At once Seg and I were in action. All about us beat the massive pinions of the impiters, shining and heavy, feather-flurried in the wind of their smiting. We dodged and ducked and avoided the flung javelin and the loosed shaft. In return our own shafts plunged home in wing and belly, in breast and head. I saw three of the barbaric riders shriek and topple from their high saddles, to swing wildly from restraining straps as their mounts struggled to stay aloft.
“Your back, Dray!"
Delia's voice.
I swung about and ducked and saw the monstrous talons graze past my head. They swerved with the swaying of the impiter's body and closed about the head and shoulders of a man upon a nactrix and dragged him screaming upward. Seg loosed and a blast of air from a slashing wing deflected his shaft. I saw another swooping flying-monster, and the creature upon its back, vicious, with narrow-set eyes and square clamped mouth, whose hair floated freely aft of his blunt head in a waving mane, dyed all a brilliant indigo. I saw the maleficent glare in those close-set eyes and I dodged the flung javelin, seizing it as it spun past in the empty air, and reversing it and hurling it back so that its flint head smashed into the leem-skin pelt and copper and bronze ornaments on the man's chest. The impiter swerved away, but I saw its rider jerk and open that square mouth and cough a bright stream of his life's blood.
A nactrix trailing its intestines galloped madly past. Its rider fell sprawling at my feet, and I bent and lifted him as an arrow feathered into the grass beside us. His young, pale face sheened with sweat; one eye was closed and swelling purple-black and his fiery-red hair clotted into a great wound across his scalp.
“Take your sword and fight them off!” I said, twisting him upright.
His eyes widened and the horrified look of absolute panic on his face creased away into the semblance of sanity amid an insane world. He drew his sword—a toothpick compared with the great long swords worn by Seg and myself—and put himself into something of the stance of a fighting-man.
Thelda was still screaming.
I saw Seg loose three arrows so fast that all were in flight together before all three smote their targets, and three more of the indigo-haired aerial attackers shrieked and slumped in their flying straps.
My own bow sang and another square-mouthed man astride his impiter sagged back, and, writhing horribly, slid down and under his mount's neck so that its wings smashed remorselessly into his body as it sought to struggle upward.
Around us the sward was splashed with blood, nactrixes lay dead, with the bodies of their riders; but the young man whom I had forcibly pushed back from the pit of madness waved his sword, his red hair bright under the morning suns, and shouted brave, silly, vain words of defiance.
Seg gasped and loosed again and an impiter in its flight went straight on, with extended wings, straight on into the ground with the arrow imbedded through its eye into its brain.
I started across to deal with the rider, who leaped free very nimbly, and drew a long and thin sword. His leem pelt glowed with the dyes lavished upon it, his bronze buckles and buttons burnished to a blazing brilliance blinded me in the brilliant suns-shine. Still with my longbow in my left hand I drew my long sword with my right. He faced me most determinedly, aware that he had only to fight me off to be saved by his companions. Over his shoulder I saw one of his comrades shake the reins of his flying beast, drive in his leather-wrapped legs and feet, and wheel that monstrous bulk toward me, and I prepared myself to face two enemies at once.
“Hai!” yelled my man on the ground, and charged.
Meeting his blade with a solid shock, I caught that sliver of fine steel, looped it around, and thrust and with the thrust went on with my lunge, doubling up and jerking the brand free from his belly, doubling up and rolling over on the ground. I felt the beat of immense wings and felt the cold downrush of air. Almost, I made it; but a raking talon smashed searingly down my side, knocking the breath from my lungs and sending gouts of racking pain through me.
I could understand and deal with pain. I staggered up, gasping for air, still clutching my sword, and turned to see Delia being whisked aloft in the cruel clutching talons of an impiter.
I shouted—something, I know not what—as I saw my Delia being whipped up. The attackers were retreating now, unwilling to lose more men to these merciless foemen below. Then, from somewhere, a blow sledged down on my head and I pitched forward into the bloodied grass.
I rolled over sluggishly. Then I could not move. I lay there, seeing Seg topple as a last flung javelin bounced from his leg. I lay there and watched that accursed impiter as it sailed away bearing my Delia fast-clenched in its claws. The thing upon its back waved its spear and screeched in a high mocking crow of victory and revenge.
My Delia was gone, snatched away by as vile and merciless a being as any I had seen. Lost and gone, my Delia of Delphond, lost and gone ... With the blackness that closed over me closed also complete and utter despair.
* * *
Chapter Eleven
Assassins in the corthdrome
The performance of Sooten and Her Twelve Suitors presented in the covered theater aroused intense enthusiasm from the audience, and although I quite admired this tragedy known almost over the entire Kregen world of culture, the action irritated me, the words seemed trite, the melodious phrases mere cant. The crack on my skull had healed with the customary rapidity of wounds inflicted on my carcass, a useful by-product of my immersion in the pool of baptism of the River Zelph that had given me the promise of a thousand years of life.
But of what use or goodness or value were a thousand years if my Delia of the Blue Mountains was not there to share them with me?
A kind of psychic numbness had overtaken me. Seg had been wounded, also, and was being nursed back to health and strength in this city of Hiclantung, which he appeared to regard in much the same way as a denizen of my own time living in a remote corner of Cornwall would regard a recreation of Chaucer's London. As for Thelda, I had to resort to lies and trickery to obtain some respite from her constant lamentations and protestations and tears. At this moment she was under the impression I was lying fast asleep in the apartments given over to our use in the villa of red brick and white stone situated on a southern declivity of the city just a comfortable ten murs’ walk within the walls. Sooten, in her interminable trickeries of the clamoring suitors—something, I fear, of a Kregan Penelope—wearied me in my numb and dissociated mood. All savagery and wild anger had shriveled. Without Delia the whole universe meant nothing.
If you marvel that we, three friendless wanderers, had so fallen on our feet as to have a comfortable villa in the Loh style given over to our use, I can remember my feelings then. The young man I had snapped into a semblance of sanity had, as was clearly evident from his trappings and hauteur, a high post in the army of Hiclantung. Young Hwang—for such was his name with the very necessary additions of many sonorous titles and ranks and indications of estate-holdings—was the nephew of the Queen of the city, and although we had made her acquaintance in the most formal of ways she yet remained a stranger to us. Yet, it was she who in gratitude had given orders that we were to be well-treated.
Seg had wrinkled up his nose about this Queen, but he refused to comment when Thelda chided him.
There is no real coincidence in this train of events. Any fighting-man knows that on an open battlefield if he renders some distinguished service to a man dressed in brilliant uniform or otherwise marked for a man of distinction, then the gratitude of the powerful can be expected—ceteris paribus— and he may expect to benefit from that action. We had saved the Queen's nephew. So we were rewarded.
I would gladly have consigned all the Queen's nephews in the whole of Kregen to the Ice Floes of Sicce to have my Delia back.
A hand touched my arm.
“You are bored with the entertainment, Dray Prescot?"
“I know the piece well, Hwang, and admire the dexterity of construction—after all, I am told there are fragments of
this play extant on clay tablets dating from five thousand years ago. But no; it's not the play. I am at fault."
Hwang, despite his somewhat foppish manner and his desperate loss of identity on a battlefield, was nonetheless for that a fine young man from whom something better than average might be made given the lad was conceded a chance. Now he laughed and said: “I can show you more full-blooded sport if you wish."
I had declined this sort of offer before in Zenicce, and so I said, simply: “I thank you; but no. I will walk a while."
Outside the covered theater the largest moon of Kregen—the maiden with the many smiles—sailed clear of clouds. The whole city lay floating in pink moonlight. Presently the two second moons would rise, eternally orbiting each other, the twins, to add their luster to the scene. As we walked along in this tide of radiance dark figures detached themselves from shadowy alcoves and fell in to our rear. Young Hwang's bodyguard, provided by the Queen, an insurance that her line would continue, and an infernal nuisance to a man like myself who wanted to be alone.
Every house and building in Hiclantung possessed a roof which stoppered the night air, every roof-garden had its sliding ceiling panels, and they were unfailingly closed each night. Over the roofs thin strong wires stretched, wires patiently drawn by hand and forged and hammered hour after hour. Metal spikes projected in serrated and ugly fans at every vantage point of cornice and ledge. All the architecture had been designed to offer no single vantage point unprotected. Tall and thin columnar towers rose everywhere, and at their summits they broadened like tulips into minor fortresses with pointed roofs—tulip-shaped, onion-shaped, domed and spired, but never flat. No canopies with gilt-spearheaded posts projected with their awnings, as were everywhere visible in the other cities I had visited. Nothing was provided that could offer a perch.
“The dancing girls at Shling-feraeo are exceptionally fine,” said Hwang. I was well aware that he had not yet summed me up; he didn't yet know what to make of me. Had I cared what he thought or did not think of me I still would not have bothered to worry over his enlightenment.
“Thank you, Hwang. But dancing girls, no matter how fine, do not suit my mood this night."
Under that moon-glow Hwang's red hair gleamed a curious color, rich and thick and curled. He was a good-hearted young fellow, I thought, amazingly friendly given the circumstances of his upbringing. He would benefit from a season or two with Hap Loder and my Clansmen of Felschraung out on the Great Plains of Segesthes.
He it was who had filled in the background picture of this city, this anachronism, this civilized survivor in a wilderness of barbarity. When the great empire carved out by Walfarg had fallen through dissension at home in Loh, here, in eastern Turismond, the cities had drawn their own culture tightly about them and resisted to their best the invaders from the north, away past the northern outskirts of The Stratemsk. Some had fallen and were now mere shells, inhabited by leem and plains-wolves and risslaca. Others had survived as cities but were now the homes of barbarians, of beast-men and half-men. And yet—some, some had retained all their old Lohvian culture and civilization and went on their own paths as cities and city-states, islands of light amid a sea of darkness.
Of Loh, they now knew nothing.
Legends and fables, garbled histories, and the occasional venturesome traveler alone provided any link with their ancient homeland.
I could foresee that both Vallia and Pandahem, the new, lusty, sprawlingly-vigorous powers establishing themselves on the eastern coast, would not find this country easy, their penetration a mere matter of barter and sword.
Hwang, to do him justice, tried to jolly me out of this mood of black depression.
“If not dancing girls, then come with me to the nactrix stables. I have had to buy fresh mounts—” He stopped talking, and coughed. I knew well enough why he was forced to buy fresh nactrixes.
“I thank you, Hwang—but—"
He halted me with an upraised hand. His bodyguard froze behind us in the shadows.
Living was an everyday precious affair for the Lohvians of Hiclantung; they valued continued existence, always struggling against the seas of barbarism beating upon their ancient walls. These robes we wore now, old but finely woven and superbly maintained, were a part of that tradition. Loh had withdrawn and there was no way home for these people through the Hostile Territories occupied by beast and barbarian—even had they wished to leave their own homes and hearths. So I was not as hard on young Hwang as I might have been. No other thoughts had much place in my skull at that time except agonized fears and mocking, now they were gone, memories of Delia of Delphond.
“Then,” said Hwang with youthful force, “we will go to see the corths that rascal Nath is trying to sell me."
I perked up at once; then reality supervened. Nath is a common name on Kregen—already in my life at this time there had been Nath the Thief from Zenicce, and my old oar comrade Nath of Sanurkazz, and I was to meet more.
This Nath was a fat but jolly man with a stub-nose and liquid eyes and a kind of loosely-rolled turban that slanted down over one ear in which a whole pagoda-like construct swung dwarfing any normal earring. His robes were new, embroidered in the Lohvian way with serpentine risslaca and orchids twining with the moon-blooms, and his slippers—to my intense disappointment—were mere plain squat-ended herring-boxes. He should have worn slippers flaunting extraordinarily long and up-curled points.
“Lahal, Dray Prescot,” he said, when what passed for pappattu had been made—I did not have to fight him or give him obi as was customary on other portions, equally civilized, of Kregen—and he rolled his girth around and resumed his seat on a pile of trappings, cushions, gear, and flying silks. Hwang was already inspecting the corths, all securely chained up by wing and leg to their perches, beneath the arched roof of the corthdrome.
“A couple are to my liking, Nath,” he said, without any attempt at bargaining. They began to talk prices, and I wandered across to take a closer look at the representatives of the flying monsters who had menaced our flight through The Stratemsk.
The corth is a truer bird than the impiter, although not as large or fierce—I believe that only two other flying animals of Kregen better the impiter—and in general will carry no more than two passengers. These birds possessed the large round eyes, the sleek feathered heads, the deep chests and wide wings of faithful fliers, their legs short and sturdy and varying as to the amount of feather-covering in different species. Now they shifted from side to side and cocked their heads to stare at me first down one side of their beaks and then the other. In color they ranged through the spectrum, with patterns of variegated feathers lending a powerful beauty to their forms. Compared to the fanged and whip-tailed impiters with their coal-black plumage, the corths were indeed beautiful.
On a question from me, Nath laughed so that his array of chins and stomachs shook. “Oh dear me, no! We would not allow our beautiful corths to perch on a bar outside our windows! Why—the barbarians would simply dive on them and kill them and then they would have the perch on which to land freely provided for them. We make it difficult for fliers to land in Hiclantung."
“I had noticed."
The corthdrome had been built at the summit of a high building on one of the hills of the city, on the southern declivity of which our villa lay. I thought of Seg, slowly recovering, of Thelda, keeping as she thought a vigilant night-time watch over my sick bed. They were good comrades. When we quitted the place, to Nath the Corthman's wheezy: “Remberee, Dray Prescot!” and the chinkling of the fresh golden coin in his wallet, I was ready to turn in.
Hwang held me back. His face tautened. Looking down the long flight of stairs that led to the street, each section of twenty treads with a separate side wall looped for arrow-slits, I saw a body of armed men climbing the white stone that glimmered duskily pink and purple in the moons-light, for the twins were now wheeling across the sky after the maiden with many smiles.
Hwang suddenly laughed softly
and I was aware of the rapid putting away of the longbows in the hands of his bodyguard.
The two parties met
“You are abroad late, Hwang."
“Yes, Majestrix.” Hwang inclined. They inclined in Zenicce, and I had never liked the custom, so, as before, I merely bowed. Queen Lilah of Hiclantung looked upon me, there in the fuzzy pink moonslight.
“It seems I have pierced two impiters with a single shaft. I came to haggle for corths from that fat corthman Nath, and now I find the pleasure of meeting you, Dray Prescot. I had planned a more formal meeting, for I fear I have not thanked you enough for saving the miserable skin of my foolish nephew."
Against that kind of polite nonsense, a plain sea officer and a fighting-man is usually out of his depth. I merely bowed again and said: “The pleasure is mine, I assure you."
How long the inanities would have gone I do not know. This Queen Lilah stood very tall, her dark eyes on a level with my own brown ones, and her red hair had been coiffed into a high pile resplendent with gems and strings of pearls. Her dark blue gown, thickly embroidered and stiff with bullion and gold and silver threads, gave no hint of her figure; but her face was very white, unlined, her eyes picked out with kohl and her mouth painted into a cupid's bow of allure. She gazed at me most intently as we spoke, and I gathered something of her power and her majesty, the immediate response she could always elicit, for that pallid face tinged with the pink radiance from the moons of Kregen and those darkly glittering eyes held a kind of hypnotic power, emphasized by the shadowing beneath her cheeks and the upslanted eyebrows, the widow's peak of red hair over her forehead.
A man with her, elegant in dark green robes—dark green!—and with a powerful bearded face and eloquent hands adorned with many rings on the carefully tended fingers, was speaking of the lack of news of the scouts sent out to track the destination of the flying tribe who had so sorely bested the Hiclantung army and carried off Delia.
Warrior of Scorpio [Dray Prescot #3] Page 12
