Beyond him as he stood so confidently his companions in the royal box guffawed in lackey-like approval. There were scented and painted women, females of the Harfnars and the Ullars, jeweled courtiers and soldiers, impiter-masters, sword-masters. And there was one man, with the red hair of Loh, who sat unsmiling and tense, clad all in dark blue and unhappy. This, I guessed, must be Forpacheng. I marked him, too, for through his machinations my Delia had been snatched when he plotted the downfall of the Lohvian army of Hiclantung.
My great Krozair long sword slashed down—aimed at my head!
I dodged easily enough but I did not reply. Delia stood a little to one side, her toothpick sword lifted, her breast heaving; but her face showed the same strong resolution I had come to know so well through all adversity.
Umgar Stro shouted, and stamped his foot, and thrust. I risked the clang of blades as I parried and dodged—and the sword I wielded snapped clean at the hilt.
The gush of laughter from Umgar Stro was like an oil well breaking surface in the desert, dark and spouting and greasy.
“Dray!” shrieked Delia, then—and she lifted her weapon to fling it to me hilt first.
“Hold, my Delia!” I shouted. I jinked left, then right, took a spring and before Umgar Stro could orient himself I had vaulted clean over him. I landed and twisted like a leem. My left hand raked across and took his right arm biceps in my fingers. My right hand went around his neck and jerked his head back. I squeezed.
He tried to gargle something.
I exerted pressure with the fingers of my left hand and his right hand slowly opened so that the Krozair long sword fell to the sand. He sagged and then thrust with desperate strength. I hauled back. Without remorse, without pity and, now his time had come, without hatred, I pulled back until, loud and sharp, his backbone snapped.
I cast him from me.
I bent to retrieve my long sword and the arrows sang past me and, in that instant, the suns-light was choked off as a wide-winged shape plummeted from the walls.
Umgar Stro's own impiter! Come to avenge his death!
He was a monster, coal-black, wide of wing and ferocious of talon, with gape-jaws distended so that the rows of serrated teeth gleamed dull gold. His tail lashed wickedly at me so that I had to leap back. I shouted.
“Delia! This is our mount—be ready, my heart—"
“I am with you, always, dear heart!"
I intended to stand no nonsense from this savage beast. I leaped. I took the reins close up to the fanged jaw and I wrenched. I brought the flat of the sword around and laid it shrewdly alongside that narrow and vicious head.
“Let that teach you who is to be master here!"
I drew the impiter's head down, twistingly, dragged that beast low, hit him again, forced him to bend. Delia mounted with a supreme confidence that brought the breath clogging into my throat. As she wrapped the flying thongs about herself and adjusted the clerketer for me, I vaulted up and dragged the reins upward. The impiter's head rose. He was in a vile temper. An arrow whistled off the black sheen of his feathers and he rasped a hacksaw whine and struck three massive blows with his wings. He ran forward and then, with a massive fluttering and a great roaring of down-driven air, he was aloft. I had to strike but three more arrows away before we were well airborne and sailing above the anti-flier defense and away into the bright air of Kregen.
Below us in the amphitheater we left an incredible scene of confusion as Ullars whistled for their impiters, as Harfnars ran uselessly, shooting upward, only to see their shafts fall short. Strongly we beat across the sky. Umgar Stro—who was now dead—had trained his mount well. Crazed and savage and bewildered it might be; the impiter understood well enough what the point of my sword thrust into his side meant. His wings beat metronomically. The wind blasted back through our hair. Naked, we shivered in the slipstream. But up and up we flew, faster and faster, winging away from Chersonang and all the barbarity festering there.
For some time I fancied I could detect the foul taint from the deliquescing corpse of the Ullgishoa.
From the city of Chersonang behind us rose the black swarm of impiter-mounted warriors. Like a column of smoke they rose and leveled off and, wind-driven, soared after us. I jabbed the tip of my sword into the impiter and forced him to beat a faster stroke.
The twin suns of Scorpio cast their mingled light down upon us, and the land beneath spread out with its cultivated fields giving way to heath and wasteland cut through by the magnificent stone roads of the old empire. The host of impiters on our trail must have been visible for dwaburs in every direction. Our own beast flogged the air, driving us on, putting an increasing space between us and our pursuers. As befitted the power and glory, as well as the bulk, of Umgar Stro his impiter was a king among fliers. But the double burden would tell in the long flight, and eventually the flying nemesis would catch us.
If such a thing as Fate exists, it has sometimes come to my aid as well as dealing me many shrewd blows. Unaccustomed to such things, I confess it was Delia who first spotted the distant dot, and who cried out in joy—and then alarm as other reasons for the presence of an airboat here, over the Hostile Territories, occurred to her.
But there was nothing else for it. The distant flier changed course and bore through the upper levels straight toward us.
We strained our eyes. I made out a lean petal-shape, high as to stern, a much larger craft than the one in which we had flown The Stratemsk; larger, even, than those airboats of the Savanti in unknown Aphrasöe. Flags fluttered from the upperworks. Delia screwed her eyes up. I felt her body close and warm against me, and my arms tightened in instinctive protection.
“I think, my darling, I think—” she said. And: “Yes! It is! She is from Vallia!"
“Thank Zair for his mercies,” I said.
She must have spotted the massed fliers from a long distance off, for I knew the Vallians possessed telescopes. I knew without doubt why the Vallian airboat was here, why it turned at once, sensing the answer to her quest lay with that flying host of impiters. The airboat swung alongside. I hauled the impiter up and looked down.
The craft was compact and trim. I was reminded of the order and discipline of a King's ship or of those swifters I had commanded on the Eye of the World. The sights of varters of design strange to me then snouted upward at us. At the first sign of treachery or the first false move we would be blasted from the sky. A group of men on the high stern looked up, and I saw the familiar Vallian costume mingled with a smart dark blue uniform I took to be that of the air service of Vallia.
“Jump down, Princess!” shouted one of the men, a barrel-bodied individual in dark blue, with wide shoulder wings, and a flaring orange cloak. At his side swung a rapier, matched by the main-gauche on the other. He wore a curly-brimmed hat with a blazing device of gold on the front band, and an orange tuft of feathers. His face was seamed and wind-lined, the crow's-feet at the corners of his eyes testimony to his days in the air scanning distant horizons.
Carefully I edged the impiter lower so that the ratings below ducked against the beat of wings. Delia went over first and I followed to be caught instantly in strong hands. Umgar Stro's impiter, relieved, spun away into the bright sky.
“Princess Majestrix!” said the burly man, a Chuktar, an exalted rank in any man's army or navy or, as I encountered for the first time, air force.
“My Lord Farris!” said Delia. She was wrapped in a swathing orange cloak, and her face showed high and proud and yet mightily relieved. “You are most welcome."
The Lord Farris, the Chuktar in command of this airboat, the name of which was Lorenztone, bowed deeply. He did not incline, a depraved custom, and this pleased me. “And this—?” He gestured toward me in a way that was most polite.
Delia smiled. “This is Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor, Kov of Delphond, and betrothed of the Princess Majestrix."
Farris bent his head in a stiff but exquisitely formal little bow. He turned back to Delia. “The Emperor
, your father, learned that you had taken a flier and—” He hesitated and I could guess the scenes that had followed on that discovery. “There have been many airboats seeking you, Princess, and I am overjoyed that it was to me and Lorenztone, that the honor of finding you has been given."
“I am pleased, also, Farris. But—"
A lookout sang out from forward.
Everyone turned. The sky seemed filled with impiters.
Farris looked pleased. He smiled and rubbed his hands.
“Now these debased descendants of a decadent empire will see what a new nation can do!” His orders were given in a calm and matter-of-fact tone of voice that heartened me.
During that fight as the winged hordes of Umgar Stro fell on us I was mightily impressed by the way the air service men of Vallia handled themselves. Their swivel-mounted varters coughed a steady stream of projectiles. Impiters fell fluttering from the sky. Archers using smaller bows than those of Loh, it is true, took a toll. Any Ullar venturesome and lucky enough to gain a footing on the deck was instantly cut down. The Vallians, in this kind of aerial fighting, did not deign to disregard the effective uses of a boarding pike. With my long sword, which they looked at with a kind of amused awe, I joined in. The battle, in a sense, came to me as an anticlimax. Delia was safe, now, and before us lay the flight to Vallia and then the meeting with her father, that imperious, relentless, awe-inspiring man, the emperor of all Vallia.
At last the impiters and their Ullar warriors gave up.
We forged on across the landscape of the Hostile Territories as gradually the twin suns, Zim and Genodras, sank to the horizon. I took stock of this Vallian airboat, this Lorenztone. She was all of fifty feet long and her widest beam, which came some two-fifths of her length aft, was twenty feet. Her leanness of appearance came from the sheer of her bows and the sweep of her stern where the sterncastle raised. Varters lined the bulwarks much after the fashion of the broadside guns of the ships of Earth with which I was familiar. Somewhere below her deck in a safe place would be that mysterious mechanism—mysterious to me then—by which this bulk was upheld in thin air.
The designs on the many flags she bore surprised me with their functional formality; but some were so embroidered that leems and risslaca, graints and zhantils as well as chank and sectrix, figured in that fluttering panoply.
An obliging crewman found me a length of cloth. He handed it to me expecting me to wrap my nakedness in it. It was green. I merely wiped the bloodied blade of my long sword upon it, carefully, mindful of the way that young tearaway of a Vallian, Vomanus, had so carelessly wiped his ornate rapier, and handed it back. From a great pile of flying silks I selected a length of blazing scarlet. This, with as always a pang of memory, I wrapped around my waist, drew up between my legs, and tucked the end in. Delia came up with a broad leather belt, of a leather I did not then recognize, soft and pliable, with a massive silver buckle. With this I kept the breechclout in place.
“There will be no scabbard for your great sword, Dray; not until we can have one stitched up for you."
“No matter. It can hang at my side naked, with a fold of cloth to keep me from being cut—"
After the action the reaction—we were both just making noises. The airboat rushed on through the sky levels. Delia looked at me, her head a little to one side, her face grave.
“Seg? And—Thelda?"
I shook my head.
She gave a little gasp, immediately choked off, and lowered that mane of glorious brown hair, shining in the dying light, and put her dear head into my shoulder. So for a space we stood there on the deck of the airboat as the twin suns sank and the strange and yet familiar constellations crept into the night sky with three of the lesser moons of Kregen hurtling low over the horizon.
Presently we were called away for food and we sat to a fine aerial feast in the aft cabin. The Chuktar, the Lord Farris of Vomansoir, introduced his officers and other high dignitaries who had been assigned the craft searching for the emperor's daughter. I caught at some of the conversations, guessing at hidden meanings, trying to sort out the people who would not object to Delia marrying me from those who took a violent exception. I did not think I would meet any Vallian who would actively wish me to marry Delia—not even Vomanus, if I cared to dwell on it.
I noticed one young man, with a mane of blond hair and a frank and open face, with that high beaked nose of the Vallians—a characteristic in noses that I myself shared—and took particular notice of him after he had said, with a light laugh: “I have never seen so large a sword wielded so expertly, my Lord of Strombor. I venture to think that a regiment of cavalrymen well-versed in its use would rattle even the best infantry line."
His name was Tele Karkis, and he did not appear to be the lord of anywhere, which was refreshing. He was a Hikdar. If I paint him in flat and stereotyped colors, it is because that was how be appeared to be then, when I first met him. I leaned over the table to help myself to a handful of palines, and before I popped the first luscious morsel into my mouth, I said: “And on what steed would you mount these hypothetical cavalrymen of yours, Hikdar Karkis?"
He laughed, not easily, but without unease. “I have heard of the voves your Clansmen ride on the Great Plains of Segesthes, my Lord of Strombor."
I nodded. “I hope,” I said with the politeness habitual to the cultured Vallian, “that you will have the opportunity one day to pay us a visit and be our guest."
Then Lorenztone shuddered and lurched and Chuktar Farris spilled his wine and reared away from the table.
“By Vox!” he said. “I'd like to teach those rasts of Havilfar how to build like honest men!"
A man with a face I had taken no notice of at first sight, and thereby should have been warned, let out a string of oaths that were mere fancy verbiage, and quite fit for the ears of a lady, even for a princess. He was one Naghan Vanki, the lord of domains on one of the outlying islands of Vallia. He wore, unlike the air service men and the soldiers and court dignitaries, a simple silver and black outfit in the Vallian style. There was more about him than his name to remind me of Naghan, the Hiclantung spy.
We all went on deck.
The airboat was sinking and nothing the crew could do would bring her up. In the event we camped for the night among thorn-ivy bushes by a stream and were not too uncomfortable. Delia and I were quartered well away from each other, as was proper. As we prepared for sleep we all talked in a low-key kind of grumbling way about the profiteers of Havilfar. The name of Pandahem also figured in the conversation, usually with a round Vox-like oath or two.
A fire was built and we sat around it for a last cup of warmed wine. Naghan Vanki kept on making casually sarcastic remarks about barbarians, and uncouth individuals, and praising the civilization of Vallia. Delia shifted uncomfortably as he spoke. I saw well enough he was digging at me, but I did not care. Was I not with my Delia of Delphond once again, on the way to Vallia, if temporarily halted until repairs could be effected, and was not the future rosy with prospect?
“The Emperor raised heaven and earth to seek you, Princess,” said Farris, smiling now the mission was successful. “You mean a very great deal to him and to all the people of Vallia."
“I am grateful, Farris. I am also aware that I mean a very great deal to my Lord of Strombor, as he to me. Remember that."
“Still,” said young Tele Karkis, unthinkingly, “it is going to be an ordeal, standing up to the Emperor.” He spread his hands. “I would not relish crossing him—"
“Hikdar!” said Farris, and at his Chuktar's words young Karkis colored up and fell mute.
But the seed had no need to be sown; everyone there knew the ordeal I faced, and I guessed many of them secretly wondered if I had the nerve to go through with it.
Truly, all I had heard of Vallia warned me off the place.
The warmed wine we drank was a good vintage. I remember that. It came from the province of Gremivoh, so I was told, and was much favored in the air service. It held
a sweet and yet bitter savor unfamiliar to me.
Delia leaned close just before we parted for sleep.
“You do not truly wish to go to Vallia, dearest?"
“Can you ask!” I took her hand in the firelight. “I shall go to Vallia and face your father, never fear."
“But—” she began. And then: “Yes, dear heart, I know you will."
Perhaps, I thought then, being back with her own people had shaken her belief in me; perhaps she had been shocked by my own uncouth ways into seeing me in a new light. I tried to shrug that feeling off, but it persisted.
I crawled into my blankets and silks and yawned. I felt sleepy—not surprisingly, perhaps, but—ah, if we could foretell the future, then—!
I awoke in the morning as the twin suns of Scorpio sent down daggers of fire through my eyes into my brain to find myself rolled into a hole beneath a thorn bush.
I staggered out, cursing the pricks, and looked about.
The airboat was gone.
Alone, I stood among the thorn-ivy bushes on that endless plain of the Hostile Territories, and as I stood I heard a screech from above and I looked up and there, floating in wide hunting circles above, the gorgeous golden and scarlet raptor of the Star Lords surveyed me with a bright and implacable eye.
I shook my fist at the Gdoinye.
A moment later the white dove of the Savanti flew into sight, but, this time, the birds ignored each other. They surveyed me for a few moments and then turned and flew away. Whatever my plight it did not interest either the Star Lords or the Savanti, then.
My position was perilous in the extreme. I had the mother and father of headaches, and a stomachache, to boot, and I realized—dolt that I was—that something in the food or the wine of the previous evening had poisoned me. Whether or not the intention had been to poison me to death I did not know. I stood up, feeling grim, and looked about.
Some way off a blazing spot of scarlet caught my eye.
The remains of the campfire and discarded rubbish showed where we had camped. The marks the airboat had made were still fresh; evidently the technicians among the crew had repaired the craft working overnight. I walked across to the scarlet patch.
Warrior of Scorpio [Dray Prescot #3] Page 21
