Beasts of Antares [Dray Prescot #23]

by Alan Burt Akers

  The sailing ship of the sky slanted down through thin air. The island below spread in grays and browns on the sea. The water rippled silver in lapping waves. From the crags the sea birds soared as we swung down, filling the sky with the beat and flutter of their wings.

  Turko was laughing, and Korero was shouting something about its being more convenient to have four hands with imps like these. Still I gazed over the rail at the scene spread out below. There was all the need in Kregen for laughter...

  We made a reasonable landing with the sailer of the skies, which meant we got down and threw the anchor out without smashing anything too serious.

  The island was garrisoned by the Ninetieth Regiment, a kind of gendarmerie outfit mainly recruited by Naghan Vanki. We wanted to keep knowledge of this treasure trove as secret as we could. An assistant pallan, Noivo Randalsh, welcomed us. A calm, competent man with a habit of moving his head back and forth when he spoke, Randalsh had Chandror well-organized and producing gold. We saw the workings and I made damned sure I talked to the workers, and not a slave within many a mile, and discovered their grievances, if any, and checked on their work conditions. The gold came up out of the pit the ponsho had found with gratifying ease.

  Because of the importance of this gold to Vallia, Farris had spared a sizable airboat to ferry the bullion to Vondium. We watched as she took off, turning to vanish into the north.

  “You are doing well, Pallan Randalsh."

  “Thank you, majister. As a mark of your visit I am authorizing an extra issue of wine—"

  “Sore heads in the morning?"

  We laughed.

  “It will be worth it. Your words mean a great deal to us. The workers understand better now."

  I turned away, losing my smile.

  Turko stepped in.

  “The Ninetieth have prepared a feast. I am sure they do not want death's heads at the table."

  So, brisking up, I enjoyed myself at the feast given by the Ninetieth Regiment of Foot. And we sang. Well, swods on Kregen always sing, as you know...

  The following afternoon, having seen what we had come to see, we took off, spreading the canvas, hoisting the anchor, letting those magical silver boxes lift us up into thin air. The name of this sailing ship of the sky was Opazfaril. She was a fine craft. We waved and shouted down and the Ninetieth in their ordered ranks let rip with the wild war whoop that revealed that all the spit and polish, all the drill, could not entirely conceal their wild warrior origins. The workers shrilled the remberees. So Opazfaril sailed up into the glory of the suns.

  A moment later the aft lookout called, and we all looked up.

  Up there, erratic in the streaming radiance playing among the clouds, a nimble airboat gamboled. We looked closer. Three other airboats circled about the first, catching her up, diving to attack.

  The pursuers were trying to cut off the boat which fled madly. And now we saw she was making determined efforts to fly down toward us.

  A warning note in his voice, Turko said, “Is it any business of ours?"

  “It is taking place in Vallian skies."

  “All the same—"

  I shouted at Captain Dorndorf. “Beat to quarters!"

  The drums began to roll through Opazfaril. Men ran to the varters, the snouts of the ballistae frowning along the broadside. Other men carrying bows climbed the rigging. We prepared for battle.

  Korero appeared at my side. His four hands grasped two massive shields. His golden beard jutted.

  “Yes, yes, Korero,” I said, before he could speak.

  And then Turko appeared, with his shield uplifted.

  Korero the Shield. Turko the Shield. Well, that problem had been solved. But right here and now as we went flying into action, these two comrades might have a little ding-dong among themselves, arguing who was to stand at his back with shields upraised.

  “One each side,” I said. “And don't get in my way!"

  My surprise was perfectly genuine when they both cracked out a “Quidang, majister!"

  By Vox! But I must have snarled it at them to evoke that response!

  The apparent confusion as the crew of a fighting ship ran to action stations rapidly sorted itself out. The smell of the sea bore in on the breeze. Our canvas swelled. Up there the fliers spun, weaving patterns between the clouds. The mingled radiance of the suns fell in an opaline glory.

  “Does anyone recognize the cut of their jibs?” I bellowed.

  No one replied.

  The vollers were of a style new to me, new to everyone else in the ship too, it seemed.

  Then, with only a slight hesitation, Korero said, “I think—I would not swear to it—I think they bear some resemblance to airboats from Balintol.” He stared up, concentrating. “Not Balintolian, though. But like it."

  As the vollers approached it was possible to make out the profusion of carving and ornamentation smothering their hulls. The three pursuing were much larger than we'd at first thought. They were stuffed with men. We could see the round helmets and the thick forests of upraised spears over the bulwarks.

  As I had not gone below, Deft-fingered Minch, my orderly, brought the armor on deck and helped me into it. I wanted nothing heavy or fancy for the kind of work I anticipated lay ahead. The supple mesh links of that marvelous coat of mail I had fetched out of the Dawn Lands and a close-fitting helmet would suffice. All the same, Minch saw to it that a tall and waving panache of scarlet feathers sprouted from the top of the helmet. Perforce, I allowed that, seeing it was expected.

  Now the fleeing airboat, by the execution of a pretty piece of flying, won free of her pursuers. In a wide skating curve she threw them off to starboard. They swerved around, the pennants and flags fluttering from many flagstaffs. But the smaller airboat slid down and away from them for just enough time to stand a chance of reaching us.

  “He'll make it,” said Korero with perfect confidence.

  “Just,” said Turko,

  Weg Wegashtorio, the Bowman of Loh I had selected for an important task, glanced across.

  “A few heartbeats more, majister—"

  “Aye, Weg. Loose when you are ready."

  He nodded, turning back to his little rank of bowmen. He had ten of them, ten Bowmen of Loh that Seg had insisted I use. Each man was a veteran, a kampeon who had served faithfully and was now a citizen of Vallia, and no longer a mercenary. Other archers with the compound reflex bows settled themselves comfortably in the fighting tops. The space between the fleeing voller and Opazfaril narrowed.

  This situation, of course, presented just those kinds of problems that beset me when I was dumped down, naked and unarmed, somewhere or other on Kregen to sort out a problem for the Star Lords. Why should we assume the fleeing boat needed to be rescued? Could not those three grim pursuers be chasing a criminal, a render, say, an aerial pirate of their skies?

  By chance it happened that the officer and the duty squadron with me were Jiktar Rodan and his men. I did not need to give him a look. The squadron of the 2ESW waited calmly, not in ranks but taking up good fighting positions about the deck, ready to loose the bow or ply spear or sword as the occasion warranted. The Emperor's Sword Watch was a regiment that fought astride saddle animals, on foot or in the air. Their task was to protect the emperor.

  The problem of which side to take in this coming fight, if side we had to take, was rapidly solved.

  Jiktar Rodan flung up a hand, pointing to the flags streaming back from the staffs. Wind pressure had concealed their devices from us. Now as the fleeing voller turned in close the banners fluttered bravely into view. By color and symbol, device and design, you can get to know the Treshes of Kregen, and thereby know with whom you are to deal ... And just as surely, it would take a lifetime of lifetimes to learn them all!

  Staring at those flags as they flew fluttering back I realized I had not instinctively tightened my grip on my sword.

  Every flag was green.

  Dark green, those standards with purple and gold embro
ideries, and the tiny little jolt I would ordinarily have experienced was absent.

  Rodan shouted, “From Persinia!"

  Everybody strained to look, and many stared owlishly across the wind-streaming gap.

  Vallia had strong trading links with Persinia, although much weakened now after the Time of Troubles. A deal of that red gold we dug from Chandror was on its way to more than one nation of Persinia to buy supplies and to purchase totrixes and nikvoves.

  I looked up at Korero, at his superb face fixed in a trifle of a scowl, the golden beard and moustache bristling.

  “Friend or foe, Korero?"

  “Who can say? It is like a stewpot there, allied one day and at each other's throats the next. They are always on the go."

  “You sound as though you are describing the Dawn Lands of Havilfar!"

  “They are something like that in Persinia, although on a smaller scale. Those flags, I think, are Pershawian. The purple and gold nikvove on the green field."

  Korero was from Balintol—which remains a mighty mysterious place, by Vox!—and that subcontinent stretches down from Segesthes. Persinia is the southern protrusion of the coastline to the west. It lies to the north of the Undurkor Islands. Because the river which flows in a loop north and west from the mountains of Balintol reaches the sea far to the west at Zenicce, it effectively cuts off these southern lands from the Great Plains to the north.

  The flier looked to be in trouble. Her flight turned into a series of blind lurches through the air.

  Rodan said, “She is from Pershaw. And it looks as though she will go no farther."

  We had been buying nikvoves from Pershaw. This fleeing voller bore grated openings along her side, two decks of them, and safely penned inside would be a consignment of nikvoves. Those wonderful eight-legged saddle animals, although not as powerful or fierce as the superb voves themselves, were sorely needed by our cavalry. And in the nature of things, they would have already been paid for.

  Perhaps that petty financial reckoning made up my mind.

  “We must save the flier,” I said. “Captain Dorndorf, it is up to you and your helmsman. Maneuver to mask her."

  “Quidang—” There was no time for the tiresome majister. Opazfaril took the breeze and surged ahead, the silver boxes buried deep in the hull exerted their influence upon the lines of ethero-magnetical force, as the wise men say, and we swung up and past the staggering voller and hurled ourselves full on the three pursuers.

  Now your real voller is propelled along as well as lifted by the two silver boxes. These three could pirouette about us like hounds about a stag. Our only motive power came from our canvas spread to the breeze. Well ... not quite only.

  There was one other power, an awful force of nature, that together with the ship designers of Vallia, I had calculated to use in battles of flying sailing ships against vollers. That power had been used to grim effect on the long flight of steps up to Esser Rarioch, the strom's palace and castle on Valka...

  Captain Dorndorf proved a fine shipmaster.

  Opazfaril got in among the three vollers. Then the canvas came in, with just enough spread to give us a trifle of forward momentum, and we settled down to act as a solid fortress and shoot it out. These airboats from Persinia were not too well equipped with varters. Our varter crews bent to their work lustily, twirling the windlasses, drawing back the heavy bows, sliding in the lethal darts or the ugly chunks of rock, letting fly. The Vallian gros-varter is a king among ballistae, and we had four of them among the smaller projectile weapons.

  The archers shot. Down in the fighting galleries along the keel the bowmen loosed, up in the fighting tops and the walkways between the masts, the archers showered their steel-tipped death. Return shots came in. Our bulwarks were thick and high, our mantlets arranged just so, and for this kind of work Opazfaril was just as well suited as the vollers. If those lean hunting hounds sought to drag down this stag, they found she had needle-sharp horns everywhere and not just adorning her forehead.

  The lookouts on special duty posted in a relay chain kept calling the positional information up, along the relay, to Travok, grandson of the Vad of Valhotra, positioned near Captain Dorndorf on the quarterdeck. Travok's twin, Tom, was up in a fighting top, screeching his lungs out.

  “I leave the moment to you, captain."

  “When the trumpet blows, majister—do you grasp hold!"

  “Aye!"

  Arrows sprouted from our masts. Our hulls overside must have looked like pincushions. But our varters were striking home in ruthless fashion. Chunks of the vollers splintered stern, bulwarks, hull, beams. One or two lumps of rock whistled across our deck and a young cadet, Bolan the Tumbs, brought one across to me. I weighed it on my palm.

  Captain Dorndorf nodded. “Small."

  Korero said, “Enough to knock your head off."

  Turko said, “That's why—” and stopped.

  An arrow stood in his shield.

  He broke it off and we looked at it. Not a Lohvian shaft, but long and deadly and tipped with steel. The feathers were undyed, being browny-white from the Oraneflut, a useful bird of graceful body and broad wings.

  “I've been shot at a few times with those,” observed Korero.

  The fight brawled across the sky as Opazfaril sailed slowly and steadily on and the vollers swirled like leaves in a hurricane about us. The flier they had been pursuing snuggled in along our flank, grapnels flew and men went across to shoot on that side. A number of crossbow bolts snicked in among the arrows. I began to think the time when the boarding attempts would be made must be near. I told Dorndorf. He nodded, and drew a short, stout, thick and extremely nasty-looking axe. He ran a thumb along the edge.

  “Soon now, majister, yes."

  “Find out about the voller."

  Cadet Bolan the Tumbs ran off, like an alley cat, leaping the cumbered decks, disappearing over the bulwarks to shinny down onto the grappled voller. His freckles had blazed with his passionate enthusiasm.

  Travok Arclay yelled.

  “One is swinging in below!"

  Certainly, there were only two vollers circling above us and trying to drop nasty objects on our decks. Stationed at the end of the chain of men reporting from the lower fighting galleries, Travok kept looking up at the top where his twin screeched with excitement and hauled up barrels of arrows.

  I wondered if these harum-scarum lads were disappointed that the thought that crossed our minds on first sighting the strange vollers had proved false. The island below was rich in gold. Well, then, if the secret got out, wouldn't you expect hordes of renders to come sailing piratically down? Of course. But there was a lot more to this little fracas than mere piracy.

  The nearest flier was close enough now to bring a catapult into play that hurled larger and altogether more unpleasant chunks of rock than their small varters. A section of our bulwarks broke in and men staggered away yelling. Portable mantlets were dragged across to give shield cover against arrows and crossbow bolts. Lookouts tried to spot the catapult on the crowded enemy decks and shooters tried to knock out the crew. The fight was becoming personal.

  The crash splintered through the uproar and a barrel of arrows burst and showered shafts skittering across the deck. A rock had cleanly severed the rope by which Tom Arclay hauled up replenishment arrows. At once he started to shinny down the line, swinging like a monkey down to the deck, ignoring both the ratlines and the ladder affixed to the mast for landlubberish soldiers.

  “He's almost under us!” Travok jumped in excitement Tom hit the deck near him. They were both wrapped up in their work.

  The lookouts below reported the progress of the airboat almost under us. Probably the voller captains were quite unsure how to deal with us, a weird contraption the like of which they had not seen before. They must quickly have realized we had no power and were wind-driven. That made them incautious. No doubt they sought to fly in below and swing up, judging it nicely, and land boarding parties along our keel galleries. Th
ey would be in the ship far more easily and quickly that way than by any attempt to land across our mast and rigging-encumbered decks.

  If this captain below us wanted to try that, he was welcome...

  “Another few murs!” shrieked Travok.

  Tom glanced across at his twin.

  The bulwarks broke back just by the two lads. Yellow splinters of wood whirred murderously. A bowman screamed, transfixed by a shaft ten times thicker than those he shot. The two boys were down, rolling on the deck. A trumpet pealed.

  The trumpet rang above all the noises of the combat.

  Instantly, Opazfaril dropped like a stone.

  The silver boxes had been thrust apart, the lifting power vanished, the ship fell. She fell crushingly down upon the voller under us. The noise racketed maddeningly. But I saw the Arclay twins, rolling on the deck, sliding toward the shattered side and the awful drop into nothingness.

  Somehow I was there. There is no memory of leaping across the planking. I grabbed Tom, who was nearest, and threw him back. He pitched over and reached out, grasping for a handhold.

  A smear of blood across the wood told of some poor devil who had been in the way of the flung rock. Travok was over the side, gripping with his fists into the folds of the netting, the tarred cordage biting. He was slipping down. The net was running out, ripped through on its eyelets.

  His head vanished below the shattered bulwarks. In only moments he would fall free of the ship as the net and its supporting booms collapsed away.

  Four long leaps should carry me to the side and the slipping net, and the grasping fingers of Travok Arclay.

  Captain Dorndorf was a fine sailor of the skies. He understood the limitations and the possibilities of his ship. Opazfaril lifted a little. I felt that movement under my feet as I left Tom on the deck and began my leap for Travok. No one else was at hand; it had all been very quick. I felt the movement, I leaped, and Opazfaril dropped again, dropped sickeningly down. She hit the voller under us and the jar felt as though I had leaped down onto a marble tombstone. I staggered. My balance was gone.

  Without a sound I pitched over the side.

  Upside down I fell past the side of the ship.