Storm over Vallia

by Alan Burt Akers

  “Of course.”

  They both sat silently after that, the air as it were, exhausted between them.

  Then Dayra, very much Ros the Claw, snapped out: “Anyway, where is Silda now?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “You’ve no idea! By Vox! What a brother I have.”

  Studying this stern, sober, upright brother of hers, Dayra saw that perhaps, just perhaps, he might be overawed by this Queen Lush and her magnificence and undoubted beauty and worldly-wise ways. She wasn’t really fat, of course not, just a trifle on the plump side. She might, in Drak’s eyes who must think of himself as an emperor one day, far outdo Silda Segutoria in those qualities deemed necessary in an empress. Also, and this thought bore a great deal of truth, Drak might be more than a little offput by what he knew of the Sisters of the Rose. Their father might go off on mysterious jaunts; but so did their mother the Empress Delia. Any woman who was a sister of the SoR could expect to work for the Order, and be absent from the hearth and home.

  Equality in Vallia, as was not true in some countries of Paz, cut both ways.

  Slowly, unhappy at what he felt he must say, Drak wet his lips and said, “Look, Dayra. I must say that really this is my business—”

  “You mean you think it is no concern of mine!” She flared it out, scornful, brilliant of color, her eyes marvels in the soft samphron oil lamps’ glow. “I tell you, brother, it is of great consequence to me. Not just because Silda is a dear friend. Not just because you will be emperor one day and must have the very best empress possible. Not just because Queen Lush for all her magnificence is pathetic. No, by Vox, Drak! Because I’m choosy about who is to be my sister-in-law, that’s why!”

  “I think—”

  “Yes! You are right, by Chozputz!” She stood up like a flame in the light, stamped her tall black boots on the carpet, looped her evil whip about her shoulder. “I’m going!”

  “Dayra — please — it shouldn’t—”

  “By Chusto, Drak! D’you take me for a ninny! I can’t stay lollygagging about here. I’ll be back. I want to see Jilian, among others. Give my remembrances to those here who knew me. Remberee!”

  She was gone like a tornado before Drak collected his wits. “Remberee,” he called after her, feeling a fool.

  Outside the tent checking on the guard, Jiktar Endru Vintang slammed himself up to rigid attention. The swirl of russet leathers, a swift: “Thank you, Jik. Remberee,” and the princess was away astride her flutduin. He sighed. He wouldn’t relish being wed to that one — and yet, and yet...!

  He saw Hikdar Carlotta walking across from the queen’s guard detail and decided to hang around for a time. Carlotta was a jolly, red-cheeked girl with a good humor for everyone except a sloppy soldier. He smiled as she approached in the torch’s streaming light.

  The prince whom Endru guarded snatched up a goblet of wine, drained it, and hurled the thing at the floor. Women! Sisters! Queens! They were enough to drive a man into the claws of Mak Chohguelm the Ib-Cracker!

  Anyone observing Prince Drak act like this would have been astounded.

  He had to sort out his private life, yet there was never enough time to handle all the affairs pressing him. He was somberly aware that each time he made a mistake men and women died. A carpenter might make a table with one leg shorter than the other and the table wobbled. What a pity. The Prince Majister made the wrong decision and regiments could be cut down. That, to Drak, seemed too monstrous even to be encompassed by pity.

  Troubled as all hell he saw a girl with a white shawl wrapped about slender shoulders and hair unbound sidle into the tent. She put a finger to her lips. Endru must have let her pass. He did not know her.

  “Majister. The queen craves an immediate and private meeting. You must come at once—”

  “Is the queen ill? Has evil befallen her?”

  “No, majister. Hurry!”

  Alarmed, Drak snatched up his belts where his rapier and dagger swung scabbarded and followed the girl out of the tent.

  What jumped demonically into his mind was monstrous and totally unthinkable. Wasn’t it?

  Chapter fourteen

  Deviltry under the Moons

  They were a right rapscallion bunch. They met in the damp and tumbledown house of Yolande the Gregarian because Silda was tired of trying to meet where fights kept erupting. She had provided silver to buy wine and food and she wanted to complete her orders before they all fell down paralytic. When the time came, she promised herself, there’d be damn little if any wine, by the broken teeth and oozing eyes of Sister Melga the Harpy Herself!

  “Well, I dunno,” said Crafty Kando, sounding most cool.

  “It’s against reason,” said Rundle the Flatch, a low-browed, tangle-haired fellow with half an ear missing.

  “Since when, Rundle,” said Lon the Knees, taking a handful of palines from the red pottery dish, “have you and reason been on speaking terms?”

  As Rundle started to bristle up, Long Nath said: “But against the king? It’d be like washing away the Rahart Mountains with one cup of water.”

  “By Dipsha the Nimble-fingered!” exclaimed Yolande the Gregarian. “What do you know about washing, Long Nath? When was the last time you washed?”

  “I’ll have you know—”

  “There’s gold in it,” cut in Lon. He continued to wonder what the hell he’d got himself into with this glorious girl; but he was in and wasn’t going to back out now. “Lots of gold.”

  “Well, gold, now...” And: “There’s ways and ways...” And: “He’s for the chop, that one, anyway, by Black Chunguj!” They argued, as it were, to clear their minds and to gain sustenance one from the other.

  Looking at this unlikely gang of cutthroats, Silda understood that a Sister of the Rose used whatever tools came to hand suitable for her purpose.

  Lop-eared Tobi could still hear the shuddersome thud of that knife as it struck the wood instead of embedding itself in his back. Or Crafty Kando’s back. He owed this girl his life, at the least.

  “You call him king,” spoke out Lop-eared Tobi. “But he’s no more than a thief like us.”

  “I never stole from Kovneva Rashumin,” said Ob-eye Mantig, with a shake of his head and such droll seriousness that the others laughed at him.

  “We would be,” said Lon carefully, “taking back what rightfully belongs to Rahartdrin.”

  No one there dreamed that, if they succeeded, they’d return the gold to the kovneva. There were limits, by Diproo the Nimble-fingered!

  Useless to try to browbeat these people. They knew what they knew and understood their trade. Silda took a paline from the dish and before speaking held the little yellow berry between her fingers.

  “I understood that you were masters of your art. But, of course, if you do not have the skills required—”

  They broke out into uproar at this, their professional thieves’ competence questioned. Crafty Kando quieted them. He looked at Silda meaningfully.

  “You have not told us, my lady, why you wish to burgle the king’s gold.”

  “Why not? It is not his, as we have said. And he is bad for the country. We all know that.”

  “That is sooth. The kovneva was different. Times were good in those days.”

  Silda knew enough from what her father had told her about Katrin Rashumin to know that having lost her husband the kov, Katrin had allowed her island to fall into a disreputable state through bad management and incompetent and mercenary managers. The emperor had helped her sort out her problems. Rahartdrin had prospered until the Times of Troubles.

  The people of Rahartdrin, the Rahartese, would dearly love to throw King Vodun Alloran off their island, back to his own province of Kaldi. They might do more, given the opportunity. But no one was unaware of the drably clad men and women with their crossbows who seemed to be everywhere. Spies, too, had to be looked out for, and Silda felt thankful that everyone in this gathering had been vouched for.

  No one it appeared
to Silda was as yet fully convinced. Crafty Kando raised a point of great importance.

  “My lady, are there Pachaks among the guards?”

  “No.”

  So that cleared away one obstacle, for Pachaks are notorious for the honor and zealousness with which they discharge their duties when hired on as guards. Pachaks, with their straw yellow hair and two left arms, one right arm and powerful tail hand, give their nikobi and will not desist from the honorable course until they are discharged by their employer or by death.

  Silda did not mention that there would almost certainly be Katakis. A way around that problem had to be found.

  Yolande the Gregarian stood up. A strong woman plump with muscle, she had buried four husbands and was on the lookout for a fifth. Her face showed signs of her struggles with life. Very deft with a loop of rope, this Yolande. At first she had vehemently if privately detested this new supple stripling of a girl; but when she realized that Lyss the Lone had no designs on the men in Yolande’s life, she welcomed Lyss as a female companion among the men.

  “My loyalty remains with Kovneva Katrin. I will go up against this new despicable king. Also, I need the gold, for I shall marry again soon.”

  This latter remark caused more concern among the men present than Yolande’s other decision. Silda seized her chance, spoke briefly and eloquently, cast a look at Lon and lapsed into silence.

  Now the decision rested with Five-handed Eos-Bakchi.

  * * * *

  Drak followed the girl in the white shawl out of his tent. The sentries saluted. He saw Endru talking to one of the queen’s guards and called across: “Endru. I am to see the queen. You need not turn out the men.”

  “Quidang!”

  Endru and Carlotta watched the prince and the girl walk toward the queen’s tent.

  Torchlight pooled around the tents. The ever-present murmurous noise of an army even at night floated in from the camp. Carlotta and Endru resumed their conversation.

  The white-shawled girl and Drak vanished into the darkness between the two pools of light.

  “I suppose, my famous kampeon,” said Carlotta, joking Endru for whom she had a deep respect, “you fancy that chit of a girl instead of a jurukker like me.”

  “Why, Carlotta!” Endru put on a show of gallantry. “You malign me cruelly. Anyway, who is she? I have never seen her before.”

  “Nor have I. The queen is highly choosy about the girls who serve her. I saw little of this one in the torchlight; but she looked beautiful, as I’m sure you noticed. The queen does not often have really beautiful young girls about her person.”

  Carlotta saw no need to give the reason for that.

  Looking at the queen’s tent in its sheath of light and the Jikai Vuvushis on guard there, Endru waited for the girl and the prince to appear. He’d have a careful look at her. Prospects might be improving... He waited expectantly.

  Presently, he said, “Where are they?”

  Before Carlotta had time to answer, Endru bellowed at his men. The shock hit him like a thunderclap.

  “Turn out the guard! Alarm! Follow me!”

  He ran like a maniac for the darkness between the tents.

  Carlotta, abruptly aware of the situation, shrilled: “Bring lights!” and took off after Endru.

  Past those pools of light the night clamped down with only one of Kregen’s lesser moons vaulting past. The starlight did nothing to assist Endru’s eyes, still dazzled by the torches. He ran on, blinking, whipping out his sword, trying to see.

  The horror he experienced drove him on. The prince, who considered him as a friend, depended on him. And he had failed him! He ran on dementedly.

  A vague shape ahead...? The fugitive starlight wink of a blade...? Endru peered ahead. That was the petal shape of an airboat. Figures, dark and ominous, clustered below and then he saw the sudden blob of white rising up against the flank of the flier.

  That was the white shawl of that Opaz-forsaken girl!

  They had been duped. The prince was in mortal peril. Endru shouted, screaming, and ran on headlong. Carlotta, up with him now, fleetly running, saw what was going on. Her sword snouted. Together, they rushed on as the last figures clambered aboard the airboat. It began to rise.

  A lump and then another showed above the bulwarks.

  Endru felt nothing. One moment he was running on, the next he was pitching forward, flat on his face, with the crossbow bolt through him. He tried to yell, and froth and blood bubbled. Carlotta fell on top of him. He tried to push her off and she felt like all the Mountains of the North. He stared up as his men reached him, swords and spears brandished, and saw the airboat rise and turn and, as his eyes misted over, she vanished into the shadows.

  * * * *

  King Vodun Alloran beamed. He felt the glow of pleasure all through him. Chemsi the Fair had not been treating him just lately as he considered a king should be treated, and she had packed her baggage and been seen off. Just where she’d been sent, Alloran did not inquire. He was too wrapped up in his new light o’ love, Thelda the Voluptuous.

  And, on top of his new conquest — this!

  With deep, delicious delight coursing all through him, King Vodun Alloran stared down upon the bound and unconscious body of Drak, Prince Majister of Vallia.

  “You have done well, Scauron the Gaunt. Exceedingly well.”

  “If I have served you, majister—”

  Alloran’s wits were quick enough.

  “What, fambly, that will requite you? No gold, then?”

  Caught out, Scauron bowed. “I am at the command of the king, majister.”

  “Good. Then get this proud prince sent into the custody of the Mantissae. Tell them that never have they been offered a choicer morsel. No, by Takroti, never!”

  Again, Scauron bowed, and started on his duties. He accepted orders and carried them out. He didn’t much care for all the Katakis thronging about Alloran. But he did know, as they say on Kregen, to keep his hat on in the rain.

  Frightened slaves carried the limp form of the prince through side corridors from the anteroom where Scauron the Gaunt had delivered him to the king. Drak was passed on through a triply guarded doorway into the clutching claws of the Mantissae.

  Chapter fifteen

  Tells of a wisp of straw

  Although the darkness was not that of a night of Notor Zan — when no moons shine in the skies of Kregen — the Maiden with the Many Smiles would be late, and only a lesser moon raced across the starfields. The night breeze whispered along the cobbled alleyways of Rashumsmot. Lights flickered erratically. This was a night for ghosties and ghoulies to prowl the shadowed streets seeking soft throats and warm blood. Silda Segutoria firmly ensconced in the persona of Lyss the Lone, threw off these childish fancies.

  She had put in a great deal of hard work on Crafty Kando’s nefarious band. They were not drikingers, bandits, but they were a cutthroat crew. At the smell of gold, a number of newcomers had been recruited by Kando, all men and women he certified as safe.

  Between them and under Silda’s guidance they had scouted the back areas of the villa and Kando had pronounced no difficulty in getting into the grounds. These folk had their ways of avoiding sentries. But, to get into the building itself was an altogether different kettle of fish. Silda had rejected any ideas of introducing this hairy bunch into the normal entrances. They’d not be chucked out on their ears immediately. Oh, no. They’d be rounded up at the points of spears and sold off as slaves.

  So she was forced to arrange a break-in. All the ordinary windows would be no use. Many of the men in the gang were accomplished bar breakers or benders, and others specialists in door-opening. If Silda’s plan was to work, these folk were of paramount importance. The other important side of this operation nearly caused the whole show to come to grief.

  “Swords?” said Lop-eared Tobi. His voice did not so much quaver as shrill in alarm.

  “Swords?” yelped Long Nath. “Oh, no!”

  “But,” said S
ilda, nonplused. “If we meet up with sentries—”

  “Run, or loop ’em, or the knife,” quoth Yolande the Gregarian. The meeting, the last before Silda felt herself fully committed, being held at Yolande’s crumbling house again, provided remarkable calm after earlier attempts at meetings. “Or,” added Yolande, “a short spear, perhaps.”

  “Very well,” snapped Silda. “I will provide short spears. By Vox! I thought you’d have handled swords in your lives.”

  “Oh, no, my lady. Swords are not for the likes of us.”

  So, outfitted as a gang of thieves with the addition of short spears purloined from the armory by Lyss the Lone, they’d set off. And the night was dark.

  Silda, a Sister of the Rose, needed no assistance in scaling the outer wall. She was as adept as any of the skulkers at skulking. A funny little thought hit her that Dayra, or Jilian, would joy to be with her now. They prowled on toward the wall of the villa, shrouded in darkness, and if there were any sentries in this quarter their presence was not made known.

  Crafty Kando said between his teeth: “Wait here.”

  He slid off with a few of his people to check the last approaches across a greensward. Silda with the others waited in shrubbery. The night pressed down.

  Presently, Kando returned. His whisper breathed like a furtive slipper on polished wood.

  “The damned windows are all boarded up. Bricked up. You promised us an entrance, my lady.”

  “Let me have a look.” Silda was fed up with handing about. “There are windows all along the wall here.”

  She and Kando slid ahead, ghostlike through the darkness. Kando had to acknowledge that this fine lady certainly knew how to skulk. They reached the wall and in the dimness Silda saw two windows bricked up.

  “They are all like this at the back,” said Kando.

  “What about those?” Silda indicated windows set in the angle of wall and ground. “They are barred, yes. Does that prevent you?”

  “No, But they must lead below ground.”

  “And a good place to start. I’ll get the rest of the people. You start.”

  Silda, without more ado, started back for the shrubbery.