Storm over Vallia Read online

  The Rapas looked out of place here, even to Lyss, for no one else was a soldier in uniform, while these Rapas were churgurs, sword and shield soldiers out of one of the new king’s regiments of foot. Their feathers bristled, brick red and dusty black, and their fierce beaked faces showed animation as they toasted one another in turn. They were in undress, wearing the king’s colors of maroon and gray with the badge of the sea barynth.

  “And, Lon,” said Lyss when they were served at a small table in the opposite corner, “you wanted me to come here all dressed up in black leathers.”

  “Upvil, the landlord, may be an Och, but he knows how to respect a lady.” Lon gave her a mean look. “You do not, Lyss, look a lady right now.”

  “I suppose not.”

  For this night’s adventure, Silda Segutoria had consciously forced herself to think and act as Lyss the Lone. So she did not throw her head back and roar appreciation of the neatness of Lon’s remark. She just quaffed her ale and looked about, and her right hand rested easily at her side, not too far from her dagger.

  The Rapas were kicking up a din so that Lon shook his head and said: “Pretty soon Upvil will have to call the heavy squad and have them chucked out.”

  “But if they weren’t soldiers?”

  “Oh, well, that’d be different.”

  “Well, I hope your friend Crafty Kando turns up before the fight starts.”

  Lon started to say something, halted himself, and then spat out: “So do I.”

  His cudgel propped against his stool would be adequate in the typical tavern brawl; against the straight cut and thrust pallixters of the Rapas it would soon prove lacking.

  The tavern began to fill, ale flowed, fruits and biscuits were available, and pretty soon customers began to ask for wine. Lon kept on looking at the door. Crafty Kando might be too crafty for his own good in this business, for while Lon did not know what Lyss wanted the thief for, he felt instinctively that there would be profit in it.

  There were girls circulating in the tavern, gauzily dressed, clashing bangles, heavily made up and wafting scents that cloyed in the odors of ale and wine and food. They drew shouts of approval and the occasional coin. They indulged in a few ferocious hair and bodice-pulling fights over the money. And still Crafty Kando did not put in an appearance.

  Seeing girls in this condition upset Silda far more than watching them on the battlefield.

  The people patronizing Upvil’s Leather Bottle were mostly from the rough side of life, folk like Lon who did the unpleasant jobs. The regular patrons grew restive with the high spirits and uproar from the Rapa soldiery.

  It made not the slightest difference who started the fight. That there would be a fight was perfectly clear. Lon suddenly half-rose and then sank back on his stool. In a low voice he said, “Thank Opaz the Merciful! Here he is now.”

  Looking quickly toward the door past the bulky shoulders of a Brokelsh just standing up with a bottle in his hand, Lyss saw the fellow in the doorway. He was dressed inconspicuously in drab browns, with a down-drawn hat obscuring much of his features save for a sharp chin. On his hip rested a goodly sized canvas bag.

  Then the Brokelsh threw the bottle, the Rapas bristled up with feathers flying, and the tavern erupted.

  Lon sprang up to run to the door after Crafty Kando and was instantly engulfed in a crashing moil of men striking out with joyous abandon. One Rapa was already down with a bent beak. The hairy Brokelsh who’d thrown the bottle ducked just too late to avoid the stool that thwacked solidly into his thick Brokelsh skull. Men were staggering about locked together, others were swinging wild punches, others were flailing with bottles and stools. No one — so far — had drawn a steel weapon, edged and pointed. This was a tavern brawl with unwritten laws.

  How long before the Rapa churgurs, massively outnumbered, would draw their swords was in the jovial hands of Beng Brorgal, the patron saint of tavern brawlers.

  A big fellow with a purple nose rose up before Lon and hit him over the head with a bottle. Lon yelped, managing to duck most of the force, and stuck the end of his cudgel into the fellow’s ribs. He yelped in turn.

  A man with the effluvium of the fish market upon him lashed out with his boot at Lon’s undefended back.

  The boot did not quite reach Lon because a sandal tied up with string stuck itself out sideways and the man’s shin smacked into the edge of the sandal-clad foot. The shin came off worst from that encounter.

  Lyss didn’t stop. Her foot whipped down, planted itself firmly on the tavern floor and her other sandal, with the leather thong, swirled up as she swiveled forward. Her toe investigated most forcefully portions of the man’s anatomy that could not bear the scrutiny.

  He let out a gargling screech and fell down.

  Lyss put her fist into a fellow’s mouth and felt teeth break.

  She skipped quickly sideways to allow one of the Rapas to go charging past. She let him go and clipped the man following him alongside the ear. The Rapas might be Rapas, fierce vulturine diffs, but they were soldiers and they were outnumbered.

  The tavern resembled a chicken coop when the fox breaks in. Men — and some of the women — were tangled up everywhere, lashing out, kicking, biting, scratching. Bottles flew. Upvil the Och landlord put his head down behind his bar and wondered if being a landlord was worth the trouble. The Watch might be along soon; by the time they arrived he’d be well out of pocket.

  The original locus of the fight around the Rapas had long been forgotten. Men hit anybody handy. It would not have been surprising if one Rapa had hit another in the confusion.

  Lon dragged himself off the floor, whooped a breath, spotted Lyss hitting a Gon beside his ear, and yelled.

  “He’s run off!”

  “Well, run after him!”

  Lon’s face empurpled to match his nose. He dragged in another breath smelling the dust of the floor mingled with spilled wine and blood, and thought savagely to himself what he wouldn’t yell out at Lyss.

  “Run — in this lot! Like flies in treacle!”

  He climbed up onto his feet and instantly a bulky fellow tangling with two furry Fristles collided with him. He was knocked flying again, skidding across the floor on squashed juicy gregarians, the fruit greasing his swift passage under a table. That fell over on him and the tankards of ale upon it liberally baptised him with libations to Beng Dikkane the patron saint of all the ale drinkers of Paz.

  Lon shook with frustrated anger.

  He clambered up, his cudgel still gripped in his fist.

  His hair fell over his eyes. He glared about. There was red in the eyes of Lon the Knees.

  He spotted a Rapa and a Brokelsh, representatives of the diffs who’d started the fracas, locked together, each trying to throttle the other.

  Lon marched over, knocking a fellow out of his way.

  He used the cudgel twice.

  One blow knocked the Brokelsh senseless to the floor.

  The other struck the Rapa down so that he collapsed in a flurry of his own feathers.

  Someone grabbed Lon’s arm.

  He swiveled, enraged, swinging the cudgel up for a blow that would brain this new rast troubling him.

  Lyss said acidly, “We didn’t come here to enjoy ourselves! Your friend’s run off and he’ll be long gone if we don’t—”

  “Oh,” snapped Lon, swinging the cudgel away from Lyss’s head. “He’ll be in some sewer by now. Forget him for tonight.”

  Lyss breathed hard through her nose.

  “I suppose you are right. By the foul armpit and lice-ridden hair of Sister Melga the Harpy Herself! This is another day wasted.”

  Lon was taken aback by her vehemence.

  The fight caterwauled on, the noise prodigious, the maids all run off, the air thick with flying stools and bottles.

  “Well, Lyss. I suppose we could try The Dancing Flea.”

  She fixed the animal-handler with an eye of gimlet steel.

  “Let us do that.”

 
; They moved aside to let a man somersault between them and go thump onto his head on the floor.

  “Is there no back way out?” Lyss jerked her head at the doorway. “That’s choked up worse than the first bend in a zorca race.”

  “Yes. Through the kitchens.”

  “Lead on.”

  A couple of times Silda had heard the emperor add a word that sounded like “makduff” when he’d said that.

  Duff was one of the many Kregish names for spoon, for each size and use had its own nomenclature, and what a black spoon had to do with leading on Silda couldn’t fathom. One of these fine days she’d ask the emperor. If Opaz smiled, that was, and she wasn’t shipped off to meet the grey ones on the Ice Floes of Sicce...

  They whistled through the kitchens without stopping. Upvil’s charming Och wife, wringing her hands in her apron, watched them wide-eyed. The serving maids huddled, although some of them were peeking through the half-open door taking a lively interest in the entertainment. The smells of the kitchen faded as Lyss stepped out into the night air.

  “This way,” said Lon, and started off at a brisk trot.

  In the fuzzy pink moonlight they hurried along, watchful, naturally, as any sensible person must be in a town of Kregen where soldiers are quartered and there is counter-deviltry afoot. Not everyone accepted Vodun Alloran as the new kov instead of Katrin Rashumin as the kovneva, let alone as some new puffed-up king.

  Lyss the Lone, thinking as Silda Segutoria, intended to make more stringent inquiries concerning this aspect of the new regime in Rahartdrin.

  The distance was not far and Lon led her into a side street, the Alley of Washerwomen, where he halted at the front of a tumble-down building. The place next door no longer existed, having been demolished in the battle, and on the other side an even more disreputable construction loomed blackly with no discernible purpose.

  “This it?”

  “Aye. This is The Dancing Flea.”

  Lyss wrinkled up her nose.

  “Yes, Lyss, well. You are sure?”

  “Let’s not have all that again, my wild churmod trainer!”

  He had to smile at this, and pushed the door open.

  By comparison, The Leather Bottle was a veritable top-class establishment. The clientele looked as though they’d far prefer to slit your throat than stand you a drink. Shifty faces, furtive eyes, unshaven chins, hands hovering above weapon hilts — oh, yes, a Sister of the Rose would understand hell holes like this.

  Silda had often felt that any self-respecting man would either grow a proper beard or shave himself clean. Two or three days’ fuzz on the chin gave a man a dirty look. He couldn’t be bothered, he was on the down trail, a trail no doubt littered with empty bottles. Some men, she’d been told with sneering laughter by some of the girls, actually thought they looked romantic unshaven. When they scrubbed that bristle brush down a girl’s cheek when they embraced her, surely they didn’t think she enjoyed the experience?

  Moustaches, of course, were an entirely different and exciting matter...

  Lon’s quick birdlike gaze took in the familiar scene, spotting quondam friends, people he might rely on in trouble, allies, and also those he would not turn his back on, those indifferent to his welfare, and those who were deadly enemies. Of these latter he could see only one, black-browed Ortyg the Kaktu. He was sitting with his cronies playing the Game of Moons at a side table.

  There was no sign of Crafty Kando.

  Lon said, “You’d better wait outside, Lyss. I’ll ask Ob-eye Mantig if he’s seen Kando.”

  Before Lyss could reply, a girl wearing light draperies and imitation gems, her face plastered with paint, her hair a frizz of blonde in which the tiara-like vimshu glittered artificially, glided up and threw a tankard’s contents in Lyss’s face.

  Lyss licked the suds off her lips and wiped a finger across her eyes. The stuff was very thin beer.

  Lon yelped: “Climi! You crazy shishi!”

  “We don’t want her in here!” Climi swung the pot back. “Clear off!” She threw the tankard.

  Lyss stuck up her right hand, took the tankard out of the air and hurled it back. The pewter edge struck Climi on the forehead. For an instant she stood. Then her eyes crossed and she slumped down, her gauzy tawdriness swirling like the canvas of an argenter being handled.

  Instantly, with a bull roar, Ortyg the Kaktu reared up. The Game of Moons went flying. He ripped out a knife and charged headlong for Lon.

  “Run, Lyss!” yelped Lon.

  Silda Segutoria battled with the persona of Lyss the Lone. One said: “Run, you fambly!” The other said: “Run from that scum?”

  By that time it was too late.

  Ortyg threw himself at Lon. The animal-handler used to fractious beasts twisted aside and swung his cudgel. Ortyg was quick and the blow missed. He roared back, foaming.

  Lon ducked and Lyss put one fist into Ortyg’s guts, kicked him in the face as he doubled up and smashed a hard edge down on the back of his neck. Only then did Silda take over, grab Lon and fairly bundle the pair of them out through the door.

  They ran up the Alley of Washerwomen.

  At the corner they halted and looked back. There was no pursuit.

  “He wasn’t there, anyway, Lyss.”

  “No. As I said, another day wasted. Next time you get hold of Crafty Kando, Lon, we’ll meet in a place where we don’t get into a fight the minute we draw breath!”

  Chapter eleven

  Drak changes plans

  The black-beaked yellow-winged flyer soared on through the early morning mists, tinted palest apple-green and soft rose-red by the veiled radiance from Zim and Genodras. The breeze blew past the flyer astride the flutduin’s back; but no blazonry of apparel in fluttering scarves and trailing cords, no swirling confusion of feathers, marked the flutduin or his rider out from the half-squadron who flew escort right, left, above and below and to the rear.

  Drak, Prince Majister of Vallia, flew this early morning recce patrol in person. His brown Vallian eyes looked down past the curve of his mount’s neck. His brain noted, numbered and catalogued all he saw.

  The bird’s powerful wingbeats carried him on in a long undulating series of perfectly judged strokes. Drak did not have the opportunity to fly a flutduin as often as he would have wished. There was, truly, little to compare with the experience. Riding a zorca, well, that was superb in its own way, a quite different way from this joyous flight through thin air.

  Two ulms[10] off and spread out below like toy soldiers on parade lay the host of Rosil Yasi, Strom of Morcray; Kataki.

  Despite the nibbling advances made and local victories gained over him, the Kataki Strom still could field a formidable force. Drak’s icy brain went on figuring the numbers, the formations, the qualities and types of the troops spread out below.

  The Jiktar who had taken command of this half squadron to escort the prince shrilled a warning cry. He used his long flexible lance to point up and ahead.

  Well, by Vox, you couldn’t expect to carry out a recce without meeting opposition.

  Strom Rosil’s aerial component consisted mainly of fluttrells and mirvols, birds and flying animals in general use among the aerial cavalry of many nations. So far as Drak was aware, the flutduin, which he considered the best of all saddle birds, was to be found only in the country of Djanduin. His father, who was the king of that distant land down south in Havilfar, had organized the supply of top-quality flutduins to his island stromnate of Valka, to the east of Vallia’s main island.

  A goodly force of flutduin aerial cavalry had been built up over the seasons, and a fresh colony had been established in his mother’s province of the Blue Mountains. The more hidebound elements of Vallia had resisted this uncanny idea of fighting from the backs of great birds of the air; but the proof of the soundness of the scheme had been seen when the aerial cavalry of Hamal, among other nations, had so plagued Vallia.

  Drak would have liked a force of Djangs from Djanduin. Those fo
ur-armed warrior Dwadjangs were among the most formidable, powerful and feared fighting men of all Paz.

  Still, the Valkan flyers he had with him, trained up by Djangs, were efficient at handling their mounts in the air and consummate in the art of aerial combat.

  So he had no real problems over the patrol that flew down toward his own little force. The recce was almost over, in any case, and he had the Kataki Strom’s dispositions filed away in his head, so they could swirl their wings and fly home.

  One or two of the flutswods astride their birds, tough soldiers of the air, let rip a few pleasantries at thus turning tail. But their job was to escort the Prince Majister, not to tangle with benighted fluttrell-riders.

  The recce patrol tamely flew back to camp.

  Jumping off his bird and letting him be gathered up in the skilful hands of young Emin the Cheeky who couldn’t wait until he was old enough to become a soldier and as a flutswod join the ranks of the aerial cavalry, Drak gave the graceful bird a gentle pat.

  “Well done!”

  “Aye, jis,” quoth young Emin the Cheeky. “When you chose my Bright Feather you could not have chosen better.”

  Drak favored the lad with a smile and then said: “You keep him well-groomed. Your Bright Feather could sort out a whole squadron of those fluttrells before the second breakfast.”

  “What!” exclaimed Emin. “No, jis. Before the first breakfast!”

  Drak laughed and took himself off to the tent where the chiefs of the army waited. He handed his spyglass to his orderly, Nath the Strict, for telescopes although relatively common and much-used were still valuable property needing care in use, and ducked his head to enter the tent.

  He greeted the assembled chiefs and succinctly gave his impression of Yasi’s host, the dispositions and his intentions.

  Kapt Enwood nal Venticar, as the senior officer present, nodded his head and spoke first.

  “The plan is good, jis. Since we have drawn him north our fortunes have changed. This day — well, this day may see a victory we can follow up.”