Warlord of Antares Read online

The confusion and noise racketed all about and the hiss and splutter of the flames added an ominous accompaniment.

  I said: “Nath, Orso. Heads down and ride like the Agate-winged jutmen of Hodan-Set.”

  Seg and I dropped back. Our comrades jollied their zorcas into a run and the calsanys lumbered along aft. Pretty soon those calsanys would do what all calsanys do when they are startled and upset. That would make no difference at all in this stinking cesspool of a street.

  Nath and Orso rode hard. They did not put their heads down but brandished their weapons, glittering in the crimson violence of the fire.

  Four blackened raggedy shapes dropped from the balcony.

  They misjudged the fall by a hand’s-breadth only, fooled by that sudden onrush. Seg’s blade slashed twice and so did mine. Four bundles spun away from the zorca hooves. Their blood splashed into the mud, unnoticed and immediately forgotten.

  “Here come their fanshos!” screeched Orso.

  Instantly he was at work slashing ferociously at the pack of starveling human wolves trying to drag him from the saddle. Their grimed faces shone with sweat and the fat dribbled from their last meal. Their eyes curdled white and glaring and their black-fanged winespouts shrieked threats and curses. There were enough of them to keep us busy for a mur or two and then we’d ridden them down, cut them down or — a zorca when annoyed becomes spiritedly ferocious. Orso’s zorca was clearly his personal animal and trained by him.

  Orso’s zorca lifted his head, neighing, it seemed to me, in delight. A ragged bundle stuck through by the twisted spiral horn wriggled and flopped and a pair of filthy blood-smeared hands tried to force the spitted body off that cruel horn.

  Orso shouted: “Quey-arn.”

  At once the zorca lowered his head, shook, and the dying man slipped off into mud puddled by his own blood.

  “They do not like that,” called Orso. “These scum do not like it up ’em, believe me.”

  “Oh, aye,” said Seg as we cleared the last of the shattered band of robbers. “Oh, aye, Orso. I believe you.”

  Orso, it was clear, heard nothing of the undertones in Seg’s reply.

  Some way ahead a fresh altercation took our attention.

  Directly before us torchlights splashed luridly from the Gate of Dolors set in the inner wall of the city. We were nearly out of the slums. A party of Moltingurs, fighting amongst themselves, failed to notice the two gauffrers stealing the prize over which the Moltingurs fought.

  Orso laughed. “The fools have stolen the girl and now they will lose her through greed.”

  The scene, distasteful as it was, was thus correctly read. The Moltingurs had taken the girl, a Lamnian maiden of considerable beauty, to sell to the highest bidder and before that transaction could be completed, the quarrel over the spoils had given the sneaky gauffrers the chance to steal the Lamnian girl to sell themselves.

  Nath said: “They have only just brought her into this hellhole, for the gate is no distance away.”

  “Aye.”

  “It is clear she does not live here.”

  “Aye, for she is still clean.”

  I gentled my zorca and edged him over to the two gauffrers. Sharp rodent faces alight with greed, they carted the struggling girl like a sack, her golden fur glorious in the torchlights. I hit them over the head with the flat, one after the other, and they tumbled to the mud.

  In the same instant Seg was off his zorca and taking up the girl’s bound form. Her eyes, wide and frightened, glared above the gag. Seg slung her over the zorca before him and vaulted into the saddle. The close-coupled zorca provided just room enough with none to spare. Seg led us in our last rush for the Gate of Dolors and we were through before the Moltingurs woke up to the facts of life.

  “That was — sudden,” said Orso as we reined in. “You were very quick.”

  Nath the Impenitent was comfortably getting back to the old companionship we had enjoyed down the Coup Blag, and now he said in his rich, juicy voice: “Oh, I’ve seen ’em faster, believe me.”

  And Seg laughed.

  “We’d better find a decent tavern and then see about getting this poor girl home.” He bent and removed her gag and then helped her to the ground. The cobbles here were dry and reasonably clean. Nath whipped out his nasty-looking knife, and before the girl had time to flinch he’d snicked her bonds free.

  In a superb attempt to hold onto her breeding and courage, she said: “I thank you jikais for—” and then she keeled over and would have toppled headlong if Seg’s strong bowman’s arm had not lapped her slender waist.

  “Well, now,” I said, most helpfully.

  “She must be got into a bed and a puncture lady sent for quicker than a cisfly spits,” said Seg. He lifted her and started for The Leather Bottle a few doors along. We followed. The Leather Bottle obviously was not the best of taverns; but this was an emergency.

  The landlord, an Och hight Niswan the Lop, was only too anxious to help when Nath showed him gold, and Orso slid a bloodied cleaning cloth over his sword blade.

  The puncture lady, of three chins, ample bosom, starched petticoats and smelling of peppermint, tut-tutted and threw us out of the upper bedchamber and, later, pronounced the oracle that the Lamnian maiden would live, allowed us in, took her gold and departed swinging her bag of mystery.

  “Well,” said Seg, smiling with that handsome face of his most reassuring to a defenseless lady in these horrendous happenings. “I’m glad you are feeling better.”

  “They kidnapped me,” she whispered, her face still drawn with remembered terror and sick apprehension. “They were going to sell me — it was horrible!”

  I confess I sounded most priggish when I couldn’t stop myself from saying: “You must expect this sort of thing to happen in a slave-owning society.”

  “I’m not — quite sure — how do you mean?”

  I felt annoyed I’d been such a boor, but good old Seg smoothed it over and she said her name was Yamsin Weymlo and her father was a merchant. Being Lamnian, this was usual.

  Orso said: “You were lucky, Yamsin. Now had Katakis taken you, the gauffrers would have been chopped and you’d be—”

  “Quite,” snapped Seg, chopping Orso’s indelicacies.

  “We’ll get word to your father right away,” I said. “Now you rest easy. We’ll be on hand and if you need anything, just shout.”

  Her golden fur gleamed against the pillow and her beautiful face, beautiful to anyone of any race with eyes to see, relaxed a tiny amount, enough to reassure me.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “I give thanks to Mother Heymamlo. And, I give thanks to you, my four jikais.

  Chapter fourteen

  I take up a collection

  The mingled lights of Antares streamed into the upper chamber of The Scepter and Wand, a luxurious inn and posting house of Gorlki adjacent to the Wayfarer’s Drinnik beyond the walls.

  Yamsin Weymlo lay asleep in an adjoining bedchamber with her own nurse and handmaidens to care for her.

  Sitting in a deep brocaded armchair, her father, Dolan Weymlo, munched palines and kept ratatatting his fingers on his knee. He looked worried.

  He’d thanked us effusively for the rescue of his daughter, the light of his life, and only female relative now his wife, the gentle Pilsi, and passed — as he confidently believed — through the Ice Floes of Sicce to the sunny uplands beyond. He had discovered his daughter’s loss only a short time before we’d reported her safe, and that short time had aged him.

  But the worry nagging at him was not connected with his daughter’s peril. That had passed. His misfortunes persisted. Frankly, he told us what plagued him.

  “I am a merchant, well, almost all us Lamnians are merchants, and agents of the king pestered me for supplies for this pestiferous war.” He lifted a paline; but he did not put the luscious berry into his mouth. “Wars may bring profit for those unscrupulous enough to batten on other folks’ misery. I prefer the profits of peace.”

  “You are,
then, Horter Weymlo, exceeding wise.”

  “A wisdom bought by hard experience.”

  “So,” I said. “A shot at random. You brought these supplies for the king and his army was most grateful. But you have not been paid, nor are likely to be paid.”

  His shrewd old eyes looked up. “You are a merchant, too, then?”

  “No. But it is not difficult to know the ways of the great ones of the world. They do not often vary.”

  “True, by Beng Feylam the Bonder of Warehouses.”

  Nath had really no need for the little grunt of agreement, and then the checked intake of a breath, and then a scuffle of his booted foot. Nath the Impenitent, old Hack ’n’ Slay, had had his views of at least some of the great ones of the world changed lately.

  “This king,” said Seg, who since his winning of a kingdom had become a trifle more tolerant of monarchs — a trifle only, mind. He is new to the throne I hear.”

  “Aye. His uncle died as inconvenient uncles in the way of ambitious nephews do die from time to time.”

  Lamilo, the Lamnian with only one arm, clad in sober but sumptuous clothes next to Weymlo, leaned closer and whispered. What he said was easy to guess.

  “Yes, yes, good Lamilo,” said the merchant. “That is sooth. But I judge these jikais to be men of honor. Besides, they are not of Menaham.”

  “All the same, horter, some care—”

  “I tell you, I am past caring in this.”

  Orso shuffled and spoke up. “We thank you for your hospitality, Horter Weymlo. We are glad to have saved your daughter from a hideous fate. But, now, I think we must take our leave.”

  Seg threw a swift amused glance. I judged Orso was trying to extricate me from what he considered a sticky and uninteresting situation. Little, I feared, did the gallant Koter Orso Frentar know of Dray Prescot!

  Immediately the Lamnian rose and gathered his gold-embroidered robes about him. They are shrewd, are Lamnians, and yet so often their countenances express perpetual surprise at the world’s follies. This is, of course, a potent source of strength in their merchanting deals.

  “If you must leave so soon... I give you my thanks and may Havil the Green speed your ways.”

  I cut in. “Horter Orso is concerned for the welfare of our zorcas.” I gave Orso a stare. “Thank you for thinking of them. When you have finished no doubt we will meet in the taproom.”

  He was hooked on his own hook and so could do no more than nod stiffly and leave. I breathed in and out when he’d left the room and said to Weymlo: “Pray, be seated, horter. I fancy there are matters we may discuss.”

  He glanced at me, shrewd and sharp, and then resumed his seat. He took up a crystal goblet of parclear and looked at me over the rim. “You are paktuns seeking employment?”

  “We are tazll at the moment, yes. But we are in no hurry. If you deign, I’d like to hear more of this king.”

  “King Morbihom of the Iron Hand.” He smiled. “Yes, I know the sobriquet is ridiculous. He chose it himself.”

  “He is leaving a wake of destruction through Iyam.”

  “Destruction, terror and the loss of all hope. If he is not stopped soon — rather, if he does not stop soon — he will be on the borders of Lome.”

  Lamilo, Weymlo’s stylor, said: “We must follow in the path of the king to speak with him personally.”

  Weymlo waved a beringed hand. “Easy to say, Lamilo.”

  They told us that they’d asked for payment through the usual channels and had been fobbed off. They’d approached officials of various authorities within the army and the persons in charge of supply, to no avail. Now, they had determined to go to the commanding Kapts in the field to bring pressure on the responsible officials to pay up.

  “Why not,” said Seg, “go straight to the king?”

  “Exactly!” cracked out Stylor Lamilo.

  “Tsleetha-tsleethi,” counseled Weymlo. “The Kapts first. Through them the king will be swayed.”

  “The king is swayed only by the queen and by his Wizard of Loh, this Al-Ar-Mergondon whose name be...” Here Lamilo stopped speaking with a snap of his Lamnian jaws. Only fools speak ill of wizards, even when the wizards are dwaburs away.

  “What is known of this wizard?” said Seg into the awkward little silence.

  “He is powerful, abrupt, terrible in his wrath.”

  A chill seeped around our bones there in that upper chamber of The Scepter and Wand.

  The relationships between king, queen and wizard might follow well-established patterns, or this instance might throw up an entirely new stratification and power-arrangement. Familiar or unfamiliar, the situation had to be turned to our advantage.

  Weymlo insisted we stay for the first meal of mid, traditionally a light snack, followed by the more substantial lunch of the second meal of mid. Here the superb Kregan tea could be drunk as well as parclear and sazz. We tucked in and over the meal learned more of the local situation and what we might expect to encounter as we progressed toward the battle front.

  Suddenly and out of the blue, a complete non-sequitur, Seg said: “May Havil the Green look down!” He sounded serious. “Orso! We have completely forgotten him and he is down in the stables or the taproom waiting.”

  “Ha!” and Nath the Impenitent downed his cup.

  “I,” I said, standing up, “with your leave, Horter Weymlo, will go down.”

  Seg was having enormous difficulty in not bursting out laughing, and Nath was stuffing his face. Weymlo nodded and said: “By all means,” and I trotted off.

  The blackwood stairs from the upper floors led into the taproom; Orso was not there. In the other direction a narrow brick-walled passage led to the inner courtyard.

  A few freymuls and preysanys were tethered up and quietly drinking from the trough. A soughwood tree overhung a corner of the yard. A few blooms wilted on a windowsill. Dust tasted on the air.

  “Orso!” I called. No answer.

  Two sides were lined with stables. Most of the split doors were closed. A flutter of movement just inside an open door drew my attention and I walked across and went into the dimness beyond. My mouth opened to call Orso again.

  A very sharp blade caressed my neck from ear to chin. I stood absolutely still.

  “Stand still,” rasped the unmistakable tones of a Rapa. “Or you are a dead man.”

  The redundancy of the remark escaped the Rapa, who moved around, the knife still pressed against my neck.

  His dingy feathers smelled unpleasantly. His clothes were a collection of castoffs from half a dozen different sources. He was well-practiced with a knife, that was patently obvious, and his ferocious vulturine face, beaked and menacing, indicated that he knew exactly what he was doing.

  “Back into the shadows.”

  We moved farther into the dimness. He was smart, no doubt of it; but I’d been lax, no doubt of that, either.

  “Drop your weapon belts.”

  I did so.

  “Now move away.”

  I moved farther into the straw-smelling stall.

  He stepped back. His beak tilted. “Now hand over your money.” The knife gestured eloquently.

  The small lesten-hide bag of gold, silver and copper tucked into my broad waist belt held enough to satisfy this small-time holdup Rapa. He weighed it and fondled it. When Seg and I went off adventuring, we mostly carried our gold in pockets inside our belts. And elsewhere. The Rapa did not ask. He pulled the string of the money back with his beak and then made a mistake.

  He cocked his head on one side and looked down at the bag. The dimness made him look longer than he should have done.

  The intervening distance passed in no time at all and I was on him. A stunning blow to his wrist, a grasping turn and the knife was in my possession. I gave him a backhander across the beak and he stumbled back, spitting feathers.

  One hand to his face he glared at me with that lopsided look of Rapas. Absolute baffled fury engorged him

  He said: “I think
I made a mistake.”

  “Quite possibly. Hand back my money.”

  He threw the purse onto the straw at my feet.

  “So we are quits, then.”

  I said nothing but continued to stare at him.

  “You have your weapons and your money. Give me back my knife and I’ll be off.”

  “I’ll keep your knife, dom.”

  “By Rhapaporgolam the Reiver of Souls!”

  But he turned and went toward the open door. As he reached the jamb, I threw his knife. It struck through a flapping rag of his clothes and pinned the filthy cloth to the wood. He swung about at once, beak quivering.

  He half-raised a hand and I shook my head.

  “Now hand over all your money.”

  He couldn’t believe this. The hand lifted farther so I whipped out the old sailor knife and poised.

  “Your money, dom. Or this one is through your eye.”

  Hissing with that gobbling, guttural hiss of enraged Rapas, he fished out his money bag and threw it down.

  “And the rest.”

  He found some more coins tied into the corners of his clothes.

  “Take the knife from the wood, very carefully, and throw it down.”

  By this time he realized he wouldn’t outthrow me.

  At the last he looked back, his feathers most bedraggled, to say: “I shall remember you, dom.”

  There was nothing I wished to say to that, and he mooched despondently off into the mingled lights of Antares. I picked up his knife, and it was a cheap blade of Krasny work; still, it threw accurately. His money amounted to little enough, by Krun, and most of it wasn’t his to start with, anyway, I didn’t doubt. There was still no sign of Orso so I took myself off to the upper room.

  “No Orso?” said Seg.

  “No.” I put the Rapa’s money on the table and said to Stylor Lamilo: “Would you see this goes to a deserving charity, stylor, as a favor?”

  “Of course. But—?”

  “Oh,” I said, sitting down and picking a juicy paline from the dish. “I just took up a collection for a good cause.”

  Chapter fifteen

  Murlock the Spry

  Dolan Weymlo proved an interesting traveling companion, for his merchanting business had carried him into many parts of Kregen. He had transacted profitable deals in lands I’d never visited, and had met folk of whom I had no knowledge.