Warlord of Antares Read online

  The old stories of people with an eye in their chests and legs growing from their foreheads were trotted out.

  Weymlo, I fancied, used these as a test. Nath believed in these caricatures, and hung on Weymlo’s every word, eyes wide open and ears flapping.

  Orso, upright and scornful in the saddle, rode on by himself. We were content that our traveling arrangements should thus be settled, but as I said to Seg: “There are four of us, and we should be united. I approve of Orso riding solo; I do not much care for the division it may cause in our ranks.”

  “He’s young and the blood’s fair bursting around his body,” said Seg. “He’ll measure up when the shaft nocks the string.”

  As we rode westward through devastated Iyam, the twin suns shone splendidly and the weather was brilliantly perfect even for Northern Pandahem. This island is blessed in many ways. The east-west central spine of mountains cuts the island into two distinctly different parts, their characters at variance. Down south lie the festering jungles. Up here in the northern parts the weather was noticeably warmer than in Vallia; but nowhere near unpleasant.

  So, under dappled skies and with nature smiling all about we rode past blackened ruins, obscene in their gutted shells, past gibbets festooned with their dreadful freight, past fields where the loosely thrown soil failed to cover the decomposing and stinking corpses. Oh, yes, the triumphant path of this great King Posno, who called himself King Morbihom of the Iron Hand, was most easy to follow.

  We were attacked only three times.

  The miserable and desperate creatures hiding in ruins or among crevices of the hillsides, could be shooed off with a show of force. The flash of blades indicated to them that they had not picked on a merchant’s defenseless caravan. On both occasions Weymlo ordered his people to leave parcels of food as we rode off.

  The third attack was of a different nature.

  Being a Lamnian with merchanting skills in his blood, Dolan Weymlo had been unable to resist concluding a few deals in Gorlki. We had a string of calsanys and plains asses with us, loaded with merchandise that — at least in theory — should fetch good prices when we came up with the army. He and Lamilo rode preysanys. The lady Yamsin rode a freymul, often called the poor man’s zorca. Also there were the bodyguard mercenaries already hired.

  They were a motley crew. There was not a real paktun among the mercenaries. Most paktuns would be off in the king’s army, naturally, and these were low-quality soldiers or youngsters just starting out on the mercenary life. They were not, I judged, to be classed as masichieri who, while calling themselves paktuns, are little better than mere drikingers, bandits.

  We four had politely refused Weymlo’s offer of employment. We rode with him from mutual advantage, we gaining the cover of a sizable force, and he gaining the added protection of four professional blades.

  So, the third attack came in with a whoop and a holler, and with deadly meaning.

  These were deserters, riffraff from the army, drikingers, men desperate in ways far deeper and darker than the desperations of the miserable wights whose homes had been destroyed. This is not a paradox. These gentry were bound for Cottmer’s Caverns no matter who caught them. And they knew it.

  Orso slashed into action at once, kneeing his fighting zorca into a frenzy.

  Our mercenaries faced this first serious challenge. When Seg, Nath and I roared out ahead, sweeping away the first ragged charge, the mercenaries took heart and pitched in. They fought as well as they could, and I do not doubt that more than one raw youngster discovered something there of what being a mercenary entailed. We lost only three of them, two dead and one wounded who would recover.

  Just before the fight Seg and I had slipped the silken cords of our pakzhans out so that the golden wink of the zhantil-head device glittered at our throats. Only paktuns who have earned great renown are given the accolade of the pakzhan from their peers. They are known as zhanpaktuns. Those with the silver mortil-head device, the pakmort, are known as mortpaktuns.

  I have known brigands to simply run off immediately they spot a wink of gold at the throat of the fellow they thought they would attack and rob.

  Nath the Impenitent, of course, having served only in the Vallian Army, was not a mercenary. Orso Frentar had not served as a mercenary, either. Here we had further opportunity to observe his swordsmanship, which had been learned at the best academies of Vondium.

  “Very neat and precise,” was Seg’s verdict.

  “I will not pass judgment until we have been in a real hack ’n’ slay situation.”

  “Balass the Hawk’s very words.”

  “Aye,” growled out Nath. “In the bash of a melee, fine theories are blown away like bubbles.”

  Seg started to say: “Indu—”

  And Nath roared out, joyfully: “—bitably, Horkandur!”

  We rode back to join the caravan and the servants climbed up from under the plains asses. No one in his right mind would shelter under a calsany in those circumstances.

  Stylor Lamilo walked carefully down the line of pack animals, counting.

  “Not one lost,” he reported.

  The captain of the mercenaries, a Fristle hight Foison the Stroke, preened his whiskers and took the credit for this successful execution of the duties for which he and his men had been hired. As a cadade, Foison the Stroke should go far in his chosen profession.

  A hoarse shout attracted our attention.

  The bushes where the deserters and brigands had secreted themselves hemmed the area in a trifle, although the broad lands stretched beyond, and among the dark bundles of dead bodies an arm lifted.

  “Soho,” exclaimed the cadade, Foison the Stroke. “One still lives. Well, by Odifor, he will not live long.”

  He hefted his thraxter and strutted out, his cat-face venomous.

  I turned at once to the Lamnian merchant.

  “Horter Weymlo.” I spoke urgently. “Do you not think it wise to question this fellow? He could prove useful, if you can order your cadade to stop in time.”

  “Foison!” called Weymlo at once, without quibbling. “Hold! We will ask the fellow a question or three before you spit him.”

  Foison swung about, the sword high. Then he spat back in his catman fashion: “Quidang!”

  The brigand was dragged up. He had been wounded in the foot and had lost blood. A fearsome scar, still red and recent, bifurcated his left cheek. He was an apim, thin and scrawny, with a disreputable mop of brown hair, two front teeth missing and with a ferret-like look of desperate cunning about him. Yet he faced up to us openly enough, hopping on one foot, held by guards.

  “Here he is, horter,” said Foison. “And a nasty rast he is. The quicker the sliver slides between his ribs the better.”

  Weymlo licked his lips. Gentle as a rule though they are, Lamnians by reason of their vocation inevitably brush up against violence. He put on a stern expression.

  “You deserve death. Have you anything to say?”

  When the brigand spoke, he tended to whistle by reason of those two missing teeth. He made himself stand up on his one good foot and he squared his shoulders.

  “I am Murlock known as the Spry.” Well, that cognomen fitted, I judged. He went on: “I was condemned unjustly for a crime I did not commit. I escaped. Around here the only way to stay alive is to join a band. Otherwise you are dead, either by the bands, by soldiers, or by hunger.”

  “That I believe,” said Weymlo.

  “When I escaped, I was wounded—” Here he motioned to the scar. “I was forced to stay with the drikingers. I did not fight you. That I swear by Pymanomar the All-Seeing!”

  “A likely story!” cut in Foison, spitting derision.

  “It is true! I hid in a bush and Gartang the Kazzur, as bloody-minded a devil as ever breathed, cut my foot because I did not attack with the others. Him, I slew.”

  “Ah!” said Seg. “Then show us.”

  So off we all trooped into the bushes, and there lay a hulking great Br
okelsh with a knife still in his throat. His clothes and harness betokened a drikinger with pretensions to grandeur. Murlock the Spry stirred the body with his wounded foot and gave a yelp of agony.

  “Look at the knife and I will tell you what is engraved on the handle.”

  Foison gestured and one of his men bent and, after a struggle, dragged the bloodied knife free. Weymlo held out his hand, distastefully, and then looked at the handle.

  “Well?”

  “In the Mercy of Gashnid.”

  “That is what is engraved on the handle,” said Weymlo, looking up.

  After that there was some discussion; but we all felt we could believe this Murlock the Spry’s story. After all, he was not the first unfortunate to be forced temporarily into a bandit gang. Nor, I fancied — at least on Kregen — would he be the last.

  “Bind up his foot and put him on the back of a calsany,” ordered Weymlo. “And then let us depart from this benighted spot.”

  That, then, was the sum total of our adventures during this first leg of our journey to find this King Morbihom of the Iron Hand.

  For, as is obvious, the best plans of Vallia would be served if we could reach this maniac king and talk to him.

  During the ride, among other items of information I had from Weymlo, the fact that he hailed originally from Tomboram offered me the opportunity to inquire after my friends, Tilda and Pando. After the wedding in Vondium they had returned home. Weymlo had nothing more than my secret agents had already reported to me. He did add that the King of Tomboram had taken a sickness.

  Seg cocked an eye at me and said: “If old Inch hears this, well, he might — well, who knows?”

  “That tall streak might do anything.”

  I let the matter rest there for it is, after all, as you must realize, another story altogether.

  Seeking this insufferable King Morbihom of the Iron Hand we rode across Iyam and so approached the border of Lome.

  Looking around at the ruins of yet another burned town, Seg shook his head and said: “Poor old Queen Lush!”

  I agreed. I trembled for Queen Lush’s realm.

  Yet there were issues at stake here far greater than the well-being of a queen and her realm and its people. King Posno, the idiot King Morbihom of the Iron Hand, had to be stopped, and stopped damn quickly, for the sake of all Paz.

  Chapter sixteen

  Concerns a meal by the king’s camp

  The great, all-conquering King Morbihom suffered a set-back and his forces, bested in the field by Queen Lush’s army of Lome, recoiled upon the town of Molophom.

  There, at last, we caught up with the king.

  Or, to be truthful, we caught up with the Kapts, the court, the hangers-on and camp followers, all the tumult of an army on campaign temporarily defeated and thirsting for revenge. The immediate result of Weymlo’s request to meet with the Kapts of the army was a brusque refusal.

  No one said: “I told you so.”

  Rings of campfires burned into the night on the ground outside the town. Inside all was uproar. Drunkenness was a mere everyday occurrence. Pillage, rapine, burnings and hangings went on all the time. The place was picked over like the skeleton of a kipper.

  All the rumors spoke of fresh troops with Queen Lush. Powerful regiments from that hell hole over the sea — Vallia, Vallia the Vile — had raced to her rescue and the defence of Lome.

  “Still,” we were told, over and over. “The king is not defeated. We have more soldiers. Next time the land will run red with the blood of Lomian and Vallian alike!”

  While the Bloody Menahem were bloody in the extreme, as anyone who had dealings with them could tell you, there still remained Menahem and Menahem, men and women different in outlook and degrees of bloodthirstiness.

  Weymlo and Lamilo went in search of those who might listen to reason and further the just cause of an honest merchant being paid for the wares he had sold.

  Morbihom himself, for I suppose it easier to call the idiot by the grandiose name he had dubbed himself instead of his own name of Posno, had no truck with the town of Molophom, blackened and half-ruined as it was. His guarded enclosure, bright with flags and striped marquees, was set up on a level stretch of pleasant sward beside the River of Rippling Reeds. Here no one would imagine his army had just suffered a reverse.

  As in most armies of this nature when many of the soldiers were mercenaries, it was possible to ride around without too much hassle. Seg and I were challenged only when we tried to enter the king’s enclosure, and here we were able, simply enough, to allay any feeble suspicion by our status as hyrpaktuns. We would be welcomed with open arms by the recruiting officers of the king’s army.

  Using a familiar ploy, I said to the Deldar at the gate: “We will be happy to join the king, Del. Give us a few days to — well, dom, you know.”

  “Aye, dom. Well enough. One day, and soon, I trust, I will wear the gold.” And he touched the silver mortil-head at his throat.

  “My felicitations,” said Seg as we rode off.

  “A cutthroat bunch,” I observed.

  “A blade at their throats rather than the gold would seem equitable, by the Veiled Froyvil!”

  Among our comrades, Seg and I were known as a comical duo, and when Inch was around as a jestful trio; at times like these our thoughts were far enough from the comical to reach right around in the vaol-paol and start us laughing from the other direction. Once you could no longer laugh, even at such horrendous creatures as the Menahem Kazzurs, then you were done for.

  Trotting off, we spied on the other bank of the river a stockade forming a long line of palings. Sentries patrolled. A casual question to an Och carrying water from the river elicited the information that this was the prisoner stockade.

  The same thought occurred to both of us.

  “There is no doubt at all.” Seg was positive. “Erthyr would approve of no other course.”

  “You are right.”

  “Oh, indubitably.”

  We arrived back at the little camp set up away from the army encampments to find stupendous news.

  Lamilo and Weymlo beamed their furry Lamnian smiles at us. Bundles and bales were being opened and Yamsin was busy superintending the arrangement of the wardrobe and the presents.

  An appointment had been made with Kapt Rorman the Indestructible, general of the Second Menaham Army. The Lamnians were due at the general’s tent just as the suns went down.

  We congratulated them and wished them well and then went off, leaving them to their excited preparations.

  Murlock the Spry, most unspry-like with his foot bandaged and propped on a log, called across. His thin face with the raw, healing scar looked as apprehensive as ever. He’d been employed as best he could around the camp, and Weymlo had dropped a few silver dhems into his hand. Now he wanted to know what his fate would be. As he said: “If the king’s men find out—”

  “No fear of that, at least yet,” Seg told him.

  “I suppose you’ll be off and running the moment your foot heals.” I stared at the offending appendage.

  He looked even more guilty.

  “As to that, doms, I do not think so. If you would take me, I would serve you well. And cheaply.”

  “Doing what?”

  “My father, may his bones never be disturbed, was a Third Under Chamberlain at the Second Court of the Palace of Exotic Delights. I trained up to follow in his illustrious footsteps.” He shook his head. “Alas, the Mensaguals, the cruel Arbiters of Fate, dictated otherwise.”

  Seg snorted in amusement. “We are in no need of those kind of entertainments, Murlock.”

  “Ah, but, horter, I am well-trained in the management of a household. You would be served in the field as you have never before been served. I know.”

  He didn’t know, of course. Seeing our faces, he went on: “My punishment was over a mere peccadillo — why, the girl was more eager than I! I swear it by Pymanomar the Ever-Just! I must try to make my way in the world again.�
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  Seg and I held ourselves in check and did not burst out laughing. In the end we said: “Very well, Murlock the Spry. And see you are as good as your word.”

  At that his cares fell from him. He bounded up on his wounded foot and danced across to us, shouting: “My thanks, horters! Thrice blessed in the name of Havil!”

  “Your foot,” pointed out Seg.

  “A miraculous cure, horters!”

  “Murlock the Spry,” I said. “More likely Murlock the Cunning.”

  “Cunning in providing all your wants. You will eat tonight as you have not done on this journey!”

  Nath and Orso, strolling over, listened to this fresh news with fascination. Nath licked his lips.

  “I trust the rascal is as good a cook as a liar.”

  “I shall see to it that he tastes every morsel before I eat it,” quoth Orso.

  That evening we saw the Lamnians off, and splendidly sumptuous they looked for their meeting with Kapt Rorman.

  Then we settled to taste and test the meal prepared by Murlock the Spry. He had shrugged off caustic comments about his foot’s improvement, and had disappeared during the early part of the afternoon. Under the first fuzzy pink rays of the Maiden with the Many Smiles, we sat down to dine.

  No doubt about it. Murlock was a blue-ribbon chef. He was not as good as Emder, or even as Deft-Fingered Minch; but he was top class. We sat back after the repast, not bloated but comfortably full.

  “So that is how they eat in a place like the Palace of Exotic Delights,” remarked Nath, picking his teeth. “The prices must be ruinous.”

  Murlock, just carrying away four plates all together, plus four smaller plates and four used glasses, plus sundry other items, halted and swung about. For a thin ferrety fellow he looked wrought up.

  “Horter! Were you not a renowned hyrpaktun wearing the gold pakzhan I would challenge you for the insult!”

  “Do what?”

  “D’you think my illustrious father worked in a mere tavern? The Palace of Exotic Delights is one of the king’s palaces beside the Azure Lake in Pelasmohnia!”