A Sword for Kregen [Dray Prescot #20] Read online

  “There, Seg, again. The army which Fat Lango brought has been seen off. But others are landing. It seems that some countries of Pandahem are still desirous of carving a helping of good Vallian gold for themselves."

  “Vallia has something they deserve and which they will receive,” quoth Seg, without flourish. “Something that will last them through all the Ice Floes of Sicce."

  He referred, quite clearly, to the six feet of Vallian soil each one of her invaders would be dumped into. I smiled. Very dear to my heart is my blade comrade, Seg Segutorio. He and I have battled our way through some hairy scrapes since he first hurled a forkful of dungy straw in my face. And, by Zair, that seemed a long long time ago.

  With that old memory in mind I said, and my voice, weak as it was, sounded altogether too much like a sigh: “If only Inch was here. Inch and all the others—"

  Seg looked swiftly at me. He was not reassured by what he saw. He put a spread of fingers up under his ear and scratched his jaw. A very tough and craggy jaw, that jaw of Seg Segutorio's.

  “Aye, Dray, aye. But I think Inch will not forget Vallia, or that he is the Kov of the Black Mountains. His taboos—for my money Inch has been eating too much squish pie."

  That made me smile.

  “When we were all slung back to our homelands by that sorcerous Vanti,” Seg went on, half-musing, his eyes bright on me, his hand rubbing his jaw. “I felt no doubt that every single one of us would make every effort to get back to Valka or Vallia as soon as humanly possible.” His voice betrayed nothing of the agony he must still suffer over his belief in the death of Thelda. I had pondered that problem. For all the news we had, Thelda and Lol Polisto might be dead by now. They were leading a precarious existence fighting our foes as guerillas. They could so easily be dead. Until Thelda was proved still to be alive, why torture Seg with a fresh burden that was so different and yet so much the same as his belief his wife was truly dead?

  “My son Drak is still down there in Faol trying to find Melow the Supple.” I spoke fretfully, for I wanted Drak back here in Vallia, with me, so that he could take over this business of being Emperor of Vallia. “But I think you have something else on your mind?"

  “Aye. You have found a new marvel in Korero. He is indeed remarkable with his shields. So..."

  “You don't think I haven't wondered what I'm going to say to Turko?"

  His rubbing hand stilled. “What will you say?"

  That was another poser for my poor aching head. The yellow bandage around my throat seemed to constrict in to choke me with problems. Turko the Shield stood always at my back with his great shield uplifted in the heat of battle. But, now, Korero the Shield, with his four arms and handed tail, stood always at my back with his shields upraised in the heat of battle...

  I said sourly, “I'll make Turko a damned Kov and find him a province and get him married to raise stout sons for Vallia and beautiful daughters to grace the world. That's what I'll do."

  “He, I think, would prefer to stand at your back with his shield."

  “D'you think I don't know that!"

  “Hum, my old friend, a very large and ponderable hum."

  That was Seg Segutorio for you, able to cut away all the nonsense with a word. But he was smiling. By Vox! What it is to have comrades through life!

  We talked for a space then about our comrades and wished them with us, and eventually returned to the subject of the army to be sent to the southwest and the knotty problem of choosing a commander.

  Seg said, “I still have a rapier to sharpen with those rasts of clansmen. And, yes, before you ask me, I can spare a Phalanx, although preferring not to. Filbarrka's zorcamen make life a misery for them. And I am slowly becoming of the opinion that perhaps, one day, I shall manage to make bowmen of the fellows I have under training."

  Well, if Seg Segutorio, in my opinion the finest archer of all Kregen, couldn't fashion a battle-winning missile force, then no one could.

  We looked at the maps and pondered the likeliest routes the invading armies from Pandahem might choose. I would have to delegate responsibility in that area of the southwest, and make up my mind as to the numbers and composition of the army we would send. That would be the Army of the Southwest.

  Presently I placed my hand on the silver-bound balass box.

  Seg shook his head.

  “Much as I would love to rank Deldars against you, my old friend, and thrash you utterly, I have another zhantil to saddle."

  “There is never enough time,” I said. And added, under my breath, “In two worlds."

  “Anyway,” he said, standing up and shifting his sword around more comfortably. “Delia tells me you have been playing Master Hork."

  “Aye. Katrin Rashumin recommended him, although he has been famous as a master gamesman in Vondium for many seasons."

  Once, I had interrupted a proposed lesson that Katrin was to have taken from Master Hork. He had returned to the capital city, and had, I knew, played his part in our victory. As for Katrin, the Kovneva of Rahartdrin, Opaz alone knew what had happened to her. Her island kovnate was situated far to the southwest and messengers we had sent had not returned. Perhaps our new Army of the Southwest might succeed in gaining news of her and her people.

  “Master Hork has a great command of the Chuktar's right-flank attack,” said Seg. “Personally, I incline to the left wing."

  “Mayhap that is because an archer must have something of a squint—"

  “Fambly!"

  “And Seg, do you take great care. Your back is healed, well and good; but I don't want you—"

  “I know, my old dom. May Erthyr the Bow have you in his keeping, along with Zair and Opaz and Djan.” Then Seg, turning to go, paused and swung back. “And, I think, may the lady Zena Iztar also approve of our ventures. The Kroveres of Iztar do little, to my great frustration; but we try—"

  “There is a great work set to our hands with the Kroveres.” That sounded fustian; but it was true. “We must continue as we are, recruiting choice spirits, and remain steadfast. As the Grand Archbold, you have a double duty."

  So I bid farewell to Seg and ached to see him go, and presently in came Master Hork with his own bronze-bound box of playing pieces and we set the board, ranked our Deldars, and opened the play.

  Master Hork held within himself that remote and yet alive inner sense of being that marks the Jikaidast. A Jikaidast is a man or woman who plays Jikaida on a professional level. Because of the enormous popularity of the game on Kregen such a person can make a handsome living and receive the respect that is due. I was most polite with Master Hork, a slender, well-mannered man with brown Vallian hair and eyes, and a face that one felt ought to be lined and wrinkled and which was smooth and untrammeled. His movements were neat and precise. He wasted not a single scrap of energy. But he could play Jikaida, by Krun!

  There was no point in my attempting to play an ordinary game against his mastery, so we went through the moves of a famous game played five hundred seasons or so ago. Outstanding games are usually recorded for posterity, and many books of Jikaida lore exist. The notations are simple and easily read.

  This game was that remarkable example of high-level Jikaida played between Master Chuan-lui-Hong, a Jikaidast then in his hundred and twentieth year, and Queen Hathshi of Murn-Chem, a once-powerful country of Loh.

  A Jikaidast will not deliberately lose a game, not even against so awesome a personage as a fabled Queen of Pain of Loh. But Chuan-lui-Hong had had to play with extraordinary skill, for Queen Hathshi might, had she not been a queen, have been a Jikaidast herself.

  From the impeccable written record on the thick pages of Master Hork's ponderous leather-bound tome we re-created that famous game. It was, indeed, a marvel. The queen swept all before her, using her swods and Deldars to push on and deploying her more powerful pieces with artistry. At the end, Master Chuan-lui-Hong had played the masterstroke. By using a swiftly developed file of his own pieces, by placing a swod, that is, the Kregan pawn
, into the gap between his own file and that of the queen's and so closing the gap, he was able to vault his left-flank Chuktar over the conjoined files into a threatening position that offered check. Check in jikaidish is kaida.

  That spectacular vaulting move is unique to Jikaida. A piece may travel over a line of other pieces, either orthogonally or diagonally, using them as stepping-stones, and alight at the far end. The jikaidish word for vault is zeunt. The Chuktar moves in a similar fashion to the Queen of our Earthly chess. Master Hork read out the next move.

  “A beautiful response.” I felt the pleasure inherent in a neat move. “Hathshi avoids the Chuktar's attack and places her Queen on the only square the Chuktar cannot reach."

  Although Vallians call the piece a King, many countries use the names Rokveil, Aeilssa, Princess, and in Loh, much as you would expect, the piece is called a Queen. The object of the game is to place this piece in such a position that it cannot avoid capture. In the jikaidish, this entrapment is called hyrkaida.

  “And if the Chuktar moves to place the Queen in check, he will be immediately snapped up by her Hikdars or Paktuns. Although,” I said a little doubtfully, “her position is a trifle cramped."

  A Jikaidast lives his games, and lives vicariously through the games of his long-dead peers. Master Hork allowed a small and satisfied smile to stretch his lips. Deliberately, he closed the heavy leather cover of the book. The pages made a soft sighing sound and the smell of old paper wafted. I looked at Master Hork across the board where the pieces stood in their frozen march.

  “See, majister,” he said, and reached far back into Chuan-lui-Hong's Neemu drin.

  His slender fingers closed on the Pallan.

  The Pallan is the most powerful piece on the board. He combines in himself moves that include those of the chess Queen and Knight, plus other purely Jikaidish possibilities. Chuan-lui-Hong was playing Yellow.

  His Pallan stood in such a position that he could be moved up to the end of the long file of yellow and blue pieces—and vault.

  The instant Master Hork touched the Pallan I saw it.

  “Yes,” I said, and my damned throat hurt with that confounded arrow wound. “Oh, yes indeed!"

  For the Pallan vaulted that long file and came down on the square occupied by his own Chuktar.

  The Pallan has the power to take a friendly piece—excepting the Queen, of course.

  Chuan-lui-Hong used his Pallan to remove his Chuktar from the game. Now the Pallan stood there, an imposing and glittering figure, and with the moves at his disposal he trapped, snared, detained, entombed Queen Hathshi's own Queen.

  “Hyrkaida!” said Master Hork. And, then, as Chuan-lui-Hong must have done all those dusty seasons ago, he said: “Do you bare the throat?"

  “I fancy Hathshi bared her throat with good grace, Master Hork; for it is a pretty ploy."

  “Pretty, yes. But obvious, and one that she should have foreseen three moves ago when Hong's Pallan made the crucial move to place him on the correct square within the correct drin.” Master Hork screwed his eyes up and surveyed me. “As majister, you should have seen, also."

  With Seg, I said, “Hum."

  Casually, Master Hork said, “Jikaida players say I am the master of the right-wing Chuktar's attack. This is so. But in my last ten important games, against Jikaidasts of great repute, I have not employed that stratagem. Not in the opening, the middle or the end game. There is a lesson there, majister."

  I was perfectly prepared—happy—to be instructed by a master of his craft. But what Master Hork was saying was basic to cunning attack. Be where you are not expected.

  “You are right, Master Hork. More wine—may I press this Tawny Jholaix?” From this you will see the truly high regard in which we of Kregen hold Jikaidasts, for Jholaix is among the finest and most expensive wines to be obtained. As Master Hork indicated his appreciation, I went on: “I have likened all Vallia to a Jikaida board. But how you would denominate the Phalanx I do not know for sure, for where they are they are, and there they stand."

  “I saw the Phalanx, majister, at the Battle of Voxyri.” He drank, quickly at his memories, too quickly for Jholaix, which should be savored. But I understood. When the Phalanx sent up their paean and charged at Voxyri it was, I truly think, a sight that would send either the shuddering horrors or the sublimest of emotions through a man until the day he died.

  We talked on, mostly about Jikaida, and it was fascinating talk, filled with the lore of the game. As ever, when in contact with a Jikaidast, my memories flew back to Gafard, the King's Striker, Sea Zhantil. Well, he was dead now, following our beloved Velia, and, I know, happy to go where she led, now and for ever.

  “Many a great Jikaidast,” Master Hork was saying, “set store by the larger games, Jikshiv Jikaida and the rest. But I tend to think that there is a concentration of skill required in the use of the smaller boards. Poron Jikaida demands an artistry quite different in style."

  “Each size of board brings its own joys and problems,” I said, sententiously, I fear. But my head was ringing with sounds as though phantom bells tolled in my skull. I felt the weakness stealing over me, and growing, and pulling at me.

  Master Hork started up. “Majister!"

  There was a blurred impression of the Jikaida board spilling the bright pieces to the floor. That resplendent Pallan toppled and tumbled into a fold of the bedclothes. Master Hork made no attempt to save the scattering pieces. He turned, his face distraught, and ran for the door, yelling for the doctors.

  His voice reached me as a thin and ghostly whisper, faint with the dust of years.

  That Opaz-forsaken arrow wound! That was my immediate thought. By the unspeakably foul left armpit of Makki-Grodno! There was much to do, and all I could turn my hand to, it seemed, was playing Jikaida and lolling in bed.

  And then...

  And then I saw a shimmer of insubstantial blueness.

  The radiance broadened and deepened.

  So I knew.

  Once again I was to be snatched away from all I held dear and at the behest of the Star Lords who had brought me to Kregen from Earth be flung headlong into some strange and foreign land. The injustice of this fate that doomed me rang and clangored in my head with the distant sounds as of mighty bellows panting. And the blueness grew and brightened and took on the form I knew and loathed.

  Towering over me the lambent blue form of a gigantic Scorpion beckoned.

  Once again the Scorpion of the Star Lords called...

  * * *

  Chapter Two

  The Star Lords Disagree

  Around me the blueness swirled and I knew no doctors or Kregan science could save me for I was in the grip of superhuman forces that made of human aspirations a mere mockery. Yet I had thought the Star Lords possessed a superhumanity in keeping with their superhumanness. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe they were entirely inimical. Still, as the gigantic Scorpion leered on me, blue and shimmering with all the remembered menacing power, I saw the betraying flicker of greenness suffusing through the blue.

  That Star Lord whose name was Ahrinye and who was evilly at odds with the rest of the Everoinye had his hand in this. He it was who summoned me now.

  He was the one who wanted to run me hard, to run me as I had never been run before. I made a shrewd assessment of what that would mean. My life, over which I had been gradually assuming some kind of partial control, would never again belong to me. Ahrinye would have me continually at his beck and call.

  “You are called to a great task, mortal!” The voice was as I remembered it, thin and acrid, biting. In those syllables the power of ages commanded both resentment and obedience.

  “Fool!” I shouted, and my voice brayed soundlessly in that bedchamber. “Onker! Do you not—"

  “Beware lest I smite you down, mortal. I am not as the other Everoinye."

  “That is very clear.” My bravado felt and sounded hollow, false, a mere mewling infant's bleatings against the storms of fate. “They would
soon see in what case I am."

  The idea that the Star Lords couldn't actually see me when they summoned me was not worth entertaining.

  The blueness sharpened with acid green. The green hurt my eyes, and that, by Vox, is far from the soothing balm that true greenness affords.

  “You are wounded, mortal. That is of no matter. I speak to you. That is something that you cannot grasp, for the Everoinye speak to few."

  “Aye,” I bellowed in that soundless foolish whisper. “And I'd as lief you didn't speak to me."

  The shape of the Scorpion wavered. I knew that for this moment out of time no one could see what I saw, that no one could hear what I heard. Master Hork would, for all he knew, run out to fetch the doctors. When he returned he would find an empty bed and I would be banished to some distant part of Kregen to sort out whatever problem this Ahrinye wished decided in his favor.

  That was, and I realized this with a sudden and chilling shock of despair, if he did not smash me back contemptuously to Earth, four hundred light years away. I must keep a civil tongue in my head.

  Yet, for all that, I was involved in some kind of dialogue with this Star Lord. Many a time I had engaged in a slanging match with the gorgeous bird who was the spy and messenger of the Everoinye. But that scarlet and golden bird, the Gdoinye, was merely a messenger, and we rubbed along, scathing each other with insults. But this was far different. Never before, I fancied, had I thus talked to a Star Lord and, too, never before—perhaps—had a Star Lord been thus spoken to by a mere mortal.

  “Your wound is not serious and you merely sulk in bed and play at Jikaida."

  “That is what I say, and not what the doctors say."

  Was it possible to argue with a Star Lord? Was it perhaps conceivable that one might be swayed by what I said?

  That had hitherto seemed a nonsense to me.