A Life for Kregen [Dray Prescot #19] Read online

  Then I said, “By Vox! May Opaz rot the fellow. At least, he got nothing out of us."

  A fraction unsteadily, Nath walked across to retrieve his dagger. He gestured with the blade.

  “Falinur will never be the same."

  I warmed to him. The experience through which he had just been would have left many a man gibbering.

  “Seg wouldn't know whether to be glad or sorry."

  “As to Seg Segutorio, the Kov of Falinur,” said Nath, re-sheathing the dagger with a snick. “I know he was a blade comrade of yours; but he is peskily absent from his kovnate when we need all the friends we can muster."

  It was not a rebuke. Merely a hard-headed comment.

  I chose to say, with a little snap, “Seg is a blade comrade, not was."

  Nath half lifted his chin; but he chose not to reply.

  “Now, Nath, not a word of this to a living soul."

  “Quidang, majister."

  “Good. Yantong spies on us with an advantage. We must cloak our designs in shadow, sheath our plans in subterfuge. We hew to the plans I have mentioned—unless unforeseen circumstances force us to alter them. If they do, we will."

  The clepsydra on its own shelf told me that the hour was almost up and we were due on Voxyri Drinnik. A small ceremony was to be held there to mark the presentation of medals, ‘bobs’ the swods in the ranks called them, like phalerae, and the importance of keeping the army happy outweighed much. The matter of Renko the Murais had been dealt with in court by one of the judges appointed to the task. It might be thought that presenting new colors to a Jodhri could not rank as importantly in a humanitarian scheme of government as being present in a court of justice. But a man has only so much time on Earth, or Kregen. No matter that because I had dipped in the Sacred Pool of Baptism I was assured of a thousand years of life, each day still contained only forty-eight burs. So we had been presenting standards when Renko had been sentenced. Now we must present bobs when we had promised. The apparition of Yantong must be pushed into its proper perspective.

  And, anyway, what was there I could do about the Wizard of Loh? He worked through human tools. His minions sought to enslave the country. In our turn we must resist them.

  Anything else was fantasy.

  The days were filled with hard work. There was everything to do. The country was still in turmoil and no one talked of the Time of Troubles being over merely because Vondium was in our hands. Vondium, the proud city, was mostly ruins, with the grandiose rebuilding schemes of Yantong halted in mid-execution because I would not flog on the people to work as slaves, and, also, because they insisted on flocking to join the colors and form fresh regiments to help clear out the rest of the island.

  Walking out into the mingled streaming suns shine of Antares, I hoisted up the rapier to sit more comfortably. The chances of assassins, stikitches, still being active and seeking my life, in the pay of any number of cramphs who would as lief snuff me out as they would snuff a last candle, remained high. A man must be ready always on Kregen to fight for his life, just as he is ready to sing or to drink, to eat or to laugh.

  Many of my new comrades waited. Nath Nazabhan was a relatively new comrade, also, for we had been together since we had trained up the Phalanx in Therminsax ready for that great battle. My choice band waited for me. A right rough and tumble crowd, festooned with weapons, brilliant in a motley of uniforms, they greeted me with a roar. I bellowed back, most affably, banishing the dark schemes of Yantong from my mind. Together we rode for Voxyri Drinnik where the great victory had been gained that gave over Vondium to our hands.

  The last of the Hamalese prisoners were being sent off back to their homes in Hamal. This had aroused great controversy and acrimony, men saying why did we not keep the rasts as slaves. I would not execute them, for I knew the Hamalians, knew their army, knew the swods in the ranks. I would not kill or enslave, and so they were sent home to Hamal. We still had a debt outstanding with the Empress Thyllis of Hamal, the despotic ruler of the greatest empire in the southern continent of Havilfar. Yantong had used her to further his own schemes; but Vallia had been invaded by Hamalese, there was the matter of the defective airboats, and, also, there was the island of Pandahem to be liberated.

  Every way I turned there was work to my hand.

  And, always, the greater menace of the Star Lords hovered over me. At a whim they could dispatch me back to Earth, hurl me four hundred light years through the deeps of space, send me back to the planet of my birth and, perhaps, forget me and let me rot.

  Fresh concepts about the Star Lords, the Everoinye, had been plaguing me. I had begun to wonder if their designs were so baffling, after all, for certain events seemed to me to bear of only one interpretation. I will leave the reasoning by which I reached this surprising conclusion until later, contenting myself with the simple remark that, if there was good in every man, might there not be a greater good in the Everoinye, who were so much greater than men?

  “Lahal, Majister!” bellowed Cleitar. He had once been Cleitar the Smith, and he bore his wicked war-hammer into action. But now he was generally called Cleitar the Standard, for he carried my own battle flag, that yellow cross on a scarlet field fighting men call Old Superb. He rode a zorca and his uniform was splendid.

  I raised my hand in salute as we rode out. Vondium was a shadow of the great city it once had been. The other spirits in my choice band were mostly, at this time, from the provinces, for we had recruited there in our drive to the capital; but they were aware of the despoliation. We would rebuild; but our aim was to rebuild the heart of the country through the people and the agriculture and husbandry. Bricks and stones and mortar must follow that.

  Volodu the Lungs, a leathery man if ever there was one whose appetite for ale could never, it seemed, be quenched, blew a stentorian blast on his immense trumpet. And that silver instrument was immense. With it Volodu had crushed in the head of a too froward Hamalese Hikdar, smashing through helmet and bone to the very brains beneath. The blast echoed through the streets and cleared a way for us as though we were a pompous procession of robed priests.

  There was no need for lictors or any other street-clearing violence as the Emperor of Vallia rode out.

  The ceremony passed off well, brilliant and dashing in the glitter of the Suns. I will not go into detail, save to say the old sweats took their medals with a swagger, and no doubt, like Vikatu the Dodger, would trade shamelessly on their prowess to dodge the column for a few sennights to come. And good luck to them. They had risked their lives and limbs in the battle line.

  Like any good Kregen who tells the time of day by the state of his innards, I felt the time was ripe for a meal and so we wended our way back to the palace. I had barely crossed the first of the twin canals straddled by the Bridge of Voxyri with the confused onward shrilling of that great fight ringing in echoing remembrance in my head, and Naghan ti Lodkwara was as usual engaged in a slanging match with Targon the Tapster, when the shadows fleeted in.

  A lancer, Naghan Cwonin, reined across. Dorgo the Clis shouted. Cleitar the Standard began to furl up the flag. Naghan ti Lodkwara and Targon the Tapster took mutual breaths and, instead of slanging each other, yelled the alarm.

  The airboats floated down as though guided by rails.

  There were six of them, and each one was of a capacity to hold a dozen fighting men.

  So—we were in for a fight.

  The devils had chosen their place well. The troops back on the Drinnik would never be over the Bridge in time to assist us. The streets were filled here with ordinary folk about their business trying to put Vondium back together again. Phu-Si-Yantong's spying mission must have told him what he wanted to know, and this was a direct result.

  Shades of Rafik Avandil, Lion-man!

  I ripped out the clanxer scabbarded to my zorca. He was a fine black, mettlesome, whom I called Snowy out of stupid humor as much as contrariness, and I'd ridden him because he needed the outing. The stables were not too well provi
ded as yet, and discretion had to be used. But the men tumbling out of the airboats almost before they touched down were afoot, and so we, mounted on zorcas, were by that much better off.

  Two fliers landed in our rear, cutting off a flight back the way we had come.

  Cleitar had the flag furled and stowed away now, and his hammer glittered as he lifted it.

  Nath Nazabhan drew his clanxer and called across to me, “Ride, majister—there is an alley mouth there—"

  I looked at him.

  “Well,” he said, huffily, swirling the straight cut and thrust sword about, loosening up his muscles. “It was just an idea."

  We numbered about twenty or so, bright rollicking companions of my choice band. We faced about four times our own numbers. Well. Yes, a situation in which I had found myself more than once, and usually through my own block-headedness. I lifted in the stirrups. I'd gone out for a breath of fresh air. I was like, and my companions also, to taste blood as well as air. And the air we tasted might well be let in through our ribs.

  “Straight through them!” I bellowed. “Slap bang and no tickles. No man stands for handstrokes. Ride like the agate-winged jutmen of Hodan-Set!"

  We clapped in our heels and in a rampaging bunch roared into the forming ranks of our Chulik foemen.

  * * *

  Chapter Two

  Assassins at the Gate of Voxyri

  Oh, yes, they were Chuliks all right. Ferocious, yellow-skinned fighting men with ugly three-inch long tusks jutting cruelly up from the corners of their mouths. This bunch was as well-trained in the martial arts as any Chulik mercenary band on Kregen. Reared from their earliest infancy to the bearing of arms, trained to be cold and merciless killers, Chuliks can handle any variety of weaponry they need, and in that heartless and iron-hard discipline they had forgotten if ever they had known the softer virtues of humanity.

  They are loyal mercenaries if they are paid and fed. They command higher fees than most, excepting Pachaks and Khibils and a few other, not many, of the vast variety of splendid humans on Kregen. They have always been and continue to be formidable opponents.

  But my choice band recked nothing of that. Yelling and cursing they clapped in their heels and went racketing down.

  The Chuliks with their oily yellow skins and long dangling pigtails from their shaven heads formed a line swiftly. Their faces remained blank and impassive. They knew exactly what they were doing and they did it well.

  Their uniforms were simple tunics of brown cloth over which they wore armor of a scaled form, bronze-studded, highly barbaric and flaunting their power. Their helmets bore black and green feathers, but shorn short, workmanlike, a badge of identity clamping each tuft in place. Black and green. Well, they were colors I knew Yantong had used at least once, and so by their use now he seemed to be openly proclaiming his power and contempt for me.

  Truth to tell, in that hectic moment as we belted along, I wondered if we would have done better for Cleitar to let Old Superb float free, a ringing challenge to the power confronting us. But that way lay the hubris, the megalomania, the self-importance I detest so much. I had sworn, as I was called to be Emperor of Vallia, that I would do a good sound workmanlike job. Pride is for the vainglorious, in excess, and its unbounded license has caused great sorrow in two worlds.

  And then we were among them and Cleitar's hammer lifted dripping crimson, and so that answered that question.

  At my back Korero the Shield bore a single targe, a small parade ornament, but with its yellow and scarlet traceries he fended a sweeping blow and lashed back with the blade gripped in his tail hand. Ferocious, Korero the Shield, a Kildoi whose four arms and handed tail both protect and devastate.

  With a jolt and a crack we overbore the first line.

  Chuliks sagged back—and when a Chulik sags he is either dead or dying.

  The zorcas responded nobly as only those superb four-spindly-legged steeds can, all fire and spirit. Never meant for the charge, they flowed on and over in a fleetness of rhythm that bore us on and up. Like hunters at chase we cleared the first line and slammed into the second. But the Chuliks were ready, well-knowing the business of tackling a zorca-charge. Their weapons glittered. We sliced and drew our blades reeking in crimson as we leaped ahead. But the fray thickened and grew denser and Largo the Astorka was down, a spear through his throat. We yelled and swirled our blades and pressed on. But our progress slackened. The impetus of the charge dwindled.

  The noise bellowed up, echoing in rolling confusion under the Gate of Voxyri. Volodu put three distinct dents into his massive silver trumpet, and each time burst out with genuine anguish at that desecration. But three Chuliks dropped as though the trumpet had been a poleaxe.

  The third line of yellow-tuskers swayed, and men went down. But they held us. The zorcas drew back, pirouetting from a hedge of steel. Furiously I bellowed it out.

  “Reform! Break out over the Bridge!"

  We swung the zorcas about, their nimble hooves clicking on the cobbles where blood ran between the time-worn stones. The Chuliks back there were unlimbering crossbows, and this made me frown.

  “Heads down!” I yelled and clapped in my heels and Snowy surged on, picking up speed, elegantly avoiding tumbled bodies.

  The bolts would have had us but for the Gate. The trajectory intersected the masonry and the bolts chinked and tumbled like chicks disturbed in the nest. In the next mur we were out in the sunshine again and bearing down on the men from the two guarding fliers. It was all nip and tuck. Korero surged ahead, despite my yell, and his little yellow and red shield whipped up.

  I urged Snowy to greater efforts. In a bunch we crashed out and the Chuliks rose to meet us.

  Naghan Cwonin's lance tip was a clotted red mass. He lowered that steel wedge of death and then he was hurled back off his saddle, trailing blood, yelling, a stux clear through him. The Chulik who had hurled that spear did not hurl another, for a streaking dagger crossed the narrowing space and chinked in most neatly over the brass-coiled rim of his corselet.

  That Chulik bore a golden image of a grascent on his breast, suspended by golden chains around his neck. The dagger protruded above the golden image of the risslaca for a heart beat, and then the Chulik walked forward, as a dead man walks, blindly, walked forward three paces, four, and almost a fifth before he tumbled under the hooves of the zorcas.

  The weapons flamed. The Suns beat down. The dust lifted. And the blood spurted.

  The pandemonium was, for a brief moment, akin to the last dying scenes in a sinking ship where the crew panic. Blades clashed. Korero's shield split asunder and he used the half in his hand to dash a Chulik away. But another leaped for him, his yellow tusks dripping, and my clanxer only just swept down in time in a precision-controlled arc that kissed death across a corded neck.

  “My thanks, majister—"

  “There's another devil, Korero—"

  “Your back, Nath!"

  “On, on!"

  The shouts racketed as we forced our way on. And then we were through. Before us stretched the Bridge of Voxyri, and the open plain with the distant lines of men coming on swiftly. We could have ridden on. We might simply have nudged the zorcas to a further effort and ridden away.

  But, as one man—as one man—we turned.

  We turned back, raging, and tore once again into those murderous Chuliks and their yellow tusks and their ferocious military skills.

  The mellow stone of the Bridge and the Gate, the coolness of blue shadows and the piercing brilliance of the suns light, the clatter of hooves, a distinctive, brittle, rousing sound, the pants of men in combat and the yells of the wounded, the stink of rawly spilled blood—yes, yes, it struck responsive chords in me. But until we were done with scenes of this ugliness Vallia would never be the peaceful country we all intended her to be.

  Well—Nath Nazabhan and a few others might question that assumption—but it was what I intended.

  The Chuliks saw their attack had failed. They had kille
d or wounded a number of us, and they had lost more men than they liked. With that quick appraisal of the situation that had earned them as much contempt—in this case misguided contempt—in the past as praise, they took their airboats aloft. The fliers lifted off, swiftly rising and turning to head toward the north.

  North.

  That made a kind of sense, although they might have been expected to head for the southwest, where no one seemed to know what was happening. Equally, they might have gone southeast, for the situation there was confused. The truth was they might have headed anywhere in Vallia, for we were ringed.

  And, even so, this northward flight might be a mere subterfuge.

  We were plagued by the lack of airboats. All the vollers had been confiscated by the victors, and we, late into the fray, had to make do with what sorry remnants we could scrape up. As for aerial patrols, they were carried out by a skeleton force that had no chance to halt any determined aerial attack.

  Before the troops from the Drinnik reached us we were off our mounts and tending our wounded.

  Those who had already started on their last journey to the Ice Floes of Sicce were Naghan Cwonin, Largo the Astorka, Nath the Flute, Aidan Narfolar ti Therduim, Roban Vander and Nath the Mak, sometimes known as Nath the Waso.

  We had another five with wounds, great or small, from which only one, Larghos Shinuim the Fortroi subsequently joined his comrades among the ice floes.

  So we were cut down by a half.

  Nath's face bore a grave look that I saw was compounded as much of worry as of grief and anger.

  I attempted to rouse him.

  “You, it was, Nath, who told me that all men must die in their time. Praise Opaz for those who survived."

  “Wounded or slain,” he said. “A half of us. Some will rally, of course. But it is not good enough."

  I was not sure what he meant; but in the nature of the circumstances as the first of the men from the Drinnik reached us, I forbore to inquire. Had I done so I know now he would have given me no answer, or would have evaded the issue. What was planted in his mind then was subsequently made plain. And, I may add, to my own personal pleasure and profound gratitude to my comrades.