Storm over Vallia Read online

  She spoke evenly enough, yet lightly, on a breath, as though the horror of the past moments had not been so easily disposed of in the thrust of a sword.

  “I give you my thanks, dom. Your name?”

  “Why, my lady — it is Lon the Knees—”

  “Yes.”

  And she smiled. And Lon the Knees was overwhelmed.

  He licked his lips and swallowed and got out: “My lady! You have slain a chavonth! It is a great jikai!”

  He would not dare, naturally, to ask her name in return.

  Her smile did not falter.

  “A little jikai, perhaps, Lon the Knees. To gain the great jikai, let alone the High Jikai, one must do far more than this. Far more.”

  He opened his mouth, and she went on: “Now give me a hand with this young lord. His companions are dead, which is unfortunate for them, although no doubt somewhere in this land of Rahartdrin someone is giving thanks to Opaz for this eventuality.”

  Lon didn’t follow all this; but he stepped across, knees trembling, and helped to raise up one of the corpses.

  This body was clad in gorgeous clothes of a nature that, while they filled Lon with envy, filled him also with repugnance.

  As though inconsequentially, she said: “You throw a cunning knife, Lon.”

  “Aye, my lady.”

  “It did the trick. Gave me time — hold his arm, the idiot keeps on falling over — now, you young lord, open your damned eyes!” She slapped the corpse around the face and, lo!, the corpse’s eyes opened.

  “Help!” The puffy lips shook as the man screamed.

  The girl shook his shoulder. “It is all over! You are safe, Jen[1] Cedro.”

  This young lord Cedro in the foppish gaudy clothes took some time to calm down. He was sick. His eyes, of a pale transparency so unlike the normal deep Vallian brown, stared vacantly at the room, the dead chavonth, his two dead companions. He shuddered and vomited again.

  Only now, this close to the girl as he helped with this petulant young lord, was Lon aware of the blood scored along the rip in her black leathers. The slash from razor-sharp claws bloodied her left shoulder. That, Lon surmised, was why she’d held her left hand at her back.

  “My lady! You are hurt—”

  “A scratch. As soon as I’ve handed Jen Cedro over I’ll have the needle lady attend to it.”

  “At least let me bind it up—”

  “Don’t fuss, Lon the Knees.”

  He felt chastened, and so said no more.

  “That damned churmod is still prowling about outside.” She sounded fretful and just as savage as the damned churmod. “I don’t fancy having to go up against her with—”

  “My lady! That would be madness!”

  “Oh, aye, by Vox, absolute madness. So I won’t.”

  “Thank the good Opaz!”

  “We’ll sit tight in here and wait until Kov Vodun sorts out the whole stupid mess. You can tell me about yourself.”

  So he told her, not that there was much to tell. Orphaned at an early age and sent to work on a farm, been looking after animals all his life. His twin brother, Nol, gone for a mercenary slinger and who might have any sobriquet now, a source of ever-present foreboding.

  “Why, Lon?”

  “Soldiers get themselves killed, my lady.”

  “Oh, aye, they do that. But then, so do beast-handlers who don’t know their job.”

  “My lady!” Lon was aware of deep disappointment that he should not have felt. The great ones of the land would always blame someone other than themselves. “I am not trained to handle wild beasts — give me a Quoffa, or a mytzer, a zorca or—”

  “I know, Lon. I am not blaming you. Far from it.”

  “They should not have put the captives so near the wild beasts, and—”

  “And the cages were ludicrous. Yes, I guessed that. But, Lon the Knees, do you not think it strange that so many wild animals escaped — all at once?”

  “I saw the churmod break the bars. It was frightening.”

  “Assuredly. Yet I suspect that a hand loosened the bars of the cages — not yours, Lon, believe me, I did not intend to mean that.”

  Oddly enough, given his usual attitude to the high and mighty of the world, Lon believed her, believed she spoke the truth. She was, he could see, a most remarkable young lady.

  “You do not ask my name, Lon.”

  “That is beyond my reach, my lady, as you know.”

  “Oh — I see. Yes. I am a Jikai Vuvushi and am used to rough ways. Well then, Lon the Knees, I am Lyss the Lone — well, that is one name by which I am known.”

  Very gravely, Lon said: “Llahal and Lahal, Lyss the Lone. Now we have made pappattu properly.”

  “Lahal, Lon.”

  So the introductions were made.

  Lord Cedro groaned and started to roll over so Lyss the Lone pushed him away to avoid his own vomit.

  Added to the rank smell of blood in the chamber the sour stink of Cedro’s sick gave Lon a queasy sensation, he who was used to the stenches of a farmyard!

  Lyss walked to the window and looked out. She shook her head.

  “The beasts still stalk arrogantly. There is no sign of a human being — alive, that is.”

  “Oh,” said Lon.

  “The kov will be rounding up his people now. Pretty soon they’ll come back and try to round up the beasts—”

  “I should be there to help them.”

  “You will stay here and help me.”

  “Quidang, my lady.”

  “So you never wanted to go for a mercenary, then?”

  “Oh, I went off with my brother Nol. They took him for a slinger; me they sent home, laughing. But I was in one army for a time, looking after the totrixes.”

  “Someone has to, otherwise the army would not ride.”

  Nervously, trading on this amazing friendship he sensed between them, Lon ventured: “And you, my lady. You have been in many famous battles?”

  “Some.”

  “A — I see...”

  “A battle is a battle, Lon. A messy business.”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  The idea that a battlefield was not exactly the right place for a young lady could only occur to Lon the Knees, or any of his contemporaries, as it might apply to one particular girl, one prized loved one. Girls had always fought in battles, and the Jikai Vuvushi regiments were justly feared.

  Lon was perfectly content, now, to sit tight in this chamber and wait for Kov Vodun to come for them. That the kov would come, Lon felt no doubt. Now he knew this young and unpleasant lord was Jen Cedro, he knew him to be one of Kov Vodun’s nephews. If the foppish idiot was valued by his uncle, then rescue would not be long delayed. Thus reasoned Lon the Knees.

  Also, and in this Lon felt unsure, he would meet the kov, face to face. Vodun Alloran might lord it over wide lands; the common folk could hope to see him barely more than a handful of times during their lives. The great ones of the earth rode past in a glitter of gold amid the trumpets and banners; the common herd cheered from the crowds and saw only what the dazzlement in their eyes allowed.

  Assured that Cedro was still alive, Lyss the Lone did not seem bothered that he relapsed into unconsciousness. She sat on one of the chairs twisted to face the windows. She sat still and trim in her black leathers, and Lon felt the pang strike through him. If only...!

  Well, jolly fat Sendra down at The Leather Bottle had been kind to him in the past, and he could always shut his eyes and dream.

  Noise and fresh uproar in the street told that at last rescue had arrived. The clatter of hooves, the screeching fury of wild beasts skewered and feathered, the high yells of men and women drunk on slaying, filtered in through the window. Lyss stood up. She hitched her rapier and main gauche around, picked up her other sword, solid and powerful, and started for the door.

  “My lady!” Lon was alarmed to such an extent he scared himself at the intensity of his own feelings.

  “Well?”

&nbs
p; “You cannot — I mean — why go out now?”

  “I am a Jikai Vuvushi.”

  Lon stiffened his spine.

  “Aye! And like to be a dead one if you go outside that door now — my lady.”

  Thankfully, she did not say: “And you would care?” Such banality, they both recognized, had long since vanished between them. She smiled that dazzling smile.

  “I believe your justified concern no longer applies — listen!”

  From outside the door the sounds of the churmod’s death hissed in, and Lon had no difficulty visualizing the hail of bolts from the crossbows, sleeting in to shred and bloody that ghostly silvery-blue hide.

  Lyss opened the door.

  “Hai! The lord Cedro is here, unharmed. Hurry, famblys, and take him up carefully, for he is beloved of the lord kov.”

  Men and women wearing a variety of colorful uniforms entered the room, and at once began to attend to Cedro. Lon stared at the open doorway.

  Vodun Alloran, Kov of Kaldi, conqueror of this island of Rahartdrin, entered. Lon stared, fascinated, quite unaware of his own peril in thus staring so openly at a great lord.

  Alloran looked the part. His clothes were sumptuous, for he no longer wore the normal Vallian buff tunic and breeches; golden wire, lace, feathers and folderols smothered him in magnificence. His shrewd, weather-beaten face contained harshness engraved as a habit, and the bright brown Vallian eyes, partially hidden by down-drooping lids, revealed a little of the fury of ambition seething within him.

  He wore an aigrette, the feathers of maroon and gray, the colors of Kaldi, and the golden device, that of a leaping sea-barynth, a long and sinuous monster of Kregen’s seas. His own personal retainers wore sleeves banded in maroon and gray in the old style of Vallia. He stared about from under those drooping eyelids, and Lon abruptly switched his gaze to Lyss.

  She stood, upright and slim in her black leathers.

  “My nephew,” said the kov. “He is unharmed?”

  “He is well, my lord kov, praise be to Opaz—”

  “Yes. He would escape from a pack of leems without a rent in his coat.”

  Lyss said nothing. Lon stood with his tongue cleaving to the roof of his mouth.

  Alloran stared about with that aloof, disdainful look of the great ones of the world.

  “There has been a mischief done here,” he said. He spoke through his teeth. “And I will have the guilty ones hung by their heels over the battlements until they are shredded to bone.”

  Watching Lyss the Lone, Lon saw the way she held herself, the tautness of her, the poise. Was that a fine trembling along her limbs, the ghost of a twitch of muscle in her cheek? He’d conceived the instant idea that this glorious girl feared nothing. She had faced and overcome a savage wild beast, not even claiming a jikai for the deed. Now she stood watchful, like a falcon poised ready to take flight, alert and wary.

  Naturally Lon stood in awe and fear of Kov Vodun Alloran.

  But did this Battle Maiden, this superb Jikai Vuvushi, stand in fear of the kov?

  No. No, Lon the Knees could not believe that this girl feared anything in Kregen.

  Chapter two

  Of the concerns of Drak, Prince Majister of Vallia

  The battle was lost a half an hour after it began with the totally unexpected appearance of a second hostile army swarming up from the sand dunes on the left flank. The Vallians broke and fled.

  The First Army, commanded by Drak, Prince Majister of Vallia, trudged dispiritedly back from that disastrous field. Then the rain fell.

  Jumbled regiments on foot slogged through mud that thickened and stuck like glue. A few artillery pieces saved from the ruin, ballistae and catapults swathed in coarse sacking against the rain, struggled on drawn by a motley collection of animals, and by men. The cavalry, who had suffered grievously, walked their animals, and everywhere heads hung down.

  The wounded, those who could be collected, were transported in improvised fashion, for the supply of ambulance carts proved woefully insufficient.

  Sliding, slipping, dragging themselves through the mud, the First Army staggered on eastwards across the imperial province of Venavito in southwest Vallia.

  Jiktar Endru Vintang led his zorca through the mud, holding the bridle so that he walked to the side, for the zorca’s single spiral horn jutting from his forehead could inflict a nasty nudge if anyone was foolish enough to walk directly in front of so superb an animal. His saddle dripped water, and his orderly would spit brickdust cleaning up the weaponry strapped both to zorca and Endru.

  The long lines of men and animals kept doggedly on in the rattle of the rain and the gruesome footing.

  Jiktar Endru commanded one of the prince’s personal bodyguard regiments.[2]

  He was three-quarters of the way up the ladder of promotions within the Jiktar rank, and hoped soon to make Chuktar. With this disastrous Battle of Swanton’s Bay to ruin their plans, Endru morosely felt that promotions for anyone were a long way away. You’d have to take the place of a dead superior and soldier on in your own grade for a bit yet. That was his surmise.

  Nobody talked. They all went sloshing on in a profound and gloomy silence, broken by the slash of the rain, the creaking of axle wheels, the suck and splash of feet in mud, and the groans of the wounded. All these distressing sounds faded within the bitterness of the silence engulfing the army.

  Endru Vintang ti Vandayha[3], tough as old boots, efficient, a superb zorcaman, a warrior who understood discipline and let his regiment know he understood, had fought as a Freedom Fighter in Valka, and counted himself supremely lucky to be selected by the Prince Majister to command the bodyguard regiment called the Prince Majister’s Sword Watch. The best part was that, feeling a real and powerful affection for the prince, Endru knew that Prince Drak liked and trusted him and treated him as a friend.

  He knew he felt as many and many a poor wight in this defeated army felt. He felt they’d let Prince Drak down badly, very badly indeed.

  But, still and all! That second army, suddenly appearing over the sand dunes where scouts had reported nothing apart from shellfish and crabs! That had been the stunner.

  Those Opaz-forsaken Kataki twins had been the cause of this defeat. That seemed certain.

  Glimmering spectrally through the slanting rain, a light appeared ahead. Wearily, Endru flapped back the cloth over his saddle and with a soft word to Dapplears, his zorca, stuck a leg over and mounted up. Even then, quick as he was, he sat in wetness and felt the discomfort through his breeches. One thing was for sure in all the surrounding desolation; this uniform was ruined beyond repair.

  He nudged Dapplears, for no true zorcaman put spurs to so fiery and spirited a saddle animal, and walked him up alongside his regiment.

  “Deldar Fresk! Ten men with me. Bratch!”

  Eleven of them, they rode out ahead of that bedraggled rout toward the light which Endru knew to be shining in a window of a house in the little village of Molon. He said nothing, did not turn his head, as he passed the powerful figure walking sturdily beside his zorca at the head of the column. The prince would be in no mood for polite conversation now, by Vox!

  The inhabitants of the village, apprised by that seemingly magical dissemination of country news, had fled.

  There were beds for the wounded, and roofs for a fair number of those fortunate enough to cram into the little houses. There was even a little food. Fires were lit and clothing began to steam, filling the close confined atmosphere with that particular charring, moist, fibrous smell of drying clothes. When he had seen to his duties, Endru reported to the prince.

  “They’ll get some rest for the night, jis,” he said, using the “jis” as the shortened form of majister, for Prince Drak did not care to be addressed as majister. He was not too keen on the slightly more formal ‘majis’, although that was how most of those not in his immediate circle addressed him.

  “And those we have left on the field will sleep even more profoundly.” Drak sounded d
epressed.

  “The odds were more than two to one, nearer three to one. Had we not—”

  “Run off?”

  “Aye, jis! Had we not done so, many more of us would sleep on the field this night. And then, what of the morrow?”

  “You are right, Endru. We must look to tomorrow.”

  Endru was of an age with the prince. He felt perfectly confident in his ability to be allowed to say: “Bitterness over this defeat, jis, will avail us nothing. Those damned Kataki twins wrought the mischief, I’ll be bound.”

  “I did not see them in the fight. Did you?”

  “No.”

  Drak sat himself down on a rough wooden seat and put his forearms on the scrubbed tabletop. The fire threw harsh shadows into his face. Yet Endru could see the power there, the arrogant beak of a nose, the jut of chin, all the charisma he possessed, shared and inherited from his father the emperor. They were much alike, yet Prince Drak for all his austere ways, his uprightness, his dedication to his duty, possessed a streak of more gentle character from his mother, the divine Empress Delia.

  The small cottage room contained other men and women: Kapt Enwood nal Venticar, the prince’s right-hand man and his chief of staff, crusty old Jiktar Naghan the Bow, commanding the prince’s bodyguard regiment, the Prince Majister’s Devoted Archers, his personal servants, one or two of the sutlers come to report the damage, various people who had business with the prince, and Chuktar Leone Starhammer, commanding Queen Lushfymi’s regiment of Jikai Vuvushis. Now Kapt Enwood resumed the conversation Endru’s entrance had interrupted.

  “Jiktar Endru confirms my view, then, jis. I am confident the Kataki twins commanded. It is certain that Vodun Alloran was not there.”

  “The quicker he is put down, the better it will be for Vallia.”

  “Yet he is clever and resourceful. He commands many men. And he’s getting his gold from somewhere—”

  “Aye!” burst out Drak. “But where?”

  “It is my view,” put in Leone Starhammer, “there is sorcery involved here.”

  No one cared to answer that. This Leone, a full-bodied woman, plain of face, dark of hair, with biceps that could smash a sword through oak, kept herself and her girls up to a very high fighting pitch. Fortunately, in Drak’s mind as in the others’, the Jikai Vuvushis had not been heavily engaged during the short fray.