The Tides of Kregen [Dray Prescot #12] Read online

That made me glance at Turko, massive and muscled, where he stood with the enormous shield he would bear in action to protect me. Where Turko the Shield went, men knew, there went Dray Prescot, Prince Majister of Vallia, Strom of Valka.

  As the aerial armada pressed on I had time to consider, somewhat ruefully, that Valka's own fleet of great sailing fliers could not hurtle across the wind as we were doing. I had assigned them to defense of the island. One day I must return to Havilfar and go to Hamal, that puissant Empire under its evil ruler Thyllis, who was now crowned Empress, and discover the final secrets of the silver boxes that powered, uplifted and directed the fliers.

  Our fleet of airboats pressed on. Now we flew over the scattering of islands called the Nairnairsh Islands, from the huge numbers of nairnair birds that made of every rocky headland a cawing, fluttering colony of white and brown feathers. I could see a few small ships sailing, fishermen, local traders, and I looked—thankfully in vain—for a sight of the tall, wing-like banded sails of the shanks.

  “Not far now, my Prince."

  Balass the Hawk stood at my side, fully armored, his visor thrown up, grim and yet splendid, with his hawklike black face a great comfort to me.

  The wind bluster cracked Old Superb above our heads. The suns glittered from armor and weapons. I turned and, looking ahead, said, “Not long now, Balass."

  In those days I felt no admiration for the true courage of the shanks, those fishheads who sailed in their superb craft around the curve of the world, sailing from their grouping of continents and islands to sack and destroy the fair cities of our continental grouping of Paz. These shanks, these Leem Lovers, were superb seamen. Yet I knew, as an old sailor, that after their immense voyage across the open sea they would need a secure base, a good anchorage, a place to careen and refurbish their ships, a place to get their breath back after the voyage. Fossana would be such a place. They must not be allowed to make a base so close to Valka...

  “We must stop them here,” I said, still looking across the sea, willing the voller to fly faster and bring us to the battle quickly. “They must not be allowed a chance to fester here."

  A voice spoke at my back, a voice that made me go cold from the very first syllables.

  “We will fight them, Father, and we will win!"

  Slowly I turned around.

  Young Drak—my son—Drak—stood there in brave panoply, all scarlet and gold, staring up at me with a set and defiant expression across his face. He knew what he had done. He had no fear of the terrible shanks, but he was most uneasy about my reaction.

  With him—Delia!

  She smiled at me.

  My heart leaped. She wore a scarlet breechclout, a breast and back, and a helmet very much like the one she had insisted I wear. She carried her rapier and main-gauche scabbarded to her slender waist, and I knew how well she could use them, the Jiktar and the Hikdar.

  “Delia,” I said. “You should not have allowed him."

  “He is like you, Dray. A wild leem. And is this not to be his portion in life?"

  “Aye."

  Oby stood there also, accoutered, smiling away at me, relishing his part in the coming battle. As a young rip he had a most dubious effect on Drak. Young Oby had mended much of his wild ways when he had been my assistant in the arena; now his passion was all for vollers and the mysteries of aerial navigation, but it was clear he intended to get into the coming fight.

  “And Naghan the Gnat?"

  “I am here!” shouted Naghan and, in truth, there he was, loaded down with choice specimens from his own armory, smiling away like a loon. I shook my head.

  “Mad, the lot of you...” I looked past Naghan. “And you, Tilly, you are here also."

  “Yes, my Prince,” said Tilly, her glorious golden fur glowing in the light of the Suns of Scorpio, for Tilly was a most delicious little Fristle fifi.

  A mewling and harshly screeching roar told me that Melow the Supple had also come with us. I stared at Melow and the ferocious manhound stretched her neck up, then put out a fearsomely clawed hand to keep her son Kardo from beginning one of the interminable fights he was always into with Drak. Well, I welcomed Melow and Kardo, for the jiklos are terrible and ferocious, mighty in their strength. Although really human beings, they have been changed so that they run on all fours and possess the fighting ferocity of the leem.

  “Melow, your son Kardo will be with Drak?"

  “Yes, Dray Prescot. For that is where he wills he should be."

  “And you will be with the Princess Majestrix."

  Melow lolled her red tongue between those horrific jagged teeth, and I felt a little more easy. Mind you, once I had this circus home I would let them know just what my true thoughts were on this foolhardy rushing into danger. Didn't they understand the sheerly awful power of the shanks? Didn't they realize they could all be killed?

  A lookout shouted from forward and I swung around to look ahead. A cloud hung in the sky athwart our passage, a cloud that must have grown with incredible swiftness, for only murs before the sky had been clear.

  A dun shadow swept across the glittering sea below and in an instant we plunged into the cloud. Dank tendrils of vapor brushed us, clinging and unpleasant. Vision was reduced so that I could see only those faces near me; beyond the quarterdeck the ship vanished.

  Shouts and yells arose. That cloud—how could it have formed so quickly?

  The voller jerked. I knew that feeling. The flier lurched and skidded sideways. Her nose went down. We were falling.

  “Those Opaz-forsaken cramphs of Hamal!” yelled Vangar, incensed that once again his duty as chief of fliers was to preside over a crash.

  “Silence!” I bellowed.

  In the ensuing hush we heard the wind bluster and roar as we fell. Slowly the haze cleared and we dropped free of the cloud. I looked up. The rest of our fleet was winging swiftly on, arrow-straight for Fossana. Now it would all be up to Tom Tomor, and it would be to him the responsibility would fall. I looked down. An island below showed creamy surf breaking on a beach. Massive trees crowded close, and there were at least three village clearings visible. Men were running below. Men like myself, apims, and also weird forms with grotesque fish heads, scaled and armored, running with vicious tridents flashing in the suns, weapons stained with the blood of my people.

  "Shanks!"

  The voller hit the sand. Ahead the wooden palisade of a village offered shelter. Everyone leaped from the stranded voller, running fleetly for the village. Heads appeared over the stockade.

  A flight of arrows rose and I cursed. Then I realized the arrows curved away, falling into a body of fishheads who were trying to cut us off.

  “Run!” I bellowed.

  Straight for the village gate we raced. The valves were dragged open. We tumbled through the opened portal and the villagers slammed the heavy lenken logs back with a thunk. Iron bars dropped. The headman came running up, distraught, wringing his hands. Simple fisher folk these, used to landing fine fat fish in their nets, and now they faced man-sized fishheads raging at them, armed with tridents, swords and bows, their plunder from the sea revenging itself horribly on them.

  He knew me.

  “Majister! Majister! Monsters—they—"

  “Man the walls! Keep your heads down!” I shook his shoulder. “It will be all right, Koter, all right."

  “Yes, Majister, yes—but the fishheads—"

  We could hold this place until my fliers returned. We must hold this place! Nothing else would do. Nothing.

  The Leem Lovers were in force, roaring in to attack, hurling spears and tridents, shooting arrows. My men replied with the cool precise shooting Seg Segutorio had drilled into them. These men were Valkan Archers, but they used the great Lohvian longbow and they could outshoot the compound reflex bows of the shanks. Spare supplies of shafts had been brought from the flier, for Jiktar Orlon Llodar in command of the regiment was an officer in whom I reposed confidence. He did not have his full regiment with him, for half had b
een embarked on another flier, packed in like fish in a barrel. With three pastangs of sixty men each we must hold off an unknown number of fishheads.

  I leaped up onto the parapet around the stockade. The village possessed a stockade because these islands were often the scene of raids from Pandahem, or from a dissident nation of Segesthes beyond Zenicce, or, in the old days, from the slavers and aragorn. Along the beach the voller lay stranded, and shanks were already clambering and running there. I cursed. From the trees other shanks were running. The devils must have beached their ships and marched overland. There had not been a sign of a shank ship as we crash-landed.

  A circuit of the stockade brought me back to the parapet over the main gate. This faced along the beach, as I have said, and not out to sea or inland. Defensive considerations dictated that choice. A small protected harbor held a few fishing boats, little better than dories. The circuit of the walls had shown me we could hold. A stream trickled down from the forest so we would have water, if the Leem Lovers did not divert or dam the stream.

  “Now, Jiktar,” I said brusquely to Orion Llodar. “Now is the chance to show that the Second Regiment of Valkan Archers can do better than the First."

  Before Llodar could answer, young Drak, who had followed me around most carefully, sniffed. “I would like very much to see that,” he said. I glared at him. As you know, Drak is the Hyr-Jiktar—colonel in chief—of the First Regiment of Valkan Archers. Lela was Hyr-Jiktar of the Second.

  Orion Llodar smacked his buff-sleeved arm across his breastplate. He wore a bob there. “We shall, my Prince, and with due respect to Prince Drak, outshoot the finest the First could offer this day."

  “I believe you. These yetches of fishheads will try to fool us. They will feint an attack on one flank and then drive in on another. All faces of the stockade must be kept under observation at all times. Have a party of swordsmen handy to rush to the threatened wall. And watch out for their Opaz-forsaken tridents. They are vicious."

  “My Prince!” he bellowed, in the old soldierly way.

  Barbaric and savage are my warriors of Valka and they love little better than a rousing fight, but we had been knocking drill and discipline into them. They would have full need of all their courage and skill now.

  But we could hold. With determined and skillful leadership we could defy the Leem Lovers. I was determined enough, Zair knows, and as to skill ... well, this bore the appearance of a militarily simple defense of the fortified place. If they tried to burn us out ... I bellowed for the headman, one Remush the Trident, for he was a noted fisherman, and got him to organize fire fighting parties of his people with all the buckets and containers they could find. This was the village of Panashti on the island of Lower Kairfowen. I fancied these names would be remembered henceforth, filling men's mouths.

  “I wish, my Prince, that my pastangs were at full strength.” Jiktar Llodar stared with venom at the shanks as they massed at the forest edge.

  “All the more glory, Jiktar, for those who are here."

  That was cheap enough, Zair knows, but it fitted the occasion.

  The gate looked sturdy in construction, with square towers and a walkway across the gap. “Here, Planath,” I said, pointing. “Raise the standard here."

  Planath Pe-Na, my standard-bearer, was a Pachak and a man of exceptional virtues. He rammed the standard pole into a crevice in the wood and then lashed it upright. Dead or alive, Planath would stay by the standard. I turned to Kodar ti Vakkansmot, the chief of my corps of trumpeters. “Give a few good bracing calls, Kodar. Rouse the blood in ‘em!"

  “Aye, Majister."

  The lilting peals of the trumpet sounded over the small stockaded village of Panashti on the island of Lower Kairfowen. I fancied the men would brace up at the sound, grip their weapons more firmly, glare the more murderously at their antagonists.

  The blueness stole in quietly. It muffled the bright, brilliant sounds of the trumpet. It wrapped its baleful coils around me. I saw the blue radiance churning everywhere. The world was slipping away, I was falling, the whole world turning into the semblance of a giant Scorpion, come from the Star Lords to carry me far and far away.

  * * *

  Chapter Three

  I defy the Star Lords

  I, Dray Prescot, of Earth and of Kregen, knew what was happening to me.

  This obscenity had taken me before, many times, snatched me away from pleasant home life with those I loved and hurled me into fresh adventures in Kregen under Antares. Even more balefully still, it had thrust me contemptuously back to the world of my birth four hundred light-years off through the depths of interstellar space.

  “No!” I shouted.

  I was falling, in actuality. For the blueness lifted, the radiance dwindled a little and I felt myself falling and in the next instant the ground smashed up iron hard. I was winded. I tried to yell again, to shout my defiance of the Star Lords and their commands.

  I heard voices—Delia's voice, Drak's, others—shouting; through the misty blueness I saw forms above me; hands grasped my arms and legs and I was carried, swaying and swinging above the packed earth. A shadow blotted my sight of the forms dimly visible through the blue mist. I thought I must have been carried into one of the huts. The blueness grew again. “No! I will not leave! It is unthinkable!"

  The blueness twirled about me, the Scorpion shape grew and grew and then, in very final truth, I was falling.

  I was encompassed in a floating blueness. Everything turned blue, roaring and twisting in my skull.

  “I will stay on Kregen!” I screamed it out, and I knew with a feeling close to despair that my scream gushed voicelessly from my mouth. I tried again. “I will not leave! More! I will not leave here!"

  The sensations of falling persisted now with dread finality. The blueness coiled in my eyes and head; I could not speak, could scarcely breathe; a weight oppressed my chest. All manner of thoughts flitted like black bats through my mind. I felt the ground again, dust and heat, and the abrupt hammer of conflict bursting painfully through into my skull.

  All the sensations I had come to expect of a transition smashed at me. I was naked. I lay in the dust. And nearby a battle took place.

  The Star Lords had contemptuously ignored my feeble yells of defiance. They had not banished me to Earth, for as I opened my eyes the glorious mingled lights of Antares fell about me, but I was no longer within the stockaded village of Panashti. I was no longer near Delia and Drak and all my other friends there.

  On occasions before I had attempted to defy the Everoinye and instead of being banished to Earth had been dumped down, naked and unarmed, on some unknown spot on Kregen, there to sort out a problem for the Star Lords. Always before I had obeyed. I knew that the quickest way to rid myself of the immediate obligation to the Star Lords was to obey their injunctions and to settle the problem at hand. Then, always, before, I had been able to go about my own business.

  This time was different.

  I sat up on the dusty ground and saw a sickeningly familiar sight.

  A mass of crazed Relts ran and fell and were slaughtered as the shanks pursued them. I sat under the shadow of a voller parked beside two other vollers at the edge of a gulley in the dusty ground. I would have to stand up, all naked as I was, and run forward, into the fight, possess myself of a weapon and so defend these people against the Leem Lovers. This I could do. This was the way of it, the way of my life on Kregen. I was expected to take up arms at once and rush in to save the life of the one person—perhaps two, if a mother and child were involved—in that melee whom the Star Lords wished preserved.

  What they were planning with the people whose lives I thus perpetuated I did not then know.

  I didn't care, didn't give a damn.

  This time I was Prince Majister. This time my wife and child were penned in a tiny rickety wooden village under savage attack from monsters from around the curve of the world.

  Against the skyline beyond the struggle I saw twin peaks, fores
ted, shaped like sugar loaves. They bulked there against the blue. I knew them. I knew where I was. This was the island of Vilasca. Vilasca, barely twenty dwaburs from the Nairnairsh Islands, and south of them the island of Lower Kairfowen. And, on that island, the village of Panashti!

  I leaped up.

  Barely twenty dwaburs. A mere hundred miles! A fleet voller might take less than two burs—much less—to cover that distance—a little over an hour. There are forty Earth minutes to a bur. If the flier was speedy...

  Over there across the dusty earth where the Leem Lovers had swarmed ashore to catch these people all unprepared, a vicious and bloody struggle raged. This island of Vilasca did not owe allegiance to me; I was not its Strom or Kov or any other noble. I felt desperately sorry for those people, but there was no question, no hesitation in my mind. My duty lay elsewhere.

  The voller controls felt warm under my hands. I thrust the levers hard over. Again I forced the speed lever all the way across, hard against the stop. The voller leaped into the air, screaming away, curving to the east and south. Twenty dwaburs to go...

  As I shot over the beach and left that struggle I looked down.

  What I saw shocked a fresh and awful knowledge into my brain. I saw the fighting down there, the wicked shapes of Leem Lovers as they went about their business of slaughtering the people of Vilasca. Among those shanks I saw the hideous forms of shtarkins. No one then knew the name these fishheads gave themselves; we called them by a variety of names of which shant, shank and shtarkin were only three. But the ones I called shtarkins were not fishheads. As I looked down I saw the reptilian heads, the snakelike features, the hard, unfishlike scales closely set, the wide eyes and the trap-mouths set flatly in wedge-shaped heads, a flicker of forked tongue darting through as they fought. Snakeheads!

  The voller bore me up and away and I left those fearsome fighting shtarkins to slaughter the good people of Vilasca.

  The shtarkins employed the tall asymmetric bow instead of the short compound reflex bow. I had no real knowledge of the asymmetric bow, but the thing shot an arrow fully as long as a great Lohvian longbow and was reputed accurate to prodigious ranges. Seg would have had his keen professional instincts immediately aroused. The arrows, cloth yard shafts, were tipped with long serrated heads. I saw one burst clean through a running woman, and as she fell my hands twisted the levers to bring me down.