A Victory for Kregen Read online

  It was all a bedlam of heaving scaled bodies and wicked fangs and lashing blades. Some of the Chulik-like riders attempted to claw their weapons free. They could be given no chance to fight back, of course, and we set on them with a will. We had seen what they had accomplished, and we did not wish to suffer a like fate. The fight was quick and deadly. The thraxter slimed and lifted, struck and thrust, withdrew with more ominous streaks along the dulled blade.

  Tyfar fought with a wild panache, his axe blurring in short lethal strokes. The two Pachaks fought as Pachaks fight. And Nodgen’s thick spear thrust with all the power of his bristle body.

  And — there was Hunch, his bill cunningly slanted, cutting the legs away from the riders who attempted to smite down on him. Yes, Tryfants will put in a wild, brave, skirling charge, magnificent in attack. It is the retreat, in the withdrawal, when doubts arise, that Tryfants rout so easily.

  The suddenness of the attack, the ambush that had shot them into pieces, and then the headlong rush of fighting men undid these swarthmen. None escaped. Modo Fre-Da, curling his tail cunningly out of the way, leaped astride a swarth. He seized up the reins and jammed in his heels. The animal shot ahead.

  Furiously, the Pachak hyr-paktun galloped after the dead rider lolling in the saddle of his fleeing swarth.

  We others gathered up the reins of the surviving animals, quieting them in the dust and turmoil, sorting them out and calming them. No one was bitten, which was a thankfulness.

  The saddle dinosaurs were middling-quality mounts, with two among their number of superior breed.

  These two had the thickened scale plating over their eyes, which were fierce and arrogant, and their tails were triple-barbed. Once you know how to handle a swarth, he is a tractable enough mount. Mind you, I would take a zorca or a vove any day of the week.

  “Did you see—”

  And: “That fellow bit on the shaft!”

  And: “He went over backward and his head—”

  We looked at the corpses of the swarth riders.

  “Muzzards,” said Quienyin, walking up and standing, his head on one side to balance his turban before he pushed it straight. “Ugly customers. There are a lot of them down south in the Dawn Lands.”

  They did look a little like Chuliks, at that. They did not have the oily yellow skin of the upthrust tusks, but their build and thickness and stance — when they were alive — suggested the Chulik morphology to our eyes.

  Their skins carried a leaden hue, which had not been caused by death, and they exuded a musky stink I, for one, found unpleasant. Modo returned with the dead warrior still lolling in the saddle, and so we nine stood, looking down on the dead. The living animals clustered farther along the runnel and began tentatively to rip off the thorn-ivy, munching it up quite oblivious of the thorns. Tough, your Kregan swarth — although their trick is simply to twist their fanged mouths around to get the thorns in sideways and then get their masticating dentures at the sharp spines.

  This, as I saw it, was just another example of that peculiarly Kregan marriage of convenience between conflicting demands. The omnivorous animal comes equipped with two sets of implements. At the time I was still, despite my conversations with a Savapim, unsure if these Kregan eccentricities were part of natural evolution — either on Kregen or some other world — or if they were the result of artificial interference with nature’s handiwork.

  “Cut-price, unsophisticated Chuliks,” said Logu Fre-Da, nodding to his brother. “These Muzzards.”

  “They bear harness and weapons, brother.”

  “Aye, brother.”

  The Pachaks were mercenaries. I, too, have been a paktun in my time. We were not long in stripping harness and weapons and collecting the loot in a pile. The bodies we left for the carrion-eaters of the Humped Land to dispose of, in nature’s way. I know I did, and I am sure some of the others must have also, said a short prayer to Zair for the well-being of these lost souls in the Ice Floes of Sicce.

  Then we crawled into the shade beyond the boma and contemplated the pile of harnesses and weapons.

  “Which, Jak,” said Tyfar, “reminds me you never did change your scarlet breechclout.”

  “Why, no,” I said. “But we were rather — busy.”

  “Yes.”

  “I shall keep it, as I am sure there is nothing hygienic on these Muzzards. But I admit I am not averse to a stout coat of leather, studded with bronze. And a helmet, too, although—” and here I picked one up and turned it on my hand— “they are poor specimens, of iron bands and leather filling.”

  “They put the wind up me, I can tell you.”

  “Is that all they put up you, Hunch?” Nodgen guffawed. “Then you’re lucky.”

  Because the two Pachaks were hyr-paktuns, wearing the golden pakzhan at their throats, I knew they would be able to handle the long lances from swarthback. I said to Hunch, “Can you manipulate a lance?

  Or would it be a waste for you?”

  “A waste, notor,” he said at once, without preamble. “I like a long-staved weapon; but these are ill-balanced, as I judge.”

  And, by Vox, he was right.

  “Let me cut an arm’s length off the end,” said Nodgen. “Then I’ll have a capital long-spear.”

  “Each man to his own needs,” I said, and looked at Tyfar. “Prince?”

  He smiled.

  “I will stay true to my axe.”

  In the saddlebags we found comestibles of a hardtack kind, such as a warrior would carry. There was also wine in leather bottles. Tyfar and I exchanged glances.

  “Water for now,” I said. “I’ll answer for Nodgen and Hunch.”

  “And I for Barkindrar and Nath.”

  Quienyin said, “The brothers Fre-Da will, I think, answer for themselves, as is right and proper.”

  The Pachaks lifted their tail hands in acknowledgment.

  “When the suns are over the yard arm,” I said, although in the Kregish it was not what I said at all. We lay back, munching hardtack, sipping water sparingly, and every now and then a white gleam in Hunch’s face told of his roving eyeballs gazing fondly on the wine skins.

  Truly, Moderdrin is an amazing and forbidding place. The mountains stud the plain with their humps, crowned by jumbles of towers and domes and walls, smothered in vegetation, with tumbling waterfalls and bosky avenues in which, as we knew, were to be found savage denizens.

  But, those denizens were nowise as monstrous as the horrors within the artificial mountains.

  We dozed and kept watch, and the water remained stoppered in the bottles. Prince Tyfar showed signs of wishing to protest, after the first sips had ceased to refresh him.

  “Prince,” I said, and I spoke evenly, “if you drink now you will simply sweat the precious liquid away, wasting it. Wait until the worst of the heat goes.”

  “But my mouth is afire—”

  “Suck a pebble.” I nodded at the Pachaks. The cheeks on each hardy Pachak face bulged.

  He did as I bid; and he had the sense to see the sense in it. I felt he was a young man, prince or no, who grasped the uses of sense in a way that would be approved, at least, by men who thought as I did. For your full-bloodied, rambunctious hell-for-leather rampant princeling, Prince Tyfar was altogether too much of an intellectual — and a superb axeman, withal.

  He had gone raging into the Muzzards. There was no dilly-dallying there. I fancied he was more of a proper prince than most of that ilk in Hamal.

  Three times during that day we spotted flights of flutsmen, and we stayed close. The swarths were lying down and dozing against the heat, shivering their scaly tails every now and then. We were not observed by those sky reivers.

  That night we drank sparingly, mounted up on nine of the animals, and led the remaining six bundled up with all we thought necessary to take. The ground scavengers had been at work on the corpses, but our presence had deterred the warvols from swooping down on rustling wings to join in the devouring. By morning there would be left only b
ones.

  At my insistence, Tyfar and Quienyin rode the two superior swarths. Tyfar, I noticed, just took the best one without even thinking about it. Quienyin looked across at me, and it was then I insisted he take the beast.

  So, mounted up, not quite as thirsty as we had been, we set off again across the Humped Land, the Land of the Fifth Note. The strong probability was that the Moder Lords organized these Muzzard swarth riders, and agreed among themselves which mound the arriving expeditions of gold-and magic-hungry adventurers should be directed into. Well, the wizards had their fun running poor crazed folk through their tombs, torturing them and extracting the last jot of enjoyment from their anguish. As for the magic items we had taken, they had been expended in our troubled ascent to the surface and escape.

  There would be no spells of paralysis, no more burning drops, no more tail-shrivelers for us now. Now we must rely on steel and muscle to see us through.

  That night passed and toward dawn we ventured to close one of the mounds where we filled the bottles at a stream and set up, stalked, and slew our supper. Everyone cheered up.

  “If it means steering out of here from Moder to Moder—”

  “Aye, Jak!” said Tyfar. He beamed. “We will be back into the grasslands in no time. And then we will hear word of my father and sister, I am sure.”

  I looked at the Wizard of Loh, who sat by the fire munching a leg of one of the birds brought down by Barkindrar the Bullet.

  Again we had chosen a strong place for our camp, beneath a rocky outcrop where the fire was shielded by cut branches of thorn-ivy. The swarths rested after their exertions of the night, and I fancied they were well content that their new masters rode them at night and rested them by day here.

  “I feel sure you are right, Tyfar. We follow their tracks, I believe, although the wind wipes them out smartly enough.”

  “Once I am back in Hamal — once we are both there, Jak — you do not forget my invitation to a bladesman’s night out in the Sacred Quarter?”

  “I do not. I anticipate it with relish.”

  By Vox! Did I not!

  What, I wondered, would he say if I said, quite casually, “Oh, and, Prince Tyfar of Hamal, by the way, I am Dray Prescot, Emperor of Vallia, the chief of your country’s sworn enemies?”

  That, I felt, would repay in the glory of his face much discomfort.

  But, of course, he would not believe me.

  How could he?

  He would think I jested with him, and in damned poor taste, into the bargain.

  He knew nothing of me, save what I had told him, and that was going to have to be altered, soon. He would ask what on Kregen the Emperor of Vallia, the great rast, was doing down here in the Dawn Lands of Havilfar. That was, by Vox, a good question. Tyfar knew nothing of the Star Lords and their engaging habit of putting me into situations of peril in order to affect the future course of the world.

  Well, I had done the Star Lords’ bidding here and was now free to return home to Vallia. I longed to get back, to see Delia again and my comrades and what of my family deigned to show up when their grizzly old graint of a father returned from one of his wild jaunts over the world. There was so much still to be done in Vallia it defied all common-sense evaluation. The island was split by war and factions; the people had called on me, had fetched me to be their emperor, and I was in duty bound to honor that trust and that demand. The island would be united and healed. Then I would hand it all over to my fine son Drak, and with a thankful sigh shake the reins of empire from my sticky hands.

  And, make no mistake, this was what I intended to do.

  All the same, Drak was in Vallia now, and I had many outstanding councilors and generals. I could leave the country to get on well enough without me for a space.

  For — I had other fish to fry.

  Down here in the Dawn Lands I was not too far away from Migladrin, from Herrelldrin, from Djanduin.

  Also, in the opposite direction lay Hyrklana. In all these lands I had business.

  “Jak!”

  I did not jump. I realized I had been sitting brooding on the Wizard of Loh.

  “By the Seven Arcades, Jak! You were far gone in your thoughts — I did not pry,” he added, quickly. I did not wish to understand just what he meant, although the gist was plain enough. I did not smile; but I was aware of an easing in the graven lines on my craggy old beakhead of a face.

  “Yes, Quienyin, I was thinking. Prince Tyfar would like news of his family and friends, and I do not doubt the others of us nine would, also.”

  “And you?”

  “Yes.”

  He nodded, half to himself.

  “You miss Hyrklana, Jak?”

  Before I could open my mouth — for thus suddenly had come up the change in the story of myself that Prince Tyfar of Hamal must know — the prince spoke.

  “Hyrklana? That nest of pirates? What has that to do with you, Jak of Djanduin?”

  I sighed. There, displayed before me, was the reckoning for the sin of lying about one’s origins and playing at cloak and dagger for the fun of it. I had told Quienyin I hailed from Hyrklana, that large and independent island kingdom off the east coast of the continent of Havilfar, and I had told Tyfar I came from Djanduin, the remote, massive peninsula in the far south and west of the continent.

  And, as you know, I had not lied in saying I was from Djanduin. I never forget I am King of Djanduin.

  Usually, it is not particularly helpful in maintaining a good cloak and dagger cover to say you come from a country you know nothing of and have never visited.

  Dressed up in a disguise and wearing a gray mask, I had successfully convinced Lobur the Dagger, one of Tyfar’s father’s retinue, that I was of Hamal. Other priorities had supervened in my description of my place of origin, and I felt it high time I sorted out the tangle.

  Looking about as the suns smote down, shedding their streaming mingled lights, I sighed. How we practice to deceive and then come a cropper in the nets of our own weaving!

  “Well, Jak?” Tyfar, your proper prince, was a trifle tart. “Are you from Djanduin? Or Hyrklana?”

  “Would it make any difference, Tyfar?”

  He waved a hand. “No. I think we have been through enough together by now — I think I know you —

  I thought I knew you. But Hyrklana. You know what they think of the Hamalese there.”

  “I do. I have visited Hyrklana and I have unfinished business there.”

  “But,” interposed Quienyin. “You are not Hyrklanian?”

  “No.”

  “So you are from Djanduin?”

  I could have left it there. Djan knew, I was well enough cognizant of all Djanduin to claim it completely as my country. As long I had fought for that beautiful land against her enemies and won.

  “I have land in Djanduin,” I said. “I love the place — it is unspoiled so far.”

  “So you are a notor of Djanduin, as we believe?”

  “Yes.”

  Tyfar was continuing to stare at me. “You know that because of the war waged by the Empress Thyllis, Hamal is not much cared for in many lands of Havilfar. This is simple knowledge. Perhaps you are from a land that has been invaded by Hamal. Perhaps, Jak my friend, you conceive yourself as an enemy to me?”

  I had waited on his last words in some trepidation. But I was able to relax. He had said, “enemy to me.”

  Had he said, “enemy to my country” my reply must, in all honor, have been different.

  The trouble was, Tyfar was quite right. Mad Empress Thyllis had alienated just about every country within reach of her iron legions.

  And, also, I had the feeling, substantiated only by intuition and a few scraps of idle converse, that Tyfar’s father, Prince Nedfar, was both not happy with Thyllis and not in her good books. And I had suggested to Lobur the Dagger that I worked secretly for Empress Thyllis. I squared my shoulders.

  “I cannot tell you, Tyfar, all that I would wish to tell you. Suffice it to say that I
know the Sacred Quarter, I can walk it blindfolded, I have ruffled many a night away as a bladesman. I have wide estates in the country — well, not so much wide as passing fair and rich — and I work for the good of the country.”

  That was true.

  He was surprised.

  “You are Hamalese?”

  I have estates in Hamal. I am called there Hamun ham Farthytu, the Amak of Paline Valley. But I was not Hamalese. If anything, I was Vallian, not being born on Kregen.

  These things I could not tell Tyfar — or Quienyin.

  “I work for the good of Hamal,” I said. Again, I spoke the truth, even though, perhaps, Vallia would have to put down the worst excrescences of Hamal, chief of whom was the Empress Thyllis. “I deplore what the empire is doing to neutral countries—”

  “So do I, by Krun!”

  That declaration, by a prince whose father was second cousin to the empress, really was nailing his colors to the mast.

  I managed a smile.

  “Then we see eye to eye in that, Tyfar. Do not press me further. Only remember: what I do I do for the good of Hamal and for all of Paz. For the eventual good.”

  “And you will not confide in me?”

  “Not will not.”

  He frowned and then banished the scowl and replaced it with a smile, uncertain, but a smile nonetheless.

  “I — see.”

  And Deb-Lu-Quienyin, that puissant Wizard of Loh, sat looking at me, and he had stopped gnawing on his bone.

  “Hyrklana, Djanduin, or Hamal,” he said briskly, waving the bone, “it does not matter, not to me. I have gone through so much with Notor Jak that if he came from some hellhole in Queltar — where no man should have to exist — by the Seven Arcades, he is a man and a friend—”

  “Well said, San.” Tyfar stood up. Now he did smile. “I see you are about secret business, Jak. Well and good. That is your affair and none of mine. You have given me your word that you work for Hamal. I, too, work for Hamal, as does my father. I trust we do not work in opposition.”

  I shook my head. “Now, now, Prince. You will not worm it out of me like that!”