Legions of Antares [Dray Prescot #25] Page 3

  We all wended on, and Irvil breathed his stertorous lion-man snorts, and every now and again he would favor me with a baleful glare. At the time I was quite looking forward to getting out of here myself. I would enjoy being given my just merits from Strom Irvil, as I might return his...

  His tawny mane was dark-tipped, his body of a deep brown, quite unlike the golden mane and hide of Rees, who was the Trylon of the Golden Wind, aptly named estates. The wind blew Rees's land away into that deadly golden wind, and I wondered if he was still as rich as he had been, if he still lived, he and Chido, who were boon companions, Bladesmen, rufflers of the Sacred Quarter in Ruathytu, capital of this enemy Empire of Hamal.

  My thoughts took a somber turn. When I dealt with mad Empress Thyllis, as I would, and knocked over her foul and insane ambitions to extend the conquests of Hamal far beyond the country's logical limits, would I encounter Rees and Chido? They were touchy on matters of honor. They fought for Hamal. I fought for Vallia, and the two empires were locked in mortal combat. I could never slay Rees or Chido, even though they were supposed to be enemies, because they were comrades, valued friends, a part of the joy of life.

  And, even more than Rees and Chido, what of Tyfar? Prince Tyfar of Hamal, who was a blade comrade, and who did not know that I was a Vallian—and because our two countries were at war was his foeman—what of Tyfar? My daughter Jaezila and Tyfar, for all their buffoonery and slanging matches, were deeply in love. I knew that. If Tyfar declared for Thyllis, could I fight him? Could I go up against him with naked steel in my fist? Of course not.

  Then I tripped over an outcrop of rock and fell on my nose, and Strom Irvil bellowed out, and I was back in these damned caverns. I sneezed as the dust bit, and stood up, and bashed the dust off, and so stumbled on. If Irvil went up against me fighting for Hamal, I might yet joy in teaching him that Vallians had learned the arts of soldiering.

  Then I checked my wandering thoughts. Irvil said he came from Thothangir, right in the south of the continent of Havilfar. He was a kregoinye and worked for the Star Lords. There was no reason why he should fight for Hamal.

  Then the confounded giant spiders descended on us.

  On glistering lines they dropped from the shadows, bulbous, hairy, many-legged, a nightmare rain of heavy bodies and spindled serrated legs.

  “What?” Irvil's lion face charged with passion. “What?"

  “Pundhri!” I yelled. The people panicked. They ran screaming every which way, falling staggering into one another, flailing uselessly with weak arms. The moment was ugly and horrific and fraught with greater peril for us than even these monstrous spiders could bring. If Pundhri died ... Thothangir at least was on Kregen. I would be banished back to Earth, sent packing through the gulfs between the stars and left to moulder away in a despair far more horrible than that caused by any stupid giant spiders.

  Directly ahead and some twenty paces off the jagged round opening of a tunnel offered some protection. People were running for the opening, crying and screaming. Some fell and the bodies of the spiders descended on them, bloating, stingers driving deep, legs folding and closing in.

  “Pundhri!” I shouted again. Irvil glared madly at me. Snatching up a chunk of rock I poised and hurled. The missile smashed into the fat body of a spider about to drop onto Pundhri's head. The bloated thing burst. Pundhri moved away, not shouting, his bearded face still calm, still serene. No doubt what happened to him, he believed, happened because it was ordained. That might be so. But the Star Lords thought differently.

  “Get him into the tunnel!"

  Irvil had the sense to grab at the sage who allowed himself to be led off. Irvil, at that, showed up well, for his bandage at last tumbled off. The wound in his head looked a mess. It was genuine. The blood had caked around the gash and no doubt some of his scalp was pulled off with the bandage. He took no notice now he was in action and there was work to do. He hauled Pundhri off, and his free hand flailed the stump of sword over their heads. The Star Lords do not choose lightly when they select kregoinyes to work for them; this blowhard strom was a fighting man.

  Also, he was damned uncivil to his servants.

  Spiders swung on their threads, slicing into the rabble. They were, of course, no concern of mine. All the same, there was no question of running off and leaving them. Hurled rocks proved effective, if the aim was good, and ahlnim lads joined in, joyful to expand their chests and knowing they did not break the tenets of their race. I saw a Dunder grab a spider and squash it in his arms, between his arms and chest, before the sting had time to pierce him.

  “Well done! Keep them off! Into the tunnel!"

  Of course, there might be more spiders, other horrors, in this tunnel...

  “Zaydo! Onker!"

  Irvil stood in the opening of the tunnel and although he for the moment blocked ingress of anybody else, that did not discommode him. “Catch!"

  The flung sword spun end over end toward me.

  Pundhri stood close to Irvil and just before they moved back to allow the press to run, crying and wailing, into safety, they watched me. There was no time to lose, no time to playact. The spiders were now crowding in, and rocks were proving useless. The stump sword spun through the air. I took it cleanly by the hilt, slapped it across and then hacked a swinging spider in half. All those motions were merely one continuous flow of action.

  Shadows deepened as the lanterns and torches were carried toward the tunnel. A few people were dead and past help; but we dragged more away and so, angrily, we backed up to the tunnel mouth. The broken sword reeked with spider ichor. One or two of the stronger men with me were all for staying and bashing spiders flat with rocks. They were accustomed to being humiliated and maltreated in ordinary life; now they tasted a little of the other side, albeit against hairy giant spiders, and it got into their blood. I had to stop this, stop it cleanly, for it displeased me. Not for these poor folk, not for the spiders, no, not for those reasons...

  “The tunnel is clear,” shouted Irvil above the din. “Come on, Zaydo, do! Move yourself!"

  “Notor,” said Pundhri, which is the Hamalese way of addressing a lord. “Notor, the slave fought well with the broken sword."

  “Well, and why not? It was my sword, was it not?"

  You had to laugh at old Strom Irvil. Everything was perfectly logical to him in his universe.

  Shouts rose from the people who had gone ahead along the tunnel, telling us they had broken a way through. Irvil glared at me. “And mind you clean the sword properly, Zaydo. There is one thing I will not abide in my body slaves, dirty habits."

  There was nothing to be done for the unfortunate folk who had fallen victim to the spiders. No one could watch the grief of relatives who had survived unmoved; but no good could come from allowing oneself to break down. In one person's death the whole world shares. Also, after the ordeal in the slot when the living rock closed up on me, and the poison-tipped sting aimed for my eye, I was still in overwrought condition.

  We all welcomed the sight of daylight. We broke from a shaggily overgrown hole in the side of the mountain, and many a one fell to his knees to give thanks for safe deliverance. I took a long, deep and expansive lungful of the glorious Kregan air. By Vox! What it is to be alive!

  The land spread out before us, wide and rolling, yellowish-brown with dust and blued with heat haze. By the position of the suns I saw we faced eastwards. And that brought up my words to that Relt who had received such a shock at the stream. Whereaway were we in Opaz-forsaken Hamal?

  Pundhri was blessing the people, and already many of them were hurrying away, skipping and jumping down the slopes. Smoke rose into the air from villages down there. The land looked sparse, but there were herds of cattle, and no doubt chores to be done and absences to be explained.

  Pundhri turned to me.

  “I give you thanks, Zaydo—"

  Strom Irvil blossomed. He shook the bloody bandage at me.

  “Thanks to a damned dim-witted slave! You are re
puted a wise man, Pundhri the Serene. In this, I think your wits wander. It is to me, Strom Irvil of Pine Mountain, the thanks are due."

  Only a few folk were left now, and the ahlnim woman with Pundhri kissed a woman who might have been her twin, and watched her take her children and go down the mountain. I said nothing. Pundhri smiled. The whole cast of his features changed. He looked jolly and mischievous, and as I had thought about his dwablatter and how he must have used that knobby stick before he acquired his name of Serene, so now I thought how he must have laughed and joked before the mysticism took him up.

  He looked meaningfully at me. “And is it now you trim the leem's claws, Zaydo the slave?"

  The Kregish saying, something like “to cut him down to size,” amused me. The leem is an eight-legged devilish hunting animal of incredible ferocity and vicious cunning, and often have I been dubbed both a leem-hunter and a cunning old leem. I thought Pundhri used that particular saying for that reason; seeing in me something foreign to a slave, something of the leem.

  “Give me the bandage, strom,” I said. “I will do up your head, for you have had a knock."

  Now slaves do not usually address lords by their titles. Irvil started to explode, whiskers bristling, and I took the bandage and slapped it on his head so that an end flapped down over his face. His roar abruptly snuffled on bloody cloth.

  I sorted him out, and got the bandage neatly tied, and then he started in on me. Pundhri stared with a nicety of expression very exhilarating.

  So, knowing what I was doing, I said, “No, san. No, I think not. It amused me at the time, and it amuses me more, now, that Strom Irvil remain as he is. It would be a pity to trim even a single paring from the leem's claws in this."

  Irvil bellowed, “I'll have the skin off your back! I'll gastronomate you! You'll be flogged jikaider! So help me—if I had my strength! If my head wasn't broke in two!"

  He took a whooping breath and saw his broken sword where I had dropped it on the grass to see about his bandage.

  “And you haven't cleaned my sword! Oh, why do I suffer so? What have I done to deserve such an oaf, such an ingrate?"

  The woman with Pundhri, whom he called his dear Puhlshi, tugged his sleeve gently. “It is time to go. We should be in Hernsmot already by now."

  “Yes, my dear Puhlshi. But we must give our thanks first."

  “Hernsmot,” I said. “Over by the Mountains of the West."

  “A poor place, but there is a meeting there."

  “Well, I am for Thothangir as soon as possible.” Irvil pushed fretfully at his bandage. “I suppose I shall have to endure you, you useless oaf, Zaydo, until we reach a place where I can hire a flier."

  “That will not be easy,” Pundhri pointed out. “With the war. The army and the air services—"

  “Yes, yes. You Hamalese are in a fine old state with your stupid war."

  Puhlshi's ahlnim face turned a dark plum color.

  “We detest the war! We speak against it—"

  “Ah!” I said, and when they all looked at me in surprise at this intelligent comment, I coughed and looked at the grass. Still and all, that did explain a lot. Perhaps the Star Lords were no longer quite so anxious about Hamal as I had thought? Perhaps my own brave country of Vallia had entered the reckoning? Saying good-bye and calling the remberees, we watched Pundhri and his ahlnim party making their way down the hill. Irvil shook himself, winced, and blamed me for that.

  “You are supposed to be a kregoinye,” he said. “Although why the Everoinye should choose a stupid apim, and send him to me naked and weaponless, I cannot imagine."

  “Do you always arrive where the Everoinye send you with clothes and weapons, master?"

  He stared. “If I thought you were serious..."

  “Have you been a kregoinye long, master?"

  He glowered. “You should address me as master before you speak. You are damned insolent, Zaydo, and this displeases me.” He stretched, and, again, he winced. “We will have to find shelter and food. I starve. If you have to carry me on your back—"

  “Surely the Everoinye will take care of you?"

  “Of course!” He brayed that out. But I saw he was not at all sure. Then he started to shake, and after that he sat down on a boulder on the hillside, and for a space I left him to his own devices.

  Presently, he called across: “Zaydo! You are an onker and a hulu. But you fought well down there in the earth's guts. I have been a kregoinye for ten seasons. I was chosen, so they told me, because I am a fighting man with intelligence and a high moral code."

  I did not laugh. As though a high moral code would weigh in the scales of the Star Lords!

  He went on: “But I was wounded. I think the Everoinye no longer cared for me when I could not do their bidding."

  “Yes. But you still live."

  “Just, you onker."

  A harsh croak floated down from the sky. We both looked up. I, for one, knew what—or who—floated up there on wide pinions, and I guessed Irvil knew, also.

  The Gdoinye, the scarlet- and golden-feathered raptor of the Star Lords, circled over us. He turned his bright head and a beady eye surveyed us. I did not, as was my wont, shake my fist at that glorious bird and hurl abuse at him. Instead, I looked to see what Irvil would do. He stood up. He stood up and he stood to attention, smartly, as though on emperor's parade.

  “What are your commands, Notor Gdoinye?"

  Well, perhaps the only other kregoinye I had known, Pompino, might have spoken thus, and certainly he stood in great awe of this splendid bird; but, all the same, it was extraordinarily difficult for me to keep a straight face and not to burst out with a series of choice epithets to express what I thought of this nurdling great loon of a bird.

  Perhaps the Gdoinye saw or sensed those irreverent feelings in me. He winged lower, the suns glisten vanishing from his body and wings as he ruffled his feathers in the draught. Low over our heads he volplaned, swishing down, hurtling over us and then soaring up and up and dwindling to a vanishing dot. As he passed so he let rip one contemptuous squawk.

  On this occasion the messenger of the Star Lords had delivered no verbal message. As he was a supernatural creature serving beings with awesome powers, there was no doubt of his opinion of us. Also, there was no doubt his report had gone in. No doubt at all.

  Strom Irvil let his body slump. He did not relax, for he looked uneasy. His scowl appeared shifty. “I wanted to complain about the trash they sent me as a body slave, Zaydo, you fambly. But I did not. I do not know why I did not.” He picked up his broken sword and hefted it. He was going to throw it to me—at me more likely.

  “Get this cleaned up!” His big lion-man bellow broke about my ears, brashly reasserting self-confidence.

  A puff of dust lifted about him. Instantly it was apparent that dust was no natural phenomenon. Blue radiance glowed. For the space of two heartbeats the dust flowed and lifted and irradiated by the blue fire formed itself into the semblance of a living lion man. The sapphire statue swirled up in an expanding dissipating cloud.

  Strom Irvil no longer stood with me on the mountainside in western Hamal.

  * * *

  Chapter three

  A Length of Lumber Instructs Flutsmen

  The task was to defeat the Empire of Hamal.

  No. No, that was not strictly true. The task was not so much to defeat Hamal as to encourage the people to see the errors in their ways of carrying on. They had to see that instead of trying to conquer and subdue the people around them—and people like Vallians who lived at a considerable distance, by Vox!—they should join with them in a mutual defense against the weird Fishheaded folk who raided all our coasts.

  I tasted the wind, looked around the heat-hazed land, remembered a few things, and started off walking.

  I headed north.

  If it seems ludicrous that a single, unarmed and almost naked man should thus set off to topple a proud empire—well, yes, it may seem passing strange. But it was a task laid o
n me. Also, and this warmed me as I trudged along, I was not really alone. There were many good friends on Kregen who stood at my side in battle. My country of Vallia would be joined by other nations desirous of ridding themselves of the yoke of Hamal. Together, we would make a mighty flood that would sweep away mad Empress Thyllis.

  To return at once to Vallia was a strong and almost overpowering temptation. It had to be resisted.

  We in Vallia had suffered devastating invasions and great humiliations from Hamal. Now we planned to gather an army and invade in our turn. But my people at home could deal with all these purely military matters. Much as I wanted to return at once to my capital of Vondium, picking up Delia from Huringa en route, I knew I could be of more use here. Here in Hamal I could work from within, the worm in the bud. Here was the scene of my labors.

  So, with joy that I was about the business that obsessed me, and with despair that this duty deprived me of all that I loved, I set off for Paline Valley.

  Before that, though, I hankered after going down to the village and seeking Pundhri the Serene. Dressed as I was, in a sober brown loincloth, I could pass easily enough as a free working man. By exercising a little carpentry skill I could pass as a gul, one of the artisans and craftsmen and small shopkeepers of Hamal, rather than as a clum, the festering mass of poor—free but little better than slave.

  The village grew clearer as I scrambled down the slope. It looked a dead and alive hole. There would be guls and clums there, possibly; most of them tended to congregate in the towns and cities. One worrying factor was that the military might of Hamal, being strained, was now prepared to accept clums into the army. Along with the mercenaries Hamalian gold could hire, the clums would constitute a new and major threat. They'd take time to train and they'd desert as fast as they could; but the laws of Hamal are as of steel. Once the Hamalian military machine gained control of an individual clum, that once-free man would turn into just another cog in the iron legions of Hamal.

  Not a pretty prospect, and yet just one of the hundreds of problems that beset me. There was much to ponder as I walked into the end of the main and only street of the village. Pundhri the Serene was not there. He had taken his little party off at once, riding preysanys, a common form of saddle animal among the less wealthy. I looked at the gaffer who told me this, and shook my head, and went away from that village. I had not cared for their looks.