Warlord of Antares [Dray Prescot #37] Read online

  Kov Loriman, shattered by the death of his lady Hebe, existing now like a man drugged or in a trance, had been the cause of Seg's, Nath's and my enforced further entrapment in the maze of the Coup Blag.

  By this time, as was clearly apparent, old Nath the Impenitent recognized he was lumbered with Kov Loriman. Nath was conscious of his insular Vallian blood, and of the fact that the lords of the land cared nothing for him, and this famous Hunting Kov was not even Vallian, he was from Yumapan in the west of the island of Pandahem. Well, Nath would be saying to himself, they might be stumbling about in a damned hole in the ground in Pandahem, he'd drag this haughty noble out of it by the scruff of the neck and then pitch him over onto his nose. This, I fancied, would also be the reading Seg would give to the situation.

  The rocky corridor turned twice upon itself and then led into a room where some light seeped in from a webwork of cracks in the ceiling.

  “If that lot's due to fall down—” began Nath, ominously.

  “—we'll depart with the utmost urgency,” finished Seg, cheerfully.

  Loriman slumped to the stone floor with a thump. His head hung down so that his armored shoulders peaked. He'd lost his helmet. Looking at this once blustery, damn-you-to-hell fellow, I experienced a sudden, quick, quite surprising stab of pity.

  Mind you, if Delia was—well, never mind that.

  “Two exits,” sang out Seg. “D'you have a fancy?"

  “They both look the same,” observed Nath.

  “Toss a blade,” I said.

  Now the meaning of a couple of odd looks Nath had given me when he'd met up with me again revealed themselves.

  “Need to stand from under if you toss up that great bar of iron, Jak."

  He'd seen me use the Krozair longsword in action; now I realized he'd seen me step out with the old scarlet breechclout and with the longsword cocked up and, of course, all the legends and tales of Dray Prescot would have come into his mind. That was how Dray Prescot, the Emperor of Vallia, whirled about the world, righting wrongs, rescuing both princesses and tavern girls from danger, slaying dire monsters and putting Vallia back together again and recreating the empire as a place where folk could live happily in safety.

  There would be absolutely no connection in his head. I was Jak the Bogandur, admittedly a lesser noble of some kind; but a decent enough fellow for a lord, as was our comrade Seg the Horkandur. The Emperor of Vallia was altogether another fellow, a rogue and cramph Nath detested wholeheartedly.

  He'd already said he disbelieved the tales about Dray Prescot. Well, that made two of us.

  Once we were out of this maze I'd have to make the attempt to put the record straight. Nath had been court-martialed, and I had promised myself that I'd have that lot sorted, too. The main priorities now were getting out of the Coup Blag, of finding our Vallian aerial fleet, and of going and bashing the fliers of those Opaz-forsaken Shanks.

  We went through the left-hand door and found only another of these baffling corridors.

  Loriman shambled along like a drugged wild animal chained and leashed by callous performing-animal handlers.

  “He won't be much good if we get into another fight.” Seg paced along like a savage wild animal himself, chained and leashed by this damned maze.

  “Maybe that would bring him back to his senses."

  “If that were so, then bring on the fight sharpish."

  None of us recognized any of the passageways and chambers through which we made our way. These subterranean burrowings would be either natural formations or sorcerous constructs fashioned by Csitra. All Phunik's magical architecture had vanished along with him, and good riddance too, by Krun.

  We spoke little, going cautiously.

  Nath the Impenitent did say, with that grumbly growl: “There's been no food lately and my insides are like the purse of a pickpocket at an orgy."

  I thought of my scrunchy meal of caterpillar-rotted metal, and said nothing.

  Noise from up ahead halted us. After a long time of listening, we moved carefully forward along a tunnel hung with tapestries.

  Any damn tapestry can hide a fellow with a bow or a knife, ready to degut you. We inspected everything with enormous thoroughness, and even then one of the tapestries detached itself from its hangings and like a monstrous bat swooped down on us.

  We flailed about with our swords, and Seg put a torch to the flapping horror and scorched it away. It flip-flopped off, burning, crackling to shredded blackness.

  We caught our breaths.

  “Strangle your eyes out and your head off, that,” remarked Nath. Any amusement I might feel at his by now complete adaptation to the requirements of survival in the Coup Blag had to be indulged in when we were out of it.

  We went on toward the source of the noises ahead, and we gave a pretty hefty tug at each tapestry as we passed. There were only three more we had to torch.

  The noises increased in volume and sorted themselves out into two varieties. Both varieties were exceedingly ugly. One was the screams of women. The other was the sound of nuzzling and grunting as of beasts feeding.

  Seg's face, which I have often described as handsome, as, indeed, it is, shocked suddenly with blood. He took the appearance of an eagle about to swoop. When my blade comrade appears like that, it is best for evildoers to run and hide and pray they are not discovered by Seg Segutorio.

  Nath ripped out: “That sounds like—” and then he started off after Seg.

  Kov Loriman flopped sacklike onto the floor.

  If what was going on in the chamber up ahead was as my comrades and I suspected, then this would be the opportunity—evil and heart-breaking though it be—to revive the Hunting Kov. If I had read his character aright, then despite all his arrogance and haughty treatment of others, his slavish indulgence in hunting, this situation would appeal to those traits of character I knew him to possess which had not been deadened by his lofty station in life. I seized him under his left shoulder and fairly dragged him along the passageway.

  The women were of many races, diffs and apims. Not all were young and beautiful, though they mostly were younger rather than older, and their condition suggested they were kept hard at arduous tasks when they were not employed as they were now. Some retained remnants of clothing. None wore ornaments or jewelry. And they screamed.

  The bestial sounds came from the gorilla-faced malkos who were, after all, men, even if they were not apim. They were employed as guards by Csitra in her maze of the Coup Blag. They were unpleasant, brutish customers, and Seg had dealt firmly with a bloodthirsty pack of them when he'd met the lady Milsi, who was now his wife.

  I hauled Kov Loriman up straight. I had not drawn my own sword, and so was able to draw his and thrust it into his hand. I wrapped his fingers about the expensive hilt.

  Loriman was a Pandahem noble, widely-traveled, as I guessed, who'd been to many countries and down to the southern continent of Havilfar. He'd seen a lot of the world in his travels, during his hunting forays. He would have heard of the legends and stories clustered about the name of the Emperor of Vallia, Dray Prescot, and like any sophisticated man, would have considered them palpable falsehoods. Still and all, he'd have heard of Dray Prescot in his scarlet breechclout with the great Krozair longsword flaming.

  Now it is quite clear that in this my narrative I tell you of the surface of things openly, thus allowing you the pleasure of teasing out the inner meanings. I do not mean hidden meanings. They are plainly there for those who see beneath the tapestry of the language. Language itself, whether of Earth or of Kregen, is at once a communication and a barrier.

  Kov Loriman had to be made to see what his eyes told him was going on. And this meant I delayed my own entry into the fight and assistance to Seg and Nath.

  So, and without any hidden meanings in this case, you can see that I thus risked the lives and sanity of these poor half-demented and savagely brutalized women.

  Seg shot. There is little that can be added to those evocative words
. Seg Segutorio shot.

  Nath the Impenitent, sword a brand of flame, leaped down into the chamber and started to lay about him. Malkos screeched, spouted blood, and died.

  Most of the gorilla-faced diffs were without armor. Their weapons were piled against one wall. They had been chasing the women, joying in the licence allowed them by the Witch of Loh. Bestial though they were, they died like any mortal man.

  I saw Nath swing his sword in a cunning drawing stroke. The malko's head flew off to roll bouncing on the filthy straw-matted floor. Crimson blood from the severed neck spouted across the white bosom and neck of the girl still clasped in the malko's arms. The crimson splash seared into white skin. The woman drew a breath to scream, and the headless body fell away, tumbling onto the straw. She put her hands to herself, looking down, and she could not find the breath to scream any more.

  Nath surged on, his brand a bar of crimson. Seg's shafts spitted malkos as they ran for their weapons.

  I shook Kov Loriman as a teacher shakes a recalcitrant child.

  “Look, Loriman. Look on what goes forward here. If that lady there were the Lady Hebe—"

  The girl to whom I pointed, slim and shrieking and naked and distraught almost beyond reason, struggled in the grip of a malko so passionately involved he had failed to grasp the significance of the other uproar going on about him.

  “Suppose that were the Lady Hebe, Loriman! She might be dead; there are many other ladies demanding your service. You are called the Hunting Kov, Loriman. Is your prideful selfishness so profound and your arrogant self-esteem so great, that you have forgotten you are a hunting kov and—"

  There was more I was wound up to spout into his ear. But he let rip with a groaning, snorting howl of anguish. He snatched up the sword in his fist. His face tautened, lost its slack look of imbecility, hardened into a semblance of the Hunting Kov I knew.

  “By all the gods of Panachreem!” he screeched.

  He whirled the sword once about his head and tore free of my grasp, hurled himself down into the melee.

  “And about bloody time too, by Krun!” I said as I unlimbered the Krozair brand and roared into the fray.

  Some of the malkos, naked as they were, had reached their stacked weapons. They took up their swords, thraxters mostly, and turned to face us. There was no doubt in their minds that even after this surprise which had brought down a number of them, they would quickly dispose of us four foolish souls.

  By this time Seg had knocked off most of the isolated targets. Those remaining were masked by the caterwauling women or by the tables they used as barricades or even by Nath and Loriman. Seg stashed his longbow and drew his drexer and with sword in fist joined me as we hurtled into combat.

  * * *

  Chapter five

  How Loriman the Hunter returned to life

  Dour, stocky, withdrawn people, malkos, prone to savagery beyond the bounds of reason. They have much body hair. Their gorilla-like faces are capable of expressions, emotions clearly discernable to any apim. Now, as they battled back at us, after lust came rage.

  Seg's quiver was empty. So that was the real reason he had stopped shooting. His sword flamed alongside mine.

  No fighting is a pretty affair, no matter how the romanticists attempt to dress it up in fine language. Oh, yes, there is a panache, a surge of blood and a feeling that what you are about, being worthwhile, uplifts the spirits. But it is a dreadful business. When a heavy steel blade swishes through the air powered by the muscles and energy of a full-grown man, and strikes flesh and blood, the results may be grotesque, outrageous, gory and, inevitably, horrible.

  The malkos, being paid guards, fought well.

  The Impenitent appeared to be in his element, striking shrewd, economical blows after that initial strike of decapitating fury. In the past I had worried over Seg's prowess as a bladesman; I worried no longer, for he was superb. Kov Loriman now demonstrated that he had recovered from that black pit of despair. I was not sure he had fully recovered; for this business his sword work proved more than adequate.

  So we smashed and hacked and thrust and destroyed.

  There was no surprise to a Kregan in seeing some of the naked women snatch up fallen weapons, daggers, knives, swords, and spring like furies upon the malkos. They had many indignities to avenge, and while vengeance is a child's game, here one could understand and in part sympathize.

  We did not slay them all, for at the end a handful ran off through a secret door that opened in the blank stone wall. It clashed shut and Seg just had time to drag a frenzied girl away before she was crushed between the closing stones.

  “Kill them!” she screeched, twisting and writhing in Seg's grip. “Slay them all in the name of Pandrite the All-Glorious!"

  “Armipand will surely take them all up into his special terror,” said Seg, easily. “Now you just rest quietly, young lady, and get your breath."

  She panted, hair swirling, chest heaving, her body all a glisten of sweat. The long dagger with the blood smeared upon the blade and splashed up her arm formed a fitting accessory for such a spitfire girl.

  Already Nath was cleaning his sword.

  The Hunting Kov looked about as a man looks upon the dawn after he has freshly risen from his bed.

  He stared at Seg and he stared at me, and he said: “I remember."

  I nodded in acknowledgment. It was left to Seg to say: “Good. I am glad to see you recovered, kov. Now perhaps you'd take out your knife and help."

  With that Seg started in on the task of recovering his arrows.

  When we'd cut them all out and cleaned them up, Seg was disgusted to find that two of the shafts had broken through.

  “You must expect shafts to break, Horkandur,” said Nath.

  Seg began stripping the arrows down, removing heads and flights and nocks.

  “That is true, my old Impenitent; but in our situation not to be relished."

  Loriman spat out: “In our situation that damned witch will be watching us and know where we are and will—"

  “Just for the moment,” I broke in, “I think she has other problems on her mind."

  “And, anyway,” said Seg, stowing the salvaged arrow parts in his pouch, “In this present situation we have all these women to concern us."

  Most of the screaming and crying had stopped and the women were trying to find bits and pieces of clothing from the malkos. Many of them also took up weapons to add to those they had already used. The display of naked female bodies was covered up. One or two of the girls began to mutilate the malkos and I, in a state of indecision, wondered if that should be stopped when Loriman bellowed.

  “Stop that, you creatures! Hunting and killing are one thing; what you are about is another."

  One of the girls, very pale of skin, with frizzy dark hair, her teeth filed to points, stared back, the knife in her fist dripping blood onto the legs of the malko flat on the floor.

  “What do you know of—?"

  “I know enough of your dark Rumay customs, harpy!"

  The Impenitent growled out: “I don't like it; but you can see it from their point of view."

  “If it's their custom,” said Seg. “Anyway, it doesn't hurt the malkos, seeing they're dead."

  “I will not tolerate Rumay rituals,” ground out Loriman. “And that is final. Queyd-arn-tung!"

  The woman glared back, her eyes like rinds. She hadn't bothered to collect any clothes, being too intent on her task of ritual revenge and absolution, and dark blood splotched her pale shapely body.

  “One last cut, then, master."

  Loriman opened his mouth and I cracked out: “Do it!"

  She cut and held her trophy aloft and Loriman, face congested, swung toward me.

  “What do you know of this, Jak the Bogandur! This is women's evil work against men—"

  “Alive yes; dead, is it of consequence to an unbeliever?” I gave him a hard stare and he, while not exactly flinching back, braced himself. “Or, Kov Loriman the Hunter, are y
ou, too, a believer?"

  “Were I not under a vow to desist from chastising you, Jak, I would challenge and strike you down where you stand!"

  Seg laughed.

  The Impenitent, enormously pleased at that moment, sang out: “Here, doms! There is food and wine!"

  Loriman gave me a look that might have drilled through the best armor steel. He breathed in so that his harness creaked. Then he hunched up his left shoulder, swung his sword around in a gesture of complete contempt, and went off to where Nath had found the victuals.

  Seg said: “He'll do himself a mischief one of these days."

  “I am glad to see he is getting back to his old self. And, I tell you this, Seg. He won't want to leave the Coup Blag when we do."

  “Quite."

  The truth was obvious to both of us. Loriman would now insist on finding Csitra and dealing with her. She, or rather her hermaphrodite child Phunik, had slain the Lady Hebe. Loriman would never forget or forgive that. His desire for revenge was a cancer that burrowed far too deeply for rationality to alter.

  We went off to the table where Nath and Loriman were stuffing their faces.

  The women gathered around to eat and drink, and a weird-looking crew they were.

  We elicited their stories, which were sad and cruel and painfully familiar.

  Kidnapped, they'd been brought to the maze and employed on menial tasks, abused and ill-treated, seeing their only escape in death.

  “So we shall have to take them all along with us.” Seg braced himself up. “Well, if we have to, we have to. By the Veiled Froyvil, we can do it!"

  Nath nodded in agreement.

  Now people speak of your complete soldier very often as a man or woman who thinks, lives and talks only of soldiering. There are such unhappy wights about, on Earth as on Kregen. They are not complete human beings, that seems clear. They have their uses. A fellow takes up soldiering because he has to, there being no alternative at the time. As soon as he can, he finishes with it.

  My misfortune on Kregen had been that circumstances dictated that my life and soldiering had been intimately intertwined for a long time, a damn long time, too long a damned time, by Krun.