Fliers of Antares dp-8 Read online

  “Now by all the devils in a Herrelldrin hell!” bellowed Kov Nath.

  He hesitated — he stood there, balanced, ready to lunge one way for his sword and the other in flight. A bolt pranged glancingly from his lorica, and that decided him; with a final blood-curdling curse he ran around the far end of the inn. Moments later the thud of animal hooves sounded and the band of rogues burst into view, racing with straining necks and heads low, riding fast away along the white dusty road. I looked up into the point of a stux.

  The Djang holding the stux looked as though he would like nothing better than to thrust down. Just as I was about to teach him the error of his ways in thus treating a Krozair of Zy, four arms or no four damned arms, the little diff with the mouse-face came running out of the inn, squeaking. His whiskers were all a-twitch as he pushed the stux aside and dropped on a knee at my side.

  “Apim! You still live! Now may Mother Diocaster be praised!”

  I did not fail to notice the offhanded way this little fellow thrust the stux aside, nor the way the Djang soldiery stiffened up at sight of him. These were signs I recognized. He was most solicitous.

  “You are hurt, sir, you are hurt. You bleed!” He leaped up and tore into the gathered newcomers.

  “Deldar! Take this Horter into the unburned room and care for him. Bandages, water, needles, palines.”

  He swung about. “Sinkie! Sinkie! I am coming, my love! It is all right now, the Opaz-forgotten leemsheads are gone! You may come out from under the table now.”

  I had to let myself be hoisted up to keep a smile off my face. Lord knew, I needed a smile then!

  As we went into the unburned end of the inn I observed how the Djangs were going about dousing the flames, working with a swift eager efficiency that heartened me. Hauling water from the well in the rear courtyard, they had the fire under control very soon. Truth to tell there was little left of that end of the roof. The little fellow pranced at my side very solicitously.

  “I have the honor to present myself to you, sir. I am Ortyg Fellin Coper, Pallan of the Highways.”

  He looked at me expectantly, his bright eyes alert, his whiskers quivering. He wore rich robes of a dark blue material liberally splattered with gems and silver lace. His scarlet velvet hat with its white feather looked now a sumptuous part of his costume. He wore no weapons, apart from a small silver secretarial knife in a silver sheath at his belt.

  All naked and bloody as I was — although a cloak had been flung across me as I was half-carried in -

  I pondered what answer to make. This, I thought, must be the man the Star Lords had sent me here to rescue. I had done that, for if I had not stood before the door and prevented the leemsheads from getting at him before his bodyguard came up he would have been a dead man. If I was, as I sincerely believed, in my own past, then perhaps I was not Strom of Valka yet; certainly I was not the Prince Majister of Vallia.

  “I am Dray Prescot, the Lord of Strombor, Pallan.”

  “Well, you are right well and heartily met, as Mother Diocaster is my witness!”

  He introduced his wife, a charming little lady whose whiskers added, if anything, to her coy beauty. Her clothes, too, although simple were richly jeweled. I could not fail to notice the affection between these two, and, also, the affection and respect accorded them both by the tough warrior Djangs. O. Fellin Coper handled them with the casual unthinking courtesy of a man habituated to absolute authority tempered with concern for those that fate had put into his hands. Also in the unburned room were two other mouse-faced diffs like himself, lesser in rank and importance but still treated with grave gruff respect by the Djangs, and a Djang woman, very much pregnant and very near her time, as I judged. She lay on a pallet, pale-faced, her long fair hair damp, her face streaked with sweat. She was still beautiful, despite the difficulty of the birth. Three Djang women were attending her but there was no doctor with acupuncture needles in attendance. This did not seem right to me and so I mentioned it to O. Fellin Coper. His gerbil-like head twisted.

  “You are quite right, Notor Prescot. But when Mother Diocaster calls forth the babe at the appointed hour — why, then, the babe has to come whatever the circumstances.”

  A great bustle began as preparations were made for the Pallan to leave the inn. The pregnant Djang woman was not of his party. Her husband had been burned in the fighting and had died. For a moment I pondered, and then Ortyg Coper called to me from his decorated carriage which his men had brought up.

  “I am returning to Djanguraj, Notor Prescot, and if the city was your destination before you fell among these leemsheads, I would be most honored — my wife and I would be most honored — if you would deign to take advantage of our carriage for the journey.”

  It was nicely said, and it explained why no one had commented on my nakedness. They assumed I had been set on and was fighting the leemsheads to get my clothes and money back. To dispose of another problem here and now, they also took me for a member of the Martial Monks of Djanduin, which would explain my hairlessness.

  My wounds had been seen to, and I was busy as any old mercenary would be. The dead Djangs yielded clothes, weapons, and money. I rifled the dead men with as much compunction as I would sweep the table of breadcrumbs. A paktun is a paktun, when all is said and done. So it was that when I walked toward Ortyg Coper’s carriage at the far end of the yard I was suitably clad in a pair of gray trousers with an orange cummerbund and a white shirt. A lorica was collapsed and slung over my shoulder. In a pouch lay enough shivers and obs to last, and there were three golden deldys. No one, I thought, had seen that quick rifling of the dead. For weapons I took a thraxter, a pair of stuxes, a djangir and a shield, which I draped about myself. At the last moment I picked up Kov Nath’s enormous sword, and so stepped into Ortyg Fellin Coper’s elegant carriage for Djanguraj.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Pallan O. Fellin Coper of Djanduin

  “We do not see many apims in Djanduin, Notor Prescot. Nor many other diffs, come to that.” Ortyg Coper glanced at me obliquely as the carriage rolled along the road and left a wide swath of white dust in its wake. His bodyguard rode up front and well astern. I had noticed they rode totrixes, the awkward six-legged riding animal of Havilfar, and carried long slender lances upright in boots attached to their stirrup irons. “So,” went on Coper, looking out of the window at the passing fields of corn and marspear and crops I did not recognize, “it seems you are the Lord of Strombor and so therefore cannot be a Martial Monk of Djanduin.”

  “I lay no claim to being a Martial Monk, Pallan Coper.”

  The dangers here were obvious. This man was a Pallan, a chief minister of state, and, as he had told me, one charged with the upkeep of the highways. He held a very real power. To judge by other parts of Kregen I knew he would think nothing of having me thrown into a dungeon if it suited him or his master the king, and the fact that I had saved him from the swords of Kov Nath’s leemsheads would mean nothing. So I had to tread warily, for all that he seemed a pleasant enough little fellow. He brushed his whiskers in a finicky fashion.

  “Tell me of Strombor, Notor.”

  Had I been a man given to empty gestures I might have smiled then, for this was so clearly a cunning opening ploy in a conversation designed to trap me into giving away my secrets. No further mention of my nakedness — its fact lay there between us — but it was: “Tell me of Strombor.”

  I considered. If this past was far enough back he would not have heard of Strombor, for that enclave had been taken over by the Esztercaris in distant Zenicce. Had he heard of Zenicce? Had he heard of Segesthes?

  “You know the continent of Segesthes, Pallan? The great enclave city of Zenicce?”

  He inclined his head.

  “Indeed. We have records in our libraries.”

  I said easily, “Strombor is an enclave in Zenicce,” and then I went on matter-of-factly. “I, naturally, consider Strombor the most beautiful and the best, even if not the greatest; but we are a rich people
and I am fortunate to be their prince.”

  His wife, Sinkie, fluttered up at this, but Coper gave me a sly sideways look and said: “You saved my life, Notor Prescot, and for this I am in your debt. I shall not forget. But there will be those in Djanguraj who will — ah — wonder what a noble prince of a great house of Zenicce is doing, wandering naked and hairless in Djanduin, so far from home.”

  Well, you couldn’t say fairer than that.

  “How are arguments that touch a man’s honor settled in Djanduin, Pallan Coper?”

  “With the sword.”

  “That will be quite suitable.”

  He chuckled then, this little mousy fellow, and stroked his whiskers in high good humor.

  “You are apim, Notor Prescot! You have, like me, but two arms. How do you think to face a Djang champion, who has four arms?”

  About to say, “I had thought you had witnessed that,” I paused. To make that remark would be boorish, despite its other and intended meaning.

  So I said something about fighting as Zair willed (he like most Kregans accepted strange gods, devils, and saints without turning a hair) and so we rolled on for a space in silence. I found that to suggest I had been shipwrecked, an obvious stratagem, would not work, as the inn and crossroads were dwaburs from the sea. I told a part of the truth, and said I had tumbled off a voller. Like the Horter he was, he did not refer to it again.

  In the southwest corner of Havilfar the sea surges in a cleft that, looking at the map, reminds me of the Bristol Channel, except, of course, that the scales are vastly greater, for Havilfar is a broad continent. The northern promontory sweeps out boldly south of Loh, with a ruggedly indented coastline and a wide and sheltering band of islands, some quite large, running off the northwestern shore. At the tip of the channel is sited the town of Pellow in Herrelldrin. Sometimes the smot[2]of Pellow is referred to as standing in a bay, but the bay shape begins farther out, below the Yawfi Suth. The Yawfi Suth is a frightful area of bog and fen, of marsh and quagmire, penned between a tonguelike intrusion of the sea to the north, and treacherous ground to the south, alongside the channel. Here, also, is the Wendwath, that vast, misty lake of magic and superstition, and, too, of a strange, haunting golden beauty when the twin suns slant through the mists upon the water. They call the Wendwath the Lake of Dreaming Maidens. The promontory that extends westward south of the channel — that same Tarnish Channel — curves southward to the southernmost land of Havilfar: Thothangir. Off the jagged and wind-eroded cliffs there lies the Rapa island that had once been the home of Rapechak, the Rapa with whom Turko the Shield and I, with those two silly girls Quaesa and Saenda, had escaped from Mungul Sidrath. Rapechak had not surfaced in our sight above the waters of the River Magan. It hurt me still to recall that, but I did not believe he was truly dead.

  But we were in the northern promontory, near its far western extremity, rolling along toward Djanguraj, the capital of Djanduin, which is situated at the head of a wide, island-protected bay notched into the southwestern corner, above the Tarnish Channel.

  To the west, as far as man could know, stretched the Ocean of Doubt. So I was in the southwest of Havilfar. Now I had to prove myself acceptable to the Djangs, and I had to see about organizing transport back home to Valka.

  Then I froze.

  I knew the Star Lords would never let me leave here until time had once more caught up with the present I had left at the Heavenly Mines. I had had experience of their ways before. A great storm would arise, supernatural lightning and thunder would bar my path, as rashoons had done on the Eye of the World, as gales and typhoons had penned me in Valka, as I had been prevented from leaving Huringa in Hyrklana.

  It was no use cursing and crying and calling out against the injustice of it all. Where I was I must stay until the time was up, until once more the green sun preceded the red across the sky — and I knew where else on Kregen I would be when that happened! I took the only comfort I could from the fact that Delia would not share this enforced and lonely exile. To her, when I returned — for I would return! — it would seem I had but minutes before tumbled out of the voller.

  This would be.

  How I was to make the Star Lords keep their part of the bargain I did not know. I had only the haziest idea what their plans were, but I suspected they wished me to do something drastic about the omnipresent slavery of Kregen. Very well, while I sweated out my sentence in this prison of time I would amuse myself. I would take what satisfaction I could get from upsetting as many unpleasant people as I could. I would do the aragorns’ business for them, if any came my way, or I would dot a few eyes for the flutsmen, or show the cramphs of Gorgrendrin the error of their ways. By Zim-Zair!

  I would!

  But — how long? How long?

  On the thought I cocked my head out of the carriage window and, shading my eyes as best I could, squinted up to get an idea of how far apart were Zim and Genodras. They looked a long way, a damned long way, apart. I remembered how in the warrens of Magdag and in the Emerald Eye Palace — which was the second best palace in all Magdag — I had waited and watched for the red sun to eclipse the green. When it had happened I had not been in either the warrens or the palace; and then — as you must guess — I felt that old life surge back. What were we all doing now, Zolta and Nath, my two oar-comrades, my two wonderful rogues of Sanurkazz?

  If you think in those first few moments of understanding I grew overly maudlin, you are probably right. But I missed Nath and Zolta, oh, how I missed them!

  And Mayfwy, the widow of my oar-comrade Zorg. And Pur Zenkiren. The inner sea knew little of the outer oceans and cared less. Would that I were there now, if I could not be in Valka!

  “You look troubled, Notor Prescot.”

  “I was thinking of old times, and that ill becomes a man, as I know to my cost.”

  Sinkie, the Pallan Coper’s wife, gave a little cry.

  “Oh, my dear Notor Prescot! Pray, do not alarm me so! You looked so stern and — and — oh!” And she buried her quivering little nose in her lace handkerchief that had come all the long way from Dap-Tentyrasmot across the Shrouded Sea.

  We trundled on and the conversation came back to normal patterns. As is my usual custom I will tell you the details of this land of Djanduin — and fascinating they were, at least to me — as and when they are relevant to my story.

  The Djangs with their four arms, powerful bodies, and great muscular agility were superb fighters, and they were conscious of their good fortune. Their land of Djanduin was walled off in the southwestern promontory of Havilfar by first the Yawfi Suth and the Wendwath and second by a dangerous and difficult range of mountains barring the path of an invader. But the Djangs had not won their independence lightly. Constantly over the seasons the Gorgrens mounted invasions. Gorgrendrin, the land of the Gorgrens, stretched inland from the head of the Tarnish Channel. The Gorgrens had carved themselves fresh living space and captured many slaves from the lands and free cities of the area. The smot of Pellow, in Herrelldrin, lay under their heel.

  Turko the Shield, my Khamorro comrade, came from Herrelldrin, and now I understood fully, for he had always been reticent, that the Gorgrens had indeed enslaved Pellow. The Khamorros had developed their syple disciplines of unarmed combat because they were, in truth, not allowed weapons. And the Gorgrens sought always to march into Djanduin and serve the Djangs as they had served the people of Herrelldrin.

  Trouble, it seems, is endemic in any culture where peoples fret and struggle and seek to expand their frontiers.

  The only problem with the Djangs was — and here Pallan O. Fellin Coper exercised exquisite tact as he sought to explain to me in a way that would not demean the Djangs in my eyes — that they were, in very truth, exceptionally fine soldiers, but they were seldom entrusted with high command. To be brutally frank about it, the Djangs were bonny fighters in the blood and press of the field, but were not overly bright when it came to the higher command. Tactics — yes, they were superb. Strateg
y — no. They were duffers.

  “Up to Jiktar rank, and you will scarcely find a better soldier. But give a Djang a brigade and he sweats and groans and worries, and wants to go up to the front line to see how his men are getting on every bur instead of thinking and planning what they ought to do. There are Djang Chuktars; very few.”

  “And you, Pallan Coper?”

  “Oh, I am a civilian administrator. I deal with the roads.” At that moment the carriage gave an almighty jolt and pitched and swung on its simple leaf springs so that we were rattled about like a Bantinko dancer’s peas in his gourd.

  “Now may Djan rot the road!” burst out Coper and immediately turned in alarmed contrition to his wife, who let out a little shriek and waved her perfumed handkerchief.

  When I discovered she was horrified at his outburst and not the shuddering of the carriage I felt my lips rick up. These two were likely to make me laugh before I realized!

  When all was settled Coper explained that his own people handled all the affairs that demanded planning and higher administration for the Djangs. He called himself a Djang, too. He was an Obdjang, that is, a First Djang. He told me frankly that although his race of diffs were clearly not the same as the Djang diffs, no one had any memory of when their partnership had begun, and no records existed in their libraries. Always, so Coper said, the Djangs had fought and the Obdjangs had directed. Each respected the other. Each knew they could do nothing without the other.

  “Except-” And here Coper looked as troubled as I had seen him so far. I chanced a guess.

  “This Kov Nath Jagdur na Hyr Khor,” I said. “The leader of the leemsheads. He would prefer to lead instead of being led.”

  Coper nodded rather forlornly and his whiskers drooped. “That is so, Notor Prescot. You are quick.”

  “You have to be quick to stay alive on Kregen.”

  “Those yetches of Gorgrens are quick, also. We have certain intelligence that they plan a new campaign