Bladesman of Antares dp-9 Read online

  I am the King of Djanduin.

  The ten girls would have given the Och guards a nasty time if they came too close, and the Ochs were driving them along well out of arms’ reach. I thumped the nearest Och over the head. An Och has six limbs, the central pair used indiscriminately as either arms or legs; a lemon-shaped head with puffy jaws and lolling chops; and he is not above four feet tall. Agile, determined fellows, Ochs are cunning and dirty fighters, and used over many parts of Kregen as mercenaries — although, to their constant annoyance, they are not ranked in the top class. Consequently, they may be hired more cheaply. I had had experience of Ochs. The second one flew at me now and I slid his spear and thumped him, too. I picked up his spear, flung it at the third Och. The fourth and fifth hurled their spears and then rushed with their thraxters low, their little shields low, and daggers in their middle limbs’ dual-purpose hands. I swirled a trifle with the dead Och’s thraxter, caught their blades, swirled some more, and then — flick!

  flick! they were down and I could run across to the girls.

  One of them, whose name I afterward discovered was Rena, recognized me. She yelled. Her shout was one of absolute joy.

  “It is the King! It is Notor Prescot, the King of Djanduin!”

  Seldom have I had a homecoming to Kregen like that!

  The chains could be unlocked with keys taken from the Ochs. Rena said: “Those other Djan-forsaken Ochs will be upon us.” She snatched up a thraxter. “By mother Diocaster! Let us serve them finely chopped into a Herrelldrin hell!”

  “Are there other slaves already aboard, Rena?”

  “Aye, Majister.”

  “Then we must free them, also.” I had to speak cleverly. “Where is your home, Rena?” I could not ask with cunning if she expected help, and thus gather some idea of where we were, for she might think I was reluctant to fight without the promise of help. I know, now, that my people of Djanduin would not think that of me; but in those days I was a new king in Djanduin.

  Before she could answer, another girl, brandishing a spear, shrilled: “The rasts of Ochs! They run to attack!”

  So we went to. Of that smart little fight I need only say that two of the girls were lightly scratched; none was, thanks to Djan the All-Glorious, killed.

  We went down to the ship and released the prisoners there and as we all came up onto the beach, rejoicing (and I had flung a scrap of orange cloth about me to hide my nakedness), a skein of flutduins, those special and superb flying birds of Djanduin, soared over us and we were surrounded by a patrol of Djang warriors. We were on the north coast of Djanduin, and the water to the north was the Lohvian Sea. No one was at all surprised that the king had turned up to rescue his people from the slaving Ochs who had slipped in to raid by night, and were about to push off for their foul nests on the Lohvian shoreline across the sea.

  Amid great rejoicings and much singing and laughing and drinking of toasts, the freed people were conveyed back to their village. I promised to have money and supplies and food sent down to restore the place after the attack. Then, surrounded by Djang warriors, astride our flutduins, we flew for the capital city of Djanguraj.

  Kytun Kholin Dom, that true friend and mighty warrior, greeted me with quick and affectionate happiness. He grasped my single apim right hand in his two djang right hands, and with his upper left hand he clapped me on the shoulder, and with his lower left he punched me in the stomach with the abandon of reunion. I punched him back, for these things mean much, and then turned to see the Pallan Ortyg Coper hustling in, his gerbil-like face twitching, squeaking his excitement.

  “We saw you off in the voller, Dray,” he said. “And, now, here you are back again! Lahal and Lahal!

  Welcome indeed!”

  Before I had time to greet him I was engulfed by a squeaking and crying mass and there was Sinkie, Ortyg’s little wife, kissing and sobbing and vowing that, by all the flowers of Djanduin, she was the happiest woman alive to see me again.

  Well, you can imagine, we had a reunion, and my friends who were in the capital came hurrying into the palace and that night we enjoyed a sumptuous feast. The country prospered. Wise government by my regent, the Pallan O. Fellin Coper, backed by firm and fair authority of K. Kholin Dorn, ensured that the ravages of the civil wars were being repaired. After my sojourn on Earth, to come back to Kregen in such style as this! It all seemed too marvelously perfect for me — except that Delia was not at my side. The desire to see her again overpowered me. But there was work still to be done in Djanduin. And as I was so relatively near to Migladrin, I could fly there and see if our work was bearing good fruits. So, in due order, these three things were done by me. .

  The news of Kregen rushed upon me in a great nostalgic flood of remembrances. But there were new and uneasy signs abroad. I was told that the supply of vollers had dried up. Hamal refused to sell any further examples of fliers to anyone. Hyrklana, that island realm which was the second chief supplier of fliers, was now able to see profit in selling to Hamal, its deadly rival. I wondered what Queen Fahia of Hyrklana was about, selling to her enemies, but guessed she needed every last ob she could scrape up for the glory of her Arena in Huringa.

  All the rumors, the uneasy speculations, had their center of origin in Hamal. As Kytun said, drinking in his luxuriant way: “Those cramphs of Hamal are at the bottom of it, Dray!

  They are power-mad. With all their laws you’d think they’d have more sense.”

  “It is true,” said Ortyg, brushing his beautiful white whiskers. “Their path of conquest seems to be ordained to them by their Havil the Green. They are spreading south of the River Os-”

  “Oh, Ortyg, dear, they have been doing that for seasons!”

  “Yes, wife, yes. But they are now striking west over the mountains — and Zodjuin the Stux knows what they’ll find there — and also are attacking South Pandahem.”

  These things I knew.

  But then, very gravely, Kytun said: “They have taken most of South Pandahem. That is the last information.” Pandahem, the large island northwest of the continent of Havilfar, is split into north and south by mountains. I sat up as Kytun went on: “They are now invading Yumapan, in the far west of Pandahem. It is certain they will swing north into Lome-”

  “Iyam lies east of Lome,” I said. “And then Menaham — The Bloody Menahem! — and if I know them and their rulers they’ll seek to conclude an alliance.” I frowned. I knew these countries, and I knew that to the east of Menaham lay the country of Tomboram. The damned Hamalians could bring in troops by sea or air to hit Tomboram from the east as their victorious armies, with The Bloody Menahem as allies, swept in from the west. Well, all that would take time. I had my job to do in Hamal, which was now of even greater importance.

  I knew people of Tomboram. I knew Pando, the boy Kov of Bormark, and his mother, Tilda the Beautiful, Tilda of the Many Veils. I would not stand idly by if they were attacked.[4]

  So, and not without a sense of desolation at what evils the price of friendship in high places can bring to the simplest soldier, I made cunning question of my Djang friends. Would they fight the Hamalians if I were to ask it, fight them on behalf of a boy Kov and his mother in far Pandahem? It was obscene of me to suggest this; and yet I knew with a heavy heart there would be much fighting before Kregen was made a world where a mother need not fear for her daughter, a father not fear for his son, where the slavers and the power maniacs had been banished. In this, no concern for the requirements of the Star Lords or the Savanti swayed me; this was necessary if those parts of Kregen I loved were not to be overrun and enslaved.

  For North Pandahem lies perilously close to Vallia.

  Vallia and Pandahem were enemies, through forces which were as much ironically stupid as through any other rational reason, for their maritime and colonial and economic rivalries could be adjusted given compassion and tolerance, and even though I was Prince Majister of Vallia, still I would fight for Pandahem against an outside invader. This might bring the
two islands closer together in concern. I would like that. The Hamalians would not sell vollers to Pandahem. Was that because they wished to keep from them this means of aerial warfare, and, thus weakened, be easy meat for invasion and conquest? But then

  — Hamal was now refusing to sell Vollers to Vallia, a traditional market. This, surely, was the preliminary to attack!

  “You look thoughtful, Dray,” said my chief minister and now my regent, Pallan O. Fellin Coper. “Djangs are a bloodthirsty lot, as you know. I am a civilian and I-”

  “Aye, Ortyg!” said Kytun, lifting his flagon. “You leave the fighting to us! And very sensible that is, to be sure. Dray,” he said, and he quaffed and set the emptied goblet down. “Djangs survive only by fighting well. If you have enemies we will fight them — aye! Even beyond the Ice Floes of Sicce!”

  “Good Kytun, I don’t think we need to go there, just yet.”

  I had discovered what I had already known to be true. These fearsome Djangs would fight for me, if they clearly saw my cause was just. I had little doubt that could be made plain. Deliberately, I steered the conversation away.

  In the high-arched banqueting hall of my Palace of Illustrious Ornament in sprawling, arcaded, windy Djanguraj, the noise of laughter and singing brought aching memories of nights of carousing in the high fortress of Esser Rarioch overlooking Valkanium. It brought memories of those luminous nights with my clansmen on the Great Plains of Segesthes under the seven moons of Kregen. And, too, and with an especially keen nostalgia, it brought flooding back vivid memories of roistering away in Sanurkazz on the inner sea with my two favorite rascals, my two oar comrades, Nath and Zolta. Ah! Time is a relentless monster that devours us all.

  And sometimes the thought of a thousand years is insupportable to me, and then I think of Delia, and I know the thousand years will be all too short. .

  So I turned the conversation and I talked of affording better protection to our northern shore against slaving raids from Loh. I had at that time never been to Loh save for a short stop at Seg’s country, Erthyrdrin, when I had thought him dead. . I would go there, one day.

  “We are still a long way from the kind of land we would like to see,” O. Fellin Coper said, and we plunged into discussions of ways and means and where the money was coming from and all the problems of managing a country.

  Oh, yes, I acted the part of the King of Djanduin, and, as is the way of these things, acting was not necessary. At this time on Kregen the lands of Strombor, Valka, and Djanduin meant most to me, for the peoples of those lands looked to me not only as their leader and the man who would guide them and devote his life to them, but mostly, I like to think, because they regarded me as their friend. I do not make friends easily. I had been blessed and doubly blessed on Kregen with true friends. . I had also picked up a few enemies on the way. A goodly number of those were dead, and of those who remained there were some who were to do me great mischief, as you shall hear. . Because I was the King of Djanduin there was no difficulty in finding me a flier in which to travel to Migladrin. Any guilt I might have felt about depriving my country — a country, remember, of which I was a relatively new king — of a precious voller was more than overcome by the attitude of the Pallan of the Vollers, who would have taken amiss a decision to fly to Migladrin astride a flutduin. The Pallan of the Flyers — an office created by me to foster the breeding of first-class strains of birds — kicked a trifle; but he could see that long journeys went faster with vollers than with flyers. I sorted out a few last-minute problems and took my leave. At the last moment it was decided that a small group of Djangs, of both racial stocks, would accompany me to establish friendly relations with the Miglas. This suited me very well. I was now consciously beginning that wide-ranging system of establishing friendly relations between the various countries of this continental grouping. Of this I will have much more to say later. For now I flew to Migladrin, saw old Mog — called Mog the Mighty — and met my friends there again. Then, leaving the Djangs to diplomacy, I took off for Valka.

  All this high-level politicking was intensely interesting, but I hungered to hold Delia in my arms again. In Valka I was greeted like some hero returning home, which embarrassed me mightily. After the junketings, which, you may well imagine, went on for a long time and embraced a continual round of banquets and feasts and entertainments, I had to confess to Delia, rather miserably, that I had failed.

  “You see, Delia. It is even more important, now that Hamal refuses to sell us fliers, that we must learn to build our own.”

  We were sitting on our favorite terrace high in the fortress of Esser Rarioch overlooking Valkanium and the sweep of the bay. Drak and Lela were safely sleeping after all the excitement of seeing their father -

  and did they chatter and jump up and down! The streaming mingled light of the twin suns, Zim and Genodras, fell about us in the early evening. Soon it would be night, one of those sweet soft nights of Kregen when the moon-blooms open their petals and drink the moons-light, and the sky is filled with the pink radiance of the moons. I sipped a fine Jholaix, a wine with few equals.

  “But, dear heart,” said Delia, her sweet face troubled, “is it ethical to steal this secret from the Hamalians?”

  I knew what she meant.

  I tried to explain.

  “In the normal way, no, of course not. But think how Hamal has behaved. Not only do they charge inflated prices for vollers — and remember, I have seen them built and built them with my own hands! -

  and refuse all service, they deliberately manufacture them with built-in faults. I am now absolutely convinced of this.”

  “But, Dray, that is-”

  “I know, Delia. But it is so. And we all know the fine men and women who have been killed in faulty fliers. This is murder. We owe it to the memory of the dead and to the well-being of the living to make sure a voller is safe in the air.”

  “This all sounds high and mighty, you great shaggy graint! But the fact remains. You are stealing a secret from another country so that you will not have to buy their goods.”

  My Delia, my Delia of Delphond, has a confoundedly cutting way with her at times! She put her pretty rosy finger right on the central core, on a fact that had troubled me. I tried in my gruff way to explain that, as far as I could see, the Hamalians had forfeited all rights to their own secrets, through their despicable use of them. “If they treated us fairly, there would be no need to steal the secret. They are a nasty lot, anyway — well, most of them — and they have done me mischief and will seek to do so again.”

  “I know, Dray, you do not seek to justify your actions by talking of revenge.” Delia spoke with just enough hesitancy to make me sit up and take notice. She is the most beautiful woman in two worlds. She is also shrewd, clear-sighted, realistic — and maddeningly romantic, too! — and clever enough to tie in knots the smartest politicians and lawyers of those same two worlds.

  “Revenge is for the softheaded, Delia,” I said. I drank some wine to break up my words. “Oh, I know I’ve thumped a few heads when I was annoyed-”

  “I believe you have.”

  “Yes, well. This is taken by me to be a matter of state. If Hamal attacks us — as I believe it will — we must have vollers to defend ourselves. I can find vollers only in Hamal.” She sat there, looking at me, her glorious brown hair with those dazzling auburn highlights catching the last of Zim as the red sun sank in swirls and floods of orange-and-crimson fire. She wore a simple sleeveless gown of white sensil, soft and clinging, without any jewels save a tiny brooch I had given her pinned to the left shoulder. That brooch blazed now in the fiery light with brilliant orange, yellow, and blue gems in the hubless spoked wheel within the circle.

  “And, you great onker,” she said, her face radiant, “what of your fat friend, Queen Fahia of Hyrklana?”

  I laughed.

  I roared with joy.

  “She’d feed me to her pet neemus, and those black-souled cats would chomp me with great delight. No, if I
am to discover high state secrets — and those damned silver boxes are just that — I need freedom of movement. As Amak Hamun ham Farthytu, I can move around Hamal.”

  “We might consider,” she said, putting her head on one side, “whether it might be an idea to import the rank of Amak into Vallia. I will talk to Father. It would reward many good men and their wives.”

  “It’s a thought, Delia. An Amak’s holdings need be only an estate, not a village, even. Something a little grander than a Tyr, which is really a title only.”

  So we talked on in that glorious evening as the suns sank and the Twins, the two second moons of Kregen eternally orbiting each other, rolled by above our heads casting down their gold-pink light. We had much to say to each other. But, true to my determination to do all I could for my island of Valka, the following days saw my preparations being finalized. I would use the flier from Djanduin. Once again Delia made up gear for my travel. I kissed her and held her close, I kissed the twins, Drak and Lela, and then I stepped aboard the voller, observing the fantamyrrh, and as I rose into the clear air I shouted down.

  “Remberee, my Delia!”

  “Remberee, Dray, and mind you come back in one piece!”

  Chapter Eight

  Trylon Rees of the Golden Wind — lion-man