A Life for Kregen Read online

  Against aerial attack strong forces of archers were incorporated, and the artillery park was built up.

  All Vondium and the imperial provinces surrounding the capital city resembled a gigantic beehive, humming with activity. What cheered me most was the demeanor of the people. Almost without exception they were cheerful, sprightly, utterly confident in themselves, their new army and their emperor. Feeling like a cheat and a fraud, and with profound doubts about the new army, but with pleased awareness of the new spirit of the citizens, I sorted out the folk to take over should the necessity arise. This is mere common-sense insurance when your name is Dray Prescot and you are Emperor of Vallia, and the Star Lords remain unsatisfied.

  Messages carried swiftly by one of the few fast airboats we possessed assured me that the Lord Farris, the Kov of Vomansoir, prospered in his newly-restored kovnate. His people accepted him back with a warm welcome because he had been associated with Jak the Drang and was remembered and well-liked as a fair, just and generous man.

  The airboat which brought him flying swiftly into Vondium bore the gray and yellow of Vomansoir. Alert, active, bronzed, he jumped down and saluted Delia and me as we waited to greet him.

  “Lahal and Lahal,” he called, smiling, brisk and yet with that sureness of purpose about him that marked him as a man who knew what was what and got on with it. “Majister — it is good to see you again. Majestrix, my eternal loyalty.”

  I wasted no time but spelled it out, right there and then, as we walked into the shambles of the palace to find refreshment.

  “But, majister! Why should you go away again? Now all Vallia awaits your victorious arms.”

  “You will have Nath to handle the Phalanx — and if we persevere with him I think he will take on a larger command of the army. Barty Vessler will be of help — he is a fine if headstrong aide-de-camp — more than that, really — and there is Enevon to handle all the finicky details of daily administration.”

  “But—”

  “There are pallans appointed to all the departments of government and they can function autonomously with only an occasional eye.” We told him of the sad business of Tyr Jando ti Faleravensmot, and of how he had hanged himself rather than return to Vondium. That meant another possible lead to the Wizard of Loh who sought to destroy us had been lost.

  “But—”

  “You will have Laka Pa-Re to run the mercenaries for you. He is a fine example of the best of the Pachaks. He remained after the nikobi was discharged and I have promoted him Chuktar. You may repose complete confidence in him. And there is Naghan Strandar, and Larghos the Left-Handed, and there are all those ruffianly companions of the choice band. Only if I am called away, Lord Farris, will your services be needed in this. I ask it as a favor.”

  “But, majister — your sons. Prince Drak, Prince Jaidur—”

  He knew that Zeg was away somewhere and had heard us refer to him as the King of Zandikar.

  “Drak is off in Faol looking for Kardo and Melow, and Jaidur — well—” I cocked an eye at Delia and she smiled, both radiantly and ruefully.

  “The last I heard of that rapscallion son of ours he was seeking the whereabouts of his sister.”

  My ears pricked up at this. These women and their infernal secret societies are one thing; but now they had inveigled a brash fighting man in the person of Jaidur into their schemes. I saw that, and quickly enough, if you please.

  At last I overbore Farris by saying around a goblet of the best Gremivoh, the wine favored by the Vallian Air Service in a voice I made as neutral as possible: “Anyway, I need you here to keep an eye on things and on the Empress Delia also.” Farris was a man whose life had been dedicated to the emperor and whose fanatical loyalty to Delia was a part of his makeup. “An army marches against us from the southwest and I’ve a mind to go out there and spy them out. Perhaps—”

  “Aye, Dray Prescot,” quoth Delia, sharply. “Aye! And you’ve a mind to crack a few of their villainous skulls, too, while you’re at it. I know.”

  “Mayhap, my love,” I said, unrepentantly. “Mayhap.”

  So, the matter being settled, we passed onto a more detailed assessment of the situation, which was pretty fraught as I have explained.

  Reports from our scouts indicated that the army had landed in Vallia on the coast of Kaldi to the west of the Island of Wenhartdrin. This gave the invading host a long distance to march, for they might have landed much nearer the capital, and I surmised that they hoped to pick up recruits as they advanced. Just how the honest burghers and farmers of Vallia would react to this hope remained to be seen. Certainly, the southwest had not, to my knowledge, shared the ambitions toward self-determination of the northeast.

  In a direct line — as the fluttrell flies as they say in Havilfar — the invaders had six hundred and fifty miles to cover to Vondium. It seemed clear they would not march a direct line. At an average speed of ten miles a day — more or less — at which a spry army can march with its baggage and artillery and followers and all the rest of the baffling impediments that so slow up armies on the march, they would take better than seventy or eighty days. The latest reports gave their position as being at the border between Ovvend and Thadelm. They had come, therefore, roughly halfway.

  Estimates of their numbers varied enormously. This was partly due to the inexperience of some of our volunteer scouts and partly to the complexity of an army on the march, where thousands of followers confuse the eye. A sagacious Khibil, a paktun with many battle scars, had told me that he estimated the core of the army — the formed ranks of fighting men and the wings of cavalry — at fifty thousand. This was an army, therefore, of indeterminate strength, not so small as to be contemptible, and not so large as to be truly overpowering.

  My reaction to that information had been to cast the net of scouts wider, suspecting another army marching parallel to the first. So far no confirming reports had reached me.

  Nath was white with fury at my decision not to take a single brumbyte from the Phalanx. And, because I would not take any pikemen from the files, the Hakkodin, who flanked them, would not be touched, either.

  “But majister! We are the army — the heart and sinew and core. If we march out, now, in all our strength, we can crush them—”

  “Utterly?”

  “By Vox! Yes!”

  “I think not.”

  “But they are just an army — cavalry with zorcas and these white-coated hersanys, and infantry with nothing untoward in the way of weapons or formations. Fifty thousand! We will go through them as a cleaver goes through beef!”

  “And you’re like to strike a bone, in the middle, Kyr Nath.”

  The invading army flew no colors that had been reported to me. The hersanys present, those shaggy, six-legged, chalky-white riding animals, indicated there were contingents from Pandahem. And Phu-Si-Yantong had set his ferocious seal on the whole island of Pandahem, subjugating all its kings and rulers to his despotic sway. I wished him joy of it. He must be mad, for that seemed to me the only way to explain the ambitions he cherished. As for the good in him, that must lie so deep that Cottmer’s Caverns brushed the heavens.

  “Well,” said Nath, breathing deeply and the whiteness denting the corners of his nostrils. “If I may not march my Phalanx, then, at the least, majister, let me come with you.”

  With a sorrow tinged with affectionate amusement, I said: “And leave the Phalanx without the leader? Come now, Nath, surely you see I cannot do that?”

  He was in a cleft stick and he knew it, and the knowledge made him barge off with a parting Remberee and I did not doubt that his Relianchuns would skip and dance to his tunes and give their brumbytes in the ranks a little stick, also. Well, that is the way of it. He kept his men in fighting trim and I was unsure if I really did want him to hand over control of the Phalanx to somebody else. There were plenty of superb fighting men who could handle that immense and crushingly destructive mass of men with their pikes and shields and deadly onrushing force, n
aturally; but the sight of Nath commanding had power to instill perfect confidence.

  The business of the day being settled for the time being, for alarums and excursions cropped up at any hour, I was free to give thought to what Delia had said about Jaidur. The notion in my mind that there must be more than one army advancing on Vondium had, for the moment, to be pushed aside. I left it with the thought that the mercenaries and the detachments from Hamal who had taken over the southwest had not obstructed the landing of the new army from Pandahem, and this argued they were in league and mutually assisting each other.

  But, Jaidur...

  As we sat to a private meal in what would be called our withdrawing room, with Delia superb in a long sheer laypom-colored gown, and I lounging in a white wrap, the whole small room limned with gold from the samphron-oil lamps, I found her as reticent on this as I had on other occasions touching the Sisters of the Rose. That secret society of women demanded much of their members, and had a hand in a great deal of what went on in Vallia.

  “You know I am under vows, my heart.”

  “I know. At least reassure me that Jaidur is — well—” I gestured helplessly. “That he is not likely to be chopped and eaten at any moment.”

  Delia laughed. The line of her throat caught at mine.

  “No, no, you hairy old graint. You worry too much over the children, and yet—”

  “And yet they have been woefully neglected by me, I know. Some people, looking at our family, might well say they have turned out a thoroughly bad lot. Well, not Drak. I except him, of course, and, I suppose, Zeg, seeing he is fully occupied in the Eye of the World being the king of Zandikar.”

  “A bad lot? We-ell... Lela bides her manners and is so mewed up with the SoR she hasn’t been home for—”

  “I haven’t seen her since I got back—” I choked on my words, and seized up a crystal glass of best Jholaix — for we had unearthed a cellar full of the superb wine in a ruined wing of the palace — and drank it off, scarlet-faced, I have no doubt.

  Gravely, Delia regarded me. Her gown slipped demurely from one rounded shoulder. The lamps caught flecks of gold in her brown hair. She looked gorgeous.

  “From where, my heart?”

  I swallowed down. Sudden, it was, sudden and quick and fierce, like a first love.

  “From that world I told you of. That world with only one sun, and only one moon, and only apims.”

  She caught her breath, and was still. And that was her only reaction.

  Then: “You have spoken to me of this strange world which boasts but one small yellow sun, and one small silver moon, and lacks any kind of humans save apims, without a single diff to make life interesting. And is it real? And is it—?”

  “It is real. It is called Earth. And it is where I was born.” I reached over the table and took her fingers. They were warm, alive, trembling only a little. “And, my heart, it is many and many a dwabur away from Kregen, lost among the stars of the heavens.”

  “Your home — is among the stars...”

  “No, Delia, no. My home is here, on Kregen. With you.”

  Her smile transformed her face, making what was beauty into a radiance so all-encompassing the loveliness dizzied me. I closed my eyes, and opened them, and Delia still smiled on me.

  “And this weird crippled world is where you go when you leave me?”

  “I am sent there. Against my will. Because I defy those who wield the power. I shall not defy them so stupidly again.” We talked then, quick questions and answers, and I told her much. She was fascinated by the idea of Earth, and quite beyond any childish feelings of guilt that the pure religions of Opaz would frown on her or condemn her conduct.

  We talked through many burs of the night.

  And, when at last we slept, we still had not talked enough to satisfy her curiosity or relieve my mind of those years of guilty secrecy. But, when all was said and done, what difference would this make in our relationship? We were a twinned whole, a twosome that transcended one-ness. She had always been aware that I left her from time to time, without explanation, and always returned. She always waited. No moist-mouthed seducer from Quergey the Murgey could sway her love away from me, as he had so often done with lesser women from their husbands. We remained still Dray and Delia. We were. But I felt a deal easier in my mind now that Delia knew. And, when she did know, I saw all my previous fears as the childish phantasms they were. To be brutally honest, the truth had come out and the whole episode smacked of anti-climax.

  And, to be equally truthful, that was exactly how it should be.

  The next day I mounted up and rode out at the head of my little band, aiming to get on with the hard business of rebuilding an empire, not for the glory of empire but because it was a task that had been set to my hand by the people of Vallia.

  Chapter Seven

  Jilian

  Barty reined up and swung his zorca about to fall in with me.

  “They’re three ulms away, off beyond that ridge of trees.”

  He pointed ahead. The trees lined the horizon, barring off forward vision. The clouded sky towered above and, I fancied, when the wind dropped there would be rain. The turf compacted firmly beneath the hooves of the zorcas and nikvoves, the breeze rustled bushes and small trees among the grassland, and we were approaching Dogansmot, which is a lively enough little town in the vadvarate of Thadelm in the southwest of Vallia.

  I said to Volodu the Lungs: “Do not lift your trumpet, Volodu. Word of mouth, and quietly. Dismount.”

  Approaching us walked three zorcas, one of whom had a broken horn, carrying two dead men and two wounded. I looked at them and felt the anger, and repressed it.

  “Close, Barty. You did well.”

  He nodded and was enough of a veteran now to say, merely: “Our patrol was ambushed. They left two dead men, three zorcas. The Pandaheem know we are about.”

  “Surely.” At our backs the long columns were dismounting. “Get the men away into what cover they can find. Spread out. Strict silence.” I swung to Targon the Tapster and Naghan ti Lodkwara who rode with Korero the Shield. “Come, and quietly as you value your hides.”

  The four of us cantered out across the turf, making very little sound. The zorca hooves beat softly. And I would have no truck with junk like jingling accoutrements and flying tassels and nonsense of that sort. Our harness and gear made no sound as we cantered out to scout the enemy.

  “Gallop,” I said, in a harsh penetrating sort of way, and with a swift look back, which assured me that the troops were finding cover and making themselves and their mounts invisible, clapped in my heels and took off. The others followed.

  We reached the line of trees without strain.

  The situation was as I had expected.

  The enemy general had sent forward a patrol to the line of trees and their distance beyond gave us time to reach the trees first. But only just.

  We saw the green and blue uniforms, the brilliance of bronze and silver, as the zorcas broke up the ridge from the far side. There were ten of them, riding hard, and their plumes nodded very bravely.

  “Let them get in among the trees,” I said, most mildly. “Ten. Well, whoever gets himself a third man will be right merry and quick.” From which, you will perceive, I was in a grim humor that needed a little skull-bashing to relieve the tensions. Vondium had burned and Vallia had been ripped into shreds. Somehow we had to start rebuilding, and here and now was a tiny fracas along the way...

  The trees rose tall and heavily foliaged, their roots no doubt drinking deeply of a subterranean stream. The shadows fell bafflingly, and we waited in silence, completely confident.

  The ten cavalrymen spread out a trifle as they reached the crest of the ridge and plunged boldly in among the trees, and this made me think they had once been good soldiers but were now by reason of easy marching and the absence of fighting grown somewhat careless. That carelessness cost them their lives.

  After the first surprise and sudden onset they fou
ght well. But four of them were down on the instant before they had drawn, and the next four, wheeling their mounts and setting up an outcry, barely had time to clear scabbard. The remaining two, those on the wings, fought their zorcas under control and attempted flight.

  I reined in. The brand smoked red in my fist. Targon, Naghan and Korero whooped up their mounts and went flying in and out among the trees, like bats. They caught the last two Pandaheem before they quitted the tree-lined crest, and I did not wish to see who claimed three.

  My desperadoes trotted back, looking mightily pleased with themselves. I was already dismounted, the reins slung over a handy branch, examining the dead men and their equipment. Their zorcas stood by the corpses, which made me think we dealt here with an army of professionals, or hardened mercenary veterans. By this I mean men accustomed to working with zorcas for most of their lives, and not levies scraped up for a quick and cheaply promised conquest. Their carelessness had been a self-confident carelessness, when all was said and done.

  “Summon up Karidge’s regiment,” I told my men, without looking up. One of them would ride with my orders. “Silently. The rest to move up in order to the ridge.”

  Rising, with what I wanted to know already tucked away, I walked to the far edge of the ridge. Fallen leaves kicked underfoot. The shadows dropped down, and then a chink in the overspreading leaves rained a color-fall of ruby and emerald. The army advancing down there were still two ulms away, that is to say around three thousand yards, and I could make out with the aid of my Kregen spyglass the way they came on.

  Well. An army is an army. And there are all kinds, and, as I must have remarked, they are all the same and all different.