A Sword for Kregen [Dray Prescot #20] Page 8

  That marked the beginning of the end.

  The commander over there must have looked with despair upon that battlefield. He saw his vaunted swarths mightily discomfited and driven off. He had seen a powerful force of mercenaries, containing Rapas and Fristles, Khibils and blegs, shattered, and a second about to be overwhelmed. The masichieri and the aragorn were hauling up, their ranks disordered and in turmoil. It took little imagination to picture what they were doing, to hear what they were shrieking as they saw this new menace rushing up to smash into the flank. And, with his dermiflons gone, the enemy commander saw his fancied force of cavalry recoil from the center of the field as the Light Division hit them full force.

  I do not like letting slip zorcas in a charge; but Karidge and Larghos the Spear had no doubts.

  In moments the face of the battle changed.

  Everywhere the enemy were in retreat.

  That was the end of First Kanarsmot.

  * * *

  Chapter Seven

  An Axeman Drops In

  “It would perhaps have made better sense,” said Delia as we sat in the tent and looked at the maps, the casualty returns ugly and horrible on the table, the sounds of an army at rest all about us in the mellow evening. “Perhaps, to have sent the Light Cavalry instead of the Heavies in the flank force."

  “As it turned out, it would have been. But they were late.” I yawned. “Mind you, my heart, by this time a man should have learned to expect delay in any plans he makes."

  “And a woman, also."

  “And what plans are you fomenting?"

  “For the present situation, why, that we must take Kanarsmot as quickly as possible. Drak should be back by now and I want to go home to Vondium."

  “And I.” I looked at her, and I smiled. “You could always go—"

  She did not say anything; but before I could go on she took off her slipper and threw it at me. I caught it. It was warm and soft.

  “Very well. You won't go home by yourself."

  “You could go. Nath can handle affairs here."

  “That is true. But I feel responsible. I want to clear the area this side of the Great River. After all, the villains to the east seem to have settled down in our country. If they respect the line of the river it will prove valuable."

  “You are, Dray Prescot, as cunning as a newborn infant."

  “Ah, but,” I said. “There is no one more fitted by nature to work cunning than a baby."

  She smiled at this, and I knew her memories mingled with mine, and the warmness enveloped us.

  Presently we had to get back to work. The army had not suffered the ghastly scale of casualties I had at one time envisioned. But we had not got off scatheless. The final nikvove charge, slap bang through the middle and to hell with anything that got in the way, had relieved a lot of pressure. Karidge and his zorcamen had behaved splendidly. The cavalry was pursuing; but the enemy were not a fleeing force for they had withdrawn onto a further considerable body of reinforcements and then presented a front. They were still in play. The cavalry harried them, and parried their cavalry probes. We had not been worried by their flying machines but in the successful accomplishment of that our small saddlebird force had been fully stretched, so that no aerial cavalry had played a part in the battle.

  Nath was most wrought up about the late arrival of the flank force. When I pointed out to him that if they had been too early they would not have had an exposed flank to charge into, he sniffed, and agreed, and said with devastating logic: “But had they been on time, as you ordered, majister, the flank would have been there and we would not have been so hard-pressed."

  We had not grown hard and callous over casualties. We mourned good men gone. But more and more the truth, unpleasant at first glance and then, with greater acquaintance, acceptable with a kind of glow of abnegation, was borne in on us that for what we sought to do even death had its part to play. These murky philosophical waters led us on, inexorably, to a continuation of the heady and almost intoxicated feelings the people of Vondium had felt during the protracted Time of Troubles and later, when we were penned up in the city. No one wants to die in the ordinary course of things, but if death comes to us all then a fighting man may choose his going over into the care of the gray ones on a battlefield. That, surely, is his right. And, do not forget, we were an all-volunteer army.

  The arguments against this kind of thinking, involving manic pressure and self-hypnotism and twisted logic that goes against the grain of life-enhancement, were well known to the sages of Kregen. There is no proprietary right to life-thinking. But we all felt that our lives were well spent in the attempt to provide a free land for our children.

  So I was able to read the casualty returns and see the familiar names leap out at me from the long lists with a calmness that no longer surprised me. No, we of Vallia are not callous in these matters.

  Nath said as I lowered the last list: “We lost Yolan Vanoimen, I am sorry to say.” Yolan Vanoimen was—had been—Jodhrivax of the Second Jodhri of the Kerchuri. “A stinking Rapa bit his throat out."

  Nath looked down at his hands. I said nothing.

  After a space he went on: “The Rapa was brave, you have to say that. He went down with four pike heads piercing him and a Hakkodin axe severing his wattled neck."

  “I am sorry that Yolan Vanoimen has gone,” I said at last. “He was in line for Kerchurivax of the Eighth. We have to pay a heavy price for what we believe in."

  The mineral oil lamps glowed and the camp tent was crowded with our familiar belongings. But I felt the chill. I tried to shake it off. The Eighth Kerchuri would have to find a new commander. We were forming a new Phalanx in Vondium, the Fourth. The Kerchuris were numbered throughout the whole Phalanx force. The Jodhris were numbered through their Phalanx, the First to the Sixth and the Seventh to the Twelfth. The Relianches, the basic formations of a hundred and forty-four brumbytes and twenty-four Hakkodin, were numbered through their Kerchuri, the First to the Thirty-Sixth. Later we made adjustments to this numbering.

  The aftermath of battle is not kind. Useless to dwell on that. We gave the army a breather of four days during which time the additional units I had summoned from Vondium flew in. After that we pursued the campaign. From information received from the local people, who rallied wonderfully after the battle, we learned that the commander of the enemy army was one Ranjarsi the Strigicaw. He was a Rapa, one of those beaked and vulturine diffs of Kregen, and he showed great skill in fending us off and leading us a dance. But, in the end, with our enhanced forces, we pinned him against the Great River.

  The Fourth Kerchuri of the Second Phalanx had joined us, so we had a full phalanx in action. More bowmen and archers and cavalry swelled our ranks. Second Kanarsmot was a fearful debacle for the invaders and Kapt Ranjarsi the Strigicaw was lucky to escape across the river with the remnants. The waters of She of the Fecundity rolled red.

  We did not pursue across the river, and we trusted the invaders got the message. Larghos the Left-Handed, a spry, clever, completely loyal Pallan, came up from Vondium to take over the command in the area. I trusted him, along with his comrade, Naghan Strandar, to deal with many of the higher details of the government, the army and the law. They worked with the Lord Farris and made a capital team.

  Leaving sufficient forces to ensure that any fresh attempts to invade across the river would be crushed swiftly, we turned toward Kanarsmot itself. This still held out against the small screening forces so far pitted against it, the garrison, of mercenaries, commanded by a Fristle called Fonarmon the Catlenter. He had dubbed himself, no doubt with Ranjarsi's blessing, the Strom of Kanarsmot.

  We disabused him of that idea.

  The plan I outlined was to take the place by a coup de main. I had no desire whatsoever to sit down to a protracted siege. So, on the night chosen, when for a space only two of the smaller moons of Kregen rushed across the dark sky, we set off. Infiltrators within the walls overpowered the guard at the West Gate and we
poured in, a silent host, and set about securing the town, house by house.

  Other forces went in over the walls. After that the garrison awoke to their peril and we came to handstrokes.

  Over the southeastern walls of the town the citadel had been built with its footings in the waters of the river. The mercenaries fought well, earning their hire, and slowly withdrew to the citadel. The massive gates closed with a couple of ranks of our bowmen trapped inside. We knew we had seen the last of them. Other bowmen dropped with yells into the moat or withdrew from the hail of arrows that sprouted from the battlements. By that narrow margin had we failed to take the citadel.

  I said: “I regret the men we lost there. But as for the citadel, well, the cramphs are mewed up inside and we can leave them to rot. I will not lose more good men in unnecessary attacks."

  That seemed sound common sense, by Vox.

  Dawn was breaking and illuminating the clouds with fringes of gold and ruby, orange and jade. Someone let out a high excited yell. We all looked up.

  High against that paling sky the rope arched. It curved like a whip. It fell all quivering down the wall and its length dangled an invitation at the end of the bridge which the mercenaries had been unable to draw up. The next moment helmets tufted with the maroon and white of the churgurs of the Fiftieth Regiment of the Nineteenth Brigade appeared on the left-flank gate tower.

  Kov Vodun shouted by my side.

  “Those are my men up there.” He threw off his cloak.

  In the next instant as he started forward across the bridge I was flinging my leg over the zorca to dismount.

  Delia's voice, warningly, said: “Dray."

  Korero, whose shields were uplifted against the occasional arrow, said, “Majister..."

  “You can't expect me to sit here and watch!"

  Then a whole bunch of men ran over the bridge, yelling, and with Kov Vodun in the lead they began climbing the rope.

  “By Zair!” I shouted. And I was running, too, running like a fool over the planks of the bridge where arrows stood thickly, and taking my turn to grip the rope and so go hand over hand up like a monkey. Korero, with four arms and a tailhand, had no difficulty in swarming up the rope after me, carrying his shields and giving me an assist from time to time. We tumbled over the battlements into a scene of confusion.

  Those two ranks had done their job, and there could not have been above fourteen men between the two sections, in jamming the winding mechanism of the bridge and of clambering up the stairs of the left-flank gate tower. They had been unable to prevent the closing of the gates. But their dropped rope gave us an alternative ingress.

  The tower top blazed with action, as swords clashed and spears flew. The paktuns, a mixed bunch of diffs with Fristles predominating, fought savagely to hold us back from the battlements. Our way down the gate tower was blocked; but once along the ramparts we could expand. The way into the citadel would lie open. The garrison knew that and fought like leems to hurl us back over the walls to shattered destruction on the ground below.

  Very few of our men had climbed the rope with their shields. Vallians still had not fully mastered the art of shield play and had not slung the crimson flowers over their backs. I ripped out my drexer, the straight—or almost straight—cut and thrust sword, and plunged into the fray.

  Over the clangor everyone heard the fearsome yells from the tower, dwindling. For a paralyzed instant the action froze ... The soggy thumps sounded eerily loud.

  “The rope has broken!” bellowed a hulking Deldar from the nearest group who had just climbed up. “We are on our own!"

  “Not for long!” I fairly shrieked over the fresh hubbub. “Into them! We must open the gates!"

  This was the red hurly-burly of action very far removed from sitting a zorca in the rear and methodically working out which way a battle should be run. We were up at the sharp end and if our wits and our sword arms failed us we were done for.

  The party of mercenaries blocking the stairway resisted our efforts. They were fighting men. Many of them showed the gleam of the pakmort at throat, or looped into the shoulder of the war harness. We charged into them and were thrust back, struggling desperately.

  Our numbers were thinning. Flung stuxes, those thick and heavy throwing spears with the small cross quillons set back from the head, flew into our ranks. Men shrieked and died, blowing bloody froth, vomiting. I hurdled a sprawled bleg, three of his legs missing, and launched myself at the mercenaries. Their swords flamed. It was all a mad business of cut and hack, of duck, of thrust, of parry, and recover.

  I do not think, I seriously do not think, we could have done it. Looking back at that scene of carnage it seems to me the enemy were slowly overmastering us. We fought; but we were few and they continually fed reinforcements up from the garrison so that we faced what appeared to be an unending stream of foemen.

  And then...

  And then!

  By Zair! But to think of it brings that excruciating tingle in the blood, sets the pulses jumping, shows it all again in splendor.

  A shadow dropped down over us, a twinned shadow from the twin suns. An airboat hovered, for she could not settle with that seething mass of struggling men below without squashing friend and foe alike. From the voller leaped men. I saw them. Over the coamings they jumped, roaring into action. I saw their yellow hair flying free, for the Maiden with the Many Smiles was not in the sky. I saw the height of them, seven foot, each fighting man. I saw their weapons, those long single-bladed Saxon-pattern axes. Oh, yes, I saw them as they smashed into the mercenaries and the axes whirled in that old familiar way, ripping arcs of silver and red.

  Warriors of Ng'groga, they were, tall sinewy axemen, and there was about their work the fierce controlled power of the typhoon.

  At their head, urging them on, slashing with cunning skill, opening a path through the enemy—at their head, in the lead, roared on that tall familiar figure that meant so much to me.

  “By Zair!” I said. “If only Seg were here now!"

  With that and with renewed heart we swept the enemy from before the stairway. They were sent screaming to topple over the battlements of the tower. The stairway was cleared and men raced down, yelling, striking this way and that with lethal axes. The gate was opened.

  After that—why, the army poured in and in next to no time the citadel of Kanarsmot was in our hands.

  Delia found me as I walked out of the open gate and over the bridge. Walking was not easy for the arrows and the corpses. The Sword Watch were busily engaged in the citadel in rounding up prisoners and discovering what portable property there might be worthy the consideration of a guardsman of the Emperor's Sword Watch.

  “Oh, Dray! When you climbed the rope—"

  “Did you see him?"

  She smiled and the world of Kregen took on a roseate light. “Yes. I saw him. And here he is, walking up just as though nothing had happened.” She was looking past me and as I turned so Delia ran by and threw herself at that tall, yellow-haired, grimly ferocious axeman. He clasped her in his long arms.

  "Inch!"

  He looked at me over Delia's brown hair and I swear he had to swallow before he spoke.

  “As a comrade of ours would say, Dray—Lahal, my old dom."

  “Lahal and Lahal a thousand times, Inch."

  And I strode forward to clasp his hand. He had had to swallow before speaking. Damned if I didn't, too...

  * * *

  Chapter Eight

  Vondium Dances

  Inch's adventures would fill a book of their own. We left affairs in the capable hands of Larghos the Left-Handed and prepared to return to the capital. Inch kept on looking about and uttering exclamations of surprise—at the flying sailers so different from those with which we had fought the Battle of Jholaix, at the Phalanx, and this and that. He was delighted to be back, and when, in an odd moment, we found him solemnly standing on his head, reciting the Kregish alphabet backwards and at the end of each recital clapping his hee
ls smartly together, we smiled fondly. Inch and his taboos! If he fell over when he clapped his heels together, he'd have to start all over again.

  We did not ask him which particular taboo he had broken. When you got to know Inch of Ng'groga, the Kov of the Black Mountains, you did not bother to question his taboos and simply took delight in his presence.

  He told us that after he had been sorcerously flung back from the Pool of Baptism to his native Ng'groga, in southeastern Loh, he had been forced to spend some time atoning for all the mass of broken taboos he felt sure he had left strewn in his wake. Then, with due ritual and protocol and a mass of taboo-legitimized formalities he had wed his Sasha.

  Delia clapped her hands.

  “Wonderful, Inch, delightful. Congratulations. Is she with you?"

  “Yes. I left her in Vondium—"

  “Oh?” I said.

  He looked at me—by this time he was sitting at a table in a decent chair and we had forbidden squish pie to be brought any closer than an ulm—and he smiled.

  “I know you think I am a clever fellow, Dray. But it would take Ngrangi Himself to have known you were here at Kanarsmot. No, the moment we heard in Ng'groga of the troubles in Vallia I set off.” Across in the continent of Loh they had few if any airboats and travel would be slow and news hardly come by. “I took the liberty of going via Djanduin. I found the people wonderfully hospitable when they discovered I was acquainted with their king."

  “Acquainted,” I said.

  Inch laughed at that. “Oh, yes, Ortyg Fellin Coper and Kytun Kholin Dom are great fellows. They greeted me right royally and gave me splendid fliers."

  “Fliers..."

  “Well, of course. By Ngrozyan the Axe! You didn't think I'd come empty-handed? I enlisted a parcel of likely rogues, all friends of mine, or friends of friends, and we look forward to a rollicking time, I can tell you."