Fliers of Antares Read online

  This, as you will see, was a highly cunning way for a Krozair of Zy to earn his daily bread. But as I have said, I felt bitter and betrayed and desolated, in those early days in Djanduin.

  Well, I will not weary you with a recital of my daily doings, as those doings wearied me. Suffice it to say that I raced Dust Pounder, and we won handsome sums of golden deldys; and I made the acquaintance of my Lady Lara Kholin Domon, who herself raced zorcas and who, perhaps, felt annoyance that she had lost, and who yet concealed that annoyance because she fancied some affection for me. The Lady Lara — oh, yes, she was a girl with fire and spirit, who rode like the east wind over the Sunset Sea. Yet she had a humility that was totally amused each time some proud Djang buck proposed to her. Her middle name — Kholin — proclaimed to all Djanduin that she came of a most powerful and wealthy tan — or House or clan or tribe — of Djanguraj. The Fellins and the Stolins were not in the same class as the Kholins.

  We raced our zorcas against each other, and old Dust Pounder carried me to victory, for I would not shame her by pulling on his rein and so allowing her a hollow victory.

  Her wild coppery hair blazed under the suns as we rode, her lithe and lissome form, clad in gray leathers, bent urgently over the neck of her zorca, whispering in his ear, entreating, pleading, urging, commanding him to run faster, faster, faster! Fast enough, at any rate, to beat Dust Pounder. But Dust Pounder had an aversion to running with another zorca’s hindquarters in his view.

  Her four supple arms, rounded and aglow with beauty, could not aid her once she mounted a zorca. But when she wrestled with me, stripped, I found her a most slippery customer. We wrestled for our own private amusement — not as we raced, as professionals for gain — and I could not bring myself to use the disciplines of the Krozairs of Zy upon her and so hurl her flat upon her back, panting, and place my foot upon her neck. She did this to me, though, many times, laughing down on me, her eyes dancing with mischief, her vibrant form outlined above me, her coppery hair in disarray, superb.

  “Now, Dray Prescot, who says four arms are not better than two!”

  “I won’t argue, Lara. But for the sweet sake of Djan Himself, take your foot off my windpipe so I can breathe!”

  They knew of the Khamorros of Herrelldrin here, of course, being not all that far distant from Pellow, and their own Martial Monks were reputed masters of bloodless combat as well as more serious work with pointed and edged weapons. My hair was growing back and I was shaving, as I sometimes did, leaving my arrogant old brown moustache to thrust its way up from my lip. I wondered what Turko the Shield would make of my thus throwing a combat with a four-armed girl — and so cursed and groaned as again the realization of ten infernal years to serve in my prison of time brought me back to reality.

  So the time passed in Djanguraj, capital of Djanduin.

  Chuktar Rumferling had guessed right about the attack route of the Gorgrens. I knew there would be more of sagacity and experience than sheer guesswork in this decision as to which pass to throw most of his weight. The first of this fresh invasion from Gorgrendrin was hurled back. I stood silently in the crowded streets to watch the wounded come in. On that day the new king was fished from the river, its yellow mud disturbed by his finery and his jewels, and a new king installed himself.

  The main strength of the army lay carefully positioned along the frontier under the cover of the Yawfi Suth and the Wendwath; those left at home in Djanguraj struggled to keep the country on its feet.

  This period proved near-disastrous to the Djangs. Before the troubles there had been three kings who had ruled for over a hundred years each, and before that there had never been this weakening rapid succession. Djang and Obdjang had ascended the throne in the sacred court of the warrior gods at the center of the Palace of Illustrious Ornament. No continuity could be achieved, it seemed, and even the expedient of the Obdjangs and Djangs failed in allowing a diff of another species to ascend the throne. A Rapa, a Chulik, and a Bleg succeeded one another with the rapidity of utter ruin.

  I saw Coper when the Bleg was cut down from the rafters of his own country house, and the Pallan of the Highways looked exhausted, shrunken. Sinkie was lying down.

  “It is good to see you, Notor Prescot. These are evil days in Djanduin.”

  Rather too carelessly, I said, “The army will have to return to set a strong king upon the throne. You, my dear Pallan, or Chuktar Rumferling, or one of your friends who see eye to eye with you.”

  At this Sinkie sat bolt upright with a shriek.

  “Notor Prescot! I consider you a good and valued friend! But to speak thus! Would you condemn my poor dear husband to a terrible fate — do you want his blood to stain the faerling throne?”

  “Of course not, Lady Sinkie, as well you know. But there must be a man of courage and strength and sound common sense. The markets complain of the prices of food. Ships from countries overseas do not wish to trade because we cannot guarantee either their safety or payment. Why, I can only make a living by winning in the zorca races—”

  “We have heard, Notor Prescot.”

  They were a straitlaced pair, these two, and yet I liked them much. We talked more and I believe it was then that Pallan Coper began to come around to the dreadful idea that perhaps Naghan Rumferling, or one of their circle, would have to chance his life as king. I was shown out by their personal servant, Dolar, a massive Djang of ferocious appearance and childlike mind, a man of enormous courage and strength and utmost loyalty. He had been the first of those Djangs who, on fire, had leaped from the burning inn to fight the leemsheads.

  Back at The Paline and Queng I made a frugal supper of bread — not done in the bols fashion, I may say — butter a little too long out of the icebox, and a ponsho chop that had seen better days. I had the money to buy better provender; the troubles had dried up markets and the country folk were frugally storing food against worse days to come. The whole countryside was in unrest, for the leemsheads now openly waylaid and slew any Obdjang they could find. If the Kov of Hyr Khor thought he would frighten Djangs like Chuktar Rumferling by these tactics, he was well out in his calculations. But Sinkie and Ortyg Coper were two worried Obdjangs.

  At one time ships from Ng’groga used to call regularly at Djanguraj. The first time I had seen one of the tall, fair-haired Ng’grogans I had jumped forward with joy, expecting to find Inch; and then sober sense returned. Here in Djanguraj we were a mere three hundred or so dwaburs almost due south from Ng’groga. But the ships, simple single-decked brig-rigged craft, seldom reached in past the pharos of Port Djanguraj now.

  The days of my enforced imprisonment limped past. And each day it seemed to me the state of the country worsened. If the army suffered a reverse now, Djan Himself knew what would happen. The Lady Lara Kholin Domon still wrestled me and one day, so occupied was I with my miserable thoughts, I forgot what I was doing, and caught two of her wrists. I twisted and pulled and sent her flying beautifully through the air to land with an almighty thump upon the mat. Three of her hands punched down to spring her back to her feet while the fourth rubbed her bottom, and then I was on her and tying her in knots and pressed my foot on her windpipe.

  She glared up in a fury, and so, remembering, I let my foot slip and then she was on me like a leem and belted me down until I yelled quarter.

  Even the zorca races were poorly attended, the lavish hippodrome, which they call merezo on Kregen, sparsely filled and the bets poor.

  Lara had introduced me to her cousin, Felder Kholin Mindner, who was a Jiktar of the aerial forces and therefore as highly placed as a Djang had any right to expect in the military services. He had been wounded in an affray and was home convalescing. What he told me of the army convinced me that if the emergency at home was not speedily ended, then the army would simply march on the capital and compel some sense into the politicians. What that would do as regards the Gorgrendrin situation was not something any Djang would wish to contemplate.

  There were few fliers in Dja
nduin, but the Djanduin Air Service, being manned by Djangs, was as smart and efficient as any other. Felder Kholin Minder was a Jiktar of the flyers,[3] riding a saddle-bird peculiar to Djanduin, called a flutduin, a powerful bird with wide yellow wings and a vicious, deadly black beak. We discussed the military situation; but he burst out with the usual realistic Djang observation: “May all the devils in a Herrelldrin hell take me if I understand strategy, Notor Prescot! How Chuktar Naghan does it I’ll never know. But he peers down at his maps and he measures up with his ruler, and walks his dividers across, and then he thinks, and then, by Djan! we’re all flying off helter-skelter and, as neat as you like, there are the Opaz-forsaken rasts of Gorgrens all lined up ready for us to belt into! I tell you, Notor Prescot, these Obdjangs are powerful clever fellows!”

  “Both races of Djanduin get along well,” I said. “I feel it a great shame that the country suffers so. If you Djangs accept the Obdjangs, as they accept you—”

  “Absolutely right, Notor Prescot! We do and they do!”

  “—then it seems that Kov Nath Jagdur is a mischievous man.”

  “I’d like to see him in the Ice Floes of Sicce!”

  The use of the name Djang for either of the two peoples is quite correct; the little gerbil-faced fellows are often called Obdjangs. Very seldom are the four-armed warriors called Dwadjangs, which is a name to which they are entitled.

  Eventually I came to find out why I had not come across a crossbow when I had rifled through the dead outside the inn on the occasion I had arrived in Djanduin. The Djangs use the curved compound reflex bow, a very similar weapon to those used by my clansmen and by my archers of Valka. The crossbow is a weapon they manufacture; not well, and they generally import examples for their crossbow regiments. So an arbalest is one of the first weapons a Djang soldier will snatch up on the scene of battle.

  We went swimming in a scented indoor pool and Lara’s parents joined us, laughing and splashing. I was invited to stay for supper, an invitation I accepted with alacrity, for although I had a sufficiency of money I had no influence, and the Kholins had both, and so could secure supplies.

  We were halfway through an extremely fine meal, although Lara’s father, Vad Larghos, would keep apologizing for the meanness of his table, and her mother, a woman still beautiful with her coppery hair bound with silver moon-bloom petals, kept throwing him reproachful glances as though the emergency and lack of the usual abundance of food were all his fault, when the majordomo announced a messenger.

  “For the Notor Prescot, Lord of Strombor!” he boomed out.

  Dolar stumbled in. His gray trousers, his dark blue cloak, the shirt visible beneath his lorica, were hideously splashed with blood. He looked exhausted. We all leaped up and I pressed a golden cup of wine into his hands. He drank like a leem.

  “The Pallan!” he cried out, when he could get his breath. Then, remembering his manners, he said: “Lahal, Notor Prescot. The master and mistress! They send for you. Chuktar Naghan Rumferling is dead, assassinated, and they need all loyal help.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  “You hairy graint, Dray Prescot!”

  Wild alarums and excursions and mad dashes through the night sky of Kregen, well, they have been a pretty constant part of my life on that beautiful yet terrible world. The Maiden with the Many Smiles floated high above us as we saddled up, strapping the clerketers tightly over our flying silks and leathers, and sent the flutduins lunging into the air.

  Chuktar Naghan Rumferling, who was now dead, had been visiting a base camp at Cafresmot, halfway to the Mountains of Mirth. Pallan Coper and his wife had visited him there; I wondered, as I stretched forward along the neck of the giant flying bird and battled through the rushing air, if that visit had to do with a kingly crown and throne.

  Pink moonlight washed over the steadily beating wings of the flutduins, and their sharp black beaks jutted forth ready, it seemed, to impale any obstruction. We flew on, with a steady remorseless wing-beat to lull us into a false sense of security. Wounded though he was, although much recovered, Felder Mindner had insisted on coming with us. Lara, too, had borne down all opposition, and her father, the Vad, had thereupon announced that he valued Naghan Rumferling highly, and the Pallan Coper, also, and would come with us, Nundji take him if he didn’t!

  Dolar, the faithful servant to Coper, in his turn hadinsisted on rousing the other loyal friends he had been bidden to summon. Much of the blood spattering him, dried and caked as it was from his flight from the Mountains of Mirth, was not his own. He had merely said, “They would have prevented me leaving, Vad,” when Vad Larghos questioned him.

  Truly, the Djangs have thews of iron and a simplistic view of life!

  So we knew there were others in the sky this night, outward bound for the base camp of the army of the east.

  If the Gorgrens got wind of this night’s doings, and decided to attack, who would there be capable of reading their plans and scheming to defeat them? So many of the Obdjangs had been slaughtered by this maniac, Kov Nath Jagdur, that the High Command was decidedly thin on the ground — or in the air.

  Cafresmot stood a good long way from the fighting front, the Mountains of Mirth rise something like halfway between the Yawfi Suth and Djanguraj and have in the past proved the final insurmountable obstacle to armies invading from the east. That is why they are called what they are. How many and many a time, so I had been told with a chuckle, had proud and confident armies burst through one of the tortuous routes around the Yawfi Suth or the Wendwath and marched through Eastern Djanduin, full of hopes of easy conquest and glory now they had broken into the country. And then, they had seen rising before them the sharp and narrow peaks of a mountain range that extended north and south and curved in a bow that faced them. Not overly grand or full of hauteur, the Mountains of Mirth, standing no comparison whatsoever with The Stratemsk, and yet many and many a time they halted enemy invasions in relatively poor country, and turned them back. The shock had proved disastrous to many armies, not least the Gorgrens on the single long-ago occasion when they had managed to reach the mountains; and the men of Djanduin had roared their merriment.

  Truly, they were the Mountains of Mirth!

  From Djanguraj to the outermost western limits of the Yawfi Suth is about a hundred and seventy dwaburs. So this night we had to fly approximately fifty dwaburs, for the Mountains of Mirth stand roughly a hundred dwaburs from the capital, roughly seventy from the Yawfi Suth.

  The firm steady beat of the flutduin I rode impressed me. I have ridden impiters, corths, fluttrells, mirvols, and many other of the marvelous saddle-flyers of Kregen, and it is difficult to choose the absolute best, for all have their good points as well as their weaknesses. We passed over the sleeping countryside and as She of the Veils rose before us and we blustered on against the rushing wind, the night filled with the pinkish moons-radiance. We followed the pink-glimmering reflections of the River of Wraiths. This river rises in the Mountains of Mirth and curving boldly southward flows westward through Djanduin and so to the Bay of Djanguraj where the Tarnish Channel meets the Ocean of Doubt. On that river stands Djanguraj, and also Cafresmot, our destination. Up and down, rising and falling with the long smooth wing-beats, we hurtled on through the level air and all about us fell the pink moons-light.

  This part of Djanduin is rich in agriculture and husbandry, and we passed over the wide fields and the farms and the carefully tended grazing, and presently we saw beneath us the darker splotches of shadow against the pink glimmer, and so knew we had reached Cafresmot. The town is small but active, with a good cattle and ponsho market and with a thriving trade in corn and other staples. Felder Mindner, who knew the area well, had received directions from Dolar, and we swung a little north and swooped down toward a lightless ranch house set among missals. The night wind rustled the branches as Felder Mindner dropped his flutduin beyond the trees and we settled to the earth screened from the house by the missals.

  Cautiously we crept along a tr
ack rutted by cart wheels and pocked by the hooves of calsanys. No one spoke. We were aware of the need of surprise, and I was quite content to let this Jiktar Mindner lead, for he seemed to know his business. Also, and the real reason, was that I recognized I was here only as a friend of Coper’s. Dolar had been to other houses in Djanguraj and aroused friends of the Pallan. Chuktar Naghan, visiting here, had been met by Pallan Coper, but had been treacherously slain by disaffected members of an army unit stationed here, well back from the front. If Kov Nath had instigated this murder, and we had yet to prove that, he had struck a shrewd blow. It would have been useless for Dolar to have flown eastward to summon assistance from the army of the east, for, as he had told us, Coper suspected treason among them. If an army mutiny was to be added to the troubles of Djanduin I could see little hope for the country.

  This troubled me as I crept forward through the pink radiance from the moons, my sword in my fist.

  A Horter of Havilfar will carry his thraxter with him as a mere matter of dress; but I had taken nothing else in the way of weapons to what should have been a pleasant evening of swimming and feasting with the Demons, and so they had lent me a soldier’s gear. The thraxter gleamed silvery pink. The shield I held high on my left shoulder. At my waist swung a djangir. Some of Vad Larghos’ men carried crossbows, the others the compound reflex bow. We padded on like a wild hunting pack of drangs, scenting our quarry.

  No lights, no sounds, came from the ranch house.

  We passed the corrals on our left and heard the sleeping snorts of joats and the restless snuffling of totrixes. Mindner waited for us to come up and he spoke in a whisper to Vad Larghos and me.

  “I fear we are too late, Vad. If the Pallan was not dead there would be sounds of fighting—”