More about "The Spikatur Cycle"

The Spikatur Cycle

The Saga of Dray Prescot Omnibus edition

a Mushroom eBooks sampler

Copyright © 2010, Kenneth Bulmer

Alan Burt Akers has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, to be identified as the Author of this work.

First published in United Kingdom in 2010 by Bladud Books.

This Edition published in 2011 by Mushroom eBooks,
an imprint of Mushroom Publishing,
Bath, BA1 4EB, United Kingdom
www.mushroom-ebooks.com

Originally published separately by Daw Books, Inc., as: Beasts of Antares (1980), Rebel of Antares (1980), Legions of Antares (1981) and Allies of Antares (1981)

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 9781843198420 (PDF complete edition)

This is a sampler of The Spikatur Cycle by Alan Burt Akers. If you enjoy reading these sample chapters and would like to read the rest, you can buy the complete Mushroom eBook edition from the usual bookshops online, or find more details at www.mushroom-ebooks.com.

Contents

BEASTS OF ANTARES

REBEL OF ANTARES

LEGIONS OF ANTARES

ALLIES OF ANTARES

BEASTS OF ANTARES

The Spikatur Cycle

Beasts of Antares is the first volume of the Spikatur Cycle chronicling the history of Dray Prescot on the marvelous and horrific world of Kregen four hundred light-years away under the red and green fires of the Suns of Scorpio. Reared in the inhumanly harsh conditions of Nelson’s Navy, he has been transported to Kregen through the agencies of the Savanti and the Star Lords. Dray Prescot is a man above middle height, with brown hair and level brown eyes, brooding and dominating, with enormously broad shoulders and superbly powerful physique. There is about him an abrasive honesty and an indomitable courage. He moves like a savage hunting cat, quiet and deadly. The portrait he presents of himself is enigmatic and attractive.

The people of the island empire of Vallia, cruelly oppressed by invaders, call on Prescot to shoulder the burden of leading them to liberty. This he has vowed to do to the best of his ability, and then thankfully relinquish the imperium, for there are other tasks set to his hands on the unforgiving and rewarding world of Kregan.

The Spikatur Cycle brings Prescot closer to the realization of many of his dreams and each book is arranged to be read as complete in itself. He is determined to do what he feels is laid upon him; but he finds it is not so easy, particularly when the Empress Delia and his comrades are determined to keep him out of trouble. But — he is Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor and Krozair of Zy, and that canny old leem hunter will not be prevented from buckling up the brave old scarlet breechclout and with a sword in his fist hurtling off beneath the Moons of Kregen into fresh headlong adventure.

Chapter one

At the Sign of the Headless Zorcaman

Naghan Raerdu was a most entertaining character. He had a remarkable penchant for laughing so much the tears squeezed out of his closed eyes and no one took much notice of what else he was doing. His face expressed habitual surprise that people never took him seriously, and his body, short, stout, robust, supported on thick waddling legs, conveyed an impression of undirected manic energy. He was apim, a member of Homo sapiens, with brown Vallian hair and eyes and a blobby chunk of gristle for a nose. He’d been a soldier in the Phalanx, rising from brumbyte to Relianchun. With his bright popping eyes, his highly colored cheeks, his glistening mouth from which a glass was seldom absent, he looked quite unlike what he was.

Naghan Raerdu had turned into a first-class spy.

His jolly red-faced exterior concealed the mentality more often associated with the gray, inconspicuous secret agent. And he liked to laugh.

He finished laughing now as he said, “This fellow Chuktar Mevek — leastways, that’s what he calls himself — means what he says. In a matter this important he will deal only with the emperor.”

“It’s a trap.” Turko spoke in a dismissive way, perhaps a little warm at having to state the obvious. He stretched his arms in which the sinuous muscles spoke eloquently of the enormous man-crushing power of him. He had the wrestler’s trick of emphasizing statements by physical movements. Since his elevation to the nobility he had flowered wonderfully and yet he remained a good comrade. Naghan Raerdu’s spying mission had been into Falinur, near the center of Vallia, Kov Turko’s new province.

“I think not, kov.” Raerdu spoke up stoutly. He was often called Naghan the Barrel for obvious reasons. “I took soundings.” He laid a chubby finger alongside that blob of gristle that passed for a nose.

“A trap,” repeated Turko. He half turned away, and his profile showed, keen as an eagle’s. “That unhanged villain Layco Jhansi wants to lure the emperor into his clutches by this story, and then — chop.”

“With respect, kov, this Mevek has suffered and has no love for Layco Jhansi.”

“He told you this?” Nath Karidge, that tearaway cavalry commander spoke up. He happened to be here because a new task was to be set to his capable hands. Now his reckless face was thoughtful in the shadows under the trees. “Or — you saw for yourself?”

“Both, and yet it was the way Mevek spoke that impressed me. I have seen men’s faces when they talk like that. I was Relianchun in the First Phalanx at the Battle of Sicce’s Gates, and, after we were beat... That was a bad time for Vallia.” Naghan the Barrel did not laugh. “It is my view that Mevek speaks honestly and can do what he promises.”

The problem was a knotty one. Around the heap of tumbled ruins that had once been a pretty village, up here in the north of the province of Vindelka, the trees grew vigorously, thrusting their roots into crevices and completing the work of destruction. The streaming mingled radiance of the Suns of Scorpio fell in a muted, wavering undersea vision of green and russet gold. A short way off the animals snorted and stamped their hooves, tossing their manes. The cavalry escort waited beyond the line of trees. By the slanting rays from the twin suns the day was waning. Night would soon be here. A decision had to be made before the twin suns, Zim and Genodras, sank beneath the horizon and the first moon of Kregen, the Maiden with the Many Smiles, swam roseate and shining into the night sky.

Naghan the Barrel cocked his red face up and squinted at the position of the suns.

“Chuktar Mevek will wait for you, majister, at the Sign of the Headless Zorcaman until the hour of midnight.”

His golden beard glinting in that dappled light, his four arms and tail hand relaxed, Korero the Shield coughed one of his dry little coughs. A magnificent golden Kildoi, a marvel with his shields, an adept of Disciplines, Korero was, like Turko, a valued comrade.

“Mevek may speak the truth,” said Korero, “but the risk is not worth taking.”

“I agree,” said Turko. “You’d be running your head into a noose.”

With a flick of his pelisse, furred and smothered in gold lace, Nath Karidge added, “Majister, the danger is too great.”

In that uncertain light they all stared at me. The scent of evening hung sweetly on the air, and insects buzzed. The zorcas snorted and stamped their hooves. Overhead the trees bowered us in shadow.

I stared back at them.

“Three of you,” I said. “Three right-roaring rapscallion hellions. Since when has a little danger, a few risks, bothered you?”

They each found it necessary to make immediate and finicky adjustments to their clothes or harness or weapons. I did not add, as in justice I ought, that if anyone trembled at risks taken and dangers dared, it was me. Korero the Shield, with four arms and a tail hand and an enormous competence in the midst of battle, with a dry humor and practical outlook; Turko the Shield who was now Kov Turko of Falinur, a Khamorro, a feared man who could break the strongest opponent, a man with a gently sarcastic manner; these two were good comrades, trusted friends, and right tearaways. And Chuktar Nath Karidge, the beau sabreur, a cavalryman — no, a light cavalryman — who swore on Lasal the Vakka and had no great expectations of living beyond the next charge, he was here because I wanted him to put his talents to good use. And, all three, all three reckless daredevils, all cautioned me gravely, with long faces, direfully warning me of risks and dangers.

By Vox! It was enough to make a fellow laugh.

“With your permission, majister, I will have to take back an answer soon. Mevek is somewhat touchy in these matters.” Naghan the Barrel laughed his wheezing, tear-splattering laugh. “I fancy it is how he has kept his head on his shoulders for so long fighting his guerrilla actions against Layco Jhansi’s mercenaries.”

“Risks,” said Korero. He pulled his golden beard. “I do not hold with them.”

“Nor me,” said Turko.

They spoke seriously. I considered. Yes, it was true that both Korero and Turko were among the more sober headed of my boon companions. They were not as foolhardy as most, not as ready to jump in without a thought. Both had carried shields at my back in battle. Perhaps that was why they were less reckless, or perhaps their function as shield bearers to the Emperor of Vallia had made them more cautious. All the same, the humor of the situation remained.

“You say this Chuktar Mevek will deal only with me directly?”

“Yes, majister. And, in addition, he was firm on the point. We can take no more than three companions to the Sign of the Headless Zorcaman.”

“Five of us,” said Turko. “And I daresay he’ll have a little army waiting.”

“As much as any man may,” said Naghan the Barrel, and he spoke more strongly. “Chuktar Mevek has my trust.”

Nath Karidge put his fist onto the hilt of his sword. He carried a curved sword of a pattern of his own design, specially made for him. He looked at me. “If we go, majister, at least let me bring on my two half-squadrons in support.”

“Would that not be breaking faith?”

He stirred the dust with his cavalryman’s boot.

“Aye. But, by Lasal the Vakka, when you treat with rogues you must watch your back.”

The others nodded. There was no need for them to amplify. This view was one commonly held among my comrades concerning certain eventualities and certain people. What Karidge had said merely cloaked a deeper meaning.

There was no need to amplify, yet Turko said, “Honor is a precious commodity. Yet honor cannot stand in the way of our proper duty.”

I refused to allow myself to think about this at the moment. Later on I pondered the implications deeply, as you shall hear; but, right now, the decision must be taken.

And, really — and as they knew only too well — there was only one conclusion I could come to.

I said, “We go. We go now. Rather — with Naghan I go.”

At once, speaking all over each other, they were baying out their outrage. I calmed them.

“If you wish to accompany, you will be most welcome. But, if you think the risks too great, why, then—”

In mercy I couldn’t go on. Their faces expressed the utmost consternation and chagrin and downright fury.

They knew — I trusted they knew — that I merely baited them.

In the language spoken over most of Paz, the Kregish language which had, I surmised, been imposed on the people, there are many fine terms of abuse and contempt, many resounding oaths, many expressions of love and fidelity. Some have a reasonably exact counterpart in the languages of Earth; some are purely Kregan. To call a fellow a fambly is to express your opinion of him in gentle, friendly terms, and yet you also let him know you are giving him a little stick. When, half under my breath and turning toward the zorcas, I said, “Famblys!” these men of mine knew exactly what I meant. Mind you, the oafish of two worlds might misunderstand, that seems obvious. To call a man a fambly is not the same as calling him an onker, or a hulu, or any other of the colorful names available in the Kregish tongue.

“I shall station my two half-squadrons—” began Karidge.

“No. I judge Chuktar Mevek will scout the approaches. Anything like a follow-up cavalry force — and he’ll be off.”

“Quidang, majister!”

Yet, as he spoke, Karidge indicated that he might bellow out “Quidang!” — a standard acknowledgment of an order — but he didn’t like the idea at all. He was a cavalryman. It was hard for him to grasp any idea that anything at all valuable could be accomplished without the exciting jingle of harness and the onrushing stamp of hooves.

We mounted up and Karidge gave orders to the cavalry to await our return, and we set off as the suns declined. Up ahead lay a rich and fruitful land between the generous arms of a loop in the Great River, She of the Fecundity. This part of Vallia was blessed with richness; the land sent forth its goodness in thickly growing crops, in trees heavy with fruit, in grasslands where cattle grazed and grew fat. Westward on the outskirts of the semi-desert Ochre Limits the land yielded many rich minerals. This land was called Vinnur’s Garden. It lay between Falinur to the north and Vindelka to the south. It was coveted by and laid claim to by both provinces.

Just who was the rightful claimant no one now could say. I had partially solved the squabble by an arbitrary parallel dividing Vinnur’s garden in half. The locals didn’t much like the solution, but had to acknowledge there was not much else to do. Falinur had been the kovnate province of Seg Segutorio until he had relinquished it and I had appointed Turko. Vindelka was the kovnate province of Vomanus, half-brother to Delia. Both were blade comrades. Neither would press his claim against the other.

Some of the annoyance felt by the southern Falinurese against Seg for not actively advancing their claims had led, coupled with his attempts to put down slavery, to the people throwing in their lot with Layco Jhansi. Jhansi had been the old emperor’s chief minister, and he had betrayed him. The plot to kill the emperor had misfired, Jhansi had fled to the safety of his own province, Vennar, to the west of Falinur, and in the Time of Troubles he had waxed strong. He had troubles on his northern borders, but just lately he had attempted to invade southward into the imperial province of Orvendel, having subjugated Vindelka. We had bested his army at the Battle of Ovalia and had subsequently campaigned successfully northward to liberate Vindelka. My projected trip to Hyrklana had perforce been postponed yet again...

So, now my spy Naghan the Barrel brought word that the people of Falinur were grown tired of Layco Jhansi.

The time was ripe to strike the blow that would free the province. All the island empire of Vallia had been in turmoil, invaded by mercenaries and reiving barbarians and by the iron legions of our rival empire, Hamal. We had won back most of the south and the midlands, and the northeast stood for us. But there was still much to do. If Turko could take over in Falinur that would be another good step forward to the final liberation of all Vallia.

The twin suns sank as we trotted past fields rich with crops. Very few lights showed from farmhouses or villages; these people had grown to live with waves of invasion. The miracle was the land was in such good heart. We moved on, silently.

Just what we were trotting so silently into did not bear thinking of. I looked ahead at the dark squat figure of Naghan, who clamped his short legs around his zorca and hunched down with your typical infantryman’s handling of a mount. After the disastrous Battle at Sicce’s Gates, where the Phalanx had been upset by the clansmen, Naghan had been cut off. He had lived off the country, saved his life, kept his spirits and had kept out of the way of our enemies. In the fullness of time he had reported back. His story had interested me, and on meeting him I realized that here was a man of parts, resourceful, hardy, and like a chameleon able to survive in places where no one would expect him to last a couple of heartbeats.

He had proved ready to take employment with me, as a spy, a secret agent — the name did not matter overmuch. The interesting aspect of this was that Naghan Vanki, the emperor’s chief spymaster, did not know of Naghan the Barrel or the other agents recruited in similar ways. A small corps of intelligence men was being built up, quite distinct from the large-scale organization controlled by Vanki and which served Vallia to the best of its ability in dark times and in good.

We halted on the brow of a hill where the road, dim and barely visible before the rise of the Maiden with the Many Smiles, trended down toward the shadowy and misshapen lumps of darkness that indicated a village. Not a light showed.

“Chuktar Mevek risks much in coming this far south to meet you, majister.” Naghan the Barrel wiped his face with his neckerchief, a gaudy article of red and lilac and green with brown spots. That kind of neckerchief the Kregans call a flamanch, and very useful it is, too. Usually it is fastened at the front by a brooch or a pin or a nolp, and now, having wiped his face, Naghan slid his nolp up and down as he spoke. “We are in good time. And his men have us under observation already.”

Not one of us showed the least surprise or consternation. We were old campaigners. If Mevek had not scouted the approaches and kept a lookout we would have been far more concerned.

“All the same,” said Turko, following on that line of thought. “It means we may have some difficulty if we have to pull out quickly.”

Although we had only Naghan’s assertions to guide us in this enterprise, we felt we were not going in entirely blind.

I, for one, felt confidence in Naghan Raerdu the Barrel, and his opinion was that this Chuktar Mevek would hold to his word, even if we did not reach agreement. If Naghan was wrong, why then it could easily be a quick scramble to get free...

I nudged my zorca.

“No sense in hanging about.”

We rode slowly down the path which glimmered into smokey grayness as the first moon lifted. The Maiden with the Many Smiles shone bleakly, it seemed to me, cutting a pallid sickle in the sky. Soon she would take on her usual pinkish hue and the shadows would warm to a russet fuzz. We rode on.

This little village was called Infinon of the Crossroads, and the inn with the sign of the Headless Zorcaman squatted in one angle of the cross. The other houses were fast shuttered. The stillness and the ghostly moonlight were broken as men rode out with a clatter, casting bars of shadow across the road, to surround us. A few quick words between their leader and Naghan and we went on, riding up to the inn and dismounting.

A warm fug of ale fumes and cooking and sweat met us as we entered. The place presented the appearance one would expect from a small village in a prosperous countryside, and the ale would be good.

The floor was swept clean. That floor was made from sawn planks, not beaten earth. Pots glittered. The enormous fireplace gaped black and empty, save for a brass jar filled with dried flowers. The men who escorted us and the others who awaited our coming wore ragged clothing of a raffish, free-flowing kind. They were much burdened with weapons. Almost all were apims. They sat about on the settles and benches, and I surmised they would keep quiet as their chief spoke. If there was trouble — I gave them a glance that appeared casual and which totted them up and assessed them.

Twenty. Twenty ruffians, guerilleros, as ready to slit your throat as to greet you with a pleasant Lahal.

One of them, a fellow who wore a gaudy sash of a color I took to be plum, so dirty and festooned with gold lace was it, walked forward. His face looked like an old boot. His hair was lank. But he smiled.

“Llahal, koters,” he said, giving us the name of gentlemen of Vallia. “The Chuktar will be here in but five murs.”

Karidge would have started hotly demanding to know why the emperor should be kept waiting, but I silenced him. I looked about, saw a long lanky lout with his feet on a bench. Walking over, I pushed his legs off, so that his heavy Vallian boots crashed to the floor, and sat on the bench. I took off my wide-brimmed hat, placed it on the table, and said, “I will wait five murs.”

As a mur is shorter than a terrestrial minute, the ball was, as they say, in Mevek’s court.

The long lanky lout glowered, but he said nothing and straightened himself up. The eyes of the others in the taproom — by Krun! You could feel them, like a pack of drills.

My companions remained standing. The fellow with the unmentionable sash and the face like an old boot swallowed.

“I am Vanderini the Dagger. I will fetch the Chuktar—”

He went out through a rear door in something of a hurry.

Karidge chuckled nastily. A chuckle can express many profound emotions.

Turko and Korero looked as though offensive smells were obfuscating the pleasures of life. Naghan the Barrel let one of his wheezing laughs shake him up, the tears pouring from his eyes. He clapped his belly.

“I am parched. Will no one fetch a stoup, for the sweet sake of Mother Dikkana, who brought forth the saint who gave us ale?”

Someone laughed — that was easy to do with Naghan the Barrel — and tankards were forthcoming. I sipped.

Four and a half murs, all that took. On the fifth, as the calibrated clepsydra on its shelf above the mantelpiece showed, Chuktar Mevek walked into the taproom.

To sum him up in a single glance would be easy, and probably completely wrong.

This Mevek, who called himself a Chuktar, the equivalent of a brigadier general, was quite clearly hard as nails, hard-bitten, hard as old leather. He was strongly built, with a flat, impassive face in which his brown Vallian eyes were deeply set. He looked like his men, save that he wore more ornamentation. Yet I judged that to have accomplished what he had, in raising so many people willing to stand against Layco Jhansi and his mercenaries, he had a spark, a charisma, a touch of that genius Kregans call the yrium. He looked at me carefully. He reminded me by that stare, by his impassivity, of a wild animal in the moments before it leaps.

Then: “Llahal, majister. I will not give you the full incline as all emperors are due. I hear you have banished such flummery.”

“You are right. Llahal.”

“They say the kov who ran off is a friend of yours.”

“You are right and wrong.”

He merely lifted one dark eyebrow.

“Kov Seg Segutorio is a friend of mine. He did not run off.”

“He was not here when—”

“I have heard this before. It is unworthy of you if you wish to prove your friendship. Kov Seg Segutorio was about business for the empire — for the old emperor — and those to whom he confided the care of Falinur failed him. He did not fail them.”

“You fight for your friends—”

I broke in. “This wastes time. The past is dead.” Well, that is not strictly true... “What do you wish to tell me?”

Now he did not exactly lose that coolness, but he reached out and fingered one of the many loops of precious gems encircling his neck and depending on his harness. His eyebrows drew down.

“Perhaps it is you, majister, who has somewhat to tell me.”

I stood up.

“Shilly-shallying, Mevek, is for those who have all the time in the world. I do not. There are mercenaries, reiving rasts, cramphs from Hamal, abroad in Vallia. The people called me to be their emperor and free them from tyranny. That I will do, although I did not seek the task. If you can help me win back Falinur, all well and good. If you are powerless, then we have nothing to say to each other.”

He digested that. Then, as I had suspected he would, he picked out the item that touched him most nearly.

“Powerless? Me? Oh, no, majister, I am not powerless.”

“Do not think these men here can stop me from leaving.” And here I put on a little of the bravado I detest and which, sometimes, serves well. Sometimes it is a disaster. “I do not think you could stop me if you had twice as many men.”

He wiggled those eyebrows of his again, and I came to the conclusion that, impassive as his flat face was, those eyebrows were weather indicators to his state of mind.

“I have been told you are Jak the Drang.”

“Yes.”

“Then I believe you.”

I nodded. “Then we understand each other.” I pulled my riding cloak off and tossed it on the table. I sat down. “I do not think you are powerless. Now, let us Rank our Deldars and see what we can agree.”

At that familiar opening challenge from the famous game of Jikaida, Mevek, nodding in his turn, visibly relaxed. We had sparred. His amour propre had been maintained. Now we could get down to cases.

His story followed the lines I expected. When Jhansi’s mercenary troops deteriorated in quality with the hiring of more and more of them from dubious sources, the country folk began to suffer. That was a normal risk run by any commander who hired mercenaries. The defeats in the south were almost matched by unhappy encounters with the Racters in the north.

The Racters, once the most powerful political party in Vallia, were now penned in the far northwest where a concentration of their estates gave them a base. Jhansi fought them and the battle did not go well.

“What you are saying is now that Jhansi’s fortunes are at a low ebb, you wish to change sides.”

His eyebrows flared.

“No, majister, not so. Many of us have opposed the Kov of Vennar from the moment he crossed our borders.”

“As I am the emperor, you may understand that Layco Jhansi is no longer the Kov of Vennar. His province lies under an interdict. His head is forfeit to the empire. He is a traitor.”

“Just so. But he still runs his kovnate, whether he is kov or not, and he still sends his damned mercenaries to keep us down.”

I said, “You have intelligence of the battles we have won? You know our armies have cleared Vindelka?”

“Aye.”

“Then you must realize that the time will soon come when we will march north, through this very spot, and go on into Falinur and west into Vennar, and Layco Jhansi will swing very high indeed.”

In a low tone, almost surly, he said, “You will need my help.”

“I welcome your help, Mevek. As to needing it — that may be a different matter.”

Vanderini the Dabber, he with the sash and the face like an old boot, stepped up. That face wore a scowl.

“By Vox! But this new emperor has a stiff neck! If I did not hate Jhansi so much, why—”

“There will be a place for you, Vanderini,” I told him, without a smile. “In the new Falinur after we have liberated the province. At least—” And here I judged the time had come to apprise these desperadoes of their new lord. “At least, if the new kov I have appointed listens and approves of you.”

They swung to glare at me on this.

“New kov?” growled out Mevek. “What new kov?”

“Kov Seg Segutorio is about vital business for the empire. He has relinquished Falinur. Your new lord is appointed. He is Kov Turko, whom you will obey in all things.”

Now, as you know, the rights and the law on Kregen regarding titles and property and inheritance are not quite the same as on this Earth. Necessarily, they must differ.

Mevek hoisted his eyebrows. I began to suspect that he was well aware of his eyebrows, and used them on purpose, to fool credulous folk into thinking they could read his mind.

“If this Kov Turko proves himself—”

“He will.”

“Then we will give him the welcome that is his due. But I recall the old kov, Naghan Furtway, and his nephew Jenbar. They had little love for the emperor. Their seed still grows here.”

Perhaps this was the root cause of the disaffection in Falinur. The past is not dead, its tendrils twine and choke the new bright growths...

“You know Naghan Furtway proved a traitor and fled overseas. He is allied with the Empress Thyllis of Hamal, and that mad woman seeks only evil for Vallia. You know.”

“I know.”

“So that Kov Turko will bring a new light and spirit to Falinur. You will see.”

Now, all this time Turko had been standing there silently. I could see him. His face, that handsome Khamorro face, remained impassive. But the muscles in his arms roped and jumped. He would wait just so long for me to fiddle around like this and then, why, then Turko the Shield would start to show these hardy, near-bandit guerrillas that he was their new kov and they’d better get to like it...

Korero the Shield stroked his beard with his upper left hand in a most judicious way. He had kept his two lower arms well inside his cloak, and his tail with its powerful grasping hand was tucked up out of the way, so that he did not look like a diff but could pass as an apim like us. Now he smiled.

“It seems to me we are all agreed, but we cannot reconcile ourselves.” His voice carried that tinge of mockery he knows so well how to intimate; goads to infuriate his listeners.

Mevek almost bit.

“Agree! Of course we agree that Jhansi must be put down, but as for this new kov—” And then he caught himself, and that dull, impassive look settled again on his features.

“Good,” I said brightly. “When do you think the Kov of Falinur should show himself to the people? I do not think he is a man to wait until after the victory.”

“Indeed, no,” put in Korero.

Turko said nothing.

Mevek said, “If he is the kov for us he will lead us in battle. I have Freedom Fighters, in hiding. We lack weapons of quality, but we fight. Send for this new Kov Turko and bid him join us — if he dares!”

Turko opened his mouth. I lifted my hand.

“We will send weapons. Our armies will march north. They will be commanded by Kov Turko of Falinur. You will send word to your people. They will rise. Together, we will sweep Jhansi and his mercenaries back to Vennar. Then...”

I had overlooked a point. Not all the Falinurese felt the same fierce detestation of Jhansi shared by the men in that room.

As Turko looked at me, his head up, his handsome face verging on a scowl — for I sensed he was not completely sure of what I was about — I went on in a heavy voice, for what I had to say did not please me.

“When we beat Jhansi’s men at Ovalia, they were led by a damned Hamalese, a Kapt Hangrol, and by Jhansi’s toady, Malervo Norgoth.”

“Hangrol has gone back to Hamal—”

“Poor devil,” I said, whereat they looked at me strangely. They did not know the kind of punishment the Empress Thyllis handed out to people who failed her.

“And Tarek Malervo Norgoth skulks somewhere in Vennar. He is out of favor, serve the rast up stewed black.”

“We were attacked by hordes of screaming savages — yet they were once ordinary citizens of Vallia. This is sorcery.” I did not miss the flicker of fear in many faces. “This displeases me. Can you contain this? Can you handle these misguided fanatics? Will you succumb to the sorcery of Rovard the Murvish?”

This did not go down at all well.

Many were the protestations, many the oaths, many the knotty fists thumped on tables. But these men had felt the breath of fear. Rovard the Murvish, an initiate in the Brotherhood of the Sorcerers of Murcroinim, an adept of real powers, had almost trapped me in a web of sorcery. Jhansi had a trenchant tool in this sorcerer.

At last Mevek said over the hubbub, “We have seen the misguided men this wizard has spelled. Yes, they fight like crazy animals. But, they may be killed.”

This, then, was the nub of my displeasure.

We talked for a space, with Turko growing more and more tense and showing every symptom of blowing up, quite unlike his usual distant mockery of me. I inquired about various people whose welfare in Falinur obsessed me, including Lol Polisto and his wife Thelda and their child, and learned he was known in this part by reputation; but his guerrilla deeds took place dwaburs away across the hills. The problem of the men under the thrall of thaumaturgy, fighting like maniacs for Jhansi, would have to be faced. When we fought and met them in battle, they would, as Mevek had so crudely said, be slain if we were to free the country.

“At the least,” I said, “you can always smell Rovard the Murvish a bowshot off.”

They ventured hesitant laughs at this. Sorcerers, to the ordinary man, are no joking matter.

A man wearing a fur cap poked his head in the doorway and said, “Nath says there are men skulking about to the north of the village.”

My first thought was that I’d misjudged it badly when I’d tallied Mevek’s band at twenty. He still had outposts.

Mevek jumped up at once.

“That will be that damned rast Macsadu and his foul masichieri.” Masichieri are very low-class mercenaries, barely better than bandits. “He has been scouring the countryside for us. Well, we owe him, and tonight he’ll bite off more than he can chew.”

Vanderini walked quickly to the door, drawing his sword. The others followed, their weapons making a fine show.

Mevek eyed me. “It is best, majister, if you remain here where you will be safe. Macsadu does not know I have more men than usual, more than he expects.”

“No,” I said in a mild voice. “I do not skulk—”

“You are the emperor!” Now Mevek looked astonished, and his eyebrows formed a black bar. “Emperors do not—”

“Jak the Drang does,” I said.

He nodded, convinced at once. He jerked his head at Turko. “The stylor had best hide when the fighting begins.”

Because Turko bore no weapons, Mevek had judged him to be a stylor, outside the scope of fighting men, a stylor being a man who can read and write and as a scribe carries pen and ink and paper instead of sword and spear.

Now Turko’s mouth opened in earnest.

I said, “This Macsadu. I hear he is a by-blow of Jhansi’s.”

“Aye. A vicious man-hunter. He slew his own mother when Jhansi tired of her. Now he extorts taxes and tortures for pleasure. We have a score to settle.”

Turko got out, “I’ll be at your side in the fight, Mevek, and judge how you conduct yourself.”

The guerrilla chief gave Turko a puzzled look, started to say something, changed his mind, said, “Please yourself, stylor. If you are chopped, do not blame me.”

Nath Karidge drew that curved sword of his. “It appears to me, Mevek, that you have been lax in your scouting and have sucked us into a trap. You had no business arranging this meeting if you were being followed.”

Very quickly I stopped the argument. Outside the inn the sudden sounds of combat flowered in the night. Perhaps Mevek had made a mistake; we were in for a fight and that was that.

Somewhat surlily, Mevek said, “I have enough men to thrash that cramph Macsadu, do not fear—”

Vanderini catapulted through the doorway. His old boot of a face bore a huge bloody gash. He was yelling. He twisted and slammed the door, shoving the bar across.

“Scores and scores of the bastards! They’ve tricked us!”

The noise outside faded and then increased. The door bulged. The bar broke. In a smashing welter of splinters fierce armed men thrust through. Their weapons glimmered darkly with blood.

“You stupid onker!” yelled Karidge.

He fairly hurled himself forward, shouting, “Into them before they deploy!”

Korero threw back his enveloping cloak. His four arms raked up and his tail hand curved. Steel glittered.

With a whooping rush the mercenaries charged.

In the next instant a confused and murderous struggle began across the cleanly swept floor of the taproom in the Sign of the Headless Zorcaman.

Chapter two

Of the Disobedience of Nath Karidge

The windows exploded in fountains of splintered wood and patterned glass and struggling men collapsed inward to sprawl, still fighting, over the tables and settles. The guerrillas and the mercenaries hunting them fought madly across the floor.

Korero’s glittering figure swirled like a lightning bolt of destruction.

Nath Karidge, characteristically the first to get in among his foemen, swung his curved sword with precision and gusto.

Naghan the Barrel whipped a stout clanxer, a straight cut and thruster of Vallia, into his adversary and then stiff-armed it about in a horizontal slash that dislodged the Adam’s apple of the next.

Vanderini, swearing horribly and the blood running down his face, cut back into the pressing mass.

Chuktar Mevek, a sword and a dagger swirling, fought madly, as though working out a private grudge eating away his soul.

And I, Dray Prescot, I fought too, seeing that these miserable masichieri sought to kill me and I didn’t have the time to die, not right now, with all I had still to do waiting to be done.

A screaming wretch flew over the battling throng. He turned a complete cartwheel as he whistled though the air. He departed from the taproom through the only window so far unbroken. Wearing the windowpanes like a collar, he vanished.

So I knew Turko the Khamorro was in action.

The fight, for all its shortness, was exceedingly ferocious.

One of the problems with low-class mercenaries is their rapid loss of interest if the day goes against them.

Not for me to judge any man in what he does, unless that happens to be against the well-being of Vallia and he is hauled up before me in my capacity as emperor. I did not condemn, nor even cavil, as the mercenaries, seeing that we were not to be easily plucked, lost interest. By ones and twos, and then a half dozen at a time, they ran out of the shattered doorway. A few hardy souls left were either cut down or persuaded to depart. I noticed that Mevek far preferred to cut them down than let them escape. He had his reasons, I did not doubt.

Some of these dubious fighting men were not apims, not Homo sapiens, being diffs of various races. A Rapa with his wattled neck and vulture head and waving tufts of feathers pressed me and I cut him a little, so that he shrieked and, turning, ran off. A Fristle, his cat face a bristle, spat at Korero, whose arm — one of his arms, the speed made it difficult to see exactly which one of the assemblage — raked out and biffed the Fristle through the gaping window. Korero used the hilt of his sword.

A Brokelsh, coarsely furred and coarse of manner, sought to drive his spear through Mevek’s guts. Mevek was, at the time, hotly engaged with a fellow who tried to bring a cleaver down from the crown of Mevek’s head to the junction of his collarbone.

Mevek dealt with the cleaver fellow just in time, and swung about. He saw what happened.

Turko hove up, twitched the Brokelsh’s spear away, upended him, twirled him as a maid twirls a feather duster in all the old plays and heaved him over the heads of the rest of us out the window. Then, without pausing, Turko slid a long thrust of a sword in the grip of the next mercenary who had delusions of grandeur. The Khamorro grip fastened on the screaming wight and he was twitched up, up and away.

Turko, perfectly balanced, breathing easily, not in the slightest discommoded, looked about for the next one.

Mevek stared at Turko.

The fight was dying. A few more quick flurries, the shriek of a fool who hadn’t the sense to duck, and the masichieri departed.

But the battle was not over yet, and we had not escaped scot free. A number of Mevek’s men sprawled on the floor in their own blood, wounded, dead and dying.

“It seems,” said Mevek, breathing hard and his eyebrows twitching uneasily, “that I owe you my life. And I do not know your name.” Turko smiled.

A commotion outside drew our attention to the open doorway, and once again we grasped our swords ready to beat off a fresh attack. Introductions could wait. Crossing to the door, I peered out cautiously.

The Maiden with the Many Smiles illuminated the crossroads. The shuttered houses remained dark and mysterious. The folk of this village of Infinon of the Crossroads wanted nothing to do with the night’s nefarious doings.

The stink of spilled blood and the tang of dust obliterated the smell of the flowers of the white shansili trailing on its trellis over the door.

A group of riders astride totrixes were bringing their clumsy six-footed steeds up in a rush, and the moon glinted from their lance tips and harness. These were the fellows come to finish the job the masichieri had failed to do. I did not doubt that Jhansi’s illegitimate son, Macsadu the Kroks, rode at their head.

“They mean to finish us off once and for all,” growled Mevek at my shoulder.

“Aye,” panted Vanderini, shoving up with his sword crusted with blood. “But we’ll—”

“Yes, you old wart,” said Mevek, by which I judged there was a comradeship between them.

“We can but fight,” I said. “We would never reach our zorcas in time.”

“And if we could,” said Karidge, stepping out and, surprising me, looking in the opposite direction, “I do not think, majister, you would gallop off.”

“I would, Nath, and thankful to be able.”

His reckless face looked shocked as he swung back.

“But, majister—”

“I have work to do for Vallia, Nath, work such that it would ill betide me to get killed before it is done.”

“Ye-es,” he said. The doubt was alive in him. “I see.”

“No, Nath, you do not see now. But, I think, you will see one day. And, if we get out of this scrape in one piece, soon.”

“Where is this marvel who makes men fly?” bellowed Mevek. “By Vox! I would have him stand at my side in the fight.”

“I am here, Chuktar Mevek,” said Turko, in his silky tones.

“How you manage it, and without naked steel in your fists, passes me. But, by all the names, you are a marvel.”

“Men have said that before, Mevek,” I said. “I am glad to see you share their opinion.”

The totrix riders were now almost on us. They rode knee to knee, in a jingling, ominous trot, and it behooved us to duck back into the inn before they speared us where we stood.

Again Nath Karidge looked away at the crossroads. The intensity of his stance, the piercing stare, gave me to think. So, when the first shafts arched and the steel birds struck in among the totrix riders, I was not surprised.

Zorcamen rode swiftly from the shifting shadows. They bore on in a close, disciplined mass. Archers in front, loosing with the fluent rapidity of experts, lancers following on, they galloped along the road.

The archers fanned out, still shooting, using their nimble zorcas with superb skill. As the zorcabows opened out, so the lancers bored on through in a solid bone-crushing charge. The lance heads with their red and white pennons all came down. The steel heads glimmered cruelly in that wavering light.

When the half-squadron hit, they plunged in like a fist into a tub of butter. In a twinkling the individual combats broke out as the melee swirled along between the shuttered houses. Caught utterly by surprise, thrown into confusion, the totrix men gave no thought to fighting — only to flight.

A trumpet pealed the recall. As one, the lancers disengaged. The archers shot until their targets flitted into the shadows and were lost.

Karidge yelled in his strong voice: “No pursuit, Jiktar Tromo! Form up, emperor’s guard!”

With drilled precision the two half-squadrons swung back and formed at the door of the Sign of the Headless Zorcaman.

“Well — by all the names!” declared Mevek.

His men huddled, gaping at the red and yellow uniforms, the feathers, the furred pelisses. Yes, zorcamen, archers and lancers, make a fine show, by Krun!

Nath Karidge was staring at me in great uncertainty.

Mevek, however, voiced the mutual thoughts first.

“So you brought a bodyguard, emperor, after all.”

“It was necessary,” said Karidge, very firmly, brooking no argument, no recrimination. “The emperor did not order the bodyguard. I did so on my own responsibility.” He looked down, and then up, defiantly. “I disobeyed your orders, majister, and now I accept that I will be sent as a simple trooper, to pay for my crime.”

“You assume I would send you to a cavalry regiment?”

He suddenly looked aghast.

“But — majister—”

Karidge was a zorcaman first, last and all the time.

“I am minded to send you to the Phalanx, to be a brumbyte.” I said brumbyte deliberately, and not soldier, for I wished Karidge to understand the situation.

“Majister...” He spoke in a weak, strangled voice.

“I shall speak to you, Chuktar Karidge, about this later. For now, I thank you for your two half-squadrons. They judged it nicely. Jiktar Tromo? Send him to me later on.”

“Quidang, majister!”

Then it was a matter of clearing up and finalizing what was understood between the guerrillas and myself. I heard Karidge saying to Korero, “In the Phalanx — I admire them, of course — but to trail a pike as a brumbyte! One of your muscled fellows with a vosk-skull helmet and a damned great pike and the view of the fellow in front’s backside! By Vox! I couldn’t bear it!”

“Cheer up, Nath,” Korero advised him. “The emperor has a funny way with him at times.”

“Aye!”

Keeping a straight face, I walked over to Turko and Mevek who were arguing about payment for the damage to the inn.

“These folk have been badly treated,” Mevek was saying, his flat face now filled with passion. “I shall pay for the damage. And then—” and he laughed “—I shall find a damned convoy of Jhansi’s and take from it what he owes.”

“I feel I have a better claim,” said Turko.

“You are then a rich man, you who save my life and refuse to tell me the name of the man to whom I owe it?”

“No, I suppose, if all goes well, I could be rich one day. But wealth does not interest me for itself. It is what may be done with riches — like paying for this damage.”

I said, “Let Mevek pay and take the gold from Jhansi. I like the sound of that.”

“There, you see!” burst out Mevek. His impassivity had quite deserted him. “The emperor speaks sense.”

“I shall return to Vondium now, Mevek. You call yourself a Chuktar?”

The note of interrogation prompted him to a long, circumstantial story about once having served in a mercenary army raised somewhere in Pandahem, and he was a Chuktar by that right as well as being the leader of his guerrilla band.

“Then Chuktar it is, Mevek. An ord Chuktar, I would say.” Ord — Kregish for eight — meant he had only two more steps to go before becoming a Kapt.

“Thank you, majister—”

“And now you serve the new Kov of Falinur, Kov Turko?”

He squinted up at me.

“What has passed cannot alter my decision—”

Turning to Turko the Shield, I said, “Kov, I would like to introduce to you Ord-Chuktar Mevek, a fine fellow and one whom you must watch. Mevek, you have the honor of being presented to Kov Turko of Falinur.”

Well...

I suppose to a tired old cynic this was all childish stuff. I am tired, right enough, even though I recognize tiredness as a mortal sin, and I am cynical enough betimes; yet I viewed this confrontation with a quiet relish. The sight of Mevek’s eyebrows was reward enough.

Turko maintained a marvelous composure, and yet I knew well enough that superior Khamorro was thoroughly enjoying himself. And, with all this fun and games, we had made a significant breakthrough in relations with some of the people of Falinur. Oh, there were many of them who would side with Jhansi, and detest their new kov. But we had to be patient, and do the right things — the right things in our eyes, of course — and eventually demonstrate that we were not bloodsuckers, not slavers, and were seeking the good of all the folk of Falinur.

That was just about impossible, given the tenacious clinging to slavery of many of the masters of Falinur. But I felt strongly that Turko would succeed. He was going to bring a different technique to Falinur from the mild methods of Seg. I might deplore this. But, as the surgeons say, you cannot amputate without losing a little blood.

We left Chuktar Mevek with promises that we would soon return with the army of liberation. At least, Kov Turko would lead that army; I planned to travel to Hyrklana. With the cavalry escort fore and aft, we rode back south as She of the Veils, the fourth moon of Kregen, rose to follow the Maiden with the Many Smiles between the stars.

Chapter three

In Which Nath Nazabhan, Kapt of the Phalanx, Is at Last Named

“A sorcerer was reported sniffing around one of the university buildings.”

“Ortyg Voinderam has absconded with the Lady Fransha, and her father, the Lord of Mavindeul, having recovered from a fit occasioned by his paroxysm of rage, vows vengeance, and his agents have been seen in Drak’s City.”

“Filemon, the shoe contractor, has defaulted on payment for a thousand hides.”

“An outbreak of horn rot is reported in the zorcas of Thoth Valaha.”

“It is reported that an idol of Mev-ira-Halviren opened its eyes and spoke, since when a multitude of the credulous flock to the temple of this outmoded religion, and the priests wax fat.”

“A Hamalese spy has been apprehended in Delphond and is being brought to Vondium in chains.”

“It is reliably reported that...”

“The latest situation appreciations show that...”

“What are your orders concerning...”

And so on and so on...

The motives of anyone who takes on the job of putting a country back together again after seasons of unrest and destruction surely need very close scrutiny.

While the process of reconstruction is going on there is little time if any for introspection. It is all work, work and more work, from long before the twin Suns of Scorpio rise to long after they set. All the same, despite the constant crushing work load, doubts must creep in. Self-analysis is probably engendered by the pressures and fatigue. And then, as they say in Balintol, you’ll forget which hand to use and stand there, motionless, like a cartwheel.

Enevon Ob-Eye, my chief stylor, had recruited a large and growing bureau to handle the paperwork.

Every death warrant was seen by me, personally, and in many cases with discussions with the magistrates concerned to delve deeper into the matter, the sentences were commuted to lesser punishments. This damned Hamalese spy, for instance...

“Hang him,” said Nath Nazabhan, the fierceness of his words matched by the anger he felt against the enemies of his country. “Hang him from the highest branch in all Vondium.”

I sipped the wine, for it was evening and the lights had been brought in and the curtains closed. My small workroom with the books and charts, the arms rack, enclosed us. The wine was superb — Vela’s Tears from Valka — and I swallowed down, keeping Nath waiting before replying.

Then: “Nath. It is high time this vexed question of your name was settled.”

“You will not hang this Hamalese spy?”

“Probably not. If you ask him which he prefers, to be hanged by us or sent back to the Empress Thyllis, what do you think he will reply?”

Nath’s face creased. “So we hang him?” He could see the funny side of that. “Because it is more tender?”

“He might be won over. At least, we must make the attempt. Naghan Vanki will earn his keep as the chief spymaster in this.”

“I am privileged to command the Phalanx. We are the most powerful fighting force Vallia possesses. I leave spies and darkness of that kind to Vanki’s faceless minions.”

“And, Nath, that is the problem. Your father’s rank of Nazab gives you the right to call yourself Nazabhan. We have talked on this. You are the Kapt of the Phalanx. I have warned you often enough that the Phalanx is vulnerable—”

“And have we not overturned all who came against us?”

“Yes, yes. We have done well together. And you keep shying away from this business of your name.”

Enevon Ob-Eye rustled papers at the side of my desk where he had brought in the latest reports. A small folding stool allowed him to sit down to the job. His own offices were large and crammed with people and files and papers.

“If I may speak for Nath, majis? He wishes to remain in the Imperial service, with your blessing, as a Justicar governing a province or city. He has no ambitions to be ennobled in the main ranks of the peerage — at least—” and here Enevon squinted his one eye up— “that is how I read the situation.”

“That is so, Enevon.” Nath spoke crisply.

I said, “You know that at any time you wish you may be appointed Justicar to govern the city or province of your choice. The imperial provinces around Vondium are in our hands once more, and arrangements can be made that will not unduly upset the incumbents.” Nath Nazabhan was a good comrade, a fine man, who led the Phalanx and who was devoted to that immense cutting instrument of war, as the brumbytes within the ranks were devoted to him. So, I added, “You’d have to leave the Phalanx, of course.”

“That, I am not prepared to do.”

Enevon closed his eye. I leaned back and sipped the wine.

“So, as you are set in your ways, Nath, and it is necessary that you be rewarded—”

“It is not necessary, majister!”

“Oh, but, Nath, it is.”

Nath, as a superb example of the splendid young fighting men who had fought shoulder to shoulder to liberate Vallia and stave off the attacks of the predators feasting on the prostrate empire, a blade comrade, a man of unquestioned loyalty, Nath must be seen to shine in that galaxy of gallants who had stepped forth to save Vallia in her Time of Troubles.

“You remember the Battle of Kochwold, Nath?”

“Who can ever forget it?”

“We had three Phalanxes there. It was a famous victory.”

“Aye.”

“It appears to me that Nath na Kochwold has a ring.”^[1]

“Majister?”

Enevon rustled more papers and pulled out a large sheet much embellished with fine writing and scrollwork. He placed this down before me and then fussed in his meticulous way with the sealing equipment. I looked steadily at Nath.

“Kyr Nath! No more shilly-shallying. Your rank will be formally announced when the lists are promulgated. You are Nath na Kochwold.” Then, and I hoped in no testy way, I added, “There are so many Naths on Kregen you have to accept the needle in this.” And I signed and sealed the patent.

Nath opened his mouth, shut it, opened it again and his lower jaw moved sideways before he spoke.

“And I keep the Phalanx?”

I nodded.

“Then, majister, I thank you. By Vox! I shall have no difficulty in remembering my name!”

The feeling of relief I experienced in having pushed that problem to a solution lasted for some time as we worked on. But, inevitably, more problems came crowding in and the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel remained obscured. Mind you, to call rewarding Nath — or anyone of the people who labored so hard for Vallia — a problem is to be foolish. It was just Nath’s insistence on remaining with the Phalanx that prevented my using him in a wider capacity for which he was perfectly suited.

Plans for Turko to march northward to Falinur pushed ahead. An army had to be collected. It had to be equipped and fed. And, at the same time, the rest of the territories regained in the island had to be protected.

Two new plants for processing the bumper crop of mergem we had been blessed with this season had just reached completion. Mergem, a leguminous plant, when dried may be stored for long periods and then reconstituted. It is rich in protein, vitamins and minerals, with trace elements — although at the time I knew nothing of them, by Vox! — and has seen many a beleaguered city safely through a siege. With little persuasion from me, the Presidio, to whom I was delegating more and more responsibility, had ordered the planting of vast areas of mergem. These two new processing facilities would give an even larger return than the traditional methods of grinding and drying in the suns light. Now we could use not only the pods, but the stalks as well.

And, as all good Kregans know, you can flavor your reconstituted mergem with all manner of tasty fruit juices.

Delia burst into my room as I shoved the mergem file away. She looked marvelous, rosy of face, brilliant of eye, quivering with passion.

“Dray! You sit here! What are you about? Why haven’t you done something?”

I stood up. I think — I am not sure — Enevon killed a smile. I searched for meaning, and for words.

“Come on, Dray! We can’t just do nothing! We must hurry!”

“Yes,” I said. And I tried to put a snap, a ring of decision into my voice. “We must act!”

“At once!”

“Of course...”

Now my Delia is the most wonderful person in two worlds. That goes without saying, although I have said it, will say it and continue to say it. But, all the same — what in the frozen wastes of the Ice Floes of Sicce was she talking about now? By Zim-Zair! It was enough to make a plain old fellow like me jump up and down on his hat.

And here came Jilian, recovered of her wounds, roaring into my little study, shouting that we must hurry. Jilian with her black leathers and her pale face with those dark brilliant eyes brought a heady wash of action wherever she went. Jilian, with her whip and her claw.

“Don’t just stand there, Jak!” she called.

Delia said, “Oh, you have to take a two-handed sword to stir him up when he gets like this. Come on, Dray!”

I swallowed. Venturing all, I said in a voice that was little more than a husky croak, “Where to?”

Both women — both gorgeously beautiful women — stared at me as though I was bereft of my senses.

“Well, I don’t know!” said Jilian.

“I’ve no idea,” said Delia. “But we must hurry!”

Now I shut my mouth most firmly. I put both hands flat on the desk. I closed my eyes.

Enevon coughed. “I think, majis, this matter touches the business of Ortyg Voinderam—”

“An imbecile I’ll sink my claw into if—” began Jilian.

Now I grasped what was going on — well, some of it. Ortyg Voinderam had eloped with the Lady Fransha, and Delia as Empress of Vallia no doubt knew far more about the affair than anyone could guess. From this knowledge I judged that young idiot Voinderam had not obtained an opinion from the empress. Delia would not interfere in matters of the heart. But, as she was the empress, these were matters that were of concern to her.

After all, in the mating of noble houses coalitions formed and business was transacted and heads could be parted from shoulders.

I ventured again, attempting to sound as though I was fully apprised of the situation. “So no one knows where Ortyg has gone?”

“Where he has taken poor Fransha!”

“Now, Jilian,” I said in my reasonable voice. “Perhaps she went willingly. Perhaps they are in love—”

“Of course they’re in love! That’s why she went! And that’s why we have to get her back!”

I shook my head. I reached for the glass of Vela’s Tears. I sipped the strong red wine that comes from Southern Valka. I was all at sea again. These women...!

A kind of brain wave occurred to me then, and I spoke up with a firmer voice. “Call all the members of both households. Call all our chamberlains. Contact Naghan Vanki. Order a fast voller. Saddle a dozen zorcas and two dozen totrixes. Have the Emperor’s Sword Watch stand to arms — No.” I felt I’d gone far enough. I didn’t want the Emperor’s Sword Watch given unnecessary burdens, turned out of barracks at all hours, their training program interrupted. “No, cancel that last order.”

Delia saw through all that nonsense on the instant.

“You may think it all very funny, Dray. But it is serious. Ortyg and Fransha are passionately in love and the match is generally regarded with great favor—”

“Well, why—?”

“Because if they run off like this the families will never agree, old Larghos of Mavindeul, Fransha’s father, will turn against Ortyg Voinderam and make his daughter wed that Fridil Goss. Then you know what will happen.”

I did. My old antagonist, Natyzha Famphreon, with the wizened face and lush body would rub her hands with glee when she heard the news. She was a leading member of the Racter party, once the most powerful political force in Vallia, able to dictate to the emperors, and now sadly fallen away and confined to their locus of discontent in the northwest. After Turko had regained Falinur we had to deal with Layco Jhansi who fought the damned Racters to the north of him. Many men expressed the pious hope that they’d kill each other off before we had to march against them.

I looked down at the cluttered desk. A paper protruded from a file — a thin file, just opened — and on the paper two names were written out fairly. Weg Wegashtorio. Nath Karidge. The next file concerned the state of our airboats. We could buy none from Hamal, seeing Hamal was at this time our mortal enemy. We could not manufacture airboats ourselves, only our flying sailing ships. Embassies had gone down south into the Dawn Lands in the hope of buying fliers. I had to go to Hyrklana not just to find our friends; making deals to buy fliers was also on the agenda there. I sighed.

All these pressing problems of empire, and I was being entwined in the passions of lovers. A world might shiver and shake and empires totter and fall, but two foolish young people in love must take precedence.

Well, there is a justice in that, I suppose...

The other three people in my study were well aware of the network of agents — spies — I had set up distinct from the empire’s chief spymaster, Naghan Vanki, and his organization. Enevon had been an active participant in our plans.

So now Delia could burst out hotly, “We have worked hard up there in Mavindeul. The stromnate is ready to declare for us if they are guaranteed support. And old Larghos has no love for Natyzha, despite he holds his stromnate at her hands.”

A strom, the equivalent of an Earthly count, has certain powers. We had promised to make Larghos, Strom of Mavindeul, a strom in his own right with his own province if he threw in with us. The marriage of his daughter Fransha was a part of this, for young Ortyg Voinderam was the son of the Vad of Khovala, and Khovala’s southwestern border marched with that of Mavindeul. If everyone agreed, Mavindeul would rise, Khovala would march and we would send troops across the Great River to join in the attack from the imperial province of Thermin, whose governor just happened to be the father of Nath of Kochwold. It all fit perfectly.

And now passions could not wait, and the couple had eloped.

Enevon coughed. “If the Lady Fransha is married off to Fridil Goss, a puppet of Natyzha Famphreon’s, Mavindeul will not dare declare for us, for they will get no support from Khovala.”

“I suppose,” I said in a vague way, “Khovala will not support, anyway, seeing their vad’s son has the girl he wants?”

“It will not rest with them. Mavindeul holds the key.”

A vad is the rank of nobility below a kov, which roughly equates with a duke, and a vad is very high on the tree of rank and power and prestige. Old Antar Voinderam wasn’t going to stick his neck out for nothing, and nothing would be all he would get if he tried to march against Natyzha Famphreon without the support of Mavindeul. Rather — he would get something — a great many dead soldiers in his forces.

The situation was perfectly simple. It was not at all complicated. After all, this was just the kind of problem your real emperor would tackle and solve twice a day before breakfast.

But — I wasn’t a real emperor — at least, not in my own eyes. I was just plain Dray Prescot, tackling a colossal task with all the wits and cunning I may be blessed with. The sooner I could wrap up this business of liberating the Empire of Vallia and hand the lot over to my son Drak in working order, the better.

By Zair, yes!

And together with that, there was no denying the fascination of handling these problems. How did you perform the balancing act necessary to gain your ends? How did you please everybody? Well, that can’t be done, of course. There is a pull, a dark tide in men, that urges them to meddle with the lives and destinies of other people. We felt that we were acting for the right reasons in attempting to free Vallia from the hordes of mercenaries and slavers who had descended on the islands in the Time of Troubles. We believed that these people gathered together under the new flag of Vallia. The moment I suspected the tiniest suggestion of corrupting power — I’d be off, by Vox, off and away and out of it.

It is not necessarily true that absolute power corrupts; it does do so, lamentably, but it is not a rule that it must.

Anyway — how many men-in history have possessed real, true, genuine absolute power? Perhaps it is having only the illusion of absolute power that corrupts. I did know that the passions of young lovers were, if not more important than, at least certainly as important as, the devious political maneuvers we were forced to in our struggle to clean up the mess in Vallia.

Rather heavily, I said, “Send everyone suitable to try to trace Ortyg and Fransha. We can hope they have left a trail. I’ll go and see Antar Voinderam if he is still at his villa here. And I shall try to catch Fransha’s father, Larghos, before he departs.”

I closed the next file on the desk. It concerned the Opaz-forsaken zorca horn rot, a frightful business.

“I don’t like the idea of Larghos sending to Drak’s City to hire assassins.”

Chapter four

Concerning the Power of Phu-si-Yantong

“See to it, Vanki,” I said to the empire’s chief spymaster.

“Yes, majister.”

His flat and chilling voice was just the same after all this time. His face, pale, composed, held that containment of himself, that inscrutable knowingness, that perhaps he did not realize revealed so much. This was a man who lived in the shadows and was of the darkness. And in contact with people in the everyday run of rubbing elbows they would regard him and know that this man lived within himself. He had proved a master of his trade. Also, and for this I forgave him much, including his part in dumping me under a thorn ivy bush in the Hostile Territories, he was devoted to Delia.

Anyone who tries to run a country, even a ramshackle kind of place as Vallia then was, cannot do it all alone.

You have to learn to delegate.

“And remember, the welfare and happiness of Ortyg and Fransha are more important than a possible advantage on the fringe of Racterland.”

Naghan Vanki still wore his trim black and silver clothes, cut in the latest fashion and inconspicuous. Black and white are the Racter colors. He moved his hand over the papers on his desk, the same kind of damned papers that cluttered my desk.

“Once I thought the Racters held the chief hope for the country. Events have altered my appreciation.”

With a quick look at his clepsydra — the time was flying by! — I turned to leave. “If Mavindeul does not throw in with us and rise, we’ll soon be in a position to attack the Racters from the south, anyway, as soon as Kov Turko has cleared his Falinur.”

“My sources inform me that Antar Voinderam will not risk an attack on the dowager Kovneva of Falkerdrin until he is assured of success.” Had Naghan Vanki been in the habit of smiling, or of allowing any expression on that chilling face of his, now he might have smiled. Old Natyzha Famphreon, the dowager Kovneva of Falkerdrin, was a holy terror. No one — but no one — could ever be assured of success against her until she was battened down and on her way to the Ice Floes of Sicce.

“We’ll do our best to accommodate him.” I opened the door, and then thought that Vanki might profit from a little jolt. “You know there is zorca horn rot in Thoth Valaha. We are going to be short of saddle animals if we’re not careful. I want a full report of our negotiations with the countries in the Dawn Lands we have approached to purchase airboats.”

Vanki said, just a little quickly, “We continue to try in the Dawn Lands, majister.” Then he halted himself, about to say something and checking himself. Oddly, I had the clear impression that he knew something, had thought I knew, and had suddenly realized that I did not know.

“Yes?”

He was very smooth. “I will have the report on your desk before the suns rise.”

It would have been childish of me to have said, “In triplicate!” as I almost did. We were operating on a level a little above that kind of pettiness.

“We desperately need vollers,” I said. Vanki, like most Vallians, called airboats fliers. Voller was the Havilfarese name, coming from the places where they were built. “And we need saddle and draught animals. I shall be going to Hyrklana as soon as I can shed some of this work load. Not that we will get much joy out of fat Queen Fahia. But we must have transport!”

He saw that I was seized by the urgency of this problem. It was vital to the continuing struggle.

“Much of the mergem crop has been planted where the forests were cut down for the sailing ships of the sky.”

“We’ll just have to forage wider for lumber.”

“Yes, majister.”

About to burst out, as the old intemperate Dray Prescot would certainly have done, I held my tongue. Spymasters may become two-edged weapons. If that happened Vallia would be in for much bloodshed before we righted the ship of state, so to speak. He watched me with that calm stare as I went out. Our parting remberees were polite, that was all.

But, for all that, Naghan Vanki was an invaluable servant to Vallia.

* * * *

The urgency of everything was enough to drive a man wild with baffled impatience.

Both Antar Voinderam, Ortyg’s father, and Larghos Eventer, Fransha’s father, had left the city before I could contact them. Messengers were on their trail. After seeing Vanki, there was one more man I would see, perhaps in this case as in so many others, the most important man of all.

Riding back through the nighted streets of Vondium, passing ruins still sprawled in ugly decay but bright with wild flowers, grim and yet glowing reminders of the Time of Troubles, I relished the scent of moon blooms. She of the Veils sailed the sky above. Her fuzzy golden and rosy glow illuminated buildings and avenues, glimmered molten on the still waters of the canals. Truly, even half in ruins, Vondium was still the beautiful city, proud in her beauty.

At my back rode the duty squadron of the Sword Watch.

Formed out of loyalty to the emperor, formed at the beginning by my blade comrades without my knowledge to protect me against the cunning and viciousness of assassins, the Emperor’s Sword Watch kept guard. This was a squadron from 2ESW, for 1ESW was away up north with my son Drak. With him, also, was the Emperor’s Yellow Jackets, 1EYJ, helping to finalize our campaigns up there against the clansmen. With them were Seg Segutorio and Inch, and I hungered to see my blade comrades again and talk and carouse and sing and generally forget that I was supposed to be a puissant emperor.

The two second moons of Kregen, the Twins eternally orbiting each other, lifted over the serrated rooftops, and the night brightened with a confusing crisscross pattern of pinkish shadows.

On such a night assassins might stalk abroad. I would have to go and see the Hyr Stikitche in Drak’s City, the haunt of thieves and vagabonds and assassins, and see what he would tell me of Larghos Eventer’s doings. Not damned much, for old Nath the Knife, the Aleygyn of the Stikitches, was touchy concerning the honor of assassins.

All the same, he had sent many of his fine young men to serve with 1EYJ, and they had fought passing well.

These thoughts as we hurried along brought up the business interrupted by this passionate elopement. The stray thought did occur to me of that horrendous time when Delia had, by mischance, been abducted. “Shades of the Lady Merle and Vangar Riurik,” I said to myself. Well, that affair had turned out all right in the end, and I hoped that this one would as well.

Despite the urgency of our ride, the beauty of moons-drenched Vondium, half in ruins, could not fail to stir me. If working for mere artifacts of brick and stone is not simple foolishness, it was in my mind to believe we did right to struggle for the well-being of this city.

New schools had not only to be equipped and staffed and funded, they had to be built...

* * * *

A flurry of alarm shook a patrol of the Sword Watch forward, their zorcas running with upflung horns as they passed me, grim-faced men surging up to ride knee-to-knee in a compact body around Shadow, my beautiful black zorca. The staccato crack of hooves, the creak of leather and clink of harness, were punctuated by brief shouts, of interrogation and answer, as the forward patrol sorted out the pother.

Jiktar Rodan had the command of the duty squadron this night. His iron-hard face beneath the brim of his helmet looked like a mere mask, carved as one with the helmet itself.

Shadow slackened speed. Rodan rode level with me. Swords glimmered in the light of the moons. Up ahead the shouts lifted.

A zorcaman came hurdling back, pelisse and feathers and plumes flying. He bellowed it out.

“A party of drunks, Jik! Shall we round ’em up?”

Rodan looked annoyed. He had quite clearly mentally braced himself to meet a savage attack upon the person of the emperor he was sworn to preserve with his own life if necessary, and all it was was a parcel of drunks. Yes, one could sympathize with Jiktar Rodan.

He started to say, “Round ’em up—” and no doubt would have gone on to order them thrown into the nearest dungeon and forgotten.

I said, “Who are they?”

The zorcaman bellowed, “Citizens, majister!”

“Then let them fall into the gutter and sleep quietly, we have urgent business ahead of us tonight.”

“Quidang, majister!”

Jiktar Rodan looked across at me before he fell back into his position at the head of the duty squadron. He took a breath. We had seen action together. He had taken wounds.

“Yes, I know, Rodan. I am too soft with them.”

“Yes, majister.” These old hands, training up the youngsters, soldiers who had served with me for seasons, know how and when to take liberties with the emperor — not that they were regarded as liberties by me. We all did our jobs for Vallia and that was what counted. He went on, shaking his head, “We need to put a little backbone into them, by Vox!”

I forbore to ask if he meant his youngsters or the party of drunken citizens.

Certainly, the reaction of the duty squadron had been prompt and sharp, and had there been real trouble ahead then these lads of 2ESW would have nipped it in the bud.

Ortyg Voinderam, who had run off with his Lady Fransha because he couldn’t wait for the legal bokkertu to be concluded, might benefit by a season or two of being trained up by crusty old vikatus like Jiktar Rodan. Vikatu the Dodger, the archetype of the old soldier, the old sweat, can teach lessons to civilians as well as the swods in the ranks...

When I dismounted in a convenient inner courtyard of the imperial palace — convenient because it hadn’t been burned down or knocked to pieces — Rosala, one of Delia’s handmaids, was talking to a soldier in the half-shadows of an archway.

I heard her say in a teasing voice, “And here is the emperor now, you famous jurukker, and I must fly!”

She danced across the flags toward me.

Delia knows how to look after her people. Rosala called the soldier a jurukker, that is to say guardsman, and I, perforce, had accepted this nomenclature. I will not belabor the point about my ambivalent attitudes to bodyguards and the like. They have their uses. And the men forming a juruk — a guard — are the important part of the structure for me.

“Majis!” said Rosala, pert, half laughing. “The empress bid me tell you she has gone with the Lady Jilian. She hopes to be back late tomorrow.”

Throwing Shadow’s reins to the groom who hurried up, and with a pat for the zorca’s gleaming black neck and a word or two for the groom, Yando the Limp, for he had taken a wound at the Battle of Kochwold, I went into the palace. Rosala lingered.

“Do not suborn that soldier from his duty, Rosala...”

She knew I teased her.

“Majister!” Her eyes, her lips, her hair, all looked magnificent in the light of the moons. “He stands guard like a famous juruk, like the best soldier in the Sword Watch. Do you think he would desert his post for me?”

I did not answer. Truth to tell, as I went into the palace in search of Khe-Hi-Bjanching, I realized that any soldier with any sense — anyone without commitments — would desert his post for a girl like Rosala. But she was handmaid to the Empress of Vallia. She was, besides being a girl of remarkable beauty, a girl of immense common sense. She knew the dangers thronging around an imperial palace on Kregen.

And the news she brought that Delia had gone off meant, I judged, that Delia and Jilian were going their own way about finding the Lady Fransha.

Now I am well aware that I am a crusty old curmudgeon who takes delight in foolish notions that appall the more sober-minded, plain Dray Prescot with the weight of an empire in ruins hanging on my shoulders. Yet, I think, and I truly believe, that I was genuinely more concerned for the safety and happiness of Ortyg and Fransha than I was for the political maneuverings surrounding their match. So, as I found Khe-Hi-Bjanching wide awake in the chambers given over to the Wizard of Loh, I felt the leap of gratitude to him and hope that all might yet be well.

“Majister,” he greeted me. “I have been trying — but so far my powers fail me.”

All my sudden hope vanished like thistledown.

The chamber was illuminated in the mellow glow of samphron oil lamps and was filled with comfortable furnishings. There was nothing of the tawdry bric-a-brac of the common sorcerer here. Wizards of Loh, the most famed and feared thaumaturges of Kregen, as far as I then knew, needed no gimcrack trappings of skulls and bats blood and reptile inner parts and pickled dragons.

“You have been into lupu, Khe-Hi?”

“Yes. I sent my powers out and found nothing. It was strange. Ortyg Voinderam is no sorcerer of any kind, surely?”

“No. Not as far as I know.”

I felt the chill. If another sorcerer were at work here, preventing Bjanching from discovering the whereabouts of the runaways by means of his kharrna which gave him the power of observing events at a distance, then that other wizard might be the wizard...

Bjanching saw all that on my face.

“If Phu-si-Yantong is interfering here...”

“Sink me!” I burst out. “I’ll have that devil’s tripes one of these fine days. He is a maniac and although I have searched for some I have failed to find goodness in him yet.”

“I do not know anyone who would say he was capable of an ounce of goodness—”

“Well,” I grumped, “I suppose he must have some redeeming features. If we could discover what they were perhaps we might talk to him—” I looked at Bjanching. “Have you contacted Deb-Lu-Quienyin?”

“I was about to do that when you arrived, majister.”

Deb-Lu-Quienyin, with whom I had been through a fraught time or two, had remained with Drak and my friends in the north where I fancied he would be of inestimable value to them. He was just about the most powerful Wizard of Loh there was — always excepting that crazed power-mad devil Phu-si-Yantong.

Even though I had spent much time in company with Quienyin and Bjanching, and had seen Wizards of Loh performing their mysteries, I, like anyone else on Kregen, could never fully feel at ease as they set about their arcane rituals.

Khe-Hi-Bjanching wore a severe robe of a lustrous black. No runes or magical symbols sullied his vestments, and the pallor of his face and the fiery red Lohvian hair seemed, by contrast, all the more striking. As a young — or relatively young — Wizard of Loh, Bjanching might have been excused displays of thaumaturgical fashion. He disdained them. He was able to exert his power and go into lupu — that strange, half-trance state in which his kharrna extended and gave him pictures of people and events many miles away — without fuss and without many of the physical preparations of other Wizards of Loh I had known.

Waiting as Khe-Hi-Bjanching prepared himself, calmed his whole body and psyche, began to infiltrate the tendrils of his power into those arcane other worlds no mortal might tread with impunity, I found my sense of screaming impatience easing. This would take time, and time I did not have, yet I could wait quietly.

Bjanching’s eyes rolled up until, in the moment before he placed his palms over them, his eyes glared forth sightlessly in white blankness. The waiting was mercifully short. The Wizard of Loh’s breathing lengthened and drew out, softer and softer, shallower and shallower, until it seemed he did not breathe at all. The chambers gave no sound. We were two primeval spirits, isolated in the great mysteries.

Then — Bjanching lowered his hands.

He stared at me, and in his face that knowing look told me he had broken through.

I leaned forward eagerly. “Quienyin?”

No answer.

“San?” I gave the Wizard of Loh the honorific of dominie, or sage, and I breathed in a deep draught of the close air.

“Majister—” The voice was Bjanching’s. “San Quienyin is there, on the periphery, and he is trying to make contact with me. But...”

I put my teeth into my lip.

For a long space the two wizards sought to reach each other through that timeless, formless, unknowable hinterland of the occult. Sweat began to roll down Bjanching’s face. Abruptly, he jumped up, his black gown swirling. He took three faltering steps, beginning to spin around in that dervish-like whirling by which some wizards summon their powers. Instead of going on with the rituals that had been unnecessary for him for so long, he tottered and collapsed into his high-backed chair.

He looked at me, and that look of knowingness had fled.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Majister — Quienyin and I were separated, as by a barrier of enormous force. This is new. We must work and investigate and—”

“Yes, yes. Tell me!”

“We cannot discern a single thing concerning the whereabouts of Voinderam and the Lady Fransha.”

“Now the devil take it!” I said, and I swore.

“But, majister — do you not see?”

“I see, San, I see very well. Phu-si-Yantong—”

“Yes! That arch devil has interdicted our powers, and that means he has achieved a recrudescence of power taking him into an altogether new plane. I think, majister, I believe, we are in for a fight passing anything that has gone before.”

“And it’s a fight you must win, or all Vallia is doomed.”

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