Chapter seventeen

Emperor’s Yellow Jackets

The captain and first lieutenant of the argenter had been killed in an accident, and this in part accounted for her doomed course of destruction toward the rocks. Most of the crew were Hobolings who are among the finest of topmen. These and the other deckhands had no part of our fight. I did not inquire how the arrangements for the passage had been made. We agreed to leave these folk on the island and see to it that they were repatriated.

Ashore, we busied ourselves scrubbing off the mud. The ship broke apart slowly. I marked the spot. On a more auspicious occasion I’d return here and see if I could salvage those silver boxes from the sunken voller.

Boxes and bales and barrels floated ashore, mingled with the sad detritus of a destroyed ship. There were many fat bales of a good quality cloth, all of that bright, strong, yellow color called tromp. There was food, also, that was not contaminated by sea water and we soon had fires going and tea brewing and food sizzling. To clothe our nakedness we cut up squares of the tromp cloth and made holes and so put them over our heads. We cinched our belts tight, and we looked a fine rousing rabble under the suns. Some few remnants of the paktuns’ original clothes drifted ashore, and a few pairs of boots. But, in general, we were a band of yellow brigands to all intents as we set off. The old emperor, Delia’s father, had always liked the wines from Wenhartdrin. We marched on and soon passed signs of viticulture, most of it blackened and ruined. Houses had burned. We saw no one for some time until, reaching a tumbledown village, we found a few poor people who told us the news. This was simple. Strom Rosil Yasi, being a damned Kataki and therefore by nature a slavemaster, was more interested in human merchandise. These folk were left free and alive because they were too ill, too weak, or could till just enough land to provide food for the conquering invaders. Well, by Zair, we sorted out that local problem.

The band of yellow-clad comrades fought like men possessed. As we progressed into the island and saw the evidences of what being occupied meant, they grew hard and fierce even above all their mercenary habits. We found the aragorn, slavers who occupy an area and from a strong point terrorize and suck dry everything of value, and we slew them in battle and drove them into the sea. Wenhartdrin is not above fifteen dwaburs long and ten wide, shaped rather like two triangles apex to apex. We discovered that Strom Rosil Yasi, known as the Kataki Strom, had left but two squadrons of cavalry and a half regiment of infantry to hold the island. These men were all mercenaries of various races. Military organization varies from country to country on Kregen, that stands to reason; but hereabouts the regiment of infantry very often consisted of six pastangs of eighty or so men each, giving four eighty men to a regiment. So there were around two hundred to two hundred and forty mercenaries swanning about Wenhartdrin that we had to deal with. Cavalry regiments varied more widely in numbers and composition and we had seen off one squadron on the beach and the second squadron, some hundred or so, we caught in a pretty little ambush along a defile crowded with tufa trees. By this time a portion of our force was mounted; but what with sickness and casualties, we now numbered not much more than a hundred and seventy-five or so.

We had shaken out into a loose organization, all wearing those tromp-colored uniforms which, gradually and against all expectations, smartened up and grew into proper uniforms. Larghos the Sko-handed commanded a group of expert staff-slingers. Drill the Eye commanded his bowmen — they used the compound reflex bow, not the great Lohvian longbow. The bulk of the force consisted of swordsmen, many of them sword and shield men, churgurs, and these were handled by Clardo the Clis. Although these people had gathered together relatively recently to return to Vallia, many of them had served as groups in one war or another, and in general their names and reputations were known among themselves. On the evening when we knew on the morrow we would have to go up against that half regiment, I stood talking quietly to Torn Tomor. The campfires burned and the viands sizzled and the wine passed around companionably. We talked of his parents, Tom Tomor ti Vulheim, the Elten of Avanar and his wife, Bibi, who were comrades of the Strom of Valka and Elders of the high assembly of Valka.

“And you will wear the orange of the high assembly in due course, Torn,” I said. “Be very sure of that.”

“Before that, majister, I will serve in the Strom’s Sacred Life Guard.”

He saw my instinctive frown, a twist of irritation to my lips I could not halt. I have mentioned before my equivocal feelings regarding these bodyguards. When we had been clearing out the island of Valka, before I was fetched to be the strom — which is grandly recorded in the famous song “The Fetching of Drak na Valka” — they had put together a devoted band of blade comrades to stand watch and ward over my person, in battle and camp and wherever the blade of an assassin might strike. They had served nobly, even though I had still managed to find a few adventures on my own account, as you have heard. As I struggled to find the right words, a man passed us. He was, as I thought, talking to himself. Torn Tomor glanced across. The fellow’s head was turned to his left shoulder and his right hand gestured vehemently as though he spoke to someone who walked at his side. He was a swordsman, with thick brown mustachios and that swagger of your true hyrpaktun.

“Oh,” said Torn, “that’s old Frandor the Altrak.”

“He looks—” I began cautiously.

“Don’t bother your head about old Frandor. He lost his twin brother in a battle seasons ago and still fancies he is with him. He talks to him all the time. Watch him at meals. He takes a phantom plate and fills it with phantom food and offers it to his brother — who lies moldering somewhere in Loh, and his ib is wandering the Ice Floes of Sicce seeking the sunny uplands beyond.”

“He is not makib,” I said. I guessed Frandor was not insane. He just had one of those little funny habits fighting men are prone to.

Many of the most renowned of fighting men had peculiarities that would, on this Earth, have landed them in lunatic asylums. Nath the Flimcop, when his name was shouted out at roll call, would answer with a roar: “Gone fishing!” No punishments could break him of the habit; and now that he was a paktun he could get away with that very mild example of irrational behavior. Some of the near nut cases among seasoned fighting men would shrivel your hair. Naghan the Thumb collected the right thumbs of those he defeated and he wore a belt of the shriveled things around his waist. He had swum ashore with the thumb belt. It had grown considerably since, and he was debating how best to loop it up into a double thickness.

Talk of the Strom’s Sacred Life Guard — Torn had said En Luxis Bliem Juruk, and Sacred Life Guard is a near enough translation. Kregish is particularly rich as a language, filled with colorful words. Bliem, for life, is merely one word, and the one chosen here. These fellows had fought well and loyally and I had thought the Praetorian Guard, the Imperial Guard, idea had died when I became emperor. But then, as you know, the Sword Watch had been formed. So, what with Frandor the Altrak wandering past carrying on an animated conversation with his dead twin, I was spared the embarrassment of stumbling out some words or other to Torn about my feelings on bodyguards.

And, by Vox! Bodyguards are a delightful invention when some of the cramphs trying to kill me on Kregen take action!

On the next day my seasoned veterans caught that half regiment and tumbled the three pastangs into bloody ruin. When it was all over and we turned over the loot, as all good paktuns do, sharing one with another, we were able to outfit our whole little force with armor. And, over the armor, these men wore their old yellow homemade jackets, still.

On the way back to our camp our outriders spotted a flier cruising over the island. Instantly we all faded into the bushes. Down here any air-service boats were operated by adherents of Strom Rosil. Peering up through the leaves, I studied the craft as she flitted past. She was a very small single-place job, and no doubt before the Time of Troubles had been some sporty fellow’s pride and joy. Then I stared again, harder.

“Keep your heads down, you famblys!” Clardo the Clis rumbled the words. He had no need to, for these men were kampeons[7]; but Clardo no doubt felt the need of expressing his feelings about cowering in the bushes.

I stood up. I walked out from the bushes. Lifting my arms and waving, I shouted.

“The emperor!” someone yelled from the bushes.

“Shastum!” came Clardo’s irate voice. “The emperor knows what he is doing. But, by Vox, I do not!”

The flier circled and dropped down. With a sweet swoop of precise piloting she landed ten paces from me.

I knew that a score of bows were aimed for the pilot’s heart.

He stepped out and threw up an arm in salute.

“Lahal, majister! Well met!”

“Lahal, Quardon,” I said. “Well met indeed.” I half turned and bellowed at the bushes. “Come on out. We have been found.”

From the short flagstaff in the stern of the voller flew the union flag of Vallia. That yellow cross superimposed on a yellow saltire, all on a red field, had told me the airboat was friendly. Down here, she could only be looking for us on the advice of Quienyin. And, as you will readily perceive, none of these paktuns freshly returned to their native land would know that the flag they saw was their new flag of Vallia.

The splendid upshot of this meeting appeared a few burs after young Quardon, a rip-roaring lad of the Sword Watch, shot off in the voller. Soaring in over the trees, all her sails set, one of our flying ships from Vondium threw her long shadow from the suns. The paktuns gathered with me stared up and it was a wonderful sight to see their faces. The sails came in smartly and the ship let down through thin air, upheld and supported by her silver boxes that were, alas, in nowise as efficient as the silver boxes of the powered vollers.

Flags of Vondium flew from her, and men’s heads dotted along the bulwarks. She was a fine craft, three-decked and with proper accommodation, and armed with varters and gros-varters. I own to a thrill, myself, as she touched down.

Well, the Lahals rang out and there was much clasping of hands and back-thumping. Many of the new Second Regiment of the Sword Watch were there. These fighting men had come ahunting me when Quienyin in lupu had sussed out our whereabouts.

“She is a fine, large craft, majister,” said Torn. “Finer, I daresay, than those with which Vallia thrashed Hamal at the Battle of Jholaix.”

“As good, Torn,” I said. “As good. Now let us all board and catch the breeze for home.”

Only two men looked glum. These were the brothers Niklaardu — for their home was Wenhartdrin itself.

“Have faith,” I said, speaking the easy words, but meaning them, and demanding a response in kind.

“We will free all Vallia. You will return to your home in Wenhartdrin. Believe that.”

“Aye, majister. We believe it. But it will be a hard road.”

Sheer common sense and the practicalities of government told me that during my absence many changes must have taken place at home. I asked questions, an endless stream of them, and digested the answers. I preferred this method to allowing my comrades to babble on haphazardly telling me what jumped into their memories. All the relevant information I will retail as and when it affects this my narrative; suffice it to say now that Vallia was still an island sundered and divided, with factions warring for power, and the capital city of Vondium, still in our hands, standing like a rock in a raging sea. With those silver boxes we had made ourselves in Vondium uplifting the ship, we sailed on. The boxes gave us no forward motive power, as the complete boxes did for the vollers; but they extended gripping, invisible holds into what the wise men called the ethero-magnetic lines of force and thus afforded the ship a kind of keel so that we could tack and make boards against the wind. Leaving Wenhartdrin, we sailed east over the sea with the lovely coastline of Vallia passing to the northward. One item of news gave me an itchy feeling up the spine. Delia and I had discussed the designs of Queen Lushfymi of Lome upon our splendid son Drak. Drak was our eldest, the stern, sober, competent one of our sons. Queen Lush had been sent by Phu-Si-Yantong from her country in Pandahem to seduce, suborn, and destroy the old emperor. Instead, she had turned to us Vallians, and stood at our side against the Wizard of Loh. Now that the emperor was dead, Queen Lush was set on marrying Prince Drak, well knowing that one day she would thus become Empress of Vallia. Delia and I felt that Seg’s daughter, Silda, was the proper mate for Drak. Nothing openly had been said. This was one of those fractious knots of problems that bedevil men and women, whether they be puffed-up emperors or empresses, or shopkeepers with a business to care for.

By Zair! How I was looking forward to the day when I could throw down the burden of empire, and become once again plain Dray Prescot, of Esser Rarioch in Valka!

And, of course, Lord of Strombor and King of Djanduin and all manner of other splendid and sometimes mocking titles and estates.

The flutsmen circled out of the suns’ glare as I pondered the problems facing me. The trumpets pealed the alarm.

How marvelous to see the Sword Watch and these new comrades in their yellow jackets work together!

Shafts rose from the flying ship, leaden bullets flew. The flutsmen, screeching, their mottled clumps of feathers flying, their weapons glittering, swooped upon us. It was a pretty set to. The flying argosy was called Challenger , registered in Vondium, and as she coursed through thin air with all her canvas pulling and the flutsmen spun and darted in to attack, I felt that here we had a microcosm of the evils inflicting Vallia with agony, a prophecy of the struggles to come.

When the flutsmen saw their attacks were fruitless, what remained of them drew off. Their wings bright in the suns’ light, the fluttrells swerved away. They sped in a long, defeated string northward for the coast.

“We are within a few dwaburs of Delphond, are we not?” I said to Captain Hando, the master. A thin, razor-nosed man with a tufty chin beard, he screwed up his eyes. He had been a galleon captain, and had transferred to the new flying ships service.

“Aye, majister. Devil take the flutsmen. So near the capital! It is beyond bearing.”

I learned that implacable frontiers had been drawn between Delia’s province of Delphond and Venavito, just to the west. Venavito was an Imperial Province. I should say, had been an Imperial Province. The Imperial Province of Vond, just to the north of Delphond, was in our hands; but Thadelm, to the west, was a battleground. I frowned at this news. We had fought battles in that part of the country and I had hoped we had cleared the enemy out.

“It is mostly a matter of border raids, majister,” I was told.

This area of action was altogether too close to the capital. Plans had been laid before I was summoned away by the Star Lords to my adventures in the Dawn Lands of Havilfar for an army to march to the southwest and liberate all that corner of the island. Why had not that been done? Why had the plans not been acted on? I could obtain no satisfactory answers to my questions on that score. The answer that I guessed, at the time, to be near the truth, reflected my own caution and anxiety. The Lord Farris and the Presidio well knew my concern for dissipating our forces. We had the raging armies of clansmen in the northeast to deal with. We had Layco Jhansi and the Racters in the northwest. We had to pivot on a center to face all ways at once. If we committed too much in a single lone thrust, we exposed our backs. Yet, I was now convinced, we must strike, make a decisive move in one direction or another, and so begin the final campaigns.

When Captain Hando used the word “implacable” to describe the new frontier between Delphond and Venavito, I understood exactly what he meant. It was not an incongruous word. I stared after the fluttrells. But I did not give the order to swing the ship after them. Challenger continued on her course, sailing the sky, and the suns shone and the flutsmen vanished back to their camps and fortresses in Venavito.

Too much awaited me in Vondium. The state of the country had to be seen to first, before I could go harum-scarum after a pack of miserable sky-reivers, much as I would have liked to have done. Even after all this time I know I have not done justice to the splendor, the beauty, the grandeur of Vondium. It is a human city, filled with warmth and light, and the brilliance of the vegetation, the silver-gleaming canals, the traceries of bridges, all the spires and towers, complement and enhance the city’s welcome. At this time much of the proud city lay in ruins. Rebuilding went on spasmodically, when we could spare workmen and materials. So as Challenger came slanting down out of the sky and the topmen swarmed aloft to furl her canvas and Captain Hando brought her nearly in to a landing in her berth in the admiralty complex alongside the Varmondsweay Canal, I felt the shiver of appreciation for the great city despite her scars and dilapidations. Here, in the capital of the empire, was the place where I worked.

There is a word in Kregish — diashum — which I suppose can be translated as magnificent. Certainly, in those days of travail and struggle for the island empire, it was diashum to be a Vallian. And, while that was true, it was also remarkably easy to join the ranks of the diashum dead. For me, this homecoming turned out to be dust and ashes.

Practically no one was left in the city of those to whom I wished so urgently to talk. Prince Drak and most of the army had flown and marched north to deal with a new and serious incursion of the clansmen. He had taken with him the majority of the Sword Watch, which explained, as I knew, why those who had flown for me in Challenger were from the Second Regiment. Seg Segutorio was already up there, locked in combat. Nath Nazabhan and the Phalanx were fully engaged. The Lord Farris had taken his air along. My son Jaidur, as usual, was missing. As for my daughters — Lela was Opaz knew where, and, likewise, Dayra was off conducting more mischief, I did not doubt. Inch sent news from the Black Mountains of violent affrays and ambushes and of a gradual clearance of his kovnate. Filbarrka kept busy in the Filbarrka regions of the Blue Mountains. A number of my Valkan regiments had arrived in the city and had incontinently gone north. Jilian had taken her Battle Maidens off to the wars again. Many another fine comrade you have met in my narrative had gone. So, as you can see, I felt down.

Yet, despite all this, I was fully conscious of the fact that I could not go haring up north after them. I had been accused by Tyfar of being overhasty in running on a leem’s tracks. Those people up there, they could handle the problems. I was firmly convinced that all that had happened to me since I had left Vondium bore most strongly on what was afoot. Very little, if anything, had happened by chance. Everything was all a part of that master plan I now knew to be guiding my footsteps on Kregen. Even Deb-Lu-Quienyin had gone. I was cheered to hear that Khe-Hi-Bjanching had returned, and the two Wizards of Loh, so I gathered from the palace staff, had warmed one to the other. Khe-Hi knew of Deb-Lu’s reputation. They would work together.

So... In all this... Yes. Delia. Where the hell had she gone to this time?

Chapter eighteen Silda

The pouch containing the brooch and the baubles I had retrieved from the Moder and which I had retained through my adventures now lay on the desk before me. I sat in that small room in the imperial palace and I glowered at the brooch, at the shelves of books, and the maps that, as ever, mocked me from the walls, at the arms rack. In this room I had done a deal of work and, by Vox, was to do a damned deal more.

“Yes, yes,” I said to Chuktar Naroku, “you have taken employment with the Prince Majister and I shall honor the pledge.”

Chuktar Naroku rubbed his thumb along his right tusk. His three-inch-long tusks, thrusting up arrogantly from the corners of his mouth, were banded in gold. His oily yellow skin glistened in the radiance of the samphron-oil lamps. His pigtail hung down his back. He filled his armor. He sweated. He was not apim like me, he was a diff, a Chulik out of the Chulik islands off the east coast of Balintol. Reared from birth to the handling of weapons, Chuliks are justly respected and feared as mercenaries. Of humanity...?

Well, they do have a modicum more of that precious commodity than, say, the damned Katakis. The diff at Naroku’s side coughed. He had a long-nosed canine face, and his air of eternal supercilious superiority was guaranteed to get up the snub nose of diff and apim alike.

“My archers, majister—” began this Chuktar Unstabi.

“The same goes for you, too,” I said. I own my voice snapped a trifle pettishly. Chuktar Unstabi was an Undurker, from the Undurkor islands south of the huge promontory of Persinia. Both these Chuktars, which is a rank something like junior general, brigadier, were hyrpaktuns. They were costing my treasury good red gold.

My son, Prince Drak, had contracted to hire mercenaries to wage the war against the mercenaries hired by our enemies.

Fume though I might, I had to honor his pledge. But, by the Black Chunkrah! I said to myself. I’ll have something to say to that son of mine when I see him, by Krun!

I looked sharply at the man who stood silently a little to one side of the two hyrpaktuns. He was a Vallian. He wore a fancy new uniform, all buff and red, with a solid iron breastplate. His shrewd, weather-beaten face conveyed the sense of a man of gravitas, and the brown Vallian eyes were partially hidden by down-drooping lids. He wore a rapier and main gauche. The two mercenaries also wore their weapons.

“And now you feel you are fit to march to the southwest, Kov Vodun?”

“Yes, majister, with your blessing.” Kov Vodun Alloran had lost his kovnate of Kaldi, right in the toe of southwest Vallia, to that rast Strom Rosil Yasi. Kov Vodun kept up an unceasing barrage of contumely against our enemies, and lusted after returning and hanging every last one from the tallest tree branches he could find.

A number of invasions had been launched through his province. We had resisted and now, with Kov Vodun to prod us into action, we felt the time was ripe for us to return in strength and kick Yasi and his foul henchmen out of our land. The trouble was, and this trouble explained our experiences after Mancha of Tlinganden had been wrecked, our army had been forced to march north. The strength left in the capital was now rather too weak for my liking. But, still and all, that southwest rankled...

“If we can clear all the southwest,” I said, “it will free our hands for the sterner tasks ahead.”

Kov Vodun snapped erect. “Sterner tasks, majister?”

I sighed. Trust me to say the wrong thing.

“Only in matters of number, kov; not in anything else.”

“I see.”

A prickly customer, Kov Vodun Alloran. Very popular with the ladies, with his tales of guerrilla action from the hills. Alloran had done well at the Battle of Kanarsmot, and afterwards in that fraught action to take the fortress where Inch had rejoined us. Kov Vodun Alloran had been chosen by the Presidio, with the blessings of Prince Drak and the Lord Farris, to lead the Army of the Southwest to liberate that area of our land.

“Very well,” I said. “My mind is made up. You have the nucleus of the forces earmarked for you—”

“The most of which were taken away!” said Alloran, with a prickly nastiness. He had regained a very great measure of his own self-esteem since escaping from his kovnate and fighting with us here. I nodded.

“That is true. And, no doubt, that is why the Prince Majister contracted to engage paktuns. You will have a tidy army, Kov Vodun, to lead into your kovnate.”

He moved his shoulders under the armor and the polished iron caught the light and glittered. “There is the matter of the Fourth Phalanx, majister. I was promised the Fourth, and one wing was taken from me and flown north. I now have only one Kerchuri, and it is in my mind I should take a Kerchuri from the Fifth.”

My old blade comrade Nath Nazabhan had been busy, and besides finishing the raising of the Fourth, he had started the Fifth. Now a phalanx is a wonderful engine of destruction and the pikemen in the files, the brumbytes, of whom there are 10,368, are flanked by the axe and halberd men, the Hakkodin, of whom there are 1,728. There are also strong bodies of archers, and lads to strew caltrops and run with chevaux de frises. A whole lot of men are locked up in a phalanx.

I stirred the piece of paper on my desk. In Drak’s handwriting the composition of the proposed Army of the SW stared me in the face. Drak had written down: “One Kerchuri.” A Kerchuri is a wing of the phalanx, one-half. I looked up at Alloran.

“Two Kerchuris, kov?”

“Aye, majister, two.”

“But the Fifth Phalanx is green raw.”

“Their Ninth Kerchuri is ready. And, by Vox, by the time I have marched them a sennight or so they’ll smarten up!”

“You would leave Vondium with only the Tenth Kerchuri?”

“You need, with your permission, majister, archers to defend city walls.”

That was only half true.

I wondered if he was going to bargain his paktun archers, these Undurkers, for the Ninth Kerchuri. It was, in my view, no bargain at all.

I said, “What do your spies report of the strength and composition of Strom Rosil’s army?”

“Scattered,” he said at once. “He will have time to scrape his men together before I reach him, of course, after the initial breakthrough battles. He has something of the order of thirty thousand he can concentrate with reasonable speed.

Give him two of the Moons of the Twins and he will have fifty or more.”

I stirred Drak’s list again.

“If you move with speed, you can catch him before he concentrates his full strength.”

“That is my plan.”

“And the composition?”

Alloran smiled. “Mercenaries of varying quality. A normal mix of infantry and cavalry. He has also masichieri and aragorn. They hardly count.”

I looked up suspiciously. “Never underrate those rasts.”

“I am thinking, majister, of First Kanarsmot.”

“We surprised them there.”

“And I,” said Kov Vodun, “shall surprise the cramphs again.”

The decision I was being called on to make was your everyday, normal, ulcer-breeding decision facing emperors. If I allowed Kov Vodun to take the army as listed by Drak, less those units detached for duty in the north, plus the Ninth Kerchuri, there would be a skeletal force left in the city. I looked up. I know my face must have looked like a chunk of granite dredged from a thousand-season-old wreck. The Southwest had to be cleared, the risk accepted. He could take a full phalanx, the Eighth and Ninth Kerchuris. The commands would mesh. Get the job done fast. I told him my decision. Then I said, “Very well. You will take upwards of forty thousand. That should suffice.”

His down-drooping lids lifted, then he smiled, and nodded his satisfaction with what he had salvaged.

“The original army was to have been upwards of sixty thousand, majister. But I will do what I must with these straitened circumstances.”

Just as I was thinking this was a damned boorish way of carrying on, he added, “And I give you my thanks, majister.”

“May Opaz go with you and guide you in the forthcoming battles.”

So off he went with his paktuns and in came Enevon Ob-Eye, my chief stylor, a man whom I trusted and who had a head for figures and lists, and the warrants were prepared.

“You leave the city perilously undefended, majis.”

“Aye, Enevon. But while we attack in the north and attack in the southwest, we have the cramphs off balance. They’ll be too busy defending themselves to attack us here.”

The heavy atmosphere in the room during the interview with Alloran seemed to have gone with him. Enevon reported that the swarths I had ordered collected were stabled in the sleeth’s stables at the merezo, and the lads of the racing track were caring for their new charges. My experiences in the Humped Land with those damned swarthmen had convinced me a few regiments of swarth-mounted cavalry would not come amiss.

So, as you will see, I was in the thick of this paperwork and caring for it only insofar as I worked for Vallia and Delia. I just could not twine my thoughts around the whereabouts and well-being of Delia. She was off with the Sisters of the Rose, doing marvelous and secret wonders, and no doubt having a tremendous time. As ever, unless I felt that peculiar sense of urgency and disaster, I would not request a Wizard of Loh to go into lupu and spy out Delia’s whereabouts.

During this period both Quienyin and Bjanching paid a courtesy call on me. Oh, they were both up north; but their ghostly apparitions showed up in my room, and this comforted me considerably, as you may well imagine. Paying polite visits by these supernatural means, and taking it all as a matter of course, came with an all-standing kind of refresher to me, even if to them it was all in the day’s business. One visit gave me immense pleasure. Silda, Seg’s daughter, called on me. She couldn’t stop, she said; she was on her way through. I did not inquire. She was about business for the SoR, that was clear. Silda had grown more beautiful than ever, a bright, charming, happy girl who mentioned the death of her mother just the once. She was also very strong-minded. I could see that. There was in her much of Seg’s greatness of character, and also a deal of her mother’s outgoing warmth which in Silda was not inevitably brought to disaster. If I had to choose a daughter-in-law — and, by Vox, I did not have to, not with Drak making up his own mind! — there was no one I could think of to surpass Silda Segutorio. She said her brother, Dray Segutorio, was now a hyrpaktun and had only just learned of the troubles afflicting us. He was on his way home.

“The quicker he gets here the better. We need every trained professional we can lay hands on. And I’m not talking about mercenaries. Young Drak has—” And I stopped. I would not too openly criticize Drak in front of Silda. I had seen the way her eyebrows went up, and the purse to those delectable lips, the flush of color along her cheeks. Silda would fight for Drak, aye, fight against his own father! And the luck of Opaz with her!

Then she said, with an abrupt switch of mood, “Have you seen Queen Lushfymi of Lome since you got back, Uncle Dray?”

“I have not. And it’s about time you stopped calling me Uncle Dray. By Zair! It makes me feel a million years old.”

“I beg your pardon, majister. Of course—”

“Silda, Silda! Just knock it off.”

Her eyebrows flicked up again. Damned attractive, those eyebrows, like the rest of her.

“I mean, knock off the uncle bit. As for Queen Lush — I wish she’d go home to Lome. But of course, poor woman, she can’t. Not with Yantong ready to put her down if she does.”

“Poor woman!” flared Silda. Then, calmly: “It must be hard for her. Aunt Delia’s father meant a great deal to Queen Lushfymi. But do you really think Yantong is in Pandahem?”

“I do not know and I wonder if I really do want to know. No. No, I’d like to know. Then perhaps we could — well, all that is wishful thinking. Even Quienyin doesn’t know where Yantong hides out and tries to run the world.”

Then we talked of more personal matters. When she left with my good wishes and the last Remberees and her refusal of any aid in particular she might need — independent girl — I reflected that not once had she called Lushfymi Queen Lush.

What she had told me, and been at pains to tell me without acknowledging that she had told me, was that Delia was all right, was safe and well, and was chafing to get home. So I could draw a deep breath and soldier on alone. The passing on of that information, I saw, had been the reason for Silda’s visit. I wondered, with a pang, if Delia knew, or if Silda had brought me the news of her own volition. That would be like Silda.

Kov Vodun was burning to be about his business of clearing up the southwest. I rode faithful old Grumbleknees out to Voxyri Drinnik to see the advance guard off. They were flying out. They would be reinforced as fast as the ships of the air could turn around. The breeze, the Todalpheme had told us, would stay fair, giving a good stiff-sailing course to be steered out and back. Apart from the Eighth Kerchuri of the Fourth Phalanx and the Ninth Kerchuri of the Fifth, Kov Vodun was taking five thousand churgurs, three thousand archers and five thousand kreutzin, the light infantry and skirmishers. Many of these infantry were mercenaries. For cavalry I had let him have three regiments of totrix heavies, and five divisions of a mixed force of totrix and zorca lancers and archers. He took forty varters, the efficient ballistae of Kregen, wheeled and drawn by a variety of draught animals. Enevon Ob-Eye rode with me and wore a gloomy face.

“All these fine men leaving the city,” he said. He shook his head. “Pray Opaz nothing untoward occurs.”

“Long before the enemy can even think of reacting and mounting an attack on us,” I told him, “the armies will be victorious and return. You’ll see.”

I was thinking of the foemen we knew, up in the north and east and down in the southwest. The life of the city roared on, even though to me the place appeared empty. There were many folk who were still civilians, going about their daily tasks and providing the sinews to keep the army moving and supplied and fed. Every day men would march in having toiled for many dwaburs out of the invaded territories. Most of them simply wanted to get into a uniform and take up a weapon and go right back and have a bash at the occupiers. We had to instill in them the notion that they must be trained and drilled and hardened before they could even think of returning.

Turko took a large hand in the hardening of the men. He might be a Khamorro and therefore far more deadly with empty hands than with a weapon; but he ran these raw recruits ragged and built them up not only in physique but in spiritual confidence.

Many men saw me every day over matters touching every part of daily life, and of these, some you have met and many there are whom I grew to know better and who feature in later episodes. And then, one day, a voller appeared over the palace. She was a large craft, and she flew the Vallian tresh, blazing under the suns, and also my own battle flag, Old Superb. I looked up and I frowned. I had a good idea of what this was all about, I had expected it, and I knew what course I was going to take and how confoundedly angry that was going to make everyone. I was not looking forward at all to the coming scene.

But, I admit, I did look with great joy upon the tough, fierce men who crowded from the voller and advanced upon me as I stood upon the high landing platform to greet them. You know them, you know their lineaments and much of their history. These men were the Emperor’s Sword Watch. They were the ruffianly spirits of my Choice Band. Cleitar the Standard stepped forward.

“Majister!” he bellowed. “They have elected me as spokesman.”

I gave him no further time. “Lahal to you all!” I know I looked fierce. These men and I had been through perilous times together. “I understood there was fighting in the north. Battles against our foemen. What?

Have you deserted in the face of the foe?”

Their faces, wreathed in smiles, brilliant at seeing me again, were cast down in an instant. They looked puzzled and hurt.

“Majister!” stammered Cleitar. “Us? Run away...?”

Dorgo the Clis stepped forward, his scar a vivid slash across his face. “Majister! We return to where we belong!”

“Aye!” bellowed Targon the Tapster. “We are the Emperor’s Sword Watch!”

“We stand always at your side, majister!” roared Naghan ti Lodkwara. “You cannot send us away!”

The others joined in then and the air filled with protests and lurid oaths. They were all incensed at my obtuseness. So I had to explain.

“Prince Drak, the Prince Majister, commands the Army of the Northeast. He is in the forefront of the battle. Your duty is to him at this time.”

Well, as I say, I had not relished the scene and it turned out as I had gloomily suspected. In the end they saw that I meant what I said. They shuffled. They protested. But at last they all returned to the voller and observed the fantamyrrh and so took off to return to Drak. But they did not do this right away. Oh, no. We spent a raucous night drinking and singing and telling the old stories before they left bright and early and mostly hung over. That, at the least, gave me a single bright spot to put alongside the visit from Silda

— and one or two other timely interruptions to the everyday slog of work. And, in a sense, that decided me on a project I had long contemplated. The Second Regiment of the Sword Watch, mainly brave and brilliant young men still under training, were all very well. There were the paktuns from the sea in their tromp-colored uniforms. Now they were called the Emperor’s Yellow Jackets. But I looked at the empty barracks and the thinness of the morning parades. So, I went to see the Chief Assassin of Vondium.

Chapter nineteen

Of Assassins, Dynasties, and Invasions

Perhaps I had been over-hasty in sending the Sword Watch back to keep an eye on my son Drak.

“I did warn you, majister, that contracts had been placed for you. We have had to deal with two such attempts — but you were not in the city at the time, and that made it easier.”

Nath the Knife, the chief of assassins, styled the Aleygyn of the Stikitches, studied me through the eyeholes of his steel mask. We both sat at the table under the arch of the Gate of Skulls this time, and there was no need for either of us to attempt to gain stature by sitting or standing.

“Have the builders been working as I promised?”

“Yes, majister.” His words were plain enough; but his meaning was difficult to judge. “They work well. Our houses grow.”

Drak’s City, the oldest part of Vondium, was a law unto itself. Here the rascals, the scalawags, the thieves, and the disaffected lived. The aid from the rest of the city might have been aimed at preventing disease; but it was in a very real sense a humanitarian gesture. Within the walls life bustled along. Everybody scratched a living somehow. Nath the Knife had positioned his bodyguard in the Kyro of Lost Souls, as men of the Sword Watch and the Yellow Jackets waited on me on the outside.

“You will not tell me who is letting out these contracts, Aleygyn? That would be against your code of honor?”

“You know it would.”

We talked for a space of the city and the rebuilding and skirted the tricky business of the payment to kill me, and then I said, “If I mention the word kreutzin, Aleygyn, you, as an educated man, will know what I mean, even if some vosk-skulls might not.”

“I understand.” The kreutzin are the light infantry, the voltigeurs, who skirmish ahead of the line. “I promised to send some of my young men to join your army—”

“Not my army, Aleygyn. The Army of Vallia.”

“I think not. You cannot but my young men for Vallia with bricks and mortar, or with medicines.”

I looked at him and I kept the fury out of my face.

“Some idiots might call you an old warrior, Nath the Knife. I think you are—”

“I am not foresworn. My honor is a stikitche’s honor!” He spoke up briskly. Damned difficult to carry on a conversation with a fellow who wears a steel mask over his face! “I will send my young men to serve you. They will serve the Emperor of Vallia. There is a difference. And, as you see, there are reasons for this nicety in our arrangements.”

I could see that, all right. By the disgusting diseased right eyeball of Makki Grodno! And then I laughed. The thought struck me that if Drak sat here, in conversation with an assassin, his rectitude and composure would fight like merry hell with all his natural fighting instincts. But, he’d learn. By Krun, but he’d learn what being an emperor meant.

“You mean,” I said, when I’d had my laugh out, “you are a pack of rogues in here, hulus, rascals and fools, thieves, stikitches — and the rest of respectable Vondium—”

“Precisely. They would burn us out if they could.”

“They could, Nath the Knife. They could. But not while you and I talk, man to man.”

That shook him. For centuries the sanctity of Drak’s City as a Kingdom of Thieves had been unwritten law.

“Go on, Aleygyn. You will send your young men to serve me? I need them. We are overstrained—”

“You told me you would not hire mercenaries. Yet paktuns walk the streets of Vondium and march with the army.” The steel mask glittered. “We are pleased. Their pockets are full.” If he smiled that confounded mask hid all. “You changed your tune there, majister.”

“Temporarily only. A matter of policy.” I was not prepared to admit to this stikitche that my son Drak had done this thing.

“I have made arrangements. The young men will report to you and your Deldars at the barracks you appoint.”

“My Deldars are intolerant drill masters. But your young men will rise to become Deldars, in their turn. Even kreutzin must learn drill and discipline in my army.”

“Agreed. I will tell them so.”

After a few more words I rose to go. Grumbleknees waited, his single spiral horn jutting proudly. I turned back, my fists gripping the reins, my booted foot in the stirrup.

“These contracts, Aleygyn. If I was in the habit of letting contracts with stikitches, I think the names of Kov Colun Mogper of Mursham, and Zankov, illegitimate son of the High Kov of Sakwara, might prove lucrative.”

That steel mask went back. His gloved hand, with the ornate ring outside the glove, clenched. I swung up into the saddle and Grumbleknees walked gently forward out of the shadow of the Gate of Skulls.

“Remberee, Aleygyn.”

“Remberee, majister.”

Yes, I reflected as, followed by my men, we trotted back to the palace, that laugh had been worth it. What, indeed, would Drak have made of his father the emperor talking to a damned assassin? Yet I felt sure Drak would see the difference between using Vallian assassins in our army and hiring mercenaries. I do not care over much for stikitches, having had one or two sprightly measures with them; but by the time my Deldars got through with them, they’d know they’d been punched, drilled, and bored, by Vox! Then, they’d be soldiers first, and I could hope would never return to their despicable trade — if they lived. There are people who say, and I go some way in agreement with them, that a soldier’s trade is despicable. But if your home is about to be burned down and your family butchered, a fellow tends to want to do something about that — at least on Kregen.

Despite my big talk of drill sergeants, we were still short of veterans who could train up the new armies we needed. The Emperor’s Yellow Jackets were hardened professionals. They had many military skills in their ranks. They took the newly arrived young men from Drak’s City and trained them up. Many of these limber young rascals were not assassins, of course, many being thieves and swearing by Diproo the Nimble-Fingered. Many were simply poor lads with no prospects in life. We fed them and clothed them in the yellow jackets and made full use of their special skills. I didn’t give a fig about training them merely as light infantry. They would learn to handle all the weapons a fighting man may manipulate, and would be employed as we saw fit. They welcomed that as a proof of their own quality. Thankfully, my tough paktuns expressed no aversion to serving alongside these newcomers. Truth to tell, many an old friendship was renewed...

And, also, old enmities. But only three men were found dead in a ditch or in their quarters; two from Drak’s City and one paktun. That seemed to let the spleen of the force out for good, thanks be to Opaz. News was received from Alloran that he had fought a skirmish and cleared his front. I wished I had more men to dispatch to secure the rear areas; and managed to scrape up two regiments of spearmen. On the next day different news came in.

Enevon Ob-Eye walked into my room very quietly. He made no great fuss about it. He was entitled to rave and accuse.

He said, “Majister, news has just arrived of an army marching and flying south out of Vindelka. They press over the borders of Orvendel. The land is being put to the torch. The people cry out for help. Orvendel, majister,” he said, and turned the blade in the wound, “is an Imperial Province. They are your people. And the southern border of Orvendel is but forty dwaburs from Vondium.”

By this time I knew the map of Vallia; it was not so much engraved on my brain as burned on my heart. Despite that, my gaze fastened on those infuriating maps adorning the walls. Oh, yes, he had worked it beautifully, the cramph.

“Layco Jhansi?”

“No, majis. We do not think so. The scouts have him located still in his own kovnate.”

That made me think. Layco Jhansi, the old emperor’s chief minister, had proved a traitor. Now he fought the Racters, the one-time most powerful political party, who were penned up in the northwest, north of Jhansi. But, if he had not sent this army to attack us while we were weak, who had?

“The scouts report the presence in this army of those we know. Tarek Malervo Norgoth — you remember him, majis. He headed the deputation from Jhansi you sent packing with a zorca hoof up their rumps?”

“I remember, Enevon.” A Tarek is a rank of the minor nobility. I guessed this fat and pompous Norgoth with the spindly legs was bucking for an increase in his patents of nobility. But the news reassured me even as I raged at the iniquities being committed up there by Jhansi’s men. Orvendel is a pretty province. Many of her sons served in the army. I could not allow the destruction to go on unchecked, could I?

When my comrades of the Sword Watch had flown in to Vondium, they had left forces still with Drak. Volodu the Lungs, the chief trumpeter, and Korero the Shield, had remained. The expected confrontation of Korero and Turko had not taken place. I suddenly felt a pang, a hunger for my blade comrades to be with me now. And — I had been on the point of going off to Hyrklana to fetch out Balass and Oby and Tilly! Just as well the Hyrklanian trip had been postponed...

These weakling thoughts must be pushed aside. What I had to do was perfectly clear to me. Even if, like King Harold of England, it led to disaster, I could not halt myself. And, anyway, the situations were not quite the same. A last voller to Drak would bring in fighting men to garrison Vondium. And I knew, as is obvious, that the time would not allow that simple a solution. I had to face up to Malervo Norgoth with what men I had, and we would fight. Win or lose we would halt this raid. After that, if we moldered in our graves, time would have been bought.

“Jhansi would not, I think, place an army into the hands of Norgoth without a general to guide him?”

Enevon nodded. “There is a Kapt with them. A Kapt Hangrol. He has the command. Naghan Vanki’s spies are sure.” He paused. Naghan Vanki was the empire’s chief spy-master. But Enevon went on with a bite in his voice. “His name is Hangrol ham Thanoth.”

I glared. I felt the fury rising. “A damned Hamalese!”

“Aye, majis.”

“Well, that settles it. Write the orders. We’ll call out everyone who is able to march instanter.” I stabbed the map with a fierce finger. “Ovalia. Every ship that will fly will take us to Ovalia. That’s the key. The city must be held.”

“Quidang, majis!” Enevon grasped essentials at once.

The map glowed with color. It showed the River of Shining Spears running southeast from the Blue Mountains to join the Great River, She of the Fecundity. To the north of the fork my Imperial Province of Bryvondrin stretched broad and rich and in our hands. Northwest of Bryvondrin lay Orvendel. If Jhansi’s men broke through, overwhelmed the city of Ovalia, the raid would turn into a major attack, a dagger thrust at Vondium, the proud city herself. We had to muster our forces, what we had of them, fly to Ovalia, set down, and smash the living daylights out of this Opaz-forsaken cramph of a Hamalese general and his army. As for Malervo Norgoth, he was quite obviously Jhansi’s man of the spot, a kind of commissar, and we’d hang him high with his toes all adangle if we caught him... Because the majestic canal system of Vallia is so efficient and extensive, roads in the island were atrocious at this time. We’d have to fly out with what we could. A reserve force could follow. They might be there to continue the victorious pursuit. They might have to fight a stern rearguard action. As to the forces available... Just about everybody had gone north to fight with the Army of the Northeast. It appeared to me to be the fashionable thing, the in thing, to serve in that army alongside the Prince Majister. Some of the people up there, well, when I heard their names I had to smile my bleak old grimace that passes for a smile. By Zair! But some right popinjays had ridden off gallantly to be seen with the Prince Majister. Men who had contumed me as a hairy unwashed clansman now thronged about my son. My own pride in Drak told me that he would be level-headed enough to see through all the flattery and the flummery. At least, by Krun, I hoped so!

And, to be truthful, there was far more of trust in Drak than could be expressed by mere hope. On the same day that the news of Layco Jhansi’s raid reached us our vanguard flew off for Ovalia. They flew in all the vollers we had. A regiment of churgurs, sword and shield men, and a regiment of archers, almost one thousand men. The swods in the ranks of these regiments were old hands, they had served with me before and would have to form one of the hard cores of the little force. The other hard core, it goes without saying, would be the Tenth Kerchuri. The pikes would have to stand, and hold, and charge, as they had been trained, and no one must allow doubt to creep in that these men, these brumbytes wielding their pikes in the files, were green, raw, and had seen no action. Like that half-blinded man standing on the center and seeking to strike out in all directions at those who attacked him, we of Vondium had lashed out northeast and southwest. And Layco Jhansi had seized his chance to raid us from the northwest. It was perfectly clear by the presence of a Hamalese Kapt with his forces that the dirty finger of Hamal was busy stirring up this pot. The fight would be tough; we’d be facing regulars, possibly some of the iron legions of Hamal, as well as the screaming fanatical irregulars of Jhansi’s cowed provinces.

The regiments from the Fifth Brigade of churgurs and the Ninth Brigade of archers who had flown off had served with me at the Battles of Kanarsmot. They were good men. The remaining two regiments of each Brigade, together with a motley bunch of spearmen, slingers, and axemen waited transportation. The flying ships of the air gathered on Voxyri Drinnik and that broad space of open land seethed with all the commotion of an army embarking. I call it an army; well, yes, it was in spirit and composition and determination if not in numbers.

The Presidio met to deliberate, as was their wont, and I spent a couple of precious burs speaking to them from the rostrum, impressing on these grave senators the need for cool heads in this time of crisis. They ran the country and knew of my dreams of the kind of country I had been asked to bring into being by the people who had called me. There was a little of the wheeling and dealing that had characterized the reign of the old emperor still in evidence; but these men were a new breed of senator. Naghan Strandar, whom I trusted, stood up to reply, and he astonished me.

“Majister! You have made us, and we are mindful of that.” The council chamber in the Villa of Vennar echoed to his words, and the rows of soberly clad men listened with composed faces. “The old emperor is dead and with him died the Valhan Dynasty. You are the first of the Prescot Dynasty of Vallia. We shall serve you and the country no matter what transpires.”

I sat in the seat reserved for the emperor and listened as he went on for a short space in these terms. I own I found this idea amazing. Of course, I had begun a new dynasty in Vallia. It was something I had scarcely even acknowledged. And, as you who understand the Kregish will perceive, Valhan had a special meaning. The upshot of that was a vow of total allegiance to Vallia, and a determination to bring every last ounce of energy and will to the struggle.

Going back to see the leathery swods boarding the vessels, I reflected that great words do, very often, deserve great deeds. And, as Erithor, the great poet of Valka, would have said, the opposite holds true, also.

Two men attempted to desert and were caught and dragged before me as I sat Grumbleknees with the dust blowing and the pandemonium bellowing up all over the Drinnik.

“Let them go,” I said. “Put them to work baking bread, or cleaning sewers, or forging weapons.”

“But, majister!” said Chuktar Vogan, commanding the Ninth Brigade of archers. “They should be hanged up high so that all men may see the miserable cramphs!”

“Then they would be dead, Vogan. Mayhap, after a dwabur or so of sewers, they might rescind their decision to desert.”

Chuktar Vogan saw only the obvious, brutal side of that. He guffawed, and slapped his thigh, and allowed the emperor was blessed with brains from Opaz himself.

I had no time to try to explain that any man had the right to feel fear at battles to come, that running away was a natural and healthy thing to do if you wanted to keep your skin intact, that simple brutal warfare was a horrendous thing which no civilized man should have to endure. He would not have grasped those concepts, not with a raging pack of Hamalese coming down to burn his home and slay his family. I could see both sides of this pathetic human problem, and sighed, and could see no way out for me other than doing what I was doing, and hoping for the best in the sweet light of the Invisible Twins. I suppose that the agonies a woman suffers in anticipation of childbirth, and then in the birth itself, are analogous to the agonies a man suffers in the anticipation of battle, and the ghastly event itself. Something like, perhaps...

“My Val!” said Orlon Sangar ti Deliasmot. “Majister, I’m delighted to get the chance of showing you what my lads can do. By Vox, I thought I’d rot in Vondium forever.”

Orlon Sangar came from Delphond. He was the Kerchurivax in command of the Tenth Kerchuri. He had risen through the ranks in the Third, and the Third was by way of being a special phalanx to Nath Nazabhan and me. I nodded.

“Your lads will do well, Orlon. I just wish we had more of you.”

He made the expected reply. Well, that answer has been given many and many a time before a battle, on two worlds...

The brumbytes handed in their pikes as they boarded. These long weapons were bundled and then lashed to the ships. The men kept their shields, and they hung them on the bulwarks in fine style. There was a deal of the horseplay and raucous coarse humor inevitably surrounding the movement of green troops. These men had been trained hard; but only the faxuls of the front ranks, and not all of them, had seen active service. A wisp of nerves can be concealed beneath a huge guffaw and a practical joke. Essential though the religious ceremony honoring and imploring Opaz most certainly was, I own — a coarse, profane, swearing kind of fellow as I am — I chafed to have it over with and get the troops airborne. When the prayers for the safekeeping of the men and for the victory were offered up and the voice of the chief priest rang to silence, a deep stillness held all Voxyri Drinnik. Absolute quiet for ten long heartbeats proved how wrong I was, how much the feelings of the soldiers had been affected, how needful this was. Then a cough, the scrape of a boot, and the Deldars yelling, the shrill notes of trumpets. Even the flags began to rustle again.

One of the texts chosen as suitable for the service was the well-known advice from the Instructions to Novices. This says, in effect: “Be Brave, Bold, and Resourceful; Fret not on the Hazard.” A fair comparison may be made with Aristophanes in The Frogs, where he uses words of similar meaning and intent. Easy to give advice and harder than keeping warm on the Ice Floes of Sicce to take it. I had accepted the risk and, in theory, should now push all thoughts of the hazard from my mind and go forward in bold confidence. But, while that might be fine for your valiant and daring prince, for me, plain Dray Prescot, the doubts and premonitions of disaster remained. Weak, of course; but in my usual fashion I put a tough face on my ugly old beakhead and concealed the torture and turmoil in my head from my comrades.

Then an event occurred which the doubter would take merely as a trifle from a Fairy Story. One of the new regiments of zorca archers was loading. The animals were being led up the gangplanks, and the cavalrymen were in the usual lather, yelling, pushing, pulling, cajoling the zorcas into the ship. A commotion greater than usual began as I cantered by. I was riding Fango, a fine bay zorca, who had lost a hand-breadth of his spiral horn at some time in his career. The imperial stables had fashioned a new horn tip for him from Chemnite ivory, neatly banded with gold. Grumbleknees and Snowy were having the day off.

“Catch him!” The shouts spurted up. “Grab the beast!”

Cavalrymen went spinning every which way, their red uniforms dusty and stained already. A monstrous black shape reared high, hooves lashing, nostrils crimson, seeming to breathe fire. His eyes glittered in the light of the suns. Down he came, roaring down the ramp, scattering folk like ninepins. Straight up to me he galloped, horn up, tail flying, mane splendid. Fango backed off, alarmed, thinking he was being attacked.

“Majister!” They were yelling. “The emperor is in danger from a wild beast! Shoot the zorca down!”

“Hold!” I bellowed. I really let go a shout that rattled the teeth in their heads. I gentled Fango and as the huge black zorca crashed alongside I laid a hand on his head.

“Shadow!”

And Shadow threw up his head and whinnied, glorious in his shining splendor. Shadow... A great-hearted zorca with whom I had built a special relationship of trust and affection, and whom I had thought lost in Vondium, and yet, and yet... Always I had known we would meet again. That was quickly sorted out. I was told Shadow had been found in Vond, dwaburs away from Vondium, and in our eternal quest for quality zorcas had been brought into the army. He had always given trouble, being highly independent-minded. The Jiktar to whom he had been issued sighed with relief when I said, “He is my zorca, Jiktar.” I dismounted. “Take Fango. He is a first-class animal and you will joy in him.”

“Quidang, majister!”

The saddles were swiftly changed and I stuck my boot into the stirrup and mounted up on Shadow. He showed his pleasure. We had been through many adventures together; we would go through many more. But in the heady moment of reunion all those perils could wait.

Then another little crisis developed. Long lines of yellow-clad men marched toward the gangplanks. I frowned.

“Larghos the Sko-Handed!” I bellowed.

Larghos came over, beaming. His shoulder wings stuck out far more than regulations allowed. He looked fit and tough.

“Where, Larghos, do you think you are going with those coys?” A coy is a recruit, a greenhorn.

“Coys, majister! Are not they damned assassins? They will fight! By Vox! I will see to that!”

I sighed. What would you do with these fellows?

Nath the Knife had sent us an initial seven hundred young men. They could fight, of course. But they weren’t swods.

Larghos saw my face. “You would not deny them the glory?”

About to break out into bitter invective against this stupid, shuddery, bloody idea of glory, I held my tongue. If our country was in the dire danger we all knew her to be, why should not these fine young men go off to fight? Why should they? Because it was their duty? Because they would be less than men if they did not? No — the reasons lay deeper than that...

Larghos’s slingers went on boarding. Drill the Eye shouted at his bowmen to carry on and rolled over, spluttering, to join his comrade. When Clardo the Clis, his scar burning, nudged his zorca across, I knew I was beaten.

“You are taking the Sword Watch,” pointed out Clardo, with consummate cunning. “They are coys, also—”

“Not quite,” I said.

“Nor neither are we!”

“Very well. You’ll have to skirmish forward. Your drill is not up to formed standards yet.”

“Aye, majister. We’ll skirmish the zigging Hamalian tripes out!”

So that was settled. The Emperor’s Yellow Jackets, the EYJ, joined the Second Regiment of the Emperor’s Sword Watch, the 2ESW, aboard the flying ships. Both men and swods would be created out of the lads embarking. That is life.

The return of the vollers enabled me to send off part of a regiment of totrix heavies. They would still arrive ahead of the sailing fliers. Other units went up to the northwest. Regular reports told me Ovalia was filling up, and the locals were helping with energy.

Consigning the rest of the paperwork to Enevon, confiding the city once again to Naghan Strandar and the Presidio, I collected the last of the troops we were taking and with Turko stepped aboard the voller, observing the fantamyrrh, and took off for Ovalia and destiny.

Chapter twenty

The Depths of Deb-Lu-Quienyin’s Eyes

The messenger stood before me in the Tower of Avoxdon in Ovalia where I had set up headquarters. His flying leathers were stained and travel worn. He looked exhausted. But before he would allow himself to sit down, this merker would deliver his message from Drak.

“The armies of the Prince Majister are fully committed. He has sent a number of provisional regiments to Vondium, mostly walking wounded and invalids. A brigade of churgurs is on the way to you and is following me within a day.”

Instead of saying anything I indicated the chair and the merker sat with a flummox. His bird was being cared for by the flutswods of my single squadron of flutduins. I stared at him.

“And cavalry?”

“Three squadrons of totrix javelinmen.”

We were short of cavalry, of the land and of the aerial kind. Well, all commanders are always short of cavalry, unless they be barbarian chieftains of a savage host of jutmen, as admirals are always short of frigates. Most of the force sent by Jhansi on this raid into our land consisted of jutmen; many were cavalry, some were mounted infantry riding a variety of animals. The balance of his infantry was carried in airboats. He had mirvols, powerful flying animals, with experienced flutswods to fly them, as his aerial cavalry component. Kapt Hangrol ham Thanoth commanded a powerful and fast-moving force. We had been operating out of Ovalia for three days now and our initial dispositions had been made. As I sat brooding on this travel-weary merker I thought back to that smart little dust-up Prince Tyfar, Quienyin and our comrades had gone through in the Humped Land. It all added up. Those damned swarthmen had ridden on, confidently, and we had enticed them and tricked them and dazzled them before we’d seen them off. What a fellow may do with half a dozen staunch comrades against superior numbers, surely the same fellow could do with a small army against a larger?

Sipping the wine poured by Deft-Fingered Minch, a crusty, bearded veteran who ran my field quarters, the merker answered questions and conveyed news. Kov Seg Segutorio fought in the vaward, as usual, and commanded the Second Army. His daughter had visited him and gone on to see Prince Drak, commanding the First Army. This numbering of armies was new to me, and, to my ears, smacked of magniloquence. The Presidio had dished out the numbers, following Drak’s instructions. Kov Vodun Alloran had marched into the West Country with the Fifth Army. Other numbered armies guarded our other provinces and frontiers. I gathered my little lot were the Eighth Army. All that flummery meant nothing, of course. You could call yourselves what you liked; what counted was your strength and tenacity, physical and moral.

The merker, he was a Hikdar and his name was Ortyg Lovin, an honored name in Vallia, went on with his news. Our enemies fought obsessively but we pushed them back. An assassination attempt on Prince Drak had been frustrated by the Sword Watch. At this I sat up straight and felt anger, and horror, and sickness. Zankov, the arch enemy, had not been seen in the enemy camps. Kov Inch of the Black Mountains made slow progress. Filbarrka was in the thick of it. There was more, much more, and I looked at the maps spread on the camp table and pondered. The red tide of war engulfed Vallia. Had I not been called by the people to lead them out of these miasmic shadows, I believe I would have thrown it all in and flown off to Strombor to see Velia and Didi. As it was — we had a damned raid to see off and to see off, by Vox, with far too few men.

Ovalia was the key to campaigning hereabouts. Had we not garrisoned the city first, Kapt Hangrol would have seized it and controlled the route for his onward march. As it was, daily we had small-scale aerial combats, and my single squadron of flutduinim would be worn down before long at this rate. As for our airboats, we had a weyver, which is a wide, flat, barge-like affair and which we had adapted to carry two hundred men. We had two vollers each carrying a hundred. And we had ten which could take fifty or so at a pinch. Of them all, only four of the latter were real fighting vollers. There were also a handful of smaller vollers for scouting and messenger duty. When the merker left and Turko and my Chuktars came in, I pointed to the maps and very simply said,

“We do it the thorn-ivy way.” At their gapes of non-comprehension I explained the plan in detail. And, to say plan is to dignify the harebrained scheme. But they nodded, bright-eyed, and vowed that it would work and that, by Vox, they’d have the tripes out of these Hamalese rasts in a twinkling. Our air component left at once to set about the enticement part of the scheme. The three squadrons of totrix javelinmen came in and their transport, under orders to return at once, I would not touch. And, as you will see, stupid parental pride and dignity came in here! I would not let Drak see how hard-pressed we were, well-knowing the complexities of the problems he faced.

There was no question in my mind of sitting tight in Ovalia and allowing Kapt Hangrol to open a formal siege. He could hold us down quite adequately with a part of his force and, collecting up the rest, fly on. But we needed him to hold still just long enough for our forces, which had to move piecemeal, to reach their start lines. After that — thorn-ivy!

And, as though the gods joined in the scheme, I was apprised of the spirit of the army. One of the wide avenues of the city with its cobblestones was being torn up. Those stones were being loaded into carts, drawn by Quoffas, and would eventually be discharged against the Hamalese. Gangs of men worked with pick and crowbar. A number of taverns were well patronized by the thirsty off-duty. They gave me a yell as I cantered by.

One group of men attracted my attention. I knew who they were, of course. A stoutly formed, scarlet-faced man with shining black hair — unusual in a Vallian — bellowed his lads to attention. He was smiling, his face dimpled, good-humored, sweating a little, and as he saluted with his right hand, his left still clasped his tankard.

“When do we march out, majister?”

“As soon as you lot have drunk the taverns dry, Brad.”

His men chorused their appreciation of this. Brad the Berry was a publican of Vondium. But he was much more than that, by Vox! It was rumored he’d been a wizard in his time; certainly his magic tricks astonished all who witnessed them. He was also rumored to be the son of a prince, who had cleared off because he preferred the life of wizardry and pubs to that of the courts. He’d raised and equipped a regiment at his own expense, mainly recruited from the regulars of his establishment, the Hagli Bush. They were titled the Hagli Bush Irregulars. I glanced at the covered wagons parked nearby.

“And, Brad, I would take a bet that there is more beer than bows, more ale than arrows, more wine than weapons, in those carefully packed wagons.”

He laughed, cheerful and happy, supping along with his men.

“We’ll have ’em, you’ll see, majister,” he said. That was sufficiently obscure to cover the points raised. I had Brad the Berry marked out for high office. He was the Jiktar of his regiment now; he would prove of more use in other areas of life than that of going off to be a soldier. Much more use... The Hagli Bush Irregulars diligently went about their sworn duty of drinking every tavern in Ovalia dry

— in between laboring mightily to help the army along.

It ought to be said, in addition, that the uniform designed for the Hagli Bush Irregulars by Brad the Berry was a marvel of practicality and ornateness. It was rumored he had once served an apprenticeship to a goldsmith in his wizardry search for the secret of making gold out of straw. Like many and many another sorcerer and wise man, he might not have discovered that particular secret; but he could bring to anything he set his hands to, a wonderful felicity of invention. We needed men like Brad the Berry. Riding Shadow back toward the Tower of Avoxdon I looked up and saw a magnificent scarlet and golden bird, circling in the upper air, blinding in the mingled streaming radiance of the Suns of Scorpio. I sucked in my breath. But I rode on. No one else could see that gorgeous raptor. He was the Gdoinye, the messenger and spy of the Star Lords, and I wondered if I was about to be dramatically transported to some other part of Kregen on business of the Star Lords. So I rode on and took no notice of the bird. He eyed me for a space, winging wide above my head; then he flicked a wing and soared away, vanishing in the suns’ glare.

Well, now... Just keep the old cranium down and get on with the job in hand. That was the way of it, by Zair! The only way.

Jiktar Travok Ramplon, to whom I had given Fango in exchange for Shadow, led his zorca archers out to trail his skirts before the enemy. He would raise the dust and lure Hangrol on. We had no Battle Maidens, no Jikai Vuvushis, with us, for which I was profoundly thankful. The local people rallied round wonderfully and scraped up a wild assortment of riding animals. These were apportioned among the infantry, for neither men nor beasts would be fit to act as cavalry against the kind of opposition we were facing.

Our two regiments of swarthmen were weak, only around three hundred each; but they were going to have to take the brunt of it when the cavalry came to handstrokes. The totrixmen were good quality, and Drak’s three squadrons would help. But...

We marched out of Ovalia, heading for our start lines, and news came in that Hangrol had turned like a maddened graint to follow Jiktar Travok Ramplon and his zorca bows. Turko nodded in satisfaction.

“Grapple him, Dray, like any ordinary wrestler. Then throw him and twist his neck!”

“Aye.”

Very rapidly becoming accustomed to being addressed as a kov, our Turko the Shield. “Yes, kov,” and,

“Certainly, kov.” Oh, yes, Kov Turko of Falinur — living very high on the vosk, our Turko!

The flags flew in the light of the suns, the men marched, the dust rose, and as we of the Eighth Army swung along so the swods in the ranks sang. They sang old songs and new songs, sprightly ditties and scurrilous comments on their officers. They sang sickly love ballads like “She Lived by the Lily Canal.”

This was the song sung almost obsessively by the men on the night before that resounding affray, the Battle of Kochwold. Of a similar sentimental nature was “Wedding Dirge of Hondor Elaina.”

Then the veteran swods of the Fifth Churgurs struck up “Paktuns’s Promenade” and sang their own repeatable words, and when that was done they warbled out many a ditty I have mentioned to you. At last I half-turned in the saddle and glared at the Second Regiment of the Sword Watch. In my fruity old bellow I started to yodel out “The Bowmen of Loh.”

And, soon, the whole army bellowed out that brave old song and the imbalances of echoes as the words rolled down the lines sent tiny birds scurrying for shelter.

Seg Segutorio was not with me. Many of my fine Archer regiments of Valka, who used the Lohvian longbow, were with Drak. But we raggle-taggle bobtail of any army sang as we marched. Continually I rode up and down the lines, observing the men. And, in their turn, they observed me. Many were the comradely greetings flung to and fro. And, as we marched, my thoughts insisted on dwelling on Prince Tyfar and our comrades and our experiences in Moderdrin. It seemed to me I had learned something there and I did not know what it could be. Certainly, a mere trick of thorn-ivy and its escalation into army scale could not be the reason I had found my way to the Humped Land. If Quienyin knew, I fancied he would tell me.

Marking how the Tenth Kerchuri marched, their pikes at ease, the Hakkodin with their axes or halberds over their shoulders, the attached Chodku of archers singing lustily, I thought of other times when we had marched singing into battle. Well, this time would be different and yet just the same. The differences became apparent as, wheeling to meet an attempt to flank us, I realized afresh the frightening smallness of our company. Kapt Hangrol was a seasoned campaigner, and he sought to pin and crush us. We had to work on him, out-march him — for all his aerial strength would avail him nothing if he could not put troops on the ground — and whittle away both his strength and his confidence. We lost men in skirmishes. I raged and grieved; but we went on with the words of Clardo the Clis to sustain us.

“If one man dies for what he believes in — would you deny him that right? We all chose to be here!”

The maneuvers were complicated and pretty. We kept to good cover, making the utmost use of woods and darkness. The pace told on us and the men grew lean and hungry. The quoffa-drawn wagons caught up with us from time to time and yielded provisions and provender. Brad the Berry disgorged an amazing quantity of first-class food from his wagons, the Hagli Bush Irregulars delighting in showing how well they could provide. And we played Kapt Hangrol and his army, and in one classic attack we cut off and destroyed four full regiments of the iron legions of Hamal. With them went a shrieking collection of Layco Jhansi’s hoodwinked adherents, spearmen, savage, almost barbaric fanatics. As a few miserable and shaking prisoners were interrogated, I reached the conclusion that Jhansi must be using sorcery to control and enflame these men. Only a few seasons ago, before the Time of Troubles, these same shrieking savages had been sober, industrious citizens of Vallia. It was not just civil war and all its attendant horrors that had brought this travesty into being.

“That rast Hangrol draws near,” said Turko, most cheerfully, on the day when the maps and the scouts’

reports showed the raiding army to be within a day’s march. All ideas of raiding farther into Orvendel had been abandoned by Layco Jhansi’s men. I could guess that Kapt Hangrol and Malervo Norgoth had been exchanging acrimonious words. That cheered me up, since I was a malignant sort of fellow. We had trailed the red rag and they were bedazzled and enflamed.

“Right, Turko — or should I say, Kov Turko?”

“And I say to you — do you wish to try a few falls?”

We laughed companionably together. For all the seriousness with which Turko took his new status as a kov, he, like my comrades and myself blessed or cursed with these noble titles, could see the ludicrousness, the pompous jackass nonsense, of putting too much store by rank and title. Estates, now

— ah! That was a different matter.

These intricate maneuvers were of absorbing interest. We pivoted so as to maintain the Tenth Kerchuri with its solid mass of pikes as our fulcrum. And, of course, the local folk of Orvendel were extremely severe on any raiders who fell into their clutches.

Absorbingly interesting or not, the purely maneuvering phase had to come to an end.

“You are right, Turko. Tomorrow should see them nicely positioned.”

“The spot you have chosen and worked them to is perfect. Now all that remains is for them to go in like idiot dermiflons, braying and charging full pelt.”

“I think they will. Empress Thyllis has sent men up here in a desperate attempt to recover her losses in Vallia. Hangrol knows his head is forfeit if he loses.”

My knowledge of mad Empress Thyllis encompassed her macabre Hall of Notor Zan where the wretches she deemed had failed her were thrown to the slavering fangs of her pet Manhounds.[8]

Everything was in order and to hand. The men sat around their campfires and a few songs lifted; but in the main they got their heads down and tried to sleep. I fancy that most of them did not, not being veterans. So the morning dawned. Palest rose and apple green, the Suns of Scorpio, Zim and Genodras, rose into a dappled sky. The air tanged with a morning bite. Food was eaten by those whose appetites remained. The final polish to weapons, the last adjustment to harness, the bilious shouts of the Deldars bellowing the men into their ranks — so we raggedy little bunch, so magniloquently styled the Eighth Army, fell in.

The lay of the land was simple and all important. Not being sufficiently strong to meet Hangrol in open battle, we must perforce make him attack piecemeal, which, being a skillful general, he would not do unless hoodwinked. The plain was here cut by a wide gash, the bed of an ancient stream long since lost to the Canals of Vallia. Vegetation clothed its flanks. Here were posted the archers. At the end of the depression the Tenth Kerchuri stood, formed, solid, a glittering array of crimson and bronze. They were withdrawn just enough to be out of sight of the distant end. Our cavalry waited my orders on the flanks. Scouts and skirmishers moved forward in clouds to deny the enemy clear observation. The churgurs waited just inboard of the archers. It was a simple arrangement to all seeming, and not a particularly military layout, either. I knew a fair old number of princes and generals who would blanch at the mere sight of the formations we adopted.

Our total aerial force went whirling off to put into effect the final dazzlement. Even the lumbering old weyver went, with a rascally gang of cutthroats concealed behind her low bulwarks and a dozen varters ready to spew out chunks of Ovalia’s fine street paving.

“You’ll never dupe all that cramph Hangrol’s aerial forces, Dray!” Turko rested his massive shield on his saddle. “By Morro the Muscle! We’ll have the hornets around our ears—”

“Difficult to say.” I spoke seriously, for this was a tactical and psychological problem. “If our fellows can draw off a goodly part, our archers can deal with the rest.”

“I just wish Seg was here,” said Turko, and gentled his zorca between his knees. By Zair! And didn’t I! And Inch, too, and all the others!

We watched the lads of the Tenth Kerchuri running back down the dry, ancient riverbed scattering their caltrops. If you question — if you condemn — the use of youngsters here, I sympathize. But they were born on Kregen, Vallians, and they burned to do what they could. The chevaux de frise were unloaded from the krahnik carts and carried forward ready to be run out where needed. I lifted in the stirrups to survey the scene. There was no fleet voller for me now to oversee the dispositions. Our men melted into the shadows of the bushes, and were still. A lazy breeze tufted the leaves, which was most useful and was taken by many men as a sign of the direct assistance we had from Opaz and Vox. Into that ravine trotted Jiktar Travok Ramplon’s regiment. The zorcas looked marvelous. The men had smartened themselves and their mounts up for the occasion, and wore their brightest uniforms. Red and gold glittered in the light. They rode forward and they suddenly seemed, despite their trim appearance and martial order, very small and lonely and isolated trotting up that dusty defile. They trotted on and the hooves of the zorcas glittered through the dust, the spiral horns jutted proudly, the tails switched impatiently. Each trooper held his bow in his left hand, straight down his left leg, and his right hand gripped the nocked arrow. Jogging along in the trot, guiding their mounts with knees and body movement and voice, the swods of the zorca bows rode forward.

At the far end of the defile appeared the scouts from Hangrol’s forces. Overhead a bunch of mirvols flew up ready to swoop down. I held my breath. You can see the tricky situation. Too soon and Hangrol would never follow. Too late, and that fine zorca regiment would be a mangled ruin. With faithful Fango between his knees, confident, exalted, Jiktar Ramplon judged it to a nicety. His men loosed at the mirvols. The flying animals swerved away, preferring to leave to the advance guard of land cavalry the sweeping away of this troublesome zorca unit. Remember, Ramplon had been baiting these adversaries for the past days. They had blood in their eye. The leading units of enemy zorcas simply let rip a yell of rage and anger and charged like leems. Jiktar Ramplon gave his orders, his trumpeter blew, the regiment pivoted and pulled back, building up their speed into a fine, free gallop. Around that kink in the defile Ramplon sent on his regiment, for he had chosen to ride last, for which I marked him. He had the Twenty-seventh Regiment of zorca archers. They raced around that bend, and the following cavalry roared around after them. Dust smoked into the air. When the pursuing cavalry were out of sight of their following main body, our archers let fly. Ramplon’s men hauled up, skidding, turned, and those bows came up and showered shafts into the abruptly huddled, terror-stricken mass. Shot to pieces, the enemy zorcas tried to flee back, and ran full tilt into a wall of steel that closed as though on a hinge across the defile. The Tenth Kerchuri received the fleeing cavalry as though they received a charge. Perhaps half a dozen zorcamen survived to scramble around the edges and run for it

— and each one of that half-dozen was brought down by a marksman.

The noise was such, I hoped, as to convince Hangrol that his advance cavalry had successfully chased off the annoying hornets who had been stinging him so unmercifully. The first elements of his main body came into sight, and I judged that Hangrol did think so. Apart from those early mirvols, there was no sign of his aerial support.

I looked back to where the 2ESW and the EYJ lay waiting in the runnels in the ground. All our men waited in concealment. Hangrol’s forces advanced, led by more cavalry, with bunches of irregulars following, and backed by regiments of the iron legions of Hamal. I counted quickly. Ten regiments... They were the hard nut we had to crack. Like the other troops in Hangrol’s force, the Hamalese swods were mounted up; they would dismount to go into action.

The moment approached and nothing was going to stop it now.

The Jiktars of the Archers awaited the signal. The churgurs gathered themselves. The kreutzin strained to get in among those brilliant adversaries. Close they came, nearer and nearer, riding with all the aplomb and confidence of men sure of themselves.

Any minute now...

Deb-Lu-Quienyin appeared at my side.

He was standing and leaning back, with his left hand pressed flat against thin air, as though he supported himself against an invisible wall. His clothes were filthy, torn, and tattered, and his turban was hanging over an ear. His face worked with passion and near despair, and he glared upon me with frightful meaning.

I bent from Shadow’s back to peer more closely.

With an effort, Quienyin motioned.

Not understanding what he wanted, and aware that Turko was taking no notice whatsoever, I for a moment thought I was hallucinating and imagining I saw the Wizard of Loh. Hangrol’s army marched on and the distance lessened. The giving of the signal could not be long delayed. I looked back at Quienyin, and he was still there, an apparition bold in the light of the suns. He lifted his right hand with a gesture of weariness. The short sword in his fist was broken in half. He dropped the sword. The moment it left his hand it vanished.

He pointed. He pointed with his right forefinger. He pointed at his eyes. I leaned from the zorca, staring. I stared into the eyes of the Wizard of Loh...

I was looking into a stone-walled chamber pierced by tall windows through which the suns light streamed in emerald and ruby. Silda Segutorio, half-naked, blood staining her shoulder, was staggering up distraught and trying to wield a blood-crusted rapier. Crumpled in a corner lay the body of a man in clothes splashed with blood. I stared. I felt the sickness rising. The man’s fist rested on a sword, flat on the straw-covered stone.

My vision swung to the doorway. Men crowded in, fierce, bright, savage men, exulting. They were clansmen. Their weapons flickered in the brilliant light. They kicked aside the dreadful evidences of their handiwork. They trod contemptuously over the shattered corpses of men wearing the red-and-yellow uniforms of the Emperor’s Sword Watch. Clansmen, savage, horrific, far more lethal than any barbarian, they jostled in to be the first to slay the Wizard and Silda and the man who lay crumpled in the corner. I knew that man. His fist made a sudden spasmodic attempt to seize the sword, and fell away, limp. I knew the sword.

That was a great Krozair longsword.

That man was my son Drak.

Chapter twenty-one

Victories for Vallia

Turko said, “Almost time, Dray! Another hundred paces or so, and then...”

He spoke, Turko the Shield, and I could not see him. I could hear the susurration of the breeze, hear the ominous drumroll of that advancing army; I could feel Shadow between my knees and the warmth of the suns, but I glared with awful fury into a stone chamber where some of the most ferocious warriors of all Kregen stalked down with bloodied weapons upon the helpless form of my son. The vision’s view shifted again and I saw Silda drawing herself up. Her blood-spattered body glowed through her ripped russet leathers. The rapier trembled in her fist. But she staggered up, her face pallid and distraught, her eyes fierce, her brows downbent, and I knew she would hurl herself forward. Seg’s daughter would fling herself to destruction to protect my son!

The feral, bearded mouths of the clansmen opened and I knew they roared their appreciation of the gallantry of it, shouted compliments of the High Jikai; yet I could hear nothing of them, only the onward tramp of an enemy army dinning in my ears.

How could I give the signal to loose when I could not see Hangrol’s forces? How could I assist Drak and Silda when I was miles and miles away from them?

In my nostrils blew the sweet-scented breeze of Kregen. I could not smell the dust in that stone chamber or the raw stink of spilled blood. Among the refuse of swords scattered from the shattered Sword Watch lay a drexer, one of those swords we in Valka had designed and forged to make a superior weapon. It stirred.

The sword moved of itself.

Jerkily, it lifted into the air and the hilt dropped down and the blood-smeared point snouted up. I knew. This, I had witnessed before. Gladiomancy! Swordomancy! Deb-Lu-Quienyin was exercising his powers, putting forth his kharrna, and manipulating that sword through the force of his mind. The sword trembled.

So, at once, near-instinctively, I understood what the Wizard of Loh required of me. The clansmen hauled up. Soundless, that ghastly scene. The clanners stared at the sword floating unsupported in midair. But they did not run away. They were Clansmen of the Great Plains of Segesthes. They had little truck with sorcerers. One leaped. He was a Zorcander, one of the chiefs, and his broadsword struck like a sliver of silver fire.

“Dray! What—? What ails you?”

The drexer parried the first flashing blows.

“Nothing, Turko.” Still keeping my gaze fastened on the eyes of Quienyin and through them that scene within the stone chamber, I dismounted from Shadow. I gripped the saddle. “My eyes — tell me when Hangrol’s advance reaches the second down-drooping missal tree.”

“Hai!” Turko started to yell, prepared to rouse our men to my aid.

“Shastum! Silence! Listen, Turko. You must be my eyes. Keep talking, tell me what goes forward, but speak quietly. Let no one know. You understand?”

“I understand. And the cramphs have reached the first missal.”

“Then it will not be long delayed.”

The drexer was beaten aside and the Zorcander, with a soundless yell of triumph, burst past. A discarded rapier lifted and struck and drove deeply into his side. He staggered back, and between the fingers of his left hand the bright blood seeped.

The rapier hovered in the air. And then — and then it was as though I gripped the hilt of that rapier in my fist. I could feel it, silver-wound and ridged, hard in my fingers. And I knew I gripped Shadow’s saddle!

The rapier twitched up, and my body and arm did what bodies and arms with rapiers attached are accustomed to do on Kregen. The Zorcander fell, and the next clansman, leaping, silently roaring, fell also. But a rapier is no weapon with which to go up against Clansmen of Segesthes, by the Black Chunkrah, no!

Quienyin, through his kharrna, controlled the weapons. His strength had been taxed to the utmost. His skill would not avail him in swordplay against these supreme warriors. So he stretched out the powers of his mind and brought me in to wield the weapons through him. Uncanny, weird, spirit-shaking — but the only chance left in all the cruel and exotic world of Kregen for Silda and Drak. The Wizard had to channel my skill at swordplay through his control. The rapier was a flashing blur of bloodied silver, and the broadswords beat and slashed. They had to knock that slender sliver of steel away before they could pass, and when they thrust they pierced thin air. But they drove on and I felt the shifting, sliding movement of my feet on the straw-covered stone, and yet I knew I stood braced on the ground beside my zorca and gripping onto his saddle.

The smashing power of the clansmen’s blows forced me back, and the rapier slicing and thrusting unsupported in the air drew back. Had I been there in the flesh, I would have been sore wounded by now. Back and back, until I stood a few paces only before Drak and Silda. A single comprehensive glance showed me Drak sprawled unconscious and Silda crouched over him with her rapier half-lifted. She panted and her eyes were wide and wild. She would spring up at the last and fight until the end over the body of Drak.

The chamber spun about me as Quienyin turned once more to face the clansmen, for I realized I saw through his eyes. Stubbornly I tried to move back. I let go of Shadow’s saddle and the dizziness caught me and I staggered. I felt Turko’s Khamorro arm wrap about me and support me. But as I released my grip on the saddle so the rapier fell soundlessly on the stone.

This lack of communication baffling us infuriated me. It was like shouting into fog and receiving nothing in return. But Deb-Lu-Quienyin had been with me through the Moder where in that subterranean hellhole he had seen me battling with a longsword. The Wizard understood instantly. The Krozair brand under Drak’s limp fingers twitched. It shivered. It lifted. It seemed to me I reached out with both fists and took the hilt into my grasp, and I turned in Turko’s arm and so once again gripped onto Shadow’s saddle. This time I gripped with both hands.

“They have reached the second missal, Dray.”

“Then — loose! And Opaz have us in his keeping.”

The noise of the battle I could hear; the sounds of the combat within the stone chamber remained cut off. In two places at once, I fought.

The battle I could hear and smell but not see roared on as our archers and slingers loosed and the Tenth stepped into view to block the ravine and entice Hangrol on. The combat I could see but not hear or taste flowered in the stone chamber as the clansmen smashed on to strike down the Krozair blade and have done. The battle was of vital importance to the welfare of the country. The combat was of excruciating agony for me, for through wizardly powers I sought to save the life of Drak.

“They go on! They go on!” roared Turko.

I switched the Krozair brand in a blur and chopped and sliced and thrust.

“Their cavalry, Turko?”

“Cannot maneuver for the shafts pinning them.”

“Tell me when they charge — if they charge.”

“The Hamalese have dismounted and are formed — the skirmishers run like rasts — our fellows are in among them now—”

A clansman dropped to a knee and brought two blades, a broadsword and a shortsword, up in a cross of glittering steel. That was a cunning and brave trick, for he sought to trap my blade in the neck of the cross and so wrench it free. With supple Krozair skill the longsword looped and hummed and the clansman fell back, silently.

Hangrol had over twice our force. We had to remain in cover and shoot and shoot. The Tenth Kerchuri did not entirely fill the width of the ravine where once a river had flowed. The Hakkodin spread out and the Chodku of archers shot with their comrades along the bushy heights each side. Turko kept up a ceaseless flow of reports and I swirled the Krozair longsword and, by the Light of Opaz, did not move a hairsbreadth!

The trumpeter of the Second Sword Watch on that day was Vardon the Cheeks. I said, “Bid Vardon stand ready.”

Turko yelled, and then said, “The Hamalese are formed, their shields are up. They advance. They charge!”

“And the ground between?”

“Cumbered with dead men and fugitives still running.”

“The cavalry?”

“They mill. It looks as though they will recover in a mur or so.”

“And the skirmishers and their mercenaries?”

“Some press on with the Hamalese. Some wait the outcome.”

Three clansmen came for that disembodied longsword together and now two of them swirled cloaks in a valiant effort to entrap that ghostly brand. I sliced and — without moving! — leaped away and so launched myself at them from the side. Quienyin’s powers flowed through my arms and fists and the Krozair brand slashed in a vivid bar of light.

“The distance left?”

“Five hundred paces, no more, and narrowing all the time,” Turko’s voice rasped. “But the bowmen bring them down.”

‘Tell Vardon the Cheeks to blow the Tenth Kerchuri Prepare.”

The silver notes ran out, swirling and skyrocketing in the air. And the clansmen drew back a space, panting, and their weapons glittered in the light of the slanting rays of the suns. Two murs, three...

“Bid Vardon blow, Turko. Blow the Charge!”

“Quidang!”

And over the field and floating free and lilting with blood-quickening urgings, the Charge blew in ringing imperative.

As the clansmen came on again and the Krozair brand leaped and flashed I could imagine I saw the Tenth Kerchuri. I could see their pikes come down, down, pointing, their sharp steel heads a bristle of menace. The crimson shields would all slant together. Down would go the bronze-fitted helmets. The plumes would ruffle bravely. And then the brumbytes, formed, solid in their crimson and bronze, would charge. Blind to that sight, I could yet see it all, and hear and taste and smell the blood-thumping excitement of it.

Yet the clansmen would not leave off their attacks upon this eerie sword that floated in midair and chopped them as they charged.

“They meet!” yelled Turko. “By Morro the Muscle! You have created a veritable weapon in this phalanx, Dray!”

Very little can stand and survive in the path of a charging phalanx. We had proved that before. I had not really believed. But here, in what came to be known as the Battle of Ovalia, the pikes in their steel-crested fervor charged and overthrew the iron legions of Hamal. Raging, like a bursting dam that spills destruction in the path of its waters, the Tenth Kerchuri swept everything away before that intemperate onslaught.

And I did not see it!

Raw, green, they might be, these brumbytes wielding their pikes. But their helmets were down and their shields were slanted and their pikes went in and they rolled on and on and nothing could stand before them.

Silda was standing now, gripping her rapier. She had overcome the first tremor of horror when swords swirled with no visible hands to wield them. She stepped forward. I brought the longsword across in a vicious defending blow and smashed a clansman away.

“Stand clear, Silda!” I shouted.

“What?” Turko’s voice reached me, alarmed. “What’s that, Dray?”

“How goes the battle?”

“The Hakkodin are in among their cavalry and the cavalry do not like it — they run — they flee...

“Blow for the churgurs — blow for everything! General Advance!”

The General Advance rang out over the roar of the battle.

The Tenth would be rolling down the ravine like a tidal wave of destruction, and now the sword and shield men would rage from the bushes crowning the slopes and hit the bewildered enemy from both flanks. And, all the time, I knew, the archers and staff slingers would be loosing into the huddled masses. Kapt Hangrol had been sucked into the thorn-ivy trap. And now he was paying the price. Many clansmen littered the stone floor. Their blood ran greasily in the cracks between the flags. And still they sought to pass that disembodied sword and slay the Prince Majister of Vallia. The next Clanner struck at the sword seeking by main force to beat it down. The enormous leverage exercised by the Krozair two-handed grip brought the sword in a neat curve around the clansman’s blade. The longsword twitched and the clansman’s broadsword struck it square. I felt the shock, like liquid fire, jolt all up my arms. By Zair! Slow — slow and weak... With a spurt of passion I slashed the clansman away and swung to the next and his blade clashed down on mine. I felt the shock, shuddering through me, and I smashed back. I knew what was happening. Deb-Lu-Quienyin was weakening. What he had accomplished already was a miracle. But his kharrna was not limitless. The fight raging in the stone chamber became fraught with its inevitable end.

With the sounds of a greater battle ringing in my ears, I faced defeat in this contemptible little fracas, and knew it to be by far the more important, the vital, of the two — for with Quienyin’s exhaustion the Krozair brand would fall, and Silda would hurl forward with her rapier blurring, and would die and then would die also my son Drak.

Still Quienyin upheld me. Still I continued to battle.

Turko yelled that the pikes rolled on like the millstones of the gods. The churgurs welted into the flanks of the foemen. Our irregulars were in there, smiting and dodging and smiting again. Drooping now, the Krozair brand, drooping like a victim of the black lotus-flowers of Hodan-Set. Useless my exerting all the bestial and savage power pent within me by civilization. I fought only through the wizardry of gladiomancy. With the slipping away of Quienyin’s powers so dropped away all the Krozair skill.

The longsword slashed and slashed again, and at every blow I could feel the lessening of force. The chamber blurred, the stones merging as though melting in some supernal heat. The stone flags of the floor pitched beneath me like the deck of a swifter. I knew I was grasping onto Shadow’s saddle with fists in which the knuckles ridged into skulls. Turko was yelling; but I did not hear him clearly, could see nothing in the world but the next opponent and do nothing in all Kregen but strike on. Two clansmen battered their broadswords down on my sword, and the blade slithered. I strained of myself to bring it up, and could feel no life, no response, could feel only a deadly leaden lumpiness of total fatigue. A six-inch-long sliver of steel appeared from the floor. It was grasped in a fist. It drove smartly into the left-hand Clanner and a second, precisely similar steel blade, gripped in a fist of precisely the same nature, struck the right-hand clansman. Both fell away.

Two Pachaks raged into the fight. With them, glorious in their red and yellow, men of the Sword Watch drove on. But, ahead of them, the Pachak twins, Modo and Logu Fre-Da, smashed on in defense of the Wizard of Loh to whom they had given their nikobi in all honor.

Then I let out a harsh snort of sound, a breathy explosion that might in Cottmer’s Caverns be taken for a laugh.

“What?” said Turko somewhere a million miles away.

Nodgen and Hunch pranced into the stone chamber, and Nodgen’s spear was darkly stained, and Hunch’s bill bore the marks of hard blows given and taken.

The First Sword Watch did not waste time on the clansmen. And, to be truthful, those clanners had fought heroically against sorcery. Very few other hardy warriors would have stood, let alone fought so determinedly, against wizardry like this. The 1ESW cleared out the clansmen, and arrows brought down those who sought to flee. But these four, the Pachak twins and Nodgen and Hunch, ran across toward me.

Their mouths were opening and closing and their eyes were popping and they were giving every indication of extreme animation. My viewpoint changed, and I was looking at the ceiling, with these four faces ringing the perimeter of vision. So I knew they were caring for Quienyin, all unknowing that Jak the Sturr stared through the wizard’s eyes!

In the next instant I was staring at the polished leather of Shadow’s saddle, twisting, and Turko was hauling me up, and saying, “Dray! Dray! For the sweet sake of Opaz—”

“I am all right, Turko — now. Let me see the battle.”

“Your eyes—?”

“Perfectly all right now. I will explain. Are there any of our vollers in sight?”

“Not one. I trust they are all safe.” He looked at me with all his old quizzical mockery; but he’d been shaken up, all right, no mistake about that!

All along that ravine of death the dead lay. The Tenth had stormed on with their pikes level and left nothing living in their wake. The rest of our little army, our Eighth Army, pushed on and Kapt Hangrol’s forces fled.

“They won’t come araiding over the borders again in a hurry, Dray.”

“That is what I would like to think. By Vox! But it is a melancholy sight. Pull Jiktar Brad the Berry and his Hagli Bush Irregulars out and get them to tend the wounded. Brad will understand.”

“Aye, he will. We are light on medical services.”

A battery of krahnik-drawn varters went rumbling past. They had limbered up the ballistae in record time, and the krahniks, powerful, deep-chested, full of fire, hauled with a will. They were off to try to take up new positions and harry the rout. Their darts and rocks had wrought fearful execution in that blood-soaked ravine.

Well, the aftermath of a battle is always a messy business, and we had to make sure Hangrol kept running and did not stop to try to regroup. Our little cavalry force swept out in pursuit. The Tenth Kerchuri halted and I sent word to Kervax[9]Orlon Sangar telling him of my pride in his men and my congratulations. All the units involved had done well. There would be bobs[10]aplenty in the wake of the Battle of Ovalia...

In all decency I could not leave at once. Some reassurance could be allowed in that the Sword Watch and Quienyin’s comrades had burst in to the rescue. But I vowed I wanted to know what had gone wrong over in the Northeast. By Krun, yes!

A Kerchuri of the phalanx, when arrayed in the normal formation of twelve men to a file, spreads out to cover a frontage of approximately three hundred and seventy paces. Drill movements can expand or contract this front, of course, containing as it does four hundred thirty-two pikes in each rank. The Tenth had swept up the ravine like a steel broom.

Turko and I and a few others of my officers walked slowly along the ravine. Everywhere our men were tending the wounded and carrying off the dead to be decently interred according to the rites suggested by the atras, the little amulets, the slain wore. Some of us made the usual trite observations about life and death. The scene was somber; but I did not feel — then — the chill I knew would near overwhelm me at all this waste.

I bent and picked up a shield from the phalanx. Its five-ply wooden construction was still intact, leather faced, bronze bound. The carrying strap was cinched tight; but the battle grips were broken. On the strip across the top the colors and symbols and numbers proclaimed this shield to have belonged to the Paltork — the second in command to the Relianchun — of the Sixty-fifth Relianch of the Eleventh Jodhri. In glowing yellow the stylized representation of the brumby, that long-horned, eight-legged, armored battering ram of destruction and an animal thought to be long extinct if not legendary, appeared on the face of the crimson shield. The brumby from which the brumbytes took their name was the symbol of the entire Phalanx Force. I put my finger alongside the painted symbol of the Tenth Kerchuri of the Fifth Phalanx, a Prychan grasping Thunderbolts, and I shook my head.

Yes, the Golden Prychan, the wrestlers inn, had yielded up the means to bring back Turko. But as I stared on this shield, I realized I did not know the name of the Paltork who had carried it into battle. How could I? But this seemed to me wrong. I felt I should have known his name. Tucked around the strap was a little cloth packet of cham. The Paltork no doubt chewed stoically as he marched forward; well, I fancied he would never return to claim his favorite chew. The group of officers did not dwell overlong on that depressing scene. Having made sure that everything that could be done was being done, we trailed back to camp in a heavy silence. Of our voller force, nine returned. We had lost five. The flutduins had done well and had taken minimal casualties. As the returns came in I realized the thorn-ivy ambush had worked, and worked extraordinarily well. Our casualties were exceeding light.

I took Turko and Deft-Fingered Minch and one or two others, and left the Eighth Army under the command of Orlon Sangar, with orders to recoup and to clear the area, and flew direct for the northeast. No one expressed any surprise or chagrin that I should be leaving. It was taking me some time to realize that emperors could behave in this peremptory way without causing comment. After all, every man knew the emperor’s concerns were wide, covering all of Vallia, and he was clearly needed elsewhere. We caught up with the grandly named First Army at a bleak little town of Northern Jevuldrin called Ithieursmot. Its chief claim to fame until now was a mildewed mass of ruins left over from the Sunset People. Drak lay in his camp cot in his tent and fumed and swore and was in a thoroughly bad temper.

“The wound in itself was not serious,” Quienyin told me as we stood looking down on the fractious Drak. The needlemen had worked well and Drak was in no pain. “But the prince had taken a savage knock on the head which Rendered Him Unconscious.”

Silda sat on a low stool at the cot side, holding Drak’s hand, and would not be moved. I thanked Opaz she was there, her own wound bandaged, and her ripped leathers replaced by a yellow gown. Had she not been, I think Drak would have blown up.

“Deb-Lu has explained it all to me, Father,” said Drak. “It seems I owe my life to you.”

“As to that, it is Deb-Lu-Quienyin in whose debt we both stand. And, Quienyin, you know my thanks is yours — aye! And I do not forget all we said in the Desolate Waste, and the Moder and the Humped Land. It is all coming together, now.”

“Did I tell you,” said the Wizard of Loh, “what your pair of rogues, Hunch and Nodgen said when they were apprised who you were?”

“I am not sure I wish to know that.”

Drak looked suspiciously at me. He had not seen me smile overmuch when his mother was not present. As to the fracas in the stone chamber, Drak had brought on a battle with superior forces, which was why he had been unable to spare me very many, in the complete conviction that Seg would come up with the Second Army. Seg had done so; but a flash flood had delayed his arrival by three burs. In that time Drak’s army had fought devotedly, but a wing of clansmen had broken through. What I had witnessed had been the last dying attempt on the clansmen’s part to slay the Prince Majister of Vallia before their whole force was broken and driven off. Seg’s arrival and Quienyin’s wizardry had saved us, and now the Second Army was hot-foot thrusting the minions of Zankov, cavalry, infantry, and air, farther north. The Hawkwas, a most savage bunch who were now devoted to the Emperor of Vallia, were swinging in to crush the enemy between them and Seg. Altogether, a satisfactory day’s work, if you omitted to dwell too long on what might have occurred.

Then a fast voller arrived to tell us that Kov Vodun Alloran had been victorious in the southwest and was marching strongly into his own kovnate in the corner of the island.

“It seems as though we are successful in the south,” said Drak. He smiled at Silda as he spoke.

“There remains the southeast,” I said. “And those rasts up north. And the islands—”

“Oh!” flamed Silda. “We will do it! We have to look on the bright side.”

I put a hand to my jaw and stared at her. Her bright face stared back, defiant, challenging, and I felt a poignant stab of happiness for Drak. Now, if only he had the nous to take the happiness that was his, and forget all about Queen Lush...

With my old gravel-shifting voice I said, “We will win, in the end, Silda, because defeat is unthinkable.”

Then, to Drak, I said, “Have you seen your mother?”

“No. Nor anyone else of the family. But they are all right.” He glanced up at Quienyin. “Otherwise we would have heard.”

I grumped at this. But he was right.

“I would like to go after those rasts. But we must consolidate what we have and strengthen our new frontiers. The army will have to be looked at, too.” My face, I think, must have looked its usual ugly self, for Drak lost a little of his fretfulness. “And as for hiring mercenaries—”

“They fought well and earned their hire.”

“Maybe. But I want Vallia to be liberated by Vallians. Is that clear?”

“Why shed our blood when—?”

“Just because it is our blood and the prize is blood-worthy. If it is not, you will never secure peace in the land.”

We might have wrangled then; but the needlemen insisted Prince Drak needed rest, and we were shepherded out. Silda did not accompany us. She was the best medicine Drak could have. My comrades in camp and I decided we ought to hold a right roaring bender that night. We had done well. There was much to do. But for this night we could forget problems and carouse around the campfires and bellow out the old songs under the Moons of Kregen. And so we did. But for all the wild singing and drinking and dancing as the campfires spurted lurid highlights against flushed faces and feverish eyes — can one ever forget problems? I do not think so. A few moments of oblivion, dearly bought, look cheap and tawdry when the problems remain, as intransigent and menacing as ever with the pallid light of the suns.

Every man contains a scorpion within him. And every man is commanded by the Star Lords. My Scorpion had materialized itself and become real; my Star Lords had revealed a glimmer of themselves. In this, surely, I was more fortunate than the unhappy people who struggle uncomprehendingly against the vagaries of their own nature and the vicissitudes of what, mistakenly, they call fate. If it be true that men are born to rule and men are born to be slaves, then surely it is an onus placed on those who rule to command toward life and not toward death? The study of history tends to the belief that those with power abuse it because they understand only a tiny part of what power is. If individual people are as nothing before the great weight of destiny, and there is no reason in the universe, then a man has just the one single fact to which to cling: he is a man. Nothing more. Unknown powers within and without ourselves — the Scorpion and the Everoinye — may overthrow us and we may go down to eternal ruin; but can we do any more, seeing we are but men?

We had won victories against what my people regarded as the powers of darkness, yet I knew we must all go forward together in the light of Opaz, against greater forces of evil. And who was to say that those other evil powers would not, in time, be reconciled?

“There is a magnificent golden Kildoi, there, Dray,” said Turko.

“Aye.” The firelight glinted from Korero’s golden beard and he smiled, lifting his two right arms. His tail hand wrapped around a silver goblet, and he drank.

I made the pappattu and I made it in a certain way.

“Korero the Shield — Turko, Kov of Falinur.”

A welling burst of song roared out then from the nearest group around their campfire, rollicking words that finished, “No idea at all, at all, no idea at all.”

We all half-turned to look and listen, and when I turned back — lo! Turko and Korero were gone. What transpired between those two touched me nearly, and I, fallible human being that I am, trembled as vague rumors, laced with sly chuckles, reached me. Garbled stories of a fight that sprawled away into the moon shadows, a titanic conflict that roared over kools of land, made me imagine all manner of disasters. But, when I found them, the Kildoi and the Khamorro, they were sitting together and quaffing and not a bruise or a cut on either. They stood up as I approached, lithe, limber, superb men.

“You two—” I started. Then the ridiculousness of the situation overwhelmed me. How small my faith had been! “I need you both, in different ways. You are not Vallian born — well, no more am I — but our path is set out for us. Falinur is to be won back, for one thing.”

“The kov was saying—” spoke up Korero, his golden beard glinting, his tail hand curled around his jar.

“Korero expressed the view,” said Turko.

They paused and looked at each other. I took the measure of that look.

“Well, that’s settled, then.” I spoke briskly. “We’ll round up an army and no doubt Drak and the Presidio will bestow an imposing number on it, and we’ll see about Falinur.”

“It is in my mind, Dray, to ask Korero to march with us.”

“If the Prince Majister can spare him. When it’s done I’ll expect Falinur to be a model kovnate. As for your taxes, Kov Turko, see they are paid promptly, and in full. And I shall call on you for a few regiments. See about raising a brigade of swarthmen.”

They both looked puzzled. “But — you—?”

“When I get back we will have to think seriously about the rest of the island. This King of Urn Vallia, for example.”

“Get back?” they said together.

The first pastel tints of the new day lightened the horizon, the air smelled crisp and clear with a lingering trace of woodsmoke to spice the atmosphere with promise of breakfast, She of the Veils sank slowly wreathed in roseate clouds. This was a dawn on Kregen and there cannot be any other dawns in all the worlds among the stars to compare with that, by Zair!

“Get back,” I said firmly. “Much of Vallia has been freed from the maniacs who destroy all they touch. Prince Drak is fully competent to run the country. The army is in good heart with these victories under their belts. Where we have the land, the people prosper. The harvests are good. There is a spirit abroad that will not be denied. I shall not be long — at least, I trust I shall not be long.”

“But—” said Turko.

“Where—?” said Korero.

“You two sound like that mythical fellow from Balintol with two heads.”

“Mythical or not,” said a voice from the shadows at my back, “he is a fellow who stays at home for some of the time. Just where are you off to this time?”

For two heartbeats I did not turn around. I felt all that glorious dawn of Kregen rush together and collide and burst into my stupid vosk skull of a head. I felt the dawn colors riot and coruscate and burn through my veins. Slowly, slowly, I turned.

She half-smiled, yet her face was serious and grave, pale and with the first hints of the exhaustion brought by long journeyings and too-intensive work. I barely noticed her clothes — black silk tights, black leathers, black boots, with her rapier and dagger depending from golden lockets and the wide black belt with the golden clasp. A scarlet cape swung from her shoulders. She stared at me and I stared at her, and, like two loons, we stood, not moving, staring with unappeased hunger one upon the other. I took a breath. The fragrance of the dawn air, the subtle pastels of apple green and rose, the distant chorus of those marvelous birds of Kregen all — all swam about me. The morning radiance touched her hair and brought alive those glorious tints of auburn, making a halo about her face. I swallowed down —

hard.

It occurred to me that I might have said, “So you have come home, then?” But, instead, all I could say was, “There is still much to do. We have made a beginning—”

She took a step forward.

“Yes, there is still much to be done. You great grizzly graint! And you are flying off again!”

“Hyrklana,” I said. “You know.”

“I know. And you will leave today?”

I took a step forward. We moved toward each other. She raised her arms and I saw the wonder of her face.

There was nothing else in all of Kregen.

I held her, held her close, and I felt her arms clasping me.

“Delia!”

“Dray!”

“I must go to Hyrklana, as you must go about the business of your Sisters of the Rose—”

“Only for Vallia—”

“We are driven—”

“But not for much longer. It will end, one day—”

“Yes, there is light at the end of the tunnel, at last.”

I held her close and I could feel the warmth of her and the tremble between us. All of Vallia, then, all of Kregen, seemed of small moment, tiny, insignificant, beside my Delia, my Delia of Delphond, my Delia of the Blue Mountains...

“And you will fly for Hyrklana today?”

I could feel the growing heat of the Suns of Scorpio burning upon me.

“No, my heart. I do not think I shall leave today.”

A Glossary to the Jikaida Cycle of the Saga of Dray Prescot

References to the four books of the cycle are given as:

LFK: A Life for Kregen

SFK: A Sword for Kregen

FFK: A Fortune for Kregen

VFK: A Victory for Kregen

NB: Previous glossaries covering entries not included here will be found in Volume 5: Prince of Scorpio

; Volume 7: Arena of Antares ; Volume 11: Armada of Antares ; Volume 14: Krozair of Kregen ; Volume 18: Golden Scorpio .

A

Absordur: A woodland trylonate of the Dawn Lands, rich in timber and minerals. Aeilssa: Princess.

agate-winged jutmen of Hodan-Set: A mythical host of ghostly riders who scourge the nighted plains of Kregen.

Aidrin: Country of the Dawn Lands; Jikaida City is the capital.

Alloran, Vodun, Kov of Kaldi: A shrewd man who lost his lands in Vallia’s Time of Troubles and who dreamed only of returning in triumph; commanded the Fifth Army, the Army of the Southwest. Almuensis: A cult of Sorcerers of considerable powers.

alkwoin: A valuable mineral obtained by open-cast mining.

Amklana: A province of Hyrklana and its proud and beautiful city. Andrinos: A Khibil wrestler brought with Turko and Saenci by Dray Prescot out of Pandahem. VFK

Aracloins: City areas of confused alleys and covered souks and bazaars, teeming with commerce and villainy.

arbora trees: Called this because their flowers look like arbora feathers. Archolax the Bones: A spare man of gravitas, appointed Pallan of the Treasury of Vallia. Ariane nal Amklana: The chief lady of the city of Amklana who did not come too well out of her adventure down the Moder.

Astrashum: A city of the Dawn Lands from which expeditions set out for Moderdrin. Here Prescot, Nodgen, and Hunch were sold on the auction block to Tarkshur the Lash. FFK

B

Bakkar: A Brokelsh spirit or deity.

Balassmane: A superb nikvove charger ridden by Prescot at the opening of the Battle of Kochwold. LFK

Banje: A shop selling candies and trifles and trinkets for children. Barkindrar the Bullet: A Brokelsh slinger from Hyrzibar’s Finger; one of Prince Tyfar’s retainers. Battle of Irginian: In which the Army of Vondium overthrew Mogper’s army under command of Kapt Hangreal. LFK

Battle of Kochwold: Traumatic fight in which the Phalanx of Vondium and other arms successfully resisted the great charge of ten divisions of Clansmen of Segesthes, and the zorcas of Filbarrka triumphed. When Prescot left, command devolved on Seg Segutorio, commanding the vaward. LFK

Battle of Ovalia: Where Prescot sprang the thorn-ivy trap on Jhansi’s army led by Kapt Hangrol, the Vallian Eighth Army winning despite being outnumbered over two to one. VFK

Battles of Kanarsmot, First and Second: In which Vallian forces held and threw back raiders over the Great River. SFK

Bellendur: Kovnate of the Dawn Lands.

Belzid’s Belly, By: A Brokelsh oath.

Belzur the Aphorist, Master: A new and successful playwright of Vondium. Beng Drudoj: Patron saint of wrestlers.

Beng Lomier: Patron saint of strolling players.

Beng Teaubu: Martyr who was drawn many seasons ago in the chundrog of Jikaida City. Bevon: A powerfully built yet gentle Brukaj, slave to Master Scatulo, who obtained freedom by acting a piece in Kazz Jikaida; good comrade to Prescot. SFK

Bilsley: A vadvarate of the Kingdom of Mandua in the Dawn Lands. Dav Olmes is vad. Black Chunguj, By the: An oath indicating disapproval of an unjust act.

“Black is White and White is Black.” A song about a Pandaheem who kissed the baker’s wife and went floury white to see the sweep’s wife, and so went home white and black. Blind Archer, By the: Plea to the Bowman of Chance for a good shot when the mark is difficult and a hit uncertain.

Brad the Berry: Landlord of the Hagli Bush in Vondium, a cheerful, resourceful man around whom rumors cluster. Raised a regiment from his regulars; but marked out for high office. Brince: Second cousin to Inch.

Brokkerim: Familiar form of address from one Brokelsh to another. Brudstern: Sword mark shaped like open flower, whose magic is whispered rather than spoken. Usually punched on forte.

Brugheim: A kovnate of the Kingdom of Mandua in the Dawn Lands. Konec Yadivro is kov. Brukaj: A diff with a bulldog face and powerful hunched shoulders, with somewhat short legs. They are determined and dogged.

Bruk-en-im: Brukaj spirit or deity of good will.

Brumbyte’s elbow, By: A Vallian pikeman’s oath.

“Brumbyte’s Love Potion”: Sentimental song created in Vondium out of regard for the new phalanx. C

calsax: armored howdah containing warriors mounted on the backs of huge beasts such as dermiflons, boloths, and trompipluns.

Challenger: Flying sailing ship commanded by Captain Hando which took Prescot and the Vallian paktuns off Wenhartdrin. VFK

chavnik: A form of small pet Kregan cat.

Chodku: Archer component attached to the Kerchuri, consisting of two Lanchans each of 432 bowmen. Chodkuvax: Commander of Chodku. Equivalent rank to Jiktar.

chundrog: dungeon.

churgur: heavy infantryman equipped with sword and shield as basic weapons. Clardo the Clis: A Vallian hyrpaktun from Vomansoir, a pug-ugly man, scarred, with prominent eyebrows, returned to fight and joined 1EYJ in command of churgurs.

“Conundrum of the Hyrshiv”: Song concerning the comical efforts of a little Och maiden and a strapping Tlochu youth to sort out the twelve limbs they possess between them. Covinglee: Small kovnate of the Dawn Lands.

D

Deb-Lu-Quienyin: Wizard of Loh.

Deft-Fingered Minch: A crusty, bearded veteran who ran Prescot’s field quarters in the Eighth Army. VFK

Desolate Wastes: Difficult area, not all barren, confining the eastern approaches to Lionard Den, Jikaida City.

diashum: magnificent.

Dogansmot: Town in the vadvarate of Thadelm in SW Vallia.

Dolardansmot: Town where lived the mother of the Fre-Da twins.

“Don’t dice with a four-armed fellow”: Saying cautioning against taking foreseeable and unnecessary risks.

Dottle’s Playhouse: A theater in Jikaida City.

drexer: Pattern of sword designed in Valka by Prescot and Naghan the Gnat sharing attributes of the thraxter and clanxer with what of the Savanti Sword Prescot could incorporate. Drill the Eye: A Vallian hyrpaktun from Vond, a squat, fiery-faced man, returned to fight and joined 1EYJ in command of archers.

drin: land; a division, usually of thirty-six squares, of the Jikaida board. Drogo: A Kildoi who joined Prescot and Pompino in their attempt to steal an airboat and escape from Jikaida City. Bears a grudge against Mefto the Kazzur. FFK

Dromo the Benevolent: Spirit appealed to and given thanks for assistance in the Dawn Lands. Durheim: Kovnate north of the Mountains of the North in Vallia, south and east of Evir. E

Emder: Acts as Prescot’s valet although more of a comrade; a quiet, deft, impeccable, invaluable man.

“Empty Wine Jar, The”: A song popular in Vondium during the Time of Troubles. Ennschafften: Diffs with delightful baby faces, naive and simple, the men very strong, the women very beautiful, most often employed as house servants. The name they are generally called is Syblians. Erthanfydd The Meticulous: Spirit of Erthyrdrin under whose intolerant eye the warriors of the Erthyrrhim pass their weapons in metaphysical inspection before battle. ESW: Emperor’s Sword Watch; at this time two regiments strong, 1ESW has comrades of the Choice Band who created this bodyguard out of affection and concern for the safety of Prescot, and 2ESW

mainly promising youngsters training for commands.

EYJ: Emperor’s Yellow Jackets; at this time one regiment strong, 1EYJ formed from paktuns returning to Vallia and young men from Drak’s City.

Execution Jikaida: Unpleasant form of Kazz Jikaida in which the pieces are taken by condemned criminals and slain on the board, in Jikaida City.

F

Fakal the Oivon: A Vallian paktun from Meltzer, swarthy-faced; returned to fight, and lent his shield to Turko as Mancha of Tlinganden ran aground on Wenhartdrin. VFK

Filbarrka na Filbarrka: Nazab of the blue-grass country of the Blue Mountains, a zorcaman, created the zorca archers and lancers that discomfited the clansmen in the Battle of Kochwold. Flame Winds of Father Tolki: In the ancient, now repudiated, religion of Father Tolki, his Flame Winds would race across the land to avenge and destroy faster than a zorca could run. Fiona: Brilliant, beautiful girl, handmaiden to Delia.

flutduinim: collective noun for men flying flutduins.

flutswod: Soldier flying any kind of bird or animal.

Fluttrhim: Flying people of various races of winged diffs.

flyer remained unsaddled: Saying indicating a problem was left unattempted.

“Forbenard and the Rokrell”: An unsophisticated ditty.

Frandu the Fanch: A Fristle who has a very high opinion of himself, hence his nickname, with a sharp tongue, a doughty fighter.

Fre-Da, Logu: Pachak, with all the Pachak virtues, gave his nikobi to Deb-Lu-Quienyin, while his twin ventured into the Moder.

Fre-Da, Modo: Pachak, twin to Logu who shared adventures.

Frelensmot: Town of Vallia in which Jilian Sweet-tooth was born.

freymul: Pleasant riding animal, often called the poor man’s zorca; one breed having vivid streaks of yellow below and a chocolate-colored coat. A willing mount and serves well within abilities. Frorkenhume: Kingdom of the Dawn Lands overrun by Hamal.

Fruningen: A small rocky island northwest of the island of Tezpor north of Rahartdrin. A harsh, inhospitable place despite the near perfect climate, home of the Wizards of Fruningen. G

Game of Moons: A game of arguable simplicity much played by those to whom Jikaida, Jikalla, and Vajikry present problems.

Garfon the Staff: Majordomo in the palace of Vondium.

gauffrer: Diff with rodent features, usually a city-dweller.

Gertinlad: City of Dawn Lands, held by Kov Pastic.

gherimcal: Small carrying chair, sedan chair.

Gilma, Ford of: Leads to Songaslad, a town of thieves.

Glyfandrin: Kovnate of the Dawn Lands.

Gonells: Women of the Gon race of diffs, many of whom allow their beautiful silver hair to grow long, as the men all shave bald.

grascent: A risslaca of medium size, scaled, with powerful hind legs used for leaping, and a wedge-shaped head.

greesh: Term of contempt used by slaves and poor folk ripe for enslavement for slavers, aragorn, slavemasters. Formed from “grak!” and “kleesh.”

GrollenDen: City of Vallia, capital of Zaphoret, east of Mountains of the North. Grumbleknees: A fine zorca, a gray, ridden by Prescot on a number of notable occasions. Gursrnigur: Spirit or deity used in oaths by Moltingurs.

H

hagli: ivy, not the thorn variety.

Half Moon: An old theater of Vondium, partially burned in the Time of Troubles but still in use; the audience gets wet when it rains.

Hall of Specters: One of the Nine Halls surrounding the Chamber of the Flame in the Moder of Ungovich, crammed with corpses.

Havandua the Green Wonder: A spirit of the Dawn Lands of Havilfar. heasmons: Fragrant violet-yellow flowers.

Hikaidish: Rules and regulations of different styles of wrestling. Himindur the Three-eyed: A Havilfarian spirit of luck and good fortune, equating with the Vallian Five-handed Eos-Bakchi.

Hiviku the Artful: The archetypal old sweat in Havilfar, equating with Vikatu the Dodger. hiviku: one of the inferior pieces in Vajikry.

Horata the Bounteous: A Khibil female beneficent spirit.

Horato the Potent: A Khibil male beneficent spirit.

Humped Land: Colloquial name for Moderdrin, the Land of the Fifth Note. Hunch: A Tryfant from the kovnate of Covinglee in the Dawn Lands, whose father, a brass founder, fell on evil times through spending all his time and money on Vajikry, and Hunch ended up slave. A good companion to Prescot who is not afraid to tell everyone that he is afraid. Went to Vallia with Nodgen. Huvon the Lightning: A popular deity in Hyrklana.

Hyr Brun: Giant with straw-yellow hair, broad and bulky, seven inches taller than Prescot. Servant to Ros the Claw.

Hyr Flick: A very large variety of carnivorous flower, with green tendrils and orange cones, like enormous flick-flicks.

hyrkaida: in Jikaida, checkmate.

I

ibithses: one of the many purple flowers of Kregen.

Ibs of the Lily City: A Hyrklanian reference to the ghosts of the Lily City Klana, the ancient ruined capital of the island.

Infathon: Town of the province of Vazkardrin in NE Vallia.

Inshurfraz, the Furnace Fires of: One of the hotter legendary hells of Kregen. Instructions to Novices: Precepts for those entering the service of Opaz, used to advise and guide all Vallians.

“In the Fair Arms of Thyllis”: A Hamalian song telling of the marvelous deeds of Thyllis the Munificent. Erithor made scurrilous words and Prescot entertained his comrades from Mandua with them during a Noumjiksirn after a game of Kazz Jikaida in Jikaida City. SFK

Irginian: Place in south Vallia, scene of the battle of that name. Ithieursmot: Bleak little town of Northern Jevuldrin in Vallia.

J

Jehamnet: Spirit of harvest time associated with crop failures and other disasters. Known as Jevalnet in Vallia, Jegrodnet and Jezarnet in the Eye of the World, Jepannet in Pandahem and Jehavnet in most of Havilfar.

jibr: Pain.

Jikaida: The premier board game of Kregen. A brief description of Poron Jikaida is published as Appendix A to A Sword for Kregen .

Jikaida City: LionardDen.

Jikaida Dance: One of the dances of Vallia and most other countries of Paz, but not all, in which the dancers retire as they fail to adhere to the movements called for by the songs sung to the music of the dance.

Jikaidish Lore: A hyr lif containing the history, rules, comments, and games of Jikaida over the centuries. In Jikaida City the Jikaidish also contains rules concerning weapons and relative strengths of the humans acting as pieces.

Jilian: A brilliant girl, a Jikai Vuvushi, one of six children of a Banje shop keeper who failed. She was taken in by the Little Sisters of Opaz and taught sewing, then the Sisters of the Rose sent her to Lancival. She uses a whip and a claw like Ros the Claw. Formed a regiment of Jikai Vuvushis. A good comrade to Prescot and a friend and devoted adherent of Delia.

Jögen: A favorite old play from the Fifth Book of The Vicissitudes of Panadian the Ibreiver by Nalgre ti Liancesmot.

jutman: A word describing anyone riding an animal, the Kregish is juttim. It follows that a riding animal must be a jut.

K

kaida: In Jikaida, check.

Kaldi: Lozenge-shaped kovnate in extreme southwest of main island of Vallia. Vodun Alloran was kov. Kaldu: A large, powerful apim retained of Jaezila.

kalider: A dagger of Havilfar, sharply curved with a heavy hilt, the blade being very wide at the quillons, a Kregan knuckle (4.2”, 106.68 mm), and curving keenly to a fine point, honed on both edges. kampeon: A veteran who has achieved great renown and recognition. Kanarsmot: A town of Bryvondrin on the northwest bank of the Great River opposite the boundary of Mai Makanar and Mai Yenizar to the southeast of the Great River.

kao: One of the many Kregan names for death.

kaochun: The Jaws of Death.

kaotim: The Undead, the living dead.

Karidge, Nath: A fine zorcaman and cavalry commander.

Kazz: Blood.

Kazz-Jikaida: Blood Jikaida, played with people who fight for the possession of the squares on the board.

Kervax: Abbreviation for Kerchurivax.

Khorundur: A country of the Dawn Lands of Havilfar.

Khorunlad: Capital of Khorundur.

King’s Hand: Gambling game played with at least six dice.

Klaiton: Noble House of Zenicce, colors are gray and blue.

Kochwold: A sweep of moorland on the southern borders of Jevuldrin and the northern borders of Forli. krad: A bronze coin of Vallia, newly minted and issued by the Presidio. kraitch-ambur: Thunder.

Kranlil the Reaper: Horrific spirit of maleficent evil.

kregoinye: People employed by the Everoinye, the Star Lords, on their business about Kregen. kreutzin: Light infantry acting as skirmishers, voltigeurs.

L

Lamdu: A form of Jikaida in which there are ninety pieces to a side. Larghos the Sko-handed: A Vallian hyrpaktun from Gremivoh, with a long, narrow chin and slinger’s shoulders, returned to fight and joined 1EYJ in command of staff slingers. Lattice House: Decadent palace in Trakon’s Pillars where Thelda Polista and her child were kept prisoner. LFK

Ling-li-Lwingling: A Witch of Loh.

LionardDen: Known as Jikaida City, situated very near the exact center of Havilfar. Llunyush the Juice: One of the many spirits of catering sworn on by the chefs of Paz. Lobur the Dagger: Name used by Lobur ham Hufadet, a Hamalese horter, aide-de-camp to Prince Nedfar.

Longweill: A fluttrhim and thief, who came to a glutinous end down the Moder. FFK

Loriman the Hunter, Kov: A full, fleshy, choleric noble whose passion is hunting. In his own intemperate, bash-on, bully-boy way he was a tower of strength down the Moder. What he sought down there among the horrors and the Monsters, Prescot suggests, was of use to his cult of Spikatur Hunting Sword and far outweighed in value mere gold or gems. FFK

“Lucili the Radiant”: A popular song in Vondium.

Lucrina, Yasuri, Vadni of Cremorra: The Lady Yasuri, a small woman who dressed in shiny black bombazine, employed Pompino and Prescot as paktuns, and they were bound to her protection as kregoinye on orders from the Star Lords. When she became champion in Jikaida City after Prescot fought Mefto the Kazzur she lost a deal of her sharpness, most of the lines on her face, and the razor-edged nose softened. The king of her country was slain and her vadvarate overrun. SFK, FFK

lumop: Term of abuse.

Luxis Bliem Juruk nalen Strom, En: The Strom’s Sacred Life Guard. Formed in Valka when Prescot Fetched the island back to the people and was Fetched to be their strom. Known as SSLG. lynxter: A Lohvian sword.

M

Mahendrasmot: A town of Southern Pandahem.

Mai Makanar: A kovnate on the southeast coast of Vallia.

Mai Yenizar: A kovnate on the southeast coast of Vallia.

majis: Short form of majister, used only by close intimates.

Mancha of Tlinganden: Argenter in which the returning paktuns took passage to Vallia, wrecked on Wenhartdrin. VFK

Mandanillo: A stately dance.

Mandua: Kingdom of Dawn Lands hostile to Hamal.

“March of the Skeletons”: A song in which a brilliant and charming girl, just returned from a boat holiday, recounts how the skeletons marched from the graveyard in search of their missing flesh and blood. The song is an example of that inscrutable Kregan humor.

marlque: A riding animal.

Mausoleum of the Flame: Chamber of the Flame at the heart of the Nine Halls filled with their corpses in the Moder. FFK

Mazdo the Splandu: A superb golden numim, great-hearted and generous, deadly with all kinds of weapons.

Measure of Princesses: The Jikaida Dance.

Mefto the Kazzur: Cognomen of Mefto A’Shanofero, Prince of Shanodrin, a Kildoi. An exceptional swordsman who fought through to the princedom of Shanodrin in blood and death, devoted to Kazz-Jikaida, involved in intrigues to further the cause of Hamal in the Dawn Lands. Is now minus his tail hand, which was a left hand. SFK

Mists of Sicce: Confusing fogs circumjacent to the Ice Floes of Sicce. Moder: A large artificial mountain, a kind of tell, containing tombs, sepulchers, and vaults, corpses, Undead, treasure, traps, and monsters and magic. FFK

Moderdrin: The Humped Land, the Land of the Fifth Note, where the Moders cover the ground as far as the eye can see.

Mogper, Colun, Kov of Mursham: A brilliant-seeming but vicious and depraved kov of a province in Menaham, marked for retribution by Jilian. He slew Barty Vessler by stabbing him in the back. Moltingur: Diff of apim size with horny carapace across shoulders, eating proboscis, feelers, faceted eyes, a tunnel mouth with rows of needle-like teeth to tear food for proboscis to masticate and swallow. Speaks with a hiss, chillingly.

mon: Right (as distinct from left).

Mountains of Thirda: Situated on the western end of the border between Jevuldrin and Forli in eastern Vallia.

Muzzard: A diff something like a Chulik, but without tusks, with skin of a leaden hue and exuding a musky odor.

Myer, Pallan: Minister of Education, Learning, appointed by Prescot in Vondium. Walks everywhere reading a book.

“My Love is like a Moon Bloom”: Popular song of Paz.

mytzer: Low-slung, ten-legged, docile draught animal, inexpensive but of excellent pulling power much used by tradesmen and poor folk who cannot afford the more expensive breeds of draught animals abounding on Kregen.

N

Naghan the Doom: One of Ariane nal Amklana’s retainers, a numim.

Nath the Shaft: An apim from Ruathytu, expert archer, one of Prince Tyfar’s retainers. Neagrom: City famous for beautiful ceramic ware.

Nedfar, Prince: Prince of Hamal, second cousin to the Empress Thyllis, father of Tyfar and Thefi, a man of high courage and honor.

Nierdrik: Diff with coarse-skinned, high-beaked, hooded-eyed face like killer-turtle, hard and gritty, with compact muscular body, with two arms, two legs and no tail.

Niklaardu: Family name of twin Vallian paktuns from Wenhartdrin returned to fight and joined 1EYJ. Ngrozyan the Axe: Spirit from myths of Ng’groga.

Nodgen: A Brokelsh who has been a mercenary, a cutpurse in Jikaida City, and much else, handy with a spear, became slave with Hunch and Prescot. Good companion to Prescot, went with Hunch to Vallia. Norgoth, Tarek Malervo: A man with thin legs and bulky body, sent as Ambassador to Prescot from Layco Jhansi, acted as commissar in army commanded by Kapt Hangrol defeated at Battle of Ovalia. A man whose self-importance expands or recedes with the company he keeps. LFK, VFK

Norhan the Flame: A useful fellow who likes to hurl blazing pots of combustibles. Notor Shorthush of the Waves: One of the mythical Sea Lords of Kregen who send gales to sink men’s ships out of spite.

Noumjiksirn: A wake, an uproarious yet serious celebration in which warriors mourn their vanished comrades.

O

Olmes, Dav, Vad of Bilsley: A good-natured noble with long yellow hair, a round, cheerful, pugnacious face, an expert swordsman. Vad of a province in Mandua hostile to Hamal. Befriended Prescot, Bevon, and Pompino in Jikaida City. SFK

“Only Zair knows the cleanliness of a human heart”: A saying from the Eye of the World suggesting that all men have secrets they do not want, and act differently from the way they would wish to act, yet make attempts to overcome their failings.

Orscop, Nath, Trylon of Absordur: A noble of the Dawn Lands whose ruling passion was Vajikry. VFK

Ortyg the Tresh: Standard Bearer with 1ESW who carries the Union flag of Vallia. Ovalia: Town of the Imperial Province of Orvendel in Vallia.

P

Panachreem: Mythical home of the gods and spirits of Pandahem.

pantor: The word in Pandahem for the Hamalian notor and Vallian jen — lord. Phrutius, Strom: Bought Prescot as slave from Jikaida City, was eaten by a Laughing Shadow down the Moder. FFK

Polisto: Tyr Lol, ti Sygurd: Fine, limber man who lost his farming estate during Vallia’s Time of Troubles, fought back as the leader of the local guerrillas and rescued and married Thelda. Pompino, Scauro, ti Tuscursmot: A Khibil, powerful and shrewd, with scars tracing over his body, sometimes called Pompino the Iarvin. A kregoinye. From South Pandahem. Worked with Prescot for the Star Lords protecting the Lady Yasuri. Like most Khibils somewhat contemptuous of everybody else, but a good comrade to Prescot. SFK

Prado, En: A later playwright than Nalgre ti Liancesmot whose work En Prado often comments on. Prince Larghos and the Demons: A legend of Kregen containing the story of Gilma, a water sprite, and Nafti, the potter’s son.

propt: Support; given by Deldar to swod in Jikaida.

Pypor: Deity of some clans of the Great Plains of Segesthes, and a Devil Deity to other clans. Q

Quardon: Young voller pilot of 2ESW.

Queltar: Of Queltar, Deb-Lu-Quienyin says: “Some hellhole in Queltar where no man should have to exist.”

Queyd-arn-tung!: No more need be said on the subject.

R

Ralton Daw-Erentor, Tyr: Seconds on of a minor noble of North Vallia, hewed to Layco Jhansi’s party because of his father, a keen sleeth racer, uncomfortable over confrontation with Prescot during Norgoth’s embassy, potentially a fine man. LFK

Ravenshal and Rashenka: A gentle Relt stylor and his wife of Mahendrasmot, who invited Prescot to their home and treated him with kindness, two of the ordinary nice people of Kregen. VFK

reed-laurium: Reed — headband. Laurium — rank. Any headband bedecked with symbols, feathers, colors denoting rank. In this instance worn by people in Kazz-Jikaida to indicate the pieces they represent.

Renko the Murais: A Valkan axeman, member of the SSLG, saved from being hanged for a murder he did not commit by Prescot in Vondium, subsequently joined 1ESW. LFK

Risslaca Ichor: Wine; a rosé with the addition of dopa which adulterates it or fortifies it according to taste.

Rodiflor, Kov Erclan the Critchoith: Square, hard noble, savage to his subordinates, devoted to Kazz-Jikaida, a man of harsh authority and power.

Rokveil: King.

Rorvreng the Vakka! By: A strong cavalryman’s oath.

Rosala: Beautiful, brilliant girl, handmaiden to Delia.

Rovard the Murvish: An initiate of the Brotherhood of the Sorcerers of Murcroinim, an ascetic, dressed in skins and skulls, smells offensively, an adept with the morntarch.

“Run over-hastily on a leem’s tracks”: Presuming too early to confidences in a relationship. Ruthmayern: A country of Hamal.

S

Saenci: Pretty Khibil girl, fiancée of Andrinos, brought safely out of Mahendrasmot by Prescot. VFK

Sakkora Stones: Ruined star-shaped buildings of the Sunset People. Sangar, Orlon, ti Deliasmot: Kerchurivax of the Tenth Kerchuri of the Fifth Phalanx at the Battle of Ovalia. VFK

Sasco! By: An oath so far of obscure provenance used by Kov Loriman, the Hunting Kov. Scarron Necklace, The: A new play by Master Belzur the Aphorist, produced in Vondium during the troublous times.

Scatulo, Master: A Jikaidast of repute, with too high an opinion of himself, who once owned Bevon as slave. SFK

schrafter: One of the many types of animal infesting dungeons, where they sharpen their teeth on the bones of corpses.

schturval: Any kind of badge, symbol, color, denoting allegiances. screetz: Sword.

Shanodrin: Princedom of the Dawn Lands.

shansili: A white-flowered creeper with sweet scent grown on trellises.

“She Lived by the Lily Canal”: A sentimental song, much sung by the troops on the night before the Battle of Kochwold.

sherissa: A lady’s filmy veil.

Shirrerdrin: A country of the Dawn Lands heavily forested with oak trees. Sicce’s Gates: Here an eons-old crack leads down deeply into the crust of the world; place in Vallia where the Vallian Army was overthrown by clansmen. LFK

sko: Left (as distinct from right).

Skull and Crossbones: A game of Kregen.

“Smoke blown with the wind”: Water under the bridge.

Sorcerers of Murcroinim: A brotherhood of thaumaturges of some real powers. Songaslad: A town of thieves in the Dawn Lands where caravans form for the journey across the Desolate Wastes to Jikaida City.

Spag the June! By: The favorite oath of Dav Olmes, referring to a spirit causing confusion to honest travelers.

Spikatur Hunting Sword: A secret cult of which, at the moment, little is revealed by Prescot. Spikatur Cycle, The: The Sixth Cycle of the Saga of Dray Prescot. Springs of Beng Jasto: Hot mineral springs in Vallia where hides are cured to an exceeding toughness. Spurs of Lasal the Vakka! By: A mild cavalryman’s oath.

Stony Korf: A forbidding fortress in the kovnate of Falinur.

strangdja: A feared weapon of Chem, six-foot-long haft, ten-inch-long steel head of holly-leaf shape, nine spikes aside set alternately forward and back, the lowest pair curving downward into hooks. strebe: Silver coin of Western Dawn Lands, of two kinds, the broad and the short strebe. It is important in business to know which kind you are bargaining in.

Stroxals: A race of diffs of Kregen.

sturr: A fellow who is mostly silent, a trifle boorish, not particularly favored in handsomeness, louche, maladroit.

swarth: A four-legged risslaca with a cruel, wedge-shaped head sloping into a humped scaled body, clawed feet, not very fast. Has a muscular bulk that carries his rider well and is a saddle animal that jutmen are coming to favor more in Vallia.

Sweet Ibroi: Herb; the burned twigs give off aromatic smoke which invigorates and is used to revive victims of faintness.

Sweet Ordums: Small octagonal biscuits.

Sygurd: Small farming estate in Falinur; Lol Polisto is the squire. T

Tardalvoh: A bracing dry wine, tart and invigorating.

Tarkshur the Lash: A Kataki from Klardimoin, bought Hunch, Nodgen, and Prescot on the slave auction block, a ferocious slaver, came to a gripping end down the Moder. FFK

“Teach a Wizard to Catch a Fly”: Teach your grandmother to suck eggs. tenash: A large, blundering, grazing animal with a strong hide, which when cured becomes extraordinarily tough and light.

Tezpor: Island of Vallia due north of Rahartdrin.

Thangal: A Trylonate of Hamal northwest of Ruthmayern.

Thefi, Princess: Daughter of Prince Nedfar, a charming and strong-willed girl, with no malice in her but that occasioned by her exalted status and unthinking acceptance of service. Thrangulf, Kov: Of Hamal, calls himself a plain man, successfully held his kovnate despite his father’s animosity because the old kov, Thrangulf’s grandfather, lived too long, no ham in his name, generally disliked by people who did not trouble to consider his position, loyal to the Empress Thyllis. FFK

Tipp the Thrax, Kyr: A Huringan cheldur favored by Queen Fahia but lacking the powers of a Roman lanista.

Tlinganden: Free City of the east coast of Loh.

Tlochu: A diff of Kregen with six limbs.

Tomor, Torn: Son of Tom Tomor and Bibi of Valka, a paktun, returned to fight for Vallia, joined the 1EYJ.

Trakon’s niksuth: Boggy area surrounding Trakon’s Pillars.

Trakon’s Pillars: In Falinur, built around the hill rising from the bogs, a decadent place of many palaces with Jikaida as the most prominent architectural and decorative motif. Trefimlad: A wealthy city of Hamal.

Trip-Tails! By the: A Kataki oath.

tromp: A bright, warm, pleasant yellow color.

Tryflor: A Tryfant spirit or deity.

Tuscursmot: A town of Southern Pandahem.

Tyfar, Prince: Son of Prince Nedfar of Hamal, studious and intelligent, a lover of books, is a superb axemen, honorable and upright, dealing fairly with all, a good comrade to Prescot down the Moder and across the Humped Land and the Dawn Lands.

U

Ungovich, Tyr: The Lord or Wizard of the Moder down which the expedition including Prescot ventured. FFK

urron: Crimson.

V

Vajikry: A board game of Kregen.

Valhan: Name of the last dynasty of Vallia; Dray Prescot began the new dynasty of Prescot. Vardon the Cheeks: Trumpeter of the 2ESW at the Battle of Ovalia. Varmondsweay Canal: An Admiralty yard for the flying sailing ships of the Vallian air sailing service in Vondium located by this canal.

Vazkardrin: A vadvarate of Vallia between the east coast and the Kwan Hills. Vilaha’s Tripes: An incident of legend used in oaths.

Villa of Vennar: Layco Jhansi’s villa in Vondium, confiscated, used as meeting place of the Presidio in the Time of Troubles.

voinsh: Happy.

Vond: Rich Imperial Province west of Vondium.

W

Wayfarer’s Drinnik: Wide, dusty area outside most cities and towns of Paz where the caravans form up or disband.

“Wedding Dirge of Hondor Elaina”: A sentimental song.

Wend: A dance accompanied by popular songs, in which the singers form long lines and prance through every nook and cranny of palace, villa, kyro, and avenue of their city they can reach before either the ending of the songs or exhaustion sets in.

Wenhartdrin: Small island off south coast of Vallia, produces first-quality wines, an Imperial Province. Werven: A small place in the kovnate of Falinur.

“When Zair crooks his finger, then up you go, my friend, and nothing will detain you on Kregen”: A saying in the Eye of the World indicating that individual fate will not be balked. Wizards of Fruningen: A small sect of religious thaumaturges, regarding Opaz as a single entity, with some claims to serious consideration.

Y

Yadivro, Konec, Kov of Brugheim: An upright, determined, not-too-brilliant kov of a province in Mandua hostile to Hamal.

Yagno, San: A Sorcerer of the Cult of Almuensis, foppish, a show-off, drew power from hyr-lifs, vanished in the lowest zone of the Moder. FFK

Yervismot: Town of Vallia taken by Prescot, where he was reunited with Seg Segutorio. LFK

Z

zeunt: The unique vault in Jikaida.

zhantilla: Female zhantil.

zoid: Trap.

zygodont: A reptile with fangs, claws, membranous wings, and barbed tail; can grow to the size of a small zorca excluding the serpent-like neck.

Notes

[1]jid: bane.

[2]General name for city areas of confused alleys and covered souks and bazaars, teeming with commerce and villainy. A.B.A.

[3]Beng Dikkane: The patron saint of all the ale drinkers in Paz. A.B.A.

[4]Schturval: Color-coded badge, symbol, banded sleeve, and figurative representation of animal or plant or abstract design, forming insignia denominating allegiances in Vallia.

[5]db: dwaburs per bur.

[6]pantor: The Pandahem word for lord, equating with the Havilfarian notor and the Vallian jen.

[7]kampeon: veteran who has received recognition and won renown.

[8]See Dray Prescot #11, Armada of Antares .

[9]Kervax: Abbreviation for Kerchurivax.

[10]bobs: phalerae, medals.

About the author

Alan Burt Akers was a pen name of the prolific British author Kenneth Bulmer, who died in December 2005 aged eighty-four.

Bulmer wrote over 160 novels and countless short stories, predominantly science fiction, both under his real name and numerous pseudonyms, including Alan Burt Akers, Frank Brandon, Rupert Clinton, Ernest Corley, Peter Green, Adam Hardy, Philip Kent, Bruno Krauss, Karl Maras, Manning Norvil, Chesman Scot, Nelson Sherwood, Richard Silver, H. Philip Stratford, and Tully Zetford. Kenneth Johns was a collective pseudonym used for a collaboration with author John Newman. Some of Bulmer’s works were published along with the works of other authors under "house names" (collective pseudonyms) such as Ken Blake (for a series of tie-ins with the 1970s television programme The Professionals), Arthur Frazier, Neil Langholm, Charles R. Pike, and Andrew Quiller.

Bulmer was also active in science fiction fandom, and in the 1970s he edited nine issues of the New Writings in Science Fiction anthology series in succession to John Carnell, who originated the series. More details about the author, and current links to other sources of information, can be found at www.mushroom-ebooks.com, and at wikipedia.org.

The Dray Prescot Series

The Delian Cycle:

1. Transit to Scorpio

2. The Suns of Scorpio

3. Warrior of Scorpio

4. Swordships of Scorpio

5. Prince of Scorpio

Havilfar Cycle:

6. Manhounds of Antares

7. Arena of Antares

8. Fliers of Antares

9. Bladesman of Antares

10. Avenger of Antares

11. Armada of Antares

The Krozair Cycle:

12. The Tides of Kregen

13. Renegade of Kregen

14. Krozair of Kregen

Vallian cycle:

15. Secret Scorpio

16. Savage Scorpio

17. Captive Scorpio

18. Golden Scorpio

Jikaida cycle:

19. A Life for Kregen

20. A Sword for Kregen

21. A Fortune for Kregen

22. A Victory for Kregen

Spikatur cycle:

23. Beasts of Antares

24. Rebel of Antares

25. Legions of Antares

26. Allies of Antares

Pandahem cycle:

27. Mazes of Scorpio

28. Delia of Vallia

29. Fires of Scorpio

30. Talons of Scorpio

31. Masks of Scorpio

32. Seg the Bowman

Witch War cycle:

33. Werewolves of Kregen

34. Witches of Kregen

35. Storm over Vallia

36. Omens of Kregen

37. Warlord of Antares

Lohvian cycle:

38. Scorpio Reborn

39. Scorpio Assassin

40. Scorpio Invasion

41. Scorpio Ablaze

42. Scorpio Drums

43. Scorpio Triumph

Balintol cycle:

44. Intrigue of Antares

45. Gangs of Antares

46. Demons of Antares

47. Scourge of Antares

48. Challenge of Antares

49. Wrath of Antares

50. Shadows over Kregen

Phantom cycle:

51. Murder on Kregen

52. Turmoil on Kregen

Contents

A Note on Dray Prescot

1 – Tyfar Wields his Axe

2 – Of the Testing of a Wizard of Loh

3 – The Bonds of Comradeship

4 – Dead Men Pose Puzzles

5 – “Dray Prescot, Vile Emperor of a Vile Empire!”

6 – We Fly Over the Dawn Lands

7 – Of a Meeting in a Hayloft

8 – An Arrow in the Swamp

9 – We Strike a Blow for Hamal

10 – The Brothers Fre-Da Give Nikobi

11 – Vajikry

12 – Of an Invitation at the Golden Prychan

13 – Of a Few Falls with Beng Drudoj

14 – The Khamorro Way

15 – The Confidence of the Kov of Falinur

16 – Homecoming

17 – Emperor’s Yellow Jackets

18 – Silda

19 – Of Assassins, Dynasties, and Invasions

20 – The Depths of Deb-Lu-Quienyin’s Eyes

21 – Victories for Vallia

A Glossary to the Jikaida Cycle of the Saga of Dray Prescot

Notes

About the author

The Dray Prescot Series