ISBN 1843195801

Golden Scorpio

Alan Burt Akers

Mushroom eBooks

Dray Prescot

Dray Prescot is an enigmatic figure. Reared in the inhumanly harsh conditions of Nelson’s Navy, he has been transported many times through the agencies of the Star Lords, the Everoinye, and the Savanti nal Aphrasöe to the terrible yet beautiful world of Kregen under Antares, four hundred light years from Earth. In chronicling his brilliant adventures on that exotic world I have been forced to the conclusion that there is much he does not tell us as he records his story on cassettes. A fresh supply has reached me and will form the subject matter for the next cycle of Dray Prescot’s story. His appearance as described by one who has seen him is of a man above middle height, with brown hair and level brown eyes, brooding and dominating, with enormously broad shoulders and powerful, even brutal, physique. There is about him an abrasive honesty and an indomitable courage. He moves like a savage hunting cat, quiet and deadly. On the marvelous world of Kregen he has fought his way to become Vovedeer and Zorcander of his wild Clansmen of Segesthes, Lord of Strombor, Strom of Valka, King of Djanduin, Prince Majister of Vallia — and a member of the Order of Krozairs of Zy. To this plethora of titles he confesses with a wryness and an irony I am sure mask much deeper feelings at which we can only guess.

Prescot’s happiness with Delia, the Princess Majestrix of Vallia, is threatened as the notorious Wizard of Loh, Phu-Si-Yantong, seeks to overwhelm the empire. Many factions rise to seize the supreme power and with the death of the emperor, Delia’s father, and the burning of Vondium, the capital, Prescot and Delia are forced to flee Vallia. Golden Scorpio tells how Prescot reacted and how he came to terms with himself, if not altogether satisfactorily in his own estimation.

The volumes chronicling his life are arranged to be read as individual books. A clearly-marked change has overtaken the character of Prescot as he relates his story, and, indeed, the story itself reveals this, illuminating him in ways of which he himself is probably unaware. Future volumes can only be awaited with the fascination of the unexpected.

The next cycle of volumes in the Saga of Dray Prescot I have called the Jikaida Cycle, carrying the linking word Kregen in their titles. Life is a continuing process and the enigmatic figure Prescot presents of himself might lead us to imagine that he understands only the belief that the effort of life is soldiering on dauntlessly against Fate. There is more to him than that. I feel sure he is fully aware of the many other facets of human belief in understanding our natures and harmonizing them, in the theory of abnegation, in the idea of letting oneself slide into the infinite, of bending with the current to cope with existence, of acceptance. But on the vivid world of Kregen under Antares, in the streaming mingled lights of the Suns of Scorpio, Prescot has had and will continue to have more than his share of setbacks and hurtful adventures. I do not think it is Dray Prescot’s nature to allow the destruction of himself or those he loves. Alan Burt Akers

One

Dragons in the Fire

We flew from burning Vondium.

Sulphurous masses of smoke rolling from the doomed city cast dark palls between the streaming mingled radiances of the fading suns. The spreading fans of jade and crimson light cupped the city below. Vondium burned. Along the wide avenues rivers of fire, across the canal-bordered islands lakes of fire, upon the terraced hills volcanoes of fire — incandescent, lambent, roaring with unchecked power, spurting yellow and orange flames, shooting myriads of sparks like discharges from Hell’s furnaces, the fire burned.

Our airboat shook in the windrush.

“This was not planned,” said Delia, guiding the airboat out of the last swathing bands of smoke. The suns shafted light behind us and swiftly the emerald and ruby spears drained down across the sky, dwindling and shrinking as the pit of fire that was Vondium blazed up. She shivered. “Not planned—”

“The factions fight it out down there. They all struggle for the supreme power and,” I said, looking up, my fist closing on the hilt of the sword, “here come those who would dispute our passage.”

Two fliers spun out of the shadows ahead, the light glittering along their sides, glancing from their brazen embellishments. In the weirdly coruscating lights the two airboats looked dark and magical dragons, glinting with fire-jewels.

“Hamalese,” said the Lord Farris. He moved forward from the shelter deck aft, and his face lay shrunken in shadow.

At his side Lykon Crimahan spoke in words still slurred by witnessed horror. “They have destroyed all of value in life — I will have my due of them.”

“The queen?” said Delia, not glancing back, but guiding our airboat skillfully upwards so that the cramphs of Hamal might not have the advantage of us. The airboats flitted up into the night sky and the smoke dropped away and the clouds were tinged in orange and gold about us.

“The queen sleeps.” Farris had already drawn his sword. In the encroaching darkness the bulky firmness of his body as he moved up struck me as mightily comforting. “She is exhausted.”

We were all exhausted. But only a fierce continuing, a savage determination to go on, an unyielding struggle against all odds would get us through now and save our necks. In this airboat I had taken from the Hamalese were ready racked a dozen crossbows. I took one up and spanned it and said to Farris: “Put up your sword. Delia will outfly these rasts.”

“Yes,” said Farris. “The Princess — I mean, the Empress — has consummate skill.”

The three airboats whirled about the night sky, leaves tossed in the maelstrom of the fire and the high winds of the night, darting and swooping, climbing to secure the height advantage. Delia swung us up superbly. I leaned over the wooden coaming and let fly. The bolt skewered into the dark mass of the Hamalian airboat below. In the wind bluster I could not hear a shriek of anguish, I did not know if I had hit; but I respanned the bow and let fly again as we circled in.

Farris and Crimahan joined in. They were unused to crossbows; but every bolt that hit the Hamalians would count.

And then in the way of these wild skirling affrays as fliers spin and grapple at night, one of the Hamalians flew awkwardly across and fell athwart our bows. Delia made a last frantic effort to avoid the onrushing mass. The two airboats came together with a great crushing of wood and ripping of canvas. But the craft I had selected was stoutly built, as one would expect from the damned Hamalese who made the things and denied us Vallians the right to make our own, and she was stouter than the other. Amid a shrieking splintering of wood the foeman’s airboat tumbled full into our own. Men spilled out to stagger and stumble across our deck.

Over our heads through a rent in the clouds the fat blue shine of the first star of the evening suddenly caught me up with a swift and entirely unexpected sense of the beauty of the night. That first star that Kregans call Soothe was not as large or as fat now, as the conjunctions of orbits opened out, for Soothe is a planet of Antares as is Kregen, but that blue lambent luminosity reminded me of the fabled Goddesses of Love of Kregen. And as no Goddess of Love of two worlds has ever been or can ever be as precious as my Delia, my Delia of Delphond, my Delia of the Blue Mountains, I hurled the crossbow down and leaped yelling into action.

Delia was ready for the Hamalese from the wreck of their airboat. Together, we hit them. Like two perfectly-machined parts, we meshed, she taking her man with her rapier, I chunking the Krozair longsword around into his comrade’s ribs. Armor crumpled.

“Hanitch! Hanitch!” The Hamalese kept up their battle yells, fierce, predatory and yet highly disciplined fighting men.

“Vallia!” yelled Farris and hurled himself forward along the deck, his sword a glinting blur. “Vallia and Vomansoir!”

These warriors of Hamal did not carry shields, although their Air Service personnel habitually did so, and I guessed the shock of the collision had not so much left them with no time to seize up that article of combat as the demands of scrambling from the wreck of a flier about to plunge over into nothingness had made them concentrate wonderfully on having two hands free. Now, had they been Djangs, or Pachaks...

The little fight raged for a space. I squared off my man and thrust the next one through. Crimahan was bashing away and yelling all manner of frenzied insults and taunts, half off his head with grief for what had befallen Vallia and him.

With every blow he struck, Lykon Crimahan, Kov of Forli, took out a payment for his lost lands on the hides of his enemies.

“Hamal! Hanitch!” screeched the Hamalese, and fought and struggled and died. I feel the very fury of our vengeful attack threw them off balance. They had flown up from their empire to sack and burn and overthrow the Empire of Vallia, acting under the veiled orders of the Wizard of Loh Phu-si-Yantong whose maniacal ambitions knew few bounds, and if they were surprised at our vengeful resistance then they were fools. In that moment I felt the enormous weight pressing in on me that my own plans called for Vallia and Hamal to join hands in amity. To accomplish that with the blood-debt that now soaked the two countries seemed almost impossible.

So we fought.

Toward the end of the fight when but four Hamalese soldiers remained alive, the rest either slumped in death on the deck or pitched with a despairing shriek overboard, Queen Lushfymi tottered out of the aft cabin. She held a poniard. She looked distraught, her dark hair disheveled, her violet eyes wide and drugged.

She would have rushed upon the last soldiers; but I got her right arm in my left fist. I held her very very carefully.

The poniard she brandished with drugged abandon had two dark channels cut into the narrow blade, and in those runnels clung a virulent poison...

“Let me go. I will slay and slay—”

She spoke in a slurred, drugged fashion, her words heavy. Her face showed demoniac devilishness and exhausted despair, struggling to gain the ascendancy.

“They slew the emperor, they murdered my beloved — let me repay the debt.”

That she had to be held back was quite obvious, although she was a queen — the Queen of Lome in Pandahem — and therefore might be expected to know how to handle weapons. But the Hamalese soldiers of the air were no amateurs. Their swords flickered in these dying moments of the struggle as they sought to take us and so win all — and, in truth, even now we could lose. I shook Queen Lush.

“Hold still. Do you want to throw your life away after the emperor’s?”

That, of course, was a stupid thing to say. I recognized that. I gave her a push back into the cabin, before she could screech out some cataclysmic determination to end it all and die to join the emperor, and slammed the door.

I swung back to the fight, raging.

Delia had taken her man out with that neat precision of effort girls are taught in the military establishments of the Sisters of the Rose. Crimahan missed his stroke and had to duck and dodge back, his left-hand dagger fending off a thraxter blow. Farris was in the act of withdrawing his rapier from the throat of his man. So that left the fourth, the one I should have been attending to if Queen Lush had not staggered out brandishing her poisoned poniard.

“By Vox!” I bellowed as I leaped. “I should have let the silly woman at these rasts with her poisoned dagger.”

Then the Krozair brand flamed left, twitched right, sliced and was still, sheened in blood. Farris looked at me and Crimahan staggered back, shaking with the violence of these last few moments. Delia tut-tutted and caught at a dead Hamalese by his belt.

“They’re bleeding all over the deck. What a mess. Give me a hand to push them over.”

We did so, with a will. If you imagine this to be strange behavior, insane, then you are not correct. Death is a part of life. Delia fully understood that. But, even so, even so, no girl should have to go through the things Delia had been through, events and horrors that would have destroyed a being of lesser fiber. But Delia was right. We had a way to fly and we already had enough blood to clear up as it was. Highly practical, highly professional, highly commonsense is Delia of Vallia — just as she is highly romantic. Her father, the Emperor of Vallia, had been slain this night. No — Delia could not act completely normally, not for a space yet.

I made up my mind. You who have listened to my story as the tapes spin through the heads will know how wrought up I must have been to nerve myself, actually to pluck up the courage, to open the talk I had promised Delia for long and long.

Tentatively I spoke to her in one of the aft cabins as Farris took the steering, speed and height levers and Crimahan having indicated he wished to be dropped on his own estates, tried to sleep. Queen Lush slumbered, her demoniac energy temporarily exhausted.

So, Delia and I sat on a ponsho fleece spread on a bench and talked as the airboat slid through the nighted air of Kregen.

“A world with only one sun and only one moon! But you can’t expect anyone to take such a silly idea seriously.”

“Yes, I know it sounds a silly notion. But I’m asking you to examine the idea. After all, it’s not impossible, is it?”

“Impossible — one sun and one moon — we-ell — I suppose not.”

“Look, Delia, my heart. Try to imagine a world very much like Kregen — well, something like — but instead of Zim and Genodras shining down in glory there is only one sun, a little yellow sun.”

“But Opaz! The Invisible Twins visibly vouchsafed us in the fires of Zim and Genodras, the Eternal Spirit of Opaz — how could that be if the world did not have two suns?”

“That’s a poser, all right. But say that the Eternal Spirit is manifest in some other form — that is possible.”

“You would run into charges of heresy at many of the religious colleges for that, Dray. People have been burned alive for casting doubts like this. And talking of only one sun in the sky is blasphemy—”

“To some people. But the Todalpheme could discuss this as a proposition. The wise men, the Sans of the world — the Wizards of Loh.”

“Oh, yes, as a theory. But it runs dangerously close to blasphemy against Opaz, and that is something no honest person can possibly tolerate.”

I wanted to burst out into a roar of laughter, I wanted to shout aloud in frustrated fury, and I wanted to cringe away and have no more stupid talk of planets orbiting solitary stars. But I owed Delia an explanation, and so I ploughed doggedly on. This was one eventuality I hadn’t bargained for, that religion would rear its beautiful head to deny the possibility that I came from such a crippled world.

“Instead of the seven moons of Kregen there is just the one—”

“Oh, Dray, Dray — if I didn’t know you I’d think you were determined to blaspheme. So — there is only one explanation. You are making fun of me.”

“No.” I was about to go on by saying I was in deadly serious earnest; but I paused. Tsleetha-tsleethi, as Kregens say, softly, softly. “No, I would not do that. But what I have said merits thought... This business about a world possessing just a single sun and a single moon was only the beginning. What would Delia say when I tried to explain to her the concept of a world that had no diffs, no splendid array of peoples, no enormous variety of morphology, no halflings; but only had a single sort of human being, apims, like ourselves? How could she accept such an absurdity?

For a space we were silent as the airboat sped on through the level air and Vallia passed away below. Poor Vallia. That was where our thoughts lay. Poor, proud Vallia, an island empire torn and savaged by implacable foes, by power-hungry maniacs, by coldly ambitious men and women — and we flew in all haste from a shattered city and a burning palace which provided a funeral pyre of somber magnificence for the body of Delia’s father the emperor. Yet it was precisely at this point that I chose to begin this my late and lame explanation. I tried to talk to Delia of Earth, of that strange planet distant four hundred light years from Kregen, and hoped these transparent means might provide the anodyne she needed. Mysteries partially revealed, I thought, might exercise her mind. But I miscalculated the power of Opaz, the pure religion that, I felt sure at the time, was one certain way to raise Kregen from its barbarity and savagery. Perhaps I was being selfish. All I know is that I was savaged by grief for Delia, whatever may have been my ambivalent attitude to her father, and I was desperate to ease her suffering. Up front the Lord Farris, Kov of Vomansoir, piloted the flier and left Delia and me to talk in privacy. He had witnessed the death of the emperor, for I had not been there, and had struggled with blood-stained sword to prevent that deed. Now he, like us, was a hunted fugitive. Lykon Crimahan, Kov of Forli, had also been there at the emperor’s death. He had never liked me, being bitterly opposed to my schemes to create a strong Air Service to withstand the attack from Hamal we knew must one day come across the sea. Well, that day had come and gone. Even if the whole power of Hamal had not been thrown into the battle, as I judged, the maniacal Wizard of Loh, Phu-si-Yantong, who controlled through his puppets all of Pandahem and plenty of other spots besides, had gained enough strength to do the work. And, as well as the Hamalese marching against Vondium, there had been traitors from Vallia herself. Layco Jhansi, Udo, the various factions, they were fighting and gnawing at the bones of empire, seeking to snatch the richest portions for themselves. The Hamalese army that Phu-si-Yantong had somehow got out of the Empress Thyllis had possessed no aerial cavalry of any strength that I had seen. Maybe the flyers were away in another part of Vallia engaged in the campaigns that Yantong must surely carry out to bring us much of the island empire under his heel as he hungered for.

If there were no aerial cavalry mounted on fluttrells or mirvols flying over the corpse of Vondium, there would certainly be plenty of red meat there for the warvols, those vulture-like carrion-eaters. The thoughts and images rose into my mind, most unprettily, most pungent. All over Vallia as the days passed there would be slaughter. Vallians are accounted a rich people, and most of their wealth comes from trading. They are great seafarers. Inland they are farmers and stockmen and woodsmen. When Vallia needed an army to fight some war or other she would hire mercenaries, and the mercenaries would be secure in the knowledge that Vallia could transport them safely in her fleets of galleons. But as for indigenous fighting men, warriors, they were few and thin on the ground. That enormous wealth existed within Vallia herself was undeniable. The forests, the mines, the broad cornlands, as the emperor had once told me, they are the sinews of wealth and the muscles of power. At Lykon Crimahan’s request we dropped him off near his provincial capital of MichelDen. MichelDen lies a hundred dwaburs northeast of Vallia’s capital Vondium. The provincial capital of Forli stands on the River of White Reenbays, an eastern tributary of the Great River. The kovnate of Forli extends from the Great River to the eastern coast opposite the Thirda Passage between the islands of Arlton and Meltzer to the north and Veliadrin to the south. We had taken a dog’s leg passage to Valka in order to let Crimahan off at MichelDen.

He stood with one hand on the coaming of the flier, looking up at us before he jumped down onto the grass. The stars glittered. She of the Veils cast down a sheening diffused golden light and the night was very still.

“I give you the Remberee, Dray Prescot, Emperor of Vallia. I—” And here Crimahan paused, and swallowed.

I own it, the sound of my name coupled with the emperor’s landed with a strange sound in my ears, a leaden sound of doom. But Drig take me if I would let this fellow see all the hesitation and indecision tormenting me. I nodded; with a hard and curt gesture of my hand I hoped he would not mistake, I ground out in the old hateful way: “If I am the emperor, Kov Lykon, then your fealty I take and welcome. Now you will do what you can against these cramphs. I shall contact you.” His face bore that pained expression of unwelcome comprehension. I finished, surly and domineering: “And mind you don’t get yourself killed. May Opaz go with you. Remberee.”

The others called their Remberees as Crimahan dropped from the airboat and vanished into the uncertain shadows.

“Up,” I said to Farris. “Valka.”

The voller rose into the air as Farris hauled on the levers. “He may be going to his death, majister—”

“Very likely, Farris, very likely. But he wanted to go home and I forbore to prevent him. I know how he felt.”

“As do we all. I do not need to be told what has overtaken my kovnate,” went on Farris in his dogged way. “Vomansoir, like your estates, like Lykon’s, must have been marked down for destruction. All those about the emperor and who gave him their loyalty will find only grief in their homes. Once the structure of empire creaks and bends, once the first blows succeed, the collapse is swift.”

“There will be fighting and bloodshed all over the land,” said Delia, and her lovely face shadowed with the horrors we had seen and the fresh horrors to come.

“Not always,” I said in my intemperate, vicious way. “Sometimes an empire will hold out tenaciously. But, Farris, I hope you are right in your estimation when we return.”

I said this, and all the time I was totally unsure if I had the right, the moral right, to return to Vallia. But I went on speaking in that old savage way.

“So,” I said, only half-believing my own words. “Before we can do anything we must secure a base and see about men and resources — and that means Valka.”

The voller rose against the stars and sped eastward.

“Only,” I told Delia. “You will take Didi and Velia and Aunt Katri and fly to Strombor. The continent of Segesthes is far enough away from Vallia and these troubles. There they will be safe.”

“But—”

I shook my head. Delia did not like the idea of leaving Vallia at this time, even for a short period and even for so important a mission; but she saw the sense of it and agreed to go. Below us under the glinting moonlight the coast passed away. We struck out across the sea. We flew across the Rojica Passage that separates Vallia from Veliadrin. We flew along the Thirda Passage, eastward, to the north of Veliadrin. We did not fly over the land. To the south we could see fires burning in the night.

Delia took my arm and I could guess her thoughts.

“Veliadrin is attacked, like all our lands. No doubt the Qua’voils have stirred their prickly selves again. But there are good men down there, as well as evil. Our duty lies elsewhere this night.”

It was hard. No doubt of it. We could only guess at what deviltry was going on down there to the south. But little imagination was required to understand that all of Vallia was in turmoil, with old grudges being paid off and with rapaciousness leading men and women on to blood-soaked excesses. From MichelDen to Valkanium is about two hundred dwaburs in a straight line, what the Havilfarese call

‘as the fluttrell flies’. But we circled around over the sea to the north and so took longer over the aerial journey. The Maiden with the Many Smiles joined She of the Veils and although the night was cloudy the two moons shed their fuzzy golden pink light upon the sea.

In the sheening water sparkle below in the light of the moons the dark shadowed mass of Valka rose before us out of the sea. Valka. Valka, the place I had made my home on Kregen. The place that, along with Strombor and the Great Plains of Segesthes and Djanduin, meant more to me at that time than anywhere else. Valka...

“Dray—”

I held her gently, for I knew what Delia intended to say, what pained her to say, how she had struggled and sought for the right words.

“Dray — Valka. All our lands have been attacked, we know that Phu-si-Yantong would not overlook Valka.”

I spoke cheerily, and with a certain confidence, for Valka was not quite as other lands of Vallia, because the island had fought its battles and won. “I would not expect that villain to do so. One day he will be chopped. But Valka is not the same easy prey to mercenaries and aragorn and slavers as the rest of Vallia. We have regiments of strong fighting men—”

“But Phu-si-Yantong is a Wizard of Loh. He will have employed sorcery—”

“Yes.”

That was, indeed, an unpalatable thought. This damned Wizard of Loh sought to make himself the supreme lord of Paz. He didn’t care what he did to achieve that insane ambition.

“If only Khe-Hi-Bjanching was with us — or had been in Valka.” Delia’s hand trembled against mine. I did not think she trembled in fear. “But he will have been sent to Loh as all our other friends were sent home from—”

“There are other forces of superhuman help,” I said, cutting in briskly, over-riding Delia’s words. I did not want Farris — or anyone who need not know, for that matter — being apprised of what had happened to our friends. They had all been incontinently hurled back to their homes from the Sacred Pool of Baptism. So far they had not found their way back. That was a contributory cause to the misfortunes that had overtaken us; but we would have been overwhelmed even if all my friends had surrounded us. That I knew with a somber chill.

The dawn would soon be with us, and I suggested that Delia try to sleep. It was not so stupid a suggestion, for she was exhausted and despite her feelings, despite the grief for her father, she did sleep. I could soldier on for a space yet.

I fancied, in thinking of Yantong, that the cramph no longer cared if I lived or died. I had to examine the notion with great care. He had given orders that I was not to be assassinated. I did not know if he had canceled those instructions. Yantong had contrived the death of an empire. His tools fought in Vondium and over the land against the armies of other men, highly placed nobles and demagogues, who sought the throne for themselves. Of all those ambitious and greedy would-be-emperors, I fancied Phu-si-Yantong would be the eventual victor.

And, among his instruments, numbered in the ranks of those who fought for him, was our own daughter Dayra. Unwittingly, perhaps, she served the Wizard of Loh, thinking in all honor that she fought for the rights of self-determination for the North Eastern section of Vallia and this damned fellow Zankov; but she had served Yantong well. Dayra. I would have to tell Delia about her, tell Delia about Ros the Claw, and of her entanglement with Zankov, that same cramph Zankov whose bloody brand had struck down the emperor, Dayra’s grandfather.

This was a tangled web, and there was more, and I could not see a clear path to steer.

“Well,” I said to myself, and if I had spoken aloud my voice would have cracked out harsh and ugly under the moons, “we will take Didi and Velia and Aunt Katri out of Valka if the place is closed up as tight as a swod’s drum. We will see them safely to Strombor. And then—” And then — what?

If I did what I had said I would do, speaking in the heat of the moment and out of anger and foolish pride, there would lie seasons of campaigning ahead. Vallia would run as red with blood as ever it had. How could I justify this? I had pushed these thoughts away before, but they recurred. What moral right had I, what morality was there in it, if I raised armies, fought the usurpers, destroyed their armies, restored the throne of Vallia to its rightful heirs? Did my honor demand that? Can honor ever justify the deaths of thousands of honest people?

Perhaps, as I had wistfully half-suggested to myself, perhaps I would just stay quietly in Strombor, that beautiful enclave of the city of Zenicce, and live life the way life is intended to be lived and enjoyed. We had taken all night over this flight. The flier was reasonably fast, having covered three hundred dwaburs, about fifteen hundred miles, and it would be full daylight before we reached Valkanium and the Bay and the high fortress of Esser Rarioch.

Below us Valka fled past. Farris had gone back to sleep and as I cogitated with such melancholy with my tormented thoughts and watched the suns rise off to our larboard, I felt the soft warm hand creep into mine and felt again all the magic of my Delia enfold me.

“Dawn,” said Delia.

“Aye. And the Suns are rising on a sorry land this day.”

“But it is a new day, my heart. A new beginning. A new chance. In Valka—” She expected me to interrupt; but I did not. “In Valka we must find help. We must.”

“If we do not, if we do, it makes no difference. You and the children are for Strombor.”

The Suns of Scorpio, Zim and Genodras, rose into the clear air. The day would be fine, with perhaps a little rain after the Hour of Mid. Delia sighed.

“I have been thinking of your blasphemous suggestions of a world with one little yellow sun and one silvery moon. It is possible, I grant you. But where is the sense in it? Why do you raise a philosophical point? Is there anything more?”

“Oh, aye,” I said, turning so she could nestle into my free arm. “A lot more.” I spoke slowly and carefully, trying to make what I said sound sensible, which, to a Kregen, it did not, could not.

“Only apims?” She stared up at me blankly. I leaned down and kissed her. For a space nothing else mattered. Then—

“Only apims. People like us. No diffs, none at all.”

“Now I know you make fun. Such a world would be — would be flat, would be — dull!”

“Well — no,” I said, defending this our Earth which is so marvelous a world in its own right. “Not flat or dull. Just that Kregen is so much — so much — more,” I finished lamely. She drew a deep breath.

“Very well, husband. Since you choose to mock all the religion and the learning of the wise men —

suppose, just suppose a world could exist like that. Then what?”

It was my turn to swallow.

Below us Valka began to show all those myriad colors of her forests and lakes, the mountains of the Heart Heights, the wide open spaces, the serene areas of ordered cultivation, the thread of rivers and the glint of waterfalls. The air breathed sweet and clean, that glorious air of Kregen. This was my own island of unsurpassed beauty, wild and rugged, tranquil and fertile, rich with the goodness of the earth. I drew another deep breath and the fragrant dawn air of Kregen dizzied my senses. For this I would give much, give very much...

Delia looked up at me, her brown hair catching the radiance of the suns so that those outrageous chestnut tints glinted. The richness of her lips, the clarity of her brown eyes, the perfect purity of her face and form — I swallowed again and opened my mouth.

“From such a world, distant a long long way, my heart, I—”

She broke away from me and her chin firmed and the danger signals flashed from those brown eyes that changed from melting tenderness to hard authority. “Flyers! Hamalese! They see us!” I swiveled about, checking my words, stared out Flyers lifted toward us, their wide wings spread against the light, the flyers on their backs shaking their weapons.

“Not Hamalese,” I said after that first flashing glance. “Flutsmen.”

The mercenaries of the skies wheeled their flying mounts up toward us like a gale-driven whirlwind of leaves.

Ahead of us the Bay opened out, and the City of Valkanium spread in beauty up the slopes where vegetation bowered my home in verdant beauty. The massive pile of Esser Rarioch reared above the city and the Bay. The light picked out every detail.

Our own flags of Valka still flew from the battlements of Esser Rarioch. But ugly smears of smoke rose from the city. There were sunken galleons in the Bay. Flames spat spitefully from warehouses and from the villas along the shore and overhanging the water. A confused mass hurled up and forward against the fortress and the wink and glitter of weapons splintered shards of light into the morning.

“Esser Rarioch is attacked,” I said, and the bitterness choked me with bile.

“But it still holds out.” Delia leaped for a crossbow. “We must break through these flutsmen and reach the fortress.”

Feathered wings flickered about us. Feathers streamed back in those clotted clumps from their helmets that give to flutsmen their devilish, reiving, headlong appearance. True mercenaries, Flutsmen of Kregen, hiring out to the highest bidder and ready to betray him for a price. They share nothing of the high honor of nikobi that give Pachaks their unmatched reputation as paktuns. Flutsmen often band together and simply reive on their own account. Now, with Vallia torn by strife, these aerial devils struck out for themselves.

I slammed the control levers over to full and bellowed for Farris. The voller lanced up into the air, spraying flutsmen away. Delia, braced against the coaming, loosed, and bent at once to respan the bow. Some remnants of honor still cling to some flutsmen. I had no way of knowing of what calibre were these aerial foes; but I knew with everything I held precious that I would never allow Delia to fall into their hands.

Farris lumbered out and belted up the deck to the controls. Flutsmen were urging their flying steeds on. For a space we outclimbed them. I shoved my head over the side and looked down. The dark mass of men attacking Esser Rarioch had broken through the first portals of the long stairway and were forcing their way up. The pavises borne before them bristled with arrows. Esser Rarioch was due to fall soon. And the flutsmen bore in toward us, screeching, their weapons glittering.

“Down, Farris!” I bellowed. “Straight down — straight for Esser Rarioch!”

The Lord Farris flung me a single questioning glance. He saw my face, that ugly, demoniac, headstrong old face of mine with the look of the devil, and he thumped the levers over. Straight through the whirling cloud of flutsmen we plummeted, down and down, hurtling toward the fight raging on the long stairway leading up to Esser Rarioch.

Two

The Folly of Empire

The brave red and white flags of Valka still flew over the battlements, the treshes bright and defiant in the morning light. Down we plummeted. Flutsmen screeched and drove in and were buffeted away and left, trailing far above us. The wind scorched about our ears.

No flyers attacked Esser Rarioch. I smiled. I, Dray Prescot, smiled at the grim and bloodcurdling thoughts — for my Archers of Valka must have remembered and put to good use the techniques they had been taught of repelling aerial cavalry.

So we roared down toward the fight and I peered about intently. Birds and flying animals used as steeds had been virtually unknown in Vallia until the confrontation with Hamal had forced the unwelcome information upon the Vallians. Down south in the magnificent continent of Havilfar there were many and many a variety of flyer, and of them all, I fancied — aye! and still do! — that the fabulous flutduin of my ferocious four-armed Djangs is the finest. A corps of flutduin mounted flyers had been formed in Valka, trained by Djangs brought to my island for the purpose. Where were they now?

Why was not this assaulting mass of infantry being harassed from the air?

These thoughts had to be banished as with the wind blustering past we dropped headlong into the attack.

Queen Lush staggered out, almost falling down the steeply canted deck.

“Take up a crossbow, queen, and let us see how you shoot!”

“I’ll shoot, ma faril, I’ll shoot—”

So we had three crossbows to loose and Delia and I spanned a half dozen more as we rocketed down. White and colored blobs showed as the faces of the men in the ranks below looked up. Their wide pavises were studded with arrows. Varter-hurled bolts splintered off the rocky sides of the stairway, and chunks of stone ricocheted away. I judged that there were few Valkans left in Esser Rarioch to carry on the defense.

Time, time... There is never enough time...

Up the stairway the infantry struggled in the shelter of their large shields, and down we plunged at them. At intervals in the long flight of steps there are generously proportioned landings, places where a fellow might pause and catch his breath as he climbs to Esser Rarioch. The head of the assaulting column had reached one such landing and now it halted. Bows bent against us and arrows flew. The voller was of good Hamalian construction, built soundly of stout wood, mostly sturm, with lenken bracers. The arrows either failed to penetrate or missed and fell away.

The Lord Farris was a fine flier. He would needs be, seeing he was a Chuktar in the Vallian Air Service. Now he eased the voller out of her headlong downward plunge, aiming to bring us up over the heads of the foremost foemen.

Queen Lush leaned over the coaming and let fly. She loosed far too early and where her bolt went Opaz knew.

“Save your bolts, queen!” I bellowed. She glared madly at me, and seized up another of the crossbows. Farris was swinging us up now in a sweetly contrived curve that would put us in a good shooting position. Queen Lush’s second bolt disappeared into the dark mass below. Delia began to shoot.

We discharged our crossbows and I saw one of the pavises sway and tilt as men fell, their hands lax in death slipping from the cross-struts. But our combined shooting would not make the decisive difference the desperate situation required.

Now Farris was a fine flier, as I have said. I bellowed at him as I frantically wound a windlass.

“Down, Farris! Drop full on them!”

He glared at me, and all the reluctance of an Air Serviceman to hazard his craft showed in his seamed, wind-lined face. The crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes deepened. With a curse that apostrophized Makki-Grodno’s foul and diseased anatomy I hurled myself at the controls. I thunked the lever down, hard. The voller dropped like a leaden plummet.

“Majister!” yelled Farris, aghast.

The airboat smashed down onto the head of the column, onto the pavises, onto the infantry. If there were squashing sounds they were lost in the uproar. The voller lurched. She stuck her stern down, over the rear of the steps leading onto the lower flight. I juggled the controls, lifting her and letting her fall. We ground down as a pestle grinds in a mortar.

Presently, with only a few arrows flicking about us, I lifted. The voller rose smartly enough and I turned her in the air. We looked over the side.

The column was in full retreat, broken into flying fragments. Men ran and scrambled down the stairs. Many fell to roll in brightly swathed bundles of uniforms and armor down the long stairway. I did not smile. But, for the moment at least, we had gained a respite.

“The chance,” breathed Farris. “It was a gamble—”

“And the gamble succeeded,” said Queen Lush. She had just spanned a bow, struggling with the cords, and now she took careful aim at a wretch running down the steps and sent the bolt full into his back. He leaped into the air, convulsed, and then collapsed, to fall and tumble headlong down onto the pressing backs of his comrades. In a wild tangle of arms and legs and weapons they all slithered down to the next landing.

“Now,” I said. “We will find out what is going on here, by Krun!”

“It won’t be good news, that is no gamble,” said Farris.

“But,” said Delia, her chin lifted, her face bright. “Esser Rarioch still stands. The flags still fly.”

As we flew up to the high landing platform I fancied that my fortress palace might still stand; but not for long. Anyone of the villains who wanted the downfall of the Empire of Vallia as a prerequisite to assuming the crown himself — or herself — would not allow any strong place of the Prince Majister’s to stand. My plans for starting the counter-revolution from Valka must be re-thought. But, then, I’d half-known that all along.

The folk who met us as we alighted from the voller bore the marks of hard fighting. Yellow bandages bore ugly stains. But the men greeted me with a roar of welcome, the women smiling at Delia. Esser Rarioch is a place dear to me, as you know, a place where no slaves were kept. Everyone in the fortress capable of bearing arms did so. We were engulfed in a human tide of talk and explanations of what had happened here and enquiries of what was taking place elsewhere and a determined defiance of anything those rasts outside could do to us.

Chuktars hold high ranks in any army, the name in its original barbaric connotations meaning commander of ten thousand. Nowadays, a Chuktar commands a grouping of regiments or units each under a Jiktar. The Chuktar who met me as I went up onto the battlements gripped my hand in his own brown fist and beamed. I agreed with his decision not to meet me at the landing platform. He was occupied where he was and he pointed out what deviltry was afoot out there as we talked. The flutsmen had been employed to bring the fortress to a rapid submission, and they had been seen off with volleys of accurately loosed arrows. Chuktar Nath Fergen ti Vandayha pointed at the gathering masses far below filling the Kyro of the Tridents, and he had no need to say they prepared themselves for the next attack.

As we talked I knew Delia would be seeing about Aunt Katri and the children, that Queen Lush would be exciting sidelong glances from the folk of Esser Rarioch, that our own preparations were being made. The Lord Farris joined us on the high battlements, and the pappattu was made between him and Chuktar Nath Fergen.

Jiktar Exand, the commander of the fortress guard, had been wounded early on, and I would go down and see him and give him words of comfort. Nath Fergen had chanced to be in Valkanium when the attack developed. As he said, with a round oath: “Tom took most of the army off to Veliadrin, for those Opaz-forsaken cramphs of Qua’voil burst out and burned three towns and started to march north. I came here to pick up the Fourth Archers and was just in time to get myself into the castle.”

He sounded most wroth. The Fourth Archers, a fine regiment, had been scattered in billets around the town and only a half pastang had made it up the long stairs. Among that number was Naghan ti Ovoinach, now an ord-Hikdar. Panshi, my Chief Chamberlain, came up and superintended the supply of tea and parclear and fruits. Long before Esser Rarioch could be starved out the attackers would have broken their way in, for there were very many of them, and barely a hundred and fifty souls left in the fortress. As for the Valkan army, that was away in the island of Veliadrin, to the west, fighting those porcupine-like devils of Qua’voil who would rejoice to see the destruction of everything apim within their reach.

So, as I listened to the news tumbling out, there was precious little to cheer me. I remained firm in my decision to send Delia and the children to Strombor. All those incapable of fighting must be crammed into the voller. But, I thought with what I hoped was shrewd cunning and not footling incapacity, suppose the voller was used to take everyone out of the fortress by turn? They could be taken into the Heart Heights. We could resist from there as we had in the old days. Yes, I said to myself, and swung about to tell Chuktar Fergen what I proposed.

“But strom! To abandon Esser Rarioch!”

“Aye, Chuktar Nath. Aye! I would abandon this place that I love so dearly to those devils. What is the importance of stone and sculpture against flesh and blood? I would not lose a single man or woman of Valka to save Esser Rarioch.” I thought of the emperor, grimly holding onto his fine palace, and getting the place burned down around his ears and himself slain for the sake of it. “The important strategy now is to save our people.”

“Yes, my strom — and then we will rise and kick them out — all these invaders, every last one.” His full-fleshed face showed the thick blood-pulse beneath the skin, his beaked Vallian nose outthrust. “As we did in the old days, when we chased the aragorn out of Valka! Hai, Jikai! We will write new stanzas to The Fetching of Drak na Valka !”

“Hai, Jikai!” shouted the others clustered on the high battlements. “Hai, Jikai!”

The moment was emotional, no doubt of it, and I responded, thinking that, perhaps, if we did what we said then itmight well be a Jikai we did. And then those people of mine had to go on, and bellow it out, as they loved to do.

“Hai Jikai!” they shouted, and the swords whipped up, glittering in the lights of the Suns of Scorpio.

“Hai, Jikai! Dray Prescot! Strom of Valka!”

It was all proud and stupid and a folly. Pride, pride — well, I have no truck with pride, having fallen flat so very many dreadful times. But, I own, if we all fought as well as we shouted, we should be home and dry.

On that sour mental note I looked out and saw that our shouting had attracted the attention of some of those miserable cramphs below. They were running about, mere black ants so far below in the kyro, preparing to ascend the stairs again and, I trusted, many of them to ascend not to any of their heavens but to the quickest way to the Ice Floes of Sicce.

Joining our group on the high battlements, Delia looked down. Her face drew down in a frown that always has the power to seize my heart up in a constricting grip.

“Is this to be Vondium, all over again?” she said.

I forced my craggy old face to smile for her.

“No. We will evacuate. Everyone will be taken to safety in the Heart Heights. From there, as we did in the old days, we will resist the invaders.”

At once she fired up. For only the most fleeting of fallible moments I thought she would protest. But she saw at once that by abandoning Esser Rarioch, for all that we held the place so dear, we would shed an encumbrance and gain freedom of action. To be mewed up in a fortress with a hundred and fifty souls against an army is no way to fight a war. Memories of the Siege of Zandikar ghosted in, and scarlet memories of other sieges; but I looked away to the distant purple haze of those ferocious central mountains of Valka, and took heart.

We held that attack, shooting sheaves of arrows and bolts upon the attackers, rolling masses of stone down the steps, bounding, crunching into the shield, scattering them in a splintering wash of wicker and blood.

In a pause of the action, Jiktar Exand clambered up onto the ramparts, a yellow bandage over his neck and shoulder already glistening with fresh blood. The enormous arch of his ribcage swelled as I greeted him.

I said: “What in the name of the black lotus flowers of Hodan-Set are you doing up here, Exand? Look at that wound!”

Exand’s square face bristled under his helmet and he bashed his red and white banded sleeve across his breastplate. I tensed up for his bellow.

“Strom! I cannot skulk in bed when there is fighting to be done! Strom! We fight to the death!”

He was just the same, massive, bulky, creaking in his armor, bulbous, filled with the fanatical devotion of all my fighting men of Valka.

“Well, Exand, my friend. It is indeed good to see you. Now stand you clear of that varter and get a fresh dressing on that wound. You hear?”

“Quidang!” His bellow vibrated against our eardrums. “I hear, my strom!”

The Lord Farris bustled up and took Exand’s arm, leading him off, talking. I saw Exand halt as though shafted. He swung about. His quivering alertness took everyone’s attention and the shrieking of the infantry below struggling to climb those murderous stairs faded. Exand’s face turned that purple that the best Wenhartdrin wines hold within their bodies.

“Majister!” Exand fairly roared out, purple, immense, consumed with overwhelming joy. “Hai, Emperor of Vallia!”

My first thought was that Farris had to go and open his mouth. He was loyal to the emperor — to the emperor that was — and to Delia. I knew a loyal man, and I valued Farris far too much to fault him in so petty a thing as this.

After that, when we had thrown the attack back and could take a breath, the buzz went around the fortress. The emperor was dead: long live the emperor.

I have mentioned how my folk of Valka continue to call me their strom, somehow or other conveniently overlooking the rather comical thought that I was the Prince Majister of Vallia. Well, now they knew I was the Emperor of Vallia. Although, at that moment, I was the Emperor of Nothing. But they continued to call me strom, with occasionally a lapse into more formal majisters for the sake of propriety. This somewhat farcical interjection of emperors and majisters into the grim business of staying alive within the besieged fortress served to force upon me the thought that I was more like the fabled Pakkad, the outcast, the pariah, than any emperor. I had not wanted to be emperor, had not sought the throne and crown of Vallia. And, the plain fact was, I did not have them. The corpse of Vallia was being fought over as lurfings fight over a corpse on the great plains.

The desire to dabble my fingers in that stew appeared more and more unattractive, more and more unworthy.

Thrusting these morose broodings aside I joined in the preparations. The voller would take out the people in relays and with them weapons and supplies. Up in the Heart Heights we would find refuge. As an accomplished flier, Farris offered to make the first journeys. For the moment the attackers had drawn off and so I decided to catch up on a little sleep. The first voller load was seen off and then I went into our private apartments and stretched out on the bed. Before I went to sleep two thoughts hovered lazily in my mind and the first of these was cheerful and reassuring.

Among these defenders of Esser Rarioch and all the other fearsome warriors of Valka who would continue the resistance there would be found no place for that robust figure of legend, Vikatu the Dodger, the archetypal Old Sweat of most of the armies of Paz. That mythical old soldier is loved and sworn by with enormous gusto by the swods in the ranks, a paragon of all the military vices, the old hand who looks after Number One and knows every trick in and out of every book and manual of soldiering ever written. The fighting men of Valka might cuss away in Vikatu’s best style, but they were not soldiers in the strict regimental sense, not even the swods of the regiments we had formed, disciplined, controlled, trained. In the struggles that lay ahead I thought that not one fighting man of Valka would misunderstand the reality of Vikatu and dodge his duty.

So that, as far as it went, was all right. We would, as Kregans say, blatter them with a will. But — by all the grey ones of Sicce — but the other thought coiling in my head made me twist and turn uncomfortably on the bed. I was still totally undecided. I had spoken out about returning, had half-promised to regain the throne and crown. But, even with all the strictures laid on me, the ideas of honor, the knowledge of evil that would cover the land unopposed in any meaningful way, even with all this and the high ideals of the Kroveres of Iztar, even then I was not fully committed to a course that would bring further bloodshed. What was Vallia to me? I cherished estates in other parts of the world. Delia’s father the emperor was murdered and his empire sundered. Why should I seek to restore all that blaze of pomp and pageantry, resuscitate the power and the glory? Were those ends moral? Could the suffering be tolerated? How could all this maelstrom of future misery be justified?

So, as I slipped into sleep with a million torturing thoughts troubling me, you will see I was in a most foul mood. Only that last thought before sleep of Delia held any power to sooth me. Three

Delia Looses an Opinion at the Star Lords

The sleep lasted long enough to refresh. The voller made two more trips and the defenders of the fortress were very thin along the battlements indeed. We had to take thought to arrange the best way of the final evacuation.

“The folk are being cared for at friendly farms in the Heart Heights,” said Farris. He looked windblown and tired. “But it is wild country up there — wild.”

“Aye. Valka will never fall to invaders whilst the Heart Heights stand.”

The remainder of the force was split into two. I moved along the sun-splashed battlements to talk privately with Delia. I knew I’d encounter opposition.

“I do not think, husband, that that is a very good plan at all. In fact, if you ask me, I’d say it was a plan suitable for Cottmer’s Caverns.”

Below us the incredibly beautiful vista of Valkanium and the Bay spread out, dappled in sunshine, the light drifting of rain after the Hour of Mid burnishing everything with a glistening patina of gold. The attackers far below were thinking of forming up for another onslaught. They had lost a great many men, and they could see no other way of getting at us in Esser Rarioch than of climbing up those blood-spattered stairs.

They did not know of the secret entrances and exits far below the rock. I persisted stubbornly.

“You will fly out with the children and Aunt Katri. I want you with them.”

“But Aunt Katri is perfectly capable — she may be getting old, now, true; but the nurses—”

“You. You will take the penultimate trip. We may have to cut and run for it on the last one.”

“I know. And don’t you think I would be at your side?”

A shadow fleeted between the ruby glory of Zim and the ramparts. I looked up. My fist tightened on my sword hilt.

Up there, planing in its arrogant wide-winged circles, flew the Gdoinye, the spy and messenger of the Star Lords. That gorgeous golden and scarlet raptor circled up there, his head on one side, one beady eye fixed upon us.

Delia said in a voice that almost but not quite trembled: “There is that bird again—”

“Aye... A Bird of Ill Omen. Delia — I have promised to tell you why I am sometimes dragged away from you when all I want is to stay with you. Not like now, when it is sensible for you to go with the children. But, the other times—”

“I remember them, I remember them all. They were horrible.”

What was horrible to me in that moment, as well as the enforced absences I made at the orders of the Everoinye, the Star Lords, was that Delia could see the bird. I knew Drak my eldest son had seen it, and I had lied to him and said the bird was not there. But the Star Lords did not reveal their powers to many. I feared and hated the idea of my Delia being caught up in the schemes of superhuman unknown and unknowable beings who demanded so much from me without explanation.

“The bird is connected with your — disappearances.”

“Yes. And the Scorpion.”

“On the field of the Crimson Missals, when you said you did not want to go to Hyrklana — and I went there — and—”

I tried to make a laugh and failed. “I’d be sorry, now, if I hadn’t gone to Hyrklana and fought in the Jikhorkdun of Huringa. Then we would not have Tilly and Oby and Naghan the Gnat and Balass the Hawk as friends.”

“And where they are now, Opaz knows.”

“We will fetch them back, if they wish to come.”

“I think they will make their way back here, to Valka, for they are true Valkans now—”

“And what a sorry mess Valka and Vallia are in!”

The scarlet and golden bird circled, watching us. I shook my fist at it, and it continued on, indifferent.

“And when the shanks attacked that little village of Panashti, on the island of Lower Kairfowen, and you fell from the gate and we carried you to a hut. It was all a confusion. The walls and huts were burning. Those terrible Leem Lovers were breaking in — the walls came down and the smoke blew. We fought. Oh, Dray! You should have seen Drak. He was like a young zhantil. You would have been proud.”

Drak had grown up since then, become a man, a prince, a Krozair of Zy. His life had not been easy. Now Delia poured out all the wonder and the hidden-away hurt, the bewilderments she had felt over the years of our life together.

“I had gone to see you in the hut and — and you were not there! Only your armor and your weapons. I feared, then, remembering the other times, Jynaratha, over the Shrouded Sea — and then, even your weapons were gone. We fought as hard as we could and then Tom and Vangar came and we were saved. Drak was suddenly aware. Men looked to him. He and I, between us — and there was Turko and Naghan and Balass and all the others. There was such a lot of shouting and confusion. It was given out that you had gone to punish the shanks. Men believed. We were able to leave Panashti without any suspicion that you had died being voiced. Later, it was suggested — but you know — and, anyway, you have gone before to visit other lands, as all men know.”

“Twenty-one years,” I said, and I shivered.

The Star Lords had banished me to Earth for twenty-one long and miserable years because I had defied them.

Delia put her hand on my arm.

“And then you disappeared from the voller as we flew to Aphrasöe — that was mysterious and terrible—”

“The Scorpion,” I said. “I will tell you why I sometimes have to go away, and why I have decided to resist in different ways that do not mean I go back to — go away for twenty-one years.”

She looked at me and a wary look warned me.

“Back to — where?”

I did not reply.

“Back to the Great Plains of Segesthes? To your Clansmen?”

It would have been only a little difficult to lie. I shook my head.

“But where, my heart, where? Tell me—”

“If I do tell you, you will believe, I think, for I love you enough to know that — but it will be hard.”

She looked at me, and I knew my stupid remark had not only been unnecessary, it showed her how tangled up I was.

The wind blew the red and white flags of Valka out in a fluttering panoply. We would leave them flying when we deserted this beautiful place. For a time they would convince those rasts below we still resisted them. The red and white of Valka...

Among the treshes fluttering from the flagstaffs someone had hoisted my own old battle flag, the yellow cross on the scarlet field, that battle flag fighting men call Old Superb. I wondered then if I could bear to leave that behind.

What I did know and with sharp agony, was that if I defied the Star Lords who had brought me to Kregen I would leave more than a flag behind me when I was ejected with contempt from this exotic and cruel world.

The bird volplaned away, turning in a gentle glide, and the suns sheened a brilliance along his feathers. I wondered what Delia would do, what say, if the Gdoinye slanted back to us and spoke to me. The messenger of the Everoinye usually insulted me — well, we understood each other’s tempers in that. But I did not want to risk what Delia might say if the bird did speak to us. I wanted to move us along. I wanted — what I wanted was just about anything than having to go through this. The quick, intuitive empathy between Delia and myself has always given me a trembling feeling of possessing beauty beyond price. Always, I stress that we call each other ‘My Delia’ and ‘My Dray’ and the togetherness is complete, unshakeable, unremarked on save as I speak this record, and yet that possession is mutual, not a diseased obsession of property, one or the other. We are two people, two rounded persons, and yet together we are more than a single rounded one, more than merely one and one, more than two; and through all this rapturous spectrum of feeling, the dark hollow secret I carried dragged at me, tearing at me, and I knew that Delia sensed that apartness and grieved. So, with that empathy between us, I was not surprised when she began to speak in a low, serious voice, as we stood there in the radiance of the Suns of Scorpio. But her voice faltered, hesitated, her face was half-averted, and those brown eyes did not regard me with that same old brave look I knew and loved. All my primeval instincts flared into my thick old skull. Her mouth trembled as she spoke and yet she controlled herself, and I saw the way her hand fingered the brooch upon her breast and fell away and so crept up again. I felt the blood in my head.

“You have watched performances of Sooten and Her Twelve Suitors , I know.” She would not look at me. “The story is old, as old as Kregen itself. An abandoned wife is prey. There are many men whose minds dwell on their opportunities, whose desires, whose hands—” She stopped speaking, unable to go on.

Sooten, as you know, is a legend of Kregen that parallels in emotional depth the brave Earthly story of Penelope, wife to Odysseus, mother of Telemachus. Like Penelope, Sooten kept her suitors at bay. I sensed that Delia was trying to feel her way to telling me things I had best learn at first hand, if at all, and my mind went back to what I had heard, posing as Jak Jakhan, in the Baths of the Nine called the Bower of the Scented Lotus in Vondium. There those oafs had nudged and winked and repeated tales of the notorious affairs of the Princess Majestrix of Vallia. The rubbish had passed from my mind as the cess pits are emptied and purified with that remarkable concoction made from the little blue fallimy flower. And, chained in a prison cell, I had heard other salacious stories. In the many rich pantheons of Kregen there stands the archetypal figure of the seducer, suave, groomed, glib-tongued. He knows well how to comfort and feed the vanity of women and this Quergey the Murgey is charmingly versed in the ways of breaking down the defenses of wives who, for whatever reason, are estranged from their husbands. I should add that I give this contemptible figure a name that is not his own, his real name being much contumed over Kregen, and I choose to use this alias. Perhaps, one day, his own name and not his use name will be revealed. Odysseus was gone for twenty years. I had been gone many times, and once for twenty-one whole years. As I looked at Delia I understood that many men had essayed her, and I knew they had failed. Her own inner spirit and strengths would not fail her, and although she knew my opinion of the sin of pride, in this case her own pride would rise and she would draw her virtue from our love. Her strength would not fail no matter that I was absent, gone, removed. What we meant to each other remained steadfast despite my seeming rejection of her, leaving her distraught and abandoned and prey to the scum who batten on unhappy women. One of Quergey the Murgey’s favorite techniques is to practice the sympathy routine, offering help and a firm shoulder on which to lean and cry, and so lead on, subtly, delicately, to the fulfillment of his desires. He feeds the anguished ego with words the woman craves to hear. Delia would see through all that. But she felt she must try to make the oafish, foolish, thoughtless Dray Prescot understand the load she bore. And, understanding, my anguish for her agony almost destroyed me — almost, for my Delia of the Blue Mountains was with me now and no matter what happened we would be together in ways of love far beyond the comprehension of mere mortal flesh and blood.

That belief is not rooted in religion or mysticism of a mundane kind — and that is not a contradiction in terms — is not understood by the seducers of the world. The meretricious creeds that condone the acts of Quergey the Murgey offer cheap substitutes for reality, like the evil creed of Lem the Silver Leem, and claim their reality is of life when it is of death.

The scarlet and golden bird circled, watching us.

My wife must understand that my absences were forced on me and not of my own free will. The idea that she would fail to grasp my ludicrous story of a world with one sun and one moon and only apims for people appeared to do her a most injurious injustice. Was she not Delia? Of course she would understand, and in understanding, gain strength to repel with the contempt they deserved all those moist-mouthed, hypocritical well-wishers, the suitors infected by the poison of Quergey the Murgey. She looked up at me and her chin lifted. She looked marvelous.

“Yes, my heart. There are stories. I beg you — do not un-sheath your Krozair longsword against those little people. They do not merit that worth of attention.”

“You are with me, Delia.” I spoke most soberly. “That is all I want.”

“And all the rest,” she whispered, and leaned toward me and the Gdoinye flew down and hawked out a coarse barking cry. She glanced up, and said: “These absences — you will tell me. But there are puzzles, sorely troubling, in the times. Time seems unreal.” She spoke in a reflective way now, the storm over, searching for knowledge, remembering our partings.

The messenger and spy of the Star Lords hovered over us.

Delia eyed the Gdoinye with a speculative eye. “You made yourself Strom of Valka when—”

“I was made, my love,” I corrected, mildly.

“Yes. You were Fetched to be Drak na Valka. And that happened — it must have happened — when you and I, and Seg and Thelda were marching through the hostile territories. I have thought about this. I have thought that I spent but one day apart after we met, whilst you were off in Segesthes and your Clansmen, or at least, so it seems. A person cannot be in two places at once, can they?” Here she moved a little way away, pensive, troubled and struggling with her thoughts. “Also, you are King of Djanduin and when did that happen?” She looked at me, and caught that luscious lower lip between her teeth. “And will you say you were Fetched to be King of Djanduin?”

“No.” I spoke with humility and with anger. “No. I own I set out to make myself King of Djanduin. But I changed along the way. It was a long and wearisome wait through the seasons.”

“So,” she said, and sparked up. “So the sorcerer is very powerful. I do not think even a Wizard of Loh could match what I suspect.”

“That is true — if you suspect truth. That, I do not know.”

The Gdoinye angled closer, ruffling his feathers, slanting down toward us.

“And does this great bird come to take you away from me again?”

At my troubled look Delia gave me no time to answer. She whipped up the crossbow to hand, one we had taken from the voller. It was ready spanned. She triggered the nut, the bow clanked, the bolt sped. I gaped.

I felt the chill. What would happen now?

Delia, my Delia of Delphond, had loosed at the Gdoinye!

What thunder would roll from the heavens? What lightnings spit down and split the castle walls? What hailstones might lash us to a bloody froth? I let out a yell and rushed for Delia, swept her up into my arms, pressing her head against my chest. I glared up madly. The bird circled and the bolt whickered up and in my heightened state I followed the cast with raking eyes. Delia had shot true. The bolt would hit... So fast it all happened, so fast, pelting fleeter than a zorca over the plains. A voice hammered against the brightness of the day.

“Fool! Onker! Have you learned no lessons, Dray Prescot?”

And a stunning flash of blue fire illuminated the sky, washed over the stone walls, burst in thunder about my ears. The bolt burst asunder, limned by blue fire, smashed and broken, falling away, twisting, dropping.

Even then, I knew no other eyes but those of Delia and my own would have seen that coruscating display of power.

For a heartbeat, for a single heartbeat, I thought the blue smash of fire destroyed the crossbow bolt alone. And then I knew differently, knew better — I, Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor and Krozair of Zy, knew I had another lesson to learn.

Blueness coiled around us.

“Dray!”

The radiance twined grasping tentacles around us — between us. I felt the old hateful sensations of falling. Delia was no longer clasped in my arms. I glared up, my whole body and mind wracked with hatred. Up there, blazing against the sky, drowning out the refulgence of Zim and Genodras, the enormous bloated form of the ghostly Scorpion glowered down on me.

Gropingly, frantically, I reached for Delia. The stones of the ramparts beneath my booted feet scraped harshly. Coldness fell over me like the chill cloak of the grey ones. Delia — she was gone, torn away from me — no! I was being torn away from her as I had so often been dragged away before. Hateful memories of those other times when I had been wrenched away from Kregen by this ghostly blue representation of a Scorpion battered at me. I tried to shout, and nothing came save a wheeze. The blueness deepened.

And that blueness wavered; the Scorpion trembled as though formed of smoke wafted from a campfire, and being blown this way and that by the evening breeze from the high mountains. The Scorpion dissolved.

A flush of crimson light spread across the firmament from starboard, and I switched instinctively to search the larboard side for that welcome glow of yellow gold.

But the yellow fascinating gold of Zena Iztar did not appear to cheer me and give me comfort and help. A vivid acid green jaggled into the sky, hard-edged, sharp, cutting across the blue. Voices, as though confined in an echoing cavern shielded miles deep in rock, ghosted across, hollow voices, muffled and echoing, yet clear, distinct, so that I heard. And, hearing, I braced myself, prepared to meet the new challenge and attempt with all the will-power in me to resist. Perhaps — I had been told

— perhaps a mental force alone would suffice. I did not know. All I knew was that I must resist and summon myself, the inner me that was plain and simple Dray Prescot, to stand against these superhuman forces.

“He is mine. I run him, for you are weak and old...”

The acid voice dripped with power.

“Not so, Ahrinye! Not so. For we are the Everoinye—” The answering voice boomed, muffled, half-choked, yet deep with the reverberations of habitual authority.

“You may be Everoinye, but you have forfeited your rights. I am a Star Lord, also. I—” And then the acrid voice screeched into an incoherency that jumbled the passionate words together like the screech of metal against the grinder’s wheel. The bitter green light fluctuated wildly. This quarrel among the Star Lords affected me and yet I felt a frail confidence that the Everoinye did not know I could hear them. Their own passionate natures were well hidden, repressed, controlled by the flame of their purpose, that I believed. They were superhuman and therefore would not think as a man would think. They wrangled and I listened, and all the time I watched for the yellow golden flush of light that would herald the arrival of Zena Iztar.

What they said contorted thought; I could not then comprehend all and it would not be proper to attribute what little I later learned to the Dray Prescot who was the me who listened in such awed and yet defiant fascination.

The Star Lord called Ahrinye, he of the jagged acid green light and sharp acid voice, showered his youthful contempt upon the elders of the Star Lords. As I braced myself up, ready, hating them all, raging, I yet had time to reflect that the Star Lords in this but followed the same time-consuming course as fragile humanity — except that, I knew, the Everoinye were by thousands of years older than the oldest man who ever lived, on Earth or on Kregen.

They wrangled over me. Ahrinye wanted to use me with a greater force than hitherto and, I realized, a greater harshness, a lack of even the rudimentary concerns for my skin the Star Lords had shown. Mind you, I did not think they cared for me one jot after I had done their dirty work for them. And then the name spurted from the maze of shrouded talk and I snapped into even more alert listening.

“Phu-si-Yantong?” said Ahrinye. “Your lordling suffers from him and I would send a summary Gdoinye to settle that.”

“You think you may stand against us, and you know so little. The lordling Prescot has been given a measure of protection against the Wizard — for their puny powers quail even at the thought of the Savanti. And the Shere’affo Iztar meddles—”

I winced. The viridian green light exploded into whorls of jagged lightning. Enormous thunders crashed about my head. The blue light pulsed and, tiny, creeping, but there, real and penetrating, a golden yellow glow grew low on the horizon.

And I understood. At the mention of the name of Zena Iztar these puissant and superhuman beings took notice, took cognizance — I could not believe they feared. But they became wary — yes, wary would be the name for the emotions I sensed coiling there in the sky colors coruscating above my head. The crimson beat a steady pulse of glowing ruby light through all the other clash of color. All the time I stood upon the battlements of Esser Rarioch, in my capital city of Valkanium, in my island Stromnate of Valka — and yet I might as well have been on Earth, or Esser Rarioch have been flung to the farthest depths of space.

And although I say I understood, I understood that I had grasped at a tiny fragment of what was going on. Amid all this frightening display of supernal power I gleed at the thought that Zena Iztar did, indeed, possess some vestiges of influence. However, she may wish to influence the course of events, Zena Iztar, I felt with a dim sense of prying perhaps beyond the evidence, must perforce direct the current, seek to steer events rather than to originate them. The yellow glow faded.

I tried to scream out for Zena Iztar to remain, to succor me; but I was falling, falling, feeling the chill biting into me, and I heard, faint and far-away, like the echo of a lost child in the darkling woods: “Dray!

Dray! Where are you?”

The cords in my throat stood out as I tried to bellow back. “Delia! Delia—” But no sound forced its way from my ashen lips.

Once again I was being hurtled head-over-heels into fresh adventure, being flung halfway across Kregen to succor someone whom the Star Lords wished to remain alive for the sake of their future plans. Where before I had insanely contumed the Star Lords and sought to fly back at once to Delia, and been banished to Earth for my pains, this time I would do what the Everoinye commanded, do it fast and quick and ruthlessly. Then I would return to Valka. Better, return to Strombor, for I knew Farris would make sure that Delia was taken with the children to refuge in my enclave of Strombor in Zenicce. The blueness roared in my head like a rashoon of the Eye of the World. The Scorpion, writhing in blue fire sharded with the crimson glints of Antares, had me in its grip. Wherever on Kregen I was thumped down to get on with the commands of the Star Lords would not be too far for me to claw my way back.

As always I was thumped down stark naked. A ferocious screaming and bellowing lacerated the hot air. Joe Muggins, Dray Prescot, yanked from all he wanted on Kregen and sent to sort out a problem for the Star Lords. Well, this time I’d do it so damned fast even the Everoinye wouldn’t have time to blink. There was no hesitation in my mind over what I was supposed to do. I had been hurled down into a small wooden cabin which had been ripped and wrecked and thrown into confusion, with odd bits of clothing and kitchen utensils scattered everywhere. A man lay sprawled on the floor, his right hand trapped under his body. He was dead, his head cloven in. I leaped to my feet, feeling a dragging weight pulling at my limbs, launched myself at the man who was trying to strangle the half-naked woman. She clutched a baby to her and screamed and screamed. As I say, there was no doubt in my mind what I was supposed to do. The people were all apims, like me, and the fellow whose neck I took into my fists, twisting a trifle, for I wanted to ask him some questions, wore a hide loincloth and a quantity of beadwork. His head was shaved somewhat after the fashion of a Gon or a Chulik. He tried to slash me with his little steel-headed axe and I ground down harder so that he slumped.

I threw him down and heard the betraying shush of a shoe across the floor. The cabin was lit by a cheap glass oil lamp. The light beamed out mellowly. It was a wonder the lamp had not been upset in the struggle before I arrived.

The turn I made and the immediate sideways step were all done without thought, heritage of the Disciplines of the Krozairs of Zy. The fellow who was in the act of leaping at me, his axe upraised, was dressed as his companion. A tangle of ridiculous feathers tufted about the haft of the axe. It was only a small axe; but I knew that kind of weapon and I knew the fellow wielding it would be exceedingly ferocious and swift, no matter what part of Kregen I might be in.

The axe-head sliced down, glittering. I slid the blow and stepped in and he tried to seize me with his free hand. His face looked a flat-nosed shriek of absolute resolve. He was a savage, no doubt of it, in his fighting techniques. But so was I. I gave him no time to grapple or to bring the axe back. A knee into his vitals, a chopping blow to his neck, and a slashing smash of my forearm as he went down, finishing with a kick to whatever came handiest as he rolled. He flopped. I gave them both a reassuring tap with the little axe-head, not to slay them but to keep them in cold storage for a space. The woman was still shrieking. She glared at me with wide-eyed horror and she could not speak. The baby was yelling.

I stepped across to a pile of clothes all tangled up and then my head snapped up. My hand fastened on a pair of trousers made from some hard blue material. But, outside, shouts lifted, the sound of men yelling, muffled words and the trample of feet. Hastily pulling on the trousers, which had to be doubled up around my waist and yanked tight with the belt, I snatched up the axe and started for the door. Men were yelling out there. I heard a sudden shriek which, if I knew anything, was the sound of a friend of these two sleeping beauties in the act of charging. The first one in the door wouldn’t be put to sleep —

he’d be flattened.

The door burst open. A man towered, on the threshold, the lamp glinting from his sweat-soaked coppery skin. His axe looked identical to the one I grasped, save that I’d taken time to rip away the silly tangling feathers. He saw me and he gave a single incoherent shriek and charged. His lank black hair was bound by a fillet and he wore a few feathers there. I sidestepped, hit him over the head, smashed him down and so whirled as another appeared. This one tried to be clever, whipping a broad-bladed knife in with his left hand as he struck with the axe. But I’d fought for many and many a year with a sword and a left-hand dagger, the Jiktar and the Hikdar. I foined briefly, desperately anxious to get these idiots off my back and hightail it back to Valka or Strombor. I pitched him down to lie with his comrades, although, as I had bleakly surmised, he did not sleep. I had to slash half his face off before he’d consent to lie down.

The screaming from the woman and the baby went on and on and there was no time to shout at them as a fifth man leaped into the doorway. He took a single look at the scene within, the shrieking woman and the baby, his four comrades sprawled and bloody on the floor, and me, a right tearaway with an axe fronting him, and he half turned.

He stood in the doorway, the light gleaming from his powerful body. I was perfectly prepared to let him go. I had no idea where I was, but I had no wish to slaughter more than was inescapable if I was to do what I had been commanded to do. If he attacked the woman and the child, he would probably die. If he ran away I might run a greater risk; but that was an equation that honor demanded.

I shook the axe at him, to help him make up his mind.

From outside the approaching beat of hooves heralded the arrival of a hard-riding group of men. The staccato hammer held much of the rhythm of a zorcatroop; certainly they were not totrixes with their awkward six-legged gait or nikvoves with their battering array of eight hooves. The man in the doorway threw me a look of so powerful a hatred I was minded to charge forward and settle his hash there and then. In the linen and beadwork band about his dark hair he wore more feathers than the others. He moved smoothly, like a chavonth, the lamplight running in gleaming shadow-filled highlights across his muscles.

A succession of strange noises broke from outside — noises I did not at once identify. The first impression was of some maniac hammering a dull but noisy drum, or repeatedly slamming a heavy door. The coughing bangs erupted with the violence of a summer storm, bursting thunder about our ears. Ready to leap forward and make sure the woman and child were safeguarded from this fifth fellow who had tried to kill them, I stopped stock still.

The man jerked. He stiffened. He dropped his axe. He half-turned, shaking with some invisible force. He staggered and then, limply, collapsed.

From his back a gush of blood dropped down.

I stared.

I looked down on him.

And I trembled.

The banging sounds continued. But I knew what they were.

With a roar of rage and agony I hurled forward, reached the door, looked out. The shack stood near the end of an untidy row of similar shacks, and a raised boardwalk connected them above the road. Other men clad in loincloths and wielding axes and knives, some with bow and arrows, ran this way and that, and many fell. Up the center of the street rode a party of men, wearing clothes I recognized.

And, over all, the silvery flood of light from a single moon lit the scene in hard metallic pewter brilliance. Again and again the Winchesters and the Colts and the Remingtons flamed. I felt sick.

Somehow I was back in the cabin, looking at the woman who stared in horror at me, her sobs shaking her, her cheeks wet. She cradled the baby to her. Slowly, I picked up a shirt, a red and white checked shirt, whereat I felt a fresh pang, and put it on. Boots stood nearby. The woman’s husband would not require boots for his last journey to Boot Hill.

“You are safe now,” I said, and my voice made her flinch back.

I turned to the door and men crowded in. They were apims, like me — well, they would be, wouldn’t they? There were no Fristles and Rapas and Chuliks and all the other wonderful assemblage of diffs within four hundred light years.

“You all right, pardner?” The man who spoke wore Levis, a hickory shirt, a tin badge and a wide-awake hat. He held his Army Remington easily one-handed, and the muzzle centered on my midriff. I own he was wise to show caution. Despite my pants and boots and shirt, I must have looked far more like the Red Indians he had been shooting at than any of the White-eyes with him.

“I’m all right. This lady needs help—”

One of the others turned the bodies over with his toe.

“These two ain’t dead, Hank.”

The leader, the one with the silver star, said: “See to Mrs. Story, Jess.” He eyed me meanly. “Reckon I don’t know you, mister.”

Carefully, I placed the axe down. The men stared into the room, seeing the lax forms of the Indians, the mess, the sobbing woman — and seeing me, scowling, black-browed, looking more mean and savage than any painted Indian busted loose they’d ever run across.

“I’m Dray Prescot,” I said, and although I tried to make my harsh voice easy, I knew my words spat out like the slugs from their guns. “This lady appeared in need of help.”

“You did fer them injuns?” The men looked perplexed. The woman, Mrs. Story, was assisted to her feet. The men talked about ‘gitting her to the doc’ and so I felt she was now safe. If the Star Lords had commanded me to rescue her and her baby, then I had done that. But there was no easy way now of my returning to Valka or Strombor. I was once more marooned on Earth, stranded and desolate on the planet of my birth.

My appearance was easily enough explained — I’d been raked out of bed by the fighting and had run to Mrs. Story’s assistance. But the posse eyed me askance for a space, until the easy open-handed way of the West, and question and counter-question, plus the convincing results of my handiwork plain to be seen sprawled on the floor, assured them of my bona fides. I managed to keep track of the situation and not betray an almost impossible to explain away ignorance of local conditions. The Indians had broken out, as they were wont to do, for down here the main fighting had been finished up a few years back. Down around South Fork things erupted only now and then, and the main action had transferred north, where great disasters had shaken the nation. The local people were still jumpy. All the talk was of the frightful events of the 25th June last. The newspapers carried a leaked confidential report severely critical of Custer and his handling of the tactical situation at the Little Big Horn. I remembered the braves who had tried to do for me and was forced to wonder if not only the tactical but the strategical handling was amiss. They were men, like me, even if their skin was a coppery color. They were not Fristles or Rapas or Chuliks, and they also are men, if not like me.

Around that time a considerable amount of English money was being invested in the West. Having to face the catastrophic fact that the Star Lords had not pitched me into another part of Kregen but had dispatched me back to Earth, the world of my birth, I was still in no frame of mind to settle down. I had the opportunity of going partners more than once in a fine ranch; but I turned them all down. I took a swing through the Staked Plains and checked out Charles Goodnight’s JA Ranch, a spread he ran with John Adair’s money. They were just beginning their fabulous build up. Then I drifted west through El Paso and had me a rip-roaring time in Tombstone.

This was a couple of years before Wyatt Earp showed up with his kinfolk and Doc Holliday. Rather to my surprise I discovered that men would shoot whole magazines of Winchester ammunition away, or the full six shots from their Colts, and still not hit anything. I could draw reasonably fast; but did not make a habit of it. As to accuracy, given a gun I knew, I could hit what I aimed at. So I stayed out of trouble and drifted north. The 2nd August had witnessed the shooting of Hickok, in Carl Mann’s Saloon in Deadwood. Already, men wouldn’t play a hand of cards consisting of aces and eights. So I drifted around the frontier, not doing much of anything. As I have said before, it is not my purpose to tell you of my life here on this Earth. Certainly I got myself into a few scrapes and tight corners during this period, and found out enough to know that a great deal of guff was written then about the West, guff that has been continued to the present day.

My bankers in the City of London sent funds promptly as requested, and I had more or less reached the conclusion of going east, at least across the Mississippi and south, and then of repeating my previous swing around the country ending up in New York. From there England tempted me. The continuing improvement in repeating firearms interested me greatly. The Spencer I had known in Civil War days was now quite outclassed, although remaining a fine weapon, by the new Winchesters. The model ’73 with its stronger receiver than the model ’66 proved a reliable weapon, although lacking the range and penetration of military firearms. As for the revolvers, a plethora of different patterns and styles vied for attention. I studied everything I could, and this time I had very much in mind that the wise men of Kregen might be brought to a consideration of a repeating varter. The gros varters of Vallia, the best of their kind in my opinion, might work wonders on the Leem Lovers if some kind of repeating mechanism could be provided.

Of one thing I felt reasonably although not one hundred percent certain. It would destroy a great and intangible asset if gunpowder were to be introduced to Kregen.

By the time I’d reached Saint Louis the thought of spending time in England appealed overwhelmingly to me — until I ran across Amos Brown who had a hankering to go to California. Well, he talked me into it. We outfitted ourselves in great style, and Amos, who’d been a mule-skinner up around Laramie and ways west for a number of years, expressed himself as plumb pleased at our rigs. He was a short, spare, wispy-haired little guy with a mean shot-gun trigger finger. Well, we set off full of high spirits to cross Missouri just as fast as we could and then across Kansas. The place was already being domesticated, and Amos couldn’t stand the smell of ironing and scrubbing and stoop-sweeping. Dodge City was just about played out, too — or so it was given out. We got into only one good fight, and from then on to Santa Fe the rest of the folks with us more or less kept us on our best behavior. But I never got to Santa Fe — leastways not on that swing.

The blue radiance descended on me as I rode drag to the remuda — for we had a few wealthy folk with us — and the dust biting into my throat and the shushing of the hooves for a split-second prevented the reality of what was happening from penetrating.

Then I understood and I let fly with a holler and a whoop and felt the pony slipping away from between my knees. I gave a convulsive snatch at the Sharps scabbarded under the saddle — it was a model ’77

chambered for the three and a quarter inch, 45-120-550 load, not too hefty, with a beautiful full octagonal barrel of 34 inches, a real Creedmoor beauty with tang sight — and felt that vaporize under my fingers. No good going for the Winchester on its California saddle horn loop or the Improved Army Remington .44 at my waist — that revolver cost me eighteen dollars, plus a premium to get it — or, indeed, the Bowie knife. The Star Lords were calling me and all the gunpowder in the whole of the West wouldn’t stop them.

Whirling up, seeing the radiance enfolding me and watching with a choked fascination the enormous shape of the Scorpion glowing against the sky, I had time for what was a remarkably lurid reflection on the reactions of Amos and the rest of the bunch to my disappearance. When my pony trotted in with everything in place and without me — they’d spend a heck of a time rooting around trying to find me or my body.

Maybe, I said, maybe one day I’ll mosey back along the trail and find out what happened. And then all reflection ended as I felt the ground come up and thump me, felt once again the blessed warmth of Zim and Genodras pour heat into every fiber, drew deep breaths of that glorious tangy air —

and knew I was once again back on Kregen, where I belonged.

Four

Jak the Drang Encounters the Iron Riders

To be perfectly honest, as I leaped up I felt my nakedness, felt it terribly. My hand went to my waist. My little arsenal had become a part of my daily round, the Sharps to hit ’em as far off as I could, the Winchester to cut ’em down as they charged, the Remington to finish those that wouldn’t go down and the Bowie to take out the last, obstinate idiot who insisted on closing to close quarters. All this was a long way away from the Sea Service pistol of my youth, the cutlass or boarding pike, and a very long way away from the rapier or thraxter, the spear or the longsword I needed on Kregen — and needed right now, by Zair!

I was on Kregen, right enough, there was no mistaking that. All the agony I had experienced as I’d realized just where the Star Lords had flung me last vanished altogether in that moment. The mingled opaline radiance of the Suns of Scorpio streamed refulgently about me; but there was no time for anything other than getting on with the work to my hand, presented to me in the old familiar authoritative way — I had to fight and do what I had to do, or be banished once again. Or, given the circumstances, to die messily.

It was, I thought then, all one to the Everoinye.

Judging by the frightened looks they cast over their shoulders, and the merciless plying of whip and spur, the mob of men lambasting up the draw toward me were fleeing — were running away as fast as they could make their mounts gallop. These were a mix of various saddle animals of Kregen — hirvels, totrixes, preysanys, urvivels — with only two or three zorcas mixed up in the stampede. Dust flew up in a long ochre smear.

I ducked in back of a rock out of the way of the fugitives, guessing my task lay at the interface of pursued and pursuers.

Usually I was projected onto Kregen stark naked and headlong into action. Not always — usually. This time the Star Lords had seen fit to give me a little preparatory time. Of course, they did not deign to provide me with a helmet or spear, sword or shield, and we had struck our reactions to that idea. They would guess I would regard them with less estimation — although, truth to tell, I fancy that as I grew older I might come to regret that hot and impassioned surge of pride of my youth. I had not aged a day since the dip in the Sacred Pool of Baptism; but although my body remained young I know my brain had, slowly and painfully, accreted a trifle of wisdom in the intervening years. Drawn by six piebald nikvoves the coach lumbered into view. Its felloes shrieked as it skated over the rocks. It kicked up one helluva dust and I could see nothing down the back-trail. Most of the fugitives were apims, but there was a fair sprinkling of diffs, and a Rapa sat up on the box and flogged the nikvoves on. This coach, these six laboring animals, the dust, the racket — well, it caught at my throat, so like and yet so fantastically unlike the scenes I had just left. Had those different alien riding animals and the draught animals all been horses, had there been no diffs — this would still be Kregen. The smell, the feel, the empathy of the world was uniquely Kregen under Antares. I saw what must be done. Had those crazed fugitives taken a mur to observe for themselves they must have seen it, too. I was just a lone, naked man. But if I did not do what had to be done I knew what would happen. So I got on with it.

The rocks at the lip of the draw scattered away in a detritus to either side. Starting a likely-looking boulder moving started two or three others. Pebbles rattled. Dust smoked. The rocks tumbled down. I cut it fine, and a couple of fist-sized pebbles bounced into the polished varnish of the coach. But the main mass of sliding rock rumbled down, spreading, filling the bed of the draw. So much dust hung about that it was impossible to see beyond and so I still did not know who or what pursued these men and scared them half to death.

Who or whatever — they or it were not going to ride over that still-quivering wall of rock. The coach slewed and skidded. A wheel flew off, spinning gracefully, the spokes and hub never designed for this kind of hard hacking cross-country work. In a screech the coach bedded down canting onto its for’ard larboard axle. Slowly, I walked down toward the coach, watching the Rapa, who wore a gaudy uniform, watching the painted and varnished door swing open.

No one down there took any notice of me. The distance was too great to make out features. A woman jumped energetically down from the coach and shook her fist at the Rapa. At once he began unhitching the nikvoves. Two other women and a man got out of the coach. They all stood arguing, waving their arms, looking back at the still-smoking mass of rock barring off the pursuit. I stopped walking down, fascinated by this display of human emotion and character behavior. Presently, the whole group mounted up on the freed nikvoves and took off, hitting their mounts with the flats of their swords, galloping hell-for-leather. I stood and watched them go. I had carried out the commands of the Star Lords. I had no further interest in those people I had saved. I did not recognize any insigne, colors — the whole assemblage had been liberally covered in dust — or, more importantly, the country I was in. The coach looked to be of the kind I had seen in Zenicce, Vallia or Pandahem. I needed to know where I was to set my course for Strombor.

The Rapa coachman had freed only five nikvoves. So there was one left for me. I felt pleased. I walked down to the coach.

There are very few voves in Vallia, for that magnificent russet-coated, eight-legged king of saddle-animals is a native of the Great Plains of Segesthes. Yet Vallians and other people call his smaller cousin a nikvove, which always amuses me. This piebald specimen looked alertly at me as I walked up to him and stroked his neck, speaking soothingly. He and I would get on capitally. The coach had been stripped of its interior fittings; but in the box at the rear was to be found a mass of clothing, and from its style of buff and shirts with colored sleeves I judged I was in Vallia. I felt dizzy. The Star Lords might have dumped me down anywhere on Kregen — apart from being put down somewhere near Strombor — or, even, Djanduin — Vallia was the next best place for me in my ugly old mood.

I found a piece of russet cloth, for there was no scarlet, and twisted it around my waist and pulled the free end up between my legs and tucked it in. A broad belt — not, unfortunately, of lesten-hide — held the breechclout in place. The only weapons I could find were two small daggers, half kicked under the seat. They were of reasonable manufacture, with far too much gewgaw imitation jewelry; but they’d serve.

Despite all the cunning expertise of unarmed combat taught in the Disciplines of the Krozairs and of the Khamorros, Kregen is no place to wander around unarmed. Mind you, Turko the Shield would scoff with enormous gusto at these two ridiculous daggers, by Krun!

A number of the white shirts bore banded sleeves of gold and black. There were others in different color combinations; but the gold and black predominated. Thoughtfully I went back to the door and slammed it shut and brushed off the dust coating the varnished panel. The painted and gilded representation of a butterfly upon the gold and black blazon confirmed the view that I was in Aduimbrev. At least, the butterfly on gold and black was the insignia of Aduimbrev. If I was in the kovnate I knew where I was. Poor old Kov Vektor who had aspired with the emperor’s blessings to the hand of Delia was long since dead, having got himself foolishly killed in the Battle at the Dragon’s Bones. The memory of that famous old conflict heartened me.

A collateral line of the family had inherited, with the very necessary emperor’s confirmation of their claim, and the present kov incumbent was Marto Renberg, whom I knew only to nod to politely. The Aduimbrevs had reckoned on being emperor’s men; I had no way of knowing how their allegiances had fallen in the recent struggles for power.

I was pretty well near the dead center of Vallia. Across the Great River to the south lay Ogier. Across a tributary of the Great River to the west lay Eganbrev. And, eastward, the Trylonate of Gelkwa barred my path. Trylon Udo had led the uprising of the whole North East, or so I believed, and the mischief they had caused me with their damned revived corpse and the damage they had done to Vondium would long be remembered in the land. It had been that cramph Zankov from the North East who had slain the emperor. I thought of Dayra, Ros the Claw, and a great deal of my good mood vanished. It was necessary for me to travel east. The best plan would be to swing across to Thengelsax and in that city discover what had transpired during my absence. From there I’d have to find faster transport and take myself off to Zamra, or Valka, and from thence fly east across the sea to Zenicce and Strombor. Yes. I decided, then, spitting dust, that that was what I would have to do. Well, as they say, man reaps for Zair to sickle.

To the north spread the emperor’s province of Thermin, and in its chief city of Therminsax I might find what I needed. But the obsession was on me to take the shortest route. East, then... The rout of fugitives had headed south down the draw. I fashioned a saddle cloth from the clothes and cinched it tight with ropes. I took what clothing I thought necessary and then, being a canny old paktun, a soldier of fortune, I broke a long length of hefty timbering from the coach. That would serve as a lance, and a shorter length as a wooden sword. Once or twice before a length of lumber had served me as a weapon, and on Kregen a man needs weapons as he needs food and water. The piebald nikvove rumbled off with that special smooth elongated rhythm of the eight-footed. I cocked an eye back at the freshly created wall of rock. Nalgre ti Liancesmot, the long-dead playwright whose work is known over many areas of Kregen, is often quoted. “Better to know the smile of the friend who stabs you in the back than the scowl of the enemy who assails you in front,” which comes from his cycle

“The Vicissitudes of Panadian the Ibreiver” and contains a thought with which I do not always agree, allowing it to have a cogent point. It struck me I ought to find out just what that crazed mob had been fleeing from.

There was every chance now, that, their dirty work done, for them, the Star Lords would let me alone. I was coming to the conclusion, not as clear-cut as I may have made it appear, that there was strife among the Everoinye. If this Ahrinye really wanted to run me, as he so elegantly phrased it, with so much more force, I might find myself being run pretty sharpish in the future, and without recourse to any of the fragile obstructions I had erected to resist the Everoinye.

So, feeling pretty mulish and bloody-minded, I guided the nikvove up out of the draw. The land spread away in an opening panorama, superb under the suns, lightening from the dusty ochre near me to a fresher green along the horizon. And, in the middle distance, sparkling in the mingled radiance, the waters of a canal ran dead straight, northwest, southeast. I fancied this might well be a direct link through to Thengelsax. Certainly, the Ogier Cut ran east-west some way south of my present position. So, I turned the nikvove to follow the canal.

When I reached the towpath I frowned. So this was one of the results of the chaos destroying Vallia. For the cut was in vile condition, half-choked with weeds, the banks fallen away here and there, the water, although sparkling as the light of the suns glinted from it, sullen and barely moving. A thin strip of vegetation grew along both banks, trees and bushes breaking the flatness of the land. From the shadows of a missal tree I looked back and saw the dun-colored dust clouds rising. I stared closely. A body of riders broke into view, rising up like a succession of trap-door devils. They appeared in no hurry. They trotted on. Probably the rock-fall had caught a few of them and time had been spent assisting the injured. For whatever reason, only now were they resuming their pursuit. Or, and what was far more probably the correct explanation, the fugitives had been in such terror they were fleeing from these riders when the pursuit was a long way off. Only now had the pursuit caught up with them. At this unpalatable thought I frowned.

But the people of Aduimbrev ought to be clear away by now. Should I follow them and make sure?

They were headed south. Damn those blasted Star Lords! So, undecided, I stood there and heard the splash of water at my back.

Without thought, without looking back, I rolled off the nikvove, hit on a shoulder, rolled under a bush and came up, quivering, ready to defend myself against — against a slender slip of a girl who climbed out onto the bank, half-naked, dripping, shining — and laughing at me with a rosy face beaming rapturous amusement at my antics.

“You don’t have to be afraid of me, ven. I won’t hurt you—” she started to say. Then she stopped and all the amused enjoyment fled from her face. She saw the dust cloud, she saw the riders, and she seemed to shrivel there in the streaming light of the suns. “Radvakkas.” She spoke the word with so much fear and loathing it was instantly clear these riders were a real and terrible threat. “The Iron Riders.”

Standing up I put a hand on the piebald’s neck, soothing, and looked again at the men out there trotting along with the dust spuming and the light striking sparks from their armor and weapons.

“The Iron Riders?”

“Yes — and keep you still and silent until they are gone. I pray to Vaosh they do not see us.”

“We can swim across the canal — they are not of the canalfolk—”

I chanced my arm there; but I was right. She nodded, swiftly, her brown hair gleaming, her water-drenched tunic plastered to her. Her face was small and elfin, and her eyes were very frightened.

“That is true. But their benhoffs would swim the cut with the radvakkas safely clear of the water.”

So we kept silent and watched and I digested what this girl had said. For I knew about benhoffs. The benhoff is a shaggy, powerful, six-legged riding animal from North Segesthes. The barbarians up there use them as my clansmen use the vove. And from short and ferocious wars the various tribes and confederations of the North Segesthan Barbarians had long learned never to tangle with a Clansman. They kept themselves well to the north of Segesthes and the continent is large enough for barbarian and clansman to live separately. Although, mind you, it is a truism to say that any honest Clansman is far more savage and bloodthirsty than any barbarian...

But, here, in Vallia — benhoffs? To the best of my knowledge the benhoff was as little known or used as the vove in Vallia. I swallowed down what I was about to say, and instead, said: “You know these Iron Riders?”

“Aye, may Gurush of the Bottomless Marsh take them and suck them down and never spit out their diseased bones!”

“I am a stranger here, just riding through — tell me of these radvakkas.”

She lifted one brown eyebrow at this; but let it pass.

She told me her name was Feri of the Therduim Cut. This canal connected Therminsax and Thengelsax. Before I could urge her to tell me of the Iron Riders, other canalfolk appeared. They had no narrow boat; they walked along the towpath, and I prepared for unpleasantness even though I was well aware of the hospitality of the canalfolk. In the event Llahals were exchanged and the pappattu made in a proper civilized way. We all waited quietly until the radvakkas had ridden out of sight. Then a load was lifted from these people, and they began to smile and chatter again. Very briefly, I learned that trade had been thoroughly disrupted by the troubles, and these people had lost their two boats and, perforce were compelled to walk carrying what belongings they could, until they could reach one of the towns along the cut where they had friends. The Iron Riders had come sweeping in from the northeast and terrorized the whole countryside. They roamed in bands, ravaging and looting and burning, and no one was safe.

Despite the smiles and the warm comradeliness, the impression I gained was that these canalfolk were mightily scared not only of the Iron Riders but of life in general. Vallia was no longer the empire it once had been. The country was split into warring factions. Vengeful townsfolk had sunk the two narrow boats. The town had been sacked by the radvakkas three nights previously; and the townspeople had vented their spite. No — I did not at all care for the truths I was finding out about Vallia. This Feri had spirit. She had been out ahead scouting and had taken to the water to come up on me unseen. I suppose I’d satisfied her I was not an Iron Rider. But the rest of them were anxious to push on and after I had learned a little more of conditions — much of which I will relate when the telling is needful

— I told them I must push on also.

“But the radvakkas went that way, ven.” And: “But you are a lone rider, Ven Jak.” And: “Come with us, ven.” And so on, for I had given them the name of Jak the Drang, conceiving Dray Prescot would be a name with much gravity attaching to it.

“I thank you, vens and venas. But mayhap we will meet again in more happy times.”

Amid the calling of Remberees, I mounted up and turned the piebald’s head. I waved to them, and guided the nikvove angling away from the Therduim Cut.

Deliberately, for I fancied I had not fully completed the task the Star Lords had set to my hands, I set off southwards, following in the tracks of the Iron Riders.

Five

Of a Rout After Breakfast

Night would soon bring the brilliance of the Moons of Kregen to brighten the sky and I could feel the first tendrils of tiredness. After all, I had begun the day astride a pony riding drag to a remuda heading for Santa Fe, and was now riding a nikvove in pursuit of a bunch of rogues more ferocious than anything the West had witnessed — and had, into the bargain, been pitchforked four hundred light years through space. Not, I hasten to add, that I was then aware of the real distance involved. But I could soldier on for a spell yet and decided to take a swing around the band of radvakkas ahead and catch up with the fugitives.

The level ground began to roll into a series of long tawny-grass-covered dunes as I went on, and presently stands of trees showed throwing long twinned shadows. I kept the Iron Riders under observation and was somewhat surprised to see them pitch camp for the night and settle down. Anxious to press on I skirted their camp and rode on into the darkness as She of the Veils rose luminously over my left shoulder.

If I was on the right track then the fugitives had galloped fast and without let-up. Just before midnight the lights of a town showed ahead. I had only a hazy idea of the detailed geography around here; it seemed likely, if I was right, that the smot ahead was Cansinsax. In a long chain surrounding the North East the forts had been built in the old days against the reivers. The Therduim Cut was a later construction, running mostly along the borders between Aduimbrev to the south and Sakwara to the north. The saxes were not always built directly on the frontier, and, sometimes, the borders had been shifted by imperial decree.

I bedded down outside the town and saw to the nikvove and caught a little sleep, being up well before Zim and Genodras broke over the horizon. My urgency was being channeled into doing what I believed right. If I was wrong, well, I would be the sufferer — for I was still firmly convinced that Delia was safe in Strombor. She had to be.

For breakfast I had a few deep lungfuls of fresh Kregen air. The nikvove chomped the grass and appeared content.

Had I chosen to ride north and cross the border out of Aduimbrev I would have come into the emperor’s province of Thermin. The odd thing was, I was in no way reconciled to the idea that I was supposed to be the emperor. Emperor of Vallia. By Vox! How empty could a title get?

Had I done so, I sourly wondered if, even there, I’d have found anyone willing to give me breakfast. As the twin Suns of Scorpio rose and threw the land into that shimmering opaline radiance I saw a sight that astounded me. I put a hand to the piebald’s neck, soothing him. I remained very still in the little stand of timber, peering out under the leaves.

Across the grassy ground a great host approached Cansinsax. Clearly I could see the long extended lines of cavalrymen. They rode benhoffs, shaggy and gray. Their weapons glittered. They wore mail. There were, I judged, something in excess of three thousand of them. So a junction had been made and the forces gathered in and now the Iron Riders rode against Cansinsax. The evident terror these riders of iron struck into all they encountered was a most potent weapon; but not, I judged, their only or even their chiefest weapon. Just how they would manage the siege of the town I admit intrigued me. But then — well, they say the gods sharpen both edges of a blade — the gates of the town opened. Trumpets pealed brazen notes into the morning air. I watched, spell-bound. Out from the gates of Cansinsax, a town of Vallia, marched with a swing and a swank the iron legions of Hamal.

Hamal. I saw them. The serried ranks of swods all marching in time, their rectangular shields all in alignment, their banners blazing a rich tapestry of color, the plumes in their helmets whiffling in the dawn breeze. Swods from Hamal. Real soldiers, men trained to fight under the strict laws of Hamal. I marveled. Regiment by regiment they marched out. Squadrons of cavalry surged out and extended into wings on the flanks. A little dust plumed; but the grass here was altogether richer and lusher than the sere tawny-grass along the Therduim Cut.

My vantage position gave me a perfect view.

Following the regulars of Hamal crowded a swarm of mercenaries. Among their ranks were many diffs. Also, as I was quick to observe, there were masichieri there, which was surprising, seeing the masichieri are mercenaries but soldiers of fortune of an altogether different stamp from the paktuns, who more often than not fight with honor and earn their hire.

Two regiments of totrixmen spurred out ahead, and trumpets rang and they hauled back. It was clear this army was anxious to get to grips with the radvakkas. Running an old soldier’s eye over the serried array I estimated the Hamalians as putting into the field four or five thousand infantry — ten regiments —

and a thousand or so cavalry. The mixed bunch of mercenaries probably added up to another couple of thousand.

Numbers favored the Hamalians. What, I wondered, of the native Vallians of Aduimbrev? Mind you, as I have already explained, Vallia was a powerful trading empire, whose wealth came from her sea power, the superb Galleons of Vallia. If the empire needed soldiers, she would hire them. The Hamalian army halted. The regiments of foot braced their shields. The regiments of crossbowmen spanned their crossbows. Soon the bolts would fly. I watched, scarcely breathing and, I admit, not a little puzzled as to where my cheering should be directed.

The Iron Riders were clearly a grave menace; but, then, Hamal was the deadly foe of Vallia, temporarily in the ascendant. So, I merely watched and studied, and if my right hand twitched and the fingers curled around the length of lumber — well, they were only simple, stupid reactions of an old fighting man. Three thousand Iron Riders against around eight thousand Hamalese and paktuns — it seemed to me my services would no longer be required.

The Hamalese cavalry wings overlapped the radvakkas. The totrixmen again almost boiled over into a charge. There was a regiment of zorcamen there, also, whereat I at once thought of Rees and Chido. But the general in command held them in the rear in reserve.

The Iron Riders shook out into three battles or divisions, a thousand cavalrymen each. I saw no signal given. The distant trumpet notes pealed. The front ranks of benhoffs began to move, lumpy gray beasts surging forward like the gray tide beating against rocks. But the center division rode forward faster and faster. The crossbowmen loosed, pastang by pastang, and the bolts fell like rain, and still the benhoffs came on. A few, only a few, tumbled down to thrash on the trampled ground as their comrades thundered on.

The central division galloped rapidly through the beaten zone and crashed into the Hamalese infantry. The whole front two ranks caved in instantly. Infantrymen were sent bodily flying. The great six-legged beasts rampaged on. Swords rose and fell. Shields were splintered. And now the totrix wings of Hamalese cavalry closed in — and the left and right wedges of radvakkas spurned them. In an instant amid a ghastly racket the whole line was engaged. For only an instant — for the Hamalese army sagged back and back. Totrixes were bounding riderless from the field. The infantry were being cut to pieces. On and on surged that enormous battering wedge of Iron Riders.

The field became a sea of boiling action — I did not see the end of the zorca regiment. It merely ceased to exist. The Hamalese were running. Iron Riders were breaking away from the main divisions now, were hunting and slaying.

Time was being cut so fine I almost did not make it.

My services were, after all, still required.

Piebald roared ahead, his eight hooves battering the grass. A party of Rapas offered to halt me at the gate; but already fugitives were streaming in and the situation was plain. If it was a case of sauve qui peut then the sauvest would be the peutest , that was for sure. I had no trouble entering Cansinsax. The trouble lay in finding where away was the party I had already once rescued. Just which one in that party was the particular one the Star Lords wished preserved I did not know, which simply meant I had to save the lot.

The town was in the most frightful uproar. Men and women were running every which way — men and women wearing the buff of Vallians. Slaves were being beaten along staggering under loads of household equipment. Everyone was raging toward the western gate in a crazy flood. Just how they expected to get away when the benhoffs of the radvakkas would overhaul them in no time at all did not appear to have occurred to them. The scenes of chaos rang and thumped on and I forced my way through. A bad time this, when a town falls, a bad time.

In this instance, I think with some degree of certainty, the Star Lords took a direct hand. I remember I shook my fist at the indifferent sky, and hurled a few lusty Makki-Grodno cusses upward — conduct that aroused not one whit of interest from the crazed mobs about me — and so saw a piebald nikvove bolt from the broken-down gateway of a villa. The mobs pushed past and I came up with the nikvove and got a hand into his harness. I hauled back and lay my own steed into him and some of the crowd staggering away managed to turn him. Together, we went racketing back into the villa. Slaves were looting the place, which was a very proper thing to do, considering. The woman who stood in the doorway of the house yelling furiously, purple of face, wearing riding clothes, slashing about with a thraxter, might have been one of the three women who had descended from the coach. The air was filled with noise, people screaming, the crash of furniture being hurled through windows, the thump of many feet. The smells were interesting, too. I barged across. She looked up.

She saw my face. Her own face, which was filled with that aristocratic fury, venom-filled, that overtakes the high and mighty when they see slaves breaking out or people not obeying them instantly, abruptly hung slack. I vaulted off Piebald.

“Here, lady, a mount for you. Where are the others?”

She was saved a reply as a man rushed at me with his rapier held ready to stick me. I slid the blow, took the rapier away, hit him over the head with it — gently, mind — and caught him as he fell. Even then I felt the old familiar sensations as my fist gripped around the rapier hilt. Two other women, dressed for riding, appeared, screaming. I bellowed them all down.

“Silence, you famblys! The four of you — you will have to share the two nikvoves. Get mounted and get out. The Iron Riders will be here in a mur or two! Ride!”

They were yelling and screaming; but they retained sense enough to mount up. The man held his head, glaring at me with sadistic hostility; but I saw his eyes, and they slid away and would not meet mine. A preysany stood at the steps ready-loaded. I snapped him across the rump and started him after the nikvoves. We headed out through the gate. Truth to tell, riding through the panic-smitten mobs was not easy and I, afoot, would have been quicker than the riders. But, once they were outside the walls, the story would be different. I knew benhoffs and I knew nikvoves. The half-vove is not a true vove, but he can still outrun a shambling, shaggy, gray-haired benhoff any day of the month. Now the remnants of the Hamalese army were crowding into the town. The confusion was splendid and awful. I sweated along. The woman who rode like a man and held the man upright as he swayed and cursed weakly, glowered down on me as I led them along the crowded street.

“You, rast. Why do you save us?”

“Just be thankful I do, lady. And no Lahal between us.”

She colored again at this, fully aware of the sarcasm.

“Be very careful how you address me. I am the Kovneva of Aduimbrev, Marta Renberg, and your head lies most shakily upon your shoulders.”

“Then Llahal, Kovneva. I did not know Marto Renberg; but I once met old Vektor—”

She tried to hit me with her thraxter, and I laughed and ducked away and hauled the nikvove on. Oh, yes, I laughed. It was certainly no time for crying.

She was not very old, I judged, although that is always a tricky business on Kregen where a person changes but little and slowly over two hundred or so years. She had the brown Vallian hair and eyes, a trim figure, a high color, and she was most decidedly a very important person in her own eyes. Some quality I at first thought indefinable about her — perhaps the way her nostrils curved, the curl of her lower lip, the tensioning lines around her eyes, something — offended me. I felt I would try to like her and fail. We pushed on along the street with the fugitive mobs and I found that, once again, I did not much care for the task the Everoinye had set to my hands.

When a victorious army follows up a victory of this kind and the defeated do not have the nous to run into their town and shut the gates, much may be learned of the character and temperament of the victors by the way they go about consolidating. As we debouched from the western gate in a yelling straggling mass of people and animals, I hauled myself up by the nikvove’s mane and took a searching look around. There was no sign of Iron Riders sweeping in around the city. Then they would be simply bolting in through the eastern gate, charging down the remnants of the Hamalese soldiery and the paktuns, just driving on through the gate into the city. They had not aimed to cut off the fugitives. Not slavers, then...?

Many carts harnessed to the refreshing variety of draught animals of Kregen lumbered away across the plain heading for the forest a dwabur or so off. Mounted people set spurs to their mounts and pelted headlong for safety. Those afoot, wailing and crying, ran and hobbled in a great untidy mass. It was one diabolical scene, I can tell you.

The Kovneva of Aduimbrev leaned down toward me. Her flushed face looked dangerous.

“Take your hand from the rope, tikshim.[i]There is the forest. We can manage perfectly well now.”

She was quite serious. The situation was perfectly plain in her eyes. I had appeared and had helped her to escape from Cansinsax. And this, very properly, was the duty owed to her as the kovneva by every one of her people. I did not let go of the rope.

“Now, tikshim! We must gallop to the forest before the radvakkas overtake us—”

“Cramph!” bellowed the man, thickly. I had his rapier and so he whipped out his left-hand dagger and tried to slash at me or at the rope. I did not care for the first idea. I said: “You may ride for the forest, and you will. But if you get yourself killed I shall be most wroth.”

She could not, of course, understand just why I would be annoyed. “Do not ride with the main bulk of the fugitives—”

“Do you presume to give me orders?” She half-turned and swung the thraxter at me. This time the blade was not turned. She cut at me.

I slid the blow and jumped back, letting go the rope. I held myself under control — but only just. How they conduct themselves, the high and mighty of the land!

“Ride, kovneva. Ride. I shall find you in the forest. Just be very sure you are still alive when I do — and not a bloody corpse.”

With that I gave Piebald a slap across the rump and started him off at a run. The other nikvove with the two handmaidens lumbered after. Pretty soon the two angled away from the main mass and lit out for the trees. Nikvoves can run. I let out a gusty breath. This hoity-toity Marta Renberg should be safe now and the Star Lords satisfied. But, all the same, I’d wander across to the forest and make sure. Amid that swirling mass of terrified folk I had to think about getting myself away; but, I admit, a few nasty thoughts about these mysterious purposes of the Star Lords crossed my mind. I had been given evidence that the people the Everoinye wished preserved did, indeed, affect the destiny of the world. The mad genius king Genod of the Eye of the World proved that. What the Star Lords wanted of Marta Renberg, Kovneva of Aduimbrev, I could not know. But I wished them the evil of it, for I found myself in a black humor with the foolish woman.

Of course, I could not even be sure it was she the Star Lords had their eye on. It might have been the man — she’d called him Larghos and no doubt he served some function or other in her establishment —

or one of the handmaidens; pretty, washed out girls whose terror rendered them mute. The preysany, loaded down, I did not doubt, with choice and expensive items, followed the nikvoves. I turned about and looked at the doomed town.

Already smoke drifted over the red roofs, dun, swirling, skull-like in outline, mushroom-headed, vile. Soon the flames would break out and seek to dim the glory of the suns. It was all a ghastly mess, butchery and rapine and pillage — and here, in Vallia. Vallia that had been so puissant an empire. The cultivated fields swallowed up many of the fugitives who vanished from view in the crops. On the other side the plain was suitable only for those with fast riding animals. Reflectively, I weighed the chances, walking smartly away from the town. The rabble thinned about me, and mostly those who were delayed by excess of baggage, infirmity of limb or care for children, labored on about me now. I gave a hand to people who needed it — hauling a cart out of a rut here, carrying a child for a space there; much though I would have liked to remain and help I could not chain myself down to just one party. In the event, we were all within the first rows of crops before the leading elements of radvakkas debouched from the western gate of Cansinsax and spurred after us.

The appearance of the Iron Riders drove the fugitives into a fresh panic. Shrieking they stumbled on through the crackling fronds. One or two sturdy fellows and I sought to make them move as swiftly as might be along the tracks left for the cultivators. We yelled and waved our arms.

“Go as far as you can before you hide!” bellowed a fellow who sweated away, a leather cap awry over one ear, his apron marked with the burns of his smithy’s trade. He carried a blacksmith’s hammer. He looked as though he might be useful. His family trudged along, helping a woman smitten with chivrel. I hoped they would make it. So, because I am something of an idiot, I found myself at the tail end of the rout. I could not force myself to run on ahead, as I might easily have done. Somehow — and I cursed myself for it, believe me — I could not run off and leave these people. The crops swayed about us. Here, where the grass was weeded away, puffs of dust rose. It was hot and sticky work. We pushed on. I kept swiveling about to look down the narrow track between the crops.

Inevitably, out of the mobs hurrying through the cultivated fields, some would be found by the radvakkas, and, equally inevitably, along the row down which I moved after those ahead, an Iron Rider should trot into view. He moved his benhoff with that lumpy power that so deceives. Big ugly brutes, benhoffs, with an immense roll of fat around their chests to store nourishment against the rigors of their northern habitat, with spreading withers, and with loins and croup a trifle too mean for my taste. The Iron Rider saw me and his head went up.

He wore the usual shaggy pelt of furs — no doubt liberally infested — but because the weather was hotter than the thin mizzle to which he was accustomed the furs were thrown back exposing his armor, a simple leather shirt riveted with iron plates, and iron strips riveted down his trousers. His helmet was bulky and square in outline, with a fantastic conglomeration of feathers and benhoff tail plumes. He carried a broadsword scabbarded to his saddle, and a spear; but as was the wont of the Segesthan, he bore no shield. He looked ugly and purposeful, a packed arsenal of power. From the front rim of the helmet hung down a series of metal plates, jointed and sprung together, with eye-slots, which together formed what was in effect a mask. The sides joined the cheek pieces of the helmet. This Iron Rider had no beaver to his helmet, although the fashion was known. Oh, yes, I knew these radvakkas well enough. My Clansmen did not often confront them, for, as I have said, the radvakkas had learned the unwisdom of tangling with a Clansman. But, from time to time, they drifted south onto the Great Plains, and if they created a disturbance they had to be dealt with. That meant they had to be dealt with, for if they were good for one thing at all that was creating disturbances. I suppose one should not call them barbarians; but we did, and the appellation fitted well enough. Dark and ominous, clad in iron, the radvakka urged his mount into a trot and then a gallop. His spear came down. He would spit me as I stood.

My Clansmen learn to stand the charge, to stand alertly, poised, empty hands half-raised, watching the glittering spear point as it hurtles forward. At the last moment they hurl themselves sideways. One hand will rake out and snatch at the spear shaft. It is not an easy trick, it is extremely dangerous; and more than one youngster had his side or thigh cut open or his chest caved in. But with their ferocious abandonment they persist in the sport — for to a clansman this is sport, akin to Rakkle-jik-lora. So I stood as a Clansman stands, and, withal, as a Krozair would stand awaiting the onslaught of an Overlord of Magdag.