Chapter Ten

Of red sails and green banners

The crushing power of Magdag reached out a mailed arm across the Eye of the World. Ten top class swifters, the smallest a hundred-and-twenty swifter, escorted a hundred and fifty broad ships carrying twenty-five thousand troops, infantry, cavalry, artillery. The force was sizable, well-balanced, the varters brand-new, and their equipment did credit to the slave armories of Magdag. I would as lief have seen the lot at the bottom of the sea, save for the swifter Volgodont’s Fang, which carried my Lady of the Stars.

That flagship carried me, also, but I am an old hand at shipwreck, and so did not count myself among the blessed.

We sailed on southerly with a fair wind and a calm sea and the oar-slaves were relieved from their intolerable burdens of pulling, eternally pulling, and the breeze blew their stinks away from the functional quarterdecks and high ornate poops.

To me, who had once been a Krozair of Zy and devoted to the Red of Zair, the sight of all those miserable naked slaves came as an affront, but a subdued one. I could never have sat still and done nothing previously. Now I accepted what fate had to mete out — or nearly always — and reflected that I, too, had slaved at an oar not only for the overlords of Magdag but for the Krozairs of Zy as well. One day, Zair willing, I would return to my true allegiance. Now, I was Grodnim and intended to play that role until the bitter end. Poor Duhrra scarcely ever showed himself on deck. We had a little cubby under the forward part of the quarterdeck — the half-deck of a seventy-four — and I, too, stayed there for long periods.

The standard for which I was responsible hung racked with the others of the overlords in the great cabin aft, blazes of green and gold and white about the cabin. My Lady of the Stars had chosen — or someone had chosen for her — a plain white and green banner with a gold device of a zhantil, a rose, and three stars.

I harbored no thoughts that she might be from Earth, thus explaining the familiar name given to her, that was not her real name. She was a Zairian, as the tightly clustered, shining jet-black curls showed. She kept to the suite of cabins allotted to her. The king had appointed an agent — a kind of Crebent —

to sail in the flagship, and we all knew his eyes were everywhere and full reports would go back to the king. We were all on our best behavior during the voyage.

This galley, Volgodont’s Fang, proved to be an exceptionally fine craft. She was an eight-six-three hundred-and-eighty swifter. That is, she had three banks of oars, thirty to a bank, each side. On the lowest tier there were three men to an oar. The middle bank rowed six to an oar, and the upper bank eight to an oar. These men were stripped stark naked and, as we had recently cleared the ship sheds of Magdag, every man’s head was shaved as smoothly as a loloo’s egg. They had no need to wear the conical straw hats, dyed green, that rowers in an open-decked swifter were issued with, for this swifter was cataphract, decked in to give protection and space for the fighting-men to operate. Although Gafard had shown signs of haste during’ the fitting out in Magdag and the final clearances of the mole, now that we were on course he gave orders for the slow cruise speed to be maintained. Only one bank of oars was manned and the slaves took turns to pull, thus conserving their strength. The swifter still carried only one mast, I noticed, and I wondered yet again why the overlords did not do as the Zairians did and give their galleys two masts. Both types carried the forward boat-sail, a kind of sloping bowsprit not unlike the artemon of merchant vessels. The sail was square and reefed from the deck and was dyed a brilliant emerald green. At its center the golden device of the zhantil, rampant, glowed and glittered in glory for the Sea-Zhantil, Gafard, the King’s Striker. The breeze remained fair and we reached the various tiny islands that lay on our course in good time each day before the suns sank. Because war vessels must be as light as possible commensurate with the strength they require, their bottoms are not sheathed in lead or copper. So they must be hauled out of the water as often as possible, otherwise the old devil teredo will go to his devastating work. I knew that the teredo worm was nowhere as active or vicious on Kregen as on Earth and warships for all their cunningly light construction lasted longer than the flimsy vessels of the Ancients of Earth. The Ancient Greek penteconters and triremes and the Phoenician biremes were manned with one man to one oar; but there is room to conjecture that the quadriremes and quinquiremes of later times had four or five men disposed pulling one or two oars. Certainly, this makes more sense than to suppose there were four or five banks vertically separated. As for the later giants of Classical times, these must have been crewed with more than one man to an oar — and, indeed, as we know, there were giants in the Mediterranean in those days.

The Roman dekares probably crewed five men to an oar with two banks barely separated vertically, the distancing being done laterally and fore-and-aft. This is a neat system, for it reduces the height needed to contain the oarsmen and also gives the chance of a decent freeboard. This is, as I have said, always a problem with galleys. Before I’d left the inner sea all those years ago a squadron of these dekares was being built up in Sanurkazz and trials were planned in competition with swifters of comparable power in oarsmen.

The major disadvantage of the dekares is the necessity for adjusting the beam. Kregan galleys are notoriously long and slender craft, for all the controversy over the short-keel and long-keel theories, and there were shipwrights who swore that five men above five men, giving that desirable narrow beam, were better than five men side by side with five men. As you know, I’d left the inner sea before any of this could be worked out.

So when I say that Gafard’s swifter Volgodont’s Fang was a fine craft, you must understand me to mean it was a fine craft of its class.

The two projecting platforms in the bows were armed with large and impressive varters. They were not, of course, as powerful as the gros-varter of Vallia, but they would hurl a rock with power enough to smash into light scantlings. I walked forward and studied the weapons, thinking back to wild times with Nath and Zolta, my two oar-comrades, my favorite rascals.

Gafard found me there, leaning on the rail, watching the break and spume and the white water curling below.

He came straight to the point.

"I spoke to you of treachery, Gadak."

"Aye, gernu."

He leaned back against the rail and swept his gaze across the decks. People moved about their business. We could not be overheard. His bronzed face scowled and his right fist gripped onto the hilt of his Genodder.

"I tell you, Gadak. For all I do for Magdag, and the king, the overlords would gloat to see me torn down and brought low."

"Yes, I can believe that."

"After we left the army it was surprised in the night by raiders wearing black clothes. My belongings were rifled, the great tent belonging to my Lady of the Stars destroyed."

"But why?"

"Why do I bring my Lady always with me, on campaign, where there is no fit work for a lady’s hands?" He was making an opening for me. I took it, taking a chance as usual. It would be a damned long swim from here to the next island on our course to the southern shore. . .

"The king sends you on errands and when you take my Lady with you he sends men to surprise you and steal her away."

What reaction I had expected, and been ready for, mattered nothing. For this man, this bronze-faced, black-haired, fiery-eyed renegade boomed a huge laugh. He spluttered.

"By Genodras, Gadak! You take the chunkrah by the horns!"

I said nothing.

He wiped his eyes and then said, sharply, "You are right. It would be your head to repeat it."

"Aye."

"I like you. There is something — I cannot put a name to it — that appeals to me in you. You would have been strung up by your entrails by any other overlord long before this. I do not understand why I listen to you—"

"If the certain person we know of wishes to take my Lady from you, I do not think there is a place in all Grodnim you may hide."

He scowled blackly and swore. But it was true.

"Then must the guard be at all times ready. If they slay men skulking by night, clad in black, no man can point the finger at me. I am a loyal king’s man. Aye, by Goyt! Despite all, I admire that man, for he is a true genius in war and statecraft, in all things, save this. And in this he has the yrium to do as he wishes and make it the right thing."[2]

I wondered, privately, however much yrium Genod possessed, if he took the Lady of the Stars from Gafard how that violent man would console his conscience for his master. Or would he take sword and seek to redress his wrong, authority and power or no damned authority and power?

Next day we all knew we faced a long haul ahead. The warships were run down into the water, the slaves in their chains whipped on into putting their backs to it. They merely labored to float the ships that were their floating prisons. The suns shone. The sky lifted high and blue, with a few lazy clouds. There would be little wind today, although I fancied a breeze would get up toward evening and if we were unlucky would be dead foul for our southerly course.

There are many small islands dotted all over the inner sea, which is often a very shallow sea; but this day we faced a haul that would take us through the night and well into the morning of the day following before we sighted Benarej Island. Here we expected to be joined by a squadron of swifters for the final passage to the southern shore.

Well, the day limped along. The rowers pulled. The suns shone brassily, mingled jade and ruby, streaming down on the decks and casting strange-colored splotches of light through the awnings. Everyone sweated. The thought of the slaves below and the agonies they were enduring as they took their tricks at the looms made me fidgety and irritable.

Had I been still a Krozair of Zy I would have found an excuse to go below, would have slain the whip-Deldars and would have freed the slaves and so taken the ship back for Zair. But that, by itself, would not be enough to reinstate me. That would be the simple, ordinary, and obvious thing for any Krozair to do. And I was no longer a Krozair. So I sweated and was unpleasant to Duhrra and took myself off to stand in the bows and watch the bar-line of the horizon, burning against the sky. That sky changed subtly in color. I watched. This might be a normal rashoon, one of those suddenly explosive storms of the inner sea, or it might be the far more sinister manifestation of the Star Lords once more taking a hand in my destiny.

"It would have to strike us now, when there is no lee to run under." I turned.

The ship-Hikdar, Nath ti Hagon, had walked forward to stare with great animosity at the growing storm. He did not like me still, and who could blame him after that scene in the aft cabin when I had first come aboard Volgodont’s Fang? But the annoyance of the moment made him speak.

"We are in for a blow," I said, feeling that the calmest and most obvious thing to say. I turned away ready to go aft. He stopped me by speaking in a low, hurried voice.

"You know I do not like you, Gadak. But hear me in this. If you prove false to our lord in anything I shall surely slay you."

Shock, pleasure, annoyance? The emotions clashed in me.

I said, "I do not need you to teach me my duty, Nath ti Hagon. But, for your peaceful heart, I am charged to protect my lord. You see that you do not fail him." And I stalked off. He said no more and I guessed he was staring at me with baleful eyes and wishing to tear me to pieces as I walked aft. Hagon, his home town, lay in one of the huge looping bends of the River Dag, some sixty dwaburs north of Magdag as the fluttrell flies, although more than twice that far if you followed the curves of the river itself. Guamelga, of which province Gafard was rog, lay some eighty dwaburs to the west of Hagon, still on the same river, which looped sharply north and east, going upstream. Phangursh lay fifty dwaburs farther upstream, to the northeast. In all our operations across the River Daphig, to the east, Gafard had never troubled himself to ride across to the west and visit in his rognate of Guamelga. That made me think of all my own fair lands in Valka and her nearby islands, in Strombor and in Djanduin, and I cursed and hurled off below to make sure everything in our cabin was tightly lashed down against the force of the coming blow.

The swifter herself was snugged down. Gafard, who had been a swifter captain for a long time, knew how to handle ships on the inner sea. His first lieutenant, this Nath ti Hagon, had already proved to be a tough nut, able to run a trim swifter. I had no real fears we could not ride out the rashoon. This displayed another facet of Gafard, for a man in his position as king’s favorite, Sea-Zhantil, would act as an admiral and have a captain under him to run the ship. Not so Gafard, the King’s Striker. He ran his ship like a captain, and joyed in the doing of it. Not for him the sterile and removed glories of admiralty.

The rashoon swooped down on us and the suns vanished in gloom as the dark cloak of Notor Zan enveloped us. The wind screeched and whitecaps ran and were blown away across the tumbling sea. A galley is no ship to ride in during a blow. Men were frantically baling, and I took a hand, with Duhrra, cursing and swearing. The boat-sail was torn to shreds. In the gloom and the heaving movement, the wild shriek of the wind, the roil of the sea, I took a savage and bestial delight in battling those natural native elements, for the Everoinye had no part of this.

When, at last, the rashoon blew itself past, its violence intense and short-lived, we saw the scattered mess in which the convoy had been left. Mind you, Duhrra had a hard time not to crow aloud in his glee.

"Keep your black-fanged wine-spout shut, Guhrra! And that stupid grin off your chart-top!" I was harsh with him, for his own good, as he knew.

We had in sight across the still tumbling sea some fifty or so of the broad ships. They were scattered, but already sails were breaking out aboard and they began to straggle back into formation. I scanned the horizons; past the sails of the convoy, around over that islandless sea, and could make out not a single other swifter. Well, I knew Volgodont’s Fang had been handled superbly. She had kept up to the wind, being as weatherly as any lubberly galley ever can be, and the other swifters had all been blown down to leeward.

They’d row back when the breeze finally died. We set about sorting the convoy and heading on for our destination on Benarej Island.

"Sail ho!" bellowed down from the lookout perched on the high prow beside the beakhead swivels. Then: "Red!"

Swifters of the Eye of the World commonly carry three sets of sails, white for normal duties, black for night work, and red or green for business, depending on which side of the sea they harbor. I felt a thump of the old heart, at that call of "Red!" I can tell you.

Many of the Zairians ship blue sails as well as red, for red is a color not conducive to slipping up unseen, and their hulls, too, are often blue instead of red. It is a matter of common sense. When the strange sail showed, gleaming a bright ruby-crimson in the opaline light, I saw moments later the long, lean hull show up with the same brave color.

This fellow was a fighter, then. . .

A tremendous bustle and scurry thundered along the three rowing decks of the swifter as the slaves were rousted out and the spare slaves brought up for extra power. They were whipped and rope’s ended along to their benches and shackled down. Every oar would be in use and every loom would be fully manned. The green sail came in, in a booming rustle, and was fought into a long sausage-roll shape and stowed. Soldiers poured up onto the upperworks from their quarters on the open upper deck. The varters were cast loose and the men bent to the windlasses.

Gafard, the Sea-Zhantil, appeared on his quarterdeck gorgeous in white and green, with an enormous mass of feathers in his helmet to mark him. I stood nearby, ready to hand, with my green feathers in my helmet.

The drum-Deldar, in obedience to the orders of the oar-master in his tabernacle, raised the beat. The double note sounded, treble and bass, thumping out the rhythm. Now the whistles all stilled. The sound of water hissing past the sides reached everyone. The creak of the woodwork and the rush of water, the long groaning sigh of the slaves as they pushed and pulled, the sounds of the oars grinding, made a pattern of sound very familiar. Also familiar, dreadfully so, were the sharp, vicious cracks as the long whips snapped over the backs of the slaves. A snapping crack and a jerked shriek, and then the usual sounds until another lashing blow produced another agonized screech.

The whip-Deldars of the swifters of Magdag are skilled with old-snake. And, too, there sounded the shouted word I hate, the vicious, sadistic bawling of: "Grak! Grak, you cramphs! Grak!"

Grak means work and slave and jump to it until you can work no longer and are dead. Grak! Oh, yes, I have heard that foul word many and many a time on Kregen, and many and many a time in evil Magdag and on her hellish swifters.

"Wenda!" bellowed the ship-Deldar, bashing his fist against the quarterdeck rail. "Wenda!"[3]

Gafard stood still, his head lifted, grand in his armor and blazonry. He looked across the starboard bow. Over there the square red sail still bore on with the wind. But even as we looked so it shriveled, shrank in size, became distorted and so disappeared to be rolled and stowed out of the way, as we had stowed our green sail.

Very quietly Gafard said to his ship-Hikdar, Nath ti Hagon, "Break ’em out, Nath."

"Your orders, my commands, gernu!"

Nath bellowed his orders and the hands ran. I watched, fascinated, for it had been a long time. From the masts raised along the sides of the swifter’s apostis broke the green flags of Grodnim. Two parallel rows, those flags enclosed the ship in a box of green power. With an apostis some one hundred thirty feet in length and the flag-masts set at ten-foot intervals, there was room for some twenty-eight flags. This coruscating mass of green and gold and white fluttered in the dying breeze, magnificent, really, bold, daring — and damned well green.

I saw that the standard of the Lady of the Stars had been placed right forward on the larboard side. The standard of Gafard matched it on the starboard. I looked at Gafard and caught his eye as he turned to survey his quarterdeck, and I nodded my head, hitched up my sword, and started off forward. I was used to fighting an Earthly ship from the quarterdeck. In swifters and swordships it was often preferable to fight them from the beakhead itself.

The Norsemen of Earth, those hard, tough warriors and their enemies called Vikings, held to the tradition of the fighting-man being right forward. They called the warrior selected to fight in the prow stafnbui, stem-fighter; the Kregans call him prijiker, which is much the same thing. As a stem-fighter I could wish to have Nath and Zolta with me. But what they would say of me now, as I went forward with every prospect of coming to hand-strokes with men of Zair, I did not care to contemplate.

As for Duhrra, I had spoken to him most severely. If he could get across to the Zairian without being killed he would do so, win or lose. Otherwise he would stay close in his cabin and hope to escape detection, and failing that — and it was a remote chance — must plead illness, an old wound, his stump giving him trouble. I knew he would never strike against a Zairian. He would hope to escape among his comrades. I just did not know, as I strode past all that panoply of the Green, just what I would do. I thought of the Lady of the Stars. She had entrusted her standard to my care, and had given me a little valkavol symbol as a sign. If a tough, carefree Zairian sailor tried to slash that standard down and carry it back to Sanurkazz or any other Zairian town in triumph — what would I do? Could I cut him down?

Could I let the standard go? For the sake of my Lady, who trusted me, I really believe I might have cut a Zairian to pieces. I thought of Delia, and I knew my decision would not be affected. Across the narrowing stretch of water the Red oar blades all lifted and fell as one. The swifter came on as though on tracks, every oar parallel, rising and falling like the red wings of a great raptor of the air. The bronze rostrum cut through the water with a swirl of blue and white, curling into a white line tumbling and flowing past her sides. That cruel ram would rip the guts out of a ship. Above it the center wales curved to join at the proembolion, which would force the rammed ship off and thus prevent her in her sinking from dragging down her victorious enemy with her. The beakhead was lifted and men in the brave red worked there ready to drop it with stunning force onto our deck, or to run it out ready to form a boarding gangway. The two forward varter platforms showed busy activity, as did ours. The first darts flew, massive, long bolts of wood tipped with iron. Soon bolts entirely of iron would be used as the range, closing minute by minute, dropped. And then the chunks of rock, which would smash and rend their way through wood and flesh alike. A dart hissed in to pierce a varterist near me clean through. Blood burst from his back, spraying everywhere as he gave a last screech and spun and toppled overboard. He went under the thrashing lines of oars. Another man of the Green stepped up to take his place at the windlass. The varter clanged and a wicked bolt flew off in reply. The air filled with missiles as more and more varters and bows could be brought to bear.

The two swifters bore down on each other, their whip-Deldars frantic with lashing, their drum-Deldars banging out the stroke, the oar-masters bellowing the time, and the two opposing captains watching and waiting for the first glimpse of intention in their enemy. One or the other must sheer. The diekplus might be used, the ram-to-ram, the straight shear. The time for decision was running out with gathering speed. And then I, an unfrocked Krozair of Zy, deciphered the devices of those red flags. I stood ready to engage in bloody combat with a swifter of the Krozairs of Zy themselves. Could I, even Apushniad as I was, fight and slay my Red Brothers in Zair?

Chapter Eleven

The Golden Chavonth leads us a dance

The two swifters leaped across the last gap of water at each other like sea-leems. The answer to the question that formed in my mind was: Of course I damned well could! I was an old mercenary, an old reiver. When men sought to slay me no matter who they were — by the Black Chunkrah! — I’d slay them first! And there was the green standard of my Lady of the Stars to consider. Was a man’s life, the life of a Brother Krozair of Zy, worth more or less than a scrap of green silk given into my care by a girl? How could such idiotic and callous thoughts even occur to me? Had this girl, this beloved of Gafard, this Lady of the Stars, addled my wits?

There had to be a way — a way of honor.

The arrows rained down about me now and I cursed the stupidity of the men of the inner sea, no less than of Vallia and Segesthes, that they despised the shield as the coward’s artifice. Turko the Shield should be with me now, his great shield upraised, deflecting the arrow storm. I flicked away two arrows that would have pierced me.

An officer at my side, a Chulik mercenary and a man with long experience in artillery, in command of the bow varters, coughed gently to himself. He pulled an arrow from his arm where the keen steel head had bitten clean through his mail. He threw the two halves to the deck, with a Chulik curse. The gap of blue sea between those two closing rams narrowed with dreadful rapidity. I stared wolfishly at the Red swifter. She was two-banked and the two tiers were set closely together. Her beam appeared broader than I would have thought necessary. I could see the heads of the men clustered abaft her forward breastwork, across the forecastle. The beak remained aloft, ready to drop down if her captain chose to board. Our beak likewise remained lifted. Both captains considered this to be ram work.

How quick would Gafard be?

He was a fine swifter captain — he must of necessity be so to have earned his reputation. He was called the Sea-Zhantil, a name taken from the Zairians, a name taken from the renowned Krozair, the Lord of Strombor. He measured himself against that long-dead Krozair, did Gafard. Whatever Pur Dray had done, Gafard, the King’s Striker, would do better — or die in the attempt. The hail from aft reached me attenuated and thin. The breeze had almost died after the rashoon. The order of command from the Red swifter reached me as clearly.

Both swifters hauled out, spinning. I had thought the Zairian would try the diekplus, the maneuver in which the attacking swifter abruptly swivels and turns so as to smash her ram hard against the leading oars and the apostis forward frame, what the Ancient Greeks called the epotis. As I have said, in the swifters of the inner sea this framework remained a supporting member and, forward, a true cathead of substantial construction, designed not only to secure the anchor but also to smash on down the line of oars, was fitted with that intention. The diekplus was thus rendered less of a formidable weapon than of yore. In a ram-to-ram the stronger cathead would win the day, provided the attacker’s oars could be hoicked up out of the way, and this presented difficulties.

I had thought that a two-banker would not try the ram-to-ram against a three-banker. I was right in that. And I was wrong about the diekplus. Gafard had thought the same and had sought to take his vessel into the accepted method of attacking defense: a rapid wheel and a reversal so he had the enemy’s tail in front of his ram.

But the Zairian went on spinning. She turned past the ninety-degree point, turned more, and then all her oars went down as one and she shot off, away from us. Gafard’s vessel, still turning, the water a welter of white along its sides, was left facing at an oblique angle. I could hear Gafard raving as he bellowed his orders to bring the swifter back on line.

As the Zairian thus impudently fooled us I saw the bows flash past, turning. I had seen the men there, close. And I had recognized the Krozair Brother in command, the prijiker in command of his party of prijikers. Their hard bronzed faces in the glittering helmets turned as they flew past. Arrows crisscrossed, but no man flinched.

That was Pur Kardazh over there, one of the five Krozair Brothers who had been accepted into the Krozairs of Zy at the same time as I was. I would have thought he would have reached higher in the hierarchy than a prijiker commander, no matter the glory and honor of such a position. Perhaps he had taken the world-stance, as had I, and the call had brought him back to the service. As the swifters bore on I pondered. Could I slay an old friend, Pur Kardazh, for the sake of a scrap of green silk?

The ship-Hikdar, Nath, came running forward again, bellowing. He was not satisfied with our bow varters’ performance. That the Chulik in command had an arrow wound in his arm meant nothing. In that, of course, he was right.

"The cramph! You see what he is after!"

Indeed, I did see, and I felt most pleased.

For the Zairian was not after a fight with the Magdaggian. He was after the plump chickens of the convoy. As the breeze dropped so conditions became impossible for the sailing broad ships and ideal for swifter work. The Red swifter made no attempt to take prizes. With Volgodont’s Fang on her tail there was no time for that luxury.

Sharp cries of anger rose from the men. They were filled with rage that they were standing idly by. For long, graceful streamers of smoke rose from the Red swifter, arching over, curving to land with precision on the decks and in the rigging of the broad ships. First one and then another burned. We were flying along at full speed, every slave hurling every ounce of his being onto the looms. But the Red swifter kept ahead, and the fire-pots blossomed from her, and she left a blazing wake of ruin as she went.

"By Grodno! I’d like to drop our beakhead on her quarterdeck now!"

"That would prove interesting," I said.

Nath shook a fist at the Krozair swifter.

"Krozairs! The bane of Grodno! They are damned and doomed to all eternity! May the Green strike them."

I didn’t bother to reply. I now realized what had puzzled me at first about that double-banked galley as she had pulled toward us. I’d lost a great deal of the sharpness of a swifter captain. The two banks of oars had been lifting and falling at a speed much below that of Volgodont’s Fang. I had assumed that to be because not only was Gafard’s swifter in perfect fighting trim with a trained crew, but more probably because the Krozair swifter had been newly commissioned with an inexperienced crew. More than ship quality, crew quality can win an action.

Now the Red swifter’s wings beat in furious tempo.

In a bur or so the slaves being lashed by Gafard’s whip-Deldars would be unable to keep up the stroke. His spare oarsmen would be insufficient to make up the numbers required to propel the swifter at her top speed, and the time taken to change rowers would disrupt her smooth effort. But the Red swifter’s oarsmen were fresher. She could outrun Volgodont’s Fang, that was certain. And, too, I had noticed that the Zairian, with the figurehead of a chavonth, had possessed no less than thirty-six oars in each of her banks. I had counted them quite automatically as she flashed past, as I had recognized Pur Kardazh, as I had stood under the arrow hail. She was of the long-keel construction, then. Slow to turn, perhaps, although her spin when she broke and fooled Gafard had been executed smartly enough. She would be very fast. It was clear that Gafard had come to the same conclusion. The oar-master shouted, and the drum-Deldar subtly smoothed his frenzied banging and the bass and treble rang out with a slower rhythm. The Green swifter plowed more slowly through the calm blue sea. Now Gafard showed his seamanship.

The contest presented itself to me as a problem. The Krozair swifter had cut through the convoy in a straight line. Now she was beginning to turn. Gafard followed, more slowly, and pulled out free of the convoy flank. Orders rattled and the whistles blew and the oars came up, level and still. Like a faithful rark guarding a flock of chunkrah, the Green swifter hovered, ready to dart larboard or starboard to catch the Red swifter in the flank as she bore in again. The oars in the Krozair swifter leveled.

Both vessels drifted.

If this was a waiting game, then every advantage lay with Gafard. As though to confirm that a hail reached us and the news flashed like wildfire about the swifter.

"Swifters! Coming up fast!" And, then, "Green!"

The Krozair captain made out the fresh vessels at about the same time. Immediately he put up his helm.

"He’s running! May Grotal the Reducer grind his bones!"

By the time the Green swifters, four of them from the scattered squadron, hove up, the Red swifter was a brilliant dot on the horizon. I gazed after that speck of color, and I sighed. I wondered who her captain might be. He had struck a shrewd blow for Zair. He had struck like a leem and destroyed, and had vanished the moment the odds altered. He had acted as a proper ship captain and not as so often the Krozairs did as a crusader willing to die for no good purpose.

I would remember that golden chavonth figurehead. Maybe I might live to shake that Krozair captain’s hand.

Gafard was livid with rage.

He looked dangerous.

"The rast! Twenty good broad ships — burned! And I’ll wager he has no more than twenty casualties, if that."

We had thirty dead and wounded.

Later, when Gafard’s anger had cooled — and this was after he had spent a bur with the Lady of the Stars — I said to him, when it was safe, for I had no wish to puncture the boil of his anger again and drown in the suppuration: "An interesting vessel, that Krozair swifter."

"You must have seen them, as have I. They play about with their ship specifications, the shipwrights of Sanurkazz. I’d say she was a seven-seven hundred-and-forty-four. Double banked, shallow draft, broadish in the beam, but quick and deadly."

"I saw the oars, gernu. Seven-seven, you say?"

"Not tiered — raked. A diabolical design. But, given a fairer margin, I’d say Volgodont’s Fang could catch her."

Yes, I said to myself. Yes, I’d risk that. The speed of turning had been found in a greater beam for length ratio; maybe there was more than just the one controversy in Sanurkazz these days. Maybe the short-keel people had gone over to the long-keel argument and then given their ships a broader beam and so regained their original position.

She’d been low in the water, long and deadly, and I knew she was a highly tuned precision fighting instrument.

As she’d cut through the sea a deal of spray had flown over the prijikers, wetting my old comrade, Pur Kardazh.

Where I had stood the spray had flown clear.

Maybe the swifters of the inner sea were developing faster than I had given them credit for, for with a man’s life-span extending to two hundred years, change was bound to be slower on Kregen than on Earth.

"The Golden Chavonth?" said Gafard, pulling his black beard. "Aye. Aye, I’ll remember her." For the rest of that day we went on our way, slowly gathering up the convoy, for the breeze I had expected got up. I wondered how the captain of Golden Chavonth would have dealt with a hundred and fifty of the broad ships instead of the fifty he had met, and of which he had destroyed twenty. The swifters closed up, the sails were set, and we passed the rest of the night on course for Benarej Island. We were late for the rendezvous; but we met the other squadron, fifteen swifters of various sizes, and, after a day spent recovering, we all weighed or were slipped for the southern shore. By Zair, though! Hadn’t that Krozair swifter presented a grand sight with all her flags red and glorious under the Suns of Scorpio! And hadn’t her captain led Gafard, the King’s Striker, the Sea-Zhantil, a right merry dance!

Chapter Twelve

Of Duhrra, dopa, and friends

I, Gadak, a Green Grodnim of very dubious reliability, watched moodily as the army disembarked. There seemed to be no end to the lines of marching men, the strings of sectrixes, the rolling thunder of the varters on their wheeled carriages. There were hebramen, also, and the Grodnims considered these would give them a decided advantage in scouting against the Zairians. So I stood on the quarterdeck of Volgodont’s Fang, where she had been pulled up onto the shelving beach, and I brooded.

Duhrra stood with me and he breathed harshly through his opened mouth, his hook hidden within his green robe.

"You are sure he did not recognize you, Dak — Gadak?"

"No. Anyway, I had a fold of white cloth about my face. I fancy it is a precaution we could both do well to adopt all the time. The sand in the wind here gives ample excuse." I had not told Duhrra that it was a Krozair Brother I had recognized and he no doubt took it that I referred to one of the seamen, one of the prijiker party, or the varterists. I fancy he wanted to know nothing about Krozairs. They are regarded as men apart, dedicated, austere, giving their whole being to fighting the Green for the glory of Zair. Those Brothers who choose to take the world-scene, as had I, achieve this sense of awed mystery when they adopt the Krozair symbol no less than the Bolds, who are men dedicated for every single mur of their lives to the Krozair Brethren. That symbol had been displayed in Golden Chavonth: the hubless spoked wheel within the scarlet circle. That device had stirred me. I felt uneasy. I had been ejected and I must regain my place in order to leave the inner sea and I was doing precious little about it. That there was precious little I could do at the moment had no importance in the sense of nagging frustration.

My plans depended on a great stroke, a High Jikai.

I was kept running about on errands for Gafard.

He provided me with a hebra, a spirited little animal, for all it was no match for a zorca, and I grew to like it. Its name was Grodnofaril, and I thought it inexpedient to change that, so I called it "Boy" and left well alone.

We had landed on the main southern shore in a deeply indented arm of the sea some twenty dwaburs to the east of Shazmoz. The east. About twenty dwaburs across country to the east of us rose the Zairian fortress town of Pynzalo. It goes without saying that any town or city on the Red or Green shore must be strongly fortified if it lies within a day’s march of the sea. These frowning battlemented places must be strong. Most towns and cities are inland, well away from raid and foray. King Genod’s idea was simple enough. Reputed a genius at war, he demonstrated some of the necessary qualities of genius by issuing instructions to his subordinates that were easy to comprehend. Their execution would be another matter, of course.

After Shazmoz had been relieved the combined Zairian armies had fought on to the west, rolling up some of the Grodnim defensive positions, for they had been weak, every mind being set upon advance to the east. Now the advance had stalled and both armies lay in stalemate.

Our descent onto the rear like this would seriously disrupt communications, at the least. We had already caught a supply column — and there was nothing I could do about that. Even ships that coasted along the shore could be snapped up. Once the fleet of broad ships had discharged the army and supplies for a period they left us, to return to Magdag. They were expected again very shortly, bearing the main supply buildup. So, here we sat, astride the Red communications, and very ready to strike in any direction. More fleeting raids by Zairian swifters had bothered us, but since that destructive onslaught by Golden Chavonth nothing so damaging had been achieved against us. I fancied that Gafard might not wait for his full supplies. They had been faced, the king and the King’s Striker, with the alternatives of dispatching half the army with full supplies, or all the army with limited supplies. In my view, given the caliber of Gafard, the king had chosen correctly. One must always remember the slowness of armies when men march on their feet, and draft and pack animals carry their gear and supplies and there are no mechanical contrivances for transport.

I fancied Gafard would strike east, at Pynzalo.

With that fortress reduced and its supplies captured, and with his swifters dominating this whole stretch of coast through their use of slipways and bays and beaches, Gafard could then form a firm rear on Pynzalo and turn west. With Prince Glycas to the west, they would have the Zairian forces caught like a nut between crackers.

Just how long it would take for Sanurkazz to realize the position and scrape up another army to fling against Pynzalo could, for me, remain only conjecture. I did not know how far the treasury’s resources had been depleted. I did know that both sides had expended vast amounts of treasure on this internecine warfare. Red and Green! Well, I was supposed to have grown to a more mature wisdom, but I own I still felt the old surge when Red rose up to challenge Green, still the blood thumped quicker through my veins.

One night after I had been all day chasing hither and yon carrying orders — and, incidentally, coming to know the composition of this army, its strengths and its weaknesses — Duhrra rolled into the tent we shared, not so much drunk as fuddled and annoyed.

"Tonight," he said, slumping down on his cot with a crash. "Tonight, my Gadak of the Green — I escape!"

I took the bottle from his hand and sniffed. Dopa. I threw the thing into the moon-shot darkness and I followed it out to the hanging water bottle and I took that into the tent and sloshed the entire contents over this Duhrra of the Days and his cot. He spluttered and roared and I reached down and put a hand over his mouth.

"Duhrra of the Days," I said, in that kind of penetrating whisper that smacks of drama. "If you wish your entrails to be drawn out, then by all means continue to shout of your intentions." His eyes glared up at me over my hand.

He put his left hand on my wrist and tried to draw my hand away. I resisted. I did not let him take my hand away.

I said, "If you wish to go over the hill you must plan. There must be food and water, a mount, a plan of escape. Onker! Think on, Duhrra of the Days."

I took my hand away.

He dragged in a harsh breath. His eyes were bloodshot.

"Aye, Gadak of the Green! You argue well and shrewdly. Yet you do nothing to escape. I begin to think you really love these zigging Grodnims. You wish to stay with them forever. I do not think—"

"No, Duhrra, you do not think."

"Duh — I do, so!"

I shook my head. I know I wore that old evil expression on my face in the moons-glow, for he flinched back.

"I do not intend to escape, meekly run away, like a cur with its tail between its legs. When I go, I go in style, in a way all men may see, and say — ’That was a Zairian!’"

"Fine words."

"Aye."

He still did not know what to make of me. Of late I had been your true dyed-in-the-wool Grodnim. The religious observances that amused me had been dealt with faithfully. I think that Duhrra did doubt me then. And he had every right so to doubt, for I doubted myself.

All my life I have been a loner. With the exception of my Delia I have never revealed myself. And yet I have good friends, as you know. Seg Segutorio and Inch — great men, fine blade comrades, true friends. And there were others you have heard me speak of — Hap Loder, Gloag, Prince Varden Wanek, Kytun Kholin Dom, and Ortyg Fellin Coper. And there were my friends who lived in Esser Rarioch: Turko the Shield, Balass the Hawk, Naghan the Gnat. And I included here Tilly and Oby. There were others of whom you know. There was most particularly here in the Eye of the World Mayfwy of Felteraz. How could I face them with the knowledge I bore? I do not make friends easily. When I do make a friend I tremble lest I destroy that friendship through one of my typical, stupid tearaway actions. Not for me the easy assumption that friends remain friends no matter what atrocities I commit. How would Rees and Chido regard me? They were of Hamal, the empire ruled by mad Queen Thyllis, and were deadly foemen to Vallia. Yet during my days as a spy in Ruathytu, capital of Hamal, I had found true friendship with Rees, Trylon of the Golden Wind, and with chuckling, chinless, pop-eyed Chido, a courtesy amak. I had been tortured by the decisions forced on me, the honest attempt to rationalize the friendship I felt for Rees and Chido and the numbing knowledge that our countries fought and hated each other.

Duhrra punctured my problems with a new brashness owing much to dopa.

"So, Gadak the Great Planner. When is this to be?"

"As soon as the right opportunity offers." I did not smile at his words. But this was much more like it —

much more a cheerful companion, this Duhrra who chided me for my lapses from grace, my omission of good works. That to him these good works could exist only in labor for the Red of Zair meant only his vision was scaled to the Eye of the World. Maybe I had been slack of late. But, despite all, for me, still, it was Red and not Green. The conflict in the Eye of the World might be of tiny dimensions when compared with the dramas of the Outer Oceans. When a fellow was caught up in them they tended to reduce visibility to the immediate horizon.

Duhrra possessed the appearance of that kind of superbly built idiot calculated at first glance to deceive. I have met your true moron from time to time, and usually give him a wide berth. They do not amuse me, as they appear to amuse so many people, these slack-faced giants with muscles of gods and brains of calsanys. Duhrra was basically right in his desires to go and do something for Zair. My problem was that what I did must rank as a High Jikai, a world-shaking feat of arms that men would talk about and nod their heads over sagely and consider to be worthy to stand in the legends of Kregen along with the other high feats of achievement. That it would be damned difficult to do I knew. Maybe I overmatched myself against fate.

"We will strike for honor, Duhrra, but I do not believe I shock you when I say that honor is a poor substitute for life."

"Duh — you threw away my bottle!"

"Aye — now get some sleep. I must think."

But my thoughts coiled around my friends and my shortcomings.

These feelings of dissatisfaction with myself prompted me to the reflection — which I try always to keep somewhere near the forefront of my mind — that a man must work hard at keeping friends. At least, I know this was so for me. I did not feel that no matter what I did my comrades would remain loyal to me forever and ever. I know this is the counsel of perfection, the David and Jonathan summit; and I knew, too, I would never lose my affections for Seg and Inch and the others just because they were foolish at some time or other, or played me false out of a lapse from the counsels of morality we all accepted in our own ways; but I felt always that I was under trial. If this proves me lacking in understanding, as I suppose it does, it also proves that I am a true loner.

I would not have understood had someone at this time pointed out to me that — in my assumptions that no matter what my friends did I would forgive them but if I erred they would not forgive — I did my friends a grave injustice and imputed a higher value to my friendship than I was prepared to extend to theirs. I knew, then, I was not worthy of my Delia, and, also, not worthy of the friendship extended to me by Seg and Inch and the others. This is what I believed.

So, with Duhrra as with Melow the Supple, with Vomanus of Vindelka, with all my comrades, I chose to hew to the line of rectitude — and as always the savage barbarian that is the true me, I often think to my shame, would break out and I’d go raving off doing all the things that should, if my philosophy was correct, have resulted in the cloak of Notor Zan falling on me from a great height. Kytun Kholin Dom — that magnificent four-armed warrior Djang, a kov — and Ortyg Fellin Coper —

a wise and learned Obdjang statesman, a Pallan — ran my kingdom of Djanduin in the southwest of Havilfar for me when I was away. I had been away on Earth, banished by the Star Lords, for twenty-one Terrestrial years, and since my return and all this imbroglio in the inner sea I had not been back to Djanduin. I had no doubts whatsoever, no doubts at all, that Kytun and Ortyg ran the country with all the efficiency and honesty we had built up between us. I was still the king of Djanduin, and when I returned I would be greeted as such. Provided, of course, they were both still in power and no further revolutions had taken place. Against a warrior of the caliber of K. Kholin Dom and the statecraft of O. Fellin Coper, I did not fancy the chances of new revolutionaries, for we carried the people with us. I give this example to illuminate my tangled feelings about friends.

Twenty-one years’ absence and then a cheerful "Lahal, Ortyg. Lahal, Kytun," and I would resume the throne as though I had not been away. Blind I was in those days, for although I gave thanks to Zair —

or, in this case, to Djan — for my friends, I did not fully understand the quality of their friendship, and how blessed I was in the receiving of it.

All of which led to a very subdued Duhrra, with a hand to his bald head, crawling out of the tent on the following morning and moaning for a handful of palines.

"Dopa," I said.

"Aye, master. Dopa. Duh — a fearsome drink."

"And suitable only for those who wish to become as calsanys."

"There are many bottles in the infantry lines. I was led astray." Dopa if drunk in sufficient quantity is guaranteed to make a man fighting mad. Did Gafard, then, need dopa to whip his splendid army to fighting pitch? I was surprised.

When I was summoned to the usual morning briefing ready to begin a day astride my hebra, Boy, carrying messages, Gafard appeared to be wrought to a high pitch himself, as though he, that hard, practical, seasoned warrior, had been drinking dopa.

"Gernus," he said to the assembled officers and the aides standing respectfully in the rear. "Great news!

We are highly honored. The king himself, the All-Highest, sends news he will pay us a visit — we must expect him today."

Later I saw the arrival of King Genod. He flew in by voller.

The moment I saw the petal-shape of the airboat flitting in over the camp from the shining sea, I knew the instrument had been placed into my hands.

This, then, would be the means of creating a High Jikai.

Chapter Thirteen

King Genod reviews his army

A considerable bulk of the army drew up on parade to greet the arrival of their king, this Genod Gannius, genius at war.

In my capacity as aide to the general in command here I rode my sectrix, Blue Cloud, and clad in mail and green, waited respectfully among the ranks of the aides, well to the rear of Gafard and his high officers.

The trumpets pealed, the flags flew, the twin suns cast down their mingled opaz radiance, sectrixes snorted, and the mailed ranks stood immobile, splendid, imposing, their pikes all slanted as one, the suns-light glittering from their helmets.

There were two vollers.

One was the small two-place flier I had seen over the Grand Canal, before I’d released the tide and so swept away the vessels carrying the consignment of vollers from Hamal. The other voller was larger, higher, with three decks and varter positions, with room for a crew of eighty men — a pastang. As she flew in I was forcibly reminded of the power an aircraft must possess over the earthbound fighting-man marching on his own feet.

Rumors had floated about sufficiently for me to know that these were the only two vollers Genod possessed. I took no pride that I had deprived him of the squadron supplied by Hamal; the relief I felt was tempered by the knowledge that with these two alone, against totally unprepared Zairians, he could do a great mischief.

The reception went off smoothly enough — I was sorry to see — and with the bands playing and the flags fluttering and the swods marching in perfect alignment, King Genod made his way into the camp of one of his armies upon the southern shore.

There was no doubt as to the polished drill of these swods. There is a great difference between your wild warrior and your disciplined soldier, for all they are both fighting-men. The mercenaries Genod had hired were not on parade. He was being welcomed by the army he had helped create, the killing instrument with which he had won his victories and carried the Green triumphantly to the Red southern shore. This was a family reunion, as the long ranks of pikemen marched past, with the halberdiers and swordsmen leading, and the wedges of crossbowmen, closed up to march, followed, their crossbows held all in strict alignment across their chests. Each man in the ranks with his green plumes and insignia, I felt sure, owed a special and personal allegiance to King Genod. Genod had forged his army and it was his, in his hand, to do with as he willed.

He trusted this army, out of the greater army he had created, to Gafard, the King’s Striker. There was a deal of affectionate greeting, and much bowing and saluting, the pealing of trumpets, the curveting of sectrixes, the green flags proud against the sky.

A little breeze had ghosted up, and this added a fine free atmosphere to the occasion, a zephyr breeze foretelling the great wind of destruction that would sweep the Green to victory over the Reds all along the coast.

The king and Gafard and a sizable body of their immediate officers and retinues disappeared into the tall pavilion erected against the king’s coming. Treasure was being spilled here. Yet for this genius king, this superman with the yrium, such attendances were not only expected and demanded — they were essential to his life-style.

A powerful Pachak guard surrounded the two fliers, and the gaping swods were kept well away. I stood in the crowd with that fold of white silk across the lower half of my face. Many soldiers affected the style, for here the wind carried stinging sand. I stared at the two vollers. For my money they would both be first-class specimens. Hamal habitually built and sold inferior specimens to foreign countries. That had been one cause of a war that, while it lay in abeyance for the moment, was by no means over. The Hamalese had supplied these two vollers as examples, and on their performance the balance of the order might rest, although I knew well enough that any nation which did not manufacture fliers was only too pleased to buy examples from Hamal even if they were less than perfect.

"Real boats! That fly through the air!" observed a swod, his full-dress uniform now changed for his fatigues. The other pikemen and arbalesters were likewise changed. Full dress was costly and reserved for occasions like this grand parade and, ironically, for battle.

"I’d never have believed it, if I hadn’t seen it with me own eyes!" declared a dwa-Deldar, wiping his nose with his fist.

"Gar!" said a wizened little engineersman, spitting. "They be just ordinary boats, fitted with the power o’

Grodno, if you ask me."

"Nobody’s asking you, Naghan the Pulley."

They would have wrangled on, in the press, amicable in this off-duty period as swods usually are. I moved away with Duhrra. I would see all I wanted of the positions of the vollers. I did not like the guards being Pachaks. That complicated matters.

In less than a bur I would be on duty again, and just before Duhrra and I went to dress into our mail and greens, a fresh interest cropped up in the army. Two swifters came in bringing with them a captured Zairian swifter.

We all trooped down to the beach to look and jeer and shout mocking obscene threats as the Zairian prisoners were marched ashore in chains.

The two swifters were from Gansk, a powerful Grodnim fortress city of the northern coast opposite Zy itself. The Zairian was from Zandikar, a fortress city up the coast to the northwest from Zamu. So, of course, the Ganskian sailors and marines were cock-a-hoop over their victory and very mouthy about it to the men of Magdag.

Duhrra spat. "Zandikar," he said. "I’ve been there myself! I fought a bout there and won two zo pieces. I think they fought well before they were beaten."

The sight of those chained men displeased me. Zandikar, the city of Ten Dikars, was nowhere near as powerful or wealthy a city-state as her next-door neighbor, Zamu; but her small fleet was considered smart and effective and she had a reputation for her archers and her gregarian groves. There was no order of Krozairs associated with Zandikar, not even a Red Brotherhood, but she was of the Red and of Zair, and an ally.

The two Gansk swifters were six-five hundred-and-twenty swifters. The Zandikarean was a five-three hundred swifter.

There must have been great slaughter, for far less than a full swifter’s crew trudged ashore. As for the oar-slaves, they were sorted out, Green and Red, and sent the one to recuperate and rejoin their fellows, the other to further slavery on the oar-benches of Grodnim swifters.

After this excitement Duhrra and I had to be quick about dressing and reporting in for duty. There were more messages on this afternoon than there had been for the entire previous three days. The king had stirred things up, although I had no feeling that Gafard had been dragging his heels. Strong scouting forces had already probed east and west, and weaker patrols had gone south to check out if the Zairians had yet returned to the villages of Inzidia, which had been evacuated earlier when the Grodnims had advanced. I knew that the scouts going east would have to halt long before they reached Pynzalo, for the base camp at which I had met Duhrra, and where he had lost his hand, lay in their way. From the nature of the messages I carried it was perfectly clear that the king endorsed Gafard’s view that a strike to the east, the quick capture of Pynzalo, a consolidation on that strong line, and then a chavonth-like spring to the west represented the best strategy. They both agreed with my views, then. . . As the suns were dipping into the sea to the west with the nearest of the confused mass of islands known as the Seeds of Zantristar — the damned Grodnims called them the Seeds of Ganfowang — black bars against the burning glow of sea and sky, it chanced that Gafard called me into the inner compartment of his campaign tent. I went in and saluted and noticed he looked keyed up. He paced about, as he spoke, over the priceless carpet, well pleased over some matter.

The imposing many-peaked tent provided for his lady had been taken down long before the king arrived, and the tent, the lady, her retinue, and a strong guard of Pachaks had left the camp, no man would say where. I had seen the king’s Crebent wandering about looking exceedingly bilious. He was one Grodnim among many we could do without.

"Such news, Gadak!" Gafard greeted me. "We are on the move. The king approves — but these are matters not fit for the ears of a mere aide. Look—" He gestured to a side table. "Help yourself to a drink. It is all Grodnim stuff."

I refused politely. He’d had to stock Grodnim wine when the king came here.

"The King also brought me an item of information interesting to him; an item of supreme importance to me!" He was expansive; I had never seen him more febrile, alert, restless, pacing about, a flush beneath his mahogany suntan giving him even more of that voracious carved beakhead look I know so well from the mirror.

"Yes, gernu?"

"You asked me once if it was sure the great Krozair, Pur Dray, the Lord of Strombor, was surely dead. And I answered it was sure. Well, Gadak—" Here, he stopped pacing and turned and glared at me with a look of unholy triumph. "There is news, sure news! The king’s spies brought it; it cannot be doubted. Pur Dray has reappeared in the inner sea from — from where no man knows. He is still alive!"

"You honor me with your confidence—" I began. He brushed that aside.

"It is no confidence. The news will soon circulate. The greater the news the faster it travels. But, Gadak, there is more . . . Pur Dray has been ejected from the Krozairs of Zy! He is Apushniad!" Gafard shook his head in bewilderment. "I cannot understand how they can be such fools, such stupid idiot onkers; but the fact remains."

"Then if he is Apushniad," I said, speaking slowly, sizing him up, "you think, perhaps—?"

"Aye, I do! There is a certain matter between us. I must meet him. Now that I know he is alive and not dead I am overjoyed!"

How badly he wanted to overmatch the old reputation of that Krozair of Zy who was dead and was now alive!

I said, "You would seek to come to hand-strokes with him, to slay him, to prove yourself a greater Ghittawrer than he is a Krozair?"

He looked at me as though I were a mewling infant, or a crazy man screaming at the lesser moons to halt in their tracks. He opened his mouth, but the tent drapings ripped up and Grogor, his second in command, appeared, throwing a quick salute, butting in, interrupting: "Gernu! The king! He calls for you

— at once, gernu!"

Gafard’s mouth snapped shut. He whipped up his green cloak and threw it over his shoulders. His longsword clanked once as he strode past me. He said, "Get about your duties, Gadak. Serve me well and you will be rewarded."

"Your orders, my commands, gernu!" I bellowed blankly.

That small incident had shown me in more revealing drama the situation between these two, between King Genod and Gafard, the King’s Striker. For all the talk of brain and hand, of genius and executive, still when the king whistled Gafard ran. Gafard was tough and strong and ruthless and high-handed and all the things a man needed to be to survive upon Kregen and attain a position of comfort — quite apart from power and wealth — and his authority within the army was unquestioned. Still, King Genod whistled and Gafard ran.

Then I checked. Did I not run when Gafard whistled?

The answer to that question should be satisfactorily answered this very night. After the suns had gone down and the Maiden with the Many Smiles began to climb the heavens, I found Duhrra thinking about wandering down to the infantry lines after more dopa, and told him what I was going to do.

His broad idiot face broke into one huge grin. "About time, master! Huh — I’m with you, by Zantristar the Merciful!"

I said, "We will take both the flying boats, for that will be easier. The little one will rest on the big one’s deck."

We gathered up all our fighting gear we would ordinarily use on duty and left our sleeping silks and spare clothing scattered about as though we had just left casually. I wanted to leave a bolthole in case the damned voller was not a first-class example and played up. That is a thing anyone of foresight would do, even though I did not expect to see this place again for a long time. The Maiden with the Many Smiles, Kregen’s largest moon, gave more light than we needed for a desperate enterprise of this nature. But I would not wait. The king might leave on the morrow after his inspection. And my impatience had now boiled over. Rashness and recklessness — they are a mark of my own stupidity, I own.

Acting perfectly normally we walked through the moon-drenched shadows to the edge of the bluffs overlooking the beach. In one of the curved beach hollows fenced on its seaward side the Zairian prisoners had been lodged. They would be chained and the chains stapled to stakes driven deeply into the sand. Here lay one chance; the sand would give more easily than earth. I had brought a length of iron filched from the engineers’ stores, just in case. As it turned out we were lucky here. One of the Rapa guards, who toppled over after Duhrra hit him on top of his crested head, carried keys on a large bronze ring. Cautioning silence, we went among the prisoners, releasing them. They gathered about me in the pink and golden shadows, breathing hard, hardly believing.

"You are men from Zandikar. I salute your prowess. Now we strike a blow for Zair and we strike in absolute silence!"

"I am Ornol ti Zab, ley-Hikdar, third officer of Wersting Zinna." The man looked squat and hard, a real sailorman, his black curly hair smothered in sand, with the black dried blood crusting about a wound.

"We are with you in this escape. But — you and this giant with one hand wear the green."

"Aye," I said. "Aye, Hikdar, we do. And if there is a scrap of red about we will gladly wear that! By Zair, yes!"

There were dead men in the dunes. Red cloth was to hand. I wound the crimson about my loins, over the green, draped an end over the green tunic. There was no time for more. We all stole silently across the sand. The Hikdar halted as I put my hand on his shoulder and whispered in his ear.

"Not that way, Hikdar."

"But," he whispered back, "that way lies our swifter, our fleet Wersting Zinna."

"There is a greater Jikai tonight. You are a ley-Hikdar.[4]Success this night will leap you at a bound to Jiktar. I promise you. Your king Zinna will do no other.

He looked doubtful. I did not blame him. I could be a part of a trap, devilish sport of the Grodnims with Zairian captives.

"King Zinna is an old man now, dom. He would sooner see his swifter back in the ship-sheds of Zandikar."

"Yet the way I show you will deliver up a greater prize. Did you not see the flying boats land?" He gasped. "Aye — aye! This will be a great Jikai!"

So we went on through the moonlight in the way I directed. Of course, King Zinna must be old — I’d last seen him fifty years ago and he’d been middle-aged then. The cities and states of the Red southern shore hang together in a sketchy alliance against the Greens, but they are touchy of their national honor. I didn’t care to which Zairian city-state the voller went just so long as I stopped off at Zy first. Although, come to think of it, my allegiance should go to Mayfwy of Felteraz and through her to King Zo of Sanurkazz. That was, if I had any allegiances left.

The night guard on the two vollers had been changed from Pachaks to Fristles. No doubt apims and Chuliks and any other diffs on the roster might have been used as required. My sea-leems of Zair dealt with the Fristles; the cat-faced diffs swiftly disposed of, the Red swamped over the Green. The moon glistered on the ornate scrollwork gilding of the sternwalk. The hull bulged with power. Yes, this was a fine handy craft, equipped with varters, decked, a superb fighting machine of the air. We swarmed up like ants, climbing up onto the deck and taking by surprise the remnant of the guard sleeping off watch there.

With brands in their fists, with their blood up, these men of Zandikar showed their mettle. Their captain and ship-Hikdar had been slain in the battle with the two swifters of Gansk. Many of their comrades had gone up to sit in glory on the right hand of Zair in the radiance of Zim. Now they sent a covey of Grodnims down to the Ice Floes of Sicce without compunction. Some noise fractured the night in that swift struggle. That was unfortunate but seemingly inevitable. I belted for the control deck shouting to Duhrra to make sure everyone was aboard safely. The controls were perfectly familiar to me. I hit the levers and we went up in a smooth, swooping rise, a rush of power. The smaller voller was not inits mooring place and so King Genod must be sending more messages. I chilled.

Suppose he had taken the voller himself? But no — no, Zair would not play that trick on me. I did as I had planned and brought the voller to earth again in the first spot that appeared suitable from the air. I knew this terrain from carrying messages and had selected a number of deep gullies where the voller might be hidden. I double-checked the best place from the air as we slanted down, and was satisfied she would not be spotted if the two-place flier nosed over.

Hikdar Ornol ti Zab organized his men into throwing the scrubby branches of nik-nik bushes over the deck to shield her. The nik-nik is a nasty plant and the men were scratched. They did not care. My plan appealed to them.

But, Hikdar Ornol and Duhrra both said to me, growling: "We shall come with you, Gadak."

"Not so," I said. "I am able to pass easily where you would have trouble, Duhrra, and you, Hikdar, could not pass at all."

They fumed and argued, but they knew I was right. The voller had to be secured first. Now came the tricky part.

I started to leave them and as I did so Hikdar Ornol said to me, "There is one among our company who claims to have seen a flying boat before. He even says he can fly one through the air like a bird." The urgency in me, I now admit, made me gloss over this information that would normally have been startling. The Hikdar went on, speaking in his growly graint voice: "If you do not return within two burs of dawn we shall decide—"

I knew what he was going to say. I stopped him.

"You will get this young fellow to fly the boat out. You will all be trapped if you return. You know this to be true."

"Aye." He spoke surlily, a warrior deprived of a fight. "It is sooth. But we are loath to do this thing."

"I shall not say Remberee."

"Hai Jikai!" he said to me, and so I went back toward the camp and to King Genod and Gafard, the King’s Striker, the Sea-Zhantil.

There was a quantity of confusion going on about the vanished voller. Guards ran and shouted and torches flared. This was all to the good. I ran in as though most busy about my work, and almost forgot to rip off the red cloth. I bundled it up and stuffed it inside the green tunic over the mail.

"It must be cramphs of Zair!" men bellowed. "Rasts of the Red!" In all this confusion I ought to be able to take Genod and Gafard. At the least, I ought to be able to do that. So I planned as I ran and shouted with the rest and worked my way around to the tent of the king. How man proposes and Zair disposes! Or Opaz or Djan. I wouldn’t give the time of day to Grodno or Havil or Lem. I ran through the moon-shot darkness. This was where I let rip all the frustrations, where I really hit back, where I at last created a High Jikai that would reinstate me among the ranks of the Krozairs of Zy.

All the stupid pride flooded me, onker that I was. What would that oaf Pur Kazz say when I landed with a magnificent flying boat of the air, with rescued Zairians, and with the enormous prize of not only Gafard, the Sea-Zhantil, the most renowned Ghittawrer of the Eye of the World, but his liege lord also, his king, this same king Genod, the genius king of evil Magdag!

Well, onker I was and onker I remained.

The king’s tent was flooded with light. Orderlies and sectrixmen waited outside, nervous, fidgety. I marched through as bold as Krasny work, up to the tent flaps and the guards. I thought — well, that would be to reveal too much. Suffice it to say I thought it could be done and I could do it. I think, now, in all sober truth, I could have done it. It was, after all, a thing I had done before and was, as you shall hear, a trick I was to pull off again, more than once. But could the Star Lords have had a hand in this? The Savanti, perhaps? I did not know. I do know that as I bluffed my way past the guards and entered the first of the canvas-sided anterooms leading into the king’s quarters a number of what I then considered impossible events occurred. There were far too many men here to be accounted for by the loss of the voller, serious though that was. These were men who should be out hunting for the king’s airboat.

I heard a man shouting: "I tell you it is sooth! I saw him. I saw him as he climbed up the side of the flying boat and the moon shone on his face. He wore the red. I would know that devil’s face anywhere, for did he not give me this scar on my own face, these many years ago!"

I halted in the press, at the back, unable to pass through, cursing to get on and yet halted by these words.

"It was the infamous Krozair himself! Pur Dray. The Lord of Strombor! Come back from the dead!" Other men shouted that how could Golitas be sure, and this Golitas with the scarred face bellowed that, by Goyt, he knew the most renowned Krozair of the Eye of the World when he saw him!

This made it more tricky. Golitas must have come in with the king, for he had not been about the camp. Had he been he would no doubt have taken longer to recognize me for the circumstances would have been far less dramatic. I had best place my white scarf about my face again, but my groping fingers encountered nothing where the scarf should be. Of course, I’d lost the damned thing somewhere along the way.

This was bad enough. But then — and I swear I was in so ugly a mood I might have done something I would have regretted for all the thousand years of life vouchsafed me — I heard two voices I just could not believe in, could not, for they were of another life and another place many dwaburs removed from the problems of the inner sea.

The first voice boomed out in a great Numim bellow.

"What a gang of onkers, by Krun! Can’t even guard a voller the empress Thyllis sends out of friendship!"

And the other voice tripped up and down the scale: "This is a wight leem’s-nest, Wees! We can’t walk all the way home, now can we, dear fellow?"

Chapter Fourteen

I avoid old comrades

Rees and Chido!

Incredible. Impossible. But true.

The crowd swayed as guards opened a path through. In the uproar that roaring Numim voice of Rees’s blasted out again. He was upset. He didn’t mind who knew.

But — Rees and Chido! All the way from Ruathytu in distant Hamal, to the Eye of the World. They must have been with the voller. No other explanation was possible. I stood back, no longer pushing forward.

They had not seen me for over twenty years, but I had no doubts that I would be recognized. They’d know me. They’d be as thunderstruck as I was myself.

They’d know me. They’d know me as Hamun ham Farthytu, the amak of Paline Valley. They did not know their friend Hamun whom they had tried to make into a bladesman was the Prince Majister of Vallia.

What thoughts tumbled pell-mell through my dizzy mind! I had stepped back purely involuntarily. The onker Golitas was still babbling on about it being sure that he had recognized the notorious Krozair, the Lord of Strombor, and over that Rees’s lion-roar blattered against my ears.

"By Krun! What a bunch of onkers! Chido, old fellow, this is a right leem’s-nest!" And Chido’s light voice, turning all his R’s into Ws, a mode of speech I seldom attempt to reproduce, saying: "I suppose you can’t blame ’em too much, Rees. If this fellow who stole the voller is as good as they say—"

And a rumble from Rees, indicating to me that he had been learning wisdom in the years separating our last meeting. By Krun! But was I glad to know he and Chido were still alive! After the Battle of Jholaix in which Vallia had smashed the Hamalese Army of the North, anything could have happened to them. Maybe they were even back in the good books of the empress Thyllis. If they were, they were even more of an enemy to Vallia. . .

The swirls in the crowd as the closely packed men reformed to let the high dignitaries through pushed me against a wooden post holding a peak of the side wall. I could see past the heads and shoulders of those moving in front. I saw Rees and I saw Chido.

They looked just the same.

Well, of course, twenty-one years made little if any difference to the appearance of a man on Kregen, once he had reached the age of his maturity. They looked great. The flaming golden mane that marked Rees for a Numim, a lion-man, glowed in the lamplight. His broad, powerful lion-face scowled and those tawny eyes caught the light and glittered. And Chido, just the same, popping with excitement, spluttering, his chinless face and pop-eyes bringing back the memories. Dear old Chido!

If they saw me they would call out in huge surprise. What explanations had they thought up to explain away to themselves the vanishment of their comrade and fellow bladesman Hamun?

I caught a quick glimpse of a black-browed fellow with a hard, blocky face beyond Rees. Across this fellow’s features an old scar showed livid as the blood flushed.

This must be Golitas.

If he saw me the next few murs would be exceedingly tricky and complicated. They might be interesting, too.

Maybe, maybe I might have risked it. For if this Golitas hauled out his sword and ran at me, and Rees and Chido saw that, might they not shout in shock and run to stand with me?

They might.

Somehow, I did not think they would.

My shock had been great at seeing them. They might put two and two together. I had plans for Hamal and I wished to preserve my identity as the amak of Paline Valley.

I turned my head away.

Yes, I, Gadak, turned my head away.

A table lay cluttered with cloaks and capes and scarves dropped by the officers and aides as they had entered. A green scarf, snatched up, covered my face. I do not disguise my own feelings of contempt for myself. But much, much more depended on my actions now; my freedom meant more than the freedom that has so often been denied me — it meant getting out of the Eye of the World and back to Delia. That must come first.

There seemed to me to be more than an inkling in my head why these two, Rees and Chido, had come to the inner sea with the voller for King Genod. I guessed they had fancied the adventure, no doubt feeling at a loss in peacetime Hamal. Had Rees’s estates of the Golden Wind all blown away yet? Was he now merely the owner of an empty title? How was Saffi, his daughter, that glorious lion-maiden I had rescued from the Cripples’ Jikai, snatched from the Manhounds of Faol?

The interruption in my progress, the check as the crowd surged back making way, the shock of seeing old comrades again, all conspired to thwart my plans.

Chido gesticulating violently, and Rees stalking on arrogantly, they passed through the crowd and on into the moonlight outside. I roused myself. The idiot Golitas would follow soon. After he had gone, would there be a chance to snatch Gafard and the king? "Ah, Gadak! Just the man!" I whirled about and my hand fell to my longsword. Gafard stared at me, and past me at the others in the canvas-walled anteroom.

"All of you! Out searching! The king is most wrathful. The flying boat has been stolen and stolen by no less than Pur Dray, the great Krozair. Stir yourselves!" He saw the movement of my hand. "Yes, Gadak. It is a time for swords — but only when we find the flying boat"

"Yes, gernu."

How easily I slipped into the ways of Grodnim that had encompassed me these past months!

My prime responsibility was to Delia. I had to get out of the inner sea and back to her. I had to get back alive, for she had warned me, long and long ago, that she would be cross with me if I got myself killed. Beside her anger at that kind of foolishness on my part, the anger of King Genod over the loss of his voller was as the mewling of an infant.

There were many men, both apim and diff, in the anteroom of the king’s tent. A guard party of bowmen stood with bows held up and arrows nocked, a part and parcel of the king’s security. Word that the Lord of Strombor had been seen was enough to make every man stand to arms and tremble, sweating in anticipation.

The events that had taken place since I had bluffed my way in here to hear Rees’s great Numim bellow to the moment when Gafard ordered me to join the search had taken practically no time at all. Words and thoughts and actions had tumbled one over the other.

My plan had failed.

There was no chance at all to take Gafard and less chance, even than that, to take the king. If I put a sword-edge to Gafard’s throat and forced my way in to the king the bowmen would feather me, and if Gafard died as well that was the price Grodno exacted. I remembered, here in the very Eye of the World, the callousness with which Prince Glycas, the embodiment of all that was evil in the overlords of Magdag, had told me that I could slay his guard-commander, but that he would surely slay me, anyway. The only life with which to bargain with King Genod was the life of King Genod himself.

"Don’t stand about, you calsanys!" bellowed Gafard. No doubt he had had the rough edge of Genod’s tongue. His fierce face showed all the venom I might have shown in a similar situation. "Schtump!" He used that coarse and abusive word to these officers, the word that conveys in such a vivid way "Get out!

Clear off!"

"Schtump!" roared Gafard, the King’s Striker. "Find the flying boat of the king!" Even then, as the men elbowed out carrying me with them in the press and I saw the tall, scar-faced form of Golitas approaching Gafard, the King’s Striker had not made any evil promises as a reward for failure. He was canny enough to see the apparently obvious. If the flying boat could sail through the air faster than a galloping sectrix, then she would be away and gone and no torchlight search in the darkness would find her again.

As we mounted up I had to stop cursing. My hands did not shake, but in all else I felt myself to be the greatest rogue in two worlds. My nerve had not failed me, for I knew it was Delia who had restrained my hand. But I knew what my conduct would appear to my comrades, to my Brother Krozairs — I had failed in my plans and had not taken the opportunity to cut down all in my path until I died still striking out with the cry of Zair on my bloodied lips.

That, of course, was the maniac’s way, the battle-lover’s way, the berserker way I had renounced with disgust.

But — would that not have been a Jikai?

Possibly, but a damned little one in my view.

I gave up making excuses for my feeble conduct and spurred off into the darkness with the others, the link-slaves astride preysanys lighting our way, and precious little chance we had of finding the voller, I can say.

The torches flared their blazing hair over the shadows and we rode and men shouted and there was much hullabaloo. I took the first opportunity to ride off and lose myself in the darkness. The Maiden with the Many Smiles made that difficult, for the darkness was a matter of a pink-lit radiance, gloomy only in comparison with the glory of the daytime suns; the torches emphasized the darkness. I slipped away at last and cantered along to where I had left the voller. No one followed. I had miserably failed in the main elements of my plan. I did not return with the king and Gafard. But the second part of the scheme could still work. I would take the voller and we’d fly out over the inner sea and when the convoy bearing the supplies for the army appeared off the coast we would swoop down and sink and burn the lot.

Yes, that would at least salvage some part of my Jikai.

With a voller of the quality of the airboat we had captured under my command I would be master of the situation.

Grandiloquent ideas burned in my mind. I felt the power of madness and of supernal power flowing through me.

With the airboat I could be master of the coast, and destroy utterly all Genod’s plans. He had no varters that could deal with vollers. The armies of the Hostile Territories and of Havilfar contained high-angle varters, artillery designed to hurl bolts upward and so bring down the flaunting ships of the air. These devices were unknown in the inner sea. I would be unchallenged. I would be unchallengeable.

So it was that with the hateful word "I" ringing in my head I reached the place where the voller had been hidden.

Approaching cautiously, for there had been weapons aplenty in the flier and I did not want an arrow through me, I gave a low-voiced hail.

"Duhrra! Hikdar Ornol!"

The camouflage had been well done. The nik-nik bushes concealed all. My sectrix lumbered on, his hooves near soundless on the sandy soil. The pink and golden moonlight flooded down and away from the interference of the torches’ glow I could see well. I called again, louder. No answer. Nothing.

The sectrix slipped and skidded down the incline. I was enclosed by the bushy walls. I looked about. The voller was not there.

I looked again, and shouted, and spurred up and sent the sectrix crashing down into the bottom of the gulley.

Nothing.

The voller was gone.

Just how long I rode up and down, flailing at bushes with my sword, yelling, bellowing, I have no idea. At last the realization reached me that, in truth, the voller had flown. I could not curse. For the last time I galloped lumpily across the sandy soil, flailing away, and bits of bush flew into the air, spinning in the moon-drenched darkness. The smell of night blooms hung strongly in the air. Nothing.

No voller.

Duhrra and the men from Zandikar had gone.

I was alone.

Now, if ever, was the time to remember that I, Gadak of the Green, was not and never could be Gadak of the Green.

Chapter Fifteen

My Lady of the Stars wields a dagger

"The onkers rush upon their own destruction," said Gafard with great satisfaction. We sat our sectrixes upon a slight eminence in the nik-nik covered bluffs. The sea sparkled bluely away to our left. The land to the right trended, flat and uninteresting, to a far horizon where heat shimmer broke outlines into blue and purple ghosts. Blown by the wind, drifts of sand swathed the scene below. Below us and less than half a dwabur away marched the hosts of Zair, advancing to the west. How marvelous they looked, with their many red banners fluttering, the suns striking back in gleam and glint from armor and weapons. Sectrix cavalry trotted on the flanks. Infantry marched at the center. On they came, proud in their might, a splendid army gathered from the fortress cities of Pynzalo and Zimuzz, from the inland towns of Jikmarz and Rozilloi, and from many of the villages of the fertile inland territories. In all those brave banners of the Red I saw the proud devices, and recognized many of them. Justice and hope marched there, pride and honor. On the right flank, their sectrixes’ hooves sometimes cutting through the surf, trotted a contingent of splendid cavalry on whose red banners the device of the hubless spoked wheel within the circle blazed and coruscated.

Only a small contingent of Krozairs of Zy there were. I guessed that the bulk of the Krzy would be far to the west, fighting with Pur Zenkiren and the two generals of the combined armies there. My heart lifted when I saw that grand and formidable array advancing toward the massed green banners before me.

Gafard, the King’s Striker, sat his sectrix and chuckled and ever and anon he pulled that black hawk-beard of his. He had given no further orders after those that had drawn out the army of Magdag into its allotted positions.

Two sennights had gone by since my disastrous debacle on the night the king’s voller had been stolen by the famous Krozair, the Lord of Strombor. Although a strict watch was kept against the flyer’s return, no more had been seen of her.

I had hoped she would be flying over the host of Zair when they marched to the attack. The Zairians had worked like demons to collect this army to reinforce the armies of the west. Now we had appeared unexpectedly in their path. They attacked recklessly. This was the way they reacted to the descent upon their coasts of the Green of Grodno.

The king and Gafard had been highly delighted.

All thought of investing Pynzalo had been abandoned. The garrison of the city marched in the host fronting us. Gafard had said, "They save us much labor and casualties." He had slapped his thigh with his riding glove before throwing it to a slave and taking up the metaled war-gauntlets he would wear for the battle. "You ride as aide to me, Gadak. Nalgre and Nath and Insur, with Gontar and Gerigan, will be all I need. Once the battle is joined there will be little need for messages. The army of the king knows what to do!"

"One wonders," said Gontar, who prided himself that his father was an overlord of Magdag who owned estates requiring ten thousand slaves to run, "if that cramph the Lord of Strombor is with the onkers this day."

"One," said Gafard, Sea-Zhantil, "sincerely trusts he is not." They took that to mean the obvious, but I glanced at Gafard — and away smartly, to be sure — and guessed he meant he hoped Pur Dray would not be there to be slain by a casual pike-thrust. Gafard wanted to cross swords with the great Krozair in person, so I said to myself, pondering imponderables. I admit, in all fairness, that I was not only coming to share these damned Grodnims’ obsession with Pur Dray, Krozair, and regarding him in the third person, but also was still much surprised that his legend persisted so vividly after fifty years. I could scarce credit that no other Krozair had risen to a similar eminence in the Eye of the World.

The truth was that Gafard so hungered after a similar renown his well-known obsession fostered the persistence of the stories and tales of the Lord of Strombor. Now that Pur Dray had returned to life, had been declared Apushniad by the Krzy and had actually been seen back at his old activities, no wonder speculation and rumor buzzed around the camp like flies over the carcass of a chunkrah slain by leems on the plains.

Also in this fascination with a Red Krozair must be the dread knowledge in the minds of the overlords that Pur Dray had witnessed the private, terrible rites that went on in the utmost secrecy within the megaliths at the time of the Great Death, when the red sun eclipsed the green sun. I suppose, trying to think about it logically and restraining myself from taking the amused and cynical line that was too treacherously easy, there was a terrible and malefic aura about the name and deeds of Pur Dray, the Lord of Strombor, Krozair of Zy.

The hosts of Red marched on, their banners flying. The ranks of Green waited calmly, silent, and their green banners flaunted no less vividly under the suns.

Gafard was eyeing the distances. We could all see the restiveness in the Red cavalry on the wings. They would charge at any moment, a torrent of mailed men bursting down on the ranks of Green footmen. Those footmen were fronted by a glittering, slanting wall of pike-heads. I knew the heart of that formation down there below us on the sandy soil. I had created it myself. The serried mass of pikes in the strong phalanx to take the shock of the cavalry change. The halberdiers and swordsmen to protect the pikes from swordsmen. The wedges of arbalesters shooting with controlled rhythm. And the shields — that cowards’ artifice — the shields to protect the men and deflect the shafts from the short, straight bows and the crossbows of the enemy. Oh, yes, I had designed that fighting machine to destroy mailed overlords of Magdag. And now those same devilish overlords used my fighting instrument, remade by them with their own swods, to destroy my comrades in Zair. I tell you, my thoughts were bleak and spare.

I hoped that the Zairians would win.

I knew the worth of my work and the genius of Genod Gannius, whose parents I had saved from destruction, and I knew, darkly and with agony and remorse, the inevitable outcome of the battle. What I would do was already worked out. I knew that despite all, I could not stop myself. The red cloth was stuffed again within the breast of my tunic. I would don the red, draw my longsword, and so hurl myself into the rear of the pikes as the charges went in. Perhaps there would be a little chance for the Krozairs, for the Red Brethren, for the warriors of Zair.

That chance was slender to the point of nonexistence.

But, despite all, I could not stop myself.

Sharply, a shadow fleeted over the ground and we all looked up and there, skimming through the bright air, flew the two-place voller with Genod Gannius gorgeous in green and gold leaning over and encouraging his troops.

If he had fire-pots up there. . .

The army of the Green let out a dull surf-roar of welcome and greeting to their king. Very pretty it was. And in defiant answer rose the shouts from the Reds.

"Grodno! Zair! Green! Red!" The shouts rose and clashed. "Krozair! Ghittawrer!" The yells twined in the brilliant atmosphere. And, a new shout, a shrill screeching: "Genod! Genod! The king!" The Zairian cavalry charged, a torrential mass of steel and red bearing down on the massed pikes. I reined Blue Cloud a little way back of the other aides. They were all standing in their stirrups, craning to look down from our eminence onto the drama spread out below. Now was the time to don the red and so charge down and make a finish.

It might not be a Jikai, but with those Krozair shouts ringing through the air and the brave scarlet fluttering I could do no other. . .

A shadow flitted into the corner of my eye and I turned, quickly, the red half drawn from my green tunic. A Pachak with only one left arm, and a bloody stump where the other should be, rode frantically up to Gafard, his hebra foundering. He yelled at Gafard. I heard his words, caught and blown by the wind; I saw Gafard’s hard mahogany face turn abruptly gray within the iron rim of his helmet.

"My Lady — treachery — we were surprised — slain — black — men in black — my lord . . ." The Pachak fell even as his hebra collapsed.

Gafard lifted his head and screeched.

I thrust the red away and kicked Blue Cloud over.

"Gadak! You I trust! Find Grogor! Find Nath ti Hagon! Take men — anyone — ride, Gadak, ride! My Lady of the Stars — my pearl, my heart . . . ride, Gadak! Ride as you love me!" I didn’t love the devil. But — my Lady of the Stars!

What do I know, now, of my thoughts, my emotions, and my feelings? I know I knew the Zairian army below me was doomed, for I had wrought the instrument of their destruction. But there would come another time, another field, and another battle. Now all my blood clamored that I save my Lady of the Stars.

I rode. I did not ride wearing the red. I rode not for my lord Gafard, the King’s Striker, the Sea-Zhantil

— but for my Lady of the Stars.

Even now, after all that happened, I do not regret that decision.

If only some easy power of sorcery had been open to me!

If only by some magic formula I could have prevented what was fated to occur. But I am a mortal man and the fantasies of wish-fulfillment belong to the myths and legends of Kregen, not to the hard reality of that beautiful and terrible world beneath the Suns of Scorpio. Yes, there is seeming magic on Kregen, and the wizards practice mighty sorceries, but they are of a piece, following ordained paths. The wonder and mystery of Kregen can never be denied, but it is men and women with hope and courage who flesh out the true fantasies.

I rode.

Grogor, Gafard’s second in command, that surly man, did not hesitate a fraction. He screeched a savage order to a squadron of sectrixmen, all picked men-at-arms, apims and diffs, and wheeled his mount and was away with streaming mane and flying feathers. We picked up Nath ti Hagon, Gafard’s trusted ship-Hikdar, and then, in a compact body, we rode from the battlefield. Sand blew from our sectrixes’

hooves. The wind of our passage blustered in our plumes and scorched into our faces. So we left the action, the battle, that debacle for the Red, which the mad genius king Genod called the Battle of Pynzalo.

Wherever Gafard had hidden his beloved, the rasts of men in black had found her. I had one hope. The voller had been flown by Genod himself and it had flown over the battlefield. We had to deal with men mounted on sectrixes like ourselves.

In one item of my reading of the situation I was wrong.

We went flying through the near-deserted camp, sending the camp followers stumbling out of our way, only the green of our plumes and dress able to convince them they were not attacked by a raiding party of Zairians. We belted past the lines of tents. I had nudged Blue Cloud gently to the head of the pack, for although I wished to conserve him for what I thought would be a long ride, I still felt the mad desire to hurry on like a maniac and be the first there to rescue my Lady of the Stars. The Pachak of her guard who had escaped to warn Gafard must have been a most intelligent as well as a brave man. He must have fought until he saw there was no hope left and then, instead of going on fighting and throwing his life away, had turned and raced for the King’s Striker. Out past the camp we saw the flurry of green cloaks. I looked closer. A party of sectrixmen was picking its way down the sandy slopes toward the beach. A swifter waited there, her stern ladder erected, one end on the quarter and the other on the beach. Beneath the green cloaks I saw — instead of the expected white, or green, or the flash of mail — black.

Grogor saw, also, and shrilled and we all pelted along, hurling ourselves madly over the bluffs and so roaring down the sandy slopes in great clouds and smothers of sand.

Somehow Blue Cloud kept his six legs under him. We were on the beach. I yanked out my longsword, that Ghittawrer blade with the device removed, and whirled along the packed sand. The black-clad men saw us coming.

There was a struggle in their midst.

Grogor and Nath were neck and neck with me. Our three swords thrust forward, three-pronged retribution.

The black-clad men tried to face us.

There must have been few men who could have stood up to us in that frenzied moment. In the moments before we hit I saw my Lady of the Stars.

She wielded a long, thin dagger in her white hand, and she toppled one kidnapper from his saddle and whirled on another who tried to spit her through. She parried — it was marvelously done, marvelously!

— and riposted and stuck the rast through the eye. He screamed and fell and then we were upon them. Our rage was terrible and genuine.

The longswords whirled and glittered, split and cleft, and whipped aloft again for the next blow, dripping red.

Blade clanged against blade. My Ghittawrer longsword sang above my head. Aye! It sang as I whirled it up and down. I smashed with full force, seeing a head spin off, seeing a black-masked face abruptly disappear into a ghastly red mask, seeing an arm spin up and away as a back-hander curled beneath a blow. It was all over in scant murs. We panted. I dragged in a great lungful of air and then, dismounting, walked over to my Lady, who lay in the sand. Her green veiling remained in place, for she had one hand to it. But she knew me.

"Gadak! So you rescue me again."

"Aye, my Lady. You are unhurt?"

She stood up. She put a hand on my shoulder. Her left hand. In her right hand, smothered in blood, she still gripped the slender, jeweled dagger.

"I am unharmed. They tried to — at the end — when they saw you coming. But—"

"Yes, my Lady. You yourself created a Jikai, I saw." Then I smiled — I, who am a surly beast and with a face like the ram of a swifter. "I am minded of another lady, my Lady."

"I would not have thought—" she began, and then stopped and threw the dagger to the sand. She took her hand from my shoulder and drew herself up. She put that clean left hand to her hair. Typically, the next words she said were, "And my lord? How goes the battle?"

"The battle will go well enough."

She sighed.

She, like myself, had been Zairian once.

"I returned to the camp, Gadak, and they were waiting for me. Men in black. Stikitches — kidnappers for a space — but real stikitches, nonetheless."

"Aye."

My men were inspecting the corpses. The swifter was gone, pulling madly out to sea. Grogor turned one body over with his foot and then cocked an eye at me. I looked down. The brown face with a livid scar all across it showed where Golitas, who had received that scar from the hands of Pur Dray, had died in agony.

"It would be best to heave these carrion into the sea." Grogor took out his knife. "But first — My Lady, would you please retire for a space, for there are things that must be done." She understood well enough. A warrior maid, for she had fought magnificently, now she was a practical lady with a man to protect. So we disfigured the corpses so that they would never be recognized and heaved them into the sea. When we had finished we escorted my Lady back to camp and had anyone challenged us he would have been a dead man.

We had saved my Lady of the Stars for Gafard, Sea-Zhantil; we had saved her from the clutches of King Genod himself and no one to point the finger of accusation at us. Also, a man who knew my face was dead. Besides the safety of my Lady that was of no importance at all.

Chapter Sixteen

Grogor surprises me

Black magbirds flew overhead. To larboard the lesser Pharos passed at the end of the mole. The stones gleamed in the slanting lines of masonry, and the curve of stonework opened out into a broad view across the outer harbor. Two swifters rode to their moorings here, their yards crossed, and the last preparations caused a bustle on their long, lean decks as they were readied for sea. Volgodont’s Fang glided on, the oars pulling with a slow, steady rhythm that drove our stem through the water with a low musical chinkle.

The frowning stone gateway to the cothon, the inner basin, lined up directly with our ram. Nath ti Hagon stood staring directly ahead, lining up the ship, giving quick, direct orders to the oar-master in his tabernacle and to the two helm-Deldars at their rudder handles. These two old tarpaulins turned the curved steering oars with cunning, smooth movements that kept the swifter dead on track. The group standing with me on the quarterdeck included Gafard, but he was in this matter quite content to let his trusted first lieutenant conn the ship. Hardly a breeze ruffled the still surface of the water in which reflections stood out in perfect mirror-images.

The entrance to this cothon had been excavated widely enough to accommodate the spread wings of a swifter. Many cothons have narrow entrances, so that a galley must be drawn through by pulling-boat or, more usually, by gangs of men hauling hawsers from the dock side, all heaving together at the crack of a whip and the yell of "Grak!"

We glided on smoothly. I had no doubts that Nath would take the ship fairly through the center of the narrow channel with not a single oar splintered. Swifters habitually carry as many as half the number of oars again to replace broken oars, for breaking oars is a familiar hazard to the swifter captains of the inner sea.

Once we were fairly through the whistles shrilled and the drum-Deldar tapped his peculiar terminal notes and every oar lifted and remained level. Swifters of the size of Volgodont’s Fang are reasonably stable in the water, unlike the smaller swifters that rock so much a man must step lightly and the oars must rest in the water to ensure stability.

How familiar the details of bringing a vessel into port!

I watched, storing away the nostalgic memories and refusing to become maudlin. The sides of the cothon were lined with the long, slanting ship-sheds, narrow structures, two slips to a roof, inclined toward the water. Ingenious capstans and pulleys were arranged so that the swifters might be drawn up out of the water and gangs of slaves whipped to the work. The open fronts of the sheds with their ornate columns and Magdaggian arches could be closed by wooden doors in inclement weather — of which there is, thankfully, very little in the Eye of the World — and as they clustered closely together they presented a compact, crowded nesting effect. Little over the width of a swifter, probably not one being more than forty feet wide to accept the apostis, they were long, a hundred and eighty feet or more. This was not the king’s harbor. Over there the sheds were, of course, larger. The massively impressive building rising to the rear, sculptured almost like a temple, was the Arsenal of the Jikgernus — the warrior lords — and there were kept the multifarious stores demanded by the swifters. The smell of that place could waft me away and away four hundred light-years in my mind’s eye.

Farther to one side and lifting grandly over the ship-sheds, the bulk of a real temple glittered in the suns-light. All smothered in green tiling, ceramics of the same high quality that decorated the megaliths, the temple of the sea-god, Shorush-Tish, sparkled and glistered in the light. Set at the apex of its many-peaked roofs the marble representations of swifters, one third full size, leered down over the mariners and marines and slaves who crowded the narrow streets, busy about the sea business of Shorush-Tish.

It is a remarkable fact — at least, at that time it was remarkable to me — that the blue-maned sea-god, Shorush-Tish, is shared by Grodnim and Zairian. In all else they clash in their beliefs, for all that they sprang from the same original religious convictions. Temples to Shorush-Tish are obligatory on all the seafronts of all the ports of the north and south, the Green and the Red. Even the Proconians erect altars to Shorush-Tish. Even the many races of diffs who live up in the northeastern areas of the Eye of the World — and particularly around the smaller sea known as the Sea of Onyx to the apims because of the many chalcedony mines around its shores — build their temples to their halfling representations of Shorush-Tish. Even the Sorzarts who live and reive from their islands up there respect the power of the universal sea-god of the Eye of the World.

It would be a foolish and reckless captain who did not make an offering to Shorush-Tish before he observed the fantamyrrh boarding his vessel.

For all my own dogged beliefs I complied with the custom, and many were the rings and cups I had given to the blue-robed priests of Shorush-Tish in his great temple on the waterfront of the inner harbor at Sanurkazz.

Over by the near wall as we glided on, busy gangs of workmen swarmed over an old swifter of that class rowed in the fashion the savants call a terzaruolo. I have mentioned that the extra power gained by using a number of men on one oar rowing over an apostis in the a scaloccio system had reached the inner sea; but, like the swordships up along the coasts of the Hoboling Islands, the older system still clung on. This swifter with her five men to a bench, angled to the stern, each man pulling on one oar, could not hope to match the speed of a modern swifter of the type of Volgodont’s Fang. Yet she had been built well and the teredo had not got her, and her timbers were still sound. She had been a fairly large example, rowing five men to a bench each side and with thirty-two oars in each bank. This gave her a total of three hundred and twenty oarsmen and three hundred and twenty oars. When I say she would not reach the same speed as the more modern examples, I mean essentially the same sustained speed and the same driving power. To improve her it would be necessary to place the five men of each bench all pulling on the same oar, and to increase the length and strength of that oar out of all recognition of the smaller loom and blade hauled by a single man. This is exactly what the workmen were doing.

When completed, she would be classed as a five sixty-two swifter. I looked to see if they were building a second bank, but saw no sign that this was proposed in her rebuilding. We went through all the usual formalities of landing. The slaves were herded off to their bagnios. They would very quickly be pressed into service again, for, as the conversion of the old swifter of the a terzaruolo system showed, Magdag was scraping up all her resources to fling into what everyone here must consider as the final stages of a victorious war.

The omens looked propitious for King Genod and the overlords of Magdag as for the whole of the Grodnim alliance. I had more or less recovered from the smart of that series of disasters on the Red southern shore. Now we had come back to Magdag, For all the others here this was a homecoming. For me it was the chance to further my plans — those plans that envisaged the king, Gafard, and a voller. King Genod had duly won his Battle of Pynzalo. There had been few prisoners, and while I was glad of that, I knew the truth lay buried in the sands or running back to Pynzalo and beyond. That, I tell you, was one battle I was glad with a heartfelt gratitude to have missed.

Gafard did not tell me of what passed between him and Genod.

After all, I was as far as he was concerned merely a fellow renegade he had befriended and given employment and who had by chance come into contact with his beloved in ways that, hitherto, he had rewarded with death. I did have a privileged position of a sort, that was clear, but it did not extend past the concerns of his household and domestic matters.

He had thanked the group who had rescued the Lady of the Stars, thanked them profusely and with gold. We were only too well aware of what we had done; but the squadron under Grogor was composed of picked men, every man loyal to Gafard personally. No possible blame could attach to the King’s Striker for having his men cut down black-clad assassins and kidnappers. All the same, at the first opportunity, Genod handed over command of the army to Genal Furneld, the Rog of Giddur, and called Gafard back to Magdag. A gloss was put on this by the announcement to the army that soon Prince Glycas would take over command of the combined armies and Gafard, the King’s Striker, was required for further duties.

This Genal Furneld was of the usual cut of unpleasant overlords of Magdag and I avoided him. Giddur was sited on the River Dag in one of the great sweeping bends south of Hagon. He had arrived on the southern shore breathing fire and slaughter and having fifty men of a pike regiment punished for dirty equipment. I thought the army was welcome to him. Gafard had said, lightly, concealing his feelings, that Genal Furneld could sit down in front of Pynzalo and freeze for all he cared. No one imagined that he would carry the city with the same panache as the Sea-Zhantil. That had cheered me a little. Little time was given me for moping.

My Lady of the Stars returned to her apartments in the Tower of True Contentment and Gafard called me in to tell me that he had decided, if I was to earn my keep now that he no longer commanded actively, that I was to stand guard with the others of his loyal squadron. I do not like guard duty. But I accepted this charge with equanimity.

"The matter is simple. Grogor will give you your orders. Do not fail me, Gadak. I am a man of exceeding wrath to those in whom I have reposed trust if they betray me."

So, I bellowed, "Your orders, my commands, gernu!" and bashed off to see what unpleasantness Grogor might dream up for me.

He surprised me.

He sat in the small guardroom in the wall hard by the entrance to the tower. It was plain and furnished with a stand of weapons of various kinds, a table and chairs, no sleeping arrangements, the toilet being outside, and was a harsh and unlovely room.

"Now, Gadak, who was once a Zairian, listen to me and listen well." I was not prepared to strike him, so I listened. I had plans. I thought Grogor as a vicious killer was not worth my destroying what slender chances my plans possessed. But, as I say, he surprised me. A bulky, sweaty man, this Grogor. He said, "You told me you did not aspire to take my place in the affections of our lord and I did not believe. I was wrong. I do believe you now." He reached over a leather jack and drank with a great blustering of bubbles. He started to say "By Mother—" and stopped, and swore, a rib-creaking oath involving the anatomy of Gyphimedes, the favorite of the beloved of Grodno.

I said, "It is hard, sometimes."

"Aye."

"I serve my Lady," I said. "As you know well."

He slapped the jack onto the scarred wooden table. His sweaty, heavy face lit up. "By Grodno! But it was a good quick fight, was it not! We tore them to pieces like leems."

"Yet you missed the battle."

He looked up at me, for he sat while I stood. "Aye. What of it?"

"Nothing. Except that you strike me as a man who enjoys a good fight."

"I do." He nodded to the interior door leading into the tower. "And if anyone save the lord or people bearing his sign attempt to pass that door, it is a fight to the death."

"I understand that."

"Good. It is well we understand each other."

There was no doorway at ground level leading into the tower from the outer four courtyards around the base. The only ingress was through the guardroom in the wall. And we guarded that room and that wall and that door.

A second chamber lay alongside the guardroom in which the guards on duty but off watch might sleep and clean their tack. This room smelled of spit and polish, of sweaty bodies, of greasy food. One day, Gafard said, he would have a fresh chamber constructed and so separate the various guard functions. As it was, our prime duty was to guard my Lady.

I sent in a formal request to see Gafard. When he received me, it was in the armory, where he was inspecting a new consignment of Genodders of a superior make. They would bear the Kregish block initials G.K.S.M. in Kregish. This, quite obviously, stood for the sword from the armory of Gafard, King’s Striker.

"You want to see me?"

"Aye, gernu. I guard the tower and am happy to do so — honored—"

"Get on with it!"

"We guard the door. But the roof — we have all seen a certain flying boat—" He slapped a shortsword down so the metal rang.

"By Grodno! No honest man would think of such a thing — which proves you are no honest man and therefore of great use to me. By Goyt! We’ll fix any onkers who try to fly down like volgodonts onto my roof! We’ll impale the rasts!"

All this meant, of course, was that he had not lived, as had I, in a culture where vollers and flying animals and birds are regularly used. It was a thing he would not have thought of in the nature of his experience. But he sealed the roof as well as any roof was sealed in the Hostile Territories. Kregen is a harsh and cruel world for all its beauty, and there a man must protect his own, a woman protect her own. I had done precious little of that, lately, but I had supreme confidence in my Delia. She, at the least, would give me firm assurance that I did the right thing in thus helping to protect this unknown Zairian girl, this Lady of the Stars.

I felt sure I was right in this, and yet could give no real reason to myself. I have tried to explain as best I can the effect this maiden had on me, and although I intended to knock Gafard on the head when I could get him and the king together with a voller, I fancied I’d think of her as I hit him. One night I went on duty earlier than usual, because I was fretful and wanted to get away from some of the diffs of the squadron who were playing dirty-Jikaida (a game I do not care for), and so I wandered along by the wall thinking of Delia and all manner of distant dreams. The guardroom door was open and I went in and almost stumbled over the body of young Genal the Freckles. His neck had been cut open. The longsword was in my hand, a brand of fire in the torchlight.

The inner door to the off-duty room was shut and logs jammed it.

Three men in black swung about as I stumbled. They lunged at me. I shouted before I bothered to deal with them.

"Guards! Guards! To the tower! Treachery!" Then the blades met and rang in a glitter of steel. These three were good and they used Genodders. They would have had me, but I whipped out the shortsword and with that in my left hand fended a little, foining as I would with rapier and main-gauche. With a longsword and a shortsword this is not easy; but the second man dropped with the longsword slicing his throat out, and the third man screeched and tried to run as I chopped him as he turned. The first man was clawing up from the floor, the shortsword still transfixing his throat where I had hurled it. He collapsed in blood and then Grogor burst in from the courtyard.

"Aloft, Grogor!" I bellowed.

We kicked the logs away and the men inside, alerted by the scuffle and baffled by the jammed door, poured out. In a living tide of fury we went up the stairs. The fight was not long. The kidnappers had posted three of their number to watch the guardroom and sent three aloft. We had no mercy on them. We did not wish to hold them for questioning. We knew who had sent them. I did not see my Lady then, for she had taken her dagger and gone to her private rooms beneath the roof. We caught the kidnappers, but not before they had slain a beautiful numim maiden, her glorious golden fur foully splattered with her own blood. I cursed. When we trooped downstairs again, assured by an apim girl, a handmaiden to my Lady, that all was well, we took the three bodies and disposed of them along with the first three.

Gafard, livid, twitching, raced up the stairs without a word. He came back furious. I wondered what he would do. I knew there was nothing he could do — save send the girl to the king with a handsome note, a gracious gift.

"This is becoming expensive for the king," he said.

That was all.

I think I admired him then, as much as ever I’d done.

We kept the guard even more alert after that.

Three days later I had occasion to go into Magdag on an errand for Gafard. This was all a part of my duties as his aide. He was ordering a pearl necklace of many strands, an enormous pearl choker for his lady, and I was to deliver gold for the fittings and clasps. He trusted me in this. The souks of Magdag are strange places, filled with all the clamor one expects of markets where all is bustle, but yet completely lacking the bright, cheerful sounds of markets in Sanurkazz. Dour people, the folk of Magdag, resting on a slave foundation for labor, giving orders and whipping and shouting "Grak!" and taking the profits for themselves. They have this marvelous way with dressed leather, as I have said, although the best leather comes from Sanurkazz. I found the jewelers’ arcade and the right shop, with its barred windows and narrow door, and transacted my business. Awnings stretched out overhead and the suns’ glare was muted into gentle saffron and lime and pink. The sounds of the souks penetrated in a buzz. The walls were yellow and bright, but few vines or flowers grew, where in Sanurkazz in such a place the whole area would have rioted in blossom.

I came outside, bending my head to duck under the low Magdaggian door, and a dagger presented its point to my throat, a hand gripped my arm, and a voice said, "We mean you no harm, dom. Just come quietly with us."

In the normal course of events I would not have abided this. To slide the dagger was not all that easy, for the point pricked just above my Adam’s apple; but I did so, anyway, and kicked in the direction of the voice as I gripped the hand and twisted up and back.

Then I was outside the door, dragging one screaming wretch over the stones, seeing another reeling away — most green and bilious and vomiting — and staring at a third who held a crossbow spanned and loaded and pointing at my guts.

"We said we would not harm you, Gadak. We are on the business of a man you would do well to heed. You will come with us."

A fourth man, dressed like the others in the usual green and white robes with tall white turbans, approached and bent to say in my ear: "You are an onker! This is king’s business." The moment he spoke I saw the next few burs in all clarity — and damned awful they would be, too. If I had been recognized — but this was very much an outside chance. As we went along the crowded streets where it would have been easy for me to slip away, I did not do so. I had already convinced myself that scar-faced Golitas had recognized me only because of the stark illumination as I’d climbed up into the voller. The corner of the eye and the quick, illuminating flash can often reveal far more than the long stare. So, as I went along, I wetted and pulled my moustaches down even more into that ugly soup-straining fungus the Magdaggians think of as proper moustaches. No — I did not think the king wished to see me because I had been recognized as the arch-enemy of Magdag, the notorious Krozair, Pur Dray.

In that — about the king seeing me — I flattered myself.

Everything was conducted in the chilling, efficient way of machine governments. The house to which I was conducted was not a villa, not a hovel. It was nowhere near the king’s palace. The king would not dirty his hands with the details of his desires. The man who told me what he wanted me to do was puffy and limp-fingered, with a green-swathed paunch, bloated eyes, and moustaches so long and thin and black I felt he could tie green ribbons in each side.

He did not condescend to tell me his name; he told me I might call him gernu, and if that was not sufficient, when I received my pay I might address him as Nodgen the Faithful. It did not take a genius to understand what these cramphs wanted.

I was to arrange to open the guardroom doors, to arrange to let the kidnappers in, and this time when we jammed the door we would stand guard with more spirit and at a proper time. Of course, this Nodgen the Faithful had no idea of what had happened to his party of kidnappers. I told him, simply, they had all been slain.

"Then this time it is your neck, Gadak. We know you, renegade. You will sell your ib for an ob." I might sell my soul for a penny — but not on Earth or Kregen.

"And young Genal the Freckles? Will you serve me as you served him after I open the door, as he did?"

"He was an onker. He would have talked."

"And I will not?"

He looked annoyed. I realized I had best not pursue that line too far, otherwise he would release me from the contract prematurely — with a free passage to the Ice Floes of Sicce. So I agreed. They had a lever.

"If you betray us, be very sure you will end up on the oar benches, pulling your guts out in a swifter, flogged . . . you will not relish that, I assure you."

"How would you know?" I began to say. I did not add, as I would have done were I not meditating great, evil joy, "You fat slug!"

We agreed terms. Fifty golden oars. A large sum. I managed to get them to give me ten golden oars on account. No doubt they thought they would take them back from my dead body after I had opened the doors to them. Arrangements were made, the day was set, three days’ time, and I was taken away and left in the souk. It would be useless to return to the house. That was a mere convenient place to meet; the owners were probably bound and gagged in the cellars. I returned to Gafard’s Jade Palace. As I went in I glanced up at the Tower of True Contentment. I did not smile. But I thought of my Lady. Any man would do anything for the king to escape the galleys.

What was a mere slip of a girl besides my freedom to pursue my quest in the Eye of the World, to return to Delia?

Would not any sensible girl rejoice in the wealth and luxury the king would heap on her in return for her favors? The princess Susheeng was out of Magdag, visiting friends in Laggig-Laggu to the west. The king had a free hand. Would not any girl leap at the chance to become the king’s favorite, and use her wits to keep her head on her shoulders when he tired of her? Wouldn’t any beautiful girl of spirit leap at the chance?

I thought of the very real affection I knew existed between Gafard and the Lady of the Stars, an affection I fancied to be as true a love as any man and woman could be happy and fortunate enough to find on Kregen.

They loved each other. Whether or not Gafard deserved the love of so fine a lady I cared not. She wanted him. He might want her; that did not count. What she wanted mattered. The king must be an onker of onkers to imagine he could tame so free and fiery a spirit as hers!

Chapter Seventeen

"It is him! I know! Pur Dray, the Lord of Strombor!"

I, Gadak the Renegade, spat juicily on my harness and laid into it with a will with the best polishing cloth. Tack and gear lay spread about on the old sturm-wood table. Others of the men in the loyal squadron likewise polished and spat, spat and polished. We all felt we needed to look smart when the hired kidnappers of the king came calling.

Gafard had smiled that smile of his that was nowhere ironic but all grinning leem-grin.

"So you come to me, Gadak, knowing the king very likely can send you to the galleys?"

"If that is to be Grodno’s will, that is to—"

"Aye, aye! And how do I know you have not made another bargain with the king’s man — this Nodgen the Faithful?" Here Gafard curled his fist in contempt. "The conceit of the rast. He gives himself a name that is an anagram of the king’s. Truly, he must he faithful, the cramph."

"I made the bargain I have told you of. I am to do as poor foolish Genal the Freckles did. To put poison in the wine of the guards and to open all doors."

Gafard’s fist made a circle in the air.

"And so ten of my best men are dead, poisoned, and Genal the onker is slain."

"And they will stand a better guard this time and it will be at the mid-time, when no guard changes take place."

As I spat and polished I thought of what Gafard had said, and I did not marvel that he had reached the position he had, Ghittawrer, King’s Striker, Sea-Zhantil. For he had produced a plan that should be foolproof — for a time.

In essence it was simple and brutal.

I was to do all that the fat cramph Nodgen the Faithful commanded. Except, I was not to poison the guards; they would feign sleep and death. But I was to open the doors and then stand well clear.

"You will have men hidden, to slay the black-masks?"

"No." He was enjoying himself. Had the stakes not been my Lady of the Stars, then I know for certain that Gafard would have enjoyed this game of stealth and wits with his king as much as Genod clearly did.

"Oh, no! A slave wench will be bought from the barracoon, privately, before she is put on show for all to see. A beautiful shishi. A Zairian captive, no doubt I shall treat her with great kindness. I shall call her my Lady of the Stars. She will think herself most fortunate to be thus chosen by the King’s Striker." I said, "And this girl will be taken by the king’s men?"

"Yes. If she holds firm to her story, and she is beautiful, the king will be happy. I do not hold it against him as a king, only as a man. He has the yrium, and what he does he does." So I spat and polished and thought on about my part in this.

I must report in to Nodgen that all was ready for the day.

If there was room for any pity in my bleak old heart I do not think I spilled over much for the girl slave bought from the barracoon and taken straight up into the Tower of True Contentment. If all went well she would be the king’s mistress. If she pleased him, who knew how high she might aim or what her influence might be? Certainly, she would be far better treated than in many of the dumps and dives she might have been bought into.

Of course, if she failed to act her part and the king flew into one of the tantrum rages of which he was so terribly capable she might be strangled out of hand. But then, that was a risk, the risk of death, that everyone runs.

Thinking these and other equally odiferous thoughts on the next day, I made my way to the appointed rendezvous, a wineshop in the Alley of a Thousand Bangles. The gewgaws tinkled in the breeze off the sea, bright and sparkling, cheap and cheerful, and there were many women admiring the bangles and bartering for their purchase. The wineshop lay in a curve of the souk and I waited outside. If there was to be double treachery, I wanted a space to run and swing a sword.

Nodgen sent the same pack who had brought me to him. They eyed me with evident desire to get their own back. I said, "It is all arranged. Give me the poison." They handed over the vial and refused my request for more gold, repeated their threats, and so strode off, pushing the girls out of the way. I turned and went in the opposite direction out of disgust and so found myself crossing an open area I had scarcely ever visited before, where they sold calsanys. No one loves a calsany except for his stubborn strength in carrying burdens — oh, and, of course, for another calsany.

The animals were quite peaceful, which was useful for the salubriousness of the quarter, and I went quickly along past the auctioneers and the crowds of men — merchants, traders, caravan owners and drivers — making their bids in the quick, incomprehensible ways of auctioneers two worlds over. The whole scene was alive with the movement of commerce and the glitter of money changing hands. The breeze puffed a little dust into the air. I reached to pull up the white scarf. A voice burst out from a crowd around an exceptionally large man flogging calsanys.

"By Grodno! It is him! I know! Pur Dray, the Lord of Strombor!" I hauled the scarf up and took a running dive into the middle of a pack of calsanys. It was damned unpleasant.

But in the hullabaloo, the shouting and yelling, the braying and honking, the dust flying up, and the general effluvium upon everything, I managed to get out the other side, knock over a stall covered with calsany brasses and bells, and disappear running up an alley. People turned to gawp. I yelled "Stop, thief!" and pointed and one or two turned out to run with me. Earth or Kregen — it is a useful ploy. I may make this sound lighthearted, with calsanys doing what calsanys always do when frightened and pots and pans rolling and people yelling and running, but it was a deucedly serious business. By the Black Chunkrah, yes!

I did think that after fifty years people might forget what my ugly old face was like. But fifty years to a Kregan is not like fifty years to an Earthman. And some of those people had cause to remember Pur Dray, the most renowned Krozair upon the Eye of the World. It was not so surprising, after all. But it was most inconvenient. I think, also, that so many rumors of the return from the dead of Pur Dray had swept over Magdag that people’s nerves were keyed up. Certainly, the very next day, the day before the plot was to go into operation, some poor devil was shouted up as Pur Dray and set on and stabbed to death in the Souk of Silks. When he was dragged out by the heels, his green tunic a mass of bloody stab wounds, inquiries revealed no one anxious to own to the first shout of alarm. A lesson had been learned there by all Magdag.

So the day dawned.

Gafard said to me, standing in his armory with the wink and glitter of his priceless collections of arms upon the bare walls, speaking harshly: "Is all prepared?"

"Aye, gernu. The poison has been poured down a drain. The guards know their parts. Grogor—"

"I will answer for his conduct this day. I do not wish to miss this charade. Perhaps, one day soon, the king will relish the telling at a party. He must one day realize the position and relinquish this pursuit of my Lady."

He didn’t sound convinced.

"As for the greater news," he said, and he fired up at once, as he always did when he spoke of the notorious Krozair, "I believe Pur Dray to be in the city! It must be. He is a man who will be up and doing, always scheming, working for Zair."

How mean and small he made me feel!

"I must meet him. Somehow it must be arranged. There is a matter between us." Nowadays I would have been reminded of the famous if fatuous walk up the High Street at noon. As it was, he reminded me of a bull chunkrah pawing the ground and tossing his horns, ready to face the challenge of who was to be top chunkrah of the herd.

I said, and not altogether to goad him, "You as a Ghittawrer, gernu, have the lustre now. All the accolades won by Pur Dray lie in the past, sere and shriveled. There have been no great Jikais done by him since he returned from the dead."

He stared at me.

"You speak of things you do not understand, Gadak. You do not understand. Pur Dray was the greatest Krozair of the Eye of the World. No one doubts that or seeks to challenge it. And, today, I am the greatest Ghittawrer of the Eye of the World. Any who seek to dispute that will feel my heavy hand."

"Yet is one of the past and the other of today."

He clapped me on the back, at which I forced my hands to remain clamped at my sides.

"You mean well, Gadak. You mean well. Yet there are matters of honor that are past your comprehension."

If he meant he wanted a good ding-dong with Pur Dray to prove who was the better man, I understood that. But I was beginning to think it was not as simple as that. There was more to it than a straightforward confrontation. Gafard was fighting a legend. That is always more difficult than fighting a flesh-and-blood opponent.

So, in my cleverness, I worked it all out.

Stupid onker, Gadak the Renegade!

If only. . .

But, then, we’d all be rich and happy on if onlies.

Looking back as I do speaking to you into the microphone of this little machine here in the Antipodes, I try to visualize it all with calmness. I try to maintain a balance. I blamed myself bitterly for many and many a year afterward. I took the guilt. I did not luxuriate in guilt, as some weak people do. And yet, today, I know I was not to blame, not really, not when the situation was as it was. Gafard had no doubts.

"The king is a wonderful man, Gadak. He is built in a different mold from Pur Dray and myself. He has the true genius for war, the yrium, the power over us all. Yet he has this weakness, this fault — which is not a fault, for has he not the yrium, and does not that excuse all?" If ever there was a man trying to make excuses to himself for some other cramph, there he was now, talking to me.

"Gernu," I said. I spoke with seriousness, for the answer to my question intrigued me. This man revealed more of himself to me than he realized. And, I did not forget that he was loved by the Lady of the Stars.

"Gernu. What do you think would happen were the king and Pur Dray to meet, face to face?" He did not let me finish. A little shiver marked his shoulders and he put a hand to his face. Then he rallied. "It would be in the manner of their meeting. Were it blade to blade, or sectrix to sectrix, or in council chamber, or wherever it might be, I—" He pulled down his moustaches, for, like the Zairian moustaches they were, they insisted on growing upward and jutting out arrogantly, like mine. "I would give everything I own both to be there and yet never to have to witness that confrontation." Around about then he remembered he was a rog and the King’s Striker and a great overlord of Magdag, and I was a mere renegade looking to him for everything. He bade me clear off and make sure my Genodder was sharp for the night, just in case.

My orders were simple, for I was to open the doors and then make myself scarce. Gafard knew as well as I that the king’s kidnappers might seek to slay me to silence me. My own plans called for a somewhat more ambitious program. That plan, however, would go into operation only if the king himself came with his men. There was little chance of that, but this Genod was a man of mettle, even if he was an evil rast, and the adventure would appeal to him.

Stealth and secrecy and wild midnight journeyings by the light of the seven moons of Kregen — yes, they have all been my lot on that wonderful world. I had spied in Hamal. I had made friends of Rees and Chido. Now they had left in an argenter, going back to Queen Thyllis with a story of the inefficiency of King Genod’s guards, no doubt, and I regretted I had not plucked up the strength of will to confront them and so joy in a reunion I felt they would relish as much as I. This night might see me once again in action, taking a king and his favorite back to Zy.

The emerald and ruby fires of Antares slipped below the horizon past the jumbled roofs of Magdag, casting enormous, elongated shadows from the megaliths across the plain. The guard details changed as usual. The life of the Jade Palace went on normally. The thought of Rees and Chido calmly setting sail and leaving the Eye of the World, sailing back around the world to Hamal, filled me with the kind of baffled fury the prey of the Bichakker must feel when he unavailingly tries to climb the sloping sandy sides of the cone, and slips down into the hideous jaws waiting for him below. I was not sure who had created the sandy slopes that kept me imprisoned in the inner sea. But imprisoned I was. Any argenter in which I sailed would never pass through the Grand Canal, never reach the Dam of Days. Gafard remained aloft with his beloved when the king’s men came. The doors were open. I watched them through a chink in the inner door and saw them carry their logs and wedges to hold within any guards I had not poisoned thoroughly. This time there were no less than ten of them. Five remained to guard the escape; five went aloft. They returned very quickly bearing the shishi wrapped in a black cloak. She had ceased struggling. I saw with relief that no one carried a bloodied sword; all the blades remained in their scabbards. Silently, the black-cloaked men fled into the moon-shot darkness. After a time Grogor came down and opened the door for us, kicking the logs and wedges away.

"It is done," he said. The evil smile on his face made me think of him in a much warmer light. So we went back to our regular guard duties, for there were many other perils in Magdag besides the lusts of the genius king Genod.

The next day I went along to the rendezvous to pick up the balance of my pay, the other forty golden oars. No one turned up. I waited some time and then, with a fold of green cloth over my face, went back to the Jade Palace.

Nodgen the Faithful had proved himself damned faithless, the cramph.

Chapter Eighteen

At the Zhantil’s Lair

Of course, it had been obvious from the first that King Genod would not do his own dirty work. He would never descend to padding about one of his nobles’ palaces snuffing out a girl for himself. He was the king. He had the yrium. He would never come to me. So I had to go to him. That was settled.

I am sure I have not adequately conveyed my feelings of desperation and frustration during this time when I was Gadak the Renegade. My heart felt sore and bruised. My mind shrieked for me to be free of this evil place and to leave the Eye of the World and return to Valka and race up the long flight of steps from the Kyro of the Tridents and so burst shouting joyously into my fortress palace of Esser Rarioch and once more clasp my Delia in my arms, my Delia of the Blue Mountains, my Delia of Delphond. Before that devoutly longed-for resurrection could take place I must once more be accepted as a member of the Krozairs of Zy.

A High Jikai seemed to me to be the only way.

Truth to tell, as the days passed in Magdag and suns arched across the heavens and the duties came and went, I felt I cared little for the Krzy. I wished merely to use them to escape. If this is brutal, callous, mean, and vengeful, then this is also me, to my shame. Sometimes I would see my Lady of the Stars riding in the grassy park expanse, for the Jade Palace is large and sprawling among the buildings and palaces of Magdag, and she would graciously incline her head as I stood respectfully looking at her. She invariably wore the green veil. Then I would feel the tiny gold and enamel valkavol on its golden chain about my neck. I detest chains and strings and beads. They give a foeman a chance to grip and twist and so drag your head down ready to receive the final chop.

I wore the little valkavol, except when on duty, for then danger and instant action might occur at any moment.

Occasionally Gafard would foin with me in the exercise yard. He was very good. He was a skilled man with the shortsword, and his Genodder work made me use all my skill to let me lose to him gracefully. Although it seemed to me in my frustration and misery the time sped by superhumanly fast, as time is measured on Kregen very little elapsed before the announcement of the excursion was made and busy preparations immediately got under way.

We were to form a happy holiday party and visit Guamelga, Gafard’s enormous estates up the River Dag forming his rognate.

I said to Gafard that if he could spare me I would wish not to travel with the party. It was not that I was reluctant for a holiday. Truth was I wanted to stay in Magdag and work on my plans to take this evil king Genod and pitch him facedown in the muck and so, binding and gagging him, lug him off to a safe place. Then, I fancied, it would be comparatively simple to do the same to Gafard.

"What, Gadak the Renegade! Lose the chance of a holiday!"

"If it please you, gernu."

"It does not please me. My Lady of the Stars will go with us. She travels as she has before. But I need all my loyal men. Has Shagash got at your guts, and you are sluggish and bilious?" So there was nothing for it. I decided I would have to take Gafard and then see about the king. It would be more difficult that way around.

One thing I felt sure of. This time there would be no Chido and Rees to halt me in my tracks. Although at the time of our taking of the one-pastang flier I’d felt annoyed we’d missed the little two-place voller, now I saw the enormous benefit of that. The small flier remained in Magdag. Once I had the king I’d put the voller to good use. It would carry the three of us. I’d make it damn well carry the three of us. Its lifting and propulsive power, carried in the two silver boxes, would be ample. If necessary I’d hang the two devils in straps from the outside and let them freeze in the slipstream. . . With that decided I put a bold face on the matter. I would have to act as a man delighting in the excursion, the picnics and the hunting parties. Everyone meant to enjoy every moment. We all surmised this was a last holiday before Gafard, the King’s Striker, was dispatched on new missions for his master the king.

Before we left Magdag I carried out the last of my reconnaissances of the king’s palaces. He possessed many residences in Magdag, the largest and most gorgeous of which, the Palace of Grodno the All-Wise, he used the least. This was reserved for official functions and contained the reception chamber where I had been received as a Grodnim. Two things must coincide for my plans to work right. The voller was seen over the city from time to time and people would look up and shout and no doubt think how mighty and powerful was their king. Sometimes a green-clad arm would wave. I had been unable to discover at which palace the damned thing was kept.

If it was moved about, then that made my arrangements just a little more difficult, for — by Krun! —

they were difficult enough as it was. The voller and the king must be in the same place at the same time. Anything less would be not only suicidal, but downright stupid.

This genius king was very highly security conscious. I knew that after he had successfully won his battle against the overlords of Magdag and taken over here there had been plots against him. The overlords are a malignant lot. But he had weathered the troubled times and now kept his apparatus of guards and watches and sentinels and werstings in full order, for his genius, no doubt, told him this was a prudent course.

The next palace I reconnoitered, the Palace of Masks, looked promising. It was small, or at least small as any building of a palatial kind could ever be in Magdag of the megaliths. It hugged the crest of a hill to the east of the city just within the walls, built of yellow stone and yellow bricks. I say that it looked a charming spot, and I say that genuinely. There were more flowers and blossoming trees here than is usual in bare Magdag. I hung about looking at the guard posts and the sentry boxes, eyeing the roof with an evil glint, figuring angles and possible places for climbing and descent. If voller and king coincided here, I would strike.

Walking back to Gafard’s Jade Palace I found myself wondering how that little shishi was faring with the king. If she kept her head — and I meant that figuratively, although it had as much force literally — and maintained the fiction that she had been with Gafard for some time as his Lady of the Stars, she might become a person of extraordinary importance in Magdag. Even the princess Susheeng might have to look very carefully before she struck back.

As for Susheeng — if I never saw her again on Kregen it would be too soon. That night all was bustle and laughing preparation within the Jade Palace. Opaz knows, the overlords of Magdag were a vile, villainous bunch; but even for them, and more particularly their women, a holiday ranked as a capital time to slough off all cares. We, the men of the loyal squadron, would ride our sectrixes fully armed, armored, and accoutered. I had had a small piece of good fortune one day in the Souk of Trophies, one of the open-air markets that should, by rights, have been called the Souk of Loot. Here the stalls were heaped with booty from Zairian prizes. I recalled when I had bought a piece of cut chemzite, a handsome trinket, to take to Vallia, and the princess Susheeng had thought it for her, and of my dark knowledge later that when she discovered it was not for her the scene had saved my life. Well, I found there not a piece of jewelry but a South Zairian hlamek, a wind-and-sand mask used by the people living on the skirts of the vast South Turismond deserts. It consisted of a metal skull, a finely crafted piece of hammered iron, well-padded with soft humespack, to which were appended four long and wide white humespack panels. From the upper side of the left-hand panel a broad square of silk was hinged in such a fashion that the left hand might take the top corner and hook it to the right side. It would cover all the face below the eyes, crossing the bridge of the nose. As a protection against wind and sand it was first rate, loose and soft enough to keep the wearer comfortable. All the brave scarlet stitching had been stripped away, but the basic fastenings remained intact.

As a facemask it offered opportunities I could not refuse.

So the hlamek went into the saddlebag along with my toilet necessities, the book I was reading (How the Ghittawrer Gogol Gon Gorstar Conquered Ten Kingdoms of Zair to the Glory of Grodno), my eating irons, and the golden drinking cup, one of the set presented to all those who had rescued her by the Lady of the Stars. We drank deep and long to her health in her golden drinking cups, for she had had the forethought to include a notable quantity of wine with her gift.

In a glittering procession we rode out of Magdag early on the following morning only murs after Zim and Genodras cleared the eastern battlements of the city. Each sectrix had been rubbed down, its mane curled and decorated with green ribbons, its hooves polished. The harness burned in the light. Green banners fluttered. Following the lord came his staff and retinue, his aides, his loyal squadron. The overlords who owed him allegiance rode with their wives and families. Following after came the long lines of wagons stuffed with good things, their krahniks in the shafts and hauling on the traces as scrubbed and shining as the sectrixes and hebras of the escort. After them came the calsanys, loaded down with enormous swaying baggage packs, linked head to tail by caravan ropes dyed green. Yes, we made a goodly spectacle as we rode out of evil Magdag.

Although the slow-moving River Mag was perfectly suitable for river navigation, Gafard had chosen to ride. We could cut across the vast lazy curves of the river and cross by the ferry services provided on this, the direct route to the north. Once free of the delta we could swing to the northwest and so leave the river entirely and march through fertile country, past the chains of factory farms run in so meticulous a fashion by the overlords of the second class and journey on until we reached Guamelga in its loop of the river.

Hikdar Nath ti Hagon received special permission to leave us to ride to the east to his home town for a visit. He would rejoin us at Guamelga later.

Among our bright company there rode the Lady of the Stars, accoutered like a warrior. Gafard rarely left her side where they jogged on at the head of the column. Perforce, I was left to trundle along in the ranks and meditate on my plans.

A hunting party of a similar kind in Havilfar, if they did not fly by voller, would have flown astride any of the marvelous saddle birds or animals of that continent. With a mirvol under me, or a fluttclepper, I could have breasted into the breeze and the slipstream would have blown the cobwebs from my mind. I do not think, as I have said, I would choose a zhyan, for all that Zena Iztar had appeared to me astride one of those snow-white birds. Best of all is the flutduin in my opinion, the flyer of my warrior Djangs, and a magnificent flying creature I had introduced into Valka. It seemed to me, jogging along toward Guamelga and a holiday that would be a farce, that King Genod would very soon receive another consignment of vollers to replace the ones I had smashed up in the tide released from the Dam of Days. If the empress Thyllis meant to do a thing, she did it come hell or high water — and she’d had the high water, by Vox!

So I would have to provide the hell. That, in my mood, seemed a singularly pleasant prospect. Still and all, during my enforced imprisonment on Earth I had missed the high enjoyment of sweeping through the sky astride a giant flying mount. Even a fluttrell with its ridiculous head vane would have been like water in a desert to me then.

The city of Guamelga itself was small, gabled of roof, of no particular distinction, walled — for it was near enough the lands of the Ugas for raids to be counted on — and dominated by the harsh stone bulk of the castle, the Goytering. We did not stay in the castle or the city for long, Gafard being anxious to get away from all cares, and so we went deeper into the countryside away from the cultivated areas to one of the hunting lodges he kept up. The one he chose was the Zhantil’s Lair. A comfortable enough place set in woodlands with wide-open prospects of tall grasses beyond, it would not accommodate all his people and of those he kept with him I was one. I was pleased about this. I wanted the rogue under my eye.

Days of hunting followed. There was all manner of game, and there were leems and chavonths and, once, a pair of hunting lairgodonts. The hunting party was in sufficient strength to dispose of them. The trophies were brought back in triumph.

The Magdaggians do not go in greatly for singing. Oh, yes, they do sing, of course, and we had a few sessions around the fires of an evening. It is an odd fact that the Magdaggian swods when they sing on the march habitually bellow out only two or three songs, not caring for many others. Of these the most common is a song I find tiresome, going as it does with the beat of the studded marching sandals — "Ob!

Dwa! So!" — One! Two! Three! — followed by a doggerel verse about Genodras or Goyt or Gyphimedes or Grodno. Ob, dwa, so, as intellectual subject matter for a song, seems to me somewhat below what is necessary. Still, it takes all kinds to make a world, particularly the world of Kregen. As was to be expected, this song was known as the "Obdwa Song." When some idiot started up this song in the wood-paneled dining room, I stood up, swaying a little to color my appearance of fuddlement. "Ob, dwa so," they sang. "We’re a bloodthirsty lot, as Gashil is our witness. Ley, waso, shiv, we’ll slit throats and empty purses. Shebov, ord—" I wandered out into the paneled hall and made my way to the kitchens in search of a drink of fresh water from the pump.

The room was brilliantly lit at the far end, down by the ovens and the preparation tables, but where I had come in to get at the hand-cranked pump, shadows fell. I heard a noise and instantly, for the noise was a slither, I put my hand on my shortsword and padded forward silently. I heard a low voice, a very low voice, singing a song I knew.

It is impossible to translate the song as a poem from the Kregish to the English, as I have already mentioned. But the meaning of the words was something like: "If your swifter’s got a kink, my lads, your swifter’s got a kink. You’ll go around in circles, boys, in circles around you’ll go. Your ram will pierce your stern, old son, your ram will pierce your stern. You’ll vanish like a sea-ghost, dom, a sea-ghost you’ll become—"

At this point the soft singing stopped and I heard the evil scrape of steel on steel as a blade cleared scabbard.

A harsh voice, kept low and penetrating, bit out: "Weng da!" At the formal challenge of Weng da I said, "It is only Gadak the Renegade." For I knew who this was and I knew the next words of the song, that famous old Zairian song, "The Swifter with the Kink," were highly uncomplimentary to the Green of Grodnim and most satisfyingly urbane about the Red of Zair.

I stepped forward into the light.

If Gafard wanted to make an issue of this, well, now was a time I would not have chosen; but it was a time I would make serve. I saw the silver glitter run up and down his blade.

"Gadak! You heard?"

"I heard ’Ob, dwa, so,’ gernu. That is all."

The reflections of the blade shimmered and then were engulfed in that scabbarding screech.

"Make it so." The slur in his voice was barely noticeable. I made no formal bellow of loyalty.

I said, "But, all the same, it is hard."

He did not bite.

Instead he answered me in a way that showed he had thought about this thing and had reconciled himself.

"I am Gafard, Rog of Guamelga, the King’s Striker, the Sea-Zhantil. Few men carry the honor I command. You would do well to think of who your just masters are, Gadak the Renegade." My hand rested limp and relaxed, ready to whip the Genodder out in a blur of steel.

"You told me, gernu, that no overlord would treat me as you have done. This I believe. I think had you been an ordinary overlord of Magdag one of us would be dead by now." He stepped into the light and smiled. He was not quite perfectly composed. "If that were so, I think it would be you who lay stretched in his own blood on the kitchen floor."

"Yet you did not strike."

"My Lady has said — it is a thing I marvel at—" He put something of his old imperiousness into his words. "She has taken a fancy to you, Gadak. For that alone many an overlord would have you done away with."

"Yet this business with the king — it is a worry."

He lost his smile and scowled.

"I have said before, this is no matter for you to concern yourself with. I am the King’s Striker! The king has the yrium! That is all there needs to be said."

"That is all — until the next time."

"You step dangerously near the bounds of impudence, of insubordination. If one of us accused the other of singing ’The Swifter with the Kink,’ who do you think the overlords would believe? Riddle me that, Gadak!"

"You are secure in your power, gernu. Yet—" I stopped.

"Yes. Yet?"

"I will say no more. I serve you and my Lady. You know that to be sooth."

"I know it is sooth now. Let it remain sooth."

If I clouted him over the head now I’d have the devil of a job hauling him back to Magdag and then of taking the king and the voller. Better by far to grab the king first, with the voller, as I planned, and then bundle up this Gafard after. Yes, far better.

As I stood there with him in the kitchen I thought how dark and dangerous and powerful a man he was. I would then and there have joyed in hand-strokes with him, for he was a doughty fighter. But I let the opportunity pass.

"When, gernu, do we return to Magdag?"

"You are tired of this holiday? Aye, it palls." He stretched and yawned. "Give me the thrust of a swifter, to stand as prijiker in the bows, to bear down in the shock of the ram — aye! That is living."

"It is," I said. I believed the words as I spoke them.

"We will roam the Eye of the World, Gadak! We will create many a High Jikai! Soon all men will forget that Pur Dray existed — he will be a name, lost and forgotten with Pur Zydeng, the greatest Krozair of five centuries past. Dead with the great Ghittawrer Gamba the Rapacious, who went to the Ice Floes of Sicce these thousand seasons gone. Aye!"

"And yet, gernu, you speak always of the Lord of Strombor. I know you have no fear of him. But your interest interests me. I am fascinated not by Pur Dray but by your fascination." He had forgotten to be imperious. His eyes held a long-lost look of a man sinking in a death-race of the sea.

"The Lord of Strombor was the greatest Krozair of his time. Greater than any Ghittawrer of Magdag. I would prove I am his match — and there is more. For this matter between us — and I speak to you like this only because my Lady smiles on you. I shall be sorry, tomorrow, and you may tremble lest I have your head off for it." He was, I could see, more than a little fuddled with wine. He was not drunk. I never saw him drunk or incapable. But he had had his tongue loosened.

Irritation at his petty problems flooded me. Perhaps I might have flamed out, in my stupid, prideful arrogance: "Sink me! You stupid onker! I am Pur Dray and what is this matter between us you prate so of?"

But I did not. I do not think, had I done so, it would have made any difference. He probably would not have believed me, anyway, then.

He pulled himself erect and slapped his left hand down on his longsword hilt. "Enough of this kitchen talk! I came here to — to vent a little spleen. I want no more of them in there this night. Attend me to my room."

"Aye, gernu."

We went up the back stair to his suite of chambers in the Zhantil’s Lair. They were lavish and expensive, as one would expect, hung about with trophies of the chase. A lounge had been furnished by a man’s hand. But through the inner doors lay the apartments of my Lady of the Stars. He slumped down in a chair and bellowed for wine.

"You, Gadak the Renegade. Have you ever been outside the Eye of the World? Out to the unknown, improbable lands there?"

I poured him his wine and pondered the question.

"Yes, gernu."

"Ah!" He took the wine. The shadows of the room clustered against the samphron oil lamps’ gleam.

"You have never seen my Lady — before you met me?"

"No. I swear it." This could be dangerous. "I respect her deeply. I feel I have proved that, yet I would not in honor speak of it."

"Yes, yes, you have served. And you swear?"

"I swear."

"And she is very tender of you. She was much impressed when you slew the lairgodonts. That was a Jikai. You trespass where no man has trespassed before — and lived."

"I am an ordinary man. I know my Lady has the most tender affection for you. Do you think I would—?"

"What you, Gadak?" He drank the wine off, and laughed, and hurled the glass to smash against the wall, splattering a leem-skin hung there with dregs and glass, shining in the light. "No, Gadak, for I recognize you. You are the upright, the correct, the loyal man. You know which side your bread’s buttered. With me you have the chance of a glittering career. You may be made Ghittawrer soon."

"If the king’s man, this Nodgen the Faithful, does not have my head for the king."

"No. No chance of that. The king and I — we play this game, but for him it is a game. For me the stakes are too high. I do not know what I would do if my Lady was taken from me—" He bellowed for fresh wine then, to cover his words.

"She must not fall into the king’s hands." He drank deeply. I had never seen him drunk; he was in a fair way to showing me that interesting phenomenon for the first time. "She must not! He would do what I should do — should do — and, by Green Grodno, cannot, will not — will never!" I saw clearly that some oppressive matter weighed on his mind. As a renegade he was not fully accepted by the overlords. He believed in the king and yet in this matter he could not talk to the king. He desperately wished to confide in someone, as is a common practice among people, I have noticed. If he decided to tell me, I wondered if that would make my position more secure or destroy me utterly. I rather thought it would be the latter. Yet this man fascinated me. I could feel the strong attraction he exerted despite the evil of him. He was a mere man, as was I. He would pay for his crimes. Was the changing of allegiance from Red to Green so great a matter anywhere but on the inner sea? I found it hard to condemn him as I knew him now, as I had found it easy to condemn him when I did not know him.

"Riddle me this, Gadak. Which is more important, the good of your lady or the good of your country?"

"That has had many facile answers, and every case is different."

"But if it was you — you! Your answer?"

"No man can answer until he has faced the situation and the question."

"Do you know that my Lady of the Stars and I are married? No — only a very few know. Grogor knows. We married permanently. Not in the rites of Grodno—" He picked up his glass and spilled most of it. He barely noticed.

"Then the king would honor a legal and sanctified marriage."

"Fambly! He has the yrium. And the rites were not the rites of Grodno." He chuckled. "Even though there were two ceremonies, neither was that of Grodno." And he drank and let the glass slip through his fingers.

I felt a prod might bring him back to reason. For so strong and powerful a personality he was letting go of his will, was allowing this matter that tormented him to undermine all the strength he possessed, and so I knew this was no ordinary matter that so obsessed him. I spoke carefully.

"If the king succeeded in taking my Lady, would your men fight to regain her? If the fact was over and done, would they risk treason against the king? In that situation would not their loyalty to the king transcend their loyalty to you?"

He struggled to rise and slumped back, panting.

"So that is how you answer the question of loyalty to your lady and loyalty to your country!"

"You should know better — if this is the case you present, then—"

"It is the case! Grogor would go up against the king for me, I know! And I picked you, for I thought you would be loyal — even if I could not, for the king has the yrium, even if I could not — you—" If that was his problem I fancied the stab of an emergency would quickly make up his mind for him. As though Drig himself had heard me and mocked me, on that thought the door opened and Grogor burst in. He looked ghastly. Both Gafard and I knew, at once, almost word for word what he would say. Gafard lumbered up, screeching, drawing his sword. Swords would be useless for a space, I fancied.

"Gernu! She is taken! Stikitches — real assassins in metal faces, professionals . . . They ride toward the Volgodonts’ Aerie!"

The Volgodonts’ Aerie, another hunting lodge like the Zhantil’s Lair, stood some three burs’ ride away in the woods. That, we could not have foreseen.

Gafard’s face appeared both shrunken and bloated. His eyes glared. All the drink he had taken made his face enormous and yet the horror of the moment shriveled him. He gasped and struggled to breathe. I caught him and lowered him into his chair. Grogor stood, half bent, expecting an avalanche of invective. Gafard croaked words, vicious, harsh words like bolts from a crossbow.

"We must ride, Grogor! Have the sectrixes saddled up. Gather the men. We must ride like Zhuannar of the Storm!"

"Rather, master, call on Grakki-Grodno—"

I knew what he meant. Grakki-Grodno was the sky-god of draft-beasts of Magdag. So for all his brave talk, he had failed the test.

But Grogor said, "The king has taken my Lady and she is now his. He is the king and he has the yrium. The men would have fought for you — have fought for you, master — when she was rightfully yours. Now she is rightfully the king’s. No man will raise his hand against the king." Then, this bulky, sweaty man, a renegade, drew himself up. "I would ride, my lord. Would you have me ride alone against the king?"

He had a powerful point. Gafard looked crushed. The strength and power oozed out of him. I felt a crushing sorrow for the Lady of the Stars. Evidently the little shishi had failed to convince the king. Spies had done the rest. There were those in Gafard’s household who did not love him, that was certain, and we had made a splendid spectacle riding out of Magdag. There was no point in my offering to ride. If Gafard roused himself, if Grogor rode, that would be three of us against a band of professional stikitches. The assassins of Kregen are an efficient bunch of rasts when they have to be, and on a task of kidnapping they are no less ruthless. No, sorrowful though this made me, I would have to go with the majority.

My own concerns for my Delia must come first. My Delia — ah! How I longed for her then . . . How could a pretty girl, even a girl with the fire and spirit and charm of the Lady of the Stars, stand for a moment in my thoughts against my Delia!

The shadows in the corner of that masculine room — with the harsh trophies of the hunt upon the walls, the stands of arms, the pieces of harness and mail, the tall motionless drapes — all breathed to me of softer, sweeter things: of Delia’s laugh, the sight of her as we swam together in Esser Rarioch, the love we had for our children, all the intimate details that make of a man and a woman, make of a marriage, a single and indivisible oneness.

No, I would not throw away my Delia’s happiness for my Lady of the Stars. Gafard was breathing in hoarse, rattling gasps. The drink, the shock, the fuddlement, had left him bereft of that incisive command. He had been stricken down.

"The men will not ride!" He shook his head, hardly able to believe and yet knowing the stark truth of it. He turned to me and stretched out a hand. "And you, Gadak the Renegade, the man I chose and pampered — will you, Gadak, ride for me this night?"

"No," I said.

He fell back in the chair. His face sagged. He looked distraught, wild, near-insane. Then he proved himself.

"Then to Sicce with you all! I will ride myself, alone, for I know well what my Lord of Strombor will say!"

I felt no shock, only puzzlement.

He staggered up, waving his arms, casting about for his mail. I gripped his arm and Grogor jumped. I said, "What is this of the Lord of Strombor?"

Gafard swung a wild, sweaty face upon me. The sweat clung to his dark, clustered curls and dripped down his face. The lines in that face were etched deep. His beard bristled.

"You onker! If the king takes my Lady — Pur Dray is in the city! He has been seen in Magdag, it is very sure." He spoke down from that high screech, as a man explaining a simple problem to a child. He put a hand on my hand. "Let me go, Gadak, traitor, ingrate! I will save my Lady for Pur Dray and then I will deal with you."

I held him. Grogor moved and I swung my head and glared at him. "Stand, Grogor, as you value your life!" I shook Gafard, the King’s Striker. "Listen to me, Gafard! You prate of Pur Dray, the Lord of Strombor. What has he to do with this matter? Tell me the matter that lies between you, Gafard! Tell me!

What has the Lord of Strombor to do with the Lady of the Stars?" Some semblance of sanity returned to him. He was Gafard, the Sea-Zhantil, and he was not to be shaken by a mere mercenary, a renegade, a man he had made!

"You cramph!" he said. He spoke thickly. "You are a dead man — for you sit and let my Lady go to certain death — hideous death — death by torture for what she knows, and, before that, to humiliation and the baiting of a trap."

"Tell me, Gafard, you nurdling great onker! Tell me!"

He shrieked as my fingers bit into the bones of his arm.

He twisted and glared up, his fierce, predatory face close to mine and so like my own, so like my own.

"You fool! Pur Dray, the greatest Krozair of the Eye of the World, is here, in Magdag. And King Genod takes the Lady of the Stars! When he finds out, as he will find out — for he has the yrium, he will find out

— then — and then—"

I shook him again. I bore down on him, all the hateful ferocity in my face overmatching his own. Grogor took another step and I said "Grogor!" and he stopped stock still.

"When the king finds out what, Gafard? What is this trap? Tell me or I will break your arm off!" He shrieked again and foam sprang to his lips. He tried to pull away and Grogor moved once more so I swung Gafard, the King’s Striker, about, prepared to hurl him at Grogor. I could feel his bones grinding under my fingers.

"Now, Gafard, now!"

"You are a dead man, Gadak! For King Genod has taken Velia, who is the daughter of Pur Dray, the Lord of Strombor."

Chapter Nineteen

Stricken by genius

Gafard screamed it out, foaming, as I hurled him into the chair.

"The king has taken Velia, Princess Velia, daughter to Pur Dray, the Lord of Strombor, Prince Majister of Vallia!"

Everything blurred.

I remember colliding with Grogor on my way to the door and knocking him flying. There were stairs. There were people shouting and milling. Men stood in my way and were suddenly not there. There were softnesses under my feet. The air was suddenly cool and fresh. Stars blazed. The moons were up, gliding silently through the starfields. The sectrix stalls lay shrouded in darkness. Harness — no time, no time —

bareback! A sectrix beneath me. A vicious kick, more vicious kicks. The lolloping six-legged gait. Hard, merciless kicks, the flat of my sword, then sharper, more urgent bounding. The dark flicker of tree branches overhead. The dazzlement of the moons. The harsh, jolting ride, the clamor of hooves, the rush of wind, the pain, the agony, the remorse—

Velia!

My little Velia!

Fragments, I remember, of that night ride with the horror gibbering and clawing at me, the ghastly specters obscenely taunting me, mocking me—

I knew what this kleesh of a King Genod would do when he discovered he held in his hands the daughter of Dray Prescot, the Lord of Strombor, the notorious and dreaded Krozair of Zy. I would consign all the Krzy to Sicce to save my daughter.

What would Delia say? What would be her agony?

I galloped and galloped and I galloped as a man who has no heart, has never had a heart, and is never likely to find a heart in this wicked world.

Velia . . . Velia . . . The sectrix hooves beat out her name on the hard forest paths, over the rippling grasslands silver and pink and gold beneath the moons, the breeze swaying them as a breeze ruffles the inner sea.

Years and years ago I had last seen her. I had not recognized her, and she had not recognized me. Yet — was not that strange feeling I had suffered now explained, the weird compulsion in me to do nothing to destroy the happiness of the Lady of the Stars? Now I knew why Gafard, the King’s Striker, was not bundled in a blanket and safely in the hands of the Krozairs upon the fortress isle of Zy. If we had not recognized each other’s faces, and our names had been strange and false, had not the blood called, one to the other? Oh, maybe that is sentimental nonsense, maybe it is mere wishful thinking; but there had been some deep psychological force drawing and binding me to my daughter. Perhaps the racial unconscious, if there be such a thing, is most pronounced and powerful in relatives, and the only bond as powerful as that of a father to his daughter is that of a mother to her son. The sectrix’s hoofbeats echoed in my ears, a strange triple echo. I twisted about. In that streaming moonlight a second sectrix followed me, bounding along, its rider’s cape flaring in the golden light. The man rode like a maniac. He rode as I rode.

I recognized Grogor.

I smashed at my mount again and he responded. We flew out into a clearing of the tall grasses and splashed across a stream. On and on — the stikitches would take my daughter to the king at the Volgodonts’ Aerie. There was every chance he would have flown here in the little two-place airboat. If he had I would take his voller. Somehow I did not think I would bother to take him back to Zy. Looking back now, as that mad ride brought me raving across the wild country to the Volgodonts’

Aerie, I recognize my headlong foolishness. I had been denied many of the best years in which a father may see his children growing up. Velia had been three when the damned Star Lords had whirled me back to Earth for a miserable twenty-one years; she would be twenty-five now. What had her life been like?

Fragments, impressions, the jolting of the sectrix, the blustering of the wind, the pain in my jaws, and over all the moonshine, streaming gold and pink and glorious upon the nighted face of Kregen, mocking the blackness upon me. For every moon shone in the sky, full and gleaming, in that tiny period when the three smaller moons in their hurtling passages coincide and form with the Maiden with the Many Smiles, and the Twins, and She of the Veils; that magic time of the Scarf of Our Lady Monafeyom. Brilliant the light, brilliant and yet soft with the exquisite delicacy of moonlight. The land lay as though enchanted.

And through that magic midnight splendor I rode with the devils gibbering at me and ghastly phantasms tormenting my mind, for I knew that this genius king planned no pleasure for my Velia. Through a screen of trees I flung the sectrix, striking away branches and leaves, silver and gold and rose in the radiance, and bore out onto a meadow where a stream ran, liquid bronze under the moons of Kregen — and there lifted the Volgodonts’ Aerie.

Stark and many pinnacled, it rose against the stars like a stretched and piercing claw of a volgodont itself.

The sectrix was not as fine a mount as Grogor’s. Now Gafard’s second in command was up with me. The two animals galloped neck and neck. I did not speak. I could not speak. I stared ahead as a leem stares, entirely vicious and feral, without mercy.

Grogor shouted. "We will never save her — only us two! The lord follows. Gadak, this is madness!" I did not answer him, but hit my failing beast with the flat of the sword.

"The lord bid me say he would forgive you, Gadak, only if you humble yourself to him — he follows —

Gadak!"

Still I did not answer. We raced on. I feel sure that you who listen to my story will long ago have realized who the Lady of the Stars was, that she was my daughter. Now, with hindsight, it seemed obvious. But, to me, plain Dray Prescot who had so little experience of daughters to go on, how could that stunning truth possibly be easy? I had not known, had had no remotest idea. How could I?

Sectrix riders trotted out into the clearing to front us.

I saw their green cloaks, weird in the moons’ radiances, and the blackness of their clothes. Pinkly golden glitter reflected from their steel facemasks. They wore mail.

Grogor saw and cursed.

I did not halt the laboring sectrix. The animal lunged straight ahead, gasping in convulsive effort, the steam jetting from his nostrils. The stikitches lifted their swords. There were six of them, I believe. I did not count. I recollect the jar of blade on blade, the quick and deadly cut, and the vicious thrust. I lopped and chopped. I spitted. The facemasks splintered in shards of flying metal. I whirled that Ghittawrer weapon and I sliced those damned assassins, and there was no real time or reason in it beyond the swirling madness in my brain, the crazy viciousness of insanity driving me on. The six of them, if there were six of them, lay sprawled upon the grass of the meadow, their black and shining blood dribbling in pools from their mutilated bodies. I did not spare a single look, but hit the sectrix and galloped on. I did hear Grogor screaming: "You are a devil!" That was true. Why remark on it?

"We are too late!" Grogor was yelling and hauling his beast up. He almost collided with me, the six-legged animals struggling together and staggering sideways.

"Get out of my way, rast!" I said, hauling my mount up, driving it to stand and run although it was almost done. "Look!" Grogor pointed. He pointed up. I looked. If the king was away in the voller it would be over.

A great winged shape lofted from the top tower of the Volgodonts’ Aerie. Against the radiance of the moons the fluttrell soared up, his wide pinions beating in that long, effortless rhythm of the saddle bird. Grogor yelled in openmouthed disbelief. The truth was plain. More argenters had arrived from Hamal and as well as vollers they carried saddle birds. The fluttrell was the most common saddle-mount of Havilfar. Thyllis had spared a few to please the whim of King Genod and he had mastered the knack of flying and had come here, in person, to show off his prowess to his new conquest, the Lady of the Stars, who had once been the lady of Gafard, the King’s Striker, and was now the lady of the king — for a time.

"The devil from the bat-caves!" yelled Grogor. My sectrix staggered with exhaustion. Grogor hauled out his bow, drew and nocked an arrow, lifted and let fly. I reached out to him, dropping the blood-choked Ghittawrer sword. But his fingers released the string and the shaft flew. If he hit Velia . . . !

The fluttrell winged up, its pinions beating. I did not see the arrow strike. I saw those wings suddenly flap limply; they beat off-rhythm; and the bird swerved in the air.

Grogor’s arrow had wounded the fluttrell, yet it could still fly. I saw it curve around in a mazy, sweeping circle. It was dropping. The wings beat erratically. The bird extended its legs, talons spread wide. Grogor hauled out his sword. He yelled, high and fierce. He sent his mount charging for the point where the bird would land. I could see two figures on the fluttrell’s back, abaft the wide head vane. Two figures, struggling. I held my breath.

The king must have newly learned the art of flying a saddlebird. I guessed my Velia — my Velia! My daughter! — would be an expert in the air, trained by my Djangs astride flutduins. She would not thus foolishly struggle as a bird planed in for a landing.

Grogor’s sword blurred in the mingled light of the Scarf of Our Lady Monafeyom. The king saw us below him. I saw his face, a pale blur in the light, saw it lift and stare past that other face so near his hateful features, stare and look past me. I turned. A body of men rode in the shadows of the trees. It was difficult to distinguish them, save for the green and the mail and the glitter of weapons and war harness. I did not think they rode on behalf of Gafard. But they might. Gafard, himself, might ride at their head.

This is what the king thought.

I swung back. Grogor was bellowing and shaking his sword.

The bird made a last effort. It beat its wings and tried to rise. The two faces up there were close together as the bird tried to lift and fly in obedience to the frenzied flogging from Genod’s goad. It tried to beat its pinions and rise up, and could not. I saw those two faces — then there was one face only above the fluttrell’s back and a white-clad form pitching headlong from the air. King Genod, the genius, had thrown my daughter from the fluttrell, thrown her to the ground beneath. Relieved of the extra weight the fluttrell beat more powerfully and rose. Its wings thrashed the air. It lifted and soared up. Grogor’s second shot fell far too short.

I saw all that from the corner of my eye, not heeding.

I saw the spinning form of Velia, her white dress swirling out, pitch down through the empty air. She fell. She fell to the ground. She fell. She fell on the ground.

I was riding hard.

How often I had picked up little Velia as she tottered on her chubby little legs, there on the high terrace of Esser Rarioch, learning to walk, determined, clambering up and trying again, to tumble down again in a sprawl of her short white dress.

I rode on.

An arrow whipped in past Grogor’s ear. He swung his mount about, yelled, high: "Overlords! We are dead men! We must run!"

He stuck in his spurs and was away, the sectrix hurtling along low over the ground, its shadows spreading about it, undulating eerie blobs of half-darkness.

The overlords of Magdag trotted over the meadow toward me.

I galloped and I did not care what the damned overlords did.

The six legs of my beast skidded and splayed as I reined it up. I was off its bare back. It just stood, waiting for me to remount.

I knelt.

She lay crumpled, her white dress spread out, with no sign of blood anywhere. Her eyes were open, those beautiful brown eyes I could see now were those of a Vallian; beautiful brown eyes like my Delia’s. Her glowing brown hair was dyed black and artificially curled, in imitation of a Zairian. That was so.

"Velia," I said, and I choked.

"Why, Gadak," she said. "You know my name." As she spoke a tiny line of blood trickled from the corner of her mouth. "I — I like that, Gadak, for I have always been fond of you."

"Velia—" I took her hand in mine as I knelt. It was cold. "Velia — I am not Gadak. That is not my name."

She smiled up. Now I could see my Delia in her face — my glorious Delia reborn in a subtly different way, as glorious, as wonderful — and thrown callously through the air by a genius.

"You will look after me, Gadak? And my lord? He is safe?"

"He is safe, my heart. Listen — I love your mother as no man has loved a woman. There in Esser Rarioch we were happy, and we joyed in our twins, Segnik and Velia—" She stared at me, her soft mouth curling in puzzlement, for she felt no pain.

"What do you say, Gadak? What of — Esser Rarioch, and Valka? And — my mother — you — I have no father. He is gone away, a long way away, a long time ago."

Those Star Lords! If I’d had one under my hands then, he would never more play cruel tricks on plain men.

"Yes, Velia, you are my dear daughter, for I am your father, and I have sinned — it is all my fault —

and—"

"Father . . . ?"

"Yes."

I did not know what she would do. Had she cursed and reviled me I would know she was right. She said, "Gadak — you do not say this — to please me? Where is my lord? Has he told you to say this?"

I held her hand and it was cold. I touched her lips with a silk kerchief and wiped away the blood. I smoothed her hair. We spoke, then, and I told her little things, things that she would understand Dray Prescot, the Strom of Valka, would understand. She could not move. She smiled and I saw in her face that she forgave me. I did not deserve that, but she forgave me. We talked — and I took her into my arms and held her and smoothed her hair and looked down upon her face. Her pallor gave her an ethereal beauty there in the light of the moons of Kregen as the Scarf of Our Lady Monafeyom gleamed in pure brilliance against the stars.

"Father?" She understood I spoke the truth. "I wish my lord were here. We are married. In the rites of Zair and Opaz. He is a fierce man, proud and brave, but very gentle. He means well." She moved her head slowly to one side, and then back, nestling in my arms, and looked at me. "There is a child. My little Didi. Gafard — my lord, my beloved — keeps her well hidden. She will love her new grandfather."

I had to close my mouth. I could not speak.

"I came with Zeg to the Eye of the World. He is a great Krozair, Father, a famous Krozair of Zy. And

— and I was taken. I fought them with my dagger as Mother knew I would. The Sisters of the Rose . . . but it was Gafard, my lord. I knew, even then, and he knew, too." She breathed a long, shuddering sigh and I looked down on her, but she went on speaking in that small girl’s voice through the gathering darkness about her. "The king — Genod — is evil, Father. Drak and Zeg have told me. Now he has vollers and birds. The overlords — they laughed when the king flew off with me. If only Gafard—" The mists were closing down over her eyes. She stared up, trying to see me clearly. "Father — where is Mother? Where is my lord?"

"They will soon be here, Velia, my heart. You will soon see them. And little Didi." Now I could hear the trampling of sectrixes and the clatter of harness. The overlords of Magdag were riding up for me. A strong party galloped in pursuit of Grogor. They left their comrades to deal with the willful girl and this uncouth man of Gafard’s. They approached slowly, confident in their might. My sectrix still stood, head drooping, reins dangling, waiting for me to mount up and ride. I held my Velia in my arms, her head against my breast, and I would not move.

"It is very dark, Father. Is this the night of Notor Zan?"

"Yes, Velia. The Scarf of Our Lady Monafeyom is all rolled up and put away, and the dark cloak of Notor Zan is unfolded. You will sleep for a while. Then Mother and Drak and Lela and Segnik and your Didi will come to see you."

"I long to see them again, and Jaidur and Dayra and—" Her soft whispering voice gathered strength.

"And my lord?" She tried to move in my arms. "And my lord Gafard? He will come to see me. He is safe

— Father! He is safe?"

"Yes, Velia my daughter, Gafard is safe."

"You will like him, Father. I wished you could have known him. He is a very good man and he loves me so." Her eyes were wide open, not seeing me. "It is very dark. When will Mother come to see me? And Gafard . . ."

The overlords of Magdag trampled nearer in their iron and their might. I, Dray Prescot, with a host of stupid titles, sat and held my daughter Velia in my arms. Shadows fell across the bright faces of the moons.

Toward the end her sight cleared. She looked up as I held her cradled and she saw the tiny gold and enamel valkavol she had given me.

"The valkavol!" she said, and the dark blood ran down her white chin, thick and thicker. "Father — it will be all right . . ."

I did not care if the whole of Kregen heard her. The overlords meant nothing. The metallic rattle of their war harness sounded loudly now, the stamp of sectrix hooves iron-hard on the turf. She lost that brief spurt of luminous reason. She lay back in my arms, as she had when I had first held her, looking up from her tiny face to the glory of my Delia beyond, smiling. Her hands and her face were ice-cold.

"My lord . . ." she whispered. "My love . . ."

She was slipping from me.

"Mother," she said. "Here is Father."

The pallor of her face, the coldness of her, and that ugly red dribble from her mouth . . .

"Father—" she said again. And then: "Gafard." She spoke his name three or four times. At the end she said, "Oh, to be home in Val—"

The overlords of Magdag rode up to take me.

I sat on the ground holding the broken body of my daughter in my arms as they came for me — as my Velia died.

Notes

[1]This refers to the map Prescot drew that is appended to Volume 5 of his saga, Prince of Scorpio. It is quite clear that this map was a mere sketch to indicate the main landmasses and seas. No doubt more detailed maps will eventually appear. Prescot has provided a map of the inner sea and this will be appended to Volume 3 of the Krozair Cycle. A.B.A.

[2]Yrium: a word of profound and complex meaning, more than charisma — force, power conveyed by office or strength of character, or given to a person in a way that curses or blesses him with undisputed power over his fellows. A.B.A.

[3]Wenda: Let’s go.

[4]Ley: four

About the author

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

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

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

The Dray Prescot Series

The Delian Cycle:

1. Transit to Scorpio

2. The Suns of Scorpio

3. Warrior of Scorpio

4. Swordships of Scorpio

5. Prince of Scorpio

Havilfar Cycle:

6. Manhounds of Antares

7. Arena of Antares

8. Fliers of Antares

9. Bladesman of Antares

10. Avenger of Antares

11. Armada of Antares

The Krozair Cycle:

12. The Tides of Kregen

13. Renegade of Kregen

14. Krozair of Kregen

Vallian cycle:

15. Secret Scorpio

16. Savage Scorpio

17. Captive Scorpio

18. Golden Scorpio

Jikaida cycle:

19. A Life for Kregen

20. A Sword for Kregen

21. A Fortune for Kregen

22. A Victory for Kregen

Spikatur cycle:

23. Beasts of Antares

24. Rebel of Antares

25. Legions of Antares

26. Allies of Antares

Pandahem cycle:

27. Mazes of Scorpio

28. Delia of Vallia

29. Fires of Scorpio

30. Talons of Scorpio

31. Masks of Scorpio

32. Seg the Bowman

Witch War cycle:

33. Werewolves of Kregen

34. Witches of Kregen

35. Storm over Vallia

36. Omens of Kregen

37. Warlord of Antares

Lohvian cycle:

38. Scorpio Reborn

39. Scorpio Assassin

40. Scorpio Invasion

41. Scorpio Ablaze

42. Scorpio Drums

43. Scorpio Triumph

Balintol cycle:

44. Intrigue of Antares

45. Gangs of Antares

46. Demons of Antares

47. Scourge of Antares

48. Challenge of Antares

49. Wrath of Antares

50. Shadows over Kregen

Phantom cycle:

51. Murder on Kregen

52. Turmoil on Kregen

Contents

A note on Dray Prescot

1 – We ride into Magdag

2 – The flash of a Ghittawrer blade

3 – Ringed by renders

4 – Gafard, the King’s Striker, the Sea-Zhantil

5 – Zena Iztar advises me in King Genod’s palace

6 – Gadak the Renegade rides north

7 – The Lady of the Stars

8 – Concerning the mystery of the escaped prisoners

9 – Museum pieces

10 – Of red sails and green banners

11 – The Golden Chavonth leads us a dance

12 – Of Duhrra, dopa, and friends

13 – King Genod reviews his army

14 – I avoid old comrades

15 – My Lady of the Stars wields a dagger

16 – Grogor surprises me

17 – "It is him! I know! Pur Dray, the Lord of Strombor!"

18 – At the Zhantil’s Lair

19 – Stricken by genius

Notes

About the author

The Dray Prescot Series