Chapter Fourteen

“It is my Dray! My Dray Prescot you covet!”

One of the strange and, if the truth be told, weird, aspects of the Wizards of Loh was revealed in that grove of tuffa trees as we rested our corths and rearranged our flight program. Lu-si-Yuong, without a word of explanation to Seg or myself, squatted himself down on the ground in the pinkish light from the twin moons, composed himself and, lifting his veined hands to his eyes, threw his head back and so remained still and silent and unmoving.

Seg whispered: “I think, Dray, he is in lupu.”

“Oh?” I really hardly cared.

“Yes. They say the Wizards of Loh can see into the future—”

“A simple story for simple minds. The credulous will believe any mumbo jumbo and it puts a copper into the hands of clever tricksters.”

Seg glanced obliquely at me, his mouth open. He shut his mouth, and looked back at Yuong, and did not say what he so clearly thought. I had a mind to speak more kindly toward him, for he was of Loh, but I forbore. Delia! I remembered my anguish when among the tents and the wagons and chunkrah herds of the Clansmen of Felschraung I had heard my Delia was dead, and I recalled my determination to remain alive and fighting strong so that if, as I truly believed, she was not dead, I would be able to render her what aid I could. Now, as the Wizard of Loh went through his mumbo jumbo I made the same solemn vow.

Quietly, I said to Seg: “I came away from the tower tonight, Seg, for there were reasons why I should do so. I cannot believe that Delia is truly dead. I shall go on until I find Umgar Stro, wherever he may be. I think he was lucky not to be home tonight, and yet more unfortunate, too.”

“How is that, dom?” asked Seg in a neutral voice.

“I would have killed him tonight, stone dead. But if it takes me long to find him then there will be that amount more time in which to store resentment, and to think of ways of making him talk and — pay!”

Seg turned his eyes away from my face.

Lu-si-Yuong began to tremble. His thin shoulders shook and over all his scrawny body beneath the rags he shuddered and then he began slowly to draw his palms from before his eyes. His eyeballs were rolled up, displaying the whites like a bird-befouled marble statue’s, and his breathing had practically ceased.

“Lupu,” I said. “Is that it?”

“Aye, Dray, that is being in lupu. He is having visions. Who can tell where his mind is wandering now—”

“Get a grip on yourself, Seg!”

All the fey characteristics of his race predominated in Seg Segutorio now, all the dark and hidden lore in his native hills of Erthyrdrin pulsed and answered the weirdness of this old man, this San, this Wizard of Loh.

As the streaming pink moons-light fell upon that gaunt upturned face and turned those blind eyes into cracked yellow pits I looked about the grove of tuffa trees and at the three corths uneasily picking and pecking their feathers, and I, Dray Prescot of Earth, wondered at the faces of Kregen I had not yet seen. A gargling cry wailed from Yuong. His trembling ceased. Unsteadily, waveringly, he tottered to his feet. He opened his arms wide, the fingers rigid and outspread. Like some blasphemous cross he gyrated, like a cyclone-torn scarecrow, like a whirling dervish in the last stages of exhaustion. Then, as abruptly as he had begun, he sank down, resumed his contemplative position, and so lowered his hands flat to the ground and opened his eyes and looked on us.

“And have you looked into the future, old man?” I said.

“Dray!” Seg’s outraged cry affected me not at all.

San Yuong looked at me. I think, even then, he did not know how to size me up or to read me in the context of those people with whom he was accustomed to deal. I do know now, and admit it with only the slightest diffidence, that I must have been in a state of shock still, and hardly recking of what I did or said. In any event Yuong decided to treat me with caution. For this I was later duly grateful; at the time I merely remarked to myself that I must be wearing that old devil’s mask of a face again — and joying in it, Zair help me, joying in my pain.

“The future does not concern me at this moment, my friend. I shall thank you properly for rescuing me at a suitable time. What I have been discovering is how I will be received by Queen Lilah—”

“She does not blame you for the defeat of her army in the massacre,” I said. “At least, she did not mention you in that context — or at all.”

“She would not.”

“What have you discovered, San?” asked Seg.

“The Queen will need my guidance and advice in what is to come. But she was cold — distant and cold. There is a woman, another woman, they have fought bitterly—”

“Thelda!” exclaimed Seg. He stared at me in dismay.

I was intrigued. Could this old man in some way have seen what was even now happening in Hiclantung?

Impossible! But, remember, then I was young and new to the ways of Kregen and especially to the wiles of the Wizards of Loh.

“The Queen has imprisoned this woman, this Thelda, and she weeps for her lost lover.” Yuong canted his head so that his supercilious nose aimed itself over my right shoulder. “Perchance she dreams of you, Jikai?”

“If she does,” I said, “she does so without my permission.”

“Since when has a maid required permission to long for a man?”

I didn’t want to continue this, not with Seg looking and listening, so I went across to my corth and inspected its harness.

“Let us go,” I said. “If Queen Lilah has flung Thelda into prison we must get her out again. We owe her that much, at least.”

Seg vaulted into his saddle. His fist gripped into his rein knot — and his other hand made sure his great longbow was in position, handy as to bending and loosing, the feather of his arrows protruding from their quiver past his right ear.

I could see the irony in this situation; more than irony, deadly mockery of all I held dear. Here I was setting out to rescue my Delia from the clutches of a malevolent monster and instead was hurrying back to our friends to rescue a tiresome woman.

How all the Clansmen would have roared their appreciation of the joke — until I silenced them with my upraised sword!

We soared aloft with those initial convulsive rippling movements of the corths’ wide wings driving us low across the clearing until we had picked up enough speed to rise and bank out past the trees. I scanned three hundred and sixty degrees as I would have done the moment I stepped onto the quarterdeck of Roscommon back on Earth — only now I had to sweep again below as well as above the level of our flight height. It was almost with regret that I saw no pursuing impiters, no vengeful corths, no varter-towing yuelshi.

Had I been of the stuff from which the romantic heroes of Kregan legends are constructed — all manliness and pride and stoicism and lofty indifference to personal pain — I would not have felt then as I did, all the agony and the remorse clawing and tearing my spirit. I knew only that I must go on —

somehow.

We alighted on the outskirts of Hiclantung.

“If Thelda truly has been imprisoned by Lilah,” I said, “then it would be foolish simply to fly back when day dawns.”

“Yes,” said Seg.

I knew how he felt. His constant cheerfulness with me both heartened and saddened me, for Seg had tried most desperately to interest Thelda in himself and had as desperately failed. The corths snuffled around, ruffling their feathers, giving clear indication they wished to rest. I looked at Yuong.

“Tell me, San. Can you reach out with your mind and find the woman I seek?”

“Speak more plainly, Jikai. Do you mean Thelda, whom you would rescue from the Queen, or do you mean the woman you love?”

I started violently.

Fool! Why had I not thought of this myself — and before!

I gripped his thin shoulder. He did not wince but stared up at me placidly. I began to speak, but he shook his head.

“Is this woman you love as beautiful as you say?”

“Yes.”

“Incredibly lovely?”

“Yes.”

He moved my hand away. I let him. “I cannot find her for you, for I have no means of location, as I had with Thelda, who was with the Queen.” He started back at my movement. Pink moonshine runneled along his jaws. “But, if she is as beautiful as you say, I believe she still lives. Umgar Stro values beautiful objects.”

“Delia of the Blue Mountains is not an object!”

“With Umgar Stro all women are objects.”

I turned away from him. Old as he was, cocksure as he was, weird as he was, if I had not turned away I believe I would have struck him down.

“By the veiled Froyvil, Dray! Let us get on!”

San Lu-si-Yuong went through his pantomime again. I call it a pantomime, for that is how I thought then when I was under tremendous strain, tensed up, desperate and weary and vengeful. Yuong did, however, play fair by us.

“She is with the Queen even now, in the Paline Bower—”

“I know it!” said Seg.

“I shall humor you,” went on Yuong, “and go into lupu in the morning when the gates are open and we may enter the city.”

Seg started violently.

I said: “You do not think Seg and I are men to wait tamely out here for them to open the gates for us, do you?”

He nodded that stringy lipless head with the wine-dark eyes somber and yet full of a spritely malice.

“What else will you do, Jikai?”

Seg laughed.

I do not laugh easily, as I have said; I simply stood up and went across to my corth — the one with the trapeze and the thongs — and readied him for flight. Seg followed me. When the corth was ready I turned to Yuong.

“You had best fly with us — there are leems hereabouts—”

He shook his head.

“Nay, Jikai. If you lend me one of those thick anachronistic flint-headed spears, I will fare well enough.”

“As you wish. The spears were unnecessary, after all. They were a failure, like my plans.”

“Dray!” said Seg. “All is not yet lost.”

“Come!” I said, and I was abrupt with Seg. So we left the Wizard of Loh, San Lu-si-Yuong, there with a flint-headed spear to await the dawnrise of the twin suns of Scorpio and the opening of the gates to Hiclantung.

We rode the same corth for the short journey and by taking turns we both dropped off the swinging trapeze onto the trip-wired and fan-spiked roof of the Queen’s palace and let the corth go where he willed. I fancied that sharp eyes peering out in the pink light of the twins would have spotted us from one of the many watchtowers rising in the city. That did not concern me as yet. We padded down stairs carpentered from sturm-wood and opened lenken doors with our swords. We did not kill the guards we encountered, for these were, after all, our hosts.

No incongruity of repetition struck me as we crept silently down past the guards, for this time I carried no high palpitations of hope and fear for my Delia; now we were merely attempting to do the right thing by a comrade — and then I remembered the way Seg felt about the callous and shallow Thelda, and I sighed, and wondered just what I did wish for this baffling comrade of mine. Truth to tell, I felt a queasy sense of responsibility for Yuong; how could his frailty stand up against the awesome ferocity of a wild leem, flint-headed spear or no?

A young Hiclantung guardsman very smart in the ornate robes of a Queen’s spearman with the gold and silver buttons and buckles in place of workmanlike bronze or bone was very pleased to assist us when Seg placed his dagger at the lad’s throat. We were led past a doorway into an area of dust and cobwebs. It was a long narrow passage and every now and then thin slits let lamplight fall across the floor, so I knew it to be one of those seemingly essential items to certain palaces — the place of observation hidden behind the walls of the chambers. I have used these observation galleries many times, and no doubt will do so in the future. For some reason the minds of many rulers on the world of Kregen are obsessed with this desire for secrecy and for hidden observers ready to leap out in surprise and deal with the slightest hint of treachery or assassination. I have used these galleries many times — but not for the purpose for which they were built.

Seg tapped the lad lightly on the head when he indicated we had reached the correct loophole and I caught him in my arms and eased him silently to the dusty floor. Then Seg below and I above looked through the slit.

This was a small chamber within the Paline Bower which nestled securely beneath a wing of the palace. The first thing I noticed — before either of the women — was the chased silver dish containing a pile of palines, luscious, full-bodied, juicy, invigorating, and I licked my lips thirstily. Seg whispered: “The Queen has a dagger in her hand!” The mellow light from the samphron oil lamps shining through wafer-thin scraped-bone shades splintered back in hard-edged reflections from the jewels in the dagger hilt. A star winked and dazzled from the dagger’s point. That point hovered over Thelda’s breast.

I felt for the edges of the crack that would reveal the doorway. Seg was breathing loudly, almost gasping.

That secret chamber was furnished in casual unostentatious luxury, with ling furs upon the low couches, silks and satins scattered here and there in a riot of colors between the tumbled cushions.

“You forget that I am the Queen!”

“And you forget that I am a Lady of Vallia!”

“Vallia! I spit on your Vallia!”

“What is this miserable dung-heap called Hiclantung? My country is a great nation, united under an all-powerful emperor! The power of Vallia is like a leem compared to the puny rast-city of Hiclantung!”

“By Hlo-Hli! You will pay for this insolence!” I sighed. The girls were at it again. But poor Seg was taking it all in with a very visible distress.

Lilah wore a long scarlet gown, very tight as to the bodice, slit up the sides to reveal her long legs. Her hair and bosom and arms were smothered with gems. Much of that satanic look about her that came from the widow’s peak and her upslanting eyebrows and the shadows beneath her cheekbones was absent now as she argued and wrangled with Thelda. Thelda — poor Thelda — another man than Dray Prescot might have chuckled at her now, knowing what I knew about these two. Thelda was clad in a short and raggedy brown shift that left her thick thighs naked, that hung lopsidedly on her shoulders, sagging, and her wrists were bound behind her back with golden cords. Yet she lifted her head defiantly, and I had to admire her, despite all the ludicrous scenes that had passed between us.

“I know why you’re so much of a female cramph!” spat Thelda now, her face flushed, her eyes bright, her breast heaving like the seas of the Eye of the World after a rashoon has passed. “It’s my Dray! My Dray Prescot you covet!”

“Your Dray!”

“Yes! You know nothing of what we mean to each other. I love him and, now the Princess Majestrix is gone, he will love me! I know—”

“You know nothing, rast! What can you offer him? I am the Queen, a Queen in all her glory, Queen of a great city and a great nation—”

“Surrounded by enemies waiting to tear your heart out!”

“They may wish to — but they will never succeed. I can offer Dray Prescot everything — you—”

Thelda threw back her dark brown hair and opened those plump lips and laughed. “You!” she spluttered. “A skinny rast-bag like you! Dray Prescot needs a woman, a real woman!”

Lilah’s hand trembled and the dagger shot sparks of fire into the corners of the room. “You great fat lump of lard! Dray needs a woman of fire and passion who can meet him, breast to breast, spirit for spirit!”

Seg put his hand on the secret panel. I suffered for my comrade during those minutes. A sharp rap on the door opposite brought Lilah around, catlike, the dagger upraised. The knock also halted Seg’s pushing hand. The door opened and a little slave wench with golden bands upon her gray slave kirtle skipped in, bending and genuflecting, showing in Councilor Orpus. His powerful bearded face was filled with extreme animation and the many rings on his fingers flashed in the lamplight. He swept his embroidered robes to one side as he inclined deeply. When he straightened up, he said: “Forgive this intrusion, oh Queen! But — great news! We think we have discovered the location of Umgar Stro.”

“What do you mean — you think?” Lilah replaced the dagger in its sheath at her waist. She advanced on Orpus like a leem. She was all queen now, all regality, lofty and cold and demanding, merciless to failure.

“The scouts report—”

“Wait.” Lilah beckoned. “Guards! Take this miserable creature to the cells; let her rot there until my pleasure is known. Come, Orpus. We must go to the council chamber — summon the scouts, my generals, and my councilors. We must plan — now!”

As Orpus stood aside to let the Queen sweep past him, her long scarlet gown trailing, her naked legs strong and thrusting before, her guards inclined, their helmets low. They moved into the chamber, and their Deldar prodded Thelda with his spear point. That spear point was steel, as befitted a spearman of the Queen’s guard.

“Up, little one. We have need of playthings such as you in the cells!”

They closed upon Thelda and dragged her away and as she went she screamed most piteously. Seg put his hand to the secret panel, but it was my foot that kicked it open. Together, Seg and I, we burst into the empty chamber. Our swords were in our fists. Shoulder to shoulder we started for the door.

Chapter Fifteen

Seg, Thelda, and I stand before Queen Lilah

On the way across to the door I used my left hand to scoop up a great mass of the palines. Juice dribbled through my fingers.

“Here, Seg. Munch on these—”

“No time, Dray! Don’t you realize what they’re going to do to Thelda?”

I pushed the palines at him.

“Take them, Seg! You need them!”

I stared at him, eye to eye. With a savage curse he pushed past me, scooped up a mass of the palines and stuffed them into his mouth. Then, and only then, I ran for the door. The guards had just reached the first turn in the corridor. We ran swiftly and silently down toward that corner. I checked at the bend beside an alabaster statue of a risslaca seizing a leem, and the leem in its turn seizing the risslaca, and peered around. Seg hopped with impatience. The guards were moving Thelda along briskly. A few other slaves and functionaries moved along the corridor, which here broadened with a supporting aisle of thick-bodied columns down its center. I had visited the palace enough times to have a vague and general idea of its layout; but unlike most of the palaces I had encountered on Kregen this one, because it had been built in the midst of a city closed up around it within its encircling walls, had not sprawled out in an ever-growing maze of passages and courts and halls. We marched smartly out and cut along the corridor.

Slaves looked at us, but slaves are slaves, and they took only enough notice of us, two warriors, to keep out of our way. I hate and detest slavery; here was one facet of slavery clearly apparent. The guards hustled Thelda around another bend. When we reached the corner where a vast pot of Pandahem ware

— and how old it was I wouldn’t care to guess — brought up a few memories, I saw before me a double-corridor I recognized from its decoration. Down that corridor lay the council chamber where Lilah, the Queen, was now meeting the scouts who had brought information of the whereabouts of Umgar Stro.

Without hesitation I started off down the corridor.

“Dray! They went this way. . .”

I turned. Seg was looking at me, and I could not read the expression on his tanned face. A stray shaft of torchlight caught in his blue eyes and gleamed back lambently.

“Umgar Stro—” I said.

“The guards have taken Thelda down here, into the dungeons!”

At once I came to myself. This was Seg Segutorio, the man who had unhesitatingly followed me to the tower of Umgar Stro in Plicla to rescue Delia. Now I must go with him to rescue Thelda. Of course. How could I have thought otherwise? I would fight my way to Umgar Stro — never fear. So I thought as I ran after Seg down the corridor branching at right angles, through the bronze-bound lenken door at its end, and down bare stone steps into the dungeons of the Queen of Pain. It was not as easy as I have made it sound. Every cell of my body screamed in agony that I must go to seek my Delia, my Delia of the Blue Mountains. I did not think then, I could not, of what might be happening to her. But the agony I suffered would only increase if I allowed poor Thelda and Seg to be destroyed. I knew my Delia would understand that and approve; and I also knew I used her acquiescence as a mere excuse.

The guards had been joined by men in the traditional uniform of their trade. They wore black aprons and black masks and their brawny arms were bare. Thelda’s pitiful brown rag had been stripped from her and she huddled against a stone wall where iron rings fixed into the stone gaped open for her. Two sets along they supported a skeleton clothed in decayed scraps of flesh and skin. One of the men gripped Thelda and lifted her arm toward the iron ring. Beneath the mask his fleshy face showed a vastly unpleasant sniggering enjoyment.

Seg had sheathed his sword.

Before I could run in with my brand naked in my fist Seg’s first arrow punched meatily into the broad black-leather-clad back. The torturer screamed like a de-gutted vosk and toppled away. Then I was in among the guards. I laid about me with the flat of my sword, for in all the desperate anger blazing in me I still retained sense enough to try to mitigate the Queen’s rage. One torturer she might overlook; more would cause untold problems for Seg and myself.

“Don’t kill them, Seg!” I yelled, as I felled the Deldar and swung back and laid my blade flat into his companion’s guts, bringing the hilt down on his head as he doubled.

Seg gasped and swore and stowed that great longbow away and thwacked his long sword down onto the guards. So sudden, so vicious, so fierce was our onslaught that the guards wilted and fell in swathes. Only two managed to bring their steel-tipped spears up and these we slashed through with our brands and then knocked their wielders out, a neat one-two flicker of movement,

“I’ll make a swordsman of you yet, Seg!” I said. The brisk action had stirred my sluggish blood. But Seg Segutorio was cradling Thelda in his arms, holding her naked body to him, crooning unintelligible words over her.

“Oh, Dray!” shrieked Thelda. “I knew you would come! I knew you would save me!”

“Thank Seg,” I said with a harshness of tone I had no need to simulate.

“But — Dray—” She struggled free of Seg. She stood there, her arms outspread, her bosom panting, her color very high and flushed. “That Lilah — that Queen — female cramph! I hate her! But you, Dray

— you have saved me!”

I did not look at Seg.

He said, in a hard clipped voice: “We must get out of here. Now. Before these sleeping beauties awake.”

“Put your dress on, Thelda,” I said. “You and Seg must get away at once.” I stripped a long, lavishly embroidered cloth from the Deldar, rolling him over and over so that his nose squashed on the filth of the stone floor. “Put this on, too, as a cape. You can make the outside safely; you know the way—”

“Dray! Aren’t you coming?”

I did not laugh. “I have a matter to discuss with Lilah.”

Thelda started back as though I had struck her.

“You — Dray — you — and the Queen! No! ”

For all her words a change had come over Thelda, my lady of Vallia. Much of her bounce had gone. I remembered her screams as the guards had dragged her off. She thought then that she was doomed; dark fears of that memory would haunt her for the rest of her days, I expected. She looked more haggard, the plumpness of her sagging; her eyes looked dull.

“Not Lilah and me, Thelda, no — not like that. She has news of Umgar Stro, and I must have news, also.”

“If you go to stand before the Queen,” said Seg, “then I go with you to stand at your side.”

“Seg—”

“And me?” shrieked Thelda. “I dare not go—”

“I do not think, Thelda, the Queen will harm you if Dray intercedes for us all.”

Seg’s words, so calm, so sure, so filled with all the dark wisdom of his hills of Erthyrdrin, rattled me. Loh was, indeed, a continent of mystery.

“I am frightened—” Thelda looked it, too.

I started to walk out of the chamber, back up the stone stairs. “The Queen will listen to me,” I said. “Let us go.”

We were not molested on our way to Queen Lilah’s council chamber.

It is a strange fact to me now to recall that I have only the dimmest memories of her council chamber. Oh, it was wide and lofty and supported by the massive Hiclantung pillars with their garlands of risslaca and snake, and with pediments fashioned in the form of corths; there was color and torchlight and many people; but I recall only the tall scarlet form of Lilah, with her piled mass of gem-encrusted red hair with its wedge-shape over her forehead, of her deep dark eyes and the upslanting eyebrows, the shadows beneath her cheekbones and that scarlet-painted, small, firm, and yet sensuous mouth.

“So you have come back to me, Dray Prescot.”

I remembered her, prostrate before me, groveling, imploring me to take a seat at her side on her throne, offering me everything. Her chin lifted as though she, too, understood my thoughts.

“If you have news of Umgar Stro, oh Queen, then tell me that I may take his throat between my hands and squeeze until he is as lifeless as a rag doll.”

“Gently, gently, my Lord of Strombor! It is not sure. The scouts believe; we await confirmation.”

“Tell me where and I will confirm—”

“Not so fast.” Lilah looked at Thelda. Guards surrounded us, their steel spear-points glinting. Seg held his strung bow in his left hand, and idly held an arrow in his right hand. I knew he could bend the bow and send that shaft clear through the heart of this Queen of Pain long before he was cut down by her spearmen. “Not so fast. What is this — woman — doing with you?”

I stared at Lilah, challengingly, eye to eye. I forced my meaning upon her.

“She is innocent in all this, oh Queen. We found her in circumstances that would displease me mightily if I thought they were of your doing.”

She returned my stare. Our eyes locked.

“I see.”

“There is a man, a Wizard of Loh, a San, one called Lu-si-Yuong.”

She gasped. “What of San Yuong?”

“Seg Segutorio and I rescued him from the tower in Plicla. He was the only prisoner. He will enter Hiclantung when the gates are open at dawn, although I venture he would find it a blessing if you sent guards to let him in now. There are leems.”

“Yes.” She gestured and a Hikdar moved off at once to carry out her unspoken orders. “The San is precious to me. I grieved at his loss in the massacre. And you have rescued him!”

“Seg Segutorio and I.”

“Yes.” She seemed somewhat at a loss. It was with a considerable reduction of her powers that she said: “It seems I am in your debt again, Dray Prescot.”

“You know what I seek. Umgar Stro. Tell me—”

“As soon as the news of that evil person’s whereabouts is brought to me you shall be told. But, my Lord of Strombor, I put a thought to you. We believe he is in Chersonang.”

Chersonang was the adjoining country and city in hereditary rivalry with Hiclantung. I could foresee problems.

Lilah leaned forward a little on her throne, her white hand beneath her white chin, brooding on me. “I shall send all my army up against Umgar Stro in Chersonang. I believe we can break both him and them, together. This will be your opportunity, Dray Prescot, to seek and find the woman you desire. I offer you the chance to command my army, with my generals, to go up against Umgar Stro at the head of a host. Come, what do you say?”

At my side Thelda gasped.

The guards pressed more closely about us now.

There was no need to discuss with myself my answer.

“I thank you, Lilah, for your offer. It is generous of you. But I cannot wait. I will leave for Chersonang at once — sleep will have to wait, instead.”

“You fool!”

I turned to go and Seg’s hand flashed up with the arrow between his fingers and a spear point tripped him so that he fell sprawling before the throne. My sword was half drawn when something — a spear butt, the flat of a sword — sledged down on my head and I tumbled down that long smooth slope of black oblivion.

Chapter Sixteen

The army of Hiclantung marches out

If you choose to think my actions at this time — and, indeed, for some time past — had been irrational, I could not argue the point with you.

Truly, I now feel that the belief my Delia was dead had deranged me. I know I had acted in ways completely outside my usual fashion, and, yet, too, in ways I have been told are typical of me, as witness that wild moment when I defied the Queen of Pain to rush out from the windlass room in the corthdrome upon the indigo-haired assassins of Umgar Stro. I must have been in a state of shock that allowed me to walk and talk and act and yet held me all the time in a kind of mental stasis. The ancient Chinese, we are told, had perfected the art of torture by water, the expected drop of liquid crashing onto the victim’s forehead like a weight crushing into his brain. A single small drop could not do that; it was the expectation and the mounting terror of the inevitable, alternated with the passive bouts of cringing waiting. First I had thought Delia dead, then I had heard she might be alive, then her death was once more certain, and now again she might be missing and, perhaps, better dead. The sheer vibrationary pressure, the nightmare nutcracker rhythm of it all, had made of me a different animal from the man who had flown over The Stratemsk.

Of only one thing could I be sure. Whether dead or alive, Delia would fiercely insist that I go on with life, that I persevere, that I never give in.

Seg and I recovered quietly in a comfortable room set deep within the palace. The room was as luxuriously furnished as anyone could wish, windowless, lit with samphron oil lamps, and set everywhere with the motionless and watchful figure of guards, spearmen of the Queen’s own household in their embroidered robes and gleaming helmets, their steel-tipped spears. We were both naked. We had no weapons.

Seg said: “We could take the spears from these dummies, easily, you and I, Dray!”

I said: “We could. We could fight our way clear if we went together. But — what of Thelda?”

His look distressed me.

“Thelda,” he said, and he bowed that mane of black hair to his brawny forearms. So we pondered our chances of breaking free and taking the plump Lady of Vallia with us. Wherever we were marched within the Queen’s palace we were accompanied by an overwhelming escort, consisting of spearmen and bowmen. These latter, we knew, effectively prevented the sudden dash for freedom. And yet, even then, we knew we were not prisoners in any ordinary sense of that term. We became aware of a sense of heightened purpose within Hiclantung. Soldiers moved everywhere. Preparations were being made and Seg was moved to express a fierce dark satisfaction in the demeanor of the men.

“They have not forgotten what Umgar Stro did to them. Through the treachery of one man, that Forpacheng, their pride was humbled.” Seg moved his hands meaningfully. “Well, now they are regrouping, remembering their traditions. They will not suffer the same fate again.”

Hwang, the Queen’s nephew, came to see us, distressed by what Lilah was forced to do to us — as he said, for our own good.

His young face wore the kind of look one associates with a child’s awareness of some mischief, and the desire to brazen it out. He flung his embroidered robes away from his legs, kicking them petulantly, as he sat down. Seg hospitably poured wine — it was a purple beverage of excellent vintage, I recall, full-bodied yet not too sweet, from the western slopes of Mount Storr — and Hwang took the goblet as though prepared to sup and to forget what was on his mind.

“I have just come from the dancing girls at Shling-feraeo,” he said. “They bored me.”

“Umgar Stro,” I said.

Hwang nodded. “Yes, Dray Prescot. You have it aright.”

We began a technical discussion concerning the equipment and tactics of the army of Hiclantung, in which Seg pressed hard. I might have felt amusement, with another man, at another time without worries, at the way Seg so passionately concerned himself with the prospects of this lame remnant of the glorious empire of Walfarg. Much of Seg’s home country, that mysterious land of mountains and valleys called Erthyrdrin, I came to know later; but nothing could quench the burning pride in Seg, a pride echoed in Hwang, that the ancient virtues of Loh should survive, and that he, as a man of Erthyrdrin, should participate to the full in their perpetuation. Perhaps I caught a glimpse, there in that silken scented prison room of the palace of Hiclantung, of the breaking of barriers of nationality that was so much to affect my life on Kregen.

Seg was a man of Erthyrdrin, and he had told me how his people were feared by the other peoples of Loh — there had been much wild free talk between us — and now, here he was, dourly determined to smash unknown enemies of the Lohvians.

For the enemies were unknown in the sense that the people of Chersonang were unknown to Seg and myself, and Umgar Stro clearly had not flexed all his military muscle and therefore was unknown to Hwang and the Lohvian army of Hiclantung.

Presently Hwang said to me, with a smile and a gesture of the hand holding the wine goblet: “You are a wise man, Dray Prescot, not to attempt escape. You are a man I think could escape if you willed it. But you have put both the Queen and myself into your debt; and we are conscious of that—”

“You are not in my debt.”

“For myself, thinking of you as a friend, I am glad you go up against Umgar Stro with an army, and not alone.”

“Huh,” said Seg Segutorio.

Hwang inclined his head, squinting along the goblet.

“Assuredly, Seg. By alone I meant with you and without my army.”

“You are in command?” I said.

“In a manner of speaking. Orpus holds joint-command. There are other generals. We believe you will join us, Dray Prescot, to give us the wisdom of your advice.”

“Seg is perfectly accustomed to commanding men in combat.”

Hwang looked with a strange kind of affection upon my comrade. “Yes. Seg is of Erthyrdrin, and we who remain of Walfarg know of them well. There was once a time . . . Well” — he drained the goblet —

“no matter.”

He stood up to go.

Then, looking down on us, for protocol was not respected by me so long as I remained a prisoner, Hwang said: “I have had a messenger from Naghan. You remember Naghan, the spy?”

“Yes.”

“He will return very soon. His report — and it is cautious as befits a spy — says he will have news of Delia—”

Hwang’s shoulder was gripped in my fist and my ugly face blazed down into his.

“What?”

He wriggled. I took my hand away, drawing a breath, glowering.

“When Naghan reports I will bring him to speak with you.”

“Do that, Hwang. Pray God, Zair, my life — his news is good!”

We had insisted we be allowed exercise and the guard commander would march us to a wide hall where Seg and I jumped and ran and thwacked at each other with quarter staffs until we both slumped sweating and aching and thoroughly worked out. I cannot say we were tired, for this make-believe action merely titillated the muscles of men accustomed to the real hardships of campaigns and battles. At last Naghan the spy returned.

Queen Lilah, Orpus, and Hwang came to our luxurious prison room with Naghan. With them, also, a grim armored body of the Queen’s spearmen indicated clearly she would stand no nonsense from Seg or myself. Also — surprisingly — Thelda walked in with them, dressed in her old brown short-skirted garment and with her hands bound behind her with golden cords. Her color was high. Her bosom jutted. Her head was held erect and arrogantly. She stared around contemptuously, saw Seg and myself, and all her composure crumbled so that, for just an instant, we saw the lonely frightened girl she really was. Then she caught herself, and resumed that haughty patrician air that remained to her the only bastion against insanity.

“Speak, Naghan,” commanded Lilah.

The spy did not cringe. He looked at me curiously. His short body was clad in a simple robe with the minimum of embroidery, and his faded eyes sized me up in a way I knew few had done upon Kregen beneath Antares.

He opened his mouth, he started to speak, to say, “I now know for certain that the Princess Delia of Vallia is—” when Lilah stopped him with a single word.

She faced me. Since that dramatic meeting in her private room where we had drunk wine and she had lain at my feet with her garment of gems winking and flashing upon her white body, we had not encountered each other alone. I guessed she had been unsure of herself, unwilling to confront me again without the presence of her courtiers and her generals and her guards imposing an iron restraint upon her conduct.

“Let him speak, Lilah,” I said.

“After we have spoken, Dray Prescot.”

“Then be brief.”

“I desire you to go with my army against Umgar Stro. You will lead them, inspire them. With you at their head they will attack to the victory.”

“That is easy enough — it might suffice for vengeance. Is there more than vengeance to be found in Chersonang, Lilah?”

She frowned. Her red widow’s peak of hair drew down, it seemed, with the movement of her face, so that she presented a brooding and devilish look. She wore a tunic of green — not the green of Magdag or the green of Esztercari, but green nonetheless — and a short skirt of green over leather-clad legs. Her embroidered robes were put away. Around her narrow waist a golden belt tightened her figure, emphasizing the fact she was a woman, and from it swung a jeweled sword. In her left hand she carried a switch. All the time we spoke and without conscious effort on my part a portion of my attention concentrated on that switch.

“I want you to give me your word, by the sacred name of Hlo-Hli, by whatever pagan goddesses rule you, that you will not leave my army until you have led it to victory.”

“And what if the host of Umgar Stro prevails?”

“In that case, the issue will not matter to anyone.”

“Nothing is certain in war.”

Her whole attitude bespoke extreme uncertainty; she was bandying words with me, and she a queen.

“Give me your word—”

“I will do what I can for your army against Umgar Stro, because that happens to fit into my own desires, Lilah. Beyond that even your Hlo-Hli can do nothing. Now give Naghan leave to speak.”

Her small mouth compressed and the switch lifted. But she turned to Naghan calmly enough and told him to report.

“The Princess Delia of Vallia is now known to me for certain as not the name of the female prisoner on whose track I spent a great deal of time—”

I stood there. I could not speak or move. I simply glared at this calm matter-of-fact man called Naghan the spy, and he saw my eyes and he swallowed, that grave courageous man, and went on: “As San Yuong has said, all the prisoners except himself were killed at Plicla. I have been in Chersonang. There is a female prisoner there, who may or may not be the Princess Delia of Vallia. I have discovered only that she is kept penned in a dungeon, miserably. I have had no opportunity to speak with her, but she has female servants and slaves. The talk is that Umgar Stro is too busy to win conquests at this time; when the battle has been won he will deign to try his mettle with her.”

Queen Lilah sniffed. “From what I hear of Umgar Stro that fits his contemptible character. He likes his women pliable; drugged, eager for love. He will not waste time fighting a woman; he demands they yield to him with counterfeit joy.”

“I know that type of sub-man,” said Seg. He would not look at me.

Before anyone could stop her, Thelda burst out: “And is the man who forces a girl any the less of a sub-man, then?”

Orpus stroked his beard, which, as always, lent weight to what he was saying. “No. Passion in either case is unlawful and vile. But — I put it to you that no woman can be raped unless she desires it.”

Thelda gasped, looking shocked, and Lilah smiled reflectively. I remembered the stories of her cast-off lovers, the abandoned detritus of the Queen of Pain.

I said: “When do we leave?”

“On the morrow.” Orpus nodded, and he seemed pleased. “The plans are perfectly laid. You will ride at the apex of the host, Dray Prescot. The Queen’s generals have planned everything with meticulous attention—”

Seg Segutorio, highly incensed, cut into Orpus’ words.

“What of Delia?”

Naghan remained silent. Lilah moved her switch, but she, too, did not say anything.

“Delia may be the woman,” Seg said. “We do not know—”

“We will ride at the head of the host, Seg, you and I,” I said. “We will fight. If the army of Hiclantung can follow me, then it may. But I shall fight through to Umgar Stro, I think, or I will be cut down.”

Orpus nodded briskly. “Excellent. Our plans call for a great charge that will reduce the cramphs of Chersonang to slime beneath our feet. They are but Harfnars—”

“Harfnars, yes,” said Naghan in his quiet voice. “But they fight exceedingly well. And Umgar Stro with his Ullars has drilled and strengthened them. Half-men they may be, but they will fight.”

Orpus boomed a great basso laugh.

“There will be no treachery in our ranks, this time, when the Ullars fly down upon us. We have learned how to defend ourselves against impiters and corths. When the accursed Harfnars see their new allies retreating, bloodied and torn, they will not fight as they have done in the past.”

Clearly the sense of historic conflict sounded in Orpus’ words. For many years the hatred and rivalry between Hiclantung and Chersonang had festered. Now a new element in the Ullars had been added. There was sense in what Orpus said — sense, and a deadly danger these Lohvians would not see. So we sallied forth on the morrow, a proud and eager company. Queen Lilah was with the host. Wearing her green tunic and with a glittering gilded breastplate, she led out for a space. With Seg and myself, mounted upon nactrixes, rode Hwang’s regiment of cavalry. Heavy horsemen, with long lances and armor, and with a breathtaking panoply of embroidery and silken banners, they rode arrogantly, confident in their own prowess.

The infantry marched in their regimented formations. Varters rumbled in the intervals. There were also many strange contrivances mounted on carriages whose purpose I was to come to understand passing well in later years. At this time I saw them in action but the once, and was impressed. Thelda rode with Seg and me. Lilah wanted to keep her under her eye. Seg and I wore half-armor, bronze breastplates and shoulder-pieces, beautifully made. There comes a time in a people when armor is so splendidly made that its very beauty cancels out much of its function. The empire of Walfarg had fallen to interior problems as much as by barbarian invasions, and a symptom of that ancient disease showed in the conspicuous artistry of the armor, its incredible standard of workmanship, its comfortable fit, its padding, its cunning fastenings — and in the ominous clefts between piece and piece, the gaps at neck and shoulder.

I did not care.

I felt a lightening of my spirits. I had been imprisoned in a silken bower unable to break free; and now I once more rode beneath the twin suns of Scorpio and advanced into Kregan warfare. I did not know if Delia lived. I would find out. Of that I was certain.

The whole glittering procession marched firmly toward Chersonang and following us tailed a massive baggage train. No comforts would be missed on a Lohvian campaign. We would, in any case, spend only a few days on the march before we crossed the border and approached Chersonang city.

“You do realize, Dray, that that she-leem only wants you to lead her army? She wants you to rush in first and break a way for the rest of her lackeys. You’ve had no say in the strategy, have you?”

“Yes, Thelda, and no, Thelda,” I said. “I have more or less promised. You must understand why I agreed.”

“But there’s no need!” She bit her lip while Seg shot a quick glance at her as she rode between us. She wore a proper riding habit, and once more looked a great lady, her switch in her gloved hand.

“Oh?”

Her nactrix jostled closer to mine; she reached out her hand to me and her face showed a strange look, of compassion, baffled desire, remorse — self-doubt, even. Thelda had never been one to exhibit the slightest self-doubt; even the business of the vilmy and fallimy flowers had not fazed her for long. About to pay attention to what was festering in her, I was caught by the long shrilling sounds of Hiclantung trumpets, those fabled silver trumpets of Loh. Intense activity boiled up.

“Look!”

Low over the horizon, skimming the ground and rising and falling over groves of trees, a myriad black shapes darted down on us. A swarm of midges they appeared at first; and in seconds the narrowing distance converted them into fanged and wide-winged impiters, metal-jangling, with fearsome Ullars perched on their backs waving their spears in ferocious glee at the onslaught. Between the scattered clumps of trees the ground undulated gently in waves of rippling grasses, a motionless sea endlessly in motion. The Ullars flew their mounts directly down on us, disdaining any attempt to stalk us from the sun. Instantly the compact formations of the Hiclantung infantry shook out into fresh patterns and I saw the forest of upraised left arms, the longbows bent, the sunlight glinting from the jagged arrow barbs.

“They will not catch us again!” yelled Seg.

He lifted in his stirrups, dragging out his long sword, his whole body animate with a dreadful yearning. The strange contrivances of Hiclantung now revealed their purposes. As the impiter host struck so rose the arrow storm to drive feathered shafts deep into breast and wing and belly. And, with that rustling arrow storm rose spiraling, tumbling, spreading, spinning nets, and chains, and bolas, and starred-blades. Great was the execution that day, as the army of Hiclantung repaid their score, as they showed the fliers of Umgar Stro how they treated any impetuous airborne assault.

A warrior flying a great bird, even a creature so fierce and powerful as an impiter, must necessarily be at a disadvantage against a warrior on his own two legs armed with a projectile weapon. It is difficult to shoot an accurate shaft from horseback — or zorcaback or sectrixback — and even more difficult from the wind-gyrating back of a corth or an impiter. It can be done by expert marksmen; and such marksmen were these indigo-haired half-men of Ullardrin. But the longbowmen of Hiclantung outshot them with ease. Aerial beast and man, one after another, more and more, fell helplessly from the sky. I saw two impiters entangled in the same net, their wings striving to beat and break the strands, saw them twist and fall and smash terminally into the ground. All around us the flying host was falling. Occasionally men of Hiclantung staggered back with an arrow shafted into them, or a spear gouging its way down past the soft skin between neck and collarbone. But the winged attackers had met their match. Discipline, training, knowledge of weapons, and no taint of treachery brought the victory. Watching those half-men up there as they wheeled aimlessly about above us, screeching their hatred and their defiance, shaking their weapons, trying to loose shafts down upon us, I was vividly reminded of the useless French cavalry charges I had witnessed on the field of Waterloo — and I began to build together ideas on how one should use this aerial cavalry, the proper function of airborne infantry. In all the blaze of action I had not loosed a single shaft.

Despite his exultant energy, Seg, too, had not shot. We both sat our nactrixes with full quivers strapped to our backs.

Queen Lilah rode across, her peak of hair giving her narrow face that demon-haunted look, her mouth open and shouting. She indicated by her carriage, the brightness of her eyes, the abandon of her gestures, how great the victory was. Everywhere over those undulating hills the sprawled corpses of impiter and Ullar showed how sorely the half-men had paid, how bloody had been the vengeance of the men of Hiclantung.

“You see, Dray Prescot!” Lilah screamed across at us.

“I see, Lilah.”

“Nothing can stand against us now!”

I pointed.

Over the crest of the hill appeared a long dark line. I could see the wink of suns-light on spear and sword, on bronze helmet and breastplate. Regiment after regiment, already deployed, broke into a jog-trot down the slope of the hill. And then, around the flanks broke a spray of cavalry, squadron on squadron of nactrixes. Their riders whooped in the saddle, lifting, their weapons glittering bright. Lilah’s face twisted into itself. Her switch came down with a thwack into her nactrix’s flank. Before she bounded away she screamed at me: “There is your enemy, Dray Prescot! There are the Harfnar of Chersonang! Charge! Destroy them all!”

But, already, it was too late.

Whoever had organized this affair, be it Orpus or Hwang or Lilah herself, had miscalculated. After the formations adopted by the Hiclantung army which had so successfully defeated the flying troops of Umgar Stro, they were in no position to resist the punishing and sudden attack from the army of Chersonang. In an instant the leading echelons were upon us. Even as the men of Hiclantung broke and ran I was surrounded by viciously-striking half-men. Queen Lilah’s army was converted in an instant into a running, shrieking, panic-stricken mob. And Seg, Thelda, and I were marooned in a savage and destructive sea of hostile blades.

Chapter Seventeen

Of downfall and of bondage

I fought

Oh yes, I fought. To have once more a tangible foeman before me, to feel the bite of his steel on my blade, to swing and feel that psychic shock as my brand bit back into his skull or body or limb, to feel the electric energy of it tingling up my arm, to do and feel all these things came to me with a great and dark joy. I confess it now; I joyed, then, in that battle as I seldom joy in mere fighting and killing. It seemed to me that every foeman who came up against me might be Umgar Stro, although common sense told me he would be directing the battle from some safe spot in the rear. I felt a personal animosity against every one of these Ullars and these Harfnars. For, between them, had they not taken my Delia of Delphond from me?

The Harfnars were a strange-looking people, and yet close to men as men are known on this Earth, and in nowise as weird or uncanny as the Rapas or Ochs or Fristles with whom I was familiar. Hereditary foemen of Hiclantung, they were, whose animosity stretched back to the day when the Harfnars had taken over the city of Chersonang after the withdrawal of Walfarg’s forces. They were strong, cunning, devilish, with flat noses as wide across their faces as their lips, with brilliant lemur-like eyes set above, which gave their countenances a curious boxlike construction, forcibly abetted by the squared-off chin and forehead. They were brightly clad in checkered garments of flowing silk and satin and humespack, trimmed with fur, with the dull gleam of bronze corselet and pauldrons shining through ominously.

So we fought, Seg and I, seeking to protect Thelda and reach a solid knot of Hiclantung cavalry isolated on the crest of one of the small hills. This was the remnant of Hwang’s regiment. Arrows darkened the air about us. The turf stank sodden with the tang of newly-spilled blood. The hooves of our nactrixes pounded out erratically as we jerked the reins, this way and that. Seg’s longbow sang and sang again. Every shaft found its mark. He shot rearward, turning with supple ease in the saddle, shooting with contemptuous ease. Anyone who came within reach of my long sword died. With Thelda crouched low in the saddle in the lead we thundered toward Hwang’s remnant. They opened ranks for us, then closed. Each man there knew he must die. I could see the knowledge stark on their faces, deep within their eyes, but they stood and they fought and they died. We skidded to a halt and dismounted. Hwang greeted us with a grim and brooding humor whose genesis I recognized with a pang; his imperturbable mien outraged Thelda.

“The army ran away!” she said. She sank down to the ground, sobbing with fury. Seg tried to comfort her and — to my joy and amazement — she welcomed his attention. I saw her put her hand in his. He did not look back at me, but I saw the way his back straightened and the way his head went to one side. They talked together as the battle outside eddied past. There would be plenty of time for Seg to loose the remainder of his shafts.

“Is all really lost, Dray?” asked Hwang.

“We are not dead yet.”

“The Queen? Have you seen her? Is she safe?”

“I do not know.”

I looked over the ranks of troopers who shot with precision and care, breaking up attack after attack. There was nothing wrong with the soldiers of Hiclantung; first treachery and then bungling had undone them. The army of Chersonang swirled into the pursuit, and the Hiclantung rout vanished over the hills. There was still time. . .

“If you break for it now, Hwang, a regiment like yours can break out, can carve a way through.”

“Perhaps.”

What had happened to Hwang had happened many times to many men in an abruptly lost battle.

“Do not joy in sacrifice,” I said. “Rather, rage at death. This is no worthwhile sacrifice. If your regiment can be saved, then it is your duty to save them. It is not arguable.”

“Perhaps.”

“If you are to do it, it must be done before the Ullars rally and return. Isolated as you are and without your varters, you will not repel them as easily as—”

An arrow thunked into the turf at our feet.

The wounded had been collected in a huddle to one side of the nactrix lines. The uneasy beasts chomped and snorted, but they kept under good control. I did not know the full extent of the field supply situation, but I figured that the army, being a sophisticated part of a civilization descended from a great empire, would have ample regulations. The arrow supply would hold out yet; men were continually running from the supply carts with great sheaves up to the shooting lines. Hwang’s officers kept a tight rein on their men. Order, efficiency, going by the book — all these undoubted benefits were amply demonstrated — but. . .

“You’ve got to break out, Hwang, before you are all cut to pieces!”

He started again to say, “Perhaps,” when Seg approached followed by Thelda. She looked dreadful, the tearstains shining on her cheeks. Seg looked mean.

“You can’t stay here,” he began at once. “We’ll all be chopped. Mount and ride! The longbows of Loh can ride through granite walls!”

Hwang looked from Seg to me, and back. He took a grip on himself, and I could fully sympathize with his position. As for myself, I was perfectly content with what I must do. Then Thelda took my arm as Seg and Hwang, arguing hotly, moved off to confer with Hwang’s staff officers.

“Dray—”

I found a scrap of cloth and wiped her face.

“You’ll get out all right, Thelda. Seg will see to that.”

“Dear Seg—”

“He is the finest man you’re likely to meet, in Vallia or elsewhere, Thelda.”

“I know. And I’ve treated him so badly. But, Dray, I had to! Surely you see that? I had to!”

“I don’t see it.”

Above the bending ranks of bows and the nodding plumes of Hwang’s men sudden onslaughts of the Harfnars boiled up to the lines and then the long lances thrust in drilled precision, the slender swords disemboweled, and the onrush turned once more into a retreat. But every mur that passed thinned the ranks of the soldiers of Hiclantung. Unless Hwang broke out soon the end was very near. Thelda gulped, and her hands gripped and twisted together. She looked as though she had reached the last of her strength.

“But I had to! I was ordered to—”

“Ordered?”

“Yes, Dray. You know how the proposed marriage between yourself, a mere Lord of the Clansmen, and the Princess Majestrix is viewed in Vallia? Even the Presidio could not agree on a complete approval. Each member has his own rapier to sharpen.”

I did not smile at her — we would say “ax to grind” — but I had already guessed what she would say. Indeed, only a credulous idiot like Dray Prescot would have missed the unmistakable signs before. “Go on, Thelda, my Lady of Vallia.”

“Oh, Dray! Say you don’t hate me, please!”

“I don’t hate you, Thelda.”

She regarded me with a wary misery through her tears.

“When Delia insisted on flying out herself I, as her hand-lady, also would go. The Ractor party gave me my instructions and they are very strong, Dray, terribly powerful!”

I nodded.

“They have their own candidates for the princess’ hand. They are determined you shall never marry her—”

“So you were told to deflect my interest from Delia — to yourself.”

Poor Thelda! How could she imagine that any woman in two worlds could prevent me from thinking of Delia for a single instant? Even Mayfwy, dear, loyal, wonderful Mayfwy, had not deflected me. The battle could not go on for very much longer. The lines of wounded stretched now past the uneasy nactrixes. I fancied Hwang would not abandon his casualties and he would need every man in the ranks who could wield a sword. I reached down a hand to Thelda, to touch her shoulder and reassure her, but she gripped my hand and pressed it to her face and I could feel the tears, hot and sticky.

“I had my instructions, and I tried to follow them. And, in truth, Dray, I did fall in love with you. I believe any woman would. But Seg — he is—”

“For your own sake, Thelda, forget me. Care for Seg Segutorio. He will afford you all the love and shelter any woman could desire.”

She lifted her eyes to me, and the tears brimmed there, silver and shining.

“But, Dray — I have been foolish, for I have been brought up to obey. The Ractors demand instant and total obedience in their schemes. But, Dray—”

She was trying to tell me something extra, a fact she had to force out. Seg shouted and I turned. He waved an arm. In all the uproar of shouting and screams, of the shrieks of wounded men and beasts, the incessant clang of steel on steel and steel on bronze, I just caught the tag end of his words.

“. . . now and not a moment to lose!”

Hwang’s men were going through their drill with the precision of English Guards. Now the missiles were flint-tipped arrows. But they could strike through the bronze we wore, they could slice into the heart through the interstices in our armor, gaudy and beautiful as it was.

“We’re leaving, Thelda. Up you come. And mind you stick close to Seg!”

She came up softly into my arms, limp and trembling.

“But, Dray — I must tell you! I must!”

I held her as the roaring battle smashed and boomed about us.

“Dray — Delia did not fall into the tarn. I did not see that. I said that to make you forget her—”

The roaring was in my head now. This story, this falsehood of Delia tumbling into the tarn had been the single dominant fear, bringing on all the rest; if she had not died then, she would still be alive now. I knew it. I felt it with every fiber of my being. No cynicism could deter me, now. Delia lived — I believed that. Delia lived!

The Lohvian soldiery of Hiclantung ran smartly to their nactrix lines, mounted. Detachments maintained a covering shower of arrows. With an excess of energy like the release of icy water in the spring thaws of the north, I flung Thelda up into her saddle. I straddled my own mount. Seg was with us. Hwang shouted. The emptied supply cars were loaded with wounded. A wedge formed. I thrust my way to the apex — thinking ironically that this was the spot Queen Lilah had wished me to occupy, a spot in which my own foolhardy valor would spur on and encourage her army. Now I obeyed her wishes in order to save a paltry remnant of the Lohvians of Hiclantung.

Like some bursting summer storm cloud we broke away down the grassy slope. The nactrix hooves pounded. Arrows crisscrossed. Men and beasts shrieked and reared and fell away. We went bounding on, bouncing in our saddles, and yet maintaining that incredible accuracy of shooting that is the pride of the Lohvian.

Seg spurred up with me, his bow bending and releasing with a smooth inflexible rhythm. He controlled his mount with his knees, as did most of the men of Erthyrdrin, although some cavalrymen of Hiclantung tended to gather up their reins in the hands that grasped their longbows. I had followed the example of Seg, although my training stemmed from those far-off days riding with Hap Loder and my Clansmen across the Great Plains of Segesthes. Had I a phalanx of voves at my back now — we would smash like a roller of the gods across the Harfnars of Chersonang!

Seg turned his tanned flushed face toward me. Every thing about him was instinct with the passion of battle. I saw his face change; the expression of absolute horror and then of fanatical determination that crossed his features told me, without the need of personal verification, what had happened. With a tremendous shout Seg swirled about. He thrust his great longbow away as he spurred cruelly back.

Back there Thelda’s nactrix had taken an arrow in the belly.

She was sprawled across the grass to one side of the following wedge of cavalry. Arrows nicked the air. Arrows feathered into men and beasts. The carts rolled and bucked as they bounced after the cavalry wedge, their wounded occupants shrieking in time to the jouncing. Dust spurted. In all the crazed uproar I knew Seg could see only Thelda.

As he reached her a flying wing of Chersonang cavalry swept over them. I saw his long sword shining red; then he was down.

Somewhere in that melee of spurring beast-men and trampling nactrixes, of cutting steel and thrusting lances, lay Seg and Thelda.

I thought of Queen Lilah, and of my place at the apex of the wedge — but we were in retreat, we were not charging to victory. I brought the nactrix around with as much cruelty as Seg had shown, dug in my spurs, sent the half mad beast crashing back.

Harfnars with their flashing weapons reared before me.

Arrows cut the plumes from my helmet. Arrows clanged away flintily from the armor. One sank deeply into the neck of the nactrix. It went on and over in a somersault. I flew from its back, turning over, still grasping my long sword. I did not see Seg and Thelda again in that maelstrom of barbaric savagery. Then, for a space, I did not see anything at all save a red-flaming blackness. During this period of misted movement and dulled perception I was aware of a voice speaking in the common language of Kregen, so I knew it would be an indigo-haired Ullar talking to a Harfnar of Chersonang.

“Bring him. He will furnish sport for a while.”

There followed movement and the sensation of flying and the thrashing sounds of great wings beating the air. The ache in my head diminished to proportions just short of bearable and I came back to my senses chained and bound and strapped up to a granite wall in a dark dungeon. Dungeons are dungeons, as I have remarked before, and some are worse than others. This particular specimen contained all the unpleasant features a human-operated dungeon would have, plus a few the Harfnars had thought up out of their own culture of bestiality.

A groaning and moaning sound told me there were others of the men of Hiclantung with me, reserved for sport. There was no need to elaborate on what was in store for us. Cultures approximate, given the original dark impulse that began the gene trail.

By the time the first set of jailers flung open the lenken door and descended the greasy steps toward us I had freed my left wrist and partially broken away the links chaining my right. Under the impression that it was now or never I exerted all my force. My shoulders are not only wide, they are blessed with roping muscles that can surprise even me. The last link parted with a ringing ping. In the fresh dazzlement of light I blinked and caught two of the Harfnar jailers about their throats and squeezed and flung them into their companions. All the time a low bestial growling rumbled and raged in the dungeon. The Harfnars hoisted themselves up, yelling, and their swords flicked out. They approached me warily. I was still securely fastened by my legs, so that between fending off the beast-men with swung chains I bent and tried feverishly to unfasten my legs, only having to straighten up and lash out again to make them keep their distance.

“Put down your chains, you Hiclantung cramph!”

“I’ll slit your belly up to your throat, rast!”

At first I did not deign to answer them as they yelled at me and I worked on my bonds and swung the chains and all the time that sullen bestial roaring boomed and thundered in the dungeon.

“Keep them occupied!” shouted a Hiclantung cavalryman. The other captives were attempting to break their bonds, but they could not succeed. I still do not recall the exact strengths I exerted to snap those chains.

“Smash him over the head!” screeched the guard commander.

They danced in, one went down with his face ripped off, then they had entangled the chains, were bringing up spears to strike at me.

“Come on, rasts, and by the Black Chunkrah, come to your deaths!”

As I shouted the words, that bestial roaring stopped in the dungeon. Only then was the realization borne in on me that it was I, Dray Prescot, who had been roaring and thundering in so savage a fashion. The shock sobered me.

In that instant the dungeon door was blocked off by the entry of a bulky half-man and the guards finally lost their patience with me and one thrust hard and in deadly earnest. His spear point darted for my breast.

I smashed it away and took him by the throat with my left hand, held him squirming and kicking in the air as I snap-reversed the spear and de-gutted the next guard. Then I hurled the one I held into their midst and swung the spear down again in low port.

“What are you waiting for, offal and dung feeders?”

They hesitated. They were splashed with the blood of their comrades. They could see the dead bodies sprawled on the dungeon floor, dreadfully mutilated. And all this from a man chained up by his legs!

The newcomer shouted, harshly, loudly, angrily, beside himself with fury.

“Dunderheaded dolts! By Hlo-Hli the Debased! I’ll flog every man of you! Take him! Take him now! ”

Goaded by twin fears, the Harfnars flung themselves upon me in a body. They entangled my left arm in flung ropes and dragged me down cruelly. I gasped and forced myself upright. A spear blade slogged down on my temple and I only half broke its force. But I slashed through the ropes — the flint-headed spear was sharper than any cheap steel — and reared back, blood obscuring my vision, my legs clamped as though trapped by a chank of the inner sea.

The man giving the orders moved closer. He peered at me in the light streaming down the dungeon steps. He put both hands on his hips and jutted his head forward, so that his indigo-stained beard shot forward like the ram of a swifter.

“You must be the one they call Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor.”

“And if I am, much good it will do you!” I shouted and hurled the spear full into his stomach. He gobbled and fell back, his hands clawing himself, seeking to stem the dark rush of blood welling past the neat flint-knapped semicircles of the blade.

His opened mouth sought to shriek, but only blood poured forth.

He fell.

And then I, Dray Prescot, laughed.

It did not last long after that.

The other captives were taken out one by one and when it was my turn I was tightly wrapped around in chains and ropes and carried up the dungeon steps. I saw clearly on the square boxlike faces of my captors a gloating kind of good humor. They knew what lay in store for me and they joyed in their dark fashion for the horrors I must endure. Indigo-haired Ullars met the cortege — an apt word, I remember thinking, wryly — at the entrance of arched brick where the brilliant hues of the suns of Scorpio flooded down in topaz and opal and incandescent light.

We entered an open area rather in the fashion of a theater or arena. The anti-flier defense had been rolled away, and hung in nets at the sides, rather after the style of a Roman velarium not paid for by the gladiatorial promoter presently putting his show on and awaiting the next one, who had. The amphitheater-like atmosphere continued in the storied series of seating terraces, all jam-packed with spectators. Dark blood lay seeping into the sand. Ullars moved about officiously. I looked for Umgar Stro. He must, I considered, be the chief man among the lolling group of dignitaries and nobles gawking down from an awning-draped box over the arena steps.

In the air and cutting through the familiar reeks of spilled blood and dust and sand and sweat a new and strangely disturbing odor laid a nasty taste in my mouth.

At the far end of the stretch of sand a monstrous erection of red brick reared. It was barred down the front. Beyond I caught the vaguest of glimpses of writhing motion, a flicker of evil eyes, the sway of tentacles.

And then — and then!

A wooden stake reared from the sand, surmounted by a triangle of logs, all bound together with thongs. Naked she was.

All naked and white in the suns-light.

Thick and heavy ropes bound her to the triangle of logs, their rough bark harsh upon her soft skin. All white, her body glowed in the suns-light, bound by the constricting ropes that crossed over her spread-eagled legs, cutting into her thighs, her stomach, her arms, her throat. Openly displayed, she hung there naked before the taunting gaze of the Ullars and the Harfnars, hung there by express order of Umgar Stro, baffled of a willing conquest, victim of his lusts for sadistic pleasure as much as the sweeter pleasure of voluptuous surrender. White and virginal and hanging, Delia, my Delia of Delphond, hung there awaiting the doom that writhed beyond the iron bars. And I stood stupidly before her, bound head and foot, helpless.

Chapter Eighteen

On my own two feet, then

Some little Ullar with his silly blue-dyed hair was prancing and yammering on the sand before me, but I could not pay much attention to him, even when he jabbed a spear into my stomach, because I was looking and looking at Delia. She hung there in her bonds, roped to that blasphemous triangle of rough-bark wood. Her head was raised in defiance, her chin high, and her glorious brown hair shone radiantly with those outrageous auburn tints beneath the suns of Scorpio. She saw me.

She did not scream out.

We looked at each other, Delia and I, we looked, and between us passed the knowledge that if we were to die now, at least, we died together.

The Ullar was shouting and his flint-headed spear was becoming decidedly uncomfortable. I managed to fall sideways against my chains and the Ullar on my right side, and as his arms automatically constricted about me to support me I lifted myself against him. Like a jackknife I doubled up in the chains and my feet shot out and crashed into the Ullar’s face. He yowled and went over and I heard the answering roar from the massed spectators.

Yes, we were a spectacle, staked out for the enjoyment of the half-men peoples of Chersonang. Well-divided they were, I noticed; Ullars to my right and Harfnars to my left. The ornately canopied box of Umgar Stro frowned over the assemblage. The Ullar picked himself up, clasping his nose from which the blood poured. He would have done for me with his spear then, but a shout arrested him and he swung away under orders from Umgar Stro.

All around the walls of the stadium perched giant impiters. Their coal-black plumage cut stark arabesques against the bright sky. The heat stifled down, intense and sweaty. I went on working with the chains, testing, seeking, straining.

Was that a link, thinner than the rest? Malleable? Subject to a straining twist? Surreptitiously I pulled and levered, feeling the thinner link distorting its shape.

We prisoners to be offered up as sacrifices had been fed some nauseating swill so as to keep our strength up to prevent us from fainting and so cheating the populace of their spectacle. If ever I had needed strength in my life, I needed it then.

Now the noise from the rows of seats began to settle into a rhythm and recognizable words beat out in a roar of sound.

“The Ullgishoa! The Ullgishoa!”

As if in response to some blasphemous call the thing in the iron-barred cage stirred and rippled its tentacles.

Whatever the thing was, the Ullars had evidently brought it with them from far Ullardrin. As I watched and worked on the chain everyone’s attention centered on the cage and the thing within.

“The Ullgishoa!”

Half-men with their indigo hair streaming ran joyfully across the blood-soaked sand. Approaching the cage, they moved with a sureness of purpose that contrasted oddly with their sudden and completely unfeigned caution. Quickly the iron bars were flung back. Like a scatter of leaves before a gust of wind the Ullars scampered back to the side walls. The cage gaped open.

Movement. Slithering, sly, obscene movement. The Ullgishoa sprawled forward out of the cage, spilling over the iron lip onto the suns-warmed sand. I took a single look and then went at my chains with the crazed fury of a madman.

Huge, the thing was, squamous, slimy, its scales extending only over the upper portion of its hemispherical back, its lower portions a writhing mass of tentacles. But those tentacles! Each undulated and squirmed and writhed like a beckoning finger. Each began at the thing’s body with a thickness of a man’s calf, but as the tentacle thickness neared the tip it lessened until it was perhaps as large as a man’s thumb, finished with a protruding lump that glistened scarlet and black, ichor dripping. Inch by inch the Ullgishoa crept over the sand. Set in the center just below the squamous back a single eye stared lidlessly, yellow and red, focused unerringly upon the white, bound form of Delia. I knew what that thing would do once its tentacles were within reach of my Delia’s body. I struggled as the devils of Dante’s Hell must struggle. If Hell exists, then it took this scene as its template.

I felt the link weakening. I felt it bending, slightly, and now the very technology of Kregen came to my assistance. I have mentioned how of necessity culture varied over the surface of Kregen, and as a corollary, technology and science varied also. It is manifestly unrealistic to imagine a world with every part at exactly the same level of advancement, unless that world be one under a central government, or a world of the far future wherein our Utopians love to direct their thoughts. So the long thin swords of the Ullars and the men of Hiclantung had to be forged from iron of a good quality. I knew because Hwang had often complained that the iron deposits around his city in nowise matched in quality the ores of ancient Loh; most of the swords had been handed down, from father to son, treasured heirlooms of a misty and grandiose past.

But for the iron of their commoner weapons and tools the men of the Hostile Territories had to employ local ores, and their weakness came now as a great blessing to me. I felt the link move, bending as I strained. All the time the people in the terraces howled and the stink of the Ullgishoa befouled my mouth, and I tried to think of iron technology and not of what those obscenely-seeking tentacles of the creeping monster would do to my Delia.

And, too, this lack of high-quality ore locally came as a surprising, but not unexpected, boon to me, as you shall hear.

The thing was almost upon Delia now.

She hung there, defiant, her head up, her face composed.

I risked a more obvious movement as I struggled. I braced my arms and stretched; those wide shoulders of mine gave me a leverage and my muscles jumped - and roped and bunched and — snap!

The link parted.

Now I must move with extraordinary swiftness.

The chains stripped from me with a clanking lost in the frenzied din of shouting from the thousands ranked on the terraces. Twin shadows from the suns of Scorpio paced me as I ran. Ullars must have attempted to stop me. I swung my bunched chains. I had become expert with swinging chains; I had had experience. I left a trail of blood and brains and shattered skulls strewing the sand. The scarlet haze enveloping my sight concentrated vision only onto the Ullgishoa and Delia. Its tentacles were looping and coiling and reaching out for Delia. Each bloated head of scarlet and black dripped a foul ichor. They thrust and withdrew, thrust and withdrew, in congested anticipation. I ran. Delia watched me.

As I reached the Ullgishoa her eyes widened.

“Jikai, Dray Prescot!”

I swung the chains. I swung the chains high and I put all my strength into that vicious and barbaric blow. Gone were the polite trappings of civilization. Gone the veneers of gentle conduct. Now I was a simple barbarian, filled with hate and loathing for this thing that sought so obscenely to destroy the woman I loved.

All that primordial savagery nerving me added cunning as well as bestial strength to my arms. The chains sliced cuttingly down upon that single lidless eye where mucus ran in a continuous dust-cleansing stream. The eye pulped and exploded into a scattered mass of scarlet and yellow. The stench sickened me —

and yet nothing could sicken me now — not when Delia of the Blue Mountains watched as I fought for her life!

The Ullgishoa was not finished.

It emitted a high whickering shrill and its tentacles lashed back to envelop me. I skipped agilely aside and an arrow slashed past me. Again I moved, constantly maneuvering myself as more arrows sliced the bright air. Many of those shafts feathered into the bulk of the Ullgishoa — and I laughed!

I took the thick coarse ropes that bound Delia into my fists and I pulled and the rope snapped in a fray of threads.

She fell forward into my arms, her body against my chest, my face enveloped in her hair. There was time for neither greeting nor the taking of a breath now. The whole amphitheater was in turmoil. Ullars and Harfnars gesticulated and screamed, arrows scythed toward us, warriors ran fleetly over the sand, their swords and spears bright in the streaming mingled light of the suns of Antares.

“Umgar Stro!” I looked up at the ornate box.

I put Delia aside and met the first of the Ullars. I broke his neck, took his sword, slashed the face from the next, disemboweled the third. Delia had snatched a sword and fallen into place at my left side. I felt a terrible pang of fear for her safety there, but she urged me on: “Jikai!”

We ran in a jinking zigzag path. The sword broke and I took another from the first Ullar foolish enough to cross my path.

A flint-headed arrow scored a bloody line across my back. Another nicked a chunk of skin from my calf. I ran on. Delia’s hair streamed behind her head as she paced me. Straight toward that awning-draped box we ran, and the bedlam increased and surged into a continuous shattering wash of sound.

Umgar Stro stood up and gripped the gilded rail before his royal box. Large he was, bulkier than me, with his indigo-dyed hair contorted into a fantastic prancing shape above his head. His blunt features and those narrow close-set eyes brooded on his warriors as they sought to stop my advance. He wore a fancy gilded armor, risslaca and leem designs hammered onto the breastplate. His thick neck rose above, ridged with corded muscle and congested veins.

“Stop him, you fools!” he roared. “Cut him down!”

But I had seen what I wanted.

Strapped to Umgar Stro’s side hung a great long sword that made the long thin swords of these people mere toothpicks in comparison. That sword was a Krozair long sword. It was the weapon given me by Pur Zenkiren in Pattelonia, before we set off to fly The Stratemsk and the Hostile Territories. I could well understand how a man like Umgar Stro would value such a brand.

An arrow hissed into the sand before my feet and I jumped and jinked and the following volley split air. Delia paced me, running very quick, her circulation coming back and yet not impeding her movements. I knew what she was suffering and if it were possible my heart hardened even more against Umgar Stro and his Ullars and these Harfnars of Chersonang.

Only this man had prevented us from continuing our journey. He it was who had caused Seg and Thelda to go down before his allied cavalry. He owed me much, this half-man, this beast, this Umgar Stro. I ran toward him and I did not shout and he saw me coming. He drew that great brand that was my own and he threw himself into a posture of defense, cursing those about him. Arrogant and conceited, puffed with pride like many Earthly Politicians, was Umgar Stro, but he did not lack courage.

His massive frame dangled and clanged with golden ornaments, barbaric dyed leem pelts flaunting weird colors. He towered there, glowering in the light from the Suns of Scorpio, his indigo-dyed hair waving with the violence of his movements, his arms bulging with muscle.

“If these cramphs of mine will not kill you, then, by the violet offal of the snow-blind feister-feelt, I will send you to hell myself!”

He vaulted the gilt rail and landed very nimbly, swinging at once into that trained posture of defense. He was a swordsman. I made no attempt to cross swords with him. I was only too well aware of the quality of the Krozair long sword he brandished; as to the blade I had snatched up, it was as like to break at the first blow for all I knew.

A sudden and tense silence descended. All eyes fixed on the drama being enacted before the royal box. Into that silence came the screech and hacksaw rasp of the impiters from their perches around the amphitheater. There was one, a giant of the air, fluffing its feathers immediately over the awning. There was no time for fancy swordsmanship, for feint and riposte, for lunge and parry. There was space for swordplay — of the brutal cut and thrust variety I knew so well and that had brought me thus far alive

— space but no time. Umgar Stro’s coarse and bloated features broke into a crude guffaw as he brandished that splendid sword before my eyes.

“Die, little man! Die and spit your guts on the ice needles of Ullarkor!”

Beyond him as he stood so confidently his companions in the royal box guffawed in lackey-like approval. There were scented and painted women, females of the Harfnars and the Ullars, jeweled courtiers and soldiers, impiter-masters, sword-masters. And there was one man, with the red hair of Loh, who sat unsmiling and tense, clad all in dark blue and unhappy. This, I guessed, must be Forpacheng. I marked him, too, for through his machinations my Delia had been snatched when he plotted the downfall of the Lohvian army of Hiclantung.

My great Krozair long sword slashed down — aimed at my head!

I dodged easily enough but I did not reply. Delia stood a little to one side, her toothpick sword lifted, her breast heaving; but her face showed the same strong resolution I had come to know so well through all adversity.

Umgar Stro shouted, and stamped his foot, and thrust. I risked the clang of blades as I parried and dodged — and the sword I wielded snapped clean at the hilt.

The gush of laughter from Umgar Stro was like an oil well breaking surface in the desert, dark and spouting and greasy.

“Dray!” shrieked Delia, then — and she lifted her weapon to fling it to me hilt first.

“Hold, my Delia!” I shouted. I jinked left, then right, took a spring and before Umgar Stro could orient himself I had vaulted clean over him. I landed and twisted like a leem. My left hand raked across and took his right arm biceps in my fingers. My right hand went around his neck and jerked his head back. I squeezed.

He tried to gargle something.

I exerted pressure with the fingers of my left hand and his right hand slowly opened so that the Krozair long sword fell to the sand. He sagged and then thrust with desperate strength. I hauled back. Without remorse, without pity and, now his time had come, without hatred, I pulled back until, loud and sharp, his backbone snapped.

I cast him from me.

I bent to retrieve my long sword and the arrows sang past me and, in that instant, the suns-light was choked off as a wide-winged shape plummeted from the walls.

Umgar Stro’s own impiter! Come to avenge his death!

He was a monster, coal-black, wide of wing and ferocious of talon, with gape-jaws distended so that the rows of serrated teeth gleamed dull gold. His tail lashed wickedly at me so that I had to leap back. I shouted.

“Delia! This is our mount — be ready, my heart—”

“I am with you, always, dear heart!”

I intended to stand no nonsense from this savage beast. I leaped. I took the reins close up to the fanged jaw and I wrenched. I brought the flat of the sword around and laid it shrewdly alongside that narrow and vicious head.

“Let that teach you who is to be master here!”

I drew the impiter’s head down, twistingly, dragged that beast low, hit him again, forced him to bend. Delia mounted with a supreme confidence that brought the breath clogging into my throat. As she wrapped the flying thongs about herself and adjusted the clerketer for me, I vaulted up and dragged the reins upward. The impiter’s head rose. He was in a vile temper. An arrow whistled off the black sheen of his feathers and he rasped a hacksaw whine and struck three massive blows with his wings. He ran forward and then, with a massive fluttering and a great roaring of down-driven air, he was aloft. I had to strike but three more arrows away before we were well airborne and sailing above the anti-flier defense and away into the bright air of Kregen.

Below us in the amphitheater we left an incredible scene of confusion as Ullars whistled for their impiters, as Harfnars ran uselessly, shooting upward, only to see their shafts fall short. Strongly we beat across the sky. Umgar Stro — who was now dead — had trained his mount well. Crazed and savage and bewildered it might be; the impiter understood well enough what the point of my sword thrust into his side meant. His wings beat metronomically. The wind blasted back through our hair. Naked, we shivered in the slipstream. But up and up we flew, faster and faster, winging away from Chersonang and all the barbarity festering there.

For some time I fancied I could detect the foul taint from the deliquescing corpse of the Ullgishoa. From the city of Chersonang behind us rose the black swarm of impiter-mounted warriors. Like a column of smoke they rose and leveled off and, wind-driven, soared after us. I jabbed the tip of my sword into the impiter and forced him to beat a faster stroke.

The twin suns of Scorpio cast their mingled light down upon us, and the land beneath spread out with its cultivated fields giving way to heath and wasteland cut through by the magnificent stone roads of the old empire. The host of impiters on our trail must have been visible for dwaburs in every direction. Our own beast flogged the air, driving us on, putting an increasing space between us and our pursuers. As befitted the power and glory, as well as the bulk, of Umgar Stro his impiter was a king among fliers. But the double burden would tell in the long flight, and eventually the flying nemesis would catch us. If such a thing as Fate exists, it has sometimes come to my aid as well as dealing me many shrewd blows. Unaccustomed to such things, I confess it was Delia who first spotted the distant dot, and who cried out in joy — and then alarm as other reasons for the presence of an airboat here, over the Hostile Territories, occurred to her.

But there was nothing else for it. The distant flier changed course and bore through the upper levels straight toward us.

We strained our eyes. I made out a lean petal-shape, high as to stern, a much larger craft than the one in which we had flown The Stratemsk; larger, even, than those airboats of the Savanti in unknown Aphrasöe. Flags fluttered from the upperworks. Delia screwed her eyes up. I felt her body close and warm against me, and my arms tightened in instinctive protection.

“I think, my darling, I think—” she said. And: “Yes! It is! She is from Vallia!”

“Thank Zair for his mercies,” I said.

She must have spotted the massed fliers from a long distance off, for I knew the Vallians possessed telescopes. I knew without doubt why the Vallian airboat was here, why it turned at once, sensing the answer to her quest lay with that flying host of impiters. The airboat swung alongside. I hauled the impiter up and looked down.

The craft was compact and trim. I was reminded of the order and discipline of a King’s ship or of those swifters I had commanded on the Eye of the World. The sights of varters of design strange to me then snouted upward at us. At the first sign of treachery or the first false move we would be blasted from the sky. A group of men on the high stern looked up, and I saw the familiar Vallian costume mingled with a smart dark blue uniform I took to be that of the air service of Vallia.

“Jump down, Princess!” shouted one of the men, a barrel-bodied individual in dark blue, with wide shoulder wings, and a flaring orange cloak. At his side swung a rapier, matched by the main-gauche on the other. He wore a curly-brimmed hat with a blazing device of gold on the front band, and an orange tuft of feathers. His face was seamed and wind-lined, the crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes testimony to his days in the air scanning distant horizons.

Carefully I edged the impiter lower so that the ratings below ducked against the beat of wings. Delia went over first and I followed to be caught instantly in strong hands. Umgar Stro’s impiter, relieved, spun away into the bright sky.

“Princess Majestrix!” said the burly man, a Chuktar, an exalted rank in any man’s army or navy or, as I encountered for the first time, air force.

“My Lord Farris!” said Delia. She was wrapped in a swathing orange cloak, and her face showed high and proud and yet mightily relieved. “You are most welcome.”

The Lord Farris, the Chuktar in command of this airboat, the name of which was Lorenztone, bowed deeply. He did not incline, a depraved custom, and this pleased me. “And this—?” He gestured toward me in a way that was most polite.

Delia smiled. “This is Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor, Kov of Delphond, and betrothed of the Princess Majestrix.”

Farris bent his head in a stiff but exquisitely formal little bow. He turned back to Delia. “The Emperor, your father, learned that you had taken a flier and—” He hesitated and I could guess the scenes that had followed on that discovery. “There have been many airboats seeking you, Princess, and I am overjoyed that it was to me and Lorenztone, that the honor of finding you has been given.”

“I am pleased, also, Farris. But—”

A lookout sang out from forward.

Everyone turned. The sky seemed filled with impiters.

Farris looked pleased. He smiled and rubbed his hands.

“Now these debased descendants of a decadent empire will see what a new nation can do!” His orders were given in a calm and matter-of-fact tone of voice that heartened me. During that fight as the winged hordes of Umgar Stro fell on us I was mightily impressed by the way the air service men of Vallia handled themselves. Their swivel-mounted varters coughed a steady stream of projectiles. Impiters fell fluttering from the sky. Archers using smaller bows than those of Loh, it is true, took a toll. Any Ullar venturesome and lucky enough to gain a footing on the deck was instantly cut down. The Vallians, in this kind of aerial fighting, did not deign to disregard the effective uses of a boarding pike. With my long sword, which they looked at with a kind of amused awe, I joined in. The battle, in a sense, came to me as an anticlimax. Delia was safe, now, and before us lay the flight to Vallia and then the meeting with her father, that imperious, relentless, awe-inspiring man, the emperor of all Vallia.

At last the impiters and their Ullar warriors gave up.

We forged on across the landscape of the Hostile Territories as gradually the twin suns, Zim and Genodras, sank to the horizon. I took stock of this Vallian airboat, this Lorenztone. She was all of fifty feet long and her widest beam, which came some two-fifths of her length aft, was twenty feet. Her leanness of appearance came from the sheer of her bows and the sweep of her stern where the sterncastle raised. Varters lined the bulwarks much after the fashion of the broadside guns of the ships of Earth with which I was familiar. Somewhere below her deck in a safe place would be that mysterious mechanism — mysterious to me then — by which this bulk was upheld in thin air. The designs on the many flags she bore surprised me with their functional formality; but some were so embroidered that leems and risslaca, graints and zhantils as well as chank and sectrix, figured in that fluttering panoply.

An obliging crewman found me a length of cloth. He handed it to me expecting me to wrap my nakedness in it. It was green. I merely wiped the bloodied blade of my long sword upon it, carefully, mindful of the way that young tearaway of a Vallian, Vomanus, had so carelessly wiped his ornate rapier, and handed it back. From a great pile of flying silks I selected a length of blazing scarlet. This, with as always a pang of memory, I wrapped around my waist, drew up between my legs, and tucked the end in. Delia came up with a broad leather belt, of a leather I did not then recognize, soft and pliable, with a massive silver buckle. With this I kept the breechclout in place.

“There will be no scabbard for your great sword, Dray; not until we can have one stitched up for you.”

“No matter. It can hang at my side naked, with a fold of cloth to keep me from being cut—”

After the action the reaction — we were both just making noises. The airboat rushed on through the sky levels. Delia looked at me, her head a little to one side, her face grave.

“Seg? And — Thelda?”

I shook my head.

She gave a little gasp, immediately choked off, and lowered that mane of glorious brown hair, shining in the dying light, and put her dear head into my shoulder. So for a space we stood there on the deck of the airboat as the twin suns sank and the strange and yet familiar constellations crept into the night sky with three of the lesser moons of Kregen hurtling low over the horizon.

Presently we were called away for food and we sat to a fine aerial feast in the aft cabin. The Chuktar, the Lord Farris of Vomansoir, introduced his officers and other high dignitaries who had been assigned the craft searching for the emperor’s daughter. I caught at some of the conversations, guessing at hidden meanings, trying to sort out the people who would not object to Delia marrying me from those who took a violent exception. I did not think I would meet any Vallian who would actively wish me to marry Delia

— not even Vomanus, if I cared to dwell on it.

I noticed one young man, with a mane of blond hair and a frank and open face, with that high beaked nose of the Vallians — a characteristic in noses that I myself shared — and took particular notice of him after he had said, with a light laugh: “I have never seen so large a sword wielded so expertly, my Lord of Strombor. I venture to think that a regiment of cavalrymen well-versed in its use would rattle even the best infantry line.”

His name was Tele Karkis, and he did not appear to be the lord of anywhere, which was refreshing. He was a Hikdar. If I paint him in flat and stereotyped colors, it is because that was how be appeared to be then, when I first met him. I leaned over the table to help myself to a handful of palines, and before I popped the first luscious morsel into my mouth, I said: “And on what steed would you mount these hypothetical cavalrymen of yours, Hikdar Karkis?”

He laughed, not easily, but without unease. “I have heard of the voves your Clansmen ride on the Great Plains of Segesthes, my Lord of Strombor.”

I nodded. “I hope,” I said with the politeness habitual to the cultured Vallian, “that you will have the opportunity one day to pay us a visit and be our guest.”

Then Lorenztone shuddered and lurched and Chuktar Farris spilled his wine and reared away from the table.

“By Vox!” he said. “I’d like to teach those rasts of Havilfar how to build like honest men!”

A man with a face I had taken no notice of at first sight, and thereby should have been warned, let out a string of oaths that were mere fancy verbiage, and quite fit for the ears of a lady, even for a princess. He was one Naghan Vanki, the lord of domains on one of the outlying islands of Vallia. He wore, unlike the air service men and the soldiers and court dignitaries, a simple silver and black outfit in the Vallian style. There was more about him than his name to remind me of Naghan, the Hiclantung spy. We all went on deck.

The airboat was sinking and nothing the crew could do would bring her up. In the event we camped for the night among thorn-ivy bushes by a stream and were not too uncomfortable. Delia and I were quartered well away from each other, as was proper. As we prepared for sleep we all talked in a low-key kind of grumbling way about the profiteers of Havilfar. The name of Pandahem also figured in the conversation, usually with a round Vox-like oath or two.

A fire was built and we sat around it for a last cup of warmed wine. Naghan Vanki kept on making casually sarcastic remarks about barbarians, and uncouth individuals, and praising the civilization of Vallia. Delia shifted uncomfortably as he spoke. I saw well enough he was digging at me, but I did not care. Was I not with my Delia of Delphond once again, on the way to Vallia, if temporarily halted until repairs could be effected, and was not the future rosy with prospect?

“The Emperor raised heaven and earth to seek you, Princess,” said Farris, smiling now the mission was successful. “You mean a very great deal to him and to all the people of Vallia.”

“I am grateful, Farris. I am also aware that I mean a very great deal to my Lord of Strombor, as he to me. Remember that.”

“Still,” said young Tele Karkis, unthinkingly, “it is going to be an ordeal, standing up to the Emperor.” He spread his hands. “I would not relish crossing him—”

“Hikdar!” said Farris, and at his Chuktar’s words young Karkis colored up and fell mute. But the seed had no need to be sown; everyone there knew the ordeal I faced, and I guessed many of them secretly wondered if I had the nerve to go through with it.

Truly, all I had heard of Vallia warned me off the place.

The warmed wine we drank was a good vintage. I remember that. It came from the province of Gremivoh, so I was told, and was much favored in the air service. It held a sweet and yet bitter savor unfamiliar to me.

Delia leaned close just before we parted for sleep.

“You do not truly wish to go to Vallia, dearest?”

“Can you ask!” I took her hand in the firelight. “I shall go to Vallia and face your father, never fear.”

“But—” she began. And then: “Yes, dear heart, I know you will.”

Perhaps, I thought then, being back with her own people had shaken her belief in me; perhaps she had been shocked by my own uncouth ways into seeing me in a new light. I tried to shrug that feeling off, but it persisted.

I crawled into my blankets and silks and yawned. I felt sleepy — not surprisingly, perhaps, but — ah, if we could foretell the future, then—!

I awoke in the morning as the twin suns of Scorpio sent down daggers of fire through my eyes into my brain to find myself rolled into a hole beneath a thorn bush.

I staggered out, cursing the pricks, and looked about.

The airboat was gone.

Alone, I stood among the thorn-ivy bushes on that endless plain of the Hostile Territories, and as I stood I heard a screech from above and I looked up and there, floating in wide hunting circles above, the gorgeous golden and scarlet raptor of the Star Lords surveyed me with a bright and implacable eye. I shook my fist at the Gdoinye.

A moment later the white dove of the Savanti flew into sight, but, this time, the birds ignored each other. They surveyed me for a few moments and then turned and flew away. Whatever my plight it did not interest either the Star Lords or the Savanti, then.

My position was perilous in the extreme. I had the mother and father of headaches, and a stomachache, to boot, and I realized — dolt that I was — that something in the food or the wine of the previous evening had poisoned me. Whether or not the intention had been to poison me to death I did not know. I stood up, feeling grim, and looked about.

Some way off a blazing spot of scarlet caught my eye.

The remains of the campfire and discarded rubbish showed where we had camped. The marks the airboat had made were still fresh; evidently the technicians among the crew had repaired the craft working overnight. I walked across to the scarlet patch.

It was a length of scarlet silk wrapped about my own long sword, a rapier and main-gauche, a bow and a quiver of arrows and, tucked in at the end, a water bottle and a satchel of provisions. I was not fool enough to believe these had been left for my good.

Whoever had drugged me and had me dumped here had also taken the trouble to leave these items, typical of those a man would need if he must survive in a hostile territory, so as to color the impression that I had left voluntarily and surreptitiously. The plot had worked. The people aboard Lorenztone must believe I had run away because I was unable to face meeting their emperor. And the people aboard included Delia — my Delia of Delphond!

Did she believe I had left her? Could she believe?

I did not think so — but . . . But so much pointed to a desire on my part to evade going home with her. However much I tried to tell myself my fears were groundless, that she would keep faith in me, the more I doubted. I was in low spirits. My guts hurt, my head throbbed like the freshly cut-out heart of a graint, my limbs trembled, and my vision blurred.

I snatched up the Krozair long sword.

This I believed in — I had been cruelly wronged. My beloved had been snatched from me, and I could not blame her if she believed the worst of me. I could imagine how the situation would look, and the pressures that would be brought to bear on her to renounce her love for me. Well, the Star Lords clearly had had no hand in this. The Savanti, too, were not implicated. They had merely assured themselves that I still lived, ready, no doubt, to seize me and toss me once more into the turmoil of their plans when the occasion demanded. Until then, I had men for enemies, men of Vallia who sought to take my Delia from me. Well, then, I would go to Vallia, I would march all the way to the eastern seaboard of Turismond and take ship, and march all the way into the great palace of this dread emperor of Vallia, this father of Delia’s, and confront them all to prove my love for Delia. I picked up the gear and strapped it about myself. I took a great breath. I looked at the distant eastern horizon of hills.

Then, with my long sword in my fist, I took the first step onward.

Above me the suns of Scorpio blazed down and about me the land of Kregen opened out with the promise of danger and terror, of beauty and passion. I could not fail. Not with the vision of my Delia before me.

Steadily, I tramped on eastward to whatever destiny held in store.

About the author

Alan Burt Akers is a pen name of the prolific British author Kenneth Bulmer. Bulmer has published over 160 novels and countless short stories, predominantly science fiction. More details about the author, and current links to other sources of information, can be found at www.mushroom-ebooks.com

The Dray Prescott Series

The Delian Cycle:

Transit to Scorpio

The Suns of Scorpio

Warrior of Scorpio

Swordships of Scorpio

Prince of Scorpio

Havilfar Cycle:

Manhounds of Antares

Arena of Antares

Fliers of Antares

Bladesman of Antares

Avenger of Antares

Armada of Antares

Notes

[1] Transit to Scorpio and The Suns of Scorpio.

[2]A further reference to the missing cassettes’ information we do not have, as related in The Suns of Scorpio. A.B.A.

[3]Prescot spells out Lu-si-Yuong, and is meticulous about getting the name and pronunciation right. He also elaborates on these famous Wizards, and is careful to use the title San. Jikai, here, clearly is being used in a titular role, and must be assumed to be the general for “warrior”. A.B.A.