Chapter Seventeen Disaster

The spearmen ran yelling on their doom.

For a short space only I fronted them with the deadly Krozair longsword singing, and then Targon and Naghan and Dorgo and Korero were there, with the others of my choice band clad in their stolen ochre and white uniforms, and the blades clanged and rang. The spearmen were either cut down or ran. The fight was brief and bloody, swift and savage.

“Well met!” I bellowed. “Now back through the gate and into the swamps before they gather their wits.”

“You are safe?” demanded Korero, and blood dripped from his tail hand and the blade he bore.

“Aye! Now — move!”

So we ran.

Brun lifted the carpet and I stuffed Dayra back, whereat she squealed and tried to slash me. I looped the silk around her wrists and drew it tight, tight, and said: “Daughter. Bide you still or earn a father’s wrath.”

“And what else have I ever had?”

There was nothing I could say to that. Filled with a sudden and blinding sense of infamy, I ran with my comrades out through the gate and past the dead guards sprawled there, and along the causeway and through the other gate where the guards lay naked, and so out and into the bog of Trakon’s niksuth. Well into the slimy stinking labyrinth we slowed down and caught our breaths, and I let them tell me the story as we pressed on. Inky the Chops had vanished when the risslacas attacked. My men had gone on, finding their own way through the boggy maze, half-blinded, choked with the miasmic stinks, but coming at last to this gate and so making their way through determined to rescue Lol and me or burn the place down. I said: “I regret we had no time to do that. It would have been — useful.”

“Useful,” growled Targon. “Aye, majister, and overdue.”

The riding animals were gone and so we must walk. So we did. I reflected that the reasons that had impelled my fellows to choose a double-walled entrance, so that they might obtain uniforms without arousing suspicions inside, and the reasons impelling Vaxnik, that we would have a double chance of being caught, had coincided nicely. My band would have wrought fearful havoc looking for me: chance only had decreed we should meet when we did. Now chance, or fate, decreed we should walk. We reached an area somewhat less boggy than most and opened the leather bag carried by Brun. Its provender gave us all a slender meal, and then it was done. Ros the Claw was brought out. I told her that she would walk, seeing she was so limber and lithe a lass, and that Hyr Brun would carry Vaxnik. She was amenable to this, having an affection for the boy.

No one knew a certain way out of the bog, and so we walked in as straight a line as we could contrive. We knocked over a few risslacas on the way, and Brun smashed in the head of one ugly monster with a single swipe of that giant sword. We kept alert for sounds of pursuit on the backtrail. We heard none and so got clean away. At last we emerged from the miasmic labyrinths of Trakon’s niksuth and breathed in air that tasted like best Jholaix.

“However,” said Targon, hitching his belt. “We are as like to be out of the frying pan and into the fire. All this country would as lief chop us as say a cheery Llahal.”

“They would find us a prickly mouthful,” I said.

That night we made a cheerless camp; but were able to catch up on our sleep. Our sentries reported all’s well during the hours of darkness and by dawn we sat up, hungry and thirsty, and contemplated the labors of the day.

I do not propose to give a blow-by-blow account of the shifts we were forced to in the ensuing days. We headed south and we foraged for food and we picked up a few riding animals here and there; but of fliers we saw no sign. During this period I was obsessed with what was going on in Vondium, and cursing myself that I should have been so blind or foolhardy as to leave the center at this moment. That no other invasion armies had been reported now, in retrospect, appeared to me, tortured by guilt, to be totally irrelevant.

Dayra, quite naturally, would say nothing about her plans or the voves. I am a zorca and a vove man, each superb animal supreme in the tasks nature has intended for each. The vove — well, yes, there is the supreme riding animal of Paz, as I understood then. Powerfully built, large, with eight muscle-packed legs, the vove boasts both fangs and horns through his mingled ancestry, and a coat of a glorious russet color. He is exceptionally ferocious to those he does not know. And he will run and run until his heart bursts asunder, for his strength and his loyalty are well-matched; but his devotion is the stronger. The obvious answer to the problem was an ugly one. Zankov must have gone to Segesthes, the large sprawling eastern continent of the Paz grouping, and there contracted an alliance at best, or a mercenary undertaking as the more probable, with clans hostile to the clans owing allegiance to me as their Zorcander and Vovedeer. Hap Loder, my old blade comrade and the man who stood in my stead with the clans of Felschraung and Longuelm and Viktrik — and any others he had taken over lately — had been with us to the Sacred Pool. He must have been pitchforked back to the Great Plains of Segesthes. Well, I could send a flier to him — when we got back to Vondium, Drig take it — but the logistical problems involved in shipping an army of the massive voves staggered. Phu-Si-Yantong could have done it. The galleons of Vallia could do it. The skyships of Hamal could do it. And, by the disgusting diseased entrails of Makki Grodno, so could the ships of the great enclave city of Zenicce. That was the answer. And here was I, traipsing about like a loon in the backwoods of Vallia instead of being in Vondium.

It was enough to make a man swear off strong drink for life.

No, I will not go into that journey or into my state of mind.

The occasion is worth a mention when, during the night of storms when the wind blew streamers of screaming fury across the sky and the moons remained hidden so that the world became bathed in darkness like a night of Notor Zan, Hyr Brun, Vaxnik and Dayra escaped. They hardly escaped. They simply staggered off into the darkness, holding on to one another and with Brun like a massive anchor to hold them to the earth. They vanished within a couple of arms’ lengths and we did not see them again, or for a very long time thereafter.

In order to bolster my failing sense of direction and to give some semblance of rationality to what I was doing, to counter the absolute loss and waste of my efforts with Dayra, I told myself that this journey had been worthwhile for the rescue of Thelda and my discovery of the misery in store for Seg and Thelda, and for Lol Polisto, too. So I told myself.

In the fullness of time we trailed into Vondium.

We had obtained vollers for the last part of the trip and when I vaulted out on the high landing platform of the palace and searched the faces of those who waited to greet us for just the one, and failed to see her, I felt another and more treacherous feeling of loss. I needed Delia near me now. And then — well, I looked again at the faces of the crowd.

Glum. Drawn. Haggard. Cast down as though sent reeling by some ghastly catastrophe. Many of the women were mourning. A chill gripped me. And, of course, I already knew. But I did not know the full horror of what had befallen the pride of Vondium, capital of the Empire of Vallia. Kyr Nath Nazabhan, a good comrade, a fine fighting man, commander of the Phalanx, Kapt, was so cast down in his pride that at first he would not look at me, merely cast himself down in the full incline, trembling, clad in black, contrite, ashamed, grief-stricken — and guilty.

“For the sweet sake of Opaz, Nath! Stand up straight and tell me. Openly and honestly, as we are comrades.”

“Majister — majister — the army. My Phalanx...”

“Voves, was it?”

His gray-carved face looked up. “Majister? How could you know that?”

“You forget, the Emperor of Vallia has eyeballs everywhere.”

Well, how can one remain unamused and not essay a feeble jest in the face of disaster?

So the story came out, brokenly, the grim, ugly, cold story.

I sat at my desk in that book-lined room with the maps and the weapons, and presently Nath was persuaded to sit across from me. He stabbed the map as he spoke. Lines, arrows, routes of penetration, ambush and surprise, and, at the end, the battle. News had reached Vondium that an army had at last been sighted, an army marching southwest from Vazkardrin on the east coast. I nodded. Vazkardrin lay between the coast and the Kwan Hills which demarcated the borders of Hawkwa country thereabouts. Zankov clearly had inserted his tendrils of power into the vadvarate of Vazkardrin, which had been run by canny old Vad Rhenchon, a numim, who had always kept himself unaligned in the struggles of power politics. Zankov had taken over with his cronies and his renegade Hawkwas and provided a secure base for the arrival of the clans carried in Zeniccean ships from Segesthes. It had to be. Southward of Vazkardrin lay the imperial province of Jevuldrin. That was flat country, ideal, as Nath said, for the maneuvers of the Phalanx. It was also ideal cavalry country. And there is no cavalry in all of Paz, so I thought, to compare with vove chivalry. The only animal and human thing to stand against a vove charge was another vove charge...

“We shipped out,” said Nath. Then he caught himself, and paled, and ground his fists together. “No, majister. I shipped them out. Me. I did it. Every sailing skyship we had. Every last one. We — I — took the First and Second Phalanxes, leaving the Third here. The churgur infantry, the axemen, the spearmen, three quarters of the cavalry of all kinds. And the artillery. We were a brave sight.” He swallowed. “A brave sight.”

“Yes.”

“We landed and formed. And then came a storm, a monstrous storm. The sailing ships of the sky could not stand before it but had to run.”

In the skirts of that storm Dayra and her friends had run, too...

“So,” I said. “Farris could do nothing with his air?”

“Nothing. The army formed on the second day. Magnificent, magnificent. You should have seen them, majister—”

“I wish,” I said, with a note of dryness in my voice I could not withhold. “I wish I had.”

Nath understood and he bowed his head.

“We stood as we had been trained. The Phalanx resplendent in crimson and bronze. The paean was chanted and the songs sung. And we advanced. And they rode like an avalanche, like the wind, like the irresistible tides of the ocean. The voves...” For a space he could not go on. Well, in Vallia they ride the nikvove, the half vove, and that is indeed a fine animal. But he does not have the fangs and the horns, does not have the sheer crushing battering bulk. A vove, it is half believed, could knock down a church steeple. I have ridden in many a vove charge, coursing knee to knee with my clansmen, charging headlong into the massed ranks of the enemy clan. Terrible, a whirlwind of destruction, the vove charge. I did not want to think what had happened to my Phalanxes. But I had to. I was responsible. Not Nath. I had warned him, oft and oft, against fighting unsupported against sword and shield men, the churgur infantry. But he had believed implicitly that the Phalanx could defeat any cavalry charge, any cavalry charge at all.

“There were many casualties?”

He could only nod.

“And the army?” I riffled out well-thumbed papers. “Here are the lists. Take up this pen and strike through the formations that no longer exist.”

He did as he was bid. As the pen scratched with a vicious stab across the paper, time after time, I felt the cold clench around my heart. Most of the fine Army of Vondium had been swept away. People talk of an army being decimated, not knowing what the word means, intending to imply wholesale destruction. We had been far worse than decimated. We had lost far more men than a mere one in ten. The units had been drastically thinned, the ranks devastated. That army had to be written off. That campaign had been lost. This was not Jikaida. Those men had not been swept up in the cupped hand to be placed back in the velvet-lined box, to be brought out again all fresh for the next game. They were gone forever. They were dead.

“The Third is still here,” I said. “With its Hakkodin and three regiments of archers and spearmen. There are two regiments of zorcamen, four of totrixmen and one of nikvove-men. Artillery is thin, but can cover.” I looked at Nath. “This army of clansmen from Segesthes was not brought against us by that Opaz-forsaken Wizard of Loh. His ruse is still hanging. We still have him to contend with. This cramph Zankov — he brings the clans against us.”

“Nothing has happened in the southwest. Fat Lango’s army stagnates. The man you saw, Kov Colun Mogper of Mursham, has disappeared. Had he assumed the command—”

“Thank Opaz he did not. But, Nath, mayhap he has gone to command the real army from Yantong against us.”

Nath spread his hands. “We are doomed, it seems.”

“No.” I rubbed my nose. “No. I do not think so. I remember a man called Filbarrka. He is a great zorca man, the Filbarrka na Filbarrka. He and I have talked about zorcas and voves and his theory is overripe for the testing.” I stood up. “You and Farris, and everyone else, must rebuild the army. Work hard and work fast and work well. I am for the Blue Mountains.”

“The Blue Mountains? But—”

“Yes. But I fancy Filbarrka has not taken kindly to a damned invasion from anyone. Build up the army. And stay close. If I am wanted, ask in the Blue Mountains.”

Chapter Eighteen

We Gamble on Filbarrka’s Zorcamen

Certain important tasks had to be completed before I could leave. I went to see Barty, who was up and pacing about, rotating his arm and bristling to get back into action. I told him to see about raising fresh regiments. We had lost a doleful number of good men; but there were others, and the spirit of the people, with that stoical and yet fierce Vallian integrity, rose to the crisis. New armies would be formed. He wanted to go off adventuring with me until I convinced him he was more valuable in Vondium. As to Dayra, I told him what had happened, and he blamed the storm again, this time not for wafting away an air fleet leading to the destruction of an army. I wondered. Perhaps I had secretly wanted my daughter to run off again. Perhaps I could not face the meeting between her mother and me and her... Had I wanted to keep her close I could have hobbled her feet and tied up Hyr Brun and Vaxnik. Then, with a mere continuation of my feelings, I went to see Seg. He mended. That cheered me. Very soon, he told me, he would be back fighting fit. He, too, wanted to come with me. I told him, sternly, to get well first. I could not speak of Thelda. How could I? He did not know. The hateful thought occurred to me that perhaps Lol and Thelda were dead already. They had not flown to Vondium, and had no reason to, since they resisted the occupation of Falinur.

All of life during this period was a pickle. Delia was away, Seg’s problems and Barty’s problems weighed on me. Jilian cheered me up a little; but she was busy doing just what she had said she would, and I stole a half-bur to watch her Jikai Vuvushis at practice.

“By Vox, Jilian. They frighten me. Opaz knows what they will do to the enemy.”

“Not a one of them has been through Lancival and so none wears the — wears the claw. But they come on apace.” She looked ravishing, seductive in her black leathers. I thought of Dayra and I could not find a smile. She went on to talk of the disaster to the Army of Vondium, which had taken place near a little village called, ominously, Sicce’s Gates, from the eons-old cracks in the earth nearby which led down so deeply into the crust of the planet none had ever ventured to the bottom. The Battle of Sicce’s Gates would be recorded in agony and lamenting in the records of those times kept by Enevon Ob-Eye. I bid Jilian farewell and took myself off to the landing platform.

Farris, with a pinched look, had spared me a fast single-place airboat. My mission demanded urgency. I missed the fond preparations made by Delia on these occasions, and shifted for myself in the matter of provisions. Be sure I took many wicker hampers. My armory remained as it had been, it had served me well so far.

Observing the fantamyrrh with care as I went aboard I called down the Remberees. Barty had come up to wish me all speed with Opaz. I had a hell of a game with Korero and the others. But the voller was a single-place job and that, it seemed to me, was that.

“I will send for you when the Lord Farris can place a sizable voller at our disposal. But the defense of Vondium is vital and our air fleet — well—” I did not go on.

That dratted storm had not only blown the sailing fliers away from Sicce’s Gates, it had destroyed the majority of them. Farris was busily rebuilding. And we had cut down forests to build those ships... It would be infantile and pompously stupid of me to suggest that my brief reappearance in Vondium had made a vastly impressive increase in the recuperation of the people from the debacle. But more than one old sweat had said that, by Vox, now I was back and safe they could get on with drilling the coys and look forward to knocking the daylights out of those zigging vovemen. Off on my travels again, I prayed that Farris and Nath and Barty and all the others — including Seg when he had recovered — would, indeed, recreate the Army of Vondium.

For much of the journey the River of Shining Spears paralleled my course. Once I had taken a roundabout way to the Blue Mountains, by way of Delphond, riding a hired zorca. I felt that Korf Aighos would have dealt very harshly with the invaders of Delia’s country. Filbarrka ran the wide plains country at the foot of the Blue Mountains in the fork of the two rivers, and that country, I believed, was the best zorca country in Paz. Now I was going to put to the test the theories Filbarrka held. Despite all the long series of misfortunes, despite what had happened, despite my intense sensation of loneliness, despite the foreboding dread with which I viewed the future in spite of my brave words, I still experienced a profound excitement at what was proposed.

Vallia swirled past below and I ate roast vosk sandwiches and drank superb Kregen tea brewed on the little spirit stove packed within a sturm-wood box. I looked up. Yes, there he was, the Gdoinye, the giant raptor of the Star Lords. A beautiful scarlet and golden bird, glistening in the mingled rays of the Suns of Scorpio, he flew lazily above me, looking down with one beady eye from his sideways cocked head. The Star Lords wanted to know my doings. Well, I felt the uplifting sense that I was far more involved with what I was doing in the here and now, attempting to hold Vallia together, than in the machinations of the Everoinye, who could hurl me back to Earth, four hundred light years away, at a whim. There appeared to be no sign of the white Savanti dove.

More out of habit than with a positive feeling of enmity, I shook my fist at the Gdoinye. He slanted a wing, and flew away. I went back to my food, and scooped a fistful of palines. There was a squish pie in the hamper and I thought of Inch, and sighed, and so prepared to finish the long flight and bring the flier to earth. I did not anticipate too much trouble in finding Filbarrka. He would be leading the resistance and, I felt sure, the local people would be solidly on his side, the Vallian side, against the mercenaries and flutsmen and aragorn who had flooded in on the misery of Vallia. A few careful inquiries in out of the way places, and I would be directed to him. I just had to steer clear of the occupation forces.

These things worked out to plan and I caught up with Filbarrka as, big, bluff, red-faced, happily twitching his fingers together, he watched his zorcamen run rings around a hapless party of totrixmen. I landed the flier and walked across, aware of the bows bent against me. But Filbarrka recognized me and bellowed a cheerful greeting.

“Lahal, majister! I am glad to welcome you to the fun. See how the rasts run!”

The totrixmen were remorselessly cut down. I did not particularly relish the sight; but it had to be done if you concede that the freedom and happiness, not to say health, of a country matters more than the lives of its harsh invaders.

The amusing thing here was that Filbarrka did not seem in the least surprised to see me. He talked away, filled with his news, as we jogged along together. In a predominantly grass land I would have thought that guerilla tactics would prove particularly difficult; but Filbarrka would have none of that.

“We ride rings around ’em, majister! And there are the foothills of the Blue Mountains if things get tough.”

My flier was stashed away in a wood and the locals would keep an eye on it. The country was pastureland, lush and lovely, well watered and wooded, and zorcas could live here as though grazing in a zorca heaven. I told Filbarrka that as I was the emperor now, and the Blue Mountains and this plains section of it called Filbarrka, the same name for man and country, was the empress’s, he, Filbarrka na Filbarrka, was now an imperial Justicar and might style himself Nazab. He was pleased. But titles, I felt, meant little to him beside the thrill of simply riding a zorca.

I told him the problem.

He fired up at once. Eager, alive, filled with a fretting spirit, he tore into the problem.

“Voves. Ah, yes, voves...”

He had seen voves in action, having visited my clans in Segesthes at the invitation of Hap Loder. Now he began to talk in his quick, bubbling way, red-faced, twitching, full of cunning and guile and sound common sense.

“As San Blarnoi says,” he observed. “Preparation is improved by digestion. Ha! We have a snug little camp in a fold of the hills — pimples to a Blue Mountain Boy, to be sure — where we can eat and drink

— and think. But the tactical situation vis-à-vis a zorca and a vove is fascinating, fascinating. And I have had thoughts, by Vox, yes!

“No clansman would dream of riding against voves with zorcas.”

He did not say: “But they are only shaggy clansmen,” as many a wight would have done in Vallia. For, was not I, Dray Prescot, taken for just such a shaggy graint of a clansman?

He did say with bluff politeness: “We do not have voves to go up against voves with, majister, as they do on the Great Plains.”

“Discard all notions that I can magically produce an army of vove cavalry. The damned Hamalese burned most of the galleons. I’d hazard a guess that the shipping from Zenicce has been engaged to transport these voves we’re up against. And our own sailing skyships were dispersed and smashed up by the storm at Sicce’s Gates. We’re on our own, Nazab Filbarrka. It is zorcas for us—”

“What could be better?” He rubbed his hands as we stepped away from the steeds where handlers were already leading them off, talking to them, cajoling them, for every Filbarrkian loves a zorca. We entered the camp area, tents under the trees in a fold in the hills. The weather remained bright; but I fancied it would rain before morning. The food was good, straight from a looted caravan. Filbarrka ate and drank as hugely as he talked. “The zorca is close-coupled, we know that. A good animal can turn on a copper ob. So we can run rings around voves—”

“They charge in an unbroken knee-to-knee mass.”

“Naturally. They aim to crush anything in their way.”

“They do.”

“So, majister, we are not in the way.”

I quaffed good Vallian wine and hid my smile.

The problem spread out for Filbarrka spurred him on as he would never spur on a zorca. I had my own ideas which I intended should meld in with his, so as to maintain the pleasant harmony. He shared my view that if an army was really serious about fighting to win and to stay alive, or as many swods as might be who would stay alive, the discipline must be instant and automatic. That demanded high-quality officers, and these, too, must instantly obey the orders of their generals. As to these latter, if Filbarrka himself was to be a Kapt, I fancied I’d take his recommendation on the others to be appointed. He drank his wine and then looked at me, his face large and happy in the lamplight.

“How long do I have, majister? And — numbers?”

“As to numbers, the reports I have indicate the clans brought over at least six divisions.”

He nodded, for the calculation was easy. A division consisted of a thousand warriors. The clansmen stuck to the old ways of ranking, so that their Jiktars who commanded the divisions did, in fact, command a thousand.

“By their colors, weapons and harness, it seems, there is more than one clan involved. From what I have been told I have identified the Clan of Rudimwy. The others are unknown to me and must come from north and east of the parts I know.”

“Six thousand vove-mounted cavalry, clansmen, renowned and feared.” He brisked up. “Life is going to be interesting.”

“As to time — yesterday. The army or armies that menace us from the southwest cannot be discounted. The lice that infest Vallia daily suck more blood. And Vondium’s army is not yet rebuilt, not ready.” A nasty thought occurred to me. “Anyway, it will be interesting to see who can train and provide their force first; the army in Vondium or you here.”

That got to him. As I say — nasty.

He drank again and one of his lieutenants — a raffish bunch, these, liberally bedecked with the ritualistic trappings of zorcamen — leaned across and passed the opinion that any zorcaman of Filbarrka, of the Blue Mountains, which was the blessed Delia’s province, could do what ten of those fat and callous-arsed citizens of Vondium could do, and in half the time, by Vox!

That made it my turn to hide my face in the wine cup.

Presently I asked about Korf Aighos of the Blue Mountain Boys.

Filbarrka roared out a belly-laugh.

“The old Korf! Why, he’s strung up so many damned flutsmen he could build a hedge with them. No mercenary ventures into the Blue Mountains these days.”

“Does he send men to assist you down here on the plain?”

“Aye, oh, aye. We strap everything down, then, and chain and padlock it all triple-tight.”

Great reivers, the Blue Mountain Boys. Only because they shared a common fealty to Delia prevented the Blue Mountain Boys and the Filbarrkians of the plains from being at each other’s throats as once they had to their mutual loss and benefit.

“And the Black Mountains? Kov Inch—?”

“Not a word. The Black Mountains remain as impregnable to the invaders as the Blue. But they are hard-pressed by that rast up north of them, Kov Layco Jhansi.”

“And east, too,” I said. “In Falinur.”

“And, over the river, the black and whites, may their eyeballs fall out.”

“Amen,” I said, companionably, and drank, and we chatted in this polite way a little longer. At last, judging the moment ripe, I proposed to Nazab Filbarrka that the Blue Mountain Boys be invited to contribute a component of the zorca force he would form. They might be infantry, archers, axemen, to fight in the intervals — anything, in my view, just so long as I could get their ferocious fighting ability put to use in the coming struggle.

“And if we can get word to the Black Mountain Men, them too.”

The threat posed by raids by the Racters over the border into the Black Mountains was serious; but the greater menace drew swiftly on us with those infernal Pypor-worshiping cramphs of clansmen and their voves from Segesthes. The Black Mountains must strip much of their own strength away, if we could reach them, to face Zankov. These are the hateful decisions emperors have to make every day before breakfast.

For a brief treacherous moment my thoughts dwelled on Drak and his fortunes in Faol among the Manhounds.

Filbarrka nodded in his enthusiastic fashion. “The great two-handed Sword of War of the Blue Mountains will serve excellently once I have broken up the main mass. I know they regained their pride in the weapon.” He cocked an eye at me, a knowing eye. “There was this business of you and the shorgortz, majister, as I recall.”

“Aye,” I said. “And the Sword of War was blunt.”

“Against the Racters and Jhansi, and now these vovemen, the great Swords of War will be sharp.”

“By Zim-Zair!” I said. “Yes!”

Filbarrka began to expatiate on the methods and equipment he would use and need. “I am prejudiced toward comfort in the shape of a four-legged animal, and am convinced that in spite of apparent lessons to the contrary, zorca cavalry can successfully fight those mounted on heavier animals.” He rubbed his fingers together, happily planning cunning tactics and stratagems. “Weapons will be a slender lance, twelve feet long, for a start, until we see how the men behave and the weapons serve. A number of lead-weighted and feathered throwing darts with broad barbed heads will be kept in a case at the saddle.”

“And a striking weapon, Nazab?”

“From a nimble zorca curveting about against an oaf astride a lumbering vove? Oh, a mace. A heavy, flanged head mace. Hit the fellow anywhere with that, and one of the flanges will bite in and do his business for him.”

“Very pretty. These weapons can be built for you in Vondium, together with such harness as you require.”

“Excellent, excellent!”

“And you will leave sufficient forces here to contain the confounded mercenaries.”

“I will. But it will be a task to choose who is to go and who to stay.”

“That’s why you are a Nazab.”

“And you, majister, an emperor.”

Just because of that it was possible for me to introduce the subject of shields. Some of Filbarrka’s people emitted loud snorting noises of derision at this; but I noticed others who, sitting forward intently, marked what was said.

“Shields?” said Filbarrka. He entwined his fingers and bounced up and down on his seat. “Well, now... Yes. Yes, I have seen shields in action and, if we are to have them, I would favor a long triangular convex-section shield.”

Well, argument ensued. In the end we agreed that the suggestions put forward by Filbarrka would be acted on to the best of our ability. The arsenals in Vondium had been instructed in the best way of manufacturing shields, and I guaranteed to supply the articles requested. As for armor, Filbarrka wanted a light quilted knee and elbow length coat with a steel bar sewn to the outside of the sleeve, steel right forearm guard and shoulder plates. These latter, being the trademark of the Vondium soldier, fitted in perfectly. In all probability what the arsenals produced would be high-quality iron; but we tended to call it steel, as one does. Steel is usually reserved for weapons. For helmets of the force, it was proposed that a small, round helmet rather like an acorn in shape, be fitted with a mail hood fastening up to the nasal. Mail was not easily come by in Vallia, as you know. The mail of the Eye of the World was effective but crudely heavy in comparison with the superb mesh of the Dawn Lands of Havilfar. The arsenals in Vondium could produce a mesh link that would serve. I had the sneaky suspicion that many a man of Filbarrka’s zorca force would ride into action without this mail hood.

“And, in the rear ranks,” said Filbarrka with anticipatory satisfaction, “we substitute bows for the lance and darts. The shields must be different, too. Smaller round parrying shields fastened to the lower arm. They should serve capitally.”

So it was settled. Settled, that was, in conference. The hard slog of bringing theory into practice must begin now. One supreme advantage Filbarrka did have. He could call on the services of superb zorcamen. That gave him a flying start.

Although pressed to stay and see some more fun — they had a raid against a caravan, of whose route they had been apprised, planned for the next day — I expressed my regrets. Vondium and the raising of a great city to renewed effort called. Satisfied that the mercenaries and aragorn in this part of Vallia were paying dearly for their plunder, I bid the zorcamen of the plains of the Blue Mountains Remberee, and flew fast back to the capital city.

The news that met me, conveyed by Enevon Ob-Eye with an appearance of studied calm, was that Barty Vessler the Strom of Calimbrev, wounded though he was, had stolen an airboat and flown from Vondium in the devil of a hurry and the devil of a state. My chief stylor contrived to appear matter-of-fact, but he was enraged, amused, and downright admiring about the stir.

“Hardly stole, Enevon,” said Seg, stretching his arms, as he kept doing to explore the pains in his mending back. “It was his to start with, you know.”

“It is gone now, and the Lord Farris is shorter still of air for surveillance.”

No message had been left. I could only assume that Barty could contain himself no longer and had gone to carry on the overdue talk with Dayra interrupted by the storm and their escape from us. I did not know how long it had been since he had last seen her. I’d wager a king’s treasury against a copper ob that she was never the girl he remembered.

Nothing could be done about that situation. Every effort must be bent to building up the warlike capacity of the city. Seg said: “I have scoured around, Dray, in the taverns and dopa dens and stewpots. I’ve dug up three hundred men who claim to have been Bowmen of Loh. Some may never have been within a hundred dwaburs of Loh; but I have them sweating over their drills now, under command of Treg Tregutorio, a right old devil but a man with a bow, by Vox. You will find they will stand come the day.”

“Good,” I said, cheered in a way Seg could not hope to understand. “But, come the day, I shall need you to command the vanguard, as ever. I rely on you, you know.”

“That is where Treg will want his men if I know him.”

Despite his shortages, Farris kept up observations of the country and the day did come, sooner than we expected. Farris burst into my room without ceremony, looking wild-eyed, a most unusual state for him to be in.

“Majister! That cramph Kov Colun! He is found — aye, and an army with him. A great army of mercenaries from Pandahem and Hamal, marching from the south on Vondium. There is little time left.”

So, with what we had, we marched.

We marched to the south.

The host of clansmen mounted on their terrible and terrifying voves pressed in on us from the north. If we were to be the nut in the nutcracker, then we would make sure we broke off one of the jaws, broke and splintered, and sent it shattered back before we turned — with what we had — to strike at the other.

In those dark days for Vondium and for Vallia there were few, and fewer with every day that passed, who believed any more that we would win through. But, still, we would fight. We would fight on, although doomed, fight on without surrendering. For that was the way of it, in those days. Surrender would bring our utter annihilation. Everyone knew that from bitter example. So we would fight on and if we were doomed, why, then, we would go down before Fate and put as brave a set of faces on it as we could muster.

That was the way of the new Vallians.

Chapter Nineteen

Surprises in the Delphondian Campaign

I had been wrong about Delphond.

Delphond, the Garden of Vallia, a sweet, languorous, easy-going place where the fruit hung heavy on the tree and the fat kine filled lush pasturelands, where men and women laughed easily and ate well and quaffed good Delphondian ale, where life flowed in smooth mellow rhythms and it was good to be alive and rest awhile — Delphond, Delphond — the sword and fire and destruction came to Delphond. And the good people arose in their wrath. Calling on the name of Delia of Delphond, they rose and smote the invaders.

Always I had considered the Delphondi would be too lazy, too good-natured, too easy-going, to resist, even though I had seen evidence of a new awareness and a growing suspicion during that time I had sought news of the mystery of the Black Feathers of the Great Chyyan.[1]

The distance from Vondium to Delphond is not great. That was the paramount reason why the invasion army under command of Kov Colun Mogper of Mursham had chosen to land there, on the south coast. He might have sailed his fleet up the wide mouth of the Great River; but then he would have faced crippling odds as all the small craft we could muster would have assailed him. He was confident, I’ll give the cramph that. Straight across Delphond he marched, in a straight line, through the orchards and the cornfields, over the pastureland, and in his wake he left a broad swathe of destruction. Also, he left many a man of his regiments hacked to pieces in a ditch where the enraged Delphondi had thrown him.

We marched southwest to get around that curve of the Great River, crossing the imperial province of Vond. We cut well south of the route of that earlier quick and improvised march against the mock army of Fat Lango. The comparative failure of that ruse had not deterred Kov Colun from setting forth on the balance of the ploy. If we did not stop him, he would be in Vondium, and Yantong would have won another round.

Although I had long ago come to the conclusion that bricks and mortar were not worth human lives, there were other considerations in the decision to defend Vondium. The arsenals being there constituted one obvious reason. But for that, by Zair, I’d have let Kov Colun and Zankov fight it out between them.

“By the Veiled Froyvil, my old dom,” exclaimed Seg, reining up and shading his eyes. We looked up into the high blue of a Kregen day. “That looks a trifle likely.”

Up there, swirling away from the advance guard of our little army, black dots pirouetted across the blue. They appeared to frolic between puffball clouds; but we knew they were not of the frolicsome kind, being aerial cavalry of the army we challenged.

“Mirvols,” I said. “So Colun has brought aerial forces with him.”

“We’ve seen them off before, Dray! D’you mind the times in the Hostile Territories — and that scheming woman, Queen Lilah of Hiclantung?”

“Aye, I mind me, Seg. But we have no air to speak of.”

“Your Djangs from Valka—”

“If they get here in time.”

“Erthyr the Bow will see to it that they do.”

Ahead of us stretched the open park-like landscape of Delphond. We had marched fast and light, having information from our spies that Colun tarried for his rearguard to come up. If all went as we planned, we would harass the invaders as far as we were able until we were all formed. That was a grim note — all. There were pitifully few of us left. And the new regiments were not ready. Karidge’s regiment of zorcamen — the First — went cantering past. Because Nath Karidge had caught a small punitive excursion mounted by Farris against a fortress of the aragorn over our borders, he had missed that fight at Sicce’s Gates. At the time he had raved. Now he said that Opaz had saved him and the best zorca regiment in the army for greater things — for victory. I had agreed with him. His men were raging to get at the invaders and a deal of the gloom and doom so rampant elsewhere was missing in their ranks. Karidge’s wife had recently had twins, and Seg made some remark as to his good fortune, and mentioned Thelda.

Again and again I had struggled with myself, quite unable to decide the best course. In all mercy I ought to tell Seg that Thelda was still alive. That would lead to questions. I could simply say that I had had a report that she had been seen, alive and well. I knew what that would mean. Instantly, Seg would be off hot foot on the trail. And I knew he dared not go with that wound in his back. Now the wound was almost healed, and the doctors of Vondium had expressed their amazement at his recuperative powers. Now, if I spun him some cock and bull story, he would have no reason not to go off. The plight of Vondium ought not to move him. It wouldn’t me, if it had been Delia I was chasing. So... Up until now I could with justice claim I had not told him Thelda was alive so as to save him from killing himself by searching for her with that damned great wound. Now that he was well again — could I in conscience keep the news from him? The half of the news? Sink me! I couldn’t tell him about Lol Polisto. And yet, for him to discover the story in some hole-in-the-corner way would be even more frightful. By the disgusting diseased tripes of Makki-Grodno!

And then a trumpet pealed sweet and silver, hurling notes through the air and sending birds scurrying from the nearby wood as though the notes took wing. A zorca rider burst up over the ridge and bore on toward us, riding hard and low in the saddle.

He was from the forward advance guard and so I knew one of our patrols had come in with news. We might have no aerial scouts; but we kept our patrols probing well ahead. He brought the news for which I had hoped, scarcely thinking such good fortune would fall our way. But Five-Handed Eos-Bakchi had smiled and his knuckle-bones had turned dexter.

“Ha!” said Seg when the rider had finished speaking. “We have the cramph now.”

“We have the opportunity,” I said, mildly. “We have but to execute the design.”

“Execute! Aye, we’ll execute Colun and all his villains.”

Waiting for his rearguard to come up, Colun was separated from them by a good forty miles. If we could strike into the gap and turn on one force before they linked, we would stand a chance. The forces were ill-balanced. Which should it be?

“Hit Kov Colun,” counseled Nath Nazabhan, sturdily. He had left his devoted Phalanx, being infantry, to be with us in the vanguard. Our vanguard was all cavalry or mounted infantry.

“His main body outnumbers us five to one, Nath.”

“Maybe,” said Seg, screwing up his eyes and with all the shrewd practicality of his race showing through the fey recklessness in him in these matters of operational policy. “Maybe it would be better to chop his tail off first. They are two to one. I’d say he was waiting for stores and equipment. Then he’ll be isolated, and if your Phalanx gets here in time, Nath—”

“If? If!”

“Well — when. We will crush him sweetly, like a rotten gregarian.”

I said: “I would like to hit Colun immediately. He has at least fifty thousand or so with him, with twenty thousand in the rearguard. We have almost four of cavalry and six of mounted infantry. And, in the rearguard, I fancy as Seg says, will be artillery, stores, battering equipment.” I looked at these men with me, loyal, shrewd, experienced. “The rearguard it is!”

Nath sniffed and nodded. “Very well, by Vox. I am with you, majister. But when my Third come up —

why, then we hit Colun—”

“We do, Nath. We hit him most severely.”

The orders being given, the vanguard stirred into motion again, ten thousand jutmen riding in a jingling, turf-thumping stream of zorcas and totrixes and nikvoves. To the regiments left after the debacle at Sicce’s Gates we had added a further regiment each of the three main saddle animals. Seg’s Bowmen of Loh rode zorcas and acted as mounted infantry. They wore dark crimson uniform with light bronze-studded leathers and I had great hopes for them, a mere three hundred though they might be. So we rode on through the mingled streaming lights of Antares. As Jiktar Nath Karidge said, breathing hard with his beard all a-tufting: “By the Spurs of Lasal the Vakka, majister! We will tweak this rast’s tail for him — aye, yank it out by the roots!”

He then went on to make some disparaging comments about our mounted infantry, typical jutman’s talk, and he made great play with his pelisse as he spoke. Some of the mounted men riding in the group of messengers and aides-de-camp with him started to wrangle at this, and a merry little professional ding-dong ensued as we trotted along in the suns shine. We had twelve regiments of infantry mounted up on an amazing assortment of saddle animals, preysanys, hirvels, totrixes, marlques and urvivels among them. We also had, would you believe, a regiment of spearmen mounted on sleeths. Sleeths!

This last regiment had been formed by Tarek Roper Ferdin, a passionate sleeth-racer who still, to the despair of us zorca men, refused to concede the superiority of the zorca. The regiment, being a private one, was clad in a bright bottle green outfit with a quantity of bronze studding. But, troops as green as their uniforms though they were, I had inspected them and fancied they would stand firm on the day of the battle. They were representative of what Vondium had put forth, again, and if they failed then all might fail.

By a series of forced marches we covered the ground and, choosing our time and place well, were able to strike at Colun’s rear guard just as they had begun preparations for pitching camp for the night. Give them their due, they were not like Fat Lango’s apology for an army. They were tough and hardened. But, all the same, caught with tents half-erected and men out collecting firewood and fetching water and leading the animals to the picket lines, they folded. Pockets fought madly and well; but the cavalry swamped them and the infantry raced in with a whoop and dismounted and finished the job. It was all over as the last of Zim and Genodras flushed ruby and emerald fires over the land, painting everything in an eerie sea of flame and verdigris.

There were many prisoners and the local Delphondi promised not to slay them all but to keep them penned until they might be ransomed or exchanged. We counted the cost and felt the satisfaction of relief from dire foreboding that our casualties were so few. We were still an army in being, and, into the bargain, an army crowned with success.

“Now,” said Nath. “For the main body?”

“We must chivvy them a space, yet. Hit them here and run. Ambush there — and run. We run rings around them and no man will take shame that he runs. When we have them nicely molded to the certainty of their defeat — then we will deal with them.”

Certain information reached me that this Kov Colun had been badly shaken by the defeat of a part of his army. He continued his advance; but he advanced cautiously instead of, as we all felt would be the wiser course, making an all-out effort to race through to the capital. His air component, mainly mirvols although he had some fluttrells, would prove uncomfortable in the day of the battle. During this period as we prepared his army for destruction they were chiefly an irritant. They scouted us with insolent ease and at times we were forced to pretty shifts to deceive them.

Seg’s contingent of Bowmen set themselves the task of driving off the mirvols, and succeeded remarkably well at most times. But there were many pretty little skirmishes as Bowman and flyer clashed. In the end Farris spared us a couple of small four-place airboats and these did sterling work. Colun’s air was almost all flyer-mounted; of fliers he had a few he kept close and I, with a cynicism born of being an emperor, had no need to be told what those particular vollers were intended to do. As each day passed and Colun struggled nearer and nearer Vondium, we chipped away at his forces. And, each day, messengers reached me with the latest news. Much of it concerned the preparations we made. The most ominous told me that the clansmen led by Zankov were now moving steadily down toward the city. As a defensible city, Vondium stood in much the same league as a holiday camp. The walls and fortresses had suffered so severely in the Time of Troubles that, as even Yantong had seen when he had been in control there, it would take many seasons to rebuild them. Mind you, by Zair, Vondium would be defended at the end. There was no doubt on that in anybody’s mind. None whatsoever.

This discrepancy in the defensive power of the city between the time when we Vallian Freedom Fighters had taken it back, and now when we sought to defend it, lay in the nature of the forces involved. Now the attackers would be clansmen from the Great Plains of Segesthes. The very thought of them sent cold shivers down the backs of civilized men.

The determination to fight on to the end and, if it came to it, die well, carried the men on during this period. They just did not think too far ahead. When the day came to meet the clansmen in battle, well, they’d call on Opaz and go forward and fight. And when it was over and they lay in their windrows of death, what would it matter then?

Seg remained amazingly cheerful, fully occupied, a fiery spirit of defiance and resistance. I could guess at the hurt he thus hid, the agony in him, and still I could not allay that hurt or intensify it by a single word. Every day the sense of pressure increased. We chivvied and chopped Kov Colun’s army, and ran. The clansmen drew nearer the city. The recruits drilled and sweated in Vondium and the adjoining areas. The arsenals worked all day and night producing the new arms and armor we required. Each day twisted another circle in the spiral of the press that closed on us. But we soldiered on. The progress of Colun’s army slowed. It faltered to a stop, clustered about a bend in a tiny river, a mere stream, where once it would have boldly pushed on. Provender had been scarce for that invading army of late. We hemmed them in, and still they substantially outnumbered us. Nath walked over to where I stood in the shade of a group of missals and his face bore a wide and beaming smile. Seg looked up, and said, “So your Third have come up, then, Nath?”

“Aye, Kov Seg. They have. And a magnificent sight they are, fined down, lean and hard. By Vox! Let me at this rast of a Colun and his cramphs.”

The Third with the accompanying churgurs and spearmen and archers had had to march. You could account the Third Phalanx a veteran body, now, after their victory at Yervismot where, thanks be to Opaz, we had found Seg Segutorio again. But most of the infantry were green troops, churgurs and spearmen. As for the archers, Seg pulled a face, and took himself off to make a most careful and intolerant inspection.

Now that the chance for bringing Colun’s invading army to battle had come, and the opportunity must be taken on the wing, I was plagued by all those old and hateful doubts. The idea of splendidly attired regiments hurling into the clamor and horror of battle is bad enough. But you must never forget that those bright blocks of moving color beneath the banners and the glitter of weapons are men. Living men. To hurl them into battle must, inevitably, mean that many will be dead men. So, for the next few days as Colun sought to move his men away from the stream, we chipped away at him. Then, when he did move, it was a question of maneuver and counter-maneuver. The army appeared to have abandoned all ideas of marching on Vondium. They began to move south again, trying to keep in a single compact body and reaching strong places for each night. Patrols reported in regularly. I took a flier and went ahead and scouted the terrain most carefully, at last selecting a likely looking ridge bisecting the expected path of the enemy. The ground sloped just enough to make the Phalanx into a tiered and impregnable wall of steel. The level ground would give the cavalry a capital chance of putting in some real charges. With a heavy heart I gave my orders and the Army of Vondium moved out to secure the ridge and the surrounds.

Many deserters fled the ranks of Colun’s army. They were mercenaries, and told us much of conditions; but they were astonished that we refused to hire them. We rounded them up and let the locals escort them to the coast and their ships. The invaders had swept up most of the occupying forces in their march, and, now that our tactics had dragged them to a standstill and then a reversal, the country was just about clean. Once we had disposed of these invading cramphs we could claim this southern section of Vallia back.

A Rapa veteran, his beaked face filled with outrage, was brought to my tent. My men stood looking on. This Rapa wore hard-worn harness, and his weapons were bright.

“You are the emperor?”

“Aye.”

“I am told, majister, that you will not hire my men. We relinquished our allegiance to Kov Colun to join you. We are honorable men, paktuns, whose living is by the sword. Tell me, majister, why you do not hire us to fight for you?”

I told him. He either didn’t understand or didn’t want to understand. He could see that my new policy meant there would be no employment in Vallia for mercenaries in the future. As he turned to leave, much cast down, he said: “Well majister, at least Colun will not be there to see the defeat of his army.”

I quivered alert. I looked at the Rapa, and his vulture-face twitched and he went on quickly: “Kov Colun left the army by voller when we were encamped by that muddy little stream.”

I sagged back, both elated and dejected. The army was doomed. Colun had seen that, despite its apparent strength. So, that meant — where had the rast gone to stir up more trouble?

The Rapa did not know. Diligent inquiries elicited no further information. Colun had flown away and left them to their destruction. The question now was: Would the new army commander, Kapt Hangreal, fight? Or would he agree to terms? You may imagine the tenterhooks we were dancing on as we awaited his reply to our message. The reply was short and brutal. Kapt Hangreal was confident that his army could whip us and make a clean escape to the coast. So, to my chagrin, we were committed to a fight. That was the Battle of Irginian.

Kapt Hangreal completely misjudged the strength of the Phalanx, as the aragorn had done. Formed, compact, a solid mass of crimson and bronze, glittering with steel, the Third Phalanx took the foam-crested shocks of the cavalry charges. When Hangreal flung in his infantry our own churgurs swept in from the flanks. And, all the time, the deadly arrows crisscrossed. His aerial cavalry played a small part, until Seg’s Bowmen rode up, dismounted, and shot them out of the sky as they tried to attack in flank. Well, it was a battle. It was not a particularly bad battle. Long before it could develop into a slogging match the Phalanx moved. Surrounded by clouds of churgurs and archers, the Phalanx charged. The Battle of Irginian was over.

The local people, many of whom were sending their strongest sons to join the new armies of Vallia, cleared up. There was no time to waste. With a single day for recuperation the Army of Vondium started in motion, heading back for the capital. Forces of observation were left to ensure no flare-up occurred as the lines of prisoners marched for the coast. I left Seg and Nath in command and took voller and flew for Vondium. Now it was Zankov’s turn. Now, perhaps, we would reach the beginning of the end.

Chapter Twenty

The Battle of Kochwold

Drak had not returned so far from Faol. Jaidur had not been released by the Sisters of the Rose from whatever deviltry they were egging him on to. And Zeg had not as yet responded to the call to leave Zandikar where he was king. As for the distaff side of the family, the babies, Velia, and Didi — the daughter of Gafard, the King’s Striker, and our daughter Velia — were growing apace but not yet old enough to cause us the kind of pangs their elders were so good at. Lela, presumably with Jaidur, was off adventuring. And Dayra — ah, well! No word had come from Barty telling me how he fared in his renewed search for Dayra, and I fancied that Ros the Claw would lead him a merry dance, by Zair, yes!

And, as you will instantly perceive, Delia had not returned home.

I mumped about the city, and in between brooding over the unkind cuts of Fate got on with rebuilding the army.

There were a few burs to spare for lighter moments and Jilian proved a tough and cunning opponent at Jikaida. She had a most devilish way of cutting in from a flank when you were sure everything on that side was battened down tight. Also, of course, her person was such as to distract the most hardened old misogynist from the board and the marching ranks of model men.

“By Vox, Jak! As Dee-Sheon is my witness something addles your brains. You’ve let my left-flank Chuktar in — and, see—” and here Jilian did the most diabolical things to my model men. “Do you bare the throat?”

“Aye. Aye, I bare the throat.”

We sat on a snug balcony bowered in moon-blooms and with a table handy loaded with silver flagons of wine. The night was cool and refreshing, and She of the Veils smiled down serenely, her fuzz of pink and golden light shedding a mellow roseate glow over the rooftops and battlements of the palace spread out below. Jilian yawned and covered her face with her hand, and then stretched.

“You had your girls hard at it today.”

“And every day. But I wish I had been able to lay that cramph Colun by the heels.”

“He’ll turn up again,” I said, comfortably. “That sort of villain always does. The only trouble is—”

“He’ll turn up when it’s most damned inconvenient, I know!”

Jilian wore one of Delia’s loose lounging robes all of white sensil and she shimmered like an ivory flame in the moonlight. During the day she strode about among her girls and although she did not crack and snap her whip, she carried the ugly thing looped up around her arm.

The Enevon walked onto the balcony from the room beyond, rubbing his eyes, bringing fresh problems to be sorted out.

The exact spot at which we would like to meet Zankov and his wild clansmen had been chosen. If Opaz smiled, then the enemy would choose that route. In order to encourage Opaz to make up his mind I’d sent high-speed forces out to cut the bridges of alternative routes and to harass Zankov enough to make him swing, like a bull, to face the fancied threats. If he was prepared to follow the guidelines I had set for him, he would — Opaz willing — pass across the stretch of land known as the Kochwold. If he did, as we prayed, we would be waiting for him. And this waiting came as a vast and unexpected reprieve. Mind you, as a wild and hairy clansman myself I should have anticipated what was occurring up there in Jevuldrin. Clansmen are clansmen, accustomed to the airy sweeps of the Great Plains. When they ride through hamlets and villages, seeing the spires of cities rising before them, they feel all the itchy-fingered avarice of your true reiver. Plunder was retarding the onward march of Zankov’s hired army. And, that very plunder was the hire money. I raged and fumed and could not, in all conscience, following the sad example of King Harold, allow the enemy to devastate the country. A policy of scorched earth would have served, perhaps; but the country up there was generally in the hands of that rast Ranjal Yasi, Stromich of Morcray, the twin brother to the strom, Rosil Yasi. Zankov was having either to fight or come to terms with his old ally.

So the Kochwold it was to be. Zankov was clearly aiming to march to the east around the mountains, known as the Mountains of Thirda to some folk, rather than the west of them. That way would force him to make too many river crossings. East about he would have fewer major rivers to bar him. Kochwold extended its sweep of moorland on the southern borders of Jevuldrin and the northern borders of Forli. The last I had heard of Lykon Crimahan, the Kov of Forli, was that he was fighting desperate guerilla actions, with the help of us Valkans as promised, and slowly, painfully slowly, regaining some of his province, the Blessed Forli. Now, all that was, if not irrelevant, then of far less importance than the rampaging invasion of ten thousand wild clansmen.

Oh, yes, ten thousand. A further four thousand had been disembarked. And, again, that explained the disembarkation point still further. The ships from Zenicce were engaged in ferrying men and voves across, and the passage between Zamra to the south and the islands below Vellin to the north afforded relatively sheltered waters. No doubt they were making a third trip even now. So that, starkly, was a most potent reason why our waiting, useful as it was, must be curtailed.

“Come on, Jak! For the sake of Vox’s Arm! You look as though your zorca’s run off and you’ve found a dead calsany.”

“I was wishing Delia was here.”

Jilian smiled. “So do I. From all I know of the empress she would have my girls trimmed up in no time at all.”

“Oh, aye. Mind you, I don’t think she ever went through Lancival. Although, everything is possible with that lady.”

“Everything, Jak. Everything.”

She spoke in so knowing a way that my old head snapped up. But Jilian just smiled her smile, her dark hair low over that broad white forehead, and her red mouth arched, so that I knew I was beaten. Jilian was not prepared to let me into her secrets — not just yet, anyway.

While we awaited certain news that Zankov and the clansmen had chosen the route we wanted, we labored hard and long. The army was built up again. The remnants of the force almost destroyed at Sicce’s Gates had come in and formed cadres. Nath was fiercely determined on having three full phalanxes, and the veterans of the First and Second were slogging away teaching the newcomers to the files. The brumbytes worked willingly, with the triumphs of the Third to guide them. Spearmen, archers and churgurs filled the regiments of the infantry, along with axemen and double-handed swordsmen and the rest. The cavalry was not, to their baffled fury, unduly expanded. But they worked hard, damned hard, and I concentrated strength on the armored nikvove regiments. This was obvious sense to anyone who knew what was going on in Filbarrka. A message had been sent to Filbarrka telling him that instead of six there were now ten Divisions to be dealt with. His reply was typical. I could imagine him entangling his fingers and bouncing up and down as he dictated it to his stylor. “A better target for the dartmen and archers, majister! They’ll be so confused, being so many, they won’t know which way to run or what is hitting them.”

Well, it was comforting to know someone was so confident.

Enevon sought assistance from the army in gathering the third mergem harvest and this was done. Mergem, a capital all-purpose foodstuff, would be vital in the campaigns. Farris reported that the new ship construction proceeded well, although: “Ships!” He pulled his lip.

“Mere rafts.”

“Exactly, Farris. And functional.”

The production of silver boxes which would lift the new ships was well advanced. So I had said we would simply construct huge raft-like structures, open-sided, railed in and five or six storied. Each one would be propelled by a rig of the utmost simplicity: foresail, mainsail and mizzen. With the silver boxes exerting their lifting power and extending their invisible keels into the lines of force, we could sail and tack and steer a course. When it rained, well, we’d get wet.

But, with these flying chicken-coops we could transport the army.

I may add that there were very few forests left for dwaburs around Vondium. On three separate occasions I saw the gold and scarlet hunting bird of the Star Lords circling above me. I took no notice. If the Everoinye switched me away to some other part of Kregen now — or, horribly, banished me back to Earth — there would be a struggle and I might win or lose. As of now, as they say, the defense of Vondium and the uniting of all Vallia obsessed me. Every day we heard fresh stories of atrocities committed in those areas occupied by any of the various invaders. We all felt, unshakably, that we had to ensure that the new flag of Vallia floated over a free country. Trite, chauvinistic, opportunistic — maybe. But it was not me, not Dray Prescot, not even Jak the Drang, who alone held this point of view. Nothing could have been done if the people were not every one fully dedicated and committed.

So, mentally committing the Gdoinye and its masters to the Ice Floes of Sicce, I stuck doggedly to the task at hand.

A regiment of my Valkans flying the superb flutduins eventually reached us, and they were greeted with roars of pleasure. Everyone regarded these splendid flyers with great affection and treated their riders right royally, a very different situation from even a few seasons ago when most Vallians regarded saddle flyers as birds of the devils of Cottmer’s Caverns.

Came the day.

At last.

Zankov was reported as definitely taking the route that would lead through to the Kochwold. Imagine a miles wide area smothered in men and animals all loading aboard vast and creaking five-story rafts, like a bedlam of the Ark in monstrous proportions. Dust, yelling, smells, the neighs and whinnyings of animals, the choleric bellows of Deldars, the snapping of whips, the creaking of wheels. And, over all, the forest of masts and yards. Well, somehow or other the mass was loaded and the ships — the flying chicken-coops — lifted into the air.

Wearing the blazing golden and scarlet Mask of Recognition specially made for me, I stood in the bows of a small voller and watched the departure. The ships rose and spread their wings. The wind zephyred them along. One by one, three by three, squadron by squadron, they took up their stations. Sailing orange boxes flying through thin air. Railed rafts loaded down with men and animals, with artillery and weapons, stores and fodder. They excited enormous sensations of disbelief, and wonder, and sheer jumping excitement.

This excitement thrilled through the air, leaping from man to man, bringing the color up, lending a sparkle to the eye, making every conversation bright and meaningful. Off they sailed, off to war, off to fight the Kregen-renowned and ferocious clansmen of Segesthes — off to find their destinies. When the voller landed back at the palace, for there was still work to be done before I could leave —

always there was work — Jilian waited for me to wish me Remberee.

She looked stunning. Her black leathers clung to her, molding her figure, and her long legs seemed to go on and on for ever. She carried her bronze-mounted balass box under her left arm, and rapier and main-gauche were scabbarded to her narrow waist. Also, she carried a drexer at my wish. Her hair was covered by a helmet in which crimson feathers tufted bravely. She smiled.

“So it is Remberee, Jak the Drang.”

“Aye, Jilian. Remberee.”

Her voller was waiting. The mingled streaming lights of the Suns of Scorpio fell about us, drenching us and the landing platform in ruby and emerald fires. The air smelled sweet with that pungent, unique, glorious Kregen sweetness.

And then she surprised me. Still smiling she leaned forward and kissed me. I was stunned. She stepped back, observed the fantamyrrh of her voller and climbed aboard. She lifted her arm in final salute.

“Remberee, Jak. I do not forget what help you have given a poor girl from a Banje shop.”

“You mean a wild tiger-girl, do you not? Remberee, Jilian the Claw.”

The voller lifted away. I wondered if I would ever see her again.

Work — well, there is always work. The army was commanded by men whom you have met in my narrative, and others I have not so far mentioned. But all, I felt, were competent, brave and loyal. To be anything less in those dark days for Vallia was a species of crime. Nath had taken his three Phalanxes. Farris commanded the air. He would have nothing of remaining in Vondium to be the imperial Crebent-Justicar. The Presidio would run things in Vondium. If we failed, of course, there would be nothing for them to run, except — to run themselves. Seg stood by me and we would fly up together, he to command the vanguard as ever.

Most of my choice band had gone; but about fifty of them remained to escort Seg and me, enough to fill the voller we would use. And, in these last days I had discovered what their secret was. Many a time, when one or the other of them should have been off duty I had stumbled across them on duty at my door or the flap of my tent on campaign. Slowly I realized that after the assassins’ attempts on me they had, privately, formed a kind of purely personal bodyguard. This was something I had never encouraged, for palace intrigues can breed in this kind of Praetorian Guard, this Imperial Guard, this Life Guard syndrome. But they insisted, and, to be truthful, I knew every one of them and fancied every one a true comrade.

They called this new bodyguard the Emperor’s Sword Watch.

They all wore a yellow scarf tucked in around the corselet rim. Also, I noticed that their crimson trappings tended more to the scarlet...

Left in Vondium were a few regiments so new the armory grease still clung to their weapons and their uniforms were not marked by a spot, and a convalescent regiment of men recovering from sickness or wounds. All the rest flew northeast. We followed and I, at the least, had thoughts of Armageddon plaguing my mind.

The armada was blessed with favoring winds and we lost only two of the sailing chicken-coops, the vast rafts crashing in splinters but not harming the men in them. These last, I know, raved frantically and then set about repairing their ungainly craft. The rest of the army set down safely. The details of the campaign need not be gone into at length, suffice it to say that by luck and planning we contrived that the army should be drawn up in proper array on the ridge we had chosen, with the Kochwold about us, in good time. Zankov’s scouts had reported our presence. The enemy host drew in and concentrated. They possessed such sublime confidence in their own invulnerability that we anticipated a wild and reckless clansman’s charge which, they supposed, would settle the issue once and for all.

Filbarrka, brought by a flying collection of rafts and chicken-coops, landed his zorcamen. At once I rode out to inspect them. I rode Snowy, that coal-black zorca, and I was dressed in my usual fashion. The brave old scarlet glowed under the suns. I carried a longbow, a quiver of arrows fletched with the rose-red feathers of the zim-korf of Valka, a Krozair longsword, a drexer and a rapier and main-gauche. Also, strapped to the saddle swung an axe. Not overdressed, not carrying a ridiculous over amount of weaponry, I fancied. This was the Kregen way. Not as many weapons as a man can carry — no. As may weapons as are needed for the job in hand — yes. That is the Kregen way. Accompanied by aides-de-camp and escorted by the chiefs of the Emperor’s Sword Watch, we cantered out to the place where Filbarrka, radiant, immense in armor, had drawn up his brand new zorca force for inspection.

And, indeed, they looked splendid.

“Let ’em bring on their ten thousand,” said Filbarrka, twitching his fingers. “We’ll dart ’em and feather

’em and then you lot can have a go.”

Our sailing rafts had taken the equipment asked for out to the Blue Mountains and so the zorca force was accoutered as I expected and as Filbarrka had suggested. Also, a contingent of the Blue Mountain Boys was present, extraordinarily ferocious and many of them armed with the great Sword of War. Korf Aighos was there and I greeted him as an old friend and kept a wary eye on my own equipment.

“Although,” said the Korf. “What is going on in the Blue Mountains now I do not like to think.”

“Why, Korf! I’m surprised anything remains for anyone to want to take away.”

“You would, majister, be surprised. And we have some Black Mountain Men with us, although not many. They are hard pressed up north.”

“All in good time.”

He did not mention Delia and so I knew she had not been to her province of the Blue Mountains. She hadn’t been in Delphond, either. I remember I said to myself something like where the hell can the pesky woman be? and immediately felt aghast at the thought. What the Sisters of the Rose got up to would make even Korf Aighos scratch his head.

The ground over which the coming battle would be fought was surveyed again most thoroughly. Hundreds of lads were out spreading their caltrops, and the chevaux-de-frise were stacked ready and waiting to be run out onto the flanks as required. That night the sky glowed with the reflections of campfires.

As a general rule I do not believe in Councils of War and I saw no need to make an exception now. We gathered, the Kapts and the chiefs, and there was little talk of what to do on the morrow. Every one knew his task. So we drank in moderation and cracked a few silly jokes and sang and then sought our beds. If they slept I did not inquire. I made the rounds of the campfires and was aware of the hovering shadows of the men of the Sword Watch. One of the songs that was currently popular kept breaking out from this group or that clustered about their fire. “She lived by the Lily Canal” the song was, a sickly sentimental ditty of very little musical worth; but somehow it got to the men, and they warbled it over and over, almost obsessively. Yes, I can never hear that old song now without a powerful pang of remembrance of that night before the Battle of Kochwold, among the campfires of the army, the sizzle of the flames, the smells of animals and dust, the tang of leather and sweat and oil. Well, a battle is a battle, as I have said, and they are all the same and all different — as I have said... Well before dawn the host was astir and breakfasting mightily. Then we moved forward from the camp area and took up our battle positions. Patrols reported that the clansmen were doing exactly as we anticipated and were moving forward for the confrontation that daylight would bring. Nothing would stop them from putting spurs in and charging. It was our job to stop that charge. Perhaps one day a full and detailed account of the Battle of Kochwold will be given to you by me, for it was a fascinating battle and deserves commemoration. Enevon committed all the salient facts to paper; but it needs a military historian to sort them out and make sense of them. Very many fine poems were written and there are countless songs marking this or that incident. At the time and to most of us engaged, it was a huge sprawling untidy mess.

And, to be sure, the message I received half way through did not make understanding any easier. The initial stages went as we had planned — almost.

The sprawling untidy mess occurred, as in many fights, after the initial movements of each side, being completed, had achieved or failed to achieve their objectives. Our first requirement was to stop that charge. That objective had been required by many a fighting host before us, and most of them were long a-moldering.

But the clansmen of the Great Plains of Segesthes, among whom I am proud to be numbered as a member, although not in my own eyes skilled enough to be dubbed a Clanner, are not your stupid brainless illiterate barbarians. They are not like the Iron Riders, the radvakkas whom the Phalanx had so signally overthrown.

“By Vox!” said Seg, at my side just before he left to take over his position with the vanguard. “The cramphs!”

“Aye, Seg,” I said. “Clansmen are clansmen. It will be a bonny fight.”

For the tremendous dark mass of the vove cavalry halted, a plains-filling concentration of men and animals, silent, awe-inspiring, totally menacing in their appearance. And forward trotted the archers. These were men who were the occupiers of the land hereabouts, Ranjal Yasi’s men, and so I knew the Kataki Stromich had come to terms with his old friend Zankov. Perhaps the sight and sound and stink of ten thousand clansmen and their voves had had a deal to do with that... Also, of course, in these nation-wide struggles for power, the double-dealing would always go on. No doubt Phu-Si-Yantong kept a close observation on what went on and had advised his lieutenant, Ranjal Yasi, to appear to acquiesce in the rebellious plans of Zankov, who had been disowned by the Wizard of Loh. That, at least, would be in keeping with the character of the participants. Whatever accommodations had been reached, in addition to the ten divisions of vovemen we faced a host of other cavalry and infantry. They were mercenaries, hired by Yasi to keep the country in subjection, and they had been earning their hire. We men of Vallia vowed to make them rue their wages this day of battle.

“Better clear them away with your cavalry, Seg. But I shall keep the nikvove regiments under my hand for a space.”

“Yes, my old dom, and make damned sure they nip in quick when they’re needed. By the Veiled Froyvil! I really think this is going to be a battle that will be remembered to the end of time.” He walked with me toward the four-place voller he required as a commander and which he would quit for a zorca or nikvove when he reached his battle line. “This is going to be a big one, Dray!”

“Aye. Would to Zair it was not necessary.”

In the voller waited his pilot, his trumpeter and his standard bearer, all old friends to whom I spoke a few words. Then Seg Segutorio took off, flying forward into battle. Would I ever clap eyes on my blade comrade again? That kind of thought always occurs to me, always tortures me, and is always a stupid nonsense. When Zair crooks his finger, then up you go, my friend, and nothing will detain you on Kregen...

It was time for me to perform what later generations would call the Public Relations Stunt. Mind you, I do not denigrate the value of thus showing myself, as the commander, and the flags. Mounted on as large a nikvove as we could find, a superb charger called Balassmane, and clad in a brilliant golden armor, emblazoned with scarlet, I rode along the forward face of the army. The blazing Mask of Recognition glittered in the light of the Suns or Scorpio. Scarlet feathers fluttered. I lifted the drexer high in salute. Following me trotted Cleitar the Standard bearing the flag with the yellow cross on the scarlet field, Old Superb. With him rode Ortyg the Tresh proudly lifting the new red and yellow flag of Vallia. Volodu the Lungs rode to hand and his silver trumpet, much dented, gleamed like a leaping salmon. At my back and on the side nearest the enemy rode Korero the Shield. It would take a very great deal to shift him from that devoted position. Others of my Sword Watch trotted in that imperial cavalcade, glittering with light, colorful with uniforms, proud, eager, nerved to the occasion, men you have met in this my narrative, men I am proud to call comrades.

As we passed down the lines the roar of approbation swelled and the men in the ranks lifted their weapons, a swirling forest of blades, and cheered. The answering shouts from our foes drifted in, thin and attenuated. But, then, all our bellowing would reach them as a mere whisper beside their own war chants.

“By Aduim’s Belly!” said Dorgo the Clis.

“I never thought to see a day like this,” said Targon the Tapster.

“Nor me,” said Naghan ti Lodkwara.

Their words were lost and blown away in the swelling cheers from the army. By the time that morale-boosting and flag identification exercise was over and we had returned to our positions, the first clashes had taken place. The archers had been sent forward by Zankov to prepare our mass. He must, then, have a great deal of control over the unruly clansmen. But Seg would have none of that and he would not sit on his hands when there was shooting in the wind. His advance guard cavalry swept out, screeching, long lines of glittering figures bounding over the moorland. They tumbled the enemy archers over and Seg’s mounted Bowmen roared forward. He had so few Bowmen of Loh to hand that he reserved them for the special occasion, the point d’appui. But the compound reflex bows of our men spat. The range to the enormous mass of clansmen was far too far; but the confused fighting between the two ranked armies slowly sorted itself out, and then the recalls were blown and our men, triumphant, rode back.

Of course, the discomfiture of that ploy of Zankov’s would merely make the grim Chuktars of the clansmen say in their savage way that he should not have bothered with all this fancy strategy and tactics. Let the clansmen charge. That would be the end of it.

Our position on that little ridge must have worried Zankov. I had not formed any great opinion of his qualities as a military captain; but something must have alarmed him at the sight of those massed ranks and files of men, silent and motionless in their crimson and bronze. Perhaps he had heard of the fate of the radvakkas against the Phalanx.

Looking about, I’ll admit I missed the warm and eager presence of Barty Vessler. Nath Nazabhan cantered over and instantly wanted me to order the advance. I looked at him and he said: “Well, majister, by Vox!”

“Once Filbarrka has been at work for a space, then you may advance, Nath. But you will not move until you have my personal word. Is that clear?”

“It is clear and it makes sense, as we planned. But it is damned hard standing still with a pike in your fist at a time like this.”

“Agreed. You saw their bowmen?”

He ducked his head, eager, alive, vehement. “I did. I may have spoken harsh words against the Kov of Falinur in the past, when I did not know him. No one could have cleared our front as well as he has just done.”

That, I may say, pleased me enormously.

The clansmen with the failure of their missile men were not as foolish as the knights at Crecy. There was no Comte d’Alençon in their ranks to bay out: “Kill me this rabble! Kill! Kill!” and go spurring down on his mercenary allies. They waited calmly for the outcome of this first encounter and when it went against them they waited for the ground to clear. Again, that made sense, for even a vove in the midst of a charge may stumble over a wounded man or a wounded and terrified zorca or totrix. So we watched them and the ranks held and the suns crawled across the sky and I knew Filbarrka was bringing his torrent of zorcamen up on flanks and rear.

Whether the clansmen charged before or after he hit them, I knew, made little difference to Filbarrka. Except that if they attempted to charge afterwards their onslaught would be a little dinted... For myself, I would prefer the vove charge to begin and then for Filbarrka to hit them, as they rode bunched, knee to knee.

A certain amount of aerial activity took place. Our flutduin regiment had done splendid work in scouting; but there were too few of them to affect in any greatly material way the outcome of the main battle. But, at least, it was better they fought for us than against us. I saw them swooping down and shooting into the ranks of the vovemen, and presently a mirvol-mounted force of aerial cavalry flew up and tried to chase them off. The aerial evolutions were pretty to watch. But my Valkan flutduinim had been well-trained by Djangs who are past-masters at the art of aerial combat, and they both held off the mirvols and continued to attack the army below.

Those mirvols — they wore gaudy trappings and their riders no less gaudy uniforms. Uniforms, I fancied, I had last seen in Fat Lango’s army.

Abruptly, Nath rapped out an oath. “I am for the Phalanx, majister. They move! See! The clansmen move!”

And, indeed, the front ranks of the vovemen were in motion, leading out, beginning to stretch forward into the charge.

So — the moment everyone waited for, hoped for and dreaded, had at last arrived.

“Stand like a rock, Nath!” I bellowed after him, and he half-turned in the saddle and flung up his hand in parting salute.

I could tell to the mur when Nath arrived with the three Phalanxes. From every Jodhri the battle flags unfurled and broke free, thirty-six Old Superbs, to add a special luster to the display of heraldry and defiance flaunting in the breeze.

Cleitar the Standard grunted and shook his own flag, Old Superb, making it ripple and glisten.

“It is a right they have earned, Cleitar.”

“Aye, majister. And, anyway, the Jodhri banners are smaller than your own personal standard. As they should be.”

And I had to smile.

Where one caltrop will bring a four-legged animal crashing to the ground, a vove with his eight legs will carry on until he is a veritable pincushion with the vile things tangling him. I do not like caltrops or chevaux-de-frise as a cavalryman; as an infantryman they are gifts from the gods. The vovemen moved. They advanced. Their banners fluttered. Their pace increased. Like the irresistible ocean, like the Tides of Kregen themselves, like — like a charge of vovemen! — like nothing else in Creation, they charged. The drumming hoofbeats battered the ground. The ground shook. The onward surge consumed the senses. On trampled the vovemen. On thundered the sea of steel. Forward they came. Six thousand in that first charge. Six thousand monstrous beasts. Six thousand ferocious warriors. On they rode, onward, ever onward, cantering into a gallop, racing full stretch, pouring resistlessly on, on, roaring down on the grim compact masses of the Phalanx.

How they rode! How they rode, those wild shaggy clansmen of the Great Plains!

Timing their attack to coincide with that great charge, the enemy’s vollers crested forward above that sea of tossing heads and flaring pelts, of horns and fangs, of clansmen gone wild. But our own airboats rose, reserved for this stratagem, and soared up and forward to tangle in a wild melee above the onrush below.

And now the clansmen shrilled their warcries. Onward they rushed.

Onward, a torrent of monstrous beasts and savage men, onward in a tempest of steel. Silent, motionless, solid, the Phalanx awaited the shock.

By Zim-Zair! I admit to it. The fire scorched into my blood. I have ridden in many a vove charge and thrilled to the mad onward rush when all the world blurs into a flowing frieze of color. When you know nothing and no one can stand before you and live. The sheer bulk of the vove beneath you, the solidity of him, the square impact of his eight hooves beating the ground in unison, the smooth flowing onward rush, the steadiness of the lance couched and pointed, its steel head sharp and glittering, bearing on, bearing on!

These vovemen had shattered and destroyed two Phalanxes already. We had rebuilt, and there was the Third. But, but . . . Oh, yes, by Vox, I sweated apprehension, tension — and fear. Six thousand in that first wild charge. And the other four thousand? The spyglass confirmed it. They were circling out on the flanks, two Divisions each, like horns, like pincers, raking forward to encircle and crush us.

But a stir was visible in that onrushing riding horde on either flank. The vovemen were in disorder there. And, at the rear of the great main charge a further disturbance attracted the attention of my men. Filbarrka was in action.

His zorcamen, light-armored, swift, deadly like wasps, darted in and out, maddening, pirouetting, curvetting, slaying. In orderly groups they fought with intelligence and cunning and high courage. Their archery shot coolly and methodically. Their dartmen raced in, flung their barbed weapons, and withdrew. The darts were poor at penetrating armor; but against unarmored parts of men and animals were highly effective and unpleasant. They penetrated deeply and were hard to remove. They caused constant pain as they flopped about in the convulsive movement of the voves, maddening the animals and causing them to disorder the formations still further.

The long slender twelve-foot lance was employed against man or animal. Then the mace — the vicious, heavy-headed mace, unerring — crunched with bone-smashing power. The zorcamen were nearer the ground than the vovemen. Many a clansman felt that stunning smash against his thigh or pelvis, toppling, his armory of weaponry flailing the air over the aggressive zorcaman, falling, being hit again as he fell. Oh, yes, Filbarrka’s Lancers and Filbarrka’s Archers wreaked enormous havoc and confusion as the vove charge poured across the plain and narrowed the gap.

And that gap itself proved a deadly obstacle to the voves. Liberally we had strewn the ground with caltrops and chevaux-de-frise, with narrow, wedge-shaped ditches. Many voves pitched to the ground, all their eight legs unable to cope with the obstacles. And our own dustrectium flayed them. Shaft after shaft sailed across the narrowing gap. Our archers shot well on that day, thanks be to Opaz. The steel-tipped birds of war thinned the onrushing mass. But still they came on, upborne with pride, with knowledge of their own invincibility, and, by Krun, my heart rode with them, for they were clansmen. Following them rode the mass of totrix and zorca cavalry put into the field by Zankov and Stromich Ranjal. Their infantry waited in dense masses for the outcome. But the charge, the charge of the voves —

that was the battle winner!

Watching, lifting in my stirrups, I saw the way the leading masses roared up the first of the slope to the ridge. Would nothing stop them? On and on they raged, beating on and up, and the pikes all came down as one, and the trumpets pealed, and the crimson and bronze stretched out, taut and thin to my eye, firm and like a rock in a raging sea.

The three Phalanxes had been arranged with the First on the right of the line and the Second on their left and half of the Third, the Fifth Kerchuri, on the left of the line. The Sixth Kerchuri stood fast in reserve to the rear. All the emotion of two worlds concentrated down for me in that impact. I was aware of the flanks surging on and of churgur infantry and spearmen clashing on the wings. I was aware of the ceaseless flights of arrows. I was aware of the cavalry fights taking place all over the plain. But the impact, nearer and nearer, took my attention and I could not tear my eyes away from that enormous collision.

Irresistible and immovable objects? No, by Krun, not quite. For the Phalanx had been bested before by the clansmen, and the clansmen knew nothing of defeat. The impact, when it came, racketed such noise, such clamor, such soul-searing horror, that I felt the salt taste of blood on my lips. That was where I should be, down there, in the front rank of the files with the faxuls, down there, wielding my pike against that onrushing host. And I sat my nikvove and watched and could only judge the time to send forward the Sixth Kerchuri and order in the churgurs and the spearmen. The Hakkodin were slashing and slicing away, the front swayed, locked, striking in insane fury. Incredible, the ferocity of the charge and sublime, insane, the solidity it met.

The Second swayed.

The Second Phalanx swayed and its front crumbled.

I saw the yellow and red flags go down.

Voves began to pour through a narrow gap that rapidly widened. At my instant order Volodu blew Sixth Kerchuri; but Nath was before me and I saw the Sixth moving up, solid and dense in their masses, the crimson and bronze shouldering forward to plug the gap. The Second recovered. The officers down there were raging and bellowing and the files reformed and the pikes came down again, all in line. But the lines were thinner, now.

The confusion down there tantalized me. The voves recoiled and came on again. The Phalanx held. I saw the rear markers going up, the Bratchlins urging the men on. I saw the swaying movement as though the very sea itself sought to pour on and over a line of rocks. And the zorcamen were in among the voves now, prancing around on their nimble steeds, striking and sliding return blows. The state of flux might continue, or it might break on an instant.

Zankov flung his infantry in, before they had time to decide if the day was lost or won, hurling them on intemperately to support the charge, to get in among the Phalanx. Our own infantry moved to mask the flanks, channeling the attack onto the melee. The Hakkodin now had fresh targets for their axes and halberds and two-handed swords.

This was the crucial moment.

Even when he fights in the melee a clansman is an opponent greatly to be feared. Even when he does not hurl forward in the charge, he is a fighting man of enormous power. The slogging match had begun. At that instant a troop of zorca riders flew up the long slope to my left side, riding hard, and I saw they were girls, Jikai Vuvushis.

Some of the Emperor’s Sword Watch angled out to halt them; but I saw the leader, drooping in the saddle, saw the arrow in her shoulder.

“Let her through!” I bellowed.

Jilian hauled her lathered zorca up before me. Her pale face was so white I fancied she had no blood left at all, and knew that was not so, as the blood stained around the ugly shaft in her shoulder. She tried to smile and the pain gripped her.

“I am sorry to see you in such case, Jilian.” I spoke with anger. “I had thought you in the reserve where—”

“Where you ordered my girls, aye, Jak, I know. But I have had another zhantil to saddle. My regiment is in the reserve and will go forward with the victory.” She swayed and I leaned down from the nikvove and got a hand under her armpit. “But there is no time. You must fly—” Her gaze flicked to the reserve troop of flutduins who waited beside Karidge’s Brigade, in the reserve, under my hand. Her girls were there, brilliant and chattering, and every eye fixed on that titanic fight going on along the face of the ridge. I looked there, alert for any change; but the slogging match continued and the Phalanx had not moved and the clansmen had not retired. Men were dying down there, dying by the hundred.

“The empress . . .” Jilian swayed and I was off the nikvove and hauled her off her zorca, and held her, looking down, and my face must have appeared like a chunk of granite.

“What of the empress?”

Jilian caught her breath. And I saw she bore an axe wound in her side, gashing and horrible, exposing pink and white ribs.

“That is nothing, Jak. The empress needs assistance — the Sakkora Stones—”

“I know it.” I placed her down, gently, for she was a great spirit, and bellowed at my company of brilliant aides. “Send to Seg Segutorio, the Kov of Falinur, commanding the vaward. My compliments. He is now commanding the army.” I was running toward the flutduins as I shouted, and each one of the great birds ruffled his feathers, as though asking me to pick him. “Tell the Kov to send in the reserve the moment the line wavers. Not before, not afterwards. He will know.”

Then I was hauling the flutduin Jiktar off his bird and mounting up, disdaining the straps of the clerketer. Everyone was yelling. Shouts of consternation broke from the Emperor’s Sword Watch. The flutduin troop gaped. I cracked the bird and he rose at once, his wings wide and gorgeous and of immense power. Together we rose into the air.

Below us a tremendous battle raged. Thousands of men were locked in hand-to-hand combat. I barely saw the red horror of it, barely heard the screeching din.

Over the clangor, over the blood, over the agony and death below I flew. I left the battle in the culminating moments of victory and defeat. Headlong, caring for one person and one person only in all of Kregen, I flew like a maniac across the gory battlefield of Kochwold. Delia...

Chapter Twenty-one

A Life for Vallia

Desertion. Infamous conduct. Lack of moral fiber in the face of the enemy. Lack of judgment of issues. Nothing of that mattered. Vallia did not matter, nor Kregen itself.

Only Delia mattered.

I knew the Sakkora Stones.

Like the Kharoi Stones of my island of Hyr Khor in distant Djanduin, it had been raised by the Sunset People who had lived on Kregen before the Star Lords had brought diffs to that beautiful planet to make it the wild and terrible world it is today. Ruined, tumbled into moldering stones, mysterious, unforgettable, the buildings of the Sunset People yet lived in legend and song.

Over the battlefield I flew and mirvols attacked me and I shot and slew them and their riders, and with the long whippy aerial sword strapped to the saddle fought off those who would have stopped me. In a straight line across the front I flew. The Sakkora Stones had been figured into our calculations in picking this site for the battle, and had been reckoned as not having any influence, one way or the other. They stood some ulm or so in rear of the position taken up by Zankov and we expected them to be used as a field hospital or supply dump. They lifted from the moorland, quite plainly, fallen columns, walls and roofs marking a once-vast star-shaped structure whose function remained obscure. As on Earth today, when an archaeologist is faced with an artifact whose manner of use he does not know will say it is a cult object or a ritual object, so we said the Sakkora Stones were a cult object. Over the rear echelons of Zankov’s army I flew and alighted in the grove of drooping trees gaining nourishment from some underground stream in this desolate moorland country. The flutduin immediately lifted off with a massive beat of his pinions and a wicked toss of his head. Magnificent saddle birds, flutduins. He was off back to his master.

I looked about, sternly and yet filled with terror. What in blue blazes Delia had been up to, how Jilian was involved, I did not know. But, by Vox, I would find out!

All the detritus, human, animal and material, in rear of a great army in conflict, lay scattered about. The trees afforded a slight amount of cover and men and animals moved to and fro, with a steady stream of wounded coming back. A party of spearmen, second-line troops no doubt assigned to guard the baggage train, approached the wood to question me. It were better — and more decent — not to relate what happened to them. I did not deign to don one of their uniforms as a disguise. I ran toward the nearest abutment of the Stones.

Anything could be happening in there. Jilian had been in no case to be specific. If she did not die I would be in her debt — if Delia lived. Whether or not I lived seemed to me of scant importance then, which is a strange attitude for me, Dray Prescot, to take, by Zair!

As I ran on with the blood thumping around my body it felt as though that very blood fought against constrictions in my veins. I’d been living very high and mighty, just lately, very high on the vosk, and, now...! This was more like the old Dray Prescot, rushing headlong into danger with a naked sword in his fist. Rushing, like the veritable onker I am, headlong into danger that forethought would avoid. But, then, that is me, Dray Prescot, prince of onkers.

The clansmen started up from their fire on which grilling ponsho smelled sweet. There were four of them and they were not skulkers, each being wounded. They saw my scarlet and gold flummery of dress and they did not hesitate. Out whipped their broadswords and they charged. Well, it was a merry little ding-dong; but I was frantic with worry and in no mood for a long exchange of handstrokes. The drexer snapped back into the scabbard. The next instant the Krozair longsword flamed. They were skilled clansmen, enormously powerful warriors; but they were not fighting for the life of Delia of Delphond, Delia of the Blue Mountains.

As the last of them sank down, he gasped out: “You fight like a clansman, Vallian.”

“Believe it, Clanner,” I said, hurdling him and rushing on into the gloom of the stones. “By the Black Chunkrah, believe it!”

Something caught in his eyes as he died.

Headstrong, headlong, and utterly foolish, Dray Prescot. I should have paused to snatch up a clansman’s russets and cover my insolent scarlet and gold. But there was no time, no time... Through the gloomy aisles of the leaning columns I raced. And I began to catch a glimpse of the truth. This place had been used as a headquarters. That would have made no difference to us. And what had been wrought here had been wrought with cunning and stealth and high courage. Running on I passed dead clansmen, dead mercenaries of various races of diffs. And, also, I passed dead bodies of Jikai Vuvushis, Battle Maidens. They looked pitiful and twisted in their fighting leathers of russet or black. And on their supple bodies, so lax and ghastly now in the final sleep, the badges of the Sisters of the Rose glowed in mockery. This was the kind of operation I, the stupid, proud, so inordinately presumptuous Emperor of Vallia, should have mounted. I had not. I had staked all on the impregnability of the Phalanx, the prowess of the warriors of the army and the new Filbarrka zorcamen. I prowled on, understanding what had passed here, and knowing that I would find the answers I sought when I came at last to the operations room of this headquarters and discovered what had chanced between Delia and her Battle Maidens, and Zankov, the slayer of her father.

Entwined clumps of purple-flowered Blooms depended from the shattered columns. Here and there the orange cones of Hyr-flicks congealed spots of deadly color. Their green tendrils snaked this way and that, seeking prey, snatching up the tikos of the cracked masonry, snaring any animal of reasonable size unwary enough to venture here. A Rapa had been caught and engulfed; only his beaked face glared sightlessly from a distended orange cone, and soon that would be gone, digested along with the rest of him.

Many of the Hyr-flicks, gigantic cousins of the flick-flicks that graced the windowsills of Kregen homes, had been slashed through. And yet still their tendrils writhed.

“Sink me!” I burst out as I ran on. “That Delia has put her head into a mighty unsavory pest hole, by Zair!”

The Krozair brand carved me a slimy way through and I understood this way was what could be called the rear entrance. Those four clansmen, hunkering wounded over their roasting ponsho, had been all unwitting of the drama enacted here. They had been of a clan I did not know. But I would know them hereafter, and Hap Loder would be advised.

Thinking sour thoughts like that led me on, as I ran, to a single scarlet speculation of the fate of the battle. The front would still be in flux, for the sounds of combat reached here as a muted hum, as of bees on a sunny summer afternoon, without the devil-boom of gunnery. The Hakkodin would be fully in action, the sword and shield men attempting to smash forward, the reserves being used — I must trust Seg. He must judge the time when to send in the reserves, when to commit our nikvove cavalry. But I pushed on without a pause, for ahead of me in the half-light of the aisled and gloomy Stones a radiance like the eye of the setting Zim, the red sun of Antares, drew me on.

There were diffs there, I remember, men in armor and brandishing weapons, and the manner of their going is something I do not clearly recall. I can still feel the hot wet drops of blood falling from my longsword onto my fists.

I must, I realize, have looked a monstrous sight. I had fathomed out, or thought I had, what had passed here. Delia and her Battle Maidens had struck, and kept their doings close, and somewhere up past that blood-red radiance which vanished from sight ever and anon as I twisted through the labyrinth of columns, up there — yes — Delia? Where was she, what was she doing now? Where her Jikai Vuvushis?

The Sakkora Stones spread over an extensive area, more than I realized; but through smothering vegetation I neared the operations room at the forward edge of the Stones — and Zankov. The battle raged apace, and knowledge of what reserves he could muster would have mightily interested me only a very short time earlier. Now — only reaching Delia obsessed me.

Soon I reached a part of the Stones where recent work had provided roof coverings, imported wooden beams with straw laid across making impromptu roofs. In one chamber a pile of dead lay sprawled in the attitudes of frozen battle. Diffs of various races including Katakis, Jikai Vuvushis at whom I looked with a mingling of quick and useless sympathy and a live and vibrant dread, and clansmen. I passed on and now the sounds of voices raised in anger reached me from beyond a curtaining wall of vegetation. I quickened my steps. I realized with a shock my hands were trembling on the hilt of the Krozair longsword. The half-lit gloom of the place and the bone-aching sensation of its unfathomable age lent mystery and terror to the Sakkora Stones. I slashed away a tendril that sought to encircle my neck and drag me into an orange gullet, and so put my ear to the green and living wall.

“Keep out of it, mother! It is no concern of yours!”

“You are my daughter and therefore my concern—”

“If Ros pleads for your life, I may grant it.”

I knew those three voices. I knew them!

With a vicious and intemperate slash with the longsword I ripped the curtained hangings across. Samphron oil lamps beyond splashed mellow light into a lurid scene. I stepped across the threshold and checked, struggling to focus on what lay beyond.

A further hanging partially obscured my view and, in turn, hid me from those who wrangled so bitterly. Delia — Delia stood there, pale-faced, wrought-up as I could see, unutterably lovely in her russet leathers, bereft of weapons, chained to one of the millennia-old columns of the Sakkora Stones. Facing her — Zankov stood, thin and brittle, alert and alive, his head jutting forward and the sneer of his face like the blow from a whip. At his side, Dayra — Dayra, Delia’s daughter and my daughter, Dayra, who would be called Ros the Claw. She wore the wicket stell set of talons now and they glittered in the lampglow. She looked almost bereft of reason, high-colored, frantic, beside herself with a fury she could neither understand nor control.

Delia, Dayra, and Zankov. I stood for perhaps a heart beat, for I saw they did not intend to kill Delia just yet. And the reason for that lay in Delia’s spirit, in her refusal to beg or to cringe. She spoke to Dayra as she must have spoken to her in the long ago, when I was banished to Earth.

“Do you know, daughter, who and what this man is? Do you know what he has done?”

“Whatever he has done — he belongs to me!”

“No man and no woman ever belong one to the other, Dayra.”

Those words struck through to me with the pain of a white hot iron. I knew Delia spoke the truth; but I could not accept that truth. Perhaps the word “belong” was the wrong word. I could accept another, less final, word...

“My army is now winning a great victory over that onkerish cramph of a husband of yours, majestrix.”

So Zankov still spoke to Delia as majestrix. I listened on for a space, wanting the words I hungered for to be spoken.

But Delia just said: “I do not think you will beat him. He is very proud of his new army. He is a man with a stiff neck. I know.”

“He is a clansman, is he not? A hairy barbarian savage?” Zankov laughed in his bright, brittle way, most puffed up with his own pride and cleverness. “Then he knows full well the ferocity of the clansmen. They obey me, me! And I am Zankov.”

“You call yourself Zankov. But that is not your name. I know who you are, now—”

“Mother!” cried Dayra. She started around, and I saw she trembled.

“Aye, daughter. This man who calls himself Zankov is the son of Nankwi Wellon, the High Kov of Sakwara. And Kov Nankwi has sworn allegiance to the Emperor of Vallia—”

“Son!” shrieked Zankov. “Aye, son. Illegitimate son!”

“So you seek to gain all by slaying all—”

“That is the way of the Hawkwas.”

“And if you murder me before the eyes of my daughter, as you murdered her—”

“Enough of this nonsense!” bellowed Zankov and I saw he thus shouted in anger because Dayra did not know he had killed her grandfather. “You will say the words required to pass Ros — Dayra — into my keeping. You will say them, majestrix, if I have to—” Then he paused, and shifted his gaze to Dayra, who stood taut and lovely at his side.

“You had best leave us for a space, Ros. There are things of the bokkertu I must discuss with your mother.”

So that was the way of it, then. The mother’s agreement and her full acceptance of the bokkertu must be obtained. Even in this, the people of Vallia would not be hoodwinked. So Delia’s life was safe for a space yet.

This knowledge did not make me relax as much as the point of a Lohvian arrow. But I did become aware of other people in the partially roofed chamber between the Stones. They stood under a straw-thatched roof supported by twisted beams of raw wood, in a shadowy space, and they watched Zankov and his doings with the bright blood-lusting avidity of a crowd in the Jikhorkdun watching the death-sports of the arena. As I looked at them the whole brilliantly attired group wavered and rippled as though I peered drunkenly at them through a ghostly waterfall. I blinked my eyes. The images slowly refocused and I put my hand up to my neck, just above the rim of the kax, and, lo! an arrow, embedded in the flesh, all unknown to me. I must have got this beauty in one of the fights astride the flutduin. With a pettish snap I broke it off.

There was no time, now, for shilly-shallying; but my warrior instincts recognized why I had not rushed headlong out into the cleared area. Those cramphs watching so avidly would take a deal of beating. But, beat they had to be, because Dayra was at last leaving the chamber, with a long hungry look back at Zankov, and I knew what lay in store for Delia.

“Do not be long, my love,” she said.

“Not so long as the time between an axe and death.”

I felt a fist constrict around my heart, and then Dayra, looking back, her eyes brilliant, her form tensed, lifted that vicious steel claw. “I shall do as you ask of me, and my Jikai Vuvushis call. But, Zankov, as you love me, I wish to speak with my mother when I return.”

His laugh was high, brittle and, at least to me, artificial. But, I could be wrong. “Of course, Ros. She is, after all, your mother whom you love. It is not your father we ask this bokkertu in all legal formality.”

“Him!” spat Dayra. “The betraying rast — I would it was him. Then I would stroke him with my claw.”

The scene wavered again before my eyes. For a desperate moment ghastly phantasms of the time I had ridden after my daughter Velia rose to rend and torture me. I shut my eyes, pressed down hard, hard, and struggled to regain my senses. When I looked again, Dayra had gone. Now I saw under that partial roofing there were Battle Maidens there, twisted lesten-hide thongs cruelly constricting their limbs. There were four Katakis in the front rank, arrogant, lofty men, with their bladed whiptails flaunted menacingly. Them first, then...

Next to them the two clansmen... They were Zorcanders. No doubt they were witnesses to this bokkertu, the Vovedeers out conducting the battle. And, the sight of Katakis, here, involved in legalities of Vallia gave eloquent testimony to the kind of country Vallia would be if Zankov had his way. Very carefully I placed the Krozair longsword hilt-up on the stone flagging, leaning against the column. Next to it went six Lohvian arrows. I bent the great Lohvian longbow. Seg believes I can shoot as well as he, although I am not sure; I think even he might nod a tight approval of that six-shot group. The four Katakis and the two clansmen were flung back by the smashing power of that tremendous bow. The longsword was in my fists and I was leaping forward and, as though the uproar in the chamber was the signal, other men boiled in from the far side, men and Jikai Vuvushis. Leaping for Zankov, who sprang away with a high screech of sudden fear, I saw Barty Vessler there, splendid, splendid, hacking his way through the ranks of diffs who sought to drag him down. His personal guard fought at his side. He made for Zankov who, attempting to escape me, scrambled into Barty’s path.

Men reared before me and there were handstrokes aplenty. Then I was through them or their remains and the Krozair blade bit cleanly through the iron links of the lapping chain. I took Delia into my arms. She said: “Dayra—”

“I know. Hush.”

“There is no time to hush. Give me a weapon, and—”

“Perhaps she truly loves this Zankov, as he her. Perhaps—”

“No, my heart. It is not like that.” She pushed me away and bent to retrieve a fallen rapier. As she straightened, her face, incredibly lovely, tautened, and I whirled, sword up. Barty was in the act of bringing his drexer down on Zankov. Zankov’s rapier angled, the light runneled along the blade, and then the drexer bit into his face. With a demoniac screech he leaped away and the blood poured down that thin and bitter face, painting him like a devil of Cottmer’s Caverns. His face as red with passion as Zankov’s was red with blood, Barty bellowed. “Cramph! Seducer! Pray to all your evil gods, for, by Opaz, your time has come!”

I saw it.

Colun Mogper, the Kov of Mursham, sprang up, tall at Barty’s back. The dagger in his fist did not glitter, for it was dulled a deep and ominous green. High, Kov Colun raised the poisoned dagger. With a convulsive effort he brought it down and plunged it deeply into Barty’s neck. His life saved by his ally, Zankov did not hesitate. He ran under the roofing and vanished in shadows. I started after him, and found I was barely moving. The stones of the floor surged up and down under me like a swifter in a gale. I was sitting down. I was the Emperor of Vallia. I could not sit down when the country depended on me. Delia bent to me.

“Stay still, my love. The arrow is deep.”

“Zankov... Dayra ... Barty!”

She pointed.

Through the ferocious hand-to-hand struggle as Barty’s men and the Battle Maidens sought to overthrow Zankov’s people a man moved with a purpose I recognized. Clad like a Krozair of Zy, he wielded a great Krozair longsword, and he cut down all those opposed to him as the reaper cuts corn. He carved a path to the far side and ran into the shadows after Zankov.

“There goes our son, Jaidur. He has worked well for Vallia!”

“But — Barty!”

She put her hand on my forehead and it felt like ice against my skin. “Barty Vessler is dead.”

I could say nothing. Nothing I could say was of any use.

With a roar as of a volcano exploding the roof broke into a thousand shards, dragged up by hooks hauled up by air-boats. Men smashed down, sliding on ropes, men wearing scarlet and yellow, their weapons aflame. I recognized them. The Emperor’s Sword Watch. Devoted to the Emperor of Vallia, each one would give his life. They were here to ensure the emperor’s safety. And this they would do. But they had come too late for another life...

A life for Vallia had been given, given willingly, but that life was gone, snuffed out, and Barty Vessler would never rush eagerly, honorably and joyously headlong into adventure at my side, not ever again.

“Barty,” I said. I just felt stupid. Delia held me.

Korero bellowed at me. “The battle is won! They flee!”

“That,” I said. “Is very good, by Zair.”

And, as I spoke in a strange stupefied whisper, I saw a glistening red scorpion waddle out contemptuously from under the ancient stones.

Notes

[1]see Secret Scorpio

About the author

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

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

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

The Dray Prescot Series

The Delian Cycle:

1. Transit to Scorpio

2. The Suns of Scorpio

3. Warrior of Scorpio

4. Swordships of Scorpio

5. Prince of Scorpio

Havilfar Cycle:

6. Manhounds of Antares

7. Arena of Antares

8. Fliers of Antares

9. Bladesman of Antares

10. Avenger of Antares

11. Armada of Antares

The Krozair Cycle:

12. The Tides of Kregen

13. Renegade of Kregen

14. Krozair of Kregen

Vallian cycle:

15. Secret Scorpio

16. Savage Scorpio

17. Captive Scorpio

18. Golden Scorpio

Jikaida cycle:

19. A Life for Kregen

20. A Sword for Kregen

21. A Fortune for Kregen

22. A Victory for Kregen

Spikatur cycle:

23. Beasts of Antares

24. Rebel of Antares

25. Legions of Antares

26. Allies of Antares

Pandahem cycle:

27. Mazes of Scorpio

28. Delia of Vallia

29. Fires of Scorpio

30. Talons of Scorpio

31. Masks of Scorpio

32. Seg the Bowman

Witch War cycle:

33. Werewolves of Kregen

34. Witches of Kregen

35. Storm over Vallia

36. Omens of Kregen

37. Warlord of Antares

Lohvian cycle:

38. Scorpio Reborn

39. Scorpio Assassin

40. Scorpio Invasion

41. Scorpio Ablaze

42. Scorpio Drums

43. Scorpio Triumph

Balintol cycle:

44. Intrigue of Antares

45. Gangs of Antares

46. Demons of Antares

47. Scourge of Antares

48. Challenge of Antares

49. Wrath of Antares

50. Shadows over Kregen

Phantom cycle:

51. Murder on Kregen

52. Turmoil on Kregen

Contents

On the Jikaida Cycle

1 – Death Warrants

2 – Assassins at the Gate of Voxyri

3 – Two Deputations Amuse Us

4 – Rovard the Murvish, Sorcerer of Murcroinim

5 – Justice

6 – Yellow Sun, Silver Moon

7 – Jilian

8 – Kov Colun Mogper of Mursham

9 – The Whip and the Claw

10 – What Difference Does an Emperor Make?

11 – Of Lahals After Battle

12 – Jikaida over Vallia

13 – A Bowman Topples a Blazing Brand

14 – Lol Polisto ti Sygurd

15 – I Postpone a Problem

16 – The Carpeting of Ros the Claw

17 – Disaster

18 – We Gamble on Filbarrka’s Zorcamen

19 – Surprises in the Delphondian Campaign

20 – The Battle of Kochwold

21 – A Life for Vallia

Notes

About the author

The Dray Prescot Series