Bladesman of Antares

by Alan Burt Akers

  Chapter Seventeen

  Espionage

  Nothing useful came out of that trip back up the River Havilthytus. Nothing useful, it seemed to me, was coming out of my entire spying efforts in Hamal. The news with which Chido greeted me, although I had heard rumors before I slung my coat down onto the bed for Nulty to clear away in my room in The Kyr Nath and the Fifi, was that something of a reverse had been suffered by the army of Pandahem. That is what the Hamalians called their forces operating in Pandahem; it was not the army of the Pandaheem. I grimaced, thinking, good for them, the Hamalian cramphs.

  Chido noticed the glitter of gold falling from my coat as Nulty cleared it away.

  “Oh,” I said, offhandedly. “Just a souvenir I picked up.”

  “It is magnificent, Hamun!”

  Well, I was not about to tell Chido that this little golden trinket had been given to Bagor ti Hemlad by the Kovneva Serea of Piraju for services rendered. It was a nice piece, fashioned into the shape of a zhantil, that golden-maned tawny wild beast of Kregen, studded with a violet gemstone that Chido, handling it reverently, told me was extraordinarily valuable.

  “I prefer scarron,” I said.

  So I passed it off. For safety I pinned the thing to the scarlet breechclout, and locked the chain on it. I did not want to leave it lying about to excite further comment, and I did not wish to wear it where it might be seen. A spy has to think of these things.

  Before I made up my mind to sell it I would have to make careful inquiries concerning the Kovneva Serea, and, in all probability, break the violet-and-gold-zhantil brooch up, which would be a pity.

  Chido did say, before we went out to a gaming match he had contracted to bring me to, “It seems you are lucky to find it, Hamun. It is clearly a trophy of war. Pandahem work, I’ve no doubt.” Then, before I could comment, he was burbling on in his artless way: “The Havil-forsaken news means that Rees will be marching out before he’s fully fit! It isn’t right, Hamun! Rees’s regiment bivouacs outside Ruathytu tomorrow.”

  This stupid reverse of the Hamalese forces in Pandahem, which I welcomed with vicious pleasure, meant that a friend was going marching off to war before he was fit enough to do so. Truly, fate is a weird old fabricator at times!

  “That means you’ll be marching out, too, Chido.”

  “Looking forward to it, old sport, looking forward.”

  Amak Chido spoke in an offhand way, with that cultivated drawl of the raffish set of Ruathytu, but he had been thinking about what going off to war would mean, and those thoughts had not been entirely to his liking.

  “If Rees insists on an entire regiment of zorcamen,” I said, and I spoke more weightily than I intended, “then I cannot march with you.”

  It was a sore point between us. That it was the truth merely helped its use as an excuse for me to stay in the city.

  Perhaps I ought to say here that this “truth” was simply the fact that for all the training Rees’s men had undergone, they were new recruits, raw. The best use for them would be as a thundering great mob charging headlong into the enemy. But they rode zorcas. Not the most suitable animal for a charge, when other forms of saddle-animal were available. As zorcamen they should be employed in the scouting role. But they would be totally unfitted to carry out that task with all the skills it demanded. Whoever was running the Hamalese war effort was here allowing rank and status and a glib tongue to lead them astray. A new Pallan for the Northern Front had been appointed, one Kov Pereth; I supposed Rees had got to him.

  There were plenty of glum faces as we went the rounds of the sacred quarter. Every Hamalian believed fervently that his empire would win this war, and would go on extending the boundaries of empire, but at setbacks like these they grew glum, where, I believe, other races would grow angry.

  It was on this day, I recall, that my winnowing of the wind at last yielded a result. Time was running out faster than I cared to contemplate. True, this setback to the Hamalese army of Pandahem gave me a little more breathing space; but all the time I spent here in Hamal I was somberly aware that when at last I prised loose the secret of the vollers a great deal more time would be required for the builders of Vallia to construct our own fliers. I was not overlooking the fact that Hamal was operating an expedition at a considerable distance from her home bases, and that she might overstretch her resources. From all I had seen in Hamal I knew the empire ruled by Queen Thyllis was immensely rich and powerful, with untapped resources of men, materials, and money. She would have to be struck many shrewd blows before the Hamalians could be convinced of the wisdom of halting their imperial ambitions and expansions. So that when at last all Pandahem had been conquered — perhaps even before the final mopping-up operations — the Hamalians would launch themselves in their clouds of sky ships against my home of Vallia. Looking back, I can think with warm affection — and not a little wry amusement, considering the way of it — how I now completely took the island empire of Vallia as my homeland. Vallia and Valka, Djanduin and Strombor!

  The best way of winnowing the wind, I discovered, lay in scattering golden deldys with a lavish hand.

  The astrologers of this Earth consider that a person born under the sign of Scorpio is not only strong, silent, courageous, and passionate — claims I admit I could only regard with a surprised amusement — but is also an intriguer, fond of all that is disguised or secret. If that is so I was a sorry specimen of my sky sign.

  All my heavy-handed espionage had come to nothing, leaving me with dirt and air only. So I took that other course I had been planning for a time before I sold the voller. With that capital sum, and with much else I won in the frenzied gambling of the sacred quarter, I coldly bribed my way to the information.

  What price honor and romance!

  Down in a dopa den where slimy walls dripped and cheap dips flared in cracked crocks, where the dregs of the gentry slouched in crude wooden settles, drinking dopa, driving what unimaginable phantoms from their brains I knew not and cared less, I talked to rat-faced, nervous men, men who twitched and kept one eye always roving, looking over their shoulders. I did not take any pride in this work. This dopa den had been constructed out of one of the ancient guardhouses along the waterfront walls, where they were rotting away after the new walls had been built in a wider cincture around the city. I sat and listened as Jedgul, with his cloak muffled to his ears, his eyes two bright spots in the shadows, told me he knew a man who knew another man who knew a gul who might be able to provide what I sought — and so on and so on. It was an unsavory business.

  Suffice it to say, by spending a great deal of money and by beating down with harsh words and cruel threats, I was promised a meeting with a man who understood the composition of the minerals in the silver boxes, and would tell me — for a price.

  I think you will understand that although I would far prefer to have done this business clad in my old scarlet breechclout, my rapier in my fist, leaping over the rooftops beneath the whirling moons of Kregen, to do it at all was the imperative driving me on. A single thought of Delia, and my twins, in far-off Valka, awaiting the onslaught of the Hamalese invaders, was more than enough to make me understand I would do anything — anything — to ensure their safety and happiness.

  On a night when Notor Zan had swallowed up the moons, I huddled by the wall of a manufactory in the sensil quarter of the city. Although silk was still being turned into sensil in some of the buildings, this massive block had been turned over to voller production — specifically, the filling of the amphorae from the various minerals from mines all over Hamal.

  The man I knew as Ornol let me in, a finger to his lips. He was apim. We crept through the darkness, he leading, for he knew the way well from his daily labors here. When at last he let fall a crack of light from a fireglass lantern and I saw the amphorae, the scoops, the scales, and measuring devices, the troughs filled with minerals and sands and earths, I swallowed down hard. This, I felt sure, must be success!

  He showed me, spe
aking in a low throaty whisper, what I had struggled so hard to discover. I think you will understand if, at this moment, I do not tell you of all the technical matters of the silver boxes, reserving them for a later and much more suitable occasion in my narrative. One thing, though, of interest: five minerals resulted in one kind of voller, nine in another. One flier might be pushed willy-nilly by the wind; the other might not. The only means of describing the effect I had then, with my brushed-up mid-nineteenth-century science, was to say that a voller could seize on to the subetheric forces, could lift itself against the pull of gravity, and yet lean against those forces as though leaning against an infinitely resisting fence along the line of its own direction.

  Enough. The fireglass light cast weird distortions of light and shadow over Ornol’s evil face. My own face, too, was as evil, even more so, hard and ugly with the unholy passions of a long-contested victory.

  When I had assured myself that I had mastered the minerals, their names, their proportions, the results that would accrue from mixtures of different strengths, I tucked packets of the various earths into the pouched belt I had worn to that end. I was dressed in dark blue trousers, shirt, and cloak, and wore shoes. I carried no rapier and dagger, instead a Hamalese thraxter was belted to my waist.

  “Is that enough, Bagor?” whispered Ornol. His eyes in the fireglass glow gleamed like a leem’s.

  “No, Ornol. What of the other silver boxes?”

  He shivered. “I know only of the vaol-boxes, Bagor. That is my work.”

  “You must know something, Ornol!” I gripped his shoulder, shook him. “They are empty — and yet they cannot be empty!”

  “They are not empty! Even I know that— For the sake of Kuerden the Merciless, let go of my arm!”

  I pushed my ugly figurehead close to his face. “What do the paol-boxes contain, Ornol? Tell me, or by Havil the Green I’ll—”

  “No, no, Bagor!” He writhed, but I did not let him go. In this close sweaty darkness with the light gleaming weirdly and the shrouded shadowed forms of amphorae and troughs and scales all about us, here the destiny of nations was at stake.

  The vaol-boxes contained minerals, and I had the mix and the composition, at last. The paol-boxes contained — nothing! No, for Ornol said they were not empty! I shook him again.

  “By Krun! Ornol — what do the paol-boxes have in them?”

  “My arm! By Kaerlan the Merciful, Bagor! My arm!”

  “If I am sure of one thing, Ornol, you onker, it is that the paol-boxes do not contain your arm! Speak, or I’ll have your arm off and see if it will fit!”

  But I eased the pressure, and he gasped, and his fingers moved like a crab’s legs.

  “Cayferm!” he said. “Steam!”

  It made no sense to me then. The common Kregish word for steam is kish. I’d never heard of cayferm.

  With a sobbing grunt, Ornol twisted free as I pondered what he had said. The wooden door of the fireglass lantern smacked shut. Through the abrupt darkness I thought I caught a glimpse of him, silhouetted like a bat against a high skylight, but that was illusion: it was a night of Notor Zan, and he was gone.

  I let him go.

  The names of the nine ingredients were imprinted on my brain. For good measure — and ill luck as it turned out — I took up three of the scales they used here, for I recognized the workmanship of them and knew they would be invaluable in Vallia. After all, Vallia was going to be drawn into a war against Hamal, despite all our attempts to prevent it.

  The way back through the darkness took me little time. I felt uplifted. I had done more tonight than in all my long sojourn in Hamal. And I had a clue, a single slender thread, it was true, to the contents of the other silver boxes. I felt very good then, I remember, as I made for the massive iron-bound lenken door that had opened so easily for Ornol.

  He had known what cayferm was. I would seek him out again and give him more money, and ask again. Truly, as I put out my hand to draw the door open, I felt I had succeeded at long last.

  The door creaked uneasily as I drew it back stealthily.

  I had to be sensible. I had not succeeded yet. Almost; not quite. A few more hours’ work — and then I would succeed!

  A torchlight flared in my face.

  A voice, a hateful voice, thick and rich and giving commands that gave pleasure, bellowed: “Take him!”

  The net descended about my head and shoulders with wicked entangling folds. I half drew the thraxter, still near blinded by lights that glared all about me. If skull-bashing was necessary, then I would skull-bash with a will!

  The thraxter caught in the net.

  Iron-studded sandals scuffled at my back, and like a leem I ducked and sprang and fell, the net wrapping me as a fish is wrapped, and whatever they bit me with landed precisely under my ear.

  Notor Zan . . .

  Chapter Eighteen

  Queen Thyllis outfits Bagor ti Hemlad

  The twin suns of Kregen burned down harshly on my naked back as I swung the pickax, smashing granite, and so I was not at all displeased when Matoc Fokal hauled me out of the sweating line of slaves.[8]

  Fokal wasn’t a bad sort, really, for a Hamalian slave overseer. He carried the balass, that black and uncomfortably hard stick of office, and would thwack us about, but he seldom bashed our heads, unlike some of the other overseers.

  “What’s afoot, Fokal?”

  We walked along the lip of the ramparts. Ruathytu’s walls were being strengthened and the slaves broke fingernails and sweated their guts out over the fortifications. We were all chained up, and Fokal had to summon Deldar Nath the Whip to come with the key before I could be released. I still clashed my own chains, though, swinging between my legs and my wrists as I walked. Everything done according to the law, in Hamal . . .

  “I do not know, Bagor, you wild onker. A summons for you to go with a party of guards.” He spat. “It is not the Jikhorkdun, though.” Then he let rip a bellyful of laughter. “Not that I wouldn’t pay my sinver to see you facing a wild leem, by Beng Thrax and his glass eye!”

  Around us the busy work went on. Among those poor devils who were slaves for the rest of their lives were men like the man I was supposed to be, a common criminal. I did not know whether to pound granite to dust in anger or to howl to the suns in glee — here was I, spying against Hamal, and they had caught me stealing three valuable scales, and had tried me and sentenced me as a thief! A laugh, I suppose, even for Dray Prescot, could be the only correct response.

  The guards turned out to be ordinary swods under the command of an ord-Deldar.[9] We marched off with me in the center, all their iron-studded sandals crashing down in time, a left-right-left of brutal power, their stuxes all aslant, the suns gleaming from their helmets and loricas, their shields brave with the painted insignia of their pastang and regiment.

  Matoc Fokal was a slave overseer with a sense of humor as well as a balass rod. “Treat him gently,” he bawled after the guard detail. “That Bagor is like a wild leem if you upset him!”

  Not for the first time I blessed the conceit that had led me to use again that name of Bagor when dealing with the underworld of Ruathytu. No possible connection could be established between the naked slave in his chains sweating along among guards, and the effeminate Hamun ham Farthytu, Amak of Paline Valley. My friends who had not gone off to war with the Trylon Rees’s regiment of zorcamen would think I visited Paline Valley.

  My hair had grown, too, although the slave overseers saw to it that we were cropped and bathed at regulation intervals.

  Bundled into the back of a cart drawn by two calsanys, and the canvas awning let down, I was trundled off I knew not where.

  The guards’ harsh footfalls paralleled the cart. All for one miserable slave? I began to wonder if, perhaps, my disguise had been penetrated. But then, by how much? How deeply into my multifarious deceptions had they penetrated? It was no good worrying; I would find out in Zair’s good time.

  The calsanys halted just a
fter the hollow echoes told me we had entered a stone courtyard bounded by high walls. The moment I was dragged out a great blindfold was whipped about my eyes. Prodded and pushed, I went where I was directed, up stone stairs, along passages, then into corridors where carpets felt soft and luxurious beneath my toughened soles. Coolness dropped about me, and the tinkle and splash of fountains sounded most refreshingly. I heard girls laughing. I heard the deep-toned voices of men in conversation, their worlds clearly far removed from that of slaving.

  A feeling of soft pressure against my shoulder explained why no one appeared to have taken any notice of a party of armed guards and a naked slave in chains; some form of pierced screen, of wood or ivory, probably, shielded us from their observation. I was led into a room I knew by the echoes to be relatively small. A door clashed. The guards remained, for I heard their suppressed breathing, the creak of their harness.

  After a moment a fat and unctuous voice said: “Is this it?”

  “This is the slave Bagor, Notor,” said the Deldar.

  The abrupt feel of soft fingers prodding my muscles, digging me in the belly, poking about in my mouth, sickened me.

  I bit.

  The resultant shriek was most instructive. The blow that sent me reeling until brought up by the chains was also intended to be instructive.

  “The nulsh!” The fat eunuch — it had to be — sounded anguished. “Take it away! Wash it! Clean it! Perfume it! Do not bring the offensive carcass before me again until it has been tamed.”

  The Deldar’s voice hid a quaver. “We were told the slave Bagor was a wild leem, Notor.”

  They carted me off and I went through a caricature of the baths of nine. At least, I washed off the sweat and the dust. They dressed me up in a mocking suit of colored clothes, all bright yellows and greens and reds, with feathers, bells, and ribbons. I knew I looked an imbecile; I would endure, for by now I was intrigued.

  Again the blindfold was wrapped about me. This second time the journey was shorter, and involved getting into and out of a boat. The soldiers pulled the oars and by the splashings I knew they were an unhandy lot. I was prodded up a steep and slippery flight of stone steps, very narrow, and the guards lumbered after, swearing by their soldier gods.