Armada of Antares [Dray Prescot #11]

by Alan Burt Akers

  The Empire of Hamal had to be beaten in war first, or at least halted in the tide of conquest, some modus vivendi arrived at, before I could consider my own selfish ends.

  So I said, “My friends, torture is not the answer. It may give us the information we seek, but think what it will do to us who practice it—"

  “It'll keep us alive,” said Balass the Hawk.

  “Certainly. But, Balass, and all of you, the brands you use on your victim must surely brand you yourselves."

  Some of them could see, most could not. They were all good-hearted fellows, prime companions, chosen comrades to have around me in battle or roister. But it is truly said that Kregen is a hard world.

  I had gone through torments enough in the past to know that from bitter personal experience.

  A rumbling bellow from the far end of the table made us all look that way, and some of us smile, and all of us listen as Naghan Kholin Donamair burst out: “By Zodjuin of the Silver Stux! All this is emptiness, fit for Obdjangs! Take the cramph by the throat and choke it out of him!” N. Kholin Donamair had clearly been holding himself back from the conversation, for now, glaring around, his four fists clenched, he recollected himself and finished: “That is what I would do, my King."

  I do not forget that I am king of Djanduin.

  My Djangs are the most fearsome warriors in Havilfar, with their four perfectly matched arms and their proud heads and defiant step. With weapons no Khamorro can stand against them. There is a great deal more to tell of the relationships there, in southwestern Havilfar, far away down south below the swell of the equator; but for now here was the typical Dwadjang philosophy exemplified. The four-armed Dwadjangs are unexcelled fighting-men; but they are a trifle thick at affairs above a Chuktar's rank. The gerbil-faced and extraordinarily clever Obdjangs handle affairs of state and strategy in Djanduin.

  I am king of Djanduin. I said: “Well spoken, Naghan. But the fellow is a professional stikitche. He will have steeled himself to being choked, even by a Djang."

  “These affairs seem simple to me,” said the Djang, and he reached his left lower arm for a vosk sandwich as his left upper brought the teacup to his lips. Both of his right hands fondled the little gyp sitting at the side of his chair, gobbling crumbs.

  No one said to Naghan Donamair: “You stick to your flutduins and what you know, Naghan!"

  The comment might have been apt; it would have been cruel, unnecessary, and boorish, and these are things I will not tolerate in my Great Hall of Esser Rarioch. This is known by my friends who sup with me there.

  As for the flutduins, those marvelous saddle flyers from Djanduin, after their initial reticence the good folk of Valka were now agog with the idea of flying through the thin air astride the back of a giant bird. I was actively arranging for more flyers to be brought all the long way to Valka, and the recruiting Deldars were forming enormous lists of bright young Valkan lads who wished to join the aerial cavalry.

  Seg, his black hair and blue eyes as always very reassuring to me now that I knew his feckless and yet deeply moving ways, laughed and said, “If Thelda were here instead of caring for young Dray and the twins back in Falinur, I think she would understand, Dray."

  “I am sure she would.” I am loyal to my friends.

  So we talked on through that glorious afternoon tea, arguing whether or not a man should be tormented. The mingled lights of the suns glowed on the high walls. We laughed a lot and banged the old lenken table. Tilly, the glorious little golden-furred Fristle fifi, quite accidentally knocked her tea over the white robe of Elena, the matronly wife of Erdgar the Shipwright. Erdgar was away supervising the building of certain unusually shaped ships at this time. Elena made no great fuss, Tilly was filled with contrition, and a fresh cup was poured. While no one laughed, we all felt the spirit of the occasion. Truly, those days of sunshine in Esser Rarioch provide rich memories in a crusty old shellback like me.

  Delia suggested we go out to the high terrace where the mushk glowed yellow in the suns’ light and the bees droned most contentedly among the perfumed flowers.

  So it was that among my friends, on that high terrace with the radiant lights of Antares reflecting back in refulgent gleams from spire and pinnacle and tower, with Valkanium spread out below in a chiaroscuro of brilliance, bowered in greenery and flowers and mellow with the splash of fountains, I turned and held up my hand and said: “We will not torture this miserable stikitche. If he does not tell us who employed him we shall hand him over to the Emperor's justice."

  “And is that all, my Prince?” That was Balass.

  “Aye, that is all.” I screwed up my eyes. “Do you relish the idea of the mercy of an emperor, if you had tried to slay his daughter?"

  The others nodded, no doubt thinking their thoughts. I knew I had bungled. But, about to correct that slip, I was arrested by the sight of a voller skimming perilously low over the rooftops toward us.

  Seg said, “Another attempt, do you think?"

  “It could be. Roust out Jiktar Exand."

  Seg nodded and ran back off the terrace. Exand, an old battle companion, had been appointed Jiktar of the fortress guard. Seg returned far too soon. With him stomped Jiktar Exand, furious, beet-red of face, almost stuttering in his anger.

  “Strom!” he burst out, enraged with himself. “The miserable cramph of a stikitche is dead! Assassinated while he hung in his chains! Strom, the fault is mine!"

  So there was an end to all our academic arguments.

  * * *

  Chapter 3

  Evold Scavander reads from Drozhimo the Lame

  The voller, a swift and brightly painted craft, swirled up from that mad dash over the rooftops. It was headed for a landing platform three stories below the level of this high terrace.

  Tom ti Vulheim let out a shout. “That is no stikitche, Strom! That is Lish! He always flies as though his tail is on fire."

  “The fault is mine, my Strom,” repeated Jiktar Exand. He crashed his right fist against his breastplate, rather as a housewife takes a rolling pin to a cheap steak. “The guards were in the act of changing when two were struck down; two others were lucky to escape with their lives, although wounded. The prisoner's body was slashed to pieces."

  “Hum,” I said. Then: “Do not blame yourself, Exand. The fault is more truly mine. We did not realize that we were up against highly professional stikitches. Ordinary swods of the guard could scarcely comprehend the villainous expertise of these hireling murderers."

  “The Strom takes upon himself the fault of his people,” shouted Exand. These tough old warrior birds all seem to shout in normal conversation about their business. “I understand the need. But, Strom, I failed you!"

  This Jiktar Exand—broad, heavily boned, thickly muscled, with a gut that extended the massive arch of his chest—was of that breed of men who serve, it seems, in the armies of all countries of two worlds. His square face bristled under the helmet. The brave red and white slashed his sleeves. He wore the usual rapier and main-gauche, and his tall black boots gleamed with the loving polish administered by his batman.

  I sighed. He wouldn't forgive himself, even if I did.

  About to reason with him, I was arrested by a shocked gasp, a shout of horror, from the people on the terrace. I swirled around.

  The airboat was falling. Like a tossed chip of wood it spun end over end, tumbling from the bright air. Everyone held rigid in a stasis of horrified anger as the voller struck a domed roof, bounced, turned over into a spire, rebounded, and so smashed into kindling and vanished into the slot of the street far below.

  We had all seen the tiny dot of the pilot, arms and legs pinwheeling, pitch out and plunge to his death.

  “Lish!” said Tom. He gripped his hands together.

  Lish Sjame had been a battle comrade of ours when we cleansed Valka of the slavers and the aragorn. Now that laughing man with the lean, intense face and the intellectual grasp of a problem, that man who had sung many a fine song with us, empt
ied many a filled flagon, was gone.

  We stood looking down. And mingled with our sorrow ran an ugly murderous thread of anger: anger against the builders of airboats that failed; anger against the manufactories of Hamal which sold us vollers that murdered our friends.

  “If ever we needed the secrets of the vollers, now is the time to show all men that truth!” said Seg.

  “Aye!” I said. Then, in my old way I burst out: “Sink me! I'll take that damned Presidio, one by one, and shake them by the scruff of the necks! Vallia must build her own vollers!"

  We went down the long flights of stone stairs to the dungeons. Oh, yes, if you feel surprise that there should be dungeons you must have forgotten that the high fortress of Esser Rarioch had been built in the old times, in the days when dungeons featured as essential adjuncts to the gracious living of Stroms, and Kovs, and high nobles. Also, I think you may judge Valka better now if I tell you that the only occupant of this complex series of dungeons in the rock had been this same stikitche.

  He hung in his chains, hacked to pieces.

  Which made me ponder.

  The two dead guards had been carried away. The wounded two had been treated. Bound up in clean yellow bandages, acupuncture needles cunningly inserted to take away their pain, they awaited the Strom's verdict of their crime. For, make no mistake about it, they had sinned. Their dereliction of duty could very possibly cause severe problems for the future.

  The two swods braced themselves up the moment I appeared. They stood to attention as best they could, so that my first words were: “Stand at ease, you couple of famblys.” I looked at them, cast a single glance at the hunk of bloodied meat hanging in the chains, and said, “You, Larghos. Tell me."

  “Yes, my Strom.” He swallowed. A youngster, newly appointed to the fortress guard, he was now clearly appalled at what had happened and what he had been part of. “We were changing guard. I saw Nath and Pergon set upon and I attacked the nearest of the men and he whickered his blade and—"

  “Steady, lad.” His lorica had been unbuckled so the doctor could more easily get at the thrust that had gone cleanly through above the top segment, above the collarbone. These stikitches are fine swordsmen. “Now, who did you attack?"

  “The assassins, my Strom."

  “Yes. Yes. Tell me what they looked like."

  “Dressed in black, Strom. All in black. With steel faces."

  And that, I knew, was as fair a description as I would get.

  His comrade, Yaldy, was in worse case, the rapier having thrust through his cheek, scraping the bone. It had missed his eye, the target; but for the acupuncture needles Yaldy would have been in great pain. He leaned on his glaive as he spoke. I pondered the wisdom of the glaive, that wicked bayonet-blade splined into a five-foot ash shaft, and yet the Valkans normally have no fear of a rapier man with the glaive in their hands.

  “No more to add, my Strom!” bellowed this Yaldy. His parade ground shout whispered out weakly. I nodded. There was nothing more to learn here except, perhaps...

  I spoke with a forceful presence of urgency and importance.

  “Did either of you hear the stikitches say a word? Anything?"

  They shook their heads, and then Larghos checked, his head going up.

  “Well?"

  “The assassins did not say a word. I do not know how many of them there were. But this one here—” He gestured vaguely to the hunk of meat hanging in the chains. “This one cried out as they went up to him."

  “Ah!"

  “He shouted in mortal terror. He shouted, ‘I did not say a word!’ Then he swore by a name I do now know. He said: ‘As Lem is my witness, Traga, as Lem—’ Then they cut him."

  Although it seemed to me Kregen exploded around my head, I felt it expedient to keep the shock from my face and voice.

  Lem!

  That evil cult of Lem the Silver Leem had found its vile way to my own home of Valka. Well, I made a most solemn vow that I would never allow that evil superstition of Lem the Silver Leem to sully Valka. I would uproot the whole foul practice, root and branch. By Zair! This was a matter of supreme importance, far outweighing the mere stikitches’ attacks.

  Now I asked, “Traga? Does that mean anything to anyone?"

  They all shook their heads. The name was not common, but there had been a Traga in Valka, that Traga ti Vandayha, the city of silversmiths. I thought this was merely coincidence, nothing more. The Traga we knew had perished when the aragorn's fortress above Findle's Crossing had burned.

  “Jiktar Exand."

  “Strom!"

  “Fetch me a man from the city who swears by Diproo the Nimble-Fingered."

  “Aye, my Strom.” He knew exactly what I meant.

  His red and white banded sleeve, made from first quality humespack, bashed across his breastplate as he clanged off, his booted feet loud on the unyielding stones of the dungeon floor.

  With a few further words to the guards, for they were brave young men and had been woefully overmatched in their encounter with the stikitches, I led the way back into the upper terraces of Esser Rarioch.

  The remains of Lish Sjame had been brought in and I saw to it that he was given a decent funeral, with all the proper rites accompanying the burial, as was proper. His wife had long since died, victim of one of the diseases that, notwithstanding the skill of Kregen's doctors, still carry off far too many of her people. The remains of the airboat were taken up to that long and lofty room with the tall windows I had set aside as a laboratory. Here I had been carrying out experiments, with the help of the man who was, I fancied, the wisest wise man of Valka.

  “Ha! My Prince!” he cried as I came in, and then he sneezed. He was smothered in fine dust, and he kept sneezing. I kept upwind of him.

  “You seem to be immersed in your work, San,” I said.

  I called Evold Scavander, the wise man, San. As you know, San is the respectful title given to a dominie or sage, and how well San Evold Scavander earned this mark of respect.

  But, for all that, sneezing, he had to say: “Nothing, my Prince. Not a movement, not a sign. And the bags grow less with every trial."

  A spluttery, bewhiskered, round-faced man, with crab-apple cheeks and snapping brown eyes, he wore an old stained smock and a pair of decrepit foofray satin slippers. I always had the feeling that, with his contempt for the Wizards of Loh, he missed something of their dark power. But he refused to adorn his clothes with archaic symbols or wear the tall conical hat, and he used his long sensitive fingers to good purpose in the many schemes to improve Vallia and Valka I put forward. His temper was of the same order as a leem's.

  On a scarred bench lay a number of silver boxes. I felt my heart go thump at the sight. These were boxes we had made up here, in Valka, in imitation of those silver boxes made in Havilfar that powered and lifted fliers. I had uncovered many of the secrets of the various minerals that went into the vaol boxes, at some discomfort to myself, as you know. With a mix of five minerals of certain kinds of voller would fly and might be pushed by the wind, with the effect of gripping the subetheric forces of the structure of the universe, of sliding against these forces as the wind pushed. With a mix of nine minerals a voller would fly independently of the wind.

  As for the paol boxes, those boxes that for so long I had thought contained only air, there lay the heartbreak.

  “Dirt and air!” I said, somewhat heavily, I fear.

  “Aye, Prince! The minerals would seem to operate well enough, and I have that lazy scamp Ornol out searching for them in the Heart Heights. I feel confident they will be found.” His brown eyes snapped at me. “If they are not, Ornol will get a striping, by Vox!"

  “Yes, but, San, what of the paol boxes? What of cayferm?"

  He crowed his triumph.

  I stared at him, willing it to be true, willing that he had discovered what that mysterious immaterial substance truly was, if substance it was at all.

  He reached down a monstrous old hyr-lif, massively bound w
ith brass bands and with a brass lock. He produced a key from under his clothes, a key of brass hanging on a brass chain. With this and much creaking and groaning, he turned the lock and opened the book. I swear I expected a black cloud of bats to fly forth. He blew away dust and sneezed again.

  “Here, Prince, in The Secret Lore of San Drozhimo the Lame is to be found the only reference I have run across to cayferm."

  He turned the pages, ancient and stained and yet supple still in that perfect atmosphere of Valka. A little spider crept out and ran across the lines of black writing, and Evold Scavander leaned down and gently blew to help the spider on its way.

  I was fully aware of the gravity of the moment. Dirt and air! How they had mocked me in my struggles in distant Havilfar! But I had come through in the end to an understanding of the names and the compositions of the minerals. We might not find all of them in Valka; we must find them all in Vallia! And cayferm! That mysterious substance, cayferm that was supposed to be steam, when all of Kregen knew steam as kish; could old San Scavander have found the secret in this musty book?

  He found a page very nearly at the end. I breathed more easily when I saw the page was untorn. How often at the end of a book a torn page has destroyed all hope...

  He cleared his throat, sneezed a mighty sneeze, and peered close.

  “Listen, my Prince, to the words of a sage dead these thousand seasons and more!"

  “I listen."

  “Then this is what Drozhimo the Lame has to say.” He read in a loud wheezing voice, and I felt the shadows come closer in that high ceilinged room with the tall windows and all the splendor of the Suns of Scorpio flooding in.

  “'The Freeing of an Ib from a Mortal Body Undiluted.’”

  He looked up. “The spirits of the dead do not always leave the body the moment men are killed. Sometimes a man retains his ib, to his own mortification in the blessed light of the Twins."