Armada of Antares [Dray Prescot #11]

by Alan Burt Akers

  I started to climb down the sheer face, which afforded jagged hand- and footholds in the striated strata of the flying island. Down I went, hand under hand, feet feeling for a purchase, down and down, and I looked aloft for the first fierce face to show over the fence.

  This was a pretty little fix! I felt like a fly in amber. It seemed to me I climbed down that serrated cliff edge with all the speed and activity of a nonagenarian negotiating his seat from bed to bathchair. I didn't dare take any chances.

  “By the Black Chunkrah!” I said to myself. “The cramphs won't get to me before I'm out of sight!"

  In any event, only three crossbow bolts spattered down before I found a scooped hole in the rock. Here rainwater had gouged out a hollow in softer rock between shales. I flopped in, rested my back, and cursed. The moment I put my head out they'd shoot down. Some swod with an eye would feather his quarrel in my skull.

  A slight overhang enabled me to look down, even if I could not in safety look up. So I looked down.

  The ground seemed no nearer, but there were definitely animals running through the open spaces down there. I saw they were animals very much like the cattle of Kregen, somewhat smaller than Earthly cattle, with short horns and, in this wild state, of uncertain temper. These were very much like the fine fat cattle that grazed so peacefully in Delphond.

  The shadow of the volgendrin, moving like a demarcation line across the terrain, seemed to drive them to fearful flight, for they ran and ran to stay in the suns’ shine.

  I admit I dwelt with some philosophical rancor on my plight. I do not run away very often or very easily. The old Dray Prescot would have stood his ground, unscabbarded the great longsword, and simply slugged it out ... until he was rapped on the head and all the Bells of Beng Kishi rang in that thick and stupid skull of his.

  Well, by using what brains I imagined I possessed, in running in order to escape with the report and the pasham, how had I improved matters?

  This position was not even a standoff.

  I knew what they would do. A voller would ghost along the cliff edge—and a flight or two of Gerawin as well, in all probability—and they'd simply shoot me full of quarrels.

  The angle of the suns, hidden by the bulk of the flying island, told me there were far too many burs before nightfall for me to last that long without discovery.

  The lust for revenge consuming the Kov of Apulad escaped my calculations.

  A voller ghosted into view, flying along the edge of the volgendrin from left to right. It flew perhaps ten feet below the level of the hollow. I drew back. Maybe, just maybe, there would be a chance for life.

  They saw me.

  The voller eased up. Gerawin, their purple and black feathers flying in the wind of their passage, circled ready to plunge in. Crossbowmen packed the deck of the voller. They had mantlets erected so as the craft rose level the men vanished from my view behind the shields; all I could see of them were the heads of the quarrels through shooting slits.

  With a grunt I reached up and drew out the longsword. This was not a genuine Krozair longsword. This weapon had been created by Naghan the Gnat and myself in the smithy of Esser Rarioch. It was a superlative weapon, built as closely as I could make it to pure Krozair lines, of perfect balance and heft, with a pair of superb cutting edges. It would do enormous damage. But it was not a true Krozair longsword.

  With the silver wire-wound hilt gripped in the cunning Krozair fashion, right hand up to the quillons, left hand to the pommel, with that spread of leverage between them, I stood up on the lip of crumbling rock and prepared to fight the last fight.

  With the sword angled before me and vertical, I could bat away the flying bolts by quick delicate flicks of the wrist. They loosed, but the bolts hissed past on either side and not one came near enough to touch me. Bits of rock chippings flew.

  A voice hailed from the voller.

  “Chaadur, you who call yourself Naghan Lamahan. You have no chance. Give yourself up to the law as is proper."

  I considered this. Oh, yes, I, Dray Prescot, tried to decide if I should fling back defiance and fight until death, or if I should risk present capture for later escape.

  The struggle between the Dray Prescots that are me—at least, at the very least, two of them!—was, believe me, of far greater virulence than any fight with steel swords could ever be.

  First I tried to stick to my guns. “I am Naghan Lamahan. That mad Kov is mistaken. Who is this Chaadur?"

  “I know you, yetch!” That was the Kov, foaming at the mouth most likely. “Do you think I could ever forget you?"

  He would have gone on, but I heard another voice, then whispers, then nothing as their voices sank. But I could guess easily enough that they were trying to calm the Kov so as not to excite me. I did not laugh, but this was a ripe occasion for a real belly laugh, if ever there was one.

  “Give yourself up, Chaadur!"

  The voller inched in. Another foot or so and I could leap the gap.

  “Not while that cramph of a Kov remains out of a madhouse!"

  More shouts and whisperings, and the voller edging closer, the watchful Gerawin circling...

  “You have no chance of escape, Chaadur!"

  About that time, realizing I had no bow, they took down a couple of the mantlets. I could see the Hikdar yelling at me, the pressing mass of bowmen, and Kov Ornol ham Feoste, too, shaking his thraxter at me, all on the deck of the voller.

  No Hikdar, even an ord-Hikdar, was going to argue overlong with a Kov.

  And the voller inched in...

  I had to consider the Gerawin most carefully. They would see the impossible situation in which I was held, and would know escape was impossible. All the same, being guards by nature, they would still be ready to hurtle down at the first suspicion that something had gone wrong.

  So I watched them circling for a while and, looking down, saw a couple spiraling up with great speed. Far below these two I saw other flyers spinning down to the ground, leveling off, planing with wings I felt my eyes must be deceiving me as to their span. I could see no riders astride their backs. The flyers’ wings were short, yes, but they were heavily ribbed with deep vees at the trailing edges between the ribs. They appeared to be hardly moving as the flyers planed down. Long whip tails flicked out into hard rearward-pointing spears.

  They were aimed for a large open clearing among the trees in which the cattle animals—wild ordels—ran in a breaking smother of heaving brown backs and upthrust horns.

  My eyes switched back, before whatever was going to happen down there took place, to the Gerawin and then to the voller.

  The thing had stopped moving in. It hung just too far off for a certain leap without a running takeoff.

  The men aboard were all looking away from me. The Gerawin were swirling up, clumping together, stringing out from the lumps into fighting patrol vees.

  No one needed to tell the Amak of Paline Valley, which lies close to the Mountains of the West to the north of these volgendrins, what was happening.

  I heard sharp yells from the voller, sounds of violent argument. No genius needed to guess what that was!

  Kov Ornol ham Feoste appeared on the coaming, one foot up and the leg flexed. He held a crossbow. Deliberately, he aimed at me. When the bolt flew I was ready and swatted it away. It caromed against the rock and fell far out, dwindling into a mere black speck before it vanished.

  The voller was moving.

  The Hikdar shouted, impassioned, “He will stay, Kov, until we return! He cannot climb down! And if he climbs up..."

  The Kov of Apulad had reloaded. He was not very quick. He took another shot and again I batted the bolt away. The voller rose faster now, the Gerawin up there in their fighting vees heading back across the volgendrin. The flier moved faster and rose out of my view.

  I was left alone, perfectly trapped, to await the return of the soldiers and the law of Hamal.

  Well, not perfectly trapped. I could go on climbing down and fall off t
he bottom of the volgendrin. I could climb up and be taken prisoner by the guards waiting for me as I climbed over the fence.

  The deep booming gong-tones of bells reached me. Now the other volgendrins took up the alarm. The air vibrated with the tocsin notes. At Paline Valley we had our alarm gongs, also, and our watchmen with hammers and strong arms.

  Then, gazing up into the brilliant sky of Kregen, squinting at an angle against the streaming mingled light of the twin Suns of Scorpio, I saw the oncoming black dots. The suns threw all my side of the volgendrin into shadow. But the brilliance of the sky by contrast made me squint hard. Yes. Yes, there flew the Wild Men from the Wild Lands. They had many names, mostly obscene. I clenched my fists on the longsword. These were men similar to those who had laid waste Paline Valley. Many of them were not really men at all; many were more kin to those dreadful crofermen living on the outer skirts of the Stratemsk in Turismond.

  My place was at the side of men fighting to protect their lives and their property from the Wild Men. And here I was, skulking in a hole in the side of a flying island in the sky!

  There had really only been two possible alternatives when the alarm bells rang and the Gerawin massed for battle. The attackers might have been flutsmen up there, those reiving mercenaries of the skies, or Wild Men. It would have been better by far for the Volgendrin of the Bridge and the other local flying islands if those alarm bells had heralded flutsmen! By far and far!

  I remembered how I had promised to take the name of Hamun ham Farthytu in Hamal. Names are precious. I had brought some honor to that name, in the end, after all the playacting, and a marble monument existed in the Palace of Names in Ruathytu to the greater glory of Havil the Green and ham Farthytu. I think you will understand that the Havil part was anathema to me; the ham Farthytu I had come to regard with a strange affection, considering it was the name of a family of a country that was an enemy to my own country of Vallia.

  So, with a blistering Makki-Grodno oath to clear the vocal chords, a dolloping spit on the hands, the longsword thrust away on my back, I started the climb again.

  I climbed down.

  I deliberately chose to leave that battle against the Wild Men from over the mountains. I deliberately chose to continue my quest for the secrets of the vollers and for the good of Vallia.

  Now that another chance had been given me I moved with exquisite caution. I tried not to tear my hands on the rock and I tried not to rip out my fingernails. My boots were inevitably ripped and, very shortly, now that haste had gone, I took off the boots and pitched them overside. They took a mortal long time to fall away to nothing.

  I saw one of the mysterious winged flyers pounce on a boot and miss, then go planing on past, its little wings stiffly outstretched, deeply curved, supported on thick wingroots that sprouted like columns from its shoulder blades.

  If they were the exorcs the soldiers had mentioned, with dislike, they appeared singularly clumsy...

  I climbed down three hundred feet. Toward the end the way became extraordinarily difficult as the overhang of the island increased and the bottom rounded into a dish shape. Over the years any sharp edges had been worn away here at the bottom, and I had to grip, cling, and worm my way along fissures with my body braced, hands and elbows, knees and feet. Occasionally I had to pause and dig away to form a handhold with that sailor's knife from the scabbard over my right hip. I persevered, there under that floating mass of earth and rock, and at last was rewarded. Sweat clung thickly to my forehead. I felt my arms had long since been wrenched from their sockets and were held only by the shirt. That shirt, the green dolman, the dark cloak, all were ripped and covered with rock dust and the mildewed droppings of the woflovols which inhabited every crevice.

  But at last I saw what I searched for.

  That spreading mass of vines and creepers which grew under the volgendrins and, in the case of the Volgendrin of the Bridge, joined two together, grew thin and brittle here at the edge. Most of the vines were dead. As I handed myself along I had to be most careful not to trust to a grip on a tendril that was brittle. The ground beneath would be damned hard. Soon the mat of vines increased in thickness and fresh plants showed green, some with orange and dirty-white flowers, here in the shadows, growing strongly with roots penetrating many feet into the rocky crevices, seeking the dirt and moisture there.

  Now the way was much easier.

  Animal life inhabited the vines. I had a short, sharp fight with a spiny creature with six suckered feet; I dispatched it with the main-gauche. The place deepened with plant growth and became infested with insect life. This was about as far as I wished to go. Much later on in my story you will hear of what lay further into the viney jungle beneath the volgendrins, but at this time I was not interested in exploring.

  I found a good solid trunk of vine, as thick as a roston's trunk, and swiped away until I had made a comfortable nest. Sitting there and looking down I could see the ground flowing past beneath my feet, that steady five knots taking us over river, lake, and forest, trending southward and eastward in the long Keplerian orbits of the volgendrins.

  The first few hundred feet of vine was easy to find, merely by hauling it in and testing each length carefully. Some of it came away from its roots without trouble. To get some of it I had to crawl through the twisted jungly mass, most of the time upside down, and hack away with the dagger or the knife to free it. The rope lengthened. I took off all my gear, leaving myself clad only in a blue breechclout, a once-clean one I had taken from my rooms in the Kyr Nath and the Fifi. The longsword, the shirt, the dolman, the rapier and the cloak were all bundled up and securely lashed to the end of the vine. Then I lowered it down until it hung and dangled in the breeze. Then it was back to more vine cutting, hauling, and tying. A sailor uses a sailor's knots; I had no fear the knots would slip, only that the vine might part.

  I had to judge the length carefully. If the bundle of my possessions caught on a tree, not only would I lose the lot, but the line might part anywhere up its length.

  Finally, shoving the dagger and knife away—neither had broken, for which I gave thanks to Zair—I coiled about five fathoms of vine up around my shoulders.

  The breath I took was a deep one.

  A thousand feet, hand under hand, feet clamping as I went down! A long way. A damned long way. But down there the bundle swayed and gyrated at the end of the line, seemingly flying unattached through the air, as the line was barely visible at that distance.

  Down I went.

  My breath came raggedly and the sweat slicked thick and greasy. I took deep draughts of air, pausing more and more frequently. The wind swung me around and I revolved dizzyingly, praying the lashings above would not part. A roston's trunk is mighty thick, but the strains I was imposing were tremendous. Down I climbed, hand under hand, and the ground slowly rose to meet me.

  I paused, dragging thick lungfuls of air past my opened lips, flicked the back of my hand across my forehead and eyes, and looked down. I studied the landscape.

  Trees, a river, those brown humped-back wild ordels, grass, more trees. I wanted to pick my spot. A few feet further down and my legs wrapped around my bundle. I looked up. What a monstrous sight! A massive oval black shape, square in the sky, soaring up there, disdaining the pull of gravity! The volgendrin! Insupportable weight drifting through the air light as thistledown. The line vanished some distance before the twisted interlacement of vines at the bottom of the floating island.

  I caught the wind on my cheeks, looked down and ahead, and chose my spot. The knot with which I lashed the line over my shoulder to the main line was made with painstaking care. I did not wish to slip at this last point. The bundle was cut free. I hung on as we sailed over a tree, and then I cast my five fathoms down.

  It did not reach the ground. Wind pressure curved the line away. I cursed. But there was nothing I could do about it. Down I would have to go...

  I was concentrating so hard on the length of line, my bundle, the ground rushi
ng past, that the first sign of the exorcs’ attack came with a harsh croaking cry.

  My head snapped up.

  A thing like a cat, the size of a large dog, with a green leathery skin, hook-clawed webbed feet, pricked pointed ears, a gaping mouth scarlet as the mouth of hell, fanged with four enormous canine teeth, and eyes like crimson pits, lanced ferociously at me. I got up my left arm and the thing spun away, screeching. I was astonished to see the left-hand dagger in that fist.

  The exorc's wings were almost rudimentary. Those thick columns rose from just behind its shoulder blades, one on either side of the spine, and the wings branched from them more like the antlers of a deer than the wings of a bat, but the likeness was plain. It could not fly back up at me. It planed on past, screeching, and the second one followed, hissing. I saw the whiplike tails, barbed, coiling for a slash, but the range was too great.

  These exorcs were mere gliders: they could launch themselves from the volgendrins, but they could never fly back.

  So that explained the reference to the cows.

  Taking a fresh grip on the rope, jamming the main-gauche between my teeth, my lips ricked back in the old way, I shimmied down the last length of vine. I wanted to get onto terra firma as rapidly as possible right now!

  A tree nearly got me but I lifted with bulging muscles and stuck my feet straight out. I received no more than I had often suffered at the hands of the bosun over a gun breech.

  The open space had gone, but another appeared ahead just past the trees. Even at five knots and with the wind I seemed to be racing over the ground. A river appeared and disappeared. I went down lower and braced myself, trying to remember to relax. Further down the grass hissed away. A stupid wild ordel rushed away before me, then a herd of them, running in panic. I was down now and they wouldn't get out of the way. I felt the ground coming up with sudden treacherous speed and I didn't bother to look up. The vine had parted. I was falling. I fell perhaps four feet to land astride an ordel, running, plunging, and racing in blind panic. It felt me on its back and it went wild as I grasped a chunk of mane.