The Hordes of Chanakra (Knights of Aerioch)

by David L Burkhead

  "So shall it be," the rest of the council responded, Kreg a little behind the others.

  "Carry out your duties," Marek said. "Kaila, Shillond, Kreg, tarry here."

  He waited until the others had filed out.

  "Shillond, you are of the opinion that Schah has powerful allies in her current wars," Marek said without preamble. "In this I am the soul of agreement. I agree that to find and sever the source of this aid must become our prime concern. I have thus decided to send you and Kaila to Schah itself in hopes that you may find who Schah's allies might be. This is a peril-fraught journey but you, Shillond, have proven quite able in foreign lands."

  "Thank you, Majesty."

  "And you, Kaila," Marek continued. "I have no doubt that your strong right arm will serve to defend your father."

  "With my life, Sire."

  Marek nodded. "I expected no less. Your squire will, of course, accompany you for such is the law." Here Marek turned to Kreg.

  Kreg nodded.

  "Fear not for our safety," Kaila said. "Fear rather for the safety of all the evil in Schah."

  Marek chuckled. "Indeed I shall, Kaila. Indeed I shall. Prepare what you need, then take your ease. The rest of the day is your own. You leave on the morrow."

  With an amused expression on his face, Marek bore a striking resemblance to Shillond. The set of the mouth, the eyes, the long, narrow nose, these were the same.

  Norveth was a far more pleasant city than Trevanta. Instead of being dumped in the streets, garbage was hauled to the river. That river ran strongly enough that trash and sewage flowed downstream. The price of that method of sewage disposal was the spread of disease, but Kreg was coming to see that they had few alternatives, all just as bad.

  As they left the palace a question occurred to Kreg. "Are the King and Shillond related?"

  "Why ask you?" Kaila said.

  "There's some resemblance," Kreg said.

  "Aye, 'tis true." Kaila nodded. "Though the relationship is distant, and not altogether clear."

  "So you're related to the King," Kreg said. "If that's the case are you sure it's a good idea to marry his son?"

  "Others have said as much," Kaila said. "But the relationship is distant and we each do as we must."

  They entered the practice ground.

  #

  Kreg and Kaila had been sparring, short bursts of activity followed by explanations and corrections, for several hours. A knight in armor was at the lists, charging down on a tilting dummy.

  "You do well." Kaila nodded as they took a short break. "When we return, I will start you in lance, and later in mace and axe. But for the nonce, have you ever used a bow?"

  "Some," Kreg admitted. "Another sport on my world."

  "Then let us see of what skill you possess." She turned and shouted, "Ho! Warder, two Merona Longbows."

  A page carried the weapons out to them, along with two quivers of arrows. The hardwood bows stretched over six feet long strung. A deep black, fine-grained wood comprised the arrows, tipped with steel heads of square cross section that came to a chisel-like point. Kreg tested the strength of the bow. It pulled a lot harder than the lightness of the wood suggested.

  "A fine weapon." Kreg nodded approvingly.

  "Aye," Kaila said. "Merona makes the best of longbows. The bowstaves are made from a wood that grows only in the Meronan isles. They treat it with secret means that make the wood strong yet light to send forth arrows of a speed like no other bow. Now, let us see if you can feather yon target."

  Kreg nocked an arrow, drew, sighted, and let fly. The arrow missed the target completely, flying over it by a good three feet.

  Kreg looked at the bow with new respect. "I don't believe it."

  "You draw and loose in a manner I never have seen before. You use three fingers instead of two, and you draw to the chin rather than the breast." Kaila shook her head. "Watch and learn."

  Kaila drew and let fly almost in one motion. The arrow struck near the center of the target. She loosed two more after it. All three stuck within a foot of the center.

  "Sorry, Kaila," Kreg said. "I was taught differently and if I tried to learn your way, I would just confuse myself."

  Kreg loosed another arrow. This one struck the target. The third hit nearly dead center, as did the fourth and fifth and four more after them.

  Kaila's eyes held amazed respect when Kreg turned to look at her. "Marry! Methinks 'twould be the course of wisdom to seek your instruction in the bow, rather than to seek to instruct you."

  Kreg smiled. He could not resist a little dig. "You should see my world's good archers."

  "'Tis a thought audacious indeed," Kaila said. "Few in all the kingdom can feather a target so well. The archers of Merona, it is said, have such skill, but I have not seen it. Right glad am I that you are going with us on the morrow."

  "Of what journey speak you?" the voice came from behind them.

  They turned. Keven was walking toward them, brushing dust from his armor. He carried his helmet under his left arm, his shield slung across his back.

  "'Tis as I thought," Kaila said. "'Twas you at the lists."

  "'Tis naught but the truth." Keven bowed. "But you have not answered my question."

  "Shillond and I leave on the morrow," Kaila said, "by the King's order."

  "Say no more." Keven held up a hand. "My father spoke of his plan, but had not said who he would send. It is a perilous journey."

  "Made the less so by the presence of so fine an archer as Kreg."

  "And a master of tactics as well." Keven bowed to Kreg who was blushing furiously. "I should be jealous of him in your company."

  Kaila started to speak. "Keven--"

  "Nay." Keven held up a hand. "Your feelings in this matter are well known to me, for do they not but mirror my own? Nevertheless, we both have our duty."

  Kaila sighed. "Our duty." The moisture was back in her eyes.

  "If I see you not before the morrow " Keven bowed. "--I bid you farewell."

  Kaila turned to Kreg as Keven walked off. When she spoke, she spoke haltingly. "That will suffice for today, methinks. Keep the bow and the arrows; I will speak to the King about them."

  Kreg nodded and sank to a bench, scratching at his left shoulder and letting his mind go blank as he stared at a pebble on the ground in front of him.

  “Kreg?” Kaila asked. “Are you well?”

  “Do you have any idea what I would give for a hot shower right now, or a toilet that doesn’t require someone to empty the pot? Or a simple cheeseburger?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “No. There’s no reason you should. Where I came from I didn’t have to worry about learning to fight with a sword or bows. Nobody did.”

  “Was your world so sheltered then?”

  “People were safe there, well, mostly. People didn’t need to carry weapons, or learn their use, or learn to fight at all, because we had police to keep the peace.”

  Kaila sat beside him. “So tell me, Kreg, where were these ‘police’ when you saw the crime you espied before you came here? And where were they when you were struck from behind?”

  Kreg looked over at her.

  “I think this is but part of your trouble.”

  Kreg sighed and nodded. “It’s like my mind is being pulled in a dozen different directions.” He pointed. “That’s an oak. I know it’s an oak, exactly like the oaks back home. That...” He pointed to a different tree, one with many thin, straight branches from which dangled tufts of green strands like clumps of hair. “I don’t know what that is. I’ve never seen or heard of anything like it.

  “Everything is a mix of familiar and strange. We ride horses, just like those at home, but I was almost killed by a ‘sand devil’ that doesn’t exist back home. What I don’t know here can kill me.” He stood up and turned to face Kaila. “I’ve mostly been too busy to think about it but I want to go home.”

  “Methinks I understand your heart in this, Kreg.” Kaila stood
and placed a hand on his shoulder. “But is there nothing that moves you to remain here?”

  “Kaila, I...” Kreg sighed. “You and Shillond have become good friends, and I’d miss you but this place isn’t for me. I need to go home.”

  Kaila nodded. “Then so be it. Once we have won this war or once the campaign season ends, my father and I shall bend all our effort to finding a way to return you to your world.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But for now,” Kaila said, “we are sore pressed. Will you aid us in our struggles against the Schahi?”

  “Of course.”

  #

  Starting the next morning, they rode at full gallop, obtaining fresh horses at small villages several times a day. After the first day, Kreg no longer felt pain, just a kind of dull numbness. At least the headaches were gone.

  Each night, they stopped at whatever town or village they first reached after the setting of the sun, ate a meal that exhaustion robbed of all flavor, and crawled into whatever rough beds either an inn or local Lord provided.

  The ride seemed to last forever. In reality, they needed only three days to reach the city of Enosh on the northwest coast of Aerioch. Their ship would take them around Shendar to Schah, dropping off one of the guerilla units along Shendar's west coast.

  The ship was the newest and largest in Marek's fleet, 30 paces long and about 5 paces across the widest part of her deck, a square rigged vessel using what was, for them, a new type of sail, a jib. No, Kreg thought, not a jib. A forestaysail. A true jib would extend farther forward onto a jib boom extending beyond the bowsprit. The stem post, the angled wooden beam that formed the very bow of the boat, looked far heavier than it needed to be to support the ship's structure. Kreg wondered why.

  She was a far more sophisticated ship than Kreg had expected to find. Her hull consisted of overlapping planks on a stout wood frame, stained black with a thick layer of pitch. Two masts each carried a topmast and topsails, giving the ship a large amount of sail area. A third mast at the rear of the ship carried a triangular sail that hung from a long, diagonally rigged yard. The ship had a stern tiller rather than the steering oars of other ships in the harbor. The rear of the ship rose in a high stern-castle providing both cover for the ship's pilot and room for two small cabins above the main deck. The topcastles at the top of both masts were far too large for simple lookouts and Kreg surmised that in battle archers would use them to rain arrows on another vessel's decks.

  "I dare not take you all the way to landfall," the Captain of the ship told them once they had settled into their small cabins. Kreg and Shillond shared a room in the stern castle while Kaila was alone in her, even smaller, room. "Not if they have taken the precaution of setting up naval patrols. This ship can outsail anything that Schah can float, especially with your help, mage, and we can sail closer to the wind than can they. But a war galley is faster than we are in a short pull. I have to spill sail to drop a boat and it takes time to regain speed. I cannot come too close to shore and risk being cut off from the open sea."

  "How close can you get us?"

  "No closer than two leagues," the Captain said. "If you mean to go on with this mad scheme, then you must pull the rest of the way in a boat."

  Kreg bit his lip. Two leagues came to a distance of almost seven miles. "It might be a good idea to start at sunset. That would give us the cover of night for our row."

  "Aye, that it would," the Captain said, "for part of the trip. But two leagues is a long pull in a boat even for seamen. For you? We could rig sail, but as you are landsmen, you would as like capsize her as reach shore."

  "We all do as we must," Shillond said.

  Kreg counted himself fortunate that he did not suffer from seasickness. Several of the group destined for Shendar did and Kreg had no wish to share their discomfort. He watched in sympathy as several green-faced men boarded a longboat for the row to Shendar. Two weeks' sail remained before they would reach Schah.

  Kaila did not let the trip go to waste. Several hours each day she continued to drill Kreg in the sword. Often those sailors not immediately involved in other tasks would gather to watch. Kreg expected to take a ribbing for his ineptitude but, strangely, the sailors had no comments to make.

  "Damn!" Kreg said as he stumbled. Kaila's training sword thwacked him in the side. "The rocking of the ship throws me off."

  "Aye." Kaila stepped back, allowing Kreg to rest a moment. "That is all to the good. Rarely have we so perfect an opportunity for the learning of balance."

  Kreg snorted and took a ready stance. This time Kreg lasted through almost a dozen parries and counters before Kaila penetrated his guard.

  What time Kreg did not spend in sword practice on this trip, he spent drawing the bow to build muscles in his shoulder and back. By the end of the voyage he could draw the bow over a hundred times without feeling strain.

  And in the evenings, Shillond attempted to instruct Kreg and Kaila in form of speech used in Schah. While the language was nearly identical to some of the rougher modes of speech in Aerioch, the locals spoke with a nasal twang. In time, Shillond pronounced Kreg as sufficiently capable in it. About Kaila, he said nothing.

  Eventually they reached the point where they lowered the longboat. The shore was invisible in the distance. As the ship sailed away, vanishing in the gloom of twilight, Kreg thought how small their boat was on that sea, particularly should some Schahi ship discover them.

  #

  It was near noon before they reached the shore. They hid the longboat in a small cave near the shore where rocky cliffs rimmed the beach, more to conceal evidence of their arrival than from any thought that they might use it again. The ship was now on her way back to Aerioch and they had no way to arrange for another to retrieve them.

  Kreg was just as glad. He had never realized that keeping a boat to a straight line with two people rowing would be so difficult.

  "Has anyone thought about how we're supposed to get back?" he asked.

  "It is obvious," Shillond said. "We must win the war."

  "And if it is that we do not?" Kaila shrugged her pack onto her shoulders. Instead of her chainmail, Kaila wore a thick leather vest over her buff tunic. Shillond had managed to convince her that no one in their assumed role would wear mail. Leather, at least, was possible. The iron plates sewn into the lining of the vest could not be seen from outside

  "Then--" Shillond picked up his staff and began to walk along the beach. "--it will not matter, for there will be no Aerioch to return to."

  Kreg grinned. "You have a point there. Grim, but a point."

  They shouldered their packs. After a short walk along the beach, they found a break in the cliffs where a stream ran into the sea. Here, they struck inland. The stream meandered between the low hills, gurgling as it poured over the smooth stones of its bed. There were no trees, but occasional clumps of brush broke the sere grassland. The breeze from out of the south brought scant comfort as the sun burned against Kreg's face.

  By evening they had reached a small village of sod buildings with thatched roofs. A modest, two-story wooden inn was the largest building in the village.

  The inn was smaller than the one at Trevanta and almost deserted. Two men in leather tunics sat in one corner, engaged in whispered conversation. Another man sat at the bar, quaffing blackjacks of ale. He had apparently been pursuing that occupation for some time with single-minded devotion. A minstrel sang. Kreg had to look twice to be certain that it was not the same minstrel that had inflicted himself on the inn at Trevanta. He was singing the same ballad--off-key.

  A barmaid appeared at their table and they ordered. This time Kreg ordered with confidence although the rancid scent wafting from the kitchen each time a breeze blew through the door did much to still his appetite.

  "I don't think I've ever been so tired in all my life," Kreg said as he ate. He tried to ignore the sour taste of the meat stew in his trencher. Probably the meat had started to spoil before being made into the stew.
He did not know whether exhaustion, infection, or food poisoning was going to kill him first. He twisted and stretched in an effort to relieve a knot in his back. "I hurt in places I didn't even know I had places."

  "Aye," Kaila agreed, keeping her voice low. Shillond had decided that it would be best if as few people heard Kaila's speech as possible. "Of a truth, I find myself in like straits. 'Twill be good to sleep this night."

  Shillond grinned. "Why, children, how can you even consider sleep after such a refreshing, invigorating walk? But I see that you will neither be much use until you rest. To bed with you and I shall hear what there is to hear."

  "Your counsel shall not go unfollowed." Kaila heaved herself to her feet.

  "Second that motion." Kreg got up, somewhat unsteadily. His back and shoulders ached from the pack.

  #

  They slept late into the next morning. A sleepless night rowing a boat and an all-day march had taken their toll. When Kreg woke, he found Shillond sitting by a lantern, reading from a scroll. As Kreg sat up on his pallet of folded blankets, Kaila, in the room's single bed, roused.

  Shillond smiled as Kreg stood. "I have had good fortune. There is a great deal of confusion over the wizards from Chanakra who are about. No one knows why they are here but if we continue up the road we will find one of them staying at the inn in the next village."

  "So we go?" Kreg asked. He reached for his pack.

  Shillond's voice contained an indulgent chuckle. "I think we can delay long enough to eat first."

  "Truly that is the best of news," Kaila said. "Methinks I could devour a krayt entire."

  "Been meaning to ask," Kreg said. "What's a krayt?"

  "Oh," Shillond said. "It's a somewhat large predator. Best to avoid them."

  "Oh?" Something in Shillond's voice roused Kreg's distrust. He cast a sidelong glance at Kaila. Her face was blank.

  They ate a breakfast consisting mostly of fruit before taking to the road again. By noon they had reached the next town. The village occupied a valley in the rolling countryside. A hill about a mile to the north overlooked the town, capped by a small castle.