Armada of Antares dp-11

by Alan Burt Akers

  Chapter 15

  I sing with swods

  Wind-bluster battered past my ears. The close-fitting leather flying cap was devoid of feathers or ornamentation. I bent low to the neck of the mirvol as we hurtled on through the air over Hamal, the fields and watercourses passing away below in a long stream of checkered browns, reds, and yellows threaded with blue. Forests sprawled beneath, the trees mere toy lumps of greenery. This mirvol was a sturdy beast, not overly fast, but I had picked him out in the voldrome with an eye to reliability and stamina. His deep keel chest indicated he would fly well and for a long time. His coloring, too, was a mere speckled brown, with nothing of the flamboyance of some flying animals of Havilfar. I liked him, and his name was Liance.

  Chido had not been standing at my side all the time I had made my preparations. But, even so, I had not opened the letter. He could easily have asked to see it before I took off, just to make sure I had it. He had not done so, but might have. My way lay south of west, almost three hundred dwaburs away. In theory the mirvol could cover that vast distance in something like forty-eight burs, the length of the Kregan day-and-night cycle. But that was in theory only. The beast would need to rest and eat, for a flying animal consumes enormous quantities of energy and must replenish its vital faculties with adequate supplies of food. Mirvols, like many flying animals, eat some meat, but the nut of the tsu-tsu tree and those fat and nourishing beans the Hamalians call dyrolains are the favorites of the mirvols; those and a sweet thick syrup they like dripped on just about anything they eat, including meat. Feeding flying animals is often more involved than merely turning them out to graze, although they forage on their own account most efficiently. I thought of the groves of dyrolains growing in my Delia’s estates of Delphond. Vallia could feed her aerial cavalry when the time came.

  Planning to reach the Volgendrin of the Bridge just after the suns set on the next day, I touched down at a tiny dusty mining town where the local inn turned out to be surprisingly well stocked on beers and sazz, if not wine. I partook of an enormous meal there and saw to it that Liance filled his belly also. I relied on the cunning strength of his wings.

  The plans went well and I slanted down from the sky with all the forward horizon sheets and pinnacles of color as the twin suns sank beyond the Mountains of the West. The mountains bulked against that glowing sky, black edges of menace. The coruscations of fire, all ruby and emerald with orange and yellow shooting through in a glowing pyrotechnic display that formed one of those breathtaking suns’

  settings of Kregen, could not diminish the stark jaggedness of those peaks; neither could the beauty conceal the horrors I knew lurked beyond the mountains ready to fly in to lay waste and destroy. Was I not the Amak of Paline Valley?

  The letter had been opened and read.

  I had not done this at the mining camp, which I left with much good-humored abuse ringing in my ears, but later, coming to earth by a grove of trees where a river edged the beginning of the barren plain that led up to the mountains here. Much of the eastward face of the mountains and the land immediately below it is smothered in heavy forest, subtropical, dangerous country. But equally as dangerous were the areas where the rivers did not run, where the rain shadows caused barrens. Where I was going, following Chido’s instructions, was clearly a semi-desert.

  I opened the letter with some skill, although the seal was broken in the process, for I was over-hasty. I would deal with that problem when it arose. A single sheet of paper, yellow and finely made by hand, folded in half, rewarded my larceny. It was covered with rows of figures. Apart from the heading which read The First Month of the Maiden with the Many Smiles, that was all. It seemed fairly clear what the figures must be. If my suspicions were right — and I was going on a mishmash of whispers, overheard conversations, and coincidences that were not coincidences, but engineered by the Star Lords; and also on the very reasons I was here at all — then these figures must refer to production targets. I believed they would be targets, for completion reports would be flying in the opposite direction. And, that being so, the product of which these figures were the subject must be connected with the silver boxes, must in all probability be a mineral, and, if I was lucky, one of the four minerals we in Vallia had not identified and so had been unable to use. If I could discover what the actual stuff was, instead of merely giving San Evold Scavander a name he did not recognize, then we might produce vollers which would travel and steer instead of merely float up in the air. The paper, correctly folded, went back into the wrapper. I pushed the split seal together, then I threw the packet on the ground and jumped on it. A few crumples and bashings and it looked as though it had gone through a charge by wild chunkrahs.

  So, as I slanted down looking for the Volgendrin of the Bridge, I had to believe that Pallan Horosh would take my story for gospel. I’d have a bit of swordplay on my hands if he did not, unless they killed me first.

  The feel of the great longsword on my back came as a comfort.

  With a final outburst of orange fire streaked with the stained green, the Suns of Scorpio sank beyond the mountains. In the dying moments of that burning glow I saw the marker I looked for: a gigantic cleft in the rock shone and coruscated in flashing reflections of the sunset, flaming in orange, red, and jade fires for murs after the suns had vanished beyond the peaks.

  What happened next was so typical of Kregen, and happened just as Chido had told me Gordano had explained to him, that I felt my craggy old lips thin out into a semblance of a smile. The air around me filled with the rustling forms of flying beasts. They curved in with swift and brutal efficiency, swerving to hem me in so that escape without a fight was not possible. I knew these beasts and their riders.

  These were the same bandy-legged diffs, squat, malefic with energy, with square, clamped mouths, who had welcomed me when I’d been flown into that hellhole called the Heavenly Mines. These were the Gerawin of Gilarna the Barren. They flew with consummate skill on tyryvols whose glistening black and ocher scales were dulled now by the onset of night. But I knew the Gerawin well enough, and knew the efficiency with which they guarded slaves for the Empire of Hamal.

  Parked like a slice of vosk in a sandwich of Kregen bread, I flew on. We did not fly down to land. We flew on straight for the mountains. A black mass, indistinct and vague in the darkness, loomed above. My mirvol, Liance, behaved perfectly, for all that a tyryvol with its whip tail and scales can unsettle practically any other flying animal or bird. We were landing. The ground felt soft and spongy as, with a soothing word to Liance, I alighted.

  The Gerawin did not land with me but curved up and away, their tridents dark lances of menace, circling like upthrown leaves away into the enveloping gloom. Men advanced toward me. I held up my hand in greeting. “Lahal,” I said, speaking firmly and loudly. “Lahal. I must see Pallan Horosh at once.”

  A slender luminousness pervaded the scene as She of the Veils rose in the eastern sky. For that little space we had been living through a period of Notor Zan. The Tenth Lord would not rise tonight, for after She of the Veils the Twins would rise and we would have light enough. If I do say so myself, I had timed my arrival nicely.

  ‘This way.” The voice was cold and businesslike. A torch flared. The guard party were apims, clad in normal Hamalese armor, bearing stuxes, swords, and shields. She of the Veils touched the black and ocher plumes of their helmets, the same colors at that time favored by the Gerawin. I went with them. The ground possessed an odd and unsettling feeling and I could not quite accustom myself to land again. I felt like a sailor stepping ashore for the first time after six months at sea. And this was strange, for I had not experienced this when I’d touched down on the way here. Vague fancies about earthquakes and rockslides took me as we went through an overhanging forest of branches, hanging with fruits I did not know. The path squelched. Everything was conducted as I had expected it would be, with the full ritual observance of the dread laws of Hamal.

  All the same, the deadliness of the
effect, the hardness, the queasy feeling underfoot, the silence of these men and the odd surroundings, affected me. . affected me powerfully, so that my hand rested on the pommel of my rapier and I wriggled my shoulder blades to make sure the longsword still hung there. The tunnel-like avenue through the hanging branches and the dependent fruit broadened and we came to a wooden guardhouse. Torches were flaring, soldiers talking, and there was the smell of food cooking. I could eat again, having grown accustomed to Kregen ideas on the correct number of meals per day. I wore a dark cloak which I left hanging over my left shoulder; it was pushed back and clipped on the right, just in case.

  On my right shoulder under the cloak I wore a sheath containing six terchicks, the deadly throwing knives. Six men would die before I drew the longsword. .

  Nothing of these bloodthirsty thoughts showed on my ugly old face as the Hikdar walked out from the wooden hut to inspect me. He carried a chicken bone in his hand. He saw I did not wear a uniform beneath the cloak and was prepared to be unpleasant. He was an ord-Hikdar, which meant he was of pretty high rank to catch guard duty, or so I thought then.

  “Now, then, by Barfurd! What have we here?” He walked around me, peering, exaggerating. Any soldierman gets tired and irritated on distant guard duty; I did not blame the Hikdar for acting like this, for it was in his nature, but I gave him up to the time I counted ten, then I would deal with him.

  “Pallan Horosh, Hikdar,” I said. “The password is Thyllis the Magnificent.” Then I forgot all about counting to ten and added with a look that made him drop the chicken bone, “And if you don’t jump, onker, and un-glue your wings you’ll be a swod with a brush and pan in your fists!”

  There was little delay after that. The nearest an Earthly expression can get to the flavor of “unglue your wings” in the Havilfarese flying culture is “get the lead out of your pants!”

  I will not go into the various substances often alluded to as causing the gluing up of wings. The moons now cast enough light for me to see the undulating plain-like expanse, covered with a thick growth of yellow grass, which extended from the guard hut to a bulging hill about half an ulm off. There was something almighty strange about this land. Away in the distance the moons shone on the Mountains of the West, the whiteness of their peaks glazed with gold and pink. I went with the detail toward the humped hill. A door opened in the Vine-like growth and we went inside. The place had been constructed, I thought, from beams and crossties of wood in the natural state, that is, the bark had not been removed and the wood had not been split or sawn. Canvas coverings formed the walls. Carpets covered the floor, which alone had been constructed from carpentered wood. The noise of habitation came up with the familiar sensations an old soldier experienced on entering barracks. The strains of song wafted along as we went through to a door guarded by two Pachaks. The song was, I remember, Tyr Korgan and the Mermaid. As we passed between the two Pachak guards to enter the Pallan’s opulent quarters, those swods down there had reached the fourth verse, where Tyr Korgan draws his fourth great breath and dives to take the mermaid’s hand. The Pallan’s quarters were those with which one would expect a man of culture and refinement to furnish himself on a distant assignment in a rough and barren land. This Horosh liked his comfort. All the evidences of hedonistic living met my gaze, and perhaps only the predominance of black and purple — in rugs and feathered hangings — indicated any particular local affiliations. I stood looking at the Pallan, who sat at a balass-wood desk, gilt and enamel in the panels, writing with a quill. He glanced up. Pallan Horosh’s look reminded me of the malefic face of the Devil of the Ice-Wind who guards the north shore of Gundarlo.

  “Your name?”

  His voice grated like an unoiled wheel.

  “Naghan Lamahan.” It amused me to give the name Gordano had used in the police watch station. His head went up. His nostrils pinched, whitely.

  “You address me as Notor, nulsh.”

  I, Dray Prescot, Prince Majister of Vallia and King of Djanduin — and much else besides — remained fast. I did not blink an eye. I said: “Notor.”

  “Give me the letter.”

  When he saw its condition he opened his mouth and I said, smooth and quick, “There was an accident. Flutsmen.” I would have gone on but he waved me down and took the letter. His hands were long and slender, missing the middle finger of the left hand.

  “I care nothing for your experiences.”

  He did not have to break the seal. He threw the wrapper to the carpet and fell to reading the figures. After a space he looked up, saw me, growled out, “You still here, nulsh? Get out.” He added, quite unnecessarily, “Schtump!”

  I said, “Notor,” turned, and marched off.

  I had enjoyed myself — maybe you can understand a little more now the coldness which was entering my heart when I dealt with these heartless men of Hamal.

  My plans were really no plans. I had followed coincidences, believing them not to be coincidences. Here I was, in the Volgendrin of the Bridge. I had had one chance and I’d taken it with both hands. Here, with the moons sailing past above and the night breeze redolent with the scents of secretly opening flowers, I went with the detail to my assigned quarters. What to do now? One thing remained certain in a shifting world: I should not tarry here over-long. If the Star Lords had thrown me this gnawed bone and refused me the meat, then I would fly back to my little army and joy in seeing Tom Tomor and Kytun once more. Naghan Lamahan. In Hamal that was like saying Charles Robinson on Earth. The detail left and I waited for half a bur before going off prowling, with all my gear still on me. I wandered down to the corridor where I’d heard the strains of song. Down there they’d begun on the Canticles of the Rose City, that famous song-cycle celebrating the mythical doings of the man-god Drak. When I pushed through into the mess they were still nowhere near the end. Apart from one or two flushed faces turned in my direction, the men went on lustily bellowing it out, all of it, taking a great joy in their singing. Of course, much of the mythical story followed different forms, for the legendary Drak is very much a god-hero of Vallia, and these Hamalians changed things accordingly. I settled down and a Matoc shoved an earthenware pot into my hand. I thanked him and drank the beer and so joined in the singing. This, to me, assuaged a great drought. Why is it that, in general, the ordinary common soldier, when he is not drunk on alcohol or the red killing fury of battle, is such a quiet, cheerful, decent sort of fellow? Maybe it is because, as so many would-be pundits have said, a good soldier is devoid of imagination. I tend to doubt that, but it is unfortunately so often true as to have become a byword.

  The song finished and my earthenware pot was replenished. The wooden walls reverberated to the strains of Sogandar the Upright and the Sylvie. The first lines of this go something like: “Now Upright Sogandar had no idea at all, and thought the Sylvie wanted just to see his Painted Hall,” and from then on it is all downhill. There is much jocose repetition of “No idea at all, at all, no idea at all.” This always sends these tough old warriors into fits of laughter at the naivete of Sogandar the Upright. One thing was certain: these Hamalians wouldn’t sing The Bowmen of Loh. I talked to them as the jugs went around between songs, the apims and the Numims, the Pachaks and Brokelsh. Chuliks usually regard singing as a decadence. A little Och staggered up and gave us a charming solo: The Cup Song of the Och Kings. He fell flat on his face just before he finished, his six limbs twitching. A black-bristle Brokelsh poured a jug of beer over him as he lay; he did not stir. Talking to them, lazily asking questions so it appeared I had no interest in the answers, drinking and singing, I spent the best part of three burs in the swods’ mess. The Matoc — a very low grade of noncom — who had pressed the first beer on me, had been grumbling away, in between singing, and I had understood him to be worried about what he called the drift.

  A Numim, his golden fur somewhat torn and his mane in shreds, belched and said, “Aye, dom! The drift this time has been real bad. Them mountings is a sight mortal close.”
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  “If I know the way of it,” said the Matoc, grumbling. “The binhoys will be late. By Kuerden the Merciless! I’d as lief be sent to the northern front.”

  “Yes,” agreed an apim, leering. “Plenty of loot up there.”

  Reaching over the jug, I said in a companionable voice, “I hear tell the army’s bogged down, up in Pandahem.”

  They were interested. I managed to avoid the immediate charge of being a peace-monger, but I sowed a few seeds I hoped would grow to the discomfort of Hamal. But they were back to the drift again, cursing the Volgendrin of the Bridge.

  They were also most crude in their comments about flyers they called exorcs. They wondered in their cheerfully rough way if the exorcs’ parents — which they called cows — would be blown away, and hoping by Krun they would. They had no time, that was very plain, for these exorcs. The wooden mess hall shuddered abruptly. I heard the noise of the wind, which had been steadily growing in volume, rising now with unmistakable ferocity. Again the wooden walls shook. The Matoc drained his jug and threw it aside, making no effort to refill it. “May Kuerden the Merciless take ’em all!”

  he burst out. “It’ll be fencing for us this night, mark my words.”

  “I never understand it,” said the Brokelsh, shaking his head. “The damned vo’drin’s not supposed to care about wind.”

  “No more it don’t,” said the apim who wished to go to the northern front. “It’s just the drift and our bad luck.”

  “Anyway,” shouted the Numim, scratching his torn fur. “Who’d be a Gerawin on a night like this, huh, lads?”

  They all chuckled at this, most evilly, I thought, and I realized they were taking some sour pleasure from thinking of other swods worse off than themselves.