“Ling-Li-Lwingling,” I said. “She was mixed up with that devil Phu-Si-Yantong, then, after all.” And, I confess it, I didn’t much care for the note of uneasiness in my voice, didn’t care one little bit, by Vox!
“Only insofar, from your news about Csitra, Jak, that she was able to elude him. Perhaps, she is not dead. I sincerely hope so, for there was much good in her.”
I’d first made the acquaintance, passing, with scant ceremony, of the Witch of Loh Ling-Li-Lwingling down south in Jikaida City in the Dawn Lands of Havilfar. That was no long time after Deb-Lu-Quienyin and I had first met. At that time he’d no idea of the schemes dominating the crazed mind of Phu-Si-Yantong. Now I said:
“She blames us for the death of her wizard. Her uhu, Phunik, hates us all. There is no doubt that between them they mean to continue with Phu-Si-Yantong’s insane plans.”
A silence fell between us filled with the creak of timber and the whisper of the breeze, the flutterings of the flutduins and the busy work of the ship about us. Gray and white clouds ahead indicated we might have to think about a course change soon. All that fascinating aerial navigation and ship-handling could be left to the captains and their officers. More and more I found these good folk who knew their tasks a trifle reticent when I wandered in to lend a hand. This was understandable; but I regretted the passing of that phase of my career as an emperor.
Seg at last said: “When we were escaping from the Coup Blag and making our way through that dratted jungle in Pandahem, we had a visitation. A phantom in a golden throne appeared in midair. We took that to be Csitra spying on us.”
Sharply, I said: “And Deb-Lu, you are confident she has not been spying on us here?”
In answer the wizard began with circumlocution.
“We Wizards and Witches of Loh keep our secrets close, as we must. I can tell you a little, for I know that there has seldom, if ever, been a relationship between Lohvian Sorcerers and non-Lohvian Sorcerers as exists between us.” He did not push his turban straight, although it toppled dangerously over his ear. “Phu-Si-Yantong and I studied together. We were not too close. There were others we held in greater esteem. But he and I were on a par.”
A shout from the foretop took my attention over the bows. A tiny black dot showed ahead skipping between the clouds. As Deb-Lu continued to speak I watched that distant speck.
“I do know that Yantong desperately desired Ling-Li-Lwingling, and that she, considerably younger, wanted nothing of him. Our codes — well, I can say that he could not force her with thaumaturgy for the punishment that would fall on him. The witch, Csitra, desired Yantong and remained faithful to him throughout — and her powers were mirrored in his.”
I said: “I believe her to be a woman who remains faithful to one man.”
Deb-Lu nodded. The turban swayed. “That is true.”
“Then I breathe a little easier.”
Seg’s voice reached me over my shoulder, for he stood a little to the rear and side and he, too, I guessed, was watching that approaching dot in the distance.
“Oh, my old dom? That sounds highly mysterious.”
I did not laugh lightly, although, in all truth, the situation could have called for an affected reaction of that kind.
“In all the horror and the maze of the Coup Blag, Csitra pretended to be Queen Mab—”
“She what!” exploded Seg.
“I was taken in for a space. Then, when she made perfectly plain that her advances were strengthened by witchcraft, and I came to my senses, and escaped—”
Seg did not quite guffaw; but infectious amusement bubbled in his words. “She took a shine to you! She fancies you! Oh, oh, my old dom, you’ve a lot to answer for when certain people gather around...”
Well, I still believed passionately that I’d done enough to escape the clutches of Csitra through my own belief in Delia. The Star Lords had given me a breathing space in which to make good my escape. But Seg was right. Csitra had prevented her child, Phunik, from torturing me to death. I still believed she would not allow that. So we had a time in which to fight back.
Yantong had thought to use me, and so had ordered his human tools not to have me assassinated; now Csitra gave the same orders through her misguided passion.
It was, as you will readily perceive, ironic. All I was concerned with was staying alive until my work in Vallia and Paz was completed.
The speck flitting between the clouds broadened and grew, sprouted wings, glittered with harness, turned into a wide-pinioned flutduin breasting the air in a long slanting descent to our leading ship.
“That’ll be a messenger from Turko welcoming us in.”
“Aye,” I said. “And I hope he brings news of better weather. We’ll have to circle around those clouds, I think.”
Deb-Lu at last lifted a hand and pushed his turban straight. “I shall continue to make observations to discover what these swift flashes of thaumaturgical art may be. I’ll have a word with Khe-Hi. He may be experiencing the same effects with Prince Drak in the southwest.”
The incoming flyer made a straight line for Logan’s Fancy. Superb birds, flutduins, masters of the air. The rider sat hunched and I caught no glimpse of weaponry jutting arrogantly upwards, streaming his colors.
With a single half-circle to bring him around and match speeds, the flutduin rippled those powerful wings, his claws extended and he was down, gripping to a perching pole. Seg and I walked aft to greet the messenger. When we reached the cleared space of deck paralleling the line of perching poles, we could see that all was not as it should be.
Four crewmen were out on the nets, balancing, bringing the flyer in. His arms and legs dangled. Those arms under the flying leathers would be banded with sleeves of ocher and umber checks, lined-out in red. Those were the colors of Falinur, the schturval of Kov Turko.
The Ship-Deldar, Bolto the Knot, looked up from the bulwarks where he’d been yelling at his men. As the Bosun, he had, perforce, to possess a pair of lungs. His hard and lumpy face reminded me of the time he’d taken those lumps fighting at my side.
“He’s sore hurt, majister. I’ve sent for the needleman; but there seems little chance for the poor fambly.”
We watched as the men brought the messenger inboard and placed him down on hastily piled cloaks. He looked ghastly, and an arrow stood between his ribs. The feathers of that shaft were a hard bright blue.
At this, Seg’s face tautened.
The messenger was a Brokelsh, his hair coarse and his ways, no doubt, uncouth; yet he was a man and he was dying. He tried to speak, and blood frothed his lips.
“Kov Turko sends... urgent... meeting place... hurry—”
His head lolled, his eyelids closed, and he was dead.
Dolan the Pills, the needleman, stood back and shook his head.
“There is nothing I can do for him, poor fellow.”
We stood there grouped about the dead man. He had given his life to serve Vallia, yet we did not know in what fraught action he had died. There was no need for me to do or say anything regarding the proprieties. The sailors of Vallia know how to respect their dead.
Presently, when we’d gone into the cabin to drink a small private toast, Captain Nath Hardolf came in to say that in his opinion the change of course would have to be made within the next glass. The clouds ahead looked more ugly by the moment...
“Well, now, Captain Nath,” I said, lowering the glass. “Let us have the charts out.”
He gave me a puzzled look; but the charts of the land ahead were brought in. We bent over them spread upon the table, the glasses and bottles pushed to the side.
“Here,” I said, and stabbed a forefinger down, “is where we agreed to meet Kov Turko.”
Captain Nath Hardolf could see, all right.
He was representative of those master sailing captains of Vallia, seasoned, experienced, long in the tooth. He had had his share of tragedies and triumphs in life, and command of Logan’s Fancy was perhaps not with him the pinn
acle of his career it would have been to a less-experienced master mariner.
The point where we had agreed to meet up with Turko’s wing of the army he commanded here lay directly beyond the storm. The gale could broom us all away, could blow us to Hell and Kingdom Come. If we tacked around the gale we would take so much longer that whatever the urgency that had given that poor dead messenger his quietus would never receive any help from us. By the time we arrived up, Turko and his army could have been destroyed.
“Very good, majister,” said Captain Hardolf. “I’ll see everything is battened down.”
“Excellent. Pass on the message to the rest of the fleet. We are going straight through that damned storm up ahead, and gale or no gale, it won’t stop us from reaching Kov Turko in time.”
Chapter fourteen
The Battle of Marndor
An armada of sails coursing through thin air... The streaming mingled lights of the Suns of Scorpio sheening from straining canvas... The sparkling glitter striking back from gilding and gingerbread, from ornate high-flung sterns and towers, from shooting galleries and menacing boarding platforms... Oh, yes, the sailing ships of the skies of Kregen provide a spectacle dazzling and inspiring. Silently above the land they soar, the wind of their passage lost and blown away in the breeze.
And I, Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor and Krozair of Zy, calmly gave orders that would hurl all that mighty armada between the jaws of destruction ahead.
For, make no mistake about it, just because I said the gale would not prevent us from joining up with Turko’s army did not mean we would. Oh, no! My bravado could toss all away in ruination...
There is a saying common in the seas of Paz that a smart vessel is ‘All shipshape and Vallian fashion.’
In the moments before we plunged into black danger those aerial sailors of Vallia proved the saying true.
The vollers with their command of forward motion took the vorlcas in tow, for the latter’s sails would be of no help, would be a positive hindrance in the fight ahead. Tow ropes were passed, the wires made fast. In a sighing flutter of multi-colored collapse, all the canvas came in. There was time for some of the vessels who possessed them to strike their topmasts. We battened down.
The flutduins were brought in off their perching poles. The magnificent birds sensed the foul weather ahead, and made only a few formal protests at being cooped up. A wing beat, the wide gape of a beak, and then they settled down. The poles were run in and lashed down.
All this was repeated in all the vessels, signals flickering like summer lightning from mast to mast.
“We’re ready, majister.” Captain Nath Hardolf stumped up to make his report.
“Excellent, Cap’n Nath. Now, by Vox, we shall see!”
“By Corg, majister! I think I shall enjoy this day. It will be something to make the blood run more freely in my veins.”
I eyed him. Yes, his professionalism and experience were of such an order that little excited him in these latter days of command. Well, now, he was being handed a little excitement. One is never too old to learn, never too old to love, never too old to taste of life...
In his daily life and with his usual professional caution, Captain Hardolf had probably never been anywhere near a storm for years...
The gale would refresh him, test him, and play havoc with the fleet. Battened down, all made fast, we coursed on through the air toward those frowning pinnacles of cloud. The blackness rose up before us and the lights of day faded and muted to a wan ghostly underwater luminosity, which rapidly sloughed away into blackness.
The gale took us in its jaws and shook us. The wind shrieked and howled and scourged us. We forged on.
Well, well... There are gales in life, and we weather them or we do not. Like a broken quarry in the fangs of a leem, we struggled feebly and resisted as best we could. This gale did what it had to do to us, and we took our punishment, and we did not give up the fight, and at last, we broke through into the streaming lights of Zim and Genodras beyond...
A goodly proportion of the folk aboard wore green faces...
Only two tows parted. The shipwrights of Vallia build well and only one vessel was shattered and broken into pieces and so fell all that awful distance to the ground with her people spilling out like dust shaken from a broom.
Not everyone had been issued with a belt containing its two small silver boxes which would keep a person drifting gently to the ground. Not all. We in Vallia built what we could with the resources we had. These horrors are the price of empire. Once more I knew that I was racing past the point at which I could no longer face the spiritual agony of paying that price.
“We have done well, majister.” Captain Hardolf’s face held a flush along the cheekbones. He looked sprightly. “Now I believe Corg does sometimes smile on us.”
The ship that had foundered, Naghan’s Reply, had been one of the older vessels of the force, containing spearmen. The loss was regrettable, but I felt thanks that we had not lost any brumbytes, or archers, or heavy infantry. Of cavalry we were short — as usual. The flutduin aerial force was going to have to perform prodigiously.
Seg had taken the blue-fletched arrow embedded in the body of Turko’s messenger and he studied it intently. I understood his unease and shared it. At least, we did have a splendid regiment of my own Valkan Archers with us.
Marion’s Jikai Vuvushis kept in good heart — nor was there any reason to suspect they would not. My own crusty kampeons in the guard corps took everything in their stride, phlegmatically, cursingly, explosively, according to their natures.
So we soared out into the radiance of the twin suns, spewed out like pips from an orange. We were still battened down. We were battered. Some malignant fringes of the gale threw a last cavort of wind at us, tumbling us about. Spread out below us across the plain lay the tents and encampments of an army.
This army had been harassed by the storm, for many tents had been blown down, animal lines broken and we could almost muster smiles at the antics of the folk down there, chasing over the plain after the stampeding animals.
“Plenty of space to let down,” observed Captain Hardolf. “We shall not be troubled by trees, I fancy.”
“The quicker we are down and can set ourselves to rights, the better.” Seg’s voice, as sure and calm as ever, reassured me in an odd way. I felt edgy. Well, by Zim-Zair, didn’t a fellow have every right to feel off-color and snappy when through his own orders other good men and women went in peril of their lives?
Our appearance caused an immediate stir in the camp below. As we lowered through the air the pale blobs of faces turned up, we could see people running, and many of those off chasing runaway animals started back for the camp.
“Turko has a sizable force here,” observed Nath na Kochwold. He leant over the rail, shading his eyes.
“What the hell was his hurry?” demanded Seg.
The first ships touched the ground. Crewmen sprang out to make all secure. When I went over the side I knew there would be a great gang of hulking lads to surround me. And, now, there would be the lithe forms of Jikai Vuvushis among that formidable guard...
The breeze in the aftermath of the gale still blew briskly; the air held that fresh minty tang and the grass glittered with millions of spearpoints of light. One after the other the vessels touched down. We took up a neat and prescribed pattern for landing. A damned great voller came down in front of Logon’s Fancy and obscured my view of the camp.
“Well, Turko’ll be rushing across here as fast as he can,” I said. “We’d better go down to meet him.”
“I’m looking forward to seeing that man again,” said Seg, and he rubbed his hands.
“If you want to try a fall or three with him, Seg—”
“What!” He laughed. “I’d as lief try to wrestle a mountain out of the ground, or a river from its bed.”
“Very poetic.” A very great Khamorro, a master of the martial arts, Turko. His bare hands were far more lethal than many a weap
on in other less-skilled hands.
Afterwards, we tried to work out who had yelled first. No one could say who it was who first raised the alarm. All we did know was that in one moment we were thankful to be down and out of the gale, disembarking to greet friends, and in the next we were facing foemen viciously determined to destroy us all.
“The colors!” The yells racketed up. “Those are not the colors of Falinur! That’s Vennar!”
And so it was.
Instead of Turko’s banners of ocher and umber checks lined out in red, with the dragon as a dramatic symbol overhead, we could make out the colors of Vennar, ocher and silver, with the strigicaw as the symbol.
“Layco Jhansi!” I said. I felt like spitting. “Now we know what Turko’s messenger died trying to tell us!”
Yes, we were caught by surprise. The ranks of Jhansi’s men formed as they ran up from their camp. They were smart. The man who had been the old emperor’s chief pallan, who had run his empire for him, who had conspired and tried to murder the emperor, whose treason had borne bitter fruit, was no man to employ mercenaries who were not top class.
In all the hullabaloo and rushing about, the lads of the guard corps showed that they, too, were not men to be flurried over falling into a trap. Even if, as evidently was the case, this was an unpremeditated trap.
In the nature of the composition of the guard corps the natural rivalry between the Emperor’s Sword Watch and the Emperor’s Yellow Jackets impelled mutual speed; by Bongolin! To see the lads whipping on their armor, latching all fast, clapping on their helmets, grabbing their weapons! They were rough, tough, hairy fellows, and I echoed Old Beaky himself when I say that they might not impress the enemy, but, by Zair, they impressed me.
While all this went on I leaped for the ratlines of the mainmast and went up as though I was back in a seventy-four in Nelson’s Navy. Up and up to the cross-trees and there I could swivel and take a good look at the wasps’ nest we had stirred up by falling into it.
Werewolves of Kregen Page 11