Allies of Antares [Dray Prescot #26]

by Alan Burt Akers

  “That,” said Jaezila, bringing the airboat to a halt in midair and relinquishing the controls, “is true."

  “How many d'you make ‘em, Dray?"

  There were eight moorkrim flying like the crazy savages they were in the air space before the ledge, rising and falling, swinging in to loose and diving or zooming away.

  “The young braves of the tribe,” I said. “You know the kind of pecking order they're likely to have and the necessity of gaining credit among their peer group. The more mature warriors will be on the ledge, under cover."

  “Yes. I make seven saddle flyers this side—"

  “And ten on the other end,” said Jaezila. She took up her longbow. Like the others, this was a Lohvian longbow built by Seg. If you have to have a hobby on Kregen it is useful if it is connected with survival.

  “Twenty-five,” said Seg. “We've shafted more than that before breakfast."

  “Maybe so, Seg. And each time we do it, it could be the last. So, my old dom, watch it!"

  He laughed, throwing back his head. His black hair waved wildly and his fey blue eyes looked now with the steady regard of the bowman—wild and impulsive and shrewd and practical are the folk of Erthyrdrin, and Seg showed all that blend now as he fitted nock to string.

  “Father!” Jaezila looked at me, the arrow in her fingers as long and lethal as those held by Seg and me. I felt surprise that she thus called me.

  “Lela?"

  “You told me, I seem to remember, when I was little, that you and Uncle Seg used to wager when you shot."

  Again Seg laughed, lifting the bow. His russet tunic hid what was going on among the muscles of his back and arms, but they would have made a sculptor weep for joy.

  “So we did, Lela, my love, so we did! What is it to be, then, a gold talen a hit?"

  Macabre, gruesome, unfeeling? Wagering on killing other people? Of course. Once we began to shoot, the wildmen would not bother about anything as decadently sophisticated as gambling on how they slew us. They would simply whoop in with the one blood-red desire to chew us up and hurl the refuse into the gulf. That is the way of wildmen.

  Perhaps, if you thought about it, that was more savagely honest? All I knew was that I was on Kregen, my comrade and my daughter were about to face deadly peril, and a man I admired was about to die unless we stopped his killers.

  We shot.

  Three of the eight pirouetting in midair before the ledge were shafted, and then three more. The remaining two swung away, the wings of their tyryvols beating madly and Seg and Jaezila saw to them as I switched my aim.

  The targets among the boulders proved more tricky, and I know two of my shafts missed. Return shots started to come up; but we were a small and protected target in the voller among the clustered shadows.

  We three worked together sweetly in the shooting.

  When the wildmen at the far end of the ledge broke from their boulders and, leaping astride their saddle flyers, shot up into the air and headed for us, Seg and Jaezila went methodically to work on them while I remained winkling out the fellows in the rocks this end.

  A crossbow bolt punched clean up through the skin of the voller.

  Seg said, “That looks nasty."

  “They capture crossbows from time to time. They can't make ‘em, can't even do repairs. When they break they throw them away. They tart them up with feathers and skins and hair. But they can shoot well with them."

  Seg loosed and flipped a fresh arrow into place and loosed again, all in a smooth twinkling motion, before he spoke.

  “That's one crossbow fellow who won't shoot again."

  And Jaezila laughed. “Two shafts, Uncle Seg, for one crossbow man?"

  “I'll pay you the gold talen, Lela, don't fret."

  The ten flyers were whittled down to four before they reached the voller. Seg shot and took out a moorkrim with his hair black and greasy braided into a fantastic halo. Jaezila's shot merely transfixed the wildman's arm; that wouldn't stop the savage from advancing.

  “Swords!"

  As the three wildmen flung their tyryvols at the airboat in a welter of thrashing wings, we drew our blades. That churning of the air, a favorite trick of men who fight astride saddle flyers, prevented accurate shooting. The three hit the deck and came for us. Their stink preceded them.

  When fighting on foot wildmen employ shields, usually of wicker and skins, and spears or swords if they can come by them, for they find the metallurgy of swords a little above their capacities. These three screeched war cries. They snatched their shields up and into place. One had a sword, a Hamalian army thraxter, and he pressed on boldly. The one Jaezila had wounded didn't seem to know he had been hit. The arrow transfixed his arm and with a petty gesture he broke it off, fore and aft, and then slapped his shield back across again.

  You had to admire the fortitude of the wildmen, if nothing else.

  Not caring to waste time, for the fellows below kept up their pressure on the stranded voller, I whipped out the Krozair longsword and cocked it between spread fists.

  “Let me have ‘em,” I shouted at Seg and Jaezila. “You see off those fellows in the rocks."

  Giving my comrade and my daughter no time to argue I pushed past to the front, faced the small deck space where the wildmen ran on as only warriors at home in the air can run, and met the first onslaught.

  A Krozair longsword does not take a deal of notice of a wicker shield.

  The first man sank to the deck with a cleft skull.

  The next two, rushing up together on bandy legs bent like springs, leaped for me. The Krozair brand switched left and as I rolled my wrists flailed back right. Two swift and unmerciful blows, and the two moorkrim toppled aside. Both fell, slipped and, shrieking, pitched over into space. I put my foot against the first one, whose blood and brains oozed out, and pushed him over the side.

  The smell of the wildmen, which comes as much from themselves as from the muck they smear on their greased and braided hair, hung about the voller. It would persist.

  Seg bellowed, “They are rushing the airboat!"

  “Down!” Jaezila sprang for the controls. She slammed the levers hard over and our flier pitched down as though the bottom of the world had fallen out.

  She brought us in with superb piloting. We flashed over the boulders. Seg leaned over, very thoughtfully, and sent two flashing shafts into billets as we passed. It is my unalterable opinion that there is no greater bowman in all Kregen than Seg Segutorio.

  We landed slap bang in the middle of the rest of them as they rushed the flier. The ensuing dust up was interesting, for Seg and Jaezila can handle blade as well as bow.

  The tyryvols fluttered their wings but could not rise as the wildmen had tethered them with rocks for the final foot charge. Our blades glittered and fouled with blood. We fought fiercely for a space and then there were no more moorkrim to fight.

  Seg had a small nick along his right wrist, a nothing, and Jaezila a score along her side. I frowned.

  “Damned careless of you, my girl. Let me look."

  “It's nothing, Jak!"

  It was nothing, really, but we dug out the first aid which consisted of a gel in a bandage, and slapped it on. Seg looked up from the crashed flier. He shouted.

  “You won't believe what's here!"

  We went across the rocks. The aftermath of a fight is often a strange time, when noises ring in your ears, and the air seems irradiated with color, and the world moves under your feet.

  Seg was right.

  There were dead men sprawled here and there, curled up in nooks and crannies, huddled behind the rocks that had punched through the voller's skin in the crash. She was done for. One of the silver boxes had broken and—it being the paol box—the cayferm it contained had wafted away to be lost in the air. A shivering man crouched behind a box which had saved him, for its stout wooden side was feathered with arrows like a pincushion. He held the windlass of a crossbow.

  “Look,” said Seg.

 
; Prince Nedfar lay half on his side, his hands outstretched gripping the crossbow. It was clear what had been going on. The man behind the box was a Relt, a gentle specimen of a race of diffs who are not warriors, and he had been spanning the crossbow for Nedfar. Nedfar's face showed greasy and strained, dirty with grimed sweat. His eyes were sunken.

  Among the dead men a few living men rose to greet us.

  They were retainers, the Relt stylor, the cooks and valets, a groom, and I felt the pang at what must have happened. I bent to Nedfar. His sunken eyes looked like plums, bruised against bruised flesh.

  “Prince!"

  He opened his eyes.

  In his right shoulder the butt end of a quarrel stood up. It looked obscene. Judging by the amount of wooden flight showing, its steel head was buried deeply into Nedfar's shoulder. He saw me. He recognized me. He spoke one word.

  “Traitor!"

  * * *

  Chapter four

  Of a Walk in the Mist

  “Now, now, prince. That's all over.” I tried to take the crossbow from his hands. “You're safe now. We have to make you comfortable—"

  “Jak the Shot—traitor! You betrayed Hamal!"

  “He's off his head,” said Seg. “And I can see he is a fine-looking man, just as you said. A real prince."

  “Yes. We've got to take care of him."

  What had happened was clear enough. The fighting men with Nedfar had fought. They had been killed. They must have held off the wildmen for a goodly long time. The end was in sight when we turned up. I judged that the twenty-five we had dealt with had been left to finish the thing from a larger war-band.

  “Hamal—” Nedfar looked in a bad way. His face was of that color of the lead in old sewers. “You betrayed our plans to our enemies, Jak—"

  Jaezila brought water and moistened his lips. He saw her.

  “Jaezila—what—the man Jak the Shot—do not, do not—"

  “Prince!” Jaezila spoke in a voice like diamond. “Where is Tyfar?"

  “Tyfar? My son Tyfar?"

  “Yes, yes! Is he still in the Pass of Lacachun?"

  “Oh, yes. He is still there—"

  Nedfar's mind was not wandering; but he was very tired and his wound gave him a distancing from reality. No doubt past and present clashed in his brain. He sounded very weak.

  “We must take Nedfar to a doctor.” I tried to sound matter of fact. “We could take the bolt out of his shoulder; but the pain might do for him, brave though he is. A needleman is absolutely vital."

  “You're right. And we'll have to go in our airboat."

  Again Jaezila bent to Nedfar.

  “Tyfar.” She spoke with compressed urgency. “Your son Tyfar. Is all well with him?"

  The prince's voice rasped weakly. His head rolled.

  “All is—is not well—with Tyfar."

  We bent closer, intent, concentrating on the halting words.

  “They trapped him—the message was—was a trick. A trap. I flew for help—help—Tyfar! They will slay him and all his men—"

  Nedfar tried to lift himself, fighting back the pain. He glared up at Jaezila; she bent over him, her soft brown hair a glory about her face. On that face an expression of loving care was replaced by horror and then by a savage determination. The whole story was there, on Jaezila's face, to be read.

  “He will be killed.” She jumped up, swinging about and the suns light caught in her hair and across her russets and she looked glorious, glorious. “No time, no time—"

  She was out of the wreck of the voller in the rocks, leaping to the nearest tethered flyer. The tyryvol's black and ochre scales glistened in the light. She gave him a clip alongside those ugly jaws and freed the tether. All in a fluid line of motion she leaped for the saddle, clamping those long slender legs in hard, giving the flying beast a licking flick with a loose rein, sending him bolting up, legs trailing, tail splattering dust and rock chips, flung him high and hard into the blaze of suns light.

  “Jaezila!"

  She did not bother to answer but strapped up the clerketer and stretched out to reduce headwinds. The tyryvol opened his wings and beat and beat again and soared up and up.

  “Jaezila!"

  Seg said, “We'll have to go after her, my old dom."

  “Aye,” I said. “I will. But you will have to take Nedfar back to the needleman—"

  “Me!"

  We looked at the prince, who slumped back, looking dreadful. His eyes closed.

  “Yes, you, Seg. Don't you see?"

  “No, Dray, I do not! You're the one who wants to make this Nedfar fellow the Emperor of Hamal."

  “I do. But I can't let Jaezila fly off—"

  “No more can I! By the Veiled Froyvil! You know you're the one to handle those idiots at the Peace Conference—"

  “Drak can do that! So can you, come to that. There's no time to waste—"

  “There's no time, agreed! You—"

  “Nedfar is to be the Emperor of Hamal, that's all arranged—"

  “I don't give a rast's hind parts for the Emperor of Hamal! But I give a very great deal for Lela! Don't you understand! She's the Princess Majestrix of Vallia, flying off alone into these confounded mountains with packs of wildmen out ahunting! I'm not going the other way—"

  “This is—"

  “Listen to me, Dray Prescot! You're the Emperor of Vallia and my old dom and your place is with the Peace Conference sorting out these idiot Hamalese and setting up this Nedfar fellow as their new emperor! By Vox! Why can't I ever knock any sense into that vosk skull of a head of yours!"

  “Just because Jaezila is my daughter!"

  There was no question of my giving orders to Seg. We did not operate on that level. He was right. I knew he was right. But Nedfar had to be taken to a doctor and I had to go after my daughter. The decision was made, irrational and selfish, maybe, but made.

  I bellowed back as I vaulted out of the wreckage, “I'll be back soon! Get Nedfar to a doctor!"

  As I laid hands on the nearest tyryvol, Seg yelled something I will not repeat. But I knew he would care for Nedfar. I'd trust Seg Segutorio to the ends of both Earth and Kregen.

  There existed no doubt in our minds that one of us had to go with Nedfar. Unable to care for himself and a prince of Hamal, he would be at the mercy of any of the many folk who might see profit in his hide. His retainers left alive were not fighting men, and they had been unnerved—shattered—by the viciousness of the wildmen's onslaught and the carnage and blood all about them. Not everyone on Kregen is a bold brave roistering warrior, or a hunting-leather-clad girl ready with whip and rapier.

  The tyryvol smashed his wings down under my intemperate handling and we rocketed into the air. Grabbing at the leather straps of the clerketer, I glanced down. Seg stood there, hands on hips, head upflung, glaring up. As he dwindled away I could visualize the expression on that face of his and although I did not laugh I felt the affection bubbling up.

  Good old Seg Segutorio!

  That forkful of dungy straw he'd bunged in my face when first we met away there in the Eye of the World had paid dividends in the best comrade a man could ever hope for.

  As we lifted away the tyryvol showed his disinclination to rise too high past the ledge. Ahead the world was blotted out in a swirl of mist, dank and gray, writhing down from the higher peaks and spreading out in the cleft between the precipices. I let the flying beast hurtle on at the level he chose, only making sure he was aimed in the right direction and going as fast as he could.

  They are splendid flyers, tyryvols, adapted to the tricky cross-currents hereabouts. Of all the wonderful array of saddle flyers of Havilfar, the flutduin of Djanduin stands supreme, in my estimation. I think the snow-white zhyans are truly regal among flyers, but overpriced and tricky as to temper. We flew on and followed the windings of the cleft in the mountains. The silence, apart from the rush of air and the beat of wings, fell strangely after the bedlam of only moments ago.

  If Nedfar died, t
hen my plans for Hamal would be thrown out of joint. This buffoon King Telmont was quite unsuitable to be emperor. And if, as I darkly suspected, Vad Garnath had thrown in his lot with Telmont, that was another and even more sinister mark against the king from the Black Hills.

  I suppose we could have ignored Nedfar's pain and pushed the crossbow bolt through his shoulder. Drawing it out would have been tricky; but we could have done it. We had a few simple medicaments. But the chance of the prince's death would have been too great; in our own reckless argumentative way, Seg and I had done what had to be done, albeit with suppressed feelings. We'd taken a shaft from old Larghos the So, cutting it off level with his skin and then putting a rod against it and giving it one hell of a thwack with the flat of a sword. Larghos had yelled blue bloody murder. But Nedfar?—Larghos had survived. I wondered if Nedfar would have weathered that kind of treatment. As the tyryvol carried me on strongly I found I was working out just how many seasons ago it was that Seg and I had fought at old Larghos the So's side.

  Too many...

  He was probably dead now. When a mercenary earns the coveted title of paktun and wears the silver pakmort at his throat he stands a better chance of survival than an ordinary mercenary. He stands an even better chance when he becomes a hyr-paktun and wears the golden pakzhan.

  The mist lowered down and tendrils swept away in long cobwebby strands. The tyryvol's wings lathered the mist. He was a fine strong beast, and his scales were polished up. The saddle was relatively crude, being made of wicker and leather and very little padding. It was practical, and from it the ukra, the long polearm of the flyer, could be wielded to deadly effect. The peaks around us seemed to stab like ukras, like the toonons of the flyers of Turismond; seemed to thrust jagged barbs to stop our onward passage. The mist forced us lower and lower.

  I'd often pondered a scheme to bring some of the impressive coal black impiters over from the Stratemsk in Turismond. They were hardy flyers and would do well in any new environment of Vallia or Havilfar. And you don't need barbs in an aerial polearm...

  I cursed. I realized what I was doing. My thoughts were maundering on like this because I could not face the truth.