A Fortune for Kregen

by Alan Burt Akers

  This stinking little compound with its crumbling mud walls wouldn’t hold an agile man for long. But our chains had been fastened to stout wooden posts driven deep into the earth. We were effectively hobbled.

  Escape was just not on — at least, not for the moment.

  When you are slave to a Kataki slavemaster, escape is usually not on — not forever, for most folk.

  Katakis — they are loathed and detested by those unfortunates who fall into their clutches.

  A little Och, a small representative of that race of diffs who usually stand six inches shorter than a Tryfant, was clearly ill. He had been corked. His face screwed up with inward pain, and his thick dun-colored hair was gray rather than black at the tips. His master, the Kataki Tarkshur the Lash gave the Och a cursory glance and then jerked his tail at the overseer of his small group of retainers.

  This man, another Kataki, stepped in and with a single thrust dispatched the little Och.

  The body was dragged away.

  Tarkshur surveyed us.

  “We are going on an expedition where you will earn your keep. Any man who fails will die. There will be much bread and mergem for you, and palines. If you—” Katakis rarely smile. They do know how to, for I have seen that phenomenon. He finished, “But then, if you fail you know your reward.”

  When he had gone we were too tired and dispirited to discuss his words. But Nodgen, a Brokelsh with some spirit left, growled out, “Expedition? By the Resplendent Bridzilkelsh! I’d like to have his throat between my fists.”

  “Aye,” said Hunch. “And his tail slicing around to rip out your guts.”

  “Katakis!” spat the Brokelsh, and he shivered up all his coarse bristle of hair. “I hate ’em!”

  Over the next few days animals were brought into the small encampment set up just outside the city walls. The Kataki had flown here with his private retinue of just six mercenaries and was preparing his expedition. His voller had been placed in the city-maintained park, with others, and was to all intents and purposes to us slaves as far off as though it were on the Maiden with the Many Smiles. He had much gold, and he spent it procuring supplies. He came, so the slaves whispered, from Klardimoin, and where away that was no one had the slightest idea.

  Hunch and I were given the task of caring for the beasts. There were other encampments outside the city walls and it was clear they all prepared themselves as we were doing. The city, all white walls and rounded domes and shadowed kyros within the blaze of the suns, was Astrashum, and we learned here and there that it was the city from which men ventured into the Humped Land.

  When I learned this I instantly thought of Pompino and his dreams of wealth and magic, and much was made clear to me.

  It seemed that, willy-nilly, I was to be taken into the mysterious land of Moderdrin, the Land of the Fifth Note. What might befall me there, I thought, could hardly be worse than what was happening now...

  Well, illusions beget illusions.

  The expedition as a whole was well-planned and the animals and slaves formed a long winding procession as we set off. We slaves had simply been given our orders that morning and off we went without any fanfare. What the great ones had been doing in the matter of eve-of-departure parties was best summed up by the way they kept to their coaches as the long procession wended through the cultivated land to the wastes beyond.

  And then I stared.

  Each chief member of the expedition moved surrounded by his or her people, so that we formed separate clumps like beads on a string. There, visible as the long lines turned to parallel a river before the last ford, I saw a preysany walking sedately along, with a loaded calsany following, and a little Och walking beside the pack animal. And, flopping about on the preysany’s back, a figure in a respectable although shabby dark-blue gown, besprinkled with arcane symbols in silver thread, a figure with a massive lopsided turban garlanded with strings of pearls and diamonds — all of them phoney, I knew —

  a figure of a man with red Lohvian hair, and with a short sword girded to his plump middle.

  “Deb-Lu-Quienyin!” I said, aloud, astonished.

  He was a Wizard of Loh who had lost his powers and, fallen on hard times, had journeyed to Jikaida City to recoup both his fortunes and his wizardry. Why should he, of all people, hazard the expedition on which we now entered?

  His little Och slave was Ionno the Ladle, walking now on two legs, now on four as he brought his two middle appendages into action to help him keep up. Once I had treated Ochs as fearsome monsters; now they had lessened in frightfulness as other and more hideous monsters of Kregen had been encountered.

  And a little Och crone had once ministered to me in the foul clutches of the Phokaym.

  “You know him?”

  “Aye, Hunch. He is—” I hesitated. I had been about to say he was a Wizard of Loh. But all men share the awe of those famous sorcerers, and so, knowing Deb-Lu-Quienyin was touchy on the subject of his lost powers although carrying it off very well, I said, “He traveled with me to Jikaida City.”

  “There is that rast Phrutius,” said Hunch, nodding to another part of the caravan.

  “Aye,” I said, looking carefully as we turned again to ford the river. “And there is a bunch of Hamalese

  — and I am not mistaken.” The carriages and wagons and saddle animals splashed across and I saw, quite clearly, the upright form of Prince Nedfar, with his close retinue, crossing over. With him rode Lobur the Dagger and the Prince’s daughter, Princess Thefi.

  “Sink me!” I burst out. “If I can but get to speak with any of them—”

  But the chance was not offered. Katakis are man managers. We slaves were chained close.

  The caravan continued and the way became hard and the land thin and attenuated. We still ate well, as Tarkshur had promised. He wanted us fit and strong, and it was easy to surmise that the reasons for that would not make pleasant hearing.

  The days and nights passed over, as they must do, and we worked on our chains with bits of rock. But stone takes a long long time to wear away iron, and the Katakis were up to the tricks of chained slaves.

  We plodded on and, I own, I was intrigued. The ample food sustained us. There was the opportunity to think of other things than merely the best way to find something to eat. The city of Astrashum, it seemed to me, catered for expeditions out into the Humped Lands. Perhaps the inhabitants knew better than to go themselves? Perhaps some had gone, and never returned?

  Gold and magic, was it, awaiting us out here?

  In the streaming mingled lights of Antares as we trudged on over that hostile land where the ground cracked in the heat and noisome vapors gushed forth, and in the roseate radiance of the seven moons of Kregen as they passed in procession night by night among the stars, there was opportunity for me to observe the other components of the expedition. I could not call any of them friends, in the real sense, although the old Wizard of Loh and I had warmed, one to the other, in our days in another caravan.

  One night I crawled in my chains, carrying them silently, and hit a Kataki guard over the head, and dumped his unconscious body outside the ring of chain slaves. But that was as far as I reached, for the Jiktar of the retinue, Galid the Krevarr, chose that moment to rumble a deep-throated question in the shadows and then to stroll across, annoyed that the guard had not replied.

  With Jiktar Galid came the ominous form of Tarkshur.

  Now, I paused. Again and again I ponder — did I do right?

  There was a slender chance. I could have dealt with these two, I believe. My chains would rip their throats out before their tail-blades ripped mine. But the noise would be unavoidable, and the others would come running, and other guards would join in. Slave owners band together when slaves break out.

  And — those miserable wights with whom I passed the days would all suffer — that was as true as Zim and Genodras rise each morning.

  So I melted back into the shadows, and lay among the coffle, and we were all asleep when the comm
otion began. In the end, because the Katakis found it impossible to believe we cowed slaves could have performed that deed, the mischief was put down to a light-fingered rogue from an adjoining camp, and we escaped punishment.

  I breathed easier.

  Hunch said, “Would that I had hit the rast. He would not have got up again.”

  I said nothing. The sentiments he expressed were valiant enough. But he was a Tryfant and the rest of the slaves were cowed to near-imbecility. All, that is, excepting the Brokelsh, Nodgen.

  Just supposing I had won free. Would Deb-Lu-Quienyin have helped me? Could he help? There was no point in approaching Phrutius. And the Hamalese — I was just an acquaintance, and, to be honest, they might not even recognize or remember me. And any debt, such as it was, outstanding from Lobur the Dagger was owed to Drax, Gray Mask — dare I own to being one and the same?

  The other components of the expedition gradually became known, more or less. A Sorcerer of the Cult of Almuensis traveled in style, and everyone said the milk-white zorcas were enchanted beasts. Certainly, they were fine animals with their well-groomed close-coupled bodies and tall spindly legs. Each one’s single spiral horn gleamed with polish and gold. They were almost as splendid animals as those found on the plains of the Blue Mountains. Whether or not they were real zorcas or animals of illusion no one knew or cared to find out.

  This sorcerer traveled in a majestic palanquin borne by garnished krahniks, a swaying structure fabricated from silks of peach and orange and lemon, pastel colors soothing in all ordinary seeming, and yet eerily eye-watering.

  His retinue of hired guards contained a dozen stout-bodied Chuliks, indomitable, fierce, inhuman, and their tusks were banded in gold.

  These Chuliks were probably real — although they might well be apparitions, like the milk-white zorcas they rode. I wondered what Quienyin would have to say about this Sorcerer of the Cult of Almuensis, and his bodyguard.

  There was a flying man from down south by the Shrouded Sea. His expedition was in nowise as magnificent as some of the others, and he and his friends spent most of the day winging freely ahead of the expedition. They proved of great use in spying out the way and of seeking water holes and routes that were the best way to go through the wilderness.

  To an observer who was not a slave we must have made a splendid spectacle. The barbaric trappings of the warriors and the colors of the carriages and palanquins, the high-stepping saddle animals, the flying men, the glint and glitter of armor and weapons, the flicker of spoked wheels, the trailing waft of multicolored scarves — all must have presented a blaze of brilliance under the Suns of Scorpio.

  Heads thrust forward, choking dry dust from the trample of hooves and the churning of wheels, we slaves in our chains blundered on. There was no high and heady sense of excitement for us.

  We passed a night beside a dry gulley and the next day, early, we started on the last stretch across the badlands.

  Truth to tell, all that mattered little to me. I was now determined that, with the aid of Nodgen the Brokelsh and, I hoped, of Hunch the Tryfant, I would break free the moment we hit decent water and trees to give us a chance. We’d smash our way out, and to the Ice Floes of Sicce anyone who tried to stop us.

  As I had said when making my ludicrous attempt on the airboat: that was the theory.

  This was the day when, toiling on and trying to make ourselves believe we could, indeed, see trees ahead through the haze, we became aware of riders pacing our progress.

  Men in the long column pointed, and heads craned to look.

  Off along the low ridges paralleling our course the riders swung along easily. They rode swarths, those fearsome saddle dinosaurs with four legs and snouting wedge-shaped heads, and their lances all raked into the sky, like skeletal fingers threatening our lives.

  Stumbling along in my chains I tried to estimate the numbers of riders. The vakkas lined along in single file, and their looming presence, ominous and brooding, struck a chill into us all.

  There must have been upwards of five hundred of them.

  Occasional winks of glitter smote back from armor or weapons; but the general impression was one of dark menace, somber and foreboding, biding the time to strike.

  Then someone raised a shout: “Trees! There are trees — and a river!” And we all struggled to look eagerly ahead, and when we thought once more to gaze upon those dark lines of swarth-mounted warriors — they had vanished, every one.

  “I was a mercenary, once,” said Nodgen. “Almost got to be a real paktun, and to wear the silver pakmort at my throat.” He shook his bullet-bristle head. “Never did like fighting swarthmen. Big and clumsy; but strong. Knock you over in a twinkling, by Belzid’s Belly.”

  Those long lines of iron riders reminded me in their frieze-like ghostly effect of some of the famous passages from Ulbereth the Dark Reiver . Whatever they portended, no one in the caravan could pretend it did not bode ill for us.

  “A paktun?” Hunch was interested as we hurried on for the shelter of the trees. “Get into any big battles?”

  “Aye, one or two.”

  To the best of my knowledge, Nodgen had been a cutpurse running with Lop-eared Nath’s gang in his quarter of LionardDen. But, then, when a man has upward of two hundred years of life, as Kregans have, he may do many things, many things...

  We were drawing near the trees and work lay ahead.

  “Go on, then, Nodgen. Tell us!” Hunch was eager.

  “Nothing in it — all a lot of yelling and dust and sweating and running—”

  “Running? You lost?”

  Nodgen’s bristles quivered. The Brokelsh are recognized as an uncouth race of diffs, with deplorable manners. He made an unfavorable comment in lurid language concerning the ancestry and level of military intelligence of the general in question.

  Then we were in among the first trees and instead of breaking ranks to make camp, Galid the Krevarr strode up with his whip going like a fiddler’s elbow, urging us on. We stumbled on through the trees and down a long loamy slope where flowers blossomed most beautifully — although, at the moment, they meant very little to us slaves.

  We burst out on the far side of the belt of trees and a most remarkable vista broke upon our eyes. Even the slaves cried out in wonder. On we were urged, down the slope. Before us spread a wide expanse extending as far as we could see under clear skies, with only the merest wisps of cloudlets.

  That wide and extensive sunken plain was covered in rounded hills like tells. Hundreds of them reared from the ground as far as the eye could see. Their humps broke upward in serried ranks, in confused patterns, in haphazard clumpings. None was nearer than a dwabur or so to its neighbor. They varied in size, both as to height and extent, but each was crowned with a fantastic jumble of turreted towers, with fairy-tale battlements and spidery spires from which the mingled radiance of Antares struck sparks of fire.

  Now every one of us could see why this place was called the Humped Land.

  Our expedition hurried on. All this talk of gold lying about waiting to be picked up had given me the impression I would find mine workings, tailings glittering under the suns. But if these were mine workings then they were totally unlike any mine engineering I had seen on two worlds.

  Any thought that by this headlong rush we had escaped the riders who had so ominously scouted us vanished as the long lines of swarthmen appeared over on both flanks, trotting out from the trees, pacing us.

  Prince Nedfar and his group galloped past, their zorcas splendid, and following them rode a group of men mounted on swarths. They were led by a fierce, tall, upright man who lashed his scaly-swarth with vicious strokes of his crop. These were the purply-green scaled swarths of this part of Kregen. The jutmen of the caravan made threatening gestures. But any fool could see we were heavily outnumbered.

  The caravan struggled on and those dark powerful lines of riders herded us.

  The swarthmen of the caravan returned, evidently attempting to protect the fla
nks. But no attack was made. In the period that followed before the suns sank it was made perfectly plain to us that we were being herded, were being shepherded into a predetermined course between the monumental mounds.

  As we passed the nearest pile, vegetation and trees growing on the miniature mountain were clearly visible, with streams falling in cataracts, and winding paths leading up to the walls and towers at the summit.

  The suns declined. One hump — for to call these impressive mounds humps does not belittle their awesome character — one hump, then, lay directly before us, and to this particular one and no other it was clear the ominous riders were directing us. When we were within running distance the riders, with no warning and acting with consummate skill, lanced their swarths upon us.

  Arrows curved against the darkling air. One or two slaves screamed and fell as the shafts pierced them.

  In a straggling, bolting, panicking mob, we fled for the stone gateway at the foot of the mount.

  There were ugly scenes as the carriages jammed trying to force their way through the stone gateway. But the riders curveted away, and loosed as they went, Parthian shots that fell among us. Men screamed.

  Animals whinnied and neighed and shrieked. The dust smoked up, glinting in the slanting rays of the suns.

  Tarkshur lashed his zorca alongside us, swearing foully, his black armor a blot of darkness against the last of the light.

  “Wait, wait — let these craven fools press on. There is time.”

  He was a damned Kataki; but he was right in this. The swarths melted back into the creeping shadows.

  They had done what was clearly expected of them. Gradually the caravan crowded in through the gate and when we followed on last we saw the carts and coaches and beasts of burden all crammed into a wide area, bounded by high stone walls, with a dominating gateway at the far end. The gates were closed. The uproar continued.