The Hikdar rapped out a command and every right foot bashed down perfectly alongside a left and the column halted.
The Hikdar strode over. He swaggered. He drew his thraxter as he came and there was on his dark face that look of enjoyment that has always baffled me.
“You bow, nulsh, before it is too late.”
I said, “You are Canops?”
He reared back as though I had struck him.
“Filthy nul! Of course we are Canops! I am Hikdar Markman ti Coyton of the Third Regiment of Canoptic Foot. And you are a dead nulsh!”
The horror of it almost made me slow. The horrendous, the vile, the vicious, the despicable Canops — were human men like me! I felt the sick revulsion strong upon me. I saw the thraxter jerk back for a lethal thrust.
I said, “So you are Canops! I do not like you, Hikdar Markman, and I detest your race of kleeshes.”
And I kicked the Canoptic Hikdar in the guts.
Chapter Nineteen
I visit Turko and Rapechak in Mungul Sidrath
I say I kicked him in the guts. I had not forgotten he wore armor, and so my kick went in lower and at an angle and it did the business I intended well enough.
Before he had time to spew all over me, although he was turning green in the face already, I yanked him forward, took away his thraxter, clouted him over the nose with the hilt, and said to Turko, Rapechak, and the girls: “Run!”
To our rear lay a maze of alleyways and hovels and I fancied the smartly disciplined men of the Third Regiment of Foot would not welcome breaking ranks and chasing about in there. I knew, also, that in the next few seconds the crossbow bolts would come tearing into our bodies. Turko did not hesitate, and neither did Rapechak. They grabbed a girl each — Saenda fell to Rapechak and she squealed — and they vanished into the mouth of the alleyway where the crazy houses hung their upper stories over the cobblestones.
As you may well imagine, I was furiously angry.
Angry with myself.
What an utter onker! Here I’d been, all nicely set to take off for Valka, and this stupid imbroglio had burst about my ears. I had been too stupid for simple cussing.
Mind you, the shock of discovering that these detestable Canops were apims, men like myself, had been severe.
I recognized their breed, all right. They were not the mercenaries to which I had grown accustomed in the other parts of Kregen I had up to then visited. These were men of a national army. Their discipline would be superb. They had a far more sheerly professional look about them than had had the rather unhappy army of Hiclantung. These men were trained killers, and they fought and killed and, no doubt, died not for cold cash but for hot love of country.
Theyvwould present a problem far graver than I had anticipated.
The Deldar leaped out from the leading rank and began yelling and the lines of crossbows twitched up. If I hung about any longer it would be pincushion time. The mouth of the alleyway struck cold across my shoulders. I dodged against the near wall and ran — oh, yes, I ran! — and the bolts went chink, chink, chinkaroom, against the far wall. Maybe these soldiers would have been trained to penetrate alleyways, to leap up and down steps covered by fire from their files. This Kasbah-like maze might hold no terrors for them. I ran. I had been running a lot lately, and that, I assume, was the reason I hadn’t bowed to the silver leem. I just do not like running, although it can be, as I had demonstrated on the jungle trail back in Faol with underhand and cunningly vicious traps, an absorbingly interesting pastime.
There was no sign of the others and I guessed they had pelted hell-for-leather as far and as fast as they could.
Following them, as I thought, I rounded corners, leaped offensive drainage ditches, hared through archways, and roared down the flights of narrow steps, flight after flight I saw no one, but, of course, many eyes watched me as I ran, and, no doubt, as well as marveling consigned me to Sicce as the greatest onker ever spawned.
By the time I reached the last alleyway and debouched onto the wide steps leading down to the quays, I knew I’d missed Turko, Rapechak, and the girls. For the first time in a very long time, I was on my own. That could not, however much I welcomed it, be allowed to continue. Through my stupid action the others had been put in danger of their lives. I had, if for no other reason than my stupid stiff-necked pride — which I detest — to ensure that they were safe.
A disguise would seem appropriate.
I was not a Migla and I would need a rubber mask even to approach the look of one. I was a human and must therefore disguise myself as another sort of human. I found the man I wanted in a low-ceilinged taproom with the smell of mud and stale wine everywhere, and the acrid tang coming off the flat and sluggish waters of the River Magan.
He was a wherryman — I knew about those — and he willingly parted with the dark-blue jersey of his trade, together with the flat leather cap that went with it, for a silver coin that bore the likeness of a man-king of some country somewhere in Havilfar. His eyes opened wide at sight of the thraxter, which I had carried beneath the old brown robe.
“Those Opaz-forsaken Canops see you with that, man, you’re dead.”
“They might be dead first, though. You get along with them?”
“Huh!” He had sized me up — as he thought — and without questioning my motives, was ready to talk. “I had a nice little line going here before they came. Worse’n eight-armed devils from Rhasabad, they are! Can’t abide ’em. It’s all regulations, regulations, regulations now. I’m thinking of moving on. No family; sell me wherry. There’s plenty of openings across the other side.” He meant on the other shore of the Shrouded Sea, and I learned a little more. “I got along real fine with the Miglas. Now — why they can’t abide the sight of me. Remind ’em of the Canops! Me — who took their kids on outings when it was Migshaanu’s special days!”
Sympathizing with him seemed in order, and we had a jar together. The wine was a thin stuff, palely red and nothing like the rich color of a rose, and was shipped in from a country over the Shrouded Sea that must be making a fortune from fourth and fifth pressings.
He told me there had been a brisk trade in the old days before the Canops came. The Miglas exported vosk-hide, which they knew how to cure to a suppleness of surprising strength and beauty by a secret process, and colored earths. But most of that had stopped now and the Canops were trying to develop a quite different economy. “Bloody fools!” said the wherryman, who was called Danel, and looked about him in sudden remembering fear.
Bidding Danel Remberee I took myself off with the thraxter rolled in the old brown robe to The Loyal Canoptic. I had not missed the irony of that name for a tavern where gathered a remnant of those loyal to Migshaanu. My traveling companions had not arrived back. Planath told me, with a quiver, that the city buzzed with the news. A Hikdar of the Canoptic Army had been struck. He had been kicked! Patrols were everywhere seeking the madman responsible. I upended a blackjack of a wine little better than that I’d drunk in the taproom with Danel, and waited, and fretted, and the suns passed across the heavens. In the end I had to admit that Turko and Rapechak and Saenda and Quaesa were not returning to The Loyal Canoptic.
When She of the Veils sank into the back hills of Migla and the sky was filled with the shifting light of the Twins, Planath brought me the news I quailed to hear, had known I must hear, and which distressed me greatly.
“They were taken, Horter Prescot. Taken by a patrol and now they languish in the dungeons of Mungul Sidrath.”
I sat there, on the settle, the blackjack in my hand, and I could have broken into curses that would have frizzled this comical worried ugly little halfling’s ears off.
Mungul Sidrath, I was told, was well-nigh impossible to break into. The citadel stood on a solid bed of rock jutting into the River Magan and it dominated the city. In the old days the royal family had lived there with their hired mercenary guards, and they had smiled on the city of Yaman and on the daily worship to Migshaanu, and the s
uns had shone. Now the city commandant lived there, controlling the city by terror. He had many regiments under his hand as well as mercenary troops, very wild and vicious, quite unlike the old king’s mercenaries, who had served him all their lives and grown fat and happy with their job, which consisted, in the main, of providing honor guards and rows of guardsmen with resplendent uniforms and golden-headed stuxes. Well, I had to break into Mungul Sidrath.
There was no need for me to do this foolhardy thing.
The Star Lords had commanded me to bring out Mog, and I had done so, and she was safe. After that, I was free to return home. There would be no blue radiance and no scorpion this time. I felt sure of that, now; now when it was too late. Of course I could fetch the airboat from the sacred grove of Sidraarga and fly north-northwest and so come to Valka.
I could.
There was nothing to stop me.
Turko and Rapechak and the girls were hanging in chains in the dungeons of the Canops in Mungul Sidrath, but they were no concern of mine. My concerns were all with Delia and little Drak and little Lela, and Vallia and Valka, with Strombor and my clansmen. What was this local petty matter to me?
It was no good cursing. All the Voxes and Zairs and Makki-Grodno oaths would not change one iota of this mess.
I stood up.
“I have to go to Mungul Sidrath, Horter Planath. Would you give me food and drink?” I took out the golden deldys.
Planath bristled. He thrust the money away.
“Ploy!” he shouted. “Hurry, woman, and prepare food. Horter Prescot is hungry!”
After I had eaten and drunk I wiped my lips and laid down the cloth and looked at these Miglas. Old Mog had silently walked in. Now she said, “You are a fool, Dray Prescot.” Her voice had lost all its stridency. “A get-onker. But you are a man, and, I now know, beloved of Migshaanu. She will go with you on this desperate venture.”
“That is good—” I was about to say just her name, Mog. But I paused, and then said: “I shall be glad of the help of Migshaanu the Glorious, Mighty Mog.”
Her hard agate eyes appraised me and her nutcracker jaws clamped, then she relaxed. I think, even then, she realized I had given over mocking her — for a space, at least.
Wearing the wherryman’s old blue jersey with its rips and stains and with the flat leather cap pulled down over my forehead I went up against the citadel of Yaman. I went without weapons in my hands. I kept to the shadows and as I went I bent over and shambled. And so I came to the outer stone wall of the fortress where it reared, pink in the moonlight, rising against the stars of Kregen.
The place was old, for there is much that is ancient in Havilfar, and although well-built in olden time was much crumbled and fallen away in parts. An arm of the Magan encircled the fortress like a moat and the bridges were guarded by smart and well-drilled infantrymen of the Army of Canopdrin.
As I skulked in the shadows from the towers, where the Twins threw down their roseate-pink light, I saw something I had never seen before on all of Kregen.
I stared, for a moment letting the urgency of my mission slide, staring at the soldiers who guarded this massive pile. These foot soldiers wore armor, like the men of the Third Regiment of Foot I had earlier seen. They wore bronze helmets with tall plumes, weird under the streaming moonslight, and their greaves gleamed in that light. They carried the stux, and at their waists were belted thraxters. They did not carry crossbows. I stared at what made them, as far as I was concerned, unique in all of Kregen — if you did not count my old slave phalanx from the warrens of Magdag, and they must now be scattered and slain or slaving once more on the monolithic buildings of the overlords. Not even the Ochs counted here.
For these soldiers carried shields.
The shields were oval, like the windows in The Loyal Canoptic, of a goodly size, much decorated and embossed, with a broad silvery rim. The men handled the shields as though they knew what shields were for. In Segesthes, in Turismond, I had never come across the shield as an article of warlike equipment, the men of those continents regarding the shield as the coward’s weapon, behind which he might cower.
That I knew different — and, perhaps, gloated a little in my so-called superior knowledge — meant now that I had just been my usual foolish self.
I went around the angle of a bastion — for the towers were square-angled and not rounded — and prowled on, brought back to my senses by the hurtling passage of a lesser moon across the heavens. I found the man I sought leaning on his stux and opening a packet made from soft leaves to get at the wad of cham inside. I hit him cleanly on the back of the neck, below the neck-guard, and he pitched to the stones.
Dragging him back into the shadows of a wall and stripping him took little time. I had been careful, the man I wanted not being the first sentry I had seen, and his equipment fitted — but only just.
Dressed and accoutered as a soldier of the Army of Canopdrin I stepped out, leaving the man bound and gagged, and marched boldly for the bridge.
While it is true to say that the necessary demands of discipline and organization make one army very much like another, and the better an army is the nearer it approaches to an unattainable ideal, there must of necessity be many differences between army and army, details that are unique to any fighting force. I felt confident I could bluff to a great extent; after that, I would just have to take my chances, for there was precious little chance of finding another way into the fortress as quickly as this.
Common sense had dictated that I find a bridge as far from the one the sentry’s comrades would be guarding as I could. On my shield, below the embossed image of the leaping leem, there had been painted in white the stylized representation of a fluttrell, with the figures for six and five. By their relative sizes I judged this would be the sixth regiment and the fifth subdivision of that regiment, called what I did not know as yet, for Planath had no knowledge of military organization. The men guarding the bridge I chose, besides having a different color arrangement of the streamers over their shoulder armor, carried on their shields the silver leem and, below it, a blue-painted zorca with the figures for eight and two.
I marched in boldly and, as I had seen the men do on the bridge, brought the stux up and across in a salute. Without breaking step I strode on. An ob-Deldar looked across and called: “It’s your guts, is it, soldier?”
An ob-Deldar is the lowest one can get — as any ranker will say — and so I answered hoarsely: “Too true, Deldar. They pain something awful.”
The ob-Deldar laughed with great malice and so I passed on into the dark shadows of Mungul Sidrath.
Observation that had helped me thus far could no longer give me a guide on the behavior patterns of the men of this army.
Down in the dungeons, Planath the Wine had said, shaking his head. Therefore, I must go down, and to descend I had to find a stairway of some kind. I had ideas on the proper situation of stairways in fortresses, and I found that whoever in the ancient times had designed Mungul Sidrath had come a long way along the path of fortress construction. The stairway was exceedingly narrow, and spiraled the wrong way — that is, it had been designed so that a man going down, as I was, had the advantage of the curve. This could only mean the designer had recognized the possibility of entrance below and had decided on the main-gate level as his central stand-area. He had ruled out any idea of defenders running below against a successful entrance by attackers through the gate. Going up into the towers the curve would be against a man.
The stones were surprisingly dry, considering the Magan flowed nearby, and only occasional runnels of water trickled across the stones. Where they did so they stained darkly and lichens grew. The air grew unpleasant but breathable.
At the bottom the stair curled in on itself, so that a man might stand and loose against men running up the passageway. The ceiling here was low and I took off the tall helmet. Farther along the way widened and two guards, their stuxes leaning against the wall, were crouched over tossing dice. They looked
up suddenly as I approached, saw I was a mere ranker, and pulled back to get out of the way. Farther along there might be a single sentry; so leaving these two to a mercy they had no idea had touched them, I went on.
They had not spoken. The language used by the ob-Deldar had varied only minutely from the universal Kregish, and I guessed it was Canoptish, the local language of Canopdrin. The sound of rushing water ahead and a marked cooling and freshening of the air made me lengthen my stride.
In a man-made cavern carved from an original bubble in the rock, water poured through from a black cleft high in one wall, dropped in a great weltering and rushing of foam and spume, sped sheeningly through a wide conduit, and passed in another broad shining curve of water down and out of sight beyond an arched opening in the opposite wall. The passageway opened onto nothingness and the path was carried on a narrow wooden bridge across the pelting water. Steps led to a neat contraption after the fashion of a waterwheel by which water could be lifted from the stream and raised, level by level, until it was carried out of sight into the mouth of a shaft. Buckets hung from the shaft mouth. Here guards cracked their whips and slaves of all kinds turned the great waterwheels, level by level, and lifted the fluid up and into the fortress so that, no doubt, the great men of the Canops might drink and wash and waste the water that had cost so much effort.
The noise blattered unceasingly. Water splashed and hissed. Whips cracked. Men screamed and guards yelled obscene orders to work faster, faster, and smash went the whips, and around and around hauled the slaves, all filthy and naked and hairy, and in fountains of silvery leaping spillings the water lifted high. The name on Kregen for water fitted that scene.
Passing on, with a salute for the Deldar in command, I came into an area of gloom, for the torches guttered low and there were no fireglass panels above, as there had been in the cavern of the waterwheels.
The sight of these hairy naked devils writhing and struggling and hauling, the spouts of water slopping everywhere, the insufferable noises, affected me profoundly. Truly, there was a foretaste of the Ice Floes of Sicce here!
Manhounds of Antares Page 19