A Victory for Kregen dp-22

by Alan Burt Akers

  “Bid Vardon blow, Turko. Blow the Charge!”

  “Quidang!”

  And over the field and floating free and lilting with blood-quickening urgings, the Charge blew in ringing imperative.

  As the clansmen came on again and the Krozair brand leaped and flashed I could imagine I saw the Tenth Kerchuri. I could see their pikes come down, down, pointing, their sharp steel heads a bristle of menace. The crimson shields would all slant together. Down would go the bronze-fitted helmets. The plumes would ruffle bravely. And then the brumbytes, formed, solid in their crimson and bronze, would charge. Blind to that sight, I could yet see it all, and hear and taste and smell the blood-thumping excitement of it.

  Yet the clansmen would not leave off their attacks upon this eerie sword that floated in midair and chopped them as they charged.

  “They meet!” yelled Turko. “By Morro the Muscle! You have created a veritable weapon in this phalanx, Dray!”

  Very little can stand and survive in the path of a charging phalanx. We had proved that before. I had not really believed. But here, in what came to be known as the Battle of Ovalia, the pikes in their steel-crested fervor charged and overthrew the iron legions of Hamal. Raging, like a bursting dam that spills destruction in the path of its waters, the Tenth Kerchuri swept everything away before that intemperate onslaught.

  And I did not see it!

  Raw, green, they might be, these brumbytes wielding their pikes. But their helmets were down and their shields were slanted and their pikes went in and they rolled on and on and nothing could stand before them.

  Silda was standing now, gripping her rapier. She had overcome the first tremor of horror when swords swirled with no visible hands to wield them. She stepped forward. I brought the longsword across in a vicious defending blow and smashed a clansman away.

  “Stand clear, Silda!” I shouted.

  “What?” Turko’s voice reached me, alarmed. “What’s that, Dray?”

  “How goes the battle?”

  “The Hakkodin are in among their cavalry and the cavalry do not like it — they run — they flee…

  “Blow for the churgurs — blow for everything! General Advance!”

  The General Advance rang out over the roar of the battle.

  The Tenth would be rolling down the ravine like a tidal wave of destruction, and now the sword and shield men would rage from the bushes crowning the slopes and hit the bewildered enemy from both flanks. And, all the time, I knew, the archers and staff slingers would be loosing into the huddled masses. Kapt Hangrol had been sucked into the thorn-ivy trap. And now he was paying the price. Many clansmen littered the stone floor. Their blood ran greasily in the cracks between the flags. And still they sought to pass that disembodied sword and slay the Prince Majister of Vallia. The next Clanner struck at the sword seeking by main force to beat it down. The enormous leverage exercised by the Krozair two-handed grip brought the sword in a neat curve around the clansman’s blade. The longsword twitched and the clansman’s broadsword struck it square. I felt the shock, like liquid fire, jolt all up my arms. By Zair! Slow — slow and weak… With a spurt of passion I slashed the clansman away and swung to the next and his blade clashed down on mine. I felt the shock, shuddering through me, and I smashed back. I knew what was happening. Deb-Lu-Quienyin was weakening. What he had accomplished already was a miracle. But his kharrna was not limitless. The fight raging in the stone chamber became fraught with its inevitable end.

  With the sounds of a greater battle ringing in my ears, I faced defeat in this contemptible little fracas, and knew it to be by far the more important, the vital, of the two — for with Quienyin’s exhaustion the Krozair brand would fall, and Silda would hurl forward with her rapier blurring, and would die and then would die also my son Drak.

  Still Quienyin upheld me. Still I continued to battle.

  Turko yelled that the pikes rolled on like the millstones of the gods. The churgurs welted into the flanks of the foemen. Our irregulars were in there, smiting and dodging and smiting again. Drooping now, the Krozair brand, drooping like a victim of the black lotus-flowers of Hodan-Set. Useless my exerting all the bestial and savage power pent within me by civilization. I fought only through the wizardry of gladiomancy. With the slipping away of Quienyin’s powers so dropped away all the Krozair skill.

  The longsword slashed and slashed again, and at every blow I could feel the lessening of force. The chamber blurred, the stones merging as though melting in some supernal heat. The stone flags of the floor pitched beneath me like the deck of a swifter. I knew I was grasping onto Shadow’s saddle with fists in which the knuckles ridged into skulls. Turko was yelling; but I did not hear him clearly, could see nothing in the world but the next opponent and do nothing in all Kregen but strike on. Two clansmen battered their broadswords down on my sword, and the blade slithered. I strained of myself to bring it up, and could feel no life, no response, could feel only a deadly leaden lumpiness of total fatigue. A six-inch-long sliver of steel appeared from the floor. It was grasped in a fist. It drove smartly into the left-hand Clanner and a second, precisely similar steel blade, gripped in a fist of precisely the same nature, struck the right-hand clansman. Both fell away.

  Two Pachaks raged into the fight. With them, glorious in their red and yellow, men of the Sword Watch drove on. But, ahead of them, the Pachak twins, Modo and Logu Fre-Da, smashed on in defense of the Wizard of Loh to whom they had given their nikobi in all honor.

  Then I let out a harsh snort of sound, a breathy explosion that might in Cottmer’s Caverns be taken for a laugh.

  “What?” said Turko somewhere a million miles away.

  Nodgen and Hunch pranced into the stone chamber, and Nodgen’s spear was darkly stained, and Hunch’s bill bore the marks of hard blows given and taken.

  The First Sword Watch did not waste time on the clansmen. And, to be truthful, those clanners had fought heroically against sorcery. Very few other hardy warriors would have stood, let alone fought so determinedly, against wizardry like this. The 1ESW cleared out the clansmen, and arrows brought down those who sought to flee. But these four, the Pachak twins and Nodgen and Hunch, ran across toward me.

  Their mouths were opening and closing and their eyes were popping and they were giving every indication of extreme animation. My viewpoint changed, and I was looking at the ceiling, with these four faces ringing the perimeter of vision. So I knew they were caring for Quienyin, all unknowing that Jak the Sturr stared through the wizard’s eyes!

  In the next instant I was staring at the polished leather of Shadow’s saddle, twisting, and Turko was hauling me up, and saying, “Dray! Dray! For the sweet sake of Opaz-”

  “I am all right, Turko — now. Let me see the battle.”

  “Your eyes-?”

  “Perfectly all right now. I will explain. Are there any of our vollers in sight?”

  “Not one. I trust they are all safe.” He looked at me with all his old quizzical mockery; but he’d been shaken up, all right, no mistake about that!

  All along that ravine of death the dead lay. The Tenth had stormed on with their pikes level and left nothing living in their wake. The rest of our little army, our Eighth Army, pushed on and Kapt Hangrol’s forces fled.

  “They won’t come araiding over the borders again in a hurry, Dray.”

  “That is what I would like to think. By Vox! But it is a melancholy sight. Pull Jiktar Brad the Berry and his Hagli Bush Irregulars out and get them to tend the wounded. Brad will understand.”

  “Aye, he will. We are light on medical services.”

  A battery of krahnik-drawn varters went rumbling past. They had limbered up the ballistae in record time, and the krahniks, powerful, deep-chested, full of fire, hauled with a will. They were off to try to take up new positions and harry the rout. Their darts and rocks had wrought fearful execution in that blood-soaked ravine.

  Well, the aftermath of a battle is always a messy business, and we had to make sure Hangrol
kept running and did not stop to try to regroup. Our little cavalry force swept out in pursuit. The Tenth Kerchuri halted and I sent word to Kervax[9]Orlon Sangar telling him of my pride in his men and my congratulations. All the units involved had done well. There would be bobs[10]aplenty in the wake of the Battle of Ovalia…

  In all decency I could not leave at once. Some reassurance could be allowed in that the Sword Watch and Quienyin’s comrades had burst in to the rescue. But I vowed I wanted to know what had gone wrong over in the Northeast. By Krun, yes!

  A Kerchuri of the phalanx, when arrayed in the normal formation of twelve men to a file, spreads out to cover a frontage of approximately three hundred and seventy paces. Drill movements can expand or contract this front, of course, containing as it does four hundred thirty-two pikes in each rank. The Tenth had swept up the ravine like a steel broom.

  Turko and I and a few others of my officers walked slowly along the ravine. Everywhere our men were tending the wounded and carrying off the dead to be decently interred according to the rites suggested by the atras, the little amulets, the slain wore. Some of us made the usual trite observations about life and death. The scene was somber; but I did not feel — then — the chill I knew would near overwhelm me at all this waste.

  I bent and picked up a shield from the phalanx. Its five-ply wooden construction was still intact, leather faced, bronze bound. The carrying strap was cinched tight; but the battle grips were broken. On the strip across the top the colors and symbols and numbers proclaimed this shield to have belonged to the Paltork — the second in command to the Relianchun — of the Sixty-fifth Relianch of the Eleventh Jodhri. In glowing yellow the stylized representation of the brumby, that long-horned, eight-legged, armored battering ram of destruction and an animal thought to be long extinct if not legendary, appeared on the face of the crimson shield. The brumby from which the brumbytes took their name was the symbol of the entire Phalanx Force. I put my finger alongside the painted symbol of the Tenth Kerchuri of the Fifth Phalanx, a Prychan grasping Thunderbolts, and I shook my head.

  Yes, the Golden Prychan, the wrestlers inn, had yielded up the means to bring back Turko. But as I stared on this shield, I realized I did not know the name of the Paltork who had carried it into battle. How could I? But this seemed to me wrong. I felt I should have known his name. Tucked around the strap was a little cloth packet of cham. The Paltork no doubt chewed stoically as he marched forward; well, I fancied he would never return to claim his favorite chew. The group of officers did not dwell overlong on that depressing scene. Having made sure that everything that could be done was being done, we trailed back to camp in a heavy silence. Of our voller force, nine returned. We had lost five. The flutduins had done well and had taken minimal casualties. As the returns came in I realized the thorn-ivy ambush had worked, and worked extraordinarily well. Our casualties were exceeding light.

  I took Turko and Deft-Fingered Minch and one or two others, and left the Eighth Army under the command of Orlon Sangar, with orders to recoup and to clear the area, and flew direct for the northeast. No one expressed any surprise or chagrin that I should be leaving. It was taking me some time to realize that emperors could behave in this peremptory way without causing comment. After all, every man knew the emperor’s concerns were wide, covering all of Vallia, and he was clearly needed elsewhere. We caught up with the grandly named First Army at a bleak little town of Northern Jevuldrin called Ithieursmot. Its chief claim to fame until now was a mildewed mass of ruins left over from the Sunset People. Drak lay in his camp cot in his tent and fumed and swore and was in a thoroughly bad temper.

  “The wound in itself was not serious,” Quienyin told me as we stood looking down on the fractious Drak. The needlemen had worked well and Drak was in no pain. “But the prince had taken a savage knock on the head which Rendered Him Unconscious.”

  Silda sat on a low stool at the cot side, holding Drak’s hand, and would not be moved. I thanked Opaz she was there, her own wound bandaged, and her ripped leathers replaced by a yellow gown. Had she not been, I think Drak would have blown up.

  “Deb-Lu has explained it all to me, Father,” said Drak. “It seems I owe my life to you.”

  “As to that, it is Deb-Lu-Quienyin in whose debt we both stand. And, Quienyin, you know my thanks is yours — aye! And I do not forget all we said in the Desolate Waste, and the Moder and the Humped Land. It is all coming together, now.”

  “Did I tell you,” said the Wizard of Loh, “what your pair of rogues, Hunch and Nodgen said when they were apprised who you were?”

  “I am not sure I wish to know that.”

  Drak looked suspiciously at me. He had not seen me smile overmuch when his mother was not present. As to the fracas in the stone chamber, Drak had brought on a battle with superior forces, which was why he had been unable to spare me very many, in the complete conviction that Seg would come up with the Second Army. Seg had done so; but a flash flood had delayed his arrival by three burs. In that time Drak’s army had fought devotedly, but a wing of clansmen had broken through. What I had witnessed had been the last dying attempt on the clansmen’s part to slay the Prince Majister of Vallia before their whole force was broken and driven off. Seg’s arrival and Quienyin’s wizardry had saved us, and now the Second Army was hot-foot thrusting the minions of Zankov, cavalry, infantry, and air, farther north. The Hawkwas, a most savage bunch who were now devoted to the Emperor of Vallia, were swinging in to crush the enemy between them and Seg. Altogether, a satisfactory day’s work, if you omitted to dwell too long on what might have occurred.

  Then a fast voller arrived to tell us that Kov Vodun Alloran had been victorious in the southwest and was marching strongly into his own kovnate in the corner of the island.

  “It seems as though we are successful in the south,” said Drak. He smiled at Silda as he spoke.

  “There remains the southeast,” I said. “And those rasts up north. And the islands-”

  “Oh!” flamed Silda. “We will do it! We have to look on the bright side.”

  I put a hand to my jaw and stared at her. Her bright face stared back, defiant, challenging, and I felt a poignant stab of happiness for Drak. Now, if only he had the nous to take the happiness that was his, and forget all about Queen Lush…

  With my old gravel-shifting voice I said, “We will win, in the end, Silda, because defeat is unthinkable.”

  Then, to Drak, I said, “Have you seen your mother?”

  “No. Nor anyone else of the family. But they are all right.” He glanced up at Quienyin. “Otherwise we would have heard.”

  I grumped at this. But he was right.

  “I would like to go after those rasts. But we must consolidate what we have and strengthen our new frontiers. The army will have to be looked at, too.” My face, I think, must have looked its usual ugly self, for Drak lost a little of his fretfulness. “And as for hiring mercenaries-”

  “They fought well and earned their hire.”

  “Maybe. But I want Vallia to be liberated by Vallians. Is that clear?”

  “Why shed our blood when-?”

  “Just because it is our blood and the prize is blood-worthy. If it is not, you will never secure peace in the land.”

  We might have wrangled then; but the needlemen insisted Prince Drak needed rest, and we were shepherded out. Silda did not accompany us. She was the best medicine Drak could have. My comrades in camp and I decided we ought to hold a right roaring bender that night. We had done well. There was much to do. But for this night we could forget problems and carouse around the campfires and bellow out the old songs under the Moons of Kregen. And so we did. But for all the wild singing and drinking and dancing as the campfires spurted lurid highlights against flushed faces and feverish eyes — can one ever forget problems? I do not think so. A few moments of oblivion, dearly bought, look cheap and tawdry when the problems remain, as intransigent and menacing as ever with the pallid light of the suns.

  Every man contains
a scorpion within him. And every man is commanded by the Star Lords. My Scorpion had materialized itself and become real; my Star Lords had revealed a glimmer of themselves. In this, surely, I was more fortunate than the unhappy people who struggle uncomprehendingly against the vagaries of their own nature and the vicissitudes of what, mistakenly, they call fate. If it be true that men are born to rule and men are born to be slaves, then surely it is an onus placed on those who rule to command toward life and not toward death? The study of history tends to the belief that those with power abuse it because they understand only a tiny part of what power is. If individual people are as nothing before the great weight of destiny, and there is no reason in the universe, then a man has just the one single fact to which to cling: he is a man. Nothing more. Unknown powers within and without ourselves — the Scorpion and the Everoinye — may overthrow us and we may go down to eternal ruin; but can we do any more, seeing we are but men?

  We had won victories against what my people regarded as the powers of darkness, yet I knew we must all go forward together in the light of Opaz, against greater forces of evil. And who was to say that those other evil powers would not, in time, be reconciled?

  “There is a magnificent golden Kildoi, there, Dray,” said Turko.

  “Aye.” The firelight glinted from Korero’s golden beard and he smiled, lifting his two right arms. His tail hand wrapped around a silver goblet, and he drank.

  I made the pappattu and I made it in a certain way.

  “Korero the Shield — Turko, Kov of Falinur.”

  A welling burst of song roared out then from the nearest group around their campfire, rollicking words that finished, “No idea at all, at all, no idea at all.”

  We all half-turned to look and listen, and when I turned back — lo! Turko and Korero were gone. What transpired between those two touched me nearly, and I, fallible human being that I am, trembled as vague rumors, laced with sly chuckles, reached me. Garbled stories of a fight that sprawled away into the moon shadows, a titanic conflict that roared over kools of land, made me imagine all manner of disasters. But, when I found them, the Kildoi and the Khamorro, they were sitting together and quaffing and not a bruise or a cut on either. They stood up as I approached, lithe, limber, superb men.