“Step lively,” I said, and began to retrace my steps. We were not disturbed going out as I had not been bothered coming in. A swathing great cloak around the wizard sufficed to conceal him and his hair vanished under my helmet. Outside in the moons’ light I dragged him off in the direction of the river. He hauled up.
“This way, Prescot? I cannot swim.”
“Don’t fret over that problem. Come on!”
Approaching the river gate I saw the sentries clustered there and the torch lights flaring. Well, to have expected anything else would have been foolish.
“You will never—”
“Just shut the black-fanged winespout, there’s a good wizard, san.”
He said in the hardest tones he’d employed yet: “I had heard you were an unusual man, Prescot. I am beginning to see the stories are not exaggerated.”
I unlimbered the great Krozair longsword.
“Stick closely to me. Make sure you duck when necessary. Apart from the guards, I don’t want to cut your head off.”
He gave an odd little shiver and then we headed for the gate and the guards.
They came at us to interrogate at first, and then, unfortunately for them and to my eternal sorrow, to die.
The blade swished and cut, hacked and slew, and every now and then did a little thrusting. Mergondon stuck to my back like a leech.
The guards pressed, shouting and creating a hellish din, and the work became warm. Mergondon mumbled something like: “I did not think it would be like this!” Then he shouted: “Jurukkers! It is me—”
A shriek burst from the guard trying to get at me from the side, drowning Mergondon’s panicky call. The guard reeled drunkenly away. A long rose-fletched shaft had fair split his backbone in two.
In the next heartbeat Nath and Orso, dripping wet, shocked into action, laying about themselves. Seg’s bellow rose above the din.
“This way, fanshos!”
A raggedy mob of wet fighters rose up from the bank and tore into the remaining guards. In mere moments it was all over. We caught our breaths.
Seg, beaming, hollered: “Righto, my old dom. All aboard!”
We piled into the pontoon which swayed alarmingly. The released prisoners were crowing with delight. Seg slashed the rope and the pontoon began to drift down the river.
By the time reinforcements ran up through the king’s encampment we were in midstream and poling along splendidly.
I took hold of Al-Ar-Mergondon, bent down and put my whiskery face close to his ear. “Listen, san. Do not call me Prescot. Just Jak. It is, you understand, a matter of your life.”
“I don’t—”
“Jak. Remember!”
“This is no way to treat a Wizard of Loh!”
“Better, you will agree, than the way Morbihom treated you?”
He crouched down, then, and I fancied he was sulking.
While most of the released prisoners were from the Lomian army, some hailed from Vallia. Of them I knew only Nath the Iartus, a Hikdar, and he was able to outline for me what had been happening. He was, I may add, absolutely spitting rivets that he had been caught and not at all surprised that the Emperor of Vallia — or the ex-emperor — had turned up to rescue him.
Seg came over to say: “We’ve lost our zorcas, though.”
“Yes. Probably not a clever move to go back.”
“Orso is furious. He’d trained that zorca of his.”
“So we observed.”
Nath the Impenitent remarked: “Well, Murlock the Spry will do well out of it.”
“He’s busy cooking a breakfast we shall not eat.”
“For that I mourn our loss,” said Nath, and rubbed his stomach ruefully.
We managed to sleep fitfully as the pontoon drifted downriver and long before dawn poled in to the opposite bank and abandoned our craft. We set off due west, watchfully, and when we ran across a Lomian cavalry patrol we realized we had been traversing the no-man’s-land between the two fronts.
After that it was a matter of everybody going off to rejoin their units and of our little group plus the wizard finding Headquarters. Nath na Kochwold welcomed us with enormous glee, and we ate and drank and told him what we had learned of the Menaham Order of Battle. Our spying mission was, for the moment at least, at an end.
Queen Lushfymi of Lome, nominally in personal command of her gallant army, had sense enough to put her trust with Kapts of proven skill. I was pleased to see the high commands of Vallia and Lome cooperating well. Personally, I refused to interfere and simply let Nath na Kochwold carry on in his own effective fashion, and extremely effective that was too, by Krun, in the running of the smart and powerful contingent from Vallia.
The Presidio had, as was their wont in these matters, given these forces the grandiloquent name of The Fourth Army. The lads were in good heart. They’d won the first contest in which they’d indulged after landing, and were ready for what was to come.
I paid my respects to Queen Lush and fabricated an excuse which would keep me out of her way. Orso decided to take up the offer of joining Nath’s staff. He’d performed well in those aspects of our admittedly low-key adventure that demanded courage and resolution and skill. But there are other factors needed in the character of an adventurer upon Kregen who wishes to do more than merely carve a bloody path through human flesh, as they say in Clishdrin.
When that was settled, I said to Nath the Impenitent: “The papers have come through, and it’s all settled. No stain attaches to your reputation. You are once again a Jiktar and as of now you are promoted at least to Ley-Chuktar.”
“That is munificent, Jak. I would be churlish to refuse. But — what of the missing cash?”
“All paid back. Now—”
“By you, of course!”
I looked him in the eye, seeing his scarlet pride in that rugged face and the lifting of the weights on his mind, and I said in a harsh and damn-you-to-hell fashion: “Now, see here, Chuktar Nath Javed, sometime known as Hack ’n’ Slay and sometime known as the Impenitent! You will earn that money! We have unfinished business with the devils of Lem the Silver Leem. When Seg and I next tangle with them, you will be up there battling with us. Is that clear?”
He gave a brusque nod. “Thank you, majister.”
I did not misunderstand his use of majister here.
I went on: “There’s a little job for you here, and then you’re free to follow your own inclinations. You can go to Vallia and see about your sister, for instance.”
“If Opaz wills.”
“Of course. I arranged to meet our Lamnian friends in Linansmot. Take them the money owed by King Morbihom—”
“But, Jak! You’re not paying for our enemy’s supplies!”
Very little explanation was needed to show him what was in my mind and I finished with: “So they can supply us. They will be most useful.”
“I’ll get over to Linansmot straight away.”
“Take a cavalry squadron with you, Nath.”
“Quidang.”
With that out of the way I went over to the tavern where we put up and found Seg and Al-Ar-Mergondon. I wasn’t quite sure what to do with the Wizard of Loh. He kept fulminating against King Morbihom, with reason.
With Khe-Hi-Bjanching and Ling-Li-Lwingling away in Loh discovering what being parents was all about, and Deb-Lu-Quienyin as always busily occupied on a number of different schemes, it might be convenient, to say the least, to have another Wizard of Loh to help us.
He jumped at the offer.
With Seg using those marvelous fingers of his in creating a new bowstave at the table, and Al-Ar sitting across from me, the wine between us, I said: “Have you heard of a Witch of Loh called Csitra?”
“Csitra.” He rolled the name around his tongue. “Csitra what?”
“That I have not discovered. She was mated with Phu-Si-Yantong.”
“He is dead.”
“Aye.”
“I had heard of a Witch of Loh in connection wit
h Yantong. That is all. The name means nothing to me.”
“Perhaps, at a time convenient to yourself, you could go into lupu and discover her whereabouts.”
“I will try.”
All this, as you may hear, was conducted on a most formal basis. We were like two dogs sniffing around each other, ready for mere acquaintanceship and alliance or for real friendship, as the Mensaguals decreed.
Mergondon took his wine and before he drank, he spoke and, I judged, with something of an effort.
“The Wizard of Loh, Phu-Si-Yantong is better off dead, the yukpam,[3] by the Seven Arcades yes.”
“Never was truer word spoken,” said Seg, in his most cheerful fashion, working on his bow.
I felt a little surprise that a person like a Wizard of Loh should use so coarse a word as yukpam, particularly after the nature of the preceding conversation. Still, it takes all kinds to make a world.
He had expressed his gratitude without effusiveness and in a dignified way. Now he went on to say: “When the Yantong calling himself the Hyr Notor ran Pandahem, they were remarkable days.”
“All Pandahem must work together now against the Shanks,” I told him. “And that means Menaham, as well.”
“King Morbihom has not had the privilege of my arts for very long. The man is a bloodthirsty simpleton.”
The gambit was accepted by Seg who said in his lazy way: “And you’d be the one to knock him down, right?”
“If the opportunity was vouchsafed me.”
So, as I say, I was not absolutely sure what to do with Al-Ar-Mergondon. There was, and understandably enough, a tenseness about him, a feeling of uncertainty and unease, despite our efforts to reassure him.
The political situation inside Lome had been a constant source of concern — well, by Krun, that applies to most countries, I suppose — and those forces sent across by my lad Drak acting with decision as the Prince Majister had performed well. They’d assisted the folk loyal to Queen Lush and the land was coming back to normalcy when this treacherous attack from Menaham set everything boiling again.
Kapt Nath Molim, the Trylon of Polnehm, very smart, still quite young, and devoted to Queen Lush, had stood up under the test well. He remained, as Drak had told me, still very much out for Number One. His experience with our armies in Vallia had convinced him that the future for both our countries lay in mutual help and alliance.
Drak had shifted the mercenaries out of Vallia to help Lome. They had put up as resolute a resistance to mad King Morbihom as they could contrive, but they’d have been done for if the fresh army with Nath na Kochwold had not arrived.
The Fifth Phalanx was with Nath consisting of the Ninth Kerchuri Dayra and the Tenth Kerchuri Jaidur. Brytevax[4] Orlon Sangar commanded. He had commanded the old Tenth Kerchuri in that traumatic Battle of Ovalia, where we had set the Thorn Ivy Trap. Now, a seasoned warrior and commander, he was well aware that in the Phalanx we had the battle-winning instrument to give us the final victory.
Seg and I had chosen to set up our quarters in the upper room of The Throstle and Swill which stood on the opposite side of the square from The Rokveil Crown’d where Nath na Kochwold and the other ranking officers lodged. There were ample taverns and inns in this town of Mompass to care for us.
A messenger brought a note from Milsi saying she was let off the hook and wanted Seg to go meet her in Vondium.
“So the Sisters of the Rose do grant leave, then!”
“Sometimes,” I said, remembering.
“Still, it is dratted inconvenient. I can’t leave you and the army with this campaign on our hands—”
“You,” I told my blade comrade with ferocity, “will take your voller and hightail it to Vondium right now. And give my love to Milsi. Dernun?”
“Quidang! And, my old dom — well, no matter, no matter...”
No need whatsoever for more words between Seg and me.
As a matter of policy, although both Seg and I detested all the flummery, I insisted that he be sent off with due ceremony. Guards turned out, bands played, banners flew. Seg Segutorio, King of Croxdrin and High Kov of Balkan, soared aloft on course for Vallia and Vondium. We called the remberees and the twin suns shone and the flags fluttered and trumpets pealed their high notes of departure. After that I took myself off to The Throstle and Swill to sink a flagon or two and shake off the black dog that descended, unwanted but not entirely unexpected.
Al-Ar-Mergondon came up and we settled to a game of Jikaida. He was good and the contest was close.
Nath the Impenitent had not returned from Linansmot, although the four days were past. I did not think for a single mur that he had taken the Lamnians’ money and run. There were great strokes and adventures in store for old Hack ’n’ Slay.
With a strange sigh and a flutter of all his features, Mergondon pushed back from the table. His eyes rolled up. The Chuktar he had been about to move slipped from his fingers and rolled across the table. A distinct sense of chill brushed across my skin. Mergondon went rigid.
“Dray,” he said. He spoke in his own normal voice, with an added breathlessness that echoed oddly in the upper chamber. “Dray. Forgive my speaking to you like this through San Mergondon. Pay him my respects. He will understand the urgency.”
“Deb-Lu!”
“It is Yumapan. The emperor has received intelligence that Morbihom intends to march onward after he has crushed Lome. An alliance is essential. He asks that you visit him.”
“Reply,” I said, standing up, “that I am on my way.”
Chapter nineteen
At the Eye of Imladiel
To hurtle on through the clean crisp air of Kregen! To stand in the prow of the voller and feel the wind in your hair and all the urgent vibrancy beneath your feet urging you on! Yes, to have flown headlong through the sweet air of Kregen is to have tasted life, my friends!
Below us the mountains whirled past, their peaks rising ahead of us, wreathed in snow, cloud mantled, superb. Mergondon knew the way through those granite masses, and we skimmed low over high passes where wild animals, shaggy and pelted, tossed their horns at us in defiance.
On through thin air we rushed. And yet on this journey I did not chase frantically onward to rescue a loved one, to snatch a sacrifice from evil priests of a vile cult or to plunge at once into scarlet action. Oh, no. Now I simply flew with this Wizard of Loh to talk alliances with Pelleham, the Emperor of Yumapan.
All the world could see that once King Morbihom had eaten up Iyam and Lome, he would attack Yumapan. The mountains had proved a barrier in the past. I had a shrewd suspicion that riding on his tide of success, Morbihom would have little difficulty in buying or hiring airboats for the coming campaign. There would be much booty.
Hitherto Pelleham’s greatest concerns had been the renders from the Hoboling Islands. These pirates festered in the chains of islands and raided coasts at will, in between taking up fat argosies and their treasures.
Yumapan had extended into the south of the island of Pandahem, conquering the small kingdoms in the south and west and eventually establishing a natural frontier line. The country could with reasonable justification, then, call itself an empire.
That particular specimen of conquest had taken place a good few seasons ago and the situation was now stabilized. Morbihom was out to stir the cesspit again.
So it was natural that Pelleham should seek allies and his first thought must have been Vallia. It was natural, too, that he would wish to discuss the situation with me in the first instance on a semiofficial level. When he and I had agreed the agenda, as it were, the fanfares could sound and the official deputations meet and consult. Speed, clearly, was of the essence. That had been eloquently evidenced by the occult means used to bring us together.
Mergondon had simply said: “I accept San Quienyin’s apologies to me. He must find using his kharrna debilitating and to speak through a fellow Wizard of Loh saved him much.”
I didn’t comment on that. I did feel a breeze of a
larm. Good old Deb-Lu — surely he was not once again losing his powers?
The warmth of this area enfolded us once more as we descended from those high passes. The land spread below, lush and green and well-watered and filled with game. This was tremendous hunting country — for those who cared for it — and I recollected that Kov Loriman the Hunter hailed from Yumapan.
We were to meet Emperor Pelleham not at his capital city but privately at a noble’s hunting lodge. Here we could escape prying eyes and ears, owned by damned spies sent in by King Morbihom.
“I came through here on my way from Loh,” Mergondon told me. “Quite a few seasons ago, now. Not a very interesting place. The people seem able only to encompass one idée fixe in their lives.”
“Yes, so I believe.”
As though it was all a part of the same conversation, he added: “Just so I can see Morbihom squirm. By Hlo-Hli! The fellow is a worm!”
I did not reply. The distant glint of metal, high in the sky, caught my intrigued attention. Airboats are very few and far between in Pandahem. I stared closely, and Mergondon joined me at the rail to search between the clouds.
“There!”
“Aye.”
Instantly, I recognized what I was staring at.
The shapely black hulls showed up hard and etched against cloud banks. The brilliantly colored, squared-off upper works lost much of their color at this distance but remained unmistakable. Shanks. The Shank armada flew steadily on course toward the south. We skipped between cloud masses for a time, tracking them; but their course would take them out over the coast of the island, and if they continued long enough without changing direction they’d hit Loh at Chem.
Mergondon said: “They look — purposeful.”
“Extremely.”
We saw no other fliers as we finished our journey and dropped down to land at the hunting lodge known as The Eye of Imladiel. Forests and open country surrounded the buildings and a considerable amount of agriculture was in evidence. We were expected.
Seen from the air the main buildings were arranged in the form of a letter W. Off to the north side rambling stables and outbuildings no doubt housed the functional parts of the establishment. To the east a cleared area of gravel had, resting in grand isolation on the golden brown, a single voller. She was a smallish ten-place craft and by her lines had been built in Hamal. She flew no flags. I brought our flier in neatly to land alongside.
Warlord of Antares Page 14