Witches of Kregen [Dray Prescot #34]

by Alan Burt Akers

  “Seen Nath?"

  “No."

  The area was now a maelstrom of dust, wings, the flicker of steel, and the phantom shapes of running bodies. Just how the day was going was, for the moment, impossible to tell. Seg and Turko were sublimely confident that the flutsmen would soon have had enough and would fly off.

  “They don't like taking casualties,” I said. “That is true. They like easy pickings."

  “May a green-fanged demon from Ledrik's Nether Hell take ‘emall.” Turko swung his arms and glared balefully about. Dust swirled about us and the fluttrell's noise and confusion gave the whole fight an unreal air, as though we fought in a nether bird-hell of our own.

  Three more flutsmen ran at us and were summarily dispatched where they belonged. Although, to be honest, there are some flutsmen who aspire above the generality of their calling, some I have known I have even called friend. Sometimes a fellow is swept up by fate into a life not of his choosing. Well, by Zair, hadn't I been dragged up by the scruff of the neck from Earth, four hundred light years away, to be dumped down all naked and unarmed on Kregen to make my own way?

  “That's interesting,” observed Seg.

  Half a dozen of our men who by their neat and tightly fitting uniforms were flyers from Valka were busily at work. As it were, with one hand they fended off flutsmen and with the other made sure the fluttrells were securely chained down to their stakes.

  “My lads of Valka,” I said, with what I admit to being a comfortable feeling, “are indeed great scallywags and rogues and terribly fierce fighting men; they also, thanks be, have an eye to turning an honest profit."

  Mind you, no flyer of Valka, trained up by my Djangs to fly a flutduin, would change that superb saddle flyer for a fluttrell. Not in a million months of the Maiden with the Many Smiles!

  Just how much longer the fight would have gone on must remain conjectural. Certainly, in the dust and confusion the flutsmen had lost all idea of thrashing us and taking the spoils. Our resistance—indeed, our sudden and overwhelming attack—had knocked them back on their heels with a surprise from which they did not recover. They fought; but increasingly they sought to escape.

  Then our flutduins descended on them.

  After that it was a mere matter of rounding up those who would be rounded up and seeing off those who would not. When that was going on strong, parties of my lads of 1ESW and 1EYJ ran up, more in anger than sorrow that they had missed most of the fight.

  The men of the Emperor's Sword Watch and of the Emperor's Yellow Jackets, sworn to protect the life of the Emperor of Vallia and his family, do not take lightly the discharge of their duties. They were very thorough in their rounding up of flutsmen, severe in their chastisement.

  One flutsman, green in the face and with an arm and a leg missing, from which he was dying, stared up with eyes that would soon glaze over. He saw us pass by.

  “By Barflut the Razor Feathered,” he got out. “I wish I'd never taken the gold from Layco Jhansi."

  I bent to him.

  “Think of Layco Jhansi when the Grey Ones meet you and you wander through the mists of the Ice Floes of Sicce, dom."

  “I'll remember, Hanitcha the Harrower take him. I'll remember and curse his name."

  Seg glanced at me as I straightened up.

  “A dratted Hamalese."

  “A renegade, evidently."

  Turko said, “There's more to this. I wonder if they were out on a scavenging expedition on their own account?"

  “Or are they scouting for the main force?” Seg looked up at the sky at this, instinctively, and his sinewy fingers curved around his bowstave.

  Then, of course, the lads of my bodyguard corps arrived, as I have said, highly incensed. Korero the Shield, magnificent and golden, a Kildoi with four arms and a tail hand, swung his two enormous shields about as though they were saucers. I wondered if he and Turko might exchange a few words.

  In the event Turko, who was, after all, now the Kov of Falinur, contented himself with a very politely-spoken: “You are welcome, Korero the Shield."

  And Korero contented himself with: “I am glad to see you, Kov Turko.” He put no heavy emphasis on the word kov. Of course, they could have been so fearfully polite just because I was there and in earshot. These two who had carried shields at my back in battle epitomized the way in which men and women strove to put their heroic bodies between men and the incoming shaft, the slashing blade. I sighed. I knew damn well I didn't deserve such devotion. But, also, I fancied these two had come to an arrangement, one with the other, and each saw his duty ahead.

  “Secure all here,” Nath went past, shouting. He saw me.

  “Time we returned to the camp, I think."

  “You're right. And what we'll find does not amuse me."

  “By the Veiled Froyvil, my old dom, we'll soon have the army to rights."

  “Aye,” said Nath na Kochwold in his grimmest voice.

  I was not so sure.

  If these confounded flutsmen were the advance patrol of an army, that army would find ours in parlous case, that seemed certain. We had no time to shilly-shally about.

  Layco Jhansi, who had once been the old emperor's chief pallan, virtually in charge of Vallia, had turned traitor. His schemes had backfired and he had been forced to flee to his estates in the northwest where he had set out on the road of conquest. He was ruthless. He'd had no hesitation in striking down Ashti Melekhi, one of his tools who had failed him.

  Recently he had concluded a treaty of non-aggression with the Racters to the north of him so that he could concentrate all his efforts against Turko's Falinur. If he was recruiting fresh mercenaries, even low-grade ones, to give a hard core to his army of crazies, we'd need every man and animal, every bird, every engine, to hold him and beat him back.

  So, as we returned to the shattered camp of the Ninth Army, I began to seek out ways in my mind to draw fresh forces into the field to counter Jhansi's schemes. The Empire of Vallia, of which I was hauled into being the emperor, was a rickety and ramshackle old construction these days. We ran on a knife edge. One mistake, one error of judgment, one lapse in our spirit of high resolve could let in the ravening monsters of destruction to tear down into ruin all that we strove for.

  * * *

  Chapter three

  Of a few words to Kov Turko

  The main beam of the catapult lay on the ground, the massive arm of laminated wood smashed through in two separate places. The rest of the engine looked as though a maddened giant had jumped up and down on it with hobnailed boots.

  Seg brought across a bronze helmet. The crown was dented into a recurve in the shape of a frog. If any poor devil had been wearing that at the time...

  Swords were shattered, spears splintered, shields torn to shreds.

  Annoying though this destruction of equipment might be—annoying! It was downright infuriating!—it meant nothing beside the distress caused by the casualties.

  Many of the men had saved themselves by simply running flat out. The swods near the circumference of the frog storm had raced away to safety. Many men fortunate enough to be close to their saddle animals had been able to gallop off. The vollers had all taken to the air and some of the vorlcas had drifted downwind as we had. The flutduins had not been touched, for which we gave thanks to Opaz.

  There remained many men injured, maimed, many dead. The lads had used their shields cannily, sheltering under whatever of cover there was and slanting the shields to take the blows glancingly. As we walked about the camp amid these scenes of desolation, we saw many pitiful examples of the horror that had blackened the Suns, many men crouched and smashed presenting bizarre and ghastly tableaux of death.

  If a frog falling from the sky could smash the great beam of a catapult, it would not be stopped by the flatbed of a cart, the angle of a shield.

  No, I will not elaborate on what had happened to the Ninth Army or the scenes I saw.

  Suffice it to say that we devoted all our resources to car
ing for the injured and burying the dead.

  All Turko's usual quizzical mockery fled. As we carried out the necessary tasks he grew silent and cold. His mood remained somber. He was not dejected; both Nath and Seg were able to reassure him that his Ninth Army, although grievously wounded, was not irrevocably destroyed.

  “Yes, we will rebuild the army.” Turko got the words out as though they ground between granite mills.

  Seg looked over my shoulder just as I was about to make a remark I had pondered on and had, at last, decided to speak out.

  “Here come Khe-Hi and Ling-Li-Lwingling."

  Turning about slowly at Seg's words, I saw the Wizard and the Witch of Loh approaching, stepping carefully over debris and corpses. Men were hard at work clearing up; they could not be everywhere at once and I was helping in a particularly bad patch where the frogs had rained down like stone hail and the ground was windrowed with men and women.

  Ling-Li wore a bandage around her head, the yellow cloth making the pallor of her face look sickly. She did not seem to notice the ghastly moil about her; I fancied she did and marked all.

  “Majister,” said Khe-Hi.

  I looked at him, seeing him as he usually appeared, wearing his white robe, his red hair neatly arranged, the handsomeness of his face a little, just a little, plumper than it had been in earlier days. His voice was the same metallic meticulous instrument of his will. But I felt a tiny tremor of anxiety. Khe-Hi in these days usually called me Dray. Very few people aspire or are granted that method of address. Now he used the full formal majister, not even the familiar majis of those close to me, and so I knew he wished to put this on a politico-formal basis. Well...

  “Khe-Hi,” I said, refusing this opening gambit. I half-inclined my head to the Witch of Loh."Ling-Li. I trust you are not seriously injured."

  “A scratch."

  She did not use majister; I did not think she had as yet earned any right to call me Dray although she had materially assisted us in the matter of the werewolves. I have likened her small face with its piled mass of auburn hair to a superbly carved mask in the ivory of Chem, the smoothest and mellowest of ivories. Her skin clung tightly to her bone structure without hint of a sag; yet she was not gaunt, for her beauty, aided by the startling blue of her eyes and the scarlet of her mouth above a firmly rounded chin, seemed to me to be a trifle more than skin deep and was self-evident. All the same, it also seemed to me a deal of her force was absent, that the sickly pallor of that perfect skin was not all created by the yellow bandage.

  “I trust you will soon be recovered.” I turned back to the Wizard of Loh. “Tell me, Khe-Hi."

  Now Wizards and Witches of Loh enjoy deserved reputations upon Kregen. Their powers are immense and unknown and simple men believe anything of them. But I have known Wizards and Witches of Loh who were mediocre in their control of the thaumaturgical arts. Of course, they would be more powerful than most sorcerers of other disciplines; most, not all. These Wizards of Loh who are somewhat less than their fellows unashamedly use the reputation of any Wizard of Loh. They trade on the fear their fellows engender. In this wise they make a living.

  Khe-Hi-Bjanching and Ling-Li-Lwingling were both very highly powered mages. Khe-Hi, I fancied, would one day when he reached the prime of life, become perhaps more powerful than almost any other Wizard of Loh. Certainly, he had at the least caught up with Deb-Lu-Quienyin, who was many seasons older, if he had not surpassed him.

  Csitra the Witch of Loh was also extraordinarily powerful, and the kharrna of the child, the uhu Phunik, would grow to match and surpass hers. I wondered—with horror—if Phunik would outgrow the kharrna of his father, Phu-Si-Yantong, who was dead and gone, the bastard.

  As I, a layman, saw the situation, then, here we had a very powerful sorceress aided by her child of lesser mastery of the arts, versus two very powerful mages. There should in theory therefore have been a clear-cut advantage to our side.

  There was not.

  Naturally there was not, given the mazy, chancy mystery of thaumaturgy and its applications to the problems of life.

  When Deb-Lu joined in, then we did have an advantage. But Deb-Lu at the moment was off on business of his own. That business, I shrewdly suspected, knowing Deb-Lu, had to do with the welfare of Vallia and, not least of all, of Delia and myself.

  Khe-Hi motioned slowly with his right hand, for his left was held by Ling-Li's hand. “I grieve for the dead soldiers..."

  In this I knew Khe-Hi spoke the truth. I do not care to associate with people who have no respect for human life. This too marks me as being an ordinary fellow without certain special qualifications for being an emperor, a ruler of men, a person whose will to the grand design discards lives without thought.

  At my nod, Khe-Hi went on with his explanation.

  “You are aware that Csitra can stab a pulse of great power through the defenses we have arranged, simply by virtue of the old military saw that concentrated force will smash through attenuated defenses.” Khe-Hi looked up at me, and added: “Some of our defenses are not attenuated."

  What he was saying in this roundabout way was that a great deal of magical art had been put out by the Wizards of Loh in the past to safeguard certain people thought necessary to the well-being of the emperor. I had had to push aside all notions of guilt that I, and Delia, and my family and blade comrades were thus protected. If we went down, Vallia would go down with us. We had seen what that would entail during the Times of Troubles. No sane person wanted those times to recur.

  This was not just a question of who would be master in the empire. Those flutsmen we had just seen off were a tiny representation of what the whole island had groaned under, would suffer from, if the evil days returned.

  “Also, majister, you will understand that I had to fabricate a caul for Ling-Li and myself, for had a frog knocked our brains out, well, I need not go on."

  “In this you judged right."

  The two mages, Seg, Turko and Nath stood in a semicircle with me, removed from other folk. That suited the other folk. Wizards of any kind, and Wizards of Loh in particular, were held to be unpredictable to any casual wandering person chancing by. The swods got on with clearing up, and very few even raised their eyes to glance curiously at us.

  Because of this isolation, I was able to say, “Now, Khe-Hi, we have been friends a long time. Why are you addressing me as majister all of a sudden?"

  Ling-Li said: “I feared you would be displeased we had taken so long, would judge and condemn us—"

  I almost said that she'd changed her tuneremarkably since she'd called me tikshim and told me to clear off to the benches beside the Jikaida board where they were playing Death Jikaida. I did not smile.

  “If you believe yourself to be guilty of some crime, perhaps you would care to name it?"

  Very quickly Khe-Hi shot out: “No, Dray, we are not guilty of any crime, and we know we are not. We did what we had to do as quickly as we could. It took time. Ling-Li believed that you—"

  “You, Khe-Hi, ought to have known better."

  “I do. But I could not convince—"

  “Next time, Ling-Li,” I said in that old gravel-shifting voice, and I know my face must have held some of the old devil look, for the Witch of Loh flinched back. “Next time believe and trust in Khe-Hi's word."

  She said nothing in reply; but those tell-tale mottlings of color seeped up across her cheekbones.

  Seg with his laugh and apparently brash words cloaking subtle schemings, said, “I'll tell you, Khe-Hi, when those dratted frogs were tumbling out and bashing us about it seemed two seasons long."

  “Yet,” added Nath na Kochwold with his military instincts at work: “The time was remarkably short. That it appeared long was natural."

  That summed up this little minor crisis within the greater.

  There was a great deal to do, most of it unpleasant, and so I will pass over the next few days with but one final word. Repugnance.

  The crazed army of Layco
Jhansi did not attack, and Kapt Erndor, the army commander who thankfully had survived, was positive this was because his advance patrol of flutsmen had not reported back. Every last one had been brought down by our flyers.

  “All the same,” said Kapt Erndor as we sat around the campfire on the last evening. “All the same, he will attack, now. I feel confident he will have had news of our disaster."

  I said: “I do not usually call councils of war. In this case I would be interested to know what you think should be our next course of action."

  Erndor, one of my old Freedom Fighters of Valka, hard and gritty, lifted his goblet. He stared at me over the rim.

  “Normally, strom, I'd counsel a swift attack on our part. Stick him before he sticks us."

  “But."

  Kapt Erndor heaved up a sigh, swallowed a mouthful, wiped his mouth.

  “The army has taken a few hard knocks lately. We had the werewolves. Now the frogs. They've suffered casualties in a way that is foreign to a fighting man. I hate this, I hate myself for saying it; but I think a great deal of the heart has gone out of the army."

  Nath na Kochwold burst out: “It is a terrible thing to have to say; but it is true. I have watched the lads. They are bewildered, fearful, not knowing when a fresh disaster out of their experience will fall on them."

  “Dratted sorcery,” rumbled Seg.

  In his latter mood of somberness, Turko said nothing.

  “The Ninth Army,” I said. “A fine fighting force. Sorcery has ruined it."

  “All we need is time—” began Erndor.

  “Give us a month of She of the Veils,” said Nath.

  “Will Layco Jhansi allow us that?” I stared at them, and I saw the answer in their faces.

  The wine passed around. Above us the stars glittered. The night lay cool upon the land, and the scents wafted in fresh and clean, cleansed of the raw horror of the shambles of a few days ago. We talked around the question, and the problems remained. We were, in truth, a mightily despondent group.