All the stupid pride flooded me, onker that I was. What would that oaf Pur Kazz say when I landed with a magnificent flying boat of the air, with rescued Zairians, and with the enormous prize of not only Gafard, the Sea-Zhantil, the most renowned Ghittawrer of the Eye of the World, but his liege lord also, his king, this same king Genod, the genius king of evil Magdag!
Well, onker I was and onker I remained.
The king's tent was flooded with light. Orderlies and sectrixmen waited outside, nervous, fidgety. I marched through as bold as Krasny work, up to the tent flaps and the guards.
I thought—well, that would be to reveal too much. Suffice it to say I thought it could be done and I could do it. I think, now, in all sober truth, I could have done it. It was, after all, a thing I had done before and was, as you shall hear, a trick I was to pull off again, more than once.
But could the Star Lords have had a hand in this? The Savanti, perhaps? I did not know. I do know that as I bluffed my way past the guards and entered the first of the canvas-sided anterooms leading into the king's quarters a number of what I then considered impossible events occurred.
There were far too many men here to be accounted for by the loss of the voller, serious though that was. These were men who should be out hunting for the king's airboat.
I heard a man shouting: “I tell you it is sooth! I saw him. I saw him as he climbed up the side of the flying boat and the moon shone on his face. He wore the red. I would know that devil's face anywhere, for did he not give me this scar on my own face, these many years ago!"
I halted in the press, at the back, unable to pass through, cursing to get on and yet halted by these words.
“It was the infamous Krozair himself! Pur Dray. The Lord of Strombor! Come back from the dead!"
Other men shouted that how could Golitas be sure, and this Golitas with the scarred face bellowed that, by Goyt, he knew the most renowned Krozair of the Eye of the World when he saw him!
This made it more tricky. Golitas must have come in with the king, for he had not been about the camp. Had he been he would no doubt have taken longer to recognize me for the circumstances would have been far less dramatic. I had best place my white scarf about my face again, but my groping fingers encountered nothing where the scarf should be. Of course, I'd lost the damned thing somewhere along the way.
This was bad enough. But then—and I swear I was in so ugly a mood I might have done something I would have regretted for all the thousand years of life vouchsafed me—I heard two voices I just could not believe in, could not, for they were of another life and another place many dwaburs removed from the problems of the inner sea.
The first voice boomed out in a great Numim bellow.
“What a gang of onkers, by Krun! Can't even guard a voller the empress Thyllis sends out of friendship!"
And the other voice tripped up and down the scale: “This is a wight leem's-nest, Wees! We can't walk all the way home, now can we, dear fellow?"
* * *
Chapter Fourteen
I avoid old comrades
Rees and Chido!
Incredible. Impossible. But true.
The crowd swayed as guards opened a path through. In the uproar that roaring Numim voice of Rees's blasted out again. He was upset. He didn't mind who knew.
But—Rees and Chido! All the way from Ruathytu in distant Hamal, to the Eye of the World. They must have been with the voller. No other explanation was possible. I stood back, no longer pushing forward.
They had not seen me for over twenty years, but I had no doubts that I would be recognized. They'd know me. They'd be as thunderstruck as I was myself.
They'd know me. They'd know me as Hamun ham Farthytu, the amak of Paline Valley. They did not know their friend Hamun whom they had tried to make into a bladesman was the Prince Majister of Vallia.
What thoughts tumbled pell-mell through my dizzy mind! I had stepped back purely involuntarily. The onker Golitas was still babbling on about it being sure that he had recognized the notorious Krozair, the Lord of Strombor, and over that Rees's lion-roar blattered against my ears.
“By Krun! What a bunch of onkers! Chido, old fellow, this is a right leem's-nest!"
And Chido's light voice, turning all his R's into Ws, a mode of speech I seldom attempt to reproduce, saying: “I suppose you can't blame ‘em too much, Rees. If this fellow who stole the voller is as good as they say—"
And a rumble from Rees, indicating to me that he had been learning wisdom in the years separating our last meeting. By Krun! But was I glad to know he and Chido were still alive! After the Battle of Jholaix in which Vallia had smashed the Hamalese Army of the North, anything could have happened to them. Maybe they were even back in the good books of the empress Thyllis. If they were, they were even more of an enemy to Vallia...
The swirls in the crowd as the closely packed men reformed to let the high dignitaries through pushed me against a wooden post holding a peak of the side wall. I could see past the heads and shoulders of those moving in front. I saw Rees and I saw Chido.
They looked just the same.
Well, of course, twenty-one years made little if any difference to the appearance of a man on Kregen, once he had reached the age of his maturity. They looked great. The flaming golden mane that marked Rees for a Numim, a lion-man, glowed in the lamplight. His broad, powerful lion-face scowled and those tawny eyes caught the light and glittered. And Chido, just the same, popping with excitement, spluttering, his chinless face and pop-eyes bringing back the memories. Dear old Chido!
If they saw me they would call out in huge surprise. What explanations had they thought up to explain away to themselves the vanishment of their comrade and fellow bladesman Hamun?
I caught a quick glimpse of a black-browed fellow with a hard, blocky face beyond Rees. Across this fellow's features an old scar showed livid as the blood flushed.
This must be Golitas.
If he saw me the next few murs would be exceedingly tricky and complicated. They might be interesting, too.
Maybe, maybe I might have risked it. For if this Golitas hauled out his sword and ran at me, and Rees and Chido saw that, might they not shout in shock and run to stand with me?
They might.
Somehow, I did not think they would.
My shock had been great at seeing them. They might put two and two together. I had plans for Hamal and I wished to preserve my identity as the amak of Paline Valley.
I turned my head away.
Yes, I, Gadak, turned my head away.
A table lay cluttered with cloaks and capes and scarves dropped by the officers and aides as they had entered. A green scarf, snatched up, covered my face. I do not disguise my own feelings of contempt for myself. But much, much more depended on my actions now; my freedom meant more than the freedom that has so often been denied me—it meant getting out of the Eye of the World and back to Delia. That must come first.
There seemed to me to be more than an inkling in my head why these two, Rees and Chido, had come to the inner sea with the voller for King Genod. I guessed they had fancied the adventure, no doubt feeling at a loss in peacetime Hamal. Had Rees's estates of the Golden Wind all blown away yet? Was he now merely the owner of an empty title? How was Saffi, his daughter, that glorious lion-maiden I had rescued from the Cripples’ Jikai, snatched from the Manhounds of Faol?
The interruption in my progress, the check as the crowd surged back making way, the shock of seeing old comrades again, all conspired to thwart my plans.
Chido gesticulating violently, and Rees stalking on arrogantly, they passed through the crowd and on into the moonlight outside. I roused myself. The idiot Golitas would follow soon. After he had gone, would there be a chance to snatch Gafard and the king? “Ah, Gadak! Just the man!"
I whirled about and my hand fell to my longsword. Gafard stared at me, and past me at the others in the canvas-walled anteroom.
“All of you! Out searching! The king is most wrathf
ul. The flying boat has been stolen and stolen by no less than Pur Dray, the great Krozair. Stir yourselves!” He saw the movement of my hand. “Yes, Gadak. It is a time for swords—but only when we find the flying boat"
“Yes, gernu."
How easily I slipped into the ways of Grodnim that had encompassed me these past months!
My prime responsibility was to Delia. I had to get out of the inner sea and back to her. I had to get back alive, for she had warned me, long and long ago, that she would be cross with me if I got myself killed. Beside her anger at that kind of foolishness on my part, the anger of King Genod over the loss of his voller was as the mewling of an infant.
There were many men, both apim and diff, in the anteroom of the king's tent. A guard party of bowmen stood with bows held up and arrows nocked, a part and parcel of the king's security. Word that the Lord of Strombor had been seen was enough to make every man stand to arms and tremble, sweating in anticipation.
The events that had taken place since I had bluffed my way in here to hear Rees's great Numim bellow to the moment when Gafard ordered me to join the search had taken practically no time at all. Words and thoughts and actions had tumbled one over the other.
My plan had failed.
There was no chance at all to take Gafard and less chance, even than that, to take the king.
If I put a sword-edge to Gafard's throat and forced my way in to the king the bowmen would feather me, and if Gafard died as well that was the price Grodno exacted. I remembered, here in the very Eye of the World, the callousness with which Prince Glycas, the embodiment of all that was evil in the overlords of Magdag, had told me that I could slay his guard-commander, but that he would surely slay me, anyway. The only life with which to bargain with King Genod was the life of King Genod himself.
“Don't stand about, you calsanys!” bellowed Gafard. No doubt he had had the rough edge of Genod's tongue. His fierce face showed all the venom I might have shown in a similar situation. “Schtump!” He used that coarse and abusive word to these officers, the word that conveys in such a vivid way “Get out! Clear off!"
“Schtump!” roared Gafard, the King's Striker. “Find the flying boat of the king!"
Even then, as the men elbowed out carrying me with them in the press and I saw the tall, scar-faced form of Golitas approaching Gafard, the King's Striker had not made any evil promises as a reward for failure. He was canny enough to see the apparently obvious. If the flying boat could sail through the air faster than a galloping sectrix, then she would be away and gone and no torchlight search in the darkness would find her again.
As we mounted up I had to stop cursing. My hands did not shake, but in all else I felt myself to be the greatest rogue in two worlds. My nerve had not failed me, for I knew it was Delia who had restrained my hand. But I knew what my conduct would appear to my comrades, to my Brother Krozairs—I had failed in my plans and had not taken the opportunity to cut down all in my path until I died still striking out with the cry of Zair on my bloodied lips.
That, of course, was the maniac's way, the battle-lover's way, the berserker way I had renounced with disgust.
But—would that not have been a Jikai?
Possibly, but a damned little one in my view.
I gave up making excuses for my feeble conduct and spurred off into the darkness with the others, the link-slaves astride preysanys lighting our way, and precious little chance we had of finding the voller, I can say.
The torches flared their blazing hair over the shadows and we rode and men shouted and there was much hullabaloo. I took the first opportunity to ride off and lose myself in the darkness.
The Maiden with the Many Smiles made that difficult, for the darkness was a matter of a pink-lit radiance, gloomy only in comparison with the glory of the daytime suns; the torches emphasized the darkness. I slipped away at last and cantered along to where I had left the voller. No one followed.
I had miserably failed in the main elements of my plan. I did not return with the king and Gafard. But the second part of the scheme could still work. I would take the voller and we'd fly out over the inner sea and when the convoy bearing the supplies for the army appeared off the coast we would swoop down and sink and burn the lot.
Yes, that would at least salvage some part of my Jikai.
With a voller of the quality of the airboat we had captured under my command I would be master of the situation.
Grandiloquent ideas burned in my mind. I felt the power of madness and of supernal power flowing through me.
With the airboat I could be master of the coast, and destroy utterly all Genod's plans.
He had no varters that could deal with vollers. The armies of the Hostile Territories and of Havilfar contained high-angle varters, artillery designed to hurl bolts upward and so bring down the flaunting ships of the air. These devices were unknown in the inner sea. I would be unchallenged. I would be unchallengeable.
So it was that with the hateful word “I” ringing in my head I reached the place where the voller had been hidden.
Approaching cautiously, for there had been weapons aplenty in the flier and I did not want an arrow through me, I gave a low-voiced hail.
“Duhrra! Hikdar Ornol!"
The camouflage had been well done. The nik-nik bushes concealed all. My sectrix lumbered on, his hooves near soundless on the sandy soil. The pink and golden moonlight flooded down and away from the interference of the torches’ glow I could see well. I called again, louder.
No answer. Nothing.
The sectrix slipped and skidded down the incline. I was enclosed by the bushy walls. I looked about.
The voller was not there.
I looked again, and shouted, and spurred up and sent the sectrix crashing down into the bottom of the gulley.
Nothing.
The voller was gone.
Just how long I rode up and down, flailing at bushes with my sword, yelling, bellowing, I have no idea.
At last the realization reached me that, in truth, the voller had flown. I could not curse. For the last time I galloped lumpily across the sandy soil, flailing away, and bits of bush flew into the air, spinning in the moon-drenched darkness. The smell of night blooms hung strongly in the air.
Nothing.
No voller.
Duhrra and the men from Zandikar had gone.
I was alone.
Now, if ever, was the time to remember that I, Gadak of the Green, was not and never could be Gadak of the Green.
* * *
Chapter Fifteen
My Lady of the Stars wields a dagger
“The onkers rush upon their own destruction,” said Gafard with great satisfaction.
We sat our sectrixes upon a slight eminence in the nik-nik covered bluffs. The sea sparkled bluely away to our left. The land to the right trended, flat and uninteresting, to a far horizon where heat shimmer broke outlines into blue and purple ghosts. Blown by the wind, drifts of sand swathed the scene below.
Below us and less than half a dwabur away marched the hosts of Zair, advancing to the west. How marvelous they looked, with their many red banners fluttering, the suns striking back in gleam and glint from armor and weapons. Sectrix cavalry trotted on the flanks. Infantry marched at the center. On they came, proud in their might, a splendid army gathered from the fortress cities of Pynzalo and Zimuzz, from the inland towns of Jikmarz and Rozilloi, and from many of the villages of the fertile inland territories.
In all those brave banners of the Red I saw the proud devices, and recognized many of them. Justice and hope marched there, pride and honor. On the right flank, their sectrixes’ hooves sometimes cutting through the surf, trotted a contingent of splendid cavalry on whose red banners the device of the hubless spoked wheel within the circle blazed and coruscated.
Only a small contingent of Krozairs of Zy there were. I guessed that the bulk of the Krzy would be far to the west, fighting with Pur Zenkiren and the two generals of the combined armies there.
<
br /> My heart lifted when I saw that grand and formidable array advancing toward the massed green banners before me.
Gafard, the King's Striker, sat his sectrix and chuckled and ever and anon he pulled that black hawk-beard of his. He had given no further orders after those that had drawn out the army of Magdag into its allotted positions.
Two sennights had gone by since my disastrous debacle on the night the king's voller had been stolen by the famous Krozair, the Lord of Strombor. Although a strict watch was kept against the flyer's return, no more had been seen of her.
I had hoped she would be flying over the host of Zair when they marched to the attack. The Zairians had worked like demons to collect this army to reinforce the armies of the west. Now we had appeared unexpectedly in their path. They attacked recklessly. This was the way they reacted to the descent upon their coasts of the Green of Grodno.
The king and Gafard had been highly delighted.
All thought of investing Pynzalo had been abandoned. The garrison of the city marched in the host fronting us. Gafard had said, “They save us much labor and casualties.” He had slapped his thigh with his riding glove before throwing it to a slave and taking up the metaled war-gauntlets he would wear for the battle. “You ride as aide to me, Gadak. Nalgre and Nath and Insur, with Gontar and Gerigan, will be all I need. Once the battle is joined there will be little need for messages. The army of the king knows what to do!"
“One wonders,” said Gontar, who prided himself that his father was an overlord of Magdag who owned estates requiring ten thousand slaves to run, “if that cramph the Lord of Strombor is with the onkers this day."
“One,” said Gafard, Sea-Zhantil, “sincerely trusts he is not."
They took that to mean the obvious, but I glanced at Gafard—and away smartly, to be sure—and guessed he meant he hoped Pur Dray would not be there to be slain by a casual pike-thrust. Gafard wanted to cross swords with the great Krozair in person, so I said to myself, pondering imponderables.
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