A Life for Kregen

by Alan Burt Akers

  “I said the emperor and I would be alone.”

  Seg did not move.

  I said, “Seg, this handsome young man who has fallen so low is Barty Vessler, the Strom of Calimbrev. And, Barty, you have the honor and pleasure of meeting Seg Segutorio, the Kov of Falinur.”

  Barty opened his mouth, shut his mouth, extended his hand as the pappattu was made. My new friends had said harsh words about Falinur and its kov. But, as always, I could not be harsh on Barty. So I added, casually, “Seg is with us in this.” Here I had to trip daintily around certain subjects. “He is aware of the problem and—”

  “Oh, them,” said Seg. “My girl Silda wanted to go off and be some kind of Jikai Vuvushi. But Thelda didn’t like the idea and I had to bring Silda home.” He glanced at me, and, amazingly, laughed. “She is not at all pleased that Drak has gone off adventuring in Faol.”

  So ho, I said to myself, so the weathervane spins that way, does it...?

  Barty’s news was both stimulating and depressing. Dayra had most certainly been seen and then the local gang of mercenaries who held the district for Layco Jhansi had mewed him and his men up here, together with the local Freedom Fighters. And, one of these, the guerilla chief, was in a right state over his wife. I said: “Dayra first. Then the others, all of them, as many as we can contrive.”

  “I agree. But Dayra isn’t with this bunch of cramphs trying to burn us out.” His words were not idle. Every now and then a varter bolt tied with burning flax would arch up and over and fall into the tower. Sand was flung in strewed winnowed falls to quench the flames.

  “Well, young Barty! Where the hell is she, then?”

  At this he spread his hands helplessly, and winced, and looked more gray and drawn than I liked.

  “My spies got wind of what she came for. That kleesh Zankov has been thoroughly rejected by the Northeast Parties, and so he is seeking an alliance with Jhansi.”

  Seg ran a hand along his longbow. “It will be interesting to meet this Zankov.”

  “But now,” I said. “Right now!”

  “Majister,” said Barty, and his voice shook. “I do not know.”

  “These cramphs are getting troublesome,” said Seg, brushing sparks away as a blazing bolt hit and bounced near us.

  “Where was she last seen, Barty?”

  “Trakon’s Pillars. Jhansi was supposed to be meeting her at a summer villa the old kov had there.”

  “Him,” said Seg, and sniffed. “I’d as lief Naghan Furtway had his Opaz-forsaken kovnate back again.”

  “You know the place, Seg?”

  “Yes. Damned degenerate pest hole. Furtway was a great Jikaida player — you know that, Dray — and the whole place was built like a Jikaida board. Most odd. And devilish, too. I can take you there. But our friends outside grow impatient.”

  A few words soon showed that the mercenaries outside the tower had been reinforced after Hikdar Douron had left for Vondium. We had brought men, yes; but had we brought enough to break through the ring? Barty was all for getting up and bashing on. There were saddle animals stabled in the lower floors. But the Jiktar who ran his guards, a man who could have sat for a portrait to represent the professional, life-time fighting man, shook his head.

  “In my view we are still too few,” said Jiktar Noronfer.

  “Um,” said Seg.

  “We must break out!”

  Barty sank back on the blankets. He looked in bad case.

  Then Jiktar Noronfer, with the infuriating ability of the professional to state a situation as though it was not a matter of life and death affecting him no less than anyone else, said: “They will break in before the flier can return to Vondium for help.”

  Another iron-headed bolt arched over the ancient stone battlements and hit, bouncing. The flames from the tar and bitumen-soaked flax blazed up. The brand skated across the stones straight for us like a comet on a collision course.

  Barty let out a feeble yell. Jiktar Noronfer dived out of the way. The caroming bolt leaped, like a fractious zorca, spat sparks, sizzling with a noise like a cage full of serpents. It roared directly at us.

  I leaped for Barty. Seg — the infernal idiot! — seized up Noronfer’s dropped spear and swung toward the blazing brand. Even as I got Barty up and scrambled him out of the way so Seg with a beautifully lithe skip and jump got the spear point under the iron head of the bolt and heaved. Then he, too, jumped for safety. His cloak was alight. He landed and rolled and I put Barty down as gently as I could contrive and as the flaming bolt reared up and spilled over the stones at our back I leaped on Seg. With my bare hands I batted at the flames and got his cloak ripped off and tossed aside. I was not burned, thank Zair — well, not much, not enough to notice.

  Seg sat up.

  “Thanks, my old dom. We’ve enough light as it is without using me as a living torch.”

  “You maniacal Erthyr nitwit! Why didn’t you jump out of the way?”

  “Never thought you’d get the youngster out of it in time. You were damned quick.”

  “Not as quick as you, you—”

  Seg’s face drew in with pain. His eyes misted. Torchlight hung shadows along his jaw and his cheeks hollowed.

  “Get that tunic off! And the kax! Your wound, when you were slave—”

  “Aye, Dray, aye. It’s plaguing me, devil take it.”

  Seg’s wound had opened and the bloody mess made me go cold. Barty’s needleman was summoned and we kept everyone else away and I made up my mind.

  I made up my mind not as the Emperor of Vallia, not as Dayra’s father, not as a friend to young Barty. I made up my mind because Seg needed immediate and expert attention which the needleman here was not equipped to give. He could insert his acupuncture needles and dull Seg’s pain. But that was not enough. This was just another obstacle and, like all obstacles, must be evaluated and the best course chosen.

  Seg protested vehemently. But I would not be swayed.

  “And Jiktar Noronfer,” I said with emphasis, my face I am sure as hard and merciless as it had ever been. “I see you are a shebov-Jiktar. If you wish to gain the remaining three steps in the Jiktar grade to make zan-Jiktar and, if you are lucky and live, ob-Chuktar, you had best pick up the spear you dropped and fight with us.”

  “I will fight, majister. I do not seek to excuse my conduct.”

  “Make it so.”

  I thought he would come through and fight well, better than well, after the spectacle he had made. But I would keep my eye on him.

  Barty and Seg, of course, both of them, kicked up a frightful indignant racket. But I was prepared in this to be high-handed, very high-handed, even going to the ridiculous length of reminding them that I was, for Vox’s sake, the Emperor of Vallia. Thankfully, it did not come to that sorry pass and they agreed. I turned on Jiktar Noronfer.

  “Wheel me up the leader of the local Freedom Fighters, Jiktar. He ought to know his way around.”

  “Quidang, majister!” barked Noronfer, very businesslike, and clattered off down the stairs to the lower stories.

  Seg looked mighty sullen. Because he, like me, had dipped in the Sacred Pool of Baptism he would live a thousand years and his wounds would heal swiftly and cleanly, leaving no scars. But nature will not always be baulked and his wound had been far more serious than I evidently had realized. He would heal. But that last foolhardy, heroic act had burst the fragile adhesions of the wound’s surfaces. He needed proper rest and attention and that, by Krun, was that. As Kregans say, the situation was Queyd-arn-tung! No more need be said on the subject.

  Barty, too, as I say, had to have his lines read to him. The two wounded men lay side by side, Seg on his side, and glowered at me. At last Seg said, “That flint-fodder outside. You have a good longbow? Mine—”

  “Rest easy and stop chaffering like a loloo over chicks!”

  “Thelda—”

  “I know. In this short time we’ve been away there could be news in Vondium. The whole world can change in an inst
ant.” By Zair! But wasn’t that right! I knew, perhaps none better, how in a twinkling life can make a one-hundred-eighty-degree turn, and stand you on your head, gasping, with nothing ever the same again. “And you can go see if Delia is back, too.”

  “I will. And getting out of here?”

  “The plan calls for us to rush ’em and knife through. It will knock over a dermiflon.” Which is a cast-iron guarantee of success. “Now shut your great fanged wine-spout and let yourself be loaded aboard the voller. And, Seg—”

  “Yes, my old dom?”

  “Take care of yourself. You hear?”

  His smile might be a wan ghost of his old reckless fey laugh; but he mustered up a smile for me. “I hear.” And then, being Seg Segutorio and the best comrade a man could have on two worlds, he barbed in a cutting: “Majister!”

  I winced, and then they came and took Seg and Barty and the other wounded and loaded them into the voller.

  As the flier rose into the air I saw a dark hunched shape lift in an embrasure and the thin pencil mark of a great Lohvian longbow being fully drawn. That was Seg Segutorio for you. Despite his lacerated and bleeding back he was up there and ready to cast down a few deadly shafts to help us. The cramphs out there were flint-fodder, no doubt of it, and I crossed to the battlements and looked down. Three dark figures spun away, arms wide, screeching soundlessly as She of the Veils rose through wreathing mists and shed her fuzzy pink and golden light. Now we would have light enough to see by, light enough to kill by — if we were unlucky or unskilled, light enough to die by.

  The voller vanished into the night and another besieger toppled with a long Lohvian arrow through him. Four times, Seg had shot. I do not think there was another archer in the whole world who could have loosed three — and hit with every shot.

  Losing Seg like this naturally made me think of Inch and Turko and Balass and Oby and the rest. By Krun! Devil take these troubles consuming Vallia. I ought to be out scouring Kregen for my friends.

  Going down to the lower stories I found them choked with saddle animals and calsanys. Jiktar Noronfer was just about to climb back up. He looked annoyed.

  “Beg to report, majister! The local chief — Lol Polisto ti Sygurd — has just got back.” He paused, waiting. I did not amuse him by bursting out with a hot-headed: “Back from where, by Vox!” I looked at him. Noronfer wet his lips, suddenly, and finished in a rush: “His wife has been taken by these rasts and they sent a message. He tried to fight through; but was beaten back.”

  I said: “Was he wounded?”

  “No, majister.”

  I looked again at Noronfer, and, again, he wet his lips.

  I wondered what Barty was coming to. Noronfer was a mercenary, although not yet a paktun despite his rank of Jiktar, and he must have seen the way we were ceasing to employ mercenaries in Vallia. Yes, more than an eye would have to be kept on this one...

  Lol Polisto ti Sygurd lay exhausted on a straw pallet, smothered in blood, not his own, and looked savage and wan and distraught and, also, a useful-appearing fighting man. As the leader of the local resistance fighters warring in guerilla fashion against the minions of Layco Jhansi he must have a fair amount of the yrium, the power to move men to actions of which they deem themselves incapable. I did not smile; but I bent down to shake hands, saying: “Lahal, Tyr Lol Polisto. Tell me; their numbers, their strengths — their weaknesses?”

  “Cramphs, the lot of them!” He struggled to stand up; but I pushed him down, gently. He whooped in a breath. He was a fit, limber man, with dark hair and he reminded me, with Seg in my mind, very much of that master bowman. Now he got out: “At least two hundred of them, swordsmen and Undurkers. Layco Jhansi is determined to have my head and uses the Lady Thelda as bait. By Opaz the Deliverer! I pray she is still safe, she and the child they took with them, the Opaz-forsaken kleeshes.”

  My response was instant, particularly as thinking of Seg’s Thelda brought the plight of this man more sharply into focus. He was clearly suffering anguish. If Jhansi had taken Lol Polisto’s wife Thelda as a hostage, I, for one, had no sanguine hopes for her survival, hers or the child’s.

  I told Lol Polisto the plan and he expressed the opinion that as a plan it would sieve greens very well, which warmed me to him; but that if we swung our swords right merrily enough we should break through with the warriors I had brought. We had, as yet, no wounded to worry our heads over. The saddle animals were made ready, a mixed bunch, and I was found a zorca who, although his single spiral horn was broken, appeared a spirited-enough beast and anxious to get out of the dark and fetid hole in which he found himself penned. We mounted up and the rest grasped the stirrup leathers. Talk about the 92nd charging on the stirrups of the Scots Greys at Waterloo! The big lenken double doors were thrown open with a smash and golden moonlight splashed in. Then we were out, a dark mass of men and animals, roaring out and slap bang into the surprised mercenaries opposite us. It was all a sheerly onward-surging mass tumbling the foe left and right.

  We racketed on, leaping shadows, swarming on, sweeping away in an instant a line of Undurkers who were thrown down and shattered, sent reeling, before they could pull string to chin. We hit the mercenaries and pulped them and then went on, striking fiercely left and right, leaving a trail of bloody corpses bleeding on the churned up dirt.

  The drexer proved admirable for this foul work; and, to be sure, I did my share. But I kept both Lol Polisto and Jiktar Noronfer in my sights as we galloped fiercely on.

  A quick bellow to Polisto directed him to lead on. I hauled my maddened beast up, his polished hooves striking the air, swung him about. The tail of our company pressed swiftly on and now the mercenary cavalry was reacting. Totrixmen appeared like lumbering phantasms from the golden-fretted shadows.

  “Jhansi! Jhansi!” They screeched as they came on. The golden glitter of moonlight ran down their blades.

  “You make a man twist to follow you!” exclaimed Korero, hauling his twin shields up. Only a few arrows sported down. Dorgo the Clis reined up beside me, and Naghan and Targon the other side. Others of the choice band clumped. We formed a small but very knobbly afterguard, a nut these cramphs of mercenary totrixmen would find extraordinarily hard to crack.

  Dorgo had reported on the blasphemies he had witnessed in Dogansmot. These men we faced tonight were very different from that fatuous army of Fat Lango’s, which had sat down and vegetated after the death of its leader; but they shared the same avariciousness for rapine and pillage. We were sharp set for them. On they came, heads bent, weapons glittering, and we faced them, and if I say we were the more vicious and savage and barbaric, well, I think that to be true if understandable, Zair forgive us.

  The two lines clashed and there was a moment of tinker-work before we belted them, belted them in true style, hip and thigh. The totrixmen turned and fled. Someone set up a cheer, but I bellowed out intemperately: “Stow your gab! There will be more of ’em. Now, ride. Ride!”

  We swung our mounts’ heads and gladly galloped off into the golden-tinged darkness.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Lol Polisto ti Sygurd

  Having outdistanced the pursuit we eased our mounts. We intended to be long away from this neighborhood by dawn. We had suffered six casualties, and carried with us ten or so who bore wounds, light or serious. Not one, thank Zair, of my choice band had taken so much as a scratch. They were by way of becoming your well-accomplished band of desperadoes, to be sure.

  Lol Polisto said with a matter-of-fact simplicity that carried more chill conviction than any amount of loud-mouthed bragging: “The cramphs have my wife Thelda and our child and I am going to get them out.”

  “Where?” I said to him, just as quietly.

  “In a camp they’ve set up at Trakon’s Pillars.”

  “Ah!”

  “You know of the accursed place? Surrounded by bogs, deep and dark and treacherous. And decadent too, once you get there. They were proud and gleeful in their triumph.” He held out
a bracelet, a heavy silver thing engraved with strigicaws and graints. “This is a trinket I gave to Thelda, in remembrance of our adventures and our love. They flung it into the fortress of the Stony Korf, with a note tied to it. See.” The note was obscene. It mentioned Trakon’s Pillars. I understood the feelings torturing Lol Polisto.

  “We will ride there, Lol. I think we can perhaps pay a call they do not expect.”

  “Majister!”

  “Aye,” I said. “Aye. Of all Vallia. A thing I do not easily forget.”

  We rode hard all the rest of that night and rested up a couple of burs before dawn. The wounded with a strong escort went off to one of the hide-outs the freedom fighters had set up. Among them was a lop-eared rascal with a lewd grin exposing snaggle-teeth, by name Inky the Chops, who, having been born hereabouts laid claim to a working knowledge of the treacherous pathways through the quagmire of Trakon’s niksuth, the bog area surrounding Trakon’s Pillars. There was no holding Lol, who appealed to me as a fighting man battling for his homeland and his people, and a family man tortured by fears for his wife and child. It was clear that he loved them both deeply, and, I could see, the love was returned. So, in daylight, we pressed on into the bog.

  Mists wreathed the pewter-placid waters and green scum floated and laid carpets for our feet that would have pitched us into the stinking depths had we been foolish enough to trust them. Bladderworts burst, it seemed, just as we passed them, in succession like a royal salute on Earth, and the smells clashed and stank. We wrapped scarves around our noses and pressed on along the spongy ways, with lop-eared Inky the Chops loping ahead. He prodded with a long tufa-tree stick he had slashed off, and every now and again he stopped, and sniffed, and picked his nose, and heaved up a gob, and spat, and then started off along a fresh trail. I put my trust in Zair and followed on, letting the zorca sink his feet where he would, knowing he had sense enough in this.

  Ashy-trees hovered over the ways, their spectral branches splotched, dripping with green and orange slime, like Spanish moss. Clumps of scraggy rusty-black birds rose, squawking in indignation at our trespass. These last I eyed with exasperation and concern. A watchful sentry could mark our progress by those betrayers. They were, in very truth, not unlike the magbirds of Magdag, inhabitants of the land of betrayal and treachery, as I considered them.