A Life for Kregen

by Alan Burt Akers

  “Useful,” growled Targon. “Aye, majister, and overdue.”

  The riding animals were gone and so we must walk. So we did. I reflected that the reasons that had impelled my fellows to choose a double-walled entrance, so that they might obtain uniforms without arousing suspicions inside, and the reasons impelling Vaxnik, that we would have a double chance of being caught, had coincided nicely. My band would have wrought fearful havoc looking for me: chance only had decreed we should meet when we did. Now chance, or fate, decreed we should walk.

  We reached an area somewhat less boggy than most and opened the leather bag carried by Brun. Its provender gave us all a slender meal, and then it was done. Ros the Claw was brought out. I told her that she would walk, seeing she was so limber and lithe a lass, and that Hyr Brun would carry Vaxnik. She was amenable to this, having an affection for the boy.

  No one knew a certain way out of the bog, and so we walked in as straight a line as we could contrive. We knocked over a few risslacas on the way, and Brun smashed in the head of one ugly monster with a single swipe of that giant sword. We kept alert for sounds of pursuit on the backtrail. We heard none and so got clean away. At last we emerged from the miasmic labyrinths of Trakon’s niksuth and breathed in air that tasted like best Jholaix.

  “However,” said Targon, hitching his belt. “We are as like to be out of the frying pan and into the fire. All this country would as lief chop us as say a cheery Llahal.”

  “They would find us a prickly mouthful,” I said.

  That night we made a cheerless camp; but were able to catch up on our sleep. Our sentries reported all’s well during the hours of darkness and by dawn we sat up, hungry and thirsty, and contemplated the labors of the day.

  I do not propose to give a blow-by-blow account of the shifts we were forced to in the ensuing days. We headed south and we foraged for food and we picked up a few riding animals here and there; but of fliers we saw no sign. During this period I was obsessed with what was going on in Vondium, and cursing myself that I should have been so blind or foolhardy as to leave the center at this moment. That no other invasion armies had been reported now, in retrospect, appeared to me, tortured by guilt, to be totally irrelevant.

  Dayra, quite naturally, would say nothing about her plans or the voves. I am a zorca and a vove man, each superb animal supreme in the tasks nature has intended for each. The vove — well, yes, there is the supreme riding animal of Paz, as I understood then. Powerfully built, large, with eight muscle-packed legs, the vove boasts both fangs and horns through his mingled ancestry, and a coat of a glorious russet color. He is exceptionally ferocious to those he does not know. And he will run and run until his heart bursts asunder, for his strength and his loyalty are well-matched; but his devotion is the stronger.

  The obvious answer to the problem was an ugly one. Zankov must have gone to Segesthes, the large sprawling eastern continent of the Paz grouping, and there contracted an alliance at best, or a mercenary undertaking as the more probable, with clans hostile to the clans owing allegiance to me as their Zorcander and Vovedeer. Hap Loder, my old blade comrade and the man who stood in my stead with the clans of Felschraung and Longuelm and Viktrik — and any others he had taken over lately — had been with us to the Sacred Pool. He must have been pitchforked back to the Great Plains of Segesthes. Well, I could send a flier to him — when we got back to Vondium, Drig take it — but the logistical problems involved in shipping an army of the massive voves staggered. Phu-Si-Yantong could have done it. The galleons of Vallia could do it. The skyships of Hamal could do it. And, by the disgusting diseased entrails of Makki Grodno, so could the ships of the great enclave city of Zenicce.

  That was the answer. And here was I, traipsing about like a loon in the backwoods of Vallia instead of being in Vondium.

  It was enough to make a man swear off strong drink for life.

  No, I will not go into that journey or into my state of mind.

  The occasion is worth a mention when, during the night of storms when the wind blew streamers of screaming fury across the sky and the moons remained hidden so that the world became bathed in darkness like a night of Notor Zan, Hyr Brun, Vaxnik and Dayra escaped. They hardly escaped. They simply staggered off into the darkness, holding on to one another and with Brun like a massive anchor to hold them to the earth. They vanished within a couple of arms’ lengths and we did not see them again, or for a very long time thereafter.

  In order to bolster my failing sense of direction and to give some semblance of rationality to what I was doing, to counter the absolute loss and waste of my efforts with Dayra, I told myself that this journey had been worthwhile for the rescue of Thelda and my discovery of the misery in store for Seg and Thelda, and for Lol Polisto, too. So I told myself.

  In the fullness of time we trailed into Vondium.

  We had obtained vollers for the last part of the trip and when I vaulted out on the high landing platform of the palace and searched the faces of those who waited to greet us for just the one, and failed to see her, I felt another and more treacherous feeling of loss. I needed Delia near me now.

  And then — well, I looked again at the faces of the crowd.

  Glum. Drawn. Haggard. Cast down as though sent reeling by some ghastly catastrophe. Many of the women were mourning. A chill gripped me. And, of course, I already knew. But I did not know the full horror of what had befallen the pride of Vondium, capital of the Empire of Vallia.

  Kyr Nath Nazabhan, a good comrade, a fine fighting man, commander of the Phalanx, Kapt, was so cast down in his pride that at first he would not look at me, merely cast himself down in the full incline, trembling, clad in black, contrite, ashamed, grief-stricken — and guilty.

  “For the sweet sake of Opaz, Nath! Stand up straight and tell me. Openly and honestly, as we are comrades.”

  “Majister — majister — the army. My Phalanx...”

  “Voves, was it?”

  His gray-carved face looked up. “Majister? How could you know that?”

  “You forget, the Emperor of Vallia has eyeballs everywhere.”

  Well, how can one remain unamused and not essay a feeble jest in the face of disaster?

  So the story came out, brokenly, the grim, ugly, cold story.

  I sat at my desk in that book-lined room with the maps and the weapons, and presently Nath was persuaded to sit across from me. He stabbed the map as he spoke. Lines, arrows, routes of penetration, ambush and surprise, and, at the end, the battle. News had reached Vondium that an army had at last been sighted, an army marching southwest from Vazkardrin on the east coast. I nodded. Vazkardrin lay between the coast and the Kwan Hills which demarcated the borders of Hawkwa country thereabouts. Zankov clearly had inserted his tendrils of power into the vadvarate of Vazkardrin, which had been run by canny old Vad Rhenchon, a numim, who had always kept himself unaligned in the struggles of power politics. Zankov had taken over with his cronies and his renegade Hawkwas and provided a secure base for the arrival of the clans carried in Zeniccean ships from Segesthes. It had to be.

  Southward of Vazkardrin lay the imperial province of Jevuldrin. That was flat country, ideal, as Nath said, for the maneuvers of the Phalanx. It was also ideal cavalry country. And there is no cavalry in all of Paz, so I thought, to compare with vove chivalry. The only animal and human thing to stand against a vove charge was another vove charge...

  “We shipped out,” said Nath. Then he caught himself, and paled, and ground his fists together. “No, majister. I shipped them out. Me. I did it. Every sailing skyship we had. Every last one. We — I — took the First and Second Phalanxes, leaving the Third here. The churgur infantry, the axemen, the spearmen, three quarters of the cavalry of all kinds. And the artillery. We were a brave sight.” He swallowed. “A brave sight.”

  “Yes.”

  “We landed and formed. And then came a storm, a monstrous storm. The sailing ships of the sky could not stand before it but had to run.”

  In the
skirts of that storm Dayra and her friends had run, too...

  “So,” I said. “Farris could do nothing with his air?”

  “Nothing. The army formed on the second day. Magnificent, magnificent. You should have seen them, majister—”

  “I wish,” I said, with a note of dryness in my voice I could not withhold. “I wish I had.”

  Nath understood and he bowed his head.

  “We stood as we had been trained. The Phalanx resplendent in crimson and bronze. The paean was chanted and the songs sung. And we advanced. And they rode like an avalanche, like the wind, like the irresistible tides of the ocean. The voves...” For a space he could not go on.

  Well, in Vallia they ride the nikvove, the half vove, and that is indeed a fine animal. But he does not have the fangs and the horns, does not have the sheer crushing battering bulk. A vove, it is half believed, could knock down a church steeple. I have ridden in many a vove charge, coursing knee to knee with my clansmen, charging headlong into the massed ranks of the enemy clan. Terrible, a whirlwind of destruction, the vove charge. I did not want to think what had happened to my Phalanxes. But I had to. I was responsible. Not Nath. I had warned him, oft and oft, against fighting unsupported against sword and shield men, the churgur infantry. But he had believed implicitly that the Phalanx could defeat any cavalry charge, any cavalry charge at all.

  “There were many casualties?”

  He could only nod.

  “And the army?” I riffled out well-thumbed papers. “Here are the lists. Take up this pen and strike through the formations that no longer exist.”

  He did as he was bid. As the pen scratched with a vicious stab across the paper, time after time, I felt the cold clench around my heart. Most of the fine Army of Vondium had been swept away.

  People talk of an army being decimated, not knowing what the word means, intending to imply wholesale destruction. We had been far worse than decimated. We had lost far more men than a mere one in ten. The units had been drastically thinned, the ranks devastated. That army had to be written off.

  That campaign had been lost. This was not Jikaida. Those men had not been swept up in the cupped hand to be placed back in the velvet-lined box, to be brought out again all fresh for the next game. They were gone forever. They were dead.

  “The Third is still here,” I said. “With its Hakkodin and three regiments of archers and spearmen. There are two regiments of zorcamen, four of totrixmen and one of nikvove-men. Artillery is thin, but can cover.” I looked at Nath. “This army of clansmen from Segesthes was not brought against us by that Opaz-forsaken Wizard of Loh. His ruse is still hanging. We still have him to contend with. This cramph Zankov — he brings the clans against us.”

  “Nothing has happened in the southwest. Fat Lango’s army stagnates. The man you saw, Kov Colun Mogper of Mursham, has disappeared. Had he assumed the command—”

  “Thank Opaz he did not. But, Nath, mayhap he has gone to command the real army from Yantong against us.”

  Nath spread his hands. “We are doomed, it seems.”

  “No.” I rubbed my nose. “No. I do not think so. I remember a man called Filbarrka. He is a great zorca man, the Filbarrka na Filbarrka. He and I have talked about zorcas and voves and his theory is overripe for the testing.” I stood up. “You and Farris, and everyone else, must rebuild the army. Work hard and work fast and work well. I am for the Blue Mountains.”

  “The Blue Mountains? But—”

  “Yes. But I fancy Filbarrka has not taken kindly to a damned invasion from anyone. Build up the army. And stay close. If I am wanted, ask in the Blue Mountains.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  We Gamble on Filbarrka’s Zorcamen

  Certain important tasks had to be completed before I could leave. I went to see Barty, who was up and pacing about, rotating his arm and bristling to get back into action. I told him to see about raising fresh regiments. We had lost a doleful number of good men; but there were others, and the spirit of the people, with that stoical and yet fierce Vallian integrity, rose to the crisis. New armies would be formed. He wanted to go off adventuring with me until I convinced him he was more valuable in Vondium. As to Dayra, I told him what had happened, and he blamed the storm again, this time not for wafting away an air fleet leading to the destruction of an army. I wondered. Perhaps I had secretly wanted my daughter to run off again. Perhaps I could not face the meeting between her mother and me and her... Had I wanted to keep her close I could have hobbled her feet and tied up Hyr Brun and Vaxnik.

  Then, with a mere continuation of my feelings, I went to see Seg. He mended. That cheered me. Very soon, he told me, he would be back fighting fit. He, too, wanted to come with me. I told him, sternly, to get well first. I could not speak of Thelda. How could I? He did not know. The hateful thought occurred to me that perhaps Lol and Thelda were dead already. They had not flown to Vondium, and had no reason to, since they resisted the occupation of Falinur.

  All of life during this period was a pickle. Delia was away, Seg’s problems and Barty’s problems weighed on me. Jilian cheered me up a little; but she was busy doing just what she had said she would, and I stole a half-bur to watch her Jikai Vuvushis at practice.

  “By Vox, Jilian. They frighten me. Opaz knows what they will do to the enemy.”

  “Not a one of them has been through Lancival and so none wears the — wears the claw. But they come on apace.” She looked ravishing, seductive in her black leathers. I thought of Dayra and I could not find a smile. She went on to talk of the disaster to the Army of Vondium, which had taken place near a little village called, ominously, Sicce’s Gates, from the eons-old cracks in the earth nearby which led down so deeply into the crust of the planet none had ever ventured to the bottom. The Battle of Sicce’s Gates would be recorded in agony and lamenting in the records of those times kept by Enevon Ob-Eye. I bid Jilian farewell and took myself off to the landing platform.

  Farris, with a pinched look, had spared me a fast single-place airboat. My mission demanded urgency. I missed the fond preparations made by Delia on these occasions, and shifted for myself in the matter of provisions. Be sure I took many wicker hampers. My armory remained as it had been, it had served me well so far.

  Observing the fantamyrrh with care as I went aboard I called down the Remberees. Barty had come up to wish me all speed with Opaz. I had a hell of a game with Korero and the others. But the voller was a single-place job and that, it seemed to me, was that.

  “I will send for you when the Lord Farris can place a sizable voller at our disposal. But the defense of Vondium is vital and our air fleet — well—” I did not go on.

  That dratted storm had not only blown the sailing fliers away from Sicce’s Gates, it had destroyed the majority of them. Farris was busily rebuilding. And we had cut down forests to build those ships...

  It would be infantile and pompously stupid of me to suggest that my brief reappearance in Vondium had made a vastly impressive increase in the recuperation of the people from the debacle. But more than one old sweat had said that, by Vox, now I was back and safe they could get on with drilling the coys and look forward to knocking the daylights out of those zigging vovemen. Off on my travels again, I prayed that Farris and Nath and Barty and all the others — including Seg when he had recovered — would, indeed, recreate the Army of Vondium.

  For much of the journey the River of Shining Spears paralleled my course. Once I had taken a roundabout way to the Blue Mountains, by way of Delphond, riding a hired zorca. I felt that Korf Aighos would have dealt very harshly with the invaders of Delia’s country. Filbarrka ran the wide plains country at the foot of the Blue Mountains in the fork of the two rivers, and that country, I believed, was the best zorca country in Paz. Now I was going to put to the test the theories Filbarrka held. Despite all the long series of misfortunes, despite what had happened, despite my intense sensation of loneliness, despite the foreboding dread with which I viewed the future in spite of my brave words, I sti
ll experienced a profound excitement at what was proposed.

  Vallia swirled past below and I ate roast vosk sandwiches and drank superb Kregen tea brewed on the little spirit stove packed within a sturm-wood box. I looked up. Yes, there he was, the Gdoinye, the giant raptor of the Star Lords. A beautiful scarlet and golden bird, glistening in the mingled rays of the Suns of Scorpio, he flew lazily above me, looking down with one beady eye from his sideways cocked head. The Star Lords wanted to know my doings. Well, I felt the uplifting sense that I was far more involved with what I was doing in the here and now, attempting to hold Vallia together, than in the machinations of the Everoinye, who could hurl me back to Earth, four hundred light years away, at a whim.

  There appeared to be no sign of the white Savanti dove.

  More out of habit than with a positive feeling of enmity, I shook my fist at the Gdoinye. He slanted a wing, and flew away. I went back to my food, and scooped a fistful of palines.

  There was a squish pie in the hamper and I thought of Inch, and sighed, and so prepared to finish the long flight and bring the flier to earth. I did not anticipate too much trouble in finding Filbarrka. He would be leading the resistance and, I felt sure, the local people would be solidly on his side, the Vallian side, against the mercenaries and flutsmen and aragorn who had flooded in on the misery of Vallia. A few careful inquiries in out of the way places, and I would be directed to him. I just had to steer clear of the occupation forces.

  These things worked out to plan and I caught up with Filbarrka as, big, bluff, red-faced, happily twitching his fingers together, he watched his zorcamen run rings around a hapless party of totrixmen. I landed the flier and walked across, aware of the bows bent against me. But Filbarrka recognized me and bellowed a cheerful greeting.

  “Lahal, majister! I am glad to welcome you to the fun. See how the rasts run!”