“They were impiters. But — they carried men upon their backs!”
At once I remembered what Pur Zazz, the Grand Archbold of the Krozairs of Zy, had spoken to me when we had said Remberee. “I would welcome news, Pur Dray, of your adventures and the sights you encounter. Men say that beyond the mountains, in the Hostile Territories, there are whole tribes who fly on the backs of great beasts of the air.”
And so there were.
Of course, when one considers that men on this Earth have tamed horses and camels and donkeys and ride them as a mere fact of everyday life, and on Kregen men and half-men ride zorcas and voves and sectrixes and yulankas and many more wonderful animals, and given that the impiters and corths we had seen were large enough to support a man’s weight in the air, the wonder would be if there were not men flying birds and beasts, the miracle would be if men did not form aerial cavalries. And so it was that I felt no surprise at Seg Segutorio’s words.
“They did not see us,” I said, “thanks to Seg’s sharp eyes. But, by Zim-Zair, had we four of those flying beasts we could manage this journey to Port Tavetus or Ventrusa Thole with less damage to our feet.”
Delia looked at me sharply. Her surprise was understandable; she knew how much this leisurely progress meant to me and then she smiled as the realization that I really did want to go to Vallia pleased her. And yet, she still felt doubts of the outcome, that I knew. Her father’s reputation was a frightening reality.
“Aye!” said Seg, leaping up. “And we’d soon unravel the knot of how to fly the beasties. They must be well-trained.”
“Assuredly,” I said, “otherwise the riders would either fall off or hang upside down between the beasts’
legs.”
So saying, we gathered our belongings and took up our weapons and continued our journey. Below us, in the valley, an army marched.
At once we sank down below the crest. We looked out and down onto infantry and cavalry and artillery
— different types of varters and catapults — and I heard Seg whistle softly between his teeth.
“Tell me, Seg.”
“It is as though I am Loh-borne again,” he said. His eyes stared with a fey hunger on the marching host.
“It is as though I am looking through the illuminated scrolls of my people — for I tell you, Dray Prescot, that army marching there is an army from the past!”
I said nothing, respecting the mood that had overtaken him. He had told me of the pictures in the illuminated scrolls of his people. They were artifacts common in lands where literacy was not high or widespread, and conveyed stories by many thousands of pictures stretching along scrolls that might be, when rolled up, as thick around as a chunkrah thigh. Many men dedicated their lives and the contents of their paint-pots to producing these items, and many of them were objects of great beauty in their own right, irrespective of the story they told.
Now Seg drew in a shuddery breath. “An army from the past, an army of Loh, marching in all the glory of the empire of Walfarg!”
In my time on Earth and on Kregen I have seen many armies on the march, and there are ways to assess the qualities and the strengths as well as the weaknesses of hosts of marching men. These men below me marched with a swing, in step and in ranks, their spears all slanted at identical angles. Cavalry rode picket. Artillery — strange-looking varters to me, used to the ballistae of the inner sea — all arranged in a neat symmetry. I studied the way in which the army marched, and came to certain conclusions. But it was Delia, watching with us that army of something like ten thousand men, who pointed out the most important observation of all.
“I feel like swearing just like Thelda!” said Delia, crossly. “For — do you see? — they are marching in exactly the same direction as the way we wish to go!”
And — as I said with a nice round Makki-Grodno oath — they were.
There was nothing for it but to wait out their progress and then follow along with the utmost caution, for as Seg and I observed, their scouts were very good.
“Although,” I said, with a trace of dubiousness, “they seem a little too good.”
“How come?”
“Well — they scout ahead, checking every knoll and defile, and they’re spread to the flanks. But it seems to me, somehow, done by rote, as though each man has a drill book in his hand.” The English word was: mechanical. “For instance — if I was commanding that army I would want to know if four desperadoes were lurking on a neighboring hill — there might be more.”
Thelda looked alarmed for an instant, and then she laughed, and tapped me on the bicep, and said, “Oh, Dray! You mean — us!”
Very gravely, I said, “Yes, Thelda.”
As we trailed them Seg relaxed his first incredulous disquiet and told us that the uniforms worn by the soldiers were those of three hundred years or so ago, and I was quite prepared to believe him, for in the main the uniforms of Kregen are colorful, practical affairs that change slowly. Although life and culture on Kregen varies widely from place to place, in general culture is outward-looking and thrusting forward, new lands opening up, new kingdoms raised, new empires being formed. Many new peoples were lifting their fortunes on the debris of the empire of Loh, and here in the Hostile Territories we had stumbled across an army constituted as Loh would have organized it.
“For a moment,” said Seg, and his laugh did not sound genuine to me, “I thought they were an army of ghosts!”
The truth was that in the collapse of the old empire and the inrush of barbarian hordes, fragments of culture from Loh, Lohvian attitudes and customs, had survived. Clearly, this army belonged to a city-state that had retained its Lohvian character. I confess, now, that at that moment the idea cheered me. With a civilized people we might find shelter in this crazy patchwork of Hostile Territories and rest and relax. Why then, do you ask, did I not run down and introduce myself to the army commander?
My friend — whoever you are listening to this tape — if you think that, you have not listened well to my tale of Kregen.
Since the eclipse of the green sun Genodras by the red sun Zim — an event that had entailed direful consequences for me in distant Magdag — the green sun preceded the red in sunrise and sunset. When we camped that night in the amber rays of Zim falling slanting across the land we could see the campfires of the army like a miniature flame-filled reflection of the stars above us. In the morning the army formed up in a welter of heel-clicking and rigidly correct lines; there was much drilling about, parading, and wheeling past fluttering colors before they at last set off. My suspicions of the army spread out below me grew — and shattering confirmation came when that ominous low cloud dashed into sight above a crest a dwabur away.
We watched, fascinated.
The fight was not our concern and we wanted nothing of it. We sheltered in the lee of a crest and watched. We had drunk refreshingly from an upland lake, a little tarn, and we had palines to munch, and we did not wish to become embroiled in what was going on between the Lohvian army and the boiling mass of wing-beating animals and ferocious men. The flying armada came on with cloud-driven swiftness and immediately began a long series of diving attacks on the men on the ground. These reacted with all the strict order of men obeying the rule book. And this was where I saw the weaknesses I had suspected revealed. Their dispositions for combating the aerial attack were excellent, but the manner in which they carried out their instructions left them shattered and confused.
The flying beasts were impiters, right enough, possibly the same group we had seen before, possibly another tribe. The men perched on their backs were too distant to discern properly, but I guessed they would possess some, at least, of the attributes of humanity along with their obvious bestiality.
“Look at them!” screamed Thelda, and Seg had to reach up a hand to drag her down, so carried away by excitement was she.
The flying beasts would swoop down and the men on their backs would loose arrows or fling javelins. Then they would zoom up
again and reverse to swoop again. The Lohvians were shooting upward, and many flying beasts fell, but the army was split, segments were running wildly. The whole confused area before us became covered with hundreds of separate combats.
“No, no, no!” Seg was saying, over and over. His eyes betrayed his excitement. His hands kept gripping into fists and relaxing, gripping and relaxing. He held his longbow now, and I said, softly: “Seg?”
He looked at me with blank, drugged eyes. He breathed very quickly.
“They are of Loh!”
“You are of Erthyrdrin, Seg. But, if you will it. .”
I started to bend my longbow and Delia said: “No!”
“No, Dray! This is madness! Suicide!”
“Oh, Dray!” wailed Thelda.
Only one woman in two worlds could hope to sway me in any decision I make, right or wrong. I, Dray Prescot, hesitated. .
And then a dark shadowed shape gusted above us and there were a dozen great winged beasts circling us and circling, too, the dazed little group of riders who had spurred their mounts at the hill in the hopes of riding beyond it to safety.
The riding beasts were nactrixes, cousins of the familiar sectrixes, with their six legs and their blunt heads; but they were deeper of chest and taller, with an altogether more hardy look about them. Their slatey-blue hides were covered with a more profuse coat of hair, which was trimmed and cropped. The riders were officers, with sumptuous saddle gear and brocaded cloths, with as much finery about their mounts as about themselves. Some attempted to shoot their arrows aloft, but absolute concern over their own safety drove them on and the shafts flew wide of their marks. Thelda screamed.
Seg cursed. He drew, let fly, and his shaft hurtled true to bury itself in the body of one of the aerial attackers.
Even as the screech rang out and the great body pitched from the sky my own shaft winged its way to its mark.
At once Seg and I were in action. All about us beat the massive pinions of the impiters, shining and heavy, feather-flurried in the wind of their smiting. We dodged and ducked and avoided the flung javelin and the loosed shaft. In return our own shafts plunged home in wing and belly, in breast and head. I saw three of the barbaric riders shriek and topple from their high saddles, to swing wildly from restraining straps as their mounts struggled to stay aloft.
“Your back, Dray!”
Delia’s voice.
I swung about and ducked and saw the monstrous talons graze past my head. They swerved with the swaying of the impiter’s body and closed about the head and shoulders of a man upon a nactrix and dragged him screaming upward. Seg loosed and a blast of air from a slashing wing deflected his shaft. I saw another swooping flying-monster, and the creature upon its back, vicious, with narrow-set eyes and square clamped mouth, whose hair floated freely aft of his blunt head in a waving mane, dyed all a brilliant indigo. I saw the maleficent glare in those close-set eyes and I dodged the flung javelin, seizing it as it spun past in the empty air, and reversing it and hurling it back so that its flint head smashed into the leem-skin pelt and copper and bronze ornaments on the man’s chest. The impiter swerved away, but I saw its rider jerk and open that square mouth and cough a bright stream of his life’s blood. A nactrix trailing its intestines galloped madly past. Its rider fell sprawling at my feet, and I bent and lifted him as an arrow feathered into the grass beside us. His young, pale face sheened with sweat; one eye was closed and swelling purple-black and his fiery-red hair clotted into a great wound across his scalp.
“Take your sword and fight them off!” I said, twisting him upright. His eyes widened and the horrified look of absolute panic on his face creased away into the semblance of sanity amid an insane world. He drew his sword — a toothpick compared with the great long swords worn by Seg and myself — and put himself into something of the stance of a fighting-man. Thelda was still screaming.
I saw Seg loose three arrows so fast that all were in flight together before all three smote their targets, and three more of the indigo-haired aerial attackers shrieked and slumped in their flying straps. My own bow sang and another square-mouthed man astride his impiter sagged back, and, writhing horribly, slid down and under his mount’s neck so that its wings smashed remorselessly into his body as it sought to struggle upward.
Around us the sward was splashed with blood, nactrixes lay dead, with the bodies of their riders; but the young man whom I had forcibly pushed back from the pit of madness waved his sword, his red hair bright under the morning suns, and shouted brave, silly, vain words of defiance. Seg gasped and loosed again and an impiter in its flight went straight on, with extended wings, straight on into the ground with the arrow imbedded through its eye into its brain. I started across to deal with the rider, who leaped free very nimbly, and drew a long and thin sword. His leem pelt glowed with the dyes lavished upon it, his bronze buckles and buttons burnished to a blazing brilliance blinded me in the brilliant suns-shine. Still with my longbow in my left hand I drew my long sword with my right. He faced me most determinedly, aware that he had only to fight me off to be saved by his companions. Over his shoulder I saw one of his comrades shake the reins of his flying beast, drive in his leather-wrapped legs and feet, and wheel that monstrous bulk toward me, and I prepared myself to face two enemies at once.
“Hai!” yelled my man on the ground, and charged.
Meeting his blade with a solid shock, I caught that sliver of fine steel, looped it around, and thrust and with the thrust went on with my lunge, doubling up and jerking the brand free from his belly, doubling up and rolling over on the ground. I felt the beat of immense wings and felt the cold downrush of air. Almost, I made it; but a raking talon smashed searingly down my side, knocking the breath from my lungs and sending gouts of racking pain through me.
I could understand and deal with pain. I staggered up, gasping for air, still clutching my sword, and turned to see Delia being whisked aloft in the cruel clutching talons of an impiter. I shouted — something, I know not what — as I saw my Delia being whipped up. The attackers were retreating now, unwilling to lose more men to these merciless foemen below. Then, from somewhere, a blow sledged down on my head and I pitched forward into the bloodied grass. I rolled over sluggishly. Then I could not move. I lay there, seeing Seg topple as a last flung javelin bounced from his leg. I lay there and watched that accursed impiter as it sailed away bearing my Delia fast-clenched in its claws. The thing upon its back waved its spear and screeched in a high mocking crow of victory and revenge.
My Delia was gone, snatched away by as vile and merciless a being as any I had seen. Lost and gone, my Delia of Delphond, lost and gone. . With the blackness that closed over me closed also complete and utter despair.
Chapter Eleven
Assassins in the corthdrome
The performance of Sooten and Her Twelve Suitors presented in the covered theater aroused intense enthusiasm from the audience, and although I quite admired this tragedy known almost over the entire Kregen world of culture, the action irritated me, the words seemed trite, the melodious phrases mere cant. The crack on my skull had healed with the customary rapidity of wounds inflicted on my carcass, a useful by-product of my immersion in the pool of baptism of the River Zelph that had given me the promise of a thousand years of life.
But of what use or goodness or value were a thousand years if my Delia of the Blue Mountains was not there to share them with me?
A kind of psychic numbness had overtaken me. Seg had been wounded, also, and was being nursed back to health and strength in this city of Hiclantung, which he appeared to regard in much the same way as a denizen of my own time living in a remote corner of Cornwall would regard a recreation of Chaucer’s London. As for Thelda, I had to resort to lies and trickery to obtain some respite from her constant lamentations and protestations and tears. At this moment she was under the impression I was lying fast asleep in the apartments given over to our use in the villa of red brick and white stone situated on a southern decli
vity of the city just a comfortable ten murs’ walk within the walls. Sooten, in her interminable trickeries of the clamoring suitors — something, I fear, of a Kregan Penelope — wearied me in my numb and dissociated mood. All savagery and wild anger had shriveled. Without Delia the whole universe meant nothing.
If you marvel that we, three friendless wanderers, had so fallen on our feet as to have a comfortable villa in the Loh style given over to our use, I can remember my feelings then. The young man I had snapped into a semblance of sanity had, as was clearly evident from his trappings and hauteur, a high post in the army of Hiclantung. Young Hwang — for such was his name with the very necessary additions of many sonorous titles and ranks and indications of estate-holdings — was the nephew of the Queen of the city, and although we had made her acquaintance in the most formal of ways she yet remained a stranger to us. Yet, it was she who in gratitude had given orders that we were to be well-treated. Seg had wrinkled up his nose about this Queen, but he refused to comment when Thelda chided him. There is no real coincidence in this train of events. Any fighting-man knows that on an open battlefield if he renders some distinguished service to a man dressed in brilliant uniform or otherwise marked for a man of distinction, then the gratitude of the powerful can be expected — ceteris paribus — and he may expect to benefit from that action. We had saved the Queen’s nephew. So we were rewarded. I would gladly have consigned all the Queen’s nephews in the whole of Kregen to the Ice Floes of Sicce to have my Delia back.
A hand touched my arm.
“You are bored with the entertainment, Dray Prescot?”
“I know the piece well, Hwang, and admire the dexterity of construction — after all, I am told there are fragments of this play extant on clay tablets dating from five thousand years ago. But no; it’s not the play. I am at fault.”
Hwang, despite his somewhat foppish manner and his desperate loss of identity on a battlefield, was nonetheless for that a fine young man from whom something better than average might be made given the lad was conceded a chance. Now he laughed and said: “I can show you more full-blooded sport if you wish.”
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