Farris looked pleased. He smiled and rubbed his hands.
“Now these debased descendants of a decadent empire will see what a new nation can do!” His orders were given in a calm and matter-of-fact tone of voice that heartened me. During that fight as the winged hordes of Umgar Stro fell on us I was mightily impressed by the way the air service men of Vallia handled themselves. Their swivel-mounted varters coughed a steady stream of projectiles. Impiters fell fluttering from the sky. Archers using smaller bows than those of Loh, it is true, took a toll. Any Ullar venturesome and lucky enough to gain a footing on the deck was instantly cut down. The Vallians, in this kind of aerial fighting, did not deign to disregard the effective uses of a boarding pike. With my long sword, which they looked at with a kind of amused awe, I joined in. The battle, in a sense, came to me as an anticlimax. Delia was safe, now, and before us lay the flight to Vallia and then the meeting with her father, that imperious, relentless, awe-inspiring man, the emperor of all Vallia.
At last the impiters and their Ullar warriors gave up.
We forged on across the landscape of the Hostile Territories as gradually the twin suns, Zim and Genodras, sank to the horizon. I took stock of this Vallian airboat, this Lorenztone. She was all of fifty feet long and her widest beam, which came some two-fifths of her length aft, was twenty feet. Her leanness of appearance came from the sheer of her bows and the sweep of her stern where the sterncastle raised. Varters lined the bulwarks much after the fashion of the broadside guns of the ships of Earth with which I was familiar. Somewhere below her deck in a safe place would be that mysterious mechanism — mysterious to me then — by which this bulk was upheld in thin air. The designs on the many flags she bore surprised me with their functional formality; but some were so embroidered that leems and risslaca, graints and zhantils as well as chank and sectrix, figured in that fluttering panoply.
An obliging crewman found me a length of cloth. He handed it to me expecting me to wrap my nakedness in it. It was green. I merely wiped the bloodied blade of my long sword upon it, carefully, mindful of the way that young tearaway of a Vallian, Vomanus, had so carelessly wiped his ornate rapier, and handed it back. From a great pile of flying silks I selected a length of blazing scarlet. This, with as always a pang of memory, I wrapped around my waist, drew up between my legs, and tucked the end in. Delia came up with a broad leather belt, of a leather I did not then recognize, soft and pliable, with a massive silver buckle. With this I kept the breechclout in place.
“There will be no scabbard for your great sword, Dray; not until we can have one stitched up for you.”
“No matter. It can hang at my side naked, with a fold of cloth to keep me from being cut-”
After the action the reaction — we were both just making noises. The airboat rushed on through the sky levels. Delia looked at me, her head a little to one side, her face grave.
“Seg? And — Thelda?”
I shook my head.
She gave a little gasp, immediately choked off, and lowered that mane of glorious brown hair, shining in the dying light, and put her dear head into my shoulder. So for a space we stood there on the deck of the airboat as the twin suns sank and the strange and yet familiar constellations crept into the night sky with three of the lesser moons of Kregen hurtling low over the horizon.
Presently we were called away for food and we sat to a fine aerial feast in the aft cabin. The Chuktar, the Lord Farris of Vomansoir, introduced his officers and other high dignitaries who had been assigned the craft searching for the emperor’s daughter. I caught at some of the conversations, guessing at hidden meanings, trying to sort out the people who would not object to Delia marrying me from those who took a violent exception. I did not think I would meet any Vallian who would actively wish me to marry Delia
— not even Vomanus, if I cared to dwell on it.
I noticed one young man, with a mane of blond hair and a frank and open face, with that high beaked nose of the Vallians — a characteristic in noses that I myself shared — and took particular notice of him after he had said, with a light laugh: “I have never seen so large a sword wielded so expertly, my Lord of Strombor. I venture to think that a regiment of cavalrymen well-versed in its use would rattle even the best infantry line.”
His name was Tele Karkis, and he did not appear to be the lord of anywhere, which was refreshing. He was a Hikdar. If I paint him in flat and stereotyped colors, it is because that was how be appeared to be then, when I first met him. I leaned over the table to help myself to a handful of palines, and before I popped the first luscious morsel into my mouth, I said: “And on what steed would you mount these hypothetical cavalrymen of yours, Hikdar Karkis?”
He laughed, not easily, but without unease. “I have heard of the voves your Clansmen ride on the Great Plains of Segesthes, my Lord of Strombor.”
I nodded. “I hope,” I said with the politeness habitual to the cultured Vallian, “that you will have the opportunity one day to pay us a visit and be our guest.”
Then Lorenztone shuddered and lurched and Chuktar Farris spilled his wine and reared away from the table.
“By Vox!” he said. “I’d like to teach those rasts of Havilfar how to build like honest men!”
A man with a face I had taken no notice of at first sight, and thereby should have been warned, let out a string of oaths that were mere fancy verbiage, and quite fit for the ears of a lady, even for a princess. He was one Naghan Vanki, the lord of domains on one of the outlying islands of Vallia. He wore, unlike the air service men and the soldiers and court dignitaries, a simple silver and black outfit in the Vallian style. There was more about him than his name to remind me of Naghan, the Hiclantung spy. We all went on deck.
The airboat was sinking and nothing the crew could do would bring her up. In the event we camped for the night among thorn-ivy bushes by a stream and were not too uncomfortable. Delia and I were quartered well away from each other, as was proper. As we prepared for sleep we all talked in a low-key kind of grumbling way about the profiteers of Havilfar. The name of Pandahem also figured in the conversation, usually with a round Vox-like oath or two.
A fire was built and we sat around it for a last cup of warmed wine. Naghan Vanki kept on making casually sarcastic remarks about barbarians, and uncouth individuals, and praising the civilization of Vallia. Delia shifted uncomfortably as he spoke. I saw well enough he was digging at me, but I did not care. Was I not with my Delia of Delphond once again, on the way to Vallia, if temporarily halted until repairs could be effected, and was not the future rosy with prospect?
“The Emperor raised heaven and earth to seek you, Princess,” said Farris, smiling now the mission was successful. “You mean a very great deal to him and to all the people of Vallia.”
“I am grateful, Farris. I am also aware that I mean a very great deal to my Lord of Strombor, as he to me. Remember that.”
“Still,” said young Tele Karkis, unthinkingly, “it is going to be an ordeal, standing up to the Emperor.” He spread his hands. “I would not relish crossing him-”
“Hikdar!” said Farris, and at his Chuktar’s words young Karkis colored up and fell mute. But the seed had no need to be sown; everyone there knew the ordeal I faced, and I guessed many of them secretly wondered if I had the nerve to go through with it.
Truly, all I had heard of Vallia warned me off the place.
The warmed wine we drank was a good vintage. I remember that. It came from the province of Gremivoh, so I was told, and was much favored in the air service. It held a sweet and yet bitter savor unfamiliar to me.
Delia leaned close just before we parted for sleep.
“You do not truly wish to go to Vallia, dearest?”
“Can you ask!” I took her hand in the firelight. “I shall go to Vallia and face your father, never fear.”
“But-” she began. And then: “Yes, dear heart, I know you will.”
Perhaps, I thought then, being back with her own people had shaken her belief in
me; perhaps she had been shocked by my own uncouth ways into seeing me in a new light. I tried to shrug that feeling off, but it persisted.
I crawled into my blankets and silks and yawned. I felt sleepy — not surprisingly, perhaps, but — ah, if we could foretell the future, then-!
I awoke in the morning as the twin suns of Scorpio sent down daggers of fire through my eyes into my brain to find myself rolled into a hole beneath a thorn bush.
I staggered out, cursing the pricks, and looked about.
The airboat was gone.
Alone, I stood among the thorn-ivy bushes on that endless plain of the Hostile Territories, and as I stood I heard a screech from above and I looked up and there, floating in wide hunting circles above, the gorgeous golden and scarlet raptor of the Star Lords surveyed me with a bright and implacable eye. I shook my fist at the Gdoinye.
A moment later the white dove of the Savanti flew into sight, but, this time, the birds ignored each other. They surveyed me for a few moments and then turned and flew away. Whatever my plight it did not interest either the Star Lords or the Savanti, then.
My position was perilous in the extreme. I had the mother and father of headaches, and a stomachache, to boot, and I realized — dolt that I was — that something in the food or the wine of the previous evening had poisoned me. Whether or not the intention had been to poison me to death I did not know. I stood up, feeling grim, and looked about.
Some way off a blazing spot of scarlet caught my eye.
The remains of the campfire and discarded rubbish showed where we had camped. The marks the airboat had made were still fresh; evidently the technicians among the crew had repaired the craft working overnight. I walked across to the scarlet patch.
It was a length of scarlet silk wrapped about my own long sword, a rapier and main-gauche, a bow and a quiver of arrows and, tucked in at the end, a water bottle and a satchel of provisions. I was not fool enough to believe these had been left for my good.
Whoever had drugged me and had me dumped here had also taken the trouble to leave these items, typical of those a man would need if he must survive in a hostile territory, so as to color the impression that I had left voluntarily and surreptitiously. The plot had worked. The people aboard Lorenztone must believe I had run away because I was unable to face meeting their emperor. And the people aboard included Delia — my Delia of Delphond!
Did she believe I had left her? Could she believe?
I did not think so — but. . But so much pointed to a desire on my part to evade going home with her. However much I tried to tell myself my fears were groundless, that she would keep faith in me, the more I doubted. I was in low spirits. My guts hurt, my head throbbed like the freshly cut-out heart of a graint, my limbs trembled, and my vision blurred.
I snatched up the Krozair long sword.
This I believed in — I had been cruelly wronged. My beloved had been snatched from me, and I could not blame her if she believed the worst of me. I could imagine how the situation would look, and the pressures that would be brought to bear on her to renounce her love for me. Well, the Star Lords clearly had had no hand in this. The Savanti, too, were not implicated. They had merely assured themselves that I still lived, ready, no doubt, to seize me and toss me once more into the turmoil of their plans when the occasion demanded. Until then, I had men for enemies, men of Vallia who sought to take my Delia from me. Well, then, I would go to Vallia, I would march all the way to the eastern seaboard of Turismond and take ship, and march all the way into the great palace of this dread emperor of Vallia, this father of Delia’s, and confront them all to prove my love for Delia. I picked up the gear and strapped it about myself. I took a great breath. I looked at the distant eastern horizon of hills.
Then, with my long sword in my fist, I took the first step onward.
Above me the suns of Scorpio blazed down and about me the land of Kregen opened out with the promise of danger and terror, of beauty and passion. I could not fail. Not with the vision of my Delia before me.
Steadily, I tramped on eastward to whatever destiny held in store.
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Alan Burt Akers
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Warrior of Scorpio dp-3 Page 21