Beasts of Antares [Dray Prescot #23]

by Alan Burt Akers

  “The men must be well-armored,” she said, with that toss of her red-haired head that indicated she knew exactly what she was talking about. “They should have lance and mace. Under the armor they need a good thick cloth and where it shows, divided and out of the way above the legs, it should be heavily embroidered for the battlefield."

  We stood with a group of my rascally henchmen from 1ESW bellowing unkind orders at a bunch of coys, out on Voxyri Drinnik. The recruits were riding marlques and they kept tangling out of formation. It was lucky for them the spears were blunt. The Lady Zenobya had given the recruits a comprehensive look and, no doubt, dismissed them from any consideration for a season or so. A zorcaman rode slowly toward us from Voxyri Gate. The suns shone, the breeze blew, the dust and animals and oiled leather filled the air with familiar odors.

  “The trouble with a cataphract with a kontos is that he's a bit slow.” The Lady Zenobya was staring at the approaching zorcaman. “Cataphracts are a delight, of course. But you really need lights for scouting, and air, if possible. I'll have to find flutsmen I can at least trust while they are paid. Their crossbows ought to keep them out of trouble with the Chobishaws—although their crossbows are wicked."

  The zorcaman turned out to be Filbarrka na Filbarrka.

  His beaming face was a welcome sight. He was incredibly smartly turned out. His zorca was tremendous.

  “Lahal, majister!” he called. And then his cheerful voice changed in tone to a remarkable degree. “Lahal, my lady."

  “Lahal, Filbarrka,” said the Lady Zenobya, and her voice, too, held a different, huskier note than the voice in which she spoke to me or anybody else.

  Some poor wight out on the parade ground dropped a spear and the wrath of his Deldar was awful to behold.

  “They won't drop their kontoi in Pershaw when I'm through with them,” said Filbarrka.

  I raised one eyebrow at him.

  “I have asked Filbarrka na Filbarrka,” said the Lady Zenobya, her laugh exquisite, “if he will command my forces."

  Filbarrka's fingers grasped the reins, otherwise they'd have been entwining like a nest of rattlers. “I have set up the whole organization for the second-line cavalry. My lads from the Blue Grass country are training ‘em hard. You'll have a good, dependable—if a trifle brittle—force there in no time at all."

  “Thank you, Filbarrka,” I said. “And so you are off to Pershaw with the Lady Zenobya?"

  “Aye!"

  And, of course, there was more to it than that, as was very obvious. Later on, Delia told me, “They make a superb pair, do you not think, my love?"

  “Oh, aye! Filbarrka is getting all the fun, going off to adventures overseas, and I'm stuck here—"

  “Hush!"

  For just about the first time on Kregen I had the hankering for the damned Star Lords to seize me up and dump me down somewhere. I'd sort out their nonsense for them and then I'd be a free man, able to go to Hyrklana on my own, able to do what I wanted. Of course, there was Delia...

  She would welcome the return of our friends from Hyrklana. And I did not want, most certainly did not want, my Delia risking her life anywhere near Queen Fahia's Jikhorkdun!

  This plan was typical of Dray Prescot. It was simple. When necessary I can invent complicated plans of fiendish subtlety; I prefer them simple. Although I am told my face is of that fierce damn-you-to-hell kind, I am able to assume an expression of near imbecility. This has served me well in diverse escapades. Now Deb-Lu-Quienyin was able materially to improve on nature.

  “It is all a matter of muscle control,” he told me as we sat privately in my study. “You have attained a fair degree of control. I think I can improve on that."

  He made me do exercises with my ugly old beakhead. Also, without doubt, he exerted some of his supernatural powers. I do know that after a sennight he had me so composing my features that I did not recognize myself in the silver mirror.

  “It is a miracle, San—"

  “Not a miracle. A matter of tone, of muscle, of enhancing features and of reducing them. With practice an adept is able to suggest what his face is like. People do not see what they look at; they see what they expect to see."

  “True. So—?"

  “So they see your clothes and they fit the face to them. Where are you going?"

  I half-turned. “I'm going to test this out."

  He let his laugh ripple out like a tree branch splitting from the main trunk. “Beware lest Folly and Pride lead to Perdition!"

  “Aye—and Hunch and Nodgen have been saying that they're going to Hyrklana with me. I ask you! Can you imagine our Hunch in the arena?"

  “The mere thought leaves me cold—and also—amused."

  Wearing a simple gray tunic, with a leather belt from which one of the long thin daggers of Vallia swung from plain bronze lockets, with sandals on my feet, I put on a new face and stalked from the study. I passed along corridors and soon people were there, passing me without a second glance. People I knew! People who knew me!

  Diffident about how long this would work, how long I could keep my facial muscles holding the new face, I returned to my study. One or two people looked at me more closely as I walked back, and I had to duck into a cross-corridor and let my face relax. By Zair! It was hard work. I ached as though I'd been stung by a hive of bees. But, with practice, I'd be able to hold these new faces for longer periods.

  Deb-Lu studied me as I walked in.

  “Hurt?"

  “Yes."

  “That will pass."

  “I hope so. If I'm to get out of the palace without one of my rascals spotting me, the face I put on has to last me. The security system here is now first class. No assassin would last a couple of heartbeats."

  “And you mean to leave? Just like that?"

  I nodded. “By Zair! Do I not!"

  “The empress...?"

  I glowered. “She will be left a message and she will understand ... I know that to be so."

  Then Deb-Lu-Quienyin shook me. “I am a Wizard of Loh, and all men fear us. And rightly so. But I think I might be tempted to relinquish all my arts and all my knowledge for the love of a lady like the Empress Delia."

  “You old devil!” I said. But I spoke in affection.

  I was sure, absolutely hell-fire sure, there was nothing in two worlds that could tempt me to abandon Delia.

  By this time along I was shedding the work load as fast as was seemly. Ever since the first days when I'd realized there was work to do for Vallia I had, as you know, arranged for people to take over when I vanished. On Valka the Assembly was able to run the island stromnate perfectly. And, as my tasks sensibly lessened, with the people appointed by the Presidio shouldering more of the burdens, another little part of the puzzle about power fell into place.

  If you have an emperor who is not allowed to do anything, has no job to do, then he will, like anyone else, become bored. And he'll start looking around for something to get up to, to while away the time. Well, by Djan! And hadn't I looked around, when bored, for something to do in Djanduin, and wound up king as a result? Keep an emperor busy and he will discipline himself, that was the theory.

  In order to reward the many folk who had worked so hard for Vallia, the Presidio had instituted a whole fresh ranking of minor nobility, whose standing was a little below the already existing minor nobility. The main difference between this new hierarchy and the older minor nobility lay in the absence of lands or estates attached to the titles. The titles themselves had resounding names, which you will hear when a recipient enters my story, and usually a generous pension. By this means a non-endowed but wealthy peerage was established loyal to the country and to the emperor.

  Again, I took the selfish pleasure of rewarding men and women, and seeing their pleasure. Maybe this is petty, maybe it is just another manifestation of the power syndrome, all I know is that when a fellow who had done well for the country received his new title of spandar or chornuv and his five or ten thousand golden talens, and
started thinking about his new coat of arms, I felt his happiness as my happiness. And this despite my profoundly held ridicule of all titles and pomp.

  The simple plan I had concocted—simpleminded, probably—demanded that I get to Huringa, the capital of Hyrklana, and then simply join the throngs flocking to the arena. Once there I would find out which of the four colors in eternal competition now commanded the allegiance of my friends. We had fought for the ruby drang. Then, once they had been located, I'd just boldly go in, carrying disguises, and have them out of it and into a borrowed voller and whisk them away home. Simple.

  The major problem, as I saw it, was stealing a voller from the Lord Farris. He was not as young as he had been—by Vox! who is?—but he was just as punctilious in his duty, the perfect emperor's right hand, a treasure, and a confoundedly difficult fellow to steal a flier from.

  Barty Vessler had taken a voller. True, it had been his own. I let my eye fall on the Lady Zenobya's cage voller. But that was too large. Anyway, she and Filbarrka would require the use of the craft. She'd said that Pershaw had bought fliers from Hamal before the supply dried up, and the pesky things broke down, a familiar story. Where Chobishaw was buying vollers from now she did not know.

  So I put on decent Vallian buff, the wide-winged tunic and the breeches, and drew on a pair of the tall black boots. The broad-brimmed Vallian hat, with those two slots cut in the forward brim and the jaunty feathers flaunting, shadowed the new face I assumed. I sallied out and tried to bribe an attendant at the vollerdrome.

  Well!

  After they unchained me and stood me on my feet and dusted me off, I had to invent some rigmarole about checking security of the flierdrome.

  My face had slipped during the dust up. It was a miracle nobody was hurt.

  It happened to be the 1EYJ on duty at the flierdrome that night. Now Clardo the Clis and Torn Tomor stared suspiciously at me. As you know, the two corps forming the emperor's guard ran themselves, their officers alternating as to duties and leaves. Now these two looked at me as though I'd tried to make off with the crown jewels.

  “Yes, majister,” they said, and, “Certainly, majister."

  But they knew!

  The devils, they guessed right away what I was up to.

  So, after that contretemps, I was faced with the problem of finding alternative means of transport.

  It really was a bit thick. When an emperor can't quietly sneak off for a spot of adventuring, hurtling along under the Moons of Kregen, life tends to be dull, dull...

  Not that life was dull, as you have heard and will hear. Naturally, much happened I have not so far apprised you of. The son of Trylon Lofoinen, for example, being enamored of a certain lady, hired a band to serenade her outside her father's villa. And his rival, the son of Strom Nevius, got to hear of it and arranged for a dung cart to run down the hill, all over the band, Lofoinen's son, and whoever else was in the way. That whoever else happened to be a solemn procession of adherents of Mev-ira-Halviren, going chanting to see their idol open its mouth and give forth prophecies.

  The resulting uproar, not to say scent, enraptured the neighborhood.

  The two lads were sent packing up north to join Seg's Second Army. He wrote that they were being kept buckled down to their duties—and had each found a little shishi already. This was an unsavory story—pungent ibroi was in short supply in that neighborhood for a sennight—and not necessarily typical of the amusements afforded by Vondium. Crude—of course. Funny—possibly, depending on your station vis-à-vis the wind. Perhaps it is best to leave the story to molder where it lies.

  The crusty, bearded kampeon who had bossed my field quarters in the Eighth Army, Deft-Fingered Minch, possessed what was to me an amusing and endearing habit. He had fought with tremendous gusto in the ranks and had made shebov-maztik, before coming to my notice. He ran a field quarters with a competence I recognized as being akin to what was expected of a first lieutenant of a ship of the line in Nelson's Navy. I ought in parentheses to say that junior noncommissioned officers in Vallia were maztiks. Matoc is a Havilfarian name. And, anyway, they aren't like NCOs or noncoms; they are more like those special privileged fellows in the legions of Rome. More or less. Minch's endearing habit was simply this: Every time he encountered Emder in the course of his duties he would draw himself up and deliver himself of a chest-crushing salute. Emder, quiet, gentle, courteous, was treated as though he were a Jiktar at the least, and more probably a Kapt. Minch was serious, I fancied, but Emder wasn't quite sure how he should receive these military honors.

  This was a case of the rough diamond respecting the cut and faceted gem.

  One day Minch fairly cracked his fist against his chest, as Emder appeared in the corridor. Neither man saw me. I started to smile and then Minch broke with tradition.

  “Jen Emder! A word!"

  I will not attempt to reproduce the conversation word for word. What it boiled down to was Minch's desire for more information on my civilized habits. Emder did everything in the palace; Minch was the out-of-doors camp-king.

  “For, Jen Emder, when we get to Hyrklana the emperor will be living in surroundings much like this. Is it possible you will accompany him as well as me?"

  Emder made some reply. I just stood there. This was getting right out of hand. Plans, plans—how could I just go off and leave them all now? There was left to me one person, and one person alone, who could cut this knot.

  So I went to see her.

  “Delia,” I said, “this nonsense has to stop!"

  “Yes, dear. How?"

  “That's for you to tell them all! By Vox! You are the empress, daughter of the old emperor! You know about these things. Tell ‘em. Or, I swear it, I'll just take off one dark night and—"

  She smiled. “The Sword Watch and the Yellow Jackets have very good eyes."

  “Maybe. But when my mind is made up, my mind is—"

  “Like a weathervane. We must hold a conference."

  I groaned. “When did chitter-chatter solve anything?"

  “You'll see. I promise."

  So Delia called her famous conference. As I say, she is not only the most beautiful and most wonderful person in two worlds, she is also the most clever, the most tactful—the most downright cunning.

  The decision was this: Farris would supply vollers to take a reasonably sized party, lots would be drawn, I would not be allowed to travel alone. When they started politely putting forward reasons why the speakers in turn had a special and undeniable duty to be among the participants, I left. All that reasonableness and fair-speaking frightened me. These were hairy warriors, as ready to slit your throat if you offended them as to wait for an apology—and they were all sitting neatly in rows discussing the point like a girl's grammar school debating society. But, you see, they were sitting there so docilely under the eye of Delia, Empress of Vallia.

  These incidents did make me form a resolution. In future when I wanted to go off somewhere to get something done, I'd keep the fact to myself, and just go.

  Delia would be told, of course. She had lived for far too long in the shadow of these mysterious absences forced on me by the Star Lords.

  The thing was settled and I had to put the best face on it I could. So I took myself off and stood before the silver mirror in private and put on more than one best face. The bee-sting pains attacked me less and less, and I could hold a face for gratifyingly longer periods. Two things happened, and then we could leave.

  Young Bargom, an old comrade, a Valkan, requested the pleasure of my company at the reopening of the Rose of Valka. By Zair! How that took me back! So, dressed to kill, I went down to the Great Northern Cut and took part in the ceremony consecrating the new inn and posting house. We had a right old night of it, and we sang that song “The Fetching of Drak na Valka” until the stars paled in the sky.

  Among the singers a couple of Pachaks were, despite the presence of the emperor and the joyful ructions, far more interested in themselves. This was right and
proper. They were Donal Em-Da, a Hikdar on leave from one of the Valkan regiments, and his affianced love, Natema Na-Pla. They sat in a corner—there were no quiet corners—with their right arms and two left arms each entwined. Their tail hands took care of the wine. I like Pachaks. I was told they planned to marry before Donal Em-Da marched out to rejoin his regiment, somewhere up north at the front. Then I learned something that brought me across to stand before them, finding a smile, hushing them back into the seat as they began to stand up.

  “Now, Kotera,” I said to the Pachak girl, giving her the full title of lady of Vallia. She was charming, blooming with health and youth, dressed in a simple laypom-colored gown and with only the brooch that was the badge of her fiancé's regiment as ornament. “Natema Na-Pla. The Pla from your father's name is that of Planath, is it not?” I was teasing her, for I had been told just this moment.

  “Yes, majister—” She did not flush but her eyes were wide.

  “Did he not tell you of the standard he bore?"

  “Oh, yes, majister. Many times. He was proud."

  “And I promised Planath Pe-Na that I would dower his daughter.” That wasn't quite the word, but the idea was much the same. I remembered Planath Pe-Na. He had been my standard bearer at the affair of the Burned Man at Twin Forks, and at the Battle of Tomor Peak. So I bumbled on and the meeting somehow heartened me. Many fine men, apim and diff, had sought and succeeded, sought ways of serving Vallia and succeeded in giving their service to the best of their ability.

  That was made my first duty next day. I gave Enevon instructions to present a seemly sum—not trifling, and yet not stupidly embarrassing, for Pachaks have that berserk streak, true or false does not matter, and their honor means much. Then the day's work could begin and Naghan Raerdu, Naghan the Barrel, was first on the agenda. Turko was present.

  “Majister—word from Chuktar Mevek. The gold we sent has been well used. But it is detestation of Layco Jhansi that matters more.” Naghan's laugh broke out, and he shut his eyes and the tears squeezed forth. “By Vox, majister! Jhansi seems to have taken leave of his senses. His mercenaries show no mercy and grasp the whole of Falinur in a grip of iron, trying to squeeze blood."