Armada of Antares

Chapter 11

The rapier went back into the scabbard with a snick.

I said, “If you shout loudly enough, Rees, you fambly, the whole camp will know we have escaped.”

“By Krun!” said the Trylon Rees of the Golden Wind, stepping forward and looking around him. “You are a changed man from our days in Ruathytu, so help me Opaz!”

“And you, too, Rees, old fellow. Has Opaz then conquered you? What of Havil the Green?”

“This is no time to argue theology, Hamun! For the good graces of Hanitcha the Harrower, let us get out of here!”

This was to be expected. The plan that had instantly flown into my head demanded a few murs alone, and yet I should have known that Rees, that glorious golden Numim who — I counted myself fortunate

— was a friend as well as an enemy, would be full of energy and resolve. He wouldn’t hang around when he could escape.

I said, “I am overjoyed to see you, Rees, by Krun! I did not know you were with the army here.”

“And I had no idea you were either, old fellow. Now where are you going?”

“I will fetch weapons and clothes.” I had seen he wore the wreck of a uniform, and he carried a stone in his hand with which he had knocked the Chulik out. “Wait quietly!”

“Don’t be long. They are as efficient a pack of scoundrels here as any I’ve known.”

“Oh, yes,” I said. “These rasts of Tomboram are a fine fighting bunch.”

“Tomboram? These are cramphs of Vallia!”

So that meant I’d blown up one pretty little scheme.

Still, I would not have my friend Rees slain out of hand. He and I had ruffled it together in the Sacred Quarter of Ruathytu, when I was spying in Hamal; with Chido we had had some fine old brawls and roistered the night away. He thought I had been captured and escaped, as he had. Now I would put that to my advantage, for there were outstanding items in Hamal.

You may imagine the speed with which I ran.

“Tom!” I said into his ear, and he was awake on the instant. “I am going to Hamal. Do not question. You and Kytun must do what we planned with the army. I trust you. If there is any difficulty at all with the rast of a King of Tomboram — any difficulty at all — then pull out. Use the transports and the vollers and get the men safely away. No questions. Tell Kytun. Tell him I trust you both and if you argue too much, one with the other, I’ll knock both your heads together.”

“But Dray-!”

But I was gone.

In my own tent I ripped out a clean blue shirt for Rees and a loincloth. I snatched up a fine matched pair of rapier and main-gauche and then, on my way out, paused. I turned back, snatched up the longsword, and at top speed again fled into the moonlight.

I saw Rees hiding in the shadows of the tent. As I came fairly close to him a Chulik guard stepped out into the fuzzy pink and golden glow of moonslight. He started to snap his spear across in salute and to bellow out, “All’s well-” He would have finished that with, “My Prince!”

I leaped for him, took him by the throat, hissed in his ear: “Silence! Shut up! Stand still!” Then I tapped him alongside the head, just under the brim of his helmet. “Fall down and lie still, my friend!”

He fell down and he lay still.

Rees got up and whistled. “A different man from that Amak Hamun I rescued from the Rapas and the burning building, by Krun!”

“Here are clothes, here are weapons. Now let us find a voller.”

Rees stared at the longsword. “That bar of iron — is that a weapon?”

“I found it in a tent and thought it might serve.”

“I fancy I might wield it passing well.”

“I fancy so, too. But for now I think I will carry it. It pleases me.”

Rees shook that golden head of his so that his mane fluttered under the golden moonsglow. “A different man.”

We crept cautiously away.

“Not so, Rees. I am still the same Hamun ham Farthytu, the Amak of Paline Valley. But I have been in a battle and I see things a little differently now.”

We reached the voller lines. I had to be far more careful now than even Rees realized. I most certainly would not slay one of my own men, not even for a scheme of importance, but Rees would be elated if he could dispatch a hated Vallian to the Ice Floes of Sicce.

A thought occurred to me, so, as we eased up to a voller with our eyes glaring out at the guard, a Rapa who paced some fifty yards away, I said: “And Chido? Is he here, too?”

“Now, old feller! D’you think I’d sneak off and leave old Chido a prisoner? No, he was not taken, thanks to Opaz.”

I noted this use of Opaz by a Hamalian who in theory should stick to his state religion of Havil the Green, and who by belief and predilection professed Krun. I shook my head.

“Of course not. I am glad he is safe.” I was sincere.

How can a man be friends with men who are enemies of his country? It is a puzzle and a torment. In any event we stole a voller — not a prime example, I was glad to see — and we made good our escape, successfully eluding the guards. Much though this pleased me — we had not had to fight, so I was saved the agony that would have caused me — I was also hotly angry that my guards had allowed it. On one hand my pleasure was genuine as we flew swiftly through the pink-streaming moonslight, and on the other I was ragingly angry at the slackness of discipline. I would have something to say to the guard commanders when I got back, that I promised. To jump ahead, and also to explain much of what had happened, I should now say that Tom Tomor had sprung out of his bed, rushed out, and seen my attack on the Chulik. The Chulik had repeated my words. So Tom gave immediate orders that a mock pursuit was to take place. He understood just enough to assume I knew what I was doing, maniacal though that appeared. But then my chiefs of Valka are accustomed to a maniac leading them. . In my own overweening pride I had decided that any attempt to fake the escape would alert Rees. Probably, in one way, that was right. But now I think that if Tom had not given his orders, Rees and I would never have escaped so easily.

During that flight through the night sky of Kregen with the moons casting down their pinkish golden light, Rees told me what had happened in his life since I had last seen him, a gravely ill man, near death’s door. He spoke of his daughter Saffi, the glorious golden lion-maid, and his thanks for her rescue were given in gruff, harsh tones, but simple, direct, and from the heart. She had reached Ruathytu safely with Doctor Larghos the Needle and Jiktar Horan. She had been full of her escapade when, kidnapped by Vad Garnath and his Kataki Strom, she had been taken as a bargaining counter to the Manhounds of Faol. Apparently she had described the fight in the voller, when I had just about keeled over from loss of blood, to her father as a High Jikai. Well, it had been a little Jikai, I suppose; I remember nothing of it, as I said.[3]

Rees looked back. “Those yetches of Vallia do not follow.” As he turned to me his golden face with that fierce lion-look glowed in the moonslight. “Hamun, old son. I owe you much, so much that I know I can never repay you, but-”

“You can repay me, Rees.”

“How?”

“Promise me you will hold out your hand in friendship to me.”

“Well, of course! May Hanitcha harrow me else!”

“In friendship, Rees, no matter what happens.”

“By Krun! This makes me glad to promise.”

Would a promise, the feeling of gratitude to me for the life of his adored daughter, weigh in the balance when he discovered I was a hated enemy, a Vallian and, much worse, the damned Prince Majister of those cramphs of Vallians? I wondered.

And, at that moment, I felt a great partiality for Rees, for hadn’t he dragged me off from poring over figures and plans — fascinating in themselves, of course — and hauled me into headlong action, haring over the surface of Kregen into more adventures, flying under the moons?

What Rees had to say about the Battle of Tomor Peak intrigued me, but he clearly did not relish talking about it. This, at least, was a comfort, because I only had to mumble something about joining at the last minute by voller, not really knowing Rees was there but finally wishing to join his regiment, and being caught up in the battle. I could not forbear adding, “And how did the regiment behave?”

His fists clenched. He looked unhappy and guilty, which pained me.

“You always hinted, more than hinted, about my beautiful zorcas. My lovely regiment! We trotted out, every lance aligned, all in perfect formation — oh, Hamun, the regiment looked grand!”

I did not speak but busied myself unnecessarily with the voller controls. Presently Rees went on in a slow, leaden voice, reliving those moments of scarlet horror.

“We were trotting out, ready to charge, having those yetches on the run. The infantry was attacking. We picked up speed, yelling: “Hanitch! Hanitch! Hamal!” in the old way. And then. . then a crazy mob of maniacs astride animals — nikvoves, I believe they are called — smashed at us. My beautiful zorcas!”

He did not go on. He could not, I think, go on.

I said, “But the totrix regiments were smashed, also.”

“Aye. It is a sad day for us. What the Queen will say. .”

“Will you reform the regiment?”

“Again?”

“The war still goes on.”

“Aye, old fellow, the damned war still goes on. And the Queen will not be pleased. We have suffered a reverse. And I think her treasury does not have a never-ending supply of deldys.”

This was heartening. I prodded. “Do you think she would come to some arrangement? Not sue for peace, but desist from the fighting while arrangements are made?”

“Now that the rasts of Vallians have come in, maybe that will stay her hand. She has a fear of Vallia, for all they are a miserable lot, too stupid to build their own vollers.”

By Vox! It was true!

“And,” went on Rees, visibly growing warmer, “did you see the crazy man who led the charge? A big man, broad in the shoulder like you. His face was covered by a blazing golden mask. He came in at the head of the nikvoves like Hanitcha himself.”

I said, with perfect truth, “No. I did not see him.”

A breeze of alarm touched me. That golden mask was a mere toy, designed to mark me out so that my own men might know and follow. It had served here in that Rees had not seen my face. But suppose some imp of memory stirred, some mannerism betrayed me? Then common sense reasserted itself. How could the Trylon Rees possibly equate his bumbling friend Amak Hamun, for all he had picked up a few sworder’s tricks lately, with the puissant majesty of the Prince Majister of Vallia?

For Rees knew who that man riding like the thunderclouds in his golden mask was.

“A feller called Prescot. Prince Majister of Vallia. I’d like to have him at the point of my rapier!”

I coughed and twitched the controls. The airboat flew up and swooped, and Rees, thrown off balance, yelped, “What in the name of Hakki are you playing at?”

“A shadow, there under the moon. . It is gone now.”

He peered but could see nothing. “We should be up with the remnants of the army soon.”

“Would you give the Jikai to the Vallians for their victory?”

He looked at me as though I had sprouted devil’s horns.

“The Jikai? To nulshes of Vallia! Are you off your head?”

“They beat us, fair and square.”

He chewed on that. His hand brushed his golden mane. He did not like the thought. I pressed on relentlessly. “If they march to fight the main army, they might overthrow that, also. Kov Pereth-”

Luckily he burst in then, interrupting me, fortunately concealing my lack of up-to-date knowledge out of Hamal.

“Yes! The Queen threw Kov Pereth into a dungeon in the Hanitch! That idiot Kov Hangol is Pallan of the armies of the north now. I know him! A bungler, but he knows how to fawn on the Queen, Havil take him!”

“She’ll run out of Kovs soon.”

“You may jest, Hamun. But you have a sorry truth in the jest.”

“Then she may turn to a Trylon, perhaps the Trylon of the Golden Wind.”

“She knows I have never toadied to her, and dangerous that has been, fool that I am. No, old friend, I think we know each other well enough by now for me to tell you that the King himself frowns on his wife’s follies. Of course he is powerless, but one day. . who knows?”

“The King?” I said, surprised. “But he is a mere puppet.”

“Today, yes. If the war goes on. . then tomorrow, who’s to say?”

As you may imagine, I digested all this very thoroughly. It would not be as easy as all that. Queen Thyllis was seated very firmly on the throne — she and the Opaz-forsaken manhounds that lolled on her golden steps. The King her husband was a mere cipher. If the Queen was to be deposed, I hoped for little from the King. Anyway, as soon as a great and suitable opportunity arose, a mighty victory, for instance, then Queen Thyllis was going to hold her triumphal procession and have herself crowned Empress of Hamal. She was hard, and evil, and power-crazed.

Mind you, she would make exactly the same insults about the Emperor of Vallia and his son-in-law. I could guess.

Rees pointed down over the wooden coaming.

“There they are. We’ll have to go down at once, before they shoot at us.”

I swung the flier around and set the control levers for a rapid descent. In the vitals of the craft the sturm-wood orbits would be turning and the silver boxes would be rotating around each other, their power directing and upholding the flier. Down we plunged. I still had plans about vollers and silver boxes in Hamal, and this time I would not be put off by a miserable farce of dirt and air. No, by Zair! For this time I was armed with knowledge I believed had been sent to me by direct intervention of the Star Lords or the Savanti.

Any help from them was like a gallon of water in the Owlarh Waste — something not to be believed. But this time I believed, the water was no mirage.

So we slanted in and landed, quickly ringed by fierce, hot-eyed men of Hamal, soldiers who had lost a battle and did not care for the experience. Units were mixed up, but discipline still held together, and we were passed through to the Chuktar who had taken command after the general had been slain. These remnants were on their way north and west to join up with Kov Hangol, the new commander in chief. Our story excited little comment, even though we were the only two to escape after being made prisoner, as far as I could determine. I’d have something to say to my own men later if there had been others.

Chido said that, by Krun! he’d given Rees up for dead. Of course, dear old Chido, he said Wees for Rees. He stared at me as though I was a ghost. He goggled at me, his cheerful, flap-eared, chinless face alight with fellow feeling.

I said, “Chido, you old rascal. How happy I am to see you alive!”

We spent two miserable days with these miserable men, and then a merker came with orders for Rees to take himself and what remained of his officers back to Ruathytu. I went also. I believed Rees would have need of friends. Other officers who had fought and lost were also to report back. The men were to rejoin the main army and then be distributed into other regiments. The flank force had been wiped out. On the flight back no one spoke much. They all acted like a bunch of misbehaving midshipmen up on first lieutenant’s report — only those poor devils suspected heads would roll. It is, I assure you, a painfully curious and sobering experience to share the suffering of men who go to meet a harsh and unjust fate, knowing you are the prime mover, the person responsible for their suffering. Believe me.

There also flew with me the memory of the blood, smoking and hot, which had been so lavishly spilled on the battlefield of Tomor Peak. I had seen men pierced through, men whose limbs had been hacked half off; I had seen zorcas screaming in agony; I had seen whole regiments smashed away to a red pulp. In the arrow storm I had watched all this — and sitting in the voller on the way to Ruathytu, capital of Hamal, I wondered just how much of the reality a vindictive queen could comprehend. What she saw in her foul Jikhorkdun paled beside the reality of a battlefield.

How many of these officers would end up in the arena, spilling their guts in the Jikhorkdun for the sadistic pleasure of the crowd and their evil ruler?

So, of course, the danger rose in my mind and mocked me.

I had borne at least three names in Hamal that could identify me, clean or dirty, bearded or clean-shaven: Chaadur. Bagor ti Hemlad. Amak Hamun Farthytu.

Well, I was Hamun now and had no wish at all to be Bagor ti Hemlad again, for he had run afoul of Queen Thyllis and for a time had been her plaything. That cramph of a King Doghamrei had attempted to have Bagor slain by setting him alight and dumping him out of a Hamalese skyship down onto the decks of a galleon of Vallia. One galleon had burned. This crazy onker Bagor, with his trousers on fire had wrecked the two Hamalese skyships in a midair collision, and then had taken passage aboard the other galleon to further adventures.[4]

All this I knew. My rear still itched when I thought of that fight and my trousers burning. As for Chaadur, it was wrongly said that he had slain the Kovneva Esme, when he had in reality merely set that despicable woman — for whom one could only feel a tiny pang of pity — in silver chains, as she had kept her own girls in chains that galled them. The Kov her husband had raged after Chaadur, who had been a gul working in the voller manufactory of Sumbakir, run by Ornol ham Feoste, the Kov of Apulad. I had never met Ornol ham Feoste in Ruathytu, for Sumbakir lay at a considerable distance, but I had always been on the lookout for him — he would know Chaadur when he saw him.[5]

Also, a minor worry: those two rascals Avec and Ilter who had named Chaadur knew that Chaadur’s real name was Dray Prescot.

Ruathytu looked pretty much as that sinful brawling city had always looked, except for a pervasive air of dinginess, dustiness, a down-at-heels lethargy that, product of the war though it was, depressed me. We were carried swiftly from the voller landing park to the north of the River Havilthytus in a procession of zorca riders silent except for the clitter-clatter of polished hooves against the stones. The Queen allowed only the most important people and super-urgent messengers to land on her palace island where the evil pile of Hammabi el Lamma rose in spires, peaks, and turrets against the sky. The whole northern area of Ruathytu through which we passed was given over to the soldiers’ barracks. There had once been a merry little fire up there. . another story. At the river we were ferried across to the palace island, the boats thunking into the ocher flood. The rowers at the oars were being reminded that they were slaves by the lashes in the hands of the whip-Deldars. I noticed there were far more diffs in Ruathytu now. The Queen was spending the country’s money prodigiously in hiring mercenaries. The emperor in Vallia was having to dig deep, too, to counter all this.

There were few preliminaries at the palace before we were shuffled into line and ushered through into the Hall of Notor Zan. This was not the impressive audience chamber in which I had encountered Queen Thyllis before. That chamber had been dominated by the enormous crystal throne, the golden steps, the golden-chained Chail Sheom, and, perhaps most of all, dominated by the somnolent but savagely vicious forms of the jiklos, Manhounds of Faol used as throne-step pets. There also lay in that resplendent high-ceiled chamber a hole in the marble floor beneath which grew a syatra, that leprous-white man-eating plant.

It soon became clear that Queen Thyllis had no intention of thrusting these officers down to her pet syatra.

The Hall of Notor Zan opened before us and we shuffled through to stand in a bunch on the left of the tall balass doors. The whole chamber was robed in black. The ceiling was not very tall, as such things are measured in palaces, and the room was out of proportion to the extent that its length was overly long to its width. Black cloths cloaked the ceiling and black drapes covered the walls. Samphron-oil lamps shed a clear, unwavering light. There were no windows. At the far end, sitting on a giant black basaltic throne, the Queen clenched her arms on the fur coverings — a dramatic and dynamic picture of a woman/queen worked up to a pitch of anger. There were no Chail Sheom in evidence here for the grim work ahead, but three manhounds dozed on the black and shining steps. I sniffed. Incense burned, and incense is calculated to make a man throw up.

The Queen’s guard stood to either hand beside the throne in close mesh mail. Marshals and chamberlains, all dressed in sober black, fussed around, ready to open the proceedings. And the Queen? Queen Thyllis? She sat erect and leaning a little forward, dressed all in black — as she had been when I first saw her during that little folly, clutched in the grip of flutsmen. Her face blazed white now, her green eyes diamonds to match the fire of Genodras. That rich red mouth of hers which could firm instantly to killing hardness was set now like a trap, with a corner of her lip caught up between her white pointed teeth.

She had never failed to make an impression, this Queen Thyllis, the Empress of Hamal. The stillness held. I admit to feeling the effectiveness of the stage-setting. If I had been a Hamalese officer laden with guilt for having lost a battle, no doubt I’d have felt as sick as these poor devils around me.

A marshal spoke to us after a while, a prickly, stupid little man, waving a sheet of paper.

“When your name is called out go forward. The Queen will hear the charge against you and give judgment. If you are adjudged not guilty return here and stand to the right of the door. Although, for myself, I think she will send you all to the Jikhorkdun.”

The names were called. Men went forward. They were mostly regimental commanders, Jiktars, or pastang commanders, Hikdars. Of the first ten only one was reprieved to go stand by the right of the door. Seven were condemned to the Jikhorkdun and one was condemned to a hanging. One was given

— there and then! — to the jiklos, who arose in fearsome bestiality and tore him to pieces. The blood was left to shine greasily on the black marble of the floor in front of the throne. About then the thought occurred to me, for I had been absorbed by the Queen’s flummery in overawing her soldiers, that my name would not be on the paper prepared according to the rigid laws of Hamal. I had not been a member of the army and so could not be written down. Eventually, everyone else would be called forward to face their judgment. I would be left to stand alone!

Then, surely then, the evil Queen could not fail to recognize in this man claiming to be Hamun ham Farthytu, Amak of Paline Valley, that same wild leem Bagor ti Hemlad who had rescued her, then refused to bend to her whims, and one day disappeared from her dark palace of Hammabi el Lamma!

How she would smile when she had me once more in her clutches!