Armada of Antares

Chapter 12

As that macabre and horrific scene went on, I stood there calculating my chances. Although I did not sweat I grew decidedly warm. Another screaming wretch was thrown to the manhounds. These jiklos had been well trained, for they disposed of him in a cat-like, playful, obscene way. When he was dead they did not eat him, crunching on his bones with their jagged teeth; instead they pushed the mangled body aside and looked up, sniffing, their tongues lolling, waiting for the next victim.

“The army does not deserve this!” breathed a Jiktar next to Rees.

Rees the lion-man said, “The army lost. We were defeated. That is a personal affront to the Queen.”

I carefully edged a little away from Rees and Chido. Our weapons had been taken from us, but we had been tricked out in fancy new uniforms. Our baggage, what there was of it after the rout of the army, had been brought back and warehoused in the soldiers’ quarters. I had stuffed the longsword down into a roll of blankets and swathed a military cloak around the whole.

The feel of that longsword hilt in my hands would have been highly comforting now. The mailed guards, the manhounds. . if I fought, it would most likely be my last fight of all. There had to be a better way to get out of this than simple fighting. Brains and cunning rather than swords and brawn, now. . The Queen would rejoice to humiliate and torture this Bagor ti Hemlad, who was me, and her revenge would surpass the terror of the manhounds.

In accordance with the strict laws of Hamal the offending officers were called up in alphabetical order -

needless to say the Kregish alphabet does not begin with an a and end with a z — with the pastang Hikdars grouped after their Jiktar. The Chuktar who had taken command after the death of the commanding general featured in the group of many men whose names began with h. He went forward, upright, dour, already believing himself condemned.

“I think, Chuktar Hingleson,” said the Queen after the man’s supposed crimes had been read out, “that you deserve great ill at my hands.”

“We fought, Majestrix. We were defeated.”

“I am minded to let my pretty jiklos try their teeth on you.”

“As the Queen commands.”

He was a brave old fellow, if somewhat lacking in the knowledge needful in a successful commander. He held himself upright in that black room of horror, and he did not flinch.

“Because of you my army was beaten.”

He didn’t dare contradict her, except for his life. He said, “The army was already defeated when I took command. This I swear, my Queen, by the light of the Silver One.”

I knew what he was talking about.

Lem the Silver Leem!

That foul religion wormed its way into the very heart of evil societies and now held sway over the Queen. And this Chuktar was a devotee. Maybe, just maybe he would come out of this with a whole skin. I watched, fascinated. I remembered the scene so vividly, the men around me shaking in their shoes, the black light-absorbing drapes on the walls, the tall, unwavering flames of the lamps, the black throne, and the hideous forms of the manhounds slavering for more now they had tasted blood. And over all, the vibrant form of the Queen, all in black, with her white face brooding on her judgments, her green eyes emerald fires of hatred and power!

“You may go to stand by the right of the door, Chuktar Hingleson. You will report to me when I send for you. Hold yourself in readiness.”

“My Queen!” He bellowed it out in parade-ground fashion, and that snapped my mood. I realized I had to do something or else be faced with the prospect of forming a manhound’s supper, if nothing worse. The Chuktar stomped back and it was the turn of the next Jiktar. Rees would be next. I realized how selfish I had been in thinking only of my own skin, when Rees and Chido would be striding over the black marble to their destinies. I saw the Chuktar halfway back. All eyes were fixed on him as he turned and performed the full incline bow. I moved very quietly and very smoothly from the left of the door to the right. The man to whose side I stepped moved forward to see better as the Chuktar straightened up. He murmured, so low the words were a mere hum. “He is a dead man.”

I said nothing. The Chuktar joined us at the right of the door. In the ensuing shuffle so that he might stand at the front, I became integrated with the others who had been reprieved. When Rees stepped forward I sent up a prayer to Zair for him.

Zair, that deity who inhabits the red sun Zim, smiled; Rees was discharged from obloquy and, with his officers, including Chido, was sent to stand at the right of the door. Then it was over and we could escape into the fresh air of Ruathytu and Rees could say to me, puzzled,

“I did not hear your name called, Hamun.”

To which I replied, “I think many of us missed a great deal when the names were called. Did you see the Chuktar?”

The question set him off and, with Chido, we went to find a wet, talking away about the experience like a drove of fluttrells. We all knew we had brushed death by, there in the black Hall of Notor Zan in the Hammabi el Lamma.

I did not know whether or not the little ant that had crawled on my boot when I mounted Stormcloud to lead the charge in the Battle of Tomor Peak had survived. Perhaps he had tumbled off somewhere in the trampled grass and run to hide among the corpses. Well, perhaps something of his stature belonged to me during those moments in the Hall of Notor Zan. I had taken a crazy chance, for if a man had been seen crossing from the left to the right, he would have been arrested instantly to face all manner of unmentionable horrors. But there had been nothing else to do. Yes, I hoped that little ant had lived, as I had.

We did not feel like patronizing the Golden Talu, for the atmosphere in that high-class tavern, as I have said, was most respectable. We sought out a much more robust, coarse, hard-drinking den — not a dopa den — and swung together through the low portals of the Scented Sylvie. With the jug upon the sturm-wood table and our glasses filled, Chido had a fit of the shakes, remembering. Rees, too, looked unhealthily sallow. They were suffering from the aftereffects of what they had been through, and I suffered with them. With a few coarse oaths and more drink, and the sight of the dancing girls — marvelous Fristle fifis of incredible lissomness and lasciviousness — they perked up. We sat back to carouse the night away.

This did not suit my plans, but I wanted to ask questions anyway, and I might find loosened tongues in a low tavern where men grew merry. The quality of the company was not low — there were two Kovs and three Trylons there — but the atmosphere was conducive to erratic behavior, hard drinking, wenching, and a fuddlement of the senses. As I had found out, when you act as a spy you must employ what weapons come to hand.

Looking around the low-ceiled tavern with the wine-drenched tables, the scurrying serving wenches, the flushed faces of boisterous revelers, I found it extraordinarily difficult to realize all that had happened to me since I had spent my nights in Ruathytu in just this fashion. But not whole nights — when the others had staggered off to their homes I had gone leaping over the rooftops, my cloak flaring, a mask covering my features, a rapier glittering ready to spit the first person who tried to stop me. Now I was going about exactly the same task in a different way.

And only because I had rescued Rees’s daughter, the glorious lion-maid Saffi, from a hideous death in Far Faol.

The mad dash to save Saffi had not been a hindrance to my plans, had not been an interruption in my search for the secrets of the vollers. If I had not gone after Saffi I would not have come into possession of the information I had through a narrow air shaft, a fragment of a conversation between that cramph Vad Garnath and his agent, the Chuktar Strom, Rosil na Morcray who was a vile Kataki, and Phu-si-Yantong, a Wizard of Loh, a man of whom I was to know far more later, to my cost. For one thing, this Wizard of Loh fancied he was going to take over Hamal from Queen Thyllis; that is, if I had heard him correctly. And he intended to use me, Dray Prescot, as his pawn in taking secret command of the Vallian Empire when the Emperor was gone. This was megalomania. At least, that is what I thought then. Later I came to know this Phu-si-Yantong better and to understand he was in deadly earnest.

Yantong had also said I was not to be assassinated, so he had not sent the stikitches who had attacked Delia, the twins, and myself in our walled garden of Esser Rarioch. He had mentioned the Nine Faceless Ones of Hamal as appointing the nobles to their duties in connection with voller manufacture. The secrets were well understood to be secrets and were well kept. I believed exactly the same precautions were taken in Hyrklana, where Queen Fahia would have me dragged into her arena and butchered for the crowds if I showed myself. So, with the smell of spilled wine about me, men arguing in half-drunken ways, the girls dancing, and the air filled with shouts, there in the Scented Sylvie, I marked one of the Kovs talking to a Trylon. Both were of Hamal, hard men, filled with the vigor of full growth. Their faces severe even as they felt the wine working on their senses, they were men who knew their high positions and would not tolerate a single infringement upon their pride or their dignity. The pride of a noble is fanatical in most countries of Kregen. This I knew.

Outside in the moons-shot darkness they would have their preysany litters waiting with their link slaves and a retinue of guards, fierce predatory men — diffs, apims — who would delight in smashing a few heads to clear a path for their master.

The tavern was well patronized by diffs, I noticed and, even as Rees turned to me, I saw a fresh party of Kataki officers stride in, their tails bare, laughing, shouting, clearly already very merry from previous taverns. Other halflings sat at the sturm-wood tables, Chuliks, Rapas, Blegs — many and many a member of the diffs on Kregen, many of races I have not even mentioned yet, for the reason that they have not figured largely in my story up to this time. This was clear proof, if proof was needed, that Queen Thyllis had been pouring out her coffers to hire mercenaries. Bankers like Casmas the Deldy had lent her vast sums, to be rewarded by patents of nobility, favors or prerequisites within an administration which was corrupt despite all the rigid laws of Hamal. This reeking tavern, the Scented Sylvie, had evidently become a favorite haunt of the halflings in Ruathytu.

“Damned diffs,” the Kov was saying, his face a deep plum purple, as he lifted his glass. Rees saw my look and turned to me, saying, “You don’t want to take too much notice of what old Nath the Crafty says, but, by Krun, you must watch your back if you cross him.”

“Nath ham Livahan,” said Chido, and bent his goggle-eyed face back to his glass. “Kov of Thoth Uppwe. We call him old Nath the Crafty-”

“And, by Krun,” chipped in Rees, “never a man better deserved it!”

“He don’t like diffs,” Chido said, laughed, and drank.

Well, there were many men on Kregen who disliked every other man not of their race. This was inevitable, I suppose, given xenophobia. A Chulik does not get on with a Fristle. A Rapa gets on with very few other races. Blegs will draw swords against Mystiges without excuse. And apims like Chido and myself — there probably being more apims than any other race on Kregen — often came in for hatreds from every quarter.

The presence of so many Katakis intrigued me, for previously, as far as I was aware, they had seldom ventured far from their homes in the Shrouded Sea and elsewhere. The only reason I could advance for their presence was the prospect of enormous hauls of slaves, for Katakis are slave-masters par excellence.

The noise racketed on and the girls danced; wine and beer were spilled, and men cursed by a medley of gods and spirits. More than once, listening, I heard the name of Lem spurt from the seething mass. Rees touched me on the forearm.

“Leave him be, Hamun. He is in a nasty mood.”

For quite humorous reasons, I could not explain to Rees that I wished to discuss the problems of the Nine Faceless Ones and the secrets of the vollers with this Nath the Crafty, this Kov of Thoth Uppwe, so I sat back in the chair. Nath the Crafty suddenly jerked up as his arm was jogged, and a stream of wine — the best the house afforded although not Jholaix — spattered the front of his gray shirt and the ling fur of his pelisse. Kov Nath leaped to his feet, his harsh features convulsed. He dragged out his thraxter.

The Bleg who had jostled him, about to apologize, snapped into the fiercely angry rage of that race and whipped his sword out in turn.

“Cramph!” bellowed Kov Nath. “Rast! You will pay for that!”

A Kataki about to sit at the next table, his tail curved over his shoulder, whipped a hand into his sash and flashed out a wickedly bladed dagger. The thing was strapped to his tail in a twinkling. Other diffs were brandishing weapons. The moment spurted a dark and horrible fire.

“To me, apims!” screeched Nath the Crafty. What craftiness there was now about his conduct I couldn’t see.

A Rapa hurled a knife. A Kataki whistled his bladed tail. “Kill the apim yetch!” yelled a Chulik, his tusks catching the oil lamps’ gleam and glistening.

In the next mur the tavern turned into a boil of action and fighting, a frenzied, murderous brawl. We three, Rees, Chido, and myself, sat at our table shoved up against the wall. I said, “If an apim tries to stick you, Rees, we will help you dispose of him.”

“And,” said Rees, “if a Numim does likewise, likewise.”

The tavern exploded with action. Men were reeling around, many more than half drunk, blinded by the glitter of sword and rapier. Daggers thunked home. The Katakis whistled their tails about and the wicked blades sliced and slashed. I sat still. I meant what I had said to Rees for one thing. For another, every man slain here meant a fighting man less for Hamal to fling against my country. A Numim staggered from the press, a rapier still transfixing his body, and reeled to crash full-length on our table.

Rees pushed him off to die on the floor.

“Naghan Largismore,” he said. “He should have known better.”

Blood sprayed from an apim as he sprawled past, his neck efficiently slashed by a Kataki tail. The Kov of Thoth Uppwe, this Nath ham Livahan men called Nath the Crafty, fought with a terrible cold fury which had swiftly succeeded his hectoring words and hot-tempered anger. But there were more diffs than apims. Another apim sprawled to the floor, grasping his neck and looking surprised as the blood spurted between his fingers. The Kataki who had flicked his tail with such virulent purpose swerved to get at another young apim whose thraxter glistened with fresh blood. It was increasingly difficult for me to sit. I cannot analyze my feelings. I glanced at Rees. He looked disgusted with the whole proceedings. I wondered. . suppose Rees had been with other Numims this night, instead of two apim friends? How often we behave so vastly differently with different company!

But I felt I could not sit much longer and watch young apims being slaughtered by Katakis and Chuliks. A man stood in the doorway. I had not seen him enter. I looked at him from the tail of my eye — and I knew! I knew!

I knew what he would do and I knew the brand he wielded. Under an enveloping black cloak he wore hunting leathers, with the addition of a gray shirt. As he burst forward into the fray I saw his sword, that Savanti sword of superb balance and inconceivably cunning design, fashioned of steel far surpassing anything we have so far forged.

A man serving the Savanti! He had not been thrown out of Paradise, as I had. He had gone through all the tests and had been proved fit to be numbered among the elect. Now he worked with great purpose for the Savanti in their high designs for Kregen.

I admit I felt all the pangs I had thought dead and buried as I watched this man go about the business for which he had been selected, tested, and trained: to alter fate.

Once on a beach in Valka I had seen a young man try to do what the Savanti required, and fail. And so I had come into the possession of Alex Hunter’s Savanti sword. Do you wonder that I gazed at this man who had come from the Swinging City, and hungered for his blade?

Oh, yes, of course there were all the other reasons. But although I did not harbor a grudge against the Savanti for so contemptuously dismissing me from Aphrasoe, the Swinging City, I felt under no obligation to go out of my way for them; rather I would go on doing what I had always done, knowing that much of it paralleled what the Savanti were attempting to do on Kregen.

The fight did not last too long after that. This man was no novice, no amateur like Alex Hunter. He kept his eyes open and ducked the thrown knife, the wickedly flicking tail. He had been trained well. And he had a great deal of experience.

Soon the diffs were calling it a day and running. The tavern’s occupants boiled out into the street, here in the Sacred Quarter where brawls were a way of life, running and shouting and hullabalooing. In any second the watch and the police would be here, and the laws of Hamal would swing into action. I stood up.

“Right gladly, Hamun,” said Rees.

Kov Nath stood, shaking a little, staring around at the carnage. The Trylon with him, holding a bloody arm, looked sick.

Rees and Chido made for the door. Going with them, for I had no wish to tangle with the law again, I watched the man sent by the Savanti. He walked quickly to the door, waited for Rees and Chido to pass out — had he raised his marvelous blade against Rees he would have been a dead man, for my rapier was loose in the scabbard — and swiftly followed. I went after them. The street, indifferently lighted here, with the moons casting enough light to see sufficiently well not to trip over the first corpse on the doorstep, showed blank and empty. The link slaves had run. The guards had fought among themselves. I may be cynical, but I felt sorrow over that. Fully prepared to make my own opening, Chido saved me the gambit.

“Warm work, dom,” he said in his shrill voice.

“Aye,” said this man, swirling his black cape about him, “for a tavern fight.”

“Do you hate us so much then?” Rees spoke heavily.

“It were better you did not ask that question, Numim.”

Walking up, I said, “Do you have a bed for the night, dom?”

“No. I am but newly arrived.”

I could believe that.

“I have rooms,” I said. “You would be welcome.”

Rees stared at me. I hated to hurt him, but I fancied he would remember our words in the voller. No explanation was possible.

The man from the Savanti hesitated only a moment, then said, “I am grateful, dom.”

“As for me, I am for home,” said Rees.

“And I,” piped up Chido. “I will walk with you.”

Rees did not say good night or Remberee. I was grateful for that. What I was about to do would betray Hamun ham Farthytu, and I had spent a lot of time and pain building up that young man. When Rees and Chido had gone we walked the other way. We had gone perhaps six paces when I heard the shouts and I yelled, “Run!”

He ran without question. The Savanti train well.

We eluded the watch and the patrols and so walked to my old inn, the Kyr Nath and the Fifi. Absences in time of war are a common occurrence, and Nulty had seen to payment for the rooms. How was he faring in Paline Valley? We went up to my room and I closed the door. The man from the Savanti unclasped his cape and threw it swirling on the bed. I looked at him. He smiled. He was apim, of course, with thick fair hair and a square-set face, exceedingly grim as to the set of the jaw. I liked the brightness of his eye and the laugh lines at the corners of his mouth. Strongly built, as, of course, he must be, he looked like what he was, a powerful, professional fighting man. I said, “Happy Swinging. And how are things in Aphrasoe?”

Before I had even finished, that superb, deadly Savanti blade had flashed from the scabbard and the point pricked my throat.

“Speak, rast! What do you know of Aphrasoe? Speak quickly and speak the truth — or you are a dead man!”