Armada of Antares

Chapter 18

“You nurdling get-onker!” The Gerawin’s voice hammered close to my ear and I opened my eyes, feeling as sluggish as Tyr Nath after he’d drunk the sylvie’s poisoned cup in the Grotto of the Trell Kings. I was being carried along like a rolled-up carpet, swaying from side to side. I cocked an eye down. Below me lay a windswept, empty space beyond the slats and ropes; below that was the undulating mass of creepers and vines.

So I knew that Gerawin were carrying me across the bridge that gave this volgendrin its name. We halted and the bandy-legged flyer thus addressed shouted something about no sane man having to cope with such a bar of iron. His yells were the furious and desperate shouts of a man seeing vast unpleasantnesses fast approaching.

“You have only yourself to blame, Genarnin the Chank!”

The chank is that vicious white shark of the Outer Oceans of Kregen, a somewhat smaller cousin of the chank of the Eye of the World. The nickname is often given to men who possess that swift and deadly ferocity that marks them for small-sized killers.

Breeze fleered the trappings of the Gerawin, there on the bridge over the vine jungle far below. I felt the blood painfully pulsating in my body. My head rang with Beng Kishi’s finest reverberations. The bar of iron had caused trouble. I did not laugh, but the thought was in my head, somewhere, mixed with the woolly balls of fuzz that scrambled my brains. The Gerawin stopped and the leader bent his head to stare at one of the bracing rope uprights. It was slashed through, hanging by a single thread. So the old longsword still possessed an edge, then. .

The Gerawin who carried the sword in so awkward a fashion looked properly horrified by what he had done. A mere single upright keeping the hand-rope fixed to the side-rope would never bring the bridge down, but I knew the laws of Hamal would be ferociously strict about the minutiae. The law would no doubt have already prescribed the very punishment he must undergo for exactly this misdemeanor. So, stopped as we were, I gave the Gerawin holding my legs a twisting kick, at which he fell back, yelling, grabbing for support above that windy height. The next Gerawin fell half through the slats of the bridge, over the edge, grasping it and screeching. The one with the longsword tried to run, but tripped. Then the familiar silver wire-wound hilt snugged into my palm grip and I turned, ready to slash them all -

and the damned bridge, too, so ugly was my mood.

The bridge swayed. Gerawin were running. I felt the breeze. The suns were declining now. Also, I felt most decidedly queasy. My legs trembled. My arms somehow brought the sword up with a speed I knew would mean my death in a fight. I shook my head and those old devil Bells of Beng Kishi rang and caroled, shooting silver and green sparks through my eyes. I felt as though a herd of stampeding chunkrah had trodden all over me.

The Gerawin, no doubt completely unprepared for an unconscious man to recover and get into action as fast as I had — and I, a Krozair of Zy, knew just how slow I had really been — nevertheless went methodically about their man-snaring again.

“Come on, you rasts!” I said. My voice sounded like a whistling faerling with an ague. “Fight like warriors!” That was pitiful, of course, but I threw it in as a player throws in his last charge of Deldars across the final drin at Jikaida.

They sneered at me. They were professionals. But, for all that it was perfectly clear they did not wish to cross swords with me. The great longsword — that bar of iron — kept them back. The iron chains flew again. The loops snagged. I struggled to free myself, hampered by the swaying bridge and the ropes and supports. More chains settled about me. I knew that running, fighting, defiance itself, were over.

With a last yell I stretched up tall, dragging on the chains. I whirled the longsword over my head.

“For Zair!” I shouted, and hurled.

The Gerawin flight leader was quick. He ducked. The longsword, a blinding bar of silver in the lights, for they had wiped it off, spun through the air. It arced high and then fell. Over and over it tumbled, glittering, a silver brand of silver fire falling away and away into the mat of vines far below.

“Zair rot you for a pack of cramphs!” I said. And then the last loop of iron chain sledged into my head and, once again, I plunged into the darkness of the enveloping black cloak of Notor Zan.

During all my sessions in relating my life on Kregen I have attempted to speak the truth. No matter how fantastic what I say appears to be, it is the truth as well as I can express it. For the next few days of my life on that terrible if beautiful world I feel it expedient to gloss. I will cover the events as quickly as may be until I found myself back in Ruathytu, under strong guard, heavily chained but back to strength. The attack of the Wild Men on the Volgendrin of the Bridge had been beaten off with loss; my recapture had been a mere small incident. The Kov of Apulad, bearing down with all the authority of a Kov, had asserted his prior claim to my carcass and had insisted on taking me back to the capital for judgment. After he was through with me, he had told Pallan Horosh, the Pallan might have what was left to send to trial for the deaths of the two Pachaks.

So, here in Ruathytu, I was lodged in those grim, famous, horrific, and extraordinarily diabolical dungeons of the castle of Hanitcha the Harrower, the infamous Hanitchik. An unduly great part of my life has been spent in prisons of one sort or another. The Hanitchik was a most unpleasant specimen. Torture was a way of life. The food was atrocious, yet it always came up at regular intervals and was enough to keep body and soul together. The prisoners had the laws of Hamal to thank for that.

Escape, of course, was the primary concern.

Just in case you have forgotten — and I most certainly had never forgotten — it is written in the laws of Hamal that the nearest relative of a murdered person may choose between certain dire tortures which may then be inflicted upon the murderer before he is dragged off to be hanged. I fancied the Kov of Apulad would decide on the most unpleasant tortures the law allowed. The trial, with which I will not weary you, wound its way to its inevitable conclusion. Stoutly protesting that I was not Chaadur at all, I was indicted by the Kov. Now that he had taken up his new post under the Queen, his weight and prestige were fully sufficient to have me condemned. Even during the proceedings, which were carried out with a great attention to scrupulous fairness in every detail, even though the whole affair’s outcome was cut and dried before it began, thus making a nonsense of the very justification for laws at all, I mulled over Ornol ham Feoste and his new appointment. He had been in charge of a small voller factory in Sumbakir. It had all been very provincial. Now, after the death of his wife Esme, he was here in Ruathytu high in the Queen’s favor and even more strongly connected with the vollers.

On Kregen two and two make four — sometimes.

The Nine Faceless Ones who chose the high nobles to oversee the secrets of the vollers must have chosen this Kov Ornol ham Feoste. There seemed no other explanation. So as the guilty verdict was brought in by the three judges — they did not run to the jury system in Hamal for all the laws — I had found another piece of the jigsaw. It appeared it was going to do me no good at all. It certainly wasn’t going to stop what the Kov planned to do to my hide. Because like any normal human being I did not believe I was going to die just yet and that must mean I would escape in some way, I had refused to offer up the alias of Hamun ham Farthytu as an alibi for myself. If Rees and Chido were apprised of my plight they would be there to do all they could, and I fancied their testimony might shake the hard identification of the Kov. This was comforting. One of the turnkeys, an apim with one eye and a crippled left leg, smashed that bubble.

“The Queen’s happier’n a vosk in swill,” he told me as I took my regulation one bur of exercise in the enclosed yard, roofed with iron bars, the suns invisible and only the streaming mingled opaz light falling across the grim stone walls. “The army o’ the north’s won the big victory we’ve all waited for.”

I felt the chill. I swallowed.

“Yes,” he went on, chewing his cham from one cheek to another. “Havil smiled on us. Those rasts of Pandahem were all smashed up. It was a great victory.”

“Where was this?”

“Oh, I dunno. Those foreign places is all the same to me. By Kuerden the Merciless! The stories! The army chased after ’em for three full days. The loot! If’n I had both my eyes and a sound leg I’d a bin there, believe me, with my sack stuffed with gold and jewels — ah! It don’t bear thinking of.”

It certainly didn’t bear thinking of. But I had to think. And there was more.

“The Queen — may Havil bless ’er! — is going to be crowned Empress! That’ll be a sight! Ruathytu’ll go mad. The procession will take all day to pass, an’ I’m going to see it, right from the top of the Hanitchik.” He chewed. “Well, that’s my right, ain’t it?”

“Yes,” I said. “Was it only the Pandaheem? Any other. .?”

“Oh, you’ve heard the tales, too, have you? Yes, they say there was an army out of Vallia. Rasts of Vallians! May Hanitcha harrow ’em to hell!” He chuckled and spat. “All smashed up. Tumbled back to a place they call Jholaix — they’re hiding out there now. All we’ve gotta do is go in and finish ’em.” He spat again. “I’ve heard of Jholaix, not that I’ve ever bin able to afford to drink of it, never not once in my whole life.”

Thus spoke Nath the Keys, my jailer and an enemy, yet just an ordinary man. One of the most telling indictments of the gul Chaadur had been that he had pretended to be a Horter. The official torturing was scheduled for three days away.

I could delay no longer. Rees and Chido, and the others who had known me in Ruathytu as the Amak of Paline Valley, must be called on. Hamun ham Farthytu must be used as an alias. I should not have delayed so long. The remnants of the armies of the countries of Pandahem, and my army of Vallia and Djanduin, were penned up in the extreme northeastern corner of Pandahem, in Jholaix. One final battle would destroy them utterly and put the whole island into the power of Hamal. My place was with my army.

Having reached that decision I called for Nath the Keys and he was there already at the cell door, swinging his lamp and jangling his keys.

“Stop your bawling, Chaadur! Your time has come, there’s no sense in kicking against it, lad. You did a foul murder and now you must pay the price.” Soldiers with iron chains stood with Nath the Keys.

“But,” I said stupidly, “there are three days.”

“Naw. Naw, lad. The Kov’s in a hurry, like. It’s now.”

They dragged me out and I fought, so they wrapped the iron chains around me and knocked me out. When I came to I was chained up to the stake in a small courtyard of the Hanitchik with an assembled party of gloating nobles and Horters, with the guards. . and with the black-and red-robed tormentors. Kov Ornol ham Feoste was in a jovial mood. He had brought a group of friends. He called out, “I have chosen well for you, Chaadur, murderer!”

They had gagged me so I couldn’t yell back. I glared in murderous fury on this miserable Kov, but I could not break the chains.

The fires banked red in their braziers, the hot irons glowing. The tongs, the knives, the scalpels, the screws, all were at hand. The Kov sat back on the front chair, upholstered in green brocade, and he lounged in fine style to enjoy the spectacle. Those with him, sitting on chairs placed in the spots reserved for them, perked up at the prospect of a bur or so of pleasure. I looked at them as the chief torturer advanced, holding a tiny knife. He wore a black hood and his eyes glittered at me from the holes cut in that ominously black material.

I looked at the assembled nobles and Horters of Hamal and I considered once more that the country was evil, that this glittering, decadent city of Ruathytu was evil, and that the greatest evil of all was Queen Thyllis herself. There were one or two men there I had seen during my days in Ruathytu; but not one I had known well enough to imagine he would recognize me as the Amak of Paline Valley. My position was such that I would joy in being recognized as someone — anyone — other than Chaadur, the condemned murdering gul.

My wish was so rapidly fulfilled I wondered if the Everoinye or the Savanti had a hand in it. But, apart from what I suspected they might have been doing lately, the Star Lords and the mortal but superhuman men and women of Aphrasoe left me strictly to my own devices on Kregen. They would let me be tortured and killed if they had no immediate need of my services.

Sitting two places away from Kov Ornol, a man lounged in his chair. I recognized him as my gaze passed along the nobles. He wore a natty costume of blue, gray, and black stitched into a hexagonal pattern very like the hide of a chavonth. He looked a lot like a sleek, treacherous chavonth lounging back, this man I had rescued from the snows of the Mountains of the North at the behest of the Star Lords.

So I stared at him as the little knife in the leprously white hand of the torturer sliced toward my skin for the first cut. I was stripped naked. My body glistened with sweat. The gag choked me. I know my eyes must have held all that old powerful look of the devil as I gazed at Naghan Furtway, he who had once been the Kov of Falinur.

Now my comrade Seg Segutorio was the Kov of Falinur, and this Naghan Furtway a fugitive from Vallia, a man who must be riddled with anger and resentment. Once before he had unmasked and betrayed me, there at The Dragon’s Bones.

Would he recognize me again?

Naghan Furtway had once held enormous power as a Kov of Vallia. His passion for Jikaida had been inordinate; I had played him enough times in the Mountains of the North, waiting for him and his nephew Tyr Jenbar to regain their strength and for Genal the Ice to take his icy load down the mountains, to know he played as he lived, hard, ruthlessly, without mercy.

Yet he had raged at the cramphs of Havilfar for selling us defective airboats. Clearly his disgrace and flight had changed his mind. He was here in Ruathytu for no good purpose. He had become a renegade. The knife pricked my skin, slid, cut, and withdrew with a sparkle of my blood on the tip. This would take a long time.

I watched Naghan Furtway.

The knife cut again, cunningly, painfully.

Naghan Furtway stood up, drawing that chavonth-patterned cape back, resting his hand on the hilt of his rapier. The knife licked out and the pain stung. Soon that pain would coalesce from many tiny pains into an insupportable agony.

Kov Ornol looked up, frowning.

“Sit down, Horter Furtway. There is much to come.”

So they knew, here in Hamal, who Furtway was.

“I think not, Kov.”

“What in Havil’s name do you mean! As Malahak is my witness, Horter Furtway, this cramph of a Chaadur suffers torment to my orders before he dies.”

“I think not, Kov. This man’s name is not Chaadur.”

Kov Ornol spluttered. “That is what he says, the lying rast! You believe his story?”

“No. For I know him, aye, I know him well.”

“That is nothing to me. He murdered my wife and has been adjudged guilty. I will have what the law allows-”

“I have the ear of the Queen. I think she will not be pleased if you persist, Kov Ornol.”

That was threat enough to make any man think twice.

Between these two, the Kov and the ex-Kov, there was a great gulf. For all his bluster, cruelty, and evil, Kov Ornol ham Feoste was a mere blunderer, an oaf, compared with the refinement of cunning and calculation of purpose of Naghan Furtway. The sheer hardness of the man in the chavonth-patterned clothes blunted all Kov Ornol’s bluster.

“The Queen must be informed at once.” Furtway was looking at me much as a leem stares at a ponsho.

“If you persist, Kov Ornol, the Queen will order done to you what you do to this man.”

“You cannot speak to me like that! I am a Kov of Hamal! I know-”

“You know nothing, Kov. The situation between Hamal and Vallia is what concerns us here.”

“You are a Vallian disgraced and thrown out of your own country!” Ornol blustered on, very plum-colored of face, struggling to rise and confront Naghan Furtway.

“So I know what I am saying.”

The tormentor and his little knife withdrew, thankfully. He wasn’t going to commit himself until the argument was settled.

Ornol ham Feoste gestured with irritated anger at the torturer. “Get on with it! Take no notice of this fool of a man who thinks he is a Kov still! Cut him!”

“I will tell you, Kov Ornol, since you are bent on running headfirst into mortal danger. The Queen will want to deal with this man herself, personally. She will excuse no one who balks her of that. I tell you, you foolish man, and you will not listen.”

Kov Ornol puffed himself up and half drew his thraxter.

If he set to with Furtway the latter’s rapier would spit him before he could call on Malahak as a witness.

“Guards!” bawled the Kov of Apulad, this foolish, incensed, half-demented Ornol ham Feoste.

“Then you will have to know and see the truth, and the error you fall into Kov Ornol. And once I tell you, the guards must seal this yard and the Queen must be told. At once! There is great danger here for us all.”

“What in a Herrelldrin Hell are you talking about?”

“This man, this murderer you call Chaadur, is a man the Queen will give great riches for. And I am the man — remember that, Kov Ornol, and you who sit here — remember, I am the man who brought this rast to justice.” He swung around, the chavonth cape flaring. He pointed at me, evil triumph lending him a spurious but frightening dignity.

“That man is Dray Prescot, the Prince Majister of Vallia!”

Chapter 19

Empress Thyllis takes me for a stroll through Ruathytu

King Doghamrei slashed me across the face and screeched: “You lie, cramph, you lie!”

Queen Thyllis sat forward on her crystal throne, with the golden steps, the zhantil pelts, the Chail Sheom chained in their golden chains, and the manhounds lolling fearsomely below her. She propped her chin on one white hand and regarded me with those slanting emerald eyes.

“Bagor ti Hemlad!” she said. “What you say cannot be believed, for you could not have survived.”

I’d felt pretty rough, I can tell you. This cramph Doghamrei had drugged me and had me thrown burning from a skyship, as I have told you, and I suppose it was natural that Queen Thyllis should not believe that. She was far too wily a bird to believe what King Doghamrei said. She had that onker’s card marked. He was the King of Hirrume, a moderately sized kingdom within the Empire of Hamal, and he hankered after getting rid of the Queen’s husband, the King who was a mere cipher and a friend of Rees, and then King Doghamrei planned to marry the Queen and settle himself in comfortably as Emperor. I fancied that Thyllis, with her intuitive grasp of affairs, kept her husband under strict control as a counter to this idiot Doghamrei, who still had adherents and men who would cry for him. So, feeling weak, I lolled against the guards and used them to prop me upright. The torturer and his knives had done no real damage; my weariness came from many sources of punishment over the past sennights. I’d bellowed to the Queen what Doghamrei had done when I was being played with by the Queen, and she, not really finding it possible to believe what I said, while certainly not believing what Doghamrei said, chose a middle course and beckoned to Naghan Furtway. Furtway approached the golden steps. The slanting emerald eyes regarded him, and before she spoke the white pointed teeth bit onto a full moist lip.

“So you claim Bagor ti Hemlad is the Prince Majister of Vallia?”

“I know nothing of this Bagor, Majestrix.” Furtway spoke up. “But this is Dray Prescot. I know.”

“Majestrix!” brayed Ornol ham Feoste, struggling forward. “The cramph is Chaadur, the murderer of my wife!”

The Queen regarded the two of them in turn, and then looked at me. “So the man who is Bagor ti Hemlad, and with whom I have an account still open, is Chaadur and also the Prince Rast of Vallia, hey?”

The situation would have brought that marvelously delightful tinkle of laughter to my Delia’s lips. Even I could see the humor of it, and I was pig in the middle. They were debating here in the great hall of the palace, debating on a man who had three names, and all wishing to claim him as theirs. The Hammabi el Lamma contained many a dark secret and many a hideous story; I doubted if the stinking place had witnessed such a farce before. I had acted like a great onker here once, dressed in ridiculous and humiliating clothes. I had been hairy them. My beard now, although nowhere near as long, presented the Queen with strong memories of Bagor ti Hemlad, that was sure.

Across the shining marble lay the slab covering the hole beneath which grew the leprous-white syatra. Men and women who made mistakes and displeased the Queen were popped down there. . All these people knew they plotted on the knife-edge of disaster.

So, as I glared up at the Queen and pondered if I slew her now would that materially assist Vallia, I was aware that my Delia would laugh in amusement at the situation, but would feel absolute horror at the plight of her husband. Thank Zair, she was safe in Valka, in Esser Rarioch, and her women would be readying the layette. Doctor Nath the Needle and Thelda would be there, and Aunt Katri, also. .

“Bagor! Do you wish to feed the syatra?”

“No, Queen.”

“Are you Chaadur?”

One lie was as good as another.

“No.”

“Are you Dray Prescot?”

I stared up at her. Could I deny it? I saw the green glitter of her eyes, the corner of her lip caught between her teeth, the way she leaned to look at me, the betraying movement of the golden bodice. And I saw that she already knew the answer. Other men besides Naghan Furtway must have come to Hamal, fugitives from Vallia. There was his nephew Jenbar for a start. Possibly Nath Larghos, who had been Trylon of the Black Mountains, was here. I’d knocked his eye out and maybe he was dead. Anyway, Inch was now Kov of the Black Mountains. There must be others of the third party who had escaped. They were hatching a plot here, that was certain; but more immediately they could identify me. I was sure they already had. That would be Queen Thyllis’ way.

So I stared up at her and pushed myself upright from the guards, plunking my chained fists on my hips. She saw my face. She did not flinch back, but — and I admit now I enjoyed it — her eyebrows drew down as though in sudden pain, and her teeth bit so hard she drew blood from that ripe lip.

“You stupid onker,” I said. “Queen Thyllis. Vallia has thrown out these rasts, and now you plot with them. They are failures, and so are you. Your evil Empire of Hamal is doomed. Vallia will crush you like a fly.”

I was not too happy with the fustian this time. It had not boomed and rolled out. It did not convince me. Thyllis was offended, but she was not convinced either.

“So you are the Prince Majister of Vallia!”

“Aye!”

“And you think I shall ransom you? Demand a huge sum from that evil Emperor, so you can sail home to plot against me?”

“You can try to extract ransom from the Emperor, if you wish. You’ll waste your time. If you want ransom-”

“Ah, but, Dray Prescot! I shall not ransom you!”

In my heart I knew she would never let me out of her clutches for ransom. I wondered what the Emperor, that dread ruler who was Delia’s father, would do if he had this woman, this Queen Thyllis, penned in his dungeons in his capital city of Vondium.

She threw a sweetmeat to one of her jiklos; it lifted its maw and caught the fragment out of the air, chomped once, and the piece was gone. It wore gold necklaces, I noticed, but the bands around the creature’s neck and the attached chains were of solid steel.

“Shall I feed you to my jiklos?”

I didn’t bother to reply.

At my back the great hall was packed with courtiers, soldiers, guards, and the petty clients from the lands owing allegiance to the Empire of Hamal. They made a gorgeous picture of barbaric magnificence. The Queen would not be hurried. She wanted to make the most of her bur of triumph.

“Would you fight in the Jikhorkdun?”

I was tempted to say “Put a sword in my fist and see!” But I ignored her. Her personal bodyguard, stalwart apims clad in the beautiful mesh link mail manufactured in some of the old countries bordering the Shrouded Sea, stood lined out on either side of the throne. Feathers and golden ornaments made them popinjays, but they could fight well enough, I knew. The Chail Sheom, lovely and yet pathetic in their scraps of sensil, glowed with beauty in chains along the steps. The zhantil-skin pelts reminded me of the magnificent wild animals slain to provide a touch of grandeur to the surroundings of this evil woman.

“Answer me, nulsh! Is it the Jikhorkdun?”

“I do not care,” I said at last. “Hamal is finished, whatever you do to me.”

“Liar!” she screamed suddenly, and painful blood flooded into her white face. The green eyes blazed. She beat her fist on the arm of her crystal throne. “Liar!”

“You’re a fool,” I said, and leaned back on the guards to rest my legs.

“We have smashed the armies of Pandahem — aye, and your raggle-taggle bobtail of an army from Vallia! Now we go forward into Jholaix and all Pandahem will be mine! Mine!” She was panting. “As for Vallia! We’ll attack Vallia and smash that Lem-forsaken blot from the face of the world!”

“If you trust in Lem,” I said, “you’re more of a fool than I thought.”

She almost lost control. But she was a Queen. She had suborned good men to put her on the throne. Rees had fought for her. She forced herself to lean back, to let her hands uncurl from fists to claws. She smiled. “I know what I shall do with you, Dray Prescot, Prince of Cramphs! But first you shall taste the cup of bitter humiliation while I drink from the cup of victory!”

I did not know what she meant then, but two days later — days spent in a hole in the wall below the palace — I found out.

It is in the nature of a man to be himself, despite himself, and it was in the nature of this woman Queen Thyllis to be a bitch. Also, and this seems unarguable, it is in the nature of a victor to be seen to be victorious.

I was dragged out. They did not remove the chains. They cleaned me up and fed me so I felt better. The stone walls of the dungeons dripped with moisture, niter-gleaming. The guards contained many more diffs than there had been before in the Hammabi el Lamma. A little Och came forward with a strip of red cloth. My blue breechclout was taken away and the red cloth was wrapped around me. It was not the old brave scarlet, but it was red. In the circumstances I took no great heart from that. I suspected the reasons for the red, and I did not like them at all.

They gave me a huge breakfast of slursh and red honey, then a Brokelsh, cracking off jokes typical of the witticisms of his race, sawed off a quantity of my hair and beard. They handed me a skin bag of wine

— a foul red rubbish from the lees of all the barracks, I suppose — but I drank it off. They gave me a handful of palines. They wanted me sober and able to appreciate what was going on. Then they led me aloft with the iron chains, up the narrow stairs, slimed and gloomy. By this time I had fathomed out what was going on.

It was, given the circumstances, both obvious and simple.

I will not go into all the doings of that day. It was a day of Hamal’s greatness. Queen Thyllis celebrated a huge triumph. She gave public thanks to Havil the Green for the victory of her armies before she finally took the crown and the scepter. At last she sat on the throne, the Empress of Hamal. Her husband the King went through all the procedures as a pale shadow hovering near, deferred to by those of lesser ranks, but a cipher, a puppet, a pawn, there only for the legality of the whole proceedings. Thyllis had adapted with great cunning all the high thrones, daises, and platforms on which they rode as well as the boloth palanquins, so that she always sat higher than her husband the King. The procession was vast, glittering, magnificent, superb. It wound slowly through all the chief thoroughfares and boulevards of Ruathytu. I knew many of them well as we went along. All the vantage points were loaded with sightseers. Every foot of the way was crowded with people shouting and cheering.

“Hamal! Hamal! Thyllis! Thyllis!” And how triumphantly she must have heard their new yell: “Empress!

Empress! Havil keep the Empress Thyllis!”

Dust puffed despite the slaves and their swinging watering cans. The suns shone down. The flags flew. The trumpets shrilled. Bands played all the famous marches of Hamal, swinging down boulevard after boulevard, circling the kyros and the Jikhorkdun and the merezos. On and on went the procession, animals caught for the display, chained slaves, the trophies of battle, loot taken from the despoiled palaces of Pandahem. Regiment after regiment marched, and even in my state I could observe that many of the regiments were brand-new, composed of young men from the guls. Probably there were clums there, also, for Hamal had formidable population resources if she admitted the despised clums to the ranks of her army.

Cavalry trotted. I wondered if Rees was there, so I asked my guards, to be told no one had heard of him. They were all new men. .

Above us in the sky flew the vollers and the flyers, creating patterns against the opaz glare, a proud symbol of Hamal’s might. The noise of cheering buffeted every step of the way. As for Thyllis, true to form, she had bedecked herself in gorgeous simplicity. A long green gown, loaded with gems, fitted the needs of the occasion with a singular appropriateness. She looked regal — no, rather, she looked imperial!

How superbly she aped those notorious Queens of Pain of Ancient Loh, aped them and surpassed them!

Her howdah aboard a massive boloth which swayed along on its sixteen legs had been so lavishly decorated I wondered how many families of guls might live for how many years on the value of the jewels and gold alone. She sat high. She sat with only a feathered fan behind her head so she might be seen by everyone. The sight of that barbaric magnificence must have thrilled everyone who watched. For the cruel empress of a cruel empire, the Empress Thyllis was supreme and superb. After all that long procession of booty, slaves, and soldiers had wended for bur after bur through the streets of Ruathytu, Empress Thyllis in her fantastically decorated howdah aboard the equally fantastically decorated boloth followed. Apart from an honor guard of zorca cavalrymen who brought up the rear, she let everything precede her and so lead on in a mounting frenzy of expectation to her own glittering arrival. A space had been left between the last marching body of men before the boloth. These last were her personal bodyguards in their link mesh, and others marched on either side of the boloth, with zorca-mounted officials. In that space a single calsany trotted along. People guffawed when they saw that beast of burden, the lowliest of the low, trotting along with down-bent head, always ready to accept the beatings with sticks which were the lot of the calsany.

Chained to the tail of the beast, dragged along, went the man who was known to the crowds as the Prince Majister of their hated enemy Vallia.

How they booed as I was dragged past, trying to keep on my feet, being dragged by the chains and the tail of the calsany. Every time the calsany became frightened by the noise and the close-pressing throngs he did what all calsanys do when they are startled.

The cramphs of Hamal had not forgotten a thing.

Lashed to the harness of the animal in an upright position a flagstaff nodded along. Someone had told them, Furtway, probably, and they had stitched up a red flag with a yellow cross. This fluttered from the staff atop the calsany’s back as I stumbled along at the rear.

So, I, Dray Prescot, Prince Majister of Vallia, took a proud part in the coronation procession of the Empress of Hamal, and I stumbled along with Old Superb flying over me. I do not believe I wish to dwell more on that day.

It was absolutely certain that if Rees, Chido, Nath Tolfeyr, Casmas the Deldy, or anyone of that circle of friends and acquaintances I had made in Ruathytu, saw me as I staggered along, the chains clanging and hampering me so that often I fell and was dragged before I could claw up to my feet again, then they would never recognize this man at all. It makes sense. If you see a man you know to be the Prince Majister of Vallia, all filthy and grimed, chained and humiliated, dragged through the streets at the tail end of a calsany, how could you possibly for a moment imagine he was Hamun ham Farthytu, the Amak of Paline Valley? No, there was no risk that I would be mistaken for the Amak. The day ended at last. Thyllis had spent four burs in the Great Temple of Havil the Green being crowned, and I had spent the time getting my wind back and slopping up a bowl of slursh, without red honey this time, and no palines either. The guards looked curiously at me. But they must have seen walking dead men many times before, working as they did for the Empress Thyllis. At the end of the day when the twin suns of Antares at last sank I was carted off, still in my chains, and thrust back into my hole.

The gloom of the dungeon matched my thoughts. I had felt no humiliation, no shame, during that parody out there in the streets of Ruathytu. Anger I had felt, of course. Determination to bash a few skulls and escape, yes.

But the Opaz-forsaken chains would not yield. I could not bend or break them. What Thyllis had in store for me next would be physically unpleasant. The psychological unpleasantness she had already handed out would have pleased her, no doubt assuming me to be crushed in spirit. But that kind of naked display of power offends me. Taking no material store in it for myself, it could not inversely harm me. Had Thyllis been in my position on that day she would have been asphyxiated with shame and humiliation.

Dark figures moved into view under the single torch and I bawled down at them.

“Jump to it, you rasts! It’s time for supper and I’m famished!”

But it was not my guards who stepped forward into the torch light.

“Dray Prescot?”

I did not answer.

The cloaked figures moved closer. There were half a dozen men in bulky armor beneath their cloaks, with naked thraxters in their hands. They were Katakis. Their bladed tails curved above their heads. Blood shone thickly on four of the blades. There had been four guards on duty in this deep inner cell. These Katakis I ignored. I stared at the man, powerful, hard, arrogant, who led them. Strom Rosil na Morcray, the Kataki Chuktar.

I looked with a swift searching stare for his employer, Vad Garnath, for that cramph would know me as Hamun ham Farthytu.

This Kataki Strom would not know my face, for when we had clashed in Smerdislad I had been wearing the Dudinter mask and he had thought me to be Quarnach Algarond, the Vad of the Dudinter District, of Ba-Marish. I knew this man to be violent and dangerous, a lethal tool in the hands of unscrupulous men, a man who would turn on them to his own profit. The Katakis are slave-masters, expert in the manipulation of slaves, as I have said.

He spoke again, harshly, impatiently, flicking a whip against his boots.

“You are the man they call Dray Prescot?”

“If you watched my little promenade today you would not need to ask the question.”

He drew in his breath with a hiss.

“I see the wizard was right!” He gestured to his men. “Unchain him.”

I rubbed my wrists when I was freed. They were raw.

“There is no time to dillydally. We have bribed and killed our way here. Grak!”

There it was again, that slave-driving word. .

So they shepherded me along the runnels and the corridors and we met no one except the four guards they had slain to gain ingress. We came out under the light of the moons at that very same postern where King Doghamrei had sent me off with Ob-Eye to set me alight and dump me overside from a skyship. A voller was waiting. We clambered aboard and the flier leaped aloft.

“You do not ask why we rescue you?”

“No doubt you have your reasons.”

Again he drew in his breath with a hiss.

“I was waiting for my supper,” I said, just to keep him on the boil. “Do you have anything aboard?”

They rummaged out a wicker basket and I set to on bread, cold vosk, and palines. They did not know what to make of me, and that suited me. I of course could have no idea what their plans were. For sure, the wizard, this certain Phu-si-Yantong of whom I then knew nothing, must consider me vital to his mad schemes of taking over Hamal and through me controlling Vallia. It seemed to me as I ate and thought that he must no doubt consider me the only man in Vallia who could hold the empire together after the old Emperor’s death. If I died, he would be faced with the task of controlling many splinters. Through me he could run the entire place. As I say, I did know this of the Wizard of Loh, Phu-si-Yantong, even then: the man was a megalomaniac of the highest quality.

The notion crossed my mind that if he was a megalomaniac for wanting to run Vallia, what did that make me? I had no desire to run the place, however, and I wished Delia’s father long life.

“You will be required to do certain favors for your rescue,” said the Kataki Strom in his hissing voice.

“But for me and my masters you would be unpleasantly dead on the morrow.”

I munched vosk, swallowed, and took a fresh bite.

“You act very coolly. When the wizard has dealt with you you will fly a different wing.”

“As to that,” I answered, “I am my own man.”

“No longer!”

He wore a thraxter. His tail was bladed. There were five others similarly armed with him. Their shields ranked around the coaming of the voller. I was not feeling on my top form. Zair knows, I had been through much. But the old Dray Prescot began to struggle and fight his way through all the good intentions I had been trying to impose on myself. I had been kicked around and tortured — only the beginning of that, I grant you — and hung in chains. I was feeling mean. Very mean. The only gratitude I felt to these Katakis was that I wouldn’t slay them unless they forced me. Over our heads the Maiden with the Many Smiles and She of the Veils shone down lambently. Their gold and pink light fuzzed the edges of the voller and shone on the close-set helmets of the Katakis and their bladed whip-tails.

I said, “You rescued me. For that I give you thanks. But you did not rescue me because you were sorry for my plight. If you have a quarrel with Thyllis I am not your pawn.” That should make them think I did not know the fuller plans of the wizard.

“What are you talking about, Prescot?”

“I have given you thanks. Now you had best set the voller down and let me go about my business.”

Strom Rosil laughed. His Kataki tail lashed above his head, very deadly in the golden pinkish light. Ruathytu fled past below. The familiar streets and kyros vanished with the domes and towers into the pinkish haze.

“You are coming with us to receive your instructions.”

“I think not,” I said, leaning forward, very smoothly, very fast, and drew his thraxter from the scabbard. They are man-managers, the Katakis. But they had none of their damned iron chains with them now. We fought.

The tails of the Katakis are superb weapons, but they have their limitations. Against my thraxter their thraxter-work could not stand, and the straight sword chunked into the throat of the man who threw himself at me in front of his leader. Rosil staggered back. The voller bored on. The next came at me and I ducked his tail, slashed it off so that the bladed tip spun far out into the void. He screamed. I stuck him through the throat, also, for these cramphs wore armor. The next two sparred for a moment and I leaned to avoid their thrust. I took a tail blade on my sword and so slashed across and down. Then, shortening the sword, I drove it in low and deep enough on the second one. That left two of them with Rosil raging to get at me. He snatched the thraxter from the hand of his man and the blades crossed and twinkled in the pink moonslight.

“You ungrateful cramph! Is this how you repay our guile and cunning in freeing you?”

To confuse him further, I said, “Thyllis probably paid you well to lay this trap, kleesh.”

He did not like that.

His man flung himself at the controls and the voller lurched and swooped down. Trees flicked past, dusky golden blobs in the shifting light.

“Get behind him, onker!” bellowed Rosil.

He was a fine fighter, and his tail was a marvel. I missed a slash at the tip and had to jump, weave, and parry to avoid his counter. The voller skidded along the ground, a cornfield going past with a loud hissing of broken stems. The last man tried to obey his leader and brought his tail up through his legs in that deadly stabbing thrust. I swirled the blade down, lopped the tail, and swung back to Rosil. He looked around. The voller came to rest. He had four dead men and one holding a bladeless tail, looking stupidly at the blood gushing out of the stump. The Kataki Strom was a cunning and resourceful man. I did not doubt his courage. Evidently the Wizard of Loh, Phu-si-Yantong, had studied the Prince Majister of Vallia most carefully, but he had not discovered that I could be an onker when it came to taking orders. He must have realized I was some kind of fighting man; Strom Rosil knew that, now. With a baffled yell he sprang over the side of the voller and vanished into the moons-shot darkness. He yelled back:

“Your day will come, Prince. The wizard will cut you down to size!”

His tailless man followed.

I had command of the voller.

I threw the thraxter down into the blood-reeking pit and hauled the bodies out, tossing them overboard. I kept all the weapons, and I chopped all the tail blades off, too. Then I set the controls and up we went, the silver boxes performing their usual uncanny function, sending us fleeting over the surface of Hamal.

I set the course.

Peacefully, equably, feeling a lot better, I sent the voller speeding north to Pandahem and Vallia.