A Sword for Kregen (11 page)

Vondium Dances

Inch’s adventures would fill a book of their own. We left affairs in the capable hands of Larghos the Left-Handed and prepared to return to the capital. Inch kept on looking about and uttering exclamations of surprise — at the flying sailers so different from those with which we had fought the Battle of Jholaix, at the Phalanx, and this and that. He was delighted to be back, and when, in an odd moment, we found him solemnly standing on his head, reciting the Kregish alphabet backwards and at the end of each recital clapping his heels smartly together, we smiled fondly. Inch and his taboos! If he fell over when he clapped his heels together, he’d have to start all over again.

We did not ask him which particular taboo he had broken. When you got to know Inch of Ng’groga, the Kov of the Black Mountains, you did not bother to question his taboos and simply took delight in his presence.

He told us that after he had been sorcerously flung back from the Pool of Baptism to his native Ng’groga, in southeastern Loh, he had been forced to spend some time atoning for all the mass of broken taboos he felt sure he had left strewn in his wake. Then, with due ritual and protocol and a mass of taboo-legitimized formalities he had wed his Sasha.

Delia clapped her hands.

“Wonderful, Inch, delightful. Congratulations. Is she with you?”

“Yes. I left her in Vondium—”

“Oh?” I said.

He looked at me — by this time he was sitting at a table in a decent chair and we had forbidden squish pie to be brought any closer than an ulm — and he smiled.

“I know you think I am a clever fellow, Dray. But it would take Ngrangi Himself to have known you were here at Kanarsmot. No, the moment we heard in Ng’groga of the troubles in Vallia I set off.” Across in the continent of Loh they had few if any airboats and travel would be slow and news hardly come by. “I took the liberty of going via Djanduin. I found the people wonderfully hospitable when they discovered I was acquainted with their king.”

“Acquainted,” I said.

Inch laughed at that. “Oh, yes, Ortyg Fellin Coper and Kytun Kholin Dom are great fellows. They greeted me right royally and gave me splendid fliers.”

“Fliers...”

“Well, of course. By Ngrozyan the Axe! You didn’t think I’d come empty-handed? I enlisted a parcel of likely rogues, all friends of mine, or friends of friends, and we look forward to a rollicking time, I can tell you.”

“How many?”

Five hundred or so — of course fifty of ’em are mindyfingling about somewhere in Pandahem, probably. One of the fliers broke down. And I sent half of ’em up to the Black Mountains under command of my second cousin, Brince, to sniff around and sort out any mischief up there.”

Delia glanced at me. Kov of the Black Mountains, our comrade Inch, with responsibilities there he took most seriously. Yet — he had flown first to Vondium...

All the same, the situation had to be explained to him, that same situation that had so puzzled and infuriated Seg.

Also, there was about Inch a new and refreshing air of determination, of a positive approach. He was still the same gangling affable fellow; but clearly discernible in his talk and his movements this new positive attitude to life marked off a change that had taken place in him, also.

I said, “We no longer employ mercenaries in Vallia.” I saw his face. “Oh, there are still many paktuns in employ, of course, they have not all packed up and gone home. But as a part of the new imperial policy, Vallia is going to be liberated by Vallians.”

If he had stood up, flouncing, and shouted, before he stalked out, I could not have blamed him. This sounded like the basest ingratitude on my part. But Inch just stared at me, and scratched his nose, and pulled a long lock of that yellow hair.

“Yes. They told me something of the sort in Djanduin. If you’ve managed to persuade Kytun that he must not bring a horde of your ferocious Djang warriors to Vallia — well, the reasons must be cogent, most cogent indeed.” He gave a little laugh. “But, by Vox! What a sight that would be!”

“Aye.” I said. “It would indeed.”

There was a great deal to be talked about and histories to be filled in. Larghos the Left-Handed came in to finalize his orders and the position as we saw it then. He had known Inch as the Kov of the Black Mountains before the death of the emperor, Delia’s father. But when Nath came in, fresh from organizing the movements of the Phalanx, I braced myself up. Nath had not easily accepted Seg Segutorio. The last thing I wanted was friction between my comrades and my trusted lieutenants. Some emperors and dictators use antipathies between their subordinates to divide and rule; to me that is inefficient and, to boot, indicative of a society I have no wish to be a part of.

When the formalities were made, Inch, very gravely, said, “It was my misfortune not to have been with you, Kyr Nath, when you led the first Phalanx that the emperor has spoken of. I grieve that I missed so much. But I am here now and my axemen are under your command for the rest of this campaign.”

He cocked an eye at me and I wondered if he was bracing himself to break a few of his taboos for which he would have to do remarkable penances later. “I understand we no longer employ mercenaries. But these fellows are not paktuns. They are friends of mine, out for what rascally fun they can find and a little loot if that comes their way. We shall be going up to the Black Mountains before long.”

How difficult to judge when men and women talk in apparently open and frank ways just how much of the truth they are telling! Deeply thinking people do not rush into confidences the moment acquaintance is made with strangers. But I felt I knew Inch. He was a blade comrade. His words rang with truth, at least to me, and I knew that Delia also heard that truth.

Nath smiled.

“You are most welcome, kov. Like Kov Seg, you have been much spoken of in your absence. The Hakkodin will marvel at your axes.”

“They will that,” I said. And then I added, warningly, “But I think it takes a native Ng’grogan to swing that axe in just that way. We continue with our Vallian axes, Nath — do you not agree?”

“Assuredly, majister. And, anyway, I fancy some of my axemen could give Kov Inch’s men a gallop for their zorcas.”

The conversation eased after that. I was not fool enough to imagine that perfect comradely harmony would exist between Inch and Nath immediately and without a little time for rubbing off the sharp corners. But, at the least, a start had been made.

There remained the last parades and the music and the marching and the distribution of bobs, and then we took off for Vondium. News came in from Seg that he had inflicted a minor defeat on the enemies facing him, that the clansmen were arguing among themselves over what to do, and that given a little more time he rather fancied his chances at driving them into the sea. Nath read the message and said, at once and without preamble: “Let me go up there right away, majister, and join Kov Seg. We have the strength now—”

Farris looked troubled.

“My sailing fliers can—”

“Of course, Kov Farris!” broke in Nath, eagerly. “And we can drop right on them and discomfort them utterly.”

I’d heard this before. I pointed at the map, indicating the southwest.

Nath said: “I know, majister. But the Fourth is coming along nicely, we have fresh regiments of churgurs and archers. And, above all, the southwest is quiet now.”

“Quiet. But what are they up to down there?”

“I,” said Inch, “would greatly like to see Seg again.”

There were a few other pallans in my rooms and each gave his opinion, honestly, for what it was worth, and all knowing I would have to make the final decision.

The notion that Vallia was some gigantic Jikaida board returned to me. One moved the pieces here and there and sought to contain strengths and to camouflage weaknesses. If you wonder why I hesitated to take the obvious step and rush up with all the forces at my disposal and smash the clansmen back into the sea, one reason was the ever-present threat from the south. Also the northwest remained a vague area of conflict in which racters fought Layco Jhansi’s people, and where Inch would soon plunge with his axemen into the Black Mountains. No — the reason lay in that recent conversation with the Star Lords. I had been snatched summarily from Vallia before. This time I waited. I knew I was to be called by the Everoinye. It was absolutely vital that Vallian affairs remained in honest and capable hands. Seg and Inch, Nath and Farris, all the others, would shoulder their burdens while I was away.

If this was a doom laid on me then I waited for the stroke as I had waited in the dungeons of the Hanitchik.

The happy sounds of laughter outside and the clanging crash as the three-grained staffs of the guardsmen of the Sword Watch presented, heralded the joyous arrival of Delia, smiling, with Sasha, who looked radiant.

“The plans are all prepared and everything is going to be wonderful!” cried Delia.

I, I must confess, gaped.

“And the first dance is to be a mandanillo,” said Sasha. “And you, Inch, are to lead off with me.”

So I remembered. Tonight all Vondium celebrated. The palace was to see a great ball and the lanterns would bloom colors to the night sky and the tables would groan with food and everyone would dance and sing and laugh as the moons cavorted through the sky between the stars, until the twin suns, Zim and Genodras, awoke to send us all to sleep at last.

“Let us dance the night away,” I said. “And in the morning, with Opaz, we will decide.”

The dances of Kregen are spectacles that would drive the gods to tripping a measure. Everything conduced to laughter and pleasure. Every girl was beautiful. Every man was a hero. We sang and danced and drank and ate, and we kept it up as the Maiden with the Many Smiles cast down her fuzzy pinkish light, and She of the Veils added her more golden glow, as the Twins endlessly revolved above. The stars blazed. The torches and the lanterns filled the air with motes of color. The orchestras played nonstop, all the exotic instruments of Kregen combining to provide the right music for each dance.

And the dances!

Useless for me to attempt to describe them all. They delighted the senses and they fed the soul.

The sounds of plunking announced the mandanillo and Inch and Sasha led off in that gliding, dreamlike dance. This was followed by more of the stately dances, in which the lines of men and women interlink and revolve and weave their magical patterns that woo the very blood in the body to the rhythms. As the night wore on so the dances grew wilder. Your Kregan loves a riotous rollicking dance, full of blazing passion and jumping and kicking and high jinks. In groups, in couples, the brilliantly attired revelers gyrated through the palace and into the grounds. In the avenues and boulevards the people danced and sang. The kyros filled with the rhythms, and the patterns of the dances cast kaleidoscopes of brilliance against the arcades and colonnades. The vener pranced in their boats along the cuts and the canal water glittered back in blinding reflections.

Oh, yes, we had a ball that night in Vondium.

The dance called the Wend carried people in swaying undulating lines through every corridor in the palace, it seemed, in a procession far removed from the solemn chanting religious festivals where the worshippers all chanted “Oolie Opaz, Oolie Opaz” over and over again. The Wend carried them singing the currently popular songs around and around: “Lucili the Radiant,” “The Empty Wine Jar,” “My Love is like a Moon Bloom,” and dozens more.

As you will realize, they sang “She Lived by the Lily Canal,” and “The Soldier’s Love Potion,” over and over.

Presently Delia drew me into the rose-bordered courtyard where Inch and Sasha and many and many another good friend laughed and waited, for we were to dance the Measure of the Princesses, often called the Jikaida Dance.

The ladies all wore their sherissas, those filmy, gauzy, tantalizing veils that float and drift dreamlike in the dance. The men wore masks, dominoes of silver and gold. The courtyard, massed in its banks of roses, was laid out as a Jikaida board, three drins by four, giving an area of eighteen by twenty-four squares. We all formed up, laughing and fooling, and the orchestra struck up the Jikaida Introduction and the choir started to sing.

Well, now. As the song unfolds the story, you have to suit your actions to the words. We were in the yellow party and we waved yellow favors. The blues, at the far end, waved their blue favors and taunted us, all laughing and joking, and every time some unfortunate made a mistake they were summarily ejected. We pranced around the board, hopping the blue and yellow squares, going through the contortions. No one cheated. There was no point in dancing else.

All too soon I missed a cue and forgot to wave my yellow favor aloft when I should have, and the marshals, killing themselves with laughter, attired in their white regalia, turfed me off the board.

“Dray! You empty-head!”

“It is all too clever for me, my love — but go on, go on — the blues gain on us.”

For, indeed, there were far too many yellows gathered in the shadow of the roses, chattering and scoffing and doing their best to upset the blues still in the dance.

What a picture it all made! The gleam of the lanterns, the impression of the shadows of the trees above, the scent of the Moon Blooms, the music twining into our very beings — yes, Kregans know how to enjoy themselves. Be very sure the wheeled trolleys containing their racked amphorae were everywhere to hand.

In the end the yellows just pipped the blues, and Delia smiled and gestured to Sasha, who accepted the golden flower of triumph. We clapped, for Sasha was rapidly proving a popular figure among us.

After that we had the Spear Dance, full of leaping and twisting and jumping the flashing spear blades. The Yekter followed and then there were more dances in which the participants enacted the stories of the songs.

Then, I walked to the orchestra I had spent a few burs with, doing my best to introduce them to the rhythms of the waltz. During my sojourns on Earth I had become addicted to the music of the waltzes that grew every year in popularity. The breadth and humanity of vision of the newest waltzes were a far cry from the early Ländler and I carried the tunes in my head. This is possible, and by repeated practice the orchestra chosen could reproduce the music most wonderfully. It had proved an altogether different kettle of fish with Beethoven; but even in this I persevered. So, now, to those evocative strains, Delia and I led out in the Grand Waltz of Vondium.