A Victory for Kregen (3 page)

Hunch was in no doubt.

“We can hole up here all day,” he said to Nodgen. “We’ve water to last us and we can march on to the next stream tonight.” He yawned. “I think I shall sleep all day.”

“The dawn wind will blow our tracks away,” said Nodgen. “But you’ll stand your watch like the rest of us, you skulking Tryfant.”

“At least I don’t always need a shave—”

“Quiet, you two,” I said.

They froze.

“All of you — still!”

As the light brightened with the rising of the red sun, Zim, and the green sun, Genodras, and the shadows fleeted across the sere land, specks drifted high against the radiance. We squinted our eyes. Yes —

Flutsmen. They were flutsmen up there, sky flyers sweeping across the land on the lookout for prey. True mercenaries of the skies, the flutsmen serve for pay in various armies; but they mostly enjoy reiving on their own account. And no man is safe from them.

We remained perfectly still.

High and menacing, the wings of their flyers lifting and falling in rhythm, the flutsmen circled twice, rising and falling, and then lined out and headed north.

“May the leather of their clerketers rot so they fall off and break their evil necks,” said Hunch. He shut his eyes tightly. “Have they gone?”

“They’ve gone, you fambly — you can stop shaking.”

“The trouble is,” said Hunch the Tryfant, opening his eyes and looking serious. “I couldn’t run away then, and you know how it upsets me not to have a clear run.”

There spoke your true Tryfant. But Hunch had proved a good comrade, despite his avowed intention of running off if the going got too tough.

We composed ourselves for the day. I positioned myself so that my head was just under the lowest prickly branch of a thorn-ivy bush, where I had to be careful. The view afforded lowered down — the dusty surface, ocher and dun, blowing a little with the dawn wind, and the prospects of the Moders, massive artificial mounds that gave the Humped Land its name of Moderdrin, spotting the landscape for as far as I could see. Slowly, the Suns of Scorpio crawled across the heavens. And we waited and sweated.

The first sign came, as so often, in a patch of lifting dust.

I narrowed my eyes against the glare. The dust plumed white streamers and grew closer. A body of men rode out there. Logu Fre-Da, who was on watch, called down gently, “Swarths.”

We remained still. The dust neared.

Dark shapes, fragmentary, appearing and disappearing, thickened beneath the dust. We waited.

“How many, Logu?”

An appreciable pause ensued before he replied.

“At least a dozen, notor — perhaps as many as twenty.”

“They will ride nearer.”

“Yes.”

Perhaps twenty — twenty of those hard dark riders who had hounded our caravan toward one particular Moder. Their swarths, agile, scaled risslacas with wedged-shaped heads, fanged, terrible, would carry them in a thumping rash if they spotted us. They would have no mercy, seeing we were not an expedition but merely victims for their sport — or so it was easy to believe.

For very many of the mysterious races of Kregen that is just how it is, no matter that there are many splendid races on Kregen who regard that kind of bestial behavior with abhorrence. There was no mistake with this little lot. If they spotted us they’d seek to have sport with us before they slew us.

“Not a squeak out of you,” said Prince Tyfar. “Or you’ll be down among the Ice Floes of Sicce before you’ve finished yammering.”

Not one of these men crouching with noses in the dust would make so much as a bleat. Now we could hear the soft shurr and stomp of the swarths. From their angle of approach they were making for the nearest Moder. They would pass within three hundred paces of our little thorn boma. They’d never see us. Not from where they would pass, avoiding the line of thorn-ivy. All we had to do was remain perfectly still and silent and we’d be safe.

Gently, making no fuss over it, I stood up.

I climbed out past the edge of the thorn-ivy.

“Jak!” screeched Tyfar. I heard the others cursing.

I walked a few paces forward, toward the swarth riders. I lifted my arms high. I shouted.

“Hai! Rasts! Over here! You zigging bunch of cramphs — what are you waiting for?”

Hunch’s agonized wail floated up at my back.

“He’s mad! Oh, may the good Tryflor save me now!”

The ground felt hard and rocky underfoot. The air tasted sweet. The brightness of the day fell about me.

“Hai! Rasts of the dunghill! Why do you tarry?”

Sharp-edged, brittle, black against the radiance, the swarth riders crowded forward. They saw me, standing clear of the thorn boma. I stood alone. The runnel led directly toward me. The vicious heads of the swarths jerked around, dragged by reins in equally vicious fists.

White dust drifted away downwind. The smell of tiny violet flowers crowning spiky bushes, shyly hiding in crevices along the crumbly sides of the runnel, reached me. The suns shone, the wind blew, the flowers blossomed — and I, Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor and Krozair of Zy, challenged this glorious world of Kregen to do what it could against me...

As Hunch the Tryfant had said, shocked, I must be mad. Well, he was not above four foot six tall, and a Tryfant, and so there were excuses for him. I took a step forward, seeking a secure purchase for my gripping toes, and I drew forth the Lohvian longbow.

The saddle dinosaurs were coated in that white dust, but as they moved and jostled the sheen of their purply-green scales glittered against the thorn-ivy. They began to move, urged on by the riders perched on their backs. All those long, thin lances descended from the vertical, slotting into the horizontal, and lethal steel point was aimed for my heart.

Four abreast — that was all the runnel would allow. There was some jostling and cavorting for positions.

Each swarth-man was determined to be in the front rank of four, knowing that those following on would have only tattered rags and blood to take as an aiming point.

I banished my comrades from my mind.

Now the Lohvian longbow mattered — the great longbow was the only thing that mattered, that and the shafts fletched with the blue feathers of the king korf of Erthyrdrin. The longbow I had found in the crystal cave that provided what I lacked and its arrows fletched with the rose-red feathers of the zim korf of Valka had vanished with all the other phantasmal artifacts of the Moder. This longbow, these shafts, came from the Mausoleum of the Flame, and they were real.

The bow drew sweetly. The first shaft sped. The second was in the air, and the third was loosed before the first struck. The fourth followed instantly.

Four honed steel bodkins drove in to a cruel depth.

The shrieks and the bedlam, the racket of crashing swarths and hurtling riders, might sound sweetly, but there was no time to contemplate them. Two more shafts sped and then I was up and through the little gap in the thorn-ivy we had made dragging bushes down for the boma. Out on the lip of the runnel I could flank those harsh riders. More shafts arched.

The dust swirled. The uproar boiled. Now Nath the Shaft, using his composite bow, joined in.

Barkindrar the Bullet swung and hurled.

The dust obscured much of the tangle.

We shot into the mess.

Three swarths cleared the obstacles to their front. They raged down the runnel, heads outstretched, scales glittering between the dust streaks. The lances reached forward. The riders, heads bent in metallic helmets, short cloaks flaring, bellowed down the slot.

One I took. One Nath took. One Barkindrar took.

Nodgen was up and leaping about, waving his spear.

“Leave some for me!”

The two Pachaks were running forward, their tail hands stiff above their heads, the daggered steel brilliant.

“They run!” yelled Tyfar, beside himself, running on with his axe poised.

Four swarths galloped madly away; and one carried a dead rider lolling from the saddle, one sped with empty saddle, and the other two were being urged on with whip and spur.

These two last were shot out by Tyfar’s retainers. I had thrown down the Lohvian longbow which had served so well and, ripping out the thraxter, the straight cut and thrust sword of Havilfar, leaped headlong into the dust.

It was all a bedlam of heaving scaled bodies and wicked fangs and lashing blades. Some of the Chulik-like riders attempted to claw their weapons free. They could be given no chance to fight back, of course, and we set on them with a will. We had seen what they had accomplished, and we did not wish to suffer a like fate. The fight was quick and deadly. The thraxter slimed and lifted, struck and thrust, withdrew with more ominous streaks along the dulled blade.

Tyfar fought with a wild panache, his axe blurring in short lethal strokes. The two Pachaks fought as Pachaks fight. And Nodgen’s thick spear thrust with all the power of his bristle body.

And — there was Hunch, his bill cunningly slanted, cutting the legs away from the riders who attempted to smite down on him. Yes, Tryfants will put in a wild, brave, skirling charge, magnificent in attack. It is the retreat, in the withdrawal, when doubts arise, that Tryfants rout so easily.

The suddenness of the attack, the ambush that had shot them into pieces, and then the headlong rush of fighting men undid these swarthmen. None escaped. Modo Fre-Da, curling his tail cunningly out of the way, leaped astride a swarth. He seized up the reins and jammed in his heels. The animal shot ahead.

Furiously, the Pachak hyr-paktun galloped after the dead rider lolling in the saddle of his fleeing swarth.

We others gathered up the reins of the surviving animals, quieting them in the dust and turmoil, sorting them out and calming them. No one was bitten, which was a thankfulness.

The saddle dinosaurs were middling-quality mounts, with two among their number of superior breed.

These two had the thickened scale plating over their eyes, which were fierce and arrogant, and their tails were triple-barbed. Once you know how to handle a swarth, he is a tractable enough mount. Mind you, I would take a zorca or a vove any day of the week.

“Did you see—”

And: “That fellow bit on the shaft!”

And: “He went over backward and his head—”

We looked at the corpses of the swarth riders.

“Muzzards,” said Quienyin, walking up and standing, his head on one side to balance his turban before he pushed it straight. “Ugly customers. There are a lot of them down south in the Dawn Lands.”

They did look a little like Chuliks, at that. They did not have the oily yellow skin of the upthrust tusks, but their build and thickness and stance — when they were alive — suggested the Chulik morphology to our eyes.

Their skins carried a leaden hue, which had not been caused by death, and they exuded a musky stink I, for one, found unpleasant. Modo returned with the dead warrior still lolling in the saddle, and so we nine stood, looking down on the dead. The living animals clustered farther along the runnel and began tentatively to rip off the thorn-ivy, munching it up quite oblivious of the thorns. Tough, your Kregan swarth — although their trick is simply to twist their fanged mouths around to get the thorns in sideways and then get their masticating dentures at the sharp spines.

This, as I saw it, was just another example of that peculiarly Kregan marriage of convenience between conflicting demands. The omnivorous animal comes equipped with two sets of implements. At the time I was still, despite my conversations with a Savapim, unsure if these Kregan eccentricities were part of natural evolution — either on Kregen or some other world — or if they were the result of artificial interference with nature’s handiwork.

“Cut-price, unsophisticated Chuliks,” said Logu Fre-Da, nodding to his brother. “These Muzzards.”

“They bear harness and weapons, brother.”

“Aye, brother.”

The Pachaks were mercenaries. I, too, have been a paktun in my time. We were not long in stripping harness and weapons and collecting the loot in a pile. The bodies we left for the carrion-eaters of the Humped Land to dispose of, in nature’s way. I know I did, and I am sure some of the others must have also, said a short prayer to Zair for the well-being of these lost souls in the Ice Floes of Sicce.

Then we crawled into the shade beyond the boma and contemplated the pile of harnesses and weapons.

“Which, Jak,” said Tyfar, “reminds me you never did change your scarlet breechclout.”

“Why, no,” I said. “But we were rather — busy.”

“Yes.”

“I shall keep it, as I am sure there is nothing hygienic on these Muzzards. But I admit I am not averse to a stout coat of leather, studded with bronze. And a helmet, too, although—” and here I picked one up and turned it on my hand— “they are poor specimens, of iron bands and leather filling.”

“They put the wind up me, I can tell you.”

“Is that all they put up you, Hunch?” Nodgen guffawed. “Then you’re lucky.”

Because the two Pachaks were hyr-paktuns, wearing the golden pakzhan at their throats, I knew they would be able to handle the long lances from swarthback. I said to Hunch, “Can you manipulate a lance?

Or would it be a waste for you?”

“A waste, notor,” he said at once, without preamble. “I like a long-staved weapon; but these are ill-balanced, as I judge.”

And, by Vox, he was right.

“Let me cut an arm’s length off the end,” said Nodgen. “Then I’ll have a capital long-spear.”

“Each man to his own needs,” I said, and looked at Tyfar. “Prince?”

He smiled.

“I will stay true to my axe.”

In the saddlebags we found comestibles of a hardtack kind, such as a warrior would carry. There was also wine in leather bottles. Tyfar and I exchanged glances.

“Water for now,” I said. “I’ll answer for Nodgen and Hunch.”

“And I for Barkindrar and Nath.”

Quienyin said, “The brothers Fre-Da will, I think, answer for themselves, as is right and proper.”

The Pachaks lifted their tail hands in acknowledgment.