Allies of Antares (17 page)

The first one laughed. “You mean Vad Garnath, don’t you, Thafnal? King Telmont is—” He stopped, and looked swiftly about.

“Aye, Ortyg. Best watch your mouth.”

All the notorious Bells of Beng Kishi rang and collided in my skull. I licked my lips and swallowed. I could move about half an inch. The chains were thick and strong and of iron.

The fancy dandy little Hikdar trotted up, managing not to trip over his own sword. He put on a big frown, bending his brows down, and I guessed he had caught this guard duty and was not too pleased about it, no doubt having other and more pleasant occupations planned for the night. The two swods looked across as he appeared in the moons light and stood at attention — casually.

“No trouble?” squeaked the little fellow.

“No trouble, Hik.”

“Good, good.”

I’d given no trouble because I’d been enveloped in the black folds of Notor Zan’s cloak. I strained at the chains and could not break them or budge the stakes to which they were stapled. The Hikdar jumped.

“Watch him! There are express orders from Jiktar Nairn. He is to wait judgment from the king himself.”

“Very good, Hik.”

With a careful flick at his sword to clear it away from his legs, he trotted off.

“Who’s he?” I said, in my conversational voice. I didn’t give a damn who he was; I wanted to get the conversation flowing easily.

“Hikdar Naghan ham Halahan, and you mind your mouth.”

“D’you have a mouth-wet around here?”

The one called Thafnal hoicked forward a bottle. His face was scarred and dark, seamed with seasons of campaigning. “Open your black-fanged winespout, dom, and I’ll pour you a draught.”

I did as he bid and took in a sloshing mouthful of cheap wine. It was refreshing, tangy though it might be.

“My thanks, dom.”

As the stars and moons wheeled across the sky I crouched there, chained like a wild animal, and cogitated. My thoughts were as cloudy as the sky, where dark masses erratically obscured the moons, and then blew free in wispy streamers until the following clouds cast their shadows upon the land.

Just a little of this famous cogitation convinced me that out of a hundred chances, ninety-nine would say that Lobur the Dagger had betrayed me. He was frightened that I would convince Thefi to return, and Lobur would not face her father. This saddened me. It showed how little he understood the depth of her feelings for him.

Also, the unwelcome thought occurred to me that Lobur knew more than he said — certainly not that I was who I was, for in that case my head would be rolling away over the ground — but was probably aware of the true situation in Ruathytu through his contact with Garnath. He had not told Thefi. I felt my faith in Lobur slipping away depressingly.

If I hadn’t saved him from falling off a rooftop in Jikaida City — and he did not know that Drax, Gray Mask, was me — he wouldn’t be alive now and a whole train of incidents that had followed would not have taken place.

In the confusing lights of the moons Hikdar Naghan ham Halahan came mincing back. He looked different, and was trying to strut along with all the pomp his position demanded, and making a strange hash of it. He’d be more dangerous to his own men in a fight, I was thinking, as he wheeled up toward the two guards, Thafnal and Ortyg, who barely took enough notice of him save to come to their sloppy attention. They were so long in the tooth as extended-service swods they could get away with murder among the forest of Hamalian regulations.

“A prowler in the zorca lines,” squeaked ham Halahan, his voice higher and yet struggling to sound hoarse. “Get off there at once. I’ll stand guard here.
Bratch!
”

That hard word of command made them move. Thafnal said: “He won’t get away, Hik—”

Ham Halahan pointed, his helmet casting deep shadows over his face, his cloak wrapped about his uniform. The two swods picked up their spears and marched off, whistling. They knew to a nicety how far to go in baiting jumped-up young officers.

The Hikdar watched them go. He was trembling. They disappeared beyond the corner of the nearest tent toward the zorca lines as clouds threw down shadows.

“Jak! We must be quick!”

In a single heartbeat I stopped my stupid “Wha—?” and instead said, “I thank you, princess. The chains are of iron.”

“I have the key. I stole it from Lobur. Here...”

She bent over me and I sensed her perfume. The uniform showed under the cloak, impressive, far too impressive to be that of a Hikdar, however important he thought himself, and it fitted ill. One of Lobur’s, of course. The key clinked. The lock made a sound like a wersting savaged by a leem. The chains fell away. I rubbed my wrists, my ankles, but the shackles had not been tight enough to restrict circulation.

“Why?”

She would not look at me. Strands of hair wisped free of the harsh helmet brim.

“You were a good friend to us. I couldn’t see you—”

“Is that all?”

Now she looked at me as I stood up, her eyes dark and pained, and I felt for her pain.

“No. Lobur — he was talking to Garnath—”

“That great devil is here?”

“They said — I overheard and I couldn’t believe — and yet I still love Lobur—”

“What did they say?” I looked about, and I know my face was as savage as faces may ever become. “We must move away from here.” We moved off into the shadows and I held her arm.

“Garnath and my Lobur — what you said is true, Jak. And Lobur knew all the time. He knew! My father
is
the emperor and they plan to destroy him and use me... Use me to...

She trembled under my touch.

“It isn’t pretty, Thefi. Will you stay with Lobur?”

“I want to... But how can I? I do not know what to do!”

She wore a sword, a straight cut and thruster used all over Havilfar. The thraxter looked to be a quality blade as I drew it from the scabbard, quickly, before she could move.

“Jak! You will not kill me?”

“Hold still, princess. No — run for the nearest voller if you wish to escape. I will follow.”

She turned her head to look where I stared and saw the advancing forms of soldiers, weapons bared.

“Oh, Jak! They will surely kill you—”

“And you too, and still make your father dance to Garnath’s tune. Now, run — run for the nearest voller. And, my girl, run fast!”

Then I swung about and switched up the sword, ready to take on the yelling guards who ran in with weapons brandished.

Chapter fifteen

Hometruths

Thefi had saved me from almost certain death, and now in order to save her I had to face another round with almost certain death. Well, that is life on Kregen. The guards ran on yelling. One or two screeched the chilling Hamalese war cry “Hanitch! Hanitch!” — a sound that has risen in triumph over very many battlefields.

My blade slithered across the first guard’s sword, turned, thrust, retrieved — all, it seemed, of its own volition. He staggered back, arms upflung, and already the dark blood spouted.

Three more came on, hard, panting, and I foined around and cut and pierced them, and danced away, risking a quick glance over one shoulder. Thefi had reached the voller lines and — by Krun, she was the daughter of her father and sister to her brother! — she pointed imperiously at me and as the guard obediently ran past to join the fray, she took off her helmet and hit him over the head with it. He collapsed in a smother of cloak and his dinted helmet fell off and as Thefi bent with a glitter of steel in her fist I swiveled back to my own fight.

There were a lot of them, and they ran in from different sides, so I backtracked, taking them as they came. Some were what an unfeeling Kapt once called “blade-fodder,” some were your ordinary seasoned fighting men more at home in the line with their regiments. Some, three or four, were superior bladesmen. These consumed time. And, of course, I was never unaware that at any disastrous moment I would front up to a man — or woman — who was a better sworder than I was.

If that happened — and it had happened and could occur at any moment — it would be highly inconvenient.

A burly fellow with a tuft of green feathers in his helmet proved clever, working in combination with his oppo, a slighter man with a wizened face. These two held me up and others were running up, hullabalooing. I just avoided a clever cut at my thigh which changed trajectory with a cunning roll of the wrist and aimed to degut me, blades chingled and rang, I riposted against the little fellow and let my body go with the turn, avoiding the big fellow’s degutting stroke. They bored in again and two more started to circle around to my left side.

I yelled.

“By Krun! Behind you, rasts!”

And, with the yell, I leaped.

Cheap, melodramatic trick? Yes. But the big fellow flung a startled look back so that I could ignore him for the instant it took me to engage with wizened-face, circle his blade and punch him through, and then slice down across the throat of the big fellow as he pivoted back. I jumped clear. They fell. The other two hung back. But there were more. I ran. I hared off toward the vollers and saw Thefi at the controls of the green-painted courier voller we had liberated from Ruathytu and in which she and Lobur had traveled to Pandahem and back here.

“Here, Jak! Run!”

Without wasting any more breath I sprinted for the green flier and leaped aboard, tumbling in any old way. As it was, an arrow sprouted from the wooden coaming. I frowned as I untangled myself and then fell against Thefi as she swept the voller into the air. She could not rise at a steep angle, as we would have wished, for the vollers had been staked out in the lee of a gaggle of half-stunted trees. These were small enough, and yet large enough to be an obstacle. We went hurtling along in a wild swinging curve and then straightening to plunge up at the end of the trees.

We never made it.

I was just saying, “Well done, Thefi!”

A mustard-colored voller started up at right angles to our course, coming in from the left-hand side. It hesitated, and then plunged on and Thefi, quite unable to hold the courier flier back or drive her up in time, screamed.

We went slap bang wallop into the side of the maxi-mustard flier and I had a glimpse of Kregen cartwheeling upside down. The courier voller splintered all forrard, turning end over end, slewing away as the maxi-mustard airboat collapsed sideways.

Thefi and I fell out in a wild tangle onto the grass.

No time to feel winded or take notice of the bruising pain in my left shin or the thwack behind my left ear. Time only to snatch Thefi up, hurl her on stumbling across the muddy grass toward the next flier. She was the penultimate one in the tethered line. Thefi’s hair streamed loose, her helmet, its work done, long abandoned. We fled for the voller.

The stupid pilot of the mustardy voller, who had pulled out right in front of Thefi, hung upside down from the coaming, blood streaming from his nostrils. Served the fool right.

“I’ll do the chains,” I bellowed. “Up with you!”

She did not argue.

The first staple came free with a single heave. The second proved more stubborn, the cunning voller attendants having burred the staple end and cross-pinned it. I ducked out from under the airboat and called up.

“Is there a crowbar, Thefi?”

I looked back. The pursuers, well outdistanced by our brief flight, would soon be up with us, howling like a pack of hunting werstings. The pilot of the voller who had caused the accident, as I now saw, was a woman, not a man. She’d been no heroine trying to halt us, but some incompetent pilot who imagined a voller took up less than half the airspace required. The crowbar appeared over the side and Thefi said, “I’m all ready to go.”

“In half a leem’s spring.”

The crowbar snugged between chain and staple, I leaned back, forces took the strain, balanced, gave. The staple wrenched clear and the chain fell to the mud.

Thefi yelled.

“Guards!”

She did not scream; but the urgency of her tone made me turn sharply enough to crack my head on the voller’s keel. I was suffering far too many of these cracks on the head just lately. Half-crouched, I stopped moving. Two boots, black and muddy, showed beneath the keelson. They were positioned in just such a way as would tell the trained eye of a sword fighter that the owner of the boots stood braced and poised, weapon lifted ready to strike down at anyone crawling out from under the flier.

I hefted the crowbar.

The bar of iron cracked against an ankle bone with a most unpleasant sound and the pair of boots hopped madly into the air. In an instant I was out from under the airboat and bringing the crowbar around again in a blow that stretched the guard senseless. His helmet fell off. Others of his comrades were running up, for Telmont had taken the sensible precaution of placing a strong guard on his vollers. The woman who had crashed into us had been attended to and sent off, and the guards must have gone back for a quiet wet until our commotion brought them running back.

Using the crowbar after the fashion of an Aleyexim’s trakir, a hefty sliver of iron sharpened at both ends and hurled by the warlike Aleyexim in battle to deadly effect, I managed to knock over the first of the yelling guards. Thefi stared over the coaming, her face apprehensive and yet betraying no real concern.

“Hurry, Jak!”

Without answering — and remarkably heartened by Thefi’s obvious confidence — I leaped aboard. She slammed the control levers over to the stops and we shot away.

Looking down as we passed over the last voller, I felt a pungent regret. She was not an enormous skyship, but she was an airboat of good size, of three decks and many fighting tops and walkways, and my regret really did me no credit. Gunpowder had not yet been invented on Kregen — if the Star Lords so willed it might never be invented — and that was most probably a good thing. But right there and then, the idea of toppling a keg of best gunpowder with a short fuse down onto that ship appealed to me with some force.

“Well done, Thefi. Turn a little right and dive below the tree line. I don’t think they’ll expect us to do that.”

She flung me a puzzled glance.