Allies of Antares (7 page)

I started to swing, holding on with both hands, freeing my legs, swinging myself up and down like a pendulum. It was bend, pull, stretch, bend, pull, stretch. The animal’s head went with me like an upside down yo-yo. Like a pendulum I swung horizontally, along the line of his body, and I got my feet into the base of his neck where it joined his scaly body. I’d have liked to have landed him one in the guts; but I couldn’t reach that far.

He gave a choked up kind of squawk.

“That’ll show you you won’t shake me off, tyry!”

Down I swung and up and then down and around again, swinging like a monkey after a coconut. In the wind rush and bluster the sound of a ripping, tearing, death-bringing parting of the leather rein told me this was my last chance.

On that swing, just as the rein finally parted, I got my leg hooked around the tyryvol’s neck. I hung from one crooked knee. His scales cut into me. His head drove down and tucked in and his fangs, all yellow and serrated and sharp, slashed at my dangling head. His talons raked up from the rear to scrape me off and hurl me away.

I swung.

Sideways on my bent knee I hauled myself up. A flailing hand scraped on his scales, caught and gripped. With a frenzied cracking of muscles I heaved up. His talons gored my side and I swore at him.

His clashing fangs missed me by a whisker. His head shot up and he twisted around to get at me on the other side. I straddled the thick part of his neck. I held on. I held on!

I took three huge draughts of air.

The valley below swam dizzily.

By the disgusting diseased liver and lights of Makki Grodno! This was no time to test out Sir Isaac’s theories...

I sat up, clipped the tyryvol alongside his head, told him that his fun and games were over. He would come under control all right. Mind you, he’d be frisky for some time. He’d quite enjoyed it all.

The sweat lay on me thickly, clammy, chill and damned unpleasant.

After that it was headlong for the Pass of Lacachun.

By Zair! I don’t relish going through that kind of nightmare too often, believe you me.

Chapter five

Trapped in the Pass of Lacachun

The landlord of The Jolly Vodrin, Hamdal the Measure, had told us Prince Tyfar had taken two regiments. The reason for the statement now seemed clear as I circled briefly between the peaks, glaring down onto the Pass of Lacachun. The men down there were of two kinds: crossbowmen and spearmen. Hamdal had seen that and reported. Just how many there had been to start with I did not know; I did know and with dreadful certainty that there were not many left now.

These soldiers were trapped. They huddled in what cover they could find on a projecting floor of rock standing proud of the south side of the pass. To either side the sheer faces of the lower cliffs lifted to the peaks above. Yes, rather like jaws, those peaks. And the tidbit in their gullet was being gobbled up by the clouds of skirling wildmen.

Against the north face I flew in shadow. The sounds of the yelling down there drifted up attenuated. The floor of rock jutting out into the pass, smothered with fallen boulders, provided the best — the only — place for defense.

The wovenwork shields of the wildmen were no proof against the crossbow bolts of the defenders. Salix plants of various varieties grew in the upland soils, and, stripped, provided light strong canes for weaving. Many moorkrim carried hide-and-skin shields, some fastened around wickerwork foundations. The Hamalian shields of the spearmen down there would keep out an arrow cast from a flat bow if the angle was not perfectly at right angles. All the same, the wildmen had bottled up this little force and were going about their business of exterminating it completely.

Nothing was going to stop me from bursting through them and landing among the survivors. Down there Jaezila stood in the cover of a rock and, even as I watched, she shot her longbow and took out a wildman who attempted to get his shot in first. He went over sideways, flailing, with the long rose-fletched arrow through him.

At Jaezila’s side, Tyfar stood, his head bandaged, giving orders to his men.

A nasty situation...

Down I went, hurtling with the tyryvol now thoroughly of the opinion that this manthing on his back was no longer to be trifled with. Most of the wildmen had landed and taken cover the better to shoot up at the ledge of rock; but enough remained flying to make me punch through them with a rush and a whoop.

Even then, with me hollering like a dervish and crashing through in a thrashing of wings, a couple of the swods below loosed their crossbows. Both bolts hissed past. I yelled.

“I’m on your side, you pack of famblys!”

And then the wildmen took it on themselves to show their nastiness, and they shot my tyryvol under me.

I felt his body bunch and jerk with the bite of the arrows. He uttered a shrill squawk and then a dolorous descending moan. His wings trembled. He fell. We pitched down for the last ten or fifteen feet and I was only saved from a broken neck by his collapsing body. I leaped off, feeling immense sadness for him. After his little escapade over the valley with me dangling like a bobbin, we had come to an understanding. His bright eyes glazed over. His slim head on its slender neck shuddered and drooped laxly, and he was dead.

For a moment — a stupid, defenseless moment — I stood looking down on him.

“Jak! Get your fool head down!”

“All right, Tyfar, all right.”

I stomped across to his rock. Two arrows broke against the face as I dodged into cover.

“Jak!” said Jaezila. “Prince Nedfar—?”

“He’ll be all right. Seg went back with him to find a needleman.”

“And you two came after me.” Tyfar put his hands on his hips and glared at us. Trim, defiant, eager, a true comrade, he shook his head. He looked as though he could go ten rounds with a dinosaur, bandaged head and all.

He winced when he shook his head.

“We came after you, Ty, because we didn’t think you could be trusted out alone.” Jaezila spoke sweetly.

He looked at her. “You mean you couldn’t keep away from my funeral.”

“Now, Ty—”

He gestured with a blood-splashed hand. “Well, look! We’re boxed in here. I told Jaezila she was a ninny to fly in alone. Now you do the same.”

He was right, of course. And we were not about to go into maudlin scenes of swearing eternal comradeship as we were chopped. For a start, neither Jaezila nor I intended to be chopped, and Tyfar wouldn’t, either, once we jollied him out of his mood.

“What happened?”

“He fouled it up,” said Jaezila, with her haughtiness of manner most pronounced.

“Well?”

Tyfar looked chastened. “I had a message to come here to catch a damned bandi—”

“We heard something of that. The message was a trap.”

“Yes. I’ve been hitting the moorkrim hard lately and this is their way of getting rid of me.”

“And all you brought was two regiments?”

He looked furious. “We’re thin on the ground and just about nonexistent in the air. I’m supposed to command the Twentieth Army, and they stripped most of my troops. Tell me, Jak, for the sweet sake of Havil, what really happened in Ruathytu? We heard garbled reports of a battle—”

“First of all, what was your father doing here?”

“He wanted to see me. What about I’ve no idea. He heard where I’d gone and followed. He descried the situation and tried to go for help. It seems that wildmen brought him down. And then you—”

“Seg will bring up help. There is no doubt whatsoever of that.”

“I don’t know who Seg is—”

“A friend. A good friend.”

“Now tell me about the battle—”

I frowned. How to tell a young keen general commanding troops that his country had been defeated not only in a battle but in the war? That his foemen lorded it in his capital city? I swallowed. I tried.

His face lengthened. He half turned away. He put a hand on the rock behind which we sheltered.

“You mean to say we lost?”

“Yes.”

For only a heartbeat I doubted him; then he proved once again that he was Prince Tyfar.

“Well, we lost this one. But we won’t lose the next—”

“I knew you would say that, Tyfar. I have to try to make you see that the Vallians and Hyrklese, particularly, desire friendship with Hamal.”

“A fine way they have of showing it.” He was suffering now as the enormity of what had befallen his country sank in. “You mean they just took Ruathytu? Just like that?”

“It was not easy. It was a bonny fight. But the Djangs settled the issue.”

He listened as the story of the Taking of Ruathytu unfolded. He stood very still. I watched his hands. Slowly they constricted into fists, knobby and hard, the fists of a fighting man as, spread on a page, they were the shapely hands of a scholar. A man of parts, Prince Tyfar.

“We three have been through some rousing adventures,” he said, stirring himself. “The Empress Thyllis made a pact with the Hyr Notor, who was a Wizard of Loh. I remember our times, Jak, with Deb-Lu-Quienyin. I could have wished he had been there, at the Battle of Ruathytu, to help us.”

I could not look at him, at my comrade. Deb-Lu had been there. Without his sorcerous powers we might well have lost. In the end it had been Deb-Lu, aided by Khe-Hi-Bjanching, who had defeated Phu-Si-Yantong, the Wizard of Loh whom Tyfar knew as the Hyr Notor. Tyfar would have to know one day. How would he react when he recalled our conversation?

That was merely a smaller component of the greater puzzle. And now Tyfar, all unknowing, heaped fresh fuel on the blaze that would explode when the time came.

“So the Djangs took a hand? I know little of them but, Jak, you once said you were from Djanduin, that you had estates there.”

“I did and I have.”

He cocked an eye at me.

“The Hamalese were beaten by a combination of people who had grown tired of Thyllis’s mad dreams of empire, and they were aided by the Djangs—”

“That is easy enough to understand.” Tyfar sounded bitter. “If Vallia entered the fight against us, then that arch devil, Dray Prescot, is Emperor of Vallia and King of Djanduin. His evil influence brought about our ruin.”

“Ty—” said Jaezila.

She looked most unhappy. She stretched out a hand toward this young Prince of Hamal, and a shower of insects burst from a pot flung over the rocks. The pot smashed to bits on the stone and the buzzing, winging, stinging insects swarmed out. Instantly we were hard at work swatting and dancing and banging. Arrows flew in.

“Keep your eyes front!” bellowed Tyfar at the swods as he flailed away at the clouds of maddening stingers. “We’ll take the insects off you! Look to your front!”

The Deldars took up his orders and the swods stuck grimly to their posts, clutching crossbow and spear, and when the attack came screeching in it was met by disciplined men under orders. We stepped up to fight, and we met and rebuffed the onslaught. When the wildmen retreated, leaving their dead, we slumped back, exhausted.

“They won’t repeat that trick in a hurry. It must have taken them a long time to collect the insects. How many pots did they throw in?”

“Twenty, at least.”

‘They’ll try something else soon.”

A number of openings into the cliff where the ledge joined led into a series of caves. A stream ran through to fall away into a sink hole. Into this sanctuary the wounded were carried. Tyfar had brought a doctor with this little force; but he had been wounded. Now he lay on a cloak and told other less wounded men what to do to alleviate suffering.

Tyfar explained that he’d brought four vollers, small craft, and all four had been burned by the wildmen. The men had fought their way through to this outcrop and made of it a fortress. The moorkrim clearly considered the affray and its successful outcome for them to be merely a matter of time. “We started with two regiments, crossbows and spears, and they were weak, anyway. Now we’re down to what amounts to little over one reasonably strong regiment, five hundred or so men. We take the roll call; but it is depressing.”

I learned what had happened to the rest of Tyfar’s Twentieth Army. The bulk was spread along his sector of the frontier, with strong contingents removed and sent east. I pondered this. I did not think any elements of the Twentieth had been in action against us in Ruathytu. I pursed up my lips, and then, casually, I said, “D’you know anything about King Telmont, Tyfar? What sort of fellow he is?”

“Telmont?” Tyfar turned back at the entrance of the caves with a final encouraging word to a spearman with a shaft through his shoulder. “Not much. He was called Telmont the Hot and Cold until he hanged and burned enough people to stop the name being bandied about. But it is true. He can’t make up his mind on anything, except hanging and burning.”

“Any chance that, now that Empress Thyllis is dead, the people would shout for Telmont as emperor?”

Tyfar swiveled to stare at me. His eyes opened.

“It is a thought — one that had not occurred to me. But — well, he is a king of some means. He could buy support.” Tyfar frowned and then laughed. “No, no, Jak. He’d never make up his mind to reach for the crown. He’d have to have someone to kick him up the backside.”

Thinking of Vad Garnath, and the Kataki Strom, I said, “Perhaps he has. He is supposed to be marching on Ruathytu.”

Then Tyfar said something that stopped me in my tracks.

“He is! To throw out this devilish alliance! Then I must hurry and join him and drive back the Vallians and their despicable allies!”

“Oh, Ty!” exclaimed Jaezila.

She looked fierce.

“Now what’s the matter? I mean, of course, when we get out of this pickle we’re in.”

We went back to the rocks, and there was a jaunty bounce to Tyfar’s step. Now he had an aim in life. I refused to despair. Tyfar now believed our friend Seg would bring relief. Then Tyfar would collect what men he could and rush off to join King Telmont. That made sense to a loyal Hamalese. Sweet sense.

“Listen, Tyfar. I heard no good spoken of Telmont—”

“Of course not! He’s a fool. But if he is raising the standard of resistance to Vallia—”

“Your father has a greater claim to the crown and throne of Hamal. Think of that.”