Allies of Antares (8 page)

“You have spoken of this before—”

“Aye! Even when Thyllis sat on the throne. Now that she is dead I speak openly. I want to see you father, Nedfar, Emperor of Hamal.”

Tyfar put a hand to his bandage. “Yes, but—” He walked on. “We have no real support. Thyllis saw to that. She maneuvered father away from the center of power. He was included in the high command only because he is an astute soldier. No, Jak. No one would stand with father—”

I took a breath. I said, “Suppose the alliance stood for him? Suppose Djanduin and Hyrklana and Vallia all said Prince Nedfar, Emperor of Hamal, Jikai! What then?”

He controlled his contemptuous anger. “You mean treat with our enemies? Supplicate them, be beholden to them? Fawn on them as slaves fawn on their master who brings the slopbowl of porridge?”

“One thing, Tyfar, you’d have to get straight.” His honest anger nettled me. “If it is to work you’d have to get rid of slavery. I can tell you that is one thing the Vallians and Djangs won’t tolerate.”

His cheeks were pinched in and white. “I detest slavery, too, yet it is a necessity for ordered life—”

“We won’t go into that now. I know your point of view. I respect you too much to think you a hypocrite. But leave that for now. Think about your father as emperor, with friends at his side—”

“Friends!”

“Aye, Ty, you ninny! Friends!” Jaezila was as wrought up as the man she loved and who loved her — although they fenced one with the other, afraid, it seemed, to acknowledge their own emotions.

“I don’t understand this.” Perplexity made Tyfar calm. “What authority do you have to make this suggestion?”

Not now. Not the right time...

“It is a serious proposal I heard about. You and your father were not available, and so could not be approached. But you will be. The Vallians are in deadly earnest about this. They don’t want continual war with Hamal. There are the damned Leem-loving Shanks—”

“I know, I know. But here come the wildmen and they are our first concern...”

So we took up our weapons and went smashing into action again, slashing and thrusting and driving the moorkrim back over the lip of the ledge. They went flying over, their skins and furs and feathers a panoply of savage warriors, our steel in their hearts. We fought them. But we lost men and our numbers were thinned and we knew we would never last too many assaults of that ferocious nature.

Tyfar panted. “The devils! By Krun! If only we had a voller!”

The medicaments were holding out and we patched up our wounds. We drank thirstily from the stream. The water was ice cold. As for food, that was in good supply and we could eat heartily, in the grim understanding that we were likely to be killed before we starved to death.

Jaezila finished putting a gel-impregnated bandage on Barkindrar the Bullet’s leg. He was a hairy Brokelsh, a faithful retainer to Tyfar, a comrade with whom we had gone through perils. Nath the Shaft, a bowman from Ruathytu, tut-tutted and said: “You stick your leg out when you sling, Barkindrar, and you expect to get a shaft in it.”

“It’s just a hole. Had it been a slingshot it’d have busted my leg—”

“All right, you two,” said Jaezila. “Save your temper for the wildmen.”

“Yes, my lady,” they said together. They put great store by Jaezila, did these two, Barkindrar and Nath, Bullet and Shaft.

Intrigued by Tyfar’s passionate yearning for a voller, I asked him what one voller would do, since he had lost four.

“Do? Jak! Why, man, get Jaezila to safety, of course!”

A pandemonium of yells and screams at our backs coincided with the next onslaught. Wildmen roared onto the platform and as we fought them others dropped like monkeys from the caves in the cliff, howled down upon our backs, trapped us in jaws of death.

Chapter six

Seg and Kytun Are Not Repentant

Like big fat flies dropping off a carcass the wildmen plummeted out of the holes in the cliff. They howled down upon our astonished soldiers. The wildmen in front and now these suddenly appearing demons in the rear...

“Steady!” Tyfar stood up, not so much fearless as indifferent to anything but holding his men. “Face front! You — face rear—” he bellowed in a voice that astonished me. He sorted the men out even as the two sides sought to close upon us and crush us in the jaws of death.

As for me — the Krozair brand leaped like a live spirit. The wildmen, hairy and shaggy and nasty, bore in with skirling bravery, scorning cuts and bruises, only dropping when some serious portion of their anatomy was chopped away, only dying when not enough remained of that anatomy to sustain life. Dust puffed under stamping feet. Sweat shone briefly, and the dust covered the sweat and caked men’s faces and arms. That peculiar haze of dust and sweat hovered above the battle as brings back the memories to an old fighting man.

Jaezila swirled splendidly, her sword wreaking devastation upon the hairy skin-clad host. Diplomatically I left Tyfar and Jaezila to work out a modus vivendi between themselves. Contenting myself with keeping my own skin unpunctured I could watch out for them and knock the odd persistent fellow away and still let them fight on, back to back, defiant and splendid. And, by Vox! The fight was warm, exceedingly warm. We were overmatched in numbers. The very animal vitality of the moorkrim astonished by its ability to sustain damage and to leap from rock to crag to boulder, swinging sword or thrusting with polearm all along the way. It was like fighting a collection of Springheeled Jacks.

In the midst of the fight, Jaezila and Tyfar kept on at each other. Back to back for much of the time, they each made lurid guesses as to the activity of the other: “Have you untangled your feet yet, Ty?” and: “I should have worn a thicker backplate with you there, Zila,” and so nonsensically forth. Tyfar’s axe, dull and fouled with blood, cut mercilessly down with massive sweeps. No one was getting past him to sink a blade into Jaezila’s undefended back.

For a moment or two it became vitally necessary for me to leap and skip about as a dozen or so scuttling horrors plopped down from a cliff-edge hole. They came for me as a target. These were the caving experts of the moorkrim, often called moorakrim, swarthy of skin, bent of back, grimed with the marks of soil. Their fingers were long, bony and taloned, and their hands formed scoops. Like all the wildmen, they were bandy. Without doubt once the Hamalese had been killed these two sorts of moorkrim would fight among themselves for the spoil.

They hurled javelins at me, they threw stones, and the stones were more dangerous than the javelins.

Great displeasure is taken by a Krozair of Zy if he is forced to beat away flung stones with his Krozair longsword. Beating away arrows and javelins is one thing; driving off a stone over mid-off is quite another. I felt the chunks of stone cracking against the steel.

“You mangy pack of powkies!” I yelled, and started off for them, howling all manner of abuse and swirling the sword, as much to scare them as to bash away their stones. They hesitated. One or two hopped about from one bandy leg to another.

“Schtump!” I bellowed and ran faster, and caught the two nearest fellows, the two bravest or more foolhardy, I dare say, and swept them into four. I shook the Krozair brand at the others and charged at them, thinking among all the scarlet flashes of annoyance how my Krozair brothers would frown at this wanton display of vanity.

But the wildmen scuttled back on their bandy legs and with swinging skins about their shoulders disappeared into a hole in the cliff. To let them go was no decision. I started back to Tyfar and Jaezila and saw one of the commanding officers of the regiments fall. The Jiktar simply fell straight down. His helmet was dented by a thrown rock — a very large rock.

Up on a ledge over our heads a group of the moorakrim worked busily at what was — what had to be — a catapult.

I stared up. The suns were slipping down the sky and the light lay full on the cliff face. The wildmen up there did have a catapult, a small affair with a squat beam and a narrow twisted sinew spring. But it could throw.

The arm came over and the clang distinctly preceded the arrival of the stone. That one missed.

Then a wildman tried to spit me and I parried and riposted and looked up at the ledge and that catapult.

“Cover me, Deldar!” I said to the neatly groomed officer — he had a spot of dirt on his cheek and his right shoulder arm-piece was cut through — who staggered back with half a dozen of his men. They recoiled from an advancing line of wildmen, moving now with purpose as they sought to clear the platform.

There was no time for question and answer. I stuck the longsword through my belt, not in the scabbard, and shoved it back out of the way. The Lohvian longbow came off my shoulder sweetly to hand. The arrow nocked as it seemed of its own accord. Brace, push, pull, bend — shooting in a longbow demands skill and skill I had been taught by Seg. The first rose-fletched shaft skewered the wildman about to place the next stone. He fell back, the shaft through him, and before he hit the ledge his comrade started to fall beside him, feathered through the chest. His arm struck the release latch and the arm, missileless, slapped forward. The whole catapult jumped and a crack of an exceedingly rich and juicy sound floated down.

“Bad cess to you,” I said, loosing again and taking a wildman in the rump who was trying to take cover.

The very neat Deldar had formed his handful of men in a line among the boulders and we were separated by a short open space from Tyfar and Jaezila. I shot again. Tyfar and Jaezila fought on, and I switched my aim and was able to take out a couple of moorkrim and so assist my comrades. I reached for another arrow and — lo! — the quiver was empty. So much for hotheaded intemperate rushings after people; Seg would be scathing with me for so glaring a dereliction of the archer code.

Dealing with the wildmen who lined out after us was not as difficult as I’d expected, for the neat Deldar was neat in swordsmanship and neat in his handling of his men. When we straightened up after that small affray within the larger, we were down two men and the wildmen, those still alive, drew back.

I said to Deldar, “Your name, Deldar?”

“Fresk Thyfurnin, notor.”

“If all the swods fought like your men, I’d be easier.”

“I think, notor,” said this Deldar Fresk Thyfurnin, “that this is our last fight.”

“I’ll not have that kind of talk—” I started to bluster. Thyfurnin simply pointed along the cleft of the Pass of Lacachun.

They flew up and they seemed to fill the air between the two rock faces. The cliffs echoed to the rustle of their wings. The mist drifted past, very high, shredded now for some time to allow the radiance of the twin suns to burn through. Below the mist they flew on, hundreds and hundreds, it seemed, drawn to the pickings to be found at Laca’s Jaws.

“Well, now. Deldar Fresk. I still do not think you right. We will have to pull back to the caves and defend ourselves there.”

“Of course, notor. And guard our backs against the moorkrim creeping along their holes in the cliffs. Our wounded were lucky to have escaped them. But we will fight.”

Tyfar and Jaezila dispatched the last of their opponents and walked across the open ground toward our group. Everyone looked depressed. The darkness in the air shadowed from that enormous flying host was enough to make a laughing hyena weep. We gathered together before the entrances to the caves.

“We’ve won this fight.” Tyfar sounded as though he would burst a blood vessel. “No one thought we could win; but we did. We beat ’em. And now we have this whole new force to reckon with.”

“How many men do we have?”

Deldar Fresk, it turned out, was the senior surviving officer. All the Hikdars, each commanding a pastang, and the two Jiktars had been slain. The roll was a lamentable affair.

The host in the sky flew nearer.

In defeating the flying wildmen and the cave wildmen we had lost over two hundred men. We had, counting lightly wounded, some two hundred and twenty remaining.

The noise of beating wings filled the air now, close and closer. The volume of sound caught and re-echoed from cliff to cliff bore down oppressively, making the nerves twitch. We took a fresh grip on our weapons and positioned ourselves among the boulders and the cave mouths. In that small breathing space I took the opportunity to fetch what arrows I could find embedded in moorkrim corpses. I managed to bring in ten.

So a moorkrim bow and a few full quivers had to be brought back. Each arrow was a life. The flying host began to descend and the leading elements planed in for the platform. They could see the dead people lying everywhere.

Deldar Fresk served in the crossbow regiment.

Tyfar called across, “As soon as they are in range.”

“Quidang, prince,” said Fresk, and set himself.

Now this Deldar Fresk was a fine fellow and the swods were of value. But there was no shadow of a doubt in my mind, no shadow of doubt whatsoever, that what I was going to do would be done, and would be the right thing to do. I anticipated no opposition from Tyfar. The moment I laid my hands on a tyryvol — or any other quality saddle-flyer — I’d have him or her and get Jaezila away. Tyfar would help. We’d get Jaezila out of this debacle alive if it was the last thing we did.

The leading tyryvols alighted on the platform and Fresk opened up on them, the crossbows clanging and hissing in rotation. Of the two hundred and twenty swods some ninety were crossbowmen. Shooting in the harshly disciplined Hamalian way, they carried out considerable execution. Return shafts came in, outranged by the crossbows but brought into range by the advance of the shooters between the rocks. Such was the weight of the enemy’s dustrectium
[2]
and the numbers of his swordsmen that this snapshooting party would not last very long. The force on the ground built up and positioned itself nastily and neatly and started the advance.

We watched the vulpine forms of the wildmen slipping between the rocks, skulking forward, jumping across open spaces and affording no chance for a shot. They edged forward.

“I—” began Tyfar.