Fliers of Antares (20 page)

“I am a stranger here,” I began.

Avec laughed, and then winced as burned skin caught him at the edge of his mouth.

“We know you are a stranger. Where you came from only Opaz the Vile himself may know. We know everyone in Orlush.”

“Aye, Avec,” mocked Ilter. “And everyone in Orlush knows you!”

Again I felt a shock of premonitory — what? Not fear, not horror, unease perhaps. Anger certainly.

Opaz — the
Vile?

Opaz, the invisible embodiment of the dual-spirit, the Invisible Twins, the great and good Opaz? Opaz made manifest by the visible presence of the suns Zim and Genodras the heavens above in Kregen — the suns which in Havilfar are called Far and Havil.

I couldn’t stop myself. I was exhausted — as were we all — and I was in a foul temper as may be imagined. I had been a king, and now I was a mere puppet dancing to the tune played by superbeings who refused to treat me seriously.

“Where are we, by the diseased and stinking right eyeball of Makki-Grodno?”

They stared at me, both of them, shaken by my tone.

When they saw my face glowering upon them, they were more mightily shaken still.

Then Avec, with something of a bluster in his voice and manner, said, “Why, in Orlush, of course.”

Ilter Monicep regarded me with his dark eyes half veiled, and a pucker to his lips. He had recovered from that instinctive panic, that insubstantial terror, that seems to grip people when I glare at them with purpose. He spoke softly, and yet with meaning.

“You are in Orlush, as this great fambly Avec has said. And Orlush lies in the kingdom of Pwentel, and Pwentel has the great and glorious honor of being part of the Empire of Hamal.” He chuckled harshly. Then he said bitterly, “Not a large or important part, for King Rorton Turmeyr whom men call the Splendid, is a frightened king. And Orlush, as you see, is not a great and famous town, for our Elten, Lart Lykon, is a corrupt bladder of vileness.”

“You have said it, Ilter, although I shall beat you for calling me a fambly, you clever onker!”

While I digested this information the people of the town secured themselves on the highest terraces, clustering near the irrigation trenches which poured downslope from tier to tier. There are many degrees in the various peerages of Kregen, and I have not detailed them to you except when necessary. Suffice it to say that an Elten is two ranks lower in the hierarchy than a Strom. And I was in Hamal!

Something of what the Gdoinye had said made sense now.

Food had been saved from the disaster and we could eat the portion of the crop that was already ripe. All the rest of the day and the next night we huddled as Muruaa spouted into the air and poured his molten fury down the slopes. In the evening of the third day the fires slackened. Toward the decline of the twin suns — Zim now followed Genodras below the horizon — and with She of the Veils floating smokily between the stars, we saw a cavalcade drop down swiftly through the last level rays of emerald and ruby. It came to rest on the broadest and driest of the terraces encircling a low hill.

Surrounding a large and ornately decorated voller flew a squadron of mirvols, their riders flamboyant with flying silks and furs, with slanted weapons and the glitter of gems and steel.

“That will be Strom Nopac, come to find out what has happened,” said Ilter Monicep. From his tone it was perfectly clear he had as little love for Strom Nopac as he had for Elten Lart.

“Who’d be a Notor?” Avec offered as his contribution to the philosophy of the evening. “It’d worry a man’s guts out.”

We were eating palines, and precious little else we had had, too, and we leaned in the last of the twin suns’ glow, resting our elbows on a brick wall and looking down the slopes in the gathering dusk. Men moved urgently about down there, and Elten Lart would no doubt be pushing as hard as he could for help and relief in the disaster. The town showed like a patchwork of roofs protruding from the cooling lava.

Soldiers were climbing the stairs cut in the terrace walls. Zim and Genodras winked from the armor and the weapons.

“I just hope they’ve brought food,” said Ilter, and he belched with a hungry hollow sound.

I remembered the whip-marks upon Avec’s broad back, lash-stripes that were newly healed. Avec pushed up from the wall and flexed his arms and then rubbed his hair and nose. “They’ll put me back in the Opaz-rotten cells,” he said. He sighed. “Well, it was a rouser to be out, if for such a short time.”

“They’ll flog you again, Avec,” said Ilter.

“Ah!” Avec spoke with a crowing kind of pleasure. “But they can’t jikaider me! The law doesn’t allow that to an Elten, by Krun!”

The soldiers approached.

In the last of the light they looked bulky, powerful, wearing uniforms which to me smacked of the overly ostentatious. I had been in Hamal before, at the Heavenly Mines, and I had no love for the Hamalese — although, Zair knew, Avec and Ilter were shaping up as interesting companions for a fight.

I readied myself in case Avec would put up a fight; but he held his wrists out, together, crossed, and said, “Here I am, boys. Anybody got a bottle of dopa handy?”

One of the soldiers laughed and a Deldar put his hand on Avec’s shoulder. “You are Avec Brand the Niltch? You will come with us.” Before the Deldar had finished speaking a voice lifted farther back in the shadows beyond the group of soldiers.

“There he is! There is the cramph who wounded two of my guards! Seize him, instantly!”

Ilter Monicep swung before me, so that his body blocked off my instinctive reaction to belt the first soldier over the head with his own stux. The soldiers closed in, their spears pointing for me, deadly in the fading light.

Monicep whispered, swiftly, frantically: “You resist, they’ll kill us all!”

Helpless, I was taken, my hands bound. With stuxes prodding my back I was marched down the terraces and flung like a sack of refuse into the bottom of the voller.

Of Avec, Ilter, and ripe fruit

Avec Brand, also, was flung down with me. He was a Niltch. At the time I had no idea what that could be.

The bottom of the voller did not smell as pleasantly as I suspected a voller should smell, although for a man like myself who knows what an eighteenth-century seventy-four’s bilges smelled like after eighteen months on blockade, smells are usually merely information clusters. This voller had been carrying gregarians, squishes, and malsidges. I saw no reason, now, to wait before freeing myself.

“Avec!” I said, not loudly, but not whispering, either. “Is your crime so serious?”

I wanted to know if he was just a petty criminal who was always in trouble, or if he had just done one thing wrong.

“Serious?” He chuckled, there, tied up in the malodorous hold of the voller. “Had I not left to go to Sumbakir I would have challenged him earlier, for although I am not a Horter neither am I a slave! Elten Lart is corrupt. I told the cramph what I thought of him, then I threw slursh at him — slursh with best red honey stirred in, too!”

Slursh is a remarkably fine porridge, which may be cooked in a number of different ways according to taste, and is so common on Kregen that if I have not mentioned it previously it is surely for that reason. Slursh and red honey, now — superb.

“Slursh wouldn’t hurt him, Avec. Not enough to flog you—”

“I did not trouble to take it out of the pot, Dray.”

“Ah!”

“The pot was that cheeky shishi Sosie’s, a brave iron pot exceedingly thick and heavy, with the story of Kov Logan na Hirrume and the two Fristle fifis molded around the rim.”

“What will they do to you?”

“For thumping a Notor? The Jikhorkdun, for sure. The Strom has jurisdiction, I think. The law is very strict. That rast Lart Lykon must bow to the Strom, as he bows to the king.”

“You do not appear to me to be worried, Avec.”

“No. Ilter Monicep is a clever lad, schooled, and no more of a fambly than I am. He will get me out. He is my sister’s son.”

“I had thought, Avec, I might break out soon.” I did not wish to enter the Hamalian Jikhorkdun. I moved my wrists and the thongs burst. “About — now.”

He could barely see me in the reflected glow of oil lamps shining through the hatchway from the deck above. “You have freed yourself of your bonds? By Krun! That is a deed!”

I reached over in the dimness, found his wrists, said, “Hold steady if they cut, Avec,” and jerked his thongs apart.

He rubbed his wrists for a few murs in thoughtful silence. Then he belched. Then he said, “I have read you, Dray, I have read you. You are a paktun. A Hyr-paktun, in all probability.”

I have been called a paktun before and, by Zair, I supposed I was and am. A paktun is a name given only to a mercenary who has achieved considerable fame — or notoriety. I would not lie.

“If you think that, Avec, I shall not quarrel with you. Shall we go up?”

“Aye — with all my heart.”

We crawled up the ladder cautiously and came out onto the lower deck. Above us the upper deck showed a rectangle of night sky. We crept up there and Avec put the watch to sleep, and we slunk down off the voller. Avec padded ahead of me in the pink-lit darkness. I heard his voice, and an exclamation. From the trees of this terrace two figures tangled together, flailing. Then—

“By Havil the Green, you fambly! You make more noise than a pair of calsanys!”

“Onker! Can’t you look where you’re going!”

I sighed. I had a right pair here — and, instantly, flooding me with nostalgia, warm and wonderful memories of Nath and Zolta, my own two oar-comrades, my two favorite rogues, leaped into my mind.

There was no love of Hamal in my heart. But although these two, Avec and Ilter, might be of Hamal, I did not care about that impediment in them.

I said, “If you shout a little louder you might wake the guards. I don’t think they can hear you — yet.”

They came closer, dark shadows between the pink shafts of moonshine beneath the trees.

Ilter said, “You are something of a wild leem, Dray Prescot. Avec tells me you burst your bonds, and his. They are regulation thongs, manufactured by the government, to government regulations. It is a marvel.”

I almost said, “They were not lesten hide.” But I did not. Hostages are given to fortune all too often for my taste. I would not add to the blabbermouths of Kregen.

We had found odd scraps of clothing after we had diverted some of Muruaa’s lava, and the night was warm enough, up here in Hamal, although in the Hamalian deserts of the altiplano one finds freezing temperatures almost every night. We walked on in the pink darkness, arguing about what we should do. Rather, they argued, and I listened until we reached the soldiers and their mirvol lines.

Then I said, “I am not of Orlush. I shall take a mirvol and fly out.”

They stopped whispering, and turned on me together, saying, “Where will you fly to?” and “I am with you!”

“I welcome you, Avec. I know not, Ilter. Where the flyer takes me, I think.”

“He’ll take you straight back to the Strom’s stables.”

“I do not think I would like that.”

Avec said, “I left Orlush many seasons ago, and did well. I return for a visit, to see the onkerish son of my dead sister, and Yurncra the Mischievous clutches me in his talons so that the cramph Lart has me flogged and now the Strom will sentence me to the Jikhorkdun. I shall not return to Orlush again.”

What Ilter’s plans were we never did discover, for we never did ask him. At that moment from beyond the encampment among the trees a soldier appeared bearing a torch which scattered its light upon us. He shouted.

He recognized both Avec and Ilter, for he called their names before my flung stone knocked him down.

Ilter said, “It seems, Uncle, I shall have to accompany you, and that is a fate no well-deserving young man deserves.”

The shout would arouse the sleeping camp. We made great speed to select three fine mirvols with full saddlebags still attached, and to release the restraining ropes and hobbles of the others and to beat them into the air. We took off in a veritable welter of wings.

All that night we flew north and east.

The capital of Hamal, Ruathytu, situated on the River Havilthytus lies almost midway between the northern coast and the southern border of the country bounded by the large and impressive River Os, often called He of the Commendable Countenance. Ruathytu is an inland city, situated approximately sixty dwaburs from the eastern coastline. It stands at the junction of the River Mak, known as the Black River, with the River Havilthytus. It was this latter river we followed now, winging through the pink-strewn darkness and seeing the moon’s reflection upon the dark and gleaming waters. The Black River is well named, for when it discharges its inky waters into the Havilthytus they run side by side for a surprising number of dwaburs before at last they mingle and merge.

Ilter waved his arm and pointed down. We let our mirvols plane through the sky and came to ground on a yellow bluff above the Black River. Above us two of the lesser moons of Kregen hurtled past, always in a hurry.

“I do not wish to travel all the way to Ruathytu,” said Avec, his Kregish thickening a trifle more with the local accent. “But I wish to escape those cramphs on our necks, now we have started. What in Kaerlan the Merciful’s name do you want, Ilter?”

“I thought you intended to fly to Ruathytu, the way you were going, by Krun! Had you done so, better to call on Kuerden the Merciless than Kaerlan the Merciful, my onkerish uncle.”

“I’ll strap you across my knee, nephew! By Krun, I’ll—”

I said, “You may fight all you wish. Just give me some idea of a suitable place to find rest and food and I will leave you.”

They glared at each other, chests heaving, faces angry and puffed, hands half raised. I was interested to notice that they did not clench their fists or adopt an unarmed-combat discipline posture. They were like two bantam cocks.

“Rest? Food?” Ilter slowly let his hands drop and looked at me. “Where I want to go, of course, is to Dovad, if only this onkerish fambly uncle of mine will allow.”