Krozair of Kregen (27 page)

“I think.” said Zeg as he wiped his dripping blade, “they have us now.”

“Do not speak like that, Zeg!”

He glared at me, his eyes over bright, his mouth ugly.

“You and I will settle this, if we live. You deserve to be jikaidered for your foulmouthed insolence. Ha! My brother Drak was right when he compared you with our father! He must be just such a braggart as you.”

If that was not fair I had no time to care as once again we went hammer and tongs into a pack of Fristles running, screeching, from a newly landed flier. Our varters shot-in our attack and we routed them. The Zandikarese archers proved their worth on this day, and my Lohvian longbow sang sweetly whenever a target looked likely. But, all the same, we could last little longer.

A particularly fierce attack developed against that nodal central gate of the landward wall. Outside, waiting, the Magdaggian army stood at ease, drawn up in formation, ready to burst in. Over our heads the vollers circled and clashed and men and fliers fell from the sky. Many a green flag smashed into the dust and many a red flag followed. Our strength was being whittled away, and yet even as our fliers dwindled in numbers so did the Grodnim vollers shrink. There remained the force ready to launch itself at the central gate, and here we positioned ourselves to withstand the assault that might end all.

“If only our mean old devil of a grandfather had spared Drak good vollers!” said Zeg, with a vicious burst of anger. “He has them, for our cramph of a father took them in the Battle of Jholaix.”

“We must fight with what we have, lad.” I made up my mind. “If the city does fall, you must take a voller and Miam and escape.”

He roared at me then, as a Valkan prince might roar. I bellowed over his furious protests. “Do you want to see what will happen to Miam? Are you that callous and hardhearted — and stupid?”

“And the warriors and the people, you rast! Do I leave them?”

“If they cannot escape, at least you and Miam—”

He turned away from me, unable to answer so base a suggestion as it should be answered, with a blow or the sword, for through all his Zairian fervor he recognized this Zadak was useful to Zandikar in a fight. He did say, bitterly, “But
you
will escape?”

I did not answer. Sniz was there, a bloody bandage around his head. “Blow, Sniz! Blow as you have never blown before.”

Everything depended on this gate. Glycas had ceased to throw his fliers haphazardly into the city, where we waited for them and shot his soldiers up as they disembarked. Now he put everything into this last attack. The vollers descended and we could see their brave green banners, the fierce glint of weapons, and hear the ferocious shrilling war chants. “Magdag! Grodno!”

“Zair!” we yelled, and our archers shot. “Zair! Zandikar!”

The Green vollers descended in clouds, like flies onto a carcass. The wall, the gate-towers, the courtyards, filled with battling men. We heard the shrill yelping of men and trumpets from outside. With a crash that tore at our heartstrings we saw the gate burst in with a smother of flying chips of wood. The gate burst and went down and hordes of Green mailed warriors broke through, yelling in triumph.

“Now is the end!” bellowed Zeg and he leaped forward, swirling his Krozair longsword above his head, resplendent, shining in mail and blood, smashing a bloody trail through the Greens. I used the Lohvian longbow and preserved his life, as Seg had done for me in the long-ago. Other red banners pressed in from the side and for a space, a tiny space, we held them. But we could not hold the pressure. We sagged back. We sagged and stumbled back, and wounded men fell and dead men were crushed and it seemed that this final moment was the end.

We saw the ranks of Green draw back a space and knew they summoned up their energies for the last smashing attack. Duhrra stood at my side, splashed with blood, fearsome in his might. Vax was with him. Their flier had been smashed and they had lived so that they might die here, at the gate of Zandikar. Drak was there, calm and powerful, darkly dominant, giving orders that tightened up a flank. Our exhausted men ran to do his bidding. So, for that tiny space, we stood there, Drak, Zeg, and Jaidur — for that was Vax’s name. We stood there, three sons who did not know their hated father stood with them in the final hour, and I, that same father who had so failed his sons.

I saw the green-clad ranks forming for the next charge, saw them sorting themselves out after the skirling charge that had driven them through the gate. Now they formed the phalanx, that phalanx I had created in the warrens of Magdag. I saw the pikes all slanting forward, the halberdiers and swordsmen in the front ranks. The sextets of crossbowmen took up their positions in flank. This was a mighty force, this killing instrument of war. It would roll over us, as we smashed with our swords, roll over us and obliterate us. Theory might say otherwise; but I had trained well and I knew Genod’s father had carried on that training, and King Genod, who was now dead, the rast, had profited by it.

So we braced ourselves for the final charge of that superb machine of war. Then I saw men looking up and a shadow pressed down over the gateway. Like a clump of thistledown in lightness and like a floating solid fortress for power, an enormous skyship landed gently before the gate and stoppered the smashed opening with solid lenken walls bristling with varters and longbowmen.

The sleeting discharge of darts and shafts shattered the phalanx. The smashing force of varter-driven rocks carved bloody pathways through rived mail and tattered flesh. The Archers of Valka drove their shafts pitilessly into the gaps. The shields of the phalanx could not withstand the magnitude of the blows: rocks and darts and shafts. The phalanx was shredded to pulp.

“By Opaz!” said Drak. “By Zair!” said Zeg. “By Vox!” said Vax.

I did not say anything. Excited screams burst out all about us. The men of Zandikar knew when succor had arrived. I saw the huge bulk of the skyship, enormous, deck piled on deck, all sustained and driven through the air by the power of the aerial mechanism, the silver boxes, deep in her hull. I looked. She seemed smothered with flags. There was the red of Zairia. But, over all, dominating and fluttering in the brave Kregen sunshine — Old Superb! My own flag, the yellow cross on the scarlet ground. Old Superb, my battle flag, floating in the streaming rays of the Suns of Scorpio.

At the jackstaff flew the yellow saltire on the red ground, the flag of the Empire of Vallia. Many red and white flags of Valka, famous in song, fluttered from the masts. And there were other flags, also, flags I recognized as the flags of friends.

Another shadow sped across the ground and we all looked up, a flower-bed of faces, and another huge skyship circled up there and rained death and destruction down upon the Grodnim army.

As though casually, a varter-sped rock flew and knocked from the sky the last Grodnim voller. It snapped and fell.

My three sons were gabbling away together, and Miam clasped Zeg, and I turned away, for even Duhrra stood by Vax, beaming in his cheerful idiotic way. Roz Janri and Pallan Zavarin joined them. I heard what was said, Drak dominating all.

“We have been saved by warriors from my own country. See the flags, the Vallian, the Valkan. And yet — Old Superb — our father’s flag. That has not been flown for many years.”

“It is of no consequence!” shouted Zeg as we waited for the people from the skyship to join us. “See the Blue Mountain Boys! See the flags of Falinur and the Black Mountains! That means Seg and Inch! And the valkavol standards of Valka!”

The skyship was lifting to join her sisters in the sky as they went methodically about exterminating the least sign of Green. Now a fresh wonder was vouchsafed us. The people from the skyship were approaching us. But we looked up. A mass of flying specks leaped from the ship, fanning out, and the wide wings of saddle-birds beat against the sky. Orange streamers identified them, if the flutduins had not — my Djangs! Those ferocious four-armed warrior Djangs! How the fluttrells wearing the green plunged and scattered like breeze-driven smoke!

I swallowed down, hard. By God! I am an old cynical case-hardened warrior. But in that moment — in that glorious moment — I relished as seldom I relished the mingled sunshine of Kregen, the heady intoxicating air, and the deep sure knowledge of friendship I know I do not deserve but which has blessed me in my new life on the planet four hundred light-years from the world of my birth.

They were all there. It seemed to me they were
all
there.

Seg and Inch, striding on, beaming. Turko the Shield, Balass the Hawk, Naghan the Gnat, Oby, Melow the Supple. Korf Aighos was there, Tilly, Kytun Kholin Dorn, his four arms windmilling in his excitement, but Ortyg Fellin Coper was not there, as was proper, for he would hold Djanduin when Kytun and I were both away. And — Prince Varden Wanek strode along brave in the powder blue of the Ewards. And, with him, Gloag! And Hap Loder! Incredible! I gaped. What had she been up to? Raising half of Kregen after me?

The Wizard of Loh, Khe-In-Bjanching, strode on busily talking to Evold Scavander, two wise Sans absorbed in arcane lore despite their surroundings. And there were others there I knew, men like Wersting Rogahan, and Jiktar Orlon Llodar. I guessed Vangar ti Valkanium and Tom Tomor, Elten of Avanar, were aloft conducting the aerial operations and finishing the Magdaggians.

Drak and Zeg and Vax took a few paces forward, free of the rest of us, as the crowd from the skyship approached. It struck none of us to rush forward. We stood. And, among the crowd walking toward us all smiling and laughing — I might have guessed! — staggered two rascals skylarking and upturning bottles. “Stylor!” they crowed, beaming and drinking by turns. Oh, yes, they were there, my two favorite rascals, my two oar-comrades, Nath and Zolta.

So the crowd around Queen Miam waited, and the three princes of Vallia stepped forth proudly in this moment of victory. I stood a little to one side of them, in the random shadow of a tower, and I, too, savored the moment of victory. But more than that I savored, I luxuriated in, I stared devouringly at she who walked at the head of all my friends. Slender, lissome, superb, clad in russet hunting leathers, with the brave old scarlet sash about her, the rapier and the dagger swinging at her sides, her long brown hair free about her shoulders with the suns casting gorgeous auburn highlights in that lush profusion of beauty, she walked in light, glorious, glorious. . .

Drak and Zeg and Vax who was Jaidur took another step forward. They held out their arms in welcome. I stood to the side and watched, for I could not see their faces, but I know they were smiling and happy. Her three sons welcomed her, and they called, “Mother!” Drak and Zeg and Jaidur, happy, laughing, calling, “Mother!”

She lifted her own arms. She was smiling and I felt myself trembling, felt the choke, the ache in my throat.

“Mother!” called the three brothers and held out their arms.

She held out her own arms and began to run because she could not hold back in regal dignity any longer. The moment for ritual observances had flown. No longer was she the Princess Majestrix, imperial granddaughter of the emperor of Vallia, she was a woman and her heart, like mine, was bursting. Straight toward her three sons she ran. I stood to the rear of them and to the side, in the shadows, and I felt all the crushing weight of twenty-one years pressing down on me. Directly toward the outstretched arms of those three stalwart young men ran their mother and they broke and ran toward her in filial love.

Straight past them she ran. Past their outstretched arms, past the welcoming smiles upon their faces, past the three of them, and so I stood forward. And she threw herself into my arms and I held her close, close, and I could not see anything in the whole world of Kregen but my Delia.

Krozair of Zy

“My
father!”

“That insolent rast my
father!”

“The hyr Jikai Zadak my
father!”

Well, poor lads, it was hard for them.

There is little left to tell.

I, Dray Prescot, Prince Majister of Vallia, Strom of Valka, King of Djanduin, Lord of Strombor — and much else besides — held my Delia and I most certainly would not let her go. We gathered in the High Hall and there was the most sumptuous shindig.

I forced away the dark and terrible news I must tell Delia. Her daughter Velia was dead. But she had news for me that set me back, for she had gone home from the inner sea when Seg and Inch had come for her on the island of Zy after I had seen her in a stinking fish cell. Those two had stolen a skyship from the emperor and gone looking for me. Seg had been in Erthyrdrin and Inch in Ng’groga when my letters at last reached them. But they had taken Delia back, for she had seen me and understood that with the help of Nath and Zolta I must work out my own salvation. At home in Esser Rarioch she had given birth to a daughter. We would call this dearly beloved daughter Velia.

“So now you know why I made you look at the dead face of Gafard. He was not an altogether evil man.” The three faces of my sons reflected indescribable emotions. “He was your brother-in-law.”

Delia insisted on looking, also, and she turned away and held me close, and said, “Dear Velia. Dear Velia.”

She would overcome her sorrow in time.

As to Zeg and Jaidur, they were hot for continuing the war against the Grodnims. The situation of the Eye of the World was now back to where it had been before Genod had set out on his road of conquest. With his genius for war removed, the Red southern shore would be cleansed of the Green centers of infection. From Zimuzz west to Shazmoz all would be Red once more. Drak put his chin in his hands and said he had to return to Vallia, for trouble brewed there and the Racters were not the only ones involved.

Just what their attitude to me would be, now that they knew just who I was, remained to be seen. They studiously avoided any mention of the past differences. But I said, “I go to Zy. There is a matter between me and Pur Kazz, the Grand Archbold.”

As Krozairs of Zy, Drak and Zeg would attend. Delia said, simply, “I’m not letting you out of my sight again, and you needn’t think otherwise.”