Witches of Kregen (7 page)

“Your own chief priest has been stricken down by Lem!” Well, it was obvious that by now many of the people out there clustered listening to me would have recognized I was not the man they knew. I went on: “He has blasphemed. He is stricken in his own quarters and lies in his own blood. The Name that Must Not Be Spoken has wrought this justice, and has sent me to reveal unto you the truth.”

The ensuing hubbub died away as, still with my arms raised to create that very necessary aura of power, I towered over them.

Then: “Listen, devotees! We serve Lem, the Silver Wonder. We have been betrayed by evil influences. We do not do well in this land of Vallia. Our deaths are written in the blood of Lem if we continue.”

The whole atmosphere was conducive to making a person believe. The incense, the brazier, the tall unwavering flames of the torches, even the unspoken menace of the torturer’s implements, the altar, and the sacrifice herself, all exerted a powerful mesmeric spell. I claim no credit for the deed. What skill at oratory I have — apart from hailing the foretop in a gale — has been used, and I do grasp at the essentials of the art. I bore down on them.

“I come to you at the first temple in this strange land of Vallia, to reveal the thinking of the Name that Must Not Be Spoken. We shall be destroyed here. We shall be betrayed. This is written. Return to your homelands. Return to the warm embrace of your friends, your lovers.”

Thus I harangued them, building up a picture of disloyalty, of greed and of vengeance, seeding their minds with the belief that they had been betrayed into hiring on here in Vallia.

Slowly, I lowered my arms.

They stood, silent, attentive, yet half-hypnotized.

With a firm and steady tread I crossed to the cage. The door was unlocked, ready for the ceremony. I opened the cage door, bent and, in a low voice, said: “Lahal, Maisie. Your mother has a special treat for you, and nicer sweets than these,” and with that I took her up into my arms.

If I fouled it up now, we’d both be chopped...

The sea of silver masks below moved, glinting in the torchlight. If Helvcin the Kaktu or Movang the Splitter stood there, as, indeed, they must, they might recognize in me the person they had spoken to in The Quork Nightly. But they would be held by the attitude of reverence for authority ingrained in them in Hamal, in Hamal of the Laws. They would reason that I had simply told them I was a Hikdar-majis-ponti so as not to reveal the true altitude of my lofty rank. For, I must be an important chief priest within the hierarchy to be doing what I was doing. Anything else was impossible, was beyond belief.

Sheer bluff carried me through. Slowly and with enormous dignity I walked through the throng, carrying Maisie, and she just put her head on my shoulder and sucked a sticky sweet on a stick. One false move, one question, one slip... I walked on and I felt the sweat trickling down under that infernal silver mask. On I strode, calm, giving the impression of a figure full of authority. On to the exit from the mine tunnel.On and out into the sweet night air away from the stinks of that blasphemous place.

When to start to run like hell?

I had to hold on, to continue that calm and steady progress. Then a thought occurred to me. I stopped.

I turned about. I lifted my free arm, and the silver-masked throng who’d followed me out halted, silent and waiting.

In a strong clear voice, I shouted back: “Do not be deceived, fellow adherents. Lem is not deceived. The gold — the gold is false. The Princess Mira gives gold freely with one hand, and her sorcery will take it away with the other when you have done her work for her and she has no further use for you. Be warned! Vallia is no place for you.”

With that, about I turned and walked off. And this time, by Zair, I walked a trifle faster.

They did not follow. Some way down the back trail I could still hear their voices raised in argument. Once I was well away I just picked up the hem of the brown robe and ran — ran like a zorca pursued by a leem.

Chapter seven

Inch — and squishes...

When I walked into the great hall of the palace of Makolo, situated on a cliff overlooking Makanriel, the capital city of the kovnate province of the Black Mountains, they had just finished the evening meal. I was followed by a great crowd of retainers and guards and servants, all amazed and agog that the Emperor of Vallia had arrived.

The sweet and luscious smell of squishes hung in the hall.

I sighed.

I knew what to expect when I walked into the small room at the back of the hall where folk would retire after the meal to drink wine and talk and relax after the day’s exertions.

I was not disappointed.

Squishes are, indeed, flavorsome morsels on the tongue, tiny fruits that melt and create incredible delights on their way. The dish had probably been squish pie, I guessed, and I felt the old juices starting up in my mouth. I’d flown hard and long on the stolen fluttrell, and poor old Salvation had perforce been left with master Urban the Unguent. The new fluttrell was a fine flyer, with a wicked eye, so I’d called him Salvation the Second.

Maisie had been restored to her mother Minvila amid many tears and protestations of gratitude. I’d been able to press a little gold into her unwilling hand. Good folk, cruelly brought down by the evil times that had fallen on their province, they would, I felt sure, welcome a return to more settled and prosperous days when at last the Emperor of Vallia liberated the whole island.

So, now, here I was, in the palace of Makolo in Makanriel in the Black Mountains.

The colors of the Black Mountains, Black and Purple, shone from tapestry and streamer. The schturval, the emblem of the province, emblazoned in panoply about the hall and the retiring room, was an axe. At one time this axe had been of a common variety, double-bitted and not particularly well-crafted as to haft. Now that axe was of the Saxon pattern, small of head, long of haft and with that cunning curve and recurve to the wood that transferred such power and accuracy into the blow.

I noticed, too, in the banded sleeves of the men and the draperies of the walls, that the black and purple did not meet but were separated by two narrow lines of yellow enclosing a narrow line of red. I smiled. That was also new.

The sweet smell of squishes remained strong as I entered the room. There was even a scrap of pie crust on the floor and a pretty young serving girl was in the act of sweeping it up with a brush and dustpan. She was neatly dressed in a yellow tunic, her sleeves bearing the schturval, and in her combed hair a glitter showed where she wore a vimshu, a kind of small tiara set with brilliants much favored even by girls who were not considered vain.

She missed her sweep with the brush, for her head was cocked up and to the side and she was looking over at the far corner of the room. She might have seen that sight many and many a time, and yet I could well understand her bright interest and amusement.

In the corner — where I spotted another scrap of squish piecrust — I could see a man. He was inordinately tall and thin. He wore a scarlet tunic and a golden belt. His long yellow hair was tightly wound into a red bandage-cap somewhat like a turban. He was a strange and powerful figure, well, enough.

The trouble was, he was standing on his head.

I could feel my harsh old lips stretching into the broadest of smiles.

He saw me.

Now I give him his due. He did not fall over.

To one side stood another fellow almost as tall wearing a proper decent Vallian evening robe of midnight blue. To him I said:

“Tell me, Brince, how long?”

“Majister!” This tall streak recovered himself. “But a couple of murs more, majister. And lahal, I am overjoyed to see you. As is my cousin—”

With that the tall man standing on his head flung himself in an amazing contortion around so that he landed on those spider-long legs. He towered in the room. He advanced on me, hand outstretched, beaming away like a searchlight.

I grasped his hand as he grasped mine.

“Dray!”

“Inch!”

Seven foot he stood in his socks, and not an inch shorter. I looked up and I laughed, and I gripped his hand as he gripped mine.

Good old Inch!

As he had said on an occasion before, so, now, he said, “As a rascally comrade of ours would say, Dray — Lahal, my old dom!”

“Aye,” I said, “and he is well and I’ve sent him back to Vondium for reinforcements. And that is why I’m here.”

“You do not surprise me.” He lifted his voice, as gangling and bubbling with life as ever, and yet with the marks of his responsibilities upon him in the line of lip and jaw, the crinkle around the eyes. “Wine! Wine for the emperor! The best we have — Jholaix! By Ngrozyan the Axe! Break out that crate of Jholaix hidden behind the racks of Stuvan! And hurry!”

Men ran off to do the kov’s bidding, and he rubbed his hands at the ends of those long thin arms where the bunched muscles showed strongly. “I’ve waited a long time for something worthwhile to celebrate.”

“Maybe celebrations are a trifle premature, particularly when I wish to deprive you of some fine fellows of your best regiments.”

“We have had a turn of fortune up here, recently, Dray. The Racters are quiet. Brince says they’re so quiet they’re up to something fiendish. Isn’t that so, Brince, you lathe of stubborn willpower?”

Inch’s second cousin, who’d come over from their native Ng’groga to help out with five hundred axemen, nodded.

“I’ve grown to love Vallia. When all these troubles are over, majister, we’d like to settle down here, if that falls within your will and permission—”

“Falls within my gratitude, Brince. You are all most welcome.”

“I thank you, majister. But what my long streak of a cousin says is true. I believe the Racters merely withdraw a little to regroup and so strike us with full force.”

“That is a sensible reading of the situation. I think, however, that the true picture is even more dire.”

Then I told them, as the Jholaix hoarded against a special day was brought in and opened and we drank, savoring the superb vintage, told them of the schemes of Layco Jhansi and the Racters. Jhansi concentrated against Turko in Falinur. The Racters turned their attentions to the King of North Vallia, upstart and usurper though he was. When, if not before, they had accomplished those tasks, they would crush Inch in the Black Mountains between them.

Inch quaffed the wine.

“Very well. We strike first. It can be done.”

“Agreed. But I still need regiments to assist Turko.” Then I spoke of the disaster that had sorcerously overtaken the Ninth Army.

The moment I had finished speaking Inch burst out: “Anything Turko requires from me he can have, and at once. We’ll get started first thing. By Ngrangi! I can’t abandon Turko — and, anyway, we can keep the Racters in play and then, when we’ve won,
we’ll
be the ones to crush them in a vise!”

Many and many a time I thank Zair for good comrades. And, more, I thank all the gods and spirits that my blade comrades are blade comrades one with another. Not for me the system which sets subordinates at one another’s throats, filled with petty jealousies, unwilling to act together, trying always to steal a march. That this system does work, after a fashion, has been proved. But its inefficiency puts it out of court to anyone with a heart and an eye to the main chance. If all my blade comrades ganged up together on me — well, then, by the disgusting diseased liver and lights of Makki Grodno, perhaps I would deserve that fate.

That I had not a single qualm that that could happen does not indicate I was a blind fool. I give trust seldom. When I do, I judge fairly that it is given in full.

Then Inch raised a point I had known he would, and had rather wished he wouldn’t. Still, the ridicule would have to be faced.

“Tell me, Dray, the army with Turko that is so badly shaken. Did you say — Ninth Army?”

“Aye.”

He looked down on me with a comical expression and said: “Well? You’d better tell me what’s been going on.”

“Yes, I suppose so. The Presidio have been doing very well running the country, and their council has been invaluable. Also, they handle the day-to-day affairs that are so time-consuming.”

“That I well believe. But—”

“They decided that for the glory of Vallia and the better management of the army as a whole, each Kapt commanding an army should be given an army with a number. Turko’s happened to be the Ninth.”

“And the other eight?”

I made a face.

“Drak has the First down in the southwest. The Second was serving up in the northeast. The Eighth I had, and although that army no longer exists, its brigades being distributed among the others, I still hang onto the number. As for the others, they served in Hamal.”

“I have heard somewhat of what went on down there. You must tell me of it over supper.”

“I will. Also I will tell you about Tilda and Pando—”

“You have seen them again? Spoken to them?” He bent down, eager, concerned for our old friends who had turned out so different from what we had expected.

“Aye, I’ve seen ’em and spoken to them. I’ll tell you.”

He frowned at my tone, and so I promised to tell him all over supper. At that, he had been very decent over this grandiloquent business of numbering the armies, and had not mocked the notion at all. He would, though, he would, when the time was ripe.

To scotch that plan, I said, “I think I shall ask the Presidio to allocate your forces an army number, Inch. How does that seize you?”

“My lads will laugh.”

“So well they may. They’ll still fight.”

“Oh, aye, that is sooth.”

Then we sat down at the tables to concentrate upon the wine, upon miscils and palines, and upon the forces Inch could spare to march to the east to assist our blade comrade Turko — who was never a blade comrade in the sense of wearing edged weapons. I found that Inch had, as I suspected, been waging his struggle to free the Black Mountains with very slender resources.

His own Black Mountain Men, bonny fighters all, were in truth fearsome irregulars. His main disciplined strength resided in the regiments sent over from Valka, and a handful from the Vallian forces who had been flown in from time to time. For a good few seasons no direct land link had existed between our sections of Vallia and the Black Mountains.