A Victory for Kregen

Chapter eighteen

The pouch containing the brooch and the baubles I had retrieved from the Moder and which I had retained through my adventures now lay on the desk before me. I sat in that small room in the imperial palace and I glowered at the brooch, at the shelves of books, and the maps that, as ever, mocked me from the walls, at the arms rack. In this room I had done a deal of work and, by Vox, was to do a damned deal more.

“Yes, yes,” I said to Chuktar Naroku, “you have taken employment with the Prince Majister and I shall honor the pledge.”

Chuktar Naroku rubbed his thumb along his right tusk. His three-inch-long tusks, thrusting up arrogantly from the corners of his mouth, were banded in gold. His oily yellow skin glistened in the radiance of the samphron-oil lamps. His pigtail hung down his back. He filled his armor. He sweated. He was not apim like me, he was a diff, a Chulik out of the Chulik islands off the east coast of Balintol. Reared from birth to the handling of weapons, Chuliks are justly respected and feared as mercenaries. Of humanity…?

Well, they do have a modicum more of that precious commodity than, say, the damned Katakis. The diff at Naroku’s side coughed. He had a long-nosed canine face, and his air of eternal supercilious superiority was guaranteed to get up the snub nose of diff and apim alike.

“My archers, majister-” began this Chuktar Unstabi.

“The same goes for you, too,” I said. I own my voice snapped a trifle pettishly. Chuktar Unstabi was an Undurker, from the Undurkor islands south of the huge promontory of Persinia. Both these Chuktars, which is a rank something like junior general, brigadier, were hyrpaktuns. They were costing my treasury good red gold.

My son, Prince Drak, had contracted to hire mercenaries to wage the war against the mercenaries hired by our enemies.

Fume though I might, I had to honor his pledge. But, by the Black Chunkrah! I said to myself. I’ll have something to say to that son of mine when I see him, by Krun!

I looked sharply at the man who stood silently a little to one side of the two hyrpaktuns. He was a Vallian. He wore a fancy new uniform, all buff and red, with a solid iron breastplate. His shrewd, weather-beaten face conveyed the sense of a man of gravitas, and the brown Vallian eyes were partially hidden by down-drooping lids. He wore a rapier and main gauche. The two mercenaries also wore their weapons.

“And now you feel you are fit to march to the southwest, Kov Vodun?”

“Yes, majister, with your blessing.” Kov Vodun Alloran had lost his kovnate of Kaldi, right in the toe of southwest Vallia, to that rast Strom Rosil Yasi. Kov Vodun kept up an unceasing barrage of contumely against our enemies, and lusted after returning and hanging every last one from the tallest tree branches he could find.

A number of invasions had been launched through his province. We had resisted and now, with Kov Vodun to prod us into action, we felt the time was ripe for us to return in strength and kick Yasi and his foul henchmen out of our land. The trouble was, and this trouble explained our experiences after Mancha of Tlinganden had been wrecked, our army had been forced to march north. The strength left in the capital was now rather too weak for my liking. But, still and all, that southwest rankled…

“If we can clear all the southwest,” I said, “it will free our hands for the sterner tasks ahead.”

Kov Vodun snapped erect. “Sterner tasks, majister?”

I sighed. Trust me to say the wrong thing.

“Only in matters of number, kov; not in anything else.”

“I see.”

A prickly customer, Kov Vodun Alloran. Very popular with the ladies, with his tales of guerrilla action from the hills. Alloran had done well at the Battle of Kanarsmot, and afterwards in that fraught action to take the fortress where Inch had rejoined us. Kov Vodun Alloran had been chosen by the Presidio, with the blessings of Prince Drak and the Lord Farris, to lead the Army of the Southwest to liberate that area of our land.

“Very well,” I said. “My mind is made up. You have the nucleus of the forces earmarked for you-”

“The most of which were taken away!” said Alloran, with a prickly nastiness. He had regained a very great measure of his own self-esteem since escaping from his kovnate and fighting with us here. I nodded.

“That is true. And, no doubt, that is why the Prince Majister contracted to engage paktuns. You will have a tidy army, Kov Vodun, to lead into your kovnate.”

He moved his shoulders under the armor and the polished iron caught the light and glittered. “There is the matter of the Fourth Phalanx, majister. I was promised the Fourth, and one wing was taken from me and flown north. I now have only one Kerchuri, and it is in my mind I should take a Kerchuri from the Fifth.”

My old blade comrade Nath Nazabhan had been busy, and besides finishing the raising of the Fourth, he had started the Fifth. Now a phalanx is a wonderful engine of destruction and the pikemen in the files, the brumbytes, of whom there are 10,368, are flanked by the axe and halberd men, the Hakkodin, of whom there are 1,728. There are also strong bodies of archers, and lads to strew caltrops and run with chevaux de frises. A whole lot of men are locked up in a phalanx.

I stirred the piece of paper on my desk. In Drak’s handwriting the composition of the proposed Army of the SW stared me in the face. Drak had written down: “One Kerchuri.” A Kerchuri is a wing of the phalanx, one-half. I looked up at Alloran.

“Two Kerchuris, kov?”

“Aye, majister, two.”

“But the Fifth Phalanx is green raw.”

“Their Ninth Kerchuri is ready. And, by Vox, by the time I have marched them a sennight or so they’ll smarten up!”

“You would leave Vondium with only the Tenth Kerchuri?”

“You need, with your permission, majister, archers to defend city walls.”

That was only half true.

I wondered if he was going to bargain his paktun archers, these Undurkers, for the Ninth Kerchuri. It was, in my view, no bargain at all.

I said, “What do your spies report of the strength and composition of Strom Rosil’s army?”

“Scattered,” he said at once. “He will have time to scrape his men together before I reach him, of course, after the initial breakthrough battles. He has something of the order of thirty thousand he can concentrate with reasonable speed.

Give him two of the Moons of the Twins and he will have fifty or more.”

I stirred Drak’s list again.

“If you move with speed, you can catch him before he concentrates his full strength.”

“That is my plan.”

“And the composition?”

Alloran smiled. “Mercenaries of varying quality. A normal mix of infantry and cavalry. He has also masichieri and aragorn. They hardly count.”

I looked up suspiciously. “Never underrate those rasts.”

“I am thinking, majister, of First Kanarsmot.”

“We surprised them there.”

“And I,” said Kov Vodun, “shall surprise the cramphs again.”

The decision I was being called on to make was your everyday, normal, ulcer-breeding decision facing emperors. If I allowed Kov Vodun to take the army as listed by Drak, less those units detached for duty in the north, plus the Ninth Kerchuri, there would be a skeletal force left in the city. I looked up. I know my face must have looked like a chunk of granite dredged from a thousand-season-old wreck. The Southwest had to be cleared, the risk accepted. He could take a full phalanx, the Eighth and Ninth Kerchuris. The commands would mesh. Get the job done fast. I told him my decision. Then I said, “Very well. You will take upwards of forty thousand. That should suffice.”

His down-drooping lids lifted, then he smiled, and nodded his satisfaction with what he had salvaged.

“The original army was to have been upwards of sixty thousand, majister. But I will do what I must with these straitened circumstances.”

Just as I was thinking this was a damned boorish way of carrying on, he added, “And I give you my thanks, majister.”

“May Opaz go with you and guide you in the forthcoming battles.”

So off he went with his paktuns and in came Enevon Ob-Eye, my chief stylor, a man whom I trusted and who had a head for figures and lists, and the warrants were prepared.

“You leave the city perilously undefended, majis.”

“Aye, Enevon. But while we attack in the north and attack in the southwest, we have the cramphs off balance. They’ll be too busy defending themselves to attack us here.”

The heavy atmosphere in the room during the interview with Alloran seemed to have gone with him. Enevon reported that the swarths I had ordered collected were stabled in the sleeth’s stables at the merezo, and the lads of the racing track were caring for their new charges. My experiences in the Humped Land with those damned swarthmen had convinced me a few regiments of swarth-mounted cavalry would not come amiss.

So, as you will see, I was in the thick of this paperwork and caring for it only insofar as I worked for Vallia and Delia. I just could not twine my thoughts around the whereabouts and well-being of Delia. She was off with the Sisters of the Rose, doing marvelous and secret wonders, and no doubt having a tremendous time. As ever, unless I felt that peculiar sense of urgency and disaster, I would not request a Wizard of Loh to go into lupu and spy out Delia’s whereabouts.

During this period both Quienyin and Bjanching paid a courtesy call on me. Oh, they were both up north; but their ghostly apparitions showed up in my room, and this comforted me considerably, as you may well imagine. Paying polite visits by these supernatural means, and taking it all as a matter of course, came with an all-standing kind of refresher to me, even if to them it was all in the day’s business. One visit gave me immense pleasure. Silda, Seg’s daughter, called on me. She couldn’t stop, she said; she was on her way through. I did not inquire. She was about business for the SoR, that was clear. Silda had grown more beautiful than ever, a bright, charming, happy girl who mentioned the death of her mother just the once. She was also very strong-minded. I could see that. There was in her much of Seg’s greatness of character, and also a deal of her mother’s outgoing warmth which in Silda was not inevitably brought to disaster. If I had to choose a daughter-in-law — and, by Vox, I did not have to, not with Drak making up his own mind! — there was no one I could think of to surpass Silda Segutorio. She said her brother, Dray Segutorio, was now a hyrpaktun and had only just learned of the troubles afflicting us. He was on his way home.

“The quicker he gets here the better. We need every trained professional we can lay hands on. And I’m not talking about mercenaries. Young Drak has-” And I stopped. I would not too openly criticize Drak in front of Silda. I had seen the way her eyebrows went up, and the purse to those delectable lips, the flush of color along her cheeks. Silda would fight for Drak, aye, fight against his own father! And the luck of Opaz with her!

Then she said, with an abrupt switch of mood, “Have you seen Queen Lushfymi of Lome since you got back, Uncle Dray?”

“I have not. And it’s about time you stopped calling me Uncle Dray. By Zair! It makes me feel a million years old.”

“I beg your pardon, majister. Of course-”

“Silda, Silda! Just knock it off.”

Her eyebrows flicked up again. Damned attractive, those eyebrows, like the rest of her.

“I mean, knock off the uncle bit. As for Queen Lush — I wish she’d go home to Lome. But of course, poor woman, she can’t. Not with Yantong ready to put her down if she does.”

“Poor woman!” flared Silda. Then, calmly: “It must be hard for her. Aunt Delia’s father meant a great deal to Queen Lushfymi. But do you really think Yantong is in Pandahem?”

“I do not know and I wonder if I really do want to know. No. No, I’d like to know. Then perhaps we could — well, all that is wishful thinking. Even Quienyin doesn’t know where Yantong hides out and tries to run the world.”

Then we talked of more personal matters. When she left with my good wishes and the last Remberees and her refusal of any aid in particular she might need — independent girl — I reflected that not once had she called Lushfymi Queen Lush.

What she had told me, and been at pains to tell me without acknowledging that she had told me, was that Delia was all right, was safe and well, and was chafing to get home. So I could draw a deep breath and soldier on alone. The passing on of that information, I saw, had been the reason for Silda’s visit. I wondered, with a pang, if Delia knew, or if Silda had brought me the news of her own volition. That would be like Silda.

Kov Vodun was burning to be about his business of clearing up the southwest. I rode faithful old Grumbleknees out to Voxyri Drinnik to see the advance guard off. They were flying out. They would be reinforced as fast as the ships of the air could turn around. The breeze, the Todalpheme had told us, would stay fair, giving a good stiff-sailing course to be steered out and back. Apart from the Eighth Kerchuri of the Fourth Phalanx and the Ninth Kerchuri of the Fifth, Kov Vodun was taking five thousand churgurs, three thousand archers and five thousand kreutzin, the light infantry and skirmishers. Many of these infantry were mercenaries. For cavalry I had let him have three regiments of totrix heavies, and five divisions of a mixed force of totrix and zorca lancers and archers. He took forty varters, the efficient ballistae of Kregen, wheeled and drawn by a variety of draught animals. Enevon Ob-Eye rode with me and wore a gloomy face.

“All these fine men leaving the city,” he said. He shook his head. “Pray Opaz nothing untoward occurs.”

“Long before the enemy can even think of reacting and mounting an attack on us,” I told him, “the armies will be victorious and return. You’ll see.”

I was thinking of the foemen we knew, up in the north and east and down in the southwest. The life of the city roared on, even though to me the place appeared empty. There were many folk who were still civilians, going about their daily tasks and providing the sinews to keep the army moving and supplied and fed. Every day men would march in having toiled for many dwaburs out of the invaded territories. Most of them simply wanted to get into a uniform and take up a weapon and go right back and have a bash at the occupiers. We had to instill in them the notion that they must be trained and drilled and hardened before they could even think of returning.

Turko took a large hand in the hardening of the men. He might be a Khamorro and therefore far more deadly with empty hands than with a weapon; but he ran these raw recruits ragged and built them up not only in physique but in spiritual confidence.

Many men saw me every day over matters touching every part of daily life, and of these, some you have met and many there are whom I grew to know better and who feature in later episodes. And then, one day, a voller appeared over the palace. She was a large craft, and she flew the Vallian tresh, blazing under the suns, and also my own battle flag, Old Superb. I looked up and I frowned. I had a good idea of what this was all about, I had expected it, and I knew what course I was going to take and how confoundedly angry that was going to make everyone. I was not looking forward at all to the coming scene.

But, I admit, I did look with great joy upon the tough, fierce men who crowded from the voller and advanced upon me as I stood upon the high landing platform to greet them. You know them, you know their lineaments and much of their history. These men were the Emperor’s Sword Watch. They were the ruffianly spirits of my Choice Band. Cleitar the Standard stepped forward.

“Majister!” he bellowed. “They have elected me as spokesman.”

I gave him no further time. “Lahal to you all!” I know I looked fierce. These men and I had been through perilous times together. “I understood there was fighting in the north. Battles against our foemen. What?

Have you deserted in the face of the foe?”

Their faces, wreathed in smiles, brilliant at seeing me again, were cast down in an instant. They looked puzzled and hurt.

“Majister!” stammered Cleitar. “Us? Run away…?”

Dorgo the Clis stepped forward, his scar a vivid slash across his face. “Majister! We return to where we belong!”

“Aye!” bellowed Targon the Tapster. “We are the Emperor’s Sword Watch!”

“We stand always at your side, majister!” roared Naghan ti Lodkwara. “You cannot send us away!”

The others joined in then and the air filled with protests and lurid oaths. They were all incensed at my obtuseness. So I had to explain.

“Prince Drak, the Prince Majister, commands the Army of the Northeast. He is in the forefront of the battle. Your duty is to him at this time.”

Well, as I say, I had not relished the scene and it turned out as I had gloomily suspected. In the end they saw that I meant what I said. They shuffled. They protested. But at last they all returned to the voller and observed the fantamyrrh and so took off to return to Drak. But they did not do this right away. Oh, no. We spent a raucous night drinking and singing and telling the old stories before they left bright and early and mostly hung over. That, at the least, gave me a single bright spot to put alongside the visit from Silda

— and one or two other timely interruptions to the everyday slog of work. And, in a sense, that decided me on a project I had long contemplated. The Second Regiment of the Sword Watch, mainly brave and brilliant young men still under training, were all very well. There were the paktuns from the sea in their tromp-colored uniforms. Now they were called the Emperor’s Yellow Jackets. But I looked at the empty barracks and the thinness of the morning parades. So, I went to see the Chief Assassin of Vondium.