A Victory for Kregen

Chapter nineteen

Perhaps I had been over-hasty in sending the Sword Watch back to keep an eye on my son Drak.

“I did warn you, majister, that contracts had been placed for you. We have had to deal with two such attempts — but you were not in the city at the time, and that made it easier.”

Nath the Knife, the chief of assassins, styled the Aleygyn of the Stikitches, studied me through the eyeholes of his steel mask. We both sat at the table under the arch of the Gate of Skulls this time, and there was no need for either of us to attempt to gain stature by sitting or standing.

“Have the builders been working as I promised?”

“Yes, majister.” His words were plain enough; but his meaning was difficult to judge. “They work well. Our houses grow.”

Drak’s City, the oldest part of Vondium, was a law unto itself. Here the rascals, the scalawags, the thieves, and the disaffected lived. The aid from the rest of the city might have been aimed at preventing disease; but it was in a very real sense a humanitarian gesture. Within the walls life bustled along. Everybody scratched a living somehow. Nath the Knife had positioned his bodyguard in the Kyro of Lost Souls, as men of the Sword Watch and the Yellow Jackets waited on me on the outside.

“You will not tell me who is letting out these contracts, Aleygyn? That would be against your code of honor?”

“You know it would.”

We talked for a space of the city and the rebuilding and skirted the tricky business of the payment to kill me, and then I said, “If I mention the word kreutzin, Aleygyn, you, as an educated man, will know what I mean, even if some vosk-skulls might not.”

“I understand.” The kreutzin are the light infantry, the voltigeurs, who skirmish ahead of the line. “I promised to send some of my young men to join your army-”

“Not my army, Aleygyn. The Army of Vallia.”

“I think not. You cannot but my young men for Vallia with bricks and mortar, or with medicines.”

I looked at him and I kept the fury out of my face.

“Some idiots might call you an old warrior, Nath the Knife. I think you are-”

“I am not foresworn. My honor is a stikitche’s honor!” He spoke up briskly. Damned difficult to carry on a conversation with a fellow who wears a steel mask over his face! “I will send my young men to serve you. They will serve the Emperor of Vallia. There is a difference. And, as you see, there are reasons for this nicety in our arrangements.”

I could see that, all right. By the disgusting diseased right eyeball of Makki Grodno! And then I laughed. The thought struck me that if Drak sat here, in conversation with an assassin, his rectitude and composure would fight like merry hell with all his natural fighting instincts. But, he’d learn. By Krun, but he’d learn what being an emperor meant.

“You mean,” I said, when I’d had my laugh out, “you are a pack of rogues in here, hulus, rascals and fools, thieves, stikitches — and the rest of respectable Vondium-”

“Precisely. They would burn us out if they could.”

“They could, Nath the Knife. They could. But not while you and I talk, man to man.”

That shook him. For centuries the sanctity of Drak’s City as a Kingdom of Thieves had been unwritten law.

“Go on, Aleygyn. You will send your young men to serve me? I need them. We are overstrained-”

“You told me you would not hire mercenaries. Yet paktuns walk the streets of Vondium and march with the army.” The steel mask glittered. “We are pleased. Their pockets are full.” If he smiled that confounded mask hid all. “You changed your tune there, majister.”

“Temporarily only. A matter of policy.” I was not prepared to admit to this stikitche that my son Drak had done this thing.

“I have made arrangements. The young men will report to you and your Deldars at the barracks you appoint.”

“My Deldars are intolerant drill masters. But your young men will rise to become Deldars, in their turn. Even kreutzin must learn drill and discipline in my army.”

“Agreed. I will tell them so.”

After a few more words I rose to go. Grumbleknees waited, his single spiral horn jutting proudly. I turned back, my fists gripping the reins, my booted foot in the stirrup.

“These contracts, Aleygyn. If I was in the habit of letting contracts with stikitches, I think the names of Kov Colun Mogper of Mursham, and Zankov, illegitimate son of the High Kov of Sakwara, might prove lucrative.”

That steel mask went back. His gloved hand, with the ornate ring outside the glove, clenched. I swung up into the saddle and Grumbleknees walked gently forward out of the shadow of the Gate of Skulls.

“Remberee, Aleygyn.”

“Remberee, majister.”

Yes, I reflected as, followed by my men, we trotted back to the palace, that laugh had been worth it. What, indeed, would Drak have made of his father the emperor talking to a damned assassin? Yet I felt sure Drak would see the difference between using Vallian assassins in our army and hiring mercenaries. I do not care over much for stikitches, having had one or two sprightly measures with them; but by the time my Deldars got through with them, they’d know they’d been punched, drilled, and bored, by Vox! Then, they’d be soldiers first, and I could hope would never return to their despicable trade — if they lived. There are people who say, and I go some way in agreement with them, that a soldier’s trade is despicable. But if your home is about to be burned down and your family butchered, a fellow tends to want to do something about that — at least on Kregen.

Despite my big talk of drill sergeants, we were still short of veterans who could train up the new armies we needed. The Emperor’s Yellow Jackets were hardened professionals. They had many military skills in their ranks. They took the newly arrived young men from Drak’s City and trained them up. Many of these limber young rascals were not assassins, of course, many being thieves and swearing by Diproo the Nimble-Fingered. Many were simply poor lads with no prospects in life. We fed them and clothed them in the yellow jackets and made full use of their special skills. I didn’t give a fig about training them merely as light infantry. They would learn to handle all the weapons a fighting man may manipulate, and would be employed as we saw fit. They welcomed that as a proof of their own quality. Thankfully, my tough paktuns expressed no aversion to serving alongside these newcomers. Truth to tell, many an old friendship was renewed…

And, also, old enmities. But only three men were found dead in a ditch or in their quarters; two from Drak’s City and one paktun. That seemed to let the spleen of the force out for good, thanks be to Opaz. News was received from Alloran that he had fought a skirmish and cleared his front. I wished I had more men to dispatch to secure the rear areas; and managed to scrape up two regiments of spearmen. On the next day different news came in.

Enevon Ob-Eye walked into my room very quietly. He made no great fuss about it. He was entitled to rave and accuse.

He said, “Majister, news has just arrived of an army marching and flying south out of Vindelka. They press over the borders of Orvendel. The land is being put to the torch. The people cry out for help. Orvendel, majister,” he said, and turned the blade in the wound, “is an Imperial Province. They are your people. And the southern border of Orvendel is but forty dwaburs from Vondium.”

By this time I knew the map of Vallia; it was not so much engraved on my brain as burned on my heart. Despite that, my gaze fastened on those infuriating maps adorning the walls. Oh, yes, he had worked it beautifully, the cramph.

“Layco Jhansi?”

“No, majis. We do not think so. The scouts have him located still in his own kovnate.”

That made me think. Layco Jhansi, the old emperor’s chief minister, had proved a traitor. Now he fought the Racters, the one-time most powerful political party, who were penned up in the northwest, north of Jhansi. But, if he had not sent this army to attack us while we were weak, who had?

“The scouts report the presence in this army of those we know. Tarek Malervo Norgoth — you remember him, majis. He headed the deputation from Jhansi you sent packing with a zorca hoof up their rumps?”

“I remember, Enevon.” A Tarek is a rank of the minor nobility. I guessed this fat and pompous Norgoth with the spindly legs was bucking for an increase in his patents of nobility. But the news reassured me even as I raged at the iniquities being committed up there by Jhansi’s men. Orvendel is a pretty province. Many of her sons served in the army. I could not allow the destruction to go on unchecked, could I?

When my comrades of the Sword Watch had flown in to Vondium, they had left forces still with Drak. Volodu the Lungs, the chief trumpeter, and Korero the Shield, had remained. The expected confrontation of Korero and Turko had not taken place. I suddenly felt a pang, a hunger for my blade comrades to be with me now. And — I had been on the point of going off to Hyrklana to fetch out Balass and Oby and Tilly! Just as well the Hyrklanian trip had been postponed…

These weakling thoughts must be pushed aside. What I had to do was perfectly clear to me. Even if, like King Harold of England, it led to disaster, I could not halt myself. And, anyway, the situations were not quite the same. A last voller to Drak would bring in fighting men to garrison Vondium. And I knew, as is obvious, that the time would not allow that simple a solution. I had to face up to Malervo Norgoth with what men I had, and we would fight. Win or lose we would halt this raid. After that, if we moldered in our graves, time would have been bought.

“Jhansi would not, I think, place an army into the hands of Norgoth without a general to guide him?”

Enevon nodded. “There is a Kapt with them. A Kapt Hangrol. He has the command. Naghan Vanki’s spies are sure.” He paused. Naghan Vanki was the empire’s chief spy-master. But Enevon went on with a bite in his voice. “His name is Hangrol ham Thanoth.”

I glared. I felt the fury rising. “A damned Hamalese!”

“Aye, majis.”

“Well, that settles it. Write the orders. We’ll call out everyone who is able to march instanter.” I stabbed the map with a fierce finger. “Ovalia. Every ship that will fly will take us to Ovalia. That’s the key. The city must be held.”

“Quidang, majis!” Enevon grasped essentials at once.

The map glowed with color. It showed the River of Shining Spears running southeast from the Blue Mountains to join the Great River, She of the Fecundity. To the north of the fork my Imperial Province of Bryvondrin stretched broad and rich and in our hands. Northwest of Bryvondrin lay Orvendel. If Jhansi’s men broke through, overwhelmed the city of Ovalia, the raid would turn into a major attack, a dagger thrust at Vondium, the proud city herself. We had to muster our forces, what we had of them, fly to Ovalia, set down, and smash the living daylights out of this Opaz-forsaken cramph of a Hamalese general and his army. As for Malervo Norgoth, he was quite obviously Jhansi’s man of the spot, a kind of commissar, and we’d hang him high with his toes all adangle if we caught him… Because the majestic canal system of Vallia is so efficient and extensive, roads in the island were atrocious at this time. We’d have to fly out with what we could. A reserve force could follow. They might be there to continue the victorious pursuit. They might have to fight a stern rearguard action. As to the forces available… Just about everybody had gone north to fight with the Army of the Northeast. It appeared to me to be the fashionable thing, the in thing, to serve in that army alongside the Prince Majister. Some of the people up there, well, when I heard their names I had to smile my bleak old grimace that passes for a smile. By Zair! But some right popinjays had ridden off gallantly to be seen with the Prince Majister. Men who had contumed me as a hairy unwashed clansman now thronged about my son. My own pride in Drak told me that he would be level-headed enough to see through all the flattery and the flummery. At least, by Krun, I hoped so!

And, to be truthful, there was far more of trust in Drak than could be expressed by mere hope. On the same day that the news of Layco Jhansi’s raid reached us our vanguard flew off for Ovalia. They flew in all the vollers we had. A regiment of churgurs, sword and shield men, and a regiment of archers, almost one thousand men. The swods in the ranks of these regiments were old hands, they had served with me before and would have to form one of the hard cores of the little force. The other hard core, it goes without saying, would be the Tenth Kerchuri. The pikes would have to stand, and hold, and charge, as they had been trained, and no one must allow doubt to creep in that these men, these brumbytes wielding their pikes in the files, were green, raw, and had seen no action. Like that half-blinded man standing on the center and seeking to strike out in all directions at those who attacked him, we of Vondium had lashed out northeast and southwest. And Layco Jhansi had seized his chance to raid us from the northwest. It was perfectly clear by the presence of a Hamalese Kapt with his forces that the dirty finger of Hamal was busy stirring up this pot. The fight would be tough; we’d be facing regulars, possibly some of the iron legions of Hamal, as well as the screaming fanatical irregulars of Jhansi’s cowed provinces.

The regiments from the Fifth Brigade of churgurs and the Ninth Brigade of archers who had flown off had served with me at the Battles of Kanarsmot. They were good men. The remaining two regiments of each Brigade, together with a motley bunch of spearmen, slingers, and axemen waited transportation. The flying ships of the air gathered on Voxyri Drinnik and that broad space of open land seethed with all the commotion of an army embarking. I call it an army; well, yes, it was in spirit and composition and determination if not in numbers.

The Presidio met to deliberate, as was their wont, and I spent a couple of precious burs speaking to them from the rostrum, impressing on these grave senators the need for cool heads in this time of crisis. They ran the country and knew of my dreams of the kind of country I had been asked to bring into being by the people who had called me. There was a little of the wheeling and dealing that had characterized the reign of the old emperor still in evidence; but these men were a new breed of senator. Naghan Strandar, whom I trusted, stood up to reply, and he astonished me.

“Majister! You have made us, and we are mindful of that.” The council chamber in the Villa of Vennar echoed to his words, and the rows of soberly clad men listened with composed faces. “The old emperor is dead and with him died the Valhan Dynasty. You are the first of the Prescot Dynasty of Vallia. We shall serve you and the country no matter what transpires.”

I sat in the seat reserved for the emperor and listened as he went on for a short space in these terms. I own I found this idea amazing. Of course, I had begun a new dynasty in Vallia. It was something I had scarcely even acknowledged. And, as you who understand the Kregish will perceive, Valhan had a special meaning. The upshot of that was a vow of total allegiance to Vallia, and a determination to bring every last ounce of energy and will to the struggle.

Going back to see the leathery swods boarding the vessels, I reflected that great words do, very often, deserve great deeds. And, as Erithor, the great poet of Valka, would have said, the opposite holds true, also.

Two men attempted to desert and were caught and dragged before me as I sat Grumbleknees with the dust blowing and the pandemonium bellowing up all over the Drinnik.

“Let them go,” I said. “Put them to work baking bread, or cleaning sewers, or forging weapons.”

“But, majister!” said Chuktar Vogan, commanding the Ninth Brigade of archers. “They should be hanged up high so that all men may see the miserable cramphs!”

“Then they would be dead, Vogan. Mayhap, after a dwabur or so of sewers, they might rescind their decision to desert.”

Chuktar Vogan saw only the obvious, brutal side of that. He guffawed, and slapped his thigh, and allowed the emperor was blessed with brains from Opaz himself.

I had no time to try to explain that any man had the right to feel fear at battles to come, that running away was a natural and healthy thing to do if you wanted to keep your skin intact, that simple brutal warfare was a horrendous thing which no civilized man should have to endure. He would not have grasped those concepts, not with a raging pack of Hamalese coming down to burn his home and slay his family. I could see both sides of this pathetic human problem, and sighed, and could see no way out for me other than doing what I was doing, and hoping for the best in the sweet light of the Invisible Twins. I suppose that the agonies a woman suffers in anticipation of childbirth, and then in the birth itself, are analogous to the agonies a man suffers in the anticipation of battle, and the ghastly event itself. Something like, perhaps…

“My Val!” said Orlon Sangar ti Deliasmot. “Majister, I’m delighted to get the chance of showing you what my lads can do. By Vox, I thought I’d rot in Vondium forever.”

Orlon Sangar came from Delphond. He was the Kerchurivax in command of the Tenth Kerchuri. He had risen through the ranks in the Third, and the Third was by way of being a special phalanx to Nath Nazabhan and me. I nodded.

“Your lads will do well, Orlon. I just wish we had more of you.”

He made the expected reply. Well, that answer has been given many and many a time before a battle, on two worlds…

The brumbytes handed in their pikes as they boarded. These long weapons were bundled and then lashed to the ships. The men kept their shields, and they hung them on the bulwarks in fine style. There was a deal of the horseplay and raucous coarse humor inevitably surrounding the movement of green troops. These men had been trained hard; but only the faxuls of the front ranks, and not all of them, had seen active service. A wisp of nerves can be concealed beneath a huge guffaw and a practical joke. Essential though the religious ceremony honoring and imploring Opaz most certainly was, I own — a coarse, profane, swearing kind of fellow as I am — I chafed to have it over with and get the troops airborne. When the prayers for the safekeeping of the men and for the victory were offered up and the voice of the chief priest rang to silence, a deep stillness held all Voxyri Drinnik. Absolute quiet for ten long heartbeats proved how wrong I was, how much the feelings of the soldiers had been affected, how needful this was. Then a cough, the scrape of a boot, and the Deldars yelling, the shrill notes of trumpets. Even the flags began to rustle again.

One of the texts chosen as suitable for the service was the well-known advice from the Instructions to Novices. This says, in effect: “Be Brave, Bold, and Resourceful; Fret not on the Hazard.” A fair comparison may be made with Aristophanes in The Frogs, where he uses words of similar meaning and intent. Easy to give advice and harder than keeping warm on the Ice Floes of Sicce to take it. I had accepted the risk and, in theory, should now push all thoughts of the hazard from my mind and go forward in bold confidence. But, while that might be fine for your valiant and daring prince, for me, plain Dray Prescot, the doubts and premonitions of disaster remained. Weak, of course; but in my usual fashion I put a tough face on my ugly old beakhead and concealed the torture and turmoil in my head from my comrades.

Then an event occurred which the doubter would take merely as a trifle from a Fairy Story. One of the new regiments of zorca archers was loading. The animals were being led up the gangplanks, and the cavalrymen were in the usual lather, yelling, pushing, pulling, cajoling the zorcas into the ship. A commotion greater than usual began as I cantered by. I was riding Fango, a fine bay zorca, who had lost a hand-breadth of his spiral horn at some time in his career. The imperial stables had fashioned a new horn tip for him from Chemnite ivory, neatly banded with gold. Grumbleknees and Snowy were having the day off.

“Catch him!” The shouts spurted up. “Grab the beast!”

Cavalrymen went spinning every which way, their red uniforms dusty and stained already. A monstrous black shape reared high, hooves lashing, nostrils crimson, seeming to breathe fire. His eyes glittered in the light of the suns. Down he came, roaring down the ramp, scattering folk like ninepins. Straight up to me he galloped, horn up, tail flying, mane splendid. Fango backed off, alarmed, thinking he was being attacked.

“Majister!” They were yelling. “The emperor is in danger from a wild beast! Shoot the zorca down!”

“Hold!” I bellowed. I really let go a shout that rattled the teeth in their heads. I gentled Fango and as the huge black zorca crashed alongside I laid a hand on his head.

“Shadow!”

And Shadow threw up his head and whinnied, glorious in his shining splendor. Shadow… A great-hearted zorca with whom I had built a special relationship of trust and affection, and whom I had thought lost in Vondium, and yet, and yet… Always I had known we would meet again. That was quickly sorted out. I was told Shadow had been found in Vond, dwaburs away from Vondium, and in our eternal quest for quality zorcas had been brought into the army. He had always given trouble, being highly independent-minded. The Jiktar to whom he had been issued sighed with relief when I said, “He is my zorca, Jiktar.” I dismounted. “Take Fango. He is a first-class animal and you will joy in him.”

“Quidang, majister!”

The saddles were swiftly changed and I stuck my boot into the stirrup and mounted up on Shadow. He showed his pleasure. We had been through many adventures together; we would go through many more. But in the heady moment of reunion all those perils could wait.

Then another little crisis developed. Long lines of yellow-clad men marched toward the gangplanks. I frowned.

“Larghos the Sko-Handed!” I bellowed.

Larghos came over, beaming. His shoulder wings stuck out far more than regulations allowed. He looked fit and tough.

“Where, Larghos, do you think you are going with those coys?” A coy is a recruit, a greenhorn.

“Coys, majister! Are not they damned assassins? They will fight! By Vox! I will see to that!”

I sighed. What would you do with these fellows?

Nath the Knife had sent us an initial seven hundred young men. They could fight, of course. But they weren’t swods.

Larghos saw my face. “You would not deny them the glory?”

About to break out into bitter invective against this stupid, shuddery, bloody idea of glory, I held my tongue. If our country was in the dire danger we all knew her to be, why should not these fine young men go off to fight? Why should they? Because it was their duty? Because they would be less than men if they did not? No — the reasons lay deeper than that…

Larghos’s slingers went on boarding. Drill the Eye shouted at his bowmen to carry on and rolled over, spluttering, to join his comrade. When Clardo the Clis, his scar burning, nudged his zorca across, I knew I was beaten.

“You are taking the Sword Watch,” pointed out Clardo, with consummate cunning. “They are coys, also-”

“Not quite,” I said.

“Nor neither are we!”

“Very well. You’ll have to skirmish forward. Your drill is not up to formed standards yet.”

“Aye, majister. We’ll skirmish the zigging Hamalian tripes out!”

So that was settled. The Emperor’s Yellow Jackets, the EYJ, joined the Second Regiment of the Emperor’s Sword Watch, the 2ESW, aboard the flying ships. Both men and swods would be created out of the lads embarking. That is life.

The return of the vollers enabled me to send off part of a regiment of totrix heavies. They would still arrive ahead of the sailing fliers. Other units went up to the northwest. Regular reports told me Ovalia was filling up, and the locals were helping with energy.

Consigning the rest of the paperwork to Enevon, confiding the city once again to Naghan Strandar and the Presidio, I collected the last of the troops we were taking and with Turko stepped aboard the voller, observing the fantamyrrh, and took off for Ovalia and destiny.