Fliers of Antares

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

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.”

“You ingrate! That your father, my dear sister’s husband, is dead! I come to visit you, dwabur after dwabur-”

“My crystal is shattered, oh nit of Nathian girth!”[4]

They really would have gone at each other then, but I stirred my mirvol, and in a fluster of wing-beats shouted down at them, “Where is Dovad, then, dom?”

Ilter leaped into his saddle with such force he almost missed and went slithering over the far side. He caught the pommel and wrenched himself back.

“I’ll fly with you, by Krun, and leave this onker to simmer in his own droppings.”

“By Krun!” howled Avec. He sprawled up into his saddle somehow, pommel and cantle at the wrong ends, so that he had to fling himself around and grab the flying reins, for the mirvol took an extreme distaste to these antics. The mirvol lowered his head, and his neck, and flicked his wings. Long before Avec could grab on to anything that was fastened, off he spun, up into the air, head over heels, and down on the flat of his broad back.

He yelled.

I was no longer amused. I had seen his back.

I quieted my mirvol and kicked him to close his wings, then hopped off to get to Avec, who lay winded, Ilter’s mirvol had responded faster, and when I reached Avec his nephew was already there, bending over him, lifting his head. I saw Ilter’s face.

“I’m all right, Ilter, lad. The beasts aren’t trained like they used to be.”

“I know, Uncle. Lie still for a moment while I-” and Ilter stopped talking and began to feel his uncle’s body. He looked up. “Nothing broken.”

“Help me up, lad, for it fair thwacked me, like the kick of a calsany.”

Avec had made no outcry. I did not wish to shame him by inquiring about his back, for a man of Kregen is touchy about pain and punishment — stupidly so, sometimes.

We took to the air once again and flew steadily on downstream along the course of the Black River. Dovad turned out to be a sizable town, located where the river broadened into a lake before plunging on and through a low range of hills, scantily clad with brush and gorse, for they were rocky and looked of fairly recent origin, being sharp-peaked. I saw the way the river plunged over a smooth bulbous edge of land to fall beyond, the white smother of the foot of the falls out of view as we landed. It seemed sensible to us to remove all signs that these mirvols were military beasts, although the brands on their leathery skins would not easily come out, for obvious reasons. In the end Avec said, “The trouble they will bring is not worth their sale price.”

“I agree,” said Ilter.

So we took the silks and furs and Avec was about to give his mount a blow to send him into the air when I stopped him.

“Let us take the saddles, if they are not marked, and sell them, and say our flyers perished of a disease.”

Ilter said, “The saddles are marked.”

“Everything is marked in Hamal, it seems.”

We drove the mirvols into the air and soon lost them under the declining rays of She of the Veils as they flew back to Strom Nopac’s aerial stables.

Although I had clothes, of a sort, and flying silks and furs to sling over my shoulder, I was still weaponless. It seemed most strange to me that I should walk the face of Kregen without a sword strapped to my side, and yet the very law of this country of Hamal offered a kind of surrogate guarantee of safety. I would find a weapon soon, that I knew.

“We have not come far from Orlush,” said Ilter as we waited for the dawn. “They will think to look farther afield than this. And Dovad is a fine large town — almost a smot. I think we would do well to think of new names for ourselves, and after a few days they will forget about us, and we can move on.”

“Will they forget, them and their laws?” I said.

Ilter laughed. “Hamal is a large empire. There are many kingdoms and Kovnates. Why, I am told it is four hundred twenty dwaburs from the north coast to He of the Commendable Countenance. If such a distance can be imagined.”

Avec scoffed at his nephew. “You know a great deal for a village smith, nephew! Did Nelda the Cane then thwack some learning into your thick skull?”

“Into the other end, Avec, which is more than she ever did for you! And, further, to display my knowledge, earned by much standing up when I could not sit, the empire is three hundred or more dwaburs from the east coast to the Mountains of the West, which have too many names for any one man to remember.”

“Aye — and very few men have seen them, by Krun!”

I knew from what Queen Fahia of Hyrklana had told me that the Emperor of Hamal was extending his powers over these distant mountains, and south of the River Os, and, also, that the maniac was trying to invade South Pandahem — all at the same time. With the scale of these operations demanding such enormous resources and manpower, I fancied that Ilter had the right of it. In the event he was proved right. We spent a few days in Dovad using the money from one of the saddlebags, and bought ourselves new outfits, very tasteful, too. When we took the boat down the Black River we felt in our bones we were as free as fluttcleppers.

As Avec said, “The guard who shouted had his money in his saddlebag so he could keep an eye on it during watch. He did us a good turn, after all.”

I doubted this, knowing, probably, a little more about soldiers than Avec, despite that they were his countrymen. The money was neatly pouched in mashcera and I felt it would more likely be true to say it was Strom Nopac’s, under guard.

We took a boat below the falls and the captain, a cheerful Amith, delighted in keeping his crew hard at it to beat the record for downstream journeys set up only a season ago by a great rival. The boats on the Black River are usually flat-bottomed, wide, with puntlike bows, and three decks. They are brightly painted and kept in tip-top condition. Downstream the Amiths swear they are faster than a hack flyer, although this is generally conceded as just another of the Amith’s genial boasts. Strange folk, the Amith, with the hindquarters and rear body of a totrix, and with an apim’s torso and arms rising from the junction of what appear to be two entirely different bodies. What was originally the center pair of legs of the totrix have become what appear to be the lower limbs of an apim. The males are usually black-bearded, and they look undeniably impressive. Many of the females have masses of curly golden hair, which gives them an oddly coquettish air, most strange, as I have said. And when I say strange, I have in mind that Kregen is peopled by many strange races, of which the diffs called Amith are a proud and delightful example. There is a legend which has received wide credence that the Amiths were the original inhabitants of Hamal.

What with the money and what with my two companions, I spent a most agreeable time roaming around central Hamal. The country is undeniably big. It has a larger population per area than many other places

— by contrast Segesthes is practically deserted — and I believe all three of us found in this wandering a kind of release from normal cares. For we all knew we would have to get back to work one day. The year to which I had been sentenced by the Star Lords slowly crept by. Ilter would find himself a job as a smith and do very well. Avec would go back to being a Niltch.

He said to me one day as we waited to board one of the wheeled vehicles plying for public hire in the main street of Hemlad, a fair-sized town out toward the east of Dovad, “You and Ilter should come with me, Dray. I’ve had myself a holiday that that cramph of an Elten Lart Lykon ruined. I’ve enjoyed myself, by Krun! But I must get back to work. That onker Naghan needs me at his side.”

I was not interested in working for a living if I had money in my pocket. Oh, yes, I’d work, and work like a slave, if I had to. I’d do anything at all — for certain reasons that you know. So I said as the carriage halted before the little crowd waiting to board, “What do you do, anyway, Avec? You never talk about it.”

The carriage — usually they have four central wheels, and like the chaldrons of the Heavenly Mines they run on tracks let into the road — lurched ahead. I sat on a wooden-strip seat as Avec paid the fare. He stumbled across a woman with a shopping basket filled with plump ripe shonages, gloriously red, luscious, making my mouth water, and Avec mumbled some apology and flopped into the seat next to me.

The woman glared at him and then solicitously at her shonages; I didn’t blame her. We were going to meet Ilter and the first thing I promised myself was to buy a shonage and sink my teeth into it. I remembered them from Huringa.

“What do I do, dom?” Avec chuckled and cocked one leg over the other and so kicked the shonage basket again. The woman tsk-tsked and glared; but Avec bestowed upon her so sweet and gallant a smile that she was forced to lower her eyelids.

I wondered if Avec in his bumbling way had overdone it. In a country so ridden with laws as Hamal the woman might easily stop the carriage and call the Amith drawing it to come and sort out this yetch who kept insulting her and damaging her fruit.

I was interested in knowing what Avec did, for he had never mentioned it, and I suppose I was assumed to understand what Niltch meant.

Avec struggled in his seat to get a wad of cham from his arm-purse. Avec was a great cham-chewer. He was also leaning over toward me as he tried to flick the purse-lid open, but the pesky thing had stuck. His legs were kicking about dangerously.

“I don’t mind telling you, dom,” he said, and his voice sank. We had forced ourselves not to use each other’s names in public, just in case. “But, you know the way the government and the Emperor regard this matter. I’m not a skilled man, as Havil the Green is my witness, although I would wish to be. Now, young Ilter is now.” He swore a little more loudly then, and wrestled with the purse. We both hoped no one would have overheard his careless use of the name. The woman was trying to move her basket away, and a shonage looked about to slide off at any minute. I was looking at the shonage, and thinking my tangled thoughts about emperors and their laws and how poor folk could not afford to ride in a voller and sail through the air, and so avoid knocking into old ladies and damaging prime shonages. Avec rambled on, under his breath, leaning over more and more, struggling with the arm-purse.

“We are all vowed to secrecy, of course. Penalty death. Oh, yes — death! But I will tell you what I can, and hope you will come with me to Sumbakir, and I’ll put in a word for you. We’ll be safer there, too, for the guards are fierce, by Krun!”

The woman rescued her shonage. I let my breath out. Avec ripped furiously at his arm-purse. He also spoke softly to me as the purse-lid came free.

“You must know, dom, what I do, from what I have already told you, and my name, and where I work.”

His thick arm jerked with the violence with which he dragged the purse open, the elbow driving toward me as he told me.

“I build vollers, dom.”

My surprise was complete. I could not stop the instinctive start of shock. Avec’s solid elbow hit me as I jumped and my body lunged forward in exact time to a corner-turning lurch of the carriage. It threw me forward putting my face and shoulders slap-bang squash into the woman’s basket of ripe shonages.