A Victory for Kregen (24 page)

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.

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!