Legions of Antares (13 page)

When princes speak, even princes who are a trifle suspect among dour professional fighting men, when there is a prince present who is famous for his integrity and prowess, it behooves lesser mortals to listen — even such high and mighty lesser mortals as these nobles in The Golden Zhantil. They nodded, these generals and nobles, and the consensus of opinion was that we would have to fight that much harder to overcome this setback.

During the more detailed discussions following I had the sense to take myself off and sit at a table by the farthest window. Being too pushy is counterproductive. Presently Tyfar joined me. He was smiling in his frank way, clearly pleased to see me, yet puzzled, too, by my appearance here in Ruathytu. To be absolutely honest, which is a task so difficult of accomplishment as to be virtually impossible, I must admit some notion of what had transpired had been with me from the beginning. From a position within the Hamalian Air Service I would be capitally placed to carry out my work. And, of course, inevitably, that brought up the question of honor. Tyfar and I were true blade comrades. How could I descend to using that friendship to such despicable ends? Easy, my friend, damned easy, when you have the people of an empire to take care of; and hard, abominably hard, when you laugh and talk with your comrade and know you are betraying him. Almost, almost I threw it all in and told Tyfar outright that the girl he knew as Jaezila was the Princess Majestrix of Vallia, and I was her father, and we were at war with Hamal. Almost — but not quite.

We talked over many of the events that had transpired since last we met, and my version was mightily censored, that is obvious. Tyfar had been fully occupied with the Air Service. When Jaezila was mentioned I simply said I looked forward to seeing her again, and did Tyfar know when she would be in Ruathytu. He did not know. Then he said, “You must understand, Jak, I do not fathom that girl at all. One moment I believe she has some friendly feeling for me, and the next, well—” He lifted his glass and put it down without drinking. “I know she detests me and thinks of me as a ninny. I am in despair.”

“Then,” I said, and I spoke with knowledge from conversations with Jaezila, “you have no need to be. When this stupid war is over, you and Jaezila will—”

“That long, Jak!”

“It may not be all that long, Tyfar. You have difficulty in obtaining vollers, now, more so after Hyrklana declared against us. Your father is a man among men. I think he can see which way the wind is blowing.”

“I do not care for the sound of this.”

“Agreed. But you have to look facts in the face. You and Jaezila are so dear to me that I—” I stopped. Deliberately I sipped the wine, a good vintage, clear and bright. I could not bear the thought of what had happened to Barty Vessler, who had been stabbed in the back by a rast who would one day pay for that crime, happening to Tyfar. I said heavily, “When you next see Jaezila, then act as your heart prompts you.”

He fired up, but delicately I guided the conversation into further talk of the deteriorating military situation. This was what I was in Hamal for. When we invaded I wanted to have as many facts available as possible. The places to strike must be decided without blindfolds; this was crucial. The lives of too many men hung on these decisions for me to make mistakes.

Tyfar shook his head. “These fanatics of Spikatur Hunting Sword burn our voller yards. We guard them well now, and the losses have come down. But that ties up men.”

“And the famblehoys?”

He looked surprised. “You are well informed. We try to keep them away from the cities. They are not popular.”

“Understandable. And you are recruiting clums into the army—”

“The old days are dead. Now everyone must fight. And the iron legions of Hamal can mould men, make of them soldiers. The army will fight, however poorly the Air Service may do.”

So, hating myself and feeling for Tyfar, I said, “But the army loses in Vallia. The iron legions recoil from the army of Vallia. And, we all know of the Battle of Jholaix.”

“The Vallians were lucky there and we lost by a fluke. Everyone says so.” He gripped his full glass. “The army will fight!”

“Of course. I have heard little news out of Pandahem lately.”

“The Hyr Notor commands there, by warrant from the empress. The island remains quiet. But what you say of Vallia is so, Jak, and it rankles. I believe more than one of our armies was broken up there.”

The Hyr Notor was the name that maniacal Wizard of Loh, Phu-Si-Yantong, called himself as he pulled the wool over Thyllis’s eyes. Both shared the same stupid ambition. Incredible though it may sound, both of them wanted to rule the world — or, more realistically, to control our grouping of islands and continents, the whole gorgeous panoply of lands and peoples called Paz. Nuts, both of them.

Thinking to finish this odd little conversation on a more promising note before Lobur joined us, I said, “I do not believe I have to reiterate to you my admiration for your father. But I must tell you that my obligations in certain quarters are now at an end.”

He looked up sharply. He had, along with others, taken the notion which I had fostered that I worked in secret for the Empress Thyllis. That gambit had served. Now I was after bigger fish. I went on, “You do understand me, Tyfar?”

“I — think I do. But if anyone else should thus understand what you are most carefully not saying, your head and shoulders would be separated by an air gap, believe you me!”

Chapter ten

Of a Crossbow Bolt

War and Love are intimately bound up in many of the philosophies of Kregen as well as giving color and sparkle to the never-ending myth cycles. In the preparations for those two activities a divergence of approach may be discerned. As the sere grasslands flashed past below and the voller swooped headlong for the rickety wooden stockade ahead, I reflected that out of this ship’s company and the soldiers she carried, more than ninety-nine in a hundred would far prefer to prepare for Love than War.

The odd less than one in a hundred was, indeed, odd. But these men are found in abundance on Kregen, probably more so than on this Earth. These are the Warlovers. I detest them. But they exist, they are a part of the universe we inhabit, and in times of crisis we understand the reason for their existence.

Vad Homath, his forefinger eternally stroking down his scar, was such a man.

He peered ahead, his narrow face just like any of the famous birds of prey that will have your eyes out like winkles on a pin. An overly ornate helmet covered his bristly hair done in that peculiar style, all smothered in gold lace. That was a new fad in Ruathytu in those days. He was leaving the handling of the airboat to her captain, a Hikdar who kept nervously swallowing, and to the helm-Deldars. Crouched in the bulky main body of the vessel some two hundred and fifty soldiers fidgeted about and coughed, and waited uneasily for the moment of disembarkation.

This was just a practice. The half-regiment of men had gone through basic training, and were now having the final polish applied. Most of them were clums, freemen but the poorest of the poor, at last allowed into the august ranks of the army. I fancied most of them would prefer to be out of it.

“Keep her head up, onker,” Vad Homath’s words grated.

The Hikdar shrilled in anger at the helm-Deldars, who heaved on their levers and brought the voller’s bows up. We were due to skip over the wooden fence, touch down, and see how fast we could disgorge the half-regiment. This was just the kind of exercise I had done a thousand times with my fighting men of Vallia. Here I was in a position to make interesting comparisons. I admit to a fatuous glow at the feeling I was doing my job as a spy — and getting paid for it, too, by the foe!

The windrush over the prow ruffled the flags, those damned purple and golden flags of Thyllis, with the green of Hamal slashed through. I looked down at the soldiers. Their faces under the brims of the helmets looked white. I noticed the way they gripped spears, and crossbows. By the time warlovers like Homath, and the army Jiktar, Landon Thorgur, were finished with them, they’d be drilled, disciplined, regimented, ready to become part of the iron legions of Hamal.

And there lay the problem confronting Vallia and her allies. Insidiously though we might work, cutting here, burning there, in the end we had to face the iron legions. There was no way of avoiding that confrontation.

Men like these had marched west and south and north from Hamal and had conquered everywhere. True, the wild men from the Mountains of the West had checked the advance, and that had been met by a redistribution of forces against more sophisticated enemies. In the Dawn Lands down south Hamal continued her advance. Pandahem lay under her heel, with Phu-Si-Yantong in command and plotting further deviltry. Only in Vallia had a real check met the Hamalese. There we had beaten them fair and square. Rather than be whittled away by the mountain guerilla tactics of the wild men of the west, the Hamalese had turned their attentions south. Only in Vallia had the iron legions been met and worsted, by the radvakkas and by the warriors of Vallia. Thyllis knew that; she’d sent hecatombs of the poor devils who had failed to the horrors of the syatra pit in her throne room, or the jaws of the manhounds in the Hall of Notor Zan. More importantly, in a military sense, those in command of the army, those charged with its continuing performance, would know and, knowing, prepare countermeasures.

As Vad Homath ostentatiously lifted his left hand in the air I knew what I was doing had a direct bearing on the struggles to come. He shook the ruffles at his wrist free. Then, with an equally meaningful gesture, he placed his right middle finger over his pulse. We all knew that he would time us to the last heartbeat.

A glance ahead showed the wooden fence skipping beneath us. The Hikdar shouted, the helm-Deldars thrust their levers hard over, and the voller plunged for the ground.

She hit heavily. The whole fabric of the airboat shook and she groaned, for she was an ancient craft, in Hamalian terms good only for training, although in Vallia we’d have had her through force of circumstance in the front fighting line. Dust spouted up from the hard ground. The Deldars were bellowing as Deldars always do bellow. The wooden flaps covering the openings along the sides crashed down and the men started to run out over these ramps. You could taste the sweat and fear. The Deldars did not actually brandish whips; but the impression was there, hard and vivid, like desert sunshine. The noise of bronze- and iron-studded sandals clattered into the hot air. The uproar battered on. I was supposed to be observing what went on and learning. I did think that a bunch of smart girls with bows could have made a sorry mess of these iron legionaries as they debouched from the voller.

All around us the flat horizon of Central Hamal showed specks of trees, dust and grit, mountains lifting to the north and a river meandering along vegetation-choked banks to the south. The swods panted and stamped down the ramps and ran out onto the parched ground. They formed up smartly enough, for that was a parade-ground evolution. But one or two tripped quitting the airboat, and others piled up, and, all in all and quite without the black-faced fury of Vad Homath to warn us, we knew the evolution had been a disaster.

That didn’t bother me. Callous, of course, but gleeful, by Vox!

One Deldar simply picked up a poor wight all entangled with his own crossbow and fairly hurled him head-first down the ramp. The swearing flowered to the burning sky. He catapulted full into his buddies and they collapsed down the ramp in an arm and leg wriggling mess. This was an active-service exercise, a practice disembarkation under threat of opposition, and the crossbowmen were landing with loaded weapons. Some idiot couldn’t have latched his safety properly. A crossbow twanged from the middle of the confusion. The bolt went an arm’s length from Vad Homath’s head.

He didn’t move or flinch. Give him that. He looked down on that particular ramp, and the heap of struggling men, and at the Deldars, and abruptly it was not funny any more. I knew — everyone knew — heads would roll for this foul-up. On Kregen, in Hamal, the expression “heads would roll” was not idle, oh, no, very far from idle.

Out of that squirming heap of uniformed humanity, a voice burst, high, hard, rapturous: “Spikatur! Hai, Spikatur!”

So the crossbow bolt had not been an accident. The only mistake here had been that the quarrel had missed...

“Down there!” ordered Homath. He did not scream or rage; he cracked out his orders as though in the midst of battle. Well, for his life, it had been a battle. “Arrest all those men. You—” he spoke to me directly. “Down there. Do not let any of them escape. On your head.”

Jumping down onto the ground I joined the Deldars and other officers rounding up the tangled group of soldiers. We sorted them out. They stood in a line, quivering, shaking, the sweat starting out in sheening rivulets all over their faces. If no one knew who had shouted, they were all for the question, no doubt of that whatsoever. I felt sorry for them, that was a normal human response. But I felt angry, too. Was this the way I wanted to fight Hamal?

Vad Homath called off the exercise at once. As a Kapt, a most high-ranking general, he had chosen in his capacity as overlord of the Nineteenth Army, his immediate responsibility, and member of the army council, to check out the progress being made by the new units. Prince Nedfar had asked him to take me along to gain experience. Homath’s rage was contained within himself. Like an icy chip caught between ice floes, he froze the marrow in the bones of his subordinates.

The upshot of the affair came when the suspects, lined up in the virulent blaze of the suns, awaited interrogation. One man leaped out. His face was a mere mask of contorted hatred as he tried to get at Vad Homath. The crossbowmen of the guard shot him to pieces. He died. Useless to rage at the guard. Homath didn’t even bother to check them. They had their orders. The immutable laws of Hamal laid down procedures. Their job was to protect the Kapt, and this they did. Any thought of sparing the man’s life for questioning must remain subordinate to that.