Armada of Antares (20 page)

The Pallan’s quarters were those with which one would expect a man of culture and refinement to furnish himself on a distant assignment in a rough and barren land. This Horosh liked his comfort. All the evidences of hedonistic living met my gaze, and perhaps only the predominance of black and purple — in rugs and feathered hangings — indicated any particular local affiliations. I stood looking at the Pallan, who sat at a balass-wood desk, gilt and enamel in the panels, writing with a quill. He glanced up.

Pallan Horosh’s look reminded me of the malefic face of the Devil of the Ice-Wind who guards the north shore of Gundarlo.

“Your name?”

His voice grated like an unoiled wheel.

“Naghan Lamahan.” It amused me to give the name Gordano had used in the police watch station.

His head went up. His nostrils pinched, whitely.

“You address me as Notor, nulsh.”

I, Dray Prescot, Prince Majister of Vallia and King of Djanduin — and much else besides — remained fast. I did not blink an eye. I said: “Notor.”

“Give me the letter.”

When he saw its condition he opened his mouth and I said, smooth and quick, “There was an accident. Flutsmen.” I would have gone on but he waved me down and took the letter. His hands were long and slender, missing the middle finger of the left hand.

“I care nothing for your experiences.”

He did not have to break the seal. He threw the wrapper to the carpet and fell to reading the figures. After a space he looked up, saw me, growled out, “You still here, nulsh? Get out.” He added, quite unnecessarily, “Schtump!”

I said, “Notor,” turned, and marched off.

I had enjoyed myself — maybe you can understand a little more now the coldness which was entering my heart when I dealt with these heartless men of Hamal.

My plans were really no plans. I had followed coincidences, believing them not to be coincidences. Here I was, in the Volgendrin of the Bridge. I had had one chance and I’d taken it with both hands. Here, with the moons sailing past above and the night breeze redolent with the scents of secretly opening flowers, I went with the detail to my assigned quarters. What to do now? One thing remained certain in a shifting world: I should not tarry here over-long. If the Star Lords had thrown me this gnawed bone and refused me the meat, then I would fly back to my little army and joy in seeing Tom Tomor and Kytun once more.

Naghan Lamahan. In Hamal that was like saying Charles Robinson on Earth.

The detail left and I waited for half a bur before going off prowling, with all my gear still on me. I wandered down to the corridor where I’d heard the strains of song. Down there they’d begun on the
Canticles of the Rose City,
that famous song-cycle celebrating the mythical doings of the man-god Drak. When I pushed through into the mess they were still nowhere near the end. Apart from one or two flushed faces turned in my direction, the men went on lustily bellowing it out, all of it, taking a great joy in their singing. Of course, much of the mythical story followed different forms, for the legendary Drak is very much a god-hero of Vallia, and these Hamalians changed things accordingly.

I settled down and a Matoc shoved an earthenware pot into my hand. I thanked him and drank the beer and so joined in the singing. This, to me, assuaged a great drought.

Why is it that, in general, the ordinary common soldier, when he is not drunk on alcohol or the red killing fury of battle, is such a quiet, cheerful, decent sort of fellow? Maybe it is because, as so many would-be pundits have said, a good soldier is devoid of imagination. I tend to doubt that, but it is unfortunately so often true as to have become a byword.

The song finished and my earthenware pot was replenished. The wooden walls reverberated to the strains of
Sogandar the Upright and the Sylvie.
The first lines of this go something like: “Now Upright Sogandar had no idea at all, and thought the Sylvie wanted just to see his Painted Hall,” and from then on it is all downhill. There is much jocose repetition of “No idea at all, at all, no idea at all.” This always sends these tough old warriors into fits of laughter at the naiveté of Sogandar the Upright.

One thing was certain: these Hamalians wouldn’t sing
The Bowmen of Loh.

I talked to them as the jugs went around between songs, the apims and the Numims, the Pachaks and Brokelsh. Chuliks usually regard singing as a decadence. A little Och staggered up and gave us a charming solo:
The Cup Song of the Och Kings.
He fell flat on his face just before he finished, his six limbs twitching. A black-bristle Brokelsh poured a jug of beer over him as he lay; he did not stir.

Talking to them, lazily asking questions so it appeared I had no interest in the answers, drinking and singing, I spent the best part of three burs in the swods’ mess. The Matoc — a very low grade of noncom — who had pressed the first beer on me, had been grumbling away, in between singing, and I had understood him to be worried about what he called the drift.

A Numim, his golden fur somewhat torn and his mane in shreds, belched and said, “Aye, dom! The drift this time has been real bad. Them mountings is a sight mortal close.”

“If I know the way of it,” said the Matoc, grumbling. “The binhoys will be late. By Kuerden the Merciless! I’d as lief be sent to the northern front.”

“Yes,” agreed an apim, leering. “Plenty of loot up there.”

Reaching over the jug, I said in a companionable voice, “I hear tell the army’s bogged down, up in Pandahem.”

They were interested. I managed to avoid the immediate charge of being a peace-monger, but I sowed a few seeds I hoped would grow to the discomfort of Hamal. But they were back to the drift again, cursing the Volgendrin of the Bridge.

They were also most crude in their comments about flyers they called exorcs. They wondered in their cheerfully rough way if the exorcs’ parents — which they called cows — would be blown away, and hoping by Krun they would. They had no time, that was very plain, for these exorcs.

The wooden mess hall shuddered abruptly. I heard the noise of the wind, which had been steadily growing in volume, rising now with unmistakable ferocity. Again the wooden walls shook. The Matoc drained his jug and threw it aside, making no effort to refill it. “May Kuerden the Merciless take ’em all!” he burst out. “It’ll be fencing for us this night, mark my words.”

“I never understand it,” said the Brokelsh, shaking his head. “The damned vo’drin’s not supposed to care about wind.”

“No more it don’t,” said the apim who wished to go to the northern front. “It’s just the drift and our bad luck.”

“Anyway,” shouted the Numim, scratching his torn fur. “Who’d be a Gerawin on a night like this, huh, lads?”

They all chuckled at this, most evilly, I thought, and I realized they were taking some sour pleasure from thinking of other swods worse off than themselves.

An ob-Deldar stuck his head in the door and bellowed.

That, after all, is what ob-Deldars exist to do.

“All out! Wenda!”
[6]
In the lamplight the ob-Deldar’s face exhibited an incipient case of apoplexy. The swods scrambled for the door. They took only their thraxters for weapons, leaving their stuxes and shields. They knew what they were being called out for.

The ob-Deldar saw me.

“You! Nit that crawls on a fluttrell’s back! Out!”

I went across to him and looked at him.

“I am not a soldier, dom. Hurry about your business. The Hikdar appeared to me to be a man of hasty temper.”

“By Kuerden the Merciless! You are right, he is a very devil.”

The wooden walls shook — no, the floor shook!

The Deldar took a fresh grip on his thraxter and pushed his helmet straight. “Look out for yourself,” he said. “You messengers don’t know half of it.” He ran out, already bellowing fearsomely for the men to get topside.

When I reached the door the men were already gone. I stepped out and gasped. The wind reached for me with burning fingers. Flat and level, the wind coursed across the ground, swirling dead leaves and twigs, scraps, rubbish, dust. I bent my head into it and tried to see what was going on. The four major moons were up, but drifting clouds broke the light and threw intermittent shadows on the earth.

The wind blew with the furnace breath of the desert. I peered through slitted eyes and saw the trees bending. I also saw, but did not realize then the full significance of what I saw, the unripe fruit being torn from the trees and hurled through the air, squashing and dripping, wasted.

A fresh party of soldiers ran up and the Hikdar, having lost all appetite for chicken, was bellowing them on. He saw me and was about to push past. I said, “I will help.”

“You will be welcome. We go to mend the windbreaks. The fruit is being destroyed.”

I could understand that. Heads down, our capes billowing, we struggled against the wind across that fruit-strewn ground. And I thought — I thought! — the ground moved beneath me with the violence of the wind.

After a time the fences showed before us. Tall constructs of wood and lath, they were tightly woven to give shelter to the fruit trees. Now there were grinning gaps torn in their orderly ranks. Even as we came up a whole section a full hundred paces long ripped away and flailed concertina-like for a moment, then broke and splintered. The air was filled with the whirring, deadly slivers of wood.

“On! On!” yelled the Hikdar, as though he led a regimental charge against swordsmen. A number of low huts against the fence contained repair materials. We were going to have to rebuild the damned fence if the gale persisted much longer. Soon I was employed lugging out lengths of lumber and running with them to the men propping the fences, reinforcing the props that had snapped, reweaving fresh withes between the uprights and diagonals to form fresh panels. It was damned hot work with that biting, burning wind scouring the air in the lungs and frying the eyes in the head. And, over all, the moons of Kregen shone down through the gale-torn gaps in the clouds. It did not rain.

Other men were there helping, and I realized that reinforcements had been brought up from somewhere, for these new arrivals were slaves. They were lashed into the work, while the soldiers labored through their own discipline.

A voller sliced down from above, riding on an even keel and without discomfort in the shriek of the gale. It was very clearly of that class of flier that moves independently of the wind, the forces in its silver boxes surrounding the voller with its own sphere of influence. A man in a blue cape gestured and the anger in his gesture was plain. The Hikdar yelled more fiercely over the wind and the slave overseers plied their whips.

Staggering up carrying a timber balk against the wind I cannoned into a Brokelsh who, with the crudity of that race, grabbed me for mutual support. He seized the other end of the balk and together we ran it across to the soldiers where they struggled to hold up a section of fence against the wind. In the lee of the half-raised fence the cessation of violence, streaming wind, and blattering noise cut and snuffed, I paused for a quick breather. The Brokelsh spat.

“These onkers’ll never get a section as big as this up. Look at ’em . . . onkers!”

“It’s a tough one,” I said. A few paces further along the fence lay flat on the ground, rippling with the wind flow. Men clustered like flies on a honeyed rope as they sought to shove the fence up with their poles. A pole slipped from the upright against which it thrust. It ripped through the withes, tearing them like tissue as wind pressure smashed the fence down. Men jumped out of the way and the wind hit us again.

Ropes lay neatly coiled here and there. I had once been a sailor on the seas of Earth and had long experience in handling enormous weights and dealing with wind pressures, with the only power at my disposal the muscles of men.

The blustering yell of the wind made normal speech impossible. If I started to do what I intended, others would follow . . . that is always the way. Once a man takes the lead there are always those who will follow. It just needs the right man in the right place at the right time. How all the gods of Kregen must have guffawed! How the Star Lords and the Savanti, if they were watching, must have snickered!

They say pride comes before a fall.

I, Dray Prescot, Krozair of Zy, jumped up and ran head-down into the wind. I snatched up the end of a coil of rope and sprinted for the flat section of fence. Once over that I could loop the rope around an upright and then, with the men I knew would follow my example, we could haul back and so raise the fence in proper shipshape fashion.

I saw the Deldar waving his arms at me, his face a most wonderful color, much like an overripe shonage, and his mouth opening and opening as he bellowed all silently in the wind rush.

I waved my arm back, reassuringly. The rope felt thick and bristly in my hands. It felt wonderfully reassuring, also, bringing back many salty moments of the past. Running forward, bent over, I scarcely heeded where I was going. Just to get around the end of the fence and loop the rope up onto an upright, that was my task. I’d show these onkers of Hamal how a sailorman handled the wind!

As I say, pride goes before a fall.

I lurched against the wind past the end of the fence and for a moment I put my hand against the wood. I looked down.

To this day, as I sit here talking into this microphone, I can recall the utter shock of disbelief that thrilled through me.

The wind shrieked past my ears, the wood felt thick and sleazy in one hand, and the rope thick and bristly in the other — and I looked down. I stood on the very lip of a precipice. The edge of ground broke sheer away. At that instant the clouds parted. The four great moons of Kregen shone forth.

And I saw.

I saw.

Far far below I saw the ground. I saw the ground moving past below. The sharp edge of the precipice did not join that ground; I stood on ground that soared above the earth like a flier. I yelled. The very shock of it, the incredible fact of it, hit me shrewdly. Land that flew through the air!

Volgendrin!