Armada of Antares (28 page)

A swift-winged patrol of flutduins scouted us; quick, agile forms among the clouds. They must have seen our banners. Every ship carried her proud freight of colors. The yellow saltire on the red ground floated from every ship. Many of the vessels flew Old Superb, those vessels from the Valkan yards crewed by Valkans. Many of the other provinces of Vallia were represented, a brilliant plumage of color fluttering in the wind of our passage.

Against the very circumstance of that flutduin patrol I had caused to be flown in the bows of the lead ships the brilliant orange of Djanduin. The Emperor might twist his lips and make funny remarks about my being some sort of king of Djanduin, but he cocked his old eagle face up at those fliers, and I guessed what he was thinking.

Very soon Kytun Kholin Dom and Tom Tomor flew up to the armada. I greeted them with relief. Tom alighted with a sigh of gratitude; flying monstrous great birds of the air comes strangely to those unaccustomed to that mode of travel.

We talked there on the quarterdeck of that selfsame flier my men had taken in Hyrklana. It was now the Emperor’s flagship. He had named it
Jen Drak
for the mythic hero of Vallia. For myself I had chosen to fly in one of the new sailing vessels, and it had been named
Vela.
Before I left the flagship to go aboard my own ship we talked, there on that windy quarterdeck.

“We still resist, Majister,” said Tom, standing very straight before his Emperor. “Your arrival is barely in time.”

“Aye,” put in Kytun, very martial in his trappings, his harness and weapons about him. “Aye, Emperor. We fight for you because the King wishes. But you must take your share now.”

I interposed as smoothly as I could. My Djangs are not a mealy-mouthed bunch when it comes to talking to foreign royalty.

The plans were laid. In truth there was little else we could do but what we did. We put our trust in the Invisible Twins made manifest in the everlasting glory of Opaz, and we flew down to battle.

The Hamalians had seen the imposing armada flying through the air toward them. I confess that as I took a small two-place flier from
Jen Drak
to
Vela
and saw that mass of ships spread out through the air my old heart gave a skip. The ships were stringing out, still under tow, to land their troops for the field battle. Then they rose again, sometimes somewhat jerkily as the tow lines came on, and soared up to take their battle stations.

If Kov Hangol, the Hamalese Pallan of the northern armies, thought we would enter action in long lines under tow, where he could swirl around us and cut us to pieces, he was the idiot Rees had named him. All our sails had been furled. Now, as the Hamalese sky force rose to challenge us, the orders were given.

The towropes were cast off. The agile sailors from both below and aloft cast loose the canvas and muscular heaves sheeted it home. The yards braced around. The canvas filled and the sails bulged proudly.

Very few nations of Kregen know anything of balloons and, I fear, many writers on this our Earth know nothing of balloons, either. One so often hears of balloons and airships being equipped with sails and acting like ships on the sea. This is not possible, of course, for no tacking is possible, and balloons and sails will all be swept away downwind. The two silver boxes which held us in the air, although they gave us no directional movement, did serve, as I have said, to grip the fabric of that force which upheld us. In my mid-nineteenth century understanding of the universe I thought of this in terms of the boxes latching onto the ether, so that when in line they acted as the keel of the vessel, dipped into the ether, affording us the necessary grip to tack windward. There was a little leeway made, of course, but these sailing vessels reacted better in the air than their counterparts in the sea below. With the sails sheeted home and the yards braced hard across the decks, the wind pushed us so that we skated along well up into the wind, like an orange pip squeezed against a window.

By turning the silver boxes, that window could be turned to take full advantage of the wind. I felt I could bring the heads of these vessels further into the eye of the wind than ever I had done with the sauciest schooner, certainly four points off.

No, if we had sailed balloons or airships with sails, as so many foolish people pretend to have done, we’d have tumbled away downwind in the stupid tangle that should reward all such idiotic stories.

But, and now the real business would begin, we had nothing like the agility and maneuverability of the vollers. I had impressed the skippers with the absolutely vital necessity of maintaining formation. We must sail as a great armada. We must keep our line, distance, and formation. The ships we had knocked together were large. They carried a lot of men. Their weaponry was enormous. We must sail in lines and shoot down the enemy fliers with catapults and varters. Our small force of Vallian Air Service vollers would do all the dodging and maneuvering that was necessary. We provided the weight and punch.

When my men saw the Hamalese skyships rising they understood the battle that lay ahead. These ships were like the ones which had sunk the Vallian galleon before I had smashed them. They were strong, powerful, well-armed, and armored. We would be at a serious disadvantage. One thing was in our favor: we could shoot the massive Vallian gros-varters. The Hamalians did not possess that superb weapon.

Turko the Shield grunted when he saw that array rising through the level air toward us.

“You remember to keep to this shield, Dray.”

“I shall try to remember.”

I do not wish to dwell overlong on the battle. It came to be known as the Battle of Jholaix. Down there the vineyards smiled up, row after row of luscious grapes waiting to be made into the wine which was justly famous all over this continental grouping of Paz. Making wine was a far better occupation for a man than killing other men in the air above the vines. By far.

The outcome of this battle would be decided in the air.

The land forces we had set down, in conjunction with those already there, ought to be able to stand off the army of Hamal. Only the gigantic skyships and the agile vollers of Hamal had given them their easy victories. I was as well aware as anyone of the professional expertise of the Hamalese swod, but now he faced fighting men backed by the terrible Lohvian longbow and cavalry mounted on nikvoves. It seemed to me, as we sailed through the thin air, that if the air services could only pull out every stop and really go for the Hamalese skyships we would win. It would not be easy. I looked along the line of ships, noticing with critical appreciation their line and dressing, and I must say I thought of the times I had done this, back on Earth, gone sailing down to action in the rigid lines prescribed by the Sailing Instructions.

How different this was from a swifter fight on the inner sea! Or, come to that, a battle with the swordships up along the Hoboling Islands!

The Hamalese skyships held no strict formation. Confident in their power and no doubt somewhat incredulous of what must appear to them to be a succession of sailing boxes, they bore on.

Our nimble vollers were going ahead. The flutduins were winging forward. Many a man there carried an earthenware pot filled with combustibles which would spell the end for a proud Hamalese voller.

I looked aloft.

Up there the protecting formations of vollers and flutduins prepared to prevent the Hamalians from flinging down their own pots of fire. Grimly, I knew that many a fine flying wooden box from Vallia would burn this day.

No, I will not dwell on the battle.

The skyships attacked in a fine display of panache and daring, and we shot them out of the sky. Ships burned.
Vela
almost burned but the fire-fighting parties managed to extinguish the blaze except for the loss of our mizzen. Seamen now proving themselves to be first-class airmen rigged a jury mast.

Arrows and bolts crisscrossed through the bright air.

Our gros-varters wrought frightful execution. I saw a fine Jiktar smeared into a red and greasy lump on the deck before me. At once the Hikdar leaped forward to take his place. What was left of the body was heaved over the side. The battle went on. The gros-varters more than avenged that Jiktar. I saw a hurtling rock smash clean through the iron grille surrounding the controls of one skyship. It dropped and the next smashed into it. A flyer astride his flutduin, his four arms most useful, swooped in like a dart and dropped a pot of fire. Both ships burned.

We bumped the lead skyship and a roaring torrent of Valkan swordsmen flooded over the bulwarks. Somehow or other they were led by a maniac called Dray Prescot, wielding a longsword built by Naghan the Gnat, a longsword sister to that one lost in the mat of vines of the Volgendrin of the Bridge. The skyship was taken.

The breeze did not fail us. We could not make the speed of the Hamalese vollers and we could not sail against the wind, but before the Hamalese Air Service decided they had had enough we had burned or taken over half of them. The rest fled. The Emperor in
Jen Drak —
a very fine craft built in Hyrklana but less than half the size of the Hamalese skyships — led the pursuit. Our fliers took more Hamalese vollers before the last remnants fled over the horizon rim.

Korf Aighos had fought with his Blue Mountain Boys in the land battle. Balass the Hawk had seen the regiments he had trained fully vindicate our belief in them. With the techniques adapted from the rigorous training of the Jikhorkdun and the drillmasters from Djanduin, those blade comrades of mine from Valka had successfully employed their newfangled shields and the sword we had improved over the thraxter and the clanxer. Under their proud red and white standards of Valka crowned by that loyal bird, the valkavol, they had met the iron men of Hamal face to face and whipped them.

The seven-foot-tall streak of Inch at the head of his Black Mountain Men had been foremost in the battle. With that Saxon ax of his blurring a deadly arc in the forefront, who could doubt the victory? Inch, the Kov of the Black Mountains, fought well that day.

The mercenaries earned their hire, and many of them won the coveted honor of being dubbed paktun. So the armies of Vallia advanced in their might and the field was won.

Seg Segutorio and Tom Tomor ti Vulheim observed the fantamyrrh as they came aboard
Vela.
They were smiling. I held out my hands. There was no need, at that moment, to say anything.

Much in the way of clearing up remained to be done.

There were men with me to attend to that now.

The Hamalese sky force had been swept away and the Emperor’s tent was set up with the orderly rows of vines and their luscious grapes as background. The old devil sat there in high state to receive his various chiefs. Representatives of the nations of Pandahem came to him. With the news of this victory spreading across the island the Hamalese garrisons had to shut up shop and return home, or face extinction in blood. I saw with great satisfaction this beginning of a new era in relationships between Pandahem and Vallia. There would be misunderstandings in the future, for that is the way of mankind, but the beginnings of a true understanding had been made. This afforded me great comfort, for much of my apprehension for the future centered on the shanks coming over the rim of the world to attack us here in Paz.

As for Pando and Tilda, they arrived with their King Nemo among all the Kings, Kovs, and high nobles of the nations of Pandahem. And then — explain it how you want, for I can’t — I could not face them.

With Turko the Shield, my staff, and a small group of my closest friends, I went aboard a small voller and we sailed back with all speed to Valka. I hungered to see Delia.

The Emperor and the representatives of the Presidio could handle the new turn in the affairs of the world of Kregen quite well without me. All I wanted in life existed with my Delia, my Delia of Strombor, my Delia of Vallia. I knew that Queen Thyllis, now Empress, her vaunting ambitions blunted for the moment, would conclude a peace with Vallia. The distances involved made that certain. She might even totter, for a tiny moment only, on her throne. Then she would recover herself and set about creating new forces. That seemed sure. But it was equally sure that much time must pass before these two, Hamal and Vallia, would be at each other’s throats again.

Most of my work in Havilfar had been completed. I looked down from the voller as we rose into the air. There were enormous shouts of “Hai Jikai!” as we soared aloft. “Hai Jikai! Prince Majister! Jikai! Hai Jikai!”

For the very first time on Kregen that great call reached me blunted, meaning less than it should. The glittering forest of upraised blades below, the banners, the shouting, all dropped away as we rose, for all the High Jikai I wanted waited for me in Esser Rarioch, my high fortress overlooking Valkanium in Valka.

I was not finished with Havilfar. From my first encounter with the enormous continent, with the Manhounds of Faol, I had been employed on many different schemes; the latest, discovering the secrets of the vollers, had been only one. I fancied a small, swift party might visit the Volgendrin of the Bridge and bear off a sack or two of pashams. Evold Scavander would cough and sneeze and set to work on them. We might not be able to build perfect fliers in Vallia yet, but we had done very well indeed with those we had built. We would succeed in the future, by Zim-Zair, yes!

As we soared back home it seemed to me that what I had done in Havilfar was like weaving an intricate pattern, that the different colors and designs each held its own significance and the totality would create an overall picture. The Star Lords, most certainly, had an idea of what that picture was, despite my defiance of them. I had a thousand years of life to look forward to. If that vast continent of Havilfar held no more adventurings, dangers, and sheer zest of living for me, then the future looked dark and dull indeed.

The Great Armada from Vallia had dealt with Hamal for the time being. But Hamal was only a part of Havilfar. That splendid and enormous continent must exert continual pressure on world events in the land masses of Paz, half the world of Kregen. I knew that. But I had finished most of what had consumed me in Havilfar. The outstanding accounts remained and would be settled; I did not forget them. But mostly my mood this moment was a heady one of victory. For now I could lay down that burden begun with the commands of the Star Lords in distant Faol. They had not interfered in my life for a long time now with their old intemperate demands. They would return — I was not fool enough to believe they had finished with me.