Golden Scorpio (28 page)

And so, on the day of Opaz the Deliverer, the signal was sounded.

Vondium rose.

The plan called for small independent groups to attack at selected points around the walls, aiming for particular gates and bridges. These were diversionary attacks, of course, and because there were not too many of them to reveal that fact to the Hamalese we trusted they would draw the swods off. Although the walls were in generally crumbled condition no one seriously anticipated ill-equipped guerillas to be able to storm over in the face of professional opposition. We wanted the swods clear of the main thrust; my commanders were confident we could do it.

The main attack, aimed to get as many fighters as possible into the city in one overwhelming tumultuous mass, would go in over the Voxyri Bridge. The wide expanse of common ground, Voxyri Drinnik, had to be crossed first. The plan called for the civic rising and the diversionary attacks to coincide, and then for the mass to charge into the city across the Drinnik, over the Bridge and through the Gate of Voxyri.

We had chosen the Voxyri complex because the bridge spanned a double canal making it the widest leading into Vondium, and the gate handled the heaviest traffic, and was the widest. These facts occurred in their calculations to the Hamalese high command.

No one ever proved a single thing. It was possible that among our own ranks
Punica fides
existed. The Bridge would have been taken without difficulty against a normal watch.

The Resistance Fighters in the immense mobs waiting for the signal to attack across Voxyri Drinnik were guerillas, Freedom Fighters. They were not line infantry, not even Peltasts or Hypaspists. They had been disciplined on the line of march and in camp and in respect of the proper behavior of fighting men; but they were quite out of hand now, when battle sounded. They would not stand their time in concealment.

Thin spires of smoke rose from the city and we could hear the first clangor from the walls and streets.

“Not long now,” said Barty. He sat his zorca erect and his smooth face bore an exalted, shining look that afflicted me sorely. All about us the Freedom Fighters hunkered in cover. We heard trumpets from the city. These undisciplined mobs who fought for what they loved would not wait our signal.

They rose into the open. Screaming their hatred for the defilers of their country they ran out. Half-crazed, brandishing weapons, roaring, they burst all thoughts of discipline.

In a wild shrieking bunch they tore for the Bridge.

The combination of factors collided disastrously. Perhaps there was no treachery. Perhaps the swods merely acted as experienced soldiers. Perhaps in these latter days Catastrophe Theory can indicate on its models the unfolding progression of events, the upward line, the incurve, the downward trend that, curving through a million dimensions, abruptly explodes into catastrophe. Whatever the inner truths may be — here and now, on Voxyri Drinnik, we stared disaster in the face.

This screaming onslaught confirmed our intentions long before the Hamalese had been drawn away by feint attacks. The Bridge and Gate of Voxyri were the widest and quickest way into the city and therefore the best. They were and it was. Except — except that right here and now we saw cogent reasons why they and it were the worst possible ways we could have chosen.

From the Gate moved out long columns of soldiers, swods of Hamal in perfect line and dressing, trotting on with ranked shields, with crossbowmen flanking, with standards unfurled, trotting on to deploy into their long lines of armed and armored men. They were ready. They had not suddenly been called up from barracks or billets, summoned with drumming urgency from their beds. They were ranked and ready — waiting.

And, from the narrower Gate of Rosslyn along the way giving access over the canal trotted squadron after squadron of cavalry.

For whatever reason, the Hamalian army had not been decoyed. Now they deployed, faced front, and advanced.

The roaring ranging mass of people hurtling down on them had no form or order. Archers and spearmen, swordsmen and axemen, all mixed up together in a boiling torrent, they spumed along like the primeval breakers of the sea itself. The long ordered lines of shields would meet them unyieldingly and the swords of the swods, blood-drenched, would be unmerciful.

As the iron legions of Hamal moved into view there was perceptible in the mass of crazed onrushing people the barest check. The noise suffused reason. The regiments of Hamal marched out, deploying, ranking shields. And my people, gathering themselves as men do about to burst into burning buildings, gave a loud vociferous shout, a high shrilling moan of rapture, and flung themselves headlong on.

No rapture, no headlong charge, was going to carry partially armored and casually armed and shieldless mobs over or through that iron wall.

Useless to sound the recall. All there was left to do was to kick in heels and go pelting down after those crazed people of mine and burst through and so lead them, hoping that the inevitable stumbling falls of the zorcas might break a way through the shield wall.

I turned to bellow at my choice band, I lifted out my legs to kick in, and I heard and saw the wonder, the marvel — as, indeed, I had surmised I might, hoping, and condemning my hope as evil.

The brazen trumpets shrilled high demanding notes into the heated air, all together, trilling blood-thumpingly on — sounding the “Advance.” I saw — ah! I remember it — I remember it... I saw the long serried lines of vosk-skull helmets, bronze-fitted, glittering, the crimson plumes nodding defiantly above. I saw the level wall of shields, crimson and yellow, gleaming. I saw the thickly-clumped forest of pikes, all slanting as one, rank on rank. I heard the heavy resonant blam-blam-berram of the deep-toned drums, and the trampling onrush of bronze-studded war-boots. Rank on rank, Relianch and Jodhri advancing, the files of the Phalanx pressed on.

A pungent smell of the red flowers of the letha tree wafted to my nostrils — hallucination, memory, evocation of another time and place where this advancing machine of glory, devotion, war and destruction had been born.

I trembled.

I, Dray Prescot, in the evil grip of grandeur, trembled. For Jak the Drang had warned and warned, and the brumbytes had laughed and not cared to listen. And I knew what I knew. My tumultuous mobs of undisciplined Freedom Fighters would be savaged and destroyed by the iron of Hamal. The temptation shook me, terrible visions of what would occur tormented me. The Phalanx advanced, perfect in order, moving as a single gigantic organism.

Could I? Dare I? What right had any man to demand the sacrifice of blood and life from another? Even with the fate of a country, an empire and all its people, at stake?

I knew what Nath Nazabhan would say. I knew what the answering roar from the brumbytes and the Hakkodins would be. And yet — the consequences of selfishness were incalculable.

So, shaking, filled with indecision, hating the fates that had brought me to this, I sat my zorca. What right...?

Because a man is called emperor and sits in the seat of power over multitudes of men and women — does that give him the right? I did not think so. I had been called to be emperor by those crazed mobs who would so soon be destroyed and by those ranked and orderly pikemen who awaited my signal. They had placed the power in my hands, and not because I am blessed or cursed with the yrium. I cupped their fates in my hands. Worthy or not worthy, it was all down to me, and to me, simple sailorman though I am, the fate of empire had been entrusted.

This vision of empire at Voxyri, this fleeting hallucination of power and glory as the Phalanx halted as one, glittering, splintered with sun-glory, waiting my signal — my signal! — overwhelmed me. I saw the flags proudly lofting above the Jodhris. Nath had told me the Jodhris had been given new treshes. Scarlet, those flags, scarlet slashed with the broad yellow cross. So he knew. Nazab Nalgre his father must have confided in him.

Over the brilliant and formidable mass of Phalanx awaiting my orders waved Old Superb, the battle flag of Dray Prescot.

So could I take the granite decision and into my own hands and heart allow the creeping death that such a decision might bring? And in the suns-sprinkled scene I saw a private chamber within some anonymous hotel or high-class tavern, the walls lush with rosy drapes, the samphron oil lamps shining, the wide white-sheeted bed, I saw the room clear as the trumpets pealed and the zorcas tossed their heads and the iron legions of Hamal advanced to meet that headlong, rapturous, pathetic charge of the Freedom Fighters.

And, in that room I saw a woman, standing, half-turned, the samphron-oil lamp’s gleam limning her form, supple and sweetly curved, secretly shadowed. The rosy light glimmered on her flesh. I saw her head lift in that old familiar dear way and the heavy fall of her brown hair, rich with those outrageous auburn tints. Standing waiting in that room that was not our own, Delia smiled, and filled all my mind and heart, and I drank her in and slaked my desolation with her goodness. That welcoming smile, that special, secret, intimate smile between ourselves alone enfolded me and I could not feel the zorca between my knees or the helmet pressing my brow, and the dust and stink of armed and armored men shrank and faded away. I looked upon my Delia as I was wont to do in those precious moments of our deepest privacy. And a man moved toward her, taking her into his arms, leading her to the waiting bed. And I saw his face.

Palpitating with love for Delia and ready to cast all the mad desires for empire and power and dominion to the four winds and revel only in her, I saw his face, and saw he wore that tousle-haired, knowing, surely-smiling, handsome face of Quergey the Murgey. I sat the zorca like stone and the suns fell. Pain cleft me. I saw the bitter fighting as my Vallians reached those iron-hard shields and the thraxters struck, in and out, in and out, and scattered their red droplets upon the sundered bodies of my people.

The bodies clung together. The shield wall advanced. The pointed swords thrust in and out, in and out, and the tumbled bodies fell into the dust of the Drinnik. Naked flesh pierced by steel swords bled into the dirt. Together they forced themselves on and together they died.

No anguish touched me for the dead. Not then. The agony within me bit and burned as acid bites, corroding through everything, corrupting, defiling, destroying. My whole body flamed a single blaze of torment.

This obscene insanity was not real. The blood and death all about me was not wanted; but its evil was real. Better, perhaps, the ghostly hallucination than the dreadful reality. Surely better, certainly surely, that neither should be real! A spark I did not know I possessed flared and I saw and I understood. This was the work of Phu-si-Yantong. He had thrown his powers upon me, using his kharrna to infect my mind with this horror. And the horror almost destroyed me. A Wizard of Loh is a bitter and implacable enemy to any man; but ordinary mortals are bitter and implacable, they do not wield the sorcerous and supernatural powers of a Wizard of Loh.

Yantong had determined to crush my will to fight. He infected my mind with diseased pictures. That room, that woman panting with passion for Quergey the Murgey, they were not real, they were hallucinations of the worst kind. But they had almost unmanned me. The crucial time approached as the ram of a swifter slices toward its victim’s side. The noise shattered skywards. The stink of raw blood infected the air. Delia — my Delia — would have no truck with a vanity-feeding, suave, seeming-sincere seducer like Quergey the Murgey, no matter how badly I had treated her in leaving her abandoned for so long, for she knew I would come back to her, always.

Phu-si-Yantong’s vile trick had failed.

For my Delia knew me as I knew her, and our knowledge encompassed all of pain as well as love. For better or worse, for all the spaces between, in vaol-paol, we were the unity that transcends oneness, we were Dray and Delia.

Shouting like a crazy man — no, shouting as the crazy man I truly was in that anguished moment — I forced the zorca around and sent him haring across Voxyri Drinnik. Straight at the figure at the right flank of the Phalanx I galloped. For there was a Phalanx there, two full Kerchuris. Straight at Kyr Nath Nazabhan I rode, yelling, roaring, screaming at the top of my lungs.

“Jodhris!” I shrieked, whirling my sword above my head. “Jikaida! Jodhris!”

Nath responded instantly and the trumpets pealed. The even-numbered Jodhris from the right moved on; the odd numbers stood fast. The Phalanx formed a checkerboard. Square and trim in their alignments, the Relianches within the Jodhris halted and the glittering mass poised, in Jikaida, ready.

Volodu came crashing up behind me but to one side, for at my back rode Korero the Shield.

“Blow ‘Archers to the Intervals’, Volodu!”

He blew, the notes ringing out over the screaming racket erupting from the mobs of Freedom Fighters running across the Drinnik to follow their comrades as the bolts fell among them. I had to shut my ears to that frightful sound. The noise spumed on. The stinks drenched us with sweat. The brilliance of the suns splintering from bronze and iron dizzied the senses. The zorca moved under me, bounding on.

“Blow for the Cavalry!”

Now Nath was up with me, beaming, entranced, sitting his mount with the consummate ease of the true zorcaman, his armor a shining splendor.

“Well met, Nath. Your cavalry?”

“Coming up on the flank — there is a canal to cross—”

“You will blow the Charge?”

At once grave, he nodded, aware of the importance of the moment.

“As Varkwa the Open-Handed is my witness, majister, this is a moment that will be remembered in all Vallia.” The barred visor half-shadowed his face. He drew a breath. “I will blow the Charge.”

Nath called on Varkwa the Open-Handed, the spirit of generosity in Vallia, uniting all Vallians. I knew I had seriously hurt Delia by my enforced absences from her and that the oily minions of Quergey the Murgey would seek to take advantage of her unhappiness and defenselessness and sense of rejection. But I thought she knew me, knew me, plain Dray Prescot, well enough to comprehend that the necessary spaces between married couples were for us illuminated by the mutual light of love.