Warlord of Antares (17 page)

The idea that I was on a desperate mission occurred to me, to be pushed aside.

Murlock had served his part. He’d gotten me in, he’d brought in my weaponry and armor, and now it was all down to me.

Going carefully in the fuzzy moonlight I managed to avoid tripping over any guylines and so fetched up before the tent indicated. At that precise moment, as the gods smiled upon man’s foolish endeavors, an uproarious hullabaloo started up on the opposite bank of the River of Rippling Reeds.

Good old Seg!

He’d judged it to a nicety even he couldn’t have anticipated. He, Nath and Orso were now hard at it over there, creating mayhem and busily liberating the Lomian and Vallian prisoners. The reaction on this side of the river came commendably quickly and soldiers ran yelling from their quarters. There was a clumsy rope-propelled pontoon arrangement provided to cross the river and the soldiers ran down to the bank to line up at the gate to board. I strolled across to the two sentries on the prison tent.

I used a well-worn device.

The burden was this: “Hai, doms! You have all the luck. The Jik wants you over there, and I’m stuck here on sentry go. May Havil take it!”

Eagerly, they ran off, guessing they would have some skull-bashing in prospect. I took up a properly soldierlike stance until they vanished into the moons-drenched shadows, and then I went into the tent.

Just in time I managed to avoid Yamsin’s pottery cup. The thing flew up and shattered on the ground. I held her in my arms, as she writhed and twisted, calling me all the vile beasts she could lay her tongue to.

“Calm down, Mistress Yamsin. We must be quiet—”

“Horter Jak!”

“Aye.” I stared hard at the Lamnians. “Swiftly and quietly and we are out of here and safe.”

With all his merchant’s nerves aquiver, Weymlo got out: “You are welcome, Jak, right welcome. We will never be paid by the king now. He would have our heads first.”

“The cramph,” put in Lamilo, in a most un-like Lamnian snarl.

“Fling your cloaks about you and follow me.”

I wasn’t at all sure it was going to be particularly easy; in any event in all the confusion we were able to slip out through the gate, leaving two unconscious sentries sprawled on the ground. We hared off into the pink shadows.

The opportunity was too good to miss.

“The best thing for you is to pack your camp right away and get well clear before dawn. With a good start you should not be troubled.” I did not add that what I intended would materially assist their chances of complete escape.

“But you, Jak!”

“A trifle of unfinished business. Shall we meet in, say Linansmot? Perhaps in four days’ time?”

“If we are not taken up, we will be there.”

“Good. Off you go, and may Pandrite go with you.”

“And may Pandrite the All-Powerful go with you, too.”

I waited just long enough to see them well away and then turned back for the encampment gate.

The two sentries were just waking up as I entered. Helping them to further slumber I ran rapidly on before the swirls of confusion rip-roaring about swirled my way.

The king’s pavilion, the largest and most grand structure, could not be missed. Even with the turmoil going on there was no chance of entrance through the front and I circled around to the back. My judgment suggested King Morbihom would merely go to the flap of his pavilion and give orders. He would not concern himself personally over a matter as simple as that of rounding up escaped prisoners. He’d send troops across the river and then return to the delights within his personal silken enclosure.

My old sailor knife slit down and the cloth parted and I was through.

Naturally, this sumptuous portable palace being on Kregen, it was not a single erection but a bewildering maze of cloth-hung passageways and rooms. Various marquee-sized tents joined together formed a lavish field headquarters. I turned to the right as I came to the first tent’s junction with the next, and gave no thought to why I went that way.

One or two people were about, mostly slave; and these I ignored, only having to tap on the skulls of a couple of the king’s personal bodyguard who proved inquisitive. I stepped out into a small enclosure, intending to cut right through the cloth into the next.

Two stout poles thrust into the ground to form a cross supported the body of a man. I stopped.

He wore sumptuous robes, and by the runic inscriptions and the fellow’s flaming red hair, I took him to be from Loh, a Wizard of Loh. His face bore black marks; but it bore also the marks of passion and habitual authority. His turban lay to one side, dented in. His robes were ripped open and his shirt also, baring his chest. Streaky red marks like strawberry jam disfigured the skin.

He lifted his head as I entered.

“Drugged,” he said in a slurred furry voice. “Memphees. The king requites me most unjustly.”

“Al-Ar-Mergondon, I presume?”

“You are right. And now you are here you may assist me to escape.”

“As to that—”

“Oh, I think you will. I have been expecting you, Dray Prescot.”

Chapter eighteen

I pay for our foe’s supplies

Well, if it came to it, I could always pay the Lamnians myself. Out of friendship. However odd it might sound for me to pay good red Vallian gold to the purveyors of supplies to Vallia’s enemies, it made solid common sense to me. I fancied that Weymlo, in order to make a living, and the king of Tomboram being sick and not going to war, had been decoyed into selling to Morbihom. Also, the illness of Tomboram’s monarch probably explained Menaham’s freedom of action.

I was in sufficient control of myself to betray no great start of surprise when this Wizard of Loh used my name.

Instead I looked around, saw the boxes and bales ripped open and vandalized, the overset tables and chairs, the spilled wine. I went up to Al-Ar-Mergondon, whipped out my knife, cut him free and caught him as he fell.

“Easy, san, easy.”

“Yes. I am still weak. The devilish Memphees drains a man, wizard or no wizard.”

“I know.”

As, indeed, I did. That rascally villain, Vad Garnath, long gone down to the Ice Floes of Sicce, had had me drugged just before a Bladesman’s duel. Memphees, concocted from the bark of the poison tree memph and the cactus trechinolc, seeps through the body and takes away the senses. Once Mergondon, helpless, had been trussed up, even his arcane arts had been unable to free him.

The thought occurred to me to wonder if Deb-Lu or Khe-Hi or Ling-Li could not have loosened their bonds.

“Such a task is not within my powers,” said Mergondon.

“Come on, Mergondon,” I said, determined that we should start our relationship on the right lines from the very beginning. “If we are to escape this hell hole, then you must brace yourself up.
Brassud!
”

“Of course. And all because the army suffered a reverse. I was blamed, the ingrate!”

“Step lively,” I said, and began to retrace my steps. We were not disturbed going out as I had not been bothered coming in. A swathing great cloak around the wizard sufficed to conceal him and his hair vanished under my helmet. Outside in the moons’ light I dragged him off in the direction of the river. He hauled up.

“This way, Prescot? I cannot swim.”

“Don’t fret over that problem. Come on!”

Approaching the river gate I saw the sentries clustered there and the torch lights flaring. Well, to have expected anything else would have been foolish.

“You will never—”

“Just shut the black-fanged winespout, there’s a good wizard, san.”

He said in the hardest tones he’d employed yet: “I had heard you were an unusual man, Prescot. I am beginning to see the stories are not exaggerated.”

I unlimbered the great Krozair longsword.

“Stick closely to me. Make sure you duck when necessary. Apart from the guards, I don’t want to cut your head off.”

He gave an odd little shiver and then we headed for the gate and the guards.

They came at us to interrogate at first, and then, unfortunately for them and to my eternal sorrow, to die.

The blade swished and cut, hacked and slew, and every now and then did a little thrusting. Mergondon stuck to my back like a leech.

The guards pressed, shouting and creating a hellish din, and the work became warm. Mergondon mumbled something like: “I did not think it would be like this!” Then he shouted: “Jurukkers! It is me—”

A shriek burst from the guard trying to get at me from the side, drowning Mergondon’s panicky call. The guard reeled drunkenly away. A long rose-fletched shaft had fair split his backbone in two.

In the next heartbeat Nath and Orso, dripping wet, shocked into action, laying about themselves. Seg’s bellow rose above the din.

“This way, fanshos!”

A raggedy mob of wet fighters rose up from the bank and tore into the remaining guards. In mere moments it was all over. We caught our breaths.

Seg, beaming, hollered: “Righto, my old dom. All aboard!”

We piled into the pontoon which swayed alarmingly. The released prisoners were crowing with delight. Seg slashed the rope and the pontoon began to drift down the river.

By the time reinforcements ran up through the king’s encampment we were in midstream and poling along splendidly.

I took hold of Al-Ar-Mergondon, bent down and put my whiskery face close to his ear. “Listen, san. Do not call me Prescot. Just Jak. It is, you understand, a matter of your life.”

“I don’t—”

“Jak.
Remember!
”

“This is no way to treat a Wizard of Loh!”

“Better, you will agree, than the way Morbihom treated you?”

He crouched down, then, and I fancied he was sulking.

While most of the released prisoners were from the Lomian army, some hailed from Vallia. Of them I knew only Nath the Iartus, a Hikdar, and he was able to outline for me what had been happening. He was, I may add, absolutely spitting rivets that he had been caught and not at all surprised that the Emperor of Vallia — or the ex-emperor — had turned up to rescue him.

Seg came over to say: “We’ve lost our zorcas, though.”

“Yes. Probably not a clever move to go back.”

“Orso is furious. He’d trained that zorca of his.”

“So we observed.”

Nath the Impenitent remarked: “Well, Murlock the Spry will do well out of it.”

“He’s busy cooking a breakfast we shall not eat.”

“For that I mourn our loss,” said Nath, and rubbed his stomach ruefully.

We managed to sleep fitfully as the pontoon drifted downriver and long before dawn poled in to the opposite bank and abandoned our craft. We set off due west, watchfully, and when we ran across a Lomian cavalry patrol we realized we had been traversing the no-man’s-land between the two fronts.

After that it was a matter of everybody going off to rejoin their units and of our little group plus the wizard finding Headquarters. Nath na Kochwold welcomed us with enormous glee, and we ate and drank and told him what we had learned of the Menaham Order of Battle. Our spying mission was, for the moment at least, at an end.

Queen Lushfymi of Lome, nominally in personal command of her gallant army, had sense enough to put her trust with Kapts of proven skill. I was pleased to see the high commands of Vallia and Lome cooperating well. Personally, I refused to interfere and simply let Nath na Kochwold carry on in his own effective fashion, and extremely effective that was too, by Krun, in the running of the smart and powerful contingent from Vallia.

The Presidio had, as was their wont in these matters, given these forces the grandiloquent name of The Fourth Army. The lads were in good heart. They’d won the first contest in which they’d indulged after landing, and were ready for what was to come.

I paid my respects to Queen Lush and fabricated an excuse which would keep me out of her way. Orso decided to take up the offer of joining Nath’s staff. He’d performed well in those aspects of our admittedly low-key adventure that demanded courage and resolution and skill. But there are other factors needed in the character of an adventurer upon Kregen who wishes to do more than merely carve a bloody path through human flesh, as they say in Clishdrin.

When that was settled, I said to Nath the Impenitent: “The papers have come through, and it’s all settled. No stain attaches to your reputation. You are once again a Jiktar and as of now you are promoted at least to Ley-Chuktar.”

“That is munificent, Jak. I would be churlish to refuse. But — what of the missing cash?”

“All paid back. Now—”

“By you, of course!”

I looked him in the eye, seeing his scarlet pride in that rugged face and the lifting of the weights on his mind, and I said in a harsh and damn-you-to-hell fashion: “Now, see here, Chuktar Nath Javed, sometime known as Hack ’n’ Slay and sometime known as the Impenitent! You will earn that money! We have unfinished business with the devils of Lem the Silver Leem. When Seg and I next tangle with them, you will be up there battling with us. Is that clear?”

He gave a brusque nod. “Thank you, majister.”

I did not misunderstand his use of majister here.

I went on: “There’s a little job for you here, and then you’re free to follow your own inclinations. You can go to Vallia and see about your sister, for instance.”

“If Opaz wills.”

“Of course. I arranged to meet our Lamnian friends in Linansmot. Take them the money owed by King Morbihom—”

“But, Jak!
You’re
not paying for our enemy’s supplies!”

Very little explanation was needed to show him what was in my mind and I finished with: “So they can supply us. They will be most useful.”

“I’ll get over to Linansmot straight away.”

“Take a cavalry squadron with you, Nath.”

“Quidang.”

With that out of the way I went over to the tavern where we put up and found Seg and Al-Ar-Mergondon. I wasn’t quite sure what to do with the Wizard of Loh. He kept fulminating against King Morbihom, with reason.

With Khe-Hi-Bjanching and Ling-Li-Lwingling away in Loh discovering what being parents was all about, and Deb-Lu-Quienyin as always busily occupied on a number of different schemes, it might be convenient, to say the least, to have another Wizard of Loh to help us.