Witches of Kregen (17 page)

We made no attempt to join any of the regiments forming in the city. The capital of Falkerium was just such a proud provincial capital as may be found over the length and breadth of Vallia. Strong-walled, tall of tower, wide and deep of moat, powerful in artillery, the place with its population of citizens and much swollen military presence, could hold off a siege for a good long time.

If we brought Nath onto our side... There would be no need for a long and costly war, a terrible siege. We could conclude the treaties and go home to our firesides.

Surely, that was a victory worth attempting?

Falkerium, then, would be the site of this final battle in this particular campaign. Nalgre told me somewhat of his history, and I made up a rigmarole that satisfied him as to mine. He’d left Loh and traveled extensively in the other countries of Paz. He’d fought some arduous campaigns in the ever-squabbling Dawn Lands of Havilfar, and had then migrated northwards to seek employment with Hamal.

“But the confounded war was over by the time I arrived. So I came on here. I met a fellow who told me what was afoot.” Here Nalgre’s panda face expressed absolute distaste. “He wore the golden pakzhan at his throat and pretended he was a hyrpaktun. Only a few moments’ conversation unmasked him.”

“You can always tell the fakes.”

“Aye! By Hlo-Hli, but I berated him! I never did discover where he’d stolen the pakzhan from, but the name was never his, the nulsh.”

When your peers in the mercenary trade confirm you as a hyrpaktun and you wear the pakzhan, there are certain secret words you learn, also. No, some rash young fellow who might by chance have the golden insignia fall into his hands would never pass off the deception.

We put up at the sign of The Hen Downwind and went out to look at the sights.

The front line forces down south on the provincial border were, we were told, holding the line. But everywhere in the city regiments marched, bugles blew, hooves trampled as Falkerdrin gathered its resources to strike back and this time bring the Racters to total victory against the emperor.

We were idly watching a group of coys growing weary trying to march in step and align their spears. Nalgre said: “Y’know, Kadar. From what I’ve heard of this new Emperor of Vallia, I’d sooner be fighting for him than against him. But, the strange fellow, he does not employ mercenaries.” Nalgre rubbed his squat nose. “Most odd.”

“Aye.”

Whether Nalgre the Point knew it or not, he was indeed going to be employed by the Emperor of Vallia!

That gave me pause. I’d had more than a few qualms lately, particularly over the casualty figures, about my avowed policy of having Vallians free, and be seen to free, their own country. If I employed men who fought for a living, would not that release from what could be a frightening bondage those young men of Vallia who had no wish to chance the battle, the outcome of war? I was not growing weak in my resolution; I was looking at the problem from a different angle.

Maybe, if I chose wisely, it might be possible once more for Vallia to pay gold for fighting men instead of paying with the blood of her sons...

I just hoped to Zair I had not been arrogantly blind in my so lofty pronouncements.

All during this time with Nalgre the Point in Falkerium as I listened and looked, made inquiries and put together a plan, I constantly watched for a sight of the messenger and spy of the Star Lords. But the Gdoinye made no appearance. That superb golden and scarlet bird of prey did not come flying down out of the suns, sent by the Everoinye, to squawk insultingly at me.

I missed the onker. By Krun! I missed him!

Came the day when I heard positive news of the whereabouts of the young Kov Nath.

A guardsman in his cups told us with many sniggers that the young Kov really thought he was running the war. This ran so strongly with the tide of general opinion about Kov Nath that it was easily believable. I harbored doubts. I knew Kov Nath possessed a quick courage. Of his mental attainments I had no readily accessible first-hand knowledge; but I supposed it was feasible that devious and cunning Kapts could persuade a not-too-bright noble that he was in command and running the war effort.

Nalgre, having agreed to abide by our contract that he would be told all that was necessary when the time for action came, busied himself finding out all he could of the Barange Fairshum, the central fortress palace from which Nath and his officers ran affairs of state. As befitted a proud provincial capital, Natyzha Famphreon’s palace was, indeed, a marvel. I detected a fanciful resemblance to her in the building, for it possessed a hard granite carapace of towers and battlements and an architectural lushness of feature in the walls and buttresses.

“We could join this young kov’s guard, Kadar,” suggested Nalgre.

“He’s not so young these days; but the impression he gives makes people refer to him like that. As to joining the guard, well, I’ve had my fill of standing like a statue at the heads of staircases or against walls. There will be another way, you’ll see.”

So we ferreted about and snuffed into unlikely corners and slid surreptitious gold into dirty and clutching palms.

“It will not be easy, by Hlo-Hli! But we can take him. The ransom will make up for all our trouble.”

“You’ve entirely glossed over your philosophical qualms.”

“Not entirely. I’d sooner earn a dishonest crust this way than an honest one killing people.”

I couldn’t allow this to pass. I said, “I am not taking up the kov for ransom, Nalgre. I have said I will explain it all when the time comes.” I gave him a hard look. His panda face couldn’t really flush up. “But I abhor kidnapping—”

“If, in our short acquaintance, Kadar the Silent, I had not formed a certain opinion of you, I would not be here with you on a harebrained escapade. Logical dialectic would indicate my own madness. I do admit I doubted your motives, and the talk of ransom was to test your reaction — d’you mind?” The last, Nalgre shot out like a bolt from a crossbow.

“Nope.”

“Ha! There is the Kadar the Silent we all know and love!”

These olumai folk from mysterious Loh — there may not be many of them upon the gorgeous and terrifying world of Kregen, but they are a people to be reckoned with. The toppling towers and slaked walls of his own country of K’koza in Whonban in the continent of Loh might have been the cause of Nalgre the Point’s traveler’s itch; but they exerted a strong and mesmeric force upon him, that I knew.

The exotic names of faraway places attract with magnetic force the dreams and desires of the ordinary mortal man and woman. Zair knew I’d like to go off exploring into Loh, and Balintol and many many other strange countries of Kregen, yet my whole life was spent working away in the place where I found myself. There just had been no time that I could see in which I could just have upped sticks and departed for a little exploration without a reason for going. Every time I’d flown off into adventure I’d gone with something to be accomplished, and this was true of those occasions when the Star Lords dumped me down naked and unarmed to sort out a problem for them.

Now if I heard that a comrade was in trouble in far Balintol, or slaved in chains in Loh... But, then, I’d brought back my comrades to Vallia, or Drak had done so, or they’d found their own way back. Vallia, the unity of Paz, and the fight against the reiving fish-headed Shanks took precedence,
must
take precedence, in my life.

On the following day, the cups of our guardsman friend being filled to overflowing, he told us between hiccups that Kov Nath was to inspect the Second Frant of Foot Spears. Nalgre sociably poured more wine.

“So the kov is to leave the palace. Mayhap the Suns will burn his pallid cheeks.”

“You have the right of it, dom!” The guardsman, Orban the Stick, laughed. He delighted, as we could see, that he, a simple jurukker, was able to address two ferocious hyrpaktuns as dom. Of such petty prides are great treacheries made. “And they’ll have a baby’s leash tied to him as well, by Vox, I don’t wonder!”

We laughed companionably at his jest.

His head slumped onto the wine-stained table when we left the tavern. His hair, of a paler than usual brown in Vallia, stained a deep vinous ruby around its curly edges.

“You’ll never snatch him off a parade ground! It is madness, Kadar!” Nalgre twitched himself around in our upstairs room to stare at me over his shoulder. He threw his lynxter on his bed and repeated: “Utter madness!”

“Perhaps.”

Well, it was a madness, in all truth. But Nath was being allowed out of the Barange Fairshum. He would dress in his pomp and finery and ride out to the parade ground outside the city walls. This had to be our chance, surely?

“We need two stratagems,” I said. I spoke firmly. But the plan was as shaky as a two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old’s legs. “One: we must block the Avenue of Grace. Two: we must enlist a gang of rascally cutthroats.”

“And then?”

“Oh, it’ll be a desperate affray. No doubt of that.”

Nalgre the Point unlatched his tunic and then paused, the points between his fingers. “I’ll undertake to block the Avenue of Grace. I can see that the escort with Nath will then have to pass through the Souk of Weavers to reach the palace by the quickest route.”

“Exactly so.”

“You may enlist your cutthroats. I have noticed that in Vallia you apims do not take altogether kindly to folk who are not apims. I think of the people of the world as divided up between olumai and diffs. It makes no difference to me. But in Vallia, apims and diffs are regarded in vastly different lights.”

Useless for me to protest. What Nalgre said was depressingly true. This, as well as slavery, was a blot that would have to be removed.

“Done.”

Then we refined the plan until we felt we had it as well-oiled as we could make it. On the morrow we would each do what was necessary, and in the afternoon see if the ramshackle plan would work.

Natyzha Famphreon’s carbon-steel grip on the country had put down the bandits and so opened up the communications; the paradoxical effect had been to drive the drikingers into the cities where they festered. To recruit a gang of cutthroats was not easy; it was not difficult, either. These were men accustomed to robbery and murder as a way of life. Every day they ran the risk of apprehension. My plan struck some as too bold.

In one ill-favored tavern a black-bearded rascal with a gold ring in his only ear spat out: “We’re with you! And you, Ortyg! Catch that stinking Lart before he runs out!”

The fellow Lart, whose effluvium did pervade the atmosphere, was hauled back by a dangling strap and sat on.

“He’d have warned the watch, as sure as my name’s Mangarl the Mangler!” This Mangarl twisted the ring in his ear. “Don’t you worry, Koter Nath, we’ll see to him.” They knew Nath wasn’t my name; but they accepted it readily enough.

Their weapons were mostly cudgels, or stout sticks, some had short swords, and all had knives. There were also five slingers, whose stones I fancied would materially assist in the plan.

I let them see the rapier and left-hand dagger, and, as well as knowing my name was not Koter Nath, they knew I’d use the rapier and spit them if they started anything untoward. I left them with:

“Three glasses after the hour of mid. As they go through the Souk of Weavers.”

“Aye,” said Mangarl the Mangler. “I’ve a score or three to settle with the soldiers! They’ll pay for what they did to my sister’s sons.”

These drikingers did not seem dismayed that with their cudgels they planned to go up against soldiers armed with spears and swords. If I read the picture right, they’d do all their fighting from hiding places. This was exactly what I wanted. It would take only a handful of the braver or more vicious among them to jump into the affray for the scheme to work as planned.

Nalgre the Point reported he had arranged a most beautiful furor concerning four quoffa carts. Once a quoffa — huge, shaggy, lumbering, patient — sits down, a great deal of encouragement is required to get him up again. When Nalgre added that he’d put in a string of calsanys also, I smiled.

“I shall give them a wide berth if they become upset, by Vox!”

Almost all the gold I’d brought from Vondium in the waist belt was now exhausted. Despite the unholy character of the ruffians the gold had brought into our employment, the money was spent in a good cause. And I’d stressed that I wanted no wanton killing, we were just out to make the biggest disturbance we could.

This, again, suited these desperadoes, for they also wished not to disturb overmuch or enrage the soldiers who administered the law in Falkerium.

Saddle animals, whether of the air or ground, are scarce and valuable in wartime. I had to pay out just about all the balance of the gold to secure a zorca. He was a lop-eared animal, whose horn was rather too thin and rather too long and not quite spirally coiled enough. But he was a zorca, and he’d run as best he could until he could run no longer. The zorca handler from whom I bought him in a disreputable market assured me his name was Greatheart; but Greatheart seemed never to have heard of his own name.

A patch of hide on his rump bore a nasty scar.

I asked no questions. I just hoped his real owner would not spot him before my use for him finished.

So, then, see me astride Snagglejaws and with Greatheart — or whatever his name was — following along on a leading rein, riding out to the parade ground beyond the walls of Falkerium. The day bloomed with color and scents and noise. Many folk had come to see a new regiment on parade. Out of professional curiosity I gave them a keen appraisement.

They were from Frant, a middle-sized island in the northwest, between the larger island of Ava to their northeast and the narrow strip of island of Yuhkvor to their southwest. Odd folk up there, of course — well, all folk are odd from one village to the next. They stood in their ranks well enough, wearing bronze helmets and leather jacks. Their spears slanted at more or less the same angle. They did not carry shields. Each one had a flamboyant favor of ribbons and bows pinned to his left shoulder, all black and white. Black and white were the Racter colors.