Witches of Kregen (18 page)
The mobs set up a caterwauling when the nobles rode onto the parade ground. They glittered in the lights of the Suns and looked splendid and important and they went through the inspection with sufficient enthusiasm as to fool one into believing they enjoyed it. All except Nath. He looked as I remembered him, for people age incredibly slowly upon Kregen over their better than two hundred years life spans. I looked closer. On each side of the slim, upright figure of Kov Nath rode two men I recognized.
One was short and squat in the saddle, beet-red of square face with deeply set eyes of Vallian brown. He wore a fancy uniform and armor, yet he still carried his riding crop, with which he belabored any and sundry impartially. Trylon Ered Imlien. Yes, I remembered his abrupt ways and consciousness of personal power and of the way he had spoken of Dayra. So the rast was in the conspiracy! At the heart of it, too, if you asked me.
The other man, the Trylon Vektor Ulanor, of Frant, was to be expected to be here when his Second regiment of Foot Spears marched on parade. Crimson-cheeked, pouchy eyed, impatient and intolerant of all — yes, he was a fit companion to Imlien, a pair of high-flown Racter nobles indeed. I’d met Vektor Ulanor far away when he was the ambassador to Xuntal. I’d treated him with a high hand myself, at the time. But, then, I’d just returned from a twenty-one-year exile on Earth, had been lost at sea in Kregen, and was in no mood for a petty official to stand in my way.
[iii]
The band played, the people shouted, the dust puffed up, the swods marched and, at last, the parade was over and the two Racters, one each side of Kov Nath, led off to return to the city.
Unhurrying, I nudged Snagglejaws along to follow among the crowds.
I overheard a chance conversation between two upright citizens — stout, solid Vallian merchants.
“The people shout for them now, Markman. But I wonder if they will shout when the emperor arrives?”
“The Racters have always had my allegiance, Naghan; but now—” A tiny resigned grimace. “All this war isbad for business. The nobles grow too puffed up. The dowager kovneva should return and take command.”
“By Beng Llamin! I grow weary of this continual struggle for power between the nobles—”
“Caution, my friend.”A frightened glance from slanting eyes. “There are ears everywhere these evil days.”
I rode on, taking no notice.
If only my plan encompassing the lever and fulcrum worked! Then these two solid merchants, Markman and Naghan, should have cause to rejoice.
The soldiers of the Second Frant of Foot spears marched off to their barracks, the procession of the nobles and their escorts trotted along through the city gate and began their ride to the palace. I spared a single glance for the graveyard away across the parade ground. In the natural course of life and death on Kregen, no less than on this Earth, burial customs varied from place to place. Here the dead were reverently placed to rest in graveyards outside the city walls. The markers showed gaunt limbs against the dusty ground, or marble slabs, or fabrications of branches bright with flowers and ribbons, or gray and hollow shells of gourds, gonging sonorously through the night.
With these unwelcome reflections on man’s mortality, and woman’s too, for although they may outlive men they too, in the end, must die, as witness Natyzha Famphreon, I chick-chicked Snagglejaws and with Greatheart following trotted after the procession of the nobles.
A cluttered side road paralleling the Avenue of Grace led me into the Souk of Weavers at a right angle some distance down from its junction with the avenue. If the plan was working, Nalgre was up there now organizing his catastrophe.
Here the weavers not only sold their products; they wove them. The Souk, originally a broad thoroughfare with shops and booths along the sides, had over the seasons been encroached upon, so that most of the space was covered by little awnings and shelters, crammed with people, and the noise battered away aloft. There was no communal roof as in many of the Souks of other parts. Congestion and turmoil, constant comings and goings as people forced their way along, marked the market. Flies upon a honey pot... Well, humans have to earn a living somehow.
In the surf roar the added noise of the confusion at the mouth of the Souk passed practically unnoticed. The numbers in the crowds watching the soldiers parade made no appreciable difference in the numbers continuing their daily work here. Whatever mischief Nalgre had accomplished with his four quoffa carts and the added complication and undeniable panic the calsanys would cause when they did what calsanys always do when they are upset proved enough. No doubt Ered Imlien, bluffly impatient as ever, had bellowed angrily and turned his zorca and Nath’s away from the muddle, seeing the mouth of the Souk so conveniently to hand. They’d just ride down there, knocking people out of their way in the comely fashion of that kind of noble, and make the journey back to the palace by a slightly more roundabout route.
As I expected, Trylon Ered Imlien came into sight first, striking out with his riding crop. His face was a black mask of anger, and while I couldn’t hear what he was bellowing over the hubbub, it did not take a clever guess to sense that, by Vox!
His left hand dragged along Nath’s zorca. Vektor Ulanor urged his mount along on the other side. The cadade of their guard followed on in the rear, and the soldiers of the escort followed him. People staggered out of the way of this proud group, and those laggards not quick enough to jump were clouted for their tardiness.
In any contest between nobles, as had been spoken of so bitterly by the merchants out on the parade ground, the ascendancy here of Imlien over Ulanor was undeniable.
A ferocious whiskery face peered down from a wickerbasket-hung balcony opposite. A stout pole protruded at an angle supporting an awning, and its mate supported the other end some ten paces along. Those poles were whole cedar trunks. The awning, I recall, was green and yellow. A second rascally face showed perched alongside the second awning support.
Mangarl the Mangler timed it perfectly.
This part of the scheme was mainly his in inspiration, and I guessed they’d done this kind of thing before. They detested the soldiers. They had no fear of being caught here in the seething squalor of their home ground. Also, these bandits knew that if they didn’t kill a soldier the hunt for them would be entirely superficial. This, I had learned, was just another result of the absence of the kovneva.
The drikingers were doing this as much to revenge themselves on the soldiers as for my red gold. They’d bash a few heads, steal everything they could, and vanish.
The first cedar trunk fell just abaft Ulanor. He incontinently fell off his zorca. The second trunk and the swathing mass of the awning fell slap bang over the escort, swaddling them in green and yellow stripes. Bulges rose and sloughed away under the canvas. With fiendish whoops the rascals dropped from their vantage points, bludgeons raised.
My concern was with Kov Nath.
Now this might be the home of the weavers, and plentiful evidence of their handiwork everywhere decorated the Souk, but the folk of Kregen like their food and drink and were not stupid enough to fail to provide these necessary requisites conveniently to hand. Many little stalls selling food and drink were scattered among the other booths.
I kicked over the charcoal, all glowing red and splendid with fire, of the roasting nuts stall. The gold I’d given its owner cleaned me out. The flames sizzled under the hooves of the zorcas.
Absolute utter and glorious pandemonium!
Without a second’s delay I urged Snagglejaws forward. Imlien’s riding crop sliced down over the butter-golden skull of a Gon, who shrieked and tumbled over. Other people were running away and running in. I reached Nath’s zorca. A fellow twisted under the hooves. The fire was taking hold of a booth filled with straw bundles, and the owners were screaming and carrying off their stock in trade.
In all this hullabaloo I reached for Nath.
My arm around his waist simply hauled him from the saddle. Imlien let his riding crop dangle by its loop. He snatched out his rapier. He still held Nath’s zorca and he dragged the reins in cruelly. He saw Nath in my clutch as I turned.
“You rast! You are a dead man!”
“Come easily, Nath,” I said, hard and even.
Then that inconsiderate, ungrateful, selfish beast called Greatheart simply broke away, kicked over a fat man with a red nose, and bolted away down the alley. I was left with Nath dangling in my clutch and beginning to try to hit me.
Imlien gave a huge cry of triumph and urged his mount close. Nath caught me a glancing blow on the forehead. Ered Imlien poised his rapier, aimed for my ribs, and thrust.
Nath Famphreon, Kov of Falkerdrin
With a frantic heave to swing Kov Nath out of line, I twitched desperately sideways on the saddle. The rapier ripped through my buff tunic and the damned skewer scored a bloody weal all along my ribs. This upset me.
Useless to hang so stupidly onto the leading rein so disgracefully chewed through by Greatheart. I dropped it. That left me one free hand, for being an apim I do not have the luxury and convenience of three or four arms like some of the folk of Kregen. I used that free arm to jab a rocky fist into Imlien’s face as he bent forward with the ferocity of his thrust.
“Let me go! Let me go!” Nath was babbling away.
“Shut up,” I told him, with a growl.
He quieted a little. Imlien sprayed blood everywhere from a squashed nose. Some of the people who a moment or two before had been desperate to escape from the noble’s riding crop had stopped and were turning back and taking an interest in what went forward.
For the second and last time I put out that arm and fist, and, this time, Ered Imlien fell off his zorca.
With that other half of my ration of arms I laid Nath flat on his stomach before me. Zorcas are extremely close-coupled so that riding two-up is uncomfortable. Nath flopped along belly down, face over one side, legs over the other, yelling blue bloody murder.
“Oh, do shut up, Nath,” I said, again, bending a little to bellow in his ear.
Snagglejaws was only too anxious to get away from all this riot. He moved smoothly enough along under the double weight and, with only one poor fellow shouldered out of the way — he’d been gawping so hard he appeared stapled to the spot like a poor damned levy — we started off along the parallel alley.
I heard Nath spraying words like: “You’ll be sorry!” and: “I am the kov, you poor fambly!” and: “Take me back at once!”
Back there the soldiers might be sprawled insensible under the green and yellow awning, their portable possessions just about to pass from their ownership. Ulanor was probably also among the list of those rendered
hors de combat
. As for Ered Imlien — I cast a quick look back.
He was not following.
He was, in all probability, tenderly rubbing his nose.
I reflected that there would probably have been time to have snaffled one of the zorcas. The plan had envisaged what had happened, that Imlien would be holding Nath’s zorca reins. Still, perhaps I ought to have attempted to grab a zorca in those fleeting moments. That was smoke blown with the wind, now...
The most important item on the agenda now was to quiet down the squirming, kicking, yelling Kov Nath.
I said in a harsh voice: “If you do not keep quiet I shall have to strike you. I do not wish to do this, Nath, but, by Vox, I shall if you don’t shut up.”
We were almost through the parallel alley — I believe they called it Splitter’s Alley — and the open parade ground lay beyond the gate. I’d have to risk that small end section of the Avenue of Grace.
Nath spat up at me: “Strike, you rast! I shall cry out the more strongly, for my people will recognize me and rescue me — Help! Help!”
I hit him.
This grieved me.
Oh, yes, indeed, in a sinful work in a sinful world, Dray Prescot is right up there among the chief sinners.
The flap of a cloak about his dangling body, a rearrangement of myself in poor old Snagglejaws’ saddle so that we rode more easily, and I struck out across the last few paces of the avenue.
The guards lounging in the gate counted but two — the rest had gone hurrying officiously off to sort out the confusion wrought by Nalgre the Point. I put a semi-imbecilic look on my face, and wobbled a trifle, and let go with a bellowing croak of “The Maid with the Single Veil” which I finished on an enormous hiccough.
“Hai, doms!” I called in that bright bucolic voice. “The day is fast going and there are things I must do if I could remember them.”
“Beng Dikkane has merited your praise,” said the swod, leaning on his spear, laughing. Of course, for all this banter, had he tried to stop me I’d have kicked him in that lean-jawed face of his, for sure.
I walked Snagglejaws out of the gate, and called back: “My comrade worshipped twice as fast as did I. To him the glory and to him the — ah — hic — praise.”
Serenely, carefully, not quite as I had planned, I let Snagglejaws carry me away from the city. Past the cemetery with its pathetic reminders lay open fields and orchards, and white dusty roads. On I went, with an itching back. Once we were in among the trees I could relax and find a good spot to rest up.
Kov Nath groaned as I eased him to the grass under the shining green leaves and greenish yellow fruit of a postan tree. I tied him up, tightly enough to let him know he was restrained. I did not gag him. I picked off a postan and pushed it between his lips into his teeth.
His eyes, those Vallian brown eyes, fastened their gaze upon me. In their depths raged passion and fury and, of course, the deep sense of outrage he experienced.
I said: “Listen to me, Nath. I have a comrade due to arrive shortly and there are three things you must know before he comes up with us.”
He managed to spit most of the fruit free and started in with a bitter vituperation. I put a hand across his mouth. “Just listen, Nath. One piece of information will surprise you, although it is not particularly important, and I would not have my friend know it. The second, I am sorry to have to tell you, and regret it, for, despite all it saddens me. The third is the future, in which lies your hope, the hope of Falkerdrin, and the hope of Vallia.”
