Beasts of Antares

Chapter one-3

They swung to glare at me on this.

“New kov?” growled out Mevek. “What new kov?”

“Kov Seg Segutorio is about vital business for the empire. He has relinquished Falinur. Your new lord is appointed. He is Kov Turko, whom you will obey in all things.”

Now, as you know, the rights and the law on Kregen regarding titles and property and inheritance are not quite the same as on this Earth. Necessarily, they must differ.

Mevek hoisted his eyebrows. I began to suspect that he was well aware of his eyebrows, and used them on purpose, to fool credulous folk into thinking they could read his mind.

“If this Kov Turko proves himself—”

“He will.”

“Then we will give him the welcome that is his due. But I recall the old kov, Naghan Furtway, and his nephew Jenbar. They had little love for the emperor. Their seed still grows here.”

Perhaps this was the root cause of the disaffection in Falinur. The past is not dead, its tendrils twine and choke the new bright growths...

“You know Naghan Furtway proved a traitor and fled overseas. He is allied with the Empress Thyllis of Hamal, and that mad woman seeks only evil for Vallia. You know.”

“I know.”

“So that Kov Turko will bring a new light and spirit to Falinur. You will see.”

Now, all this time Turko had been standing there silently. I could see him. His face, that handsome Khamorro face, remained impassive. But the muscles in his arms roped and jumped. He would wait just so long for me to fiddle around like this and then, why, then Turko the Shield would start to show these hardy, near-bandit guerrillas that he was their new kov and they’d better get to like it...

Korero the Shield stroked his beard with his upper left hand in a most judicious way. He had kept his two lower arms well inside his cloak, and his tail with its powerful grasping hand was tucked up out of the way, so that he did not look like a diff but could pass as an apim like us. Now he smiled.

“It seems to me we are all agreed, but we cannot reconcile ourselves.” His voice carried that tinge of mockery he knows so well how to intimate; goads to infuriate his listeners.

Mevek almost bit.

“Agree! Of course we agree that Jhansi must be put down, but as for this new kov—” And then he caught himself, and that dull, impassive look settled again on his features.

“Good,” I said brightly. “When do you think the Kov of Falinur should show himself to the people? I do not think he is a man to wait until after the victory.”

“Indeed, no,” put in Korero.

Turko said nothing.

Mevek said, “If he is the kov for us he will lead us in battle. I have Freedom Fighters, in hiding. We lack weapons of quality, but we fight. Send for this new Kov Turko and bid him join us — if he dares!”

Turko opened his mouth. I lifted my hand.

“We will send weapons. Our armies will march north. They will be commanded by Kov Turko of Falinur. You will send word to your people. They will rise. Together, we will sweep Jhansi and his mercenaries back to Vennar. Then...”

I had overlooked a point. Not all the Falinurese felt the same fierce detestation of Jhansi shared by the men in that room.

As Turko looked at me, his head up, his handsome face verging on a scowl — for I sensed he was not completely sure of what I was about — I went on in a heavy voice, for what I had to say did not please me.

“When we beat Jhansi’s men at Ovalia, they were led by a damned Hamalese, a Kapt Hangrol, and by Jhansi’s toady, Malervo Norgoth.”

“Hangrol has gone back to Hamal—”

“Poor devil,” I said, whereat they looked at me strangely. They did not know the kind of punishment the Empress Thyllis handed out to people who failed her.

“And Tarek Malervo Norgoth skulks somewhere in Vennar. He is out of favor, serve the rast up stewed black.”

“We were attacked by hordes of screaming savages — yet they were once ordinary citizens of Vallia. This is sorcery.” I did not miss the flicker of fear in many faces. “This displeases me. Can you contain this? Can you handle these misguided fanatics? Will you succumb to the sorcery of Rovard the Murvish?”

This did not go down at all well.

Many were the protestations, many the oaths, many the knotty fists thumped on tables. But these men had felt the breath of fear. Rovard the Murvish, an initiate in the Brotherhood of the Sorcerers of Murcroinim, an adept of real powers, had almost trapped me in a web of sorcery. Jhansi had a trenchant tool in this sorcerer.

At last Mevek said over the hubbub, “We have seen the misguided men this wizard has spelled. Yes, they fight like crazy animals. But, they may be killed.”

This, then, was the nub of my displeasure.

We talked for a space, with Turko growing more and more tense and showing every symptom of blowing up, quite unlike his usual distant mockery of me. I inquired about various people whose welfare in Falinur obsessed me, including Lol Polisto and his wife Thelda and their child, and learned he was known in this part by reputation; but his guerrilla deeds took place dwaburs away across the hills. The problem of the men under the thrall of thaumaturgy, fighting like maniacs for Jhansi, would have to be faced. When we fought and met them in battle, they would, as Mevek had so crudely said, be slain if we were to free the country.

“At the least,” I said, “you can always smell Rovard the Murvish a bowshot off.”

They ventured hesitant laughs at this. Sorcerers, to the ordinary man, are no joking matter.

A man wearing a fur cap poked his head in the doorway and said, “Nath says there are men skulking about to the north of the village.”

My first thought was that I’d misjudged it badly when I’d tallied Mevek’s band at twenty. He still had outposts.

Mevek jumped up at once.

“That will be that damned rast Macsadu and his foul masichieri.” Masichieri are very low-class mercenaries, barely better than bandits. “He has been scouring the countryside for us. Well, we owe him, and tonight he’ll bite off more than he can chew.”

Vanderini walked quickly to the door, drawing his sword. The others followed, their weapons making a fine show.

Mevek eyed me, “It is best, majister, if you remain here where you will be safe. Macsadu does not know I have more men than usual, more than he expects.”

“No,” I said in a mild voice. “I do not skulk—”

“You are the emperor!” Now Mevek looked astonished, and his eyebrows formed a black bar. “Emperors do not—”

“Jak the Drang does,” I said.

He nodded, convinced at once. He jerked his head at Turko. “The stylor had best hide when the fighting begins.”

Because Turko bore no weapons, Mevek had judged him to be a stylor, outside the scope of fighting men, a stylor being a man who can read and write and as a scribe carries pen and ink and paper instead of sword and spear.

Now Turko’s mouth opened in earnest.

I said, “This Macsadu. I hear he is a by-blow of Jhansi’s.”

“Aye. A vicious man-hunter. He slew his own mother when Jhansi tired of her. Now he extorts taxes and tortures for pleasure. We have a score to settle.”

Turko got out, “I’ll be at your side in the fight, Mevek, and judge how you conduct yourself.”

The guerrilla chief gave Turko a puzzled look, started to say something, changed his mind, said, “Please yourself, stylor. If you are chopped, do not blame me.”

Nath Karidge drew that curved sword of his. “It appears to me, Mevek, that you have been lax in your scouting and have sucked us into a trap. You had no business arranging this meeting if you were being followed.”

Very quickly I stopped the argument. Outside the inn the sudden sounds of combat flowered in the night. Perhaps Mevek had made a mistake; we were in for a fight and that was that.

Somewhat surlily, Mevek said, “I have enough men to thrash that cramph Macsadu, do not fear—”

Vanderini catapulted through the doorway. His old boot of a face bore a huge bloody gash. He was yelling. He twisted and slammed the door, shoving the bar across.

“Scores and scores of the bastards! They’ve tricked us!”

The noise outside faded and then increased. The door bulged. The bar broke. In a smashing welter of splinters fierce armed men thrust through. Their weapons glimmered darkly with blood.

“You stupid onker!” yelled Karidge.

He fairly hurled himself forward, shouting, “Into them before they deploy!”

Korero threw back his enveloping cloak. His four arms raked up and his tail hand curved. Steel glittered.

With a whooping rush the mercenaries charged.

In the next instant a confused and murderous struggle began across the cleanly swept floor of the taproom in the Sign of the Headless Zorcaman.