A Victory for Kregen

Chapter two-1

Chapter two

Of the testing of a Wizard of LohHunch’s agonized wail floated up at my back.

“He’s mad! Oh, may the good Tryflor save me now!”

The ground felt hard and rocky underfoot. The air tasted sweet. The brightness of the day fell about me.

“Hai! Rasts of the dunghill! Why do you tarry?”

Sharp-edged, brittle, black against the radiance, the swarth riders crowded forward. They saw me, standing clear of the thorn boma. I stood alone. The runnel led directly toward me. The vicious heads of the swarths jerked around, dragged by reins in equally vicious fists.

White dust drifted away downwind. The smell of tiny violet flowers crowning spiky bushes, shyly hiding in crevices along the crumbly sides of the runnel, reached me. The suns shone, the wind blew, the flowers blossomed — and I, Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor and Krozair of Zy, challenged this glorious world of Kregen to do what it could against me...

As Hunch the Tryfant had said, shocked, I must be mad. Well, he was not above four foot six tall, and a Tryfant, and so there were excuses for him. I took a step forward, seeking a secure purchase for my gripping toes, and I drew forth the Lohvian longbow.

The saddle dinosaurs were coated in that white dust, but as they moved and jostled the sheen of their purply-green scales glittered against the thorn-ivy. They began to move, urged on by the riders perched on their backs. All those long, thin lances descended from the vertical, slotting into the horizontal, and lethal steel point was aimed for my heart.

Four abreast — that was all the runnel would allow. There was some jostling and cavorting for positions. Each swarth-man was determined to be in the front rank of four, knowing that those following on would have only tattered rags and blood to take as an aiming point.

I banished my comrades from my mind.

Now the Lohvian longbow mattered — the great longbow was the only thing that mattered, that and the shafts fletched with the blue feathers of the king korf of Erthyrdrin. The longbow I had found in the crystal cave that provided what I lacked and its arrows fletched with the rose-red feathers of the zim korf of Valka had vanished with all the other phantasmal artifacts of the Moder. This longbow, these shafts, came from the Mausoleum of the Flame, and they were real.

The bow drew sweetly. The first shaft sped. The second was in the air, and the third was loosed before the first struck. The fourth followed instantly.

Four honed steel bodkins drove in to a cruel depth.

The shrieks and the bedlam, the racket of crashing swarths and hurtling riders, might sound sweetly, but there was no time to contemplate them. Two more shafts sped and then I was up and through the little gap in the thorn-ivy we had made dragging bushes down for the boma. Out on the lip of the runnel I could flank those harsh riders. More shafts arched.

The dust swirled. The uproar boiled. Now Nath the Shaft, using his composite bow, joined in. Barkindrar the Bullet swung and hurled.

The dust obscured much of the tangle.

We shot into the mess.

Three swarths cleared the obstacles to their front. They raged down the runnel, heads outstretched, scales glittering between the dust streaks. The lances reached forward. The riders, heads bent in metallic helmets, short cloaks flaring, bellowed down the slot.

One I took. One Nath took. One Barkindrar took.

Nodgen was up and leaping about, waving his spear.

“Leave some for me!”

The two Pachaks were running forward, their tail hands stiff above their heads, the daggered steel brilliant.

“They run!” yelled Tyfar, beside himself, running on with his axe poised.

Four swarths galloped madly away; and one carried a dead rider lolling from the saddle, one sped with empty saddle, and the other two were being urged on with whip and spur.

These two last were shot out by Tyfar’s retainers. I had thrown down the Lohvian longbow which had served so well and, ripping out the thraxter, the straight cut and thrust sword of Havilfar, leaped headlong into the dust.

It was all a bedlam of heaving scaled bodies and wicked fangs and lashing blades. Some of the Chulik-like riders attempted to claw their weapons free. They could be given no chance to fight back, of course, and we set on them with a will. We had seen what they had accomplished, and we did not wish to suffer a like fate. The fight was quick and deadly. The thraxter slimed and lifted, struck and thrust, withdrew with more ominous streaks along the dulled blade.

Tyfar fought with a wild panache, his axe blurring in short lethal strokes. The two Pachaks fought as Pachaks fight. And Nodgen’s thick spear thrust with all the power of his bristle body.

And — there was Hunch, his bill cunningly slanted, cutting the legs away from the riders who attempted to smite down on him. Yes, Tryfants will put in a wild, brave, skirling charge, magnificent in attack. It is the retreat, in the withdrawal, when doubts arise, that Tryfants rout so easily.

The suddenness of the attack, the ambush that had shot them into pieces, and then the headlong rush of fighting men undid these swarthmen. None escaped. Modo Fre-Da, curling his tail cunningly out of the way, leaped astride a swarth. He seized up the reins and jammed in his heels. The animal shot ahead. Furiously, the Pachak hyr-paktun galloped after the dead rider lolling in the saddle of his fleeing swarth.

We others gathered up the reins of the surviving animals, quieting them in the dust and turmoil, sorting them out and calming them. No one was bitten, which was a thankfulness.

The saddle dinosaurs were middling-quality mounts, with two among their number of superior breed. These two had the thickened scale plating over their eyes, which were fierce and arrogant, and their tails were triple-barbed. Once you know how to handle a swarth, he is a tractable enough mount. Mind you, I would take a zorca or a vove any day of the week.

“Did you see—”

And: “That fellow bit on the shaft!”

And: “He went over backward and his head—”

We looked at the corpses of the swarth riders.

“Muzzards,” said Quienyin, walking up and standing, his head on one side to balance his turban before he pushed it straight. “Ugly customers. There are a lot of them down south in the Dawn Lands.”

They did look a little like Chuliks, at that. They did not have the oily yellow skin of the upthrust tusks, but their build and thickness and stance — when they were alive — suggested the Chulik morphology to our eyes.

Their skins carried a leaden hue, which had not been caused by death, and they exuded a musky stink I, for one, found unpleasant. Modo returned with the dead warrior still lolling in the saddle, and so we nine stood, looking down on the dead. The living animals clustered farther along the runnel and began tentatively to rip off the thorn-ivy, munching it up quite oblivious of the thorns. Tough, your Kregan swarth — although their trick is simply to twist their fanged mouths around to get the thorns in sideways and then get their masticating dentures at the sharp spines.

This, as I saw it, was just another example of that peculiarly Kregan marriage of convenience between conflicting demands. The omnivorous animal comes equipped with two sets of implements. At the time I was still, despite my conversations with a Savapim, unsure if these Kregan eccentricities were part of natural evolution — either on Kregen or some other world — or if they were the result of artificial interference with nature’s handiwork.

“Cut-price, unsophisticated Chuliks,” said Logu Fre-Da, nodding to his brother. “These Muzzards.”

“They bear harness and weapons, brother.”

“Aye, brother.”

The Pachaks were mercenaries. I, too, have been a paktun in my time. We were not long in stripping harness and weapons and collecting the loot in a pile. The bodies we left for the carrion-eaters of the Humped Land to dispose of, in nature’s way. I know I did, and I am sure some of the others must have also, said a short prayer to Zair for the well-being of these lost souls in the Ice Floes of Sicce.

Then we crawled into the shade beyond the boma and contemplated the pile of harnesses and weapons.

“Which, Jak,” said Tyfar, “reminds me you never did change your scarlet breechclout.”

“Why, no,” I said. “But we were rather — busy.”

“Yes.”

“I shall keep it, as I am sure there is nothing hygienic on these Muzzards. But I admit I am not averse to a stout coat of leather, studded with bronze. And a helmet, too, although—” and here I picked one up and turned it on my hand— “they are poor specimens, of iron bands and leather filling.”

“They put the wind up me, I can tell you.”

“Is that all they put up you, Hunch?” Nodgen guffawed. “Then you’re lucky.”

Because the two Pachaks were hyr-paktuns, wearing the golden pakzhan at their throats, I knew they would be able to handle the long lances from swarthback. I said to Hunch, “Can you manipulate a lance? Or would it be a waste for you?”

“A waste, notor,” he said at once, without preamble. “I like a long-staved weapon; but these are ill-balanced, as I judge.”

And, by Vox, he was right.

“Let me cut an arm’s length off the end,” said Nodgen. “Then I’ll have a capital long-spear.”

“Each man to his own needs,” I said, and looked at Tyfar. “Prince?”

He smiled.

“I will stay true to my axe.”

In the saddlebags we found comestibles of a hardtack kind, such as a warrior would carry. There was also wine in leather bottles. Tyfar and I exchanged glances.

“Water for now,” I said. “I’ll answer for Nodgen and Hunch.”

“And I for Barkindrar and Nath.”

Quienyin said, “The brothers Fre-Da will, I think, answer for themselves, as is right and proper.”

The Pachaks lifted their tail hands in acknowledgment.

“When the suns are over the yard arm,” I said, although in the Kregish it was not what I said at all. We lay back, munching hardtack, sipping water sparingly, and every now and then a white gleam in Hunch’s face told of his roving eyeballs gazing fondly on the wine skins.

Truly, Moderdrin is an amazing and forbidding place. The mountains stud the plain with their humps, crowned by jumbles of towers and domes and walls, smothered in vegetation, with tumbling waterfalls and bosky avenues in which, as we knew, were to be found savage denizens.

But, those denizens were nowise as monstrous as the horrors within the artificial mountains.

We dozed and kept watch, and the water remained stoppered in the bottles. Prince Tyfar showed signs of wishing to protest, after the first sips had ceased to refresh him.

“Prince,” I said, and I spoke evenly, “if you drink now you will simply sweat the precious liquid away, wasting it. Wait until the worst of the heat goes.”

“But my mouth is afire—”

“Suck a pebble.” I nodded at the Pachaks. The cheeks on each hardy Pachak face bulged.

He did as I bid; and he had the sense to see the sense in it. I felt he was a young man, prince or no, who grasped the uses of sense in a way that would be approved, at least, by men who thought as I did. For your full-bloodied, rambunctious hell-for-leather rampant princeling, Prince Tyfar was altogether too much of an intellectual — and a superb axeman, withal.

He had gone raging into the Muzzards. There was no dilly-dallying there. I fancied he was more of a proper prince than most of that ilk in Hamal.

Three times during that day we spotted flights of flutsmen, and we stayed close. The swarths were lying down and dozing against the heat, shivering their scaly tails every now and then. We were not observed by those sky reivers.

That night we drank sparingly, mounted up on nine of the animals, and led the remaining six bundled up with all we thought necessary to take. The ground scavengers had been at work on the corpses, but our presence had deterred the warvols from swooping down on rustling wings to join in the devouring. By morning there would be left only bones.

At my insistence, Tyfar and Quienyin rode the two superior swarths. Tyfar, I noticed, just took the best one without even thinking about it. Quienyin looked across at me, and it was then I insisted he take the beast.