Delia of Vallia

Chapter one-2

The first tree sprang at her, quite unexpectedly.

It appeared to be a tall, leering presence, black against the suns’ glow. The sky sheeted in jade and crimson, in ochre and gold, in delicate tendrils of mauve. So there were clouds left in the world, after all...

She moved aside to let the tree pass.

The next clump had to be rounded more cautiously. The fantastic notion was lodged in her head, along with the bells and the clamor and the hollow silence: the trees were sentient and walking and out to clasp her in their barky embrace.

She tried to stop, to take a breath, to force herself back to sanity.

Her legs refused to stop walking.

She went on, walking with her purposeful gait, walking on, unstoppable.

As she marched on with all the clamor bellowing away in her head and the muffled silences hollowing the edges of that uproar, she began to wonder if she had made a disastrous mistake. She knew where her airboat had been attacked, where her friends had died, the point from which she had begun her march. Perhaps she should have remained with the airboat until night, and then started. But she had had all day... Perhaps that was the trouble. She fought the devils of self-doubt, and mistrust of her own judgments. She knew she was not unique in this. He who did not doubt, she who did not mistrust, must be lost.

But she had been so sure, so confident!

The distance to the river, the speed at which she walked, her own strength and determination... The equation was not going to balance. Soon she would lie down. Then she would be finished.

If only those devils of flutsmen arrogant astride their saddle birds had not smashed the water jars! If only her flier had not been attacked at all... If only...

She marched on, and now her head was high, her shoulders back, chest out, and she strode on, not as though drunken but as though forcing her way forward against a whirlwind that sought to hurl her back.

She was used to marching. She’d marched through the Hostile Territories. She’d marched with armies with banners. But now the pain in her feet and ankles had ceased. She could not feel anything in her legs at all, so that proved they’d fallen off long ago.

The long shadows dropped down.

She had completely miscalculated. The whole thing was a miserable fiasco — a fatal fiasco.

A sound obtruded.

A tinkling, running, splashing sound...

She couldn’t run.

And in those last few moments as she forced herself on toward the river she knew she had not miscalculated, and, too, she knew she was not marching on, striding out, rather she was staggering, toppling, near falling, desperately trying to reach the water before she collapsed.

Blindly in the last of the light she marched straight off the edge of the bluff and plummeted headlong into the river.

She hit with a divine splash and wetness surrounded her in bliss.

Then it became imperative to reach the little shelving beach under the bluff at once.

Jaws and claws lived in the river.

A few powerful over-arm strokes took her to the bank. She pulled herself out and lay on the mud, dripping, her wetness a cloak of benediction. The fourth Moon of Kregen, She of the Veils, rose to cast down her fuzzy pink and golden light. The woman lay on the bank, in the mud, her brown hair spread and shining and the glory of her body abandoned to wetness. Magnificent, she looked, lying there, rounded and lissom, abandoned, sprawled, her tanned skin glowing through the rents in her leather russets.

Something hard squelched in the mud at her side.

A voice said: “By Vox! I’ll fight any man who says I’m not first!”

Her eyes snapped open. She took a breath.

“Well,” said another voice, thin and nasal. “She’s not dead then, Hirvin.”

“Out of the Ochre Limits,” said another.

No one offered to fight Hirvin.

The woman turned and half sat up, leaning back on out-thrust arms. The clustered men, six of them, caught their breaths. They sat their mounts at the top of the bank. Moonshine glittered on their metal. Shadows ran and concealed their faces beneath the helmet brims.

She had been concerned lest she encounter a wild and savage leem; what she had encountered was far more dangerous.

Their lances spiked up from stirrup boots, the pennons indistinct and unrecognizable in the hazy half-light. They bestrode totrixes, and the ungainly six-legged riding animals stood docilely enough, proof of harsh discipline in their management.

Hirvin c****d a leg over his saddle and dismounted.

Automatically, he took a hitch to his belt.

“Fetch her up here,” he said, and the order was obeyed with betraying alacrity.

Three of the others dismounted and slid down the bank. They seized the woman, who did not resist. They brought her up to the top of the bank. The light of She of the Veils shone down. By that haloing golden light the hard hawklike faces came clearer, harsh with incessant patrols of the badlands, harsh with imposed discipline, harsh with unrealized ambitions and denied wish-fulfillments.

“A Beauty,” said Hirvin, and he sucked in a breath. His face congested. An old scar shone lividly against the browned skin. He put a hand to the cheap and ornate clasp of the first of the belts girding him.

The woman put out her tongue and — as though exploring forgotten territory — licked her lips.

She swallowed and shook her head. She opened her mouth and a strangled cry changed to a wheeze. Then she could speak.

She said: “Llahal. You should know that—”

Hirvin bellowed laugher. He threw the first belt down and the axe it carried clashed against the hard packed earth of the higher bank. He roared.

“Polite, this one! Trained, I don’t doubt! By Vox — Llahal to you, shishi, and play your part well, and—”

“I am not—”

“That’s of no consequence.” His voice sharpened. “Hold her!”

She moved her arms, in a particular way, and the two fellows grasping her were grasping thin air.

The rapier cleared scabbard sweetly. The main gauche slapped up, crosswise, in her left hand.

“You would do well to go your ways. You are swods, soldiers to be ordered. You are not brigands, murderers—”

“We are swods and we’ve had no fun for days on end—”

Hirvin saw something, something in the way the woman held the rapier and left-hand dagger, that made him rip his own sword free. It was a clanxer, a straight cut and thruster. He rushed, with a yell, aiming to smash past with superior weight and strength and knock the woman down with the flat.

He struck. The woman was not there.

But her rapier passed through his upper right arm.

“Do not make me kill you,” she said.

“Howling Hakkachak the Hungry!” he screeched. His left hand clamped around his arm, pressing, and still a dark blot of blood stained out over his fingers. “Get behind her, you fools! Grab her! By Vox, I won’t be denied my pleasure from this beauty—”

The first fellow to grab her, the one with the broken nose and the silly sly grin, fell back, staring stupidly at the dark wet line across his forearm. That was blood. He looked up, starting to yell, and Hirvin roared again.

“You miserable stupid onkers! Get around her! Trip her up! By Vox, do I have to do everything myself!”

The other two men climbed down from their totrixes hurriedly. They fanned out in the moonlight, circling the woman. She turned at once and ran toward the bank, ready to dive in and chance the jaws and claws of the river.

She was amazed at her own weakness. A hand clamped on her arm, and a fist grabbed her brown hair. Her head was cruelly jerked back. A foot struck and knocked her legs from under her. She was aware of realizing that she did have her legs, and that was interesting, as she fell. They dragged her up to Hirvin.

A knobby fist hauled on her hair, forcing her to lift her face. She stared up at the man who looked down on her, gloating. He gloated as much from pride that he had won, as for any anticipation of what he intended. The scar moved as he spoke.

“You stuck your sword into my arm. Two can play that game.”

The others — dutifully — laughed at the sally.

“Lial, do you go up to the hut and get things ready. Hot water and bandages.”

The fellow with the freckles and snub nose ran off at once. The woman was dragged up by her hair. They held her, hard and harsh, and they took the rapier, main gauche and sailor knife away.

“A pretty thing like you oughtn’t to play with men’s weapons.” Then Hirvin roared out again, his good humor restored, the sting from the rapier thrust ebbing. His men guffawed, genuinely, and they dragged the woman with them along the bank.

Their guard hut abruptly showed a light through the window as Lial struck flint and steel and caught the tump ready for the lamp. That was a cheap mineral oil lamp, and would no doubt stink all night. The place contained bunks for ten men, an audo, with a curtained alcove for the leader. The light showed his rank markings. Hirvin ranked as a ley-Deldar. The woman was pushed down on a bunk and the men stood back, staring at her.

She sat up. Sly looks passed from swod to swod. Young Nal swallowed, visibly trembling.

She said: “You are—”

“Say nothing, shishi.” Hirvin held out his arm without looking as Lial bustled up with a cloth to wipe away the blood. “As soon as this little pink is bandaged, then you and I will try a fall or two, and not with Beng Drudoj, either.”

Chuckles sounded in the little hut. The mud brick walls were hung with cheap and garish cloths such as could be bought for a silver sinver in any bazaar. A cooking stove built into the wall stank of grease. The bunks draped grayish bedclothes, heaped like stranded and decaying fish. The lamp, inevitably, smoked.

An arms rack, built of mud brick with some wood, held spears, stuxes, axes and short swords. The men, watching the woman, began to take off their weaponry. Outside sounded the clatter of hooves as the totrixes found their own way into their stalls.

“Watch her!” snarled Hirvin, then winced as Lial slapped a steaming cloth onto his wound. “Careful, oaf!”

The water stood ready on the stove, and it was clear the men were willing, very willing, to forgo their evening meal until afterward. Patrolling the river and the edge of the Ochre Limits was a miserable existence.

When Lial finished bandaging Hirvin’s arm, the Deldar took a breath, sniffed, drew in his stomach and flexed his arm experimentally. He looked at the woman.

“Will you scratch? If you do you will have to be tied down.”

“I will do more than scratch—”

Hirvin shouted.

“Get the clothes off her! Tie her down! By Vox! No little shishi balks me—”

She kicked the first one so that he turned green and rolled about the floor. The second only just missed having an eye removed. The third got a grip on her hair and then keened in agony as two fingers struck up his nostrils. The other two fell on her, bearing her down by weight, and Hirvin simply leaped on top of the lot.

The door of the hut opened and the growing night breeze blew dust across the floor. Hirvin, sliding forward and hitting his wounded arm a crack on the edge of the bunk, yelled.

“Shut the door, Tandu, for the sake of Ben Dikkane! And keep that brat of yours outside if you don’t want him to see man’s work.”

He reared up and swung about as his comrades grasped the woman, holding her. Now she struggled unavailingly, lissom, supple, her brown hair aswirl.

The four-armed man in the doorway said, curtly: “Stay outside, Dalki. See to the totrixes.”

Hirvin’s momentary distraction as his wounded arm cracked against the bunk edge, and from shouting at the four-armed Djang, gave the woman a tiny moment in which to act. The two men holding her felt her movements and could not hold her. One wrung his hands as the wrists poured molten streams of pain up his arms, the other reeled back with blood spurting from his nose. The woman leaped up onto the bunk, panting, brown hair wild, and from the last of her assailants she snatched the fighting man’s dagger. Heavy, unadorned, designed to be a gut-spiller, the dagger menaced the men in the hut.

She looked a magnificent savage beast of the jungle, broken free of her chains, uncaged, no longer shackled for the delight of the passing trade.

The Djang, Tandu, used his upper left hand to sweep the dust-covered cloak up over his shoulder, out of the way. His height overtopped all. His broad, ferocious, open Dwadjang features congested with blood. He stepped forward and knocked over a three-legged stool. He did not notice. He stared at the woman, poised on the bunk. She did not brandish the dagger; she held it as a person holds a weapon they know well how to use.

Some of the swods were over the first shock of their injuries at the hands of the woman. They gathered themselves together, and stood up and wiped the blood away. They looked at their leader, at ley-Deldar Hirvin, and murderous intent disfigured their faces. They were mercenaries, hired for a mind-dulling task; they would not be balked of their prey.

“She’s only a woman!” yelled Hirvin. “She will not stop us with a dagger. Get behind her, throw a blanket over her, bear her down!”

Young Nal, trembling, scampered around the end of the bunk and Lial and Long Naghan snatched up a blanket. Tandu, the Djang, stared at the woman.

His hand, his upper right, whipped out one of his swords. His lower left drew a long dagger. He advanced, he did not shut the door as he had been ordered, and his boots scratched on the blown dust. His hip collided with the edge of the nearest bunk and dislodged a marching pack there, which fell and emptied its contents onto the dusty floor. He did not notice.

He stared. His face, congested, broad, a furious ferocious frightening Djang countenance, empurpled.

He shouted. He roared in such a voice as would bring the very stars out of the sky.

“Do not touch her!” His lower right hand caught in Vogon the Amsant’s hair, and jerked the bulky mercenary back. He thrust himself on, sword lifted, dagger snouting. He was visibly shaking with passion.

“What nonsense is this?” screeched Hirvin.

Tandu the Djang drew himself up. His sword swept in the ritual salute to the woman and then flickered out, a bar of lethal steel, to menace Hirvin.

“You fool! This lady is my queen! The Queen of Djanduin!” The Djang sword darted for Hirvin’s throat. “This is the Stromni of Valka! The Empress of Vallia! Delia of Delphond, Delia of the Blue Mountains!”