Storm over Vallia

Chapter one-1

Chapter one

Lon the KneesIn Vodun Alloran’s victory procession the wild beasts, placed ahead of the lines of carts containing trophies and treasure, followed immediately on the heels of the captives. The wild beasts, carefully and expensively gathered, were of many varieties, different of shape and form, of color and physiognomy. One thing they shared in common. They were all hungry.

At the rear of the sweaty reeking mass of savage beasts penned in the cage-carts, Lon the Knees marched along sturdily, for all his legs in their bandiness might have circumscribed a barrel — whence his sobriquet. He was of Homo sapiens sapiens stock, clad in rough homespun with decent sandals upon his feet. The long ash stick he carried was more sharply pointed than perhaps the authorities might have allowed in a beast handler, had they known.

“They’re restless, bad cess to ’em,” said Fandy, walking at Lon’s side.

She did not wave her stick at the animal in the cage for which she and Lon were responsible. As a Fristle, a cat-woman, Fandy the Tail’s whiskers bristled and her gray-marbled white fur slicked sheening where the universal dust did not coat it in a dull ocher.

“They should have fed them.” Lon’s nostrils filled with the savage beast smell, thick and clogging. The noise hammering into the bright air made conversation impossible beyond a few paces. “The lord saves money where he should least afford it.”

Up ahead, squadrons of cavalry rode clearing the way past the mass of onlookers thronging the streets of Rashumsmot, the town having gained greatly in importance since the capital, Rahartium, had been tumbled down into ruin during the wars. Following the wild beasts, bands blared music, and gauzily clad girls, flowers in their hair, flower garlanded, strewed the roadway with petals. Only when all this pomp and pageantry had passed would the high and mighty of the land ride arrogantly along, luxuriating in their wealth and power and prestige.

Fandy the Tail glanced sidelong at Lon, seeing his florid face scowling and paler than usual, the nose still purple but with harsh lines extending downwards to the corners of his mouth, which, uncharacteristically, resembled a snapped rat trap. She was well accustomed to reading facial expressions of other races, as anyone must do who lives on Kregen.

“Lon! You feeling—?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Fandy. We’re ordinary beast-handlers. I don’t care for these monsters. And I suppose I worry over Nol — for a twin brother he’s so vastly different from me as to make me wonder at times.”

“Twins from different fathers?” Fandy flicked her tail, long and thick and glossy where the dust did not cling. “It’s been said. I am not so sure.”

The bands played, the people shouted, the soldiers marched, trumpets blew and the beasts penned within their cages paced forward and back, forward and back, bristling.

“Well, Nol went for a mercenary, having the shoulders for a slinger. They took me into the cavalry stables. He fought for our lady the kovneva and when the new kov defeated her—”

“You’re here, Lon. He will be all right, you’ll see.”

“I pray to Opaz that be true. I just feel — by Black Chunguj! I would this damnfool procession was all over!”

The roadway here was ill-paved, cobbles having been ripped out for the catapults, and the wheels of the cage-carts snagged and leaped in the ruts.

Among the gawping crowds Lon was well aware that his friends and acquaintances would be busy. They left the poor folk alone. They dipped the fat and wealthy. It was said Crafty Kando could slide the gold ring off the finger of a woman who’d never taken it off since the day it was placed there. Lon was not a member of the thieves’ fraternity. When his work was done and theirs, they’d enjoyed good times in one another’s company.

In all the shrieking bedlam of bronze gongs, of brass trumpets, of drums and bells, the screams from ahead and the snarls and deep-throated growlings could not be mistaken.

Into that clogging miasma of smells, the raw rank taste of blood shocked through like red wine spilled onto a yellow tablecloth.

“I knew it!” Lon’s face pinched in. He gripped his pointed stick. “I told you so!”

Instantly, Fandy swiveled to glare not up ahead where the bound captives were being slaughtered by the escaped beasts, but at their cage. Everything remained battened tight. The latchings, the bolts and bars, were all in place.

Inside the cage the silver-blue unpatterned hide of the churmod reflected light in a ghostly silky-smooth patina. Her blunt head lifted. Her tail thumped once upon the floor of the cage. Languidly, with all the arrogance of a churmod, she lifted on her four rear legs, so that her head, ferocious and deadly, rested still upon her front legs. Two crimson slits regarded Fandy with all the malevolent enmity of any churmod, surly and sadistic and vicious beasts that they are.

Everywhere people were running. The procession broke up, fragmented. Demented with terror, men and women hurled themselves into doorways, clambered up into windows, tried to shin up the pillars to the safety of the balconies where the bright scarves and the flowers and feathers waved still in mockery of the pandemonium below.

The churmod stood up on her eight legs. Eight sets of claws whicked out like razors. Without a sound, the churmod stood there, swaying with the lurchings of the cagecart. In the last moment before the cart stopped, its off fore wheel dropped into a rut. The whole cage tilted, groaning, and remained canted.

The churmod’s enormous hissing sounded like a volcano spitting steam.

She hurled herself at the front bars, splintered them through, catapulted out onto the roadway, a lethal silvery-blue phantom of horror.

Fandy the Tail vanished in the opposite direction, the last tip of that fat tail flicking out of sight past a bundle of bandsmen all struggling to rid themselves of their instruments.

The churmod in those long lazily-leaping bounds soared toward the fracas ahead, toward the screams and toward the luscious scent of blood.

Cursing everyone — and Kov Vodun Alloran most of all — Lon the Knees did not give himself time to stop and think. Had he done so he would have followed Fandy the Tail.

He began to run toward the sounds of death.

Just why he was doing this he didn’t know; of course, he was scared stiff, of course he was an Opaz-forsaken fool, but he did owe a responsibility for the safety of the churmod. Churmods are amazingly rare and costly beasts. Larger than leems, more treacherous than chavonths, they are highly coveted prizes in the Arena. And rumor had it that Vodun Alloran, the new kov, was intent on introducing all the spectacle of the Jikhorkdun, the Arena, the training rings, the barracks, all the gambling and the panoply, into this newly conquered island of Rahartdrin.

Lon ran on his bandy legs, and his tongue lolled.

Very quickly he came upon the ghastly work of the untamed animals.

Headless bodies, and disembodied heads, arms and legs, a scattering of inward parts, bestrewed the roadway. Some of the animals had stopped to appease their hunger. Others, the more unremittingly hostile, continued in their orgy of slaughter.

There was no sign of Lon’s churmod.

Sense slapped back to him like a shower of ice across his face.

By the sweet name of Opaz!

What had he been thinking of!

At once he scuttled across the littered roadway, thankful not to be encountered by a stray leem, or a strigicaw, or anything with sharp teeth and claws, and dived into the black rectangle of an open doorway.

His feet tangled in a body by the doorstep. He caught his balance and glanced down. He frowned.

The body was that of a young woman, a firm, proud young woman, who had been slashed so grievously by giant claws that she must have died almost instantly. She wore black leathers, tightly fitting along slender legs and around a narrow waist, flared as to hip and breast. Her helmet with the brave feathers lay rolled into the angle of the doorway.

She was, Lon saw readily enough, a Warrior Maiden. Her rapier and left-hand dagger had availed her nothing, although the sword was still gripped into her black-gloved right fist.

Thoughtfully, he bent and picked up her dagger.

As a mere animal-handler, he could never aspire to wearing a rapier. The dagger, awkward though it might be in his right hand, was still of far finer workmanship and temper of metal than anything he was likely to be able to afford to buy down at the Souk of the Armorers.

The street outside looked something like the aftermath of a battle. Bodies lay everywhere. Blood ran to foul bright clothes and dabble in artfully curled hair. Some of the escaped beasts still roamed looking for fresh victims. The sounds of other animals eating crunched sickeningly into the brightness of the day.

Lon stepped over the dead girl and ventured farther inside, anxious to put a strong door between him and the horrors outside.

Along the short passageway from the front entrance to the inner courtyard he padded. A door stood in each wall, that on the right being closed, that on the left open. He looked over his shoulder before moving to the open door and saw a chavonth putting an inquiring head into the entrance. Lon swallowed. The chavonth, his fur in the familiar blue, gray and black hexagonal pattern, spat in sinister fashion. He braced on his six legs. Treacherous, are chavonths, and Lon knew that this specimen would spring in the next heartbeat.

With a yelp of pure terror he dived past the open door and without hesitation flung the solid wooden door shut.

He stood with his head bowed against the door, shuddering. He was just a simple animal-tender, and so the kov had ordered him, along with others in the same trade, to take charge of his new menagerie. These savage beasts had been gathered from far afield across the seas. Lon was used to ordinary sensible animals, used for pulling carts and ploughs, for riding on, for performing the ordinary sensible tasks demanded by ordinary sensible people.

He was not used to these ferocious assemblages of claws and fangs. No, by Beng Debrant, patron saint of animal husbandry!

A low spitting awful growl from the room at his back stiffened his spine as though he’d been shot through by an arrow.

He wriggled himself around, slowly — slowly! — to stare in appalled horror upon the scene in that downstairs chamber of an unknown house.

The girl clad in black leathers like the poor dead girl in the entranceway snapped: “Stand still, dom!”

Lon the Knees had no intention of doing anything else. Long before he could get the door open the chavonth in the room would be on him. And if he did, the thing’s mate waited for him outside.

The sweat ran down his nose and into his eyes and he dare not move. The blue and black and gray hexagons upon the hide of the beast pulsed. He lifted his front left paw and Lon saw the blood glimmering upon it. There was more blood upon the beast’s hide, fouling that hexagonal pattern.

There was blood, too, upon the sword in the girl’s fist...

Lon did not know the name of that sword or of what pattern it might be. It looked something like the common clanxer, the cut and thrust sword of Vallia; but there were differences that even he could see. His brother Nol, now, would probably know. Lon stood and sweated and was thankful he was so bandy his knees could not knock together and so enrage this frightful beast.

Of the details of the room Lon took in absolutely nothing, apart from a vague awareness of a heavy table in the casement window, a few chairs, and the three bodies on the floor. The Warrior Maiden stood with her black-booted feet firmly planted in front of the three corpses.

The twin suns, Zim and Genodras, slanting their mingled streaming light upon the scenes of c*****e outside, twinkled in odd refractory reflections of jade and ruby within the shadows of the room. Lon just stood, petrified.