Witches of Kregen

Chapter one-2

Could I change? Could Dray Prescot, the Lord of Strombor and Krozair of Zy, really stop being the reiving tearaway rascally fellow he was?

Seg bellowed in a too-loud voice: “Cheer up, my old dom! You look as though you’ve lost a zorca and found a calsany.”

“Aye, Seg, aye.”

The overhead abruptly split, the wood shattering away in scything splinters, and a couple of frogs belted down. They hit the deck under our feet with almighty crashes and instantly were up and hopping about. Turko caught them easily enough. He whistled.

“You’re right. They weigh like stone.”

“The whole picture is different,” I said, forcing myself to return to the present and what was going on. “When Csitra dumped cartfuls of frogs onto our heads it was all a bit of an occult lark. She was plaguing us. But now, one of these damned frogs can knock down a fine soldier, between ’em they’ll destroy this ship if we don’t drift clear in time. She can destroy the whole Ninth Army at this rate.”

“Khe-Hi just has to wake up!” Seg, like the prudent man he is — sometimes — positioned himself under a thick beam. We all did likewise, crowding shoulder to shoulder. The frogs began to batter their heavy way through the upper decks and shred the planking away. Soon they were hopping and croaking about our feet.

No one was going to venture out from the thick beam’s protection to shovel them outside. No, by Vox!

My comrades are, by and large, a harum-scarum lot. Clearly, and despite the eeriness of it, they’d been taking this infestation of frogs and roklos and toads in an off-hand manner, seeing the ludicrousness of the situation. A whole piling-up of frogs from the sky would inconvenience us, make the beginning of the battle delayed, perhaps cause one or two hearts to tremble a little more than they had. But it was an infuriating delay, that was all.

Now, with what amounted to stones from catapults hurtling down around our heads, the whole picture became potentially disastrous.

“I suppose the possibility exists,” said Nath with a casualness that totally failed in its object, “that Khe-Hi is unable to halt the infestation, that countering the thaumaturgy is beyond his art and strength.”

“It exists but is unlikely—” Turko began.

Seg said brutally: “The better chance is that poor Khe-Hi has had his head bashed in.”

So now it was in the open, the fact Nath had danced around, sounding querulous, which was a state very far from the fiery yet disciplined Krell Kapt of the Phalanx. If Khe-Hi had been killed, or even incapacitated, when would these damn frogs stop? Ever?

“Where’s the woman getting ’em all from?”

“If,” I said in that weirdly mild tone of mine, “they are real.”

Seg shot me such a look of suspicion as to tell me I was overdoing the mildness bit. Seg had dragged the chief fear in our minds into the open. I just had to go back to being rough tough Dray Prescot again, hard corners and all.

We were able to speak in easy tones, and for just a queasy moment I couldn’t grasp why that was strange. Then I realized that the incessant banging and crashing of frogs’ bodies against the decks had dwindled away so that now only the last outriders of the descending column struck us.

“Praise Opaz for that!” exclaimed Nath na Kochwold.

We climbed up past the splinters and the wreckage to the deck and found ourselves perches. Truly, the scene was fantastic. It was awesome too, in a shivery way, for the solid column of frogs falling from the blue sky spread a considerable area and thus by their very bulk oppressed the imagination. Individual bodies were impossible to see in the shining flanks of the mass; colors shifted and reflected, the bright green of a lizard, the orange of a roklo, the brown of a toad, and over all the liquid green glinting of the frogs.

I was just saying: “I don’t care for all this sorcerous stuff,” when I felt a distinct thump, as it were, in the very air itself.

“What—?” said Turko, and, instinctively, the muscles along his arms rippled ready for instant action.

“Odd,” said Seg, and turned himself around and stared out over the land.

The flying sailer drifted with the breeze and we saw a few other ships that had broken free. But, always, we turned back to stare at that infernal, impressive, diabolical torrent of frogs falling from a clear sky.

But...

Seg, with that feyness of his race, was obviously the first to see and recognize what had happened.

He let out a yelp, and then: “By the Veiled Froyvil, my old dom! Khe-Hi’s done it!”

“What—?”

“Look!”

We all stared narrowly at the shining frogfall.

“Yes — Khe-Hi’s done it.”

“I like it,” said Seg, cheerfully. “I like it!”

The column of frogs remained, as solid, as torrential, as impressively diabolical as it had been before. But now the frogs rained upwards.

Khe-Hi-Bjanching was sorcerously sending the damned frogs back whence they’d come, we hoped to fall out of the clear sky onto the head of the witch Csitra.

“Good old Khe-Hi!”

“And his lady love,” pointed out Turko. “Ling-Li will have had a hand in this.”

“I do like it,” said Seg.

We stood to watch those damned frogs whirling back up into the sky and the relief was enormous, by Zair, I can tell you!

The experience through which we had just gone had been mind numbing. It had blunted out senses. At least, I felt that inner dizziness as though I had difficulty merely in keeping balance, in finding the right words, in carrying out even the simplest action. Sorcery sometimes plays a great part in the lives of people on Kregen; mostly it is just there, heard of but peripheral to busy lives.

There was little we could do until the frogs had all been returned from whence they came. A jury-rigged mast and a scrap of sail gave us control; but I felt it essential to return to the camp as fast as possible, so I bellowed out orders to land the ship. We’d go back on foot. There would be a tremendous amount of work to do back there sorting out the damage, caring for the wounded, preparing defenses, putting what regiments we could into shape for any possible attack from Layco Jhansi and his screaming fanatics.

The tall roof of the village barn glistened into view as the upward torrent of frogs continued. The cottages buried in the squiggling mass began to show a gable here, a twisted chimney there. This tiny village of Gordoholme, although within the area occupied by the Ninth Army, was generally out of bounds, off limits, to the swods in the ranks, and the officers, too, unless on duty. We had liberated the place from the clutches of Jhansi’s offensive people; we did not wish to continue the crimes of which they were guilty.

This village of Gordoholme represented the farthest point we’d reached in our march into Vennar so far. Jhansi had refused the great and decisive battle we’d expected outside Gliderholme. We knew he was in trouble finding fresh mercenaries, for many of his paktuns had renounced their service and either returned home or joined the usurping King of North Vallia. This puzzled us, for the journey entailed shipping in order to circumvent the activities of the Racters who were at war with the King of North Vallia.

Whatever obscure motives prompted Jhansi and his sorcerous adviser, Rovard the Murvish, a highly aromatic Sorcerer of Murcroinim, into the various courses of action they had undertaken against us, one fact remained more than most probable — Jhansi would hurry to hire on more mercenaries, and his agents would be overseas now scouring the markets and barracks for tazll paktuns.

In the meantime he had the mobs of ordinary people driven into a state of fanatical frenzy by the thaumaturgical arts of Rovard to hurl against us in waves of screaming humanity. This disgusted us. As I watched the stream of ascending frogs I seriously considered the usefulness of sorcery to any world among the millions of worlds in space.

The people who had taken refuge with us in the ship — the vorlca was named Wincie Smolek II — gathered at the rails to watch. Among them I spotted a group of cavalrymen wearing pale-green uniforms, the dolmans well-frogged and the pelisses smothered in fur and gold wire. This habit of carrying a spare coat slung over the shoulder to put on when the weather turns chilly is well-known on this Earth, and is sensible enough for many fighting men of Kregen to adopt as a matter of course. These jutmen were from the Forty-Second Regiment of Zorcabows, raised and led by Strom Larghos Favana. The irony in the situation, which I savored as a man with toothache might savor a poultice, lay in their regimental name — Favana’s Frogs.

“The damned things are nearly all gone,” I said. “If we’re going, we’d better make a start.”

Seg and Turko did not reply but just climbed down the shattered remnants of the ladder to the ground. Nath clipped out a command to the men clustered along the rails, and they began to go over the side. They were not all chattering away among themselves as one might have expected. They were very quiet. The enormity of what had happened affected them, affected all of us, deeply.

Soon we were marching off toward Gordoholme and the ruined camp of the Ninth Army.

Other vessels had lifted clear and no doubt the people aboard them would be doing just what we were doing. The flying saddle birds had mostly, fortunately for them and us, been dispersed on patrol duties.

“What a hell of a mess!” said Turko, highly disgusted.

“We’ll soon have your army back in shape, Turko,” said Seg, striding on, his bow slanting up over his back.

I didn’t say anything. The catastrophe might yet prove decisive. Certainly, it had put back our plans for this part of Vallia to what might be a disastrous degree.

In his decisive way, Nath na Kochwold said, “The discipline of the army will hold up, Turko. I’ll see to that, by Vox.”

Well, that was Nath for you, tough and uncompromising, dedicated to the ideals of order and discipline.

He glared upon the men trooping along from the stranded sailer. His fierce eyebrows drew down.

“Look at ’em!” he exclaimed. “By the Blade of Kurin! A bunch of washerfolk with the laundry would look smarter.”

With that, off he went, rounding up the soldiers, bellowing orders, cutting into them. He did not wave his arms about frantically. He did not even draw his sword and brandish that. He got in among the mob and his incisive personality and reputation very quickly sorted them out.

It made no matter who or what they were. Whether pikemen without pikes, cavalry without mounts, heavy infantry without shields, they jumped to his cracked-out commands.

Very soon they were in a column of march, three abreast, and striding along, heads up, chests out, swinging their arms. It wouldn’t be beyond Nath na Kochwold to have them singing in a moment or two.

“You’ve got to admire—” began Turko.

“Aye,” said Seg. “What’s that?”

His keen bowman’s eye picked up the tiny black cloud in the distance before any of the others. We all swiveled to look.

Seg, Turko and a small group of the lads from my bodyguard, standing a little to the side of the marching column, watched that small cloud as Nath strode up to join us.

“That’s got ’em...” He stopped himself, swung about, shaded his eyes against the Suns.

Seg said: “Flyers.”

“A returning patrol?” But Turko spoke the question without conviction as to the answer.

Glints of light speared off the aerial riders, armor and weapons flashing in the suns-light.

“Damned flutsmen,” I said.

“Aye,” someone at my back ground out. “May they rot in a Herrelldrin Hell.”

We’d all had experience of flutsmen, unpleasant experiences, tending to result in sudden death if you were not the quicker.

Flutsmen, reiving bandits of the air, had preyed on Vallia during and after the Times of Troubles. They owed allegiance to no one apart from their own bands. They would hire out, serving as mercenaries, if the prospect of loot was good. They fought hard and viciously. They were not nice people, to use a phrase once coughed out concerning them. Loric the Wings had died after making that pronouncement. But he was right.

“Whatever they are,” Turko said, “they are enemies to us.”

“And if they’ve been newly hired by Layco Jhansi,” amplified Seg, carefully taking his bow off his shoulder, “they’ve caught us at a remarkably inconvenient moment.”

At this distance it was still only possible to make an estimate of the numbers of flutsmen. From the apparent thickness and extent of the flight, I judged more than a couple of hundred approached. Well, we’d find out their real strength soon enough.

Nath shot off to the marching column not wasting any time and instantly the soldiers began to fan out and take up the best defensive positions they could find.

“So much,” said Seg, stringing his longbow with that cunning application of flexing power that betrayed long experience and great strength. “So much for our friend Nath’s neat marching orders.”

Around us grew little vegetation to afford cover. There was no handy river. The ground puffed dust-hard underfoot. No, we’d have to stand and fight these reivers of the air where we were.

“I make it better than two hundred and fifty,” remarked Turko. He had no sword to draw and I noticed the way he flexed his arms, as if instinctively limbering up for a contest in which all his skills in unarmed combat could be negated. Yet that was a foolish thought. I’d rather have Turko the Shield with me, unarmed, than many and many a man lumbering in full armor and with a whole arsenal of edged and pointed weapons.

With a flash of the old quizzically mocking Turko, he turned to me, half-smiling.

“I do not see Korero the Shield, Dray.”

“And I don’t see a single shield, either.”

“So your back—”

“My back will have to be the business of myself, and your back yours, if we are parted.”

In that quiet way of his, Seg Segutorio glanced across as he reached out for the first shaft from his quiver, and said: “I’ll fight alongside you, Turko.”

I nodded. The arrangement was sensible.

Turko contented himself with: “Aye, Seg. It is a pity Nath didn’t hang onto that shield.”

Just that, a pity. We looked as though we might be entering on the last great fight. If we were, if we were all to die here, well, I couldn’t hope to go down to the Ice Floes of Sicce in the company of finer comrades.

The oncoming flutsmen spread out into individual dots. The dots sprouted wings and became fluttrells, and the riders on their backs, brandishing their weapons, became men.

There were more nearly three hundred of them.

We set ourselves and grasped our own swords and spears. Seg lifted his bow.

Streaming their flying silks and furs, their standards fluttering in the breeze, their armor and weapons a blaze of glitter in the radiance of the Suns of Scorpio, the flutsmen swooped upon us.