The Witch War Cycle

Chapter nine

Chapter nine

Werewolf at the partyI draw a merciful veil over the uproarious happenings when my lads of 1ESW flew into Vondium.

By Vox! Carouse! They did not quite tear the place to bits, but they beat up the city sorely.

They were all there, thanks to the mercy of Opaz, and while some had taken wounds, all were recovered. There were new members of the regiment, of course, and it was my task to get to know them all as quickly as possible. No one entered the ranks of the premier guard regiment unless he was a proven kampeon, a swod of merit, a superb fighting man.

They decided they’d better have some kind of formal parade, and march through the streets to the Temple of Opaz Militant, and there render up thanks. The bands played, the flags fluttered, the suns glinted off massed ranks of armor and weapons. The spectacle delighted the crowds who turned out in their thousands to cheer. The rogues had even organized a bevy of pretty young girls, half-naked sprites in silken draperies all a-swirling, to dance ahead and scatter flower petals. That made me give a grotesque tweak of the lips which my friends recognized as a smile.

Not one of them, nobody, not a single swod, got drunk. I have explained how that kind of idiotic anti-social behavior was not tolerated in the guard corps.

Targon the Tapster, Cleitar the Smith who was now Cleitar the Standard, Ortyg the Tresh, Volodu the Lungs, all of them were there. Korero the Shield, a magnificent sight as always, a golden Kildoi with four arms and a tail hand, uplifting his shields in protection, Dorgo the Clis, saturnine and with his facial scar a livid blaze, and Naghan ti Lodkwara together with all our other comrades from the original Choice Band joined by our new fellows, marched in the streaming mingled lights of the Suns of Scorpio.

Vondium, the proud city, as the capital of Vallia is a civilized metropolis of a civilized country. Yet, as I watched the parade and marveled afresh at the panache and bearing, the spirit and devilment of the jurukkers of 1ESW, I could not fail to be aware of the barbaric appearances everywhere, the feeling of passions bursting through regimentation, the savage warrior spirits chafing at and yet understandingly accepting discipline. Mazingle, the swods call that on occasions, and sometimes they call unfair and too harsh a discipline mazingle, with darker and far more ugly meanings.

For a brief moment a vision of the zazzers of the Eye of the World, the inner sea of the continent of Turismond, took my inner attention. Drunkenness was more common among both Grodnims and Zairians there, although still generally regarded as the pastime of the feeble-minded. The zazzers were those folk — men and women, apim and diff alike — who quaffed until they reached a fighting frenzy before battle. Unlike the old Norse berserkers, who either wore bear skins or stripped naked, according to your sources, they smashed into action fully accoutred and armed, ragingly high seas over, roaringly sloshed, and fought until they won or were cut down. The zazzers’ philosophy may appeal to many; as a shortcut to personal extinction it repelled more.

A tremendous shindig was held that night; the torches flared their orange and golden hair, the sweet scents of moonblooms mingled with that of exotic foods and enormous quantities of wines. While we might not have shaken the stars, we surely shook all Vondium.

As I say, I draw a decent and merciful veil over the proceedings.

After the orchestra in their platform-shell at one side of the flower garden had played the Imperial Waltz of Vallia, which as you know was the best rendering I could contrive of the Blue Danube, and the folk had danced the whole sequence three times over, I spotted young Oby.

Well, I should not refer to him as young Oby, of course, for he was a grown and limber man. Two girls clung to his arms, another rode his shoulders and waved a bottle aloft, and a fourth in some mysterious way held on with her naked legs wrapped around his waist from the front, and was busily kissing him in between laughing and drinking. He saw me and, disengaging his mouth from its amorous combat, grimaced and called across.

“I cannot help it!”

Oby ran the Aerial Squadron attached to the palace, and always seemed to be in peril of sudden and immediate marriage, which with a sleight of hand much admired among the raffish bloods and despaired of by the maidens, never was — in his words — trapped.

“I would feel envy, Oby, but for good reasons!”

“Aye, Dray, aye! Would that I could find—” and then he was devoured again.

I yelled: “Where’s Naghan?”

Oby twisted his head and the girl’s lips sizzled down his cheek. She started to bite his ear — of course.

“In the armory — he’s finishing up the first of the arrowheads.”

“Then,” declared Seg briskly, “that’s where I’m off.”

“I’ll join you.”

The palace jumped. Lights festooned the alleyways between hedgerows of sweet-smelling shrubs, lamps twinkled in the trees as a tiny zephyr trembled the branches. It was a glorious night, with She of the Veils flooding down her roseately golden radiance.

“I could wish Milsi was here,” said Seg. “But she has gone off with Delia.”

“Ah! That means, I would guess, your Milsi is about to be inducted into the Sisters of the Rose.” I shot my comrade a hard glance. “I don’t know if you should be congratulated or consoled, by Krun!”

“Young Silda never had any doubts.”

“Your daughter, and my son, ought really to sort things out — Silda is down in the southwest, I suppose?”

“Aye.”

We strode through the various gardens and arbors until we’d skirted this side of the palace and so crossing a graveled drive walked up to Naghan’s armory.

Naghan the Gnat had once been all gristle and bone; now he had filled out a trifle and his thin and wiry form filled his tunic to greater effect. Amazingly cheerful, quick and lively, he could bash his hammer on his anvil with consummate skill. He is among the finest of the armorers I have known on Kregen. Now he turned as we entered, feeling the heat from the furnace, and he held up between iron tongs a palely yellow arrowhead.

“The edge is the art of it,” he said. “Seg — there are a full score over there for you.”

“Well done, Naghan,” I said. “And a sword?”

Naghan had worked damned hard, that was clear. He had taken the pattern of sword called a drexer which we had developed in Valka and knocked out three of them. His assistants were hard at it, bellows pumping, heat pulsing, hammers ringing, and the hissing turbulence and aromas of quenching going on neatly within the armory. Picking up a dudinter drexer I swung it about experimentally.

“Nolro!” yelped Naghan. “Fetch the quiver.”

A young lad, streaming sweat to the waist, jumped to a peg and fetched down the quiver. This was a simple, plain quiver as issued to the archers of the army. Nolro handed it to Seg. It contained a score of arrows, fletched with the rose-red feathers of the zim korf of Valka.

“I had Lykon the Fletcher do these up for you, Seg,” explained Naghan. “Speed is the watchword now.”

Seg drew out an arrow. It lacked a point. “Thank you, Oh Gnat. I trust Lykon’s handiwork. But—”

We all knew Seg liked to build his arrows himself. He now meant that he’d accept another’s work in fletching the shafts, but was pleased to bind on the heads himself. This he at once started to do, there and then, at a side bench where the necessary equipment had been prepared.

The party still racketed away among the gardens of the palace. There were Jikai Vuvushis there, out of uniform, dressed exquisitely, laughing, dancing. I own I felt an ache that Delia was not here.

Still, she was removed from the lurking menace of the werewolf. That thought made me speak out, and somewhat bombastically, I confess, saying, “Now let the damned werewolf show his ugly snout.” I shook the dudinter drexer. “We’ll have his tripes!”

“Aye,” confirmed Seg, looking up, holding the first completed arrow. “Aye, my old dom, we’ll puncture him like a pincushion.”

A shape skulking past the doorway by a clump of pale blue flowers in the torchlights caught the corner of my eye. I swung about. Seg was hard at it pointing up his shafts, but Naghan caught my movement and squinted out into the torchlights across the yard. He wheezed his infectious laugh and swung back to his work, saying; “Well, Dray, you must expect all that, being an emperor and no longer a kaidur!”

“Aye, Naghan, by the Glass Eye and Brass Sword of Beng Thrax himself! But it irks at times...”

The skulking shape flicked a red cape back and, seeing he was discovered, walked forward sturdily. Oh, yes, the lads of ESW and EYJ were on duty when the emperor wandered abroad.

“Hai, Erclan!” I called, and I own my voice sounded mocking even in my own ears. “You’d have been shafted for a certainty then, my lad, and well you know it!”

He looked downcast, a young, strong, eager jurukker from 2ESW, knowing he shouldn’t have been spotted as he stood watch. I felt for him, for — and if this be boasting then take it as it is meant — there are very few folk, of Kregen or Earth, who can keep an unobserved watch when I do not desire that condition. I did not take pity on him; but I thought to make a small gesture to cheer him up and brace him for the next turn of this kind of duty.

“Look at this, Jurukker Erclan — a fine new blade fashioned from dudinter with which to spill the tripes of the werewolf. Here, try it.”

He took the drexer and swung it about. He was from Valka and he addressed me as majister, because he was a youngster and had grown up with that form of address naturally; his father, Emin ti Vinfafn, called me strom — and no messing.

Now Fate plays us all scurvy tricks from time to time and on this occasion I thought I was particularly hard done by — wrongly, as you will hear.

When Naghan first set up his armory for the palace, he, Tilly and Delia felt it would be nice to have shrubs and flower beds not too far away, and to lessen the effect of raw power at work. So the shrubs by which Erclan had lurked and the graveled walks and the flowerbeds led naturally to other areas of the gardens. A young couple, hands and arms about waists, walked dreamily along, lost to the world in each other. Erclan, swinging the blade, looked across.

“Fodor,” he exclaimed in great disgust. “Some people get all the luck and can split the wand, and others have to stand guard duty.”

Because of his words I reasoned that the young lady was a bone of contention between the two guardsmen.

About to say something which no doubt would have been highly foolish, I checked. The lethal gray form that flashed into view by the path was no figment of a dream. The foam upon its jaws gleamed in the torchlight. Its eyes reflected the torchlights and speared like two scarlet bolts. Its fur bristled. Undulating with muscle, lethal with fang and claw, the werewolf pounced upon its prey.

“Fodor!” screamed Erclan. He flung himself forward.

A single mighty blow from a paw sent Fodor reeling into the bushes. The werewolf hunched above the shrinking form of the girl. Her shriek was lost in the horrid guttural snarls. Erclan, blade high, raced in.

Everything began, happened, and was over.

In a flurry of cape and cords and skidding boots Erclan flung himself bodily at the werewolf. The dudinter blade slashed down.

His body and the flare of the cape obscured the result of his blow. The werewolf shrieked in a hideous screaming whine. It made no further attempt to attack the girl. Erclan lifted the blade again.

The thought scorched into my brain.

“Now we shall see!”

The blade flashed, the werewolf snarled and bounded off, Erclan missed and swirled forward. In a few gigantic bounds the werewolf vanished beyond the shrubbery.

Seg stood at my side. He breathed hard.

“What the hell! Erclan hit the beast, I am sure of it — why—?”

I was short, abrupt, haltingly furious.

“The dudinter failed.”