The Jikaida Cycle

Chapter six

Chapter six

Yellow sun, silver moonWhen you live on a world as wild and ferocious as Kregen, for all its beauty and splendor, missions of mercy such as rescuing girls in distress or marching to the relief of a besieged city are a natural order of life, given the way of the world. Although I would not go so far as to claim they are of the same order as worrying about the overdraft, or the state of the automobile, or the parlous conditions of employment or where the next meal is coming from on this Earth, the parallels are clear and ominous.

One has to do what one can against the strokes of Fate and, really, that is all there is to it.

We all worked in those days as our plans matured. The crumbling walls of the city occasioned a great deal of worry, and much effort was expended in rebuilding the fortifications. Over the sennights, what began as rumors hardened into facts. Unpalatable facts. Spies and scouts brought in sure word that a host marched on Vondium from the southwest.

All that wedge of Vallia remained locked in mystery since the victories there of the minions of Phu-si-Yantong. His insane ambition to rule all Paz had received a setback in the island, and he was set, with or without the help of the Empress of Hamal, on imposing his will on us all.

So we labored and set our house in order and sharpened our weapons.

With the new threat from the southwest there could be no thoughts of our marching north. The Racters and Layco Jhansi would still fight each other, no doubt, and the reverberations of that conflict would be felt in Inch’s Black Mountains and in Delia’s Blue Mountains. East of them across the Great River we held the land. There was, again, no thought of a westerly expansion for the time being.

The imperial provinces around Vondium were now almost wholly in our hands, pockets and enclaves still being held by insurgents and reiving bands of aragorn, slavers. There remained also a number of roving gangs of flutsmen, mercenaries of the skies, who flew their great winged saddle animals in raiding descents wherever they sensed the pickings were easy. Strong detachments of the army had to be posted not only on the borders of the imperial provinces, but in strategic loci from whence they could march out forthwith against the threat wherever it might be found.

The whole island presented a patchwork of warring factions. How we were to bring peace to the whole land exercised our minds wonderfully.

And if you comment that the peace we brought merely represented the rule of me, Dray Prescot, well, then — yes, I suppose you are right. But I had fought that battle with myself and now my course having been set by the acclamation of the people, I could not in honor draw back. And I still devoutly believed that, blood or no blood, Vallia would prosper far more sweetly with my people to handle affairs than under the iron heel of Yantong or ripped apart by bandits and mercenaries and flutsmen who simply reived for their own benefit and no others.

As for Hamal — the Empress Thyllis would have to withdraw her iron legions, and see to her own internal problems. One day, and the quicker the sooner, by Zair, we would shake hands with the Hamalese in friendship. Until that time they were our bitter foes.

And Pandahem — well, the various countries of that island would have to serve as a friendly bridge to Hamal.

After Hamal the rest of the massive southern continent of Havilfar would ally together against our common enemies.

And there was Segesthes, and Turismond, and Loh...

All Paz must stand shoulder to shoulder against the Shanks who raided and destroyed, sailing up over the curve of the world.

By Opaz! It was a task to daunt the stoutest heart. With all this mighty clangor of distant ambitions reverberating in our minds we were forced to deal with the here and now, the relatively minuscule problems of an army marching against our city.

As the reports came in we understood that the problem was by no means minuscule. Given our resources, the odds against us were gigantic.

Mind you, the Star Lords might suddenly decide they had a sticky problem somewhere on Kregen they wished sorted out for them. Then I would find myself hoisted up out of Vondium whirled by the gigantic blue semblance of a Scorpion, thrust down all naked to get on with the job. So, as was my custom, as I planned and directed, I molded men and women to handle the tasks that must be undertaken should I not be there. And, as always, they could not understand.

Only Delia grasped what I was doing, and sorrowed for it.

To the end of leaving everything in as apple pie an order as might be contrived should I be suddenly whisked away I looked carefully at the commanders available to us.

Nath — whose name of Nazabhan came as a courtesy from his father, who was a Nazab, an imperial appointment as governor of a province and equivalent to a kov — resolutely insisted that he wished to continue in command of the Phalanx. He put great store by that cutting instrument of war. I tried to make him see reason on both counts. But he would not leave the Phalanx command, and he would not allow that the Phalanx could be bested by infantry — as for cavalry, they were just a laugh.

Against aerial attack strong forces of archers were incorporated, and the artillery park was built up.

All Vondium and the imperial provinces surrounding the capital city resembled a gigantic beehive, humming with activity. What cheered me most was the demeanor of the people. Almost without exception they were cheerful, sprightly, utterly confident in themselves, their new army and their emperor. Feeling like a cheat and a fraud, and with profound doubts about the new army, but with pleased awareness of the new spirit of the citizens, I sorted out the folk to take over should the necessity arise. This is mere common-sense insurance when your name is Dray Prescot and you are Emperor of Vallia, and the Star Lords remain unsatisfied.

Messages carried swiftly by one of the few fast airboats we possessed assured me that the Lord Farris, the Kov of Vomansoir, prospered in his newly-restored kovnate. His people accepted him back with a warm welcome because he had been associated with Jak the Drang and was remembered and well-liked as a fair, just and generous man.

The airboat which brought him flying swiftly into Vondium bore the gray and yellow of Vomansoir. Alert, active, bronzed, he jumped down and saluted Delia and me as we waited to greet him.

“Lahal and Lahal,” he called, smiling, brisk and yet with that sureness of purpose about him that marked him as a man who knew what was what and got on with it. “Majister — it is good to see you again. Majestrix, my eternal loyalty.”

I wasted no time but spelled it out, right there and then, as we walked into the shambles of the palace to find refreshment.

“But, majister! Why should you go away again? Now all Vallia awaits your victorious arms.”

“You will have Nath to handle the Phalanx — and if we persevere with him I think he will take on a larger command of the army. Barty Vessler will be of help — he is a fine if headstrong aide-de-camp — more than that, really — and there is Enevon to handle all the finicky details of daily administration.”

“But—”

“There are pallans appointed to all the departments of government and they can function autonomously with only an occasional eye.” We told him of the sad business of Tyr Jando ti Faleravensmot, and of how he had hanged himself rather than return to Vondium. That meant another possible lead to the Wizard of Loh who sought to destroy us had been lost.

“But—”

“You will have Laka Pa-Re to run the mercenaries for you. He is a fine example of the best of the Pachaks. He remained after the nikobi was discharged and I have promoted him Chuktar. You may repose complete confidence in him. And there is Naghan Strandar, and Larghos the Left-Handed, and there are all those ruffianly companions of the choice band. Only if I am called away, Lord Farris, will your services be needed in this. I ask it as a favor.”

“But, majister — your sons. Prince Drak, Prince Jaidur—”

He knew that Zeg was away somewhere and had heard us refer to him as the King of Zandikar.

“Drak is off in Faol looking for Kardo and Melow, and Jaidur — well—” I c****d an eye at Delia and she smiled, both radiantly and ruefully.

“The last I heard of that rapscallion son of ours he was seeking the whereabouts of his sister.”

My ears pricked up at this. These women and their infernal secret societies are one thing; but now they had inveigled a brash fighting man in the person of Jaidur into their schemes. I saw that, and quickly enough, if you please.

At last I overbore Farris by saying around a goblet of the best Gremivoh, the wine favored by the Vallian Air Service, in a voice I made as neutral as possible: “Anyway, I need you here to keep an eye on things and on the Empress Delia also.” Farris was a man whose life had been dedicated to the emperor and whose fanatical loyalty to Delia was a part of his makeup. “An army marches against us from the southwest and I’ve a mind to go out there and spy them out. Perhaps—”

“Aye, Dray Prescot,” quoth Delia, sharply. “Aye! And you’ve a mind to crack a few of their villainous skulls, too, while you’re at it. I know.”

“Mayhap, my love,” I said, unrepentantly. “Mayhap.”

So, the matter being settled, we passed onto a more detailed assessment of the situation, which was pretty fraught as I have explained.

Reports from our scouts indicated that the army had landed in Vallia on the coast of Kaldi to the west of the Island of Wenhartdrin. This gave the invading host a long distance to march, for they might have landed much nearer the capital, and I surmised that they hoped to pick up recruits as they advanced. Just how the honest burghers and farmers of Vallia would react to this hope remained to be seen. Certainly, the southwest had not, to my knowledge, shared the ambitions toward self-determination of the northeast.

In a direct line — as the fluttrell flies as they say in Havilfar — the invaders had six hundred and fifty miles to cover to Vondium. It seemed clear they would not march a direct line. At an average speed of ten miles a day — more or less — at which a spry army can march with its baggage and artillery and followers and all the rest of the baffling impediments that so slow up armies on the march, they would take better than seventy or eighty days. The latest reports gave their position as being at the border between Ovvend and Thadelm. They had come, therefore, roughly halfway.

Estimates of their numbers varied enormously. This was partly due to the inexperience of some of our volunteer scouts and partly to the complexity of an army on the march, where thousands of followers confuse the eye. A sagacious Khibil, a paktun with many battle scars, had told me that he estimated the core of the army — the formed ranks of fighting men and the wings of cavalry — at fifty thousand. This was an army, therefore, of indeterminate strength, not so small as to be contemptible, and not so large as to be truly overpowering.

My reaction to that information had been to cast the net of scouts wider, suspecting another army marching parallel to the first. So far no confirming reports had reached me.

Nath was white with fury at my decision not to take a single brumbyte from the Phalanx. And, because I would not take any pikemen from the files, the Hakkodin, who flanked them, would not be touched, either.

“But majister! We are the army — the heart and sinew and core. If we march out, now, in all our strength, we can crush them—”

“Utterly?”

“By Vox! Yes!”

“I think not.”

“But they are just an army — cavalry with zorcas and these white-coated hersanys, and infantry with nothing untoward in the way of weapons or formations. Fifty thousand! We will go through them as a cleaver goes through beef!”

“And you’re like to strike a bone, in the middle, Kyr Nath.”

The invading army flew no colors that had been reported to me. The hersanys present, those shaggy, six-legged, chalky-white riding animals, indicated there were contingents from Pandahem. And Phu-si-Yantong had set his ferocious seal on the whole island of Pandahem, subjugating all its kings and rulers to his despotic sway. I wished him joy of it. He must be mad, for that seemed to me the only way to explain the ambitions he cherished. As for the good in him, that must lie so deep that Cottmer’s Caverns brushed the heavens.

“Well,” said Nath, breathing deeply and the whiteness denting the corners of his nostrils. “If I may not march my Phalanx, then, at the least, majister, let me come with you.”

With a sorrow tinged with affectionate amusement, I said: “And leave the Phalanx without the leader? Come now, Nath, surely you see I cannot do that?”

He was in a cleft stick and he knew it, and the knowledge made him barge off with a parting Remberee and I did not doubt that his Relianchuns would skip and dance to his tunes and give their brumbytes in the ranks a little stick, also. Well, that is the way of it. He kept his men in fighting trim and I was unsure if I really did want him to hand over control of the Phalanx to somebody else. There were plenty of superb fighting men who could handle that immense and crushingly destructive mass of men with their pikes and shields and deadly onrushing force, naturally; but the sight of Nath commanding had power to instill perfect confidence.

The business of the day being settled for the time being, for alarums and excursions cropped up at any hour, I was free to give thought to what Delia had said about Jaidur. The notion in my mind that there must be more than one army advancing on Vondium had, for the moment, to be pushed aside. I left it with the thought that the mercenaries and the detachments from Hamal who had taken over the southwest had not obstructed the landing of the new army from Pandahem, and this argued they were in league and mutually assisting each other.

But, Jaidur...

As we sat to a private meal in what would be called our withdrawing room, with Delia superb in a long sheer laypom-colored gown, and I lounging in a white wrap, the whole small room limned with gold from the samphron-oil lamps, I found her as reticent on this as I had on other occasions touching the Sisters of the Rose. That secret society of women demanded much of their members, and had a hand in a great deal of what went on in Vallia.

“You know I am under vows, my heart.”

“I know. At least reassure me that Jaidur is — well—” I gestured helplessly. “That he is not likely to be chopped and eaten at any moment.”

Delia laughed. The line of her throat caught at mine.

“No, no, you hairy old graint. You worry too much over the children, and yet—”

“And yet they have been woefully neglected by me, I know. Some people, looking at our family, might well say they have turned out a thoroughly bad lot. Well, not Drak. I except him, of course, and, I suppose, Zeg, seeing he is fully occupied in the Eye of the World being the king of Zandikar.”

“A bad lot? We-ell... Lela bides her manners and is so mewed up with the SoR she hasn’t been home for—”

“I haven’t seen her since I got back—” I choked on my words, and seized up a crystal glass of best Jholaix — for we had unearthed a cellar full of the superb wine in a ruined wing of the palace — and drank it off, scarlet-faced, I have no doubt.

Gravely, Delia regarded me. Her gown slipped demurely from one rounded shoulder. The lamps caught flecks of gold in her brown hair. She looked gorgeous.

“From where, my heart?”

I swallowed down. Sudden, it was, sudden and quick and fierce, like a first love.

“From that world I told you of. That world with only one sun, and only one moon, and only apims.”

She caught her breath, and was still. And that was her only reaction.

Then: “You have spoken to me of this strange world which boasts one small yellow sun, and one small silver moon, and lacks any kind of humans save apims, without a single diff to make life interesting. And is it real? And is it—?”

“It is real. It is called Earth. And it is where I was born.” I reached over the table and took her fingers. They were warm, alive, trembling only a little. “And, my heart, it is many and many a dwabur away from Kregen, lost among the stars of the heavens.”

“Your home — is among the stars...”

“No, Delia, no. My home is here, on Kregen. With you.”

Her smile transformed her face, making what was beauty into a radiance so all-encompassing the loveliness dizzied me. I closed my eyes, and opened them, and Delia still smiled on me.

“And this weird crippled world is where you go when you leave me?”

“I am sent there. Against my will. Because I defy those who wield the power. I shall not defy them so stupidly again.” We talked then, quick questions and answers, and I told her much. She was fascinated by the idea of Earth, and quite beyond any childish feelings of guilt that the pure religions of Opaz would frown on her or condemn her conduct.

We talked through many burs of the night.

And, when at last we slept, we still had not talked enough to satisfy her curiosity or relieve my mind of those years of guilty secrecy. But, when all was said and done, what difference would this make in our relationship? We were a twinned whole, a twosome that transcended one-ness. She had always been aware that I left her from time to time, without explanation, and always returned. She always waited. No moist-mouthed seducer from Quergey the Murgey could sway her love away from me, as he had so often done with lesser women from their husbands. We remained still Dray and Delia. We were. But I felt a deal easier in my mind now that Delia knew. And, when she did know, I saw all my previous fears as the childish phantasms they were. To be brutally honest, the truth had come out and the whole episode smacked of anti-climax.

And, to be equally truthful, that was exactly how it should be.

The next day I mounted up and rode out at the head of my little band, aiming to get on with the hard business of rebuilding an empire, not for the glory of empire but because it was a task that had been set to my hand by the people of Vallia.