Warlord of Antares (9 page)
No, I will not dwell on that experience.
A thought occurred to me and, oddly, it comforted me in that ghastly situation. No one had volunteered to return through the mazes of the Coup Blag. All had chosen the perils of the underground river in preference to the horrors of Csitra’s domains.
More than once the roof descended so that I, the highest of the crew, had to duck fiercely. The rock looked highly unfriendly, ready to slice like razors.
And — all the time and with deadly meaning — the river increased the speed of the current flow.
To dwell on that spirit-shrinking experience? No. I may be Dray Prescot, called by those whose paths I have crossed the Bravest of the Brave; I do not wish to repeat, even in remembrance, the journey down that subterranean river.
Twice we saw strange mingled lights falling upon us from rifts in the roof. I judged that we were approaching the edge of the mountain where faults in the structure allowed the streaming radiance of Zim and Genodras to filter down to this underground world. We were close to the outside now and in moments we shot out into the resplendent brilliance of daylight.
Here was the moment of truth.
Here we could win or lose all.
The river spewed out of its worn hole in the side of the mountain and fountained down in a waterfall. The noise boomed enormously. Spray engulfed us. I held on and counted and as each figure followed the next as we went helter-skelter down that slope of water I felt the rise of a bubble of nausea into my throat.
We hit.
The raft splintered into fragments.
Everything went up and down and around and around.
There was only noise and sickness and water and confusion.
Deep under the surface we plunged. Instinctively I thrashed with arms and legs. The lungful of air would not last long. The surface held life, and I fought fiercely, feeling the bruising battering of that headlong smashing impact.
My head broke through and I gulped in glorious Kregen air. Tossing the hair back and staring around, I saw heads in the water, and, also, saw the danger in which we still remained.
Phocis spluttered up at my side, still clutching her spear.
We began to grasp the wretched girls and swim with them away from the impact area of the fall. The noise engulfed us. Spray sleeted into a white mist. Slowly we managed to drag ourselves farther off and strike out for the bank.
Ghostly memories of my original arrival on this marvelous planet of Kregen occurred. Then I’d sailed down the River Aph aboard a leaf boat and had dared the might of a waterfall by many many times higher and more spectacular than this exit of the underground river from the mountain of the Coup Blag. Those days did not seem dim and distant, rather, they formed a portion of the living tapestry of my career on Kregen. Just as this very day as we reached the bank and hauled ourselves out, dripping wet and panting, formed another of the links in the living tapestry.
“By the Veiled Froyvil, my old dom! That was a tidy little to-do!”
“Aye. I see we have lost some of the women.”
“An unavoidable tragedy, Bogandur,” said Nath. “We have saved the majority, and for that we must rejoice and give thanks to Opaz the All-Glorious.”
“That is so,” said Seg, “and to Erthyr the Bow. One of the Rumay women’s rafts vanished completely.”
“If they are caught in the eye of the fall, then by this time all hope must be abandoned for them.”
Gradually we dried ourselves off and sorted ourselves out. Phocis, who had kept herself very much to herself previously, proved a tower of strength in soothing and helping the weaker women. The Rumay fanatics were fit and ready, it seemed, to take on a crack regiment of Chuliks.
“We,” said Shalane, making a direct statement, “will move off at once. We cannot stay here.”
Her dark hair was already drying and frizzing out, and now it had had a wash it gleamed far more splendidly than ever it had done in the maze. Her fierce downdrawn face showed she was in no mood to argue.
Around us the banks stretched to low cliffs crowned with bushes cutting off further vision. The sky beamed gloriously above and the twin Suns of Scorpio cast down their mingled streaming radiance to light the world in an opaline haze of splendor.
Sniffing with enormous appreciation at the wine-rich Kregan air, looking upward and expanding my chest, I saw an airboat fly into view above the bushes.
Her hull was a dense black. Her upperworks, painted in a bewildering variety of clashing colors, were squared off and hard, pierced for throwing engines, frowning ominously above us.
“By all the imps in a Herrelldrin Hell!” burst out Seg in fury. “Dratted Shanks. That’s all we need right now!”
“Keep absolutely still!” I bellowed, yet not so loud as to reach up through the air to that silent flier up there. “Do not move as you value your lives!”
Of bushes, beliefs and airboats
The deadly Shank voller up there flew with ponderous purpose across the river. We crouched low and still, deathly still.
This vessel must be from the fleet we had fought on our way over Pandahem. If our own fleet had managed to regain contact — and anything could have happened during the time Seg and I had been stumbling about in the Coup Blag — then I had to hope a Vallian voller would fly over soon.
No one moved a hairsbreadth until the Shank vanished over the farther bushes.
“Of course,” said Seg, helpfully, “he could have spotted us and given no indication, and be landing troops right now out of our sight.”
“He could,” said the Impenitent in that grunting gruff way of his. “And there could be one of our own fliers about right now, ready to pounce on him.”
“I’ll go for a scout around.” Seg didn’t waste time arguing but started off at once to the bush-lined crest.
Shalane, spiky and venomous, spat out: “Our fliers, man?”
Nath opened his mouth and I said: “There are many other islands and continents in Paz, Shalane, besides Pandahem. All of us, together, fight the Shanks.”
“If they are men like other men then I will fight them,” she said, in an offhand, dismissive way.
“Oh,” I said. “You’ll find them somewhat different, if you haven’t fought them before. But I don’t doubt you’ll be able to cut a few trophies.”
“Sanka,” she said to one of her girls. “Get up there and scout. I don’t trust a man to do a proper job.”
Sanka scurried off, all frizzy hair and naked flesh, with a nasty-looking sword swinging at her side.
Shalane swung back to Nath. “You said ‘our fliers’, man. What nation in Pandahem are you from that has airboats?”
Nath cast a glance at me that summed up fury and annoyance at his lapse, and, also, I sensed, a great deal of damn-you-to-hell with respect to this ferocious woman.
“We have come through quite a deal together, Shalane.” I returned the scorching stare she gave me, with interest. “But we are not yet comrades in arms. There is much you do not know that you will discover later.”
“Now.”
“Perhaps.”
“You said there are other islands besides Pandahem.”
“And continents.”
“Other islands. I thought you three men strange. I have heard of Vallia.”
“Have you heard, Shalane, that Vallia and the nations of Pandahem are now allies against the Shanks?”
She showed the chiseled teeth in a grimace of malicious amusement. “Even the Bloody Menahem?”
“Well—” I started, whereat she laughed aloud.
“Man, man! Your words fall upon you and crush you.”
With what I considered exemplary patience I went on: “By Chusto, woman, listen! With the exception of those idiots of Menaham all of Pandahem stands with Vallia.”
“I shall believe that when I see it. I have heard, also, of this Emperor of Vallia, Dray Prescot. The stories in the souks are marvelous but quite unbelievable.”
“Those stories are trifles to amuse children.” Then, because even here I couldn’t malign the good-heartedness of the Vallian and Valkan storytellers, I added: “There is a kernel of truth to them. It is enlarged upon.”
Nath rumbled out: “Dray Prescot! Emperor of Vallia! I’d as lief crush him beneath my heel as give him a Lahal.”
“So you, Impenitent,” snapped out Shalane waspishly, “are not Vallian also?”
Nath — who, remember, was ferociously proud of being Vallian — puffed up his cheeks into scarlet globs and his scowl would have cracked a window at fifty paces. “As to that, woman—” he started, rumbling like a volcano.
I cut in.
“No more time for shilly-shallying, Nath. Tell this poor woman Shalane the truth.”
Her fist clenched convulsively on her sword hilt.
“Poor woman, man! I’ll—”
Sanka came into view fleeting down the slope waving her arms. Seg ran astern of her and, I suppose, some deviltry got into him so that in all this petty wrangling he didn’t intend to be beaten into second place.
Seg speeded up and slid past Sanka so that she seemed to be running backward. I cast a quick glance at Shalane and tried not to take any glee from her black look of anger at this fresh indignity.
“The rast is returning,” said Seg, breathing evenly, completely unruffled. “And there’s another following him.”
I’d not been entirely consumed by the arguments with Shalane and had selected a likely site where bushes grew thickly to the margin of the river. I pointed.
“All in there and still as woflos when chavniks prowl!”
We all ran across and huddled in the bushes.
This vegetation wasn’t thorn ivy; I did not believe any Thorn Ivy Trap would be sprung here.
Our joy at escaping from the grim confines of the maze had been swiftly transformed into sick apprehension at sight of the dreaded Shanks.
Some of the women had been bruised, all had been battered, and I wanted to get them into the care of a puncture lady as soon as might be. I most certainly did not want to get into a fight with them on our hands. Yes, the Rumay fanatics would fight, of that I had no doubt; just how well they would do against the incredible ferocity of a fish-headed, trident-armed Shank remained conjectural.
As far as I could see, they had not done at all well where the malkos were concerned. Again the idea crossed my mind that all these women were criminals imprisoned in the maze. That might, for all the oddity of it, square with Csitra’s character.
As we waited and trembled crouched over in our bushes I tried to put that thought together with the notion that the vast and beautiful cavern from which we had taken passage down the river was outside the witch’s jurisdiction. If not that, then that Deb-Lu-Quienyin had curtailed her power in that direction.
That Deb-Lu had not put in a recent appearance I judged was caused by his attention to other duties. He had a vast realm in which to be constantly vigilant and, unlike those ordained as kregoinye by the Star Lords, could not be in two places at one and the same time.
With an eyeball screwed to a chink in the leaves, I watched the steady and catlike progression of the Shank flier.
I knew Seg was chafing to shaft the cramphs up there, and clamping down on his very natural desires to shoot.
In this situation all we could hope to do was wait for the Shank airboat to fly away. A nasty problem troubling me was — why had the bastard flown back?
A slender but sinuously-muscled form at my side stirred and an elbow dug into my ribs.
“Keep still, Phocis. If not to prevent the Shanks seeing us, then for the sake of my bruised ribs.”
“By the Wooldark Mitraeus, Jak! You are enough to make a girl forsake her vows.”
Then, for she was looking out at an angle from me, she said in a sharper voice: “Something dark came flying out of the hole where the waterfall begins. I lost it in its descent. Like a log.”
“I hope it wasn’t one of our poor girls trapped on a rocky ledge in there and washed down after us.”
Seg whispered: “There’s the second voller.”
Even as he spoke both ships of the air speeded up and rose. They circled and raced across the river and then I saw something that made me clench my teeth together until the jaws ached.
A Vallian flier swooped down trying to evade the pounce of the two Shanks. She was a scouter, trim and fast; but they hemmed her in and all the time they were shooting at her.
The outcome of that fight could not be in doubt.
Battered and smashed, her steering gone and her lift decaying rapidly, the Vallian dropped down.
A fast scouter, she was of a type I recognized only because we’d bought half a dozen from King Filbarrka and Queen Zenobya, whose realms in Balintol were firmly allied with Vallia. She carried blue and yellow checkered flags, whereat I knew she was from my kovnate island of Zamra. Now this was odd, as I did not recall any similar vessels in the fleet that had sailed to Pandahem. Therefore, reinforcements must have been sent us. This was good news. The bad news was that this scouter was doomed and her crew just about done for.
She hit heavily and ripped into shreds. Agile figures dark against the suns’ light leaped out and the silver wink of stars from their weapons held cold comfort.
The Shanks landed promptly but unhurriedly, and disgorged rank after rank of fish-headed fighting demons.
In a low-voiced monotone Nath Javed the Impenitent cursed everything, from fate, the Ice Floes of Sicce, the benighted of Opaz, the forsaken of Vox, the destroyed of Kurin, his own bad luck and, finally, himself.
Then he said: “Well, it all had to end one day. I cannot skulk here.”
Seg said in his lightest and most flamboyant style: “Oh, aye, my old Impenitent. I agree. But I do not think we will walk away from this fight.”
“Indubitably.”
Shalane, from her bush, spat out: “You are not going to — no, you cannot? Surely—”
I said: “You may not believe now, Shalane, that this is your fight and the fight of the Rumay belief. But it is so.”
With that I stood up, unlimbered the great Krozair longsword and with a lilting: “
Hai, Jikai!
” roared out of my bush and along the riverbank full tilt at the packed ranks of the fish-headed Shanks.
