The Spikatur Cycle, page 11
They all wanted to come. 1 and 2 ESW. 1 and 2 EYJ. Nath Karidge insisted on bringing EDLG. Most of the slate of Vallian nobility were lining up. Applications poured in from all the regiments.
“Think of fat Queen Fahia!” I said. “She’ll think we’re invading her island!”
With a judicious air, Lord Farris said, “I can spare you enough fliers to take a thousand men. They’ll have to draw lots to see who goes.”
“Well, I’m going,” said Korero, “and I’ll fight anyone who tries to steal my place.”
“And me!”
“And me!”
“By Vox!” I said. “This isn’t like the old days.”
“No,” said Delia. And she smiled, the cruel and heartless woman. “No, Dray Prescot. You are the emperor now.”
I groaned. Were the brave old days gone when I’d wrap the old scarlet breechclout about myself and take up my weapons and board a voller, richly stacked with wicker hampers provided by Delia’s loving forethought, and fly off to find adventure, hurtling across the face of Kregen under the Suns of Scorpio?
“By the disgusting diseased liver and lights of Makki Grodno! I’m not having this! If I am the damned Emperor of Vallia then what I say goes! How can I work my way into the Jikhorkdun in Huringa and rescue our friends if there’s an enormous lollygagging army of ruffians hanging around my neck?”
“Oh,” they said, “you’ll think of a way.”
Sink me!
Turko, who hadn’t left yet, talked darkly of sending north for Seg and Inch to come down and knock some sense into my obstinate vosk skull of a head.
“And then,” I snarled, “I suppose they’ll want to come, too.”
“Probably,” said Turko, and he flexed his muscles.
Despite all the lightheartedness of this there was a darker side. Oh, it wasn’t anything to do with questioning the authority vested in me as emperor. If folk didn’t want me to try to be an emperor, I’d quit, instanter, and they knew that. I’d told them enough.
But just suppose — just suppose the Star Lords took it into their superhuman heads to whisk me up out of Vondium and hurl me down into some other part of Kregen, all naked and unarmed, to sort out a problem for them? The Everoinye had been silent of late. I’d not even seen their spy and messenger, the Gdoinye, flying high and looking down mockingly on my doings. If that happened now, what would be the reaction of the people of Vondium, of Vallia?
This time, my disappearance would be viewed in an entirely different light. In, I could see, an unfavorable light.
I said to Delia when we were alone, “Look, I can’t manage the Jikhorkdun with that crowd along! Surely they can see that?”
“I am not sure you should risk the arena at all.”
“But — we want Tilly and Oby and Naghan back, don’t we?”
“Of course! But, dear heart, there has to be another way. An embassy to Queen Fahia—”
“She’d laugh at them. She thinks she is the leem’s claws. Hamal won’t bother her now because Hamal is so tied up with Thyllis’s mad schemes of conquest. Hyrklana must be doing very well, very well indeed. And their agents will be scouring the world for human fodder for the arena.”
“And you’ll be just that, Dray Prescot! Arena fodder!”
“Better me on my own than a great gang of—”
“No!” Delia put a hand to her heart.
After that, for a space, we were occupied. But, all the same, nothing was solved regarding my expedition.
The same difficulties that stopped Hamal from invading and conquering Hyrklana — as mad Empress Thyllis probably longed to do — prevented us from flying there in sufficient force to do what was necessary. We were overstretched and our resources were committed. Hamal had invaded north and south, although her invasion to the west had withdrawn. We were fighting to regain Vallia. Both empires grappled with problems that overtaxed their strength.
“All right,” I said, “then I shall not go to Hyrklana.”
I said that. I did not mean it. I had a plan.
In all this furor the Lady Zenobya continued on in her serene and yet enthusiastic way. She was a many-faceted individual. She clearly expected Vallia to give her assistance to regain her lost lands in Pershaw and kick out the Chobishaws. The Presidio was in sympathy with her. All the evidence we had, supported by reports from Vanki’s spies, indicated that the right of the case lay with the Lady Zenobya. But how, in our impoverished state, were we to help?
Certainly, our gold would buy mercenaries.
“Yes, and I thank you,” said the Lady Zenobya. “I shall avail myself of your kindness and use the gold, and you will be repaid, in full and with interest, in specie or in kind, when I am firmly established in Pershaw.”
So that was decided. The Lady Zenobya had very definite views on the type of warrior she required.
“The men must be well-armored,” she said, with that toss of her red-haired head that indicated she knew exactly what she was talking about. “They should have lance and mace. Under the armor they need a good thick cloth and where it shows, divided and out of the way above the legs, it should be heavily embroidered for the battlefield.”
We stood with a group of my rascally henchmen from 1ESW bellowing unkind orders at a bunch of coys, out on Voxyri Drinnik. The recruits were riding marlques and they kept tangling out of formation. It was lucky for them the spears were blunt. The Lady Zenobya had given the recruits a comprehensive look and, no doubt, dismissed them from any consideration for a season or so. A zorcaman rode slowly toward us from Voxyri Gate. The suns shone, the breeze blew, the dust and animals and oiled leather filled the air with familiar odors.
“The trouble with a cataphract with a kontos is that he’s a bit slow.” The Lady Zenobya was staring at the approaching zorcaman. “Cataphracts are a delight, of course. But you really need lights for scouting, and air, if possible. I’ll have to find flutsmen I can at least trust while they are paid. Their crossbows ought to keep them out of trouble with the Chobishaws — although their crossbows are wicked.”
The zorcaman turned out to be Filbarrka na Filbarrka.
His beaming face was a welcome sight. He was incredibly smartly turned out. His zorca was tremendous.
“Lahal, majister!” he called. And then his cheerful voice changed in tone to a remarkable degree. “Lahal, my lady.”
“Lahal, Filbarrka,” said the Lady Zenobya, and her voice, too, held a different, huskier note than the voice in which she spoke to me or anybody else.
Some poor wight out on the parade ground dropped a spear and the wrath of his Deldar was awful to behold.
“They won’t drop their kontoi in Pershaw when I’m through with them,” said Filbarrka.
I raised one eyebrow at him.
“I have asked Filbarrka na Filbarrka,” said the Lady Zenobya, her laugh exquisite, “if he will command my forces.”
Filbarrka’s fingers grasped the reins, otherwise they’d have been entwining like a nest of rattlers. “I have set up the whole organization for the second-line cavalry. My lads from the Blue Grass country are training ’em hard. You’ll have a good, dependable — if a trifle brittle — force there in no time at all.”
“Thank you, Filbarrka,” I said. “And so you are off to Pershaw with the Lady Zenobya?”
“Aye!”
And, of course, there was more to it than that, as was very obvious. Later on, Delia told me, “They make a superb pair, do you not think, my love?”
“Oh, aye! Filbarrka is getting all the fun, going off to adventures overseas, and I’m stuck here—”
“Hush!”
For just about the first time on Kregen I had the hankering for the damned Star Lords to seize me up and dump me down somewhere. I’d sort out their nonsense for them and then I’d be a free man, able to go to Hyrklana on my own, able to do what I wanted. Of course, there was Delia...
She would welcome the return of our friends from Hyrklana. And I did not want, most certainly did not want, my Delia risking her life anywhere near Queen Fahia’s Jikhorkdun!
This plan was typical of Dray Prescot. It was simple. When necessary I can invent complicated plans of fiendish subtlety; I prefer them simple. Although I am told my face is of that fierce damn-you-to-hell kind, I am able to assume an expression of near imbecility. This has served me well in diverse escapades. Now Deb-Lu-Quienyin was able materially to improve on nature.
“It is all a matter of muscle control,” he told me as we sat privately in my study. “You have attained a fair degree of control. I think I can improve on that.”
He made me do exercises with my ugly old beakhead. Also, without doubt, he exerted some of his supernatural powers. I do know that after a sennight he had me so composing my features that I did not recognize myself in the silver mirror.
“It is a miracle, San—”
“Not a miracle. A matter of tone, of muscle, of enhancing features and of reducing them. With practice an adept is able to suggest what his face is like. People do not see what they look at; they see what they expect to see.”
“True. So—?”
“So they see your clothes and they fit the face to them. Where are you going?”
I half-turned. “I’m going to test this out.”
He let his laugh ripple out like a tree branch splitting from the main trunk. “Beware lest Folly and Pride lead to Perdition!”
“Aye — and Hunch and Nodgen have been saying that they’re going to Hyrklana with me. I ask you! Can you imagine our Hunch in the arena?”
“The mere thought leaves me cold — and also — amused.”
Wearing a simple gray tunic, with a leather belt from which one of the long thin daggers of Vallia swung from plain bronze lockets, with sandals on my feet, I put on a new face and stalked from the study. I passed along corridors and soon people were there, passing me without a second glance. People I knew! People who knew me!
Diffident about how long this would work, how long I could keep my facial muscles holding the new face, I returned to my study. One or two people looked at me more closely as I walked back, and I had to duck into a cross-corridor and let my face relax. By Zair! It was hard work. I ached as though I’d been stung by a hive of bees. But, with practice, I’d be able to hold these new faces for longer periods.
Deb-Lu studied me as I walked in.
“Hurt?”
“Yes.”
“That will pass.”
“I hope so. If I’m to get out of the palace without one of my rascals spotting me, the face I put on has to last me. The security system here is now first class. No assassin would last a couple of heartbeats.”
“And you mean to leave? Just like that?”
I nodded. “By Zair! Do I not!”
“The empress...?”
I glowered. “She will be left a message and she will understand... I know that to be so.”
Then Deb-Lu-Quienyin shook me. “I am a Wizard of Loh, and all men fear us. And rightly so. But I think I might be tempted to relinquish all my arts and all my knowledge for the love of a lady like the Empress Delia.”
“You old devil!” I said. But I spoke in affection.
I was sure, absolutely hell-fire sure, there was nothing in two worlds that could tempt me to abandon Delia.
By this time along I was shedding the work load as fast as was seemly. Ever since the first days when I’d realized there was work to do for Vallia I had, as you know, arranged for people to take over when I vanished. On Valka the Assembly was able to run the island stromnate perfectly. And, as my tasks sensibly lessened, with the people appointed by the Presidio shouldering more of the burdens, another little part of the puzzle about power fell into place.
If you have an emperor who is not allowed to do anything, has no job to do, then he will, like anyone else, become bored. And he’ll start looking around for something to get up to, to while away the time. Well, by Djan! And hadn’t I looked around, when bored, for something to do in Djanduin, and wound up king as a result? Keep an emperor busy and he will discipline himself, that was the theory.
In order to reward the many folk who had worked so hard for Vallia, the Presidio had instituted a whole fresh ranking of minor nobility, whose standing was a little below the already existing minor nobility. The main difference between this new hierarchy and the older minor nobility lay in the absence of lands or estates attached to the titles. The titles themselves had resounding names, which you will hear when a recipient enters my story, and usually a generous pension. By this means a non-endowed but wealthy peerage was established loyal to the country and to the emperor.
Again, I took the selfish pleasure of rewarding men and women, and seeing their pleasure. Maybe this is petty, maybe it is just another manifestation of the power syndrome, all I know is that when a fellow who had done well for the country received his new title of spandar or chornuv and his five or ten thousand golden talens, and started thinking about his new coat of arms, I felt his happiness as my happiness. And this despite my profoundly held ridicule of all titles and pomp.
The simple plan I had concocted — simpleminded, probably — demanded that I get to Huringa, the capital of Hyrklana, and then simply join the throngs flocking to the arena. Once there I would find out which of the four colors in eternal competition now commanded the allegiance of my friends. We had fought for the ruby drang. Then, once they had been located, I’d just boldly go in, carrying disguises, and have them out of it and into a borrowed voller and whisk them away home. Simple.
The major problem, as I saw it, was stealing a voller from the Lord Farris. He was not as young as he had been — by Vox! who is? — but he was just as punctilious in his duty, the perfect emperor’s right hand, a treasure, and a confoundedly difficult fellow to steal a flier from.
Barty Vessler had taken a voller. True, it had been his own. I let my eye fall on the Lady Zenobya’s cage voller. But that was too large. Anyway, she and Filbarrka would require the use of the craft. She’d said that Pershaw had bought fliers from Hamal before the supply dried up, and the pesky things broke down, a familiar story. Where Chobishaw was buying vollers from now she did not know.
So I put on decent Vallian buff, the wide-winged tunic and the breeches, and drew on a pair of the tall black boots. The broad-brimmed Vallian hat, with those two slots cut in the forward brim and the jaunty feathers flaunting, shadowed the new face I assumed. I sallied out and tried to bribe an attendant at the vollerdrome.
Well!
After they unchained me and stood me on my feet and dusted me off, I had to invent some rigmarole about checking security of the flierdrome.
My face had slipped during the dust up. It was a miracle nobody was hurt.
It happened to be the 1EYJ on duty at the flierdrome that night. Now Clardo the Clis and Torn Tomor stared suspiciously at me. As you know, the two corps forming the emperor’s guard ran themselves, their officers alternating as to duties and leaves. Now these two looked at me as though I’d tried to make off with the crown jewels.
“Yes, majister,” they said, and, “Certainly, majister.”
But they knew!
The devils, they guessed right away what I was up to.
So, after that contretemps, I was faced with the problem of finding alternative means of transport.
It really was a bit thick. When an emperor can’t quietly sneak off for a spot of adventuring, hurtling along under the Moons of Kregen, life tends to be dull, dull...
Not that life was dull, as you have heard and will hear. Naturally, much happened I have not so far apprised you of. The son of Trylon Lofoinen, for example, being enamored of a certain lady, hired a band to serenade her outside her father’s villa. And his rival, the son of Strom Nevius, got to hear of it and arranged for a dung cart to run down the hill, all over the band, Lofoinen’s son, and whoever else was in the way. That whoever else happened to be a solemn procession of adherents of Mev-ira-Halviren, going chanting to see their idol open its mouth and give forth prophecies.
The resulting uproar, not to say scent, enraptured the neighborhood.
The two lads were sent packing up north to join Seg’s Second Army. He wrote that they were being kept buckled down to their duties — and had each found a little shishi already. This was an unsavory story — pungent ibroi was in short supply in that neighborhood for a sennight — and not necessarily typical of the amusements afforded by Vondium. Crude — of course. Funny — possibly, depending on your station vis-à-vis the wind. Perhaps it is best to leave the story to molder where it lies.
The crusty, bearded kampeon who had bossed my field quarters in the Eighth Army, Deft-Fingered Minch, possessed what was to me an amusing and endearing habit. He had fought with tremendous gusto in the ranks and had made shebov-maztik, before coming to my notice. He ran a field quarters with a competence I recognized as being akin to what was expected of a first lieutenant of a ship of the line in Nelson’s Navy. I ought in parentheses to say that junior noncommissioned officers in Vallia were maztiks. Matoc is a Havilfarian name. And, anyway, they aren’t like NCOs or noncoms; they are more like those special privileged fellows in the legions of Rome. More or less. Minch’s endearing habit was simply this: Every time he encountered Emder in the course of his duties he would draw himself up and deliver himself of a chest-crushing salute. Emder, quiet, gentle, courteous, was treated as though he were a Jiktar at the least, and more probably a Kapt. Minch was serious, I fancied, but Emder wasn’t quite sure how he should receive these military honors.
This was a case of the rough diamond respecting the cut and faceted gem.
One day Minch fairly cracked his fist against his chest, as Emder appeared in the corridor. Neither man saw me. I started to smile and then Minch broke with tradition.
“Jen Emder! A word!”
I will not attempt to reproduce the conversation word for word. What it boiled down to was Minch’s desire for more information on my civilized habits. Emder did everything in the palace; Minch was the out-of-doors camp-king.
“For, Jen Emder, when we get to Hyrklana the emperor will be living in surroundings much like this. Is it possible you will accompany him as well as me?”
