glimmer of weapons, the gleam from an eye-socket, the black sheen of blood, and the harsh rock and dust, the ring of bones, the ruins, the desolation.
Vomanus cornered me where a dead Rapa still clutched his sword, his bird-beak embedded in the dust, the Undurker arrow protruding through his neck.
“Dray! I never thought to see you alive again!”
We talked. Much of our conversation dealt with what I have already related to you. I found my surmise was true. He had allowed himself to become the candidate so as to discover the secret intentions of the Emperor’s enemies. His warning had been almost too late. “And now we are done for, anyway, I think, Dray. We have had bonny times, but they are over.”
From the corner of my eye I was aware of the dark crimson shape, hovering. I said, “Vomanus, tell me true — you have no desires to marry Delia? You continue to support me?”
“Of course! Need you ask? I have spoken with Delia, and no woman loved a man as she loves you.”
He chuckled, an incongruous sound in those surroundings. “Although why so ugly a looking devil as you should manage it when all the chivalry of Vallia have been spurned — Vox take it! But you are the man, Dray Prescot!”
I heard Seg gasp.
“Come here, Seg!”
These two, Vomanus of Vindelka and Seg Segutorio, stared at each other, and I recognized the amusement in me at their instinctive sizing up, their flash of temperament. I told them both a little of the fuller story, and finished: “So we three are dedicated to the service of Delia of Delphond. Very good. Very fine. But where, by the Black Chunkrah, is she?”
All that was certain was — she was not trapped with her father in the tumbled ruins at the center of The Dragon’s Bones.
Naturally, I immediately took stock of the situation with the single obsessive desire to get out. I could make a run for it, and once inside the tangle of bones, no man or beast-man would catch me. Covering that open space would be the tricky part, for I would be shot at by Undurkers in front and by Lohvian Bowmen from the rear. Of the two I gave the Lohvians the best bet on feathering me.
“Sink me!” I burst out, and the other two looked at me strangely. I knew I must appear a black-hearted devil to them, a harsh, intolerant — and intolerable — man who demanded instant obedience. But other thoughts occurred to me. This man we defended was Delia’s father. That he was the Emperor meant nothing in my book. But if I left now, and Furtway succeeded in murdering Delia’s father in cold blood
— what would she think? What would she think of
Hell’s bells and buckets of blood!
I was in a cleft stick and it was damned uncomfortable.
Furtway flung his men in again, and this time they surged up to our parapet of stones. We had a few brisk moments when the swords rang and slithered, and men screeched with steel skewering their bellies. Then the third party mercenaries broke and we spitted them all the way back to the bone ramparts. Seg said, “I’m down to a dozen shafts.”
“Here, take these quivers.” I handed them out, sharing among the crimson Bowmen. They had lost all their Jiktars, their Chuktar was Opaz knew where, only three Deldars remained, and one badly wounded and dying Hikdar. Of the intermediate ranks, as you know, a man is called simply by the last and identifying portion of his full rank. Various organizations place varying numbers of degrees in each rank. The highest ranking of the three Deldars was a So-Deldar — that is, the third degree of Deldar — and he had seven more to go before he became a Hikdar. They were good men. But, as is my custom, I had been active in the fighting, shouting intemperate and callous orders in my brutal and domineering way, and they had listened to me, instinctively understanding that, for all my sins and ugly face, I was a leader, and they obeyed.
The Emperor came up and said abruptly, “Strom Drak. I have noticed how you fight, and I am pleased. Of the other matter we will talk by and by-”
I interrupted him. If you cannot imagine the full depth of my agony for Delia, the feelings of screaming madness possessing me, I can understand that. It has been given only to few men to grasp what I suffered then, and I would not wish that pain on anyone. So it was I interrupted the Emperor, and walked away, saying over my shoulder: “I will fight for you, Majister — aye, and slay those rasts for you! — but afterward we will talk, you and I.”
Pallan Rodway, a Vadvar, the High Kov of Erstveheim, two Stroms, and all the other nobles gasped their outrage. I was aware of Vomanus talking hurriedly with the Emperor; but another attack came in then and we were busily occupied in hurling the mercenaries back. But our numbers were thinning. I heard a Rapa grumbling that he had a throat drier than the Ocher Limits themselves. I gripped him by his clumsy throat, glared madly into his birdlike eyes, and I screamed at him that he’d be a dead Rapa before he drank again if he didn’t get back into the fight.
The Emperor watched all this. I was sane enough to realize that he was cunning enough to use men when it suited him; he had seen me fighting and wouldn’t arrest me — or make the attempt, Zair rot him! -
while I was useful to him. That’s how he had remained Emperor so long. I caught a whiff of perfume, a sweet, gagging stench, completely out of place in those surroundings. Across the clearing raced foemen to attack us. I looked quickly down and there, wedged into a crevice between rocks, crouched a man. He was sumptuously dressed, with a great deal of lace, silk, and golden ornaments. He wore a rapier. He smelled like a barber’s shop. I caught him by the collar and hauled him out.
“Get up and fight, you cramph!”
“No! No — I am no fighting-man!”
Once a Kregan reaches maturity he appears to age very little until the last years of his life, perhaps a few white hairs when he is a hundred and fifty or so; but I fancied this man was considerably older than my comrades. I kicked him.
“You fight, dom! You fight for your Emperor!”
An Undurker arrow whistled between us and clanged against the rock. He screeched. His face was covered in sweat. It sheened under She of the Veils like pink icing.
“Fight, cramph!”
He staggered up then, his face contorted into a look compounded of fear and hatred, pride and anger. For a second I thought he would take his place in the line of men and halflings now furiously battling with the waves of attackers as they sought to smash past the pitiful barrier of rocks. Then he crumpled and twisted away. In the wash of light I saw the colors, made meaningless by the pink moons’ light, but the emblem was unmistakable. It was a great butterfly so I knew those colors were gold and black.
“I do not want to die!” he moaned now, all the hatred and anger gone, and the pride slipping until only fear was left.
“We’ve all got to die some time, you calsany! Better in a great fight than rotten with disease in a bed!
Draw your sword! Fight!”
Some of the last vestiges of habitual unthinking pride clung to him and he looked up at me, a white face, delicate, weak, foolish. “Do you not know who I am, kleesh! I am Vektor, Kov of Aduimbrev! I do not take orders from a mere Strom.”
I looked at him, and the Emperor moved his hand. Pallan Rodway and the High Kov of Erstveheim, two old men and therefore not required in the fighting line, lifted Vektor by the armpits and took him away. I glared sullenly at the Emperor.
“That is Vektor of Aduimbrev! That is the thing you wish to marry your daughter!”
And then I laughed. I roared out a great coarse insulting gutter-bred laugh.
“You thought to rule him when he was married, keep him from getting in your hair! I despise you, Emperor Majister! You sought to soil your daughter by marrying her to a thing like that to serve your own dark and evil ways.” And then, because a wash of Chuliks poured in over the wall, such as it was, I pushed him aside. “Get yourself under cover or you will be killed.”
An Undurker arrow arched in over the ruins and dropped full for the Emperor’s chest. My rapier nicked out, cleanly as we Krozairs of Zy know how, and chopped the arrow away.
