He groaned and sat up, and tumbled over sideways.
“Life is sweet and there is much to live for,” he said, the gush of white mist spuming from his lips at each word. “Now I know that, but I cannot feel it. I am done for. Leave me, Koter Prescot. It is soft and comfortable and warm here.”
“It’s as cold as the Ice Floes of Sicce,” I said, “which is where you’ll find yourself if you do not brace up.”
I stared at them. If they died I would have failed the Star Lords, and then I would be flung contemptuously back to Earth. I might rot there for years. I could not face that. These men must be saved, so that I might remain on Kregen and seek my lost love and demand her from her all-powerful father.
The task was extraordinarily difficult and painful, but I got Furtway up on my back, bundled with ponsho fleeces, and buckled him in place. I put my left arm around Jenbar and dragged him up, and so, carrying one and dragging the other, I set off.
There was no ice pick, so I could not probe for crevasses. If we fell, we fell. The cold was biting into my brain now; all I could do was put one foot down in front of the other, thankful for the tall Vallian boots. Socks are known on Kregen, but, like the men of the Foreign Legion, most Kregans have no truck with socks. I would have welcomed a good thick warm pair right now.
The memories I have of that nightmare descent grow vague and more vague. I was aware of the green sun Genodras sinking in an eerie smothering of emerald and jade, and then the world turned into blood as the red sun Zim held for a short space the sole domination of the sky. At this time the overlords of Magdag would gather in their colossal buildings and pray to Grodno, the green-sun deity, for protection and grace. Or so the peoples of the Eye of the World believed; I had witnessed the rites held during an eclipse of the green by the red, and I guessed the overlords did not act as the world suspected. I was no warmer, but the trees were thickening and the snow — the eternal, damned snow — was petering out in drifts and crunching sheets through which I plunged to feel the hard rocklike ground beneath. The Maiden of the Many Smiles floated up into the night sky among the hosts of stars, and two of the smaller moons hurtled low overhead. In their pinkish light I trudged on. I had no conception of time or distance; all I knew was that I must go downhill. There had been a vague glimpse of a vast hilly plain when we quitted the clouds, cloud-bedappled. Now, as I lifted my head to look up and so out over the plain beneath, I saw that dark expanse beneath the moons spattered and dotted by myriads of specks of light.
Nearer, five hundred yards downslope, a light beamed up, warm and friendly and beckoning. I headed for it, fell against the wooden door, and went on hitting the door until it opened.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“You are a strange man, Koter Prescot.”
“Many men have said that, Kov Furtway. And it is true.”
We sat around the plain wooden table in the neat cabin and drank the superlative Kregan tea and warmed ourselves by the fire that crackled and sparked in the hearth, while Bibi, the lady of the house, fussed around us, delighted and yet awed at entertaining a real live kov in her house.
“How were you in the mountains, then, Koter Prescot?” asked Jenbar.
“I was lost. Believe me, I was hoping you were going to rescue me.”
They laughed at that.
Warmth, a good sleep, and now a piping hot meal of roast rolled-vosk-loin and a vegetable-pot, together with chunks torn from a long Kregan loaf and that Kregan tea I had sampled with my clansmen, had revived the three of us.
Bibi’s husband, Genal, was out chopping more wood. They lived well up here in the mountains, with a great store of food put by in the shed protected from snow-leem and deep-frozen by the weather, and Genal could bring in enough ice to be packed and shipped down to the plain to keep him and Bibi in moderate affluence. Genal the Ice, they called him down there.
“More tea?” fussed Bibi. “It is still fresh, Kov Furtway.”
He held out his cup and watched as Bibi filled it and he drank. He did not say thank you. In everyday life he never had to say thank you to anyone, except. .
“We bring our ice from Drak’s Seat,” said Jenbar. “By Vox! I’ve seen enough to last me a lifetime. In Vondium ice is all the rage, but not for me, Oolie Opaz, not for me!”
I was in Vallia. I must be. Vallia. .
‘Tell me, Tyr Jenbar. Just how far away is Vondium?”
He stretched and yawned and answered offhandedly: “Oh, I don’t know. Three hundred dwaburs perhaps, a bit more probably, something like that.”
“At least that, Jenbar,” said Furtway. “We had crossed most of these accursed Mountains of the North from Evir before we crashed. May the Invisible Twins smite those cramphs of Havilfar!”
I nodded. “One would think they did themselves a grave disservice by selling airboats that fail so often.”
Furtway grunted and reached for the palines that Bibi placed in a diced-wood bowl upon the table.
“They are arrogant in their power. Only they, as far as we know, possess the mines. One day, Opaz willing, one day. .”
Jenbar laughed and took up the palines.
“My uncle has an old dream, Koter Prescot.[1]We of Vallia are proud and strong; we produce all we require and may buy what we will all over the known world. But we cannot make an airboat.”
I nodded and the conversation drifted. The impatience to be gone sawed at my nerves. Vondium lay something like fifteen hundred miles due south. I had to get there — and I managed to retain wit enough to understand that through these two, Furtway and Jenbar, I might reach my objective faster than I could by traveling alone. They would provide transport.
Evir, across the mountains to the north, was the most northerly province on the island proper, although, as is common on Kregen, the coastal waters were peppered with small islands. One of those islands -
and not so small, at that — was Valka. If I said I was a Strom to these men now, they would not believe. But the name Dray Prescot was likely going to prove a handicap.
The clothes I wore, the black boots on my feet, the rapier and two daggers, were all from the corpse in the airboat. In addition, I had taken his money, as also the money from the others, for old mercenary habits die hard. The Kov and his nephew had not recognized either the clothes or the weapons, for they were of the plain and workmanlike cut common to the middle classes of Vallia. I suppose one might call that great mass of self- interested, self-centered, and intensely self-loyal people the gentry of Vallia. With this garb I fancied I could fend for myself in somewhat better style than I had when I had at last crossed the Klackadrin and reached Pa Mejab on the eastern coast of Turismond. In my view neither Furtway nor Jenbar were fit to travel yet, for we were still high in the mountains and the weather was bitterly cold. Since Genal the Ice had told us he would be taking an ice-load down the mountain in three days’ time, it was easy enough to persuade them to wait that long. I did not want to wait, but I already knew what Kov Furtway proposed.
Roads are not as good as they might be in Vallia, and no one, as far as I then knew, had shown the interest in zorca chariot racing that had caused the old Strom of Valka to pave a number of his roads across the island. The roads are, however, perfectly capable of speeding zorca couriers along their tracks which would not accept wheeled or sledged traffic. Heavy traffic goes by canal in Vallia. Furtway intended to dispatch a zorca courier from the post town below in a fold of the foothills with a message -
and a damned intemperate one it would be, too, I could guess — to his villa in Vondium to send a fresh airboat for him.
On that airboat I intended to enter Vondium.
All the great lords of the provinces of Vallia maintain splendid and sumptuous villas in the capital city, and use them whenever business or pleasure calls them to Vondium. When the lord is not in residence the villa is kept
