westward for the Blue Mountains.
There was in the character of the folk of Delphond a gentleness and a happy laughter, too, that I knew would serve Delia well in times of peace. I had grave doubts that I could raise an army here that would fight. In that, as you will hear, I did the Delphondi an injustice. But then, in my black, dispirited mood, I canceled them from my evil calculations. Even so, I could understand that I had no right to bring war and bloodshed to this pleasant estate, that I would truly be the evil man I know myself to be if I forced these gentle folk to take up the sword, and carried fire and slaughter through their comfortable country. Delia had told me that Delphond, willed to her by her grandmother, was a tiny estate. It took me two full days to reach the western border from the port city of Delphond. Truly, the ideas of size of the Kregan people, with the much greater landmass of the planet, are of a different scale from those of Earth. Even their methods of travel have no significant influence on their conceptions of distance, for whereas the canal boats travel so leisurely, the fliers cover vast distances very rapidly. Astride my zorca I bid Remberee to Delphond, which her people call Delphond the Blessed, and rode on into Thadelm, the neighboring country, owing allegiance to Vad Selnix. That land shared much of Delphond’s rural beauty on its southeastern borders, but gradually changed in character as I wended northwestward, until the land sprawled gray and featureless beneath the glare of the suns, a wild expanse of moorland and rolling downland. A Vad is one of the intermediate ranks between a Kov and a Strom. I rode on and passed a pleasant “Llahal” with the few people I saw. I was able to catch a few rabbits -
very much like Terrestrial rabbits, a meat of which I am not over-fond — and the ever-present palines worked their usual magic.
If necessary, I would beg.
By this time you must realize that I didn’t care what I did just so long as I reached my Delia of the Blue Mountains, my Delia of Delphond.
By this means and that, and, I am relieved to be able to say, without doing anything of which I was truly ashamed, I traversed the country in a northwesterly direction, passing through Stromnates and Kovnates and Vadvars, and through a number of wide estates, as big as states in themselves, owned by the Emperor. When the mountains began to loft on the horizon I knew I was approaching my goal. I had sold one of the daggers, but I kept the rapier and remaining main-gauche, for I felt I might have need of them above the usual need a man has for weapons on Kregen. I fell in with a caravan of calsanys, with preysany-litters, and with a guard of zorcamen. The servants wore shirts with sleeves banded in bold and black.
A zorcaman wearing a close-fitting helmet of iron, with a nasal and a high flaunting plume of gold and black feathers, hauled across my path. He had no lance. His quiver of javelins was unstrapped and he balanced one of the long casting shafts in his right hand as he eyed me. I said, as civilly as I could: “Llahal.”
“Llahal,” he replied. Then: “Who are you and whence do you travel?”
I knew what to say.
“I am Drak ti Valkanium, and I go to High Zorcady in the Blue Mountains.”
“Your business?”
He was a big fellow, and beyond him the rest of his company jogged along escorting the caravan. There were fifty of them, a sizable little squadron, and judging from the bulging sacks and panniers of the calsanys, they were extremely careful with what they carried. They were not a mere merchant’s caravan, like that of Naghan the Paunch on far Turismond — or even of Xoltemb, in Segesthes, as far in the opposite direction.
“Who are you?”
The lifted javelin quivered. “I am asking the questions, dom.”
“By what right?”
His laugh was intended to be scornful, but I detected a note of uncertainty.
“You travel alone, Kr. Drak. I am Hikdar Stovang, and I travel on the business of the Kov of Aduimbrev. We are about to enter the Blue Mountains, and I want no secret enemy at my back.”
“You are one of Vektor of Aduimbrev’s men!” I relished this. “That is good. If you will, I would like to travel with you. I, too, have no wish for unseen enemies at my back through the Blue Mountains.”
He spat. He had shown his authority, had sized me up as a simple Koter, a gentleman, and was prepared now to let me join his caravan. “The Blue Mountains,” he said. “When the Kov marries the Princess Majestrix I hope to Opaz I am not stuck out here on duty. The place is a death trap.”
I was fascinatedly interested, but my questions must be of such a kind, and in such an order, as not to arouse his suspicions. We turned our zorcas together and rode knee to knee. He sheathed the javelin. He was a soldier, doing a job, and not much caring for it.
The retainers of Vektor were heartily sick of the whole business. The quicker their master married the Princess Majestrix and had a brood of children to carry on the imperial line, the better. Then perhaps they could all return to their old ways and all this chasing about, first here, then there, seeking to make Delia of the Blue Mountains make up her mind, could finish. “I’ve saddle sores on my saddle sores, Kr. Drak!” declared Hikdar Stovang. “By Vox, I’m black and blue where I sit down.”
I smothered my chuckle. I can always react like a normal man where my Delia is concerned. She had been leading them a dance. Impudently refusing to marry the man of her father’s choice, then arrogantly refusing to marry at all, she had held them all off, going from one of her estates to another, staying with friends — I felt my senses quicken at that — she had kept them all at bay ever since her mysterious arrival back in Vallia.
“But all the nonsense is going to stop, now, Kr. Drak. We carry the wedding gifts. The Emperor is in High Zorcady. The Princess Majestrix is there, also. So is Kov Vektor.” Hikdar Stovang sounded like a man well-pleased that a difficult and unpleasant job is finished. “Where the Emperor is, then that is where the wedding will take place. And right glad, to the glory of the Invisible Twins, am I that it will soon be over.”
Aduimbrev lay to the north midlands, and Stovang couldn’t wait to return home. The Vomansoir Cut had not gone through Vektor’s Kovnate, and I guessed we had flown over it in the ice airboat. Now I set my face forward. Oh, yes, I relished the irony of thus riding in with the very wedding gifts of my rival, but that rival held all the aces.
A few canals have been cut through the Blue Mountains, and one, the Quanscott Cut, is carried through the longest tunnel in Vallia, driven through the heart of the Blue Mountains to the coastal strip on the west where stands Quanscott, the major port on that stretch of coast. But the Emperor would be riding up to High Zorcady astride a zorca, unless he chose to ride like old women, monks, or children, and saddle a preysany.
I knew that here, all around me in the rolling wild country leading up to the Blue Mountains, roamed thousands, possibly millions, of zorcas. This was zorca country. The frowning citadel and the town that had grown up on the granite crags around it in sight and sound of rushing waterfalls was aptly named High Zorcady. On most days clouds drift around the highest towers. From the ramparts on a clear day you can look out and see so vast an expanse of country that the very coil of the world seems to lie beneath your feet.
We had some way to go yet before we reached that high and inaccessible place, full of crags and water- thunder, drifting with clouds and the wide-winged crested-korf. That night we camped in a hollow by a stream and I was able to appease my hunger with hot vosk and taylyne soup. I noticed that double guards were set. Stovang was jumpy. He had been carrying this treasure of wedding gifts all around Vallia, it seemed, in futile chase of Delia, on the run from her father’s marriage plans, but I knew that he was not apprehensive on account of the gifts.
The Blue Mountains, it seemed, were notorious.
According to Hikdar Stovang, bandits and robbers and assassins lived in every cave and crevice of the rocks.
I could see I was welcome as an extra sword. Fifty zorca riders had not been considered too many guards. Among the zorca riders in the service of Vektor and wearing his colors and insignia — a butterfly on gold and black — were halfling mercenaries, Rapas, Fristles, a couple of Chuliks. They appeared a reasonably disciplined and efficient bunch, but I slept with a hand on my rapier hilt, and with a lifetime’s experience I slept ready to leap up in an instant. This knack of sleeping soundly and yet with the ability to react to the noise that threatens usually serves me well, for it has been learned in the harsh life of seafaring, or adventuring on Kregen; it is not a gift of cloistered universities. Among the zorca riders were two Womoxes. Although outwardly as composed and drilled as their companions, they exhibited to me clear signs of a much greater degree of agitation. I had fought Viridia’s Womoxes, and found them formidable opponents, their stumpy horns mounted on their foreheads able to jab at an enemy’s eyes with terrifying power. Now they made no pretense at sleep. They stayed on guard all night, alert, their weapons drawn, waiting.
