boomed a laugh and clapped the young Strom on the back, and bade him bear up and face the future, when the Emperor was dead, and men could plunge their hands to the elbows in rich red gold.
These Undurkers wore coiled artificial headdresses of hair plaited and colored from which rose their squarish helmets. Their clothes, of good Lohvian silks and Segesthan hides, were studded with bits of metal and base gems; their Jiktars would wear real gems. Their feet were hidden in heavy boots, and I knew why; the hands of the Undurkers are hands that would not look amiss hanging on the wrists of a man, but in their paws they betray their canine origin. They are, as the Gons are ashamed of their manes of white hair, ashamed of their hind-paws, and always wear heavy concealing boots. That was their business. I wanted a glimpse of the leader — and then nothing would stop me from heading through the piles of bones to the ruins in the center and all that waited there. Food, drink, and fuel had been brought in and the camp fires blazed into the night sky, obliterating the last lingering ruby drops scattered across the western horizon as Zim sank in the wake of Genodras. I saw Berran the Vadvar of Rifuji, a lean dyspeptic man with a nervous tic about his left eye, laughing and jesting, and marked him, for his Jiktars were leading his men against Vomansoir to keep them out of play. Over most of Vallia that might have any hand in this business the third party had cast the web of their intrigues so that here, in isolation, the Emperor might be murdered and the new leader proclaimed. This was more than a palace revolution; this work would drench the empire in blood and overturn old dynasties, set men’s thoughts and actions into new paths that might last a thousand years. Around the campfires I took a heaping handful of roast vosk. I was not too proud to eat with these men, for all that I might be slaying them before the Maiden of the Many Smiles had crossed the heavens. I shoved the six quivers of arrows away on the strap holding them together; I kept my eye on them.
“Hai, Strom Drak!” said Larghos, very merry, quaffing his wine, his eyes beads of glitter in the firelight. He swaggered over with a bunch of men of whom I knew some, and whom I knew I would make myself acquainted better later on. “The leader is busy, there is much to do, but he will see you when he can spare the time.”
I swallowed vosk and nodded.
The thought came to me then that it might be accounted a great deed — as true Jikai — if when we met I plunged my rapier through the body of this leader.
Even today, I cannot say if I would have done that deed or not.
The leader stood by a great fire, half turned from me, talking to a group of the nobles of the third party caught up in his schemes. With them stood the Chuktar of the Undurkers. At the leader’s side stood a younger man, laughing and full of merriment. This was the third party’s candidate for the hand of the Princess Majestrix, through whose marriage the leader would seek to legitimize his claim to the throne. Larghos led me forward.
“Here is Berran, Vadvar of Rifuji,” said Larghos. “And here also is Drak, Strom of Valka.”
We went forward into the firelight.
The leader turned, a goblet of wine in his hand.
I saw him.
It was Naghan Furtway, Kov of Falinur.
At his side, laughing and jesting, stood his nephew, Jenbar.
I froze, for a stupid moment held in a stasis of self-contempt. These were the two I had rescued from the Mountains of the North at the instance of the Star Lords. I had saved their lives so that they might destroy mine and the girl’s I loved.
Jenbar stopped laughing.
“Who?” he said. He peered closer.
“Berran, Vadvar-” began Larghos.
“No. The other.”
“Drak, Strom of Valka.”
“No, by Vox!” said Jenbar. His laughter returned, bright and evil in the firelight. His uncle looked at me. Kov Furtway stared at me — and I knew his thoughts, as those of his nephew’s, went back with mine to those icy slopes and snowy mountains. They had known and had planned all this, then, and how they must have mocked their secret knowledge of me, then!
Furtway said, “We were surprised and disappointed when you disappeared from Therminsax. We would have taken you to Vondium, as you wished.”
“Aye, by Vox!” said Jenbar, chuckling. “And the Emperor would have been mightily pleased to receive you.”
“As, indeed, he did receive you.” Furtway’s smile altered in character. “Although how in the name of the Invisible Twins you escaped him I do not know.”
“What?” said Trylon Larghos. “What are you saying, Kov?”
“Why, Nath Largos, do you not know who this man is, the man you call Drak, Strom of Valka?”
Larghos saw the evil undercurrents running here, and he stammered, and was silent. His fear of this leader, who was Kov Furtway of Falinur, was very great.
I poised.
“Chuktar Uncar,” said Furtway. “Feather me this fool with arrows! Pull him down as the trags pull down a leem!”
The Undurker unshipped his bow. Larghos was babbling. Jenbar was laughing.
“That man, you fools,” shouted Furtway, “is Dray Prescot! That wild clansman, the Lord of Strombor!
Slay him!”
I swung about and ran from the firelight and into the avenue of dinosaur bones. And as I ran the whispering rain of arrows whistled about me and clanged from those millennia-old bones in a sleeting shower of death.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The very tangle and interlacing tapestry of bones over and under which I leaped and dived saved me. One arrow only nicked me, a slicing shear through the leather over my left shoulder; a scratch, nothing. I dodged and ducked as best I could. These ancient bones, fossilized over the millennia and then cast adrift once again on the desiccated surface of the secret crater where these great beasts had trekked to die, surrounded me and in a weird and ghoulish way afforded me protection. The arrows sleeted about the iron-hard bones. I heard their chiming, like the bells of the damned, and I ran and leaped. One chance alone was left me now. A roaring bellow of rage pursued me. Kov Furtway had let loose his mercenaries, and the Undurkers, their proud supercilious noses high, were after me. I remember as I ran, hurdling risslaca vertebrae and all the scattered skeletons of giants of the past, that I had a most uncharitable thought about these halflings from Undurkor. Their long noses meant they could not turn their heads when loosing, otherwise the strings would have given them bloody stripes down those snouts. They used a short compound bow, and they must draw it as far as they might, to the chest, the lip, the nose. It is from the long throw of the great longbow that all its awful power is obtained, that long energy-storing thrust that gives range and penetration, when the shorter flatter staccato of the small bow slaps out jerkily.
Mind you — if an Undurker arrow skewered me now it would be just as painful as a cloth-yard shaft. The moons of Kregen floated past above and the shadows shifted strangely among that fossilized forest of bones. The hard clatter of booted feet pursued me. I ran. I dodged. There was no time for that old Krozair trick I so joyed in employing, of turning about and swatting the arrows away with my sword, something after the style of a flick-flick gobbling up flies on the wing.
“I’ll marmelize you!” a voice screeched at my back.
I ignored that kind of drivel.
I kept my bowstave horizontal so as not to foul the arching rib cages. Had my bow been strung — for like any frugal bowman I kept the stave unstrung when possible — I’d have risked a turn and a shot. But I kept on. Inky shadows barring the path succeeded by patches of pink moonlight passed, and I raced on. The avenue twisted and turned where bones too large and heavy to lift from the way imposed a turning. These serpentine windings saved
