For the actions of Tilly and Oby and Naghan and Balass could have brought them nothing but death. And what I saw now came from men who wanted nothing to do with death — at least, with their own death.
For the neatly ordered ranks of the guards swayed, and writhed, and collapsed. Guards were falling in droves. And then I saw the sleeting rain of the steel-tipped clothyard shafts, and so I knew why Delia was calling to me to hurry.
I went up and over that poor old boloth like a steeplechaser at the first fence. I poised for just a second, looking down.
An airboat of a style unfamiliar to me hung a yard or so above the sand. But I knew the men who manned her! I saw their great Lohvian longbows bending in that smooth and precise rhythm, and the deluge of shafts that soared to pierce through with bodkin accuracy and penetration. I saw, also, the varters lining her sides angled upward, and loosing bolt after bolt toward the Hyrklanan Air Service vollers. And, the aerial cavalry astride their mirvols were not left out of that continuous pelting rain of destruction that sheeted from the airboat.
The voller was the largest I had seen up to that time. Her petal shape had been drawn out into a towering construction of terraced power, long and beamed, three-decked forward, four-decked aft. The varters spat and clanged and the bowmen loosed and she looked like a snarling demon of the skies. And
— from every flagstaff floated the yellow cross on the scarlet field, that flag of mine warriors call Old Superb!
I roared out once, a mighty
Then I was leaping down from the destroyed boloth and feeling that familiar genuine pity for a noble beast done to death to please the debased whims of people who should know better. His three hearts pumped more slowly now as his bright blood poured out upon the silver sands of the arena, and he gave a last long mournful hooting, very distressing. But what else could I have done, there in the Jikhorkdun beneath the Suns of Scorpio?
Delia waited for me aboard the voller. I knew Seg and Inch and Turko had had adventures. Seg waved an arm to me, in between shooting. Inch flailed his Saxon-pattern ax about, cursing, I could so easily guess, that he could not get into close action. Korf Aighos, too, was there, jumping up and down, brandishing that monstrous Sword of War of the Blue Mountain Boys. He would be longing for a fast looting trip to bring him final satisfaction. Away up forward Tom ti Vulheim controlled his band of Valkan Archers, putting shaft after shaft down in the dense defensive pattern. I could have strolled up to the voller. Then I saw Obquam of Tajkent, that flying Strom who disliked the volroks, and I understood he had been that slender flying figure I had seen, and also how Seg and Inch had found me. Nothing could be heard save the beast roar from the crowd. Not even the shrieks of the wounded and dying as those cruel steel birds tore into them and their crossbows and shields spilled into the blood-drenched sands of the arena.
I wondered what Queen Fahia was thinking.
Halfway there I stopped. Naghan the Gnat lay on the sand, his heel wet with blood. He waved at me and his lips moved. I guessed what he was saying, for a crossbow quarrel at random chunked into the sand beside us.
“Sink me!” I said aloud, although no one could hear. “I’ll not leave Naghan the Gnat!”
I scooped him up and a bolt hissed past and so I did not walk, out of concern for Naghan, but raced to the voller and bundled him up onto the deck, where eager hands grasped him. I took a grip of the side, a brass-bound lenk coaming near a varter platform, and the airboat shot into the sky. For a lurid instant I hung there, dangling by one hand, for the other grasped the Krozair longsword which I would as lief hold on to as to the voller carrying us to safety. Wind whipped past. With a wriggle and a squirm, and with Seg and Inch hauling at my wrists, I came aboard.
As I stood up a shadow flicked over me, and I swung around, and there was Turko the Shield, at my back, and a last despairing try sent a crossbow bolt clattering harmlessly from the massive shield Turko lifted over me.
The noise diminished as we rose.
A Hyrklanan Air Service voller shot past, ripped and torn, her crew strewn across her decks with the clothyard shafts feathered into them.
“By Zim-Zair, my friends!” I cried. “You are most welcome!”
Delia clasped me and Korf Aighos cast a swirling scarlet cloak about her glowing nakedness and I laughed and drew her close beneath that flame of friendly scarlet.
Seg Segutorio smiled very merrily upon us, his reckless blue eyes and dark hair very dear to me. “We would have been here sooner, with the good aid of Obquam, but our airboat broke down. We had to take this fine new flier from some onkers who wanted to imprison us and take us to Hamal.”
Inch was standing on his head, looking very serious, and we laughed but respected him and his taboos, and gave him room.
“Tom ti Vulheim!” I roared up at that massive fore-deck. “Come down here and shake my hand!”
Korf Aighos produced golden goblets of refreshing wine.
“Seg and Inch, old comrades!” I cried. “Korf Aighos and Turko the Shield! Now we have an armorer with us in Naghan the Gnat. And a hyr-kaidur in Balass the Hawk. And, also-”
“And also, dear heart, a saucy Fristle fifi!”
“Aye! And also a rascal who will now aspire beyond the kaidur dreams of the Jikhorkdun. Oby, you imp of mischief! Let go-” But with a screech and a clang the varter with whose mechanism Oby had been tinkering loosed. Everyone gave a great cheer.
“A parting shot to a rast’s nest!”
Oh, yes, as we lifted high and higher and sped far and fast from that reeking blood-fouled arena of silver sand in the Jikhorkdun of Huringa in Hyrklana, I saw before me a great and dazzling future. One day, one day, Zair willing, I would return and perhaps, if the people were willing, cleanse the Jikhorkdun. Now the future opened out bright with that promise. For no ominous clouds boiled about our path and no supernatural winds contemptuously hurled us back as they had done when I had previously tried to escape from Huringa. I knew why the Star Lords had prevented my going before, for then I had been in the past relative to the freeing of Migla, and had I returned I might have met myself — so that I had been forced to wait in the Jikhorkdun until my two presents once again merged. No such impediment had caused the Everoinye to prevent Delia and me leaving together, and now the Star Lords were allowing us to go where before they had smashed us back to be captured. A task I had had no idea I must perform had therefore been carried out in the interim, and, looking at Oby as he joked and laughed with my good comrades, I fancied I could guess something of the Star Lords’ purposes. Oby, in running with our friends into the arena, had saved me twice over!
And, too, no insidious blue radiance crept out to toss me four hundred light-years back across the void to the planet of my birth. Once again, so I fondly thought in my joyful ignorance, once again I was free upon the face of Kregen.
In my arms I held my Delia, my Delia of Vallia, mother of our twins Drak and Lela, and the Suns of Scorpio streamed their mingled opaz light and the sky remained clear and serene above.
