as we saddled up, strapping the clerketers tightly over our flying silks and leathers, and sent the flutduins lunging into the air.
Chuktar Naghan Rumferling, who was now dead, had been visiting a base camp at Cafresmot, halfway to the Mountains of Mirth. Pallan Coper and his wife had visited him there; I wondered, as I stretched forward along the neck of the giant flying bird and battled through the rushing air, if that visit had to do with a kingly crown and throne.
Pink moonlight washed over the steadily beating wings of the flutduins, and their sharp black beaks jutted forth ready, it seemed, to impale any obstruction. We flew on, with a steady remorseless wing-beat to lull us into a false sense of security. Wounded though he was, although much recovered, Felder Mindner had insisted on coming with us. Lara, too, had borne down all opposition, and her father, the Vad, had thereupon announced that he valued Naghan Rumferling highly, and the Pallan Coper, also, and would come with us, Nundji take him if he didn’t!
Dolar, the faithful servant to Coper, in his turn hadinsisted on rousing the other loyal friends he had been bidden to summon. Much of the blood spattering him, dried and caked as it was from his flight from the Mountains of Mirth, was not his own. He had merely said, “They would have prevented me leaving, Vad,” when Vad Larghos questioned him.
Truly, the Djangs have thews of iron and a simplistic view of life!
So we knew there were others in the sky this night, outward bound for the base camp of the army of the east.
If the Gorgrens got wind of this night’s doings, and decided to attack, who would there be capable of reading their plans and scheming to defeat them? So many of the Obdjangs had been slaughtered by this maniac, Kov Nath Jagdur, that the High Command was decidedly thin on the ground — or in the air. Cafresmot stood a good long way from the fighting front, the Mountains of Mirth rise something like halfway between the Yawfi Suth and Djanguraj and have in the past proved the final insurmountable obstacle to armies invading from the east. That is why they are called what they are. How many and many a time, so I had been told with a chuckle, had proud and confident armies burst through one of the tortuous routes around the Yawfi Suth or the Wendwath and marched through Eastern Djanduin, full of hopes of easy conquest and glory now they had broken into the country. And then, they had seen rising before them the sharp and narrow peaks of a mountain range that extended north and south and curved in a bow that faced them. Not overly grand or full of hauteur, the Mountains of Mirth, standing no comparison whatsoever with The Stratemsk, and yet many and many a time they halted enemy invasions in relatively poor country, and turned them back. The shock had proved disastrous to many armies, not least the Gorgrens on the single long-ago occasion when they had managed to reach the mountains; and the men of Djanduin had roared their merriment.
Truly, they were the Mountains of Mirth!
From Djanguraj to the outermost western limits of the Yawfi Suth is about a hundred and seventy dwaburs. So this night we had to fly approximately fifty dwaburs, for the Mountains of Mirth stand roughly a hundred dwaburs from the capital, roughly seventy from the Yawfi Suth. The firm steady beat of the flutduin I rode impressed me. I have ridden impiters, corths, fluttrells, mirvols, and many other of the marvelous saddle-flyers of Kregen, and it is difficult to choose the absolute best, for all have their good points as well as their weaknesses. We passed over the sleeping countryside and as She of the Veils rose before us and we blustered on against the rushing wind, the night filled with the pinkish moons-radiance. We followed the pink-glimmering reflections of the River of Wraiths. This river rises in the Mountains of Mirth and curving boldly southward flows westward through Djanduin and so to the Bay of Djanguraj where the Tarnish Channel meets the Ocean of Doubt. On that river stands Djanguraj, and also Cafresmot, our destination. Up and down, rising and falling with the long smooth wing-beats, we hurtled on through the level air and all about us fell the pink moons-light. This part of Djanduin is rich in agriculture and husbandry, and we passed over the wide fields and the farms and the carefully tended grazing, and presently we saw beneath us the darker splotches of shadow against the pink glimmer, and so knew we had reached Cafresmot. The town is small but active, with a good cattle and ponsho market and with a thriving trade in corn and other staples. Felder Mindner, who knew the area well, had received directions from Dolar, and we swung a little north and swooped down toward a lightless ranch house set among missals. The night wind rustled the branches as Felder Mindner dropped his flutduin beyond the trees and we settled to the earth screened from the house by the missals. Cautiously we crept along a track rutted by cart wheels and pocked by the hooves of calsanys. No one spoke. We were aware of the need of surprise, and I was quite content to let this Jiktar Mindner lead, for he seemed to know his business. Also, and the real reason, was that I recognized I was here only as a friend of Coper’s. Dolar had been to other houses in Djanguraj and aroused friends of the Pallan. Chuktar Naghan, visiting here, had been met by Pallan Coper, but had been treacherously slain by disaffected members of an army unit stationed here, well back from the front. If Kov Nath had instigated this murder, and we had yet to prove that, he had struck a shrewd blow. It would have been useless for Dolar to have flown eastward to summon assistance from the army of the east, for, as he had told us, Coper suspected treason among them. If an army mutiny was to be added to the troubles of Djanduin I could see little hope for the country.
This troubled me as I crept forward through the pink radiance from the moons, my sword in my fist. A Horter of Havilfar will carry his thraxter with him as a mere matter of dress; but I had taken nothing else in the way of weapons to what should have been a pleasant evening of swimming and feasting with the Demons, and so they had lent me a soldier’s gear. The thraxter gleamed silvery pink. The shield I held high on my left shoulder. At my waist swung a djangir. Some of Vad Larghos’ men carried crossbows, the others the compound reflex bow. We padded on like a wild hunting pack of drangs, scenting our quarry.
No lights, no sounds, came from the ranch house.
We passed the corrals on our left and heard the sleeping snorts of joats and the restless snuffling of totrixes. Mindner waited for us to come up and he spoke in a whisper to Vad Larghos and me.
“I fear we are too late, Vad. If the Pallan was not dead there would be sounds of fighting-”
“If you are right, Felder-” Vad Larghos took a shuddering breath. “If you are right, my boy, we must take our revenge upon these mad leem!”
As you know I am not a man much concerned with revenge. Justice — of a suitable kind — usually satisfies me. But I own I shared a little of the Vad’s anger. Punishment must be seen to be inflicted, for the country was falling to pieces and good men were dead.
We crept on and reached the final packed-earth space before the row of tall windows fronting the house. I looked carefully in the streaming moonlight and could see no sign of movement. The Vad waved his men to left and right and, their bows nocked, they spread out. Lara stood close to me, breathing in quick excited gasps, her face pale in the moon-glow. I put my hand on her left upper arm, and pressed, and she turned quickly to me and would have spoken, but I took my hand and the thraxter away swiftly and touched the hilt to my lips. I was indicating silence upon her; I think, now, she understood that little gesture differently.
Those around me were aware of the tense and jumpy business this was. At any moment a storm of arrows and bolts might spurt from those dark windows and cut us down. Someone had to go up to the front door and find out the truth of the situation.
Why I did what I did, I think, is easy to explain. Such boredom, such bitterness, such hellish misery had been my portion ever since I had been parted from Delia that a kind of fey recklessness had overtaken me. As I marched up to the door with my shield high and thraxter low I knew — I
I am not given to having my nerves racked by the various frightful experiences that befall me from time to time and which make life on Kregen so fascinating. If a bolt flicked toward me I would take it on my shield. I wanted to know what had become of Coper and Sinkie. I marched up to the door and kicked it in and smashed my way inside.
The darkness was partitioned by the long angular parallelograms of pink moonlight from the windows, paired from She of the Veils and the Maiden with the Many Smiles, softer and stronger, as one is the fourth and the other the first moon of Kregen. I padded in, vicious and ready for instant combat. The house was empty.
Mindner followed me in and then the Vad and Lara and we searched, and gradually, with the lighting of torches and the shouting and running of feet, we made a nice little hullabaloo, as the Vad’s men turned the house upside down.
“You take great chances, Notor Prescot,” said Jiktar Mindner. He flexed his four arms meaningfully.
“Perhaps. Where will the rasts have taken the Pallan and the Lady Sinkie?”
