“We must find them!” exclaimed Lara. “Poor Sinkie! Think what may be happening to her!”
“I fear they must all be dead, daughter,” said her father, the Vad, somewhat gruffly.
“If they are, Vad,” I said, in my old surly way, “I will not believe it until I see them lying before me -
dead.”
“Oh!” said Lara, and she put her sword down as though suddenly aware of what it was.
“Jiktar!” I said and I saw them all jerk up at my tone. I had spoken as I would have spoken to a Jiktar of the army of Vallia or Valka, or a wild clansman who had not jumped immediately when I asked a question.
“I think-” Mindner began, a little hazily.
“By Vox! Spit it out!”
“If, as Dolar said, this terrible thing was done by the local army unit, they might have gone back to their barracks.”
“Are the Dwadjangs then so envious of the Obdjangs?” As he opened his mouth to make some sort of answer I chopped him off. “No matter. I know what I know of the Djangs. We fly at once to the barracks. Jiktar Mindner! You lead!”
“Yes, Notor Prescot.”
And so once more we mounted our flyers and took the wide-winged wind-eaters into the night sky of Kregen.
As we hurtled through the rushing air I considered how strange it was that these big rough fighting-men, the Djangs, so desperately needed someone to tell them what to do in moments like this. In a battle or an affray Mindner would never have been at a loss. If I say that the Djangs fight in such wise as to turn even Chuliks a little more yellowly pale than usual, I do not exaggerate. But they need leaders!
They would have all gone flying off to the barracks, whooping, to plunge down into as bloody an affray as you could wish; I had had to tell Mindner to detail a man to stay at the deserted ranch house to warn the following flights.
Yet this was only a tactical move, nothing clever in it, and I suspected there were as many degrees of intuitive intelligence as well as learned skill among the Djangs as among any other diffs. A number of the young fighting-men of Djanduin would go off to become mercenaries; but the vast majority stayed at home to work the soil and serve as soldiers in their own army, constantly menaced by the Gorgrens. Therefore the formidable fighting shape of the four-armed Djang was seldom encountered in the empires and kingdoms and free cities of Kregen. Djanduin is a rich kingdom, and yet it holds itself aloof from the rest of Havilfar, secure behind its treacherous bogs of the Yawfi Suth, the mysterious waters of the Wendwath, and the serried peaks of the Mountains of Mirth.
There was action aplenty at the barracks.
We saw the lights flaring and heard the yelling and shouting, whoops of ferocious merriment, the discordant clanging and banging of gongs and punklinglings and drums, and the wailing of flutes, the brazen notes of razztorns and trumpets.
We touched down out of sight and Mindner looked over a screen of thorn-ivy bushes forming a kind of natural boma around the barrack area, and he looked as delighted, as fierce, as obsessively pleased, as any fighting-man has any right to be casting his avaricious gaze on his foemen.
“They are Dwadjangs of North Djanduin, very fine doughty warriors, and I have no doubt that the madman Nath Jagdur has besotted their minds with evil promises.”
If it came to a fight between Djangs, as I knew, they’d fight, by Zair, they’d fight!
I wished to avoid bloodshed. Oh, I was bitter and savage enough in my self-misery not to care who got themselves killed; but I suppose the devil was working his dark and devious plans in me even then. We could see Coper and Sinkie, with other Obdjangs and a few Dwadjangs who must have remained loyal to them, sitting in a corner of the compound, the light from the two moons bright upon them. They had been bound with thongs. They looked dejected and frightened, as they had every right to be. And yet I saw Coper leaning toward his wife, and the way her little body jerked upright, her whiskers quivering, and I could guess with what sweet and reasonable fire he was putting courage back into her. He was a fine man, Pallan O. Fellin Coper!
The noise came from a drunken band of soldiery who had broken out the musical instruments; each man with a piece that would make a noise was making a noise, and each man was playing a different tune from his neighbor. Other men sang and laughed and jumped, and continually they drank deeply of the liquor that poured from great barrels turned on their sides and wedged up on trestles. I sniffed. Dopa. Well, no wonder they were making this racket. Dopa is a fiendish drink guaranteed to make the coolest headed man fighting drunk in a second, if he takes it neat. The dopa dens usually water or soft-drink their dopa in the ratio of ten to one.
“Drunk!” said Vad Larghos, with great distaste.
“I think, Vad, that Kov Nath Jagdur has made them drunk, for otherwise it is doubtful, even though they are Northern Djangs, that they would do what they have done.” Mindner looked a little sick, as he looked on this betrayal of the army in which he served.
“They may be too drunk to notice us,” I said. I merely tested the wind as I spoke, for I was forming theories about the Djang fighting-man.
“The hulus!” said Mindner. “They’re drunk enough to tangle with a leem. They’ll see us.”
There had to be a way around this. There were ten in the party of captives, and at least a hundred drunks cavorting about. Mindner had called them hulus. Well, here on Earth we apply insulting names, in amused despair, to idiots who are doing something wrong that we know, in normal circumstances, they would not do. It is all in the tone of voice, as when you call a man a bastard or a ratbag you can mean many different things. On Kregen one such term is hulu. And it summed up these onker-rasts perfectly, for they were more villainous at the moment than a simple stupid onker, and yet not quite as outrightly villainous as rasts.
I said to Mindner, “You will, on my signal, keep them occupied here. I am going to get them out with the flutduins.” He started to huff up at this, but I was brutal with him. “Don’t get yourself killed, Jiktar. And keep an eye open for the Lady Lara and her father. If you have to run away — aye! — run away from them, then run. Just give me a few murs in there, that is all.”
He managed to get out, “I shall accompany you, Notor Pres-”
“Do not be a nurdling onker! You keep those hulus occupied in there, and, by the Black Chunkrah, they won’t know a thing has hit ’em.”
I gave him no time to argue. Back into that moon-spattered night I went, and the Lady Lara pattered along with me, and I turned my look on her, and I knew — Zair forgive me! — what my face looked like then. “Go back, Lara, and keep out of the way. If you do not, I shall tan you so that you won’t sit a zorca for a sennight!”
“You hairy graint, Dray Prescot!”
And then I — Dray Prescot — chuckled. It was not in me to laugh, not then. “I have been called a hairy graint before, Lara, many and many a time — to my eternal joy!”
“Oh — you!” she said, and swung about and marched back to the distraction party outside the boma. Managing the flutduins was not as difficult as I had expected, and they followed me into the air on leading lines, a smoothly rhythmical flight that slotted them into a pattern that economically took up the minimum space their wide yellow wings required. We passed over the boma and that was the signal Mindner awaited. As I went streaking over the packed earth I twisted to look at Mindner and his party. They were putting up a brave show, loosing arrows, yelling and shrieking, and they’d thought to twist up quick torches from clumps of grass which they tossed cunningly down just the other side of the boma. These served before they burned out to illuminate the boma and the drunken soldiery and, by contrast, to drown the pink light of the two moons and throw Coper and the captives into shadow. The flutduins were birds that could not be easily hidden. I had no stupid ideas that I would not be seen. But the Vad’s marksmen were aware of the importance of Coper. So many Obdjangs had been killed that the Pallan of the Highways was now a most exalted personage. Vad Larghos’ men would shoot, and they would shoot to kill.
The flutduins landed and I was off the back of my bird and at Coper and Sinkie with a hunting knife. Their thongs sliced free.
“Oh! Notor Prescot!”
“Up, Ortyg!” I yelled, as Sinkie, calling on her husband Ortyg, fainted into his arms. “Grab Sinkie and get on a flutduin!
Savage slashes that, I confess, drew blood, released the other captives and I herded them onto the remaining birds. The flutduins rose into the sky. A crossbow bolt sheared past my arm and vanished into the
