shadows. I whirled. Half a dozen drunken soldiers were staring at me, and shouting and gesticulating. One of them was trying to wind his arbalest, but the ratchet kept slipping and he kept falling over his own feet. Another drew his thraxter, waving wildly, and charged.
I knew what they would have done to Coper and Sinkie when Kov Nath Jagdur arrived, and so I could resign myself to cutting this hulu down. He fell without a screech. The flutduins were aloft now, their yellow wings powerful in the pink moons-shine. I jumped for my bird, the last remaining one, and took off without strapping myself up in the clerketer. I found the ready bow and I drew and loosed six deadly shafts before we rose past the boma, and six of those less drunk than their fellows, who were trying to shoot up, fell, screeching.
Out over the boma we whirled and a darkness descended as the crude torches flared and died. Then eyes adjusted and I was seeing my comrades rushing for the flutduins and mounting up. Each bird can carry three people, at push of pike, and we were not overloaded as we winged off into the Kregan night. No surprise at all, none whatsoever, that the Lady Lara contrived to leap up before me and let me grasp her around the waist as the flutduin belabored the air. She leaned back and her coppery hair brushed my cheeks.
“I declare, Notor Prescot! Hai Jikai!”
We flew off, and, I think, perhaps that had been a good Jikai. Not a High Jikai. But, still, a Jikai to remember.
CHAPTER TEN
They say the devil finds work for idle hands.
Well, there are many devils of many different shades of deviltry on Kregen, as there are parts of that profoundly mysterious planet where devils are accounted of no value at all; and I suppose the devil who got into me was most likely to be Khokkak the Meddler.
I do not think it could have been Sly the Ambitious, or Gleen the Envious. No, on reflection, some few aspects of Hoko the Amusingly Malicious must have helped along the general deviltry of Khokkak the Meddler.
At any event, what with my own desperate boredom and savage misery, and the way the country was going, and the stupid succession of stupid kings, and what was happening to fine people like Coper and Sinkie, for something to do I decided I would become king of Djanduin. This was a consciously mischievous decision.
As you will know, among my clansmen my success there had been entirely because I would not allow myself to be killed, when, in truth, I had no great reason to live, and through the accumulation of obi and a growing respect, culminating in the selection by the elders and the election of myself as leader, subsequently Zorcander. And in Zenicce no one had been more surprised than I had been myself when Great-Aunt Shusha — who was not my great-aunt — had bestowed on me the House of Strombor. And in Valka, I had fought, I and my men, for the island, and they had petitioned behind my back with the Emperor to make me their Strom. As for being Prince Majister of Vallia, that meant nothing. Delia, as the Princess Majestrix, had been the prize not only for me, but I as her prize. So I had not gone out of my way to grasp for ranks and titles and honors. I had with some calculation accepted Can-thirda and Zamra, but they were political acquisitions, with an eye to the future. Here, in Djanduin, with much inner amusement, I took a calm decision. I, Dray Prescot, would make myself King of Djanduin.
It would not be easy. That was all to the good. I had what was left of ten years to do it in, and the harder it was the more amusement I would have.
Oh, do not think I did not falter on occasion as the years wore on, when I saw fine young men, superb fighting Djangs, dying on some stupid battlefield, or in some affray that went awry; but I took the weakling’s comfort in the knowledge that had I not struggled to put the country in order those fine young men would have died, anyway, and many more with them. When Nath Wonlin Sundermair was assassinated as he waited in my tent for me — while I was out repairing a varter that had been damaged by a chunk of rock thrown by the enemy artillery — do not think I was unmoved. N. Wonlin Sundermair had fought them and shouted for aid, and my guards had come running, too late. The assassins were caught. A military court sat, and adjudged, and they were hanged, all six of them, hanged and left to rot. The fateful charisma that envelops me whether I will it or not worked for me in Djanduin. Many men, and not only Djangs, but Lamnias and Fristles and Brokelsh and others of the marvelous diffs of Kregen, had reached a dead end in their hopes for Djanduin. The leemsheads were now so bold in their raids that only strongly escorted parties of non-Djangs might venture out onto the white dusty roads, or take cautiously to the air astride their flutduins.
The onslaught of the Gorgrens had, at last and following on the death of Chuktar Naghan Rumferling, burst through a pathway of the Yawfi Suth, and a clever feint southward toward the Wendwath had sent the bulk of the Djanduin army rushing southward. The Gorgrens surged through the land of East Djanduin to reach the Mountains of Mirth. Here they were stopped, not by the army but by those old allies of Djanduin, the Mountains of Mirth and the desolate country at their feet to the east. You will recall that great period when the events chronicled in the song “The Fetching of Drak na Valka”
were being enacted. Somehow, during this time when I struggled with only two hands to hold Djanduin together and to defeat the Gorgrens, I could take no high joy from the enterprise. No song, I thought, would be composed by the skalds of Djanduin to commemorate these wild and skirling events. Well, I was wrong in that, as you shall hear.
One day when the little band I had gathered together — old soldiers, young men out for adventure, rascals like Khobo the So, one or two diffs from overseas who thought I looked a likely prospect for future plunder — came down into a hollow among tuffa trees and found the remnants of an army unit shattered and burned, I met Kytun Kholin Dom. We had a smart set-to with the Gorgrens — nasty brutes — before they were seen off, and I took pleasure from the way this tall and agile young Djang fought. He roared his joy as my men came running down swiftly into the hollow between the tuffa trees, and his thraxter twinkled merrily in and out, and his shield rang with return blows.
“You are welcome, Dray Prescot!” he yelled at me, and dispatched his man and swung to engage the next. “Lara has told me what a great shaggy graint you are! But, Lahal! You are right welcome!”
“Lahal, Kytun Dom,” I shouted, and ran to stand with him back to back and so beat off the last of the Gorgrens. Truly, he is a man among men, Kytun!
We had incredible adventures together and he became a good comrade to whom I could confide much of my story. We understood each other. He was a Dwadjang, and therefore as bonny a fighter as there is on Kregen, and I was apim, and therefore as canny as an Obdjang. We formed a great team. The years went by and the kings came and went and the Gorgrens moldered sullenly to the east of the Mountains of Mirth. On the day they made their final massive attempt to break through they also did something they had not attempted before, according to Kytun, through all of recorded history. We were riding our flutduins toward the mountains followed by the advanced aerial wing of our army -
oh, yes, by this time we had our own army, and efficient and formidable it was, too — when the merker reached us. We alighted at once.
“I find it impossible to believe, Dray,” said Kytun. His coppery hair blazed in the emerald and ruby lights from Antares. His tough, bluffly handsome face with the amber eyes twisted up in deep reflection as he twisted the signal paper. “The Gorgrens, may Djan rot ’em! Sailing across the sea to attack us!”
“The Gorgrens hate the sea, Notor,” said old Panjit, the Obdjang Chuktar who had thrown in his lot with us, at Pallan Coper’s urgent suggestion. “They have no navy, no marine. They are a nomad people above themselves with pride and greed who wish to sweep us up into their jaws, as they have done Tarnish and Sava.”
“I agree, Panjit,” said Kytun. “But the signal says their ships are landing men in the Bay of Djanguraj, at the mouth of the River of Wraiths.”
“Then the capital is immediately threatened.” Panjit gave his fine white whiskers a polishing rub. “We cannot be in two places at once. The army of the east must hold the Mountains of Mirth — but they are too weak, as we well know.” He looked at me a moment, wanting me to say something; but I remained silent. Finally he said, “The reserve army should be called out, of course. But they will never stand if the invasion is so close to Djanguraj.” Again he rubbed his whiskers. “We will have to return.”
