Kytun looked at me.
Our officers had gathered, standing in the relaxed yet alert postures of the fighting-man. And very romantic and barbaric they looked, with their flying leathers covered in flying silks and furs, their jewels and their ornaments, their weapons gleaming, the feathers nodding from their helmets. I took heart from their firm bronzed faces, the light of determination in their eyes. The Djangs are a warrior people. They would need all their devotion to me, all their belief in an apim’s powers of strategy, for them to follow me now and trust my word.
I said, “We go on to the Mountains of Mirth.”
There was a silence.
I can see them now in my mind’s eye, as I sit talking into this microphone, here on the world of my birth. Oh, they are a bonny lot, the fighting-men of Djanduin! The brilliant colors of their decorations, their silver and gold sword-mountings, the jewels studding their harness, the meticulously executed designs upon their shields, all the affected trappings a fighting-man acquires during his years of service giving them this wonderful pagan, barbaric look tempered by the discipline of a professional army. The flutduin men are addicted to the pelisse and sabretache and look like savage editions of hussars. Their national weapon, the djangir, is worn by every soldier — aye! — and he knows how to use it to devastating advantage.
The silence hung.
Slowly I turned and glowered on them, one by one. The streaming opaz light from Zim and Genodras flooded down in brilliance all about us upon that windy plain, and the feathers and silks and scarves rustled and fluttered. With a steady slogging tramp of metal-studded sandals the infantry were marching up, as I glared around on my knot of high officers. The joat-mounted cavalry trotted by, every lance aligned, the colors flying.
I waited for one of them to break the silence, but all, every one, lowered his eyelids as my gaze fell upon him. I glared with special ferocity upon Felder Mindner, for he was my Jiktar of flutduins, and he looked away, and slapped his sabretache against his leg, and fidgeted; but he did not speak.
“By Zim-Zair!” I burst out, at last, forced by their sullen silence to speak against my will. “Must I explain everything!”
Kytun — that same K. Kholin Dom, who was a Kov and a good comrade — at last lifted his head, the coppery hair flying, and he said, “Dray — Notor Prescot, Lord of Strombor! We have followed you faithfully and well, in good times and in bad. But now that Djanguraj is attacked from the sea we-”
I would not let him continue. I did not wish him to utter words he would afterward regret.
“Yes! You have vowed to follow me, and I seek nothing from any of you, except the saving of the country!”
This was a lie. Thankfully, it was the last lie I had need of telling my men, my wonderful men, of Djanduin.
And, do not misunderstand me, for there were many girls who marched and rode and flew with us, glorious girls with coppery hair and tawny skins and flashing eyes, girls whose four arms were as deft with sword and djangir as any man’s. Girls who, into the bargain, had other, gentler skills.
“You have sworn to serve me as I serve you in freeing our country from the devil Gorgrens and the devil leems-heads! Together, Obdjang, Dwadjang, apim, diff, we will cleanse Djanduin and found for ourselves a new, clean, brave country where our children may live in peace!”
Around us now the army gathered,
In the sound of stamping hooves, the snorts of joats, the rustling of flutduin wings, the clink of armor and weapons, that silence came back. It hung there between us like a rashoon of the inner sea, stark and dark and brutal.
I glared at Felder; he is a fine fellow but a blockhead. I glared at the Obdjang Chuktar Panjit, and he rubbed his whiskers and looked away.
Again I looked around the circle of my officers, my trusted comrades, and again they looked away. And then Kytun stepped forward. He dragged out — not his thraxter but his djangir. He lifted it high.
“I trust Notor Prescot! I believe in him! I, for one, will fly to the Mountains of Mirth and there thrash the Gorgrens, once and for all!” He swung the broad short blade about his head. “Who will follow me and ride with Notor Prescot?”
The spell was broken, the dam breached. The djangirs flashed out, a forest of blades, and they cried, every one, that they would follow me. For, by Djan, was I not Notor Prescot, the man who had sworn he would put their poor abused country back on its feet again?
I stood, looking on them as they shouted and cheered and pledged themselves again, as the great cry was taken up by the massed men beyond, as infantry and cavalry and artillery and flyers all caught the fever, the understanding that this was a new and bright beginning, a fresh compact between themselves and me. And I looked and saw what I had wrought.
In that moment, I now see, I drove Khokkak the Meddler from my brain. In that moment there on the wind- blowing plain with the acclamations and the pledges of my men ringing in my ears, I sloughed off at last my willful foolishness, my malicious antics. I had decided to become King of Djanduin because I had been bored, on a whim, as something to do to amuse me. Now I saw something I should have seen from the very beginning: that I had been meddling in the affairs of men and women, men and women whose own lives were profoundly affected by my petty games. Never again with the men of Djanduin could I act the games-master. The country needed a strong hand at the helm. If I could become King of Djanduin, I would do so. Not, this time, just for amusement and to see if I could do it in the time allowed me, but so as to fulfill all the glib pledges I had made, so as really to make of the country a fine and wonderful place in which to live — as we had in Valka!
So we rode and flew and marched to the Mountains of Mirth, and we caught the Gorgrens as they tried to debouch from a high pass. The battle was long and weary, but in the end we overcame and routed them and sent them packing back to East Djanduin. When we had overcome our internal problems and gathered our strength we in our turn would descend from the Mountains of Mirth and drive the cramphs of Gorgrens right out of Djanduin and back over their own borders.
As you know the colors of Djanduin are orange and gray. I had not bothered overmuch about banners and flags, apart from ensuring that every unit flew its identifying guidon or standard. But just before the battle in the high pass of the Mountains of Mirth, in the pass known as the Jaws of Nundji, I had made a flag. I told the women who stitched it that it was to be a large flag, and a noble one, with a heavy gold-bullion fringe, and with golden ropes and tassels, and to the men who turned the staff I told them I wanted a djangir blade mounted atop, proudly, as was fitting.
So, when we fought the Gorgrens in the pass of the Jaws of Nundji, and routed them utterly, my old flag flew over my men. That old flag with its yellow cross on the scarlet field floated high as we charged down. Truly, with Old Superb to fight under, I was totally committed. No longer was I merely playing a political and military game, so as to see if I might make myself king within a stipulated time. Now, I did not care if I became king or not. Now I decided that Djanduin came first. . You may laugh and mock and call me a sentimental fool. For, of course, you might say, these Djangs were a leaderless bunch, naturally they would accept my decision. But they were hotheaded fighting-men, and they believed their homes were in danger, behind their backs, with their enemies creeping upon their wives and children from the sea. Had you been there on that windswept plain, under the streaming brilliance of the Suns of Scorpio, I do not think you would have dubbed me either an onker or sentimental.
When we were taking an enforced rest after the battle, seeing to our wounded and counting the cost, and I sat in a miserable little tent of hides and pored over the map, in the light of a samphron-oil lamp we had captured from the Gorgrens, the merker came.
His fluttclepper was exhausted. These fast racing birds are built for speed and speed and more speed. He had reached us from Djanduin in record time.
After the Llahals had been made and he had gulped a goblet of wine, he said, “I see my message of warning is not necessary.”
“Tell us, man!” Kytun spat out wrathfully, as befitted a Kov kept waiting, although he was a good-hearted fellow as I well know.
“As to that,” I said, “the merker will say that the ships were a feint, that they carried straw dummies, that only a small force landed, and straightaway took themselves off when once they had aroused the neighborhood and
