Bladesman of Antares

of the skies, a veritable aerial fortress. Thick were her timbers, massive her upperworks, profuse her provision of varters and catapults, her ports for bowmen. All this was a revelation to me, accustomed to the small vollers and airboats; the greatest fliers I had seen had not even approximated in size to these monsters. I saw then something of the awful power of Hamal. Two sky ships lifted off as the twin suns cleared the horizon, and as we rose, so the suns raced up the sky. Ob-Eye had the complete confidence of his master, and I saw and heard him giving intolerant and contemptuous orders to the captain of the ship, this Hikdar Hardin. This ship sported the colors and insignia of Hirrume. The lead ship showed the purple and gold of the Queen. In trail we flew out over the sea.

A hexagonal structure mounted on stilts just forward of the center allowed an uninterrupted sweep of deck fore and aft beneath. Other towers of various shapes and sizes housed artillery, the varters and catapults; this hexagonal bridge was the center of command, and there I was carried. The sky ships are built in a number of different fashions and styles, in the never-ending effort to achieve better efficiency. High in the control area, with Hikdar Hardin most uneasy, with Ob-Eye chuckling away, chewing cham and thoroughly enjoying himself, I waited like a chunk of frozen beef. When a lookout shrilled, high and fierce, everyone, including me, felt a climactic moment had arrived. Under Ob-Eye’s malicious eye the guards hoisted me up. They unlocked my chains and threw them on the deck. They stripped off my gaudy and humiliating clothes — for I had not had time to remove them after my regretted drink — and they dressed me in a gray shirt and blue trousers. Ob-Eye explained. He wanted to distill every moment of horror thrice over.

“When you fall into the sea, rast, those onkers aboard the Queen’s ship will think you a crewman and will suspect nothing.” Then he nearly split a gut laughing. “But, cramph, you will not be falling into the sea, will you?” And he guffawed his merriment to the skies.

Over our heads fluttered the bright colors of Hamal, and I realized we had slowed. Ob-Eye gave curt instructions. I was lifted and twisted so that I could look forward and down. I saw — and, seeing, I understood — and the full horror of what these cramphs from Hamal were doing drove coldness between my shoulder blades and a painful cramp into my stomach. Below on the blue glittering surface of the sea sailed two beautiful ships. I recognized one for sure; the other I did not know. They foamed along, their sails stiff and curved, proud, and from their trucks floated the yellow saltire on a scarlet ground that was the flag of Vallia.

Vallian galleons!

Oh, yes, it was perfectly plain what was afoot here. If Hamal would not sell vollers to Vallia, then Vallia must try to buy them elsewhere. Never before, I had been told, had Vallian galleons been allowed farther south than the towns of the northern coast of Hamal. They were restricted to the westward of the Risshamal Keys. The deputation to Ruathytu had been exceptional. And now here were these two gorgeous galleons, their sails proudly billowing, the spume flying, their forefeet crashing through the blue seas, driving on southerly to Hyrklana!

Like an onker I wanted to yell a warning to those two galleons down there, small with the distance and yet clear in every detail. The suns blinded from their paintwork, their gilding caught gleams from the ivory curve of their sails.

The Queen’s sky ship from Hamal was Pride of Hanitcha, and she had drawn out ahead of us. I watched in pure horror as she circled twice, coming up with the wind on the wake of the nearest galleon. I knew, then, and I felt the surging blood clashing and clamoring in my skull.

“Look, Bagor the wild leem! Look!”

A primitive lust for killing swept over the decks of King Doghamrei’s sky ship, Hirrume Warrior. Lips ricked back from teeth, eyes showed a devilish gleam, weapons were more fiercely grasped. Pride of Hanitcha slowed, hovered. I saw the black rocks tumbling down. I saw the iron pots spouting fire screaming down through the air to burst upon the spotless deck below, to spread and grow and devour the galleon, flickers of flame mounting with horrid swiftness up shrouds and stays, bringing down yards and spars, utterly consuming that marvelous galleon, so far from her home port in Vallia. I could not weep, for I was paralyzed.

“See, you rast! Now we burn the other — and you, Bagor the kleesh, will be the first torch to be flung down on her decks!”

They wheeled up an iron cage stuffed with combustibles. A torch glared in Ob-Eye’s hand. His one eye was quite mad.

“Thrust him in, put the torch to him, and throw him down upon the Vallian ship!”

Chapter Twenty

Sky ships and galleons

They stuffed me in the iron cage among the combustibles.

They wheeled the cage to the bulwark.

They lifted it on tackles.

They swung it out over the water.

Ob-Eye himself put the torch in.

Flames crackled up about me.

By Zim-Zair! This was no way for a Krozair of Zy to die and leave this wonderful world of Kregen and go reiving among the Ice Floes of Sicce! By the Black Chunkrah! What would my maniacal clansmen say, riding their voves like the wind across the Great Plains of Segesthes? By Vox! How would my people of Valka take the news? By Djan! My Djangs would nod their heads and say a man needed four arms, by Zodjuin of the Silver Stux! And Strombor. . and Delia, my Delia of Delphond, my Delia of the Blue Mountains?

Flames sprouted about me and I felt nothing.

Hirrume Warrior, captained by Hikdar Hardin, had not quite reached the correct position in the sky from which to release the flaming cage of combustibles onto the deck of the Vallian. The galleon I had not recognized had been burned. The one below now, creeping apparently slowly back toward us as we crept up along her wake, was Ovvend Barynth. A fine galleon, she was, belonging to the Kov of Ovvend, farther along the coast from Delphond, and I had been aboard her in the crowded harbor of Vondium in my capacity as Prince Majister of Vallia. In a few murs she would be a flaming volcano, and I the blazing human torch of her destruction.

The flames touched me.

Like a high-spirited zorca responding to a clumsy rider’s spurs, I felt the kiss of flame. I felt the heat. I felt the searing pain. I jumped.

I jumped!

Whether the drug needed the stimulus of pain to drag its victim back to life, whether I just shattered through my agony all the chemical bonds holding me, I did not know. What I did know was that strength and feeling flooded back to my arms and legs, to my shoulders and back — and to my rear, which felt as though my trousers were on fire.

I leaped.

I got a hand to the cable above the cage and I got the other onto the little wooden derrick. I hauled myself in hand over hand and gave a last barbaric kick at the flaming cage, knocking it free. It dropped away with a great hissing and roaring of flame — I did not stop to watch it drop all the way into the sea. I knew in the inferno of sensations clamoring at me that it would drop short of Ovvend Barynth. Even as I handed in along the derrick I caught a faint ironical cheer breaking up from the deck of the Vallian galleon. Trust my sailormen of Vallia to jeer at an enemy’s mistake!

Ob-Eye was glaring at me, openmouthed, his hands half-raised. Someone had done half the job already on him. All I needed to do as I came inboard was to smash my fist into his one good eye, and knock him flat. A stux flashed past my ribs. A thraxter chunked down past my head, biting deep into the bulwark. I ignored all of them for the fiery pains shooting and darting up my backside. I was aflame, all right; my pants were well alight.

I couldn’t stop. I charged headlong into the crowd of idlers who had gathered to watch me burn and bomb. They scattered, yelling, and thraxters flashed before my eyes. I seized the nearest guard, broke his neck, took his thraxter, slashed the faces of the next three who came at me, won a space in which it might be possible to