“Yes.” This was true. “They live on Kregen. The quicker they understand what that means, the better.”
But I felt a soreness at my heart. Innocence of youth should be continued for as long as possible, in an ideal world. Kregen, under the Suns of Scorpio, is not ideal, even if there is much in that beautiful and terrible world I prefer to my own Earth, four hundred light-years away. Delia glanced down, about to say something, but called up to the children instead. I knew I had spoken thoughtlessly, even after all the time I had lived on Kregen under Antares. How do you explain to your wife that you were never born on the world she was born on, that you came from a distant speck among the stars of heaven?
Like any weakling I had been putting off and putting off the time when I must explain to Delia. I had been brought from Earth to Kregen many times through the agency of the Scorpion, through that mysterious blue radiance that encompassed everything and which transported me from one world to another. The Star Lords, those unknown, aloof, supernal beings manipulated me from time to time, to carry out their wishes. Certainly I had been able to manufacture a crazy kind of strength that had given me some opposition to them; but I was always conscious that their purposes, dark and unknowable at that time, demanded more from me than I was prepared to give. As for the Savanti, those mortal but superhuman men and women of Aphrasoe, the Swinging City, their purposes were altogether more direct, for they wished to make the world of Kregen a fit place for men and women to live, in friendship and peace, with dignity and honor.
The four corpses and the unconscious would-be assassin had been removed. As stikitches these four must have been high in their trade. They had successfully penetrated the high fortress of Esser Rarioch overlooking Valkanium, and managed to make their evil way right to the target. It had been their misfortune that their potential victim had been a ruffian called Dray Prescot. No stikitche would go around wearing a special kind of fancy dress proclaiming him an assassin, of course, for his days would be smartly numbered if he was so foolish. I bent and picked up one of the steel dominoes. There was blood clotting around the milled edges. This came from the fellow who, before he died, must have pondered the lack of half a face. The metal was still warm. It was merely an artifact, a lump of metal, fashioned into a mask with two eye-pieces, a swell for the nose, with straps to secure it in place. I had worn a similar steel domino during that fracas in Smerdislad. At once impatient urgings closed on me. I threw the mask to the grass. Today a newly raised regiment of archers was to be given new standards. The important thing to remember here was that in Valka, an island Stromnate which prided itself on its own Valkan archers, armed with the compound reflex bow, this new regiment had been raised and armed with the great Lohvian longbow. The men had practiced religiously with this great bow and I had received tremendous help and encouragement from that master bowman, Seg Segutorio, the Kov of Falinur.
He had said in his feckless way: “To make a longbowman you must start training with his grandfather!”
To which I had replied. “But these Valkans of mine, Seg, are used to drawing the bow. They only have to draw that extra notch, to snug the string under their ear, and to feel the extra power across their shoulders. They will grow into it far quicker than you would credit.”
And he had said, “I’ll train ’em for you, Dray. Aye, by the Veiled Froyvil! I’ll run ’em in little circles until they can shoot out the chunkrah’s eye!”
He had been as good as his word. But then, I never expect anything less from Seg Segutorio, a good companion and a friend.
So, with the honor of Hyr-Jiktar going to my son Drak, the regiment would receive the new standards today.
I bellowed up: “Come on, Drak! You must learn never to keep honest soldiers waiting on parade. Least of all bowmen, who are a rough lot at best.”
“I am coming down, Father.”
And down he came. He did not come down as he had expected.
Delia let out a little ladylike shriek. Lela let rip an enormous laugh from so dainty a little maid. For Drak went down headlong from his high branch, a fluttering, yelling bundle that hit the water with an almighty splash.
We stood on the poolside as he swam across and climbed out, lily pads hanging around his ears.
“Drak!” said his mother.
Lela giggled.
Drak tried to get at his sister to push her into the water; but I took him up into my arms, all wet as he was, and carried him off for one of the fastest dryings and changings of clothes he had ever endured. The urgency in me was not just to have the standards presented to the longbow regiment. Thoughts of Smerdislad, where I had overheard much that still puzzled me, thoughts of the airboats that my country of Vallia must acquire for the coming struggle with the overweening Empire of Hamal — these were the imperatives urging me on.
Quite simply Hamal, the greatest power on the continent of Havilfar, which lay south of us below the equator, was bent on a road of conquest; abandoning her attempts to fight on three fronts simultaneously, she had concentrated her strength for the thrust north against Pandahem. Pandahem was the island to the north of Havilfar and to the south of us in Vallia. Vallia and Pandahem were old-time adversaries on the oceans of Kregen. If all the countries of Pandahem went down in ruin there was nothing to stop the ambitions of Hamal from turning against us in Vallia. And Hamal possessed fleets of superb flying ships, airboats which they manufactured, which we did not. I had discovered some of the secrets of the air-boats and I wished to put through a big program of building. The Emperor of Vallia, Delia’s father, had promised to make up his mind. The parade this afternoon would provide a good opportunity to force him to give his consent, I had thought, for he was flying in to see his daughter and his son-in-law and, no doubt, to find out what I had been up to in Havilfar.
“Who were those men, Father?”
“They were foolish fellows, Drak, paying a visit without telling us first they were arriving.”
“But you hit them — you hit them hard.”
By the lice-infested scaled hair of Makki-Grodno! How did you tell a little boy that men had come to slay his father, and his father had slain them instead? In cold words? Drak had seen. Maybe he thought this was a game in which one thumped a playmate over the head and fell down, shouting out that he was dead, and the next minute jumped up ready for further mischief.
I said, “Sometimes you have to do that, and you will find out when to do it and when not to do it. I promise you, Drak, you will know. For now, you must always listen to your mother and do as she says-”
“I know, I know! But, Father, why do you have to go away? Dray’s father doesn’t.”
“And if you don’t hurry up Dray’s father will not be pleased.” That was true. Like myself, Seg Segutorio, the father of young Dray, intensely disliked keeping bowmen waiting on parade. So, spruced up, young Drak was hauled off to do his part in the presentation of the standards to the First Regiment of Valkan Longbowmen.
We met this same Seg Segutorio riding up at breakneck speed as we wound down the narrow path from Esser Rarioch. The fortress pile reared stark above our heads, dominating Valkanium with its ordered streets of neat houses, the parks, the boulevards, the shops, the docks, all spread out below. The industrial sections were over on the other side. Seg reined his zorca in, so that the animal scattered sparks from his four dainty steel-shod hooves. Seg looked extremely upset.
“Dray! Delia! By the Veiled Froyvil, my old dom! I heard — I thought-”
“We do not yet know who it was. But one did not die.”
“I give thanks to Erthyr the Bow you are unharmed.”
The streaming mingled light of the twin suns cast those familiar and dear double shadows as we trotted on, going down from the high fortress and out onto the paved kyro with colonnaded shops all around. People there were, honest Koters and Koteras of Valka, who set up a shout as their Strom appeared. I waved a hand to them, knowing some of them by sight, able to recall the lusty days when together we had fought the slavers and the aragorn for this rich and beautiful island Stromnate of Valka. Seg and my other friends, Inch in particular, had learned to accept the puzzling aspects of my life, and I had made a half-promise to tell them all one day. We trotted on, a brave cavalcade, out through the new walls and so over the ditches and onto the wide and dusty plain called Vorgar’s Drinnik. This Mars Field now held a splendid array of bowmen, lined up in impeccable and yet not rigid ranks. Despite all our attempts at knocking some kind of discipline into these rough and hairy fighters of Valka they set up a hullabalooing cheer as their Strom rode out onto the field.
A knot of zorcamen waited at the saluting base, and many orderlies stood ready. The new standards, cased, stood planted by the piled drums. Colors and panoply blazed everywhere. A trumpet blew and flags and banners unfurled from staffs set in ranks along the edge of Vorgar’s Drinnik. Among that small group of waiting zorcamen I saw Lykon Crimahan staring at me beneath the brim of his helmet. I did not much care for the expression on his
