“We were trotting out, ready to charge, having those yetches on the run. The infantry was attacking. We picked up speed, yelling: “Hanitch! Hanitch! Hamal!” in the old way. And then. . then a crazy mob of maniacs astride animals — nikvoves, I believe they are called — smashed at us. My beautiful zorcas!”
He did not go on. He could not, I think, go on.
I said, “But the totrix regiments were smashed, also.”
“Aye. It is a sad day for us. What the Queen will say. .”
“Will you reform the regiment?”
“Again?”
“The war still goes on.”
“Aye, old fellow, the damned war still goes on. And the Queen will not be pleased. We have suffered a reverse. And I think her treasury does not have a never-ending supply of deldys.”
This was heartening. I prodded. “Do you think she would come to some arrangement? Not sue for peace, but desist from the fighting while arrangements are made?”
“Now that the rasts of Vallians have come in, maybe that will stay her hand. She has a fear of Vallia, for all they are a miserable lot, too stupid to build their own vollers.”
By Vox! It was true!
“And,” went on Rees, visibly growing warmer, “did you see the crazy man who led the charge? A big man, broad in the shoulder like you. His face was covered by a blazing golden mask. He came in at the head of the nikvoves like Hanitcha himself.”
I said, with perfect truth, “No. I did not see him.”
A breeze of alarm touched me. That golden mask was a mere toy, designed to mark me out so that my own men might know and follow. It had served here in that Rees had not seen my face. But suppose some imp of memory stirred, some mannerism betrayed me? Then common sense reasserted itself. How could the Trylon Rees possibly equate his bumbling friend Amak Hamun, for all he had picked up a few sworder’s tricks lately, with the puissant majesty of the Prince Majister of Vallia?
For Rees knew who that man riding like the thunderclouds in his golden mask was.
“A feller called Prescot. Prince Majister of Vallia. I’d like to have him at the point of my rapier!”
I coughed and twitched the controls. The airboat flew up and swooped, and Rees, thrown off balance, yelped, “What in the name of Hakki are you playing at?”
“A shadow, there under the moon. . It is gone now.”
He peered but could see nothing. “We should be up with the remnants of the army soon.”
“Would you give the Jikai to the Vallians for their victory?”
He looked at me as though I had sprouted devil’s horns.
“The Jikai? To nulshes of Vallia! Are you off your head?”
“They beat us, fair and square.”
He chewed on that. His hand brushed his golden mane. He did not like the thought. I pressed on relentlessly. “If they march to fight the main army, they might overthrow that, also. Kov Pereth-”
Luckily he burst in then, interrupting me, fortunately concealing my lack of up-to-date knowledge out of Hamal.
“Yes! The Queen threw Kov Pereth into a dungeon in the Hanitch! That idiot Kov Hangol is Pallan of the armies of the north now. I know him! A bungler, but he knows how to fawn on the Queen, Havil take him!”
“She’ll run out of Kovs soon.”
“You may jest, Hamun. But you have a sorry truth in the jest.”
“Then she may turn to a Trylon, perhaps the Trylon of the Golden Wind.”
“She knows I have never toadied to her, and dangerous that has been, fool that I am. No, old friend, I think we know each other well enough by now for me to tell you that the King himself frowns on his wife’s follies. Of course he is powerless, but one day. . who knows?”
“The King?” I said, surprised. “But he is a mere puppet.”
“Today, yes. If the war goes on. . then tomorrow, who’s to say?”
As you may imagine, I digested all this very thoroughly. It would not be as easy as all that. Queen Thyllis was seated very firmly on the throne — she and the Opaz-forsaken manhounds that lolled on her golden steps. The King her husband was a mere cipher. If the Queen was to be deposed, I hoped for little from the King. Anyway, as soon as a great and suitable opportunity arose, a mighty victory, for instance, then Queen Thyllis was going to hold her triumphal procession and have herself crowned Empress of Hamal. She was hard, and evil, and power-crazed.
Mind you, she would make exactly the same insults about the Emperor of Vallia and his son-in-law. I could guess.
Rees pointed down over the wooden coaming.
“There they are. We’ll have to go down at once, before they shoot at us.”
I swung the flier around and set the control levers for a rapid descent. In the vitals of the craft the sturm- wood orbits would be turning and the silver boxes would be rotating around each other, their power directing and upholding the flier. Down we plunged. I still had plans about vollers and silver boxes in Hamal, and this time I would not be put off by a miserable farce of dirt and air. No, by Zair! For this time I was armed with knowledge I believed had been sent to me by direct intervention of the Star Lords or the Savanti.
Any help from them was like a gallon of water in the Owlarh Waste — something not to be believed. But this time I believed, the water was no mirage.
So we slanted in and landed, quickly ringed by fierce, hot-eyed men of Hamal, soldiers who had lost a battle and did not care for the experience. Units were mixed up, but discipline still held together, and we were passed through to the Chuktar who had taken command after the general had been slain. These remnants were on their way north and west to join up with Kov Hangol, the new commander in chief. Our story excited little comment, even though we were the only two to escape after being made prisoner, as far as I could determine. I’d have something to say to my own men later if there had been others.
Chido said that, by Krun! he’d given Rees up for dead. Of course, dear old Chido, he said Wees for Rees. He stared at me as though I was a ghost. He goggled at me, his cheerful, flap-eared, chinless face alight with fellow feeling.
I said, “Chido, you old rascal. How happy I am to see you alive!”
We spent two miserable days with these miserable men, and then a merker came with orders for Rees to take himself and what remained of his officers back to Ruathytu. I went also. I believed Rees would have need of friends. Other officers who had fought and lost were also to report back. The men were to rejoin the main army and then be distributed into other regiments. The flank force had been wiped out. On the flight back no one spoke much. They all acted like a bunch of misbehaving midshipmen up on first lieutenant’s report — only those poor devils suspected heads would roll. It is, I assure you, a painfully curious and sobering experience to share the suffering of men who go to meet a harsh and unjust fate, knowing you are the prime mover, the person responsible for their suffering. Believe me.
There also flew with me the memory of the blood, smoking and hot, which had been so lavishly spilled on the battlefield of Tomor Peak. I had seen men pierced through, men whose limbs had been hacked half off; I had seen zorcas screaming in agony; I had seen whole regiments smashed away to a red pulp. In the arrow storm I had watched all this — and sitting in the voller on the way to Ruathytu, capital of Hamal, I wondered just how much of the reality a vindictive queen could comprehend. What she saw in her foul Jikhorkdun paled beside the reality of a battlefield.
How many of these officers would end up in the arena, spilling their guts in the Jikhorkdun for the sadistic pleasure of the crowd and their evil ruler?
So, of course, the danger rose in my mind and mocked me.
I had borne at least three names in Hamal that could identify me, clean or dirty, bearded or clean-shaven: Chaadur. Bagor ti Hemlad. Amak Hamun Farthytu.
Well, I was Hamun now and had no wish at all to be Bagor ti Hemlad again, for he had run afoul of Queen Thyllis and for a time had been her plaything. That cramph of a King Doghamrei had attempted to have Bagor slain by setting him alight and dumping him out of a Hamalese skyship down onto the decks of a galleon of Vallia. One galleon had burned. This crazy onker Bagor, with his trousers on fire had wrecked the two Hamalese skyships in a midair collision, and then had taken passage aboard the other galleon to further adventures.[4]
