Armada of Antares

ached to see him acting so vivaciously to maintain his habitual lion-like bellowing and roaring.

Once again concern over a friend had seduced me from my true work. Concern over an enemy had made me forget he was a Hamalian, an enemy, a man who was fighting the men of my own country of Vallia. Curse all wars!

So, speaking, I admit, with a greater heaviness than I wished to show, I said, “I’ll ride out with you, old fellow, as soon as can be. We’ll see what a totrix regiment can do.”

It doesn’t matter, we are told, if you lie to your enemy. I’d lie and cheat and do the dirtiest tricks possible on my enemies to assist my friends. As we sat in the scented air overlooking the pool with the happy sounds of splashing and diving, though, and I looked across as Rees took up a handful of palines and I saw his pleased look, knowing I had lied to him, I had no love at all for the life of a spy. I must get on with spying, though. .

I had been in Ruathytu less than a day. Adding on our travel time from Pandahem I fancied Tom Tomor and Kytun would have the army on the move heading northwest, I judged they would only have gone a short distance. As for Pando and Tilda, they must wait on the icy slab of anticipation for my return. I had not shaved this morning, and resisted the attempts of a charming little apim girl to shave me during the bathing ritual.

Rees stood up, flinging the last paline into the air and catching it in his lion-mouth, his golden mane flowing. “You look as scruffy as the back end of a quoffa, Hamun!”

Chido guffawed and, in his turn, stood up.

But all the same, as Chido rose his eyes caught mine and he made a face which said, very clearly, “Poor old Wees is badly off color.”

The cause might be that idiot called Nath the Crafty and his obsessive hatred of diffs, but I was not at all sure of that. It could just be that Rees felt more than a little humiliated that his gorgeous regiment of zorcamen had failed again so disastrously. The first zorca regiment he had raised had been tumbled over by a regiment of Pandahem hersanymen. It could be.

Well, it was no use trying to saddle a fluttrell before you catch it. And, equally, I had my own zhantil to saddle.

Many of our old friends and acquaintances of the Sacred Quarter had gone off to war, and the place festered with a sleazy gaiety that displeased me, notwithstanding the place was the capital city of an enemy country. The presence of so many diffs also posed an unsettling problem: there were many more fights centered on racial differences than there had ever been. At the time — I admit with all due shame, now — this had no power to worry me. The more fighting men of Hamal who were put hors de combat at their own hands, before they got to battle with my warriors of Valka and Djanduin, the better. By Krun! Yes!

A fistfight broke out among a noisy group of bathers below the terrace as we turned to leave. Shouts and yells spurted up, bouncing from the high fire-crystal roof. Other people avoided the ugly scene, knowing the guards would quickly arrive. Rees turned back, looking down with hot eyes. Chido let out a tchh of annoyance.

“There is that onker Gordano! He only came in from his volgendrin last night, for he called on me and left a note, and here he is brawling with Fristles.”

“He should have found you last night at the Scented Sylvie,” said Rees, his voice growling. “Maybe a damned Kataki would have slashed his throat open with his tail blade.”

I did not like this at all. But I caught at that word Chido used, volgendrin. I had heard men speak of them, as I have indicated, but I had not bothered, being busy about other pursuits. But the word must have a meaning over and above what I supposed.

Chido turned back and leaned over the terrace parapet. The fight down there waxed warm and two men went headfirst into the pool. From one of them redness drifted into the water, chill and ominous.

“Run, Gordano, you fambly!” yelled Chido. “Run!” But, being Chido, he shouted, “Wun!”

Rees shouted something, but in such a way that his meaning was lost. He strode out, flinging his towel around his golden mane. I looked with Chido down at the poolside, at the greenery growing lushly in ceramic pots and hanging from the multi-planed rafters supporting the fireglass roof. A pot smashed, and an apim and a Numim, fighting furiously, rolled into the water in an almighty splash. I did not know which of the men fighting down there might be Gordano. I looked back over my shoulder. Rees had gone. Then Chido gripped my arm.

“By Krun, Hamun! The guards have them!”

The guards sorted out apim and diff and trundled them off in different directions. Chido let go my arm and wiped his forehead. “And Gordano’s arrested. The law will deal with him, the great onker.”

“What does he do?” I said to Chido as we trailed after Rees.

“Gordano has some sort of job — Havil knows what — over on his volgendrin. He doesn’t talk about it. Mysterious feller, even if he is my cousin and a Vad.”

I pondered. When I had heard those three evil men plotting with their voices rising to me through the bronze grill there in the fortress of Smerdislad in Faol, I had more particularly marked their plans for me, for Vallia, for Hamal. They had said they would recruit more guards, if necessary, to take care of the volgendrins. Why should they do that? I had been taken to that fateful meeting only because I had followed Saffi to rescue her.

I truly believed I had done that because the Star Lords — or the Savanti — had arranged it. Now I felt strongly again that the Star Lords — or the Savanti — had arranged this poolside fight purely for my benefit. Much was to grow from that fight. So much that it was no coincidence but must have been a carefully arranged scenario for the furtherance of the plans of the Star Lords — scarcely the Savanti -

and an opportunity I must not miss. The Star Lords, of whom I then knew just about nothing at all, normally cared for me not one whit. But some force had put me in the way of overhearing that conversation in Smerdislad, and some force had directed that fight with its consequences to take place as I sat on the terrace directly above.

Chido and I walked off to the guardhouse to find out what we could of his cousin Gordano. The Hikdar in charge, fat and imposing behind a balass desk, peered at us myopically, and then back to the ledger before him. “Gordano? No, Horters, no Gordano has been brought in.”

Chido made a face and turned away, clearly considering that his cousin had managed to run from the guards. The fight had resulted in deaths, so the laws of Hamal would come into full force. The bleak local guard building, an unhappy piece of architecture, solid-walled and squat, had been designed to withstand a siege. One could see why. I walked off after Chido and saw him pause, then start to walk on again. Only this time he turned off the corridor down a side passage. I followed.

“Quiet, old feller. There’s that fambly Gordano, and he’s up to something.”

If the fight was indeed no coincidence but the chance I believed given to me by the Star Lords, it would be a single chance. From now on I must work alone. If I failed in this, I might easily be hurled back to the Earth of my birth, flung in a blue radiance fashioned after the likeness of a monstrous scorpion, sent packing four hundred light- years away from all I held dear on Kregen. No wonder I stepped lightly!

This Gordano, rapidly and fluently talking to a somewhat thick-headed guard, a dwa-Deldar, looked far more like the usual Hamalian than ever young Chido could. I could not hear what he was saying, but I saw the wink of silver as a handful of dhems passed, to be clutched and stuffed away with practiced ease.

Chido opened his mouth. Gordano saw him and his voice rose to continue effortlessly: “Lahal, Nath!

I’ve just been telling this good fellow that as I am Naghan Lamahan it is essential I write a letter. Now that you are here you can deliver it for me.”

Chido gaped. I could imagine the wheels revolving in his mind. He was no Nath, by Krun! And this was Gordano ham Thafey, the Vad of Unlorlan, the son of Chido’s father’s brother, and who in a Herrelldrin hell was this Naghan Lamahan?

“Lahal, Naghan,” I answered. “Nath and I will see your letter safely delivered.”

This Gordano ham Thafey, the Vad of Unlorlan, gave me a pretty close stare, I can tell you. My dirty wisp of chin beard could not have impressed him, but the guard and Chido both spoke at once, then, and we had to sort out the babble.

“You must hurry, Horters. The Hikdar will be yelling for me any mur!”

“Very well. A mur only, then.” Gordano drew Chido aside.

At that moment a bull voice roared along the passage. “Deldar! Where in Havil’s name have you got to, you cramph of an onker!”

“By Havil!” gasped the Deldar. He bolted across the corridor to grab Gordano. That worthy, a dark-skinned