Armada of Antares

I said, “Notor,” turned, and marched off.

I had enjoyed myself — maybe you can understand a little more now the coldness which was entering my heart when I dealt with these heartless men of Hamal.

My plans were really no plans. I had followed coincidences, believing them not to be coincidences. Here I was, in the Volgendrin of the Bridge. I had had one chance and I’d taken it with both hands. Here, with the moons sailing past above and the night breeze redolent with the scents of secretly opening flowers, I went with the detail to my assigned quarters. What to do now? One thing remained certain in a shifting world: I should not tarry here over-long. If the Star Lords had thrown me this gnawed bone and refused me the meat, then I would fly back to my little army and joy in seeing Tom Tomor and Kytun once more. Naghan Lamahan. In Hamal that was like saying Charles Robinson on Earth. The detail left and I waited for half a bur before going off prowling, with all my gear still on me. I wandered down to the corridor where I’d heard the strains of song. Down there they’d begun on the Canticles of the Rose City, that famous song-cycle celebrating the mythical doings of the man-god Drak. When I pushed through into the mess they were still nowhere near the end. Apart from one or two flushed faces turned in my direction, the men went on lustily bellowing it out, all of it, taking a great joy in their singing. Of course, much of the mythical story followed different forms, for the legendary Drak is very much a god- hero of Vallia, and these Hamalians changed things accordingly. I settled down and a Matoc shoved an earthenware pot into my hand. I thanked him and drank the beer and so joined in the singing. This, to me, assuaged a great drought. Why is it that, in general, the ordinary common soldier, when he is not drunk on alcohol or the red killing fury of battle, is such a quiet, cheerful, decent sort of fellow? Maybe it is because, as so many would-be pundits have said, a good soldier is devoid of imagination. I tend to doubt that, but it is unfortunately so often true as to have become a byword.

The song finished and my earthenware pot was replenished. The wooden walls reverberated to the strains of Sogandar the Upright and the Sylvie. The first lines of this go something like: “Now Upright Sogandar had no idea at all, and thought the Sylvie wanted just to see his Painted Hall,” and from then on it is all downhill. There is much jocose repetition of “No idea at all, at all, no idea at all.” This always sends these tough old warriors into fits of laughter at the naivete of Sogandar the Upright. One thing was certain: these Hamalians wouldn’t sing The Bowmen of Loh. I talked to them as the jugs went around between songs, the apims and the Numims, the Pachaks and Brokelsh. Chuliks usually regard singing as a decadence. A little Och staggered up and gave us a charming solo: The Cup Song of the Och Kings. He fell flat on his face just before he finished, his six limbs twitching. A black-bristle Brokelsh poured a jug of beer over him as he lay; he did not stir. Talking to them, lazily asking questions so it appeared I had no interest in the answers, drinking and singing, I spent the best part of three burs in the swods’ mess. The Matoc — a very low grade of noncom — who had pressed the first beer on me, had been grumbling away, in between singing, and I had understood him to be worried about what he called the drift.

A Numim, his golden fur somewhat torn and his mane in shreds, belched and said, “Aye, dom! The drift this time has been real bad. Them mountings is a sight mortal close.”

“If I know the way of it,” said the Matoc, grumbling. “The binhoys will be late. By Kuerden the Merciless! I’d as lief be sent to the northern front.”

“Yes,” agreed an apim, leering. “Plenty of loot up there.”

Reaching over the jug, I said in a companionable voice, “I hear tell the army’s bogged down, up in Pandahem.”

They were interested. I managed to avoid the immediate charge of being a peace-monger, but I sowed a few seeds I hoped would grow to the discomfort of Hamal. But they were back to the drift again, cursing the Volgendrin of the Bridge.

They were also most crude in their comments about flyers they called exorcs. They wondered in their cheerfully rough way if the exorcs’ parents — which they called cows — would be blown away, and hoping by Krun they would. They had no time, that was very plain, for these exorcs. The wooden mess hall shuddered abruptly. I heard the noise of the wind, which had been steadily growing in volume, rising now with unmistakable ferocity. Again the wooden walls shook. The Matoc drained his jug and threw it aside, making no effort to refill it. “May Kuerden the Merciless take ’em all!”

he burst out. “It’ll be fencing for us this night, mark my words.”

“I never understand it,” said the Brokelsh, shaking his head. “The damned vo’drin’s not supposed to care about wind.”

“No more it don’t,” said the apim who wished to go to the northern front. “It’s just the drift and our bad luck.”

“Anyway,” shouted the Numim, scratching his torn fur. “Who’d be a Gerawin on a night like this, huh, lads?”

They all chuckled at this, most evilly, I thought, and I realized they were taking some sour pleasure from thinking of other swods worse off than themselves.

An ob-Deldar stuck his head in the door and bellowed.

That, after all, is what ob-Deldars exist to do.

“All out! Wenda!”[6]In the lamplight the ob-Deldar’s face exhibited an incipient case of apoplexy. The swods scrambled for the door. They took only their thraxters for weapons, leaving their stuxes and shields. They knew what they were being called out for.

The ob-Deldar saw me.

“You! Nit that crawls on a fluttrell’s back! Out!”

I went across to him and looked at him.

“I am not a soldier, dom. Hurry about your business. The Hikdar appeared to me to be a man of hasty temper.”

“By Kuerden the Merciless! You are right, he is a very devil.”

The wooden walls shook — no, the floor shook!

The Deldar took a fresh grip on his thraxter and pushed his helmet straight. “Look out for yourself,” he said. “You messengers don’t know half of it.” He ran out, already bellowing fearsomely for the men to get topside.

When I reached the door the men were already gone. I stepped out and gasped. The wind reached for me with burning fingers. Flat and level, the wind coursed across the ground, swirling dead leaves and twigs, scraps, rubbish, dust. I bent my head into it and tried to see what was going on. The four major moons were up, but drifting clouds broke the light and threw intermittent shadows on the earth. The wind blew with the furnace breath of the desert. I peered through slitted eyes and saw the trees bending. I also saw, but did not realize then the full significance of what I saw, the unripe fruit being torn from the trees and hurled through the air, squashing and dripping, wasted. A fresh party of soldiers ran up and the Hikdar, having lost all appetite for chicken, was bellowing them on. He saw me and was about to push past. I said, “I will help.”

“You will be welcome. We go to mend the windbreaks. The fruit is being destroyed.”

I could understand that. Heads down, our capes billowing, we struggled against the wind across that fruit- strewn ground. And I thought — I thought! — the ground moved beneath me with the violence of the wind.

After a time the fences showed before us. Tall constructs of wood and lath, they were tightly woven to give shelter to the fruit trees. Now there were grinning gaps torn in their orderly ranks. Even as we came up a whole section a full hundred paces long ripped away and flailed concertina-like for a moment, then broke and splintered. The air was filled with the whirring, deadly slivers of wood.

“On! On!” yelled the Hikdar, as though he led a regimental charge against swordsmen. A number of low huts against the fence contained repair materials. We were going to have to rebuild the damned fence if the gale persisted much longer. Soon I was employed lugging out lengths of lumber and running with them to the men propping the fences, reinforcing the props that had snapped, reweaving fresh withes between the uprights and diagonals to form fresh panels. It was damned hot work with that biting, burning wind scouring the air in the lungs and frying the eyes in the head. And, over all, the moons of Kregen shone down through the gale-torn gaps in the clouds. It did not rain.

Other men were there helping, and I realized that reinforcements had been brought up from somewhere, for these new arrivals were slaves. They were lashed into the work, while the soldiers labored through their own discipline.

A voller sliced down from above, riding on an even keel and without discomfort in the shriek of the gale. It