moons, would go into this magnificent tent and the flaps would be let down and no one would see him until reveille. As we rode in the long journey he took more and more to calling me up to ride at his side. I was uneasy. This sign of favor marked me among his retinue. Duhrra accompanied me and we slept lightly in our little two-man tent at night when we were not on guard duty.
Gafard summed it all up in a phrase. 'I need men like myself, men I can trust, about me. I see in you, Gadak, a man who can go far. Your loyalty is what I ask.'
I assented with the usual words. But I knew well enough that he had other men in his retinue who would dispatch me without a qualm if I angered him. Autocratic, absolute power — well, I knew all about those baubles and the paths they led a man’s feet into.
For my own good, perhaps, my periods of absolute power on Kregen had been heavily broken up by periods when I was the recipient of harsh authority. Although, as you know, I react with vicious hostility to most forms of authority when they are manifestly unjust.
We crossed the River Daphig at last, a brownish swirling flood running through eroded banks, and pressed on into the disputed territory. We had long left the cultivated areas behind, the enormous factory farms of Magdag, the immense pasture lands, the vast expanses of head-high grasses. Now we ventured into a sparser land, broken, where water became precious. Our goal was an outpost from which we would seek out the leemsheads and the barbarians after we had rested and recouped. That night Gafard said to me, 'I hunt on the morrow, Gadak. You will ride with me.'
'Your orders, my commands, gernu.'
'Aye.'
Of his immediate retinue there were a number of men, not all apim, with whom I rubbed along, quelling my distaste for the Green, consoling myself with the reflection that I planned for the future when the Red might once more rise.
On that morning Gafard rode out hunting. With him went five of his favorite officers, two women, and me, Gadak.
The beaters, simple swods earning a few obs, ran ahead crying up the game, and we rode slowly along after. We all carried the short simple bow of the inner sea. There were, I had noticed, no Bowmen of Loh among the mercenaries of the army. And another thing I took note of — this little army was composed of overlords to command, of mailed men-at-arms to obey and act as cavalry, and of mercenary swods, cavalry and infantry, some mailed, some not, some apim, some not. There was not a single sign of the superb fighting army created by Genod Gannius on the model set him by the slave phalanx of Magdag.
We rode along, bright and glittering under the lights of the Suns of Scorpio. I rode easily, looking about for quarry. We hunted what there was to find, for some would offer good eating and the others would offer the challenge of predators disturbed in their own hunting grounds. Presently I found I had trended to the left, going through a rocky defile where the sand puffed beneath my sectrix’s hooves. A shout from the rear brought back my attention. Gafard rode up with one of the women, sitting her sectrix in the fashion that told me she was a rider, for all she wore a long green robe concealing her and — most unusual in Turismond — a heavy green veil. Loh is the continent of secret walled gardens and veiled women.
I guessed this woman to be Gafard’s paramour, the woman of the sumptuous palankeen and luxurious tent. He made no offer to introduce me, and, with a bow, I went to fall in at the tail.
'Ride with me, Gadak.'
So I reined in to his left. The veiled woman rode on his right, which is a privilege given to very few. I disliked anyone walking or riding on my right.
Even out hunting he could not desist from talking.
'The king’s plans, Gadak! I tell you, with our army we can sweep the southern shore of all the Red! We can turn the whole inner sea Green.'
'If that is Grodno’s wish it will surely come to pass.'
'You have not seen the army of the king. This is a mere rabble, a mercenary host hired to put down the leemsheads and barbarians. Down on the southern shore — that is where the battles are.' I risked a question.
'And Shazmoz?'
Shazmoz, one of the last frontier seaport fortresses of Zair, had been heavily besieged. Pur Zenkiren, a Krozair Brother, now broken because of ill health and disappointment, held it against impossible odds. He made a gesture of irritation. 'It holds, still.' The woman remained silent, but I knew she listened.
'That old devil Pur Zenkiren holds the city. His days are numbered. Prince Glycas leads the army on toward the east, on to the fortress of Zy, and on to Holy Sanurkazz itself.' So that was where the evil rast Glycas had got to. .
I did not venture to ask why, if Gafard was the king’s favorite, he was not down there, leading this formidable army. Perhaps the king preferred him closer to hand.
We walked the sectrixes slowly, hearing the calls and shrill hunting horns of the beaters ahead and to our right. We were for the moment alone. Gafard went on talking.
'The king has fashioned an army like no other upon the inner sea — save for a contemptible slave army fashioned by this Pur Dray.' Perhaps this would explain his obsession with the Lord of Strombor. I had learned that Genod Gannius, fruit of that Gahan Gannius and the lady Valima whom I had saved at the Grand Canal, hailed from Malig, a powerful but small fortress city of the northern coast some twenty dwaburs along from the Akhram. That explained the presence of his parents there on that fateful day so long ago. All that area lay under the sway of Magdag, the city of the megaliths. Even the important conurbation of Laggig-Laggu, near twenty dwaburs up the Laggu River and twenty dwaburs from Malig, owed allegiance to the king in Magdag. It also explained how I, knocked on the head and captured by overlords, had been shipped to Magdag. They took tribute of everyone for dwaburs about their city. Gahan, it seemed, had been in Magdag when I had led my old slave phalanx of vosk-skulls against the overlords. He had seen and he had remembered. The old king had been only too thankful that this dangerous insurrection had been crushed. He, like the Magdaggians, put his trust in mailed men riding sectrixes, armed with the longsword.
So Gahan had experimented and fashioned an implement. But it had been his son, Genod, who with all the ardent fire of youthful genius had seized on the implement and turned it into the most formidable fighting machine yet seen, who had used it to take Laggig-Laggu, to overturn the mercenary hosts of Magdag, to humble the overlords, and, eventually, to make himself king, the All-Powerful, the Revered, the Holder of Men’s Hearts.
I knew that fighting machine. The solid ranks of armored pikemen, the halberdiers and swordsmen in the front ranks, the wedges of crossbowmen shooting in their sixes. And, because the fighting-men of Segesthes and Turismond commonly derided the shield, the shield-protected phalanx could simply march forward and topple all the mailed chivalry sent against it.
'It was this same Pur Dray, the Lord of Strombor, who created the first phalanx. He was defeated and slain. And Genod Gannius now rules in Green Magdag.'
'But suppose,' I said, feeling the emotions in me boiling up in a rage comical and ludicrous, 'this same Dray Prescot was not slain?'
He reined in his sectrix with a lunging thump of hooves.
'What mean you?'
'Only, gernu, is it certain sure he was slain?'
He eyed me. He licked his lips above the black beard.
'No,' he said, at last, reluctantly. 'No, it is not certain.'
'And has there been no news of him since?'
He smiled, that ironic half-smile. 'I can say what is common knowledge, that men tell stories of two Krozairs of Zy who claim this Dray Prescot as their father.'
How my heart leaped!
'And do they speak false?'
He flicked the reins and kicked in his heels. 'Who is to say what is false and what is real? I would that it was true, though, by the Holy Bones of Genodras!'
'Aye,' I said. 'So that we might go up against this great Krozair and measure swords with him.'
'Not so, Gadak!' He spoke too sharply. He saw my expression and kicked in, harder, and sent his sectrix bounding off. The woman spurred up, also, and raced after him. I was left looking at their flying animals, and their
