Renegade of Kregen

'Be sure that if you do understand you tell no one.'

I felt it was about time he eased up from this fraught excitement. And, anyway, confidences like this were damned dangerous secrets. So, to goad him, I bellowed.

'Your orders, my commands, Gernu!'

He turned on me, saw me standing bolt upright, my ugly old face blank, and he caught himself and lowered his hand.

'Yes, yes you are right, Gadak. That is the way it must be. Regulations. Just remember. I let you live even though you have seen the face of the Lady of the Stars.'

'I shall not fail you.'

'I do not think you will. I would have you slain out of hand, you know that. And yet I would feel sorrow were that to be so.'

As I went out I said to myself, rather obviously for all it was the perfect truth, 'Not half as sorry as I would be, dom!'

Chapter Eight

Concerning the mystery of the escaped prisoners

There followed a short campaign that, although viciously and bloodily fought, contained nothing of interest apart from a demonstration of the overlords’ methods of maintaining order in their own lands and of dealing with incursions over their borders.

The people who lived beyond the river were mainly nomads, although cities existed as well, built by settlers in favored positions. No one knew very much of this whole vast area of Northern Turismond, and we were much less than two hundred dwaburs into a space of land stretching, it was estimated by the Todalpheme, for six hundred dwaburs to the pole.

These nomads did not remind me of my own Clansmen.

Oh, they possessed vast herds of chunkrah, and they lived in magnificent tents, and when they moved they shook the earth. I do not think the land was as rich here as it is in the Clansmen’s areas of Segesthes. These folk had their ways and their customs, traditions and folklore, and pretty and fascinating it all was to me at the time, to be sure. These people called themselves the Ugas, in their various tribes, and many races of diffs formed the tribes and nations. They had no zorcas. They had no rarks. Their weapons were inferior longswords and small bows. They did have the hebra, which I have mentioned, and a form of dog I believed they called ugafaril — the derivation is obvious — but which the Grodnims called rasts and cramphs and all manner of obscene things, for the dogs kept watch and alerted the camps and it was damned difficult to carry out a neat smart raid.

In all this I acted my part with as good a grace as I could muster. Duhrra, rumbling like a vessel of San Evold’s boiling with the cayferm, followed.

I will not weary you with the details of the campaign. We caught leemsheads who were very dreadful men with atrocities upon their heads, so that I had no compunction about dealing with them. The Ugas were another matter. But they were worthy foemen and after they caught a strong party of Grodnims and slaughtered them to a man the atmosphere eased. And, anyway, I did not see much fighting, being used by Gafard as an aide, a messenger, a trustworthy conveyer of orders and instructions. One day we surprised a war party of Ugas, and Duhrra and I had a taste of the reckless charge, swinging our swords, going up and down on the sectrixes, lumbering into a bone-crunching collision with the Ugas. Hebras went down. Swords whirled. The dust rose in driven clouds. When it was all over we inspected what we had captured.

This had been a slave caravan. The Ugas required slaves, as was common over Kregen except where Delia and I had stamped out the practice, and we were happy to release a number of Grodnims who fell on their noses and upended their bottoms and gave long howls of thanks to Grodno for their rescue. Among the slaves I saw a group of men and women with stark white hair. I thought, as was natural, that they were Gons, that race who habitually shave their white hair religiously until they are bald, out of shame.

'Not so, Gadak,' said young Nalgre, the son of an overlord of Magdag on Gafard’s staff, and therefore one day to be an overlord himself and so a candidate for the edge of my sword. He would have been a smart young man had he worn the red. As it was, he had no chance to learn what humanity meant. 'They are the Sea-Werstings. Best we slay them all, here and now, and so save trouble.'

'Are they so dangerous?'

'Little you know, renegade.' They liked to rub our noses in it, these puppies, when Gafard was not around. 'They are a sea-people and they should be sent sailing to the Ice Floes of Sicce, by Goyt!' He half drew his Genodder, scowling at the huddled group of naked white-haired slaves, and thrust the shortsword back into the scabbard with a meaningful snap.

Later there was a chance to talk to these Sea-Werstings, for Gafard had issued orders they were not to be slain but were to be kept awaiting his pleasure.

Their language was but little different from the universal Kregish, an imposed tongue, and it would have been easy to talk with them even had I not been blessed by Maspero’s coded genetic language pill given to me in Aphrasoe, the city of the Savanti.

I selected a strong man in the prime of life, who sat with bound hands and feet in a protective fashion by the side of a woman who, although not beautiful in the accepted sense, was firm of body and pleasantly faced, with a fineness about her forehead where the white hair had been cut away.

'You have fallen on hard times, dom,' I said, sitting at his side and offering him a piece of bread soaked in soup. He opened his mouth sufficiently to speak, and shut it at once.

'Thank you, master. Give it to my woman.'

I did so and then gave him a second piece from the earthenware bowl. I kept my weapons well away from his bound hands, just in case he had been working on his bonds.

'You are Sea-Werstings?'

He scowled. 'That is the foolish name given to us by these barbarians, and by you ignorant Grodnims.'

'Then what is your name, and where is your home?'

As we talked so I fed them soup-soaked bread, and gave also to the others nearby.

'We are the Kalveng. We are a seafaring folk, with havens all along the western coast of Turismond. When our long-ships breast the foam and our weapons glitter across the dark sea, then all men tremble.'

'I have never been there. Is it very cold?'

He looked at me as though I were an idiot. 'No more than a warrior may bear, wearing mail and wielding a sword.'

'And a woman?'

'They, too, are handmaidens of Veng.'

We talked more. It seemed to me the spirit of these people would not be broken by fetters and chains. Had I been a king ruling a country menaced by their depredations, I fancy I might have heeded well the advice of that young puppy Nalgre, the Magdaggian overlord’s son.

This Kalveng, Tyvold ti Vruerdensmot, clearly a proud and stubborn character, told me much of the unknown lands of northwestern Turismond. In the map I roughly sketched out I indicated that coast with a mere scrawl, a line of no meaning, for the coast there had no part to play in my story then.[1]The inner lands are riddled with vast lakes and inlets of the sea; there are fjords and rapids and marshes, a whole vast area aswarm with life and people on the move and people in their keeps and towns. As the folk of the inner sea face inward, to the Eye of the World, so the nations of the northwest hold themselves aloof from others!

'What is your name?' said this Tyvold ti Vruerdensmot.

'I am called Gadak.'

He looked astonished.

'And is that all?'

'Aye.'