ship-Hikdar had been slain in the battle with the two swifters of Gansk. Many of their comrades had gone up to sit in glory on the right hand of Zair in the radiance of Zim. Now they sent a covey of Grodnims down to the Ice Floes of Sicce without compunction. Some noise fractured the night in that swift struggle. That was unfortunate but seemingly inevitable. I belted for the control deck shouting to Duhrra to make sure everyone was aboard safely. The controls were perfectly familiar to me. I hit the levers and we went up in a smooth, swooping rise, a rush of power. The smaller voller was not inits mooring place and so King Genod must be sending more messages. I chilled.
Suppose he had taken the voller himself? But no — no, Zair would not play that trick on me. I did as I had planned and brought the voller to earth again in the first spot that appeared suitable from the air. I knew this terrain from carrying messages and had selected a number of deep gullies where the voller might be hidden. I double-checked the best place from the air as we slanted down, and was satisfied she would not be spotted if the two-place flier nosed over.
Hikdar Ornol ti Zab organized his men into throwing the scrubby branches of nik-nik bushes over the deck to shield her. The nik-nik is a nasty plant and the men were scratched. They did not care. My plan appealed to them.
But, Hikdar Ornol and Duhrra both said to me, growling: 'We shall come with you, Gadak.'
'Not so,' I said. 'I am able to pass easily where you would have trouble, Duhrra, and you, Hikdar, could not pass at all.'
They fumed and argued, but they knew I was right. The voller had to be secured first. Now came the tricky part.
I started to leave them and as I did so Hikdar Ornol said to me, 'There is one among our company who claims to have seen a flying boat before. He even says he can fly one through the air like a bird.' The urgency in me, I now admit, made me gloss over this information that would normally have been startling. The Hikdar went on, speaking in his growly graint voice: 'If you do not return within two burs of dawn we shall decide-'
I knew what he was going to say. I stopped him.
'You will get this young fellow to fly the boat out. You will all be trapped if you return. You know this to be true.'
'Aye.' He spoke surlily, a warrior deprived of a fight. 'It is sooth. But we are loath to do this thing.'
'I shall not say Remberee.'
'Hai Jikai!' he said to me, and so I went back toward the camp and to King Genod and Gafard, the King’s Striker, the Sea-Zhantil.
There was a quantity of confusion going on about the vanished voller. Guards ran and shouted and torches flared. This was all to the good. I ran in as though most busy about my work, and almost forgot to rip off the red cloth. I bundled it up and stuffed it inside the green tunic over the mail.
'It must be cramphs of Zair!' men bellowed. 'Rasts of the Red!' In all this confusion I ought to be able to take Genod and Gafard. At the least, I ought to be able to do that. So I planned as I ran and shouted with the rest and worked my way around to the tent of the king. How man proposes and Zair disposes! Or Opaz or Djan. I wouldn’t give the time of day to Grodno or Havil or Lem. I ran through the moon-shot darkness. This was where I let rip all the frustrations, where I really hit back, where I at last created a High Jikai that would reinstate me among the ranks of the Krozairs of Zy.
All the stupid pride flooded me, onker that I was. What would that oaf Pur Kazz say when I landed with a magnificent flying boat of the air, with rescued Zairians, and with the enormous prize of not only Gafard, the Sea- Zhantil, the most renowned Ghittawrer of the Eye of the World, but his liege lord also, his king, this same king Genod, the genius king of evil Magdag!
Well, onker I was and onker I remained.
The king’s tent was flooded with light. Orderlies and sectrixmen waited outside, nervous, fidgety. I marched through as bold as Krasny work, up to the tent flaps and the guards. I thought — well, that would be to reveal too much. Suffice it to say I thought it could be done and I could do it. I think, now, in all sober truth, I could have done it. It was, after all, a thing I had done before and was, as you shall hear, a trick I was to pull off again, more than once. But could the Star Lords have had a hand in this? The Savanti, perhaps? I did not know. I do know that as I bluffed my way past the guards and entered the first of the canvas-sided anterooms leading into the king’s quarters a number of what I then considered impossible events occurred. There were far too many men here to be accounted for by the loss of the voller, serious though that was. These were men who should be out hunting for the king’s airboat.
I heard a man shouting: 'I tell you it is sooth! I saw him. I saw him as he climbed up the side of the flying boat and the moon shone on his face. He wore the red. I would know that devil’s face anywhere, for did he not give me this scar on my own face, these many years ago!'
I halted in the press, at the back, unable to pass through, cursing to get on and yet halted by these words.
'It was the infamous Krozair himself! Pur Dray. The Lord of Strombor! Come back from the dead!' Other men shouted that how could Golitas be sure, and this Golitas with the scarred face bellowed that, by Goyt, he knew the most renowned Krozair of the Eye of the World when he saw him!
This made it more tricky. Golitas must have come in with the king, for he had not been about the camp. Had he been he would no doubt have taken longer to recognize me for the circumstances would have been far less dramatic. I had best place my white scarf about my face again, but my groping fingers encountered nothing where the scarf should be. Of course, I’d lost the damned thing somewhere along the way.
This was bad enough. But then — and I swear I was in so ugly a mood I might have done something I would have regretted for all the thousand years of life vouchsafed me — I heard two voices I just could not believe in, could not, for they were of another life and another place many dwaburs removed from the problems of the inner sea.
The first voice boomed out in a great Numim bellow.
'What a gang of onkers, by Krun! Can’t even guard a voller the empress Thyllis sends out of friendship!'
And the other voice tripped up and down the scale: 'This is a wight leem’s-nest, Wees! We can’t walk all the way home, now can we, dear fellow?'
Chapter Fourteen
Rees and Chido!
Incredible. Impossible. But true.
The crowd swayed as guards opened a path through. In the uproar that roaring Numim voice of Rees’s blasted out again. He was upset. He didn’t mind who knew.
But — Rees and Chido! All the way from Ruathytu in distant Hamal, to the Eye of the World. They must have been with the voller. No other explanation was possible. I stood back, no longer pushing forward.
They had not seen me for over twenty years, but I had no doubts that I would be recognized. They’d know me. They’d be as thunderstruck as I was myself.
They’d know me. They’d know me as Hamun ham Farthytu, the amak of Paline Valley. They did not know their friend Hamun whom they had tried to make into a bladesman was the Prince Majister of Vallia.
What thoughts tumbled pell-mell through my dizzy mind! I had stepped back purely involuntarily. The onker Golitas was still babbling on about it being sure that he had recognized the notorious Krozair, the Lord of Strombor, and over that Rees’s lion-roar blattered against my ears.
'By Krun! What a bunch of onkers! Chido, old fellow, this is a right leem’s-nest!' And Chido’s light voice, turning all his R’s into Ws, a mode of speech I seldom attempt to reproduce, saying: 'I suppose you can’t blame ’em too much, Rees. If this fellow who stole the voller is as good as they say-'
And a rumble from Rees, indicating to me that he had been learning wisdom in the years separating our last meeting. By Krun! But was I glad to know he and Chido were still alive! After the Battle of Jholaix in which Vallia had smashed the Hamalese Army of the North, anything could have happened to them. Maybe they were even back
