So it was that with the hateful word 'I' ringing in my head I reached the place where the voller had been hidden.
Approaching cautiously, for there had been weapons aplenty in the flier and I did not want an arrow through me, I gave a low-voiced hail.
'Duhrra! Hikdar Ornol!'
The camouflage had been well done. The nik-nik bushes concealed all. My sectrix lumbered on, his hooves near soundless on the sandy soil. The pink and golden moonlight flooded down and away from the interference of the torches’ glow I could see well. I called again, louder. No answer. Nothing.
The sectrix slipped and skidded down the incline. I was enclosed by the bushy walls. I looked about. The voller was not there.
I looked again, and shouted, and spurred up and sent the sectrix crashing down into the bottom of the gulley.
Nothing.
The voller was gone.
Just how long I rode up and down, flailing at bushes with my sword, yelling, bellowing, I have no idea. At last the realization reached me that, in truth, the voller had flown. I could not curse. For the last time I galloped lumpily across the sandy soil, flailing away, and bits of bush flew into the air, spinning in the moon-drenched darkness. The smell of night blooms hung strongly in the air. Nothing.
No voller.
Duhrra and the men from Zandikar had gone.
I was alone.
Now, if ever, was the time to remember that I, Gadak of the Green, was not and never could be Gadak of the Green.
Chapter Fifteen
'The onkers rush upon their own destruction,' said Gafard with great satisfaction. We sat our sectrixes upon a slight eminence in the nik-nik covered bluffs. The sea sparkled bluely away to our left. The land to the right trended, flat and uninteresting, to a far horizon where heat shimmer broke outlines into blue and purple ghosts. Blown by the wind, drifts of sand swathed the scene below. Below us and less than half a dwabur away marched the hosts of Zair, advancing to the west. How marvelous they looked, with their many red banners fluttering, the suns striking back in gleam and glint from armor and weapons. Sectrix cavalry trotted on the flanks. Infantry marched at the center. On they came, proud in their might, a splendid army gathered from the fortress cities of Pynzalo and Zimuzz, from the inland towns of Jikmarz and Rozilloi, and from many of the villages of the fertile inland territories. In all those brave banners of the Red I saw the proud devices, and recognized many of them. Justice and hope marched there, pride and honor. On the right flank, their sectrixes’ hooves sometimes cutting through the surf, trotted a contingent of splendid cavalry on whose red banners the device of the hubless spoked wheel within the circle blazed and coruscated.
Only a small contingent of Krozairs of Zy there were. I guessed that the bulk of the Krzy would be far to the west, fighting with Pur Zenkiren and the two generals of the combined armies there. My heart lifted when I saw that grand and formidable array advancing toward the massed green banners before me.
Gafard, the King’s Striker, sat his sectrix and chuckled and ever and anon he pulled that black hawk-beard of his. He had given no further orders after those that had drawn out the army of Magdag into its allotted positions.
Two sennights had gone by since my disastrous debacle on the night the king’s voller had been stolen by the famous Krozair, the Lord of Strombor. Although a strict watch was kept against the flyer’s return, no more had been seen of her.
I had hoped she would be flying over the host of Zair when they marched to the attack. The Zairians had worked like demons to collect this army to reinforce the armies of the west. Now we had appeared unexpectedly in their path. They attacked recklessly. This was the way they reacted to the descent upon their coasts of the Green of Grodno.
The king and Gafard had been highly delighted.
All thought of investing Pynzalo had been abandoned. The garrison of the city marched in the host fronting us. Gafard had said, 'They save us much labor and casualties.' He had slapped his thigh with his riding glove before throwing it to a slave and taking up the metaled war-gauntlets he would wear for the battle. 'You ride as aide to me, Gadak. Nalgre and Nath and Insur, with Gontar and Gerigan, will be all I need. Once the battle is joined there will be little need for messages. The army of the king knows what to do!'
'One wonders,' said Gontar, who prided himself that his father was an overlord of Magdag who owned estates requiring ten thousand slaves to run, 'if that cramph the Lord of Strombor is with the onkers this day.'
'One,' said Gafard, Sea-Zhantil, 'sincerely trusts he is not.' They took that to mean the obvious, but I glanced at Gafard — and away smartly, to be sure — and guessed he meant he hoped Pur Dray would not be there to be slain by a casual pike-thrust. Gafard wanted to cross swords with the great Krozair in person, so I said to myself, pondering imponderables. I admit, in all fairness, that I was not only coming to share these damned Grodnims’ obsession with Pur Dray, Krozair, and regarding him in the third person, but also was still much surprised that his legend persisted so vividly after fifty years. I could scarce credit that no other Krozair had risen to a similar eminence in the Eye of the World.
The truth was that Gafard so hungered after a similar renown his well-known obsession fostered the persistence of the stories and tales of the Lord of Strombor. Now that Pur Dray had returned to life, had been declared Apushniad by the Krzy and had actually been seen back at his old activities, no wonder speculation and rumor buzzed around the camp like flies over the carcass of a chunkrah slain by leems on the plains.
Also in this fascination with a Red Krozair must be the dread knowledge in the minds of the overlords that Pur Dray had witnessed the private, terrible rites that went on in the utmost secrecy within the megaliths at the time of the Great Death, when the red sun eclipsed the green sun. I suppose, trying to think about it logically and restraining myself from taking the amused and cynical line that was too treacherously easy, there was a terrible and malefic aura about the name and deeds of Pur Dray, the Lord of Strombor, Krozair of Zy.
The hosts of Red marched on, their banners flying. The ranks of Green waited calmly, silent, and their green banners flaunted no less vividly under the suns.
Gafard was eyeing the distances. We could all see the restiveness in the Red cavalry on the wings. They would charge at any moment, a torrent of mailed men bursting down on the ranks of Green footmen. Those footmen were fronted by a glittering, slanting wall of pike-heads. I knew the heart of that formation down there below us on the sandy soil. I had created it myself. The serried mass of pikes in the strong phalanx to take the shock of the cavalry change. The halberdiers and swordsmen to protect the pikes from swordsmen. The wedges of arbalesters shooting with controlled rhythm. And the shields — that cowards’ artifice — the shields to protect the men and deflect the shafts from the short, straight bows and the crossbows of the enemy. Oh, yes, I had designed that fighting machine to destroy mailed overlords of Magdag. And now those same devilish overlords used my fighting instrument, remade by them with their own swods, to destroy my comrades in Zair. I tell you, my thoughts were bleak and spare.
I hoped that the Zairians would win.
I knew the worth of my work and the genius of Genod Gannius, whose parents I had saved from destruction, and I knew, darkly and with agony and remorse, the inevitable outcome of the battle. What I would do was already worked out. I knew that despite all, I could not stop myself. The red cloth was stuffed again within the breast of my tunic. I would don the red, draw my longsword, and so hurl myself into the rear of the pikes as the charges went in. Perhaps there would be a little chance for the Krozairs, for the Red Brethren, for the warriors of Zair.
That chance was slender to the point of nonexistence.
But, despite all, I could not stop myself.
