Sharply, a shadow fleeted over the ground and we all looked up and there, skimming through the bright air, flew the two-place voller with Genod Gannius gorgeous in green and gold leaning over and encouraging his troops.
If he had fire-pots up there. .
The army of the Green let out a dull surf-roar of welcome and greeting to their king. Very pretty it was. And in defiant answer rose the shouts from the Reds.
'Grodno! Zair! Green! Red!' The shouts rose and clashed. 'Krozair! Ghittawrer!' The yells twined in the brilliant atmosphere. And, a new shout, a shrill screeching: 'Genod! Genod! The king!' The Zairian cavalry charged, a torrential mass of steel and red bearing down on the massed pikes. I reined Blue Cloud a little way back of the other aides. They were all standing in their stirrups, craning to look down from our eminence onto the drama spread out below. Now was the time to don the red and so charge down and make a finish.
It might not be a Jikai, but with those Krozair shouts ringing through the air and the brave scarlet fluttering I could do no other. .
A shadow flitted into the corner of my eye and I turned, quickly, the red half drawn from my green tunic. A Pachak with only one left arm, and a bloody stump where the other should be, rode frantically up to Gafard, his hebra foundering. He yelled at Gafard. I heard his words, caught and blown by the wind; I saw Gafard’s hard mahogany face turn abruptly gray within the iron rim of his helmet.
'My Lady — treachery — we were surprised — slain — black — men in black — my lord. .' The Pachak fell even as his hebra collapsed.
Gafard lifted his head and screeched.
I thrust the red away and kicked Blue Cloud over.
'Gadak! You I trust! Find Grogor! Find Nath ti Hagon! Take men — anyone — ride, Gadak, ride! My Lady of the Stars — my pearl, my heart. . ride, Gadak! Ride as you love me!' I didn’t love the devil. But — my Lady of the Stars!
What do I know, now, of my thoughts, my emotions, and my feelings? I know I knew the Zairian army below me was doomed, for I had wrought the instrument of their destruction. But there would come another time, another field, and another battle. Now all my blood clamored that I save my Lady of the Stars.
I rode. I did not ride wearing the red. I rode not for my lord Gafard, the King’s Striker, the Sea-Zhantil
— but for my Lady of the Stars.
Even now, after all that happened, I do not regret that decision.
If only some easy power of sorcery had been open to me!
If only by some magic formula I could have prevented what was fated to occur. But I am a mortal man and the fantasies of wish-fulfillment belong to the myths and legends of Kregen, not to the hard reality of that beautiful and terrible world beneath the Suns of Scorpio. Yes, there is seeming magic on Kregen, and the wizards practice mighty sorceries, but they are of a piece, following ordained paths. The wonder and mystery of Kregen can never be denied, but it is men and women with hope and courage who flesh out the true fantasies.
I rode.
Grogor, Gafard’s second in command, that surly man, did not hesitate a fraction. He screeched a savage order to a squadron of sectrixmen, all picked men-at-arms, apims and diffs, and wheeled his mount and was away with streaming mane and flying feathers. We picked up Nath ti Hagon, Gafard’s trusted ship-Hikdar, and then, in a compact body, we rode from the battlefield. Sand blew from our sectrixes’
hooves. The wind of our passage blustered in our plumes and scorched into our faces. So we left the action, the battle, that debacle for the Red, which the mad genius king Genod called the Battle of Pynzalo.
Wherever Gafard had hidden his beloved, the rasts of men in black had found her. I had one hope. The voller had been flown by Genod himself and it had flown over the battlefield. We had to deal with men mounted on sectrixes like ourselves.
In one item of my reading of the situation I was wrong.
We went flying through the near-deserted camp, sending the camp followers stumbling out of our way, only the green of our plumes and dress able to convince them they were not attacked by a raiding party of Zairians. We belted past the lines of tents. I had nudged Blue Cloud gently to the head of the pack, for although I wished to conserve him for what I thought would be a long ride, I still felt the mad desire to hurry on like a maniac and be the first there to rescue my Lady of the Stars. The Pachak of her guard who had escaped to warn Gafard must have been a most intelligent as well as a brave man. He must have fought until he saw there was no hope left and then, instead of going on fighting and throwing his life away, had turned and raced for the King’s Striker. Out past the camp we saw the flurry of green cloaks. I looked closer. A party of sectrixmen was picking its way down the sandy slopes toward the beach. A swifter waited there, her stern ladder erected, one end on the quarter and the other on the beach. Beneath the green cloaks I saw — instead of the expected white, or green, or the flash of mail — black.
Grogor saw, also, and shrilled and we all pelted along, hurling ourselves madly over the bluffs and so roaring down the sandy slopes in great clouds and smothers of sand.
Somehow Blue Cloud kept his six legs under him. We were on the beach. I yanked out my longsword, that Ghittawrer blade with the device removed, and whirled along the packed sand. The black-clad men saw us coming.
There was a struggle in their midst.
Grogor and Nath were neck and neck with me. Our three swords thrust forward, three-pronged retribution.
The black-clad men tried to face us.
There must have been few men who could have stood up to us in that frenzied moment. In the moments before we hit I saw my Lady of the Stars.
She wielded a long, thin dagger in her white hand, and she toppled one kidnapper from his saddle and whirled on another who tried to spit her through. She parried — it was marvelously done, marvelously!
— and riposted and stuck the rast through the eye. He screamed and fell and then we were upon them. Our rage was terrible and genuine.
The longswords whirled and glittered, split and cleft, and whipped aloft again for the next blow, dripping red.
Blade clanged against blade. My Ghittawrer longsword sang above my head. Aye! It sang as I whirled it up and down. I smashed with full force, seeing a head spin off, seeing a black-masked face abruptly disappear into a ghastly red mask, seeing an arm spin up and away as a back-hander curled beneath a blow. It was all over in scant murs. We panted. I dragged in a great lungful of air and then, dismounting, walked over to my Lady, who lay in the sand. Her green veiling remained in place, for she had one hand to it. But she knew me.
'Gadak! So you rescue me again.'
'Aye, my Lady. You are unhurt?'
She stood up. She put a hand on my shoulder. Her left hand. In her right hand, smothered in blood, she still gripped the slender, jeweled dagger.
'I am unharmed. They tried to — at the end — when they saw you coming. But-'
'Yes, my Lady. You yourself created a Jikai, I saw.' Then I smiled — I, who am a surly beast and with a face like the ram of a swifter. 'I am minded of another lady, my Lady.'
'I would not have thought-' she began, and then stopped and threw the dagger to the sand. She took her hand from my shoulder and drew herself up. She put that clean left hand to her hair. Typically, the next words she said were, 'And my lord? How goes the battle?'
'The battle will go well enough.'
She sighed.
She, like myself, had been Zairian once.
'I returned to the camp, Gadak, and they were waiting for me. Men in black. Stikitches — kidnappers for a space — but real stikitches, nonetheless.'
'Aye.'
My men were inspecting the corpses. The swifter was gone, pulling madly out to sea. Grogor turned one body over with his foot and then cocked an eye at me. I looked down. The brown face with a livid scar all across it showed where Golitas, who had received that scar from the hands of Pur Dray, had died in agony.
