They are trained from birth as mercenary fighters, and can use many weapons with great skill. They will remain loyal when paid, and sometimes afterwards, if the prospects seem good.
A few nasty ideas began to circulate around my thick old head. The emperor, despite one nasty experience and a recent scotching of another, still reposed trust in his Crimson Bowmen. Why, then, should he replace them with most expensive mercenaries who were generally disliked?
Perhaps I should have used more guile getting in to see my father-in-law, and instead of taking the direct, golden-paved route, have broken in through one of the many secret passageways. Persevering, on I went, noticing the air of tension and gloom about the place, but ignoring that in my determination to get through. Long and overly-ornate corridors, mirror-faced, tiled with scenes of the chase and the hunt, led me on ways I knew. This was now the main corridor that led from the outer courts of the palace to the first of the succession of anterooms opening onto the emperor’s private apartments. The thickness of the scurrying crowds thinned. Soon, as I approached a tall balass door guarded by two Chuliks, I stood almost alone.
They regarded me as though I had crawled from under a stone.
“You had best begone from here, calsany,” said one. He wore a most fancy uniform of red and black, lavishly garlanded with golden cords, with black belts studded with bronze. At his sides he carried scabbarded a rapier and main gauche and in his right hand a three-grained staff. The tassels were red and black, the colors of the emperor’s slave masters.
“Will gold unlock that door, dom?” I spoke up cheerily, most friendly. My hands hung limply at my sides. “I know it well, having passed through many times. The Chemzite Stairway lies beyond, and this door is seldom closed-”
The left-hand Chulik stopped my prattling.
“These are not normal times, rast. The emperor is dying. No one passes here save those with authority.
Schtump is a most abusive way of saying clear off, and in normal circumstances could never have been used by a Chulik mercenary to a koter of Vallia within the palace. But times they were a changing-oh.
“Since,” I told these two yellow-skinned, pigtailed mercenaries, “you will not take gold — take this.”
Oh, yes, it was foolish, vainglorious. Even as I twisted the left-hand one’s three-grained staff free and clouted his companion over the ear with it, and brought it back to drive the bronze butt hard into ridged gut muscle, I was ruefully thinking that I was becoming overly talkative in these latter days. But, by Zair, that would change!
I gave each one a thoughtful little tap alongside the helmet rim, just to make sure, and leaving them slumbering pushed the balass doors inward. I heard a gasp and twisted at once, fast, to see only the long golden furred legs and delightful tail of a Fristle fifi disappearing past a pilaster along the wall. Friezes of strigicaws and shonages ran along the cove here, and the door slammed sharply. I made no attempt to follow. Instead, I pushed on through and ran up the weirdly deserted Chemzite Stairway. In normal times the balass doors were thrown back and the Stairway thronged with courtiers and supplicants and advocates and nobles, all going about their business with the emperor’s personal staff. Now all those highly-placed nobles with access to the emperor were confined to a few of the great halls. I passed along through narrower stairways, walking the marble of a balcony, and looked down at them as I went. From all over the Empire of Vallia the lords and ladies had come to Vondium to be in at the death. Each one had personal reasons of avarice or ambition or fear. As I walked along quietly, looking down at the assemblage of waiting nobility, my lips wrinkled up. A fine crew they were! Not a one, I daresay, spared a thought in sympathy for Delia, their Princess Majestrix. Not a one thought for an instant that it was a girl’s father who lay dying.
But, then, that was not entirely true, for nobles like Farris would care. Many of them I recognized. Some of them I have already introduced to you in these tapes, and many more there were of that crew waiting to step onto the stage and strut their little part, before shuffling off, and, by Vox, a lot of them horizontal, too. .
But, adhering to my plan, I will tell you of these high and mighty nobles of Vallia as and when they came into contact with me. And, too, I did not forget that I had vowed to myself to be the new Dray Prescot, the quiet, conciliatory peace-loving man who would talk first. If the emperor died then the streets of the capital might flow with blood. Everyone knew that factions waited for the moment to strike. And, as is the way with desperate men banded together waiting for a single event to strike, each party believed itself to be the most powerful, or the most advantageously placed, or having the most moral force. A detached observer could see only tragedy ahead.
But, of course, there were few — if any — detached observers, for everyone had a zhantil to saddle. And I, Dray Prescot, I was not detached. Oh, I tried to be. I told myself I wanted none of it. But I knew if some hulking lout brandishing a sword and flaunting colors and feathers tried to steal what belonged to Delia, or what should rightfully belong to our children, then all my fine detachment would vanish and the old Dray Prescot, of the devil’s face and intemperate manner and vicious determination, would jump in, sword swinging, as he had done long and long in the old days. .
As was inevitable I was at last stopped by four Chulik guards before an ivory door banded in gold and emeralds. They wore the red and black and carried the three-grained staffs. They were less polite than the last. True to my desire to be the rational easy-going man I ought to be, I attempted to talk. The polearm slashed toward me with deadly intent. They’d knock me senseless and hustle me down to the dungeons. The three-grained staff, very convoluted, very ornate, the black and red tassels swinging, the bright curved edges glittering with much honing against the solid olive of the metal head, struck for my skull.
I slid the blow, took the polearm, twisted it free and held it parallel with the ground. I pushed. The Chulik tumbled against the gold and emerald and ivory door. He went: “Whoof!” That was as much from surprise as from having the air knocked from his lungs.
His companions set on at once, so I had to twist the staffs free and, partially regretfully, tap their skulls. As the last slumped down I heard a hard, brittle voice say: “If you do not drop that staff this instant you are a dead man.”
Without turning I knew what stood behind me. I dropped the staff. Without seeing the flight of an arrow it is damned difficult — nigh impossible — to judge which way to jump, which direction to use. Slowly, I turned around.
Yes — four Bowmen and an officer stood there, their bows fully drawn, and the lamplight glittered from the sharp steel heads. The odds were against me. I might have dodged, given the mystic disciplines of the Krozairs of Zy, had the occasion warranted. But I persevered in my peaceful overtures — here, in the palace of my father-in- law, for all that I was banished, here!
As it was, I said to the officer at the head of the four Crimson Bowmen: “I do not know you. It is clear you do not know me. I have pressing business-” I got no further.
“Take him to the cells,” said this officer, in his brittle voice. “Question him — Naghan the Pinch will know what to do. You know your orders.”
The officer in his trim Crimson was a Hikdar, a waso-Hikdar, and the pallid hardness of his face and blankness of the stare in his blue eyes would give any nefarious culprit wandering the palace a severe case of the frights. I looked at him. I thought I knew this type — always a dangerous assumption — and I stared past him at the four Bowmen.
One, I recognized.
I said: “Lahal, Neg Negutorio. Why do you stand in the ranks? You were an ord-Deldar the last time we met. I would have thought you a shiv-Hikdar by now-”
That was as far as the officer was going to allow me to prattle on. My attempt at distraction would not fool him. Furiously, he bellowed out: “Seize him up! I’ll have you all jikaidered, by Hlo-Hli!
This was a threat no swod was fool enough to ignore.
Three of the Bowmen, taking their bows and arrows into their left hands, reached out with their right hands.
Neg Negutorio gaped at me.
“Dray Prescot!” he said. And: “The Prince Majister!”
The Hikdar took a step back. The hands of the three Bowmen fell away. Neg shook his head. “Prince. Times have changed. There are many new faces in the Guard. Dag Dagutorio, our Chuktar, has been sent home, and replaced by Rog Rogutorio.” He wet his lips. “As for me — I was degraded — it was a trumped-up charge — and now I must obey orders I care not overmuch for-”
