right and lower left arms, bear-hugged. The upper left hand clapped me on the back, while the lower right fist gut- punched me in an abandonment of joyous welcome.
I gut-punched back with my fifty percent of his equipment, that, so recently, had been twenty-five percent.
“Kytun! You old devil! Having fun again!”
“King! Notor Prescot!” And thump, thump against my ribs he tattooed. “Dray! What a sight!”
Yes, you see. My Djangs are never surprised when their king turns up to rescue them from a tight spot. It is infuriating, I suppose, the way they just take it for granted that their king will be around in times of trouble; but I am used to it. And, anyway, it gives me a warm delicious feeling, I admit. The sad truth is I am so often away from Djanduin. But all the sorcery of the Wizards of Loh, all the magical powers of the Savanti, cannot place me in different spots on Kregen at the same time. When a time loop operates, of course,
The others crowded up, the remaining nine. They had lost six of their number in the crash and the fight.
“Katakis!” said Felder Kholin Mindner, dismissively.
“Aye,” said Kytun Kholin Dom. “It was a bonny fight. And only ten to one. The whiptails didn’t stand a chance.”
Mind you, he did not boast. I vouch for that.
Then followed the greetings and the handclasps and the joyous shouted insults, the horseplay. We made a camp and ate, for the voller was well-provisioned. If any Katakis remained alive they dared not show their ugly faces. Katakis, these bladed whiptails, fear very few races — Chuliks, Pachaks who share a racial hostility; perhaps most of all they fear Djangs, when they meet them, which is not often. As for my Clansmen — well, again, that is for another time.
Kytun broke open an amphora of best Jholaix he had been keeping against our meeting. The wine had been a present from me; we eleven drank it down, and right royally it served its purpose.
“And the emperor-?”
“Aye, Dray! The queen, may Mother Diocaster smile forever upon her, went first into the pool, walking at the side of her father down the stairs. And he moved and sat up on the litter — before, by Zodjuin of the Silver Stux, before it dissolved away — and spoke rationally. He was cured, Dray. Perfectly cured. And then, why then-” And here Kytun scratched his head with his upper left hand and his other hands busied themselves in eating and drinking. “Why, there was blueness and coldness in the pool, and we were in Djanguraj and I was shouting for a new voller. It was not Drig’s business. We were there, and then we were home. But, as Djan is my witness, it was a mighty strange affair. Mighty strange, by Zodjuin of the Stormclouds.”
Afterwards the dead Djangs were prepared for burial, an extempore, battlefield ritual, with due feeling and solemnity. I watched, taking my part, for I was king.
As to my own story, the wonder of their experiences tended to help and, anyway, as I say, my Djangs perfectly accepted that I would turn up to help them out in any little spot of bother if I could manage it. When troubles hit a party of them that they couldn’t handle, and I did not turn up, they would swing those four arms of theirs and say, so I was told, that, by Zodjuin, the king could not be everywhere at once. Talking to Kytun, I could not stop my own overriding concerns from showing.
“You are our king, Dray. But it is Vallia that demands at the moment.” He worked his oiled rag over his djangir, setting up the polish. “Of course, they only see you as a prince. One day-”
“Djanduin,” I said harshly. “Djanduin means more to me than Vallia. Perhaps Valka-” I had no need to go on. “One day, Kytun, the whole of Paz will be one, united.”
He was a good comrade and so he could insult me with a jest; also, I was his king, so he refrained from any comment on so patently absurd a notion.
During the siege among the rocks there had been no time to work on the flier with any consistency; now we went at it to straighten out the linkages controlling the silver boxes that upheld and powered the voller in flight. After some hot and toiling work, mixed with profanities that encompassed the Pantheon of the Warrior Gods of Djanduin, we had the thing fixed, and the voller was once more operational. Kytun cocked an eyebrow at me.
“Djanguraj,” I told him. “We will take this wonderful zorca, Shadow, with us. There is room. In Djanguraj I shall take a small fast voller for Vondium-”
I got no farther.
“King!” bellowed Kytun. The djangir gleamed brilliantly. “We follow you to chop the cramphs who poisoned the queen’s father! By Djondalar of the Twisted Staff! This is our duty — aye, and our pleasure.”
I was tempted.
Zair knew, with a rascally gang of ferocious Djangs at my back I could do the business speedily enough. But caution supervened. I explained it patiently.
“Suppose a great crowd of Vallian nobles came barging into Djanduin to punish Djangs? Would you-”
“I would rip their guts out! — Oh. .”
“Pride, Kytun, is very foolish at times, as at others it is very necessary in a man. I must go alone. To do otherwise would alienate those who-” I paused, annoyed with myself. I had been about to say, those who did not think things through, and, by Djan! that applies to four-armed Dwadjangs, without a doubt. But I love them, for they are bonny fighters. So I said, firmly: ‘The pride of Vallians would be insulted. Anyway, the emperor has probably sorted things out by now.”
“I trust so, by Zodjuin of the Storm Clouds.”
Just whereabouts in their home parts of Kregen Vanti would have dispatched my friends I did not know. That depended on how good a shot he was. He’d dumped me down on the coast of Africa somewhere near where I’d been when the Scorpion first took me up to Kregen. But the emperor, Delia, Drak and Jaidur could all be scattered over the whole of Vallia. They could have been shot cleanly into the throne room of the palace in Vondium. I did not know. As to my other friends — well, they’d been scattered halfway around Kregen, as you shall hear.
Perhaps, looking back, I made a mistake in not there and then deciding to load as many fighting Djangs as possible into airboats and going vengefully back to Vallia to settle affairs finally. But, remember, I was still attempting to be the conciliatory Dray Prescot I fancied I must be to attain my goals on Kregen. So, instead, we flew to Djanguraj, I stayed for the shortest possible time decency would allow, and then, with Shadow, took off for Vallia in a small, fleet craft that should see me safely all the way there. The journey north along the South Lohvian Sea and across the western section of the Southern Ocean
— which lies north of Havilfar — and so skirting close to the Koroles, and away up with a great swing to the west of north around the tip of Pandahem, a place remarkably dear to many men, being called Jholaix, passed uneventfully. Uneventfully, save that twice the scarlet and golden raptor appeared high in the blue, circling, watching, and twice the white dove of the Savanti flew down to take a look at my craft. I say the white dove — maybe, I wondered, it might be better to say a white dove. The idea that each tutor operated his own individual dove did make sense.
So, at last, the southern coastline of Vallia hove in sight over the horizon. The breakers thundered against the shore, the broad bay of the Great River of Vallia, She of the Fecundity passed below, and away up the shining reaches of the river the enormous fantastical skyline of Vondium came in sight. I slanted down. There was to be no fooling about with attempts to pass guards this time. No secret passages. From the wardrobe kept up in the Palazzo of the Four Winds in Djanguraj I had selected a suit of decent Vallian bluff, so I was dressed as a Vallian as I brought the voller down to the emperor’s own landing platform and leaped out. The patrolling airboats of the Vallian Air Service had been late — I frowned at that -
and I started off across the broad paved space toward the porticoed entrance. Shadow looked at me a little reproachfully from the stall built for him in the aft body of the voller, and I flung him a few words of comfort.
Around me the pinnacles of the higher towers reached for the sky. The wind whispered across the open space where airboats were parked, with men working on them in the shadows of their hangars. Chulik guards ran out toward me, angry, intent, ready to do me a mischief. Up here there were usually the Crimson Bowmen on guard.
“Stand, cramph, for the emperor’s guards!” yelled their Deldar, a Chulik of mean aspect, with a golden tip to his portside tusk.
“Out of the way!”
I bundled into them, took the first three-grained staff that came handy, knocked three or four of the fellows
