Only Delia grasped what I was doing, and sorrowed for it.
To the end of leaving everything in as apple pie an order as might be contrived should I be suddenly whisked away I looked carefully at the commanders available to us.
Nath — whose name of Nazabhan came as a courtesy from his father, who was a Nazab, an imperial appointment as governor of a province and equivalent to a kov — resolutely insisted that he wished to continue in command of the Phalanx. He put great store by that cutting instrument of war. I tried to make him see reason on both counts. But he would not leave the Phalanx command, and he would not allow that the Phalanx could be bested by infantry — as for cavalry, they were just a laugh. Against aerial attack strong forces of archers were incorporated, and the artillery park was built up. All Vondium and the imperial provinces surrounding the capital city resembled a gigantic beehive, humming with activity. What cheered me most was the demeanor of the people. Almost without exception they were cheerful, sprightly, utterly confident in themselves, their new army and their emperor. Feeling like a cheat and a fraud, and with profound doubts about the new army, but with pleased awareness of the new spirit of the citizens, I sorted out the folk to take over should the necessity arise. This is mere common-sense insurance when your name is Dray Prescot and you are Emperor of Vallia, and the Star Lords remain unsatisfied.
Messages carried swiftly by one of the few fast airboats we possessed assured me that the Lord Farris, the Kov of Vomansoir, prospered in his newly-restored kovnate. His people accepted him back with a warm welcome because he had been associated with Jak the Drang and was remembered and well-liked as a fair, just and generous man.
The airboat which brought him flying swiftly into Vondium bore the gray and yellow of Vomansoir. Alert, active, bronzed, he jumped down and saluted Delia and me as we waited to greet him.
“Lahal and Lahal,” he called, smiling, brisk and yet with that sureness of purpose about him that marked him as a man who knew what was what and got on with it. “Majister — it is good to see you again. Majestrix, my eternal loyalty.”
I wasted no time but spelled it out, right there and then, as we walked into the shambles of the palace to find refreshment.
“But, majister! Why should you go away again? Now all Vallia awaits your victorious arms.”
“You will have Nath to handle the Phalanx — and if we persevere with him I think he will take on a larger command of the army. Barty Vessler will be of help — he is a fine if headstrong aide-de-camp -
more than that, really — and there is Enevon to handle all the finicky details of daily administration.”
“But-”
“There are pallans appointed to all the departments of government and they can function autonomously with only an occasional eye.” We told him of the sad business of Tyr Jando ti Faleravensmot, and of how he had hanged himself rather than return to Vondium. That meant another possible lead to the Wizard of Loh who sought to destroy us had been lost.
“But-”
“You will have Laka Pa-Re to run the mercenaries for you. He is a fine example of the best of the Pachaks. He remained after the nikobi was discharged and I have promoted him Chuktar. You may repose complete confidence in him. And there is Naghan Strandar, and Larghos the Left-Handed, and there are all those ruffianly companions of the choice band. Only if I am called away, Lord Farris, will your services be needed in this. I ask it as a favor.”
“But, majister — your sons. Prince Drak, Prince Jaidur-”
He knew that Zeg was away somewhere and had heard us refer to him as the King of Zandikar.
“Drak is off in Faol looking for Kardo and Melow, and Jaidur — well-” I cocked an eye at Delia and she smiled, both radiantly and ruefully.
“The last I heard of that rapscallion son of ours he was seeking the whereabouts of his sister.”
My ears pricked up at this. These women and their infernal secret societies are one thing; but now they had inveigled a brash fighting man in the person of Jaidur into their schemes. I saw that, and quickly enough, if you please.
At last I overbore Farris by saying around a goblet of the best Gremivoh, the wine favored by the Vallian Air Service in a voice I made as neutral as possible: “Anyway, I need you here to keep an eye on things and on the Empress Delia also.” Farris was a man whose life had been dedicated to the emperor and whose fanatical loyalty to Delia was a part of his makeup. “An army marches against us from the southwest and I’ve a mind to go out there and spy them out. Perhaps-”
“Aye, Dray Prescot,” quoth Delia, sharply. “Aye! And you’ve a mind to crack a few of their villainous skulls, too, while you’re at it. I know.”
“Mayhap, my love,” I said, unrepentantly. “Mayhap.”
So, the matter being settled, we passed onto a more detailed assessment of the situation, which was pretty fraught as I have explained.
Reports from our scouts indicated that the army had landed in Vallia on the coast of Kaldi to the west of the Island of Wenhartdrin. This gave the invading host a long distance to march, for they might have landed much nearer the capital, and I surmised that they hoped to pick up recruits as they advanced. Just how the honest burghers and farmers of Vallia would react to this hope remained to be seen. Certainly, the southwest had not, to my knowledge, shared the ambitions toward self-determination of the northeast.
In a direct line — as the fluttrell flies as they say in Havilfar — the invaders had six hundred and fifty miles to cover to Vondium. It seemed clear they would not march a direct line. At an average speed of ten miles a day — more or less — at which a spry army can march with its baggage and artillery and followers and all the rest of the baffling impediments that so slow up armies on the march, they would take better than seventy or eighty days. The latest reports gave their position as being at the border between Ovvend and Thadelm. They had come, therefore, roughly halfway. Estimates of their numbers varied enormously. This was partly due to the inexperience of some of our volunteer scouts and partly to the complexity of an army on the march, where thousands of followers confuse the eye. A sagacious Khibil, a paktun with many battle scars, had told me that he estimated the core of the army — the formed ranks of fighting men and the wings of cavalry — at fifty thousand. This was an army, therefore, of indeterminate strength, not so small as to be contemptible, and not so large as to be truly overpowering.
My reaction to that information had been to cast the net of scouts wider, suspecting another army marching parallel to the first. So far no confirming reports had reached me. Nath was white with fury at my decision not to take a single brumbyte from the Phalanx. And, because I would not take any pikemen from the files, the Hakkodin, who flanked them, would not be touched, either.
“But majister! We
“Utterly?”
“By Vox! Yes!”
“I think not.”
“But they are just an army — cavalry with zorcas and these white-coated hersanys, and infantry with nothing untoward in the way of weapons or formations. Fifty thousand! We will go through them as a cleaver goes through beef!”
“And you’re like to strike a bone, in the middle, Kyr Nath.”
The invading army flew no colors that had been reported to me. The hersanys present, those shaggy, six- legged, chalky-white riding animals, indicated there were contingents from Pandahem. And Phu-Si-Yantong had set his ferocious seal on the whole island of Pandahem, subjugating all its kings and rulers to his despotic sway. I wished him joy of it. He must be mad, for that seemed to me the only way to explain the ambitions he cherished. As for the good in him, that must lie so deep that Cottmer’s Caverns brushed the heavens.
“Well,” said Nath, breathing deeply and the whiteness denting the corners of his nostrils. “If I may not march my Phalanx, then, at the least, majister, let me come with you.”
With a sorrow tinged with affectionate amusement, I said: “And leave the Phalanx without the leader?
Come now, Nath, surely you see I cannot do that?”
He was in a cleft stick and he knew it, and the knowledge made him barge off with a parting Remberee and I did not doubt that his Relianchuns would skip and dance to his tunes and give their brumbytes in the ranks a little stick, also. Well, that is the way of it. He kept his men in fighting trim and I was unsure if I really did want him to hand over control of the Phalanx to somebody else. There were plenty of superb fighting men who could handle that
