without doubt be hostile. The rendezvous with Barty and the others lay some way ahead and although I was in a fever of impatience to reach Vondium and attempt to discover where the main threat to the city would come, I had to tread cautiously. So we covered the dwaburs, talking and laughing, and keeping our weapons loose in their scabbards.
A scatter of black-winged warvols rose ahead of us. The scavenging birds would rip a body up, dead or half- dead; but they were a part of nature fulfilling a function and so must be treated on their own merits. We rode up to the mess hunkered by a grassy hillock.
The three zorcas were almost stripped down to the bone. The three jutmen because of their armor were not in so detailed a state of dissolution, although their faces were gone, and only three yellow skulls jutted above the corselet rims. Their weapons were gone, and although two of the arrows had been withdrawn, the third, broken in half, still shafted from the gaping eye socket of a skull. One always, in these circumstances, inspects the fletchings.
There was no sense in grieving over the three zorcamen. By their uniforms and insignia they were of the Second, Jiktar Wando Varon’s regiment. Stragglers, they must have been attempting to catch up with the main body, as we were, heading for the rendezvous.
The arrows were fletched with natural gray and brown feathers, and were of the length to be shot from a standard compound bow. “Hamalese?” said Jilian.
“Very likely, or their mercenary allies. We have a ways to go before we reach Vond. The river will set a barrier of some sort between us. Keep your eyes skinned.”
And that was an unnecessary injunction, to be sure.
The mercenaries turned out to be masichieri, very cheap and nasty examples of men earning a living hiring out as killers and pretending to be soldiers, and they found us as the twin suns were sinking into banks of bruised clouds and streaming a choked, opaline, smoky light over the grass.
“I make ten of them, Jak.”
“Yes.”
“Will that be five each, d’you think?”
They were infantry, armored in an assortment of harnesses, bearing a variety of weapons, and their bristly ferocious faces exhibited their joy at thus finding two lonely strangers at this time of the evening. They rose from the bushes and four of them bent bows upon us. They were joking among themselves.
“Best step down nice and easy, horter and hortera,” one shouted, very jocose, calling us gentleman and lady.
“Had I a bow-” began Jilian.
I said: “Put your head down, girl!”
I clapped in my heels, the Krozair longsword flamed a single brand of livid light against the sky and I leaped forward.
Three of the arrows were caught and deflected as the masichieri, startled, loosed. The third whistled past out of reach to my rear. Then I was in among them. The Krozair longsword — well, that brand of destruction is indeed a marvel, and this was a true Krozair brand, brought from Valka, the blade and hilt so cunningly wrought that the steel sings of itself as it thrusts and cuts. Four, five and then six were down before they even had time to consider what manner of retribution they had brought on themselves. I kneed the hirvel to the side and the Krozair blade hissed. Back the other way and a thraxter that came down at me abruptly checked, snapped across, and its owner went smashing backwards without a face. The remaining two were to my rear and I hauled the hirvel up squealing on his haunches and swung him about. His hooves clawed at the sunset. We were down and I was belting back, and saw a sight, by Krun!
One of the masichieri staggered away, his hands to his face, and between his clenching fingers spurted a crimson flood.
The other screamed as the whip coiled around his neck. He was dragged bodily up to Jilian’s hirvel. I saw her face. It was drawn and intent. I saw her left hand.
She did not wield a rapier.
As the shrieking wight was dragged in, struggling futilely against the coils of the lash, a steel taloned left hand raked out, glinting in the dying light, slashed all down his face. That cruel, steel curved claw ripped his face off as a mummer takes off a mask. Blood spouted. Jilian reined back and flicked her whip and allowed the body to drop.
She laughed.
Her left hand, gloved with taloned steel, a razor claw of destruction, glimmered darkly as she lifted it to me in triumph.
Chapter Ten
“By Vox! I do not know. I’ve no idea at all.”
“Us and Sogandar the Upright,” said Nath at Barty’s wail of despair. We stood in that book-lined room glaring in baffled fury at the map of Vallia. The colors mocked us. No scouts reported an invading army, we had had not a whisper from our spies in the occupied territories. We knew nothing. And yet, I was convinced, there had to be the real invasion force from which that ludicrous gaggle of men masquerading as an army under command of Fat Lango had been intended to decoy us away.
“Where among all the Ice Floes are they?” said Barty.
He stood with his hands on his hips and his head thrown back and he looked as though he’d just tried to eat a five-fathom eel lengthways.
“There’s only one way to find out.” Nath slapped his rapier up and down in the scabbard, fretfully. “And we’re doing that right now. Scouts, spies, aerial observation. What else can we do?”
“Wait,” I said.
“Aye, majister. Wait. And the men grow lean and hungry although we fill their bellies six times a day.”
“The fight will come. We must ensure we fight it where we choose.”
Most of my joy at rejoining the force and then of marching back to Vondium had evaporated when I discovered that Delia had taken herself off again about important and secret business of the Sisters of the Rose. Always I felt irritable and half-lost when she was away. This is natural, if foolish, behavior and I do not choose either to defend or curse at it. It just is.
The arrow that had winged past me in that short sharp fight had sliced a chunk out from under Jilian’s breast and I’d had a fair old game with her at the end, just before we joined up with the rest of the retreating force. She’d fought her two masichieri well. But she’d become a little delirious and I’d had to strap her down to the hirvel. It was a most undignified young lady who was decanted in Vondium and hustled off by the ladies to their own wing where the doctors could attend more effectively than I had done. Had Seg’s wife Thelda been here the to-do would have been much greater, of course. The trouble was — this meant I could not question Jilian about her steel claw, which was a twin to that worn by Dayra.
Jilian had kept the clawed glove strapped to her hand and wrist after the fight. That had caused some of the bother, for she’d taken it into her head to slash at anyone who came near. Well, that was all over and she was safely asleep festooned with acupuncture needles. When she awoke, poulticed, bandaged, dosed and medicated, she’d be herself again.
So we pondered the dark designs of those who sought to topple Vallia, and, besides wondering where they would strike, wondered who in a Herrelldrin Hell they were.
One thing I could do, and that was make sure the army was up to scratch. We were forming regiments at a fair pace, of course; but it takes time to turn a man into a soldier. I offer no excuses for this conduct in a land where always before in living memory gold had been used instead of warriors. Now we must free ourselves by our own efforts. The response of the Vallians was immediate and generous and we had no difficulty in filling the muster lists of any regiment on the day they were opened. Cavalry, infantry, artillery, we formed fresh bodies and trained
