Seg saw the smile.
“These two regiments of these marvelous archers of yours?”
I glanced at the clepsydra.
“Yes. Time to go. You will excuse us, Jilian?”
She put her head on one side, her hair dark and low over that broad white forehead, and all her intent look returned.
“I think, Jak, that I shall raise a regiment of Jikai Vuvushis. We can fight for Vallia.”
Seg looked at her, and then at me, and I said: “That would be interesting, anyway. They have Battle Maidens up in the northeast who have declared for our foemen. It would be — both amusing and horrible — to see Jikai Vuvushis in line against one another.”
Jilian tossed her head. She laughed. “That will be no new thing.”
“Kregen,” I said, but to myself. “Kregen…”
As we went out I noticed Jilian’s sandals. Light and airy, they were thonged with golden straps to the knee. Those sandals were never Delia’s.
Jiktars Stormwill and Brentarch met us on the parade ground and the inspection went off faultlessly. Everyone knew the Kov of Falinur was a Bowman of Loh, and the ranks stiffened up wonderfully. Their shooting was good. It was not excellent; just good, and I knew Seg would be highly dissatisfied. But these were green regiments, and must learn. Their Jiktars would keep them at training, making sure the Hikdars ran their pastangs firmly and fairly, and the Deldars would run along the ranks bellowing and shouting as all Deldars bellow and shout.
The standards were presented, the trumpets blew, and a band from the Second Archers, a seasoned outfit, played stirring marches. By my express wish they played “The Bowmen of Loh.” Seg looked at me. Then he looked away. Well, in this life we all have to learn, and it is always the hard way, and painful.
The parade marched off to the strains of “Old Drak Himself,” which was by way of being a growing habit, and would soon be a tradition, when a flier circled across the rooftops, obviously searching. Seg had been given a Lohvian longbow by Log and his other comrades, for he felt naked without, and the great bow was out of its scabbard, strung, and an arrow nocked at a speed which would have dizzied the green archers marching off the parade ground.
I saw the schturval painted up on the side of the flier. Gray, red and green, with a black bar.
“Lower your bow, Seg. Those are the colors of Calimbrev. The flier is from Barty Vessler.”
Seg lowered the bow; but he only half unbent it and he kept the shaft ready in that casual, superbly competent way of a true Bowman of Loh, the master archers of Kregen. The men in the voller spotted us. What with Cleitar holding my own flag aloft, and with Ortyg the Tresh lifting the new flag of Vallia, and the blaze of scarlet and gold about, it was pretty clear where stood the Emperor of Vallia.
Targon the Tapster and Naghan ti Lodkwara, who had rejoined after his wound had half-healed, exchanged remarks. The others of my choice band, also, expressed opinions. I sat, looking forward and up, stony-faced. These staunch companions of the choice band and Seg had lived and worked with me in different times, and, it seemed, times centuries apart. Seg was not himself. If anyone questioned me, and no one did, I was prepared to be reasonable on the point. But Seg Segutorio meant a great deal, a very great deal, as you will know. As, to be sure, did every single one of the choice band. The flier landed and Hikdar Douron jumped down and ran across, saluting as he hauled up before me.
“Majister!”
“Spit it out, Hikdar Douron.”
“The strom begs to report,” he started off. I killed my smile. That, for a certainty, was not the way Barty had given his message.
“Yes?”
“The — person — he sought has left certain signs so that the Strom is confident he knows where she is. But the strom has been wounded and is mewed up in the fortress of the Stony Korf. He cannot leave our wounded.”
I said: “Why did you not all leave in the flier?”
“We have been joined by freedom fighters — we could not bring them all and the strom would not abandon them. Honor-”
Barty’s honor! Well, the lad was in the right of it.
I turned to speak and Seg said: “Stony Korf! I know that devil’s eyrie. It is in Falinur, that is supposed to be my kovnate, may it rot in the Ice Floes of Sicce.”
The decision was made without thinking about it.
Farris was told he was to take over. No attack was imminent, everyone was sure. I would take a pruned down group of the most ferocious desperadoes of my band. Seg would come. We were at last going to find my daughter Dayra. We were going to talk to Ros the Claw. And about time, too.
Chapter Thirteen
To be free of the cares of empire! Once more to ride the winds and with a cutthroat band of loyal companions to hurtle across the face of Kregen, speeding beneath the Moons, and sword in hand once more to plunge into headlong adventure. Ah! This was the old Dray Prescot, a fellow with whom I had barely been on nodding acquaintance lately.
We had packed Barty’s flier with men and supplies and, Hikdar Douron having assured us we were adequate for the job ahead, I had not pressed Farris to release any more vollers from his small and hard-pressed fleet. Our sailing skyships would be, by days, too slow. Now in fading light, Douron pointed ahead, where a jagged line of peaks rose against the star-glitter. This was an uncomfortable little corner of Seg’s kovnate, a sour, dull place inhabited by sour, dull people. They insisted on keeping slaves and all Seg’s attempts had failed to convince them otherwise. I knew that toward the end, before the Time of Troubles, he had been at his wits’ end, unwilling to use the force at his disposal against the people of his new kovnate, and yet, sharing my views, desperate to end the blasphemy against human nature that slavery was, in very truth, in our eyes.
“I remember this fortress,” said Seg. He wiped his lips and peered ahead. “When I asked its chief, a bent- nosed rascal called Andir the Ornc, to manumit his slaves, he threw my messenger out, a fine young fellow, Naghan Larjester, and sent him back to me with a nose as bent as his own. It was a jest. I was screwing up my mind to march on him with my people and make an example of him, when the emperor was poisoned.”
“I think, Seg,” I said with some gravity as we flew down, “I really do think you are well out of Falinur. It is a kovnate of which much may be made. But slavery has to be ended. And there has been far too much water under the bridge.”
“If you mean, Dray,” said the Kov of Falinur, “that you wish to strip my kovnate from me, why, then, I will be the first to throw my hat in the air.”
“I will do what you wish. You are still a kov, that is something useful to be in this world, as you know. And a kov must have estates. There is a province ready for you, once-”
“Aye,” he said, his wild blue eyes bright in that mingled light. “Aye, dom! I know! Once we have cleared out whatever bunch of rasts is sucking it dry now.”
“Aye. And there will be a lot of that, by Krun.”
He did not ask where away this new kovnate of his might be and, truth to tell, I was in nowise sure myself. But, I was firmly convinced, unalterably convinced; Seg Segutorio was a kov and would have a kovnate.
He told me something of conditions he had found north of the Mountains of the North when he had gone seeking Thelda in Evir, the northernmost province. A fellow had taken over up there and was calling himself the King of Urn Vallia. He controlled Durheim and Huvadu although running into some trouble from the High Kov of Erstveheim. Venga, of which the hapless Ashti Melekhi had been the vadnicha, had been invaded and her twin brother, the vad, was on the run. It was all a mess up there, and, that was true of the southwest and the southeast and the mountains, also. There was no profit in worrying over those broader problems now when the stone fortress
