“Jhansi! Jhansi!” They screeched as they came on. The golden glitter of moonlight ran down their blades.
“You make a man twist to follow you!” exclaimed Korero, hauling his twin shields up. Only a few arrows sported down. Dorgo the Clis reined up beside me, and Naghan and Targon the other side. Others of the choice band clumped. We formed a small but very knobbly afterguard, a nut these cramphs of mercenary totrixmen would find extraordinarily hard to crack.
Dorgo had reported on the blasphemies he had witnessed in Dogansmot. These men we faced tonight were very different from that fatuous army of Fat Lango’s, which had sat down and vegetated after the death of its leader; but they shared the same avariciousness for rapine and pillage. We were sharp set for them. On they came, heads bent, weapons glittering, and we faced them, and if I say we were the more vicious and savage and barbaric, well, I think that to be true if understandable, Zair forgive us. The two lines clashed and there was a moment of tinker-work before we belted them, belted them in true style, hip and thigh. The totrixmen turned and fled. Someone set up a cheer, but I bellowed out intemperately: “Stow your gab! There will be more of ’em. Now, ride. Ride!”
We swung our mounts’ heads and gladly galloped off into the golden-tinged darkness.
Chapter Fourteen
Having outdistanced the pursuit we eased our mounts. We intended to be long away from this neighborhood by dawn. We had suffered six casualties, and carried with us ten or so who bore wounds, light or serious. Not one, thank Zair, of my choice band had taken so much as a scratch. They were by way of becoming your well- accomplished band of desperadoes, to be sure. Lol Polisto said with a matter-of-fact simplicity that carried more chill conviction than any amount of loud-mouthed bragging: “The cramphs have my wife Thelda and our child and I am going to get them out.”
“Where?” I said to him, just as quietly.
“In a camp they’ve set up at Trakon’s Pillars.”
“Ah!”
“You know of the accursed place? Surrounded by bogs, deep and dark and treacherous. And decadent too, once you get there. They were proud and gleeful in their triumph.” He held out a bracelet, a heavy silver thing engraved with strigicaws and graints. “This is a trinket I gave to Thelda, in remembrance of our adventures and our love. They flung it into the fortress of the Stony Korf, with a note tied to it. See.”
The note was obscene. It mentioned Trakon’s Pillars. I understood the feelings torturing Lol Polisto.
“We will ride there, Lol. I think we can perhaps pay a call they do not expect.”
“Majister!”
“Aye,” I said. “Aye. Of all Vallia. A thing I do not easily forget.”
We rode hard all the rest of that night and rested up a couple of burs before dawn. The wounded with a strong escort went off to one of the hide-outs the freedom fighters had set up. Among them was a lop-eared rascal with a lewd grin exposing snaggle-teeth, by name Inky the Chops, who, having been born hereabouts laid claim to a working knowledge of the treacherous pathways through the quagmire of Trakon’s niksuth, the bog area surrounding Trakon’s Pillars. There was no holding Lol, who appealed to me as a fighting man battling for his homeland and his people, and a family man tortured by fears for his wife and child. It was clear that he loved them both deeply, and, I could see, the love was returned. So, in daylight, we pressed on into the bog.
Mists wreathed the pewter-placid waters and green scum floated and laid carpets for our feet that would have pitched us into the stinking depths had we been foolish enough to trust them. Bladderworts burst, it seemed, just as we passed them, in succession like a royal salute on Earth, and the smells clashed and stank. We wrapped scarves around our noses and pressed on along the spongy ways, with lop-eared Inky the Chops loping ahead. He prodded with a long tufa-tree stick he had slashed off, and every now and again he stopped, and sniffed, and picked his nose, and heaved up a gob, and spat, and then started off along a fresh trail. I put my trust in Zair and followed on, letting the zorca sink his feet where he would, knowing he had sense enough in this.
Ashy-trees hovered over the ways, their spectral branches splotched, dripping with green and orange slime, like Spanish moss. Clumps of scraggy rusty-black birds rose, squawking in indignation at our trespass. These last I eyed with exasperation and concern. A watchful sentry could mark our progress by those betrayers. They were, in very truth, not unlike the magbirds of Magdag, inhabitants of the land of betrayal and treachery, as I considered them.
Presently Inky the Chops halted. The way, such as it was, stretched ahead between water-grasses and bulrushes and clumps of floating weeds. The stink offended man and beast alike. Mist wreathed and there was nothing silvery in that oily, greenish-black effluvium.
“Well, Inky?”
“It gets a bit tricky hereabouts,” said Inky, flashing his snaggle teeth. “There’s risslaca in some of these stretches of open water. Real nasty ’uns.”
The risslacas come in a fantastic variety of sizes and shapes, and only some are akin to Earthly dinosaurs. I could see the wriggle of a leepitix as it chased a fish in a pool to our left. Oily mist swirled down on the other side, and a vast and creaking giant of an un-named tree hung over the squelchy trail. I cocked an eye at Inky.
“Do you wish me to lead?”
He had no time to answer before Korero — and Targon and Naghan and Dorgo and Magin — were up and pushing to get to the point position. I let the corner of my mouth twitch.
“Go on, Inky. You will have spears to protect you.”
“Spears!” He spat — most accurately, overwhelming a dragonfly. “If’n you get a real big ’un — don’t git in my way when I runs!”
“I won’t,” I promised him. An engaging rascal, Inky the Chops, in the style of Kregen rascals I have known.
We pushed on for a space in this fashion, my men taking it in turns for the dubious honor of leading out. I made good and sure I was up near the head of the column. The beasts did not like it at all, and were growing increasingly restive. What happened, when it did, at last, happen, reflected scant credit on any of us. The labyrinth of boggy pathways and precarious footholds along the compacted dirt gathered between tree roots, mazed in its complexity. Inky seemed to know where he was going. We reached an open space that bore the marks of solid land. Trees bowered it in that green and orange dangling slime, and mist coiled, and no birds sang.
But the risslacas were waiting.
Equally at home on land or in water, they charged us with clawed and webbed feet expanded to give them perfect support on the treacherous boggy surface. Squamous hides gleamed in orange and green, camouflage colors, and bright and glittering eyes measured us for size. Talons raked. In an instant we were battling desperately with spear and sword against talon and fang. The noise spurted. Ichor smoked as sword strokes opened up reptilian innards. We were fortunate in only one thing; they had attacked head on instead of lying in wait.
With the drexer slicing away and the zorca a live coal between my knees I was forced to pirouette away, and felt the beast sliding dangerously, hock-deep, into slime. With a convulsive heave he was up and out of the muck. On a semblance of dry ground he gathered himself. Lol Polisto had stayed near me throughout this nightmare journey. His zorca collided with mine. Both animals squealed their fears. As though impelled by the same evil spirit they took to their heels. Heads down, spiral horns thrusting, they bolted.
No effort of sawing on the reins would halt my zorca. He went baldheaded up the trail, brushing past Inky, and I got in a good thwack at a reptilian head, all scales and eyes and fangs, as we racketed past. Lol led. We were both carried on and away and into the shrouding mists and we left the sounds of that desperate combat far in our rear.
As I say, little credit to any of us — and least of all to me.
By the time we had the zorcas under control once more we were well and truly lost.
“Well,” said Lol. “I am not giving up.”
