The flutsmen circled out of the suns’ glare as I pondered the problems facing me. The trumpets pealed the alarm.
How marvelous to see the Sword Watch and these new comrades in their yellow jackets work together!
Shafts rose from the flying ship, leaden bullets flew. The flutsmen, screeching, their mottled clumps of feathers flying, their weapons glittering, swooped upon us. It was a pretty set to. The flying argosy was called
When the flutsmen saw their attacks were fruitless, what remained of them drew off. Their wings bright in the suns’ light, the fluttrells swerved away. They sped in a long, defeated string northward for the coast.
“We are within a few dwaburs of Delphond, are we not?” I said to Captain Hando, the master. A thin, razor- nosed man with a tufty chin beard, he screwed up his eyes. He had been a galleon captain, and had transferred to the new flying ships service.
“Aye, majister. Devil take the flutsmen. So near the capital! It is beyond bearing.”
I learned that implacable frontiers had been drawn between Delia’s province of Delphond and Venavito, just to the west. Venavito was an Imperial Province. I should say, had been an Imperial Province. The Imperial Province of Vond, just to the north of Delphond, was in our hands; but Thadelm, to the west, was a battleground. I frowned at this news. We had fought battles in that part of the country and I had hoped we had cleared the enemy out.
“It is mostly a matter of border raids, majister,” I was told.
This area of action was altogether too close to the capital. Plans had been laid before I was summoned away by the Star Lords to my adventures in the Dawn Lands of Havilfar for an army to march to the southwest and liberate all that corner of the island. Why had not that been done? Why had the plans not been acted on? I could obtain no satisfactory answers to my questions on that score. The answer that I guessed, at the time, to be near the truth, reflected my own caution and anxiety. The Lord Farris and the Presidio well knew my concern for dissipating our forces. We had the raging armies of clansmen in the northeast to deal with. We had Layco Jhansi and the Racters in the northwest. We had to pivot on a center to face all ways at once. If we committed too much in a single lone thrust, we exposed our backs. Yet, I was now convinced, we must strike, make a decisive move in one direction or another, and so begin the final campaigns.
When Captain Hando used the word “implacable” to describe the new frontier between Delphond and Venavito, I understood exactly what he meant. It was not an incongruous word. I stared after the fluttrells. But I did not give the order to swing the ship after them. Challenger continued on her course, sailing the sky, and the suns shone and the flutsmen vanished back to their camps and fortresses in Venavito.
Too much awaited me in Vondium. The state of the country had to be seen to first, before I could go harum- scarum after a pack of miserable sky-reivers, much as I would have liked to have done. Even after all this time I know I have not done justice to the splendor, the beauty, the grandeur of Vondium. It is a human city, filled with warmth and light, and the brilliance of the vegetation, the silver-gleaming canals, the traceries of bridges, all the spires and towers, complement and enhance the city’s welcome. At this time much of the proud city lay in ruins. Rebuilding went on spasmodically, when we could spare workmen and materials. So as Challenger came slanting down out of the sky and the topmen swarmed aloft to furl her canvas and Captain Hando brought her nearly in to a landing in her berth in the admiralty complex alongside the Varmondsweay Canal, I felt the shiver of appreciation for the great city despite her scars and dilapidations. Here, in the capital of the empire, was the place where I worked.
There is a word in Kregish — diashum — which I suppose can be translated as magnificent. Certainly, in those days of travail and struggle for the island empire, it was diashum to be a Vallian. And, while that was true, it was also remarkably easy to join the ranks of the diashum dead. For me, this homecoming turned out to be dust and ashes.
Practically no one was left in the city of those to whom I wished so urgently to talk. Prince Drak and most of the army had flown and marched north to deal with a new and serious incursion of the clansmen. He had taken with him the majority of the Sword Watch, which explained, as I knew, why those who had flown for me in Challenger were from the Second Regiment. Seg Segutorio was already up there, locked in combat. Nath Nazabhan and the Phalanx were fully engaged. The Lord Farris had taken his air along. My son Jaidur, as usual, was missing. As for my daughters — Lela was Opaz knew where, and, likewise, Dayra was off conducting more mischief, I did not doubt. Inch sent news from the Black Mountains of violent affrays and ambushes and of a gradual clearance of his kovnate. Filbarrka kept busy in the Filbarrka regions of the Blue Mountains. A number of my Valkan regiments had arrived in the city and had incontinently gone north. Jilian had taken her Battle Maidens off to the wars again. Many another fine comrade you have met in my narrative had gone. So, as you can see, I felt down.
Yet, despite all this, I was fully conscious of the fact that I could not go haring up north after them. I had been accused by Tyfar of being overhasty in running on a leem’s tracks. Those people up there, they could handle the problems. I was firmly convinced that all that had happened to me since I had left Vondium bore most strongly on what was afoot. Very little, if anything, had happened by chance. Everything was all a part of that master plan I now knew to be guiding my footsteps on Kregen. Even Deb-Lu-Quienyin had gone. I was cheered to hear that Khe- Hi-Bjanching had returned, and the two Wizards of Loh, so I gathered from the palace staff, had warmed one to the other. Khe-Hi knew of Deb-Lu’s reputation. They would work together.
So… In all this… Yes. Delia. Where the hell had she gone to this time?
Chapter eighteen
The pouch containing the brooch and the baubles I had retrieved from the Moder and which I had retained through my adventures now lay on the desk before me. I sat in that small room in the imperial palace and I glowered at the brooch, at the shelves of books, and the maps that, as ever, mocked me from the walls, at the arms rack. In this room I had done a deal of work and, by Vox, was to do a damned deal more.
“Yes, yes,” I said to Chuktar Naroku, “you have taken employment with the Prince Majister and I shall honor the pledge.”
Chuktar Naroku rubbed his thumb along his right tusk. His three-inch-long tusks, thrusting up arrogantly from the corners of his mouth, were banded in gold. His oily yellow skin glistened in the radiance of the samphron-oil lamps. His pigtail hung down his back. He filled his armor. He sweated. He was not apim like me, he was a diff, a Chulik out of the Chulik islands off the east coast of Balintol. Reared from birth to the handling of weapons, Chuliks are justly respected and feared as mercenaries. Of humanity…?
Well, they do have a modicum more of that precious commodity than, say, the damned Katakis. The diff at Naroku’s side coughed. He had a long-nosed canine face, and his air of eternal supercilious superiority was guaranteed to get up the snub nose of diff and apim alike.
“My archers, majister-” began this Chuktar Unstabi.
“The same goes for you, too,” I said. I own my voice snapped a trifle pettishly. Chuktar Unstabi was an Undurker, from the Undurkor islands south of the huge promontory of Persinia. Both these Chuktars, which is a rank something like junior general, brigadier, were hyrpaktuns. They were costing my treasury good red gold.
My son, Prince Drak, had contracted to hire mercenaries to wage the war against the mercenaries hired by our enemies.
Fume though I might, I had to honor his pledge. But, by the Black Chunkrah! I said to myself. I’ll have something to say to that son of mine when I see him, by Krun!
I looked sharply at the man who stood silently a little to one side of the two hyrpaktuns. He was a Vallian. He wore a fancy new uniform, all buff and red, with a solid iron breastplate. His shrewd, weather-beaten face conveyed the sense of a man of gravitas, and the brown Vallian eyes were partially hidden by down-drooping lids. He wore a rapier and main gauche. The two mercenaries also wore their weapons.
“And now you feel you are fit to march to the southwest, Kov Vodun?”
“Yes, majister, with your blessing.” Kov Vodun Alloran had lost his kovnate of Kaldi, right in the toe of
