Silda would fight for Drak, aye, fight against his own father! And the luck of Opaz with her!
Then she said, with an abrupt switch of mood, “Have you seen Queen Lushfymi of Lome since you got back, Uncle Dray?”
“I have not. And it’s about time you stopped calling me Uncle Dray. By Zair! It makes me feel a million years old.”
“I beg your pardon, majister. Of course-”
“Silda, Silda! Just knock it off.”
Her eyebrows flicked up again. Damned attractive, those eyebrows, like the rest of her.
“I mean, knock off the uncle bit. As for Queen Lush — I wish she’d go home to Lome. But of course, poor woman, she can’t. Not with Yantong ready to put her down if she does.”
“Poor woman!” flared Silda. Then, calmly: “It must be hard for her. Aunt Delia’s father meant a great deal to Queen Lushfymi. But do you really think Yantong is in Pandahem?”
“I do not know and I wonder if I really do want to know. No. No, I’d like to know. Then perhaps we could — well, all that is wishful thinking. Even Quienyin doesn’t know where Yantong hides out and tries to run the world.”
Then we talked of more personal matters. When she left with my good wishes and the last Remberees and her refusal of any aid in particular she might need — independent girl — I reflected that not once had she called Lushfymi Queen Lush.
What she had told me, and been at pains to tell me without acknowledging that she had told me, was that Delia was all right, was safe and well, and was chafing to get home. So I could draw a deep breath and soldier on alone. The passing on of that information, I saw, had been the reason for Silda’s visit. I wondered, with a pang, if Delia knew, or if Silda had brought me the news of her own volition. That would be like Silda.
Kov Vodun was burning to be about his business of clearing up the southwest. I rode faithful old Grumbleknees out to Voxyri Drinnik to see the advance guard off. They were flying out. They would be reinforced as fast as the ships of the air could turn around. The breeze, the Todalpheme had told us, would stay fair, giving a good stiff-sailing course to be steered out and back. Apart from the Eighth Kerchuri of the Fourth Phalanx and the Ninth Kerchuri of the Fifth, Kov Vodun was taking five thousand churgurs, three thousand archers and five thousand kreutzin, the light infantry and skirmishers. Many of these infantry were mercenaries. For cavalry I had let him have three regiments of totrix heavies, and five divisions of a mixed force of totrix and zorca lancers and archers. He took forty varters, the efficient ballistae of Kregen, wheeled and drawn by a variety of draught animals. Enevon Ob-Eye rode with me and wore a gloomy face.
“All these fine men leaving the city,” he said. He shook his head. “Pray Opaz nothing untoward occurs.”
“Long before the enemy can even think of reacting and mounting an attack on us,” I told him, “the armies will be victorious and return. You’ll see.”
I was thinking of the foemen we knew, up in the north and east and down in the southwest. The life of the city roared on, even though to me the place appeared empty. There were many folk who were still civilians, going about their daily tasks and providing the sinews to keep the army moving and supplied and fed. Every day men would march in having toiled for many dwaburs out of the invaded territories. Most of them simply wanted to get into a uniform and take up a weapon and go right back and have a bash at the occupiers. We had to instill in them the notion that they must be trained and drilled and hardened before they could even think of returning.
Turko took a large hand in the hardening of the men. He might be a Khamorro and therefore far more deadly with empty hands than with a weapon; but he ran these raw recruits ragged and built them up not only in physique but in spiritual confidence.
Many men saw me every day over matters touching every part of daily life, and of these, some you have met and many there are whom I grew to know better and who feature in later episodes. And then, one day, a voller appeared over the palace. She was a large craft, and she flew the Vallian tresh, blazing under the suns, and also my own battle flag, Old Superb. I looked up and I frowned. I had a good idea of what this was all about, I had expected it, and I knew what course I was going to take and how confoundedly angry that was going to make everyone. I was not looking forward at all to the coming scene.
But, I admit, I did look with great joy upon the tough, fierce men who crowded from the voller and advanced upon me as I stood upon the high landing platform to greet them. You know them, you know their lineaments and much of their history. These men were the Emperor’s Sword Watch. They were the ruffianly spirits of my Choice Band. Cleitar the Standard stepped forward.
“Majister!” he bellowed. “They have elected me as spokesman.”
I gave him no further time. “Lahal to you all!” I know I looked fierce. These men and I had been through perilous times together. “I understood there was fighting in the north. Battles against our foemen. What?
Have you deserted in the face of the foe?”
Their faces, wreathed in smiles, brilliant at seeing me again, were cast down in an instant. They looked puzzled and hurt.
“Majister!” stammered Cleitar. “Us? Run away…?”
Dorgo the Clis stepped forward, his scar a vivid slash across his face. “Majister! We return to where we belong!”
“Aye!” bellowed Targon the Tapster. “We are the Emperor’s Sword Watch!”
“We stand always at your side, majister!” roared Naghan ti Lodkwara. “You cannot send us away!”
The others joined in then and the air filled with protests and lurid oaths. They were all incensed at my obtuseness. So I had to explain.
“Prince Drak, the Prince Majister, commands the Army of the Northeast. He is in the forefront of the battle. Your duty is to him at this time.”
Well, as I say, I had not relished the scene and it turned out as I had gloomily suspected. In the end they saw that I meant what I said. They shuffled. They protested. But at last they all returned to the voller and observed the fantamyrrh and so took off to return to Drak. But they did not do this right away. Oh, no. We spent a raucous night drinking and singing and telling the old stories before they left bright and early and mostly hung over. That, at the least, gave me a single bright spot to put alongside the visit from Silda
— and one or two other timely interruptions to the everyday slog of work. And, in a sense, that decided me on a project I had long contemplated. The Second Regiment of the Sword Watch, mainly brave and brilliant young men still under training, were all very well. There were the paktuns from the sea in their tromp-colored uniforms. Now they were called the Emperor’s Yellow Jackets. But I looked at the empty barracks and the thinness of the morning parades. So, I went to see the Chief Assassin of Vondium.
Chapter nineteen
Perhaps I had been over-hasty in sending the Sword Watch back to keep an eye on my son Drak.
“I did warn you, majister, that contracts had been placed for you. We have had to deal with two such attempts — but you were not in the city at the time, and that made it easier.”
Nath the Knife, the chief of assassins, styled the Aleygyn of the Stikitches, studied me through the eyeholes of his steel mask. We both sat at the table under the arch of the Gate of Skulls this time, and there was no need for either of us to attempt to gain stature by sitting or standing.
“Have the builders been working as I promised?”
“Yes, majister.” His words were plain enough; but his meaning was difficult to judge. “They work well. Our houses grow.”
Drak’s City, the oldest part of Vondium, was a law unto itself. Here the rascals, the scalawags, the thieves, and the disaffected lived. The aid from the rest of the city might have been aimed at preventing disease; but it was in a very real sense a humanitarian gesture. Within the walls life bustled along. Everybody scratched a living somehow. Nath the Knife had positioned his bodyguard in the Kyro of Lost Souls, as men of the Sword Watch and the Yellow Jackets waited on me on the outside.
