sure.” He paused. Naghan Vanki was the empire’s chief spy-master. But Enevon went on with a bite in his voice. “His name is Hangrol ham Thanoth.”
I glared. I felt the fury rising. “A damned Hamalese!”
“Aye, majis.”
“Well, that settles it. Write the orders. We’ll call out everyone who is able to march instanter.” I stabbed the map with a fierce finger. “Ovalia. Every ship that will fly will take us to Ovalia. That’s the key. The city must be held.”
“Quidang, majis!” Enevon grasped essentials at once.
The map glowed with color. It showed the River of Shining Spears running southeast from the Blue Mountains to join the Great River, She of the Fecundity. To the north of the fork my Imperial Province of Bryvondrin stretched broad and rich and in our hands. Northwest of Bryvondrin lay Orvendel. If Jhansi’s men broke through, overwhelmed the city of Ovalia, the raid would turn into a major attack, a dagger thrust at Vondium, the proud city herself. We had to muster our forces, what we had of them, fly to Ovalia, set down, and smash the living daylights out of this Opaz-forsaken cramph of a Hamalese general and his army. As for Malervo Norgoth, he was quite obviously Jhansi’s man of the spot, a kind of commissar, and we’d hang him high with his toes all adangle if we caught him… Because the majestic canal system of Vallia is so efficient and extensive, roads in the island were atrocious at this time. We’d have to fly out with what we could. A reserve force could follow. They might be there to continue the victorious pursuit. They might have to fight a stern rearguard action. As to the forces available… Just about everybody had gone north to fight with the Army of the Northeast. It appeared to me to be the fashionable thing, the in thing, to serve in that army alongside the Prince Majister. Some of the people up there, well, when I heard their names I had to smile my bleak old grimace that passes for a smile. By Zair! But some right popinjays had ridden off gallantly to be seen with the Prince Majister. Men who had contumed me as a hairy unwashed clansman now thronged about my son. My own pride in Drak told me that he would be level-headed enough to see through all the flattery and the flummery. At least, by Krun, I hoped so!
And, to be truthful, there was far more of trust in Drak than could be expressed by mere hope. On the same day that the news of Layco Jhansi’s raid reached us our vanguard flew off for Ovalia. They flew in all the vollers we had. A regiment of churgurs, sword and shield men, and a regiment of archers, almost one thousand men. The swods in the ranks of these regiments were old hands, they had served with me before and would have to form one of the hard cores of the little force. The other hard core, it goes without saying, would be the Tenth Kerchuri. The pikes would have to stand, and hold, and charge, as they had been trained, and no one must allow doubt to creep in that these men, these brumbytes wielding their pikes in the files, were green, raw, and had seen no action. Like that half-blinded man standing on the center and seeking to strike out in all directions at those who attacked him, we of Vondium had lashed out northeast and southwest. And Layco Jhansi had seized his chance to raid us from the northwest. It was perfectly clear by the presence of a Hamalese Kapt with his forces that the dirty finger of Hamal was busy stirring up this pot. The fight would be tough; we’d be facing regulars, possibly some of the iron legions of Hamal, as well as the screaming fanatical irregulars of Jhansi’s cowed provinces.
The regiments from the Fifth Brigade of churgurs and the Ninth Brigade of archers who had flown off had served with me at the Battles of Kanarsmot. They were good men. The remaining two regiments of each Brigade, together with a motley bunch of spearmen, slingers, and axemen waited transportation. The flying ships of the air gathered on Voxyri Drinnik and that broad space of open land seethed with all the commotion of an army embarking. I call it an army; well, yes, it was in spirit and composition and determination if not in numbers.
The Presidio met to deliberate, as was their wont, and I spent a couple of precious burs speaking to them from the rostrum, impressing on these grave senators the need for cool heads in this time of crisis. They ran the country and knew of my dreams of the kind of country I had been asked to bring into being by the people who had called me. There was a little of the wheeling and dealing that had characterized the reign of the old emperor still in evidence; but these men were a new breed of senator. Naghan Strandar, whom I trusted, stood up to reply, and he astonished me.
“Majister! You have made us, and we are mindful of that.” The council chamber in the Villa of Vennar echoed to his words, and the rows of soberly clad men listened with composed faces. “The old emperor is dead and with him died the Valhan Dynasty. You are the first of the Prescot Dynasty of Vallia. We shall serve you and the country no matter what transpires.”
I sat in the seat reserved for the emperor and listened as he went on for a short space in these terms. I own I found this idea amazing. Of course, I had begun a new dynasty in Vallia. It was something I had scarcely even acknowledged. And, as you who understand the Kregish will perceive, Valhan had a special meaning. The upshot of that was a vow of total allegiance to Vallia, and a determination to bring every last ounce of energy and will to the struggle.
Going back to see the leathery swods boarding the vessels, I reflected that great words do, very often, deserve great deeds. And, as Erithor, the great poet of Valka, would have said, the opposite holds true, also.
Two men attempted to desert and were caught and dragged before me as I sat Grumbleknees with the dust blowing and the pandemonium bellowing up all over the Drinnik.
“Let them go,” I said. “Put them to work baking bread, or cleaning sewers, or forging weapons.”
“But, majister!” said Chuktar Vogan, commanding the Ninth Brigade of archers. “They should be hanged up high so that all men may see the miserable cramphs!”
“Then they would be dead, Vogan. Mayhap, after a dwabur or so of sewers, they might rescind their decision to desert.”
Chuktar Vogan saw only the obvious, brutal side of that. He guffawed, and slapped his thigh, and allowed the emperor was blessed with brains from Opaz himself.
I had no time to try to explain that any man had the right to feel fear at battles to come, that running away was a natural and healthy thing to do if you wanted to keep your skin intact, that simple brutal warfare was a horrendous thing which no civilized man should have to endure. He would not have grasped those concepts, not with a raging pack of Hamalese coming down to burn his home and slay his family. I could see both sides of this pathetic human problem, and sighed, and could see no way out for me other than doing what I was doing, and hoping for the best in the sweet light of the Invisible Twins. I suppose that the agonies a woman suffers in anticipation of childbirth, and then in the birth itself, are analogous to the agonies a man suffers in the anticipation of battle, and the ghastly event itself. Something like, perhaps…
“My Val!” said Orlon Sangar ti Deliasmot. “Majister, I’m delighted to get the chance of showing you what my lads can do. By Vox, I thought I’d rot in Vondium forever.”
Orlon Sangar came from Delphond. He was the Kerchurivax in command of the Tenth Kerchuri. He had risen through the ranks in the Third, and the Third was by way of being a special phalanx to Nath Nazabhan and me. I nodded.
“Your lads will do well, Orlon. I just wish we had more of you.”
He made the expected reply. Well, that answer has been given many and many a time before a battle, on two worlds…
The brumbytes handed in their pikes as they boarded. These long weapons were bundled and then lashed to the ships. The men kept their shields, and they hung them on the bulwarks in fine style. There was a deal of the horseplay and raucous coarse humor inevitably surrounding the movement of green troops. These men had been trained hard; but only the faxuls of the front ranks, and not all of them, had seen active service. A wisp of nerves can be concealed beneath a huge guffaw and a practical joke. Essential though the religious ceremony honoring and imploring Opaz most certainly was, I own — a coarse, profane, swearing kind of fellow as I am — I chafed to have it over with and get the troops airborne. When the prayers for the safekeeping of the men and for the victory were offered up and the voice of the chief priest rang to silence, a deep stillness held all Voxyri Drinnik. Absolute quiet for ten long heartbeats proved how wrong I was, how much the feelings of the soldiers had been affected, how needful this was. Then a cough, the scrape of a boot, and the Deldars yelling, the shrill notes of trumpets. Even the flags began to rustle again.
One of the texts chosen as suitable for the service was the well-known advice from the Instructions to Novices. This says, in effect: “Be Brave, Bold, and Resourceful; Fret not on the Hazard.” A fair comparison may be made with Aristophanes in The Frogs, where he uses words of similar meaning and intent. Easy to give advice and harder than keeping warm on the Ice Floes of Sicce to take it. I had accepted the risk and, in theory, should now push all thoughts of the hazard from my mind and go forward in bold confidence. But, while that might be fine for
