Vallia, were swinging in to crush the enemy between them and Seg. Altogether, a satisfactory day’s work, if you omitted to dwell too long on what might have occurred.
Then a fast voller arrived to tell us that Kov Vodun Alloran had been victorious in the southwest and was marching strongly into his own kovnate in the corner of the island.
“It seems as though we are successful in the south,” said Drak. He smiled at Silda as he spoke.
“There remains the southeast,” I said. “And those rasts up north. And the islands-”
“Oh!” flamed Silda. “We will do it! We have to look on the bright side.”
I put a hand to my jaw and stared at her. Her bright face stared back, defiant, challenging, and I felt a poignant stab of happiness for Drak. Now, if only he had the nous to take the happiness that was his, and forget all about Queen Lush…
With my old gravel-shifting voice I said, “We will win, in the end, Silda, because defeat is unthinkable.”
Then, to Drak, I said, “Have you seen your mother?”
“No. Nor anyone else of the family. But they are all right.” He glanced up at Quienyin. “Otherwise we would have heard.”
I grumped at this. But he was right.
“I would like to go after those rasts. But we must consolidate what we have and strengthen our new frontiers. The army will have to be looked at, too.” My face, I think, must have looked its usual ugly self, for Drak lost a little of his fretfulness. “And as for hiring mercenaries-”
“They fought well and earned their hire.”
“Maybe. But I want Vallia to be liberated by Vallians. Is that clear?”
“Why shed our blood when-?”
“Just because it is our blood and the prize is blood-worthy. If it is not, you will never secure peace in the land.”
We might have wrangled then; but the needlemen insisted Prince Drak needed rest, and we were shepherded out. Silda did not accompany us. She was the best medicine Drak could have. My comrades in camp and I decided we ought to hold a right roaring bender that night. We had done well. There was much to do. But for this night we could forget problems and carouse around the campfires and bellow out the old songs under the Moons of Kregen. And so we did. But for all the wild singing and drinking and dancing as the campfires spurted lurid highlights against flushed faces and feverish eyes — can one ever forget problems? I do not think so. A few moments of oblivion, dearly bought, look cheap and tawdry when the problems remain, as intransigent and menacing as ever with the pallid light of the suns.
Every man contains a scorpion within him. And every man is commanded by the Star Lords. My Scorpion had materialized itself and become real; my Star Lords had revealed a glimmer of themselves. In this, surely, I was more fortunate than the unhappy people who struggle uncomprehendingly against the vagaries of their own nature and the vicissitudes of what, mistakenly, they call fate. If it be true that men are born to rule and men are born to be slaves, then surely it is an onus placed on those who rule to command toward life and not toward death? The study of history tends to the belief that those with power abuse it because they understand only a tiny part of what power is. If individual people are as nothing before the great weight of destiny, and there is no reason in the universe, then a man has just the one single fact to which to cling: he is a man. Nothing more. Unknown powers within and without ourselves — the Scorpion and the Everoinye — may overthrow us and we may go down to eternal ruin; but can we do any more, seeing we are but men?
We had won victories against what my people regarded as the powers of darkness, yet I knew we must all go forward together in the light of Opaz, against greater forces of evil. And who was to say that those other evil powers would not, in time, be reconciled?
“There is a magnificent golden Kildoi, there, Dray,” said Turko.
“Aye.” The firelight glinted from Korero’s golden beard and he smiled, lifting his two right arms. His tail hand wrapped around a silver goblet, and he drank.
I made the pappattu and I made it in a certain way.
“Korero the Shield — Turko, Kov of Falinur.”
A welling burst of song roared out then from the nearest group around their campfire, rollicking words that finished, “No idea at all, at all, no idea at all.”
We all half-turned to look and listen, and when I turned back — lo! Turko and Korero were gone. What transpired between those two touched me nearly, and I, fallible human being that I am, trembled as vague rumors, laced with sly chuckles, reached me. Garbled stories of a fight that sprawled away into the moon shadows, a titanic conflict that roared over kools of land, made me imagine all manner of disasters. But, when I found them, the Kildoi and the Khamorro, they were sitting together and quaffing and not a bruise or a cut on either. They stood up as I approached, lithe, limber, superb men.
“You two-” I started. Then the ridiculousness of the situation overwhelmed me. How small my faith had been! “I need you both, in different ways. You are not Vallian born — well, no more am I — but our path is set out for us. Falinur is to be won back, for one thing.”
“The kov was saying-” spoke up Korero, his golden beard glinting, his tail hand curled around his jar.
“Korero expressed the view,” said Turko.
They paused and looked at each other. I took the measure of that look.
“Well, that’s settled, then.” I spoke briskly. “We’ll round up an army and no doubt Drak and the Presidio will bestow an imposing number on it, and we’ll see about Falinur.”
“It is in my mind, Dray, to ask Korero to march with us.”
“If the Prince Majister can spare him. When it’s done I’ll expect Falinur to be a model kovnate. As for your taxes, Kov Turko, see they are paid promptly, and in full. And I shall call on you for a few regiments. See about raising a brigade of swarthmen.”
They both looked puzzled. “But — you-?”
“When I get back we will have to think seriously about the rest of the island. This King of Urn Vallia, for example.”
“Get back?” they said together.
The first pastel tints of the new day lightened the horizon, the air smelled crisp and clear with a lingering trace of woodsmoke to spice the atmosphere with promise of breakfast, She of the Veils sank slowly wreathed in roseate clouds. This was a dawn on Kregen and there cannot be any other dawns in all the worlds among the stars to compare with that, by Zair!
“Get back,” I said firmly. “Much of Vallia has been freed from the maniacs who destroy all they touch. Prince Drak is fully competent to run the country. The army is in good heart with these victories under their belts. Where we have the land, the people prosper. The harvests are good. There is a spirit abroad that will not be denied. I shall not be long — at least, I trust I shall not be long.”
“But-” said Turko.
“Where-?” said Korero.
“You two sound like that mythical fellow from Balintol with two heads.”
“Mythical or not,” said a voice from the shadows at my back, “he is a fellow who stays at home for some of the time. Just where are you off to this time?”
For two heartbeats I did not turn around. I felt all that glorious dawn of Kregen rush together and collide and burst into my stupid vosk skull of a head. I felt the dawn colors riot and coruscate and burn through my veins. Slowly, slowly, I turned.
She half-smiled, yet her face was serious and grave, pale and with the first hints of the exhaustion brought by long journeyings and too-intensive work. I barely noticed her clothes — black silk tights, black leathers, black boots, with her rapier and dagger depending from golden lockets and the wide black belt with the golden clasp. A scarlet cape swung from her shoulders. She stared at me and I stared at her, and, like two loons, we stood, not moving, staring with unappeased hunger one upon the other. I took a breath. The fragrance of the dawn air, the subtle pastels of apple green and rose, the distant chorus of those marvelous birds of Kregen all — all swam about me. The morning radiance touched her hair and brought alive those glorious tints of auburn, making a halo about her face. I swallowed down -
hard.
It occurred to me that I might have said, “So you have come home, then?” But, instead, all I could say was,
