Alan Akers - A Victory for Kregen

“Water for now,” I said. “I’ll answer for Nodgen and Hunch.”

“And I for Barkindrar and Nath.”

Quienyin said, “The brothers Fre-Da will, I think, answer for themselves, as is right and proper.”

The Pachaks lifted their tail hands in acknowledgment.

“When the suns are over the yard arm,” I said, although in the Kregish it was not what I said at all. We lay back, munching hardtack, sipping water sparingly, and every now and then a white gleam in Hunch’s face told of his roving eyeballs gazing fondly on the wine skins.

Truly, Moderdrin is an amazing and forbidding place. The mountains stud the plain with their humps, crowned by jumbles of towers and domes and walls, smothered in vegetation, with tumbling waterfalls and bosky avenues in which, as we knew, were to be found savage denizens. But, those denizens were nowise as monstrous as the horrors within the artificial mountains. We dozed and kept watch, and the water remained stoppered in the bottles. Prince Tyfar showed signs of wishing to protest, after the first sips had ceased to refresh him.

“Prince,” I said, and I spoke evenly, “if you drink now you will simply sweat the precious liquid away, wasting it. Wait until the worst of the heat goes.”

“But my mouth is afire-”

“Suck a pebble.” I nodded at the Pachaks. The cheeks on each hardy Pachak face bulged. He did as I bid; and he had the sense to see the sense in it. I felt he was a young man, prince or no, who grasped the uses of sense in a way that would be approved, at least, by men who thought as I did. For your full-bloodied, rambunctious hell-for-leather rampant princeling, Prince Tyfar was altogether too much of an intellectual — and a superb axeman, withal.

He had gone raging into the Muzzards. There was no dilly-dallying there. I fancied he was more of a proper prince than most of that ilk in Hamal.

Three times during that day we spotted flights of flutsmen, and we stayed close. The swarths were lying down and dozing against the heat, shivering their scaly tails every now and then. We were not observed by those sky reivers.

That night we drank sparingly, mounted up on nine of the animals, and led the remaining six bundled up with all we thought necessary to take. The ground scavengers had been at work on the corpses, but our presence had deterred the warvols from swooping down on rustling wings to join in the devouring. By morning there would be left only bones.

At my insistence, Tyfar and Quienyin rode the two superior swarths. Tyfar, I noticed, just took the best one without even thinking about it. Quienyin looked across at me, and it was then I insisted he take the beast.

So, mounted up, not quite as thirsty as we had been, we set off again across the Humped Land, the Land of the Fifth Note. The strong probability was that the Moder Lords organized these Muzzard swarth riders, and agreed among themselves which mound the arriving expeditions of gold-and magic-hungry adventurers should be directed into. Well, the wizards had their fun running poor crazed folk through their tombs, torturing them and extracting the last jot of enjoyment from their anguish. As for the magic items we had taken, they had been expended in our troubled ascent to the surface and escape. There would be no spells of paralysis, no more burning drops, no more tail-shrivelers for us now. Now we must rely on steel and muscle to see us through.

That night passed and toward dawn we ventured to close one of the mounds where we filled the bottles at a stream and set up, stalked, and slew our supper. Everyone cheered up.

“If it means steering out of here from Moder to Moder-”

“Aye, Jak!” said Tyfar. He beamed. “We will be back into the grasslands in no time. And then we will hear word of my father and sister, I am sure.”

I looked at the Wizard of Loh, who sat by the fire munching a leg of one of the birds brought down by Barkindrar the Bullet.

Again we had chosen a strong place for our camp, beneath a rocky outcrop where the fire was shielded by cut branches of thorn-ivy. The swarths rested after their exertions of the night, and I fancied they were well content that their new masters rode them at night and rested them by day here.

“I feel sure you are right, Tyfar. We follow their tracks, I believe, although the wind wipes them out smartly enough.”

“Once I am back in Hamal — once we are both there, Jak — you do not forget my invitation to a bladesman’s night out in the Sacred Quarter?”

“I do not. I anticipate it with relish.”

By Vox! Did I not!

What, I wondered, would he say if I said, quite casually, “Oh, and, Prince Tyfar of Hamal, by the way, I am Dray Prescot, Emperor of Vallia, the chief of your country’s sworn enemies?”

That, I felt, would repay in the glory of his face much discomfort. But, of course, he would not believe me.

How could he?

He would think I jested with him, and in damned poor taste, into the bargain. He knew nothing of me, save what I had told him, and that was going to have to be altered, soon. He would ask what on Kregen the Emperor of Vallia, the great rast, was doing down here in the Dawn Lands of Havilfar. That was, by Vox, a good question. Tyfar knew nothing of the Star Lords and their engaging habit of putting me into situations of peril in order to affect the future course of the world. Well, I had done the Star Lords’ bidding here and was now free to return home to Vallia. I longed to get back, to see Delia again and my comrades and what of my family deigned to show up when their grizzly old graint of a father returned from one of his wild jaunts over the world. There was so much still to be done in Vallia it defied all common-sense evaluation. The island was split by war and factions; the people had called on me, had fetched me to be their emperor, and I was in duty bound to honor that trust and that demand. The island would be united and healed. Then I would hand it all over to my fine son Drak, and with a thankful sigh shake the reins of empire from my sticky hands. And, make no mistake, this was what I intended to do.

All the same, Drak was in Vallia now, and I had many outstanding councilors and generals. I could leave the country to get on well enough without me for a space.

For — I had other fish to fry.

Down here in the Dawn Lands I was not too far away from Migladrin, from Herrelldrin, from Djanduin. Also, in the opposite direction lay Hyrklana. In all these lands I had business.

“Jak!”

I did not jump. I realized I had been sitting brooding on the Wizard of Loh.

“By the Seven Arcades, Jak! You were far gone in your thoughts — I did not pry,” he added, quickly. I did not wish to understand just what he meant, although the gist was plain enough. I did not smile; but I was aware of an easing in the graven lines on my craggy old beakhead of a face.

“Yes, Quienyin, I was thinking. Prince Tyfar would like news of his family and friends, and I do not doubt the others of us nine would, also.”

“And you?”

“Yes.”

He nodded, half to himself.

“You miss Hyrklana, Jak?”

Before I could open my mouth — for thus suddenly had come up the change in the story of myself that Prince Tyfar of Hamal must know — the prince spoke.

“Hyrklana? That nest of pirates? What has that to do with you, Jak of Djanduin?”

I sighed. There, displayed before me, was the reckoning for the sin of lying about one’s origins and playing at cloak and dagger for the fun of it. I had told Quienyin I hailed from Hyrklana, that large and independent island kingdom off the east coast of the continent of Havilfar, and I had told Tyfar I came from Djanduin, the remote, massive peninsula in the far south and west of the continent. And, as you know, I had not lied in saying I was from Djanduin. I never forget I am King of Djanduin. Usually, it is not particularly helpful in maintaining a good cloak and dagger cover to say you come from a country you know nothing of and have never visited.