Alan Akers - Armada of Antares

“And this can be repeated?” asked the Emperor.

“Oh, yes, Majister,” piped up Scavander. He wiped a hand across his forehead. “Indeed, it is a mere matter of-” And here he launched into a description which made me frown. It was recondite and extraordinarily complex, filled with arcane words, and made little sense even to me, who ought in the nature of things to have known what he was talking about. I felt the whisper of unease. The Emperor waved all that aside brusquely.

“Suffice it that my son-in-law has succeeded in his task. I will have sums set aside for the building of fliers. Indeed, if all we hear out of Hamal is half true, we shall have need of them.”

“I do not believe it, Majister,” spoke Kov Lykon. “I am not at all persuaded that Hamal means us mischief. Their quarrel is with the countries of Pandahem. And we of Vallia should welcome anyone who can ruin the Pandahem.”

The growl of assent saddened me. Vallia and Pandahem were rivals on the outer oceans of Kregen. That rivalry seemed stupid, wasteful, and altogether ugly to me. I had friends in Bormark, a Kovnate of Tomboram, a kingdom in Pandahem.

“You may stake out a ponsho for a leem,” I said, somewhat heavily. “That does not prevent the leem from eating you after he has finished the ponsho.”

Seg at my elbow quaffed off his Gremivoh. I knew what he was thinking: by the time the leem was halfway through crunching up the ponsho Seg’s superb longbow would have feathered the devil of a leem like a pincushion. But they all took my meaning. I was finding the importance of talking at an oblique angle to the direct statement, in dealing with these people around the Emperor. As a one-time first lieutenant of a seventy-four on the oceans of Earth I had been used to belting out my orders and seeing that the hands jumped to it, or there’d be a few red-checked shirts at the gratings. Now, as I had discovered, the soft approach often worked better at this level of statecraft. Not that either Lykon Crimahan or Natyzha Famphreon much cared for the soft approach; they employed it in the same fashion I did.

These two eyed the Emperor. They no doubt fancied themselves laboring under the enormous disadvantage of not being related to the Emperor or his daughter, whereas I was the old devil’s son-in-law. Little did they know of the true situation at that time if they thought my marriage to his daughter had softened him to me! He tolerated me — was indeed more than a little afraid of me, as I well knew — yet the affection he could give was stunted and could only flower where his grandchildren were involved.

There was a great deal of further conversation, in which I caught the anger against me more clearly than ever. The fact that I was a barbarian clansman from the Great Plains of Segesthes, as well as being Lord of Strombor, was held against me with as much venom as my marriage to the Emperor’s daughter and my schemes to create friendship with Pandahem. Crimahan and the dowager Kovneva argued vehemently against squandering money on my crazy fliers. Since Hamal had begun her war against Pandahem they had refused to sell us vollers. Hyrklana was even selling vollers to Hamal. Queen Fahia of Hyrklana, that fat and evil lady, had trouble with her flier factories, and I knew there were men in Hyrklana who burned her manufactories and sought to topple her from the throne. Yet Hamal insisted she sell to them. No, we had to go on as I had planned. The only nit in the fleece was this puzzling attitude of San Evold. What in the name of Zair was he up to?

The answer came like a thunderbolt when I got him alone in the laboratory after all the others went back to the Chavonth Chamber to carry on the drinking and the discussions.

“My Prince! I am desolate!”

I saw — or thought I saw.

“You fixed it, Evold! The squish steam was not true cayferm so you used another silver box — a genuine one from Hamal!”

He shook his head, holding out his hands, palm up, and then he sneezed. Spluttering, he said, “Not so, Prince, not so.”

“Well, spit it out, Evold!”

“When the steam condensed I began to wonder if the water could have anything to do with the secret at all. What was left in the box apart from water? Air!”

“Ordinary air, from this damned laboratory of yours.”

He beckoned me over to an apparatus on a low lenken table.

Ornol, his assistant, hobbled in. Ornol had fallen into a Valkan canal and before they’d fished him out he’d drunk some of the canal water. He had not died, but he’d never be able to walk properly again. His left leg, in some mysterious reaction to the poison in the canal water, had shrunk and become almost useless. Now Ornol, a cheerful fellow with a shock of lank yellow hair that was pulled back from his forehead and streamed down over his shoulders, limped forward and set up the amphora, boxes, and tubing.

“See, Prince! With this tube I draw off what was left in the box after the steam condensed. .”

I knew of this strange non-substance called vacuum, but I hesitated to mention it. I had an idea that the box would collapse, for it was of exceedingly thin metal, tinned, as I have said. I grunted and Evold went on, excited by his work.

“The next time I collected the steam in this amphora, inverted it, and drew off what was there through this pipe. It must, my Prince, be the true cayferm!”

In that he was wrong, but we were both engrossed now and so I sniffed. There was the scent of ripe squishes. He had been unable to get to me through all the ceremony and knowing the urgency of the work had gone ahead alone. I did not fault him in this. Instead I said, “So it does work!”

“Aye, my Prince. And yet there is a strange discrepancy in the action. It does not operate as the others do.”

I heard a shout from the long hall of the images.

“Dray! The Emperor is waiting.”

If I did not care for my skin, Seg Segutorio, the Kov of Falinur, most certainly did.

“Two murs, Seg, and I am with you.” Then, to Evold: “Explain!”

“I have placed the new boxes in their correct positions in the orbits taken from a flier.” These circles of sturm-wood, their bearings of balass and bronze, revolved intricately and so carried the silver boxes into different aspects with each other. By these movements the upward and forward directions of the flier were controlled, as the backward and downward.

“Hurry!”

“Their reactions are different. There is no directional control. .”

I kept my face impassive. “You mean these boxes — our boxes — will only rise in the air? You cannot make them move forward?”

He nodded, and his lumpy nose glowed in the samphron-oil lamps’ gleam. “That is so, my Prince.”

“By the disgusting, worm-eaten kidneys of Makki-Grodno!” I was furious. All the work, all the pain, all the indignity — only to be rewarded with half the answer at the end!

“Very well. Have supplies made up. I will talk with Erdgar the Shipwright. We must change the plans again.”

“But, my Prince-”

“Dray!”

“Do it, Evold!”

“Yes, my Prince.”

I went out, my long white robe swirling, feeling thoroughly annoyed. All my pretty schemes were falling in ruins around my head. There were a few farsighted men of Vallia who could see what the future portended, could understand that the insane ambitions of Queen Thyllis of Hamal would not be slaked when all of Pandahem lay under the sway of her iron legions. But for every such one there were a hundred, no, a thousand, who could not see. These proud men of Vallia put store in their great galleons, in the mercenaries their gold could buy. These men would never see — let alone acknowledge — that Vallia might be threatened by any other country or empire. Now would not be the time to tell the Emperor the true situation. I would not tell him I could build fliers that would rise in the air but would not fly forward or backward!