Alan Akers - Fliers of Antares

“Kov Nath! They come! They come!”

Kov Nath went mad. His great sword whirled into a silvery-blue blur, for he had not tasted blood with it as yet. He bellowed his anger.

“By Zodjuin of the Stormclouds! I’ll spit you yet, yetch!”

His face congested with blood. Apart from his four arms he looked exactly like an apim, and his face was darkly handsome, with bright merry eyes, a thin black moustache, and a chin that jutted with a dark bristle to show he had not shaved that morning. He bore down on me again even as his men yelled and began to decamp.

“Rast!” he yelled at me, and spittle flew. “I’ll degut, debrain, dissect you, you two-armed weakling!”

“By Vox!” I ducked a swing and surged up to him and so took his throat into my left hand and dragged his handsome head forward. I glared into his congested face. “You’ll know you’ve met me, Kov Jagdur the Boaster!” And I slashed the thraxter down. The blow would have finished any ordinary man. But this Kov Nath Jagdur was a Djang. He had four arms. The shield came around and caught me in the side, just beneath the ribs, and I grunted and let him go, and he brought the great sword around and down to finish me.

I rolled away and my thraxter came up just in time and slid that long wicked blade. The steel bit into the turf.

A crossbow bolt went whirr-chunk against the great blade. The double hilt was violently wrenched from Kov Nath’s fists. The sword spun across the turf.

He roared and straightened up and another bolt hummed past his ear. From the smoke more Djangs appeared, running and loosing crossbows, holding their shields high, their thraxters low. At their belts swung djangirs.

“Now by all the devils in a Herrelldrin hell!” bellowed Kov Nath.

He hesitated — he stood there, balanced, ready to lunge one way for his sword and the other in flight. A bolt pranged glancingly from his lorica, and that decided him; with a final blood-curdling curse he ran around the far end of the inn. Moments later the thud of animal hooves sounded and the band of rogues burst into view, racing with straining necks and heads low, riding fast away along the white dusty road. I looked up into the point of a stux.

The Djang holding the stux looked as though he would like nothing better than to thrust down. Just as I was about to teach him the error of his ways in thus treating a Krozair of Zy, four arms or no four damned arms, the little diff with the mouse-face came running out of the inn, squeaking. His whiskers were all a-twitch as he pushed the stux aside and dropped on a knee at my side.

“Apim! You still live! Now may Mother Diocaster be praised!”

I did not fail to notice the offhanded way this little fellow thrust the stux aside, nor the way the Djang soldiery stiffened up at sight of him. These were signs I recognized. He was most solicitous.

“You are hurt, sir, you are hurt. You bleed!” He leaped up and tore into the gathered newcomers.

“Deldar! Take this Horter into the unburned room and care for him. Bandages, water, needles, palines.”

He swung about. “Sinkie! Sinkie! I am coming, my love! It is all right now, the Opaz-forgotten leemsheads are gone! You may come out from under the table now.”

I had to let myself be hoisted up to keep a smile off my face. Lord knew, I needed a smile then!

As we went into the unburned end of the inn I observed how the Djangs were going about dousing the flames, working with a swift eager efficiency that heartened me. Hauling water from the well in the rear courtyard, they had the fire under control very soon. Truth to tell there was little left of that end of the roof. The little fellow pranced at my side very solicitously.

“I have the honor to present myself to you, sir. I am Ortyg Fellin Coper, Pallan of the Highways.”

He looked at me expectantly, his bright eyes alert, his whiskers quivering. He wore rich robes of a dark blue material liberally splattered with gems and silver lace. His scarlet velvet hat with its white feather looked now a sumptuous part of his costume. He wore no weapons, apart from a small silver secretarial knife in a silver sheath at his belt.

All naked and bloody as I was — although a cloak had been flung across me as I was half-carried in -

I pondered what answer to make. This, I thought, must be the man the Star Lords had sent me here to rescue. I had done that, for if I had not stood before the door and prevented the leemsheads from getting at him before his bodyguard came up he would have been a dead man. If I was, as I sincerely believed, in my own past, then perhaps I was not Strom of Valka yet; certainly I was not the Prince Majister of Vallia.

“I am Dray Prescot, the Lord of Strombor, Pallan.”

“Well, you are right well and heartily met, as Mother Diocaster is my witness!”

He introduced his wife, a charming little lady whose whiskers added, if anything, to her coy beauty. Her clothes, too, although simple were richly jeweled. I could not fail to notice the affection between these two, and, also, the affection and respect accorded them both by the tough warrior Djangs. O. Fellin Coper handled them with the casual unthinking courtesy of a man habituated to absolute authority tempered with concern for those that fate had put into his hands. Also in the unburned room were two other mouse-faced diffs like himself, lesser in rank and importance but still treated with grave gruff respect by the Djangs, and a Djang woman, very much pregnant and very near her time, as I judged. She lay on a pallet, pale-faced, her long fair hair damp, her face streaked with sweat. She was still beautiful, despite the difficulty of the birth. Three Djang women were attending her but there was no doctor with acupuncture needles in attendance. This did not seem right to me and so I mentioned it to O. Fellin Coper. His gerbil-like head twisted.

“You are quite right, Notor Prescot. But when Mother Diocaster calls forth the babe at the appointed hour — why, then, the babe has to come whatever the circumstances.”

A great bustle began as preparations were made for the Pallan to leave the inn. The pregnant Djang woman was not of his party. Her husband had been burned in the fighting and had died. For a moment I pondered, and then Ortyg Coper called to me from his decorated carriage which his men had brought up.

“I am returning to Djanguraj, Notor Prescot, and if the city was your destination before you fell among these leemsheads, I would be most honored — my wife and I would be most honored — if you would deign to take advantage of our carriage for the journey.”

It was nicely said, and it explained why no one had commented on my nakedness. They assumed I had been set on and was fighting the leemsheads to get my clothes and money back. To dispose of another problem here and now, they also took me for a member of the Martial Monks of Djanduin, which would explain my hairlessness.

My wounds had been seen to, and I was busy as any old mercenary would be. The dead Djangs yielded clothes, weapons, and money. I rifled the dead men with as much compunction as I would sweep the table of breadcrumbs. A paktun is a paktun, when all is said and done. So it was that when I walked toward Ortyg Coper’s carriage at the far end of the yard I was suitably clad in a pair of gray trousers with an orange cummerbund and a white shirt. A lorica was collapsed and slung over my shoulder. In a pouch lay enough shivers and obs to last, and there were three golden deldys. No one, I thought, had seen that quick rifling of the dead. For weapons I took a thraxter, a pair of stuxes, a djangir and a shield, which I draped about myself. At the last moment I picked up Kov Nath’s enormous sword, and so stepped into Ortyg Fellin Coper’s elegant carriage for Djanguraj.