“Et cetera,” I said, and I own the rebellious ugliness sounded threatening in my voice.
The reaction was rapid.
“Enough, Dray Prescot, who is called Emperor of Emperors! Beware the wrath of the Everoinye! Begone!”
It was quick, damned quick, I’ll say that for them, the invisible, black-humored pack of leems.
I was standing in the small room staring down at the entwined Sylvies, naked limbs glistening with unguents, hair glossy about flushed faces. They looked up at me, newly awoken, and before they could scream I’d slammed the door open and stalked out, clutching my robes about me, furious past anger so that I wanted to roar with laughter, and did not, because I hewed to a new path and would not be deflected.
My entrance following the scorpion into their room had awoken the Sylvies. When I returned to the party no one even remarked on my absence, everything was as it had been before, and the clepsydra could have dropped barely a score of splashes to mark the passage of time.
One fact I knew and kept in the forefront of my thick vosk skull of a head. The Star Lords possessed power, real power, terrible power. It was fortunate for us all that their wishes and mine coincided.
What I Learned in The Leather Bottle
“You do intend to go to my father’s coronation, then, Jak?” Tyfar spoke with such mirth, the young devil, I was minded to play dumb and plead prior engagements. “After all, you are by way of being an expert.”
The main and overridingly important thing to notice here was that Tyfar and I could joke about a horrible experience through which I had gone when Hamal and Vallia had been enemies.
That she-leem Thyllis during the pomp and circumstance of her coronation had had me, naked and filthy and hairy, dragged around Ruathytu at the tail of a calsany.
That Tyfar could rest assured that he might make this nature of joke without offense heartened me. He now fully accepted that what we said we said in good faith. Only his own prickly sense of honor had stood in the way of immediate acceptance.
“Do you, Tyfar, have any particular calsany in mind?”
“I have my eye on a particularly fine animal. And we all know what calsanys do when they are upset or excited.” Then a sudden seriousness brought his mockery to a close as he said, “Although, by Havil! I certainly would not, nor would my father, sink so low as to drag a defeated foeman around the streets like that. I saw it, and never knew who you were. It was something that, even then, revolted me.”
Then we were joined by Hamalese nobles and Djang nobles and the conversation expanded. Now all our thoughts were set upon the coronation of Nedfar so that all the people of Hamal might have a lawful emperor, and the expected confrontation with the enormous raiding fleet of Shanks. This fleet was being watched and shadowed, and all men trembled lest it turn in their direction. The brutal fact was, the Shank fleet would turn in
someone’s
direction — without fail.
As for the rest of that evening, it remains a mystery to me. My mind filled with speculations on that remarkable encounter with the Star Lords. By Vox, but they’d changed in the time I’d known them!
On and off, thinking about the changed situation in the ensuing days, I fancied that the key words, the clue, lay in the words of the Everoinye: “We are growing old...” I had some thousand years of life stretching ahead of me thanks to the baptism in the sacred pool of the River Zelph in far Aphrasöe, and I had no idea of what length of time the Star Lords would count as making them old. Millions upon millions of years had been my feeling. Perhaps that was mere superstitious impressionism? Maybe the Everoinye grew old and dropped dead at far more frequent intervals.
The idea did not give me the same glow as it would have done a few seasons ago.
Here and now I had to assume the Everoinye would leave me to get on with the job. The ready acceptance of Prince Nedfar as Emperor of Hamal was no closeted palace coup, for the rejoicing extended in genuine feeling throughout the city and into the provinces as the news spread. Tyfar saw about making sure of the army, and many a fine fellow you have met in my narrative rolled up to swear allegiance, and many and many more I knew well and have not mentioned, also. The Air Service wanted to know when they could expect some vollers.
This exposed the whole vexed question of the position of the realms of the Dawn Lands. Most of those monarchs who had so bitterly quarreled had gone home, expecting dissension to rend Hamal for seasons to come. And there was always King Telmont. Our spies reported he had taken a wide swing around to the south. He and his army — which grew from disaffected mercenaries — were watched. So the few airboats left were handed over to the new Hamalian Air Service.
Many people have called me an uncouth fighting man, and that never worries me. It now occurred to me that it would be tactful if I left Ruathytu for a space, to give the new emperor room to swing his scepter. We intended to begin as we meant to go along, and Ortyg fretted over the accounts due in Djanduin and Jaidur itched to return with Lildra to Hyrklana and Kytun wanted to put into practice some new ideas for the army he’d picked up. So we agreed. We’d leave Hamal to the Hamalese for a space, and all return for the coronation. As for the detachments of our armies and their commanders — they would remain.
Tyfar said, “Only true comrades could do this, Jak.”
“Aye.”
“My father tells me he even feels shame for doubting you. I—”
“You are a young rip, who has a stern task before him. As for the emperor; he and I understand each other. Now I’m off to have a quiet look at King Telmont and his army. If Rosil is there, well, he will be a bonus, and Vad Garnath, the rast.”
“Take care, Jak—”
“And you.”
He continued to call me Jak at my express wish. Soon enough he’d be able to accept my name without a tremble. Everything is not sweetness and light in the blink of an eyelid.
Jaezila said she would stay with Tyfar. Saying the remberees to them I checked my impatient query: “When will you two knock some sense into each other’s heads and get married, or whatever relationship you desire, instead of pussyfooting around each other like a manhound and a wersting?”
As we said the remberees, Jaezila kissed me. “And, Jak, Father, you might run into Mother. You never know.”
As I fired up and demanded to know what she meant, she put a finger to her lips, laughing. “You know, Father, you mustn’t know! It is Sisters of the Rose. Sufficient?”
“No. But no more than I expect.” The Sisters of the Rose, that secret organization of women, was secret. No man was privy to its secrets, for that would have negated the art and craft of female autonomy. It was all sub-rosa, and with that feeble twin-world-language idiocy in my head, I took off.
There had been the usual to-do over getting away alone, but I’d managed it. Seg refused to be hurt. As he said, “I have the Kroveres of Iztar to see to. They will have a lot to do in Vallia now.”
“And in Hamal and the rest of Paz, Seg.”
“Of course.”
So I flew south ready to act the spy again and see what this King Telmont and his associates were made of.
As I sped southwards in a fast two-place flier I wondered if I would meet those two unhanged rogues, Rosil, the Kataki Strom, and Vad Garnath. I’d spoken to Nedfar about rewards. Deldar Fresk, who had not lost another man there in the Pass of Lacachun, was made up to Jiktar. I particularly wanted to make sure Rees and Chido were safe. They were very dear to me, Bladesmen of my ruffling days in Ruathytu’s Sacred Quarter and good companions. Chido, I was told, had returned to his estates of Eurys in the east, where he was the Vad. Rees, whose estates had blown away on the Golden Wind from which he took his name, had been badly treated by Thyllis. There were many people in the same position. It was not difficult to arrange with Nedfar to reinstate them, and reward them, and I’d put Rees’s name prominently on the list. As to his whereabouts, no one seemed to know.
Rees had suffered most cruelly from the Kataki Strom and Van Garnath, his eldest son, Reesnik, being slain by their hired assassins. We’d spent some rousing times together, and I had brought his daughter, Saffi, the golden lion-maid, out of a hideous bondage. But Rees and Chido knew me as Hamun ham Farthytu, the Amak of Paline Valley. That was a name I owned to in honor and intended to keep inviolate. I’d have to do some fancy footwork when we all met up, by Krun!
The dwaburs sped past below. Hamal is a rich country and Nedfar would make of it a fine and wonderful place. All we had to do was deal with Telmont and his hired army, and then close our ranks against the Leem-Lovers from over the curve of the world.
Simple plans are very often but not always the best. All I intended to do was turn up at Telmont’s current army camp as a simple paktun, a mercenary at the moment tazll and therefore willing to take employment. I’d have a good look around and nose into what did not concern me and then, having sized up things that spies could not tell from outside vantage points, return to work out ways of dealing with what I had discovered. It seemed a not unuseful idea to drop down into a town first and ask around before committing myself to the army. Anyway, I wanted to hide the voller first.
Take it all nice and easy... No sweat... Just fly down and stow the airboat and then wander into town... All free and easy... Ask around, casual like, all smiles... Easy...
Ha!
This was Kregan and I was Dray Prescot, and that combination is, I have to point out, volatile.
Stowing the voller was simple enough at the back of a stand of timber. Walking around the curve of the hill along the dusty yellow road into town was simple, too.
They grabbed me as I started off across the square toward the nearest tavern. Now, my reputation holds different values in different pans of Kregen, and had these folk known who I was they would no doubt — without a damned doubt at all, by Vox! — have used edged and pointed weapons. As it was they tried to lay me out with cudgels.
Townsfolk, they looked, rosy of cheek, shocked of hair, wearing simple country town clothes. But their bludgeons whistled about my ears like billy-oh.
“Hold on!” I bellowed, weaving and dodging. “Hold on, for the sweet sake of Kaerlan the Merciful! I mean you no harm.”
They meant
me
harm, though.
I dragged out my thraxter and used the straight cut and thrust to parry blows, to thwunk a few tousled heads, to trip up folk who insisted on trying to brain me. The townsfolk were all hurrying up, screaming abuse, women hurling rotten gregarians and children flinging all kinds of unmentionables. The mob bludgeoned and pelted and shrieked and I soon turned into a dungy fruit-juicy lumpen scarecrow.
“By Krun!” I said. “I’m not standing for this!”
So, there and then, without more ado, I ran. I ran off. I ran away from an indignant mob of townsfolk with their brooms and cudgels and rotten fruit. Run! I ran, I can tell you!
They chucked refuse after me and a stinking bamber hit me behind the ear, and squelched all glistery brown down my neck, stinking to the heavens. I ran faster than they did, and reached the voller and took off. They stood under the craft and shrieked imprecations up at me, shaking their fists and their clumsy rabble weapons. They were not shouting the remberees. And, by Krun, I hadn’t stopped to observe the fantamyrrh as I boarded the voller.
Whirling away and up over the trees I turned to glance back. They were still there, jumping up and down and waving their weapons and no doubt bellowing fit to wake the dead. By the disgusting leprous left nostril of Makki Grodno! Now what had that all been about?
Moving this time with much greater circumspection at the next town along and mingling in unobtrusive clothes with folk entering the narrow streets in a religious procession, for the little towns in this section were unwalled, I discovered the answer to the riddle.
And, to an old campaigner, an old paktun, that answer was perfectly obvious and deucedly uncomfortable to a fighting man. I had laughed like a loon leaving that first town, for the ludicrous situation appealed to me; now I did not laugh.
The explanation, simple and ugly, was merely that the townsfolk had been plundered rotten by the mercenaries of King Telmont’s army. Simple, direct, and, as I say, ugly.
My clothes, fighting man’s gear, and my weapons, marked me for a paktun. These townsfolk, brave enough to remain in their little towns, would deal most unkindly with a lone soldier.
The religious procession wended along to an adobe temple erected to the greater glory of the goddess Dafnisha the Ample, a goddess much favored in these parts, having a deal to do with the births of healthy twins. The chanting and the shuffle of feet died. I hitched up the old blanket coat that, ragged and dingy, draped my left shoulder, leaving a not-too-clean blue shirt displaying a fringe of shaggy ruffles, and went over to the nearest tavern, The Leather Bottle. It is always the nearest tavern a fellow enters when he is thirsty — almost. I didn’t want to share a place with the devotees of the plump and fertile goddess Dafnisha the Ample when they boiled out after their service with their tongues hanging out.
The Leather Bottle was like many another small tavern in this section of Hamal — quiet, dusty, provided with one good supply of ale and wine and the rest indifferent stuff. Three frugally produced copper obs started me off, enough to quench my thirst, and a few more brought an earthenware platter so that I stuffed chunks of bread and slivers of cheese into my mouth as I drank, chewing with distended cheeks, and thus conveyed the impression I wished to create. I had, also, given a little twist to my face, as Deb-Lu-Quienyin had taught, so that I seemed your typical laboring fellow on the lookout.
Soon I was in conversation. The suns warmed the room and a flick-flick plant stirred to life now and again.
“King Telmont?” The speaker, a fellow with a wooden leg and a cast in his left eye, spat. He was a good shot. “We hid what we thought we could keep and sent all the women out into the hills. That stinking yetch’s men took what we left—”