She stood, upright and slim in her black leathers.
“My nephew,” said the kov. “He is unharmed?”
“He is well, my lord kov, praise be to Opaz—”
“Yes. He would escape from a pack of leems without a rent in his coat.”
Lyss said nothing. Lon stood with his tongue cleaving to the roof of his mouth.
Alloran stared about with that aloof, disdainful look of the great ones of the world.
“There has been a mischief done here,” he said. He spoke through his teeth. “And I will have the guilty ones hung by their heels over the battlements until they are shredded to bone.”
Watching Lyss the Lone, Lon saw the way she held herself, the tautness of her, the poise. Was that a fine trembling along her limbs, the ghost of a twitch of muscle in her cheek? He’d conceived the instant idea that this glorious girl feared nothing. She had faced and overcome a savage wild beast, not even claiming a jikai for the deed. Now she stood watchful, like a falcon poised ready to take flight, alert and wary.
Naturally Lon stood in awe and fear of Kov Vodun Alloran.
But did this Battle Maiden, this superb Jikai Vuvushi, stand in fear of the kov?
No. No, Lon the Knees could not believe that this girl feared anything in Kregen.
Of the concerns of Drak, Prince Majister of Vallia
The battle was lost a half an hour after it began with the totally unexpected appearance of a second hostile army swarming up from the sand dunes on the left flank. The Vallians broke and fled.
The First Army, commanded by Drak, Prince Majister of Vallia, trudged dispiritedly back from that disastrous field. Then the rain fell.
Jumbled regiments on foot slogged through mud that thickened and stuck like glue. A few artillery pieces saved from the ruin, ballistae and catapults swathed in coarse sacking against the rain, struggled on drawn by a motley collection of animals, and by men. The cavalry, who had suffered grievously, walked their animals, and everywhere heads hung down.
The wounded, those who could be collected, were transported in improvised fashion, for the supply of ambulance carts proved woefully insufficient.
Sliding, slipping, dragging themselves through the mud, the First Army staggered on eastwards across the imperial province of Venavito in southwest Vallia.
Jiktar Endru Vintang led his zorca through the mud, holding the bridle so that he walked to the side, for the zorca’s single spiral horn jutting from his forehead could inflict a nasty nudge if anyone was foolish enough to walk directly in front of so superb an animal. His saddle dripped water, and his orderly would spit brickdust cleaning up the weaponry strapped both to zorca and Endru.
The long lines of men and animals kept doggedly on in the rattle of the rain and the gruesome footing.
Jiktar Endru commanded one of the prince’s personal bodyguard regiments.
[2]
He was three-quarters of the way up the ladder of promotions within the Jiktar rank, and hoped soon to make Chuktar. With this disastrous Battle of Swanton’s Bay to ruin their plans, Endru morosely felt that promotions for anyone were a long way away. You’d have to take the place of a dead superior and soldier on in your own grade for a bit yet. That was his surmise.
Nobody talked. They all went sloshing on in a profound and gloomy silence, broken by the slash of the rain, the creaking of axle wheels, the suck and splash of feet in mud, and the groans of the wounded. All these distressing sounds faded within the bitterness of the silence engulfing the army.
Endru Vintang ti Vandayha
[3]
, tough as old boots, efficient, a superb zorcaman, a warrior who understood discipline and let his regiment know he understood, had fought as a Freedom Fighter in Valka, and counted himself supremely lucky to be selected by the Prince Majister to command the bodyguard regiment called the Prince Majister’s Sword Watch. The best part was that, feeling a real and powerful affection for the prince, Endru knew that Prince Drak liked and trusted him and treated him as a friend.
He knew he felt as many and many a poor wight in this defeated army felt. He felt they’d let Prince Drak down badly, very badly indeed.
But, still and all! That second army, suddenly appearing over the sand dunes where scouts had reported nothing apart from shellfish and crabs! That had been the stunner.
Those Opaz-forsaken Kataki twins had been the cause of this defeat. That seemed certain.
Glimmering spectrally through the slanting rain, a light appeared ahead. Wearily, Endru flapped back the cloth over his saddle and with a soft word to Dapplears, his zorca, stuck a leg over and mounted up. Even then, quick as he was, he sat in wetness and felt the discomfort through his breeches. One thing was for sure in all the surrounding desolation; this uniform was ruined beyond repair.
He nudged Dapplears, for no true zorcaman put spurs to so fiery and spirited a saddle animal, and walked him up alongside his regiment.
“Deldar Fresk! Ten men with me.
Bratch!
”
Eleven of them, they rode out ahead of that bedraggled rout toward the light which Endru knew to be shining in a window of a house in the little village of Molon. He said nothing, did not turn his head, as he passed the powerful figure walking sturdily beside his zorca at the head of the column. The prince would be in no mood for polite conversation now, by Vox!
The inhabitants of the village, apprised by that seemingly magical dissemination of country news, had fled.
There were beds for the wounded, and roofs for a fair number of those fortunate enough to cram into the little houses. There was even a little food. Fires were lit and clothing began to steam, filling the close confined atmosphere with that particular charring, moist, fibrous smell of drying clothes. When he had seen to his duties, Endru reported to the prince.
“They’ll get some rest for the night, jis,” he said, using the “jis” as the shortened form of majister, for Prince Drak did not care to be addressed as majister. He was not too keen on the slightly more formal ‘majis’, although that was how most of those not in his immediate circle addressed him.
“And those we have left on the field will sleep even more profoundly.” Drak sounded depressed.
“The odds were more than two to one, nearer three to one. Had we not—”
“Run off?”
“Aye, jis! Had we not done so, many more of us would sleep on the field this night. And then, what of the morrow?”
“You are right, Endru. We must look to tomorrow.”
Endru was of an age with the prince. He felt perfectly confident in his ability to be allowed to say: “Bitterness over this defeat, jis, will avail us nothing. Those damned Kataki twins wrought the mischief, I’ll be bound.”
“I did not see them in the fight. Did you?”
“No.”
Drak sat himself down on a rough wooden seat and put his forearms on the scrubbed tabletop. The fire threw harsh shadows into his face. Yet Endru could see the power there, the arrogant beak of a nose, the jut of chin, all the charisma he possessed, shared and inherited from his father the emperor. They were much alike, yet Prince Drak for all his austere ways, his uprightness, his dedication to his duty, possessed a streak of more gentle character from his mother, the divine Empress Delia.
The small cottage room contained other men and women: Kapt Enwood nal Venticar, the prince’s right-hand man and his chief of staff, crusty old Jiktar Naghan the Bow, commanding the prince’s bodyguard regiment, the Prince Majister’s Devoted Archers, his personal servants, one or two of the sutlers come to report the damage, various people who had business with the prince, and Chuktar Leone Starhammer, commanding Queen Lushfymi’s regiment of Jikai Vuvushis. Now Kapt Enwood resumed the conversation Endru’s entrance had interrupted.
“Jiktar Endru confirms my view, then, jis. I am confident the Kataki twins commanded. It is certain that Vodun Alloran was not there.”
“The quicker he is put down, the better it will be for Vallia.”
“Yet he is clever and resourceful. He commands many men. And he’s getting his gold from somewhere—”
“Aye!” burst out Drak. “But where?”
“It is my view,” put in Leone Starhammer, “there is sorcery involved here.”
No one cared to answer that. This Leone, a full-bodied woman, plain of face, dark of hair, with biceps that could smash a sword through oak, kept herself and her girls up to a very high fighting pitch. Fortunately, in Drak’s mind as in the others’, the Jikai Vuvushis had not been heavily engaged during the short fray.
“Let’s have the maps out and see what we can cobble together and call a plan.”
Again Endru felt that stab of dismay at the depths of the prince’s despondency.
The maps were brought and spread upon the table and the people gathered about them in the light of a lamp, a cheap mineral oil lamp.
Drak began by stating the obvious.
“We are fighting for Vallia. The whole island empire has been broken into pieces, and slavers and slave masters, villains who batten on our misery, have swarmed in to ravage and despoil. We will not allow slavery in Vallia. We will not allow honest folk to be crushed into the mud. So we fight for them. And, this day, we have been defeated.”
“Tomorrow, jis,” said Kapt Enwood, “or the day after or the day after that, we will be victorious.”
“And how many days must the downtrodden wait for us?”
“As many as the Invisible Twins made manifest in the glory of Opaz decide, my prince.”
Drak took that well enough. He stabbed a finger at the map.
“At least, they did not pursue their victory.”
“I lost the better part of a fine totrix brigade,” said Kapt Enwood, grimly. “Then the rains came.” He drew a breath. “No. They did not pursue.”
Where Drak had stabbed his so savage finger the little bay, known as Swanton’s Bay, gouged a piece out of the Venavito coastline. To the east lay the province of Delphond, the Garden of Vallia. Delphond was the province of the Empress Delia. The people were languid and easygoing, joying in the good things of life which they produced so profusely from their lovely land, not easily aroused. During the Time of Troubles they had changed. From slitting the throats of stragglers in ditches, they now sent many strapping sons and daughters to swell the ranks of the regular Vallian army. Delphond was cut off from many direct routes and canal trunk systems, and invasions usually passed the province by. Drak did not wish to contemplate what his mother would say if he allowed invading hordes once more to ravage her lands.
Northward lay the vadvarate of Thadelm, mostly occupied by Vodun Alloran’s mercenaries. There was some resistance to his schemes there, though, and a small force watched the borders.
To the west the kovnate of Ovvend was now once more solidly in Alloran’s grip. Ovvend was on the small size for a kovnate province; it was undeniably rich.
West of Ovvend lay the diamond-shaped kovnate of Kaldi, Vodun Alloran’s own province. The westerly point of land was the last on the mainland of Vallia. Beyond that extended many islands, chief of which was Rahartdrin, with Tezpor to the north. No word had been received from these islands, or those further west, for many seasons, and spies sent in did not return.
Two divisional commanders had been killed in the battle, so the council was thin on the ground. Brigadiers would have to be appointed to take over the divisions; as Endru had suspected, they would not advance a grade within the Chuktar rank.
“I am determined to hold them on this line,” said Drak, indicating a river some miles to the east. “We must draw them north.”
He was aware that these people, all well-meaning, gathered here to help and advise, would know why he wanted to do that. The thought of Delphond once more put to the torch and the sword made him limp with anger. He had spent some of his childhood there and he loved Delphond’s lazy ways, her soft rivers, the winding dusty lanes, the fields of fruit and hop gardens, the fat ponshos with fleeces as white as the clouds above. Oh, no, he must draw Alloran’s army, commanded by the Kataki twins, toward the north where they could be entrapped in mountains.
Kapt Enwood said: “We shall have to send to Vondium to ask for reinforcements. I see no alternative.”
“They are short of troops in the capital.”
“If you appeal to the emperor—”
Drak’s head snapped up. Almost, almost, he burst out: “Ask my father? Oh, yes, we’ll ask him. But he won’t be there. He never is. He’ll be off gallivanting around the world doing derring deeds, hurtling under the Suns in his scarlet breechclout and swinging his Krozair longsword. Oh, yes, ask the emperor, an’ you please. Much good will it do you.”
Instead, he said: “Send and ask, Kapt.”
“Quidang!”
Their faces harshly highlighted by lamp and the fire, they thrashed out some kind of plan. They would draw the enemy on, try to chivvy him northwards, get him in unfriendly country, continuously ambush him, run him ragged. They could not stand up to a face to face set-piece battle. Not while they were now, having sustained casualties, at a worse ratio than one to three. When the reinforcements marched and flew in, why, then, with the blessing of Opaz and the strength and cunning of Vox, they’d knock Vodun Alloran’s teeth down his throat.
And his two whip-tailed Katakis with him, too...
“We must preserve the Phalanx intact,” said Drak, stating the essential and the obvious. “Without them at Swanton’s Bay we would have been destroyed.”
“Aye, jis.”
“Get the kervaxes moving at first light and withdraw the entire Phalanx force to the east. We will need light infantry for ambush work, and light cavalry.”
They talked on for a space, settling details, then at Drak’s suggestion, they retired to try to sleep for what was left of the night. The rain continued. The sky was a mere black platter pressing down on the land. Leone Starhammer lingered.
“Jis?”
“Yes, Leone?”
“The queen — I fear she will take this news ill.”
“She will have to be told, I suppose...”
“Jiktar Shirl the Elegant fell today—”
“I am desolated! I did not know.”