Springbuck, now
the object of attention of the girls deserted by Ferrian, grew unsteady in his
cups. Some streak of ill humor, complicated by Ferrian’s obvious depression,
made him turn bleary-eyed to Reacher and slur, “Well, pig-killing’s easier than
throwing hands with this local lad, eh? Almost halved you, crown to pizzle,
didn’t he?”
The King, sober
despite diligent drinking, turned a face of stone to the Prince and answered in
a voice that none but those two could hear. “I could have killed or humbled him
when first we rushed together. But now he’ll be able to say, ‘I lost to
Reacher, but as anyone will tell you, it was a near thing.’”
He stood and
said to Su-Suru, “I go to rest now.” Facing about on his heel, he strode out,
followed dutifully by four of the copper-skinned, copper-haired dancing girls.
The Hetman sighed
as he left, a minor hurricane. “Ahh, I have lost the spirit of the festivities
with my mullings and the wine no longer fills my head. I’m away to bed, young
Prince. Your bed is through there; Kishna and Fahna will show you the way.”
The two
remaining members of the troupe giggled.
Springbuck
smiled, sheepish at his lapse of the moment before. “What’s this? Four girls
for the King of a small city-state and only two for the
Ku-Mor-Mai?”
Su-Suru yawned.
“No, four for the Champion-at-arms of the Horseblooded and two for his friend,
a deposed princeling. Be happy at the implication that you’re half the man he
is.”
Springbuck
thought about this, and was.
At last he let
his new companions lead him off, though he leaned rather heavily on them, in
search of repose, among other things.
One can
stand still in a flowing stream, but not in the world of men.
ANONYMOUS JAPANESE PROVERB
EDWARD Van Duyn sat busily
recopying his shorthand into script for duplication by scribes of Freegate’s
War Ministry. These were the notes he had taken during the long afternoon he’d
spent listening to Gil MacDonald ramble at length on what he knew of warfare.
The sergeant had displayed exhaustive knowledge of tactics, intelligence
gathering, organization, theory and practice. He had spoken of the principles
behind guerrilla fighting as he’d distilled them from many sources, among them
standard Armed Forces texts, and this was to serve as the basis of a manual for
the irregular army now being raised in Coramonde. For his own purposes Van Duyn
saw in this popular movement a tool to be used toward the political revision of
the suzerainty, though he knew that this would have to come later.
He sighed
contentedly, took another small sip of the excellent brandy with which he’d
been supplied and turned to the next topic, the incorporation of guerrillas as
auxiliaries for regular troops.
The tax
collector fingered his medallion of office nervously despite his cavalry
escort. The young officer who rode at his side in the quiet woods was blithely
confident that no peasant would dare challenge armed, armored men on horseback.
But the tax
collector was not so certain. When his predecessor had quit in disgust at the
severe new policies instituted by Strongblade he, a former clerk, had moved up
to fulfill those duties with a certain relish of power and prerogative. Putting
illiterate, base-born yokels in their place and making them toe a stricter line
was the sort of work for which he considered himself singularly suited. He had
always felt that they were permitted to retain far too much of their income,
anyway; now, with new campaigning in the east being planned, more money was
needed.
He reached back
nervously to pat the bulging satchels on his horse’s croup as he thought of how
efficiently he was helping in the collection of that money—with an unofficial
honorarium for himself, of course. But there were disquieting rumors, tales of
other tax agents being set upon, robbed and killed in a particularly unpleasant
fashion. And at that, not being accosted by outlaws or wildmen but some new
element which killed with cold precision.…
These were his
final thoughts as a white arrow, fired by an unseen hand, sprouted without
warning from his throat. He stared down at it stupidly as the snowy fletchings
so close to his eyes were covered by spurts of his life’s blood. Then he
toppled from his saddle.
The cavalry
officer yelled in surprise and reached for his sword, reining up. Before he
could organize his thoughts or his men, however, he was slain by an arrow twin
to the first, driven into his chest by a heavy bow at close range.
There was a
minute of pure pandemonium as most of those soldiers who tried to flee were cut
down. All of those who tried to stand and fight an enemy they could not see met
a like fate as the woods suddenly produced a blizzard of white shafts. Then
calm returned to the forest once again, while hard-eyed men dressed in dark
brown or green slipped from their careful concealment, bows in hand, to
approach their victims.
Their leader, a
tall, gaunt, scar-faced man, weighed the money satchels so recently in the
custody of the collector, and smiled to himself. He said to his waiting men,
“You know what to do. Two measures of three go back to the people who paid it,
and the third stays with us.” His voice was soft, and he had never been known
to speak loudly.
His
second-in-command began retrieving the taxing rolls from the collector’s
sanguine robes. “They’ll be more careful next time; there will be more dragoons
in escort and they’ll soon begin to try to force people to tell who we are.”
The gaunt
man—who had once had a son named Micko, the boy tortured and murdered by
Eliatim on the night of Springbuck’s escape—was at once happier and grimmer at
his lieutenant’s remark.
“Let them,” he
said. “The more they abuse people, the sooner they’ll be hated by one and all.
You can see our ranks swelling as quickly as Strongblade can send in fresh
troops. Let them grieve to learn how we trap them, elude them, torment them,
stalk them and remain yet unseen! And it must always be this way; the tax
collectors die first of all, with the white arrow in their throats.”
They stripped
the soldiers’ bodies of their weapons and departed noiselessly, to hide their
scavenged swords and liberated funds along with the quivers of white arrows.
The next day
another tax agent heard of the incident. Blanching in indignation and fear, he
immediately drafted a request for additional protection and called for
reprisals against the population of that area.
DEPARTMENT OF THE
ARMY
Headquarters, 32d
Armored Cavalry Regiment
APO 96766
SPECIAL
ORDERS: 099-6921
MACDONALD,
GILBERT A./ US 12732836 SGT/E5: Individual will proceed via transport as
directed in subsequent amending orders to Oakland Army Terminal for separation
from active duty IAW pertinent regulations.
Yardiff Bey,
the Hand of Shardishku-Salamá, sat black-robed in the monolithic carven onyx
chair in his sanctorum at Earthfast’s central donjon, looking out through the
dusk over Kee-Amaine, pondering. This room had once been the retiring place of
the
Ku-Mor-Mai,
but as the sorcerer’s influence in Court had waxed over
generations, he had requested and received its use for his own purposes. Now it
suited him to sit in his seat where the
Ku-Mor-Mai
had taken their
leisure, anticipating the day when he would sit on the throne itself. In the
center of the chamber, a giant pentacle was engraved on the stone floor. It had
taken him, what with constant interruptions and travels on one mission or
another, over twenty years to complete the pentacle, so intricate and
efficacious were the runes he forged into it. But this and many other things he
had done, always piloting his course through resistance, interference and
distractions, gradually putting circumstances into the order in which he wished
them. He had used much of his long life conspiring toward the events now
culminating; yet the unforeseen had occurred and for the first time he
perceived discrepancies.
An energetic,
swarthy man whose handsome face was marred only by the eerie metallic ocular
fastened where his left eye had been, he watched the sun set over the city. The
deviations suffered to his plans were traceable to the appearance of Van Duyn,
the foreigner whom Yardiff Bey, to his own astonishment, could not quite fathom
fully. Then there was the Prince’s escape on the night Hightower had been
disposed of and the subsequent besting of Chaffinch by those irritating
outlanders and their machine and weapons, summoned from somewhere by Van Duyn
and the hated deCourteney. The invasion of the Infernal plane had come as the
rudest shock of all, and now this bothersome banditry, forcing his hand to acts
of repression before he was ready to introduce them.
He had brought
all his perception and cold reason to bear on the tidings he’d received and was
now convinced that the entire carefully contrived structure of his conspiracies
against the Crescent Lands was in jeopardy if he could not mend it quickly.
Still, there
was time and there were ways. He had already directed Strongblade to call for
more troop levies and soon there would be manpower enough to swamp Freegate and
punish the insurrectionists.
But for their
leaders, ahh, that would be more difficult. There were the
deCourteneys—Gabrielle, of course, being his own daughter—to contend with.
Neither might stand against him alone; but in concert they could prove
troublesome. Springbuck, disturbingly, was showing more potential than the
sorcerer had thought him to possess. And most recently, Legion-Marshal
Bonesteel had mutinied to go over to the Prince’s side, taking his legion
command with him.
But all these
Yardiff Bey knew he could overcome, bring to their knees with a single word
when the time was ripe. It was the aliens who worried him. Van Duyn and the men
he had conjured were an unknown, unlooked-for quantity in the great equation of
his plan. Their presence from another cosmos might upset natural balances, set
all his prophecies and calculations awry.
Yeessss. His
hand toyed with the catch of his ocular—though even
he
would only dare
open it at dire need—as he came to a decision. He must eradicate this Van Duyn,
as he should have done earlier, and with him any fellow interlopers. Bey’s eye
went to a pigeonhole in the wall where rested a melon-sized crystal of complex
cut which he had used for the imprisonment of a mighty demon after long
struggling. He considered calling it forth and dispatching it to slay Van Duyn,
but he knew he could only demand one service of it, it would be foolish—and
dangerous—to use the demon unnecessarily. Besides, there were other ways open
to his hand and mind.
His attention
was broken as a rapping came at the heavy, bronze-bound cedar door. He spoke a
syllable of Command. The massive valve swung inward by some silent agency to
reveal Fania and his bastard son Strongblade, ostensible
Ku-Mor-Mai.
Fania still
boasted much of the beauty that was close to being her only asset, regal
bearing being an effective disguise for the fact that, while clever in some
ways—and most capable of treachery—the now Queen Mother was far from bright.
There were pearls secured among the locks of her hair, which she kept the color
of jet. The robe she wore emphasized length of leg, whiteness of throat and the
yet-youthful tautness in her waist.
He felt a
momentary flash of hunger for her but dismissed it immediately. He disliked
yielding to grosser appetites, preferring to go his own fastidious way,
avoiding contact with mere mortals as much as was feasible.
Strongblade was
wearing fine mail armor of black iron and red gold; he carried at his side the
enchanted greatsword Flarecore, and his face held a stubborn aspect. It was
none too intelligent a face, and in centuries of life Yardiff Bey had seen its
type often, had frequently been forced to break and discipline the people he’d
chosen as tools. He was completely confident in his own supremacy.
As always in
the absence of onlookers, the two bowed before him, but not so low as they had
been taught and, in contravention of form, Strongblade spoke without receiving
the wizard’s let to do so. “The new levies are near ready to depart. I’m told
I’m not to be their commander.” His face flushed red. “Am I not
Ku-Mor-Mai?
It is my right to lead my liegemen.”
Fania
interrupted, never one to stay long out of a conversation. “He is your son!
He
should be the one to destroy Springbuck and bring back the coward’s head on
a lance.” She drew herself up dramatically, puffed with pride. “Then he can sit
the throne with the respect of his people.”
Bey leaned
forward, elbow on knee; when he turned his eye on her, what she saw there made
her tremble and turn from his face. In his intimidatingly controlled voice, he
said, “Do you think Yardiff Bey would play his pawn as if it were a knight? I
had Strongblade trained at arms so that when the time came he could kill
Springbuck, then sit the throne and obey me—and nothing more. What is his
smattering of military lore to the likes of Bonesteel, who marches now to throw
in with them?”
He turned the
frightening gaze from the Queen to his son. “I shall warn you this one time not
to presume on our kinship again—ever! Ours is a relationship of convenience
alone,
my
convenience. Take the place I grant you and show gratitude; do
not think you could any more lead and rule than you could use that sword you’re
wearing as it’s meant to be used. Or can you? Come, show me.”
Teeth bared
furiously, Strongblade took Flarecore from its ornate scabbard. The green-blue
blade was filled with minuscule writings and runes. Holding the weapon in both
hands, he thrust it toward his father. “I can’t work its damned enchantment,”
he grated, “but I can use it to effect, if that occasion should come to pass.”