More frenzied bashing of the controls brought me up level again. But it was a mere matter of time before my voller gave up completely and down to the hard earth we plunged, to make a pretty hole in the ground of Kregen.
The flier below flew parallel, surging on surely. By her lines she was a first-class Hamalian-built vessel. I could see no sign of life aboard her; doubtless her passengers were asleep in the cabin aft and her crew snugged down along the bulwarks.
There was a chance.
A slender chance — true; but it was all I had.
I let my voller down as gently as I could, gentling the controls now, handling her like a fractious zorca, light on the bit.
Sink me! I said. Was I not an old sailorman? Did I or did I not have the skill?
Putting my trust in myself is no new sensation for me; but always I do so with a trembling uncertainty. I can never be sure. With a muttered prayer to Zair — and to Opaz and Djan — I let the voller drift down, fighting the controls, feeling the rush of wind, feeling the sinking bottomless sensation of the gulfs of emptiness under me.
Down we plunged, down to a chance in a thousand.
In a thousand?
In a million. . .
An Aerial Reception
That chance in a million came off, of course, otherwise I would not be here to tell you of it.
The crippled voller responded lurchingly to the controls. There was little time left as I brought her in over the flier’s foredeck. Judging distance was tricky. I was for a crazy moment reminded of the time when I swung from a long rope slung to a corth whose wide wings beat the air above me, swinging down to land clawingly on the tower of Umgar Stro. So, now, I swung the airboat down and hit the deck and bounced. We nearly went over the rail. The wind tried to lift us off, and then was miraculously stilled, so that I knew this large flier was of that kind that creates its own little biosphere in which the wind has no power to force an entrance.
The stillness settled and I took a deep breath and put a leg over the wooden coaming of my airboat.
Now, I own my sudden arrival was unceremonious. Out of the night sky a voller had come swooping in to land on this airboat’s foredeck. Kregen is a world where abrupt actions of that sort almost invariably herald mischief. So as I jumped down to the deck I called out in a most pleasant voice.
“Llahal!” I called, using the double L of the familiar greeting for those one does not yet know. “Llahal. I crave your indulgence for my flier—”
I was allowed to go no farther.
The airboat was not deserted, as the stray thought had crossed my mind. As though conjured magically from the sleeping decks men sprang up, hard and dark against the last of the moonlight. The bright wink of weapons ringed me in.
Those weapons drove forward with purpose, unhesitating, sword and spear points aimed at my heart.
As I say, my arrival had been unceremonious.
But even so, even on Kregen, a little of pappattu might have been made, a little time taken to sort put the situation, to understand why I had dropped out of the night sky.
But no.
The spears lanced toward me, the swords flashed down. With the instinct a fighting man must needs have or perish very quickly, I was leaping away, my rapier whipping out, the main gauche flicking up out of its scabbard.
These sudden devils trying to degut me were Chuliks. Their oiled yellow skin glistened in the radiance of She of the Veils. Their upthrust tusks glinted. They bore in, silently, ferociously, and I had to skip and jump and beat away those murderous brands.
“Listen, you bunch of onkers!” I yelled, prancing away, scrambling across the deck, around my voller, flicking and flashing swords and spears away. “I’m no stikitche! I haven’t come to assassinate anyone!”
But they bore on silently. I own their very silence gave me pause; even a Chulik will give vent to a war cry every now and then, when he fights.
The rapier and left-hand dagger flamed under the moon and I had to exert myself smartly. So far I had not spitted any of them or slit anyone’s throat; but they pressed and the cramped conditions hampered free movement. Pretty soon now someone was going to get his fool self killed, and I did not intend that someone to be me. And then, when the explanations followed, there would be a pretty pickle.
“Listen, you stupid onkers!” I bellowed, and slid a blow and my rapier winked out of its own accord, or so it seemed, and I had the devil of a time merely slicing down the Chulik’s cheek instead of his throat. He staggered back, and I kicked his companion betwixt wind and water, and bellowed again. I was beginning to become annoyed.
One of them rushed in headlong, attempting to overbear me by sheer bulk and speed. I bent. He went over me, his arms flailing, letting out no sound, no surprised whoofle, simply somersaulting on to fetch up with a rib-cracking thunk against the bulwarks.
These fellows wore dark harnesses, black belts and leathers, and I could see no signs of favors or insignia, no colors. Their swords and spears were the badges of their trade.
A light bloomed from the poop rail. The radiance fell on the man holding up the lamp. He was a Fristle and his cat’s face showed hard and angular in the light. At his side stood a bulky figure clad in a black cloak, with a bronze helmet jammed on his head, a bronze helmet with a tall cockscomb of gold and white feathers. Only the deep-set eyes of this person glittered out over a fold of cloth, drawn up over the face.
“Do not kill him!” The words were harsh, fierce, with a rattling, hissing viciousness. They commanded immediate respect from the Chulik mercenaries. I saw the way the swords twitched in the yellow hands. They would use the flats, now. . .
“Take him alive! The rast who kills him will be flung overboard.”
Again the words battered the mercenaries. The man in the concealing black cloak and face cloth clearly handled these Chuliks with the proverbial rod of iron.
Two Och bowmen on the deck of the poop lowered their bows. They might have done for me had they loosed on me unawares. Now they would not chance a shot, under the interdiction of their lord, even though the bows were mere small flat short-bows. I leaped away from the coming attack and bellowed up at the black-cloaked figure.
“Tell these nurdling rasts of yours I come as a friend! I am not—”
“What you are and what you are not are of no concern of mine,” came the hoarse, hissing, rattling voice. I fancied I heard a distant resemblance in that voice to a scoundrel I had known on the inner sea, the Eye of the World; but I could not be sure. And what with keeping the swords away from me and skipping about and bellowing at them to desist, I thought no more about it at the time.
How that little scene would have ended I do not care to dwell on — or, rather, how it should have ended with the lot of them pitched overboard — but in the event the black-cloaked figure turned abruptly half-about. He stood in a strained, attentive, silent pose for a moment and I surmised he was listening to someone whom I could not see. After a moment or two in which I came perilously close to sinking the rapier between the ribs of a Chunk who wanted to finish matters, the man turned back.
His hard outline bulked against the last of the moonglow, for She of the Veils sank into the west and flooded the flier with a roseate light. So we had turned in mid air and were heading east. Why, I did not know. He flung up a commanding hand, and something about the gesture, some awkwardness, tugged at my memory.
“Hold!” he bellowed. Then: “Take the flier down. Let that man stand free, do not harm him.”
The swords glittered as they lowered.
“Well,” I said. “By Vox! You took your time.”
The flier slanted toward the shadowed earth. The tableau held. The eeriness of it was not lost on me. If anyone of those Chulik mercenaries made a wrong move, this time he might not be so lucky, and might, indeed, take six inches of good Vallian steel through his guts.
The airboat touched down. A tiny pre-dawn wind sang in the trees. The shadows loomed. The land spread, dotted with tree clumps, with not a light in evidence anywhere.
“Over with you!” shouted the man in the cloak. He pointed with his sword at my voller. “Throw that after him.”
The Chuliks stood back, for they were fighting men and the volmen of the flier would handle details like casting a voller over the side. These sailors of the skies were men like me, apim, some of them; others were Brokelsh and Womoxes, diffs whose racial animosities were not too blatant. There were no Fristles that I could see apart from the one on the poop with the lantern, for as a rule, although not always, Chuliks and Fristles do not get along too easily, one race with the other.
My voller was incontinently heaved up and chucked over the side. I heard the breaking and splintering of wood, the ripping of canvas.
“By Vox!” I yelled. “Who’s going to pay for that?”
That harsh hissing voice carried not the slightest trace of amusement. “You are a man with much gold. The trifle of a smashed voller will not trouble you.”
He said voller, which is the word for an airboat most often heard in Havilfar, where they are manufactured.
I said: “And do you then know me?”
“Aye.”
I pondered. He was very sure of himself, then. . .
He turned his head again, and listened, and when he swung back to face me he held the cloth even higher so that only those dark, narrow, widely set eyes glittered out upon me.
“Now go. Take yourself off. And give thanks to your gods that you still live.”
Pondering, I walked to the rail. Of course, I could have bounced up the ladder onto the poop, taken him by the throat, choked a little politeness into him. I might have cowed the crew and done something along similar lines with the mercenaries. But my first concern was Delia, and as these thoughts sprang into my head I saw a light go on half an ulm away. That would be a farm awakening to the daily labors. There I could find transport.
It would take more time than I wished to spare to deal with these rasts and commandeer their flier. All the same, I was conscious of the indignity — no, that is not true. Dignity and I share little in the harsh realities of life. Pride had nothing to do with it. The cardinal rule for me upon Kregen has been and remains always the concern for Delia. Only she concerned me.
At the rail I started to jump over, then turned. A Chulik stood near, lowering down on me. Many apims say, with a casual laugh, that they cannot tell one Chulik from another. They say this about Fristles, and about many other of the wonderful races of people, called diffs, upon the world of Kregen. I saw this big bulky fellow and I would know him again. I saw his sword. It was a rapier, for he was in Vallia, and the hilt and pommel were fashioned into the likeness of a mortil, very fancy. I nodded to him as I went over the side.
He did not speak.
None of the confounded Chulik mercenaries had spoken or cried out.
I had taken a bare half-dozen steps away from the flier before it lifted up, quickly, going low over the ground toward the east. It vanished past a copse of trees. Wherever that cramph in his concealing black cloak and the person from whom he had taken his orders were going, they were going there in the devil of a hurry.
I set off for the farm.
That mysterious lot had been flying west when I’d first seen them and managed to land on their deck. Then, during the fight, they’d changed course a hundred and eighty degrees. Now they had taken off, going low, heading east. I fancied that they had kept low so that once out of my sight they could turn again and head back onto their original course.
They were flying to Vondium. And they had not wished me to know that.
Then I banished them from my thoughts and walked up to the farm and thundered on the door.
Half a dozen stavrers started barking.
“Quiet you famblys,” I said, making my voice as soothing as possible.
The stavrer with his fierce wolf-head, his eight legs, the rear six all articulated the same way, with his stumpy tail, is an enormously loyal watchdog of Kregen. He can put in a sudden charge that will leave a chavonth standing for sheer acceleration; but the loyal stavrer has no long-distance legs to him. In a dash to take the seat of the pants off importunate strangers at the door he is hard to fault; but if they get a head start they can usually get away scot-free. I just hoped the stavrers at this farm were all securely chained up for the night.
Lights showed at the windows and the door was cautiously opened. There had been troubles in Vallia of late. I saw the gleam of weapons beyond the edge of the door so, quickly, I sang out: “Llahal and Llahal. My airboat has broken down and I would crave your help, Koters.”
After that it was relatively easy. I was in the Vadvarate of Valhotra, of which Genal Arclay was Vad. The province lay immediately to the east of Vondium and, most sensibly, was always held by a family loyal to the emperor. It was rich farming land, filled with fat cattle and good, fruitful earth, bringing forth abundance. I knew Vad Genal as an easy-going likable fellow, with a weakness for riding sleeths in fast races on which he would bet far more than he should. But these people made me welcome, offering refreshment and the use of their best airboat — indeed, their only airboat. She was an ancient craft, much used, and very much a symbol of the farm’s prosperity in the surrounding district. The farmer, Larghos Nilner, and his wife and family were clearly loyal to their Vad and through him to the emperor.
I reflected that not all of Kregen is vicious and hostile, and not all of Vallia made furtive and strenuous attempts to get rid of the emperor. He had his friends.
Making proper arrangements for the use of the flier, I bid them Remberee and took off, heading back to Vondium.
The colors of Valhotra are red, brown and green, with a diagonal slash of white. They were painted up on the airboat in the private style, to indicate that the airboat’s owner was a Valhotran but not of the retainers of the Vad.
Before the ancient airboat reached Vondium the suns rose.
I took deep breaths of air, the sweet, limpid air of Kregen. Bursting over the horizon, filling the world with light and glory, the Suns of Scorpio drove away the shadows and drenched all the marvelous world of Kregen in light and color. Zim, the great red sun, and Genodras, the small green sun, poured down their floods of radiance. I basked in the warmth and brightness. Over in Havilfar they call Zim Far and Genodras Havil. The suns have many and many names over Kregen. But they remain the Suns of Scorpio, Antares, blazing, superb.