So, now my spy Naghan the Barrel brought word that the people of Falinur were grown tired of Layco Jhansi.
The time was ripe to strike the blow that would free the province. All the island empire of Vallia had been in turmoil, invaded by mercenaries and reiving barbarians and by the iron legions of our rival empire, Hamal. We had won back most of the south and the midlands, and the northeast stood for us. But there was still much to do. If Turko could take over in Falinur that would be another good step forward to the final liberation of all Vallia.
The twin suns sank as we trotted past fields rich with crops. Very few lights showed from farmhouses or villages; these people had grown to live with waves of invasion. The miracle was the land was in such good heart. We moved on, silently.
Just what we were trotting so silently into did not bear thinking of. I looked ahead at the dark squat figure of Naghan, who clamped his short legs around his zorca and hunched down with your typical infantryman’s handling of a mount. After the disastrous Battle at Sicce’s Gates, where the Phalanx had been upset by the clansmen, Naghan had been cut off. He had lived off the country, saved his life, kept his spirits and had kept out of the way of our enemies. In the fullness of time he had reported back. His story had interested me, and on meeting him I realized that here was a man of parts, resourceful, hardy, and like a chameleon able to survive in places where no one would expect him to last a couple of heartbeats.
He had proved ready to take employment with me, as a spy, a secret agent — the name did not matter overmuch. The interesting aspect of this was that Naghan Vanki, the emperor’s chief spymaster, did not know of Naghan the Barrel or the other agents recruited in similar ways. A small corps of intelligence men was being built up, quite distinct from the large-scale organization controlled by Vanki and which served Vallia to the best of its ability in dark times and in good.
We halted on the brow of a hill where the road, dim and barely visible before the rise of the Maiden with the Many Smiles, trended down toward the shadowy and misshapen lumps of darkness that indicated a village. Not a light showed.
“Chuktar Mevek risks much in coming this far south to meet you, majister.” Naghan the Barrel wiped his face with his neckerchief, a gaudy article of red and lilac and green with brown spots. That kind of neckerchief the Kregans call a flamanch, and very useful it is, too. Usually it is fastened at the front by a brooch or a pin or a nolp, and now, having wiped his face, Naghan slid his nolp up and down as he spoke. “We are in good time. And his men have us under observation already.”
Not one of us showed the least surprise or consternation. We were old campaigners. If Mevek had not scouted the approaches and kept a lookout we would have been far more concerned.
“All the same,” said Turko, following on that line of thought. “It means we may have some difficulty if we have to pull out quickly.”
Although we had only Naghan’s assertions to guide us in this enterprise, we felt we were not going in entirely blind.
I, for one, felt confidence in Naghan Raerdu the Barrel, and his opinion was that this Chuktar Mevek would hold to his word, even if we did not reach agreement. If Naghan was wrong, why then it could easily be a quick scramble to get free...
I nudged my zorca.
“No sense in hanging about.”
We rode slowly down the path which glimmered into smokey grayness as the first moon lifted. The Maiden with the Many Smiles shone bleakly, it seemed to me, cutting a pallid sickle in the sky. Soon she would take on her usual pinkish hue and the shadows would warm to a russet fuzz. We rode on.
This little village was called Infinon of the Crossroads, and the inn with the sign of the Headless Zorcaman squatted in one angle of the cross. The other houses were fast shuttered. The stillness and the ghostly moonlight were broken as men rode out with a clatter, casting bars of shadow across the road, to surround us. A few quick words between their leader and Naghan and we went on, riding up to the inn and dismounting.
A warm fug of ale fumes and cooking and sweat met us as we entered. The place presented the appearance one would expect from a small village in a prosperous countryside, and the ale would be good.
The floor was swept clean. That floor was made from sawn planks, not beaten earth. Pots glittered. The enormous fireplace gaped black and empty, save for a brass jar filled with dried flowers. The men who escorted us and the others who awaited our coming wore ragged clothing of a raffish, free-flowing kind. They were much burdened with weapons. Almost all were apims. They sat about on the settles and benches, and I surmised they would keep quiet as their chief spoke. If there was trouble — I gave them a glance that appeared casual and which totted them up and assessed them.
Twenty. Twenty ruffians, guerilleros, as ready to slit your throat as to greet you with a pleasant Lahal.
One of them, a fellow who wore a gaudy sash of a color I took to be plum, so dirty and festooned with gold lace was it, walked forward. His face looked like an old boot. His hair was lank. But he smiled.
“Llahal, koters,” he said, giving us the name of gentlemen of Vallia. “The Chuktar will be here in but five murs.”
Karidge would have started hotly demanding to know why the emperor should be kept waiting, but I silenced him. I looked about, saw a long lanky lout with his feet on a bench. Walking over, I pushed his legs off, so that his heavy Vallian boots crashed to the floor, and sat on the bench. I took off my wide-brimmed hat, placed it on the table, and said, “I will wait five murs.”
As a mur is shorter than a terrestrial minute, the ball was, as they say, in Mevek’s court.
The long lanky lout glowered, but he said nothing and straightened himself up. The eyes of the others in the taproom — by Krun! You could feel them, like a pack of drills.
My companions remained standing. The fellow with the unmentionable sash and the face like an old boot swallowed.
“I am Vanderini the Dagger. I will fetch the Chuktar—”
He went out through a rear door in something of a hurry.
Karidge chuckled nastily. A chuckle can express many profound emotions.
Turko and Korero looked as though offensive smells were obfuscating the pleasures of life. Naghan the Barrel let one of his wheezing laughs shake him up, the tears pouring from his eyes. He clapped his belly.
“I am parched. Will no one fetch a stoup, for the sweet sake of Mother Dikkana, who brought forth the saint who gave us ale?”
Someone laughed — that was easy to do with Naghan the Barrel — and tankards were forthcoming. I sipped.
Four and a half murs, all that took. On the fifth, as the calibrated clepsydra on its shelf above the mantelpiece showed, Chuktar Mevek walked into the taproom.
To sum him up in a single glance would be easy, and probably completely wrong.
This Mevek, who called himself a Chuktar, the equivalent of a brigadier general, was quite clearly hard as nails, hard-bitten, hard as old leather. He was strongly built, with a flat, impassive face in which his brown Vallian eyes were deeply set. He looked like his men, save that he wore more ornamentation. Yet I judged that to have accomplished what he had, in raising so many people willing to stand against Layco Jhansi and his mercenaries, he had a spark, a charisma, a touch of that genius Kregans call the yrium. He looked at me carefully. He reminded me by that stare, by his impassivity, of a wild animal in the moments before it leaps.
Then: “Llahal, majister. I will not give you the full incline as all emperors are due. I hear you have banished such flummery.”
“You are right. Llahal.”
“They say the kov who ran off is a friend of yours.”
“You are right and wrong.”
He merely lifted one dark eyebrow.
“Kov Seg Segutorio is a friend of mine. He did not run off.”
“He was not here when—”
“I have heard this before. It is unworthy of you if you wish to prove your friendship. Kov Seg Segutorio was about business for the empire — for the old emperor — and those to whom he confided the care of Falinur failed him. He did not fail them.”
“You fight for your friends—”
I broke in. “This wastes time. The past is dead.” Well, that is not strictly true... “What do you wish to tell me?”
Now he did not exactly lose that coolness, but he reached out and fingered one of the many loops of precious gems encircling his neck and depending on his harness. His eyebrows drew down.
“Perhaps it is you, majister, who has somewhat to tell me.”
I stood up.
“Shilly-shallying, Mevek, is for those who have all the time in the world. I do not. There are mercenaries, reiving rasts, cramphs from Hamal, abroad in Vallia. The people called me to be their emperor and free them from tyranny. That I will do, although I did not seek the task. If you can help me win back Falinur, all well and good. If you are powerless, then we have nothing to say to each other.”
He digested that. Then, as I had suspected he would, he picked out the item that touched him most nearly.
“Powerless? Me? Oh, no, majister, I am not powerless.”
“Do not think these men here can stop me from leaving.” And here I put on a little of the bravado I detest and which, sometimes, serves well. Sometimes it is a disaster. “I do not think you could stop me if you had twice as many men,”
He wiggled those eyebrows of his again, and I came to the conclusion that, impassive as his flat face was, those eyebrows were weather indicators to his state of mind.
“I have been told you are Jak the Drang.”
“Yes.”
“Then I believe you.”
I nodded. “Then we understand each other.” I pulled my riding cloak off and tossed it on the table. I sat down. “I do not think you are powerless. Now, let us Rank our Deldars and see what we can agree.”
At that familiar opening challenge from the famous game of Jikaida, Mevek, nodding in his turn, visibly relaxed. We had sparred. His amour propre had been maintained. Now we could get down to cases.
His story followed the lines I expected. When Jhansi’s mercenary troops deteriorated in quality with the hiring of more and more of them from dubious sources, the country folk began to suffer. That was a normal risk run by any commander who hired mercenaries. The defeats in the south were almost matched by unhappy encounters with the Racters in the north.
The Racters, once the most powerful political party in Vallia, were now penned in the far northwest where a concentration of their estates gave them a base. Jhansi fought them and the battle did not go well.
“What you are saying is now that Jhansi’s fortunes are at a low ebb, you wish to change sides.”
His eyebrows flared.
“No, majister, not so. Many of us have opposed the Kov of Vennar from the moment he crossed our borders.”
“As I am the emperor, you may understand that Layco Jhansi is no longer the Kov of Vennar. His province lies under an interdict. His head is forfeit to the empire. He is a traitor.”
“Just so. But he still runs his kovnate, whether he is kov or not, and he still sends his damned mercenaries to keep us down.”
I said, “You have intelligence of the battles we have won? You know our armies have cleared Vindelka?”
“Aye.”
“Then you must realize that the time will soon come when we will march north, through this very spot, and go on into Falinur and west into Vennar, and Layco Jhansi will swing very high indeed.”
In a low tone, almost surly, he said, “You will need my help.”
“I welcome your help, Mevek. As to needing it — that may be a different matter.”
Vanderini the Dabber, he with the sash and the face like an old boot, stepped up. That face wore a scowl.
“By Vox! But this new emperor has a stiff neck! If I did not hate Jhansi so much, why—”
“There will be a place for you, Vanderini,” I told him, without a smile. “In the new Falinur after we have liberated the province. At least—” And here I judged the time had come to apprise these desperadoes of their new lord. “At least, if the new kov I have appointed listens and approves of you.”
They swung to glare at me on this.
“New kov?” growled out Mevek. “What new kov?”
“Kov Seg Segutorio is about vital business for the empire. He has relinquished Falinur. Your new lord is appointed. He is Kov Turko, whom you will obey in all things.”
Now, as you know, the rights and the law on Kregen regarding titles and property and inheritance are not quite the same as on this Earth. Necessarily, they must differ.
Mevek hoisted his eyebrows. I began to suspect that he was well aware of his eyebrows, and used them on purpose, to fool credulous folk into thinking they could read his mind.
“If this Kov Turko proves himself—”
“He will.”
“Then we will give him the welcome that is his due. But I recall the old kov, Naghan Furtway, and his nephew Jenbar. They had little love for the emperor. Their seed still grows here.”
Perhaps this was the root cause of the disaffection in Falinur. The past is not dead, its tendrils twine and choke the new bright growths...
“You know Naghan Furtway proved a traitor and fled overseas. He is allied with the Empress Thyllis of Hamal, and that mad woman seeks only evil for Vallia. You know.”
“I know.”
“So that Kov Turko will bring a new light and spirit to Falinur. You will see.”
Now, all this time Turko had been standing there silently. I could see him. His face, that handsome Khamorro face, remained impassive. But the muscles in his arms roped and jumped. He would wait just so long for me to fiddle around like this and then, why, then Turko the Shield would start to show these hardy, near-bandit guerrillas that he was their new kov and they’d better get to like it...
Korero the Shield stroked his beard with his upper left hand in a most judicious way. He had kept his two lower arms well inside his cloak, and his tail with its powerful grasping hand was tucked up out of the way, so that he did not look like a diff but could pass as an apim like us. Now he smiled.
“It seems to me we are all agreed, but we cannot reconcile ourselves.” His voice carried that tinge of mockery he knows so well how to intimate; goads to infuriate his listeners.