Mevek almost bit.
“Agree! Of course we agree that Jhansi must be put down, but as for this new kov—” And then he caught himself, and that dull, impassive look settled again on his features.
“Good,” I said brightly. “When do you think the Kov of Falinur should show himself to the people? I do not think he is a man to wait until after the victory.”
“Indeed, no,” put in Korero.
Turko said nothing.
Mevek said, “If he is the kov for us he will lead us in battle. I have Freedom Fighters, in hiding. We lack weapons of quality, but we fight. Send for this new Kov Turko and bid him join us — if he dares!”
Turko opened his mouth. I lifted my hand.
“We will send weapons. Our armies will march north. They will be commanded by Kov Turko of Falinur. You will send word to your people. They will rise. Together, we will sweep Jhansi and his mercenaries back to Vennar. Then...”
I had overlooked a point. Not all the Falinurese felt the same fierce detestation of Jhansi shared by the men in that room.
As Turko looked at me, his head up, his handsome face verging on a scowl — for I sensed he was not completely sure of what I was about — I went on in a heavy voice, for what I had to say did not please me.
“When we beat Jhansi’s men at Ovalia, they were led by a damned Hamalese, a Kapt Hangrol, and by Jhansi’s toady, Malervo Norgoth.”
“Hangrol has gone back to Hamal—”
“Poor devil,” I said, whereat they looked at me strangely. They did not know the kind of punishment the Empress Thyllis handed out to people who failed her.
“And Tarek Malervo Norgoth skulks somewhere in Vennar. He is out of favor, serve the rast up stewed black.”
“We were attacked by hordes of screaming savages — yet they were once ordinary citizens of Vallia. This is sorcery.” I did not miss the flicker of fear in many faces. “This displeases me. Can you contain this? Can you handle these misguided fanatics? Will you succumb to the sorcery of Rovard the Murvish?”
This did not go down at all well.
Many were the protestations, many the oaths, many the knotty fists thumped on tables. But these men had felt the breath of fear. Rovard the Murvish, an initiate in the Brotherhood of the Sorcerers of Murcroinim, an adept of real powers, had almost trapped me in a web of sorcery. Jhansi had a trenchant tool in this sorcerer.
At last Mevek said over the hubbub, “We have seen the misguided men this wizard has spelled. Yes, they fight like crazy animals. But, they may be killed.”
This, then, was the nub of my displeasure.
We talked for a space, with Turko growing more and more tense and showing every symptom of blowing up, quite unlike his usual distant mockery of me. I inquired about various people whose welfare in Falinur obsessed me, including Lol Polisto and his wife Thelda and their child, and learned he was known in this part by reputation; but his guerrilla deeds took place dwaburs away across the hills. The problem of the men under the thrall of thaumaturgy, fighting like maniacs for Jhansi, would have to be faced. When we fought and met them in battle, they would, as Mevek had so crudely said, be slain if we were to free the country.
“At the least,” I said, “you can always smell Rovard the Murvish a bowshot off.”
They ventured hesitant laughs at this. Sorcerers, to the ordinary man, are no joking matter.
A man wearing a fur cap poked his head in the doorway and said, “Nath says there are men skulking about to the north of the village.”
My first thought was that I’d misjudged it badly when I’d tallied Mevek’s band at twenty. He still had outposts.
Mevek jumped up at once.
“That will be that damned rast Macsadu and his foul masichieri.” Masichieri are very low-class mercenaries, barely better than bandits. “He has been scouring the countryside for us. Well, we owe him, and tonight he’ll bite off more than he can chew.”
Vanderini walked quickly to the door, drawing his sword. The others followed, their weapons making a fine show.
Mevek eyed me, “It is best, majister, if you remain here where you will be safe. Macsadu does not know I have more men than usual, more than he expects.”
“No,” I said in a mild voice. “I do not skulk—”
“You are the emperor!” Now Mevek looked astonished, and his eyebrows formed a black bar. “Emperors do not—”
“Jak the Drang does,” I said.
He nodded, convinced at once. He jerked his head at Turko. “The stylor had best hide when the fighting begins.”
Because Turko bore no weapons, Mevek had judged him to be a stylor, outside the scope of fighting men, a stylor being a man who can read and write and as a scribe carries pen and ink and paper instead of sword and spear.
Now Turko’s mouth opened in earnest.
I said, “This Macsadu. I hear he is a by-blow of Jhansi’s.”
“Aye. A vicious man-hunter. He slew his own mother when Jhansi tired of her. Now he extorts taxes and tortures for pleasure. We have a score to settle.”
Turko got out, “I’ll be at your side in the fight, Mevek, and judge how you conduct yourself.”
The guerrilla chief gave Turko a puzzled look, started to say something, changed his mind, said, “Please yourself, stylor. If you are chopped, do not blame me.”
Nath Karidge drew that curved sword of his. “It appears to me, Mevek, that you have been lax in your scouting and have sucked us into a trap. You had no business arranging this meeting if you were being followed.”
Very quickly I stopped the argument. Outside the inn the sudden sounds of combat flowered in the night. Perhaps Mevek had made a mistake; we were in for a fight and that was that.
Somewhat surlily, Mevek said, “I have enough men to thrash that cramph Macsadu, do not fear—”
Vanderini catapulted through the doorway. His old boot of a face bore a huge bloody gash. He was yelling. He twisted and slammed the door, shoving the bar across.
“Scores and scores of the bastards! They’ve tricked us!”
The noise outside faded and then increased. The door bulged. The bar broke. In a smashing welter of splinters fierce armed men thrust through. Their weapons glimmered darkly with blood.
“You stupid onker!” yelled Karidge.
He fairly hurled himself forward, shouting, “Into them before they deploy!”
Korero threw back his enveloping cloak. His four arms raked up and his tail hand curved. Steel glittered.
With a whooping rush the mercenaries charged.
In the next instant a confused and murderous struggle began across the cleanly swept floor of the taproom in the Sign of the Headless Zorcaman.
Of the Disobedience of Nath Karidge
The windows exploded in fountains of splintered wood and patterned glass and struggling men collapsed inward to sprawl, still fighting, over the tables and settles. The guerrillas and the mercenaries hunting them fought madly across the floor.
Korero’s glittering figure swirled like a lightning bolt of destruction.
Nath Karidge, characteristically the first to get in among his foemen, swung his curved sword with precision and gusto.
Naghan the Barrel whipped a stout clanxer, a straight cut and thruster of Vallia, into his adversary and then stiff-armed it about in a horizontal slash that dislodged the Adam’s apple of the next.
Vanderini, swearing horribly and the blood running down his face, cut back into the pressing mass.
Chuktar Mevek, a sword and a dagger swirling, fought madly, as though working out a private grudge eating away his soul.
And I, Dray Prescot, I fought too, seeing that these miserable masichieri sought to kill me and I didn’t have the time to die, not right now, with all I had still to do waiting to be done.
A screaming wretch flew over the battling throng. He turned a complete cartwheel as he whistled though the air. He departed from the taproom through the only window so far unbroken. Wearing the windowpanes like a collar, he vanished.
So I knew Turko the Khamorro was in action.
The fight, for all its shortness, was exceedingly ferocious.
One of the problems with low-class mercenaries is their rapid loss of interest if the day goes against them.
Not for me to judge any man in what he does, unless that happens to be against the well-being of Vallia and he is hauled up before me in my capacity as emperor. I did not condemn, nor even cavil, as the mercenaries, seeing that we were not to be easily plucked, lost interest. By ones and twos, and then a half dozen at a time, they ran out of the shattered doorway. A few hardy souls left were either cut down or persuaded to depart. I noticed that Mevek far preferred to cut them down than let them escape. He had his reasons, I did not doubt.
Some of these dubious fighting men were not apims, not Homo sapiens, being diffs of various races. A Rapa with his wattled neck and vulture head and waving tufts of feathers pressed me and I cut him a little, so that he shrieked and, turning, ran off. A Fristle, his cat face a bristle, spat at Korero, whose arm — one of his arms, the speed made it difficult to see exactly which one of the assemblage — raked out and biffed the Fristle through the gaping window. Korero used the hilt of his sword.
A Brokelsh, coarsely furred and coarse of manner, sought to drive his spear through Mevek’s guts. Mevek was, at the time, hotly engaged with a fellow who tried to bring a cleaver down from the crown of Mevek’s head to the junction of his collarbone.
Mevek dealt with the cleaver fellow just in time, and swung about. He saw what happened.
Turko hove up, twitched the Brokelsh’s spear away, upended him, twirled him as a maid twirls a feather duster in all the old plays and heaved him over the heads of the rest of us out the window. Then, without pausing, Turko slid a long thrust of a sword in the grip of the next mercenary who had delusions of grandeur. The Khamorro grip fastened on the screaming wight and he was twitched up, up and away.
Turko, perfectly balanced, breathing easily, not in the slightest discommoded, looked about for the next one.
Mevek stared at Turko.
The fight was dying. A few more quick flurries, the shriek of a fool who hadn’t the sense to duck, and the masichieri departed.
But the battle was not over yet, and we had not escaped scot free. A number of Mevek’s men sprawled on the floor in their own blood, wounded, dead and dying.
“It seems,” said Mevek, breathing hard and his eyebrows twitching uneasily, “that I owe you my life. And I do not know your name.” Turko smiled.
A commotion outside drew our attention to the open doorway, and once again we grasped our swords ready to beat off a fresh attack. Introductions could wait. Crossing to the door, I peered out cautiously.
The Maiden with the Many Smiles illuminated the crossroads. The shuttered houses remained dark and mysterious. The folk of this village of Infinon of the Crossroads wanted nothing to do with the night’s nefarious doings.
The stink of spilled blood and the tang of dust obliterated the smell of the flowers of the white shansili trailing on its trellis over the door.
A group of riders astride totrixes were bringing their clumsy six-footed steeds up in a rush, and the moon glinted from their lance tips and harness. These were the fellows come to finish the job the masichieri had failed to do. I did not doubt that Jhansi’s illegitimate son, Macsadu the Kroks, rode at their head.
“They mean to finish us off once and for all,” growled Mevek at my shoulder.
“Aye,” panted Vanderini, shoving up with his sword crusted with blood. “But we’ll—”
“Yes, you old wart,” said Mevek, by which I judged there was a comradeship between them.
“We can but fight,” I said. “We would never reach our zorcas in time.”
“And if we could,” said Karidge, stepping out and, surprising me, looking in the opposite direction, “I do not think, majister, you would gallop off.”
“I would, Nath, and thankful to be able.”
His reckless face looked shocked as he swung back.
“But, majister—”
“I have work to do for Vallia, Nath, work such that it would ill betide me to get killed before it is done.”
“Ye-es,” he said. The doubt was alive in him. “I see.”
“No, Nath, you do not see now. But, I think, you will see one day. And, if we get out of this scrape in one piece, soon.”
“Where is this marvel who makes men fly?” bellowed Mevek. “By Vox! I would have him stand at my side in the fight.”
“I am here, Chuktar Mevek,” said Turko, in his silky tones.
“How you manage it, and without naked steel in your fists, passes me. But, by all the names, you are a marvel.”
“Men have said that before, Mevek,” I said. “I am glad to see you share their opinion.”
The totrix riders were now almost on us. They rode knee to knee, in a jingling, ominous trot, and it behooved us to duck back into the inn before they speared us where we stood.
Again Nath Karidge looked away at the crossroads. The intensity of his stance, the piercing stare, gave me to think. So, when the first shafts arched and the steel birds struck in among the totrix riders, I was not surprised.
Zorcamen rode swiftly from the shifting shadows. They bore on in a close, disciplined mass. Archers in front, loosing with the fluent rapidity of experts, lancers following on, they galloped along the road.
The archers fanned out, still shooting, using their nimble zorcas with superb skill. As the zorcabows opened out, so the lancers bored on through in a solid bone-crushing charge. The lance heads with their red and white pennons all came down. The steel heads glimmered cruelly in that wavering light.
When the half-squadron hit, they plunged in like a fist into a tub of butter. In a twinkling the individual combats broke out as the melee swirled along between the shuttered houses. Caught utterly by surprise, thrown into confusion, the totrix men gave no thought to fighting — only to flight.
A trumpet pealed the recall. As one, the lancers disengaged. The archers shot until their targets flitted into the shadows and were lost.
Karidge yelled in his strong voice: “No pursuit, Jiktar Tromo! Form up, emperor’s guard!”
With drilled precision the two half-squadrons swung back and formed at the door of the Sign of the Headless Zorcaman.