Golden Scorpio (25 page)

Ahead the long long line of radvakkas came into view.

At once Nath said: “Hai! The rasts try a new trick.”

The Iron Riders did not charge headlong at us the moment they could. Instead, they hung back, pirouetting out there across the plain, with the glinting thread of the River Sabbator at their backs. The wagon leaguers and the camps occupied a vast area of the watermeadows. The twin suns shone.

The banners flew and the trumpets pealed. The Phalanx halted.

I say Phalanx; against this moment we put into practice the plans we had developed. File by file the Relianches moved into open order, the Bratchlins standing fast and the files marching back to turn and come up behind their neighbors, thirty-six men deep. Into the intervals stepped the archers. The evolution was completed smoothly and in good order — and only just in time.

The Iron Riders in clumps and groups swept toward us and retreated and as they curveted so they loosed a rain of arrows.

At this early stage most of the shafts fell short. Our trumpets blew “Shields” and up went the crimson flowers, like a field of roses, ready to resist the falling arrow storm. Our archers loosed careful, aimed shots, from standing or kneeling positions, that took a toll of the galloping radvakkas. For their part, the Iron Riders attempted to press in to the range at which their short bows might reach, but the compound bows of our archers outranged them handsomely. As I have said, one does not fire a bow. Kregans have a word which roughly approximates our terrestrial word firepower. Now Nath half-turned in his saddle, laughing, gleeful, raking me with the demand in his bright eyes, already triumphant.

“See, Jen Jak! Their dustrectium is pitiful! Let us close ranks and lock shields and advance.”

“Their attempt to prepare the mass is, indeed, not worthy of our preparations to resist. Mayhap they have another cast hidden from our view. Let our bowmen empty a few more saddles, Nath.”

On my other side Nev fidgeted astride his zorca, anxious to bring his phalanx into action. But I made them wait. I needed the radvakkas to appreciate that their new tactics were failing them, and to gather, once again, for the headlong charge that, I fancied, this time they would make with the final fling of desperation.

Well, the story of that old battle is there for all to hear in the song that was made. The “Black Wings over Sabbator,” it is called. This is a typical Kregish reference to the incident where a fleeing formation of radvakkas, circling, came across one of our ambulance units tending the wounded of both sides and simply rode across them, slaying friend and foe alike. That was after, at last, I gave the signal, and we closed ranks and locked shields and with helmets fiercely bent forward, plumes nodding, and pikes leveled in a lethal hedge of steel, we advanced at the regulation double pace. The moment was judged nicely. We caught the Iron Riders just as their chiefs had finally collected the scattered bands into that fearsome armored host with which they had so often ridden to victory. We hit them as they formed, before they had even put spur to benhoff. We hit them and the pikes bit and the halberds slashed and we rolled them up and crushed them and destroyed them utterly.

Pinned against the Sabbator they could only stand among the tents and wagons and fight until they died.

Our irregulars swarmed in. Our archers picked off any who sought to flee. Only that one formation which so mercilessly razed the ambulance unit escaped; and subsequently they were pursued and brought to justice. For, believe me, that is how the army viewed the situation.

Relianch by relianch, the brumbytes came back out of the line, pikes tossed, formed, intact, ready to face anything.

As I say, and no doubt will continue to say, by Vox, that was an army.

That it was wildly anachronistic meant merely that it gathered the more honor. Of glory I will not speak. But I had, with the full co-operation of Nazab Nalgre, instituted valor medals, phalerae, and these were worn with pride.

In the history of those skirling days kept by Enevon Ob-Eye the battle was recorded as The Battle of the Sabbator; but men usually refer to it as the Sabbator. It was a famous victory — and, thank Zair, our casualties were less than minimal. On the aftermath of the action I looked up, and there, floating over the Phalanx soared the gold and scarlet Gdoinye.

I put a hand to my helmet and hoisted the barred face-mask, and stared up narrowly. The raptor swung about, and glided down and then, as though satisfied, flirted his wings and soared away.

The very next day I said to Nath: “You are in command of the army now, Kyr Nath. Nev will support you loyally. Appoint whom you wish to command your phalanx in your stead, although I think we both favor Kyr Derson. Conduct the army back to the southern borders ensuring that the whole country is free. Then you may disband and send the men to their homes. The work of rebuilding is pressing.”

“But — Jak.”

“I have business elsewhere.”

“Where, by Vox?”

I looked out of our tent and saw the brumbytes. Four full Kerchuris we had now, and their crimson shields no longer bore the brown of Thermin. They were an imperial host, bearing yellow insignia on their crimson shields. I felt the wrench at parting. As I had said to Barty: “The organization is so simple even the dullest oaf can understand. Twelve pike men to a file, twelve files to a Relianch. Six Relianches to a Jodhri and six Jodhris to a Kerchuri. And each position of command from a Laik-Faxul to the Kerchurivax, is linked in a chain. The rank and function are inseparable.” When you spend a part of your life building anything at all, when the time comes for the dismantling, regrets creep in, nostalgia, all the silly unmanning emotions that, I suppose, in some measure indicate the value of what you have wrought.

So I said to Nath: “I shall probably end up in Vondium; but I do not know.”

“Then—”

“Command the army well. Make sure we have the whole country cleared. Rebuild. Your father will advance money. As far as the borders are concerned—”

“Layco Jhansi is a traitor!”

“Aye. And he is kept in play by the Racters north of him. Let the brumbytes go home, Nath. And the Hakkodins and archers. As for the irregulars, they will melt away now the fighting is over.”

So I took my leave. The island of Vellin to the east ought to be cleared, always assuming radvakkas had fled there; but I doubted that the Gdoinye would have let me go if my work was unfinished. The actual leave-taking turned out to be highly emotional, and my plans to slip away were frustrated. There was a full-scale parade and review, with the trumpets blowing and the drums beating and the banners flying. The army marched in review — and the sight of the solid masses of crimson and bronze, with the pikes all slanted together, affected me profoundly. This farewell was, after all, worth my own embarrassment.

Korero the Shield said, as I saddled up: “You do not seriously think I would let you ride alone?”

The others of that choice band who, even though the country was cleared of radvakkas, still had no homes of their own, said much the same. Cleitar the Smith, who bore the banner of Vallia, may have had a home; but he had no wife and children to go home to. Dorgo the Clis was now so habituated to fighting with me that he was amazed I could even think of sending him away. And this was so of the others, valiant fighting men I had led in battle, who formed a kind of reserve guard cavalry. Mounted on zorcas, we rode south in a bunch, with Calsanys loaded down with provender and weapons and, I confess, with gold. Gold might be very needful, for I had no idea of the kind of situation we were riding into.

It would be useful to point out here that so much plunder was recovered from the radvakkas that, of the raw gold alone, we were able to repay many of the assignats, and I appointed a corps of stylors to catalogue each item of treasure and make our best efforts to return it to its owner. This was justice of a very rough and ready kind; but, at the least, we did not take everything for the army, as — we all know — many would have done.

The depreciation in the value of money which afflicts civilizations from time to time posed a threat which I was concerned to prevent. Armies cost money and the land will provide only so much. With the troubles that had dismembered and disrupted Vallia reducing production drastically, pretty soon the people of the empire would wake up to find themselves poor. The aragorn and the slavers did not help, for their depredations might remove thousands of hungry people; but they created so many terrors that in many areas the land had not been worked properly since the first invasions.

As we rode south we saw evidences of that. More and more I felt the claustrophobic effects closing in on me. We were a band of fugitives where we rode, leemsheads, outlaws, shunned by the people of the villages, with the gates of towns slammed in our faces, with the campfires of armed hosts at night to warn us off. This land was torn with anger and terror and evil. And these were the broad rich central provinces of Vallia! Truly, an emperor would weep to see how sadly fallen away was his patrimony.

The iron legions of Hamal were a different proposition from the Iron Riders. I developed a scheme. The countryside was infested with brigands, drikingers who waylaid any and everyone. In a brief and bloody encounter with one such band my choice spirits discomfited them — rather roughly, I must report. We told the drikingers that if they wished to live they must confine their depredations to waylaying and slaying Hamalese, aragorn, Flutsmen, the mercenaries and masichieri. They were to leave the honest folk of Vallia alone.

“Any by what right do you imagine you can make us?” demanded their leader, blood streaming down his reckless face, held by the elbows and forced to stare up at me.

“Do the Hamalese not contume you? You are held in contempt by them. You are nithings. Yet you are Vallians. You were not always drikingers. Very well, then. Men call me Jak the Drang. I tell you that I shall utterly destroy the Hamalese and all the vermin who infest our country. Have faith in Opaz. The evil days will pass.”

Such were my words, or roughly what I said, over and over, to the men we encountered in our travels. And, on that occasion and, subsequently, on every occasion no matter that I did not much care for it, one or other of my choice spirits would sing out: “Aye, hulus! Remember, this is Jak the Drang, who is Emperor of Vallia, and will sit on the throne in Vondium and take Drak’s Sword into his hand. Remember and tremble at his name.”

Well, as we neared the capital, we found the name of Jak the Drang had gone before us, and men were ready to heed my words. The scheme I put into operation demanded that the women and children of these rich lands remove themselves to the North East. Reports reached me regularly from Nazab Nalgre and the other nobles in Hawkwa country, all of whom now called me emperor without affectation. Their borders were secure. Their first harvest of the new season was a bumper one, producing the plenty of the land in abundance. This operated in two ways to help us, for the people who traveled to the North East left their own shrunken fields to enter a land where they could eat their fill, and Nalgre and the others forwarded on food to us as an earnest of our good intentions. And, in a third and altogether more profound way — if anything can be more profound than the state of a man or woman’s inward constitution — the news of what had been achieved in Hawkwa country circulated.

At the name of Jak the Drang these miserable cowed people, living in fear of the Hamalese and the mercenaries, took heart. What had been achieved there by Jak the Drang might also be achieved here. The process took time. More than once we were forced to enter the open field and battle bands of masichieri — it was mostly them — in defense of a group of people. But our name and the report of our deeds spread.

When the Hamalese sent a force against us we melted away.

When we ran into real drikingers, bands who had been bandits before the troubles, they were dealt with in a proper and summary fashion. The bands who roamed the countryside now were death on wheels to the invaders of their country, and full of concern for native Vallians. We gathered more people, of course, in our peregrinations until we moved in a tidy little force, daily growing in strength, never halting in one place, but clearing up a spot of trouble and moving on.

The canalfolk were a tower of strength. The vens and venas, the vener, proved themselves fully alive to the peculiar advantages and possibilities of the canals, and long strips of narrow boats carried the refugees into the North East. Of course, occasionally, a caravan was stopped. Sometimes there were tragedies. But gradually, as the season passed over, we cleared the lands of most of the women and children. The task was colossal and, of course, we could never fully complete it. There were just too many people in these lands around the capital.

But we cleared so many that the Hamalese were forced to resort to setting guards on the farm people remaining. The fields were being left unattended, and no crops grew, and the food was going to run out — and soon. The hordes of rasts who had burst into Vallia and eaten of her goodness stored up in barns and warehouses would go hungry — unless they chose to leave.

I suppose — indeed, I know it to be true — that the Dray Prescot who is me was not the person in those days called Jak the Drang. Jak the Drang browbeat bandits, harangued lords and nobles, had no hesitation in dealing with the utmost ferocity with murderers and rapists and those who had battened on the misery of the people of Vallia. The name of Jak the Drang was whispered — in fear by his enemies and in pride and exultation by his friends and comrades.

But — it was hardly me, hardly the new Dray Prescot — although to be truthful, there was a damned lot of the old intemperate Dray Prescot in Jak the Drang.

When we reached Olordin’s Well and found the little hamlet a razed wreck, without hair or hide of a soul, I admit I raved and ranted and was like to have done something exceedingly violent — which is against my nature — when Barty, who with a few friends had been waiting nearby, came running up. He had fliers and provisions and friends; and he reported that Dayra must have been at Olordin’s Well but had long since departed.