Omens of Kregen (4 page)

Nath Karidge commanded the elite regiment called the Empress’s Devoted Life Guard. Also, Delia had a second regiment of jurukkers, a composite regiment of bows and churgurs, a powerful force designed to operate in conjunction with Nath Karidge’s First EDLG.

Even then, we hadn’t been able to cram everyone aboard who wanted to fly north with us.

We did have with us a force very essential to the type of warfare carried on in these latter days in Vallia.

Although the fliers had been able to accommodate only two squadrons of aerial cavalry, we had taken those in preference to three squadrons of ground cavalry. The saddle birds were flutduins from my kingdom of Djanduin, magnificent chargers of the air. Flown by highly trained flyers from Valka, they were worth their weight in gold.

Marion’s regiment of Jikai Vuvushis also flew with us; they were still without an official name and I’d managed to reduce their numbers to half. The balance would come on with the advance forces of the main body. I guessed Marion herself, off honeymooning with Nango, would have a few words to say when she found out. She would bring them up very smartly, I did not doubt.

What looked like a dark cloud over the land ahead drew out attention.

This blot of darkness covered a white road below and straggled out into the fields on either side. It did not take an old campaigner long to know exactly what we were looking at.

Before anyone could say anything, I spoke in my old hateful, harsh, intemperate way.

“The best service we can render those poor devils is to fly on and smash up the hostiles. When pursuit ends and the enemy are driven back, these people can return home.”

“You are right,” said Delia. “But I feel for them — feel terribly.”

The refugees trudged along. Some of them looked up and a few waved.

Our bright scarves trailing over the bulwarks, the splendor of our paintwork, the glitter of weapons and the ugly snouts of our ballistae and catapults might appear grand and lordly sailing along in mid-air. I wondered how much they would reassure those people below. It is hard to see any good in the world when your farm has been burned and your family slain.

The smoke cloud ahead thickened and grew closer.

The King of North Vallia had been clever. The fortress town of Tali had been sited on the approach road from the Mountains of the North. The stout walls and strong garrison were there to prevent incursions. This clever king had struck far to the west, almost to the coast, and bypassed Tali.

He would know that a force would march out to dispute his passage. They had done so, and had been routed.

Now he had a clear run south for as far as he wanted to go, pillaging and burning. Only when we had gathered sufficient forces to meet him in pitched battle, he would be thinking, might he expect more opposition. And, the scheming devil, he was in great strength himself. This, it seemed clear, came from new hordes of mercenaries he had recruited from overseas.

The lead voller in which we flew, dubbed
Heart of Imrien
, was not overlarge and I intended to use her as the headquarters ship. Aboard flew men and women close to Delia and me.

Our intelligence from the northern provinces over the Mountains of the North in what was now the kingdom of the usurping and self-styled king of those regions was sparse. The general assessment was that he did not have considerable strength in the air. Our plan therefore was to use our air and avoid a direct land battle until the rest of the army came up. That was the plan.

How many times in the past have I said: “That was the plan.” And how very very many times has that plan gone awry!

We sailed on, searching the ground ahead for signs of our opponents.

Heart of Imrien
, as I have said, was not an overlarge specimen of voller. She possessed a structure corresponding to a raised forecastle of a terrestrial galleon, with a slightly higher poop. She had but the one fighting top, and this square battlemented fortress was supported by four stout masts, cross-braced and served by ladders.

There was no reason at all why, in the air, the first sightings should be made from this fighting top; the fact remains, they were.

“Fliers!” screeched down the lookouts.

Up ahead of us, whirling like autumn leaves, the forerunners of our enemy’s aerial armada swept down full upon us. They came on with demonic speed, swirled along by the breeze which blew in our faces. There looked to be a lot of them. A deuced lot of them.

Our trumpets pealed out and the drums beat to quarters.

Our aerial sailors ran to their stations. The soldiers carried aboard, tough kampeons all, formed up. They were experienced enough to know when to leave one aspect of the approaching fighting to the experts.

My bowmen could shaft as well as any, and when it came to handstrokes then my lads yielded to no one in Vallia.

There was practically no time between the first sightings and the onslaught.

“Fluttrells, mostly,” said Captain Voromin.

“Aye.”

The wide-winged birds bore on, a flutter of color and brightness through the air.

I said to Targon: “Make sure the lads are armored. There will be time for that.”

“Aye, and time for slaying thereafter.”

“Yes, And tell the proud-necked fellows to keep their fool heads down.”

With a clanking groaning the first ballista loosed. These weapons were the superior gros-varters of Vallia, throwing rocks or darts, as suited the occasion and the target. I didn’t bother to see what shooting was made. It seemed to me there were enough birds out there to soak up all the fire we could hammer out and still have enough aerial-borne warriors left to break through and make the attempt to land on our decks.

Delia said in her rasping voice: “And, you hairy graint, where is your armor?”

I cursed. By Makki Grodno’s diseased intestines and dripping eyeballs! If I didn’t trot off and don armor, Delia never would. She would stand at my side, shoulder to shoulder, and trade handstrokes with these reivers of the air.

“Very well. Come on — and for the sweet sake of Zair, let us hurry!”

For I had seen enough to know these fluttrells were flown by flutsmen, bandits of the air, mercenaries of bloodthirsty nature and heart-stopping habits.

Strapping up a breast and back I struggled with the buckles. The breast fastened up and the back refused to go easily. I nearly left the confounded thing off, but Delia rapped out: “Put it on!”

She was right. In these nasty affrays some protection for your back is more important at times than a breastplate. You don’t see the blow from the rear that knocks you over. After that your head is off or your inward parts are displayed for the world to see.

Rushing back onto deck from the arched opening to the cabin we shared, I was in time to see the first of the flutsmen make their attempts to land on
Heart of Imrien
. Korero the Shield sprang out before us, hefting two enormous shields and a sword distributed between his five hands.

“Hai, Korero!” I said.

“This won’t last long,” he said, and circled his shields to loosen up his muscles.

I confess I felt that “Hai!” a trifle overdone. I felt dull and wooden, not so much apathetic as resigned to frustration. I had no interest whatsoever in fighting bloody-minded flutsmen. They would be men and women from many nations come flying into Vallia to feast, as they imagined, on the bleeding corpse of the old empire. Some news of the new empire had traveled overseas together with startling information on the new emperor and the new armies of Vallia. This new lot of mercenaries could have come from anywhere; I had the idea they came from a long way away.

“You look,” said Korero, “as though you’ve lost a zorca and found a calsany.”

“Aye, and I must use up good shafts on these rasts.”

The great Lohvian longbow gripped in my left hand, the cunning draw as perfected by Seg Segutorio imparting immense energy into the bow, I drew and let fly. The rose-fletched shaft took a rider from the air and I didn’t bother to see where he went, but drew and loosed against the next.

That first attempt by the flutsmen to land on our decks proved a dismal and costly failure to them.

Quite apart from the varters that simply blew the riders from the air, the massed ranks of bowmen picked them off with precision and finicky accuracy. As I say, it does not do to meddle with the kampeons of ESW or EYJ.

Still, as I had sourly predicted, there were enough flutsmen for some to break through and touch down on the decks of
Heart of Imrien
.

The Lohvian longbow went down on the deck and the great Krozair longsword went smack into my fists. Well, now...

“Dray—” called Delia.

“Yes, my heart,” I said, without turning.

The leading bunch of flutsmen tumbling from their birds leaped into action with the remarkable poise and agility of true fighting men of the air. A pity they were such a pack of desperadoes of the unholy kind fit only to be sent down to the Ice Floes of Sicce. Given a better chance in life — well who knew what they might have become?

As it was we had to chop them, and chop them fast.

Now I refer to the Lohvian longbow and the Krozair longsword as “great” more often than not. This is because they are great. There are longbows and longswords on Kregen that are not great.

The Krozair brand snicked this way and that, thrust and withdrew, and as I belted into the lead elements of the fliers on our deck I left a wake of slaughter abaft. There were others with me. In a fighting frenzy of action we belted the flutsmen across the deck and those that were not cut down just fell overside.

The vollers were not flying all that high in the air, but the fall was enough to pancake anyone foolish or unfortunate enough to try the drop.

“There are still plenty of them left,” observed Targon the Tapster. He was smeared with blood not his own.

“Flutsmen like easy pickings.”

We stared out into the brightness of the day where the black dots of saddle flyers curved and pirouetted as their riders summoned the nerve for a secondonslaught. The other vollers in our little squadron had all fared as well as we had done. There was a little pause in the proceedings.

Then the lookouts perched aloft bellowed down.

“Airboats!”

“So this unpleasant King of North Vallia has a proper fleet now, has he?” remarked Delia, with an endearing tilt to her chin.

“How many?”

A pause for counting, and then: “More than twenty.”

“H’mm,” I said.

Once contemptuous of the silly remark, I now saw its value in covering up the absence of thought.

The lookouts shouted down again.

“More than thirty.”

“Ah,” I said.

Delia threw me a suspicious look. Casually and with what I hoped was an insouciant air, I strolled over to the bulwarks and leaning out peered ahead. Well, yes, I could see the fliers out there, bearing on, chips of rust against the light.

More than thirty? We had in this squadron sixteen vessels, a mixture of fighting vollers and larger ships designated transports for this operation. This op was, as I have explained, intended to harass the enemy from the air and hold him until our main forces could come up.

Now the devils had provided their own air, a completely new force of which we had no intelligence. Therefore, the situation had changed, the odds had altered and the stakes had been raised.

There was no question of sending our own aerial cavalry aloft. Our two squadrons, hardly more than a hundred and twenty flyers, would be hopelessly outnumbered. I did not relish the idea of a single Valkan astride his flutduin being attacked by ten or a dozen flutsmen.

“They fly on apace,” said Targon.

“So I observe,” I said.

“It will be — interesting.”

The lookouts screeched down for the third time.

“More than forty!”

Now was no time for vacuous expressions like: “H’mm.” Now was no time for shilly-shallying, and most certainly now was no time for me to act like some proud intemperate and bloody stupid emperor.

“That’s it,” I said. I made my voice into that rasping and unpleasant gravel-shifting voice of old, and even good old Targon the Tapster jumped.

“All out.” I fairly hurled the words at the helmsman, using the old foretop-hailing lungpower that had carried commands through many a gale in the Bay of Biscay. “Reverse Course! Speed lever hard over — full speed ahead!”

Carrying on with the bullroarer of a voice, I shouted commands to the signal Deldars to run up the flags to spell the message out to the rest of the squadron.

“You, Dray Prescot, are running away!” said Delia.

“Too right,” I told her, still wrought up. “By Zair! I’m not having all these people of ours chopped uselessly.”

The small almost secret smile that touched her lips heartened me. Delia knew me well enough. She’d seen me change from a hot-headed and damned stupid fighting man into an emperor who was somewhat more cautious of other peoples’ skins. As for myself, well, I suppose had there been no one else to concern myself about, I’d have gone raging into that hopeless fight and you would not now be listening to my words as I relate my story of my life on Kregen.

The fliers of our squadron curved in the air, swinging about in graceful arcs, all their brave flags flying.

“Cap’n,” I said in a more moderate voice to Captain Lorgad Voromin, in command of
Heart of Imrien
, who stood like a bluff barrel girt with leather armor and with feathers in his helmet, face like a beetroot. “Cap’n, I crave your pardon. Would you kindly allow your command to fly last in the squadron?”

“With all my heart, majis.”

In the violence of those moments before I’d shouted the orders to reverse course, I had been so wrought up I’d thrown overboard altogether the etiquette of ship command.

Of course, I should have requested Captain Voromin to give the actual sailing orders for his own ship. I had trodden on his toes with a vengeance. He was a bluff old sea dog, transferred to aerial duty, and I thought he would understand. We had not served together before; I had a shrewd idea he knew my mettle.