Talk of the Strom’s Sacred Life Guard — Torn had said En Luxis Bliem Juruk, and Sacred Life Guard is a near enough translation. Kregish is particularly rich as a language, filled with colorful words. Bliem, for life, is merely one word, and the one chosen here. These fellows had fought well and loyally and I had thought the Praetorian Guard, the Imperial Guard, idea had died when I became emperor. But then, as you know, the Sword Watch had been formed. So, what with Frandor the Altrak wandering past carrying on an animated conversation with his dead twin, I was spared the embarrassment of stumbling out some words or other to Torn about my feelings on bodyguards.
And, by Vox! Bodyguards are a delightful invention when some of the cramphs trying to kill me on Kregen take action!
On the next day my seasoned veterans caught that half regiment and tumbled the three pastangs into bloody ruin. When it was all over and we turned over the loot, as all good paktuns do, sharing one with another, we were able to outfit our whole little force with armor. And, over the armor, these men wore their old yellow homemade jackets, still.
On the way back to our camp our outriders spotted a flier cruising over the island. Instantly we all faded into the bushes. Down here any air-service boats were operated by adherents of Strom Rosil. Peering up through the leaves, I studied the craft as she flitted past. She was a very small single-place job, and no doubt before the Time of Troubles had been some sporty fellow’s pride and joy. Then I stared again, harder.
“Keep your heads down, you famblys!” Clardo the Clis rumbled the words. He had no need to, for these men were kampeons[7]; but Clardo no doubt felt the need of expressing his feelings about cowering in the bushes.
I stood up. I walked out from the bushes. Lifting my arms and waving, I shouted.
“The emperor!” someone yelled from the bushes.
“Shastum!” came Clardo’s irate voice. “The emperor knows what he is doing. But, by Vox, I do not!”
The flier circled and dropped down. With a sweet swoop of precise piloting she landed ten paces from me.
I knew that a score of bows were aimed for the pilot’s heart.
He stepped out and threw up an arm in salute.
“Lahal, majister! Well met!”
“Lahal, Quardon,” I said. “Well met indeed.” I half turned and bellowed at the bushes. “Come on out. We have been found.”
From the short flagstaff in the stern of the voller flew the union flag of Vallia. That yellow cross superimposed on a yellow saltire, all on a red field, had told me the airboat was friendly. Down here, she could only be looking for us on the advice of Quienyin. And, as you will readily perceive, none of these paktuns freshly returned to their native land would know that the flag they saw was their new flag of Vallia.
The splendid upshot of this meeting appeared a few burs after young Quardon, a rip-roaring lad of the Sword Watch, shot off in the voller. Soaring in over the trees, all her sails set, one of our flying ships from Vondium threw her long shadow from the suns. The paktuns gathered with me stared up and it was a wonderful sight to see their faces. The sails came in smartly and the ship let down through thin air, upheld and supported by her silver boxes that were, alas, in nowise as efficient as the silver boxes of the powered vollers.
Flags of Vondium flew from her, and men’s heads dotted along the bulwarks. She was a fine craft, three-decked and with proper accommodation, and armed with varters and gros-varters. I own to a thrill, myself, as she touched down.
Well, the Lahals rang out and there was much clasping of hands and back-thumping. Many of the new Second Regiment of the Sword Watch were there. These fighting men had come ahunting me when Quienyin in lupu had sussed out our whereabouts.
“She is a fine, large craft, majister,” said Torn. “Finer, I daresay, than those with which Vallia thrashed Hamal at the Battle of Jholaix.”
“As good, Torn,” I said. “As good. Now let us all board and catch the breeze for home.”
Only two men looked glum. These were the brothers Niklaardu — for their home was Wenhartdrin itself.
“Have faith,” I said, speaking the easy words, but meaning them, and demanding a response in kind.
“We will free all Vallia. You will return to your home in Wenhartdrin. Believe that.”
“Aye, majister. We believe it. But it will be a hard road.”
Sheer common sense and the practicalities of government told me that during my absence many changes must have taken place at home. I asked questions, an endless stream of them, and digested the answers. I preferred this method to allowing my comrades to babble on haphazardly telling me what jumped into their memories. All the relevant information I will retail as and when it affects this my narrative; suffice it to say now that Vallia was still an island sundered and divided, with factions warring for power, and the capital city of Vondium, still in our hands, standing like a rock in a raging sea. With those silver boxes we had made ourselves in Vondium uplifting the ship, we sailed on. The boxes gave us no forward motive power, as the complete boxes did for the vollers; but they extended gripping, invisible holds into what the wise men called the ethero-magnetic lines of force and thus afforded the ship a kind of keel so that we could tack and make boards against the wind. Leaving Wenhartdrin, we sailed east over the sea with the lovely coastline of Vallia passing to the northward. One item of news gave me an itchy feeling up the spine. Delia and I had discussed the designs of Queen Lushfymi of Lome upon our splendid son Drak. Drak was our eldest, the stern, sober, competent one of our sons. Queen Lush had been sent by Phu-Si-Yantong from her country in Pandahem to seduce, suborn, and destroy the old emperor. Instead, she had turned to us Vallians, and stood at our side against the Wizard of Loh. Now that the emperor was dead, Queen Lush was set on marrying Prince Drak, well knowing that one day she would thus become Empress of Vallia. Delia and I felt that Seg’s daughter, Silda, was the proper mate for Drak. Nothing openly had been said. This was one of those fractious knots of problems that bedevil men and women, whether they be puffed-up emperors or empresses, or shopkeepers with a business to care for.
By Zair! How I was looking forward to the day when I could throw down the burden of empire, and become once again plain Dray Prescot, of Esser Rarioch in Valka!
And, of course, Lord of Strombor and King of Djanduin and all manner of other splendid and sometimes mocking titles and estates.
The flutsmen circled out of the suns’ glare as I pondered the problems facing me. The trumpets pealed the alarm.
How marvelous to see the Sword Watch and these new comrades in their yellow jackets work together!
Shafts rose from the flying ship, leaden bullets flew. The flutsmen, screeching, their mottled clumps of feathers flying, their weapons glittering, swooped upon us. It was a pretty set to. The flying argosy was called Challenger, registered in Vondium, and as she coursed through thin air with all her canvas pulling and the flutsmen spun and darted in to attack, I felt that here we had a microcosm of the evils inflicting Vallia with agony, a prophecy of the struggles to come.
When the flutsmen saw their attacks were fruitless, what remained of them drew off. Their wings bright in the suns’ light, the fluttrells swerved away. They sped in a long, defeated string northward for the coast.
“We are within a few dwaburs of Delphond, are we not?” I said to Captain Hando, the master. A thin, razor-nosed man with a tufty chin beard, he screwed up his eyes. He had been a galleon captain, and had transferred to the new flying ships service.