The argenter in the usual way had for topmen those agile long-limbed men of the Hoboling Islands, and I said to the captain of the maintop: “Well, dom, and are the pirates still at their trade, up along the Islands?”
“Yes, master, they are.” He looked disgruntled.
“And have you heard of a certain Viridia the Render?”
“Indeed I have, master. She took a fine argenter on which my brother was captain of the foretop. . sent him back naked with a demand for a sackful of dhems for the rest of the crew.”
I stopped myself from laughing. It was good to know that Viridia still lived, even if she was still about her rending trade with all the old panache. They had been cut-and-thrust days, when I had sailed with Viridia the Render!
So I gave orders to treat the Pandahem kindly, and we went back up to Esser Rarioch. The Emperor and his closest advisers awaited us, and soon Captain Rordhan was telling us of the frightful gloom that had spread over all of Pandahem which had not already fallen to the iron legions of Hamal.
“The bloody Menahem,” he said, shaking his head. We had given him a goblet of his own cargo, and he drank feelingly. “They assisted the Pandrite-forsaken devils of Hamal. The ships flew through the sky and the iron men marched. Tomboram is beset-”
I asked the inevitable question, but he shook his head.
“You may know all I know, Prince. There is little news out of Tomboram. As to Bormark, which I know a little, Pandrite alone knows what has happened to their Kov.”
The upshot of this was that I worked my way a little closer to a scheme I wished to carry out at once. The building of ships in the yards of Valka and Vallia and all the other Kovnates and provinces of the Vallian Empire went ahead. I had told the Emperor of the difficulty, but had softened the blow by taking him up in the first vessel we had finished.
Later I will have to tell you of the exact construction of these new vessels, so that you may understand what we intended. For now I will content myself by saying that the Emperor was convinced that we must fight the Hamalians with whatever weapons the wisdom of Opaz placed in our hands.
“The news from Pandahem makes me believe you, Dray. This Captain Rordhan is a shaken man. The doom he sees ahead stinks in him.”
“And it is now clear the Hamalians will leap from Pandahem once they have conquered the whole island. We are next.”
Kov Lykon attempted to pooh-pooh the idea; but even he could not shake the beliefs we now saw to be true.
“No, Kov,” said the Emperor in his authoritarian voice, so that men listened most carefully. “You have lost your cause, so plead no more, or else, perhaps, men will say you have been bribed by the Hamalians to strip us of our defenses.”
I looked narrowly at Lykon Crimahan at this, but he dissembled well, and blustered and protested his innocence.
But I pondered the thought. It made sense.
Later, closeted alone with the Emperor in the samphron-oil lamps’ gleam, we spoke long into the night. I told him of the plan I thought might give us a breathing space.
“What it boils down to, Majister, is that we must afford assistance to Tomboram. Even to Jholaix. When they go down there is nothing between us and the Hamalians.”
“There is the sea, Dray! That has been our defense and our highway to fortune for generations.”
“I have seen Hamalese skyships. They burned a great galleon of Vallia. They will burn all if we do not stop them short of Vallia herself.”
He was a deeply worried man. Being emperor is fine when things go well, but things seldom go well, least of all on Kregen.
“Very well. You must draw up a list of the forces you think proper. I will give you what I can. The newly hired Chuliks will not arrive in time. But we have a few thousand Pachaks, and they are redoubtable fighting men.”
We talked more and then I said, “And the Crimson Bowmen of Loh?”
At this he hummed and hawed. The Crimson Bowmen of Loh were his own personal bodyguard, superb archers, mercenaries, a corps which had been completely reorganized by Seg and Dag Dagutorio after the shambles of the attempted coup by the third party and the battle at The Dragon’s Bones. He propped a fist under his chin and gazed at me, holding the goblet of Jholaix in his other hand, so that it spilled a little on my carpet. I waited.
Presently he answered, “I gave you three thousand of my Crimson Bowmen when you fought for the Miglas against the Canops. I have yet to see any great reward for that.”
We argued. I was taking as many men from Valka as I felt safe. I would not strip my island Stromnate of its fighting power, but here a strange and true phenomenon showed itself: any country which has gone through a recent war, in particular a civil war, produces skilled soldiers in great profusion. I probably had in Valka, which is not a particularly large island, as many first-class trained soldiers as in the rest of Vallia, which formerly relied on mercenaries for its land forces.
In the end we compromised and he let me have a thousand.
Only for their longbows would I prize them. I said, “Our foot soldiers cannot go up with true confidence against the Hamalians, with their shields and thraxters and their discipline.”
He was surprised. “You thrashed the Canops on the field of the Crimson Missals.”
“Archery did that. And we were lucky — make no mistake. The Hamalians will be in large numbers and they will have the benefit of a superb Air Service. They will have saddle flyers, also.”
“There are these flutduins you had sent from Djanduin.” He glanced up at me and, in the nasty way he more than half meant, peevishly said, “I believe you are some kind of king of Djanduin.”
“As to the flutduins,” I said, keeping my old mahogany features straight. “They are perhaps the best saddle flyers in all Havilfar. But we have less than a hundred couples. The Hamalians will fill the sky with fluttrells and mirvols, aye, and some of the damned young fools will be flying zhyans.”
“I know nothing of all these flying creatures-”
“But your army will!”
Well, from this you will see the obstinacy with which we both argued. In the end I scraped together a little army of some fifteen thousand. Small enough, when I recalled the regiments of Hamal, but it was a start. With this army then, and a welcome reinforcement from Djanduin — of which I was ruler! — we would sail for Pandahem and stand shoulder to shoulder with Pando, the Kov of Bormark, and deny those cramphs of Hamalians the springboard to Vallia their evil Queen Thyllis sought in her conquest of all Pandahem.
Before we left I decided that a little object lesson might not be lost upon the doughty warriors of Valka. As you know, the fighting men of Turismond and Segesthes, as of Pandahem and Vallia, consider the shield a coward’s artifice, something behind which to hide in the heat of battle instead of striding out, rapier or clanxer or glaive flashing.
I said to Balass the Hawk as we paused in our strenuous leaping around in the tiny sandy arena we had erected for practice purposes: “Now, Balass. You saw how Ortyg Handon disposed of that poor onker Larghos the Unrequited yesterday?”
He nodded. “I watched with great interest, by Kaidun!”
Yesterday Ortyg Handon, still smarting from his handling by the mysterious Zando, had forced a quarrel on Larghos; that young man, well-named as the Unrequited, had responded to the challenge. Handon’s wrist wound had mended under treatment. He had made a spectacle of Larghos, killing him with unnecessary messiness. Once the challenge had been given and accepted there lay no other recourse under the codes of honor and chivalry of Kregen save it be settled in blood. The Emperor might have stopped it, had he willed. But Larghos had been determined to rush upon death or honor. So I asked Balass the Hawk, “Can you take him — with sword and shield?”