I am the King of Djanduin.
The ten girls would have given the Och guards a nasty time if they came too close, and the Ochs were driving them along well out of arms’ reach. I thumped the nearest Och over the head. An Och has six limbs, the central pair used indiscriminately as either arms or legs; a lemon-shaped head with puffy jaws and lolling chops; and he is not above four feet tall. Agile, determined fellows, Ochs are cunning and dirty fighters, and used over many parts of Kregen as mercenaries — although, to their constant annoyance, they are not ranked in the top class. Consequently, they may be hired more cheaply. I had had experience of Ochs. The second one flew at me now and I slid his spear and thumped him, too. I picked up his spear, flung it at the third Och. The fourth and fifth hurled their spears and then rushed with their thraxters low, their little shields low, and daggers in their middle limbs’ dual-purpose hands. I swirled a trifle with the dead Och’s thraxter, caught their blades, swirled some more, and then — flick!
flick! they were down and I could run across to the girls.
One of them, whose name I afterward discovered was Rena, recognized me. She yelled. Her shout was one of absolute joy.
“It is the King! It is Notor Prescot, the King of Djanduin!”
Seldom have I had a homecoming to Kregen like that!
The chains could be unlocked with keys taken from the Ochs. Rena said: “Those other Djan-forsaken Ochs will be upon us.” She snatched up a thraxter. “By mother Diocaster! Let us serve them finely chopped into a Herrelldrin hell!”
“Are there other slaves already aboard, Rena?”
“Aye, Majister.”
“Then we must free them, also.” I had to speak cleverly. “Where is your home, Rena?” I could not ask with cunning if she expected help, and thus gather some idea of where we were, for she might think I was reluctant to fight without the promise of help. I know, now, that my people of Djanduin would not think that of me; but in those days I was a new king in Djanduin.
Before she could answer, another girl, brandishing a spear, shrilled: “The rasts of Ochs! They run to attack!”
So we went to. Of that smart little fight I need only say that two of the girls were lightly scratched; none was, thanks to Djan the All-Glorious, killed.
We went down to the ship and released the prisoners there and as we all came up onto the beach, rejoicing (and I had flung a scrap of orange cloth about me to hide my nakedness), a skein of flutduins, those special and superb flying birds of Djanduin, soared over us and we were surrounded by a patrol of Djang warriors. We were on the north coast of Djanduin, and the water to the north was the Lohvian Sea. No one was at all surprised that the king had turned up to rescue his people from the slaving Ochs who had slipped in to raid by night, and were about to push off for their foul nests on the Lohvian shoreline across the sea.
Amid great rejoicings and much singing and laughing and drinking of toasts, the freed people were conveyed back to their village. I promised to have money and supplies and food sent down to restore the place after the attack. Then, surrounded by Djang warriors, astride our flutduins, we flew for the capital city of Djanguraj.
Kytun Kholin Dom, that true friend and mighty warrior, greeted me with quick and affectionate happiness. He grasped my single apim right hand in his two djang right hands, and with his upper left hand he clapped me on the shoulder, and with his lower left he punched me in the stomach with the abandon of reunion. I punched him back, for these things mean much, and then turned to see the Pallan Ortyg Coper hustling in, his gerbil-like face twitching, squeaking his excitement.
“We saw you off in the voller, Dray,” he said. “And, now, here you are back again! Lahal and Lahal!
Welcome indeed!”
Before I had time to greet him I was engulfed by a squeaking and crying mass and there was Sinkie, Ortyg’s little wife, kissing and sobbing and vowing that, by all the flowers of Djanduin, she was the happiest woman alive to see me again.
Well, you can imagine, we had a reunion, and my friends who were in the capital came hurrying into the palace and that night we enjoyed a sumptuous feast. The country prospered. Wise government by my regent, the Pallan O. Fellin Coper, backed by firm and fair authority of K. Kholin Dorn, ensured that the ravages of the civil wars were being repaired. After my sojourn on Earth, to come back to Kregen in such style as this! It all seemed too marvelously perfect for me — except that Delia was not at my side. The desire to see her again overpowered me. But there was work still to be done in Djanduin. And as I was so relatively near to Migladrin, I could fly there and see if our work was bearing good fruits. So, in due order, these three things were done by me. .
The news of Kregen rushed upon me in a great nostalgic flood of remembrances. But there were new and uneasy signs abroad. I was told that the supply of vollers had dried up. Hamal refused to sell any further examples of fliers to anyone. Hyrklana, that island realm which was the second chief supplier of fliers, was now able to see profit in selling to Hamal, its deadly rival. I wondered what Queen Fahia of Hyrklana was about, selling to her enemies, but guessed she needed every last ob she could scrape up for the glory of her Arena in Huringa.
All the rumors, the uneasy speculations, had their center of origin in Hamal. As Kytun said, drinking in his luxuriant way: “Those cramphs of Hamal are at the bottom of it, Dray!
They are power-mad. With all their laws you’d think they’d have more sense.”
“It is true,” said Ortyg, brushing his beautiful white whiskers. “Their path of conquest seems to be ordained to them by their Havil the Green. They are spreading south of the River Os-”
“Oh, Ortyg, dear, they have been doing that for seasons!”
“Yes, wife, yes. But they are now striking west over the mountains — and Zodjuin the Stux knows what they’ll find there — and also are attacking South Pandahem.”
These things I knew.
But then, very gravely, Kytun said: “They have taken most of South Pandahem. That is the last information.” Pandahem, the large island northwest of the continent of Havilfar, is split into north and south by mountains. I sat up as Kytun went on: “They are now invading Yumapan, in the far west of Pandahem. It is certain they will swing north into Lome-”
“Iyam lies east of Lome,” I said. “And then Menaham — The Bloody Menahem! — and if I know them and their rulers they’ll seek to conclude an alliance.” I frowned. I knew these countries, and I knew that to the east of Menaham lay the country of Tomboram. The damned Hamalians could bring in troops by sea or air to hit Tomboram from the east as their victorious armies, with The Bloody Menahem as allies, swept in from the west. Well, all that would take time. I had my job to do in Hamal, which was now of even greater importance.
I knew people of Tomboram. I knew Pando, the boy Kov of Bormark, and his mother, Tilda the Beautiful, Tilda of the Many Veils. I would not stand idly by if they were attacked.[4]
So, and not without a sense of desolation at what evils the price of friendship in high places can bring to the simplest soldier, I made cunning question of my Djang friends. Would they fight the Hamalians if I were to ask it, fight them on behalf of a boy Kov and his mother in far Pandahem? It was obscene of me to suggest this; and yet I knew with a heavy heart there would be much fighting before Kregen was made a world where a mother need not fear for her daughter, a father not fear for his son, where the slavers and the power maniacs had been banished. In this, no concern for the requirements of the Star Lords or the Savanti swayed me; this was necessary if those parts of Kregen I loved were not to be overrun and enslaved.