and Trylon Larghos.
I snatched up the bowman’s great longbow, and half a dozen filled quivers. They told the story. The third party had come in the guise of racters, as friends, and then had struck with steel; the crimson Bowmen of Loh had gone down with their bows unstrung, the arrows still snugged in their quivers. I took Katrin’s airboat captain’s neck between my fingers.
“You will take us instantly to The Dragon’s Bones.”
He cringed. He had no time to argue, to say a word. He was run outside, and I shouted at the men standing limply by the drawbridge in the gatehouse in such a way that the drawbridge smoked down, and bounced, spouting dust. Inch and I ran across with the flier captain propelled before us. Katrin’s despairing cry followed.
“Strom Drak! You would not leave me?”
“Where I must go there is no place for you, Katrin! I will try to send your airboat back for you.” I gave the captain a buffet to make him run faster. “You might get it back if you’re lucky.”
The captain yelped at this. I kicked him aboard his craft and he fell onto the deck. Rearing up, he saw my face and so gave his orders in a scared husky croak to his crew. We took to the air.
“Captain,” I said. “I do not know your name. But you will obey me in all things. Is that understood?”
“Yes, my lord Strom. I am Hikdar Arkhebi. I will do as you order.”
“Get us to The Dragon’s Bones as though your life depended on it — for, believe you me, it does.”
He took himself off to oversee his steersman, down in the engine compartment where were situated the two silver boxes which, with my limited knowledge then, I understood to control height, speed, and direction of the flier.
Inch said, “The raiders got in treacherously by wearing white and black. The Bowmen were very bitter about that.”
“I just hope Seg is all right.”
“From what you tell me of Seg, I think he can take care of himself.”
Delia.
If she had been harmed — I did not relish that swift flight across the Ocher Limits to The Dragon’s Bones. I couldn’t remain still. I paced up and down the sundeck, flicking my rapier this way and that, aching, shivering, shrunken. Black thoughts flitted like evil bats through my brain. The barren wastes, rugged and harsh, fled past beneath. The hot wind scorched into my face and stung my eyes. I could not descend into that sumptuous cabin where the Kovneva Katrin had besought me. I stayed on the sun-deck and Inch kept everyone away, and, up there, alone, I suffered through that blistering journey.
Inch had never met Delia. I know, now, that he came to a full understanding of what she meant to me. Away ahead I saw the yellow-umber landscape with its dry gulches and its powdery screes lifting to a serrated ridge, saw-toothed, jagged. Across this we flew, and I was very conscious how this evil land fitted my mood. Beyond, in a depression, lay a fumarole. We flew over it and then another. This whole area looked much as the surface of Earth’s moon looks, with volcano detritus and lava scattered everywhere, crater colliding and blending with crater. The glare of the twin suns beat back dazzlingly. There was no need for Inch to stand upon any rung of the ladder to lift his head to the sundeck level. He shouted back: “Strom Drak! We approach The Dragon’s Bones.”
“Come up here, Inch.”
He shambled up onto the sundeck and stood, braced against the slipstream, regarding me.
“They said, back there in Delka Dwa, that there was no one in all Vallia who would fight for the Emperor.”
“Aye,” said Inch, who had been a barge hauler.
“That may be true. I do not know and, truth to tell, do not much care. But there are men willing to fight for the Princess Majestrix.”
Inch looked at me. “Now I know,” he said. “I can feel a little sorrow for Tilda the Beautiful — and, by Ngrangi, for Viridia the Render, also.”
“You,” I said to Inch, and I spoke as reasonably as I could, and Inch, because he was my comrade, understood and remained patient and calm under the bitter lash of my voice. “Inch, go to the Blue Mountains. Go to High Zorcady. Ask for Korf Aighos, for I think he will have returned by now, recovered. If he has not, there will be other men willing to fight — aye, and die — for their Princess. Gather what men you can, in fliers, and bring them back here.”
“But,” said Inch, “this Hikdar Arkhebi — you remember our Arkhebi who took Strom Erclan’s place?
— he can take a message.” Inch’s eyebrows drew down. “I would rather fight at your side.”
“And dearly would I have you there, Inch, you long warrior, but” — and here I rolled out a foul Makki-Grodno oath — “I don’t trust him. Only you will carry the words to make them believe. Only Korf Aighos knows I am Dray Prescot, Krozair of Zy.”
Even Inch did not fully comprehend what that meant. No one could, who had not sailed the inner sea, the Eye of the World.
Inch grumbled a great deal and swung his ax about and looked every inch of his seven feet a disgruntled man, but in the end I persuaded him. I had to. The Delphondi for all their loyalty were useless — as I then thought — and only the Blue Mountain Boys and all the other bandits, reavers, and moss troopers of the Blue Mountains could offer help.
I placed the point of my rapier against Hikdar Arkhebi’s throat. It was a cheap gesture, theatrical, but I had summed up the man.
“You will fly directly to High Zorcady, Hikdar Arkhebi. Maybe, if you succeed, you will take the first step on the ladder leading to Jiktar. If you fail, you won’t be a Deldar — you’ll be a corpse, swinging rotting in a gibbet!”
“Yes, my lord Strom!” he gasped out, his lips ashen.
“And Inch, here, who is to be addressed as Tyr Inch, has my permission — no! by the Black Chunkrah!
my orders — to degut you the instant you try to betray me. Is that clear?”
He gobbled it out. “Yes, my lord Strom!”
They landed me short of my target, which appeared to be a crater filled with bones, and Arkhebi took the airboat in a wide circle around The Dragon’s Bones, and so on over the horizon to the west. I stepped out smartly, for I was anxious to get where I was going. I wanted to speak with Trylon Nath Larghos of the Black Mountains. If he died, that would be his misfortune. I was approaching where my Delia was in deadly danger, and nothing could be allowed to stand in the way of her safety.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“So you did receive the message I left at The Rose of Valka,” said Nath Larghos. “But why are you afoot? What took you so long?”
He eyed me strangely. I had myself under control. The Emperor, Delia, and their men were shut up in the mass of ruins at the center of the crater. Various roads led in and out scraped in the rock and dust, with the enormous bones dragged aside. They were risslaca bones, mainly, although there were some from mammals of a later time, all fossilized, a veritable treasure for paleontologists. I forced myself to act normally. Just for the moment, Delia’s danger lay in abeyance.
“That Opaz-rotten storm,” I grunted. “The airboat failed. One day, by Vox, we must teach those cramphs of Havilfar a lesson.”
“Agreed, Strom Drak.” He led me off to a cluster of tents. “Come, sit and drink wine and refresh yourself. You need a shave, if you will pardon the liberty of my mentioning it.”
“Mayhap,” I said, “I will grow a beard, Trylon.”
The Circadian rhythms of my Earth ancestry adapted well to the longer day-and-night cycle of Kregen, and I had quickly adjusted — and, if the truth be told — with some relish, to the idea that a day demanded not four square meals but at the least six and preferably seven or eight. We sat and drank wine — a fine vintage of Procul, rich and fortifying — and I knew that before I did what I screamed and hungered to do and rushed into the ruins to clasp Delia in my arms, I must find out everything I could of these third party members and their plans.