“Get up and fight, you cramph!”
“No! No — I am no fighting-man!”
Once a Kregan reaches maturity he appears to age very little until the last years of his life, perhaps a few white hairs when he is a hundred and fifty or so; but I fancied this man was considerably older than my comrades. I kicked him.
“You fight, dom! You fight for your Emperor!”
An Undurker arrow whistled between us and clanged against the rock. He screeched. His face was covered in sweat. It sheened under She of the Veils like pink icing.
“Fight, cramph!”
He staggered up then, his face contorted into a look compounded of fear and hatred, pride and anger. For a second I thought he would take his place in the line of men and halflings now furiously battling with the waves of attackers as they sought to smash past the pitiful barrier of rocks. Then he crumpled and twisted away. In the wash of light I saw the colors, made meaningless by the pink moons’ light, but the emblem was unmistakable. It was a great butterfly so I knew those colors were gold and black.
“I do not want to die!” he moaned now, all the hatred and anger gone, and the pride slipping until only fear was left.
“We’ve all got to die some time, you calsany! Better in a great fight than rotten with disease in a bed!
Draw your sword! Fight!”
Some of the last vestiges of habitual unthinking pride clung to him and he looked up at me, a white face, delicate, weak, foolish. “Do you not know who I am, kleesh! I am Vektor, Kov of Aduimbrev! I do not take orders from a mere Strom.”
I looked at him, and the Emperor moved his hand. Pallan Rodway and the High Kov of Erstveheim, two old men and therefore not required in the fighting line, lifted Vektor by the armpits and took him away. I glared sullenly at the Emperor.
“That is Vektor of Aduimbrev! That is the thing you wish to marry your daughter!”
And then I laughed. I roared out a great coarse insulting gutter-bred laugh.
“You thought to rule him when he was married, keep him from getting in your hair! I despise you, Emperor Majister! You sought to soil your daughter by marrying her to a thing like that to serve your own dark and evil ways.” And then, because a wash of Chuliks poured in over the wall, such as it was, I pushed him aside. “Get yourself under cover or you will be killed.”
An Undurker arrow arched in over the ruins and dropped full for the Emperor’s chest. My rapier nicked out, cleanly as we Krozairs of Zy know how, and chopped the arrow away.
“Go on, you old fool Majister!” I roared. “I’ve a battle to fight and you’re getting under my feet!”
The Emperor stared at me with eyes in which an agony had been born. Vomanus ran up. His sword dripped blood.
“They’re through on the other side!”
“Thank the Emperor for that and the onker Vektor. They detained me when I should have been fighting. Get everyone back to the central tower, Vomanus. Move!”
He ran off and then the smash of Chuliks reached me and I had to skip and jump, slash and thrust, very busily for a space. I left the Chuliks stretched upon the dusty rocks and ran back. I could see the heads of the Bowmen of Loh in the ruined tower, but they were not loosing their deadly shafts. We had expended all our arrows.
The smaller arrows of the Undurkers were not of great use, but some of the Bowmen, who boasted they could loose a leg of ponsho and hit the chunkrah’s eye, let fly and brought down their men. Inside the tower I paused to take stock.
We had lost a lot of men. We were down to twenty-four Bowmen, and sixteen halfling mercenaries. Out there, Furtway, although he had lost large numbers, must still have three or four hundred to hurl against us. And without arrows we were in parlous state.
“Rocks!” I roared. “We will throw rocks down on them and break their skulls!”
“Aye!” shouted Seg Segutorio. “They haven’t a chance!”
The men reacted to that. Now they had faced the reality of the situation they knew they must fight on. One reality was, of course, that they had seen me thrust a Fristle through the body when he had attempted to run out toward our foemen, his hands empty and high over his head. That had not been murder. That had been execution of a traitor. I hated it, but it was done in the heat of battle, when the blood sang, when that dreadful and despised red curtain of which I have spoken drops before the eyes, and a man who is a man must struggle to reach past it. The other reality was less starkly brutal; much more of the mores of Kregen. They would earn their pay, these hireling soldiers. They had no complaints now about food and drink, for they sensed they might not live long enough to want. The Emperor approached me again. “Strom Drak, I would like to speak with you-”
“Not now, Majister. I’m busy. If you’ve a problem, see Vomanus, or Seg Segutorio.”
I spun away and roared vilely at two Chuliks who, in their eagerness to procure rocks for skull-crushing, were prizing loose a stone that would have brought down the upper corner ruins. As we sorted out that, I looked over the jagged masonry wall and saw quite clearly the quick energetic figures of Furtway’s men advancing. So Zim and Genodras had risen. So it was daylight.
“All the better for us to see them!” I roared. “They’ll be sorry they messed with us!”
We met the enemy as they advanced with a shower of rocks. Men fell, to join the piles of other bodies feathered with the long Lohvian arrows. But they pressed on. I looked for Furtway, Jenbar, and Larghos. Some new dynamic had been injected into the attack. They came on with a firm tread, ignoring their casualties, and so burst into the foot of the tower. I had ordered everyone aloft on the single rickety platform remaining. From this we hurled down rocks. Arrows sought us. Every now and then a Bowman or a halfling would clutch himself, looking stupidly at the arrow in him, and then pitch forward to crash to the stones beneath. Around then I realized — and despaired as far as ever I allow myself to despair -
that the men with me believed all was lost. They did not think we would live through this. The Emperor with his nobles had been perched right at the top in the highest of the three angled corners remaining. I prowled the canted platform below, urging my men to conserve their rocks and to hurl only when a foeman attempted too boldly to climb. I had brought us into an impasse. This was not my way of fighting. I couldn’t get at those rasts down there.
There were few enough of us left now for a breakout to be a possibility. It was our only chance to save the Emperor and his men. I had to make that attempt to save him now. For my Delia’s sake. I went up and told him.
He looked at me, and a look on his face I could not fathom made me return it with as ugly a glare as any I have bestowed on an unfortunate in my life.
“We stand a good chance now, Majister, and we will leave no one behind except the wounded who cannot run. And,” I added bitterly, “they are mostly below, poor devils, well on their way to the Ice Floes of Sicce.”
The Emperor said, “You are a wild and strange man, Drak. I thought this even when I heard of your exploits on Valka, when I signed your patent of nobility.” He pulled and pushed a ring on his middle left finger. “Well, Strom Drak. If you save me alive from here, I will do more than make you a Strom, or a Vad, or a Kov. You will be fit to be called Prince Majister of Vallia.”
“You’ll have to tie up your garments,” I said. “And take a good grip on my tunic, and belt. If you let go I can’t save you. I shall need both hands for climbing.”
“Did you hear what I said?”