“Yes. No time now. Titles mean nothing to me. Your life, Majister, means only something you wouldn’t understand.”
Vomanus came over and reported a stir below. I looked down.
Trylon Larghos was there, full of life and good cheer, beaming up, confident of victory.
“Let me speak to the Emperor!”
I hurled a rock at him and, stupidly, missed, for he jumped aside. The rock splintered and a chip struck him in the eye, and screeching and spouting blood over his hands as he clasped his face, he collapsed. I went up again.
“Now is the time, Majister.” He was ready. Vomanus and Seg assisted the other old men. We went to the back of the tower and squeezed through the lower windows. Opposite us the forest of petrified bones glittered in the mingled opaz light. We began that climb down the walls. The Emperor hung on my back a dead weight. I watched a Fristle let go and scream his way to the ground, landing in a red puddle, and I cursed the fool for betraying what we were doing.
We slid, slipped, and scraped our way down. In the song that has been made of the fight at The Dragon’s Bones, the tempo becomes mocking here, talking of the loss of skin, the sweat in our eyes, the ripped fingernails, and the blood-streaks down the ruined walls. But that is the Kregan way. They often mock where their emotions run deep.
We reached the floor of the clearing and at once we started for the bones opposite. I thought we would make it.
“Go on, Majister! I will take the rear — just in case.”
They ran on, a clump of old men, halflings, and Bowmen. I found Seg at my side, and Vomanus at the other. All our weapons were caked with blood. I spoke viciously.
“Go on, you two! Stick with the Emperor.”
Vomanus said, “You have been giving us orders very freely, Dray. Now, I think, we will disobey you.”
Seg said, “You go with the Emperor, Dray, if you like.”
Comrades.
We would do it. We were almost there.
A great swirling flood of mercenaries burst around the shattered corner of the tower and raced across the dust toward us. Many races and species were there, all thirsting for our blood. I could hear their shrill shrieks of triumph.
“Run, Majister!” I roared. “Run, by Vox, run for the sake of your daughter.”
He half turned to look back, and I waved my rapier at him and yelled: “I didn’t come here to rescue you! But you’re rescued now! Get in among the bones and you’re safe! Run!”
Then we three, Seg, Vomanus, and I, turned to face the death running so swiftly upon us.
CHAPTER TWENTY
A great song has been made of the fight at The Dragon’s Bones, but I will not give you its title. It runs to a mere seventy-eight stanzas, but every one is turned and polished like a gemstone, and when I hear it the blood thumps and thrills through my veins. Perhaps, at least to me, there is no finer passage than that which follows. But I, speaking in English, can only tell you in my plain sailorman’s prose what happened. You must dream of the wonder-images, the defeat and triumph, the despair and hope, the smell of blood and sweat, the slick taste of dust, the feel of a rapier hilt hard in the fingers, the main-gauche gripped in the left fist; hear the devilish shrieks and yells of the wounded and maimed, the screams of the dying. You must blend all this into a mighty uproar in the brain.
We fought.
Vomanus was a fine rapier man, as I knew. Seg Segutorio was the finest archer in two worlds. Yet we would not have lasted more than a few murs, but for the wonder.
How to tell you of that moment?
We heard yells, surprised shouts, and the press upon us slackened. We could gulp for air, wipe the sweat from our foreheads, and look about. We were all wounded, but we lived. We looked about, we looked up — oh, the wonder, the wonder of it!
The sky filled with airboats.
They slanted down from the east, so that I guessed Inch must have swung his fleet from the Blue Mountains around. And in that I was wrong. Gloriously wrong!
The fliers landed in the clearing and men poured out.
Such men!
I didn’t believe it then. I just stood there, my mouth open, my rapier and dagger hanging limply, and any onker of a rast could have run me through as I gaped.
The very first man to hit the dusty rock of the clearing wore russet leathers, tasseled and fringed, with cunning pieces of armor strapped where they would protect the most. He wore a helmet, but I knew his hair was fair and bleached by the Suns of Antares. He swung an ax, double-bitted and daggered with six niches of flat-bladed steel. Belted at his side swung a great broadsword and a deadly shortsword. Over his back he carried, ready strung, a short reflex compound bow.
Hap Loder!
Running swiftly with him was a ferocious being all dun-colored hide and bristly bullet-head, massive shoulders, and short sinewy legs, clad in as brilliant a scarlet breech-clout as you will find on Kregen. He wore parts of armor, too, and carried a rapier and main-gauche. I smiled, guessing he had been taking lessons.
Gloag!
With these two ran a young man clad all in powder blue, with an elegant and handsome appearance, his bronzed face keen and his black eyes alert. He wore cropped hair beneath his steel cap. He handled his rapier and main-gauche with superb authority, a true bravo-fighter of Zenicce. Varden! Prince Varden Wanek of the House of Eward!
Following on rushed a great crowd of men clad in the russet leathers of my clansmen, the brave scarlet of Strombor, the powder blue of Eward — and there were even a few bravos wearing the silver and black of the Reinmans, and the crimson and gold of the Wickens.
I saw those old familiar faces — Loku, Rov Kovno, Ark Atvar, fierce merciless clansmen sworn in obi brotherhood to me. And — and by Diproo the Nimble-fingered! There ran Nath the Thief, dressed up in clansmen’s russets and the scarlet of Strombor, with an empty lesten-hide bag flapping at his side ready to be filled with the loot his nimble fingers could close on!
How I stared!
My men — my ferocious Clansmen of Felschraung with their horrendous axes and broadswords, and my bravo-fighters of Strombor! I had not seen them for long and long; but they had not forgotten me, for as they smashed like a solid wall of iron and steel into the panic-stricken mob of Furtway’s mercenaries, they were yelling and roaring it out: “Hai! Jikai! Dray Prescot! Jikai!”
My clansmen roared in a deep rolling thunder of noise: “Hai! Zorcander! Hai! Vovedeer!” With the last they exaggerated, as they always did.
My men of Strombor roared in a high fierce screeching: “Hai! Strombor! Strombor!”
Furtway’s men had little chance — hell! — they had no chance at all!
My clansmen, the most ferocious and brave warriors in all Kregen, simply smashed over the rapiers and daggers like a single wave blots out a fragile bridge. A few Undurkers let fly with their arrows, and from the rear ranks of the clansmen rose a sheeting storm from the cruel reflex bone and horn bows, and the Undurkers fled. They had recognized clansmen, and however impossible it was for clansmen to be here in the heart of Vallia — they were here, in iron and steel and blood!
The axes rose and fell. The great broadswords scythed. The shortswords stabbed, in and out, very deadly.
Then Vomanus, who had been staring with the eyes goggling in his head, shouted and pointed. A second aerial armada settled down in the space cleared of dinosaur bones. The first man out was Inch, waving his huge Saxon-pattern ax, roaring into action to chop at an angle into the crazed mob of Furtway’s mercenaries. I did not see the Kov Furtway, or his nephew Jenbar, or the wounded Trylon Larghos, but word was brought to me they had managed to escape. And I was willing they should go, for the score between us lay on a personal basis. Much more important, though, was the fact that the Star Lords wanted Furtway alive for their own schemes. I had been prepared to balk them and see the man slain for what he had tried to do, but I own I felt a certain relief, a cowardly relief, if you will, that the Star Lords would not have reason to toss me back to Earth.