"That old devil Pur Zenkiren holds the city. His days are numbered. Prince Glycas leads the army on toward the east, on to the fortress of Zy, and on to Holy Sanurkazz itself." So that was where the evil rast Glycas had got to. .
I did not venture to ask why, if Gafard was the king’s favorite, he was not down there, leading this formidable army. Perhaps the king preferred him closer to hand.
We walked the sectrixes slowly, hearing the calls and shrill hunting horns of the beaters ahead and to our right. We were for the moment alone. Gafard went on talking.
"The king has fashioned an army like no other upon the inner sea — save for a contemptible slave army fashioned by this Pur Dray." Perhaps this would explain his obsession with the Lord of Strombor. I had learned that Genod Gannius, fruit of that Gahan Gannius and the lady Valima whom I had saved at the Grand Canal, hailed from Malig, a powerful but small fortress city of the northern coast some twenty dwaburs along from the Akhram. That explained the presence of his parents there on that fateful day so long ago. All that area lay under the sway of Magdag, the city of the megaliths. Even the important conurbation of Laggig-Laggu, near twenty dwaburs up the Laggu River and twenty dwaburs from Malig, owed allegiance to the king in Magdag. It also explained how I, knocked on the head and captured by overlords, had been shipped to Magdag. They took tribute of everyone for dwaburs about their city. Gahan, it seemed, had been in Magdag when I had led my old slave phalanx of vosk-skulls against the overlords. He had seen and he had remembered. The old king had been only too thankful that this dangerous insurrection had been crushed. He, like the Magdaggians, put his trust in mailed men riding sectrixes, armed with the longsword.
So Gahan had experimented and fashioned an implement. But it had been his son, Genod, who with all the ardent fire of youthful genius had seized on the implement and turned it into the most formidable fighting machine yet seen, who had used it to take Laggig-Laggu, to overturn the mercenary hosts of Magdag, to humble the overlords, and, eventually, to make himself king, the All-Powerful, the Revered, the Holder of Men’s Hearts.
I knew that fighting machine. The solid ranks of armored pikemen, the halberdiers and swordsmen in the front ranks, the wedges of crossbowmen shooting in their sixes. And, because the fighting-men of Segesthes and Turismond commonly derided the shield, the shield-protected phalanx could simply march forward and topple all the mailed chivalry sent against it.
"It was this same Pur Dray, the Lord of Strombor, who created the first phalanx. He was defeated and slain. And Genod Gannius now rules in Green Magdag."
"But suppose," I said, feeling the emotions in me boiling up in a rage comical and ludicrous, "this same Dray Prescot was not slain?"
He reined in his sectrix with a lunging thump of hooves.
"What mean you?"
"Only, gernu, is it certain sure he was slain?"
He eyed me. He licked his lips above the black beard.
"No," he said, at last, reluctantly. "No, it is not certain."
"And has there been no news of him since?"
He smiled, that ironic half-smile. "I can say what is common knowledge, that men tell stories of two Krozairs of Zy who claim this Dray Prescot as their father."
How my heart leaped!
"And do they speak false?"
He flicked the reins and kicked in his heels. "Who is to say what is false and what is real? I would that it was true, though, by the Holy Bones of Genodras!"
"Aye," I said. "So that we might go up against this great Krozair and measure swords with him."
"Not so, Gadak!" He spoke too sharply. He saw my expression and kicked in, harder, and sent his sectrix bounding off. The woman spurred up, also, and raced after him. I was left looking at their flying animals, and their tensed bodies, their capes flying, and wondering.
Well, there are none so blind as will not see. But, by the Great and Glorious Djan-kadjiryon, how could I be expected to see then?
I shook up the reins and cantered after them, the sectrix’s six legs going in that damned ungainly lumber. The hunting horns had shrilled and died; the cries of the beaters dwindled and faded to silence. The sectrix lumbered along. I heard a scream. I rammed in my heels and we picked up speed and came galloping out onto a scene that in all its ugly drama made me furious and, had I known it then, would have made me go cold with horror.
Gafard had shot cleanly and had dismounted to dispatch his kill, a small tawny-colored plains ordel. The hunting lairgodont had caught him totally unprepared. The sectrix had wrenched free of its reins and bolted. The woman’s sectrix, equally terrified, bolted also and bore her off. After that first scream, which I suspected had been ripped from her when Gafard and she had first seen the lairgodont, she remained silent, wrestling to keep her beast under control.
Gafard stood there, his longsword out, his feet spread apart. Dust puffed as the lairgodont drew itself up ready to charge.
Not so much large in their strength, the lairgodonts, as vicious and quick and damnably difficult to kill. Scaled and clawed, sinuous as to neck and back, with those skull-crushing talons and those serrated, steely fangs in the gap-jawed mouth, the lairgodont presents a terrifying spectacle of feral horror. Scarlet gaped the fanged mouth of the lairgodont. Pricked ears lay back on its scaled head. Hissing, it advanced, one taloned claw after another. That long forked tail rippled high. When that tail straightened and became a rigid bar. .
I was minded to let Gafard, the renegade, go to his fate unmourned.
I knew I could not make the sectrix advance any farther. It pawed the ground, trembling, arching its neck and shrilling in fear. Hastily, I dismounted and hitched the reins to a projecting rock. If I was slain the sectrix would provide a fine second course.
Yes, Gafard, arch-traitor, a man who had betrayed the Red of Zair, yes, why not? Why not let him be pitched to the Ice Floes of Sicce under the fangs and talons of this vicious monster?
The bow in my hands spat four times as fast as I could draw string and let fly. The four arrows struck. Two bounced away, broken. The third penetrated one staring eye. The fourth took the lairgodont in the belly, for it leaped with the shock, not charging. I lugged out my longsword and ran in, yelling.
"Hai! Lairgodont! Your dinner is this way!"
It whipped about so that Gafard went into its blind side. Then its forked tail lashed sideways and knocked Gafard head over heels. There would be no support from him, then. . What an onker I was! Charging into this mess when I should have wheeled my mount away and let nature take its course.
"The ordel is not yours this day, my friend," I said, and I leaped.
Chapter Seven
I leaped.
The longsword is a cruel weapon.
Even this longsword, this Ghittawrer blade Gafard had allowed me to keep without comment, could do its work with cunning and smashing power in the hands of a Krozair Brother. And, as I leaped, I even shouted: "Hai! Hai!"
The sword licked across the beast’s near foreleg and almost severed it, crunching into bone. I leaped nimbly away. The tail hissed above my head. Again I leaped and as the vicious head struck at me so I came down and went on, rolling, to come up with the sword blurring for the other eye. The eye vanished in a gout of blood and slime. A blow like — well, a blow like a ripping slash from lairgodonts talon -
raked down my side. I thanked Opaz I wore mail this day, even for hunting. I was knocked over and flying, landing in a spout of dust. I heard Gafard’s yell, feeble and coming from a long way off.