Golden Scorpio (16 page)
Now I knew.
The Vallian citizens of Therminsax stood about their charming city, wringing their hands, wailing and crying. I did not see any guards of the Hamalian Army, nor did I see any sign of mercenaries. The reason was simple. The Hamalian Army and their mercenary allies had taken every saddle animal, every draught animal and every cart, and had gone. They had marched out, to the safety of the Great River some one hundred and fifty miles due southwest. And long before the citizens could think to abandon everything they could not carry and hurry after the deserting forces, young Wil the Farrow had ridden in on a preysany with the frightful news that the radvakkas had closed in from the south, and had cut off direct escape. Even as we assimilated this information and Naghan’s Hawkwas hurried into the city, almost unnoticed, so more dust clouds rose ominously from east and north. The city was ringed. We were cut off.
Abandoned by all the professional fighting men, the citizens of Therminsax faced a future filled with horror, with sack and rapine and death. There seemed to them to be nothing else left to them in the whole wide world of Kregen.
Doomed, they shouted, screaming, distraught, crazed. Doomed.
We Shut the Gates
Useless to shout and attempt to calm the frenzied mobs who ran, shrieking and wailing, this way and that. Here and there men stood, alone, in groups, who did not scream but clenched their fists and scowled and knew not what to do. Pushing my way through and being buffeted about and trying not to retaliate unthinkingly, I led the Hawkwas to a central kyro I knew beside the Vomansoir Cut. This joined the Therduim Cut in a sizable basin, with wharves and slips, and here Rordam would bring his people to tie up. I headed for the palatial palace of the Justicar, the emperor’s governor of the city.
Damn these Opaz-forsaken radvakkas! The Iron Riders had drifted westward across North Segesthes in comparatively recent seasons, although it seemed we Clansmen had been resisting them for ages. Where they had come from no one could be sure, for most of Eastern Segesthes was completely unknown to us, save for a few coastal free cities and the islands of the east. Once Hap Loder had said to me that I could weld all the clans of the Great Plains together into a single mighty fighting force, and I had chided him, my right-hand man, my good comrade, asking of him who the enemy would be we would fight. Well, in these latter days we knew who that foe was, and rued the knowledge.
The mobs thickened about the streets as I approached the kyro before the imperial Justicar’s palace. I pushed through and worked my way toward the front. People were shrieking and tearing their hair, some had fallen onto their knees, their arms lifted imploringly to the facade of the palace. They shrieked to the imperial Justicar to save them, to find some way of salvation, to prevent their destruction at the cruel hands of the Iron Riders.
There were no guards. I guessed the small honor guard maintained here in normal times had been suppressed by the Hamalese. I was able to push through the throngs who surged into the inner courtyards and up the ornate stairways and into every room and chamber. The noise would have been upsetting to a man of stone. And, still, there were these knots of citizens who did not scream out, but clenched their fists emptily, and scowled, and did not know what to do.
Eventually I found the Justicar, standing with his back to a tall window where the crimson drapes shadowed the brilliance of the suns. He looked shriveled. I knew him. He was Nazab Nalgre na Therminsax — an honor title adopted on his appointment. He stood there, created a Nazab by the emperor, trembling, holding his head, surrounded by a few loyal servants and slaves, quite unable to answer the imploring shouts and frantic pleas of the citizenry.
Without ceremony I ripped out the thraxter and angled it so that the light caught the blade and runneled an ominous glitter into the faces of the citizens. I bellowed over their cries.
“Out! Outside! Stop this caterwauling. Let the Nazab have time to think and plan. Out — or I’ll crop your ears.”
Dazed, abruptly panic-stricken in an altogether more personal way, the people in the chamber hustled to the door, pushing, crying that a madman had arrived, yelling — oh, it was all a bedlam, and not very splendid, either.
I glared at the slaves.
“Out!
Schtump!”
They scuttled.
I was left alone with the Justicar of Therminsax, Nazab Nalgre. He recognized me. He stopped shaking. His eyes grew round. He put a hand to his lips. I slammed the door and, swiftly, yanked it open and bellowed along the carpeted corridor.
“If anyone hangs about by this door I’ll blatter him!”
Slamming the door again I swung back to Nazab Nalgre.
“Lahal, Nalgre. You know me. My name is Jak the Drang. Do you understand?”
“Yes — No, my prince—”
“Jak the Drang, onker!”
“Yes, yes, majister — Jak the Drang.”
I lowered my voice. “Not prince, not majister. Jak. Now, Nazab Nalgre, we have work to do.”
“Work? We are doomed. The soldiers have all gone. The Iron Riders approach — what work can we do but pray to Opaz?”
“I’ll show you,” I said, and hustled him to his desk. “Write at my dictation. A proclamation. Have your stylors copy it out, fair, and have it displayed all over the city. By Vox! We’re Vallians. We do not run screeching like a pack of witless vosks when cramphs sniff around our city! Write!”
“Yes, majis— pri— Jak.”
So I drew a breath and told him what to write. It was all good rousing stuff and I will not repeat it word for word. Briefly, I told the citizenry that the city would not fall, that we would outface these miserable radvakkas, that we’d see them all buried in their damned iron armor, and anyone who skulked would have his ears cropped, if not worse. Then I went on to give orders the import of which will become plain as I go on with my tale. Very quickly, the stylors were summoned and began to copy out the proclamation for distribution.
Then I ran Nazab Nalgre out onto the balcony fronting the kyro and by gesticulations we obtained a quietness in the mobs.
I shouted. I put forth that old fore-top hailing voice and reached out well into the square, and waited between sentences so that they might be repeated to those farther back.
Again I will not repeat all I said. It was perilously near boasting.
“People of Therminsax. Vallians. Hearken. Your Justicar, Nazab Nalgre, has given me the high honor and duty of resisting the Iron Riders, of saving Therminsax, and of burying every radvakka in a plot of soil. Those that are not burned to a crisp, that is. Think how a radvakka would broil in his armor! All the gates will be closed. Now. Those men who wish to shut the gates they know best — shut them. Those men who have iron bars to hand place them in the canals under the gateways so that no skulking radvakka may gain entrance there.” I went on bawling, detailing work to be done, seeing groups of men running to obey. I scaled the work so that the most obvious tasks were performed first. Soon I was able to finish with a resounding burst of oratory, rousing stuff, and then go to meet the leaders of the city. The masters of the guilds, the heads of each ward, the magistrates, the Hikdars of the Watch, the chief of the fire service and, most important, the high priests of the various temples. Therminsax is well-served with temples, fine imposing buildings, and the priests held great if tenuous powers.
With this collection of frightened men in the main chamber of the palace I called for quiet and then told them, simply and forcefully, that Therminsax would not fall, that if they obeyed me they would be saved, what unpleasant things would happen to them if they did not obey, and finished off with a direct statement. “You are Vallians. Do not forget that. You have a pride in your city and your land. These rasts of Iron Riders are uncouth barbarians, illiterate. They have no idea how to lay siege to a city. All they know is charging in their mail, brainless. Obey me and you will be saved.”
Then it was a matter of giving each group its orders.
All weapons must be gathered up for ordered distribution. If a man possessed a favorite sword — or spear, for they were spearmen of a sort — he might keep that, if he would use it. The weapon most used by the tumultuous townsmen was the stave with the cudgel held ready in the belt. The spears were used in vosk-hunting, and this was not done for a living but as a sport. The wild vosks were vicious beasts, as all men know, and quite unlike the domesticated vosks from which come such succulent rashers. I already had ideas on the old vosks, as you may imagine. Then I took myself off on a circuit of the city. The suburbs built outside the walls were a handicap, no doubt of that.
Barriers were erected across the ends of the streets, from house to house, where we could. In other places I gave orders for awkwardly placed houses to be pulled down. Now that the citizens had a task to do, had been given some hope, and had an intolerant devil to goad them, they saw fresh hope where all hope appeared dead. They worked. City folk are accustomed to working together, in disciplined order, their habits of mind are orderly. They work together, each relying on the next. That is for work. For play they are a wild tearaway bunch, of course, given the opportunity. Both these traits would be used by me in the defense of Therminsax.
The herds of vosks and flocks of ponshos were being driven into the city through the gates specially left ajar for the purpose. Cattle were brought in. The drovers had, perforce, to work afoot, for the only saddle animal in the entire city was young Wil the Farrow’s preysany. At my direction stylors were making a count of food. Well and well — for now. If the siege was protracted — and I did not think it would be — then would come the time to search out hidden hoards.
The iron bars under the gates through which the canals flowed were fixed firmly, and I checked them all, ducking down into the water, conduct which brought knowing nods, and whispers that this Jak the Drang was a canalman, then...
A small but cheerfully clear stream ran chuckling through the city, flowing on across the country to swell other streams and eventually to empty into a tributary of The Great River. Along both sides of this little stream, called the Letha Brook, grew tall stands of the letha tree, well mixed with a kind of beech. The letha tree gives a tough, elastic wood, very white, much used for the handles of agricultural implements. The leaves of the letha are light green, frondulous, very pleasant, and afford a pleasing contrast to the red and black buds and flowers. In the bed of the Letha Brook I made sure the iron bars were firmly fixed against the flow of water. The Iron Riders were perfectly capable of pulling off their iron armor and wading up the stream into the city.
These preparations, rushed though they were, filled in the time until the approach of the radvakkas signaled the time for me to go up onto the wall facing their serried ranks. They ringed the city in metal, sitting their benhoffs lumpily, watching us, and an embassy rode forward, under a great banner of benhoff tails, and trumpets blew for a parley.
Chivalric ways of warfare were not for the radvakkas, and a parley to them meant nothing like what it would mean to a professional soldier of more civilized lands. So I did not go outside the gates to parley.
A fellow clad in iron with much gilding and a profusion of feathers and benhoff tail plumes spurred forward. He bellowed.
I heard him well enough.
I was pretty sure they were perplexed that an army had not ridden out to meet them and, in the familiar and highly satisfactory fashion they had established in this new land, be crushed to powder beneath their iron hooves. This fellow wanted us to open the gates pronto, to stand aside as the radvakkas rode in. He made no promises. His absolute confidence was, in truth, somewhat amusing. I guessed this band — an offshoot of the westward horde — had heard of the prowess of their fellows down south and burned to emulate them here. The city lay before them, open and defenseless, for they were well aware that an army had marched out — had run off. Their astonishment that we did not let them in abruptly ceased to amuse me. It affronted me. I leaned over the battlements and bellowed back.
Well — I cannot repeat what I said. It might burn out the machinery of this tape recorder. But I let fly with a choice selection of insults nicely calculated to upset these haughty and brainlessly arrogant barbarians.
I finished: “And any one of you can enter the city any time he likes, horizontally with his guts hanging out.”
For a moment a dead silence hung over the assembled host.
Then a deep and passionate diapason of fury burst out from the crowded ranks. A cloud of arrows flew up. Every one fell short. The Iron Riders set spurs to their steeds, put their heads down, and charged. In a thundering roaring mass of iron they hurtled on.
Nazab Nalgre standing next to me took a few paces back across the ramparts. I stood watching the oncoming avalanche and I half-narrowed my eyes, studying them, thinking, scheming, imagining standing on the ground and facing that little lot...
Of course, the radvakkas had to halt as they reached walls and buildings. Some tried to hack through the barricades we had erected across the ends of the outer streets; but the men I had stationed there reported that the defenses held against this passionate, headlong, ill-considered charge...
The riders began to mill, some fell back, others started to gallop around the city seeking an entrance. All the time they were blowing trumpets and horns, yelling, kicking up the devil of a racket. Looking down on them I longed for a great Lohvian longbow and an inexhaustible supply of clothyard shafts.
Presently, the band drew off, waving their spears, shouting, reforming their ranks. They had no real organization apart from the war band clustered about a leader, and of discipline their ideas were that anything they did to an inferior was lawful, and if an inferior objected then they’d strapado him or do something equally unpleasant. Sheer brute force was their guiding principle. Everyone in the city was fully aware of the horrors that would ensue if the radvakkas took the place.