Thelda wore out the first pair of shoes and then the second. She persisted in her bright eager chattering and her pushing concern over me, but with Delia walking so lithely at my side I could put up with far worse than a boring woman. Seg and I grew closer together, too, as we joined in hunting for our sustenance. I remember those days as we walked steadily eastward away from The Stratemsk across the eastern plains of Turismond with a warm affectionate nostalgia. My search for Delia had been accomplished; we were together again. Vallia could wait, and as for Aphrasoe, to which Swinging City I fully intended to return some day, that was of the distant future. Everything was of the present. The journey itself was the adventure, the joy, the laughter, the zest.
Seg told me of Erthyrdrin, that country of his, that convulsed mass of mountains and valleys occupying the northern tip of Loh and peopled by a highly individualistic kind of person. The valleys resounded with song and the mountain peaks with the music of the harp. There were cliff-top strongholds everywhere, mere single towers of stone, some of them. Others had grown into battlemented fortresses of four or five towers linked by walls, and all were fiercely independent and devoted to protecting their crops and their flocks from neighboring raiders. Many of the young men hired out as mercenaries, for their longbows which had been developed over the centuries as hunting weapons proved mighty and invincible in battle. The Yerthyr trees were revered on the score of the quality of bow-staves they could produce; but it was considered a man’s prerogative to cut his stave from the best tree he could find, wherever he could find it. The Yerthyr trees contained a deadly poison that killed any animal who ate of its leaves, and only, according to Seg, were the thyrrixes protected by virtue of their second stomach.
“We men of Erthyrdrin were the backbone of the armies of Walfarg. I doubt not but the bowman whose handiwork we witnessed came in the long ago from Erthyrdrin. Walfarg was a mighty country — it still is
— but in its great days it ruled an empire over all Loh, and Pandahem to the east and south, and Kothmir and Lashenda, and over the eastern portions of Turismond. Only The Stratemsk halted the onward flow of the empire of Loh to the west.”
“So all these so-called Hostile Territories were once a part of the empire of Loh?”
“Yes. I hold nothing in my heart for Loh as a country. They failed because they failed. Then the raiding barbarians from northern Turismond moved in, fiercer and ever more fierce. What are now the Hostile Territories became walled off to the east by barbarous tribes of men and half-men and nowadays only a scattering of cities and trading posts on the eastern seaboard remain open to the men of the outer ocean.”
He gestured about him. “As for what goes on in the Hostile Territories now — who knows?”
Seg Segutorio would sing of the old days of Loh as well as his own high-flavored culture. I do not care to render into English the words of his songs. They roared and rattled and boomed in my head — and I can sing them now — but they are of Kregen.
They echoed with deep rolling sounds — “oi” and “oom” and reverberating drumrolls and profound bassoon-like resonances, with the splatter of hard syllables like hail against taut canvas. One of his songs of which he was particularly fond reminded me instantly of “Lord Randolph My Son” and I believe the frontier and border cultures of both worlds hold much in common.
We saw occasional hunting parties roaming the wide plains but we invariably went to earth until they had passed. Strange beasts riding strange beasts — how those words recalled another time and another place to me! — were of no concern of ours now. Although I sensed a growing need in Delia for us to push on. She wanted to get back to Vallia.
“I cannot contract a legal marriage outside Vallia, Dray. It is all part of this silly business of my being the Princess Majestrix — you know.”
“I can wait, my Delia — just.”
“We must soon be there.” She glanced at me quizzically as we threaded the aisles of a forest which appeared to bar our approach and around which we had been unable to trek. “If you have any-” and then she stopped, to start again: “If you feel somewhat-” And again halted.
“I know little of Vallia, Delia. All I know is that I wish our union to be one in which you will take pride. I know your father is the emperor and I have heard of the puissance of his island empire. Maybe-”
“Maybe nothing! You will be my husband and the Prince Majister! Have faith, Dray. It will not be so great an ordeal.”
“As to that,” I said, somewhat offhandedly and a little thoughtlessly, as I realized afterward, “We have to reach there yet.”
“We will, dear heart! We will!”
Whenever we saw flying specks in the sky we took cover at once and instinctively, without stopping to think.
Through this forest we did not expect to find impiters or corths and so we trod along with a firmer tread. As night dropped with the refulgent sinking of the twin suns spearing in topaz fire through the intertwined branches we sought a resting place and soon enough ran across a series of old caves sunken into an earth bank. Gnarled tree roots thrust forth, naked and shining. The leaves around looked untrodden, the dirt trails unmarked. Seg nodded. We set about gathering wood and preparing camp. I felt a slight twinge of concern lest Delia consider I was chary of visiting her notorious home and of meeting that powerful man, her father the emperor. Well, it was something I would have to do if I wished to claim Delia before the world, and having said that, that was sufficient. Nothing would stop me from doing just that — nothing. .
Settling down for the night in our sleeping bags we had fashioned from the soft Sanurkazzian leather with plenty of luxurious silk for linings I lay back for a moment reflecting as I often do before sleep. I could well understand Delia’s desire to return home. As for me, now, my home was on Kregen and with Delia. But, still and all, I had felt very much at home riding with my wild Clansmen, and I acknowledged the surge of barbaric pleasure that savage and free life could always invoke in me. Seg had mentioned the barbarians who had swarmed down out of north Turismond to ravage and destroy the remnants of the empire created by Walfarg. I wondered if they were more violent and more barbaric than I and my Clansmen could be. .
As I was sinking into sleep I heard a tiny scraping sound from the rear of the cave. Before the sluggish reactions of a city dweller of Earth would have prised his eyelids open in yawning query I was up out of the sleeping bag and with my naked long sword in my fist facing at a crouch whatever menace lurked there in the cave.
Seg said: “What?”
He stood beside me, a sword in his hand. Delia said: “Do not make a sound, Thelda,” and I heard the squashy sound of a palm over fat red lips.
Again the noise reached us and then the whole back end of the cave fell outward. We had searched the place carefully before taking up our occupation; we had not expected this. Pink light from the moons of Kregen washed in with a reflective uncanny glow.
In that wash of pink radiance I could see the squat ovoid outline of something moving. I saw two squat legs bending to bring the bulk of the body into the cave, and I saw the array of tendril-like arms bunching from arched shoulders. The thing’s head was hunched down and in the darkened silhouette was invisible to me. The thought occurred as such thoughts will that perhaps the thing had no head at all. It kept emitting a wheezing hiss, rather more like a faulty deck pump than a snake but nerve-chilling for all that.
Seg shouted. “Hai!” and charged, his sword high.
He brought the sword down in a brutal butchering blow and a tendril uncurled and caught his forearm and snapped straight. The long sword poised immobile over the thing’s bunched tendrils. Two more grasped Seg about the waist, lifted him, began to draw him forward into the pink-tinged shadows. I did not yell but ran forward fleetly, my head bent to avoid the overhang, and sliced the two gripping tentacles away.