“If these cramphs of mine will not kill you, then, by the violet offal of the snow-blind feister-feelt, I will send you to hell myself!”
He vaulted the gilt rail and landed very nimbly, swinging at once into that trained posture of defense. He was a swordsman. I made no attempt to cross swords with him. I was only too well aware of the quality of the Krozair long sword he brandished; as to the blade I had snatched up, it was as like to break at the first blow for all I knew.
A sudden and tense silence descended. All eyes fixed on the drama being enacted before the royal box. Into that silence came the screech and hacksaw rasp of the impiters from their perches around the amphitheater. There was one, a giant of the air, fluffing its feathers immediately over the awning. There was no time for fancy swordsmanship, for feint and riposte, for lunge and parry. There was space for swordplay — of the brutal cut and thrust variety I knew so well and that had brought me thus far alive
— space but no time. Umgar Stro’s coarse and bloated features broke into a crude guffaw as he brandished that splendid sword before my eyes.
“Die, little man! Die and spit your guts on the ice needles of Ullarkor!”
Beyond him as he stood so confidently his companions in the royal box guffawed in lackey-like approval. There were scented and painted women, females of the Harfnars and the Ullars, jeweled courtiers and soldiers, impiter-masters, sword-masters. And there was one man, with the red hair of Loh, who sat unsmiling and tense, clad all in dark blue and unhappy. This, I guessed, must be Forpacheng. I marked him, too, for through his machinations my Delia had been snatched when he plotted the downfall of the Lohvian army of Hiclantung.
My great Krozair long sword slashed down — aimed at my head!
I dodged easily enough but I did not reply. Delia stood a little to one side, her toothpick sword lifted, her breast heaving; but her face showed the same strong resolution I had come to know so well through all adversity.
Umgar Stro shouted, and stamped his foot, and thrust. I risked the clang of blades as I parried and dodged — and the sword I wielded snapped clean at the hilt.
The gush of laughter from Umgar Stro was like an oil well breaking surface in the desert, dark and spouting and greasy.
“Dray!” shrieked Delia, then — and she lifted her weapon to fling it to me hilt first.
“Hold, my Delia!” I shouted. I jinked left, then right, took a spring and before Umgar Stro could orient himself I had vaulted clean over him. I landed and twisted like a leem. My left hand raked across and took his right arm biceps in my fingers. My right hand went around his neck and jerked his head back. I squeezed.
He tried to gargle something.
I exerted pressure with the fingers of my left hand and his right hand slowly opened so that the Krozair long sword fell to the sand. He sagged and then thrust with desperate strength. I hauled back. Without remorse, without pity and, now his time had come, without hatred, I pulled back until, loud and sharp, his backbone snapped.
I cast him from me.
I bent to retrieve my long sword and the arrows sang past me and, in that instant, the suns-light was choked off as a wide-winged shape plummeted from the walls.
Umgar Stro’s own impiter! Come to avenge his death!
He was a monster, coal-black, wide of wing and ferocious of talon, with gape-jaws distended so that the rows of serrated teeth gleamed dull gold. His tail lashed wickedly at me so that I had to leap back. I shouted.
“Delia! This is our mount — be ready, my heart-”
“I am with you, always, dear heart!”
I intended to stand no nonsense from this savage beast. I leaped. I took the reins close up to the fanged jaw and I wrenched. I brought the flat of the sword around and laid it shrewdly alongside that narrow and vicious head.
“Let that teach you who is to be master here!”
I drew the impiter’s head down, twistingly, dragged that beast low, hit him again, forced him to bend. Delia mounted with a supreme confidence that brought the breath clogging into my throat. As she wrapped the flying thongs about herself and adjusted the clerketer for me, I vaulted up and dragged the reins upward. The impiter’s head rose. He was in a vile temper. An arrow whistled off the black sheen of his feathers and he rasped a hacksaw whine and struck three massive blows with his wings. He ran forward and then, with a massive fluttering and a great roaring of down-driven air, he was aloft. I had to strike but three more arrows away before we were well airborne and sailing above the anti-flier defense and away into the bright air of Kregen.
Below us in the amphitheater we left an incredible scene of confusion as Ullars whistled for their impiters, as Harfnars ran uselessly, shooting upward, only to see their shafts fall short. Strongly we beat across the sky. Umgar Stro — who was now dead — had trained his mount well. Crazed and savage and bewildered it might be; the impiter understood well enough what the point of my sword thrust into his side meant. His wings beat metronomically. The wind blasted back through our hair. Naked, we shivered in the slipstream. But up and up we flew, faster and faster, winging away from Chersonang and all the barbarity festering there.
For some time I fancied I could detect the foul taint from the deliquescing corpse of the Ullgishoa. From the city of Chersonang behind us rose the black swarm of impiter-mounted warriors. Like a column of smoke they rose and leveled off and, wind-driven, soared after us. I jabbed the tip of my sword into the impiter and forced him to beat a faster stroke.
The twin suns of Scorpio cast their mingled light down upon us, and the land beneath spread out with its cultivated fields giving way to heath and wasteland cut through by the magnificent stone roads of the old empire. The host of impiters on our trail must have been visible for dwaburs in every direction. Our own beast flogged the air, driving us on, putting an increasing space between us and our pursuers. As befitted the power and glory, as well as the bulk, of Umgar Stro his impiter was a king among fliers. But the double burden would tell in the long flight, and eventually the flying nemesis would catch us. If such a thing as Fate exists, it has sometimes come to my aid as well as dealing me many shrewd blows. Unaccustomed to such things, I confess it was Delia who first spotted the distant dot, and who cried out in joy — and then alarm as other reasons for the presence of an airboat here, over the Hostile Territories, occurred to her.
But there was nothing else for it. The distant flier changed course and bore through the upper levels straight toward us.
We strained our eyes. I made out a lean petal-shape, high as to stern, a much larger craft than the one in which we had flown The Stratemsk; larger, even, than those airboats of the Savanti in unknown Aphrasoe. Flags fluttered from the upperworks. Delia screwed her eyes up. I felt her body close and warm against me, and my arms tightened in instinctive protection.
“I think, my darling, I think-” she said. And: “Yes! It is! She is from Vallia!”
“Thank Zair for his mercies,” I said.
She must have spotted the massed fliers from a long distance off, for I knew the Vallians possessed telescopes. I knew without doubt why the Vallian airboat was here, why it turned at once, sensing the answer to her quest lay with that flying host of impiters. The airboat swung alongside. I hauled the impiter up and looked down.
The craft was compact and trim. I was reminded of the order and discipline of a King’s ship or of those swifters I had commanded on the Eye of the World. The sights of varters of design strange to me then snouted upward at us. At the first sign of treachery or the first false move we would be blasted from the sky. A group of men on the high stern looked up, and I saw the familiar Vallian costume mingled with a smart dark blue uniform I took to be that of the air service of Vallia.