“Jump down, Princess!” shouted one of the men, a barrel-bodied individual in dark blue, with wide shoulder wings, and a flaring orange cloak. At his side swung a rapier, matched by the main-gauche on the other. He wore a curly-brimmed hat with a blazing device of gold on the front band, and an orange tuft of feathers. His face was seamed and wind-lined, the crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes testimony to his days in the air scanning distant horizons.
Carefully I edged the impiter lower so that the ratings below ducked against the beat of wings. Delia went over first and I followed to be caught instantly in strong hands. Umgar Stro’s impiter, relieved, spun away into the bright sky.
“Princess Majestrix!” said the burly man, a Chuktar, an exalted rank in any man’s army or navy or, as I encountered for the first time, air force.
“My Lord Farris!” said Delia. She was wrapped in a swathing orange cloak, and her face showed high and proud and yet mightily relieved. “You are most welcome.”
The Lord Farris, the Chuktar in command of this airboat, the name of which was Lorenztone, bowed deeply. He did not incline, a depraved custom, and this pleased me. “And this-?” He gestured toward me in a way that was most polite.
Delia smiled. “This is Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor, Kov of Delphond, and betrothed of the Princess Majestrix.”
Farris bent his head in a stiff but exquisitely formal little bow. He turned back to Delia. “The Emperor, your father, learned that you had taken a flier and-” He hesitated and I could guess the scenes that had followed on that discovery. “There have been many airboats seeking you, Princess, and I am overjoyed that it was to me and Lorenztone, that the honor of finding you has been given.”
“I am pleased, also, Farris. But-”
A lookout sang out from forward.
Everyone turned. The sky seemed filled with impiters.
Farris looked pleased. He smiled and rubbed his hands.
“Now these debased descendants of a decadent empire will see what a new nation can do!” His orders were given in a calm and matter-of-fact tone of voice that heartened me. During that fight as the winged hordes of Umgar Stro fell on us I was mightily impressed by the way the air service men of Vallia handled themselves. Their swivel-mounted varters coughed a steady stream of projectiles. Impiters fell fluttering from the sky. Archers using smaller bows than those of Loh, it is true, took a toll. Any Ullar venturesome and lucky enough to gain a footing on the deck was instantly cut down. The Vallians, in this kind of aerial fighting, did not deign to disregard the effective uses of a boarding pike. With my long sword, which they looked at with a kind of amused awe, I joined in. The battle, in a sense, came to me as an anticlimax. Delia was safe, now, and before us lay the flight to Vallia and then the meeting with her father, that imperious, relentless, awe-inspiring man, the emperor of all Vallia.
At last the impiters and their Ullar warriors gave up.
We forged on across the landscape of the Hostile Territories as gradually the twin suns, Zim and Genodras, sank to the horizon. I took stock of this Vallian airboat, this Lorenztone. She was all of fifty feet long and her widest beam, which came some two-fifths of her length aft, was twenty feet. Her leanness of appearance came from the sheer of her bows and the sweep of her stern where the sterncastle raised. Varters lined the bulwarks much after the fashion of the broadside guns of the ships of Earth with which I was familiar. Somewhere below her deck in a safe place would be that mysterious mechanism — mysterious to me then — by which this bulk was upheld in thin air. The designs on the many flags she bore surprised me with their functional formality; but some were so embroidered that leems and risslaca, graints and zhantils as well as chank and sectrix, figured in that fluttering panoply.
An obliging crewman found me a length of cloth. He handed it to me expecting me to wrap my nakedness in it. It was green. I merely wiped the bloodied blade of my long sword upon it, carefully, mindful of the way that young tearaway of a Vallian, Vomanus, had so carelessly wiped his ornate rapier, and handed it back. From a great pile of flying silks I selected a length of blazing scarlet. This, with as always a pang of memory, I wrapped around my waist, drew up between my legs, and tucked the end in. Delia came up with a broad leather belt, of a leather I did not then recognize, soft and pliable, with a massive silver buckle. With this I kept the breechclout in place.
“There will be no scabbard for your great sword, Dray; not until we can have one stitched up for you.”
“No matter. It can hang at my side naked, with a fold of cloth to keep me from being cut-”
After the action the reaction — we were both just making noises. The airboat rushed on through the sky levels. Delia looked at me, her head a little to one side, her face grave.
“Seg? And — Thelda?”
I shook my head.
She gave a little gasp, immediately choked off, and lowered that mane of glorious brown hair, shining in the dying light, and put her dear head into my shoulder. So for a space we stood there on the deck of the airboat as the twin suns sank and the strange and yet familiar constellations crept into the night sky with three of the lesser moons of Kregen hurtling low over the horizon.
Presently we were called away for food and we sat to a fine aerial feast in the aft cabin. The Chuktar, the Lord Farris of Vomansoir, introduced his officers and other high dignitaries who had been assigned the craft searching for the emperor’s daughter. I caught at some of the conversations, guessing at hidden meanings, trying to sort out the people who would not object to Delia marrying me from those who took a violent exception. I did not think I would meet any Vallian who would actively wish me to marry Delia
— not even Vomanus, if I cared to dwell on it.
I noticed one young man, with a mane of blond hair and a frank and open face, with that high beaked nose of the Vallians — a characteristic in noses that I myself shared — and took particular notice of him after he had said, with a light laugh: “I have never seen so large a sword wielded so expertly, my Lord of Strombor. I venture to think that a regiment of cavalrymen well-versed in its use would rattle even the best infantry line.”
His name was Tele Karkis, and he did not appear to be the lord of anywhere, which was refreshing. He was a Hikdar. If I paint him in flat and stereotyped colors, it is because that was how be appeared to be then, when I first met him. I leaned over the table to help myself to a handful of palines, and before I popped the first luscious morsel into my mouth, I said: “And on what steed would you mount these hypothetical cavalrymen of yours, Hikdar Karkis?”
He laughed, not easily, but without unease. “I have heard of the voves your Clansmen ride on the Great Plains of Segesthes, my Lord of Strombor.”
I nodded. “I hope,” I said with the politeness habitual to the cultured Vallian, “that you will have the opportunity one day to pay us a visit and be our guest.”
Then Lorenztone shuddered and lurched and Chuktar Farris spilled his wine and reared away from the table.
“By Vox!” he said. “I’d like to teach those rasts of Havilfar how to build like honest men!”
A man with a face I had taken no notice of at first sight, and thereby should have been warned, let out a string of oaths that were mere fancy verbiage, and quite fit for the ears of a lady, even for a princess. He was one Naghan Vanki, the lord of domains on one of the outlying islands of Vallia. He wore, unlike the air service men and the soldiers and court dignitaries, a simple silver and black outfit in the Vallian style. There was more about him than his name to remind me of Naghan, the Hiclantung spy. We all went on deck.