Read Online A Victory for Kregen by Alan Burt Akers - Free Book Online

— I took a single look and then looked away. The vile things that happen to faithful saddle animals at the hands of men is a sore subject with me, as with many other men on two worlds. Twisted under this poor dead zorca, as I say, lay the body of a large man who had been pitched from the saddle. His neck had broken.
    I studied his face, calm, lined, filled with the remnants of a vigor that had sustained him in life and was now deserting him in death. He wore magnificent armor. It had not stopped his neck from being smashed. I sucked in my breath and went to work.
    He was not the bearded servitor’s young lord, and I guessed he was a lord in his own right, gone adventuring on his own account. The expedition of which we nine were the last to escape from Moderdrin had contained nine separate expeditions within our ranks. The armor came off easily, for it had been well cared for. I hoisted it on my back and took his weapons and then trailed off after the others who were hurrying back to the rocks.
    I saw Prince Tyfar looking at me.
    He said nothing.
    I said, “When you have been adventuring out in the wild and hostile world, Tyfar—” And then I stopped myself.
    He would not understand. He might learn — if he lived long enough. But I knew enough to know that his ideas of honor could not comprehend my motives.
    “Just, Tyfar, one thing.”
    “Yes, Jak?”
     
    “Do not think the less of me. I hazard a guess that you have never starved, never been flogged, never really wanted in all your life. These things give a man a different view of the values in life and, yes, I know I am being insufferable and almost preaching, but I value your comradeship and would not see it spoiled over so small a matter.”
    And, even then, that was the wrong note. The matter was not small when it touched the honor of a prince of Hamal.
    Then he surprised me.
    “I have a deal to learn — everything is not contained in books or the instructions of axemasters. I shall don this poor young lord’s armor, which Nath and Barkindrar carry back for me — when it is necessary.”
    I felt, I admit, suitably chastened.
    When he reached the outcrop, the others had finished up their work and had secured the surviving fluttrells. The big birds were chained down by their wing chains, and had found it suddenly restful in the shade.
    I nodded. “Well done.”
    “And, what do we do with the swarths?”
    “Cut them loose,” said Tyfar. “They will fend for themselves and, eventually, find their way to fresh employment.”
    “Agreed.”
    The night would soon be upon us and although we could fly quite easily by the light of the moons, we judged it better to give the fluttrells a time to recuperate. Hunch busied himself brewing up tea, that superb Kregan tea, for a supply was discovered in the saddlebags we had taken from the dead animals.
    Also, we found something that told us who at least some of these folk had been.
    Modo brought the package across and we opened it and read the warrant in the last of the light.
    “Rolan Hamarker, Vad of Thangal — most odd.” Tyfar looked up from the paper. “That is a good Hamalese name. Yet I do not know of anyone called that. Thangal has no Vad. It is a Trylonate.”
    “Due northwest of Ruthmayern,” I said.
    “Yes. This is, indeed, a curiosity.”
    “And this came from the effects of the young man?”
    “Yes, Jak,” said Modo.
    “Well, there was nothing with the other lord to identify him. And that, to me, is stranger still.”
    “You are right, by Krun!” said Tyfar.
     
    “Perhaps,” said Quienyin in his mellow voice. “They did not wish to give their true names when they ventured into Moderdrin.”
    “Of course.” Tyfar beamed on the Wizard of Loh. “You have the right of it.”
    “Probably,” I said.
    We now had a plethora of weapons and armor and equipment. So we could take our pick. Any good Kregan will take as many weapons along with him as the situation warrants, or the situation that