Read Online Witches of Kregen by Alan Burt Akers - Free Book Online Page B

perhaps I would deserve that fate.
    That I had not a single qualm that that could happen does not indicate I was a blind fool. I give trust seldom. When I do, I judge fairly that it is given in full.
    Then Inch raised a point I had known he would, and had rather wished he wouldn’t. Still, the ridicule would have to be faced.
    “Tell me, Dray, the army with Turko that is so badly shaken. Did you say — Ninth Army?”
    “Aye.”
    He looked down on me with a comical expression and said: “Well? You’d better tell me what’s been going on.”
    “Yes, I suppose so. The Presidio have been doing very well running the country, and their council has been invaluable. Also, they handle the day-to-day affairs that are so time-consuming.”
    “That I well believe. But—”
    “They decided that for the glory of Vallia and the better management of the army as a whole, each Kapt commanding an army should be given an army with a number. Turko’s happened to be the Ninth.”
    “And the other eight?”
    I made a face.
    “Drak has the First down in the southwest. The Second was serving up in the northeast. The Eighth I had, and although that army no longer exists, its brigades being distributed among the others, I still hang onto the number. As for the others, they served in Hamal.”
    “I have heard somewhat of what went on down there. You must tell me of it over supper.”
    “I will. Also I will tell you about Tilda and Pando—”
    “You have seen them again? Spoken to them?” He bent down, eager, concerned for our old friends who had turned out so different from what we had expected.
    “Aye, I’ve seen ’em and spoken to them. I’ll tell you.”
    He frowned at my tone, and so I promised to tell him all over supper. At that, he had been very decent over this grandiloquent business of numbering the armies, and had not mocked the notion at all. He would, though, he would, when the time was ripe.
    To scotch that plan, I said, “I think I shall ask the Presidio to allocate your forces an army number, Inch. How does that seize you?”
    “My lads will laugh.”
    “So well they may. They’ll still fight.”
    “Oh, aye, that is sooth.”
    Then we sat down at the tables to concentrate upon the wine, upon miscils and palines, and upon the forces Inch could spare to march to the east to assist our blade comrade Turko — who was never a blade comrade in the sense of wearing edged weapons. I found that Inch had, as I suspected, been waging his struggle to free the Black Mountains with very slender resources.
    His own Black Mountain Men, bonny fighters all, were in truth fearsome irregulars. His main disciplined strength resided in the regiments sent over from Valka, and a handful from the Vallian forces who had been flown in from time to time. For a good few seasons no direct land link had existed between our sections of Vallia and the Black Mountains.
    So we fomented our plans. I was sorry to have missed Sasha, for she had proved tremendously popular in Vondium and had worked damned hard at being a good kovneva alongside her husband the kov. The twins — and there was another boy child as well now — had gone with their mother back to Ng’groga. Inch said, “Don’t ask me what my Sasha did to break that particular taboo. It meant she had to go to Ng’groga, and so we felt it good that the children should see the place. I hated losing one of my fliers, though.”
    Always, around Inch of Ng’groga, one had to watch for his own infringement of his taboos. Wonderful and fearful they were, too, and never understandable to anyone who wasn’t seven foot tall and as muscular-thin as a tentacle. The way he exorcised his taboos was even more remarkable. Well, we talked and in the end agreed that Inch could spare two regiments of Valkan archers, a regiment of Vallian spearmen and a mixed regiment of totrix cavalry, lances and bows.
    “There is no point in taking any of your Black Mountain Men,” I said. “They do best where