Armada of Antares Read Online Free PDF

his death.
    “Lish!” said Tom. He gripped his hands together.
    Lish Sjame had been a battle comrade of ours when we cleansed Valka of the slavers and the aragorn. Now that laughing man with the lean, intense face and the intellectual grasp of a problem, that man who had sung many a fine song with us, emptied many a filled flagon, was gone.
    We stood looking down. And mingled with our sorrow ran an ugly murderous thread of anger: anger against the builders of airboats that failed; anger against the manufactories of Hamal which sold us vollers that murdered our friends.
    “If ever we needed the secrets of the vollers, now is the time to show all men that truth!” said Seg.
    “Aye!” I said. Then, in my old way I burst out: “Sink me! I’ll take that damned Presidio, one by one, and shake them by the scruff of the necks! Vallia
must
build her own vollers!”
    We went down the long flights of stone stairs to the dungeons. Oh, yes, if you feel surprise that there should be dungeons you must have forgotten that the high fortress of Esser Rarioch had been built in the old times, in the days when dungeons featured as essential adjuncts to the gracious living of Stroms, and Kovs, and high nobles. Also, I think you may judge Valka better now if I tell you that the only occupant of this complex series of dungeons in the rock had been this same stikitche.
    He hung in his chains, hacked to pieces.
    Which made me ponder.
    The two dead guards had been carried away. The wounded two had been treated. Bound up in clean yellow bandages, acupuncture needles cunningly inserted to take away their pain, they awaited the Strom’s verdict of their crime. For, make no mistake about it, they had sinned. Their dereliction of duty could very possibly cause severe problems for the future.
    The two swods braced themselves up the moment I appeared. They stood to attention as best they could, so that my first words were: “Stand at ease, you couple of famblys.” I looked at them, cast a single glance at the hunk of bloodied meat hanging in the chains, and said, “You, Larghos. Tell me.”
    “Yes, my Strom.” He swallowed. A youngster, newly appointed to the fortress guard, he was now clearly appalled at what had happened and what he had been part of. “We were changing guard. I saw Nath and Pergon set upon and I attacked the nearest of the men and he whickered his blade and—”
    “Steady, lad.” His lorica had been unbuckled so the doctor could more easily get at the thrust that had gone cleanly through above the top segment, above the collarbone. These stikitches are fine swordsmen. “Now, who did you attack?”
    “The assassins, my Strom.”
    “Yes. Yes. Tell me what they looked like.”
    “Dressed in black, Strom. All in black. With steel faces.”
    And that, I knew, was as fair a description as I would get.
    His comrade, Yaldy, was in worse case, the rapier having thrust through his cheek, scraping the bone. It had missed his eye, the target; but for the acupuncture needles Yaldy would have been in great pain. He leaned on his glaive as he spoke. I pondered the wisdom of the glaive, that wicked bayonet-blade splined into a five-foot ash shaft, and yet the Valkans normally have no fear of a rapier man with the glaive in their hands.
    “No more to add, my Strom!” bellowed this Yaldy. His parade ground shout whispered out weakly. I nodded. There was nothing more to learn here except, perhaps . . .
    I spoke with a forceful presence of urgency and importance.
    “Did either of you hear the stikitches say a word? Anything?”
    They shook their heads, and then Larghos checked, his head going up.
    “Well?”
    “The assassins did not say a word. I do not know how many of them there were. But this one here—” He gestured vaguely to the hunk of meat hanging in the chains. “This one cried out as they went up to him.”
    “Ah!”
    “He shouted in mortal terror. He shouted, ‘I did not say a word!’ Then he swore by a name I do now