thought I did, and a tide of pure relief flooded me through and through. I had spent years with my clansmen and had been back to Earth, and for Delia it had all been like a single day. I saw the Gdoinye rising higher and I shouted something after it, but it merely screeched an accipiter-like insult at me, and winged away, vanishing in the moon-drenched shadows.
But — I felt free! I felt released from a bar of constricting steel. I would make my way to Vondium in Vallia and claim my Delia — and only I would suffer the pangs of parting and separation. To me, then, these thoughts came as a great benediction, for I did not care how I suffered so long as not a single hair of the head of my Delia was harmed.
A flutter of white beneath She of the Veils made me turn my head and there flew the white dove of the Savanti. It flew around, and I thought its flight as agitated as ever I had seen it. The white dove spied for the Savanti. I shook my fist at it and shouted: “And what have you to say for yourself?” But the dove merely circled and then flew off, a white fluttering speck, pink-lit, inconclusive under the moons of Kregen.
So it was I think you will understand that I started up the beach with a grim purpose.
Now for Valka!
To explain the high purpose and the desperate resolves of the next six years I would do best to quote you the song made by Erithor of Valkanium; but he was of Valka and composed in the Vallian tongue, the Vallish, and even when translated into Kregish the majesty and power of the words are lost, the alliterations meaningless, the rhythm fractured. To translate further into English, however marvelous a tongue our English language truly is, would be to cripple the beauty and the magic and leave only dry facts. And, in glory and blood and effort and sacrifice, the facts were never dry. There are many kinds of singers in Kregen; call them what you will, bards, skalds, troubadours, minstrels, trouvères, tsloivoidees, and of them all, few were held in higher repute than Erithor of Valkanium.
How we sang in the high hall of the fortress of Esser Rarioch overlooking Valkanium!
This song Erithor made, the song that is still sung and will be sung for as long as there are singers on Kregen, is called
The Fetching of Drak na Valka.
There are wild savage passages full of the purple passions of battle, storm, and onslaught; and there are the longer wailing laments that surge rhythmically into heroic acceptance of the good men dead and gone, good men never forgotten. The song tells of Kylie and Kylon, the famous twins who held the bridge to Ussanore Ovoidach, and Nath of Vandayha, Jeniu and Vokor, Carli and Vomanus, and Yathmin ti Vulheim, whose broken body I clasped in my arms as she died, seeking to stroke the blonde hair from her face where her blood matted and clotted and the shining brown eyes dimmed and dulled.
I can never listen to
The Fetching of Drak na Valka
without a reaction that brands me as a human being, full of folly and sentiment and sadness, and, yes, pride too, nonetheless that pride is bruised and broken, the foolishness of a man who has known good friends and lost them.
The song tells how we roused the island of Valka. How the prisoners huddled shivering on the beach took up arms, and how we marched, and how the aragorn resisted us, and how we routed them, and grew stronger. How the young men and women came down from the central mountains, the Heart Heights of Valka, and took weapons from the slavers and the aragorn and all their mercenaries, for the aragorn brought against us Ochs and Rapas, Fristles and Chuliks. And the singing notes of the harps rise and the drums roar and once again I am transported back to the many battlefields and the stratagems and the night surprises when the seven moons of Kregen shone upon courage and selflessness and high endeavor.
The Fetching of Drak na Valka!
No man knows the profundity of feeling I experience, for my name is indissolubly linked with the
But — I felt free! I felt released from a bar of constricting steel. I would make my way to Vondium in Vallia and claim my Delia — and only I would suffer the pangs of parting and separation. To me, then, these thoughts came as a great benediction, for I did not care how I suffered so long as not a single hair of the head of my Delia was harmed.
A flutter of white beneath She of the Veils made me turn my head and there flew the white dove of the Savanti. It flew around, and I thought its flight as agitated as ever I had seen it. The white dove spied for the Savanti. I shook my fist at it and shouted: “And what have you to say for yourself?” But the dove merely circled and then flew off, a white fluttering speck, pink-lit, inconclusive under the moons of Kregen.
So it was I think you will understand that I started up the beach with a grim purpose.
Now for Valka!
To explain the high purpose and the desperate resolves of the next six years I would do best to quote you the song made by Erithor of Valkanium; but he was of Valka and composed in the Vallian tongue, the Vallish, and even when translated into Kregish the majesty and power of the words are lost, the alliterations meaningless, the rhythm fractured. To translate further into English, however marvelous a tongue our English language truly is, would be to cripple the beauty and the magic and leave only dry facts. And, in glory and blood and effort and sacrifice, the facts were never dry. There are many kinds of singers in Kregen; call them what you will, bards, skalds, troubadours, minstrels, trouvères, tsloivoidees, and of them all, few were held in higher repute than Erithor of Valkanium.
How we sang in the high hall of the fortress of Esser Rarioch overlooking Valkanium!
This song Erithor made, the song that is still sung and will be sung for as long as there are singers on Kregen, is called
The Fetching of Drak na Valka.
There are wild savage passages full of the purple passions of battle, storm, and onslaught; and there are the longer wailing laments that surge rhythmically into heroic acceptance of the good men dead and gone, good men never forgotten. The song tells of Kylie and Kylon, the famous twins who held the bridge to Ussanore Ovoidach, and Nath of Vandayha, Jeniu and Vokor, Carli and Vomanus, and Yathmin ti Vulheim, whose broken body I clasped in my arms as she died, seeking to stroke the blonde hair from her face where her blood matted and clotted and the shining brown eyes dimmed and dulled.
I can never listen to
The Fetching of Drak na Valka
without a reaction that brands me as a human being, full of folly and sentiment and sadness, and, yes, pride too, nonetheless that pride is bruised and broken, the foolishness of a man who has known good friends and lost them.
The song tells how we roused the island of Valka. How the prisoners huddled shivering on the beach took up arms, and how we marched, and how the aragorn resisted us, and how we routed them, and grew stronger. How the young men and women came down from the central mountains, the Heart Heights of Valka, and took weapons from the slavers and the aragorn and all their mercenaries, for the aragorn brought against us Ochs and Rapas, Fristles and Chuliks. And the singing notes of the harps rise and the drums roar and once again I am transported back to the many battlefields and the stratagems and the night surprises when the seven moons of Kregen shone upon courage and selflessness and high endeavor.
The Fetching of Drak na Valka!
No man knows the profundity of feeling I experience, for my name is indissolubly linked with the
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