Beasts of Antares by Alan Burt Akers

his fingers together, he brought a breath of the clean air of his zorca plains into my study. Filbarrka of the best zorca country in Kregen, he was a man who had organized the zorcabows and the lancers that had so materially contributed to the rout of the ferocious clansmen of Segesthes in the Battle of Kochwold and subsequently.
    “What brings you to Vondium, nazab?” I asked.
    “That confounded horn rot in Thoth Valaha. They seem to think I can work a magic cure-all for them.”
    “Can you?”
    “Yes, majister.”
    I sat back. Trust Filbarrka nal Filbarrka!
    “So I just looked in to see if you were still here.”
    “And right welcome you are. We need more zorcas. If we cannot obtain sufficient, what do you say to forming a few regiments of men mounted on marlques, or on freymuls?”
    “The poor man’s zorca!” Filbarrka bounced up and down and his fingers performed prodigies of entwining. “They are pleasant enough, but—”
    “Quite. But we are poor men, are we not?”
    “My stock is down, granted, majister. But the colts come along well, some beautiful little—”
    He went on enthusiastically, for Filbarrka and zorcas lived together. As the governor of the blue-grass sections of Delia’s province of the Blue Mountains, Filbarrka rated the rank of nazab. I valued his wisdom. When, in the course of our conversation he heard of Farris’s problems with the freed slaves, he perked up. It was very quickly done.
    “Let me at them! I have ideas—”
    Well, Filbarrka was a fellow who never lacked for ideas!
    As the conversation wended on in the way these rambling discussions do, and I ruefully reflected that this was not the way to clear my desk, I was also forcibly brought up short by the fact that Filbarrka was supposed, when I contacted him, to provide zorcas for Nath Karidge. Instead, here we were reasonably and carefully discussing ways and means of mounting freed slaves on a wild miscellany of saddle animals, and trying to train them up to look out for themselves...
    Somehow or other, I had given the job of creating a second-line cavalry force to Filbarrka. He was enthusiastic. He is always enthusiastic. “The trouble will be a lack of maneuvering skills, an inability to get up in the morning and carry out long marches, and a certain liability to panic at the unexpected. But we’ll polish ’em up. I’ll bring in some of my lads — you know what they are like — and we’ll start off with maces and round shields. We’ll add darts and lances as these fellows improve. Some of the quilted cloth you produce here in Vondium will be capital for protection, with bronze arm and shoulder bars. We’ll keep it simple to start with.”
    Farris smiled and lifted his wine.
    “You convince me, Filbarrka. No doubt of that.”
    We thrashed that out to Filbarrka’s satisfaction. He would be based in Vondium to begin with. Then I said, “I was going to ask you if you could supply five or six hundred prime zorcas.”
    He lowered his wine. “Five or six hundred? That sounds like a new regiment and remounts—”
    “Yes.”
    Farris, rather incautiously, I thought, said, “We can buy zorcas overseas—”
    “Oh, yes,” said Filbarrka. “There are other zorcas in the world, of course. And, there are other mountains besides the Blue Mountains.”
    We took his point.
    “All the same,” I said, “we will buy saddle animals from Segesthes. We have to. But — and I own to being selfish here — for this new regiment I would like to have the best. The Jiktar is to be Nath Karidge.”
    “But he is a Chuktar.” They both looked surprised. I did not think they knew of my threat to stuff poor Nath Karidge into a Phalanx.
    “He remains a Chuktar, with a step. But this regiment will be a cavalry reserve, the basis for a much larger force, when we can find the zorcas and the right men.”
    In the end we sorted it all out and I pulled that thin file from under the stack of other files, and wrote down the reassuring fact