Savage Scorpio [Dray Prescot #16]

by Alan Burt Akers

  “Men of Paz! Brothers of the Order! Comrades in blood! Those you call Fish-Heads must be shown the error of their ways. The Order demands sacrifice, loyalty, utter devotion, unswerving purpose, obedience.” She lifted the banner in her left hand and golden coruscating sparks shot from her armor. In her right hand a sword—a sword! A sword like unto a Savanti sword—lifted high and pointed. The brand pointed at the Shanks. “Death is a small price to pay for honor! Brothers of the Order! Your duty in honor is to be true to yourselves and to Paz and to the Order."

  The light began to fade.

  I shook my head. There was much she had said with which I would not, could not, agree. But a great deal summed up something of what I struggled for.

  But, in the name of Zair! How did she know the Order existed at all?

  But, then, she was no mortal woman. She understood many secrets I longed to know, could see into the hearts of men, must surely comprehend the doings of Kregen and attempt to mold them to her own ends.

  The Shanks pressed nearer. They were confident now. They had withstood all we could throw at them. They had suffered and had lost a goodly number from their ranks. But they could see how we had suffered. They shrilled their hideous screeching war cries and they came on, fishy, stinking, scaly, repulsive, deadly.

  They had not seen the golden glowing apparition of Zena Iztar.

  Her chiming voice rang out for one last time before the vision disappeared.

  “Fight for what you believe to be true, Men of Paz. And, remember, never speak to anyone not of the Order of my presence, for I am sacrosanct. This is a stricture laid on you as members of the Order—and a privilege. Follow Dray Prescot. Jikai!"

  The first man to move was Dredd Pyvorr.

  With a high lifting shriek he set his zorca in a straight dead run at the oncoming Shanks.

  We saw him galloping madly into the thickest of them. We saw his sword swirling and smiting left and right, saw him engulfed as a stone is engulfed in a pool. In the same instant we were all once more in motion, roaring down, headlong belting down into the repulsively stinking mass of Fish-Heads.

  Dredd Pyvorr had shouted as he charged for the last time.

  Over and over he had shouted as he roared to his death.

  “For the Brotherhood of Iztar! For the Order! For Dray Prescot! Iztar! Iztar!"

  I felt the coldness running through me.

  There were manipulations here, superhuman twistings of normal human men to supernatural ends.

  Then we hit.

  The red roaring madness of battle descended on us. I am contemptuous of that notorious red curtain that falls before the fighting man's eyes—so it is said—but it is a thing that transcends humanity and must be used and manipulated in its turn so far as a man may. We fought. We fought.

  I think, now, as I thought then, that Zena Iztar brought some of her magical powers to our assistance. Nothing else, in all sanity, serves to explain what happened.

  The few of us, the few Brothers of the Order of Iztar, smashed and beat and routed the confident might of the Shanks from around the curve of the world. We destroyed them. The survivors ran. The sleeths poured blood as the Shkanes poured blood. Green ichor fuming onto the grass, smoking under the suns.

  We pursued them.

  Down the long slope and through the copse and so down the last curve of the trail into Briar's Cove we pursued them, slaying all the way.

  Memories are scarlet and monstrous and do not pass.

  Our arms did not tire. We were possessed of superhuman strength. Tireless, we smote and slew and drove them down to the beach where we slew them in the water as they tried to reach their ships. Those ships with their clumsy square upperworks and the sleek fishlike lines below water, with the tall banded aerodynamic sails, pushed off with the last few remnants. The black and amber sails slid up the tall masts, curving to the breeze. The ships pulled away, sliding easily through the water, and we stood on the beach and shook our fists at the Shanks, and cursed them, and jeered them, and felt, perhaps, as no men of Paz had ever felt before.

  We did not attempt to sail the ships in which the Katakis had landed after the Shkanes. I knew that no ship of Paz, not even the superb race-built galleons of Vallia, could catch a Shank ship.

  Some of the very best galleons built in Valka might almost match a Shank vessel, and we were working all the time on improvements; but these Kataki vessels were mere small editions of argenters, broad and squat and with a pitiful sail plan. They were broad-beamed and capacious and designed to hold slaves.

  We stood and jeered and fumed until the last Shank vessel vanished from sight, and then we turned back to the dolorous business of clearing up after the battle.

  There was much talk, and much to talk about; but one single topic dominated every conversation.

  Zena Iztar.

  Dredd Pyvorr had been the first to drive into battle at her instigation. He, it was soon apparent, was the original martyr of the Order. His name would live enshrined.

  Traditions were built in this fashion.

  And, too, I detected a difference about these men. Some inner strength had been vouchsafed them. They were not the same men who had agreed to join the Order. They had been refined, refined in the crucible of agony and battle, and now they gleamed with a luster of spirit I found mightily reassuring—and also worrying in that nagging anxious way I have when events pour past without due design and thought spent upon them.

  As with my membership of the Order of Krozairs of Zy upon the Eye of the World, I will not speak of much of our discipline. Much had been taken from the Krozairs, for their Orders are justly famed, and workmanlike, martial and mystic, devoted to Zair, and designed to sustain morale and spirit in the deepest of adversities. So I will content myself with a few remarks only. In the old days of Valka, when that island of which I am Strom was its own kingdom, they had their own knights, men of high-caliber, renowned, given the honor prefix of Ver to their names. This, we chose to resurrect, and members of the Order of Iztar were called, among ourselves, Ver Seg and Ver Inch, and so on.

  Ver Seg Segutorio was the High Archbold.

  This I welcomed and refused to take on any particular position for myself, preferring to be a plain member, a simple Ver of the Order.

  We called ourselves Kroveres.[1]

  [1 Kroveres. Prescot spells this out. He pronounces it in the same way as Krozair, but does not spell it Krovair. A.B.A.]

  Kroveres.

  The name rang and reverberated, as the name Krozair rings and reverberates.

  We were the Kroveres of Iztar.

  Also, and at the time much to my displeasure, another name was also used, and I asked questions and was told. Was told.

  Seg said to me: “We are the Order of Kroveres of Iztar, Dray. Now we must build. This little Island has witnessed a miracle."

  “Surely,” I said as we rode lumpily for the Mound of Arial. “And you still haven't given me any idea why we came here in the first place—except to check up on progress."

  He laughed.

  “Why, you may as well know now. I think Elder Pyvorr will be mourning his son—” All the laughter fled. “It was a great deed, Dredd Pyvorr's. We shall remember him in the Kroveres."

  “Yes, that is so. And?"

  “And, my old dom, you were asked here to be given the new name of the island as a gifting. You are the Kov of Zamra. Zamra is just over the horizon to the north, and this little island is called Nikzm—"

  “I know!” Nik as a prefix means half and as a suffix means small. In the names of lands and islands, however, the prefix often carries the meaning of small, for Zamra was by many times more than twice the size of Small Zamra, Nikzamra, Nikzm.

  “The Elders and people of the island have decided and issued the necessary patents and the bokkertu has been concluded to call the island Drayzm. Drayzm. So, my old dom, we are also the Kroveres of Drayzm."

  So, as you can well imagine, I was not overly pleased.

&nbs
p; I passed it off; but Seg gave me a hard look, and said a word or two about thick-headed, vosk-skulled ingrates, and how Delia was muchly pleased—

  “Did Delia know about this, then?"

  “Oh, aye. You don't think we'd go behind your back without consulting Delia, do you? You've told me how they made you Strom of Valka—well! This is no new title—and I know how you feel about them, as I do. They are useful in this world."

  “That is sooth, by Vox!"

  And Inch leaned forward to say, waspishly: “And if the Kov of Falinur lost that one, he'd not give a damn, hey?"

  “Too right!” snapped back Seg. He had had great trouble in his kovnate of Falinur. “Except—except Thelda would—"

  “Aye,” I said. “Thelda likes mightily to be a kovneva. And so she should. She deserves it."

  Inch laughed and chick-chicked his zorca and we rode on. But I began to think how best to relieve Seg of Falinur and find him a kovnate where he was not regarded with hatred, through no fault of his own but because of the ingrained animosity of the people to anyone who deprived them of slaves.

  Then, of course, the problem would arise that the new kov would almost certainly approve of slavery, as did most ordinary men and women of Vallia. Slavery, Delia and I had sworn, was going to be rooted out of Vallia. I looked beyond that, as did Delia, I know now, until it was finally uprooted from all of Paz.

  As we rode back this kind of talk naturally led on to the problems of Vallia, the huge island Empire. Delia's father, the emperor, had once more gained a breathing space with the destruction of the Chyyanists; but there were always fresh factions seeking to drag him down and install the puppet of their own choice as emperor.

  “Mind you, Dray,” said Seg, reflectively as we cantered gently into a defile ready to begin the last ascent to Arial's Mound in the last of the suns shine. “The nobles loyal to the emperor remain loyal, or most of them. He couldn't rule without them."

  “But the opposition parties still continue, also,” pointed out Inch. “They keep changing alliance and pattern; but they are still against the emperor, the whole family.” Here he looked at me.

  I nodded somberly. Vallia is an enormous patchwork of many different sized estates, run by nobles—by kovs and vads and trylons and Stroms and all the others—and there are many parties and factions, not all of whom seek to destroy the emperor. At this time the main party was the Racter Party, and the second the Panval Party. The Fegters were growing in strength and there was always the North East of Vallia, an area traditionally troublesome. But when Inch mentioned the family of the emperor, he was thinking of Delia and me and our family.

  “And, to cap it all,” said Seg, “there's this Queen Lush. Thelda is still captivated by the woman. I fancy this queen has her eyeballs firmly set on the emperor. You'll have to have a say there, Dray."

  “Sink me!” I burst out. “If the old devil wants to get married again I won't stop him.” I added, nastily: “Give him something else to think about."

  “Well, my old dom, you're still banished from Vondium."

  I grumped in the saddle, and we rode on. By Zair! But I was anxious to see Delia again and find out about our erring daughter Dayra. And even Lela still had not put in an appearance. I'd not seen them for years and years. It was just not good enough. So I was not in the happiest of moods as the final rites were gone through, the Kroveres of Iztar dispersed to their homes, the island was renamed Drayzm, and, at last, at blessedly last, we could take off for Valka and home—and Delia.

  * * *

  Chapter Three

  Of Processions and Mercenary Guards

  The airboat swung in a wide graceful arc over the glittering sea and the dancing wavelets of the Bay of Valkanium threw back splintered shards of ruby and emerald, merging into a deepening golden-speckled radiance as the Suns of Scorpio sank beyond the bulk of the Heart Heights of Central Valka. The sight was gorgeous and nostalgic and always, invariably, awakes in me vast and moving memories. I slanted the boat down toward the high palace and fortress of Esser Rarioch, and joyed that I was coming home.

  There was much work to be done. With a premonition I tried unsuccessfully to shake off, I faced a future in which the harsh clangor of strife, the wicked scrape of assassins’ steel and the devious and vicious intrigues around an emperor's court held no lure for me whatsoever, and to the Ice Floes of Sicce with the headlong adventure of it all. But I would face danger and the most deadly peril, as I knew, as I knew, and as you shall hear.

  The world of Kregen, four hundred light years from Earth, is indeed a beautiful world. It is also a horrific world. It is real. And yet I was more and more convinced that the beauty and horror cloaked far deeper truths. If the Star Lords, who had brought me here from Earth many and many a time, alone were responsible, as I had once thought, with the Savanti attempting to combat them, then how could I either resist or support so powerful a group of—a group of what? Were they men? Were they superhuman beings, divine in origin, godlike in power? I did not know. The Savanti, the superhuman but mortal men of the Swinging City of Aphrasöe seemed, at least to me, to have more easily understood aims. The Savanti wanted to make of Kregen a better and more civilized world, and they supported apims to do that work for them. Apims, that is, people like Homo sapiens, formed a goodly proportion of the various peoples I had so far met on Kregen. But whose word was it? Did it belong to diff or apim? Or neither? I did not know.

  These wider problems of Kregen stayed with me as the flier landed on that high upflung landing platform and we stepped down to be greeted by my High Chamberlain, old Panshi. He looked grave. He bowed formally, his wand of office held just so in the prescribed position of welcome and warning.

  “My prince! Messengers from Vondium came for the princess; they left sealed packets and have departed these three days."

  Well, Delia was off with her Sisters of the Rose, hunting up information on our wayward daughter Dayra. I trusted she was being assisted by our eldest daughter Lela.

  “Thank you, Panshi.” We walked swiftly in the last of the suns sets glow toward the outer chambers. “I will see the packets. First I will see the princesses—Velia and Didi."

  As I stood by the cots and looked at the two tiny forms, cherubic, sleeping, tiny fists closed, puckered mouths breathing gently, I sighed. What future lay in store for them, on this harsh and hostile planet of Kregen? Delia and I had been blessed by our daughter Velia, when our first daughter Velia had been so cruelly slain. But she had given us little Didi, the daughter of Velia, my Lady of the Stars, and of Gafard, the king's Striker, Sea Zhantil, renegade and man. I sighed again and bent and kissed them and so left them to the capable hands of the nurses and of Aunt Katri, who shooed me away with a fine air of hustle. As the emperor's sister, she spent more of her time with the emperor's daughter and her children than she did in the capital of Vallia, Vondium the Proud.

  Panshi handed me the packets as I sipped the first light wine of the evening.

  Heavily sealed, they bore the stamps of Lord Farris of Vomansoir, Chuktar in the Vallian Air Service, a great man, utterly loyal to the emperor, who looked upon Delia as a daughter.

  With a brutal tug I broke the fastenings and took out the letter.

  It was circumlocutory, filled with respect and devotion; but its message was more brutal than the gesture I had used to unseal it.

  Briefly; the emperor was gravely ill. No one could fathom out the nature of his illness. There were new doctors who promised much but could find no cure. The presence of the Princess Majestrix was requested.

  Turko walked in and saw my face.

  “Aye, Turko. Bad news. The emperor is like to die."

  “Delia—” said Turko, on a breath. His magnificently muscled body and his handsome face reassured me. He understood.

  “He may be an old devil. But he is Delia's father. He once ordered his guards to take off my head, instantly, but—"

  Turko half laughed. “Aye! Seg has told us often enough. He has sai
d your surprise when you saw him will last the rest of his life.” Sharply, he added: “When do we leave? Now?"

  “Aye."

  “Remember, you are banished, by the emperor's strict decree."

  “To the Ice Floes of Sicce with the old devil's decrees. Delia will have other messages, so she will know. She will go. And there is danger in a capital city of an empire when the emperor dies. We will pack up and leave at once."

  Panshi was summoned and ran instantly to do my bidding. I felt that grim chill of premonition again. There were many forces conspiring to drag down the emperor, Delia's father. I was an old sea-leem, a render, a paktun, a buccaneer prince, the king of a fabled far-off land—I admit it freely. I wanted to be in at the death—if there was to be a death. I must add, not for myself alone. Delia must be supported. The emperor's grandchildren must be apportioned their rights. I knew my Delia would think only of her father's health and life; and I being that same Dray Prescot who is more of a rogue than he appears, thought also of what might follow the death of the emperor.

  One thing appeared to me certain at the time. I did not then want to be the Emperor of Vallia. I was sincere in that. But what was to happen would be in the hands of the various doctors, the wizards and the gods of Kregen, each acting his part, each with his own rapier to sharpen—or, in the case of the doctors, with his own needle to sharpen—and, as always, I took as my guiding light through the maze of conflicting loyalties and treacheries the single dominant fact of my life. The well-being of Delia alone mattered. For her I would throw over kingships, kovnates, princedoms. They mean little, anyway, apart from the obvious comforts and the powers to alleviate suffering. Even, I would cast aside all I worked for with the Kroveres of Iztar. Even—and I shudder to confess this, for it is a horrendous crime—even I would disavow the Krozairs of Zy for the sake of my Delia, my Delia of Delphond, my Delia of the Blue Mountains.

  Banishment from Vondium still hung over me like a cloud. It seemed sensible to land first at my own Valkan villa at the crest of one of the reserved hills of the capital, and equip myself suitably for admission to the palace. So I donned decent Vallian buff, with tall black boots, and slung a rapier and main gauche at my sides. I clapped on one of those peculiar Vallian wide-brimmed hats, with the two oblong slots cut in the front brim. The raffish curling feather was red and white, the colors of Valka. Also, I wore a red and yellow favor on my left shoulder, to tell any inquisitive rast who wanted to know that my sympathies lay with the emperor. For Vallia's colors are red and yellow, as are mine, except that the Vallian cross of yellow on the red flag is a saltire. So dressed, and carrying a heavy pouch filled with tied leather bags of gold talens, I took a zorca-ride up to the palace.