Secret Scorpio [Dray Prescot #15]

by Alan Burt Akers

  He was an onker, right enough. He twisted the bamboo. I felt the click and the sweet sliding of oiled metal. He staggered back clasping the hollow bamboo. All the people watching gasped, as this foolish young trylon fell back, pulling the bamboo free of the blade.

  In my right fist I held the ridged wooden hilt. Two feet of oiled steel blade glimmered in the lights from the windows. That blade had been forged by Naghan the Gnat in the armory of Esser Rarioch. I had designed it with Naghan, and we had laughed as we'd mounted its slender length into the bamboo hilt, covering the murderous brand with the rest of the hollow bamboo. I keep calling this wood bamboo; it is not real bamboo. It is of a deep orange luster, ridged and grows in the marshes. Kregans call it pipewood, for it is often used for tubing work in plumbing and the like.

  The blade glistened. The Trylon of Tremi stared and his face assumed a caricature of enraged fury, black with passion.

  “You murderous rast! Now I'll spit you clean through your filthy guts!"

  And he set to, swirling his blade, thrusting and slashing like one demented.

  His companions stumbled up from the table, their chairs going over with a smash. They ripped their own weapons free.

  One came in from one side, the second from the other.

  If I was in for a little exercise then I'd make it reasonably entertaining.

  As I fought, foining off the two from the sides and beginning an amusing disrobing of the trylon, I reflected that this Rafik Avandil possessed a rare sense of humor. He had arranged to meet me here in this pseudo-cultural Running Sleeth knowing damn well what would follow. So I felt a double amusement as I cut the laces of the trylon's fancy tunic and so stripped his clothes from him, garment by garment. When his two cronies pressed too close one was sent staggering and yelling away with a slit ear and the other with a punctured right forearm. The good old over and under stop-thrust worked beautifully.

  This idiot trylon's overlong rapier most often pointed at the ceiling or the floor, or angled toward one of the garish pictures along the walls, more often than it aimed at my guts. I played him long enough to cut away his clothes down to his breechclout—bright pink, would you believe?—and then I had had enough.

  Disgust filled me.

  This kind of petty mindless brawl leaves a foul taste in a man's mouth. This kind of bestiality is for the morons of the world, for the morons of two worlds.

  Once they had seen how they thought the fight would now go, the rest of the patrons began to laugh. In their stupid heartless way they laughed at the Trylon of Tremi. He, poor fool, gagged on his own spit. His face was now whey-colored, gray and green, his eyes staring, his mouth slobbering. His beautiful pink breechclout with the embroidered chavonths and zhantils looked pathetic. It had blue lace edging. I stripped a little away and then he jumped at the wrong moment and the blade nicked his flesh in a tender spot.

  He screamed.

  So, wishing to have done, I snaked his blade away and stepped in. I took him by the throat with my left hand. I choked him only a little.

  “The next time you seek to bully and thrash a defenseless old man, think, rast. Think, you brainless cramph, and remember this day."

  Then I turned him around and gave him a hard toe up the backside and so kicked him staggering across the floor.

  His cronies stood back, furious but cowed, unwilling to reopen the fray.

  Blood had been drawn from both of them, splattering their finery and the black and white favors, but they had come out of this less injured than their lord. His hurts did not show on his skin. His hurts would not mend as fast as the scratches they had suffered.

  The contrast between the conduct of this spoiled lordly brat and that of Rafik toward an old man was to me at the time most edifying. I felt an amusement toward Rafik, engendered as much by his trick as by the circumstances of his supposed rescue.

  Larghos was visibly recovering his composure, seeing that no real damage had been done to his establishment. He began to flutter about. So I wiped my blade tip on the corner of my old brown cloak, picked up my sack, cast a last look upon the assembled gaping patrons—remembering to bend over as I did so—and bid them all a pleasant Remberee.

  Then I stepped out of the Running Sleeth into the clean air and luminous suns-shine of Kregen.

  * * *

  Nine

  Nath the Gnat misses the Princess Majestrix

  Delphond is not as well served by the intricate canal system of Vallia as it might be, especially as it is an imperial province, descending in the imperial female line. This has served in the past as a distinct advantage and goes some way to explaining the surprising remoteness of much of the province, situated as it is relatively close to the capital. This fact, too, I suppose, does explain, as Delia maintains, why so many tides of conquest in the troubled history of Vallia have passed Delphond by with little destruction.

  The zorca ambled along the dusty road, kicking the thick white powder into a floating trail, and I jogged along, sunk in thought, yet still keeping that old sailor-man's weather eye open. The oiled steel blade was snicked back into its bamboo scabbard and now looked like any wandering laborer's stick.

  Making no attempt to discover the whereabouts of Rafik, I had simply ridden out of Arkadon. I could feel the muzziness clouding my head a trifle and a light-heaviness about my limbs; but, if necessary, I could go on swashing and fighting and drinking for another night or two without sleep yet. It is a knack. The rendezvous with Delia drew me on. The moment I reached Deliasmot where a canal trunk system terminated I would transfer to a narrow boat and be rapidly hauled all the way in first-class comfort.

  If Rafik was headed this way we would meet. I fancied I'd not seen the last of that golden numim with the sense of humor.

  The white road wound between cornfields, with orchards all green and shining beyond, rising and falling over the gentle countryside. The road remained deserted until a cloud of dust heralded a considerable party of country folk taking their produce into Arkadon. I was surprised. The quoffa carts trundled along. Men thwacked on krahniks loaded with bales and baskets. The calsanys trotted along in their strings of patient bearing. Women and children perched on the carts or walked together in the intervals. The men marched, I could swear, almost in the form of a guard, with a scouting party ahead riding preysanys, superior forms of calsanys, and carrying not only their sticks but spears and long-knives.

  They gave me highly suspicious looks. But I was alone, and so we exchanged Llahals and parted, and I spat dust until free of their trail.

  Logic told me that I did, indeed, look highly suspicious.

  Here I was, a raggedy old laborer with a tattered brown blanket cloak, bareheaded and barefoot, riding a well-groomed and, if not first water, then reasonably high-quality zorca. Yes. Logic told me the country people might well have thought it their business to stop me and question me. There would be a reward for the return of the zorca to its owner. They were not to know the Rapa masichieri lay with his blood spilling out into the Kregan dirt.

  But they had not stopped me. If anything, they had displayed so extreme a caution that it could be construed as fear.

  And this, in Sweet Delphond, Delphond the Blessed, the Garden of Vallia!

  The other interesting fact I had observed was simply that these country folk appeared to have shed their fat and lazy indifference. The men—abruptly, it seemed to me—presented an altogether new and different aspect. They had held their spears and long-knives with the firm determination of men intending to fight if they had to. This was remarkably unlike the usual attitudes I had encountered in Delphond.

  Ahead along the road the lath and plaster walls of a country inn came in sight, the red tile roofs shallowly peaked, the twisted chimneys lifting in welcome. No smoke rose from the chimneys. A window pane caught the red light of Zim and flashed. I perked up. Here was where I would repair the deficiencies missing breakfast was causing my stomach.

  I rode up, feeling cheerful, and the damne
d place was empty, deserted, with windows smashed and doors hanging loose and weeds choking the neat fenced gardens. I cursed. Just my luck to encounter a wayside inn that was derelict.

  “By Vox!” I said, aloud, thoroughly miffed. “By the disgusting bloated swag belly of Makki-Grodno! My throat is like the Ocher Limits."

  A voice spoke from the corner of the inn and I was off the zorca and under the eaves before the last words were uttered.

  'Temper, temper!” said this light voice. “If you would accept a Llahal and a drink of wine from a stranger, they are here for the asking."

  Cautiously, the hilt of bamboo in my right hand and the rest of the stick in my left, ready for emergencies, I peered around the corner. A man sat there on a pile of old sacks holding out a leather wine bottle. The spout was formed of balass, black and shining, stoppered with silver-wound ivory.

  “Wine, dom,” said this young fellow, smiling.

  “It is too early for wine,” I said, somewhat surlily. “But Llahal, I thank you and I will take a sip."

  I took the bottle. It was deliciously cool. I moistened my mouth—a light white Yellow Unction; so this fellow had a few silver coins to rattle in his pouch—and then took two measured swallows. I looked hard at this purveyor of wine. Young, in that way the Kregans, with their better than two-hundred-year life span look young, he had a peaked, cheerful face, with merry eyes and a droll mouth. He was dressed in a simple open-necked buff tunic and decent breeches. His boots were not black, being of a tan color, well-splashed with the white dust of the road. He had a scrip and a staff, and at his belt hung a strong lesten-hide satchel.

  I handed the wine bottle back. “My thanks, dom."

  “Oh, I am Covell. Men call me Covell of the Golden Tongue."

  “I have heard of you,” I said, pleased. “All Vondium rings with praises for your latest, Time Lost is Time Gained Hereafter,’ I believe. A fine poem."

  He laughed easily and drank wine himself, moderately.

  This Covell was by way of being a poet. I saw that he favored the unconventional life, in order to gain the experiences he distilled into his verses. Some of the older and sterner critics of Vallia condemned his work as trifling, but they were a trifle ossified, or so his supporters said.

  “What brings you here? Is Vondium too hot for you again?"

  “You know me then? Yes, a tavern brawl and an onker with a knife in his guts, he did not die. But the guards thought to lay me by the heels and question me, and I do not fancy mewing up. So I took to my travels again."

  “Who does? I am Nath the Gnat and—"

  “And,” he said easily, laughing, standing up, “and you are no laborer or farmworker, not even a cattleman. Whoever you are, Gnat is not the appellation for you, dom."

  I remembered to bend over at that, whereat he laughed again.

  “I have my hirvel tethered in the shade. Should we ride together? I heard uncommon evil stories of Blessed Delphond in these latter days."

  I fired up at this. If my Delia did not know what was going on in her estates, then it behooved me to find out.

  “Right willingly, Covell. But I am a laborer. That is true."

  I meant I labored for a living, not that I was a laborer who dug ditches or built walls. I fancied this Covell of the Golden Tongue understood.

  “There are fields of labor that demand other skills than brawny shoulders.” He picked up his satchel. “I labor with words, and damned intractable beasts they can be, as well as singing with golden wonder. Why I do so is beyond my limited understanding."

  He mounted up on his hirvel. The animal was a fine beast, superior to Whitefoot, whom I had slapped on the rump and sent off, knowing he would find his own way back to his owner. Covell eyed the zorca.

  “You are well mounted for a laboring man, Nath the Gnat."

  “The zorca came to me by way of a bequest from a dead man."

  He laughed again at this and shook his reins; together we rode gently along the dusty white road. He carried a long-knife like Oby's and, as far as I could see, no other weapon on his person, although a short blade mounted on a shaft some six feet in length was stuck down into a boot on his stirrup. His scrip and staff were slung onto the hindquarters of the hirvel, and rode a trifle awkwardly.

  So we rode along talking. It is not my intention to regale you with all we spoke of, but you may be very sure I soaked up all the information he gave, and as it bears on this my narrative I will tell you, all in due time.

  Covell mentioned the concern felt in Vondium over the continual unrest in the northeast of Vallia. Up there the folk were of altogether a more down-to-earth character, blunt, hardheaded, out for red gold and self-determination.

  Using some little skill I introduced a query about black feathers into our talk.

  He replied as an educated man interested in literature would reply, quoting The Black Feathers of Ulbereth the Dark Reiver, giving a stanza or two of that old epic fashioned from the legends of olden time. But that is another story.

  I judged that he did not dissemble and had not encountered the Black Feathers of the Great Chyyan. But I would not completely trust anyone in this thing.

  So, later, I mentioned the craze for flying fluttrells in Vondium, and suggested that flying a chyyan might be interesting. Whereat he said: “I have flown a fluttrell owned by a comrade, Nath ti Havring—and an experience it was, too!—but I am told by those who know about these things that chyyans are unridable. Surely, Nath the Gnat, it is zhyans you mean?"

  “Perhaps it is,” I said. “They are all foreign, out of Hamal. Give me a zorca."

  “Aye. But one day these great soldiers of ours will go up against Hamal, and we poets will be forced to sing their praises. I prefer to tune my songs to sweeter themes."

  “Amen to that."

  I pressed him to recite a line or two of his own, and nothing loath, for he loved an audience, he declaimed his “Ode to Dawning,” in which the red sun Zim and the green sun Genodras are apostrophized as mere balls of colored fire, without sentience, marvels of nature, bringing light to all men over the whole of Kregen. He added, when he had finished, that translating Zim to Far and Genodras to Havil ruined the feel of the piece. “I have a large contempt for religiosity in pious hypocrites. Opaz is well enough, I suppose, given as a sop. But a man's heart is his true religion."

  I made no direct answer. Rafik trusted in a right arm and a sword, and Covell in a man's heart. What, then, did I trust in? Anything at all apart from my Delia and the Krozairs of Zy?

  When I had first returned to Kregen after that hideous expanse of twenty-one years on Earth I had fancied Kregen had not changed. The more I learned the more I discovered that this marvelous world had changed, was changing and was like to change even faster as the days wore on.

  When Covell spoke of the emperor he simply laughed and made witty jokes. He did say that the taverns reeked with plots, and then contemptuously dismissed them as wine-soaked dreams. “Trouble is coming to Vallia, Nath the Gnat, and all men can see that plain. There is the northeast. There are the racters. There are other parties and plots. I want none of them! By Vox! I am a poet and as a poet will I live and die a happy man. All else is illusion."

  “You do not share the fear of the locals to travel alone?"

  “Do you?"

  “Ah, well, I was not fully aware of the situation, being a simple wandering laborer. If there is no work here by reason of the troubles—"

  “There are no troubles in Delphond, at least not yet. That is why I chose to travel here. But the lonely traveler is not as safe as he once was and isolated houses, like the inn where we met, are no longer little fortresses of peace. The damned aragorn prowl all the land—aye, and the racters aid and abet them. That is where their money comes from."

  “You do not like the racters?"

  “I dislike all political parties. I am an individual."

  “The people take precautions against drikinger."

  “Yes, but Delphond is n
ot an easy province for bandits."

  “So it is the slavers they fear?"

  “If the emperor and the Presidio do not act soon no one will be safe. Vallia is like to be torn asunder."

  Deliasmot was its usual charming, smiling self, a typically beautiful, easygoing, life-loving Delphondian town. Yet even here the new edginess was apparent, the more anxious demeanor, the stricter controls at the gates. Here Covell of the Golden Tongue and I parted, for he was contracted to give a recitation of his poetry, a declamation he called it, and I was for the canal and for pressing on to Drakanium where I would meet Delia.

  We made our Remberees and I expressed my disappointment at missing his declamation, for he was truly a golden voice, and then I hurried to the canal to make travel arrangements. The zorca ensured a ticket in a narrow boat. I found a quiet seat where I might watch the passing banks, sliding along all green and golden under the suns, and I dozed and took my meals with the best of them and kept to myself, tolerated here in Delphond, and so came at last gliding with the canalfolk all hauling lustily away under the stone vaulted archways of Drakanium's watergate.

  As a city, Drakanium was simply a larger edition of a Delphondian town, clean, neat, sparkling, bowered in vegetation, filled with the prosperous bustle of a contented folk—at least it had been. The city was just as clean and neat and the flowers bloomed magnificently and the fountains played. But the people hurried about their tasks with worried looks. A regiment of totrixmen were exercising on the parade ground and I judged by their antics they were newly formed. The Jiktar was near to apoplexy as he bellowed orders, and the awkward six-legged totrixes tangled up and squealed and the lances all slanted at odd angles. But they flew nice banners and flags.

  I had agreed to meet Delia at the best inn, instead of her villa here, to keep my cover. A hostler took in my message, giving me a sharp look as he went in through the lenken door under the glowing tiles, where the moon-blooms clustered thickly. Bees droned and the shadows lay across the stone-flagged court. I sat down on a bench and a serving wench brought out a flagon of best Delphondian ale. I quaffed it gratefully.