Talons of Scorpio [Dray Prescot #30]

by Alan Burt Akers

  “They're over now—"

  “Aye, thank all the gods. But we hear tales of those Shtarkins who raid and burn. No coasts are safe, it seems, these days."

  He had his worries, we had ours. That is how the worlds roll on. We drank and waited for the rain to stop and took little notice of the company in Fandarlu the Franch's The New Frontier.

  Cap'n Murkizon, anxious to put right what he considered a slur upon his honor, wanted to know more about the plans to burn the accursed temple here in Peminswopt.

  Pompino explained enough, and little at that.

  “This hateful cult of Lem the Silver Leem—” and he kept his voice low—very low “—appears in different guises from country to country. The king here, this flat slug of a King Nemo the Second, supports the religion. It is spoken of a little more openly, and more people know of the Brown and Silvers. But they like to keep their secrets. They use passwords and secret signs. And they torture and sacrifice little children."

  Murkizon drank ale, and his fists clenched on the jar. He said nothing.

  Quendur the Ripper, raffish and reckless and almost a reformed character, said: “When I was a render adventuring for my own profit and leading a band of bloodthirsty pirates, we never did that. It would not occur to any civilized man."

  “Draw your own conclusions."

  Larghos the Flatch poured more ale and pushed the jar across to Murkizon. “Civilized people might think to raise a Great Jikai against this evil cult."

  “Many do not believe what they cannot grasp. The secret powers of the Leem Lovers are great; men and women disappear in the night, others are assassinated. The followers of the Silver Wonder have friends in the highest places. The Jikai against them is difficult—"

  Murkizon looked at the jar Larghos pushed across, down at the one in his fists and saw that it was empty. He exchanged the jars, drank, wiped his lips, and said: “Anything worth doing is difficult. This is not anything like the fight against the Shanks.” He clamped his heavy lips shut. No one said any more about that fight, in which Murkizon had been absolutely in the right to suggest we should not fight, and when we had fought he had taken his part right royally.

  Outside in the rain a file of soldiers wended past, hunched in their capes. Their flag hung wet and shining. This was the flag of Tomboram, a solid blue with the symbol of a quombora, a fabled beast all fangs and spits of fire. Tomboram utilizes the system of having a simple national flag which is differenced by each sub-use, so that the Kov of Memis charged the blue with a silver full-hulled argenter, and Pando over in Bormark where we were bound had a golden zhantil emblazoned in the center of his blue flag. This is an interesting tradition of a number of nations on Kregen. I looked at what trotted along after the soldiers.

  Sleek and shining in the rain, the lethal forms of werstings appeared to undulate like a river in spate, so close their backs were packed. Black and white striped hunting dogs, werstings, vicious and trained to hunt and kill. Yet they have only four legs, and not over-large jaws or fangs. The pack humped along, chained together, and led by their Hikdar, who carried his switch tucked under one arm.

  “Werstings,” said Quendur. “Now those I do not like."

  “Out in the rain?” said Pompino. “Some poor devil is for the chop, then, that is sure."

  The landlord, Fandarlu the Franch, came back to our table. He looked after the last of the werstings, loping along with tucked-in tails, and made a face. When he offered to refill our jars, we refused, for the rain was easing and the first hints of ruby and jade across the street gave evidence that the twin suns of Kregen, Zim and Genodras, once more deigned to smile upon the world.

  “Thank you, landlord,” said Pompino, standing up. “Here is the reckoning.” He put a handful of coins on the table. The others nodded and smiled, pleased that the Owner had treated them. We went outside where the air held that freshly scrubbed after-rain tang. Water ran in the gutters. People began appearing on the street. A few birds climbed away from the eaves where they had sheltered, heading out for the fish quays. They were gulls and small birds, not saddle flyers.

  “A nice place, The New Frontier,” commented Pompino as we walked along. “Clean and respectable."

  I felt like stirring Pompino a little. Now the landlord's nickname of Franch means a fellow who thinks a lot of himself, and is able to prove it. It is not in the same category as Iarvin. So I said: “His nickname suited him, no doubt. Perhaps they are all cut from the same cloth hereabouts."

  He stopped and glared at me. He took my meaning. Then he laughed. Pompino Scauro ti Tuscursmot, called the Iarvin, can laugh as only a Khibil can. For Khibils are a mighty supercilious folk, highly hoity-toity in their ways and when they laugh they relax from that high posture and let it all roll out.

  “And there,” he said when he stopped laughing, “is the fellow we need.” He nodded his head.

  Indeed, there was the man. He strutted along the street pompously, swinging a golden-headed balass cane. His clothes ballooned splendidly, laced with gold and silver, wired with gems. His hat glistened, the arbora feathers flaring. A few paces to his rear trotted along a Brukaj, patient, docile, carrying a satchel which no doubt contained all the fussy necessaries this puffed-up personage required from time to time.

  The object which unmistakably told us that this was, indeed, the man we required, was pinned to his lapel. A small silver brooch, fashioned in the form of a leaping leem, and with a tuft of brown feathers setting it off.

  “They are more open, up here,” I said.

  “They are safe, the cramphs. If you do not know what the silver leem and the brown feathers mean, then you do not matter. And if you do know, then you had best walk small and keep a still tongue in your head, otherwise you're likely to find yourself in the gutter with a slit throat."

  “Aye. You have the right of it."

  Murkizon said in his thunder-growl voice: “Shall I twist his arm a little?"

  “When we are safe from observation. And the poor Brukaj slave will have to be attended to."

  “I,” said Quendur the Ripper, who had once been a pirate, “will treat him with great courtesy."

  We followed this glittering popinjay in an unobtrusive way among the growing crowds. His slave carried the furled-up rain-shedder, a kind of umbrella, over his shoulder, and looked miserable. The popinjay himself carried a multi-colored kerchief in his hand, with which he made much gallant play to passing ladies and acquaintances. He also carried strapped to his waist a rapier and main gauche. For all his dandified looks, he'd be able to use the weapons. On Kregen weapons are carried for a purpose, and those that carry them are expert in their use. Those that are not are dead.

  As the suns shone down and we dogged our quarry, I qualified that thought. Not everyone on Kregen is a roistering rapscallion of an adventurer, and, in addition, there are those who carry weapons and who have only a modicum of skill in their use. Usage and custom dictate where the twain shall meet, if they do, and how they shall conduct themselves.

  “He is making for the zorcadrome, I believe,” said Pompino. “The thought of a fine dainty zorca saddled to support that bulk offends me."

  “You are right, and you are wrong."

  “What, Jak? What in the name of—?"

  “You are right to say he is no zorcaman, despite they are sturdy and strong and always willing. You are wrong to say he is going to the zorcadrome. Look. That is his destination."

  The fellow we followed in our unobtrusive way lumbered up the steps of a building that gave no indication of its use. It was simply a three-storeyed structure, one of a row in this street, with a fantastical array of pointed roofs and toppling spires and chimneys. The slave Brukaj followed and the door closed after him.

  “How long is the ninny going to stay in there, wherever he is?” demanded Murkizon.

  Before Pompino had time to speak, I said: “Well, I for one do not intend to hang about to find out."

  They looked at me. To give my com
rade his due he grasped my meaning before the others. Larghos the Flatch started to say: “What, Horter Jak! Giving up so soon!"

  Pompino broke in. “And I am with you!"

  “Good,” I said, and wasted no more words. Across the street, dodging a smart carriage drawn by freymuls, up the steps and a thunderous tattoo on the door, I gave Pompino no chance to dart in front. He was at my side as the door opened.

  A small Och woman—and Ochs are small in any case—turned her head up to regard us. She wore a decent black dress and a yellow apron and her hair was covered in a white lace coif. Pompino spent two heartbeats staring vacantly down the brown-varnished hall with its side tables and vases of flowers before he looked down at the little Och lady.

  “Yes?” Her voice held the timbre of a saucepan struck by a carving knife.

  “Ah...” said Pompino.

  He stared at me with the same vacant look.

  I said in as cheerful a voice as I could manage: “Pray pardon, madam. Is Horter Naghan Panderk at home?"

  The name just jumped into my head—Naghan as one of the more common Kregish first names, Panderk for the bay of that name.

  She looked me up and she looked me down. Her nose wrinkled just a trifle.

  “There is no one here of that name."

  I looked suitably flabbergasted. Pompino picked it up at once.

  “Surely there must be, madam? This is where he lives."

  She shook her head and made shooing motions.

  Maybe Pompino had picked up more than he ought to have done. Maybe this place was not a house where people lived at all. As though confirming that notion a hulking great Chulik of a fellow hove into view along the passageway. His yellow-skinned face and the upthrusting tusks at each corner of his mouth bore down on us, together with his beetling brows and his thin lips and his iron armor and his sword.

  Perfectly normal to have a watchman, a sensible precaution in a chancy world, of course—but this fellow bore down with so evident an intention of picking us up by the scruff of our necks, of smiting at us with his sword, of doing us a mischief, that the normality of the custom vanished instantly.

  He wore brown and silver favors, and that condemned him in our eyes.

  “Out!” he roared. “Schtump!"

  “Now this,” said Pompino, and he spoke almost gratefully. “Is more like it!"

  At that instant the terrified scream of a child rocketed up through the house, bounced along the corridor in a shriek of agony.

  “Devil's work!” yelled Pompino.

  Together, shoulder to shoulder, we charged past the little Och woman and slap bang into the raging Chulik beyond.

  * * *

  Chapter two

  The Devil's Academy

  If the famous Watch of Peminswopt of whom Renko the Thief was so scared had chanced by just then and seen a wild bunch of ruffians breaking into what seemed a private house, they would have taken us for reivers, criminals, bandits. That piercing scream proved otherwise.

  The little Och woman toppled sideways, unharmed as we crashed past. Pompino dealt with the Chulik in a summary fashion. The man was unready for such a swift and headlong assault, and he went down soundlessly.

  We roared on along the passage.

  “Down there!” yelled Pompino and we clattered down the blackwood stairs leading off at a right angle at the turn of the corridor. The others whooped after us. A vague orange glow from the edges of a door at the foot of the stairs abruptly bloated into brilliance. The door smashed open as Pompino put his foot to it. We all rushed through. The room beyond held four more Chuliks in iron armor and wearing brown and silver. Their weapons glistened in that orange light.

  They did not hesitate. They launched themselves at us in a feral onslaught designed to smash us instantly, with no questions asked. Pompino yelled, Cap'n Murkizon's axe whistled about, Larghos switched his sword forward. Quendur simply slid down and along the polished floor on his seat and skewered upwards. A nasty trick—dangerous, of course; but then that was Quendur the Ripper, reckless and swashbuckling. I joined them and in a trice the Chulik guards were overpowered.

  “They were not guarding that entrance for nothing,” quoth Pompino. His sword indicated the curtained doorway at the far end.

  The shrill and agonized scream broke out again, ending in a ghastly bubbling wheeze.

  “Hurry! Before we are too late!"

  The curtains whisked aside.

  Pompino used his sword to open the drapes; what we saw beyond convinced us that swords would have to be used for a grimmer purpose before we were done with this place.

  “The Devil's Academy!” Pompino's words summed up that scene. The man we had followed was in the act of dressing himself in clothes suitable for what went forward here. His assistants, meek, frightened, pallid men and women, fussed over him, oblivious of our entry. The room's lamps shed that orange light upon the cages and the basalt slabs, the racks of knives and saws. For a foolish moment I thought we might have stumbled upon a surgeon's operating room; but I saw no signs of tar barrels, and Kregans do not operate in quite that way. The man in the blood-stained smock over his brown and silver looked up. His fingers ran with blood. The girl child upon the slab would not live, not now. The saw in the man's fingers was a single bar of crimson.

  He shouted: “Who are you?” And then, quickly: “Guards! Guards!” For he saw our swords and understood what they meant.

  The man we had followed struggled to get either into or out of the smock his attendants fussed with, and he, too, screamed for guards. It was quite clear what was going on. As Pompino said, this was the place where the priests of Lem learned their butcher's trade.

  We were too late to save the child who had screamed and so brought us here; we could try to save the four other children, three girls and a boy, penned in the iron cages against the walls. Their hands and feet were bound, and they wore blindfolds and were gagged. We did not think it was from concern over their feelings that they were thus blindfolded.

  The half-dozen or so younger men in the ubiquitous brown and silver standing goggling to one side must be the acolytes, the trainees. Here they were taught the finer arts of sacrifice.

  With a shout of pure horrified anger, Pompino threw himself forward. The others followed, yelling. This, I thought, was what the Star Lords wanted us to do, eradicate Lem the Silver Leem, root and branch. I gather that here on this Earth there have been discovered recently something over two hundred sub-atomic particles, including leptons, and things called glues which hold, or appear to hold, quarks together within protons. I'm pretty confident that the Star Lords know of many more sub-atomic particles if there are many more to know. These sacrifices were being divided and sub-divided, like atoms, into sub-atomic, sub-human, particles. If this was Lem's idea of scientific research, then the Star Lords had our whole allegiance in putting a halt to it. So, nauseated, I dived into the fray, and my prime object was not revenge but to get the four children safely out of it.

  The flash of sword flickered in a most particular and sinister fashion in that pervasive orange light. My comrades rushed upon the adherents of the Silver Wonder. I turned toward the cages.

  As the clangor of the fight broke out at my back I looked at the cages. The iron bars bulked each with a heavy full roundness that told of strength sufficient to hold not only children. Leems would be kept penned there when required. The bolts were shot home, the locks clumsy and intricate. To one side two angerims gaped upon the scene.

  Sharp-toothed are angerims, all hair and ears, and as a race of diffs who are not Homo sapiens they are an untidy, messy lot. Staring at me they backed off, holding their mop and broom up as though they were weapons.

  “Just give me the keys,” I said. For the key ring at the taller of the two's waist spoke eloquently.

  “Keep off!” screeched one angerim, his hair sprouting everywhere, half-concealing his brown breechclout.

  “Run!” yelped the other.

  They threw down the
mop and the broom and started to run toward a small door set abaft and to the side of the cages. Opaz alone knew what maze they'd disappear into if they escaped through that exit. I sprinted after them.

  In their mad flight they kicked over a metal bucket containing bits and pieces. The floor stained red and slippery. I jumped. They almost reached the door when I realized this was no way to get the keys.

  Instantly, I yanked out my old sailor knife, poised, and threw.

  The broad blade pierced the thigh of the taller angerim and he toppled over, screeching. His companion did not wait about but simply wrenched open the door and leaped through with a long wailing cry. In a heartbeat I reached the fallen diff, saw that he would live if he reached a needleman in time, and took two things from him—one the key ring and the other my sailor knife.

  The noise spurted up as Pompino and his crew sorted out the problem of the Leem Lovers. The third key fitted the lock and the first cage swung open.

  The best plan would be to open all the cages first and then to release the bonds and the blindfolds. To do it the other way around would see the first child running screaming every which way, probably to fling himself in the way of a sword.

  Each cage opened with its own individual key. A neat touch. Remaining on the clumsy iron ring three keys promised other doors in this place it might be worth the opening. I glanced over my shoulder. The acolytes had either run or been cut down. The two chief butchers, the instructors, must have attempted resistance, for the body of one still clutched in one half-severed hand a broken sword. The other vomited out his life over the corpse of the child.

  From the distant end of this unpleasant chamber the guards at last appeared. A group of half a dozen or so Rapas rushed into sight. Predatory, beaked and feathered, their vulturine features convulsed with killing fury, the Rapas hurled themselves at Pompino and his men. No doubt they intended to avenge their paymasters.