Talons of Scorpio

by Alan Burt Akers

  “You will all go home to your parents—” And, of course, that was the wrong thing to say. At that, they began to cry. The picture was obvious and ugly enough. So, to repair the damage, I told them that as soon as the nasty men had been dealt with we would find a new home with many sweets — in fact, I said, embroidering, “We will find you a home right next door to a Banje shop!”

  A Rapa blundered past with half his beak missing and his feathers bedabbled a brighter color than their usual green-gray. I merely watched him as he struggled to reach one of the other doors in this place, for the Devil’s Academy was well-provided with exits. Larghos the Flatch, sweeping his sword in a slashing cut very suitable for a Bowman to use, helped the Rapa on his way. I held the little Fristle Fifi’s hand, and the other children clustered around. Their eyes remained large and round and glistening.

  The noise quieted. The stink of spilled blood rasped in the close atmosphere. Pompino came over, looking as though he was halfway through a chore.

  “Fire, Jak,” he said. “Now we burn the accursed place.”

  “And hope the temple is handy.”

  “Too right, very handy, to be consumed also.”

  Larghos said: “That Rapa — he must be dying; but he dodged off. He could raise the alarm.”

  “Then settle him, lad, settle him!” boomed Cap’n Murkizon. “By the nit-infested armpits of the Divine Lady of Belschutz! Don’t waste your sympathy on these cramphs!”

  Larghos ran off, swirling his sword. Murkizon trundled along after. They were forming a right partnership, that pair.

  Quendur the Ripper said: “I am glad Lisa the Empoin is not here to witness this.” He shook his head, raffish, reckless yet trying to reform.

  “If she had been here,” Pompino told the ex-pirate, “she would have been more merciless than we mere men.”

  “Oh, aye. That is sooth.”

  I cocked an eye at Pompino. The Khibil brushed up his reddish whiskers. No doubt he was thinking of his wife, who nourished ideas above her station, and with whom Pompino no longer got on. A startling confirmation — a re-affirmation — in the coincidence of the actions of Pompino’s wife after a fight and what next occurred, a confirmation only that human nature is human nature, gave me a feeling of helplessness in the face of that very same human nature. Cap’n Murkizon returned to the chamber yelling with merriment. He fairly golloped out his glee.

  Following him walked Larghos the Flatch, his head bent a little to the side and over the sleek dark head of a naked girl who walked close to him. We all stared.

  “A cloak!” bellowed Murkizon. “To cover the Lady Nalfi!”

  Quendur leaped to one of the less distorted bodies and whipped off the brown tunic. The silver hem was only lightly bespattered. He took the garment across, saying: “Until we can find something better for the Lady Nalfi.”

  Larghos the Flatch took the tunic from Quendur. I noticed the officious way in which he acted, taking the tunic, fussing, handing it to the girl. She was in the first flush of womanhood, firm and rosy, with bright eyes in which a pain easily understood clouded the blueness. She lifted her arms and slipped the tunic on, shivering.

  “Thank you, Jikai,” she said in a small voice, speaking to Larghos. He was acting as though he’d received a thirty-two pound roundshot betwixt wind and water, so we all knew his business was done for.

  “The Rapa?” said Pompino, brushing aside what went forward, anxious to get on with the purpose.

  “He led me to the Lady Nalfi,” said Larghos. He spoke through lips stiff with some emotion we again envisaged as being all too easy to understand. “I cut him down. And a rast of a Chulik tried to bargain with us over the Lady Nalfi—”

  “Standing holding her!” roared Murkizon. “But she didn’t stay held long.”

  “She just took his dagger from his belt and slit his throat.” Larghos gazed fondly at Nalfi. “A brave act for a naked girl in so perilous a position.”

  She lowered her eyelids and leaned against Larghos.

  “I — I had to.”

  “Do not think of it, my lady, if it pains you—”

  “No, no. It is not that. Just—”

  Pompino burst over all this. “Find combustibles. Pile them up. Let us burn the place down and leave, for, by Horato the Potent, the stench is getting down my gullet!”

  As we busied ourselves over this task, I reflected that the adherents of Lem the Silver Leem hired mercenaries of a reasonably high quality. Also, while it is said that Chuliks and Rapas are hereditary enemies, this is not strictly and invariably true. Of course, some Chuliks and some Rapas are always at one another’s throats, just as there are misguided apims who are hereditary enemies — here on this Earth just as much as Kregen, more’s the pity. But an employer will hire on mercenaries from many different races, and they will serve alongside one another for pay, and not quarrel overmuch. This system, as I have indicated, works to the employer’s advantage in that there is less likelihood of plots against him or her from the ranks of the paktuns taking pay.

  The combustibles were set, the children and the Lady Nalfi drew away to a safe distance, and Pompino personally set the first flame.

  We had seen no sign of the Brukaj slave who waited on the man we had followed here, and I, for one, could entertain a hope that he had escaped. Slaves are controlled, and do not always believe what their masters or mistresses believe.

  Flames ran and crackled and laughed gleefully to themselves. Smoke began to waft in flat gray streamers, filling the place with a soft veil, hiding the horrors.

  Retracing our steps up the blackwood stairs we encountered the little Och woman at the top, wringing her hands, crying.

  Some of us were for cutting her down where she stood, there and then. Others of us, though, counseled mercy as we could not know the full story and there was certainly no time to wait to find out. Pompino shouted alarmingly, and the Och woman ran off, throwing her apron over her head. The rest of us, the children and the Lady Nalfi, came up and we headed for the front door.

  Now even on Kregen in a civilized city a cutthroat gang of rascals with blood-spattered clothing and blood-reeking swords will claim attention if they attempt to march down the High Street. We halted on the steps, staring about.

  The Lady Nalfi in her soft husky voice said: “I know a way. The back alleys. Come, quickly.”

  Agreeing, we trooped down the steps and cut into the side alley between this house and the next. Murkizon trod on a gyp which howled and scampered off with his tail between his legs. Nothing else untoward occurred as we hurried along the alleys, past the backs of stores and houses, and so came out to a place where three alleys met. Here stood — or rather leaned — a pot house of the most deplorable kind. Only four drunks lay in the gutter outside. No riding animals were tethered to the rail. The Suns shone, the air smelled as clean as Kregan air ever can smell clean.

  Pompino looked at Nalfi.

  Larghos held her close and it was clear he would not relinquish her.

  “If we clean off the blood—”

  Pompino nodded. So we all went at the pump outside the pot house, sluicing and sloshing. Larghos eyed the four drunks calculatingly; but Murkizon told him that their clothes were far too ragged — and alive — for the Lady Nalfi.

  Speaking in a solemn, careful way, in almost a drugged fashion, Larghos the Flatch said: “I shall see to it that the Lady Nalfi is dressed as befits her, in the most perfect clothes it is possible to find. Such beauty must be dressed in beauty.”

  Nalfi did not reply; but her blue gaze appraised Larghos. He swelled with the importance of the task he had set himself. Pompino caught my eye, and smiled; I did not respond. Not all marriages are made in Heaven, and not all end in Hell.

  When we were cleaned up we set off still keeping to quiet and less-frequented ways down to the docks.

  Confidentially, Pompino said to Cap’n Murkizon: “Captain. It would be best if you asked Larghos, quietly, what he knows of this Lady Nalfi
.”

  Murkizon leered; but agreed.

  The sea sprung no untoward surprises, sparkling pale blue with that tinge of deeper shadows past the rocks, which, in their furry redness sometimes looked perfectly in place and at others oddly out of keeping. Gulls flew up squawking as we walked along the jetty.

  “Thank the good Pandrite!” exclaimed Pompino when we saw our boat was still moored up. Looking back over the spires and pinnacles of the close-pitched roofs we could see no sign of smoke. Murkizon expressed himself forcibly on the subject of fires, and when, icily, Pompino requested that he make himself plain, the bluff captain shut up.

  But we knew what he was on about. Pompino had set the fires. We had all seen them burning, beginning to ease their way aloft. Why, then, had the godforsaken building not burned down?

  Not until we had pulled almost up to Tuscurs Maiden and the watch, hailing us, prepared to receive us aboard, could the first wafts of smoke be seen over the city.

  Pompino merely gave the smoke a single significant glance, and leaped up onto the deck. That glance spoke more eloquently than any “I told you so!”

  Standing on the deck I said to Pompino: “I know a man, a fellow by the name of Norhan the Flame. His hobby is throwing pots of blazing combustibles about.”

  “Aye, Jak. A handy fellow to have along now.”

  “Down in Hyrklana, though — I think, for he was moving around the last I heard.”

  “Don’t we all?”

  The breeze indicated a fair passage, the vessel was in good heart, if a trifle stormbeaten, and she’d been careened and scraped at Pomdermam. Over on the shore the smoke lifted and people moved about on the jetty. Two other argenters like Tuscurs Maiden lay moored up. Well, being North Pandahem craft they were not quite exactly the same as our vessel which hailed from South Pandahem.

  “It is reasonably doubtful, Pompino. But there is a chance we were observed. Therefore we may be followed.”

  “We may, indeed.”

  Climbing onto the quarterdeck Pompino radiated energy.

  “Captain Linson,” he said to the master. “While I do not profess to understand the tides and the winds as sailors do, and while it is true that I merely own the ship, I would like you to take us to sea and toward the west at this very moment.”

  Pompino, it seemed, had been learning that owners could not order their ships to perform evolutions like soldiers on a parade ground. His heavy-handed way with Linson, who was sharp, cutting, and with every instinct set on making a fortune from the sea, simply made the master even more indifferent. Linson was a fine sailor, knew his own mind, took enormous delight from tormenting Captain Murkizon, and was prepared to obey orders if they did not conflict too much with his own desires.

  “We are able to sail at once, Horter Pompino. I made certain arrangements when I — ah — observed the smoke.”

  “Did you now, by Pandrite!”

  As Cap’n Murkizon and I sailed as supernumeraries, we had no direct part to play in getting the ship to sea, apart from hauling on and slacking off and running. This sailor activity pleased me for reasons Murkizon, who had been born on Kregen as had everyone else as far as I knew, could never understand. As for Murkizon, that barrel of blow-hard toughness ached to eradicate the imagined slight upon his honor.

  The Lady Nalfi and the children, escorted below, were safely out of it. I caught Pompino’s eye as the canvas bellied and was sheeted home, and the ship began to come alive.

  “Linson could see the smoke before we could, as he was higher.”

  “Aye. Devilish smart is our master, Captain Linson.”

  “Aye.”

  Tuscurs Maiden heeled, took the breeze, and in a comfortable depth of water headed out past the Pharos. A few small craft bobbed here and there. The lookout sang out.

  We rushed to the aftercastle.

  “May Armipand the Misshapen take them!” burst out Pompino.

  With shining oars rising and falling like the fabled wings of a bird of prey, wedge-prowed, hard, a swordship pulled after us, her bronze ram bursting the sea into foam.

  Chapter three

  We sail for Bormark

  We stared aft as that cruel bronze rostrum smashed through spray after us. The oars rose and fell, rose and fell, beautiful in their way, derisive of the agony entailed in their hauling. Pompino stamped a booted foot upon the scrubbed deck.

  “Now I am growing heartily sick of this seafaring life, Jak! I thought buying a few ships and trading would turn an honest ob or two, in between serving the Star Lords. Yet it seems an honest sailorman’s life is bedeviled every which way he turns.”

  Somewhat drily, I said: “They are probably not pirates, Pompino. No doubt they are some of the Seaborne Watch of Peminswopt. They would like to ask us some questions.”

  Pompino eyed the pursuing craft meanly. She foamed along, yet I fancied that once we left the shelter of the cliffs she’d feel the bite of the sea and the thrust of the wind. Once out into the offing we should outrun her, if the breeze held.

  “This Kov of Memis runs a tidy province, I’ll say that for him.”

  “Do I detect a hint that our own young Kov Pando na Bormark does not?”

  “Ask his mother—”

  Involuntarily, I glanced down as though, foolishly, I could see through the solid planking of the deck into the aft staterooms. Sprawled on a seabed down there, Tilda — Tilda of the Many Veils, Tilda the Beautiful — would no doubt be drinking with a steady regularity from any of the splendid array of bottles provided. Never fully drunk, always a trifle lush, the Dowager Kovneva Tilda presented us with a sorry problem. We knew that the Star Lords, superhuman, almost immortal, unknowable, as I thought then, wished us to cleanse the province of Bormark of the Leem Lovers. We had burned a temple in the capital of Tomboram, Pomdermam, and now we had burned the Devil’s Academy in Peminswopt, in Memis. Next along the coast in the enormous curve of the Bay of Panderk lay the stromnate of Polontia. I had not yet made up my mind if we should stop there or make directly for Bormark, at the western frontier of the kingdom of Tomboram.

  The pursuing swordship foamed along. Long and lean like all her class, she presented only that wedge-shaped bow and the wings in their shining splendor, rising and falling, rising and falling. Faintly, borne across the breeze, the sound of the drum reached us.

  “They mean to catch us.”

  I made up my mind. As Pompino the Iarvin considered he led our partnership I had to put the decision to him tactfully; this was accomplished easily enough by spelling out our alternatives. Pompino nodded decisively.

  “Captain Linson!” he called. “We steer straight for Bormark!”

  Linson nodded, dark and smooth and as sharp as a professional assassin’s dagger. Tuscurs Maiden responded to a delicate helm, a trifle of canvas management. She headed directly for the open sea, bearing boldly out across the Bay. Soon the swordship was going up and down like a dinosaur in a swamp.

  “Hah!” shouted Pompino, filled with childlike glee. “They do not like that, by Horato the Potent, they do not!”

  “I,” I said with firmness, “am hungry.”

  “And I. Is there time to eat before—?”

  “He won’t catch us now. And his oarsmen will have shot their bolt soon enough. Poor devils.”

  By this time in our relationship, Pompino knew this was no idle remark. He agreed, commenting on his previous remarks about the plight of oarslaves. He had been made well aware that my face was firmly set against slavery.

  Sharp set, we went below.

  “Of course,” said Pompino as we entered his stateroom, “there remains the problem of the Kovneva Tilda.”

  “She expressed the firm desire to return home to Bormark. Our way lies in that self-same direction.” The table was spread with excellent promise, and I addressed myself as much to the viands as to Pompino. “And Pando will not be a long away from his estates, not with the trouble he has brewing there.”

  Biting into a succulent vosk
pie, well stoked with momolams and greens and with a gravy poured from the tables of the gods themselves, I realized how fatuous that remark was. On Kregen, wonderful, horrible, fascinating, trouble is always brewing — if it is not already here and hitting you in the back of the neck.

  “Did you follow all that rigmarole of the love lives of these folk?” Pompino spoke around a leg of chicken that dribbled gravy into his whiskers. This he wiped away at once with a clean yellow cloth. Khibils are fastidious folk.

  “Most. It is not an unfamiliar pattern—”

  “Oh, agreed. I meant how can we turn it to our own ^benefit?”

  Sharp, too, are Khibils, especially those dubbed the Iarvin.

  I speared a momolam and lifted it. Tuscurs Maiden, in Limki the Lame, boasted a cook to be prized. In this, Linson merely emphasized his own approach to the important things of life. I squinted at the momolam, the small yellow tuber glistening and delicious and aching to be tasted.

  “Whoever supports us in opposition to Lem receives our support in their amorous designs? Is that it?”

  “Aye. Probably.”

  “Too simple, my friend.”

  “Nothing is simple where you’re concerned, Jak.”

  I placed the momolam into my mouth and shut my eyes and chewed. Pompino was right, confound it!

  I wondered what would chance if the Star Lords dispatched Pompino to Vallia to sort out a problem for them and we met up. I’d have a deal of explaining to do then, by Vox!

  He waggled his knife at me.

  “Your young friend Pando, the Kov of Bormark, is a rascal and yet a very very highly placed noble. He means to have his own way with this girl and to Cottmer’s Caverns with his cousin Murgon.”

  Refusing to be drawn into a wrangle about Pando’s character I said: “The Everoinye have commanded us to go and burn Lem’s temples. So this we do. We are going to burn as many temples as we can find in the kovnate of Bormark. Young Pando is the kov. A great deal of his property is going to be burned up when the temples are destroyed. What, Pompino, do you think the young rascal of a kov will say to that?”