Talons of Scorpio

by Alan Burt Akers

  Toward the corner of the building I came across a stairway leading up. Just a simple wooden affair, it led through an opening onto a higher corridor. At the foot stood a man in half-armor, carrying a sword, who stared at me in my leem mask and said: “They have all gone, no one—”

  He said no more as he sank down, mightily surprised, I feel sure, that the world had gone black. I dragged him into a doorway and left him breathing heavily, out to the wide, and padded quietly up the wooden stairs.

  These old buildings are often warrens of tiny rooms. The sound of voices led me to a narrow window at the side of a closed door. There were two voices, and one of them was Murgon’s. Without a doubt. I remembered that harsh, overpowering and yet resigned voice. The other voice was that of a woman.

  I put my eyeball around the edge of the narrow window, looked in, and listened.

  “You will marry and that’s an end of it!” Murgon’s voice pulsed with menace.

  The woman was the one I’d seen ride up here closely surrounded by her escort. Her pallid face, still half hidden by the flap of her hat, looked distraught.

  “I cannot, Murgon! It is against nature to ask me!”

  “You will!” He reached out both hands and shook her by the shoulders. He put his face close to hers, shouting. “You will!”

  “No — please—”

  He had his two cronies with him, the giant malevolent Chulik, Chekumte the Fist, and the sly and slinky Dopitka the Deft. They stood to one side, watching, ready instantly to do whatever Strom Murgon commanded them.

  The woman crumpled. She slid to her knees, her arms trailing down Murgon’s body. She stared up under that silly hat.

  “Dafni,” said Murgon in that grating voice. “There is no sense arguing. This you must do — this you will do!”

  As though unable to argue longer, her head lowered, and she lay, trembling, grasping his knees. It was not an edifying scene.

  Murgon gestured to his henchmen.

  “Take the vadni away.” Then he added, almost as an afterthought: “Treat her gently.”

  The two plug uglies started forward.

  Now, as I may have mentioned before, on Kregen it seems to me rescuing ladies from villains is a perfectly normal occupation. You usually have to be quick. There is no sense in hanging about. Unlike other normal occupations on Earth, it’s a job at which you can get yourself very messily killed.

  Still wearing the snarling silver leem mask I kicked the door in and leaped.

  Chekumte the Fist simply hauled out his sword and rushed at me. His tusks, gilded and polished, caught the light from the samphron-oil lamp. His dangling pigtail flew out like a bolt of blue rope. I did to him what Pompino had already done once and he flew up and over and fell, to lie snorting. Then I did to Dopitka the Deft what Quendur the Ripper had done to him and he fell to lie beside his fellow.

  Murgon’s rapier was out.

  As he flew at me he tangled up with the lady Dafni. I eluded that first attack, gripped his wrist, ready to pull, twist or break, and Dafni, shrieking, fell all over us. Murgon caught me a nasty whack alongside the head. For a moment dizzied, I stumbled back. The rast nearly had me and I just managed to evade his savage thrust. Dafni fell all asprawl against him, I jumped up, head ringing, to hit him and he toppled back over the girl. His head hit the floor. He sprawled, rapier tinkling away. I shook myself.

  The blow had struck shrewder than I’d realized. Maybe there was not the full campanological chorus of Beng Kishi’s famous Bells, but my head clanged like an old bucket kicked over down an alley on a moonless night.

  A hand to my head I staggered up. The four of them slumbered. What a mess! Vadni Dafni came up in my fists and I slung her over my shoulder. She flopped like a sack of meal.

  “By Krun!” I said to myself. “The things a fellow does!”

  Out the doorway and with a swift look up and down — no one in sight — and a careful pad down the stairs — still no one about — and a cautious quiet prowl along the dusty corridor — and still no one to challenge me. I could taste the dust on my tongue. The smells were laced by the after-scents of the dancing girls’ perfumes.

  There seemed to me to be few chances of getting away scot free. Someone was going to be about still, that is the nature of the beast. Instead of re-entering the temple area I turned in the other direction and wended on, looking for the first doorway out. That the door I found was bolted had little to do with it. I put the lady Dafni down, propped against the wall — where she immediately flopped over like a baby — and gave the door a thumping kick. The bolt snapped.

  The night breeze blew in, scented with the fragrance of moonblooms. Moons shine glistered on cobblestones. A corner of the building jutted here in an angle where the roof dropped low, and a couple of the loungers who did not lounge were just strolling back. Watching them, I waited until they turned in their apparently casual amble. Then I leaped.

  The luck that was with me in that they had been at the far end of their patrol when I’d kicked the door open persisted. Both men went down without a sound. I straightened. For all I could see in the Moons shine, no one had seen me.

  I ran around to the front of the building. A couple of the hostlers in their brown tunics hung about, and the stalls contained perhaps a dozen or so riding animals. My freymul was brought out and I mounted up. Over this matter of tipping, a little dash, I could betray myself if they didn’t go in for it between the members of the cult here in Port Marsilus; and although it went against the grain to hand out money to the people in brown tunics, I handed down a couple of silver coins.

  “Our thanks,” said the fellow with the most silver spattered over the brown. He took the money all right.

  I trotted off, letting Frupp flick his head up and down as though pleased to see me again.

  By the time I’d ridden around to where the door I’d broken open flapped more than I liked, I was reassured that the hostlers suspected nothing. Also the pain in my head, still throbbing, was beginning to lose some of the scarlet claws that dug into my brain.

  The lady Dafni lay half on her side, half on her front, sprawled, and she made snoring sounds that, I felt convinced, would have offended her had she known she was making them. I hefted her up, went outside and arranged her across Frupp. Freymuls, like zorcas, are close-coupled animals with room enough for two people if they squeeze up tighter than peas in a pod. I decided to walk alongside. The silver leem mask would have to come off now. It had served well, the damned thing, and I stowed it away in the velvet pouch.

  Frupp and I with our limp burden walked sedately through the nighted streets of Port Marsilus.

  There was going to be a pursuit, as surely as Zim and Genodras would rise in the morning sky.

  No sense in rushing along in a galloping lather, attracting the attention of everybody on the streets this late. Just a nice careful walk along in the shadows, with the girl over the saddle held gently, and Frupp acting as though well aware that he carried a burden somewhat different from that to which he was accustomed.

  In the kyro where we had first been ambushed I wended around on the shadowed side. The memory of that first attack made me screw my head around, watching every opening and doorway. A couple of passersby gave me a look; but I’d put on a nondescript face, one of the sort that Deb-Lu-Quienyin called a gyp-face, quite unremarkable. Deb-Lu’s powers as a Wizard of Loh had enabled him to overcome ferocious sorceries, and give me sage advice, and they had taught me through his own charisma how to alter my own harsh physiognomy.

  She of the Veils rode the night sky, flirting with skirts of cloud, gilding the night with beauty, casting roseate shadows through which I walked with Frupp at my side. The lady Dafni was showing signs of returning consciousness, and I wanted to be along the avenue and into the palace before she awoke.

  The guards in their little sentry boxes were a couple of Fristles I recognized, men serving under ord-Deldar Naghan the Pellendur who, I trusted, was keeping the palace functioning a
nd intact. I say I recognized these two cat-men; they did not recognize me.

  They stepped out and the two spears slapped across forming a saltire to bar onward progress. I halted and Frupp let a little ripple of breath escape his nostrils. I patted his neck, and said: “All right, all right, old lad. The stables and a bale of hay are coming right up.” Then, to the Fristles: “Lahal, doms. Naghan the Pellendur, ord-Deldar. He’ll want to see me at once, or before that if it were humanly possible. I’ll wait inside, if I may, while you summon him or a patoc — patoc Lurgan Crooknose might be on duty now, might he not?”

  Lurgan Crooknose happened to be a Fristle whose name I recalled from hearing Naghan the Pellendur bellowing at him.

  The cat-men took no offense at my easy way; they carried out their duties punctiliously, bidding me stand fast, not letting me through the gate — whereat although not faulting them I waxed a trifle warm, and looked back over my shoulder — waiting until patoc Froindarf the Clis arrived.

  I said: “Patoc. Kov Pando sends me with this lady to his palace. You—”

  He interrupted. “You seem to know a deal about us. You ask for Naghan the Pellendur, so you must know he commands here while the cadade is away. Yet — how could you know this if you did not spy on us?”

  Mind you, I ought to have got rid of that confounded gyp-face before this; but I’d been dwelling on other items in the night’s doings. I went on with great patience, realizing the farcical waste of time this was; but trapped by my own stupid cleverness.

  “You are right to say I spy — but I spy for Kov Pando.” He moved across to the freymul and lifted a hand. One of the guards hauled a torch from its becket and swung it over Frupp.

  “This lady,” said patoc Froindarf the Clis. “This is the Vadni Dafni! You’d better bring her in.” He ran back to the gate and helped to open it wider, and yelled: “Send for handmaidens! Hurry! The vadni needs assistance!”

  Frupp ambled through. Just as the gate was pushed shut, and I put my shoulder to it, I can assure you, I saw through the closing gap a string of torches debouching from the avenue, and the dark exaggerated forms of zorca riders, and the wink of steel. The gate slammed solidly. I let out a breath. And — I nearly lost that gyp-face. It did not sting overmuch, and I could hold it for some time.

  The courtyard buzzed with activity. Naghan the Pellendur arrived, sorted out the confusion, and came over to Frupp. Dafni was assisted down. She opened her eyes as she stood up, supported by a couple of scantily dressed handmaidens hastily dug out, and she looked about in a bewildered way.

  “It is all right, my lady,” I said. “There is nothing to fear.”

  “Where — oh, this is Pando’s palace — I recognize — what? How did I...? Murgon!”

  “Hush, my lady. Murgon need no longer concern you. You have been rescued from his clutches—”

  For a moment I thought she would collapse again. The handmaidens held her, trying to fuss, patting her clothes straight. Then she drew a deep breath and opened her eyes and looked at us surrounding her. She could see the concern on our faces.

  “By the agate-winged jutmen of Hodan-Set,” she whispered. “It is scarcely to be believed.”

  “Kov Pando will be here soon. You must rest and recover from your ordeal.”

  “Ordeal? Yes, you are right. You were the man who burst in wearing the silver mask? Yes, I remember—”

  “Then forget that, my lady. Murgon can no longer harm you here. You are now under Kov Pando’s protection. All his people will care for you.”

  “Pando... So I am here, then. It is da’eslam. What I am fated to do I will do. Da’eslam.”

  The lady Dafni Harlstam, Vadni of Tenpanam, put out a trembling hand to clutch at the handmaid, and she burst into a torrent of tears.

  Chapter sixteen

  Mindi the Mad

  The lady Dafni, so Tilda had told us, was a vivacious girl.

  Tilda was right.

  Too right.

  There are a couple of apocryphal squibs, not, I hasten to point out, attributed to San Blarnoi, which go something like: “Why is language called the mother tongue, because father doesn’t often get to use it; and when a woman tells a doctor she is exhausted he asks to see her tongue.”

  Yes, Dafni chattered.

  She recovered from what she kept on referring to as her “Ordeal.” When, the following morning, I turned up in different clothes and wearing my ordinary face, I was able to ooh and aah along with the rest as she told her story again and again. Vivacious. Yes, she was that, all right. That and a lot, a whole lot, more.

  Pompino and Framco the Tranzer arrived back during the day. They brought all the people with whom they had set out, not having lost a soul. They did not return with Tilda or Twayne Gullik.

  Pompino was disgusted.

  “Not a sight of ’em. Then we got a trail, turned out to be a bunch of idiot Ifts taking supplies back to their forests. Waste of time, complete and utter.”

  “You did not send a message.”

  “Not send a message? Of course we sent a — oh!”

  I waited.

  We were sitting in the mess hall, drinking sazz and parclear, for it was too early for wine. Framco said: “That messenger, then, either betrayed us or was waylaid.”

  “But you returned with everyone—”

  “A numim who said he was going to the Zhantil Palace — he was not a great lord; but he had a retinue of stout fighting men — took the message.”

  “And you trusted him?”

  “He was clearly a man of honor—”

  “All numims look like that, for the sake of Pranxco the Gullible!”

  “Well—” began Pompino truculently.

  “Did he give you a name?”

  “Of course. We made the pappattu. He was Mazdo the Splandu.”

  I said nothing more on that, and changed the subject of conversation immediately, by trying to tell Pompino that my priorities had changed, and not tell him why.

  “Leaving me to burn the temples?” he said, outraged. “Here I’ve been traipsing up and down those diabolical forests and you’ve been idling your time away here! By Horato the Potent, Jak! What are you up to?”

  I couldn’t tell him that these confounded people were hiring on an army to invade my home country. Rather, I could tell him, and after all the marvelings and wonderings, he’d just say something like: “Well, you know, Jak. You have to serve the Star Lords first!”

  To hell with that. I had to stop these villains from invading Vallia. That was the priority number one.

  “There wasn’t time to burn the temple in the old theater because I was rescuing the lady Dafni at the time.”

  “Yes, yes, a fine handy piece of work. But the temple is still there!”

  “I,” I said with a great show of magnanimity, “left it all for you!”

  “In all this,” put in Framco the Tranzer. “What of the Kovneva Tilda?”

  There was no sensible answer we could give to that heartfelt question.

  I did not want to lose my freymul, Frupp, for I had grown attached to him. So I hummed and hawed, and then said: “There was a fellow in a silver leem mask who helped me with the lady Dafni. He brought her back on my freymul. Nath the Bludgeon, he said his name was. Useful. He—”

  “Ah!” said Pompino, brushing up his whiskers. “Now we are getting the truth! This fellow Nath the Bludgeon did all the rescuing while you were admiring the scenery — I see!”

  “We-ell,” I said, choking up a trifle, and determined not to let Pompino catch on.

  “So now perhaps we’ll find the real reason you didn’t burn the confounded temple!”

  I was saved on that one by the arrival of Constanchoin, just about recovered although still inclined to shiver a trifle when he saw me — which was a pity, really. He thumped his black balass wood staff down. He looked put out.

  “All these children!” he said, crossly. “Do you know anything about them? They’re running everywhere like a flood
of tinklehoils who’ve just lost their tails.”

  “Ah, now,” I said, and leaned back in my chair, and picked up a paline from the pottery dish. “Well, now—”

  “Yes, Horter Jak?” Constanchoin had learned one lesson, apparently.

  “They are the guests of Kov Pando. He will welcome them when he arrives. Just give them lots of sweets — bring in a Banje shop’s stock, if you can.”

  “But they’re getting everywhere! I just managed to stop them swinging on the bellropes—”

  Framco the Tranzer started up, aghast.

  “By Odifor! If they ring the bells...!”

  “Quite,” said Constanchoin in a kind of moan. “What are we to do?”

  “Keep them occupied.” I was glad the girl sacrifices were safe; they were the past at the moment, and only in the future would they become part of the present. That damned army recruiting to sail against Vallia... That was the conundrum.

  Murgon and the army, they were the present and immediate future. But I could not abandon Pompino. So I said: “They postponed their diabolical ceremony until tonight. No doubt they’ll buy some more sacrifices.” I rattled through what had happened with the smells and the bathing glossed over. Constanchoin, clearly, wanted to hear nothing of this and took himself off. Framco listened, pulling his whiskers and every now and again saying: “I don’t know what we are to do.”

  Pompino crowed. “So you’ve been to the place twice, and it still stands! And all these girls—”

  Warm, I snapped out: “We’ll burn the dump tonight, if you wish. But we’ll have to get any more sacrifices out first. You burned a temple here. I do not see it has lessened the worshippers’ zeal in the slightest.”

  “By Horato the Potent! You speak hard!”

  “As I told you; we have to find a more successful method of uprooting the cult than merely burning temples. We have to change the minds and hearts of the worshippers—”

  “Part their heads from their shoulders. That’ll change their minds, ha!”

  The arguing and wrangling went on and then, with an amusement in which I delighted, I remembered the catty remarks about Dafni and her incessant chattering. By Vox! These men had been nattering away fit to rival Dafni in full flow.