Talons of Scorpio

by Alan Burt Akers

  So — I took heart!

  “Listen, daughter, and mark me well. I and my friends oppose Lem. We set fire to the temple tonight. Aye! My comrades burn the stinking temples to Lem. I wore the silver mask only so that I would have the chance to rescue the girl sacrifice...”

  “How can I believe!”

  “He lies, Ros, he lies!”

  Then Zankov stopped his shouting, abruptly. Dayra spoke slowly. “If he lies, then... And if speaks the truth, then...”

  Zankov was caught both ways. He blustered and raged, swearing most vilely. I kept silent, head hanging, feeling awful. How I had contemplated this meeting with my daughter, the Princess Dayra, known as Ros the Claw... How often I had imagined its circumstances. How could I have foreseen that it would be like this — with Dayra hanging like a Rose between two thorns!

  Their voices blended, one shrill and bitter and loaded with invective, the other hard and growing harder, suspicious, horrified. I’d started this adventure with a simple objective, as Pompino had said, but that had been deflected by a greater urgency, and I was now in a peril so great as to cause me to tremble, me, Dray Prescot, father of this girl who was troubled out of her wits... Bad advice, no advice, bad example and no example... Her life, despite the connotations and her connection with the Sisters of the Rose, had been no bed of roses... She deserved more from me than I could repay.

  I do not think any words of mine — the stupid, stumbling, feeble words — tipped the balance. Dayra had been misled, deceived; but she was not a stupid girl — how could she be, how could any daughter of Delia’s be stupid? She must have harbored doubts. That she had rationalized the sight of her mother hanging in chains must have caused her intense agony; doubts persisted, engendered despite all the wily and malevolent advice heaped upon her by her friends.

  Zankov confirmed my suspicions.

  Among the threats, the taunting, the obscenities, he reproached Dayra. “You have proved stubborn in the past, and have grown worse lately.” The thin bitter words crackled as the torches spat sparks. “I have lost a great deal of the hope and trust I once had in you. You are an ingrate — and this miserable kleesh, your father—”

  “I have tried!” She sounded distraught and yet, and yet, through all her desperate despair, that hard note of reawakening reality heartened me. “I believed you and our friends. The Kataki twins — I believed what they said. All of you — because my father was not there. And the calumnies you put about regarding my mother — are they lies, also?”

  My blade-comrade Seg Segutorio had been forced to kill a few folk for these false and vile rumors about Delia. I’d experienced horror when he’d told me — death for a few words! Now, seeing the havoc they had wrought, these few words, I could wish Seg had dispatched all the dispensers of lies and calumnies regarding Delia... Dayra had suffered, and I had not known how she had been affected.

  I croaked out — and Dayra turned her head to listen to me even as Zankov spluttered and blasphemed on her other side! — “Dayra — your mother is above reproach from anyone, she cannot be touched by the stinks of offal like that.”

  The effort of speaking nigh exhausted me. I could feel the blood dripping down my face. I’d been sore wounded before, far worse than these clumsy blows on the head, and I’d recover well enough. But I needed to be alive and vigorous right now. Right at this moment I needed all the strength and willpower I could muster. This schemer Zankov had to be unmasked, and now. Dayra could not be expected to change her mind about the conduct of her life in an instant. The painful process would take time. She had to be convinced and then when she had thought it all through for herself and seen the truth, why, then she would make the decision.

  All I could do was hope Pando got here in time.

  And — I could go on through the dizziness and put in what arguments I could, explain, keep calm — keep calm! — and try to make Dayra’s agonizing reappraisal an experience that would not destroy her. That, I shuddered to think, was a real danger... But, was it? Would a daughter of Delia’s be shattered? I took heart. No — not while the Ice Floes of Sicce exuded their chill breath!

  Intermittently I heard Dayra trying to question Zankov, and he slid away from the quizzing and harped on the great enterprise and his powerful friends and the treasure they had entrusted to him to pay for the ships that would carry the army to Vallia. I struggled to listen and learn of this, although I cursed the fellow and willed Dayra to press her inquiries.

  “The Lord Farris?” shouted Zankov, answering one of her questions at last. “Yes, he was there. When I see him he will tell you the truth, him and Lykon Crimahan both!”

  Spluttering, I coughed out: “Lykon Crimahan! I did not speak of him, Zankov, so how—?”

  “It is common knowledge—”

  “It is not common knowledge. Lykon Crimahan, the Kov of Forli, returned to his kovnate and fought the aragorn and the slavemasters. He was no friend to me. But now he is loyal, and he saw you slay the emperor...”

  “He saw you, you cramph!”

  “I think,” I said to Dayra, “that unless Crimahan is very careful, if this fellow here is let free, these words have signed Crimahan’s death warrant.”

  “He and Farris, all of you!” shrieked Zankov.

  Dayra turned those gorgeous brown Vallian eyes on me. I could see her mother there. “And you truly joined the Lemmites and wore the silver mask to rescue the sacrifice and burn the temple?”

  “You saw me carrying the child to safety. The temple burned.”

  “Yes...”

  “Did you, Dayra, become a Leem-Lover—?”

  “I never was! D’you think I could—?”

  “No, my daughter, no, I do not think you could.”

  “We’ll see!” shouted Zankov. “You have betrayed me, Ros. I am finished with you! When my friends get here—”

  “Or when the Zhantil masks return,” I put in, hard.

  We hung there, the three of us, breathing hoarsely. This Zankov, for all his villainy, had courage. And I saw what the plan was against Vallia, the thoughts ringing in my head. They would land the enterprise in Delphond — my Delia’s Delphond! — and march to cut off my lad Drak. They’d catch him between two armies, crush him, and then turn like leems on the capital of Vondium. It all fitted together. And Zankov had the money to pay for it all. A deal of that gold had gone to Strom Murgon, that was clear. They were all in it. Pompino’s actions and mine against the Leem Lovers had been, also, against the foes of Vallia.

  It all fit.

  And I was strung up like a bird in the kitchen to be plucked, stuffed and roasted...

  The time dripped away. Zankov kept on railing against Dayra, and she protested that she must have time to think and he made it perfectly plain that if she was not wholeheartedly for him then she was against him. He became more malevolent. He was confident. He knew the strength of the forces arrayed on his side.

  The sound of iron-shod sandals, the crash of the bolts on the cell door brought a cry of triumph to his lips.

  Eagerly, I looked, aching to see the golden masks appear, and Pando, and to have this ghastly ordeal over.

  “Now you will see!” he crowed. “The silver leem-masks will destroy you forever, Dray Prescot!”

  And I said in all my stupid arrogance: “And the golden zhantil-masks will rid the world of you, Zankov!”

  We three stared in awful fascination as the door opened.

  The wood creaked back. Torchlight flared brilliantly.

  In that eye-watering radiance as the door opened — we stared — warriors broke in — in that brilliance the wink and glitter of silver overpowered in the stinking stone cell.

  Chapter eighteen

  Of the spitting of Ros Delphor

  “Cut me down! Cut me down!”

  Zankov’s voice cracked with triumph.

  The silver-masks rushed in and then halted at the sight before them. One jumped as though stung when Zankov shouted, and leaped forward, dagger lifted.
He slashed the bonds and as the thongs fell free so Zankov collapsed forward onto his knees. He breathed in huge gasps. Wiry, vigorous, alive, he wore the green breechclout drawn up tightly.

  Green is a perfectly ordinary color for a Vallian, and Zankov was Vallian, if nothing else. Dark blue is the color Vallians shun, to my sorrow. Pale blue is acceptable in seacoast provinces, and the old Vallian Air Service used to wear dark blue and orange in a fashion that did not last upwards of ten seasons. So, the importance of colors was not lost on me as Zankov shoved up, turning lithely, fighting the cramps, to gloat upon us, and I recognized that, yes, indeed, green in all the evil connotations of that otherwise admirable color was fit garb for him.

  An Ift wearing the leem mask reached up his dagger to cut Dayra free.

  Zankov knocked him aside.

  “Give me the dagger, and stand away, rast!”

  The Ift obeyed instantly.

  Zankov took the dagger and fronted Dayra. He laughed; his eyes were very merry.

  “Hurry, notor, there is not much time,” said a fellow whose dark beard sprouted around the edges of his leem mask.

  “There is time for this, Handroi.” Zankov spoke in his thin and bitter voice and yet he was filled with elation. “You are a fool,” he told Dayra. “You have failed me. I have suspected you for some time past, and now I know your allegiance to Lem the Silver Leem was mere make-believe. Well, shishi, think on this, before I kill you. You have a sister, you have two sisters, and a niece. When you are dead and gone wandering the Ice Floes imagine me, wed to Lela, or to Velia. Either will do. Or, if they fail me, I shall wed your niece, Didi. All are in the line of succession. And, all the others, all, will be dead and gone and moldering!”

  With that, triumphantly, he lifted the dagger to strike out the life of my daughter Dayra.

  She spat in his face.

  Now, if I repeat that I am Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor and Krozair of Zy, too often, you may well think of me as a braggart. But this repetition arises from humility that life has afforded me so much. I do not boast. I state facts that mean a great deal. The bonds cut into my wrists. My head still felt as though it had been battered around a camp of my Clansmen in Segesthes. But, just because, I had to try.

  The bonds broke — at last. Of course, as I fell in a heap to the stone, I expected to die at once. That mattered little — save for one or two items of unfinished business — but Zankov would not dagger the life from my daughter while I lived and could prevent it. And, if I thought of my daughter Velia, the first Velia, as I staggered up and bundled all any old how into Zankov, that, too, I think you will understand...

  I butted him a thwack in the ribs and he bowled over like a ponsho brought down by a leem. The dagger remained fast clenched in his fist, and I couldn’t reach it. It was vitally necessary to roll over and over, away from the expected slash of blade or shaft of arrow.

  “Father!” screamed Dayra.

  Zankov, screeching, staggered up, the dagger glittering. Beyond him a fellow in a leem mask lifted his short bow. The arrow head centered on me and I dived aside, pivoted, put a foot into Zankov’s green breechclout. His face joined that color scheme.

  He fell away and a bulky Brokelsh rushed, sword uplifted, and I twisted him over my shoulder so that his head and the leem-mask hit the floor with an almighty thwack. Blood spurted — but the damned sword skittered across the stone flags, and I reared up to dodge the next arrow or front the next attacker.

  The chances were not entirely hopeless... Frantic action, constant movement, swift, savage and sudden...

  Two more leem-masks dropped, broken, and my fingers reached for the hilt of a thraxter. In the corner of my eye a blurred rush — Dayra’s passionate yell: “Your back!” — a twist, a vicious thrust of the sword — blood gushing over my wrist — a blow sending me staggering sideways — a recovery and sight of a silver-masked Rapa lifting his bow. Off balance, I tried to twist to avoid the shaft. The Rapa did not loose. He swiveled sideways. An arrow stood in the center of his back. He fell forward onto his beak, bent within the mask.

  The heavy tramp of footfalls and a voice, a booming bull voice just finishing saying... “Tromple all over ’em!”

  Yet, despite that Pompino and Cap’n Murkizon and Quendur the Ripper and Larghos the Flatch bustled in, roaring, laying about them with the deadly flicker of steel, the first into the cell was Tipp the Kaktu.

  Instantly, belting an inopportune Fristle over the furry head to make his whiskers wilt, I leaped for Dayra. The thraxter sliced bloodily through the bonds. She fell against my chest, and I held her, held her, as she trembled.

  “Listen, daughter. Call me Jak. I am just Jak. Remember—”

  “Jak the Drang?”

  “No. Just Jak — sometimes Jak the Shot.”

  She recovered with the swift catlike ability that must have kept her alive in many a perilous situation when there was no mother or father to keep an eye on her.

  “And me — Jak?”

  “A friend. We have both been accustomed to using aliases. Are you still Ros?”

  “Yes. But not the Claw—”

  “Very well.” The uproar bellowing away, as Pompino’s fellows from Tuscurs Maiden and Tipp the Kaktu who had watched me and brought the crew here, fighting mad, sorted out the Lemmites, formed a chorus to Dayra and my quick words. “Yes — then you must be Ros the Radiant—”

  “No. Delphor. Ros Delphor.”

  “As you wish—” A body with its head hanging and the silver mask slashed across tumbled past. “I’ll have to help the lads now—”

  “You said I am to be a friend. It won’t be as easy or as quick as that.”

  “No. But it will — Ros Delphor!”

  And I went roaring harum-scarum into the fight and, lo! it was all over.

  Pompino brushed up his whiskers and stared around.

  “By the tangled and nit-infested locks of the Divine Lady of Belschutz! What a mangy crew!”

  Cap’n Murkizon’s axe glimmered darkly with blood. Pompino said to me: “You are unharmed, Jak?” Then he laughed. “I seem to be saying that with distressing frequency, by Horato the Potent!” He stared at Dayra.

  She stalked arrogantly across the floor, kicking bodies out of the way, ripped off a few capes and cloaks and things until she found a decent gray cape to swing about her shoulders. With a gray tunic — with only a few spots of blood — to go under the cloak, and a thraxter in her right fist and a dagger in her left, she paced back. She moved with the lethal grace of a hunting leem, and — as I thought in my admiration for this woman who was my daughter — with the nobility of a zhantil.

  I made the Pappattu quickly.

  “Scauro Pompino the Iarvin. Ros Delphor.” And the others, swiftly, for we had to get clear of this place, and there were certain acts I had to perform this night before I could think that this adventure was over.

  Together, we hurried from the cell. Needless to say I’d clothed and armed myself. We climbed stairs, and as we went I made it my business to say to Tipp the Kaktu: “My deepest thanks, Tipp the Kaktu.”

  Without the leem mask his face showed quick, intelligent appreciation of events. His nose was on the thin side; but his mouth was finely formed. “Naghan Raerdu is a generous paymaster. Also, he is very sudden. And, again, I do not care for people who chop up children.”

  With those sentiments, I fancied, we had the beating of the Lemmites.

  We saw no more masks, either silver or golden, as we went through the house, apart from masks upon corpses. Stopping, I bent and freed the leather latchings of a golden zhantil mask from a dead man. He looked peaceful enough lying in his own blood. I stowed it away with a fine silver mask in the pouch taken from a fellow whose swag belly held more than the pouch. We pushed open the last door and so walked out onto the streets of Port Marsilus under the radiance of the Moons.

  Among all the twisted corpses — and, believe me, I’d looked with attentive care — not one revealed the thin and bit
ter features of Zankov.

  When I asked, Larghos the Flatch said, crossly: “That one, I shot, but a hulking Brokelsh got in the way and took the shaft in an eye. When I looked again this fellow — Zankov? — was gone.”

  “We’ll blatter him yet!” boomed Murkizon, cheerfully. He mentioned the Divine Lady of Belschutz, and added: “That sort run hardly upon their noose.”

  Ros the Claw, Ros Delphor, said nothing.

  I said to Tipp the Kaktu, and I own I felt concern: “Monsi the Bosom? She is safe — you both got out of the fires in the cellars?” He saw my concern. “And the child?”

  “Yes, Jak. And the child.”

  “Thank the good Pandrite.”

  Dayra favored me with a swift liquid upward glance; again, she said nothing. Pandrite, a chief god of Pandahem, sat oddly on the lips of a Vallian. In a bunch, desperadoes, all of us, we moved along the street, our cloaks and capes flaring in the night breeze.

  The glow in the sky suffused drifting clouds with orange; of flames, nothing, and of smoke, none in the night. The temple, that had been the Playhouse of the Singing Lotus, had not taken long to burn to the ground. But, by Krun, she must have made a splendid spectacle when she roared in fury!

  Moderating our progress now we were away, we still kept a sharp lookout. Pompino fell in on my other side. He glanced across at Dayra, at ease and most gallant in his haughty Khibil way.

  “My lady. Where may we have the honor of escorting you?” And then, before she could answer: “You appear to be friendly with our Jak, which he does not deserve. Perhaps you would care to favor us with an account of your acquaintance, although, of course, one would not press...”

  Jesting though he was, he struck shrewdly.

  Dayra did not flinch.

  “I give you thanks for your timely rescue, kot— horter Pompino. Jak claims friendship with me; I am not sure I give mine so freely.”

  “Aha!” exclaimed Pompino, bubbling now with the aftereffects of the fight in his blood. “I knew it! I always said he kept secrets too well. You see, my lady—”