The rapier flew true.
Murlock screamed, and the scream was choked off as my rapier transfixed his neck. He stood for an instant, staring, his face as horrible a mask of hatred and disbelief as any I have seen. Then he fell.
Tilda and Pando, with wild and abandoned shrieks, flew across the room, through the drapes, and flung themselves into my arms, all bloody as they were.
“Dray! Dray!” they babbled, grasping me. “Dray Prescot! You have come back to us!”
Viridia, all blood-smeared, grasping that old flag of mine, stared at me. Her tanned face with the dark hair flowing contrasted with the classical ivory beauty of Tilda and her jetty mane of gorgeous hair. Pando was gripping me and sobbing convulsively.
“So,” said Viridia. “This is what you tricked me and my renders into! A woman and her brat! It was all for this that you schemed and fought!”
“Not so, Viridia the Render. This is Pando, Kov of Bormark. And this is Tilda, his mother, the Kovneva. They are my friends, and if you are my friend and comrade, then they are your friends, also. Do not forget that. As for me, my destiny lies elsewhere.”
“Do not say it, Dray!” sobbed Tilda, grasping me, as Viridia stared at me with her wide blue eyes all aglitter from the samphron oil lamps’ gleam. “Say you will not go to Vallia.”
“Vallia!” said Viridia. “What is this of Vallia, Dray Prescot, render?”
I felt the cold anger in me, the desire to turn and smash everything in sight. Not for this petty wrangling had I risked all and turned my back on Vallia and my Delia, my Delia of the Blue Mountains!
“Vallia is where I am going, Viridia. And neither you nor Tilda can stop me.” I lifted Pando up. He wore his old zhantil-hide tunic and belt, and I marveled. Tilda’s long blue gown was torn over one shoulder, and an ivory globe and collarbone showed, gleaming, alluring, even there, in those circumstances. “Pando. You will stop all this nonsense of going to war, and fighting for pleasure. You are a Kov. You must rule your people wisely and well, and you must listen to your mother and to Inch. Otherwise I shall strap your backside. As for you, Tilda. You must smash the bottles of Jholaix. Pando needs guidance. You must listen to Inch. He knows my views.”
If that sounds pompous, tyrannical, banal, blame yourself, not me. I spoke truths. Truths were needed then; for I could hardly hold myself under control. Vallia! Delia! The need for her flamed in my blood, drugged me with desire. Too long had I betrayed her, and dillydallied with renders and Kovs and all the petty glory of sailing a swordship sea under my old flag.
“You — will not desert us, Dray?” Tilda tried to wipe away the tears staining her cheeks. Her eyes rested on me in a new glory, and I knew that if I stayed I would now have the same trouble with her as I had with Viridia.
As for that pirate wench, she stood with my old flag draping her shoulders, her rapier all bloody, glaring at me.
“And if you go to Vallia, Dray Prescot the Render, what is to prevent me from going, also?”
I sighed. I tried to speak calmly.
“There is nothing but heartbreak for you in Vallia, Viridia.”
“And is she so much more beautiful, more desirable than me, Dray?”
“Or me?” demanded Tilda passionately.
There was no answer that a gentleman might make, and although I am no gentleman, although a Krozair of Zy, I could make no answer, either. But my silence told them both. The moment held, awkwardly.
Then Pando broke it. He struggled free, wiping blood from my armor caught tackily on his hands down that zhantil tunic.
“And would you beat me, Dray?”
Then I laughed.
“I would flog you, Pando, you imp of Sicce, if you did not behave like a true Kov and have a care for your people of Bormark! Aye, flog you until you sobbed for mercy!”
Before Pando could answer the chamber filled with the pirates who had followed me here. They crowded in, forming a great excited mass of milling men and glittering steel about me. Arkhebi, his red hair all tousled, shouted the words, words taken up by the others in a flashing of lifted rapiers.
“Hai, Jikai! Dray Prescot! Hai! Jikai! Jikai!”
Well, they were happy in the knowledge that immense plunder awaited them in Menaham. I listened to the uproar, and that slit between my lips widened a trifle, hurtfully.
That glorious mingled sunshine of Antares flooded in from the tall windows to lie across the rich trappings, the colors, the steel of blade and armor, the flushed excited faces, the blood. The samphron oil lamps blinked dim. Someone had thrown back the shutters from the windows and all the opaz glory of the Suns of Scorpio poured in.
I looked through the windows into that bright dazzlement and saw a giant raptor, its scarlet and golden feathers brilliant in the streaming mingled light of the twin suns.
And coldness touched my heart.
Jerkily, moving with the stiffness of rheumatic old-age, I pushed through the shouting exultant renders, entered a small side room. I was vaguely conscious of Viridia and Tilda following me, suddenly anxious, but if they spoke I did not hear what they said. Behind them, I guessed, Inch and Valka and Spitz would be treading on fast, and Pando would be working his way through to catch me.
I felt dizzy.
Then — how I recall that moment of horror, of despair! — across that empty room before me I saw the scuttling running form of a scorpion.
A scorpion!
I knew, then. . .
I was to be returned to Earth, banished from Kregen beneath Antares, hurled back contemptuously to the planet of my birth.
As that cursed blue radiance limned all my vision and the sensations of falling clawed at my limbs, my body, my brain, I cried out, high, desperately, frantically.
“Remember me, remember Dray Prescot!”
And when I tried to shout my defiance of the Star Lords, and of the Savanti, who were so callously flinging me back to Earth, and to scream that I would not return to Earth, that I would stay on Kregen, no sound issued from my rigid lips.
The blueness grew.
It took on the semblance of a gigantic blue-glowing scorpion.
I was falling.
In my mind, unuttered, tearing and bursting with passion, I screamed: “Delia! My Delia of Delphond! My Delia of the Blue Mountains! I will come back! I will come back! Delia, I will return!”
I would return.
About the author
Alan Burt Akers is a pen name of the prolific British author Kenneth Bulmer. Bulmer has published over 160 novels and countless short stories, predominantly science fiction.
More details about the author, and current links to other sources of information, can be found at
www.mushroom-ebooks.com
The Dray Prescott Series
The Delian Cycle:
Transit to Scorpio
The Suns of Scorpio
Warrior of Scorpio
Swordships of Scorpio
Prince of Scorpio
Havilfar Cycle:
Manhounds of Antares
Arena of Antares
Fliers of Antares
Bladesman of Antares
Avenger of Antares
Armada of Antares
Notes
[1] The Word “Kyr” has been used by Prescot many times in his narrative but I have generally changed it to “Lord.” It begins to look as though this usage may be incorrect, and the honorific “sir” is a better translation. As part of the title of a book its use here is perfectly justified. Also we have here, I suspect, the root reason why there are so many Naths on Kregen.
[2] Here is another example of a reference to incidents in Dray Prescot’s life on Kregen during the period he spent on the inner sea and in Sanurkazz lost to us with those missing cassettes, as related in “A note on the tapes from Africa” in The Suns of Scorpio. A.B.A.
[3] Prescot spells out this name, Phokaym, giving it the “Ph” and the “Y,” although he nowhere tells us where he learned that these were the cor
rect spellings, in place of the “F” and the “I”. A.B.A.
[4] I think it worth pointing out that the suffix “A” clearly does not invariably denote the feminine gender in Kregish, as Prescot suggested in “Beng” and “Benga,” the Kregish for male and female “Saint.” We have also the example of Zolta — a man if ever there was one. A.B.A.
Copyright © 1973, Kenneth Bulmer
Alan Burt Akers has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, to be identified as the Author of this work.
First published by Daw Books, Inc. in 1973.
This Edition published in 2005 by Mushroom eBooks, an imprint of Mushroom Publishing, Bath, BA1 4EB, United Kingdom
www.mushroom-ebooks.com
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.
ISBN 1843193566
Swordships of Scorpio Page 21