Golden Scorpio [Dray Prescot #18]

by Alan Burt Akers

  For breakfast I had a few deep lungfuls of fresh Kregen air. The nikvove chomped the grass and appeared content.

  Had I chosen to ride north and cross the border out of Aduimbrev I would have come into the emperor's province of Thermin. The odd thing was, I was in no way reconciled to the idea that I was supposed to be the emperor. Emperor of Vallia. By Vox! How empty could a title get?

  Had I done so, I sourly wondered if, even there, I'd have found anyone willing to give me breakfast.

  As the twin Suns of Scorpio rose and threw the land into that shimmering opaline radiance I saw a sight that astounded me. I put a hand to the piebald's neck, soothing him. I remained very still in the little stand of timber, peering out under the leaves.

  Across the grassy ground a great host approached Cansinsax. Clearly I could see the long extended lines of cavalrymen. They rode benhoffs, shaggy and gray. Their weapons glittered. They wore mail. There were, I judged, something in excess of three thousand of them. So a junction had been made and the forces gathered in and now the Iron Riders rode against Cansinsax.

  The evident terror these riders of iron struck into all they encountered was a most potent weapon; but not, I judged, their only or even their chiefest weapon. Just how they would manage the siege of the town I admit intrigued me. But then—well, they say the gods sharpen both edges of a blade—the gates of the town opened. Trumpets pealed brazen notes into the morning air. I watched, spell-bound.

  Out from the gates of Cansinsax, a town of Vallia, marched with a swing and a swank the iron legions of Hamal.

  Hamal. I saw them. The serried ranks of swods all marching in time, their rectangular shields all in alignment, their banners blazing a rich tapestry of color, the plumes in their helmets whiffling in the dawn breeze. Swods from Hamal. Real soldiers, men trained to fight under the strict laws of Hamal. I marveled. Regiment by regiment they marched out. Squadrons of cavalry surged out and extended into wings on the flanks. A little dust plumed; but the grass here was altogether richer and lusher than the sere tawny-grass along the Therduim Cut.

  My vantage position gave me a perfect view.

  Following the regulars of Hamal crowded a swarm of mercenaries. Among their ranks were many diffs. Also, as I was quick to observe, there were masichieri there, which was surprising, seeing the masichieri are mercenaries but soldiers of fortune of an altogether different stamp from the paktuns, who more often than not fight with honor and earn their hire.

  Two regiments of totrixmen spurred out ahead, and trumpets rang and they hauled back. It was clear this army was anxious to get to grips with the radvakkas. Running an old soldier's eye over the serried array I estimated the Hamalians as putting into the field four or five thousand infantry—ten regiments—and a thousand or so cavalry. The mixed bunch of mercenaries probably added up to another couple of thousand.

  Numbers favored the Hamalians. What, I wondered, of the native Vallians of Aduimbrev? Mind you, as I have already explained, Vallia was a powerful trading empire, whose wealth came from her sea power, the superb Galleons of Vallia. If the empire needed soldiers, she would hire them.

  The Hamalian army halted. The regiments of foot braced their shields. The regiments of crossbowmen spanned their crossbows. Soon the bolts would fly. I watched, scarcely breathing and, I admit, not a little puzzled as to where my cheering should be directed.

  The Iron Riders were clearly a grave menace; but, then, Hamal was the deadly foe of Vallia, temporarily in the ascendant. So, I merely watched and studied, and if my right hand twitched and the fingers curled around the length of lumber—well, they were only simple, stupid reactions of an old fighting man.

  Three thousand Iron Riders against around eight thousand Hamalese and paktuns—it seemed to me my services would no longer be required.

  The Hamalese cavalry wings overlapped the radvakkas. The totrixmen again almost boiled over into a charge. There was a regiment of zorcamen there, also, whereat I at once thought of Rees and Chido. But the general in command held them in the rear in reserve.

  The Iron Riders shook out into three battles or divisions, a thousand cavalrymen each.

  I saw no signal given. The distant trumpet notes pealed. The front ranks of benhoffs began to move, lumpy gray beasts surging forward like the gray tide beating against rocks. But the center division rode forward faster and faster. The crossbowmen loosed, pastang by pastang, and the bolts fell like rain, and still the benhoffs came on. A few, only a few, tumbled down to thrash on the trampled ground as their comrades thundered on.

  The central division galloped rapidly through the beaten zone and crashed into the Hamalese infantry. The whole front two ranks caved in instantly. Infantrymen were sent bodily flying. The great six-legged beasts rampaged on. Swords rose and fell. Shields were splintered. And now the totrix wings of Hamalese cavalry closed in—and the left and right wedges of radvakkas spurned them. In an instant amid a ghastly racket the whole line was engaged. For only an instant—for the Hamalese army sagged back and back. Totrixes were bounding riderless from the field. The infantry were being cut to pieces. On and on surged that enormous battering wedge of Iron Riders.

  The field became a sea of boiling action—I did not see the end of the zorca regiment. It merely ceased to exist. The Hamalese were running. Iron Riders were breaking away from the main divisions now, were hunting and slaying.

  Time was being cut so fine I almost did not make it.

  My services were, after all, still required.

  Piebald roared ahead, his eight hooves battering the grass. A party of Rapas offered to halt me at the gate; but already fugitives were streaming in and the situation was plain. If it was a case of sauve qui peut then the sauvest would be the peutest, that was for sure. I had no trouble entering Cansinsax.

  The trouble lay in finding where away was the party I had already once rescued. Just which one in that party was the particular one the Star Lords wished preserved I did not know, which simply meant I had to save the lot.

  The town was in the most frightful uproar. Men and women were running every which way—men and women wearing the buff of Vallians. Slaves were being beaten along staggering under loads of household equipment. Everyone was raging toward the western gate in a crazy flood. Just how they expected to get away when the benhoffs of the radvakkas would overhaul them in no time at all did not appear to have occurred to them. The scenes of chaos rang and thumped on and I forced my way through.

  A bad time this, when a town falls, a bad time.

  In this instance, I think with some degree of certainty, the Star Lords took a direct hand. I remember I shook my fist at the indifferent sky, and hurled a few lusty Makki-Grodno cusses upward—conduct that aroused not one whit of interest from the crazed mobs about me—and so saw a piebald nikvove bolt from the broken-down gateway of a villa. The mobs pushed past and I came up with the nikvove and got a hand into his harness. I hauled back and lay my own steed into him and some of the crowd staggering away managed to turn him. Together, we went racketing back into the villa. Slaves were looting the place, which was a very proper thing to do, considering.

  The woman who stood in the doorway of the house yelling furiously, purple of face, wearing riding clothes, slashing about with a thraxter, might have been one of the three women who had descended from the coach. The air was filled with noise, people screaming, the crash of furniture being hurled through windows, the thump of many feet. The smells were interesting, too. I barged across. She looked up.

  She saw my face. Her own face, which was filled with that aristocratic fury, venom-filled, that overtakes the high and mighty when they see slaves breaking out or people not obeying them instantly, abruptly hung slack. I vaulted off Piebald.

  “Here, lady, a mount for you. Where are the others?"

  She was saved a reply as a man rushed at me with his rapier held ready to stick me. I slid the blow, took the rapier away, hit him over the head with it—gently, mind—and caught him as he fell. Even then I f
elt the old familiar sensations as my fist gripped around the rapier hilt. Two other women, dressed for riding, appeared, screaming. I bellowed them all down.

  “Silence, you famblys! The four of you—you will have to share the two nikvoves. Get mounted and get out. The Iron Riders will be here in a mur or two! Ride!"

  They were yelling and screaming; but they retained sense enough to mount up. The man held his head, glaring at me with sadistic hostility; but I saw his eyes, and they slid away and would not meet mine.

  A preysany stood at the steps ready-loaded. I snapped him across the rump and started him after the nikvoves. We headed out through the gate. Truth to tell, riding through the panic-smitten mobs was not easy and I, afoot, would have been quicker than the riders. But, once they were outside the walls, the story would be different. I knew benhoffs and I knew nikvoves. The half-vove is not a true vove, but he can still outrun a shambling, shaggy, gray-haired benhoff any day of the month.

  Now the remnants of the Hamalese army were crowding into the town. The confusion was splendid and awful. I sweated along. The woman who rode like a man and held the man upright as he swayed and cursed weakly, glowered down on me as I led them along the crowded street.

  “You, rast. Why do you save us?"

  “Just be thankful I do, lady. And no Lahal between us."

  She colored again at this, fully aware of the sarcasm.

  “Be very careful how you address me. I am the Kovneva of Aduimbrev, Marta Renberg, and your head lies most shakily upon your shoulders."

  “Then Llahal, Kovneva. I did not know Marto Renberg; but I once met old Vektor—"

  She tried to hit me with her thraxter, and I laughed and ducked away and hauled the nikvove on. Oh, yes, I laughed. It was certainly no time for crying.

  She was not very old, I judged, although that is always a tricky business on Kregen where a person changes but little and slowly over two hundred or so years. She had the brown Vallian hair and eyes, a trim figure, a high color, and she was most decidedly a very important person in her own eyes.

  Some quality I at first thought indefinable about her—perhaps the way her nostrils curved, the curl of her lower lip, the tensioning lines around her eyes, something—offended me. I felt I would try to like her and fail. We pushed on along the street with the fugitive mobs and I found that, once again, I did not much care for the task the Everoinye had set to my hands.

  When a victorious army follows up a victory of this kind and the defeated do not have the nous to run into their town and shut the gates, much may be learned of the character and temperament of the victors by the way they go about consolidating. As we debouched from the western gate in a yelling straggling mass of people and animals, I hauled myself up by the nikvove's mane and took a searching look around.

  There was no sign of Iron Riders sweeping in around the city. Then they would be simply bolting in through the eastern gate, charging down the remnants of the Hamalese soldiery and the paktuns, just driving on through the gate into the city. They had not aimed to cut off the fugitives. Not slavers, then ... ?

  Many carts harnessed to the refreshing variety of draught animals of Kregen lumbered away across the plain heading for the forest a dwabur or so off. Mounted people set spurs to their mounts and pelted headlong for safety. Those afoot, wailing and crying, ran and hobbled in a great untidy mass. It was one diabolical scene, I can tell you.

  The Kovneva of Aduimbrev leaned down toward me. Her flushed face looked dangerous.

  “Take your hand from the rope, tikshim.[i] There is the forest. We can manage perfectly well now."

  She was quite serious. The situation was perfectly plain in her eyes. I had appeared and had helped her to escape from Cansinsax. And this, very properly, was the duty owed to her as the kovneva by every one of her people. I did not let go of the rope.

  “Now, tikshim! We must gallop to the forest before the radvakkas overtake us—"

  “Cramph!” bellowed the man, thickly. I had his rapier and so he whipped out his left-hand dagger and tried to slash at me or at the rope. I did not care for the first idea.

  I said: “You may ride for the forest, and you will. But if you get yourself killed I shall be most wroth.” She could not, of course, understand just why I would be annoyed. “Do not ride with the main bulk of the fugitives—"

  “Do you presume to give me orders?” She half-turned and swung the thraxter at me. This time the blade was not turned. She cut at me.

  I slid the blow and jumped back, letting go the rope. I held myself under control—but only just. How they conduct themselves, the high and mighty of the land!

  “Ride, kovneva. Ride. I shall find you in the forest. Just be very sure you are still alive when I do—and not a bloody corpse."

  With that I gave Piebald a slap across the rump and started him off at a run. The other nikvove with the two handmaidens lumbered after. Pretty soon the two angled away from the main mass and lit out for the trees. Nikvoves can run. I let out a gusty breath. This hoity-toity Marta Renberg should be safe now and the Star Lords satisfied. But, all the same, I'd wander across to the forest and make sure.

  Amid that swirling mass of terrified folk I had to think about getting myself away; but, I admit, a few nasty thoughts about these mysterious purposes of the Star Lords crossed my mind. I had been given evidence that the people the Everoinye wished preserved did, indeed, affect the destiny of the world. The mad genius king Genod of the Eye of the World proved that. What the Star Lords wanted of Marta Renberg, Kovneva of Aduimbrev, I could not know. But I wished them the evil of it, for I found myself in a black humor with the foolish woman.

  Of course, I could not even be sure it was she the Star Lords had their eye on. It might have been the man—she'd called him Larghos and no doubt he served some function or other in her establishment—or one of the handmaidens; pretty, washed out girls whose terror rendered them mute. The preysany, loaded down, I did not doubt, with choice and expensive items, followed the nikvoves. I turned about and looked at the doomed town.

  Already smoke drifted over the red roofs, dun, swirling, skull-like in outline, mushroom-headed, vile. Soon the flames would break out and seek to dim the glory of the suns. It was all a ghastly mess, butchery and rapine and pillage—and here, in Vallia. Vallia that had been so puissant an empire.

  The cultivated fields swallowed up many of the fugitives who vanished from view in the crops. On the other side the plain was suitable only for those with fast riding animals. Reflectively, I weighed the chances, walking smartly away from the town. The rabble thinned about me, and mostly those who were delayed by excess of baggage, infirmity of limb or care for children, labored on about me now. I gave a hand to people who needed it—hauling a cart out of a rut here, carrying a child for a space there; much though I would have liked to remain and help I could not chain myself down to just one party. In the event, we were all within the first rows of crops before the leading elements of radvakkas debouched from the western gate of Cansinsax and spurred after us.

  The appearance of the Iron Riders drove the fugitives into a fresh panic. Shrieking they stumbled on through the crackling fronds. One or two sturdy fellows and I sought to make them move as swiftly as might be along the tracks left for the cultivators. We yelled and waved our arms.

  “Go as far as you can before you hide!” bellowed a fellow who sweated away, a leather cap awry over one ear, his apron marked with the burns of his smithy's trade. He carried a blacksmith's hammer. He looked as though he might be useful. His family trudged along, helping a woman smitten with chivrel. I hoped they would make it. So, because I am something of an idiot, I found myself at the tail end of the rout. I could not force myself to run on ahead, as I might easily have done. Somehow—and I cursed myself for it, believe me—I could not run off and leave these people.

  The crops swayed about us. Here, where the grass was weeded away, puffs of dust rose. It was hot and sticky work. We pushed on. I kept swiveling about to look down
the narrow track between the crops.

  Inevitably, out of the mobs hurrying through the cultivated fields, some would be found by the radvakkas, and, equally inevitably, along the row down which I moved after those ahead, an Iron Rider should trot into view. He moved his benhoff with that lumpy power that so deceives. Big ugly brutes, benhoffs, with an immense roll of fat around their chests to store nourishment against the rigors of their northern habitat, with spreading withers, and with loins and croup a trifle too mean for my taste. The Iron Rider saw me and his head went up.

  He wore the usual shaggy pelt of furs—no doubt liberally infested—but because the weather was hotter than the thin mizzle to which he was accustomed the furs were thrown back exposing his armor, a simple leather shirt riveted with iron plates, and iron strips riveted down his trousers. His helmet was bulky and square in outline, with a fantastic conglomeration of feathers and benhoff tail plumes. He carried a broadsword scabbarded to his saddle, and a spear; but as was the wont of the Segesthan, he bore no shield. He looked ugly and purposeful, a packed arsenal of power.

  From the front rim of the helmet hung down a series of metal plates, jointed and sprung together, with eye-slots, which together formed what was in effect a mask. The sides joined the cheek pieces of the helmet. This Iron Rider had no beaver to his helmet, although the fashion was known.

  Oh, yes, I knew these radvakkas well enough. My Clansmen did not often confront them, for, as I have said, the radvakkas had learned the unwisdom of tangling with a Clansman. But, from time to time, they drifted south onto the Great Plains, and if they created a disturbance they had to be dealt with. That meant they had to be dealt with, for if they were good for one thing at all that was creating disturbances. I suppose one should not call them barbarians; but we did, and the appellation fitted well enough.

  Dark and ominous, clad in iron, the radvakka urged his mount into a trot and then a gallop. His spear came down. He would spit me as I stood.