The Suns of Scorpio [Dray Prescot #2]

by Alan Burt Akers

  I cursed the Star Lords, then, hating them and all their works.

  Follon's body had to be disposed of and so I carried him down to the river that flowed so sluggishly through its retaining banks of granite through Magdag to the sea. Here the banks were of mud, and in the shadow of a toppling tower of vosk skulls, I hoisted the dead Fristle, ready to cast him into the flood.

  The old Fristle woman, with a cry, darted forward. She made her intentions plain. I stopped most of the mutilation, but she divested the body of all its clothes and money and she took the curved sword.

  “These I will keep,” she said, looking up at me. She was crouched, bent with age. “My Sheemiff is yours for the asking, for you are a great Jikai."

  I shuddered, and the two women Fristles eyed me speculatively. Jikai! How often, lately, had that great word been debased!

  With some formal rote of acknowledgment, I bade them farewell and took myself off. Truth to tell, the sleek furred body of the girl Fristle, with its human outlines, stirred me. I half ran through the pink-tinged shadows into the warren.

  As I had asked during my last visit, the Prophet had been found. Now he was waiting for me.

  It seems fairly clear that Delia's loving actions in setting her whole empire in action to seek me out had upset the plans of the Star Lords. I had no way of knowing just what problems Delia had overcome in instigating this search: Tharu would not broach the subject and Vomanus shied away from it. He was a good and likely lad and, with a little discipline of the sort that gives a man an eye to survival, would turn out well. But the Star Lords—for, as I have said, I had by this time convinced myself that my presence this time in Magdag was of their fashioning—had drawn me here from Earth, four hundred light-years away, and here must lie the labors to which I must put my hands.

  What those labors were blazed painfully obviously to me.

  The Prophet looked just the same, with his white hair and beard fierce in his righteous rebellious ardor.

  “The workers will rise, Stylor,” he said in his rolling sonorous voice. “Too long have we suffered. The time is ripe and we know the secrets of the overlords’ hearts.” He stared at the assembled workers with an exalted look, an expression of dazed fanaticism on his face, drawing the gaunt lines into sharper and more hungry wedges of skin and muscle.

  “We know!” said Genal, with a reflection of that dedicated fanaticism uplifting him.

  “Yes, we know the time,” said Pugnarses, and the hunger on his face glared bleakly out upon the gathering of those men and half-men who would lead the revolt.

  We made plans. I listened. They had accepted me as one who had proved himself, and when I had promised to secure them weapons as proof of my intentions, I was a brother rebel.

  But the talk consisted of high-flown sentiments, of passion, hatred, and anger, of long detailed descriptions of what the rebels would do to the overlords once they had them in their power. I fretted.

  At last I stood up. They fell silent.

  “You chatter,” I told them. They reacted angrily to this but I quieted them. “You talk of chaining the overlords in the gangs and making them haul stone, and of the whips you will wield. Have you forgotten? The overlords wear mail, and they carry long swords! They are trained fighting men. What are you?"

  Genal leaped to his feet, his dark face flushed and furious.

  “We are workers, slaves, but we can fight—"

  “I can bring you swords, spears, some coats of mail, but not enough. How, my gallant Genal, will you fight the overlords?"

  Such were the dark torments, the passions of frustration twisting in that hovel as I faced them with the truth, that they had no time or energy to spare to wonder—then—where I would find weapons for them. I had brought food, so as not to be a burden on them, and already half a dozen long swords lay hidden in a pit beneath straw, closely wrapped in oiled sacks, below the beaten earth of Genal's and Pugnarses’ hovel.

  The talk buzzed, coiling, endlessly repeating itself. I let them talk this out. They had to face the truth of themselves.

  At last, a silence fell. Pugnarses was knotting his fists together, and every now and again he would smash his fist into the earth of the floor. Genal, I saw, was close to tears, but he did not break down. He was looking at me. I saw that look. I knew the time for hard facts was near. Bolan, a giant man with a head that gleamed all naked and shining in the light, grunted. He had been shaved as a slave once, and his hair had never grown back. He could lift stone blocks that took three other men to shift.

  “What do you say, Stylor?” he asked me directly, without artifice, like a charging chunkrah. “You have only dismay and doom for us—can you prophesy to any more effect?"

  “Yes, Stylor,” cried Genal and one or two of the others. “Tell us a plan.” I noticed that Pugnarses did not join in.

  Well, he would confirm and conform, for this was the only way he could achieve his heart's desire as to an overlordship. I told them.

  There was nothing clever about the plan. It's only dreamers who believe they can develop something so entirely new that the suns of Kregen have not shone down on it before—always excepting, of course, the men of science and art.

  “The merits of the plan are obvious,” I said eventually. “And its drawbacks, too. It will take longer than we would wish."

  Pugnarses started up. “Long! Yes, too long! Give us the weapons and we will kill the overlords and all their beast guards!"

  “But, Pugnarses,” Bolan said, rubbing his naked skull. “Stylor has just told us, and I believe what he says is true. You cannot beat the overlords and the mercenaries by a mob of workers and slaves with a few swords and balass sticks!"

  “You must train,” I said, and I put force into my words. “We will forge an army from the workers and slaves of Magdag so that slavery can be abolished from Magdag."

  They nodded, still only half convinced. I enlarged on what I wanted to do, and I admit that it is all elementary and obvious, but to a man who slaves in the sun the thought of a single extra day under the lash between him and freedom is intolerable.

  “Give me your help and backing; bestow on me your authority so that I may so order and organize that the workers will rise as a strong and keen weapon.” I stared challengingly at them. I was beginning to feel alive again, and the shame of that reawakening as to its means may not be mitigated as to its ends; but it is in my nature to rise to a challenge and to strike down first he who would seek to kill me.

  “I will fashion you a cadre of men who will use the weapons I shall bring, and the weapons we will make. I want production of certain weapons that I shall designate, and no others. I value freedom and liberty more than most men, for I have been deprived of freedom—in ways you cannot comprehend—but if I tell you that a galley slave knows about slavery, you will not argue with me, I know.” I was jumbled, garbled in what I said, but I convinced them. I obtained total authority over the fashioning of this military weapon from the slaves. I had to. I could see this struggle only in military terms, now; for that was the only way to keep a sense of sanity and proportion. I wanted a small well-trained little army that could blitzkrieg the overlords so that the great mass of slaves and workers might follow and devour the struck-down carcass.

  Sentiment had gone. I had seen the misery of the slaves; I had experienced it. I knew of the aspirations of the laborers and artificers—and I was well aware of possible conflicts of interest between slave and worker. I was born, you will recall, in 1775 and this year, I venture to believe, has a certain significance on Earth. On Kregen there were more complex antagonisms even than those surrounding, say, the combatants and theorists caught up in the French Revolution. I determined now to look at the revolt of the slaves of Magdag in purely military terms. Then, I would see that they turned their successful rebellion into a true revolution. That, as I conceived it, was what the Star Lords desired.

  Also—my Krozairs of Zy and all of Sanurkazz would benefit.

  In the d
ays and nights that followed I took greater and greater risks in sneaking out of the Emerald Eye Palace. I would climb out of my high window and use the ropy vines of the ivy-like plants that clothed the walls to clamber down and so over the wall and astride the waiting sectrix. Vomanus, of course, had to be a party to my mysterious disappearances, and he sweated out many a sleepless night waiting for my return. He thought I had a girl somewhere in the city. While cursing me for my stupidity in not sipping from the flower under my lips, he had a grudging admiration for my foolhardiness in taking wing to sip elsewhere.

  The cadre began to train with wooden staves. I had them cut to a modest twelve-foot length. A number of soldiers slaving on the buildings were spirited away by Holly, who used her underground route to good purpose, and these men were only too happy to join us. Their vacancies had to be explained. A death of a slave was a common event in Magdag, and even though the overlords were aware, as Glycas often complained to me, that there were slaves hiding in the workers’ warrens, the expeditions to rout them out had to be undertaken with due military care. Glycas loved to ride into the outskirts of the ghetto warrens. He and his sectrix-mounted friends would cut down the workers and slaves not clever enough to run at the first sounds. I suppose between them they killed a thousand or so slaves a season; this was a number scarcely missed in the hundreds of thousands who labored on the buildings of Magdag.

  Then the overlords would ride out in their mail and their glory and raid adjacent cities who owed them suzerainty. They had a jolly old life of it, the overlords of Magdag.

  The slave soldiers we took in were sworn to secrecy with vows that made their hair curl and their bowels turn to water. They were set to work to drill and discipline the volunteer workers. I personally scrutinized every man at this stage. The soldiers—men of Zair mostly, but there was a sprinkling of the fair-haired men of Proconia, and a number of Ochs, Fristles, Rapas—could make little of the twelve-foot staves. They called them staves, thinking that was their function. I did not disillusion them at this stage. That would come later, and as staves they would also serve a purpose.

  Soon a small group gathered around me, men I ventured to think would stick to the last.

  “You have an overlord of Magdag charging down on you,” I said to them as we sat around the hovel, on the beaten-earth floor in the flickering light of the candle. “He is clad in mail. He sits upon a sectrix, which means he towers over you, on foot. And he is bringing his damned great long sword down to cleave your skull to your neck bones.” I stared at them, these dozen or so men on whom I must rely. “I don't want the answer, ‘Run,’ when I ask you the question, ‘What do you do?'” We weren't past the joking stage yet. Genal, for sure, would have said “Run."

  They coughed and shuffled, and Bolan said viciously: “Leap on the sectrix's back and jab your dagger into the vosk's eyes."

  “Fine. How do you get past the sword?"

  We argued on. I saw that Genal had the right idea when he said sturdily: “Throw something—a rope weighted with lead—around the sectrix's legs.” He laughed nastily. “That should bring the overlord to earth."

  “Fine. You'll have to get close to do that with any accuracy. The overlords will be in squadrons and platoons. The ones following will cut you down—"

  “So?"

  I spread my hands. “Talking in military terms there are two methods of dealing with armored men, and these overlords wear hauberks of mesh iron, link mail. Some wear leg mesh; most do not. Some wear solid helmets; some rely on their coif. There are still two main methods of dealing with them, of dismounting them."

  “Kill them,” grunted Bolan.

  “Yes. You can drive a relatively small hole through the mail, or you can bash a great wedge of it in, cutting it or not according to the opposed strengths.” I thrust my rigidly outstretched forefinger at Bolan. He flinched back, but not by very much. He would be a useful man. “To punch a hole you need an arrow, a dart, a javelin or—” I hesitated, found Maspero's genetic language pill had failed me, and so used the English word. “Or a pike."

  I opened out my other three fingers rigidly alongside the first finger and I slashed down in a quasi-karate blow at Bolan. This time he did not move a muscle—but, of course, he blinked. “To slash a man's guts in half you need a long sword, an ax, a—” Again the pill failed me in the exact meaning I required. I went on: “You can bash with a mace or, if you have the requisite skill, with a morning star.” Again I used English for the elusive words. “To slash, you can also use a species of bill, a halberd, a glaive, a fauchard. And these weapons are those on which we will concentrate our production."

  We spent the rest of that session going over and over the weapons which, to these men, were new.

  Just before it was time for me to leave, and these men had no idea where I went when I disappeared from their sight in the warrens, I put the final indignity to them.

  I have mentioned that the men of Segesthes considered the shield as the cowards’ article, a weak, treacherous, miserable item of warfare, one to which they would not deign to give the name of weapon. They had never seen an offensively-used shield. So I took a break and then, when we had drunk a little wine, I said: “Finally, the production lines will make shields."

  I quieted them. The men of the inner sea, also, disregarded shields. Only Ochs used shields, a tiny round targe clasped in one of their six limbs with which they attempted to counter aggression. Men derided the Ochs for their little shields. I spent some time arguing; finally I said: “It is settled. When I give you the patterns for the pikes, the glaives, and halberds, you will also receive patterns for shields. These will be manufactured. It is ended for now.” I stood up, looking down on them.

  “I will see you tomorrow night. Remberee.” I left them.

  * * *

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Vomanus takes a message to Delia of the Blue Mountains

  The Princess Susheeng of Magdag was a vibrant, alluring, sensual creature. There was no doubt of that at all. It was all too clearly apparent as she reclined on a low divan covered in ornate green silk, the lighter green of the silks partially covering her white body seductive in their flowing curves and hidden shadows. Poor Vomanus in his buff coat and black boots looked gauche and out of place; essentially I felt the same way, no matter that I wore a lounging robe of that detested green. I had felt it politic to do so; now, clearly, it had been a mistake. The intimate little supper party was over and now Susheeng was devising ways of getting rid of Vomanus. I was countering them with a suaveness I had to admire in myself.

  “Oh, Vomanus, my pet,” said Susheeng in a dripping-honey voice. “I wish to speak with Drak alone."

  She could have said, simply: “Vomanus, clear out.” Since she had not, it was obvious that her brother Glycas’ warning of the importance of Vallia had got through to her.

  Vomanus, casting me a dirty look, rose and, with a graceful farewell speech, left. Susheeng turned her bright eyes on me. Her breast rose and fell beneath the scrap of green silk.

  “Why do you always avoid me, Drak? Time after time I seek you out—and you are not there. Why?"

  I was astonished. This proud and haughty woman, a beauty in any man's eyes, was in effect begging me. She leaned gracefully toward me, and the green silk moved again tumultuously.

  “I keep myself busy, Princess."

  “You do not like me!"

  “Of course I do!"

  “Well, then...? If you knew how lonely I am. Glycas is forever busy about matters of state. The campaign in Proconia does not go well.” I had to keep from shouting aloud my joy. She went on, slumping back now, her feelings of neglect beginning to stir different emotions. “All he can talk about are the pirates from Sanurkazz. Everyone is wondering when that arch pirate, that evil devil's spawn, that cramph, the Lord of Strombor, will strike again. He cost me a cool three merchantmen last season. Money of mine, lost to me, in his filthy hands. This Pur Dray, this Lord of Strombor, why, he is a worse Krozair
than that mangy Pur Zenkiren."

  I felt drunk.

  I had quaffed but little wine, for I had to keep my wits about me. But—this was how the enemies I had sworn to oppose talked about me, about Zenkiren, about the Krozairs of Zy! I felt suddenly strong and liberated, rejoicing in the powers that Sanurkazz extended across the Eye of the World.

  “I feel sorry for you, Princess,” I said. “But I believe you also raid the men of the southern shore. Is this not so?"

  “Of course! They deserve it; they are rasts before Grodno."

  Then, shaking those creamy shoulders, she reached for her goblet and drank deeply. Her face was more flushed than usual. I thought of Natema. I tensed myself, ready for what might come. There would be no ghetto warrens for me this night.

  The work of preparations was going well, and already the production lines were turning out long, beautifully shaped shafts of pikes and halberds, and the smiths were forging the heads to fit. Grindstones were being stolen and if a Rapa guard was found with his throat slit, wasn't that what they hired themselves out to expect?

  “My dear Drak,” said Susheeng. “I swear you are thinking of something else."

  A naturally gallant man might have mumbled that no man could think of anything in the presence of Susheeng except her; that way lay dragons. I said: “Yes."

  “Oh?” Her eyebrows lifted. That cruel look flashed over her face.

  “I was thinking how strange it is that neither you nor your brother, the noble Glycas, are married."

  Her breath caught in her throat. “You—would—?

  “Not me, Princess Susheeng.” I took a breath. “I am spoken for in Vallia."

  “Ah!"

  I thought that would finish the matter. She had known that my urgent desire to return to Vallia—as she thought of it as a return—had cooled lately. She had thought it was on her account and now she knew otherwise. I made a big mistake then.