Scorpio Triumph [Dray Prescot #43]

by Alan Burt Akers

  And that bidding sent a trembling feeling of frustrated anger through me. The devil had at last shown his hand. Carazaar, too, coveted the Skantiklar.

  What he wanted it for, what he might accomplish with it, I did not know. I did know no good would come of it, none at all.

  At my back Chido let out a yell followed instantly by the scrape of steel against steel. I whirled. Four warriors hurled themselves along the gallery and Chido was engaged with two of them whilst the other two made for me. None wore bright green vepid in their helmets. With some of Seg's speed I nocked a fresh arrow and shafted the first fellow. The longbow swung back out of the way, the little round target shield snapped forward and the spear slanted up. I charged forward.

  These fellows were churgurs, sword and shield men. They were absolutely confident they could knock Chido and me over and escape the disaster. They were not apims, being bulky, two-armed, tail-less zaffims. Their faces were lumpy, as it were unformed, with large brow ridges and squashed noses, and their jaws were narrow to the point of nonexistence. Yet in those sharp jaws stood snaggly teeth that could tear off a fair old chunk of flesh. This zaffim decided he'd just rush me, knock me down with his shield and trust my little targe would never deflect his lynxter as he stabbed home.

  In that first flashing glimpse of them I'd decided their shields really were too large for inside work. All right for the line, yes; now I sidestepped and as he blundered past stuck him with the spear. He wore a banded corselet and the spear point snugged in above the neck rim. I withdrew with alacrity, fearing for Chido in his unequal fight.

  Dear old Chido handled himself superbly. He'd wounded one of them and was tinker-hammering at the other, trying to get past that damn great shield. I rushed across and gave the wounded zaffim an almighty kick up the rear and yelled in the old foretop hailing roar: “Get off out of it, fambly, before you get dead!”

  He yelped more in consternation than anything, gave me a single shocked glance and then scampered off towards the exit. I hit the other one a shrewd and unfair blow, using the butt to thump him in the back whereat he staggered forward so that Chido, quick as a leem, smacked him down.

  “No need, Hamun, I judge, to kill the hulus.” Chido spoke with the slightest hint of puffing. His face was bright with passion; but he was in command of himself.

  “Yes.”

  The fellow I'd shafted was gone; but the other one with a hand to his neck where the blood dribbled, was staggering away. Chido hauled his man up and pushed him off. The zaffim needed no further urging and ran.

  “Perhaps,” I said, with meaning, “they were not the yetches who catapulted our fellows.”

  “Perhaps.” Chido was already wiping a rag along his sword. “I wish I knew where Wees was.”

  I worried over our comrade Rees, but I leaped for the gallery rail and stared down into the chamber.

  Many dead Katakis lay on the steps leading up to the dais, and some Chuliks were dead and a few wounded. The remaining Katakis were crowding back. Well, that was the expected outcome of that confrontation.

  Chido joined me and, in that instant, he said: “Opaz!”

  The Chuliks were moving slowly, more slowly, and then they stopped. They stood like statues. Na-Si-Fantong, hand high, showed a purple and congested face up to Carazaar in his seat aboard his boat, for the devil had lifted off and was floating above the floor. Na-Si-Fantong clutched the little wooden box to his chest. He shook like an aspen. The Katakis stopped retreating and a bunch moved back up the steps. The Wizard of Loh shook himself, and then his trembling fined out and he, too, stood stock still.

  Chido said: “Confounded magic—”

  A Kataki took the box and in the moment it left Na-Si-Fantong's grasp the lid snapped open in the Kataki's hand. A red streak lanced from the box up to Carazaar—and vanished.

  In a bunch the Whiptails ran back, the boat lowered for them and they climbed aboard. There were less now than when they'd begun; but that had never upset a Kataki before and was not likely to now. They held life cheap, including the lives of fellow Whiptails.

  The boat lifted and began to revolve.

  I said to Chido: “I fancy that concludes the entertainment for today. Step back out of sight.”

  “Is there nothing we can do? No, of course not.”

  Now the reason the Star Lords had given me a little shield and a spear became crystal clear. I attracted no attention after a fleeting glance. I was just a simple spearman in the ranks. We stepped back and, just for a moment, the stern of the vessel lifted into sight as she nosed out through the green star in the stone wall. The star vanished, the black globe of radiant darkness formed and dwindled and died. Carazaar was gone—and with him another of the rubies of the Skantiklar.

  I was left to contemplate the unpalatable fact that I'd failed to obtain the ruby. Worse than that, instead of Na-Si-Fantong as our chief adversary for the possession of the Skantiklar, we now had to face Carazaar, the éminencegrise behind the Shanks.

  A voice roared out in triumph at our backs. “I've done it! By Krun, I've done it! Hoko has at last turned his face away and fortune has—”

  “Do be quiet, Wees, old fellow. There's nasty magic down there.”

  “Magic?” The booming numim voice softened. “Hanitch take it.”

  Very carefully I put an eyeball over the rail. The dais was empty.

  The last of the Chuliks trailed off out of the far doorway.

  There was no point now chasing after the sorcerer. From what I knew of his character he'd already be planning ways and means to regain the ruby. The ugly thought occurred to me to wonder just how many of the red baubles this devil Carazaar now had in his possession. My job now was to rejoin my friends and consult with our comrade Wizards and Witch of Loh.

  “Phew!” said Chido on a breath. “Can't say I've ever liked messing about with confounded magics.”

  “Nor me!” agreed Rees. Then, in a light eager voice: “Look at this!”

  We turned to him. He'd been in a fight all right, but his sword had been cleaned and was back in its scabbard. His shield was thrust up on the point of his left shoulder. He held out a brass-bound balass box.

  “A Jikaida box,” said Chido. “Aye. And, see, look what's in it!”

  The moment I saw I felt an enormous gladness for Rees well up in me. The box was jammed with gems of every description. It was a fortune.

  “Splendid!” cried Chido. “Now the estates of the Golden Wind will—”

  “They've all blown away long since.” Rees swelled his chest. “I'll start afresh, somewhere else. Opaz will aid me, I know.”

  Now after the Battle of the Incendiary Vosks when I'd parted company with Rees and Chido I'd been exceptionally busy over the business of Csitra and the Witch War. When that dust up had finished at the hunting lodge in Yumapan known as the Eye of Imladiel there had been time to go back to see Nedfar in Ruathytu. Nedfar was a man of the utmost integrity. Where in many men to be seated on the throne of empire by another person and his armies would bring resentment rather than gratitude, Nedfar had simply thanked me and we had gone forward together as allies. So I'd put in a word for Rees. Nedfar was aware of the good work Chido and Rees had done in the battle, and before, and made immediate arrangements to find a vacant estate or two.

  Since the golden lion man had taken himself off abroad, and Chido with him, nothing had so far happened. I had to be careful when I spoke.

  I said: “The last time I was in Ruathytu I picked up all manner of gossip. You know how it is. I did hear that the Emperor Nedfar was mightily pleased with your actions at the Incendiary Vosks. He knew of your difficulties with the wind blowing your estates away. I think he has in mind to find you others, a vadvarate of a certainty.”

  Before the numim could speak Chido burst out: “Marvelous! I've always said, Wees old fellow, you are worth more than a trylon, a vad at least and a kov for pweference. We must return at once.”

  “We-ell—”

  “That se
ems a good idea,” I put in, my work done.

  “You'll come with us, Hamun? Of course you will!”

  “Ah, well, now—” My future tasks lay in Loh, of that I felt convinced. I'd like to go roistering with these two in the Sacred Quarter of Ruathytu once more. The dichotomy in apparent character of the Hamalese had always fascinated me. When they'd been the enemies of Vallia we'd always seen them as a miserable folk, singing mournful songs, obsessed with their Laws. Yet the Bladesmen ruffled in the Sacred Quarter and there were many bright sparks like Rees and Chido. Oh, yes, I'd had some splendid times.

  “We'll set Wees up in his new lands and then we'll—”

  “I can't be certain of that until the new emperor confirms it.” Rees shook his golden-maned head. “We were siding with old Hot and Cold.”

  “Oh Wees! Only because the damned Vallians poked their long noses in.”

  “I suppose so. Old Hot and Cold was no good for Hamal, anyway. I saw the Vallian Emperor, on the battlefield. His people fought magnificently. He was—impressive. Funny thing, he reminded me of someone. I could have sworn I'd met him before, yet, of course, that's impossible.”

  I kept my old beakhead placid and my black-fanged winespout shut.

  “First thing is to collect our men and then see what Na-Si-Fantong is up to. We'll have to tell him the campaign is over for us.”

  I couldn't help saying: “The fellow who became Emperor of Vallia was dragged at the tail of one of Queen Thyllis's calsanys through Ruathytu.”

  “And I've told you before I considered that disgusting at the time.”

  “So you did, Rees, so you did.”

  “A wotten thing to do, even to a Vallian.”

  I stared at dear old Chido and I knew, somewhat heavily, that even now I couldn't unburden myself, tell him and Rees I was not only a Vallian but was that self-same Dray Prescot who had become the Emperor of Vallia. What they'd say to the notion of an Emperor of Emperors, an Emperor of Paz, I just couldn't contemplate. I remained Hamun ham Farthytu, the Amak of Paline Valley.

  We went out, and went cautiously, for who knew how many of the defenders lurked in the shadows thirsting for revenge.

  This red ruby of the Skantiklar was gone, and that depressed me with the terrors and horrors that must follow. I tried to take some comfort from my comrade Rees's good fortune—but I made heavy weather of it, I can tell you, by Krun.

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  * * *

  Chapter twelve

  For one awful moment of terror I imagined, as the blue glow of the Scorpion faded, that I was back on Earth.

  The whitish yellow radiance falling about me did not come from a little yellow sun but from concentric rings of lamps, shining upon a pleasant glade among rhododenrons and hydrangeas. The air tasted full of the fragrance of many flowers banked in solid beds of colour. The grass shone a lustrous green. Butterflies flitted by. Above the lamps the sky remained aloof and indistinguishable. I was not on Kregen, of that I felt confident, so I stared about, alert for what might chance next.

  The phantom blue Scorpion had taken me up as we rested after the siege of the castle of Samral. Rees and Chido would wonder where I'd gone. Would the Star Lords fashion another excuse for my absence?

  Now I have mentioned that although it appears I spend my time with the Everoinye slanging them rotten and attempting to keep myself from being contemptuously hurled back four hundred light years to the planet of my birth, the truth, of course, is that the whole situation is so fraught with terror and the anticipation of terror that my mind is held in a kind of stasis. The Star Lords wield power of so immense a scale it surpasses normal imagination. My reflexes become automatic. Yes, there were many questions I could think of in more rational moments on Kregen, but to bring them to mind facing the Everoinye is an altogether different order of rationality.

  So, now, when the clanging voice resonated through the clearing I felt once again that familiar tightening of all my senses.

  “Dray Prescot! Where is that which you observed and were sent for?”

  I swallowed down hard. “I expect you know. That benighted Carazaar took it—”

  “Oh, yes, we know, Dray Prescot.”

  A hissing at my back brought me about sharply. A wooden brass-bound chest skimmed across the grass and halted at my side.

  “Replace your dress.”

  It was borne in on me that I still wore the leather gear and carried the little targe and spear. Philosophically, I shrugged them off and dumped them all back into the chest. This was more normal, facing the Star Lords stark naked.

  The sequence of automatic actions must in some way have unclogged my brain, or jolted it into action. I remembered a question the answer to which I would like to hear from these superhuman beings. I kept that question like a little nugget of gold in my head, hugging it, concentrating on it, ready to spring it when I judged the time right.

  “We warned you Carazaar was a formidable opponent.”

  “He's that, all right.”

  If they thought I was going to plead guilty and beg forgiveness then they had another thought coming. Sure, I'd changed my attitude to them—or attempted to—but I felt instinctively they'd not believe a new cringing Dray Prescot after the uncouth rough with whom they were familiar.

  I did feel it prudent to speak up, saying: “There was nothing I could do. The fellow has an impressive amount of kharrna.”

  If I found myself back on Earth in the next heartbeat I wouldn't then be surprised. As ever, that calamity must be prevented.

  I said: “Touching these ideas of a new Empire of Loh—”

  Whether or not the ploy to distract their attention actually worked or not, I, of course, couldn't say. Probably they were prepared to talk on this subject in any case. I felt a genuine gush of relief when the clanging voice spoke. “You preserved the life of Mul-lu-Manting and she fanatically desires this new Empire of Loh. You have met Queen Satra who regards herself still as the Empress of Loh, a true Queen of Pain. Between them they may accomplish...” The voice paused and when the Star Lord spoke again I marveled. Did I detect a note of humor in the words, like that last bubble in a glass of champagne? “Well, Dray Prescot, the human who has the yrium. What is your opinion?”

  If my mouth hung open foolishly I wouldn't have been surprised.

  Well, sink me! I'd let ‘em have it, both barrels!

  “There are advantages and disadvantages. Many of the people of Loh, and particularly of Walfarg and Tsungfaril, are listless, lackadaisical. One has to judge that they would not give a good account of themselves in any confrontation with the Shanks. Should Walfarg be re-united into the empire and be provided with strong leadership, resistance should follow.”

  “Yes?”

  “It is my view that most of the other independent nations of Loh would resent any attempt by Walfarg to impose their old empire.”

  “Go on.”

  “Against that one must set the unsettling effects. Should Walfarg persist, then we'd end up fighting among ourselves instead of fighting Shanks.”

  “That is an eventuality you must prevent.”

  I clamped my harsh old lips shut. The kind of jobs these Everoinye handed out were mind boggling in their immensity.

  “How in a Herrelldrin Hell would I do that?”

  “You have the yrium.”

  “And that's supposed to be enough?”

  Silence fell.

  I broke that uncanny quietness. I spoke up brashly.

  “Tell me, Star Lords, do you or do you not want the Empire of Walfarg or the greater Empire of Loh to be reformed?”

  If they came back with their infernal chorus: “That is not for you to know,” I honestly felt I'd crash to the ground and start tearing up fistfuls of grass and chewing on them like a demented man.

  Instead: “One balances the other. The Shanks remain the priority. Anything forwarding that end must be used.”

  “All right. So Mul-lu-Manting doesn't antagoniz
e the people and Satra gets to run her new Empire of Walfarg. Yes, we'd stand a better chance against the Fish Faces. But the unpleasant consequences—”

  “That is a question for the Emperor of Paz.”

  For a black instant sheer disgust overwhelmed me. Not so much despair as angry denial. How the hell was I supposed to cope with all these problems? For a start, I couldn't see Satra taking orders from anyone, let alone that she-leem Licria if she got to take over.

  I got out, half-choking: “Very few folk want to know about any footling Emperor of Paz.”

  “Then you must make them.”

  “I've seldom been in the business of making people do anything—”

  “In that, Dray Prescot, patently, you lie.”

  Because they were who they were I couldn't smack a glove into their faces and challenge them to a duel or sequence of duels. Anyway, I suppose what they said was true enough. I could remember times when folk had done what I wanted—as you who are listening to my narrative can testify—without any real understanding on my part why they chose to do so. This was all bound up with that mysterious and frightening power, the charisma Kregans call the yrium. The opposite, the evil power, is called the yrrum.

  The scents wafted fragrantly, a little breeze blew and the varnished leaves of the rhododendrons rustled harmoniously. The resonant voice echoed about the clearing. “As to Carazaar and his interest in the Skantiklar, all things must eventuate in each epoch. Ways will be found.”

  I wondered, if the next eventuation was to take place in the next epoch, how they expected me to be still around to find any ways.

  A familiar hissing spurted and I turned to see a battered wooden chest bound in black iron trundling over the grass. When it stopped at my side I didn't lift the lid. I waited.

  “Dress.”

  Up went the lid on the instant and I saw the brave old scarlet breechclout. Well now! Yes, my kit was there, all of it was there. The lesten hide belt with the dulled silver buckle, the heavy Bowie-type knife I persist in calling my old sailor knife, the rapier and main-gauche—I pulled them out one after the other. And then I stopped stock-still. I felt utter shock.