Captive Scorpio dp-17

by Alan Burt Akers

  The only sane course for me to follow was to do what I could for Vallia. I could not put out of my mind that terrible experience — how her claws had slashed — but I could attempt to comfort myself with the reflection that she had lived this long without me and so could live a while longer until I managed to persuade her I was not entirely the rogue, the cheat, the liar, the deceiver she dubbed me. I was those things; but not in the way she meant.

  That was a dark and dismal flight back to Vondium. The claw cuts in my face could be cleaned up and in time they would heal without a scar; but the real scars on me they would leave might never heal. My own daughter! But — at the end, she had stood back. She had made no further effort to stop me. She had bid me go.

  Better, I suppose, to be thrown out than to be killed, to a pragmatic kind of fellow, although the more sensitive might well dramatically prefer death. To me, they are the fools, for although one can see their artistic point of view, they do rather show their contempt of the gift of life, which is not to be taken lightly. Perhaps a taste of the Heavenly Mines would cure them. .

  So I forced myself to look at this unnatural situation with Dayra’s eyes. She was perfectly entitled to her view of me. I fancied the company she kept could be revealed to her as the bunch of villains they were and their dark purposes destroy her belief in them. That was one area in which she could be straightened out. That was general. In the private and family quarrel she had with me — that was something else again.

  Even then, in those bleak moments of near despair, I once again forced myself to consider the concept that Dayra’s companions were honorable people, working for what they truly believed in, and seeing Delia and the emperor and me and the family as villains overripe for the chopping. It was difficult. But, as Zair is my witness, I tried.

  And, by Vox, it was not too difficult where the emperor was concerned, either. . All these worries must for the moment be pushed aside. However difficult that might be, I had to realize that all Vallia could be drenched in blood. I had to do what I could to prevent that. Also, it would not hurt to remind myself I had two other daughters, not to mention three sons, to worry over. . All the same, the story of how Dayra had spurned the Sisters of the Rose and taken the name of Ros and learned the trick of using the Claw and become involved with Zankov and that gang would make a fascinating task to unravel and learn. Like me, she used aliases as it suited her. In that, at the least, the very littlest least, she was like me.

  It was damn small comfort.

  Vondium hove into view and the place was burning in many areas, the fierce orange flames reflecting in the canals, the proud buildings on their hills and islands burning and collapsing. I stared, shocked back to present crises.

  The long straggling black fingers of fugitives clogged roads leading away from the capital, the canals lay deserted with all the narrow boats gone, and not a flier sped through the sky apart from my own sole voller I had stolen from Udo.

  The palace was not burning and a Pachak guard ringed it to prevent looting. The devoted loyalty of the Pachaks through their honor system of nikobi was never better demonstrated. I landed in the great kyro before the palace. A guard checked me quickly and efficiently — those guards again, men, just men, doing a job, and faithful, not mere lay figures to be spitted and chopped and cast down all bloody and forgotten — and I was led off to their Chuktar.

  A few quick glances told me that all the Pachaks hired by the emperor for duties in various wings of the palace had been collected together. Even the Pachaks from the wing given over to the use of Delia and myself, for with the Chuktar stood our Pachak paktun Jiktar, Laka Pa-Re. He greeted me warmly. The Chuktar, the highest of the military ranks apart from princes and kovs and generals and kings and their like, was Pola Je-Du. He looked more haggard than I liked.

  “Lahal, prince. The situation, as you see, is ripe.”

  “Lahal, Pola Je-Du. Your orders?”

  “To guard the palace. Since the defeats the emperor-”

  “Defeats? I had heard of one.”

  “The Hamalese fought well, so I am told. The Vallian army was defeated in detail. The Crimson Bowmen fought brilliantly, those that marched. The others-”

  I looked at Laka Pa-Re, remembering how he had warned me that the guards were being bribed. Laka nodded. “The guards who took bribes were weeded out. Naghan Vanki saw to that. But the damage had been done.”

  “And the various elements disaffected in the capital and the provinces took the chance to rise. There has been much mischief, prince.” The Pachak Chuktar pulled his moustache. Smoke billowed up from a dome across the kyro and the distant sounds of shouting and the crashings of masonry reached us, thin and attenuated. “The emperor marched out with all that was left to him. For us, we guard the palace.”

  Not for the first time I wondered how the emperor had ever remained emperor for so long. With these Pachaks a great deal might be done — and then I reconsidered. There were perhaps five hundred of them. Against the Hamalese army, against the mobs and the irregulars and the mercenaries of the factions, would they have made all that much difference? The Pachaks would fight in their superb fashion when the first looters arrived with whichever army reached Vondium first. As a reserve, as a hard core, they would serve. Maybe the emperor was still the crafty old devil I thought him.

  “And the Princess Majestrix?”

  The question was followed by a general shaking of heads in the small, round, unadorned Pachak helmets. No one had any news of the Princess Majestrix.

  More information was given me — of the arrests of men hitherto considered loyal to the emperor, of the way Queen Lushfymi more and more obsessed him to the exclusion of all else, of the riots, the burnings and lootings and killings, of the exodus from the capital as the various hostile armies closed in, Hamalese, rebels, insurgents. And I knew a fresh and powerful host inspired by a revived corpse could now be added to that number. .

  It seemed to me that Phu-si-Yantong was drawing ever closer to his insane dream. But he could not control all the foes of Vallia advancing on Vondium. In that, paradoxically, lay a slender hope. In that wide and grandiose kyro with its surrounding colonnades and superb architecture the slender line of Pachaks ringing the palace and the small knot of officers all looked fragile, alone, gray chalk marks against the brilliance. In the radiance of the suns a chill wind blew dust across the flagstones. A confused noise drew our attention to the far side of the square. The sound of a multitude, the ragged tramp of feet, the jingle of weapons, the creaking of carts, made the officers walk along the ranks, tautening up their men. The Pachaks moved with the quiet, well-ordered air of men waiting for business. They were ready. They would earn their hire.

  Calmly the Chuktar gave a last few orders. I said: “I will stand and fight with you, Chuktar Pola Je-Du, if you will.”

  “I will it so, prince, and deem it an honor.”

  No victorious army of irregulars, no raging army of mercenaries broke into the square. A beaten army debouched and began to straggle across the stones. They were wounded, and dusty, wrapped in bloody bandages, exhausted. At their head mounted on a drooping-headed zorca rode the emperor. This was an army shattered and near-destroyed.

  Krahnik-drawn carts brought in the seriously wounded. A few flags drooped here and there, ripped and bloodied standards. A couple of squadrons of totrix cavalry retained their guidons. But for all else these men formed a mere mob.

  The emperor rode slowly toward the group of high ranking Pachak officers. At his side, mounted on a pure white zorca, rode Queen Lushfymi. She wore armor. Somehow, it did not look absurd; gilded breastplate, flaunting helmet crowned with the red and yellow of Vallia, a jingling assortment of weapons buckled about her and her mount. I stood, grim-faced, prepared to be exceedingly nasty. Eighteen

  The Hand of Phu-Si-Yantong

  In the emperor’s private inner sanctum he placed his goblet of wine on the polished table and banged a fist down on his knee.

  “I’
m not finished yet, son-in-law, so don’t take that tone with me. Queen Lushfymi thinks we have as good a chance as any of defeating these rasts from Hamal.”

  Only a few of us had gathered here after the shattered remnants of the army had been attended to as best we could. The Pachaks still stood guard. Now Queen Lush, half a dozen of the pallans who remained, Chuktar Wang-Nalgre-Bartong and myself conferred with the emperor. The news was as bad as it could be without being total disaster. In detail all the forces arrayed against the foes of the emperor had been defeated.

  “Kov Layco Jhansi will yet bring in a victory, son-in-law. Once he disposes of these scheming rasts of Falinur the rest will see they had better toe the line.”

  “Falinur?” I forced myself to remain calm.

  “Aye! The kovnate you made me give to your so-called friend Seg Segutorio. They have risen like flies and march to war — and where is this precious Seg Segutorio, Kov of Falinur? Skulked off as you do

  — or does he lead his host against me?”

  The emperor’s hand curled in a claw about the stem of the goblet. I couldn’t tell him that Seg had been hurled back to his home in Erthyrdrin after his baptism in the Sacred Pool — banished like all my friends to their homes. So, instead, I said: “And what of Vomanus? His Kovnate of Vindelka marches with Falinur. They quarrel over Vinnur’s Garden, so-”

  “Vomanus? That great rascal. Where is he you may well ask.”

  I judged that many a wight had taken himself off from the capital in these troublesome times; but I felt disappointment with Vomanus. He was a careless fellow, true; but he was half-brother to Delia. . All the time we spoke and argued and planned meaningless plans in the face of the catastrophe, Queen Lush sat upright, toying with her wine, looking at the emperor fixedly. When he glanced fondly at her she would smile. She wore a simple robe of a deep yellow, and not a scrap of jewelry. She looked different from the easy, casual, bitchy minx I had left here.

  “Layco Jhansi will subdue the central provinces. The southwest awaits events. The southeast-” Here the emperor looked pointedly at Lykon Crimahan, the Kov of Forli. Him you have met before. Now he was the Pallan of the Treasury, the new pallan, for Pallan Rodway had long ago passed away and the last incumbent suffered from a cleavage where his neck should be.

  Forli, often called the Blessed Forli, lies up an eastern tributary of the Great River and extends to the east coast opposite northern Veliadrin. Lykon Crimahan had no love for me. Yet, I believed he hewed to his own faith with the emperor, evil though he might be, and had the welfare of Vallia at heart, even though he had tried to obstruct my plans to build a great aerial fleet. So I waited for Crimahan to speak, ready with bitter, mocking words of my own.

  “I can vouch for Forli, majister. As for the rest — they attack my lands. I would be there to fight for them; but-”

  “Your duty is here, at the emperor’s side,” said Queen Lush.

  Her face was bright, her eyes alive with passion. I looked away from her. Her influence, I felt sure, along with many other fighting men, had weakened the emperor, and yet the old devil was full of fight, firm in his resolve to go on with the struggle.

  “And, Lykon Crimahan,” I said, “where is the great fleet of skyships I wanted to build? Are your friends in Hamal pleased at your handiwork?”

  He would have drawn his rapier and rushed on me; but the emperor put up a hand and bellowed, and protocol saved the fool.

  “I am loyal to the emperor and Vallia, prince majister! I sit still under no insults-”

  “Still, Kov Lykon. Remember the skyships we do not have when those from Hamal cast down their firepots upon the city.”

  “Our varters will shoot them down,” said the emperor. He believed it, and he had taken part in the Battle of Jholaix.

  “The Northeast is solidly against you-” I began.

  “That I know.”

  “They fly an army here.” I told them what I had learned. Barty had not reached Vondium. Probably his flier had broken down. In these last dark hours that witnessed the death of an empire Barty Vessler must take his own chances. Maybe he had gone home. I did not speak of my daughter Dayra who was called Ros the Claw.

  “Trylon Udo. Very well. I have a high tree ready for him. As for this Zankov, he can be dealt with when they get here. I am the emperor, and I understand these foolish plots. By Vox! My emissaries are already hiring thousands of paktuns for me from overseas.”

  “By the time they arrive all will be over,” said Chuktar Wang-Nalgre-Bartong. He licked his lips. He was a Bowman of Loh and he did not like to say what he had to say. “My men are loyal. They have been selected-”

  “Aye,” put in a pallan, fierce and intolerant and with a wounded arm in a sling. “The rest of the rasts took bribes.”

  The Chuktar was the last in a line of commanders of the Crimson Bowmen. He had been vouched for by Naghan Vanki, the emperor’s spymaster. Now he roused himself again to say: “We fought. We fought as Bowmen of Loh can fight. But we were ambushed in detail — do not ask me how for it is a mystery. Our plans were divined. We had no chance. So, I repeat and with sorrow, I see no other course for us than honorable capitulation.”

  The Vallians glared at him. He was a mercenary, a hyr-paktun with the pakzhan glittering golden at his throat.

  Softly, the emperor said: “And Chuktar, when you capitulate in all honor and take service with our foes, what becomes of us?”

  “That is the way of the fall of empires,” said Chuktar Bartong. Again he licked his lips. “It is all one in vaol-paol.”

  The wrangling went on. These men were like children whistling in the dark to keep their courage up. All except the emperor. There was about him a spirit I had not expected. He was far from cowed, disdaining defeat, eager to resume the struggle. A calm and supreme confidence radiated from him. In those burs in his private sanctum as we planned against catastrophe, I understood how he could be the father of Delia.

  The Chuktar of the Crimson Bowmen would from time to time shake his head and repeat: “We had no chance. All our movements were known in advance. No chance at all.”

  “And the northwest?” demanded the emperor briskly.

  “Racter country,” said a pallan with the exhausted and yet vicious air of a rast trapped in a spring cage.

  “The last reports remain unmodified. The Black Mountains and the Blue Mountains are bathed in blood. What will happen no one knows.”

  I felt the pang of that. The Black Mountains was Inch’s kovnate, and the Blue Mountains — I forced myself to ask for details. All that was known was the northwest had tried to raise a host and the Blue Mountain Boys and the Black Mountain Men had barred the advance. After that, silence. So the schemes of the Racters had not gone as they planned, then. . The black and whites were waiting quietly in other areas, waiting to step in and take up the pieces after the holocaust. Well, the onkers, they did not know that Phu-si-Yantong was there to forestall them.

  For, make no mistake, I felt, I sensed — I almost knew — that Phu-si-Yantong was this minute employing other agents to wreak his will in Vallia quite apart from the duped tools of his I had so far encountered.

  So far there had seemed no good purpose in telling the emperor the truth of this Wizard of Loh. He would be best employed fighting each threat on the ground uncluttered by an overall fear. And, anyway, it was most likely he would not believe me.

  “All known Racters have left the city,” said Lykon Crimahan. His jaws rat-trapped shut, and his thin fuzz of dark beard below his chin, the prominent cheekbones, the malicious intelligence of his dark eyes, all conveyed the seething frustration and despair in him. At times of troubles before, he had contrived to be away on his estates. This time he was here, in the capital, Pallan of the Treasury; and this time the trouble was likely to be the biggest of the lot and final. That, at the least, was good for a laugh. Now he opened that rat-trap mouth again to say with some evil satisfaction: “The Fegters rose to loot and burn and many of them were ki
lled.” He looked at me. “Your trip to the northeast was fortuitous, prince majister.”

  “Had I been here,” I began. And then stopped. To boast would be criminal and foolish — and also useless; Kov Lykon saw my hesitation, and misconstrued it. I had been about to say something entirely different from what he expected.

  But I wouldn’t tell this bright malicious rast that concern over my daughter Dayra might have cost an empire. It might have. And, again, it might not have; for could I have done any differently from what the emperor and his advisers and the Presidio had done? The forces arrayed against us were too strong. As I suspected had been the case with all the war councils the emperor had been holding, we broke up with nothing decided.

  Only one thing remained clear. We would go on fighting for as long as we could. But that time was short and was growing shorter with every bur that passed.

  Just before we rose to leave, with the emperor already turning to Queen Lush and smiling at her, holding out his hand, I said: “I’d like you to consider certain — speculations — I shall lay before you.” I’d been about to say facts; but that would put their backs up too firmly. I stared around the gathering as they paused, some half-risen, some in the act of finishing their wine, others gathering their cloaks and weapons.

  “Consider the plight of Vallia. A puissant empire and a strong emperor who yet must manipulate the factions within the empire. Consider the ambition of another, someone of equal or greater stature, someone with — extraordinary powers. Someone who can extend his tentacles of power over vast distances and subvert the good and use the evil for his own ends. Someone who will take Vallia and rule it through his puppets.”

  “How can there be any such man?” demanded Crimahan.

  I went on doggedly, wondering, to tell the truth, just how much to reveal, and knowing they would hardly believe.

  “All these risings are connected. There is a master plan. Where, emperor, is your personal Wizard of Loh, Deb-sa-Chiu?”