Warrior of Scorpio dp-3

by Alan Burt Akers

  Poor Thelda!

  Poor Seg!

  He perfectly resigned himself to carrying her, if needs be.

  I must admit that I had not a care in the world. We had landed safely. We had arms and food, we were fit, and we had a continent to explore. Vallia would be there when we got there. I was in no hurry to reach that mysterious, potent, terrible island empire and face the emperor-father of the girl I wanted to marry. The future would take care of itself; only the here and now mattered — for was not Delia of the Blue Mountains, my Delia of Delphond, walking so lightly and freely at my side?

  Chapter Nine

  Into the Hostile Territories

  Delia sang.

  As we marched along Delia sang.

  My chest itched.

  As soon as Thelda had recovered herself and seen the weals crisscrossing my chest she had cooed and pursed up her fat lips and gone off to pick some brilliantly-mauve wild flowers which she bashed and mixed into a paste. Delia had wondered across and bent down and looked closely at the flowers and at Thelda’s intensely absorbed face as she pounded and stirred, and had smiled slantingly at me, and gone off, humming.

  Now Thelda had splattered the mauve paste all over my fiery chest, saying: “This will do you the world of good, Dray! It’s an old Vallian remedy and wonderfully efficacious. Why, these little vilmy flowers will have your poor dear chest healed in no time!” The confounded paste was irritating and fretting me like a hive of bees fastened to my chest.

  And Delia marched on at the head of our little caravan and sang.

  She sang wonderfully. Gay, rollicking airs that sped our feet over the grass, sad little laments that made me, for one, think back on all the great times and powerful men I had known who were now no more, silly little catch-phrase songs in which we all joined — Thelda with a self-important air of consciousness of the effect she was creating, Seg with a most powerful and musical tenor that truly delighted me, and me with my own wild and savage bellowings that always made Thelda jump and Delia sing on superbly. But that damn chest itched until I could stand it no more.

  “May the Black Chunkrah take it!” I yelled. I ripped the whole sticky mauve plastery mass off and flung it into the grass and jumped on it “My chest’s on fire!”

  “Really, Dray!” sighed Thelda, sorely tried by my ingratitude. “You must persevere. You must give it time to work its healing magic.”

  “Healing magic nothing!” I shouted at her. “You try it! You stick it on your own imposing chest and see what it feels like!”

  “Dray Prescot!”

  “We-ell-”

  The tinkling of a stream a short distance off by a line of salitas trees gave me the excuse not to exhibit further my sullen disgrace. I ran across and dived in and if all the monsters from the fabulous book called the Legends of Spitz and His Enchanted Sword that had been popular at the time I’d spent in Zenicce had started for me with gnashing jaws and talons I’d have scrubbed that confounded chest of mine clean first. Since Delia and I had taken that baptism by immersion in the sacred pool on the River Zelph in distant Aphrasoe — distant! No one knew where Aphrasoe, the City of the Savanti, was located! — we seemed to have picked up the valuable attribute of not only remaining healthy and with a promised life span of a thousand years but also of recovering with remarkable rapidity from wounds. We never seemed to get sick.

  I rejoined them and I heard Delia, in a musing kind of voice, talking about a little blue flower she had picked.

  “How pretty it is, Seg! See the petals, and the stamens, and the curious little silverish shape on each petal, like a heart-”

  Thelda said “Oh!” and put a hand to her mouth.

  “You are not well, Thelda?” inquired Seg, most anxiously.

  “Oh! How silly — Oh, Dray, what you must think of me!”

  “Now I’ve got rid of that debased paste from my chest I don’t think anything,” I said. I saw Delia’s face, all glowing and glorious and I knew Something Was Up -

  “Oh, Dray!” wailed Thelda. “What I picked was not vilmy at all! It didn’t have the silver heart — I forgot! It was fallimy, that we use to scour cisterns clean — and I put it on your chest! Oh, Dray!”

  I looked at her.

  She put her hands over her face and started to sob, so I had to yell at her: “You silly girl — it doesn’t matter! I’m not mortally wounded — oh, for the sweet sake of Zim-Zair, stop that infernal racket!”

  “Say — say you — will forgive — me! I’m so — so stupid!”

  “Now, now, Thelda!” said Delia, rather more sharply than I expected. Seg tried to put his arm around the lady companion’s shoulders, but somehow she eluded him and the next moment she was up against my abused chest and snuggling up to me, crying: “I am such a silly girl, dear Dray! What you must think of me — but-”

  “Thelda!”

  Delia hefted her pack and nodded at Seg.

  “It’s time we marched!”

  I couldn’t have agreed more. I managed to tuck Thelda somewhere around my left hip bone — she clung on — and started off after the other two.

  Oh, how my Delia had joyed in all that! She was no white-skinned flaccid lump of lard who would lie back motionlessly. She was lithe and vibrant, a sprite, alive, full of mockery and yet absolutely dedicated and honest and fearless in our love. We had met and loved and we formed the perfect whole, meeting on all levels, profound and ethereal — no, there is no woman in two worlds like my Delia of the Blue Mountains.

  The country closed in soon after that into a series of knobby rounded hills through which we followed the bank of the stream. Thick vegetation choked the hills but we found animal tracks beside the river and made good progress, always on the alert for the makers of these trails. Insects tended to be a nuisance, but Delia found a herb of pale and delicate green which, when she had crushed it and made a clear syrupy liquid seemed to my eyes a better proposition than poor Thelda’s thick mauve paste. With this smeared over our faces and bodies the insects left us severely alone; I quite liked the scent of it. Once more the country opened out and now we could see distant mountains — mere knobs on the ground compared with The Stratemsk; but nonetheless for that mountains through which we must find a way, walking. Numerous species of wild deer roamed the plains and I sighed for a fleet zorca between my knees. As it was Seg did some crafty stalking and with a single arrow provided us with our supper. We selected carefully-chosen campsites, for the horrific stories of the Hostile Territories, although so far nowhere borne out in what we had encountered, still rang in our minds. And so we proceeded across the land toward the far-off mountains. Twice we saw smoke rising from distant elevations in the plain, but these places we avoided.

  Who — or what — lived here we did not know and had no desire to make their acquaintance. An earnest of the wisdom of that decision came on a morning when the twin suns of Scorpio flamed into the sky and threw slanting sunshine gloriously through fluffed and meandering clouds above. We broke camp and strapped up and set off. The trail we were following dipped through a defile and so, naturally, we detoured that, clambering over scrubby hillsides and around thorn-ivy bushes. Ambushes are no places to take the girl one loves.

  “Look-” said Seg in a low voice.

  Ahead of us, in a crevice in the hillside that trended down to the defile below, something glittered. We approached with the silent tread of the hunter — Seg’s learned in his mountains of Erthyrdrin and mine with my Clansmen in Segesthes.

  Two dead bodies lay there. They were not men. Neither, for that matter, were they members of any of the races of half-men of Kregen with which I was at that time acquainted, Fristle, Och, Rapa, Chulik, Sorzart, or other — and my companions had never met these people before. Of medium height, they possessed two legs and two arms. Their faces reminded me of the hunting dogs of some of the clans that roamed the Great Plains of Segesthes, but there was a considerable admixture of the leem there, too. I was struck by the vast forward-thrusting lower jaw an
d the dewlaps that hung down. Mind you, the bodies were decomposing and the flies — they get everywhere — were busy. The girls moved back, out of range of the stink, but Seg and I were professionals and we knew what we had to find out. Weapons first: Short thrusting swords like the short swords of my Clansmen. Long and slender lances with many-barbed tips. Tomahawk-like axes. Knives. Metal: From the mixture of steel and bronze, we judged these people to be in much the same area of development as the people of the inner sea where steel would be used if it could be come by, and bronze if not. Armor: Practically nonexistent, consisting of leather arm-guards, a leather cap, and a leather breastplate with strips of some pretty hard substance stitched into it. Seg thought this was a bone or a horn of some kind. Clothes: Minimal, breechclouts as worn all over Kregen, with a padding vest beneath the breastplate. No shoes or sandals. Accouterments: The usual leather belts and pouches.

  Then we both looked at what had killed these beast-men.

  From the face of each one protruded a long arrow. An exceptionally long arrow. Working carefully with his knife Seg got the arrows out. He gave a grunt and lifted the points for my inspection. They were not the steel piles I would have expected.

  “Flint,” Seg said. His tanned face screwed up. “Seems I have relations around here.”

  He did a few quick flip-overs of his outstretched fingers, measuring the shaft, and then he whistled.

  “They’re from a master-bow.” I knew that the esoteric of toxophily dominated much of Seg’s life. Various grades of bow each had its name, every part, every action, every function, had its name and its ranking. The necessity of this was obvious. Seg, during our time together, had taught me much of the longbow, as I had swapped details with him of the compound bow of my Clansmen and the crossbow I had introduced to my old vosk-skulls. He had built himself a number of longbows, none, of course, from Yerthyr wood, and we had shot together in friendly rivalry. As was to be expected, at first he had outshot me by a margin. Then, as I got the hang of the longbow and mastered the transition from the compound reflex bow with which I was thoroughly familiar, as I have mentioned, I gave him a run for his money. They say you must start to train a longbowman by beginning with his grandfather. Once the society exists, however, and a man like myself with a lot of time to devote to the practice of arms is dropped into it, with the necessary requirements of an archer already existing, a great bowman may be made of him — as I had demonstrated on the Plains of Segesthes.

  “You recognize the flight, Seg?”

  He shook his head. “An expected master-set.” He mentioned the technical jargon for the way the feathers were cut and set, the angle of the cock-feather, the twining and slotting. “Whoever loosed these knew his business.”

  “Whoever he was, he was ambushed and dealt with it.”

  “But good.”

  “These beast-men have no missile weapons. They must have flung them-”

  “Much good it did them — nothing,” said Seg Segutorio, “can stand against the longbow of Loh.”

  We marched on. All we took were the two arrows. The other weapons would merely weigh us down, although I regretted leaving them.

  As we walked through this land, wary and always alert, we were able to talk. I believe you must have realized that having Delia with me had released my tensions, had loosened me up so that more than once I was astonished to find myself in the midst of a rib-straining laugh. A genuine laugh, at a joke, a witty remark, a funny situation. So we talked and joked and sang as we walked on toward the east coast of Turismond and Port Tavetus from whence we would ship to Vallia.

  Thelda wore out the first pair of shoes and then the second. She persisted in her bright eager chattering and her pushing concern over me, but with Delia walking so lithely at my side I could put up with far worse than a boring woman. Seg and I grew closer together, too, as we joined in hunting for our sustenance. I remember those days as we walked steadily eastward away from The Stratemsk across the eastern plains of Turismond with a warm affectionate nostalgia. My search for Delia had been accomplished; we were together again. Vallia could wait, and as for Aphrasoe, to which Swinging City I fully intended to return some day, that was of the distant future. Everything was of the present. The journey itself was the adventure, the joy, the laughter, the zest.

  Seg told me of Erthyrdrin, that country of his, that convulsed mass of mountains and valleys occupying the northern tip of Loh and peopled by a highly individualistic kind of person. The valleys resounded with song and the mountain peaks with the music of the harp. There were cliff-top strongholds everywhere, mere single towers of stone, some of them. Others had grown into battlemented fortresses of four or five towers linked by walls, and all were fiercely independent and devoted to protecting their crops and their flocks from neighboring raiders. Many of the young men hired out as mercenaries, for their longbows which had been developed over the centuries as hunting weapons proved mighty and invincible in battle. The Yerthyr trees were revered on the score of the quality of bow-staves they could produce; but it was considered a man’s prerogative to cut his stave from the best tree he could find, wherever he could find it. The Yerthyr trees contained a deadly poison that killed any animal who ate of its leaves, and only, according to Seg, were the thyrrixes protected by virtue of their second stomach.

  “We men of Erthyrdrin were the backbone of the armies of Walfarg. I doubt not but the bowman whose handiwork we witnessed came in the long ago from Erthyrdrin. Walfarg was a mighty country — it still is

  — but in its great days it ruled an empire over all Loh, and Pandahem to the east and south, and Kothmir and Lashenda, and over the eastern portions of Turismond. Only The Stratemsk halted the onward flow of the empire of Loh to the west.”

  “So all these so-called Hostile Territories were once a part of the empire of Loh?”

  “Yes. I hold nothing in my heart for Loh as a country. They failed because they failed. Then the raiding barbarians from northern Turismond moved in, fiercer and ever more fierce. What are now the Hostile Territories became walled off to the east by barbarous tribes of men and half-men and nowadays only a scattering of cities and trading posts on the eastern seaboard remain open to the men of the outer ocean.”

  He gestured about him. “As for what goes on in the Hostile Territories now — who knows?”

  Seg Segutorio would sing of the old days of Loh as well as his own high-flavored culture. I do not care to render into English the words of his songs. They roared and rattled and boomed in my head — and I can sing them now — but they are of Kregen.

  They echoed with deep rolling sounds — “oi” and “oom” and reverberating drumrolls and profound bassoon-like resonances, with the splatter of hard syllables like hail against taut canvas. One of his songs of which he was particularly fond reminded me instantly of “Lord Randolph My Son” and I believe the frontier and border cultures of both worlds hold much in common.

  We saw occasional hunting parties roaming the wide plains but we invariably went to earth until they had passed. Strange beasts riding strange beasts — how those words recalled another time and another place to me! — were of no concern of ours now. Although I sensed a growing need in Delia for us to push on. She wanted to get back to Vallia.

  “I cannot contract a legal marriage outside Vallia, Dray. It is all part of this silly business of my being the Princess Majestrix — you know.”

  “I can wait, my Delia — just.”

  “We must soon be there.” She glanced at me quizzically as we threaded the aisles of a forest which appeared to bar our approach and around which we had been unable to trek. “If you have any-” and then she stopped, to start again: “If you feel somewhat-” And again halted.

  “I know little of Vallia, Delia. All I know is that I wish our union to be one in which you will take pride. I know your father is the emperor and I have heard of the puissance of his island empire. Maybe-”

  “Maybe nothing! You will be my husband and the Prince Majister
! Have faith, Dray. It will not be so great an ordeal.”

  “As to that,” I said, somewhat offhandedly and a little thoughtlessly, as I realized afterward, “We have to reach there yet.”

  “We will, dear heart! We will!”

  Whenever we saw flying specks in the sky we took cover at once and instinctively, without stopping to think.

  Through this forest we did not expect to find impiters or corths and so we trod along with a firmer tread. As night dropped with the refulgent sinking of the twin suns spearing in topaz fire through the intertwined branches we sought a resting place and soon enough ran across a series of old caves sunken into an earth bank. Gnarled tree roots thrust forth, naked and shining. The leaves around looked untrodden, the dirt trails unmarked. Seg nodded. We set about gathering wood and preparing camp. I felt a slight twinge of concern lest Delia consider I was chary of visiting her notorious home and of meeting that powerful man, her father the emperor. Well, it was something I would have to do if I wished to claim Delia before the world, and having said that, that was sufficient. Nothing would stop me from doing just that — nothing. .

  Settling down for the night in our sleeping bags we had fashioned from the soft Sanurkazzian leather with plenty of luxurious silk for linings I lay back for a moment reflecting as I often do before sleep. I could well understand Delia’s desire to return home. As for me, now, my home was on Kregen and with Delia. But, still and all, I had felt very much at home riding with my wild Clansmen, and I acknowledged the surge of barbaric pleasure that savage and free life could always invoke in me. Seg had mentioned the barbarians who had swarmed down out of north Turismond to ravage and destroy the remnants of the empire created by Walfarg. I wondered if they were more violent and more barbaric than I and my Clansmen could be. .

  As I was sinking into sleep I heard a tiny scraping sound from the rear of the cave. Before the sluggish reactions of a city dweller of Earth would have prised his eyelids open in yawning query I was up out of the sleeping bag and with my naked long sword in my fist facing at a crouch whatever menace lurked there in the cave.