“The Ullgishoa! The Ullgishoa!”
As if in response to some blasphemous call the thing in the iron-barred cage stirred and rippled its tentacles.
Whatever the thing was, the Ullars had evidently brought it with them from far Ullardrin. As I watched and worked on the chain everyone’s attention centered on the cage and the thing within.
“The Ullgishoa!”
Half-men with their indigo hair streaming ran joyfully across the blood-soaked sand. Approaching the cage, they moved with a sureness of purpose that contrasted oddly with their sudden and completely unfeigned caution. Quickly the iron bars were flung back. Like a scatter of leaves before a gust of wind the Ullars scampered back to the side walls. The cage gaped open.
Movement. Slithering, sly, obscene movement. The Ullgishoa sprawled forward out of the cage, spilling over the iron lip onto the suns-warmed sand. I took a single look and then went at my chains with the crazed fury of a madman.
Huge, the thing was, squamous, slimy, its scales extending only over the upper portion of its hemispherical back, its lower portions a writhing mass of tentacles. But those tentacles! Each undulated and squirmed and writhed like a beckoning finger. Each began at the thing’s body with a thickness of a man’s calf, but as the tentacle thickness neared the tip it lessened until it was perhaps as large as a man’s thumb, finished with a protruding lump that glistened scarlet and black, ichor dripping. Inch by inch the Ullgishoa crept over the sand. Set in the center just below the squamous back a single eye stared lidlessly, yellow and red, focused unerringly upon the white, bound form of Delia. I knew what that thing would do once its tentacles were within reach of my Delia’s body. I struggled as the devils of Dante’s Hell must struggle. If Hell exists, then it took this scene as its template.
I felt the link weakening. I felt it bending, slightly, and now the very technology of Kregen came to my assistance. I have mentioned how of necessity culture varied over the surface of Kregen, and as a corollary, technology and science varied also. It is manifestly unrealistic to imagine a world with every part at exactly the same level of advancement, unless that world be one under a central government, or a world of the far future wherein our Utopians love to direct their thoughts. So the long thin swords of the Ullars and the men of Hiclantung had to be forged from iron of a good quality. I knew because Hwang had often complained that the iron deposits around his city in nowise matched in quality the ores of ancient Loh; most of the swords had been handed down, from father to son, treasured heirlooms of a misty and grandiose past.
But for the iron of their commoner weapons and tools the men of the Hostile Territories had to employ local ores, and their weakness came now as a great blessing to me. I felt the link move, bending as I strained. All the time the people in the terraces howled and the stink of the Ullgishoa befouled my mouth, and I tried to think of iron technology and not of what those obscenely-seeking tentacles of the creeping monster would do to my Delia.
And, too, this lack of high-quality ore locally came as a surprising, but not unexpected, boon to me, as you shall hear.
The thing was almost upon Delia now.
She hung there, defiant, her head up, her face composed.
I risked a more obvious movement as I struggled. I braced my arms and stretched; those wide shoulders of mine gave me a leverage and my muscles jumped — and roped and bunched and — snap!
The link parted.
Now I must move with extraordinary swiftness.
The chains stripped from me with a clanking lost in the frenzied din of shouting from the thousands ranked on the terraces. Twin shadows from the suns of Scorpio paced me as I ran. Ullars must have attempted to stop me. I swung my bunched chains. I had become expert with swinging chains; I had had experience. I left a trail of blood and brains and shattered skulls strewing the sand. The scarlet haze enveloping my sight concentrated vision only onto the Ullgishoa and Delia. Its tentacles were looping and coiling and reaching out for Delia. Each bloated head of scarlet and black dripped a foul ichor. They thrust and withdrew, thrust and withdrew, in congested anticipation. I ran. Delia watched me.
As I reached the Ullgishoa her eyes widened.
“Jikai, Dray Prescot!”
I swung the chains. I swung the chains high and I put all my strength into that vicious and barbaric blow. Gone were the polite trappings of civilization. Gone the veneers of gentle conduct. Now I was a simple barbarian, filled with hate and loathing for this thing that sought so obscenely to destroy the woman I loved.
All that primordial savagery nerving me added cunning as well as bestial strength to my arms. The chains sliced cuttingly down upon that single lidless eye where mucus ran in a continuous dust-cleansing stream. The eye pulped and exploded into a scattered mass of scarlet and yellow. The stench sickened me -
and yet nothing could sicken me now — not when Delia of the Blue Mountains watched as I fought for her life!
The Ullgishoa was not finished.
It emitted a high whickering shrill and its tentacles lashed back to envelop me. I skipped agilely aside and an arrow slashed past me. Again I moved, constantly maneuvering myself as more arrows sliced the bright air. Many of those shafts feathered into the bulk of the Ullgishoa — and I laughed!
I took the thick coarse ropes that bound Delia into my fists and I pulled and the rope snapped in a fray of threads.
She fell forward into my arms, her body against my chest, my face enveloped in her hair. There was time for neither greeting nor the taking of a breath now. The whole amphitheater was in turmoil. Ullars and Harfnars gesticulated and screamed, arrows scythed toward us, warriors ran fleetly over the sand, their swords and spears bright in the streaming mingled light of the suns of Antares.
“Umgar Stro!” I looked up at the ornate box.
I put Delia aside and met the first of the Ullars. I broke his neck, took his sword, slashed the face from the next, disemboweled the third. Delia had snatched a sword and fallen into place at my left side. I felt a terrible pang of fear for her safety there, but she urged me on: “Jikai!”
We ran in a jinking zigzag path. The sword broke and I took another from the first Ullar foolish enough to cross my path.
A flint-headed arrow scored a bloody line across my back. Another nicked a chunk of skin from my calf. I ran on. Delia’s hair streamed behind her head as she paced me. Straight toward that awning-draped box we ran, and the bedlam increased and surged into a continuous shattering wash of sound.
Umgar Stro stood up and gripped the gilded rail before his royal box. Large he was, bulkier than me, with his indigo-dyed hair contorted into a fantastic prancing shape above his head. His blunt features and those narrow close-set eyes brooded on his warriors as they sought to stop my advance. He wore a fancy gilded armor, risslaca and leem designs hammered onto the breastplate. His thick neck rose above, ridged with corded muscle and congested veins.
“Stop him, you fools!” he roared. “Cut him down!”
But I had seen what I wanted.
Strapped to Umgar Stro’s side hung a great long sword that made the long thin swords of these people mere toothpicks in comparison. That sword was a Krozair long sword. It was the weapon given me by Pur Zenkiren in Pattelonia, before we set off to fly The Stratemsk and the Hostile Territories. I could well understand how a man like Umgar Stro would value such a brand.
An arrow hissed into the sand before my feet and I jumped and jinked and the following volley split air. Delia paced me, running very quick, her circulation coming back and yet not impeding her movements. I knew what she was suffering and if it were possible my heart hardened even more against Umgar Stro and his Ullars and these Harfnars of Chersonang.
Only this man had prevented us from continuing our journey. He it was who had caused Seg and Thelda to go down before his allied cavalry. He owed me much, this half-man, this beast, this Umgar Stro. I ran toward him and I did not shout and he saw me coming. He drew that great brand that was my own and he
threw himself into a posture of defense, cursing those about him. Arrogant and conceited, puffed with pride like many Earthly Politicians, was Umgar Stro, but he did not lack courage.
His massive frame dangled and clanged with golden ornaments, barbaric dyed leem pelts flaunting weird colors. He towered there, glowering in the light from the Suns of Scorpio, his indigo-dyed hair waving with the violence of his movements, his arms bulging with muscle.
“If these cramphs of mine will not kill you, then, by the violet offal of the snow-blind feister-feelt, I will send you to hell myself!”
He vaulted the gilt rail and landed very nimbly, swinging at once into that trained posture of defense. He was a swordsman. I made no attempt to cross swords with him. I was only too well aware of the quality of the Krozair long sword he brandished; as to the blade I had snatched up, it was as like to break at the first blow for all I knew.
A sudden and tense silence descended. All eyes fixed on the drama being enacted before the royal box. Into that silence came the screech and hacksaw rasp of the impiters from their perches around the amphitheater. There was one, a giant of the air, fluffing its feathers immediately over the awning. There was no time for fancy swordsmanship, for feint and riposte, for lunge and parry. There was space for swordplay — of the brutal cut and thrust variety I knew so well and that had brought me thus far alive
— space but no time. Umgar Stro’s coarse and bloated features broke into a crude guffaw as he brandished that splendid sword before my eyes.
“Die, little man! Die and spit your guts on the ice needles of Ullarkor!”
Beyond him as he stood so confidently his companions in the royal box guffawed in lackey-like approval. There were scented and painted women, females of the Harfnars and the Ullars, jeweled courtiers and soldiers, impiter-masters, sword-masters. And there was one man, with the red hair of Loh, who sat unsmiling and tense, clad all in dark blue and unhappy. This, I guessed, must be Forpacheng. I marked him, too, for through his machinations my Delia had been snatched when he plotted the downfall of the Lohvian army of Hiclantung.
My great Krozair long sword slashed down — aimed at my head!
I dodged easily enough but I did not reply. Delia stood a little to one side, her toothpick sword lifted, her breast heaving; but her face showed the same strong resolution I had come to know so well through all adversity.
Umgar Stro shouted, and stamped his foot, and thrust. I risked the clang of blades as I parried and dodged — and the sword I wielded snapped clean at the hilt.
The gush of laughter from Umgar Stro was like an oil well breaking surface in the desert, dark and spouting and greasy.
“Dray!” shrieked Delia, then — and she lifted her weapon to fling it to me hilt first.
“Hold, my Delia!” I shouted. I jinked left, then right, took a spring and before Umgar Stro could orient himself I had vaulted clean over him. I landed and twisted like a leem. My left hand raked across and took his right arm biceps in my fingers. My right hand went around his neck and jerked his head back. I squeezed.
He tried to gargle something.
I exerted pressure with the fingers of my left hand and his right hand slowly opened so that the Krozair long sword fell to the sand. He sagged and then thrust with desperate strength. I hauled back. Without remorse, without pity and, now his time had come, without hatred, I pulled back until, loud and sharp, his backbone snapped.
I cast him from me.
I bent to retrieve my long sword and the arrows sang past me and, in that instant, the suns-light was choked off as a wide-winged shape plummeted from the walls.
Umgar Stro’s own impiter! Come to avenge his death!
He was a monster, coal-black, wide of wing and ferocious of talon, with gape-jaws distended so that the rows of serrated teeth gleamed dull gold. His tail lashed wickedly at me so that I had to leap back. I shouted.
“Delia! This is our mount — be ready, my heart-”
“I am with you, always, dear heart!”
I intended to stand no nonsense from this savage beast. I leaped. I took the reins close up to the fanged jaw and I wrenched. I brought the flat of the sword around and laid it shrewdly alongside that narrow and vicious head.
“Let that teach you who is to be master here!”
I drew the impiter’s head down, twistingly, dragged that beast low, hit him again, forced him to bend. Delia mounted with a supreme confidence that brought the breath clogging into my throat. As she wrapped the flying thongs about herself and adjusted the clerketer for me, I vaulted up and dragged the reins upward. The impiter’s head rose. He was in a vile temper. An arrow whistled off the black sheen of his feathers and he rasped a hacksaw whine and struck three massive blows with his wings. He ran forward and then, with a massive fluttering and a great roaring of down-driven air, he was aloft. I had to strike but three more arrows away before we were well airborne and sailing above the anti-flier defense and away into the bright air of Kregen.
Below us in the amphitheater we left an incredible scene of confusion as Ullars whistled for their impiters, as Harfnars ran uselessly, shooting upward, only to see their shafts fall short. Strongly we beat across the sky. Umgar Stro — who was now dead — had trained his mount well. Crazed and savage and bewildered it might be; the impiter understood well enough what the point of my sword thrust into his side meant. His wings beat metronomically. The wind blasted back through our hair. Naked, we shivered in the slipstream. But up and up we flew, faster and faster, winging away from Chersonang and all the barbarity festering there.
For some time I fancied I could detect the foul taint from the deliquescing corpse of the Ullgishoa. From the city of Chersonang behind us rose the black swarm of impiter-mounted warriors. Like a column of smoke they rose and leveled off and, wind-driven, soared after us. I jabbed the tip of my sword into the impiter and forced him to beat a faster stroke.
The twin suns of Scorpio cast their mingled light down upon us, and the land beneath spread out with its cultivated fields giving way to heath and wasteland cut through by the magnificent stone roads of the old empire. The host of impiters on our trail must have been visible for dwaburs in every direction. Our own beast flogged the air, driving us on, putting an increasing space between us and our pursuers. As befitted the power and glory, as well as the bulk, of Umgar Stro his impiter was a king among fliers. But the double burden would tell in the long flight, and eventually the flying nemesis would catch us. If such a thing as Fate exists, it has sometimes come to my aid as well as dealing me many shrewd blows. Unaccustomed to such things, I confess it was Delia who first spotted the distant dot, and who cried out in joy — and then alarm as other reasons for the presence of an airboat here, over the Hostile Territories, occurred to her.
But there was nothing else for it. The distant flier changed course and bore through the upper levels straight toward us.
We strained our eyes. I made out a lean petal-shape, high as to stern, a much larger craft than the one in which we had flown The Stratemsk; larger, even, than those airboats of the Savanti in unknown Aphrasoe. Flags fluttered from the upperworks. Delia screwed her eyes up. I felt her body close and warm against me, and my arms tightened in instinctive protection.
“I think, my darling, I think-” she said. And: “Yes! It is! She is from Vallia!”
“Thank Zair for his mercies,” I said.
She must have spotted the massed fliers from a long distance off, for I knew the Vallians possessed telescopes. I knew without doubt why the Vallian airboat was here, why it turned at once, sensing the answer to her quest lay with that flying host of impiters. The airboat swung alongside. I hauled the impiter up and looked down.
The craft was compact and trim. I was reminded of the order and discipline of a King’s ship or of those swifters I had commanded on the Eye of the World. The sights of varters of design strange to me then snouted upward at us. At the first sign of treachery or the first false move we would be blasted from the sky. A gr
oup of men on the high stern looked up, and I saw the familiar Vallian costume mingled with a smart dark blue uniform I took to be that of the air service of Vallia.
“Jump down, Princess!” shouted one of the men, a barrel-bodied individual in dark blue, with wide shoulder wings, and a flaring orange cloak. At his side swung a rapier, matched by the main-gauche on the other. He wore a curly-brimmed hat with a blazing device of gold on the front band, and an orange tuft of feathers. His face was seamed and wind-lined, the crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes testimony to his days in the air scanning distant horizons.
Carefully I edged the impiter lower so that the ratings below ducked against the beat of wings. Delia went over first and I followed to be caught instantly in strong hands. Umgar Stro’s impiter, relieved, spun away into the bright sky.
“Princess Majestrix!” said the burly man, a Chuktar, an exalted rank in any man’s army or navy or, as I encountered for the first time, air force.
“My Lord Farris!” said Delia. She was wrapped in a swathing orange cloak, and her face showed high and proud and yet mightily relieved. “You are most welcome.”
The Lord Farris, the Chuktar in command of this airboat, the name of which was Lorenztone, bowed deeply. He did not incline, a depraved custom, and this pleased me. “And this-?” He gestured toward me in a way that was most polite.
Delia smiled. “This is Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor, Kov of Delphond, and betrothed of the Princess Majestrix.”
Farris bent his head in a stiff but exquisitely formal little bow. He turned back to Delia. “The Emperor, your father, learned that you had taken a flier and-” He hesitated and I could guess the scenes that had followed on that discovery. “There have been many airboats seeking you, Princess, and I am overjoyed that it was to me and Lorenztone, that the honor of finding you has been given.”
“I am pleased, also, Farris. But-”
A lookout sang out from forward.
Everyone turned. The sky seemed filled with impiters.
Warrior of Scorpio dp-3 Page 20