Scorpio Ablaze

by Alan Burt Akers

  Written perfectly plainly on that hairy red visage and in his words and bearing was the message that he bore no animosity in my thus flaunting Vallia before him. Rather, he felt elation and pride that he was permitted to call an emperor jis. I didn’t sigh. But I admit I felt a cheap kind of cheat. Then I chucked that stupid idea out of my old vosk skull of a head. To run an empire you need to be an emperor. The kind of emperor that is Dray Prescot I hope you have some inkling of by now.

  Sternum pointed. “There’s Skull Charger, nearest. Just past her is Havil Resplendent. Then—” he screwed up the hair about his eyes. “Yes, that’s Hirrume Warrior and as usual with her Pride of Hanitcha.” He made a small gesture. “Newish ships, both.”

  Well, that figured. I’d had a passing acquaintance with both those ship names before. Quite possibly there had been two other ships built between these two over there and those I’d destroyed. As far as I knew, King Doghamrei, who’d owned the old Hirrume Warrior, had disappeared.

  The streaming mingled lights of the Suns of Scorpio threw long beams athwart the lines of ships. The vessels rode the level air. Line after line of them, proud, glittering, tall of castle and fighting top, crested with a host of fluttering flags. Yes, they made a splendid sight.

  All were of Hamal.

  They radiated confidence. You could feel the sheer zest for the coming battle as an aura about them. As for Dovad Daisy whose deck I trod, the crew were already back in various low dives in the lowest portions of Ruathytu spending their prize money.

  Jiktar Taranto walked up with a swagger. He gave me a perfunctory salute.

  “It is going to be a day, majister.”

  “Aye.”

  To Sternum, curtly: “See about finding our position in the line.”

  “Quidang, Jiktar,” said Sternum. I did not miss the fact that he had not shortened Jiktar to the familiar Jik.

  The old-fashioned courtesies in naval observances and orders to which I had been accustomed in the Royal Navy were paralleled to a considerable degree in the navy of Vallia. One could quite see why. Vallia had possessed a great sea going navy and custom and tradition would follow the ways of the sea. Hamal had no great sea-going navy. Her power flew. Even so, I didn’t like Taranto’s manner with his Ship Hikdar.

  To ease whatever tension there might be, I walked to the rail, and leaned comfortably, and studied the armada spread between land and clouds.

  Well, yes, they were an impressive lot. There were fifty-three of them. Many were skyships like Hirrume Warrior and Pride of Hanitcha, vast vessels of many decks and fighting tops and galleries. They were tiered fortresses of the sky. They carried batteries of varters and catapults. They carried regiments of marines. They were colossal machines of destruction floating through thin air.

  Among the shoals of large ships flashed the smaller pinnaces, long boats, tiny two-place fliers, carrying messages, performing the multifarious tasks needful in any fleet.

  The flagship, Pride of Ruathytu, was a veritable monster.

  She was not towing a famblehoy and it was noticeable that that demeaning duty had been allocated to the smaller vessels.

  Well, I supposed it made sense.

  Flags broke from her yard arm. The yeoman screwed his telescope into his eye and the lad wrote on the slate as the yeoman called. The signal informed Jiktar Rango Taranto na Firthlad of his position, tucked in at the tail of the Sixteenth Wing at the rear of the larboard column.

  Since the days of the great conflicts, now thankfully past, finding crewmen for fliers was easy enough, for the huge fleets of yesterday were no more. Likewise, the Hamalese Wing now consisted of nine vollers instead of twelve. The grand skyships, of course, tended to act in small squadrons or individually. Dovad Daisy turned in mid-air and sailed carefully below the fleet until she reached her place when her helmsman lifted and turned her into her slot. We rode at the very end of the fleet.

  The Ship Deldar (sometimes written ship-Deldar) went forward supervising a painting party. His position equates with that of boatswain on Earth. He was short, rotund, built of muscle, hight Hondar the Frogan. The hands with their paint pots were going to smarten up the eyes in the bows of the vessel. It was vital that in the coming battle Dovad Daisy could see where she was going.

  Whilst all this activity went on — and still no sign of the Shanks — I fretted over Shankjid. No, that is a lie. Delia was aboard that ship. I sweated blood.

  A brightly painted pinnace darted down the column and swerved up to Dovad Daisy’s quarterdeck rail. A most natty young Hikdar stepped aboard. He was smothered in gold lace, feathers festooned his hat, his face was a pink chinless round. He spoke up in a kind of chirrup.

  “Hikdar Nath ham Homath. Lahal.”

  The ham Homaths were a family well known in Hamal, of power, wealth and influence. Even if the old vad had sided so heavily with Thyllis.

  This young whippersnapper went chirruping on. “The c-in-c, Fleet Admiral, Harulf ham Hilzim, Vad of Quinvarn, requests the pleasure of the company of Dray Prescot—” here the youngster floundered, and, I thought, with design to embarrass. Then he chirruped on. “Dray Prescot, emperor, aboard the flagship, Pride of Ruathytu.”

  By this time they all knew damn well I’d abdicated the throne of Vallia. Yet the idea that I was supposed to be an Emperor of Paz over them all would be a hard nut to swallow. Still, I was a kind of emperor still.

  “I shall be delighted,” I said, curtly.

  Sternum looked disappointed. Taranto didn’t look as pleased as I would expect him to look.

  No, I said to myself. No, by Vox! That devious one has designs on my person.

  Much as I might have joyed in staying aboard his ship and playing him as one plays a giant fish on the end of a line knowing he is your supper and you’ll starve if he gets away, I needed to be at the center. The flagship was obviously the place to be. I looked at Sternum and winked. He contorted all his features so that it appeared all the whiskers disappeared into some other dimension centered on his nose. Then he managed to splutter out: “We are all mightily sorry to see you go, jis! By Krun, yes!”

  Taranto snapped out: “Majister.”

  Hikdar ham Homath was half bending and indicating with an elegant arm that I should step aboard his pinnace.

  I said: “Thank you, all aboard Dovad Daisy. I shall not forget.” Then I crossed to the rail and stepped aboard the admiral’s pinnace.

  As we whirled away with the breeze rushing past I saw Sternum at the rail, gazing after me, his whiskers fairly blowing everywhere.

  The flagship, Pride of Ruathytu, was the largest skyship I’d seen up to that time. She was just simply immense. You could get lost aboard and not find your way back to your quarters in a sennight.

  Homath knew his way to officers’ country in the center castles.

  The fore castles were given over to the marine officers. The ship bustled with activity. I surmised that the control tower would be a veritable fortress, sheathed in thick iron and protected by grilles it would take heat cutters to break through. As we went towards the admiral’s quarters, the smells of tar and resin faded to be replaced by lavender water. This, I confess, made me grin a wicked grin. A whiff of boiling cabbage broke through the lavender scent, and Homath put a lace kerchief to his nose. I didn’t blame him. Only idiots boil cabbages limp.

  After various doors and sentries, we eventually arrived at the admiral’s quarters and the admiral himself. Like anyone on Kregen who does not change much once they reach maturity until a few years before their death at two hundred or so, he looked just the same. He greeted me kindly and waved me to a chair and sent for wine. His face was burnt brown by suns and wind, his hair was Hamalese dark and his jaws were like those of a shark.

  After some pleasantries, he said: “I, for one, will support your candidacy. I have the utmost regard for Nedfar. I know what you did for him. I am your man. The quicker we can unite all of Paz the better. There is no better man for the job than Dray Prescot.”
Before I could make any sensible reply, he added: “And I thank Havil the Green that I have not been picked for the job. No, by Kaerlan the Merciful!”

  He wore a plain blue shirt and gray trousers. His belt was hard worn leather and the lockets of his thraxter were solid steel. He was, I sensed at once, a man after my own heart. I stood up and extended my hand.

  “Welcome aboard, Harulf.”

  He smiled and we shook hands after the Hamalese fashion.

  When we had reseated ourselves and he had poured more wine, he said: “All the same, majister, the task is daunting.”

  “Aye. Call me jis. Aye, the task is daunting. Still we have advantages the Shanks do not. They are dwaburs from home. We are down here in Loh, true; it is not too difficult to find our way home to Hamal.”

  “They are consummate sailors.”

  “That is indisputable. We just have to be better.”

  “The confidence of the fleet is high. I have pumped that up. But, privately, I have doubts.”

  “All I can say is I am impressed by your fleet, Harulf. I cannot say I have seen a better.”

  He glowed at that, briefly, and then said: “Aye, aye, jis. I’ve done what I can. But — and to be brutally frank — after we Hamalese fought one another, and the rifts remain, there are elements in the fleet of which I remain dubious. I am disquieted. There is a growing adherence to a creed of which I know nothing but am investigating.”

  I came alert at this. I stared at Harulf. I could feel heat on my temples. I said: “Tell me, Harulf, you do not mean Lem the Silver Leem?”

  It seemed to me to be a whole parcel of lifetimes before he slowly nodded. His face was grim. “Aye, jis. That is their name.”

  I braced up. “Very good! Root and branch, Harulf, tear them up and burn their temples. Lem the Silver Leem is an evil creed.”

  “That I had gathered. My own pantryman’s daughter went missing. By a pure fluke some ceremony or other was stumbled upon in the skyship Havil Resurgent. The little girl was—” He stopped then.

  Very quickly, I said: “You need not amplify. I know. I have seen what they do to little girls. Lem must be put down. They will have it no other way.”

  “Put down and obliterated, by Krun!”

  “Aye. Now — I am not sure if this evil cult of Lem the Silver Leem is in any way connected to the Shanks.”

  He looked at me, stricken. “You mean — jis — you mean, there are those of Paz who would ally with the Schtarkins?”

  In a voice like shifting gravel I said: “Down in Tarankar the Katakis work for the Shanks.”

  “Katakis.” He dismissed them. “Scum.”

  “Agreed, Harulf, agreed. But they are of Paz and they ought to work with us and not against us.”

  “If we can contrive that, jis, we will do so. If not, then...”

  The edge of the sword is supposed to settle so many arguments!

  The day was now waning and Harulf had duties to perform. He was clearly a man I could do business with. That he supported me as Emperor of Paz came as a surprise and a pleasure. We went up to the central top and the view of the armada spread about us was a breathtaking sight.

  This central top was well armored; just below and for’ard the control top was the heavily armored box I’d anticipated.

  You could certainly have put at least a half dozen, if not more, Shankjid’s aboard this flying mammoth.

  Harulf was proud of his fleet. He had every right to be. When the hails came in: “Sail ho!” and we all looked, there was only tense and brilliant anticipation of action and a great victory.

  Out there, black against the glows of the twin suns, the Shanks hovered, waiting.

  They looked like flecks of darkness hurled against the sky glow. I started to count. The shifting and treacherous light made accuracy difficult and I made a total of sixty. I felt that was probably an undercount.

  “Fifty-eight,” said Hikdar Nath ham Homath and he snapped his telescope shut with a grandiloquent air of finality.

  Others in the fighting top voiced their opinions.

  “Fifty-five or sixty-five,” said Harulf, silencing the babble. “We will smash them. We have to.”

  The two fleets surged together.

  There is no pleasure in recounting disaster.

  The Hamalese fought. They fought like maddened leems. They fought like wounded graints. They fought like chavonths or strigicaws, cunning and lethal. The Hamalese fought. And the Shanks fought harder.

  Ships burned. In the failing light, ships roared with flame, strewing the evening sky with lurid streamers of death. Ships fell. Men fell. Red roaring madness scorched across deck after deck.

  Pride of Ruathytu burned.

  The wonderful skyship, queen of the air, burned.

  All about Shank vollers were swooping and darting and Hamalese vollers were dying.

  Nath ham Homath, white to the lips, chattered away to himself in the fighting top as flames licked up from the deck. Harulf had gone for’ard some time ago to sort out a problem. A Shank veered away from us as our flames belched up.

  I grabbed Nath ham Homath and hauled him up.

  “Come on, sunshine. Time to leave.”

  “Fire,” he babbled. “All on fire.”

  “Let’s find that pinnace of yours.”

  “Shouldn’t play with flint and steel—”

  “Come on!” I took him by the arm and fairly hurled him down the ladder.

  We didn’t find his pinnace. We did come across a group of crazed men trying to launch a small flier and fighting over her possession. Homath appeared to regain a semblance of sanity and wanted to take the flier from the men by right of rank. I hauled him on. He’d have wound up with a slit throat, for sure. Now all the gigantic vessel above us burned. We crawled out onto the lower fighting gallery. Men were toppling off into the shadowed void beneath. The shrieks were pitiful in their intense abandonment to fate and destruction. A dark shadow drifted in below us.

  I shook Homath.

  “That’s a voller down there. We must jump.”

  He looked down, and drew back, shuddering. “I can’t!”

  The voller below us looked familiar. She eased up, closer, and I was sure. Dovad Daisy. Now there was a turn up for the book.

  Nearer and nearer the voller rose towards us. Bits and pieces of Pride of Ruathytu were falling all about, spitting flame.

  At last I judged the flier could close no nearer. I took hold of Homath’s fancy collar and dragged him over the edge of the fighting gallery. Judging the moment, I shoved him and myself, let go my hold, and we fell through thin air.

  Chapter sixteen

  Other men were toppling from the fighting gallery.

  Nath ham Homath broke a wrist and two ribs when he hit the deck. He’d not made any attempt to break his fall. With my habitual agility I managed to land catlike and escape serious injury, although I did feel as though some giant had trodden on me with seven league boots.

  For that reason I was out of action in the subsequent moments. I was aware that the voller was swinging and moving. The burning bulk of Pride of Ruathytu above drifted away, sparking flame and burning debris.

  By the time I’d got my breath back and my wits about me we were pulling away from the debacle.

  I clambered up. The lights of the Suns struck slantingly in across the deck. I turned and looked back. The sky burned.

  Ships were blazing like torches. Ships were falling wrapped in shrouds of fire. And through that whole incredible panorama the dark febrile shapes of the Shanks darted like piranha stripping the Hamalese to the bone.

  A voice said: “I thank you, Taranto. I owe you my life.”

  The voice was mellifluous, full bodied, assured. I took a look. The speaker was burned about his clothes, which had been fancy like those of Nath ham Homath’s. His rank was that of Jiktar and I judged him to be a nobleman. Taranto’s twin sister, Taranta, was there, fussing.

  “Oh, Naghan, you did frighten me so! I thought you
would never jump!”

  “It was a confounded long way! By Flem, Taranta, I thought the voller would rise closer!”

  “We rose as high as we could, Naghan.” Taranto spoke icily.

  “I’m sure, I’m sure, my dear Taranto. Just that the void looked remarkably unhealthy, by Krun, remarkably unhealthy!”

  A hand reached under my armpit as I listened to this interesting conversation and I was hoisted to my feet. Sternum’s hoarse voice said in my ear: “Any busted bones, jis?”

  “Nary a one, thank you, Sternum. Who is this Naghan fellow then?”

  “Him? Why, he’s Naghan ham Newsat, Strom of Livhavil. He’s just gone through the bokkertu to marry the lady Taranta. She carried on something dreadful. Made her brother fly to the flagship to get Naghan off.”

  I glanced about. The suns were just about gone. Whether by chance or good airmanship Dovad Daisy escaped any further Shank attentions. She bore on through the air, heading north. North did not suit me. There was work to be done down south. There was Shankjid to find.

  After a disaster of this magnitude, the people involved would be in shock. You couldn’t expect the Hamalese, for all their reputed toughness, to carry on regardless. The survivors would need time to recuperate. I wasn’t about to give them that time. There just wasn’t time for that kind of time wasting.

  I said to Sternum: “We must head south. There are things I must do down there. Important things for Paz.”

  “The Jiktar Rango Taranto is heading home for Hamal, jis.”

  “Yeh, I guessed that was where he was headed.”

  “The lads are a bit shaken — by Krun! I’m shaken!”

  “Your fleet’s been beaten. So you’ve been whacked. So all right. You come out fighting and smash up the Shanks next time. It’s no use scuttling back to Hamal—”

  “But we don’t have a fleet any more, jis!”

  “There are other fleets around here to take over.”

  “We-ell—”

  “This is a set-back, Sternum. That’s obvious. But that’s all it is. It isn’t the end. Now go round and have a word with your lads. Make them see we have to carry on down south.” I gave him an eyeball to eyeball look. “I’ll compromise if I have to. Just get the lads to take me down south to link up with my friends, and then you can scuttle off to Hamal like a whipped rark.”