Masks of Scorpio

by Alan Burt Akers

  Most of the rest...

  “There are murdering holes in that ceiling,” pointed out Rondas the Bold, “and arrow slits in the walls.”

  “Aye,” agreed Pompino. “Where is the trigger?”

  Jespar professed himself at a loss.

  “This must have been set up after Kov Pando left.”

  “Well,” I said, venturing an opinion, “if no one has been here much since, this could be Murgon’s work, therefore we look for places where the dust does not lie as thickly — as there!”

  The plate in the floor was suspiciously free of the dust that clung stubbornly everywhere. We could mark our route in the dust of the floors.

  “You could be right.”

  “We shall see,” said Rondas, and he took off his heavy helmet, swung it by the straps, and hurled it full onto the plate. The metal rang gonglike.

  Instantly, the nearest murdering holes disgorged a fuming liquid that stank in the confines of the corridor, and the nearest arrow slits ejected barbed darts that flew to smash rendingly against the opposite walls.

  Bold as ever, Rondas laughed, and stepped forward to retrieve his helmet, no doubt concerned lest the feathers were damaged.

  “Wait!” screeched Pompino.

  Rondas took two steps more and bent, and the whiz of the dart passed just over his head. From the murdering holes more fuming liquid poured, stifling us in the stench. Rondas let out a yell, and leaped back, half-straightening as he jumped. The second dart took him full in the back. It punched through his carelessly flung cape, and as he reeled under the blow I leaped, grabbed him, hauled him in like a fisherman reeling in his catch. Rondas fell all of a heap.

  We staggered back.

  Rondas said, “May all the devils of Gundarlo take it — my back, horters, my back!”

  We turned him onto his front so that his great beak jutted to the side and lifted the cape away. The barb had dinted into his armor, breaking a way through. Dark blood welled.

  Pompino pursed up his lips.

  “It is deep; but not so deep as to be fatal, as I judge. You have been lucky, my Bold friend.”

  “Lucky! My back feels like it has been broken in two!”

  “Well, the dart must be got out, and that is a job for a needleman, of whom we have none. So—”

  “I can make it back to the flying boat,” gasped Rondas. “Even if I crawl. Do you go on.”

  I said, “I am not prepared to see Rondas die for lack of attention—”

  “What do you suggest, then, Jak? Abandon our rescue?”

  “If necessary. The Vadni Dafni can always be rescued another time — this whole venture is—”

  “I know! It is foolhardy, harebrained and stupid! But we are in for it now, mostly thanks to you. So I shall go on, by Horato the Potent!”

  “Very well.”

  He glared at me, very huffy, very arrogant, brushing up those reddish whiskers into a bristling stiffness.

  “If that is your desire, Jak the — Jak the—”

  “Call me Jak the Onker, and it would fit. We cannot go on through that corridor, I judge—”

  “That is right, master!” broke in Jespar, babbling in his eagerness. “The traps are fresh and strewn thickly.”

  “So you will have to find another way through, Pompino the Iarvin.”

  Cap’n Murkizon, who appeared somewhat at a loss because of the absence of Larghos the Flatch on guard by the voller, banged his axe about, mentioning his Divine Lady, and suggesting we stop blathering and get on with it. I believe he had missed a deal of the byplay, the words not spoken, between Pompino and me.

  Now Pompino cast about and spotted a secondary corridor. He pointed that way, nose in the air, filled with a quivering fury.

  “Let us go, then, by Horato the Potent!”

  The way led for a time back the way we had come and if Pompino noticed this he did not comment thereon. I supported Rondas, fairly hauling him along, concerned at the state he was in. Arrow and dart wounds are the very devil if they are not treated correctly. I judged that the barb although not overly deep was deep enough to present problems. It could not be pushed all the way through, as a slender arrow might with a smart blow, mainly because it was aimed directly into the vitals of the Rapa. It would have to be cut out. This I could do, and had done aforetimes; it was not something I was overly fond of having to do. Also, to weigh the balances in our favor, Rondas was a tough bullyboy of a fellow, able to stand the shock of my rude ministrations. He would not keel over like others might have done who had previously caused Seg and me some headaches.

  The Fristle guard commander, Naghan the Pellendur, told off one of his men to assist me, and between us we carried Rondas along more comfortably.

  As we went along, I decided that I didn’t care what Pompino might do. He was my comrade and we both worked for the Star Lords. If he wished to continue the rescue attempt then he would do so and I would not seek to prevent him. I did know that I was taking Rondas back to the voller where I’d put out my utmost exertions to see that he did not die from his wound.

  The others pressed on and Naghan half-turned.

  “Maybe it would be safer if a couple of us went with you, horter Jak.”

  “My thanks, Naghan; but with Nath the Gristle here to help, we should manage.”

  The Fristle guard assisting me made no comment.

  The Pellendur nodded, satisfied, and swung off after the main party. We’d reached a bend in the corridor where the Twins shafted their light, still eerily tinged with a ghostly silver glow, across the walls covered in faded paintings, from an arched opening above.

  Dust motes spun in the still air. The men ahead seemed phantoms, specter figures moving in moonbeams and magic. The whole wall at our side collapsed and fell away on hidden hinges. A pit gaped beside us.

  The Fristle guard, Nath the Gristle, and Rondas would have fallen, tottering off balance. I managed to give them both a fierce twisting shove, a gasped effort like the release of a spring. They toppled away from the pit.

  Then, in the same instant, I was falling, spinning head over heels through thin air.

  A frenzied hullabaloo started above, a chorus of shocked yells and oaths. The sounds racketed between the stone walls. I hit with an almighty thump, thwacking down flat on my back onto a heaping pile of filthy straw. Mangy bits of straw fluffed, the stink was immense, and all the stars of Kregen flashed before my eyes and the cacophony of the Bells of Beng Kishi clamored in my skull.

  “You all right, Jak?”

  Pompino’s shout was an echo, floating around in darkness, an alarmed yell of despair.

  I couldn’t — for the moment — answer.

  “Jak! ”

  I drew in a breath that nigh gagged me.

  “You’ll wake up the whole damn fortress...”

  “Thank Pandrite — we’ll soon have you out.”

  A hiss, a particular venomous malevolent hiss, drew my shocked attention. I came quiveringly alert. I knew, at once and without a doubt, what kind of creature stalked me from the shadows.

  Up above on the lip of the pit, out of jumping distance, my comrades crowded to peer down. They saw.

  They saw the lean slinking form lope out into the shafts of moonlight.

  That lethal shape halted when the first shaft of moonlight struck down. In that pallid radiance the eyes gleamed, gleamed — oh, how those eyes gleamed!

  The wedge-shaped head sank down, low to the stone, and the mouth gaped wide revealing rows of yellow teeth and the purple-black gums, from which spittle-foam dribbled down. Slavering, those jaws opened wide.

  Delicately, step by step, two feet at a time, one from each side, the eight clawed feet lifted and fell and the long lean body bore down on me. The tail flicked from side to side, sinuous, quivering, and the tip was truly tufted by a clot of black hair. The muscles stirred the furred pelt, long iron-hard muscles, moving with smooth precision under the ocher hide. Low to the ground, head out-thrust, two feet after two feet
, tail flicking, death stalked me in that moonlight-drenched pit.

  One of the Fristle guards hurled his spear and thankfully he missed the leem.

  More usefully, Nath Kemchug shouted: “Hai!” and threw down his spear to me. It clattered on the stones and the butt end rested on the pile of stinking straw by my foot.

  At the Chulik’s shout the leem paused and his wicked head with the whiskers stiff as steel spikes tilted up. I reached out a slow, steady, cautious hand for the spear.

  My fingertips touched the iron-bound wooden butt; and then froze. The leem snarled at me, ignoring the people up above who were all now shouting and screaming trying to draw the beast’s attention.

  Two more spears flew.

  “Belay that!” I yelled, risking an immediate attack. “You might hit him!”

  No more spears hurled down.

  Two clawed feet at a time, eight feet lifting and putting down, the leem moved from the shadows into the light of the Twins. His two shadows lay close together, so for a bewildering moment it seemed there were three leems stalking me in the pit...

  My fingers wrapped around the iron-shod butt. Nath Kemchug was proud of his spear. It was stout and sturdy, with plenty of steel weighted in the head. He could polish up his tusks a treat with it.

  The saliva glimmering on the teeth of the leem dripped down from those purple-bruised gums. His tail flicked from side to side — was he one of the sort who straightened his tail into a bar in the instant he charged? Or was he of that diabolical sort who waggled his damned tail even when he leaped? I did not know. My fingers eased up the smooth wooden haft of the spear, and I was at full stretch, and knew that if I moved too much too quickly the bolt of ocher-furred lightning would strike...

  Sensations fined down. I could feel the polished wood as rough as sandpaper. The stink wafted away and became as nothing, the dung-heap stench vanishing, and instead my nostrils filled with the smell of leem. I could see the way his whiskers indented, each in its own little black pit. I could see the sparkle of each drop of spittle. I could see the angry-red tongue, lolling behind those fangs. His ears lay close to his head, swiveled to catch the first sound of an enemy elsewhere than where he knew he had his prey firmly fixed. And his eyes! Partially veiled by a downdroop of brow, semicircles of hate, the eyeballs turned up so that the eye looked a blot of mirror darkness cupped in a rind of yellow-white, those eyes fastened on me with such merciless determination I knew that I’d have one heartbeat and one only to save myself.

  As that thought shot through my head I realized I was glad Dayra was not up there, crowding to the lip of the pit with the others.

  I do not know how long the interval was between my falling into the pit and the instant the leem charged.

  It could not have been very long. Leems are sudden beasts in their ferocity; to me that time passed in an agony of slowness. It seemed a long time to me, a damned long time.

  Then I had the spear in my fists, had thrust the butt into the crack of stone just beyond the pile of straw and the leem was in midair above me, his paws widely extended, his mouth a single vast cavern...

  One way and one way only to go—

  Headlong I dived under him, between the rows of taloned paws. His belly shot past above and the steel spear point penetrated his breast and went on and on and he went on also. Had I stayed another heartbeat, he would have landed full on me. The spear passed completely through him, jutting up a reeking and gory splinter above his back.

  His screeching scream shattered against the walls of the pit and echoed crazily in my head.

  I was on hands and knees, was turning, seeing his tufted tail quivering before my face. He thrashed and screamed and pawed at the spear, and blood sprayed.

  He wasn’t dead. Not by a long long way do you kill a leem by merely passing a spear through his body.

  Even if you hit one of his hearts, the other will pump fresh anger and power into his muscles.

  If my comrades were yelling, I could not say. If the world had blown up, I didn’t know. The noise in my head, compounded of the leem and my own blood, drowned out sanity. My thraxter was in my fist. What a weapon to fight a leem! I leaped to the side, skidding, and he turned and tried to leap again and this time I was poised and ready. The thraxter went in neatly and I swear the last foot of the blow was in midair, for I was already turning and leaping away and snatching up one of the Fristles’ flung spears.

  Give a leem no chance — he never gives anyone or anything a single chance in all of Kregen — give him no rest... The first spear, muscled by desperation, flew to embed itself in his flank and bit, as he swiveled to leap again. He did not move as fast as he had... His blood choked upon the floor and fouled among the foulness of the straw...

  Flashing the second spear before his face, shooting a jagged reflection of moons shine into his eyes, checked him for a tiny moment. He was a fine specimen — powerful, savage, a killing machine. I believe the spear in his flank must have nicked his secondary heart; for as he swiveled and prepared to leap again he was slow. I poised the spear. I drew a breath, realizing that that simple act meant I was back in control of myself and was a fighting intelligence rather than a mere primordial warrior-savage. His tufted tail lashed. His eyes fastened on me like leeches. His scarlet cavern of a mouth gaped and the yellow fangs glittered with saliva. Blood pumped from his side.

  In the next instant he would leap...

  So, mastering myself, remembering I was Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor and Krozair of Zy, I bellowed out: “Hai!” and charged in full tilt.

  Savage against savage, beast against beast...

  The cruel steel spearhead drove deeply into the ocher beast’s breast as the apim beast that was myself forced on the shaft with bursting muscles.

  Almost, he had me then.

  A paw swiped from nowhere and even as I ducked a claw razored down my cheek. Had he connected full that blow would have split my head as an axe splits kindling, a child squashes a rotten fruit.

  Hanging onto the spear I twisted, grinding it in, shouting, redness and haziness everywhere.

  Someone shouted: “Hai!”

  Pompino was there, before me, a spear in his fists driving down.

  I said, “Thank you, Pompino—”

  He said, “It was fast, too fast — my help was not necessary.”

  Staggering back, feeling the wetness of my own blood on my face, I gulped air. The stench was prodigious. The leem lay on his side, eyes rolled up, a last long shaky quiver trembling his lean flank. The dark tufted tail gave a last twitch.

  “Hai!” bellowed down Murkizon.

  The others set up a yelling. I sat down, plump, on the blood-soaked straw.

  Probably the perfectly natural reaction of a fellow after a fight overwhelmed me then. Normally I can contrive to carry on with some at least of the old functions still operative after combat. But, for some reason, on that occasion, with the dead leem and the blood and the stink — and the very real horror coiled in me at thought of what might have occurred had Dayra been with us when I fell into the pit — I babbled like a green young coy after his first brush with the foe.

  “A leem!” Quendur said, leaping down and giving the dead carcass a kick. “That is a jikai — a lone man—”

  So, loose-tongued, chattering, I said: “A leem? But I had a sword, and spears, so I had all the advantages. I’ve fought leems before. Once, I recall, I fought a leem with a kutcherer, that silly butcher knife with the spike at the back. That was a bad one. He chewed me up; but I got him in the end.

  Leems? No, doms, I do not like leems and have fought them many times, and each time I swear will be the last.”

  “You speak strangely, Jak.” Pompino turned his head to stare at me instead of the leem. The furred, feline and vicious fighting cat lay there in his own blood, and he looked pathetic now, as so many dead creatures do...

  “Strangely?”

  “Aye. A lone man against a leem no matter what his weapons and skill is
a jikai not lightly to be undertaken. Even professional leem-hunters, who are all mad anyway, do not operate alone. You were a leem-hunter?”

  “Not a professional — I only fight leems when I have to...” And, as you know, that was not strictly true...

  “A jikai,” boomed Murkizon. “That is what I call this deed and that is what it is, a jikai. Hai, Jak Leemsjid!”

  Jak Leemsjid...

  They all took up the cry.

  So, I had acquired a sobriquet, at last, after my simple name of Jak.

  Leemsjid, leemsbane...

  I said, “If that is so, we must prove myself equal to the name. The Leem Lovers—”

  “Aye!”

  I stood up. I retrieved the thraxter. I cut off that dark tuft at the tip of the leem’s tail. This I tucked down into my harness. Then we were hauled out of the pit and so set off again, and now Rondas the Bold was assisted along by a rascally savage fellow rejoicing under the new name of Jak Leemsjid.

  Chapter eleven

  We assist at Strom Murgon’s feast

  The way before us was blocked solidly by a mass of masonry extending from wall to wall and from floor to ceiling.

  “The devil take it!” exclaimed Pompino.

  He twisted up Jespar’s ear.

  “Well, tump!”

  “I do not know, master! Maybe, maybe the noise — we were heard — maybe Murgon has triggered more traps—”

  “That cross-passage fifty paces back may lead us in the direction we wish to go,” suggested Naghan the Pellendur. He glanced at the slumped figure of Rondas the Bold. “We must hurry—”

  “Aye,” said Nath Kemchug, busy with rags and oil.

  I took great heart from this small exchange. I have said many times that most of the folk of Kregen did not get on with Rapas. But one became accustomed to their smell after a time. Not all were evil. No more than any other of the races of Kregen — excepting Katakis and some others, who were damned of the devil and doomed in all men’s eyes.