Scorpio Drums [Dray Prescot #42]

by Alan Burt Akers

  Holding myself as relaxed as I was able, I re-dedicated myself to the Disciplines of the Krozairs of Zy, and awaited his arrival.

  He halted in a little willy-willy of dust. I could smell the oils of leather and of metal wafting from him. Added to that he exuded a strong rank odor of body sweat. His face glared at me, rather like the blunt end of a tent peg. His eyes, narrow and bright, dark with secret knowledge, sized up the girl and me.

  “Lahal, dom,” I said, before he opened his rat-trap of a mouth.

  “It is Llahal, dom.” He spoke harshly, rattlingly, as I expected.

  He was, of course, perfectly correct. That guttural double-L makes of the Lahal with which you greet a friend the Llahal, the general greeting for a stranger.

  I nodded. “As you wish, dom.”

  “You have seen a shint of a Rapa with blue feathers and a double-handed axe?” It was more of a demand than a question.

  Half-turning to Manting, I said so the Kanzai could hear: “Have you seen such a fellow?”

  “No.” She was still shaking.

  “No more have I.”

  He eyed us with those bright dark eyes. In a twinkling he could snatch up a Star of Death and hurl it with unerring accuracy.

  “His name is Ralafon the Kaktu.”

  “I regret I can not be of assistance to you.”

  He stood absolutely still, braced on those strapped legs.

  Then, I suppose because although humanity had been trained out of him after a lifetime of bloodshed, simple human curiosity remained, he said: “Your clothes?”

  Manting opened her mouth and I said, sharply: “Damned villagers.”

  “A village? Good. Perhaps that Shuvu-forsaken Rapa has sought shelter there. They would not take his clothes from him.”

  “Not until he was dead,” I said, equably.

  He ducked his head in a quick, instinctive gesture.

  “Yes. He is of the Tolkvar Sect.”

  Who the hell the Tolkvar Sect was I didn't know.

  Every day, they say, on Kregen, you may learn a new name. And, as I have said, it behooves you to remember names if you do not want your throat cut. I did not take my gaze from him, waiting.

  Now, let me make this clear. I had absolutely no wish to fight him. I just wanted to get this task for the Everoinye over and get back to Taranjin and Delia. If he started something I could have no mercy, not with the burdens on my shoulders.

  “We are going to Shamfrin. We would like to arrive before the suns go down.” I spoke carefully.

  “She of the Blushes will be up soon enough.”

  With seven moons in the sky any Kregan can tell the time and prognosticate when a certain moon is due. So why had the Kanzai said so obvious a thing unless he had an ulterior motive?

  “We must get on, then.” I spoke with a tinge more hardness.

  Now, as I have said, I swear I did not want to fight this fellow. He was looking at us, sharp and bright, and I knew, I just knew, that what he intended to propose would not fit in with my own plans. I suppose some imp of deviltry, I plead in extenuation, tempted me. Perhaps Hoko the Amusingly Malicious leered enticingly at me, or Khokkak the Meddler suggested mischief, both spirits of deviltry in the pantheons of Kregen. At any rate, I spoke up, and I still insist I did not want a fight.

  “Kanzai,” I said, crisply. I pointed to the fancy gold-edged blue scarf slung around his neck in a most dashing way. “The lady is bereft of clothes. I would consider it a favor if you clothed her nakedness.”

  He just didn't believe this. He opened his mouth, and closed it, and half ducked his head in that flaring-brimmed helmet.

  “Cramph,” he got out, at last, chewing the word like a cheekful of cham, making the insult stick. “Cramph. You are fortunate. I do not dispose of you instantly because I have a task—”

  Well, by Krun, I'd guessed that! And there was no time left to lollygag about. I'd just have to take him, armor and swords and all. I leaped.

  He was taken completely by surprise. My fingers were gripping his throat, high above the laminated neck ring, thumbs thrusting his Adam's Apple deeply back against his spine, before he had time to gasp.

  He was choking away and his eyes stuck out like gob-stoppers; but he was a Kanzai Brother, an Adept. He struggled and fought back.

  His knee smashed past my side, my movement instinctive the moment I sensed his. His arms raked up and his hands clamped about my wrists. I could still think clearly for I had not slipped into that fighting mesmerism that makes every move part of a natural rhythm. My opinion of Kanzai techniques went down, if this was an example. He'd reacted to my attack in a defensive response and gone for my wrists. A Krozair Brother would have gone instantly onto the offensive, probably a gauntlet in the face. I kept my head tucked down in anticipation.

  We glared eyeball to eyeball, our noses almost touching, the helmet a frame for this struggling, wriggling, constricting contest.

  He kept on dragging at my wrists and trying to knee me. He was getting nowhere with those tactics. If the minor devils had lured me into this, perhaps they had one more stab at me, this time to my discomfiture. Being Dray Prescot, I am the antithesis of the boaster; equally, I detest silly showiness, Vulgar Ostentation. I have no excuse for what happened next.

  I shifted grips, leaving my left hand at his throat whilst my right dropped to the hilt of one of his swords.

  The silver-wire wrapped hilt was in my grasp. I gave his throat an extra dig and, suddenly, he was toppling away from me, falling over in a flail of arms and legs, and I went on over him, my left hand ripped away from his throat and my right slipping helplessly from the sword.

  I rolled over three times and jumped up like a flea. The moment my feet hit the dusty ground I leaped sideways and the Kanzai's flung Star of Death hissed past my ear, a little whirring horror of silvery steel. He'd have another of these Shuriken-like killers in his fingers in the next second. I hurled myself forward—and then saw I'd never reach him before he threw.

  The whole world of Kregen fined down to that single silver streak flashing towards my eyes.

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  * * *

  Chapter three

  I did not think. There was no time to think. Only afterwards could words be found to express what occurred. Everything was instinct, an instinct trained and honed by the Disciplines of the Krozairs of Zy.

  Mul-lu-Manting, afterwards, was of little help. She could only say of what happened, whispering: “It was all a flurry. Arms and legs and blood and dust. I did not really look.”

  As for myself, I remember spurts and flashes of scarlet and yellow striking across my eyes, and the evil silver glint of the Star of Death flashing towards my face, and of the grunt the Kanzai made.

  To recollect violence in after days is not pleasant, either.

  What happened, I think, was this.

  There were two options open to me as the Shuriken swooped at me. The Kregans make their Stars of Death asymmetrical, so that their flight is not in a ballistic line. The little whirring death dealers swoop cunningly, curving into face-destroying contact. So a deflection would be tricky. It could be, had been done. To obstruct the naked human arm in way of a descending blow is always painful. The Star of Death might well spin at the last fraction of a second and so stick me. The other option was to duck out of the way fast enough. The Star of Death was traveling rapidly and my movement might not carry my head clear in time.

  These apparently nice calculations, of course, just did not exist in the heartbeat between throwing and reaction. This explanation may appear to lack the melodramatic blood and guts demanded by sensation-seekers. It would seem to them cold and lifeless, not blood-stirring. To the true aficionado of Martial Arts quite the reverse is true. To such a one, the super-quick and instinctive response has to be trained and disciplined into the correct reaction. Instinct tends always to try to save our necks, and sometimes that—as this Kanzai Adept had shown—is not always the most efficient
way of doing what is required. This time, the saving of my neck was done as prescribed by Mother Nature.

  I ducked.

  The Star of Death flashed past, hissing, and I was lunging forward.

  He got his sword out before I hit him. Well, he would, being who he was.

  Inside the first slash I bundled headlong. Body contact shocked all through me as my naked flesh smashed into his armor.

  That was the first time he grunted.

  My try for his throat was blocked by a savage sideways jerk. His sword arm was in my left fist. Correction, his elbow was in my left fist. I gripped, twisted, yanked, wrenched. So much for my left flank. My right flank had to be protected from the dagger in his left hand and the first slanting upward movement of my arm forced the blow away to the side. Missing his throat, I stuck my fingers for his eyes.

  He tore himself backwards, still struggling furiously to free his sword arm. Only my middle finger connected, a ramrod of bone.

  I felt the jolt of contact as I caught him on the bridge of his nose, which was squat and spatulate. That didn't bother him; to some folk of Kregen it would have brought water to their eyes.

  The next moment I had to deal with that pesky dagger again.

  A change of tactics was called for. With his sword out of action the dagger became the focal point of the combat. I did not make an attempt to deflect or block the next blow. I twisted a trifle and took his fist into my grip. He wore the large, ornate and truth-to-tell clumsy gauntlets of his calling, and I just crushed down hard. I did not break any bones, but his hand slowly opened. I say slowly. In comparison with the rest of it, his fist opened like a flower, gently.

  Once more trying to be clever I made a grab for the dagger but it fell away to the dust.

  He essayed another bold move and shoved himself forward bodily like a rugby scrum forward. I went staggering back and almost lost his right elbow. To let him know he had better desist, and desist quickly, that elbow was given a right rollicking wrenching about. That was when he grunted for the second time.

  Bracing myself, I halted his drive, and shoved him back.

  His left hand must have been smarting; but he doubled it up into a fist inside the gauntlet and hammered a blow at my ribs. That I could parry, and curl my arm inside his, and so grip and twine and pull. Evidently, he was not aware of that particular technique for he allowed it as a novice on the mat would do. A simple pull, and a reversal, a foot tucked behind his, a roll and a lunge and he went over slantingly backwards and sideways. As he went I released his sword arm. As he sprawled I was able to jump on him.

  After that, as they say in Clishdrin, it was all over bar the shouting.

  I had his own sword point poised above his throat, and then I dug the steel in a little, just a little, so as not to draw blood.

  That was when he grunted for the third time.

  There was blood on me and it was my own damn blood.

  In the ferocity of the combat I couldn't exactly say when I'd caught the little scratch; but, as Mul-lu-Manting said, there was blood.

  If I make this contest sound easy—it was not. There was no primitiveness of a foot behind a foot and a push to unbalance him. Oh no, by Zair! That technique was harshly taught and painfully learned and was delicate as to balance and timing and not for novices. He lay on his back glaring up at me past the blade of his sword.

  I said, and I own that although I was not panting, I took a breath before I spoke. “Do you bare the throat?”

  This ritual request from Jikaida seemed appropriate.

  He couldn't nod his head, not with the brand's point indenting the skin. He growled out in a surly fashion. “And if I do not?”

  When I answered I must have displayed that demoniac face folk call the Dray Prescot Devil Look. He licked his lips, which were dust caked inside the helmet, and said, very quickly: “Aye, dom, aye. I bare the throat.”

  “Unbuckle your harness.”

  Flat on the ground he could still do that. When I let him up his two swords and the empty scabbards and his pouches remained there. I motioned with the lynxter I carried and he stepped away from his armaments.

  I touched the harness with my foot. “This is an interesting sword, dom.”

  He was rubbing his throat and glaring. Some saliva ran down his chin. “It is a drexer from Vallia.”

  “Oh. The thraxter is from Havilfar, that I know. Where did you come across this drexer?”

  If he thought my interest in a sword after such a fight was odd, he gave no indication. “It was given to me by a comrade.”

  “His name?” That snapped out more sharply than I intended.

  “Larghos Vom ti Ferlinsmot.”

  I hadn't seen Larghos for many a season and I doubted if that crusty old kampeon had become a Kanzai Brother. If he'd given a drexer, which is a superior sword of Vallia, to this fellow, then I knew I'd done right in refraining from slaying him. I said: “Then I must ask you for the loan of the blade. You have other swords.”

  He didn't answer, still chafing his neck. Now and then he let a little grunt past his thin lips.

  “That pretty blue scarf with the golden edges. I must now ask you to let the lady have it to clothe herself.”

  He fairly tore it off and hurled it at Manting. It fell to the dust in a crumple.

  I said: “Not the action of a true walfger, although the Kanzais may have other ways of treating ladies.” I put a snap into my words. “Pick it up and hand it across properly.”

  Now was his chance to grab the girl and use her as a hostage. He didn't try. By this time I believe he had the message that he wouldn't win with that gambit. He picked up the scarf and before he passed it over he actually dusted it off. I quite liked that.

  “Now that scrap of red at your waist, under the armor. That will be a nice red sash, I believe. I'll have that, too, if you don't mind.”

  He had to strip off some of his armor to get the sash out. It was not a brilliant scarlet, being more of a bright crimson; it would serve me well enough. When I pulled it around myself and tucked the ends in, I own I felt a new man. Of such petty symbols is morale built!

  His three swords were each swung from their lockets on separate belts, so I could strap the drexer's belt around me and haul tight.

  He moistened his lips again. “Your name, dom?”

  “Drajak the Sudden. And you?”

  “Noring the Ovoinach. Yes, you are sudden.”

  “You are for the village and this Rapa, we are for Shamfrin. I would we could part in peace.”

  At that time I knew little of the Kanzai Brotherhood. I had been told their humanity had been trained out of them. They went about the world on missions in pursuance of their own ends. Yet the very fact they called themselves a Brotherhood indicated feelings, one for the others. They were not, I judged, evil in the mundane meaning of the word.

  He shifted a foot in the dust.

  “I surprise myself,” he said in that harsh, uncompromising voice. His face had regained some of the color it had lost during and after the fight. The rank smell of sweat hung on the still air. “I would not willingly go up against you in fair combat. Peace from a Kanzai Brother is possible only to a dead adversary—or to one who does not threaten us.”

  “Well, by Chusto!” I burst out. “Sink me! I don't threaten you!”

  “If that is the truth in your heart.”

  “It damn well is, and it is not for you to harangue, Kanzai.”

  He nodded, a quick yet formal bow. “Very well. Let us part in peace.”

  I didn't offer to shake hands. I moved off a little way as he retrieved his harness and sheathed the lynxter and dagger. If he threw another Star of Death I had the sword to deflect it.

  He straightened up and started to march off with a swing. After half a dozen paces he stopped and turned about.

  “Remberee, Drajak the Sudden.”

  “Remberee,” I called back. “Remberee, Noring the Ovoinach.”

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  * * *

  Chapter four

  To the majority of people of Paz, the Clansmen of Segesthes appear as archetypal savage barbarians. My Clansmen, I hasten to add, I hope needlessly, are not barbarians. Some of the clans farther off are a trifle hairy, I suppose. But if you wish to describe someone as savage and destructive and barbaric, you can call him or her a Clansman.

  The clans of the Great Plains are nomads, of course. Nomads, in their eternal marches across the grazing lands, do not in general assist the onward march of progress and civilization. Nomads are essentially living a static way of life. And, too, something of that harsh living is caught in the very word Clansman. A girl or a woman of the clanners will call herself a Clansman unselfconsciously, for she is of the clans.

  All this in explanation of Mul-lu-Manting. She had heard of the clanners and she had seen what she had seen, and she could still look me straight in the eye, her shakes forgotten. As we trudged on towards Shamfrin she resumed her normal attitude. That meant she began to try to convert me to the creed of the New Empire of Loh.

  Even in the most populated nations of Kregen the land area is so extensive that vast tracts remain comparatively uninhabited. Stretches like that over which Mul-lu-Manting and I now walked existed between cities. Well aware of the sudden and ferocious habits of Nature upon Kregen I walked with a light step and a wary glance. Leem, themselves, the archetype of feral destruction, might be sniffing on our scent. At the least I expected savage hunting beasts like chavonths or strigicaws, mortils or prychans. The white walls of Shamfrin approached as the Suns of Scorpio declined and we walked only the last ulmby the light of She of the Veils.

  Other cities and towns I had visited in Walfarg had given me the strong impression of weirdness. They were different from other cities in unexpected ways and therefore were strange beyond the normal strangeness of foreignness. The white walls and red roofs might well appear to be familiar; their architecture caught the eye at odd angles, leaning, overtoppling, pile on pile piled on arcades of gloom in the depths.

  The light of the moon guided us the last distance through cultivated fields where the fuzzy pink and golden light caught the sleeping heads of the crops, shadowing and highlighting stalk and leaf and ear. That light was sufficient for the guards to see clearly and they had not yet closed the gates as we approached. A few stragglers moved along with us, and a Quoffa hauling an immense cart piled with nameless objects; a string of pack calsanys, and a lone rider astride a lictrix passed under the gatehouse with us.