Bladesman of Antares [Dray Prescot #9]

by Alan Burt Akers

  They took me in a little flier out to the coast in the dawning light as the emerald-and-ruby glory broke over the land, and we slanted down to a vast flat area of dust and scrawny grass where row after row of monstrous Hamalese sky ships were lined up. I watched everything with feverish eyes.

  Ob-Eye had me loaded aboard a giant of the skies, a veritable aerial fortress. Thick were her timbers, massive her upperworks, profuse her provision of varters and catapults, her ports for bowmen. All this was a revelation to me, accustomed to the small vollers and airboats; the greatest fliers I had seen had not even approximated in size to these monsters. I saw then something of the awful power of Hamal.

  Two sky ships lifted off as the twin suns cleared the horizon, and as we rose, so the suns raced up the sky. Ob-Eye had the complete confidence of his master, and I saw and heard him giving intolerant and contemptuous orders to the captain of the ship, this Hikdar Hardin. This ship sported the colors and insignia of Hirrume. The lead ship showed the purple and gold of the Queen. In trail we flew out over the sea.

  A hexagonal structure mounted on stilts just forward of the center allowed an uninterrupted sweep of deck fore and aft beneath. Other towers of various shapes and sizes housed artillery, the varters and catapults; this hexagonal bridge was the center of command, and there I was carried. The sky ships are built in a number of different fashions and styles, in the never-ending effort to achieve better efficiency. High in the control area, with Hikdar Hardin most uneasy, with Ob-Eye chuckling away, chewing cham and thoroughly enjoying himself, I waited like a chunk of frozen beef.

  When a lookout shrilled, high and fierce, everyone, including me, felt a climactic moment had arrived.

  Under Ob-Eye's malicious eye the guards hoisted me up. They unlocked my chains and threw them on the deck. They stripped off my gaudy and humiliating clothes—for I had not had time to remove them after my regretted drink—and they dressed me in a gray shirt and blue trousers. Ob-Eye explained. He wanted to distill every moment of horror thrice over.

  “When you fall into the sea, rast, those onkers aboard the Queen's ship will think you a crewman and will suspect nothing.” Then he nearly split a gut laughing. “But, cramph, you will not be falling into the sea, will you?” And he guffawed his merriment to the skies.

  Over our heads fluttered the bright colors of Hamal, and I realized we had slowed. Ob-Eye gave curt instructions. I was lifted and twisted so that I could look forward and down.

  I saw—and, seeing, I understood—and the full horror of what these cramphs from Hamal were doing drove coldness between my shoulder blades and a painful cramp into my stomach.

  Below on the blue glittering surface of the sea sailed two beautiful ships. I recognized one for sure; the other I did not know. They foamed along, their sails stiff and curved, proud, and from their trucks floated the yellow saltire on a scarlet ground that was the flag of Vallia.

  Vallian galleons!

  Oh, yes, it was perfectly plain what was afoot here. If Hamal would not sell vollers to Vallia, then Vallia must try to buy them elsewhere. Never before, I had been told, had Vallian galleons been allowed farther south than the towns of the northern coast of Hamal. They were restricted to the westward of the Risshamal Keys. The deputation to Ruathytu had been exceptional. And now here were these two gorgeous galleons, their sails proudly billowing, the spume flying, their forefeet crashing through the blue seas, driving on southerly to Hyrklana!

  Like an onker I wanted to yell a warning to those two galleons down there, small with the distance and yet clear in every detail. The suns blinded from their paintwork, their gilding caught gleams from the ivory curve of their sails.

  The Queen's sky ship from Hamal was Pride of Hanitcha, and she had drawn out ahead of us. I watched in pure horror as she circled twice, coming up with the wind on the wake of the nearest galleon. I knew, then, and I felt the surging blood clashing and clamoring in my skull.

  “Look, Bagor the wild leem! Look!"

  A primitive lust for killing swept over the decks of King Doghamrei's sky ship, Hirrume Warrior. Lips ricked back from teeth, eyes showed a devilish gleam, weapons were more fiercely grasped. Pride of Hanitcha slowed, hovered. I saw the black rocks tumbling down. I saw the iron pots spouting fire screaming down through the air to burst upon the spotless deck below, to spread and grow and devour the galleon, flickers of flame mounting with horrid swiftness up shrouds and stays, bringing down yards and spars, utterly consuming that marvelous galleon, so far from her home port in Vallia.

  I could not weep, for I was paralyzed.

  “See, you rast! Now we burn the other—and you, Bagor the kleesh, will be the first torch to be flung down on her decks!"

  They wheeled up an iron cage stuffed with combustibles. A torch glared in Ob-Eye's hand. His one eye was quite mad.

  “Thrust him in, put the torch to him, and throw him down upon the Vallian ship!"

  * * *

  Chapter Twenty

  Sky ships and galleons

  They stuffed me in the iron cage among the combustibles.

  They wheeled the cage to the bulwark.

  They lifted it on tackles.

  They swung it out over the water.

  Ob-Eye himself put the torch in.

  Flames crackled up about me.

  By Zim-Zair! This was no way for a Krozair of Zy to die and leave this wonderful world of Kregen and go reiving among the Ice Floes of Sicce! By the Black Chunkrah! What would my maniacal clansmen say, riding their voves like the wind across the Great Plains of Segesthes? By Vox! How would my people of Valka take the news? By Djan! My Djangs would nod their heads and say a man needed four arms, by Zodjuin of the Silver Stux! And Strombor ... and Delia, my Delia of Delphond, my Delia of the Blue Mountains?

  Flames sprouted about me and I felt nothing.

  Hirrume Warrior, captained by Hikdar Hardin, had not quite reached the correct position in the sky from which to release the flaming cage of combustibles onto the deck of the Vallian. The galleon I had not recognized had been burned. The one below now, creeping apparently slowly back toward us as we crept up along her wake, was Ovvend Barynth. A fine galleon, she was, belonging to the Kov of Ovvend, farther along the coast from Delphond, and I had been aboard her in the crowded harbor of Vondium in my capacity as Prince Majister of Vallia. In a few murs she would be a flaming volcano, and I the blazing human torch of her destruction.

  The flames touched me.

  Like a high-spirited zorca responding to a clumsy rider's spurs, I felt the kiss of flame. I felt the heat. I felt the searing pain. I jumped.

  I jumped!

  Whether the drug needed the stimulus of pain to drag its victim back to life, whether I just shattered through my agony all the chemical bonds holding me, I did not know. What I did know was that strength and feeling flooded back to my arms and legs, to my shoulders and back—and to my rear, which felt as though my trousers were on fire.

  I leaped.

  I got a hand to the cable above the cage and I got the other onto the little wooden derrick. I hauled myself in hand over hand and gave a last barbaric kick at the flaming cage, knocking it free. It dropped away with a great hissing and roaring of flame—I did not stop to watch it drop all the way into the sea. I knew in the inferno of sensations clamoring at me that it would drop short of Ovvend Barynth. Even as I handed in along the derrick I caught a faint ironical cheer breaking up from the deck of the Vallian galleon. Trust my sailormen of Vallia to jeer at an enemy's mistake!

  Ob-Eye was glaring at me, openmouthed, his hands half-raised. Someone had done half the job already on him. All I needed to do as I came inboard was to smash my fist into his one good eye, and knock him flat. A stux flashed past my ribs. A thraxter chunked down past my head, biting deep into the bulwark. I ignored all of them for the fiery pains shooting and darting up my backside. I was aflame, all right; my pants were well alight.

  I couldn't stop. I charged headlong into the crowd of idlers who had gath
ered to watch me burn and bomb. They scattered, yelling, and thraxters flashed before my eyes. I seized the nearest guard, broke his neck, took his thraxter, slashed the faces of the next three who came at me, won a space in which it might be possible to extinguish the fire in my rear.

  I hurled myself onto the deck and rolled over and over in a vile stink of burning cloth and singed flesh. When I leaped up a fresh group of skymen faced me, ready to overbear me. I knew exactly what I must do. I was alone, stranded on the decks of an enemy sky ship stuffed with foemen, and I had a job to do.

  There was some satisfaction in it as I bellowed out, high and hard and as loud as I could, “Hai! Jikai!” I hurdled the group opposite me, put in a couple of thwacks as I cleared their prostrate bodies, gripped with my left hand onto the rail and went for the next bunch. They thought they had me penned between them and the control area, where Hikdar Hardin gaped like a loon above the skymen at the levers.

  These men were protected by a wrought-iron screened cage and I wrenched the door open so that the hinges squealed. Hardin clapped his mouth shut, whipped out his sword, and came for me. I did not kill him; a Bladesman pass and his sword went whirling up, end over end, sparkling. I thumped him alongside the temple with the hilt, just below the rim of his helmet, and showed my thraxter-point to the two skymen at the levers.

  One babbled, “Do not kill me, Notor! I know nothing—"

  The other went for his dagger.

  Him, I clouted and stretched senseless. The other one cowered back, screaming. Faces showed beyond the perforations in the wrought-iron screen. The door groaned. So I had to hit this screaming wretch, knocking him out. I bundled his unconscious body atop that of his comrade's and wedged the Hikdar's body across both, using the captain as a wedge. The wrought-iron door in the screen would not open easily now.

  I leaped to the levers. These, with Delia's tuition fresh in my mind, I could understand. Hard over with the speed-forward lever. This, I knew, would bring the two silver boxes linked to the controls beneath my feet closer together. The boxes would most probably be in a well-armored compartment in the center of the ship. The other lever, that controlling attitude, I thrust to starboard. Now the two silver boxes would be rotating around each other in their concentric rings of wooden and bronze mountings. Hirrume Warrior responded instantly. The sky ship picked up speed and swung on to her new course.

  All this time the frenzied yelling outside the bridge-like control area mounted in fury. I laughed. I, Dray Prescot, laughed. Let them fume! To the Ice Floes of Sicce with all of them—and with that yetch Lem to keep them company!

  Through the forward screens, more pierced to afford a good view, I could see Pride of Hanitcha, the Queen's sky ship, turning with contemptuous solid ease there in the thin air, swinging back to find out why we had not burned the second galleon. On our respective courses, which I found I could feel with the same instinctive feel I had for a frigate ghosting in under reduced canvas between shoals, I saw Pride of Hanitcha would cross directly above Ovvend Barynth. When sky ship crossed galleon more hideous spouts of fiery destruction would tumble down...

  The speed lever was notched over as far as it would go. I hammered it with the flat of my hand. Outside that wrought-iron screen the crewmen of the sky ship howled and danced. Now they had brought up a timber and were using it as a battering ram. The sky ship hurtled on through thin air. I held her course. The wrought-iron door bulged, screeching, and one of the skymen's arms was trapped, acting as a wedge. The Hikdar draped across, closing off movement. The door jerked again as the timber struck. The note boomed like a gong of battle.

  Now the devils were clambering on the wrought-iron roof trying to stick stuxes and thraxters down at me. I flailed the thraxter up at them, clanging against steel like an anvil chorus. Now the roof of the hexagonal bridge-like structure swarmed with men trying to get at me. Now I was in a cage of my own devising—a cage not filled with blazing combustibles but a cage affording me protection!

  They'd break through soon. I knew that. Again I hammered at the speed lever. Ahead of me the towered side of the Queen's sky ship, pierced and looped and wicked with varters and catapults swung closer. Men were running about her decks. The Queen had not known what King Doghamrei was up to in his plans to get rid of me, and his insane plotting was going to cost Queen Thyllis dear. The bows of Pride of Hanitcha began to swing. She was trying to dip beneath my ram. If I missed I would not get another chance, by Vox!

  The cacophony of yelling outside the iron cage, where the skymen struggled to break in, mounted in intensity. They had realized what was happening. There was precious little deck for them to mass on, for the control cage had been specifically designed to stand as a fortress, a strong point, and its wrought-iron mesh, cunningly angled, afforded a fine view out but would prevent the easy entry of enemy bolts and arrows.

  No time to laugh now, no time for anything but to keep the sky ship on course and hold off these Hamalian rasts...

  The door groaned and squealed and gapped a fraction, enough for an intrepid soul to hurl a stux. I caught it and returned it, a neat little cast through the iron crack, and the skyman screeched and fell away. Another took his place with a crossbow. The levers were hard over. I could force them no farther. If the skymen slew me and forced their way into the control cage they might yet be in time to divert the swift destructive rush of the sky ship.

  Dodging the first bolt as it whistled past my head was the quick and instinctive reaction of a Krozair. Leaving the levers, I jumped for the door, whipped the thraxter in and out, and tumbled the crossbowman back, spouting blood from a wrecked face.

  “Kill him! Kill him!” shouted a Hikdar, foaming, his face scarlet, urging his men on. He was a dwa-Hikdar and subordinate to his captain, Hardin, who was a zan-Hikdar, and who now lay wedged against the door having desperately little chance of ever making that next and vital step to ob-Jiktar. The skymen made a fresh rush, bashing their timber against the door, as the dwa-Hikdar urged them on with that typical battle cry of Hamal: “Hanitch! Hanitch! Kill! Strike the nulsh down!"

  The iron door gonged. I thrust at the first unfortunate on the timber and he dodged back, colliding with his fellows. There was an instant's confusion, then they had dropped the timber among their own feet and legs, and the timber fought for Vallia!

  “Hai! Jikai!” I roared at them to infuriate them, to goad them, and all the time the monstrous sky ship bore down on her equally monstrous consort across the swirling sky.

  Like a Bladesman I whickered the thraxter at them as, yelling, they rushed again. A quick glance forward showed me the Queen's sky ship Pride of Hanitcha, painted, gilded, the flags fluttering, rushing in with so close and sudden a telescopic effect that in a trice all I could see was her central portion, its middle tower with a wrought-iron cage similar to the one in which I battled on. Then all that vanished in a single chaotic glimpse of the control cage. Pride of Hanitcha had made a last desperate attempt to slide under me. She failed.

  The crash hurled me across the cage and I grabbed the levers to steady myself. Men were reeling and shrieking about the decks, toppling, to plunge twisted over the side. With a deliberate savagery I thrust both levers hard down, sending Hirrume Warrior with Pride of Hanitcha impaled on her ram and her beak planted in her vitals plunging for the sea.

  Absolute bedlam foamed outside.

  They'd given up trying to break in. Men were screaming and yelling, calling on the gods and godlings and saints, bellowing all manner of oaths. Distinctly, over the racket, I heard a panic-stricken voice shrilling: “Help me now, Lem the Silver Leem! To you the sacrifice, to you the power, to me the deliverance! Lem! Lem!"

  Any idiot who called on Lem for help deserved all he got.

  Also, I heard a strong voice calling on Opaz, and this, I admit, gave me a pang.

  The sea rushed up. I caught a distorted glimpse of it, all twisted and on end, past the deck of the Queen's sky ship. I'd gaffed that one, brutally! Judging distance
s is a necessary accomplishment of a first lieutenant of a seventy-four if he wishes to remain in that position. When the sea boiled beneath, for we were now almost standing on our starboard bow with men falling off in spouts of white foam into the water, I eased the controls. Those silver boxes would have to earn their keep now! Half of their secrets I knew. Somehow, whatever was really in the paol-box reacted with the mix of minerals in the vaol-box and lifted Hirrume Warrior. The sea flattened out beneath us. The ram spur of the sky ship must have sunk deeply into the vitals of Pride of Hanitcha and disrupted the careful balancing in the wood and bronze circles where her two silver boxes operated. She was not lifting. Together, flat, like a pair of old boots, the two sky ships splashed into the sea, gouting water and debris in a flower of destruction.

  Even while the ship floundered and the water cascaded up past the splintered bulwarks, I dragged the three unconscious men away from the door. I dragged it open on its buckled hinges, straining with effort. I roared out, crabbing along half on the deck, half on the bulwarks. What I looked like I do not care to imagine—what I remember is the decidedly cool feel about my backside. Men were leaping into the water, clinging to bits of wreckage. The sky ship might not sink for some time; there would be ample wreckage to support her company.

  Ob-Eye, his face congested, a beautiful swelling of magnificent coloration around his one good eye, saw me and yelled. He charged. There was no time for Bladesman's work here. We had borne on past the track of the galleon, but she was bowling along in a stiff breeze and would be gone in a trice.

  “You cramph, you rast—I'll cut you down, by Lem!"

  I slid his sword, circled, clunked him over the head, and dived over the side into the water. I started swimming, fast. I am able to swim fast, Zair be praised, and I had only to knock three clutching pairs of hands away as I scythed through the wreckage. The galleon, from this angle, towered into the blue sky, seemingly immense, a spired castle of white canvas, where before she had been a vulnerable toy on the ocean floor.