Savage Scorpio [Dray Prescot #16]

by Alan Burt Akers

  Turko, Balass, Oby and Naghan the Gnat refused any orders from me to remain in the villa. They said they'd go with me, even if they had to hang about outside the palace, and go they would and that was that.

  “If Tilly was here, she'd go as well,” said Oby, stoutly.

  The little Fristle fifi, Tilly, was away with Delia.

  I nodded. “Very well. But we don't want any swordplay."

  “We do not want it,” said Balass, evilly. “But we may get it, by the carbuncle on Beng Thrax's posterior."

  At the time I knew little of Vondium. It is a great and wonderful city, split by many wide boulevards and by the canals that are the glory of Vallia. I knew more of Ruathytu, the capital of the Empire of Hamal, arch-enemy to Vallia. I knew the way to and from the palace from various points within the city—from the villas we possessed, from Young Bargom's inn, from some of the gates, from the prison of the angels. We rode out sedately, taking the broadest ways, determined not to get into trouble.

  We came to an intersection, where a wide avenue passed over a canal—it was the Samphron Cut—by one of the myriad bridges of Vondium. This bridge, of ancient and weathered stone, had been decorated with sculpted heads of zhantil and mortil. The fierce old faces had worn away until now they looked merely pathetic, savage fangs blunted and broken, mighty jaws crumbling and lean. Across the intersection passed a long procession, chanting. Many and many a time have I seen these processions, garlanded, brilliant with colors, bright with banners, carrying the sacred images proudly aloft, sprinkling the holy dew-drops, winding in long sinuous trails through the streets and avenues of Vondium. They changed as they walked, the long rolling mesmeric singsong of “Oolie Opaz, Oolie Opaz, Oolie Opaz."

  Usually the emphasis falls on the first syllable of each word, so that the long chant goes on and on and on: "OO-lie OH-paz, OO-lie OH-paz, OO-lie OH-paz.” Up and down, up and down, a hypnotic singsong chant in time with the shuffle of many feet.

  But now all the emphasis, although apparently the same, rolled into a melancholy dirge. Effigies of the emperor were being carried along, heavily draped in black. The yellow and red of Vallia was fringed with heavy black tassels. Many tall poles were entwined with symbolic leaves and flowers, and topped with gilded and silvered skulls. These people, devout, devoted to Opaz, mourned the emperor already. The signs of passionate intercession broke spontaneously from the long columns, men and women flinging themselves into ecstasies of supplication, impassioned bursts of oratory and prayer to preserve the life of the emperor. But the dominant impression remained of a funeral procession, of the pious regrets and observances for a departed monarch.

  “By Vox!” I said. “The old devil isn't dead yet!"

  We rode on toward the palace and the traffic flow thickened with many riders and palankeens and chairs, with the zorca-chariots flickering their tall spindly wheels, varnish and paint and gilding catching the light of the suns. At the time the palace in Vondium always caught at my throat by its sheer size, its grandeur—as always I reflected that this beauty and glory and power would have been flung aside as nothing by Delia when she would have fled by night with me, a penniless outcast.

  Up to the various guard details we rode and, at first, a chingle of the golden talens and the swift transference of a bag procured our passage. These guards did not know me—as I did not know them. They were mainly apims; but a few diffs of the kinds most favored in Vondium stood their duty.

  Further into the warren of courts the going became tougher.

  Here were stationed the first details of the emperor's personal bodyguard, the Crimson Bowmen of Loh.

  “No way through here, koter,” observed a matoc, a non-commissioned rank, anxious to be promoted to Deldar and put his foot on the first rung of the long ladder of advancement.

  The gold worked with him.

  At the next court, where flower sellers waited in long lines, their flowers all blue—a color not favored in Vallia—the guard detail was commanded by a dwa-Deldar. He looked at me. The gold did not move him. We dismounted.

  I said to my friends: “Wait here and do not cause mischief."

  “But—"

  “Wait!"

  I took the Deldar aside confidentially. I showed him the gold. He started to shake his head in the shadow of the marble column and I put a dagger into the small of his back, twisted it so he could feel the point, and said gently: “It's the gold or the steel, dom. The alternatives are open to you, the choice yours alone."

  He made the sensible man's choice.

  When we went back I said to Turko and the others: “Do you go back to the main square. I shall not return this way.” I spoke forcefully. “If you do not leave now you will be taken up."

  Such was the evil nature of my face that they went, albeit grumbling.

  Past the next courtyard I found myself in a portion of the palace I knew slightly, and so could duck through a small door and enter the more somber shadows of the inner precincts unobserved. There would be more guards yet I did not think I would have skewered the Deldar; but it was no certainty.

  Mind you, I did not recollect the Crimson Bowmen being stationed so far out of the main bulk of the palace before. They usually stood duty inside the palace.

  Inside, as I strode along and mingled with the many people hurrying to and fro, a common occurrence in these huge households so that I was for the moment not noticed, I spotted a distinct change. The guards stationed at doors leading to the various inner areas were Chuliks. I felt surprise. Chuliks do have two arms and two legs, two eyes, one nose and one mouth; but they are diffs of so savage and ferocious a nature that many diffs, let alone apims, hesitate to call them men. They habitually shave their heads save for a long pigtail, their skins are oily yellow, they have two three-inch long tusks thrusting up from the corners of their mouths, which are cruel rattraps. They are trained from birth as mercenary fighters, and can use many weapons with great skill. They will remain loyal when paid, and sometimes afterwards, if the prospects seem good.

  A few nasty ideas began to circulate around my thick old head. The emperor, despite one nasty experience and a recent scotching of another, still reposed trust in his Crimson Bowmen. Why, then, should he replace them with most expensive mercenaries who were generally disliked?

  Perhaps I should have used more guile getting in to see my father-in-law, and instead of taking the direct, golden-paved route, have broken in through one of the many secret passageways.

  Persevering, on I went, noticing the air of tension and gloom about the place, but ignoring that in my determination to get through. Long and overly-ornate corridors, mirror-faced, tiled with scenes of the chase and the hunt, led me on ways I knew. This was now the main corridor that led from the outer courts of the palace to the first of the succession of anterooms opening onto the emperor's private apartments. The thickness of the scurrying crowds thinned. Soon, as I approached a tall balass door guarded by two Chuliks, I stood almost alone.

  They regarded me as though I had crawled from under a stone.

  “You had best begone from here, calsany,” said one. He wore a most fancy uniform of red and black, lavishly garlanded with golden cords, with black belts studded with bronze. At his sides he carried scabbarded a rapier and main gauche and in his right hand a three-grained staff. The tassels were red and black, the colors of the emperor's slave masters.

  “Will gold unlock that door, dom?” I spoke up cheerily, most friendly. My hands hung limply at my sides. “I know it well, having passed through many times. The Chemzite Stairway lies beyond, and this door is seldom closed—"

  The left-hand Chulik stopped my prattling.

  “These are not normal times, rast. The emperor is dying. No one passes here save those with authority. Schtump!"

  Schtump is a most abusive way of saying clear off, and in normal circumstances could never have been used by a Chulik mercenary to a koter of Vallia within the palace. But times they were a changing-oh.

  “Since
,” I told these two yellow-skinned, pigtailed mercenaries, “you will not take gold—take this."

  Oh, yes, it was foolish, vainglorious. Even as I twisted the left-hand one's three-grained staff free and clouted his companion over the ear with it, and brought it back to drive the bronze butt hard into ridged gut muscle, I was ruefully thinking that I was becoming overly talkative in these latter days. But, by Zair, that would change!

  I gave each one a thoughtful little tap alongside the helmet rim, just to make sure, and leaving them slumbering pushed the balass doors inward. I heard a gasp and twisted at once, fast, to see only the long golden furred legs and delightful tail of a Fristle fifi disappearing past a pilaster along the wall. Friezes of strigicaws and shonages ran along the cove here, and the door slammed sharply. I made no attempt to follow. Instead, I pushed on through and ran up the weirdly deserted Chemzite Stairway. In normal times the balass doors were thrown back and the Stairway thronged with courtiers and supplicants and advocates and nobles, all going about their business with the emperor's personal staff.

  Now all those highly-placed nobles with access to the emperor were confined to a few of the great halls. I passed along through narrower stairways, walking the marble of a balcony, and looked down at them as I went. From all over the Empire of Vallia the lords and ladies had come to Vondium to be in at the death. Each one had personal reasons of avarice or ambition or fear. As I walked along quietly, looking down at the assemblage of waiting nobility, my lips wrinkled up. A fine crew they were! Not a one, I daresay, spared a thought in sympathy for Delia, their Princess Majestrix. Not a one thought for an instant that it was a girl's father who lay dying.

  But, then, that was not entirely true, for nobles like Farris would care. Many of them I recognized. Some of them I have already introduced to you in these tapes, and many more there were of that crew waiting to step onto the stage and strut their little part, before shuffling off, and, by Vox, a lot of them horizontal, too...

  But, adhering to my plan, I will tell you of these high and mighty nobles of Vallia as and when they came into contact with me. And, too, I did not forget that I had vowed to myself to be the new Dray Prescot, the quiet, conciliatory peace-loving man who would talk first. If the emperor died then the streets of the capital might flow with blood. Everyone knew that factions waited for the moment to strike. And, as is the way with desperate men banded together waiting for a single event to strike, each party believed itself to be the most powerful, or the most advantageously placed, or having the most moral force. A detached observer could see only tragedy ahead.

  But, of course, there were few—if any—detached observers, for everyone had a zhantil to saddle. And I, Dray Prescot, I was not detached. Oh, I tried to be. I told myself I wanted none of it. But I knew if some hulking lout brandishing a sword and flaunting colors and feathers tried to steal what belonged to Delia, or what should rightfully belong to our children, then all my fine detachment would vanish and the old Dray Prescot, of the devil's face and intemperate manner and vicious determination, would jump in, sword swinging, as he had done long and long in the old days...

  As was inevitable I was at last stopped by four Chulik guards before an ivory door banded in gold and emeralds. They wore the red and black and carried the three-grained staffs. They were less polite than the last. True to my desire to be the rational easy-going man I ought to be, I attempted to talk.

  The polearm slashed toward me with deadly intent. They'd knock me senseless and hustle me down to the dungeons. The three-grained staff, very convoluted, very ornate, the black and red tassels swinging, the bright curved edges glittering with much honing against the solid olive of the metal head, struck for my skull.

  I slid the blow, took the polearm, twisted it free and held it parallel with the ground. I pushed. The Chulik tumbled against the gold and emerald and ivory door. He went: “Whoof!” That was as much from surprise as from having the air knocked from his lungs.

  His companions set on at once, so I had to twist the staffs free and, partially regretfully, tap their skulls. As the last slumped down I heard a hard, brittle voice say: “If you do not drop that staff this instant you are a dead man."

  Without turning I knew what stood behind me. I dropped the staff. Without seeing the flight of an arrow it is damned difficult—nigh impossible—to judge which way to jump, which direction to use. Slowly, I turned around.

  Yes—four Bowmen and an officer stood there, their bows fully drawn, and the lamplight glittered from the sharp steel heads. The odds were against me. I might have dodged, given the mystic disciplines of the Krozairs of Zy, had the occasion warranted. But I persevered in my peaceful overtures—here, in the palace of my father-in-law, for all that I was banished, here!

  As it was, I said to the officer at the head of the four Crimson Bowmen: “I do not know you. It is clear you do not know me. I have pressing business—” I got no further.

  “Take him to the cells,” said this officer, in his brittle voice. “Question him—Naghan the Pinch will know what to do. You know your orders."

  The officer in his trim Crimson was a Hikdar, a waso-Hikdar, and the pallid hardness of his face and blankness of the stare in his blue eyes would give any nefarious culprit wandering the palace a severe case of the frights. I looked at him. I thought I knew this type—always a dangerous assumption—and I stared past him at the four Bowmen.

  One, I recognized.

  I said: “Lahal, Neg Negutorio. Why do you stand in the ranks? You were an ord-Deldar the last time we met. I would have thought you a shiv-Hikdar by now—"

  That was as far as the officer was going to allow me to prattle on. My attempt at distraction would not fool him. Furiously, he bellowed out: “Seize him up! I'll have you all jikaidered, by Hlo-Hli! Bratch!"[2]

  [2 Bratch: “Move!” “Jump!” Get about your duty or you know what will happen, and the punishment will be sore indeed. Not quite so vicious a word of command as the terrible “Grak!” shouted with killing intent at slaves; but still a hard word. A.B.A.]

  This was a threat no swod was fool enough to ignore.

  Three of the Bowmen, taking their bows and arrows into their left hands, reached out with their right hands.

  Neg Negutorio gaped at me.

  “Dray Prescot!” he said. And: “The Prince Majister!"

  The Hikdar took a step back. The hands of the three Bowmen fell away.

  Neg shook his head. “Prince. Times have changed. There are many new faces in the Guard. Dag Dagutorio, our Chuktar, has been sent home, and replaced by Rog Rogutorio.” He wet his lips. “As for me—I was degraded—it was a trumped-up charge—and now I must obey orders I care not overmuch for—"

  “Silence, cramph!” shouted the Hikdar. He stared at me with venom in his face and a twitch about his jaws. “If this is truly Dray Prescot, the Prince Majister of Vallia, then is he forsworn! He is banished from Vondium! Seize him! Chain him! Send word to Kov Layco we have taken up a rare prize. Bratch!"

  For a second a paralysis gripped the Crimson Bowmen. Then the four Chuliks groaned, more or less together, and opened their eyes. Like the fierce fighting men they were they came to their feet, grasping their ripped-free rapiers, and the points glittered, centered on my chest. These diffs would have no hesitation in killing me if that proved more convenient than attempting to restrain me.

  “The Prince Majister is banished from Vondium and sets foot within the city at his own peril!” howled the Hikdar. “Seize him! If he resists—slay him!"

  The Chuliks stepped forward. My hand gripped the rapier hilt. In the next second blood would splash luridly across the golden and emerald and ivory door—

  “Hold!” rang a clear, perfect voice. A voice I knew. A voice that means everything in two worlds. “Hold! The Princess Majestrix commands! Touch the Prince Majister at your peril!"

  * * *

  Chapter Four

  Ashti Melekhi, the Vadnicha of Venga

  “The emperor my father has
revoked the edict of banishment that should never have been passed on the Prince Majister! Get about your duties."

  So, together, side by side, we walked along through the ivory and gold and emerald doorway. We left four Chuliks with blank, yellow faces, and three Crimson Bowmen disgruntled, and a waso-Hikdar raging with icy, baffled fury—and one Bowman with a single enormous grin plastered all over the inside of his martially stiff and unmoving features.

  Delia!

  She held my arm. I was dizzyingly conscious of the limber suppleness of her as she walked at my side. She wore a long dress of deep purple, unrelieved by any ornament save two brooches, one fashioned into the likeness of a rose and all of rubies and gold. The other was the hubless spoked wheel of precious gems I had given her, the emblem of the Krozairs of Zy.

  “My heart—my father—he is ill, so very ill. He is dying, I am sure of it. The doctor—” Here she gripped the scrap of lace between her fingers.

  “I will see the doctor. We should fetch Nath the Needle—"

  “It is no use. Doctor Charboi is most highly respected, and his associates. But they will not let Nath the Needle see my father."

  “I think they will,” I said.

  Nath the Needle had doctored me, and he had taken care of Delia. If the emperor's new doctors did not want Nath about them, that was a matter of concern to me. In the ante room beyond, Seg and Thelda hurried toward us with Katrin Rashumin, the Kovneva of Rahartdrin. She was now wholeheartedly devoted to Delia. With them, Nath the Needle looked just the same, if a trifle absent-minded rather than bewildered in this strange, claustrophobic atmosphere of the imperial palace where we waited for an emperor to die. And, too, here came Tilly, the gorgeous golden-furred Fristle fifi. Now I knew it was she I had seen running off to fetch Delia.