Prince of Scorpio

by Alan Burt Akers

“From what you tell me of Seg, I think he can take care of himself.”

  Delia.

  If she had been harmed — I did not relish that swift flight across the Ocher Limits to The Dragon’s Bones. I couldn’t remain still. I paced up and down the sundeck, flicking my rapier this way and that, aching, shivering, shrunken. Black thoughts flitted like evil bats through my brain.

  The barren wastes, rugged and harsh, fled past beneath. The hot wind scorched into my face and stung my eyes. I could not descend into that sumptuous cabin where the Kovneva Katrin had besought me. I stayed on the sun-deck and Inch kept everyone away, and, up there, alone, I suffered through that blistering journey.

  Inch had never met Delia. I know, now, that he came to a full understanding of what she meant to me.

  Away ahead I saw the yellow-umber landscape with its dry gulches and its powdery screes lifting to a serrated ridge, saw-toothed, jagged. Across this we flew, and I was very conscious how this evil land fitted my mood. Beyond, in a depression, lay a fumarole. We flew over it and then another. This whole area looked much as the surface of Earth’s moon looks, with volcano detritus and lava scattered everywhere, crater colliding and blending with crater. The glare of the twin suns beat back dazzlingly.

  There was no need for Inch to stand upon any rung of the ladder to lift his head to the sundeck level. He shouted back: “Strom Drak! We approach The Dragon’s Bones.”

  “Come up here, Inch.”

  He shambled up onto the sundeck and stood, braced against the slipstream, regarding me.

  “They said, back there in Delka Dwa, that there was no one in all Vallia who would fight for the Emperor.”

  “Aye,” said Inch, who had been a barge hauler.

  “That may be true. I do not know and, truth to tell, do not much care. But there are men willing to fight for the Princess Majestrix.”

  Inch looked at me. “Now I know,” he said. “I can feel a little sorrow for Tilda the Beautiful — and, by Ngrangi, for Viridia the Render, also.”

  “You,” I said to Inch, and I spoke as reasonably as I could, and Inch, because he was my comrade, understood and remained patient and calm under the bitter lash of my voice. “Inch, go to the Blue Mountains. Go to High Zorcady. Ask for Korf Aighos, for I think he will have returned by now, recovered. If he has not, there will be other men willing to fight — aye, and die — for their Princess. Gather what men you can, in fliers, and bring them back here.”

  “But,” said Inch, “this Hikdar Arkhebi — you remember our Arkhebi who took Strom Erclan’s place? — he can take a message.” Inch’s eyebrows drew down. “I would rather fight at your side.”

  “And dearly would I have you there, Inch, you long warrior, but” — and here I rolled out a foul Makki-Grodno oath — “I don’t trust him. Only you will carry the words to make them believe. Only Korf Aighos knows I am Dray Prescot, Krozair of Zy.”

  Even Inch did not fully comprehend what that meant. No one could, who had not sailed the inner sea, the Eye of the World.

  Inch grumbled a great deal and swung his ax about and looked every inch of his seven feet a disgruntled man, but in the end I persuaded him. I had to. The Delphondi for all their loyalty were useless — as I then thought — and only the Blue Mountain Boys and all the other bandits, reavers, and moss troopers of the Blue Mountains could offer help.

  I placed the point of my rapier against Hikdar Arkhebi’s throat. It was a cheap gesture, theatrical, but I had summed up the man.

  “You will fly directly to High Zorcady, Hikdar Arkhebi. Maybe, if you succeed, you will take the first step on the ladder leading to Jiktar. If you fail, you won’t be a Deldar — you’ll be a corpse, swinging rotting in a gibbet!”

  “Yes, my lord Strom!” he gasped out, his lips ashen.

  “And Inch, here, who is to be addressed as Tyr Inch, has my permission — no! by the Black Chunkrah! my orders — to degut you the instant you try to betray me. Is that clear?”

  He gobbled it out. “Yes, my lord Strom!”

  They landed me short of my target, which appeared to be a crater filled with bones, and Arkhebi took the airboat in a wide circle around The Dragon’s Bones, and so on over the horizon to the west.

  I stepped out smartly, for I was anxious to get where I was going. I wanted to speak with Trylon Nath Larghos of the Black Mountains. If he died, that would be his misfortune. I was approaching where my Delia was in deadly danger, and nothing could be allowed to stand in the way of her safety.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  With Trylon Larghos at The Dragon’s Bones

  “So you did receive the message I left at The Rose of Valka,” said Nath Larghos. “But why are you afoot? What took you so long?”

  He eyed me strangely. I had myself under control. The Emperor, Delia, and their men were shut up in the mass of ruins at the center of the crater. Various roads led in and out scraped in the rock and dust, with the enormous bones dragged aside. They were risslaca bones, mainly, although there were some from mammals of a later time, all fossilized, a veritable treasure for paleontologists. I forced myself to act normally. Just for the moment, Delia’s danger lay in abeyance.

  “That Opaz-rotten storm,” I grunted. “The airboat failed. One day, by Vox, we must teach those cramphs of Havilfar a lesson.”

  “Agreed, Strom Drak.” He led me off to a cluster of tents. “Come, sit and drink wine and refresh yourself. You need a shave, if you will pardon the liberty of my mentioning it.”

  “Mayhap,” I said, “I will grow a beard, Trylon.”

  The Circadian rhythms of my Earth ancestry adapted well to the longer day-and-night cycle of Kregen, and I had quickly adjusted — and, if the truth be told — with some relish, to the idea that a day demanded not four square meals but at the least six and preferably seven or eight.

  We sat and drank wine — a fine vintage of Procul, rich and fortifying — and I knew that before I did what I screamed and hungered to do and rushed into the ruins to clasp Delia in my arms, I must find out everything I could of these third party members and their plans.

  They had infiltrated all the other parties, the racters in particular, and built up a powerful and secret force. The headless zorcamen were their messengers, able to travel through the country where eyes would have followed the movements of any man wearing whatever colors. They had built up a network, and I heard news that struck me with a powerful horror. Trylon Larghos — of the Black Mountains! — had set his own followers in motion against the men of the Blue Mountains.

  “Those bandits who forever raid us would have tried to protect the Princess, their liege lord; as it is, they are out of the reckoning.”

  I sat there, drinking stupid wine, and I trembled. And I had sent Inch there — I had sent him to his death!

  Larghos went on to tell me how he had so arranged matters that one Kovnate, or any other great estate, had been set to put out of the issue the one most convenient. Neighbor had been set against neighbor. He rolled out the names with a kind of lip-licking glee. “Delphond, of course, means nothing in these affairs.”

  “No,” I said, trying to speak normally. “They are a peaceful, luxury-loving lot down there.”

  “So, Strom Drak. I am glad you have brought Valka in on the right side. I had bargained for that; I think I would not have enjoyed settling the Qua’voils against you.”

  I stared at him, trying to mask my hatred. He would have loved doing that. The Qua’voils occupy the southeastern lobe of the large island to the west of Valka, and they are halflings, sharing the attributes of — as the best way of so describing them — porcupines with those of men. They were — and here the old bitter jest turned sour in my mind — a thorn in the flesh of Valka.

  The large island to the west of Valka is called Canthirda. In the past it has been the scene of many bloody battles as Vallia, the main island, separated from Canthirda by a wide channel, sought to bring a single government over the whole archipelago. Many races had settled there and man
y species. The Qua’voils were always causing trouble. To the north of them the Emperor had settled in new lands a dependency of Relts, those more gentle cousins of the Rapas. The Valkas got on well with them, and it was to their land that Tom of Vulheim had advised me to go when I had sought to escape from Valka and reach Vallia, only to be halted by the express commands of the Star Lords in lightning and thunder. Now Larghos was speaking of fresh foulness.

  “Those stupid bird-brained Relts! Now, Strom Drak, you must send orders to your warriors to join with the Qua’voils and march against the Relts. We will take over all of Canthirda and run it as it is meant to be run.” He chuckled. “A Relt can haul a barge as well as anyone else, I fancy.”

  I managed to get out: “They remained loyal to the Emperor, Trylon?”

  “More fool them. So did the Pallan Eling. I fancy he wishes he had joined us. The leader has already appointed another man as Pallan of Canals.”

  Not knowing what Larghos had put in the letter, save that it must have summoned me to join the revolt, I could not inquire after this leader. I had thought Trylon Larghos that man. He was looking pleased, so I ventured to congratulate him on being appointed the Pallan of Canals.

  “You are right Strom Drak. . . The Pallans who will run the Presidio under the leader are all chosen. I feel that you will soon rise to office, should you wish to do so.”

  “That day may come, Trylon Larghos.”

  The attack on the tumbled mass of ruins was not being prosecuted with much zeal. I heard that a couple of hundred or so Bowmen of Loh, with other mercenaries, were shut up with the Emperor. They had bloodily repulsed the first impulsive attack. Now Larghos was waiting for the arrival of the leader with reinforcements. I talked more, seeming affable — and wanting to drive my dagger into this man’s guts — and I learned.

  He commented on the longbow, and I said I found it useful, although I would not care to shoot against a crimson Bowman. I knew that Seg Segutorio, the best bowman that Erthyrdrin — and therefore Loh — had produced, had shot against me, and although he had won, it had been by a whisker.

  I had to learn the plans.

  Drinking wine made Larghos boastful. “What are these talked-of Lohvian bowmen? Merely archers. They caught us in the open, unprepared, but the next time — why, the leader is bringing with him five hundred Undurkers. The crimson Bowmen have idled away their time, living in luxury provided by the Emperor, living on money extorted from us! The Undurkers can outshoot the Lohvians, by Vomer the Vile!”

  I did not believe that, and I had experience to go on; but, certainly, the compound bows of the Undurkers were powerful and their reputation ferocious. I felt more and more fidgety, sitting here, drinking and talking; but for the moment Delia was safe and I was doing more valuable work here than blindly rushing into the ruins.

  I walked about the third party’s camp, after a while, and Larghos gave me a great green and purple favor to wear in my hat. I saw the men they had, the mercenaries, men who would remain loyal while they were paid and their duty unfinished. Tents had been set up. There was no siege equipment of any kind that I could see. The leader might bring some, went the word. The suns would soon decline in the west. I felt I had learned all that was useful. The next big attack would go in through an archway of bones, through the gigantic skeletons of monstrous dinosaurs dead a million years or more. I looked out from the jump-off point and marked the way to go.

  I had asked Larghos about Vomanus, his candidate.

  “Vomanus! If I see him I shall slay him. He must have guessed he was being used merely as a front. Once the Emperor was out of his palace we had him at our mercy. Vomanus agreed to invite him to Vindelka. He trusted Vomanus, for the sake of Tharu, when he would not have trusted one of us. Vomanus warned the Emperor, but they fled here. That old fool Pallan Eling told us. He was glad to tell us.”

  He looked sharply at me. I nodded.

  “So,” he went on. “As soon as the Emperor is dead, the leader will take over. His candidate will wed the Princess. Then we can all count the loot.”

  I fiddled with the crimson Bowman’s shooting glove I had taken from him. I use a bracer and a shooting glove when they are available; like any Bowman of Loh I can shoot without them if I have to. It is a knack.

  All across to the east stretched the badlands of the Ocher Limits. Oh, they were nowise as strange and fearful as the Owlarh Waste over which I had tramped leaving the Hostile Territories. And they did not compare with the Klackadrin, that frightful place of hallucinations and the risslaca riding risslaca, the Phokaym. The Klackadrin is a great rift in the planet’s crust, gaseous, poisonous, fatal. The Ocher Limits were merely badlands. But that meant I wouldn’t walk out without plentiful supplies and much water.

  A shout went up and we turned our backs on the twin suns as they oblated in weird runnelings of jade and crimson, and stared up to see a fleet of fliers swinging in over the Ocher Limits. Bright pinpricks of light against the swathing darkness dropping down, they circled once. Then with a neat precision that, once again, made me give that mental nod of admiration for flier pilots, they settled onto the ocher sands.

  Five hundred archers from the islands of Undurkor!

  With them were many other mercenaries, men willing to fight for pay. Well, I had been a mercenary in my time, aye, and was to be again, as you will hear. Fristles, Ochs, Rapas, Brokelsh, Womoxes, and men, they crowded from the fliers, laughing and exchanging rough jokes with comrades from bygone campaigns they recognized in the crowd waiting to greet them. Among them the yellow skins and shaven heads of the Chuliks stood out, grim and menacing and altogether malefic.

  I went with Trylon Larghos. I stood in the last of the mingled opaz light falling about the animated scene to greet this leader who would kill the Emperor and take his place, who would marry his own candidate to the Princess Majestrix.

  With the feeling that it was my duty to count heads and to appraise potential in fighting, I studied the new arrivals.

  Of the halflings I knew — and some were there I do not mention, for I had not run across them in such a way as to merit detailed descriptions yet to you in these tapes — I was sure enough that I knew their capabilities.

  The Undurkers I knew, for they came from a string of islands situated in that enormous bay pent between the giant peninsula of South Segesthes and the smaller boot-shaped promontory to the west that separates Zenicce from Port Paros. We saw them often in Zenicce, and they had even made the attempt at a few settlements in Segesthes itself. But they seldom ventured onto the Great Plains. I rather fancied my wild clansmen would be a trifle too tough for them there.

  Their conversation was loud and confident, brash, I thought. They carried their bows already strung and in fancifully decorated bow-sheathes slung under their left arms on straps, making a saltire shape with their arrow quivers. The bows themselves were very much like those of my clansmen, curved, compound, reflex, fabricated from horn, bone, and wood, with brilliant silver fittings. Lovers of ostentation to an extreme degree, are the Undurkers. Their faces always remind me of the snooty, supercilious, offended faces of borzois. Except for their eyes, which are mounted higher up for the essential binocular vision required, they do look like borzois — and that higher mounting for the eyes adds, if anything, to their expression of continual superiority.

  They formed their camp a little apart from the rest of the brawling throng, where already, I guessed, some old scores were being paid off. A mercenary makes enemies as he goes through life. A young Strom with Larghos’ party laughed nervously, and fingered his rapier hilt. An older Vad, with a beard far too long for current fashions, boomed a laugh and clapped the young Strom on the back, and bade him bear up and face the future, when the Emperor was dead, and men could plunge their hands to the elbows in rich red gold.

  These Undurkers wore coiled artificial headdresses of hair plaited and colored from which rose their squarish helmets. Their clothes, of good Lohvian silks and Segesthan hides, were studded
with bits of metal and base gems; their Jiktars would wear real gems. Their feet were hidden in heavy boots, and I knew why; the hands of the Undurkers are hands that would not look amiss hanging on the wrists of a man, but in their paws they betray their canine origin. They are, as the Gons are ashamed of their manes of white hair, ashamed of their hind-paws, and always wear heavy concealing boots. That was their business. I wanted a glimpse of the leader — and then nothing would stop me from heading through the piles of bones to the ruins in the center and all that waited there.

  Food, drink, and fuel had been brought in and the camp fires blazed into the night sky, obliterating the last lingering ruby drops scattered across the western horizon as Zim sank in the wake of Genodras. I saw Berran the Vadvar of Rifuji, a lean dyspeptic man with a nervous tic about his left eye, laughing and jesting, and marked him, for his Jiktars were leading his men against Vomansoir to keep them out of play. Over most of Vallia that might have any hand in this business the third party had cast the web of their intrigues so that here, in isolation, the Emperor might be murdered and the new leader proclaimed. This was more than a palace revolution; this work would drench the empire in blood and overturn old dynasties, set men’s thoughts and actions into new paths that might last a thousand years.

  Around the campfires I took a heaping handful of roast vosk. I was not too proud to eat with these men, for all that I might be slaying them before the Maiden of the Many Smiles had crossed the heavens. I shoved the six quivers of arrows away on the strap holding them together; I kept my eye on them.

  “Hai, Strom Drak!” said Larghos, very merry, quaffing his wine, his eyes beads of glitter in the firelight. He swaggered over with a bunch of men of whom I knew some, and whom I knew I would make myself acquainted better later on. “The leader is busy, there is much to do, but he will see you when he can spare the time.”

  I swallowed vosk and nodded.

  The thought came to me then that it might be accounted a great deed — as true Jikai — if when we met I plunged my rapier through the body of this leader.