Talons of Scorpio

by Alan Burt Akers

  The suns light struck across the settle so that he stood out in fine detail, whereas I leaned back in the shadows.

  “And they say they’re taking anybody. Masichieri, most likely, so a paktun like me can expect a good position.”

  “Hikdar?” I said, lazily.

  He blinked.

  “Well — perhaps not at first. But shebov-Deldar, at the least.”

  Shebov-Deldar — seven steps up the ladder of promotions within the Deldar ranking — would be handsome, I judged. He was apim, like me, well-built, and with a crop of dark hair tied into a knot with a blue ribbon at the back of his head. He wore a leather brass-studded jerkin, and carried a pallixter. He had no helmet I could see.

  He said his name was Apgarl Apring, called the Strigicaw; but I did not believe him.

  His business on that score was his own; what he could tell me of the recruiting going on was going to be mine also.

  “You looked a fine handy fellow when I saw you come in,” he said, quaffing the ale I’d bought him. “Why don’t you come along o’ me, and we’ll sign up together?”

  “Why not?”

  He looked pleased. If he’d run off from some scrape he’d welcome a friend. He wore neither golden zhantil-head nor silver mortil-head at his throat; but in these latter days on Kregen he called himself a paktun, which is really a name reserved for mercenaries who have acquired renown.

  He knew nothing of any party of Ifts, and allowing my voice to rise when the question was posed, I received no response for my pains from anyone else.

  This Apgarl Apring possessed no saddle-animal, no helmet, no spear, no shield. The obvious conclusion was that association with him would bring accumulated suspicion down on my head. This might work both ways, of course...

  We went along to the Street of the Jiktars where, at an imposing structure stuccoed white, we went in to see about signing up. The courtyard was busy with comings and goings of military men and women, and the place hummed with activity.

  In many of the countries in this part of the world in the days following the great war against Hamal, employment for mercenaries had thinned. Men and women to be hired for guard duty and to protect caravans or ships were always in demand; now the markets were overflowing. In the normal course, then, one would expect Apgarl to find some difficulty in securing employment.

  No such thing. Oh, no! The moment we sized up the layout, saw the different regimental tables with their recruiting Deldars, the heaps of gold coins, the busy bustle, saw the speed with which any new arrival was snapped up, we saw there would be no difficulty. Apgarl looked at the different tables.

  He smiled and then he frowned.

  “I shall, of course, choose a first-class regiment.”

  “Of course.”

  I’d seen enough — already. If they wanted men so desperately as to take on Apgarl Apring — who was in all probability a decent enough fellow except for his unfortunate circumstances — then an expedition of some size was planned. Given the information I was already possessed of, it seemed to me that the destination of the expedition had to be southwestern Vallia.

  “Where are you off to, then, Nath?” Apgarl looked surprised. I’d told him I was Nath the Bludgeon.

  “A previous appointment, Apgarl. Don’t wait for me.”

  “I won’t, by Acker of the Brass Tail! But if you’re in the Hersany and Queng I’ll treat you out of my first pay.”

  “Done, Apgarl. Remberee.”

  He trotted off to sign up and I wandered in the other direction where a bulbous-nosed fellow wearing a gorgeous uniform that had been stitched together to close the rents, and chalked over the white and painted over the colors, stood at a table and bellowed fruitlessly. A standard of blue and white with yellow slashes hung at his back. Its edges were shredded. His own uniform of similar colors looked as though he’d been ridden over by the same charge of armored cavalry.

  “Come along, dom,” he called to me. “You look a fine upstanding fellow.” His spiel followed the usual line of desperate recruiting Deldars. Things were hot, then!

  “Tell me, Deldar,” I said in an easy voice. “Just where are you expecting to fight? For, I can tell you, I have a weak stomach. If there’re ships involved—”

  “Weak stomach!” He managed a laugh, although his cheeks, bearded and pitted with tiny blackheads, for he was apim, changed not at all and his eyes remained dull. “Why, we can soon cure that for you! We’ll see to it that you get a first-class berth, with all the trimmings. Come along, lad, sign up and take the silver in your hand.” He tossed a silver dhem up and down on his palm.

  This time of day the recruiting Deldars might wait at their tables here in Headquarters in the Street of the Jiktars; their serious work took place later in the various taverns about the city. They expected eager volunteers now.

  “So it is over the sea,” I said, looking downcast.

  “It don’t matter to a fighting man where he fights! When you take up the profession of arms, you look no further than the next meal and the purse o’ gold, the next jovial company and the next battle.”

  “Who, Deldar, are you fighting?”

  Still his expression remained in that pathetic joviality overlaying deadness.

  “That’s for the orffizers to say, dom. Here, take the silver and we’ll make two men of you—”

  “You look, Deldar, as though you’ve just staggered off a battlefield. You’re not a good advertisement for your regiment.”

  He goggled at me now, taken aback. Then he banged the ornate brass badge set in the front of his leather helmet. Half the blue and white feathers were missing from the socket.

  “See that, lad! That’s the badge o’ the Corrundum Rig’ment, known as the Korfs. Proud, we are, and don’t you—”

  “Archers, then... You don’t know I can pull a bow.”

  He laughed now, and there was some amusement there. “I seen your shoulders, dom. I know a bowman when I see one.”

  A Deldar at the adjoining table shouted across.

  “Corrundum Krasnys! Step over here, dom, and join a real rig’ment!”

  He wore a splendid uniform of blue and yellow with much gold ornament and a veritable peacock’s tail in his helmet. Giving him a casual glance, I was held by the small silver brooch at his left shoulder, fastening the flamboyant sash. A small tuft of brown feathers surmounted the silver image of a leem.

  About to saunter across, ignoring the pleas of the Deldar of the Corrundum Korfs, I had to step aside as a great wash of men surged in, shouting and laughing, stamping their boots and swishing their capes.

  “They’ll pick and choose,” said the Corrundum Deldar. He clearly regarded me as a lost cause. “Proud we are, right enough; but we’ve had hard times lately.”

  If a pang touched me I had to thrust it aside.

  “Been in it, lately?”

  “Aye, dom. Down in Hamal, I was. Paktun.” He was a true paktun, for he wore the silver mortilhead at his throat. “Fought them Pandrite-forsaken Shtarkins, the Shanks. Beat ’em, too—”

  Jolted, I said, “You were at the Battle of the Incendiary Vosks?”

  His eyes opened. “Aye, I was. You, too?”

  “Aye.”

  He looked alive, suddenly. I could not afford to get involved in old-soldier campaigning talk, much as I might have enjoyed it over a wet. He was a mercenary, last season fighting with me against a common foe, this season fighting for my enemies against my own country. All the time, if he were your true paktun of Kregen, he would remain loyal to the employer to whom he had sworn his allegiance. I edged a little away, not because of any ill-feeling against paktuns, but out of the pressing necessity of getting on with the task in hand. I looked at the sumptuously-clad Deldar in the blue and yellow with the badge of the Silver Leem.

  A fellow, a moltingur, all proboscis and carapace, was speaking to the Deldar. He wore brass-studded leathers and carried a formidable armory. He leaned over and I heard him say: “Yes, indeed, Deldar, I
am choosy; but, as you can see from this I am not your ordinary paktun.” And he touched his own silver and brown badge pinned to his shoulder.

  The Deldar simply asked a question, couched in the ritual — and rigmarole — of the secret passwords of the Leem Lovers. I was privy to these secrets, having been inducted into the vile cult to save my life down in Ruathytu. The moltingur had no idea what was being said, and gave a noncommittal answer that branded him as one who knew nothing of Lem the Silver Leem.

  Fascinated, I listened and watched.

  The Deldar of the Corrundum Korfs sniffed at my back and said in a growly bass: “That lot get promoted, right enough.”

  I faced him.

  “You know about that badge — the leem and the brown feathers?”

  “I know nothing and I want to know nothing. But you see it more and more every day. That moltingur will get made up to ord-Deldar on the strength of it, you mark my words.”

  I thought not; I did not say so.

  Loath though I was to give any credit to anyone belonging to the Leem Lovers, in what next occurred I saw that, perhaps, some men and women — and particularly the military — might sign up with the cult out of other reasons than religious fervor, misguided ambition and love of orgies. I fancied that this Deldar might be absent when it came to torturing and sacrificing children.

  He spoke swiftly to the Moltingur, in a low voice, and then called across to the Deldar of the Corrundum Korfs.

  “Hai, Deldar Poll! Here is a fellow for you—”

  The Moltingur’s proboscis shoved forward and he grabbed the rich uniform before him, starting to protest. That, as anyone could see, was a great mistake.

  The Deldar did not hit him, made no move to withdraw. He simply called: “Glemshos! Autmoil![1] Bratch!”

  The next few moments witnessed a boil of fellows in bright uniforms descending on the unfortunate moltingur and beating anywhere they could reach with stout and heavy cudgels. They knocked him down and kicked him, and then they dragged him up by his ears and threw him into the center of the courtyard.

  One of them, a pinch-faced fellow whose brown and silver badge was of an ornateness surpassing the others, spat down: “If you attempt to deceive or impersonate us again, you will try to swim with a slit throat, by Flem!”

  The moltingur lay on the flagstones, shattered.

  The pinch-faced fellow swaggered back. “That’s the way to deal with that trash, Deldar Loparn. We are not people to be fooled or trifled with.”

  The word used by this Deldar Loparn — Glemshos — intrigued me. Clearly the shos part came from the common word fanshos, being a band of companions, a gang of likely lads, all pals together. The Glem was merely one of the ways the Leem Lovers disguised their adherence. But the use of the word in just this way meant that here in Bormark the cult of Lem the Silver Leem operated much more in the open. The words spoken and the acts performed testified eloquently to this. I’d seen Lem the Silver Leem worshipped openly in Canopdrin, seasons ago, and we’d settled up that question. Now the Canops lived on the island of Canopjik and kept watch and ward for the Shanks who raided up into Havilfar. Deldar Poll at my back coughed and said: “Bad cess to ’em.”

  “You don’t fear them?”

  “Of course I do, dom!”

  He wiped a sleeve across his mouth.

  I said: “There’s little enough doing here. Come along for a wet.”

  He hesitated; but agreed when I took one of Pompino’s golden deldys out and twinkled it between my fingers. He called a shiv-Deldar out to take over, not that there would be much doing, for this fellow’s uniform was in almost as sorry a state as Poll’s. We went off toward the wing of the Headquarters turned into an alehouse for the recruiting period.

  Our conversation followed along traditional lines. As Nath the Bludgeon I contrived to put on a half-vacant look, not quite imbecilic, although my friends claim that this is a natural expression. He said he was Tom Poll called the Nose. That organ was not as colorful or as plentiful as many nourished in the taverns of Kregen, but it was of a certain quivering splendor.

  A vague idea that I could join up with a Brown and Silver regiment and thus worm my way into the heart of things had been dashed. Tom the Nose said his commander, Jiktar Naghan Lappartom, was a fair man, but short of the readies, both of cash and equipment.

  “We’ve been in Vallia, and we had a tough time.” He was into the confidence stage now, past trying to recruit me.

  “This new army they’re putting together will probably beat the Vallians; but you never can tell. They fight hard.”

  “So I believe.”

  “You must have heard of them at the Incendiary Vosks. By Pandrite — they and those devilish Djangs! I was with a regiment contracted to old King Hot and Cold. I can tell you, I’m glad we did not have to thwack it out with the Vallians.”

  I hoisted my stein and gave him a quizzical look.

  “You sound as though the Vallians you saw then and the ones you fought over in Vallia recently are not the same.”

  “Too right, dom! The best Vallian regiments are still in Hamal, or are up in the north of Vallia. It won’t be easy; but this time we can do it. Their King Alloran will sweep most of his section of the country clean. There’ll be rich pickings. I wasn’t at the sack of Rahartdrin—”

  “Sack of Rahartdrin?”

  He slopped ale.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. I knew someone from there. That’s all.”

  He leered, his nose wobbling. “A girl, hey?”

  ”Yes.”

  “Don’t we all.”

  “By the way,” I said, trying to sound casual and making a pretty poor fist of it, “d’you hear anything of what happened to the kovneva there: Katrin Rashumin, I think her name was. My girl slaved for her.”

  He cocked an eye at me.

  “She ran off, was all I heard. And the Vallians don’t keep slaves anymore—”

  “Figure of speech, dom, figure of speech.”

  I drank ale, to hide the fury in my face. Being caught up in my own wishes and orders! Ironical — and infuriating with it. The fact that Vallians had done away with slavery in almost all their provinces was now a well-known item of news even though it remained a marvel.

  “So this King Vodun Alloran has conquered Rahartdrin.” That kovnate consisted of a large island off the southwest coast. Katrin Rashumin was a loyal friend to Delia. And this maniacal king was on the move, clearly taking other islands and also making his way up to the northeast. Soon he might reach Delphond — what the hell was Drak doing?

  This Tom Poll the Nose, with whom I sat companionably drinking ale, was a zan-Deldar. He wore the silver mortilhead. Now he quaffed ale, and said: “Oh, yes, right enough. As soon as we get there we’ll be off, you mark my words. We’ll be off into Vallia and bring their capital city, Vondium, down about their ears. King Vodun Alloran has vowed to cut off the emperor’s head.” He drank again, a paktun discussing his trade. “It’s certain sure. This Dray Prescot emperor is for the chop this time.” He eyed me. “What’s stopping you from coming along and helping us fight this Dray Prescot?”

  Chapter eleven

  How the Great Lie spread

  “What’s stopping me from going and fighting Dray Prescot, Emperor of Vallia?” I said. “Why, Tom, I told you. I’d get seasick.”

  He looked over the rim of his stein at me, quite clearly nonplussed.

  “You were down in Hamal—”

  “Certainly. Never again.”

  The large hall in this wing of the grandiose building given over as a tavern for the military resounded with the clink of bottles, the surf-foaming-roar of voices, the occasional quick snap of argument. Most of the men were recruiters, conscious of their dignity; the arguments did not degenerate into fights. They’d come later, out at the taverns, when the competition grew fiercer.

  I leaned closer.

  “Did you see this Emperor of Vallia at the Incendiary Vosks?�
��

  “No. He kept out of it. That’s his style.”

  “Oh?”

  “Surely. Why, dom, it’s no secret. He was built up as the Prince Majister of Vallia, before the old emperor died, given false credentials, a fake glamour, made out to be a fighting man, when in truth he’s nothing more than a ninny.”

  “I’d heard that. But I thought those old stories had been disbelieved by now.”

  “Some folk were gulled. But we’ve been told the truth. We know what kind of a devil Dray Prescot is. Cunning, cowardly, scheming, as soon murder a friend and run from an enemy as stand and take decent handstrokes like a warrior.”

  “You’ve been told?”

  He let a satisfied smile twist his lips. I’d summed him up as a decent sort of fellow, one who followed his profession with devotion, probably pushed into it when he’d been so young and wet behind the ears he knew no better. But, at that, a real paktun on Kregen, a man of honor, has no need in those terms to feel shame. I’d known mercenaries one would put down as a blight upon civilization; others helped to ensure that that civilization endured.

  “Oh, yes, dom, we’ve been told. We know the truth. Prescot is no good. Even if he was as brave as two zhantils, which he isn’t, he’d still be evil and crooked and ripe only for the chop.”

  Patiently, I said: “It is difficult to believe—”

  “Would you believe it if it came from his own family?”

  So, then, of course, I knew.

  To delay, now, the moment, I said: “He has a son Drak, the Prince Majister. He is fighting you now. He has a daughter, the Princess Majestrix—”

  “And who knows where she is? No, dom, this Prescot’s daughter, Princess Dayra. She knows her father only too well. She’s had trouble with him before. She’s the one who knows the truth.”

  My fist closed on the jug, and clenched, and I could not speak.

  Tom the Nose drank ale, flushed with this imparting of high affairs. I felt sick. I managed to get the jug to my lips, and drank, and wiped the back of my hand across my mouth and did not say: “By Mother Zinzu the Blessed, I needed that!” although it was true, by Zair!