Avenger of Antares [Dray Prescot #10]

by Alan Burt Akers

Rogahan glanced at me. I kept my face immobile. Truth to tell, it had come as a great relief to allow all my own natural facial expressions free rein once more. If they are evil and arrogant and overweening, then I blame no one but myself; certainly they came more sweetly to me than that blank look of idiocy I assumed in Hamal.

  Rogahan peered aft along his chute. The Vallians have developed a serviceable sight for their gros-varters; Rogahan, I judged, would shoot by eye and experience and feel alone, as would I.

  He put his hand on the release lever, a mammoth lenken trigger. I watched him. From what he said, my Sosie would under-range his Vela. He loosed. We all watched the rock, for the gros-varter looses either rocks or darts depending on the exigencies of the occasion.

  Then everyone let out a howl of glee.

  The rock had struck fair into the forepart of the pursuing ship. For the moment we could only observe it had struck, we could not see what damage had been caused. The crew were hard at the windlass rebending the varter. I cocked an eye at Deldar Rogahan. He read my unspoken question instantly.

  “Aye, Majister. Just."

  I felt the rising and dipping of the stern, judging the moment to loose, traversing the varter a fraction to bring it dead on line. Then I touched the trigger and the bow clanged and the rock flew. Well, maybe I was lucky. I do not know. In any event my rock flew true. It would hit the shank, I knew that surely enough, for I possess this knack of hitting what I shoot at. But in its manner of striking lay the luck. The rock flew higher than Rogahan's and for a split instant I thought I had missed. Then the rock struck full against the shank's foremast, a quarter of the way down, struck and smashed a splintering of brown chips away, perfectly visible.

  The men let out another cheer.

  “A fine shot, Prince!” yelled Rogahan.

  We all watched in great expectancy as the crews went at winding the varters. The foremast of the shank was in trouble; two of the panels, one black and the other amber, began to shred away. I saw the top section of the pole mast trembling. If that mast had been made in the usual way, out of foremast, foretop mast, and foretopgallant mast, the thing would have been down already.

  In the instant the leem lovers began to fold up their sail from the top to ease the strain, the yell arose on our deck.

  “Incoming!"

  We could all see the three rocks soaring up, black against the sunlight, tumbling over and over in their trajectories and, in that same instant, I saw they would strike without doubt.

  Wersting Rogahan saw that, too. He was a fine varterist.

  “By Vox!” he yelled. Then, enraged, “Wind, you onkers! Wind!"

  The crew finished winding and we all bent to the task of loading the next rock. With a roar and a smash and a heave the deck shook beneath us and the air was filled with the whirring splinters of ripping death. Two men went down, screaming, six-foot-long splinters impaling them. Other men slipped on the spilled blood. I saw a sailor looking stupidly at his wrist. Where his hand was no one would ever know. In the midst of this the catapult forward of us let fly with an almighty clang. There might not be the choking smoke or the smashing concussions of the iron guns, but in other respects this was very much like the fighting I had endured as a young man in the sea actions of my own world.

  Three more times Rogahan and I let fly. We thought we hit five times out of the six shots, and neither would give the other the credit for the odd one.

  Again Ovvend Barynth was hit.

  And, through it all, despite the loss of pressure from the reduced sail area on its foremast, the shank crept closer.

  Captain Ehren stormed onto the poop, rapier in hand.

  “Prince!” he cried. “We must turn and rend him! Give us the order, I pray you! Majister! We must board!"

  If that happened I, for one, would not like to bet on the outcome. I hold in great esteem the fighting sailors of Vallia. They roam the seas in confidence born of achievement. But I knew of the ghastly savagery, the barbarous power, of these leem lovers from the southern oceans of mystery.

  “Prince Dray!” bellowed Ehren.

  Everyone clustered there was looking at me. I saw their eyes, the stubble on their cheeks, the sweat drops caught there. I nodded. I could not speak.

  “Hai Jikai!” shouted Captain Lars Ehren. He went roaring back to his quarterdeck and I said to Deldar Rogahan: “My duty lies on the quarterdeck, too, Wersting. Fight well. If we both live, I shall seek you out."

  He picked up his leather jack and took his clanxer from that Nath whom he had dubbed an onker.

  “Corg has me in his keeping, Prince,” he said. He spoke dourly, shrugging the jack tight and lacing the thongs, the sword thrust down his belt. “I shall live. I pray Opaz has you in his keeping."

  I nodded, satisfied, and clattered down the ladder to the quarterdeck. Everyone stood their posts with strict attention to discipline. Swords glimmered in the light of the suns. Men breathed with their mouths wide open. The Chuliks stood in their ranks, immobile, impassive, imponderable to an apim mind.

  Onward we rushed. The sea broke away from our bows, and spume flew outward. Our banners spread above us, the brave scarlet flag with the saltire of yellow, the colors of Vallia, and the crimson and pale blue of Ovvend. My own flag, Old Superb, was not flying there. The galleon did not carry my flag in her lockers, and I most certainly did not have one about my person. I was wearing my old scarlet breechclout, under the armor...

  Closer and closer we rushed. Now the varters were clanging at point-blank range and the arrows were crisscrossing the narrowing space of water between us. It had to be done in a swift clean rush. I disregarded the sleeting storm of arrows, climbed up a few of the ratlines of the fore shrouds. Now the deck of the shank lay exposed to my view, and I saw the milling numbers of men there—men! Half-men, beast-men, for now I saw them clear!

  The ships touched, the tumble-home of our galleon making it essential for Ehren to bring his vessel in on bow or quarter. We had maneuvered well, and I was looking down on the massive aftercastle of the shank.

  A rock hissed past me and severed two of the shrouds.

  Arrows splattered past.

  This was a situation where a shield would be of priceless use, but the men of Vallia, as the warriors of Segesthes and Turismond, do not habitually use the shield. That I was the first to leap onto the deck of the enemy, then, must be put down to the simple fact that, having no shield and making a cock-shy in the shrouds, I was anxious to get down and out of the staked position in the chunkrah's eye.

  Instantly, we were leaping aboard. The shanks, surprised, met us with a wall of steel.

  In only a few murs they had rallied, and with wild and screeching shouts that chilled our men's blood, they were raging against us, hurling us back over our own bulwarks, tumbling us back onto our own decks, and then they were pouring over after us in a screeching tide of hell-spawned destruction!

  * * *

  CHAPTER THREE

  Concerning fish heads

  There are some experiences in one's life one may look back on with some reasonably successful attempts at equanimity. All the times you acted like a fool. The times you did things which afterward you wished you had not done, or had done differently.

  And there are some occasions you do not wish to recall at all.

  Deliberately, I have left out many and many a fight I went through on Kregen, in these accounts, for Kregen is not a world like this Earth. It is hard and cruel, as well as brilliant and beautiful. There men are more often less tolerant of weakness. Some fights I shall never record.

  Of that fight in Ovvend Barynth as we struggled against these monstrous leem lovers from around the curve of the world I will say but little. Oh, it is not because I lose a fight that I do not relish the telling of it. We lost that first fight between the Miglas and the Canops, there on the field of Mackee. But I have spoken of it. And I have not spoken of battles in which I was victorious: battles of my wonderful clansmen of Felschraung, battles of my m
arvelous people of Valka, even battles on the Eye of the World, where our red forces were pitted against the green, where Zairians fought Grodnims. But we did not lose that fight against the shanks.

  The struggle was long and fierce and most severe.

  Bodies struggled and writhed across the decks. Arrows flew. Swords lifted and fell and the blood spattered friend and foe alike. We clumped together and charged, and forced them back, and they reformed and returned. Our Chuliks fought like demons.

  The shanks fought like demons, also.

  This particular race of diffs from the lands around the curve of the world were shanks, and not, in the event, the shtarkins that the Lamnia, Lorgad Endo, had feared. The main difference between them is one of physiognomy.

  You have heard already of the Rapas, those vulture-headed people, and the Fristles, the cat-headed people, and many and many more of the marvelous diffs who inhabit Kregen.

  These shanks possessed lithe and muscular bodies fashioned very much after the way an apim's body is shaped, an apim, like you or me. But instead of skins they possessed scales. They grew a short, gristly fishlike tail. From their shoulders and hung on shoulder blades of a somewhat similar configuration to the sliding concentric shoulder blades of my own famous Djangs, each shank has four arms. Unlike the Djangs, the shanks’ arms are not homogenous. The upper pair are weaker than the lower pair.

  And, as one would expect, crowning each fishy body of the shanks grows a fish head.

  The effect of these serried rows of fish heads, all with staring round eyes, scaly mouths, tendrils, and slits for nostrils, came at one with a gruesome and grotesque force.

  I do not like fish.

  If it is essential, then I will eat fish; but I do not pretend to enjoy a mouthful.

  The sight of these fishy excrescences, screeching and hissing, charging on with their weapons lifted, with their steel and bronze glittering, infuriated me. The sprouting green corals in their helmets, the jewels fashioned into the likeness of seaweed and swathed in decoration about them, all this piscine splendor and arrogance, this grotesque transference of the things of one realm to another, repelled me. Yet these shanks were acting only according to their own lights, their own way. They did what nature impelled them to do, as did I. (Although, since my arrival on Kregen and up to this point in my story, I had made valiant attempts to curb my nature, to see things in other ways and with other peoples’ eyes. I had had some success, as you know, and some failures.)

  As the shanks violently rushed upon us, seeking to slay us and take our possessions for themselves, I had no right to any other course of action save that of opposing them.

  The blades clashed and rang. Arrows hissed spitefully. The shanks used short, heavily curved compound bows, and they drove barbed arrows in with fiendish cruelty. The Vallians were using bows very similar to the Valkan bows, for that style had proved itself in the eyes of the Vallians who could not pull a longbow and so they had adopted it. As the shafts flew I found myself cursing and raging that there was no contingent of bowmen from Loh with me, and to lead them no one else but Seg Segutorio. And, too, if Inch had been there with his monstrous ax. And Turko, also, with a massive shield to lift up at my back. But they were far away, and I was here, caught up in a scene of carnage and savagery.

  Our red blood ran to mingle with the greenish blood of the shanks.

  They wore armor, of course, and it was fashioned from bronze scales, as would seem inevitable, given their fishy origins. We fought across the decks of the galleon in the heaving sea and gradually the twin suns of Kregen, Zim and Genodras, the red and the green, sank to the horizon.

  You may feel I have overemphasized the repulsiveness of these shanks. This could be so. But from them rose a foul aroma, the decaying stench of rotten fish. We gagged as we fought. But, then, I suppose it would be true to guess we stank in their slit nostrils.

  We fought. The suns declined. Backward and forward swayed the fight, first upon our deck, then upon theirs, and then back again as men shrieked and died and others ran to take their places.

  “Vallia! Vallia!” shouted our men.

  “Ishtish! Ishtish!” screeched the shanks.

  I must now relate what was to me a strange phenomenon. In the lands of Kregen whereon I had wandered this far in my life, the grouping of continents and islands so familiar to me, a grouping that in after years came to be called Paz, I had always found that among all the myriads of local dialects there ran the strong sure thread of the Kregish language. That tongue had seemed universal. But now, to my astonishment, I discovered that my people of Vallia could not understand the language of the shanks.

  A few moments’ reflection convinced me that this was a more natural state of affairs than that around the curve of the world, on that other grouping of islands and continents, they should speak the tongue we called Kregish. This reflection was accompanied by much physical exercise in slitting throats, and gouging fishy eyeballs, and inspecting what fishy tripes might be like.

  During this stage of the combat I began to have hopes that we would win.

  The coded genetic language pill given to me by Maspero so long ago in Aphrasöe, the Swinging City, ensured that with a little application I could perfectly understand the language of these fishy people. In the heat of conflict I discarded that information and bashed on.

  “Vallia! Vallia! Opaz is with us!” The shouts grew triumphant now as we smashed the shanks back, over their own brown-painted bulwarks, down onto their decks. Bodies lay everywhere, and there was no time to feel pity at the redness of the blood mixed with the green. Time only for a fleeting and wry acknowledgment of the antipathetic colors, the red and the green, forever locked in mortal combat in the sky, and now once again matched in the very blood of mortal foes!

  Many a good man was down.

  Hikdar Insur came cleaving his way through a crowd of shanks, and as his brand scorched and flayed them I noticed their resistance faltering. We were beating them!

  “The Risshamal Keys close to larboard, Prince!” panted out Insur.

  That was grim news. The breeze would push both our craft, entangled as they were, down on those reefs and rocks. If we were lucky we might strike a long sandy beach, a low-lying cay. Either way, with night coming on and the breeze at last freshening, we'd be shivered to pieces.

  I saw Captain Ehren busily engaged. The Chuliks fought still with their ferocious disciplined violence. We were gradually overcoming the fish-men, but the task was nowhere near completed, and would grow sterner as we grew tired. I leaped for the shank's quarterdeck followed by a ragged scrum of sailors. We used our clanxers and our spears, clearing away the massed tridents opposing us. We forced our way up onto the quarterdeck. The aftercastle, beyond, towered above us, and fish-men were shooting from it.

  Our bowmen replied. We should have shields, I thought uselessly, and forged on. The command center of the vessel would be positioned here, and here was where the shank captain would be found.

  He stood there, phalanxed by a bodyguard, resplendent in golden-scaled armor, a trident in his hand. His fishy face meant nothing to me. I could see differences in the faces of the shanks, the difference between a trout and a pike, say. To the shanks, I guessed, these were differences of great importance, nation by nation. This captain had the face of a barracuda.

  He waved his trident with great authority. These fish-men were of a stature to compare with a normal-sized human being. They danced and wriggled and fought as I cleaved my way through them. The captain yelled his orders in a high hissing voice, and I understood them.

  “Sinotas! Defend the stairway!” There followed a curse that meant nothing to me. “The hairy filth press close!"

  Aye! I said to myself, slicing my clanxer neatly across a thrusting mackerel snout. Aye, we hairy ones press you damned close, you stinking fishy cramph!

  So we pressed on, and for all the viciousness of their fighting, the shanks fell back, and faltered. If one may ever take a pride in fightin
g and war and battle, and that is a debatable question, I think the men of Vallia might take pride from that fight they put up from Ovvend Barynth against the leem lovers’ ship that I learned was called Maskinonge.

  We might yet have won.

  We might yet have done something that had never been done before, to my knowledge.

  We might have taken the ship and carried her triumphantly as a prize of war into the great harbor of Vondium.

  As was proper I had taken no part in the management of the galleon. The captain was the master of his vessel, and would command her. My part, as Prince Majister of Vallia, had been to take overall command. Now that I could sense victory within our grasp I began to think that I had not bungled the task. Regretting all the good men dead would not bring them back to life, and there had been no mortal way of escaping a fight with Maskinonge, for her superior sailing qualities had given her the dictation in maneuver.

  I caught a glimpse out of the corner of my eye of Captain Ehren and Insur ti Fotor with a small group of hands they had collected making frantic attempts to free us from the entanglement of the shank. My part had led me to an attack upon the fish-men's ship, and now I stood upon her quarterdeck past the barricades, traps, and hooks, face to face with her barracuda-like captain. I would take this ship and then, freed from Ovvend Barynth, claw her off the shoals.

  For, louder now over the clash of the melee, I could hear the sullen rumble of surf.

  We were perilously close to the shore.

  The vessels lurched beneath our feet as the currents took them. We fought on, steel against steel, hairy ones against scaly ones. At last I was within sword length of the fish captain, slashing at his bodyguard, feeling my men with me as we made the final charge.

  Then my clanxer snapped clean across.

  I hurled the hilt into the face of a yelling shank and saw him go down. I ripped out my rapier. This was not the most handy of weapons for this scramble of a fight, this close-quarters melee; but I was adept enough in the use of any weapon to make the most of it.

  The trident hissed toward me and I parried it away with the forte of the rapier, much as one would use a small sword; then the slender blade, gleaming clean silver in the declining rays of the suns, skewered forward, neatly, precisely, punching past the rim of the golden-scaled corselet and transfixing that scaly shank neck.