Swordships of Scorpio

by Alan Burt Akers

  But all this domestic business had blurred the edges of just why I was in Pandahem at all.

  I told Tilda. I explained reasonably that she had asked Inch and me to escort her to her home; this we had done, and therefore it was time for me to be pushing on. Inch, when sounded out by me, had made the same reply he had made back in Pa Mejab.

  “I’m a rover of the world, Dray, a wanderer. As a mercenary guard I can earn an honest crust I’d as lief stay with you as not.”

  “I am heading for Vallia.”

  He whistled. “Vallia! May Ngrangi aid you! From Pandahem they’d as soon send you to the Ice Floes of Sicce as to Vallia.”

  “I know. Please don’t mention our eventual destination. We have to push on. We’ll find a ship, somewhere, never you fear.”

  Now, when I told Tilda as we squashed down ripe palines and Pando explored his cavity with a pink tongue, Tilda exploded.

  “You ingrate, Dray Prescot!” Her fine ivory skin flushed with blood and her violet eyes clouded. She put a hand to her bosom, over the orange robe, and grasped the golden locket there. “You were to be our champion, Pando’s and mine. And now, just when it is all to do, you are deserting us! Is this friendship?”

  I sighed.

  Tilda had made not the slightest sign of any advance toward me and I was comfortable in her company. Poor Thelda, now, had been all gushing, pushing and eagerness and help, and had thereby been a confounded nuisance.

  Sosie, of course, had had her own secrets, and I felt a twinge of bafflement when I thought of her sweet black face and her great eyes and Afro hair. She had presented her own brand of problem. I got along with Tilda perfectly.

  “What do you mean, Tilda? It is all to do? Surely, you are in your homeland—”

  “Do you think this great untidy port of Pomdermam is my home?”

  “Bormark?”

  “Of course. Bormark lies on the extreme western border of Tomboram, and the lands run border with those of The Bloody Menaham. We have to reach Bormark, Dray, before Pando can claim his rightful inheritance.”

  I looked at Inch. He rubbed his ear and popped a paline into his mouth, and chewed, and refused to meet my eye — a mean and despicable act in a comrade.

  “Is there no one here who can help?” I shot a shaft at a venture. “The king in his capital—”

  “Him!” Scorn flashed from those lovely violet eyes. “King Nemo? He would as soon lock up Pando and me deep in a dark dungeon and throw the key away. I am sure he hates us, for being the relatives of his brother, Marsilus.”

  “All right, then. Anyone else?”

  She picked up a paline and began to roll it on her palm. “I was an actress, Dray. Oh, I came from a famous theatrical family, we played all the best houses, and my way seemed set to follow in my family’s footsteps. Then Marker came to the theater one night — and—” She looked at Pando, who was gazing at her, his mouth and eyes wide and the rich paline juice dribbling down his chin.

  “Wipe your face, Pando! You look like an urchin!”

  All the old adjustments had to be made by me. I was an urchin, a powder monkey who had climbed up through the hawsehole and trod the quarterdeck, bedecked with gold lace and a pair of shoes, cracked and with steel buckles, true. But urchins, to me, are comrades the two worlds over.

  Tilda watched as Pando wiped. Then she said: “There is the Pallan Nicomeyn. He is old and wise. He was always fond of Marker — he tried to mitigate Marker’s father’s wrath; but uselessly.”

  A Pallan was the Pandahem equivalent of a minister of state, a name used, I discovered, also in Vallia.

  “The Pallan Nicomeyn, then,” I said. “Let us go and see him.”

  It was not as easy as all that to contrive a meeting, for we traveled under assumed names. But, eventually, we were shown into a small and windowless antechamber of the palace where guards — humans — stood at the folding doors. Presently the Pallan Nicomeyn entered. He was old, for his hair was gray and his face lined, destructions of time that do not overtake a Kregan until he is well past his hundred and fiftieth year. Whether or not he was wise remained to be seen.

  As soon as he saw Tilda he turned and made a quick motion to the guards. Obediently they closed the folding doors and we were alone with him in private.

  He wore a long gown of blue, girdled by a golden chain set with rubies, and he wore on his gray hair a flat velvet cap of a bright blue adorned with the blue tail feathers of the king korf. He carried a book which, I noticed, locked with a hasp and a golden padlock.

  He advanced toward Tilda, his arms open to her.

  “My dear! I never thought to see you again! You do not know the pleasure these old eyes of mine gain by once more gazing upon your beauty!”

  They kissed and I thought this Pallan, this councillor or minister of state, showed some true feeling for Tilda.

  “And is this—” He turned to Pando.

  “This is my son, Pando.”

  “So,” said Nicomeyn. “You are the young Kov—”

  I said, loudly, so that they all jumped: “Pando is a fine boy. He doesn’t know much, though.”

  “Dray!” said Pando, and he tried to kick me. I moved my foot and he kicked the chair, and I smiled. “Sit quietly, you young imp, and listen while your elders talk.”

  He used the Kregish expression for grups, which I ignored.

  “So he does not know, eh?” said Nicomeyn. He nodded. He wasn’t too slow to catch on. “Perhaps that is wise.”

  Pando, defying me, said: “Will I see the king?”

  “All in good time, dear, all in good time,” said Tilda. She faced Nicomeyn. “You know the truth. Will you help us?”

  He pursed his lips so that the lines indented deeply around his mouth. He put a long white finger to those lips, and shut his eyes, and thought. Just as I was about to become angry, annoyed that he should thus insult Tilda the Beautiful, he spoke his own salvation.

  “There is no need to ask if I will help, Tilda. The question is — what to do best?”

  “Oh, Nicomeyn!” said Tilda. “Dear Nicomeyn.”

  “Old Marsilus was a drinking comrade of my youth. It is dangerous to compare a king to his brother. I will not say more.”

  I stood up. “Well, that’s settled, then, and pleased I am, too. Now Inch and I can get on. Kregen is a large place.” I began to make a polite farewell to Tilda, with Pando staring at me as though I had grown another head, when Nicomeyn cut in.

  “Please do not prattle, young man. I do not know who you are, but I assume the Kovneva Tilda employs you as a bodyguard. Your brute strength and your sword will be needed now, as it has never been needed before. So sit down and listen.”

  Then — with a great swoosh of air, I laughed. The situation tickled me. Inch looked most offended and Pando glowered at me, pursing his lips and fidgeting up and down on the seat; but I had my laugh out.

  Tilda stared at me and her plucked dark eyebrows rose.

  Most men, speaking like that to me, would have woken up in the far corner minus a few teeth. But the Pallan Nicomeyn was deep in conversation with Tilda, and patently anxious to help, so that I was completely disarmed. He did not know me, that is true, and so he escaped the deserts of his rash talk; besides, he was old and he wanted to help Tilda and Pando.

  A plan was concocted but of it all the most important lay in the few words Nicomeyn spoke to me. “I have labored long for this realm of Tomboram, and I know the family of Marsilus can play a great part in our future. My loyalties go a long way into the past. I would wish to see Pando where he belongs.” I made no comment, frivolous or otherwise, on that pious hope. “If the usurper Murlock Marsilus can be deposed, and a fait accompli is presented to the king, then the law is clear. The rightful title lies—” He glanced at Pando, and finished: “The title lies where the law obliges it to lie, and cannot be challenged. But, the usurper must be deposed first. While he holds — possession counts for a great deal.”

  “And he’s a bad lot?�
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  Nicomeyn made a face.

  “I see. So we must first get rid of him and then it is plain sailing?”

  “Yes.” Nicomeyn looked at me. I was dressed in a sober blue tunic with leather shoulder straps rather like winged epaulettes, and my weaponry was belted about me as was my custom. Under the tunic I wore my scarlet breechclout, but that was invisible. I held the broad-brimmed gray hat with its curled blue feather on my knee. As though sizing me up in a different light from that with which he had first conned me, Nicomeyn said: “He is cunning, like a rast. He is strong, like a leem. He is stubborn, like a calsany. He will not be an easy person to dislodge.”

  Pando perked up, speaking his clear childish treble. “I don’t know what it is you say, Uncle Nicomeyn. But if anyone can do anything, that one is Dray Prescot. I know.”

  I clumped my ex-assassin’s boots on the floor and stood up. The part that Murlock would play was already clear; for he had sent the assassins after Tilda and Pando to make absolutely sure of his inheritance, that was patent. “We had better be about our work, then.”

  All the way out from the palace and into the suns-shine of Kregen I was hating myself. For I had once more engaged to do something that prevented me from rushing to my Delia, and claiming her before the world.

  On the street with the busy pedestrians, and the zorca riders, and the calsany carts, and all the hurry and bustle of a great port that was also a capital city, Pando piped up, “Why did Uncle Nicomeyn call you a Kovneva, mother?”

  Immediately I took his arm and bent and whispered: “Did I not tell you, oh boy of little faith?”

  He looked up at me and giggled and then tried to kick me whereat I spun him around and Inch yanked him back onto the pavement and a passing zorca bucked and its rider cursed. I looked up at him, and his curses stopped in midstream, and he swallowed and smiled — rather a sickly smile — and dug in his spurs and cantered off.

  “You’ll have to tell him soon, Tilda,” I said as Inch and Pando went ahead. “If we are to rouse support for you, he is bound to hear—”

  She nodded. “You are right, of course, Dray. We have much to thank you for—”

  “You have,” I said. “But say nothing of that until the job is finished. Then—” and I chanced it, and took a breath, and said stubbornly: “And then, Tilda the Beautiful, I must be on my way to Vallia.”

  She halted. “Vallia!”

  “So you can see why we are like two nits in a ponsho fleece. We both have a zhantil to saddle.” Which is the Kregan way of saying we both had our own secret and dangerous purposes.

  “But, Dray! Vallia! What can possess you to go to that dung-heap of a disgusting rast-nest?”

  When a woman as beautiful and respectable and intelligent as Tilda of the Many Veils spoke like that about the country that was the home of my beloved — what could I say?

  “I have good reasons, Tilda. I believe I can expect of you some trust, to believe you do not think me an imbecile.”

  If she was about to make some unthinking remarks about me being a spy, she thought better of it. To take care, I hoped, of that eventuality, and already regretting that I had opened my big mouth, I said: “I have come to like and admire your Tomboramin, Tilda, I get along with your people. I shall be sorry, I think, to leave for Vallia, for there I shall do much mischief.”

  And, by Zair! That was true!

  Inch, ahead of us, took Pando’s arm, as I took Tilda’s, to thread safely through the maze of traffic thronging the street as we crossed to make our way down to the discreet tavern in which we were lodging. The Admiral Mauplius was situated in the cooler end of a square, overlooking the sea and gathering most of the sea breeze. The temperature was somewhat higher here in North Pandahem than I had found it anywhere else I had so far traveled on Kregen. I have remarked that Zenicce and the cities of the inner sea are situated close to the same parallel of latitude, and Vallia, also, lies with much of her island bulk on those parallels. It is a strange fact that the temperate zones extend over far greater an extent north-south than they do on Earth. From the most southerly tip of the most southerly promontory of South Pandahem, the equator is not so many dwaburs farther south. From South Pandahem directly southwestward lies the coast of Chem. The equator runs through the enormous, dripping rain-forests of Chem in Central Loh. While I mention North and South Pandahem, it is worth saying that they are separated by a range of mountains running generally southeast to northwest in a dogleg. The mountains extend on into the sea to form the long chain of islands that terminate off Erthyrdrin in Northern Loh. But the mountains do not stop, for there, in Seg’s homeland, they rear and convulse into that misty land of song and then, abruptly, collapse into a few islands across in the Cyphren Sea around which the Zim Stream swirls in its northward progress.

  The problem we faced now was to hoist this usurper Murlock Marsilus out of his title and possessions, knowing that the king and the law would not help us until we had performed the deed, and knowing, also, that Murlock had all the aces on his side. He had the estates; ergo he had the money and the people tied up.

  “We must do a little crafty detaching, Inch.”

  “With Ngrangi’s help, that will be a pleasure.”

  Inch, as you know, came from Ng’groga, which is right down in the southeast of Loh, well south of the equator. I wondered if he’d want to go home after this. If he did, he’d try to talk me into going with him.

  “Murlock,” I said, firmly and with some bite. “We hit the top from the beginning.”

  So strikingly beautiful a woman as Tilda was surely going to raise men’s eyebrows, inter alia, and she had taken to wearing a loose semitransparent blue veil, after the fashion of the women of Loh. When I asked Inch about Loh, and its mysterious walled gardens, and its veils, he chuckled and said: “I come from Ng’groga. There we are somewhat different folk.”

  “The truth is, Inch, everyone all over the world is somewhat different.”

  From the capital Pomdermam we took a coaster, a vile little ship smelling abominably of fish, to the westward. We touched at various charming little ports along the great incurved sweep of the north coast which forms the extensive Bay of Panderk, voyaging steadily westward. On the third day we saw a swordship foaming toward us on a parallel course, the waves breaking clean over her long low hull as she wallowed and lunged in the sea, her oars bending with the strain, white spume skyrocketing high, all her blue banners and flags taut in the wind that bore us so comfortably on.

  One of the crew spat overside. “A King’s swordship,” he said.

  “The good Pandrite rot him,” said another crewman, looking up from where he slapped dough to make the long Kregan loaves he would bake on the hot stove later during the morning. “My brother was sent to the swordships — for nothing. I’d like to—”

  “Aye, Lart!” interrupted the first, scowling. “And your mouth is like to get you sent to join your brother in the galleys!”

  I took note of this little interchange. Evidently, this King Nemo was not loved by all his subjects.

  With the bread we ate cold vosk and taylyne soup. In the warmer weather here the cold soup was delicious, a thing I would normally never credit. Taylynes are pea-sized, scarlet and orange in their redness, and in conjunction with succulent vosk, superb.

  “In Vallia,” Tilda told me when we chanced on that awkward subject, “they drink their vosk and taylyne soup so hot it scalds their lips and mouths. Barbarous, they are, in Vallia.”

  She sighed. “Poor Meldi loved vosk and taylyne soup.” Meldi was the bodyguard with whom she had fled from Tomboram, and from what I heard of him he had been a gentle giant, caring for Tilda and Pando, until sickness had carried him off just before my arrival in Pa Mejab.

  On the fifth day we saw what at first I took to be a school of fish with tall almost-transparent dorsal fins. A cry went up and the crew rushed to the rail. Then, between the foam and the splashing I made out that this was all one huge and serpentine monster of
the deep, with an oval body along the top of which grew that long fence-like fin. His head was impossibly out of proportion to his body, being immense, and equipped with a dredger of a fang-filled mouth.

  “A sea-barynth,” said Lart, whose brother rowed in a King’s swordship. “Now if we could catch it we’d feast right royally this night.”

  However, the coaster’s skipper was no intrepid huntsman, and we left the sea-barynth far astern wriggling and curving in the water. It had two large paddle fins beneath its head. I was told that the barynth, of a similar size and ugly ferocity, one was likely to meet in the swamps of Pandahem as elsewhere, was equipped with four clasping claw-armed legs beneath its head.

  I do not believe I have mentioned that the general word in use in Kregish for sea is “splash.” The oddity of this perfectly sound onomatopoeic word in English ears, I think, is sufficient justification for the hint of a smile I summoned when I heard it, and why I use the word sea in its stead. There is another aspect of translation worth mention here. The word in Kregish for “water” in the sense of a drink of water is one that could never be uttered in any respectable company where English is spoken. To hear a wounded man calling for water, on Kregen, is to experience heights of the surreal.

  In the shambles of the gun deck of a seventy-four which has just received a broadside from enemy thirty-twos, of course, one would hear through the smoke and confusion both words in just about equal proportion.

  On the day before we picked up the pharos for what would be our penultimate port of call Tilda discovered nits in Pando’s hair and nearly went mad, ordering up huge copper kettles of boiling water, and formidable bars of Kregen soap which is designed to scour little boys’ eyes and the backs of their ears and necks. When Pando had been nearly scalped, she pronounced him fit to enter decent company once again. I thought of those running-alive ponsho skins of the Magdag swifters. Conditions of life are all relative.

  From this last port of call before we reached Port Marsilus, the entrepôt for Bormark, we sailed in a little convoy of eight ships, accompanied by a vessel paid for and maintained by Bormark and her neighboring dukedom to the east for just this purpose of escort against raiders from The Bloody Menaham which lay far too close for comfort to the west beyond the promontory and islands that terminated the Bay of Panderk. The vessel was an argenter, if of a slightly leaner build than those that plowed the outer oceans, equipped with varters and catapults and with a sizable crew. I studied her, and felt something could be made of her and her like.