The Suns of Scorpio [Dray Prescot #2]

by Alan Burt Akers

  They were all grins and grimaces, dancing around me, prodding me to see if I could still withstand a gut-punch, like in the old days. To them the idea that I was now a Krozair, and they must call me Pur—on top of the “lord” bit they had been unable to swallow—came as ludicrous nonsense with which I thoroughly agreed.

  “Nath! Zolta! You disgusting ruffians! Why, Nath, your gut is so swelled with wine a season on the benches would trim you down to man-size again! And you, Zolta—I could scabbard my long sword in those pouches under your eyes!"

  “Stylor!” they crowed and we wrestled affectionately.

  Zenkiren stood to one side, his arms folded and one hand stroking his chin. The Grand Archbold, Pur Zazz, made a sound that might have been “harrumph” if that silly way of speaking had penetrated here. There were five other newly-fledged Krozairs, and we were all to go back together on Zorg, which was now under the command of Sharntaz. They, too, didn't quite know what to make of these two bearded rapscallions in the dedicated, austere enclave of Zy, even if the two specimens of hardy and iconoclastic inner sea sailors were only standing on the outer jetty wall.

  But the essential dignity and purpose and a breath of that mystery overawed even Nath and Zolta eventually, so that they quieted down. The laymen kept to the outer courts, those opening off the harbor, of course; only Krozairs and lay brothers, the so-called Zimen, were allowed past the iron doors into the interior of the island. Not all of Zy was austere and given over to the pursuit of the inner light; there was great beauty there, for the Krozairs of Zy believed that Zair was just as approachable through beauty as through devotion and dedication in war.

  When the time came for our departure, Zenkiren told me he would be staying on in Zy for a time.

  “Pur Zazz is old. There are many weighty matters to be discussed, chapter by chapter, langue by langue, in council. You will come to these in your turn, Pur Dray, one of these fine days."

  I knew that the Order was in general maintained by Krozair contributions from all the free cities of Zair along the southern shore, and they therefore would have their say in council. Back along the Sea of Swords lay large salt pans, as there were off the Sea of Marshes, and Zy gathered much of its revenue from the salt as did Sanurkazz. But without the continuous support of the brothers of the Order scattered throughout the Zair portions of the Eye of the World, the Krozairs of Zy would be in parlous state.

  Sharntaz greeted me with a kindly word and the necessary formality as one captain going aboard another's vessel, and also with the sign—I hesitate to call it a secret sign, it was so obvious and lucid a greeting—that identified a Krozair brother.

  He smiled. “I have no idea what swifter you will be given, Pur Dray. But I rather imagine you will want to call her Zorg."

  “That is my intention."

  “So be it. We now stand on the swifter Lagaz-el-Buzro.

  I nodded. “Also, I shall take those two useless hands, Nath and Zolta."

  He chuckled. “And very welcome to them you are, for their drinking and their wenching. But useless? I would rather have a crew like them than one composed of the spoiled brats of Sanurkazz nobility."

  I nodded again. I agreed. There was no need of more words.

  Zorg that was now Lagaz-el-Buzro pushed off. Everything that had to be done had been done. I was going back to report to the high admiral, with a strong recommendation from Zenkiren, and my future in the Eye of the World looked bright. Also, I wanted to see Mayfwy again, and the children, Zorg and Fwymay.

  * * * *

  We drew into Sanurkazz. I reported to the high admiral, who did not like me and knew the feeling was reciprocated. But Zo, the king, was disposed toward me, for I had never caused him any offense, and, besides, I had brought him during the course of my last season's activities more gold, jewels, and the precious commodities that are the lifeblood of the inner sea's trading than any other of his captains.

  I got my ship.

  I have already given some explanation of the controversy then raging in the inner sea over the relative merits of what were called, for convenience, the long keel and the short keel theories.[4] Long keels, that is, a long narrow swifter, are necessary for speed. But the short keel men, those who argued for the same oar-power packed tighter, claimed that a shorter craft for the same beam might lose a knot or so of speed but gave immeasurably greater maneuverability and turning capacity. I had not yet made up my mind. Zo, the king, appointed me to a five-hundredswifter of the short keel construction. Immediately I set about devising ways of improving the speed of my new Zorg. I had two banks of twenty-five oars a side. I carried six hundred slaves, allowing me a reasonable turnover in use and rest periods.

  [4 Clearly, here, Prescot is referring to passages in the lost cassettes. This is a great pity, for any light he can shed on galley propulsion and crewing is of the greatest academic interest to scholars. A.B.A.]

  “I thank you, Light of Zim,” I said formally. “Rest assured. I shall bring you in a tail of accursed Magdag broad ships and swifters.” It was a rote speech, but I meant it with all my heart.

  I went raiding on the Eye of the World.

  The seasons slipped by; Felteraz remained as beautiful as ever. Nath grew ever more corpulent. Zolta had a number of narrow escapes from the form of marriage that would have clipped his wings. We sailed and we pulled and we crisscrossed the inner sea with burning wrecks and floating corpses; the totals of our prizes steadily mounted as we pulled in past the pharos of Sanurkazz.

  Clever distribution of the weights was always the problem in trimming a swifter. A galley that depends on oar propulsion must possess a shallow draft, yet we were packing as many as a thousand or twelve hundred oarsmen in, besides the crew, soldiers, and varters. Sometimes shipwrights went to dangerous lengths to conserve weight. Although all the enormous deadweight of the guns aboard a ship of the line did not have to be carried, the weights were still considerable. Victory's longest deck measures a hundred and eighty-six feet in length, and the width is fifty-two feet. She is built of wood. A swifter of that length would measure something like twenty feet beam. The differences make for cranky, unwieldy, and extremely unseaworthy craft. But then, no galley could live in a sea that Victory, or her sisters of my old Navy, could sail with ease.

  Galleys are useless on the open ocean. I know.

  I had seen the Spaniards out of Cartagena wallowing as we flashed past with our royals set.

  I could never sail back home to Strombor in Zenicce, or to Vallia, that island hub of an ocean empire, aboard a galley.

  Equally, I would not relish the journey aboard a broad ship, what the ancients also called a round ship, of the inner sea.

  All my growing fortune, my success, the luxury with which I might surround myself if I so wished, the good friends I was making—to my continual surprise, for I think I have indicated sufficiently that I am a loner in life—meant little. I felt more and more restless as the long days of raiding, cruising, and carousing passed. I hungered for something I was not clearly conscious of desiring.

  That cunning and politely vicious man, the noble Harknel of High Heysh, continued his attempts at persecution, but I held him off, contemptuously, almost with boredom. He did not pose the kind of problem I was in the mood to deal with. Because he had not been born with the all-important Z either in his name or his place of abode, by which he was known, his resentment of that further embittered him. He had seen that his son possessed the Z in his name. I had found, not without amusement, that my name was taken as Prezcot. It had helped. A man had to have the antecedents or the newly-won right to name either himself or his son with the Z. I often wondered what Zolta's history was, but he would never tell me. Nath, now, was the son of an illiterate ponsho farmer, who had taken to the sea in revolt against fleeces, dips, and eternal flock-tending.

  At the beginning of a new raiding season, when the twin suns of Scorpio were so close they appeared almost to touch as they rose in the sky, we had returned from our f
irst cruise, happy and successful. Isteria had witnessed some carousing the night before and we had left a trail of mayhem at our many ports of call. I had taken my last cruise aboard this swifter, and was due to shift to a new six-six-hundred-and-twentyswifter, one built on long keel lines, as an experiment. She would be Zorg, of course.

  Nath wore a bandage around his head.

  A Magdag oar blade had welted him nastily during our last fight and he could still hear the bells of Beng-Kishi ringing in his head.

  “He's all right,” scoffed Zolta. “He wouldn't know it if the tower of Zim-Zair fell on him. He has the skull of a vosk."

  Vosks notoriously had exceptionally thick skull bones, so I laughed, and said: “Maybe, Zolta. He should be thankful. He kept the varters going all through—"

  “Vosk skull!” said Zolta, and then Nath threw a wet mop at him and I took myself off to my aft state room. It is not seemly for the captain of a king's swifter to be seen romping with the crew. But again that nag of dissatisfaction came to me.

  I have mentioned the single occasion on which I attempted to alleviate the lot of the slaves aboard my galley, and of how they rose as one man and attempted to cut the throats of all my crew.[5] Both red and green kept slaves: the red only for gallery work and a few personal body servants, the green for every aspect of menial labor they required. I had conceived it that my duty lay with the men of Zair—and I heartily loathed and hated the men of Magdag—but also I tried to remember that perhaps the Savanti had sent me here to the Eye of the World to do something positive about this abhorrent slavery. If they had, if the Star Lords also had their own requirements, I must obey, but I would do so with the clear understanding that I would make for Vallia or Zenicce just as soon as I could.

  [5 Further information lost to us from Prescot's narrative in the missing cassettes. A.B.A.]

  The Proconia, those fair-haired people who dominated all the eastern shoreline of the inner sea, were involved in another of their internecine wars. As I have said, we always kept out of it, for we had enough to do with Magdag. This time Magdag herself had taken a hand in an attempt to dominate the only area of the Eye of the World where neither Grodno nor Zair were worshipped.[6] My new Zorg was directed to join a squadron outfitted for an expedition toward the east. This would be entirely new sea for me. I found a fresh interest in life again and Mayfwy had had made for me a new coat of mail of a fineness almost as supple as the mail worn by that mailed man in the Princess Natema's alcove. That mesh steel had come from Havilfar, I had learned. The mesh of the inner sea was practical, lumpy, and unsophisticated by contrast.

  [6 Idem. A.B.A.]

  The Victorian antiquaries who, to do them justice, revived an interest in Medieval artifacts, persisted in their odd usage, a quite erroneous nomenclature, of “chain” mail for the mesh iron coat, or hauberk, for far too long. One even still sees this silly word used of a coat of mail. I sat, I remember, in the stern sheets of my barge, feeling the iron links between my fingers, and thinking deep and powerful thoughts of nothing at all as we rowed back from Felteraz to Sanurkazz. The suns, very close together, were sinking into the sea ahead of us. The water shimmered and sparkled with the most wonderful colors. We drowned in sparkling light. The lighthouse men were climbing up the winding stairs to the pharos. A few fishing craft were sailing out. Some birds flitted against the cliffs. The glow of lamps and torches were lighting all over the city.

  Perhaps I was dull, tired, maybe stale. Whatever the cause I was scarcely aware of the abrupt rush of men with dark cloaks swathed over their mail. We had just touched and bow oar had hauled us in with his boat hook and I, as was proper, was first out of the boat onto the steps. The men smashed into us in a fierce and silent onslaught. At once Nath's long sword cleared his sheath and he was fighting for his life. Zolta, cursing, hurled himself into the fray. My men tumbled up from the barge.

  We would have had a hard time of it; maybe I would not have survived, had it not been for two men who appeared unexpectedly at the side of the jetty. I heard two whirring thuds, and as two men pitched screaming to the stones of the jetty I knew I was again seeing and hearing the terchick, the balanced throwing knife of Segesthes, in action.

  Both victims had been struck in the face where their mail did not protect them.

  Zolta was yelling like a crazy man. My long sword cleared its scabbard in time to cut down the attacker who pounced on me like a mad graint. I could see the two newcomers and they were going to their work with a will. Swords flashed in the dying light. Men yelled and bodies made heavy splashes as they toppled from the stones. The attackers had been caught flat-footed by that unexpected flank onslaught; and as more of my men came racing up the stairs, green and slippery with weed, Zolta, Nath, and I with reinforcements drove them off. We had been lucky; without those two on the flank, they might have overwhelmed us by sheer numbers. Nath was puffing with his mouth open, his bulk heaving.

  Zolta, to my surprise, was not making rude comments. He was looking at the newcomers.

  “By Zim-Zair!” he said, in wonder. “Is that a sword? Or is it a toothpick?” I knew, then.

  A light, arrogant, and yet pleasant voice answered. “They don't like it through their eyes, friend. They don't like it."

  The man who bent to retrieve his terchick from the bloodied face of a dead man wore buff clothes, short to the thigh and belted in; his legs were encased in long black boots. However, the item that truly identified him for me was the jaunty broad-brimmed hat, with the gay feather, and with those two strange slots cut in the brim above his forehead.

  He straightened, the cleaned terchick in his hand. In a single rapid motion it vanished into the sheath behind his neck.

  “The little Deldar,” he said, “has his uses, like the Hikdar,” and he slapped the long left-handed dagger at his right side. “And the Jiktar, my toothpick, as you so disrespectfully called the queen of weapons."

  His rapier was long, thin, and elegant, rather too ornate about the hilt, and there were spots of blood about the hilt he had not cleaned off.

  Nath and Zolta were over their surprise, now. They had seafared long enough around the inner sea to have learned of the men of Vallia.

  The other Vallian, who was older and stouter and whose square-cut face showed a trace of displeasure as he slapped his rapier hilt, said a few words beneath his breath that halted his young companion in his tracks.

  The older man scanned us in that streaming dying light, with the dead men and the blood between us. He took a step forward. He did not remove his hat, whose feather was black.

  “Which of you,” he said in a harsh voice, at once metallic and flat, “is the man known as Dray Prescot?"

  * * *

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  "Remberee, Pur Dray! Remberee!"

  I was going home.

  I was going home to a place I had never seen.

  What was this Vallia like? This Vallia of the island empire, of the fabled opulence: the ocean-spanning shipping, the fleets of airboats, the wealth and power and beauty. What did it mean to me apart from my Delia, Delia of Delphond, Delia of the Blue Mountains?

  I did not forget that my Delia was known as the Princess Majestrix of Vallia.

  Tharu of Vindelka, Kov, the older of the two Vallians, treated me with a grim distant courtesy that puzzled me. He was icily polite. When I asked him about Delia's father, the emperor of Vallia, he rubbed a reflective thumbnail along a narrow scar on his jaw. “He is a mighty man, sudden, all-powerful unpredictable. His word is law."

  Tharu had made all the arrangements. Vomanus, his aide, was volatile in his enthusiasm for life with a fetching kind of swaggering arrogance. I gathered from Zolta that Vomanus had a love of love also, for my two rascals, Nath and Zolta, took Vomanus out on the town as a kind of way of saying thank you. Tharu of Vindelka ripped into Vomanus on the following morning. I had insisted that they stay at my villa in the best part of Sanurkazz, and I heard the grim rumbling tones rolling on remorselessly,
and the dispirited replies from Vomanus, who badly needed a hatful of palines.

  We got down to business that very first morning.

  Delia, Princess of Vallia had returned home immediately after an exhaustive search of the enclave of Strombor, all the rest of Zenicce that could be searched by parties of allied Houses, the Eward, the Reinmans, the Wickens, and the speediest airboats’ messages and inquiries to the Clansmen of Felschraung and Longuelm. Of course I could not be found. By that time I was trying to explain why I was walking naked on a beach in Portugal, some four hundred light-years away.

  “Now that we have found you, my Lord of Strombor,” said Tharu in his metallic voice, “we will sail at once for Pattelonia on the southeast coast of Proconia. I have an airboat waiting there. You know whereof I speak?"

  I nodded. I could feel my pulses jumping, the blood surging through my veins. Delia had gone home to Vallia and had started a search operation to find me that had turned her world upside down.

  She had known—for how could she not so well understand?—that a mystery surrounded me. I had not told her of my origin, although I fully intended to. But she had shared with me that eerie experience of being flung in a gesture of contemptuous dismissal out of the sacred pool of baptism in far Aphrasöe, to find herself running on a beach in Segesthes. She must have reasoned that something similar had occurred again, and this time to me alone. So she had set herself to finding me. I heard from young Vomanus of the efforts that had been undertaken. He was very apologetic that he and Tharu had missed me before. I gathered that they had searched Magdag but in all that festering confusion of slaves and workers the discovery of a single man, who bore a name different from the one they sought, was well-nigh impossible and had defeated them. Chance had dictated that they had visited Sanurkazz when I was away at Zy. They had thought they had at last found the man their princess had instructed them to find, and they awaited my arrival, for they would not venture to the Grand Archboldship of the Order. They were thanked by me for waiting; they had almost certainly saved our necks.