Rebel of Antares [Dray Prescot #24]

by Alan Burt Akers

  Tipp the Thrax was there, well guarded, walking into our place of confinement. It was clear he had been watching us.

  “Remember! You lose well, or it is the men in black!” Blue shivered all over. He took a fresh grip on his sword and shield and without a word strode out onto the sand.

  “As for you,” said Tipp, regarding me with his shriveled look of venom, “remember!"

  I shook my sword at him, whereat he stepped back smartly, and his guards closed up. I did not bother to speak to him. Blue was fighting and he was worth the watching. He would, without doubt, have made hyr-kaidur in only a few more fair combats. He fought the queen's man with savage concentration, giving ground and then sidestepping and sweeping in with a clever flank attack. He drew blood. But in the end, he allowed his shield to sag and his thrust to falter, and the Queen's Kaidur chopped him, and blue went down, face first into the bloodied sand.

  The trumpets roared, and out I stepped, and the heat of the Suns of Scorpio smote across my shoulders.

  The royal box glittered with light.

  I looked up, as the others had done. I neglected to give the formal salute, and I did not repeat that obscene sign I had once given Fahia. Instead, I settled myself and waited for my opponent to walk out and go through the formalities before we set to.

  Although Kregans do not age much during their better than two hundred years of life, little signs can give you an idea of their age. This fellow looked young. He carried himself well. He must, of necessity, be very good, to be a Queen's Kaidur so young. His face was oval, with bright blue eyes and fair hair, but his nose was pinched and his lips were full and fleshy, glistening red and pouting with self-satisfaction and indulgence. The idea crossed my mind that he looked just like a spoiled brat, but that didn't make sense. His armor and weapons were of superb quality. He flourished his sword about and the thraxter splintered back light. He'd know a whole encyclopedia of tricks of the sworder's art...

  As usual at the beginning of each combat, the uproar from the mobs quieted. We circled watchfully. He made a quick rush, feinted and stepped back. I did not move. I saw his face reveal his sudden annoyance that I had not reacted to his move. It was as though I had insulted him.

  There was an odd feeling of wrongness about this. The three previous champions had been hyr-kaidurs, men I had seen fight before, hard-bitten and professional. If it made sense at all, this young fellow was an amateur, a dilettante, and you don't get many of those in the Arena, no, by the brass sword and glass eye of Beng Thrax!

  Again he feinted and rushed, and again I did not move.

  Some of the crowd started to barrack. The raucous shouts came from the greens, the yellows and the blues, partisans who had seen their own men go down in bloody defeat. I circled again, still making no attack, trying to think in the heat and the noise and the stinks.

  The smart young fellow came in confidently, and this time he meant it, so his thraxter had to be parried, and he had to be knocked away with the shield. These things were done, and he went staggering back. His face expressed the utmost surprise and savage resentment before he fell smack down on his rear end.

  I stood back.

  Standing up, he shook himself, set his shield, snouted his sword and came in with a ferocious rush. We tinker-hammered for a space, which is a pretty sight, but useless. Unless you can hack your opponent's shield rim through, this clanging away at shields merely blunts your sword. I gave him a final clout and put enough power into it to smash his shield back into his face. He yelped and skipped away. Over his shield rim his thin nose showed a dribble of blood.

  He moved around more cautiously. He looked puzzled. When he came in again he hammered impetuously at my shield and thrust on. His sweating face was inches from my own. He snarled at me.

  “Rast! You are supposed to let me win!"

  I slid sideways, came back and landed a good welting blow with the flat against his backside. He spun about. His sword and shield went every which way. And the crowd began to laugh.

  “Yetch!” he screamed. “Think of the men in black!"

  Again I did not answer. The next flurry of action saw his shield failing to deflect a blow. His sword spun up in the air wrenched from his fingers, spinning, glittering end over end to thunk point-first into the sand. It quivered. He panted, staring from the sword to me and back again. I stepped back and bowed and with my own thraxter indicated his.

  The crowd howled.

  He wrenched the blade from the sand. “You onker! You are meant to let me win!"

  “Maybe ... It is not supposed to be easy for you, though, is it?"

  He possessed a good and varied repertoire of tricks and stratagems and now he settled down to use them in real earnest. Many of the passages I recognized as being developed by hyr-kaidurs of the past, some were the old regulars; he had nothing new. He had been well-trained and his schooling had been thorough, but he lacked the fire, the spirit, the ultimate essence that makes a swordsman.

  Breaking my usual habit when fighting, I fell into conversation with him. The incongruity of this did not escape me.

  “You've had good teachers, lad. Fine swordmasters—"

  “I have, rast!” And he leaped in, hacking and slashing and I foined him off and stood back as he went blundering past.

  “All the same,” I said, in a conversational voice as he floundered around to face me, “it is a puzzle that you have become a Queen's Kaidur. You don't have the wherewithal for the job."

  He shrieked in an access of rage and rushed again, and I twirled his sword out of the way and then—it makes me feel odd to recall—I tripped him with an outstretched foot. It was a mean trick. He tumbled over again and this time he lost his grip on the shield as well as the sword. He lay for a space, winded.

  Very gravely, I walked across and picked up his shield and sword. My own shield hung from a single grip on the arm, my own sword was stuck into the sand at my back. With a polite little bow I handed him his weapons. Instantly he was on his feet, the shield swished across and he took a lusty blow at me with his sword, slashing to take my head off. I skipped away.

  The crowd booed!

  They hadn't liked this display of boorishness. Not when I'd handed him his weapons, and myself without a sword.

  This buffoonery went on for a time, and I started to undress him. This was done, I plead on my behalf, out of boredom and to give me something to do while I thought of my best course of action. His straps were slit through. His harness fell. He wore a tasty breechclout in green, so my heart hardened a trifle.

  When he was practically mother naked, and still shrieking and sobbing and hurling himself on, telling me what the men in black would do to me, I began to play him a little in earnest. I confess he was run ragged. His face was a scarlet bloom. He gasped for breath. Any number of times he thought he was dead, and at the last minute my blade twitched away. I did give him a haircut though.

  The crowd was now silent, with only the occasional long susurration of indrawn breath, or an incongruous laugh at some buffoonery, to indicate aught went forward on the silver sands. He was out of breath now, panting, bursting, and his shield drooped and his sword wavered. Carefully, I chipped away the shield grips, and the shredded thing fell to the ground. Then his sword was upended and went flying through the air, a steel deadliness, spinning up and away to smack hilt-first into the sand.

  He faced me, disheveled, sweating, gasping for air, unarmed and shieldless.

  With a deliberate step I walked across. I showed him my sword. I was aware that the crossbowmen flanking the royal box were on the move. Out of the corner of my eye I could see them lifting their weapons. If they shafted me, that would not reflect well on the queen. I handed my own sword across to the lad, hilt first, with all the magniloquence of swordsmanship carried to absurd heights.

  He did not know, I felt, that even with the sword he wouldn't easily kill a Krozair brother.

  The silence in that place of noise was appalling.

 
I shouted.

  “You're supposed to win, lad, if you're a Queen's Krozair. Well, let me help you a little."

  The crowd exploded into violent laughter, enormously relishing all this absurdity. And then they fell silent. A single trumpet pealed a golden note. Cautiously keeping the lad in my sight, and taking my sword away, I stared up to the royal box.

  The courtiers were bowing and scraping. The neemus were being drawn back on their silver chains and the gauzily clad slave girls huddled away in groups at each side. The fans kept on waving to bring fresher air into the royal box. The color and movement demanded attention from every eye.

  Queen Fahia stood up.

  She was simply a magnificent blur of color and jewels.

  She lifted a hand and the suns struck splintering sparkles from her rings.

  The silence was absolute.

  “You have made mock of my son, Chaadur the Doomed! Give me one good reason why I should not tell my crossbowmen to loose and pierce you through with fifty bolts."

  Her hair piled high with gems lent her a spurious dignity; her white face, painted and powdered, came into focus as I squinted up, seeing her blue eyes and the fair hair and the cosmetics laid on like butter on bread.

  “So the lad is your son. He fought as well as he could. It is no discredit to meet a better swordsman in the Jikhorkdun. As to your question: because you and he have not lost yet and if you gave your bowmen the order to loose you would lose everything."

  Her head went back and then slowly forward and she stared at me hard, hard.

  “You are impertinent, Chaadur the Doomed!"

  “You don't have to worry about that—you should be worrying about your lad, who has lost. What says the queen to that? Is he to live or is he to die? Choose!"

  She put a hand to her lips. Even at that distance she could clearly be seen shaking uncontrollably. Then she thrust her hand out, pointing, her forefinger stiff and beringed, glittering on me.

  “It is impossible! I know you. Drak the Sword! Drak the Sword!"

  * * *

  Chapter nineteen

  In the Dungeons of the High Fortress of the Hakal

  There are dungeons and dungeons on Kregen and those beneath the high fortress of the Hakal in Huringa were in a class of their own. They were of a quite exceptional horror. The things done there turned men into drooling imbeciles. An item that confirmed my judgment that Fahia had sadly fallen away lofted to one side, an ornate area with seating and lounging facilities, with tables provided with the best of food and drink, it was quite simply a place of observation where Fahia could sit in her throne and enjoy what went on.

  The iron rings stapled into the stone floor were no stronger for her pet neemus than they were for the poor devils out in the dungeon itself. The men in black busied themselves with their apparatus. I crouched in a small iron-barred box. This method of confining criminals and those reserved for judgment was the normal understandable system that insured the poor wight let out of the box would have his muscles so knotted up and be so writhing in pain with the flow of blood that he could be run into the next phase of his ordeal without protest. I knew. Unfortunately.

  So it behooved me to attempt a few of the more esoteric Disciplines of the Krozairs. To force blood through constricted passageways was the devil of a job and one which high adepts mastered with difficulty. I did what little I could, using capillaries in the accepted fashions, but I knew my blood was still going to cause me considerable agony—euphemistically termed pins and needles—when I got out of the box. As for the muscles, these offered less of a problem, and by manipulations and tensing and relaxing, I hoped I'd have them limber enough. I did know, and with certainty, that I must leap about in a frenzy of action when they opened the box to lead me off to destruction, and I knew, also, that my body might decide not to obey the dictates of my will. I did not forget the slate slab. So I practiced the Disciplines and glared balefully at that elegant observation area where the lords and ladies in attendance on Fahia ogled with her the sufferings of the unfortunates below.

  She had not yet arrived. The men in black moved about in a sullen and yet free way, cracking jokes, sharpening up their implements, oiling their tongs, stoking the braziers. In these pursuits they resembled humankind. When the queen arrived they would assume the stoic, calm, professional aloofness of the true torturer. Strange to attempt to evaluate the processes of another person's mind. What had brought these people to this? Perhaps here, as in some countries, the profession was handed down from father to son. Probably they took pride in their work. As they say on Earth and Kregen, it takes all sorts...

  The layout of the torture equipment was of vital importance and the positions and relationship of the various items had to be judged exactly. Chains dangled from the rocky ceiling. At the moment they were free of the skeletons one assumed normally remained there until the chains were required again. A massive pot of oil bubbled and boiled. The metal glistened. The pot was of a size to have fed a cannibal city. Near it a rack with spikes and other strategically placed unpleasantnesses had been cleaned up reasonably well; only a few bloodstains remained. The rack was of a down-to-earth kind, a simple stretcher, but near it a device for turning the victim inside out frowned down far more ominously.

  Slaves wearing black breechclouts in place of the more usual gray slave clouts stoked up the fire under the pot of boiling oil, and tended the braziers, occasionally poking the implements in further, or pulling them out to inspect their heat color. The whole place stank. I crouched knotted up in the iron-barred box and cursed fat Queen Fahia and longed for her to put in an appearance so we might begin.

  When Fahia at last arrived she put on a regal show with all the trimmings. By that time I was aware that unless I could contrive a breathing space before they ran me up and strapped me into the first piece of their diabolical arsenal of devices, I was done for. Her pet neemus with their round heads and wicked fangs and glittering eyes were handled by experts with the silver chains. Her dancing girls were there—and I could only hope they would shut their eyes. The ranks of the courtiers were thinned, there being only a handful present. Her court wizard was there, a fellow of some discipline or other in which she believed devoutly, I felt sure, with his book of power and his wand and tall hat and his face that showed a too-great love of the wine jug. I glared evilly at the lot of them.

  Fahia wore a mountain of clothing. It glittered in that dismal place. She walked over to me, and her walk was a waddle. She had been beautiful once. Never slender, her plumpness had been delightful. Now she was grotesque. Some glandular disaster must have struck, swelling her thighs and buttocks, coarsening her face, thickening her everywhere. The clothes disguised much; they could not conceal the pathetic truth.

  “Drak the Sword,” she said, and her voice came breathily, her lips red and bloated, “I should have recognized your style earlier."

  If there was any one person in all Huringa who knew more about the Jikhorkdun than Queen Fahia then he was unknown. Looking at her and her grotesque barrel body and ravaged face, the pity in me was perfectly understandable. Her sister, Lilah, I judged, would never have come to this.

  That thought made me say, “You did not treat Lilah well, Fahia."

  She flinched. Her sway as queen was absolute.

  “Yetch! You talk as crudely as ever. Now you will be sorry—"

  “I think I am, a little, for you, fat woman."

  That was cruel and unkind of me, but, by Zair ... !

  “Your death will not be easy, Drak the Sword. I remember you claimed to be Dray Prescot, and a multitude of other ridiculous names. We have heard of this Dray Prescot. He is the Emperor of Vallia. So you are forsworn. I do not think the Emperor of Vallia would be found fighting in my Jikhorkdun."

  If they didn't let me out soon I'd never be able to move fast enough...

  “Think what you will. I bore you no ill will. Now, you have forfeited what friendship I might have—"

  “You were never a
true friend to me! I thought you so once. But you escaped with that trollop of a slave girl—"

  “Let them begin, mother!” The lad who had fought me spoke pettishly, not looking at me. “I want to see him scream and writhe and beg for mercy—for death he will not come by easily—"

  “In a moment, Babb. In a moment."

  This Babb, the queen's son, wore clothes of a cut that might have made me feel sorry for him. He could hardly be totally blamed for turning out as he had, given the circumstances of his upbringing, which were simple enough to surmise. Perhaps, had he possessed a tithe of the character of Prince Tyfar, he might have stood a chance.

  The handful of nobles and the wizard came over to take a closer look at me. The wizard stank. The queen treated him with a marked respect. I had no idea of the sorcerer's powers, but I did not miss the look of loathing bestowed on him by Babb.

  The conversation might be unreal in these surroundings, but Fahia was intrigued by the circumstances of my escape. I told her nothing, and insulted her a few more times. My limbs were dead as rotted timbers. The torturers hovered. She could take no more of my rudeness, and with a parting “You will suffer as only Lem knows how, Drak the Sword!” she waddled back to her throne.

  The men in black clustered about my box and the locks were snapped open. The iron-barred side fell away.

  Instantly, before any of them could reach down to grasp me, I was rolling. Like a bundled-up heap of laundry I rolled over and over across the stone floor. The internal torturers were at work. They inserted a red-hot needle into every joint and muscle, they trailed white-hot streams of agony through my veins. Still I had to keep on rolling. I hit the pot of boiling oil. It tipped. It overturned. Boiling oil foamed out in a broad flood. That was useful. In the abrupt yelling and shrieking, it was not yet enough. On I went, shaking and trembling, feeling as though I were being stretched out on the rack and being turned inside out on that fiendish device, on and toward the braziers. Slaves ran.