The Suns of Scorpio

by Alan Burt Akers

  And still the sleeting hail of the crossbow-shot bolts and quarrels burst about them. There were very many slaves in the warrens of Magdag, and many workers. We had manufactured a great many bolts for the crossbows — a very great many.

  The body of longbowmen from Loh performed stoutly, and I used them as snipers and sharpshooters. I did not know how many surprised Magdaggian overlords pitched from their saddles with a cloth yard shaft in them — surprised in the few moments left before they died.

  All over the city-end of the warrens slaves and workers were pushing back the overlords and their hired mercenary beast-men.

  I sensed the victory within our grasp.

  We had fought our way back toward the original line where the conflict had begun. I ordered my pikes to form phalanx ready for what I hoped would be the final charge. Holly prepared to march in the intervals to give cover. I was covered in a thick paste of sweat and mud and blood. It was not my blood; I looked past the torn-down barricade, out onto the open area from which the overlords had begun their attack and where now a mass of overlords on foot and mercenary beast-men milled. They were saddling up, out there, taking their sectrixes from their slave grooms. Was this their final charge, as we marched out?

  I smiled, then, at the thought of mailed men charging my pike phalanx covered by my steel crossbows.

  That, as a sight and a terrible retribution, would repay me much.

  A single figure rode out toward us. Clad all in white, a long white trailing robe, the Princess Susheeng rode her sectrix out to parley with me, Dray Prescot.

  “What can I say, Kov Drak?”

  She could not bring herself, I could see, to use any other name for me. She was pale, her moist red lips now thinned, almost bloodless, shrunken. Her eyes glared out on me from deep bruised wells. Her hands fidgeted with her reins.

  “There is nothing to say, Princess Susheeng. You and your brother, all the overlords of Magdag, you merely reap what you have sown.”

  “Do you hate me so much?”

  “I—” I began. Then I hesitated. I had hated this woman. I still believed I hated all the men of green. I was young, then, and hatred was easy, Zair forgive me.

  “You are a Krozair,” she said, with some difficulty. “A Lord, a man of Zair. You could arrange a truce with Sanurkazz — you yourself said the red and the green would one day cease to fight.” She leaned over toward me from the high saddle. “Why should not today be that day, Dray Prezcot, Kov Drak?”

  “You still do not see. It is not between red and green. It is between the overlords and their slaves.”

  A harsh discordant shriek shattered the waiting silence as the two armies faced each other. I looked up, shading my eyes. Up there, wheeling in lazy hunting circles, a great scarlet and golden raptor swung on wide cruel pinions.

  “Slaves!” Susheeng made a dismissive gesture. “Slaves are slaves. They are necessary. There will always be slaves.” She looked down on me, and a spark of her old fire returned. “And, ma faril, you look ridiculous, standing there with an old vosk skull on your head!” She had not forgotten and she was paying me back.

  “The old vosk skulls will win this fight, Susheeng.”

  “I appeal to you, Drak! Think what it is you do! Please — you owe me something, after all — Zair does not hold your true allegiance, you are not of the inner sea, the Eye of the World. Make peace between the red and the green, and we will settle the problem of the slaves—”

  Now, in that shining sky as the twin suns of Kregen slanted, close together but separate now, toward the horizon, the scarlet and golden hunting bird was circling with a more deadly intent. A white dove was matching its moves, dive for dive, volplane for volplane. They circled and maneuvered like two fighter planes of a later age. Once again I sensed my own helplessness as the phantom forces of the Savanti and the Star Lords clashed in this world so far from the planet of my birth.

  Susheeng saw my face. She moved irritably and I saw that she wore mail beneath that white robe. She twiddled her riding crop and the reins. She said: “I have appealed to you, Drak. Now hear the message I have brought from my brother, Glycas. If you do not all return to your warrens and lay down your arms you will all be destroyed—”

  I moved back a pace.

  “There is nothing left between us to be said, Princess. Tell Glycas my message is the same as I called him in the dungeon of the great Hall na Priags. He will understand.”

  A handful of overlords, impatient, were riding out toward us. They carried bows. The bows were bent and strung in their hands. Pugnarses began to walk out to me, tall and ugly with his mop of hair and his sprouting eyebrows. Susheeng lifted her crop.

  An arrow arched from the overlords. It struck Pugnarses in the throat. He fell sideways, retching, clawing the arrow that had killed him.

  “There!” I shouted, impassioned, savage with anger. “There is your answer to your foul brother!”

  She brought the crop down hard on my face, but I turned my head down and the blow glanced harmlessly off the vosk-helmet.

  When I looked up she was spurring back to her own kind.

  I had to run, zigzagging and dodging, through a pelting rain of arrows, but I stopped to carry Pugnarses back to his friends. Holly bent over him, weeping.

  “Prepare to move!” I yelled at my men — my men who were workers of the warrens, and slaves from the gangs, and girls like Holly, and youngsters with their shields. The phalanx stiffened. Holly looked up from Pugnarses’ dead body. Genal was at her side. He lifted her up. “Yes!” I shouted at them. “Yes! We fight now in the last battle. We will utterly destroy the evil of the overlords of Magdag.” I lifted the long sword. “Forward!”

  Beneath the measured tramp of the phalanx of slaves the ground shook.

  The phalanx advanced. The pikes were all held in their correct alignment, angled forward and upward. The yellow of the vosk skulls glowed in the streaming opaline light. The steel bows of the crossbowmen winked back brilliant reflections. All — everyone in my little army — all moved forward.

  With us now were the thousands of other workers and slaves, men and women with snatched up weapons or implements to use as weapons in their hands. The dust rose chokingly. Trumpets shrilled and called. I strode on, wishing I had Mayfwy’s mail coat about me now, but moving on, moving on. . .

  I knew, as nearly as a man may know anything, that now we had these arrogant overlords. Against the new weapons of the phalanx and the pike, supported by the crossbows, they would be swept away. Exultantly I strode on. Shouts and rallying cries echoed. Arrows and bolts began to crisscross in the air.

  “Krozair! Krozair!” I yelled, swinging the long sword and pressing on, the pikes all about me. Holly’s sextets were lavishing loving care in their shooting. “Jikai! Jikai!”

  We would win. Nothing could stop that.

  In all that uproar, all that bedlam, with the pikes seeming to lean forward in their eagerness to get at these hated mailed overlords of Magdag, I looked up. I looked up. The scarlet and golden hunting bird circled up there — alone. The dove had gone.

  “Against Magdag!” I yelled and my sword caught that falling streaming light and blazed like a flaming brand.

  The light was changing. Blue tints crept in around the edges of my vision — and I knew what was happening. Arrows fell about me; the pikes were surging forward, stabbing; the halberdiers were hacking and cutting; Holly’s bolts were swathing through the mailed ranks and the Prophet and Bolan and Genal were urging the men on. Even as we smashed solidly into that surging sea of armored men and moved on over them, so the blueness limned everything about me. I felt light. I felt myself being drawn upward.

  “No!” I shouted. I lifted the long sword. “No! Not now! Not now — I will not return to Earth! Star Lords! If you can hear me — Savanti — let me stay on this world! I will not return to Earth!”

  I thought of my Delia of Delphond, my Delia of the Blue Mountains. I would not be thrust through the interstellar voi
d away from her again! I could not.

  I struggled. I do not know how or why or what happened, but as the blueness grew and strengthened I fought back at it. In some way I had failed the Star Lords. Something I was doing was contrary to what they wanted to accomplish. I had vaunted that I would serve them in my own way — and this was my reward.

  “Let me stay on Kregen!” I roared it up at that indifferent sky where the suns of Scorpio cast down their mingled light. Now I was scarcely conscious of the fight raging around me. Men were dying, heads and limbs were being lopped, bolts were piercing through mail, blood was being spilled on a prodigious scale.

  I staggered. I was encompassed and floating in blueness. I gripped my long sword with the clutch of death. I felt myself falling, all lifting and exultation gone, falling and falling. . .

  “I will not go back to Earth!”

  Everything was blue now, roaring and twisting in my head, in my eyes and ears, tumbling me head over heels into a blue nothingness.

  “I will stay on Kregen beneath the suns of Scorpio! I will!”

  I, Dray Prescot of Earth, screamed it out. “I will stay on Kregen! I will stay on Kregen!”

  About the author

  Alan Burt Akers is a pen name of the prolific British author Kenneth Bulmer. Bulmer has published over 160 novels and countless short stories, predominantly science fiction.

  More details about the author, and current links to other sources of information, can be found at

  www.mushroom-ebooks.com

  The Dray Prescott Series

  The Delian Cycle:

  Transit to Scorpio

  The Suns of Scorpio

  Warrior of Scorpio

  Swordships of Scorpio

  Prince of Scorpio

  Havilfar Cycle:

  Manhounds of Antares

  Arena of Antares

  Fliers of Antares

  Bladesman of Antares

  Avenger of Antares

  Armada of Antares

  Notes

  [1] A bur is the Kregan hour, some forty Earth minutes long. It is divided into fifty murs, the Kregan minute. Discrepancies in the year caused by the orbit of Kregan about a binary are ironed out at festival times. There are forty-eight burs in the Kregan day and night cycle. I have omitted much of what Dray Prescot says of mensuration on Kregan and have considerably amended his account of the technical activities of the tide-watchers, the Todalpheme. A.B.A.

  [2] I have left Prescot’s use of the Kregish “dwabur” here. A dwabur is one of the standard units of measurement and is approximately five Terrestrial miles. Its origin, according to Prescot, comes from the sunset people’s army marching disciplines: they would continue for two of their hours, that is, burs (the Kregish word for two is dwa), with a halt. Their speed must therefore have been something over three and a half miles an hour. More usual are the local lesser fractions of the dwabur. A.B.A.

  [3] This is the point where at least one cassette is missing, as I have written in A Note on the Tapes from Africa at the beginning of this volume. It is clear from internal evidence that Prescot achieved command of a four-sixtyswifter and the next consecutive cassette picks up his story when he had spent probably three, at the least, seasons as a galley captain on the inner sea. What is lost we do not know, but from our knowledge of Dray Prescot I think it evident it was lurid, violent, and vividly colored in the extreme. A.B.A.

  [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.

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

  [6] Idem. A.B.A.

  Copyright © 1973, Kenneth Bulmer

  Alan Burt Akers has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, to be identified as the Author of this work.

  First published by Daw Books, Inc. in 1973.

  This Edition published in 2005 by Mushroom eBooks, an imprint of Mushroom Publishing, Bath, BA1 4EB, United Kingdom

  www.mushroom-ebooks.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN 184319340X