Prince of Scorpio [Dray Prescot #5]

by Alan Burt Akers

  Then we commanded the dancing girls, who were half dead with fright and horrendous expectations, to dance for us. The ordinary dancing girl, such as one finds in taverns and dopa dens and even in higher establishments of pleasure, never appeals greatly to me, almost certainly on account of my experiences with my clansmen where the girls dance gaily and freely and with a fierce joy that finds its greatest expression of art—and where they'd stick you with a terchick if you called them dancing girls. Slavery and dancing are obscene bedfellows.

  I had never touched the Triangular Trade, but I knew.

  After that I called the three of them over and said: “Have you chosen?"

  They fell on their knees, the tears streaming—and, of course, I could not let the cruel farce continue any longer. I told them, simply, that they must henceforth cut themselves off from the aragorn, and help the villagers. Later, when things had worked themselves out, they might be dancing girls again. It was not a satisfactory solution, but I was afire to find a boat and sail to Vallia.

  Tom was doubtful I'd find a single boat along the west coast of Valka. When he understood that I had no objections to stealing a boat from the slavers or the mercenaries, and if necessary, bashing in a few skulls in the process, he said that, yes, there were boats; but the skull bashing would be hectic and heavy.

  That suited me only in one way; but Valka, however pleasant an island it really was despite the depredations, could not hold me at all, and if skull bashing was necessary, then skull bash I would. Speed, now I had almost reached my goal, seemed to me the prime requisite. Tom accompanied me back to the beach. The prisoners were astonished to see me. Under the direction of their self-elected leaders, of which Borg was one, they had begun to sketch out a camp for themselves off the beach and on the banks of a little river where we tracked them. They were warned about the water in the canals, whereat Borg laughed hugely, a true canalman.

  Tom and I departed, and after some difficulty, discovered a slaver camp where we stole a boat. The skull bashing did not, in the event, prove necessary. Tom waved goodbye. “Remberee, Drak!” and: “Remberee, Tom!"

  I hoisted the dipping lug and the little boat curled out across the sea. I felt at last my peculiar destiny was running in ways I could understand when the black clouds gathered and a gale blew with incredible, immediate violence and the waves broke mountainously high; with a sick heart I recognized all the symptoms I had met before. This had happened on the inner sea. The Star Lords were forcing me back. I could not go on. The Star Lords were saying plainly: “You may not go to Vallia! Return to Valka, Dray Prescot, and perform there the work to your hands."

  * * *

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The true history of The Fetching of Drak na Valka

  I would not accept this dictate of the Star Lords.

  What did I know of these mysterious and lofty beings then? Practically nothing of value, save their power. They had flung me back and forth between Earth and Kregen like a tennis ball. They could rouse the wind and the sea against me.

  The boat grounded and waves sheeted over me, and I stood up and shook my fist at the sky and cursed the Star Lords, horribly and comprehensively. The wind slackened and the stars shone through the cloud wrack.

  She of the Veils, the fourth moon of Kregen, drifted like a wan ghost, and against the pallid orb the shape of a giant hunting bird stretched like an accusing brand.

  “The Gdoinye!” I yelled up, my head thrown back. “What do I care for you? It is Vallia and Vondium for me,” and I finished with a fine rattling series of foul oaths.

  The raptor up there, black in the starlight, catching an occasional gleam from She of the Veils, was the messenger and spy of the Star Lords. A giant bird with, I knew, a scarlet coat of feathers and golden feathers about its eyes and throat, it circled above me now in wide planing hunting circles. That raptor had watched over many of the crises of my life on Kregen. Now I picked up a stone from the beach and hurled it aloft. Oh, yes, believe me, I was mad clean through.

  And then—then something happened that had never occurred to me before on Kregen and was never likely to occur on Earth.

  The Gdoinye folded its wings and stooped. It dropped like a shot from a tower straight toward my head. I shouted aloud in my glee and hauled out my sword and threw it up, the blade a pinkish-silver brand in the night.

  “I'll tickle your feathers for you, you kleesh of a bird! You won't spy for the Star Lords when I've spit you and roasted you and thrown you to the vosks!"

  With a harsh cry the bird spread those gorgeous wings all black in the moonlight and swooped over my head. It circled insolently low above me, contemptuous, out of my reach. At my side swung a main-gauche Tom had insisted I take, and I could have drawn it and hurled it fairly into that scarlet-feathered breast. But I continued to shake my sword and rave at the Gdoinye. Looking back, I know I had forgotten I carried the dagger. My rage was terrible and ludicrous, pathetic.

  Then—then the thing happened that stunned my brain.

  “Dray Prescot!"

  I fell silent, numb, gaping.

  The bird—the bird spoke to me!

  “Dray Prescot, you are a fool."

  How could I argue that?

  “Dray Prescot, we did not bring you to Valka. Had you a grain of common sense you would have understood. Was not the lad Hunter from the Savanti? Were you not brought to aid him?"

  My sword felt as heavy as the chest of gold we dragged from Dorval the Render's tower.

  “Vallia!” I shouted up. “I must go to Vondium!"

  “Not so, Dray Prescot. You have been selected. Therefore you must."

  “As I did in Magdag? When you dragged me away in the hour of victory?"

  “If you presume, you will be put down."

  “Presume! I served you as I thought fit! Star Lords! You are less than rasts that crawl upon a dunghill!"

  “We are what we are. The Savanti try to be what they are not. They brought you here untimely.” Then the bird emitted a shrieking squawk that might have been the laughter of the gods, or the gloating of demons. “Your Delia does not miss you, Prescot—"

  I interrupted. “In that you lie!"

  “Listen, fool. You remember that Delia saw you the very next day after her capture in the Esztercari enclave, yet you had wandered and adventured and swaggered like any ruffler for years?"

  Now I understood, or thought I did, and a tide of pure relief flooded me through and through. I had spent years with my clansmen and had been back to Earth, and for Delia it had all been like a single day. I saw the Gdoinye rising higher and I shouted something after it, but it merely screeched an accipiter-like insult at me, and winged away, vanishing in the moon-drenched shadows.

  But—I felt free! I felt released from a bar of constricting steel. I would make my way to Vondium in Vallia and claim my Delia—and only I would suffer the pangs of parting and separation. To me, then, these thoughts came as a great benediction, for I did not care how I suffered so long as not a single hair of the head of my Delia was harmed.

  A flutter of white beneath She of the Veils made me turn my head and there flew the white dove of the Savanti. It flew around, and I thought its flight as agitated as ever I had seen it. The white dove spied for the Savanti. I shook my fist at it and shouted: “And what have you to say for yourself?” But the dove merely circled and then flew off, a white fluttering speck, pink-lit, inconclusive under the moons of Kregen.

  So it was I think you will understand that I started up the beach with a grim purpose.

  Now for Valka!

  To explain the high purpose and the desperate resolves of the next six years I would do best to quote you the song made by Erithor of Valkanium; but he was of Valka and composed in the Vallian tongue, the Vallish, and even when translated into Kregish the majesty and power of the words are lost, the alliterations meaningless, the rhythm fractured. To translate further into English, however marvelous a tongue our English language truly is, would be to cr
ipple the beauty and the magic and leave only dry facts. And, in glory and blood and effort and sacrifice, the facts were never dry. There are many kinds of singers in Kregen; call them what you will, bards, skalds, troubadours, minstrels, trouvères, tsloivoidees, and of them all, few were held in higher repute than Erithor of Valkanium.

  How we sang in the high hall of the fortress of Esser Rarioch overlooking Valkanium!

  This song Erithor made, the song that is still sung and will be sung for as long as there are singers on Kregen, is called The Fetching of Drak na Valka. There are wild savage passages full of the purple passions of battle, storm, and onslaught; and there are the longer wailing laments that surge rhythmically into heroic acceptance of the good men dead and gone, good men never forgotten. The song tells of Kylie and Kylon, the famous twins who held the bridge to Ussanore Ovoidach, and Nath of Vandayha, Jeniu and Vokor, Carli and Vomanus, and Yathmin ti Vulheim, whose broken body I clasped in my arms as she died, seeking to stroke the blonde hair from her face where her blood matted and clotted and the shining brown eyes dimmed and dulled.

  I can never listen to The Fetching of Drak na Valka without a reaction that brands me as a human being, full of folly and sentiment and sadness, and, yes, pride too, nonetheless that pride is bruised and broken, the foolishness of a man who has known good friends and lost them.

  The song tells how we roused the island of Valka. How the prisoners huddled shivering on the beach took up arms, and how we marched, and how the aragorn resisted us, and how we routed them, and grew stronger. How the young men and women came down from the central mountains, the Heart Heights of Valka, and took weapons from the slavers and the aragorn and all their mercenaries, for the aragorn brought against us Ochs and Rapas, Fristles and Chuliks. And the singing notes of the harps rise and the drums roar and once again I am transported back to the many battlefields and the stratagems and the night surprises when the seven moons of Kregen shone upon courage and selflessness and high endeavor.

  The Fetching of Drak na Valka!

  No man knows the profundity of feeling I experience, for my name is indissolubly linked with the island I love, the island of Valka, that was to become a home in which I might find perfect peace and security, happiness and love. But, then, as we first sang the seven hundred and seventy-seven verses of the song, I had only the faintest inkling of what Valka was to become to me in the days ahead.

  The song tells of Tom of Vulheim, and Ven Borg nal Ogier, Theirson and Thisi the Fair, and their granddaughter Bibi, old Jeniu, the wise counselor, and his wife, Thuri, who in supporting him supported us all.

  And only when Jeniu presented me with the fiat of the whole assembly of Valka, the pitiful remnant of men and women who had formed the assembly in the old Strom's day, led still by Tharu ti Valkanium, was the double meaning of the song's title born in on me.

  For we had cleared the island of the aragorn. We had killed until the rivers ran red. We had driven them into the sea and watched as their armored forms toppled from the chalk cliff-tops. We had taken the slavers and sent them packing.

  And when more slavers came, seeking to scourge the island again and sweep up more human victims for their vile trade, we had met them with a wall of steel and an invincible purpose. We had organized, for I had put all my own experience in these matters at the disposal of the Valkans, and our Jiktars and Hikdars, our Deldars, had led disciplined formations into action. Once again the island was a fair and clean place in which to live and bring up children. And the word spread and the slavers came no more for, as the song triumphantly proclaims, no longer was Valka a supine carcass rotten for plunder. The slavers, with their patents from the court of Vallia, turned aside from Valka and sought easier conquests.

  And then—and then I understood what they all meant by the word “fetching."

  For I had fetched the men and women out of the Heart Heights, and I had fetched them weapons, and organization and the understanding that they could triumph if they willed it. And then they fetched me.

  Grim Tharu ti Valkanium, sword-girted, robed in the orange of the high assembly, strode the length of the high hall of the fortress of Esser Rarioch, and inclined to me—whereat, I remember, I was moved to anger, and bade him stand up like the man he was, and never cringe—and, with a smile, he said: “And for you, Drak, Strom na Valka, all men will bow. Aye! And joy in it, for it will show the world what we think of our Strom!"

  I was astonished.

  But they were serious. Everything had been arranged behind my back. I had known nothing. The song does not tell of these circuitous dealings, the messages, the sacks of golden talens dispatched, the complicated resorts to law, and the quoting of precedents. I was the Strom of Valka. The whole island was my fief. Everything upon it, whether living or dead, whether of man or nature, was mine, inalienably mine.

  I tried to refuse, and saw the hurt in their eyes. I sat back in my seat and marveled.

  This, I felt sure, was no outcome envisaged by the Star Lords or, given that I had completed what poor Alex Hunter had set out to do, the Savanti, either. But I have remarked before of this strange and frightening charisma I possess, unasked, unsought, that serves me sometimes so well and sometimes so ill. Now I could only stand before them all, and humbly take what they offered.

  The rapiers leaped, glittering in the torchlight in that great hall.

  “Hai, Jikai! Drak, Strom na Valka! Hai, Jikai!"

  And so the seven hundred and seventy-eighth verse was added to the song.

  The emblem of Valka is the reflex-compound bow, placed horizontally, half drawn and aimed upward. Vertically upon this is a trident, as though about to be shot from the bow. The Valkans are great fisherfolk. Also, up in the rolling hills and wild crags of the Heart Heights that form the broad central massif of the island, they are proficient bowmen, using not the great longbow of Loh and Erthyrdrin but the shorter, stiffer, compound bow of cunning double-reflex curves, such as is used by my clansmen.

  We had driven our arrow storm into the aragorn, and they had shriveled before us. But, once on a time, Tharu ti Valkanium said to me: “We of Valka are great bowmen. Yet the Emperor keeps a personal bodyguard of the Bowmen of Loh. We are just a distant province, rich for plunder, ripe for slaves."

  And I had said to him: “You are great bowmen, still, Tharu; but no longer is Valka a province ripe for plunder!"

  The other favorite weapon of the Valkans is the glaive. I do not mean by glaive a sword, in the archaic meaning of the word, gladius, a sword; but in the meaning in general use of a pole-arm, of the fifteenth century or so. The Valkan glaive is formed of a long narrow head, somewhat more robust than a bayonet, mounted on a shaft about five feet long. From the head along the sides run strengthening pieces of steel that serve also to prevent a slashing sword blow slicing the shaft in two. With the glaive the warriors of Valka go up against rapier men with complete confidence.

  So, in the fullness of time I, Dray Prescot, of Earth, became Drak, Strom na Valka.

  If there was any regret that my own name had, by a chance, not featured so far in Valka, I had quickly gone along with the name of Drak, for I saw that this might serve me well as a disguise and an alias when I penetrated Vallia. For the name of Dray Prescot, the Lord of Strombor, would be that of a wanted man there.

  Also, through this incident, I had discovered that titles—for what they are worth—were obtainable as much by merit and effort as by birth and heredity in Vallia. Once I had cleared Valka and established myself in fact as the chief of the island, and the whole people concurring, I became a Strom and no one would say me nay. I did discover that a great deal was owed to the panvals I had rescued; for they had joyed in arranging the contracts, bribes, and agreements in Vondium, and in obtaining the Emperor's great seal and signature—Earthly custom is paralleled in this on Kregen—on the letters patent. The illuminated patent itself was kept safely locked away in the fortress of Esser Rarioch.

  Now a Strom, with all the responsibilities
of rebuilding the island's economy and reinforcing her people's confidence, I plunged headlong into work. Do not think I forgot Delia. More than once I took a boat out toward Vallia, to the west, and invariably the storm clouds gathered and the lightning and thunder roared and crackled menacingly, and the waves sought to smash the boat to fragments.

  Valka was a rich province, as I found, and by management I made her richer and more pleasant. Also, storing up credit for the future I had sworn must come, I so arranged matters that the high assembly could function with greater and greater freedom and authority. Tharu ti Valkanium often told me I was placing power into their hands, whereat I would say: “And do you believe I do not trust you, Tharu? And the elders? After all we have been through together?” And, again, I would say: “One day, Tharu, I must leave Valka, for a space, and go upon a mission that is dear to my heart. When that day comes, I want the island to continue to prosper, andyou to remember me, so that when I return—with my bride—the whole future will be bright and glorious."

  “We will not forget, Strom Drak, we will never forget."

  Already, the girls were preparing the elaborate dresses and jewelry and all things needful that the Stromni, my bride, would require. Erithor of Valkanium could not make a song about that triumphal return yet, but he would strum out a merry tune, and hum words beneath his breath. When the girls of the place begged him to continue he would laugh and say: “Not so, you handmaidens of frivolity! I but tune my strings against the day the Stromni comes!"

  How could I tell them that this Stromni was a princess, was the Princess Majestrix of all Vallia?

  One day, among a group of friends on the terrace of Esser Rarioch with all of Valkanium spread beneath us and the suns of Antares blinding back from spire and tower and gabled roof, and the wide sweep of the bay beyond where the sea sparkled its impossible Kregan blue, I began idly to hum and then sing a few snatches of The Bowmen of Loh. There were no ladies present, and we had been drinking the strong red wine of southern Valka, a vintage called Vela's Tears, after the maiden who features in the music drama The Fatal Love of Vela na Valka, a drama which you may imagine is highly popular on Valka itself.