Bladesman of Antares dp-9

by Alan Burt Akers

  “Coward!” he shouted full in my face. His breath was unpleasant. “Rast! You do not walk away when the Strom of Hyr Rothy speaks to you!”

  I said, “I have nothing to say to you.”

  Looking back, I recall that scene vividly, and also I experience again my shame: my shame at not holding steadfast to my purpose but, instead, of allowing the ordinary, arrogant, intemperate Dray Prescot, who is — alas! — perhaps the only real Dray Prescot, to overwhelm this new meek and mild image I had sought so hard to attain.

  “Well, I have something to say to you, you insolent rast!” He shook me. “I am Lart ham Thordan, the Strom of Hyr Rothy. You do not turn your back on me, yetch! I have seen you, Amak, and I know what sort of repulsive vermin you are! You will crawl to me, and beg my forgiveness! You will-”

  At that point I leaned on my arm. My arm pushed forward my hand. My hand happened, for some reason, to be doubled up into something you might call a fist if you were uncharitable. The leaning arm and fist somehow found their way to this Strom’s belly. It was not a hard lean. He choked a little, and his eyes filled with water. He had a naturally high color — these people so often do — and his apim face turned deeper red and the veins on his forehead glowed like coiled serpents. I walked away.

  I was followed by boos and yells and catcalls.

  Well, as Nulty said, reproachfully: “You broke your own promise, Notor!”

  “Aye, Nulty, I did.” I threw the thraxter on the bed in my room and stretched. “I think I know what the rast will do now.”

  “He is a Strom. You are an Amak. He will consider his dignity so soiled he-”

  “Confound these stupid ranks!” I bellowed, “I don’t give a lead ob for them!”

  He looked at me with what I took to be a reproachful glare, and I knew he was thinking of the old Amak. A loyal man, Nulty.

  “For shebov obs, Notor,” he said.

  “I know!”

  “He will challenge you.”

  The laws in Hamal are strict and multipurpose and, as in so many countries where the wealthy also flaunt their power, blatantly favor the moneyed of the land. Dueling is still a recognized social phenomenon, although hedged about with regulations, and in all due formality a challenge would be presented from Strom Lart which I must answer.

  “He will challenge you, Notor, and you must answer. How will you maintain your deception then?”

  “I do not think that possible.”

  I’d humbled myself and then, when the first real test came along, I’d failed. Ignominiously failed. To my surprise Nulty brightened up remarkably. He started singing that old risque song about Fanli the Fristle fifi and her regiment of admirers. I looked at him. He caught my eye, and stopped singing, and then with a dirty chuckle said: “I shall be heartily glad to see you acting the real part of the Amak of Paline Valley!”

  By his lights, it was clear, I had not been truly honoring my promise to Amak Naghan. I had tried to explain, but full explanations were impossible. A few tentative inquiries had shown me that to discover the secrets of the vollers I must penetrate not just into the buildings where they were manufactured here in Ruathytu — for I guessed they would be little different, if on a larger scale, from the works at Sumbakir

  — but past them and into the inner secret places where the silver boxes which gave lift and propulsion to the fliers were filled. This, as you will hear, was only half the truth. The challenge was brought by an Elten and a Kyr, both very stiff and formal, and I agreed to fight Strom Lart on a morning two days later in a hall of his choosing. These occasions often attracted visitors, and the owner of the hall would charge admission to defray the expenses of rental. The Elten said, “Amak Hamun. My principal directs me to inquire if you have knowledge of the rapier and the left-hand dagger. He is desirous of sharpening his skill.”

  “Is he aping the ways of the young bloods, then, Elten? Is the Havilfarese thraxter no longer good enough for him, then?”

  “Fashions in these things change, Amak. The nobility has taken up the rapier with great enthusiasm. It is fashionable. If you have no knowledge of rapier work-”

  “I care not what weapons the fool chooses-”

  “Amak!”

  “Go back and tell the onker I’ll kill him even if he chooses wooden spoons.”

  “Brave words!” The Elten spoke with a pronounced sneer. He did not look at my face, and I made a great effort to smooth out that old devil’s expression I knew must be disfiguring my features. When he did look at me he saw a man who, in his eyes, was a weakling trying to bluster. “I think, Amak Hamun, you will be very sorry you crossed words and swords with Strom Lart.”

  Because of this stupid quarrel I had to cancel a planned expedition to the small coastal town of Denrette, which stands where the River Havilthytus empties into the Ocean of Clouds. The river mouth opens out to the sea just to the south of the island of Arnor. At Denrette lived the Todalpheme who calculated the tides and the movements of the great waters.

  Nulty said, “You will not travel now, Notor?”

  “No, Nulty, may Havil the Green twist the eyeballs in the sockets of this onker Strom Lart. No, I will not travel now.”

  Truth to tell, much of that old urgency to go and find out from these Todalpheme — who might be the very ones I needed to talk to — just what they knew of the Savanti and the Swinging City of Aphrasoe had left me. I would find out one day. Right now my life on Kregen had taken turns that would have astounded me in those days when my main desire on the planet was to find my way back to the Swinging City of Aphrasoe and the Savanti. .

  The day of the duel arrived and Nulty saw to it that I had a fine breakfast of fried vosk-rashers and loloo’s eggs and after the last of the superb Kregan bread — done in a Hamalese fashion quite pleasant

  — smeared with honey had been eaten, a delicate china cup of Kregan tea and then a silver dish of palines to munch finished the meal. He checked my clothes. I had chosen to appear in very rich, sober style, with a subdued flash of ruby in place of the scarlet. I belted on my thraxter, and the straight sword of Havilfar seemed to me the proper instrument with which to show a Hamalese Strom the error of his ways. We stowed all our gear away safely, paid the lodging bill, and then went down to the hall of duels. The scene presented itself at once as macabre and exciting.

  The seats surrounding the flat central space were filled with citizens. The betting was light. Everyone gave the Strom every chance. This was more in the nature of an exhibition than a duel, and many of the bets were on just how the Strom would humiliate me before the final stroke. The due ceremonies went ahead. Judges and referees were appointed and a doctor was in attendance. So far everything went along coldly and with formality. The Hamalese system of dueling bears some resemblance to encounters here on Earth, with the system of seconds standing in for the principal if he is absent. Since I had no seconds, and no one volunteered, and Nulty was only a servitor, the Strom waived some of the protocol. Instead, he sent the Elten across with a rapier and dagger, with the injunction that he, as the party to choose weapons, chose these. Since it was clear I did not possess rapier or dagger I might be allowed the loan of these.

  Well, the fool would find out soon enough the truth. I have already told you of my beliefs in this vexed question of sword-fighting. One day, I think, I will meet a man who is better than I am. Or, perhaps, a woman. Then I shall face the greatest fight of all. Each time I fight I am aware that this may be the last time. I am not so egomaniacal as to imagine I am the best swordsman of two worlds. Besides egomania and megalomania, that would be plain sinful pride and stupid into the bargain. This Strom Lart looked strong and quick and clever; he might best me.

  Expectancy caught up everyone. The crowd grew impatient. The high-ceiled hall rang with muted echoes. Lart glanced across at me, and flicked his rapier about as though he knew how to use it. I heard men talking in the nearest seats, saying that I was doomed, that the Strom would cut me up into fancy shaped pieces and feed m
e to the dogs.

  Opening off the main hall of challenge were a number of smaller rooms, for dressing, for religious observances. A plan occurred to me whereby I might get out of this with a whole skin, not slay the Strom (for this was a duel to the death), and at the same time preserve my image as a weakling and no true fighting-man.

  “I will spend a few murs in seeking the assistance of Havil the Green,” I said. That was obscenity to me, then, enough to make me wince. Of all the multiplicity of gods and godlings on Kregen, only Zair and Opaz had made any real impact on me, and, then, mainly for their parallels to my own inner beliefs. Havil the Green could go stew in his own juice for all I cared.

  Perhaps, to be fair, I should add Djan to that short list of Kregan gods; for Djan was dear to my people of Djanduin. As for the beliefs of my wild clansmen of the Great Plains of Segesthes — that crazy harum-scarum bunch is enough to drive the bravest of men to the nearest dopa bottle. This list, I hasten to add, refers to my religious evolution on Kregen up to this time. Krun, of whom I have not spoken, was to come.

  “Very well.” Strom Lart’s acquiescence was relayed to me by the Elten. “But, for the sake of Havil, do not take long.”

  There were two meanings to that. I frowned. Then I took myself off, out of the central space, between the seating, and so through a short corridor to the room which had been furnished in green, with all necessary things provided, as a shrine to Havil the Green. The state religion of Hamal was safe, at the least, if nothing else.

  Fully intending to spend a few moments in mock prayer and then return to disarm in some clumsy fashion and wound sufficient to halt the bout, I turned into the shrine. So fast, it came! So rapidly and without the slightest warning! No giant scarlet-and-golden-feathered bird of prey swooped over me. No slow growth of a blue radiance appeared to suck me down into emptiness.

  I saw the scuttling form of a reddish-brown scorpion.

  It stood with its arrogant tail upflung, perched on the very nose of the statue of Havil the Green with its encrustations of precious stones. Samphron-oil lamps cast gleams that broke and splintered from the brilliance of diamond and emerald and many another gem. The idiot face of Havil the Green stared down on me, and squatting on that Rapa-beaked nose of his — a scorpion! The wagon-wheel of eight arms stretched from the statue. Its face showed that admixture of racial traits, a morphology that, at least in this ten-foot-tall statue, betrayed only idiocy to my intolerant eyes. This statue was insignificant compared with that enormous and truly gorgeous statue of Havil the Green which Delia and I had encountered in the fortress of Hakal in Huringa in Hyrklana. That statue had seen us beset by neemus, those black-furred cats of vicious temper and sadistic power.

  Far rather would I have faced a dozen deadly black neemus than that single solitary scorpion!

  So fast it was. One moment I saw the scorpion, the next the reddish-brown form vanished and the world turned a radiant blue.

  In my helpless falling I had time for one thought, one thought only, as I was pitched out of Kregen and back to Earth.

  Delia!

  Chapter Seven

  The Scorpion brings travels and discoveries

  There was no sense in it!

  No sense at all. That Opaz-forsaken cramph of a scorpion! One day I’d put my foot on the foul red-and-brown thing and twist and crush and so squash the thing flat! So help me!

  Even as I raged thus to myself, and looked about the planet of my birth again, I knew the day would never dawn. I thought so then. I am not so sure now. If I did smash my foot down on the scorpion, and so deal with it in such wise as would kill a normal scorpion, would this messenger of the Star Lords die?

  If I loosed a shaft at the scarlet-and-gold raptor, would that superb bird die?

  I did not know. . I do not know. . All I knew then was that for some reason I had been flung back to Earth.

  Oh, yes, I landed in a peck of trouble and sorted it out, and then haunted the night beaches, forever looking up toward that glinting spark of light upflung so arrogantly in the tail of the constellation of Scorpio. Up there, on a planet circling that twin star, four hundred light-years away, rested all I wanted in two worlds. Call me selfish, if you will. I do not care. Take the Prince Majisters, the Kovs, the Stroms, all the gaudy panoply of rank and wealth and privilege I had earned there on that perilous and profitable world of Kregen — take them all away. I hungered only for Delia, for my Delia and our twins, Drak and Lela.

  A ghost of remorse would overtake me as I considered my friends there: Seg Segutorio, Inch of Ng’groga, Hap Loder, Prince Varden Wanek, Gloag, Turko the Shield, Kytun Kholin Dom, my friends of Valka and Djanduin, and Korf Aighos, and even Nulty; and there was my stepbrother-in-law, Vomanus of Vindelka, who wanted, I knew, to be a good friend and yet whose reckless ways took him off to the far corners of Kregen where he might swing a rapier with that raffish carelessness of his. Oh, yes, remorse would overtake me as I realized I would forgo all their friendship if I might once more clasp in my arms my Delia of Delphond, my Delia of the Blue Mountains.

  And, hungering as I did, could I ever forget that I, Dray Prescot, was also a Krozair of Zy?

  The days on Earth passed in gray despair. I had cleared up the trouble here. (I will concern myself in these tapes mainly with what transpired in my career on Kregen, except when something I believe will interest you occurred to match). Then partly to give myself something to do, thereby driving away the insanity that threatened, and partly because I was genuinely interested in finding out what I could of the Savanti, I set out on a little detective work.

  The Star Lords, the Everoinye, seemed to me to be above inquiry.

  The Savanti, those mortal but superhuman men and women of Aphrasoe the Swinging City, seemed subject to investigation.

  I went hunting Alex Hunter.

  Rather, since he was dead on a Valkan beach on far Kregen, decently buried by me with two prayers said over him, it was his memory I hunted, what there was to know about him in the minds of those who had known him.

  Money matters were carried on for me by the descendants of that man, whose name I will not mention, whom I had met on the field of Waterloo. I was now remarkably rich. It meant nothing, of course; it still means nothing compared to the greater glory of Kregen. But my Earthly wealth gave me the means to carry out my search.

  The trail began in Paris and took me to New York. After a month of inquiries, of checking public records, of following up leads in school and college and U.S. Army records, I felt I had indeed discovered the Alex Hunter who had been employed by the Savanti in their crusade to cleanse the world of Kregen.

  As a grim old Army major said: “He was posted missing, Mr. Prescot. There was Indian trouble. There always is. But we had high hopes of the boy. You say you knew him?”

  I dissimulated; but the picture became clearer. Alex Hunter had been a young shavetail whose career seemed marked for high command. Eager, alert, efficient, he had made a first-class officer. I remembered his fair hair, those keen blue eyes, the supple strength of him. How he had been recruited by the Savanti nal Aphrasoe, I did not know. But he had been taken to Kregen, and no doubt had passed his test down the River Aph with flying colors, as I remembered, as I remembered! Then the Savanti had appointed him a tutor, given him a genetic language pill, trained him in the martial arts. They had no doubt explained to him in full their plans for Kregen, plans at which I could only guess, for the Savanti had booted me out of the paradise that was Aphrasoe, the Swinging City.

  What I did know without doubt was that Alex Hunter had appeared on a beach in Valka, charged by the Savanti to rescue a shipwrecked party of political prisoners from their guards. He had been doing well. He had fought gallantly; as he had said of my fighting, so I could say of his, that he had fought merrily. But his lack of experience had betrayed him. A cruel javelin had smashed its steel head through his body.

  Either the Savanti themselves, employing me out of desperation, or the Star Lords with the
ir infinitely more devious ways, had flung me onto that beach to save the situation. I had done so. And I had won my island of Valka. But the strangeness of walking a New York street, and of seeing all the wonders of mid-century America growing before my eyes, made me ponder long and long the reasons that most surely existed for all that the Star Lords did.

  The Savanti, I felt sure, wished to make Kregen a civilized world. This is a laudable object. Just what the Star Lords wanted, I did not know. But it was clear their plans were long-term. The people I rescued from death at the behest of the Star Lords would be growing up now, and their fates must influence the fate of the world.

  Here, on this Earth, how many people who vanished had been taken to Kregen by the Savanti to join their great crusade?

  And I, Dray Prescot, had been found wanting and had been kicked out. Thoughts such as that would send the claws of madness striking through to me. Was I to remain for the next thousand years, left here to rot on Earth, to destroy myself in futility on the world of my birth?

  I left the Western frontier, where I had felt strangely at home in the harsh conditions so similar to many of the Kregan frontiers, and I took a southeasterly swing and was in Virginia when the blue radiance took me — blessedly — back to Kregen.

  Opening my eyes, I saw that I was naked. That was normal. I think the Star Lords knew of that tickling feeling I had that I would think the less of them if they provided me with a handy sword, or shield, or helmet, when they brought me to Kregen to untangle the latest problem hurled at me. The problem I had to sort out this time was so absurdly simple that I was sure the situation had been contrived by the Star Lords merely to bring me once more to Kregen. Maybe, I thought, as I stood up and stretched in the glorious mingled opaline light, maybe they required me to be here on Kregen. Certainly, facing a little four-armed Och, for all that he carried the small round shield of the Och, and a spear, and a thraxter belted to his waist, was not of the order of problems I had previously encountered. The Och was a slaver and he was driving a heavily chained coffle of Djan girls to the beach where a low two-masted vessel waited. Now the Djangs are an especial joy to me, as you know. They are apim, just like Homo sapiens, but they have four arms apiece. They are the most ferocious fighters. Their girls are exceptionally beautiful. They are much prized. They do not travel very far from their own country of Djanduin, which is situated in the southwest of Havilfar.