“The cripple is cured!” I shouted.
“Begone, Dray Prescot!” The voice from that vast body soughed with sorrow. “You would have been acceptable, and sorely do the Savanti need men like yourself! But you have failed! Begone and begone and never Remberee!”
Delia was a naked soft shape in my arms. I bent my head and pressed my lips on hers and she responded with a joyous love that shocked me through and through.
“Begone!”
I felt the blue luminosity crowding close about me. I was slipping away from this world of Kregen. I shouted.
“I will return!”
“If you can,” sighed the voice. “If you can!”
Chapter Seven
The Star Lords intervene
“Hey! Jock!” a coarse voice shouted. “Here’s some poor devil crawled outta the jungle!”
I opened my eyes. I knew where I was. A wooden palisade crowned with skulls. Thatched huts. The smoke from cooking-pot fires. A coffle of black slaves being herded to the beach and the waiting canoes of the Kroomen. Moored in midstream, on a brown and stinking flood, was a brig. The place stank. Oh, yes, I knew where I was.
The harsh sunlight blazed yellow, stinging my eyes.
I do not believe it necessary or even wise to speak of the next few years. I was able to ship out from the slave factory, nauseatingly aboard the slaver brig, and then in some fashion resume my old life. Promotion to post rank still eluded me; but now I did not care. I hungered for Kregen. I bore the Savanti no ill will. I recognized their essential goodness and I acknowledged that I did not understand all the answers to my questions. I failed to comprehend why they had refused to treat Delia—my Delia! Delia of Delphond, Delia of the Blue Mountains—how many nights I stood by the quarterdeck rail and stared up at the stars and ever and ever my eyes sought that red star that was Antares, and there, I knew, lay all of hope or happiness I wanted in all the universe.
I knew what had happened to me. I had been flung out of Paradise.
Paradise. I had found my heaven and had been debarred from entering.
After my life of hardship and struggle Aphrasöe was Paradise.
Now that I have lived so long and have visited Earth many times, always, in some strange way it seems, during times of stress or crisis, I can speak more calmly of my feelings then. So that you may better understand the kind of man I am now, speaking into your little recording apparatus, I should say that on Earth I have amassed a considerable fortune over the years in the normal course of business investment. Had I possessed a hundred times that sum in those days when I once more walked the quarterdeck and plunged into the battlesmoke on Earth I would have given it all, over and over, to be returned once more to Kregen of Antares.
When Lloyd’s Patriotic Fund voted me a fifty pound sword of honor I grasped the gaudy thing with its gilt and its seed pearls and I longed to feel once again the firm grip of a Savanti sword in my fist.
I do not believe it possible for anyone of Earth to imagine my state of mind as I thought of the crimson and emerald suns of Kregen, of the seven moons glowing in the night sky against those constellations so alien to Earth and yet so familiar to me. The tortured regrets impelled me to a strange step, for I obtained a scorpion and kept the thing in a cage. I would stare at its ugliness for many minutes on end, and hope that some familiar drowsiness would overtake me. The thing was cursed at by the men when we had to clear for action, and as bulkheads and cabin partitions were removed and struck down, I would have my pet scorpion sent down with the rest.
The Peninsular War opened and I was appointed first lieutenant aboard Roscommon, a leaky old tub of a seventy-four whose captain was one of the famous mad captains of the Navy List. Clearly, before me lay a career as a lieutenant until my hairs were gray and I was at last discarded on half pay to rot on the beach. Except that—my hair would not turn gray for a thousand years.
We carried out a number of interesting operations, interesting only in that they provided a strong anodyne for the ache in my soul. We took a French eighty gun ship and were thereby cheered. I heard the officers remarking on the astounding ferocity of my conduct during the boarding. I did not care. After the battle, drained of emotion, I stood on the quarterdeck, gripping the rail, and as always my eyes lifted to the heavens. Alpha Scorpii blazed its mocking ruby fires into my eyes.
Was that a hint of blueness limning Antares? Was that a blue shape leering down on me? The shape of a scorpion?
I reached up my arms.
I heard a cry from the quartermaster, and the midshipman of the watch yelled to the master’s mate. I ignored them. The blueness grew. It was. It was!
I reached out and felt that blueness expand and take my consciousness into itself and I shouted, loudly and exultantly: “Kregen!” And: “Delia—Delia of Delphond, my Delia of the Blue Mountains! I return, I return!”
I opened my eyes on a sandy beach with the sound of great waves.
Sick despair clogged my mind. Standing up, I looked around upon a vast heaving sea, a sandy beach, a line of bushes inland and beyond that a prairie vast and wide, extending to the farthest horizon.
The gravity—the sun—the suns!—the feel of the air—yes. Yes, this was the world of Kregen beneath Antares. But—but where was the city? Where the River Aph? Where was Aphrasöe, the City of the Savanti, the Swinging City?
My eyes adjusted quickly to the warm pink sunshine; but I could not see what I wanted to see. I hammered a fist into the sand. Where could I be on the surface of an unknown world? Was I in Loh, that continent of mysteries and veils and hidden walled gardens? Or in Gah, that pathetic semblance of a man’s sick dreams where women were chained to bedposts? There were Havilfar and Turismond, continents of which I knew nothing—and there were the other continents and the nine islands and all the seas between.
How I cursed my inadequate knowledge of Kregen!
A shadow fleeted between me and that great bloated red sun. I saw a scarlet feathered bird, with golden feathers about its neck and head, its black legs extended with wicked claws wide, its broad wings stiff and stately as it wheeled in hunting circles above me. I stood up and shook my fist at the Gdoinye. It uttered a harsh croak. After a time of surveillance it began to wheel higher and higher with a lazily powerful wingstroke. When it was but a dot in the sky I heard along the beach a sudden shrill chopped-off cry. A woman’s cry.
A girl ran toward me along the beach.
It could only be Delia.
With a great shout of joy I ran toward her.
The devil might take me if I cared where in the whole world of Kregen I was if I could have Delia of the Blue Mountains at my side.
A group of riders burst from the dunes beyond Delia. They rode strange beasts, extremely short-coupled with four long narrow legs poising their bodies more hands high than any horse had any right to be. Each had a single curled horn rising from its forehead. The men wore high helmets of blazing gold. They were clad in purplish-colored jerkins studded with brass nails, a color made into vivid bruise-shine by the light. They carried weapons. And they were gaining on Delia far faster than I could reach her.
She, like myself, was completely naked.
The air in my lungs scorched like fire. I bounded in fantastic leaps, my Earthly muscles scorning the pull of gravity. Once before I had let all my Earthly muscle-power leap out in defense of this girl; now my bounds were truly of fantastic distance. Sand sheeted away at each footstep. But the riders gained on Delia, and now I could see they were not men, although possessing two arms and two legs, for their faces were like nothing so much as the big tabby cat’s bewhiskered face I remembered from home. Their slit eyes blazed. I shouted, and then saved my breath for running.
Delia flung both arms up as her foot caught in some driftwood discarded on the beach and she fell. I heard her scream: “Dray Prescot!”
A rider leaned one furred arm down and caught her up around the waist, flicked her over to lie facedown across his saddle. I lunged forwar
d like a demented man. I could not lose her after all, not now, not so soon after finding her again!
The lead rider reined up, those enormously long legs of his mount spindling with muscled power. Sand cascaded, his mount slid backward, then, with a snickering shrill, it had regained its balance. But in those few vital moments I had reached a stirrup. I grasped the booted foot and jerked and pulled as though I could tear the thing’s leg clean off.
He screamed and something thwacked down on my shoulders. I glared up. Delia moaned. The rider threw away his crop in fury and drew a long curved sword and lifted it high. I reached up, took his elbow between my fingers, twisted, and heard the bones grind and snap. The thing shrieked again.
Delia’s eyes opened; horror clouded them. “Behind you—”
I whirled and ducked and the curved sword sliced air. Now they were all about me. Swords lifted in a net of steel. I reached again for him whose arm I had mangled. He let out a keening shriek and hauled desperately at his mount’s reins. The beast reared, throwing me off. Ducking a swiping sword, silently, I leaped again. I was on the thing’s haunches, and so short were they that I half hung over nothingness with my left arm clamped around the rider’s waist and my right dragging his head back in that arrogant golden helmet. I heard his neck snap and cast him from me. I slid forward into the saddle, seized the reins and kicked my heels into the flanks of the beast. It shivered and snorted and bounded forward.
Then the world spun around in a blaze of sparks and I saw the sand rising up toward me and, for only a fractional moment of time, felt the hardness of the sandy ground smash all along my face.
They must have left me for dead.
When I recovered, sick and groggy, and looked about, the beach was silent and deserted and only the pitiful humped shape of the dead beast, and the sprawled rider beyond, told of the tragedy that had unfolded here.
At the instant of my success, on the point of escape, I had had my mount shot from under me. The weapon still protruded from the poor thing’s flank. It was an eight-foot long spear, the head fashioned from bronze and heavy although not particularly sharp. It was an unhandy weapon.
Beneath the rider—I subsequently learned that these feline-like semi-humans were called Fristles—I found his curved scimitar-like sword. Despite his broken elbow he had retained grasp of his sword hilt. When I had flung him from the high saddle he had fallen so that the point of the blade had entered his stomach with the hilt jammed against the ground. That blade had gone clean through his body and the stained point protruded eight inches past his backbone. The blood was blackened and caked and a few flies—for they exist everywhere—rose as I approached.
I turned him over with my foot, freed his hand from the hilt, put a foot on his body and dragged the sword clear. I cleaned it thoroughly with the sand all about me. I was not thinking at all clearly. I did not care to use this creature’s clothes, so I cut up the purple leather and fashioned myself a breechclout after the fashion of Savanti hunting leathers; and I cut from his tunic enough to wind about my left arm. His boots fit me well enough. I slung the sword over my shoulder, its scabbard suspended from a leather baldric, and I felt that when I ran across these cat-people again I would kill very many of them before they could once again wrest Delia of Delphond from me.
The sound of hooves would be muffled to a succession of steady thumps in the sand. At the sound I drew the sword and turned to face the rider who approached. The wind blew grains of sand across the hoofprints; there had been no chance of tracking those who had taken Delia.
“Lahal,” the rider called when he was fairly up with me. “Lahal, Jikai.”
“Lahal,” I likewise replied. I had learned what Jikai could mean in the various inflexions put upon the word. It could mean simply “Kill!” It, could mean “Warrior” or “A noble feat of arms” or a number of other related concepts, to do with honor and pride and warrior-status and, inevitably, slaying. It had been used in admiration by Delia of the Blue Mountains, as it had been used by her as a command. I studied the stranger, as I said: “Lahal, Jikai.”
For, clearly, he was a warrior.
I had made a mistake in custom and usage; for he made a face and pointed to the dead rider and his mount. “Indeed, it is for me to call you Jikai; what have I done that you know of?”
“As to that,” I said, “I doubt not that you are a mighty warrior. But I seek a girl these—things—took.”
He had an open, frank face, burned brown by the suns of Antares, with light-colored hair bleached by those suns. He carried a steel helmet at his saddle bow, and his mount was of the same strange high-stepping breed as the dead one at my feet. He wore Leathers, russet-brown, tasseled and fringed after the fashion in New England, and he sat his saddle with the alert carriage yet relaxed air I knew bespoke a master rider. I could not say horseman, although no doubt from sheer familiar usage the word crosses my lips from time to time.
“I am Hap Loder, Jiktar of the First Division of the Clan of Felschraung.” The last word, as you can hear, was pronounced deeply with a great sound as of clearing the throat. The way Hap Loder said it, made it sound menacing, prideful, arrogant.
“I am Dray Prescot.”
“Now that we have made pappattu, I will fight you at once.”
Very little would startle me now. Any other time I’d have been pleased to fight him, if he so desired; but at this imperative time I must find Delia. He dismounted.
“You have not told me if you have seen a girl—” I began. His lance flashed before my eyes.
“Uncouth barbarian! Know you not we cannot speak of anything save obi until we have fought and given or taken obi?”
Furious anger flooded me. Pappattu, I understood, meant introduction. The formalities had been observed; but now this idiot would not tell me of Delia until he had fought me! Well—my captured blade flashed. I would not take long over this.
He went back to that tall-legged animal, stuck the slender willowy lance in its boot, came back with two swords. One was long, heavy, straight, a swashbuckling broadsword. The other was short, straight, simple of construction, a stabbing short sword like a gladius. “I have challenged. Which sword, since that is what you have, will you choose?”
I looked him in the eye. Impatient or not to have the thing done, I recognized honor when I met it. This young man, Hap Loder, was offering me a chance of life, and of death for himself. The powerful broadsword, of course, would not stand against my scimitar, except perhaps on sand. I nodded toward the shortsword. He smiled. “It matters not to me,” I said. “But make haste.” Then, for he was a fine-looking young man and, as I was to discover, Hap Loder was steel-true honest and fearless, I added: “But I think you would do well to choose the shortsword.”
“Yes,” he said, and took it up by its grip, replacing the long broadsword in its scabbard strapped to his mount’s saddle. “Should you win I do not mind giving obi; but I have no wish to die unnecessarily.”
On which fine point of logic we fell to.
He was a fine swordsman, yet the very advantages of the quick and deadly shortsword were lost to him now. The shortsword is at its best when used with a shield, packed with room to play in the long ranks of a disciplined army, each man relying on his neighbor. Or in the close and sweaty melee of the press, when the elbow has room only to move within the compass of the body, does the shortsword rule. The great broadsword, too, can be outfought by a wily and nimble opponent, and I think he had made the better choice. But he could not match the demon-driven needs that obsessed me.
“Jikai!” he shouted, and lunged.
I made a few quick passes, left his blade short and faltering, and then, with the old over-underhand loop, sent his blade flying. My point hovered at his throat. He stared up, his eyes suddenly wide.
“Now, Hap Loder, tell me, quick! Have you seen a girl carried off by such carrion as this dead thing?”
“No, Dray Prescot. I speak truth. I have not.”
He scrambled up,
backing away from my point. He drew himself up in the position of attention. He put his palms to his eyes, his ears, his mouth, and then clasped them over his heart.
“I make obi to you, Dray Prescott. With my eyes I will see only good of you, with my ears I will hear only good of you and with my mouth will I speak only good of you. And my heart is yours to feast upon.”
“I don’t want your bloody heart,” I told him. “I want to know where Delia of the Blue Mountains is!”
“Had I that knowledge it would be yours.”
I stood looking at him, at a loss. He was a young man, proud and upstanding, and a fine swordsman. If he got into many fights he’d be taking obi all the time.
He stirred awkwardly and then bent and retrieved his sword. I watched, alert, but he fingered the weapon and then walked across to his animal. He spoke to it for a moment, soothing it, and a pang of remembrance touched me.
Then he came back leading it by the reins.
“My zorca is yours, Dray Prescot, seeing that you are afoot, which no clansman may be.”
A zorca! So this was the type of animal from which Delia had fallen.
“Are you not a clansman? Would you then not have to walk?”
“Yes. But I have made obi to you.”
“Hmm.” Then the obvious question asserted itself. “Which way lies Aphrasöe, the City of the Savanti?”
He looked blank.
“There is only one city. I have never heard of any other.”
This was the answer I had feared to hear. I must be stranded in some remote and forgotten region of Kregen. Then the truth presented itself painfully. It was Aphrasöe that was isolate and hidden; these people were of the planet Kregen, living a natural human life. I thought of the cat-people—or as natural as their customs and environment allowed.
All I could do was go along with Hap Loder and learn all I could from him. I would find Delia, I would! And to find her I must learn, and quickly, damn quickly, everything I could.
Transit to Scorpio Page 7
