Transit to Scorpio

by Alan Burt Akers

  He was the Champion of Esztercari. A master swordsman.

  “I know,” I said, wasting breath, and turned, and smashed that gorgeous jar of Pandahem porcelain into a thousand shards. From the wrecked interior of the vase I snatched the mailed man’s rapier I had hidden there at the close of that epic fight, and swung up, and stood, facing Galna. I know now my face must have daunted him. But he faced me bravely, his blade a living streak of light in the lanternglow. Our blades crossed. He was very good.

  But I live and he is dead, dead and gone these many years.

  He fought well and with great cunning; but I took him with a simple developed attack against which his return faltered at the last instant; my dagger twisted his blade and then my brand passed between his ribs and through his lungs and protruded all blood-smeared beyond.

  No further resistance was offered as my wolves of the plains surged forward.

  We stood in the Great Hall beneath that wonderful ceiling with the lamplight and the torches adding to the crimson and topaz glory of the suns’ light through the tall windows. My men crowded about me, their russet clan leathers grim beside the powder blue and, even, beside the Strombor scarlet I wore. Their swords and axes lifted high, in salute.

  “Hai, Jikai!” they roared.

  A figure in emerald green, lost and drowned now in the surge of newer colors, was flung forward to the foot of the steps of the dais on which we stood. Wanek, Varden, great nobles of Eward, and my Jiktars, crowded the dais. We looked down on that crumpled figure in emerald green, with the rosy limbs and white body, the corn-yellow hair.

  The Princess Natema of Esztercari lay there, at our feet.

  Someone had loaded her with chains. Her gown was ripped. Her cornflower blue eyes were wild with baffled fury; she could not comprehend what had happened, or, believing, refused.

  Prince Varden, at my side, started to rush down the steps.

  I held him back.

  “Let me go to her, Dray Prescot!”

  He lifted his rapier, all bloodied.

  “Wait, my friend.”

  He stared in my face, and what he saw there I do not know; but he hesitated. A man of Eward stepped forward and stripped off the emerald green gown and cast it underfoot so that Natema groveled at our feet, naked. But Natema would never grovel. She stared up, beautiful, disheveled, naked, but prideful and arrogant and demanding.

  “I am the Princess Natema, of Esztercari, and this is my House!”

  Wanek spoke to her, gravely but with iron resolve that bewildered her. “Not so, girl. You are no longer a princess. For you no longer have a noble House. You own nothing, you are nothing. If you are not slain, hope and pray that some man will take kindly to you, and may buy you. For you have no other hope in all Kregen.”

  “I—am—a princess!” She forced the words out, gasping, her hands clenched and her vivid scarlet lips curved and passionate. She stared up at us on the dais—and she saw me.

  Her cornflower blue eyes clouded and she jerked back in her chains as though I had stepped down and struck her.

  “Dray Prescot!” She spoke like a child. She shook her head. At my side Varden jerked like a goaded zorca.

  I spoke to the Princess Natema. “Natema. You may be permitted to retain that name; your new master—if you are not slain, as the Lord Wanek has suggested—may give you a new one, like rast or vosk. You have been evil, you have cared nothing for other people; but I cannot find it in my heart to condemn you for what your upbringing made you.”

  “Dray Prescot!” she whispered again. How different now were the circumstances of our meeting! How changed her fortunes. With my clansmen about me with their weapons raised I looked down on Natema.

  “You may live, girl, if you are lucky. Who would want a naked ragbag like you now? For you have nothing but an evil temper and a violent tongue and know nothing of laboring to make a man happy. But, maybe, there is to be found a man who can see something in you, who can find it in his heart to take you in and lift you up and clothe your nakedness and learn to school your tongue and temper. If there is such a man in all Kregen, he needs must love you very greatly to saddle himself with such a burden.”

  To this day I do not truly know if Natema really loved me or was merely gratifying a lustful whim when she proposed herself to me. But my words struck through to her. She looked bewilderedly upon the pressing men in hostile dress all about her, at the steel of their weapons, at Wanek’s iron-masked face of hatred, and then she looked at her own naked body with the heavy chain pressing the white skin—and she screamed.

  No longer could I hold back Prince Varden Wanek of Eward.

  He cradled her in his arms, smoothing back the lush yellow hair, calling for smiths to strike off the chains. He was whispering in her ear, and slowly her sobs and wild despair eased and her body relaxed from its rigid grip of hysteria. She looked at him, and, indeed, he was a fine and handsome sight. I saw those ripe red luscious lips curve.

  I heard what she said.

  She raised those luminous cornflower blue eyes to Varden, who was staring down at her with a foolish, happy, devoted and unbelieving look on his face.

  “I think,” said the Princess Natema, “that blue will go with my eyes very well.”

  I almost smiled, then.

  A press circled in the hall and I saw a stately palanquin swing and sway in between the towering columns of the main entrance, slowly move toward the dais as the solidly packed masses of men whirlpooled away to give it passage. I also saw a sharp, weasel-faced little man dressed incongruously in clansman’s russet and with a long knife stuck through his belt, standing truculently, as though he had conquered everything himself, at the foot of the dais. Beneath the tunic of Nath the thief there were a number of highly suspicious bulges, and I remarked to myself that Shusha would be missing a few choice items when she installed herself in her new home.

  “Hai, Nath, Jikai!” I called down to him, and he looked up with his furtive weasel face as proud as though he had stolen all three eyes from the great statue of Hrunchuk in the temple gardens across the forbidden canal.

  The palanquin swayed to a halt and scarlet-liveried men helped Great-Aunt Shusha—who was not my great-aunt—up the dais steps. More men provided an ornate throne she must have had carried from some dusty and long-forgotten attic. She sat in it with a thankful gasp after climbing the dais steps. She was so covered with gems that scarcely a square inch was to be seen of her scarlet gown. Her bright eyes fixed on Varden, who had flung a great blue cape about Natema, and who now stood with his bride-to-be to one side.

  All the noise of shuffling feet, of laughing, of hugely-excited men, fell silent. There was in the Great Hall of Strombor, that had once been Esztercari, an overwhelming tenseness of feeling, a current of thrilling excitement, a sense that history was being made, here and now, before all our eyes. The light fell from the tall windows and burned upon the colors and the weapons. The torches smoked and their streamers lofted into a high haze in which darting colored motes weaved endlessly. Even the very air smelled differently, tangy, tingling, bracing.

  Here was a nodal point of history. Here was where a Noble House vanished, and another took its place, where the rightful House once more claimed its old rewards. The vague thought that I had been brought to Zenicce to encompass just this result flashed upon my mind, to be instantly dispelled.

  I knew that Shusha might wish to administer the House of Strombor herself, for her Eward husband and sons and daughters were all dead and she was herself alone—but that she would certainly wish to unite the two Houses in the person of her great-nephew Varden. I felt this to a most happy outcome. She would will him everything, and this friendship between the Houses would be assured. I smiled at Varden where he clasped Natema, and surprised myself at the curve in my lips. His response a little surprised me, for he laughed widely, his eyes alight with merriment as he clasped Natema, and he bowed to me, a stately half-incline. I wondered what he meant.

  Shusha of St
rombor began to speak.

  She was heard out in utter silence.

  What she said shook and dumbfounded me, and explained Varden’s laugh and bow, for he must have known and approved.

  Shusha of Strombor had made me her legitimate heir, given me suzerainty over all the House of Strombor, with all ranks, privileges and dues thereto entailed in law; all the bokkertu—that is to say, the legal work—had been concluded. I was to assume at once the lawful title of Lord Strombor of Strombor. The House of Strombor was mine.

  I stood there like a loon, stunned, not believing, thinking myself the victim of some kind of insane practical joke. But my men did not doubt. My wild wolves of the plains lifted their weapons on high and amidst a forest of flashing blades the cheers rang out. “Zorcander! Vovedeer! Strombor!” Among the russet and the powder blue there was now to be seen more color. The black and silver of Reinman, the crimson and gold of Wicken, others of our allies; they crowded in and lifted their weapons and shouted and roared.

  “Dray Prescot of Strombor! Hai, Jikai!”

  My slave clansmen knew I would not desert them for a soft city life; was I not their Zorcander and was I not sworn in obi-brotherhood with them? So they bellowed with the best. That great and glorious hall rang to the repeated cheers as the swords lifted high.

  I looked at Shusha.

  Her wizened face and bright eyes reminded me of a wise old squirrel who has stored her nuts and seeds for the winter to come. That stiff slit in my lips twitched again. I smiled at Shusha.

  “You cunning—” I said. And as she laughed I went to her and knelt. She put her ring-loaded hand on my shoulder. That hand trembled; but not with age.

  “You will do what is right, Dray Prescot. We have talked long into the night and I have seen you in action and I believe I know your heart.”

  “Strombor will be a mighty House once more,” I told her, and I took her other hand in mine. “But, there is one thing—slavery. I will not tolerate slavery whether it be a kitchen drudge or a pearl-strung dancing girl. I will pay wages and the House of Strombor will maintain only free retainers.”

  “You do not surprise me, Dray Prescot.” She pressed my hand. “It will seem a little strange, an old woman like me, going through life without a slave at my beck and call.”

  I looked at her on her great throne. “My Lady of Strombor,” I said, sincerely. “You will never be without a slave at your feet.”

  “Why, you great big slobber-mouth lap-lollied chunkrah! Get along with you!” But she was pleased. The noise in the Great Hall bellowed and racketed to that wonderful ceiling and I could look down from the dais again.

  A man in black and silver was talking to Varden, who had been about to leap up to congratulate me as had the others on the dais, clasping my hand, the first of whom had been Hap Loder. Varden, holding Natema in the crook of his left arm, seized the man by his silver cords, staring into his face. My attention was instantly arrested. Then, the man’s laughing having ceased abruptly, he was pushed back by Varden, who came roaring and raging up the dais steps to me. Shusha regarded him with a lift of her old eyebrows. He came straight to me.

  I stood up and held out my hand in affection.

  “You knew of this, Varden, my friend?”

  “Yes, yes—Dray! Hanam of Reinman has just brought news. He was laughing at our good fortune that the Prince Pracek of Ponthieu did not intervene in the fighting, and that they had had no need to cover us in that quarter, for the prince was celebrating his nuptials this day.”

  “I had heard,” I said, surprised at his manner, at once agitated and nervous. “He is marrying a princess of Vallia, is he not?”

  “A great match,” put in Wanek, with an odd look at the form of Natema shrouded in her blue cloak. I guessed he wished Varden, his son, had made a match that brought with it a whole island under one government, an invincible fleet, and trade contacts firm for ten thousand miles of Kregen. Plus a fleet of airboats hardly seen outside Havilfar.

  “A great match, indeed, Dray Prescot!” burst out Prince Varden. “A match such as a Jikai would not suffer to go on! Know, Dray Prescot, that the Prince Pracek is marrying the Princess Delia of Vallia.”

  Chapter Twenty

  The Scorpion again

  There is little more to tell.

  There is little left to say about that time, my second sojourn on the planet Kregen beneath Antares.

  I cared nothing for honor, for glory, for the colors of pride, I cared nothing for the bokkertu, for what might have been written down and signed and sealed. My wild clansmen would follow me across the Plains of Mist if needs be. With that marvelous rapier gripped in my fist, with my battle-stained scarlet gear flaming beneath the twin suns, and with my clansmen at my back, I paid a call on the wedding of Prince Pracek and his exotic foreign bride.

  The Ponthieu enclave lay just across the canal. There would be trouble there in the future. I might have to raze or capture the whole complex. On that day, so long ago, I and my men roared across in fliers, in skiffs, in the wherries that had ghosted up from the marble quarries with my men packed within. We smashed in with unceremonious power when the place was decked in purple and ocher, and wreaths of flowers hung everywhere and the scents of costly perfumes wafted in the corridors and halls, where slave girls danced in their silks and bangles, where music sounded on every hand. At the head of my men I burst into the Ponthieu Great Hall and a guard of Ochs and Rapas and Chuliks fell away before the ranked menace of our clan bows. Grim and terrible to see, as I know I must have looked by the way the women shrank away from me and the men in their purple and ocher fingered their rapier hilts and would not look at me, I strode down the central aisle. Gloag, Hap Loder, Rov Kovno, Ark Atvar, Loku—and Prince Varden—were with me, but they kept at a distance, silent and watchful.

  So sudden, so violent, so vicious had been our descent that nothing could stop us. The first Ponthieu to reach for crossbow or rapier would have died with a dozen arrows feathered in his purple and ocher trappings. I halted before the great dais as the music faltered and died away.

  Absolute silence hung in that Great Hall as it had hung in the Great Hall of Strombor—my Great Hall!—only, it seemed, moments ago when Shusha proclaimed my inheritance.

  Prince Pracek, with his lopsided face and sallow visage, stood there, his hand gripping his rapier hilt, gorgeously clad in his wedding trappings. Priest were there, shaven-headed, long-bearded, sandaled. Incense smoke coiled, stinking. A crimson and green carpet led to the altar.

  And there, standing with lowered head, stood the bride-to-be. Clad all in white, with a white veil concealing her face, she waited quietly and patiently to be united to this twisted man at her side. Bride-to-be! Could I be too late! Then—then I promised, she would be a widow within the second.

  Pracek tried to bluster the thing out.

  “What is the meaning of this outrage! We have no fight with you—clansmen, a scarlet trapped foe! I know you not!”

  “Know, Prince Pracek, that I am the Lord of Strombor!”

  “Strombor?” I heard the name taken up and repeated in a buzz of speculation about the great chamber.

  But my voice had betrayed me.

  The white-crowned head lifted; the veil was torn away.

  “Dray Prescot!” cried my Delia of the Blue Mountains.

  “Delia!” I shouted, high, in answer.

  And then, before them all, I took her in my arms and kissed her as I had kissed her once before in the pool of baptism in far Aphrasöe.

  When I released her and she released me she still clung to me and her eyes were shining wonders. She trembled and held onto me and would not let go—and I would not have let her go for all the two worlds of Earth or Kregen.

  There was nothing Pracek could do. The papers relating to the bokkertu were brought and ceremoniously burned. I took Delia of the Blue Mountains—this strange new Delia of Vallia—away with me back to my enclave, to my House of Strombor. Any man who had tried to lift a finge
r to stop us would have been cut down in an instant.

  Laughing, sighing, kissing, we went back to the Great Hall where I showed Delia of Delphond to everyone and announced she was the Queen of Strombor.

  There is little left to tell.

  How brave she had been! How foolhardy, how noble, how self-sacrificing! Believing I regarded her as an encumbrance, as a hindrance, that I was doing what I was doing out of love for Princess Natema, she vowed to aid me in every way she could. If she could not have me, then she would help me to obtain the woman she thought I wanted, if that would make me happy. I chided her, then, accusing her of weakness and of giving in; but she only said: “Oh, Dray, my dearest! If only you could see your own face at times!”

  She had taken Natema’s gems, glad now to use them to aid me, and slipped away in the airboat so that I might think she had returned home. Of course, she had known where Vallia was all along. At first she had been reluctant to tell me she was the daughter of the Emperor of Vallia for fear I would demand an immense ransom—which would have been paid, I knew. Then, when she had known she could not live without me—I believe she might have done something brave and foolish immediately after the wedding ceremony with Pracek—she did not tell me because then she thought I would simply see her home and leave, or just send her home, away from me. And she could not bear that.

  But when her poor confused thoughts had tangled Natema with me she had gone to her father’s consul in Zenicce, that bluff, robust, booted man with the buff gear, using the gems to ease her way in the city and setting the airboat to drift far out over the sea, and told him she wished to be betrothed to Pracek. He had tried to dissuade her, for the match was too far beneath her; but with her own imperious will so different from that of Natema, she had insisted.

  I hugged her to me. “Poor foolish Delia of the Blue Mountains! But—I must call you Delia of Vallia now.”

  She laughed up at me, holding me close.

  “No, dearest Dray. I do not think Delia of Vallia an euphonious name and never use it. Delphond is a tiny estate my grandmother willed me. And the Blue Mountains of Vallia are magnificent! You will see them, Dray—we will see them together.”