Warrior of Scorpio [Dray Prescot #3]

by Alan Burt Akers

  The little stream broadened here and washed the worn steps of a landing jetty. Shadows jungle-hostile hung between truncated columns. I caught strange glimpses of pagan sculpture, serpentine forms that twined upon the surfaces of the blocks, hints of a demonology older than any current civilization thriving on this continent of Turismond.

  The men of the sunrise had built their cities along the shores of the inner sea. Today, the shores lie mostly barren and untended except where the vicinity of a strong castle or fortified town or city affords some protection from corsair raids. I had raided the north shore myself, that shore of the green-sun deity Grodno; I had heard horrific tales of similar raids upon the red southern shore, dedicated to the sun Zim's deity, Zair. And the sorzarts raided both north and south and the eastern shore of Proconia—where I must now be—with the impartiality of the true unbeliever. I touched the hilt of one of my swords—for I remembered with affection the impressive armory of Hap Loder and my Clansmen of Felschraung—and went on.

  “Stand and declare yourself—or you are a dead man!"

  The voice sounded hard and confident and reckless. It was the voice of Seg Segutorio. I could not see him.

  Undoubtedly, then, he was a warrior of skill.

  “Dray Prescot,” I said, and did not stop.

  Seg and the Lady Pulvia waited beside the stone lip of a wide and shallow basin, shell-shaped, into which an arm of the stream poured continually, pinkly silver in the moons’ light. Above them a chipped and defaced statue of a woman whose marble wings hung splintered from narrow shoulders cast a peaked shadow.

  “You are safe, Dray?"

  “Safe, Seg."

  We had fallen into names thus easily, then.

  “Thank the veiled Froyvil for that, then!"

  “And you—the Lady Pulvia?"

  She lifted her head from above her child as I asked, and gave me a blank, unseeing stare that told me that we would have to support her on whatever further voyage we must undertake. She bent her head and crooned softly to the child, who lay, his soft mouth stoppered by a plump thumb, fast asleep.

  For a moment I could not recall when I had last slept. In all my bones that laxity of alert feeling told me that I was tired, deadly tired, but a sea officer of a King's Ship comes early to learn the knack of using his strength against long periods of wakefulness. I could go on for a space yet, but I considered the situation, knowing that sleep now would set store of strength by for later emergencies.

  A movement in the purple shadows beneath the statue's splintered wings brought my sword out instantly, but Seg laughed and said: “Easy, Dray, you wild leem! That is Caphlander. A stylor, one of my lady's servants."

  The man stepped into the moonlight. Tall, he walked with a stoop, and his sparse hair glinted in that wash of pink light. He wore a white robe bordered with a checkered design of red and green—a sight I must admit bewildered me for a moment with all the fierce clash of red and green still echoing in my skull—and his face reminded me somewhat of the ugly bird-head of a Rapa. There were significant differences, however, and his humanity seemed to me more pronounced than the remnant left to a Rapa. He was a Relt. Numbers of these usually gentle people when made slave pined near to death; others found reasons for living in serving their masters as librarians, stylors, accountants. His bright bird-like eyes studied us from a face held to one side, so that I knew his sight was affected in one of those eyes.

  “Llahal!” he said, and then waited, stooping, subservient.

  Brusquely, Seg said: “And?"

  Caphlander the Relt wilted. “All burned,” he said. “All dead. Such sights—"

  “There's no going back, then. The Lord of Upalion having gone on his expedition will return to dust and ashes and corpses."

  The impression I gained then, briefly and fleetingly, was that Seg was not overly dismayed at this catastrophe to his master, the man who owned him as slave. And—no wonder.

  “Is there no safe place for this woman, Seg?"

  He looked at her and sucked in his lower lip.

  “The city—that is the only safe place. And we would never reach it on foot now. The sorzarts must be out in force."

  “The day of our doom is here.” Caphlander spoke with complete subjection and acceptance of his fate.

  “I do not believe that my day of doom is to be brought by a bunch of lizard-faced scaled beast-men. There are other ways to cities than by walking,” I told Caphlander and Seg.

  “All the sectrixes were taken—"

  I lifted my head and sniffed. On the night air, whose lush odors of nocturnal plant life told of many of those immense moon-drinking flowers twining among the ruins, the tangier smell I knew so well infiltrated like liquor at a funeral.

  “The sea is not far. This city—"

  “Happapat,” said Seg.

  “This Happapat—is it a port?"

  “Yes."

  “Then let's go."

  We reached the coast. Seg carried the child and I carried his mother. She lay in my arms, a soft flaccid sexless bundle, a human being for whom my only concern had been dictated by the Star Lords—whoever they might be. We rested in a rock cave halfway up the cliff as the night passed.

  With the gaining light, and refreshed by a few burs’ sleep, we could plan again. I think, even then, Seg Segutorio had realized something other than mere concern over the safety of his mistress impelled me, for his people may be wild and reckless and filled with song, but they also possess that hard streak of practicality that has maintained their independence.

  As the first sheening light of Zim spread in scarlet and golden radiance across the calm waters of the inner sea we looked out and down onto the ships of the sorzarts.

  “Eleven of them.” Seg spat. I did not waste good saliva. “They have to voyage in company, for they cannot face a Pattelonian swifter in fair fight."

  On the curved beach the ships had been drawn up stern first. Ladders were lowered with the dawn and the anchor watch began their preparations to welcome back their comrades with loot and gold and prisoners. My hand tightened on the hilt of one of the swords. We could wait here until the sorzarts sailed away...

  Call me a fool. Call me a windbag full of braggadocio.Call me prideful. I do not care. All I know is that while my Delia sought me from her island home of Vallia by rider and flier and I yearned above all things to hold her dear form in my arms once more, I could not thus tamely crouch hiding in a cave. On the hilt of the sword were marked letters in the Kregish script: G.G.M. That meant that a mercenary warrior employed by Gahan Gannius had died some time in the past and his sword had been taken as battle booty by the sorzarts. I wondered what had happened to Gahan Gannius, whom I had rescued on my last return to Kregen, and if his manners and those of the girl Valima had improved.

  The plan must be nicely made and as nicely decided. Those eleven ships down there on the beach beyond the nearest crumbling wall of the Pattelonian fishing village were not swifters nor were they broad ships. They were dromvilers. They had chosen to land directly at the fishing village—which are rare enough on the inner sea's coastline, Zair knows—to secure safe berthings. The coast here fell sheer into the sea. The people of the village, sentinels against just such raids, had been outwitted on this occasion, for a huddle of their fishing boats, the familiar muldavy with her dipping lugsail of the inner sea, were still drawn up on the beach by the wall. No one, then, had escaped.

  But those ships of the sorzarts ... I had heard of them, of course, during my seasons as a Krozair raider on the Eye of the World. But I had never before penetrated this far east. The dromvilers were, to phrase it loosely, a compromise between a galley and a sailing ship, although they were not galleasses. They were more like those classical ships sometimes remarked on by ancient writers, or the oared merchantmen of the Middle Ages used considerably in the trade to the Holy Land, shipping pilgrims.

  Broader than a swifter, narrower than a broad ship, they carried single banks of twenty oars each crew
ed probably by three or four oarsmen, and two masts. I felt reasonably certain that the masts could carry topsails, and a grudging respect grew in me for the sorzarts’ sailing skills, for from topsails can emerge all the panoply of sails, skysails and stunsails and all.

  A further sobering thought occurred to me. With that number of oarsmen—something between one hundred and twenty and one hundred and sixty, plus essential reserves—the sorzarts could not be using slaves as oarsmen. A large war swifter can carry a thousand slave oarsmen, and feed and water and clean them after a fashion, by extraordinarily careful management. But a merchantman exists to transport goods. There would be no room aboard the sorzarts’ ships for slaves. The oarsmen, then, were free—that is, they were sorzarts capable of standing and fighting along with the soldiers of the crew. Maybe the sorzarts were not the savage barbarians the men of Grodno and Zair believed them.

  “I am thirsty,” said the Lady Pulvia, breaking the silence. “And my son is thirsty. Also, we are hungry."

  I said: “So am I. I will bring you food and water as soon as it is possible."

  “And when will that be?” said Caphlander. He held his hands together, the long thin fingers intertwined. The veins stood out with a greenish-blue tinge.

  I ignored him.

  Why should I destroy these sorzarts? A peculiar feeling toward them of respect had been growing in me. They were small men—half-men—yet they fought well. They had adopted topsails. They employed themselves as free men as oarsmen. But I saw the fallacy of this materialistic argument. The Vikings had been free men employed as oarsmen—yet I would have had no hesitation, given this situation, in utterly destroying every Viking longship I could. The child gave a whimpering cry, which swelled until against all his mother's shushings it broke into a torrent of sobs. The child was hungry and thirsty and he reacted as nature ordained he should.

  Often I have been faced with a problem and reacted as I did because that was the way of my nature. That scorpion, that frog, they were impelled by forces stronger than themselves. Well, I have boasted that I can control my impulses, but I think that boast is on occasion an empty one. I stood up.

  “Caphlander. You will remain here. Do what you can for the Lady Pulvia and her son. Seg, please come with me."

  Without giving any of them a chance to reply or argue I went out of the rock cave and began to climb to the cliff top.

  * * *

  Chapter Three

  I dive back into the Eye of the World

  Seg Segutorio looked at the bow in his hand and his mobile lips drew down in a lopsided grimace. The bow spanned about twelve Earthly inches. He had made it with swift expertise from a branch of the thin willowy tuffa trees in whose shade we stood. The string he had as rapidly fashioned from plaited strips torn from the living bark. I looked down over the edge of the cliff, squinting a little against glare striking back off the sea from the twin suns of Antares.

  Our preparations were complete. It only remained to kindle fire.

  Any distaste as a sailorman I felt for the task I had set myself had to be quashed.

  Seg let loose a great sigh and lifted the bow to me. He shook his head. “Had I my own great bow I'd guarantee to pick off those sorzart rasts so fast they'd be pincushions before the first one hit the deck."

  He surprised me. You must realize, you who listen to my story as these tapes rustle through your little machine, that despite Seg's black hair I had taken him to be a Proconian, who are, as I have said, mostly fair-headed. The remarks about his people I have made refer, of course, to his own true people; but they are remarks made from hindsight, a crime you must forgive a man who has lived as long as I have. “Great bow?” I said.

  He laughed. “Surely, even you—who are a stranger of strangers—must have heard of the longbows of Loh?"

  “You are of Loh?"

  Again he laughed. “Yes—and no!” That ancient look of blood pride suffused his face, an arrogant, proud expression so familiar in those who trace their ancestry back and back into the dawn of their culture. I can understand it; but in many ways I am glad I do not share it, for that kind of pride so often leads to the chinless wonders who have so blighted life on our own Earth. But, with Seg Segutorio, as you shall hear, pride in race and ancestry burned with a steadier and truer flame.

  “I am an Erthyr, of Erthyrdrin..."

  Of Erthyrdrin, that convulsed mass of mountains and valleys forming the long northern promontory of Loh, I had indeed heard. I had used longbowmen from Loh as a special sniper force in my slave army when we went against the overlords of Magdag, and some of them had had red hair, and some had not, and all had been superlative archers; but none had come from Erthyrdrin, although they had spoken of the place with some awe, some respect, and not a little bile.

  Although tempted to contest a little in words with Seg over the relative values of my Clansmen's horn and steel compound reflex bows, I desisted. The wind was just right. The trees selected and bent and staked. The grasses gathered.

  Now only the flame remained to be kindled.

  “Go down to the Lady Pulvia, Seg. Prepare them. You know the boat. If I am delayed—do not wait for me."

  “But—"

  “Go, now—"

  He handed me the bow, his face glowering. “I see that at a more suitable opportunity, Dray Prescot, I shall have to teach you some respect for a warrior of Erthyrdrin."

  “Willingly, my friend. I trust the good Zair will grant it—"

  “Pagan gods!” he said, with a flash of cutting temper. “The mountaintops whereon the veiled Froyvil sends out his divine music from his golden and ivory harp would soon teach you the true values, my sad and unhappy friend."

  “As to that,” I said, taking the bow and squatting down to work, “I make no claims for Zair beyond those his followers make. And,” I added, looking up suddenly, “they have been known to claim by the edge of the sword."

  He made some kind of exasperated snort and hurried off down to the rock cave.

  I shook my head over Seg Segutorio. From what I had heard of Erthyrdrin, that mountainous promontory of the continent of Loh thrusting up into the Cyphren Sea between eastern Turismond and Vallia, he was a good representative of his race. They were reputed reckless and wild, forever screeching crazy songs and thrumming on their harps; yet I knew of the strong streak of realism stabilizing their characters and lending always the calculated risk to the actions that other men called foolhardy.

  So Seg was a longbowman. That could prove interesting.

  The little bow whizzed rapidly back and forth twirling the drill of harder sturm-wood against its sturm-wood hole wherein chippings and dry grasses awaited the first ember. Gently and then with greater boldness I blew on the glow. You, who are so accustomed to flicking your finger for heat or light or a naked flame must remember that I had known flint and steel from childhood; perhaps I was a little quicker and defter at thus creating fire than a modern civilized man would be. It is of little consequence.

  By the time I had a twisted torch well alight, the flames pale and writhing in the twin suns’ rays, I figured that Seg must have reached the rock cave and gathered up our companions. He should be creeping cautiously down toward the beach now and, as I had judged him aright, taking every opportunity for cover the way provided. I walked across to the first bundle of grasses, wrapped and wadded around a flighting stone, where it lay poised on the forked-branch end of a sapling bent over and staked into the ground. Seg had sighted these rude catapults, and I had let him do that and had then merely checked them. He seemed to me to have done an excellent job. My ballistic knowledge had been gained at the breeches of twelve pounders and then all the way down to four pounders and up to thirty-two pounders, with one stint I looked back on with a grimace on the clumsy old forty-two pounders. In addition I had handled varters aboard swifters from Sanurkazz, and added to all this a natural eye for estimating distance and elevation and trajectory, and I knew myself, with all the necessary modesty required, to b
e a first-class shot. As I sliced through the first retaining fiber and released the first weighted bundle of flame I knew Seg Segutorio, also, to be a great marksman.

  That first flaming missile arced into the suns-lit air, some smoke trailed from it, then it was a roaring mass of consuming flame arcing high and over and down onto the deck of a sorzart vessel.

  I ran along the line of staked-down tuffa trees, their supple stems bent into graceful arches, and I seemed somehow to sense all their necessary springing effort as they flung themselves erect once more. It seemed to me all of their essential nature was pent up in those supple stems. One after another the spouting missiles of destruction plunged down onto the decks of the sorzarts’ dromvilers. A pure pang of relief pierced me that the lizard-men would have no slaves chained to their dromvilers’ benches. Already flames were licking malevolently at masts and rigging, shooting from oar ports; already the most dreaded foe of the seaman was consuming the wooden vessels and I knew, not without another pang, that nothing could be done now until the dromvilers burned down to the waterline—and their sterns were drawn up on the beach...

  This was a sight I need not stop to watch; this was a sight I did not care to stay to watch. It sickened me.

  The necessity of the act alone could make me burn a ship. Halfway down toward the rock cave I halted and looked over the drop toward the beach. All eleven ships were blazing, although the one farthest away, which we had had to reach with a smaller incendiary missile, showed signs of resisting. Gangs of sorzarts were running like crazy people with buckets of seawater; others manned the pumps and streams of water jetted. I doubted they would hold back the flames. Once fire gets a hold aboard a wooden ship with her paint and tar and canvas and wood dried internally, there is practically no hope of extinguishing it.

  At the cave I paused again, just to make sure they had gone. They had. On again and so down out of sight of the beach and around the last corner over the bluff above the fisher-folk's jetty wall.