Warrior of Scorpio [Dray Prescot #3]

by Alan Burt Akers

  “You recognize the flight, Seg?"

  He shook his head. “An expected master-set.” He mentioned the technical jargon for the way the feathers were cut and set, the angle of the cock-feather, the twining and slotting. “Whoever loosed these knew his business."

  “Whoever he was, he was ambushed and dealt with it."

  “But good."

  “These beast-men have no missile weapons. They must have flung them—"

  “Much good it did them—nothing,” said Seg Segutorio, “can stand against the longbow of Loh."

  We marched on. All we took were the two arrows. The other weapons would merely weigh us down, although I regretted leaving them.

  As we walked through this land, wary and always alert, we were able to talk. I believe you must have realized that having Delia with me had released my tensions, had loosened me up so that more than once I was astonished to find myself in the midst of a rib-straining laugh. A genuine laugh, at a joke, a witty remark, a funny situation. So we talked and joked and sang as we walked on toward the east coast of Turismond and Port Tavetus from whence we would ship to Vallia.

  Thelda wore out the first pair of shoes and then the second. She persisted in her bright eager chattering and her pushing concern over me, but with Delia walking so lithely at my side I could put up with far worse than a boring woman. Seg and I grew closer together, too, as we joined in hunting for our sustenance. I remember those days as we walked steadily eastward away from The Stratemsk across the eastern plains of Turismond with a warm affectionate nostalgia. My search for Delia had been accomplished; we were together again. Vallia could wait, and as for Aphrasöe, to which Swinging City I fully intended to return some day, that was of the distant future. Everything was of the present. The journey itself was the adventure, the joy, the laughter, the zest.

  Seg told me of Erthyrdrin, that country of his, that convulsed mass of mountains and valleys occupying the northern tip of Loh and peopled by a highly individualistic kind of person. The valleys resounded with song and the mountain peaks with the music of the harp. There were cliff-top strongholds everywhere, mere single towers of stone, some of them. Others had grown into battlemented fortresses of four or five towers linked by walls, and all were fiercely independent and devoted to protecting their crops and their flocks from neighboring raiders. Many of the young men hired out as mercenaries, for their longbows which had been developed over the centuries as hunting weapons proved mighty and invincible in battle. The Yerthyr trees were revered on the score of the quality of bow-staves they could produce; but it was considered a man's prerogative to cut his stave from the best tree he could find, wherever he could find it. The Yerthyr trees contained a deadly poison that killed any animal who ate of its leaves, and only, according to Seg, were the thyrrixes protected by virtue of their second stomach.

  “We men of Erthyrdrin were the backbone of the armies of Walfarg. I doubt not but the bowman whose handiwork we witnessed came in the long ago from Erthyrdrin. Walfarg was a mighty country—it still is—but in its great days it ruled an empire over all Loh, and Pandahem to the east and south, and Kothmir and Lashenda, and over the eastern portions of Turismond. Only The Stratemsk halted the onward flow of the empire of Loh to the west."

  “So all these so-called Hostile Territories were once a part of the empire of Loh?"

  “Yes. I hold nothing in my heart for Loh as a country. They failed because they failed. Then the raiding barbarians from northern Turismond moved in, fiercer and ever more fierce. What are now the Hostile Territories became walled off to the east by barbarous tribes of men and half-men and nowadays only a scattering of cities and trading posts on the eastern seaboard remain open to the men of the outer ocean.” He gestured about him. “As for what goes on in the Hostile Territories now—who knows?"

  Seg Segutorio would sing of the old days of Loh as well as his own high-flavored culture. I do not care to render into English the words of his songs. They roared and rattled and boomed in my head—and I can sing them now—but they are of Kregen.

  They echoed with deep rolling sounds—"oi” and “oom” and reverberating drumrolls and profound bassoon-like resonances, with the splatter of hard syllables like hail against taut canvas. One of his songs of which he was particularly fond reminded me instantly of “Lord Randolph My Son” and I believe the frontier and border cultures of both worlds hold much in common.

  We saw occasional hunting parties roaming the wide plains but we invariably went to earth until they had passed. Strange beasts riding strange beasts—how those words recalled another time and another place to me!—were of no concern of ours now. Although I sensed a growing need in Delia for us to push on. She wanted to get back to Vallia.

  “I cannot contract a legal marriage outside Vallia, Dray. It is all part of this silly business of my being the Princess Majestrix—you know."

  “I can wait, my Delia—just."

  “We must soon be there.” She glanced at me quizzically as we threaded the aisles of a forest which appeared to bar our approach and around which we had been unable to trek. “If you have any—” and then she stopped, to start again: “If you feel somewhat—” And again halted.

  “I know little of Vallia, Delia. All I know is that I wish our union to be one in which you will take pride. I know your father is the emperor and I have heard of the puissance of his island empire. Maybe—"

  “Maybe nothing! You will be my husband and the Prince Majister! Have faith, Dray. It will not be so great an ordeal."

  “As to that,” I said, somewhat offhandedly and a little thoughtlessly, as I realized afterward, “We have to reach there yet."

  “We will, dear heart! We will!"

  Whenever we saw flying specks in the sky we took cover at once and instinctively, without stopping to think.

  Through this forest we did not expect to find impiters or corths and so we trod along with a firmer tread. As night dropped with the refulgent sinking of the twin suns spearing in topaz fire through the intertwined branches we sought a resting place and soon enough ran across a series of old caves sunken into an earth bank. Gnarled tree roots thrust forth, naked and shining. The leaves around looked untrodden, the dirt trails unmarked. Seg nodded. We set about gathering wood and preparing camp.

  I felt a slight twinge of concern lest Delia consider I was chary of visiting her notorious home and of meeting that powerful man, her father the emperor. Well, it was something I would have to do if I wished to claim Delia before the world, and having said that, that was sufficient. Nothing would stop me from doing just that—nothing...

  Settling down for the night in our sleeping bags we had fashioned from the soft Sanurkazzian leather with plenty of luxurious silk for linings I lay back for a moment reflecting as I often do before sleep. I could well understand Delia's desire to return home. As for me, now, my home was on Kregen and with Delia. But, still and all, I had felt very much at home riding with my wild Clansmen, and I acknowledged the surge of barbaric pleasure that savage and free life could always invoke in me. Seg had mentioned the barbarians who had swarmed down out of north Turismond to ravage and destroy the remnants of the empire created by Walfarg. I wondered if they were more violent and more barbaric than I and my Clansmen could be...

  As I was sinking into sleep I heard a tiny scraping sound from the rear of the cave.

  Before the sluggish reactions of a city dweller of Earth would have prised his eyelids open in yawning query I was up out of the sleeping bag and with my naked long sword in my fist facing at a crouch whatever menace lurked there in the cave.

  Seg said: “What?"

  He stood beside me, a sword in his hand. Delia said: “Do not make a sound, Thelda,” and I heard the squashy sound of a palm over fat red lips.

  Again the noise reached us and then the whole back end of the cave fell outward. We had searched the place carefully before taking up our occupation; we had not expected this. Pink light from the moons of Kregen washed in with a reflecti
ve uncanny glow.

  In that wash of pink radiance I could see the squat ovoid outline of something moving. I saw two squat legs bending to bring the bulk of the body into the cave, and I saw the array of tendril-like arms bunching from arched shoulders. The thing's head was hunched down and in the darkened silhouette was invisible to me. The thought occurred as such thoughts will that perhaps the thing had no head at all.

  It kept emitting a wheezing hiss, rather more like a faulty deck pump than a snake but nerve-chilling for all that.

  Seg shouted. “Hai!” and charged, his sword high.

  He brought the sword down in a brutal butchering blow and a tendril uncurled and caught his forearm and snapped straight. The long sword poised immobile over the thing's bunched tendrils. Two more grasped Seg about the waist, lifted him, began to draw him forward into the pink-tinged shadows.

  I did not yell but ran forward fleetly, my head bent to avoid the overhang, and sliced the two gripping tentacles away.

  They fell to the floor and writhed away into cracks in the rocks like snakes.

  The thing shrieked—whether of rage or pain I did not know—and Seg managed to get his sword-arm free.

  “The point, Seg!"

  As I yelled I ran in again and buried my own weapon up to the hilt into the thing's body. Everything had happened fast. I know now that these things are inimical to most living beings and the thing had been clearly bent on surprising us by its trick back-end to the cave. Quasi-intelligent, the morfangs, quick and treacherous and incredibly strong. As the beast lay on the ground we could all see in that streaming light from Kregen's moons the gaped mouth with its serrated rows of fangs, the tiny malicious eyes, the thin black lips, the slit nostrils where a nose should be. It hissed as it expired. We found out about these morfangs later on; what we did not know then was—they habitually hunted in groups.

  From the dimmer radiance at the mouth of the cave where the overhang cast shade, figures moved with unhurried purpose. I leaped for the opening. A quick glance showed me six of the tendriled beasts. Thelda was heaving and moaning and Delia was holding her down. I had no time for Thelda now. My Delia was in mortal peril.

  “Seg! Gather what we need. Grab the girls! Hurry!"

  I checked the back exit to the cave where the surprise had come from. Quasi-intelligent, these things, but clever. We were supposed to run screaming from its sudden surprise appearance—run straight into the tendrils of its fellows waiting outside. The back, which opened into a small shaft filled with moons-light, was clear.

  “Seg!” I said again, harsh and dominating. “Take the girls out the back way—hurry—"

  He tried to argue and I beat him down with a snarl and a look.

  Thelda was clutching herself and rocking and moaning. Seg hoisted her up beneath the armpits and half carried her. Delia took our gear and as she went out she cast a look back and stopped, ready to throw down the sleeping bags and the food and the medicines and jump to my assistance, a long jeweled dagger in her hand.

  “For my sake, Delia! Go—Hide and then create a little noise—not much, enough to draw them off—you understand?"

  “Yes, Dray—oh, my—"

  I didn't give her time to finish but waved her off with a most ugly look. Then I turned to face the front opening of the cave.

  * * *

  Chapter Ten

  Great beasts of the air

  The noise from the cave had not been what these tendriled monsters expected. In a body they headed for the entrance to the cave.

  Pink moonlight lay thickly on the leaves, on the spilled earth, limned the branches of the trees, weaved and twisted with purple shadows in the coiling and uncoiling tendrils.

  I stood at the entrance. I could feel my feet thrusting at the earth, the dirt of Kregen four hundred light-years from the planet of my birth. I could feel my heart thumping with a regular anticipatory pulse, kept unpanicked by the disciplines so carefully and painfully learned from the Krozairs of Zy. I could feel the heft of the long sword in my fist, and the balance of it, and the beginning movements that would turn that bar of cold steel into a palely glimmering instrument of pallid destruction until the clean steel glitter fouled and slicked with blood.

  As I stood there I must have presented a wild and terrible picture, with the defiance that would not be beaten down because the girl I loved was in peril, with my ugly face ricked into an expression I am sure would have prevented me from shaving had I seen it in a mirror, with my muscles limber and lithe and ready instantly to bunch and exert all the monstrous power of which—sometimes to my shame—they were capable.

  These morfangs were quasi-intelligent, as I learned later; that they clearly were not fully-intelligent is obvious. Had they sense enough they would have run from me, shrieking.

  But not unintelligent—as soon as they saw me they halted in their advance and their hissing increased. One bent, picked up a stone, and threw it. I struck it away with my sword as one makes an on-drive to mid-on. The ringing clang acted as a gong-like signal. The half dozen of them, hissing and screeching, leaped toward me and the lashing forest of tendrils writhed above my head seeking to trap me and draw me into the fanged crevices of their jaws.

  And now I struck and struck again and the keen edge bit and sliced and any pity or sorrow I might have had for these voracious beasts burned away in the fire of action. Only the sword could have saved me. Their intent was quick and deadly and obvious. Those tendrils clustered in seeking, groping, twining bunches, with immense coiled power striving to drag me into the crag-like sharpnesses of their mouths. Unarmed, I know I would not have lasted five minutes.

  As it was I was forced to hack and skip and jump and strike again as though I were some phantom woodsman fated to hack his way through an animate mobile forest. All the time they kept up their jangling-nerved hissing screeching; and, too, I became convinced that shrilling was of anger and fury and not of pain. For the severed tendrils looped up with muscular strength and writhed like the furious contents of an overturned snake basket. And, too—instead of writhing off into the woods as the severed tendrils had wriggled into crevices in the cave, these serpent-like tendrils writhed toward me. They crept over the ground and began to drag themselves up my legs. I could feel their clammy coils lapping about me, constricting my muscles, and as I stepped back and chopped them free so each new severed portion began instantly to coil sinuously toward me over the leaves and the dirt.

  Only one way waited for me if I wished to escape.

  With full force I brought the long sword down onto the head of the nearest creature. That head split and gushed ichor and brain and the sword sliced on past the coat-hanger-like shoulders with their five-a-side ranks of lashing tentacles, drove cleaving on down into the ovoid body. The thing fell backward and I had to exert tremendous strength to jerk the sword free.

  In that instant of hesitation tendrils lapped my neck.

  Instantly my left hand whipped the main-gauche across and the razor-edged steel—razor-edged because when I shaved I found this weapon a useful implement on my stubble—sliced down the bunched coils. It left a thin scarlet line on my own neck, too.

  This could not go on.

  Now two of the beasts were down and then a third staggered away on one leg. I breathed in with long deep breaths, timing them to the swing of the sword. The main-gauche went into the eye of an attacker on my left—too deeply, for I was again hung up on the withdrawal and only barely managed to fend the sword blade above my head, shearing tendrils. More tentacles looped me from behind and I felt myself toppling backward off balance.

  “Hai!” I yelled—a complete waste of breath and yet a psychological reminder. I twisted as I fell and thrust the sword up so that the beast in falling into me fell instead on the sword with its pommel thrust hard into the ground.

  Dragging myself clear I shook my head. Two left, if the others were truly hors de combat, and a host of writhing wriggling tentacle-remnants like a pit of snakes from hell; long odds
they were, yet.

  Then I heard a shout—Seg's voice: “Hai!"

  The remaining beasts hesitated. Quasi-intelligent they were, knowing when to stop fighting as well as when to go on with unintelligent viciousness to death. Had they been armed...

  I shouted.

  “Hai! Jikai!"

  I leaped forward.

  The sword blurred. Left, right, left, right. I struck now with the impassioned zeal of a man who knows he must finish it fast.

  The two morfangs dropped and I dragged the smeared sword back. Now, with the death of the last two, all the free snake-like tendrils wriggled away into the moon-drenched forest. I guessed then, and was later proved right, that they would grow each into a new morfang beast-monster. Moments later I had rejoined my comrades, guided by their voices, able to reassure them. We began a night march at once to clear the confines of this accursed forest.

  There had been only six. They had given me more trouble than twice their number of armed men. One of the reasons lay in those coat-hanger shoulders, each with five whipping tendrils. Even allowing a man two arms, which on Kregen is usual although by no means universal, the count was as though I had fought thirty men. I touched the hilt of the sword. I had lived then, by the sword. The balance of the thought lay leaden and ugly in my mind, and I did not speak as we marched through the pink-shot moonlight of the Kregen night.