Scorpio Ablaze

by Alan Burt Akers

  “No, trylon, not a word. But he had this wonderful flying boat.” Talk of airboats aroused conflicting emotions in Loh. Lack of fliers was often given as one reason for the decline and collapse of the Empire of Loh. Conversation became general as Lunky led the party in for a splendid Kregan meal.

  At one point, in answer to Rollo, Kuong said: “Our journey has merely been interrupted. We shall start west again with the first caravan.”

  “In that case, trylon,” quoth Rollo the Runner, “I would ask leave to accompany you. I am doing no good here. Drajak has gone to Tarankar, so that is where I must go.”

  Looking at Rollo’s determined young face, Mevancy saw clearly what an impression Drajak had made on this young man. Could other people see in her face the impression Drajak had made on her?

  The episode with Leotes she had now firmly put away from her thoughts. He was paol-ur-bliem like Kuong. The new Repositers would be appointed by the college to collect every scrap of information about the lives of the Accursed in their care, thus ensuring continuity. Now, before Kuong could rush off again, he had to wait for his new Repositer. Lunky threw up his hands in regret, but, as he said: “This is your fate.”

  In the event Trylon Kuong received a small, sedate man with a nose more pointed than round, and a chin more round than pointed. He habitually put his hands into the opposite sleeves, and smiled. This was San Cheng.

  Mevancy decided to reserve her opinion of him.

  Some time elapsed in fresh preparations. Some of Kuong’s gear was retrieved from the desert. A caravan formed and, at last, they could set off west for Taranik and Tarankar. The days in the desert passed as desert days do as the twin suns rose and set. The patient animals plodded on, and, eventually, via Orphasmot and the oases of Claransmot and Hanjhin, took the party to Taranik. Here, in this large and splendid oasis and its imposing lake, they were greeted by the Crebent left in charge by Kuong. T’sien-Fu was able to tell them that the flying boat had flown in and off and that Drajak the Sudden had asked after the very people with the trylon now.

  “Well, at least we are following him,” said Mevancy.

  Whilst Kuong was in a hurry, it was needful for him to spend some time in his estates of Taranik. No further troubles had been experienced from the Glitch Riders, and the bandits were lying low. T’sien-Fu’s mop of black hair quivered as he spoke to his lord. “But, lord, to go to Tarankar!”

  Speaking with heavy gravity, Kuong said: “I have been ordered to go by the queen. Queen Kirsty is forming an army. It is necessary to find out all that we can.”

  “But, lord, the man Drajak in his flying boat has gone.”

  “It was our agreement to go together. Queyd-arn-tung!”[1]

  With considerable reluctance, despite the urgency of their mission, the party left the peace and plenty of Kuong’s estates of Taranik. The groves of trees, the cultivated fields, the herds of fine animals and the wonderful scent of Kregan flowers all called to the wanderer to pitch his tents and settle down here. The glitter of the twin suns off the lake was the last sight of water before She of the Sundering, the river marking the eastern boundary of Tarankar. Kuong took a last deep draught of the perfumed oasis air and then swung resolutely away into the desert.

  The wasteland here was real desert, mile after mile of shifting sand. Known as the Glarkie Dunes, the barrier it formed was formidable.

  Husbanding water and supplies, keeping steadily on, the party could only speculate what the future held for them.

  At last came the day when Llodi, in the lead, hauled up and shaded his eyes, peering intently ahead. Kuong reined in beside him.

  “Yes, Llodi. I think those are clouds.”

  “And mountains under ’em. That’ll be the river, an’ everything.”

  “I trust,” said Mevancy, her sand scarf trailed across the lower half of her face, “I sincerely trust we may swim in the river.”

  “That is something to be discovered.”

  Although they did not urge their animals to a faster gait, the beasts soon snuffed water ahead and speeded up. San Cheng, his yellow robe flapping, held onto his saddle in a most awkward fashion. He carried a sword and Llodi, for one, promised himself not to stand too close to the Repositer if it came to a fight.

  San Cheng had no need to give his history. He had been chosen early on showing signs of promise, had been trained up by the college, and would spend the rest of his life recording Kuong’s doings and sayings. When this body inhabited by Kuong died the Diviners, now led by Lunky, would discover Kuong in the body of a new born baby. By that time it was highly probable that San Cheng’s successor would be the trylon’s Repositer.

  Mevancy cried out and pointed.

  “Look! That must be Drajak!”

  Fleeting swiftly from the distant smudge of cloud and skimming over the desert towards them a dot rapidly grew in size and turned into a flying boat.

  Mevancy started to wave and Rollo, after a single look, shouted: “No! No, my lady. We must hide!”

  “Hide!” exclaimed Kuong. “Where, by Lohrhiang of the Springing Branch, can we hide in this hellish place?”

  “What is it, Rollo?” Mevancy was appalled by Rollo’s panic-stricken vehemence.

  “Shanks!”

  The flying vessel swooped down. Her brightly-painted squared-off upperworks glinted with gilding above the sleek black hull. Quite clearly her crew had seen the party below. Llodi clapped his heels in and started a blind rush off to the left, Rollo went galloping off to the right, San Cheng was carried off willy-nilly. Kuong cast a glance at Mevancy and ripped out his sword.

  “From all I have heard about these Shanks,” she said, speaking as evenly as she could, feeling her heart thudding, “we do not have much chance.”

  “Nevertheless—”

  “Oh, yes, I agree. Your company has been pleasant, Kuong, and much appreciated.” She drew her sword.

  The Shanks flew with precision. Circling, they dropped nets, parties of fish-faced soldiers alighted. All Kuong’s people were rounded up and of them all only two servants were killed. Everyone else was taken.

  They resisted. They fought. Of course, they fought.

  They were ruthlessly smashed down entangled in the nets, clubbed senseless.

  Some awful time later, thrown down into a dark wooden-walled space deep within that black hull, they huddled together, nursing their cuts and bruises. The sight of these fishy people, these Shanks, affected Mevancy profoundly.

  Used as any inhabitant of Kregen must be to the wonderful array of diffs, people who are not built as Homo sapiens sapiens is built, she still recoiled in revulsion. These Fish Faces repelled in a fashion at once nauseating, hideous and terrifying.

  San Cheng simply sat with his hands thrust into the sleeves of his robe, head sunk on breast. Llodi was trying to prise a splinter of wood away from the wall. Some of Kuong’s servants were crooning a slave dirge as old as slavery itself. Kuong said: “When we are taken out. There are no nets on us now.”

  Mevancy, on a breath, said: “Oh, yes!”

  They all felt the bump shiver through the room and only then realized they had been flying through the air.

  Rollo said: “You’ll get used to it. Now, I do not stop fighting.”

  He, and the others, did not stop fighting as they were dragged out. Indifferently, the Shanks clubbed them down, hauling their kicking protesting bodies by ankles or wrists or hair. Mevancy had a chance to let fly with her bindles. Sensing this was the end, she did not husband her biological arsenal but let rip with both forearms.

  Three Shanks screamed, dropping their weapons and clasping their ruined fishy faces. Others beat her to the deck and hauled on her hair, dragging her up to the top deck. Even then, in pain, half blind, she did not fail to note the callous treatment living Shanks afforded dead Fish Heads.

  Repeatedly struck, dazed, Kuong and his party staggered from the flying ship, still attempting to struggle. Other ships lay on the landing field and the suns shone.


  Now black-browed Katakis appeared to take over. These were slavers of Paz, man managers, utterly indifferent to other peoples’ pains. They flashed their tails, to which were strapped six inches of daggered steel, and their whips rose and fell.

  The slave coffle under the whips staggered on. Shouting and screaming, the line of slaves was hauled aboard another of the black hulled flying ships and thrust against the bulkhead. Mevancy lifted her head. On the deck a group of Shank officers glittered in scaled armor, glinting with gold, surrounding one who shone more magnificently than his aides. He, then, was the chief. He held a trident. Mevancy stiffened in fresh horror.

  Perfectly clearly the whole situation was at once apparent. The Shanks had grown tired of the slaves’ antics, annoyed and aggravated. The Shank lord would go along the line and thrust his trident deeply into each person’s guts, twist and pull. That would be a dreadful object lesson to the rest.

  Rollo surged forward and was beaten back by the smash of a trident butt.

  The Fish Face lord thrust his trident into a Mionch who went down screaming to snap one of his long tusks against the deck.

  The trident lifted. In the next heartbeat it would degut Mevancy.

  A heavy throwing spear with red feathers flaunting where head joined shaft abruptly sprouted between the fish lord’s shoulder blades. He went down at once. The other Shanks shrieked in uncomprehending rage, and ripped out their swords, lifted their tridents. They turned to stare down the deck.

  Mevancy, sick with the horror and the stink of rotten fish, looked.

  She did not really believe.

  A voice of power and passion bellowed: “Hai Jikai! Hai Jikai, you murdering torturing kleeshes of Fish Faces! Hai Jikai!”

  A bronzed and lithely muscular figure clad in a flaring scarlet breechclout leaped down the deck straight for the Shanks. A great two-handed longsword flamed under the Suns of Kregen.

  “Hai Jikai!”

  Chapter two

  Held in the cunning two-handed Krozair grip the glittering longsword slashed left and right. Two Shanks had no time to scream, collapsing in green gore. Most of the length of the Krozair brand still glittered in the lights of the twin suns.

  As more of the surprised Fish Faces fell under the merciless blows, the glitter changed to an ominous green patina. It was absolutely vital to keep moving, to strike economically despite the red roaring passion of revengeful blood. The Katakis shouted confused orders and the Whiptail Chuktar tried to thrust with his bladed tail. The tail was severed by a slicing cut which went straight on to sunder his armor in a welter of blood.

  “Come on! Come on! Grab weapons! Bratch!”

  Llodi was the first to react. He snatched up a fallen trident and with a whooping shriek thrust a Shank clean through the guts.

  Kuong and Mevancy retrieved swords and went to work.

  Rollo got his fists around a trident and joined them.

  The suddenness of it all, the shock, the abrupt death of the lord, tumbled the Fish Faces back in confusion. More died. The fight raged across the filthy deck.

  Even then, we might not have done it — probably would not have done it — against this formidable opposition that swiftly threw more Shank soldiers into the fray. But acid was eating, eating at six membranes. The acid did not bite through evenly, so that the incendiary devices planted aboard six of the Shank flying ships ignited in sequence. With a great whoosh flames burst up from the ship next along the line. A bedlam of yells and shrieks broke from this vessel, the lord’s flagship, as the incendiary device I’d planted in the magazine at last took fire.

  Half a dozen Fish Faces leaped over the side. Others hesitated.

  Striking with the Krozair brand I cleared a space.

  “Rollo! I’ll hold ’em. Get up to the controls!”

  “But — Drajak—”

  “Mevancy, go with Rollo! Come on. Runner, you know how to fly one of these contraptions! Move!”

  Without another word Rollo started for the ladder to the next deck. The position of the controls was plain enough, in the armored box just for’ard of midships. Mevancy stuck a Kataki through and stepped on his tail as she ran with Rollo. She did not stop to cut his tail off. Normally one would cut off a Kataki’s tail if the opportunity offered; but she’d stuck him good. She and Rollo vanished above.

  Now other slaves were coming alive, were seeing salvation.

  I knew none of the others, apart from my four friends. The killing frenzy that had given me impetus enough to break free from the slave mentality had to be channeled, organized, used. This fight was not over yet.

  Flames roared over the after part of the flagship. Fire was sweeping through all six ships in which the fire eggs had been planted.

  This ship, the lord’s flagship, was a fine vessel. I had no compunction, in these latter days, in burning her. I just hoped we’d get her airborne before she was totally consumed.

  Spouting flames, with Katakis and Shanks leaping over the side, the ship lurched. She lifted off and then fell back.

  “Come on, Rollo, my lad. Come on!”

  He took her up with a savage burst of power that threw many people to the deck. She nosed ahead and the flames streamed away aft. With Shanks and Katakis stumbling about, tripping over one another, falling to the deck, this was a splendid opportunity not to be wasted. There was not a shred of mercy in me as I raced on, striking with the green and red slimed longsword.

  Mevancy’s head appeared over the upper deck as I chopped a Fish Face and swung to degut a Whiptail.

  “Cabbage! There’s no one up here!”

  She started to descend the ladder.

  “Watch yourself, pigeon. There are a few of the shints down here.”

  Now the ship lifting up and moving forward faster and faster sent a tail of flame streaming back. The slaves — who were slaves no more — fought on. In a burning ship we leaped for the sky.

  “Hunt ’em all down!” I bellowed. “Leave not one of the cramphs.”

  As you can see, I was in a right old paddy.

  But, then, I’d been slave and had seen atrocities too dreadful to recount. My friends had been about to be murdered. And the scarlet breechclout and the Krozair brand had changed that, had altered fate.

  With that swift onward rush of the flying ship through thin air the breeze swept in clean and sweet. The perennial stink of rotten fish diminished.

  We went around the forward parts hunting slavers.

  All the stern was now a single roaring mass of flames. When we were quite certain not a single Whiptail or Fish Face remained alive, we fell silent. Only the crackling roar of the flames and the windrush broke the silence.

  Ripping a length of cloth from a Kataki face down in his own blood I cleaned the Krozair blade.

  Mevancy’s soft voice, full of questioning, said: “Cabbage?”

  I tried to find a smile for her.

  “Thank you, pigeon.”

  “What? You thank me? But—”

  “I had failed here in Taranjin. All the land of Tarankar was lost, I thought. Then the Shanks and Katakis brought you and the others aboard.”

  Even as I spoke I recognized my own loquaciousness. All the same, by Krun, it had been a near run thing. I was recovering rapidly now.

  She nodded. “Oh, yes, I see.”

  I think she did, at that.

  Rollo walked up. He’d found a Lohvian longbow and was adjusting the quiver over his shoulder. He gave me a most peculiar look.

  “I’ve read the stories, as I told you — Drajak.”

  “You looped the cords around the controls as I showed you?”

  I sounded sharp.

  “Of course.” He sounded hurt. “I’m not that much of a fambly, am I?”

  We were going along splendidly, burning and breaking up. How long the vessel would stay in one piece I couldn’t say. Either that, and a sudden plunge to the earth, or we’d all crisp. Neither prospect pleased.

  Kuong and Llodi were bot
h looking queasy. That was not from the fight. That was because they were Lohvians and they had no experience here of flying ships. In an effort to reassure them, I said: “These flying contraptions are wonderful. We’ll be all right.” In the aftermath of a fight few people can react with complete normalcy. Our conversation was strained and unnatural. We’d get over that, too.

  “I’m going below and aft. I want to see if we are being pursued.”

  Instantly, Mevancy snapped out: “You’ll get singed.”

  His mind still on this marvelous experience of flying through thin air, Llodi said: “It’s been a funny old day, what with this flying an’ all.”

  That broke some dam of expression in us all. We all laughed.

  Kuong said: “I’ll come aft with you, Drajak.”

  So far, not one of them had commented on my appearance, except Rollo’s oblique reference. He, alone of them all, knew my true identity. Yet the others had read the lurid tales of Dray Prescot, how he swung about the world of Kregen righting wrongs, rescuing damsels in distress, fighting oppression.

  What you might call the trademarks of Dray Prescot were his scarlet breechcloth and the great Krozair longsword. Would they, I wondered futilely, then, would they connect up the clues? Could Rollo remain silent?

  Well, that didn’t matter much any more. I had the task, handed to me by the Star Lords, of clearing all the damned Shanks out of Tarankar and then of all Paz.

  From the lower rear balcony, with the heat pulsing down over our heads, we could stare aft and see the armada of Shank flying ships in grim pursuit.

  “How many?”

  After a short space, Rollo said: “I make it twenty nine.”

  Wishing to be hard on the young hellion, I said: “Count again.”

  Whilst he did so I reflected that he’d overlooked one vessel flying immediately astern of another, and had counted the two as one.

  Rollo grumped: “Oh, aye. Thirty.”

  “I suppose I needn’t explain that the odd one out could be your death?”

  “No, you needn’t.” He sounded most sharp.

  “Let’s get back on deck. It’s unhealthily warm here.”