Scorpio Ablaze

by Alan Burt Akers

  The enemy flying ship hovered just above our bows. Dark and agile figures were clambering up the ropes and nets from our deck to hers.

  For a single and stupid instant I imagined those frantic figures to be our lads boarding the Shank.

  Seg rapped out: “The cramphs are pulling back.”

  “Aye.”

  The Fish Faces were leaving the fight and climbing back to their own vessel.

  This was not the final victory. Some single ship actions have seen ship’s companies boarding, being driven off, been boarded, thrusting the enemy back, and boarding again. A real ding-dong knock-out fight can last.

  I said: “Now it’s our turn to board.”

  “Indu,” said Seg with great gravity, “bitably.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Old Hack ’n’ Slay’ll be livid he missed this little lot. And I’ll tell you another—”

  “Nath na Kochwold. Surely.”

  As Kapt of the Phalanx Corps, Nath na Kochwold had to make the decision to relinquish his beloved brumbytes, the pikemen in the files, if he wished to become the governor of a province. What he really wanted to do was come adventuring with us, and no one in Vallia would take bets on what his final decision would be.

  As I stared up at the Shank I fancied she was drifting down our starboard side. That movement was not ours; I didn’t think Oby would get us to move again until we had repaired the leaking bronze box. Seg, looking up, said: “What now?”

  “We can’t reach her from the deck, that is certain. We might get aboard from our forward fighting top—”

  “Whoever’s up there has been shooting well.”

  Inch, wiping the blade of his axe, came up just then. He said: “The girls are up there. Didn’t you know?”

  Korero burst out: “So that was it!”

  Well, I’d known the girls had been brewing something. They’d slipped below and then crept out and up to the top to have a fine view of the proceedings. They’d done good work, too.

  The Shank was now drifting perilously close. If he could get only a little nearer he’d be chucking firepots down on us.

  Fretfully, I said: “Can’t Oby get us to lift, for the sweet sake of Opaz?”

  Rollo snapped out: “I’ll go and see.” He was off like a hare.

  Inch said: “I haven’t got that one fathomed out yet.”

  Seg said: “He hasn’t got himself fathomed out, either.”

  I said: “He’s been learning a few things today.”

  Shankjid hung motionlessly. The Shank was turning and moving towards our starboard bow. Already the Chiefs of 1ESW were harrying out their fire fighting parties. Some of them had tried to follow up the retreating Shanks, hanging to the nets; but shouted orders caused them to drop back onto our deck before they dropped off into space.

  Inexorably the Shank flying ship swerved in towards us.

  So far neither combatant had thrown fire pots.

  Seg turned that fey blue gaze of his on me. “They want to take us!” He jabbed his bow upwards. “That’s why they haven’t chucked any firepots.”

  “I agree.” Inch was still finickily cleaning his axe. “They haven’t seen a voller like this before. So they want to capture us.”

  There were good men dead scattered across the decks. The stink of blood smoked into the air. The suns shone. I felt the futility.

  Balass said: “We gave them a bloody nose. They’re coming back.” His shield described a circle in the air. “Will they try again, or will they try to burn us?”

  “Board or burn,” said Korero. “We’ll stuff their fishy faces where—”

  “Korero!”

  This was most unlike our reticent Kildoi, whose personal life remained a mystery to his comrades.

  The Schtarkin swung on through the air above us. I felt at least three separate and distinct lurchings of Shankjid, a sluggish rise followed by an abrupt fall back to the original position. Oby was trying. No doubt Rollo was attempting to give advice.

  Our fire parties stood by. We were as ready as we could be to resist whatever the Fish Face up there sprang on us.

  Closer and closer he came. Seg grunted and leaned into his bow. There were Fish Heads lining the ship’s lower fighting gallery, and that kind of target could not be resisted by Seg Segutorio.

  Other archers took up the challenge, and return shots spat onto our decks. Up there the Shank’s keel slid in over our deck perhaps two or three man heights above the fighting top. We all looked up.

  There was no deadly flicker of flame I could see, linstocks held in fishy fists to light the pots. No flaming bundles of death tumbled down on us from above.

  A Shank with an arrow through him did fall down onto our deck. He was speedily disposed of overside as Hikdar Larghos the Trevoilyan spoke and Deldar Nath the Veins said: “You heard the officer,” and Swods Mangarl the Sofirst and Oglin Vandar jumped to scoop up wrists and ankles and with a swing fling the offal over the side. I didn’t smile. But I thought of these lads of mine of the Guard Corps. Then I returned my attention to the enemy vessel.

  I saw it all, saw it all in a heartbeat, and my own heart seemed to jump into my throat.

  With an abrupt and vicious swoop the Shank dropped down. The Fish Face pilot didn’t judge it perfectly. The keel crashed into our forward fighting top. Struts splintered and snapped. The Shank lifted for another try. Our forward fighting top leaned over, straining against the remaining struts. As I looked another strut parted. The top was now almost on its side, visibly moving further and further over and out to hang over the ship’s gunwale.

  A narrow door flapped open in the side of the top, the side that was now becoming the floor. A bundle flailing arms and legs tumbled out, screaming, to spin over and over and fall and fall down and down past the ship, down out of our sight into the ground below.

  An arm reached out and after a struggle pulled the door closed.

  The Shank ship was dropping down again for another attack.

  In that top balanced on breaking struts over nothingness was all that mattered to me on Earth or Kregen.

  On a sudden all I could see was redness. Half blind I raced for the ladder leading up to the toppling wreckage.

  Chapter nine

  As I clambered up I could hear a savage snarling, growling noise, unutterably menacing, enough to send a shiver down your spine. Only after another three or four upward lunges was it borne in on me that the dreadful sound was coming from me. Instantly, I forced my mouth shut. Because Delia was in peril I had reverted to bestial primeval savagery. And I knew why. Had the danger come from some ferocious wild animal, or cruel barbarian, I’d have sailed in and chopped them indifferently, knowing they but obeyed their instincts. But this was different. The hand of blind fate threatened Delia and I felt helpless to influence with my sword the course of events.

  The voller lurched and the toppling fighting top twisted and sank lower. I half-turned and screamed back.

  “Tell Oby to keep her steady!”

  “Get on, get on!” came a voice from just beneath me.

  A single fleeting glance down showed me Seg and Inch clawing up the ladder. Inch’s phenomenally long arms and legs swirled him up like a spider.

  I’d served aboard sailing ships where you laid out along the yard arm in gales to turn your hair white. In no time at all Seg, Inch and I clung onto the broken top of the ladder, surrounded by a mess of splintered struts and snapped supports.

  Below us the spiked and balconied tower now looked like a wedding cake that has been half consumed by ravenous wedding guests. I’d no memory of clawing up the ladder past the galleries. Men crowded them, ready to repel the imminent boarding.

  The Shank hesitated — Opaz alone knew why — and swung up and around. Rocks and arrows spat from his lower fighting gallery.

  “We’re just targets, perched up here,” observed Inch.

  The round top trembled as another strut buckled. Had the Tomecdrin voller builders gone in for tripods or pole masts the who
le lot might well have snapped clean off by now. The multi-strutted construction gave us a slender chance.

  I started to crawl along the tangled raffle out towards the top.

  Seg grasped my shoulder.

  “That’s no good! Get a rope over to them!”

  I had to think, I had to get rid of this red roaring madness in my old vosk skull, I had to calm down. With a tremendous effort, I said: “Quidang, Seg! We can rip a line free from this raffle.”

  The bottom of the pillbox shaped top faced towards us, with the broken-off end of the ladder leading to the trapdoor. As we pulled a line free a face appeared at the trapdoor opening. She must have been standing on something to reach the trap — even on the shoulders of her comrades.

  “Hurry up and throw,” she said in a clear controlled voice.

  There was no din of gunfire to drown out shouted words. I heard her perfectly clearly. I saw her only through a red haze.

  I gathered up the line into a coil. This was down to me.

  An arrow spat against the wood at my side.

  The coil of rope swung backwards and forwards. I’d throw this underhand, unlike my days out West when I’d used a lariat. Seg moved at my back. Inch said: “You got the cramph.”

  Where my crossbow was I hadn’t the faintest idea. Probably Llodi had stowed it somewhere safe before surging into combat. But Seg still had his bow. Trust Seg Segutorio not to abandon that! Now he was shooting back at Fish Faces loosing at us.

  The rope felt hard and hairy yet greasy in my fingers. I swung with a last vicious jerk and hurled.

  The line snapped across, uncoiling, sinuous as a serpent.

  The end flicked across the opening and an arm grabbed — and missed.

  Keeping my breathing as steady as I could, a great ragged gasping for air, I hauled the line in. “No good,” I said. I saw the jagged end of a timber and I reached out and snapped that wood off as though it was a stick of sugar candy from a banje shop. With sure practiced speed the chunk of wood was lashed to the end of the line. I coiled again, swung again, and loosed again.

  The wood went slap bang into the hole and Delia just had time to duck her head out of the way.

  They hauled in and I waited feverishly, knowing they were tying the line around one of the ladies trapped in there. A Fristle climbed through the trap door and then another. They were trying to cross two at a time.

  Inch grunted. “I’ve got the end lashed tight, Dray. If they fall we can pull them in.”

  “Aye. But this is going to take time, time!”

  The Fristles began to crawl along the swaying perilous raffle of splintered struts. I hauled in pacing them. I watched, hardly able to breathe. Perhaps it might be better to tie off the line inside the top and have the girls grip onto it as they struggled across the gap. But, then, if they fell, they’d fall all the way down to the ground beneath or the hard deck of Shankjid. Time — it would take time and the damned Shank was up there, circling and preparing to come in again — and I knew with anger just who would be the last to cross. Anger, yes — and pride.

  Also Milsi as a queen would claim priority over Sasha, a kovneva, and come across as the penultimate survivor. As I waited the thought crossed my mind that a kingdom ought to be found for Inch and Sasha. Something had to occupy my frenzied brain. The uselessness I felt then is a dark and horrible period I do not wish to dwell upon. The Fristle fifis reached safety and were assisted down by Moglin and Llodi who had climbed after us. The line was coiled and hurled back. Two more girls crossed.

  Delia and Milsi could cross together. That would reduce the time. Sasha and Mevancy would then be the penultimate pair. I felt something wet drop onto my wrists, extended before me on the line. It was sweat from my forehead and face.

  Oh, no, I do not wish to remember that black hell through which I passed as the girls crawled across the swaying mess of wreckage.

  Twin shadows fell across us and I looked up to see the Shank dropping down. He’d evidently decided that he couldn’t get his lower gallery close enough to our decks if he came down on top of the crushed tower and so was trying to land further aft. A single fleeting glance showed me men gathering to repel boarders.

  The shadows passed away aft and I looked back as two more Fristle fifis clambered across the gap. When the wood-weighted rope flew back and the next two girls appeared I saw I had miscalculated. There was an horrendous clamor of mad thoughts clawing at me. The top had contained an odd number of women. Fan-Si and Mevancy started to cross.

  When they were safe it was the turn of Sasha and Milsi.

  I half turned.

  “You’d better get them all down safely. And pitch in to help the lads.” The senseless din of combat burst up from the after deck of the voller where Fish Face and jurukker clashed and smote and died.

  Seg said: “I’ll hang on—”

  “Get Milsi down. Inch, get Sasha safe.”

  The others had already climbed down the rickety structure.

  Mevancy had given me such a look as she passed. I do not know what she thought of the look on my face; but she went down without a word.

  Seg and Inch and their ladies tried to argue. I shook my head and persuaded them to descend. Perched up here we remained mere targets.

  Delia appeared at the trap door opening. She must have arranged a way to reach that from the side of the top that was not its floor. She gave me a cheeky wave and then laid into the line. All the time the top had been making doleful screeching noises as wood pressed against wood and splintered and parted. It sank lower, turning inwards now so that Delia had to climb upwards at an angle. I could see her movements, controlled as ever, as she climbed with neat and economical precision. Carefully, I kept enough slack on the line so as not to hinder her movements, and yet ready instantly to haul in if she fell.

  She did not fall.

  The whole damned top fell off.

  The hollow round structure hit the bulwarks with a rending gonging sound. I set my teeth. That gong note was not a Passing Bell — never! The whole lot vanished over the side and Delia clinging like a monkey to the line swung pendulum fashion. She was not wearing one of the flying safety belts. Delia swirled in towards the tower.

  I remember more falling than clambering down the ladder among the wreckage. I do recall my fists pained. I did not notice that at the time.

  With a heartbeat to spare I reached the tangle directly opposite Delia’s swinging form. Everything hazed about me into a ghastly blur. Now I have mentioned before, mention now, and will undoubtedly continue to mention, Delia of Delphond is no simpering weak shemale, no screaming blonde of fiction. Delia is resolute, quick, sharp-witted — apart from being the most beautiful woman in two worlds, of course — and now she saw what was going to happen. Everything took place in mere fragments of time. She would cannon into me with rib-crunching force and we’d both be hurled spinning sideways, seriously injured. So Delia in the tiny moment of time left to her worked her gorgeous body around in a sinuous series of swings so that she would pass just clear. With calm, precise and elegant movements she used herself as the bob of a pendulum and so swung past.

  On her return swing I gathered her up in my arms and held her to my breast, close, close!

  She said: “The Shanks are inconvenient, my love. They keep shooting at us.”

  Even as she spoke an arrow sprouted from the shattered wood beside us.

  I had no need to ask fatuously: “Are you all right?” Anyway, there was no time for that. Headlong we tumbled down the ladder to the deck. The world of the voller, of noise of shouting and screaming, of the raw stink of blood, of violent action, smashed back into my consciousness.

  “Oby’s lost control — except for lift—”

  “Can nothing be done about the bronze boxes?”

  “I wrapped my breechclout around the break. It’ll stop the damage getting worse — but that’s all.”

  “Then we must take the Shank!”

  Amid all the noise and confu
sion of battle she made that simple declaration without bombast or boasting but as a simple comment on our sole course of action remaining.

  The enemy flier had managed to position himself so that his lower gallery overhung our stern. Screeching their hideous war cries the Shanks leaped aboard.

  “Ishti! Ishti!” In a howling frenzied mob the Fish Faces charged.

  We met them with a wall of steel and smashed them back with a charge more wild and savage than theirs. Inch swathed them away. Seg shot them to pieces. Balass surged forward as though through a corridor of toppling scaly forms. Korero remained with Delia, for she would not be denied. Everyone did his or her part, everyone fought as best they could.

  We were all uplifted on the rush of blood in the head, nerved past the ordinary, driven to do extraordinary deeds. The Schtarkins either ran back to their ship or were cut down where they stood.

  Our fellows started to clamber aboard her lower gallery, battling all the way. I had my fists around a black wooden stanchion and was about to haul myself aboard, the Krozair brand dangling by the sword knot, and a dagger between my teeth just in case of necessity.

  A shrill voice lanced through the hubbub.

  “Get off the Shank! Get off the Shank! He’s afire!”

  That was Rollo’s voice, shrieking a desperate warning.

  At the word so dreaded by sailors of wooden ships there was an immediate evacuation of the Schtarkin’s lower gallery. We jumped back to our own deck where Seg was still methodically picking off Fish Heads.

  A flicker of flame wavered like a flower in the breeze high on the enemy flier’s poop. At first the gossamer strands were lost in the radiance of the suns. Swiftly the flames thickened into a crackling blaze and the black smoke blew down over us.

  Oby’s reaction came immediately the last of our people dropped back to the deck. That happened to be Sandar Na-Ku, a Pachak with a touch more of the calculated berserker in him to cause him to fight to the last. The moment Sandar hit the deck Oby dropped Shankjid and the voller plummeted.

  Everyone lifted up on their toes, so swift was the descent.

  Seg held onto his arrow and then let the string slowly forward. “We’re drifting with the wind, my old dom. If that rast up there falls straight down he ought to miss us.”