Scorpio Ablaze

by Alan Burt Akers

  Chapter eleven

  Smashed and pummeled by the water, bashed by black boulders, charged by drifting logs and lashed by overhanging branches — yes, I can say that unknown river in darkest Chem gave me one of the roughest rides of my career, a career, as you who have listened to my narrative can testify, not without its full freight of rough rides.

  Away I went, hurly-burly, scattering foam as I tried, damn feebly, too, to claw a way to the bank and out of this maelstrom.

  Rolling over and over like one of those confounded logs that kept battering at me, I saw streaming black and white water and then a whisk of a green-leaved bank and then the black branch-laced sky. The current possessed the power of a thousand leems. The boulders were positioned with the cunning animosity of Mak Grancesi the Malignant himself. I could feel the bruises starting up already. If I didn’t hoick myself up out of this tout de suite I’d run my head full tilt into a rock, and as what there might be of brains oozed into the water, that would be the end of Dray Prescot.

  One of those Opaz-forsaken branches that kept on whipping me as I thundered past proved the saving of my carcass. The thing took a vicious swipe at my head as I was rolling, all splashing and flailing arms and legs, and turning face uppermost. I reached up with arms and fists seeking life.

  The grip I took was the grip of death. I felt the shock of the sudden check in my helter-skelter progress. I hung on, panting, and after a bit, gritting my teeth, started to haul myself up. By the time I’d got my legs up out of the clutching jaws of the stream and gripping the branch, I felt as though I’d been beaten with laths. When I got my breath back I swung leg over leg and fist over fist to the bank.

  I wasn’t fool enough to imagine my troubles were over. No, by Vox!

  Here I was, dumped into a hostile jungle, pelted by rain so that visibility was practically nil, isolated, with only my wits and weapons to save me from becoming some predator’s lunch. Well, as you know, this is no novel situation for Dray Prescot even if each situation is different one from the other. Previous experiences would be invaluable; the unexpected will always turn up and must therefore be expected.

  Because this was Kregen, where you take your weapons for even the shortest trip, I was not unarmed. There were spare strings for the Lohvian longbow in the waterproof pouch on my belt. I had the Krozair longsword and the rapier and main gauche. My old sailor knife snugged over my right hip. And, inevitably and correctly, I wore the brave old scarlet breechclout.

  Well, now...

  As abruptly as it had begun, the rain stopped and the incessant hissing drumming was replaced by the steady drip drip drip as the leaves shed the surplus water. Everything began to steam like the hot rooms of the Baths of the Nine.

  One fact was absolutely certain in this infuriating situation.

  I must stay by the stream. Already it was beginning to broaden out into what might be called a river and although it still spumed and roared, and unpleasant rocks spouted white water along its course, the top cover concealed only the stretches close to the banks. There was no doubt whatsoever in my mind that Delia and my comrades would fly Shankjid down the river in search of me.

  “A fire!” I exclaimed aloud. “By the disgusting diseased left kidney and the blighted liver of Makki Grodno! A fire!” And, for good measure, I added: “A goodly waft of smoke, by the black armpit hairs and leering squint of the Divine Lady of Belschutz! A fire and billow on billow of smoke!”

  The river took a bend in its course a couple of hundred paces ahead and widened further. A jumble of boulders across the width formed a dam of sorts and the water smashed and spumed high sending rainbow colors glinting. The noise of the rapids beat steadily between the trees. In this section of the rain forest there would be no easy traveling by boat or canoe along the rivers. Among the pleasant scents wafting in the air one or two atrocious stinks told of vegetable life attracting animal life of a different order. I prowled along warily.

  Sure enough, at the bend there was quite an expanse of blue sky above. Luz and Walig, the twin suns, sent opaline beams to cheer me up with the reflection that the whole wide world of Kregen was not one confounded jungle.

  Among the dripping branches finding dry wood was a mere matter of stripping off the wet bark and digging out the soft and dry inside. If my flint and steel refused to work it would be the work of moments to fashion a fire-maker’s bow and then of skillfully twirling until the tump caught. The tinder caught on the third strike and I blew gently.

  A flicker of gossamer flame danced into life.

  Well, I’d had just about enough of fires lately. Building the fire into a blaze had to be done carefully; but it was not long before I could pile on dampish wood and start the smoke roiling upwards.

  As I straightened up ready to bring across a fresh branch, I saw a man standing among the trees about twenty paces off. He stood absolutely motionlessly, staring at me.

  I stopped my movement. I stared back. The noises of the jungle screeched and howled about us.

  There was something deuced odd about this fellow.

  He was six or seven inches taller than I am and although his face in the shadows of the leaves looked shiny and plump there was a gauntness about his frame. He wore only a loincloth of a drab beige color and appeared to have no weapons. That, by Vox, in a hostile jungle of Kregen, was distinctly odd!

  He moved forward and a shaft of mingled light fell across his face. The plumpness was emphasized by the shine; his face looked as shiny as the shell of a crab. I couldn’t make out with any distinctness the morphology of his body. He had two legs all right; but of arms I could see none. Across his chest were crisscrossed shadows.

  I called out: “Llahal, dom!”

  I made no move to draw a weapon.

  He moved further forward, leaving the shadows, stepping into the full rays of the suns. What were those crisscrossing ridges on his torso? He had two eyes, two ears, a nose and a mouth, and no sign of body hair. He advanced silently three or four more paces.

  The situation grew odder by the minute. Now, I did not want to take my eyes off his, yet it was imperative that I looked carefully all around to see if he had any comrades ready to jump on my back.

  I threw the branch onto the fire and in a continuation of the same movement looked left, right and rearwards. In that flashing surveillance I saw only jungle, river and sky.

  He took advantage of the interruption to move swiftly forward so that when I looked at him again he was no more than five paces off. If he essayed a rush from there I could unlimber a weapon before he reached me. The jumble of shadows across his torso looked like a bundle of sticks. His head was fuller than I’d at first thought. I had not seen him blink once.

  Again, I called: “Llahal, dom!” This time my voice was sharper and harder, demanding an answer — always assuming, of course, that he could speak.

  He did speak. He made a gargling, hissing noise that closely resembled: “Schahal, schdom.”

  I opened my mouth to attempt a conversation. You must always be alert on Kregen if you wish to survive. I saw the bundle of sticks across his chest stir. They were not a bundle of sticks. They were his arms. From the shoulder they were jointed like a folding rule so that he had three elbows to each arm. Instead of hands he had serrated claws like those of a lobster or crab and I did not need to be told they were razor sharp. The arms straightened and slashed like flails. The fellow had a reach of five paces easily. He’d have had me if I hadn’t given a convulsive leap backwards.

  “Schnarra! Schnarra!” he screeched and rushed, those enormously long arms swinging and slashing before him. I dodged away. You know my views on wanton killing and its abhorrence. You also know my views on people who try to kill me. In this situation I judged the longsword to be the correct weapon in preference to the rapier.

  The Krozair brand hissed free of the scabbard. The blade glittered once as it cut. A claw and the first elbow span away trailing blood. The thing screeched and the other arm flailed scythi
ngly towards my head. The sword switched up and the second claw and forearm dropped.

  Holding the stained blade up, I stood my ground, waiting to see what he would do, not wanting this grotesque encounter to continue.

  He was hissing and shrilling, keening higher than the roar of the rapids. For a moment he swung his shortened arms before him and then, recognizing the futility of any further attacks, folded them up across his chest. He turned about and ran off into the jungle.

  I felt, I admit, by the sweet name of Opaz, only regret for him. He had sought this encounter and initiated violence. Because of that he suffered. I walked a little way after him. There was no sign of him so I went back to the fire shaking my head at man’s folly.

  The severed limbs looked only pathetic. When I tested the claws they were, indeed, razor sharp. The forearm and claw would make a capital weapon. The creature reminded me of a Praying Mantis. The marvels and mysteries of Kregen under the Suns of Scorpio! I would have to ask Rollo or Mevancy for information on this fellow. If he lived with his kind in the jungle I just hoped he was a solitary.

  You may well imagine I kept a sharp lookout after that, by Krun!

  One or two animals blundered up from the trees but the fire discomfited them. I was not troubled by animal life and I kept well away from those vegetable predators I recognized — and well away from anything not like a simple ordinary forest tree.

  Dark smoke wafted into the bright air.

  A pang from my inward parts reminded me that I could do with a solid Kregen meal. If I was not found in the very near future I’d have to go hunting for my lunch.

  As you may well imagine, just feeding a fire and trying to make white and black smoke waft high into the air took little intellectual capacity. I was left to ponder on all the multifarious problems facing me.

  “By the Blade of Kurin!” I said to myself as I cleaned and polished up the Krozair brand. “I thought it was a truly smart move to get out from under the job of being Emperor of Vallia. And now everyone wants me to be the Emperor of Paz.”

  The divine Delia was being supportive and understanding but I felt it to be absolutely imperative that I knew without any misunderstanding her true feelings on this awkward matter. What the Star Lords wanted must also be taken into consideration. They considered I had the yrium, that blessed and cursed charisma, to organize all the lands of Paz against the Shanks. And there were others... Truly it was all a moil!

  Of one thing I was passionately certain. I must do nothing to cause the Everoinye to hurl me contemptuously back to Earth.

  Worrying over what might happen in the future can be highly unhealthy if your current actions cannot influence the course of events. Forward planning to meet contingencies, though, is highly rewarding. What ought to happen in the future seemed planned out well enough. What might happen, of course, was a zorca of a different horn. It was no good fretting. I stoked up the fire so that the suns paled and then hauled out the Krozair longsword.

  Any fighting man must keep in trim. A spot of practice every day is required. So, there in that lost jungle clearing by the rapids in the bend of the river, I went through the Krozair manual of arms. Naturally, there was time only for the basic techniques but I chose to go through the routine from the Fifth Circle of the Artifices of the Sword. San Zefan, Krzy, had written down his Artifices some two and a half thousand seasons ago on the Island of Zy in the Eye of the World. Later artists of the sword had amplified and improved the basic work. Some had merely decorated it, so that these practitioners gave a showy performance. Only by continual practice and hard work does a swordsman stay alive — on Kregen.

  Towards the end of the session I felt much calmer.

  A voice much distorted and muffled said: “Do you thus fight phantoms, Dray?”

  I swung about. Half visible in the sunslight on the bank of the river the figure of Deb-Lu-Quienyin wavered. His turban appeared to topple off his head and then in the heat distortions flow back again.

  “Deb-Lu! Lahal and Lahal!”

  As I spoke the ghostly figure shimmered, thickened and darkened. I thought the Wizard of Loh was putting more of his kharrna into his lupal projection. Then I saw this was not so. The face of Khe-Hi-Bjanching appeared in place of Deb-Lu’s wise old visage, and then disappeared as Deb-Lu once more showed. They were both projecting into the same space.

  “Khe-Hi! What is going on?”

  “We face tremendous interference. I am in Whonban and Deb-Lu is in Vallia. The planes distort—” The fluttering voice keened into incoherence. A most unpleasant feeling of unease possessed me.

  They both spoke together in a weird double-echo.

  “We are maintaining our Observations. But the load is crippling. When we know more we will—” With a guttural gargling as of water running down a plughole the voices tailed off. The lupal projection flickered and died. I was alone.

  These two comrades were powerful Wizards of Loh, well-versed in their arcane arts. Their thaumaturgy protected my comrades and myself. Yet here they were being baulked of a simple lupal communication by what must be an enormous and hostile force.

  A snickering wheezing laugh sounded from the trees and I swung about, the sword snouting. Then I knew who that hostile force was.

  Chapter twelve

  This time the bastard was surrounded by a bevy of half-naked girls. They were Bowmaids of Loh. They had sweet round faces and soft pouting lips and were sharp as barracudas and tough as old boots. There were eight of them, four each side of his damned throne chair. Their great Lohvian longbows were half drawn in that practiced archer’s grip. They could lift, draw, let fly, in the flicker of an eyelid.

  He sat in that chair leaning slightly forward, bearded chin cupped in his left hand, looking broodingly at me. He wore robes of a smoky sullen red sweeping away from artificially widened shoulders over a scale shirt. He was studded with golden adornments. His right hand, bone white like the left, rested lightly on the haft of a double-headed axe between his booted feet. All this was as I had seen him before. He wore his helmet. To look at him you couldn’t rightly say if he was a man wearing a fish-face helmet, or a fish-face with a man’s face as neck adornment.

  Scraped chalk white, that face out of nightmare. Paper-thin skin stretched over and revealed his facial bone structure. The open lipless mouth showed a double row of jagged fang-like teeth pressing outwards from wide jaws. His thin nostril slits pulsed. I looked at his eyes. The eyes of a devil, I’d said, blue-black yet filled with the mad red glow of rhodopsin, eerie, repellent, dominating.

  The little scaled creature with the silver collar still crouched against his right leg. Now he had two naked girls, one with flowing yellow hair, one with short dark hair, twined against his booted left leg.

  The snickering wheezing laugh sounded again.

  Among the dark greens and rusty blacks of skin and scale drapings and the redness of his robes, a patch of white glimmered. Low down at the left side of the throne, a patch of dirty white, like a fish’s belly, moved forward, and a red-black gash opened across it. From that slit the mocking laugh wheezed again. This was the face of an obscenity, neither apim nor true fish, a miscegenation that had been procreated with the worst of both sides. I stared, feeling slightly sick. But then, of course, the wonderful wise men and savants of Kregen, those scientists of the ancient times, who had wrought so playfully with the flora and fauna of Kregen, might also have created this corpse white, leech-like, horror.

  The throne chair hung suspended three feet in the air. The Bowmaids of Loh stood on the same level.

  From the slant of the twin shadows from the girls and the throne you could tell they were not here in this jungle clearing.

  I breathed in hard, and breathed out, and said nothing and waited for what he might have to say. I kept a sharp lookout for his pet Arzuriel. I’d already disposed of Arzuriel once; but I’d learned he was a multi-dimensional creature and so could be expected to turn up again.

  He saw me looking.


  “Do not concern yourself, Dray Prescot. Arzuriel will come when I call.”

  I took another hard look at him, his throne, his clothes, his companions. They made a tableau of evil. You could feel the gust of depravity reeking from them. Opaz alone knew how many more of them there were in whatever foul den they hailed from. One thing was certain sure about that place — it stank.

  Was it because I hadn’t bothered to answer him that made him mad? The deep red of the rhodopsin in his eyes glared to match the sullen smoky red of his robes. He lifted his head. His left hand jutted forward, forefinger pointed directly at me. His nails were long and curved and sharp, like claws.

  “You think you are so important, puny little apim! I tell you, you are less than nothing in my scheme of things.”

  The last time he’d appeared to me like this he’d been instrumental in stopping me from getting to where I ought to have been in time. What was he stopping me from doing this time?

  As far as I could see, I was waiting for my friends to pick me up in Shankjid. The thought did occur to me that perhaps they wouldn’t be able to see this tableau. I just stood there, poised, alert, the Krozair sword in my fists, ready.

  “Fear has this effect, very often,” he went on, lowering his pointing finger. “Like the risslaca and the woflo. I had heard you were a false jikai, Prescot, and found it hard to believe. Perhaps it is true?”

  I looked at the Bowmaids. They were a toothsome bunch. All they wore in the way of uniform was a scale triangle in front and a few wisps of feathers here and there. The heftiest of them had three red feathers in a headband. She said something in a voice like a spoon hitting a glass. Two girls each side lowered and eased off their bows.

  He saw me looking at the beauty parade and when I turned back I thought there was a dull flush of red along his cheekbones.

  “We could have worked in concert, you and I, Dray Prescot. My plans call for a strong man to rule in Loh. I thought I had such a man; but he decided his own powers gave him strength to do as he wished.” His voice took on something of the keening whine he’d used when he first spoke to me. He clearly felt deeply on this point. “My plans have not gone as I would have wished.” Now the bright malice showed in that monstrous face. “But all that interference is ended.”