Fires of Scorpio

by Alan Burt Akers

  “So am I, isn’t that funny,” I said, and smartened up my pace. She wasn’t above giving me a kick or two to keep me going. Parclear is a refreshing sherbet drink, and sazz is the same with the addition of fruit juices that make it colored. Either one serves its purpose.

  We attracted only perfunctory interest. Most of the buildings were of wood, the road was unmetalled and would be a quagmire in the rains, and there were no proper walls as such around the town, merely a stockade. This was of a good size, and sturdily built; but I had seen what sea rovers could do against wooden stockades.

  The biggest buildings looked to be temples and palaces — overgrown villas with three stories, really — and inns and taverns. I chose a modest-looking place that stood on the corner of an open space, and, going in, concluded for a meal for two, lots of sazz, lots of tea, some wine, and a room for the night. Gold changed hands.

  Always there is the problem with gold in a strange town.

  That night I wedged the door shut, stuffed pillows in the bed, made Ashti sleep on blankets by me — and that was a luxury compared to the jungle — and so sat half-awake all night. The precautions were unnecessary; I felt tired, but I’d recoup the lost sleep somehow.

  “Ship out, dom?” The landlord, bleary-eyed and with a runny nose, sniffed. “No ships looked in here since the bar silted up.”

  I used some bad language.

  “They’ve took all the trade, them down the coast,” went on the landlord. “Hukalad is finished. I’m selling up myself, soon, and moving to Tuscursmot.”

  My ears went up like those of a leem scenting ponsho.

  “Tuscursmot!” I said. “Is the town far off?”

  “You’d do better to ride, rather than walk. I can sell you a fine freymul — or a hersany — I have a splendid pair of hirvels—”

  “Stay, stay, landlord! No doubt you could lay your hands on a zorca if—”

  He shook his head.

  “Gold dust.”

  “Well, my feet have carried me this far, they will carry me the rest of the way.”

  As the rascal hadn’t told me how far it was, and as Tuscursmot must be in a position to benefit from the unfortunate happening to Hukalad’s sandbar, I judged the next town to be not very far off at all. I’d buy myself a saddle animal for a half a day’s ride, if I listened to this sales talk.

  In the end I found that Tuscursmot stood on the eastward arm of the river on whose western stood Hukalad. So, after an enormous breakfast of vosk rashers and loloo’s eggs, quantities of tea, heaps of palines, bread done in the shan’feran fashion, with red honey, we set off. We walked, and in the early suns shine, tripping along, Ashti walked for a time, too. She danced on ahead, a sprite in a little white dress, and we talked and laughed as we made our way to Tuscursmot.

  Chapter five

  Ashti plays in The Swod’s Revenge

  Tuscursmot turned out to be a charming town, strung out along the banks of the River Curstouran, as the waters were called here, and extending for some distance north and south. The houses were not all wood, many were of mudbrick and stucco-finished, with tiled roofs. As of nature, they were bowered in greenery; but there was a considerable agriculture around the town, and it was clear that these cultivations were prodigious in production and also, I judged, needed constant damned weeding.

  The white houses thickened toward the town center into a regular crisscross of streets and avenues. Temples rose. There were hotels, with signs proclaiming the joys to be found within. Palaces dedicated to the Baths of the Nine indicated that Tuscursmot well understood the refinements of culture. The theatres might tell a different story, true...

  All in all, Tuscursmot was of that species of town that is your comfortable, county, provincial, market, well-off town, and highly satisfied with itself. Somnolent, perhaps, sleepy, filled with scandals of the frilly petticoat and the embezzling kind.

  All, that is, except for the stout brick walls encircling the central portions of the town, the watchtowers manned by bright-helmeted men bearing spears, and the way no houses or vegetation were permitted within a bowshot of the walls. Mind you — the bowshot was a short bowshot; the impression was gained that as bows improved the folk of Tuscursmot had not bothered to keep their killing zone in step with changing technology.

  So, an interesting town. Industry was decently concealed away in a curve of the river out of sight of the town. No doubt there were shanty towns down there. If this was true of Earth, it was no less true of Kregen.

  As far as I knew, the name of the street I wanted had been Lower Squish Street. This ran from the cleared space fronting the South Gate down alongside the river bank and so trailed away at last when no more houses were built beside the track. Bushes — even trees — loaded with squishes grew everywhere, and I thought of Inch, and sighed, and went along to a neat little tavern halfway along Lower Squish Street, under the trees.

  Carts pulled by krahniks passed, loaded with produce. The air smelled sweet with that particular aroma that is of Pandahem South — much invigorated here, I might add, by the scents of squishes. This close to the equator they’d get ripe harvests on a regular basis. A gang of Rapas wearing striped aprons busily unloaded a cart of its barrels. Grapes could be produced readily enough, but ale — that might present a problem. The Kregans have ways of producing wine and ales in the most unlikely circumstances — which is a thirst-quenching miracle.

  “Hai, doms,” I said pleasantly. “Warm work.”

  The beaked faces turned to me, the feathers bristled, and then the biggest Rapa — the one with the yellow feathers beside his beak — contorted his face into the grimace that passes for a smile among Rapas.

  “Aye, dom, warm work. You’ll be quenching your thirst inside.” He nodded toward the tavern into which he and his mates were unloading the barrels. The sign said, beside the swinging flagon, The Swod’s Revenge.

  I smiled. I liked that name.

  “Aye. If the ale is good.”

  Ashti decided it was time she took a hand in all this chatter that wasted time. After all, she had walked quite a long way before I’d picked her up.

  She jumped down and started for the tavern steps, her white dress like a flitting moth in the suns light. The Rapas smiled. Truly, Tuscursmot was a friendly place.

  “Come on, Jak!” she admonished me over a shoulder. “I’m thirsty.”

  “You’re never anything else.”

  The tavern, low-ceiled, seemed to me of that order of establishment that would boast a cheery mine host, a good wine list, an ample cellar, good honest plain fare that melted in the mouth, and, if you stayed, beds that enveloped you in soft slumber. Well, I was half right.

  The landlord greeted me in a friendly fashion. He was a Khibil, and his fox-like face with the arrogant moustaches and that air of supercilious superiority that most Khibils have did not, in this context, set my teeth on edge.

  All the same, in the tap room I recognized as being either a copy of or an attempt at a tap room of Hamal, I wouldn’t come to the point at once.

  He put the jar of ale on the counter. There were two Ochs giggling in a corner, a couple of Fristles playing dice by the window, and three apims at the other end of the bar. I sipped.

  “By Beng Dikkane, I needed that,” I said.

  Ashti piped up.

  “Sazz! Sazz! Sazz!”

  The foxy landlord poured and placed the glass on the counter. I gave it to Ashti, who drank it off like a trooper. I wondered if I was getting her into bad habits. Well, she was nearly four years old. Kids are tough at that age, far tougher than I was likely to be.

  The silver winked as it lay on the counter.

  The two Ochs stopped giggling and, hand in hand, went out. The landlord picked up the silver dhem and bit it. Well, that was fair comment on the wicked ways of the world.

  The two Fristles stopped playing dice, and went out.

  The three apims pushed away from the bar. They looked nothing special, although two wore the
ir hair colored and tortured into the fashionable towser cut — I say fashionable... that towser-cut had been fashionable in Ruathytu, capital of Hamal, some seasons ago. No doubt the style had just reached this outpost. The three of them wore tunics and trousers cut short and ragged to the knee, mostly of greens and browns. They carried knives and cudgels. Their faces — well, now, as I glanced at their faces I realized that not all the people of Tuscursmot were friendly to the wandering stranger in their midst.

  The trouble was, I had Ashti to look after. And she’d as lief walk down and start to talk to these three bully boys.

  So, I tried to handle the affair as though it wasn’t happening. All these snaggly-toothed, leering-mouth three had done was stand up away from the bar. And the diffs, the Ochs and the Fristles had left. I put my back to them, with my ears flapping, I dare say, to listen for them, and looked hard at the landlord. He was a Khibil.

  “Landlord,” I said.

  “I am called Palando the Berry.”

  “Palando the Berry. Can you direct me to the house of Scauro Pompino ti Tuscursmot? You know, Pompino the Iarvin.”

  The Khibil landlord said straight into my face: “Duck!”

  He had no need to warn me. The sound of the footfalls on the floor, the way in which tunics rustled when arms are lifted, the sound of a wheeze on an indrawn breath, all these betraying things told me what the three tearaways were trying to do.

  I not only ducked, I went sideways, turned around and looked at the situation.

  The cudgel smashed onto the counter, the fellow with the towser cut in green and yellow quite unable to halt his blow. I kicked him twixt wind and water and before he fell down screeching I hit the other one with the orange and vermilion towser cut in the ear. That happened to be nearest. The third fellow swung his cudgel and I swayed away and knocked him down inside his blow. The three of them lay on the floor like three little fishes, stranded, gasping and wheezing. It was all not very clever, a trifle messy — the last one sprayed blood from his nose everywhere — and of no real credit to anyone. I should have spoken up first.

  With that feeling strong on me, I said: “I crave your pardon, Palando the Berry. There is blood on your floor.”

  “Rogoglopher!” the landlord bellowed at the top of his voice. Moments later the chief Rapa looked in.

  “Yes, master?”

  “Heave these outside, Rogoglopher. They met more than they bargained for this time.”

  “My pleasure,” said the Rapa, and bellowed for his mates to give him a hand. I sensed undercurrents of local conflicts and politics here. Maybe these were just locals, terrorizing their local tavern. Maybe they were more. I did not care; it was of no concern of mine.

  “Pompino?” I said.

  “Aye. You know him?”

  “Yes.” My voice sharpened. “Ashti. Stop playing with that blood. You’ll get it all over your dress. And it’s hard work to get blood out.”

  The landlord leaned forward and looked over the counter.

  “Rogoglopher!” he bellowed.

  The Rapa came back from dumping senseless bodies.

  “Yes, master?”

  “Get that floor scrubbed out.”

  “Yes, master.”

  The Khibil landlord brushed his whiskers. “I keep a clean house here, in the Swod’s Revenge.”

  “Aye, Palando the Berry. Pompino—”

  “Oh, aye, Pompino. He is away at the moment.”

  I compressed my lips.

  “Just tell me where away lies his house. That is all I ask.”

  “It’s no good going there. There are only his wife and twins—”

  “Two sets of twins, I believe.”

  “That is right. I see you do know him, then.”

  “Look, Palando. If you are trying to protect Pompino — forget it. He is a friend. If you were to turn me away he would be most wroth, believe me.”

  Palando nodded. “I remember the way you put those three Durkin brothers out. Nasty customers. Oh, I believe you. But he is away—”

  “Just tell me where his house is.”

  “But he is not there.”

  I looked at the counter. I looked at the low ceiling. I studied the rows of flagons and bottles and glasses. I saw the amphorae in their tripods in the area beyond the bar. Many were stacked against the wall all leaning like the drunks they might make. I looked back at the counter, where Palando the Berry swiped with a cloth.

  I said, “I may have to start at the beginning and go to every house in Lower Squish Street. I should find the right house then. But it would be easier — do you not think, landlord, it would be easier? — if you told me which house.”

  “Would you care for a refill? Your glass is—”

  I did not grasp the landlord. I did not touch him. Nor, for that matter, did I blow up. I said, “Ashti — leave that Rapa’s bucket alone—”

  Too late.

  The Rapa, swabbing at the floor with his mop, let out a yell. The bucket spilled. Bloody water swilled across the clean floor. Ashti laughed delightedly.

  I took a breath.

  “Palando the Berry. Tell me. Where does Pompino live? I ask for the last time.”

  He said: “I will tell you before that little she-pinki destroys my tavern and my relationship with my servants.”

  Ashti laughed as a Rapa coming in the door slipped on the blood and skidded into a table and so brought that down on his head. Truth to tell, Ashti hadn’t done anything yet. I would promise Palando Ashti’s full resources of mischief if he didn’t cooperate.

  But, in the end, he said: “The fourth house along. You can’t miss it, it has a red door.”

  “Oh? Why red?”

  “I thought you said you knew Pompino?”

  “Maybe his fondness for red is something new.”

  Ashti was red now, the hem of her dress, where she was banging the bloody froth. I bent down and hoicked up the squealing, kicking, struggling handful — the reason I hadn’t pulled her out of it before. There would be a stern contest of wills in the immediate future between clean dresses and having further mucky fun.

  “Well, he did have that front door repainted when he came back from one of his excursions, recently, I’ll say that. It always used to be a decent blue.”

  Having at least wormed out the secrets of Pompino’s whereabouts from his fellow Khibil, and having sorted out all I could in the way of Ashti’s dress, and not being in the frame of mind to hang about in the Swod’s Revenge any longer, I hoicked up the struggling handful and said the remberees and started off along Lower Squish Street.

  Eventually I had to let her run ahead. And then I noticed that although she wanted to get down and run, freely, off, she didn’t go over far. She ran and played within easy distance. She, as it were, kept her radius of action located on where I happened to be. I own I felt highly perked up at that, and, also, dismayed.

  The fourth house along stood within what was obviously a pleasant evening stroll down to the Swod’s Revenge. Pompino was not one to miss a trick like that. The house looked charming, white-walled, freshly painted, with two stories and with highly polished windows. The roofs were blue slate. That was probably imported, for Tuscursmot had a busy trade, and was a clear indication of conspicuous wealth. If the jungle folk could use honest leaves for roofs what was the need to import slate? Well, there are ways among men and women not explicable by logic.

  The area before the house was set out as a gravel garden. The gimmick — no, that is the wrong word — the art in a gravel garden is not to let anything grow. It is all stone and gravel and chipped flints, split rocks to yield a fascinating spectrum of colors. The suns bring out the shine and the glitter of mica and the fleck of semi-precious stone. Cunning sculptors earn vast sums designing gravel gardens, and contractors earn vast sums laying them out. When it comes to the slave who goes around uprooting the weeds, vast sums are conspicuous by their absence.

  So Pompino did all right for himself. By the word “ti” in
his name, meaning “of” he was a man of importance.

  I walked up the gravel path through the gravel garden, and an enormous one-eyed, one-tusked Chulik stood up from the porch and glowered one-eyed at me.

  He was taller than me, yellow-skinned, his pigtail hanging down his back dyed blue. He had only one tusk thrusting up from the left corner of his mouth. I judged he’d taken a back-handed slash in some old fight. There was a scar above the gap in his jawline. His piglike eye regarded me solemnly. The missing eye was decently covered by a blue patch on a string around his ear. He wore a leather kax and pteruges, and looked uncomfortable in the warlike costume.

  “Llahal, dom!” I called, getting in with the friendly greeting early. “I am a friend to Pompino the Iarvin.”

  He said: “Go away, master. You can do no good here.”

  I felt the astonishment. The Chulik spoke as though I had come forewarned of some disaster. All I wanted to do was pass the time of day with my fellow kregoinye, Pompino, chew the fat about old times in Jikaida City, and then take off. I also, I must admit, hoped I’d get him to help in the way of transport. So I said: “I just want to have a word with him. We have not seen each other for some time.”

  “Best leave now, master.”

  He carried a short spear and that was all in the way of weapons. Now I knew he’d be expert in the use of the spear, for Chuliks on their islands are trained up from birth to become mercenaries and to handle any kind of weapon. They usually adopt the weaponry of their employers. But this little spear which looked as though it would snap the moment the Chulik put his strength behind it?

  Despite all the comicality of getting through locals and their clannish close-mouthed remoteness, I suddenly began to fancy there might be something amiss, after all.

  “Are you servant to Pompino, Chulik?”

  “You had best leave, master. Go — now!”

  He was speaking in a hoarse penetrating voice, as though desperate not to be heard. And, he did not sound like your true overpowering Chulik would sound like, telling a mere apim to do something. He sounded like a slave. I judged that if Pompino was as important a man as, suddenly, I conceived him to be, he would have Chulik servants, and, also, that very much could be amiss with him and his family.