Fires of Scorpio

by Alan Burt Akers

An arrow sprouted suddenly from Wilma’s arm. She gave a scream of shocked surprise; then tried to carry on. She bent to her trigger as her crew finished winding. Pompino saw.

  “Wilma! Go off the castle—”

  “If someone will snap the arrow it can be drawn—”

  “Go down, Wilma. D’you want to look like a pincushion?”

  A rock hissed past so close it stirred our hair.

  And, all the time these incidents had been occurring, little splinters of hardness in a sea of noise and stink and movement, we had been forging on and on toward the Shank.

  “Prepare to Ram!” screeched Chandarlie the Gut. His voice bashed back to Murkizon. The drum beat increased, a frantic blam-blam that got into the blood and vibrated the nerves.

  Redfang fairly leaped the last few paces into the flank of her quarry.

  Those last few moments before we hit passed as though I observed them in a dream, and all the fighting that followed, slow, hazy, almost perversely unreal, while the real events took place swiftly and in stunning flashes of rapid action. This strange dilation of time meant only that one lived through the horror for longer than it really lasted.

  We hit.

  The ram struck shrewdly along the Shank’s underbelly and so nicely timed were Murkizon and Chandarlie’s commands, that the oars flurried into powerful backwatering on the same instant.

  Everything lurched forward. People clung onto whatever happened to be close. The jolt of impact juddered through Redfang. Some careless idiots lost their grips and sprawled headlong. Ropes strained and some parted. The ship jolted as though she’d run head on into a brick wall.

  The Shank rolled. Now we should slide off neatly and our proemblion prevent the ram from entering too far into the side of the rammed vessel. Our oars, smashing the sea into foam, would haul us off.

  Grapnels soared up against the sky.

  Hard three-hooked iron shapes, they swung up and over and slogged down to bury their barbed fangs into Redfang. We had been hooked.

  “Backwater!” Chandarlie yelled and heaved his gut around. “Their lines won’t hold!”

  The drum rolled and rattled.

  The oars dug deeply, all in perfect rhythm, all pulled through the sea together. The sea roiled away, churned into suds, and Redfang did not move.

  “The ropes hold us,” said Pompino.

  A boarding axe was grasped in my fist. Do not ask me how it got there, and my thraxter stuffed away in the scabbard and the bow discarded. The axe was there. I leaped from the forecastle down onto the beak. Grapnels stood there, their arms stuck, their shanks up and taut with the strain of the ropes. Like any sensible sailor who wishes to grapple a ship, the Shanks had used chains for a goodly length before bending on their ropes. I’d have to crawl right forward to get past the iron chains and slash the ropes. There was not a chance in hell of prying the grapnels loose under the strain on them, and the axe wouldn’t look at the chains. An arrow stood up by my head, going thwunk into the wood. Damned arrows! They would have to be ignored. I went on crawling forward.

  “Cover him!” Pompino must have shouted that before he jumped down after me. I guessed it would be him.

  The first grapnel rope parted — and believe me I hit the thing only a hand’s-breadth up from the link to the iron chain!

  The second went and an arrow struck the blade of the axe as I withdrew. The haft vibrated like a harpstring. I held on to it and struck at the next. By this time I was beginning to become a trifle warm.

  The height of Redfang over the Shank waist meant they had to shoot upward from there. The archers in the ungainly square end castles were shooting down on me. This was not, I may say, a particularly comfortable position. I hit the next grapnel rope and she parted, and that cleared all along the beak. At the time I was doing that, others of Redfang’s company were busily parting grapnels nearer to them.

  And, just as I was about to congratulate myself on a job well done and to feel satisfaction that we’d denied the Shanks the chance of boarding us easily, I looked down over the enemy’s waist.

  As I looked down on that crowding mass of scaled helmets and scaled men, a rock swathed through them. It chopped down five of them and mangled them in spraying green ichor. At least one of the girls was still in action, and archers as well, as the shafts spat in. Down there on that alien deck they were screeching their chants, waving their tridents, desperately trying to stop us from pulling back.

  “Ishtish! Ishtish!” they screeched, in their own tongue, fishy and hissing and nasty as it was.

  Then, as I looked down on that scaly mass a Fish-head somersaulted away from a door that evidently closed off a companionway leading below. He sprawled on the deck. In the doorway stood a man — an apim. Naked, hairy, he glared madly upon the scene on deck, and then looked up. He stared directly at me.

  “Help!” he yelled over all the din, a ferocious bellow. “Help!”

  The Fish-heads heard him. Tridents menaced him and the other apims and diffs of familiar features of Paz who came trooping up from below. It took little deductive skill to deduce these men were slaves, maintained to pull the oars in the fluky winds off the coast. No doubt when the Shanks were finished here they’d hurl the apims and diffs of Paz overboard.

  Chandarlie the Gut bellowed at my back.

  “That’s Quendur the Ripper! And I’ll wager that’s his foul pirate crew with him!”

  “Leave ’em!” someone else shrilled. “Pull back!”

  “For the sake of Opaz!” screamed Quendur the Ripper.

  “Let the renders go hang!”

  An arrow scorched past my ear.

  Pompino spat his words out in the uproar. “What now, Jak?”

  “Why, Pompino, we cannot leave a fellow human to these fishy horrors, can we?”

  “Back!” Chandarlie was yelling, and I could imagine him waving his arms, his stomach aheave-ho.

  “They are pirates, and would have done us no good had they taken us.”

  “Aye, you are right. But, by the Black Chunkrah, I would deny the worst fellow you could imagine to these Shanks.”

  With that I threw the axe at a tall Fish-head who looked important and knocked his head all sideways, and snatched out my thraxter, and leaped down onto the deck.

  Pompino’s despairing yell bounced after me: “Jak — you get onker!”

  And then he was jumping with me and, as we had been before, we were in action shoulder to shoulder.

  All a mad bedlam, a welter, a chaos, a leaping and skipping and slashing... We battled the Shanks on their own deck. Tridents against swords, the Fish-heads tried to bring us down. The rescued renders were not wholly helpless, for they had snatched up weapons in their escape. They began to bash their way from the companionway door toward us.

  A little fellow with a droopy moustache and spaniel eyes screeched and flopped forward with a trident lodged in his back. He’d go no more a-roving across the wine-dark sea...

  Our Rapa and Chulik comrades joined us, and we battled on. For a space it was touch and go; but the very audaciousness of the hairy filth, as the Shanks called us, leaping down into the attack confused them in their own onslaught. We had, as it were, thrown a spanner into the works, and now we had to extricate said spanners without loss. We could see no crossbows among the Shanks, and so they had none to span, but they’d know what a spanner was in this context — a fellow of Paz to be slain.

  Fish-heads hissed and gibbered away around us, scales glistened. They wore ornamental branches of coral of various colors in their helmets. They carried spears and swords as well as tridents. They used heavily-curved bows. And they knew how to fight. By Krun, they knew how to fight.

  We lost more men from the render crew before they could be hoisted up at our backs. The muscled body of the pirate chief, Quendur the Ripper, covered with the weals of the lash, pressed past. His face was a single black blot of anger. He held a trident and he stabbed and thrust and slashed with it as though a demon jerked his muscles.r />
  “Fish-heads,” he kept on saying, over and over. “Fish-heads. Fish-heads.” Saliva spittled his lips. He looked mad enough to be loaded with chains against himself.

  “Get aboard, dom,” I called across. “Sharpish.”

  He kept on alongside us, slashing his trident about, and croaking out: “Fish-heads. Fish-heads.”

  I put some snap into my voice. My words were interrupted twice by the need to knock a Shank over in the interim.

  “Quendur! Get aboard the swordship! Bratch!”

  He glared sideways at me. A trident hissed past and I grabbed it out of thin air, reversed it, hurled it back.

  “You—!” he croaked.

  “Get aboard.” I did not repeat that harsh word of command, bratch, for he had the message. He turned and leaped for Redfang. I didn’t know him. Maybe he knew me, or thought he did... Unlikely...

  “Get going Rondas!” I bellowed it out. “Up with you, Nath Kemchug.”

  They were both still alive, which was miracle enough, although both wounded. Pompino was still untouched. We fought for long enough to get the mercenaries away and then it was the old duel between my fellow kregoinye and myself. I was not prepared to make an issue of it. To do so would get us both killed.

  “Are you going, Pompino, you stiff-necked Khibil?”

  “I am in command here, Jak, you pompous apim. Get aboard and leave the man’s work to me.”

  “Fambly,” I said, and leaped for Redfang. Before I hit the beak I was yelling for archers. Larghos the Flatch and his comrades laid down a carpet for Pompino, and I contributed as soon as I laid my hands on a bow, and the two girl varterists shooting superbly, swathed away the raging Shanks. Wilma’s wound was barely bound, and leaked red blood. But the mercenaries of Kregen are not quite like your mercenaries of Earth. The outmoded concepts of honor and pride and service rendered for payment given are not outmoded on Kregen. Perhaps the nearest to that you’d get on Kregen would be the masichieri; bandits who call themselves paktuns, to their shame.

  Pompino was hauled inboard. He was laughing. Well, let us not go too closely into the question of why he laughed.

  And, on that instant, Redfang began to withdraw from the wound she had inflicted in the side of her foe. The Shank began to heel. As we drew off, she slowly turned over and sank.

  Chapter fifteen

  Of a galleon, a rapier and honor

  In an outward wash of foam-tinged green bubbles the Shank vanished.

  Subsequently we carried out those necessary rites and services for our dead, consigning each to his or her own god or pantheon and releasing their bodies over the side.

  Wilma recovered of her wound; many of our wounded did not. Captain Murkizon remained a most subdued man. Everyone felt sympathy for him. He had been right — of course he had been right! — yet such is the contrary nature of humankind that right though he was we felt that deep undercurrent that in this case being right was not the right course. Do not ask any explanation. I deplore racial hatred, as you know. I deplore slavery. In the dealings of the folk of Paz with the raiding sea rovers from over the curve of the world, Fish-heads called by many unpleasant names, rights and wrongs and instinctive feelings jumbled and became confused.

  We put into the free port city of Matta, where they charged us exorbitant docking fees, the mercenary slit-eyed devils, and saw to our needs. The released oar slaves naturally wished to return home. We were sailing north. Those sailors contracted to Pompino would continue, and the mercenaries indicated they would remain hired to him. We could hire oarsmen, and they were not cheap, we could buy oarslaves, or we could see about a different vessel. The knot was cut by the timely arrival of what was left of our convoy. They straggled in over the space of three or four days, those that had survived, and among them to Pompino’s gratitude, sailed Tuscurs Maiden and Blackfang.

  He went up to the most imposing temple to Horato the Potent and registered his thanks. The priests reciprocated.

  This free port city of Matta maintained a sizable fleet of swordships, and they swept their part of the seas clean of pirates. After the Koroles the seas were not so infested by renders; but wherever there are coasts and islands, no less than extensive trade routes, there will, it seems, be pirates.

  “So, friend Jak. What next?”

  “You ask me?”

  “Aye. I saw the Gdoinye, as did you. But I am puzzled.” Pompino’s haughty Khibil face expressed concern, and by the way he brushed up his whiskers I knew he was troubled. “We are adventuring as it were on our own account. You and I, together, are setting about work for the Everoinye. Yet we must pay our own way, make our own passage, suffer all these delays. I ask you, Jak, is that right?”

  “You should know that nothing is right, when you want it to be. Life is not fair.”

  “Oh, I know that, fambly!”

  “It would probably be best to sail in Tuscurs Maiden.”

  “You think so? I confess, I am beginning to wonder if I was altogether wise to invest in a fleet of ships. They are a great worry to a man.”

  “Oh, aye, assuredly.”

  “But we saw the Gdoinye. He has a sister, the Gdoinya, who is, as I and Neil Tonge can testify, as great an onker. That must mean the Everoinye wish us to continue.”

  “Yes.”

  “I just wish—” And here Pompino sounded positively petulant. “I just wish they’d set us down where we are to set about our work for them!”

  I almost laughed, for Pompino’s expression and attitude were downright comical. But this was serious business. And that, as any sane man knows, is comical in this insane world, anyway.

  “As they have not, we must make our own way. And, Pompino, my friend, think of the things we have done, to fight our way through the pirates of the Koroles, to have taken a swordship — to have saved our lives.”

  He sniffed. “You think these things constitute a Jikai?”

  “Oh, no. Nothing as grand as that.”

  “To tell you the truth, Jak, I am not sorry to get out of a swordship. The noise of the oarslaves distresses me, the way they all rise up and then hurl themselves backwards, the clashing of their chains, their grunts of effort. I did not think it would be like that.”

  “You do not mention that sometimes they stink—”

  “Not in my ships! I pay good gold for sweet ibroi—”

  “You may disinfect their smell. You cannot disinfect the blot that slavery imposes on civilization by its very existence.”

  He stared at me, taken aback at my tone.

  Then: “I share much of your philosophy, Jak — by the Pink Cheeks of Dandy Pullhard, I must do for we both serve the Everoinye!”

  “Aye.”

  His words reminded me of the reaction of John Evelyn when in 1644 he went aboard a galley out of Marseilles. He was “amazed” at the “discomfort” of the galley slaves. He mentioned their rising and falling as one, the noise of the chains, the splashing crash of the “beaten waters” and how the slaves were “ruled and chastised without the least humanity.” Yet, he said, for all this they were “Cherefull, and full of vile knavery.”

  The vile knavery my comrades and I had been up to, when we’d been galley slaves, had been, besides conjuring a better share of food and water and ponsho fleeces, dreaming up ways of escape.

  With an intake of breath and a gusty sigh, Pompino said, “Very well. We sail in Tuscurs Maiden. And I think Captain Murkizon will return in Blackfang. As for Redfang—”

  “You could do worse than give her command to Naghan Pelamoin.”

  “My thought, exactly. Captain Linson has trained up a new Ship Hikdar to replace Pelamoin. But Chandarlie the Gut will sail with us.”

  We walked down through narrow streets to the jetties where Pompino’s little squadron was moored. The air struck fresh and sweet, the suns shone. Now this free city of Matta was interesting to us — well, almost every city, not all, is interesting — by reason of one singular fact. The latest fashion craze here was for men
to wear tightly restricting corsets. They were made from various bright materials, boned and laced, and worn over a tunic. The men strutted about with wasp waists. The women strode about uncorsetted and free, swinging, lithe and limber. As I say, fashion is a tyranny best steered clear of.

  A breeze curled in off the sea. We rounded the last warehouse corner and Pompino stopped. He shaded his eyes.

  “Now that,” he said, “is a ship. If I could buy the likes of her for my fleet, I would be a happier man.”

  I turned the corner. A Vallian galleon sailed into the port. Her flags flew bravely, the old Vallian flag, and the new, the new Union, with the yellow cross and saltire on the red ground.

  “Yes,” was all I could say. I felt myself responding to that ship from my adopted homeland. She sailed superbly, her canvas trim and taut, a curl of spume under her forefoot. We watched as she took in her canvas and noted the smartness of her evolutions. Later on I managed to make an excuse and left Pompino to see about stores while I had myself rowed out to the galleon. Her name was Schydan Imperial, out of Vond. I knew her master, Nath Periklain, and my first words hushed the welcome on his lips.

  “Jak, majister?”

  “Aye, Cap’n Nath. Jak. Now let us go below and you must tell me all the news of Vallia.”

  This he did when we were ensconced in his stateroom, with wine and palines upon the shining table. The array of stern windows let in the light. Everything was as smart and spick and span as was to be expected in a galleon of Vallia. These beautiful ships were being built again, and were now venturing on trading missions to places — such as here in Pandahem — where seasons ago they would have been regarded as enemies.

  The news Nath Periklain conveyed reassured me. Vallia might still not yet encompass all her lost domains, but what we had prospered. Our enemies were contained. Time alone would see the whole of Vallia once more united. He had nothing to tell me of the Empress of Vallia, and while I grieved over this blankness in my life, I felt strengthened. If mischance occurred and there was ill news of Delia, I would hear. Also, and this I did not forget, the Wizards of Loh who were our comrades would apprise me should events take place that would necessitate my immediate return. I could breathe easier. By Zair! I’d not spend another moment adventuring out in these foreign lands if Delia or my own country needed me. And there is no pretension, no pride, in this, merely a sober matter-of-fact statement.