Fires of Scorpio

by Alan Burt Akers

  He was right, of course. On Earth we say that someone has walked over our grave; on Kregen they refer to an icy breath from Sicce. I shook my shoulders, saw that we’d take a bur or two to get in, and went below with my kregoinye comrade. We downed a few glasses; but they made no difference. I was awash with reluctance to carry on, to see Pando and Tilda again, to fight the Silver Leem, to carry out the wishes of the Star Lords. I had to do these things. But I felt I would do them unwillingly.

  Yet I would like to see Pando and Tilda again and hear their news and find out how they fared. I hungered to see Lem the Silver Leem and his evil cult banished for good. And I was achieving a better understanding of the Everoinye with every meeting. So — why?

  Ridiculous to suggest I felt this unease because I was going into the future without a plan and with no idea of what I was up against. By Vox! That is my usual situation!

  Yet — yet that is not quite true. I do have plans, quietly tucked up my sleeve. I eyed Pompino.

  “If we just burn the first temple we run across—”

  “We will burn the first and the last, Jak!”

  “Oh, aye. We can do that. By ourselves or with help. But — what then?”

  “Why, then we go home.”

  “Yes, but, if the temple burns, the beliefs will linger on. They’ll rebuild—”

  He drank and poured fresh and did not answer.

  I went on: “We can hardly kill them all.”

  “This King Nemo the Second. I hear he is a flat slug. If we can sway him, make him see with clear eyes, he will see to all that end of the business for us.”

  “If.”

  “Well—” and here Pompino spoke with some brusqueness. “Have you some better scheme?”

  “No.”

  “Drink up! We will find the temple and burn it and then see what the Leem Lovers do.”

  Privately, I wondered just how far this haughty Khibil comrade of mine would get with fat King Nemo the Second.

  Tuscurs Maiden duly picked up her moorings, and discharged her cargo, and then the master and the hands set about the task of cleaning her bottom. A small creek an ulm along the coast provided a nicely sloping beach, and there were careening lines and stakes provided. Pompino did not hire slaves for any of the work, whereat a few dark looks drifted about the ship. I hung about taking a note of what went forward, a professional interest not blunted over the years giving me an insight. Pompino just imagined you simply tilted the boat over and scraped away.

  “There is more to it than that.”

  “Well, I am for the races. Some fool is backing his sleeths against zorcas—”

  “Then he’ll lose his money.”

  “Assuredly. Quendur the Ripper is going along, for he has business — I did not ask. So is his woman. They have been given leave. You’re coming, of course—”

  “Perhaps.”

  But, in the end, I went along with them to see the races in Pomdermam’s merezo, the race track carved out of the side of a hill. The view was splendid from the terraces. As was duly surmised, the idiot’s sleeths lost to the zorcas. Well, I ask you, in this day and age, to find anyone who still thought a sleeth could outrun a zorca!

  Then we hied ourselves off to the town to find a wet.

  On the shady side of a small tree-bowered square a tavern swung a sign proclaiming it to be The Trident and Crown. An interesting name, although I took scant notice of it at the time. Just as we were about to enter, Pompino’s eye was caught by the shop abutting. A smaller sign said that this was the time of opening. Pompino looked and walked across. Above his head on bronze brackets a down-at-heels signboard creaked as though ready to fall apart. The paint flaked everywhere, and the boards warped. Originally the sign had read NALGRE THE EDGE. At some time past, judging by the fractionally brighter paint, the word EDGE had been obliterated and the word POINT substituted.

  Rapier and dagger work were well established here in North Pandahem.

  “I left here somewhat hurriedly,” commented Pompino, pushing open the door. “I’ve a mind to buy myself a good matching pair, similar to those you swindled that poor sailorman out of.”

  I hung my head, and we went into the swordsmiths.

  When we emerged into the suns light Pompino swung a goodly rapier on his left hip and a matching main gauche on his right. I gave him a wide berth.

  “You’ll do me an injury with those things,” I said. “After you’ve done one to yourself, of course.”

  “I’ve handled these pig-stickers before—”

  “Oh, aye.”

  In the Trident and Crown we found a quiet corner by a window and ordered up ale. This was not particularly fine ale, and Pompino made a face. He leaned back, and then came out with what had been on his mind, among other things. “Anyway, that rascal Quendur, oh, yes, he may have repented of his evil ways. But he spoke up against going on by coaster just so he could see about his business here.”

  “I don’t doubt it. He is a reformed character; but he is still as cunning as a leem.” I sipped. “What was the business, do you know?”

  “I’ve no idea.” Pompino leaned forward to the window. “But there he goes now, with his woman. He looks hangdog enough. Let’s ask him.”

  Pompino shoved open the window and called. Quendur looked up as though stuck in the rump by Pompino’s new rapier. He saw us in the window of the tavern. He smiled, took Lisa’s arm, and hurried across. When he sat down at our table with Lisa, he and she both looked bright of face, flushed, and they breathed rapidly.

  When the serving girl brought ale, Quendur drank the lot off in one go. He rubbed his right hand reflectively. Lisa smiled.

  “Business all settled?”

  “Aye, horter Pompino. Settled and settled well.”

  “That’s good, then.”

  “Aye. And bad for some.” And Quendur laughed.

  A brightness about him kept breaking through that hangdog look. He bubbled with some inner excitement, as though still high on adrenalin, as though he’d just pulled off a deed to remember. Lisa hung on his arm.

  Not too long after that a carrying chair borne by four Brukaj diffs with patient bulldog faces and liveries of blue and white halted outside the Trident and Crown. The curtains were half-drawn. A Rapa stuck his beaked nose toward the tavern door, twirling a thick stick. Two more Rapas, following on, halted. One immediately turned back and ran off. I watched this byplay in the drowsy square with faint interest, trying to summon up some enjoyment from the thin beer and making up my mind to take off and find a better eating establishment.

  The lead Rapa turned to the curtained chair and spoke to the occupant. The Brukaj chair-carriers squatted down, resting. The square rested, too, in the declining suns.

  Presently a double file of soldiers marched up, wearing the king’s livery, as I recalled. They were led by a Hikdar, who strutted on in a way at once important and grotesque. The men halted by the palanquin and the Rapa spoke to the Hikdar.

  Just about then, I suppose, the old itch breezed. I should have suspected mischief sooner. But the air here breathed sweetly, conducive to ease. Guards could be lowered, it had appeared. On Kregen — most parts of Kregen — that is a mistake.

  I stood up.

  “What, Jak—?”

  “Quendur — was your business of—?”

  Before I finished he leaned past me to look out the window. His face drew down. The woman put a hand on his arm.

  “That is the rast!” he said. “I gave him a good hiding and the impudent cramph returns for more! Well, I can accommodate him!” With that, Quendur leaped up and fairly hurled himself through the open doorway. He roared straight at the carrying chair, screeching his fury and hatred...

  Chapter seventeen

  Cash for Lash?

  It was all our own fault. Well, it was really Pompino’s fault. That fiery Khibil turned into a real tearaway when he sensed his honor was imputed. But, then, no. No. Really it was my fault. As usual. I ought to have tripped Pompi
no up as he roared out of the tavern after Quendur while we sized up the situation.

  As it was — here we were.

  In chains.

  No novelty for me, for that intemperate Dray Prescot who ran headlong and foolishly into danger. But for Pompino the harsh iron chains galled with much more than mere physical restraint. His honor was affronted. He felt degraded.

  The occupant of the carrying chair, one Pamcur Ovin, a notable merchant and slave dealer, had been the business Quendur had occupied himself with. Pamcur Ovin had received a thorough thrashing. Now he brought up the king’s guards, the law and order here, and sought revenge.

  When the guards restrained Quendur, we might perhaps have made a case for ourselves and argued it all out. But when they callously beat Lisa and knocked her to the ground, Pompino’s hot Khibil blood sent him passionately to her assistance. So I’d been drawn in. And the iron nets and the chains had risen and fallen, and here we were, bound by chains and lying in a stinking dungeon cell awaiting punishment.

  Quendur attempted to apologize; but Pompino, his whiskers electric with fury, would have none of that.

  “Had I known, Quendur, I’d have been more forceful with them! You are not to blame. When I see this King Nemo I’ll let him have a piece of my mind. Aye, by all the devils of Armipand!”

  “This Pamcur Ovin is the rast who ruined my family and had me sold into slavery.” Quendur’s savage face bore the marks of bruises. The single torch outside the cell fluttered dark shadows across his eyes. “But I think the law will not bring you to that, horters.”

  “They’ve put me in chains,” said Pompino, with a wealth of evil meaning in his words.

  “Yes; but that is because you resisted, and you too, Horter Jak. I will be sold again; you may receive only a flogging and a fine—”

  “Only!”

  “It will be painful.”

  “Wait until I get my hands on that cramph Ovin!”

  “That is what I swore.”

  I said, “What are our chances of escape?”

  His mouth twisted. “Precious few.”

  “Still, there must be a way.”

  Lisa, hanging in her chains as we were, said, “I will offer to—”

  “No,” said Quendur.

  Pompino and I, sensibly, said nothing on that score.

  Our jailer brought in pannikins of water and rinds of dry bread and moldy cheese. His name was Trai Naghan. The atra swinging on its chain about his neck was large and ornate. This amulet afforded him great comfort. He was in body long and thin and wiry. There was, really, only half a body there, for his left ear, eye and arm were missing, and he limped favoring his left leg. He’d been chewed up by a leem in youth, and had escaped with his life. Trai is one Kregish word for luck, so that he was called Lucky Naghan.

  “They’re putting up the flogging frames now,” he said in a cheerful voice. “They’ve a left-handed Brokelsh and a right-handed Rapa.”

  So we were to be flogged jikaider, until the lashes crisscrossed over our backs and diced our flesh to the bone.

  “And the woman?” Pompino said.

  “Maybe. She kicked the Hikdar of the guard where it did him no good.” Trai Naghan spat reflectively. “I wish I’d been there to see that.”

  We drank the stale water and ate the hard bread and green cheese. It kept us alive. They were in no hurry to deal with us, and we heard from Trai Naghan that they awaited a great lord to oversee the proceedings. This made no sense to us, and so we hung and suffered others’ pleasure.

  “Of course,” he told us in his chirpy cheerful way, “If you cannot pay the fines, they will not flog you so hard.”

  Quendur emitted a nasty-sounding snort of disgust.

  Pompino lifted his head. “Oh. Why?”

  “Why, dom, they won’t want to damage the merchandise.”

  That was explanation enough. If we couldn’t pay the fines, the authorities would chastise us in some unpleasant but not too-damaging a way — and then they’d sell us as slaves.

  We had to pay to be flogged, and to be thankful we could afford that punishment.

  A nightmare quality of incongruousness in our situation afflicted me either with a sense that this could not really be happening or that it was a typical Dray Prescot imbroglio. Here we were, storming up to Tomboram to put down the followers of the Silver Wonder, and finding ourselves smartly locked up in chains awaiting chastisement for a stupid brawl. It was enough to make a fellow spit granite chippings.

  The torch sputtered and banged and smoked and dimmed. Quendur let out a groaning laugh in his best sound-effects way.

  “Even our light is to be taken from us.”

  Kregans grow up accustomed always to objects having two shadows, the word for shadow is singular but refers to the two — one reddish, the other greenish — cast by the suns. In a surprisingly large number of countries the folk are psychologically disturbed if there is only one light. One torch, one candle, is a catastrophe not to be borne. I have seen a family cut a rushlight in half, shaking, to light both ends and reinstate normalcy in the world of their home. The Great Death and the Great Birth of the Overlords of Magdag, when they cower away in their newly built and dedicated megaliths, is occasioned perhaps as much by the eclipse of the suns’ effect in throwing just one shadow, as by their dread belief that the red sun swallows up the green. I’d seen the horrors then, and had escaped, somehow. I recalled that I, Dray Prescot, was a Krozair of Zy. I’d broken free then. Was I any less a man now that I’d done so much on Kregen and gone through so many ordeals, and discovered such happiness with Delia?

  Was I less of a man than that foolish, headstrong Dray Prescot who bashed so intemperately against anything and anyone who sought to do him a mischief?

  The feeling of self doubt was — at first — heightened by what then passed between Quendur and Lisa. This fear of a single light source and a single shadow, so odd to terrestrials accustomed to having just one little yellow sun in their sky, is not explicable by geography, nation or race. Some people experience the fear; others do not. Those who do make a point of staying safely indoors with two lamps burning when there is only one moon in Kregen’s night sky.

  Now Quendur said: “Lisa. They must kill me before any harm comes to you.”

  Even as I wondered if that could be any comfort to Lisa the Empoin, she turned her head to stare at Quendur. His eyes were fast shut.

  “Quendur,” she said. “We will survive, as we have before and will again. You will see, mishme, I promise you.”

  When she called her man mishme a host of memories rushed to torture me. It seems to me that in reporting on the languages of Kregen I have leaned heavily toward insult and harsh command, of the harder and uglier aspects of that beautiful tongue. Maybe this is a mere result of many of my experiences there. The languages are filled to overflowing with words of love. Expressions of respect, affection, comradeship, admiration, fill page after page of the dictionaries, the hyr-lifs of the spoken and written word. If I neglect them, often substituting terrestrial terminology, that may perhaps be because tenderness comes to me only from a few, a very few people. Mishme. What does that word mean? My love, my heart, dear one — all these and nothing of sickly sentiment about the meanings, either. Kregans — or most of them — are robust when it comes to talk of love.

  So I thought of Delia, and hungered, and felt lost, and so grew a fresh resolve that was almost shattered as Pompino burst out with all his fiery Khibil passion:

  “Pay good broad red gold pieces to be flogged! That is a strange custom! Do they think I’ll pay to have my back striped?”

  “If you do not,” said Quendur, still with his eyes closed, “then, Horter Pompino, they will sell you as slave.”

  “And so they shall!” bellowed my comrade. “I’ll be a slave and slit the throats of the guards and disembowel the damned slavemasters and slaveowners, and all that before I escape!” He swung his reddish whiskers at me. “Are you with me, Jak?”

&
nbsp; “Oh, aye,” I said in a desert-dry voice. “Oh, aye. I’ve been slave and escaped. But think on this, Pompino the Rash. Here in Tomboram the king will send you to the swordships, if he wills. You have seen the oarslaves—”

  Pompino blinked his eyes, twice, very rapidly. Then: “Oarslaves! Oarslaves! If I set my mind to escaping no miserable whip-deldar will stand in my way! I tell you this when by our comradeship there should be no need.”

  “There is no need. As you very well know. But—”

  Quendur interrupted, in a hoarse breathy voice.

  “Think on, Horter Pompino! A flogging is one thing, but to serve in the swordships at the looms...”

  “Oh,” I snapped out, somewhat tartly. “Oh, he’ll survive, Quendur, he’ll survive.”

  Pompino bristled up his whiskers and looked murderous.

  Lisa spoke in her turn, hushed but tart with it. “As San Blarnoi says: ‘Blowing the frothy head off is one thing.’”

  Quendur let out his gurgling groaning laugh and Pompino sniffed with audible affront. I did not laugh. By Zair! This was no situation in which to break down. There were things we could do, one of which was to pray, which we did fervently; the other was to work on our chains, which we abandoned very quickly. Apart from that we could only think and talk.

  Each country of Kregen has its own peculiar little ways, in large things as in small. Customs strike across geographical boundaries irrespective of creed or race. As in this devilish business of flogging. Ol’ Snake appears in many hideous guises. The Cat’s claws are variously unsheathed. Over in the Flower Country in Balintol they pronounce ferocious sentences larded with intimidatory inventories of thousands of lashes. The victim is stripped and tied up. The whip-deldars use what they call the lintash or the tashlin depending on who wields the instrument. This lash consists of a bunch of full-petalled flowers of many varieties. When the victim is struck the petals caress his body. Each petal is counted as one stroke. The velvety flowers do not break the skin, do not sting, do no physical harm whatsoever. But the victim is shamed and chagrined, scored by mental blows far more savage than any lacerations of the skin. The Flower Country of Balintol is a peace-loving, gentle land, with its own concepts of integrity.