Masks of Scorpio

by Alan Burt Akers

  This time there was no misunderstanding.

  Normally the Star Lords catapulted me into danger naked, unarmed, and half-bedazzled from the effects of the blue radiance, the baleful form of the gigantic Scorpion and the stomach-unsettling topsy-turvy fall through nothingness.

  This time I felt limber, alert, ready for what might befall.

  I needed to be.

  By Zair, I needed to be!

  I was, as usual, naked and unarmed.

  Still the Everoinye must have sensed the lessening of regard for them that would have been engendered had they provided me with a spear, a helmet, a shield. They summoned, I went and did.

  But — this time — there was something new.

  In the rough canvas bag dangling on its cord over my shoulder snugged a hard, metallic object.

  Without thinking twice — in all the uproar that surrounded me — I drew out the golden zhantil mask and snapped the straps about my head. I glared out through the eyeholes.

  The scene was cut straight from nightmare.

  The cavern lofted into purple shadows, bruised and swollen. Torchlights fluttered against that encompassing presence. The leering silver image of the Leem lowered over all, high against the far wall, silver glints striking and sparking from its body.

  The iron cage stood empty. The door opened onto a stone ledge. On this ledge two acolytes of Lem the Silver Leem drew on the eager form of a little girl clad in a white dress.

  Candy juice smeared her chin.

  She was laughing.

  Below, to the side, the altar crouched. Dark, misshapen, stained, it humped a blot of blackness against the torchlights.

  The worshipers, all wearing their silver masks, swayed and gyrated, caught up in the expectations of the moment. The butcher-priests stood beside the altar. Their assistants held the implements of their trade upon cushions. The air stifled.

  And the stink was diabolical.

  I was one man, alone, naked and unarmed.

  The worshipers mustered upward of a hundred. The priests and their assistants and acolytes another thirty or so.

  Even as I started forward I was saying to myself but so that the damned Star Lords — wherever they were! — might hear: “Right, Star Lords. You’ve dropped me into a real beauty this time! By Vox! What a mess!”

  A knee in the back of a fellow who was clutching at the woman next to him, ready for the bloodletting to follow, sent him toppling. Before he fell the thraxter in the scabbard at his waist was gripped in my fist.

  I hit the next fellow a nasty slash along the neck and swiveled immediately to hack down his companion.

  Run — run! Straight for the altar and the cage and the girl sacrifice! Run as I’d never run before — get into them, as Cap’n Murkizon would roar: “Hit ’em, knock ’em down, tromple all over ’em!”

  The pandemonium began as I legged it, spreading from my hurtling body as the ripples spread from the thrusting prow of a swifter of the Eye of the World.

  People tried to stop me.

  They were cut down as the reaper cuts corn.

  They saw the blazing gold of the zhantil mask.

  Shocked cries burst out.

  “The Golden Zhantil masks! Kill him! Kill!”

  At least the Star Lords had had the sense to dump me down at the back of this unholy crew. They’d not seen me arrive, or don the mask. Now they saw a fleeting naked figure roaring along, cutting left and right, lopping heads, disemboweling, amputating limbs, the glinting glory of the zhantil mask ferocious upon them.

  They crushed in to prevent my onward movement and to slay me.

  Swords whipped up. Men and women screamed and gesticulated and tried to get at me.

  I did not hang about.

  The thraxter snapped off clean.

  I hit a corpulent bastard over the head with the hilt and took his sword and degutted his crony at his side.

  The next two went down, the next reeled away with his face reflecting the effects of a foot in the guts, and I roared on.

  It was all a blur, of course, a blur of action and movement, of the silver twinkle of swords and the quick spurt of dark red blood. Even then I don’t believe I thought that I would never surface from this dank spot. There was no time for coherent thought. As each fresh opponent or pairs or threes or fours of opponents presented themselves they had to be taken on their merits. What the floor looked like in the wake of that intemperate bloody bashing onslaught I hesitate to contemplate.

  I do recall that one thought hit me with scarlet intensity.

  Where the hell was Pompino in all this frantic bedlam?

  Had the Star Lords fouled up again?

  Nobody of this ripe bunch possessed a bow, or, at least, no one shot at me.

  One fellow hurled a stux and the javelin flew straight.

  I took it out of the air with my left hand. I did not return it whence it came, a favorite trick of the Krozairs. Instead I lobbed it at the Chief Priest in his brown and silver robes and his ornate mask, the butcher knife in his hands. It sheared through his neck, half-severing it. I was disappointed his head did not fall off.

  The Brown and Silver at his side jumped away, flinging up his hands in horror. But he didn’t drop his own cunning little instrument of torture.

  In the next half-dozen heartbeats I was past the chained-off area separating the main hall from the preserve of the priests. Here the incense stank away, stiflingly.

  There was time — just — to throw two of the torches at the brown draperies, and then I leaped for the man who was now turned away from the fallen body of his chief. The other acolytes ran. I hit the second in command over the head — not too hard — hurdled him and scooped up the girl.

  Two hard and unmerciful blows disposed of her guards.

  The second-in-command staggered. I put the girl down — of course she was crying now — and said: “It is all right. Stand still.”

  I put an inch and a half of the thraxter into the second-in-command’s guts and said: “Where is the way out?”

  The repulsive idiot must have imagined I was setting up a bargain with him, making a compact.

  “Behind the drapes there,” he babbled. The sword must have been tickling him up. He wriggled like an insect on a pin. He pointed painfully. “There.”

  I finished him — and he still clutched the shiny instrument he would have used to put this girl child to so much pain — snatched up the sacrifice, and hared for the drapes.

  Another stux hit the wall beyond as I wrenched the panel open.

  We bundled through into dimness relieved by mineral-oil lamps at intervals. The air smelled stale and musty and yet clean by comparison with the stinks in that chamber of abominations. The door snapped shut. There seemed no way of bolting or barring it, so I just ran full tilt up the corridor.

  The girl sacrifice, following the usual habits of girl sacrifices rescued against their wills, was yelling her head off and banging her heels against me.

  The corridor opened into a square stone-cut chamber.

  The congregation would be after me like a pack of leems.

  The Chulik in the chamber, clad in leather armor with brown and silver flourishes, seeing me, immediately drew his sword and dropped into the on guard. He was ready for a pleasant foining match before he dispatched me.

  The point of my flung thraxter took him in the throat. The blade punched on, ripping tendons and throat and all to smash in a welter of blood.

  I ran on without stopping, scooped his sword up, went racing on along the far corridor.

  Howls from back down the passage echoed from the stone walls. The helter-skelter rush and hammer of feet roared after me. I fled on, carrying my cargo in her white dress as carefully as I could. Blood spattered the dress from the splashes and stains covering me. She was blubbering away now, a fist stuffed into her mouth and her nose all running and I felt for her, I felt for her. But that mob of hyenas baying after us — if hyenas bay — had to be outdistanced before we could
stop. Outdistanced — for I was not sanguine of slaying them all, much though that would have cleansed the world of Kregen.

  Steps hewn from the rock led up.

  A few lanterns glowed to point out the broken treads and the darkly greasy patches where water seeped.

  The smell of the earth, dank and rich and sweet, began to oust the charnel-house stench of the chamber of worship and sacrifice with its unholy freight of incense and blood.

  Through her sobs the child gasped out: “Put me down, put me down! Let me go!”

  Now the treads were fashioned of wood, cutting through the dark earth, and my feet hit them with the hard smack of callused skin.

  In these frantic moments of flight there was just no way of explaining, and my concern for the child had to be adjusted with what might appear to be the same callousness that affected my feet. She had been promised sweets and candies, a pretty white dress, and these goodies she had received. To be snatched from them by a naked hairy sweating devil in a glinting gold zhantil mask! No, oh, no, explanations at this moment could never explain.

  The wooden door at the head of the stairs was not guarded from the inside, whereat my heart sank, for I judged it would be bolted and guarded from the outside.

  The only way to find out was to put a shoulder to it and heave.

  The door resisted.

  I felt — I felt that demeaning rush of blood to the head, the scarlet curtain, the furious obsessive rage that trembles all along the muscles and bursts out in blinding ferocity.

  I smashed at the door.

  It flew open and the mingled emerald and ruby radiance of Kregen flooded in.

  The splintered ends of the shattered bar thumped to the ground. Clutching the girl sacrifice, my sword snouting, I leaped through the opening.

  The two Chuliks who had been lounging on the wooden bench beside the door that let into the grassy bank scrambled to their feet. They wore the brown and silver and leather harness and they’d been playing at the Game of Moons. The pieces went flying. The Chuliks ripped out their swords and jumped for me silently.

  Like all Chuliks I’d known, they were quick, professional fighting men. There was no chance of repeating my trick with a flung thraxter here. They were on me in a twinkling.

  They did not attack one after the other like actors in a play who must never harm the hero; they leaped in together.

  Tackling two Chuliks is difficult enough, Vox knows, without the encumbrance of a squealing, wriggling, kicking girl-child in your free arm. I dumped her down, yelled: “Stand still!” and ripped into the Yellow Tuskers.

  They were good — well, that is a stupid remark! Any Chulik who goes overseas and takes employment as a paktun is good. No thought of fancy work entered my head. This had to be quick — damned quick, by Krun.

  The grass afforded firm footing, so that we three could leap and pirouette and strike and withdraw with ease. They whipped in side by side and I avoided the first blows and curled my blade in and the left-handed one contemptuously foined me off. I had to skip and jump to miss his comrade’s slash. The next onset went much the same way, although as in a mirror, for the right-hand one parried and the left-hand one struck. That round, like the first, ended with us fronting across the grass, warily seeking an opening, circling.

  Of course, they tried to circle me from each side.

  This was more like it.

  They had to split up so that one could go clockwise and the other widdershins. They’d crush me between them as an ear of grain is crushed in the mill.

  So they thought.

  Without hesitation I rushed upon the left-hand fellow, making a bit of a pantomime of it, not actually screeching a war cry, but making enough of a menacing growling challenge to set the Chulik quivering.

  As I thus rushed on him, his companion, invisible at my back, let out a yell.

  “Hold him, Changa!”

  This fellow before me whirled up his thraxter, and a wild light came into his yellow face. His tusks were banded with silver. He set himself to meet my attack and, so I guessed, deal with me before his comrade arrived, and thus gain the kudos, what some Kregan warriors call the absteilung.

  Without the shadow of a doubt, the other Chulik was haring across the grass toward my back, hungering for his share in what absteilung there was to be gained from one naked apim warrior.

  I halted. I whirled.

  The onrushing Chulik, all froth and foam, eyes glaring, tusks flecking spittle from his gaping mouth, gasping with the effort, reared up, sword high.

  The one called Changa screeched.

  “Beware, Tincho, beware...”

  I slid the blade into Tincho, twisted, withdrew, and instantly, without thought, flung sideways and snatched the thraxter aloft. Changa’s blow clanged down. Then it was a twist, a thrust, another ugly twist, and a withdrawal.

  Slowly, they collapsed. Each mirroring the other’s actions, they fell to their knees. The swords dropped from lax fingers. Together, they pitched forward onto the grass, sprawled, limp and done for.

  One — the one called Changa — managed to gasp out: “By Likshu the Treacherous... the apim fooled us...”

  I looked down at them.

  “By the Black Chunkrah,” I said, and the sadness tinged my voice. “I salute you both, Chuliks.”

  The blood dripped from the thraxter.

  It was the work of a moment to strip a length of brown cloth free and wind it about me. I looked about, and if I say my breathing was even and steady, do not be deceived.

  The bank rose at my side with the smashed open door leading to the horrors within. Within a few moments horrors on two legs would come roaring out of that cavern seeking my blood.

  Below me down the hill spread a tree-dotted expanse leading to the sea. The light of the suns sparkled on that sea. Just what sea it might be in all of Kregen I could not then know.

  A seaport nestled in a bay with a spit of land to give protection. The roads were clustered with shipping.

  Away to the right on a flat grassy area of considerable extent the long ordered rows of tents of an army glistened in the light.

  The scents of grass and trees came pleasantly to my nostrils. And a scampering white dot on twinkling bare legs skipped heedlessly down the grassy slope toward the town.

  Picking up my sword, I followed.

  Chapter sixteen

  A price for Carrie

  “Twelve gold pieces, my friend, and I’ll throw in an extra five dhems.”

  Carrying the girl sacrifice — her name she had whispered was Carrie — I tried to brush past in the crowded souk. The fellow with his black chin beard and gold chains and oily hair was persistent.

  “Come now, my friend! I know why you are here! You cannot do better than deal with me, Honest Nath Ob-eye the Trancular. Fifteen gold pieces, then—”

  He wore a patch over his left eye. His clothes were ornate if greasy, and he carried as well as a sword a whip coiled up over his left shoulder. If I sold Carrie to him he’d have no compunction in using that evil instrument on her. He’d do it in such a way as not to mark the merchandise. Slavers know how to strike in the pain ways.

  Carrie and I had hidden in a brake of greenery as the pursuit from that devil’s pit roared past. We’d cleaned ourselves up in a brook that led into the river that reached the sea where this seaport stood. Its name was Memguin and it boasted a powerful fortress. I’d never been here before. But I knew where we were.

  By Krun! I knew!

  The Everoinye had dumped me down in Menaham.

  Menaham, whose inhabitants were known to their neighbors as the Bloody Menahem, stood immediately to the west of Pando’s Bormark in Tomboram. Hereditary enemies, the two countries, and this bloody place had joined up willingly with Phu-Si-Yantong when, as the Hyr Notor, he had taken over in his crazy schemes to conquer the world.

  Well, he was dead, the black devil.

  But his evil legacy lived on.

  “Look, dom,” wheedled this Nat
h Ob-eye the Trancular. “There is no need to fear. I can see your situation at a glance. You are a poor man, and you have too many children. It is common, men and women being what they are and the good Pandrite blessing them with fecundity. Your girl will be placed in a good home where she will learn to sew and stitch and perhaps, if she has the aptitude, be trained in the arts. A harpist, a dancer, perhaps if she has the gifts of the gods an actress — the lords hereabouts are partial to—”

  “Go,” I said, “away.”

  “But, dom—”

  The souk bustled with activity. The spicy scents rose, and with them the tantalizing odors of food reminded me that my insides were as hollow as a blown egg.

  This unpleasant slaver tried a new tack as I pushed on through the throngs.

  “Twenty gold pieces will set you up for life! Why—”

  His offer was as nonsensical as to price as the situation was to my purposes.

  I ignored him and settled Carrie more comfortably on my shoulder. She took considerable interest in the busy scene, with its sights and colors and scents and ceaseless activity, crying out in wonder from time to time. We’d got along in the time it had taken to reach Memguin. By Zair! And hadn’t I had considerable experience lately in the psychological handling of bewildered little girl sacrifices?

  “Look, my friend, let me put this to you. You have a sword. Perhaps you think of joining the army being raised by Kov Colun Mogper of Mursham?”

  My intense interest was at once aroused. So that was the way of it! The treacherous Mogper was once more reaching a tentacle into my affairs. As to the sword, I had, perforce, to carry it naked in my free hand.

  “Perhaps, my friend, you are not the girl’s father at all. Perhaps you have stolen her away, kidnapped her for gain. If I call the watch...”

  A tall and emaciated thin Weul’til joined the proceedings from the side, using his furry mouth to fashion a grimace that passed for a smile. Not as tall as your average Ng’grogan, your average Weul’til, but skinnier, decidedly skinnier.

  He adjusted his black clothes, shiny in their fashion, wriggled his antennae, and said: “Hai, Nath Ob-eye the Trancular! My friend—” Then to me: “I will match this thieving trader’s best offer, aye, and increase it by five gold pieces—”