Captive Scorpio

Sixteen

Whether he lived or was dead made no real difference.

Whether he still moldered away in his crystal coffin or whether he had been blasphemously raised by necromantic power into a semblance of full-blooded life did not matter. What mattered was the belief, the impression, the effect.

These people believed.

The long low moaning shudder passed over them like a rashoon of the Eye of the World. They bowed. In a giant sighing rustle and the jangle of weapons and accoutrements they bowed their heads, crouched, extending their arms in swath after swath of ranked submission.

Was my daughter down there now, one of that hypnotized host? Did Dayra bow her head and tremble with all the others at the sight and stink of a long-dead wizard raised from the grave?

How in the name of Makki-Grodno’s disgusting diseased tripes could I know?

I was shaking. Sweat ran down my forehead and stung into my eyes. I blinked, swallowed, cursed — all the actions of an idiot without a thought in his thick vosk skull of a head. A girl in the russets and armor of a Battle Maiden ran lightly up past the half-naked temple girls. She spoke rapidly to Udo. His head went up; he gestured to Uzhiro. They conferred. Then Uzhiro swung back and called for everyone to rise and stare upon the sublime face and form of Guiskwain. Trylon Udo stepped forward. He held up a hand. He spoke with tremendous emotion, forcefully, jolting these people.

“Now are we invincible in battle. Now the potent force of San Guiskwain the Witherer is with us. He will waste away our enemies. Long and long have the Hawkwas waited for this time. And now it is here.”

His lifted hand gripped into a fist. “There is more. The army from Hamal landed in the south of Vallia has gained a great victory. The hosts of the emperor are withered away, his warriors strew the ground in windrows, their blood waters the dirt. This is a further sign! Guiskwain is with us and nothing can stand in our path.”

I had to stand peering through the stone bars of the balcony and listen, grinding down my nature that sought to burst out in bestial ferocity.

So the cramphs had come from Hamal, the bitter foe of Vallia, and not from Pandahem. An armada of skyships had brought them; that was a safe conclusion. And the emperor, Delia’s father, had been worsted. Had his bodyguard, the Crimson Bowmen, bought and paid for in red gold, betrayed him?

What of the men loyal to the emperor? What of the Blue Mountains, of Delphond, of my own Archers of Valka who had been sent for from Evir? What had happened down south?

And Delia?

Dayra. . Dayra. .

I had selfishly sought out my daughter here, and in that space of time I had been away from Vondium the empire might have fallen. Udo was shouting again, flushed, triumphant, overweening.

“Our own fleet of airboats will fly us south. We will join with our friends from Hamal. We will march upon Vondium and take that great city and utterly destroy all who stand in our path. All hail to San Guiskwain! All hail to the Hawkwas!”

Here once again was the hand of Phu-si-Yantong. I was convinced of that. He had extended the tentacles of his authority through Hamal, manipulating the pallans around the Empress Thyllis. He had provided the money and the weapons and now a fleet of vollers for Trylon Udo to take and sack Vondium. And, when the time was ripe, Phu-si-Yantong’s tools, in the guise of Stromich Ranjal and Zankov, would strike down Udo and take all for the greatest puissance of Phu-si-Yantong. It must be so.

“Sink me!” I burst out. “If you are alive, you necromantic kleesh, you’ll soon be dead again!”

The bowstave hissed from the cover, it seemed to string itself of its own will. The blue-fletched arrow nocked and the bow bent in a long sinuous flow of motion. The steel pile glittered. I loosed. The shaft flew sweetly. Clear across that wide space under the dome the arrow sped, piercing through the winding veils of incense smoke, drove hard and savagely full into San Guiskwain’s breast. I saw it. I saw the arrow curve upward. It ricocheted up with a high singing note of steel against crystal. It curved to fall away and be lost among the gathered host.

And San Guiskwain remained upright, unmoved, unharmed.

“By Krun!” I shouted. “Sorcery and more sorcery. I’ll have you yet, you cramph.”

Twice more I loosed and twice the sharp steel-tipped shafts caromed with that high crystal ringing from the unholy form of the dead wizard who yet lived.

Guards boiled along the balcony toward me. They were men. If I had to fight I had to fight. But, for the last time, and even as I loosed knowing the gesture was futile and useless, I cast a last shaft at the blasphemous form of Guiskwain.

Had I used the few brains I boast I should have shot at Uzhiro. Trylon Udo was a mere pawn. But my incensed fury was all directed at that towering, impregnable, loweringly obscene form of a living dead man.

Then, after a handful of shafts into the first of the charging guards it was handstrokes along the high balcony.

The shortsword, built by Naghan the Gnat to specifications drawn up from careful measurement of the deadly shortsword of my Clansmen of Segesthes, chunked in gleaming silver and ripped out gleaming red. I put my shoulder down and bashed into the guards, anxious to carve a way through them and reach the outside air. The notion of finding Dayra in all this hullabaloo had still not left me, although I was having to face the fact that with all my plans gone wrong I was hardly likely to find her now. Four Rapas tried to work as a team and do for me. No doubt they were accustomed to quick victory utilizing their intricate teamwork on the battlefield or in camp brawls. But a fighting man must tailor his work to circumstances. The balcony was narrow. Even as the first Rapa prepared to open the gambit and feint away I slashed his beak off, burst past him, sank the blade into the next one — just far enough

— ducked a wild clanxer swipe and so chunked left, right, and felled the other two. They couldn’t know, of course — but anyone who did would understand why the shortsword gleamed in my fist and the deadly Krozair longsword snugged still in its scabbard. The guards expected me to go one way, and so I went the other. A narrow slot opened in the wall, one of the many runnels all these huge old buildings possess, crevices between facing walls, cavities under domes, tunnels left for the maintenance that must unceasingly go on to stop the whole fabric from toppling to destruction. With a last flicker of the shortsword I ducked down the slot. The first fall was some ten feet and I hit with a thump. On my feet in an instant I padded between rough brick courses, a thread of light wanly illuminating the patches of damp and the mold. The way led via wooden ladders and dusty passages downward. The sounds of pursuit followed me. I stepped past a skeleton — it had been a plump wallpitix, poisoned by the temple caretakers, and crept away here to die

— and pushed on boldly. Wherever the way led I was sure to meet guards. Brittle bones crunched underfoot. A whole nest of wallpitixes, those furry, bright-eyed household scavengers, had died here. Beyond them and around a harsh masonry corner where the dirt had been cobbled over, a lenken door, banded with bronze, barred the way. I gave the door a look and put my shoulder to it.

With a creak like some poor soul being crushed between millstones, it grated open. Red and green light flooded in. Cautiously, I poked my head out, the blade raised, ready to defend myself. Around me stretched the ranked arcades of stone coffins. Some had toppled over and a detritus of bones and skulls littered the stone-flagged floor. I had penetrated below the temple and entered the crypt. That seemed apt at the time. Thoughtfully, I closed the door and shot the massive iron bolts, turning the heads over with a succession of sharp and satisfactory snaps. That took care of the bloodthirsty soldiers at my back. Now for the no-less bloodthirsty warriors in front.

The light streamed from tinted fireglass crystals set in niches along the coves. I guessed San Uzhiro had been down here earlier, needing light, to fetch out the crystal coffin of Guiskwain the Witherer. There were telltale marks in the dust. A skull rolled away as I marched across the flags. The eerie effects of witnessing a corpse brought back to life began to wear off. I found I was thinking again.

I have always said that if you can’t join them, beat them. As a principle of life on Kregen, I think that well-exemplified in the account of what befell Dray Prescot there. But, now, it would be convenient to join them for a space.

The fusty smell in the crypt led by way of the almost imperceptible wash of fresher air to the outer door. By its configuration I judged it stood at the bottom of a flight of steps cut into the earth leading up to ground level. Carefully, easing the door open a whisker at a time, I peered out. No matter how many times I tangle with guards, I am forced to fight sentries, hide from or dispatch watchmen, I can never think of them as mere lay figures. Guards on duty face a thankless task. At times it seems they are there merely to be slain by the princes and captains who seek to go where they should not. But a guard is a man, doing a rotten job, and glad when his duty is over and he can traipse off to the guardroom and take off at least a little of his equipment and put his feet up for a time, until he is due to roust out again.

Guards stand in gaudy uniforms with ornate spears and are ripe targets. No — I do not devalue guards, no matter that I have been forced to deal harshly with them in my time. The guards at the top of the steps were Chuliks. This complicated matters from the point of view of joining them, and made the physical exertion of dealing with them that much more hazardous. Chuliks are not apims. They are diffs. They are powerful, ferocious warriors, trained from the earliest age in the manipulation of weapons, lacking in the lighter side of humanity, abhorred except as mercenary warriors. This, at the time and, I admit, to my shame, made the moral side of the problem that much easier of resolution.

I could not join this little lot — so I was forced to beat them.

The fight boiled up along the steps and out onto a grassy sward between upflung buttresses. The courtyard closed in with gray stone walls. It formed one of the many surrounding enclosures penned by the cyclopean walls that uplifted and supported the bulk of the temple. Roughly wiped, the shortsword slapped back into its scabbard.

The Krozair longsword twinkled out, and flamed silver for only a heartbeat, and then turned into the bloody brand of destruction that shears through all opposition.

“Cut the cramph down!” And: “By Likshu the Treacherous! The man is a devil!” And: “In the name of Father Chalkush of the Iron Brand do not let him pass.”

Blades clashed and slithered, blood flew, we leaped and contorted across the grass, Chuliks spun away, pierced, slashed, degutted, the longsword flamed a circle of savage destruction. The very size of those towering walls deadened sound. We trampled across the grass and I had to skip and jump right smartly, for Chuliks are rightly renowned as superb fighting men. But for the dead Rapa paktun’s armor I would have been nicked a couple of times. But, in the end, I had them all, and so could plunk the dripping point of the Krozair brand into the turf and spell a moment or two, breathing deeply, gulping the air which stank now with the tang of freshly spilled blood.

The Chuliks wore the colors of Gelkwa. The colors were green, silver, black and yellow, arranged in the Hawkwa fashion as a regular pattern of circles, silver, black and yellow, upon their green sleeves. Finding a tunic that was not too bloody I stripped my own tunic off — or, rather, the tunic that had been Rojashin’s — and donned the garment of Gelkwa. All the same, the kax that had served me well went back on. The letting out of the shoulder straps and pauldrons had not affected the harness’s efficacy. The longbow could be unstrung and slid back into its sleeve. How long that would pass as a spear remained to be seen; it had deceived before. Settling a fresh helmet on my head — gaudy with colors, heavy with feathers — and curling the long cape about me I surveyed the scene.

A grassy sward filled with dead Chuliks. Blood. Stink. Flies. And me, Dray Prescot, helplessly and hopelessly looking for a wayward daughter, and all Vallia in flames. Through the far gateway I came out onto the temple precincts and was able to mingle casually with the departing throngs. The talk centered on one subject only. I walked with bowed head, as though profoundly affected by the awesome occurrences within the Temple of Hockwafernes. I felt that all Vallia was alight. Once the emperor was seen to falter, once a blow was struck against his authority, many people would stand forth from the shadows and openly challenge him. You know of many of the parties and factions; there were more, people determined to have their own way with the Empire of Vallia and to the Ice Floes of Sicce with anyone who opposed them. There had been a battle and the emperor had been defeated. I wondered if he had been there in person or had sent a general to deal with the invasion. I wondered if the old devil was still alive. My course was now clear cut. Despite all my ineffective attempts to see Dayra and to rescue her, I had achieved nothing. Even this corpse revived to blasphemous life lived and I had been unable to send him decently back to the grave. Between Dayra and Delia I was being forced to choose, and the alternatives were odious, agonizing. But — Delia. Yes I must assure myself she was safe first. If her father went down in ruin, Delia would become the prey of the leems prowling and scenting blood. Somehow, I sensed that Dayra had survived with the wild bunch with whom she ran because she knew how to handle both herself and them. She would not be suddenly in dire peril now, just because I had not seen her. Why should my arrival make any difference to her? After all, I had not affected her life up until now. She had lived and grown to womanhood without me. So, feeling the deep hurtful wounds pressing in on my spirit, I set off to see about stealing a flier.

The careful watch of the guards lay all at my rear now. The temple was still the focal point. How long I would have before that dreadful courtyard was discovered I did not know. But a flier I needed and a flier I would have.

At the least, I have some skill in stealing vollers.

The Chulik guard had included a Hikdar among their number and I assumed he had been checking up on his posts. That was the last item of military procedure he would ever perform. A Hikdar — nearly enough to an Earthly captain in that he commands a pastang, a company of around eighty men — is the first of the more important ranks, and it is possible for wealthy young men, well-connected and with military aptitude, to enter the army directly as ob-Hikdars. What the Deldars say about that may be imagined. So I had hung the Hikdar’s rank insigne on my harness and was prepared to be somewhat blunt to any swod who offered to halt me.

Everywhere a transformation had swept over Trylon Udo’s army. Where they had been a collection of irregulars, leavened with a few professionals, and aware of that and apprehensive of their own capacities and of the emperor’s Crimson Bowmen, now they were a united force, filled with a surging confidence that would carry them on despite casualties to ultimate victory.

With sufficient spear carriers to hurl forward, and with the hard-core elite troops to follow swiftly on, even well-disciplined enemies may be overcome. It is all zeal, morale, burning conviction, the sense of invulnerability through belief.

And the emperor had already been once defeated in the field.

My duty, clearly, lay in Vondium and the rapid creation of forces to withstand the two-pronged attack Phu-si-Yantong had thrown against Vallia.

As I walked steadily on, avoiding the areas near the leather tent of Nalgre and Dolan, fliers cruised into view, high, then circling and descending. The transports were gathering. I watched, counting, estimating, storing away information. To amass an aerial fleet of this size, and with vollers of this capacity, was a task beyond the resources of a trylon of the Northeastern part of Vallia. Once again the hand of the Wizard of Loh showed itself.

One of the tragedies of the situation was that Udo desired self-determination for the Northeast and his Hawkwas. Yantong’s ambitions ranged further, for through his tools he would rule Vallia himself. Udo was expendable, and where men and women are concerned that is a concept that always fills me with disgust. And yet — and yet it is a tactic used more than once. But, always I think, with volunteers. Not a pleasant business. .

The fliers were parked neatly and I strolled along marking out the small flier I would take, judging from her lines whether she was a swift craft. She would have to serve me well and not break down. And then I smiled — just a little. If Yantong had provided these vollers from the arsenals of Hamal then they would be first-class, they would function, they would not break down. Capital!

Now I have indicated that very many folk of Vallia believed their Prince Majister was a blown-up paper tiger, a fake Hyr-Jikai, holding a reputation he had not earned and did not deserve. This belief had been fostered by my long absence. And my enemies had no doubt put these rumors about. Phu-si-Yantong would know differently, Rosil Yasi, the Kataki Strom, knew differently from personal experience. His twin brother, the Stromich Ranjal, would therefore presumably know better, too. I overlooked that fact, and as a consequence prepared to stroll up to the little voller and send her racing into the sky without any fuss.

There were guards about, as was natural, and volmen working on the craft preparing them for the triumphant expedition south. These people I ignored and walked steadily toward my flier. A group of guards and volmen and Jikai Vuvushis stood gaping upward as a large flier circled preparatory to landing. Others looked aloft. This was my time. I advanced toward the craft I had selected more rapidly. Unfortunately she was not at the end of a row; half a dozen other craft surrounded her.

The Fristles jumped me when I had but a score of paces to go.

Scimitars upraised, their cat-faces distorted, shrilling spitting war cries they flung themselves at me.

“The rast! The Prince Majister!” They screeched their rage and triumph. “He is here! Ho! Guards! The Prince Majister!”

In an instant I was surrounded by a glittering hedge of steel.

This was inopportune. The longsword flamed out, striking away scimitars, slashing cat-faces, carving a path toward the voller. More guards were running up. The whole place came astir like an ants’ nest. I started running and slashing in real earnest. So near the voller I was not going to be denied. That particular pack of Fristles went down. I reached the voller. Before putting a hand to the coaming and leaping aboard I swung about. The old Krozair Disciplines snapped into place. Four Undurker archers were lifting their laminated bows, were letting fly. The Krozair longsword swatted this way and that and the short brightly-tufted arrows slapped away harmlessly.

Heading the group coming up from the side ran Zankov. I wouldn’t mind spitting him; but beside him raced the dark and sinister form of Stromich Ranjal. That wicked tailblade lifted high. The Battle Maidens were there also — I saw Leona nal Larravur, and Ros, and Firn, and Karina the Quick, the bandage awry, pelting along. I had no wish to slay them.

This group fouled the range for the Undurkers. Those diffs with their supercilious canine-faces ran up, trying to spot me and shaft me properly this time.

Zankov was yelling: “He is a coward. A no-account! A nulsh. Take him alive.”

“I’ll stick him through!” screeched Leona.

“I’ll take his eyes out first!” screeched Ros. The left-hand claw glittered menacingly. I leaped up into the voller and slammed the levers over to full forward and full lift. The airboat lifted two feet and then halted with a shuddering surge, a violent constriction of effort, hung swinging. I stuck my head over the side.

“By Vox!” I yelled, baffled.

The cramphs had affixed thick chains to the keel and locked them firmly into stakes driven deeply into the ground.

I was anchored fast.

Then they were on me.

Even as Zankov hurled himself forward, his rapier a glinting bar of light, Ranjal yelled: “Beware, Zankov!

He is a warrior-”

“A bag of vomit!” shouted Zankov and slashed wildly at me.

I slid the blow and put my left fist into his face. He fell backward from the voller with a scream. Ranjal flicked his tail at me and then hauled it back just in time. The longsword hissed through air.

“Let me get at him!” Ros was screeching.

“Let me!” screamed Leona. She knew how to use a rapier and the thin blade snickered past my ribs. Mind you, that was a waste, for the rapier would never puncture through the kax. I clouted her over the head — very gently.

An Undurker arrow whistled at my head and I ducked and flicked its fellow away with the longsword. A Rapa tried to climb onboard and I cleft his head down. There was nothing else for it. I would have to go overboard and release the chains.

With a wild whoop — a deliberately theatrical war cry which was not, in those circumstances, an entire waste of breath — I jumped from the flier.

A short and violent scuffle ensued in which various guards staggered away holding bloody fingers to various portions of their anatomy, or who slumped to the blood-soaked grass, and then I was familiar with the chains hooked into the stakes. One came free and the longsword bit around in a flailing slash that left a grotesque wake of lopped limbs. This was not fancy any more, this was sheer savagery in the attempt to remain alive. Zankov came at me again — he had courage, that one — and I hit him again with the hilt and the blade shocked on to skewer through the neck of a Rapa following him. Zankov dropped and I put a foot on his wrist, grinding fist and sword hilt into the dirt. Firn tried to spit me and I had to knock her away.

In the next split second I had my hand on the last remaining chain. A blow thunked down on my helmet and I whirled, the longsword slicing, and a Chulik — who should have known better — staggered away looking surprised. He collapsed. And then — somehow, somehow — with devastating speed, the lithe feline form of Ros appeared before me. She disdained her rapier. Her left hand whipped for my face.

My own left hand leaped from the longsword hilt and caught her wrist. I felt the harsh steel splines. Her face — that glorious, glowing, superbly beautiful face — bore down on me with hateful virulence. Under my foot Zankov thrust himself wildly sideways. He squirmed. With a vicious grinding twist I tramped down on his arm and he screamed.

And then — and then I felt a spiteful cutting agony pierce through the fingers of my left hand. With an oath I let Ros go. Along the metal splines sharp teeth stood out, and gleamed wetly with my blood. I could have thrust her through then with the longsword.

I did not.

I staggered as Zankov writhed around, yelling.

The cruel curved talons slashed toward me. I warded them off and Ros whipped her hand back in a cunning backhand blow that revolved at the last minute and so brought the claw in a long razoring slash down my face. The slicing blow stung.

A Chulik tried to degut me from the side and the longsword twitched and he fell away a dying man.

“You devil!” gasped Ros.

Zankov was screaming now, screaming all the bile and viciousness out, screeching words — impossible words.

“Kill the rast! Slash his eyes out!”

Again the claw razored toward my face.

“Kill him!” screamed Zankov. “Dayra! Kill him. Slay him for good and all, Dayra! Dayra!”