Captive Scorpio

Nine

“Now,” I said to Delia when all the preparations were complete. “This water bottle.”

“I see it, my love.”

We had gone up to our Valkan villa, which was still not fully brought back to habitability, despite the length of time that had elapsed since I’d acquired it by virtue of being made the Strom of Valka behind my back. But there were apartments enough beautifully furnished to make it a real home. Nalgre the Staff was the current Chamberlain, a stout fellow and one I would trust. We kept no slaves. The villa was set somewhat back from the road, bowered in greenery, presenting an outward appearance of decay and neglect. I did not object to that. Further along on the Hill — the Valkan villa was situated on the Hill of Vel’alar — the villas of the nobles presented all the munificence of aspect expected of the rich and mighty of the empire.

“This water bottle.” I hefted it. Plain leather, scuffed, worn, it was a scruffy-looking object. “We must keep it safely locked away in the stoutest iron chest.”

Delia nodded understandingly. After I had mended my hurts in the Sacred Pool of Baptism I had filled this water bottle with the milky fluid that conferred life. My return from the island of Ba-Domek on which stands the Swinging City of Aphrasoe had been rushed with the help of my Djangs; but I had managed to bring back my weapons, that superb zorca Shadow, and this water bottle.

“It will be safe here.” Delia placed the bottle in humespack, wrapping the cloth over it, and then wadding down household linen so that the iron chest almost overflowed. We closed the lid and sat companionably upon it and did up the locks. They can make fine chests in Vallia, for they have much gold and silver, jewels and precious objects to preserve.

The four keys and the master key were secreted away in a brick hole concealed within the wall of our bedroom. No picture covered that lenken paneling there; the wood had been carpentered to a close fit by men long since dead. I had found that small hiding place only by chance, and regretted it was not large enough to accommodate the water bottle itself.

As we went up to the landing platform I said to Delia: “We keep up five villas here besides the quarters in the palace. It might be a good idea to sell one or two.”

She cocked her head at me. The night air breathed sweet about us. She of the Veils rode through a tracery of clouds. The landing platform was dusty, and dead leaves blew with brittle rustlings into the corners. We had slept enough to feel refreshed. I was sorry that Delia could not fly with me; but she was adamant. The Sisters of the Rose had to be attended to first.

“You may, my great grizzly graint. But I do not think I shall sell the Delphondian villa-”

“Of course not!” That was a superb, a delightful, a magical home.

“And the Blue Mountains-”

“No.”

“So, as you have an affection for this place, that leaves the villas of Zamra and Veliadrin.”

“Um,” I said, throwing off the restraining chains on the flier I was using. “You are thinking of the children? They will need villas?”

“Perhaps.”

I climbed in and Delia climbed in after. She looked at me gravely. The flier was a small two-place craft, trim, reasonably fast, and one I hoped would sustain me in the air. We must think about buying some more vollers for the villas we kept up at different places; one never knew when a fleet air-boat would be required in a hurry. As you know, I had been in that kind of need before and was like to be again, Zair knows.

She kissed me good-bye. I said “Remberee” with a deal of anger; but this was a case of having to accept the needle.

When Delia stood once more on the dusty, refuse-blowing landing platform I looked down and waved, and shouted: “Remberee, my heart!” and took the voller up in a savage lunge of power. The Twins broke through a carpet of clouds and the two second moons of Kregen, eternally orbiting each other, cast down their fuzzy pink light. She of the Veils, the fourth moon, rolled along before them. So, once more, I, Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor and Krozair of Zy, raced through the nighted skies of Kregen, under the hurtling moons, driving headlong forward to action and adventure. The thought of seeing Barty again cheered me up. He was to meet me in Thengelsax. Sax means fort, and many of the towns and cities along the arc of the old frontiers of central northeast Vallia grew up from the ancient fortifications raised against the barbarian reivers. There are plenty of other words for castle, fortress, fort, Kregish being a rich language; but one thing they all share in common: they refer to serious concerns, matters of building pride and cunning military fortification. The sprawling cities that festoon the old walls would give heart palpitations to those ancient builders. And this, as you will perceive, was the nub of the affair. For Vallia was a great and puissant empire. There should not be, under the law, conflict within the boundaries of the empire between province and province. The emperor would be better advised seeking ways of settling these troubles instead of running after beautiful bitch-queens.

But then, he was a man. And Queen Lush was a woman — that was blatantly obvious. If she occupied his attention perhaps I could get on with my own affairs. At least, he had not made too particular inquiries about his grandchildren. I had to hoick Dayra out of the mess she was in and straighten her out before the emperor decided to take a hand.

And, again, that implied that I knew best for my daughter. That I was totally unsure must be obvious. But I thought, at the least, that smashing up taverns and raiding with a bunch of hairy reivers against innocent citizens of Vallia were not occupations she could in all honesty claim as morally defensible. Mind you, by Krun! She could easily have some explanation that would make me change my mind. The Suns of Scorpio flooded down their mingled streaming lights of jade and ruby as I circled once over Thengelsax and slanted in for a landing outside the designated inn. The city presented the expected appearance of a well-ordered city of Vallia. Clean, neat, prosperous, situated where the River Emerade flows into the Great River, the city looked justly proud of itself.

As an interesting light upon the importance of those old fortifications, the Trylon took the name of Thengelsax, from the city, and not that of Thengel, from the trylonate. Barty met me as the airboat touched down and the hostlers ran out to see to her. He looked excited and I felt a welling of hope that he had discovered some vital clue to the whereabouts of Dayra. My hopes were dashed. As we went into the inn and posting house, The Hanged Leemshead, Barty started on cussing about the Strom of Vilandeul. He windmilled his arms and when we had pots of ale before us he sloshed suds about, scarlet-faced, almost incoherent, and yet, in the end, making lucid sense and betraying the very real depths of his affection for Dayra.

“That Nath Typhohan!” he raved. “I know him! I’ve wrestled him, and thrown him, and fenced with him and pinked him. Now he’s the Strom of Vilandeul he has the effrontery to lay claim to the most beautiful land of my island! He wants the Shadow Forests of Calimbrev! I ask you!”

I nodded. “I had trouble with his father. Well-” I said, uncomfortably, “not me. My son Drak and Tom Tomor. I was away at the time. The Strom of Vilandeul laid claim to parts of Veliadrin, west of the Varamin Mountains.”

“The trouble is Nath’s Stromnate of Vilandeul is small and is penned in by powerful kovnates. He is land hungry.”

“You can understand that.”

“We must stick together, pri — Jak. If it comes to it, we’ll have to hire mercenaries and go up against him. No damned Typhohan is going to steal my land from me, by Vox!”

Mildly, I said: “In Valka we have our own army. And I would heartily dislike having to fight Vallians. We threw the aragorn and the slavers out. Don’t they trouble you?”

“A little. They take a few slaves from me. Nothing I can’t live with.”

My mildness vanished. “If you entertain any notions of marrying Dayra, I fancy you will have to manumit your slaves. The whole lot. And I will help you deal with the slavers.”

He blinked.

Even so good-hearted a fellow as Barty could not really understand my attitude about slaves. Had not Opaz made slaves for other men to use? Of course he had. Therefore a good citizen of Vallia must employ what Opaz had put into his hands.

This must be pursued later. I said in my harsh old voice: “What have you discovered about Dayra?”

“I have spoken to the landlord. She was seen with a rascally gang of Hawkwas hiring zorcas and riding northeast.”

Hawkwa was the contemptuous name given in hatred and fear by the civilized people of Vallia in the old days to the reivers from the Northeast, and in turn used by the barbarians in boastful pride and reciprocal contempt.

“Also, I have hired a guide.”

Well, I could not complain. Barty had done well. In the time I had been making inquiries in Vondium and hobnobbing with the emperor he had been hard at work here. I warmed to him. He must cherish genuine feelings for my daughter, for he had not gone rushing back to his island to fend off the predatory demands of Nath Typhohan, the Strom of Vilandeul. Well, I would help him there, for his island lay close to Veliadrin. And the Elten of Avanar, Tom Tomor, had given the old Strom of Vilandeul a salutary lesson over land-grabbing.

“We will not ride,” I said with a snap. “We will take your flier, seeing she has space for a dozen or more and the zorcas. My two-seat craft will be useless. The guide you have found-”

“Uthnior Chavonthjid. A hunter with a fine reputation. And expensive, by Vox.”

“Well, this Uthnior will have to get used to airboats if he is not already familiar with them. We have no time to lose.”

Transferring the gear I had brought to Barty’s flier did not take long, despite the mountains of stuff Delia always insisted I take along with me on these expeditions. More often than not I lost most of it, and returned draggle-tailed and almost empty-handed. Weapons, food and — well, little else, really, on Kregen, apart from necessary clothing against the weather — are all that are required. Of food we had wicker hampers piled up. Of weapons we took the usual Kregen arsenal. Uthnior Chavonthjid turned out to be the picture of a leem hunter, lean, rangy, broad-shouldered, with that weather-beaten face that conveys an ample sense of experience and wide horizons. His history contained nothing out of the usual, save for the incident that claimed for him the coveted jid appended to the animal he had slain bare-handed, or the danger he had overcome. The chavonth is a feral big cat, savage and tirelessly vindictive. Uthnior had met and bested one, breaking its back. The word jid is seldom used alone, which is why I always use bane — as, for instance, in the Bane of Grodno. I felt confident that Uthnior Chavonthjid would prove a fine, tough guide for us. As to his reliability, that remained to be weighed in the balance.

As we flew at the sedate speed of Barty’s capacious flier toward the Kwan Hills, in which rises the River Emerade, some forty dwaburs or so from Thengelsax, I was once more forcibly struck by the incongruity of having to hire a guide to any part of Vallia. But the truth remained — and, alas, still remains

— that some parts of Vallia are barbaric and untamed still.

You may recall the Ochre Limits. There nature set the obstacles in the path. Here, the Kwan Hills, densely forested, alive with game, untracked and mysterious, were the haunts of the drikingers, the reivers, the Hawkwas, who set the limits to strangers.

Uthnior, to my surprise, had refused to take zorcas.

“Koter Jakhan,” he said in his grave manner. “Where we are going the totrix is the mount for us.”

Only a half-mur’s pondering convinced me I must heed the specialist knowledge of the man on the spot. Nath Dangorn, called Totrix, would have chuckled. But he along with the rest of the newly created Order of Kroveres of Iztar, was far away. This was a family matter, and Barty had his rights in it, also. So we took six totrixes in the rigged-up stalls in the rear of Barty’s flier, and the awkward, stubborn, six-legged riding animals did not take kindly to being thus hurled helplessly through thin air. We touched down at the edge of a wood well clear of the outskirts of the town of Tarkwa-fash. From here, with the blue haze of the Kwan Hills beckoning us on, we would ride. The voller was hidden in the trees with cut branches piled upon her. Uthnior eyed the mass of weapons and gear. Then he looked at Barty and me with a wary, reflective glance that was instantly appreciated by me, at least, although Barty soon understood.

Uthnior himself slung his personal gear on his baggage totrix. All six were provided with the riding saddle of this part of Kregen, a tall, broad, comfortable seat. Uthnior buckled on his crossbow with care, strapping the quivers of bolts alongside, checking the swing of the three swords and the variety of polearms he carried. His provision bags went the other side. Barty pulled his lower lip.

“You have brought a mighty fine array of weaponry, Jak. Tell me, Uthnior, what is it best for us to take?”

I did not fail to notice that the guide carried a short but powerful bow, a compound reflex weapon of considerable beauty and precision, over his shoulder. The quiverful of arrows to match were fletched with a neutral greeny-browny set of feathers. But the steel heads were all wide, keen, wedge-shaped flesh-cutters, with vicious barbs. This bow, it was clear, was his personal close-range missile weapon. The crossbow was for the fancy shooting.

Uthnior looked at my Lohvian longbow. The quiverful of arrows were fletched with the brilliant blue plumage of the crested korf of the Blue Mountains. As to the piles, they were my usual mix, different heads for different tasks. “That is a bow from Loh, I think,” he said. “A longbow?”

“Aye. You have seen one before?”

His reply astonished me although it should not have.

“No. Never.”

This showed yet again the sheer size of the island of Vallia. Away up here the hunters used crossbows or the reflex bow. The longbow was virtually unknown. And yet, the weird thing was, if I took a flier and flew due east for eighty or so dwaburs I would arrive in the island of Zamra. Most odd. Of course, the heartlands of the Northeast lay farther to the north, mainly around the Stackwamors, which was why the reivers had full rein down here.

“We must shoot a match, Chavonthjid, when opportunity offers.”

“I would welcome that. Although I fancy this longbow of yours clumsy to handle.”

Not prepared to get into an argument over that — what he said was true for one unskilled in the use of the supreme Lohvian longbow — I urged us to complete our preparations and to mount up and ride. We wanted to get into the foothills before nightfall.

In the end I stuck to my usual custom and took my accustomed arsenal. Barty hewed to the middle path and selected a mix of weapons that made Uthnior merely smile, rather than frown, and we set off. Uthnior, it turned out, had a grandmother from the Northeast. He was at home here. If I give the impression that for a Southern Vallian to venture into these parts was like trespassing into enemy territory, then I give a false impression. We were still in Vallia and the emperor’s writ still ran here, albeit very often evaded or downright ignored. These people paid taxes to the Presidio and emperor in Vondium. They were Vallians and proud of it — if they could be Northeastern Vallians. It was the agitators who fomented unrest, hanging their banditry on the respectable peg of self-determination — or so I was led to believe. I thought them wrong. But, equally, I know that big does not equal best, and small can, indeed, be charmingly beautiful.

There is an old saying that has its echo on Kregen — A good big ’un will beat a good little ’un. I looked always to the future, past the time when Vallia would have come to an arrangement with the countries of Pandahem, and achieved peace with Hamal — and I hoped without having to thrash them in a long and costly war — and brought in the whole fantastic continent of Havilfar. When the groupings of islands and continents called Paz were truly one — then we could deal with the Chanks. We would have to deal with the devils from over the curve of the world before then, of course, dolefully so, as best we could.

We broke in among the foothills of the Kwan Range and we made camp in a secluded gulley with water and fodder to hand. We had seen not a soul. The game abounded, and regarded us rather in the light of trespassers, evidence of the infrequency of human intrusion.

In the course of a regular season Uthnior would guide just the one hunting party, and there were other hunters each with his own patch; he had been free to take employment with Barty because his hunting party had called it off over the recrudescence of the border troubles. He’d never married, seemingly preferring the open freedom of the hunter’s life. His home was where he happened to be. He appeared to me a competent, grave, inwardly content man, with a deep understanding and love for the strange ways of nature upon Kregen.

As was becoming increasingly my habit these days when I met fresh acquaintances, I studied this hunter with the Kroveres of Iztar in mind. Would he or would he not be found worthy to be admitted to the Order? Already I had been impressed by his manner. As for Barty, that young man for all his virtues had some way to go yet before the Order would consider him.

We pressed on again while the golden and pink moonlight gave us illumination, She of the Veils and the Twins lighting the way through the broken country. Ever upward we trended. The six-legged totrixes were an uncomfortable ride; but I am used to their waywardnesses and, deprived of a zorca, made the best of them.

We traveled for the rest of the night and as the last small hurtling moon vanished in the haze off to our left Uthnior indicated we should make camp again.

The fire we built was small, compact, shielded by a rocky overhang. When full daylight came we doused it and sat, resting, looking about as the light brightened. Barty could not rest for long.

“Can we not push on, Uthnior?”

The guide pulled a grass stem from the corner of his mouth.

“You hired me to guide you to the camp of the Hawkwas. I know the area they frequent — and avoid it. In general terms I can take you straight there. You will be observed closely over the last dwabur or so.”

Listening quietly to him I made no comment; but I guessed accurately what he would say next.

“Complete directions can be given you. I will be happy to do that. But you must go on by yourselves at the end. I shall wait three days for you. No more.”