Prince of Scorpio

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“So you did receive the message I left at The Rose of Valka,” said Nath Larghos. “But why are you afoot? What took you so long?”

He eyed me strangely. I had myself under control. The Emperor, Delia, and their men were shut up in the mass of ruins at the center of the crater. Various roads led in and out scraped in the rock and dust, with the enormous bones dragged aside. They were risslaca bones, mainly, although there were some from mammals of a later time, all fossilized, a veritable treasure for paleontologists. I forced myself to act normally. Just for the moment, Delia’s danger lay in abeyance.

“That Opaz-rotten storm,” I grunted. “The airboat failed. One day, by Vox, we must teach those cramphs of Havilfar a lesson.”

“Agreed, Strom Drak.” He led me off to a cluster of tents. “Come, sit and drink wine and refresh yourself. You need a shave, if you will pardon the liberty of my mentioning it.”

“Mayhap,” I said, “I will grow a beard, Trylon.”

The Circadian rhythms of my Earth ancestry adapted well to the longer day-and-night cycle of Kregen, and I had quickly adjusted — and, if the truth be told — with some relish, to the idea that a day demanded not four square meals but at the least six and preferably seven or eight. We sat and drank wine — a fine vintage of Procul, rich and fortifying — and I knew that before I did what I screamed and hungered to do and rushed into the ruins to clasp Delia in my arms, I must find out everything I could of these third party members and their plans.

They had infiltrated all the other parties, the racters in particular, and built up a powerful and secret force. The headless zorcamen were their messengers, able to travel through the country where eyes would have followed the movements of any man wearing whatever colors. They had built up a network, and I heard news that struck me with a powerful horror. Trylon Larghos — of the Black Mountains! -

had set his own followers in motion against the men of the Blue Mountains.

“Those bandits who forever raid us would have tried to protect the Princess, their liege lord; as it is, they are out of the reckoning.”

I sat there, drinking stupid wine, and I trembled. And I had sent Inch there — I had sent him to his death!

Larghos went on to tell me how he had so arranged matters that one Kovnate, or any other great estate, had been set to put out of the issue the one most convenient. Neighbor had been set against neighbor. He rolled out the names with a kind of lip-licking glee. “Delphond, of course, means nothing in these affairs.”

“No,” I said, trying to speak normally. “They are a peaceful, luxury-loving lot down there.”

“So, Strom Drak. I am glad you have brought Valka in on the right side. I had bargained for that; I think I would not have enjoyed settling the Qua’voils against you.”

I stared at him, trying to mask my hatred. He would have loved doing that. The Qua’voils occupy the southeastern lobe of the large island to the west of Valka, and they are halflings, sharing the attributes of

— as the best way of so describing them — porcupines with those of men. They were — and here the old bitter jest turned sour in my mind — a thorn in the flesh of Valka. The large island to the west of Valka is called Canthirda. In the past it has been the scene of many bloody battles as Vallia, the main island, separated from Canthirda by a wide channel, sought to bring a single government over the whole archipelago. Many races had settled there and many species. The Qua’voils were always causing trouble. To the north of them the Emperor had settled in new lands a dependency of Relts, those more gentle cousins of the Rapas. The Valkas got on well with them, and it was to their land that Tom of Vulheim had advised me to go when I had sought to escape from Valka and reach Vallia, only to be halted by the express commands of the Star Lords in lightning and thunder. Now Larghos was speaking of fresh foulness.

“Those stupid bird-brained Relts! Now, Strom Drak, you must send orders to your warriors to join with the Qua’voils and march against the Relts. We will take over all of Canthirda and run it as it is meant to be run.” He chuckled. “A Relt can haul a barge as well as anyone else, I fancy.”

I managed to get out: “They remained loyal to the Emperor, Trylon?”

“More fool them. So did the Pallan Eling. I fancy he wishes he had joined us. The leader has already appointed another man as Pallan of Canals.”

Not knowing what Larghos had put in the letter, save that it must have summoned me to join the revolt, I could not inquire after this leader. I had thought Trylon Larghos that man. He was looking pleased, so I ventured to congratulate him on being appointed the Pallan of Canals.

“You are right Strom Drak. . The Pallans who will run the Presidio under the leader are all chosen. I feel that you will soon rise to office, should you wish to do so.”

“That day may come, Trylon Larghos.”

The attack on the tumbled mass of ruins was not being prosecuted with much zeal. I heard that a couple of hundred or so Bowmen of Loh, with other mercenaries, were shut up with the Emperor. They had bloodily repulsed the first impulsive attack. Now Larghos was waiting for the arrival of the leader with reinforcements. I talked more, seeming affable — and wanting to drive my dagger into this man’s guts -

and I learned.

He commented on the longbow, and I said I found it useful, although I would not care to shoot against a crimson Bowman. I knew that Seg Segutorio, the best bowman that Erthyrdrin — and therefore Loh -

had produced, had shot against me, and although he had won, it had been by a whisker. I had to learn the plans.

Drinking wine made Larghos boastful. “What are these talked-of Lohvian bowmen? Merely archers. They caught us in the open, unprepared, but the next time — why, the leader is bringing with him five hundred Undurkers. The crimson Bowmen have idled away their time, living in luxury provided by the Emperor, living on money extorted from us! The Undurkers can outshoot the Lohvians, by Vomer the Vile!”

I did not believe that, and I had experience to go on; but, certainly, the compound bows of the Undurkers were powerful and their reputation ferocious. I felt more and more fidgety, sitting here, drinking and talking; but for the moment Delia was safe and I was doing more valuable work here than blindly rushing into the ruins.

I walked about the third party’s camp, after a while, and Larghos gave me a great green and purple favor to wear in my hat. I saw the men they had, the mercenaries, men who would remain loyal while they were paid and their duty unfinished. Tents had been set up. There was no siege equipment of any kind that I could see. The leader might bring some, went the word. The suns would soon decline in the west. I felt I had learned all that was useful. The next big attack would go in through an archway of bones, through the gigantic skeletons of monstrous dinosaurs dead a million years or more. I looked out from the jump-off point and marked the way to go.

I had asked Larghos about Vomanus, his candidate.

“Vomanus! If I see him I shall slay him. He must have guessed he was being used merely as a front. Once the Emperor was out of his palace we had him at our mercy. Vomanus agreed to invite him to Vindelka. He trusted Vomanus, for the sake of Tharu, when he would not have trusted one of us. Vomanus warned the Emperor, but they fled here. That old fool Pallan Eling told us. He was glad to tell us.”

He looked sharply at me. I nodded.

“So,” he went on. “As soon as the Emperor is dead, the leader will take over. His candidate will wed the Princess. Then we can all count the loot.”

I fiddled with the crimson Bowman’s shooting glove I had taken from him. I use a bracer and a shooting glove when they are available; like any Bowman of Loh I can shoot without them if I have to. It is a knack.

All across to the east stretched the badlands of the Ocher Limits. Oh, they were nowise as strange and fearful as the Owlarh Waste over which I had tramped leaving the Hostile Territories. And they did not compare with the Klackadrin, that frightful place of hallucinations and the risslaca riding risslaca, the Phokaym. The Klackadrin is a great rift in the planet’s crust, gaseous, poisonous, fatal. The Ocher Limits were merely badlands. But that meant I wouldn’t walk out without plentiful supplies and much water. A shout went up and we turned our backs on the twin suns as they oblated in weird runnelings of jade and crimson, and stared up to see a fleet of fliers swinging in over the Ocher Limits. Bright pinpricks of light against the swathing darkness dropping down, they circled once. Then with a neat precision that, once again, made me give that mental nod of admiration for flier pilots, they settled onto the ocher sands. Five hundred archers from the islands of Undurkor!

With them were many other mercenaries, men willing to fight for pay. Well, I had been a mercenary in my time, aye, and was to be again, as you will hear. Fristles, Ochs, Rapas, Brokelsh, Womoxes, and men, they crowded from the fliers, laughing and exchanging rough jokes with comrades from bygone campaigns they recognized in the crowd waiting to greet them. Among them the yellow skins and shaven heads of the Chuliks stood out, grim and menacing and altogether malefic. I went with Trylon Larghos. I stood in the last of the mingled opaz light falling about the animated scene to greet this leader who would kill the Emperor and take his place, who would marry his own candidate to the Princess Majestrix.

With the feeling that it was my duty to count heads and to appraise potential in fighting, I studied the new arrivals.

Of the halflings I knew — and some were there I do not mention, for I had not run across them in such a way as to merit detailed descriptions yet to you in these tapes — I was sure enough that I knew their capabilities.

The Undurkers I knew, for they came from a string of islands situated in that enormous bay pent between the giant peninsula of South Segesthes and the smaller boot-shaped promontory to the west that separates Zenicce from Port Paros. We saw them often in Zenicce, and they had even made the attempt at a few settlements in Segesthes itself. But they seldom ventured onto the Great Plains. I rather fancied my wild clansmen would be a trifle too tough for them there.

Their conversation was loud and confident, brash, I thought. They carried their bows already strung and in fancifully decorated bow-sheathes slung under their left arms on straps, making a saltire shape with their arrow quivers. The bows themselves were very much like those of my clansmen, curved, compound, reflex, fabricated from horn, bone, and wood, with brilliant silver fittings. Lovers of ostentation to an extreme degree, are the Undurkers. Their faces always remind me of the snooty, supercilious, offended faces of borzois. Except for their eyes, which are mounted higher up for the essential binocular vision required, they do look like borzois — and that higher mounting for the eyes adds, if anything, to their expression of continual superiority.

They formed their camp a little apart from the rest of the brawling throng, where already, I guessed, some old scores were being paid off. A mercenary makes enemies as he goes through life. A young Strom with Larghos’ party laughed nervously, and fingered his rapier hilt. An older Vad, with a beard far too long for current fashions, boomed a laugh and clapped the young Strom on the back, and bade him bear up and face the future, when the Emperor was dead, and men could plunge their hands to the elbows in rich red gold.

These Undurkers wore coiled artificial headdresses of hair plaited and colored from which rose their squarish helmets. Their clothes, of good Lohvian silks and Segesthan hides, were studded with bits of metal and base gems; their Jiktars would wear real gems. Their feet were hidden in heavy boots, and I knew why; the hands of the Undurkers are hands that would not look amiss hanging on the wrists of a man, but in their paws they betray their canine origin. They are, as the Gons are ashamed of their manes of white hair, ashamed of their hind-paws, and always wear heavy concealing boots. That was their business. I wanted a glimpse of the leader — and then nothing would stop me from heading through the piles of bones to the ruins in the center and all that waited there. Food, drink, and fuel had been brought in and the camp fires blazed into the night sky, obliterating the last lingering ruby drops scattered across the western horizon as Zim sank in the wake of Genodras. I saw Berran the Vadvar of Rifuji, a lean dyspeptic man with a nervous tic about his left eye, laughing and jesting, and marked him, for his Jiktars were leading his men against Vomansoir to keep them out of play. Over most of Vallia that might have any hand in this business the third party had cast the web of their intrigues so that here, in isolation, the Emperor might be murdered and the new leader proclaimed. This was more than a palace revolution; this work would drench the empire in blood and overturn old dynasties, set men’s thoughts and actions into new paths that might last a thousand years. Around the campfires I took a heaping handful of roast vosk. I was not too proud to eat with these men, for all that I might be slaying them before the Maiden of the Many Smiles had crossed the heavens. I shoved the six quivers of arrows away on the strap holding them together; I kept my eye on them.

“Hai, Strom Drak!” said Larghos, very merry, quaffing his wine, his eyes beads of glitter in the firelight. He swaggered over with a bunch of men of whom I knew some, and whom I knew I would make myself acquainted better later on. “The leader is busy, there is much to do, but he will see you when he can spare the time.”

I swallowed vosk and nodded.

The thought came to me then that it might be accounted a great deed — as true Jikai — if when we met I plunged my rapier through the body of this leader.

Even today, I cannot say if I would have done that deed or not.

The leader stood by a great fire, half turned from me, talking to a group of the nobles of the third party caught up in his schemes. With them stood the Chuktar of the Undurkers. At the leader’s side stood a younger man, laughing and full of merriment. This was the third party’s candidate for the hand of the Princess Majestrix, through whose marriage the leader would seek to legitimize his claim to the throne. Larghos led me forward.

“Here is Berran, Vadvar of Rifuji,” said Larghos. “And here also is Drak, Strom of Valka.”

We went forward into the firelight.

The leader turned, a goblet of wine in his hand.

I saw him.

It was Naghan Furtway, Kov of Falinur.

At his side, laughing and jesting, stood his nephew, Jenbar.

I froze, for a stupid moment held in a stasis of self-contempt. These were the two I had rescued from the Mountains of the North at the instance of the Star Lords. I had saved their lives so that they might destroy mine and the girl’s I loved.

Jenbar stopped laughing.

“Who?” he said. He peered closer.

“Berran, Vadvar-” began Larghos.

“No. The other.”

“Drak, Strom of Valka.”

“No, by Vox!” said Jenbar. His laughter returned, bright and evil in the firelight. His uncle looked at me. Kov Furtway stared at me — and I knew his thoughts, as those of his nephew’s, went back with mine to those icy slopes and snowy mountains. They had known and had planned all this, then, and how they must have mocked their secret knowledge of me, then!

Furtway said, “We were surprised and disappointed when you disappeared from Therminsax. We would have taken you to Vondium, as you wished.”

“Aye, by Vox!” said Jenbar, chuckling. “And the Emperor would have been mightily pleased to receive you.”

“As, indeed, he did receive you.” Furtway’s smile altered in character. “Although how in the name of the Invisible Twins you escaped him I do not know.”

“What?” said Trylon Larghos. “What are you saying, Kov?”

“Why, Nath Largos, do you not know who this man is, the man you call Drak, Strom of Valka?”

Larghos saw the evil undercurrents running here, and he stammered, and was silent. His fear of this leader, who was Kov Furtway of Falinur, was very great.

I poised. Flight! I, Dray Prescot, the Lord of Strombar, Krozair of Zy, must run from my foemen! Well, I had done that before, not often, and would do so again; now I must live to reach my Delia, stand by her side, and defy the might of Vallia arrayed against us.

“Chuktar Uncar,” said Furtway. “Feather me this fool with arrows! Pull him down as the trags pull down a leem!”

The Undurker unshipped his bow. Larghos was babbling. Jenbar was laughing.

“That man, you fools,” shouted Furtway, “is Dray Prescot! That wild clansman, the Lord of Strombor!

Slay him!”

I swung about and ran from the firelight and into the avenue of dinosaur bones. And as I ran the whispering rain of arrows whistled about me and clanged from those millennia-old bones in a sleeting shower of death.