Savage Scorpio

Chapter Two

As that dark and glittering onrushing mass bore down on us I cursed my own stupidity and pig-headed vanity and folly. I, Dray Prescot, had led these men to their deaths. The horrid clicking and scratching of many sleeth claws reached us with hypnotic intensity. The tridents glittered red in the light of the Suns of Scorpio — glittered red with our blood.

The line at my back moved and snaked, restively. The zorcas were tired. The men were exhausted. Fool! Onker! I should have retreated at the first, sought what assistance there was in Nikzm; small though it was, it would have made the difference. All the mercenaries at the Fair, the stout country-folk, the fishermen — with what weapons we could have gathered up for them, we would have fought — and I realized even as I thus castigated myself that no simple countryman, no fisherman, was going to meet and best in battle these supremely warlike Shanks. The Shanks lived for battle. It was a creed with them, some divine right given to them by their own dark and fishy gods, driving them on, egging them on to plunder and conquest and eternal battle.

The truth was the Brotherhood had achieved against the Shanks what few groups of men of Paz had ever achieved before. And the cost was high, the payment dear, the final reckoning written in blood and spelling death.

“Brotherhood of Paz!” I bellowed, turning in the saddle, glaring back at the shuffling line. “Those of you who will, go! Flee! Save yourselves. Raise the island, carry word to Zamra, rouse the garrisons. And those that will — follow me!”

Lumpily turning in the saddle and ready to clap in heels — no man who is a rider uses spurs to a zorca

— I hesitated, and turned back. My face must have borne that old intolerant, savage, devil’s look. I bellowed.

“Seg! Inch! Balass! Turko! Oby!” I shouted, loud, intemperately, viciously. “Tom! Vangar! Nath! Kenli!

Naghan! You do not ride with me. Your duty lies in other places closer to your hearts! I order you to ride and seek succor! Ride!”

They left it to Seg to speak for them all.

Seg Segutorio lifted his bow. He smiled that raffish, fey grin of his, his blue eyes very bright and merry in that tanned face beneath the shock of black hair.

“Oh, aye, my old dom. We’ll ride. We’ll obey your damned high-handed orders. Only it happens that the quickest way for us to ride to do your bidding — prince — is to ride straight ahead. Straight ahead!”

“And if any lumpen Fish-Face happens to get in the way, let him look out,” Inch finished.

“Famblys!” I shouted, feeling the gush of warmth, the anger, the pride at their folly, the agony and the shame. “Idiots! Onkers! It is my duty and mine alone — it falls to me-”

“Sometimes you take too much on your shoulders,” said Turko. His magnificent muscles bulged. I blinked. In Turko’s left hand a green-dripping sword caught the lights of the twin suns. “Turko? A sword?”

He laughed. “They broke my parrying stick. This serves in its stead. Had I my great shield, now, then-”

The clicking scrape of the advancing sleeths bore down on us.

The line shifted and yet, and yet they would not ride off. For a space the tension hung. Now I knew that they must ride. I had been wrong, criminally wrong, in thus dragging these men to their deaths. In my own folly and pride I thought I had been doing the right, the noble, thing. But nobility can be bought at too high a price. It was folly to have these men slain to no purpose now. If we all died here — as we would, as we would! — how would that help this tiny island of Nikzm, let alone the mighty empire of Vallia?

No thoughts of my Delia must be allowed to enter my stubborn old vosk-skull of a head. None.

“Go!” I bellowed. “Save yourselves!”

A few men shook out their reins, they would not look at me. But I did not blame them as they began to turn their zorcas’ heads, ready to ride back through the dark defiles of the forest. So this was how all my brave dreams for a great Brotherhood had foundered! The Order was finished. It had never even begun.

I turned back to face the oncoming mass of Shkanes, and I wished I could have had my old Krozair longsword with me, and I kicked in my heels and the zorca lunged forward for the last time. Headlong I belted for the black and silver glittering mass of Fish-Heads. A shrill and shocked shrieking began — began to my rear.

I did not look back. The zorca flew fleetly over the grass where the blue and red and white flowers starred the green, where drops of red blood stained across the flowers. The shouting at my back increased and voices mingled in shocked disbelief. I looked up to my left, toward the white ruins. I stared, disbelieving.

A light glowed among the white tumbled columns.

A golden yellow light, lambent, blazing, growing in color and luminosity, swelling. And at the heart of that refulgent radiance the figure of a woman astride a zorca. A woman wearing golden armor, astride a white zorca whose single spiral horn blazed with golden light. I stared and the mount beneath me ran loose. I stared at the apparition. She wore golden armor and carried a great banner which flowed freely outspread in a breeze no one else could feel, an unearthly breeze from a land beyond the senses of normal men.

“Zena Iztar!” I screamed it out, shaken, dazed, wondering. “Zena Iztar!”

This was the supernatural woman who had visited me on Earth when I had been banished there for twenty-one miserable years. Then she had used the fashionable name of Madam Ivanovna. She had appeared to me before, using supernatural means, and I believed she had helped me. She was not, as far as I then knew, aligned either with the Savanti or with the Star Lords. I gaped and the zorca eased up, and slowed down. Zena Iztar lifted the great banner so that all could see the device coruscating upon the crimson surface.

Outlined in white upon the glowing crimson banner the deep royal blue of her cogwheel device forced itself upon my own senses, yet I had never grasped the significance of that emblem. Always before Zena Iztar had appeared to me alone, with those around us frozen in a timeless sleep. Yet now — now from the shouts and excited and shocked exclamations that broke from the brothers of the Order, she could be seen by us all.

Her voice reached us. Golden, ringing, full-bodied, her voice floated above all the sounds of coming battle, over the shouts and yells of the men, over the clicking scraping advance of the sleeths and the hissing malevolence of the Fish-Heads, over the mingled jingling of war harness.

“Men of Paz! Brothers of the Order! Comrades in blood! Those you call Fish-Heads must be shown the error of their ways. The Order demands sacrifice, loyalty, utter devotion, unswerving purpose, obedience.” She lifted the banner in her left hand and golden coruscating sparks shot from her armor. In her right hand a sword — a sword! A sword like unto a Savanti sword — lifted high and pointed. The brand pointed at the Shanks. “Death is a small price to pay for honor! Brothers of the Order! Your duty in honor is to be true to yourselves and to Paz and to the Order.”

The light began to fade.

I shook my head. There was much she had said with which I would not, could not, agree. But a great deal summed up something of what I struggled for.

But, in the name of Zair! How did she know the Order existed at all?

But, then, she was no mortal woman. She understood many secrets I longed to know, could see into the hearts of men, must surely comprehend the doings of Kregen and attempt to mold them to her own ends. The Shanks pressed nearer. They were confident now. They had withstood all we could throw at them. They had suffered and had lost a goodly number from their ranks. But they could see how we had suffered. They shrilled their hideous screeching war cries and they came on, fishy, stinking, scaly, repulsive, deadly.

They had not seen the golden glowing apparition of Zena Iztar.

Her chiming voice rang out for one last time before the vision disappeared.

“Fight for what you believe to be true, Men of Paz. And, remember, never speak to anyone not of the Order of my presence, for I am sacrosanct. This is a stricture laid on you as members of the Order -

and a privilege. Follow Dray Prescot. Jikai!”

The first man to move was Dredd Pyvorr.

With a high lifting shriek he set his zorca in a straight dead run at the oncoming Shanks. We saw him galloping madly into the thickest of them. We saw his sword swirling and smiting left and right, saw him engulfed as a stone is engulfed in a pool. In the same instant we were all once more in motion, roaring down, headlong belting down into the repulsively stinking mass of Fish-Heads. Dredd Pyvorr had shouted as he charged for the last time.

Over and over he had shouted as he roared to his death.

“For the Brotherhood of Iztar! For the Order! For Dray Prescot! Iztar! Iztar!”

I felt the coldness running through me.

There were manipulations here, superhuman twistings of normal human men to supernatural ends. Then we hit.

The red roaring madness of battle descended on us. I am contemptuous of that notorious red curtain that falls before the fighting man’s eyes — so it is said — but it is a thing that transcends humanity and must be used and manipulated in its turn so far as a man may. We fought. We fought. I think, now, as I thought then, that Zena Iztar brought some of her magical powers to our assistance. Nothing else, in all sanity, serves to explain what happened.

The few of us, the few Brothers of the Order of Iztar, smashed and beat and routed the confident might of the Shanks from around the curve of the world. We destroyed them. The survivors ran. The sleeths poured blood as the Shkanes poured blood. Green ichor fuming onto the grass, smoking under the suns. We pursued them.

Down the long slope and through the copse and so down the last curve of the trail into Briar’s Cove we pursued them, slaying all the way.

Memories are scarlet and monstrous and do not pass.

Our arms did not tire. We were possessed of superhuman strength. Tireless, we smote and slew and drove them down to the beach where we slew them in the water as they tried to reach their ships. Those ships with their clumsy square upperworks and the sleek fishlike lines below water, with the tall banded aerodynamic sails, pushed off with the last few remnants. The black and amber sails slid up the tall masts, curving to the breeze. The ships pulled away, sliding easily through the water, and we stood on the beach and shook our fists at the Shanks, and cursed them, and jeered them, and felt, perhaps, as no men of Paz had ever felt before.

We did not attempt to sail the ships in which the Katakis had landed after the Shkanes. I knew that no ship of Paz, not even the superb race-built galleons of Vallia, could catch a Shank ship. Some of the very best galleons built in Valka might almost match a Shank vessel, and we were working all the time on improvements; but these Kataki vessels were mere small editions of argenters, broad and squat and with a pitiful sail plan. They were broad-beamed and capacious and designed to hold slaves. We stood and jeered and fumed until the last Shank vessel vanished from sight, and then we turned back to the dolorous business of clearing up after the battle.

There was much talk, and much to talk about; but one single topic dominated every conversation. Zena Iztar.

Dredd Pyvorr had been the first to drive into battle at her instigation. He, it was soon apparent, was the original martyr of the Order. His name would live enshrined.

Traditions were built in this fashion.

And, too, I detected a difference about these men. Some inner strength had been vouchsafed them. They were not the same men who had agreed to join the Order. They had been refined, refined in the crucible of agony and battle, and now they gleamed with a luster of spirit I found mightily reassuring -

and also worrying in that nagging anxious way I have when events pour past without due design and thought spent upon them.

As with my membership of the Order of Krozairs of Zy upon the Eye of the World, I will not speak of much of our discipline. Much had been taken from the Krozairs, for their Orders are justly famed, and workmanlike, martial and mystic, devoted to Zair, and designed to sustain morale and spirit in the deepest of adversities. So I will content myself with a few remarks only. In the old days of Valka, when that island of which I am Strom was its own kingdom, they had their own knights, men of high-caliber, renowned, given the honor prefix of Ver to their names. This, we chose to resurrect, and members of the Order of Iztar were called, among ourselves, Ver Seg and Ver Inch, and so on. Ver Seg Segutorio was the High Archbold.

This I welcomed and refused to take on any particular position for myself, preferring to be a plain member, a simple Ver of the Order.

We called ourselves Kroveres.[1]

Kroveres.

The name rang and reverberated, as the name Krozair rings and reverberates. We were the Kroveres of Iztar.

Also, and at the time much to my displeasure, another name was also used, and I asked questions and was told. Was told.

Seg said to me: “We are the Order of Kroveres of Iztar, Dray. Now we must build. This little Island has witnessed a miracle.”

“Surely,” I said as we rode lumpily for the Mound of Arial. “And you still haven’t given me any idea why we came here in the first place — except to check up on progress.”

He laughed.

“Why, you may as well know now. I think Elder Pyvorr will be mourning his son-” All the laughter fled.

“It was a great deed, Dredd Pyvorr’s. We shall remember him in the Kroveres.”

“Yes, that is so. And?”

“And, my old dom, you were asked here to be given the new name of the island as a gifting. You are the Kov of Zamra. Zamra is just over the horizon to the north, and this little island is called Nikzm-”

“I know!” Nik as a prefix means half and as a suffix means small. In the names of lands and islands, however, the prefix often carries the meaning of small, for Zamra was by many times more than twice the size of Small Zamra, Nikzamra, Nikzm.

“The Elders and people of the island have decided and issued the necessary patents and the bokkertu has been concluded to call the island Drayzm. Drayzm. So, my old dom, we are also the Kroveres of Drayzm.”

So, as you can well imagine, I was not overly pleased.

I passed it off; but Seg gave me a hard look, and said a word or two about thick-headed, vosk-skulled ingrates, and how Delia was muchly pleased-

“Did Delia know about this, then?”

“Oh, aye. You don’t think we’d go behind your back without consulting Delia, do you? You’ve told me how they made you Strom of Valka — well! This is no new title — and I know how you feel about them, as I do. They are useful in this world.”

“That is sooth, by Vox!”

And Inch leaned forward to say, waspishly: “And if the Kov of Falinur lost that one, he’d not give a damn, hey?”

“Too right!” snapped back Seg. He had had great trouble in his kovnate of Falinur. “Except — except Thelda would-”

“Aye,” I said. “Thelda likes mightily to be a kovneva. And so she should. She deserves it.”

Inch laughed and chick-chicked his zorca and we rode on. But I began to think how best to relieve Seg of Falinur and find him a kovnate where he was not regarded with hatred, through no fault of his own but because of the ingrained animosity of the people to anyone who deprived them of slaves. Then, of course, the problem would arise that the new kov would almost certainly approve of slavery, as did most ordinary men and women of Vallia. Slavery, Delia and I had sworn, was going to be rooted out of Vallia. I looked beyond that, as did Delia, I know now, until it was finally uprooted from all of Paz. As we rode back this kind of talk naturally led on to the problems of Vallia, the huge island Empire. Delia’s father, the emperor, had once more gained a breathing space with the destruction of the Chyyanists; but there were always fresh factions seeking to drag him down and install the puppet of their own choice as emperor.

“Mind you, Dray,” said Seg, reflectively as we cantered gently into a defile ready to begin the last ascent to Arial’s Mound in the last of the suns shine. “The nobles loyal to the emperor remain loyal, or most of them. He couldn’t rule without them.”

“But the opposition parties still continue, also,” pointed out Inch. “They keep changing alliance and pattern; but they are still against the emperor, the whole family.” Here he looked at me. I nodded somberly. Vallia is an enormous patchwork of many different sized estates, run by nobles -

by kovs and vads and trylons and Stroms and all the others — and there are many parties and factions, not all of whom seek to destroy the emperor. At this time the main party was the Racter Party, and the second the Panval Party. The Fegters were growing in strength and there was always the North East of Vallia, an area traditionally troublesome. But when Inch mentioned the family of the emperor, he was thinking of Delia and me and our family.

“And, to cap it all,” said Seg, “there’s this Queen Lush. Thelda is still captivated by the woman. I fancy this queen has her eyeballs firmly set on the emperor. You’ll have to have a say there, Dray.”

“Sink me!” I burst out. “If the old devil wants to get married again I won’t stop him.” I added, nastily:

“Give him something else to think about.”

“Well, my old dom, you’re still banished from Vondium.”

I grumped in the saddle, and we rode on. By Zair! But I was anxious to see Delia again and find out about our erring daughter Dayra. And even Lela still had not put in an appearance. I’d not seen them for years and years. It was just not good enough. So I was not in the happiest of moods as the final rites were gone through, the Kroveres of Iztar dispersed to their homes, the island was renamed Drayzm, and, at last, at blessedly last, we could take off for Valka and home — and Delia.