Secret Scorpio

Two

For an instant I lay flat on my back amid the splintered wreckage of the gallery. A damned infernal chunk of wood jabbed sharply into my back. The people broke away in a circle, yelling, struggling to tear themselves free from the descending debris. The noise and confusion, the spouting dust from the ancient building, the struggles of men and women, I suppose all the furor was rather splendid. But I had an eye out for the black feathers and leather armor of Himet’s masichieri. They’d recover more rapidly from the shock of surprise than the fisherfolk.

I sprang up. I did not draw my weapons.

People were turning to stare back at me. Broken planks slipped beneath our feet and the dust made us cough. Dust and muck festooned my hair and shoulders, and my face, I suppose, knowing my own weaknesses, revealed the struggle between laughter and downright cussing fury possessing me. To be thus chucked down like a loon among a mob yelling for my blood — well, it was funny rather than not. Himet stood with arms uplifted, his mouth open, glaring as though a demon from Cottmer’s caverns had miraculously appeared before him.

Oh, yes, the cramph recognized me.

Whoever his leader was, this Makfaril, that rast would not be pleased with his priest. For, forgetting what he had been enjoining the folk around, Himet pointed a rigid forefinger at me. His wide-eyed stare blanked into stupefaction.

“It is Dray Prescot, the devil himself!”

After the thunder of the gallery smashing into the floor a silent moment expanded. Himet’s voice shocked out. The fisherfolk understood the enormity of what the priest of the Great Chyyan had said.

“Dray Prescot!”

They repeated the name. A quick babblement flowed through the crowd. They stared at me. Like a monstrous tidal wave growing and surging landward from the wastes of the sea, like a tsunami running from continent to continent, their hatred burst up and broke. In the next instant they roared upon me in a shrieking mob.

A skip and a jump cleared the wreckage. Somehow, the rapier and dagger leaped into my hands. I beat away a reaching trident. A knife whistled past my ear and thunked into a shattered upright. These people were out for blood. These fisherfolk, wrought upon, forgetting what Himet had warned, were out to lay me flat on the floor, to slay me, to kill me stone cold dead.

“Do not kill him!” screeched Himet the Mak. He might as well have shouted into a Cape Horner. With a shout of rage Himet turned and violently gesticulated, a savage, unmistakable gesture of command. At once his guards, his bonny masichieri, leaped down into the press, their weapons glittering. Then began as weird a military dance as you could desire. For I had no wish to be forced to kill these simple duped fisherfolk, yet they sought to slay me. I did not mind if a few of the masichieri were cut down, but the guards were under orders not to slay me. And the fisherfolk would not willingly kill the guards of the priest but, as I quickly saw, the guards would slay the townspeople if necessary. This was a ludicrous three-sided encounter with each of the three sides willing to slay one of the other sides but not the third, and therefore, it must follow, to be slain and not reply. I saw a guard run his thraxter through a burly fisherman who poised to hurl his trident at me. So the preservation of my life for the future evil intentions of Makfaril had already cost the life of one fisherman of Veliadrin, and was like to cost more if I did not act now to stop this blasphemy.

I let out a yell. I bellowed over the hubbub as I had been wont to hail the foretop in a gale.

“Yes! I am Dray Prescot! I am your lawful High Kov. I wish you no harm. I have listened to your grievances and they will be redressed in justice. On this you have my word as a Prince of Vallia!”

I might as well have saved my breath.

The business about listening to them provoked only the shrieked response: “He has been spying on us!

Slay the rast! Kill Dray Prescot!”

“No! No!” bawled Himet. “He must be taken before our leader. Makfaril demanded him for his own justice!”

Enough of the congregation in the hall had not been fully persuaded by Himet’s exhortations and promises to obey blindly the dictates of the priest of the new creed. They had been roused to a sense of injustice. They had been cruelly treated by their new High Kov, and here he was, alone, ready to be chopped down in the violent way of Kregen and thus prove the justice of their own ends. There followed a bout of confused struggle, wherein I found myself backed up against the far wall, beating away the crude implements of the fisherfolk and ever and anon striking with more deadly intent at a black-feathered guard. To defend oneself and not to slay the attacker — yes, there is a skill in that. It was not too easy in the press. A bulky lad staggered back with red blood pouring from his cheek where my main gauche, in whipping back to parry a trident, had gashed his flesh. Weapons flashed before my eyes. The guards were having difficulty in breaking through the fishermen to get at me, and when they did they died. The masichieri tumbled the fishermen away and advanced with scowls to an unwelcome task. They handled their parrying-sticks with a fine free skill. As for their thraxters, the thraxter is a weapon of Havilfar, the straight cut and thrust sword, and these masichieri preferred it to the rapier in work of this nature.

The wall at my back was not altogether a good idea. No one was going to sneak up behind me and chop my knees off, but I could not skip and jump with the freedom I prefer in this kind of bash and batter fighting. I began to angle around and a trident passed perilously close under my left arm as I leaned away to flick a neat rapier slash that unhitched the belt from a portly fisherman’s waist. His breeches started to slide down. He let out a furious yell and tried to degut me with a knife so admirably adapted for the purpose, and the breeches tangled while he staggered, purple-faced, enraged, striking ineffectually at me. I did not laugh. Truth to tell, this whole fracas smacked of the ludicrous and I was in no mood for petty levity.

I leaped away and one masichier tried to be clever and earn his hire. He brought his thraxter around, flat, a blow aimed to stun. I slid the blow and bashed him with the hilt of the rapier. Instantly I had to duck a savage sweep from a parrying-stick from a fellow masichier. I almost ducked into a wickedly unstabbing trident.

“By the Black Chunkrah!” I bellowed at them all. “Must I break all your heads to make you see sense?”

They snarled and roared at this, pressing in as I foined them off.

“You are not wanted in Can-thirda!” “Go home, Dray Prescot!” “Go back to your palace and your bitch wife!”

The fellow who said this, leathern-faced, scarred of jaw, abruptly somersaulted backward. My fist in the rapier guard tingled with the force of the blow.

“Kill him! Kill him!”

It was all a flurry of blade and tine and parrying-stick, and I smashed them back, beginning to feel my frustrated fury working on me. Soon the guards would tire of their fruitless attempts to take me alive. Then the fighting would begin.

“Slay the tapo!” screeched a lean and emaciated fisherman, hurling his trident. My rapier angled up and flicked the thing away. But the weapon was a trident, three-tined, and the sharp tines caught in my blade. Like the jaws of a shark the trident wrapped around the slender blade. I did not let go of the hilt, but my rapier was angled up and deflected, uselessly pointing to the cobwebby ceiling and the smoking lamps. A fat and sweating man wearing more ornate clothes than the others, with a narrow gold chain about his neck and embroidered sleeves, even though silver fish scales caught in folds of the cloth glittered as marks of his trade, cursed with joy and thrust his trident hard for my guts. I wriggled away at the last moment, striking a guard with the main gauche, wrenching it free in a gout of blood. I swung back to meet the next attack of the fat and wealthy trident-man. His sweating face showed a grimace of fierce joy, of that awful crazed desire to kill. I do not think he would have had me. But he would have come close.

He was not given the chance.

One of the two brothers who had mocked Himet the Mak stepped in and wrapped a burly forearm around the fellow’s neck. With a chopped off squeal the crazed man was hauled bodily backward. There was no time to gasp out thanks, for with a swish my rapier came down into line and extended into a bar of gleaming red-stained steel and the guard who had decided it was time finally to deal with me shrieked and spun away, clasping his neck where the long blade had kissed him above the edge of his leather armor.

“Take him, you fools!” Himet the Mak danced about frenziedly, well back of his guards, yelling orders and curses. His fanatical obsession with the instructions given him by Makfaril did not induce him to step forward and take an active part in the fray. Steel scraped and men yelled and bodies fell. The pressure at least gave me some chance, for the fishermen maintained their yelling and their desperate attempts to get at me, and the masichieri continued to belt them away and so preserve my miserable hide. The rapier smeared with blood and the main gauche a similar reeking blade darting and flashing before me, I hacked and cut and kept them off. The rapier glistened before the eyes of a guard, distracting him, cut back viciously. He fell. As he fell so the dagger in my left fist sliced at a precise angle under the chin of his fellow. He staggered away as the rapier went in, slickly, withdrew, and a third guard spun away, shrieking, coughing out his life blood.

Now the masichieri were finished with this tomfoolery. Now these hired guards were out for blood. A masichier stepped up, bulky in creaking leather armor, bold and confident, his thraxter held in a practiced grip, the parrying-stick slanting and catching runnels of jagged orange light. He thrust. He began his thrust as I whirled away from thunking a fisherman over the head and kicking another off. The masichier halted his thrust in mid-action.

His shaggy hair beneath the iron helmet fluttered as his head lolled. Blood and spittle began to dribble foolishly from the corner of his mouth. He slid slowly sideways, upsetting a fisherman and his trident. As the guard toppled slowly to the fish-stinking floor I saw the long Lohvian arrow sprouting from his back, driven clean through his boiled leather armor, driven with exquisite force so that it did its business and no more, for it had not burst on through the man’s chest.

I did not look up.

Another arrow punched through the neck of the nearest guard.

Oh, yes, you who have read accounts of my life on Kregen, that marvelous and horrible, beautiful and savage world four hundred light-years from the world of my birth, will understand. For Seg Segutorio, the master Bowman of Loh, had shot over me more than once in the past, had preserved my skin with superb displays of archery.

The guards’ yelling changed in tone. The viciousness I had known could not be battened down for much longer broke and brought them surging forward with all the old hateful, expected, demoniac desire to slay.

A fisherman sailed up into the air from the back of the ruck. He went spinning up like a Catherine wheel and he landed plump on the heads of a group of others trying to get in at me and they all collapsed like ninepins. I saw Turko grasp another unfortunate wight and hurl him like a bag of beans. Turko, the famed Khamster, a high Kham, a man who had reached very high levels of achievement within the syples of the Khamorros, disdained edged and pointed weapons. Now he bore through the throng like a snowplow through six-foot high drifts.

Inch’s long Saxon-pattern ax removed the head of a masichier. No one who wishes to retain their anatomy entire is advised to stand within the sweep of Inch’s great danheim ax. His leather cap was slightly askew, and a long braid of brilliant yellow hair swung wildly as he fought. That meant trouble.

Balass the Hawk, matched as a swordsman without his usual shield against a thraxter and parrying-stick man, made nothing of the disadvantage. The guard’s parrying stick was a klattar model, of balass and steel, and suddenly it slanted where he had no intention of allowing it to go. His thraxter swirled as Balass’s own superb Valkan sword slid in. Himet was short another guard. As for young Oby, his wicked long-knife did nasty things to a guard who thought that he, at least, stood a chance.

The fisherfolk fell back, gasping, dazed.

Himet the Mak. . I whirled, for the moment freed from immediate opposition. The priest was nowhere to be seen. He had fled. Well, that was sensible. It was all of a piece with the man, with the artificial religion he sought to introduce to Veliadrin, and with the warped morals of the situation.

“Himet the Mak!” I bellowed up to Seg, who stood braced in the doorway above the vanished gallery. His bow was spanned, ready, and a stray gleam of light from the lamps struck a glittering spark from the steel arrow-point, most comforting to me, but most disconcerting to the poor wights huddled below, I daresay.

Seg spoke clearly, barely lifting his voice. “He vanished beyond the curtains behind the idol after the first shots.”

There was no need for me to ask why Seg had not feathered him. Seg had loosed to clear away the guards pressing in on me. He had taken what he regarded as the prime objective. There is no use arguing with Seg Segutorio on these matters. As well argue with me, for I would have done the same had Seg been down there in that riot instead of me.

As Inch said, “Let us go and chase him, for he has made me break a taboo, and I shall have to perform unsightly things hereafter,” Oby ran off with a whoop.

Again, there is no profit in laughing at Inch’s taboos, which embroil him in ludicrous situations, at least, not too much laughter, for we could always make Inch stand on his head with the mere scent of squish pie. I hauled a guard toward me by his harness. I used my left hand, for my right held the main gauche as well as the rapier in a somewhat awkward grip. Now had I been a Djang, or a Pachak, I could have done that little trick without trouble.

I glared on the guard who rolled his eyes and flinched away.

“Tell me of Himet the Mak, my friend,” I said, quite pleasantly, staring on the fellow. He blanched at this and his wild eyes went wilder still. He considered himself a dead man, that was certain, yet he had only been wounded, a long cut down his cheek. He made no attempt to lick at the blood. “Where has the arch-devil gone? Tell me that and you may live, dom.”

Whether he believed me or not I do not know. He opened his mouth, slobbering, and I saw the stump of tongue there and felt the disgust in me. Had Himet done this? Did he employ dumb guards? But some had shouted as they fought.

“Can you write?” demanded Roybin.

A rolling, lolling shake of the head.

That was to be expected. Illiterates, even if through no fault of their own, tended to end up in the lower levels of whatever trade they entered. I had no desire to play dwazn questions with him. Vallia, Havilfar, the islands, there were far too many bolt holes to go through even if this dumb devil knew. And, if Hamal was the homeland of the masichieri, I might ask all night and not get the right answer. Balass, cleaning his sword, said, “They use the thraxter and parrying-stick. That is not of Vallia.”

“They wear rapiers and daggers,” said Roybin, fingering his chin. “Yet they left them in their scabbards and chose thraxters. It adds up. Hamal it must be.”

Seg had jumped down to join us and we talked, taking no notice of the fisherfolk. I wanted these people of Veliadrin to see the picture and use their common sense. “Not Hamal, Roybin, surely?” Seg’s bow gleamed in the orange light. “Shields there. More likely the Dawn Lands of Havilfar, or over to the west. .

“Wherever they come from,” I said, “and this Himet the Mak, their target is Veliadrin. Right. Tell me, how far have they infiltrated Vallia to venture out here?”

The question was the obvious one, of course. Why bother over an island off the east coast of Vallia, an island moreover split into different provinces, when the main island remained?

Roybin looked worried. “You mean, my Prince, they have already completed their foul work in Vallia?”

Now that he phrased it like that I realized I didn’t mean it. . quite. Perhaps I was growing paranoid. The word is of this later time and my thoughts then were more earthy. I had thought that Himet the Mak was after me personally. All this business about capturing me and taking me to the leader and torturing me was pedestrian stuff. I had thought, perhaps, the Star Lords might be taking up again their interest in me or, perhaps, the Savanti. But this kind of rowdy fracas was not their style, never had been so far. If they wanted me they could reach down and by means of a gigantic and ghostly representation of a Scorpion they could snatch me up from wherever I happened to be on Kregen and dump me down anywhere else they desired. Aye, and they could send me packing back to Earth four hundred light-years off through space.

The Star Lords and the Savanti between them had caused me great grief in my life, as you know, but I was no longer the same blind, ignorant, gasping puppet I had once been. Yet I was still painfully aware that at the whim of forces I did not understand and the dictates of superhuman men and women I might be flung willy-nilly into fights and adventures, into danger and unwelcome distractions, at any moment of any day.

I would not again struggle against the Star Lords in the same stupid way I had done the time they had summoned me and, because Delia and my friends were in peril, I had refused them. Then they had flung me back to Earth for twenty-one miserable years. No. This was not the handiwork of the Star Lords, who sought to work out a destiny for Kregen I could not comprehend. The fisherfolk were growing restless. We were, as I have indicated, a right tearaway bunch of fearsome fighting men. But once we had seen off the black-feathered masichieri, why, there we stood, all talking and arguing away together as though the fisher people of Autonne did not exist. What were those good folk to make of that?

They had heard of Dray Prescot, their new High Kov, and they did not like him or his high-handed ways in renaming their island or of freeing their slaves. Fingering their tridents, shuffling their feet, they began to edge toward us.

Their faces hardened with determination ousting shock. They formed a half circle about us with their women safely in the rear. Their feet shuffled with more purpose as they advanced. The way the orange lights caught on the sharp tines of their tridents and flashed sparks about the lofty room reminded us that perhaps we had not finished here yet.

Seg was saying, “More news would have come out of Vallia about them if the Chyyanists had grown really strong. In Falinur there have been rumors only, with nothing positive. This is the furthest I’ve gone yet in discovering-”

“They’re a secretive bunch,” observed Inch, who had come back in after chasing after Oby. Now the tall man was carefully winding his braid of yellow hair and stuffing it up under the leather cap. He looked more than a trifle put out, adding, “Secretive. And they preach revolution.”

Casually, unhurriedly, Seg Segutorio turned around. His superb muscles put out their awful power and the bow string drew back. The arrow cast cleanly. The sharp steel point struck fiercely into the floorboards before that advancing semicircle of men determined to slay us out of ignorance and folly and hatred. The blazing blue feathers with which the arrow was fletched quivered as the shaft thrummed in the floor.

Seg turned back and answered Inch. “We’d have known something, you long streak.”

It was magnificently done.

Instantly the forward shuffle of those desperate men stopped as though each man had been stricken with paralysis.

I said, “There is no profit, really, in running after Himet. Oby is on a fruitless errand. He will seek us out, all in due course. He will come to us, of that I feel sure.”

As though on cue Oby walked back in looking disgruntled. He shook a few raindrops from him and the wind gusted in through the rotting doorway, half sagging from broken hinges.

“He took a flier and went — whoosh — and I can tell you, my Prince, the voller was a good one. Made in Hamal for a damned Hamalese.”

If anybody would know about airboats, Oby would.

As Oby spoke I was fretting away about my response to Roybin and my insistence that Himet would seek me out. Were these the responses of a megalomaniac? Did I see conspiracy everywhere, plots to drag me down to destruction in every unusual occurrence?

I just was not sure.

“I believe this Himet the Mak will seek us out again. This is not just a fresh religious creed, which is open and exultant about its origins. If Hamal is involved, and that certainly seems to be so, we all know that Hamal has not been crushed but only halted in her aggressions. So it makes sense to strike at us in this new way. When this Himet returns we will deal with him. And, Roybin, I did not exactly mean what you suggested about Vallia. .

Seg and Inch and Turko!

Oh, yes, I caught their delighted mocking smiles. Each one of my true comrades favored me, each in his own way, with that secret, mocking, almost indulgent smile each one reserves for me. I sometimes think they humor me as they would a little child. Clearly they must have been thinking something along the lines that this so-puissant Dray Prescot, who was Prince of this and Kov of that and Strom of somewhere else, needed a little of the old headlong action to bring his addled senses back. Since when, it seemed to me their sly and good-humored smiles were saying, since when has the high and mighty and great Dray Prescot not been sure of anything? Ah! If they only knew! If they only knew of the torments of indecision I suffered then — and still do suffer, by Zair! — then they would revise their opinions drastically.

I supposed they thought of me as a rough and ready soldier of fortune who had won through to great wealth and power — as indeed, with their help I had — and so therefore a man fit to be gently mocked. So I thought them. This amiable irony, this cheerful mockery of my comrades is returned by me, and it is never hurtful or cruel between us. Rather, it adds a zest to our comradeship, a spice, for each one of us knows that if he does a foolish thing — as who does not, by Vox! — the others will remind him of it, from time to time, gently.

So, being a cunning old leem-hunter after my own fashion, I pointed at the two brothers in the pressing crowd halted by Seg’s single arrow standing in the floor as though held back by a solid wall of granite.

“You two. Step forth.”

They stepped out, apprehensively, and other men near them hurriedly drew away to give a clear path as though afraid of contamination or the plague. What the two trident-men thought, or what the people thought lay in store, Opaz alone knew.

“You two. Brothers. Twins. Names?”

They swallowed, alike as twins, alike as twins ought to be and so often are not.

“Please, your honor, I am Tarbil the Brown.”

“And, if it pleases your worship, I am Tarbil the Gray.”

“It pleases me, Tarbils both,” I said. “I saw. And I heard. Why did you attend this meeting tonight?”

Both spoke at once, then Tarbil the Gray yielded to Tarbil the Brown. “Our lives are poor, your honor. We thought there might be a little. . fun.”

“I would like to know why you did not shout for Chyyan with the rest.”

“These people, your honor, would bring back slavery.”

“Ah!” I said, understanding. I looked at the mob. “And that sweaty one whom you dragged back. He was your master?”

“Aye, your honor. We were slaves from childhood until the High Kov said all slaves must go free.”

He looked at me under his eyebrows, his head ducked, this stalwart, muscled, hardy fisherman. He would go out in his little dory all night with a light, spearing fish. He was whipcord tough. Now he swallowed and shuffled his feet and wet his lips. “And, your honor, you are really him? You really are, your honor, you really are the new High Kov, Dray Prescot?”

“Yes.”

I did not add, as I might unthinkingly have done once upon a time: “For my sins.”

That was true enough, Zair knew. But they would have misunderstood, believing the words rather than the oblique thought behind them, an altogether too common failing, and a false word could have spread. I was hated enough in Veliadrin as it was.

Both brothers began the full incline until I stopped them, somewhat roughly, with a word, and then bade them stand up like men.

“There is no slavery in any place where the people look to me,” I told them, trying not to give the impression of smugness or of righteousness. That never wears with simple folk. “You who once were slave are now free. It is your right. And I would thank you for your help.”

I did not, there and then, in view of some of the murderous looks bestowed on the Tarbil brothers, give them a gold piece each, or a ring or any other trifle. That would come later, when I confided the details to Panshi, my Great Chamberlain. He had remained at his post in the palace fortress of Esser Rarioch overlooking the bay and my capital city of Valkanium in Valka. And it would be no trifle. The Tarbil brothers would be useful.

Yes, I own it. Already I was thinking how they would fit into my schemes to free all the slaves of Vallia. The Tarbils bobbed again and then drew back. They were given plenty of room. I looked questioningly at Roybin.

“They will be safe, my Prince. I believe you have put such a fright into these folk they will be quiet for a space, to the glory of Opaz and the Invisible Twins.”

Oby and Balass were busy picking up the scattered weapons dropped by the black-feathered masichieri. They knew my ways. I did not give the Tarbils a rapier or a thraxter. Giving a man a weapon he does not know how to use is no act of friendship, and is a good way of getting him killed. But Roybin, who would stay in his home town of Autonne for a space, would see to the Tarbils before they were brought to Valka for the greater work.

I lifted my voice so all could hear.

“And we have more work to do.” I spoke to the fisherfolk of Autonne. “Go to your homes. Ponder on what you have seen. Remember that the spirit of the Invisible Twins made manifest in the heavens above us is a beneficent spirit; but remember also that Opaz will strike down the wrongdoer. Put away from your thoughts this evil creed of Chyyanism. It is a fallacy to dream that each one of us may have exactly what he wants in this life, all at the same time, without effort. You must work, I must work. You will say I am your High Kov, and so I am and may be. The burdens laid on me are different from those laid on you, but they chafe no less harshly. But if any one of you wishes to take that task upon himself he knows the ways, both in law as elsewhere, and I warn you, he will grieve mightily.”

Yes, all right. I know that was double-edged. I damned well meant it to be double-edged. On Kregen land and wealth and titles are for the taking, but only by due process of law after the battle, despite a forest of dead bodies. I was legally the High Kov of Veliadrin. I could give the title to whosoever I wished, obtaining the emperor’s agreement. Anyone could fight me for it and, if he won, have the emperor ratify his success if he could. That battle might be harder than the preceding one. A man might marry into lands and wealth and, perhaps, into a title. The system is not the same as those obtaining on this Earth. On Kregen it is far more what a man is and what he does that makes a man, and not what a man is born into.

As for women — the whole gorgeous world of Kregen is their oyster. The famblys shuffled out, still dazed, and some, as I was very well aware, still resentful. We desperadoes were left in the deserted hall, with the shattered gallery and the stink of ancient fish and the four-winged black idol of the Chyyan.

Turko bent and picked up a parrying-stick. He turned it over in his hands, weighing it, studying it. “A klattar,” he said.

I recalled how in Mungul Sidrath Turko had bent and picked up a shield. Roybin coughed and began to say, “I will arrange for everything to be cleared up here,” when Oby let out a strangled screech that snapped us all about to glare at him.

“Dray! My Prince, look!”

We all stared where his rigid finger pointed.

The black idol against the rich cloths glowered down somberly upon us, the four wings black and seeming to span the heavens. And the idol’s eyes glowed! Twin pits of emerald fire, they shone down with an eerie, baleful flame of malefic evil.