Swordships of Scorpio

CHAPTER FIVE

Tilda would not tell anyone — not even me — any other name by which she might be known in Pandahem. Tilda was her professional name, her stage name, and by it she had become famous. What personal tragedy lay as the cause of her moldering, as I termed it, here in a distant colonial port city she also would not reveal. I gathered this had something to do with her husband, and of him all she would say was that he had married her against the wishes of his family. As a soldier he had been posted to Pa Mejab and, leading his squadron one day, had been slain.

She was fanatically proud and possessive of Pando, who was, as you have seen, an engaging imp of a rascal. She fretted continually over his safety and welfare, constantly chiding him for not wearing enough clothes, for not eating enough, for fighting the other children thronging the busy streets. But, in all this, she never lost sight with a clearheaded practicality that Pando was the son of a soldier, that she must look to him one day, and that he must develop as a man.

I confess that I grew to a better liking for both of them with each day that passed. My room at The Red Leem had always a vase of colorful flowers, and the sheets and sleeping furs were changed with hygienic regularity. Old Nath, the landlord, recovered of the knock on the head, consented to allowing me a reduced rent when I went on the guard duties by which, perforce, I earned my daily crust. He was only too well aware of the business Tilda brought into his inn. In the evening when she sang and danced, when she gave recitals of the great parts in Kregen drama, tragediennes and comediennes, performances so moving in both cases that they brought tears to the eyes of her audiences, rapt in silent admiration, Pando and I would sit companionably together and listen.

Pando, at nine years old, had the most fanatical admiration for his beautiful mother. For, as I have said, Tilda was a beauty with her ivory skin and ebony hair, all swirling and glowing, with her firm figure that had no need of the theater’s contrivances to drive men’s blood singing through their veins. Her violet eyes and her voluptuous mouth could melt with passion, could become stern and regal, could blast all a man’s hopes, could urge him to fire and ardor and unthinking gallantry — and all this on the tiny scrap of stage mounted at the far end of the main room of The Red Leem!

Pando is a familiar name for children of Pandahem, the great rival trading island to Vallia. It was only on the second day of my stint as a caravan guard that he was discovered hiding among the calsany drovers. The overseer, a tough and chunky man with a cummerbund swathing the results of many a night at The Red Leem, and, probably, all the other inns and taverns of Pa Mejab, hauled Pando out by an ear and ran him up to me where I strode along on the left flank of the leading flight of calsanys.

“Dray!” roared the overseer, one Naghan the Paunch. “Dray Prescot! Look what has dropped with the nits from the hides of the calsanys!”

I sighed and stared at Pando with a greatly feigned air of complete despair.

“We have no room for passengers, Naghan. Therefore he must either be slain at once, or sent back alone — or-?” I cocked an eye at Naghan the Paunch.

He pondered deeply. “To slay him now would probably be best, for he would never reach Pa Mejab against the leems and the wlachoffs who would rend the flesh from his bones and devour him until not a morsel was left.”

Pando, squirming against the brown hand that held his ear in so tight a grip, looked up, and the whites of his eyes showed.

“You wouldn’t do that to me, Dray! What would Mother say?”

“Ah!” said Naghan the Paunch, enjoying himself. “Poor dear Tilda the Beautiful! Tilda of the Many Veils! How she will grieve for this limb of Sicce himself!”

“Dray!” yelped Pando.

I rubbed my beard. “On the other hand, Naghan, Pando did run with his dagger to protect Tilda the Beautiful when she was attacked by leem-hunters. If he could do that, might he not thus also attack the leems themselves?”

Naghan twisted the trapped ear. “Have you a dagger, boy?”

Pando was thoroughly aroused now. He tried to kick Naghan. “Had I a dagger, oh man of the Paunch, I would have stuck you with it long before this!”

“Oho!” quoth Naghan the Paunch, and laughed.

And I laughed, and so — I, Dray Prescot, laughing! — because we could not send Pando back across that dangerous land we had perforce to take him with us. He was a bright lad, full of wiles and mischievousness, and yet with an endearing streak of pleasant loyalty and quickness of wits, and a readiness to learn that I knew would stand him in good stead on Kregen, where a man must be a man if he wishes to survive.

His greatest vice was his inveterate untidiness. Nothing he touched could be found in the same condition, and even to enter his tiny cubicle-like room in The Red Leem was usually impossible for the chaos strewing every surface and the floor, unless one did as he did and took a flying leap onto the trundle bed. The caravan, with its long lines of calsanys head-to-tail in their stubborn purposeful swaying movements and with the smaller numbers of plains asses separated from the calsanys, pressed on toward Pa Weinob in the northwest. Pa Weinob was an outpost town, part of the spreading web of influence the men of Pandahem were spinning along the seaboard and hinterland of eastern Turismond. There was set a definite limit to their western expansion as the same limit was set for all the peoples seeking to extend westward here. The Klackadrin with its cold hallucinations and its Phokaym waited out there. I have spoken a little at my chagrin at finding myself in a port city of Pandahem when I had wished to reach Port Tavetus, of, failing that, Ventrusa Thole, both colonial port cities of Vallia. The difficulty of finding a ship at all to take me to Vallia had been further compounded by this enforced arrival at a port locked in mortal combat with Vallia. Mention of Vallia here was — almost — as mad as mention of Sanurkazz in Magdag, or of Magdag in Sanurkazz. There was a faint gleam of light in that I detected less vicious acrimony between the men of Pandahem toward Vallia, more a kind of grudging respect and a direful determination to do them down, than the out-and-out obsessional hatred on the inner sea between the red and the green.

Tilda often wore a green gown; and I was used to that now.

Naghan the Paunch kept Pando very busy about the calsany lines, and the youngster learned very quickly not to be anywhere near them when they became frightened. Naghan himself rode a zorca — a fine powerful specimen of that graceful riding animal. It had been a long time since I had seen a zorca -

a long, long time. In the lands fringing the Eye of the World men rode sectrixes, and in the Hostile Territories they rode the near cousin of the sectrix, the nactrix. I looked at that beautiful zorca and I felt my hands clench in envious longing, for I had to pad along on my bare feet. This zorca, like all the breed very close-coupled and with four impossibly tall and spindly legs, possessed a particularly fine horn, twisted and proud, flaunting from the center of his forehead. I would march along and look at the zorca and think.

What little money I earned — heavy silver pieces of Pandahem coinage called dhems, and duller and often-chipped copper coins called obs, one eightieth of a dhem — I saved for my food and keep and lodging, and, most particularly, to buy myself a zorca. I had seen no voves. You must remember that this city and zonal region of Pa Mejab was civilized, or as civilized as any area of Kregen given its situation had any right to be, and I could not just knock over the first person I ran across and take his gear and weapons, mount and cash, as had been my lamentable habit in more savage times. I had to earn what I needed, as I must earn a passage to Vallia. Often I have laughed since to think that the great and puissant Dray Prescot, Krozair of Zy, Lord of Strombor, had been placed in this position; but there was no shame in it at all. Nothing had happened to me here to give me an opportunity, and a great deal of the blame for that must lie at the door of my terrible weakness that debilitated me as a result of my experiences. You will know that after my immersion in the pool of baptism in the River Zelph of far Aphrasoe I could look forward to a thousand years of life, and, equally, that I did not take to disease and mended quickly from wounds, so that my weak state gives some inkling of the ghastly passage of the Klackadrin.

Here I was once more in the sphere of influence of men and institutions that had surrounded me when I had first carved my way in Segesthes. Between this eastern coast of Turismond and the western coast of Segesthes lay the northern tip of Loh, that mountainous and mysterious land of Erthyrdrin, and Vallia, I was back among rapier and dagger men, among tall ships, among zorcas and voves — gone were swifters and sectrixes and the Krozairs of Zy.

Although — the Krozairs of Zy held now my undying loyalty.

Gone, too, were impiters and corths, although it was foolish to dream that those great flying beasts of the air might bear me across all the pitiless dwaburs to Vallia over the shining sea. When I made inquiries to discover if the Pandaheem possessed airboats, those fliers manufactured in distant Havilfar and widely used by the Vallians, I was met by a curse and a shrug. Evidently, Havilfar did not sell their fliers to Pandahem. Equally evidently, the snub to trade was resented. A light cheerful voice singing fragmentary snatches of the robust ditty “The Bowmen of Loh” brought me back to the present with a start. How that cunning and hilarious song brought back memories of Seg! Of how he and I, with my Delia and poor Thelda, had marched through the Hostile Territories singing!

Before I could yell, Obolya, an exceptionally tall and heavily-built man with a bristle of black hair all over his muscular body, cuffed Pando around the head.

“Sing somewhere else, you pestiferous brat! Little rast! Your screechings make my guts rumble!”

Obolya was a guard, a man whose profession as a mercenary had made of him a man embittered, callous, unfeeling. Whatever he once had been, growing as a young man at his mother’s knee, seemed all to have been wiped away during his years of hard fighting and long tramping. He owned a preysany, a kind of superior calsany, used for riding by those whose estate in life did not extend to the purchase of a zorca. He considered himself invaluable to the caravan, and Naghan the Paunch treated him with some respect.

It was with Naghan himself that I had taken service, as I have related. Now Obolya was being tiresome again.

The word “one” has many definitions and names on Kregen, of which “ob” is — if you will pardon the pun — one. Obolya,[4]a common name in various forms, indicates that its recipient was the firstborn of the family’s children. The Obolya who had just knocked Pando flying was tall, over a knuckle taller than I. Others of the guards on this left flank of the caravan with a few drovers crowded across to see the fun. Zair knew, walking caravan duty was monotonous enough so that any break in the routine was welcome. And Obolya was known of old; until every fresh guard knuckled down to him he would be ever seeking to force a confrontation which poor Naghan the Paunch, who valued Obolya’s massive thews in defense, must condone.

Pando just managed to avoid the nearest calsany’s instinctive response and scrambling up flew toward me.

“Just rest quietly, Pando,” I said, “while I speak with this limb of Armipand.”

Armipand was one of the devils in which many of the more credulous of the Pandaheem believed devoutly.

“Cramph!” roared Obolya. “You have a mouth wider than the Cyphren Sea! I must fill it — with my fist!”

“May Pandrite aid you now, Dray Prescot!” said Pando, overwhelmed by what had happened. He had known me long enough to know I would not shrug off an insult; but also he had seen me only as a weak and ill man, lucky to be employed by the overseer Naghan on the personal request of Tilda of the Many Veils. Pando sucked in his cheeks, and his eyes grew very round.

“Crawl back into the hairs of a calsany’s belly where you belong,” I said to Obolya. He stuttered. The black bristles on his cheeks and chin quivered. He pointed at me, and threw back his head, and roared his contempt.

“You! Cramph-begotten rast! You who carry the leavings of a blacksmith’s shop upon your back!”

This was a reference to the Krozair long sword. Now, in this culture of rapiers and daggers, I carried the long sword on my back, still in the sheath Sosie had made, beneath the quiver of which I have spoken. The weapon was in many respects anachronistic here. The guards carried short broad-bladed stabbing spears for butcher work until the rapiers came into action. This would be after the bows had taken the first toll, and it was as a bowman that I had been engaged by Naghan. He would say to me, half surly, half jesting: “You carry your bow in your hand, strong, and with an arrow nocked, Dray Prescot, when you guard my caravan. That is what I pay you for.”

The hope that by carrying the long sword over my back and thereby escaping its notice had not, in the case of Obolya, succeeded. Just how long he would go on hurling insults before he got down to action I did not know. I was almost back to my full strength, the fresh air and the suns-light and the daily marching had all combined in my recuperation. But, as always, hot though I am to resent authority, I attempted to avoid an unnecessary clash and a dangerous enmity. Pride and a hot temper are all very well for those who do not think; my trouble is that I think first — and then still go berserk, to my sorrow. Obolya wore a bronze breastplate of a reasonably high standard of workmanship; but for more complete protection he had under it only a leather tunic. On his arms and legs were boiled-leather strappings, and he wore a boiled-leather cap reinforced with straps of iron. He was as well-enough armored as many men who work as mercenary guards for a living; his armor, of course, would have made my clansmen smile and evoked mirth from the mail-clad men of the inner sea. I wore only my scarlet breechclout. My sleeping gear, along with Pando’s, was carried aboard one of the guard detachment’s plains asses.

“You affront me, Obolya. But, as I do not wish to deprive you of your few remaining teeth, black and stinking though they be, I will refrain from fighting you now.”

The crowd roared at this and Naghan the Paunch came running up, sweating, starting to yell and drive us back to our duties. But Obolya waved him down and Naghan, seeing how the wind blew, took himself off, sweating even more over the safety of the caravan he had contracted to protect. The crowd roared again as Obolya threw down his spear and crouched. He used a large and variegated collection of foul Makki-Grodno oaths. He advanced on me to, as he informed me with great relish, tear my head off and stuff it between my knees.

He wouldn’t kill me, as he knew I would not kill him. This was a bull moose confrontation, to decide who was who in the hierarchy of the caravan guards.

I handed the longbow to Pando. “Hold it off the ground, Pando. The bow is more valuable than this kleesh.”

A kleesh is violently unpleasant, repulsive, stinking — and the name was guaranteed to drive Obolya like a goad.

His infuriated roar was quite up to the standard of a leem caught in a pit. He charged.

He sought to grapple me to his breastplate and, holding me there, bend me back until I cried quarter. I stepped to one side and drove my fist into his jaw — and Obolya was not there. His speed was surprising. He hit me higher on the chest than he’d intended, because I moved; and in that I was lucky, for a blow from those massive arms would have taken my breath.

“Dray!” yelled Pando, mightily excited.

I did not deign to rub my chest, where the dint spread a pain I ignored. This time I rushed — halted, with a twist — took the blow on my upraised forearm — smashed Obolya in the breadbasket — drove him to a knee — chopped down on the back of his neck — and so laid him on the grass, insensible. Someone let out a screech. Someone else was swearing by the gross Armipand. Another was laughing. In truth I had welcomed the exercise and now I regretted hitting Obolya hard enough to knock him out. A little more of fisticuffs would have suited me, then, for I was strangely slow in getting back to my usual form. The Phokaym and the Klackadrin had drained more from me than even I realized. Pando bent and retrieved a yellow object from the grass. He held it out to me, holding it gingerly.

“This fell from your loincloth, Dray, when you fought.”

I took it. It was a six-inch fang I had taken from the jaw of a Phokaym as a memento. About to stuff it back, I stopped. Pando was looking at it with undisguised curiosity.

“What is it, Dray? It looks like — like a risslaca fang.”

If I told him what it truly was, he wouldn’t believe. No one who did not know me, Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor, would or could believe.

“It’s a risslaca tooth, Pando. Here.” I tossed it to him. “Keep it as a memento of the fight. Boys collect anything — your friends won’t have anything to match that for a space, I’ll wager.”

Pando took it eagerly. But, turning it over in his hands, he said: “Young Enky has a risslaca fang almost as big. And Wil had a claw he said his father cut off a risslaca himself.”

I was, as you may imagine, duly cut down to size.

Pando went babbling on about the fight. I took my bow and nocked an arrow — for Naghan the Paunch only half jested — and resumed my station. Guards who had felt Obolya’s fist were helping him up. I saw him shake his head, looking dazed, and he dragged his feet as they helped him along. All this time the caravan had not halted, and we were well into the outer cultivated areas surrounding Pa Weinob. I said, “Don’t let your mother hear you singing The Bowmen of Loh,’ Pando. You’re only nine.”

At his reproachful glance, I went on, “As for me, it is a fine song, and you may sing it as you will. I do not think anyone else will tell you to stop.”

“By the glorious Pandrite, they will not, Dray!”

A shouting at the head of the caravan followed by a series of shrieking roars heralded fresh trouble. I doubled up past the plodding calsanys, but by the time I reached the van the problem had been solved. The zhantil had been slashed to death by many thrusts from the broad-bladed spears of the advance guard. This zhantil was of moderate size, about the length of a leem, although his massive mane and forelegs lent much greater weight to his foreparts than has the weasel-shaped leem. He was magnificently banded in tiger-stripes of glowing umber and ruby, and his richly golden mane fell about him. His blood pumped out to foul all that rich and gaudy marking. I felt sorry for the beast, and I know many of the caravan felt as I did. Although, of necessity, we must defend ourselves from zhantils when they attacked us, we did not feel for them the loathing and determination to destroy with which we regarded leems. Naghan the Paunch, puffing, rolled up and at once began berating the guards.

“Fools! Imbeciles! Look at the pelt! Aie, aie — that would have brought many dhems had you not slashed it to pieces!”

An archer guard, one Encar the Swarthy, cursed and said, “We slashed it, good Naghan, because it was trying to slash us!”

“Well,” persisted Naghan, wiping his forehead and neck, “you might have slashed with a little more care not to spoil the pelt.”

Pando and I looked at each other, and Pando broke first, and held his belly and roared. Some of the other guards and drovers, knowing Naghan the Paunch, chuckled at the jest. I said, “Naghan — will you spare a portion of the pelt — a trifle — to give Pando here a fine new tunic?

Remember, he is the son of Tilda the Beautiful.”

Naghan put a foot into the stirrup of his zorca, who sniffed once at the zhantil, and finding it smelling dead, thereafter ignored it. He twisted around, his paunch straining that brilliant blue cummerbund.

“A tunic for Pando? Of zhantil skin? Ho — I think Tilda of the Many Veils would like that. Ay! She would part with a whole amphora of the best wine of Jholaix for such a zhantil tunic for her adored son!”

Jholaix, I knew, was the extreme northeastern country of Pandahem, which island is split up into a number of nations of the Pandaheem, and, further, I knew Jholaix wine to be scarce, dear, and extremely potent and pleasant to the tongue.

“You mercenary old rascal, Naghan the Paunch!” I said.

But he merely mounted his zorca, with an almighty belch, and winked down at me, whereat I nodded and said, “Done.”

Between us, Pando and I took enough of the zhantil skin to make him a fine tunic, and, also, I cabbaged enough to make a belt for him, also. I would pay the cost of the amphora of Jholaix wine — and, thereby, put back the time when I could buy a passage out of Pa Mejab. But, looking at the rosy glory of Pando’s young face, and the sparkle of sheer delight in his eyes, I knew my Delia of the Blue Mountains would forgive me.

Zair knows, she had much for which to forgive me. .

Naghan’s servant, a one-eyed shaven-headed Gon, remained with us to take the rest of the skin and the mane, all of which, by virtue of his office, were the property of Naghan. The caravan had gone perhaps a little farther on than was altogether advisable by the time we had finished, and I made Pando step out smartly. The bloody pelt, rolled, I slung over my left shoulder.

The shout for help, when it reached me, made me whirl about and fling the pelt down and draw my bow fully.

There was no need immediately for violence.

The man who crawled toward us from a clump of missal trees was smothered in blood, and the long ax he bore glistened with gore. He tried to stand up to run toward us, but collapsed and fell. He twitched once and then lay still.

“Dray!” yelled Pando.

“Pick up the pelt, Pando. Go back to the caravan — and hurry!” I shouted at the one-eyed Gon. “Run, too! Warn Naghan — the caravan is attacked!”

For, beyond the man collapsed in his own blood and that of his enemies, I could see the wolfish shapes of halflings riding preysanys coursing toward the caravan, their fleet forms half-hidden by the missals. The opaz glitter from the twin suns speared back blindingly from their brandished weapons. In scant seconds they would be upon the caravan.

I loosed at the nearest rider and then slung the bow, ran toward the fallen man, and hoisted him upon my back. He was incredibly tall and thin. As I lifted him his eyes opened and he gasped. His right hand did not relax its death-grip on the haft of his ax.

“Bandits!” He choked the word out, and I knew from the way he spoke he had summoned up all his strength of purpose to run and warn the caravan and had been struck down. “Bandits!”

“Quiet, dom,” I said. “Rest easy.”

Then I raced back toward the caravan where already I could hear the shrieks of men engaged in mortal combat, and the slither and clang of iron weapons.