Krozair of Kregen [Dray Prescot #14] Read online

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  Krozair of Kregen [Dray Prescot #14]

  by Alan Burt Akers

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  Science Fiction

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  Mushroom eBooks

  www.mushroom-ebooks.com

  Copyright ©1977 by Kenneth Bulmer

  NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

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  Krozair of Kregen

  Alan Burt Akers

  Mushroom eBooks

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  Copyright © 1977, Kenneth Bulmer

  Alan Burt Akers has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, to be identified as the Author of this work.

  First published in USA in 1977 by Daw Books, Inc..

  This Edition published in 2007 by Mushroom eBooks, an imprint of Mushroom Publishing, Bath, BA1 4EB, United Kingdom www.mushroom-ebooks.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN 184319533X

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  A Note on Dray Prescot

  Dray Prescot is a man above medium height with brown hair, and brown eyes that are level and dominating. His shoulders are immensely wide and he carries himself with an abrasive honesty and a fearless courage. He moves like a great hunting cat, quiet and deadly. Born in 1775 and educated in the inhumanly harsh conditions of the late eighteenth-century English Navy, he presents a picture of himself that, the more we learn of him, grows no less enigmatic.

  Through the machinations of the Savanti nal Aphrasöe—mortal but superhuman men dedicated to the aid of humanity—and of the Star Lords, the Everoinye, he has been taken to Kregen many times. On that savage and exotic, marvelous and terrible world he rose to become Zorcander of the Clansmen of Segesthes, and Lord of Strombor in Zenicce, and a member of the mystic and martial Order of Krozairs of Zy of the Eye of the World.

  Against all odds, Prescot won his highest desire and in that immortal battle at The Dragon's Bones claimed his Delia, Delia of Delphond, Delia of the Blue Mountains. And Delia claimed him in defiance of her father, the dread emperor of Vallia. Amid the rolling thunder of the acclamations of Hai Jikai! Prescot became Prince Majister of Vallia and wed his Delia, the Princess Majestrix. One of their favorite homes is Esser Rarioch in Valkanium, capital of the island of Valka of which Prescot is Strom.

  In the continent of Havilfar, Prescot fought as a hyr-kaidur in the arena of the Jikhorkdun in Huringa. He became King of Djanduin, idolized by his ferocious four-armed warrior Djangs. In the Battle of Jholaix the megalomaniacal ambitions of the empress Thyllis of Hamal were thwarted, leading to an uneasy peace between the empires of Hamal and Vallia. Then Prescot was banished by the Star Lords to Earth for twenty-one miserable years. He caught up with his education and learned a great deal during this time.

  His joyful return to Kregen was marred by his ejection from the Order of Krozairs of Zy. On Earth he had been unable to answer their Call to Arms, when the fanatics of Green Grodno swept all the Red of Zair before them in irresistible conquest. Determined to forget the Krozairs of the inner sea and return home to Delia and their children, he is told by Zena Iztar, who saves him from being banished back to Earth, that he must again become a Krzy before he can return home to Valka.

  The genius king Genod of Magdag, using a new army modeled on one created years ago by Prescot, is sweeping victoriously across the inner sea. Gafard, the king's right-hand man, was—unknown to the king and to Prescot—married to Prescot's second daughter, Velia. Now, in order to escape on a wounded saddle-bird, King Genod has callously hurled Velia to her death. Prescot, using the name Gadak, is left holding the dead body of his daughter in his arms as the overlords of Magdag ride up to take him.

  This is where the last volume, Renegade of Kregen, finished. Still known as Gadak the Renegade, Prescot picks up the story as he is dispatched to the horrific fate of an oar-slave in the swifters of Magdag.

  This volume, Krozair of Kregen, brings to an end the “Krozair Cycle” and with the next volume, Savage Scorpio, Prescot is confronted with a monstrous challenge on the planet of Kregen under the Suns of Scorpio. Because most, but not all, of the action takes place in Vallia, I have called the next cycle of Prescot's headlong adventures on Kregen the “Vallian Cycle."

  Alan Burt Akers

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  Chapter One

  The chains of Rukker the Kataki and Fazhan ti Rozilloi

  The lash curved high in the air, hard, etched black. I, Gadak the Renegade, grasped the harsh iron chains that bound me so savagely to this coffle of slaves, and which made of us one miserable body. We stumbled down the dusty streets under the lash toward the harbor.

  The people of this evil city of Magdag barely noticed us, did not even bother to spit at us or revile us, for we were but one small coffle among many. The iron ring about my neck chafed the skin raw and driblets of blood ran down onto my chest and back.

  “By Zair!” the man on my left, for we were chained two and two, gasped, his face a scarlet mask of effort. “I swear the cramph won't be happy until he's had my head off."

  “He will not do that. We are needed to pull at the oars."

  The overseer, careless in his authority, slashed his thonged whip and my companion yelped and stumbled. I let go of my own chain to help him up. The fellow in front, a giant of a man with the black body-bristle of a Brokelsh, surged forward. The length of chain between us straightened and, by Krun, it felt as though my own head were the one being wrenched off.

  “Thank you, dom,” the Zairian I had assisted was saying.

  Ignoring him, I lurched forward and made a grab at the chain so as to ease the ring about my neck. A voice at my back bellowed in vicious temper.

  “Rast! Keep steady, you zigging cramph!"

  There was no point in turning about and chastising the fellow. We were all slaves together and I might have yelled as he had done if my own pains had not been caused by myself. The uneven lurching carried back like a wave along the coffle. The air was rent with blasphemies. Listening, I used this occurrence to learn about my fellow slaves, for we had merely been hauled out willy-nilly and chained up together for the walk from the bagnio to the harbor and the galleys.

  The stones of Magdag under our feet and rising in wall and terrace and archway all about us held no more pity for our plight than the hearts of the Magdaggians. From the curses and prayers that went up, I knew we were a mixed bunch: Zairian prisoners, Grodnim criminals. And, in truth, I the renegade—who had once been of Zair and who said he was now of Grodno—hardly knew to which of these gods to cleave for the injuries that had been done me.

  We were being whipped down to be taken aboard a galley and there enter upon hell on earth.

  I knew.

  The glorious mingled suns-light poured down in radiance about us, the streaming mingled lights of Zim and Genodras, the red and green suns of Antares. We stumbled along with our twin shadows mocking us, forever chained to us as we would be chained to our rowing benches.

  “If I get my hands on that rast...” The Zairian at my left side, with his red face and perfectly bald head, showed a spirit to be expected of a Zairian. I wondered if he would be broken by the torments ahead of him, of all of us. All our heads had been shaved a
s smooth as loloo's eggs. We wore the gray slave breechclouts, which would be taken from us once we were shackled to our benches. All this I had endured before. This time, I vowed, I would make a positive effort very early on and escape.

  The enormity of the death of my daughter Velia still had a stinging power to wring my heart. I had known she was my daughter for so pitifully short a time. I had known her as my Lady of the Stars for a short space before that, and we had talked. But I had found her and then, it seemed in the same heartbeat, she had been taken from me.

  This mad king, this genius, this king Genod, who ruled in vile Magdag, had thrown her from the back of his fluttrell as the saddle-bird, winged, had fluttered to the ground. Genod had been in fear of his life then, and had thrown a girl for whom he had planned an abduction out to her death. If there was one thing I intended to do upon Kregen under the Suns of Scorpio, forgetting anything else, that thing would be to bring King Genod Gannius to justice.

  We passed beneath the high archway leading through the wall of the inner harbor, that harbor called the King's Haven. The cothon, the artificially scooped-out inner harbor, presented a grand and, indeed, in any other city, a noble aspect.

  Like all building in Magdag of the Megaliths, the architecture was on the grandest scale. Enormous blocks of stone had been manhandled down to raise these walls and fortifications, to erect the warehouses and ship sheds. Every surface blazed with brilliantly colored ceramics. The tiles depicted stories and legends from the fabled past of Kregen. They exalted the power of Grodno and of Magdag. And, of course, the predominant color was green.

  Nowhere was a speck of red visible.

  The overseer with the lash bellowed at us, using the hateful word I so detest. “Grak!” he shouted, snapping his whip, laying into the backs of the slaves. “Grak, you Zairian cramphs!"

  The lash was of the tailed variety, designed not to injure us but to sting and make us jump. The Kregans have their equivalents of the knout and the sjambok, as I have said, made from chunkrah hide. With these they can pain, maim, or kill. We dragged along in our chains in the bright light of the twin suns, the smells and the sounds of the harbor in our nostrils and ears, the sight of the galleys motionless by the yellow stone walls. I looked at everything. For I had once been a Krozair, and this place was the arch-enemy of all Krozairs, all the Red Brethren, and knowledge conferred power. Mind you, I might possess a vast amount of knowledge right now; I was still chained up in a coffle of shuffling, whipped slaves.

  The particular slave overseer entrusted with the task of bringing us down to the galleys was a Chulik. A Chulik has a yellow skin and a face that, although piglike, is recognizably Homo sapiens in general outline, save for the two fierce, upward-thrusting three-inch tusks. A Chulik will normally shave his head and leave a long rearward-descending pigtail, braided with the colors of whomever happens to be hiring his mercenary services at the moment. I will say here, at once, that my comrade Duhrra, an apim like myself, wore his hair shaved and in a short tail at the rear; I had never thought to compare his shaved skull with a Chulik's. A Chulik may possess two arms and legs and look vaguely human; that is all he knows of humanity. I eyed this specimen as he strode past slashing with his whip and I guessed he was taking what he could from the hides of the slaves before he reported back to the bagnio.

  “I'd like to—” began the Zairian to my left.

  “Shut your mouth, onker!” came that fearsome bellow from my rear. I had not seen who had been chained up aft of me and I'd been too careful of my neck in that damned ring to care to turn to look.

  The Zairian bristled. We passed into the shadow of a warehouse wall, past slaves hauling bundles and bales for the swifters moored alongside the stone wharves. I fancied the swifter for which we made lay past the galley ahead of us. She looked large. If I was shoved down in the lower tier, to slave in almost nighted gloom in that airless confined space, I'd really go berserk. I had been holding myself in admirably, looking for a chance. Not a single chance had been given me. Chuliks and the overlords of Magdag form a formidable combination in manhandling. Like Katakis, who are ferocious slave-masters, they leave no easy chances for escape.

  The hoarse rumbling voice at my back sounded again.

  “Onker! You make it worse by your prattling."

  The Zairian's red face turned even more scarlet, if that were possible. He started to speak, and I said, smoothly and swiftly, “Lean a little this way, dom—quickly!"

  He was struck by my tone of voice. He leaned in, bringing the chains with him. We remained in the shadow of the warehouse wall, marching beside the edge of the wharf where the galleys waited. We were almost on the low-slung ram of this swifter, just passing the forward varter platform on her larboard bow. Beyond the ram stretched a space of open water, before the upflung stern of the swifter I fancied we were destined for closed that open space. I stumbled.

  The Chulik was there. He had been waiting to get a few good lashings in with his right arm before he signed us over to the oar-master of the swifter.

  His arm lifted and as I sagged against the chains the Zairian at my side sucked in his breath. The Chulik lashed. I took the first blow and then the bight of chain looped his ankle. I straightened and heaved, and the cramph sailed up and over, I had hoped he might bash his head against the stones. As I flicked the chains and so released his ankle, he toppled, screeching. The lash sailed up. He went on, staggering backward, his arms windmilling, his legs making stupid little backward steps. He wore mail. He went over the edge of the wharf and the last I saw of the rast was his flaunting pigtail, streaming up into the air in the wind of his fall, and the damned green ribbons flying.

  We all heard the splash.

  We had remained absolutely silent.

  We all heard the beautiful sound of the splash, and then helter-skelter, willy-nilly, dragged by the frantic ones up front, we were pelting for the far side of the warehouse.

  “Haul up!” I bellowed.

  “Stop, you rasts!” boomed that vast voice at my back.

  “Halt! Halt!” cracked from the Zairian, in a voice of habitual command.

  But nothing we could do just yet was going to stop that panic.

  The Brokelsh in front of me was screaming and running.

  We rounded the corner of the warehouse in full cry, a crazy fugitive mob of men chained together. This was no way to escape. Anyway, the high wall surrounded the dockyard and harbor, enclosing the arsenal and the ship sheds, and there was no way over that, and certainly no way through the guarded gateways. I wondered if the Magdaggians would feather us, for sport, or if their war-machine was so desperate for oar-slaves that we had, grotesquely, become valuable.

  The bellowing voice at my rear smashed out again.

  “You! Dom! Throw yourself down!"

  The Zairian and I immediately dropped down. I held on to the chain in front with both hands. The Brokelsh went on running. The jolt was severe. I felt the chain haul out and I tugged back, the Zairian doing likewise.

  Then—I swear all thoughts of my being a slave for that moment were whiffed from my mind and I was once again a fighting-man confronted with a hated enemy—the tip of a long and sinuous tail curled under my arm. The tail looped the chain that was held by my hands, so the three gripping members formed a lock on the metal. I felt at once the physical power in that tail. The strain sensibly slackened. We skidded over the stones in our slave breechclouts, and then more men at the rear must have stumbled over the Kataki at my back, or thrown themselves down, either because they saw the sense of that or because they expected the arrows to come shafting in.

  In a tangled, cursing pile we came to a skidding halt.

  The guards surrounding us appeared with mechanical swiftness. They were not gentle sorting us out. I did not see the Chulik among them.

  In a welter of blows and curses we were thrashed along to the swifter and pitched aboard. I tried to see all there was to see, for, even though I am cynical about power and resigned about
knowledge, still, as I have indicated, knowledge is power, even to a chained slave, even in his abject condition. It might not do me much good right now; but, although still in a partial state of shock after the death of my daughter, I held tenaciously to this idea of an early escape. Then knowledge would be vital.

  If I do not for the moment mention the swifter it is because her arrangements became important later on. The chains were quickly struck off, to be returned to us in the form of chains binding us to the rowing benches allotted. As we filed from the entranceway forward I counted. We were conducted below, whereat I cursed, for this swifter was three-banked, and I had no desire to heave my guts out among the thalamites.

  The thranites already sat at their apportioned places on the upper benches, eight to a bench. We passed below them down narrow ladders where the chains clanged dolorously. This was like descending a massive cleft, the sky-showing slot between the larboard and starboard banks, with the grated deck aloft.

  I blinked and peered along the second tier. I cursed this time, cursed aloud and cursed hotly.

  “By the stinking infamous intestines of Makki-Grodno! Every zygite is in place.” I shook a fist upward, the chains clashing. “The bottom for us! The bilge-rats! The thalamites!"

  The Zairian said, stoutly, “We will survive, dom."

  The Kataki, above him, his tail looped about a stanchion, leaned over. “This is a strange and doomed place—you know, do you, apim, whereof you speak?"

  “Aye,” I said, descending into the bottom tier. “Aye, I know."

  I did not wish to address him, and I wouldn't call him dom, which is a comradely greeting. I did not like Katakis.

  The whip-Deldars were there to welcome us.

  They cracked their whips and herded us along and I saw one poor devil, a big fellow, tough, a Brokelsh, strike out at them. They surrounded him like vultures. They carried him away. I knew what would happen. Later on he would be used as an example to us all. He was, and I shall not speak of it.