Scorpio Drums [Dray Prescot #42] Read online

  At a corner a woman lay sprawled in the way. The curved fangs of a lavonth had ripped out her throat. The lavonth, about the size of a greyhound, with his zig-zag of tawny and umbre, had found the woman on the ground, I felt sure. Her feet were bruised and bloody. She must have taken her boots off at a halt—foolishly—and been unable to pull them on again. She wore a deeply double-curved kax, its iron polished to a mirror brightness that had not dulled in all these hundreds of seasons. She had two swords and a longbow and quiver. Her colors were red and yellow. These were not the scarlet and yellow of Vallia but the madder and gold of Walfarg. The blood dribbling from her throat showed starkly against her flesh.

  All this evidence was easy enough to read, so there was no help for it but that I must shaft the lavonth. This I did and then went on with a word to Hlo-Hli Herself to care for the woman's ib.

  The next two corpses were much like the last, strong-featured women with heavily-double-curved armor. These two had died with swords in their fists, facing something that had done for them. There was not dust enough to reveal any clawprints. Again commending these Jikai Vuvushis to Hlo-Hli, I pressed on.

  The next parcel of evidence appeared confusing at first; but a few moments of study soon deciphered the clues. Against the wall lay the body of a man, stripped of armor and weapons. Just beyond him lay a woman whose body had been chewed by whatever killed her. She was fully armed and armored.

  All the Jikai Vuvushis so far had been apims. The man, as it happened, was a Brukaj; I did not think that had anything to do with the picture that was unfolding as I marched on.

  In a cavern lay many corpses jumbled together. Again, the evidence looked contradictory. Some of the corpses had decayed into skeletons, others were in the same state as when the owner of the flesh and blood had died. Still, once more the clues were not too difficult to understand.

  That particular cavern ended at the head of a flight of steps that, whilst they were broad enough, went on down a damn long way into shadows. The air of menace that breathed up the stairs hung like a palpable mist. There was nothing else for it. I started on down, testing everything.

  Of course there were corpses strewing the stairs like a dreadful flung-handful of rags. They had all been stripped of weapons and armor, men and women alike. I kept a lookout for anyone still with weapons and found none.

  The first one I found with weapons lay at the first corner of the first tunnel after the foot of the stairs. I could imagine the terror that must have overcome them. Even when I went into a large chamber where food jars and baskets lay overturned and in the wildest confusion, I could still imagine them shivering with fear. There was good food in there, and wine, and I stoked the inner man. I was not tired; but I rested a whick and then pushed on refreshed.

  Now I do not wish to give the impression that the passageways and caverns were choked with corpses; of course they were not. There were enough, though, to indicate the horrors through which these parties were going. For some way I walked on without seeing any corpses or skeletons and I began to wonder if I'd taken the wrong fork at intersections. I was going straight ahead, as the inscription had advised, confident that the parties ahead had done the same.

  By this time I was getting the feel of this Realm of the Drums. People still lived here—of course, all those hundreds of seasons ago—but there were less of them. A lot less, I judged from what I'd seen of the abandoned caverns. Somewhere far below must be the currently inhabited portions. Had any expeditions ventured that far down? How was Na-Si-Fantong's expedition coming along? And—the question I had to look at squarely—had Delia and my comrades found a way to start down here?

  At the entrance to a room lay the half-naked body of a young girl. She was a Sybli; gentle, innocent, extremely beautiful girls are Syblians. The real name for these diffs is Ennschafften, and they are naive and simple folk.

  She wore only a yellowish breechclout. The edges had been embroidered with a plain stitch in a lighter yellow. Around her neck hung a black bead necklace. Syblis are employed as house servants or slaves, usually, for the men are very strong and perform arduous tasks admirably. This poor girl had been a slave. I could envisage with even greater clarity the mental turmoil up ahead, the state of the party.

  Proof of that came very shortly when a box, flung down all those seasons ago, revealed expensive feminine toilet articles, brushes, combs, mirrors, pots of unguents. Here lay a girl's secret beauty.

  This fresh evidence relieved my mind of the concern that I'd taken a different path. If there was chivalry in this, a small jikai, I was not going to belabor that in my own mind. No, by Zair!

  As is any wise old delver's custom, one keeps a wary eye upon the ceiling. In a plain corridor a dark splodge on the ceiling abruptly came to life as I passed under. A quick leap—a damned quick leap, by Vox!—carried me clear. I whirled to face, sword snouting. The thing had missed and now hung on a thread anchored in a crack in the ceiling. It was a wide flat creature, like a cartwheel of tentacles and stingers and unpleasantnesses. If that lot fell on your head you'd snuff it, as sure as Zim and Genodras rise.

  Giving the thing a good look, I went on, leaving it slowly reeling itself in back up to the ceiling.

  There were more of these pesky nuisances. If you were quick you could dodge. They did add a new zest to proceedings. I confess I continued to feel the eerie business of waking people and things up as you approached most uncanny. It sent a shiver up my spine. What lay around the next corner, frozen in sorcerous sleep, ready to wake up as I neared and jump on me? Yet that danger was quite different from the expected dangers in delving.

  Lots of the little piglet-like creatures scuttled to life as I passed. They were usually a bright orange in color, although some were dark brown or fawn and a few were bright pink. All were hairless, with little round ears, and snouts, and curly tails. You could imagine one as a pet.

  One of them had been caught by a cartwheel of tentacles dropping from the roof and was already half-digested. The scene in the centre of the corridor ahead would come to life if I passed. Yet the piglet was dead and the round tentacular monster had to eat. I would not slay that one. I passed by and the piglet was duly consumed.

  I sniffed. Yes, there was no doubt of it. An expensive perfume wafted on the air. Yet we brought our own scents in with us—the answer, of course, was that in activating the air we activated particularly strong smells. The scene at the mouth of the cavern before me explained the perfume.

  I stopped stock-still and studied the layout. The weirdness was that these people, this drama, was unfolding with breakneck speed to death, yet I could stand and study it with detachment. Odd, by Djan, deuced odd!

  From the roof a tentacled cartwheel was dropping towards the head of a girl. She was clad in half-armor of ornate and expensive style, with much goldwork. Her helmet had fallen off. Her swords were sheathed. Her face expressed the most awful fear, a terror frozen there for hundreds of seasons. Her hair was the red of Loh with a darker infusion that brought the widow's peak down over the centre of her forehead as a challenging statement of identity. Her face was pallid to chalkiness. Her eyes were large and kohled and brilliant—brilliant with terror. Her figure in the armor was of a pleasing shape. All in all, she was a most proper Jikai Vuvushi.

  Crouching with her back to this girl, another girl held a slender dagger. She was a Sybli, twin to the first I had seen. Her back was to me; I could imagine the expression on that simple pretty face.

  Advancing on her stalked the crocodilian shape of a Magor. His scales reflected the pearly light. His jaws were agape and the teeth, ragged and uneven, looked capable of cutting the Sybli girl in half. His eyes glared with rhodopsin, red and mad with blood lust. Feral and lethal, Magors, in their natural swampy habitat. Down here they must be consumed by hatred. Semi-intelligent, Magors? Or brainless beasts only? No one was prepared to give an authoritative answer to that—not yet. His claws reached out.

  So, this was the problem.


  The moment I advanced the tableau would come to life.

  The tentacled cartwheel would drop on one girl and the Magor would charge and destroy the other.

  I, Dray Prescot, just stood there. I'd walked into a real juicy one this time, by Zim-Zair!

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  Chapter fifteen

  I'd shaft the damned Magor. One arrow wouldn't stop his mad onslaught. He'd need a quiver full to stop him, and even then he might not stopuntil he'd wrapped those ugly jaws around the girl's body.

  As for the tentacled cartwheel, I could shaft him but he'd still drop on the girl's head and shoulders and his acid secretions would begin to work.

  I unlimbered the Lohvian longbow and selected a shaft fletched with rose red feathers from Valka. I took up an easy stance and shot in my bow. A score of shafts slugged into the Magor. His opened jaws bristled with shafts. His eyes were gone and I'd managed to put four good shots into the high muscles of his forelegs.

  I put the longbow down. I did off all my harness of war until I stood forth clad only in the brave old scarlet breechclout.

  Flexing my muscles I eyed the task. Quick. By Djan Kadjiryon! I'd have to be damned quick. There'd be no second chance. In, do it, out. Still that uncanny feeling persisted that I could thus stand and size up the situation, contemplate action, when in reality those two girls were within heartbeats of mutilation and death. Weird, by Vox!

  A few deep breaths, a quick consignment of my carcass to Opaz, and I sprang forward.

  The tentacled cartwheel dropped on his thread. The Magor had been snarling his ferocious intent and now those sounds changed. His onward rush continued. Blood spurted from his mouth and eyes.

  In a windmill of motion I moved forward in a straight line at right angles to the Magor's charge. The Jikai Vuvushi went up under one arm and the Sybli up under the other. Their legs flew up into the air. On, on! With a ferocious spurt of energy I surged out from under the thrashing mass of tentacles. They hit the ground with a squashing thud. I felt the Magor stumble past as we leaped out of his way. I didn't look back. Headlong the three of us tumbled up the passage and then I tripped and down we all came in a bundle of naked arms and legs and whirling hair.

  “Thank Opaz and all the Names!” I said to myself.

  The little Sybli had passed out from terror. The armored woman was yelling blue bloody murder. Both reactions were perfectly normal.

  Disentangling myself from the women was startlingly more difficult than expected. The Sybli's arms flopped over my face as I tried to shift her head with its crop of dark hair—shades of Mevancy! The Jikai Vuvushi staggered up, reeling, staring about. She saw me, I think, in a daze of terror. She kicked me.

  Her sandals were hard. At her second kick I took her foot into my palm and stopped her from kicking me. I glared up into her pallid face.

  “You are safe now, woman.”

  “You—Let me go! I shall—guards, guards!”

  I said: “Sit down and compose yourself. You have no guards left.”

  I tugged gently and she fell down. I pushed her back against the wall—I judged that any traps had already been triggered—and said: “Just take a few deep breaths. You have been through a terrible experience but you are safe now.”

  “You are a dead man.”

  Now I've heard that said before, and in exactly those same tones. So I had no need for the picture to be drawn out for me. In view of that, and because I value my hide, I decided I had to cover my tracks and organize a logical defense that would hold water. Quite obviously this little madam was an important personage. She could be a princess or something like that. Whatever she might be, she was probably in that class whose person is sacred. Any common person who touched her would be put to death in the appropriate fashion. She crouched back against the wall. Her pale face tilted up to me, her dark eyes wide, that widow's peak of hair forming a wedge of menace over her forehead. Her lips were red, glistening, pouting half open. Her teeth were very small and white.

  Her fist clenched over the armor at her breast. She panted.

  I started to say: “If you were to be saved—”

  She interrupted without even listening to me. “I do not know you. I do not know everyone in the expedition. But,” she was looking at me as someone might look at a strange creature brought up from the depths of the sea. “But I think, had I seen you, I would not have forgotten.”

  This was time for a little push of pike. I said: “You would have died if that thing had dropped on you.”

  She shuddered. “The stangsi!Disgusting!” She put her left hand against the ground and pushed herself up. She staggered forward a step and recovered. She whipped out her sword. “Loathsome! Forfeit to the White Hot Pincers of Vorwal the Relentless!”

  The tentacled cartwheel, the stangsi, fluttered about on the floor, no doubt recovering himself after his missed strike. Just how he was feeling I didn't know. The Sybli had fainted. This domineering girl in armor no doubt associated her feelings of release from the stasis as a part of all the unpleasantness surrounding this experience.

  She stepped forward and lifted the sword. The stangsi was completely defenseless.

  “Is that necessary?” I spoke in a hard, gravel-shifting voice, and she jumped. To the side the Magor lay speckled with my shafts. “The thing can't harm you now.”

  In a hating voice, she said: “I'll make sure of that.” She cut down and lifted the sword and slashed again. She cut the thing to pieces.

  “So you have recovered,” I said. “Now we can make the pappattu.”

  She held the sword, smeared with a greasy substance, away from her. Her eyebrows lifted. “Are you a fool besides a dead man?”

  I was about to make some flippant reply, when she held out the sword, and went on: “Here, clean this. And grak!”

  Now I am perfectly prepared to clean the sword of a young lady. This is all a part of the mixed up chivalry in my old vosk skull of a head. Still, there are ways and ways of making the request. I did not reply. I went over to the Magor and whipped out my old sailor knife and began to retrieve my shafts. As I did this I was not fool enough not to keep an eye on her.

  She started to work herself up into a temper. Again, this was all a natural reaction. I went on working quietly. She burst out: “Shint! I told you! Clean my sword!”

  One of the arrows had gone in deeply and I was having to cut as deeply to ease it out. One had broken on a scale, and this annoyed me. I said: “You can see it is necessary to retrieve these arrows. There may be more Magors.”

  “I shall not tell you again! You defile my person, now you defy me.” She was waving the smeared sword about wildly. “What kind of man are you?”

  A soft little voice whispered up from the side. “Majestrix. He is a jikai—a great jikai.”

  We both turned to see the little Sybli girl just sitting up. She was pretty, no doubt of it, as Syblians are. The yellow stitching on her loincloth and the black beads indicated a superior slave status.

  “Oh, Folly, so you've decided to help your mistress, have you, instead of sleeping. Well, clean this sword, or you'll be striped.”

  “Yes, mistress.”

  At least, that disposed of the confrontation over cleaning the sword.

  Now this Sybli slave, whose name was Folly, had been gripping a dagger, a long slender dagger, and facing the Magor. There was no sign of the dagger now. She was trusted to clean weapons, or, was she? I watched as Folly used her own loincloth to clean the muck off the blade. She seemed to handle the weapon without cutting herself.

  Majestrix, Folly had called the girl in armor. Majestrix is given only to the royal females. So, unless she was a queen or an empress, this hoity-toity little madam was a princess. Another damned princess!

  My logical defense in the handling of her sacred person appeared to be working, judging by the recent conversation. The cleaning of the sword had been unfortunate; but that appeared resolved. I fancied I'd better m
ake sure.

  I said: “I regret that I do not have the honor of your acquaintance. I am Drajak, known as Drajak the Sudden. Lahal.”

  She stared at me, not as though I was bereft of my senses, but as though I was a buffoon play-acting or drunk.

  “What d'you mean, you don't know me?”

  “Precisely that.”

  “You call me majestrix and bow and scrape, or—”

  “Listen, woman! Haven't you realized yet that I'm not with your expedition! I don't know who you are, except a bad tempered little girl.”

  She gasped and Folly squeaked: “Oh!”

  The pretty face of the Sybli turned to me like a flower turning to the sun. She continued to lift her loincloth and clean the sword all the time she spoke. “Jikai, you are in the presence of Princess Licria—”

  “Princess Licria, Princess Majestrix of Walfarg!” rapped out this princess, rattling it off with pride and relish.

  I said: “Did you come down here with Queen Satra?”

  Her nose pinched in. Her jaw thrust forward. “Will you or will you not address me properly?”

  That quite clearly meant she had accepted the situation.

  “I shall treat you with the respect you deserve. I do not bow and scrape. I judge you to be a brave girl in a situation of horror. Let us go forward together as allies.”

  “Horror, yes, horror.” In her little paddy over titles and bowing and scraping she'd pushed aside her situation. Now it rushed back on her with stunning force. She stared about and I saw the way those red lips trembled and I was able to move smoothly forward and catch her in my arms as she collapsed.

  “Jikai—” Folly looked troubled as she helped me put the princess down. “She has a terrible temper. You are in grave danger.”

  “Tell me what's been going on, Folly. Where are you from?”