Warlord of Antares [Dray Prescot #37] Read online

  Yes, I was growing more and more hungry and more and more annoyed.

  What I imagined to be the final annoyance, although in that I was wrong, hissed past close at hand. A chair shot out of the alleyway opposite and pelted on and vanished past me. It went by close. And the damned thing was empty.

  So, I lifted up my head and voice and I roared out: “Star Lords! What in blazes is going on! Are you all asleep, or are you all senile?"

  Echoes rolled around eerily.

  “Sink me!” I burst out. “I wish those doddering old fools would get both oars in the water."

  Nothing responded so there was nothing I could do but march on in hope.

  I didn't go near any of the dead men in their decaying armor. They hadn't been struck down in a fight, so it was a good guess that they'd died of disease. I did not wish to have anything to do with that.

  Only one of them was not wearing full harness. He was a numim, and his ferocious lionman's face lay lax and crumpled in death. He carried a water bottle at his belt. I licked my lips. But that water could be the death of me. The numim's chest was crushed in, a most unappetizing sight, and a curved sword lay on the metal near his right hand.

  I went on.

  Now I really was hungry, and no doubt about it.

  Pretty soon I'd join the caterpillars and rip off a chunk of decaying metal and find out what their diet tasted like. They looked big and chunky and well fed. Perhaps the corroded metal was really tasty. I pushed aside vivid mental pictures of pies and puddings, of steaks and gammons, of fruit and vegetables and endless cups of tea, and stalked on. And more and more my gaze was drawn to that rotten and tempting decaying metal.

  “By the Black Chunkrah!” Head up, feeling a fool as though I was under observation, I marched over to the nearest wall and ripped off a handful of scrunchy metal.

  It felt like biscuits just holding together; crumbs fell away. I molded the handful in my palm. I looked at it. I sniffed it. No smell. Cautiously I tasted a tiny portion with the tip of my tongue. The hardness at once melted into paste. And the taste—deuced odd. Like vinegar, and yet not sharp and unpleasant, with a touch of gherkin in there, and spice, and a generous portion of piccalilli and tomatoes, and, under all this bizarre mixture, the feeling that, yes, by Krun, this was metal I was eating.

  I ate some more. After a couple of handfuls it became more than palatable. I could guess that a fellow could get addicted to this stuff. This, therefore, would not do. I did not know of any metal-eating caterpillars on Kregen.

  Munching the paste, well, teeth were unnecessary for, as the caterpillars did, I could simply slurp it down once it had been moistened, I trotted on. I confess I felt in a more reasonable frame of mind. That state of mind was still bloody in the extreme, mind, and I stored up the fruitiest epithets in my skull for use against the Everoinye—when and if they ever put in an appearance.

  Now I know about the Mysterious Universe and all that, and of the mystifying nature of humankind's choice, of destiny and all that, and of the inevitability of death; but I hadn't chosen to come here, I was not at this moment concerned with the mystery of the universe, and I most certainly did not intend to die here.

  I was interested in the mystery of this place, for understanding that might hoick me out of it.

  There appeared to me in all sober reality little chance that I couldunderstand this crazy gaggle of metal boxes.

  The miserable nagging doubt began to creep in that I had chosen the wrong way, that I should have gone right instead of left.

  I can tell you, the bonhomie brought on by an unexpectedly good meal in a place not at once apparent for gastronomic delights, wore off sharpish, very sharpish, by Vox.

  In this churlish frame of mind the fact that the metal was not corroded on the boxes I was passing took time to sink in. What made me realize this were the antics of a caterpillar I'd automatically switched alleyways to avoid.

  He was lifting his head and aiming that feeding proboscis and shooting a jet of liquid in neat patterned swipes over the wall. The liquid glistered with the sheen of the rainbow before vanishing.

  “So that's it,” I said. “These hairy horrors squirt some gunk on the metal, that starts to rot away, then they trundle along and slurp it up."

  That made no difference to my taste for the stuff. I've eaten far worse than that on Kregen.

  Farther on, with pristine boxes all about me, I ran across an object that—at last!—signaled a change.

  A slender, near-gossamer tower rose up into that indeterminate silvery sky. The lacework of the weblike struts and girders, delicate and fairy-like, formed a contrast of overwhelming power.

  Approaching that enchanted spire with great caution I stared up its height. I couldn't see the top against that all-encompassing whiteness; but it was remote and far distant, for the latticework blended and formed a line no thicker than a hair before it was lost to my vision.

  Now why I did what I did might have remained a mystery to me, had not a memory of Zena Iztar occurred to me. When, as Madam Ivanovna, she had visited me on Earth, she had said: “When the need to strike arises, you must strike with a gong-note of power."

  What the blazes she'd meant then I'd no idea.

  But the memory recurred to me now, and as Zena Iztar might move in mysterious ways but always to a purpose, I whipped up the great Krozair longsword and struck the flat against the latticework of that fairy tower.

  The structure gonged pure and mellow.

  In the next instant I was upside down, buffeted by a mad whirlpool of blackness, hurtling head over heels out of the blackness and into a refulgent blueness. I gasped as I landed with a thump.

  Noise burst about my head, men shouting and arguing, women laughing and screaming, and in my nostrils stank the stenches of a tavern, of rancid fat, of burned meat, of wetted sawdust, the smells of spilled wine and ale and the cheap scents of women.

  * * *

  Chapter two

  Of Emperors in a Thieves Tavern

  Apart from the too-obvious fact I was in a tavern, I had absolutely no idea where on Kregen I was. Well, that was the usual engaging way of the Star Lords. The Everoinye would drag me off from whatever I happened to be doing and chuck me down somewhere to do their dirty work for them. It was beginning to look as though they were genuinely incapable of doing that work themselves.

  Instead of their habitual practice of tossing me in at the deep end to face horrendous perils stark naked, this time I still possessed the scarlet breechclout and the longsword, the belted loincloth and the sailor knife.

  Everyone in the tavern must have thought I'd fallen from the balcony along this side of the taproom.

  I regained my balance and, rather naturally, the longsword remained in my fist. The blade snouted up and the samphron oil lamps caught and runneled in a golden silver glitter.

  An absolute—a deathly—hush fell over the tavern.

  No one spoke. No one moved. All that raucous laughter, the screaming of insults, the savage words that must inevitably lead to a fight, all the hullabaloo died as though a giant door had slammed.

  They were a rough old lot. Most of them would cross the road to avoid the Watch. There was probably more stolen property about their persons, and no doubt in the landlord's cellars, than would comfortably fit into a six-krahnik wain. Their faces showed the marks of hard experience, of cunning and skullduggery, of thievery and mayhem. Also, they were not too clean and many were scarred and more than a few one-eyed.

  In this company the sudden arrival of a stranger was like to see that foolhardy wight with a second mouth to laugh with, a mouth stretching across his throat.

  The immediate action into which I had dropped was pitifully obvious. A young lad was being bullied by a hulking brute and in the next few moments would have had his head knocked in and the purse removed from his belt. If this was the state to which the Star Lords had reduced me, then I was very deep down indeed.

  Then I contumed myself for a proud i
diot. Any injustice must be fought, and if the injustice close to hand appears pitifully insignificant, it is not, and must be fought as hard as the greatest of injustices. For of the small the great are fashioned.

  And still that cutthroat crew stood silent and still, glaring on me as though I was a ghost, an ib broken from the flesh and blood body.

  Suddenly, as though flung from a catapult, the lad pushed himself up from where the bully had bent him back over the table. He leaped up and instantly dropped down and went into the full incline, nose in the filthy sawdust and brown breechclouted rump high in the air.

  A yellow-haired woman, very blowsy, whose bodice strings were unlatched in a slatternly way, screeched in a shriek that pierced eardrums.

  “It is! It is the emperor! It is Dray Prescot!"

  Then—and I swear it as Zair is my witness!—that whole ruffianly crew from bully to pot boy, thumped down onto their knees, stuck their noses into the sawdust and elevated their bottoms in a sea of rotundity.

  In a voice that cracked out more like a whip than a roar, I shouted: “If you know who I am, then you know I do not like the full incline. It is not seemly in a man or woman. By Vox! Stand up!"

  The rustlings and surgings and gaspings as they struggled up really were funny; I could see the humorous side of this; but I was all at sea here and in too much of a hurry to laugh. Which is always a mistake.

  There was no surprise to be felt when the lad and the bully and the yellow-haired woman all started in shouting at one another and at me, accusing, counter-accusing. The row was over the woman's affections, a perfectly ordinary squabble. Harm might have come to the lad. So the Emperor of Vallia had dropped in to sort out the problem and see justice was done.

  They were not surprised, once they'd overcome the initial shock. Everyone in Vallia had read the books, read or heard the poems, seen the plays and puppet shows, telling of the deeds of Dray Prescot. No one bothered to wonder how the emperor could be in so many places at one and the same time. He was Dray Prescot, and so he could be expected to turn up in times of trouble.

  An old buffer with lank hair, three front teeth and a look of a dyspeptic owl sitting on a stool to the side, and saying nothing, ought to be the one.

  I said: “Dom, tell me the rights of this."

  He led off at once, cacklingly, relating how young Larghos thought he was beloved of Buxom Trodi, who was enamored of Nath the Biceps.

  “They but gulled the lad, majister, and no harm done. But young Larghos pulled a knife—"

  I glared at the youngster.

  “Did you draw steel in this quarrel?"

  He flushed scarlet and stammered. “Yes, majister."

  Probably he had intended to scare Nath the Biceps off before his head was bashed in. I suggested that.

  “No, majister. That is, yes, majister; but I did not want to kill Nath. If the knife had stuck him a little, I would not have sorrowed."

  Nath the Biceps, boiling up, broke out with: “I was only going to clip you side o’ the ear, you great fambly!"

  “So the matter is settled.” I spoke like granite. “You must find another light o’ love, Larghos."

  “Indeed, yes, majister. Thank you, majister."

  “Thank you, majister,” chorused the other two.

  I stared around the taproom by the light of the samphron oil lamps. A place like this would normally be lit by cheap mineral oil lamps. A thieves’ den, then.

  I spoke forcefully.

  “You have evidently not heard. I have renounced the crown of Vallia. I am no longer the emperor, nor is the divine Delia the empress. Our son and his bride now rule. Hai, Jikai, Drak and Silda, Emperor and Empress of Vallia!"

  One or two of them called out a “Hai, Jikai."

  Others shuffled their feet. A lot had reason to turn their heads. I felt the puzzlement.

  “What ails you, doms? Why do you not give the Hai, Jikai to our new emperor and empress?"

  The lank-haired, three-toothed buffer piped up, speaking for all.

  “We heard, majister, as my name is Orol the Wise. We scarcely credited that you would turn your back on Vallia and leave us, thieves though we be. For our sons and daughters have served you well. We have nothing against Prince Drak and Princess Silda. But you and the divine Delia are emperor and empress. Opaz knows that."

  I couldn't very well ask them where I was. Well, I could, and they'd answer and most of them would think this merely another whim. But I fancied I didn't need to ask. I thought I was in Vondium, the capital of Vallia. I thought I was in the old city, in Drak's City, a place apart, a city within a city, the haunt of thieves and runaways, of disaffected folk and of assassins.

  “Yes,” I said. “Your young men have served as kreutzin and have done prodigies. But all our loyalties go now to the new emperor and empress."

  “It's not right,” spoke out a fellow with one eye and a scar to match.

  I shook my head. Well, of course, this whole scene was farcical. Here was I arguing the rights and wrongs of empire with a bunch of cutthroats in an evil-smelling tavern. Yet the situation was serious. Was this the attitude of many of the citizenry of Vallia? If so, it portended ill for my lad Drak and his gorgeous bride Silda, the daughter of my blade-comrade Seg Segutorio.

  So, in that lugubrious and squalid tavern I spoke up and told them somewhat of the dangers of the Shanks from over the curve of the world, how they raided us.

  “These devilish Fish-heads burn and pillage and seize all. Now they will attack inland as well as our coasts, for they have fliers."

  At this there was a murmur of alarm and horror.

  “Yes, doms, we in Vallia are in for it. All the lands of Paz must unite together to resist these Leem Lovers. If we fail to act together now, we will not have another chance."

  A fellow with a glint of silver at his throat, wearing a leather jack and with a scar across his jaw that gave his whole countenance a leering and lopsided look, shouldered up. He carried, I noticed, a drexer for a sword. In his left fist he held a tankard which slopped suds; but he was not intoxicated. His right fist rested on his broad lestenhide belt whose buckle looked to be gold. I say looked, the ways of these folk in Drak's City are cunning in forgery and artifice.

  “Emperor,” he cried. “Majister. We have fought for Vallia against the Hamalese, and against the Clansmen from Segesthes. We have fought the damned Pandaheem. Now you ask us to make friends with them, perhaps to kiss them on the cheek."

  “If necessary,” said I, speaking up. “If you care for a mouthful of whiskers, that is."

  That raised a few titters.

  He was not to be deterred. He had darkish hair which grew low on his forehead, and darkish eyebrows which knit furiously together as he scowled.

  “You say, majister, you are not the emperor any more. You are our emperor, and we have fought for you. I have never fought in any of Prince Drak's armies."

  I had him to rights now. I didn't know his name—well, even with the memory conferred upon me by the Savanti nal Aphrasöe, I couldn't know the name of every swod in the army.

  But he'd be one of the mercenaries who'd returned home from service overseas and would have been used as a drill-master for the young lads from Drak's City who had been volunteered into the new Vallian army by the Aleygyn, the chief of the assassins of Drak's City. He wore no rank markings; he'd be a Deldar at the least. I had not missed the silver glitter at his throat marking him for a mortpaktun, a renowned mercenary.

  “What regiment?” I said.

  “Fourth Emperor's Yellow Jackets, majister."

  “A right hairy bunch. I know of your deeds. Your name?"

  “Ord-Deldar Yomin the Clis, majister."

  “Very well, Deldar. I tell you in Opaz's twinned truth, I have renounced the crown and throne of Vallia, I have abdicated, and the divine Delia, also. The Emperor Drak and the Empress Silda are now your lawful lords and lady. It is to them we all owe our duty."

  Those ferocious eyebrows of his t
wisted about at this. Then a sudden and cunning expression turned his face into a veritable mask of shrewdness.

  He flung up his right hand, excited with his own discovery.

  “Listen, doms!” he bellowed. “I have riddled it! I see it all! All the lands of Paz must unite and we all know there is only one person who can perform that prodigious task."

  “Aye!” they cackled it out, laughing at their own access of understanding. “Aye! Only one man!"

  “Of course Dray Prescot and the divine Delia must have someone else on the throne of Vallia, for they are to lead all Paz! It is sooth. Hai, Dray Prescot! Hai, Delia! Emperor of Emperors and Empress of Empresses! Hai, Jikai! Hai, Jikai!"

  So they all took it up, caterwauling it out, over and over, and a fine show they made of flashing wicked-looking knives and cudgels and coshes in the air. What a rapscallion bunch!

  And I stood there, like a loon, like the fallible fool I was. I, Dray Prescot, the Lord of Strombor and Krozair of Zy—and various other bodies besides—was now to add to my burden of titles a fresh load of responsibility hung on me by a pack of rogues in a dissolute tavern!

  It was enough to make a plain old sailorman snatch off his hat and throw it on the ground and jump on it, by Zair!

  The pandemonium hullabalooed on and it might have gone on until the Ice Floes of Sicce went up in steam for all I knew. But a blueness swept in and I felt the cold and the wind and I began that long fall upward into the giant blue form of the Scorpion, huge and ghostly and radiantly blue above me.

  What that plug ugly bunch in the tavern thought I didn't know. They'd just put this flashy vanishment down to another of those fabulous Dray Prescot tricks, to be repeated in story and song and regaled to one and all around the hearth, around the campfires, in hall and hovel alike all over Vallia.

  Around me the blueness swelled and bloated with that phantom form of the Scorpion. The red flush spread across my vision and there was not a single spark of golden yellow or, thankfully, of acrid green.

  As I whirled up through the void so I realized all my anger against the Star Lords had evaporated. I couldn't sustain that juvenile emotion under the stress of sheer continued existence. Emperor of Emperors? I didn't want to be an Emperor of bloody Emperors!