Swordships of Scorpio dp-4 Read online

  If that sounds pompous, tyrannical, banal, blame yourself, not me. I spoke truths. Truths were needed then; for I could hardly hold myself under control. Vallia! Delia! The need for her flamed in my blood, drugged me with desire. Too long had I betrayed her, and dillydallied with renders and Kovs and all the petty glory of sailing a swordship sea under my old flag.

  “You — will not desert us, Dray?” Tilda tried to wipe away the tears staining her cheeks. Her eyes rested on me in a new glory, and I knew that if I stayed I would now have the same trouble with her as I had with Viridia.

  As for that pirate wench, she stood with my old flag draping her shoulders, her rapier all bloody, glaring at me.

  “And if you go to Vallia, Dray Prescot the Render, what is to prevent me from going, also?”

  I sighed. I tried to speak calmly.

  “There is nothing but heartbreak for you in Vallia, Viridia.”

  “And is she so much more beautiful, more desirable than me, Dray?”

  “Or me?” demanded Tilda passionately.

  There was no answer that a gentleman might make, and although I am no gentleman, although a Krozair of Zy, I could make no answer, either. But my silence told them both. The moment held, awkwardly. Then Pando broke it. He struggled free, wiping blood from my armor caught tackily on his hands down that zhantil tunic.

  “And would you beat me, Dray?”

  Then I laughed.

  “I would flog you, Pando, you imp of Sicce, if you did not behave like a true Kov and have a care for your people of Bormark! Aye, flog you until you sobbed for mercy!”

  Before Pando could answer the chamber filled with the pirates who had followed me here. They crowded in, forming a great excited mass of milling men and glittering steel about me. Arkhebi, his red hair all tousled, shouted the words, words taken up by the others in a flashing of lifted rapiers.

  “Hai, Jikai! Dray Prescot! Hai! Jikai! Jikai!”

  Well, they were happy in the knowledge that immense plunder awaited them in Menaham. I listened to the uproar, and that slit between my lips widened a trifle, hurtfully. That glorious mingled sunshine of Antares flooded in from the tall windows to lie across the rich trappings, the colors, the steel of blade and armor, the flushed excited faces, the blood. The samphron oil lamps blinked dim. Someone had thrown back the shutters from the windows and all the opaz glory of the Suns of Scorpio poured in.

  I looked through the windows into that bright dazzlement and saw a giant raptor, its scarlet and golden feathers brilliant in the streaming mingled light of the twin suns. And coldness touched my heart.

  Jerkily, moving with the stiffness of rheumatic old-age, I pushed through the shouting exultant renders, entered a small side room. I was vaguely conscious of Viridia and Tilda following me, suddenly anxious, but if they spoke I did not hear what they said. Behind them, I guessed, Inch and Valka and Spitz would be treading on fast, and Pando would be working his way through to catch me. I felt dizzy.

  Then — how I recall that moment of horror, of despair! — across that empty room before me I saw the scuttling running form of a scorpion.

  A scorpion!

  I knew, then. .

  I was to be returned to Earth, banished from Kregen beneath Antares, hurled back contemptuously to the planet of my birth.

  As that cursed blue radiance limned all my vision and the sensations of falling clawed at my limbs, my body, my brain, I cried out, high, desperately, frantically.

  “Remember me, remember Dray Prescot!”

  And when I tried to shout my defiance of the Star Lords, and of the Savanti, who were so callously flinging me back to Earth, and to scream that I would not return to Earth, that I would stay on Kregen, no sound issued from my rigid lips.

  The blueness grew.

  It took on the semblance of a gigantic blue-glowing scorpion.

  I was falling.

  In my mind, unuttered, tearing and bursting with passion, I screamed: “Delia! My Delia of Delphond! My Delia of the Blue Mountains! I will come back! I will come back! Delia, I will return!”

  I would return.

  FB2 document info

  Document ID: fbd-dc4fcb-e397-ec48-fab7-2eb6-f399-ce5840

  Document version: 1

  Document creation date: 12.11.2012

  Created using: calibre 0.9.5, Fiction Book Designer, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6.6 software

  Document authors :

  Alan Burt Akers

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