Warrior of Scorpio [Dray Prescot #3] Read online

  Down there three figures struggled toward the boat we had chosen. The Lady Pulvia fell and Seg thrust the child at Caphlander and snatched up his mistress, slung her over his shoulder as he must have slung the bags of feed oats on her farm. They would reach the boat safely—and then I saw the group of sorzarts running from the heat and the smoke of their burning fleet.

  I looked down.

  It was a long way—a hundred and fifty feet in Terrestrial measurement. The sea looked blue and calm and serene. Shadows flitted across that surface as smoke clouds wafted by. The twin suns shone in all their resplendent glory. And, away in distant Vallia, my Delia of the Blue Mountains waited for me...

  You have probably read of experiments carried out to test from what distance a man can safely fall without a parachute. There are remarkable cases on record. Impact velocities of the order of a hundred feet per second have resulted in the survival of the person—in what state depending very much on the angle of impact or entry into the water. I knew nothing of that, then. All I knew was that I had to get down to the beach rather quickly. There were things to be done down there which if left undone would bring the wrath of the Star Lords down on my mortal head.

  Without stopping further to cogitate I put my arms out and dived.

  Even now I can remember the sensations.

  Free-fall diving from aircraft is a modern sport.

  I have practiced it and enjoyed it.

  Then, when I dived off the cliff in Proconia above a Pattelonian fishing village, with the sorzarts running with naked swords, I just dived and let what fates held me in their hands take control.

  Mind you, I did assume a diving position, and I entered the water straight. Confused images of that immense waterfall in the sacred River Aph billowed and echoed in my mind, and my whole body felt as though I had been compressed in some giant vise. Then I was cleaving through the water, down and down, seeing the daylight fade, feeling the growing resistance in the water, curving up, rising and rising until my head popped out and I could shake my hair and look back at the beach.

  That first gulp of air tasted very sweet.

  The Lady Pulvia, Caphlander, and the child were in the boat. Seg had just hurled an assegai and brought down the leader of the band of vengeful sorzarts. I started to swim.

  When I scrambled out Seg accounted for four more and was crossing swords with the sixth.

  I must admit I had been extraordinarily lucky since neither the Star Lords nor the Savanti had taken a hand to preserve a life they might consider of use to them. Certainly the risk had been entirely of entry. The almost vertical cliffs of this coast had told me the water would be steep-to right up to the rock, deep and commodious enough for me to avoid knocking my brains out on the bottom. The overhang of the bluff assisted also. I had merely to swim around the tiny spit of land to reach the beach and Seg and the others.

  “Hai Jikai!” I yelled. I drew my sword and slogged into the lizard-men. Seg circled a sword, thrust, recovered, shouted: “What kept you?"

  A joke, a reprimand, mere bravado—I do not know. I never asked. But I felt a warm glow of elation at the presence of this black-haired and reckless man from Erthyrdrin.

  There was no time for nicety in that fight. We had to dispose of this band of sorzarts—there were about eight left—very rapidly before their comrades left off hurling ineffectual buckets of water over their burning ships and hastened to their assistance. No niceties—that meant hard, fierce, dirty fighting. Tricks I had learned boarding enemy ships of the line in the battle-smoke of Earth, tricks I had picked up with my Clansmen, even a few passes from those days as a bravo-fighter in Zenicce came in useful. All the miraculous-seeking swordplay given me by the disciplines of the Krozairs of Zy, of course, enabled me to stay ahead of my opponent, but some of the stunts I pulled would have turned a young college boy fencer of this Earth green.

  Seg and I—we very quickly cleared the sorzarts away.

  “The three boats on your side, Seg!” I yelled.

  Without a word he did as I directed, and together we stove in the bottoms of the boats lying in this huddle. One boat, the largest, a fifty-footer, lay some distance off, toward where the bonfires of the dromvilers spouted flame and smoke.

  I started for it, waving Seg back to the boat we had selected.

  The Lady Pulvia na Upalion stood up in the bows of the boat. Very erect, she stood.

  “Leave that boat!” she shouted. “They are coming! Look! Hurry back and push this boat into the sea! Hurry!"

  A further group following the non-reappearance of those sent to investigate, no doubt, was indeed running from the burning ships along the beach toward us. Suns-light glinted on their bronze and copper ornaments, from their tall golden helmets, and winked back from their naked weapons.

  I turned to the Lady Pulvia.

  “Get out and help Seg and Caphlander push the boat out! Move yourself! Hurry!"

  Then, before she could give vent to her outraged anger and surprise, I yelled at Seg: “Get the boat off, Seg! Make her help—and the Relt. I will swim out to you.” Then I hared off toward the remaining boat and the swiftly advancing party of sorzarts. When they saw me they shrilled their horrid war cries—but mere yelling has not so far harmed me at that distance.

  Reaching the fifty-footer I stove the bottom in with four quick blows—not without once more that pang of displeasure at myself for this destruction of property that gave livelihood to the poor fisher-folk—and glared out to sea to get the best line for my swim.

  The boat had not moved. The Lady Pulvia still stood in the bows, gesticulating to the two—Seg and Caphlander—who were vainly attempting to thrust the boat's keel into the water.

  I kept down the immediate icy welling of rage. That, if I so chose, would come later.

  The boat felt thick and hard beneath my hands as I reached it. At any moment the sorzarts would be within assegai-casting range.

  “All together!"

  We heaved. The boat lurched, the keel screeched, it stuck—we all bent and thrust with desperate effort—and then the boat jerked and slid free into the water. I took Caphlander around the waist and fairly flung him up into the boat. Seg went in over the other side and I, after a last fierce thrust that sent the craft surging out into the tiny waves, leaped in after him.

  At once I seized the oars Seg had readied and fell to. I rowed with a long swing and now all those horrific days of labor when I was an oar slave aboard the swifters of Magdag paid handsome dividends. The boat clove the water. Spray danced inboard. I bent and pulled, bent and pulled, and only incidentally was aware of Seg snatching an assegai from where it had plunged into the transom and, standing and balancing awkwardly, flinging it back into the throat of a sorzart prancing in fury on the beach.

  A few more assegais plunged in alongside and then they were hissing into the water astern of us.

  I steadied the rhythm of my stroke and glared with a most uncharitable wrath upon my Lady Pulvia na Upalion.

  She saw that look, and her chin came up; then a deep flush spread over her cheeks and she lowered her eyes. She breathed unsteadily.

  “The next time I give an order,” I told her, knowing that infernal rasp was back in my voice, “you will obey instantly, do you understand?"

  She made no reply.

  “Do you understand, Lady Pulvia?” I repeated.

  Caphlander started to burble something about being respectful to the mistress, but Seg shut him up. At last she raised her eyes. She had evidently made up her mind to be cutting, authoritative, contemptuous. But she saw my face and her resolution and no doubt her set speech faltered. She opened her mouth.

  “Obey—understand,” I said, not ceasing from rowing.

  “Yes."

  “Very well."

  I rowed then in a simple long rhythm that sent the little boat out across the suns-lit waters of the Eye of the World.

  * * *

  Chapter Four

  Rashoons command our course
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  I took no pleasure—on the contrary I experience no little shame—in thus browbeating a woman rightfully concerned over her child and attempting to uphold her own dignity and not give way to the fears that must have been clamoring to turn her into a sobbing ball of defenseless weakness. But there can be, as I know to my cost, only one captain aboard ship.

  And—she was a slave-holder, and a representative of that class of authority most distasteful to me after my experiences in far-off Zenicce, and more lately in Magdag.

  We sailed the muldavy with her dipping lug rig safely to the town, the port and arsenal and fortress of Happapat, and delivered the Lady Pulvia na Upalion into the hands of relations who cooed over her and the child and whisked her off to their palace.

  When their guards—fair-haired Proconians clad in the iron ring mail of warriors all around the coasts of the inner sea, and armed with long swords that were not cut down—marched Seg and me off to the local barracoon, I felt no surprise whatsoever.

  This kind of attitude on the part of slave-holders seemed inseparable from their nature, as abhorrent to Seg as to myself.

  We wasted no time in breaking out, whooping, cracking a few skulls in the process, and with a couple of wineskins and a vosk thigh tastefully cooked and browned, we helter-skeltered off to the harbor. The fishing muldavy we had stolen in order to rescue the Lady Pulvia and her child and Caphlander lay still tied up where we had left her. In her, I knew, there was a full breaker of water. We tossed our meager belongings in and cut the painter—a gesture of defiance, that—and rowed out. We had the lugsail up and were foaming off into the suns-set long before the guards had pulled their scattered wits about them.

  “And so, Dray Prescot,” said Seg Segutorio, “what now?"

  I stared with a glad affection at this volatile man with the lean tanned face and those shrewd yet reckless eyes. He was a good sword-companion, and for a moment I remembered with a choked nostalgia all those other good companions I had known. I am essentially a lonely man, a loner, one who stands or falls on his own merits and I take ill to being beholden to anyone. This is a fault in me. I thought of Nath and Zolta, my two oar comrades, those two rascals who could not keep away from wine and women. And I remembered how Nath would lean back and quaff a full tankard, and wipe his forearm across his shining lips, and belch, and say: “Mother Zinzu the Blessed! I needed that!” and how Zolta would already have the prettiest girl in the inn perched laughing on his knee.

  Sitting resting on the oars and looking at Seg Segutorio with an awakening awareness—I cannot dwell on that, as you will come to understand—I remembered Zorg of Felteraz, my other oar brother, and I thought of Prince Varden Wanek, and of Gloag, and of Hap Loder—and—and remember I was still young at the time as age is measured on Kregen—I wondered how it was that Seg Segutorio could sit on the opposite thwart and look back at me so cheerfully and say so matter-of-factly: “Well, Dray Prescot, and what now?"

  These memories of my comrades affected me, and I admit to a tired, dejected, defeated feeling creeping over me then. You would be forgiven if, from all I have so far said, you jump to the conclusion that Kregen is essentially a man's world. Despite the Princess Natema Cydones, and the Princess Susheeng, and other highborn ladies of enormous power, including among their number the Lady Pulvia na Upalion whom we had just rescued and delivered safely to her kinfolk, you might well think that Kregen is dominated by the male principle where brawn and muscle and fighting ability count for everything.

  You would, of course, be wrong.

  Through this sudden gloom on my part for my old comrades I never for a single instant forgot my twin destiny on Kregen beneath the suns of Scorpio.

  Whatever plans the Star Lords had mapped out for me as a troubleshooter, I held to my own purposes. First, I would find my beloved Delia of the Blue Mountains. And, when that had been accomplished, I would travel this world of Kregen to find my way back to Aphrasöe, the City of the Savanti, the Swinging City, for there I believed paradise awaited me. In all these simple and primitive emotions and ambitions I could still find joy that I did not seek vengeance.

  We sailed out into the waters of the inner sea, and Seg appeared perfectly satisfied to allow me the conn and to run the muldavy. As he said, with a laugh: “We Erthyr are a mountain people. The sea is not a second home to us."

  The night breathed gently about us. The sea ran with a calmness that cradled the little boat. The stars glittered above our heads. The wind blew a mere zephyr.

  I looked at the stars. I knew them well. I had studied them night after night from the deck of my swifter as we sailed in unexpected nocturnal raids against the overlords of Magdag, or any of the green cities of the northern shore. I had often shocked my crew by this nighttime sailing; their ideas were those of daytime sailing only and a safe beach at night.

  I steered to the west.

  It was necessary that I return to Magdag as soon as possible. From thence, before the rebellion, I had sent the Vallian Vomanus back to his home island with a message for Delia. He would return—that I knew with fair certainty—and if he landed at Magdag now, his life would be snuffed out in an instant as a friend of the arch-criminal Pur Dray of Strombor, Krozair, arch-fiend and deadly foe to Magdag.

  We steadied on our course west and the wind gusted up suddenly and heeled the muldavy so that water creamed in over the lee gunwale until I let her pay off a trifle. I frowned. The wind veered and strengthened. Now the stars were being blotted out in great clumps at a time as clouds gathered. A brilliant zigzag of fire split the heavens. The thunder, when it reached us, rolled and reverberated around our ears. Rain started to slice into the sea in an abrupt and deafening uproar. In moments we were soaked, our hair tangled about our ears. Seg started to bale. The wind blew directly from the west.

  I knew.

  This storm not only confirmed my fears that the Star Lords would not allow me to return to Magdag, it also strengthened my suspicion that after my summary ejection from the fight as my slave phalanx in their old yellow-painted vosk-helmets raged on to tear the mailed overlords of Magdag to pieces the battle had swung against us. Perhaps I had overstepped my authority when I had really and truly organized the slaves and workers of the warrens so that they could actually win the fight against the overlords? Perhaps the Star Lords did not want the overlords of Magdag crushed and banished? It could be their plans called for whatever I had done to slumber a while, to gather subterranean strength, to smolder until at some time in the Star Lords’ plans for Kregen that spirit I had kindled with the help of the Prophet could burst out in renewed fury. I did not know.

  What I did know was that I could not reach Magdag.

  Very well, then. Gradually a kind of structure of devices for coping with the Star Lords—if this was truly their work and not the mortal but nonetheless superhuman work of the Savanti—was being wrought out in my mind. I had successfully appealed and been granted reprieve the last time, in that I had been permitted to stay on Kregen, in a dissimilar fashion to the way in which I had been reprieved at Akhram. The idea began to grow that provided I did not actively contest the dictates of the Star Lords—The Everoinye—I might go about my own business on Kregen beneath Antares.

  Yes—very well, then. I put the steering oar up and we surged away on the starboard tack. I would go to Pattelonia. Vomanus would be there if I was lucky, and I could stop him from going on to Magdag. Then—then we would take over the Hostile Territories to Port Tavetus from whence we could sail direct for Vallia.

  And then—Delia!

  Immediately our bows swung to the eastward with the necessary touch of southerly in the heading for Pattelonia, the wind eased off and the rain ceased. Amid a last grumbling of thunder I heard the harsh croaking shriek as of a giant bird. I looked up. In the darkness I could not see the Gdoinye—but I knew without shadow of a doubt that the gorgeous scarlet and golden raptor of the Star Lords had swung over us in its wide hunting circles.

  “In the name of
the veiled Froyvil himself!” said Seg. He looked about. “What was that?"

  “A seabird,” I said, “caught in the gale. It seems, friend Seg, we must sail to Pattelonia—rather the chief city on the eastern coast of Proconia than any other, yes?—and we will reach it safely, never fear. You asked me what now—this is your answer. What do you say?"

  “Pattelonia.” Seg spat the name. “That may be the chief city, but the fighting-men disgust me."

  “Oh?"

  He swagged up a wineskin and stoppered his mouth to the spout very expertly, as the boat surged along, considering he considered himself no sailor. When he had gulped and wiped his mouth and said, “By Blessed Mother Zinzu, that fires up the cockles of my heart!"—and what a pang of Nath there was in that for me!—he went on to say: “I hired out as mercenary to Pattelonia in one of their infernal wars, you know?"

  I nodded. “I know."

  His story was commonplace, ugly, and painful. Men of Loh could usually find employment as mercenaries without trouble, for their prowess as archers was renowned throughout the known lands of Kregen. Seg had entered the inner sea by the western end, through the Grand Canal past the Dam of Days. I reflected that he had seen that colossal construction; I had not. I forbore to mention that to him; it would arouse too many questions. His fighting career had been of the normal routine and monotonous kind associated with mercenary fighting; when the Pattelonians had been defeated by a combined force of a number of the Proconian cities assisted by Magdag, he had been captured and sold as slave.

  “So Pattelonia fell,” I said.

  “Mayhap. I did hear that Sanurkazz was coming to our assistance, but I tripped into that damned thorn-hole and was scooped up by a diabolical overlord before it did me any good."

  I made suitable sympathetic noises.

  “There are friends in Pattelonia, Seg, although I have never been there. We will be returning to Vallia.” This was a lie. I could never return to Vallia for I had never been there in the first place; but as I had told Kov Tharu of Vindelka, I thought of Vallia for all its frightening reputation as home simply because my Delia lived there.