Warrior of Scorpio [Dray Prescot #3] Read online

  “My duty lies here, Dray, to help our Pattelonian allies against their foes and the devils from Magdag. I urge you, Pur Dray, now you have found your Delia of the Blue Mountains, to remain here. There is much to be done. We are pushing them back. Our army has gained success after success. Soon the call we all long for will go out, and all the men of Zair will rise and go up against the evil of Grodno."

  “Greatly would I desire to do that, Zenkiren. But—"

  The twin suns were slipping into the sea, far away across the western horizon. I persuaded Zenkiren to order a fleet liburna out. As we stood on the poop—she had no quarterdeck—and watched the single banks of oars, three men to an oar, pulling in that metronomic rhythm inseparable from the ideal of the swifter, I waited with apprehension.

  That apprehension was for what I hoped would not occur.

  But it did.

  The wind roared, the sea got up, the thunders and the lightnings cracked and fizzled about us. We turned for the harbor and the gale dropped.

  “I do not care to inquire too closely into these things,” said Zenkiren, with a gravity habitual to him in weighty affairs. “No doubt Pur Zazz could fathom the meaning. But I take your point. You are fated to travel east—away over The Stratemsk, over the Hostile Territories. I wish you well, Brother, for the way is difficult, Zair knows."

  “Pur Zazz has told me of many marvels and wonders in the Hostile Territories. I am happy to know the Grand Archbold still lives."

  “Zair has him in his keeping, Dray. I pray he will live until my work here is accomplished."

  I knew what he meant.

  “When you are Grand Archbold, Zenkiren, and the call comes for all the Krozairs of Zy to answer—I will not fail."

  He inclined his head in acknowledgment. But he was a sad man that I could not go with him on this last expedition against the forces of Magdag arrayed against us in the eastern end of the Eye of the World.

  I believe that Delia took an opportunity to speak privately to Zenkiren, and can guess at some of the many questions she asked about my life on the inner sea, and that she asked about Mayfwy, too; I am glad that when we two spoke of these things together we could be absolutely frank with each other. Mayfwy, the widow of my friend Zorg of Felteraz, was a wonderful person and a glorious girl; but there can only ever be one woman in my life—my Delia, my Delia of Delphond!

  Still and all, I gave Zenkiren the charge of making sure that my agent Shallan got the best price for the prize swifter Sword of Genodras and that all my shares should be paid to Mayfwy.

  “After all, young Zorg will be growing up soon, and he must command the finest swifter that can be provided,” I said. My old oar comrade Zorg—I would not let his widow or his son or daughter suffer if any way lay open to me to prevent it. I knew my two rascals, Nath and Zolta, felt exactly the same way.

  During the short time we spent at Pattelonia, in a sense getting our wind for the next stage of our journey to Vallia, Seg kept much to himself. He was still trying his best to win some sign of recognition from Thelda, but she persisted in her fussing smothering of me, much to my annoyance and Delia's hidden and mocking amusement.

  Seg came in one day bearing a monstrous stave of wood of so dark a green as to appear black. He flicked it about, speaking slightingly of it, but he was pleased.

  “This is not true Yerthyr wood,” he said. “The Yerthyr tree is deadly poisonous to the weak animals hereabouts, and the people do not like to grow it. In Erthyrdrin our nimble thyrrixes are able to digest the wood and bark and the leaves in their second stomach."

  “So?"

  “This stave will make a passable bow-stave after I have dealt with it.” He ran his thumb along it, feeling. “But had I my own longbow—ah, then, Dray Prescot, you would see!"

  A commotion broke out at the door, for we had by Zenkiren's kind invitation removed from the hostelry and quartered ourselves in commodious suites in the governor's palace. A Sanurkazzian guard—a young lad in a new hauberk and with a shiny new long sword, a parting present from his father—jumped back as a voluble, gesticulating, furiously angry Proconian popped in. Orange and green sunshine lay in slanting stripes on the patio outside the doors, and exotic blooms depended on vines from the white walls.

  “Vandals! Pirates! Thieves!” the Proconian spluttered. He was plump, flabby, with ringed hands and a nose which wine had coarsened into a knob, and he wore no sword. His robes were twisted about him in the fury of his movements.

  “I am sorry, Pur Dray,” said the guard. “He insisted—and short of cutting him down there was no way of stopping him..."

  “It is all right, Fazmarl,” I said, turning away from Seg and his bow-stave. “Let the gentleman in."

  The gentleman shook a fist under my nose, saw Seg and let out a screech. “There he is, the plunderer, the reaver, the barbarian! He holds my property, Pur Dray—and he has destroyed the finest tree in the women's quarters—"

  “Oh-ho!” I said. I looked at Seg. He gripped the stave with the clutch of a man sliding over the side of an airboat.

  “I did but cut the best stave suited to a bow."

  The little man danced and spluttered and shook his fist.

  “Only! And ripped it out of the heart—the very heart—of the tree that gives shade to my favorite wife—"

  The Proconians believed in the quaint habit of marrying three wives. They were a punishment-loving race.

  “Is the tree mortally wounded, sir?"

  “Mortally! It has suffered a wound from which nothing can save it. My tree—my favorite wife's favorite tree!"

  “Then, if nothing can be done to save the tree, I think it best to uproot it and plant another."

  He gobbled over that, and wiped his forehead, and found a chair and collapsed into it. I nodded at Seg and that reckless man had sense enough to fill to brimming a silver-chased goblet with noble Chremson wine and hurry it across. The Proconian wiped his lips and gulped the wine, and gasped and palpitated, a hand to his heart, and gulped some more.

  “Very good,” he said, looking at the wine afresh. “Booty from Chremson, I take it?"

  I inclined my head, but the word booty had inflamed him anew. “Plunderers, reavers—that is all you red-raiders from Sanurkazz are! You tear down my best tree, leave it in shattered fragments across my tessellated pavement so that my second wife barks her pretty shin and removes at least a palm of skin—"

  “Come, sir,” I said, putting the merest fraction of that rasp into my voice. “You have not yet favored me with your name. I do not know it was your tree. You could be fabricating the entire story to gain my sympathy—and my wine!"

  He staggered upright with the assistance of the chair back. He tried to speak and his fat lips popped and blew and his cheeks turned purple and his eyes stood out. Then: “By the fair hair of the Primate Proc himself! I am Uppippoo of Lower Pattelonia! I am respected in this city, with wide lands on the mainland beyond Perithia, owner of ten broad ships, and with three of the most delectable wives a man could boast—and now they have kicked me out because their shaded garden has been ruined!"

  Seg couldn't hold himself in and spilled wine trying to stop from bursting a gut laughing. I remained severe.

  “Very well, Uppippoo of Lower Pattelonia. I would not wish a man to suffer, particularly from three wives. Rest assured, I shall make complete restitution.” A thought occurred to me. “Can another tree be procured?"

  A kind of frenzy possessed Uppippoo. “You imbecile! Those trees take a hundred years to grow!"

  That was half a lifetime or so on Kregen.

  “In that case, my friend here, who comes from Erthyrdrin, will be returning to his country shortly. I know he will immediately take steps to have a fresh tree prepared and shipped out to you. There, sir, what can be fairer than that?"

  Uppippoo merely goggled at us.

  “In the meantime, if you would accept a little common gold, which is nowhere as romantic as a tree, you could purchase a length of colorfu
lly-striped awning, and thus protect your charming wives from the suns."

  And I put down carefully onto a table a handful of gold scooped out of my waist-belt—for I had now, in the city, perforce to dress as a citizen with tunic, apron, and accouterments.

  Uppippoo looked at the gold.

  “An—awning?"

  “Why—yes."

  “An awning.” He considered. “But a tree is alive, it looks beautiful, it soughs in the wind and its leaves create the most delightful patterns of shade and light upon my pavements—and the tesselae are renowned in Pattelonia, Pur Dray, renowned."

  “Quite so. Take the gold. Buy an awning or buy a new tree of a different kind. But, Uppippoo, I would wish you to leave now. Do you understand me? The gold is fair payment, I think."

  Uppippoo for the first time took care to look at me, instead of raging and roaring and blow-harding and glaring at Seg and the offending dismembered limb of his wife's tree. He saw my face. I was not conscious of any change in my countenance, but Uppippoo's snorts and ragings and breathy threats halted as though he had been gripped by the throat.

  He backed a step. He bent his back, stealthily, reaching forward to take the gold from the table. He backed away. His protruding eyes were fixed on my face; his tongue kept licking his fat lips.

  “Fazmarl!” I called. “The gentleman is leaving now."

  The young guard showed the Proconian gentleman out.

  He had not uttered a word since he'd had a fair sight of my ugly face.

  Seg collapsed moaning onto a chair.

  “As for you, Seg Segutorio, you should be ashamed of yourself. Cutting a stick from a tree—that's what kids do."

  “Aye!” he roared joyously. “Just as I did when I cut my stave from Kak Kakutorio's tree! Hai—I could hurt myself laughing."

  I must admit that I felt like allowing myself a laugh, also.

  The incident of Seg's bow-stave and the shade tree of Uppippoo's wives convinced me that I had no need to worry so much about Seg Segutorio. He was still in form despite his conspicuous lack of success with Thelda.

  Delia was anxious to leave, and now that I could not serve a useful part in the campaign I had nothing to tie me here. I told Seg, somewhat brutally, I fear, that he would have no time to put his new bow-stave into pickle. He chuckled with a grim sardonic humor that made me stare at him.

  “You have a poor opinion of the bowmen of Erthyrdrin if you believe they are unable to fashion a bow-stave anywhere on this earth—aye, and pickle it, too. Put me thigh-deep in the mire of the Marshes of Malar with a stave and I'll fashion you a bow that can split the chunkrah's eye.” He was as good as his word. He contrived a tall narrow tube of treated leather, well-stoppered, and into this with his precious stave he poured a concoction of his own—that stank to Zim itself—and shook it up and glared at me with a satisfied defiant stare on his face.

  “By the time we are past the Dam of Days she'll be pickled—"

  Even then I couldn't tell Seg just how we were traveling to Vallia, and there was no reason for this holding back. Delia knew exactly where the flier from Port Tavetus, on the eastern coast of Turismond beyond the Hostile Territories, had been hidden in the foothills which gloamed blue and orange and purple on the far mainland horizon. The people of Havilfar, where airboats are manufactured, did not care to have their products exposed on the inner sea. I gathered the airboats gave trouble, too, as I had before experienced. Thelda cooed over me and ignored Seg and so we passed the last days before we took off. Again it was time to say “Remberee” to Pur Zenkiren.

  Everything that should be done was done. Our belongings were carefully packed into satchels and leather sacks, for Delia with a strict flier's wisdom wanted no sharp-edged packing crates aboard, and were stowed aboard the calsanys that would take them down to the jetty. I detected a strange look of sadness on the face of young Fazmarl as I bid him good-bye. I clapped him on the back—a somewhat awesome experience for so young a would-be warrior of Sanurkazz from a swifter captain and a Krozair—and felt I must be getting old and walked down with Zenkiren and Delia to the jetty. Thelda had gone with the baggage—riding a calsany—to superintend, although we all knew she didn't care overmuch for walking. Seg marched behind with his revolting leather pipe of bow-stave-pickling over his shoulder.

  At the jetty we all climbed down into the boat and this time we were not using our old stolen muldavy which I had made arrangements to have, when possible, returned to its owners with a suitable sum in gold to compensate for those we had smashed. We were using the admiral's barge, no less, and twenty stalwart wights pulled lustily at the oars. As we cleared the mole and the barge's head swung toward the mainland, Seg looked back at me, sitting next to Delia. He was puzzled.

  “I do not see our ship, Dray. And, why are we heading for the mainland?"

  I realized he did not connect the storms that arose when we steered west with our very act of heading on that course, and I had not discussed that problem with him at all, as I had merely hinted at it with Zenkiren. The mysticism of the Krozairs of Zy armored Zenkiren against marvels of that kind. But now the time had surely come when I must be honest with Seg Segutorio and tell him of our means of travel. I told him.

  He gaped for a moment at me as the barge pulled through the suns-lit water. Everyone was watching him.

  “A flier,” he said, at last, surprising me. “As to them, I have seen them and I welcome the opportunity to fly in one. But—"

  “But, Seg?"

  “The Stratemsk! The Hostile Territories! Man—do you know what you're doing? They're murder."

  Delia said: “We are going home to Vallia, and you, Seg, to Erthyrdrin, if you wish. We would like you to be with us, but if you do not come we understand.” She added, mischievously: “Anyway, that's the way Thelda and I got here..."

  * * *

  Chapter Eight

  Through The Stratemsk

  “Ossa they would pile upon Olympos; and upon Ossa, Pelion with its rustling forests, that the very heavens might be scaled."

  This ambition of the Aloadai, Otos and Ephialtes, had always seemed to me a laudable goal, seeing that I myself had scrambled my way up through the hawsehole from the lower deck to the quarterdeck, and, since my startling arrival on Kregen beneath Antares, had fought my way to various arrogant-sounding posts and positions. But I had always thought of the tall twins’ activities of ambition as rhetorical. The actual idea of mountains piled one atop another had always seemed to me figures of speech, devices of the imagination. I have seen the Himalaya—the other mountain ranges of the world are subsumed in the lofty and frightening grandeur of the Himalaya—and I had been suitably impressed and awed.

  But The Stratemsk—Kabru piled on Nanda Devi upon Kangchenjunga upon Annapurna upon Nanga Parbat—with Chimborazo from the Andes thrown in as foothills—with K2 and Everest lofting beyond reason above—Yes, The Stratemsk, although not the loftiest or most extensive range of mountains on Kregen under the suns of Scorpio, are quite out of this world with the awe-inspiring terror and beauty of outraged nature flaunting her powers. The Stratemsk are big and wide and tall. They shatter reason. Snow mantles their upper slopes and pinnacles in an eternal and unbroken whiteness. The clouds hover around their feet. Savage and voracious animals haunt their lower ranges and gigantic birds and flying animals forever circle their valleys and passes with cruel talons and fangs seeking prey.

  Above these mind-freezing precipices and crags and icy glaciers we flew, Delia, Seg, Thelda, and I, in our frail airboat through the cutting air.

  We huddled close together warmly wrapped in flying silks and leathers, with immense furs wrapped about us.

  The airboat was a mere shell of wood upon metal formers, shaped into the likeness of a petal and streamlined well enough with a windshield and leather thongs and wooden guard-rails. If it failed, as airboats notoriously failed, we were doomed. Below us lay certain death.

  That death might come from cold and exposure. It might c
ome from starvation or madness. It might come in the ravening jaws of some semimystical monster of the higher slopes where the tree line thinned and the screes stretched for miles before the snow line was reached in ice and penetrating cold.

  Or—that death might come to us from the fangs and talons of any one of the many species of giant birds and animals who flew voraciously among the passes and valleys seeking what prey they might snatch. From their high aeries they could plummet down, their eyes sighted on a target so small at that distance only eyes superlatively endowed by nature could ever make out what manner of animal or beast it might be below them. We saw the ominous dots flying far off. I grasped my long sword hilt and determined that should anything or any monster attack us only my death would prevent me from protecting my Delia until none remained.

  Coal-black impiters, corths, xi—the iridescent-scaled winged lizards of the humid jungle-valleys sunk in broad tracts within The Stratemsk—bisbis, zizils, the yellow eagles of Wyndhai, and many other monstrous flying beasts are to be found within the massive confines of The Stratemsk—or, to be practical about this matter, better not found.

  For the first upward trending slopes before we rose high to seek the easiest of the passes opening out before us we flew over many crude encampments of the man-beasts who occupy the outer portions of The Stratemsk. There are many tribes, but they are referred to in general as crofermen, savage, untamed, cruel and suspicious, who delight in nothing so much as raiding down the outer slopes of The Stratemsk. It was their ponshos that the great winged beasts of the air would seize if given the chance. Life, indeed, was a hard and demanding existence within The Stratemsk.

  So that with the sheer size and immensity of the mountains and the crofermen incessantly raiding and the monstrous winged beasts, The Stratemsk had provided a barrier between the Eye of the World and eastern Turismond that had endured for century after century.