Scorpio Reborn [Dray Prescot #38] Page 8

  “The ears, cabbage."

  I groaned. This strong-minded female lady was condemning me to walk about by day and sleep by night with a green face, a red nose, and wearing enormous ears. Quite apart from the ludicrous costume I must wear.

  “Strom Hangol, in the short time I have had the misfortune to know him,” said Rikky Tardish, “strikes me as a—a—"

  “He's all of that,” said Mevancy. “And he will strike you, as Tsung-Tan is my witness, with or without the slightest excuse."

  “A green face,” I said. “Jeehum!"

  “As I said, cabbage, I no longer feel responsible for you. If you continue to improve and keep your red nose out of trouble, by the time you reach Makilorn you should be recovered. I repeat, I want no recompense. Now—"

  “You're leaving!"

  “That's right. I'll bid you Remberee, Drajak. I'm sailing downriver. My flatboat's waiting and I'll be gone long before the hour of mid."

  * * *

  Chapter eight

  I, Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor, Krozair of Zy, King of Djanduin, Hyr Kov of Zamra, Strom of Valka, Vovedeer (and a lot else, Opaz forgive me!), ex Emperor of Vallia, solemnly daubed green greasepaint all over my face, donned a large and scarlet false nose, and finally hung huge donkey ears about my own. I dressed myself in a confection of red and green and yellow and blue, of bows and folderols, of laces and ribbons, and, finally, I took up a parti-colored stick with an inflated bladder attached.

  Thus armed, I strode out onto the stage to entertain the good folk of the caravan.

  I was, as you will readily perceive, the butt of the farce.

  Very quickly my bladder was taken from me by a succession of actors and actresses and I was thoroughly and repeatedly hit over the head with it.

  In the natural course of development, Theatre on Kregen varies widely. And, as you know, at this time when I refer to Kregen I am really talking about our grouping of continents and islands called Paz. Here entertainment has progressed at different speeds in different parts and stands at varying levels within nations as well as between country and country. Shadow plays are popular, mimes and dance, a whole slew of weird singing plays are known and loved. The Italian commedia dell'arte gave rise to subsequent greatness—who greater than Jean Baptiste Poquelin?—from its knockabout beginnings. So here farce and comedy and tragedy mingled and gave rise to the great works of Kregen dramatists. Some of these and their works I have mentioned from time to time.

  Do not for a single instant believe that the sublime dramatic works that are the glory of the Kregan stage were even dreamed of by Rikky Tardish's traveling company. Oh, no! A green face, red nose and a pair of donkey's ears—why, yes, that was the level. And that was the level Rikky Tardish intended to keep. He knew the majority of his audience. I guessed that Leotes and one or two of the others merely humored the mob in thus sitting prominently in the front row and applauding—just a fraction of a second after the other groundlings. Strom Hangol was lapping it up. Yet, the rast, he'd appreciate other more refined fare. And, even as I leaped about and cavorted and tried to avoid the bladder blows, so I knew that this farcical stuff was good of its kind. Improvisation upon a basic scenario was all; the more inventive the comicalness the louder the audience applauded.

  Tiny Tanch pranced on in a piebald outfit to hit and be hit. He hailed from Ng'groga and was scraping eight foot tall. A quantity of tomfoolery ensued between him and Fat Naghan and I could step back for a moment. The smell of greasepaint, the tang of dust and oil and the mere hint of sweat combined to form a bouquet to remember. I looked at Hangol. If one wished to be uncharitable one would say he laughed the loudest at someone's misfortune. His silver mask flashed. He was enjoying himself.

  The whole caravan had turned out for this show, glad that Tardish's Troupe was accompanying them and hopeful of a fresh show each evening.

  I'd overheard Hangol talking in a bitter raving kind of way to his cronies. He'd been reviling Vallia. It turned out he'd taken his facial wound at the Battle of Ovalia. I remembered that fight—well, by Vox, would I ever be likely to forget? My Vallian Eighth Army had bested and beaten the iron legions of Hamal and their fanatical allies. We'd swung the thorn ivy trap on them and shattered them. Their commander had been Kapt Hangrol in the alliance with the traitor Layco Jhansi. Well, they were all smoke blown with the wind now.

  In what would be the orchestra pit, Tardish's little band scraped and blew away. He had no less than three punklinglings, melodious instruments, and they should not be called plunkings as some ignorant folk do. There were tabors and trumpets and in all the band produced interesting sounds. The girls danced on in their frilly skirts and beads and little else kicking their legs, arms across one another's shoulders, smiling. Oh, yes, Rikky Tardish insisted on the chorus girls smiling, smiling...

  Strom Hangol slouched back in his chair and spoke out of the side of his mouth to one of his cronies, a beetle-browed fellow with black hair and a bad skin, known as Gandil the Mak, who habitually carried sword and axe.

  After the girls had done their dance I was to be hit over the head again. Tiny Tanch, towering up and up, slipped over and fell on his bottom and drew a roar from the audience. He struggled up and swung a sword at me. I dodged. I flung up my hands and looked all about, trying my best in the pantomime, and the audience picked this up quickly and started yelling.

  “A sword! A sword!"

  Rikky Tardish himself trotted on, smirking, swishing a sword about. I do not think there was a soul in the audience who did not know I was the fall guy and no matter what I did I would come out with the sticky end.

  Then I saw the weapon Tardish proffered me. I ought not to have been surprised. After all, the bandits’ loot had been recovered, and here was my own rapier. It was perfectly clear why this particular weapon should be chosen. I was the clown. Therefore I could have an odd, foreign, unfamiliar and therefore funny weapon. Strom Hangol leaned forward, shouting something, and Leotes called out and Hangol sat back.

  A girl—she was Fashti, a shapely Fristle maiden—ran out and hit me over the head with her stick and the bladder caught one of my ears and knocked it off.

  I think, even in that moment, I knew Strom Hangol would recognize me.

  His attention had been drawn by the rapier and no doubt he had protested that such a weapon should be used in so low a farce. Touchy, he'd be, the cramph, about that. He edged forward, staring at me. Then Tiny Tanch, eight foot tall, took a swipe at me, making a grotesquerie of it, and caught me a whack across the buttocks with the flat. I jumped. They were falling about down there in the audience. My green face and red nose and one ear told them I was the butt of all this. The remaining ear fell off. Strom Hangol rose from his seat and I, of course, like the veritable onker I was, stared at him. Tiny Tanch gave me a buffet that knocked my stupid stuffed hat off.

  I saw the expression on Hangol's face.

  There is the old tradition that members of the audience in some of these congregational farces join in the action. No one would have been vastly surprised when Hangol jumped up onto the stage. Perhaps Leotes might have felt a stab of mystification in this act of his cadade. Hangol flourished his rapier.

  “Let one who knows show you!” he bellowed.

  “Strom, strom!” the crowd bellowed. “Teach him! Teach him!"

  This suited Hangol's book.

  He shickered his blade before my face. Then he said in a hissing fashion: “Shint! I know you! Rast—you are going to die!"

  I didn't bother to waste breath on him. I was in poor case here. Oh, yes, I held a rapier I knew. I did not have a left hand dagger. My strength was such that at the first pass Hangol would brush my blade aside hardly noticing the beat or the pressure.

  Just how good a swordsman was he, anyway?

  Since my escapade with Mefto the Kazzur, all my old feelings about sword fighting had been enormously reinforced. No longer was it a case that one day I might meet a better swordsman—I'd already met him. So,
maybe, this Strom Hangol was another. Unsettling, that kind of thought. If I was to have any chance at all in this fight then that chance would come only from my skill. If this bully boy was any kind of fist with the Jiktar and the Hikdar, the rapier and main gauche, then I'd not escape without serious injury, a ghastly maiming or, if he wished, my quietus.

  I grasped the rapier awkwardly. When I tell you the thing felt as though it weighed like one of those monstrous two-handed swords of the Blue Mountains, you can gauge of my weakness and muscle-power. I swished it about.

  The crowd applauded. Hangol laughed. He said: “I shall not kill you at once. Slowly is the way to do it."

  Abruptly he drove in and with a flickering glitter of steel he slashed down and a bright green bow fell off my gaudy costume.

  Well, a beginner can do that after he or she is shown how.

  “Parry him!” yelled Rikky Tardish from the side. “Make a show of it!"

  “I shall make a show of you, rast,” said Hangol in his vindictively genial way. “I shall enjoy this."

  I swashed the rapier before me as he struck again and his blade knocked my own away and seared on to remove a yellow bow.

  I did not have a main gauche. He had not drawn his as yet. Well, that was an advantage. I got my left hand onto the knuckle bow of the rapier. I gripped the pommel and knuckle bow in a clumsy grip, a pathetic apology for the two-handed grip I'd use on a Krozair longsword.

  Perhaps, just perhaps, if I had sufficient skill then a rapier used in two hands might just get me out of this scrape in one piece.

  It was vitally necessary to do a great deal of prancing about the stage. I kicked my heels up and danced this way and swung that, managing to keep my two-handed grip, swashing the rapier around in exaggerated circles, and the audience howled. Hangol breathed hard. He wanted to get in a few pretty strokes yet, to toy with me further; but in very short order I had sussed him out. His skill was average. He had not, I fancied, swaggered as a Bladesman in the Sacred Quarter of Ruathytu. And he most certainly had never, ever, been to far Zenicce to face the Bravo Fighters there.

  So, what with all this skipping and jumping, and the use of all my poor strength in that extraordinary two-handed grip, I kept his blade out.

  Oh, yes, it was known for a rapier fighter to grab hold of his hilt and slash two-handed; that would not go far if the opponent kept his head and used his skill and so thrust home.

  What would my Krozair Brothers have made of that exhibition!

  The farce could not go on long. For one thing, the audience would rapidly tire if some satisfying knock-about conclusion was not quickly reached. Always the crowd hungered for new sensation; after the girls had danced and Slender Varankey the juggler had done some tricks, they'd be ready for another bout like this. As it was, knowing this, Hangol would press hard to finish it. As it was, knowing this, I had to finish quickly before all my puny strength leached away.

  One of the strangest things about that strange fight as Hangol whipped out his left hand dagger and brought that into play, was the use of two-handed Krozair sword artistry with a rapier versus a rapier and main gauche. I discovered some new tricks there, by the Blade of Kurin!

  He was really trying now. I wondered just how many people in the audience realized this Strom Hangol was really trying to thrust home, was really trying to finish me. None, I'd guess. Even Leotes was unfamiliar with rapier work. The uproar was prodigious. People were stamping their feet and yelling and applauding. I could feel what little strength I had draining away.

  In the end I used a half-complex routine from the Seventh Circle of the Artifices of the Sword written by San Zefan some two and a half thousand seasons ago on the island of Zy in the Eye of the World of Turismond. San Zefan, Krzy, did not fail me. As I completed the preliminary movements I checked the second passage in which Hangol's sword would fly from his fingers. Instead I transferred the pressure and so, letting out as loud a shout as I could manage in my state, and stumbling forward with a tremendous bustle, I stuck the rapier through the rast's right thigh.

  Instantly I endeavored to withdraw and, of course, the pesky thing wouldn't come out cleanly with my level of strength. If he had the courage and strength of will now, he could finish me.

  Instead he let rip a scream of pain, dropped both rapier and main gauche, and staggered back, thus freeing my blade, and clapped his hands around his thigh from which the dark blood welled. I managed—and to this day it is a marvel, by Krun!—I just managed to stop my blade striking for his throat.

  I turned away, capering like a loon, and Leotes was bellowing and Rikky Tardish was catching me by the elbow and yelling that it was all a mistake. His face sheened with the sweat of fear. He dragged me off, as Hangol's cronies leaped to the stage and carted the strom off. For a space there was considerable confusion and uproar and then, with his showman's gifts fully deployed, Tardish had his girls out there prancing with flashing limbs and flaunting feathers and the inevitable dazzling smiles.

  Tiny Tanch leaned down.

  “You'd better clear off a bit, dom. Let things simmer down."

  I shook the rapier and a drop of blood flew.

  “You are right, Tiny, and I thank you."

  Truth to tell I felt as though I'd been pushing a sixteen ton load up a hill for ten years straight. I wheezed. I felt my muscles burning. By Krun! What a burden on a fellow it is in life to be weak!

  Rikky Tardish hove up, sweating, shaking.

  “Make yourself scarce, Drajak. Oh, that I listened to the smooth tongue of that Mevancy! I knew she'd bring me trouble—"

  “Blame that shint Hangol!” I said, sharply. “Mevancy paid you gold."

  “Aye, aye, by the mercy of Tsung-Tan she did. Now clear off, schtump!"

  Nothing loath I took myself off and wandered among the tents and carts. I could still feel the reaction after that ludicrous fight. My Val! To fight like that! It was a wonder I wasn't stuck clean through.

  Out past the last line of tents I walked along, swishing the rapier about, looking for a proper clump of grass or a wide-leaved bush to clean the blood from the blade.

  Blueness grew in the air. I sucked in a startled breath, looking up.

  Blueness, high in the sky, washing down in a broadening belt of blue radiance ... “What in a Herrelldrin Hell do the Everoinye want with me now?” I said. “I suppose, you Scorpion, you've come to dump me down where Mevancy has gone."

  The shape of the enormous phantom Scorpion glowed above me in fire. I knew I'd never seen him from quite this angle before. He seemed somehow removed from me. The shape dropped lower. All the ground before me radiated blueness. Yet I could hear the chirp of insects in the grass and feel a gentle breeze. The shape of the giant Scorpion wavered before me, pulsating, diaphanous. The shimmer melted, flowed, dissipated and within three heartbeats the phantom Scorpion of the Star Lords was gone.

  I let out my breath.

  I was standing quite still, and staring, and not believing. Oh no, by Vox. I certainly didn't believe this.

  For out from where the blue radiance of the phantom Scorpion had died a woman walked towards me.

  As I stood with my eyes sticking out like organ stops, Mevancy walked out from the Scorpion of the Star Lords.

  * * *

  Chapter nine

  “It really does look as though I can't go off and leave you, cabbage, without you running your fool neck into trouble. I was sure the shint wouldn't recognize you in that remarkable get-up."

  “Well, he did.” I mumbled something about Tiny Tanch and the Fristle fifi Fashti. We sat in her tent. But I was not really there. I was still standing out there on the edge of the plain as the blue radiance died. I remember with absolute clarity that the scent of Moonblooms mingled on the air with someone frying momogrosses. A girl was singing in a tent close by. She sang “Oh for the Sword of my Lover", which is a sad little ditty filled with long cadences and the drawn out vowels of sadness. Whenever I hear that song I am transported back to
that dusty grass plain outside Ankharum where I first saw another being moved through space by the Star Lords.

  How well aware I was of the importance of this occurrence!

  I had met other kregoinye laboring for the Star Lords.

  Once Pompino had staggered back to me, thrust there to do his duty. But this—this was altogether different. And, into the bargain, this was no kregoinye. This was a kregoinya.

  Mevancy nal Chardaz was a kregoinya!

  I shook my head, there in her tent, and heard as through a veil her testy words. “I cannot go down to the coast now, cabbage. So I'll just go along with you to Makilorn."

  “To be sure,” I mumbled, and then found I was not at all sure of what I was sure about. She'd certainly hauled me the last few feet out of that damned fire. I'd thought that had conferred responsibility upon her by transference. All the time it had been her duty from the Star Lords. They wanted me to look out for Mevancy, I believed. Now, it appeared, they wanted Mevancy to look out for me.

  I thrust that idea aside.

  This was turning out to be more like the jobs Pompino and I had done together. The Star Lords recognized the need for a team, at times; in some of the more tricky situations they threw their kregoinyes and—now—kregoinyas.

  “You're mumbling, cabbage. I thought you were getting better."

  “It is very good of you to come all this way back to look out for me, Mevancy.” I thought I'd try a gentle boot in. “I can't imagine why."

  “How do you know it is all this way back?” she demanded.

  “I just supposed."

  “H'm. Well, just be thankful I was able to persuade Leotes that it was all just an accident. Hangol was—upset."

  “He tried to stick me through, to kill me."

  “No one, if you bray that out, will believe, will they?"

  I breathed heavily. “Llodi would, for one."

  “Of course. But everyone else will question why a high and mighty lord, a strom no less, should worry his head over a clown."

  “It is known—"