Savage Scorpio [Dray Prescot #16] Read online

“Remberee,” they called up, dwindling into the shadows below. “Remberee, Dray Prescot, Prince Majister of Vallia...

  If they finished my interminable ridiculous rigmarole of titles I lofted up and far out of earshot long before they finished.

  * * *

  Chapter Seven

  Hamun ham Farthytu Asks Questions

  Speed was vital. There was no time to scout my approaches to the hostile and malignant Empire of Hamal. I had been there before and knew my way around. The voller flashed through the sky of Kregen, heading south, over the sea, on course for Denrette on the east coast of the southern continent of Havilfar.

  Hamal's capital city, Ruathytu, lies some sixty dwaburs to the west up the River Havilthytus. This great river empties into the Ocean of Clouds opposite the southern end of the Island of Arnor. The city of Denrette stands at the mouth of the river, and I found it a strange and yet compelling place, filled with the bustle and clamor of fisherfolk, tainted with that dourness so characteristic of Hamalians, yet not without a certain energy that, three hundred miles from the capital, gave it a semblance of the shadow of the real, a reflection of the dark glories of Ruathytu.

  Down by the shore, of course, the place stank of fish. But set atop small hills the houses and villas of the wealthier folk bespoke the nature of their affected reflection of the splendors of the capital. The city was large enough to boast an arena; but I steered well clear of the Jikhorkdun. I had had my fill, for the time being, of fighting in the arena away down south in Huringa, the capital of Hyrklana. There happened to be a sennight of games in progress as I arrived. For a single mur I was tugged by nostalgic memories. For a heartbeat I considered going in to join the multitudes to discover how went the fortunes of the Ruby Drang. But I did not. Anyway, quite often here in Hamal the colors and the orders were different from those I had known in Huringa.

  Instead, knowing a sick emperor waited, I took myself straight to the Akhram.

  The Todalpheme, the wise men of Kregen who measure the tides and keep track of the suns and the moons in their courses, who predict eclipses and who are sacrosanct, would welcome me as any ordinary traveler, anxious to improve his knowledge, of the world and of their lore. Their secrets are open, freely given to those who will join them, and difficult of access to people without that astronomically oriented frame of mind. I carried fine gifts we had put together in Vondium.

  The information could be bought, for the emperor had bought the knowledge once before, and where once gold has eased the way gold will find the opening easier of attainment.

  Set boldly atop a promontory right out at the eastern escarpment, with a sheer drop to the ocean below, the Akhram presented a massive picture of authority and power and ancient wisdom, its craggy walls one with the rock on which it stood. The dominating pharos would beam out at night, warning the imperial skyships of Hamal and the constant mercantile flying traffic, directing them on their inward courses toward Ruathytu. The Hamalese are not great sailors of the sea. They do not have to be, seeing as they manufacture the vollers which can fly through the empty wastes of the sky.

  I walked quickly up the winding path. The river flowed in its deep gorge below, cut through the living rock. Away to the north various channels of the river emptied out and the marshes stretched remote under the suns, filled with immense flocks of wildfowl. There, also, prowled the aerial predators, saddle birds gone wild, and, among them, the untamed chyyans.

  The air smelled sweet with the sea tang. The blaze of the suns fell about me, the twin intermingled rays of red and green from the Suns of Scorpio. Antares, the double star, poured down floods of light. I breathed deeply of the wine-rich air, swinging the lesten-hide bag containing so much wealth. The thraxter belted at my waist seemed in that limpid air and in that sybaritic setting to be an anachronism, unnecessary.

  Yet—I could never forget I trod the stones of Kregen.

  Carts were toiling up the hill, carts loaded with the produce of an empire, drawn by massive old quoffas with their patient faces and hearth-rug hides, bringing a pang of remembrance. I gave a shoulder to help heave a cart from a rut and the Xaffers, diffs so strange and remote they were always a mystery to apims, thanked me in their fashion, and I strode on, filling my lungs, my eyes fixed on the grey dominating pile of the Akhram above with the gilded domes flashing brilliantly.

  The carts and the workpeople toiling up served the Todalpheme. For a single instant I had the horrified thought they were on the same errand as myself, seeking the whereabouts of the Swinging City. This was a nonsense. The secret was known to very few. The voller salesman who had sold it to the emperor for Delia's sake must have been an adept in a secret society of one kind or another if he had been ejected by the Todalpheme. Secret societies always seem to flourish when men and women think about their world and their place in the scheme of things. I walked on, trying to appear inconspicuous.

  The knee-length white robe did not materially help in that, for it was a rustic dress, telling these folk I was a country bumpkin. They wore the working clothes of Ruathytu, blue or grey or green, where they were not slaves, and they knew my dress as provincial. Even the thraxter marked me, for the rapier and main gauche had grown apace as a fashion in Hamal.

  The guards carried thraxters and shields, in the fashion of Hamal, and stuxes, also, the spears of varying kinds for varying work. The Shanks who raided from over the curve of the world generally steered clear of the coasts of Havilfar, the southern continent that contains Hamal and Hyrklana—and Djanduin to the south west. These guards were here to protect the Akhram not from Hamalese, although they would do that quickly enough if necessary.

  With a polite greeting I was passed through. The Akhram! Well, these observatories of the Todalpheme are marvelous places, to be sure. When a world possesses two suns and seven moons the mysterious workings of heavenly bodies and the conflicting surgings of the tides demand a man's application to mathematics and accurate observation and a thorough-going knowledge of his world. These attributes the Todalpheme possess to a high degree. Once, I had been offered the opportunity of joining the Todalpheme, and had gracefully declined.

  Akhram—for usually the chief Todalpheme calls himself just Akhram—lifted up the golden necklace. The gold and rubies glistered back at him in the rays of the suns through the arched windows overlooking the sea. Wide-winged birds pirouetted out there and the noise of the waves reached us, although the beach was not visible. The chamber was airy, light, with a flick-flick plant, and many scented flowers. That superb Kregen tea had been served, and, gratefully, I sipped watching Akhram as he stared at the treasure heaped over the lenken table.

  “Fine, fine, Amak,” he said. “Princely gifts."

  “I respect the Todalpheme too much to weigh the price of gifts.” I spoke bluffly, stoutly, cunningly. “It is not the value that matters."

  He smiled that remote little smile with which the ascetic will acknowledge the gluttonous follies of the world. A tall, grave, distinguished man, Akhram, almost a hundred and eighty years of age, in the prime of life, with much work still to be accomplished. I will not go into overmuch detail of the transactions in the Akhram of Denrette. They kept me waiting for a space, to cool my heels, then suggested if I sought a cure it would be better to consult doctors, or seek spiritual assistance from any one of the many Bengs and Bengas whose saintly miracles could cure. Akhram himself seemed to size me up, and we talked, and I convinced him that my desire to discover the whereabouts of Aphrasöe was not mercenary. He nodded, and put the necklace back among the piles of treasure.

  “We, Amak,” he said, “are not the scarlet-roped Todalpheme. You will find them. They know the secret. We can but point you in the right direction."

  He called me Amak because I had, naturally, assumed my secret identity of Hamun ham Farthytu, the Amak of Paline Valley. I use the overly dramatic word secret. As Hamun ham Farthytu I was a real person, with a real identity, able to move freely about Hamal, the mighty empire in deadly oppos
ition to my own country of Vallia. But that is what comes of being a spy.

  He understood my intense desire for speed, for the person dearly beloved by me—and others, I added significantly—was a most highly placed personage and it would not be too much to say that a deal of Hamal's future depended on the recovery. Thus he said, with a small, deprecating smile: “We have given this information before, for a price. There is a tortuous route to follow; but we have learned ourselves shortcuts. I think—"

  “For Hamal, Akhram,” I said, most seriously.

  “Yes.” When he told me I understood why no one I had spoken to hitherto had heard of Todalpheme wearing scarlet ropes about their waists. The old color had come back again to haunt me. I did not smile; but I took up the map Akhram showed me, and with my old sailor skill committed it to memory. Right over to the west, west of the Tarnish Channel of Havilfar, out below the forbidden island of Tambu, the island of Bet-Aqsa. Bet-Aqsa.

  There we must go, and at once, to inquire of the scarlet-roped Todalpheme the whereabouts of Aphrasöe.

  Listening as Akhram spoke in his quiet voice in the high-vaulted library of the observatory where we had gone to find the map, I had the suspicion he did not truly know how the secret had come into the hands of the Todalpheme of Hamal. As a puissant empire, the strongest power in Havilfar—if, in my arrogance, you excepted Djanduin—it seemed logical for Hamal to come by strange shreds of knowledge, secrets gathered from the four corners of the continent. Maybe some of the Todalpheme down in the Dawn Lands might also know that the Todalpheme of Bet-Aqsa knew of a place where miracle cures might be effected. All that concerned me now was to take my flier as fast as she would fly to the rendezvous up among the Risshamal Keys.

  More and more I was determined to avert the consequences of the emperor's death. For the streets of Vallia would run red with blood, the alleys pile with stinking corpses, the crops would burn, the livestock starve, thousands of hapless wights would be branded and herded off to slavery—all these atrocities would happen—might happen, would probably happen—if the Emperor of Vallia died.

  Making all due observances as I took my leave, giving them Remberee, I took myself off and walked smartly back down the stony path to the waiting flier.

  The Risshamal Keys are merely a number of long, fingerlike extensions of small islands, rocks, cays, shoals and reefs running out in a northeasterly direction from the northeastern corner of Havilfar. I had been shipwrecked there in the old Ovvend Barynth. In setting up the rendezvous we knew the certain men who could aid us. As I took off and flew up into the streaming radiance of Antares I wondered who it would be who would guide my friends to the island of the Yuccamots along the Risshamal Keys.

  Flying eastward out over the sparkling sea I cleared the coast and then headed north. The Island of Arnor passed away astern. The suns poured their floods of opaz light upon the sea, and I saw a few ships sailing there—not many. A number of vollers passed; but none offered to stop and search me. The simple precaution had been taken of painting out the Vallian recognition signs, and the voller might have come direct from Ruathytu or Paline Valley for all anyone might know. I flew northwards and Bet-Aqsa lay to the southwest. I had always harbored an inkling that Aphrasöe might lie upon some island in the Outer Oceans, and had favored the easterly direction. Maybe—and I hoped most fervently that I was wrong—maybe the Swinging City was situated on the other grouping of islands and continents on the other side of Kregen, around the curve of the world. Kregen runs a longer mileage in the equator than does Earth, for all the fractionally lesser gravity, and there is a damned lot of ground to cover.

  The continental grouping in which, so far, all my adventuring had taken place, is called Paz. From the other continents and islands around the curve of the world sailed the fearsome Fish-Heads—call them shanks, shants, shtarkins, shkanes, it makes no difference to their viciousness—to plague and harry us. Every so often their marvelous fleet ships would sail upon an unsuspecting shore and there would follow horror and desolation. I had fought the shanks before the Jikai with the Kroveres on Drayzm, and would fight them again. Always, like any sailor of Paz, one eye was always roving the far horizons to catch the first glimpse of those tall wing-like sails of the shank ships.

  And then, as I plunged on through the thin air toward that brave company of friends awaiting me at the Risshamal Keys, I looked up and saw a giant scarlet and golden bird, flying high, circling, watching me with bright black beady eyes.

  I swore.

  I shook my fist.

  By Zair! Not now, not now!

  The great hunting bird circled. The raptor was a familiar sight, a hateful sight. This was the Gdoinye, the spy and messenger of the Everoinye, the Star Lords.

  Through their malign agency I had been flung about space between worlds like a yo-yo. When I had so intemperately refused to obey their orders I had been chucked back to Earth to rot for twenty-one infernal years. If the Gdoinye was spying on me, all well and good, for I knew the Star Lords kept an eye on me from time to time. But if the Opaz-forsaken bird was warning me that I would be required to perform again for the Star Lords...

  I sweated. I clenched my teeth and stopped myself from shouting up insults, as I usually did when the golden and scarlet raptor hove into sight.

  If the bird did swoop down and speak to me I would try to be conciliatory, be the new Dray Prescot, refrain from hurling abuse and calling the thing a cramph, a rast, a kleesh. But it swung about up there, glinting magnificently in the opaz radiance, and then calmly flew away.

  I let out a great gusty breath of relief.

  What a time to be dragged away from Kregen!

  * * *

  Chapter Eight

  A Brush with Flutsmen

  Thinking that, with the appearance of the Gdoinye, the Savanti might have sent their white dove to spy on me, I cast a good look around. I could see no sign of the dove. Well, that meant little, although, to be sure, it made more sense for the Savanti to spy on me now, seeing that my intended destination was their secret island.

  The long low straggle of islands of the southern fingering of the Risshamal Keys showed as an extended yellowish grey stain upon the water ahead. The Yuccamots inhabited many of the little islands and gained a precarious living fishing and trading, in communication with the local sailing craft. I had no fear of them, for they were a simple folk and had shown us kindness before. They are, I am glad to say, enormously proud of their broad thick tails, and of their webbed feet.

  The Hamalian Air Service was another matter. They maintained a string of stations along the Keys, and it behooved me to avoid those.

  What did happen, with the blinding speed of precipitate action upon Kregen, whipped up a nice little froth to send the blood thumping through the veins and open the pores, a trifle.

  Out of the roseate glow of the red sun Zim, shot the dark forms of riders urging on their saddle flyers.

  With my fingers up against my eyes I peered into the dazzlement even as I thrust the control levers hard over and up.

  They were flutsmen up there.

  Flutsmen!

  By this time I knew a little of their nefarious ways. Later, I was to learn more. But now, these mercenaries of the skies, flying their fluttrells with sure confident skill, out for plunder and lopped heads, bore down screeching on me. To them, I represented loot, easy pickings, a lone flier in a voller.

  If they could take me before I rose and speeded enough to elude them, why, then they'd toss me over the side into the sea, and pilot the voller back to their base. They'd sell her and her contents and get drunk on the proceeds. Then they'd go reiving off for more easy plunder.

  Usually, the flutsmen work for hire, bands of professional mercenaries, paktuns of a sort. I'd hardly demean them to the low quality of masichieri, those scoundrels who are more employable bandits than honest mercenaries, but often enough they came close, by Zair. I fancied this band were freelancing, tazll, harrying for themselves. There were about
thirty of them, too long odds for me to want to tangle with them, in view of the urgency of the task before me, unless I had to.

  The emperor must come first. A fight could wait. There is always opportunity for a fight on Kregen...

  The voller lifted. Slowly. Too slowly.

  The fluttrells turned their big heads with those large ridiculous vanes into the wind and opened their jaws and lanced down.

  I glared up savagely. By Krun! I wanted no fight. But if these haughty, vicious flutsmen wanted to come to handstrokes, then I'd accommodate them. With a juicy Makki-Grodno oath, having to do with the putrescent diseased innards of Makki-Grodno's disgusting liver, I snatched up the great Lohvian longbow. If I couldn't shaft a few of the yetches before they reached me I hadn't been trained by Seg Segutorio, the master bowman of Erthyrdrin!

  Down they swooped, their green-feathered harness tight about them, their closely-fitting green-feathered caps with the flaring knotted clumps of ribbon streaming out in the wind of their passage. Flutsmen on the rampage present a brave spectacle. Completely confident of themselves they swooped down, each man ready with crossbow, volstux or long whippy sword.

  Before they could start shooting I cast the first shaft.

  Clean through the feather-adorned armored body of the leading flutsman the clothyard shaft punched. The brilliant blue feathers of the shaft's notching came from the crested korf of the Blue Mountains of Vallia. Always, Seg would say that the king korfs blue feathers were just that fraction superior to those of a crested korf; but he would affirm that the beautiful bird, the korf of Kregen, provided the best feathers for the shafts cast from a Lohvian longbow. I thought about this as I loosed again.

  Before the leading flutsman had time to slide from his high saddle and dangle from the leather straps of his clerketer, the second shaft took his wingmate. The third shaft took the third man in the vee.

  Shouts of rage battered down...

  “Cramph! You should know better! To slay a flutsman is to die!"