Masks of Scorpio Read online

  “Oh, you mean our Jak. Why, dom, you want to walk very small when he’s about. He’d as lief fry you up and gulp you down as a tasty morsel between meals.”

  “I don’t—” began the tump.

  Alwim, very hard, said: “You’d better believe it.”

  “I do! I do!”

  “Just as well,” said Wilma, as hard as her sister.

  With the light of two gorgeous Moons of Kregen in the sky we deemed it not altogether opportune for a swift and undetected onslaught. Below passed away forested hills, very ghostly silver, most eerie in that streaming light. Those we pursued would have ridden hard at the beginning, and then have husbanded their mounts. We could cover in a single bur the distance it would take them to progress in ten or twelve.

  This thought occurred to Pompino, for he walked up and said, “I think we may reach this damned place before them.”

  “That is likely. I hope so. The advantage will lie with us, then.”

  “Only if this tump Jespar the Scundle speaks right.”

  “He speaks right, as far as he knows and guesses. If he is wrong—”

  “I’ll chop his ears off!”

  “It seems to me our little tump Jespar is in for a very rough ride...”

  “Oh, he’ll survive. Very tough, they are. And I’ll tell you something else. They’re not as dull and stupid as the Ifts make out. Both races tend to want to occupy the same areas of forest, the Ifts for the trees and the tumps for the gold under the ground. Why they don’t go and dig for gold somewhere else escapes me.”

  “Why should they? If the gold is in the ground, they’ll dig it out, and if a few trees are in the way—”

  “The Ifts are mightily upset, by Horato the Potent!”

  Because we took a circuitous route so as not to fly directly over the hamlet of Erronskorf we took longer than the flight strictly required. All the same, we were very quickly there, and Dayra guided the voller down into the shadow of the trees.

  “And you are sure this is the path they must take?” demanded Pompino.

  “Aye, lord, this is the path.” As we crowded out of the voller under the stars and gazed around on the gently swaying masses of trees, Jespar sounded confident. He was back on his own stamping grounds.

  That perked him up.

  He pointed upward along the path between the tree-clad slopes of the mountain.

  “Up there lies the mine — more than one, belonging to different branches of the family. Down there—”

  and the jerk of his thumb was highly dismissive, “lies the forest of the Ifts. This is the path they will follow to go up past the mines to Korfseyrie.”

  I just hoped Jespar was right, as much for his ears as anything. Murgon could hide Dafni away up here and no one the wiser. Then he could strike where he willed.

  He as good as held the provincial capital, Port Marsilus. He was entrenched in the Zhantil Palace there.

  Now he sought to erode further Pando’s fast waning power.

  Pompino’s mind must have followed a similar train of thought, for he growled out: “A pity that flat slug of a King Nemo did not burn with his damned temple and palace in Pomdermam. While he rules and supports Murgon—”

  “Murgon has a free hand here. Aye.”

  A pair of voices that were usually lovingly gentle broke out in passionate argument in the shadows. We turned.

  “Lisa! You are the most stubborn and willful of women!”

  “And you are the most thick-headed and stubborn of men!”

  Pompino brushed up his whiskers. “I would not care to step in to settle that,” he observed, in a fine free way.

  Quendur the Ripper quite clearly had not heard Pompino’s heartfelt remark. His face alive and working, with passion, Quendur stormed over to us. The golden mask hanging from its straps in his fingers shook violently.

  “Horter Pompino! I appeal to you! Tell Lisa the Empoin that as I love her I will not have her with me in this fight! Tell, horter, spell out the recklessness of her folly!”

  Pompino flung me such a look I had to turn away.

  “Well, Quendur — you see — that is—” Pompino stamped his foot. “By Horato the Potent! Am I to mollycoddle you, Quendur, you, the great roarer of a pirate?”

  “But—!”

  “But nothing! If I tell Lisa not to join in the attack, do you think she will listen?”

  “We have kept her out of fights before.”

  “That was different.”

  Lisa walked up, quietly, contained, already fastening the leather straps of her zhantil mask over her head.

  “You see, my love, I am in the fight, and shall stand by your side to keep you out of trouble.”

  “And may Pandrite aid me!”

  “He will, he will.” And Lisa the Empoin pulled the straps up tightly.

  Larghos the Flatch pulled his bow from his shoulder and set about stringing it. He looked sullen. Then, looking up he said: “I could wish, Quendur, that the lady Nalfi shared the spirit of Lisa the Empoin.”

  At my side Dayra moved and was still. She was too much the great lady to say: “See? I told you so!”

  “Rather, Larghos, you should praise your gods that the lady Nalfi does not foolishly run headlong into danger.” Quendur swung his golden mask about dangerously in itself. “Where does she rest now?”

  “She remained in the airboat. She said her foot pained her, and she would bathe it in hot liniment.”

  Quendur grunted something unintelligible, and then this part of the preparations was over. Each one of us pulled on a golden zhantil mask provided from Pando’s armory. Some were of brass, some steel with a wash of gilding. They did not restrict vision, and were light enough not to discommode a person in the heat of a fight. They might stop a blow across the face, although I was not too sanguine about that.

  The two Moons, the Maiden with the Many Smiles and She of the Veils, slanted beyond the tree line and the Twins would be later this night. For a space, a fragrant darkness englobed us in the perfumes of a Kregan nighted forest.

  While there was little necessity to give orders to so cutthroat a band about how to lay an ambush, Pompino went along each side of the pathway, making sure the dispositions pleased him. We settled down to wait.

  Well, we waited. When the Twins rose and the forest trail lit up in a fuzzy pink glory, I went over to Pompino, about to make a certain suggestion. He was holding Jespar by one ear.

  “Now, Jespar, you have had us out here on a fool’s errand! Confess! My blade is hungry for your ears!”

  “No, lord, no! Master, my ear!”

  I said, “You should know, Jespar the Scundle, that Horter Pompino can be very severe on villains’ ears.”

  “That is sooth!” roared Pompino.

  “You should be lucky your sobriquet is not Iarvin,” I went on. “Had it been—” I sucked in my breath, and fell silent.

  Pompino took the point. He let go of the tump’s ear. “Now,” he said in a more reasonable voice.

  “Where are they?”

  “Perhaps they have been delayed, lord — lord, I am certain sure my second cousin’s wife’s brother would be used to guide them here. Otherwise, why did they have a chain about the neck of Tangle the Ears, and why mount him astride a zorca, where he was always in mortal peril of falling off?”

  “Perhaps he fell off,” I said.

  “That great rast Murgon would stick him back and tie him on,” quoth Pompino. And, that was true...

  “I’ll have a look down the path a ways,” I said.

  “I’m with you,” said Dayra.

  “That will be enough!” snapped Pompino, quelling the instant desires of the rest to take a break from lurking in ambush. So, off down the trail went Dayra and I, looking to see what there was to see.

  We found enough, and easily enough at that, to tell us what had happened.

  Zorca hoof prints, many of them, in a milling marking of the ground. They had ridden up, and then they had halted, and then they
had struck off through the forest and skirted our pretty little ambush.

  When Pompino came down to see he was beside himself with rage and mortification. I realized I had to handle this situation — and especially Pompino the Iarvin — with fastidious care.

  “They must have caught wind of us,” said Pompino, when he could speak coherently.

  “Highly unlikely, surely, with such a band as ours?”

  “Aye, you are right. So—?”

  “So let us not worry too much over that now. Jespar can lead us to Korfseyrie.”

  Pompino pulled his whiskers.

  “An onslaught is different from an ambush.”

  “That is true. But we can use the voller—”

  “The airboat? How?”

  He’d taken off his golden zhantil mask and dangled it from his fingers. He was pretty livid with anger and frustration and primed to abandon the night’s doings and return to Plaxing.

  Dayra, also, removed her mask, as did I. The breeze zephyred over my cheeks, and I felt pleased that shadows dropped down to conceal my face. Dayra spoke up briskly.

  “Why, my dear Pompino, we all climb aboard, we sail over their heads, and we drop down on top of them.”

  “Ha!” Pompino swung his arms about. “That sounds a sure recipe for disaster, my lady—”

  I said, “We believe from what Jespar and the others said there are between twenty and thirty of them.

  We either go now and drop on their heads, or we give in and go back.”

  “Who said anything about giving in?”

  “This was the gist of your observations, surely?”

  Pompino glared about truculently. He breathed hard. He scrubbed up his whiskers. As a kettle on the stove bubbles and boils before either being removed or blowing up, so the haughty Khibil bubbled and boiled.

  “Very well. We drop on their heads. And if you are killed do not come whining to me with your head all a-dangling.”

  At his words I turned sharply and blundered back down the path. Dayra had suggested the stratagem, and she was coming with us, and if Quendur the Ripper thought he had problems with Lisa the Empoin, then he didn’t know the half of it...

  Delia and I had called our youngest daughter Velia, and we had done this out of love and grief and prideful memory of the older Velia, our second daughter. I did not wish to contemplate all the agonies that might follow on this night’s doings.

  There was enough of the night left in which, if we hurried, we could finish this affair.

  Lisa said she was coming, and that was that, and the lady Nalfi expressed the perfectly natural desire not to be left alone in the forest. She looked flushed. It was decided she would stay in the cabin out of harm’s way. We did not intend to make our call a long one.

  Korfseyrie was well named.

  During the day no doubt the korfs would wing about the high towers, darting specks of color in the suns shine as they sought their prey. Now they’d all be tucked up with heads under wings along the niches and crevices of the stone walls and towers. In the mingled lights of the Twins we slanted down.

  The place was a solid fortress, buttressed against attacks from the edge of the forest, its walls lofting sheer, its towers dominating every access. Being built in Pandahem no thought had been given to attack from the air.

  “How well d’you know the place?” demanded Pompino.

  Jespar whiffled and evaded; but in the end he admitted that he had a passing acquaintance with the fortress.

  “How passing?”

  “We-ell...”

  “Spit it out!”

  The place spread below, coming up fast, a confusing medley of lights and shadows. Dayra flew the voller in a tight circle aiming to land us on a flat-roofed construction high in the center. The flatness glimmered pink. Each corner of the roof supported a squat tower.

  Jespar looked over the sides as Pompino’s groping fingers sought his ear.

  “If you land there you’ll get wet!”

  “A damned rooftop reservoir!” said Pompino. “Catches the rain. My lady Ros, we must find another —

  there! That courtyard looks promising.”

  Dayra said nothing but flicked the flier into a tight turn, scraped past the edge of a corner tower and brought her to ground in a superb display of flying which was completely wasted on these Pandaheem to whom the vollers were simply magical and to be expected to do magical things.

  The moment I’d clapped eyes on this place I’d regretted my suggestion of attacking it.

  So maybe it was not planned to defeat an onslaught from the air, so maybe the sentries were single-mindedly watching for our approach up the narrow and tortuous path to the summit, so what... We were down in a yard high in the complex, Jespar could show us the way; but we were dreadfully few to accomplish a mission against a stronghold and its garrison as strong as Korfseyrie.

  Pompino had secured enough directions from Jespar to take us through to Murgon’s quarters. We didn’t then discover just what were the passing acquaintanceships the tump had with this fortress; but Jespar was perfectly confident in his directions. Soundlessly we leaped over the bulwarks of the flier and raced into the shadows.

  Chapter ten

  Jak Leemsjid

  We reached the first shadowed doorway unobserved and I paused and looked back at the airboat.

  If a satisfied grimace cracked my battered old features into a gargoyle smile, I was not only allowed that

  — and deserved it, by Vox — I joyed in it!

  From the bulwarks, Dayra stared after us. She saw me stop and look back, and she shook her fist at me.

  She had said, very hot, very intemperate: “Why should you go and I stay?”

  “Because you can fly the voller—”

  “I believe you have some small skill in flying, Jak the Onker!”

  “That is beside the point—”

  “Or is it that you think me not a ferocious enough fighter to go?”

  “If ferocity were all, then you would outdo all of us—”

  “Then it is my skill and prowess at arms that disqualifies me in your sight?”

  “Not at all, your skill—”

  “Well, then, what?”

  Pompino and Murkizon and Quendur and the rest looked on and took their own enjoyment from the scene and my predicament. I couldn’t burst out: “Because you are my daughter, Dayra, that’s why! And I’m not having you uselessly killed like Velia!”

  I did say in my churlish way: “By the disgusting diseased liver and lights of Makki Grodno, girl! You’ll stay with the guard and fly the voller out if you’re attacked, and you can hang about and fly down to pick us up when we get out!”

  She opened her mouth — and I looked at her, and Dayra or no damned Ros the Claw, she shut up.

  I admit to no proud feelings in this, on the contrary, to my discomfiture; but I knew what was what and Dayra was the pilot among us to stay in the voller.

  Queyd-arn-tung!

  There is no more to be said!

  As we took breath in the shadowed doorway a second figure appeared beside that of Dayra at the bulwarks.

  A fierce raspy voice said in my ear: “I give you thanks, Jak, that you made Ros Delphor see sense, for Lisa the Empoin was constrained to obey me — for a change.”

  I said, “They’ll be up to mischief, don’t fear, Quendur.”

  “I know. I do not wish to contemplate that—”

  “In here and stop lollygagging!” rapped Pompino.

  Dutifully, we all went into the first of the chambers and looked about, our weapons ready, our senses alert.

  Jespar mumbled: “I should have stayed, too. You know the way—”

  “Think of your ear,” said Pompino, “and lead on!”

  Korfseyrie was large enough to require a sizable garrison and it was highly unlikely that the twenty or thirty with Murgon would spread out. When we bumped into one, we’d find most of them, or so we reasoned. The place smelled of damp and decay and bore an aba
ndoned feeling, for Pando seldom ever came here and the place, designed to guard the mines worked by the tumps as well as the forests below, had been bypassed in the late wars. Murgon had shown craftiness in selecting it as his temporary headquarters.

  We passed a tall window from which the glass had long since fallen. The stars glittered through the opening and a zephyr stole in and rippled the tapestries on the wall opposite.

  Instantly, the movement at his side registering in the corner of his eye, Rondas struck.

  The tapestry split. Dust puffed out chokingly. The whole tapestry simply ripped and fell into pieces, whole soft swaths of it disintegrating and collapsing across the corridor.

  Nobody passed a comment.

  A mail-armored and axe-armed man could have been waiting behind the arras, ready to leap out and decapitate one of us as his comrades roared into the fray.

  Those decrepit tapestries were symbolic of the whole fortress. Decrepit, dusty, disintegrating. Just how old it was we didn’t care to guess; it was old...

  However unwilling and complaining he might be, Jespar led us in what I considered to be a reasonably straight line through the corridors and chambers. For all Pompino’s tough manner, and the paktuns’

  casual menace when they suggested agio, we all felt affection for the little tump and the fearful threats made were merely that, threats and not to be acted upon. At least, I trusted that was so...

  Cautiously we descended from that high courtyard going down broad staircases and narrow spiral staircases, prowling along corridors darkened by shredded tapestries and drapes. No statuesque harnesses of armor, no stands of weapons arranged in decorative patterns, adorned the walls. They had all long since been taken away to be used in the red tumult of battle. Weapons and armor must serve many seasons when the wars are on.

  Now the castle-builders of Kregen do not usually construct their fortresses so that any raggle-taggle-bobtail crew may calmly stroll in as though out for a Sunday promenade. They set traps.

  They confuse by winding stairways and corridors. They trick the unwary in a myriad of cunning, ingenious and lethal stratagems.

  If you are unable to garrison the whole of your fortress, then you seal off those parts undefended and set the traps. We had the great advantage that we descended from the upper levels instead of fighting our way in over the ramparts as any sensible Pandaheem besieger would have to do. Jespar was aware of many of the places where we would have been slain for sure, and our own expertise took care of most of the rest.