Captive Scorpio (23 page)

“Cut the cramph down!” And: “By Likshu the Treacherous! The man is a devil!” And: “In the name of Father Chalkush of the Iron Brand do not let him pass.”

Blades clashed and slithered, blood flew, we leaped and contorted across the grass, Chuliks spun away, pierced, slashed, degutted, the longsword flamed a circle of savage destruction. The very size of those towering walls deadened sound. We trampled across the grass and I had to skip and jump right smartly, for Chuliks are rightly renowned as superb fighting men. But for the dead Rapa paktun’s armor I would have been nicked a couple of times. But, in the end, I had them all, and so could plunk the dripping point of the Krozair brand into the turf and spell a moment or two, breathing deeply, gulping the air which stank now with the tang of freshly spilled blood.

The Chuliks wore the colors of Gelkwa. The colors were green, silver, black and yellow, arranged in the Hawkwa fashion as a regular pattern of circles, silver, black and yellow, upon their green sleeves. Finding a tunic that was not too bloody I stripped my own tunic off — or, rather, the tunic that had been Rojashin’s — and donned the garment of Gelkwa. All the same, the kax that had served me well went back on. The letting out of the shoulder straps and pauldrons had not affected the harness’s efficacy. The longbow could be unstrung and slid back into its sleeve. How long that would pass as a spear remained to be seen; it had deceived before. Settling a fresh helmet on my head — gaudy with colors, heavy with feathers — and curling the long cape about me I surveyed the scene.

A grassy sward filled with dead Chuliks. Blood. Stink. Flies. And me, Dray Prescot, helplessly and hopelessly looking for a wayward daughter, and all Vallia in flames.

Through the far gateway I came out onto the temple precincts and was able to mingle casually with the departing throngs. The talk centered on one subject only. I walked with bowed head, as though profoundly affected by the awesome occurrences within the Temple of Hockwafernes.

I felt that all Vallia was alight. Once the emperor was seen to falter, once a blow was struck against his authority, many people would stand forth from the shadows and openly challenge him. You know of many of the parties and factions; there were more, people determined to have their own way with the Empire of Vallia and to the Ice Floes of Sicce with anyone who opposed them. There had been a battle and the emperor had been defeated. I wondered if he had been there in person or had sent a general to deal with the invasion. I wondered if the old devil was still alive.

My course was now clear cut. Despite all my ineffective attempts to see Dayra and to rescue her, I had achieved nothing. Even this corpse revived to blasphemous life lived and I had been unable to send him decently back to the grave. Between Dayra and Delia I was being forced to choose, and the alternatives were odious, agonizing. But — Delia. Yes I must assure myself she was safe first. If her father went down in ruin, Delia would become the prey of the leems prowling and scenting blood.

Somehow, I sensed that Dayra had survived with the wild bunch with whom she ran because she knew how to handle both herself and them. She would not be suddenly in dire peril now, just because I had not seen her. Why should my arrival make any difference to her? After all, I had not affected her life up until now. She had lived and grown to womanhood without me. So, feeling the deep hurtful wounds pressing in on my spirit, I set off to see about stealing a flier.

The careful watch of the guards lay all at my rear now. The temple was still the focal point. How long I would have before that dreadful courtyard was discovered I did not know. But a flier I needed and a flier I would have.

At the least, I have some skill in stealing vollers.

The Chulik guard had included a Hikdar among their number and I assumed he had been checking up on his posts. That was the last item of military procedure he would ever perform. A Hikdar — nearly enough to an Earthly captain in that he commands a pastang, a company of around eighty men — is the first of the more important ranks, and it is possible for wealthy young men, well-connected and with military aptitude, to enter the army directly as ob-Hikdars. What the Deldars say about that may be imagined. So I had hung the Hikdar’s rank insigne on my harness and was prepared to be somewhat blunt to any swod who offered to halt me.

Everywhere a transformation had swept over Trylon Udo’s army. Where they had been a collection of irregulars, leavened with a few professionals, and aware of that and apprehensive of their own capacities and of the emperor’s Crimson Bowmen, now they were a united force, filled with a surging confidence that would carry them on despite casualties to ultimate victory.

With sufficient spear carriers to hurl forward, and with the hard-core elite troops to follow swiftly on, even well-disciplined enemies may be overcome. It is all zeal, morale, burning conviction, the sense of invulnerability through belief.

And the emperor had already been once defeated in the field.

My duty, clearly, lay in Vondium and the rapid creation of forces to withstand the two-pronged attack Phu-si-Yantong had thrown against Vallia.

As I walked steadily on, avoiding the areas near the leather tent of Nalgre and Dolan, fliers cruised into view, high, then circling and descending. The transports were gathering. I watched, counting, estimating, storing away information. To amass an aerial fleet of this size, and with vollers of this capacity, was a task beyond the resources of a trylon of the Northeastern part of Vallia. Once again the hand of the Wizard of Loh showed itself.

One of the tragedies of the situation was that Udo desired self-determination for the Northeast and his Hawkwas. Yantong’s ambitions ranged further, for through his tools he would rule Vallia himself. Udo was expendable, and where men and women are concerned that is a concept that always fills me with disgust. And yet — and yet it is a tactic used more than once. But, always I think, with volunteers. Not a pleasant business. . .

The fliers were parked neatly and I strolled along marking out the small flier I would take, judging from her lines whether she was a swift craft. She would have to serve me well and not break down. And then I smiled — just a little. If Yantong had provided these vollers from the arsenals of Hamal then they would be first-class, they would function, they would not break down. Capital!

Now I have indicated that very many folk of Vallia believed their Prince Majister was a blown-up paper tiger, a fake Hyr-Jikai, holding a reputation he had not earned and did not deserve. This belief had been fostered by my long absence. And my enemies had no doubt put these rumors about. Phu-si-Yantong would know differently, Rosil Yasi, the Kataki Strom, knew differently from personal experience. His twin brother, the Stromich Ranjal, would therefore presumably know better, too.

I overlooked that fact, and as a consequence prepared to stroll up to the little voller and send her racing into the sky without any fuss.

There were guards about, as was natural, and volmen working on the craft preparing them for the triumphant expedition south. These people I ignored and walked steadily toward my flier.

A group of guards and volmen and Jikai Vuvushis stood gaping upward as a large flier circled preparatory to landing. Others looked aloft. This was my time. I advanced toward the craft I had selected more rapidly. Unfortunately she was not at the end of a row; half a dozen other craft surrounded her.

The Fristles jumped me when I had but a score of paces to go.

Scimitars upraised, their cat-faces distorted, shrilling spitting war cries they flung themselves at me.

“The rast! The Prince Majister!” They screeched their rage and triumph. “He is here! Ho! Guards! The Prince Majister!”

In an instant I was surrounded by a glittering hedge of steel.

This was inopportune. The longsword flamed out, striking away scimitars, slashing cat-faces, carving a path toward the voller. More guards were running up. The whole place came astir like an ants’ nest. I started running and slashing in real earnest. So near the voller I was not going to be denied.

That particular pack of Fristles went down. I reached the voller. Before putting a hand to the coaming and leaping aboard I swung about. The old Krozair Disciplines snapped into place. Four Undurker archers were lifting their laminated bows, were letting fly. The Krozair longsword swatted this way and that and the short brightly-tufted arrows slapped away harmlessly.

Heading the group coming up from the side ran Zankov. I wouldn’t mind spitting him; but beside him raced the dark and sinister form of Stromich Ranjal. That wicked tailblade lifted high. The Battle Maidens were there also — I saw Leona nal Larravur, and Ros, and Firn, and Karina the Quick, the bandage awry, pelting along. I had no wish to slay them.

This group fouled the range for the Undurkers. Those diffs with their supercilious canine-faces ran up, trying to spot me and shaft me properly this time.

Zankov was yelling: “He is a coward. A no-account! A nulsh. Take him alive.”

“I’ll stick him through!” screeched Leona.

“I’ll take his eyes out first!” screeched Ros. The left-hand claw glittered menacingly.

I leaped up into the voller and slammed the levers over to full forward and full lift.

The airboat lifted two feet and then halted with a shuddering surge, a violent constriction of effort, hung swinging. I stuck my head over the side.

“By Vox!” I yelled, baffled.

The cramphs had affixed thick chains to the keel and locked them firmly into stakes driven deeply into the ground.

I was anchored fast.

Then they were on me.

Even as Zankov hurled himself forward, his rapier a glinting bar of light, Ranjal yelled: “Beware, Zankov! He is a warrior—”

“A bag of vomit!” shouted Zankov and slashed wildly at me.

I slid the blow and put my left fist into his face. He fell backward from the voller with a scream.

Ranjal flicked his tail at me and then hauled it back just in time. The longsword hissed through air.

“Let me get at him!” Ros was screeching.

“Let me!” screamed Leona. She knew how to use a rapier and the thin blade snickered past my ribs. Mind you, that was a waste, for the rapier would never puncture through the kax.

I clouted her over the head — very gently.

An Undurker arrow whistled at my head and I ducked and flicked its fellow away with the longsword. A Rapa tried to climb onboard and I cleft his head down. There was nothing else for it. I would have to go overboard and release the chains.

With a wild whoop — a deliberately theatrical war cry which was not, in those circumstances, an entire waste of breath — I jumped from the flier.

A short and violent scuffle ensued in which various guards staggered away holding bloody fingers to various portions of their anatomy, or who slumped to the blood-soaked grass, and then I was familiar with the chains hooked into the stakes. One came free and the longsword bit around in a flailing slash that left a grotesque wake of lopped limbs. This was not fancy any more, this was sheer savagery in the attempt to remain alive. Zankov came at me again — he had courage, that one — and I hit him again with the hilt and the blade shocked on to skewer through the neck of a Rapa following him. Zankov dropped and I put a foot on his wrist, grinding fist and sword hilt into the dirt.

Firn tried to spit me and I had to knock her away.

In the next split second I had my hand on the last remaining chain.

A blow thunked down on my helmet and I whirled, the longsword slicing, and a Chulik — who should have known better — staggered away looking surprised. He collapsed. And then — somehow, somehow — with devastating speed, the lithe feline form of Ros appeared before me. She disdained her rapier. Her left hand whipped for my face.

My own left hand leaped from the longsword hilt and caught her wrist. I felt the harsh steel splines. Her face — that glorious, glowing, superbly beautiful face — bore down on me with hateful virulence.

Under my foot Zankov thrust himself wildly sideways. He squirmed. With a vicious grinding twist I tramped down on his arm and he screamed.

And then — and then I felt a spiteful cutting agony pierce through the fingers of my left hand. With an oath I let Ros go. Along the metal splines sharp teeth stood out, and gleamed wetly with my blood.

I could have thrust her through then with the longsword.

I did not.

I staggered as Zankov writhed around, yelling.

The cruel curved talons slashed toward me. I warded them off and Ros whipped her hand back in a cunning backhand blow that revolved at the last minute and so brought the claw in a long razoring slash down my face. The slicing blow stung.

A Chulik tried to degut me from the side and the longsword twitched and he fell away a dying man.

“You devil!” gasped Ros.

Zankov was screaming now, screaming all the bile and viciousness out, screeching words — impossible words.

“Kill the rast! Slash his eyes out!”

Again the claw razored toward my face.

“Kill him!” screamed Zankov. “Dayra! Kill him. Slay him for good and all, Dayra!
Dayra!”

Seventeen

The Gathering of Shadows

I looked down into lustrous brown Vallian eyes. I saw that glowing face. I saw and I could not understand.

Almost, almost, then, I was a dead man.

But the longsword, of itself, sliced and slashed and the two Chuliks screamed and spun away, bloody wrecks.

The blood dripped down my face from the razor slashings of the steel claw.

“Dayra?”

Zankov screamed again: “Now is your chance, Dayra! Slay the rast and have done.”

I stepped back, out of the lethal swing of the claw and kicked Zankov in the side of the head. He slumped. My left hand reached for the last hooked chain.

“So mother was right, after all, and these fools wrong,” she said, this girl, this Ros the Claw who was my little daughter Dayra. “For no other man could do what you have done and lived.” She lifted the steel tiger talons on which my blood glimmered darkly. “You are a Hyr-Jikai.”