Prince of Scorpio (26 page)

Seg said, “You go with the Emperor, Dray, if you like.”

Comrades.

We would do it. We were almost there.

A great swirling flood of mercenaries burst around the shattered corner of the tower and raced across the dust toward us. Many races and species were there, all thirsting for our blood. I could hear their shrill shrieks of triumph.

“Run, Majister!” I roared. “Run, by Vox, run for the sake of your daughter.”

He half turned to look back, and I waved my rapier at him and yelled: “I didn’t come here to rescue you! But you’re rescued now! Get in among the bones and you’re safe!
Run!”

Then we three, Seg, Vomanus, and I, turned to face the death running so swiftly upon us.

Delia

A great song has been made of the fight at The Dragon’s Bones, but I will not give you its title. It runs to a mere seventy-eight stanzas, but every one is turned and polished like a gemstone, and when I hear it the blood thumps and thrills through my veins. Perhaps, at least to me, there is no finer passage than that which follows. But I, speaking in English, can only tell you in my plain sailorman’s prose what happened. You must dream of the wonder-images, the defeat and triumph, the despair and hope, the smell of blood and sweat, the slick taste of dust, the feel of a rapier hilt hard in the fingers, the main-gauche gripped in the left fist; hear the devilish shrieks and yells of the wounded and maimed, the screams of the dying. You must blend all this into a mighty uproar in the brain.

We fought.

Vomanus was a fine rapier man, as I knew. Seg Segutorio was the finest archer in two worlds. Yet we would not have lasted more than a few murs, but for the wonder.

How to tell you of that moment?

We heard yells, surprised shouts, and the press upon us slackened. We could gulp for air, wipe the sweat from our foreheads, and look about. We were all wounded, but we lived. We looked about, we looked up — oh, the wonder, the wonder of it!

The sky filled with airboats.

They slanted down from the east, so that I guessed Inch must have swung his fleet from the Blue Mountains around. And in that I was wrong. Gloriously wrong!

The fliers landed in the clearing and men poured out.

Such men!

I didn’t believe it then. I just stood there, my mouth open, my rapier and dagger hanging limply, and any onker of a rast could have run me through as I gaped.

The very first man to hit the dusty rock of the clearing wore russet leathers, tasseled and fringed, with cunning pieces of armor strapped where they would protect the most. He wore a helmet, but I knew his hair was fair and bleached by the Suns of Antares. He swung an ax, double-bitted and daggered with six niches of flat-bladed steel. Belted at his side swung a great broadsword and a deadly shortsword. Over his back he carried, ready strung, a short reflex compound bow.

Hap Loder!

Running swiftly with him was a ferocious being all dun-colored hide and bristly bullet-head, massive shoulders, and short sinewy legs, clad in as brilliant a scarlet breech-clout as you will find on Kregen. He wore parts of armor, too, and carried a rapier and main-gauche. I smiled, guessing he had been taking lessons.

Gloag!

With these two ran a young man clad all in powder blue, with an elegant and handsome appearance, his bronzed face keen and his black eyes alert. He wore cropped hair beneath his steel cap. He handled his rapier and main-gauche with superb authority, a true bravo-fighter of Zenicce.

Varden!
Prince Varden Wanek of the House of Eward!

Following on rushed a great crowd of men clad in the russet leathers of my clansmen, the brave scarlet of Strombor, the powder blue of Eward — and there were even a few bravos wearing the silver and black of the Reinmans, and the crimson and gold of the Wickens.

I saw those old familiar faces — Loku, Rov Kovno, Ark Atvar, fierce merciless clansmen sworn in obi brotherhood to me. And — and by Diproo the Nimble-fingered! There ran Nath the Thief, dressed up in clansmen’s russets and the scarlet of Strombor, with an empty lesten-hide bag flapping at his side ready to be filled with the loot his nimble fingers could close on!

How I stared!

My men — my ferocious Clansmen of Felschraung with their horrendous axes and broadswords, and my bravo-fighters of Strombor! I had not seen them for long and long; but they had not forgotten me, for as they smashed like a solid wall of iron and steel into the panic-stricken mob of Furtway’s mercenaries, they were yelling and roaring it out: “Hai! Jikai! Dray Prescot! Jikai!”

My clansmen roared in a deep rolling thunder of noise: “Hai! Zorcander! Hai! Vovedeer!” With the last they exaggerated, as they always did.

My men of Strombor roared in a high fierce screeching: “Hai! Strombor! Strombor!”

Furtway’s men had little chance — hell! — they had no chance at all!

My clansmen, the most ferocious and brave warriors in all Kregen, simply smashed over the rapiers and daggers like a single wave blots out a fragile bridge. A few Undurkers let fly with their arrows, and from the rear ranks of the clansmen rose a sheeting storm from the cruel reflex bone and horn bows, and the Undurkers fled. They had recognized clansmen, and however impossible it was for clansmen to be here in the heart of Vallia — they were here, in iron and steel and blood!

The axes rose and fell. The great broadswords scythed. The shortswords stabbed, in and out, very deadly.

Then Vomanus, who had been staring with the eyes goggling in his head, shouted and pointed.

A second aerial armada settled down in the space cleared of dinosaur bones. The first man out was Inch, waving his huge Saxon-pattern ax, roaring into action to chop at an angle into the crazed mob of Furtway’s mercenaries. I did not see the Kov Furtway, or his nephew Jenbar, or the wounded Trylon Larghos, but word was brought to me they had managed to escape. And I was willing they should go, for the score between us lay on a personal basis. Much more important, though, was the fact that the Star Lords wanted Furtway alive for their own schemes. I had been prepared to balk them and see the man slain for what he had tried to do, but I own I felt a certain relief, a cowardly relief, if you will, that the Star Lords would not have reason to toss me back to Earth.

Following Inch and his Saxon ax raced Korf Aighos at the head of the Blue Mountain Boys. I saw the way many swung the great sword of war of the Blue Mountains, even Ob-eye, and the flash and glitter from sharp-honed edges before they stained a more sinister hue.

After that it was all over. Then — I did shout.

“Majister! You may come out of the bones, now. You are safe.”

He crawled out. He tried to arrange his robes, but they were torn and bedraggled. The sacred emblem strung around his neck winked blindingly in a flash of gold as he lifted his head. He did not look frightened, of that he cannot stand accused. But there was about him an air of shrunken pride and tawdry magnificence, the arrogance shredded away to a reality he had never had to face before. He walked slowly toward me followed by his retinue of old men. Among them I could not see Kov Vektor.

And then, for me at least, came the greatest wonder of all.

My men had fashioned a litter of dinosaur bones and over it flung a great scarlet silk, very grand in the suns-light. Golden cushions bestrewed the scarlet silk. They had lifted the litter high, proudly. Reclining there, warm and vibrant and altogether magnificent against the gold and scarlet, holding in her left hand the staff of Old Superb, my old flag with the yellow cross on the red field —
Delia!

They carried her, those men of mine, they carried her proudly as befitted a princess. And no princess in two worlds ever had so proud or gallant a party so to carry her. My men! They carried my Princess in triumph before me, and over all waved the old flag of mine, Old Superb, as men called that flag, waving in the streaming mingled light from the twin Suns of Scorpio.

I heard Vomanus smother an exclamation. Then he and Seg were running, and in a twinkling they, too, were carrying that precious burden high before the Emperor of Vallia.

That Emperor, that proud man, looked at me most uncertainly.

“They shout a name, I think,” he said. “Do you not hear the name they shout, Strom Drak?”

“Oh, aye, Majister, I hear.” I would not take my eyes off my Delia to stare at him.

His voice reached me, whispering. “I am the Emperor, the Emperor of Vallia, the greatest power in Kregen.” He might believe that; I did not, not when Havilfar provided airboats and those mysterious ships raided up from the southern oceans. “I keep my word,” said Delia’s father. “And, in truth, I believed myself already dead, and the promise of no great value.”

Delia was smiling at me. I stared back, entranced.

“What promise was that?”

“I said that if you rescued me I would make you Prince Majister, Strom Drak.”

“Oh, yes, I remember.” I lifted my voice. I shouted to my men as they drew near bearing the dear form of my Princess. “Hai! Jikai!” And I hailed them, High Jikai, every one, by name.

The High Jikai is not lightly given on Kregen.

It came to me then in those tumultuous moments that nothing is purely perfect. There were two more faces I would fain have seen in that throng bearing so high and proudly my Delia, my Delia of Delphond. I would dearly have loved to see Nath and Zolta, my two oar-comrades, from far Sanurkazz. But that could not be, and I doubted not but that the Star Lords by their prior designs had thwarted that accomplishment, which would have been very great and wonderful indeed.

The dinosaur-bone litter lowered. Then I saw how my Delia was dressed as the great yellow and red flag lofted away. She wore the scarlet breechclout of Strombor. And over her shoulders gleamed those magnificent silky white ling furs I had won for her on the Plains of Segesthes. Lithely, her long lissome legs very wonderful to behold, she stepped down from the litter and ran to me.

My Delia, my Delia of Delphond, my Delia of the Blue Mountains! She ran to me and threw herself into my arms and she was laughing, sobbing, and crying my name, over and over.

“Hush, hush, my darling,” I said. “And tell me how you did it.”

It was superbly simple. Her airboat had been driven by that westerly gale and sent wildly toward the east, so that any hopes of her summoning rescue from the Blue Mountains had vanished. So — she had flown on to Strombor! And in their regular visits during the season Hap Loder and my Clansmen of Felschraung and Longuelm had been there, also. They had scoured the whole of Zenicce for airboats, and by gold and thievery — and here Nath the Thief hopped about from leg to leg in his excitement — they had drummed up the great armada, and had flown here as though all the glaciers of the Ice Floes of Sicce were calving around their necks. They hadn’t bothered overmuch with food or drink, so as to cram every last fighting-man in, and now they were about to raid the rebels’ camp. “And, Dray, my puissant Lord of Strombor, I have been paying regular visits to Zenicce season by season. Great-Aunt Shusha and all the others send you their love.”

“Sink me!” I said, laughing. “I have a managing female to contend with!” And I hugged her close.

My men swaggered around us, for they knew the great Jikai they had performed, and as the song whose title I will not tell you says, great was the performance thereof.

Then I stood her off from me and said: “Your father—”

“I will treat him gently, Dray.”

And I had feared and hesitated all this time!

We stood before the Emperor of Vallia in his ragged robes, and at my back bristled the weapons and the colors of my men, victorious in battle. I said softly, “Kiss him, Delia, embrace him.”

She did so. And, watching them, I saw the real affection there. Delia looked back at me from the crook of her father’s arm.

“I heard a name, Strom Drak — Strom of Valka — a name . . .” the Emperor said.

“Aye,” I said. “You ordered my head chopped off. Do you think that a great jest now, Majister?”

He licked his lips. I believe that many men there expected me to order his head off, on the instant. That would have been the justice Kregen understands. Crude, violent; something I, not only for my own sins but for the purposes of the Savanti, wished to change.

He walked with his daughter toward me. He slid a great ring from his finger. He held it out. His hand did not tremble.

“By this ring you are now legally and heritably Prince of Vallia, Drak—”

And Delia said with her brilliant laugh: “Call him by his name, Father dear. For this is Pur Dray Prescot, Krozair of Zy, Lord of Strombor, Zorcander of Felschraung and Longuelm, Strom of Valka — and what else besides I shouldn’t wonder. And, my father, know also that he is the man I shall marry, no matter if the whole of Kregen, let alone Vallia, stands in the way!”

She had placed Krozair of Zy in the prime position. I know my Delia understood.

“I am plain Dray Prescot,” I said. I took Delia’s hand. “And this is the woman who is my wife. We belong to each other.”

He braced up. He was, after all, the Emperor.

“Dray Prescot. Dray. You are, as far as I and Vallia are concerned, Prince Majister Dray. And” — he swallowed and his hand closed on the sacred emblem strung on a golden chain about his neck — “and you have my blessing, both of you.”

The hullabaloo racketed skyward, enormous, booming, uproarious. “Hai! Jikai!” The swords flashed skyward, glittering, shining, a forest of flashing blades. “Hai, Dray Prescot, Prince Majister of Vallia!”

Yes, they know how to do things with style in Kregen.

The sacred ring, emblem of the Majister, flashed and scintillated on my finger. I detest rings; this would go with the ring of Valka, safely sealed away to perform its duties on the days set apart. I held my Delia and I could not let her go.

Quietly, I spoke to the Emperor. “The third party has set Vallians against Vallians. But now that you are safe we can set about repairing the damage. I think Kov Furtway and Jenbar, no less than Trylon Larghos and the others, will fly for safety overseas. We can put Vallia back to rights.”