Scorpio Invasion (12 page)

“The Whoorn-forsaken Shanks have broken through. They’re following!”

I looked back. Two of the pinnaces flew down between the trunks, the suns light sparkling for the last time upon the weapons of the Shanks aboard. They started after us with evident evil intent.

“There will now be,” I said, trying to lighten this desperate situation, “a quantity of consummate flying.”

“Eh?”

“We’ve got to go fluttclepper flick between the trees.”
[5]

“We have to escape—”

“Keep a lookout for any swarms of small birds.”

He opened his mouth, and closed it, and then said: “Very well.”

He didn’t know what I meant, not yet. Havilfar is the continent for saddle flyers. As far as I knew there were no birds or flying animals in Loh large or powerful enough to carry a human being and who might be trained to do so. If they were large enough then, again as far as I knew, they were intractable. We had to go fluttclepper flick between and around the trunks and if we were caught then there’d be no more of Dray Prescot upon Kregen.

The Shanks soared along after us. We sped on ahead. I needed to calculate out the relative speeds, for I’d no way of knowing how fast the Shank’s flying pinnaces could go. Farris had sent me a good voller; she was not of the finest but she had a fair pair of heels. As we sped along in that half light between the trees the Shanks gradually gained on us.

“Faster, Drajak! Faster!”

“See for yourself. The speed lever is hard against the stop.”

“Then this time we are doomed — we must be!”

“This time we are doomed,” I parroted him. “What kind of weak melodramatic fustian is that? If we’re done for, if we’re going to die, then say so, for the sweet sake of Beng Pulphan!”

“All right, all right! Tighten your scabbard!”
[6]

I didn’t reply directly to that acute remark; but I felt vastly pleased Rollo was acting so well. This kind of fraught situation would most certainly reduce many folk to abject terror. He’d wanted to go adventuring and, by Krun, he was tasting what it was like!

We roared on between those timeless trunks. The gray-green light washed us with a corpse pallor. The Shanks drew closer. Our voller would not fly any faster. The flying was demanding, swerving between the trees and lining up for the next gap and then a swift jink to avoid the trunk suddenly directly ahead. I had to give my full concentration to piloting; what Rollo was doing now was up to him. He might shaft a few Shanks before we were overrun.

The violent maneuvers at last dislodged the unfortunate xichun on the deck. He slid sideways as I jinked particularly sharply around a trunk and flopped off to tumble away below. He’d make food for the trees, eventually.

At last I saw them, up ahead.

At first I thought they were insects, a swarm of bees. They filled the aisle between the trees in a black cloud.

As we neared, for I dared not slow down, I hauled up the prepared silks and furs and draped them over me one-handed. I got the canvas up and Rollo was there, helping me.

“See to yourself—” I started.

“Now I see what you meant. Can you pilot this thing safely?”

“I don’t know. I must look out ahead to avoid the trunks.”

“So they’ll be able to get at you—”

“Wrap yourself up and don’t leave any chinks.”

I didn’t look back as Rollo wrapped himself up. I had a tiny gap to see through, a chink as large as one eye. Piloting was a nightmare, I can tell you! The voller hurtled on between the tree trunks.

The black cloud ahead resolved into a multitude of tiny dots. They were birds, sparrow size, with short stubby wings and long tails and beaks — those beaks! They were long and curved and sharp, sharp. If a xichun ventured down here through a gap it would be ripped to pieces. I knew.

And here we were, about to plunge into a furious flock of these ferocious little birds. I drew a breath, lined up the opening between the trees that formed a short aisle, aimed the voller, and hauled the flap of canvas across my eye.

In the next heartbeat the voller rang and resounded with the violence of hundreds of enraged little birds hurling themselves at us.

Sharp points thrust through folds of the canvas. I felt the blasted little prickings all over my body. These little frightfuls had beaks as sharp as one of Seg’s arrow points! That made me think that Rollo the Runner at this rate of punishment might never get to Vallia and stroll through the glades of lisehn trees, from which the fine Vallian bowstaves are built.

I jumped and twitched as the beaks stuck into my flesh. But the canvas and the furs held off most of the length of the curved beaks. Mostly these birds caught and ate the small living things on the trunks, and insects hiding in the cracks of the bark. As for the xichun, they could drive the big lizards mad with their torments. And, if we weren’t out of it quickly, so they would us.

All this time my mental clepsydra had been counting off the passing murs. We must have reached the end of that aisle through which I had set our course. I had to take another look out. I had to throw back the flap of canvas so I could see, and that meant the deadly little birds could thrust their beaks straight into my eye. By Makki Grodno’s own suppurating and dangling eyeballs! I said to myself. Not zigging likely!

The dagger I’d taken from poor old Lin snugged into my hand. I held it up before my eye, cutting edge forward. Then, with my other hand I carefully lifted aside the flap of canvas. I stared past the dagger into the gloom under the canopy and at once tiny bodies were hurling themselves at my face, crazily beating at what they saw as a threat, smashing into the upright dagger. Many of them were cut and slid aside. I had to ignore all that uproar. I had to see where the tree trunks were and where the next aisle lay. The dagger shook in my fist so great was the pressure. The trunks lined out a trifle to the right. The dagger could not be lowered. So I humped around like an Eskimo and got my left hand down to the controls and still a fold of canvas buckled above my eye so that I could see past the dagger. Lining up the voller with the aisle between the tree trunks and dropping the canvas flap back took only moments. I let the dagger sag down. I felt as drained of energy as though I’d swum the Cyphren Sea.

After that, only a short time elapsed before the sound of small bodies striking the voller died away. No more sharp little beaks thrust their tips through the canvas armor. Now I could hear a constant cheep-cheep from the deck abaft the control position.

Faintly, muffled, a voice said: “They’ve gone!”

“Don’t take off your canvas, Rollo! Hold still!”

Just then he gave an almighty yell. I guessed what had happened.

“Wait, wait,” I shouted back.

Now I could open the canvas sufficiently to see properly. No more tiny birds fluttered into my face. The aisle between the trunks petered out and I selected a new course. Then I looked back onto the deck.

The canvas hump was Rollo. A fair number of little birds had become entangled and stuck there, fluttering away like crazy. Others hopped and fluttered about the deck. The moment they flew up high enough they were whisked away aft. Rollo had thrown off his canvas the moment the main attack had ceased and one of these little fellows had stuck him.

“All right, Rollo. Cautiously. And shield your eyes, just in case.”

The canvas hump moved as a sluggard moves on a Sunday morning. At last Rollo appeared, staring about, pale-faced.

I said: “Take a look aft, my lad.”

He looked.

After a little interval, in which the birds fluttered and flew off, he said: “I cannot feel sorry for Shanks, after what has been said of them, no, by Lingloh! All the same—”

“All the same, these little birds of Paz have defeated a force of Shanks.” This was true. The two flying pinnaces were moving erratically among the trees. One smashed full into a trunk, broke up, fell. Bodies tumbled from it. I wondered what the life here would make of a fresh fish diet.

The other pinnace curved down and went on down and vanished in the shadows of the floor among those gargantuan trunks.

“All praise to the Names!” breathed Rollo. He threw the canvas down and the last of the birds freed themselves. Those stuck in my canvas cleared off as well. We had the voller to ourselves.

“We can keep on south between the trees — until the trees stop.” I eyed Rollo. “Or we can try west out to sea, or up and over the forest.”

“The Shanks will be on the coast. We’ll have to fly south.”

I rather liked the way he’d said ‘fly’ so unaffectedly.

We had come through a nasty ordeal. Now we had to make the most of our chances. It would be necessary to keep an eye on Rollo in case he got the shakes. I had a shrewd idea he would not, since he regarded all this as a mere part of going adventuring. And, if he did, I had the equally shrewd idea he’d get over them sharpish.

The headlong onrush of the voller could now be eased. She cruised along sedately and there was an extraordinary amount of time to change course to avoid those solemn pillars rising to the green heavens.

Away to starboard the mingled rays of the Suns fell through a gap and made the intervening trunks dark bars, edged with color, the spaces between smoking with flittering life, hollow, fading away, on and on, into the tree-barred shadows of the distance.

Both Rollo and myself were impressed by these vistas of immensity concealed beneath a green canopy of leaves. The smell of the brellam forest remained with us in memory in after days, as I know. The many insects flittering in scintillating clouds contrasted with the tall solemnity of the trees. Undersea caverns? No, I do not think so. This strange world beneath the brellam trees’ leaves formed a world of itself, a world apart, a world that owed nothing to any comparison with undersea.

Presently Rollo heaved up a sigh and said: “I famish.”

Rather too brightly, I replied: “A capital notion!”

Somberness, stillness, these were the keynotes here.

We ate something or other. I’d slowed the voller well down the scale of her speed range. Usually one does not push an airboat along as fast as she is capable all the time. The general belief at the time was that if you pushed a voller hard, you would materially shorten her life. Hence, pilots cruised whenever possible at optimum speed.

When, at last, we saw we were leaving the true brellam forest and entering the rain forest proper, the jungle, I decided we had to rise. The heat was now considerable, for although Kregen’s temperate zones extend far further than Earth’s, the Equator is still hot. We sweated, by Krun.

Up we went, finding a gap, and cautiously entering upon the realm of the air above the jungle, we floated up into the brilliance of the Suns.

A rapid and then a second more thorough scanning of three hundred and sixty degrees revealed no distant ominous dots. We had the sky to ourselves.

“Well, now!” exclaimed Rollo. He expanded his chest and looked pleased.

“Well now, young feller-me-lad, is for us to take stock.”

I raked out the strongbox Farris had placed in the voller. Whatever its contents, it would have been guarded devotedly by my lads of the Guard Corps. Now my Delia in pursuance of her mysterious errands for the Sisters of the Rose, errands which took her from me as mercilessly as the Star Lords took me from her, had ordered the minting of a special coinage. In various sizes and weights, she had ordered produced gold, silver and bronze coins. Their difference from the normal coinage of Vallia lay in their anonymity. A vacuous face on the obverse, a blurred scene of battle and carnage on the reverse, a few profound words of the universal Kregish — ‘Honor that which is honorable’ – and you had money you could spend anywhere without evoking comment.

As a great trading nation Vallia had access to coinage of many foreign nations. In the strongbox there would be coins from many countries beside the special Delian currency. There were also a reasonable number of Vallian talens, for people would be more likely to be suspicious of a foreign fellow without Vallian coins in his wallet. There were, I was intrigued to see, a goodly number of bronze krads, that patriotic coin minted by the Presidio of Vallia in the Times of Troubles and which formed the main part of the Vallian Freedom Army’s wages. I rubbed my thumb over a krad, thinking back...

“Right, sunshine,” I said, rousing myself. “We’ll have a share out.”

“But—” he began, and fell silent.

“You’ll have to learn to handle money circumspectly. If you wish to become a freelancing adventurer upon the face of Kregen, then there are many instructions to master and lessons to learn.”

“Well, I’m learning—”

“Assuredly.” I was dividing the coins. I gave him half. I would have liked to have spared him more; but there were two reasons against that.

Stowing the coins away in the worn purse Farris had provided I spotted one coin so badly clipped it was shaped like an egg. It was one of Delia’s special minting, what she called her ‘Funny Money’. There had been a ring of dots around the edge. Milling would never deter a good coin clipper of Kregen. Coin clipping in some quarters amounted to a religious obligation.

“You are generous, Drajak—”

“Oh, no. Don’t mistake me. You’re going to Vallia to study with San Deb-Lu. You can shoot in your bow on holidays.”

He gave his condescending half-smile. “We have not yet finished this adventure. Vallia is a long way off as yet.”

I didn’t choose to answer.

Steadily we flew on devouring the distance and we saw no signs of Shanks. Crossing the desert proved a simple task, so simple as to remind me of the travails the caravan with Mevancy had suffered. Truly, to fly through the air is a great boon to travel! At least, on Kregen.

I said: “I do not think it would be a good idea to land in Makilorn, the capital city of Tsungfaril. We’d attract far too much attention.”

“Yes, I see that. But if we land out of the way, how do we—?”

“Precisely. We can touch down on the west bank just before the suns rise, and hide the voller in one of the caves there. Then we’ll have to walk in.”