Prince of Scorpio (22 page)

A couple of Katrin’s seamstresses ran up a buff Vallian tunic for Inch, extraordinarily long as to body and sleeves, and although they did it rapidly the stitching was of far finer quality than my own. Katrin, like a true Kovneva, employed only the best, and took them with her on her travels. A pair of tall black boots and a rakish hat with the two slots and a mass of red and white feathers made Inch look something like a Valkan. He found an ax, long-hafted and keen-bitted. Fit, clothed, fed, Inch was ready to march and fight at my side as we had before.

I own I felt him a great comfort to me.

Seg Segutorio had gone with the Bowmen of Loh with the Emperor. I knew he and Inch would get along together — by Zair! They would! Or I would know the reason why!

The wind blew savagely from the west for all of three days, and at times must have gusted up to a hundred miles an hour. There were many slates and tiles strewing the flags of the city. I prowled, restless as a caged leem. Katrin wanted to talk about the problems of her Kovnate of Rahartdrin, but I was in no mood for that, and kept out of her way. Most of the time I spent drinking and talking with Inch.

On the morning of the fourth day Katrin’s captain reported the weather fit for us to fly. The wind had veered and dropped and the clouds were piling back into the sky from which the twin suns put in a watery appearance. We went to the airboat, climbed aboard, and took flight for Delka Dwa. I was not in a happy mood. For some reason I did not wish to fathom I felt cut off, isolated, marooned from events.

I had made up my mind what I was going to do, and the elements were merely holding me back. They could not change my mind.

I would fly to Delka Dwa, take Delia and whoever she wanted to accompany her aboard this airboat. Seg would join us. I would place my hands on this calsany of a captain’s throat and he would fly Katrin’s airboat to Vondium. We would pick up Thelda and little Dray, and then we would take flight for Strombor.

Yes. That was the plan. Simple, direct, and brutal.

The plan did not work out like that. You must remember that Kregen is not Earth. Oh, yes, most of its geography, customs, and people are like some of those of the Earth; but much there is strange and awe-inspiring and as different from Earth as an Eskimo is different from an Amazonian Indian.

We slanted down to a landing where green fields of cabbage ended, their rows wide-spread beneath the suns. On the other side of the landing field rose the craggy pile of Delka Dwa, a dun-colored mass of stone, roofed with pointed witches hats, moated, a triple-gate opened ready to receive us. I had the impression the gates would be slammed shut the instant we were inside over the drawbridge. Across the town hung shadows of high clouds. Beyond lay a rising stretch of land, mostly of a yellow dust-rock in which the glimpses of gray-green vegetation served only to emphasize the barrenness of that land, the emptiness of it, as it rose and became drier and gradually turned into the true Ocher Limits.

All was in turmoil.

The blood was still being scrubbed from the cobbles and the flagstones, scraped from the walls, washed from the costly tapestries and carpets.

The bodies had been collected and lay in rows beneath the walls, hurriedly wrapped in makeshift shrouds fashioned from sheeting.

Delka Dwa had been attacked four days ago, just before the great storm. Savage men and beast-men wearing colors of green and purple, their badge a hangman’s noose, had ravaged the place searching for the Emperor.

I forced myself to hold on to my sanity.

Pallan Eling, with a bloody bandage around his head, lay in a long chair, and his scrawny frame shook. I asked him the questions torturing me.

“I do not know where the Princess is, Strom,” he said. His voice quavered. I thought he shook no more than did I. “Now we know the colors and the badge of the third party! By Vox, I hope their bones rot and slime on the Ice Floes of Sicce.”

In the corridors bowmen lay mingled with mercenaries, all wounded, all the Emperor’s men who had fought. They had been overwhelmed.

A Hikdar told me, a Hikdar with a broken left arm strapped across his chest and acupuncture needles in him, dulling the pain. At his side lay his great longbow.

“Pallan Eling should go back to caring for the canals,” the Hikdar said. “And leave fighting to warriors.”

“Yes,” I said, in a voice I did not recognize. “What happened?”

I was aware of Inch busily taking in what had happened and talking to the survivors. The Hikdar’s head lolled.

“I was told to wait here. As soon as we arrived from Delka Ob the Emperor must have heard news, for he took to the air again at once. Half his force he took with him. We who stayed here received the attack designed to kill him. That is sure.”

The real fear took me then and gripped my guts with a pain that made me cry out and rush upon the shrunken form of the Pallan Eling, the man responsible for canals. His face looked like an old potato left out in the sun for a week. He whimpered when I gripped him.

“You must tell me, Pallan Eling. Where is the Princess Majestrix?”

He cried out, and gazed on the scene about him as though reliving the scenes of horror. Then he closed his eyes and a shudder racked through his body. “Gone.” He moaned, barely audible, and his old lips fluttered. “They came wearing the white and black, and said they were my friends, and asked for the Emperor — and I told them! I told them!”

“What did you tell them, old man?”

“Vomanus of Vindelka, it was; he knew. He warned the Emperor! They fled to The Dragon’s Bones. There, Vomanus said, they would be safe.” Eling abruptly sat up, gripped what was left of his hair, and tore at it like a madman. “And I told them where Vomanus had gone!”

I tried to calm myself, to think clearly, and, Zair knows, that was nigh impossible with the blood roaring in my head.

“And the Princess? Where is she?”

“She took an airboat with the others — with the Emperor—”

“Inch!
”I bellowed.

He came running, swinging his ax.

“We go to The Dragon’s Bones.”

“Aye, Drak. Where may that be, then?”

I stared at him like a loon. I had no idea.

A Chulik sat with his back against a wall. One eye had been gouged out and the tusk on that side broken off. His chest was broken and a girl was trying clumsily to ease his pain. He stared up at me with that stoic calmness the Chuliks boast against pain. “The Dragon’s Bones,” he said, in a whisper. He wore sleeves of white and ocher, so he was of Vindelka.

I bent down. “By Likshu the Treacherous! Tell me where lies The Dragon’s Bones, Chulik.”

“Into the Ocher Limits — northwest — twenty, twenty-five dwaburs, more. There are bones there, millions of bones.”

A Chuktar whose once-brilliant uniform was now mere rags, bloody and ripped, leaned up on an arm and coughed out: “There is no hope for the Emperor now. The third party has suborned good men. We stayed loyal to the Emperor, and this is our thanks. There is no one in the whole of Vallia who will fight for him now.”

“No, no!” shrieked the Pallan Eling, and then he looked around furtively. “But it is true. I should have joined Trylon Larghos! I was asked — I was asked! All have turned against the Emperor!” He rocked to and fro in his agony. “Why did I not do so? My loyalty has destroyed me!”

Well, the whole sorry story was out in the open now.

And yet Vomanus had warned the Emperor, and they had fled. Yet Vomanus was Trylon Larghos’ candidate for Delia’s hand! There was treachery and double-treachery here.

The confounded roaring and shrieking persisted in my head. I couldn’t think straight. Trylon Larghos. Building his third party, double-dealing the racters — I felt a jolt of surprise. If Vomanus had found out about that, and realized his hopes for Delia as the candidate of the racters meant nothing, he would have turned against the men of the white and black. He had warned the Emperor, but his motives may simply have been pure self-interest. But — Vomanus? I had to get to The Dragon’s Bones and confront him — and Trylon Larghos.

I snatched up the bowman’s great longbow, and half a dozen filled quivers. They told the story. The third party had come in the guise of racters, as friends, and then had struck with steel; the crimson Bowmen of Loh had gone down with their bows unstrung, the arrows still snugged in their quivers.

I took Katrin’s airboat captain’s neck between my fingers.

“You will take us instantly to The Dragon’s Bones.”

He cringed. He had no time to argue, to say a word. He was run outside, and I shouted at the men standing limply by the drawbridge in the gatehouse in such a way that the drawbridge smoked down, and bounced, spouting dust. Inch and I ran across with the flier captain propelled before us. Katrin’s despairing cry followed.

“Strom Drak! You would not leave me?”

“Where I must go there is no place for you, Katrin! I will try to send your airboat back for you.” I gave the captain a buffet to make him run faster. “You might get it back if you’re lucky.”

The captain yelped at this. I kicked him aboard his craft and he fell onto the deck. Rearing up, he saw my face and so gave his orders in a scared husky croak to his crew. We took to the air.

“Captain,” I said. “I do not know your name. But you will obey me in all things. Is that understood?”

“Yes, my lord Strom. I am Hikdar Arkhebi. I will do as you order.”

“Get us to The Dragon’s Bones as though your life depended on it — for, believe you me, it does.”

He took himself off to oversee his steersman, down in the engine compartment where were situated the two silver boxes which, with my limited knowledge then, I understood to control height, speed, and direction of the flier.

Inch said, “The raiders got in treacherously by wearing white and black. The Bowmen were very bitter about that.”

“I just hope Seg is all right.”

“From what you tell me of Seg, I think he can take care of himself.”

Delia.

If she had been harmed — I did not relish that swift flight across the Ocher Limits to The Dragon’s Bones. I couldn’t remain still. I paced up and down the sundeck, flicking my rapier this way and that, aching, shivering, shrunken. Black thoughts flitted like evil bats through my brain.

The barren wastes, rugged and harsh, fled past beneath. The hot wind scorched into my face and stung my eyes. I could not descend into that sumptuous cabin where the Kovneva Katrin had besought me. I stayed on the sun-deck and Inch kept everyone away, and, up there, alone, I suffered through that blistering journey.

Inch had never met Delia. I know, now, that he came to a full understanding of what she meant to me.

Away ahead I saw the yellow-umber landscape with its dry gulches and its powdery screes lifting to a serrated ridge, saw-toothed, jagged. Across this we flew, and I was very conscious how this evil land fitted my mood. Beyond, in a depression, lay a fumarole. We flew over it and then another. This whole area looked much as the surface of Earth’s moon looks, with volcano detritus and lava scattered everywhere, crater colliding and blending with crater. The glare of the twin suns beat back dazzlingly.

There was no need for Inch to stand upon any rung of the ladder to lift his head to the sundeck level. He shouted back: “Strom Drak! We approach The Dragon’s Bones.”

“Come up here, Inch.”

He shambled up onto the sundeck and stood, braced against the slipstream, regarding me.

“They said, back there in Delka Dwa, that there was no one in all Vallia who would fight for the Emperor.”

“Aye,” said Inch, who had been a barge hauler.

“That may be true. I do not know and, truth to tell, do not much care. But there are men willing to fight for the Princess Majestrix.”

Inch looked at me. “Now I know,” he said. “I can feel a little sorrow for Tilda the Beautiful — and, by Ngrangi, for Viridia the Render, also.”

“You,” I said to Inch, and I spoke as reasonably as I could, and Inch, because he was my comrade, understood and remained patient and calm under the bitter lash of my voice. “Inch, go to the Blue Mountains. Go to High Zorcady. Ask for Korf Aighos, for I think he will have returned by now, recovered. If he has not, there will be other men willing to fight — aye, and die — for their Princess. Gather what men you can, in fliers, and bring them back here.”

“But,” said Inch, “this Hikdar Arkhebi — you remember our Arkhebi who took Strom Erclan’s place? — he can take a message.” Inch’s eyebrows drew down. “I would rather fight at your side.”

“And dearly would I have you there, Inch, you long warrior, but” — and here I rolled out a foul Makki-Grodno oath — “I don’t trust him. Only you will carry the words to make them believe. Only Korf Aighos knows I am Dray Prescot, Krozair of Zy.”

Even Inch did not fully comprehend what that meant. No one could, who had not sailed the inner sea, the Eye of the World.

Inch grumbled a great deal and swung his ax about and looked every inch of his seven feet a disgruntled man, but in the end I persuaded him. I had to. The Delphondi for all their loyalty were useless — as I then thought — and only the Blue Mountain Boys and all the other bandits, reavers, and moss troopers of the Blue Mountains could offer help.

I placed the point of my rapier against Hikdar Arkhebi’s throat. It was a cheap gesture, theatrical, but I had summed up the man.

“You will fly directly to High Zorcady, Hikdar Arkhebi. Maybe, if you succeed, you will take the first step on the ladder leading to Jiktar. If you fail, you won’t be a Deldar — you’ll be a corpse, swinging rotting in a gibbet!”

“Yes, my lord Strom!” he gasped out, his lips ashen.

“And Inch, here, who is to be addressed as Tyr Inch, has my permission — no! by the Black Chunkrah! my orders — to degut you the instant you try to betray me. Is that clear?”

He gobbled it out. “Yes, my lord Strom!”

They landed me short of my target, which appeared to be a crater filled with bones, and Arkhebi took the airboat in a wide circle around The Dragon’s Bones, and so on over the horizon to the west.

I stepped out smartly, for I was anxious to get where I was going. I wanted to speak with Trylon Nath Larghos of the Black Mountains. If he died, that would be his misfortune. I was approaching where my Delia was in deadly danger, and nothing could be allowed to stand in the way of her safety.