The suns of Scorpio (21 page)

I have mentioned that the men of Segesthes considered the shield as the cowards’ article, a weak, treacherous, miserable item of warfare, one to which they would not deign to give the name of weapon. They had never seen an offensively-used shield. So I took a break and then, when we had drunk a little wine, I said: “Finally, the production lines will make shields.”

I quieted them. The men of the inner sea, also, disregarded shields. Only Ochs used shields, a tiny round targe clasped in one of their six limbs with which they attempted to counter aggression. Men derided the Ochs for their little shields. I spent some time arguing; finally I said: “It is settled. When I give you the patterns for the pikes, the glaives, and halberds, you will also receive patterns for shields. These will be manufactured. It is ended for now.” I stood up, looking down on them.

“I will see you tomorrow night. Remberee.” I left them.

Vomanus takes a message to Delia of the Blue Mountains

The Princess Susheeng of Magdag was a vibrant, alluring, sensual creature. There was no doubt of that at all. It was all too clearly apparent as she reclined on a low divan covered in ornate green silk, the lighter green of the silks partially covering her white body seductive in their flowing curves and hidden shadows. Poor Vomanus in his buff coat and black boots looked gauche and out of place; essentially I felt the same way, no matter that I wore a lounging robe of that detested green. I had felt it politic to do so; now, clearly, it had been a mistake. The intimate little supper party was over and now Susheeng was devising ways of getting rid of Vomanus. I was countering them with a suaveness I had to admire in myself.

“Oh, Vomanus, my pet,” said Susheeng in a dripping-honey voice. “I wish to speak with Drak alone.”

She could have said, simply: “Vomanus, clear out.” Since she had not, it was obvious that her brother Glycas’ warning of the importance of Vallia had got through to her.

Vomanus, casting me a dirty look, rose and, with a graceful farewell speech, left. Susheeng turned her bright eyes on me. Her breast rose and fell beneath the scrap of green silk.

“Why do you always avoid me, Drak? Time after time I seek you out — and you are not there. Why?”

I was astonished. This proud and haughty woman, a beauty in any man’s eyes, was in effect begging me. She leaned gracefully toward me, and the green silk moved again tumultuously.

“I keep myself busy, Princess.”

“You do not like me!”

“Of course I do!”

“Well, then. . . ? If you knew how lonely I am. Glycas is forever busy about matters of state. The campaign in Proconia does not go well.” I had to keep from shouting aloud my joy. She went on, slumping back now, her feelings of neglect beginning to stir different emotions. “All he can talk about are the pirates from Sanurkazz. Everyone is wondering when that arch pirate, that evil devil’s spawn, that cramph, the Lord of Strombor, will strike again. He cost me a cool three merchantmen last season. Money of mine, lost to me, in his filthy hands. This Pur Dray, this Lord of Strombor, why, he is a worse Krozair than that mangy Pur Zenkiren.”

I felt drunk.

I had quaffed but little wine, for I had to keep my wits about me. But — this was how the enemies I had sworn to oppose talked about me, about Zenkiren, about the Krozairs of Zy! I felt suddenly strong and liberated, rejoicing in the powers that Sanurkazz extended across the Eye of the World.

“I feel sorry for you, Princess,” I said. “But I believe you also raid the men of the southern shore. Is this not so?”

“Of course! They deserve it; they are rasts before Grodno.”

Then, shaking those creamy shoulders, she reached for her goblet and drank deeply. Her face was more flushed than usual. I thought of Natema. I tensed myself, ready for what might come. There would be no ghetto warrens for me this night.

The work of preparations was going well, and already the production lines were turning out long, beautifully shaped shafts of pikes and halberds, and the smiths were forging the heads to fit. Grindstones were being stolen and if a Rapa guard was found with his throat slit, wasn’t that what they hired themselves out to expect?

“My dear Drak,” said Susheeng. “I swear you are thinking of something else.”

A naturally gallant man might have mumbled that no man could think of anything in the presence of Susheeng except her; that way lay dragons. I said: “Yes.”

“Oh?” Her eyebrows lifted. That cruel look flashed over her face.

“I was thinking how strange it is that neither you nor your brother, the noble Glycas, are married.”

Her breath caught in her throat. “You — would—?

“Not me, Princess Susheeng.” I took a breath. “I am spoken for in Vallia.”

“
Ah!
”

I thought that would finish the matter. She had known that my urgent desire to return to Vallia — as she thought of it as a return — had cooled lately. She had thought it was on her account and now she knew otherwise. I made a big mistake then.

The next night I was able to slip into the warrens with the pattern I had worked out for the shields. They were large, rectangular, curved into a semi-cylinder, and I insisted that they be built to withstand an arrow from the short straight bows of the overlords’ mercenary guards. If this meant they must be backed with metal, then the metal must be stolen from the building sites where it was being fashioned into masks and wall-coverings to the greater glory of Grodno. I overrode all obstacles. The weight of the shields thus produced, I said, was not important. I had in mind their use as a kind of pavise. I showed how they might be used in the testudo. I got through to my men in command. Susheeng was waiting for me as I climbed back in through my window.

“I have been waiting for you all night, Drak.”

I kept my composure.

“I was restless, Susheeng. I have been walking — to clear my head.”

“You lie!” She flamed at me then, passionately. “You lie! You have a girl out there in the city, a whore for whom you deny me! I’ll kill her, I’ll kill her!”

“No, no, Princess! There is no other girl in Magdag.”

“You swear by Grodno that what you say is true?”

I’d swear anything by Grodno; false deities mean nothing. But there was no girl — and then I thought of Holly. I said, harshly and with an acrid contempt: “I do not need to swear, Princess. There is no other girl in Magdag.”

“I do not believe you! Swear, you rast! Swear!”

She lifted her white hand on which the green rings flashed. I caught her wrist and so for a space we stood, locked, looking into each other’s eyes. Then she moaned softly and sagged against me, all the rigidity gone from her body. She leaned into me and I could feel her softness. “Tell me true, Drak. There is no other?”

“There is no other, Princess.”

“Well, then — am I not beautiful? Am I not desirable? Am I not fair above all other women in Magdag?”

What had Natema said, and what had I said, when I thought Delia was dead? Now I was by that span of years more mature.

“You are indeed the finest flower of Magdag, Susheeng,” I said, and felt shame at the vicious irony of my words.

A crisp knock at the door followed by a Vomanus who concealed his chagrin at sight of Susheeng, who was smoothing down her hair now, effectively chopped off that scene. When Susheeng had left with a long lingering glance at me, Vomanus said enviously: “Well, you lecherous old devil! So you managed it in the end!”

“Not so, good Vomanus.” I looked at him, and I found he ranked favorably with those other young men who had followed me to death. “And aren’t you supposed to treat a Kov with some kind of respect, hey, young lad?”

He laughed delightedly.

“Of course. But I told poor old Tharu not to tell you who I was, and I don’t intend that you should find out now. Just take it from me, Drak, my friend, Kovs are Kovs and Kovs to me.”

I glowered at him from under lowered eyelids and he, despite that he had known me for a little while now, started back and I knew I wore that corrosive look of pure authority and domination on my ugly face that I despair so much of.

“And are you going to tell me you aspire to the Princess Delia yourself, good Vomanus? That I am a rival?”

“Drak — Dray! What are you saying?”

I never apologize. I turned from him. Then: “Vomanus — I thank you for your help and comradeship. But I fancy that she-leem Susheeng will set spies on me. I am going to have to disappear.”

“What!”

“There is work waiting for my hand. I love the Princess Delia as no man ever loved a woman before in all this world of Kregen, aye! and all of Earth—” He stared then, thinking me going off my head, I shouldn’t wonder. “But before I can return to her and clasp her in my arms again I must discharge the obligations laid on me. A Vallian ship was signaled last night — you did not know?” For he had started and his face had lighted up. “Listen carefully, Vomanus. I take a great comfort from your comradeship and your ready wit and help — now, hear me out! I want you to return on the ship, go to Delia, and tell her I am well and dying for her and that I shall return just as soon as certain business has been conducted here. She will understand, I know. I know she will!”

“But, Drak — I dare not return without you!”

“Dare not? When your Princess Majestrix awaits news of me, thinking me dead, perchance, suffering. Go back to Vallia, good Vomanus. Give the good news to your princess. Tell her I shall return just as soon as I am allowed. She will understand.”

“But what keeps you here? Not Susheeng of a surety.”

“Not Susheeng, nor any other girl. I cannot explain. But you will return to Vallia and give my message and my undying love to Delia of the Blue Mountains.”

Besides, I wanted him well out of the way when my slave army struck. I didn’t want his head stuck on a pike and paraded along the harbor wall.

He shook his handsome head, and thrust his fist down on his rapier hilt so that the scabbard stuck up into the air, arrogantly. “But, Drak, to return without you!”

“Go! For the sake of Zair, go now! Tell Delia I long to clasp her in my arms — and I will, I will, but go, now, before it is too late!”

He stared at me as though, at last, I had taken leave of my senses. I calmed myself. “All will be explained. And, too, you could return with an airboat to Proconia. I know Vallia does not like using the airboats in the inner sea. I can join you there.”

He frowned. Then: “Very well, Kov Drak. I will do as you ask.”

We made the final arrangements and then I said “Remberee” to Vomanus and went back to my room that evening to collect all that I might need. I was about to leap onto the windowsill when Susheeng called. It was weak of me, I know. But I felt I could not leave without a kind of warning. After all, she was acting of her nature, like them all. So I went to the door and let her in. She was magnificent.

She was dressed as barbaric murals showed Gyphimedes, the divine mistress of the beloved of Grodno, to be dressed in the old legends. Kregen is a maze of myth and legend, some of it beautiful, some horrible, all of absorbing interest. Storytellers weave their fantasies in every marketplace and on favorite street corners beneath the sturm trees. The very air of the world breathes a scented miasma of romance and wonder. Now Susheeng stood gracefully before me dressed as a living mistress from one of those old legends.

Her hair was coifed and ablaze with jewels. A thick rope of it had been left free and this hung down, coiling lushly over one rounded shoulder. Her body was clad in strings and ropes of emeralds. A priceless fortune glowed against her white skin. The rosy hue in her cheeks was not entirely artificial. Her eyes gleamed and sparkled from lotions. Barbarically bedecked, more nude than if she had been naked, she glided toward me, the golden ankle bells chiming. The breath clogged in my throat.

“Drak — my Prince — do I not find favor in your sight?”

It was a rote question, as old as man and woman.

“You are exceedingly beautiful, Susheeng.”

She swayed toward me. My mind was a jumbled amalgam of Holly, and Natema, and Mayfwy — and then, swamping them all and clearing my head and setting my whole being blazing, came the vivid memory of my Delia of the Blue Mountains stepping so lithely down the rocks clad in those magnificent white ling furs, her figure perfection, her eyes glowing on me, her every aspect so far more beautiful — so

— words fail me here. I thrust Susheeng from me so that she staggered. She dropped to her knees. She amazed me even more. In one hand she had hidden a crumpled gray cloth. Now, moving with a frenzy I found fascinating and appalling, she stripped the emeralds from her so that the strings broke and the gems rolled and scattered wildly about the room. Stark naked she stood, her hair down and the jewels shaken from it. Then — then she wrapped the gray cloth about her thighs, drew it up between her legs, and knelt before me clad in the gray breechclout of the slave!

I didn’t want to touch her.

But I didn’t want her crouching there at my feet, dressed up as a slave girl, demanding from me what she must know I would not give.

“Get up, Susheeng!” I said. I made my voice harsh and she jumped and flinched, and her naked shoulders shook. “You look ridiculous!”

It was, of course, the end.

Slowly, she stood up. Her breast heaved and she gulped to control herself. She succeeded. Calm, icy, deadly, she stood before me, naked in the gray breechclout.

“I have offered you everything, Kov Drak of Delphond. You have seen fit in your folly to refuse me. Now—” Her eyes glowed molten on me in the lamplight. She was incredibly beautiful and evil now that her pretensions had been stripped away. On Kregen there is an expression which means roughly what

“my dear” means on Earth, with all the sinister, hating, murderous connotations involved. She used that now, as she turned like a she-leem and glided toward the door.

“You will be sorry, ma faril Drak. Oh, so sorry!”

I knew I had less than a handful of murs to get clear. The mailed men she was even now whistling up would not know I had a sectrix saddled and waiting; and so I stood a chance. But it was a near thing. As I clattered out of that secret court where a sleepy slave padded his way back to his quarters, I heard the sounds of the hunt rising behind me.