Golden Scorpio (3 page)
Perhaps, as I had wistfully half-suggested to myself, perhaps I would just stay quietly in Strombor, that beautiful enclave of the city of Zenicce, and live life the way life is intended to be lived and enjoyed.
We had taken all night over this flight. The flier was reasonably fast, having covered three hundred dwaburs, about fifteen hundred miles, and it would be full daylight before we reached Valkanium and the Bay and the high fortress of Esser Rarioch.
Below us Valka fled past. Farris had gone back to sleep and as I cogitated with such melancholy with my tormented thoughts and watched the suns rise off to our larboard, I felt the soft warm hand creep into mine and felt again all the magic of my Delia enfold me.
“Dawn,” said Delia.
“Aye. And the Suns are rising on a sorry land this day.”
“But it is a new day, my heart. A new beginning. A new chance. In Valka—” She expected me to interrupt; but I did not. “In Valka we must find help. We must.”
“If we do not, if we do, it makes no difference. You and the children are for Strombor.”
The Suns of Scorpio, Zim and Genodras, rose into the clear air. The day would be fine, with perhaps a little rain after the Hour of Mid. Delia sighed.
“I have been thinking of your blasphemous suggestions of a world with one little yellow sun and one silvery moon. It is possible, I grant you. But where is the sense in it? Why do you raise a philosophical point? Is there anything more?”
“Oh, aye,” I said, turning so she could nestle into my free arm. “A lot more.” I spoke slowly and carefully, trying to make what I said sound sensible, which, to a Kregen, it did not, could not.
“Only apims?” She stared up at me blankly. I leaned down and kissed her. For a space nothing else mattered. Then—
“Only apims. People like us. No diffs, none at all.”
“Now I know you make fun. Such a world would be — would be flat, would be — dull!”
“Well — no,” I said, defending this our Earth which is so marvelous a world in its own right. “Not flat or dull. Just that Kregen is so much — so much — more,” I finished lamely.
She drew a deep breath.
“Very well, husband. Since you choose to mock all the religion and the learning of the wise men — suppose, just suppose a world could exist like that. Then what?”
It was my turn to swallow.
Below us Valka began to show all those myriad colors of her forests and lakes, the mountains of the Heart Heights, the wide open spaces, the serene areas of ordered cultivation, the thread of rivers and the glint of waterfalls. The air breathed sweet and clean, that glorious air of Kregen. This was my own island of unsurpassed beauty, wild and rugged, tranquil and fertile, rich with the goodness of the earth. I drew another deep breath and the fragrant dawn air of Kregen dizzied my senses. For this I would give much, give very much...
Delia looked up at me, her brown hair catching the radiance of the suns so that those outrageous chestnut tints glinted. The richness of her lips, the clarity of her brown eyes, the perfect purity of her face and form — I swallowed again and opened my mouth.
“From such a world, distant a long long way, my heart, I—”
She broke away from me and her chin firmed and the danger signals flashed from those brown eyes that changed from melting tenderness to hard authority. “Flyers! Hamalese! They see us!” I swiveled about, checking my words, stared out Flyers lifted toward us, their wide wings spread against the light, the flyers on their backs shaking their weapons.
“Not Hamalese,” I said after that first flashing glance. “Flutsmen.”
The mercenaries of the skies wheeled their flying mounts up toward us like a gale-driven whirlwind of leaves.
Ahead of us the Bay opened out, and the City of Valkanium spread in beauty up the slopes where vegetation bowered my home in verdant beauty. The massive pile of Esser Rarioch reared above the city and the Bay. The light picked out every detail.
Our own flags of Valka still flew from the battlements of Esser Rarioch. But ugly smears of smoke rose from the city. There were sunken galleons in the Bay. Flames spat spitefully from warehouses and from the villas along the shore and overhanging the water. A confused mass hurled up and forward against the fortress and the wink and glitter of weapons splintered shards of light into the morning.
“Esser Rarioch is attacked,” I said, and the bitterness choked me with bile.
“But it still holds out.” Delia leaped for a crossbow. “We must break through these flutsmen and reach the fortress.”
Feathered wings flickered about us. Feathers streamed back in those clotted clumps from their helmets that give to flutsmen their devilish, reiving, headlong appearance. True mercenaries, Flutsmen of Kregen, hiring out to the highest bidder and ready to betray him for a price. They share nothing of the high honor of nikobi that give Pachaks their unmatched reputation as paktuns. Flutsmen often band together and simply reive on their own account. Now, with Vallia torn by strife, these aerial devils struck out for themselves.
I slammed the control levers over to full and bellowed for Farris. The voller lanced up into the air, spraying flutsmen away. Delia, braced against the coaming, loosed, and bent at once to respan the bow.
Some remnants of honor still cling to some flutsmen. I had no way of knowing of what calibre were these aerial foes; but I knew with everything I held precious that I would never allow Delia to fall into their hands.
Farris lumbered out and belted up the deck to the controls. Flutsmen were urging their flying steeds on. For a space we outclimbed them. I shoved my head over the side and looked down. The dark mass of men attacking Esser Rarioch had broken through the first portals of the long stairway and were forcing their way up. The pavises borne before them bristled with arrows. Esser Rarioch was due to fall soon. And the flutsmen bore in toward us, screeching, their weapons glittering.
“Down, Farris!” I bellowed. “Straight down — straight for Esser Rarioch!”
The Lord Farris flung me a single questioning glance. He saw my face, that ugly, demoniac, headstrong old face of mine with the look of the devil, and he thumped the levers over.
Straight through the whirling cloud of flutsmen we plummeted, down and down, hurtling toward the fight raging on the long stairway leading up to Esser Rarioch.
The Folly of Empire
The brave red and white flags of Valka still flew over the battlements, the treshes bright and defiant in the morning light. Down we plummeted. Flutsmen screeched and drove in and were buffeted away and left, trailing far above us. The wind scorched about our ears.
No flyers attacked Esser Rarioch. I smiled. I, Dray Prescot, smiled at the grim and bloodcurdling thoughts — for my Archers of Valka must have remembered and put to good use the techniques they had been taught of repelling aerial cavalry.
So we roared down toward the fight and I peered about intently. Birds and flying animals used as steeds had been virtually unknown in Vallia until the confrontation with Hamal had forced the unwelcome information upon the Vallians. Down south in the magnificent continent of Havilfar there were many and many a variety of flyer, and of them all, I fancied — aye! and still do! — that the fabulous flutduin of my ferocious four-armed Djangs is the finest. A corps of flutduin mounted flyers had been formed in Valka, trained by Djangs brought to my island for the purpose. Where were they now?
Why was not this assaulting mass of infantry being harassed from the air?
These thoughts had to be banished as with the wind blustering past we dropped headlong into the attack.
Queen Lush staggered out, almost falling down the steeply canted deck.
“Take up a crossbow, queen, and let us see how you shoot!”
“I’ll shoot, ma faril, I’ll shoot—”
So we had three crossbows to loose and Delia and I spanned a half dozen more as we rocketed down.
White and colored blobs showed as the faces of the men in the ranks below looked up. Their wide pavises were studded with arrows. Varter-hurled bolts splintered off the rocky sides of the stairway, and chunks of stone ricocheted away. I judged that there were few Valkans left in Esser Rarioch to carry on the defense.
Time, time... There is never enough time...
Up the stairway the infantry struggled in the shelter of their large shields, and down we plunged at them. At intervals in the long flight of steps there are generously proportioned landings, places where a fellow might pause and catch his breath as he climbs to Esser Rarioch. The head of the assaulting column had reached one such landing and now it halted. Bows bent against us and arrows flew. The voller was of good Hamalian construction, built soundly of stout wood, mostly sturm, with lenken bracers. The arrows either failed to penetrate or missed and fell away.
The Lord Farris was a fine flier. He would needs be, seeing he was a Chuktar in the Vallian Air Service. Now he eased the voller out of her headlong downward plunge, aiming to bring us up over the heads of the foremost foemen.
Queen Lush leaned over the coaming and let fly. She loosed far too early and where her bolt went Opaz knew.
“Save your bolts, queen!” I bellowed. She glared madly at me, and seized up another of the crossbows.
Farris was swinging us up now in a sweetly contrived curve that would put us in a good shooting position. Queen Lush’s second bolt disappeared into the dark mass below.
Delia began to shoot.
We discharged our crossbows and I saw one of the pavises sway and tilt as men fell, their hands lax in death slipping from the cross-struts. But our combined shooting would not make the decisive difference the desperate situation required.
Now Farris was a fine flier, as I have said. I bellowed at him as I frantically wound a windlass.
“Down, Farris! Drop full on them!”
He glared at me, and all the reluctance of an Air Serviceman to hazard his craft showed in his seamed, wind-lined face. The crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes deepened.
With a curse that apostrophized Makki-Grodno’s foul and diseased anatomy I hurled myself at the controls. I thunked the lever down, hard. The voller dropped like a leaden plummet.
“Majister!” yelled Farris, aghast.
The airboat smashed down onto the head of the column, onto the pavises, onto the infantry. If there were squashing sounds they were lost in the uproar. The voller lurched. She stuck her stern down, over the rear of the steps leading onto the lower flight. I juggled the controls, lifting her and letting her fall. We ground down as a pestle grinds in a mortar.
Presently, with only a few arrows flicking about us, I lifted. The voller rose smartly enough and I turned her in the air. We looked over the side.
The column was in full retreat, broken into flying fragments. Men ran and scrambled down the stairs. Many fell to roll in brightly swathed bundles of uniforms and armor down the long stairway. I did not smile. But, for the moment at least, we had gained a respite.
“The chance,” breathed Farris. “It was a gamble—”
“And the gamble succeeded,” said Queen Lush. She had just spanned a bow, struggling with the cords, and now she took careful aim at a wretch running down the steps and sent the bolt full into his back. He leaped into the air, convulsed, and then collapsed, to fall and tumble headlong down onto the pressing backs of his comrades. In a wild tangle of arms and legs and weapons they all slithered down to the next landing.
“Now,” I said. “We will find out what is going on here, by Krun!”
“It won’t be good news, that is no gamble,” said Farris.
“But,” said Delia, her chin lifted, her face bright. “Esser Rarioch still stands. The flags still fly.”
As we flew up to the high landing platform I fancied that my fortress palace might still stand; but not for long. Anyone of the villains who wanted the downfall of the Empire of Vallia as a prerequisite to assuming the crown himself — or herself — would not allow any strong place of the Prince Majister’s to stand. My plans for starting the counter-revolution from Valka must be re-thought. But, then, I’d half-known that all along.
The folk who met us as we alighted from the voller bore the marks of hard fighting. Yellow bandages bore ugly stains. But the men greeted me with a roar of welcome, the women smiling at Delia. Esser Rarioch is a place dear to me, as you know, a place where no slaves were kept. Everyone in the fortress capable of bearing arms did so. We were engulfed in a human tide of talk and explanations of what had happened here and enquiries of what was taking place elsewhere and a determined defiance of anything those rasts outside could do to us.
Chuktars hold high ranks in any army, the name in its original barbaric connotations meaning commander of ten thousand. Nowadays, a Chuktar commands a grouping of regiments or units each under a Jiktar. The Chuktar who met me as I went up onto the battlements gripped my hand in his own brown fist and beamed. I agreed with his decision not to meet me at the landing platform. He was occupied where he was and he pointed out what deviltry was afoot out there as we talked.
The flutsmen had been employed to bring the fortress to a rapid submission, and they had been seen off with volleys of accurately loosed arrows. Chuktar Nath Fergen ti Vandayha pointed at the gathering masses far below filling the Kyro of the Tridents, and he had no need to say they prepared themselves for the next attack.
As we talked I knew Delia would be seeing about Aunt Katri and the children, that Queen Lush would be exciting sidelong glances from the folk of Esser Rarioch, that our own preparations were being made. The Lord Farris joined us on the high battlements, and the pappattu was made between him and Chuktar Nath Fergen.
Jiktar Exand, the commander of the fortress guard, had been wounded early on, and I would go down and see him and give him words of comfort. Nath Fergen had chanced to be in Valkanium when the attack developed. As he said, with a round oath: “Tom took most of the army off to Veliadrin, for those Opaz-forsaken cramphs of Qua’voil burst out and burned three towns and started to march north. I came here to pick up the Fourth Archers and was just in time to get myself into the castle.”