The suns of Scorpio (27 page)

Beneath the measured tramp of the phalanx of slaves the ground shook. The phalanx advanced. The pikes were all held in their correct alignment, angled forward and upward. The yellow of the vosk skulls glowed in the streaming opaline light. The steel bows of the crossbowmen winked back brilliant reflections. All — everyone in my little army — all moved forward. With us now were the thousands of other workers and slaves, men and women with snatched up weapons or implements to use as weapons in their hands. The dust rose chokingly. Trumpets shrilled and called. I strode on, wishing I had Mayfwy’s mail coat about me now, but moving on, moving on. . . I knew, as nearly as a man may know anything, that now we had these arrogant overlords. Against the new weapons of the phalanx and the pike, supported by the crossbows, they would be swept away. Exultantly I strode on. Shouts and rallying cries echoed. Arrows and bolts began to crisscross in the air.

“Krozair! Krozair!” I yelled, swinging the long sword and pressing on, the pikes all about me. Holly’s sextets were lavishing loving care in their shooting. “Jikai! Jikai!”

We would win. Nothing could stop that.

In all that uproar, all that bedlam, with the pikes seeming to lean forward in their eagerness to get at these hated mailed overlords of Magdag, I looked up. I looked up. The scarlet and golden hunting bird circled up there — alone. The dove had gone.

“Against Magdag!” I yelled and my sword caught that falling streaming light and blazed like a flaming brand.

The light was changing. Blue tints crept in around the edges of my vision — and I knew what was happening. Arrows fell about me; the pikes were surging forward, stabbing; the halberdiers were hacking and cutting; Holly’s bolts were swathing through the mailed ranks and the Prophet and Bolan and Genal were urging the men on. Even as we smashed solidly into that surging sea of armored men and moved on over them, so the blueness limned everything about me. I felt light. I felt myself being drawn upward.

“No!” I shouted. I lifted the long sword. “No! Not now! Not now — I will not return to Earth! Star Lords! If you can hear me — Savanti — let me stay on this world! I will not return to Earth!”

I thought of my Delia of Delphond, my Delia of the Blue Mountains. I would not be thrust through the interstellar void away from her again! I could not.

I struggled. I do not know how or why or what happened, but as the blueness grew and strengthened I fought back at it. In some way I had failed the Star Lords. Something I was doing was contrary to what they wanted to accomplish. I had vaunted that I would serve them in my own way — and this was my reward.

“Let me stay on Kregen!” I roared it up at that indifferent sky where the suns of Scorpio cast down their mingled light. Now I was scarcely conscious of the fight raging around me. Men were dying, heads and limbs were being lopped, bolts were piercing through mail, blood was being spilled on a prodigious scale. I staggered. I was encompassed and floating in blueness. I gripped my long sword with the clutch of death. I felt myself falling, all lifting and exultation gone, falling and falling. . .

“I will not go back to Earth!”

Everything was blue now, roaring and twisting in my head, in my eyes and ears, tumbling me head over heels into a blue nothingness.

“I will stay on Kregen beneath the suns of Scorpio!
I will!
”

I, Dray Prescot of Earth, screamed it out. “I will stay on Kregen!
I will stay on Kregen!
”

About the author

Alan Burt Akers is a pen name of the prolific British author Kenneth Bulmer. Bulmer has published over 160 novels and countless short stories, predominantly science fiction. More details about the author, and current links to other sources of information, can be found at www.mushroom-ebooks.com

The Dray Prescott Series

The Delian Cycle:

Transit to Scorpio

The Suns of Scorpio

Warrior of Scorpio

Swordships of Scorpio

Prince of Scorpio

Havilfar Cycle:

Manhounds of Antares

Arena of Antares

Fliers of Antares

Bladesman of Antares

Avenger of Antares

Armada of Antares

Notes

[1]A bur is the Kregan hour, some forty Earth minutes long. It is divided into fifty murs, the Kregan minute. Discrepancies in the year caused by the orbit of Kregan about a binary are ironed out at festival times. There are forty-eight burs in the Kregan day and night cycle. I have omitted much of what Dray Prescot says of mensuration on Kregan and have considerably amended his account of the technical activities of the tide-watchers, the Todalpheme.
A.B.A.

[2]I have left Prescot’s use of the Kregish “dwabur” here. A dwabur is one of the standard units of measurement and is approximately five Terrestrial miles. Its origin, according to Prescot, comes from the sunset people’s army marching disciplines: they would continue for two of their hours, that is, burs (the Kregish word for two is dwa), with a halt. Their speed must therefore have been something over three and a half miles an hour. More usual are the local lesser fractions of the dwabur.
A.B.A.

[3]This is the point where at least one cassette is missing, as I have written in A Note on the Tapes from Africa at the beginning of this volume. It is clear from internal evidence that Prescot achieved command of a four-sixtyswifter and the next consecutive cassette picks up his story when he had spent probably three, at the least, seasons as a galley captain on the inner sea. What is lost we do not know, but from our knowledge of Dray Prescot I think it evident it was lurid, violent, and vividly colored in the extreme.
A.B.A.

[4]Clearly, here, Prescot is referring to passages in the lost cassettes. This is a great pity, for any light he can shed on galley propulsion and crewing is of the greatest academic interest to scholars.
A.B.A.

[5]Further information lost to us from Prescot’s narrative in the missing cassettes.
A.B.A.

[6]Idem.
A.B.A.