Prince of Scorpio

CHAPTER TEN

Delphond is a delightful, charming, cozy land of small fields and secluded hamlets, of winding brooks and gentle undulations of ground clad in the brilliant green of Kregan grass speckled with the prodigious abundance of Kregan flowers. It is a warm land, a soft and safe country, a place for lazy retirement and idle amusements, happy and carefree and going the old ways of its people. Tucked away in a southern bend of the coastline of the main island of Vallia, it receives all the benefit of the Zim Stream, that warm current sweeping up through the Cyphren Sea from the unknown southwestern oceans. From Delphond comes the finest vintage claret in all Kregen, or so I believe. Also there are apples, pears, gregarians, and squishes, and the people there rear a kind of ponsho whose fleece, besides being as soft and silky as any in two worlds, provides chops and shoulders and legs of a succulence not to be believed until eaten, fresh, crisp, and savory, with liberal helpings of mint sauce and with the small round yellow momolams, a tuber that Zair put on Kregen in holy wedlock with roast ponsho.

Also in Delphond are fat cattle, very like our Earthly bulls and cows, and the cream they make there. . it is of a triple consistency, rich and thick and fit for Opaz himself. Such a meal I ate in a pleasant raftered alehouse, with the twin suns slanting in at the open window and the bees busy about the mauve and white loomin flowers in a pottery jar of Pandahem ware on the windowsill. The good-natured innkeeper’s wife bustled, bringing me her best, and I ate well, for the journey had been swift and eating of secondary importance. My booted feet stuck out across the polished sturm-wood floor and in other circumstances I would have been content. I munched a handful of palines after the meal was finished, considering.

In my lesten-hide bag there now reposed but three copper obs. . I had squandered all my slender resources on this last meal. The people of Delphond are jolly, given to laughter, happy, tucked away in their corner of Vallia, secure in the knowledge that they own fealty to Delia of Delphond as their suzerain, than whom there is no more fair or perfect a girl in all their world — and, as I know, in two worlds. But I was not pleased.

The Emperor had indeed visited Delphond and been received with the pomp and ceremony fitting to his exalted majesty. He had come by water, as was fitting, in a long train of narrow boats, traveling with a full thousand of his personal bodyguard, the Bowmen of Loh, and with many retainers, servitors, and slaves. Delia, like myself, recognizes that in certain circumstances slaves can be economical, but that in many areas of the economy they are not; effective or otherwise, slaves are not for Delia of Delphond. There had been trouble when she had emancipated the whole of Delphond, as soon as the gift of the estate had been received from her grandmother, as there had been trouble of a different kind when she had emancipated the slaves of the Blue Mountains. Now the country was in apple-pie order. The colors worn banded on the shirt sleeves of Delia’s retainers were lavender and laypom — the laypom is a fruit rather like a peach but of a pale subtle yellow color, delicate and exquisite — and her servitors moved with the springy step and open shoulders and frank faces of free men and women. But this could not charm me now, for the Emperor had not found Delia in Delphond. She had gone, and so he had followed her, I was told, to the Blue Mountains.

The Emperor could simply wave a hand and the haulers would take up their ropes and away would glide his whole caravan. I must fend for myself. Well, I had done that often enough before, and was like to do it often enough again. So with a good meal of the products of Delphond inside me I stirred up my faithful zorca and set off westward for the Blue Mountains.

There was in the character of the folk of Delphond a gentleness and a happy laughter, too, that I knew would serve Delia well in times of peace. I had grave doubts that I could raise an army here that would fight. In that, as you will hear, I did the Delphondi an injustice. But then, in my black, dispirited mood, I canceled them from my evil calculations. Even so, I could understand that I had no right to bring war and bloodshed to this pleasant estate, that I would truly be the evil man I know myself to be if I forced these gentle folk to take up the sword, and carried fire and slaughter through their comfortable country. Delia had told me that Delphond, willed to her by her grandmother, was a tiny estate. It took me two full days to reach the western border from the port city of Delphond. Truly, the ideas of size of the Kregan people, with the much greater landmass of the planet, are of a different scale from those of Earth. Even their methods of travel have no significant influence on their conceptions of distance, for whereas the canal boats travel so leisurely, the fliers cover vast distances very rapidly. Astride my zorca I bid Remberee to Delphond, which her people call Delphond the Blessed, and rode on into Thadelm, the neighboring country, owing allegiance to Vad Selnix. That land shared much of Delphond’s rural beauty on its southeastern borders, but gradually changed in character as I wended northwestward, until the land sprawled gray and featureless beneath the glare of the suns, a wild expanse of moorland and rolling downland. A Vad is one of the intermediate ranks between a Kov and a Strom. I rode on and passed a pleasant “Llahal” with the few people I saw. I was able to catch a few rabbits -

very much like Terrestrial rabbits, a meat of which I am not over-fond — and the ever-present palines worked their usual magic.

If necessary, I would beg.

By this time you must realize that I didn’t care what I did just so long as I reached my Delia of the Blue Mountains, my Delia of Delphond.

By this means and that, and, I am relieved to be able to say, without doing anything of which I was truly ashamed, I traversed the country in a northwesterly direction, passing through Stromnates and Kovnates and Vadvars, and through a number of wide estates, as big as states in themselves, owned by the Emperor. When the mountains began to loft on the horizon I knew I was approaching my goal. I had sold one of the daggers, but I kept the rapier and remaining main-gauche, for I felt I might have need of them above the usual need a man has for weapons on Kregen. I fell in with a caravan of calsanys, with preysany-litters, and with a guard of zorcamen. The servants wore shirts with sleeves banded in bold and black.

A zorcaman wearing a close-fitting helmet of iron, with a nasal and a high flaunting plume of gold and black feathers, hauled across my path. He had no lance. His quiver of javelins was unstrapped and he balanced one of the long casting shafts in his right hand as he eyed me. I said, as civilly as I could: “Llahal.”

“Llahal,” he replied. Then: “Who are you and whence do you travel?”

I knew what to say.

“I am Drak ti Valkanium, and I go to High Zorcady in the Blue Mountains.”

“Your business?”

He was a big fellow, and beyond him the rest of his company jogged along escorting the caravan. There were fifty of them, a sizable little squadron, and judging from the bulging sacks and panniers of the calsanys, they were extremely careful with what they carried. They were not a mere merchant’s caravan, like that of Naghan the Paunch on far Turismond — or even of Xoltemb, in Segesthes, as far in the opposite direction.

“Who are you?”

The lifted javelin quivered. “I am asking the questions, dom.”

“By what right?”

His laugh was intended to be scornful, but I detected a note of uncertainty.

“You travel alone, Kr. Drak. I am Hikdar Stovang, and I travel on the business of the Kov of Aduimbrev. We are about to enter the Blue Mountains, and I want no secret enemy at my back.”

“You are one of Vektor of Aduimbrev’s men!” I relished this. “That is good. If you will, I would like to travel with you. I, too, have no wish for unseen enemies at my back through the Blue Mountains.”

He spat. He had shown his authority, had sized me up as a simple Koter, a gentleman, and was prepared now to let me join his caravan. “The Blue Mountains,” he said. “When the Kov marries the Princess Majestrix I hope to Opaz I am not stuck out here on duty. The place is a death trap.”

I was fascinatedly interested, but my questions must be of such a kind, and in such an order, as not to arouse his suspicions. We turned our zorcas together and rode knee to knee. He sheathed the javelin. He was a soldier, doing a job, and not much caring for it.

The retainers of Vektor were heartily sick of the whole business. The quicker their master married the Princess Majestrix and had a brood of children to carry on the imperial line, the better. Then perhaps they could all return to their old ways and all this chasing about, first here, then there, seeking to make Delia of the Blue Mountains make up her mind, could finish. “I’ve saddle sores on my saddle sores, Kr. Drak!” declared Hikdar Stovang. “By Vox, I’m black and blue where I sit down.”

I smothered my chuckle. I can always react like a normal man where my Delia is concerned. She had been leading them a dance. Impudently refusing to marry the man of her father’s choice, then arrogantly refusing to marry at all, she had held them all off, going from one of her estates to another, staying with friends — I felt my senses quicken at that — she had kept them all at bay ever since her mysterious arrival back in Vallia.

“But all the nonsense is going to stop, now, Kr. Drak. We carry the wedding gifts. The Emperor is in High Zorcady. The Princess Majestrix is there, also. So is Kov Vektor.” Hikdar Stovang sounded like a man well-pleased that a difficult and unpleasant job is finished. “Where the Emperor is, then that is where the wedding will take place. And right glad, to the glory of the Invisible Twins, am I that it will soon be over.”

Aduimbrev lay to the north midlands, and Stovang couldn’t wait to return home. The Vomansoir Cut had not gone through Vektor’s Kovnate, and I guessed we had flown over it in the ice airboat. Now I set my face forward. Oh, yes, I relished the irony of thus riding in with the very wedding gifts of my rival, but that rival held all the aces.

A few canals have been cut through the Blue Mountains, and one, the Quanscott Cut, is carried through the longest tunnel in Vallia, driven through the heart of the Blue Mountains to the coastal strip on the west where stands Quanscott, the major port on that stretch of coast. But the Emperor would be riding up to High Zorcady astride a zorca, unless he chose to ride like old women, monks, or children, and saddle a preysany.

I knew that here, all around me in the rolling wild country leading up to the Blue Mountains, roamed thousands, possibly millions, of zorcas. This was zorca country. The frowning citadel and the town that had grown up on the granite crags around it in sight and sound of rushing waterfalls was aptly named High Zorcady. On most days clouds drift around the highest towers. From the ramparts on a clear day you can look out and see so vast an expanse of country that the very coil of the world seems to lie beneath your feet.

We had some way to go yet before we reached that high and inaccessible place, full of crags and water-thunder, drifting with clouds and the wide-winged crested-korf. That night we camped in a hollow by a stream and I was able to appease my hunger with hot vosk and taylyne soup. I noticed that double guards were set. Stovang was jumpy. He had been carrying this treasure of wedding gifts all around Vallia, it seemed, in futile chase of Delia, on the run from her father’s marriage plans, but I knew that he was not apprehensive on account of the gifts.

The Blue Mountains, it seemed, were notorious.

According to Hikdar Stovang, bandits and robbers and assassins lived in every cave and crevice of the rocks.

I could see I was welcome as an extra sword. Fifty zorca riders had not been considered too many guards. Among the zorca riders in the service of Vektor and wearing his colors and insignia — a butterfly on gold and black — were halfling mercenaries, Rapas, Fristles, a couple of Chuliks. They appeared a reasonably disciplined and efficient bunch, but I slept with a hand on my rapier hilt, and with a lifetime’s experience I slept ready to leap up in an instant. This knack of sleeping soundly and yet with the ability to react to the noise that threatens usually serves me well, for it has been learned in the harsh life of seafaring, or adventuring on Kregen; it is not a gift of cloistered universities. Among the zorca riders were two Womoxes. Although outwardly as composed and drilled as their companions, they exhibited to me clear signs of a much greater degree of agitation. I had fought Viridia’s Womoxes, and found them formidable opponents, their stumpy horns mounted on their foreheads able to jab at an enemy’s eyes with terrifying power. Now they made no pretense at sleep. They stayed on guard all night, alert, their weapons drawn, waiting.

The next day as we jogged northwestward Hikdar Stovang, who had taken to me as a new companion able to enliven the journey with new stories, enlightened me, although without realizing he did so. The island of the Womoxes lay directly westward of Vallia, with the inevitable cluttering of smaller islands and islets between, and the port serving the Blue Mountains, Quanscott, lay on the same parallel of latitude as the chief easternmost port of Womox. Before Vallia had achieved hegemony and then consolidation of all the different peoples that now formed part of the empire, clearly there had been long and bitter racial enmity between the Womoxes and the people of the Blue Mountains. They were all of one nation now, under one emperor, but the old antipathies persisted here, at least. We rode on. Vektor’s men lived well, and they did not grudge me my share of food. We were made welcome at a couple of towns, where there was an influx of people foreign to these parts; then, as we penetrated higher and higher into the Blue Mountains and by following narrow tracks winding beside gorges where streams splashed and roared a thousand feet below, we knew we had left not only the plains and foothills behind but the attitudes of mind to be found there. We stayed a night at a small mountain village where the atmosphere of hostility could be cut with a terchick. We pushed on. Here local politics, local grudges, and local vendettas were carried to extremes.

“We’re all one people under the Emperor, aren’t we? complained Stovang. “If this is the family my master the Kov is marrying into, Opaz help him, by Vox!”

I was puzzled. The antagonism of the inhabitants of the Blue Mountains was a tangible onslaught on a man’s feelings; we were interlopers, unwanted, detested. Clannish feelings ran high here. Were the Blue Mountain people, as Stovang insisted, just a rabble gang of thieves and cutthroats?

What a contrast to Delphond!

Very often now, during the day, as we progressed laboriously along a narrow ledge, or negotiated a track perched between heaven and hell, we heard a long ululating call, echoing and rebounding from crag to crag. The high notes pealed in the clean chill air. The mountains rang with the gong-notes.

“We’re under observation, Opaz rot ’em,” grunted Stovang. We edged our zorcas along with care, and the animals put their dainty hooves down with a precision that showed they fully understood the situation. Highly intelligent, are zorcas.

This difficult path wended higher and higher, traversing a rampart wall of mountains. The peaks soared to either hand, their lower slopes falling away into gorge and crevasse, and so down and along and out to the foothills. Trees of all the mountain varieties grew here, and flowers of fragile beauty, and we saw mountain ponshos leaping like impiters from crag to crag. The peaks carried mantles of ice and snow. The snow-line lay high above us still, and the weather held none of that frigid bite of the Mountains of the North where I had met and rescued Furtway and his nephew Jenbar. I was grateful for that. Once we had penetrated the rampart barrier, which curved in a gigantic oval, we could descend the other side and so ride out onto the great central plateau within the Blue Mountains. But, as Stovang said with as much pleasure as he could derive from the situation, we were not traveling that far. High Zorcady had been built on its serried peaks where the pass reached its highest point. Cupped by mountains, shielded by clouds, walled by crags, High Zorcady frowned down from the mist. It was at that point, as we paused in a narrow defile to glare up at High Zorcady, eerie, pointed, and leering above us, that the Blue Mountain Boys jumped us.

All was instant confusion. The mercenaries drew their rapiers, some hurled javelins, their zorcas wheeling and colliding. I saw stones hurtling to smash against close-fitting helmets or thump against gold and black chests. I saw men in shaggy ponsho skins leaping from the rocks to lay their cudgels against skulls. I saw the frantic pandemonium of the fight, then I was down, and a man lifted a rock high over his head, straddled above me, laughing.