Prince of Scorpio

CHAPTER SEVEN

“You are a strange man, Koter Prescot.”

“Many men have said that, Kov Furtway. And it is true.”

We sat around the plain wooden table in the neat cabin and drank the superlative Kregan tea and warmed ourselves by the fire that crackled and sparked in the hearth, while Bibi, the lady of the house, fussed around us, delighted and yet awed at entertaining a real live kov in her house.

“How were you in the mountains, then, Koter Prescot?” asked Jenbar.

“I was lost. Believe me, I was hoping you were going to rescue me.”

They laughed at that.

Warmth, a good sleep, and now a piping hot meal of roast rolled-vosk-loin and a vegetable-pot, together with chunks torn from a long Kregan loaf and that Kregan tea I had sampled with my clansmen, had revived the three of us.

Bibi’s husband, Genal, was out chopping more wood. They lived well up here in the mountains, with a great store of food put by in the shed protected from snow-leem and deep-frozen by the weather, and Genal could bring in enough ice to be packed and shipped down to the plain to keep him and Bibi in moderate affluence. Genal the Ice, they called him down there.

“More tea?” fussed Bibi. “It is still fresh, Kov Furtway.”

He held out his cup and watched as Bibi filled it and he drank. He did not say thank you. In everyday life he never had to say thank you to anyone, except. .

“We bring our ice from Drak’s Seat,” said Jenbar. “By Vox! I’ve seen enough to last me a lifetime. In Vondium ice is all the rage, but not for me, Oolie Opaz, not for me!”

Vondium!

I was in Vallia. I must be. Vallia. . Vallia!

‘Tell me, Tyr Jenbar. Just how far away is Vondium?”

He stretched and yawned and answered offhandedly: “Oh, I don’t know. Three hundred dwaburs perhaps, a bit more probably, something like that.”

“At least that, Jenbar,” said Furtway. “We had crossed most of these accursed Mountains of the North from Evir before we crashed. May the Invisible Twins smite those cramphs of Havilfar!”

I nodded. “One would think they did themselves a grave disservice by selling airboats that fail so often.”

Furtway grunted and reached for the palines that Bibi placed in a diced-wood bowl upon the table.

“They are arrogant in their power. Only they, as far as we know, possess the mines. One day, Opaz willing, one day. .”

Jenbar laughed and took up the palines.

“My uncle has an old dream, Koter Prescot.[1]We of Vallia are proud and strong; we produce all we require and may buy what we will all over the known world. But we cannot make an airboat.”

I nodded and the conversation drifted. The impatience to be gone sawed at my nerves. Vondium lay something like fifteen hundred miles due south. I had to get there — and I managed to retain wit enough to understand that through these two, Furtway and Jenbar, I might reach my objective faster than I could by traveling alone. They would provide transport.

Evir, across the mountains to the north, was the most northerly province on the island proper, although, as is common on Kregen, the coastal waters were peppered with small islands. One of those islands -

and not so small, at that — was Valka. If I said I was a Strom to these men now, they would not believe. But the name Dray Prescot was likely going to prove a handicap.

The clothes I wore, the black boots on my feet, the rapier and two daggers, were all from the corpse in the airboat. In addition, I had taken his money, as also the money from the others, for old mercenary habits die hard. The Kov and his nephew had not recognized either the clothes or the weapons, for they were of the plain and workmanlike cut common to the middle classes of Vallia. I suppose one might call that great mass of self-interested, self-centered, and intensely self-loyal people the gentry of Vallia. With this garb I fancied I could fend for myself in somewhat better style than I had when I had at last crossed the Klackadrin and reached Pa Mejab on the eastern coast of Turismond. In my view neither Furtway nor Jenbar were fit to travel yet, for we were still high in the mountains and the weather was bitterly cold. Since Genal the Ice had told us he would be taking an ice-load down the mountain in three days’ time, it was easy enough to persuade them to wait that long. I did not want to wait, but I already knew what Kov Furtway proposed.

Roads are not as good as they might be in Vallia, and no one, as far as I then knew, had shown the interest in zorca chariot racing that had caused the old Strom of Valka to pave a number of his roads across the island. The roads are, however, perfectly capable of speeding zorca couriers along their tracks which would not accept wheeled or sledged traffic. Heavy traffic goes by canal in Vallia. Furtway intended to dispatch a zorca courier from the post town below in a fold of the foothills with a message -

and a damned intemperate one it would be, too, I could guess — to his villa in Vondium to send a fresh airboat for him.

On that airboat I intended to enter Vondium.

All the great lords of the provinces of Vallia maintain splendid and sumptuous villas in the capital city, and use them whenever business or pleasure calls them to Vondium. When the lord is not in residence the villa is kept up, if on a reduced scale, for no chatelaine knows from one day to the next if the lord might arrive. And if all is not in apple-pie order and everything ready immediately for comfortable occupation

— exit one chatelaine and enter a sufficiently energetic and zealous new one. So we had three days to kill.

We sang songs and we told stories and we played Jikaida.

Kov Furtway was inordinately fond of Jikaida. This is the board game popular on Kregen involving an elongated form of chessboard — the actual number of squares may vary along with the numbers of men, and the different sizes are dignified by different degrees — which, together with chess, checkers, and Halma-like moves for the men, combine to form an engrossing game of mock war. Genal the Ice and Bibi had a board, for one is usually to be found in every house in Kregen, if sometimes a little rooting about in cupboards is necessary, and we settled down to a tournament. The men were blue and yellow.

“Blue,” said Furtway, not giving me the opportunity to guess his closed fists. “You take the damned blue.”

Jenbar chuckled, but the sound was such as I had heard Thelda utter — or my many friends of Pandahem. “Blue, the color of the Opaz-forsaken Pandaheem cramphs! My uncle, Kr. Prescot, never plays the blue.”

“As you wish.” I thought of that great battle in Magdag. “I, too, have a fondness for the yellow.”

We played. Furtway was skilled, tough, ruthless, unscrupulous when he could thus win a point or a piece. I reacted at first with vigor, and gradually the yellow pushed back the blue along the board, and I was aligning my sights on his left-wing Chuktar, when I paused and considered. I came to the conclusion it might be judicious to let this man win. After all, a board game can be turned into profit and advantage, as I well knew; and there is to some men a superior form of winning in contriving their own defeat. So I fumbled a Deldar’s move, and with a flashing smile and a triumphant gesture, Furtway removed my right-wing Chuktar.

“Your concentration lapsed, Kr. Prescot. Always, at Jikaida, as in life, you must bend your mind to the task in hand.”

“Yes, Kov Furtway. You are right, but I am most anxious to reach Vondium.”

They had, of course, asked me my business in the capital. I had fobbed them off with a casual story of a consignment of cortilindens coming into the port, and turned the conversation, managing to bring up the subject of the Emperor and his wayward daughter. Both men did not attempt to hide their feelings.

“The Emperor is the Emperor, and his will is law. But we sometimes have to take measures for his own good. The Princess Majestrix, now, is willfully disobedient in refusing to marry.”

I saw Jenbar nodding in agreement.

“She is the most beautiful girl in all Vallia — in all the world, I truly believe — and she must marry some day. Happy the man who claims her hand.”

“The man whom the Emperor wishes her to marry,” I said, speaking with care, and yet seeming casual.

“He is a good choice?”

“That fool!” cried Furtway. “Why, Vektor of Aduimbrev is totally unsuited, for all that he is wealthy and powerful and has the Emperor’s ear.”

“Vektor is a get onker!” Jenbar spoke with passion. I knew of the passion my Delia could arouse in the hearts of the men in her bodyguard and retinue; I had seen its results aboard the swifter Sword of Genodras, and I warmly applauded his defense of my beloved. If there was any degree of this kind of feeling abroad in the country, then perhaps my task in persuading her father the Emperor that I was the one Delia of the Blue Mountains should marry would not be as difficult as I had surmised. But I wanted to know more narrowly where these men stood in the greatest enterprise of my life.

“But the racters, they desire it, do they not?”

Jenbar snorted. Furtway cunningly captured a zorca patrol led by a Hikdar and, with the blue pieces in his hand, stared at me. “The racters run the country, no one can deny that. But in this they are wrong.”

“Yes,” said Jenbar. “But where do you stand in this argument, Kr. Prescot?”

I was merely a Koter, and therefore only a small step up from the great mass of the ordinary folk among whom I truly belong, as I sometimes think; the question, however, was not patronizing, as might be supposed, coming from the nephew of a Kov. Jenbar really wanted to know.

“As for me,” I said, attempting to forestall an imminent attack on my exposed right wing, “I do not think the Princess Majestrix should marry Vektor of Aduimbrev.”

“Ah!” quoth Furtway, and demolished a Jiktar and two Hikdars. “You have lost the game. Place the pieces for another. As for Vektor — when your business with the cortilindens is finished, call at my villa. You will be welcome. You are a man of resource. I can find work for your hands, aye, and your brain.”

“Thank you, Kov Furtway. I shall look forward to that.”

This might be very useful. A man as powerful as a Kov on my side would weigh heavily in the scales. I played considerably better the next game, taking both his wing Chuktars, but eventually letting him push a strong force through the center and so rout me. His passion for the game was unslaked, and I saw how much of his life was reflected in the pieces on the board. Vallia, as I understood it, while being preeminent on the outer oceans, maintained a minuscule army, mainly composed of honor guards and the like, and employed mercenaries whenever land warfare was involved. The interior police, however, and the aragorn, were prominent in the political affairs of the islands. On the third day a shrill cry brought us to the door and we saw toiling up the slope toward us a shaggy old quoffa dragging a cart on its runners, its wheels removed and slung on the sides. The quoffa looks like a perambulating hearth-rug with bunchy shoulders and hindquarters — it has six legs, but the Earthly nomenclature trips from the tongue — and a dogged old head from which the steam blew in great snorts like one of Mr. Stevenson’s new engines. The carter was a Relt, at which I was much surprised. But the Relts, those less formidable cousins of the bird-headed Rapas, are often found in employment in many countries. He shouted again and Bibi chuckled and bustled about, for this was her regular delivery of four weeks’ supplies. Also, the Relt would take away a heaping load of ice on the downward run, and Genal would give him orders for the number of carts he required for the main delivery. After a great meal and a single glass of an excellent vintage from Procul, a full and rich red wine, we bade Remberee to Genal the Ice and Bibi. They were given a handful of broad gold talens, with the head of the Emperor on one side and the — smaller — head of Furtway on the reverse, charged with a checkerboard. I considered this carrying a passion for a game to a fault, that it should be the man’s emblem and figure on his coinage, but it turned out that the checkerboard was the Falinur insignia. I had privily sorted through the coins I had taken from the dead men and found some with the Emperor on the obverse, and faces and designs I did not recognize on the reverse; these I handed to Genal and Bibi with my sincere thanks.

Then we clambered aboard the cart, warmly wrapped against the chill of the ice blocks, even though Genal had reduced this load on our account to make a space, and off we went. The sliding descent on the runners was wild enough, but when the Relt replaced the wheels, and off we went again, I felt my opinion change, and knew the wheels were worse. At last the faithful quoffa could be put back into the shafts and we trundled decorously into the large village, almost a small town, nestling in the valley.

Clean through the center of the town ran a broad canal, bridged here and there, but unmistakably the artery of commerce and travel. There were many long narrow boats afloat. The ice went straight aboard one of them, together with ice from other ice-gatherers, and the boat pushed off at once.

“I’d have thought it would melt too soon, aboard a barge,” I said. The Relt rubbed his beak in the habit they have, and said in his squeaky voice: “This is ice for only a few dwaburs south. Ice for farther afield goes by airboat. Look.”

We all looked and there was an airboat — drab, gray, battered — rising over the houses and heading south.

“That is for us,” said Furtway in the voice of the Kov. We paid the Relt and walked across to the airport. Yes, we could book a passage south, it would cost us the same price as it cost the ice-shippers, and we would have to provide our own food, sleeping equipment, and an indemnity. In case of accident we must sign away the right of our heirs to claim against the ice-shipping Company of Friends. I was to learn a great deal more of these Companies of Friends which control so much of the trade and industry of Vallia. Both my companions made no bones about signing, so neither did I. The airboat carried us — not particularly comfortably and in somewhat chilly conditions — a hundred dwaburs south, where we were set down in the bustling market town of Therminsax. From this place Furtway was able to dispatch a zorca courier — one of the officers charged with maintaining the zorca communications over the island — on payment of a sizable sum and proof that he was who he said he was. This he did by means of his seal-ring. My own seal-ring as Strom of Valka, the ring sent from the Emperor via my panval friends, lay now with my Savanti leathers and my Savanti sword on the towpath back in Valka. Although — surely my friends would have found that little pile of possessions by now. They must have been sorely puzzled wondering where I had gone. Perhaps they thought I had taken that journey I had told them of. If they thought that, they were almost right, but why I should choose to go stark naked must have driven them to their wits’ end to find explanations. While we waited we put up at The Swordship and Barynth. I have often noticed how nautical names for pubs are common in inland parts. The inn was comfortable and obliging. Furtway claimed Jenbar to play Jikaida. I went for walks about the town, soaking up the atmosphere, relishing the clean red and white houses, the tidy gardens, the squares and shady colonnades, spending a long time leaning on the canal wall overlooking the towpath and watching the narrow boats as they glided by. Many of them were hauled by whole gangs and tribes of people, sturdy, open-faced folk in practical outfits, men and women, of breechclouts and short-sleeved tunics, open at the throat. They hauled with a will, and once the narrow boat was under way she could be kept going and on course by just half a dozen girls or lads to pull, and the old skipper to steer. I saw no draft animals, not a single quoffa, and this did not surprise me. There were very few halflings hauling the narrow boats, although I did see a complete outfit of two narrow boats in tandem dragged along by a squealing bunch of Ochs. On the second day I saw a sight that brought me, with my fists clenched, staring painfully at the canal. A narrow boat approached. She was not gaily painted as were all the others I had seen, decorated with fantastic scenes from myth and legend, from song and story, and with all the flowers of the field — this boat was all a dun gray and she was large and clumsy. But the thing that so disturbed me was her motive power. Along the canal towpath trudged a gang of people, all stark naked, all hairy and dirty, all heaving at the tow rope under the merciless whips of guards.

I stared, hatred welling.

The guards were big fellows, mostly humans, but a Rapa or a Fristle stalked here and there. They whipped their charges on. The narrow boat moved lumpily through the water, heavily laden. I just stood there. The guards were dressed uniformly in buff leather jerkins, wide across the shoulder, and with the tall black Vallian boots. The sleeves of their shirts were banded red and black. I had seen those uniform colors before.

I, myself, wore the buff jerkin, but my sleeves were buff also. I knew that these banded sleeves in their color coding were the signs worn by servitors of great lords or parties; but this red and black, these were the colors of the government, of the Emperor!

I, Dray Prescot, could not just stand there.

But I had to.

For I dared not do as I instinctively desired to do and rush upon these slave-herders and rout them and free their slaves; the trouble that action has caused in the past is beyond calculation. A girl stumbled and fell and dragged the tow rope down in her despairing clutch. She brought down an old man and one or two others, so telling me how weak they all were. The guards whipped them. But the girl just lay there. Her brown hair drifted out across the muddy tow-path. I saw the rawhide cutting into her. Could I just stand there? This same scene must be reenacted many times every day. One more repetition would make no difference at all.

None.

The girl moaned and tried to shield herself with her spindly arms. She shrieked afresh as the lash bit into her.

No difference.

I had been learning cleverness. I had controlled myself back there in Theirson’s village. I had not rushed upon the aragorn until I had a weapon.

I had a weapon now.

But — the trouble this would cause. The Emperor in faraway Vondium, the Kov Furtway here, all my plans, the love I bore my Delia of the Blue Mountains. One young girl being whipped to death was a common enough sight, Zair knew. What had it to do with me?

There was nothing I could do. Nothing.

I jumped the wall and ran down to the towpath. I spoke in a rational and quiet voice, calmly, reasonably.

“To hit her any more will do no good. She cannot rise.”

The guard swung, the whip poised. Four of his fellows turned toward me as the chanks of the inner sea turn toward their prey.

“This is no business of yours, dom. Clear off!”

“But,” I said, “if the girl cannot pull, why beat her?”

“She’ll pull.” The guard had fine strong white teeth. He smiled. “She’ll pull. Now clear off. This is Emperor’s business, as you well know. We are not answerable to you.”

“I think, dom, you are, unless you release her.”

“Release her? You’re either a get onker or you’re mad! The Emperor’s slaves are sequestered property. Clear off, or you’ll be in more trouble than you can handle.”

The guard sounded no more truculent than any man interrupted in his work. He spoke as reasonably as I. He could not understand what I was talking about. I tried for the last time.

“Please” — I said please! — “ do not hit her any more. If you cannot release her give her time to rest.”

Another guard ran up, swearing horribly. He wore a red and black cockade in his broad-brimmed hat, above the feather. The narrow boat had gone on with her momentum and now the tow rope stretched back from the bitts on her bows.

“What’s going on here? If you Doty-rotten cramphs can’t keep your rasts of haulers in line I’ll soon Jikaida your backs! I’ll make you yell, by Vomer the Vile!”

“It’s this one here, sir,” said the guard who had been trying to explain to me. I said, “This girl cannot pull any more. Flogging her will do no good-”

I was interrupted. The guard wore a rapier. He ripped it out. He flourished it in my face. He looked to be in a most apoplectic rage.

“This barge is on the Emperor’s service — as you well know! Take yourself off before it is too late!

Jump, rast!”

I knew little of the pecking order in Vallia; that it is complicated is true; I didn’t worry about my lack of knowledge.

“It seems you insist I must make you show mercy,” I said. I started to draw my rapier. I was already working out how not to kill them all, when I heard a man in the towing party yell. “By Vaosh! Behind you, Ven!”

I turned. I was slow. The blow struck behind my ear and I pitched forward, struggling to retain my balance. A black booted foot kicked out. I heard a coarse laugh. “Swim in the canal, cramph!” And then I smashed face-first into blackness.