Alan Akers - Captive Scorpio

“Vomanus? That great rascal. Where is he you may well ask.”

I judged that many a wight had taken himself off from the capital in these troublesome times; but I felt disappointment with Vomanus. He was a careless fellow, true; but he was half-brother to Delia. . All the time we spoke and argued and planned meaningless plans in the face of the catastrophe, Queen Lush sat upright, toying with her wine, looking at the emperor fixedly. When he glanced fondly at her she would smile. She wore a simple robe of a deep yellow, and not a scrap of jewelry. She looked different from the easy, casual, bitchy minx I had left here.

“Layco Jhansi will subdue the central provinces. The southwest awaits events. The southeast-” Here the emperor looked pointedly at Lykon Crimahan, the Kov of Forli. Him you have met before. Now he was the Pallan of the Treasury, the new pallan, for Pallan Rodway had long ago passed away and the last incumbent suffered from a cleavage where his neck should be.

Forli, often called the Blessed Forli, lies up an eastern tributary of the Great River and extends to the east coast opposite northern Veliadrin. Lykon Crimahan had no love for me. Yet, I believed he hewed to his own faith with the emperor, evil though he might be, and had the welfare of Vallia at heart, even though he had tried to obstruct my plans to build a great aerial fleet. So I waited for Crimahan to speak, ready with bitter, mocking words of my own.

“I can vouch for Forli, majister. As for the rest — they attack my lands. I would be there to fight for them; but-”

“Your duty is here, at the emperor’s side,” said Queen Lush.

Her face was bright, her eyes alive with passion. I looked away from her. Her influence, I felt sure, along with many other fighting men, had weakened the emperor, and yet the old devil was full of fight, firm in his resolve to go on with the struggle.

“And, Lykon Crimahan,” I said, “where is the great fleet of skyships I wanted to build? Are your friends in Hamal pleased at your handiwork?”

He would have drawn his rapier and rushed on me; but the emperor put up a hand and bellowed, and protocol saved the fool.

“I am loyal to the emperor and Vallia, prince majister! I sit still under no insults-”

“Still, Kov Lykon. Remember the skyships we do not have when those from Hamal cast down their firepots upon the city.”

“Our varters will shoot them down,” said the emperor. He believed it, and he had taken part in the Battle of Jholaix.

“The Northeast is solidly against you-” I began.

“That I know.”

“They fly an army here.” I told them what I had learned. Barty had not reached Vondium. Probably his flier had broken down. In these last dark hours that witnessed the death of an empire Barty Vessler must take his own chances. Maybe he had gone home. I did not speak of my daughter Dayra who was called Ros the Claw.

“Trylon Udo. Very well. I have a high tree ready for him. As for this Zankov, he can be dealt with when they get here. I am the emperor, and I understand these foolish plots. By Vox! My emissaries are already hiring thousands of paktuns for me from overseas.”

“By the time they arrive all will be over,” said Chuktar Wang-Nalgre-Bartong. He licked his lips. He was a Bowman of Loh and he did not like to say what he had to say. “My men are loyal. They have been selected-”

“Aye,” put in a pallan, fierce and intolerant and with a wounded arm in a sling. “The rest of the rasts took bribes.”

The Chuktar was the last in a line of commanders of the Crimson Bowmen. He had been vouched for by Naghan Vanki, the emperor’s spymaster. Now he roused himself again to say: “We fought. We fought as Bowmen of Loh can fight. But we were ambushed in detail — do not ask me how for it is a mystery. Our plans were divined. We had no chance. So, I repeat and with sorrow, I see no other course for us than honorable capitulation.”

The Vallians glared at him. He was a mercenary, a hyr-paktun with the pakzhan glittering golden at his throat.

Softly, the emperor said: “And Chuktar, when you capitulate in all honor and take service with our foes, what becomes of us?”

“That is the way of the fall of empires,” said Chuktar Bartong. Again he licked his lips. “It is all one in vaol-paol.”

The wrangling went on. These men were like children whistling in the dark to keep their courage up. All except the emperor. There was about him a spirit I had not expected. He was far from cowed, disdaining defeat, eager to resume the struggle. A calm and supreme confidence radiated from him. In those burs in his private sanctum as we planned against catastrophe, I understood how he could be the father of Delia.

The Chuktar of the Crimson Bowmen would from time to time shake his head and repeat: “We had no chance. All our movements were known in advance. No chance at all.”

“And the northwest?” demanded the emperor briskly.

“Racter country,” said a pallan with the exhausted and yet vicious air of a rast trapped in a spring cage.

“The last reports remain unmodified. The Black Mountains and the Blue Mountains are bathed in blood. What will happen no one knows.”

I felt the pang of that. The Black Mountains was Inch’s kovnate, and the Blue Mountains — I forced myself to ask for details. All that was known was the northwest had tried to raise a host and the Blue Mountain Boys and the Black Mountain Men had barred the advance. After that, silence. So the schemes of the Racters had not gone as they planned, then. . The black and whites were waiting quietly in other areas, waiting to step in and take up the pieces after the holocaust. Well, the onkers, they did not know that Phu-si-Yantong was there to forestall them.

For, make no mistake, I felt, I sensed — I almost knew — that Phu-si-Yantong was this minute employing other agents to wreak his will in Vallia quite apart from the duped tools of his I had so far encountered.

So far there had seemed no good purpose in telling the emperor the truth of this Wizard of Loh. He would be best employed fighting each threat on the ground uncluttered by an overall fear. And, anyway, it was most likely he would not believe me.

“All known Racters have left the city,” said Lykon Crimahan. His jaws rat-trapped shut, and his thin fuzz of dark beard below his chin, the prominent cheekbones, the malicious intelligence of his dark eyes, all conveyed the seething frustration and despair in him. At times of troubles before, he had contrived to be away on his estates. This time he was here, in the capital, Pallan of the Treasury; and this time the trouble was likely to be the biggest of the lot and final. That, at the least, was good for a laugh. Now he opened that rat-trap mouth again to say with some evil satisfaction: “The Fegters rose to loot and burn and many of them were killed.” He looked at me. “Your trip to the northeast was fortuitous, prince majister.”

“Had I been here,” I began. And then stopped. To boast would be criminal and foolish — and also useless; Kov Lykon saw my hesitation, and misconstrued it. I had been about to say something entirely different from what he expected.

But I wouldn’t tell this bright malicious rast that concern over my daughter Dayra might have cost an empire. It might have. And, again, it might not have; for could I have done any differently from what the emperor and his advisers and the Presidio had done? The forces arrayed against us were too strong. As I suspected had been the case with all the war councils the emperor had been holding, we broke up with nothing decided.

Only one thing remained clear. We would go on fighting for as long as we could. But that time was short and was growing shorter with every bur that passed.