Alan Akers - Savage Scorpio

So, we respectable citizens of Vallia crept along in the shadows like assassins, spies, drikingers. Sharp left inside the narrow wicket I turned past the buttress and so found a narrow crack in the inner wall, a crack seeming merely the ruin of time, plastered over against the fall of the towers. But the plastering was a mere shell, covering stout wood, and the wood pivoted and revealed a square opening, a foot on a side. I gripped the iron handle, shaped like the handle of a spade, and pulled. Almost soundlessly, so well wrought was the masonry, the section of stone pivoted about itself. The opening widened into a narrow doorway and onto stairs leading down.

Down we went and with the practiced knack of those accustomed to such things flint and steel lit the lanterns. The stairs leered below us, dark and sinister, running strips of water, darkly stained, brilliant in the lantern glitter.

Down we went.

Niter caked the walls lower down, and greenish slime hung in greasy tendrils. On we went along a jagged corridor where Inch appealed feelingly to Ngrangi, immediately hushing himself and rubbing that tall head of his.

These labyrinthine windings of corridor and tunnel and stair are virtually dictated by any palace architect on Kregen. A whole system of secondary channels exists alongside the proud and ornate halls and chambers. Many of these secret runnels I had had blocked up when first living here; but I had a map of those I knew of remaining in my head. To find the sick room was not difficult; merely tortuous. I put my eye to the eyehole in the wooden screen and looked out into the room in which the emperor lay dying, in which Vadnicha Ashti Melekhi had screamed invective and had myself and my friends thrown out.

Doctor Charboi was in the act of rising from the bed. A glass shone in his hand. His smooth face looked well satisfied. He spoke to someone out of my angle of vision.

“He will sleep now. Quite safely.”

The voice that answered, all cut glass and splinters, all vicious neemu-hiss, said: “Very good, doctor. See that he is not disturbed. Have the guards called at once. The young prince thinks he is very masterful. Kov Layco was most angry.”

“I have done my work well, vadnicha.”

We knew what devil’s work that was.

“I do not deny it. You will be paid.”

Charboi gathered up the implements of his trade and went toward the door. He knocked and the door opened. I saw the crimson-clad arm. So the Bowmen kept the door sealed, now, and opened only to those they knew. I did not smile. But I rather fancied Ashti Melekhi would have some hard explaining to do to Kov Layco Jhansi, the emperor’s Chief Pallan.

If she chose to remain in the room she would have to take her chances with us. We would have to quiet her before she could cry out and warn the guards. Charboi had only just got away; I think I half regretted that at the time. But, there’s no time like the present — I was about to bash open the secret door and spring leem-like upon her, when she appeared. She walked to the outer door, and paused, and looked back.

I waited.

I saw her face. All thin and white and scornful, that face, with its red mouth and arched eyebrows. And she smiled. That smile would have held a Manhound for a space. Bitter, cunning, devilish — and, yet, also, I guessed, a little regretful. I do not wish to paint Ashti Melekhi in colors that are all black. I believe she was an accomplished player on the lute. I know she kept an aviary of exotic birds. But, in the death of an emperor, it is hard to paint lighter tones when the emperor’s daughter is your wife. Then, with a small golden staff slung on a jeweled chain about her neck, she knocked upon the door. The Bowmen opened for her. She said: “Watch the door. Hold it.”

“Quidang, my lady!”

No one was going to come into that room through that door this night, unless it was over the dead bodies of the Crimson Bowmen and their new Chulik mercenary partners. So she went out, all feline grace and thin glitter, hard and brittle and oddly manlike and I wondered when I would see her again.

Gently the secret panel eased open and I stepped into the sick room. The nurse on duty sat looking at the emperor and, I swear, a tear glistered on her pale cheek. The flunkeys were gone. The nurse did not see me, she saw nothing more as the black scarf whipped about her eyes blindfolding her. Turko held her arms, very gently, and we tied her up and laid her comfortably on a thick rug of Zeniccean-made fleecy-ponsho, a gift from Strombor, with a golden cushion for her head. She did not struggle and, no doubt, poor soul, was scared witless.

We lifted up the emperor and placed him carefully in the litter we had brought, using his own bedclothes. He weighed pathetically little for a man who had once been so strong and robust. With a single quick look around the sick room we returned through the opening and I, going last, latched the secret panel shut.

Our return was uneventful. I began to think we had planned so well as to negate all problems. Onker!

We took turn and turn about to carry the litter, for each of my comrades knew my views on manual labor, the status of nobles, and the mumbo jumbo of aristocratic privileges. We knew the routine of the palace guard. The Crimson Bowmen were professionals and would keep up their hired mercenaries to the same standards. The guard commanders changed the sentries every three burs — two hours by terrestrial reckoning — and we had taken almost the whole of that time. We anticipated leaving just before any trouble from the guard reliefs with their watchwords and their lanterns and their ready weapons.

With soundless speed we filed through the concealing opening, the emperor carried smartly if gently enough, and I reset the plaster-coated wood. At the opening of the gate we paused. Someone swore; but so low the words did not carry.

The two closed carriages were gone.

The pink and golden moonlight, strengthening slowly as the Twins eternally revolving one about the other gradually added their luster, threw odd shadows from the battlements. The damned carriages were not there. Someone had unmistakably purloined them, for they had been left firmly tethered under the colonnade, and the krahniks, useful draught animals, had shown no inclination to break free and trot off. I caught Seg’s arm.

“We walk,” I said into his ear.

“The emperor-?”

“Once we clear the palace precincts we become a drunken party with a casualty. There are eight of us. We should not be molested-”

That, onker that I am, was as far as I got.

The devils were clever and they were quick and they very nearly had us. The deadly glitter of steel in the moonlight. . The quick indrawn breath as killers pounced. . The scrape of sandals across time-worn stones. .

My own rapier jumped into my fist and I swear it was only a fraction of a second faster than my comrades’, for we were a right tearaway bunch and, after the first quick shock of the ambush, a certain pitying sorrow for our would-be slayers afflicted me. In that, I suppose, the old haughty pride we all fight down reared more of its ugly head than is strictly desirable. Turko’s brand-new parrying stick flashed with smooth-oiled steel and balass, and a lunging rapier skipped and twanged away. Turko put his hand on the fellow and the cramph went sailing up, spread-eagled marvelously against the moons.

“Hai!” said Turko, reflectively, unruffled, taking a sober enjoyment. Hap’s short clansman’s axe whirled and bit, withdrew and bit again — fast, fast!

Inch licked out deftly with his great Saxon-pattern axe, and lopped, and reared up, stark against the stars, and so went with the swing, rhythmically, shearing blood and ribs and backbone in a dark welter of spraying offal.