Alan Akers - Prince of Scorpio

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.

On my back I floated with the mild drift of the current, for here near the inflow of river water, controlled and sluiced, the canal waters possessed a definite movement of their own. The sky above me towered enormously high, palely blue, with the intolerable glare of Antares blinding down and streaming variegated highlights from the tiny waves I made as I floated. I knew what I was doing there. I had been stupid, as usual, and slow, which for a man in my trade is unforgivable. I knew, however, why I had been slow. My aims had been confused; a desire to do what naturally occurred to me to do and my so-clever newfound rationality had played me false. I would far better have simply rushed in swinging as in the old days. Then, instead of me floating in the canal with a muzzy head there would be six bully-boy guards floating there, and with rapier-thrusts through their bellies, like as not.

In the future I wouldn’t be slow, and I’d hit first — as I usually did. Worry over Delia had fogged my mind. Here I was, actually on the same landmass as her, breathing air that might waft down for her to breathe and so waft back to me. An idiotic notion, but one that suited my idiotic mood.

Through the water toward me the smooth stem of a narrow boat bore on. I saw the gaily painted strakes and the fanciful representations of monsters and flowers, musical instruments, and spreading proudly to either side of the stem, the lavishly decorated picture of a Talu, one of those eight-armed mythical — as I still thought — dancers of the sloe eyes and the cupid’s-bow mouths. I had seen such a Talu carved from the mastodon tusk in that perfumed corridor of a decadent palace, when a slave girl in the gray slave breechclout had dropped and smashed a jar of water. I had cannoned into the statue and toppled with it in my arms, the eight arms a wagonwheel of wanton display about me, the fingertips touching. I confess I was still thinking about that mastodon-tusk carving as the rope hissed into the water and I was hauled aboard.

The majority of Vallians have been blessed with the kind of strong beaked nose I have myself, and the man who stared down on me now wiped a hand across his powerful nose, and grunted:

“Welcome aboard-”

He did not add the customary Koter, or even dom, or, given the circumstances, Ven. I saw the expression on his face and knew precisely what he was thinking. If you’re not a canalman, he was saying, without speaking, then you’re a dead man.

“Thank you for pulling me out. It’s all right. The water won’t harm me.”

He perked up at that, and smiled.

“You’d best come below. Dry you off.” As I nodded to thank him and bent to descend the short companionway ladder, he whistled. I had lost my hat.

“That’s a crack you’ve had on the back of your head, Ven. Like to have killed a man.”

“I’ve a tolerably thick skull. Too thick for some folk.”

Someone yelled from up forward and my host halted to yell back. “He’s of the canalfolk. He’s had a knock, but he’ll live.”

In the small but beautifully appointed cabin with everything in its place I sat at the table and drank strong Kregan tea. Made with the canalwater, it tasted somehow as good as any tea I have ever had. “I am Yelker, skipper of the old Dancing Talu.” I knew, from my talk with Borg, that he would be Ven Yelker nal Vomansoir, for this was the Vomansoir Cut.