Alan Akers - Prince of Scorpio

Mind you — if an Undurker arrow skewered me now it would be just as painful as a cloth-yard shaft. The moons of Kregen floated past above and the shadows shifted strangely among that fossilized forest of bones. The hard clatter of booted feet pursued me. I ran. I dodged. There was no time for that old Krozair trick I so joyed in employing, of turning about and swatting the arrows away with my sword, something after the style of a flick-flick gobbling up flies on the wing.

“I’ll marmelize you!” a voice screeched at my back.

I ignored that kind of drivel.

I kept my bowstave horizontal so as not to foul the arching rib cages. Had my bow been strung — for like any frugal bowman I kept the stave unstrung when possible — I’d have risked a turn and a shot. But I kept on. Inky shadows barring the path succeeded by patches of pink moonlight passed, and I raced on. The avenue twisted and turned where bones too large and heavy to lift from the way imposed a turning. These serpentine windings saved me. I roared out into a cleared area. In a great circle the bones enclosed this area like a fence of fossils. In the center rose the tumbled pile of ruins. I made out three corners of a tower, shafting up like a rotten tooth. Masses of rock lay strewn haphazardly. A few lights glimmered. I had to cross this open space somehow.

Head down I started off at a tremendous pace, my Earthly muscles gaining full effect from Kregen’s gravity, knowing I had at best but a few murs before the first of my pursuers appeared at the mouth of the tunnel-like avenue through the bones.

As I went I shouted. I used up breath to bellow a warning of my approach.

“Friend!” I roared. “I’m Strom Drak! Let me in!”

A long arrow skeeted past my head. I let out a blistering Makki-Grodno oath and lifted my voice, as on this Earth I had hailed the foretop in a gale, and told them what I thought of a Vox-spawned Opaz-forgotten cramph of a bowman who tried to spit a comrade.

With all the hullabaloo I very nearly miscalculated and left my first dodging weaving too late. I slanted my run and then zigzagged back, and six arrows clumped against the rock, to carom ahead. Three of them snapped across, whereat I took note and would have smiled, were I given to that kind of facial contortion in interesting moments like this.

“Undurkers!” I screeched. “Feather a few rasts for me!”

I was almost there, now, in the shadow cast by one moon. Over my head rustled the near-silent covey of long arrows. I dodged again and then dived into the sprawled mass of ruins with the shrieks of skewered halflings in my ears.

I rolled over and jumped up. “By Vox! That sounds better for a fighting-man to hear!”

Seg said, “You took a chance, dom. I only just managed to knock Hakli’s bow up in time.”

“I knew you must have done so, Seg. Since when does a Bowman of Loh miss a running target coming straight for him!”

The dark crimson shape at Seg’s side chuckled. “Aye, Seg Segutorio. This Drak of whom you spoke is indeed a man.”

In the moonshot darkness a line of bowmen sank down into their places in the shelter of rocks and tumbled slabs of masonry. Hakli, his fire-red hair a weird color under the moons, chuckled again, and took up his station. “The cramphs have crept back among the bones, where they belong.”

“They’ll be out again, Hakli,” I said. “They have archers of Undurkor with them now.”

“Children with toddlers’ bows, by Hlo-Hli! Flint fodder!”

I turned to Seg. “The Princess Majestrix, Seg. Where is she?”

Seg looked at me. I saw the lines on his face in the streaming pink moonshine.

“Delia? She is not with us.”

Once again that frightful sensation of the solid ground beneath my feet turning and plummeting sickeningly seized me. I gripped Seg’s arm. We moved away, into the shadows.

“What do you mean, she is not with you? She left in an airboat when these kleeshes attacked Delta Dwa. She must be here!”

“No, Dray. She did not come with us. I was aboard the flier in which the Emperor fled. She did not land here.”

There had been confusion when the Emperor, warned by Vomanus, had fled for safety to these ruins in The Dragon’s Bones. Vomanus liked to come here to study the old remains; it was a hobby. There had been worse confusion when the courtiers, retainers, and guards had landed here, a chaos made worse by the great storm that had swept up the airboats like idle leaves upon a river and swept them into shattered destruction against the massive array of bones. Seg could have been mistaken.

“We’re short on food and water, Dray. There have been a few attacks, not many, and we held them off without trouble. But the men may not fight if they are not fed.”

“They have Undurkers with them out there now, Seg. If the crimson Bowmen of Loh do not fight, the Emperor is a dead man.” I looked into the ruins. “I will seek him out now. Delia must be here. If she is not — he may know where she is.”

Seg, looking at my face in the shadows, coughed, and said: “Remember, my old sea-leem. He is the Emperor. He is surrounded still by his men.”

“I know, Seg. But I have come here to find Delia-” I told him, then, that I had sent Inch to what might be his death.

Seg said, “From what you tell me of Inch, Dray, he will fight his way out of anything.”

I warmed at that. Seg’s tour of sentry duty being finished he accompanied me as I went to find the Emperor. On all sides among the ruins the mercenaries were camped, and they appeared to be a sullen, dispirited lot. I could imagine the frightful problems they were revolving in their minds. A mercenary fights for pay and will remain loyal, but if you do not pay him, if you do not feed him and give him wine. .

“Welcome, Strom Drak!” The Emperor held out his hand and we gripped in the Vallian way. He looked exhausted, with the betraying dark smudges beneath his eyes, his cheeks sunken. But there remained about him the same indomitable iron determination that kept his place as Emperor; this man would never give in until they shoveled earth down onto him. Perhaps that was where we differed, for I would not give in until I had clawed my way up and thrown down those hurling the dirt on me. “You are right welcome, Strom Drak. It is good to find loyal men still in Vallia.”

The silly old fool! He thought I had fought my way here to rescue him, or to help him in his defense!

Idiot! Onker! Calsany!

“Where is the Princess Majestrix, Majister?”

“I do not know.” He made a flat, dismissive gesture. “At least, she is not trapped here with us. But, soon, my loyal subjects will arrive, as you have, Strom Drak, and will destroy utterly those treacherous rasts led by the Trylon Larghos, may Vox tear his guts out with white-hot pincers.”

“But, Majister,” I said. “The Princess Delia — she must-” I swallowed. I shook and couldn’t stop myself. The Emperor looked coldly at me, for no stranger, no man not of the family, unless given permission, may call the Princess Majestrix anything other than that. Her name, like her person, is sacred.

“She was in an airboat — the storm — those mad leem out there. .”

Pallan Rodway, the minister in charge of the Treasury, took my arm and tried to wheel me away from the Emperor. I would not be maneuvered. I glared at them, at this Emperor and the few loyal nobles and Pallans remaining to him as we stood in that shattered tower surrounded by ruins.

“Where is she!” I yelled it; it was a demand. “The Princess Majestrix!”

The Emperor returned my glare with all the apoplectic fury of complete authority. I saw that malignant glitter in his eyes and I know my eyes returned the same ugly, evil, hateful, utterly damn-you-to-hell look. What might have happened then I do not know — and didn’t care, by Zim-Zair, then! — but the moment was broken by two almost simultaneous events.