Alan Akers - Prince of Scorpio

I held her close. The wedding ceremony would be performed very soon. Korf Aighos whispered to me, and I laughed, and said to Delia: “Certain friends of ours discovered a king’s ransom in wedding presents hidden in a gorge in the Blue Mountains. They think it proper they should be given to you, my Princess.”

We felt a stroke of sadness that Vektor, Kov of Aduimbrev, had died of heart failure occasioned through fear as he ran for the palisade of bones; but death is cheap on Kregen, and life is for the living. Those wedding presents were fit for a princess, so a princess should receive them. There was great feasting and great drinking beneath the Suns of Scorpio. Then we all took the airboats and flew for Vondium. I stood very close to Delia. How to believe that, at last, we had won each other?

I was hers as much as she was mine. She looked up into my eyes and searched my ugly old face, and she sighed, and snuggled closer to me.

From the airboat floated the flags of Vallia and Prescot; the yellow saltire on the red ground, and the yellow cross on the red ground, and I saw what must be done with those.

“Are you content, Dray, my darling?”

“With you by my side, how could I not be?”

“With all these old comrades, Hap Loder, Gloag, Prince Varden, with Inch and dear Seg and all the others, I believe you think of your two rascals, Nath and Zolta.”

Delia had never met those two unlikely specimens, but she understood. “Aye,” I said. “And of Zorg, who is dead.”

“Do not speak of death, Dray, not now! Now we have everything to live for! All of Vallia!”

“Yes.” I hugged her and then said, “You did not mention Vomanus.”

“No?” She looked around. “There should be no secrets between us. But this is a high state secret, so mind it! I think you believed Vomanus would marry me, was a rival, as those fool racters thought-”

“Well, woman?”

She chuckled, a silver tinkle of merriment against the swift passage of the flier.

“Vomanus is the son of my mother, before she married my father. He is my half-brother.”

“No wonder,” was all I could say. “He said Kovs were Kovs and Kovs to him!”

She laughed again, and so we stood there, together, with my fighting-men at my back, sailing under the twin yellow and red flags, as we sailed beneath the twin Suns of Scorpio casting down their mingled opaz radiance, sailing for Vondium and marriage and happiness.

I, Dray Prescot, of Earth, had found my home.