Alan Akers - Swordships of Scorpio

“Naghan the Paunch!” I yelled.

He was chuckling and wiping the blade of his spear and reveling in it. I did not chuckle; but I suddenly shouted: “Hai!” and the zorca started and leaped and Naghan went careering across the grass, wildly grasping anything to keep from falling off.

I heard a deep belly-rumble of laughter and turned and there was Obolya with his black-bristle face all crumpled with malicious mirth.

“You treat men hard, Dray Prescot.”

No surprise showed on my face. This was only a petty border skirmish, a thing to be done and forgotten and not to be placed alongside the great battles and campaigns of my life; but a man can be killed as easily in a skirmish as a world-shaking battle.

“True, Obolya. To their deserts.”

He eyed me a moment, and then went off about the business of a mercenary guard — stripping the dead of their valuables. In this I heartily agreed. Pickings are hard-come-by. But when I saw Pando engaged in the same occupation I started off at once to check him, outraged, wondering what Tilda would say if she could see her son — and then I stopped. This was life. This was what fighting and killing were all about. Let Pando learn the true facts, and then, perhaps, in later life he would not be so quick to provoke a quarrel or to seek to kill.

I went back to see about the tall and thin man I had rescued, with a parting shout to Pando: “Don’t waste time on trifles, Pando. Pick the best.”

On the way back I took three rings from bandit fingers. As it happened the rings came off easily enough, greased by blood. Had I had to hack the fingers off to get at the rings this I would have done. I needed cash to buy a passage to Vallia and my Delia.

The drivers were sorting out the calsanys now and soon the caravan got under way again. The tall man, still smeared with blood, was loaded facedown onto one of the preysanys I had acquired and the loot obtained by Pando and myself bundled in our sleeping gear on the other. Pando was hopping wild with excitement still, running up and down and emitting shrill Red-Indian-like war whoops. I let him blow off steam. Any fancy modern notions that his mind had been affected by the horrific sights he had seen, of course, did not apply on Kregen, where the absence of such sights usually indicates abject slavery on one side. He was growing up into a world of great beauty and wonder, for Kregen is a planet at once gorgeous and barbaric and highly-colored; but at the same time he was also preparing himself to face the other side of Kregen, the terror and the horror and the continuous struggle for existence. Young Zorg, the son of Zorg of Felteraz, Krozair of Zy, my friend and oar comrade now dead and eaten by chanks, and his sister Fwymay, were both preparing themselves to enter the adult world of Kregen, far away there in Felteraz on the shore of the inner sea. Their mother, Zorg’s widow, Mayfwy and Tilda had little in common except a love for their children and the sense of loss for their husbands -

but I thought of them both, then, as I strode along, thinking, as I always do, mostly of my Delia of the Blue Mountains, my Delia of Delphond.

When we camped that night the man I had rescued had so far recovered as to consent to being washed. I discovered that most of the blood splattering him was not his. He kept that great ax close by him. He had had a thwacking great thump on the head, that I judged had smashed beyond repair the helmet he had lost, and was still a little muzzy. After some wine — mediocre red stuff from a local Pa Mejab vintnery — and a morsel of bread from a long Kregan loaf, liberally smeared with yellow butter, he sat with his back wedged against a tree bole munching a handful of palines. They would soon clear his headache.

“I am Inch,” he said. “From Ng’groga.”

So far had I come from Magdag that all those “G’s” did not worry me. Inch told us that Ng’groga was a nation situated on the southeastern part of the continent of Loh, facing the unknown southern sea. He was, himself, a somewhat amazing individual. He was, as I have said, incredibly tall, some seven feet of him from toe to the top of his head. That head was covered in long and silky yellow hair that hung to his waist and which he would bind up and coil when in action. He was thin, also, but I did not miss the bulge of muscle about that sinewy body. At the moment his only clothing was an old and tattered brown tunic, gathered in by a leather belt of lesten hide. Beside his great ax, which reminded me of the Danish pattern carried by the clansmen of Viktrik, with the addition of a daggered head after the fashion of my own clansmen of Felschraung and Longuelm, he bore at his waist a long knife. He had no sword.

“I shipped out as a mercenary, as so many youngsters do,” he said. “The life suited me but ill. Then I was betrayed — that does not concern me now — and was sold as slave. So I escaped and joined the brigands. But, that life, also, was not for me.”

“Then what happened?” demanded Pando. He was hunched up, eagerly listening to the story, which Inch embroidered far more than I have indicated.

“At last the bandits said they were going to attack the next caravan, slay all the men and — ah-” He cocked an eye at Pando, and went on after a cough. “Abduct all the girls. I had an argument with the chief of the bandits and left him, I fancy, with his ears wider apart than they had been.”

As he spoke he moved his hand across the ax, and I could well imagine that mighty weapon splitting down through the skull of the bandit chief.

“And?”

“That was a foolish thing to do. My taboos had not warned me adequately, which was passing strange.”

This was the first I had heard of Inch’s taboos; but not the last, oh, certainly, not the last! As you shall hear.

“So I ran from them, and they pursued, and I killed many; but then Largan the Wily hurled a stone, and I fell, and they would have beaten my brains out but for my old helmet.” He reached a long hand up to his head, and felt his yellow mane of hair. “I am sorry I lost that, by Ngrangi, yes!”

“Yes, yes!” said Pando. “And then?”

“Then, when I thought I was done for, and the caravan gone, I called out and this monstrous man here, Dray Prescot, came and took me up and shot Largan the Wily with that bow that, if I mistake not, is a true bow of Erthyrdrin.”

“Yes,” I said. I could not speak of Seg, not yet, to Inch.

For, from what Sosie had told me, I knew this Lohvian bow she had given me was a true bow of Erthyrdrin, made from true wood of the Yerthyr tree, long matured and sweetly seasoned. I thought even Seg Segutorio would be happy with this bow, although comparing it always unfavorably with his own stave he had cut himself from the private tree of Kak Kakutorio.

Gone — those days, gone and dead and best forgotten!

In Pa Weinob, a city of wooden, high-built houses and a wooden stockade with watchtowers, we waited for the goods to be collected for the caravan to take back to the coast in exchange for the manufactures we had brought here. During this period I had a local woman recommended to me cure and prepare Pando’s zhantil skin. Another woman, a clever seamstress, sewed him a fine tunic and belt. When he donned the gear and turned to let us see, both Inch and I made all the necessary noises of surprise and gratification. In truth, Pando did cut a dashing figure, and he was as pleased as a woflo eating his way through a whole Loguetter cheese.

By the time the country produce had been baled and loaded and we set forth to return to Pa Mejab, Inch had been taken on as guard by Naghan the Paunch, and he and I and Pando had palled up in a way that surprised me, although Pando took it all in his stride.

One night when the Maiden with the Many Smiles shone down from a cloudless sky, Inch approached the fire where we were cooking a tasty vosk haunch purchased in the town. He crinkled up his nose at the delightful smell. Over his long fair hair he wore a huge mass of cloth, like a sloppily-wound turban. Not a scrap of his hair was visible.