Alan Akers - Swordships of Scorpio

I directed the course of our armada into a little cove someway to the west of the city. Although Kregen possesses a larger landmass than does Earth, there are fewer people, which is pleasant from the point of view of breathing space. No one as far as we could ascertain observed our swordships as they plummeted their anchors into the smooth water of the cove and the captains and the crews rowed ashore. I held a meeting; it was more an order group. I specifically ruled out any form of council of war. I do not, in general, believe in those.

“You render captains of the islands! You have fought well. You have sailed through a storm that would sink a sea-barynth. You have some wealth. Now we go up against The Bloody Menaham, and the booty will be enormous.” I glared around on them, speaking from my perch atop a boulder. “If any one of you from Menaham wishes to pull out, that I understand. He is free to go, he and all his crew.”

No one moved.

“Very well. We take the Menaham in the flank. They will not expect us — they think an army is coming to aid them across the sea instead of you shaggy sea-leems!”

There rose a gust of laughter at this. By Kregan standards that was a jest of high carat value. So we set off, marching for we had no mounts, heading for Pomdermam. We were a motley bunch. Men and half-men of many races marched in that straggly army. But one thing we shared in common. We were all warriors of the first rank.

In the event we did not take the army of The Bloody Menaham in the flank. We struck them from the rear.

They were engaged in storming the city and tearing down the walls and setting fire to the houses. The Tomboramin had fought well and stubbornly, but they were overwhelmed and beaten back. We saw the smoke and flames as we charged in. Everywhere the diagonal blue and green waved the renders charged like sea devils. Rapiers thrust and slashed. Boarding-pikes skewered past upraised arms. Our bowmen sleeted their feathered death into the ranks of our foemen. For the Tomboramin this last-minute rescue was unbelievable.

Through all those wild scenes of carnage I fought at the head of my men, my loyals about me, driving on wedgelike into the enemy ranks. Above our heads floated my flag, the brave yellow cross on the field of scarlet. Viridia fought at my side. Inch and his incredible ax were there, striking and smiting. Valka, with a rapier like a blur of steel, thrust with me, thrust for thrust. Spitz and his bowmen cleared the path. Onward we drove and soon — very soon, to the destruction of the Menaham — we had them on the run and they were fleeing and we were looking about for booty.

“Touch nothing of the Tomboramin,” I had told my render captains. “Any man found looting will be hanged.” I remembered Wellington and his ways. “When we strike Menaham they will yield all the plunder you can imagine, for their armies will have been destroyed. The whole country will be yours.” In that, I remembered Napoleon.

A stubborn knot of fiercely resisting Menaham cavalry still clustered about the palace of King Nemo. Their zorcas were down and they fought afoot, and they fought savagely and well. With perilously few men left to me I led the final charge upon them, driving into them, with the yellow cross on scarlet biting into the ranks of diagonal blue and green.

“That flag of yours leads men on!” panted Viridia as we hacked and hewed together. The cavalry wore armor, and we were making heavy weather of it. But, as though, indeed, that flag did lure men on to victory, we poured over a shattered breach and ravened in among the Menaham. Now, we could thrust with care, aiming to drive our blades between the armor joints.

“Follow the flag!” screamed Viridia. She had flung down her rapier and now gripped the flagpole, the shaft all bloody in her fingers. The yellow and scarlet flamed above us. “It is superb! Superb! On! On!

Jikai! Jikai!”

Following that magnificent girl with her flaring dark hair and her steel-mesh clad figure waving the flag aloft the men bellowed over the last of the Menaham cavalry. Now were left only those who had run into the palace, ready, like cornered cramphs, to fight and die.

“She is superb!” grunted Inch, flicking blood drops from his ax.

“Aye!” said Valka, waving his rapier. “And so is the flag!”

We raced up the marble stairs, hurdling the dead bodies, and so came into King Nemo’s palace. As I had known I would, I found Murlock Marsilus.

Viridia, gripping the flag in her bloodied left hand, her right now wielding a fresh snatched-up rapier, used her booted foot on a double folding door, kicking it open with a crash. Spitz feathered three shafts into the room and then Inch and I leaped in. Half a dozen Menaham gathered there, three with Spitz’s blue-feathered shafts in them. The other three went down before Inch, Valka and me. Then I saw the tableau in the adjoining room, clearly visible through flung open drapes. Murlock was there, gripping a rapier, about to drive it down into Pando’s back as he clutched his mother about the waist.

Tilda faced Murlock bravely. She swung a wine bottle at his head, reeling, and with a savage laugh Murlock smashed it away. But the diversion had been enough. He heard our entrance and swung about

— and I reversed my rapier, hefted it, balanced, and hurled it as I had hurled javelins with my clansmen on the great plains of Segesthes.

The rapier flew true.

Murlock screamed, and the scream was choked off as my rapier transfixed his neck. He stood for an instant, staring, his face as horrible a mask of hatred and disbelief as any I have seen. Then he fell. Tilda and Pando, with wild and abandoned shrieks, flew across the room, through the drapes, and flung themselves into my arms, all bloody as they were.

“Dray! Dray!” they babbled, grasping me. “Dray Prescot! You have come back to us!”

Viridia, all blood-smeared, grasping that old flag of mine, stared at me. Her tanned face with the dark hair flowing contrasted with the classical ivory beauty of Tilda and her jetty mane of gorgeous hair. Pando was gripping me and sobbing convulsively.

“So,” said Viridia. “This is what you tricked me and my renders into! A woman and her brat! It was all for this that you schemed and fought!”

“Not so, Viridia the Render. This is Pando, Kov of Bormark. And this is Tilda, his mother, the Kovneva. They are my friends, and if you are my friend and comrade, then they are your friends, also. Do not forget that. As for me, my destiny lies elsewhere.”

“Do not say it, Dray!” sobbed Tilda, grasping me, as Viridia stared at me with her wide blue eyes all aglitter from the samphron oil lamps’ gleam. “Say you will not go to Vallia.”

“Vallia!” said Viridia. “What is this of Vallia, Dray Prescot, render?”

I felt the cold anger in me, the desire to turn and smash everything in sight. Not for this petty wrangling had I risked all and turned my back on Vallia and my Delia, my Delia of the Blue Mountains!

“Vallia is where I am going, Viridia. And neither you nor Tilda can stop me.” I lifted Pando up. He wore his old zhantil-hide tunic and belt, and I marveled. Tilda’s long blue gown was torn over one shoulder, and an ivory globe and collarbone showed, gleaming, alluring, even there, in those circumstances.

“Pando. You will stop all this nonsense of going to war, and fighting for pleasure. You are a Kov. You must rule your people wisely and well, and you must listen to your mother and to Inch. Otherwise I shall strap your backside. As for you, Tilda. You must smash the bottles of Jholaix. Pando needs guidance. You must listen to Inch. He knows my views.”

If that sounds pompous, tyrannical, banal, blame yourself, not me. I spoke truths. Truths were needed then; for I could hardly hold myself under control. Vallia! Delia! The need for her flamed in my blood, drugged me with desire. Too long had I betrayed her, and dillydallied with renders and Kovs and all the petty glory of sailing a swordship sea under my old flag.