Alan Akers - Swordships of Scorpio

“You will hurt her cruelly if you do not.”

“I know, by Zim-Zair, I know!”

Aunt Slopa pursed her full lips. “Sosie would not have done this just because you saved her life. There is more to this business than that.”

“Can you bring me an undecorated quiver?”

“I can. But that-”

“Just bring it, please, Aunt Slopa.”

When I had transferred all the shafts from the brilliant embroidered quiver into the plain one and had time to mark the perfection of the feather-setting — every feather was jet black — I took up the quiver that was the gift of Sosie na Arkasson and sought her out where she sat on a bench in a courtyard, the anti-flier wire stretching above her Afro hairstyle. She was reading a book — it was The Quest of Kyr Nath ,[1]a rollicking tale of mythical adventure at least two thousand years old and known all over Kregen — and as I approached she put one slim black finger between the leaves to mark her place and looked up at me with a smile.

“Nath,” I said. “I know a man called Nath, a dear comrade, and I intend to go drinking and carousing with him and Zolta again one of these fine days.”

She looked at the quiver.

“I would like to live, Sosie, and yet you put me in mortal peril.”

“I! Put you in peril, Dray Prescot! Why, how can you think it?”

“See how these marvelous gems and this incredibly lovely stitching gleam and wink and glitter in the light of Zim and Genodras!”

She reached out her free hand and stroked down the embroidery and the gemstones. Her face showed satisfaction and pride, as was right and proper for a young girl who knows she has stitched well.

“Indeed, they do look fine. Over your back they will proclaim to the world that the quiver was made for you by a girl who-” She stopped. Again her soft everted lips trembled. She did not go on. I said, in something of that foul and harshly-dominating tone I so much deplore in myself, “The quiver is beautiful, Sosie. I am a rough adventurer, who must travel in wild and perilous lands. It could be the death of me. It would show the world where I was; it would show the world that I carried a fortune on my back. I would have no peace.” She started to say something, quickly, hotly, but I shushed her and went on. “This should hang in the house of the man you marry, Sosie, the man you will love. For him, it will be a source of unceasing joy and pleasure. For me, it could bring death.”

“But — Dray-” She was confused.

“You do see, Sosie. I appreciate-”

As I spoke, as I held out the scintillating quiver to her, she leaped to her feet with a choked cry. Kyr Nath went flying. Her arms went about me and she kissed me with a full fierce passion that held in it only an innocence and a sweetness.

That hot wet pressure on my lips shot through me with a spike of agony. Then Sosie released me and fled into the house.

I sighed. Bending, I retrieved the book.

Kyr Nath. Well. I read at random: “And in this wise did Kyr Nath astride his coal-black impiter smite the legions of Sicce, so that they recoiled from him in thunder and lightning, and Kyr Nath smote them from beyond the sunrise to the day of judgment, so that they fell to the ground and crawled into the caves beneath the Mountains of Pearl and Gold from whence issueth their fiery breath even to this day.”

I put the book down. Sunrise. It said sunrise. I was still, as an Earthman, bothered over saying

“suns-rise” instead of sunrise. Those ancient people of the Eye of the World who had lived and laughed along the coasts, who had built the Grand Canal and the Dam of Days, they were called the people of the sunrise or the people of the sunset. There were mysteries here that I had no way at all of unraveling. Perhaps Maspero, in distant, unknown Aphrasoe, could have explained. Also, and significantly, this copy of the book had Kyr Nath flying an impiter. Those coal-black flying animals with their huge wingspread were well known here, in the Hostile Territories, and I had alternately cursed and blessed them, as I had fought Ullars screeching wildly on their backs, and flown with my Delia astride Umgar Stro’s great impiter away to find safety with the airboat Lorenztone from Vallia. In Sanurkazz the story would have had Kyr Nath riding a sectrix. Certainly, the story as I had first heard it, declaimed among the wagon circle of my Clansmen of Felschraung, had Kyr Nath riding a vove. The culture of a whole planet is an intricately-woven tapestry — and, I can remember now, that I turned with that duly solemn thought to find Aunt Slopa regarding me mournfully.

“Sosie asks me to say to you that she quite understands.”

Although I had faced many wild beasts, as you have heard, I felt the strongest disinclination to probe into the details of the scene that had preceded that announcement. What had been said between Slopa and Sosie was nothing to do with me. It was to do with me, really; but it could not be allowed to become of me.

The subject of conversation being turned, Aunt Slopa said in answer to my question: “When a man dies, his embroidered quiver and tunic and buckskins are laid up with him in the Glittering Caves.”

“The Glittering Caves?”

She nodded to the overbearing cliff face dominating Arkasson. “The cliff is riddled with the caves. The gems within the rock glow and glitter.”

Further comment from me did not seem required; but I did think that a fortune beyond calculation lay within that cliff, embedded in the rock and lying beside the dead bodies of generations of men in the Glittering Caves.

Before I left Sosie appeared. She had dried her tears and made herself look presentable, which, in reality, meant that she looked dazzlingly beautiful with her black skin gleaming and her Afro hairdo a puffed-up nimbus. She wore a simple dress of a dark orange color, heavily spattered with sewn gems, and her feet were clad in yellow slippers. I remember those yellow slippers. I started to say, “You will forgive me, Sosie-”

She hushed me at once, for which I was grateful. I make it a rule never to apologize; sometimes — not often — that rule of life becomes tricky.

“So you are determined to travel the Owlarh Waste, Dray Prescot! I know, now, I cannot prevent that. I thank you for your kindness to me-”

“Now, Sosie, it is you who are kind!”

“But not kind enough.”

That was spoken tartly enough. She was no weeping willow, was this Sosie na Arkasson.

“I wish you all the luck in the world, Sosie — all the luck in Kregen. May you find the man of your heart, and marry, and the farm prosper. May you be happy. Zair go with you.”

As before, she did not question my use of the name Zair. They were tolerant, in Arkasson, of any man’s religion, unlike the primitives of Cherwangtung.

“And with you, Dray Prescot”

Before me lay what Sosie called the Owlarh Waste. I took a few steps away from the frowning stone walls, out of their shadow and into the streaming light of the Suns of Scorpio, and I turned.

“Remberee, Sosie!”

She lifted her arm in farewell. “Remberee Dray Prescot. Remberee!”

With deliberate purpose I did not look back until the town of Arkasson had sunk into a blending gray against the lowering cliff upthrust beyond its walls.

During the midday break when I ate and drank sparingly was the time to take stock of myself. Around my waist I wore the scarlet silk formed into a breechclout. Sosie had, without my knowledge, stitched up for me a scabbard and baldric from plain supple leather of lesten hide and the deadly Krozair long sword now snugged safely against my thigh. She had made some remarkably raucous comments on that sword which, to her eyes accustomed to the slender blades of the Hostile Territories, was so monstrous a brand. The broad belt Delia had given me aboard the airboat buckled up firmly about my waist, the silver buckle deliberately left tarnished, and kept the silken loincloth in place, for silk has this exasperating tendency to slip. The rapier hung at my left side. It did not hang parallel to the long sword but thrust out at a divergent angle. The main-gauche was scabbarded to my right side. You may smile at this plethora of weapons, and consider me a walking arsenal — remember Hap Loder! — but I was accustomed to be so accoutered and could manage athletic evolutions without the slightest inconvenience.