Alan Akers - Warrior of Scorpio

“Obey — understand,” I said, not ceasing from rowing.

“Yes.”

“Very well.”

I rowed then in a simple long rhythm that sent the little boat out across the suns-lit waters of the Eye of the World.

I took no pleasure — on the contrary I experience no little shame — in thus browbeating a woman rightfully concerned over her child and attempting to uphold her own dignity and not give way to the fears that must have been clamoring to turn her into a sobbing ball of defenseless weakness. But there can be, as I know to my cost, only one captain aboard ship.

And — she was a slave-holder, and a representative of that class of authority most distasteful to me after my experiences in far-off Zenicce, and more lately in Magdag.

We sailed the muldavy with her dipping lug rig safely to the town, the port and arsenal and fortress of Happapat, and delivered the Lady Pulvia na Upalion into the hands of relations who cooed over her and the child and whisked her off to their palace.

When their guards — fair-haired Proconians clad in the iron ring mail of warriors all around the coasts of the inner sea, and armed with long swords that were not cut down — marched Seg and me off to the local barracoon, I felt no surprise whatsoever.

This kind of attitude on the part of slave-holders seemed inseparable from their nature, as abhorrent to Seg as to myself.

We wasted no time in breaking out, whooping, cracking a few skulls in the process, and with a couple of wineskins and a vosk thigh tastefully cooked and browned, we helter-skeltered off to the harbor. The fishing muldavy we had stolen in order to rescue the Lady Pulvia and her child and Caphlander lay still tied up where we had left her. In her, I knew, there was a full breaker of water. We tossed our meager belongings in and cut the painter — a gesture of defiance, that — and rowed out. We had the lugsail up and were foaming off into the suns-set long before the guards had pulled their scattered wits about them.

“And so, Dray Prescot,” said Seg Segutorio, “what now?”

I stared with a glad affection at this volatile man with the lean tanned face and those shrewd yet reckless eyes. He was a good sword-companion, and for a moment I remembered with a choked nostalgia all those other good companions I had known. I am essentially a lonely man, a loner, one who stands or falls on his own merits and I take ill to being beholden to anyone. This is a fault in me. I thought of Nath and Zolta, my two oar comrades, those two rascals who could not keep away from wine and women. And I remembered how Nath would lean back and quaff a full tankard, and wipe his forearm across his shining lips, and belch, and say: “Mother Zinzu the Blessed! I needed that!” and how Zolta would already have the prettiest girl in the inn perched laughing on his knee.

Sitting resting on the oars and looking at Seg Segutorio with an awakening awareness — I cannot dwell on that, as you will come to understand — I remembered Zorg of Felteraz, my other oar brother, and I thought of Prince Varden Wanek, and of Gloag, and of Hap Loder — and — and remember I was still young at the time as age is measured on Kregen — I wondered how it was that Seg Segutorio could sit on the opposite thwart and look back at me so cheerfully and say so matter-of-factly: “Well, Dray Prescot, and what now?”

These memories of my comrades affected me, and I admit to a tired, dejected, defeated feeling creeping over me then. You would be forgiven if, from all I have so far said, you jump to the conclusion that Kregen is essentially a man’s world. Despite the Princess Natema Cydones, and the Princess Susheeng, and other highborn ladies of enormous power, including among their number the Lady Pulvia na Upalion whom we had just rescued and delivered safely to her kinfolk, you might well think that Kregen is dominated by the male principle where brawn and muscle and fighting ability count for everything. You would, of course, be wrong.

Through this sudden gloom on my part for my old comrades I never for a single instant forgot my twin destiny on Kregen beneath the suns of Scorpio.

Whatever plans the Star Lords had mapped out for me as a troubleshooter, I held to my own purposes. First, I would find my beloved Delia of the Blue Mountains. And, when that had been accomplished, I would travel this world of Kregen to find my way back to Aphrasoe, the City of the Savanti, the Swinging City, for there I believed paradise awaited me. In all these simple and primitive emotions and ambitions I could still find joy that I did not seek vengeance.

We sailed out into the waters of the inner sea, and Seg appeared perfectly satisfied to allow me the conn and to run the muldavy. As he said, with a laugh: “We Erthyr are a mountain people. The sea is not a second home to us.”

The night breathed gently about us. The sea ran with a calmness that cradled the little boat. The stars glittered above our heads. The wind blew a mere zephyr.

I looked at the stars. I knew them well. I had studied them night after night from the deck of my swifter as we sailed in unexpected nocturnal raids against the overlords of Magdag, or any of the green cities of the northern shore. I had often shocked my crew by this nighttime sailing; their ideas were those of daytime sailing only and a safe beach at night.

I steered to the west.

It was necessary that I return to Magdag as soon as possible. From thence, before the rebellion, I had sent the Vallian Vomanus back to his home island with a message for Delia. He would return — that I knew with fair certainty — and if he landed at Magdag now, his life would be snuffed out in an instant as a friend of the arch-criminal Pur Dray of Strombor, Krozair, arch-fiend and deadly foe to Magdag. We steadied on our course west and the wind gusted up suddenly and heeled the muldavy so that water creamed in over the lee gunwale until I let her pay off a trifle. I frowned. The wind veered and strengthened. Now the stars were being blotted out in great clumps at a time as clouds gathered. A brilliant zigzag of fire split the heavens. The thunder, when it reached us, rolled and reverberated around our ears. Rain started to slice into the sea in an abrupt and deafening uproar. In moments we were soaked, our hair tangled about our ears. Seg started to bale. The wind blew directly from the west. I knew.

This storm not only confirmed my fears that the Star Lords would not allow me to return to Magdag, it also strengthened my suspicion that after my summary ejection from the fight as my slave phalanx in their old yellow-painted vosk-helmets raged on to tear the mailed overlords of Magdag to pieces the battle had swung against us. Perhaps I had overstepped my authority when I had really and truly organized the slaves and workers of the warrens so that they could actually win the fight against the overlords? Perhaps the Star Lords did not want the overlords of Magdag crushed and banished? It could be their plans called for whatever I had done to slumber a while, to gather subterranean strength, to smolder until at some time in the Star Lords’ plans for Kregen that spirit I had kindled with the help of the Prophet could burst out in renewed fury. I did not know.

What I did know was that I could not reach Magdag.

Very well, then. Gradually a kind of structure of devices for coping with the Star Lords — if this was truly their work and not the mortal but nonetheless superhuman work of the Savanti — was being wrought out in my mind. I had successfully appealed and been granted reprieve the last time, in that I had been permitted to stay on Kregen, in a dissimilar fashion to the way in which I had been reprieved at Akhram. The idea began to grow that provided I did not actively contest the dictates of the Star Lords