Alan Akers - Transit to Scorpio

I raged through that old fighting ground where I had defended Natema, my clan ax biting into skulls and lopping arms. Now it was the nobles of Esztercari we faced. The corridor now presented the same problems. Two by two we fought. I knew everywhere else was in our hands. I leaped forward and hacked down a noble and my ax split along its sturm-wood handle so that the leather thongs sprang spiraling out. Galna, he of the white face and mean eyes, roared hugely and lunged with his glinting rapier. I dodged aside. For a moment, we stood in a cleared space, our men at our backs. There sometimes falls in battle a strange kind of hush as all the combatants pause to take breath and renew their strength before continuing. Such a hush fell now as Galna stalked me. One of my men, it was Loku, shouted and hurled an ax. I took the handle in my fist as it sailed through the air.

Galna smiled toothily. “My rapier will spit you, Dray Prescot, before you can lift that ax.”

He was the Champion of Esztercari. A master swordsman.

“I know,” I said, wasting breath, and turned, and smashed that gorgeous jar of Pandahem porcelain into a thousand shards. From the wrecked interior of the vase I snatched the mailed man’s rapier I had hidden there at the close of that epic fight, and swung up, and stood, facing Galna. I know now my face must have daunted him. But he faced me bravely, his blade a living streak of light in the lanternglow. Our blades crossed. He was very good. But I live and he is dead, dead and gone these many years. He fought well and with great cunning; but I took him with a simple developed attack against which his return faltered at the last instant; my dagger twisted his blade and then my brand passed between his ribs and through his lungs and protruded all blood-smeared beyond.

No further resistance was offered as my wolves of the plains surged forward.

We stood in the Great Hall beneath that wonderful ceiling with the lamplight and the torches adding to the crimson and topaz glory of the suns’ light through the tall windows. My men crowded about me, their russet clan leathers grim beside the powder blue and, even, beside the Strombor scarlet I wore. Their swords and axes lifted high, in salute.

“Hai, Jikai!” they roared.

A figure in emerald green, lost and drowned now in the surge of newer colors, was flung forward to the foot of the steps of the dais on which we stood. Wanek, Varden, great nobles of Eward, and my Jiktars, crowded the dais. We looked down on that crumpled figure in emerald green, with the rosy limbs and white body, the corn-yellow hair.

The Princess Natema of Esztercari lay there, at our feet. Someone had loaded her with chains. Her gown was ripped. Her cornflower blue eyes were wild with baffled fury; she could not comprehend what had happened, or, believing, refused. Prince Varden, at my side, started to rush down the steps. I held him back.

“Let me go to her, Dray Prescot!”

He lifted his rapier, all bloodied.

“Wait, my friend.”

He stared in my face, and what he saw there I do not know; but he hesitated. A man of Eward stepped forward and stripped off the emerald green gown and cast it underfoot so that Natema groveled at our feet, naked. But Natema would never grovel. She stared up, beautiful, disheveled, naked, but prideful and arrogant and demanding.

“I am the Princess Natema, of Esztercari, and this is my House!”

Wanek spoke to her, gravely but with iron resolve that bewildered her. “Not so, girl. You are no longer a princess. For you no longer have a noble House. You own nothing, you are nothing. If you are not slain, hope and pray that some man will take kindly to you, and may buy you. For you have no other hope in all Kregen.”

“I-am-a princess!” She forced the words out, gasping, her hands clenched and her vivid scarlet lips curved and passionate. She stared up at us on the dais-and she saw me.

Her cornflower blue eyes clouded and she jerked back in her chains as though I had stepped down and struck her.

“Dray Prescot!” She spoke like a child. She shook her head. At my side Varden jerked like a goaded zorca.

I spoke to the Princess Natema. “Natema. You may be permitted to retain that name; your new master-if you are not slain, as the Lord Wanek has suggested-may give you a new one, like rast or vosk. You have been evil, you have cared nothing for other people; but I cannot find it in my heart to condemn you for what your upbringing made you.”

“Dray Prescot!” she whispered again. How different now were the circumstances of our meeting! How changed her fortunes. With my clansmen about me with their weapons raised I looked down on Natema.

“You may live, girl, if you are lucky. Who would want a naked ragbag like you now? For you have nothing but an evil temper and a violent tongue and know nothing of laboring to make a man happy. But, maybe, there is to be found a man who can see something in you, who can find it in his heart to take you in and lift you up and clothe your nakedness and learn to school your tongue and temper. If there is such a man in all Kregen, he needs must love you very greatly to saddle himself with such a burden.”

To this day I do not truly know if Natema really loved me or was merely gratifying a lustful whim when she proposed herself to me. But my words struck through to her. She looked bewilderedly upon the pressing men in hostile dress all about her, at the steel of their weapons, at Wanek’s iron-masked face of hatred, and then she looked at her own naked body with the heavy chain pressing the white skin-and she screamed.

No longer could I hold back Prince Varden Wanek of Eward. He cradled her in his arms, smoothing back the lush yellow hair, calling for smiths to strike off the chains. He was whispering in her ear, and slowly her sobs and wild despair eased and her body relaxed from its rigid grip of hysteria. She looked at him, and, indeed, he was a fine and handsome sight. I saw those ripe red luscious lips curve.

I heard what she said.

She raised those luminous cornflower blue eyes to Varden, who was staring down at her with a foolish, happy, devoted and unbelieving look on his face.

“I think,” said the Princess Natema, “that blue will go with my eyes very well.”

I almost smiled, then.

A press circled in the hall and I saw a stately palanquin swing and sway in between the towering columns of the main entrance, slowly move toward the dais as the solidly packed masses of men whirlpooled away to give it passage. I also saw a sharp, weasel-faced little man dressed incongruously in clansman’s russet and with a long knife stuck through his belt, standing truculently, as though he had conquered everything himself, at the foot of the dais. Beneath the tunic of Nath the thief there were a number of highly suspicious bulges, and I remarked to myself that Shusha would be missing a few choice items when she installed herself in her new home.

“Hai, Nath, Jikai!” I called down to him, and he looked up with his furtive weasel face as proud as though he had stolen all three eyes from the great statue of Hrunchuk in the temple gardens across the forbidden canal.

The palanquin swayed to a halt and scarlet-liveried men helped Great-Aunt Shusha-who was not my great-aunt-up the dais steps. More men provided an ornate throne she must have had carried from some dusty and long-forgotten attic. She sat in it with a thankful gasp after climbing the dais steps. She was so covered with gems that scarcely a square inch was to be seen of her scarlet gown. Her bright eyes fixed on Varden, who had flung a great blue cape about Natema, and who now stood with his bride-to-be to one side.

All the noise of shuffling feet, of laughing, of hugely-excited men, fell silent. There was in the Great Hall of Strombor, that had once been Esztercari, an overwhelming tenseness of feeling, a current of thrilling excitement, a sense that history was being made, here and now, before all our eyes. The light fell from the tall windows and burned upon the colors and the weapons. The torches smoked and their streamers lofted into a high haze in which darting colored motes weaved endlessly. Even the very air smelled differently, tangy, tingling, bracing.