Scourge of Antares

Chapter one

Chapter oneOne intriguing fact about young Veda was her incredible ability to discard her clothing at the slightest opportunity. Here we were, fleeing for our lives through the twilight streets of Prebaya. She’d put on the clothes we’d borrowed during our escape from the temple. Now she ripped off and flung the skirt aside impatiently.

“Run better.” She spoke curtly, sensibly saving her breath for running.

A few steps abaft, I bent and snatched the skirt up as I ran. Her long bare legs looked splendid in the last of the suns’ radiance; skirts to cover them might not be so easily found later on.

The mob baying at our heels by this time had attracted all manner of riff-raff. The Katakis leading the pursuit might be hated and abhorred by most folk; the mob could sense blood and fun and so joined in the chase. Unless we outdistanced them or found a safe refuge we’d be done for.

We’d crossed the river by one of the many bridges and were now entering the aracloins where deviltry was a way of life among the narrow crooked streets. The smells of sour wine, of ancient cooking, of the sewers that were mostly above ground, assaulted our nostrils. The twin suns slanted down the sky and the mingled ruby and emerald shadows lay long. The evening’s entertainments were beginning.

Leaping a festering gutter, Veda sprinted on and then at the junction of three alleyways halted. Grimy buildings leaned each side, lamps already throwing pools of yellow radiance into the red and green tinged shadows. Noise spurted up from a tavern on one side, and music sounded across the alley. Veda, poised, looked about.

Well, she knew this city far better than did I. She must know where she intended to go. From our rear the dull roaring of the mob neared.

The tavern door swung open spilling orange light. A fellow reeled out, checked himself, straightened up, saw Veda.

Already this early in the evening his breath reeked of the devil drink dopa. His bulbous nose glowed, hair sprouted from under a flat leather cap, his clothes were grease-stained. He lurched towards Veda.

“My lovely!” he croaked. “You’re mine. Come here!”

What he must have thought, seeing a superlatively beautiful girl just standing, poised, as though waiting for him, is anybody’s guess. Those legs of Veda’s, alone, must have dizzied him with lust.

He reached for her.

Oh, well, I said to myself, you might feel sorry for the i***t drunk; but we can’t hang about here. We’ve a mob chasing us. I took a step forward ready to drag him off.

I needn’t have bothered.

Veda’s toes were very hard. Her legs were long and muscled. She kicked. She put those pretty iron-hard toes where they would do the most good.

Myself, I think the drunk felt more surprise than any other emotion. He just let out a: “Zhunk!” stood for a moment like a gate hit by a battering ram, and then he quietly doubled up and rolled over onto his side.

Here in Balintol we were nearer to the equator than was Vallia and so the Suns of Scorpio descended rapidly and the twilight did not last too long. Down our back trail the sparks of fire from torches showed where the Kataki-led mob thirsted for our blood. We could hear them yelling, a chilling sound, a sound, in truth, that should never issue from human throats. But it did.

I grabbed Veda’s hand and pulled her on. Furiously she snatched her hand away. She ran on ahead, lithe and lovely in the erratic illumination. Abruptly, I felt the agonizing ache sweep over me. Ah! Delia! How much more wonderful was my Delia, Delia of Delphond, Delia of the Blue Mountains, even than this lovely girl!

Not for the first time I wondered what on Kregen I thought I was doing, running about in foreign lands, when I should be breaking all speed records back to Esser Rarioch where I could take Delia into my arms again. By Vox! I knew why. The Star Lords constrained me. Even now much of my destiny lay in their superhuman hands.

Running along through the nighted streets of Prebaya, I knew I could not leave here until the task was finished. Those damned demons, those horrific ibmanzies, would flood over Balintol destroying everything in their path. The regent, C’Chermina, would gloat in her triumph. Balintol would run with blood. And my task to unite the subcontinent against the Shanks would have failed.

That outcome, of course, was not to be contemplated.

The mob kept doggedly following our route.

We twisted and turned through dolorous alleys, dodged up side streets, kept going at a good speed.

Persistently, the pursuit clung on.

The destination that I wished to attain with Veda in Prebaya could not be visited with that chase on our tails. The hunt bayed on remorselessly. We were unable to shake them off.

There was, by Krun, only one reasonable explanation for that!

Giving the fleeting form of Veda a shrewd look among the blurred lights and shadows I fancied she’d have to use her special trick and throw off the rest of her borrowed clothing.

By now numbers of people were moving in the more open streets. From alley to alley as we fled we had, necessarily, from time to time, to cross or traverse one of the streets where the evening’s pleasures could be found. Puppet shows, fire eaters, food stalls, balladeers, thronged the torch-lit scene. Beggars called out ceaselessly. Here we slowed to a brisk walk. Although Veda attracted admiring glances she did not stand out because of her attire. There were many women scantily-clad laughing with painted faces.

We came out onto a kyro which was far better lit than most of the plazas in this area. Folk were moving towards a large structure, festooned with lamps, from which came the strains of popular music.

Veda rapped out: “We’ll have to cross. There’s no other way.”

About to agree and follow her lead, I paused.

“Hold on, Veda. This might just be the place.”

She gave me a look. Now I’d had a long day in which much had occurred. I was entitled to be tired. Tiredness, as you know, is a sin and must be ignored. But Veda? She’d been through some fraught experiences and was by now probably thoroughly tired out. A decision had to be made.

I made it. “In we go,” I said. “And smile!”

“You—!” she started. Then: “Yes, all right. I see.”

We joined the couples entering and paid over the admission charge, a silver apiece. Mind you, I reflected as we went in, there was something very different about this whole atmosphere and place of Balintol from other countries of Kregen. Balintol had always been spoken of as a land of mystery. True, I’d encountered some highly unhealthy mysteries here. At one time I’d been foolish enough to think Balintol not very different from anywhere else, as I’d once thought the same of Loh, until events showed otherwise. The truth probably lay somewhere between, halfway between the familiar and the unknown.

The foyer was decorated in a vulgarly ostentatious fashion. Beyond that the dancing area was flanked by chairs and tables and drinks were being served. This establishment clearly aped its betters in the more refined parts of the city.

There was no doubt that we’d have done better to have found a Baths of the Nine; nothing so grand was likely to last here. We’d just have to make the best of it, do what we had to do, and then get to hell out of it.

Veda glanced around, chin up. She knew exactly what she was about. Whilst this establishment stood absolutely no comparison with places like The Dancing Rostrum in Ruathytu, it had a style far higher than the dens of iniquity past which we had fled. Veda told me to make my way to the far end.

“We’ll go out that far door. More respectable avenues there.”

I nodded. Evidently we’d cut across a neck of the poor section and this place, called Nalgre Froi’s Deren, stood at the line of juncture. Meetings could take place here, and liaisons begun. This was an interesting slant on the mores of the Prebayans.

Veda went off and I began slowly to edge around past the drinkers. There had been no weapons check at the doors, although bouncers stood in strategic spots to jump on trouble the moment it began. Because of those two facts, a certain decorum prevailed.

All the same, being the kind of dump it was, I was not at all surprised to detect the furtive fingers at my belt and purse.

Putting my brown fist over the hand after my purse, I squeezed reasonably hard — reasonably hard. No more, I swear, by Krun!

A gasp of shock as much of pain blasted up, so I looked down into the narrow anguished face of the polsim who writhed about like a fish on a hook.

“Master! Master!” he managed to stutter out. “Please! I meant no harm — please!”

I let him go.

He scuttled off into the crowd of drinkers, a flurry of narrow legs and raggedy clothes and a hand tucked up under the other armpit. I felt quite sorry for the little fellow.

A broad hand clapped me on the shoulder. A voice boomed: “Poor old Larghos Deft-fingers! He caught a right woflo in you, dom.”

The speaker, an olumai all white and black, clutched a tankard, smiling widely. He was dressed in the finery that a farmer would don going off to his weekly treat in the big city.

“I suppose you have to feel sorry for ’em.”

His use of woflo here was an intriguing linguistic affectation, after the fashion of The Savage Woflo as a name for a tavern.

“Sorry? Aye, by Tolaar, if they don’t steal my silver.”

He gave a hiccup, slopped some ale, and, smiling, wandered off. The sword he wore was a braxter, and there were two knives in his belt. There was no doubt that a pickpocket's trade here was difficult.

Shortly after that as I reached the far wall and saw the exit through a passageway, I understood that the thieves hereabouts well understood the difficulties of their profession and took steps accordingly.

Out on the floor dancers swayed and gyrated. The music blared selections of popular airs. The atmosphere reeked of cheap perfume and sweat and good humor and — thankfully — not a single solitary trace of tobacco smoke. People wanted to enjoy themselves. I wanted to grab Veda and get out of here just as fast as possible.

I fretted, standing just to the side of the exit passage. Where was the girl?

Larghos Deft-fingers clearly had decided that he was not finished with me. Not a chance, by Diproo the Nimble-Fingered!

Here he was, smirking, walking towards me with half a dozen of his cronies. They walled me off in the passageway from the main hall. They were a mixed bunch of diffs, but they all held wicked-looking knives in their fists.

They fancied they could overwhelm me in a single charge and sweeping me through the passageway finish me off outside. No one in the noise and uproar of the dancing hall would be any the wiser.

Just as they were about to launch themselves forward, knives first, a chorus of screams and shrieks burst up from the entrance.

Through the shrieks of panic a sound rose, a chilling, ominous sound that was joined by others. The thieves, wrapped up in their desire to finish me off, charged. And, over all, the deep baying of the bloodhounds that had followed us here mounted to a crescendo of anticipated final destruction.