Scorpio Drums

Chapter one-1

Chapter oneThe whiptails carrying Delia off were now spurring down the street, I could see no one else in view. I gave the zorca the flat of my blade and he started and neighed and then went hell for leather after the others.

I’d catch them. I’d catch all seven of them and I’d slay all seven of them. No one was going to take my Delia from me, my Delia of Delphond, my Delia of the Blue Mountains.

The zorca ran because he understood a demon sat on his back and would unhesitatingly lash him without mercy. I hit him again. We were catching the Katakis. One looked back and yelled.

The stench of battle, the noise, the sights, all flowed away into a hollow silence between my ears. I could see only Delia and the Katakis. A blue mist hovered before my eyes. I felt cold.

I did not want to believe.

“No!” I screamed it up as I’d never shrieked at the Star Lords before. “No! Give me time, give me time!”

The blue mist thickened. I lost sight of the whiptails and Delia. All around me the blueness grew. The shape of the phantom Scorpion hovered above, gigantic, absolute, not to be ignored.

Up I went. Up and up, drawn into the blueness of the Scorpion of the Everoinye. There was no arbitration. The Star Lords wanted me.

Screaming incoherently, I felt myself flung into the gulfs of nothingness, bathed in cold, destroyed to my heart, whilst my Delia was hurried off into a captivity I could not contemplate in reason.

Delia! Delia! Delia! Ahead of me lay only a black nothingness.

The feel of the zorca between my knees remained one sensation among the many battering at my consciousness. Blueness twined about me. The Star Lords through their blue phantom Scorpion had hauled up the animal in addition and as I felt as though I was strapped to a giant Catherine Wheel that tiny touch remained a reminder of common flesh and blood.

Delia was being carried off into an all too easily imagined horror. If I went mad I could be of no further use to her. The vital necessity of keeping fast hold of all my faculties must be my sole aim now. I had to deal with the Star Lords and get back to Taranjin as fast as possible, otherwise — I must not, must not, think of the otherwise.

I, Dray Prescot, Pur Dray, Krozair of Zy and Lord of Strombor, after the first decision to retain my sanity, must think solely of handling the Everoinye and of returning from whence I had been brought.

Of course, there was a horrific chance that the fumble-fingered Scorpion might drop me as he had once before.

The blueness, a continuing symptom of my travels with the Star Lords, lasted for a very short time and then I felt myself lifted from the back of the zorca. I went tumbling headlong across a wooden deck. So I knew where I was.

I sat up. Yes. I was sitting on the deck of the narrow double-ended craft and all around stretched glittering blue sea.

Standing up I scanned the horizons. Nothing betwixt sea and the shining remote silver sky met my gaze.

The scents of seaweed and ozone and tar meant nothing to me.

“All right, Star Lords!” I bellowed up, head flung back. I was about to go on with something like: “What in a Herrelldrin Hell do you want this time, you bunch of nurdling great onkers?’ when I clamped my lips shut.

Recently I’d wondered on and off that if I’d treated the Star Lords with some of the awed respect other kregoinye treated them they might have treated me better. I seriously doubted that. All the same, it might be a clever scheme to eat humble pie, as they say in Clishdrin, and bow and scrape, kowtow to them, not arouse the anger which could fling me back four hundred light years to the planet of my birth.

So, all right, then! By the pustular eyeballs and disgusting nostrils of Makki Grodno! I’d fool the Everoinye, fool ’em rotten.

The clanging voice rang across the boat.

“Dray Prescot!”

I took a look around the boat as she bobbed in the sea; but of course there was no one aboard but me.

Speaking carefully, as it were thinking of every word before uttering it, I said: “It is imperative that I return at once. It is vitally important. The Empress Delia—”

They interrupted then, as I said that name and felt the scoring whiplashes burning across my mind, and struggled to hold my sanity. “We are aware of that situation. There is time.”

“Time!” The sensation of heat suffused my body. The Star Lords could tamper with the time flow and had flung me about within the Time Stream. Hope burst up in me. I shouted up: “Put me back when—”

“It is not for you to tell us what or what not to do.”

“Of course not,” I said at once.

A pause followed that. These were superbeings, old beyond computation, entities who had once been as human as I. Could they truly still remember and understand humanity? I had doubted that in the past and had come to believe I’d been mistaken.

So, now, would they be deceived by my unnatural acquiescence to their wishes?

What I took to be a different voice said: “You have obeyed our orders, Dray Prescot. We knew you possessed the yrium and you have proved that you can use your gift of superior charisma wisely — sometimes. Taranjin has been cleared of the invaders from Schan.”

Instead of bellowing up that I knew that, by Krun, and what need was there for them to repeat old news? I said: “What is to be done next?”

Unmistakably, a tone of gloom tinged the next words.

“There will be more invaders.”

In my wrought up frame of mind I struggled to think what I could say to that. Previously I’d have burst out with intemperate words, a tirade of vituperation against Shanks and Star Lords. I had to think. I said: “And you will place me down to fight them?”

They didn’t even bother to reply to so crass a remark.

I began to wonder if they could see right through me, for in our last meeting I’d argued and convinced them against their original wishes. I’d altered a decision of the Everoinye. Now I was acting the Yes-man with such humility I guessed they must suspect me.

So I summoned up a tiny scrap of courage and with a whisper of belligerence, said: “What about my voller? You took my airboat away. It’s about time you gave her back.”

“In due time.”

“And I didn’t meet a feller called Wulk—”

“He is away on another case.”

Oh, yes, that was the word they used, in its Kregish as well as Terrestrial meaning. On a case. Well, now.

“There are other pressing matters to be dealt with. We will return you to an appropriate moment—”

“I have your word?”

That was, of course, an utterly fatuous question. Of what use had these superbeings for words, and honor, and promises? They stood aloof. They played with the destinies of peoples and nations. Of what significance the life of a solitary individual?

I said: “Star Lords, do you play a game with whoever rules in Schan?”

The silence remained unbroken for a long time. I refused to break it. Sweating with desperate impatience though I was, I’d play these Everoinye at their own game. My question was deadly serious. If idle minds had the ability, might not they play games, side against side, and use us poor mortals as pawns?

The boat barely moved in the sea. The silver sky shone lustrously above and the sea sparkled a brilliant blue, shot with silken streaks. Wherever we were, we were highly unlikely to be on Kregen with its two suns and seven moons. No birds sailed through that limpid light. Occasionally a huge and beautiful fish would leap in a graceful arc and plunge back into the water.

The Star Lords were going to return me to an appropriate moment. That meant they’d plunk me down back on Kregen in the burning city of Taranjin in time to save my Delia. I had to believe for the sanity of my mind and soul.

Delia, her Kataki captors, the whole turmoil of the battle, were all frozen away there, waiting on the Star Lords whim for my return.

That, I must believe.

Towards one end of the boat rose a small deckhouse. I walked along the planking, feeling warmth on my toes, and tried the door. It was locked.

What, I wondered, lay below deck?

Two steering oars were swung up into their beckets at this end of the craft, and true to dwaprijjer fashion a second pair were lashed at the other. Either end could be bow or stern. The pirates infesting the Ivilian Keys used them with great élan, and they were known in other parts of Kregen. At the moment this particular craft had neither oars nor mast. I fancied she had a fair turn of speed. Something wet dropped onto my chest, and I realized the sweat was running down my face and dripping off my chin. Madness hovered close, close, then.

The Everoinye could manipulate time; but I was convinced their command was chancy, for they had made mistakes in the past. My ploy in asking if all the fraught happenings that shook Kregen were merely a game, and we were all merely pieces upon a giant Jikaida board, was delaying my return back through time.

Mind you, the question was not a true ploy, for I wanted to know the answer. I wanted to know for the dignity of my fellow sufferers.

At length they deigned to reply.

At their first words I felt anger and resentment, for it was clear they were as usual fobbing me off.

“It is not for you to question us on matters you cannot understand, Dray Prescot. The answer is not simple. No, we do not regard the threat from the Shanks as a game. But there are, as there must be, game elements in the handling of the situation.”

This was something. “Men and women get killed at this game.”

I must have spoken in a return of truculence, for the answer lashed out: “We acknowledge your usefulness to us in the past, Dray Prescot. The future need not follow that pattern.”

I breathed in and I breathed out.

Tsleetha-tsleethi, softly-softly! “You have, then, many kregoinye to call on? There are many men and women on Kregen serving you?”

“Few people are fitted to serve. That does not concern you.”

“I understand.” I swallowed down. “Will you return me now — please?”

“You will be returned to the appropriate place and time. There are many tasks set to your hand. But, first—”

The boat soared aloft, up and up into that distant silver sky. I held on, the breath short in my throat. Mist enveloped the boat and tendrils of clammy vapor clung about me. I knew what was going to happen next, and was ready for it. When the boat abruptly plunged down and down, shrieking through thin air, I realized I was only half prepared. My ears banged and I gulped down and hung on and waited.

We roared on down, and below a wide and open land opened up, green fields and wending rivers and scattered white-walled towns. If we tried to land on dry land we’d splinter into shivers. A tiny lake, like a little eye peering myopically upwards, flashed blue in the radiance of the twin Suns of Scorpio.

The dwaprijjer hit the water in a long splashing slide that started at one bank and brought the sharp curved end to a rocking halt in the reeds of the other. The feel of good Kregen air and the streaming mingled magnificence of Zim and Genodras all about drove me forward.

Over the sharp prow I leaped and hurled myself into the reeds. Muddy water splashed up my thighs. A few floundering steps saw me to firmer ground where I halted to take stock of my surroundings.

I was, of course, completely naked. That was the usual way when the Everoinye hurled me down somewhere to sort out their dirty work for them. I refused to allow dismay or desperation to enter my mind. I had a job to do as a kregoinye. When that was done the Star Lords would send me back to see about those slaving Katakis.

At one time I’d fumed at what I’d considered the incompetence of the Star Lords in thus flinging me down naked and weaponless. There was one very good reason for that practice. They expected resourcefulness from their agents. Clothes and weapons must be obtained in the field. If I’d landed dressed in the costume of one part of Kregen in an entirely differently-dressed region, I’d be spotted instantly as a foreigner. Perhaps the Star Lords were not as stupid as I’d bad-mouthed them. In all the dazzlingly varied cultures of Kregen a naked man, sharp and determined, might fare better than one marked down as a stranger.