Fires of Scorpio

Chapter one-1

Chapter one

Seg learns what frightened meStumbling around at night in a jungle alive with ravenous monsters is not a pastime to be heartily recommended. Particularly when that jungle sprawls hungrily on the horrific if beautiful world of Kregen four hundred light-years from Earth.

The fetid stench of the place choked from rotting vegetation, putrid stink-flowers, decomposing — things — of indeterminate character. The darkness pressed down as black as the armpit of a demon from hell. All I wore was a scarlet breechclout and all I carried was a longsword. Those two items have seen me through many fraught adventures in the past. There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind they will see me through many more in the future.

Each step was a probing forward venture. Dagger-sharp spines, a mass of corruption, a razor-edged leaf or a killer vine all could lie waiting for the next unwary step.

An incautious movement might precipitate me into a spiny-ribcrusher, and the spines would close with a meaty chunk and the juices would melt me down to a puddle.

Ahead in the pervasive darkness a faint line of pinkish radiance fuzzed into view and a coughing roar growled menacingly at my back.

Instantly, I was down on one knee, crouched, glaring back. To anything following me I would be silhouetted against that faint wash of moonlight. The sword snouted.

Breathing lightly, unmoving, poised, I waited.

Waiting, patience, silence, these spell survival in the jungle.

The coughing grunt smashed out again to be followed by a piercing scream and a thrashing crunching pandemonium of noise among the trees. Whoever or whatever had hunted, stalked, leaped and fastened fangs on his victim had seized a tougher prey than he had envisaged. Bad cess to the both of you, I said to myself, and cautiously rose and shuffled along to the slot of light.

Keeping bent over to make myself as small as possible against the radiance, I moved on and I did not press too close to any vegetation.

A tentacular looping horror, a spiny vine insensate with blind hunger, slashed. There was just time to see the whiplash against the rosy moonlight. The longsword switched up.

The killer vine coiled and thrashed and half of it swished back among the trees and the other half wriggled underfoot like an overturned can of worms. I stepped over and went on.

Shadows moved across that slot of fuzzy pink and golden moonlight. I stopped stock still.

Without a sound, without a movement, I peered from the blackness of the jungle out into the moonlight of the tangled clearing.

A face showed clear in the radiance. Sharp, in focus, the face turned directly toward where I stood.

The skull-face, covered by a tightly stretched pebbly skin of gray and green granulated texture, was blunt of jaw with the roots of the teeth exposed, the nostrils sunken slits, and the eyes, overhung by bony projections, of a smoky sullen crimson. The radiance of the moon fell full on that face, illuminating the rotting teeth, the decomposed nose, the crimson demon’s eyes. Out of nightmare, that face, out of the deepest levels of subconscious horror...

I stepped out into the clearing.

“Hai!” I said. “Now I am mighty pleased to see you!”

The rotting teeth parted in a gasp. A sword flashed.

Then: “Lahal. I thought you were dead.”

“And I, you.”

“You are alone?”

“Yes. I was told a falling block of stone parted you from the main company. Your people are nearby, Skort?”

Skort nodded that ghastly head which was merely the normal head and face of a Clawsang, one of the many magnificent races of Kregan who are not made in the image of Homo sapiens.

“Yes. I think we are thoroughly lost. It seems to me that block walled us off from the rest of you and when we followed obvious tunnels in the mountain we came out into the jungle through a cave exit. We are lucky to be alive.”

His people clustered a little way off and they had a shielded fire flickering. The smell of roasting meat made my mouth water. Skort saw the way I licked my lips.

“Come and sit down. It is little use trying to move off until dawn. Eat and drink.”

“Thank you.”

They had cleared an area of unpleasant jungle inhabitants of the smaller and creepier kinds, and I sat down on a tuft of dry ground. They made me welcome, and soon I was chewing on a bone. It was pointless to inquire what the meat might be. Some of Skort’s men were patiently cleaning their swords and spears. They were a hardened lot, tough and experienced, and by reason of their graveyard faces inured to the askance look, the repressed shudder. I asked Skort what he intended to do now.

He paused for a moment, and the moonlight caught in those crimson eyes. “First, tell me what befell you in that place of horrors.”

“The party adventured farther after gold and treasure. Some were killed. There is a Witch of Loh in there.” I stopped. Skort flinched back when I mentioned a Witch of Loh. That is a very proper reaction to any reference to those powerful wizards and witches. Mind you, they are not your Satany black-magic kind of witch, who is not really a witch at all. A witch is merely the recipient of the old religion, attempting to carry on in face of the newer religions, abhorring the blasphemies of those who take her name in vain. Skort motioned for me to go on, and I pushed the finer nuances of nomenclature away for the moment.

Here we were, trembling in a clearing in a horrendous jungle outside a cave-riddled mountain in which lurked untold treasures and untold horrors. Any normal man would be forgiven for wishing to be gone from this accursed spot as fast as possible.

I said, “I have to go back in there to find out what happened to my friends.”

In the short time I had known him, during this expedition, Skort had said little. He appeared anxious to talk now. His crimson eyes widened.

“I, too, must return. But — not for friends.”

Waiting, not wishing to probe, knowing if he wanted to tell me he would, I gnawed on my bone. The Star Lords who had brought me to this wonderful world of Kregen to help in rearranging the planet’s destiny had lifted me out of the caverns and tunnels to show me a vision of Delia. She had gone through experiences that had made me shout and bellow like a callow child, made me tremble and shudder. All I wanted to do now was leave this accursed spot and return to Vallia where I would find my Delia, as she would find me. But, first — and I knew Delia would approve — I had to make sure Seg was alive and well. Seg Segutorio was a blade comrade. He and I — well, we’d been through the fire together, as the saying has it.

Skort addressed himself to some of his people, and they stopped making too much noise.

“You do not ask me why I wish to return.”

“You have your reasons. I have told you mine.”

His skull face turned fully toward me. He said, “Did you find the queen?”

“No. We found a cell block and a lady, the Lady Milsi—”

He nodded, quickly. “She is handmaid to the queen.”

Slowly, I said, “She is well but saddened. There was another woman in an adjoining cell who was dead. The Lady Milsi was sorely disturbed.”

Skort put a hand to his head.

“That then, is the end of my duty. I serve Queen Mab. She and the Lady Milsi were seldom parted. I sorrow for a great one of the world.”

He was moved, that was clear. Also, this did serve to explain why he had joined the expedition to venture into the area where first the king and then the queen had disappeared.

I spoke a few words of condolence, and then said: “This means you will not be going back with me?”

“I think not.”

Before I could make a fool of myself, or a faux pas, or say something else stupid — for Skort’s decision was so eminently sensible it warranted no comment — a shrill shocked scream ripped across the clearing. In a boil of shrieking confusion men spilled away from the fire.

A thing reared above them, swarming from the jungle in tendrilled bunches of horror, smashing down on waddling clawed feet, sweeping with those tentacled clumps. A man was seized up and stuffed whole into the maw slung low and rimmed in writhing feelers which swayed all together and so closed on him.

A smell as though a compost heap had been opened up prematurely belched from the monster. It reeked. And it scooped up men and stuffed them into its insides.

Skort ripped out his sword. He flung himself forward. He had a rapport with his people, and would account for every one. I did not fling myself headlong after Skort.

Instead among the bedlam of yells and shrieks and the confusing crisscrossing of shadows as men ran and fell and the monster-thing swept its tendrilled bunches of horror upon them, I dived forward. I kept low. I skirted the damn thing with its gray rotten hide and its hairs and its swinging tentacles. My target was the fire. That had been abandoned at once as the thing burst in from the jungle.

A whiplash flicked at me and I went head over heels along the ground. My ear went into a plate of cold porridge and I skidded. That — probably — saved me. The tentacle that slashed down to seize me completely misjudged my distance as I went sliding along on my ear. I hit the ground, let out a great “Ooof!” and then was up. The longsword flamed into my fist and a single slice cut the tentacle into a little wriggler upon the ground.

But there were far too many tentacles for one sword to amputate in time. The fire! The longsword snicked back into the scabbard, blood and ichor or not, and I seized up a flaming branch and flung it full at the ghastly monster-thing. Another followed, arching in a wheel of flame, spitting fire. I tried for the thing’s eyes; but they were well-protected under hanging mats of coarse hair. Tentacles flicked my way; I burned the first one off.

After that, Skort’s men saw what was needed, and we simply threw firebrands at the monster thing until we drove it off. Either that, or we’d have burned it up. It was, said a man who knew about these things, an oiklt, and not a very big one at that. It made a strange mewling cry at the end, drawing off. It had lost tendrils, and much hair had been burned off, and it was discomfited. But the oiklt had eaten four of Skort’s men, and this was cause for lamentation.

Despite that, we had seen the thing off relatively easily, and — truth to tell — I had experienced no feelings of imminent doom when we fought. Perhaps that was merely the after effect of our experiences within the mountain.

Carefulness for other peoples’ feelings, as well as sheer common sense, made me draw away from the Clawsangs as they set about their tasks. They would observe all the necessary rituals for their lost people. This was all a part of life on Kregen, as of any world where men and women of sensitivity are to be found. Their religious observances, although obscure to me and entailing a quantity of wailing and of plastering mud upon themselves and of doing nasty things with twig-made quirts, still conveyed their own deep appreciation of the sanctity of human life and of their grief that life had been wantonly spilled.

I kept an old sailorman’s eye open in case the monster’s mate happened by, or the first oiklt decided to come back and risk a burning for some more dinner.

The night passed thus, and presently Skort came across and said that having remembranced the dead, he would post guards and I could therefore go to sleep — if I wished.

Odd, the way a boon is presented. Of course I was deathly weary. Of course I wished to sleep. But if I did so I might never wake up. If I did not, I would insult Skort. All a pretty little entanglement of motive and feeling, race and race.

Eventually I thanked Skort and sat myself down and closed my eyes and Skort put a hand neatly on my shoulder and I woke up and it was full daylight. I had slept.