Masks of Scorpio (2 page)

Well, that is not only the way of Earth as of Kregen, it is a way to gain your ends, or gain your end.

Wilma the Shot stepped forward. She and her sister, Alwim the Eye, had proved themselves fine varterists who could shoot their ballistae with great accuracy. Also they had fought with us with cold steel, and we valued them with their free ways and their ready comradeship in hard times as well as good.

“We cripple one of them,” said Wilma, with firm confidence in her and her sister’s expertise in loosing the rock or the dart from their ballistae. “Then we draw off and—”

“Take the other like a plucked fruit,” finished Alwim the Eye.

“Sound,” said Pompino. “Very sound. Your thoughts, Captain Linson?”

“I sail the ship, horter. I can handle her to run rings around those two.” He pointed a casual hand aft. The glint of sail was visible from the quarterdeck now.

No one was fool enough to comment that these two had the heels of
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. Argenters are built for carrying capacity and for comfort, not for speed.

The two varterist sisters, well-pleased, went off to check their weapons which needed no checking.

Between them they could knock over just about anything those two sea wolves on our tail might put up against them.

The rest of our company would be as ready to fight as they ever were. An interesting little problem cropped up as clouds began to build and some of the refulgent glory of the twin suns dimmed. Our two pursuers would surely catch us before nightfall; if the brewing gale broomed in with any power before that the whole picture would change. If the storm held all night as it might well do, we might never see these two sea wolves again. And that, it was very clear, would suit us admirably. With the treasure we had won aboard and crying out to be divided up according to the customs, a fight would at best be merely a distraction from the important work, and at worst might mean we could lose the gold.

“Pantor Shorthush of the Waves holds a personal grudge against me. I am sure of it,” said Pompino. He spoke fretfully. Up here in Pandahem they called Shorthush of the Waves Pantor, instead of Notor, his lordly title down in Havilfar. He was one of the armada of Kregen lords who out of spite or mere idleness, mere mischief, send the gales to sink honest men’s ships.

“I think Pantor Shorthush may be smiling, if wickedly, upon us, Pompino, for if the outskirts of the gale strike us early we can use them to escape those two fellows back there.”

“Escape? I thought we were going to blatter them for charts—?”

“Oh, we will if we have to. But we have more important ends than that.” I stared up at the massing banks of cloud. “Anyway,” I added with deliberate carelessness, “we can always buy, beg or steal charts at a more convenient time.”

“I suppose that is sooth...”

I wasn’t about to tell my comrade that I wished devoutly to avoid a fight because Dayra was aboard.

And that reason, of course, was highly ludicrous. Ros the Claw was a formidable fighting phenomenon, well able to take care of herself. All the same, in the brutal slog of a boarding action even the finest swordsman of any number of worlds — and I am not that one — can get a knock on the head and drop into the sea with a splash that ends all...

And, I admit to a fascination in finding out just how good Dayra was. That she was very good indeed was obvious from her training with the Sisters of the Rose, from her exploits, and from the simple fact that she was still alive.

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ran on in her lumpy wallowing fashion and Captain Linson kept casting black looks aloft to match the gathering sky. He was reluctant to take in any canvas. If he did so the pursuers would race up to us; if he did not and the breeze increased with sudden ferocity he could lose a sail or two, perhaps a spar. The situation was tricky.

Down in the Shrouded Sea in the great continent of Havilfar, south of the equator, sailors have to deal with volcanic disturbances almost as often as gales. Down there they call on Father Shoshash the Stormbrow, imploring him through Mother Shoshash of the Seaweed Hair not to destroy them. Up in Vallia the seamen of the superb Vallian galleons call less on the gods and spirits of the sea in terms of supplication, demanding a live and let live policy. Vallian sailors trust to their ships and their nautical skills.

They apostrophize Corg from time to time; but he and they rub along.

Had we been in a galleon of Vallia now, I would not have been so concerned. As it was, I owned to a lively feeling of imminent disaster. And this, as you will perceive, was because I sailed with my daughter as shipmate.

So it was that when the blue-glimmering apparition appeared on the forecastle of the ship I was among the first to leap eagerly for the help promised.

“Mindi the Mad!” yelled those who knew her. She had helped us before and now she was going to help us again...

We crowded up. She stood on the castle which, in an argenter was a real castle-like construction containing varters and not the low lean fo’c’sle of a galleon.

“Mindi! Mindi the Mad!”

She stood there in her usual pose, head downbent and her auburn hair shining from a light that never came from the suns above us. Her pale blue gown reached in its straight folds to a circle about her feet.

Her arms were folded in the gown.

Yet her figure wavered. She shimmered. We all knew the witch was not really standing on our forecastle; but her apparition presented far less of the solid reality it had shown before. A dark blur of the bowsprit showed through her, until her blueness coalesced and she was fully fleshed before us; then the image flickered and wavered erratically.

Naghan the Pellendur who ran our guards with admirable correctness in the absence of the cadade, said:

“She is having great difficulty. And there is no wonder at that!” He spoke with a crisp disdain which embraced the sea and all things to do with the ocean.

The blue-gowned apparition lifted an arm. A pale hand pointed landward.

We all craned over the bulwarks to look.

A shadow raced across the sea. Clouds massed above and the radiance of jade and crimson lay low across the water beyond the shadow. Rimming the horizon the coast of Bormark lifted jagged peaks.

Captain Linson said: “If we sail inshore I will not answer for the shoals—”

“Yet she clearly intends us to do just that.” Pompino tugged at his whiskers.

“She must know a way of safety.” Naghan the Pellendur looked decidedly unhappy. He was a Fristle, and it is notorious that that race of catlike diffs are not enamored of the sea. They make atrocious sailors, and are generally not employed aboard ship. Naghan, for one, would dearly love to set foot safely on dry land once more.

Cap’n Murkizon let rip a bellow.

“Put good men in the chains, Captain Linson! Go craftily. If this witch leads us, we can find a safe passage. By the unwholesome armpit of the Divine Lady of Belschutz! For an expert captain such as yourself the risk is not so great!”

The mockery with which Linson habitually treated Murkizon was now being turned back on his own head. It was amusing. The situation itself, also, held amusing overtones. I simply stood back and didn’t even bother to take a mental wager on the outcome.

An abrupt blast of wind that stretched our canvas and heeled
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settled the issue.

We were convinced that Mindi the Mad knew the coast and that she would not send us hurtling down onto rocks driven helplessly by the wind. There was a secure cove there sheltered from the gale. That had to be so...

In the refreshing way of your rapscallion Kregan they would have fallen into a sprightly argument, well-spattered with flowery oaths, before deciding to do what was obvious.

For some unfathomable reason — no doubt connected with my thoughts of Dayra — I was jolted into a memory of the time I’d spent as a kaidur in the Jikhorkdun of Huringa in Hyrklana. The arena’s silver sands had wallowed in spilled blood and I’d fought as a sworder against horrific beasts and wilder men.

In those days I’d dreamed of my baby twins, Drak and Lela, for the rest of the children had not yet visited Kregen. I’d thought, even then, that babies grow up and face their own problems. Well, by Zair!

My children had grown up and they did, indeed, face their own horrific problems. The amusing kicker here was that Dayra’s twin brother, Jaidur, had grown up to become the king of Hyrklana. I could never have expected that when I’d fought in the arena in Huringa’s Jikhorkdun!

So, impelled by these old thoughts, and perhaps with more of that old, lowering, black, devil’s mask that was the real Dray Prescot, I stepped forward.

“Let us follow Mindi’s direction and seek a safe cove and to Sicce’s Gates with these rasts who follow us! Then we can divide up the treasure and see each one of us obtains his just share and reward.”

Pompino glanced at me with a perplexed look. Then, at once, he shouted: “Captain Linson! Kindly steer the ship where the witch directs. As soon as we find a safe anchorage we can—” here he brushed up his whiskers in a way which said that, by Horato the Potent, he might not know much about ships; but he was the Owner, and he knew a bit of sea-going jargon or two “—where we can drop the hook.”

Some of the old sea salts down in the waist laughed at this; but the situation eased dramatically.

As for me — I felt the relief that Dayra was going to be kept out of another fight. She was a trained fighting girl, a mistress of the Whip and Claw. She had sheathed her Talons for a space. Those wicked razor-sharp talons affixed to her Claw that could rip a fellow’s face off as soon as look at him, they would remain sheathed if I had my way.

And that, as any onker could tell you, was as unlikely a happenstance on Kregen as anything else. The future would not hold that Sweetness and Light I craved, and yet the darkness would be illuminated by flashes of that lightning that comes only from good companionship and stout hearts and a brave striding on against fortune.

Running before the wind we sped rapidly toward the coastline. Any skipper in his right mind would have nothing whatsoever to do with this madness — running freely down onto a lee shore! Insanity! But we trusted the pale-blue glimmering apparition of the witch-woman, Mindi the Mad.

The moment an upflung headland of gaunt striated rock passed away to starboard the wind moderated spectacularly. Our canvas flapped. We moved on sluggishly in the wayward eddying currents of air spilling over into this wide expanse of sheltered water.

We had way enough to continue and to enter the mouth of a funnel-shaped bay. The land swept away and upward into mountain crests, and all clothed with strongly green vegetation. A river no doubt spilled down between those hills. The thought occurred to me, idly, that in all probability the water we now sailed was perfectly drinkable.

Islands scattered reflections of themselves, many islands, and flocks of birds, driven to seek shelter by the oncoming gale, wheeled and squawked in the preliminaries of settling down. The shafting light of the Suns lay low and bewilderingly, glittering up refulgently from the water.

Selecting one of the islands we rounded to in a good depth of water off a yellow beach. Here we did as Pompino in his newly won nautical expertise had prescribed and dropped the hook.

“A goodly shelter, this, far from prying eyes,” said Captain Linson. He was well pleased. He, it was clear, saw no sense in risking his ship in a combat against twice his number. And also, he like us could foresee the time when we’d come by charts of these waters, honestly or otherwise.

When a ruffianly crew of us went ashore for fresh water and firewood, Pompino roundly declared that, by Horato the Potent, he would spend the night on honest solid ground. A tent-like shelter was rigged, the fires were started, and the ship’s cook, the superb culinary artist Limki the Lame, with his assistants, prepared our evening meal. An anchor watch was left aboard
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, and we had to promise them their partners would oversee their share in the gold.

Sharing out the treasure!

Ah! That was now the single most important fact in all the universe to this bunch of rapscallions.

The apparition of Mindi the Mad vanished to our shouted remberees. We could not hear her speak when she was in this trance state that allowed her spirit to visit us, and we doubted if she could hear us, but being good Kregans we shouted the remberees in good heart. The two pursuing ships might snuffle about these scattered islands all night; we had no doubt that they’d never spot our fires, and if their captains had any sense, they, too, would anchor up for the rise of the Suns.

The general opinion, heartily shared by Pompino and the Fristles, was that we ought to make camp here and spend some time reorganizing ourselves. Fresh water tinkled in the brook, game abounded, we were well-provisioned. This little paradise would mightily suit us for a spell.

The chests were dragged across the sand and ranged in neat rows. The men clustered in the firelight.

Their faces — well on the faces of the apims, members of Homo sapiens like me, the avaricious gloating could be plainly read. On the faces of those folk who were diffs, races of those splendid people of Kregen who are not fashioned like people of Earth, the expressions might differ. There was no doubt that everyone here looked forward with the keenest anticipation to dipping their hands into the gold and silver...

Treasure!

Well, I in my dour sour cynical old way anticipated trouble. I was right; but not as I’d anticipated...

“We will do this thing according to immemorial custom.”

“Aye!”

The proportions to be taken by each and every person were regulated by rank, position and prowess.

We had upward of two hundred thousand gold deldys to distribute, made up of various gold and silver coins. There was no rush. This could take all night and still the rascals would be on their feet with a flagon in their fists, gloating. Pompino stood on a chest with the list prepared by Rasnoli, his gentle Relt stylor, and read out the distributions.