Warrior of Scorpio

“Let that teach you who is to be master here!”

I drew the impiter’s head down, twistingly, dragged that beast low, hit him again, forced him to bend. Delia mounted with a supreme confidence that brought the breath clogging into my throat. As she wrapped the flying thongs about herself and adjusted the clerketer for me, I vaulted up and dragged the reins upward. The impiter’s head rose. He was in a vile temper. An arrow whistled off the black sheen of his feathers and he rasped a hacksaw whine and struck three massive blows with his wings. He ran forward and then, with a massive fluttering and a great roaring of down-driven air, he was aloft. I had to strike but three more arrows away before we were well airborne and sailing above the anti-flier defense and away into the bright air of Kregen.

Below us in the amphitheater we left an incredible scene of confusion as Ullars whistled for their impiters, as Harfnars ran uselessly, shooting upward, only to see their shafts fall short. Strongly we beat across the sky. Umgar Stro — who was now dead — had trained his mount well. Crazed and savage and bewildered it might be; the impiter understood well enough what the point of my sword thrust into his side meant. His wings beat metronomically. The wind blasted back through our hair. Naked, we shivered in the slipstream. But up and up we flew, faster and faster, winging away from Chersonang and all the barbarity festering there.

For some time I fancied I could detect the foul taint from the deliquescing corpse of the Ullgishoa. From the city of Chersonang behind us rose the black swarm of impiter-mounted warriors. Like a column of smoke they rose and leveled off and, wind-driven, soared after us. I jabbed the tip of my sword into the impiter and forced him to beat a faster stroke.

The twin suns of Scorpio cast their mingled light down upon us, and the land beneath spread out with its cultivated fields giving way to heath and wasteland cut through by the magnificent stone roads of the old empire. The host of impiters on our trail must have been visible for dwaburs in every direction. Our own beast flogged the air, driving us on, putting an increasing space between us and our pursuers. As befitted the power and glory, as well as the bulk, of Umgar Stro his impiter was a king among fliers. But the double burden would tell in the long flight, and eventually the flying nemesis would catch us. If such a thing as Fate exists, it has sometimes come to my aid as well as dealing me many shrewd blows. Unaccustomed to such things, I confess it was Delia who first spotted the distant dot, and who cried out in joy — and then alarm as other reasons for the presence of an airboat here, over the Hostile Territories, occurred to her.

But there was nothing else for it. The distant flier changed course and bore through the upper levels straight toward us.

We strained our eyes. I made out a lean petal-shape, high as to stern, a much larger craft than the one in which we had flown The Stratemsk; larger, even, than those airboats of the Savanti in unknown Aphrasoe. Flags fluttered from the upperworks. Delia screwed her eyes up. I felt her body close and warm against me, and my arms tightened in instinctive protection.

“I think, my darling, I think-” she said. And: “Yes! It is! She is from Vallia!”

“Thank Zair for his mercies,” I said.

She must have spotted the massed fliers from a long distance off, for I knew the Vallians possessed telescopes. I knew without doubt why the Vallian airboat was here, why it turned at once, sensing the answer to her quest lay with that flying host of impiters. The airboat swung alongside. I hauled the impiter up and looked down.

The craft was compact and trim. I was reminded of the order and discipline of a King’s ship or of those swifters I had commanded on the Eye of the World. The sights of varters of design strange to me then snouted upward at us. At the first sign of treachery or the first false move we would be blasted from the sky. A group of men on the high stern looked up, and I saw the familiar Vallian costume mingled with a smart dark blue uniform I took to be that of the air service of Vallia.

“Jump down, Princess!” shouted one of the men, a barrel-bodied individual in dark blue, with wide shoulder wings, and a flaring orange cloak. At his side swung a rapier, matched by the main-gauche on the other. He wore a curly-brimmed hat with a blazing device of gold on the front band, and an orange tuft of feathers. His face was seamed and wind-lined, the crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes testimony to his days in the air scanning distant horizons.

Carefully I edged the impiter lower so that the ratings below ducked against the beat of wings. Delia went over first and I followed to be caught instantly in strong hands. Umgar Stro’s impiter, relieved, spun away into the bright sky.

“Princess Majestrix!” said the burly man, a Chuktar, an exalted rank in any man’s army or navy or, as I encountered for the first time, air force.

“My Lord Farris!” said Delia. She was wrapped in a swathing orange cloak, and her face showed high and proud and yet mightily relieved. “You are most welcome.”

The Lord Farris, the Chuktar in command of this airboat, the name of which was Lorenztone, bowed deeply. He did not incline, a depraved custom, and this pleased me. “And this-?” He gestured toward me in a way that was most polite.

Delia smiled. “This is Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor, Kov of Delphond, and betrothed of the Princess Majestrix.”

Farris bent his head in a stiff but exquisitely formal little bow. He turned back to Delia. “The Emperor, your father, learned that you had taken a flier and-” He hesitated and I could guess the scenes that had followed on that discovery. “There have been many airboats seeking you, Princess, and I am overjoyed that it was to me and Lorenztone, that the honor of finding you has been given.”

“I am pleased, also, Farris. But-”

A lookout sang out from forward.

Everyone turned. The sky seemed filled with impiters.

Farris looked pleased. He smiled and rubbed his hands.

“Now these debased descendants of a decadent empire will see what a new nation can do!” His orders were given in a calm and matter-of-fact tone of voice that heartened me. During that fight as the winged hordes of Umgar Stro fell on us I was mightily impressed by the way the air service men of Vallia handled themselves. Their swivel-mounted varters coughed a steady stream of projectiles. Impiters fell fluttering from the sky. Archers using smaller bows than those of Loh, it is true, took a toll. Any Ullar venturesome and lucky enough to gain a footing on the deck was instantly cut down. The Vallians, in this kind of aerial fighting, did not deign to disregard the effective uses of a boarding pike. With my long sword, which they looked at with a kind of amused awe, I joined in. The battle, in a sense, came to me as an anticlimax. Delia was safe, now, and before us lay the flight to Vallia and then the meeting with her father, that imperious, relentless, awe-inspiring man, the emperor of all Vallia.

At last the impiters and their Ullar warriors gave up.

We forged on across the landscape of the Hostile Territories as gradually the twin suns, Zim and Genodras, sank to the horizon. I took stock of this Vallian airboat, this Lorenztone. She was all of fifty feet long and her widest beam, which came some two-fifths of her length aft, was twenty feet. Her leanness of appearance came from the sheer of her bows and the sweep of her stern where the sterncastle raised. Varters lined the bulwarks much after the fashion of the broadside guns of the ships of Earth with which I was familiar. Somewhere below her deck in a safe place would be that mysterious mechanism — mysterious to me then — by which this bulk was upheld in thin air. The designs on the many flags she bore surprised me with their functional formality; but some were so embroidered that leems and risslaca, graints and zhantils as well as chank and sectrix, figured in that fluttering panoply.

An obliging crewman found me a length of cloth. He handed it to me expecting me to wrap my nakedness in it. It was green. I merely wiped the bloodied blade of my long sword upon it, carefully, mindful of the way that young tearaway of a Vallian, Vomanus, had so carelessly wiped his ornate rapier, and handed it back. From a great pile of flying silks I selected a length of blazing scarlet. This, with as always a pang of memory, I wrapped around my waist, drew up between my legs, and tucked the end in. Delia came up with a broad leather belt, of a leather I did not then recognize, soft and pliable, with a massive silver buckle. With this I kept the breechclout in place.

“There will be no scabbard for your great sword, Dray; not until we can have one stitched up for you.”

“No matter. It can hang at my side naked, with a fold of cloth to keep me from being cut-”

After the action the reaction — we were both just making noises. The airboat rushed on through the sky levels. Delia looked at me, her head a little to one side, her face grave.

“Seg? And — Thelda?”