Masks of Scorpio (21 page)

But she’d have a damned good time, all the same.

As a part of those thoughts, I spoke as though musing aloud.

“I hope Hyr Brun is well and safe. And the child, also, Vaxnik—”

“He is a child no longer! He is a fair limber young man—”

“I believe it, and with joy. He and Hyr Brun — they served you well.”

And still I would not pry. The central aching question could not be asked.

Dayra said: “I do not think you realize how much we missed you when we were young, Jaidur and I. We knew only that we had a father who was nowhere. We didn’t miss
you
— we lacked a father. Jaidur said he would call himself Vax and seek adventure. You know that my idea of adventure was —

somewhat different—”

“Aye.” I wanted to listen, silent and fascinated by these revelations. But I said, “Jaidur went out to the Eye of the World, became a Krozair, called himself Vax Neemusjid. And you smashed up honest folk’s restaurants—”

She made a small dismissing motion. “One of my closest friends was Patti na—” She stopped herself.

Then: “Never mind her real name. I thought she and Jaidur would — but they did not. Patti married the one we called Vondo. They were both slain in an affray. And so I became responsible for their son, Vondonik, and called him Vaxnik.”

Did I feel a deliquescence of hope? Was I pleased or disappointed? I did not know. I waited in silence.

She half-turned, not laughing; but bright, bright, the old memories stirring her. “You will have to wait to hear of Hyr Brun for here comes Pando. And he concerns us here and now much more than—”

“Hai!” called Pando as he advanced across the deck of
Golden Zhantil
. “Here you are! I have made up my mind. I have waited too long. I am going to teach my cousin Strom Murgon a lesson he will not forget. The final lesson.”

Pando became very much the fire-eating young noble, a gallant kov determined to strike for what was rightfully his. No more hesitation, he said, and issued orders left, right and center.

The nub of the scheme was to destroy, banish or capture Strom Murgon.

Pando was not fussy which one it happened to be, although in private bets we tended to favor the first solution as the one most pleasing to young Kov Pando.

Although, after we touched down in a forest camp set up some miles inland of Port Marsilus, Pompino confided in me: “Your young friend Pando doesn’t appear to have any really sound plan of operations.”

“Don’t underestimate him, Pompino. You know how these young bloods are when they have had a taste of power and it has been dashed from them. Anyway, the nub of his plan is the Ifts. Twayne Gullik has at last declared openly for Kov Pando his master and has, at last, brought in the Forest Ifts actively to assist.”

“Oh, yes, I know all that. Gullik was his usual supercilious smirking self when he rode in. And they intend to use the secret way into the Zhantil Palace.”

That was the tortuous secret passageway system we had used under Mindi the Mad’s direction to escape. A crowd of warriors pressing in through there could well take the palace, particularly if... “And we drop in from above in
Golden Zhantil?
”

“Aye.”

“It is after that. Pando will hold the palace, and this time the army with Murgon will be actively hostile. He cannot resist for long. Then what?”

“I tend to the opinion,” I said, a trifle cautiously, “that Pando hopes to have finished with Murgon by then.”

“He’ll need to be slippy. That one is a sly customer, and cunningly tough with it.”

“It is my view, and I regret the necessity although joying in the venture, that I will have to lie to Pando.” I added quickly, “Oh, not actively lie. I’ll lie, as it were, in absentia. It won’t be a personal falsehood.”

“Do what?”

“You’ll see.”

He grumped off then to see about the next meal, and I sought out Dayra, who must be a party to the scheme.

She fired up at once, and made all the preparations.

So it was that toward the rise of She of the Veils, ever, I believe, my favorite Moon of Kregen, a grotesque figure shambled into the camp among the trees.

Cap’n Murkizon and Nath Kemchug led him forward into the firelight. Then they moved away, out of smelling range.

Grotesque, that figure, aye, and weird. His heavy beard was checkered into red and blue, and likewise his whiskers. His hair stuck up in spikes, colored yellow and orange and blue. His face was streaked with indigo and vermilion. His eyes glared frightfully. He was clad in a mangy animal hide of uncertain parentage, cinctured by a belt of monkey’s paws, fastened by a bronze clasp in the form of an apim skull.

At his side swung a pallixter, a heavy knife snugged in a sheath over his hip, and he leaned on a mighty staff of twisted wood, the convoluted root of balass, black and grained, festooned with small evil-smelling bags, and tintinnabulating with a myriad tiny bells.

Men and women shrank away from that uncouth figure. He breathed an aura of mystery and repellent blasphemy.

“Llahal and Lahal!” he called in a strident, nerve-sawing voice. He moved with a heaviness and a hint of unsteadiness. He advanced toward the fire, and halted, and spread his arms wide, and then thumped the great staff down so that all the bells danced and clamored.

“I am Duurn the Doomsayer!”

Pando and Pompino stepped up, shoulder to shoulder, not one whit discomfited, although Twayne Gullik hung back well to the rear, and the guard Fristles congregated on the far side of the fire. Cap’n Murkizon gripped his axe and stood four square. Larghos the Flatch, who was not himself since the loss of the lady Nalfi, stood at Murkizon’s side, lowering and hating. Rondas the Bold, just about recovered from his wound, stood with them, ready and alert.

“Lahal, Duurn the Doomsayer,” quoth Pando. “And what is it you want with us? Whose doom do you say?”

“The doom of all in Bormark, all in Tomboram!”

A gasp went up at this. No one seemed to know if they should scoff at this weird, or freeze with fear.

“A mighty army marches on Bormark. They come like the sands of the seashore, marching from Memguin, out of Menaham. They march with a golden glittering lord at their head. They come to destroy all who oppose them and seize your steadings, your wealth, your women—”

Pando believed this at once.

Pompino said: “And how, mighty warlock, do you know this?”

I was highly amused at the look this Duurn the Doomsayer bestowed on my comrade.

“Unbeliever! Blasphemer! What know you of the Arts! Tremble lest your impiety bring you low!”

And, then: “I saw the host, marching.”

At that, Pando shot out: “How many? What forces? Their captains? Their rate of march? Their order?

Tell me all you can, Duurn the Doomsayer, and you may name your price.”

“There is no price in all Bormark that could rise to my just desserts! For I have the Eye! I have the Ear! I can scry past the mundane veils of the known! Beware lest idle curiosity burn you up as the moth is consumed by the candle.”

Dayra moved with all the grace of a hunting cat leaping after her prey. She slid in from the side, quick and deadly, while Duurn the Doomsayer began to thunder more rhetorical outpourings extolling his sorcerous powers; Dayra, passing by, halted momentarily, then went on past the firelight.

In that slight pause, as she passed, she whispered: “You’re overdoing it, father!”

So, incontinently, vanquished by common sense, Duurn the Doomsayer thundered his last dire doom saying, and turned away and stumped off, out of the firelight, back into the forest.

So the great plan of Pando’s went into operation.

Twayne Gullik together with a host of his Ifts and a sizeable force of men still loyal to the Kov of Bormark, entered the secret passageway and penetrated into the Zhantil Palace through the hidden corridors. We, for our part, flew down in
Golden Zhantil
bristling with weaponry.

The attacks were timed to coincide a full four glasses after the rising of the Maiden with the Many Smiles.

We hoped to have the palace cleared by dawn.

In the fuzzy pink moonshine we soared down and leaped from the voller, teeth bared, weapons sharp, raging to get into action.

I’d been spoiled for choice in the matter of weapons. The only real lack was a Krozair longsword. Still, the drexer gladly given me by Strom Ortyg served supremely well. I had the Valkan longbow. And I had repossessed the rapier and main gauche kept by Pompino when I’d been hoicked up by the Everoinye.

We went howling in like a pack of wild beasts.

With the twin onslaught the defenders of the palace crumbled and broke. That furious assault smashed them, drove them like chaff, swept them up as a slave girl sweeps up the dust of the lord’s Great Hall.

Panting, flushed, triumphant, we broke the last of Murgon’s mercenaries as they attempted a stand, according to their lights, swirling in headlong combat down the grand staircase and along the luxurious halls and corridors. They could not stand before us.

Like good quality Kregan paktuns who earn their hire in blood, they fought well. There was no quailing, no shrieking panic flight; these men and women had taken their pay and now they earned their hire. In honor, when the situation cleared unmistakably and the steel-bokkertu could be offered and made —

why then, and only then, would these paktuns change their allegiances.

As usual I was most anxious to get all this nasty fighting business over and done with as soon as possible.

Pando, exalted, a single trembling entity on the point of explosion, took some time before he set the steel-bokkertu in motion. By then, more men and women had died earning their hire.

Fragments of poetry echoed along in my skull; and I am sure, Kregen being Kregen, many a savage fighting warrior — female or male — kept up a ragged rhythm of swing and strike as the stanzas seethed in their brains. Poetry and death — ever the two are twinned...

“Do not, my heart, get your fool self killed at the last moment—”

“I shall not hang back in dishonor, you great dear buffoon—”

Quendur and Lisa, striking blow for blow, were at their accustomed arguments.

Poor Larghos the Flatch watched them in hopeless envy.

The Divine Lady of Belschutz entered the conversation from time to time, fruitily.

Rondas the Bold wished to take out some repayment for his wound. Nath Kemchug, like any Chulik, sowed death in his wake. As usual when divorced from their beloved varters, Wilma the Shot and Alwim the Eye shot in their bows with deft precision. Naghan the Pellendur, recently appointed shal-cadade,
[iv]

led his Fristle guards with our onslaught. The cadade, Framco the Tranzer, had been assigned the secret entrance and this, I felt, was as much because Pando wished to keep an eye on Twayne Gullik. Mantig the Screw distinguished himself during that fight. Jespar the Scundle was not with us — he had thankfully returned to his own people.

“I,” said Dayra to me as we cleared one of the ornate chambers leading onto the hallway below the grand staircase, “abhor killing people unnecessarily. Why doesn’t this young onker Pando negotiate? We have clearly won. Is there no one with enough authority over him to make him see sense and initiate the steel-bokkertu with the surviving paktuns?”

Dayra halted stubbornly at the entrance to the chamber and stared malevolently out onto the hall where the foot of the grand staircase swept out into a recurve. Statues decorated every other tread of the staircase, and the high balcony above was just visible from where we stood. She shook her head. “The get onker!”

“We keep referring to Pando as young Pando,” I said, and I, too, stopped beside the entrance and looked out onto the last dying flickers of the combat. “But he is not so young these days. Like any hot-blooded lord he is difficult to control. And, it is perfectly clear, he will not desist from this fight until Murgon—”

“Ah! Malignant, then—”

“Not really.” I’d given Dayra most of my past history in connection with Pando and his mother, Tilda the Fair, Tilda of the Many Veils. She did understand, of course; but like me the sight of wanton slaughter filled her with revulsion.

The stink of spilled blood, the feel of sweat in the air, the harshness of all this, gave us pause, there in the doorway of the hall with the grand staircase lofting above.

Dayra had not worn her Claw in this fight.

A Sister of the Rose normally keeps her Claw in its bronze or silver-bound balass box, secret. But that box would be an awkward encumbrance to a girl in a fight before she dons the Claw, and so usually the talons are secreted in a leather and canvas bag which can be slung on her back out of the way. These bags normally are quite plain, perhaps with a row of fancy red stitching to distinguish them one from another. The Claw itself will have each separate tooth masked by a sheath of ivory or bone, or perhaps of wood. Now, through the insights afforded me by the Everoinye, I happened to know that these sacks are called jikvarpams.

In the fight Dayra had used thraxter and shield.

She had also been armored.

I own I’d raised my voice a trifle when we’d been equipping ourselves before the off. I’d been insistent.

She’d said, with a toss of her head, words more or less to the effect that if I wanted to make a scene then she’d damned well wear armor, and carry a shield. I’d replied that I’d make more than a scene if she got herself killed. We were, you will perceive, improving in our relationship.

Now she reached around and fretfully began to pluck at the jikvarpam on her back, the blood from her thraxter staining the canvas.

“Where is Pando, or Murgon? By Vox! I need a wet!”

“By who?”

She glared at me.

“By Chusto, then, you — you—”

Dayra, like all my children, knew how to use a sword and shield with superb skill, having been trained by Balass the Hawk. She slid the shield off her left arm, and dumped it against the doorjamb. She looked pretty ferocious, I can tell you.