Scorpio Invasion (16 page)

Catching sight of Farantino I noticed he was not singing. His lips were clamped tightly shut. The expression on his face reaffirmed my decision not to turn my back on the Khibil.

Our camp was a simple affair. We regarded the forest as home. Patrols and sentries at all times kept watch. Only twice had parties of Shanks attempted to penetrate to any depth in the forest. On the first occasion they had stumbled about for half an afternoon, found nothing, and cleared off.

The second occasion, apart from being more effective, was saddened for us by the cause of that improved performance. Human slaves, chained up like dogs, led the hunting party of Shanks. Again, they found nothing. We watched from concealment and, I confess it, I had the most extraordinary difficulty in preventing myself from rushing into a brawling hand-to-hand melee with these damned Fish Heads. We might obtain a minuscule initial advantage from a surprise attack; in a straight hand-to-hand the Shanks would murder my little band of amateurs.

So, as you can see, the old Dray Prescot might well have gone roaring into action shouting “Hai Jikai!” and got all his new friends killed.

All the same — all the same, by Zair! — I made up my mind that the next time the Opaz-forsaken Shanks ventured in here we’d shaft ’em and play ’em and torment ’em and finally, I hoped, finish ’em.

That must be for the future. As of now we marched into camp singing and looking forward to a fine fish supper.

Not that, as you know, I like fish. Still, there are some fish that are splendid: kippers and sardines, for example. The Schtarkins’ convoy contained boxes of stock fish. I made a face and Fan-Si smiled, mockingly.

In the event I made do with the remnant of last night’s supper and sat with my back up against a tree, brooding. This life was very fine and free and romantic. Here we were, a bunch of outlaws in the forest, living on what we could shoot or steal, annoying the Shank masters. And all this was petty, was trivial, was not encompassing enough. Although, if you have a trivial fight and get a shaft or a blade through your guts...

No. By the Divine Lady of Belschutz and the corn on her left big toe! The cities beckoned. It would take me a month of Sundays to create a full-scale army with the materials to hand using these methods.

The Kov and Kovneva of Borrakesh could be left in charge here. They could expand this gang using my methods. I’d have to travel on. There were a couple of people I’d like to take with me, Larghos the Throstle for one and Fan-Si for a second and Moglin the Flatch for the third.

They’d help me train up a new gang. That made me remember to shout at Fan-Si as she went loping by, very seductive, wearing her usual silk shirt and breechclout. She saw me and smiled and came over.

“Well, Prince Chaadur?”

“I meant to tell you, young lady. What happened to your armor today?”

She grimaced and twirled her tail. “Oh, you know I cannot abide being shut up in a leather box!”

“Next time we go into action you will wear your armor, like it or not.”

Her tail twinkled down between her legs. “It’s all stuffy and hot and I can’t move in it! How do you expect me to stick Shanks if I can’t—”

I stood up. “Armor is for your protection. I agree it may slow you down; but you exaggerate.”

She pouted. She was about to say something, something tart, no doubt, when I went on: “You will wear your armor about the camp until I tell you you may take it off. You’ll soon get used to it.”

“That’s not fair! That’s dreadful! And you a prince!”

There were so many cheap answers flooding into my head that I had to turn away. I managed to say: “Dismiss!” and hurried across to the fires where the kov and kovneva were just finishing up their fish.

Without preamble, I said: “The time has come for you to take over. You know by now what must be done.”

“But, prince — where will you go?”

“Where there are Shanks to fight.”

They shook their heads. “They’re all about.”

“And you will deal with those in this section.” I went on to tell them I would like to take Larghos, Fan-Si and Moglin and they couldn’t very well refuse a prince, could they?

The important fact here was that I’d impressed them that I was a prince but that my real name was different from Chaadur. They accepted this with all the vivid old romances ringing in their skulls, princes in disguise traveling their kingdoms. Although, to be sure, they knew I was not of the Tarankarese ruling class, for I was apim and not riffim.

Nath and Layla, although apim, had ancient rights to their lands and titles, dating back before the riffim invasion and takeover. They had survived through the skill, cunning and groveling of their ancestors. There was nothing of that kind possible now the Shanks were the overlords.

Thinking of the peoples of other lands I knew, I had the strongest suspicions that my folk of Vallia, or Djanduin, or Strombor, would not so easily accept a fellow who came roaring in ordering about and claiming to be a prince. No, I fancy they’d be somewhat less credulous. But, then, these people had been lost, deprived of just about everything except their lives, not really knowing what to do and expressing their frustrations by quarrelling among themselves. They’d needed a prince, by Krun!

I found Moglin the Flatch painstakingly pulling an arrow through a straightener. Quality shafts were hard to come by in the greenwood; we could build our own and fletch them, we couldn’t build arrows to professional quality. I thought of Master Twang and his spritely daughters, and sighed.

“Hai, Moglin!” I said, all jovial.

He replied politely, still working on his arrow. I told him that if he wished he might accompany me, for I had other gangs to train up.

He left off work and brushed up his whiskers, which were very fine. Unlike a Pachak or a Kildoi he had no tail hand. Although Katakis, who were generally detested as Slavemasters, habitually strapped six inches of daggered steel to their tails, Fristles seldom did so. This Moglin the Flatch had been known to strap a dagger to his tail.

Cautiously, he said: “I am honored, prince. Ah — is Fan-Si—?”

“Yes. I could not ask you to come with me if that meant leaving Fan-Si here. Oh, yes, she’s coming along with us. Larghos the Throstle is going, and you all have dispensation from the kov.”

“Then right gladly, prince. I own I wish to do unpleasant things to these Shanks. By Numi Hyrjiv the Splendid! They took Fardo the Splitter away, and he was my best friend and brother to Fan-Si.” Moglin’s cat face screwed up in an access of venom. His fur was a deep russet brown, and he was built like an archer, with shoulders almost as broad as mine.

“And, Moglin, tell your Fan-Si to wear armor next time we fight.”

“Quidang, prince. I agree with you. But she is willful and headstrong. She laughs and scorns—”

“I know, I know. Well, by Chozputz! She’ll just have to, that’s all!”

“Quidang!”

I went off to tell Larghos the Throstle about our proposed trip. He was sitting on a log singing, half to himself, a little ditty about the farmer who paid ten gold pieces for a slave and married her and demanded the gold back from her owner as her dowry. This song is known as the have it and eat it song. It’s title, in the obscure way of Kregen humor, is ‘The Miscil Return’d’.

Larghos jumped at the chance to go adventuring, and, as he said in his modulated voice, “To even up the score a little.”

His strong brown hands went methodically on as he spoke polishing up his strangdja, that feared and famous polearm of Chem with its steel holly-leaf shaped head. “Oh, yes, prince. I long to swing my Stinja down on their fishy heads.”

As you know it has not been my habit to give names to my weapons. As I have remarked, a true warrior must fight with whatever comes to hand. If he relies on one favorite weapon, he is bound to come unstuck one day. Anyway, I always seemed to be acquiring and losing weapons and a name one day would be a memory the next. All, that is, apart from the Savanti swords and the great Krozair longswords.

So, everything was arranged. The next day scouts reported in that the Shanks had sent a considerable force up the road. There were carts in the procession, so maybe the fort had got their stock fish at last. All we had done was inconvenience the Shanks for a day.

That meant I had to harangue the gang with some vehemence. I used the fustian to good purpose, telling them they must think of a huge wild animal being stung by a multitude of bees. I instanced the case of the xichun and the tormenting little birds. I exhorted them to continue with pinpricks, for as the gangs grew so the pressure would grow. Their next objective, I told them, feeling the doubt in my heart, was to capture or destroy the local fort.

They waxed enthusiastic enough. Truth to tell I felt like a traitor at leaving them. Still, my mission was not to become embroiled in local guerilla operations, attractive though they undoubtedly were. My job was to find out about the Shanks and choose the weakest spot to strike.

I’d approached this gang knowing the risks I ran. What of the risks of the future when I approached a city?

“I’ll send word,” I promised. “When the day dawns, you will know.”

The Kov and Kovneva of Borrakesh stood with the combined gang shouting the remberees as we four trudged off along the forest trail. We would take a circuitous route. We called back the remberees, and then the forest closed about us.

In that moment, my chief thought was one of great delight and anticipation at the expected reactions of my new comrades to the airboat. By Vox! They’d be far worse than Rollo ever had been.

And as for that young scamp, was he doing what he ought to be doing, or was he contriving ways and means of following me into the Shank-infested perils of Tarankar? Then Fan-Si halted so that Moglin bumped into her.

“Quiet! There is someone ahead, lying in ambush. See!” She pointed with her free hand. “There, a glint of steel in the undergrowth!”

“That,” I said, with a stupid and rather comical attempt at princely arrogance, “will be that confounded Khibil Farantino, may the True Trog rot him.”

“There is more than one,” observed Larghos.

“True,” I conceded in your true princely condescending way. “The rast will have cajoled his friends into helping him. He fancies his honor has been slighted. The zigging great onker!” I finished, somewhat peevishly.

We slowed down and finally stopped. My three new comrades waited to see what this braggart prince would do.

I stepped forward.

I shouted. I used the old foretop hailing voice and I put spite and venom into my words.

“Come out, you crawling creeping horror! Come on, come on. Stand up! Step out! Let’s see you!”

The bushes swayed and metal clinked against metal. Larghos’s bow lifted, a lethal arc, his strangdja slung over the other shoulder. Moglin’s bow was held slightly down, the arrow at half draw, in that easy practiced grip of your handsome Bowman of Loh. I yelled again.

“Come on, come on! My patience is nearly exhausted.”

Now the bushes were agitated. Four men and two women stepped out onto the trail. Not one was Farantino. I felt amusement at my antics. These people were roughly dressed, almost in rags. They carried an assemblage of rusty weapons, one fellow with a strangdja with a broken shaft. They had rags tied around their feet. They were two apims, two Thankos and two Brokelsh. In short, they were a miserable looking bunch.

“Why, you great pack of famblys!” I stormed at them. “So you were going to waylay us from a bush? And would you have killed us?”

“No, master, no!” cried the Brokelsh woman, her hair wound about her waist. “We have not eaten for many days—”

I gave them my hard stare and they flinched back. I told them we were on a journey and could spare no food. They should walk boldly into the camp and declare themselves. I piled on the agony. I gave them that kind of speech I had rehearsed before, designed to open their eyes to the opportunities of the future. I gave them the old patriotic fustian. Also, I told them I was called Prince Chaadur, that this was not my real name, and that on the great day when we had removed the last of the Shanks they would know my name.

All this impressed them.

Whilst they would not change from frightened and hungry fugitives to brave bold guerillas in a twinkling, the process had begun.

So, therefore, much heartened, I bid them remberee and led my three companions forward.

Fan-Si tripped alongside and, very cheekily, said: “If that had been the Khibil he would not have stepped out.”

“Possibly.”

“You roared—”

“Fan-Si!” exclaimed Moglin, most uneasy.

“Well, Moggers, he did! Like a pregnant Quoffa!”

“Fan-Si!”

And I laughed.

We approached the bushes where I’d hidden the voller. I said: “Treat these bushes as possibly concealing an enemy force. Quiet, now.”

We’d taken most of the day to march here from the camp and now evening shadows were falling across the land. I felt the airboat to be safely hidden; there was always the chance a Shank patrol had spotted it. Then they’d do what any commander would do: they’d leave the voller there and keep watch, ready to jump on anybody trying to reach her.

We moved forward cautiously. They kept still as I’d trained them, and moved rapidly when they did move. From bush to bush we went forward.

When the voller’s hull came in sight, just her prow protruding past a bush ahead, I stopped. I waited. I listened. After a suitable time, with the shadows dropping deeper and deeper, all jade and ruby, I inched forward.

Covered by three bows I reached the voller. Nothing stirred. It took only a few moments to ensure no one kept watch. The voller was clean.

Fan-Si, Moglin the Flatch and Larghos the Throstle stood in a line and stared at the airboat, their mouths hanging open.

Observing the fantamyrrh, I stepped aboard.

“Come along, come along. Get aboard.”

“But—”

“Don’t lollygag about down there!”

“This is a Shank bird-contraption! We can’t—”

“This is an airboat and it belongs to me, for the moment. Now if you want any supper, step aboard. Otherwise I’ll fly off without you.”