Talons of Scorpio (3 page)

Chapter two

The Devil’s Academy

If the famous Watch of Peminswopt of whom Renko the Thief was so scared had chanced by just then and seen a wild bunch of ruffians breaking into what seemed a private house, they would have taken us for reivers, criminals, bandits. That piercing scream proved otherwise.

The little Och woman toppled sideways, unharmed as we crashed past. Pompino dealt with the Chulik in a summary fashion. The man was unready for such a swift and headlong assault, and he went down soundlessly.

We roared on along the passage.

“Down there!” yelled Pompino and we clattered down the blackwood stairs leading off at a right angle at the turn of the corridor. The others whooped after us. A vague orange glow from the edges of a door at the foot of the stairs abruptly bloated into brilliance. The door smashed open as Pompino put his foot to it. We all rushed through. The room beyond held four more Chuliks in iron armor and wearing brown and silver. Their weapons glistened in that orange light.

They did not hesitate. They launched themselves at us in a feral onslaught designed to smash us instantly, with no questions asked. Pompino yelled, Cap’n Murkizon’s axe whistled about, Larghos switched his sword forward. Quendur simply slid down and along the polished floor on his seat and skewered upwards. A nasty trick — dangerous, of course; but then that was Quendur the Ripper, reckless and swashbuckling. I joined them and in a trice the Chulik guards were overpowered.

“They were not guarding that entrance for nothing,” quoth Pompino. His sword indicated the curtained doorway at the far end.

The shrill and agonized scream broke out again, ending in a ghastly bubbling wheeze.

“Hurry! Before we are too late!”

The curtains whisked aside.

Pompino used his sword to open the drapes; what we saw beyond convinced us that swords would have to be used for a grimmer purpose before we were done with this place.

“The Devil’s Academy!” Pompino’s words summed up that scene. The man we had followed was in the act of dressing himself in clothes suitable for what went forward here. His assistants, meek, frightened, pallid men and women, fussed over him, oblivious of our entry. The room’s lamps shed that orange light upon the cages and the basalt slabs, the racks of knives and saws. For a foolish moment I thought we might have stumbled upon a surgeon’s operating room; but I saw no signs of tar barrels, and Kregans do not operate in quite that way. The man in the blood-stained smock over his brown and silver looked up. His fingers ran with blood. The girl child upon the slab would not live, not now. The saw in the man’s fingers was a single bar of crimson.

He shouted: “Who are you?” And then, quickly: “Guards!
Guards
!” For he saw our swords and understood what they meant.

The man we had followed struggled to get either into or out of the smock his attendants fussed with, and he, too, screamed for guards. It was quite clear what was going on. As Pompino said, this was the place where the priests of Lem learned their butcher’s trade.

We were too late to save the child who had screamed and so brought us here; we could try to save the four other children, three girls and a boy, penned in the iron cages against the walls. Their hands and feet were bound, and they wore blindfolds and were gagged. We did not think it was from concern over their feelings that they were thus blindfolded.

The half-dozen or so younger men in the ubiquitous brown and silver standing goggling to one side must be the acolytes, the trainees. Here they were taught the finer arts of sacrifice.

With a shout of pure horrified anger, Pompino threw himself forward. The others followed, yelling. This, I thought, was what the Star Lords wanted us to do, eradicate Lem the Silver Leem, root and branch. I gather that here on this Earth there have been discovered recently something over two hundred sub-atomic particles, including leptons, and things called glues which hold, or appear to hold, quarks together within protons. I’m pretty confident that the Star Lords know of many more sub-atomic particles if there are many more to know. These sacrifices were being divided and sub-divided, like atoms, into sub-atomic, sub-human, particles. If this was Lem’s idea of scientific research, then the Star Lords had our whole allegiance in putting a halt to it. So, nauseated, I dived into the fray, and my prime object was not revenge but to get the four children safely out of it.

The flash of sword flickered in a most particular and sinister fashion in that pervasive orange light. My comrades rushed upon the adherents of the Silver Wonder. I turned toward the cages.

As the clangor of the fight broke out at my back I looked at the cages. The iron bars bulked each with a heavy full roundness that told of strength sufficient to hold not only children. Leems would be kept penned there when required. The bolts were shot home, the locks clumsy and intricate. To one side two angerims gaped upon the scene.

Sharp-toothed are angerims, all hair and ears, and as a race of diffs who are not Homo sapiens they are an untidy, messy lot. Staring at me they backed off, holding their mop and broom up as though they were weapons.

“Just give me the keys,” I said. For the key ring at the taller of the two’s waist spoke eloquently.

“Keep off!” screeched one angerim, his hair sprouting everywhere, half-concealing his brown breechclout.

“Run!” yelped the other.

They threw down the mop and the broom and started to run toward a small door set abaft and to the side of the cages. Opaz alone knew what maze they’d disappear into if they escaped through that exit. I sprinted after them.

In their mad flight they kicked over a metal bucket containing bits and pieces. The floor stained red and slippery. I jumped. They almost reached the door when I realized this was no way to get the keys.

Instantly, I yanked out my old sailor knife, poised, and threw.

The broad blade pierced the thigh of the taller angerim and he toppled over, screeching. His companion did not wait about but simply wrenched open the door and leaped through with a long wailing cry. In a heartbeat I reached the fallen diff, saw that he would live if he reached a needleman in time, and took two things from him — one the key ring and the other my sailor knife.

The noise spurted up as Pompino and his crew sorted out the problem of the Leem Lovers. The third key fitted the lock and the first cage swung open.

The best plan would be to open all the cages first and then to release the bonds and the blindfolds. To do it the other way around would see the first child running screaming every which way, probably to fling himself in the way of a sword.

Each cage opened with its own individual key. A neat touch. Remaining on the clumsy iron ring three keys promised other doors in this place it might be worth the opening. I glanced over my shoulder. The acolytes had either run or been cut down. The two chief butchers, the instructors, must have attempted resistance, for the body of one still clutched in one half-severed hand a broken sword. The other vomited out his life over the corpse of the child.

From the distant end of this unpleasant chamber the guards at last appeared. A group of half a dozen or so Rapas rushed into sight. Predatory, beaked and feathered, their vulturine features convulsed with killing fury, the Rapas hurled themselves at Pompino and his men. No doubt they intended to avenge their paymasters.

Cap’n Murkizon let his booming roar lift over the noise.

“Hit ’em, knock ’em down and tromple all over ’em!”

This he proceeded to do with great gusto.

Confident that all was well, I returned my attention to the cages and the children.

If you wonder why I, Dray Prescot, whom my companions knew only as Jak, did not roar into a knock-down drag-out fight, but, instead, opened cages, then you profoundly misunderstand my nature. A fight is a fight; there have always, it seems, been fights and, no doubt in the nature of man and woman’s inclinations, there always will be fights. That does not mean a fellow has to hurl himself headlong into every one that comes along if there are more important tasks at hand.

Like now.

Freeing the children was easy; calming them down was an enormous task.

Only two were apim, Homo sapiens, like me. One girl was a Fristle Fifi, sleek and charming and graceful in her feline way, her fur a glorious honey-colored softness. The lad was a Brokelsh already with his coarse black body hair abristling everywhere, quite unlike the swagging growths fringing an angerim.

I’d half a mind to keep their ankles hobbled up; but after I’d spoken to them in a manner more brusque than I really cared for, they quieted. Their eyes, round and glistening, regarded me as though I was a fabled devil from Gundarlo or Cottmer’s Caverns. I tried to smile for them.

“You will all go home to your parents—” And, of course, that was the wrong thing to say. At that, they began to cry. The picture was obvious and ugly enough. So, to repair the damage, I told them that as soon as the nasty men had been dealt with we would find a new home with many sweets — in fact, I said, embroidering, “We will find you a home right next door to a Banje shop!”

A Rapa blundered past with half his beak missing and his feathers bedabbled a brighter color than their usual green-gray. I merely watched him as he struggled to reach one of the other doors in this place, for the Devil’s Academy was well-provided with exits. Larghos the Flatch, sweeping his sword in a slashing cut very suitable for a Bowman to use, helped the Rapa on his way. I held the little Fristle Fifi’s hand, and the other children clustered around. Their eyes remained large and round and glistening.

The noise quieted. The stink of spilled blood rasped in the close atmosphere. Pompino came over, looking as though he was halfway through a chore.

“Fire, Jak,” he said. “Now we burn the accursed place.”

“And hope the temple is handy.”

“Too right, very handy, to be consumed also.”

Larghos said: “That Rapa — he must be dying; but he dodged off. He could raise the alarm.”

“Then settle him, lad, settle him!” boomed Cap’n Murkizon. “By the nit-infested armpits of the Divine Lady of Belschutz! Don’t waste your sympathy on these cramphs!”

Larghos ran off, swirling his sword. Murkizon trundled along after. They were forming a right partnership, that pair.

Quendur the Ripper said: “I am glad Lisa the Empoin is not here to witness this.” He shook his head, raffish, reckless yet trying to reform.

“If she had been here,” Pompino told the ex-pirate, “she would have been more merciless than we mere men.”

“Oh, aye. That is sooth.”

I cocked an eye at Pompino. The Khibil brushed up his reddish whiskers. No doubt he was thinking of his wife, who nourished ideas above her station, and with whom Pompino no longer got on. A startling confirmation — a re-affirmation — in the coincidence of the actions of Pompino’s wife after a fight and what next occurred, a confirmation only that human nature is human nature, gave me a feeling of helplessness in the face of that very same human nature. Cap’n Murkizon returned to the chamber yelling with merriment. He fairly golloped out his glee.

Following him walked Larghos the Flatch, his head bent a little to the side and over the sleek dark head of a naked girl who walked close to him. We all stared.

“A cloak!” bellowed Murkizon. “To cover the Lady Nalfi!”

Quendur leaped to one of the less distorted bodies and whipped off the brown tunic. The silver hem was only lightly bespattered. He took the garment across, saying: “Until we can find something better for the Lady Nalfi.”

Larghos the Flatch took the tunic from Quendur. I noticed the officious way in which he acted, taking the tunic, fussing, handing it to the girl. She was in the first flush of womanhood, firm and rosy, with bright eyes in which a pain easily understood clouded the blueness. She lifted her arms and slipped the tunic on, shivering.

“Thank you, Jikai,” she said in a small voice, speaking to Larghos. He was acting as though he’d received a thirty-two pound roundshot betwixt wind and water, so we all knew his business was done for.

“The Rapa?” said Pompino, brushing aside what went forward, anxious to get on with the purpose.

“He led me to the Lady Nalfi,” said Larghos. He spoke through lips stiff with some emotion we again envisaged as being all too easy to understand. “I cut him down. And a rast of a Chulik tried to bargain with us over the Lady Nalfi—”

“Standing holding her!” roared Murkizon. “But she didn’t stay held long.”

“She just took his dagger from his belt and slit his throat.” Larghos gazed fondly at Nalfi. “A brave act for a naked girl in so perilous a position.”

She lowered her eyelids and leaned against Larghos.

“I — I had to.”

“Do not think of it, my lady, if it pains you—”

“No, no. It is not that. Just—”

Pompino burst over all this. “Find combustibles. Pile them up. Let us burn the place down and leave, for, by Horato the Potent, the stench is getting down my gullet!”

As we busied ourselves over this task, I reflected that the adherents of Lem the Silver Leem hired mercenaries of a reasonably high quality. Also, while it is said that Chuliks and Rapas are hereditary enemies, this is not strictly and invariably true. Of course, some Chuliks and some Rapas are always at one another’s throats, just as there are misguided apims who are hereditary enemies — here on this Earth just as much as Kregen, more’s the pity. But an employer will hire on mercenaries from many different races, and they will serve alongside one another for pay, and not quarrel overmuch. This system, as I have indicated, works to the employer’s advantage in that there is less likelihood of plots against him or her from the ranks of the paktuns taking pay.

The combustibles were set, the children and the Lady Nalfi drew away to a safe distance, and Pompino personally set the first flame.

We had seen no sign of the Brukaj slave who waited on the man we had followed here, and I, for one, could entertain a hope that he had escaped. Slaves are controlled, and do not always believe what their masters or mistresses believe.