The suns of Scorpio (23 page)

But a stricture had been laid on me.

Bare heads and Sheemiff mingled in my mind. I saw myself once more down by the muddy, bloody banks of the river, where the piles of vosk skulls lay hard and obstinate in the sun. “Old vosk skull!”

Zolta would call Nath. Yes.

“Sheemiff!” I called. She ran to me eagerly, her slit eyes lighting up, her golden fur sleek and brushed.

“What does my Jikai desire?”

When I told her she looked surprised and disappointed, but she ran off willingly enough. There were some men who swore that a Fristle virgin knew more about the arts of love than a temple maiden from Loh. I wouldn’t know about that — then — and dismissed the idea. When she returned, Holly, Genal, Pugnarses, and Bolan, who had dismissed the phalanx, with some of the other leaders, were talking about all the plans we were maturing. Sheemiff walked up to me in the center of the group and held out the vosk skull on her hands.

The uproar around me, as you may imagine, was comical in the still center of the tragic situation brewing. Vosk skulls! What had they to do with the glorious revolution?

I showed those slaves and workers of Magdag just what the skull of the vosk did have to do for us. I lifted it high in the air. Then, having seen that Sheemiff had washed it thoroughly in the river, and cleaned it, and dried it, I brought it down over my head. I felt the weight come on my own skull. I stared out through those two blank orbits. The nose bone joined them and projected down like a nosepiece of a helmet.

“The overlords call us vosks!” I shouted. “They call us fools and mangy cramphs, and calsanys — and vosks — stupid, obstinate vosks. Very well. The vosk has a skull of a thickness, my friends. Of a redoubtable thickness, as everyone knows, for the piles of skulls by the river attest this and the broken grindstones in the bone mills. So! We take on with pride all the stubborn thickheadedness of the vosk!” I banged the flat of my long sword against the skull. “We are the vosk-helmets, my friends! Vosk-helmets who will smash into the green halls of Magdag and destroy every last overlord!”

They took it very well. Even as some debated and others ran to the river for their own skull-helmets, I felt the ringing in my head. These vosk-helmets would have to be well-padded, with grass and rags and moss.

We set up a vosk skull on a rock and took turns in smashing at it with a variety of weapons. Even I, who had surmised that nature would take care of so stubborn and stupid a creature as the vosk, was surprised at the resistance offered by the skulls. I remembered when we had let loose the vosks in the Marble Quarries of Zenicce — they had been Segesthan vosks, larger than these of the inner sea. These vosk skulls fitted a man’s head like a tailored helmet, and they thrust two upcurving horns forward, arrogant now that all the flesh and skin had been stripped away.

Holly grabbed my arm.

“Oh, Stylor — you are clever! They will save many a poor man’s life—”

Genal and Pugnarses looked on.

I said: “We are downtrodden, Holly, like the vosk, considered stupid. So we take as our badge of pride the old vosk skull; we are the Vosk-Helmets! From the lowly comes forth the victory.”

The Prophet was standing nearby and I had not been able to resist the magniloquence. Afterward, I felt ridiculous. But the people responded, as they do, and the work went on. Most of the crossbows were fashioned with a bow of horn and wood; some we made of steel. But quantity, for the moment, had to take priority over quality. I put the steel bows into a corps and made sure the best shots were assigned there. We colored our vosk-helmets yellow, purloining the paint from the paint masters on the great friezes. I gave colored scraps of cloth as badges of rank. We drilled. Gradually we were turning into an army.

And all the time the slaves and workers continued their labors on the great halls. Now work was concentrated on just finishing the nearest-completed hall. It was necessary, as I understood, that at least one new hall be finished for this time of the Great Death. It took season after season to complete a hall, of course, within the complex of the massive buildings that could have swallowed all the pyramids at a gulp.

Having discussed the question of overlord spies among us, I had been reassured by my group leaders. We could carry on our work within the complexes of the warrens and lookouts would warn us of any onslaught from the overlords. Of spies, the slaves had experience. A man, acting the slave, acts differently from one who had felt old snake on his naked back, or so the men said. I was not so sure, but in this had to trust those on the spot.

I was aware that despite their willingness to drill and march the slaves were irked by the enforced discipline. Their ideas of rebellion consisted of snatching up a sword and a torch and running like crazy through the streets. Clearly, they became more difficult to hold in check as the time for the Great Death approached. It was also apparent that Pugnarses and Genal were irked. They had drawn closer together of late, and this pleased me. They were often in long, involved, passionate discussions, which would break up as soon as I appeared. I was glad they were more friendly now than they had seemed to be. Bolan was a tower of strength, his bald head covered by a massive yellow-painted vosk skull. He was manipulating the pikemen into a force I considered might just have a chance against the overlord cavalry. Just a chance, before they were cut to pieces, but that single chance would be all we would have. Although I had felt it desirous not to use either red or green as colors for the slave army — yellow and blue and black were the symbols and badges we used — the aspect of a religious war was fading. I did not see this clearly then. Zair forgive me — I actually thought I was extraordinarily clever in thus turning the Grodno-worshiping workers against their Grodno-worshiping masters. As the majority of the slaves were for Zair I had even further vague and nebulous plans I could not even acknowledge to myself, and as a consequence I completely overlooked the character of class war that had taken over. I was for Sanurkazz and Zair and the Krozairs of Zy. In that, I failed. I should have taken the longer view. . . One night, returning after a crossbow session with the sextets handling the steel bows, I halted on the threshold of the hovel. Genal was grasping Holly in his arms, pushing the shush-chiff she wore down over her shoulders, his lips seeking her soft flesh. Why she should wear a shush-chiff at this time I did not know, but apparently it had inflamed Genal. Holly was gasping.

“No, no, Genal! Leave off! Please—”

“But I love you, Holly! You know that — you’ve always known it. I’ll do anything, anything at all, for you, Holly—”

“You’re tearing my shush-chiff!”

Genal’s voice broke into an impassioned sob. “And was it for Pugnarses—”

“No — no! How can you say it! I don’t love either of you!”

I made a noise outside, and shuffled and dropped my long sword — a thing a warrior only does if he is troubled or scheming or dead — and then went in. We all acted as though nothing had happened. I am sure they did not know I had eavesdropped on their pitiful little scene. If I had taken more notice. . . But I considered this affair none of my business. They were both adult; they should be able to handle their amorous problems like adults. Perhaps I was too concerned over trivia like steel crossbows instead of looking at the springs of motivation of those around me, on whom the success of the revolution would depend.

We were all waiting now with a heightened expectation, for daily the green sun Genodras dropped lower and lower toward the red sun Zim, and the time of the Great Death was at hand. Each day brought the two closer together with an almost visible rate of closing. The moment Genodras dropped out of sight behind Zim would be the time we would rise. The workers had no care, now, in their passion, that they, too, were thought to own allegiance to Grodno. For them the seasons of oppression at last were to be broken. The whip and the chain were to be banished. No superstition would prevent that.

On what we all knew was the last night, Holly came to me. She had donned her shush-chiff, and oiled her body and hair, and she looked very delectable. She laughed at me in her own seemingly modest way, and all the blood surged into her innocent face.

“Why, Holly,” I said rashly. “You look charming.”

“Is that all, Stylor? Just — charming?”

The hovel did not seem to stink quite so badly in the sputtering, fluttering light of the candle. Genal and Pugnarses were out somewhere. I knew we were making last-minute attempts to create a line of underground communication with the slaves in the dock areas, where the bagnios would provide stalwart fighting-men once the initial attack had begun.

I felt uneasy and put that down to Holly’s presence.

A foot scraped at the door, but Holly did not hear, for she came to me, pouting, forcing herself to declare something that her nature made of tremendous difficulty and tremendous significance for her. I moved away, as though casually. I had no desire for Genal or Pugnarses — or Bolan, for that matter —

to stand in the role of eavesdropper on me as I had on Genal and Holly.

“Oh, Stylor — why are you so blind?”

Her gentle birdlike movements made me step back again, away from the bed where my mail coat and my long sword were hidden beneath the straw, but with the hilt of the long sword ready to instant hand.

“It will soon be time, Holly,” I said.

“Time for war, yes, Stylor. But is war all that obsesses you?”

“I should hope not!” I said.

I looked at her, at her bright eyes, the soft and supple figure beneath the shush-chiff, and the men who entered almost had me. They wore the slave gray, but they had fierce faces of overlords with the down-drooping Mongol moustaches, and they carried swords in their hands. There were four who had wrapped gray cloths about their faces so that only their eyes showed. My lunge for the long sword was made — I was on my way when the first arrow thunked into the wood

— and I did not stop then. I whirled with the long sword — and froze.

“That is better, cramph.” The overlord sneered the words.

The bent bow, the nocked arrow, the barbed head — they did not stop me, for the Krozairs make religious sport of striking flying arrows from the air with their swords. No — the arrow aimed directly at the heart of Holly, who shrank back, her hands to her mouth, her eyes enormous, choked with horror. I dropped the long sword, kicked it under the straw. They took me then, without a struggle, and all the time that merciless arrow remained pointing at Holly’s heart.

“A Krozair! You — the Lord of Strombor!”

I have sojourned for a spell in many prisons in my long life and the one beneath the colossal Magdag Hall na Priags was no worse than most and a lot better than some.

Stripped naked, spread-eagled out against a damp wall, my wrists and ankles clamped in rusty iron rings, chains dangling infuriatingly from the iron hoop about my waist, I waited in the half-darkness partly lit by a ruddy radiance streaming in through the iron-barred grille. All thought of the rebellion had fled from my mind. This was not because I despaired, but because I had seen a jumbled pile of my group commanders outside my hovel, dead, hideously dead. Bolan, I had seen, running shrieking into the warrens, his bald head glistening in the streaming radiance of the fourth moon, She of the Veils, and with the arrow striking through his left shoulder. All revolt, surely, would be crushed when the green sun reappeared.

The jailers took me up to judgment. They were men, for no half-human, half-beast mercenaries were allowed in the sacred halls of Magdag during the time of the Great Death and the Great Birth. Overlords of the second class, they were of a kind with that Wengard who had so viciously ordered me a touch of old snake.

The room into which I was conducted — pushed and shoved and pummeled — was walled and roofed in uncut stone. A sturm-wood table crossed an angle. Behind this the guard commander sat, all in mail, his long sword at his side. He stroked that ugly drooping Magdag moustache as he spoke.

“You will tell us of the final plans for the rebellion, rast. Otherwise you will die unpleasantly.”

I suppose he saw that this did not convince me; he knew as well as I that they would kill me out of hand. In this, as you shall hear, I was wrong.

“We know of your schemes, you whom the slaves call Stylor. We have samples of your pitiful slave-made weapons. But we would be more exact.”

They had been incautious enough to leave me with a bight of chain between my ankles. The chains around my bound wrists would, of course, serve as a weapon. I did not bother to kick the guards next to me. I went straight over the table, wrapped my wrist-chains around the guard commander’s neck, and hauled back.

“I will leave you enough air to tell these cramphs what to do,” I said, in his ear, low and venomous. He gobbled out a shrieked order to his men to stay back. Impasse.

The door opened and Glycas walked in.

He was speaking in his abrupt, authoritarian way before he was fairly through the opening.

“Send for the prisoner, Stylor. There is a mystery about this slave I would—” Then he saw me. His breath hissed in his throat. His long sword flashed clear of his scabbard.

“I shall cut you down, slave, whether you strangle that miserable guard commander or not.” He laughed, his silky, snakelike laugh. “Perhaps I will have him strangled, anyway, for allowing you this much effrontery.” He glared around at the paralyzed jailers. “Seize him!”

The death of this Magdag overlord of the second class would benefit no one. I let him go, regretfully, to be sure.

My brown hair had grown long, my trim moustache and beard a trifle shaggy, I was filthy, grimed and mucky with sweat. I stood clear before the table. Glycas kept his sword pointed.

“I am Stylor,” I said.

“Your friends have told me a great deal. But they know little of you, slave. You will tell me all I want to know.”

“Like, perhaps, where I came from? Where I vanished to? Like, perchance, that you are a foul green-scummed risslaca, Glycas?”