Free Fires of Scorpio by Alan Burt Akers

grasping what was going on. If I leaped now — but Ashti squirmed and kicked and yelled, and the Rapa clouted her on the bottom. At this she let out an almighty yell and almost struggled free.
    He took a fresh grip on her, and turned her so that her head lay inside the crook of his arm.
    “What do you know of—?” said the apim.
    “Lem must be witless to employ loons like you,” I said, and the snap in my voice lashed at them. “If you have harmed the children or the lady — or if you harm that child — you are all dead men.”
    The Brokelsh looked past me. I did not turn. I’d left three dead men there, and heard no one else.
    “Where are Halki, and Nath?” he said.
    Things were just beginning to get out of hand. If I did not leap soon I would be too late. Yet a single slash and Pompino’s lady would be dead, and Ashti too. I looked at these four, and I held the thraxter at what must appear a negligent angle. I said, “Which question do you wish me to answer first?”
    This puzzled them. While it was clear they were not over-bright, they were deadly dangerous. I moved forward a few paces, and I managed to summon a grimace that might pass for a smile. “Pompino, or Halki and Nath?”
    The apim said, suddenly, high, screeching: “He is not one of us! Slay him!”
    So they tried.
    There were four of them. An apim, a Brokelsh, a Rapa, and the other fellow.
    The big apim, all whiskers and scar, remained with the lady Scaura Pompina. The Rapa held Ashti. That left the Brokelsh and the other fellow to shriek and leap at me.
    If I give the impression these lay brothers of Lem the Silver Leem were not over-bright, I do them no injustice.
    Hard, they were, brutal and rapacious. Serving their masters who were the initiates of the cult of the Silver Leem, they aspired to no more than to bash a few skulls, skewer through between a few ribs, take a few purses of gold, get drunk a few times. They bristled and snarled and hurled themselves at me.
    Just the two of them — the Brokelsh and the other fellow.
    Descriptions of fights are not boring if you consider the circumstances. In this case, if I dealt with these two in too rapid and summary a fashion, the big apim might just slit the lady Scaura’s throat before joining the fight. And the Rapa would have no compunction over Ashti, none whatsoever...
    The whole affair had to be balanced on a pivot of exceeding smallness.
    So, of course, being more than a trifle warm, I hit the other fellow on the nose. I hit him hard. His nose opened up like one of those gorgeous scarlet and orange and blue flowers of Balintol. He tried to blubber through his mouth, which was of a large, squarish, full character, highly purple in color — even before I hit him. His eyes were most prominent and affixed somewhat high on his face, so that his cranium partook of a very shallow dish. I left that alone. I didn’t want to risk my knuckles on bone of that evident sharpness. The frills stuck up around the top of his head like the defenses of a dinosaur, or the frilled fins of a fish. As he carried on blubbering, I ducked away from the Brokelsh’s blow.
    The thraxter in my right hand clicked across. I had, of course, struck the other fellow with a left. The Brokelsh looked for me where he expected to see me, and I wasn’t there. Well, of course I wasn’t. Who wanted to hang about when swords whickered — as they say — for your guts? I gave the surprised Brokelsh a cheerful kick up his bristly Brokelsh rear and launched myself for the apim and the Rapa.

Chapter seven
    The four terminations of the Lady Scaura Pompina
    From somewhere the sweet smell of squishes wafted into the room. The taste twined in the warm air. For a single and scarlet moment, I recalled Mefto the Kazzur, who had featured in my life at the same time as Pompino. Mefto the Kazzur, who had bested me in sword fighting.
    The headlong leap left me no time to brood on past misfortunes and mishaps. The apim’s hairy face screwed