Free Prince of Scorpio by Alan Burt Akers Page A

him.
    “You’d best rest easy, dom. You’ve had a tidy whack.”
    He drew himself up, although still clutching my arm for support. Blood had dried along the clean-shaven upper edge of his beard, frozen, glittering coldly.
    “I am Naghan Furtway, Kov of Falinur, and this is my nephew, Jenbar. You address me as Kov, and my nephew as Tyr. Is that understood?”
    I held him and I looked into his eyes. I knew those eyes of old, I had seen their like many times in the faces of men accustomed to absolute power. Corrupt, sadistic, merciless, yes; but the eyes of men accustomed to moving the strings of this world, as they manipulate those of Earth. The friendly name of dom — the nearest equivalent in English is mate, and in American, pal — had affronted him.
    It was necessary to put our relationship on its proper footing instantly, and now I cursed that my stay on Earth had loosened my tongue. For these men were Vallians, and I had given them my real name. I should have remained Drak, Strom of Valka. So I simply said: “Very good, Kov. We must collect what things are necessary and travel as far downslope as is possible before nightfall.”
    He grunted. “Quite so.” He turned to his nephew. “Jenbar — do you feel fit enough to walk?”
    “I do not!” Jenbar spat out, with a curse.
    Naghan Furtway, Kov of Falinur, merely looked at the young man, and then pushed past back into the shattered cabin. I had buried the naked body of the man I had stripped, and if Furtway bothered to notice he probably assumed the disappearance had been caused by the unfortunate man being flung out as the flier crashed. He began taking ponsho skins from the dead bodies.
    Jenbar studied me.
    “Koter Prescot,” he said, at last, and his voice betrayed his weakness. “I ask you to pardon my ill-temper. But I think you will understand it when you see our condition, and good men dead. I thank you for your assistance. I will try to walk bravely.”
    I warmed to him then, responding to his frankness. I, too, would have been in a filthy temper had my airboat crashed in these surroundings.
    In truth, our surroundings were unpleasant in the extreme, and if we were caught out here by nightfall, desperately dangerous. The airboat might provide some shelter, and I fancied we might manage a fire with tree wood, but I preferred to make the effort to reach lower altitudes before dark.
    “Oolie Opaz!” exclaimed Jenbar. “What a miserable business!”
    His expression warned me that there might be more than a mere curse in his intentions; for I had once seen the long lines of chanting men and women, garishly clad and strung with blossoms, winding in and out of the streets of Pomdermam, the capital of the nation of Tomboram on the island of Pandahem. “Oolie Opaz! Oolie Opaz! Oolie Opaz!” they would chant, singing and swaying, hour after hour the same metronomic hypnotic words, swinging up and down the scale, changing key, on and on maddeningly. This hypnotic chanting held power. It sucked a man in, singing, until his eyeballs rolled up and he drifted away to a white and empty state of which philosophers and mystics talk.
    I contented myself with a nod to the ponsho fleeces.
    “Best to dress yourself warmly, Tyr Jenbar. The way will be long and hard.” Then, because he was young and there was in him a steely inner strength I could perceive, I added: “I know you will march well, but I will be here to help you if necessary.”
    He looked downslope. His features hardened and a ridge jumped into life along his jaw, for he was clean-shaven. His face held a strong damn-you-to-hell look, and I guessed that ferocity was not for me, perhaps not even for the fates that had flung him here, but for the hostility of the way we must tread.
    He chuckled. “It will be a task for Tyr Nath! But we will win through, Koter Prescot. We of Falinur always win through to our desires in the end!”
    “So be it,” I said, and busied myself in making what small preparations