Free Talons of Scorpio by Alan Burt Akers Page A

and the others would have to handle the frontal attack. I still suspected a treacherous stab in the back.
    “Hit ’em, knock ’em down, tromple all over ’em!” bellowed a fruity voice.
    The wicked tinker-hammer of steel against steel racketed up, echoing against the walls.
    Anybody who tried to break a way through that powerful human hedge of steel was in for trouble. In the time I’d known them, the comrades I’d made in
Tuscurs Maiden
had proved themselves. Now, once again, they were fighting and earning their hire. I closed up to the chair, setting my back against the curtains, and staring forward and aft. Mainly, I looked to the rear. This ambush was just right for the attack from the rear that would smash into the unprotected backs of the fighters defending in front. Grasping my thraxter, I watched.
    The two apims, Nath the Clis and Indur the Rope, and the Brokelsh, Ridzi the Rangora, and the Brukaj, Bendil Fribtix, remained grasping the handles of the chair. They were ready to run like stink to smash a way through surrounded by the fighting men. They had a tough task, and one not to my liking, I can tell you, by Krun!
    Something kicked my ankle.
    I looked down, the thraxter snouting.
    A shapely foot and ankle with a silver bangle kicked and then withdrew. I bent and lifted a flap of canvas, and the sword in my fist nuzzled forward.
    “Oh!” gasped Nalfi, twisting around, her pallid face staring up in shock.
    “It’s all right, my lady. But I do not think you are particularly wise. It is not safe under there if—”
    The dagger in her fist glimmered as she crawled out.
    “Larghos told me to seek shelter and this seemed the best place. I am frightened—”
    We had fixed up boards and bronze in the gherimcal against arrows. Nalfi knew this. All the same, the chair was the target and she had chosen to shelter in the chunkrah’s eye, as it were.
    The fight up ahead swayed back and forth as we spoke in snatched whispers. Dark shadows moved in convulsive gyrations, and men screamed and died. The noise would bring other men and women, soon, that was sure.
    Nath the Clis holding the front near side handle looked back and called: “Larghos was right, Jak. But the lady is still in danger here.”
    Even if Nalfi could have somehow squeezed into the chair with Tilda and all her belongings, the additional weight, together with the bronze and wood, would slow us too much.
    “Crouch down small, Nalfi. Here.” I handed her across the shield I’d taken from Nath Kemchug’s armory aboard ship. “Hold this over you. We’ll see off this rabble up ahead. It won’t be long.”
    “I do hope so!”
    Larghos the Flatch ran back to the gherimcal, his bow over his shoulder and his thraxter stained dark.
    “You are safe, Nalfi?”
    “Yes, yes—”
    “They’re giving way up there. We can move on now—”
    And at that moment the back stab I had anticipated and thought to be a mere overwrought fever of my brain erupted in a yelling mob of Brown and Silvers, hurtling down upon us.
    Instantly we were embroiled in a vicious fight to stay alive and to protect Tilda. The four bearers had to thwunk the gherimcal down, draw their weapons and hurl themselves into the fray. We struggled in a mass of contorting bodies across the cobbles, smashing back at the attack, striking and defending, roaring in a mind-wrenching phantasmagoria of action under the light of the Moons.
    Having given the shield to Nalfi, I was in no mood to foin with this mob of would-be assassins. The left-hand dagger whipped free of its scabbard. With the stout cut and thrust thraxter in my right fist and the main gauche in my left I felt that the combination would prove an interesting variation. The things one dwells on in the fractions of a heartbeat!
    The swirl of action revolved away to my left as, with Larghos at my side, we swathed a way through on the right. The Brown and Silvers wore their colored favors openly. Their faces were not masked as