Scorpio Assassin (eBook)

Chapter one

Absolute dismay gripped me. I had failed the Star Lords! Utter disaster!

Those unpredictable and intolerant superbeings did not tolerate failure.

Blueness grew around me in that bed-chamber of death. I swear blueness grew and thickened around me. I stood there, empty-handed, my sword still buried in the throat of San Hargon who slumped by the bed. Beside him, the still form of Pulvia lay face-down on the floor. On the bed rested the body of San Mishuro, freshly slain, the man I believed the Star Lords required me to protect. So I stood there waiting for the enormous spectral blue form of the Scorpion to materialize and seize me up into the whirling coldness between the stars. The Everoinye would send their Scorpion to snatch me back to Earth, to leave all I loved on Kregen — perhaps forever.

I swear that bedchamber was irradiated with the blue radiance.

Perhaps I could defy the Star Lords, not as I once had done, stubbornly, foolishly, and so been banished to Earth for twenty-one years. Perhaps I could this time fashion those defenses of the mind I had been working on to deflect the wrath of the Star Lords, divert their desires? As I stood there, panting, seeing the corpses and the blood as through a blue mist, I screamed silently inside my head: “No! No! I will remain here on Kregen!”

After all, the Star Lords required my help here. They had told me that. There were so many things to be done the problem was where to begin.

A voice, shrill with passion, ripped through my tangled thoughts.

“There he is! He has killed the san! Cut him down!”

The blueness vanished and the mist cleared.

Through the open door of the bedchamber leaped two black-clad men disguised in black masks and brandishing swords. San Hargon, sprawled by the bed with my sword through his neck, had, indeed, brought reinforcements, and here they were ready to avenge the death of their employer.

The sword sticking in Hargon was a local weapon, a Lohvian lynxter, given to me by my fellow kregoinye Mevancy. The two assassins must have seen my empty hands as they rushed on me, and no doubt this pleased them.

I must admit I felt the blood in my head. I ripped out my rapier, a foreign weapon in these parts, and charged full tilt at the assassins. I admit it. I yelled with ferocious venom, charged with the awful anticipation of a horrendous future parted from Kregen, I shouted like any frightened spear-carrier in the ranks. I was considerably wrought up. I still believed I was due to be hurled contemptuously back to Earth and I didn’t intend to land up there badly wounded, no by Vox!

So I just tore into these two assassins, stikitches of some quality, and our blades met in that spine-tingling screech of steel on steel.

They quite clearly had no conception of rapier work. Their cut and thrusters faltered and fell short as I showed them a few sword tricks that probably would not be of the slightest use to them where they were going. The rapier slid on — one, two — and I stepped back. The bodies slumped to the thick carpets. I own I felt very little shame — far less than a similar performance in other circumstances would have warranted — very little at that petty performance. There would have been no point in trying to question them. What had happened here was plain to see in the blood-smeared corpses.

The rapier was wiped clean on a black facemask, then I crossed to Hargon and retrieved my lynxter. Standing like that, running the black cloth up and down the blade to remove every last smear of blood, I heard the trampling noise of armored men advancing along the corridor towards the bedchamber.

There was probably a secret way out; there was certainly no time to search for and find the hidden catch to open the secret door. Somewhat like a savage beast at bay I glared around, determined to smash a way through these confident armored men, and belting them left and right tear off into the darkness. That was the plan.

The first man through the door was Trylon Kuong.

My sword described a brief arc in salute, then I thrust the clean blade back into the scabbard.

“What goes forward, Drajak—?” he began, and then saw the shambles, and so checked. Men closed up to his rear and all stopped, staring into that bedchamber of death.

“We were tricked, Kuong.” I spoke harshly. He was a trylon, an exalted rank of nobility, and I wanted to get on simple straightforward terms as soon as possible. I did not intend to kowtow to him. He was very young still, and I had taken a liking for him. With his clear eyes, ruddy cheeks and firm lips he looked every inch your high-spirited young tearaway, a rip-roaring bladesman, a noble spark. I fancied he might be all of these things, given time; but his upbringing so far at the hands of his guardian, San Caran, had produced a young fellow more moody than he should be, even allowing for the peculiar circumstances of his many lives on Kregen.

“San Tuong is dead — and so is San Hargon — Drajak — what—?”

I gestured around the room. The raw stink of spilled blood has always been offensive in my nostrils, although, Zair forgive me, I have smelled that stink often and often. The warmth of the place clogged. “As you see, Kuong, San Hargon used this poor woman as a tool. She tricked her way past the guards and stabbed Tuong Mishuro to death. Then Hargon stabbed her. When we all rushed off to your villa to stop your precious San Caran killing you, that was half of the plan. This half worked.” I eyed him. I had no compunction in reminding him of his debt, for I saw his use to me and to the plans of the Star Lords for the future. “The half that entailed your death, thankfully, failed.”

“Thanks to you, Drajak!” he said at once, impulsively, openly. “You have my thanks and gratitude. If there is anything—”

“First we must think what to do with the corpses. You are sure no retribution will fall upon us for slaying dikasters?”

He laughed scornfully, and I am sure he was reliving those fraught moments, only a short time ago, when the assassins tried to slay him. His laugh sounded brittle. He put a hand to his cheek where the bright blood showed the nick he had taken in the fight in his villa. “Absolutely sure, Drajak. By their actions, Hargon and Caran are no longer fit to be considered as dikasters. They took their oaths to the college to become Repositers and faithful to the dictates of Tsung-Tan. They broke those oaths. I doubt if they will even receive a perfunctory burial.”

Chiako the Gut, the dead Tuong Mishuro’s captain of his bodyguard, having so signally failed in his duty, blustered. “Throw them in the river!”

The River of Drifting Leaves on which stood the city of Makilorn contained among many varieties of fish the twin-finned and voracious stranks. Anybody attempting to bathe in the river would rapidly become a strank’s lunch.

“Aye!” rumbled those crusty guards clustered in the doorway.

I was not surprised.

The dikasters, both Repositers like Hargon and Caran, and Diviners like Tuong Mishuro, were regarded as sacrosanct. Poor Mishuro had not believed that any dikaster would break his solemn vows. Now the plot’s hatching was complete, he was dead of his trust.

Again Kuong fingered his blood-dappled cheek. “It is very warm here,” he said. I leaped and caught him as he fell. His eyelids fluttered.

“Water!” I bellowed.

The collapse of the young trylon seemed to break the spell of that bedchamber of death. Chiako, no doubt consumed with anxiety for his personal future, took charge. He acknowledged me as Walfger Drajak, a friend of Mishuro’s. He did not recognize me as Chaadur, a name and disguise I had adopted, and he bustled around organizing. Trylon Kuong’s own guards carried him back to his villa. I was sympathetic. The events of the evening were enough to cause a grizzled veteran to topple over, given that the basic tenets of these people’s religion had been violated.

Only then was the realization borne in on me that I was still in Mishuro’s villa, in the city of Makilorn on the River of Drifting Leaves, in the land of Tsungfaril in the continent of Loh on the world of Kregen.

By this time I’d quite expected to find myself chucked down naked in some far and forgotten corner of Earth.

The Star Lords most certainly had started the blue radiance in the room, I felt sure of that. But I had not been transported between the stars back to the planet of my birth. Yet San Tuong Mishuro had been the most likely candidate among the score or so for the position of the person we had to protect. I call Mevancy a fellow kregoinye; she was of course a kregoinya, a lady employed by the Everoinye to carry out their tasks. She might crow a trifle that I’d been wrong about Mishuro. She’d feel damn sorry the old boy was dead; but she’d be all the more keen to find out who our real target was. The Star Lords wanted us to protect someone around here; now it had turned out not to be Mishuro — so I thought — then who was it?

I took a breath outside in the arcade. I must see that Llodi the Voice, a comrade stabbed by Pulvia before she went on to stab Mishuro, received proper attention. Then I would travel back across the desert west to the Springs of Benga Annorpha and find Mevancy and bring her up to date with the news.

Oh, yes, she’d be mighty cutting about my views that Mishuro had been the target. Mind you, he might have been and the Star Lords might be biding their time before they punished me. The Everoinye were unaccountable. They had once been human beings and now were advanced far beyond the normal state of flesh and...