Talons of Scorpio by Alan Burt Akers Page B

uppermost. A single golden coin glittered. It was a zan-talen, worth ten Vallian talen pieces.
    “The captain, an unhanged rascal called Insur ti Fotor, requested me to treat the crew to a wet. Of course, he knew better than to attempt to pacify me in that way.”
    “Naturally.”
    Inwardly I was laughing — chuckling, really — over Insur’s audacity. The likeness on the coin was of a remarkably ugly fellow, all chin and beard and beaked nose. No one, seeing that indifferent portrait, was going to recognize its subject as me, plain Jak. This had been in my mind when old Larghos Valdwin had carved the original, and I’d told him to make me look as ferocious and unlike myself as possible. He’d made the expected sly remark on that. The other side of the coin, which I regarded as the more important, showed the glory of Delia, beautifully fashioned and, yet, again, a portrait from which it would be difficult to recognize her.
    Self-advertisement for your ordinary everyday emperor and empress is no doubt a worthwhile objective. For folk like Delia and myself, adventuring off around Kregen as we did, a trifle of anonymity paid handsome dividends.
    Linson gave his orders and Chandarlie the Gut, the Ship-Deldar, bellowed them into action.
    Pompino sniffed.
    “You were given up for lost, Jak.”
    I did not reply. The breeze had backed a few more points and now we could sheet home our full spread of canvas.
Tuscurs Maiden
bowled along merrily. An altogether different air now pervaded the ship’s company. It was as though we had come through a dire experience far worse than that through which we had really gone. Such is human nature. Men sang about their tasks. The coast lay ahead, and Port Marsilus, and taverns and dopa dens, no doubt, and a golden zan-talen nestled securely in the Owner’s strongbox, to find its way down the thirsty throats of the crew.
    “I am glad you were not chomped by that Styrorynth. Ugly customers, with jaws like the black gullet of Armipand himself, Pandrite rot him. No doubt he snapped up some other victim, for there was blood.”
    “No doubt.”
    “And, Jak, just think. If you’d been killed, would the Everoinye have held me accountable? The thought has often plagued me.”
    At once I felt contrition.
    “Look, Pompino, as I have told you, I do not think the Star Lords hold me in very high esteem. I curse at them and attempt to evade what they order when it conflicts with what I desire. But I serve them more willingly now than I once did. All the same — if you were killed, I think that perhaps they would frown most unkindly upon me.”
    “Well,” he said, brisking up and giving a twirl to his moustaches. “As we are not about to allow ourselves to be sent off to the Ice Floes of Sicce, let us push these doleful thoughts aside. I’m for a wet.”
    “I am with you. Port Marsilus is not far off, now. There we can start our deviltry. If the Leem Lovers were other than they are, it might be in my mind to feel sorry for them.”
    “You may begin being maudlin after they are all safely howling in Cottmer’s Caverns!”

Chapter five
    Aye
    “Look!” said Pompino as we sailed in for Port Marsilus. He did not point as one might expect a man to point as he indicated the object of his interest. “D’you see him?”
    “Aye. I see him.”
    As
Tuscurs Maiden
ran on with the bluffly blown spume from her round bows breaking and her canvas drawing as full-bellied as a noble after a feast, and the coast of Tomboram neared with the pinnacles of Port Marsilus already in sight, I stared up.
    Up there circled a giant raptor, a golden-and-scarlet-feathered bird with sharp black talons extended. He was the Gdoinye, the spy and messenger of the Star Lords.
    “They keep watch upon us, Jak.” Pompino spoke in a low tone, for we leaned on the quarterdeck bulwarks and Captain Linson and his officers and men on watch stood close.
    “You can see the Gdoinye, and I can see him. But, of late, I remark that no