Warrior of Scorpio by Alan Burt Akers Page A

you to leave now. Do you understand me? The gold is fair payment, I think.”
    Uppippoo for the first time took care to look at me, instead of raging and roaring and blow-harding and glaring at Seg and the offending dismembered limb of his wife’s tree. He saw my face. I was not conscious of any change in my countenance, but Uppippoo’s snorts and ragings and breathy threats halted as though he had been gripped by the throat.
    He backed a step. He bent his back, stealthily, reaching forward to take the gold from the table. He backed away. His protruding eyes were fixed on my face; his tongue kept licking his fat lips.
    “Fazmarl!” I called. “The gentleman is leaving now.”
    The young guard showed the Proconian gentleman out.
    He had not uttered a word since he’d had a fair sight of my ugly face.
    Seg collapsed moaning onto a chair.
    “As for you, Seg Segutorio, you should be ashamed of yourself. Cutting a stick from a tree — that’s what kids do.”
    “Aye!” he roared joyously. “Just as I did when I cut my stave from Kak Kakutorio’s tree! Hai — I could hurt myself laughing.”
    I must admit that I felt like allowing myself a laugh, also.
    The incident of Seg’s bow-stave and the shade tree of Uppippoo’s wives convinced me that I had no need to worry so much about Seg Segutorio. He was still in form despite his conspicuous lack of success with Thelda.
    Delia was anxious to leave, and now that I could not serve a useful part in the campaign I had nothing to tie me here. I told Seg, somewhat brutally, I fear, that he would have no time to put his new bow-stave into pickle. He chuckled with a grim sardonic humor that made me stare at him.
    “You have a poor opinion of the bowmen of Erthyrdrin if you believe they are unable to fashion a bow-stave anywhere on this earth — aye, and pickle it, too. Put me thigh-deep in the mire of the Marshes of Malar with a stave and I’ll fashion you a bow that can split the chunkrah’s eye.” He was as good as his word. He contrived a tall narrow tube of treated leather, well-stoppered, and into this with his precious stave he poured a concoction of his own — that stank to Zim itself — and shook it up and glared at me with a satisfied defiant stare on his face.
    “By the time we are past the Dam of Days she’ll be pickled—”
    Even then I couldn’t tell Seg just how we were traveling to Vallia, and there was no reason for this holding back. Delia knew exactly where the flier from Port Tavetus, on the eastern coast of Turismond beyond the Hostile Territories, had been hidden in the foothills which gloamed blue and orange and purple on the far mainland horizon. The people of Havilfar, where airboats are manufactured, did not care to have their products exposed on the inner sea. I gathered the airboats gave trouble, too, as I had before experienced. Thelda cooed over me and ignored Seg and so we passed the last days before we took off. Again it was time to say “Remberee” to Pur Zenkiren.
    Everything that should be done was done. Our belongings were carefully packed into satchels and leather sacks, for Delia with a strict flier’s wisdom wanted no sharp-edged packing crates aboard, and were stowed aboard the calsanys that would take them down to the jetty. I detected a strange look of sadness on the face of young Fazmarl as I bid him good-bye. I clapped him on the back — a somewhat awesome experience for so young a would-be warrior of Sanurkazz from a swifter captain and a Krozair — and felt I must be getting old and walked down with Zenkiren and Delia to the jetty. Thelda had gone with the baggage — riding a calsany — to superintend, although we all knew she didn’t care overmuch for walking. Seg marched behind with his revolting leather pipe of bow-stave-pickling over his shoulder.
    At the jetty we all climbed down into the boat and this time we were not using our old stolen muldavy which I had made arrangements to have, when possible, returned