Golden Scorpio Read Online Free PDF

and not footling incapacity, suppose the voller was used to take everyone out of the fortress by turn? They could be taken into the Heart Heights. We could resist from there as we had in the old days. Yes, I said to myself, and swung about to tell Chuktar Fergen what I proposed.
    “But strom! To abandon Esser Rarioch!”
    “Aye, Chuktar Nath. Aye! I would abandon this place that I love so dearly to those devils. What is the importance of stone and sculpture against flesh and blood? I would not lose a single man or woman of Valka to save Esser Rarioch.” I thought of the emperor, grimly holding onto his fine palace, and getting the place burned down around his ears and himself slain for the sake of it. “The important strategy now is to save our people.”
    “Yes, my strom — and then we will rise and kick them out — all these invaders, every last one.” His full-fleshed face showed the thick blood-pulse beneath the skin, his beaked Vallian nose outthrust. “As we did in the old days, when we chased the aragorn out of Valka! Hai, Jikai! We will write new stanzas to
The Fetching of Drak na Valka
!”
    “Hai, Jikai!” shouted the others clustered on the high battlements. “Hai, Jikai!”
    The moment was emotional, no doubt of it, and I responded, thinking that, perhaps, if we did what we said then itmight well be a Jikai we did. And then those people of mine had to go on, and bellow it out, as they loved to do.
    “Hai Jikai!” they shouted, and the swords whipped up, glittering in the lights of the Suns of Scorpio. “Hai, Jikai! Dray Prescot! Strom of Valka!”
    It was all proud and stupid and a folly. Pride, pride — well, I have no truck with pride, having fallen flat so very many dreadful times. But, I own, if we all fought as well as we shouted, we should be home and dry.
    On that sour mental note I looked out and saw that our shouting had attracted the attention of some of those miserable cramphs below. They were running about, mere black ants so far below in the kyro, preparing to ascend the stairs again and, I trusted, many of them to ascend not to any of their heavens but to the quickest way to the Ice Floes of Sicce.
    Joining our group on the high battlements, Delia looked down. Her face drew down in a frown that always has the power to seize my heart up in a constricting grip.
    “Is this to be Vondium, all over again?” she said.
    I forced my craggy old face to smile for her.
    “No. We will evacuate. Everyone will be taken to safety in the Heart Heights. From there, as we did in the old days, we will resist the invaders.”
    At once she fired up. For only the most fleeting of fallible moments I thought she would protest. But she saw at once that by abandoning Esser Rarioch, for all that we held the place so dear, we would shed an encumbrance and gain freedom of action. To be mewed up in a fortress with a hundred and fifty souls against an army is no way to fight a war. Memories of the Siege of Zandikar ghosted in, and scarlet memories of other sieges; but I looked away to the distant purple haze of those ferocious central mountains of Valka, and took heart.
    We held that attack, shooting sheaves of arrows and bolts upon the attackers, rolling masses of stone down the steps, bounding, crunching into the shield, scattering them in a splintering wash of wicker and blood.
    In a pause of the action, Jiktar Exand clambered up onto the ramparts, a yellow bandage over his neck and shoulder already glistening with fresh blood. The enormous arch of his ribcage swelled as I greeted him.
    I said: “What in the name of the black lotus flowers of Hodan-Set are you doing up here, Exand? Look at that wound!”
    Exand’s square face bristled under his helmet and he bashed his red and white banded sleeve across his breastplate. I tensed up for his bellow.
    “Strom! I cannot skulk in bed when there is fighting to be done! Strom! We fight to the death!”
    He was just the same, massive, bulky, creaking in his armor,