Golden Scorpio Read Online Free PDF Page B

bulbous, filled with the fanatical devotion of all my fighting men of Valka.
    “Well, Exand, my friend. It is indeed good to see you. Now stand you clear of that varter and get a fresh dressing on that wound. You hear?”
    “Quidang!” His bellow vibrated against our eardrums. “I hear, my strom!”
    The Lord Farris bustled up and took Exand’s arm, leading him off, talking. I saw Exand halt as though shafted. He swung about. His quivering alertness took everyone’s attention and the shrieking of the infantry below struggling to climb those murderous stairs faded. Exand’s face turned that purple that the best Wenhartdrin wines hold within their bodies.
    “Majister!” Exand fairly roared out, purple, immense, consumed with overwhelming joy. “Hai, Emperor of Vallia!”
    My first thought was that Farris had to go and open his mouth. He was loyal to the emperor — to the emperor that was — and to Delia. I knew a loyal man, and I valued Farris far too much to fault him in so petty a thing as this.
    After that, when we had thrown the attack back and could take a breath, the buzz went around the fortress. The emperor was dead: long live the emperor.
    I have mentioned how my folk of Valka continue to call me their strom, somehow or other conveniently overlooking the rather comical thought that I was the Prince Majister of Vallia. Well, now they knew I was the Emperor of Vallia. Although, at that moment, I was the Emperor of Nothing. But they continued to call me strom, with occasionally a lapse into more formal majisters for the sake of propriety.
    This somewhat farcical interjection of emperors and majisters into the grim business of staying alive within the besieged fortress served to force upon me the thought that I was more like the fabled Pakkad, the outcast, the pariah, than any emperor. I had not wanted to be emperor, had not sought the throne and crown of Vallia. And, the plain fact was, I did not have them. The corpse of Vallia was being fought over as lurfings fight over a corpse on the great plains.
    The desire to dabble my fingers in that stew appeared more and more unattractive, more and more unworthy.
    Thrusting these morose broodings aside I joined in the preparations. The voller would take out the people in relays and with them weapons and supplies. Up in the Heart Heights we would find refuge. As an accomplished flier, Farris offered to make the first journeys. For the moment the attackers had drawn off and so I decided to catch up on a little sleep. The first voller load was seen off and then I went into our private apartments and stretched out on the bed. Before I went to sleep two thoughts hovered lazily in my mind and the first of these was cheerful and reassuring.
    Among these defenders of Esser Rarioch and all the other fearsome warriors of Valka who would continue the resistance there would be found no place for that robust figure of legend, Vikatu the Dodger, the archetypal Old Sweat of most of the armies of Paz. That mythical old soldier is loved and sworn by with enormous gusto by the swods in the ranks, a paragon of all the military vices, the old hand who looks after Number One and knows every trick in and out of every book and manual of soldiering ever written. The fighting men of Valka might cuss away in Vikatu’s best style, but they were not soldiers in the strict regimental sense, not even the swods of the regiments we had formed, disciplined, controlled, trained. In the struggles that lay ahead I thought that not one fighting man of Valka would misunderstand the reality of Vikatu and dodge his duty.
    So that, as far as it went, was all right. We would, as Kregans say, blatter them with a will.
    But — by all the grey ones of Sicce — but the other thought coiling in my head made me twist and turn uncomfortably on the bed. I was still totally undecided. I had spoken out about returning, had half-promised to regain the throne and crown. But, even with all the strictures laid on me,