Savage Scorpio Read Online Free PDF Page B

payment dear, the final reckoning written in blood and spelling death.
    “Brotherhood of Paz!” I bellowed, turning in the saddle, glaring back at the shuffling line. “Those of you who will, go! Flee! Save yourselves. Raise the island, carry word to Zamra, rouse the garrisons. And those that will — follow me!”
    Lumpily turning in the saddle and ready to clap in heels — no man who is a rider uses spurs to a zorca — I hesitated, and turned back. My face must have borne that old intolerant, savage, devil’s look. I bellowed.
    “Seg! Inch! Balass! Turko! Oby!” I shouted, loud, intemperately, viciously. “Tom! Vangar! Nath! Kenli! Naghan! You do not ride with me. Your duty lies in other places closer to your hearts! I order you to ride and seek succor!
Ride!”
    They left it to Seg to speak for them all.
    Seg Segutorio lifted his bow. He smiled that raffish, fey grin of his, his blue eyes very bright and merry in that tanned face beneath the shock of black hair.
    “Oh, aye, my old dom. We’ll ride. We’ll obey your damned high-handed orders. Only it happens that the quickest way for us to ride to do your bidding —
prince
— is to ride straight ahead. Straight ahead!”
    “And if any lumpen Fish-Face happens to get in the way, let him look out,” Inch finished.
    “Famblys!” I shouted, feeling the gush of warmth, the anger, the pride at their folly, the agony and the shame. “Idiots! Onkers! It is my duty and mine alone — it falls to me—”
    “Sometimes you take too much on your shoulders,” said Turko. His magnificent muscles bulged. I blinked. In Turko’s left hand a green-dripping sword caught the lights of the twin suns. “Turko? A sword?”
    He laughed. “They broke my parrying stick. This serves in its stead. Had I my great shield, now, then—”
    The clicking scrape of the advancing sleeths bore down on us.
    The line shifted and yet, and yet they would not ride off. For a space the tension hung. Now I knew that they must ride. I had been wrong, criminally wrong, in thus dragging these men to their deaths. In my own folly and pride I thought I had been doing the right, the noble, thing. But nobility can be bought at too high a price. It was folly to have these men slain to no purpose now. If we all died here — as we would, as we would! — how would that help this tiny island of Nikzm, let alone the mighty empire of Vallia?
    No thoughts of my Delia must be allowed to enter my stubborn old vosk-skull of a head. None.
    “Go!” I bellowed. “Save yourselves!”
    A few men shook out their reins, they would not look at me. But I did not blame them as they began to turn their zorcas’ heads, ready to ride back through the dark defiles of the forest.
    So this was how all my brave dreams for a great Brotherhood had foundered! The Order was finished. It had never even begun.
    I turned back to face the oncoming mass of Shkanes, and I wished I could have had my old Krozair longsword with me, and I kicked in my heels and the zorca lunged forward for the last time.
    Headlong I belted for the black and silver glittering mass of Fish-Heads.
    A shrill and shocked shrieking began — began to my rear.
    I did not look back. The zorca flew fleetly over the grass where the blue and red and white flowers starred the green, where drops of red blood stained across the flowers. The shouting at my back increased and voices mingled in shocked disbelief. I looked up to my left, toward the white ruins.
    I stared, disbelieving.
    A light glowed among the white tumbled columns.
    A golden yellow light, lambent, blazing, growing in color and luminosity, swelling. And at the heart of that refulgent radiance the figure of a woman astride a zorca. A woman wearing golden armor, astride a white zorca whose single spiral horn blazed with golden light. I stared and the mount beneath me ran loose. I stared at the apparition. She wore golden armor and carried a great banner which flowed freely outspread in a breeze no one