Scorpio Invasion Read Online Free PDF Page A

aught happened to my Delia, my Delia of Delphond, my Delia of the Blue Mountains, then all of Kregen and of Earth could go hang.
    These fretful thoughts were more important to me at that moment, incongruously, I suppose, than the howling pack of slavering werstings and the Bowmaids of Loh and the Jikai Vuvushis out for my blood.
    The arcade stretched ahead, patched with shadow, implicit with menace.
    Just before I started off into those shadows a brief but excruciatingly brilliant vision of the shaggy monster and his red ball flamed before my eyes. My Val! He had the strength to rip my head clean off my shoulders. His six arms would have been the very devil to counter and beat. Powerful, dominating, a monster — and he’d wanted to play ball! Whew!
    Forcing the image out of my vision I raced into the shadows of the arcade.
    The wall to my right was pierced by a few tall narrow doorways, all shuttered by solid iron-barred wooden doors. Overhead the roof curved from column to column. To my right the radiance of the Suns of Scorpio threw light as I reached the corner of the building and scampered across to the next series of arcades. The dusty square over on the left remained empty and I felt that however strange and foreign this city might be, one would expect more people than that. A distant murmur like summer bees from ahead, I felt sure, would explain the mystery.
    Again I crossed the shafting mingled lights of a cross street. The noise increased. Two men and a woman ran out from a door, which slammed as they left, and raced on ahead. Little detective work was needed to deduce they were running to join the crowd making the noise. I followed on.
    Soon other people joined in and I was going rapidly along in quite a little crowd. No one took any notice of me. The men wore strange and fanciful costumes, all draping scarves and tassels, and multi-colored feathers in their wide and floppy hats. A few men wore brilliantly colored loincloths with bare legs, and had swords swinging at their sides. The women all wore veils. These veils were larger and thicker than the flimsy seductive bits of flimsy worn by the girls in the harem. We all ran along to join the procession.
    Debouching into a kyro of some size surrounded by the spiring buildings founded on their arcades, the procession wound around and around the square until everyone had joined in. I was near the stern of the mob.
    This suited me. Whatever morsel of scent the werstings had picked up must be obliterated and lost in all this throng.
    A woman climbed onto the pedestal of a statue of a Khibil holding a Lohvian longbow aloft. The statue was twice life size, one of a number dotted about the kyro. She raised her arms and with surprising promptitude the crowds fell silent. She began to speak in an impassioned haranguing way, all about the lost glories of Walfarg, of the ancient Empire of Walfarg which the barbarian people of the outer world called the Empire of Loh. “Just as,” she cried, shrieking, “the benighted fools call the accursed Wizards of Walfarg Wizards of Loh!”
    I felt the shock of that. I felt a distinct shock, not to say a tremor of dire chill. By Vox! To call a Wizard of Loh accursed! I stared in fascination at this woman, half expecting to see her turned into a little green toad.
    Her face was of that strong hard variety that, nevertheless, is womanly handsome. She could not be called pretty; her appeal came from her inner strengths. This reminded me of Mevancy, although the two were vastly different women in appearance and in the nature of their inner strengths. She wore fancy silken robes attached to her shoulders and trailing; but they were flung back to reveal the curved leather armor across her breast and the pteruges covering her upper thighs. Incongruously, her navel was bare. She wore two swords, a lynxter and a short sword of that type which is called a laiker in Loh. Both weapons had over-ornate hilts. Her feet I could not see for the heads of