Scorpio Invasion Read Online Free PDF Page B

pudgy than pleasant as she toppled unconscious. I pushed her at her husband — if indeed he was that unfortunate person.
    “The lady has fainted,” I said. I spoke to him as an overseer might speak to a slave. “Take her home before she is injured.”
    “Yes, yes, master,” he gabbled and dragged her off, heels draggling. I wished him well of her.
    The girl in the flowing draperies gasped. “I saw that!”
    I let my head nod in the briefest of bows. “Better all around, my lady. Now let us take this walfger to a safer spot.”
    She gave me a hard shrewd look from bright hazel eyes. Her face was of the sort described as elfin; but there were the first faint traces of the lines of responsibility upon her forehead. She came to a decision.
    “Very well. I thank you. Now we must get away before the guards find us.”
    As she spoke I heard that hateful howling of the wersting pack.

Chapter three
    We three moved smoothly and without undue haste away from the crowds, and avoiding the further series of arcades struck down a side street. The mingled streaming lights of the Suns of Scorpio flamed into my eyes. Shadows lay to our rear, not overlong shadows, for here in Walfarg we were not too far north of the Equator. The heat was appreciably lessening as the afternoon turned into evening.
    “And not a Llahal between us,” observed the man.
    “Llahal,” I said at once. “My name is Drajak,” giving the name I’d used most recently down south in Tsungfaril. “Drajak ti Zamran.”
    “Lahal, walfger Drajak. I am Wanlicheng, Ornol Wanlicheng once of Paramdan and now a wandering scholar—”
    “Oh, San Ornol! You are a great teacher,” burst out the girl, Xinthe. “Yes,” she went on, half scolding half laughing in resignation, “and well you know it!”
    “And this,” said Ornol Wanlicheng in his mellifluous voice, “is, as you can see, my strict but patient student, Xinthe.”
    “Lahal, Wr Drajak. [2] Now, I think it best if we hurried,” and she urged Wanlicheng along. With that fearful howling following us I needed no urging to scamper on with them.
    Then the obvious and unpleasant thought occurred to me. If the werstings were still on my scent — and I really felt that now to be unlikely — they would follow this couple. I’d be bringing a wersting pack down on San Ornol Wanlicheng and on Lady Xinthe. I felt that to be something Dray Prescot would not do. So I told them I’d been followed by a wersting pack.
    Xinthe, still hurrying on, shuddered. “They are terrible when aroused. Although the puppies are sweet.”
    “That is quite all right, Drajak. I have that which will remedy the situation.” Wanlicheng spoke quite casually, as though the problem were both simple and academic.
    Apart from the central square where the buildings had been reasonably open and impressive, this town appeared to consist of a maze of twisting alleys sometimes bordered by arcades, more often the further we went on bordered only by tall blank walls. Shadows slanted across the bricks from the opposite wall. I would not care to say I saw the top of a single tree over any wall. Careful, then, these townsfolk.
    The doorways were universally tall and thin and the doors of solid iron-banded and studded wood. The door which Xinthe unlocked and opened had once been painted blue; now it was mostly back to bare wood, dry and cracked. We went into the courtyard and Xinthe, after a look back, went to close the door. Wanlicheng stopped her.
    “Just a moment, my dear, let me place a simple Seal of Passing.” He moved out into the alleyway again and Xinthe obstructed my view of what Wanlicheng was doing. “There, that should suffice.” He came back into the courtyard and Xinthe slammed the door.
    Whether the werstings had missed my trail or whether Wanlicheng’s Seal of Passing did the trick I couldn’t then have said. Whichever, we were not troubled by a visit from the wersting pack or their Hikdar.
    The courtyard was surrounded by