Salmonson - Avenger of Antares

Copyright 1975, Kenneth Bulmer

Alan Burt Akers has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, to be identified as the Author of this work.

First published by Daw Books, Inc. in 1975.

This Edition published in 2006 by Mushroom eBooks, an imprint of Mushroom Publishing, Bath, BA1

4EB, United Kingdom

www.mushroom-ebooks.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Avenger of Antares

Dray Prescot #10

Alan Burt Akers

Mushroom eBooks

Dray Prescot

Dray Prescot is a man above medium height, with straight brown hair and brown eyes that are level and dominating. His shoulders are immensely wide and there is about him an abrasive honesty and a fearless courage. He moves like a great hunting cat, quiet and deadly. Born in 1775 and educated in the inhumanly harsh conditions of the late eighteenth century English navy, he presents a picture of himself that, the more we learn of him, grows no less enigmatic.

Through the machinations of the Savanti nal Aphrase mortal but superhuman men dedicated to the aid of humanity and of the Star Lords, he has been taken to Kregen under the Suns of Scorpio many times. On that savage and beautiful, marvelous and terrible world he rose to become Zorcander of the Clansmen of Segesthes, and Lord of Strombor in Zenicce, and a member of the mystic and martial Order of Krozairs of Zy.

Against all odds Prescot won his highest desire and in that immortal battle at The Dragons Bones claimed his Delia, Delia of Delphond, Delia of the Blue Mountains. And Delia claimed him in the face of her father the dead Emperor of Vallia. Amid the rolling thunder of the acclamations of Hai Jikai!

Prescot became Prince Majister of Vallia, and wed his Delia, the Princess Majestrix. One of their favorite homes is in Valkanium, capital city of the island of Valka, of which Prescot is Strom. Prescot is plunged headlong into fresh adventures on Kregen in the continent of Havilfar. Outwitting the Manhounds of Antares, ghastly parodies of humans used as hunting dogs, and fighting as a hyr-kaidur in the arena of the Jikhorkdun in Huringa in Hyrklana, he becomes King of Djanduin, idolized by his incredibly ferocious four-armed warrior Djangs. But, Hamal, the greatest power in Havilfar, is bent on conquest and Prescot must discover the well-guarded secrets of their airboats. Knowing half the information he is condemned to death by a jealous king. Over the sea he escapes and destroys two huge Hamalian skyships and saves a Vallian galleon. The galleons crew pluck him from the water and they set sail home for Vallia...

Alan Burt Akers

The leem lovers demand Jikai

Blow the winds! Roar the gales! I had shouted, exulting in my newly won freedom. Bear me on to Valka and my high fortress of Esser Rarioch! Blow, winds, carry me home to my Delia, my Delia of the Blue Mountains, my Delia of Delphond!

The lie to my boastful shouts was given by that ominous scrap of sail, striped black and amber, intermittently lifting over the horizon rim to the eastward. As our galleon bore on northward so that sail dogged us. I fancied I knew what beings manned her, what devils they were, and I went down to the armory and sharpened up a sword and saw most carefully to the harness of armor Captain Lars Ehren had laid out for me.

By Vox, Prince! said Captain Lars, his square spade beard thrusting from his blunt chin like the ram of a swifter. We will send them scurrying back to their filthy dens with their tails between their legs!

Aye, Captain Lars. I looked at him, there in the armory of his galleon Ovvend Barynth, the iron harness cold in my hands. Have you fought the leem lovers before?

No, Majister.

Concerned lest my tone lead him to suspect all the disquiet with which I faced the prospect of an action with these reiving ships from the Southern Ocean, I hastened to add: I have. We exposed enough of their tripes to find out they are diffs like any other human being.

He laughed hugely. The galleon surged through the swell, her timbers creaking, the rush of water echoing along her stout lenken sides, the snap of blocks and the rattling of rigging distant but ever-present sounds. It is not easy to disconcert a galleon captain of Vallia, that proud island empire of Kregen.

I have heard of them, Majister. Can you speak of your fight?

I thought of Viridia the Render, and of how that pirate lady and I, as a member of her render crew, had fought off one of those reiving ships from the Southern Ocean. Here, south of the equator off the eastern coast of the continent of Havilfar, the sea was known as the Ocean of Clouds. Viridia and her crew had escaped from the leem lovers ship only under the cover of a sudden gale. We had got away, but it had been a near thing.

They fight dirty, Captain. I always look for the good in a man, and tolerate anyone until he proves himself evil or traitorous; I fancy I would have to look rather too long to find any decent humanity in these leem lovers.

I have heard stories, Majister. Unpleasant stories. Captain Ehren buckled up his armor with the help of young Gil, one of the armorers apprentices. He grunted with the effort of drawing in his stomach beneath the cuirass. These shants carry their aura of evil about with em.

There are many names for these marauding ships and people from around the curve of the world;

shant was merely one. We stood up, and stretched and wriggled until we were comfortable, then we clambered up the ladders and so came out onto the quarterdeck. The mingled streaming lights of the Suns of Scorpio blazed down, that glorious twinned fusion of opaz radiance, the emerald and the ruby, pouring in molten floods upon the sea and the ship. By Zair! It was good to be alive on such a day! I did not forget that I carried in my head half the secrets of the airboats that were going to prove of such great value to Vallia, my home on Kregen, in the inevitable war with the hostile empire of Hamal. That information must reach Vallia. I drew dark mental pictures of the holocausts of horror that would follow if Hamal attacked Vallia, suddenly, treacherously, fleets of skyships raining from the skies in steel and fire and destruction.

The first lieutenant, a Hikdar, saluted.

She stays above the horizon longer, sir, he said to Captain Ehren. To cheer them, I said: It is certain she recognizes us as Vallian. That, my friends, gives pause to her cramph of a captain. It makes him think twice, does that, before he attacks a galleon of Vallia!

There was a little rumbling of oaths from the officers on the quarterdeck, not a few puzzled and half-recriminating glances in my direction. But I had given Captain Ehren strict orders. We were not to put our helm over and go roaring down to tangle with the shant. I had forbidden these proud men of Vallia, seadogs all, to do what they would naturally have done. This, alone, made them uneasy. There was certain vital information about the fliers I had to take back to Vallia. Yes, I could see that. But, also, I could see that in the next bur or so I would be solely concerned with the immediate situation. Hopeful plans for the future were not going to be of the slightest use when that Opaz-forsaken leem lover at last decided to attack. Everything, then, for us all would be concentrated into the immediate present. Captain Lars Ehren knew his business. This galleon had been on her way to the island realm of Hyrklana, farther south, to attempt to buy airboats there when the supply had stopped from Hamal. The Hamalians had reacted by sending two of their tremendous skyships to sink the two Vallian galleons. They had sunk one: