(eng) Alan Burt Akers - Dray Prescot 04 by Swordships of Scorpio

Author:Swordships of Scorpio [Scorpio, Swordships of]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“You ingrate, Dray Prescot!”

Pando had a toothache.

His face looked like one of those lusciously overripe gregarians grown in the lush gardens of Felteraz, a species of fruit of which both Nath and Zolta had been fond and so had converted me to their taste. A toothache in my own time on my own world was a serious, painful, and dreary business. On Kregen, of course, Pando saw a dentist who neatly twirled a couple of needles into his ankle and then yanked with professional skill. As first teeth, these should have given Pando no trouble in coming out and, normally, none did; this one had gone bad on him. The acupuncture gave him a completely painless time of the dentistry, and we came out and ate huge helpings of palines at the first restaurant we ran across. But all this domestic business had blurred the edges of just why I was in Pandahem at all. I told Tilda. I explained reasonably that she had asked Inch and me to escort her to her home; this we had done, and therefore it was time for me to be pushing on. Inch, when sounded out by me, had made the same reply he had made back in Pa Mejab.

“I’m a rover of the world, Dray, a wanderer. As a mercenary guard I can earn an honest crust I’d as lief stay with you as not.”

“I am heading for Vallia.”

He whistled. “Vallia! May Ngrangi aid you! From Pandahem they’d as soon send you to the Ice Floes of Sicce as to Vallia.”

“I know. Please don’t mention our eventual destination. We have to push on. We’ll find a ship, somewhere, never you fear.”

Now, when I told Tilda as we squashed down ripe palines and Pando explored his cavity with a pink tongue, Tilda exploded.

“You ingrate, Dray Prescot!” Her fine ivory skin flushed with blood and her violet eyes clouded. She put a hand to her bosom, over the orange robe, and grasped the golden locket there. “You were to be our champion, Pando’s and mine. And now, just when it is all to do, you are deserting us! Is this friendship?”

I sighed.

Tilda had made not the slightest sign of any advance toward me and I was comfortable in her company. Poor Thelda, now, had been all gushing, pushing and eagerness and help, and had thereby been a confounded nuisance.

Sosie, of course, had had her own secrets, and I felt a twinge of bafflement when I thought of her sweet black face and her great eyes and Afro hair. She had presented her own brand of problem. I got along with Tilda perfectly.

“What do you mean, Tilda? It is all to do? Surely, you are in your homeland—”

“Do you think this great untidy port of Pomdermam is my home?”

“Bormark?”

“Of course. Bormark lies on the extreme western border of Tomboram, and the lands run border with those of The Bloody Menaham. We have to reach Bormark, Dray, before Pando can claim his rightful inheritance.”

I looked at Inch.

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