Read Savage Scorpio for Free Online Page A

notorious red curtain that falls before the fighting man’s eyes — so it is said — but it is a thing that transcends humanity and must be used and manipulated in its turn so far as a man may. We fought. We fought.
    I think, now, as I thought then, that Zena Iztar brought some of her magical powers to our assistance. Nothing else, in all sanity, serves to explain what happened.
    The few of us, the few Brothers of the Order of Iztar, smashed and beat and routed the confident might of the Shanks from around the curve of the world. We destroyed them. The survivors ran. The sleeths poured blood as the Shkanes poured blood. Green ichor fuming onto the grass, smoking under the suns.
    We pursued them.
    Down the long slope and through the copse and so down the last curve of the trail into Briar’s Cove we pursued them, slaying all the way.
    Memories are scarlet and monstrous and do not pass.
    Our arms did not tire. We were possessed of superhuman strength. Tireless, we smote and slew and drove them down to the beach where we slew them in the water as they tried to reach their ships. Those ships with their clumsy square upperworks and the sleek fishlike lines below water, with the tall banded aerodynamic sails, pushed off with the last few remnants. The black and amber sails slid up the tall masts, curving to the breeze. The ships pulled away, sliding easily through the water, and we stood on the beach and shook our fists at the Shanks, and cursed them, and jeered them, and felt, perhaps, as no men of Paz had ever felt before.
    We did not attempt to sail the ships in which the Katakis had landed after the Shkanes. I knew that no ship of Paz, not even the superb race-built galleons of Vallia, could catch a Shank ship.
    Some of the very best galleons built in Valka might almost match a Shank vessel, and we were working all the time on improvements; but these Kataki vessels were mere small editions of argenters, broad and squat and with a pitiful sail plan. They were broad-beamed and capacious and designed to hold slaves.
    We stood and jeered and fumed until the last Shank vessel vanished from sight, and then we turned back to the dolorous business of clearing up after the battle.
    There was much talk, and much to talk about; but one single topic dominated every conversation.
    Zena Iztar.
    Dredd Pyvorr had been the first to drive into battle at her instigation. He, it was soon apparent, was the original martyr of the Order. His name would live enshrined.
    Traditions were built in this fashion.
    And, too, I detected a difference about these men. Some inner strength had been vouchsafed them. They were not the same men who had agreed to join the Order. They had been refined, refined in the crucible of agony and battle, and now they gleamed with a luster of spirit I found mightily reassuring — and also worrying in that nagging anxious way I have when events pour past without due design and thought spent upon them.
    As with my membership of the Order of Krozairs of Zy upon the Eye of the World, I will not speak of much of our discipline. Much had been taken from the Krozairs, for their Orders are justly famed, and workmanlike, martial and mystic, devoted to Zair, and designed to sustain morale and spirit in the deepest of adversities. So I will content myself with a few remarks only. In the old days of Valka, when that island of which I am Strom was its own kingdom, they had their own knights, men of high-caliber, renowned, given the honor prefix of Ver to their names. This, we chose to resurrect, and members of the Order of Iztar were called, among ourselves, Ver Seg and Ver Inch, and so on.
    Ver Seg Segutorio was the High Archbold.
    This I welcomed and refused to take on any particular position for myself, preferring to be a plain member, a simple Ver of the Order.
    We called ourselves Kroveres. [1]
    Kroveres.
    The name rang and reverberated, as the name Krozair rings and reverberates.
    We were the Kroveres of Iztar.
    Also, and at the