“Why? Surely they can hold up just long enough for us to slip through?”
“There are no canal wardens out here. It is every man for himself.”
About to ask him — almost tauntingly — what of the vaunted comradeship of the canalfolk, I stopped. They had accepted me as a canalman who had, sorrowfully enough, become mixed up with ordinary Vallians. I must be of the canals, for I could drink the water. But I must not show too much ignorance.
“I will take a little stroll,” I said. And then as Zyna perked up, smiling, I added swiftly: “Alone.”
Dancing Talu carried hoffiburs from Therminsax and if they did not reach Vomansoir in good time they would go rotten. Any delay was to be avoided. We could be stuck here for the rest of the day. From Vomansoir the boat would take lissium ore back to Therminsax, a busy and lucrative trade.
As I walked slowly along I could just see a shining sheet of water dim and vast along the eastern horizon, and knew this to be one of the many great lakes that make the interior of Vallia so pleasant a place. The procession of boats on the Ogier Cut passed endlessly. The haulers walked carelessly enough across the wooden bridges built over the Vomansoir Cut. Other bridges, of a distinctively different pattern, crossed the Ogier north-south. I walked along the western bridge and stood leaning on the parapet, chewing my grass stem.
The scrape of a bare foot on the bridge made me turn.
Zyna walked up, boldly enough, although there was a little diffidence she hid admirably. She smiled at me. Over her shoulder I could see the red and green boat had pulled in astern of Dancing Talu, and her people and ours were clumped on the bank, talking and gesticulating.
“You should not send me away, Drak.” She pouted at me, and the glance from her man-killing eyes would have done the business for any young buck of the canals.
“Nevertheless, Zyna, go back to your father and tell him to unmoor and begin hauling. The other boat also. They must be ready to shoot through the Ogier the moment a gap appears.”
“But—?”
“Do as I say, young Zyna, or by Vaosh, I’ll tan your bottom!”
“You wouldn’t dare!” she flashed back. And then — she giggled. I thought of Viridia the Render, and I sighed, and surmised that my handling of girls is calculated to make them exceedingly wroth with me.
“I guarantee, young woman, that if you believe you would enjoy that, you are wrong. I have a hard and horrifically horny hand.”
Whereat she giggled again. I pushed up from the bridge parapet and took out my grass stem and threw it on the gray barges of the Emperor with their arrogant right-of-planks and advanced toward her — and she ran off, shrieking with merriment.
It was precisely at crossing places like this that the gray barges of the Emperor with their arrogant right-of-way held an advantage. They would simply haul straight on. The stentor braced in the bows would lift his triply-spiraled brass trumpet, maneuvering it up and around, with his arm thrust through the spiral, the blaring trumpet mouth high and blasting forward, and peal the shrill commanding notes that would make all canalfolk hauling give way before the Emperor’s barge.
Those long low gray barges flew the flag of Vallia, the vivid yellow saltire on the red ground.
As I stared back down the towpath I saw Zyna reach the knot of folk clustered where the stem and the stern of the two narrow boats nuzzled. Faces turned to look up at me and I waved. It had not occurred to me to consider that Yelker would not instantly do as I had said, and I felt a twinge of astonishment as he and Rafee and a few others together with men and women of the red and green boat started off along the towpath toward me. Truly, the habits of a Strom, a Zorcander, a lord, do not wash with canalfolk!
“What is all this about, Ven Drak? By Vaosh, if we move into the Ogier our tows will be cut swifter than the throats of a litter of leems!”
“Maybe not so, Yelker, maybe not.”
“You have a plan?”
I hadn’t thought of any plan. “No. No, I’m just going down there and ask the first haulers I come to, to hold up for us.”
They gaped at me.
A man with a black spade beard, the skipper of Pride of Vomansoir, guffawed. “Ho! You’ll find yourself in Gurush’s Bottomless Marshes if you try that, Ven Drak!”
“Why?”
But, of course, the reason was obvious. No hauler is going to ease his boat back to a stop if he can avoid it; the effort of overcoming inertia to begin movement again is the toughest chore of the canalfolk, in and out of locks.
I said, “They will do as I request.”
Yelker said, “I am a man of peace, Drak. You possess a rapier, and we do not see many of those on the cuts. But your rapier is aboard, and I will not let you get it.”
He didn’t know the risks he ran by telling me I could not do something, but I had no desire to use an edged and pointed weapon in this fracas. All I knew was that time was running out and I must press on to Vondium and Delia, and a line of narrow boats prevented me.
“Then, so am I. But, nevertheless, Yelker, get ready.”
And I turned away from him and walked down the bridge and so on the Ogier Cut.
CHAPTER NINE
The headless zorcamen
Narrow boats keep to the left riding the Vallian cuts and so by walking down from the western bridge I could walk back eastward along the southern bank of the Ogier Cut. Past me went the stream of boats. Their haulers looked up and some smiled, others nodded, one or two called out a casual “Llahal, Ven,” to which I replied in as casual a fashion.
Six young folk on a rope passed, four jolly laughing girls and two young lads who seemed mightily bashful as they saw me watching them. I let them go. All along the placid deep-green water approaching me the boats swam smoothly on. They differed in a subtle fashion from those riding the Vomansoir Cut, but they were narrow boats, gaily decorated, brilliantly painted, their high central ridgepoles draped with multicolored canvas concealing the loads beneath. Now walked steadily a man and wife, robust, fresh-faced, firmly-muscled. I nodded to them as I climbed up the wooden bridge, giving them all the room they needed as they dragged the tow rope across the bridge railing. The wood was smooth and so highly polished by the passage of countless ropes that it shone blindingly in the light from Zim and Genodras. It took, on busy bridges, a surprisingly short time for the wood to wear away and become unsafe and so have to be replaced by the wardens.
I descended the other side of the southern bridge over the Vomansoir Cut. I let two barges go past, hauled by four men apiece, agile as they flexed out the tow ropes as they ascended the bridge. I walked on. Now I had to believe that Yelker would do as I had said. His argument had been surprising; I had to remind myself I was simply an ordinary mortal here, no longer a Strom. Ahead of me the narrow boats stretched out of sight, a moving, gliding patchwork of color along the glinting waters of the canal.
There are in any society men who for whatever obscure reasons of psychology desire to shine, to be noticed, to do things with an air that will draw the attention of everyone exclusively to them. We all know people like that. I had never been like that, but had found that simply by doing what I felt I had been impelled to do I had gained many of the results of a greater striving. Sometimes a man, to show his strength and prowess, would haul a narrow boat alone. The average rate was around a third of a dwabur a bur and by traveling at night the boats could cover sixteen dwaburs in a day. I was looking at this one man who wished to show off.
He came striding on, head down, muscles bared to the air with his jerkin unlaced and open over his chest. He was a fine-looking man, with plenty of manly hair on that chest, and a well-proportioned head with fiercely jutting beard and arrogant moustaches. He carried the tow rope over his left shoulder so that he could lay his weight against it to control his boat. I judged that, indeed, she was his, for after the fashion of many of the canalfolk he wore adornments of gold and silver about him, golden earrings and golden bands around his arms, and these were of a
fine quality.
The sound of the boat’s passage in that rhythmical series of gurglings and plashings swelled as he drew nearer. I could see no one on the deck of his boat, which was a large specimen of canal craft, a good hundred and fifty feet long in Terrestrial measurements. A brute to handle in a congested way, as I well knew.
I approached.
“You look as though you could do with some help over the bridge, Ven.”
He looked up, not having heard my approach.
“I do not think so, Ven.”
“Oh, I am sure you do.”
I fell in at his side and walked pace for pace. Ahead of us the bridges grew nearer, and the Vomansoir Cut.
“I am Kutven Ban nal Ogier, and by your clothes you are not a canalman, by Vaosh! I need no help. Or do you wish to drink canalwater?”
A Kutven was a high-ranking man among the Vens. The canalfolk had many degrees, of course, and among them there was the Lord High Kov, and the Lord High Strom, and so on down to the ordinary Kutvens and Vens. I made myself laugh.
“Oh, come now, Kutven Ban! Of course you need help to climb that bridge.” I put a hand on the rope.
I was keenly aware of the ludicrous situation. Here was I ready to brawl with a fellow canalman over rights of way, and yet all my thoughts were centered on the Princess Majestrix of this land. Truly, I relished the irony. “Take your hand off that rope. By Gurush of the Bottomless Marsh! Do you hear me, leepitix?”
“I hear, Ven, and I am not amused. I do not like being called a leepitix.” A leepitix is a twelve-legged reptilian wriggler about a foot long who infests the canals and has a nasty bite. They can be frightened off by splashing. “Clear off!”
He let go the rope with his left hand and struck out. I ducked, tripped him up, yanked the rope in hard. It came with the peculiar soggy resistance and welling movement typical of a boat in narrow waters.
“I’m only trying to help you, Ven!”
He yelled and tried to stand up, whereat I cast a bight of the rope about his ankles and so pitched him over again.
“Look out!” I yelled. I jumped up and down and waved my arms at the boat which now headed majestically into the bank. “Look out, Ven! You’ll have her aground!”
He was shrieking and raving by this time. A head popped up over the hatchway coaming of his boat. Yells floated up. The stem grounded about a yard out, and the stern began to swing. The cut, here, just after the winding-hole farther back, narrowed so as to present the shortest distance for the canal architects to bridge. The boat’s stern drifted across and grounded on the far bank. Now people were yelling and running from all directions, it seemed, and I heard a series of splashes as people dived in to swim to the bank as the quickest way ashore. I yelled at a crone with gray hair who ran shrieking with her frying pan held aloft.
“Kutven Ban tangled himself up in the rope. Quick! We must help.”
Other voices joined in a chorus of disbelief. I was making a great play of unwrapping the rope from Ban. He tried to hit me and I put my foot on his head, purely by accident, and he gobbled into the muddy grass of the towpath.
“Help us!” I shouted.
The crone started to hit me with the frying pan.
I ducked and Ban struggled up, foaming, and I gave the end of the rope a kick and it slid into the water like an eel. A big fellow with a red jerkin and silver earrings ran up. Two or three boys joined in and a couple of girls danced about. Other people formed a ring.
Ban was purple.
“He tangled in the tow rope and fell over,” I shouted. I spread my hands. “Look at the following boats.”
The fellow in the red jerkin spun around as though I had kicked him in his breechclout.
“Oh, by the mighty Vaosh himself!” he moaned.
Men and women were tumbling out of the boats to get onto the bank, where the haulers were laying back and being dragged on squeaking heels along the path. The next boat homed in on the boat wedged diagonally across the cut and bumped in a great groaning of wood. The following boats began to pile up. I looked around. Now boats were filling the cut in a series of zigzags and presenting a scene of utter confusion.
I looked around with a certain satisfaction on my handiwork.
Then I looked the other way and saw Dancing Talu and Pride of Vomansoir gliding across the empty stretch, and the other boats on the Ogier Cut calmly receding into the distance.
Ban glared up, spitting mud, struggling to rise.
“You really should be more careful,” I said.
I could not immediately run off and jump aboard Yelker’s boat. There might be reprisals. So I started in on a fresh series of explanations for the benefit of fresh arrivals.
“Poor Kutven Ban!” and: “Ban shouldn’t do it all himself.”
I looked at Ban. He shook his broad shoulders and cocked his fists, spat mud, bristled, and started for me.
I said, “It is better that it was an accident, Ban. I do not think I wish to hurt you, but if it is necessary, I will.”
He roared, threw back his head to glare in hatred at me — he looked in my face. He stopped. He hesitated. His right foot scraped the towpath. He lowered his fists.
“Maybe, at that, ‘twas an accident.”
“By Vaosh, Ban,” I said. “You’re a man after my own heart.”
The clustered ring of people quite clearly were prepared to take their cue from the Kutven. He suddenly began roaring and raving to such effect that the ring burst asunder, and men and women, boys and girls, flew to their boats and a gang tailed onto the tow ropes of Kutven Ban’s boat and began to drag her parallel to the banks once more. I shouted in a very genial way, “Remberee!” and walked off.
Dancing Talu pushed on southerly and I hauled with a will, but I was not so prideful or so foolish as to wish to show off and haul by myself, although capable of it, and I noticed that Zyna would very often be there with me, hauling with her slender firmly-rounded body thrusting into the rope. In the normal course of events life on the cuts is leisurely, but now, because the cargo of hoffiburs might go rotten on Yelker, he maintained a good pace and by nightfall we had left Pride of Vomansoir well behind. We pushed on, the leading hauler with a lantern balanced in a lantern-hat, an arrangement of cradles and slings strapped onto the head and around the chin, angled back so that the lantern swung horizontally, although the hauler’s head inclined down with the strain of pulling.
It was the next night we saw the headless zorcamen.
Yelker ran up onto the forepeak of the boat and yelled, and Zyna let out a shriek of pure fear.
“Get back on board!” roared Yelker. “Let the rope go!”
Zyna clasped my arm. Her fingers shook.
“Drak! Drak! The headless zorcamen!”
I slipped the rope off my shoulders, got a grip on Zyna, and plunged bodily into the water. A few quick overarm thrusts with my free hand and I could heft her clinging body up with my other hand to the waiting grip of Yelker and Rafee. I followed them up. I stood on the narrow catwalk around the sheeted cargo space, dripping water, and stared narrowly into the blackness.
My eyes adjusted quickly — and then I saw them.
A long line of cowled and cloaked figures they were, as I thought, dark against the sky where four moons floated. Then a closer inspection revealed that, indeed, the cowls were merely hunched shoulders, the cloaks trailing, and that the zorcamen rode headless across the moors.
“Rubbish!” I said. “By Zim-Zair, a trick, a cheap trick.”
“Of course, Drak. They are men like you or me, dressed up to look horrific. But many men still believe them to be supernatural apparitions.”
I had had experience of headless horsemen, and the headless coachman, for in the land of my youth smuggling was a fine art.
“What purpose do they serve, then, Yelker? And why do we stop?”
“They are dangerous men. Those they do not frighten off, they kill.”
“Are we to stop, then, because of buffoons
like that?”
“It is wise. So long as they believe they terrorize the district, we are safe. If they detected resistance, disbelief carried to action, they would strike us mercilessly.” He coughed, and added: “And there are Mother and Zyna, Sisi, and the girls to consider.”
“Yes,” I said. After a pause, when I had sufficiently controlled myself, I said: “Who are these kleeshes?”
“They ride the moors. Hereabouts is all the domain of Faygar, the Strom of Vorgan. He is a known racter. But he owns allegiance to the Kov of Vomansoir.”
“So?”
“So the racters must show their strength in some way when all the usual ways are denied them.”
There were twenty of them, riding head to tail, a long serpentine line of hunched shapes against the moons. They looked eerie and menacing, completely horrifying to an untutored mind.
“By Zair!” I said. “I have a mind to take my sword and teach them a lesson. And, come to that, I could use a zorca.”
Yelker passed no comment on my vainglorious boasting. He said: “You would leave us, Drak?”
My thoughts were turned to Vondium and Delia of the Blue Mountains. I had no wish to appear ungrateful to Yelker or his family aboard Dancing Talu. But I could not but speak the truth.
“I would be in Vondium as fast as the fleetest airboat could take me, Yelker!”
He sighed. “We shall lose you at Vomansoir, then. I value your presence aboard mightily. We would have lost much time crossing the Ogier Cut. By Vaosh, I would not have believed it!”
Rafee let out a cackle.
The zorcamen rode on, and their leader trended over the dark horizon, and so they vanished, one by one. Racters they were, out to terrorize the people of the district, to extort, to maim, and to kill. Well, they meant nothing to me. I had let my chance go. To the Ice Floes of Sicce with them all!
After a space we resumed our hauling, but Zyna remained aboard the boat.
I had detected in my actions since this arrival on Kregen a change of attitude, a laxness, a half-heartedness, a kind of softness most displeasing to me. I could guess why this was. You who have listened to my story will know that I tend to think like a civilized man, and to consider all the angles of a problem, and then to act like a savage barbarian, and jump in with my sword in my fist. Much of that must come from my Earthly ancestry mingled with the years I spent among my clansmen, fighting my way up to be Zorcander and Vovedeer. And, too, I am not a twentieth-century man, despite my veneer of the ways of speech and the automated culture of these times. I come from a lusty, brawling, robust age, when a belaying pin or a sailor’s knife settled an argument. I am not your ordinary hero of polite fictions, such as are still to be found in the scented courtly poems of Loh or of Vallia itself.
Prince of Scorpio Page 9