by Tanith Lee
“No other client.”
Doriyos shrugged. “I’ve been a whore since my eleventh birthday, I was sold to it. But I’m not a slave anymore. I do this because I know how to do it—”
“Yes, that’s very true,” said Rem, and so the conversation had been curtailed.
The Star made the first union partly frantic, swiftly bringing a shrill choking ecstasy, and, after the briefest interval, kindling up again into a slower and more profound pleasure.
The shadows were the color of Lowland amber on the walls when Rem came back to the bed and put the ring into Doriyos’ palm. The stone in the ring matched the shadows.
“You,” said Doriyos. “You don’t have to pay me.”
“A gift.”
“I know the worth of amber.” There was a pause, and then Doriyos said, “You’re going to fight, aren’t you? This Zakoris idiocy—I heard talk in the market. Your Prince Kesarh, who has you flayed.”
“It seems so.”
Rem had not mentioned the summons. But, as the Shansarians boasted they were with lovers or kin, he and Doriyos were sometimes sympathetic enough to share a mild telepathy.
“I can’t say be careful, you’ll have no choice. I can’t say again even that I love you, because I see you rather uncare for it.”
Rem shrugged. His eyes were full of a peculiar hurt he had not shown for the wounds on his back. The black hair that thickly curled along his head and neck fell in spiraled locks over the broad low forehead. For a moment he was vividly handsome, as sometimes he could be.
In that moment, sounds came from a room below, grunts and screeches and the splat of a soft whip as unlike the Biter as could be imagined.
“Bless the goddess, Gheal is busy once more,” said Doriyos piously. And the two young men burst out laughing.
So the farewell was merry if not gladsome.
The crowd’s alertness recalled Rem. Something else was going to happen.
Kesarh stood in his jet-black mail before the altar. All this trumpery of sacrifice and prayer had given him public attention. He seemed poised, yet electrified, and cut a strong figure, impressive and elegant.
A great bowl of beaten silver had been brought, in which a knot of serpents writhed and hissed.
A momentous hush fell over the crowd. One of the favorite sorcerous tricks of the Shansarians was about to be perpetrated. The magician-priest thrust his arm into the bowl and raised it, a mighty snake, more than half the length of a man, gripped in his fist. The snake twisted, its scales like metal or mirror, then suddenly flattened out, grew straight and rigid, quivering to immobility in the hand of the magician.
The crowd gasped.
The snake had become a sword, as expected.
The King, Suthamun, came over the terrace. It had been noticeable, his brothers and legal heirs were not present. He took the sword which had been a snake, and placed it in the hands of Kesarh Am Xai.
“You go to do our will. Go then, with our favor, and with Hers.”
Kesarh held the sword, faultless showman, up for the crowd to see. When he spoke, his voice, heard for the first time, was startling: cool and dark, and carrying with the ease of an actor’s.
“For the honor of my King, and for the glory of the goddess.” He waited, and then, just before they could cheer these sentiments, he called out to them with an abrupt and vocal passion: “And for Karmiss, the Lily on the Sea!”
The crowd responded instantly and with fervor. It was a garland aimed for the hearts of the Vis.
Rem thought wryly, Well managed, my lord. And then, with a wholesome lifting of his spirit, Perhaps he doesn’t mean us to die at Tjis, after all.
• • •
It was an eight days’ ride along the rambling coastal roads, two men of the twenty detailed each day to ride ahead or drop behind and keep the three Karmian galleys in sight. Rem, part of this detail on the first day, noticed another piece of business had been managed. In order to avoid an open act of war against Zakoris-In-Thaddra, the ships were not flying the Lily of Karmiss or the fish-woman of Shansar. Their blank sails had been powdered each with a scarlet salamander.
After a couple of days, the party of riders was ahead. Those that rode in from ship-watching, when relieved by others sent back, gave their ordinary reports. The three ships were still afloat, sails hopefully out, the oars looking lazy. The weather was hot and almost windless. They joked to each other about whether it was better to bounce all day on a zeeba, or groan all day over an oar. They knew they must reach Tjis first, and so they did, but making bivouac on the hills the night before they were due to sight the town, a pair of riders came at them out of the dusk and from the wrong direction—that of Tjis itself.
“What is it?” Kesarh asked these two messengers. His own charioteer, he had only just left the vehicle, and stood stripping off his gloves while he listened.
“My lord—the King sent us no word—are there only these few men?”
Kesarh said, “There are ships coming, a day or so behind us.”
“Thank the gods—the goddess—if they can be hurried—”
“Probably. I deduce you now expect the pirates of Free Zakoris to pay a personal visit?”
“Yes, my lord. Last night they touched Karmiss west of here, we saw villages burning. Poor villages, sir. It was done from spite. The guardian feared for Ankabek—”
Kesarh’s extraordinary presence seemed to intensify. His men knew why. Prince Kesarh’s lady sister had only just gone to Ankabek, had she not?
“But there are beacons the island would light,” the messenger hastened on, sensing something, “and none showed. Besides, the Zakorians’re superstitious about holy places.”
“Not the holy places of a woman-god,” said Kesarh. His face was forbidding.
The messenger said quickly, “But they came on in this direction, air. Eastward, away from the sacred island. The watchtower below Tjis put up red smoke at noon. A man rode in just before sunset, who’s seen them himself, at anchor a handful of miles off.”
“How many ships?”
The messenger was an optimist who had not been told the strength Istris had sent. He said confidently, almost casually, “Seven, my lord.”
Only one of Kesarh’s soldiers swore.
Kesarh waited, then he said to the messenger: “I take it you’ve good reasons for thinking they may not come on at you immediately.”
“Zastis, sir. Zakorian ships always carry women. And the villages they plundered were great beer-makers—they’ll be celebrating. Unless we’re unlucky.”
“Actually,” said Kesarh, “you may be.”
Kesarh dispatched a single rider back toward the Karmian ships. They all heard the order. The galleys were to come on at battle speed, with relays of sailors at the oars when the rowers flagged. It would not be unheard of, nor would it be popular. He expected the vessels in the bay southeast of Tjis by dawn tomorrow. One could visualize the reactions. That accomplished, he took his guard sergeant aside, said something, and remounted the chariot. Their pace had been steady but not punishing, the tough zeebas could manage a few more hours through the warm red night.
“You. Nine, and the two Fours, your animals look the freshest. Follow.”
The three ran to remount. Rem with a curse of sheer interest, surprising himself. One more minute and they were charging down the bad road in the wake of the chariot, as fast as the zeebas would gallop.
• • •
Kesarh reached the town of Tjis two hours before midnight, his team bleeding and foaming at the bits, his three men at his back on mounts practically dying. The pace had been remorseless.
The gates flew open, and the doors of the modest mansion likewise. The Vis guardian himself led the Prince Am Xai to a decorated hall, and quite a decent supper was brought in, with sweet and fragrant Vardish wine.
“Our gratitude to the King,” said the guardian, “is inexpressible.”
“So it should be,” said Kesarh, cutting himself some of the roast. “He’s sent three mildewed hulks, manned by fellows who’ll be too tired to fight when they get here. And even so much was an afterthought. If your town survives this adventure, your gratitude will be to me.”
The guardian stared, and collected himself.
“Do you understand?” said Kesarh.
The guardian, rather pale, said that he did, and took some wine.
Kesarh watched the shaking hands ringed with rather unvaluable stones, and the wine slopping over them.
“How much wine,” said Kesarh, idly, “does Tjis possess?”
“My—lord?” The guardian gaped. “What do you—”
“This will go quicker,” said Kesarh, with an awful smile, “if you answer my questions rather than asking your own. How many barrels, skins and jars of wine would you estimate are in Tjis tonight?”
The guardian gulped, made an intelligent guess, and offered it.
“Excellent,” said Kesarh. “I noted you’ve prevented a panic evacuation. Keep things as they are. Get your guard out and use them, and anyone with arms and legs, to cart the wine. The square before this house here will do for a collection point.”
The guardian sat amazed.
Kesarh pushed the wine flagon sloshing toward him.
“You can set a noble example with this.”
Very slowly, the guardian rose with the flagon in his hands, and wandered out.
• • •
Initially on being roused, the town thought the Free Zakorians upon them, and chaos reigned. It was Kesarh himself, riding about the short narrow streets on one of the guardian’s zeebas, flanked by the guardian’s guard, who introduced an element of ruthless and compelling order.
In time, his strange demand was obeyed. The wine came out, off tables and shelves, up from cellars, and was dumped in the square.
Rem, a haulier with the others, saw a kind of good humor take the town. In the face of terror, any action, even if insane, was better than passive wretchedness. There was some cause for humor too, grannies rolling barrels, the wealthy squabbling for compensation, and here and there a guard taking a few minutes off to have a willing girl against a wall. It was Zastis, after all, and the death-fear qualm was surely driving toward the life-urge here.
Tjis was mostly Visian, not a light skin or a fair head had he seen—though there must be a few of them. That Kesarh was black-haired might well be a reassurance. His three soldiers were Karmian, too.
Rem was as uninformed as any man of Tjis. Until the other things began to be brought. Then he knew, and reveled in the outrage of it, sure it must fail. And not so sure. The Zakorians were drunk already, and full of pride, and scorn. It was, besides, the only chance Kesarh really had, save to turn tail and run.
• • •
They stood up black on the sunrise, a group of three at the mouth of the little cove, and four others a short distance farther in. The water was deep enough there to support them, for they were large ships, large but swift, biremes, their double rows of oar-mouths now vacant, their black sails folded. Opened, each would show the full and crescent Moon sigil of Old Zakoris, slit over by her snarling dragon. Red eyes were painted either side the beaked prows. Fast and powerful and low, they lay now heavy-bellied on the sea. There had been plunder along Dorthar’s southern coast, and sport among the villages of Karmiss, screaming women and bright frothing beer.
Despite the orgy, however, there was a watch set at every prow, men with the cruel uneven profiles of Zakoris, black-skinned or dark brass. Their land had hated the yellow races even before Amrek, even before the allies of Raldnor, the Bastard of Sar—a man nearly dark as they—had brought their city of Hanassor to its knees. Karmiss now was fair game to these pirates, and any place that accepted or affianced the rule of yellow-haired men—which was to say, everywhere. Zakoris was in Thaddra now, and now able yet to make war upon the world. But the day of the Black Leopard would come back. For Zarduk willed it, and Rorn, and all the male gods of Free Zakoris.
After the dawn had come kissing across the lips of the cove, a big silent ship swung by them like a dream.
At sunrise, the tide swelled into the straits between Dorthar and Karmiss. Such a swell alone might be carrying the ship, for only the dawn wind filled her sail, on which a scarlet lizard flamed. Her oar-ports were hatched closed.
The nearest watch-horn hallooed. Others responded.
Not long after, two of the black biremes—only two, for they were disdainful—put out after the phantom ship.
The slaves shackled to the oars were fairly fit, for they had been allowed only a ration of beer, and no women. The torrent of Zastis had for centuries been reckoned a handy extra scourge against these men. At such times, mercilessly chained and prevented from relieving their sexual frenzy save in the crudest and most haphazard way, the Star might send some of them mad. Yet the unexpanded, unfulfilled energy lent power to the oars.
Losing their slack sleeping look, the biremes shot out on to the straits in the wake of their prey, like two lean black dogs.
They caught her inside a mile and offered no violence, for they could see she was apparently deserted and adrift.
Such a thing was not uncanny. Pirates, they had frequently come on vessels in a similar state. Fat merchants and their crews took to the boats, or swam for land at hint of a superior force of reavers. It had happened often enough, and there was, often enough, easy spoil as a result, items too bulky to have been rescued.
Presently they grappled her and swarmed aboard, taking care that none lay concealed below, but all was empty as a scoured jar.
The jars, on the other hand, were full.
She was nothing more or less than a wine-shop, her holds crammed with cibba-wood casks, leather skins, stone and clay jugs. They held the perfumed heady wines of Vathcri and Vardath, and Tarabann, the only good to come from that accursed continent beyond Aarl-hell.
They knew Tjis waited not many miles off up the coast, but they could let her wait, her ecstasy of fear only the more climactic for being prolonged by foreplay. There was even a jest the town might have sent the wine to placate them, and it raised much laughter.
It was the league of their patriotic and lawless brotherhood that made them assume the ship’s cargo and return to share it with the other five biremes. The salamander galley they fired and left, a new sunrise on the water behind them.
There was not, of course, quite enough of the wine to go round. In the traditions of their land, they fought each other for it. Several men were knocked unconscious, or maimed, and a couple killed. The joyous riot of drinking was general enough and lavish enough and headlong enough so that by the time they knew they had been tricked, which was quite soon, it was too late.
When the first casualties began to display their symptoms, they were mocked as weak stomachs. Drunks who collapsed senseless, or rolled moaning and throwing up, were compatible phenomena. Yet presently the men of every ship became affected. Tearing gripes ravaged their intestines or their throats, their vision fragmented, they lost the powers of speech and movement. Men spewed blood, and the last disbelievers were enlightened. There had been some virulent poison in the wine. They did not know if they would die of this agent—in some cases it seemed likely, in others it was accomplished. Their terror and impotent anger were to no avail. Even the captains and officers had drunk the wine, they more than any. Bedlam and horror ruled, and in the midst of it, two Karmian galleys rounded the headland beyond Tjis and stole into the cove.
The small percentage who had not drunk, or who had not taken much, ran or crawled to their stations. Knowing their drill, this scatter of men attempted to operate the flame-throwing devices with which two of the Free Zakorian vessels were equipped. But the fires were out and all hum
an fire out with them. Only one missile was released, fell short, and perished in the sea, drizzling. The pirates, those who could stand, could do little else. Some of the purged staggered to the rails, their knives and swords in readiness. And here and there an archer loosed a shaft, or a spear was flung. But their aim was mostly out, and their heart was gone.
The first Karmian, unlike the Free Zakorians, had come prepared. She had mounted on her deck, of Suthamun’s bounty, one of the great spoon-catapults the Shansarians had perfected for naval use. Kesarh Am Xai, positioned at the prow, now gave the crew of the ballista leave to fire. Instantly the catapult thundered and spat. The large globule of flame soared out, roaring and whining as it parted the air, and splashed down on the foremost of the black ships. Primed now, again and again the spoon thudded against its buffer and the volcanic charge flew forth.
The Free Zakorians were burning, and those that could leapt in the sea, where the Karmians quickly picked them off with spears and lances, as if piking fish. The sick and the crazed even began to call for help to the ships with the salamander on their sails. While out of the thickening smog of smoke and between the towers of fire there came the crunch and crack of parting timbers and a fleece of sparks as the tall masts crashed. Beyond these noises, even as they stood away, the Karmian vessels heard the screams of the rowers trapped beneath their enemies’ blazing decks.
The captain of the first Karmian turned to the Prince Am Xai. The captain was of mixed blood also, but in the modish celebrated fashion of the hero Raldnor, his skin very dark against golden hair.
“My lord, it’s well-known Zakorian pirates employ only slaves at their oars.”
Kesarh looked at him, unhelpful and remote.
“My lord, the men burning to death down there will be Alisaarians, Iscaians, Thaddrians, men of lands we have no quarrel with.”
Kesarh smiled with such magnetic charm the captain smiled in return before he could prevent himself.