Master of Whitestorm

by Janny Wurts

  "The dead no longer suffer," Korendir whispered in reply to Haldeth's silence. "And shattered bones are a small price to pay for freedom."

  His words held a ringing arrogance which allowed no grace for reply. Haldeth did not try. Either Korendir was a madman with a taste for cruelty, or he knew explicitly what he was doing; his implied intent was to release every slave on Nallga's benches. Haldeth splashed the oar into the swell with bitter anger. More likely his benchmate would earn them all the cold taste of the knife.

  * * *

  Nallga entered the tiny harbor of Kahille Island late that afternoon. Mhurgai ships often anchored there, for springs flowed like silver down the islet's mountain slopes. Most southern archipelagoes relied on rain cisterns for fresh water; controlled by a water-broker, the price came dear. But Kahillans were too unsophisticated to levy a fee, and free water made their harbor a popular port.

  Nallga moored inside the barrier reef, and instantly became the target of a flotilla of native vendors in dugouts. Reduced swell offset their nuisance; casks made awkward handling, and the captain wished the loading accomplished as smoothly as possible. The Kahillans did not concern him. A culture without knowledge of metal could traffic no weapons with the slaves, and any guard spared for security left one less man for work.

  On the lower deck, Haldeth lounged at ease, grateful for the respite. An unfamiliar deckhand stood watch. Seated on the gangway enjoying a basket of fruit, the man was tolerant of contact between the slaves and the Kahillan merchants. One bold wretch had managed to wheedle himself a bunch of grapes, but the officer was too busy eating to intervene.

  Korendir leaned across the shaft of his oar with his head cradled on folded arms. To an inboard eye, he appeared asleep. Haldeth knew he was not. A Kahillan dugout drifted close to the galley's side, all but moored beneath his oarport. The occupants sat with upturned faces watching a humorous mime as Korendir pretended to hunt lice in his beard. By periodic stretching, Haldeth caught the gist of the performance. The sham puzzled him until he noticed the Kahillan men were clean-shaven. For a people without knives or steel, the fact was a telling oddity.

  Evidently Korendir intended to exploit the implications if he could. A final, furious round of scratching raised applause from his audience. The men in the dugout pushed off. Chattering and laughing as if they shared a fine joke, they unshipped paddles and executed a graceful stroke. As the canoe slipped out of sight beneath Nallga's counter, Korendir shut his eyes and drowsed in earnest. Presently, Haldeth did likewise.

  "Baja!" cried a smiling native in accented imitation of the Mhurgai call to rise.

  Haldeth opened his eyes in time to see Korendir lift his head and peer cautiously through the oarport. Balanced precariously on tip-toe in the stern of his dugout, a Kahillan man stood with his paddle extended above his head. Lashed to the end was a small wooden box. Korendir squeezed both shoulders through the oarport to reach it. Untying the knots on the waving blade took him an imprudent amount of time.

  Haldeth cast a nervous glance at the watch and observed that the sight of a slave straining through an open oarport did not pass unnoticed. The officer spat grapeskins onto the deck and shouted a guttural warning.

  Korendir ignored him. With an irritable frown, the deckhand rose and unslung his whip.

  Haldeth kicked his benchmate's ankle, imploring prudence. But with the final knot nearly undone, Korendir refused to relinquish his prize. The string fell loose, just as the deckhand strode the length of the gangway and uncoiled his lash. Korendir started to unwedge his shoulders from the oarport, but the deckhand moved first. Seven supple feet of braid struck, splitting through muscled flesh.

  Korendir recoiled and skinned his collarbone on the oarport. Silent and sullen, he straightened. Gripping his oar with both hands, he lifted gray eyes and glared at the deckhand. The insolence earned him the whip-butt across the face in a blow that left him reeling.

  "Mind thy manners," snapped the officer. But the slave's cold gaze left him strangely unsettled. He blotted sweat from his lip and sauntered back to his seat.

  The instant the officer's back was turned, Haldeth caught his friend's shoulder and whispered. "Was that necessary?"

  Korendir shifted his hand, surreptitiously exposing the corner of a small wooden box. Kahillan shaving tools were bound to be inside, and if his brief act of defiance had distracted the deckhand from noticing, Korendir considered the price worthwhile. One bruised eyelid dipped into a wink as he tucked his prize under his loincloth. Curled once more over his oarshaft, he ignored the flies which lit upon his opened back with impressive single-mindedness, and presently fell asleep.

  * * *

  In the dark, still hours after midnight, Korendir examined his contraband. Haldeth craned his neck to see over his companion's shoulder as the box fell open. The contents were immediately disappointing. By the wan light through the oarport, Haldeth discovered that Kahillans removed their beards with slivers of sharpened shell, each imbedded in a layer of pitch to preserve their fragile edges. A slot to one side contained a well-used whetstone.

  "Neth," said Haldeth. Disgust blunted his habitual caution. "Those things are worthless."

  Korendir lifted his head. "They're precisely what I expected," he said mildly.

  But Haldeth remained too irritable to demand any explanation. Angered that he had permitted himself any hope at all, he hunched at the far end of the oar shaft and sleeplessly waited for dawn.

  * * *

  The dishonored mate resumed duty the following day. His jaw was clenched, and his strut more pronounced as he relieved the officer on the gangway. Interpreting the signs as fishermen read weather, Haldeth knew the man's temper would be short. No slave needed Korendir's crusted back to remind how readily the Mhurgai whip might fall. All orders on the lower deck were obeyed as though the rowers sat balanced on eggshells.

  Nallga cleared the barrier reef just after sunrise. Driven by both banks of oars, she thrust through the swells under a stiff breeze, her forward slaves drenched in spray.

  Accustomed to the shudder of planking against heavy waves, Haldeth rowed, preoccupied by thought. Korendir's exchange with the Kahillan natives had been outright recklessness. Certain the mate would discover the contraband, Haldeth worried. Sharpened shells were no match for Mhurgai steel. Korendir was crazy to believe in them.

  Scarcely an hour beyond the barrier reef, Haldeth noticed cold water wetting his feet. He glanced downward, immediately suspicious of a leak. Nallga was clinker built, her strakes lashed through eyes on the ribs with tarred cord; one of the lines had given way, and seawater welled between the floorboards with each roll of the hull.

  Haldeth swore. Korendir surely had been at work with his shells; the line showed no trace of chafing previously. And with the mate's competency questioned by the entire crew, now was the worst time to discover hull failure. -Yet Haldeth had no choice. Refusal to report a leak carried worse penalty than the whip. Reluctantly he raised his voice.

  "Zhaird's hells," snapped the mate. "How did that happen?" Surly and impatient, he rang the brass bell to summon the ship's marshal since no Mhurga seaman ever walked among slaves without an armed escort to cover his back.

  The mate strode down the gangway to Haldeth's bench. Even where he stood he saw the water sluicing through the floorboards. The cause was certainly minor, and in his present vicious mood, the protocol which demanded he wait for assistance rankled. The moment the marshal's weaponed bulk loomed above the companionway, the mate barked orders to hold stroke. Then he stepped down between the slave benches.

  Haldeth relinquished his oar and moved clear. Left to tend the loom alone, Korendir stared through the oar-port as if unaware that an officer had arrived to inspect the leak.

  The mate muttered an insult and added a curt gesture for Darjir to move his feet. Korendir complied without haste. He fixed intent gray eyes upon the mate and appeared not to notice the foam-laced swell which rose beneath the poised blade of his oar. T
he sucking smack of impact tore the shaft free of his grip. The high end of the loom rose in a neat arc and struck the mate in the side of the head.

  Haldeth cried out in alarm as pounds of leaded beech thumped into skull. The officer toppled like a felled tree. His weapons clattered over the wood of slave bench, rib, and floorboard. Korendir controlled the shaft with a one-handed motion and swiftly bent over the fallen body of the mate.

  Haldeth trembled uncontrollably. A man four years at the oar could never have misjudged the swell; Korendir's act surely was deliberate. The marshal had witnessed its entirety, and his muscled, gut-round figure now pounded the length of the gangway. Both huge fists contained knives.

  Fear closed Haldeth's throat and sealed the breath within his lungs. Only divine intervention would spare him from hamstringing, and as he knew the Mhurgai, he would be lucky to escape that lightly. He remembered the mate's knife too late; the marshal's lumbering charge had already carried him aft. Haldeth found himself throttled by a hairy wrist, while ten inches of bare steel pricked his exposed neck.

  "Get back!" commanded the marshal. He spoke past Haldeth.

  Instantly obedient, Korendir straightened. He withdrew his hands, which surprisingly held no weapon, but instead had supported the mate's shoulder to hold him clear of the bilge. Salt water welled beneath the floorboards, lifting plumes of blood from the man's split scalp. His tasseled braid was already sodden scarlet and his body lay ominously still.

  Korendir shrugged, artfully emphasizing empty hands. The marshal snorted in disgust, but his death grip on Haldeth relaxed slightly.

  "Zhaird's own fool, thou art, to have made such a move," he muttered at the unconscious mate. Then he fixed unfriendly eyes on Korendir. "Ship that oar, slave, and make certain it causes no further mischief."

  The marshal raised his voice and summoned Nallga's healer. The man arrived, accompanied by a brace of deckhands who removed the mate from the bilge under the vigilant eyes of the marshal. After a brief examination, the healer stood up and pronounced the mate dead. He accompanied his prognosis with a clipped gesture toward Haldeth and Korendir.

  "Those slaves should both suffer punishment."

  The marshal crossed his arms over his belted chest and spat on the deck. "I think not," he said. "Why ruin two fine strong backs? The mate's own carelessness earned his death. I saw. No hand held the oar which struck Alhar down. Any fool who thinks himself clever enough to walk alone on a slave deck well deserves a split skull."

  "The captain must decide," retorted the healer. "I doubt the injury to Alhar was an accident."

  The marshal shrugged. He extended a hand for the healer's satchel and helped the man back onto the gangway. A crewman arrived to replace the departed mate, and both officers retired abovedecks.

  * * *

  Interrupted at breakfast by news of Alhar's misfortune, the captain heard the marshal's account through without comment. But when the healer insisted the slaves be tortured in retribution, Nallga's commander spared no patience for tact.

  "Zhaird's hells, I'm well rid of that incompetent excuse of a mate!"

  The healer frowned. "That's a dishonorable way to account for an officer who was murdered in thy service."

  The captain's face went white. "Alhar's weapons were not touched." He qualified with menacing clarity. "Slaves who kill usually have courage enough afterward to strike a blow in self defense. We're short-oared enough without wasting the morning carving sheep."

  The captain sized the healer up in a manner that withered the reply in the man's throat.

  "Get thee gone from here," he finished. "Quickly, or I'll teach thee the meaning of insubordination with a rope on the end of a yardarm."

  The healer backed through the doorway, his satchel forgotten in his haste. The captain booted it out of the cabin with such violence that medicine flasks shattered within. With no pause for apology, he rounded on the marshal.

  "Clear that oar and get the joiner to work on the leak. Lock the slaves in the sail room, and don't trouble me again concerning the matter."

  * * *

  Confined in the semidarkness of the sailroom, Haldeth shivered as the sweat chilled his body. The stroke of the upper deck oars rumbled through the bulkhead at his back, and he breathed air thickened with the smell of mildewed canvas. The new location held nothing by way of advantage. Stout chain secured him to the ring set in the hatch grating, and a guard stood watch beyond the companionway. The man would not sleep at his post; every sailhand down to the waterboy had suffered repercussions from the captain's foul mood. Haldeth found no comfort knowing that blame rested on the slaves whose oar had caused Alhar's death.

  As though sensing his companion's thoughts, Korendir whispered from the shadow. "I never promised there wouldn't be risk.."

  Haldeth's temper flared. "What have you gained us but misery? You've seen what happens to those who earn the disfavor of the Mhurgai. How long do you think it will take you to break, when they strip your back raw because you moved to swat a fly?"

  "Be still!" snapped Korendir. "I never act without purpose."

  Haldeth felt his wrist gripped, and a warm object pressed against his palm. He raised it toward the dull streak of daylight which fell through a crack in the hatch grating, clued by the pungent scent of pine before his eyes confirmed. Korendir had passed him the pitch which once had lined the Kahillan box. Deeply pressed in the surface was an impression of the leg-iron key, surely purloined from the ring at the mate's belt during the confused moment while the marshal had raced the length of the gangway.

  Sobered into reflection, Haldeth returned the pitch. Over the stroke of Nallga's oars, he heard the whispered scrape of a whetstone grinding shell and in darkness, Korendir's slow smile could almost be felt.

  "I'll have you a copy," he said softly. "Wooden, but good enough, since the marshal so kindly oiled the locks."

  Haldeth suppressed a mad urge to laugh. Under normal conditions, the leg-irons were frozen with rust. But the marshal had nearly bent his key while unlocking the slaves for transfer to the sail room. In an irritable fit of efficiency, he had commanded a deckhand to work the slide bars with oil, then inspected the job personally to ascertain the work was done well. The locks now operated with a minimum of friction. For the first time, Haldeth entertained belief that escape might be possible.

  He touched his companion's arm. "Let me help. I can sharpen while you carve."

  Korendir passed the whetstone and the duller of his two shells, then resumed work in silence. The joiner would repair the leak in under an hour, and the duplicate key must be complete before the marshal returned to fetch them back to the oar.

  II. Southengard

  A scant hour later, Korendir tested his finished creation on the leg irons. His own fell open with a gratifying click, but Haldeth's proved too stiff for the wood the Kahillans used to fashion boxes. The makeshift key slivered in the lock and snapped off.

  "Neth," murmured Korendir, keen disappointment in his tone.

  Haldeth felt sweat spring along his spine. Caught with one leg iron opened, and the other crammed with splinters, nothing shy of miracle could spare them retribution from their Mhurgai masters.

  But Korendir wasted no time brooding over consequences. "I'll not be stopped," he whispered. With quick, fierce motions, he twisted off a bit of pitch and used the sticky substance to bind his own lock shut.

  "Listen carefully," he said to Haldeth. "Until we reach the bench, the Mhurgai won't know the locks have been tampered. Before then, we have them off guard. Keep your wits and wait for my move."

  Hardened by terrible resolve, Haldeth steadied his shaken nerves. He had no choice now but see the matter through. Relieved that their plot could hold no more surprises, Haldeth reviewed the steps his captors would take to return them to the lower deck. A desperate man could perhaps find an opening which might be turned to advantage.

  In the past Haldeth had observed slaves removed for punishment often enough to guess the pr
ocedure. The Mhurgai would unlock their chains at the hatch grating, then attach them to rings on the belt of the officer-appointed mate in Alhar's stead. He and Korendir would then walk the length of the upperdeck gangway, followed by the mate and the marshal, Since Mhurgai invariably adhered to custom, Haldeth assumed the marshal would move to the lead at the head of the companionway ladder, for no officer ever risked descent with an unguarded slave at his back.

  "The lower deck companionway," Haldeth murmured softly. Loose, Korendir could drop from above and kick the marshal off balance. And piled behind the ladder lay the leaded handles of seven broken oars, ready weapons against Mhurgai taken by surprise.

  "A likely choice," Korendir agreed. "However, if better opportunity presents itself, don't expect me to wait."

  * * *

  The light through the grating reddened and slowly turned gray as sunset faded into twilight. The Mhurgai seemed in no hurry to fetch the slaves who had caused Alhar's death. With a prolonged rumble of sound, the upperdeck oars ran in for the evening meal, heralding the close of the watch. The sailroom became oppressively quiet despite the beat of the lowerdeck oars which maintained Nallga's headway. Even whispered conversation became too risky. Haldeth clenched damp fingers against his forearms. Should the wait last very much longer, he felt as if he must shout to relieve the pressure. Taut and unsettled, he glanced at his companion.

  Stretched full length against a roll of spare canvas, Korendir seemed asleep. Haldeth strove to match his patience. Presently the reverse in the oar shift signalled the fact that the lower deck received supper without them. Scant minutes later, the marshal and the mate wrenched open the sail room door. Both wore their full regalia of weapons. The marshal stepped briskly inside. He bent with a grunt and unfastened the bolt ring from the hatch grating.

  "Come along," he said impatiently. "Lively, unless thee fancy an empty stomach."

  Korendir sprang to his feet. The lightest jerk would part the pitch which bound his leg iron, and he could ill afford to have his freedom exposed untimely.