C J Cherryh - Brothers of Earth

by Brothers Of Earth [lit]

  "Hya!" Val cried. "My lord Kta! Ship astern!"

  There was, amid the gray haze, a tiny object that was not a part of the sea or the shore. Kta swore.

  "They cannot help but overhaul us, my lord!"

  "That much is sure," said Kta, and then lifted his voice to the crew. "Men, if that is Edrif astern, we have a fight coming. Arm yourselves and check your gear; we may not have time later. Kurt, my friend"-Kta turned and faced him-"when they close, as I fear they will, keep away from exposed areas. The Sufaki are quite accurate bowmen. If we are rammed, jump and try to find a bit of wood to cling to. Use sword or ax, whatever you wish, but I do not plan to be boarding or boarded if I can prevent it. Badly as we both want Shan t'Tefur, we dare not risk it."

  The intervening space closed slowly. Nearer view confirmed the ship as Edrif, a sixty-oared longship, and Tavi, though of newer and swifter design, had ten of her fifty benches vacant. At the moment only twenty oars were working.

  "Ei," said Kta to the men in the rowers' pits on either side of him, the other twenty also seated and ready, six of the deck crew taking vacant posts to bring Tavi's oarage closer to normal strength. "Ei, now, keep the pace, you rowers, as you are, and listen to me. Edrif is stalking us, and we will have to begin to move. Let none of us make a mistake or hesitate; we have no margin and no relief. Skill must save us, skill and discipline and experience; no Sufak ship can match us in that. Now, now, run out the rest of the oars. Hold, you other men, hold!"

  The cadence halted briefly, Tavi's twenty working oars poised creaking and dripping until the other twenty-six were run out and ready. Kta gave the count himself, a moderate pace. Edrif gained steadily, her sixty oars beating the sea. Figures were now discernible on her deck.

  Kurt made a quick descent to seize a blade from a rack in the companionway, and on second thought exchanged it for a short-handled ax, such as was properly designed for freeing shattered rigging, not for combat. He did not estimate that his lessons with Kta had made him a fencer equal to a nemet who had handled the ypan all his life, and he did not trust that all Sufaki shunned the ypan in favor of the bow and the knife.

  He delayed long enough to dress too, to slip on a pel beneath the ctan and belt it, for the wind was bitter, and the prospect of entering a fight all but naked did not appeal to him.

  When he had returned to the deck, even after so brief ~a time, Edrif had closed the gap further, so that her green dragon figurehead was clear to be seen above the water that boiled about her metal-shod ram. A stripe-robed officer stood at her bows, shouting back orders, but the wind carried his voice away.

  "Prepare to turn full about," Kta shouted to his own crew. "Quick turn, starboard bank... stand by... turn! Hard about, hard!"

  Tavi changed course with speed that made her timbers groan, oars and helm bringing her about three-quarters to the wind, and Kta was already shouting an order to Pan.

  The dark blue sail with the lightning emblem of Elas billowed down from the yard and filled, deck crew hauling to sheet it home. Tavi came alive in the water, suddenly bearing down on Edrif with the driving power of the wind and her forty-six oars.

  Frenzied activity erupted on the other deck. Edrif began to turn, full broadside for a moment, continuing until she was nearly stern on. Her dark green sail spread, but she could not turn with graceful Tavi's speed, and her crew hesitated, taken by surprise. Tavi had the wind in her own sail, stealing it from theirs.

  "Portside oars!" Kta roared over the thunder of the rowing. "Stand by to ship oars portside! Hya, Val!"

  "Aye!" Val shouted back. "Understood, my lord!"

  A shout of panic went up from Edrif as Tavi closed, and Kta shouted to the portside bank as they headed for collision. Tavi's two banks lifted from the water, and with frantic haste the men portside shipped oars while the starboard rowers held their poised level.

  With the final force of wind and gathered speed, Tavi brushed the side of Edrif, the Sufak vessel's starboard oars splintering as shouts of pain and panic came from her pits. Sufaki rowers deserted their benches and scrambled for very life, their officers cursing at them in vain.

  "Take in sail!" Kta shouted, and Tavi's blue sail began to come in. Quickly she lost the force of the wind and glided under momentum.

  "Helm!" Kta shouted. "Starboard oars... in water... and pull!"

  Tavi was already beginning to turn about under her helm, and the one-sided bite of her oars took her hard about again, timbers groaning. There was a crack like a shot and a scream: one of the long sweeps had snapped under the strain and tumbled a man bleeding into the next bench. The next man leaned to let him fall, but kept the pace, and one of the deck crew ran to aid him, dragging him from the pit. Arrows hissed across the deck. Sufaki archers.

  "Portside oars!" Kta shouted, as those men, well-drilled, had already run out their oars to be ready. "All hold! In water... and pull!"

  Forty-five oars hit the water together, muscles rippled across glistening backs-stroke-and stroke-and stroke, and Edrif astern and helpless with half her oarage hanging in ruin and her deck littered with splinter-wounded men. The arrows fell short now, impotent. The breathing of Tavf's men was in unison and loud, like the ship drawing wind, as if all the crew and the ship they sailed had become one living entity as she drove herself northward, widening the distance.

  "First shift," Kta shouted. "Up oars!"

  With a single clash of wood the oars came up and held level, dipping and rising slightly with the give of the sea and the oarsmen's panting bodies.

  "Ship oars and secure. Second shift, hold for new pace. Take your beat. Now... two... three..."

  They accepted the more leisurely pace, and Kta let go a great sigh and looked down at his men. The first shift still leaned over the wooden shafts, heaving with the effort to breathe. Some coughed rackingly, striving with clumsy hands to pull their discarded cloaks up over their drenched shoulders.

  "Well done, my friends," said Kta. "It was very well done."

  Lun and several others lifted a hand and signaled a wordless salute, without breath to speak.

  "Hya, Pan, you men. It was as fine a job as I have seen. Get coverings for all those men in the pits. A sip of water too. Kurt, help there, will you?"

  Kurt moved, glad at last to find himself useful, and took a pitcher of water to the side of the pit. Two of the men were overcome with exhaustion and had to be lifted out

  and laid on the deck beside the man whose splintered oar had gashed his belly. It proved an ugly wound, but the belly cavity was not pierced. The man was vowing he would be fit for duty in a day, but Kta ordered otherwise.

  Edrif was far astern now, a mere speck, not attempting to follow them. Val gave the helm to Pan and walked forward to join Kta and Kurt.

  "The hull took it well," Val reported. "Chal just came up from checking it. But Edrif will be a while mending."

  "Shan t'Tefur has a mighty hate for us," said Kta, "not lessened by this humiliation. As soon as they can bind up their wounds and fit new oars, they will follow."

  "It was bloody chaos on her deck," said Val with satisfaction. "I had a clear view of it. Shan t'Tefur has reason to chase us, but those Sufaki seamen may decide they have had enough. They ought to know we could have sunk them if we had wished."

  "The thought, may occur to them, but I doubt it will win us their gratitude. We will win as much time as We can." He scanned the pits. "I have not pulled an oar in several years, but it will do me no harm. And you, friend Kurt, you are due gentler care after what you have endured, but we need you."

  Kurt shrugged cheerfully enough. "I will learn."

  "Go bandage your hands," said Kta. "You have little whole skin left. You are due to lose what remains."

  XVII

  The clouds had gone by morning and Phan shed his light over a dead calm sea. Tavi rolled with a lazy motion, all but dead in the water, her crew lying over the deck where they could find space, wrapped in their cloaks.

  Kurt walked to the stern, ru
bbing his eyes to keep awake.

  His companion on watch, Pan, stood at the helm. The

  youth's eyes were closed. He swayed on his feet.

  "Pan," said Kurt gently, and Pan came awake with a jerk, his face flushing with consternation.

  "Forgive me, Kurt-ifhan."

  "I saw you nod," Kurt said, "only an instant ago. Go lie down and I will stand by the helm. In such a sea, it needs no skill."

  "I ought not, my lord, I-"

  The youth's eyes suddenly fixed on the sky in hope, and Kurt felt it too, the first effects of a gentle southern breeze. It stirred their hair and their cloaks, touched their faces lightly and ruffled the placid waters.

  "Hya!" Pan shrieked, and all across the deck men sat up. 'The wind, the south wind!"

  Men were on their feet, and Kta appeared in the doorway of the cabin and waved his hand in signal to Val, who shouted an order for the men to get moving and set the sail.

  In a moment the night-blue sail billowed out full. Tavi came to run before the wind. A cheer went up from the crew as they felt it.

  "Ei, my friends," and Kta grinned, "full rations this morning, and permission to indulge, but moderately. I want no headaches. That wind will bear Edrif along too, so keep a sharp eye on all quarters, you men on watch. You rowers, enjoy yourselves."

  The wind continued fair and the battered men of Tavi were utterly content to sleep in the sun, to massage heated oil into aching limbs and blistered hands, to lie still and talk, employing their hands as they did so with the many small tasks that kept Tavi in running order.

  Toward evening Kta ordered a course change and Tavi bore abruptly northwest, coming in toward the Isles. A ship was on the western horizon at sunset, creating momentary alarm, but the sail soon identified her as a merchant vessel of the house of Ilev, the.white bird emblem of that house shining like a thing alive on the black sail before the sun.

  The merchantman passed astern and faded into the shadowing east, which did not worry them. Ilev was a friend.

  Soon there were visible the evening lights on the shores of a little island. Now the men ran out the oars with a will and bent to them as Tavi drew toward that light-jeweled strand: Acturi, home port of Hnes, a powerful Isles-based family of the Indras-descended.

  "Gan t'Hnes," said Kta as Tavi slipped into the harbor of Acturi, "will not be moved by threats of the Sufaki. We will be safe here for the night."

  A bell began to toll on shore, men with torches running to the landing as Tavi glided in and ran in her oars.

  "Hya!" a voice ashore hailed them. "What ship are you?"

  "Tavi, out of Nephane. Tell Gan t'Hnes that Elas asks his hospitality."

  "Make fast, Tavi, make fast and come ashore. We are friends here. No need to ask."

  "Are you sure of them?" Kurt wondered quietly, as the mooring lines were cast out and made secure. "What if some ship of the Methi made it in first?" He nervously scanned the other ships down the little wharf, sails furled and anonymous in the dark. "Hnes might be forced-"

  "No, if Gan t'Hnes will not honor house-friendship, then the sun will rise in the west tomorrow dawn. I have known this man since I was a boy at his feet, and Hnes and Elas have been friends for a thousand years.... Well, at least for nine hundred, which is as far as Hnes can count."

  "And if that was not t'Hnes' word you were just given?"

  "Peace, suspicious human, peace. If Acturi had been taken from Hnes' control, the shock would have been felt from shore to shore of the Ome Sin. Hya, Val, run out the gangplank and Kurt and I will go ashore. Stay with the ship and hold the men until I have Can's leave to bring our crew in."

  Gan t'Hnes was a venerable old man and, looking at him, Kurt found reason that Kta should trust him. He was solidly Indras, this patriarch of Actuary's trading empire. His house on the hill was wealthy and proper, the hearthfire tended by lady Na t'Ilev e Ben sh'Kma, wife to the eldest of Gan's three sons, who himself was well into years. Lord Gan was a widower, the oldest nemet Kurt had seen; to consider that nemet lived long and very scarcely showed age, he must be ancient.

  Of course formalities preceded any discussion of business, all the nemet rituals. There was a young woman, granddaughter to the chan of Hnes. She made the tea and served it, and seeing her from the back, her graceful carriage and the lustrous darkness of her hair, Kurt thought of Mim. She

  even looked a little like her in the face, and when he knelt down and offered him a cup of tea he stared, and felt a pain that brought tears to his eyes.

  The girl bowed her head, cheeks flushing at being gazed at by a man, and Kurt took the cup and looked down and drank his tea, thoughts returning in the quiet and peace of this Indras home that had not touched him since that night in Nephane. It was like coming home, for he had never expected to set foot in a friendly house again; and yet home was Elas, and Mim, and both were gone.

  Hnes was a large family, ruled of course by Gan, and by Kma, his eldest, and lady Na. There were others of the house too, one son being away at sea. There was the aged chan, Dek, his two daughters and several grandchildren; Gan's second son Lei and his wife Pym and concubine Tekje h'Hnes; Lei's daughter Imue, a charming child of about twelve, who might be the daughter of either of his two wives-she had Tekje's Sufak-tilted eyes, but sat beside Pym and treated both her mothers with respectful affection; and there were two small boys, both sons of Lei.

  The first round of tea was passed with quiet conversation. The nemet were curious about Kurt, the children actually frightened, but the elders smoothed matters over with courtesy.

  Then came the second round, and the ladies left with the children, all but lady Na, the first lady of Hnes, whose opinion was of equal weight with that of the elder men.

  "Kta," began the lord of Hnes cautiously, "how long are you out from Nephane?"

  "Nigh to fifteen days."

  "Then," said the old man, "you were there to be part of the sad tale which has reached us."

  "Elas no longer exists in Nephane, my lord, and I am exiled. My parents and the chan are dead."

  "You are in the house of friends," said Gan t'Hnes. "Ai, that I should have lived to see such a day. I loved your father as my great friend, Kta, and I love you as if you were one of my own. Name the ones to blame for this."

  "The names are too high to curse, my lord."

  "No one is beyond the reach of heaven."

  "I would not have all Nephane cursed for my sake. The ones responsible are the Methi Djan and her Sufaki lover Shan t'Tefur u Tlekef. I have sworn undying enmity between Elas and the Chosen of Heaven, and a bloodfeud between Elas and the house of Tefur, but I chose exile. If I had intended war, I could have raised war that night in the streets of Nephane. So might my father, and chose to die rather than that. I honor his self-restraint."

  Gan bowed his head in thoughtful sorrow. "A ship came two days ago," he said. "Dkelis of Irain in Nephane. Her word was from the Chosen of Heaven herself, that Elas had offended against her and had chosen to remove itself from her sight; that the true author of the offense was-forgive me, my guests-a human who did murder against citizens of Nephane while under the guardianship of Elas."

  "I killed some of t'Tefur's men," said Kurt, sick at heart. He looked at Kta. "Was that it? Was that what caused it?"

  "You know there were other reasons," said Kta grimly. 'This was only her public excuse, a means to pass blame. My lord Gan, was that the sum of the message?" "In sum," said Gan, "that Elas is outlawed in all holdings of Nephane; that all citizens must treat you as enemies; that you, Kta, and all with you, are to be killed-excepting lord Kurt, who must be returned alive and unharmed to the Methi's justice."

  "Surely," said Kta, "Hnes will not comply."

  "Indeed not. Irain knew that. I doubt even they would execute that order, brought face to face with you."

  "What will you, sir? Had you rather we spent the night elsewhere? Say it without offense. I am anxious to cause you no inconvenience."

  "Son of my friend," said Ga
n fiercely, "there are laws older than Nephane, than even the shining city itself, and there is justice higher than what is writ in the Methi's decree. No. Let her study how to enforce that decree. Stay in Acturi. I will make this whole island a fortress against them if they want a fight of it."

  "My friend, no, no, that would be a terrible thing for your people. We ask at the most supplies and water, in containers that bear no mark of Hnes. Tavi will clear your harbor at dawn. No one saw us come save only Ilev, and they are house-friends to us both. And I do not plan that any should see us go. Elas has fallen. That is grief enough. I would not leave a wake of disaster to my friends where I pass."

  "Whatever you need is yours: harbor, supplies, an escort of galleys if you wish it. But stay, let me persuade you, Kta -I am not so old I would not fight for my friends. All Acturi's strength is at your command. I do not think that with war against Indresul imminent, the Methi will dare alienate one of her possessions in the Isles."