Doom's Break

by Christopher Rowley

  ARNA 03

  DOOM'S BREAK

  Christopher Rowley

  MAP OF THE NORTHERN LANDS

  PROLOGUE

  His name was Pulbeka. He was a stone breaker and the largest man ever seen in Shasht. In height he stood nearly seven feet tall. He tipped more than three hundred pounds on the scale, and very little of it was fat. Nor was he stupid, Pulbeka. He broke stone in the quarry for his living, but he was known as something of a savant.

  When they came to him with word that he was wanted at the pyramid, Pulbeka was silent for a moment.

  "Do they want just my heart?" he said at last.

  "No, they want all of you."

  "Then I will go," he said, setting down his hammer.

  They brought Pulbeka to the temple pyramid, and he prayed to the Great God and prostrated himself on the temple steps. He expected death.

  Instead, he was brought inside to a vault in the heart of the temple and laid out upon a stone table. He was tied to the table with heavy ropes, beyond even his enormous strength.

  He waited.

  After a while the door opened to admit a pale, feeble figure. Indeed, it had to be helped into the room. It stood beside Pulbeka and stared into his eyes. Pulbeka felt the force of the mind behind the dark, penetrating orbs. Pulbeka understood the purpose of this fell being.

  Pulbeka screamed.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The storm had passed. The Sea Wasp was still afloat, riding on the stubborn swell. The huge, mountainous seas were gone. The terrifying winds were but a memory. Now they tore at the waters far ahead, beyond the wall of dark clouds that lay across the horizon.

  Aboard the Sea Wasp, the men and mots crawled out of their hiding places and surveyed the damage.

  The foremast was gone, snapped off six feet from the deck. A tangle of rigging was strewn across the barque's waist. With the mast had gone the bowsprit, ripped out during the tempest's climax. The remaining mast, the mizzen, was relatively undamaged. The big triangular sail had been securely reefed well before the storm hit.

  Thru Gillo's bare feet gripped the deck, which was beginning to dry under the hot tropical sun. Like the others, he felt the damage to the ship almost as wounds to his own flesh. Five months of sailing on the Sea Wasp had made him feel the ship was a part of himself.

  At the wheel, defiant, stood gray-haired Mentupah, the brother of Emperor Aeswiren.

  Thru gave a happy shout. "You're alive!" He ran lightly up the steps to the upper deck.

  "You bet I'm alive," growled Mentu. "Take more than the waves to be rid of me, my fur-bearing friend. How about the others?"

  Thru picked at the wet knots holding Mentu fast to the wheel. "Nobody washed overboard, but Juf got hit on the head with a block of wood."

  "I saw that. He was on deck trying to tie up a loose line when the mast went. I thought he was a goner."

  "Not our Juf. He's down below with a gash in his head."

  "You mots have the hardest damned heads, eh?"

  Finally, Thru gave up on the wet knots and cut the line with his knife. "Some of us, anyway," he murmured. Unconsciously, he put a hand up to the scar on the back of his own head.

  Mentu held up the rope with a grin. His white teeth split the strange facial hair that showed him to be man. "Without this, I'd be feeding the fishes now."

  Thru clasped Mentu's hand, reflecting briefly on how dear this man had become to him. Truly they'd become like brothers, despite everything.

  Five months at sea had accomplished that, and more. They were five thousand miles from the dread Empire of Shasht, cruising in the tropical Maruka isles to take on fresh water and banyam fruit before they crossed the equator. Then they would head out across the vast reach of the northern ocean toward the homeland of the mots, brilbies, and kobs.

  "Pity to lose the mast," grumbled Mentu. "Ship will be hard to steer now."

  Thru was studying the damage. The other mots were doing the same. "We'll have to erect a temporary mast," he said.

  "With what?"

  "We have that old boom down below. It's broken, but there's a good twenty feet of it left."

  Mentu pursed his lips. "Better than nothing, I suppose."

  Thru clapped him on the back. "Compared to what we went through after Maringa, this will be easy work."

  "Please, don't remind me!" said Mentu with a shiver.

  While taking on water at the Isle of Maringa, they had also taken on some most unwelcome stowaways: a swarm, several thousand strong, of tropical fire ants. The struggle to eliminate the ants took up much of the succeeding week. During that time, the sound of oaths and screams of pain had been commonplace aboard the Sea Wasp.

  Those on the deck were clearing the torn rigging and examining the bow and the gash in the decking left by the bowsprit when it was ripped away by the storm.

  Simona climbed the steps a little unsteadily, took Thru's hand for a moment, then turned to examine Mentu. She'd cut her dark hair short and she wore a set of baggy trousers and vest just like the mots.

  "I was sure we'd lost you," she said with a smile.

  "Take more than a storm to be rid of me, Mistress Gsekk."

  Simona smiled and patted his shoulder, an unheard of gesture by a woman of Shasht, but Simona was that incredible rarity, a woman of the upper class who had renounced purdah. Indeed, since leaving Shasht and abandoning her veils, her face had tanned a deep brown.

  "You really are a survivor, brother of the Emperor."

  Thru went down to help the others clear the wreckage.

  "Keep anything that might still serve as rope," Mentu called after him. "We don't know when we'll be resupplied."

  Janbur of the Gsekk appeared from below. He was a younger man with straight brows, dark hair, somber of eye but light of heart. An aristocrat who'd lost everything in his efforts to save the mots from death at the hands of the priests of Shasht.

  "There's a foot of water in the hold."

  "That's all?" said Mentu with some surprise.

  "You wanted more?"

  "Bah," snorted Mentu. Janbur's humor rarely worked on the older man.

  "A little water is still coming in from the bow, where the bowsprit was torn out," reported Jevvi Panst, a mot from Old Sulmo.

  "I hope it can be repaired," said Simona.

  "Oh, for sure," said Jevvi, one of their best at carpentry. "We can seal her up. Needs a new bowsprit, that's all. I've told you before, Mistress Gsekk, this boat is well built."

  That was a comfort, since Simona had paid for it with the jewels of her family inheritance.

  "We could use some help down here," said Ter-Saab, a big brown kob, in a loud voice from the waist. Everyone, including Simona, joined him in hauling up a cable to which was attached a spar and a mass of wet rigging that had caught on the spar after being dragged overboard. Carefully they pulled the tangle apart.

  The mots began to make repairs. Mentu and Janbur, lacking experience in using tools, could only stand aside. In their world, such work was done by slaves.

  The leak in the bow was plugged and sealed with tar. A bowsprit was fashioned out of a gaff brought up from the hold. After a lot of work, an old boom was fished into what remained of the foremast. To this runty mast they attached a small spar. Lines were run out to the new gaff bowsprit, and a small jib sail was set.

  With the big triangular mainsail deployed on the mizzen and a square foretopsail placed on the new small foremast, they hoped the barque would respond to their efforts to steer her.

  Meanwhile, everyone took a turn on the foot-powered pumps. While they worked, they sang. It made the time pass more quickly. Janbur had been teaching them the old songs of Shasht, and in return they were teaching him the songs of the Land.

  Down belo
w, Thru found Simona putting a bandage on poor Juf Goost's head. The back of his head was swollen from a three-inch cut. The wound had been cleaned and treated with salt, but despite the pain, Juf was his normal cheerful self.

  "I suppose it could have been worse." His smile creased his battered face, destroyed by vicious thugs in the Shasht temple.

  "You could have broken your foolish head," said Simona, who would have missed Juf's infectious good humor.

  "Well, you'd have had one less mouth to feed."

  "Yeah, and one less pair of hands to haul on a line," said Thru.

  A strengthening breeze in the late afternoon drove the Sea Wasp eastward through the Maruka channel. As the daylight dwindled, they prepared a meal of banyam and salt fish. They soaked the fish to soften it, then boiled it and ate it sprinkled with a little lime juice. The starchy banyam fruit was baked in its husk. It was hardly eating in the manner of the Land, but it filled their bellies.

  As usual, Simona, Mentu, and Janbur sat slightly to one side. The rapid-fire conversation among the mots in their own tongue was still hard for them to understand. Even Simona struggled at times.

  So, as was also usual, they fell into a familiar conversation of their own, in Shashti.

  "I dream sometimes that I am all alone, in a world of them," said Janbur quietly.

  Simona nodded. She had actually lived that dream, briefly, some years before. A girl lost in a world of fur-covered people with strangely colored eyes and inhuman faces.

  "We will adjust."

  "Damn, I hope so," said Mentu, sopping up the juice in his bowl with a piece of banyam.

  "My mother tried to warn me," said Janbur with a wry smile.

  "Bah," said Mentu. "You young hothead. You should have listened to her and stayed at home."

  Janbur never let Mentupah's annoyance bother him. Which annoyed Mentu even more, of course.

  "We were young hotheads, but we saved our friends here."

  "For which," murmured Simona, "I am profoundly grateful."

  Finishing quickly, as he often did, Mentu went to the cabin and thence to the upper deck where he took sightings with the quadrant. The storm had ruined their reckoning of position and so it was necessary to come up with some idea of where they were. He used a sighting of the giant red star Kemm, which came above the horizon shortly after sunset. Kemm's ruddy glow was many times brighter than any other star in the heavens.

  Later, the planet Igen—"the bright one," as it was called by the men of Shasht, also known as Zanth in the language of the Land—rose above the horizon and could be used for further measurements. Then the readings obtained were checked against the tables in the book of variables. With two figures in hand, their north-south location could be determined. East-west was another matter.

  Thru went back to the main cabin to see the results of Mentupah's sightings. He found him with the lantern lit and a chart of the Eastern Marukas unrolled on the table. Mentu greeted him by pointing to the chart.

  "From the readings I took, I'd say we're about two hundred miles north of where we were yesterday. But how far to the east we've been blown I cannot tell. We couldn't track our speed, and even the log and line were torn away." Mentu looked back to the map. "I think we must be fairly close to this arc of islands here, the so-called Lost Marukas. If I'm right, we'll pass through them in a day or so. Once we're past them, we enter the great ocean."

  "So, this will be our last chance to find more banyam."

  "Unless we want to turn back and search the other Marukas."

  "Our voyage has been long enough. Everyone is keen to push on."

  "Right, of course." Mentu looked down.

  Thru guessed what was troubling him. "I know you're concerned about what it will be like when we reach the Land."

  "Well, yes. Where will we fit in? I certainly don't want to join the Emperor's army. But then again, I don't know how I'd feel fighting against it either."

  "I don't think you'll be forced to join our army."

  "Well, that's a relief, I suppose."

  "And you won't be alone. There will be other men, maybe even women. We had taken some prisoners, even by the time I was captured. By now there will be more."

  "So you foresee a little village of us?"

  "Perhaps. I don't know. It will be a decision for the Kings. Perhaps the Assenzi will invite you all to live in Highnoth."

  "Ah, this Highnoth, you mentioned it before. You trained there, you said."

  "I did. It is in the far north, and it gets cold in winter. You will learn many wonderful things at Highnoth. The Assenzi will teach you."

  "Mmmm. I see." Mentu managed not to sound too dismissive.

  "I know it will be hard at times. But you knew that from the moment you decided to come."

  "Yes. That's true."

  "If you or Janbur had stayed in Shasht, you would have had to stay hidden for the rest of your lives. Or you would have been killed."

  Mentu nodded. He had been imprisoned in a remote tower for twenty years on his brother's orders. In doing so, the Emperor had been protecting him. But then the Emperor had fallen, and no one knew where he was or if he still lived. The priests would have come for Mentupah sooner or later.

  Suddenly they heard a pounding of feet on the deck, and Juf burst into the cabin.

  "We have a light, very distant."

  Mentu hurried up the mast, spyglass in hand. Janbur climbed the boom they'd fished into the wreck of the foremast.

  Thru climbed into the crow's nest, too. Far away to the north he saw the glimmer of a distant lamp.

  Mentu frowned as he lowered the spyglass. "We had better douse our own lights and steer away from them."

  "Why?" asked Thru.

  "That will be a fishing boat. But the distinction between fishermen and pirates is none too fine in the Marukas. If the fishing isn't good enough, there are other ways of making a living."

  They set their course south, steering by the constellation of the Porpoises with the bright blue star Bilades to the fore. Through the night they kept an anxious watch for a light behind them, but none was seen.

  By dawn they were scudding south and east on a fine westerly wind. The Sea Wasp was riding well despite the imbalance between her two masts. Unfortunately, no sooner had they set to eating their banyams and dried fish than Pern Glazen, the mot in the crow's nest, spotted a triangular sail to the west.

  Mentu studied it for a while then pronounced the worst. "That rig tells me they are Maruka fishermen. They are following us, no doubt of it."

  "The fishing wasn't good enough, then?"

  "They can see that we were dismasted in the storm. Perhaps they think they can catch us."

  "Well, we have eight fighters," said Thru. "We can give a good account of ourselves."

  "No, we are seven," said Mentu. "A woman cannot take up arms."

  Simona looked at him with exasperation. "This woman has taken up arms before," she said.

  Thru nodded in agreement. Simona had fought Red Top priests on more than one occasion during their strange odyssey together across Shasht.

  Mentu's face tightened. "It is against all tradition, all precedent."

  "Dear Mentu, you are such a conservative at heart."

  Janbur said nothing, but Thru could tell that he agreed with Mentu. All Shasht men were like this about women.

  Their main problem, however, was their lack of weapons. They had but a single bow, and it was small and weak. A couple of swords, some knives, a pair of axes from the ship's tool kit, and that was about it.

  Thru searched the contents of the hold. Useful clubs could be fashioned from a broken spar, but of metal for arrow points there was none.

  The Sea Wasp sailed on, and the triangular sail gained slowly but steadily. By late afternoon, the pursuer's hull was visible above the horizon.

  Then came the welcome cry of "Land ho!" from Janbur in the crow's nest. Soon they spied the outlines of several small islands. Then more appeared to the south and a
vast coral reef became visible. Beyond it they glimpsed a wide lagoon and a central volcanic island.

  By tacking first to the north and then turning sharply south, they worked their way between two rocky isles and into a channel that was out of view of their pursuers. They steered between two outreaching arms of wave-swept coral, fled across a wide bay, and entered the lagoon. Now they were hidden from the open sea by a headland leading off the main island. They found a sheltered backwater and dropped anchor.

  Above and all around them grew a riot of tropical vegetation, deep green with bursts of scarlet and yellow. Birds greeted their arrival with raucous cries and then fell silent.

  Everyone went ashore. While the others looked for a tree that would be suitable for a new mast, Thru and Simona climbed to the top of the headland to spy out the sea to the north. As they climbed, Thru examined all the trees and bushes, keeping an eye out for limbs to use for bows or spears.

  Although the ground was full of sharp volcanic shards, the slope was gentle for the most part, and he and Simona soon reached the top. Pressing forward through a dwarf forest of penhueche trees, they came to the edge of a thirty-foot cliff and below that a steep slope down into the forest skirting the northern shore of the headland. A mile away, across the lagoon, surf pounded on the reef. Beyond that, blue water stretched into the distance. Other islands loomed here and there, each surrounded by a ring of surf marking its reef.

  They scanned the sea carefully. Thru opened the spyglass and studied the horizon. "There," he said at last. "Found them."

  A small scrap of white sail danced in the spyglass.

  "Where?" said Simona as he handed her the tube.

  Thru guided her to the spot, farther down the channel to the east, well past the island they were on.

  "Then they missed us?"

  "Looks that way."

  They took turns studying the distant sail until it vanished over the horizon. Then they moved back through the dwarf forest until they had a view of the main island. The volcano dominated everything, its slopes clad in green almost all the way to the top several thousand feet above the sea.

  Beyond the mountain, extending off to the south and west, were long tongues of land. Again they studied the landscape with the spyglass.