Krozair of Kregen [Dray Prescot #14]

by Alan Burt Akers

  The whip-Deldars were backed by marines with shortswords naked in their fists, their mail dully glimmering in the half-light. We were sorted into fours. The Zairian, the Kataki, and I shuffled up and were clouted into a bench. The fourth who would row on our loom fell half on top of the Zairian. He was a Xaffer, one of that strange and remote race of diffs of whom I have spoken who seem born for slavery. He looked shriveled. As the smallest, he was shoved past us to the outside position. The Zairian sat next. Then came myself—to my surprise, really—and, outside me, the Kataki. The locks closed with meaty thwunks. The chains and links were tested. We were looked at and then, the final indignity, our gray slave breechclouts were whipped off and taken away.

  Bald, naked, chained, we sat awaiting the next orders.

  For the moment I could think. The oars had not been affixed as yet. That would be the next operation and was being done with us in position so as to show us what was what, how the evolution was carried out. I felt a surprise I should not have felt. Normally, oar-slaves would serve a period of training aboard a dockyard Liburnian with her two shallow banks of oars. Now that the Grodnims of the Green northern shore of the inner sea were carrying forward so victoriously their war against the Zairians of the Red southern shore they needed every craft they could put into commission. There was just no time to go through the protracted period of training when oar-slaves were weeded out. The vicious weeding-out process would take place in this three-banked swifter, and the dead bodies would be flung overboard. Already, after us, the batches of spare slaves were being herded down and stuffed into the holds and crannies where they would wait and suffer until required. This swifter was a good-sized vessel. There were a great number of slaves forced into her, and we were packed tightly.

  The chanks, those killer sharks of the inner sea, would feed well in the wake of this swifter, whose name was Green Magodont.

  The noise from the slaves echoed and rebounded from the wooden hull. For the moment the whip-Deldars were leaving us to our own devices. Once the oars started to come aboard they'd show us the discipline Magdag required of her oar-slaves.

  The Zairian said, “My name is Fazhan ti Rozilloi, dom."

  I nodded. The ti meant he was someone of some importance in Rozilloi. And that city was known to me, although not particularly well ... I knew Mayfwy of Felteraz must have sad thoughts of me, still, for I had used her ill. Her daughter Fwymay had married Zarga na Rozilloi—and the na in his name meant he was, if not the most important person of Rozilloi, then damned well high in rank.

  “And your name, dom?"

  Well, I'd been called Gadak for some time now and had been thinking like Gadak the Renegade. But this Fazhan ti Rozilloi was a crimson-faril, beloved of the Red, and so I deemed it expedient to revert in my allegiance to Zair. Truth to tell, I'd never seriously contemplated abandoning the cause of Zair and the Red; but recent events had been so traumatic—to use a word of later times—that I had been so near to total shock as to be indifferent to anything. Tipping that damned Chulik into the water had been not only a gesture of defiance, it signaled some return of the lump of suffering humanity that was me to the old, tearaway, evil, vicious, and intemperate Dray Prescot I knew myself at heart still to be.

  “I am Dak,” I said. I did not embroider. I did not wish to involve myself in dreaming up fresh names, and I had taken the name Dak in honor from a great and loyal fighting-man upon the southern shore. And, too, I was growing sick of names, sick of titles. This is, of course, a stupid frame of mind. Names are vital, names are essential, particularly upon Kregen, where so much is different and yet so much is the same as on this Earth four hundred light-years through interstellar space...

  This is true of names. As to titles, I had collected a hatful already in my life upon Kregen and was to gather many more, as you shall hear. Of them all I had valued being a Krozair of Zy the most. And the Krozairs of Zy had ejected me, thrown me out, branded me Apushniad. No, I would not tell this Fazhan I had once been Pur Dray, the Lord of Strombor, the most feared Krozair upon the Eye of the World. Anyway, he wouldn't believe me. Since I had taken a dip in the Sacred Pool of Baptism with my Delia I was assured of a thousand years of life and a remarkable ability to recuperate rapidly from wounds. This Fazhan betrayed the usual ageless look of Kregans who have arrived at maturity; he could be anywhere from twenty to a hundred and fifty or so.

  “Dak?” He looked at me, and then away. Then, seeing that we were to be oar-comrades, he said, “I salute you, Dak, for dumping that Zair-forsaken Chulik in the water."

  He made no mention of Jikai in the matter, which pleased me. Too many people are too damned quick to talk of some trifle as a Jikai. A Jikai is a great and resounding feat of arms, or some marvelous deed—the word should not be cheapened.

  “And I am Rukker na—” boomed the Kataki, and stopped, and looked at us, with his evil lowering face dark with suppressed passion. “Well, since you are Tailless Dak, I am Rukker.” He lifted one massive hand. “But I shall not like it if you call me Tailless Rukker."

  The recovery had been swift. But he'd said na, and then checked. Whatever place he came from, he was its lord.

  Carrying on his recovery, the Kataki swung his low-browed, furrowed face toward the Xaffer, looking past Fazhan and me. Katakis usually grease and oil and curl their black hair so that it hangs beside their faces. Their flaring nostrils curl above gape-jawed mouths. Their eyes are wide-spaced and yet narrow, brilliant and cold. They are not apim, like me; they are diffs. Perhaps their greatest physical peculiarity and strength is the tail each one can sinuously twirl into vicious speedy action, and with a curved razor-sharp blade strapped to its tip bring slicing and slashing and darting in against his opponent. No, I did not like Katakis, for they were aragorn, slave-managers, slavers, slave-masters.

  “Xaffer!” roared this blow-hard Kataki, his dark-browed face fierce. “And what is your accursed name?"

  The Xaffer surprised me.

  “You are a Kataki,” he said in that whispering, hushed, timid voice of a Xaffer. “Your devil's race has brought great misery and anguish to my people. I hate Katakis. My name is Xelnon and I shall not speak to you again."

  The Zairian shifted his eyes from the Xaffer to look at me, shocked. I looked at the Kataki, this ferocious Rukker. The blood pulsed in his face, veins stood out on his low forehead, his eyes looked murderous. “Cramph! Were we not chained you would not speak thus! Mark me well, Xelnon the onker! Your day will come and I shall—"

  “What, Rukker,” I said loudly. “You will beat and lash and enslave him, as you are undoubtedly a Kataki and that is what Katakis are so good at doing."

  His shocked gaze shifted to me. We sat next to each other, with the steps of the bench lifting him a little higher than me so as to reach the loom. He glared at me. His chains rattled.

  “You—apim—” He swallowed down and his thin lips showed spittle.

  “Do not fret, Rukker the Kataki. Your tail is safe from me. If you do not cause me trouble."

  He bellowed then, raving. I kept a sharp eye on him, for I knew a little of chain fighting by slaves, and I had no desire to be strangled or have an eye flicked out. He reached down to grab me with his right hand, for we sat on the larboard side. This confrontation was no sudden thing; it was long overdue. He tried to seize me about the neck, for the iron rings had been removed after our walk here and tame-slaves were going about with pots of salve made into paste to ease us. The blood on my neck and back and chest was congealing. If he did as he intended he'd not only open up the sore places, he'd squeeze my throat into my neckbones, and if he did not choke me, he'd give me a damned sore throat and head. So I took his right hand with my left. His face convulsed. Struggling silently, for a space we held, he pressing on and I resisting him.

  He glared with a mad ferocity upon me. Vicious and feral and violent are Katakis. This one thought to overpower me and subdue me and punish me for my words. Yes, Katakis are all those terrible things. Confident in
his power Rukker bore down. It was his misfortune that the man upon whom he happened to choose to release his own frustrations labored under torments he knew nothing of. It was his hard luck, as a vicious, feral, and violent man, to meet a man who was more vicious, more feral, and more violent. I do not say these things in any foolish state of inverse pride. I know my sins. But, here, violence met violence and recoiled.

  His eyes widened. I bore back harder, twisted, and so brought my right hand up to block the savage blow of his left. As for his killing tail—I stomped it flat against the planking of the deck, whereat he yelled.

  “Desist, Rukker, or I shall break your arm off."

  “You—apim—I'll—I'll—"

  “Do not think I would not do it, Rukker. You are a Kataki. Do not forget what that means."

  “I do not forget, you rast—"

  I twisted a little more, and as his left fist still looped around at me, I took his wrist in my right hand and jerked most savagely.

  He let a gasp of air puff past those thin twisted lips.

  “You cramph! You'll pay—"

  A lash struck down across his broad naked back and he snapped upright. A whip-Deldar, sweating in his green, his dark face sullen, lifted for another blow. “What's this?” he shouted. “I'll discipline you—you—"

  “Whip-Deldar,” I said, speaking quickly and loudly enough to make my words penetrate. “There is no trouble here. We were testing the height and the stretch of the loom."

  The odd thing was that our motions might have been taken for a practice evolution. The whip-Deldar lowered his lash. He looked tired, tired and spiteful.

  “You dare talk to me, you rast!"

  “Only to save your trouble, whip-Deldar. The oar-master would not welcome damaged oar-slaves now."

  The whip-Deldar glowered, flicking the lash. He might be a poor specimen of humanity anywhere, let alone in evil Magdag, but the sense of what I said penetrated his sluggish brain. He gave me a cut with the lash, stingingly, just to show me who was in charge here, and went off, cursing roundly.

  I do not laugh, as you know, nor smile readily. I kept my ugly old face as hard as a bower anchor as Rukker, the Kataki, said, “He was flogging me, not you, apim."

  “If you wish him to continue I will call him back for you."

  “By the Triple Tails of Targ the Untouchable! Were you a Kataki I would understand!"

  Fazhan leaned forward and looked up past me. “But for this apim Dak, you would have been beaten, Rukker."

  “I know it. But it would be best if you did not mention it again."

  “Ah,” said Fazhan ti Rozilloi, “but it is worth the telling, by Zantristar the Merciful!"

  The swifter shook and a shudder passed through her fabric. In the next instant, to the accompaniment of distant hailing above decks, we all understood we had pushed off from the wharf. A long, slow gentle rocking made us all aware that we had been cast off into our new life. Until the oars were in, the swifter would possess this gentle rocking motion, for she was of large enough build to remain steady in the water without her wings.

  Rukker the Kataki and Fazhan ti Rozilloi glared for a space longer at each other, then I stuck my old carved beak head between them and said, “If we are to pull together it will be easier if we do not try to fight one another all the time."

  Rukker nodded. He was a man accustomed to instant decision.

  “You say you understand these infernal things. Tell me."

  “You have never sailed in a swifter?"

  “Aye, a few times. But I sat in the captain's cabin and drank wine and the way of the vessel did not concern me."

  “It concerns you now,” said Fazhan.

  “Aye, that is why I would learn of it."

  “All you need to know,” I said, and I spoke heavily, “is that you will pull the oar, and go on pulling the oar, until you are dead. All else will mean nothing."

  “Where are these oars, then?"

  “We are being towed out from the cothon through the narrow channel. It is too narrow otherwise. Once in the outer harbor we will receive our oars from the oar-hulk. They will arrive soon enough, bringing misery and torment, and for some, a happy release in death."

  Rukker mused on this. His dark Kataki face scowled.

  “You appear to me to be a man, Dak—of sorts. I will allow you to assist me in my escape."

  Fazhan gurgled a little cynical laugh; but it was not a laugh a refined lady would recognize. Oar-slaves do not often have either the opportunity or the reason for laughing.

  We bumped and the swifter rocked, and then we bumped again and remained still. We had been moored up to the oar-hulk. Noises began from forward, spurting through the confined space, hollow, echoing. Hangings and scrapings, and at least two shrill yells. It was common for a slave to be crushed or injured when the oars came inboard. We waited for our turn and we did not have long to wait, for we pulled six oars from the bows. A sudden shaft of suns-light speared through the oar port as the sliding cover went back. Sailors busied themselves—hard, adventurous, callous men—hauling the oars in, adjusting the set and balance, cursing the slaves who brought down the round lead counterweights. The oar shoved past Xelnon the Xaffer, past Fazhan ti Rozilloi, past me, Dak, and so past Rukker the Kataki. The loom end was inserted into the rowing frame, which was hinged up to receive it, and locked, and the counterweight was hung on and locked in its turn. The four of us sat, looking at that immense bar of wood before us. The carpenters followed to affix the manette, which we would grasp, for the loom itself was of too great a girth.

  I had noticed immediately on boarding the swifter that she smelled clean. She smelled of vinegar and pungent ibroi and soap.

  She was not a new vessel, this Green Magodont; but she had been in for a refit and was now as sweetly clean as she would ever be. All that was about to change.

  Amid the usual barrage of curses and yells, slaves came running along the grated decks and hurled sacks of straw and ponsho fleeces at us. Men scrabbled for well-filled sacks, for fleeces that did not appear too mangy. Rukker hauled in half a dozen and the slave yelped; Rukker knocked him back and examined sack after sack. He took a fine-filled one and as he discarded the others, I snatched up the best and threw them along to Xelnon and Fazhan. The fleeces were likewise gone through, and the slave, jittering with fear, reviled by the other oar-slaves opposite us, squealed at Rukker to let him have back those he did not want.

  “Quiet, kleesh,” said Rukker, and the slave shook.

  A marine, his shortsword out, walked up along the grated deck and I looked forward, not without interest, to a little action; but Rukker hurled the last sack back and cursed. The marine chivied the slave along and he went off to throw the fleeces down to the next set of oar-slaves. We were all busy spreading the fleeces over the sacks, arranging them. Already I had nipped three nits under my thumbnail. Green Magodont was no longer a clean swifter. I glanced up at Rukker.

  “You were allowed the pick of the sacks, Rukker, because you have a tail. I understand that. But do not think to take the best of everything the four of us are issued with."

  He might have bellowed his head off then; but a whip-Deldar ran along, not hitting us but cracking his lash in the air with a sound most doleful and menacing, violent and frightening. He impressed us poor naked slaves, he impressed us mightily.

  “Silence!” shouted the whip-Deldar. “The first man to speak will get ol’ snake—I promise you."

  I did not speak.

  No one else spoke.

  We had learned one elementary lesson we would not forget.

  A deal of confused shouting bellowed down from aloft. I, who had been a swifter captain of the inner sea, could understand what was going on—but only to some extent. I knew these oar-slaves with me on the lowest tier, the thalamite bank, were raw, untrained, useless. I could not understand why the oar-master had ordered our oars fixed and threaded—that is, placed in the rowing frames. Presently, amid a deal of noise and confusion
, fresh sailors and slaves poured below and took the oars from the rowing frames, slid the oar-port covers back, and we all had our first lesson in pushing the oar looms forward so that the looms lay as close to the hull as they would go, which brought the outer portions and the blades close to the outside hull. The thalamites were not trusted to pull yet, and Green Magodont would begin her journey with only the two upper banks pulling.

  We heard the orders, the whistles, the sudden deathly silence in the ship. Then the preparatory whistle, and then the twin beat from the drum-Deldar, the bass, and tenor, thumping out. We heard the creak of the upper oars, the splash of water as they dug in. We all felt the swifter surge forward, slowly at first, but gathering momentum. All rocking ceased and the swifter struck a straight, sure path out through the harbor, out past the Pharos, out from vile Magdag into the Eye of the World. Wherever we were going, we were on our way.

  * * *

  Chapter Two

  Oar-slaves in the swifters of Magdag

  We rowed.

  We oar-slaves pulled at the massively heavy looms of the oars, up and back and down and forward and up and back and down and...

  A week. Give a galley slave a week, more or less, and he will be either dead or toughened enough to last another week, and then another, and then perhaps, if his stamina lasts, to live. If the existence of a galley slave can be called living.

  The Xaffer, Xelnon, lasted five days.

  He would have died sooner, but Green Magodont caught a wind Swinging out of Magdag and so we slaves were spared much of the continuous hauling that is the killer. But he died.

  He did not tell us what he had done to be condemned to the galleys. Usually Xaffers are given the lighter tasks of slaves, household chores, secretarial work, record-keeping. Most often they, along with Relts, are employed as stylors. But he was here, with us, slaving, and then he was a mere cold corpse, blood-marked by the lash, a bundle to be thrown overboard to the chanks.