Curt Benjamin - [Seven Brothers 03] - The Gates of Heaven

by Curt Benjamin

  It wasn’t going to be easy getting him over the side. He’d live, though, if the plan worked. Determined to learn the trick of the oar and save them both from further lessons drilled into their flesh by the lash, he slipped into his place.

  “How about a look under my skirts, boy?” Moll laughed at him as she snapped the shackle around his leg. “Not so full of spit and vinegar now, are you?”

  Llesho knew the old pirate didn’t mean him to answer the question. He kept his mouth shut, looking as much as possible like the cocky youth who had finally discovered the wages of sin were more than he could pay.

  “Singer will show you what to do. Mind him and you may survive the trip.” She gave him a good-humored pat on the shoulder, as if she had not just condemned him to slow death as a galley slave, and left them to make her way to the rear, shouting, “Stow that barrel before you kill somebody with it!”

  “I’m Singer,” the head rower on their bench introduced himself with a warning: “Do what you’re told and keep your head down or it will be the lash for all of us.”

  Llesho gave him a brief nod. “So what do I have to do?”

  That did bring up Tayy’s head, astonishment widening his eyes. And then he caught sight of the pirate captain newly arrived on the forward deck. At first, it seemed that he did not trust his eyes, or his surmise, since Master Den had his back turned to them. With a shout to bring them about, however, Master Den scurried to the side, showing his profile clearly to the rowers at rest on the forward bench. There must have been another captain when ChiChu was crossing the grasslands with Llesho’s cadre, but the trickster god was clearly in command now.

  Prince Tayyichiut closed his eyes, but when he opened them again, Master Den still called out the orders to set to. No dream, then. Llesho sympathized with the feeling. He wasn’t happy with where he found himself either.

  “So it was a trap all along,” Tayy said. “Pointless, though. My uncle will never pay ransom to get me back. I am at best an inconvenience to him.”

  “Ransom!” Llesho snapped with all the contempt he could fake in his voice. He had to stop the prince from saying anything that would give away the fact that they knew each other.

  “Who would pay ransom for Harnish scum! Old Stipes said he would see me pay for pleasing his lady wife, which was more than he could do. I was ready for death, but this is more than insult! I’d rather feed the fish right now than share a bench with damned Harnish scum!”

  That did it. Tayy’s head snapped back as if he’d been struck, but it stopped the hasty words for a moment. They communicated in silent glares and speaking frowns for a long moment. Llesho wasn’t at all sure what the prince made of his desperately rolled eyes, but Tayy only said, “I didn’t think it could get any worse.”

  “I don’t know anything about it. I’ve got problems of my own,” Llesho retorted gruffly. He ducked his head between his shoulders, hoping the pirates hadn’t heard them argue while he tried to figure out how he could explain it away to Singer, who watched them with ill-concealed contempt.

  “You two know each other?”

  “He’s Thebin,” Tayy answered with a superior sniff. “If there’s trouble, you’re bound to find a Thebin at the heart of it.” His grim expression may have passed for race-hatred in front of the rower, but Llesho read it rightly as a warning. He had, after all, come on board in the company of Master Den, his own trusted adviser, who now wore the breeches of a pirate. Tayy finished with a wary glance at their captain. “I know him, though.”

  “We are lucky,” Singer agreed, though Prince Tayy hadn’t meant it that way. “The trickster god himself favors our boat with his presence.”

  Fortunately, Tayy asked the question that burned on the tip of Llesho’s tongue: “You know him for the god ChiChu?”

  “Of course. The pirates honor him for bringing them good fortune on their raids, which is no good fortune for us at the oar. But no boat with ChiChu on board has ever lost its oarsmen to the sea. This trip was a risk. The monsoons will be rising soon. With storm season upon us, I’m happy to see the old trickster on our decks.”

  “Huh.” Llesho looked over at his teacher wearing pirate garb instead of his usual loin wrap and simple coat. This man could be a stranger. He’d assured Tayy that he’d had no part in whatever scheme the trickster had up his voluminous sleeves, however, which was all to the good. Now they just had to survive long enough for Kaydu to rescue them both.

  The beater had set up a flurry on the drum and Singer rose to his feet, grabbing onto the handhold at his position on the oar. “Set oars!” he called in a singsong voice that explained his slave name. The oars came forward with a snap on the benches, all but their own.

  “Grab hold!” he cried, and powerful muscles pushed on the great timber oar. “Right foot up!” he called out the pace. Llesho fumbled for a moment, watched what Singer did, and found the footboard. He set his right foot on it and lifted.

  “Left foot up!” Singer called again and Llesho paid attention as Singer pressed forward, raised up on his right foot and set his left down on the narrow band of another footboard, this one across the back of the bench in front of them. Tayy had no sea legs and the motions were foreign to him as even a small boat would have been. They heaved forward on the great oar and he stumbled, struggling to keep up. Llesho took the weight of both their positions on himself and realized that Singer, too, was pulling more than his weight.

  “Pull!” With a mighty heave against the oar, the rower threw himself backward, falling down onto the bench and dragging the oar after him.

  Llesho did the same, discovered the bench wasn’t hard as he’d expected but cushioned against the repeated rise and heavy fall as he rowed. He soon felt as if he’d been beaten with a stick, but years in the saddle had toughened his behind and he didn’t think he would blister where he sat. At least if he managed their escape when night fell. He didn’t have another day to find their way out of the chains, he realized. Tayy was a skilled horseman, well versed in a variety of military arts. He had no aptitude for the sea, however, and his dread of the water tightened all his muscles into rigid bands, doubling the effort it took for even the simplest action of the oar.

  Llesho and their lead rower could only do the work of their comrade for so long. It took all the self-control he had not to rail at his teacher. Master Den stood at the prow with a glass trained on the horizon and spared not a glance for his pupils suffering at the oar.

  Sometime during his duty shift the pirate galley slipped into a prevailing current that ran through the sea like a river through the land. The rowers to the front and behind his own bench sat down to rest in a pattern that reduced the number of working oars to a quarter of their full strength. If they’d continued to row as they had in the pirates’ escape from the vicinity of their prey, they would have hit the men in front of them in the head. Singer showed them a new pace that was easier on all their backs, however. At quarter strength on the oars, the current carried them forward at much their former pace, except the boat no longer paused on the forward stroke. Old reflexes learned under sail on Lord Chin-shi’s boats snapped back into play and Llesho adapted his balance to the new motion.

  Prince Tayyichiut struggled with the change in their conditions. Unable to keep to his feet on the forward motion, he fell against the oar and would have driven it into the heads of the men in front if Singer and Llesho hadn’t pulled back on their handholds. In saving the men in front of them, they missed the beat for dipping the blade of their oar, however. Alph was there, suddenly, with a lash to their backs to remind them of their jobs while they waited for the next beat of the drum to fall into the rhythm the beater had set. Tayy, who had never suffered the abuse of angry overseers, cried out in surprise, but Llesho kept his head down and put his back into the stroke.

  “Hush!” he muttered under his breath. “Don’t draw attention to us!”

  Singer threw his full weight against the oar, but he looked at Tayy like he was dead alrea
dy.

  Llesho pulled at the oar until his shoulders burned and his back screamed for rest. Then he pulled some more, but he wasn’t strong enough or expert enough to make up for a missing oarsman. Blood speckled the footboard in front of him—travel on horseback hadn’t prepared him for the shift and beat of his feet as he pushed off, pushed off. When he thought he would lie down and die from the pain, a whip cracked over their backs and he snapped to, pulling with arms that felt like they were on fire. It went on, forever it seemed, until his mind fogged and he felt the part of himself that measured things like pain and exhaustion grow distant.

  Then, suddenly, it stopped. Tayy fell into a heap at the bottom of the well between the rows of benches, but there was work still to be done.

  “Help me with this!” Singer pivoted their oar against the thole pin so that the shaft dipped low in the well. “Grab that chain and lock it down.”

  Llesho did as he was instructed, locking the oar to a stanchion set in the bottom of the well for that purpose. With their station secured, the blade of the oar rode safely out of the water.

  Sagging to the bench with a weary sigh, Singer grabbed Llesho by the shoulder and hauled him off his feet as well.

  “Rest.”

  “No problem with that one,” he acknowledged the welcome order. He ached all over. His hands were bloody, though not as bad as Tayy’s, and his feet looked like someone had been pounding on them with a stick. Which he sort of had, he figured.

  Calluses would take care of the problem eventually, if he planned to stay, which he didn’t. But he needed water, he realized with a sudden sweeping desire that would have knocked him off his feet if he’d been standing. His mouth was dry right down to his sandals and his teeth felt gritty. Not since waking up slung over the back of a camel in the middle of the desert had he been this thirsty. Half-drowning in Pearl Bay had taught him what would happen if he drank any of the seawater just beyond his reach, though. Not a good idea.

  Just as he had decided to ask about the problem, Singer reached under the bench and rolled a barrel into the well.

  “Water.” The oarsman filled the dipper he took from its side and poured it into a cup which he handed over to Llesho. “Drink it all, or you’ll die of the heat.”

  Llesho did what he was told without thinking, the way he’d trained as a slave child to respond to Lord Chin-shi’s overseers. He wanted more, but knew better than to ask. The water revived him, however. Surfacing from the darkness of his own exhausted mind, he found that Prince Tayyichiut had curled as far from the side of the galley as he could get.

  “I can’t do this!” Tayy cried. His hands were callused from weapons practice and the reins, but the new work still found bits of soft skin to shred. Blood dripped from the handhold carved out of the side of the secured oar.

  “Take it.” Singer pressed a cup of water on him, but Tayy brushed it aside.

  “Just let them kill me and be done with it! Who cares whether I take days to die like the last person in my seat or die immediately? He curled his blistered ringers into loose fists and tucked them protectively up under his arms.

  “And what do you think they will do with your sorry carcass if you can’t row?” Singer jeered at him. “I thought you didn’t like the water.”

  Tayy was a Harnishman, the son of a people well known for their dread of deep water. The wandering clans would walk the length of a river to avoid wetting their shoes in the crossing of one. No Harnishman had ever learned to swim and dozens had died when the battle with Tsu-tan had pushed them into the Onga River. Nothing could be more terrifying than the sea washing the side of the boat at Tayy’s shoulder. At Singer’s goading, however, he gave a shuddering glance over the side, as if he could not yet believe that a man of the Qubal clan had wandered out of reach of land. He quickly turned away, braver if he didn’t have to look at the water under their boat.

  “I would prefer to die in my own ger-tent of old age with a proper funeral pyre and a good shaman to guide me to the underworld. But there is only one way to get off this boat, and it’s clear even to me that I’m bound for a watery grave sooner than later.”

  Turning his gaze on Llesho, his face was void of expression in a way that had become all too familiar. After their last argument, Tayy wouldn’t have expected Llesho’s cadre to travel for days to find him, or that they would set a rescue plan in motion. He’d given the Harnish prince a clue, but Master Den, Llesho’s most trusted adviser, walked free as the captain of the boat that enslaved them. So he must wonder what truth he might find in the pantomime being played out on the pirate vessel, and if it had anything to do with him at all.

  Tayy wouldn’t parade his shattered hopes for the world to see, not even the tiny world of their small bench. In case he was wrong, he waited for a sign to tell him what he should do. Action was still hours away, however. At the moment, they had a more pressing problem. If Llesho didn’t find a way to tell his friend that theyhad a plan, he was going to get himself killed.

  Fortunately, Singer had his own method for keeping his young bench mate alive. He sneered in a way that seemed calculated to make the newly enslaved young grasslander angry. “If they made it easy to die, everyone would do it,” the oarsman said. “You foolishly assume that the pirates who rule your life on the bench would waste the energy it would take to kill you with a knife or a sword.”

  “I have seen men tortured before.” Tayy firmed his chin, but his skin was very green, whether from the sea, which had become choppy while they talked, or from the memory of Radimus’ torture at the hands of his uncle, Llesho couldn’t tell. In spite of the memory, he seemed ready to endure the attentions of his slavers if it would end the misery of his waterborne existence.

  “Torture, too, takes energy our pirate captors are loath to spend on the wind,” Singer pointed out.

  Llesho figured the rowers, in the absence of sails, were the wind that moved the galleys. No torture seemed like a good thing to him, but the punch line must be coming. Apparently Tayy had the same thought. He cast a baleful glare at their head rower and waited for the explanation.

  “If you will not work, some enterprising pirate, or perhaps your rowing mates, will pitch you overboard to sink or swim.”

  Singer gazed out toward the pale gray clouds that obscured the horizon, leaving little doubt as to the likely outcome if one should land in the water. Land lay under the mist, more distant than the mainland had been from Pearl Island. Even with all the skills of a pearl diver, Llesho had almost died trying to reach his own far shore. He wondered how many others on the galley were like Tayy and couldn’t swim at all. They were all chained to the footboard, of course, and could neither leap over the side nor be thrown over until the pirate with the key unlocked the chain. Or until somebody picked the lock.

  “I don’t want to be here!” Tayy shivered miserably and huddled at the bottom of the boat.

  “Nor do we all,” Singer agreed. “But between the sea or the boat, we generally choose the boat.”

  “I don’t want to die,” the prince admitted.

  “Then see that you don’t,” Llesho instructed him tartly. With luck, the sharpness of his tone would alert Tayy to be cautious. “There are worse things even than the sea.”

  He meant it as encouragement, but the mist that hid the horizon seemed to stir, clotting into clouds before his eyes. Edris lay in that direction. Llesho felt the whisper of a familiar, dreaded consciousness moving in the distance and wondered. Storms were worse, especially magical ones, and a magician whose ship had burned out from under him might take that shortcut to his goal. He kept the thought to himself.

  “How much time do we have for rest?” Llesho asked. They couldn’t escape during a work period or while daylight showed their every move to the watchful pirates. When they did go, they’d need to be as rested as possible. To have any hope of success, he had to know the rhythms of the boat and their own cycle of sleep and rest.

  “Count on the same period of rest as of work.
”

  The situation could have been better, but Llesho thought they could live with that. Singer had his gaze turned away from the land, however, and stared out over the water as if measuring something the rest of them couldn’t see. “We are at quarter shifts right now, but I think we will leave this current before long. Expect the rowing to go harder in the next shift.”

  A slave was passing down the aisle, feeding the rowers on rest break. Llesho held out his cup while the slave filled it with a runny soup of beans and rice and topped it with two hard biscuits. He ate them, scarcely noticing their bland flavor, staring into the same distance as their lead rower. When he squinted, he could just make out the ripple of the current running inexplicably faster than the general run of the tide. It would loop them back toward land if they rode it much longer.

  Come nightfall, both tide and current would pull toward shore. If their rescuers didn’t find them in the dark, they might still float in with the tide. He turned to warn Tayy to conserve his strength. The Harnish prince was already asleep, curled where he had fallen in the bottom of the boat, his dinner scarcely touched.

  “You’d better do the same, boy,” Singer admonished him. He scooped up the abandoned food, tucking the biscuits in Tayy’s pocket and finishing off the soup for himself. He wasn’t cruel, just practical. Tayy wouldn’t survive another day as a galley slave and there was no point wasting any more food or time on him. Singer’d left him his biscuits in case he decided to live, but more than that just hurt their own chances of survival. If Tayy were a stranger, if they didn’t have help coming, Llesho might have felt the same way. He hoped not, but he might think differently after a few more shifts at the oar.