Was this, I wondered, one reason why now the Green rose in ascendancy over the Red?
“I thank you, Deldar,” I said, speaking stiffly, as a Ghittawrer Brother would. Truth to tell, I had been speaking as a Krozair might, and that seemed to serve. “You are kind. But I must go about my business."
He nodded at once, quickly. “I understand, gernu. May the blessed light of Grodno go with you."
“And with you."
Well, if he meant it—so did I!
We threw down coins to pay for our meal and wine and went out. Duhrra took a tremendous breath once outside, under the stars, with She of the Veils rising up into the night sky.
“A po-faced lot, these Grodnims!"
“Aye. And you had best be, too."
He rumbled and moved his wing, but he remained silent.
We had come out of that well. But I determined to get rid of the device. I would not care to part with the weapon, for it was the finest I was likely to get my hands on for some time.
Those mercenaries in there came from the galleys in the adjoining harbor. No doubt they found The Net and Trident more hospitable since the withdrawal of Vallian ships. There would be more room and better service, and a discount, too, I shouldn't wonder. But they were hard, tough men. I had fought their like on the Eye of the World. How long would it take them to arrive at the truth? That the insolent apim who had fronted down their comrade, Cryfon the Sudden, had merely found the Ghittawrer sword? Stolen it, most likely, with a knife in the back of the Brother in Grodno.
Even if they reached that conclusion I fancied they would not be too anxious to rush out and test it.
The power of the Green Brotherhoods is long and terrible, in ways quite foreign to the powers of the Krozairs.
Then I thrust all this petty business away.
Here I was, aching to return home, and stranded in the inner sea, thousands of miles from Valka.
The thoughts tortured me. We mounted up. I had no real idea what to do now, for all my plans had envisaged my going aboard a Vallian galleon this night. I had not even seriously considered the alternative I had thought on, that I would have to wait a sennight or so.
Now, no galleon would come at all...
We rode past the argenter.
I said, “It seems, Duhrra of the Days, that we shall have to take passage in her."
“I will still sail with you, Dak."
“Aye.” Duhrra had been earning a living as a wrestler when I first met him. I had a good idea he was no stranger to the sea. “It may well be I shall have to pay passage money."
“That seems just. Use the money you would have paid the Vallian captain."
I humped along on the sectrix for a space, avoiding all the usual impedimenta of a waterfront. Then: “There will not be enough for a captain of Pandahem.” I could not explain that as the Prince Majister of Vallia all I needed to have done was convince the Vallian master that I was who I was. I could do that, all right.
“It would seem, master, that the Pandaheem are more greedy than the Vallians."
That was a reasonable assumption on the facts.
“Probably. Let us find an inn and get some rest. I will talk with the master of the argenter in the morning."
“We must slit a few throats and gain ourselves some gold."
“Let us talk to the master first, and discover his price."
“As you say, master."
I reined in and Duhrra's sectrix snorted and shied away. Both animals we rode and the pack animal were annoyed they had not been fed and watered, rubbed down, and bedded for the night.
“Listen to me, Duhrra of the Days. You act the part of a Grodnim here in Magdag. You understand that reason well enough."
“Aye. They'd draw out our tripes if they discovered—"
“When we go aboard the Menaham argenter, forget all mention of the word Vallia, except to give the place a round curse every now and then. Menaham and Vallia do not get on."
His heavy-lidded eyes regarded me in the flaring torchlight from over a nearby dopa den.
“I see. That makes the problem a little clearer."
“Just remember—it's my neck as well as yours."
We slept that night at the hostelry of The Missal Tree just off the waterfront but still in the harbor area. We were merely two weary travelers seeking a bed. The sectrixes were seen to by a lame Relt, one of that race of diffs who are cousins to the Rapas. The Rapas seem to have taken all the ferocity, the Relts all the gentleness. We turned in and, as I say, we slept. Old campaigners both, this Duhrra of the Days, and me, Dak.
Duhrra's stump was well concealed, and the Ghittawrer emblem likewise was covered with a flap of green cloth.
The argenter captain did not ask our business or why we wished to sail out of the Eye of the World, for which I was grateful, for I had been cudgeling what brains I have to find a reason that would stand inspection. He stroked a hand through his broad black beard and stared at us with sober calculation showing on his heavy, seamed face. He wore a gold ring in each ear, which offended my aesthetic sense. He was a hard man, as he would have need of being, and he drove a hard bargain.
When we left him amid the bustle of his ship's company preparing for sea, with the seabirds calling, those ill Magbirds of Magdag, with the mixture of stinks of tar and oil and seaweed in our nostrils, and went down the gangplank, Duhrra favored me with a look that spoke volumes.
On the quayside and heading for the tavern three along from The Net and Trident, Duhrra said, “A large sum, Dak."
“We will find it."
“Oh, aye, I never doubted that."
We found the money, and a couple of overlords of Magdag awoke with thick heads and a garbled tale of assault in the night as they rode beneath an archway, so I guessed, for I had not cared to slay them, realizing the furor that would cause. With their gold we bought passage, for they had been staggering home well loaded after a night's gambling. Their luck was now our luck. The link-slaves had run, screaming, at the first sight of sword-twinkle.
A fair northeasterly breeze bore us on bravely after the towing boats had cast us off. With all plain sail set—and the argenters had only plain sail—we creamed along, leaning over only a little on the starboard tack. Our cabin was as well-appointed as one might expect. It was, to tell the truth, luxurious by many of the sea-standards I have known. The twin suns shone, the sky lifted high and blue above us, the seabirds were dropped astern, and ahead of us lay only the Grand Canal, the Dam of Days, and then the long haul south and east and north, to Pandahem. From thence I would find a way to reach Vallia.
When the first of the black clouds appeared, boiling on the southern horizon, I felt the sudden gripping sensation at my heart. When I had been living in the inner sea before and had attempted to sail to Sanurkazz and to Felteraz, the Star Lords had sent a most violent rashoon. Rashoons, those sudden and tumultuous gales of the inner sea, are known and accepted as part of life. What the Star Lords sent was greater and more vicious, huge black clouds swirling, winds that tore canvas to ribbons, that smashed a ship over onto her beam ends.
The hands took the canvas in smartly enough. We snugged down. I recalled that the woman—so marvelous in her scarlet and ruby and gold clothing, astride a white zhyan, the woman whose use-name was Zena Iztar—had promised me I would not leave the Eye of the World just yet. She had said I would be prevented, and when I had asked if the Star Lords would prevent me, she had answered no. I stared at those ominous clouds, hanging dark and angry, and I cursed.
The master, Captain Andapon, appeared confident. His beard lifted arrogantly.
“It is only a rashoon. That is a mere nothing to a sailor who has sailed the Outer Oceans."
He was right, if it was only a rashoon, a local storm.
“It will pass, never fear."
And he was right. The black clouds rose a hand's breadth into the sky above the horizon. The light shone strangely over there. I stared. The clouds were dwindling, were th
inning, were withdrawing. I stared harder. A white speck appeared, diving down on the argenter. The ship wallowed. Captain Andapon bellowed and his men swarmed aloft to cast loose the canvas. The air felt still and warm, the breeze dying. Still that white speck flitted nearer. No one else aboard appeared to have seen it.
The suns shone on that flying dot. And as I looked up so I recognized the white dove of the Savanti. Long and long had I seen this white dove, the Savanti's counterpart to the bird of prey sent by the Star Lords to be their messenger and spy. I gripped the rail. I could not look away.
The white dove hovered. I knew the Savanti, those mysterious men, mortal but superhuman, of the Swinging City of Aphrasöe, were once more taking an interest in me. They were the ones who had first brought me to Kregen. They had wanted to make of me a Savapim, an agent to work for the humanization of the world. I had failed them because I had cured my Delia; her baptism in the Sacred Pool of Baptism of the River Zelph in Aphrasöe not only cured her crippled leg but conferred on her, as it had on me, a thousand years of life.
What could they want of me now? Why did the Star Lords stand aloof? Was this what Zena Iztar had meant?
The argenter, Chavonth of Mem, wallowed and rolled in the windless sea. The sky cleared. The suns blazed forth and no speck of cloud obscured that wide expanse.
“This will not last for long,” said Captain Andapon. I had to admire his hard grittiness, even though he was a member of the country I familiarly knew as the Bloody Menahem, those people who had allied themselves with Hamal against Vallia.
The watches changed and the bells rang and the lookout screeched from the maintop.
“Sails!"
“They bring a wind, Pandrite be praised!"
We all stared up uselessly at the lookout. He pointed to the south. His voice reached us, hoarse with yelling. “Swifters!"
Captain Andapon stamped upon his own deck, and swore.
“May the vile Armipand take ‘em! Swifters!"
He meant they would be pulling, using their banks of oars, sailing independently of the wind. We were still becalmed.
The men of Menaham had no fear of the bitter struggle between the Red and the Green, for they were neutrals. Swifters flying the red or green flags would treat them merely as passing strangers upon the sea.
Soon the swifters hove into view over the horizon. As they neared it became clear they had seen us and were bearing down to investigate this lone ship. That made sense. Captain Andapon bellowed and the Menaham flag rose up not only to the mizzen, but also to the main and foremasts. I looked at the colors: four blue diagonals and four green diagonals from right to left, divided by thin white borders. I thought back to the Battle of Jholaix when the yellow saltire on the red ground, the colors of the empire of Vallia, had borne down and trampled the colors of Menaham along with those of Hamal.
Now those colors would protect me from the Red and the Green; for to the Greens I was a hated enemy Krozair, and to the Reds I was Apushniad, an unfrocked Krozair.
The lookout bellowed again.
Captain Andapon leaped nimbly, for all his bulk, grasped the larboard shrouds, and climbed a dozen ratlines. He shaded his eyes and peered at the swifters. Before he descended to the deck he looked down at us, all standing there and looking up at him. His voice cracked, flat and brutally.
“They showed neither red nor green. They are small craft, less than ten oars a side. You all know what they are.” His voice smashed at us. “Beat to quarters! Stand to arms! They won't take us without a fight"
So I knew, too.
Renders, pirates, sea-wolves of the Eye of the World. They took and looted and burned Zairian or Grodnim; it was all one. This fine fat ship of Menaham, all becalmed and idle, would be served up to them, like ponsho on a plate!
* * *
Chapter Three
Ringed by renders
If it was not the Star Lords, then the hand of the Savanti lay in this. This contrivance was not beyond them. Superhuman, their powers. They possessed powers I had not thought about overmuch and perhaps I had neglected a duty in that. If the Star Lords—of whose powers I knew so little it amounted to nothing apart from their capacity to hurl me like a yo-yo from Earth to Kregen and back—could hurl a sudden thunderstorm upon a ship, then surely the Savanti could attract a pack of sea-wolves to a becalmed ship. It would take very little to do that.
The renders pulled on. Now they were clearly visible. Four big, open pulling boats they were, scarcely swifters at all. The swifter is your true galley, lean and deadly; these boats, although slender of build, hauled their single bank of oars over the gunwales, in closed rowlocks of rope and thole pins, and they possessed neither ram nor beak that I could see.
“You look a fighting-man,” said Captain Andapon. “But your man—?"
Duhrra was standing near. “He is not my man,” I said. “He is my comrade."
“Can he fight—with one arm?"
“I will fight with one arm,” said Duhrra of the Days. How anyone could ever imagine him an idiot—even with that idiot's face—amazed me then.
The master nodded briskly and went off shouting to his crew. The Bloody Menahem are accustomed to fighting. Thinking about that statement makes me realize that most nations of Kregen are accustomed to fighting, and there are many fighting-men; but not all men fight, as you know. Perhaps there is a greater proportion of warriors on Kregen than on this Earth in these latter days.
This would be a bloody affray. If Captain Andapon struck without a fight the renders would probably butcher us all. There was the chance they might offer us the choice. If we fought I did not think we would win, for they outnumbered us. But from the tenor of the crew's voices, and the way they handled their weapons, I knew they would fight.
The men were talking among themselves and I overheard the way they called on the Gross Armipand to blight, wither, and destroy these rasts of renders. The name of Opaz was called on, also, with pleas for a successful outcome. How strange it is that a man can feel fellow feelings for men who are supposed to be his mortal foes! I did not like the Bloody Menahem. But I felt a surge of spirit as these Menaheem prepared for battle. If we were all slain we would all go down to the Ice Floes of Sicce together—blade comrades. Odd—odd and unsettling, those feelings that would not be denied.
The four boats pulled up and then separated out of varter range to take us on the two quarters and bows. The crews of the varters were busily engaged in greasing and winding and coddling, and selecting their best chunks of rock, their straightest darts. A kind of ballista, the varter, with great penetrative and smashing power, hurling a dart of iron, or a rock, in a hard, flat trajectory. Chavonth of Mem was not equipped with catapults. Their higher trajectory and longer range might have been useful; I could see artillery in the boats and so the varters would have to be adequate until the renders closed and boarded.
Then it would be cold steel
I had no bow.
Standing higher out of the water, Chavonth of Mem could shoot her varters earlier than the boats might. With that thrilling screeching clang the first varter loosed. The rock plunged into the sea alongside the first boat, raising a water spout. The other three followed, and the rocks flew. Very quickly the varters in the boats opened up and scored. A rock flew to thud most messily onto our deck, smashing two men and a boy into red ruin. How this brought back the memories!
There were no grand concussions as the great guns fired, no leaping rumble through the decks, no swathing clouds of gunsmoke. But in all else—oh, yes, I had not been a sailor in Nelson's navy for nothing!
The boats came on. One drifted away, her larboard bank of oars ripped and idle, water slopping inboard, men tumbling out and swimming desperately for the nearest boat. A Deldar of the top spun about, there on the deck, clapped a hand to what was left of his face, trying to scream and only gurgling. Lines parted aloft and blocks spattered down. A bowman fell from the maintop screeching like a leem pierced through with a lance. Blood st
ank on the air, bright in the sunshine over the deck.
“Prepare to receive boarders!” bellowed Andapon. He swaggered aft to his poop-ladder, clambered up, and so pushed through the afterguard clustered there to the starboard quarter. He wore a back and breast, and a huge helmet adorned with a mass of blue and green feathers. He swirled his rapier widely. I followed him, for the first boat to touch us was almost here.
Duhrra said in my ear, “It is said, sometimes, it is wiser not to wear mail when fighting at sea."
“So it is said. But you wear the mesh mail, as do I."
“I think, if I fall into the sea, it is too far to swim in any case."
“You must do as you think fit."
“Aye, I will—master."
His big, sweaty idiot moonface loomed above me. I turned back to face what might come. He had never once remarked that I had upended him and dumped him down flat on his back and thereby won myself a gold coin when I'd been starving. He'd had two hands, then...
So deeply had I been thinking about the Savanti and the Star Lords, and giving a part of my mind to Duhrra, and, as I have indicated, doing some not inconsiderable boasting to myself, I had neglected what was staring me in the face. I had simply thought of this affray as just another fight. I had given it no thought. When Andapon yelled in baffled fury and his party with the huge rock perched over the quarter ready to drop on the boat yelled also, I woke up.
I raced forward along the poop, leaped down the ladder, belted for the break of the quarterdeck, yelling and waving that damned Ghittawrer longsword above my head. I was almost too late. A torrent of yells and shrieks burst from forward and the men posted there on the forecastle tumbled back in ruin. There were no gangways so I ran along the deck, leaping onto the hatches and jumping down, taking the starboard side. Now more men appeared over the forecastle. If I knew the ways of renders they'd be in through the foreports, into the forecastle.
Men rallied with me. We charged forward and met the pirates face to face, hand to hand. They were wild, hairy men, clad in remnants of armor, some bare-chested, swirling their weapons with a will. Gold and silver glittered about them. Immense lace-knots and feathers flaunted above them. There were women among them, fighting alongside their men. That was unfortunate. The struggle broke free as our impetuous rush, reinforced by a clamor from our rear telling that Captain Andapon had realized how nearly he had been fooled, carried us on. We smashed them and drove them back, over the beakhead, down and into the sea.
Renegade of Kregen [Dray Prescot #13] Page 3