Renegade of Kregen [Dray Prescot #13]

by Alan Burt Akers

  A man crawled up onto the foot of the bowsprit, yelling. He backed up, his face filled with horror. Six arrows struck him simultaneously and with a pitiful howl he fell off to splash into his watery grave.

  “Below!” I bellowed.

  Swinging about to lead a rush down the forward hatchway I realized Duhrra was no longer with me. He'd followed me good and hard, breathing hotly down my neck. In the press we had been parted. By Vox! If these miserable renders had done for Duhrra of the Days I'd do woe unto them.

  Captain Andapon bellowed a group of his men about him. He saw that I was prepared to take a hand below. His second in command had been killed. A rock flew low over the deck, parting lines, but, thankfully, missing everyone. One of the render boats had resumed shooting then. Andapon would deal with the fellow trying to get aboard over the quarter. One boat had been sunk. So that left one to be accounted for.

  “Where away that other Pandrite-forsaken boat!” I yelled. The Menaheem jumped. One shouted back from the waist. I did not think the pirates would attempt to board from there and the man pointed forward on the larboard side. In the next instant an arrow took him through the throat and, silently, he toppled back.

  “Come on, lads!” I yelled, quite like old times, and went bashing below.

  In the dimness shot through with vivid streaks of sunlight through the scuttles—and also through a rock-smashed hole—the outlines of men appeared, struggling, flaming with the wink and glitter of steel.

  “Chavonths!” I shouted as we ran forward. I had no wish to slay a Menahem or to be slain by one in the confusion. Truth to tell, for I was most annoyed by this time, the latter consideration far outweighed the former.

  At that instant a gleam of sunlight speared through an opening where a man leaped down onto the deck. The light glanced off a gleaming, sweaty bald skull, highlighted a dangling scalp lock of hair.

  “Duhrra!"

  “You're just in time! They're breaking in like leems!"

  The last boat's crew poured in to help those of their fellows who had smashed in during the attack we had repulsed up on the forecastle. Now we faced them in the semi-gloom and, by Krun, there were a lot of them.

  In among the rough furnishings of the forecastle we struggled hand to hand. It was all a dimly seen business of cut and thrust, of muffled chokes and gasping grunts, of men abruptly shrieking as the steel bit red.

  They were sure of themselves, these renders of the inner sea.

  My stolen Ghittawrer blade flamed. Men leaped and shrieked and died.

  Men were falling about me as the sea-wolves cut their way through. Duhrra and I stood together and presently we were back to back, our blades dripping red.

  I'd fought with Viridia the Render, up along the Hoboling Islands of the Outer Oceans. She and her crew of cutthroats would have been at home here. So we fought. Step by step we were forced back, back to the low wooden door leading from the forecastle into the waist. I swirled Duhrra around so that I faced the pirates.

  “Dak!"

  “Get outside and chop the first cramph who follows me."

  He ducked through without another word.

  I leaped, slashed three quicktimes, left, right, left, dropped three of the screeching hellions, then turned and bolted for the door. As I shot through so Duhrra's bulky shadow blotted the suns.

  “Hold, Duhrra!"

  “Aye! Do you think I'd take off your head?"

  And down, swish, thwack, squelch, came his longsword, neatly decapitating the first render incautious enough to thrust his head and shoulders through after me.

  The door could not be shut.

  Other renders leaped through, swirling their blades, shrilling in triumph.

  I fancied that familiar victory yell would die in their throats now we had room to swing a blade.

  Duhrra and a few of the mercenaries of the ship—Rapas, Brokelsh, Womoxes—bashed in again. We held the pirates for the moment. The wind hung breathless. The suns burned down. The deck became slippery with spilled blood. And still our brands flamed and cut and thrust and kept that vengeful seeking steel from our own throats and guts.

  For a short space the pirates drew back.

  Duhrra appeared a gleaming mass of crimson.

  “I think it will not be long now, Dak."

  “We'll have ‘em yet! Look at their hangdog faces!"

  “'Ware shafts!” The cry went up from the mercenaries.

  Arrows flew.

  I spread my fists on the Ghittawrer blade as best I could, ready to ward off the arrows. Three I batted away and then the fresh howls shrieked to the brilliance of Zim and Genodras at our backs. I risked a quick glance aft.

  Captain Andapon and the remnants of his crew were being bundled forward, struggling and laying about them. But the renders had broken through aft. Now the crew of the argenter was trapped between the two render parties, and, as Duhrra had said, it would not be long now.

  “By the Black Chunkrah!” I said. “We'll take a fine crew of ‘em to sail with us across the Ice Floes of Sicce!"

  We were ringed in.

  Now the renders ceased loosing shafts for fear of hitting their own men. I sized up the men opposite me, selected a likely looking Kataki with his steel-armed tail, his low-browed face fierce and leering upon us.

  I sprang.

  “Hai! Jikai!” I bellowed.

  He swung his blade up and I sidestepped, caught the vicious stab of his tail in my left hand, pulled. He staggered. I took the time to slash right-handed at a fellow who tried to cut me down from the side and then brought the longsword blurring around to chop through the mailed junction of the Kataki's neck and shoulder. He dropped. I dropped his tail, cut savagely left and right, and so leaped back to the ranks of the crew.

  If I was going to take that last trip to the Ice Floes of Sicce, then this little affray was going to be a true Jikai. I'd see to that. I dislike using that great word Jikai except when the fight is a Jikai—if this was a mere pirate's brawl on the inner sea, all well and good. If it meant the end of me, then it was damn well going to be a high Jikai.

  The renders hesitated, hanging back.

  The crew around me, no doubt heartened or depressed by that flashy show-off charge of mine, prepared to go down fighting. The renders yelled—deep wolfish howls and shrill wolfish howls; they were all one in the bedlam—and charged.

  We met them fiercely. Blurred, scarlet impressions flashed before me: of smiting and hacking, of thrusting and ducking. Against mail a good solid meaty blow is necessary. I gave plenty of those. Now one or two strokes slid in from directions where a comrade should have been standing. I felt a smash against my left side and before the Brokelsh could recover my blade lopped his arm. I had to leap wildly thereafter to keep off a Rapa who insisted on engulfing my blade with his throat. He fell. Another took his place. The deck slipped and slimed in blood.

  “Hai, Jikai!” someone was yelling.

  “Fight, you cramphs!” I bellowed.

  Captain Andapon was down, still shouting, weakly trying to flail his sword up against two men who would have taken his head had Duhrra and I not stepped across and spitted them both.

  There were precious few of Menaham left.

  A squawking shrill lofted. The renders, still struggling, fell back. No one, for the moment, understood the meaning of the hail. Then a woman, high on the poop, shrilled and pointed.

  We all looked. For the moment the fighting stopped and we all gaped out to sea like loons.

  Smothered in green flags a swifter pulled in toward the argenter, white water smashing away from her ram. Armed men crowded the narrow deck aft of her arrogant prow and the beak was lifted, ready to be dropped and run out. The three banks of oars rose and fell, rose and fell like the wings of a great bird of prey.

  “Swifter!” yelled a render. And then, immediately, “Magdag!"

  Thereafter we could watch the educational sight of the renders madly rushing from the sinking argenter, clambering down to jump a
nd sprawl into their three boats, and to push off frantically. The crew began to row. Their oars worked in a frenzied manner, hauling the three away in different directions.

  “Saved!” said Duhrra. “And by Magdag."

  “Thank the good Pandrite they came up when they did,” said Captain Andapon. He had staggered up and now, gripping his wounded side, stared hungrily at the swifter.

  What followed was even more educational than seeing renders fleeing a sinking ship.

  Whoever commanded the swifter knew his business.

  Every oar blade rose and feathered together, every oar in unison. We could hear the double roll of the drum-Deldar as he banged out the rhythm. White water creamed away from the long, low bronze ram, that cruel rostrum that could degut a ship and leave her shattered and sinking. Now the Magdaggian swifter captain swerved his ship as though on tracks, lined up on the first render boat. We all saw the ram hit, saw the planks fly up, bodies go pitching into the water.

  The swifter did not halt. One bank of oars backwatered and the other pulled ahead. The swifter spun. Like a great leem pouncing on lesser predators she smashed the second boat. The third knew it could not escape. The oars faltered and came to a clumsy halt. Men were standing up in the boat, waving rags. The swifter did not hesitate.

  Straight over the boat ran the galley, her sharp bronze ram crunching timber and flesh, strewing the sea past her lean flanks with wreckage.

  We heard the yells and then the peculiar double rat-tat of the drum. Whistles blew. Every oar dug in and held. The swifter came to a stop in an incredibly short space. A boat lowered. Another boat swayed out from her center deck space. One boat went to pick up the half-drowned wretches of renders, the other pulled for the sinking argenter.

  The argenter's crew, or what was left, babbled with near-hysterical relief. Men were running below to bring up their possessions. Captain Andapon had quite forgotten he had just been saved from death, had near enough forgotten his wound. He raved on like a maniac.

  “My ship! My beautiful Chavonth of Mem! Those rasts have sunk her!"

  He glared about, distraught, one hand in his hair, tugging, his eyes wild.

  “You've your life, Captain."

  “My life! My life! And my goods! The profit on the voyage! Oh, why has Opaz forsaken me now?"

  Well, it was understandable. He'd be stranded in the inner sea, too.

  The boat from the swifter hooked on and men came over the side, hard, tough men, overlords of Magdag. I nudged Duhrra.

  These newcomers took in the scene: The deck cumbered with dead men, running with blood; the few survivors frantically hauling out their dunnage; the captain raving and moaning about his beautiful ship and his lost fortune; and two hard-faced fellows, smothered in blood, who stood where the fighting had been the thickest.

  I realized we must stand out, must be noticeable.

  “Get some of our dunnage up, Duhrra. Act like the others."

  The Hikdar with the green robes and the gleaming helmet and the mesh mail picked his way delicately between the corpses and sidestepped the worst patches of blood. He saluted the captain.

  “Your ship is sinking, Captain. You will accept the hospitality of our swifter."

  He looked at me.

  Again he saluted, his arm raised in that particular Grodnim way. I replied.

  “You wear the green, dom. You are of Magdag?"

  “No,” I said. I had to say something. “I am of Goforeng.” It was one Grodnim city of which I knew a little, having raided there and made myself a nuisance—many and many a year ago—and it was a damned long way away to the east.

  “They breed fighters in Goforeng it seems."

  I knew the correct answer to that.

  “You are too kind. But it is we who must thank you for saving us. We were nearly finished."

  “So I see.” He did not look about him to underline his remark. He was probably the swifter's first lieutenant, a Hikdar being a nice middle-of-the-hierarchy rank. “You had best come aboard at once. This vessel has not much longer to live."

  “My beautiful Chavonth!"

  “Yes, Captain. Now, if you will go..."

  So he chivied us over the side and into the waiting boat.

  Duhrra brought our effects. I hoped if by any chance a scrap of our breechclouts showed the Magdaggians would think them only drenched in blood. Duhrra had his right arm wedged into the front of his robe. I helped him with the dunnage. The Hikdar's black eyebrows rose. He was a most supercilious young man.

  The boat pulled across to the swifter. Captain Andapon could not take his eyes off his ship. The argenter, Chavonth of Mem, went down in a last froth of bubbles as we climbed up onto the swifter's quarterdeck.

  Oh, yes, the memories gushed up for me, who had been a slave in a Magdaggian swifter, and then a captain of a Zairian swifter, the foremost corsair upon the inner sea.

  We were escorted below and to the captain's cabin. The men would be quartered on the upper deck, well away from the oar-slaves. Captain Andapon and I stepped into the ornate elegance of the aft cabin, and entered a world of luxury and wealth, of power and the naked display of arrogance and riches.

  Aides and orderlies sprang instantly to do the bidding of this swifter captain of Green Magdag. We were waved to comfortable upholstered chairs, wine was pressed into our hands. What the blood was doing to the upholstery seemed to give no one any cause for second thoughts. No doubt another raid would amply repay the cost. The captain walked in.

  “Lahal, gernus. You have wine? Good. Now tell me the essentials."

  Captain Andapon was not only a tough hard seadog, he was also a man who had had dealings with the overlords of Magdag. He did not beat about the bush.

  “Lahal, gernu. We were caught in a calm. We fought. They would have had us but for your timely arrival, for which I thank you from the bottom of—"

  “Very good.” This captain waved Andapon down. He looked at me. “My ship-Hikdar tells me you fought well. He says you are from Goforeng. I warn you I can smell untruths many dwaburs off. I want the truth."

  How typical this was of overlords of Magdag. And, too, how refreshing! I'd been getting soft of late.

  I still sat as I spoke.

  “Lahal, Captain. If you do not choose to believe I am from Goforeng, that is your concern."

  I heard the horrified gasps from his aides. Andapon drew a little away on his chair, as though to disassociate himself from this ungrateful and suicidal madman.

  Before anyone could say any more, I said, in what I considered a reasonable tone of voice, “You have not told us your name."

  Again the gasps from the aides. The ship-Hikdar, who had come in with some importance, half drew his sword. I glanced up at him. “Why do you draw your sword, dom? Do you wish to die?"

  The Hikdar's face flushed with painful blood. He blazed out at his captain, “Gernu! Is this to be tolerated? May I have the pleasure of chopping this—"

  “Softly, Nath, softly. There is more here than we supposed.” He bent a frowning glance on me. I recognized it as a practiced expression designed to overawe. His black curly hair was bunched on his head, oiled and scented. His long green robe was belted in at the waist, and he wore a shortsword there, on his right side. His face was hawklike, bold, arrogant, two blue bolts for eyes, the chin of a swifter's ram—yes, these were the externals. But in that face there was not only the consciousness of power, there was real power also.

  “I think,” he said, “that you should tell me your name before I tell mine. That would appear equitable."

  It was so, on the face of it, according to ship custom.

  “Dak.” I paused for only a hairbreadth of time. I had to think of some convincing name, and fast. “Dak ti Foreng.” I stared up, my ugly old face hard and uncompromising. “And you?"

  The Hikdar bustled forward, outraged by my conduct and yet unwilling to allow the pappattu to be incorrectly made.

  “You have the honor to be in the presence of Gern
u Gafard, Rog of Guamelga, the King's Striker, Prince of the Central Sea, the Reducer of Zair, Sea-Zhantil, Ghittawrer of Genod..."

  All the time this Hikdar Nath rattled off the titles, and there were many more in the wearisome way of Magdag, this Gafard sat watching me with a small ironical smile playing upon his lips. In this, if nothing else, he recognized the follies of panoply and pomp. But I fastened on one fact, one single vital item in all that long imposing list. He did not bear a surname. No man with the power and rank he had, starting from that rog—which equaled the roz of the zairians; the kov or duke of the Outer Oceans—would willingly stride the world's stage without a surname. I knew him for what he was then.

  The anger and bitterness in me ought not to be present, save as a general principle. I had made up my mind to quit the inner sea. Why, then, worry my head over its intrigues, its deceptions, its treacheries?

  When the ship-Hikdar finished and stepped smartly back to his place, this Gafard bent his eye on me and said, “Now you know."

  “Aye,” I said.

  This man was no true overlord of Magdag. Had I spoken to an overlord as I had to him I'd have been run outside and something diabolical would be happening to me, had I not done as I intended and broken free among the slaves chained below. This Gafard had prevented me from doing that, whereat I cursed within me, impotent to do what I wanted. No novel situation, I know, by Zim-Zair!

  Gafard said, “I wish to speak to this wild leem alone. Clear the cabin. Nath, stand close beyond the door with a guard. Come running at my hail."

  “Your orders, my commands, gernu!” bellowed the Hikdar, saluting, turning, bellowing the others out. We were alone.

  He sat for some time at the long shining table before the stern windows, his hands limp on the balass wood, his gaze unwavering, direct, on me. Then—