The Virgin of Zesh & the Tower of Zanid

by L. Sprague De Camp

  ###

  Emotionally drained, Althea lounged on the beach and watched Yuruzh tidy up the remains of the battle. Prisoners were paraded, wounded bandaged, and corpses piled for burning. The Dasht of Darya, unrecognizable through the bandages that covered his mangled face, was hauled roughly forward. He sank to his knees and mumbled. Yuruzh spoke a quick sentence, and the Krishnan was hauled away.

  Other Záva were at work on the shattered ships of the navy of Darya, which lay half-submerged on the shallow bottom, waves washing over their decks. The caudate Krishnans were prying loose everything salvageable. The sound of hammers and axes filled the hot noon air. Yuruzh came to where Althea lay and flopped down upon the sand.

  “Thank God that’s all for the present!” he said. “Who’s this?”

  Gottfried Bahr introduced Brian Kirwan, sitting subdued in his burlap cloak and avoiding Althea’s eyes.

  “ ’Twas a fine fight, sir,” said Kirwan. “The Irish never did better, even at Clontarf.”

  “We were lucky,” said Yuruzh. “Only twenty-odd killed and twice that number wounded, and they lost several times that. They tried to fight my boys in the water, forgetting that we swim by instinct and they don’t.”

  Althea asked, “What happened? All I know is that the ships ran on some sort of obstacles.”

  “Sharpened tree trunks with boulders roped to them to make them sink,” explained Yuruzh. “I had a lot of the things ready for such an occasion, and the boys planted them in the sand of the bottom while you were swimming out to the fleet.”

  “Did you know the Dasht might use me as a kind of hostage?”

  “I recognized the possibility, but I had to take that chance. I’m sorry.” The chief wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Jeepers, I could use a drink!”

  Kirwan said: “I had some fine whiskey, but the Noble Savages confiscated it.”

  “I see a cure for that,” said Yuruzh.

  Althea asked. “What are you going to do with the Dasht? Kill him?”

  “It would be a pleasure, but that would be like trumping my partner’s ace. While he’s alive in my hands, the Daryava may think twice about attacking us. Never destroy an asset—hullo, what’s this?”

  A procession debouched from the trees. Two Roussellians hustled Diogo Kuroki along, naked with his wrists bound behind him. After them came Aaron Halevi and several others, wrapped in their himations. Halevi said, “Senhor chief, we understand that you are displeased with us.”

  “Your discernment is acute, Senhor Diomedes,” said Yuruzh.

  “Contudo,” said Halevi, “we do not think that you will continue to feel that way. We have just had a revolution.”

  “Sim?”

  “Pois sim. We have dethroned the tyrant whose blind fanaticism caused all the trouble. Here he is; do what you like with him. Our new regime will be strictly democratic, affording to all that perfect personal liberty which is the birthright of natural man. Everybody may think and say what he pleases, provided of course that he agrees with me. And our first change of policy, besides liberalizing the rules to allow the eating of meat, will be to seek closer relations with the Záva, to afford you, too, the opportunity of benefiting from our superior ideals and institutions.”

  “Muito obrigado, senhor,” said Yuruzh, adding dryly, “Whether the Záva can stand such sudden enlightenment in their present stage of culture is something that must be carefully considered. Meanwhile, in lieu of a fine, I will accept your medicinal whiskey supply. All of it!”

  “Sim, senhor,” said Halevi and hurried off, leaving Kuroki.

  “What are you going to do with him?” said Kirwan, indicating Kuroki.

  “Send him back to Novorecife, I suppose,” said Yuruzh. “It would do no good to kill him, and I certainly don’t want him on Zá. Ordinary Terrans are difficult enough, but Qondyor save me from a Terran Utopian idealist who really believes his own line.”

  “It is not uncommon neurosis,” said Bahr. “There is in every psyche a split between the part that tries to cope with the real world and the part that flees into a better world of its own imaginings. Normally, the latter tendency acts merely as a useful safety valve. It is only when it comes the mind to dominate that touch with reality is lost.”

  Yuruzh said: “I know. La Fontaine expressed it somewhat more poetically:

  Quel esprit ne bat la campagne?

  Qui na fait chateaux en Espagne?

  Picrochole, Pyrrhus, la laitière, enfin tous,

  Autant les sages que les fous.

  Chacun songe en veillant; il n’est rien de plus doux.

  Une flatteuse erreur emporte alors nor ames;

  Tout le bien du monde est à nous,

  Tous les honneurs, toutes les femmes.

  Quand je suis seul, je fais au plus brave un defi,

  Je m’ecarte, je vais detrôner le sophi;

  On m’elit roi, mon peuple m’aime;

  Les diadimes vont sur ma tete pleuvant;

  Quelque accident faitil que je rentre en moi-même,

  Je suis gros Jean comme devant.”*

  “Do you know everything?” asked Althea.

  Yuruzh smiled. “Not quite. I did pick up a thing or two the years I was at the Institute at Princeton.”

  Bahr asked, “Excuse me, but are you of the same species as the other Záva?”

  “Not exactly. I’m a hybrid between the tailed and tailless species.” Yuruzh glanced around. “What’s keeping that whiskey? Pychets!” He spoke to one of the tailed Krishnans, who ran into the forest where the trail joined the beach.

  “Now about those tests,” began Bahr, but a rise in the voices of the Záva drew their attention seaward.

  Yuruzh jumped up to see better. A merchant lateener was standing off Zesh beyond the line of wreckage, and a dinghy was rowing rapidly shoreward. Althea had hardly observed it before it grounded and its people scrambled out. Two of them walked purposefully across the sand towards Althea.

  One was a small, dark-brown man in the traveling habit of a bishop of the Ecumenical Monotheistic Church. The other was Afanasi Vasilyitch Gorchakov.

  *What spirit fights not a campaign?

  Who doesn’t build castles in Spain?

  Picrochole, Pyrrhus, the milkmaid, the whole lot,

  The sages as much as the sot.

  Everyone daydreams; nought this pleasure surpasses,

  Our souls on a tide of illusion are whirled;

  We possess all the wealth of the world,

  All the fame, all the lasses.

  When I’m alone, the bravest I’ll face,

  I ramble; the Shah of Iran I’ll erase;

  A king I’m elected, my people adore

  And diadems on my head rain . . .

  Some mischance makes me myself again;

  I’m fat John as before.

  X

  Althea gave a little shriek. She half-turned to run, when Gorchakov’s roar brought her attention back again. He had a pistol in his hand.

  Yuruzh had half-drawn his sword, but at the sight of the gun he slowly sheathed it again. Gorchakov swung the muzzle so that it pointed in turn at everybody near him.

  “You know what this is, don’t you?” he said. “Well, everybody be good, or you know what happens. Althea, you come with me.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Then you get shot.” Gorchakov raised the pistol.

  Althea glanced around frantically. Bahr had disappeared; Yuruzh and Kirwan were standing by helplessly. She appealed to the clerical man. “Are you Bishop Harichand Raman?”

  The small man spoke accented English. “Yes, my child. I was making a sarcuit of the Sadabao ports. Hearing from Mr. Gorchakov that you were on Zesh, I came ashore with him to see.”

  “But can’t you stop him or something? I hate and loathe him!”

  “I am sorry, my dear, but there is nothing I can do. I pfear we could no longer carry you on our mission roll in any ewent—”

  “Why not?”


  “Because since your arrival on Krishna, you have managed to put yourself in a—well, a very compromising light. Pfarst you get intoxicated and marry Mr. Gorchakov—”

  “But he was the one—” cried Althea.

  “I daresay there were extenuating sarcumstances, but the central fact remains. Then you run away with Mr. Kirwan and Dr. Bahr, telling people they are your lovers.”

  “But that was only to get us across the ferry—”

  “I suppose so, but the story is still sarculating, and we must avoid even the appearance of evil among our personnel. And lastly I find you on Zesh, hardly clad in accordance with the dictates of the inspired Getulio C&aTilde;o.”

  Althea had forgotten about being unclad, since so many others around her were naked also. She could have given Raman an explanation for this state of affairs, too, but it seemed hardly worthwhile.

  “So,” concluded the bishop with an oleaginous smile, “it is better for you to return to your lawful husband. At least he vill farnish you with support, and no doubt you will in time learn to adapt your parsonality to his.”

  “Exactly,” concurred Gorchakov. “Now come along, byednyashka.”

  “Devil ye say!” cried Kirwan. “D’ye think the great Brian Kirwan’ll stand by to see our little American rose carried off by a crass gorilla from the steppes, assisted by a mealy-mouthed, toadying heretic of a bishop? Be damned to you!”

  Kirwan stooped and picked up a large safq shell, about the size and weight of a full-grown Terran conch. As he drew back his arm to throw, Gorchakov’s pistol roared.

  Kirwan tumbled backward as if struck by a mighty blow. His chest was blown open, fragments of lung and bone showing whitely through the bubbling blood.

  Althea, like the others, jumped at the explosion. She tensed herself to run, but a bark from Gorchakov stopped her. The security officer was still in command of the situation.

  “Is good,” he said, looking at Kirwan’s corpse. “I would have killed the other, too, only he ran into woods when he saw me getting out of the boat. Now come, quick!”

  How like Gottfried Bahr, thought Althea, beginning a slow march toward the boat. But then, if he hadn’t run, he probably would have been killed, too. She looked back desperately at Yuruzh, still standing with his hand on his sword hilt but not otherwise moving. All other organic sounds—the hammering and chatter of the Záva—had ceased. All the tailed men were looking at Gorchakov. The surf boomed and swished in the silence.

  Yuruzh said, “Oh, Mr. Gorchakov!”

  “What is?”

  “As security officer of Novorecife, how did you violate your own regulations to let yourself carry a gun out of the port?”

  “Regulations are what I say they are. Me, Afanasi Gorchakov. You mind your own business, or you get shot, too. Hurry up, Althea.”

  “Can’t I put on some clothes first?”

  “They wouldn’t stay on long enough to be worthwhile. Get in boat.”

  The bishop said, “Mr. Gorchakov, there isn’t room for three passengers in the dinghy.”

  “Hokay, you stay behind.”

  “But, my dear man!” bleated the bishop, “I can’t possibly—”

  “You want to get shot? All right then, shut up.”

  “You could at least send the boat back for me . . .” wailed Raman.

  Ignoring him, Gorchakov herded Althea into the dinghy. As if in a nightmare, she saw the Krishnan sailors push off and row out between a couple of Daryao hulks. The figures on the beach receded and shrank until they were hidden by the ships. The dinghy pulled up beside the roundship. Gorchakov gestured with his pistol to indicate that Althea should climb the rope ladder. The people of the merchant ship stared as she clambered over the rail.

  “Come with me,” said Gorchakov, swarming up after her.

  He shouted to the captain to get under way and led Althea aft. The dinghy was hoisted aboard, and the sails filled.

  Down a short flight of steps he took her, bending to avoid hitting his head, and into a stern cabin. He pushed her roughly in and closed and bolted the door.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  “You will see.” Gorchakov glanced out the cabin window in the stern. Althea recognized the change in the ship’s motion that betokened its getting under way. Gorchakov said, “With this wind, we ought to reach Ulvanagh before tomorrow morning. That is, I will get there. You won’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Gorchakov hauled a length of rope out of a wall cabinet, grabbed Althea, and tied her to a post that supported one corner of the bunk. She tried to struggle, but Gorchakov’s strength, vastly greater than Kirwan’s, made it futile.

  “I mean you will be dead.” Gorchakov examined one of his knots and retied it more securely. “I am going to kill you.”

  He laid his pistol on top of a wall cabinet and peeled off his shirt. Then he took a bottle of kvad out of the cabinet, sat down, and drank a gurgling gulp from the bottle.

  “But why?” Althea tried to keep back the tears. “I’ve never hurt you.”

  “Such foolish questions you ask!” Another gulp. “I told you once you would learn the Russian hate. Well, now you got a lot more of it to learn. You not only run away; you make me look like a fool with those two.

  “So, now comes the time. I will kill you, but only a little by little.” Gorchakov thrust his face forward, teeth bared. “First I will beat you. Then I will pull your hair out. Then I beat you some more. Then I break some bones, or maybe gouge out an eye. Then I beat you some more. Then I bite some pieces out of you, or maybe I skin you with my knife. And so it goes.”

  He took another drink, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and continued, “If I do it just right, I can make you last till we almost reach Ulvanagh and then push you out through that window. I made sure the window was big enough when I bought passage.” He laughed loudly. “How do you like that, eh? That will teach you to spit on a man who offered you honest love.”

  For the next hour, Gorchakov sat in his chair, alternately drinking and telling Althea the things that he meant to do to her. Althea cried and pleaded with him, which only made him laugh. Then he got sentimental and wept with self-pity over the cruel and faithless treatment that he had sustained from his beloved bride. He wept over his impending widowerhood. Then back to threats and curses.

  At last the bottle was empty. Gorchakov looked around for a wastebasket. Finding none, he walked to the cabin window, unlatched and opened it, and threw the bottle out. Without bothering to close the window, he strode back and slapped Althea’s face.

  “Just a beginning,” he said. “Where did I put my whip?”

  He rummaged until he found it. He cracked it a couple of times, then hauled off and let fly.

  The lash hissed and cracked against Althea’s skin, plowing a diagonal red welt from her left shoulder down between her small breasts to her lower right ribs. Althea shrieked.

  A metallic streak shot across the cabin. A thrown knife struck Gorchakov in the right upper arm, penetrating the biceps.

  With a yell, Gorchakov dropped the whip and snatched the knife out of the wound. As he did so, Yuruzh catapulted into the cabin.

  Gorchakov hesitated, glancing from the knife in his left fist to the pistol on top of the cabinet. With a second’s more warning, he could have reached the pistol and blasted the life out of his assailant. With Yuruzh hurtling toward him, he did not have time. Instead, he struck at the tailed Krishnan with an overhand stab.

  Yuruzh blocked the stab, caught Gorchakov’s wrist, and twisted. They reeled around the cabin, fighting for the knife, and several times knocked the wind out of Althea by bumping into her. Then she was confusedly aware that Gorchakov had dropped the knife and was lunging for the cabinet on which lay the gun. Yuruzh caught him around the waist from behind and threw him against the opposite wall. Then as they came together again Gorchakov tried to strangle Yuruzh. The latter seized one of Gorchakov’s choking fingers and bent it back
until the joint cracked and gave.

  They blundered about, punching, kicking, wrestling, gouging, biting, banging into the walls of the narrow space and falling over the furniture. Then Yuruzh had Gorchakov pinned. Both were kneeling, facing into a corner, with Yuruzh behind Gorchakov. Yuruzh gripped the wrist of Gorchakov’s left arm with his own right, twisting it behind Gorchakov’s back. Yuruzh’s left arm was employed in trying to keep Gorchakov’s chin up so that the Russian would not bite him. Gorchakov’s right arm, now nearly useless between the wound in the upper arm and the broken finger, made feeble clawing motions.

  Behind Yuruzh on the floor lay the knife. Yuruzh glanced back, then reached out with his tail. Although the organ was not truly prehensile, the Zau chief managed to sweep the weapon forward until a quick snatch with his right hand secured it. He prodded the point into Gorchakov’s ribs until he found a likely spot and pushed slowly, moving the blade about as it sank centimeter by centimeter.

  Gorchakov screamed.

  Yuruzh pushed further. Gorchakov coughed bloody froth. When the blade had sunk to the hilt, Yuruzh withdrew it, found another spot just over the kidneys, and thrust it in again. And again.

  Gorchakov relaxed. As Yuruzh let go, Gorchakov slid to the floor, eyes rolling upward and limbs twitching. Yuruzh examined the body, then carefully placed the point over Gorchakov’s heart and made a final thrust. Gorchakov gave a last shudder and lay still.

  Yuruzh looked up at Althea, saying, “Well, young lady, I seem always to meet you when you’re tied to a post and some villain’s about to do you in. Are you hurt?”

  “No,” said Althea. “Not seriously. How about you?”

  “Just a few contusions and abrasions.”

  He cut her loose. Although Althea had never fainted in her life, she came close to it now. She swayed and fell forward into Yuruzh’s arms. He held her against his broad, hairy chest. When she looked up, he unexpectedly bent and kissed her: not wildly and brutally as Kirwan had done, but gently and tenderly.

  “You’re amazing,” said Althea. Dizzy and breathless, she sank down upon the bed.