Matt considered the implications and shuddered. He hoped his potential buyer only wanted a confidential servant.
The slave market was a new low in humiliation, with people yanking his mouth open to look at his teeth, poking him in the ribs, squeezing his shoulders, and punching his arms. He kept reminding himself that he could get out whenever he wanted, and felt a huge surge of sympathy for his fellow slaves, who couldn’t. He wondered how successful he would be in mounting a worldwide antislavery campaign. His mind started considering possible ways and means, and he found himself including the little brown cat in them. Talk about the perfect spy …
Though maybe he would prefer one who couldn’t be bribed with tuna.
He went for a decent price, but nothing earthshaking. His new owner led him away by the rope that tied his hands, and Matt reflected that the police must be very good in Egypt, because any determined slave could have knocked down such a buyer and escaped easily.
The buyer led him to a rowboat, said, “Get in and take the oars!” then knelt down to tie Matt’s rope to a thwart, loosed one hand from it, then boarded behind him. He cast off the mooring line and said, “Row straight out to sea.”
Matt turned and stared at the man as though he were crazy.
“Row!” The buyer produced a mean-looking little whip from inside his robe. “Straight out, as I tell you, or you’ll be sorry for it!”
Matt revised his opinion of the police. This man, apparently, was sure of his ability to win if he tried to fight him. Well, he hadn’t been planning a mutiny anyway—he was curious enough to want to see where the journey led.
He rowed, considering. The man was round-faced, his skin darker than the Berbers’ and his hair and moustache jet-black. From the accent in which he spoke Arabic, Matt guessed he was from India. Too far south to put him in contact with the barbarians, really, but he’d picked up a lot of interesting rumors from his fellow galley slaves, and decided to play along for a while yet.
As he rowed he happened to notice a pair of yellow eyes watching him from the shadows at the stern. He tried to grin, and felt an illogical fondness for the little cat. She might have had her own purely selfish reasons for it, but she was loyal.
He rowed hour after hour, and realized that he was rowing east along the shoreline. When darkness fell, the man told him to beach the craft, then drove him ahead on a long, long walk through the darkness. His captor didn’t enlighten him, but Matt glanced at the stars and guessed he was hiking south. He guessed that if they went far enough, they would come to the Red Sea. After a long while he smelled salt air again and knew they were approaching. His captor drove him down a rocky beach to another rowboat.
“Get in.”
Matt did and, as he took up the oars, wondered how Balkis was ever going to find him-it had been an awfully long distance for a little cat. But as his captor pushed the bow free, Matt saw a shadow flow over the gunwale. His heart warmed.
The captor jumped in, and Matt started to row. He rowed for an hour and more. Then suddenly, black against black, a small galley loomed beside him.
“Stop.”
Matt did, with massive relief. He reflected that he never could have rowed for so long only a few weeks ago, when he’d left home. He turned and looked over his shoulder to see a rope come flying down from the galley. His owner caught it, then untied his tether and gestured to the rope. “Climb.”
Matt climbed. His owner climbed up right behind him. He wondered if they’d leave the rope down long enough for Balkis, then remembered that they would probably tie the rowboat to the galley.
His owner bowed to an older man resplendent in a brocade robe, even this late at night. “Your new slave, my captain.”
The captain gave Matt an assessing glance. “Where is your home?”
Matt tried to say “Merovence,” but only heard the familiar cawing.
The captain nodded, satisfied. “He will do for crew aboard a smuggler. Shackle him to his bench.”
As the blacksmith hammered the rivets home, Matt reflected that the ship had to be a rather special smuggler. Of course, any illegal ship would be painted black and running only at night—but this one was long, low, and slender, built for speed rather than cargo capacity. Admittedly, smugglers needed to be able to outrun the tax police, but they usually tried to carry enough goods to make the journey worthwhile. Gold? Diamonds? Matt couldn’t offhand think of anything of high enough value that would be cheaper smuggled than bought and sold openly.
Except, perhaps, information …
He felt a chill down his back, and wondered whose spy network he’d blundered into. It did make sense for even the oarsmen to be mute, though—not only could they not tell what they didn’t know, they couldn’t even tell what they did know. Apparently nobody had considered the possibility that he might be able to read and write—but how many slaves could?
“Out of the kettle and into the flames,” hissed a barely heard voice overhead.
Matt looked up at the brindle bundle stuffed into a niche where the overhead deck met the side, and bared his teeth, hoping Balkis would understand it as a grin.
They rowed all night, but at the first hint of dawn the captain ordered them into hiding—a river-mouth with a sea-cave large enough to hold the little ship; he had obviously come this way before. In fact, Matt suspected it was his regular route, running information between India and the Arab world. There in the gloom, the slaves rested on their oars, pillowing their heads on their arms, to sleep as well as they could.
Matt, however, discovered one advantage to the smuggler-ship—it didn’t have a resident wizard. With no need to worry about alerting a magical rival, Matt peered up through the gloom to discover the glowing yellow eyes still on him. He stared at Balkis, pantomimed unzipping his mouth, then wondered if the cat was really frowning. He tried again, opening his mouth, taking hold of his lips with both hands and wriggling them into letter shapes.
Balkis stared, frown disappearing.
Matt stuck out his tongue and twisted it up and down with his fingers.
“And the same to you,” Balkis hissed. “Do you tell me that your tongue is still tied?”
Matt nodded.
“A fine master I have chosen!” the little cat huffed, but she went ahead and recited in a cat-whisper,
“Unbind the tie that stiffens his lips,
Untwist the knot that his tongue girds!
Free his voice and mouth to speak …”
Balkis hesitated, looking uncertain, then concentrated so fiercely that her slit-eyes crossed.
Matt realized, with a sinking heart, that she was stuck for a rhyme. Heard, he thought, desperately hoping Balkis was a telepath, Heard!
The little cat might not have been a mind reader, but she came through for him anyway:
“Loose the torrent of his words!”
Matt heaved a sigh of relief and whispered, “Thanks, Balkis.” He had never liked the sound of his own voice as much.
“You are welcome,” the cat hissed, then added almost apologetically, “I have difficulty with final lines, or last verses, if there are more than one.”
A flag went up in the back of Matt’s mind—cats didn’t apologize. On the other hand, of course, cats didn’t talk. He let surprise take over. “You mean you improvise all your spells—make them up on the spot?”
“When I have not learned a spell for the situation, yes,” the cat sniffed. “Do not all wizards?”
Matt took a deep breath, then said, “Yes, but I’ll obviously have to teach you a broader range of verses.” His heart thrilled at the thought of actually teaching literature again. In fact, though, he wondered if one small feline head could hold any spells at all. Cats weren’t reputed to have very long memories.
Of course, anybody who thought that hadn’t tried to open a rustling bag of cat food when he thought he was alone.
Down the Red Sea they rowed, the slaves getting a break when the offshore breeze took them out into the midnight s
ea. They crossed the Persian Gulf, and the temperature grew hotter and hotter. Then Matt lost track of how many days they were at sea, or how many times the overseer came down the aisle with water, interrupting the slaves’ sleep. They sweated the water right back out at night, bending to their oars in the tropical warmth.
Finally the order came to ship oars, and the smuggler slipped into its berth. Matt was amazed at how slight the jar of docking was, then remembered that these were men accustomed to secrecy and who practiced it by habit even in their home port.
If this was their home port. Balkis went out to scout.
But when the sun sent shafts of light through the oar-holes, Matt knew they weren’t in a cave or forest. Not long after, Balkis came back to report.
“We have come to a great city that stretches as far as the eye can see! The houses are white, there are gilded temples, and the palace is trimmed with gold!”
“Sounds rich,” Matt agreed. “How about green space?”
“There are trees everywhere, but some of them are only tall straight trunks with a bunch of slender leaves at the top.”
“Palms,” Matt said, frowning. “We’re pretty far south, all right.”
They had to delay further conversation because the overseer came through with dinner—wooden bowls of gruel, as usual.
There was another merchant among the crew—at least Matt guessed him to be a fellow pirate victim. Stripped to breechcloth and covered with sweat and dirt, he looked like any of the other middle-aged slaves, except his flesh was sagging where he had recently been fat, and his body wasn’t as hard as the others’ yet. The constant sorrow and resignation of all the others was absent from his face, as was all other emotion. Now, though, he came out of his daze, looking up from his oar, and his vacant expression livened with a trace of hope. “Where are we?”
“Bombay, they call it,” a Moor hissed in answer, “this ship’s home port. Be still, if you wish to keep your tongue! They think we’re all mutes, and too stupid to learn to talk.”
The merchant shuddered and let his eyes glaze again.
Bombay! Matt’s blood thrilled at the exotic name. He’d never been to India, and he’d always wanted to, more than a dream, less than a plan. Admittedly, he hadn’t intended to travel in quite this way, but it was Bombay nonetheless, and even better, untouched by the twentieth century! He could hardly wait to jump ship and start exploring.
He had sense enough, though, not to try it by day. They waited for night; then Matt asked Balkis, “Are there lots of people?”
“Everywhere,” Balkis said with disgust. “It is packed and thronged with folk! I am amazed they can find houses for them all.”
“They can’t,” Matt told her, “but the more of them there are, the easier it is for us to lose ourselves among them.”
Balkis eyed him critically. “You will stand out like a jay among robins.”
“Not for long,” Matt assured her. “We’ve come as far east as this ship will take us. Time to find transport north.”
“You seem to forget the small matter of escape from this vessel,” Balkis said tartly.
“Yes, that is a small matter,” Matt agreed, and recited softly,
“Rivets shall shatter and manacles spring wide!
Don John of Austria to freedom be our guide,
Hacking out a pathway for the captured and the sold,
Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds,
Thronging of the slave-men who all labor under sea,
White for bliss, blind for sun, stunned for liberty,
Don John of Austria will set his people free!”
The shackles cracked open. Matt ducked flying rivet-heads. When he looked up, he saw a huge man in conquistador armor standing in the middle of the galley slaves.
CHAPTER 8
The apparition seemed eight feet tall, but Matt told himself it couldn’t be, the deck was scarcely more than six feet overhead. But for an apparition, the intruder was very solid, as he proved by whirling to fell the overseer with the flat of his blade and crying, “Up, all you who thirst for freedom! Up, slaves, and fight for your liberty!”
The rowers stared in shock. Then, with a shout, they surged up from their benches and followed the huge bearded figure.
Don John swung his broadsword two-handed and chopped through the hatchway. Three more strokes, and he kicked scrapwood out of his way to step onto the deck.
There the smugglers came running, or at least the half-dozen men left to guard the ship, howling in rage, scimitars swinging high.
Don John bellowed with the joy of battle and swung his broadsword. Most of the pirates had sense enough to leap back, but two were slow and fell bleeding. Matt leaped in to snatch up their swords, then stepped back to hand one to the healthiest-looking of the slaves.
The other four smugglers shouted in rage and charged back in as Don John was recovering his stroke, vulnerable for a few seconds. A scimitar clashed off his breastplate, another jabbed at his naked face, but Matt’s sword rang against it, and the stroke glanced harmlessly off the hero’s helmet. His fellow slave leaped at the other two smugglers, slashing and whirling like a dervish and howling like a maniac. The smugglers gave way, then gave again as the bearded armored man followed, demonic in the torchlight. The smugglers ran, calling for help.
Don John turned to the slaves. “Away with you now, and quickly! Find Christian ships and stowaway! Find churches and cry sanctuary! Find native robes and disguise yourselves—but flee!”
Matt fled. He pounded across the paving-stones to an alleyway. There he paused to look back, and saw Don John in the light of the torches, both hands around his blade, holding the hilt up like a cross, his gaze on it in rapt devotion, crying, “Vivat Hispania! Domino Gloria!” And, praising God and country, he faded, became transparent, and disappeared.
“Surely such a man never came from this world!”
Matt looked up and saw Balkis crouched on top of a stack of baskets, staring at the now empty ship. “No, not from this world—not yet, anyway.”
“Then from where?” His new apprentice turned searching eyes upon him.
“From G. K. Chesterton’s pen,” Matt told her. “Come on! Soldiers will be searching these docks any minute now! We’ve got to hide.”
He turned away, but there was no answer, and he turned right back, frowning up at Balkis, who was staring at him wide-eyed. Matt repressed a smile and shrugged. “Hey, you knew what I was.”
“Yes,” the little cat hissed, “but I had not seen it.”
“Better get used to it,” Matt said. “Hop onto my shoulders.”
“Very well.” Balkis sprang onto his shoulder.
Matt gasped. “Velvet paws! I’m not made of oak, you know!”
“I thought your bark was worse than your bite,” Balkis retorted.
“You haven’t seen me bite yet.” Matt started off down the dark alley. “Time to hide.”
“Where?” Balkis looked blank. “I can dodge to any shadow, but you …?”
“I think I’ll take Don John’s advice and go native,” Matt said. “Let’s see if we can find somebody’s laundry line.”
Murk moved out of murk, and a dagger-point pressed against Matt’s throat. “Your purse, foreigner!”
“On the other hand,” Matt told Balkis, “there might be a closer source.” Then, to the thief, “All I’m wearing is a loincloth. Where would I hide a purse?”
The knife pricked at his throat, and the voice said, “Your sword, then.”
“Sure.” Matt swung the tip up against the man’s belly. “How deep do you want it?”
The thief froze in surprise, and Balkis sprang.
She hit the thief’s face with all four sets of claws, yowling like a snow tiger. The thief recoiled, dropping his dagger in shock.
“That’s enough,” Matt said.
Balkis’ weight landed on his shoulder again, and the thief stared in dread at the blade of the sword vanishing under his chin. He co
uld feel the point against his throat.
“Not a good idea to attack armed men,” Matt explained, “even if they are only lousy galley slaves. Off with the clothes, fella.”
“Me give to a victim?” the thief squalled in protest.
“Almost enough to get you kicked out of the footpad’s guild, isn’t it?” Matt asked sympathetically. “Don’t worry, you can tell your shop steward the slave you picked on turned out to be a wizard in disguise.”
“Who would believe so foolish a tale?” the thief sneered.
“You would,” Matt told him, and chanted in English,
“He can fill you crowds of shrouds
and horrify you vastly!
He can rack your brains with chains
and gibberings grim and ghastly!”
Since there weren’t any shrouds to fill, all that happened was a sudden heavy jangling all around them, underlying gloating voices uttering jumbles of nonsense syllables and giggling in deep, liquid tones.
The thief cried out in horror and shrank back. Matt followed with the sword, chanting,
“Silence is golden,
And talk overrated.
Let all noise I’ve called up
Forthwith be abated!”
The darkness was silent again, or as much as night in a big city can be. There were still voices calling out here and there in the distance, the creaking of ships tied up at the wharf, scurryings and chirpings of small life-forms that weren’t willing to admit the forest had been cut out from under them, and over it all, the shouting of soldiers coming nearer.
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