The Ancient Enemy

by Christopher Rowley

  She had to marry beneath herself, it was all there was left. And here was this Rukkh, who came to stare at her every opportunity and exhibit his need for her.

  Alas, Filek had not been receptive to her wishes.

  "He is nothing but a peasant."

  "I know, Father, but we are going into the New Land. Property in the old world is meaningless here."

  "Do not say that, my darling. All status and hierarchy depend on our name from the old world. Without it we would be submerged in the common ruck!"

  Simona could hear the enormous fear and the loathing in her father's voice. She sympathized. If she could have had her wishes, she would have gone back to her old life at once. But such wishes were worse than useless.

  "Father, we must also be flexible. If I am not wed, I will be vulnerable. Unless you can protect me, I will be sold as a whore."

  "Ah, my sweet Simona, do not say such horrible things. You will be wed, my dearest, but to a fine man of good blood. This peasant soldier is scarcely a citizen of Shasht at all."

  "Nor are we, Daddy. We are citizens of the new world."

  "Hush, you must never say such things. That could easily be taken the wrong way and construed as treason against the Emperor."

  Simona put a hand to her mouth.

  "Oh! I meant no such thing." She looked around anxiously; no one appeared to be listening to them. She hadn't been loud. No one was loud on the women's deck, unless she wanted her business spread far and wide on the gossip circuit.

  Filek looked her in the eye.

  "Now, no more on this subject. I do not wish to discuss it."

  "Yes, Father." Simona knew when to give in.

  Later Filek and Chiknulba coupled behind a sheet in the common lust bunk for that section. Several other couples had already used it, and it stank. Chiknulba wept afterward in his arms, with her head cradled in the hollow of his shoulder, her stoicism shattered at last.

  "Oh, Filek, I am so degraded by this awful business. Sometimes I just wish I were dead." She kept her voice to a tiny whisper. There were often listeners lurking outside the lust bunk, hoping to catch embarrassing revelations.

  "I know," he whispered back. "Remember, it is scarcely any better on the upper decks. I am constantly insulted and threatened by Zuik and his cronies. You cannot imagine how galling it is to be humiliated by a creature like Third Surgeon Pesh."

  "Oh, Filek, Filek, when will it end? When will we be free from this living hell?"

  "Shuzt has it in for me, dear. You must get back in Vli Shuzt's good graces."

  "Oh I wish I could, believe me. I would grovel to her if it would help. But it won't. Vli enjoys this sort of thing. I am her current victim. When I am destroyed she will move on to the next."

  "Listen, dear. Shuzt is against me, and Surgeon Zuik constantly threatens to take my balls. You understand what I'm saying? They intend to strip me of my position and take advantage of the rules aboard ship to have me castrated and sent down to the slave deck."

  Chiknulba could no longer breathe.

  "No, nooooo, without you we would be doomed. Vli would sell Simona down to the whores at once."

  "They have not had an opportunity to move against me yet, but their time is running out. Once we land we will come under army rules and their power over me will be gone. Zuik will try something soon, and I have to be ready for it."

  Chiknulba was curling up into a fetal ball, and Filek, who was not so strong himself, gave out a sob and hugged Chiknulba tightly. They remained that way for a long minute or so of silent communion. Then somebody rudely pulled away the sheet.

  "Hey!" snapped Filek. "Would you mind closing that?"

  "Sorry, Master Assistant Surgeon." It was one of the men he'd patched up recently. The sheet was restored.

  "Someday soon, my darling," he reassured his wife. "Someday all this will be behind us. We will have a place to do good surgery. We will have a house and land and we will live as once we did. I promise you that we will. But first I have to survive the next few days. Once we have landed then everything changes."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The following day was a terribly tense one for Filek Biswas. The Growler had rejoined the main fleet. All forty vessels were gathering at the mouth of a wide bay that had been selected for the initial landing in force.

  About an hour after breakfast Filek happened to pass by the medical lockers and found Pesh there. Something about the lock on his own locker caught his eye. He examined it. The metal had been attacked with a saw.

  He exchanged a look with Pesh. Pesh said nothing.

  "Leave my locker alone, Pesh, or I will put the matter before the priests. Let the Great God determine my innocence."

  "Haven't touched your locker, Assistant Surgeon."

  "Well someone has. And if I find them doing it, then I'm going to the priests."

  "Don't be blaming me to the priests, Assistant Surgeon. He Who Eats knows I've done nothing wrong."

  Filek examined the contents of his locker. His bandages and thread were in order. His needles and knives wrapped and put away in their pigeonhole. Bottles of spirits of alcohol were ready. Everything was in order for immediate surgery.

  He relocked the door and examined the hasp of the lock. The metal had been cut, but not very far. He'd been lucky in deciding to stop by the lockers. Zuik and his henchmen were getting desperate. Landfall was a day away.

  Filek realized that he would have to guard his locker constantly. Zuik would try and use something like the loss of imperial goods from his locker as a pretext for putting Filek out of his position. It wouldn't take much.

  All that day the game went on, with Filek attending to his duties in the surgical saloon, then leaping down the passage to his locker to ward off Pesh, Immok, or Zuik himself. Twice he found Zuik in the locker room looking shifty-eyed. Both times Zuik left quickly without even going into his own locker.

  Filek was a sensitive man, used to the ways of civilization. This barbaric treatment was deeply upsetting, but no crime had been committed against him, and so he could not go to the priests.

  Nightfall came and Filek left only to secure his ration. He ate in the surgery by lanternlight. Twice Pesh looked in. Once Immok came in and went to his own locker. Captain Shuzt walked by at one point and gave Filek a pursed-lip sort of smile. It was the kind of look you might give a pig about to be slaughtered.

  During the long hours of the night Filek fought off sleep, afraid that the moment he nodded off they would attack. He stayed awake, a long knife in his hand, ready to defend himself.

  Several times he heard soft sounds and detected Zuik creeping up to the door. Each time Zuik looked in he found Filek awake. Zuik tiptoed away in disgust.

  The following morning, with land sighted from the leading ship, there came a signal from the flagship for the Growler. Admiral Heuze wanted to interview Assistant Surgeon Filek Biswas. He was to attend upon the admiral at his earliest convenience.

  Filek groaned. He would be off the Growler all day. His locker would be emptied, and he would be put up on charges. They would be packing him down into the slaves' deck before nightfall.

  Filek sent a gloomy message to Chiknulba, then packed his knives and needles. At least he wouldn't be cut for the loss of those precious tools.

  A boat was lowered, and eight men rowed Filek across to the flagship. He was hoisted aboard on the sailor's lift and taken to the admiral's quarters.

  He found the admiral reclining in a hip bath.

  "Come in, ur, Biswas, that's the name, correct?"

  "Assistant Surgeon Filek Biswas, Your Excellency."

  "Ah, yes, and until this expedition you worked at the city hospital of Shasht."

  "Yes, sir."

  "And became famous for surgery without pain. Very successful surgery they said."

  "Thank you, sir."

  "But the priests didn't like it. They think we're supposed to feel pain, even in surgery."

  "Yes, sir." This was dangerou
s territory. Filek was inclined to say as little as possible.

  "Priests nipped that one in the bud. Most people still scream their guts out when they have to undergo an operation."

  "Not my patients, sir. I have almost perfected the art of drugging them into a state of stupefaction."

  "Then that is what I want you to do." The admiral heaved a blackened, stinking foot out of the tub. "My foot must come off. It has rotted."

  Filek frowned in concern. The foot was gangrenous. The leg was going. Time was of the essence if the man was to have any chance at all of surviving.

  "I'm afraid, Admiral, that the leg below the knee must go, and right away. Anything else, and you'll be dead in a day or so."

  Admiral Heuze groaned.

  "You're certain of this? It all started with a cut on my big toe."

  Filek sighed. If it had been cleaned properly at the beginning, it would never have reached this condition.

  "Certain. We must hurry. In fact, we should operate at once. I will need a quantity of opium, some spirits of alcohol, which you will drink at once. We must clean the leg with spirits of alcohol as well."

  A pint of spirits and thirty drops of opium tincture later, the admiral was strapped down on the table completely insensible to the world.

  Filek was a stickler for absolute cleanliness during and after an operation. He dipped his instruments in spirits of alcohol many times and washed all surfaces with spirits as well. He had learned that this kind of cleanliness was rewarded with the survival of more patients. The admiral's own ship surgeon was not invited to attend. The admiral had placed all his trust in Filek. Of course, if the admiral didn't live, then Filek would almost certainly face interrogation at the hands of the priests.

  Somehow he pushed all of that out of his mind as he took up the familiar instruments and began to work.

  The foot was a mess, but the rot had not yet moved above the knee. He severed the leg, put his own specially made spring clamps on the blood vessels, and sewed them up. This technique had made a great improvement on the survival of patients, compared to the older one of cauterizing the stump with boiling pitch. The shock of that last maneuver took a good ten percent of them, though it did help to cut down on postoperative infections.

  The leg was off in a few minutes. The sewing took longer, but the opium he'd dosed the admiral with was keeping the poor man unconscious, or he'd have been shrieking and shaking in the straps.

  As he finished up, he cleaned everything again with spirits of alcohol. After years of careful experimentation Filek had theorized that microscopic life, which he called dikla, or small seed, lived everywhere and could grow easily on open flesh. He imagined tiny forests of this life covering wounds. Causing the rot. It was like mushrooms, he thought, the way the fungi attack a tree.

  Filek had removed a great many arms and legs in his career, many of them from poor people with gangrene from some filthy little cut that hadn't been cleaned at all. Sometimes they came after trying poultices of this and that, but in the city they lacked the herbal knowledge of the countryside and access to fresh herbs. Nearly always the limb had to come off if they were to have any chance of survival. Over the years the survival rate had slowly crept up, but when he began to operate in clean conditions things had improved enormously. When he used spirits of alcohol on every surface and instrument, they improved far more. The final piece of the puzzle had come when he'd started to use massive quantities of opium and stiff quantities of alcohol to completely anaesthetize the patient. This increased the time he could spend actually operating and in turn allowed better sewing and repair work.

  The admiral was placed in his bunk, and Filek sat beside him all day and through the following night. The pulse was steady. The man was in good health for the most part, but reverses could occur at any time with this kind of condition. Filek was aware that the admiral's survival and his own were now closely entwined.

  A series of priests came in to examine the admiral, followed by Sub-Admiral Geppugo, who questioned Filek closely for a few minutes. Filek had the sense that Geppugo was praying mightily for Heuze's demise.

  Jarls, the admiral's secretary, came in every half hour or so to check. In the thin, neurotic-looking Jarls, Filek saw his own reflection—the same gaunt face, the same nervousness in the eyes. Here was another meritocrat, serving the powerful but having no security. Jarls would carefully scrutinize the admiral's sleeping face, looking for any hint of a change. Then he would turn and nod to Filek before leaving. Jarl's fate also depended entirely on Heuze's survival.

  Filek dozed on and off through the night and finally slept for two hours straight just before dawn. He awoke to find the ship was no longer in motion. There was a steady drum of feet as hundreds of men moved around the ship preparing equipment. It had started. The expedition was about to land in the new world.

  Filek checked the admiral and found his pulse nice and steady. The breathing was regular. The wound was clean-smelling. He applied spirits with a liberal swab, just to be certain, but it all looked good.

  Outside, the waters of the bay were dotted with boats heading inshore toward the forested land.

  Landfall, at last.

  The problem for Filek was that before he could reach that land, so tantalizingly close at hand, he would have to return to the Growler, and then his enemies would have him. They would have looted his locker and brought spurious charges against him. Shutz would have given them the go-ahead, and the priests would be waiting for him with the shears in their hands.

  Meanwhile, the admiral was alive, and so far the amputation had produced no crisis. If the wound stayed clean, the admiral would survive. That meant ensuring that the leg's dressings were changed regularly and that spirits were used to disinfect everything, constantly.

  He knew the regular ship's surgeons, who were waiting outside, thirsting for the chance to displace him, would kill the admiral in no time with their methods.

  So Filek sat tight. As long as he was on the flagship he was safe. Slaves brought the foods he suggested, pap and sausage. He tasted it gingerly, to make sure that no one tried to poison the admiral. That look in Sub-Admiral Geppugo's eyes haunted him. When it passed his test, he set it aside to wait for the patient to wake up.

  The admiral finally awoke quite late in the day. He was thirsty as hell, but in no immediate agony. The loss of the leg brought on the grieving, of course. For a while he sobbed to himself quietly. Filek had seen this sad reaction many times before, and he knew the man would get over it. They always did.

  Filek waited for the right moment, then suggested food. The admiral took some gruel and some beer. Filek spooned a blend of ground herbs and dried berries into the gruel along with salt. In the beer he placed a squirt of lime juice and honey.

  The admiral slept again afterward. Filek watched the boats coming and going among the ships. The fleet was anchored in line, the ships within hailing distance, about a mile offshore.

  Smoke drifted up all afternoon from the monkey places at the head of the bay. This time, so he'd heard, they'd found a whole city of them. It was hard to conceive of the monkeys being able to build a city, but it was certainly an unusually large nest of them, anyway. There had been some fierce fighting, but the monkeys had been overcome as usual and the place taken. Columns had been sent out to capture the fleeing females and young, and a great haul of meat had been sent out to the ships.

  The looting had been terrific. All kinds of monkey-made goods had been brought back. There were things of metal—some useful, like knives, and some mysterious. There were also many fine weavings and carvings. A market had already sprung up for the craftworks, though the priests were said to be furious.

  But there was also plenty of work for the ship surgeons. Hundreds of wounded men had returned. Mostly the wounds were arrow punctures, some with stone heads. Filek soon understood that the monkeys had fought back harder here than at any other place. The drums of mourning were already beginning to throb on the warrior deck.


  The admiral awoke that evening, while Filek was in the ship's surgery removing a crushed foot. He hurried the work, then cleaned up and raced to the admiral's cabin.

  The priests were already there. Red tops kept him away from the admiral. A yellow top was talking into the admiral's ear. Jarls was standing in the corner, rubbing his hands together with anxiety.

  Then the admiral saw Filek and waved.

  "Ah, my surgeon. Come here, Biswas, you did the trick. I am alive, alive!"

  The priests all turned to glare at Filek.

  The admiral gave a little shriek and then a whistle. "Damn me, but it hurts to move it."

  "You must try not to for a few days. I will dose you with opium again, though not as heavily. It will keep the worst pain away."

  "That's what I want to hear. Damned good work, Biswas. Dine with me. I feel as if I haven't eaten properly in a week."

  Filek was happy to join the admiral, who dismissed the priests. Jarls followed them with a rare smile on his thin face.

  Slaves brought in trenchers of sizzling meat. Filek insisted that the admiral also eat a salad of greens and bitter herbs. He complained but ate it anyway.

  Later, he sipped a goblet of wine and belched contentedly.

  "The monkey was excellent. What did you think, Biswas?"

  "Oh, very good, sir."

  "Tender and with a nice sweet taste. The cooks did well, I think."

  Another gulp of wine.

  "Good work, Biswas. You shall be rewarded."

  "Thank you, Admiral."

  They were interrupted by a messenger from the Imperial Scion, Nebbeggebben. Admiral Heuze read it and dictated a reply to Jarls, who hurried out to send it off.

  "So Biswas, what can I do for you? A promotion, perhaps?"

  "Well, sir, I have enemies..."

  Admiral Heuze listened attentively as Filek told him about Captain Shuzt and Surgeon Zuik.

  "I see. You will remain on my ship, and your women will be brought over at once. Biswas, I think you may be very useful to me."

  And so, special orders went across to the Growler for a purdah boat to bring over the Lady Chiknulba and the Lady Simona, along with Filek's things, to the Anvil.