Krozair of Kregen (16 page)

“These argenters will not answer among the islands off Zandikar Bay. And there will be Magdaggian swifters.”

“Aye,” I said. “There will be. We shall tow you. I shall tow you, Robko, and Pur Naghan will tow you, Mulviko. If we run into Grodnim swifters we may have to cast you off to fight them. I shall expect you to sail in. We will protect you. It is spoken.”

They wanted to argue. They saw my face. They did not argue.

As they went over the stern ladder I called to them.

“Be of good cheer. Before the twin suns rise on the morrow we shall be in Zandikar. Then, my friends, the real business will start.”

Passing a towing line at night is always a tricky business; but the wind was with us, a fresh westerly, and I wished to conserve the strength of the oarsmen as much as possible. Under the canopy of stars we sailed toward the east and Zandikar and ventured into the waters patrolled by the hostile swifters of Magdag. Occasionally the dark bulk of islands occulted the horizon stars. The Twins rose, revolving eternally one about the other. They bear many and many a name over Kregen; but the Twins is what I call them most of the time. They cast down too much light for our purpose; but Notor Zan was not on duty this fateful night, and we ghosted along with our wind under the stars, with the chuckle of water passing down the side and the creak of wood and the slap of blocks an unheard accompaniment to our progress.

Dolan stood with me on the quarterdeck. When the closer time came he would go forward with the prijikers and signal helm orders from there. I, who had sailed impudently through the waters of the approaches to Brest on the unending duties of blockade, felt the keen zest of a seaman’s enthusiasm for a difficult technical task. I had no doubts. We would go through.

The time came for the tow ropes to be passed. The difficult evolution went through without a hitch, save that young Obdinon squashed a finger and cried out and was instantly told to stopper his black-fanged winespout, the silly fambly, and get on with the job.

Following my orders against just such a need, we had saved the hated green flags of the swifters. Colors are seldom flown at nighttime; but I had the green bent on and ready, just in case. The sense of mystery and taut-breathing expectancy held us all as we pulled on, going cautiously across the dark and subtly moving expanse of the sea. Night birds passed above us on wings that sighed and creaked like unoiled hinges. We watched the stars and the black bulks of islands and not an eye closed in any of the five ships.

We turned starboard, to the south, and soon the sweet scent of gregarians on the air told us the fabled gregarian groves of Zandikar drew near. Now all those superb groves would lie under the callous hand of Grodnim. We pulled on.

Deeply into the southern shore bites the Bay of Zandikar. South we rowed, and we watched the horizon for the first hint of a long, low predatory outline to tell us we faced instant action and perilous encounter.

When, as I had half known we must, we saw that lean rakish shape of a Magdaggian swifter, I own I felt a stab of disappointment. Magdaggian swifter captains do not relish night sailing. But Zandikar lay under siege, and Prince Glycas was there, I knew, and mayhap the king, also, waited impatiently in the encirclement for the city’s fall. Perhaps Gafard, the King’s Striker, was there. I felt no recognizable emotions over an encounter with him. I knew very well — or thought I did — what I was going to do to this genius king Genod when I caught up with him, this insane war genius who had callously murdered my daughter Velia.

“Weng da!” bellowed the challenge across the dark sea.

The pink and golden moonlight misted visibility and made accurate vision tricky. I lifted a speaking trumpet to my lips and shouted back.

“Strigic of Grodno!
With supplies for the prince.”

For a mur or two the silence hung; then the voice from the low quarterdeck of the swifter answered.

“Lahal and Remberee! Grodno go with you.”

“And with you. Remberee.”

The leem shadow vanished under the moons’ shadows and was gone.

Water chuckled from our ram and passed rippling down our sides. The oars rose and fell, rose and fell. We glided on.

“I have sailed to Zandikar before,” said Nath the Slinger. “But not by night. But it cannot be too far now. Bolan the Bow guides us well — for an archer.”

“I pray Zair,” said Fazhan, my ship-Hikdar. “I pray the argenter does not pull the bitts out entire.”

“She will not and we will reach the Pharos,” I said.

“The lantern will be dark.”

“Aye.”

A hand ran aft from the forecastle and panted up at us.

“Dolan says three ulms only, Dak.”

“Good.”

One ulm passed. I swear, although an ulm is about one and a half thousand yards, that ulm seemed to me the full five miles of a dwabur. A shape appeared ahead, athwart our course. One minute the sea shimmered empty in the moons-light; the next the lean, low ram-tipped bulk of a swifter lay there, broadside on, beginning to turn. The water frothed pink from the oars.

The hail, this time, was sharper, harsher.

“Weng da! Heave to! Back water!”

Now the swifter’s bronze rostrum swung into line. I yelled back,
“Strigic of Grodno!
Do not make us lose way — we are towing supplies for the prince.”

“Orders of the king! Heave to!”

“But—”

*Heave to or we ram!”

“Ram! Ram! Ram!”

“By Zair!” I said, enraged. “The cramph means business.” Moons-light shone on the bronze ram of the swifter ahead. She had turned directly into line. Her oars lifted and remained level. Our own wings continued to beat on. Once again the hail reached us, and this time there was no mistaking the violence of the shout, the decision taken on that swifter’s quarterdeck.

“Your last chance! Heave to or we smash your oars!”

I said to Fazhan, “Signal
Neemu
to come up. Drop the tow.”

“Quidang,” he said and was off.

I shouted in a voice pitched just to reach Pugnarses Ob-Eye, our oar-master. “At the signal, Pugnarses. Full speed.”

We had a few murs’ grace. The swifter ahead, two-banked, fast, designed for patrol and scouting duty, still held her oars leveled. In those few murs we must cast off our tow and hope
Neemu
would be able to retrieve it and continue to haul in the argenter. I turned sharply as Vax said, a little loudly, “Tow rope cast off.”

“Now, Pugnarses! Full speed! Use ol’ snake!”

We all heard the drumbeat abruptly break, then rattle, and finally settle into a swift and demanding rhythm. The oars thrashed and for a moment I thought they’d lost it, and the rhythm had been broken — and then the blades churned the water all in line, level as though on tracks, and through our feet we felt the forward surge of
Crimson Magodont,
that exhilarating onward bounding like a zorca under a rider careering wildly across the plains.

“Starboard!” I yelled at the helm-Deldars.

The forecastle of the swifter moved out of line with the swifter ahead. I could see in the moons-shimmer her oars quiver and then fall, all together, and in a macabre counterpointing echo to our own I heard her drum rattling out the time.

For a couple of ship-lengths we surged on and then I shouted to the helm-Deldars to bring her back to larboard.
Crimson Magodont
was of that style of swifter short-coupled, chunky, yet still retaining the long, lean lines of a true galley. She could turn on a golden zo-piece. Her starboard bank continued to pull frenziedly and we could hear through the ship noises the sharp sizzling cracking of whips, the shouts of that hateful word, “Grak! Grak!”

The larboard bank dug into the sea.
Crimson Magodont
spun.

Then every oar smashed into the water, the blades churning, and we leaped as a leem leaps.

“Ram! Ram! Ram!”

We took the Grodnim swifter on his larboard bow. We smashed and bashed down a full third of his length. The pandemonium racketed to the starlit sky. I did not think what was going on among the slave benches of the swifter. We spun into the Magdaggian and we wrecked a third of his oar banks and then we eased a fraction to starboard and so ripped away the remaining two thirds before we turned to free our own blades.

The noises from the Magdaggian obliterated the shouts and yells of our men. Those noises spurted hideously against the pink moons’ glow. I held my jaw shut and I could feel my teeth punching into my gums, aching.

Arrows arched. The varters let fly. There would be no boarding. The Magdaggian drifted past, wallowing, one entire wing ripped from her. And here came Pur Naghan! Driving on astern of us, flanking our argenter, he bored on with all his oars thrashing.
Pearl
surged ahead, like a living lance. Her rostrum struck the Grodnim swifter full abeam. The rending sounds as bronze sheared through wood racketed out. What they were doing aboard the argenter that
Pearl
towed I could only guess; but she went clear.
Neemu
had the first argenter’s tow secured and was going ahead. I stared around in the moon-drenched darkness.

There were no other Magdaggian swifters I could see.

“She’s going!” said Vax. He held the hilt of the Krozair longsword and I knew the young devil longed to dive into the fray and use that terrible weapon.

The Magdaggian wallowed lower.

I said, “We cannot abandon the Zairians in her. Take us alongside.”

It was madness. It was folly. The arrangements had been that if attacked
Neemu
would take our tow and
Pearl
would continue on. Nothing had been agreed about what to do with any victim of our ram.

Fazhan said, “If there are other rasts of Grodnims abroad, the noise—”

“Aye, Fazhan. We must be quick.”

We were quick. I commanded a crew of men who had been Renders, who knew how to raise a swifter’s oar-slaves against their masters. We ravened onto the Magdaggians deck. Arrows flew. I saw Dolan the Bow calmly shooting from the forecastle, sending shaft after shaft in a flowing rhythm into the ranks of the Greens clustered to receive us. And from the quarterdeck, Nath the Slinger flung his deadly pebbles and lozenges of lead, trying to match the speed of Dolan. I drew the Ghittawrer blade and led the charge that cleared the foeman’s quarterdeck.
Pearl
had ripped a ghastly hole in her side. She’d be gone very quickly.

The slaves were pouring up from below, waving their chains, raving. Many a poor devil had been crushed by his loom, those who had neither the knack nor the knowledge to duck under as the cruel ram smashed down in the diekplus. Our successful diekplus had smashed the first third of the larboard banks; from these benches came very few slaves to join us.

There were plenty of others, though, to join us as we dispatched the Grodnims. The freed slaves leaped joyously onto the deck of
Crimson Magodont
as the Magdaggian swifter sank in a smother of bubbles and breaking timbers.

Neemu
and
Pearl,
with their tows, had pulled ahead. We followed. I let the scenes of frantic joy blossom on the gangway and forecastle as we pulled in toward the Pharos of Zandikar. Any man released from slavery at the oars of a swifter from Magdag is entitled to leap and cavort, to shout and bellow, to scream his thanks to Zair.

Many men fell to their knees and banged their heads against the flibre of the deck in utter thankfulness.

I did not tell them, yet, that they were entering a city under siege, that when their bellies hungered they might yearn for the slop and the onions and crusts thrown to them on their oar benches.

Among the sailors of the inner sea the saying runs: “Easier a thorn-ivy bush than the Ten Dikars.”

Truly, the maze of channels threading between islands and headlands leading to Zandikar are confusing and treacherous. We had come safely through, thanks to Dolan, and now as we reached a broad calm stretch of water the city rose beyond and patrolling Zandikarese swifters nosed in to attack. Now we did not mind heaving to. The swifters assured themselves we were who we said we were — well, who some of us said we were at the time — and very soon scenes of riotous joy spread from our decks and gangways to the battlements and quays and streets of the city itself. Torches burst into flame as hundreds of emaciated people flooded down to the quayside. I frowned.

“Fazhan — anchor out in the center of the harbor.”

He nodded. If that lot of crazed and starving people sought to board we’d be done for. Now the mergem carried in the argenter proved of inestimable value. The ship carried enough to supply Zandikar’s normal population for a season, possibly; the war and the siege had wasted away at the people; they would not starve now. As well, the chipalines would prove of great value, and the corps of crossbowmen welcomed the bolts. I told my men to let the provender go freely into the town. No one could argue over that. If it flushed out rasts, I would be happy.

The Todalpheme who lived in a small stone house by the Pharos came aboard and were fervent in their thanks. These wise men who monitor the tides are protected by protocol and taboo from any harm from another man. They were indignant that in the siege Prince Glycas had starved them, too. We gave them mergem and sent them away, praising Zair, although I was coming around to a belief that the Todalpheme of Kregen worshiped no gods that other men worshiped.

The rasts were duly smoked out.

They came aboard on the following morning as the business of unloading went on. Fazhan and Pur Naghan had organized well. Boats pulled to the shore loaded with sacks of mergem. On the shore my men and the harbor crossbowmen formed a hollow space with the crowds pressing outside, shouting and screaming and raising a dust and tearing their clothes — but all with joy upon their faces. The sacks were handed out. All who asked were supplied. Any boats approaching the argenter were kept off with pointed bows. I knew that everyone of besieged Zandikar would eat well this night, even if it was only mergem, and no one would starve.

The rasts came aboard, having shouted their own importance, and strode across my quarterdeck.