Scorpio Invasion (22 page)

“There is a certain warehouse adjacent to the Marine Bazaar,” I said in an even voice, not to be deflected. “They store barrels of fish there. The fish is preserved in oil. Oil. That will make a capital blaze.”

“We’ll all starve!”

“The Shanks have ample supplies of food. They deprive us to keep us in order, to keep us in chains. If they lose a warehouse of fish, they have plenty more. They go out fishing every damned day, don’t they?”

“Yes—”

“Well, then. We burn the warehouse and we make sure at least one of the walls is broken down.” I glared at them with all the intolerant domination of Dray Prescot. “They will order slaves to rebuild the walls.”

“So we will toil to rebuild the walls—”

“We build those walls in a certain way. We arrange the courses so that a section as wide as a door can be swiftly taken down. We will enter the warehouse secretly and take away many of those precious barrels of fish. Then we will rebuild the wall section so that it looks the same. They may guard the double doors at the front; we enter at—”

“By Diproo the Nimble-fingered, prince! A scheme! It will work!”

“Aye. With care and cunning, it will fool the Schtarkins.”

So, that is precisely what we did. The Shanks never did figure out how barrels of fish were short in their inventory when the doors were fast shut and locked, with guards prowling. The walls stood, firm and solid. There must be some defect in their accounting procedures.

And our people ate good fish in oil.

These were just two of the schemes we tormented the Shanks with at that time. Perhaps the greatest weapon in our armory, though, was one I did not reveal to a soul. Since my tutor Maspero in far Aphrasöe had given me that genetic pill so that I could understand Kregish, I’d understood any language. Even the hissing spitting clicking racket of the Shanks.

One day creeping along out of the way like any slave, I passed into a square where along one side the Shanks had set up a row of stakes. On top writhed the poor unfortunates condemned for whatever crime they had committed.

There were forty-seven impaled persons. I counted as I walked past. The outcries had mostly died down, and the wrigglings stilled. The smells were no more unpleasant than most of Taranjin. Slaves like myself, passing along with downcast eyes, cast a single glance aloft, and then went back to scuttling along. They were just thanking the True Trog Himself it wasn’t them up there.

A few Fish Faces with shiny tridents and scale armor were lolling about by the row of impalement stakes.

“You can’t believe these people,” one of them was saying. This is a rough translation of the idiomatic fishy language. “Why do they do it?”

“If they become any more troublesome,” spat his companion, “they will become uneconomic.”

“Get rid of ’em all,” said another.

Walking on past with my head lowered I almost missed the response.

“Haven’t you heard? The leaders have struck a deal. By the Great Scaled One! We’ll soon have these drys whimpering in fear again and back under control.”

Moving on in that slavish half crouch and shuffle I realized there were a number of facts to chew on here. Not one of those forty-seven poor devils had been anyone I knew, no members of the resistance cells we were setting up, so my conscience was, relatively speaking, clear on that score. If they’d been moved to do what they did because they’d heard of resistance within Taranjin, then I decided I wouldn’t hold myself responsible for that, either. Once you were committed then you took your chances like anyone else.

So what was this deal the Shank Leaders had struck?

And, too, in the tacit admission that some at least of the people of Taranjin were slipping away from control meant that our campaign had an impact.

A few days later we worked a scam on the produce being brought in from the countryside. The Fish Heads really did not care to venture too far from the sea, although, as they had proved in the past, they would do so with frightful energy if they had to. They were growing accustomed to eating land produce. So our little group having arranged substitutes where necessary went along to the Ghat Gate and watched the loaded pack calsanys and high-sided carts rolling in. Shanks patrolled, giving an occasional lick with their whips, a vicious clout with their trident butt-ends.

The scam was a simple enough affair, workable when slaves hoisted the sacks on their shoulders and trotted in lines into the warehouses. We provided a sack identical to those being unloaded from the carts and carried into the building. Our accomplice was among the carriers. At a suitable place of shadows, under an arch, just past a door, the carrier would step out of line with his sack of flour and our man would take his place with his sack of sand.

This was garsun flour ground from the massive roots of the gola-gola plant. They tried to grow corn here but the varieties were not up to much, the climate not quite right, but garsun flour made a marvelous doughy-cake in lieu of ordinary bread. We had two sacks away and then it was my turn to step into the line with my sack of sand.

Jimjim the Randell slid past, ducking down into the archway’s shadows as I stepped out. His sack of garsun flour would feed a lot of mouths. My sack of sand, I devoutly trusted, would be allocated to a Shank unit. I moved on smartly following the fellow ahead and a voice, harsh, cutting, phlegm-laded with arrogant fury, lashed out like a whip.

“Grak! C’mere, you miserable apology for a slave! You think you can fool me with a hoary old trick like that! You shint! C’mere!”

I just stuck my head down, not wishing to believe, and hoping he didn’t mean me.

But he did.

“You! By the Triple Tails of Targ the Untouchable! We’re going to have some change around here, we’re going to have discipline and slaves knowing their place. C’mere, shint.”

The thick and elastic coils of a black whip snapped about my waist and I was dragged back, the sack falling to the ground and spilling yellow sand across the bricks. I stared up.

Up there a black-browed Kataki hauled on his whip, and his sinuous tail with its six inches of daggered steel hovered before my eyes.

So now I knew the deal the Shanks had struck with the Katakis.

After the first blazing realization of the dreadful compact drawn out between Shank and Kataki, the thought uppermost in my mind was that I must not kill this arrogant and cruel bastard of a Whiptail.

If a slave killed a slavemaster, the retribution would be so frightful everything of suffering previously endured would pale into insignificance.

His whip hauled me towards him. He was a big fellow, clad in mesh, bright and bulky, well fed. His downdrawn Kataki face with the snaggly teeth and dark eyes bore down on me.

“By Koskei of the Daggered Tail! A trick that would not fool a green coy! C’mere, you cramph, and I’ll stripe you!”

He expected me to try to pull back, to draw away from him. Instead I surged forward, inside the bight of the lash. My left hand freed the coil of whip about me. My right fist fastened on his tail just where the dagger hilt was strapped with leather and bright brass buckles. I yanked and then instantly thrust forward.

He was gobbling in black fury now.

There was the immediate necessity to duck a blow from his gauntleted fist. Balanced easily now, forcing the tail towards his belly, I kicked. I kicked good and hard, where it hurt, betwixt wind and water.

My toes are hard. I felt the soggy impact and he jumped under the impact. He started to double up and my left fist slashed him across that narrow Kataki jaw. He fell down and I threw his tail away.

An uproar began, slaves shrieking in mortal fear, mingled with the hoarse and furious bellows of more Kataki slave guards.

A swift look back past the shadows, past the line of slaves, showed me guards running up, whirling their whips, with the mingled suns shine glittering off their steel-tipped tails. Time to go.

Jimjim the Randell had vanished, gone with his sack of garsun flour, hurrying to one of our secret hoards. Bargrad the Fellin stood in a dark corner, his savage Brokelsh face expressing a mixture of fear and surprise. His sack of sand still rested across his shoulders.

“Drop that sack, Bargrad! Run!”

The sack went onto the brick flooring and the Brokelsh was away like a deer startled by dogs. I rushed after him, around the corner of the warehouse, down the stinking alleyway beyond. There was a certain hole in the cross wall at the end and Bargrad fairly threw himself in and through. I followed, taking a bit of skin off my elbow as I went.

The noise at our backs materially abated. We were now in a dark and narrow passageway that led past the second wall out onto Mare Street. The suns shine lay in a glitter of ruby and jade across the fish scales and bones littering the street, and a few slaves moved about carrying barrels into the next warehouse along. We had to reach and mingle with them, just two more fish among the rest.

By the time we’d slowed down and put half a dozen barrel-carrying slaves behind us, the next guards up ahead came into view. I let out a breath. They were all Shanks.

We could fool Shanks; we might fool Katakis if we had the luck of Five-handed Eos-Bakchi with us, otherwise — never!

That evening we called an emergency meeting of the Taranjin Freedom Fighters.

Those people you have met were there plus a good few newcomers, attracted to the group by our success. Everyone had a long face. The mood was grim. Little needed to be said, for we all understood the nature of the problem we faced. That problem had been intensified a thousand-fold. Katakis were man-managers and knew only too well how to handle slaves.

“Yet,” I said, “we must carry on somehow.”

Bargrad wanted to know when this boasted Armada would come to our rescue, when the Freedom Fighters in the country would join us.

Since I’d had no recent communication over the eerie means of the planes with Deb-Lu, I couldn’t answer. I gave a rote answer, promising that the Armada would come, and saw their confidence and belief waning.

We were cramped into a tiny mud brick hut, that inhabited by Master Chan Tang Lui, with no internal lights and only the radiance of the Maiden with the Many Smiles to show up our apprehensive and lugubrious faces. Even so, the Katakis found us in secret conclave. They’d have had us all if we had not had our bolthole prepared and were able to escape out into the shadows. As it was, it was a close run thing. And this was on the first day of the Whiptails’ arrival!

A few days’ later, with nothing done in the way of fooling the Shanks, I had to accept the needle. Our resistance to the Shank Invasion had collapsed.

All over town in the following sennight or so all our clever scams were unmasked by Katakis, expert bastards at sussing out schemes thought up by desperate slaves. They did not discover the trick wall. One reason for that was unpleasant in its implications. Most of the Freedom Fighters were too frightened to risk it. I went into the warehouse and collected a barrel of fish in oil; but alone it was hard work. With the fish as bait I tried to re-enlist some of the Liberty Warriors; few were interested.

With their superior cunning the Katakis actually increased some of the rations doled out to slaves. This helped to reduce the slaves’ willingness to chance the awful punishments meted out to those who were caught stealing.

The Whiptails did not discover the tiny little workshop where Master Palandi the Iarvin built the incendiary devices. He gave me six of them, and then indicated his unwillingness to carry on. His fear was perfectly understandable. I had six; I did not press for more.

These examples functioned through the action of acid eating away amembrane to release the twisted cord. At least, this obviated one small disadvantage of the fish-head timed examples, although I felt convinced the Shanks wouldn’t notice one new rotten-fish stink among all the miasma of rotten-fish stinks in which we all lived.

The future might look dark. If I couldn’t lead a great crusade of Freedom Fighters, then I must do what I could alone to whittle away at the Shank power. Accordingly, through Shan-lao Ortyghan, I obtained a position as a nik-armorer or shal-armorer to one of the Fishy Leaders. He was known to us slaves as lord, and that was all he was called as far as we knew. The rivalry between the Shank leaders to obtain the services of the most expert Pazzian slaves ought to work in our favor. I was taken on as assistant armorer and my main tasks were cleaning weapons and armor. I found myself surrounded by the paraphernalia of combat and war. In addition, the Shank lord through his Kataki taskmasters had me taken aboard his flying ship to clean and polish there. Well, now, if Dray Prescot couldn’t fashion a scheme out of this situation, a scheme highly unpleasant to the Fish Faces, he didn’t deserve to be the Emperor of Emperors, Emperor of Paz, no, by Zim-Zair!

In the little dingy canvas bag holding my cleaning equipment rested the six eggs of fire, as Palandi called them, for they hatched flame. The cleaning equipment, sounding grand, consisted of brick dust, oil and rags. Spittle was the other vital ingredient. So, I cleaned fighting gear.

The metal we had been cabbaging for the sword Shan-lao was to make was not sufficient. Now I was surrounded by weapons! The Shanks might be vicious and merciless killers, they were slack over managing slaves. Not so the Katakis, and a guard stood outside the armory door at all times slaves were near weapons. The door was locked from the outside. I spat and polished.

This was the period in which I learned a great deal about Shank flying ships and about the weapons of the Fish Faces.

One day it chanced that my companion slave, a little Och, Onso the Gnat, had a gripe in his guts and was absent. I was alone. I cleaned and polished assiduously. Then, in a great wave of longing and desperation, the temptation to take and hide one of these weapons swept over me.

That temptation had to be resisted. The old saw about: ‘I can resist everything except temptation’ had to be denied. The Katakis might unlock our chains when we worked aboard the flying ships — they remained slave drivers still. A single sword missing would be noted at once as the slavemaster counted stock. Then — I did not care to dwell on that particular then.