The Virgin of Zesh & the Tower of Zanid (9 page)

IX

“Well?” said the Dasht of Darya.

The lord of the isle of Darya, the two mammillary peaks known throughout the lands of the Triple Seas, stood in his gold-chased armor on the stern of the big, flush-decked quadrireme that was his flagship. Althea, dripping on the planks, stood before him, her hair plastered to her head. On each side of her, a grease-clad Daryau gripped one of her arms in both his hands.

Althea, with much fumbling for the right word, told her tale.

“Ohé!”
said Dasht with a sweeping gesture. “ ’Tis indeed a tale fraught with ponderable interest, be it true or false. But that, my Terran drabby, we’ll ascertain in pudding time.
Ao,
Mirán! Bind this exotic being to your mizzenmast—not so tightly as to harm her alien flesh, yet not so loosely as to afford a chance for the mammet’s escape. Then stand ye with bared brand nigh unto her, and if it transpire that she into disaster’s maw doth lead us, smite off her mazzard!”

The Dasht raised his voice to a shout: “Now signal to my captains brave to form line abreast of all ships of bireme or higher rate and pull for the Zeshtan shore, as Qarar’s crew pulled for Fossanderan when they fled from the Witch of the Va’andao Sea! Eftsoons, rascallions! Jump it yarely, lest the proudest prize slip from our laggard digits!”

The voice of the Dasht had risen to a scream. With the last phrase he swept out his jewel-hilted sword, whirled it around his head, stamped his boots on the deck, and pointed shoreward with the blade.

The Daryava holding Althea tied her to the mast. One of them drew his sword and stood by, his body grease glistening. The sun shone down hotly on the bare deck, now that the sails had been furled for action. The Daryau kept running his eyes up and down Althea’s body and feeling his edge with his thumb.

The fleet shook itself out into formation. The larger ships formed a rank in front, the smaller ones behind. Signal pennons flapped at mastheads. The bong of the coxswains’ gongs came over the water to mingle with the flagship’s own, as the rowers dug in.

Facing forward, Althea watched the shore creep slowly nearer. The Dasht and his gilded officers clustered on the bow, while sailors prepared rope ladders ready to unroll. Others piled weapons for use by the rowers.

The sterns of the two Zao ships became plainer. The beach, which had swarmed when Althea started out, seemed empty. She looked uneasily at the Daryau beside her. This was a complication that Yuruzh, for all his apparent brilliance, had not thought of. Or had he? As Bahr had said, Yuruzh was a devilishly intelligent fellow.

Thump, swish, thump, swish went the oars. The shore, which had seemed to approach so slowly, now fast opened out . . .

Crash!

The flagship shuddered, lurched, and heeled. The cluster of notabilities in the bow fell sprawling; a splash told of the fate of at least one. Oarsmen half-fell from their benches or were knocked off by the looms of their oars.

In an instant, the flagship was a screaming chaos. Krishnans crawled over one another, scrambled to their feet, and bawled commands. Through the yells, Althea heard a grinding, crunching, tearing, and crackling of riven timbers and a gurgle of inrushing water. Yuruzh, she thought, must have somehow lured the ship on a submerged rock. All forward motion had ceased.

The second after the ship had struck, Mirán, the Daryau guarding Althea, uttered a loud cry and swung his sword at her slender neck, but the ship’s lurch sent him staggering. The blade whistled harmlessly, and Mirán disappeared in the general confusion.

At the same time, a succession of crashes and outcries from the other ships told that they, also, had met disaster.

The volume of cries redoubled. Up the oars and over the sides of the flagship swarmed Yuruzh’s tailed men with weapons. They had a curiously masked appearance, and it took Althea an instant to realize that they were wearing a kind of respirator or diving mask, attached to a small airbag strapped to their backs. They swarmed down among the Daryava. Steel clanged and clashed.

As the flagship settled, the Dasht of Darya appeared, pushing and fighting his way aft. He clutched at rails, masts, and other objects with his free hand, to steady himself on the slanting deck.

When he sighted Althea, the ruler of Darya shifted his grip on his sword, screamed an unintelligible sentence, and stamped toward her. With teeth bared and foam drooling from his lips, the Dasht caught her hair with his free hand, pulled her head back, and swung the sword at her throat.

Plunk!

A hoarse, gargling screech came from the Dasht. Althea, who had closed her eyes in expectation of the fatal stroke, opened them again. An arrow had passed through the Krishnan’s face, in through the angle between neck and jaw, and out through the cheek on the opposite side. The Dasht dropped his sword and reeled to the rail, clutching the shaft and trying to scream orders from his mangled mouth.

Althea glanced forward to see Yuruzh, bow in hand, run aft toward her. First the Zau chief struck the Dasht across the face with the bow stave, knocking him to the deck. His face was a mask of brownish blood, through which breath and fragments of teeth bubbled. Then Yuruzh drew his own sword and cut Althea’s bonds.

“Over the side and swim ashore!” he shouted, then ran forward again toward the mainmast.

A Daryau tried to stop him. Yuruzh leaped into the air and struck. The Krishnan’s head flew off and rolled down the deck, while the spouting body collapsed. Racing on, Yuruzh cut the halyards that held the personal flag of the Dasht to the head of the mainmast and gave a mighty tug to one free end. The rope ran through the block. The flag fluttered out and down falling over the side.

A new din from seaward caused Althea to look around. There was the fleet of Zá swarming out from its own island, bearing down upon the smaller Daryao ships, which, by furious backing on their oars, had managed to avoid running into the larger ships when the latter had struck.

The fight on the flagship subsided. Some Daryava had surrendered, kneeling with outstretched arms. Others were leaping over the side as the tailed men chased them about the deck with bloody blades. Yuruzh, spattered with blue-green Krishnan blood, ran back to where Althea still stood.

“Thought I said to jump over?” he panted. “But it doesn’t matter now the ship’s ours. Wait here; I still have the rest to take.”

“Let me do something!” said Althea.

“Fine.” Yuruzh snatched a battle ax from the deck and pressed it into Althea’s hand. “Help guard these prisoners. The minute one makes a suspicious move, split his skull.”

Yelling in his own tongue to the other tailed men, he rallied them to the rail, all but the few told to bind and guard prisoners. At his signal, they all dove over in a wave and struck out for the next ship, swimming like otters. Meanwhile a ship from Zá, abandoning its chase of the fleeing smaller ships of Darya, turned and drove its beak into the stern of another stranded Daryao galley with a rending crash . . .

###

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.