Copyright © 1977, Kenneth Bulmer

Alan Burt Akers has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, to be identified as the Author of this work.

First published by Daw Books, Inc. in 1977.

This Edition published in 2007 by Mushroom eBooks, an imprint of Mushroom Publishing, Bath, BA1

4EB, United Kingdom

www.mushroom-ebooks.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN 184319533X

Krozair of Kregen

Alan Burt Akers

Mushroom eBooks

A Note on Dray Prescot

Dray Prescot is a man above medium height with brown hair, and brown eyes that are level and dominating. His shoulders are immensely wide and he carries himself with an abrasive honesty and a fearless courage. He moves like a great hunting cat, quiet and deadly. Born in 1775 and educated in the inhumanly harsh conditions of the late eighteenth-century English Navy, he presents a picture of himself that, the more we learn of him, grows no less enigmatic.

Through the machinations of the Savanti nal Aphrasöe — mortal but superhuman men dedicated to the aid of humanity — and of the Star Lords, the Everoinye, he has been taken to Kregen many times. On that savage and exotic, marvelous and terrible world he rose to become Zorcander of the Clansmen of Segesthes, and Lord of Strombor in Zenicce, and a member of the mystic and martial Order of Krozairs of Zy of the Eye of the World.

Against all odds, Prescot won his highest desire and in that immortal battle at The Dragon’s Bones claimed his Delia, Delia of Delphond, Delia of the Blue Mountains. And Delia claimed him in defiance of her father, the dread emperor of Vallia. Amid the rolling thunder of the acclamations of Hai Jikai! Prescot became Prince Majister of Vallia and wed his Delia, the Princess Majestrix. One of their favorite homes is Esser Rarioch in Valkanium, capital of the island of Valka of which Prescot is Strom. In the continent of Havilfar, Prescot fought as a hyr-kaidur in the arena of the Jikhorkdun in Huringa. He became King of Djanduin, idolized by his ferocious four-armed warrior Djangs. In the Battle of Jholaix the megalomaniacal ambitions of the empress Thyllis of Hamal were thwarted, leading to an uneasy peace between the empires of Hamal and Vallia. Then Prescot was banished by the Star Lords to Earth for twenty-one miserable years. He caught up with his education and learned a great deal during this time. His joyful return to Kregen was marred by his ejection from the Order of Krozairs of Zy. On Earth he had been unable to answer their Call to Arms, when the fanatics of Green Grodno swept all the Red of Zair before them in irresistible conquest. Determined to forget the Krozairs of the inner sea and return home to Delia and their children, he is told by Zena Iztar, who saves him from being banished back to Earth, that he must again become a Krzy before he can return home to Valka. The genius king Genod of Magdag, using a new army modeled on one created years ago by Prescot, is sweeping victoriously across the inner sea. Gafard, the king’s right-hand man, was — unknown to the king and to Prescot — married to Prescot’s second daughter, Velia. Now, in order to escape on a wounded saddle-bird, King Genod has callously hurled Velia to her death. Prescot, using the name Gadak, is left holding the dead body of his daughter in his arms as the overlords of Magdag ride up to take him.

This is where the last volume, Renegade of Kregen, finished. Still known as Gadak the Renegade, Prescot picks up the story as he is dispatched to the horrific fate of an oar-slave in the swifters of Magdag.

This volume, Krozair of Kregen, brings to an end the “Krozair Cycle” and with the next volume, Savage Scorpio, Prescot is confronted with a monstrous challenge on the planet of Kregen under the Suns of Scorpio. Because most, but not all, of the action takes place in Vallia, I have called the next cycle of Prescot’s headlong adventures on Kregen the “Vallian Cycle.”

Alan Burt Akers

Chapter One

The chains of Rukker the Kataki and Fazhan ti Rozilloi

The lash curved high in the air, hard, etched black. I, Gadak the Renegade, grasped the harsh iron chains that bound me so savagely to this coffle of slaves, and which made of us one miserable body. We stumbled down the dusty streets under the lash toward the harbor.

The people of this evil city of Magdag barely noticed us, did not even bother to spit at us or revile us, for we were but one small coffle among many. The iron ring about my neck chafed the skin raw and driblets of blood ran down onto my chest and back.

“By Zair!” the man on my left, for we were chained two and two, gasped, his face a scarlet mask of effort. “I swear the cramph won’t be happy until he’s had my head off.”

“He will not do that. We are needed to pull at the oars.”

The overseer, careless in his authority, slashed his thonged whip and my companion yelped and stumbled. I let go of my own chain to help him up. The fellow in front, a giant of a man with the black body-bristle of a Brokelsh, surged forward. The length of chain between us straightened and, by Krun, it felt as though my own head were the one being wrenched off.

“Thank you, dom,” the Zairian I had assisted was saying.

Ignoring him, I lurched forward and made a grab at the chain so as to ease the ring about my neck. A voice at my back bellowed in vicious temper.

“Rast! Keep steady, you zigging cramph!”

There was no point in turning about and chastising the fellow. We were all slaves together and I might have yelled as he had done if my own pains had not been caused by myself. The uneven lurching carried back like a wave along the coffle. The air was rent with blasphemies. Listening, I used this occurrence to learn about my fellow slaves, for we had merely been hauled out willy-nilly and chained up together for the walk from the bagnio to the harbor and the galleys.

The stones of Magdag under our feet and rising in wall and terrace and archway all about us held no more pity for our plight than the hearts of the Magdaggians. From the curses and prayers that went up, I knew we were a mixed bunch: Zairian prisoners, Grodnim criminals. And, in truth, I the renegade — who had once been of Zair and who said he was now of Grodno — hardly knew to which of these gods to cleave for the injuries that had been done me.

We were being whipped down to be taken aboard a galley and there enter upon hell on earth. I knew.

The glorious mingled suns-light poured down in radiance about us, the streaming mingled lights of Zim and Genodras, the red and green suns of Antares. We stumbled along with our twin shadows mocking us, forever chained to us as we would be chained to our rowing benches.

“If I get my hands on that rast . . .” The Zairian at my left side, with his red face and perfectly bald head, showed a spirit to be expected of a Zairian. I wondered if he would be broken by the torments ahead of him, of all of us. All our heads had been shaved as smooth as loloo’s eggs. We wore the gray slave breechclouts, which would be taken from us once we were shackled to our benches. All this I had endured before. This time, I vowed, I would make a positive effort very early on and escape. The enormity of the death of my daughter Velia still had a stinging power to wring my heart. I had known she was my daughter for so pitifully short a time. I had known her as my Lady of the Stars for a short space before that, and we had talked. But I had found her and then, it seemed in the same heartbeat, she had been taken from me.

This mad king, this genius, this king Genod, who ruled in vile Magdag, had thrown her from the back of his fluttrell as the saddle-bird, winged, had fluttered to the ground. Genod had been in fear of his life then, and had thrown a girl for whom he had planned an abduction out to her death. If there was one thing I intended to do upon Kregen under the Suns of Scorpio, forgetting anything else, that thing would be to bring King Genod Gannius to justice.

We passed beneath the high archway leading through the wall of the inner harbor, that harbor called the King’s Haven. The cothon, the artificially scooped-out inner harbor, presented a grand and, indeed, in any other city, a noble aspect.

Like all building in Magdag of the Megaliths, the architecture was on the grandest scale. Enormous blocks of stone had been manhandled down to raise these walls and fortifications, to erect the warehouses and ship sheds. Every surface blazed with brilliantly colored ceramics. The tiles depicted stories and legends from the fabled past of Kregen. They exalted the power of Grodno and of Magdag. And, of course, the predominant color was green.

Nowhere was a speck of red visible.

The overseer with the lash bellowed at us, using the hateful word I so detest. “Grak!” he shouted, snapping his whip, laying into the backs of the slaves. “Grak, you Zairian cramphs!”

The lash was of the tailed variety, designed not to injure us but to sting and make us jump. The Kregans have their equivalents of the knout and the sjambok, as I have said, made from chunkrah hide. With these they can pain, maim, or kill. We dragged along in our chains in the bright light of the twin suns, the smells and the sounds of the harbor in our nostrils and ears, the sight of the galleys motionless by the yellow stone walls. I looked at everything. For I had once been a Krozair, and this place was the arch-enemy of all Krozairs, all the Red Brethren, and knowledge conferred power. Mind you, I might possess a vast amount of knowledge right now; I was still chained up in a coffle of shuffling, whipped slaves. The particular slave overseer entrusted with the task of bringing us down to the galleys was a Chulik. A Chulik has a yellow skin and a face that, although piglike, is recognizably Homo sapiens in general outline, save for the two fierce, upward-thrusting three-inch tusks. A Chulik will normally shave his head and leave a long rearward-descending pigtail, braided with the colors of whomever happens to be hiring his mercenary services at the moment. I will say here, at once, that my comrade Duhrra, an apim like myself, wore his hair shaved and in a short tail at the rear; I had never thought to compare his shaved skull with a Chulik’s. A Chulik may possess two arms and legs and look vaguely human; that is all he knows of humanity. I eyed this specimen as he strode past slashing with his whip and I guessed he was taking what he could from the hides of the slaves before he reported back to the bagnio.

“I’d like to—” began the Zairian to my left.

“Shut your mouth, onker!” came that fearsome bellow from my rear. I had not seen who had been chained up aft of me and I’d been too careful of my neck in that damned ring to care to turn to look. The Zairian bristled. We passed into the shadow of a warehouse wall, past slaves hauling bundles and bales for the swifters moored alongside the stone wharves. I fancied the swifter for which we made lay past the galley ahead of us. She looked large. If I was shoved down in the lower tier, to slave in almost nighted gloom in that airless confined space, I’d really go berserk. I had been holding myself in admirably, looking for a chance. Not a single chance had been given me. Chuliks and the overlords of Magdag form a formidable combination in manhandling. Like Katakis, who are ferocious slave-masters, they leave no easy chances for escape.

The hoarse rumbling voice at my back sounded again.

“Onker! You make it worse by your prattling.”

The Zairian’s red face turned even more scarlet, if that were possible. He started to speak, and I said, smoothly and swiftly, “Lean a little this way, dom — quickly!”

He was struck by my tone of voice. He leaned in, bringing the chains with him. We remained in the shadow of the warehouse wall, marching beside the edge of the wharf where the galleys waited. We were almost on the low-slung ram of this swifter, just passing the forward varter platform on her larboard bow. Beyond the ram stretched a space of open water, before the upflung stern of the swifter I fancied we were destined for closed that open space. I stumbled.

The Chulik was there. He had been waiting to get a few good lashings in with his right arm before he signed us over to the oar-master of the swifter.

His arm lifted and as I sagged against the chains the Zairian at my side sucked in his breath. The Chulik lashed. I took the first blow and then the bight of chain looped his ankle. I straightened and heaved, and the cramph sailed up and over, I had hoped he might bash his head against the stones. As I flicked the chains and so released his ankle, he toppled, screeching. The lash sailed up. He went on, staggering backward, his arms windmilling, his legs making stupid little backward steps. He wore mail. He went over the edge of the wharf and the last I saw of the rast was his flaunting pigtail, streaming up into the air in the wind of his fall, and the damned green ribbons flying.

We all heard the splash.

We had remained absolutely silent.

We all heard the beautiful sound of the splash, and then helter-skelter, willy-nilly, dragged by the frantic ones up front, we were pelting for the far side of the warehouse.

“Haul up!” I bellowed.

“Stop, you rasts!” boomed that vast voice at my back.

“Halt! Halt!” cracked from the Zairian, in a voice of habitual command. But nothing we could do just yet was going to stop that panic.

The Brokelsh in front of me was screaming and running.

We rounded the corner of the warehouse in full cry, a crazy fugitive mob of men chained together. This was no way to escape. Anyway, the high wall surrounded the dockyard and harbor, enclosing the arsenal and the ship sheds, and there was no way over that, and certainly no way through the guarded gateways. I wondered if the Magdaggians would feather us, for sport, or if their war-machine was so desperate for oar-slaves that we had, grotesquely, become valuable.

The bellowing voice at my rear smashed out again.

“You! Dom! Throw yourself down!”

The Zairian and I immediately dropped down. I held on to the chain in front with both hands. The Brokelsh went on running. The jolt was severe. I felt the chain haul out and I tugged back, the Zairian doing likewise.

Then — I swear all thoughts of my being a slave for that moment were whiffed from my mind and I was once again a fighting-man confronted with a hated enemy — the tip of a long and sinuous tail curled under my arm. The tail looped the chain that was held by my hands, so the three gripping members formed a lock on the metal. I felt at once the physical power in that tail. The strain sensibly slackened. We skidded over the stones in our slave breechclouts, and then more men at the rear must have stumbled over the Kataki at my back, or thrown themselves down, either because they saw the sense of that or because they expected the arrows to come shafting in.

In a tangled, cursing pile we came to a skidding halt.

The guards surrounding us appeared with mechanical swiftness. They were not gentle sorting us out. I did not see the Chulik among them.

In a welter of blows and curses we were thrashed along to the swifter and pitched aboard. I tried to see all there was to see, for, even though I am cynical about power and resigned about knowledge, still, as I have indicated, knowledge is power, even to a chained slave, even in his abject condition. It might not do me much good right now; but, although still in a partial state of shock after the death of my daughter, I held tenaciously to this idea of an early escape. Then knowledge would be vital. If I do not for the moment mention the swifter it is because her arrangements became important later on. The chains were quickly struck off, to be returned to us in the form of chains binding us to the rowing benches allotted. As we filed from the entranceway forward I counted. We were conducted below, whereat I cursed, for this swifter was three-banked, and I had no desire to heave my guts out among the thalamites.

The thranites already sat at their apportioned places on the upper benches, eight to a bench. We passed below them down narrow ladders where the chains clanged dolorously. This was like descending a massive cleft, the sky-showing slot between the larboard and starboard banks, with the grated deck aloft.

I blinked and peered along the second tier. I cursed this time, cursed aloud and cursed hotly.

“By the stinking infamous intestines of Makki-Grodno! Every zygite is in place.” I shook a fist upward, the chains clashing. “The bottom for us! The bilge-rats! The thalamites!”

The Zairian said, stoutly, “We will survive, dom.”

The Kataki, above him, his tail looped about a stanchion, leaned over. “This is a strange and doomed place — you know, do you, apim, whereof you speak?”

“Aye,” I said, descending into the bottom tier. “Aye, I know.”

I did not wish to address him, and I wouldn’t call him dom, which is a comradely greeting. I did not like Katakis.

The whip-Deldars were there to welcome us.

They cracked their whips and herded us along and I saw one poor devil, a big fellow, tough, a Brokelsh, strike out at them. They surrounded him like vultures. They carried him away. I knew what would happen. Later on he would be used as an example to us all. He was, and I shall not speak of it. The whip-Deldars were backed by marines with shortswords naked in their fists, their mail dully glimmering in the half-light. We were sorted into fours. The Zairian, the Kataki, and I shuffled up and were clouted into a bench. The fourth who would row on our loom fell half on top of the Zairian. He was a Xaffer, one of that strange and remote race of diffs of whom I have spoken who seem born for slavery. He looked shriveled. As the smallest, he was shoved past us to the outside position. The Zairian sat next. Then came myself — to my surprise, really — and, outside me, the Kataki. The locks closed with meaty thwunks. The chains and links were tested. We were looked at and then, the final indignity, our gray slave breechclouts were whipped off and taken away.

Bald, naked, chained, we sat awaiting the next orders.

For the moment I could think. The oars had not been affixed as yet. That would be the next operation and was being done with us in position so as to show us what was what, how the evolution was carried out. I felt a surprise I should not have felt. Normally, oar-slaves would serve a period of training aboard a dockyard Liburnian with her two shallow banks of oars. Now that the Grodnims of the Green northern shore of the inner sea were carrying forward so victoriously their war against the Zairians of the Red southern shore they needed every craft they could put into commission. There was just no time to go through the protracted period of training when oar-slaves were weeded out. The vicious weeding-out process would take place in this three-banked swifter, and the dead bodies would be flung overboard. Already, after us, the batches of spare slaves were being herded down and stuffed into the holds and crannies where they would wait and suffer until required. This swifter was a good-sized vessel. There were a great number of slaves forced into her, and we were packed tightly. The chanks, those killer sharks of the inner sea, would feed well in the wake of this swifter, whose name was Green Magodont.

The noise from the slaves echoed and rebounded from the wooden hull. For the moment the whip-Deldars were leaving us to our own devices. Once the oars started to come aboard they’d show us the discipline Magdag required of her oar-slaves.

The Zairian said, “My name is Fazhan ti Rozilloi, dom.”

I nodded. The ti meant he was someone of some importance in Rozilloi. And that city was known to me, although not particularly well. . . I knew Mayfwy of Felteraz must have sad thoughts of me, still, for I had used her ill. Her daughter Fwymay had married Zarga na Rozilloi — and the na in his name meant he was, if not the most important person of Rozilloi, then damned well high in rank.

“And your name, dom?”

Well, I’d been called Gadak for some time now and had been thinking like Gadak the Renegade. But this Fazhan ti Rozilloi was a crimson-faril, beloved of the Red, and so I deemed it expedient to revert in my allegiance to Zair. Truth to tell, I’d never seriously contemplated abandoning the cause of Zair and the Red; but recent events had been so traumatic — to use a word of later times — that I had been so near to total shock as to be indifferent to anything. Tipping that damned Chulik into the water had been not only a gesture of defiance, it signaled some return of the lump of suffering humanity that was me to the old, tearaway, evil, vicious, and intemperate Dray Prescot I knew myself at heart still to be.

“I am Dak,” I said. I did not embroider. I did not wish to involve myself in dreaming up fresh names, and I had taken the name Dak in honor from a great and loyal fighting-man upon the southern shore. And, too, I was growing sick of names, sick of titles. This is, of course, a stupid frame of mind. Names are vital, names are essential, particularly upon Kregen, where so much is different and yet so much is the same as on this Earth four hundred light-years through interstellar space. . . This is true of names. As to titles, I had collected a hatful already in my life upon Kregen and was to gather many more, as you shall hear. Of them all I had valued being a Krozair of Zy the most. And the Krozairs of Zy had ejected me, thrown me out, branded me Apushniad. No, I would not tell this Fazhan I had once been Pur Dray, the Lord of Strombor, the most feared Krozair upon the Eye of the World. Anyway, he wouldn’t believe me. Since I had taken a dip in the Sacred Pool of Baptism with my Delia I was assured of a thousand years of life and a remarkable ability to recuperate rapidly from wounds. This Fazhan betrayed the usual ageless look of Kregans who have arrived at maturity; he could be anywhere from twenty to a hundred and fifty or so.

“Dak?” He looked at me, and then away. Then, seeing that we were to be oar-comrades, he said, “I salute you, Dak, for dumping that Zair-forsaken Chulik in the water.”

He made no mention of Jikai in the matter, which pleased me. Too many people are too damned quick to talk of some trifle as a Jikai. A Jikai is a great and resounding feat of arms, or some marvelous deed

— the word should not be cheapened.

“And I am Rukker na—” boomed the Kataki, and stopped, and looked at us, with his evil lowering face dark with suppressed passion. “Well, since you are Tailless Dak, I am Rukker.” He lifted one massive hand. “But I shall not like it if you call me Tailless Rukker.”

The recovery had been swift. But he’d said na, and then checked. Whatever place he came from, he was its lord.

Carrying on his recovery, the Kataki swung his low-browed, furrowed face toward the Xaffer, looking past Fazhan and me. Katakis usually grease and oil and curl their black hair so that it hangs beside their faces. Their flaring nostrils curl above gape-jawed mouths. Their eyes are wide-spaced and yet narrow, brilliant and cold. They are not apim, like me; they are diffs. Perhaps their greatest physical peculiarity and strength is the tail each one can sinuously twirl into vicious speedy action, and with a curved razor-sharp blade strapped to its tip bring slicing and slashing and darting in against his opponent. No, I did not like Katakis, for they were aragorn, slave-managers, slavers, slave-masters.

“Xaffer!” roared this blow-hard Kataki, his dark-browed face fierce. “And what is your accursed name?”

The Xaffer surprised me.

“You are a Kataki,” he said in that whispering, hushed, timid voice of a Xaffer. “Your devil’s race has brought great misery and anguish to my people. I hate Katakis. My name is Xelnon and I shall not speak to you again.”

The Zairian shifted his eyes from the Xaffer to look at me, shocked. I looked at the Kataki, this ferocious Rukker. The blood pulsed in his face, veins stood out on his low forehead, his eyes looked murderous. “Cramph! Were we not chained you would not speak thus! Mark me well, Xelnon the onker! Your day will come and I shall—”

“What, Rukker,” I said loudly. “You will beat and lash and enslave him, as you are undoubtedly a Kataki and that is what Katakis are so good at doing.”

His shocked gaze shifted to me. We sat next to each other, with the steps of the bench lifting him a little higher than me so as to reach the loom. He glared at me. His chains rattled.

“You — apim—” He swallowed down and his thin lips showed spittle.

“Do not fret, Rukker the Kataki. Your tail is safe from me. If you do not cause me trouble.”

He bellowed then, raving. I kept a sharp eye on him, for I knew a little of chain fighting by slaves, and I had no desire to be strangled or have an eye flicked out. He reached down to grab me with his right hand, for we sat on the larboard side. This confrontation was no sudden thing; it was long overdue. He tried to seize me about the neck, for the iron rings had been removed after our walk here and tame-slaves were going about with pots of salve made into paste to ease us. The blood on my neck and back and chest was congealing. If he did as he intended he’d not only open up the sore places, he’d squeeze my throat into my neckbones, and if he did not choke me, he’d give me a damned sore throat and head. So I took his right hand with my left. His face convulsed. Struggling silently, for a space we held, he pressing on and I resisting him.

He glared with a mad ferocity upon me. Vicious and feral and violent are Katakis. This one thought to overpower me and subdue me and punish me for my words. Yes, Katakis are all those terrible things. Confident in his power Rukker bore down. It was his misfortune that the man upon whom he happened to choose to release his own frustrations labored under torments he knew nothing of. It was his hard luck, as a vicious, feral, and violent man, to meet a man who was more vicious, more feral, and more violent. I do not say these things in any foolish state of inverse pride. I know my sins. But, here, violence met violence and recoiled.

His eyes widened. I bore back harder, twisted, and so brought my right hand up to block the savage blow of his left. As for his killing tail — I stomped it flat against the planking of the deck, whereat he yelled.

“Desist, Rukker, or I shall break your arm off.”

“You — apim — I’ll — I’ll—”

“Do not think I would not do it, Rukker. You are a Kataki. Do not forget what that means.”

“I do not forget, you rast—”

I twisted a little more, and as his left fist still looped around at me, I took his wrist in my right hand and jerked most savagely.

He let a gasp of air puff past those thin twisted lips.

“You cramph! You’ll pay—”

A lash struck down across his broad naked back and he snapped upright. A whip-Deldar, sweating in his green, his dark face sullen, lifted for another blow. “What’s this?” he shouted. “I’ll discipline you —

you—”

“Whip-Deldar,” I said, speaking quickly and loudly enough to make my words penetrate. “There is no trouble here. We were testing the height and the stretch of the loom.”

The odd thing was that our motions might have been taken for a practice evolution. The whip-Deldar lowered his lash. He looked tired, tired and spiteful.

“You dare talk to me, you rast!”

“Only to save your trouble, whip-Deldar. The oar-master would not welcome damaged oar-slaves now.”

The whip-Deldar glowered, flicking the lash. He might be a poor specimen of humanity anywhere, let alone in evil Magdag, but the sense of what I said penetrated his sluggish brain. He gave me a cut with the lash, stingingly, just to show me who was in charge here, and went off, cursing roundly. I do not laugh, as you know, nor smile readily. I kept my ugly old face as hard as a bower anchor as Rukker, the Kataki, said, “He was flogging me, not you, apim.”

“If you wish him to continue I will call him back for you.”

“By the Triple Tails of Targ the Untouchable! Were you a Kataki I would understand!”

Fazhan leaned forward and looked up past me. “But for this apim Dak, you would have been beaten, Rukker.”

“I know it. But it would be best if you did not mention it again.”

“Ah,” said Fazhan ti Rozilloi, “but it is worth the telling, by Zantristar the Merciful!”

The swifter shook and a shudder passed through her fabric. In the next instant, to the accompaniment of distant hailing above decks, we all understood we had pushed off from the wharf. A long, slow gentle rocking made us all aware that we had been cast off into our new life. Until the oars were in, the swifter would possess this gentle rocking motion, for she was of large enough build to remain steady in the water without her wings.

Rukker the Kataki and Fazhan ti Rozilloi glared for a space longer at each other, then I stuck my old carved beak head between them and said, “If we are to pull together it will be easier if we do not try to fight one another all the time.”

Rukker nodded. He was a man accustomed to instant decision.

“You say you understand these infernal things. Tell me.”

“You have never sailed in a swifter?”

“Aye, a few times. But I sat in the captain’s cabin and drank wine and the way of the vessel did not concern me.”

“It concerns you now,” said Fazhan.

“Aye, that is why I would learn of it.”

“All you need to know,” I said, and I spoke heavily, “is that you will pull the oar, and go on pulling the oar, until you are dead. All else will mean nothing.”

“Where are these oars, then?”

“We are being towed out from the cothon through the narrow channel. It is too narrow otherwise. Once in the outer harbor we will receive our oars from the oar-hulk. They will arrive soon enough, bringing misery and torment, and for some, a happy release in death.”

Rukker mused on this. His dark Kataki face scowled.

“You appear to me to be a man, Dak — of sorts. I will allow you to assist me in my escape.”

Fazhan gurgled a little cynical laugh; but it was not a laugh a refined lady would recognize. Oar-slaves do not often have either the opportunity or the reason for laughing.

We bumped and the swifter rocked, and then we bumped again and remained still. We had been moored up to the oar-hulk. Noises began from forward, spurting through the confined space, hollow, echoing. Hangings and scrapings, and at least two shrill yells. It was common for a slave to be crushed or injured when the oars came inboard. We waited for our turn and we did not have long to wait, for we pulled six oars from the bows. A sudden shaft of suns-light speared through the oar port as the sliding cover went back. Sailors busied themselves — hard, adventurous, callous men — hauling the oars in, adjusting the set and balance, cursing the slaves who brought down the round lead counterweights. The oar shoved past Xelnon the Xaffer, past Fazhan ti Rozilloi, past me, Dak, and so past Rukker the Kataki. The loom end was inserted into the rowing frame, which was hinged up to receive it, and locked, and the counterweight was hung on and locked in its turn. The four of us sat, looking at that immense bar of wood before us. The carpenters followed to affix the manette, which we would grasp, for the loom itself was of too great a girth.

I had noticed immediately on boarding the swifter that she smelled clean. She smelled of vinegar and pungent ibroi and soap.

She was not a new vessel, this Green Magodont; but she had been in for a refit and was now as sweetly clean as she would ever be. All that was about to change.

Amid the usual barrage of curses and yells, slaves came running along the grated decks and hurled sacks of straw and ponsho fleeces at us. Men scrabbled for well-filled sacks, for fleeces that did not appear too mangy. Rukker hauled in half a dozen and the slave yelped; Rukker knocked him back and examined sack after sack. He took a fine-filled one and as he discarded the others, I snatched up the best and threw them along to Xelnon and Fazhan. The fleeces were likewise gone through, and the slave, jittering with fear, reviled by the other oar-slaves opposite us, squealed at Rukker to let him have back those he did not want.

“Quiet, kleesh,” said Rukker, and the slave shook.

A marine, his shortsword out, walked up along the grated deck and I looked forward, not without interest, to a little action; but Rukker hurled the last sack back and cursed. The marine chivied the slave along and he went off to throw the fleeces down to the next set of oar-slaves. We were all busy spreading the fleeces over the sacks, arranging them. Already I had nipped three nits under my thumbnail. Green Magodont was no longer a clean swifter. I glanced up at Rukker.

“You were allowed the pick of the sacks, Rukker, because you have a tail. I understand that. But do not think to take the best of everything the four of us are issued with.”

He might have bellowed his head off then; but a whip-Deldar ran along, not hitting us but cracking his lash in the air with a sound most doleful and menacing, violent and frightening. He impressed us poor naked slaves, he impressed us mightily.

“Silence!” shouted the whip-Deldar. “The first man to speak will get ol’ snake — I promise you.”

I did not speak.

No one else spoke.

We had learned one elementary lesson we would not forget.

A deal of confused shouting bellowed down from aloft. I, who had been a swifter captain of the inner sea, could understand what was going on — but only to some extent. I knew these oar-slaves with me on the lowest tier, the thalamite bank, were raw, untrained, useless. I could not understand why the oar-master had ordered our oars fixed and threaded — that is, placed in the rowing frames. Presently, amid a deal of noise and confusion, fresh sailors and slaves poured below and took the oars from the rowing frames, slid the oar-port covers back, and we all had our first lesson in pushing the oar looms forward so that the looms lay as close to the hull as they would go, which brought the outer portions and the blades close to the outside hull. The thalamites were not trusted to pull yet, and Green Magodont would begin her journey with only the two upper banks pulling.

We heard the orders, the whistles, the sudden deathly silence in the ship. Then the preparatory whistle, and then the twin beat from the drum-Deldar, the bass, and tenor, thumping out. We heard the creak of the upper oars, the splash of water as they dug in. We all felt the swifter surge forward, slowly at first, but gathering momentum. All rocking ceased and the swifter struck a straight, sure path out through the harbor, out past the Pharos, out from vile Magdag into the Eye of the World. Wherever we were going, we were on our way.

Chapter Two

Oar-slaves in the swifters of Magdag

We rowed.

We oar-slaves pulled at the massively heavy looms of the oars, up and back and down and forward and up and back and down and. . .

A week. Give a galley slave a week, more or less, and he will be either dead or toughened enough to last another week, and then another, and then perhaps, if his stamina lasts, to live. If the existence of a galley slave can be called living.

The Xaffer, Xelnon, lasted five days.

He would have died sooner, but Green Magodont caught a wind Swinging out of Magdag and so we slaves were spared much of the continuous hauling that is the killer. But he died. He did not tell us what he had done to be condemned to the galleys. Usually Xaffers are given the lighter tasks of slaves, household chores, secretarial work, record-keeping. Most often they, along with Relts, are employed as stylors. But he was here, with us, slaving, and then he was a mere cold corpse, blood-marked by the lash, a bundle to be thrown overboard to the chanks. A Rapa took his place, brought up from the slave-hold. His gray vulturine face with that brooding, aggressive hooked beak and the bright feathers rising around his crest fitted in with the stark horror of our situation.

We spoke rarely. We learned the Rapa’s name was Lorgad, that he had got himself stinking drunk on dopa and had run amok in the mercenaries’ billets. Exactly what he had then done he did not say, presumably because he could no longer remember. He pulled on the loom with us and we labored and sweated in the stink and dank darkness of our floating prison.

On the day after Xelnon died we beached up on a small island, one of the many small islands that smother the larger maps of the Eye of the World with measle spots. The swifter was hauled up stern first onto a beach of silver sand. I have said that the old devil the teredo worm is nowhere as fierce on Kregen as upon Earth and often the swifters are not sheathed in copper or lead. Often, especially in the cases of the larger types, they are. Green Magodont was not sheathed, and so despite her size her captain had her hauled up out of the water as often as he could. The task was formidable; but we slaves, still chained, were flogged up and over the side and so set to work hauling the drag ropes. The island glimmered under the distant golden fire of two of the moons of Kregen; the Twins, eternally revolving one about the other, smiled down upon our agony.

We were herded back into the swifter and chained up, for in the ship lay the best prison for us. In the normal course of events the gangs on a loom remained together in duties of this kind; but the captain of Green Magodont, although undeniably a cruel and vicious overlord of Magdag, was of the school that liked to rotate his oar-slaves between tiers. Once the agonies of learning how to pull correctly to the rhythm of the whistles and drums and to conduct the necessary evolutions smartly and promptly had been hammered into our skulls and muscles, we thalamites of the lower tier were rotated to the center tier, where the zygites pulled.

Green Magodont carried on the short-keel system eight men to her upper bank, six to her middle, and four to her lower. We did not aspire to the center tier until some time; but, at last, we were deemed sufficiently proficient to be rotated.

We had left that island where we had gone ashore to work, and since then, although the swifter had touched land each night, we had not gone ashore again. As to our journey and its direction, apart from my guess that we were headed southwest, I knew nothing. Oar-slaves are not consulted on the conning of the ship.

“Will they really let us onto the middle deck, Dak?”

“Once we can be trusted to pull correctly, Fazhan. Aye.”

Rukker the Kataki grunted and turned to find a more comfortable position, his tail curled up and looped over his shoulder. We rested this night, as we rested any time, chained to our bench. “Do we ever get up onto the upper deck?”

“Only when we are considered fully proficient.” I did not want to talk. More and more I had been thinking about my daughter Velia, of the tragically short time I had known her and known she was my daughter, of the manner of her death. “I can tell you that if I captained this damned swifter this loom would remain in the thalamites forever.”

“You!” scoffed Rukker. “Captain a swifter!”

“I said if.”

“And yet you know about Magdaggian swifters, Dak.” Fazhan had lost much of the scarlet in his face; he had thinned and fined down on the food we ate, on the daily exercise. “I was a swifter ship-Hikdar before we were taken. But I know little about Grodnim swifters.”

“I have been oar-slave before,” I said, and left it at that.

Fazhan grunted and turned his head on his arms, spread on the loom. But Rukker showed instant interest. “So you escaped?”

“Aye.”

“Then you will certainly assist me when we escape.”

“I escaped,” I said, “when we were taken by a swifter from Sanurkazz. A swifter captained by a Krozair of Zy.” I said this deliberately. I wanted to probe Fazhan — and Rukker, too. For the martial and mystic Order of Krozairs of Zy is remote from ordinary men on the Eye of the World, strange, and dedicated to Disciplines almost too demanding for frail human flesh. Fazhan turned his head back quickly.

“The Krozairs!” he said. He breathed the word as a man might in talking about demigods. The Rapa, Lorgad, snuffled and hissed. “Krozairs! We fought them — aye, and we thrashed them.”

“Thrashed?” I said.

The Rapa passed a hand over his feathers, smoothing them. “Well — it was a hard fight. But King Genod’s new army won — as it always wins.”

“But one day it will be smashed utterly!” said Fazhan. His voice blazed in the night, and surly voices answered from the other rowing benches in the gloom, bidding the onker be quiet so tired men might sleep.

I had learned what little Rukker would tell me of his story, and I knew Fazhan’s, that he had been a ship-Hikdar in a swifter from Zamu. Yet he was not a Krozair Brother, not even of the Krozairs of Zamu. As for Rukker, as he said himself, he was essentially a land soldier, and knew nothing of ships and the sea. As a mercenary he had hired out his — And then he had paused, and corrected himself, and said he had been hired out as a paktun to Magdag. I knew, if I was right and he was a gernu, a noble, that he had taken a force of his own country to fight for Magdag for pay. Now this was, to me, passing strange, for my previous experience with Katakis had been of them as slave-masters, slavers who bartered human flesh. There were a number of races of diffs living up in the northeastern seaboard of the Eye of the World, notably around the Sea of Onyx. Rukker had said he came from an inland country there, a place he had once referred to as Urntakkar, that is, North Takkar. He did not refer to it again. I said, “Have you heard of Morcray?”

“No.”

So I let that lie, also.

But if the Katakis were moving out from their traditional business and becoming mercenaries, then the future looked either darker and more horrible, or scarlet and more interesting, depending on the hardness of your muscles and the keenness of your sword.

We sailed in company with other swifters; just how many we thalamites in our stinks and gloom could not know. We anchored for the night and then took a wind and so rested the next day, and on the following day, the wind fell and we pulled. That was a hard day. Another ten slaves were hurled overboard, either dead or flogged near to death. Those who remained hardened, and the replacements from the slave-hold were those who failed.

That night we once again hauled Green Magodont out of the water. I saw six other swifters being hauled up, and also there were signs of a wooden stockade being constructed on the shore into which the slaves might be herded. I knew that Magdag, no less than every other Green city of the northern shore, was utilizing every possible sinew of war. Slaves were now becoming valuable, even though many a poor devil had been captured by the new army of King Genod, the genius at war. In the stockade only a few fights broke out. Most of us wanted to stretch out — and what a luxury that was! — and sleep. I did not stay awake long. The four of us — for the Rapa, Lorgad, was accepted by us as an oar-comrade — slept together. The morning came all too soon, and with many groans and stretching of stiff joints, we rose and were doused down with a vile concoction of seawater and pungent ibroi, and then we gobbled the food thrown to us. This was a mash of cereal, a torn hunk of stale bread, and a handful of palines. For the palines everyone gave thanks to whatever gods they revered. The whip-Deldars stalked among us, the lashes licking hungrily, sorting us out amid a great clanking of chains.

“I believe,” said Fazhan, staring about, “that we are to go up to be zygites this day.”

It certainly looked like it. The dust from the stockade compound rose thickly as hundreds of pairs of naked feet stamped. The blue of mountains rose inland, and the sky showed that hint of fair weather that heartens the hard-bitten soul of a sailorman. I wanted no trouble. We had been working on our chains. I had experience to go on. The Kataki had the experience of the master slaver, the man to whom the guiles of slaves seeking escape were known as a part of his business. And Fazhan and Lorgad worked at our directions. So I wanted us to stay together, and not to create problems. We waited in long rows, our chains clanking as men shifted position. The Suns of Scorpio rose over the hills and flooded down their mingled streaming light. I stretched and felt my muscles pull. I was in superb physical shape; but I could have done with more food, as could all of us. A commotion broke out among the slaves to our right.

I heard a bull voice bellowing, and abruptly a whip-Deldar catapulted into the air, turning over and over, his whip thonged to his wrist whirling. He landed flat on his back amid a splash of dust. The slaves cheered. The smashing voice shouted:

“By Zogo the Hyrwhip! You zigging cramph! I’ll break your back! Duh, I’ll rip your guts out and—”

Dragging the other three, I was running.

The bellow smashed out again, louder, roaring with fury.

“Duh — by Zair! You’ll not walk again, rast!”

“Hold, Dak — what is it?” And, “You rast, haul back!” And, “By Rhapaporgolam the Reaver of Souls, you are mad!”

The three of them, I hauled along. The dust, the yells, the confusion, the stink . . . I bundled headlong into the thick of the confusion.

A second whip-Deldar screamed with gap-toothed mouth, glaring unbelievingly at his left arm, which dangled with broken bones protruding pinkish white. Slaves stumbled out of my way. I bashed on to the center and there — standing like a mountain, like a mammoth beset by wolves, a boloth beset by werstings — stood Duhrra.

His bald head already grew a bristly fuzz like all of us. His dangling scalplock had gone. His naked body showed all the splendid musculature of the wrestler. His idiot-seeming face was contorted into a hideous scowl, and I sighed, for Duhrra was normally the most peaceable of men unless someone upset him. Once riled he was like to tear your head off. On the ground at his feet and chained to him lay a young man. A youth; barely come to his full growth, his body showed the promise of a superb physique. He was not unconscious, but a thread of blood ran from one nostril.

I threw a Rapa away, chopped a couple of apims, kicked a Brokelsh, and so grabbed Duhrra by the arm. He whirled, ready to smash my face in, and I said, low and hard, “Duhrra! Calm down, bring the boy, come with me. Jump!”

He picked up the boy in a single fluid motion of that massive body, and we turned and plunged back into the throng of shouting, excited, dust-stirring slaves. I had to break the neck of the whip-Deldar who reared up, flailing his whip with his right hand, his broken left arm dangling. He had seen us. I knew what would happen if we were detected. As for the other whip-Deldar — I saw a Brokelsh jump full on him and guessed his backbone would not stand the strain.

With Rukker, Fazhan, and Lorgad trailing on the chain, with Duhrra carrying the youth at my side, we bashed our way through the mob until we reached the line as yet undisturbed. I watched for guards, whip-Deldars, and anyone who showed too much interest.

“Put the boy down, Duhrra.”

I bent and scooped up dust, spit on it, wadded it.

“Stand up, lad! Hold yourself straight!”

I shoved the chunk of spittle-wadded dust up his bleeding nostril and then wiped away the blood, licking my fingers. When he looked presentable, and we had knocked the dust from one another — all of us —

I said to them all: “Stand and look stupid. By Zair! That should not be difficult! We know nothing of the disturbance.”

“Duh — Dak—” said Duhrra.

“Quiet, you fambly. Tell me later.”

Rukker, the Kataki, said, “You think fast, Dak, for an apim.”

“Shut your black-fanged wine-spout, Rukker. Here come the guards.”

We all stood there, in our chains, and looked suitably stupid. There was a considerable quantity of confusion lower down, and shouting, and the sound of the whips lashing. Some of the slaves were too stupid in all reality to run off. When order was restored and we were sorted out, the six of us were herded back into Green Magodont and chained down in the middle tier. We were to be zygites, six to a loom, and if the oar-master of the swifter discovered he had two slaves too many, he would give thanks to Green Grodno and smile. As for the swifter from which Duhrra and the lad had come, her oar-master would curse and rave — and I felt damned sure that the oar-master of Green Magodont would continue to say nothing and smile even more broadly. As the quondam first lieutenant of a seventy-four I knew only too well the avariciousness of shellbacked sailormen in the matter of ship supplies — and in the Eye of the World of Kregen, ship supplies included slaves.

Green Magodont, as I had previously observed, was broad enough to accept six oarsmen abreast on a loom. Above our heads on the thranites bank the men were arranged to push and pull, the eight men forming a convenient pattern. This tended to cramp them a little more than us lower tiersmen; but the shipwrights of Magdag had done their sums well so that the leverage and power required on the differently sized oars evened out. So we sat at the loom of the zygite oar. The six of us, from the apostis seat, the outer seat, were: Lorgad the Rapa, Fazhan ti Rozilloi,Vax, Dak, Duhrra of the Days, and Rukker the Kataki.

“Duh — master,” Duhrra had said to me as we sorted ourselves out, “I should take the rowing frame.”

He was fractionally bigger than Rukker.

I said, “Fambly! With that newfangled claw of yours! Next to the gangway! Where you will get lashed more easily!”

“Yes, master.”

“And, for the sweet sake of Mother Zinzu the Blessed! I am not your master!”

“No, master.”

As always when arguing with Duhrra on this point — for he had attached himself to me on the southern shore, when he had lost his right hand, and since then we had had a few skirmishes together and were good comrades — I gave up the argument in a kind of helpless mirth. Even an oar-slave may feel that at times, in the ludicrousness of his position; for, to all the names of the gods in two worlds, it is not a position a sane man can regard without recourse to the black humor of absurdity. Some bustle attended our departure, and we were forced to throw our backs into the work. The captain was evidently in the devil of a hurry. The stockades and the cooking fires were left on the shore so we guessed we’d be back tonight. We pulled. We heaved up on the oar, those on the gangway sides of the long rows of men shoving up, standing up, and then with all the weight of the body and bunched muscles, hurling themselves frenziedly backward onto the bench. The hard wood had to be covered by the straw-stuffed sacks and the ponsho fleeces. Had they not been we would have been red raw in no time, and unfit for rowing. This is not a luxury the overlords of Magdag extend to their oar-slaves, in the matter of ponsho fleeces and sacks; it is a matter of economics and slave-management. The swifter squadron pulled about, it seemed to me, quartering in different directions. I guessed the courses were not set at random. We either searched for another ship, or we wasted a deal of energy. Nothing — apart from the eternal damned pulling — occurred, and we eventually and to our surprise heard the terminal whistles and the final double drumbeat. The oars lifted and were looped and held, locked in the rowing frames, and we slaves slumped, exhausted.

Before lethargy could drug us into stupefaction, we were flogged out and herded up into the job of hauling the swifters out of the water. The wood from which swifters are built must have been placed on Kregen either by a god or a devil. This flibre, as I have said, possesses remarkable strength for a remarkable lightness. We would scarcely have shifted the ships had they been built of lenk. But flibre gives a large vessel the shrewd feather-lightness of a much flimsier vessel. As I say, flibre was put on Kregen either by a god or a devil — a god, in order to lighten the drudgery of slaves, or a devil so that the damned ships could be manhandled out of the water at all.

At last, fed, exhausted, we flopped down on the hard ground of the stockade and slept. If anyone had wished to tell the story of his life to me at that time, and paid me handsomely to listen, I’d have consigned him to the Ice Floes of Sicce, and turned over and slept. The next day the swifters remained high on the beach and we oar-slaves sprawled in the stockade, still chained, but able to stretch out and rest our abused bodies.

Parties of hunters went inland toward the mountains and later as the suns began their curve toward the horizon we slaves were issued with steaming chunks of vosk. How we grabbed and stuffed and ate!

Provisioning swifters is invariably a complicated process, and the large numbers of men involved demand ready access to vast quantities of food. Usually we subsisted on the mash — there are several varieties

— the base of which consists of mergem, that rich plant stuffed with protein and vitamins and iron that has the blessed quality of fortifying a man against his daily toil. But for mergem, which provides so much nourishment in so small a bulk, we would have been a gaunt and hungry crew and quite unfitted to haul on our looms. Onions were provided — how Zorg and I had debated the dissection of a pair of onions!

— and some cheese and crusts and palines.[1]The palines helped keep the insanity levels within toleration.

We devoured the boiled vosk with the voraciousness of leems. Then we lay back with bloated bellies, burping contentedly, to sleep the night away.

Duhrra at last found time to tell me what had happened since we had stirred up the camp of King Genod’s army and stolen his airboat. He had had to be overpowered by the Zairians from Zandikar when I did not return in time, for he would have gone to find me. He spoke of this with some spirit of contempt for himself that he had been thwunked on the back of the head when he should have been alert not only against the cramphs of Green Grodnims but also, apparently, against the Red Zandikarese.

“When I woke up, Dak — duh! We were flying in the air!”

“You cannot blame the Hikdar — Ornol ti Zab, I believe his name was — he had a duty very plain to him.”

“Maybe so. But we flew away and left you.”

He and the lad Vax had shipped back from Zandikar and their vessel had been taken. It was becoming more and more dangerous for any vessel of the Red to venture into the western parts of the inner sea these days. The Grodnims had placed swifter squadrons at sea, which carried all before them. Only a very slim coincidence had brought us together again, and to Duhrra it was absolutely inevitable that we should meet up once more. As for Vax, he told me the youth was a fine lad, and potentially a good companion; although he would swear so dreadfully about his father, and Duhrra was strongly of the opinion that if Vax hadn’t run away from home to escape the continual beatings, he’d have killed the old devil. Or, so Duhrra believed.

I gave him a brief — a very brief — résumé of what had happened to me after we’d parted. He expressed a desire to twist Gafard’s neck a little. We had both been employed by Gafard, the King’s Striker, the Sea Zhantil, who was the hateful King Genod’s right-hand man, when we’d been renegades, as Gafard himself was a renegade. When I told Duhrra that the Lady of the Stars had, at last, been kidnapped by King Genod’s men, he thumped his left fist against the dirt and swore. When I told him that the Lady of the Stars was dead, callously hurled from the back of a fluttrell by the king when the saddle-bird had been injured, and Genod thought himself about to die, Duhrra simply sat on the ground. He ran a little dust through his fingers onto the dust of the ground. His head was bowed. At last, he said, “I shall not forget.”

I did not tell Duhrra of the Days that this great and wonderful lady, who had been called his Heart, his Pearl, by Gafard, and who had loved him in return, was my own daughter Velia, princess of Vallia. My Delia, my Delia of Delphond, my Delia of the Blue Mountains, waited for me in my island Stromnate of Valka, that beautiful island off the main island of Vallia. I yearned to return to her. Yet I was under an interdiction. Until I had once more made myself a member of the Order of Krozairs of Zy I would not be allowed to leave the Eye of the World. Whether or not it was the Star Lords or the Savanti who chained me here, I did not know, although Zena Iztar had indicated it was not the work of the Star Lords. Well, I would become a Krozair of Zy once more and escape from the inner sea and return to Valka. Before I did that I fancied I would bring this evil king Genod to justice. So, having done all these marvelous and wonderful feats and proved just how great a man I was, I would go home. I would go home and race up the long flight of stairs in the rock from the Kyro of the Tridents, leap triumphantly onto the high terrace of my palace of Esser Rarioch overlooking the bay and Valkanium and I would clasp my Delia in my arms again. Oh, yes. I would do all this. And then — and then I would have to tell her that her daughter Velia was dead.

It is no wonder that on this dreadful occasion I found less thrusting desire to go back to Valka and Delia than I’d ever experienced before. I must return. I must tell my Delia and then comfort her as she would comfort me. It was not just a duty, it was what love prompted. But it was hard, abominably hard. Duhrra was telling me about his new hand and I roused myself. I had to plan and think. My thoughts had run ahead. Here we were, still chained oar-slaves in a swifter of Magdag.

“. . . locks with a twist so cunning you’d never know. Look.”

I looked. Duhrra’s right stump had been covered with a flesh-colored extension that looked just like a wrist and the hard mechanical hand looked not unlike a real hand. He could press the fingers into different positions with his left hand. He kept it hooked so that he could haul on the manette of the oar loom. I felt it and the hardness was unmistakable.

“That’s a steel hand, Duhrra — or iron.”

The doctors of the inner sea are not, in general, quite as skilled as those of the lands of the Outer Oceans. They are good at relieving pain and can amputate with dexterity. But I did not think they were capable of producing prosthetics of this quality. Duhrra had seen Molyz the Hook Maker and this kind of work would have been quite beyond him. Duhrra had been attended to by the doctors attached to the Todalpheme of the Akhram, the mathematical astronomers who predicted the tides of Kregen, and they had fitted his stump with a socket and an assortment of hooks and blades to be slotted in. But this work here was beyond them, also. Duhrra waxed eloquent for him.

“In Zandikar, it was, Dak. Right out of the blue. This lady says she can fix me up properly. Wonderful woman — wonderful. Gentle and charming and — well, you can see what she did.”

“You saw her do it?”

“No. Somehow — duh, master — I do not know! She looked into my eyes and then she laughed and told me I might leave and I looked down — and it was all done.”

“And her name, this wonderful woman?”

“She said she was the lady Iztar.”

I did not answer. What was Zena Iztar — whose role so far had been enigmatic in my life although I felt I owed her a very great deal — doing in thus helping Duhrra? Her machinations, I suspected, might not jibe with those of the Star Lords or those of the Savanti. She it was who had told me I might never leave the Eye of the World until I was once more a Krzy. I believed her implicitly, had not thought to question her. She, I felt, I hoped, wished me well. That would make a remarkable change here on Kregen, where I had been knocked about cruelly by Savanti and Star Lords moving behind the scenes and exerting superhuman forces. So I admired Duhrra’s new hand and thought on.

Then the selfishness of my thoughts mocked me. It was all “I” — Zena Iztar could have helped Duhrra because he was Duhrra.

Tame-slaves threw in malsidges and we ate them, for they are a quality anti-scorbutic. We settled down to sleep and I had a deal to think about; but, all the same, I slept. Sleep became a rare and precious commodity during the next couple of sennights, for we were employed pulling at night as well as day. The swifters called at islands for short periods and then weighed again, and once again we threw our tortured bodies against the looms of the oars. Food was short and we hungered. Men began to die. I fancied Duhrra would last this kind of punishment well, and the Kataki had reserves of strength on which to call. For Fazhan ti Rozilloi the work became harder and harder; but with all the gallantry of a true crimson-faril he struggled on, refusing to be beaten. The young man Vax stuck to his work with stoical fury, sullen, with a smoldering anger in him hurtful to me. We were not flogged more than any other set on any other loom. But we lost Lorgad the Rapa. One day he could not pull any more, and the flogging lash merely made his dead body jump. He was unchained and heaved overboard, and a fresh man took his place.

He was short, and he took the apostis seat, chunky, and with a black bar look about the eyebrows, and a pug nose that was of the Mountains of Ilkenesk south of the inner sea. Yet he was a Zairian, an apim, and he contrived to give Rukker the Kataki a cunning slash with his chains as the whip-Deldars bundled him across.

Rukker bellowed and shook his chains.

I saw the chain between him and Duhrra pull taut. The chain between Duhrra and me began to pull. The link on which we had been working bent. It began to open. I cursed foully, loudly, unable to get at Rukker past Duhrra.

“Sit back, you stinking Kataki cramph! You tailed abomination! Sit down or I’ll cave your onkerish head in!”

He swung back to glare with murderous fury at me. The whip-Deldars bashed away at the new man’s chains. Duhrra tried to sit back as well, to release the pressure on the chains. It was a moment when all hell might have broken loose.

One whip-Deldar flicked his lash — almost idly — at me and I endured it. I bellowed again, something about Katakis and rasts and tails, and whispered to Duhrra, “Tell him, Duhrra! Get the gerblish onker to sit down!”

Duhrra leaned across and his rumble would have told the whole bank if I had not started yelling with the pain of the lash. It was not altogether a fake. Vax looked at me in surprise. I yelled some more. And then Duhrra must have got the message across, for Rukker slapped himself back on the bench, whipping his tail up out of the way, and the strain came off the chain.

When the whip-Deldars had gone, he started to rumble at me, “You called me many things, Dak, and I shall not forget them—”

“You would have ruined all, Rukker. You must think and plan if you wish to escape the overlords of Magdag and their slave-masters. Onker! I did what I did to make you sit down.”

Duhrra said, “Had you ruined our chances, Rukker, I would not have been pleased — duh — I would have been angry.”

Rukker glared at me again. Duhrra lifted the chain between us. Rukker looked. Duhrra’s metal hand had worked hard and well. The bent link was on the point of parting. Rukker whistled.

“Well, you onker! Now do you see your foolishness?”

He did not like my tone. But he was a Kataki.

Rukker said, “I understand. I will not speak of it again.”

That was Rukker the Kataki. He had this knack of putting his own mistakes and unpleasant experiences into a limbo where he chose not to speak of them. The idea of apology never entered his ferocious Kataki head.

Chapter Three

Of Duhrra’s steel hand

“Well, Dak, apim, when is it to be?”

Rukker’s words whispered in his growly voice in the darkness. Green Magodont lay anchored somewhere or other — we oar-slaves had no idea where we were after all the comings and goings of the past days. We knew only that if we searched for a ship we had not found her. I said, “There is the question of this Nath the Slinger.”

“I shall break his neck the moment I am free,” said Rukker, in a comfortable way, perfectly confident. Nath the Slinger turned his pug-nosed face our way, looking up from the apostis seat, and scowled. He looked an independent sort of fellow, who would as soon knock your teeth out as pass the time of day. Rukker had not liked the slash from his chains.

“We can free the link tomorrow. But we shall not let you go, Rukker, if you—”

He bellowed at that, raising a chorus of curses from the oar-slaves about us in the darkness, weary men trying to sleep.

“You are a nurdling onker, Rukker — why not shout out and tell the captain? I am sure he will be happy to know.”

In the starlight and the golden glow of She of the Veils the zygite bank showed enough light for me to catch the look of venomous evil on Rukker’s face. But it was dark and shadowy and I could have been mistaken; I did not think I was.

“I do not wish to discuss that, Dak. If it is tomorrow night, then—”

“We will release you only if you swear to fight with us. Your quarrel with Nath the Slinger must wait.”

“I’ll rip his tail out and choke him with it!” said Nath the Slinger, in his snarly voice. I sighed.

Anger and enmity — well, they are common enough on Kregen, to be sure. But when they interfere with my own plans I am prepared to be more angry and be a better enemy than most.

“When we have taken the swifter, you two may kill each other,” I said, pretty sharply. “And curse you for a pair of idiots.”

A voice from the bench in front whispered back.

“If you all shout a little louder—”

“We already said that,” said Fazhan nastily.

“Then we will join you. The oar-master has the keys.”

Duhrra rolled his eyes at me.

“They must think we don’t know what we’re about.”

“They are slaves like us. Now the word will be all over the slave benches. If there are white mice among the slaves we may be prevented before we strike.”

“White mice” is an expression from my own eighteenth-century Terrestrial Navy, meaning men among the hands who will inform to the ship’s corporals and the master-at-arms. On Kregen these men are called maktikos and may sometimes be discovered among slaves who appear and disappear without apparent reason on a tier of oars, moving from bench to bench. I had wondered if Nath the Slinger might be an informer. There were plans to insure his silence once we had begun the escape. The only way to insure our safety before that was to note if he spoke to the overseers or the whip-Deldars. I fancied an apostis-seat man would experience difficulty in that.

“Why not tonight?” rumbled Rukker. “Now?”

“The link must be further bent.”

“I would snap it with one wrench.”

“You may try — but for the sake of Zair, do it quietly.”

Rukker leaned over Duhrra. He took the chain in his right hand and tail and heaved. The link strained open, as it had when he’d surged up before; it did not break.

The veins stood out on that low forehead, his face grew black, his eyes glaring. He slackened his effort and panted. “Onker, Duhrra! Help me! You too, Dak!”

So we all pulled.

The link would not part.

“Tomorrow,” I said.

Duhrra said, “You were told, Rukker. Now do you believe?”

Rukker said, “I will not speak of that.”

I did not laugh. We were going to escape, I was certain; but I could not laugh — not yet. There would be time, later. . .

The next day during those periods in which we were not called on to fling every ounce of weight against the looms, Duhrra used that marvelous hand given to him by Zena Iztar. The steel fingers prised against the link like a vise. Even a steel hand that gave the hard pressure necessary would not have accomplished the bending without the superb muscles that Duhrra could bring to the task. I helped as best I could, taking the strain. We had to work surreptitiously. The bent link was camouflaged by a mixture of odoriferous compounds I will not detail and it passed the daily inspection, for a strong pull on it resulted merely in the usual melancholy clang. The whip-Deldars suspected nothing. They were always on the watch, for slavery makes a man either dully stupid or viciously frenzied. I said to Rukker, “Once we are free, everything must be done at top speed. The slaves will yell and cry out and demand to be freed. You will not be able to silence them. They have no idea at all, in moments like that, beyond the hunger to strike off their chains. So we must be quick.”

“I’ll silence—”

“You will not. You will take the whip-Deldars. We need weapons. I will see to the oar-master.”

“I give the orders, Dak. This is my escape.”

“I don’t give a damn whose escape it is. But if you foul it up I’ll pull your tail off myself.”

I had warned him, earlier, not to be too free with his tail. He could have upended a whip-Deldar easily enough. They did not carry the keys, as the onker of a slave in front of us had said. If a Kataki used his tail too much in a swifter the overlords would simply chop it off. I had told Rukker this. He had heeded my advice.

So we planned out our moves exactly, each man assigned his part. I listened as Nath the Slinger spoke, in short harsh sentences. I came to the conclusion that he was not a maktiko, that he might be trusted. The day seemed endless. Green Magodont pulled frenziedly in one direction for a bur; then we rested on our oars for another. Then we set off at slow cruise in a different direction and suddenly we were called on for every effort, and as suddenly relieved and sent back to slow cruise. I fancied we were dodging about among islands and shooting out past a headland in a surprise attack that resulted always in nothing. If the Grodnims sought a ship, as I suspected, her captain played them well in this game of hide-and-seek. Duhrra told me he had come from the swifter Vengeance Mortil, where he and Vax had been the two slaves chained together to push against the loom. I did wonder if Gafard’s Volgodont’s Fang led this squadron, for our swifter was not the flagship. One item I should mention here, for it would affect our manner of escape, showed how either development was taking place in the swifters of the inner sea, or the overlords of Magdag were running short of iron; or, very likely, were conscious of the need to lighten their galleys. There was no great chain that connected all the chains of the inboard slaves. We would have to release the locks of each set separately. This would take time. There would be no release of the locks of the great chain thus freeing all the slaves the moment the great chain had been passed through their chains. It was a factor to be figured into my calculations.

“By Zinter the Afflicted!” rasped Nath. “Is the work finished?” We lay on our oars as the gloom deepened about us and Green Magodont rocked gently with the evening sounds from an island nearby reaching us mutedly — the cries of birds, mostly, with occasionally the coughing roar of a beast of prey, and then, sometimes, the shrill scream of its quarry, telling us we were anchored well into the island up a river mouth. The chinks of light that streamed their opaz radiance into our prison waned as the suns sank.

“We will escape,” said Vax. He spoke seldom and he was, as we all could see, obsessed by some consuming inner torment.

“Then praise Zair,” said Fazhan. “I do not think I could last another day.” He coughed, too weakly for my liking. “My old father would weep to see me now.”

Vax let rip with a rude sound, and a coarse observation about fathers in general and his devil cramph of a father in particular. The venom in his voice gave me hope that he would fling some of that diabolic energy into the coming fight.

“I do not care to hear you talk thus of your father—” began Fazhan. It was clear to me that Fazhan had been brought up in the best circles of Rozilloi and was, in the terminology of Earth, a gentleman, although the peoples of the inner sea have a trifle different set of gentlemen from the horters of Havilfar and the koters of Vallia.

“You did not know my rast of a sire,” said Vax, most evilly. “And neither did I, for he died just before I was born.”

This did not accord with what Duhrra believed; but it was of no moment then as the whip-Deldars ran screeching among us, lashing with their whips, and the whistles blew and the drum-Deldar crashed out his double-beat. In the gathering gloom the swifter made a last try to trap the elusive vessel that caused the Grodnims so much trouble and us oar-slaves so much agony.

Green Magodont did not catch the quarry.

“I do not know,” Vax had said as we bent to our loom, “if I wish my foul father was here with me now. I would not know if I should slay him at once and thus purge his evil crimes, or if I should allow him to live so that he might suffer as I suffer.”

“Let the rast suffer, dom,” said Nath the Slinger and then we flung ourselves into the task. The Suns of Scorpio set in a last blaze that penetrated our prison in a mingled veil of colors and gradually died to an opaline glow. Presently the chinks of light through the gratings took on a pinkish golden tinge as the Maiden with the Many Smiles lifted above the horizon and shone down upon us. Duhrra kept up the work on the link. I helped.

At last I said, “You must sleep, Duhrra. We will have much to tire ourselves on the morrow.”

“I am sure it will give—”

“Then all the more reason for sleeping.”

We composed ourselves. Rukker’s hoarse whisper, cruel and sharp in the night, pierced the darkness.

“What are you onkers doing? There is no time for sleep. Keep working, rasts, or I will—”

A whip-Deldar on watch walked along the gangway between the rowing frames and Rukker had the sense to shut up and drop his head on the loom. Although the swifter’s slaves were washed out twice daily with seawater, we still stank. Our hair was growing back in bristles, giving us an outlandish appearance. The Deldar passed on, humming to himself — the stupid “Obdwa Song,” it was — and Rukker lifted his head. I caught the gleam of his eyes in the slatted chinks of light from the gratings.

“Shut up, Rukker, and get some sleep. I shall see how you fight on the morrow — or before, if I decide.”

“You—”

A ship is never silent. There are always the same familiar sounds, at sea or at anchor. Through that quiet threnody of water splash and creak of wood, the murmur of distant voices, I whispered, “You are becoming tiresome, Kataki. I know you are a fighting-man. Just do not keep on trying to prove it all the time. And remember who it is you fight — the overlords, and not the slaves. Dernun?”[2]

A marine bellowed some order or other high on the quarterdeck, and Rukker made a visible effort. His moon-shadowed face scowled with the effort as he controlled himself. “After, Dak the High-Handed,” he said. “After we have the swifter—”

“Yes, yes, go to sleep.”

I heard a low gurgle — hardly a laugh — from Vax, at my right. Duhrra was already fast asleep.

“If my evil rast of a father had been tamed by someone like you, Dak, I might have let him die under my hand, instead of letting him suffer.”

A most vicious and intemperate young man, this Vax.

Toward morning, with the innate sense of rhythm of an old sailorman that even the oddities of Kregen and the stresses of being an oar-slave could not break, I awoke. Soon Duhrra was hard at work on the link. Vax yawned when I nudged him, and bid me clear off. “Schtump!” he said, most malignantly.

“Wake up Fazhan and Nath. Jump!”

He gave me a look, all shadowed and dark, that was unmistakable. But he leaned down and gave Fazhan a crack in the ribs. When Fazhan was awake he woke Nath. We yawned, still tired; but I knew they were keyed up to the work ahead. If I have glossed over this period of my servitude as an oar-slave it is because I do not care to remember in too vivid a detail a time of great agony and fatigue upon Kregen. Suffice it to say I may appear to be callous about serving as a slave and lax in escaping; the truth was I wanted out of that hellhole as fervently as a man dying of thirst needs water. Duhrra let a low whispering sigh pass his lips. His powerful body eased back. The snap of metal echoed in the night

We all sat perfectly silent.

Presently, when I was satisfied no other ears had picked up that sharp snip of sound, I eased the chain off. Duhrra clawed himself up and I put a hand on his shoulder and pulled him down. Without a word, not moving the chain that lay limply on the deck at our feet, I stood up. The gratings above let down a patterned splotching of pink and gold. The long rows of naked feet and legs of the thranites glistered in the light. Here and there the coil of a chain shone dully. A whip-Deldar approached. Silently — silently — I eased up. The Deldar passed. In one leap, touching Rukker’s bench with foot and springing on from there, I reached the central gangway. A hand clapped about the Deldar’s mouth. He went limp and I eased him to the gangway.

He had a knife.

This I passed down to Rukker.

I saw the Kataki’s face.

“No noise, Rukker,” I whispered. “Until we are all free.” By all I meant the six of us on the oar. “This end is up to you, now. I’m for the oar-master and the keys.”

He would have spit some surly remark; but I padded off along the gangway. The slaves slept and I did not fear discovery from them. Only one more whip-Deldar fell before I had reached the after end of the gangway. I looked up. Up there past the thranites the little tabernacle in which the oar-master sat and blew his whistle and controlled the drum-Deldars and made sure the motive power of the swifter functioned perfectly lay in darkness. I went up like a rock grundal. The oar-master would be asleep in his cabin. The keys were neatly racked on their hooks ready to be issued to the whip-Deldars when the slaves must be taken out of the ship. I scooped them up, reading the labels, made from leather, going back down again to the zygites. From then on the process would be one of progression. Fazhan met me on the gangway. He shook. He looked elated and yet filled with a dread fury he might not be able to control. There was no sign of Rukker or Duhrra. Vax and Nath took the keys I handed them and began to awaken the slaves.

Fazhan said, “I will go aft, Dak.”

I gave him the thalamite keys. I pointed down.

“When you come up again, Fazhan, bring men who will fight with you.”

“Aye, Dak.”

I shooed him off. Nath was working forward. A noise and a stir began to whisper in the hollow hull of the swifter. In a few short murs all hell would break out. The time for silence was almost gone. I started off aft again, and Vax threw his keys to a slave three benches forward. He hit the poor devil over the head and awoke him and whispered fiercely in his ear and then clapped a hand over his mouth. I warmed to the young man. He might be intemperate and malignant in his ways, but he knew what he was doing. He looked at me. I was aware that the light was growing and that I could see him quite well.

“I will come with you, Dak. I need a sword.”

He merely echoed my own thoughts.

Together, we stole silently aft, aiming for the quarterdeck, aiming for swords, aiming to wrench this swifter from the grip of the hated overlords of Magdag.

Chapter Four

Nath the Slinger collects pebbles

The sweet fresh night air greeted us as we climbed up onto the quarterdeck. The false dawn lingered with fading radiance upon the deck and the bulwarks, the ship-fittings, the ropes and gilding. The men of the watch were sleepy; they’d been hard at work the previous day as had we. There could be no thought of mercy. Truth to tell, for all the grand talk of mercy here on this Earth, in some situations mercy would be cruel. We were going to take this swifter. I had no doubts. What would happen to any overlords, any ship-Deldars, any marines, when they were caught by the released slaves would make their swift, painless deaths now merciful to them.

There was time for me to observe this young tearaway Vax in action. I liked his style. The men on watch were dealt with on the quarterdeck. As the last sailor slumped, a shout ripped from the forepart of the swifter. The long narrow length of her lay dim in the tricky light. Shadows moved. Men were stirring. Catching the crew just before dawn might have been good planning, even in a ship. It was doubly clever in that the slaves themselves would be sluggish and slow to understand their own liberty. I had known this before. The slaves would not suddenly snatch up chains and wooden beams and go raving into action. It would take time for them to understand. But as the first shrill yells broke out and the sounds of fighting, I knew some, at least, understood.

Vax and I burst into the quarterdeck cabins.

An overlord completely naked with sleep still on his face tried to stop us and I knocked him down and kicked him as I went past.

“In here, Dak!”

Vax was pointing to the first cabin.

“You go — if you wish. I’m for the captain’s quarters.”

Vax cursed and followed me. We ran down the corridor leading from the double doors that gave ingress from the quarterdeck. These cabins lay under the poop. I went straight into the aft cabin, seeing the light hazy and unreal through the sweep of stern windows where the gallery overhung the curved stern. Up above, the high upflung stern post, curved and decorated — with a magodont, of course — would hover over the poop. I wondered where Rukker and Duhrra had got to and if they were up there. The cabin was empty, as I had expected it to be. The sleeping cabin’s door ripped open under my blow and I leaped in.

The captain tumbled out of his cot — this was a fashion to be followed more and more in the larger swifters — roaring. He snatched up his shortsword. He stood lithe and limber, instantly awake, a true captain. I jumped for him.

The shortsword blurred forward.

“Die, you rast!” bellowed the captain.

He should have saved his breath and concentrated on his swordsmanship. I slid the blow, not allowing the blade to touch me, and drove a fist into his mouth. I kicked him and as he went back I twisted his right hand with such force the wrist-bones broke. Then the Genodder was in my own grip. It felt fine.

The captain staggered back, blood from his mangled mouth dripping down his chin. His eyes were wild. Vax said, “Why do you not finish him?”

“He may be useful. Deal with him — but do not slay him.”

I barged out of the cabin and almost at once was fighting for my life. Marines ran down the corridor, yelling first for the captain, and when they saw me, yelling blue bloody murder. I accommodated them.

The Genodder was a fine example of a shortsword in the fashion of the inner sea, invented by King Genod and named after him. I swished it up and thrust, cut and jumped, and, in short, had a fine old time. Normally I do not enjoy fighting unless — well, you must be the judge of that. Suffice it to say that on this occasion my pent-up fury broke out. That red haze did not fall before my eyes, for I kept a cool head and my wits about me — at least, I think I did — but there are few memories until I was at the double doors again with a trail of dead men in my rear.

The clean tip of a longsword appeared at my side, from the back, and I whirled and the Genodder hovered inches from Vax’s throat.

“You onker,” I said, speaking reasonably. “That’s the way to get yourself killed.” I had not heard him over the noise from the swifter. “You move silently. That is good.”

“I—” he said. He looked more than a little taken aback. “I did not expect—”

“Expect everyone to attack you all the time. That way you may stay alive.” I looked at the longsword. He had selected a good specimen, although it was not a Ghittawrer blade. “Can you use that?”

“Aye.”

“Then let us see what we can find.”

“Right gladly. I need—”

I shut him up and we ran out. I knew what he needed.

That fight contained a number of interesting incidents. But then, each fight is different in details, even if they all may seem to be merely a blind scarlet confusion of hacking and thrusting. For instance, Duhrra, who appeared laying about him with a longsword, used it in his right hand, the steel fingers closed and clamped about the hilt. Rukker had spared the time to strap a dagger to his tail. With that bladed tail he could cut a man up in a twinkling. And Vax fought superbly. He did know how to use a longsword. As I barged my way through the knot of marines who came tumbling up from their deck above the rowers, I saw Vax elegantly dealing with his men in a way that made me think he might be a Krozair. He was very young, it was true; but given that the blade he used was a common longsword with a short hilt, he contrived quite a few Krozair tricks. I stuck with the Genodder, for I allow that a shortsword can, in the right circumstances, nip inside a longsword in unskillful hands. I fancied a shortswordsman would be at a disadvantage against this young ruffian Vax.

Duhrra was thoroughly enjoying himself. His great voice boomed out, “Zair! Zair!” and other men took up the call. Rukker fought silently, as did I and Vax. Fazhan and Nath appeared, bearing swords, and threw themselves into the fray. The upper decks covered with struggling men. There were naked men with weapons against men roused from sleep with weapons. We must do this thing quickly, even though there were perhaps seven hundred and fifty slaves against a couple of hundred sailors and marines. I had no desire to swamp the Grodnims by sheer numbers, for that would be mere brutalized force. I wanted the thing done quickly and in style.

Rukker had cleared his area and was about to lead a hunting party to roust out those still below. I bellowed in his ear, for the released slaves were creating one hell of a racket.

“Rukker! Try not to slay too many. We need oarsmen, too!”

He glared at me, aroused, the blood-lust strong on him. He took a great draft of air.

“Aye — aye, Dak the Cunning. You are right — and do not forget we have a score to settle, you and I.”

“Let us secure the swifter and chain down these damned Grodnims and then we may talk.”

Only after he had gone roaring back into the fray did I realize he had been hired by and had been fighting for the Grodnims. But if he came from the northeast corner of the inner sea, as he said, the chances were he did not worship Green Grodno in quite the same way as the Grodnims of the Eye of the World. Anyway, I was in no state to accommodate him no matter what his inclinations. The light had dimmed after the false dawn. But as the sounds of combat flared over the swifter so the light strengthened. Soon Zim rose in a crimson glory, at which all the Zairians yelled mightily. “Zim! Zair!

Zair!”

And, inevitably, when green Genodras rose, and we waited for the shouts of Grodno to echo around the ship, and none sounded, we roared our good humor.

Rukker stormed among the released slaves, cuffing them out of his way, giving them orders, bellowing. .

.

Duhrra was not sure what to do, so it fell to Fazhan to see about chaining down the new prisoners, those who had been spared.

I prevented a mob from tearing apart a couple of Grodnim sailors in their rage, and bellowed at them,

“Would you wish these two rasts to go up to Genodras, to sit on the right hand of Grodno? Of course not! Chain them down to the benches, make them pull at the Zair-forsaken oars!”

“Aye, aye!” screeched the ex-slaves. ‘To the thalamites with them!”

So we managed to save a few men to pull for us.

There would be the problem of what to do with the Grodnims who had been enslaved with us. The oar-slaves were mostly Zairian prisoners; there was an element among them of Grodnim criminals. There could be no half-measures, of course.

I climbed up the mast and took a look around.

Green Magodont lay in the mouth of a river, with low vegetation-choked banks to either side. The mountains inland of the island looked blue and floating in the early morning mist. Downstream lay two more swifters. People were running about them. The noise and confusion in Green Magodont needed, it seemed to me, little explanation.

We weren’t out of the woods yet.

I looked down.

Two large and powerful looking men, both apims, were arguing. They both carried swords, they both had snatched up scraps of clothing to cover their nakedness. They had been slaves, miserably chained to the bench; now they were arguing over who was in command.

“I am a roz and therefore outrank you, fambly!”

“I am a swifter captain, you onker, and know whereof I speak!”

I watched Rukker. He walked toward them. He bellowed.

Other men crowded around on the upper deck. They could be called slaves no longer — or, perhaps, for a space no longer if we did not do something about the other two swifters. Rukker yelled.

“I am in command here! Get about your business!”

The two men turned on him, hot in their anger and pride, a pride so newly returned to them. Their swords flickered out.

One of them dropped with a sword through his guts, the other could not screech. His throat had been ripped out by the Kataki’s tail-blade. I sighed.

“I, Rukker, command! If any more of you rasts wish to die, then step up.”

Duhrra, at the back, started to rumble and shove forward. I went down the mast with some speed and jumped to the deck.

“What! Dak! And so you wish to challenge me.” Rukker waved his tail above his head. The blade glittered.

“If you are in command, Rukker, which I doubt. What do you think we should do about the two swifters that will surely pull up here to retake this vessel? Come on, man. Speak up.”

“I do not wish—” he began. But the other slaves — ex-slaves — were running to the rail and pointing at the swifters downstream and caterwauling.

I said, “You may not wish to know about them, Rukker. But that won’t make them go away.”

“One day, Dak the Cunning, I’ll do you a mortal injury.”

“You may try. Until then you had best listen to what I say.”

“I am in command!”

“You command nothing, Rukker the Kataki. This is no swifter fit to fight. You could not tackle those two. Think, man—” I did not take my gaze from him, and I watched that treacherous tail as a ruffianly sailorman watches a Sylvie as she dances the Sensil Dance.

But he was, I felt sure, a high noble of one kind or another, and he could think quickly when he had to.

“And what do you, oh wise and cunning Dak the Proud, think we should do?”

It would have been easy and cheap to have said, “But you are in command, Rukker.”

The men had broken out the wine now and would soon be helpless. At least, some would, for the supplies wouldn’t stretch to better than seven hundred thirsty ex-oar-slaves. I looked downstream again. The oars were moving in the swifters. They would back up to us, and their men would be armed and armored and ready. But drunken men can fight if they have a bucket of cold water soused over them and know that if they do not fight they will be killed if they are lucky, and go to the galley-slave benches if they are not lucky. But it must be done quickly.

In that uproar it was difficult to make myself heard. I turned to Duhrra. “Go and bash on the drum, Duhrra.”

“Aye, master.”

When the booming banging went on and on the men gradually quieted down and turned to look at Duhrra as he bashed away where usually the drum-Deldar beat the rhythm. I held up my hand. Duhrra stopped banging the drum and the silence fell.

I bellowed. I am able to let rip a goodly shout, as you know.

“Men! We must fight those swifters! There is no other way out for us. We can win easily if we stick together and fight for Zair!” This was mostly lies, of course. We could have run into the island and hidden. That would have been better than slaving at the oars. And as to winning, it would not be easy. But, Zair forgive me, I needed these men and their flesh and blood to further my own plans. I own that this makes me a criminal — a criminal of a kind, perhaps — but there was nothing else I could do, impelled as I was.

Vax shouted, before them all, “Aye! Let us take the two swifters to the glory of Zair!”

So they all bellowed and stamped and then it was a matter of finding weapons and clothes and armor and of seeing that not too many men fell down dead drunk.

We would have to wait for the attack until the last moment.

I said to Fazhan, “You are a ship-Hikdar. Can you organize from these men a crew to run the swifter?”

“Aye, Dak.”

“Then jump to it. If we have to man the banks with our own men, they will have to do it. By Zair! They should be proud to row for Zair! We’ll cripple those rasts out there!”

I turned to Rukker, who during all this had stood glowering, with his tail waving dangerously. I felt he would not strike just yet. He was too shrewd for that. “You want to be in command, Rukker. But you know nothing of swifters. Let Fazhan run the ship. Once we have those other two, we will have three alternatives.”

He started to say something, thought better of it, and swung away. I bellowed after him, “Go and command the prijikers, Rukker. That is a post of honor.”

The two swifters made no attempt to turn in the narrow mouth of the river. They could have done it. No doubt their captains wished to get up to us as fast as they could. I fancied they erred in this. I hoped I judged correctly.

The water rippled blue and silver, with jade and ruby sparks striking from it as the suns rose. The birds were busy about the trees. The day would be fine. I sniffed and thought about breakfast. No time for that now. Men were arming themselves from corpses and from the armory. I went down and had to push my way through a throng crowding along the quarterdeck and so into the cabins. Men gave way for me, for they knew I was Dak, and Dak had freed them. They had been told this by Duhrra, although some still thought Rukker had organized the break. It did not concern me. We could find no red cloth anywhere, and no one seemed over keen to wear green. Not even the Grodnim criminals, who kept very quiet, with good reason.

With seven hundred men or so to arm there was no chance of my equipping myself with a longsword to match the Genodder, and any man with two weapons had, perforce, to give up one to a comrade who had none. I bellowed for bowmen and soon all the men who said they were archers clustered on the deck where all the bows we could find were issued. As for arrows, these were brought up in their wicker baskets and likewise issued. There were insufficient bows to go to all those who clamored for them. I saw Nath. He had a piece of cloth. He saw me and waved and then stood on the bulwarks and dived cleanly into the water.

One or two men yelled and they would have started an outcry.

“Silence, you famblys! Nath the Slinger goes to collect pebbles.”

A few other men turned out to be slingers and they went off to collect ammunition. Rukker turned up again; he was growing tiresome, but I wanted to humor him, for not only did he intrigue me, I needed his bull-strength in the bows as a prijiker when the attack came in. And that would not be long now. He wore a mail shirt and a helmet. He carried a longsword. He looked exceedingly fierce.

“I do not know why I suffer your impertinence, Dak. But after we have taken those ships—”

I turned to Vax.

“Why have you not put on a mail shirt, Vax?”

“Because they are all taken already.”

That was the obvious answer to an unnecessary question.

But Rukker took the point. His face went more mean than ever, and he began to bluster. I pointed forward. “They are almost here.”

He swore — something about Targ and tails — and stormed off to the bows. He had selected a strong prijiker party, those stern fighters who were the cream of a crew.

Again I went a little way up the mast. Grodnim swifters still had only the one mast, apart from the smaller one for the boat sail forward. I studied the oncoming swifters. Their tall upflung sterns towered. Men clustered their quarterdecks and poops, armed and armored men, anxious to revenge their fellows in Green Magodont.

I called down to Fazhan standing on the quarterdeck.

“Get under way and aim for the rast to larboard.”

He was a merry soul, this Fazhan ti Rozilloi, when not being flogged at the oars.

“I have ample volunteers to act as whip-Deldars, Dak. But not many oar-slaves.”

“We do not need a great speed. Just enough to get our beakhead onto his quarterdeck.”

“That I will do.”

Vax met me as I reached the deck.

“And the cramph to starboard?”

“If Rukker can handle his swifter, I’ll take that one.”

“Then I will stand with you.”

I lifted an eyebrow, but did not comment. Truth to tell, at that moment I was pleased to have him with me in the fight. Rukker had his party poised, and I saw he had about twenty Katakis with him. Again the incongruity of Katakis actually being slaves, instead of slavers, struck me. We could all hear the steady double drumbeat from the oncoming swifters. Their helm-Deldars kept them sweetly on course, going stern first, and I fancied they would both be smart ships. This was not going to be as easy as many of the ex-slaves seemed to think, screeching their joy at freedom and their malefic hatred of the damned Green Grodnims.

Duhrra said, “The one to starboard is Vengeance Mortil, Duh — just let me get aboard of her. . .”

Vax lifted his handsome, fine-featured face, with the blood staining under the skin. “It will give me exquisite pleasure to chastise her whip-Deldars.”

I said, “And each time you strike you will strike at your father, no doubt.”

He flung me a scorching look.

“It is likely, for he and they have much in common. He has done me a great injury and I shall never forgive him.”

“My old man,” said Nath the Slinger, walking up dripping wet, carrying a leather bag filled with stones,

“used to knock the living daylights out of us kids. But he meant well, the old devil.”

“Back in Crazmoz,” said Duhrra, fussing with his hand, “my father was always chasing the women. My mother used the broomstick on him right merrily. Duh — how we all ran!”

My father had died of a scorpion sting, back on Earth; but now was no time to consider how that had affected my life.

“Just so long as we get onto the deck. By Zair! We hold the Grodnims in play and the men slide below and release the slaves. That’s the only way we’ll win.”

It was not the only way, of course; but it would be the easiest. And I wished this fight to be over so that I might resume my tasks in the Eye of the World.

A brief inquiry among the men as the two swifters hauled up to us established the second galley as Pearl. She was smaller, a two-banked six-four hundred-and-twenty swifter. She was not a dekares of the Golden Chavonth type. I eyed both of them as they backed up. Fazhan had those men of ours who had not found weapons at the upper tank looms. A little byplay had ensued there, for a group of ex-slaves without weapons had protested vigorously at taking their places on the rowing benches. I strode up, mighty fierce, not happy but knowing what I did was right.

“Give us weapons’“ bellowed the men. “We will fight!”

“You will row,” I said. “That will be your fighting.”

I did not say that by not already snatching up weapons they proved themselves less able than their comrades who had. But I glowered at them, and spoke more about the glory of Zair, and shook the Genodder, and finished with, “And two last things! Once we strike the damned Grodnims you will have weapons in plenty. And if you do not row I shall beat you most severely.”

They were convinced.

My friends, even, say that sometimes I have a nasty way with me. This is so. And even if I deplore my manner, it does get things done in moments of crisis. As I went back to the station I had taken on the quarterdeck, Vax gave me a dark look, sullen and defiant.

“You are a right devil, Dak.”

“Yes,” I said, and went off bellowing to a party of men to sort themselves out, with the bowmen in rear, a great pack of famblys, asking to be slaughtered.

Rukker looked back. The gap narrowed.

I yelled at him: “Get your fool hands down! They’ll be shooting any moment.”

As I spoke, the first shafts rose from the two Green swifters.

“Get the ship moving, Fazhan!” I swung about and roared at the two men who had taken the helm positions. “Bring her around to starboard! Put some weight into it!”

Green Magodont’s wings rose and fell. We could put out only a few oars; but these gave us sufficient way to take us out into midstream. I judged the distances. Arrows struck down about us. The helmsmen looked at me, hard-muscled men, hanging on to their handles, waiting my orders.

“Hard over! Larboard!” I bellowed at Fazhan. “Every effort, Fazhan! Make ’em pull! Speed! Speed!”

The oars beat raggedly and then settled and the swifter’s hard rostrum swirled to larboard and cut through the blue water. We surged ahead, aiming for the starboard quarter of the larboard vessel, Pearl. Our stern swung to starboard. We formed a diagonal between the swifters. Arrows crisscrossed now. I saw Nath leap up and swing his cloth about his head, let fly. I had the shrewd suspicion his stone would strike. The swifters neared. Any minute they would strike.

“Ram! Ram! Ram!”

The bull roar bashed up and men tensed for the shock of impact.

We struck.

The bronze ram gouged into Pearl. Both vessels shuddered and rocked with the impact. Men were yelling. I bawled out to Rukker; but there was no need. With his knot of Katakis about him, a compact force of devils, he leaped onto the swifter’s deck. Instantly a babble of brilliant fighting ensued. Our stern swerved on, still going.

“Rowed of all!” I screamed at Fazhan. Our oars dropped.

The stern hit.

Somehow I was first across, scrambling over gilding and scrollwork, hurling myself onto the deck of Vengeance Mortil. Like a pack of screeching werstings my men followed. The blades flamed and flashed in the light of the twin suns, and then we were at our devil’s tinker work, hammering and bashing, thrusting and slicing.

Vax followed and Duhrra leaped at my side. We swept a space for ourselves and then flung forward; for to stand gaping was to invite feathering.

“Below!” I yelled and men darted off to drop into the stinking gloom of the rowing banks and begin the task of freeing the slaves.

A monstrous man in green and gold fronted me, swirling his longsword. This kind of work demanded a longsword; but I made shift with the Genodder, dropped him, and with no time to snatch up his sword engaged the next man with a clang. Swords flamed all about me. Men screamed and dropped. The rank raw tang of blood smoked on the morning air.

“Grodno! Grodno!” rang the shrieked battle cries.

“Zair! Zair!” the answering screams ripped out.

Mailed men boiled across the quarterdeck. For the next few murs the mere strength and solidity of packed men would tell. I cursed the damned shortsword, for its premier advantage in the thrust availed little against mailed men, although I gave a couple of fellows sore ribs before I got the point into their faces. I swung the Genodder in a short blurred arc and bashed through a mailed shoulder. A longsword hissed past my ear. It was a case of duck and twist and to the devil with the so-called dignity and art of fighting. I chunked a Fristle’s eye out and slashed back at a Rapa, who spun away, screeching as Rapas do screech. The very fury and frenzy of the fight pushed us back and forth across the deck. But we had men, many men, and soon more swarmed up from below as their chains were struck off.

Chapter Five Vax

The sheer pressure at our backs drove us on. The hideous sounds of mortal combat shocked into the sky. Blood ran greasily across the deck and men coughed or screamed or said nothing as they died. In the press the shortsword proved of value, but I caught a distorted glimpse of Duhrra swinging his longsword and clearing men from his path as a gardener hews weeds. Vax drove on with him. I cursed and beat away a spear-point, thrust short and sharp, and brought the blade back to catch a longsword sweeping down at my head and felt the jar smash along my muscles.

I made a grab with my left hand at the longsword and after one fumble, during which I kicked a fellow in the guts, the longsword was mine. It was a common one with a small hilt; but it would serve. I swapped with a feeling of release.

In the next mur I had leaped after Duhrra and Vax. Together we cut a triple furrow through the Green ranks. Duhrra fought as he always did with a sword, using tremendous sweeps, enormous bashes, and mighty slashings to hew down his opponents. I felt vast relief that he had found and donned a mail shirt, for he left himself dangerously exposed. Vax fought with the trim economy of the trained swordsman. I saw the way he handled his blade and again I wondered if, at his age, he could be a Krozair. We reached the double doors leading from the quarterdeck into the passage under the poop. Vengeance Mortil was a longer vessel than Green Magodont, rowing thirty oars to a bank against the latter’s twenty-one. The poop over our heads was now the scene of fighting. We could hear shrieks and the thumps of feet on the deck. Most of the cabins were empty and we tore straight on toward the captain’s cabin.

He was not there, and I recalled the large man I had felled at the instant of boarding. If he had been the captain, then his crew fought well without him. Satisfied that the cabins here were all empty, we turned to dart out and finish the fight. I stopped stock still.

Duhrra and Vax halted in the doorway.

“Come on, Dak!”

A glass case stood against the bulkhead. A shaft of mingled light struck through the aft windows and illuminated the contents of the case. Crimson blazed. A long blade of steel shafted back gleaming light.

“Trophies,” said Duhrra. “Some poor devil of a Zairian—”

I swung the sword at the glass and smashed the case open.

I took the longsword into my fists. It balanced beautifully.

A Krozair longsword. The genuine article. I saw the etched markings, the Kregish letters in flowing script: KRZI. So this was a longsword of the Krozairs of Zimuzz. The red cloth was a flag. I ripped it down and swathed it about me. I drew it up tightly between my legs and tucked in the end. I picked up the Krozair longsword.

“Now I’m ready to finish this little lot.”

We belted back down the passage. Our backs were secure. We had only to surge forward along the swifter and take or slay all the Green and the ship would be ours.

A dead marine lay at the corridor entrance. I bent and ripped off his belt and buckled it up about the red flag I used, without blasphemy, in all honor, as a loincloth. We went into the fight like leems. I felt rejuvenated. How ridiculous and petty it must seem that a piece of red cloth could wreak so great a change! But the true change was wrought by the Krozair longsword. The blade flamed. The balance was perfect. I felt the power in my fists and I battled forward, bellowed for my men, and together, yelling,

“Zair! Zair!” we catapulted the Greens from the quarterdeck, drove them along the upper gangway. More and more slaves poured up from below, whirling bights of chain. The uproar continued.

I took time to step back as a Grodnim dropped under the blade, and darted a quick and savage look at Pearl. Yes, the fighting there flowed forward, as did the fighting in Vengeance Mortil. A perverse desire grew in me to clear this swifter before Rukker cleared his. I shouted again and roared on, cutting into the last resistance. The Krozair brand sheared through mail where the shortsword would have bounced. We tore into the dying remnants of the resistance and, suddenly, we were on the forecastle with the beakhead lifted, and there were no more adversaries to taste our steel. The men in the swifter at my back began cheering.

I looked across the gap of water at Pearl. Fighting boiled across her forecastle where a knot of men in the green resisted to the end. I saw the Katakis — fewer of them now — battling in the front of the struggle. Rukker was there, a giant figure striking with sword and tail-blade. Springing onto the bulwark, I put my left hand to my mouth — my right was bloodier than my left — and I lifted up my voice and shouted in right jocular fashion.

“Hai! Rukker! What’s holding you up?”

He heard.

The Kataki devil heard. I saw a Grodnim head fly into the air and Rukker stormed onto the starboard bulwark, springing up to glare across at me.

“We have cleared all! There are no skulkers at our backs!”

“And no slaves to pull the oars, either.”

He didn’t like that.

“We have taken this Takroti-forsaken ship! That is what matters.”

“You may have taken her — but have you slaves to man her?”

“I do not wish to discuss that.”

I heard a gurgling laugh and looked back and there was Vax holding his guts and laughing. Well, it was funny, of course; but I had no desire to be stranded without oar-slaves by that Kataki idiot over there. Anyway, there was every chance that our ram had done Pearl too serious a mischief underwater to make her seaworthy. That must be looked at, at once, and the man to do the looking was Fazhan ti Rozilloi, ship-Hikdar. I bellowed to Duhrra to sort out the men here, told Vax to see about chaining up the new slaves who had so lately been sailors and soldier-marines of Grodnim, and took myself off aft. Fazhan was cleaning his sword. I had had no time. The beautiful Krozair blade gleamed red in the lights of Antares.

“Hai Jikai, Dak!” Fazhan greeted me.

I pondered for perhaps a half mur. Was this a Jikai?

Perhaps.

It was most certainly not a sufficiently high enough High Jikai to enroll me once more in the Krozairs of Zy, that was for sure.

“Is Pearl seaworthy, after we struck her?”

He saw my face. “I will see, at once.” He ran off.

In the nature of things there was a great deal of confusion. Released slaves, all naked and screaming, surged about, and I knew there would be no Grodnim whip-Deldars to chain down to the rowing benches. I saw men I thought must be of some importance — or, rather, men who had been important before they’d been captured — and tried to bash some sense into them. Our own slaves from Green Magodont had by this time some idea of what was needful in this situation. Soon all the men of Zair would come to an understanding. For the moment sheer exuberance and wild release of fettered spirits would make of the three swifters hell-holes.

So I will pass quickly over the ensuing scenes. I took myself off back to Green Magodont and met Rukker storming back. He looked savagely delighted with his morning’s work. He saw my red breechclout and the sword, and he made a face and began to make some kind of snarling remark; but he did not. His tail quivered and shot erect over his head, the tail-blade gleaming, for he had cleaned it off.

“The ships are ours, Dak. You have served me well. Now I will resume full command.”

The Katakis formed a bunch at his back. He had them well cowed. They were extraordinarily formidable. I hefted the Krozair longsword. I opened my mouth and Vax appeared at my side, laughing, saying, “Give me your sword, Dak, and I will clean it off for you. It is a beautiful blade.”

“I clean my own sword.”

He looked offended.

Rukker bellowed, “Now we carouse and make merry.”

The released slaves would do that, anyway.

Some onker was bellowing that Pearl was stuffed with wine. He carried an armful of bottles, waving one above his head, the rich red wine spilling out over him. He was already half-seas over. I did not consider long. Maybe I could have halted the debauch that followed. Maybe not. I did not try. I wanted to talk to Rukker and see if the way I planned to handle the Kataki devil would work. He had taken a good long look at the three swifters. Fazhan reported that Pearl had taken a nasty crack, but that the sharp sheer of her stern had been enough to prevent our ram from driving home, and that she would be fully seaworthy when the planking had been repaired. So Rukker could tell me in his lofty way,

“I will take Vengeance Mortil. She is the largest. You may have either of the others.”

I said, “Bring a few bottles to the cabin. We can talk there. If you wish to fight, here and now, I shall accommodate you. Otherwise, no fighting until we have decided what to do.”

Now that he had won and was in a strong position, he no doubt thought to show a facade of magnanimity. I do not think I do Rukker an injustice if I say that because he was a Kataki he was, by his religion and customs and mores, what other people would call an evil man. He could not help that; like the scorpion, it was in his nature. But I found that he had a gift denied to most other Katakis. He had a streak of humanity in him that, at first, because I did not believe it possible, I found disconcerting.

“Surely, Dak the High-Handed. We will drink together. But there is no question of our deciding.” He emphasized the “our.” “I have decided what we will do.”

I did not answer but barged off to the cabin, snatching up a couple of the bottles the idiot from Pearl had dropped — for he had passed out, beaming idiotically, on my quarterdeck. My quarterdeck.

Ah! How we arrogate to ourselves, arrogant in our pride!

Nath the Slinger appeared. He wore bits and pieces of finery, and carried a Genodder as well as his sling. He saw Rukker. He started to say something, but Rukker chopped him off.

“We talk, Nath the Slinger. Afterward, I may take from your hide payment for your insolence.”

Nath said, “I think the people may set fire to the swifters.”

That was a very fair chance.

Rukker bellowed at this, and in a twinkling, a dozen of his Katakis ran out along the gangways, roaring. That was one thing I could count on. Rukker would command obedience from his own people, and I could trust them to stop a parcel of drunken ex-oar-slaves from foolishly setting fire to the swifters they so much hated.

“Tell ’em to make sure they don’t kill too many Grodnims,” I said to Rukker, sharp. He bawled it after them. Then he took a bottle from a man near him, who did not argue, and rolled off to the aft cabin, swinging his tail in high good humor.

Fazhan looked at me, uncertain.

“You did very well, Fazhan. Now come and have a drink.”

“We should set a watch — there were three other swifters in the squadron.”

“The Katakis will do that. Or Rukker will have their tails.”

As I went along aft I admit I felt it most strange that I should be working in collaboration with Katakis. But, there it was. Those of us who had been architects in the escape gathered in the great aft cabin of Green Magodont to talk about our futures.

I will not go into all the discussion, although to a student of human nature it proved fascinating, revealing not only the desires of frail humanity but revealing very clearly the different traits of the differing racial stocks. The problem could be broken down into one of allegiances. The released slaves fell into four main classes. There were the Zairians who wished only to return to their homes of the southern shore. There were the Grodnims who, as criminals, could go neither to Zairia nor to Grodnim. There were the mercenaries who didn’t care who they fought for so long as they were paid and who, because they slaved for them, must have fallen foul of the overlords of Magdag. And there were the Zairians who, for one reason or another, could not return home.

Of the two latter classes, Rukker and I were representatives.

Long were the arguments and sometimes bitter the wrangling. But, in the end, it all boiled down to a decision by Rukker and most of the others, to join the Renders. These pirates infested many portions of the inner sea, of course; but they were particularly strong in the southwestern end, where many islands gave them shelter. As for the Zairians who wished to return home, they might take a swifter that Rukker did not want.

I said, “That does not dispose of all.”

“There is no one else, fambly!” Then Rukker, sprawled in a gilt chair, an upended bottle to his lips, roared out, “By the Triple Tails of Targ the Untouchable! No one would wish to go to Magdag!”

“I do,” I said.

He gaped at me.

“There is a certain matter I have left unfinished there.”

“Well, you will find not a single man to go with you.” Then he squinted at Duhrra — enormous in the corner, watchful — and grunted, and said, “Except that mad graint, of course.”

“And me,” said a young, firm voice, and I turned, and Vax stepped forward. “I wish to go to Magdag, for I have business there, also.”

Well, I fancied whatever his business was, it boded no good for some poor devil. Vax had been drinking. His face flushed heavily and he did not walk steadily, even though Green Magodont remained still.

Nath the Slinger had been drinking, also, and he snarled, “No doubt it has to do with your rast of a father.”

Vax turned sharply, and nearly fell. I do not like to see young men the worse for drink — or any man, come to that. Vax spoke in a cutting, nasty way. “Yes. For my father has done me a grave injustice. He has finished all my hopes in the Eye of the World. Yes, he bears a part, the cramph. But it is not for him I wish to go to Magdag, but my sister—”

“Well, go to the Ice Floes of Sicce for all I care!” boomed Rukker. He roared his mirth. “Three of you, to run a swifter! Ho — one to pull at the oar, one to beat the drum, and one to steer! Ho — I like it!”

Certainly, the image was a lively one. But I did not smile.

Vax looked as though he would be sick at any moment, if he did not fall down. I judged he was not used to heavy drinking. I stepped over to him and sniffed. I looked down at him.

“You young idiot! Dopa!”

Duhrra said, “Duh — dopa! I know, master — I know.”

Dopa is calculated to make a man fighting drunk; Vax had not yet drunk enough to turn him berserk. I saw the bottle in his hand, and I took it away. He tried to stop me. I broke the bottle over a handy table and showed him the serrated edge. “This is what you deserve, you gerblish onker.”

He staggered and would have fallen. I grabbed him and propped him upright.

“You’re coming with me to a cabin where you can sleep it off. I have work to do.” I dragged him out.

“I’ll see about you, Rukker, when I’ve seen to this hulu.”

I half carried him along to the ship-Hikdar’s cabin and tossed him down on the cot. As I say, cots and hammocks had previously been unknown in swifters, because they usually came ashore at night. No doubt the war was changing many things since the genius king Genod had taken over in Magdag. Vax snorted and tried to rise and I pushed him back and the hilt of the Krozair longsword slid forward. He blinked at it owlishly.

“I was to have been a Krozair,” he said. He was growing maudlin. “Yes, I trained. Not Zimuzz, though. I worked and all I wanted in this life was to be a Krozair like my brothers.”

“Yes,” I said, lifting his legs onto the cot. “Get some sleep and you can talk about this later.”

He grasped my arm and glared up into my face.

“You don’t understand. No one here does. How can they?”

He enunciated his words carefully, as a near-drunk sometimes does; but he made sense in what he said. He was pretty far gone, and he just didn’t know he was saying what he was saying.

“My father—”

“Look, son. We all had fathers, and they all failed us at one time or another.” That was not true; but the intensity of this lad’s hatred for his unknown father hurt me, thinking of my own father and the love I bore him.

“My father failed my mother. He ran away — ran away—”

“You said he died.”

“I always say he is dead, out of shame. But he was alive, all the time. All the time. He ran away and left my mother in mortal peril, and she was carrying me at the time, and he ran away and left her. They nearly got her — she told me, and she laughed — but — but I knew. He wouldn’t answer the Call, the Azhurad, and it is im-impossible for a Krozair not to answer the Call. So they made him Apushniad. And serve the rast right. And I was training to be a Krozair of Zy — and they — they— So I left them, ashamed. My father, Apushniad — destroyed me. Destroyed me! Me, Jaidur, Jaidur of Valka, ruined my whole life, and if I find the kleesh I shall surely slay him.”

I just gaped, stricken.

Chapter Six

Renders of the Eye of the World

The Renders of the western end of the Eye of the World made us welcome. They welcomed reinforcements of tough and ruthless fighting-men. They were not so sure of the three swifters we brought, for they habitually used small, fast craft, which could slip into a convoy and cut out the fat prizes. They said they could no doubt pick up enough oar-slaves for the swifters. But we would to a great extent be on our own. Rukker boomed his great laugh and swished his tail and said he’d show these people what real rending was about, what a fighting Kataki could do in the piracy business. He had found a competent ship-Hikdar among the ex-slaves to run Vengeance Mortil for him. I ran Green Magodont, and a tough and experienced swifter captain, a Krozair of Zamu, took command of Pearl. Once we filled with oar-slaves we would be a hard little squadron, and carry some punch in the Eye of the World. The Krozair of Zamu, Pur Naghan ti Perzefn, would sail Pearl back with all the Zairians who wished to return home.

These Renders were a cutthroat lot. Consisting of escaped slaves, criminals, men who could find a home neither north nor south of the inner sea, they carved out their own destiny. If you ask why I was with them, instead of pursuing my schemes in Magdag, the answer is surely plain. My son!

Jaidur — that same name that Velia had spoken, and I had not understood, when she had been dying in my arms. So my Delia had been pregnant when we’d flown off to chastise the shanks attacking our island of Fossana, where the damned Star Lords had sought to make me do their wishes. I had refused out of stiff-necked pride and fear for Delia, and so had been banished to Earth for all of twenty-one miserable years. There had been twins again, twins of whom I had known nothing. The girl, Dayra, the boy, this same Jaidur who called himself Vax out of shame.

He had rambled on a little more before falling into a drunken stupor. He was quite unused to dopa. He had known that any son of Dray Prescot, the Lord of Strombor, would receive scant shrift from the overlords of Magdag, and he had been on his way there because his sister, Velia, had been missing, reported captured by a swifter from Magdag.

Velia had, indeed, been captured. But she had been captured by Gafard, the King’s Striker, the Sea Zhantil, and they had fallen deeply in love. I believed that to be true. I believed it then, and I am sure of it now. Gafard owed complete allegiance to King Genod, and even when the king sought to abduct the Lady of the Stars, the name by which Velia was known, for the same reasons that Jaidur called himself Vax, Gafard had been unable to blame him; for the king possessed the yrium, the mystic power of authority over ordinary people.

King Genod had, in the end, taken Velia. And because Gafard’s second in command, Grogor, had shafted the saddlebird the king flew, and because the king was abruptly in fear for his life, the genius king had thrown Velia off, to fall to her death. Yrium or no damned yrium, when I caught the cramph I’d probably have trouble stopping myself from breaking his neck before I dragged him off to justice. I know about men who possess the yrium. As I have said, I am cursed with more than one man’s fair share of the yrium.

All this I, alone of our family, knew.

I could not tell Jaidur — or Vax.

I could not tell him.

I had not told him I was his father.

How could I?

There had to be a kinder, better, way of breaking that horrendous news to him. He was in very truth a violent young man. How could I lift a hand against my son in self-defense? And yet how could I stand and let him slay me? For I thought he very well might try. That would be a sin not only for him but for me, also.

His hatred was a real and living force.

Mind you, if I told him and then invited him to try to carry out his avowed intent, and so foined with him and disarmed him — no, no, no. . . That would shatter his self-esteem, would turn hatred for me into contempt for himself. And, anyway, he was a remarkably fine swordsman. He might finish me. I share nothing of this silly desire to call oneself the greatest swordsman of the world — or, in my case, of two worlds. That way lies not only paranoia, but a mere killing machine without interest or suspense. Each fight is a new roll of the dice with death, a gamble of life and death. I had decided to go to join the Renders with Rukker because had I gone to Magdag, Vax would have gone with me, and in evil Magdag he might all too easily be slain or enslaved. I did not want that and would stop it. So I had turned aside from my purpose.

A scheme occurred to me whereby I might turn Vax from his path, also. It would give him pain; but nothing like the pain he would be spared.

We sailed out on a few raids and caught Magdaggian shipping and so fought them and took them and built up our stock of oar-slaves. Our base lay up a narrow and winding creek in the lush green island of Wabinosk. When I say green I refer to the vegetation. The island boasted a large population of vosks; but they were kept down by an infestation of lairgodonts. I had no further wish to meet any more lairgodonts, for the risslacas had caused problems before and, anyway, the things were the symbol of King Genod’s new Order of Green Brothers. The islands in this chain were, in their turn, infested by pirates, and we had one or two set-tos with Renders who fancied our prizes. But with Rukker booming and bellowing away we kept what we took.

One day Duhrra started talking about Magdag to Vax, who was most anxious to learn all he could. I listened.

The people we had released from oar-slavery had settled down into a pattern, taking up tasks for which they were suited. Those Zairians who wished to return home had gone in a captured broad ship. Now we had smallish crews, but we were building, and our motive power was almost up to strength. I planned to leave at the earliest moment I could; I had to be sure of Vax first.

“Zigging Grodnims,” Duhrra was saying, sharpening up his sword on a block, taking care over the work.

“All they do is build monstrous great buildings. Rasts.”

Vax egged him on to talk about Magdag. And as I listened so I caught an echo of the way Duhrra saw the rousing times we had spent as pretended renegades. “The king in Sanurkazz has our names down on his roll of infamy — and we innocent.”

“When King Zo hears what you did, Duhrra, I am sure he will pardon you. Was the Lady of the Stars, then, so beautiful?”

Duhrra spit and polished meticulously. “Indeed she was!” Duhrra rolled his eyes. “No maiden more fair graced the earth, they said.”

I felt a pang. Roughly, I said, “Did you ever see her face, oh Duhrra of the waggling tongue?”

“No, master. But I know she was. Duh — everyone said so.”

Here was a chance. I felt a pain in my chest.

“Yes, she was beautiful. Gafard loved her truly, and she loved him truly.” I did not look at Vax. “I think that does mean something important.” I leaned closer. “And here is something Gafard told me that must go no farther than the three of us.” I turned and glared directly into my son’s eyes. “Do I have your word?”

“Yes, Dak. I will not speak of it.”

“Good. Then know that this Lady of the Stars was the true daughter of Pur Dray, the Lord of Strombor.”

Before I had finished the great word Strombor, my son Jaidur, whom I must think of as Vax, leaped up. He let a terrible cry escape him. Then he turned — I saw his face — and he ran to the ladder at the stern and fell down it and so raced like a maniac into the bushes of the shore, vanishing out of sight. Duhrra stared after him, a powerful frown crumpling up that smooth, seemingly idiot face. “Duh, master!

What did I do?”

“You did nothing, Duhrra. And I am not your master.”

“Yes, master.”

I walked away, feeling the desolation in me. This was not my idea of family life. But, then what did I know of family life? I had been privileged to know my eldest twins, Drak and Lela, for periods off and on until they were fourteen. My second twins, Segnik and Velia, had been three when I’d been so mercilessly hurled back to Earth. And now Segnik was Zeg and a famous Krozair of Zy, and Velia was dead. Of Dayra I knew nothing, and of her twin, Jaidur, I must see him every day and speak with him, and call him Vax, and bear the agony; for he hated the memory of his father, a father he knew nothing of

— or, at least, knew nothing good of.

I did know one thing of Dayra. Delia had told me she had been giving trouble at school, with the Sisters of the Rose, of course. And I remembered old Panshi talking of the young prince and of my assumption he meant Segnik, when he meant Jaidur. Old Panshi had had a little frown of puzzlement. Why couldn’t I be just an ordinary simple man? But then, if I were that, I would never have won Delia, the Princess Majestrix of Vallia, at all.

We sailed out on a raiding cruise the next day, hopping from island to island, and I was exceedingly beastly to the Magdaggian shipping we caught. The three swifters acted together, for it seemed the natural thing to do, and Rukker was getting the hang of sea fighting. On this cruise we took a small swifter by a ruse, and boarded her and slew or enslaved her Magdaggian crew. Her slaves joined our ranks. She was sailed back to Wabinosk in triumph.

That night we caroused as Renders do. I had run through all my memories of carousing the nights away with Viridia the Render on the Island of Careless Repose, in the Hobolings. She had been youngish then, and with the normal two-hundred-year life span of the Kregan, I had no doubt she was still at her piratical tricks. Would I ever see her again? Would I ever see any of my old comrades — and enemies

— again?

The coveted High Jikai appeared to come no nearer.

But my words with Vax — I must think and talk of him as Vax — bore fruit Fazhan, who acted as my ship-Hikdar, told me the swifter we had taken was of Sanurkazz. She had been taken by the Magdaggians and converted to their use. As in the wooden navies of the eighteenth century of Earth, the ships of the contending nations were of so similar a type they were fully interchangeable. She had the name arrogantly painted on her bows and under her stern — the sailors of Kregen follow this fashion more often than not — and I read this aloud. “Prychan . A suitable name.”

“Yes,” said Fazhan. He reached out with his knife and scraped at the green paint. “Yes, as I thought. See, Dak, underneath. Her real name, carved as is proper; but blocked up with this damned green paint.”

We removed the offensive paint and saw the original name of the galley.

“Neemu. Yes, I see.” You know that a neemu is a black-furred, near leopard-sized killer, with a round head, squat ears, slit eyes of lambent gold, and runs ferociously upon four legs. A prychan is a very similar beast, sharing the same characteristics, but having fur of a tawny gold. I studied the lines of Neemu.

She was two-banked, a four-three seventy-two. Although she had only eighteen oars to a bank, they were concentrated in the usual way of swifters, giving her an exceptionally long forecastle and quarterdeck. She was narrow in the beam, so narrow I ordered her oars kept in the water to keep her upright. She was fast. I tried her in maneuvers and found her cranky so that she did not respond as well as — for instance — Green Magodont, which was a much larger craft, a three-banked hundred-twenty-six. Green Magodont was of that class of swifter designed to sail in the front rank in a battle, agile so that she might spin about and deliver the diekplus, shearing away an opponent’s oars. Then the second line would come in to take on what was left. This Neemu was clearly a scouting vessel, designed for high speed, yet powerful enough to tackle reasonably heavy opposition. Vax said, “I would like to take all those who will come and sail back to Zandikar.”

There was now a fresh batch of rescued Zairians wishing to go home. I said, “Why Zandikar?”

He said, without shame, “There is a girl—”

“Oh,” I said.

So the brutality of my ruse had been worth it. Vax had decided not to go to Magdag to search for his sister Velia. He knew she was dead; he did not know the manner of her dying. I had told no one that I had held Velia in my arms as she died, and of how the overlords had trampled up to take me. They had not caught Grogor, Gafard’s second in command; but he it was who had shot the arrow into the king’s fluttrell; he it was, they thought, who had slain the stikitches employed by the king. I was a mere pawn, Gafard’s man, and me they had dispatched to the galleys.

“Very well—” I started to say, when I was interrupted by a harsh and ominous screeching. I knew exactly what that raucous shriek from the sky was, and I did not look up. The Gdoinye, the great golden and scarlet raptor of the Star Lords, the magnificent bird of prey they used as a messenger and a spy, had sought me out once again. Duhrra was talking to Vax about taking Neemu back to Zandikar, and trying to urge him to go on to Sanurkazz, for that was nearer Crazmoz. Vax cocked up his head.

“What is that bird?” he said.

Duhrra looked up, also, his idiot-face peering.

“Duh — I see no bird.”

I glanced up, casually.

The confounded Gdoinye was up there, planing in wide hunting circles, screeching down. The thing spied on me for the Star Lords, that was sure.

“Up there, Duhrra, you fambly!” said Vax. He pointed. “Surely you see it? A great red and gold bird.”

“Vax — you’ve been at the dopa again.”

Vax shouted hotly at this and swung to me. “Dak — you see it?”

I looked up at the Gdoinye circling up there, watching me, telling the Star Lords what I was about

“No, Vax. I see no bird.”

“You’re all blind!” shouted Vax, and stamped off. I felt sorry for him. I wondered what he was thinking. But I thought this must be an omen. I must stir myself, or I might be thrust back across four hundred light-years, to Earth, and never get out of the Eye of the World. First, I must make sure my son Jaidur, who called himself Vax out of shame, was safe.

Chapter Seven

We strike a blow for Zairia and for Vallia

On a fine Kregan morning as we pirates swaggered down to the swifters hauled up onto the beach, I said to Duhrra, “You want to talk to this young tearaway, Vax. Probe him about his father.” I saw Duhrra glance across at me. “It is not good that a young man feels this way.”

“I agree. But it is a powerful hatred he bears.”

“Talk to him.”

“Duh — master — it will be all too easy. He will deafen my ears with his anger.”

Our plans for departure had been interrupted by this capture of Neemu. There was no question of the ship being given to Vax. He was far too young and inexperienced on the Eye of the World. I did not say this. It was freely spoken of by the other Renders. Among their ranks were men who knew the inner sea, men who had fought for many years upon the sparkling blue waters, men who understood the ways of the Eye of the World. Pur Naghan ti Perzefn had not taken Pearl back. Those Zairians who wished to return home had sailed in a broad ship. Pur Naghan, Krzm, realized he could strike resounding blows for Zair in thus rending with us. As a Krozair of Zamu his vows impelled him to struggle with the Green at every opportunity. Our plans called for us to sail back together, Pearl, Neemu, Crimson Magodont, as a squadron.

No Krozair, not even an ex-Krozair, could command a swifter with Green in her name. Green Magodont was now Crimson Magodont.

Rukker, waving his bladed tail in a typical Kataki fury, had bellowed, “I spare no oar-slaves! If you wish to fill your banks you must take the rasts yourselves. And Vengeance Mortil sails with me.” He was in a right old fury.

I recall this particular day with some brisk satisfaction as demonstrating a neat double-hander in my dealings on Kregen. Occupied though I was by affairs and mysterious dealings in tie Eye of the World, I was still aware of the vaster problems awaiting me in the lands of the Outer Oceans. Out there that great and evil empress Thyllis planned to hurl all the military resources of her empire of Hamal against my island of Vallia. Out there intrigues and treachery and double-dealing blossomed like the black lotus flowers of Hodan-Set.

So, on this day, when our squadron sighted sails on the horizon, and the whip-Deldars flew about with ol’ snake licking, and bellowing, “Grak! Grak!” and the swifters flew over the waters, I found a profound joy in me as I saw those sails resolve into the typical shapes of the canvas of argenters from Menaham. Menaham with her argenter fleet was used by the empress Thyllis of Hamal to trade with the overlords of Magdag. She sold them airboats and saddle-flyers. Judging by the course of the argenters, which bore on bravely with their three masts clad in plain sail straining, I would find out what King Genod paid the empress Thyllis in return.

I pushed away disappointment. I would have preferred to have captured the argenters on their way to Magdag. Then I would have taken vollers and flyers. As it was, this blow would more directly damage Hamal. But that mad genius Genod would suffer, too. . .

In any kind of breeze the swifters would never have caught the argenters. But the Eye of the World, like the Mediterranean, is a fluky place for wind. Oared vessels reign there except — and this I say with pride, for the pride is not for me — for the great race-built galleons of Vallia. We pulled in for the kill. Sails billowed and fluttered as the breeze fluked around. The argenters wallowed. We could see their people running about the decks and a pang struck through me, for I remembered when Duhrra and I had stood in an argenter and watched the Renders pulling in for us. That made me make sure that lookouts with keen eyes were aloft to spot the first hint of Green slicing toward us over the horizon.

“They scurry like ponshos before leems,” observed Vax with bloodthirsty satisfaction. We stood on the quarterdeck. I looked at my son.

“Do you so hate them, then, Vax? They are not of Magdag.”

“I have reasons for hating them. You would know nothing of my reasons. But, believe me, they are very real.”

Much though I was dismayed at my boy’s bloodthirstiness, I was cheered by his evident concern for the affairs of his own country. And, anyway, on Kregen a modicum of good honest skull-bashing is often the only antidote to poison. I deplore this; but while it remains true I prefer to have other people’s skulls bashed. The truth also is that I have done a great deal on Kregen to lessen the incidence of skull-bashing and bloodthirsty fighting in these latter days. I speak now of a time when the famous old Bells of Beng Kishi regularly rang in many and many a thick skull over the length and breadth of Kregen. Just to get Vax going a little more, I said, “And these marvelous reasons, Vax. I suppose your cramph of a father is mixed up with them — oh, but he’s dead, isn’t he?”

He shot me a murderous glance. I did not know how much he remembered of what he’d maundered on about to me; I fancied he had precious little idea of what he had said.

“My father—” He scowled and gripped his sword-hilt. “He did fight the Bloody Menahem. I will give the rast that.”

Duhrra was looking at both of us with an expression that on his gleaming idiot-face looked most comical.

“So you have something good to say about your father, then?”

“By Vox! No! I believe he fought only through others, that his friends did the fighting, while he—”

“Rukker’s going ahead!” bellowed the lookout.

I was rather glad of the interruption.

Fazhan bellowed down to Pugnarses Ob-Eye, our oar-master, who might boast only one eye but who ran a taut six oar banks.

We heard Pugnarses’ whistle blow and then his full-blown voice telling the whip-Deldars interesting facts about their physiognomy and antecedents and probable destinations in the hereafter, and the beat of the oars quickened. No one on the quarterdeck or on the forecastle thought overmuch of the pains of the oar-slaves. We knew exactly what they were going through. Exactly.

As Mangar, our drum-Deldar, increased the beat in response to the commands from Pugnarses and the oars thrashed faster, so we began to pull back the distance Rukker had surged ahead. Three swifters ravening down on four argenters. I found by chance that I would line up on the third ship from Menaham. Rukker would hit the lead ship, and Pur Naghan the second. There would be time. I said, “It’s surprising to me, Vax, that any man with a father like yours would bother to get born at all. I suppose you will spend the rest of your life hating him?”

“And if I do, it will be spent gladly.”

The first varter shots were coming in. Our varters up forward replied. Soon the bows would sing. I could not leave well alone.

“Of course, if your father died before you were born, you have only the words of others. You don’t know yourself.”

“I know enough! I know what being Apushniad means—” He checked himself there, and glared about. He wore mail and a helmet and he looked young and bold and vigorous and — and frighteningly vulnerable with his flushed face and scowling lips. He whipped out his longsword. “I fight with the prijikers today and show the world I am not as my father!”

“No!” The word was shocked from me. I could not stop it.

He glowered at me, half turned, ready to storm off to the forecastle and be among the foremost of the prijikers who would swarm along the beakhead when it thumped down onto the argenter’s deck.

“No? I am a fighting-man. I am — I was, nearly— What do you mean, Dak; no?”

I couldn’t explain. He was my son. I didn’t want him in the forefront of the most dangerous part of the attack. A prijiker, a stem-fighter, joyed in his honor and glory and danger. I reckoned they were all more mad than other sailors. They bore the most wounds; from their numbers the most men made holes in the sea.

“I want you to be at my side.”

“But why? Do you deny me the glory?”

“There’s no damned glory in getting killed in a stupid render affray!” I roared at him. “It’s only loot out there. Are you so greedy for gold you’d throw your life away?”

He drew himself up in that faintly ridiculous way a young man indicates that he is grown up in his own estimation.

“You cannot stop me from fighting with the prijikers. If I get killed that is my affair.” He swung his sword violently at the argenters. “Anyway, they are enemies of my country.”

We were closing now and the arrows were feathering into the palisade across our forecastle. The beakhead swayed with the onward plunge of the ship. Men crouched up there, ready to spring like leems onto the decks, ready to smash in red fury to victory.

“And is that your marvelous reason?”

“It will do for now!”

And he swung off along the gangway. I glared after him. I knew practically nothing about the way he would act. He was a headstrong and violent youth, suffering under a sense of shame and outrage, carrying a heavy burden of hatred that ate at his pride. But as the fight developed and we smashed into the argenter and the beakhead went down and we roared across her decks, I had to understand that I could not do as I had unthinkingly sought to do. I had acted, I conceived, as any father would act. I did not want my son to go off fighting. But I could not hold him back. His own instincts, his pride, his youthful folly, all impelled him to rush headlong into the thickest of the fight. Can any father thus shield his son from reality and expect to produce a man?

Sometimes the burdens of fatherhood are too heavy for a simple man to bear. Sometimes, I think, nature should have invented some easier way to carry on the generations. I did not enjoy that fight. I drew the great Krozair longsword and I went up the gangway after Vax, and I bellowed back to Fazhan to conn the ship, and I plunged into the fray like the madman I am, striking viciously left and right, thrusting and hacking, carving a bloody path through those poor devils from Menaham. We took the argenter all right. I had known we would take her. Everyone knew we would take her. It seemed idiotic to me that my son should imperil himself in so obvious a way over so obvious a fight. But he did.

He was my son.

He was just as big a fool as I am.

When it was over and the flag came fluttering down in a blaze of blue and green and the shouts of “Hai!”

rose, I saw that Vax, although splashed with blood, was unharmed. He had fought magnificently. I had been near him and there had been no single time when I had had to intervene. He could handle himself in a fight, that was plain. I knew he had been under training with the Krozairs of Zy. Their wonderful Disciplines had molded him well. He must, I guessed, have been very near to the time when he would have been accepted into the Order as a full member and have been allowed to prefix that proud Pur to his name.

But, all the same, despite his prowess, I was mighty glad when the fighting ceased. Vax it was who spotted the danger to Pearl, ahead of us. He sprang onto the forecastle of the argenter and waved his sword.

“Pearl! Pur Naghan’s in trouble!”

The swifter had wallowed around and broken a number of her starboard oars. The fighting on her decks looked confused. Men were spilling over into the water. There was no time to be lost. We pulled up and launched ourselves afresh into the fray, battling up with Pearl’s men to take the Menaheem by surprise and so overpower their last resistance.

“Thank Zair you appeared, Dak!” panted Pur Naghan. His mail had been ripped and blood showed on his shoulder. “They fight well, these Menaham sailors.”

“Bloody Menahem,” said Vax. “I owe them.”

“You owe a lot of people, it seems, Vax,” I said.

He scowled at me, his brown eyes bright, his face flushed.

“Do you mock me, Dak?”

“Mock? Now, why should you think that?”

“If you do—”

Duhrra appeared, immense, his idiot-seeming face creased.

“You do — uh — seem to poke fun, master.”

I knew that Duhrra regarded Vax as an oar-comrade, and this gladdened me. I realized I had gone far enough.

I glanced over the side.

“And while we prattle Rukker has boarded the last argenter.”

The cunning Kataki had taken the first ship, and then pulled out and dropped down to the last. Now he had two prizes.

Pur Naghan said, “We will share this one, Dak, of course.”

Vax favored me with a scowl and took himself off. I bellowed the necessary orders and we took possession of our prizes. There were only three. Rukker’s first impetuous attack with the ram had so holed the argenter that she was visibly sinking. A great deal of hustle took place as the goods were brought up and whipped across to the swifter. Chests and boxes, for they contained treasure, were favored over merchandise.

Soon the three swifters and the three argenters began the voyage back to the island of Wabinosk. We called in at our usual island stopovers and met with no untoward incidents. We pulled with a fine reserve of manpower.

The argenters were sailed by scratch crews and we held fair winds almost all the way, only having to tow the sailing vessels twice in calms.

At the island hideout we inspected our spoils. The ship taken by Pearl and ourselves contained mostly sacks of dried mergem, whereat I felt greatly amused. This seemed to indicate Thyllis was in want of food for her people. Our ship contained a quantity of the fine tooled and worked leather for which Magdag is famous. As well there were sacks of chipalines and also, to my surprise, many wicker baskets loaded with crossbow bolts. These were uniformly of fine quality. I guessed they had been manufactured by the slaves and workers of the warrens, those people who, downtrodden and accursed, I had attempted to free, only in the moment of victory to be whisked away by the Star Lords and to leave them to defeat and continued enslavement. I picked up one of the iron quarrels and turned it over in my fingers. Yes, this was a fine artifact, and it should by rights be driven from a crossbow to lodge in the black heart of an overlord of Magdag. Had we not intercepted it, the bolt might well have battered its way into the heart of a Vallian.

Of the cargo carried in the ship Rukker had taken we were concerned only with the treasure. It seemed fitting to me that all gold and silver and precious gems should be heaped into a great and glittering pile and then be shared out equally, portion by portion according to the Articles. Maybe I was naive in this belief. Rukker’s ship had carried the majority of the treasure paid by King Genod for the Hamalese fliers and flyers. The saddle-birds and vollers had fetched extraordinarily high prices. I lifted a heap of golden oars and let them trickle through my fingers back to the glittering mass within the iron-bound lenken chest. This was what Thyllis needed. Her treasury must have been sorely used by the war and now, twenty-odd years after, she was busily building up her reserves so as once again to send sky-spanning fleets against Pandahem and Vallia.

With these thoughts in my mind I went to the meeting with Rukker and the others of our people in positions of authority and found myself not one whit surprised that the Kataki claimed all the treasure he had taken for himself. I was not prepared to argue. I wanted to place my son Vax in safety and then see again King Genod. Only after that could I begin to think again about what to do to free myself from the prison of the inner sea.

“You may keep what you claim, Rukker. If you can maintain your hold on it. For I do not renounce either my claim or the rightful claim of my people.”

He did not sneer at me; but his look, brooding and dark, held calculation. “I take note of your words, Dak the Proud. But I think you will be hard pressed to take what you claim.”

Vax bristled and shook off Duhrra’s hand and barged forward.

“I do not renounce—” he began.

“Keep quiet, Vax,” I said.

“By what right do you—” he blustered.

I looked at him.

Duhrra said, “The master speaks sooth, Vax.” And then the old devil added, “I think you needed a father to teach you the ways of life — duh! You will get yourself spitted if you go on like this.”

“Should I care, Duhrra?”

When my son said those words I felt the hand of ice clench around my heart. Rukker broke the awkwardness, booming out in his coarse Kataki way, “You sail for Zandikar. Well and good, for, by Takroti, I am sick of all this quibbling.” He glared around, yet he was in a high good humor. “I will sail with you and from thence back to the Sea of Onyx. With this treasure I can alter certain events at home.”

So it was settled. The local Renders were only too pleased to see us go, for not only had we beaten off their attacks on us, after the first flush of welcome, in our operations we had shown them up almost humiliatingly. The four swifters and the three argenters made a nice little squadron, sailing east, cutting through the blue waters of the Eye of the World, sailing for Zandikar.

Chapter Eight

Rukker does not speak of his seamanship

A man who has but two score years and ten to look forward to, and perhaps a little longer for good behavior, is filled with the thrusting desire to be up and doing — or he should be if he has any sense. To a Kregan with about two hundred years of life to use to explore experiences on his wild and wonderful planet, the desire to be up and doing burns no less strongly; but the Kregan can contemplate with equanimity the passing of a few seasons in doing something outside the mainstream of his life. Rukker the Kataki, as vicious and intemperate a Kregan as they come, made nothing of spending the time we had among the Renders of the inner sea. These little side excursions transform life for a Kregan. I, too, with a thousand years of life to use, shared much of that attitude, even though I had not thrown off the ways of the planet of my birth.

This trip to Zandikar to see my son Vax safe was a mere side-jaunt. I did not forget that in this jaunt Delia, Vax’s mother, would concur wholeheartedly with what I was doing. So we sailed past those mist-swathed coasts of mystery. The Eye of the World contains many areas that remain unknown, shores of faerie and romance, as well as shores of danger and horror. We pulled across the blue waters, from island to island, dropping down to coast most of the way in easy stages, venturing out across wide bays where the portolanos told us we would fetch the opposite headland in good time. I felt no sense of frustration. I was fascinated by Vax. This journey would have been a good time to become acquainted. How I longed to ask him for all the details of his life!

Even the man I was then understood that children have their own secret areas sacrosanct from their parents’ understanding. But I hungered to know more of Vax, and through him, more of my other children. And, of course, most of all, to hear about my Delia.

I might explore the Eye of the World. I was debarred from exploring my son’s life. Duhrra did as I asked and would often regale me with tidbits of information he had gleaned. I slowly built up a picture. Vax would freely admit he did not come from the inner sea, and once he had indicated to Duhrra that he had learned much from the Krozairs of Zy and would soon have been admitted to membership of that august Order; he did not tell anyone he came from Vallia and Valka.

“Whatever his father did, Dak,” said Duhrra, pulling the fingers of his right hand into the right shape to clasp a flagon of Chremson, “Vax felt he could no longer continue with the Krozairs. Duh — anyone who gets that close must be remarkable. The Krozairs—” He picked up the flagon but did not drink, looking thoughtful, as is proper when mention is made of the Krozairs of Zair. “Duh — they put ice and iron into a man, by the Magic Staff of Buzro! No wonder he detests his old man.”

“No wonder,” I said, and turned away.

A commotion boiled up in Rukker’s Vengeance Mortil and we all looked across the bright water. The sail billowed and crackled and then blew forward. The mast bent and bowed and came down with a run. We could hear the passionate yelling over there. I said, quite gently, to Fazhan ti Rozilloi, my ship-Hikdar, “Put the helm over, Fazhan. We must make a beaching. Rukker has proved once again that he is no sailor.”

“Aye, Dak,” said Fazhan, with a laugh. Rukker might be a ferocious and malevolent Kataki — with yet a spark of common decent humanity surprisingly in him — but, all the same, an old shellbacked sailorman would laugh at him for his woeful lack of seamanship and understanding of the sea. Vengeance Mortil might quite easily have continued under oar-power and certainly Rukker would have no thought for the well-being of his oar-slaves. We had ghosted through the islands and were now making southerly toward the southeasterly sweeping arm of the inner sea past Zimuzz. Astern we had left Zy, that famous extinct volcanic island cone set boldly within the jaws of the Sea of Swords. The coast here was seldom visited. A triangularly lobed bay southward received the waters of the River Zinkara, running from the Mountains of Ilkenesk. On the Zinkara stood the city of Rozilloi. Fazhan had heaved up a sigh when our calculations showed us we passed that longitude special to him. Zandikar lay some sixty dwaburs farther to the east. We could hope for a wind. So we set about beaching the swifters and anchoring the argenters and removing the weights. We made camp and prepared ourselves for what might come.

Far inland, low rolling hills showed that purple-bruise color of distance, and on the sandy plains between only straggling trees grew. A party would have to push some way before they found a tree that would yield timber suitable for a mast. The made-masts of my own old Terrestrial navy were known here on the inner sea; but usually a single stout tree trunk was employed in swifters. We had stationed a lookout and he bellowed down.

“Swifters! Green! Six of ’em!”

The curve of the bay where we had beached concealed us from seaward observation — an elementary precaution — and the lookout could see without being seen. The nearer headland under which we sheltered contained a mass of ruins, ancient stones, time worn and weathered, tumbled columns and arches, shattered walls. Up there I had a good view. There were six swifters, medium-sized vessels plowing in line ahead with their oars rising and falling in that remorseless beat. They pulled into the wind, long, low lean craft, evil and formidable. We waited carefully until they were past. Rukker said, “I will stand guard on the camp and the ships.”

“Very well,” I said. “It will be a nice task to select the proper tree for your mast”

So it was decided. If those six Green swifters returned or if we were beset by unexpected foes, then Rukker and his men would defend the camp with ferocious efficiency. I took my sailors and a gang of slaves to drag the timbers, and set off inland.

We spent the rest of the day as the suns declined searching for the right tree, and when we found it and cut it down and dragged it back, two of the lesser moons sped past above in their crazy whirling orbits, and She of the Veils smiled down in fuzzy pink radiance. We had seen no signs of life apart from the spoor of mortils and the bones of their prey, and the high circling of warvols, the vulture-like winged scavengers waiting for the mortils to finish. Once upon a time — or, as Kregans say, under a certain moon — this land had been lush and fertile, filled with the busy agriculture and commerce of the People of the Sunset. Now they had gone, and the land gleamed sere and empty under the moons. The moment we arrived back in camp we were greeted by news that filled me with amusement and filled Vax and the others with heated fury.

Old Tamil told us — a cunning rascal, quick and sly, who had appointed himself Palinter in Crimson Magodont. As our Palinter, our purser, he could be relied on to wangle extra supplies for us in his accustomed tortuous dealings with the common resources; in looking out for himself he looked out for us.

“That cramph of a Kataki!” spluttered Tamil, his off-center nose more than ever like a moon-bloom in the pink radiance of She of the Veils. “Took the treasure and sailed off!”

Howls of execration broke out at this. But then those howls changed to jeers of derision as we looked where Tamil pointed.

Less than an ulm offshore Vengeance Mortil lay becalmed in the water. She was down by the head. She stuck there, solid and unmoving, clearly held fast by fangs of rock piercing her bow.

“So the rast took our treasure and sailed off and ran himself aground!” bellowed Fazhan. He looked as offended as any of them there. They were running down to the shore and waving their arms and brandishing weapons. It was a fitting sight for a madness. It was, also, somewhat humorous — at least, it seemed funny to me at the time.

The treasure meant nothing, of course. It did mean something to these ragged rascals with me, and so that made it important to me because of them. But, all the same, the idea of a great and ferocious Kataki lord sweeping up all the treasure and loading it into his ship and sailing grandly off, only to get stuck on a rock, struck me as ludicrous and something to raise a guffaw.

The old devil had cut down his own mast, of course, to get us ashore in this lonely spot and send us sailormen off on a wild-goose chase. When he had run aground — what must his thoughts have been?

He had been thrown by his own varter, as the Kregans say. Boats were ferrying his men back. There was a sublime amount of confusion and argument; but no one came to blows. The first flush of anger dissipated in the sense of the ridiculousness of the Katakis.

I said to Fazhan, “I will wager Rukker’s words will be: ‘I do not wish to discuss this’ or ‘I will not speak of this again.’”

“No bet,” said Fazhan, being a wise man.

Pur Naghan was highly incensed, although seeing the humor of the situation, for he was bitterly annoyed by the evident lack of honor in Rukker’s actions. Honor — aye, the Krozairs set great store by that ephemeral commodity.

Rukker stormed ashore in high dudgeon. At least, that seems to me an evocative way of describing his malevolent scowls, the way his tail flicked irritably this way and that, the dark glitter of wrath in his evil eyes. He was on the verge of a killing mad.

He said in his surly hoarse voice, “I shall not speak of this in the future.”

At this a howl went up. And, thankfully, among those howls sounded many a guffawing belly-laugh. I felt relief. I watched carefully. But I think the sheer ludicrousness of it all saved an eruption, for plenty of men there would have chopped Rukker given half the chance. But the heat evaporated from the moment. Wine went around. We ate at the camp fires. We were, after all, a bunch of daredevil Renders, comrades in arms, for the time being. Tricks like this must be expected in such company. The Maiden with the Many Smiles lifted and flooded down her golden light and we sat and drank and some of us sang. On the morrow we would fashion a new mast for Rukker and so sail off with the breeze toward Zandikar. We sang “The Swifter with the Kink,” of course, and “The Chuktar with the Glass Eye,” for they are fine carefree songs full of opportunities to expand the lungs and bellow. The firelight leaped upon our faces, on gleaming eyes and teeth, on mouths open and lustily bawling, on long bronzed necks open to the air. The red southern shore is populated by apims almost exclusively, and these apims, I had noticed, were contemptuous and intolerant of diffs. But it takes all kinds to make a world. Here some of the Zairian apims found that for all the tricks of the Katakis the other diffs of our company were human men, after all, and not mere menagerie men.

A little Och sang “The Cup Song of the Och Kings,” sending the plaintive notes welling out into the light of the moons, a yearning song telling of great days and great deeds, filled with the throbbing resonances of nostalgia. Then, as seemed always to happen when an Och sang that song, the moment he finished he pitched forward on his nose, out to the wide.

We all roared and cheered. At the other fires others of the Renders caterwauled to the skies. A Gon leaped up, his skull shaved clean of all that white hair of which Gons are so ashamed, to their misfortune, and started in to sing a wild, skirling farrago, filled with spittings and abrupt, deep reverberations, of hints of horror, all accompanied by dramatic gestures evident of extreme terror. This was the song sometimes called “Of the Abominations of Oidrictzhn.”[3]

A man — an apim, a Zairian — leaped clear across the fire, singeing the hairs on his legs, and screaming. He tackled the Gon with a full body-cracking charge, smacked him in the mouth, and so knocked him down and sat on his head.

“You get onker!” screamed the apim, one Fazmarl the Beak — for, in truth, his nose was of prodigious proportions. “You wish to destroy us all!”

We hauled him off and the Gon, Leganion, sat up, highly indignant. “It is a good song and will make your flesh creep.”

“Yes, you rast! Do you not know where we are?” Fazmarl the Beak swung his hand violently to point at the moonlit ruins crowning the headland, frowning down above us. “You prate that name — here!

Onker!”

One or two other men challenged Fazmarl, and he spluttered out a long rigmarole of weird doings and nightly spells and sorcery, there in the ruins of the Sunset People. He would not bring himself to repeat the name. But he made it very clear that the ruins harbored some malefic being in whom he believed and yet whose existence he must deny in the pure light of Zair.

“Superstitious nonsense!”

“Fairy tales for numbskulls!”

Oh, yes, those fierce Renders caterwauled bravely enough as the pink and golden moonlight flooded down and we sang and drank around the camp fires. But I saw more than a few of them cast up a quick and surreptitious glance at the pale stone-glimmer of the ancient ruins. In the very nature of these men, for there were no women with us, fights broke out. These must be settled according to whatever code of honor and conduct was acceptable to both parties. I have not mentioned the detailed protocols involved in challenges and combats of Kregen, outside of a few remarks on the obi of my Clansmen, and the formal dueling of Hamal. But now, and with horrific suddenness, the finicky demands of honor and the protocol of fighting became of supreme importance to me.

It began with Vax, who had sworn off the dopa, swearing away, as was his wont, about his cramph of a father. One of the Katakis, no doubt as bored by Vax’s obsession as the rest of us, bellowed some remark and tossed back his wine. This Kataki was Athgar, called the Neemu, and it was whispered he chafed under the yoke of Rukker’s authority. Vax stood up, limber and lithe, and I caught the flare of madness in his eyes.

“You said, Athgar?”

No one had heard what Athgar had spoken; the moment could have been allowed to lie, and so dwindle and die.

But Athgar, wiping a hand across his face, bellowed out a curse to Targ the Untouchable. His low-browed, narrow-eyed face, as malignant and devilish as are all Katakis’ faces, even the dark face of Rukker, bore down on the slim erect figure of Vax.

“If your father was the rast you claim him to be, then your mother must be a stupid and unholy bitch to have married him in the first place and so give birth to—”

That was as far as he got.

There was no heroic posturing from Vax. He did not bellow out; he did not request Athgar to repeat his words. My son Vax, who was Jaidur of Valka, Prince of Vallia, simply lashed out with his fist and knocked Athgar the Kataki, called the Neemu, head over heels into the fire. When the uproar subsided and Athgar was held by Rukker’s Katakis, and Vax was held by Duhrra and Nath the Slinger, the ritual challenges and responses were gone through, the lines drawn and the demarcations between edge and point, between death and maiming, the rules and observances were finalized with all due solemnity. The rules of Hyr Jikordur would apply. I stood still and silent, watching, for the matter was passed from the hands of mortal men and lay now with the gods. Honor and passion ruled all. Words had been spoken. A blow had been struck. Now the answer, in the whims of the gods, must be found in steel and blood.

Moon-mist lay over the camp and the fires flared strangely.

In the sand the lines were drawn out.

Men ran from the other fires to form a great circle of intent staring faces. A Jikordur happened every now and then and gave fuel for gossip for sennights thereafter. The matter was grave and full of a prestigious death-wish, filled with blood and death.

Instinctively, in the very moment a challenge had become inevitable, I had stepped forward to take Athgar the Neemu on and so shield my son. But that was impossible. Ideals and honor, however misplaced and distorted, now dictated all actions.

This was to be a Hyr Jikordur. I made an effort. I said, loudly, “Let no life be taken. Let the result be adjudged in the first blow.”

Athgar sneered back his thin Kataki lips. “If it be first blood, Dak the Tenderhearted, then I will take the cramph’s head off.”

And my son said in his ferocious way, which a calmness made all the more vulnerable and bitter, “Let it be to the death, for, by Zim-Zair, I do not care.”

At that Krozair oath all my defenses went down. I must stand and watch my son fight a predatory member of a feral and cruel race, vicious, fully armed and accoutered, equipped with a deadly bladed tail. I must stand and watch. To do anything else would impugn the strict codes of conduct, bring the Jikordur into disrepute, and as well as insuring my own death, bring my son humiliation and disgrace. The Jikordur meant nothing to me. My own death little more. And I would so contrive my interference that Vax was spared that humiliation. . .

Rukker checked his man. He favored me with a slow glance that I felt meant more than he cared to say. I stood before Vax. I drew the great Krozair longsword. I tendered it hilt first. Vax looked up, and something got through to him, for his lips compressed. Then he smiled.

“I thank you, Dak.”

A sword-blade struck a helmet like a gong. The combat began.

Chapter Nine

Blood in the Hyr Jikordur

Pachaks have been blessed by nature — or the dark manipulations of genetic science — with quick and lethal tail hands. Katakis must strap their steel to their whip-tails. I am partial to Pachaks, as employed mercenaries, as friends. In long talks with them around the camp fires on the eve of battles I have learned much of the art of tail-fighting. There are tricks. As the gong note clanged with grim promise from the sword-struck helmet, I leaned down to Vax and said, “His tail may be numbed by—”

“I know,” said my son.

They always seem to know, these cocky youngsters. I stepped back. I did not waver from my resolution to court personal dishonor and destruction if they were necessary to save my son. The chances were he would know. Planath Pe-Na, my standard-bearer who carried Old Superb into action, must have known Vax as the lad grew up into manhood. Along with all my friends of Esser Rarioch — Balass the Hawk, Naghan the Gnat, Oby, Melow the Supple, the Djangs who were a regular part of the people there; all must have contributed their knowledge toward the education of Vax no less than they had to Drak and Segnik — no, I must call him Zeg now. And, of course, there were Seg and Inch and Turko the Shield. If Vax had taken in what they had to tell him then the combined knowledge should make him a formidable fighter — and he was, indeed, as I had seen, a bonny lad with a sword. Planath must have told Vax of the tricks an apim might get up to with the tail of a Kataki. Planath would have relished the telling.

With no more relish in myself at the idea of this fight, but with some feeling of relief, I watched as Athgar stalked forward — arrogant, completely confident — to knock over and slay this slim and supple apim lad.

I cannot do justice to that fight, for I was far too intimately concerned for my own good. I had picked up the look from Duhrra and he had slipped me his longsword. I held it ready, and I must give thanks that the fight occupied the attention of the men there, for had they seen my face in the firelight glow and the radiance of the moons, they would no doubt have run shrieking.

Athgar launched himself, his sword blurring, his tail-blade high and deceiving. Vax lunged right, checked and reversed, came back. The two combatants passed. Now was the danger! The tail hissed around. Vax jumped. I let out a grunt of relief. Vax dropped down hard. He made no attempt at that cunning tail-numbing trick. Athgar had expected him to duck, as would be the instinctive response to the threat of that arrogant high-held blade. Athgar struck low. Vax jumped. And the great Krozair longsword flamed. Athgar shrieked.

The tail spun and looped away, the strapped blade glittering, flicked like a limp coil of rope into the fire. It sizzled.

Blood pumped from Athgar. He stood disbelieving. He stood for perhaps two heartbeats. Rukker yelled, “Athgar the Tailless!”

The Neemu screeched and swung his sword in a ferocious horizontal sweep. Vax met the blow, slanting his brand, and let the blades chink and screech in that demoniac sound of steel on steel. His broad back muscles tensed and bunched, drew out in a ripple of massive power. The blade struck forward. The point burst through Athgar’s throat above the mail, smashed on to eject itself in a spouting gout of blood. Without a word, Vax withdrew and stepped back. He looked on silently as Athgar dropped his sword and gripped his crimson throat, his eyes glaring madly. He choked, trying to say something. Then he fell. He pitched down to sprawl at Vax’s feet.

Vax looked down. He was my son. Without a word he spit on the corpse. Then he walked away. No one said a word.

It was left to Vax, turning to speak over his shoulder, to say, “I will clean your sword, Dak, before I return it.”

I wanted to say — how I wanted to say! — the words hot and breaking in me . . . I swallowed. I said,

“Jikai — keep the sword, Vax. It is yours.”

For a moment he stood, silent, limber, lithe and young, staring at me. The firelight painted one half of his face ruby; the moons shone fuzzily pink and gold upon the other. He nodded. Again he did not speak. He just nodded and lifted the sword, and saluted, and so walked into the darkness beyond the fires. I handed Duhrra his sword. “Take Nath. Follow.”

“Yes, master.”

Duhrra and Nath melted into the moon-drenched shadows. Other men of my crew followed. They would see that Vax came to no harm. They were good fellows. If I do not mention them overmuch, surely it is obvious that concern for my son dominated all my thoughts. Rukker said, “There is no need for that, Dak.”

“No.”

He looked down at the corpse. “He was my man and yet he was not my man. I think this Vax Neemusbane is your man and yet not your man. It was a Hyr Jikordur. There is no blood between us.”

“None,” I said. “And you are right about Vax. I think he has done you a favor.”

“Probably. But I do not wish to discuss that.”

It amuses me now to think how Rukker regarded me. He treated the other Renders sharply enough, and they respected or hated him for it, according to their natures. But he must have come to terms with his own ruthlessness in his dealings with me, or so I think. Maybe he did not forget our first meeting, or the way he would have been flogged on the oar bench had I not spoken. As I say, Rukker possessed a scrap of humanity.

All the same, I meant to repay him for his trick when he had loaded all the treasure aboard his swifter and attempted to sail away. He might not wish to speak of that in the future; I had a few words on the subject — and these words would not be spoken but acted on.

In any company on Kregen one feels naked without a sword. A weapon is needed most everywhere. Even the unarmed combat skills developed by the Khamorros of Havilfar, and the Krozairs of the Eye of the World, cannot fully compensate for the lack of a weapon if the unarmed combat man goes up against an opponent skilled in his weapon’s use. And it does not have to be a sword, of course; but legends and myths cluster about swords.

In our reiving over the western end of the inner sea we had built up an armory and in my cabin in Crimson Magodont a useful array of weapons I had taken a fancy to awaited my inspection. As I went up the ladder I turned and saw in the moons-light Vax and Duhrra and Nath walking back to the fires, and already Vax was working away at the blood on his new sword. Satisfied, I went into the cabin. There was no real choice before me; just the one sword I fancied. There had been no other Krozair blade come into our possession; but I had taken a fine Ghittawrer blade. The Grodnims produce fine weapons and, as in the case of the Zairians, the finest are made by and for the Brotherhoods of Chivalry of the Green. This Ghittawrer sword had borne the device of the lairgodont and the rayed sun and I had had them removed. I picked it up and swirled it a trifle, feeling the balance as being good but not as perfect as the Krozair brand I had given my son, honoring his Jikai. That thrice-damned king Genod, self-styled genius at war, had instigated his Ghittawrer Brotherhood, the lairgodont and the rayed sun. The blade was good. It would serve to lop a few Green heads and arms.

A shouting on the beach, and a distant calling from higher up, drew me to the deck. The night lay calm and sweet under the stars and moons; yet mists trickled down like thickened waterfalls from the headland. I looked up. Lights speckled the ruins. Many torches flared among the aeons-old walls and columns.

“What is it, Sternen?” I shouted at the watch.

“I do not know, Dak. But whatever it is, men have gone up to find out.” He shivered. He was a tough apim with a scarred face and quick with a knife. “By Zogo the Hyrwhip! Those screams never came from a human throat!”

About to check him roughly, I paused. The shrieks from the ruins sounded unnatural. Sternen made several quick and secret signs. These were rooted in a time before Zair and Grodno parted into enmity. I slapped the Ghittawrer blade into the scabbard, for the Grodnims attempted to copy the dimensions of a Krozair blade, and rattled off down the ladder. Many men were running up the steep track in the cliff toward the ruins, carrying torches, bearing weapons. Renders out to prove they feared not a single damn thing in all of Kregen. I followed.

Panting up at my side Nath the Slinger said, ‘The lights up there aren’t ours.”

I halted. Duhrra and Vax appeared. Some way beyond them a knot of men I knew would be loyal not only to Zair but to me pressed on, I shouted at them, intemperately, and they clustered around. Before I spoke I looked up. In the lights of the moons the mass of Renders ascending into the ruins looked apelike, crowding up, bearing torches. The Katakis were there. I looked at Vax and Fazhan and Duhrra. I told them what I wanted them to do. I did not mince my words.

“And if there’s a watch,” I said, most unpleasantly, “knock him on the head and spirit him away. Do not kill him, though.”

Duhrra rumbled a hoarse chuckle.

“Duh — master! A fine plan!”

“Aye,” said Fazhan. “Just rewards, by Zair.”

“And if there is a fight,” said Vax, half drawing his beautiful new sword, “I shall joy in showing this boastful Kataki Rukker he may join the cramph Athgar.”

“You will not fight him unless I tell you.” I looked hard at Vax in the streaming moons-light. “He will not succumb so easily as Athgar.”

“Yet is he a Kataki, and Katakis have tails.”

“And with them they rip out throats of young coys.”

He was beginning to know a little of me, enough to understand that I might argue with him in some matters, and in others he had best obey, schtump. All the same, he looked daggers at me.

“Take Tamil the Palinter with you. He is adept at weighing and measuring.”

“Aye, master.”

“I shall entertain Rukker until you signal. Now, jump!”

I intended to be scrupulously fair. What I intended was perfectly obvious, of course; but if my men did not do a quick clean job there would be a fight. Renders habitually quarrel and fight; it is all a part of their image, Articles or no. As they took themselves off I wondered if I was doing this out of mere irritation with myself, out of a sense that time was rushing by and I had made no progress, and played this trick not so much out of evil boredom as out of self-contempt.

Then I ran lightly up the trail in the cliff toward the ruins of the Sunset People and the mysteries that might await me there.

Chapter Ten

Among the ruins of the Sunset People

From the concealment of a screen of bushes we looked upon a scene at once hideous and horrific. The Renders had extinguished their torches and they did not speak above an awed whisper. The lights illuminating those time-weathered stones were not our lights. The flaring torches wrapped tendrils of golden brilliance about the old columns and arches, lit gray walls and time-toppled cornices. Shattered domes like eggshells smashed wantonly glittered starkly in the pink moons-light. We crouched silently and we stared upon that pagan scene.

Next to me crouched the trembling form of Fazmarl the Beak. I could feel his body shaking against my shoulder.

“I warned them, the fools,” he whispered to himself, and I could feel the tenseness in the words he scarcely knew he uttered aloud. “It is Oidrictzhn himself! The Abomination!”

I nudged him. “Silence, you fambly. Is this all you know?”

He glared mutely at me and shook his head.

I drew him down farther into the shadows.

‘Tell me. And speak low.”

“Oidrictzhn!”

I clapped a hand across his mouth and shot a glance over the bushes. The figures prancing in the torchlights were concerned over their own pursuits and we did not appear to be observed; but I fancied they’d have someone on the lookout. I shook Fazmarl the Beak.

“You bear an honored name. These Abominations. Is that what they’re up to out there?” I released his mouth.

He drew in a whooping gulp of air. “Yes. It is old, older than anyone knows. Long before Zair and Grodno, whose name be cursed, separated out of—”

“Yes, yes. I know that. Will they slay the girl?”

“Assuredly. They have come from many little villages inland and they would travel to the west of us. I know, for I lived in one of those small villages, like a vosk in swill — and all knew the old stories of Oidrictzhn and his Abominations.”

“You do not mind saying his name now.”

He did not laugh; but he emitted a sour grunting kind of cough. “No — for it is too late. The evil one has arisen from his sleep. He has been conjured. Do you not see his gross form, there, where the shadows cluster, although the torches shine the brightest?”

There was a puzzling splotch of shadow against an ancient gray monolith where the torches shone, where one would expect light and the reflections brilliant against the masonry.

“How?”

“Who knows? No one owns to knowledge. Yet all know there are those who possess the secret powers. The Abominable One has risen and he will not return until he is sated.”

I was not prepared to dismiss all this as fear-induced madness.

On Kregen as on Earth there are the darker myths, hideous stories of hideous beings from out of time and space. Normally one gives no credence to them. But to hear of them among tumbled and time-shattered ruins, ancient before ordinary man ventured to tame fire and crouch at his cave-mouth brandishing a stone hand-ax, with the shifting light of the moons streaming across a scene of naked savages — for rhapsodic belief had turned these people savage — screaming and chanting, circling a stake whereon hung the bloody corpse of a ponsho, closing nearer and nearer to a raised stone slab on which lay a young girl, ripe for the sacrifice . . . as I say, to hear these horrendous myths of demons and devils in circumstances like those is to make belief all too easy.

The Abominable One had been driven away when the true light of Zair had risen in the land. But he was not dead. He slept and awaited his call. He could be raised up and he would not be satisfied until he had drunk of the blood of a virgin. That it must be a female virgin was not specified; but it seemed appropriate. I had to hold on to the levity that wanted me to rush out there and lay about with the Ghittawrer blade. I do not totally condemn these feeble-minded stories; a little care for one’s ib is as proper as care for one’s flesh-and-blood hide.

“The Zair-forsaken cramphs of Grodnims advance from the west. They destroy all who oppose them. King Genod’s army is invincible. Soon they will be here. All the little villages to the south will be enslaved

— aye! — and the great cities also.”

“You may be right, Fazmarl. But I think you wrong. And these deluded fools seek to raise up a long-dead god of evil to protect them? They are mad.”

“Yes, they are mad. But madness is easy in these times.”

Rukker crawled over. He looked as fierce as ever; but I sensed he was unsure. Why else did he crawl?

“What is this onker chattering about, Dak?”

I told him that out of fear of the Grodnims the locals were raising from his long-sealed vault a monster of evil, out of time and space, a being who might sweep us all away with the power of his breath. Rukker grunted and stilled the impatient swish of his tail.

“If the ancient god is in the likeness of an apim—”

Fazmarl let rip a hysterical giggle at this, a tiny sound of horror in a greater scene of horror.

“His shape is more awful than anyone—”

“Yes,” I said. Fazmarl quieted. “It is not of our business, Rukker. Do you agree?”

“I agree. I think I shall not speak of this later.”

“Yes,” I said. “Yet the girl. . .”

“She is apim,” said the Kataki.

“Oh, assuredly. Had she been a Fristle, or a numim, a sylvie, or a girl from Balintol, I do not think it would make overmuch difference.”

Fazmarl, quaking, said, “They would mean nothing.”

I did not hit him. I must come to terms with this detestation of diffs that was so widespread among the apims of Zairia.I had hardly remarked it during my previous sojourn on the inner sea. I had changed, not the Zairians, that was all. And, anyway, Fazmarl and Rukker would have no idea where Balintol was. I lifted a trifle and peered over the bushes. The blasphemous ceremony drew to its gruesome climax. Couples were dancing out there in the streaming torchlight, going widdershins, letting abandon carry them away in frenzy. The dread weight of evil bore us down. The sense of evil among the stones shivered through the torchlight, and a coiling mist melted the gold and pink moonbeams. Fazmarl shivered. He began to crawl back, away, shaking his head, his lips slobbering.

I let him go.

I said to Rukker, “It seems to me a little Jikai might be created here, Kataki.”

“You may. By the Triple Tails of Targ the Untouchable! This is no business of mine.”

“You would not trust your Targ against this Oidrictzhn the Abominable?”

“There is nothing supernatural there. It is a man, dressed in a skin, with a chimera for a head.”

“So why hang back?”

His tail started to twitch. I drew my sword. He saw it. He said, “You may get yourself killed if you wish. Do you not see the archers?”

“Aye. That proves they fear physical as well as occult powers.”

“Then, by Takroti, you may test them yourself.”

He would have left then, calling his people about him. I could feel the evil in that place. It is a difficult thing to say. There was some suppurating spirit of demonology flaunting itself against the gray stone wall, drinking the light of the torches. I held Rukker. The people out there, abandoned, most half gone on dopa probably, clustered close to the stone slab.

“Would it not be a Jikai to go out there and deprive them of their enjoyment? Would not depriving other people appeal to you, a Kataki?”

Under my hand his arm quivered. I could feel the bunch of muscle below the mail. He hissed the words as a Kataki can hiss. His face was demonic as any devil’s, almost as devilish as my own. “Take your hand off me! I shall spit you for this, apim!”

“Then you will have to catch me, Kataki,” I said, and stood up, and ran forward into the torchlight toward the stone slab of sacrifice and the girl bound helplessly upon its scarred surface. Hideous yells burst from the corded throats of the people dancing and clustering about the slab of sacrifice. They were possessed. Drugged on dopa or any one of a variety of narcotics, or on sheer fear-driven hysteria, they capered and screeched and sought to drag me down with clawed raking fingers. I pushed them aside. There was no time to feel either anger or pity for them. I got in among them with vicious speed and the archers perched on the crumbling lichenous walls shafted two poor devils instead of me.

The aura of horror swelled nearer that splotch of utter darkness on the gray wall. In a tangle of naked arms and legs I pushed forward toward the slab. I did not use the edge of my sword; the flat sufficed. The girl was not unconscious. She lay on her back, strained over by thongs from wrists and ankles that were knotted to iron rings stapled into the stone. She wore stockings that reached to mid-thigh and were banded by red-glinting gems. The stockings were black, a fitting counterpoint to the darkness that hovered over her. Her body gleamed pink and golden in the moons-light, looped with gems, strings of jewels chaining her breast-cups of gold and twining around her stomach and legs, linking her ankles and wrists. Her hair of that midnight black of the Zairians of the inner sea glistered with gems and silverdust. Her face seemed only a pale flower, her mouth and eyes mere dark bruises. A man leaped on my back and I bent and hurled him away. The sword slashed the thongs of her ankles, sliced the right wrist-thong. I moved to reach the left thong and someone grabbed my ankles. I kicked. A screech like a lost soul in torment cheered me. The sword licked out. I put my left arm under the girl’s head, lifted her, slid my arm down to her neck, her back, and took her up as one might hoist a sack of cereal.

She felt light and soft and warm, and she trembled all the time with a fine shivering that tingled against my hand.

Now I would use the edge, if I must.

An arrow splintered against the slab. The scarred surface showed ancient evil stains. Just beyond the slab a pit in the ground covered by an iron grating drew my alert attention. People were dragging the grating up, screaming in ecstasy and fear, throwing the iron grille down and then running, running. . . Anything could squirm out of that dank pit. . .

“Slay him! Strike him down! Immolate him!”

The shouts grew in frenzy. With the girl caught up to me and dangling her strings of jewels and chains of gold, I began to run back. I looked over my shoulder, just to check my rear, as was my custom — and I saw the dread shadow against the stone move.

At that moment of impending horror an entanglement at my feet brought me pitching to earth. I held on to the girl and as we both slammed into the ground she did not cry out. Her eyes were wide and brilliant and fixed on me hypnotically.

I looked up.

A Thing moved among the shadows.

A Shadow moved among the things.

The screeching and shouting died to a whimper and faded. The breeze stilled. Mists coiled before the moons and the light changed with dread subtlety from gold and pink to a drenching shower of blood-rubied radiance.

I looked up.

Something ancient and evil slithered against the stones. Something . . . There was only one name that could be given this bestial monstrosity from out of the dead ages of time — Oidrictzhn — Oidrictzhn the Abominable!

The Shadow rose and lifted and became monstrous, huge, blotting out vision and reason. A chilling slithering, a hissing, a feral, hateful mind-numbing hissing whispered from the shadows clustered about the Shadow.

The Beast from Time slithered out from the shadows to devour me.