This arrangement is not that unusual. It adds to the authority of officers, and tends to reduce the likelihood of serious harm amongst the men. It takes time, usually, to beat a fellow bloody and senseless, and he is likely to recover sooner or later, and perhaps put an end to the quarrel over a jug of paga, but an angry word, a swift movement, and a flash of steel, and one may well have lost a shipmate, and eventually, given the friendships and alliances amongst the men, more than one. Those on board a ship constitute a small community, confined within a circumscribed area. A strict discipline must be maintained on board, as in a cage of sleen, lest they tear one another to pieces. There is nowhere to run. Tempers may flare. Blood may beget blood. I saw that the fellows about, and there were several, were all armed. This confirmed my suspicion that I was in the midst of pirates. In any event, many of these fellows seemed to me dangerous men. This was no common crew. For what purpose, and by what means, might these men have been assembled? I thought again of the cage of sleen. What but the whip and spear might maintain order in such a cage? But, who, too, I asked myself, might disarm such men?
“You know the blade?” asked the tarnsman.
“Passably,” I said.
He was a tarnsman. Few men master tarns, few dare their saddles.
“When have you last drawn, fenced, put your skills to the test?” he asked.
“Not since Ar,” I said. “Months ago. I sold my blade.”
“One does not sell one’s blade,” he said.
“I needed money,” I said.
“One dies first,” he said.
“I am not of the warriors,” I said.
“But you take fee?” he said.
“Yes,” I said.
From his presence at my interview, or interrogation, I took him to be an officer of some sort.
His accent was unusual. I could not place it. Perhaps Harfax.
I did not think he bore me any ill will. Indeed, yesterday, on my behalf, he had stood against Seremides himself. Perhaps he did not know, as I did, the skills of the former captain of the Taurentians. I knew of no blade the equal of his. Something in the eyes or mien of this man suggested he might be other than many here; oddly enough, for the venue, I suspected he might once have been no stranger to honor; such I would not have sensed in Seremides. I wondered if he were once of the warriors, perhaps long ago. Such men may betray the codes, but they are not likely to forget them. It is hard to forget the codes. Is it not a saying of warriors that one does not sell one’s blade, that steel is to be prized above gold? And honor above life? How came then such a man here, if he were such a man, on this ship, amidst this unlikely, motley crew? Had he betrayed the codes? But it is difficult to forget the codes. There were always the codes, the codes. I supposed them fools, such men, but there are such men. One mocks them until one needs them. Who else, when one is in mortal jeopardy, would one prefer to have at one’s back? They are of the scarlet caste. Such men, at the least, like the Assassins, are likely to kill quickly, and cleanly.
“You inquired, yesterday,” he said, “of other survivors, from the
“They were slain?” I asked.
“Yes, to a man,” he said.
“And thus,” I said, “they would not survive, perhaps to enlighten others as to the existence of a great ship, a mysterious, monstrous vessel, unlicensed in our waters.”
“Fortunately for yourself,” he said, “you were picked up by a second galley, the port-amidships galley, captained by the mercenary, Torgus.”
“And now I die?” I asked.
“We shall see,” said the tarnsman.
“Hail Rutilius!” we heard. “Rutilius of Ar!”
The men who were crowded about then parted, and stepped back, clearing a space on the deck.
I removed my cloak, setting it aside, on the rail.
The man identified as Rutilius of Ar then stood at the edge of a circle, some feet of cleared space between us. Without taking his eyes off me he unclasped his cloak and handed it to a fellow, a fellow garbed as he was, in the yellow livery of what I would come to recognize as that of Lord Okimoto’s retinue. I saw nothing of Lord Okimoto himself. Perhaps the morning’s work of Seremides was of little interest to him, the outcome being a foregone conclusion, or perhaps, merely, he did not care to share, or dabble in, the pleasures of his subordinates.
I wondered if Lord Okimoto had instructed Seremides that survivors were to be put to the sword. I rather doubted it. He had not seemed much concerned, in the interrogation, with my fate, one way or another. Quite possibly he had issued no instructions. Quite possibly he had left such matters to the judgment of Seremides, the Seremides I knew.
“Are you ready to die?” asked Seremides.
“I am unarmed,” I said.
He slipped the sheath from his left shoulder, and, grasping it, drew his blade, easily, casually. It made no sound, as the sheath was lined. This is not uncommon with the sheath of an Assassin’s weapon, this permitting the weapon’s noiseless departure. It does, slightly, slow the draw. The sheath with belt he then handed, as he had the cloak, to the fellow with him. When danger is not imminent, the sheath belt is usually worn across the body, as this provides greater security, the weapon then at the left hip. If a locale is deemed dangerous the sheath belt is usually looped over the left shoulder. In this way, the weapon freed, the sheath and belt may be discarded, as it constitutes a graspable encumbrance. The sword was the
“Five days ago,” said Seremides, addressing himself to the seeming rabble about, “without provocation, we were attacked by Cosian pirates, who attempted to burn our ship. We fought. We resisted. We conquered. Then we punished. Those who did not drown were executed, with but one exception, the sleen before you who was mistakenly spared, who should have been bloodied and given to Thassa’s hungry children, an offering to her justice, that he not soil our ship with his unclean, impenitent, criminal presence.”
“My name is Callias,” I said. “My Home Stone is that of Jad, on Cos. Perhaps some of you share her Home Stone with me. I was an oarsman on the Cosian patrol ship, the
Seremides regarded me, measuring me, and smiled.
Some men enjoy killing, and I did not doubt but what one of these was Seremides, formerly first sword amongst the Taurentians. On the other hand, had I been another, and not one who knew him from Ar, I doubt that he would have been much concerned with me, nor would have so zealously set himself to have my blood. I was a witness, as was the slave, Alcinoe, who might identify him as the former captain of the Taurentians, traitor and arch-conspirator, he who had stood high in Ar during the reign of the puppet Ubara, Talena, one of those who, like Talena and the former Lady Flavia of Ar, her confidante, had a price on his head. I recalled how he had so persistently urged my death in the meeting below decks yesterday. He might have killed me then, had it not been for the intervention of the tarnsman, Tarl Cabot. Apparently I constituted a threat to him, at least in his mind, of considerable portent. Were I he I would doubtless have been similarly apprehensive. I looked over the rail, at Thassa, wanting to see her, again, if only for the last time. But she seemed uneasy, cold and dark, and there was a roll of clouds unfurling over her brow in the north.
“I, Rutilius of Ar,” said Seremides, “do not countenance an enemy amongst us. Who knows whose throat might be cut in his sleep by this sleen? Will you share water and rations, and loot and slaves, with one who would have delivered you to the teeth of flames or the fangs of sharks? Will we have an enemy, a deadly foe, amongst us?”
It interested me that Seremides seemed to feel it incumbent upon him to justify a projected murder. It had not been that way in Ar. Here it seemed he was not captain, here it seemed a certain wariness might be in order.
