and finally drew up to the landing near the village gate. They had watched ten or twelve dlomu step forth timidly, and cheered with faint derision when the creatures rolled out three small water casks and passed them down carefully to the skiff. Another mouthful each, they laughed bitterly, while over the tonnage hatch the sixty-foot yawl dangled in her harness, ready to launch, fourteen casks of five hundred gallons apiece lashed in her hold.
They had watched with impatience as Pathkendle and Lady Thasha spoke with the dlomic boy at the landing. The two youths pointed at the Chathrand; the boy shook his head. For several thirsty minutes the sailors watched a debate they could not hear. Then the young dlomu had made a gesture of surrender, and all three had climbed into the skiff, and the little boat had started out to the Chathrand.
Now they were hoisting it, dripping, above the rail. Six men caught the davit chains, guided her inboard, lowered her gently onto her skids. Haddismal shouted a quick command; the assembled Turachs surrounded the boat. The three human prisoners studied them keenly.
Fiffengurt beckoned at the water barrels. “Same ration as yesterday,” he declared, and the sailors groaned and snarled, though it could not be otherwise, and the ration, albeit painfully tiny, had been fair.
Pazel Pathkendle and the Lady Thasha leaped first from the skiff, then aided Fiffengurt, who appeared rather bruised. But when the quartermaster’s feet were planted on the deck, he straightened his back and swept the topdeck with his obedient eye.
The sfvantskors’ gaze followed his. The sailors looked where they looked, and then Fiffengurt turned to see where Pathkendle and the Lady Thasha were looking, and it was some seconds longer before they all became aware of this circular game, and stopped seeking what none could find: someone indisputably in command.
Of course Nilus Rose was still their captain. But Rose and thirteen others were hostages, caught in a trap so devious that the men struggled to believe it was the work of ixchel-crawlies-the eight-inch-tall beings that most humans had learned to fear and kill from their first days at sea. The crawlies had introduced a sleeping drug into the ship’s fresh water (hence the shortage) and when all were asleep had used ropes and wheelblocks to drag their victims to a cabin under the forecastle, which they had filled with a light, sweet-smelling smoke. The latter did no harm until one was deprived of it: then, in a matter of seconds, it killed. The hostages, all addicts now, stayed alive by tending a fire in a tiny smudge-pot, feeding it with dry berries provided several times a day by the ixchel. As long as the berry-fire sputtered on, they lived.
Given his plight, Captain Rose had temporarily entrusted the ship to Mr. Fiffengurt. So surely Fiffengurt was in command? But Sergeant Haddismal walked free as well-the crawlies had fed him an antidote that morning, fearing the Turachs might riot without their commander. Perhaps it was time for the military to take charge? But Haddismal was not the highest military officer on the Chathrand: that was Sandor Ott, the Imperial spymaster, the architect of their deadly mission. And Ott remained a hostage.
All told, an intolerable situation. Mutiny was the obvious answer-but how, and against whom? Kruno Burnscove or Darius Plapp might have led a few hundred gang members in such a rebellion-but the ixchel, thorough to a fault, had seized these two rival gang leaders as well.
So it was that the roving eyes converged at last on a tiny, copper-skinned figure, balanced on the mainmast rail. He was attended by six shaven-headed spearmen, and he wore a suit of fine black swallow feathers that shimmered when he walked. Those who were close enough saw his haughty chin, the plumb-line posture, the eyes that managed somehow to convey both ferocity and fear. It was galling, but inescapable: the most powerful figure on the Chathrand was this young ixchel lord, a crawly they could have batted overboard with one sweep of the hand.
“Well, Quartermaster?” he demanded. “Hasn’t my crew thirsted enough? Will you deliver them from misery, or not?”
His voice came out high and reedy: the effect of bending it into the register of the human ear. It was clear from his expression that he found the effort distasteful.
Fiffengurt scowled and deliberately turned away, busying himself with a davit strap. “My crew,” he muttered.
One of the ixchel guards snapped furiously: “You will answer Lord Taliktrum at once!”
Fiffengurt, Pazel and Thasha exchanged nervous looks. Behind them, Hercol Stanapeth leaped onto the deck and bent to whisper in the quartermaster’s ear. Fiffengurt nodded, then turned uneasily to face the crew.
“Now, ah, listen sharp, lads,” he said. “There’s danger ashore. The villagers can’t let us back inside their walls-”
Roars, howls: Fiffengurt was announcing a death sentence. The only danger anyone believed in was thirst, and the only fresh water this side of the gulf was the well in the village square. The men pressed closer, and their shouting increased. Fiffengurt waved desperately for silence.
“-but they’ve agreed to fill any casks we bring ’em, and to hand ’em off right there at the gatehouse. Mr. Fegin, get that yawl in the water! Thirty hands for duty ashore! Who’s prepared? Volunteers get their ration first.”
Instantly the roars became cheers, this time in earnest. Countless hands shot skyward. “Let it be done!” cried Taliktrum from his perch, but no one listened to him now. Already Fegin was ordering men to the capstans, and topmen were loosing cables to allow the big yawl to be hoisted.
Pazel and Thasha grinned at Fiffengurt, who breathed a sigh of relief. Bolutu descended from the skiff, pushing his way through Turach spears. Haddismal directed the prisoners to climb down from the boat. “On guard, marines, those are blary sfvantskors!” he shouted over the mayhem.
Haddismal possessed a voice to cut through storm and battle. Yet somehow one of the newly summoned Turachs did not heed him, and in the space of five seconds disaster struck. The soldier was stationed behind Neda, who had yet to rise to her feet. Leaning forward, he prodded her with one hand in the small of her back. Then his eyes found a long rip in Neda’s breeches. His hand developed a will of its own, and three fingers groped for an instant over the flesh of her thigh.
Neda simply exploded. With a backward elbow-thrust she broke the man’s front teeth, then spun on the bench and delivered a lightning kick to the chest of a second Turach before he could bring his spear to bear. Suddenly everyone was moving. Cayer Vispek’s boot deflected another spear; then he leaped into the rigging as the startled Turachs stabbed at his legs. Jalantri whirled toward Neda, but Haddismal clubbed him savagely across the face, and three Turachs fell on the young sfvantskor like boulders, grappling, while a fourth kicked at his stomach.
Neda instantly pulled her legs back against her chest, then snapped forward, rolling over the side of the skiff with a violent lurch. She came out of the roll with a twist of her upper body, and rose facing her would-be attackers. To the crew she seemed to have passed through the Turachs like a shadow-except that two lay senseless on the ground.
The crowd drew back. Neda whirled, as though suddenly aware of the vast, empty deck surrounding her, the futility of flight. And now the Turachs had recovered. They did not have the grace of sfvantskors, but they were terrible fighters, and they could spear anything that moved.
Neda almost became the proof of this, for eight soldiers had taken aim. But before they could let fly Thasha flung herself between them and their target.
Her friends shouted in horror. But the Turachs froze. Neda seized Thasha brutally from behind, catching the younger woman’s throat in the crook of her elbow. Thasha gasped but did not fight back.
Half out of his mind, Pazel rushed at them. “Neda, don’t! Thasha-”
As Neda’s grip tightened, Hercol lunged forward and caught Pazel by the arm. “Hear me, all of you!” he shouted, raising his black sword high. “On Heaven’s Tree I swear it: the one who harms Thasha Isiq will answer to me!”
“Hold, you dogs!” bellowed Haddismal. “Damn you, Stanapeth, what do you expect of us? The girl went mad!”
“I am doing kill!” shrieked Neda, in rough Arquali.
“Neda,” said Thasha, her voice constricted but wry, “I just saved your blary skin.”
Then Cayer Vispek spoke from the rigging. “The Turach groped at her womanhood. Perhaps Arquali women brook such treatment, but ours do not. You gave your word she would suffer no man’s abuse-and yet it begins before she sets foot on the deck.”
“All the more reason to get her safely to the brig,” snarled Haddismal. Then he looked down at his fallen soldier. “You muckin’ dullard, Vered! If you’d raised your eyes from her crotch to her blary tattoos you’d still have all
