were bitter arguments over the daily dole of food and water.
The water was brought from the Velvet River in casks which had once held fusel-oil. The food was a hunk of ironbread per man per day, plus a bowl each of a tepid, fuscous broth which occasionally contained some inscrutable fabaceous objects which, despite their shape, were certainly not beans. Sometimes this was supplemented by a bit of gristle or a bone with a few rat-pickings still adhering.
For the first ten days, a larger man bullied Drake, stealing half of his food and a third of his water. After which Drake lost patience, and fought back. The gaolers removed the larger man's corpse without comment. Perhaps they failed to notice his broken neck, and thought he had simply succumbed to the river water as so many others did.After that, nobody picked on Drake.
But there was no escaping from the constant arguments, from the banter of gamblers playing at sharps and knuckles, from the monotonous sing-song of very tame geniuses competing against each other in mental games of dragon chess, and from the whining complaints of old men with face-ache and arthritis. Some of the ancients, Drake found, had been stuck in this prison cell for as much as thirty years!He determined he would escape.Yes.And kill Plovey of the Regency, kill him slowly, with great care. And rescue Zanya. And escape with her to the Far South, to Drangsturm itself, and seek employment with wizards.
First, Drake tried to bribe a gaoler with imaginary monies. Despite Drake's skill at deception, this ploy failed. Then he tried for liberty by offering his body to one particularly villainous-looking turnkey, a brute with a swollen, depraved face and a great big bloated kyte. But the man had got himself castrated years ago, when he was seeking a position as a eunuch in a palace at Voice, in the Rice Empire.
So Drake feigned sickness, hoping to be sent to some place of recovery. But he was told he could die where he was as easily as any place elsewhere. So he feigned death – but when his body was thrown onto a bonfire in a prison courtyard, he came to life rather quickly. And was beaten thoroughly before being returned to his prison cell.Right.He would dig his way out. Where was the weakest point?
The floor was of stone, the walls were of stone, but the ceiling was of wooden boards. Which sagged in one corner. That looked weak enough. So, one evening, Drake clambered up to the ceiling, using window slits for handholds and footholds. Once up there, he began to lever away one of the boards with a human thigh bone.
As the board began to give, Drake heard an ominous humming sound. It reminded him of a Door. Good! He'd jump through a Door to anywhere, thank you, and no questions asked!
He threw his strength against the thigh bone. And the board gave way. and fell with a crash. So did an incoherent mass of darkness, which promptly resolved itself into a swarm of bees.
'Pox and bitches!' said Drake, from the floor to which he had fallen.
Then said no more, for a bee stung his tongue.
As the bees raged amongst the prisoners, they screamed for mercy. And, in their frenzy, tore away the door to their prison cell and mobbed outside. They were all rounded up at last in a high-walled courtyard, then cudgeled, then interrogated.
And Drake was hauled in front of a judge, who pronounced him to be incorrigible.
'You have proved,' said the judge, 'to be unworthy of the delights of the House of Earthly Enlightenment.'
'Does this mean you're going to execute me?' said Drake.
'No! You don't get off so lightly! Life with hard labour! Take him away!'
Life with hard labour turned out to mean life as a galley-slave on the Velvet River. And a bitter life it was, as summer yielded to autumn and the bitter winds began to preach of the winter yet to come.
Drake, to his dismay, found himself shackled to a rowing bench between two terrible bores. One was a dismal pedant who knew seventeen different languages and corrected Drake's grammar every time he opened his mouth.
'You were talking in your sleep last night,' said the pedant one morning. 'You said, 'Zanya I love thou.' It should have been 'Zanya I love thee.' '
'You're wrong,' said Drake. 'It should have been 'Zanya I lust for you.' ''It would be more elegant to say, 'It is you I lust for.' '
And this could well go on for half a day, unless they were rowing at such a pace that they needed all their breath for their labour.
The other bore was a gabeller who had embezzled a trifling amount of official money.
'They convicted me of making off with an undeclared amount. I was sentenced to labour on the galleys until I'd paid it back. What did I need to pay? Why, an undeclared amount. What, five skilders, or five million? Why, none of those, they said, for none of those is an undeclared amount. So I held out an empty palm, declaring I was offering them an undeclared amount. Why, no, they said, that is not any kind of amount whatsoever. That is nothing! So here I stay forever!'
Which made a nice enough story the first time around, but Drake, who heard it twice a day, pretty soon knew it by heart.
The galley he was on rowed right regular between Selzirk and Androlmarphos. At Selzirk they were fed on horsemeat from a knackery in Jone; in 'Marphos they were fed with fish; in between cities, they were fed with bread and lentils. The meals were vast, as befitted their backbreaking labours: but the meals were also, of course, monotonous.
But the rivertalk gave variety to their life, for talk went from galley to galley when ships were rafted up together on the river, or tied up at the docks, and few movements by land or sea were secret from the river.
Thus Drake was one of the first to hear of disaster in the south.
At first the rumours were wild, and scanty on detail, therefore little to be believed. But, as autumn chilled to winter, rumour firmed to fact. Drangsturm had been destroyed. The flame trench which had guarded the north against the terror-lands was no more. The Confederation of Wizards had destroyed itself in war. The monsters of the Swarms were marching north.
And now Drake's galley was on the river by day and night, taking wealth and panic from Selzirk to 'Marphos, where wealth and panic took ship for foreign parts, quitting forever the shores of civilization.
So the work was harder than ever. But the galley-slaves were glad now to be galley-slaves, for that meant, surely, that they would be working their way to freedom when their own craft finally took to the open waters as the menace of the Swarms got closer.
Then came the day when a Neversh was sighted flying over the Velvet River.The next day, two were seen. The day after, a dozen.
And then, come dawn on the next day, attacks on shipping began.
The owner of Drake's galley made his decision at 'Marphos. He had his slaves cut free from their rowing benches and chased ashore at spearpoint. Then he sold places on those rowing benches to the high and mighty, taking his pay in pearls and diamonds. Then forth to sea set the galley, leaving the slaves on shore.
So there was Drake, out of work. He still had a great big iron ring clamped around his left ankle, and from it dragged a great big length of rusty chain, at the end of which was another iron ring, still embedded in the chunk of rowing bench which had been cut away so that Drake could be set free.He counted himself lucky.
If they'd really been in a hurry, they could have cut off his foot so they could pull his leg free from its ankle- ring.
First off, he found a blacksmith's shop. There he took a file to his chains, and freed himself from all impedimenta. Then he went to the docks, confident that he could work a passage to foreign parts. He was a sailor, tested and true. Better still, he could lie, cheat, bluff and fight, if necessary. Or stow away.
But the docks were bare, but for a carousing mob of slaves, soldiers, whores, thieves, beggars, apprentices, lawyers' clerks, junior tax accountants and similar scum, indulging in an orgy of drinking, looting and wanton copulation.
If Drake had been sixteen and senseless, he would have joined them. But he was twenty, a seasoned survivor who had lived through shipwreck, slaughter, torture, imprisonment and assorted disaster. More to the point, he had gone chest to chest with one of the Neversh when that monster had attacked Jon Arabin's fine ship, the
Unlike others, he did not make a heap of bolts of silk and crates of glasswear, marble statues and porcelain vases, women's underwear and ornamental snuffboxes, polished silver and golden candlesticks.No.
