stranger, to the benches.”
He smiled. His face was weather-beaten, his eyes dark and penetrating, and that arrogant beak nose lifted at times so that, for a heartbreaking moment, I would catch that glimpse of Zorg. Zenkiren, like Zorg, had a mass of black curly hair, shining and oiled and remarkably romantic, I have no doubt.
“We followers of Zair have a respect for a man, my Lord of Strombor.”
A single chart, of remarkably poor quality, hopeless accuracy, and miniscule scale, had been found in the locker, which showed Strombor. The whole coastlines outside the inner sea were incorrect, but the names were marked down: Loh, Vallia, Pandahem, Segesthes, with Zenicce marked and, alongside in a panel, the names of the twenty-four Houses of Zenicce, both noble and lay. The fascinating thing here was that Strombor was marked and Esztercari was not, proving the map to have been drawn well over a hundred and fifty years before.
“We have a little contact with the outside world, mainly with Vallia and Donengil, but we are an inward- looking people. The main effort to which we are all dedicated is defiance and resistance to the power of Grodno, no matter when, how, and where such a resistance shall be made.”
I looked at him. He spoke as though out of rote. Then he smiled at me again, lifted his glass, and said:
‘To the ice floes of Sicce with Magdag and all her evil spawn!”
“I’ll drink to that,” I said, and did so.
They had given me a decent white loincloth and I had washed and rubbed scented oils on my body, and I had eaten real food again. Now, sitting drinking with the captain of the swifter, I felt human once more
— or, I reminded myself, as human as I would ever feel while the canker of Grodno and Magdag continued to exist.
My feelings were made very plain to Zenkiren, who had sized me up to his satisfaction, as he thought. The many parallels of the red-green situation in the Eye of the World to that old battle between Esztercari and Strombor had occurred to me; although I found greater contrast and interest in the Catholic and Islamic conflicts of the late Renaissance, or the bitterness between Guelf and Ghibelline. I was aware, too, that the greater malice seemed always to exist between those whose beliefs had diverged from a single origin. The people of the sunset, the old original inhabitants of the Eye of the World, had built well and industriously to produce the Grand Canal and the Dam of Days, that terrifying structure I had not yet seen. They had also built fine cities, some ruined and lost, some ruined and partially rebuilt, now inhabited by the newer men who had split from the old red-green comradeship.
“Those vile cramphs of Magdag,” Zenkiren said to me as we voyaged back to Sanurkazz. “We know how they build. They are obsessed by building, diseased by it.”
“It is destroying their culture, their life,” I said.
“Yes! They think to find favor in the sight of their evil master, the false deity Grodno the Green, by every act of building, every new construction of monstrous proportions. They bleed their countryside dry for workers and wealth. So, then they must raid and ravage us in order to replenish their stock.”
“I saw a farm, a massive affair, very well-run and producing-”
“Oh, yes!” Zenkiren waved a dismissive arm. “Of course! They have millions to feed; they must produce food, as we must. But they raid us continually and take our young men and our girls and children for their consuming buildings.”
“You raid them.”
“Yes! It is the glory of Zair laid upon us.” He looked at me and hesitated; it surprised me, for he was a fine captain and a man who knew his mind. “You were the friend of Zorg of Felteraz. I have heard from Zolta of that. You are a Lord. I think-” Again he hesitated, and then, in a slower and softer voice, asked: “Did Zorg speak to you of the Krozairs of Zy?”
“No,” I said. “He used the word Krozair when he was dying. He seemed — proud, then.”
Zenkiren changed the flow of conversation, then, and we spoke of many things as
In all honesty I must admit I did not even think it strange that Zenkiren should take my word that I was the Lord of Strombor. I was beginning to adopt the attitudes of mind of the leader of a House of Zenicce, and my years as Vovedeer and Zorcander with the Clansmen had given me the air of habitual authority. But I believe Zenkiren would not have cared had I been the lowliest of foot soldiers, for he did everything merely because he knew that I had been the friend of Zorg of Felteraz and had avenged his death. I was convinced the word Krozair linked these attitudes. I had seen, as
The ballista used on the ships of the Eye of the World was called a varter, and it was a true ballista, in that its propulsive energy came from two half-bows whose butts were clamped in perpendicular thongs twisted many times. The cord was drawn by a simple windlass. The varter could be adapted to shoot arrows, or bolts, large iron- tipped monstrous balks of timber, or to hurl stones. It could achieve a considerable degree of accuracy.
Every sixth day on ships of Sanurkazz the religious observances connected with Zair were solemnly undertaken with due rites and prayers. Religion, I had thought, was the sop for the masses, along with bloodthirsty broadsheets detailing the latest murders and hangings, cockfights, prizefights, and the occasional tankard of ale at the local alehouse. Religion kept the masses in order. These men of Sanurkazz, however, well though I might mock them in the privacy of my own thoughts, were very splendid in their best clothes, the ship-priest in his vestments, the silver and gold vessels, the blazing embroidery of the banners and flags, the shrilling notes of the silver and ebony trumpets, all conspiring to seduce any solid man into an euphoric haze of belief.
Naturally, the day on which the rites of Zair were performed was not the same day as that on which Grodno was similarly honored.
I say similarly; I had seen the religious services of the men of Magdag, and they were different in a way that, looking back, I can see was no different at all. Then, I considered them depraved and evil. It seems obvious that there was only one color which the men of Magdag could paint the hulls of their swifters. The ancient pirates of Greece, who roamed the Aegean, used to paint their hulls green. The men of Sanurkazz had struck a compromise. Green was of some use as a camouflage color; not much, a little. Red would have been some degrees more visible, so the galleys of the men of Zair of the southern shore of the inner sea were painted blue.
They carried three sets of sails in more or less regular use: white for daytime cruising, black for night sailing, and blue for raiding.
On this voyage back to Holy Sanurkazz, a voyage which was something in the nature of a victory triumph, we wore white sails.
Magdag stood upon the northern shore of the inner sea over to the western end; her power and law ran for many dwaburs toward the east until it tended to diminish a little as cities with their own marine wished to flex their own muscles of independence. All, however, were in some way tributary to Magdag, and all, naturally, were partisans of the green.
Holy Sanurkazz stood upon the southern shore of the inner sea over toward the eastern end, at the narrow neck of one of the dependent seas that extended southward. Her hegemony stretched in somewhat different ways from her opponent’s toward the west, where cities flourished which grew steadily weaker and less assured the farther west they had been sited. All, however, owed a single burning allegiance to the red.
It seemed clear that the strategy dominating the inner sea would be that of raiding to keep the opponent occupied, and a series of direct and violent blows against the chief hostile city. With either Magdag or Sanurkazz reduced, the other cities of the losing side would, like children deprived of parents, quickly succumb. This was a
