The Tides of Kregen

hell.

I said: 'I will take this boat.'

The headman looked dubious at this, with much pulling of his lower lip. One or two of the young bloods fingered their knives. I said, 'I have saved your girls. I would like you to place water and food in the boat.' More head scratching and eyes turned to the sky. 'By Vox!' I said. 'And would you wish the Yanimas to find a boat of theirs here when next they call?'

That was a two-pronged argument, but Mogo the Wise took the point as I had intended.

'That would make them very angry.'

'And they would kill many of you. Put food and water into the boat and I will leave you.' So it was settled.

The hideous anticlimax, the dread truth, the damnable situation in which I had been placed screamed at me, screeching with impending madness in my skull. Here I was, back on Kregen, and I had absolutely no idea where. I was lost. And all I had for transport was a mere rowing boat. Truly the Star Lords — if they had pitched me back here — took their revenge harshly.

But lost or not, rowing boat or not, I would set off to find Valka and my Delia. To the Ice Floes of Sicce with the Everoinye!

Chapter Seven

Lost on Kregen

Some experiences in one’s life one would wish to forget. Certainly I rate that little boating excursion as among that group of experiences I would do a very great deal never to repeat. By the position and altitude of the suns I could make a fair stab at latitude; longitude remained as much a mystery as it used to be on Earth before John Harrison gave the deep-water mariner a chronometer that would keep time with incredible accuracy. I had two alternatives and neither appeared over-appealing. Despite the fact that Kregen possesses a much greater land area than Earth, there is still a vast amount of water. Here I was, in a cranky, stubborn rowing boat, adrift somewhere on the waters of Kregen and with every direction on the compass to choose for my direction.

The other alternative, simply allowing the winds and currents to push me where they willed, in the anticipation that I would be cast up on a frequented shore, I dismissed. By more bargaining as the food and water were brought down I obtained a sheet of cloth — that fawn material the women made up from the fibers of a cottony plant — and cut down a tree to make a mast and spar. Fashioning a crude dipping lug and stepping the mast as well as I could, I determined to sail where I was going under my own power.

The little dipping lug reminded me of the muldavy of the Eye of the World. This boat was a rough and ready affair, split logs being bent to shape, secured with treenails and with quantities of hair packed in with clay. It was more of a raft than a boat, but it would serve. It would have to serve. With clumsy pottery crocks filled with water, a supply of cooked chickens and strips of bosk, dried in salt, and piles of various fruits of which palines formed a sizable proportion, I set off. No doubt the islanders thought me mad. This island of Inama was clearly situated dwaburs off the shipping lanes, and my task was to find either a ship or land as speedily as possible. It would not be easy. I could go east or west and be sure of striking land eventually. But if I was to the east of Havilfar and sailed east I’d be voyaging into an empty sea until I struck the lands of the other continental grouping from which came the shanks. And if I was to the west of Turismond and sailed the boat west, the same thing would result. The problem was a knotty one.

If I sailed north I fancied I’d stand the best chance. Southward would take me toward the equator and therefore away from Vallia.

In a similar situation on Earth there would be a strong possibility that a sailor would feel the ocean he sailed: the blue of the Pacific, the raw gray of the Atlantic, the sense of the Mediterranean. I had had no experience of these far outer oceans of Kregen, so I sailed north. The breeze veered toward the east and, accepting this as the kind of fate that had dogged me, bore away toward the northwest. The lug sail pouted, the boat more forced its way through the water than glided along, and I maintained a most strict rationing of the meager supplies.

The day came when I could not prolong the supplies by any artifice whatsoever; I had none. I do not intend to labor overlong on the rigors of that voyage; suffice it to say I caught fish and slit them open for their small quantities of fresh water. I drank a few handfuls of seawater per day for the moisture, knowing I could tolerate that small amount of salt, and I ate fish, which I detest, not only because of the damned fishheads from around the curve of the horizon.

Whether or not I could have survived without that immersion in the Pool of Baptism in Aphrasoe I do not know. But the day came when, almost out of my head and scarcely believing what I saw to be true, an argenter appeared, backed her maintopsail and so picked me up.

The hands that lifted me from the boat, the faces that stared down on me, were all a shining lustrous black. I knew I had fallen into the hands of apims from Xuntal, people of the same race as Balass. I had always found the Xuntalese to be firm, thoughtful, generous, fierce when they had to be. It seemed wise to appear in worse case than I was. So they carried me below decks and I flopped in a peculiar bunk built into the side of the ship and went to sleep. Water, food, everything I needed of bodily comfort was provided when I awoke.

There is little else to say about the argenter. She was Scepter of Xurrhuk, much after the style of those broad argenters of Pandahem, although, I fancied, not quite so wide and stubby and with another knot of speed in a fair breeze. She was painted in brilliant colors of many tones and shades and her sails were all of purest white, which delighted and amazed me, an old salt accustomed to the drab tawny sails long exposed to the elements of my own vessels.

Her master, a tall, imposing man wearing dyed blue garments of the finest ponsho wool, invited me to his cabin. The sweep of the aft windows brought back memories. I sat and drank a very fair Maxanian, straw-colored, light on the palate, and the master introduced himself as Captain Swixonon.

'You are a lucky man, dom.'

'Aye, Captain. Xurrhuk of the Curved Sword smiled.'

His craggy face regarded me gravely. 'You are not of Xuntal.'

'No. But I count at least one Xuntalese as a good friend. Tell me, Captain, where are we bound?'

'We sail from Mehzta to Xuntal.'

'I know a good friend from Mehzta also.'

'You are a much traveled man?'

I did not laugh but I said, 'No. I met them far from their homes. I cannot pay you now for a passage, but I know ships. I can work. Later, when I am home, I will remit payment through the Lamnias.'

'Very well.' He was a captain, a man who made his mind up rapidly.

'Thank you.'

'And your name? And your country?'

'I am Dray Prescot, of Vallia.'

He raised his eyebrows. I did not think he had heard of me. After all, Kregen is a large place and my doings, although making a stir in the countries I had been, would mean little elsewhere.

'I am pleased to make a connection with Vallia. Maybe we can arrange something later.' He was shrewd. Trading over the oceans is a chancy business. There are fliers on Kregen, as you know, but most of that marvelous world’s commerce is carried on by ship or canal or animal transport. Fliers -

as I well knew — are often rare and precious objects, completely unknown over many and many a highly civilized land. Havilfar holds her secrets well.

With that in mind, I said, 'I would like to hire or charter a flier in Xuntal. The Vallian embassy is still open?'

He looked puzzled. 'Why should it not be, dom?'

'I have been away. . politics. I shall be glad to be back, by Vox!' In his shrewdness I fancy he read more into me than I intended to give away. He asked no questions about my arrival in a small boat, but he must have seen her and noted her lines. The rest of the journey I acted as a simple seaman and, I swear by Zair, despite the