growing sick of names, sick of titles. This is, of course, a stupid frame of mind. Names are vital, names are essential, particularly upon Kregen, where so much is different and yet so much is the same as on this Earth four hundred light-years through interstellar space. . This is true of names. As to titles, I had collected a hatful already in my life upon Kregen and was to gather many more, as you shall hear. Of them all I had valued being a Krozair of Zy the most. And the Krozairs of Zy had ejected me, thrown me out, branded me Apushniad. No, I would not tell this Fazhan I had once been Pur Dray, the Lord of Strombor, the most feared Krozair upon the Eye of the World. Anyway, he wouldn’t believe me. Since I had taken a dip in the Sacred Pool of Baptism with my Delia I was assured of a thousand years of life and a remarkable ability to recuperate rapidly from wounds. This Fazhan betrayed the usual ageless look of Kregans who have arrived at maturity; he could be anywhere from twenty to a hundred and fifty or so.
“Dak?” He looked at me, and then away. Then, seeing that we were to be oar-comrades, he said, “I salute you, Dak, for dumping that Zair-forsaken Chulik in the water.”
He made no mention of Jikai in the matter, which pleased me. Too many people are too damned quick to talk of some trifle as a Jikai. A Jikai is a great and resounding feat of arms, or some marvelous deed
— the word should not be cheapened.
“And I am Rukker na-” boomed the Kataki, and stopped, and looked at us, with his evil lowering face dark with suppressed passion. “Well, since you are Tailless Dak, I am Rukker.” He lifted one massive hand. “But I shall not like it if you call me Tailless Rukker.”
The recovery had been swift. But he’d said
Carrying on his recovery, the Kataki swung his low-browed, furrowed face toward the Xaffer, looking past Fazhan and me. Katakis usually grease and oil and curl their black hair so that it hangs beside their faces. Their flaring nostrils curl above gape-jawed mouths. Their eyes are wide-spaced and yet narrow, brilliant and cold. They are not apim, like me; they are diffs. Perhaps their greatest physical peculiarity and strength is the tail each one can sinuously twirl into vicious speedy action, and with a curved razor-sharp blade strapped to its tip bring slicing and slashing and darting in against his opponent. No, I did not like Katakis, for they were aragorn, slave-managers, slavers, slave-masters.
“Xaffer!” roared this blow-hard Kataki, his dark-browed face fierce. “And what is your accursed name?”
The Xaffer surprised me.
“You are a Kataki,” he said in that whispering, hushed, timid voice of a Xaffer. “Your devil’s race has brought great misery and anguish to my people. I hate Katakis. My name is Xelnon and I shall not speak to you again.”
The Zairian shifted his eyes from the Xaffer to look at me, shocked. I looked at the Kataki, this ferocious Rukker. The blood pulsed in his face, veins stood out on his low forehead, his eyes looked murderous. “Cramph! Were we not chained you would not speak thus! Mark me well, Xelnon the onker! Your day will come and I shall-”
“What, Rukker,” I said loudly. “You will beat and lash and enslave him, as you are undoubtedly a Kataki and that is what Katakis are so good at doing.”
His shocked gaze shifted to me. We sat next to each other, with the steps of the bench lifting him a little higher than me so as to reach the loom. He glared at me. His chains rattled.
“You — apim-” He swallowed down and his thin lips showed spittle.
“Do not fret, Rukker the Kataki. Your tail is safe from me. If you do not cause me trouble.”
He bellowed then, raving. I kept a sharp eye on him, for I knew a little of chain fighting by slaves, and I had no desire to be strangled or have an eye flicked out. He reached down to grab me with his right hand, for we sat on the larboard side. This confrontation was no sudden thing; it was long overdue. He tried to seize me about the neck, for the iron rings had been removed after our walk here and tame-slaves were going about with pots of salve made into paste to ease us. The blood on my neck and back and chest was congealing. If he did as he intended he’d not only open up the sore places, he’d squeeze my throat into my neckbones, and if he did not choke me, he’d give me a damned sore throat and head. So I took his right hand with my left. His face convulsed. Struggling silently, for a space we held, he pressing on and I resisting him.
He glared with a mad ferocity upon me. Vicious and feral and violent are Katakis. This one thought to overpower me and subdue me and punish me for my words. Yes, Katakis are all those terrible things. Confident in his power Rukker bore down. It was his misfortune that the man upon whom he happened to choose to release his own frustrations labored under torments he knew nothing of. It was his hard luck, as a vicious, feral, and violent man, to meet a man who was more vicious, more feral, and more violent. I do not say these things in any foolish state of inverse pride. I know my sins. But, here, violence met violence and recoiled.
His eyes widened. I bore back harder, twisted, and so brought my right hand up to block the savage blow of his left. As for his killing tail — I stomped it flat against the planking of the deck, whereat he yelled.
“Desist, Rukker, or I shall break your arm off.”
“You — apim — I’ll — I’ll-”
“Do not think I would not do it, Rukker. You are a Kataki. Do not forget what that means.”
“I do not forget, you rast-”
I twisted a little more, and as his left fist still looped around at me, I took his wrist in my right hand and jerked most savagely.
He let a gasp of air puff past those thin twisted lips.
“You cramph! You’ll pay-”
A lash struck down across his broad naked back and he snapped upright. A whip-Deldar, sweating in his green, his dark face sullen, lifted for another blow. “What’s this?” he shouted. “I’ll discipline you -
you-”
“Whip-Deldar,” I said, speaking quickly and loudly enough to make my words penetrate. “There is no trouble here. We were testing the height and the stretch of the loom.”
The odd thing was that our motions might have been taken for a practice evolution. The whip-Deldar lowered his lash. He looked tired, tired and spiteful.
“You dare talk to me, you rast!”
“Only to save your trouble, whip-Deldar. The oar-master would not welcome damaged oar-slaves now.”
The whip-Deldar glowered, flicking the lash. He might be a poor specimen of humanity anywhere, let alone in evil Magdag, but the sense of what I said penetrated his sluggish brain. He gave me a cut with the lash, stingingly, just to show me who was in charge here, and went off, cursing roundly. I do not laugh, as you know, nor smile readily. I kept my ugly old face as hard as a bower anchor as Rukker, the Kataki, said, “He was flogging me, not you, apim.”
“If you wish him to continue I will call him back for you.”
“By the Triple Tails of Targ the Untouchable! Were you a Kataki I would understand!”
Fazhan leaned forward and looked up past me. “But for this apim Dak, you would have been beaten, Rukker.”
“I know it. But it would be best if you did not mention it again.”
“Ah,” said Fazhan ti Rozilloi, “but it is worth the telling, by Zantristar the Merciful!”
The swifter shook and a shudder passed through her fabric. In the next instant, to the accompaniment of distant hailing above decks, we all understood we had pushed off from the wharf. A long, slow gentle rocking made us all aware that we had been cast off into our new life. Until the oars were in, the swifter would possess this gentle rocking motion, for she was of large enough build to remain steady in the water without her wings.
Rukker the Kataki and Fazhan ti Rozilloi glared for a space longer at each other, then I stuck my old carved beak head between them and said, “If we are to pull together it will be easier if we do not try to fight one another all the time.”
Rukker nodded. He was a man accustomed to instant decision.
“You say you understand these infernal things. Tell me.”
“You have never sailed in a swifter?”
“Aye, a few times. But I sat in the captain’s cabin and drank wine and the way of the vessel did not concern me.”
“It concerns you now,” said Fazhan.
“Aye, that is why I would learn of it.”
