whirled, ready to smash my face in, and I said, low and hard, “Duhrra! Calm down, bring the boy, come with me.
He picked up the boy in a single fluid motion of that massive body, and we turned and plunged back into the throng of shouting, excited, dust-stirring slaves. I had to break the neck of the whip-Deldar who reared up, flailing his whip with his right hand, his broken left arm dangling. He had seen us. I knew what would happen if we were detected. As for the other whip-Deldar — I saw a Brokelsh jump full on him and guessed his backbone would not stand the strain.
With Rukker, Fazhan, and Lorgad trailing on the chain, with Duhrra carrying the youth at my side, we bashed our way through the mob until we reached the line as yet undisturbed. I watched for guards, whip-Deldars, and anyone who showed too much interest.
“Put the boy down, Duhrra.”
I bent and scooped up dust, spit on it, wadded it.
“Stand up, lad! Hold yourself straight!”
I shoved the chunk of spittle-wadded dust up his bleeding nostril and then wiped away the blood, licking my fingers. When he looked presentable, and we had knocked the dust from one another — all of us -
I said to them all: “Stand and look stupid. By Zair! That should not be difficult! We know nothing of the disturbance.”
“Duh — Dak-” said Duhrra.
“Quiet, you fambly. Tell me later.”
Rukker, the Kataki, said, “You think fast, Dak, for an apim.”
“Shut your black-fanged wine-spout, Rukker. Here come the guards.”
We all stood there, in our chains, and looked suitably stupid. There was a considerable quantity of confusion lower down, and shouting, and the sound of the whips lashing. Some of the slaves were too stupid in all reality to run off. When order was restored and we were sorted out, the six of us were herded back into
“Duh — master,” Duhrra had said to me as we sorted ourselves out, “I should take the rowing frame.”
He was fractionally bigger than Rukker.
I said, “Fambly! With that newfangled claw of yours! Next to the gangway! Where you will get lashed more easily!”
“Yes, master.”
“And, for the sweet sake of Mother Zinzu the Blessed! I am not your master!”
“No, master.”
As always when arguing with Duhrra on this point — for he had attached himself to me on the southern shore, when he had lost his right hand, and since then we had had a few skirmishes together and were good comrades — I gave up the argument in a kind of helpless mirth. Even an oar-slave may feel that at times, in the ludicrousness of his position; for, to all the names of the gods in two worlds, it is not a position a sane man can regard without recourse to the black humor of absurdity. Some bustle attended our departure, and we were forced to throw our backs into the work. The captain was evidently in the devil of a hurry. The stockades and the cooking fires were left on the shore so we guessed we’d be back tonight. We pulled. We heaved up on the oar, those on the gangway sides of the long rows of men shoving up, standing up, and then with all the weight of the body and bunched muscles, hurling themselves frenziedly backward onto the bench. The hard wood had to be covered by the straw-stuffed sacks and the ponsho fleeces. Had they not been we would have been red raw in no time, and unfit for rowing. This is not a luxury the overlords of Magdag extend to their oar-slaves, in the matter of ponsho fleeces and sacks; it is a matter of economics and slave-management. The swifter squadron pulled about, it seemed to me, quartering in different directions. I guessed the courses were not set at random. We either searched for another ship, or we wasted a deal of energy. Nothing — apart from the eternal damned pulling — occurred, and we eventually and to our surprise heard the terminal whistles and the final double drumbeat. The oars lifted and were looped and held, locked in the rowing frames, and we slaves slumped, exhausted.
Before lethargy could drug us into stupefaction, we were flogged out and herded up into the job of hauling the swifters out of the water. The wood from which swifters are built must have been placed on Kregen either by a god or a devil. This flibre, as I have said, possesses remarkable strength for a remarkable lightness. We would scarcely have shifted the ships had they been built of lenk. But flibre gives a large vessel the shrewd feather- lightness of a much flimsier vessel. As I say, flibre was put on Kregen either by a god or a devil — a god, in order to lighten the drudgery of slaves, or a devil so that the damned ships could be manhandled out of the water at all.
At last, fed, exhausted, we flopped down on the hard ground of the stockade and slept. If anyone had wished to tell the story of his life to me at that time, and paid me handsomely to listen, I’d have consigned him to the Ice Floes of Sicce, and turned over and slept. The next day the swifters remained high on the beach and we oar-slaves sprawled in the stockade, still chained, but able to stretch out and rest our abused bodies.
Parties of hunters went inland toward the mountains and later as the suns began their curve toward the horizon we slaves were issued with steaming chunks of vosk. How we grabbed and stuffed and ate!
Provisioning swifters is invariably a complicated process, and the large numbers of men involved demand ready access to vast quantities of food. Usually we subsisted on the mash — there are several varieties
— the base of which consists of mergem, that rich plant stuffed with protein and vitamins and iron that has the blessed quality of fortifying a man against his daily toil. But for mergem, which provides so much nourishment in so small a bulk, we would have been a gaunt and hungry crew and quite unfitted to haul on our looms. Onions were provided — how Zorg and I had debated the dissection of a pair of onions!
— and some cheese and crusts and palines.[1]The palines helped keep the insanity levels within toleration.
We devoured the boiled vosk with the voraciousness of leems. Then we lay back with bloated bellies, burping contentedly, to sleep the night away.
Duhrra at last found time to tell me what had happened since we had stirred up the camp of King Genod’s army and stolen his airboat. He had had to be overpowered by the Zairians from Zandikar when I did not return in time, for he would have gone to find me. He spoke of this with some spirit of contempt for himself that he had been thwunked on the back of the head when he should have been alert not only against the cramphs of Green Grodnims but also, apparently, against the Red Zandikarese.
“When I woke up, Dak — duh! We were flying in the air!”
“You cannot blame the Hikdar — Ornol ti Zab, I believe his name was — he had a duty very plain to him.”
“Maybe so. But we flew away and left you.”
He and the lad Vax had shipped back from Zandikar and their vessel had been taken. It was becoming more and more dangerous for any vessel of the Red to venture into the western parts of the inner sea these days. The Grodnims had placed swifter squadrons at sea, which carried all before them. Only a very slim coincidence had brought us together again, and to Duhrra it was absolutely inevitable that we should meet up once more. As for Vax, he told me the youth was a fine lad, and potentially a good companion; although he would swear so dreadfully about his father, and Duhrra was strongly of the opinion that if Vax hadn’t run away from home to escape the continual beatings, he’d have killed the old devil. Or, so Duhrra believed.
