“It’s the oldest, hoariest trick there is, Seg,” I said as we slid through the calm water toward the Pattelonian broad ship and the Magdag swifter. “But it’s all we have to work with. It’s worked in the past and no doubt it will work again, in the future. All we’re concerned with now is that it works for us this time.”
“How many men, Dray?” was all Seg Segutorio said.
“The swifter’s a seven-six-six, one hundred and fifty. That means she has three banks of oars each side, twenty-five oars a bank. The upper deck oars are crewed by seven men each, the two lower banks by six men to an oar. That’s about a thousand men or more, given spare oarsmen carried below.”
“And all slave?”
“All slave.”
“You seem to know about these things, Dray.”
“I know.”
“And the warriors?”
“That varies. Depends on the purpose for which the swifter has been put into commission. I’d guess, again, that there won’t be less than a couple of hundred. If they’re on a big one, there will be a lot more.”
I thought of my days as a slave aboard swifters from Magdag. “They crowd the men, Seg. They keep them chained to the oars and they feed them water and onions and slop and cheese and they douse them out with seawater twice a day and they fling them overboard when they’re exhausted and all the strength has gone from them and they’re lashed to death.”
“We’re approaching nicely,” said Segutorio. He laughed. “All I regret is — I do not have my own longbow with me, my bow I made myself from the sacred Yerthyr tree that grew up on Kak Kakutorio’s land. He near caught me, the day I cut my stave. I was twelve, then. I built that bow for use when I’d gained my full stature — and when I did she balanced out just right. Kak’s tree was almost black, so dark and secret green it was. He near caught me-”
Seg checked himself. I saw the way his shoulders hunched. That streak of practical common sense had thrust hard at his reckless spirit and he could apprehend clearly just what we were getting into. He was driven by hatred for the green deity worshipers and by a habitual recklessness. I was impelled by my vows, my own dark memories — and because I was a Krozair of Zy.
Being privileged to be a member of the Order of Krozairs of Zy means a very great deal to me. That they are a small group of dedicated men tucked away in an inland sea on a planet four hundred light-years away, bound up with their fanatical adherence to a mythical red deity and in absolute opposition to an equally mythical green deity, has no bearing on their inner strengths, their gallantry, their selflessness, their mysticism — which contains profundities beyond profundities — their remarkable disciplines of the sword, their essential courageous integrity. These are qualities found only in a debased coinage on the Earth you inhabit today, it sometimes seems.
Seg Segutorio hated slavery and slave-holders — as did I. Yet only when I had been the captain of a Sanurkazzian swifter and a Krozair had I, too, employed slaves. They had rowed for me in conditions little better than those of my own misery when I had pulled for Magdag. This surely must mark the power of the Order of Krozairs of Zy over me. When I had attempted to free my slaves and had adopted free oarsmen I and my crew had been so close to a horrific and murderous end as to cause nightmares.[2]
So, thus thinking, I waited as the muldavy closed the final gap between us and the swifter’s stern. Everyone aboard had their attention occupied by the dying moments of the struggle to take possession of the broad ship. I had thought she was sinking; no doubt the swifter captain considered he could plunder her and take her people prisoners before she sank. Now the high upflung curve of the stern rose from the water before us.
The swell slopped us up and down. I stood up in the bows. The swifter was large and her apostis, the rectangular rowing frame, extended well out from the smooth curves of her hull. Her oarsmen, arranged
Among the elaborate scrollwork and what we would call gingerbread I found easy handholds. As my bare feet gripped and heaved me up so Seg followed. We were both unarmed. I wore simply the same strip of brown cloth taken from the sorzart, and Seg wore his gray slave breechclout. Carefully, now, I put a hand on the deck below the rail. One of the steering oars extended past my back. I lifted myself gently. I looked.
The steering-deldar lay on his oar, ready with curling movements to keep the head of the swifter against the broadship in time with his companion on the other side and the occasional thrusts from the oars. The drum-deldar would be sitting with his drumsticks poised, and the oar-master would be sitting in his little tabernacle below the break of the quarterdeck. An officer — very resplendent in green silk and gold lace
— strode about looking pleased with himself. I cursed his black Magdaggian heart. As carefully I lowered myself.
Seg was looking at me. His face was wrinkled up, his whole expression one of absolute distaste.
“They stink,” he said.
“Yes.”
Swifters are built on lines laid down by naval architects of varying talents. I recognized the lines of this example and I knew my way about her as slave or captain. We made an entry into the aft lower cabin -
what would on an Earthly seventy-four be called the gun room — and found the space deserted of life. Beyond the doors opening onto the lower or thalamite bank of oars lay the manpower I needed. This galley was of the cataphract variety so that her upper thranite banks of rowers were protected by a fenced bulwark. At the time I was still undecided, as I was undecided between the long keel and the short keel theories, whether the open un- bulwarked style, the aphract with its free passage of air, was better than the cataphract which did at least offer some protection from arrows. However that might be, that extra protection afforded us an extra level of concealment as we went about our work. First out of the double-folding doors I saw the nearest whip-deldar and before he could so much as turn I held him in a grip from which he slumped lifeless to the gangway.
The slaves stared up with lackluster eyes. Their heads were bushy mops, clear indication that the swifter had been at sea for some time, for the heads of oar slaves when they clear the mole at Magdag are shaved as smooth as a shot trimmed for a twenty-four pounder bowchaser. Seg started for the other whip-deldar at a dead run.
Down here in the odors and the confinement the whip-deldars took turns at duty, or received thalamite duty as a punishment.
The fellow I had dropped carried a knife. It took me only a few moments to pick the lock of the great chain to which all the other chains were attached.
The nearest slave looked at me in a puzzled fashion. His back carried the marks of his trade. The one next to him also looked up, his jaw slack and mumbling over broken, decaying teeth behind thick slobbering lips. I experienced a moment of despair.
These slaves were completely broken. Would they rise, as they
There would be no question here of an immediate flinging off of the great chain, a gathering of their own chains into vengeful fists, and an immediate abandonment of the habits of slavery. They must see what could be done. But — the lower deck held the recalcitrants as a rule, the troublemakers, the extra-tough. Had I disastrously miscalculated?
Then from that twin channel of upturned faces, bearded, filthy, a man clambered up dragging his chains. He stared at me.
“Pur Dray!”
I did not recognize him. But he knew me. I sensed the change, then. I heard the word “Krozair!” and I hurriedly raised my hands.
“Be silent! Free yourselves now the great chain is loosed. Keep the oars at the level — you know. We will free our comrades above — and then —
Of course, they could not keep silent Once the traumatic bludgeon of release had shocked them, once they suddenly realized that they need not be slaves again, there was no holding them. Whip-marked naked bodies began to spill out into the central gangway with its slits of sky above and the long rows of naked legs of the oarsmen of the upper two banks. A whip-deldar looked over his narrow split-deck and yelled. I hurled the knife as I had hurled
