Kingdom Of Royth

CHAPTER 7

That evening Blade stood at the railing of the late Oshawal's galley, Thunderbolt, and watched the flames roar up from Triumph. To one side of him at a discreet distance stood Alixa and a little beyond her Brora, and to the other side stood Oshawal's first mate, the wiry little pirate who had offered Blade entrance into the Brotherhood. His name was Tuabir.

Blade was contemplating the road by which he had traveled to his new status as a pirate of Neral, or at least a candidate for the status. It was a precarious position, but almost certainly better than waiting around as a high-ranking prisoner until it was discovered that no ransom would ever be forthcoming for him. And he had made it less precarious than it might have been by a stroke of practical leadership.

In answer to the grumbling among Oshawal's men about taking an ignorant fighter, perhaps a landlubber, as captain, Blade had climbed on the railing and spoken to them.

«Oshawal Rida's son was a mighty warrior whose prowess will be sung for centuries. And he was also a wise man in the ways of the sea. Before I am worthy to step into his shoes, I must gain some small part of that same wisdom. When we reach Neral, I shall ask some worthy Brother and Captain to take me on as mate and teach me the ways of the sea. When I have learned enough, I shall return to take my place aboard Thunderbolt. Until then, follow Tuabir. I will not lead brave men into danger through not knowing the ways of the sea.» In the wake of that speech, the grumblings turned to cheers, the black looks faded, and he caught sight of Tuabir nodding and grinning.

Of his two companions, the realistic Alixa, grief-stricken as she was for her dead father, had yet accepted Blade's stratagem with a shrug of her graceful shoulders. Blade, after all, had used a ruse much like what she herself had planned. Moreover, she admitted that it was one that would quite possibly offer them both a much better chance of safety than hers. Still, he did not venture to approach her or speak to her that evening as she stood by the rail of Thunderbolt, wrapped in her blue cloak and watching the flames roar up from Triumph in an eye-searing pyramid.

Brora, on the other hand, had nearly thrown himself overboard rather than accept the protection of someone who had turned traitor to all honest seamen by joining the pirates. Blade was even less willing to approach the tough sailor that evening. He knew Brora would have preferred to be, if not a corpse burning in the flames, at least one of the shackled slaves in the lower benches and holds of Thunderbolt and her sister vessels. Blade knew that only learning he had joined the pirates with the intention of escaping as soon as possible would make Brora respect him again. But that intention was something he would have to keep secret for some time to come and pay whatever price might be necessary.

Certainly he had no idea of how it might be accomplished, the morning after the burning of the ship, when a sea flecked with whitecaps tossed burned timbers about. Even Indhios' gold could not keep a fleet of Neraler pirates together beyond the moment of victory. The fleet was breaking up. Those ships that had lost too many men for safe navigation or further fighting began the long beat to the northwest, homeward bound for Neral. Those still strong enough for further raiding or with crews greedy for more loot turned the opposite way, to spread out along the shipping lanes in search of their next prey.

With her captain and fifteen of her men dead, Thunderbolt was one of those that turned for home. Day darkened into night, which in turn faded into day, and so it continued for seventeen days and nights. Although the lateen-rigged Thunderbolt could sail closer to the wind than any square-rigger, it was still a long beat. On more than one occasion Tuabir abandoned hope of making any progress against the contrary winds. Then the drums beat the crew and the slaves to man the sixty oars and pounded out the cadence that kept those oars moving until the winds blew right again. And on one occasion they had to furl the sails, batten down oarports and hatches, and run helpless as a canoe shooting rapids before a howling northwest gale that blew for two days.

It was during that gale that Alixa decided to make the best of the fact that she and Blade would be much in each other's company for a long time, and there would be none to judge what they did except the rough and bawdy pirates. Blade realized they would wonder if a lusty man betrothed to such a magnificent specimen of female did not indulge himself as often as possible. Nor did he really disagree with Alixa's notion that there was no point in observing the proprieties conjured up by the dessicated chaperones of an over-civilized court. He had always been a man to take his pleasures as lustily and as frequently as possible. So Alixa spent most of those two nights and others afterwards in Blade's bed, and by no means all of that time was spent sleeping.

They had eleven days of voyaging after the storm blew itself out, eleven days of fair skies, cooperative winds, and seas sometimes whitecapped but never wild.

On the evening of the seventeenth day just before sunset the lookout called down, «Land ho.» An hour later Blade on deck saw the line of the horizon that was Neral. Tuabir told him that it was customary to lie off until morning unless one was being pursued and not enter the harbor by night. When morning came and Blade, after a bout with Alixa and a refreshing sleep afterwards, came on deck, he saw why. And he also saw why Neral had never been taken or even seriously threatened since the Brotherhood had made it their base some hundred or more years before.

The island was a natural fortress further improved by human ingenuity. It stretched away some forty miles to the north. But it was the south end, the one they were approaching, that was the heart of its strength. The entire southern end of the island was sheer cliff more than two hundred feet high, fringed with reefs extending out two or three miles. All, that is, except for one channel leading to an equally narrow slash in the cliffs. Behind that narrow slash, half a mile long but no more than a hundred feet wide at most, lay an immense landlocked harbor, large enough to accommodate three times the Brotherhood's two hundred ships. Climbing up the steep sides of that harbor were all the buildings that housed the Brotherhood and all the activities needed to sustain their power. Looming over fleet, harbor, and town alike was the vast gray bulk, visible fifty miles away on a clear day, called only the Mountain. It separated the southern portion of the island from the northern. Over winding, easily blocked paths the meat, grain, and garden stuffs from the farms and herds that filled the northern portion of the island came in to feed the Brotherhood and fill its storerooms. Those storerooms, Tuabir said, never held less than a year's ample rations. The Brotherhood could loll in comfort in its fortress and sneer at any opponent for far longer than that opponent could keep a fleet near or an army on the island. They had in fact done so three times.

Tuabir ordered the sails furled and the masts lowered into their cradles amidships. The rowers manned their benches, and the drums began to beat a slow, creeping cadence. Thunderbolt was just approaching the entrance to the channel, marked by two squat buoys with glass oil lanterns mounted on them, when a red flag went up on a pole jutting out from the cliff to the left of the passage through the rock.

Tuabir cursed. «Another ship coming out,» he muttered. «Back your oars!» he yelled. Thunderbolt crabbed her way clear of the channel and waited. Soon the boom of an oarmaster's drum and the thump of oars came to their ears, echoing off the high walls of the passage; then a ship came in sight. Tuabir grinned when he saw the bow emblem-a stylized female figure, green and surrounded by flowing black robes.

«Sister Cayla's Sea Witch. Coming out to exercise her rowers after refit, no doubt. Aye, there's a lusty lady. And you'd best take her for the fighter and captain she is, if you want to keep those cods you've been keeping so busy. I've seen her duel a man half again her size and slice him up until he was as well-gelded as any cony. She'll not find much happiness in learning we've taken Khystros and all his while Witch was hove down for a bottom-clean.»

Sea Witch was a small galley, rowing only twenty oars a side, low-built and almost bare of ornamentation. As she came abeam of Thunderbolt the oars slapped down into the water to lie there while the crew ran smartly to winch the masts into their sockets. A small figure in green popped out of a hatch aft and strode forward through the men. They gave way to either side as the figure passed up to the bow and hailed Thunderbolt.

Somehow, Blade had been expecting that any woman who could captain her own ship among the crowd of professional tough customers that was the Brotherhood would be large, tough, and disagreeably unfeminine. Instead, the lethal Sister/Captain Cayla was visibly at least half a head shorter than most of her crew. She wore a trim green tunic-and-breeches outfit with black leather belt and boots that would have carried a fifty-guinea price tag in any Chelsea boutique. Face and figure were at least presentable, as far as Blade could tell across fifty yards of water, while her close-cropped blonde hair shimmered in the sun like a cap of gold. Her voice as it came across that gap was roughened by many years of shouting above battle and storm but no worse than Blade had heard from ticket takers on a score of London buses.

«Hoy, Tuabir! Back so soon? Pickings that slim where you went?» Tuabir stiffened at the mocking note in her voice.

«Good pickings indeed. We were of those who fell in with Grand Duke Khystros and all his. You know the reward promised for that?»

«Wha-?»

«Aye. We took his ship. The Grand Duke, or what the fire left of him, is down among the fishes now.» Tuabir gestured over the side.

Cayla turned in an instant from fashion plate to fishwife. The stream of curses that poured out of her mouth and spattered about the ears of those aboard Thunderbolt would have made any sergeant-major turn green with envy.

Finally she ran out of curses, or more likely out of breath, and shouted, «All right, you bastards. You made sure I wouldn't get any part in this! You didn't want to let me have any more reputation, so I could be a threat to you and the other big boys!» She paused again, then, sharply:

«Where's Oshawal?»

Tuabir shook his head and jerked his thumb over the side in another down-with-the fishes gesture. «Dead. You see beside me the one who killed him. And he wouldn't take Oshawal's place, because he said he would be leading a crew into danger through not knowing our seas. He wants a chance to serve as a mate before taking Thunderbolt out on his own. Aye, his head's as good as his arm, and his arm's a thing like you've never seen.»

«Indeed.» The interest in Cayla's voice sounded clearly. Blade wished the two ships were close enough for him to see the expression on her face. But Cayla had apparently seen and heard enough. She barked an order, and the crew scrambled back to the oars, which began their steady beat again, carrying Sea Witch out to where the wind could fill her sails.

As the other ship pulled away, Tuabir turned to Blade and said softly, «Master Blabyd, I think she has her eye on you. As for me, I'd be happier with a sea adder having its eye on me.»

Cayla's own word seemed a reasonable answer. «Indeed?»

«Aye. She has ambitions beyond being a mere Captain. She would sit on the Captain's Council of the Brotherhood. And what she would do then, Druk alone knows. It's said she was once a Serpent Priestess in Mardha and would still see the Serpent Cult rising on all shores of Ocean.»

Alixa came out in time to hear Tuabir's last words and stare after the departing Sea Witch. The pirate looked at her, drew Blade farther off to one side, and muttered to him in an even lower voice than before, «Take care for your lady. I don't know what she is to you in truth, whether your betrothed or not. And I care little. But if Cayla has her eye on you and sees another woman standing in her way, the lady'll have great need of prayers, for nothing else will help her. Among the Free Women of the Brotherhood there's the Woman's Duel when two desire the same man, and it's to the death. Cayla fights with a dagger and a little whip no longer than your arm. But I puked myself empty for a day and a night after seeing what she did with them the last time she fought, and I wasn't the only one. Had you but passed the lady off as your sister, she'd be ten times safer. Cayla'd stand beside you to defend her from insult then. But as it is. .» Tuabir shrugged.

Blade shrugged too, a gesture far from reflecting his true feelings. To become involved with yet another woman, and this one a sadistic she-pirate with vast and nameless ambitions, would weaken even further the tightrope on which he was going to have to walk for a painfully long time. He hoped Tuabir was mistaken, but his own reading of Cayla's voice left him little hope of that.

However, for the moment there were other things to think of. The oarmaster began his drum beat, the oars swung forward and splashed down, and Thunderbolt surged forward up the channel towards the gap in the rocks. As they passed the entrance and slipped into the shadow, Blade noticed that the rock on either side showed signs of extensive working. Railed galleries and slits had been carved at several levels on both sides, from just above the water to nearly a hundred feet up. Blade guessed that from those galleries and slits arrows, stones, burning oil, and many other sorts of nastiness could be hurled down on any ships foolish enough to try breaking into the Brotherhood's fortress through the channel.

Farther on, they came to a broad ledge, partly natural but also extended by more carving. On it were piled a score or more of enormous logs, blackened with tar and grease, and coils of rope as thick as a man. There was yet another barrier for the passage-an enormous boom that could be easily fastened in place in any emergency, to rip out the bottom of any ship.

Blade tried to calculate the amount of work that must have been involved in all the excavations from the living rock he had seen. He found himself appalled at his most conservative estimate. No wonder the pirates had an insatiable demand for slaves, and no wonder the slaves died like flies! The more he saw of the fortifications of Neral, the more he realized how justified the pirates were in their casually arrogant assumption that the island was impregnable. And, more personally, the more he realized how difficult making his own escape would be when the time came. Possibly getting out of the channel would be easier than getting in, but he doubted it.

Thunderbolt crept up the passage. The thump and splash of the slowly moving oars echoed from the looming gray walls. Blade shivered in the chill shadows and wrapped his cloak more tightly about him. Finally they glided out into the sunlit inner basin. Blade looked up at the heart of the Brotherhood's fortress rising all about him.

Although he had looked at the symbol-crowded map of the area many times, Blade was still awed by the scale of the whole thing now that he saw it in reality. At the water's edge docks and piers jutted out into the harbor, some of them covered, enough of them to accommodate four hundred ships. Just above them lay the building ways and their auxiliaries-the storage sheds for timber, masts, rope, metalwork, and everything else needed to build ships. Mixed in with them were the storehouses for loot, the barracks for the dockyard and rowing slaves, their rank smell drifting across even the miles of water to attack Blade's nose, and the forges and foundries puffing up their clouds of black smoke. On a terrace farther up the slope stood the shops, taverns, gaily painted brothels, and the living quarters for the free sailors and the servants. Higher still were the homes of shopkeepers and mates, and highest of all, surrounded by its own walls and served by its own shops was the street of the Captains, the rulers of the Brotherhood.

From the water's edge to the uppermost of the Captains' stout brick homes the slope stretched more than a mile and rose five hundred feet in that mile. Beyond the houses another wall studded with towers wrapped itself around the whole base, and beyond that rose the frowning peak of the Mountain. Not only did this base represent an incredible amount of labor, it also represented incredible wealth. Blade could easily see why the Neralers had bled the Four Kingdoms white for a century, where the wealth had gone-and how the masters of such a fortress might begin to think of becoming masters of a Kingdom.

There was a sudden flurry of running figures all up and down the slopes as Thunderbolt slid across the basin toward her dock. At Blade's side Tuabir grinned. «So we are indeed the first back from all the fleet that took the duke. I thought that, from what Cayla said, but it was almost too much to hope.»

On the roof of one of the covered docks somebody stood now, frenziedly going through a complicated series of passes with a pair of orange and black signal flags. Tuabir barked an order, and a sailor sprang up onto Thunderbolt's prow and set a similar pair dancing. A moment's pause ashore, and then cheers that spread like a fire around the basin and up the slope until it seemed the whole vast bowl was ringing with them. From two stout, high red brick towers of a building on the Captains' street yellow smoke began to stream up into the sky in a sinuous cloud.

«Eh, the call to Festival!» said Tuabir with another grin. «And few of the fleet will be home to share the wine, the women, and the joy. Have you a stout head as well as a stout arm, Master Blahyd? You'll truly be needing it tonight for a Festival of the Brotherhood.»

Blade nodded absently. Festival-some sort of massive celebration? It would be one way of getting a chance to look around him, meet people, get a better impression of this colossal den of thieves which had sucked him in. But he would rather have had a chance to be alone and think out his next move.

He was utterly certain by now that Khystros' assumptions about a pirate conspiracy were absolutely right, and he was more than inclined to believe the duke's suspicions about the Chancellor as well. He had heard too much over the past eighteen days, and now these cheers were one more piece of evidence. Fighting and intriguing. In every world, it seemed he sooner or later wound up doing one or both.