Krozair of Kregen

Chapter Three

“Well, Dak, apim, when is it to be?”

Rukker’s words whispered in his growly voice in the darkness. Green Magodont lay anchored somewhere or other — we oar-slaves had no idea where we were after all the comings and goings of the past days. We knew only that if we searched for a ship we had not found her. I said, “There is the question of this Nath the Slinger.”

“I shall break his neck the moment I am free,” said Rukker, in a comfortable way, perfectly confident. Nath the Slinger turned his pug-nosed face our way, looking up from the apostis seat, and scowled. He looked an independent sort of fellow, who would as soon knock your teeth out as pass the time of day. Rukker had not liked the slash from his chains.

“We can free the link tomorrow. But we shall not let you go, Rukker, if you-”

He bellowed at that, raising a chorus of curses from the oar-slaves about us in the darkness, weary men trying to sleep.

“You are a nurdling onker, Rukker — why not shout out and tell the captain? I am sure he will be happy to know.”

In the starlight and the golden glow of She of the Veils the zygite bank showed enough light for me to catch the look of venomous evil on Rukker’s face. But it was dark and shadowy and I could have been mistaken; I did not think I was.

“I do not wish to discuss that, Dak. If it is tomorrow night, then-”

“We will release you only if you swear to fight with us. Your quarrel with Nath the Slinger must wait.”

“I’ll rip his tail out and choke him with it!” said Nath the Slinger, in his snarly voice. I sighed.

Anger and enmity — well, they are common enough on Kregen, to be sure. But when they interfere with my own plans I am prepared to be more angry and be a better enemy than most.

“When we have taken the swifter, you two may kill each other,” I said, pretty sharply. “And curse you for a pair of idiots.”

A voice from the bench in front whispered back.

“If you all shout a little louder-”

“We already said that,” said Fazhan nastily.

“Then we will join you. The oar-master has the keys.”

Duhrra rolled his eyes at me.

“They must think we don’t know what we’re about.”

“They are slaves like us. Now the word will be all over the slave benches. If there are white mice among the slaves we may be prevented before we strike.”

“White mice” is an expression from my own eighteenth-century Terrestrial Navy, meaning men among the hands who will inform to the ship’s corporals and the master-at-arms. On Kregen these men are called maktikos and may sometimes be discovered among slaves who appear and disappear without apparent reason on a tier of oars, moving from bench to bench. I had wondered if Nath the Slinger might be an informer. There were plans to insure his silence once we had begun the escape. The only way to insure our safety before that was to note if he spoke to the overseers or the whip-Deldars. I fancied an apostis-seat man would experience difficulty in that.

“Why not tonight?” rumbled Rukker. “Now?”

“The link must be further bent.”

“I would snap it with one wrench.”

“You may try — but for the sake of Zair, do it quietly.”

Rukker leaned over Duhrra. He took the chain in his right hand and tail and heaved. The link strained open, as it had when he’d surged up before; it did not break.

The veins stood out on that low forehead, his face grew black, his eyes glaring. He slackened his effort and panted. “Onker, Duhrra! Help me! You too, Dak!”

So we all pulled.

The link would not part.

“Tomorrow,” I said.

Duhrra said, “You were told, Rukker. Now do you believe?”

Rukker said, “I will not speak of that.”

I did not laugh. We were going to escape, I was certain; but I could not laugh — not yet. There would be time, later. .

The next day during those periods in which we were not called on to fling every ounce of weight against the looms, Duhrra used that marvelous hand given to him by Zena Iztar. The steel fingers prised against the link like a vise. Even a steel hand that gave the hard pressure necessary would not have accomplished the bending without the superb muscles that Duhrra could bring to the task. I helped as best I could, taking the strain. We had to work surreptitiously. The bent link was camouflaged by a mixture of odoriferous compounds I will not detail and it passed the daily inspection, for a strong pull on it resulted merely in the usual melancholy clang. The whip-Deldars suspected nothing. They were always on the watch, for slavery makes a man either dully stupid or viciously frenzied. I said to Rukker, “Once we are free, everything must be done at top speed. The slaves will yell and cry out and demand to be freed. You will not be able to silence them. They have no idea at all, in moments like that, beyond the hunger to strike off their chains. So we must be quick.”

“I’ll silence-”

“You will not. You will take the whip-Deldars. We need weapons. I will see to the oar-master.”

“I give the orders, Dak. This is my escape.”

“I don’t give a damn whose escape it is. But if you foul it up I’ll pull your tail off myself.”

I had warned him, earlier, not to be too free with his tail. He could have upended a whip-Deldar easily enough. They did not carry the keys, as the onker of a slave in front of us had said. If a Kataki used his tail too much in a swifter the overlords would simply chop it off. I had told Rukker this. He had heeded my advice.

So we planned out our moves exactly, each man assigned his part. I listened as Nath the Slinger spoke, in short harsh sentences. I came to the conclusion that he was not a maktiko, that he might be trusted. The day seemed endless. Green Magodont pulled frenziedly in one direction for a bur; then we rested on our oars for another. Then we set off at slow cruise in a different direction and suddenly we were called on for every effort, and as suddenly relieved and sent back to slow cruise. I fancied we were dodging about among islands and shooting out past a headland in a surprise attack that resulted always in nothing. If the Grodnims sought a ship, as I suspected, her captain played them well in this game of hide-and-seek. Duhrra told me he had come from the swifter Vengeance Mortil, where he and Vax had been the two slaves chained together to push against the loom. I did wonder if Gafard’s Volgodont’s Fang led this squadron, for our swifter was not the flagship. One item I should mention here, for it would affect our manner of escape, showed how either development was taking place in the swifters of the inner sea, or the overlords of Magdag were running short of iron; or, very likely, were conscious of the need to lighten their galleys. There was no great chain that connected all the chains of the inboard slaves. We would have to release the locks of each set separately. This would take time. There would be no release of the locks of the great chain thus freeing all the slaves the moment the great chain had been passed through their chains. It was a factor to be figured into my calculations.

“By Zinter the Afflicted!” rasped Nath. “Is the work finished?” We lay on our oars as the gloom deepened about us and Green Magodont rocked gently with the evening sounds from an island nearby reaching us mutedly — the cries of birds, mostly, with occasionally the coughing roar of a beast of prey, and then, sometimes, the shrill scream of its quarry, telling us we were anchored well into the island up a river mouth. The chinks of light that streamed their opaz radiance into our prison waned as the suns sank.

“We will escape,” said Vax. He spoke seldom and he was, as we all could see, obsessed by some consuming inner torment.

“Then praise Zair,” said Fazhan. “I do not think I could last another day.” He coughed, too weakly for my liking. “My old father would weep to see me now.”

Vax let rip with a rude sound, and a coarse observation about fathers in general and his devil cramph of a father in particular. The venom in his voice gave me hope that he would fling some of that diabolic energy into the coming fight.

“I do not care to hear you talk thus of your father-” began Fazhan. It was clear to me that Fazhan had been brought up in the best circles of Rozilloi and was, in the terminology of Earth, a gentleman, although the peoples of the inner sea have a trifle different set of gentlemen from the horters of Havilfar and the koters of Vallia.

“You did not know my rast of a sire,” said Vax, most evilly. “And neither did I, for he died just before I was born.”

This did not accord with what Duhrra believed; but it was of no moment then as the whip-Deldars ran screeching among us, lashing with their whips, and the whistles blew and the drum-Deldar crashed out his double-beat. In the gathering gloom the swifter made a last try to trap the elusive vessel that caused the Grodnims so much trouble and us oar-slaves so much agony.

Green Magodont did not catch the quarry.

“I do not know,” Vax had said as we bent to our loom, “if I wish my foul father was here with me now. I would not know if I should slay him at once and thus purge his evil crimes, or if I should allow him to live so that he might suffer as I suffer.”

“Let the rast suffer, dom,” said Nath the Slinger and then we flung ourselves into the task. The Suns of Scorpio set in a last blaze that penetrated our prison in a mingled veil of colors and gradually died to an opaline glow. Presently the chinks of light through the gratings took on a pinkish golden tinge as the Maiden with the Many Smiles lifted above the horizon and shone down upon us. Duhrra kept up the work on the link. I helped.

At last I said, “You must sleep, Duhrra. We will have much to tire ourselves on the morrow.”

“I am sure it will give-”

“Then all the more reason for sleeping.”

We composed ourselves. Rukker’s hoarse whisper, cruel and sharp in the night, pierced the darkness.

“What are you onkers doing? There is no time for sleep. Keep working, rasts, or I will-”

A whip-Deldar on watch walked along the gangway between the rowing frames and Rukker had the sense to shut up and drop his head on the loom. Although the swifter’s slaves were washed out twice daily with seawater, we still stank. Our hair was growing back in bristles, giving us an outlandish appearance. The Deldar passed on, humming to himself — the stupid “Obdwa Song,” it was — and Rukker lifted his head. I caught the gleam of his eyes in the slatted chinks of light from the gratings.

“Shut up, Rukker, and get some sleep. I shall see how you fight on the morrow — or before, if I decide.”

“You-”

A ship is never silent. There are always the same familiar sounds, at sea or at anchor. Through that quiet threnody of water splash and creak of wood, the murmur of distant voices, I whispered, “You are becoming tiresome, Kataki. I know you are a fighting-man. Just do not keep on trying to prove it all the time. And remember who it is you fight — the overlords, and not the slaves. Dernun?”[2]

A marine bellowed some order or other high on the quarterdeck, and Rukker made a visible effort. His moon-shadowed face scowled with the effort as he controlled himself. “After, Dak the High-Handed,” he said. “After we have the swifter-”

“Yes, yes, go to sleep.”

I heard a low gurgle — hardly a laugh — from Vax, at my right. Duhrra was already fast asleep.

“If my evil rast of a father had been tamed by someone like you, Dak, I might have let him die under my hand, instead of letting him suffer.”

A most vicious and intemperate young man, this Vax.

Toward morning, with the innate sense of rhythm of an old sailorman that even the oddities of Kregen and the stresses of being an oar-slave could not break, I awoke. Soon Duhrra was hard at work on the link. Vax yawned when I nudged him, and bid me clear off. “Schtump!” he said, most malignantly.

“Wake up Fazhan and Nath. Jump!”

He gave me a look, all shadowed and dark, that was unmistakable. But he leaned down and gave Fazhan a crack in the ribs. When Fazhan was awake he woke Nath. We yawned, still tired; but I knew they were keyed up to the work ahead. If I have glossed over this period of my servitude as an oar-slave it is because I do not care to remember in too vivid a detail a time of great agony and fatigue upon Kregen. Suffice it to say I may appear to be callous about serving as a slave and lax in escaping; the truth was I wanted out of that hellhole as fervently as a man dying of thirst needs water. Duhrra let a low whispering sigh pass his lips. His powerful body eased back. The snap of metal echoed in the night

We all sat perfectly silent.

Presently, when I was satisfied no other ears had picked up that sharp snip of sound, I eased the chain off. Duhrra clawed himself up and I put a hand on his shoulder and pulled him down. Without a word, not moving the chain that lay limply on the deck at our feet, I stood up. The gratings above let down a patterned splotching of pink and gold. The long rows of naked feet and legs of the thranites glistered in the light. Here and there the coil of a chain shone dully. A whip-Deldar approached. Silently — silently — I eased up. The Deldar passed. In one leap, touching Rukker’s bench with foot and springing on from there, I reached the central gangway. A hand clapped about the Deldar’s mouth. He went limp and I eased him to the gangway.

He had a knife.

This I passed down to Rukker.

I saw the Kataki’s face.

“No noise, Rukker,” I whispered. “Until we are all free.” By all I meant the six of us on the oar. “This end is up to you, now. I’m for the oar-master and the keys.”

He would have spit some surly remark; but I padded off along the gangway. The slaves slept and I did not fear discovery from them. Only one more whip-Deldar fell before I had reached the after end of the gangway. I looked up. Up there past the thranites the little tabernacle in which the oar-master sat and blew his whistle and controlled the drum-Deldars and made sure the motive power of the swifter functioned perfectly lay in darkness. I went up like a rock grundal. The oar-master would be asleep in his cabin. The keys were neatly racked on their hooks ready to be issued to the whip-Deldars when the slaves must be taken out of the ship. I scooped them up, reading the labels, made from leather, going back down again to the zygites. From then on the process would be one of progression. Fazhan met me on the gangway. He shook. He looked elated and yet filled with a dread fury he might not be able to control. There was no sign of Rukker or Duhrra. Vax and Nath took the keys I handed them and began to awaken the slaves.

Fazhan said, “I will go aft, Dak.”

I gave him the thalamite keys. I pointed down.

“When you come up again, Fazhan, bring men who will fight with you.”

“Aye, Dak.”

I shooed him off. Nath was working forward. A noise and a stir began to whisper in the hollow hull of the swifter. In a few short murs all hell would break out. The time for silence was almost gone. I started off aft again, and Vax threw his keys to a slave three benches forward. He hit the poor devil over the head and awoke him and whispered fiercely in his ear and then clapped a hand over his mouth. I warmed to the young man. He might be intemperate and malignant in his ways, but he knew what he was doing. He looked at me. I was aware that the light was growing and that I could see him quite well.

“I will come with you, Dak. I need a sword.”

He merely echoed my own thoughts.

Together, we stole silently aft, aiming for the quarterdeck, aiming for swords, aiming to wrench this swifter from the grip of the hated overlords of Magdag.