Krozair of Kregen

Chapter Five

The sheer pressure at our backs drove us on. The hideous sounds of mortal combat shocked into the sky. Blood ran greasily across the deck and men coughed or screamed or said nothing as they died. In the press the shortsword proved of value, but I caught a distorted glimpse of Duhrra swinging his longsword and clearing men from his path as a gardener hews weeds. Vax drove on with him. I cursed and beat away a spear-point, thrust short and sharp, and brought the blade back to catch a longsword sweeping down at my head and felt the jar smash along my muscles.

I made a grab with my left hand at the longsword and after one fumble, during which I kicked a fellow in the guts, the longsword was mine. It was a common one with a small hilt; but it would serve. I swapped with a feeling of release.

In the next mur I had leaped after Duhrra and Vax. Together we cut a triple furrow through the Green ranks. Duhrra fought as he always did with a sword, using tremendous sweeps, enormous bashes, and mighty slashings to hew down his opponents. I felt vast relief that he had found and donned a mail shirt, for he left himself dangerously exposed. Vax fought with the trim economy of the trained swordsman. I saw the way he handled his blade and again I wondered if, at his age, he could be a Krozair. We reached the double doors leading from the quarterdeck into the passage under the poop. Vengeance Mortil was a longer vessel than Green Magodont, rowing thirty oars to a bank against the latter’s twenty-one. The poop over our heads was now the scene of fighting. We could hear shrieks and the thumps of feet on the deck. Most of the cabins were empty and we tore straight on toward the captain’s cabin.

He was not there, and I recalled the large man I had felled at the instant of boarding. If he had been the captain, then his crew fought well without him. Satisfied that the cabins here were all empty, we turned to dart out and finish the fight. I stopped stock still.

Duhrra and Vax halted in the doorway.

“Come on, Dak!”

A glass case stood against the bulkhead. A shaft of mingled light struck through the aft windows and illuminated the contents of the case. Crimson blazed. A long blade of steel shafted back gleaming light.

“Trophies,” said Duhrra. “Some poor devil of a Zairian-”

I swung the sword at the glass and smashed the case open.

I took the longsword into my fists. It balanced beautifully.

A Krozair longsword. The genuine article. I saw the etched markings, the Kregish letters in flowing script: KRZI. So this was a longsword of the Krozairs of Zimuzz. The red cloth was a flag. I ripped it down and swathed it about me. I drew it up tightly between my legs and tucked in the end. I picked up the Krozair longsword.

“Now I’m ready to finish this little lot.”

We belted back down the passage. Our backs were secure. We had only to surge forward along the swifter and take or slay all the Green and the ship would be ours.

A dead marine lay at the corridor entrance. I bent and ripped off his belt and buckled it up about the red flag I used, without blasphemy, in all honor, as a loincloth. We went into the fight like leems. I felt rejuvenated. How ridiculous and petty it must seem that a piece of red cloth could wreak so great a change! But the true change was wrought by the Krozair longsword. The blade flamed. The balance was perfect. I felt the power in my fists and I battled forward, bellowed for my men, and together, yelling,

“Zair! Zair!” we catapulted the Greens from the quarterdeck, drove them along the upper gangway. More and more slaves poured up from below, whirling bights of chain. The uproar continued.

I took time to step back as a Grodnim dropped under the blade, and darted a quick and savage look at Pearl. Yes, the fighting there flowed forward, as did the fighting in Vengeance Mortil. A perverse desire grew in me to clear this swifter before Rukker cleared his. I shouted again and roared on, cutting into the last resistance. The Krozair brand sheared through mail where the shortsword would have bounced. We tore into the dying remnants of the resistance and, suddenly, we were on the forecastle with the beakhead lifted, and there were no more adversaries to taste our steel. The men in the swifter at my back began cheering.

I looked across the gap of water at Pearl. Fighting boiled across her forecastle where a knot of men in the green resisted to the end. I saw the Katakis — fewer of them now — battling in the front of the struggle. Rukker was there, a giant figure striking with sword and tail-blade. Springing onto the bulwark, I put my left hand to my mouth — my right was bloodier than my left — and I lifted up my voice and shouted in right jocular fashion.

“Hai! Rukker! What’s holding you up?”

He heard.

The Kataki devil heard. I saw a Grodnim head fly into the air and Rukker stormed onto the starboard bulwark, springing up to glare across at me.

“We have cleared all! There are no skulkers at our backs!”

“And no slaves to pull the oars, either.”

He didn’t like that.

“We have taken this Takroti-forsaken ship! That is what matters.”

“You may have taken her — but have you slaves to man her?”

“I do not wish to discuss that.”

I heard a gurgling laugh and looked back and there was Vax holding his guts and laughing. Well, it was funny, of course; but I had no desire to be stranded without oar-slaves by that Kataki idiot over there. Anyway, there was every chance that our ram had done Pearl too serious a mischief underwater to make her seaworthy. That must be looked at, at once, and the man to do the looking was Fazhan ti Rozilloi, ship-Hikdar. I bellowed to Duhrra to sort out the men here, told Vax to see about chaining up the new slaves who had so lately been sailors and soldier-marines of Grodnim, and took myself off aft. Fazhan was cleaning his sword. I had had no time. The beautiful Krozair blade gleamed red in the lights of Antares.

“Hai Jikai, Dak!” Fazhan greeted me.

I pondered for perhaps a half mur. Was this a Jikai?

Perhaps.

It was most certainly not a sufficiently high enough High Jikai to enroll me once more in the Krozairs of Zy, that was for sure.

“Is Pearl seaworthy, after we struck her?”

He saw my face. “I will see, at once.” He ran off.

In the nature of things there was a great deal of confusion. Released slaves, all naked and screaming, surged about, and I knew there would be no Grodnim whip-Deldars to chain down to the rowing benches. I saw men I thought must be of some importance — or, rather, men who had been important before they’d been captured — and tried to bash some sense into them. Our own slaves from Green Magodont had by this time some idea of what was needful in this situation. Soon all the men of Zair would come to an understanding. For the moment sheer exuberance and wild release of fettered spirits would make of the three swifters hell-holes.

So I will pass quickly over the ensuing scenes. I took myself off back to Green Magodont and met Rukker storming back. He looked savagely delighted with his morning’s work. He saw my red breechclout and the sword, and he made a face and began to make some kind of snarling remark; but he did not. His tail quivered and shot erect over his head, the tail-blade gleaming, for he had cleaned it off.

“The ships are ours, Dak. You have served me well. Now I will resume full command.”

The Katakis formed a bunch at his back. He had them well cowed. They were extraordinarily formidable. I hefted the Krozair longsword. I opened my mouth and Vax appeared at my side, laughing, saying, “Give me your sword, Dak, and I will clean it off for you. It is a beautiful blade.”

“I clean my own sword.”

He looked offended.

Rukker bellowed, “Now we carouse and make merry.”

The released slaves would do that, anyway.

Some onker was bellowing that Pearl was stuffed with wine. He carried an armful of bottles, waving one above his head, the rich red wine spilling out over him. He was already half-seas over. I did not consider long. Maybe I could have halted the debauch that followed. Maybe not. I did not try. I wanted to talk to Rukker and see if the way I planned to handle the Kataki devil would work. He had taken a good long look at the three swifters. Fazhan reported that Pearl had taken a nasty crack, but that the sharp sheer of her stern had been enough to prevent our ram from driving home, and that she would be fully seaworthy when the planking had been repaired. So Rukker could tell me in his lofty way,

“I will take Vengeance Mortil. She is the largest. You may have either of the others.”

I said, “Bring a few bottles to the cabin. We can talk there. If you wish to fight, here and now, I shall accommodate you. Otherwise, no fighting until we have decided what to do.”

Now that he had won and was in a strong position, he no doubt thought to show a facade of magnanimity. I do not think I do Rukker an injustice if I say that because he was a Kataki he was, by his religion and customs and mores, what other people would call an evil man. He could not help that; like the scorpion, it was in his nature. But I found that he had a gift denied to most other Katakis. He had a streak of humanity in him that, at first, because I did not believe it possible, I found disconcerting.

“Surely, Dak the High-Handed. We will drink together. But there is no question of our deciding.” He emphasized the “our.” “I have decided what we will do.”

I did not answer but barged off to the cabin, snatching up a couple of the bottles the idiot from Pearl had dropped — for he had passed out, beaming idiotically, on my quarterdeck. My quarterdeck.

Ah! How we arrogate to ourselves, arrogant in our pride!

Nath the Slinger appeared. He wore bits and pieces of finery, and carried a Genodder as well as his sling. He saw Rukker. He started to say something, but Rukker chopped him off.

“We talk, Nath the Slinger. Afterward, I may take from your hide payment for your insolence.”

Nath said, “I think the people may set fire to the swifters.”

That was a very fair chance.

Rukker bellowed at this, and in a twinkling, a dozen of his Katakis ran out along the gangways, roaring. That was one thing I could count on. Rukker would command obedience from his own people, and I could trust them to stop a parcel of drunken ex-oar-slaves from foolishly setting fire to the swifters they so much hated.

“Tell ’em to make sure they don’t kill too many Grodnims,” I said to Rukker, sharp. He bawled it after them. Then he took a bottle from a man near him, who did not argue, and rolled off to the aft cabin, swinging his tail in high good humor.

Fazhan looked at me, uncertain.

“You did very well, Fazhan. Now come and have a drink.”

“We should set a watch — there were three other swifters in the squadron.”

“The Katakis will do that. Or Rukker will have their tails.”

As I went along aft I admit I felt it most strange that I should be working in collaboration with Katakis. But, there it was. Those of us who had been architects in the escape gathered in the great aft cabin of Green Magodont to talk about our futures.

I will not go into all the discussion, although to a student of human nature it proved fascinating, revealing not only the desires of frail humanity but revealing very clearly the different traits of the differing racial stocks. The problem could be broken down into one of allegiances. The released slaves fell into four main classes. There were the Zairians who wished only to return to their homes of the southern shore. There were the Grodnims who, as criminals, could go neither to Zairia nor to Grodnim. There were the mercenaries who didn’t care who they fought for so long as they were paid and who, because they slaved for them, must have fallen foul of the overlords of Magdag. And there were the Zairians who, for one reason or another, could not return home.

Of the two latter classes, Rukker and I were representatives.

Long were the arguments and sometimes bitter the wrangling. But, in the end, it all boiled down to a decision by Rukker and most of the others, to join the Renders. These pirates infested many portions of the inner sea, of course; but they were particularly strong in the southwestern end, where many islands gave them shelter. As for the Zairians who wished to return home, they might take a swifter that Rukker did not want.

I said, “That does not dispose of all.”

“There is no one else, fambly!” Then Rukker, sprawled in a gilt chair, an upended bottle to his lips, roared out, “By the Triple Tails of Targ the Untouchable! No one would wish to go to Magdag!”

“I do,” I said.

He gaped at me.

“There is a certain matter I have left unfinished there.”

“Well, you will find not a single man to go with you.” Then he squinted at Duhrra — enormous in the corner, watchful — and grunted, and said, “Except that mad graint, of course.”

“And me,” said a young, firm voice, and I turned, and Vax stepped forward. “I wish to go to Magdag, for I have business there, also.”

Well, I fancied whatever his business was, it boded no good for some poor devil. Vax had been drinking. His face flushed heavily and he did not walk steadily, even though Green Magodont remained still.

Nath the Slinger had been drinking, also, and he snarled, “No doubt it has to do with your rast of a father.”

Vax turned sharply, and nearly fell. I do not like to see young men the worse for drink — or any man, come to that. Vax spoke in a cutting, nasty way. “Yes. For my father has done me a grave injustice. He has finished all my hopes in the Eye of the World. Yes, he bears a part, the cramph. But it is not for him I wish to go to Magdag, but my sister-”

“Well, go to the Ice Floes of Sicce for all I care!” boomed Rukker. He roared his mirth. “Three of you, to run a swifter! Ho — one to pull at the oar, one to beat the drum, and one to steer! Ho — I like it!”

Certainly, the image was a lively one. But I did not smile.

Vax looked as though he would be sick at any moment, if he did not fall down. I judged he was not used to heavy drinking. I stepped over to him and sniffed. I looked down at him.

“You young idiot! Dopa!”

Duhrra said, “Duh — dopa! I know, master — I know.”

Dopa is calculated to make a man fighting drunk; Vax had not yet drunk enough to turn him berserk. I saw the bottle in his hand, and I took it away. He tried to stop me. I broke the bottle over a handy table and showed him the serrated edge. “This is what you deserve, you gerblish onker.”

He staggered and would have fallen. I grabbed him and propped him upright.

“You’re coming with me to a cabin where you can sleep it off. I have work to do.” I dragged him out.

“I’ll see about you, Rukker, when I’ve seen to this hulu.”

I half carried him along to the ship-Hikdar’s cabin and tossed him down on the cot. As I say, cots and hammocks had previously been unknown in swifters, because they usually came ashore at night. No doubt the war was changing many things since the genius king Genod had taken over in Magdag. Vax snorted and tried to rise and I pushed him back and the hilt of the Krozair longsword slid forward. He blinked at it owlishly.

“I was to have been a Krozair,” he said. He was growing maudlin. “Yes, I trained. Not Zimuzz, though. I worked and all I wanted in this life was to be a Krozair like my brothers.”

“Yes,” I said, lifting his legs onto the cot. “Get some sleep and you can talk about this later.”

He grasped my arm and glared up into my face.

“You don’t understand. No one here does. How can they?”

He enunciated his words carefully, as a near-drunk sometimes does; but he made sense in what he said. He was pretty far gone, and he just didn’t know he was saying what he was saying.

“My father-”

“Look, son. We all had fathers, and they all failed us at one time or another.” That was not true; but the intensity of this lad’s hatred for his unknown father hurt me, thinking of my own father and the love I bore him.

“My father failed my mother. He ran away — ran away-”

“You said he died.”

“I always say he is dead, out of shame. But he was alive, all the time. All the time. He ran away and left my mother in mortal peril, and she was carrying me at the time, and he ran away and left her. They nearly got her — she told me, and she laughed — but — but I knew. He wouldn’t answer the Call, the Azhurad, and it is im-impossible for a Krozair not to answer the Call. So they made him Apushniad. And serve the rast right. And I was training to be a Krozair of Zy — and they — they- So I left them, ashamed. My father, Apushniad — destroyed me. Destroyed me! Me, Jaidur, Jaidur of Valka, ruined my whole life, and if I find the kleesh I shall surely slay him.”

I just gaped, stricken.