Swordships of Scorpio

CHAPTER TWELVE

This Murlock seemed to me to be no atavistic sport of the family of Marsilus — despite all I had heard of Marker Murlock, and all I had observed of his son Pando — for the old Kov had been relentless in his rage and malignance against not only Tilda, the girl his son had married in defiance of his wishes, but against her family also so that they had given up the stage and gone farming with distant relatives in that pleasant valley. Now, we left the valley and our zorcas’ hooves rat-tatted with a more purposeful sound on the paved road.

“Pando will turn out all right, Dray,” said Inch. He reflected, and added, “If he lives.”

“The story of the old Kov’s recantation on his deathbed and the known desire of his to have Pando recognized as his heir,” I said. “They are slender weapons, it seems to me; but they are all we have.”

“If what the Pallan Nicomeyn says is true — I expect it is — those weapons will be enough.”

“Once we have Murlock.”

“Ah!”

The palace of the Marsilus family stood on the highest eminence of a block of red cliffs that fell into the sea with a stark sheer of cliff reminiscent of those cliffs of the Eye of the World where I had dived in order to go to the assistance of Seg and the others in our flight from the sorzarts. Verdant glowing vegetation clothed the heights. The castle and palace, as richly red as the cliffs, reared above. Many flags floated there, and armed guards strode everywhere. We heard, in the inn where we stayed for a dram of Tomboram wine, that the news was that the king was visiting Tomboram and was even now on his way, traveling with a great company, coming on the pleasant coast-road, journeying in state and great comfort, surveying the domains.

“There is no time to waste,” I told Inch. “Once the king gets his lodging and board in the palace-”

“By Ngrangi! We must strike quickly, Dray!”

So it was that that night we two, Inch, a gangling giant with his ax, and I, Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor, with all my weapons about me, climbed that frowning red cliff in the light of the Maiden with the Many Smiles. We were gentle with the guards, for Pando, we hoped, would assume the overlordship of this pile and we did not wish to store up resentment against him. As it was, we left a trail of unconscious bodies until we penetrated clear through to Murlock’s bed chamber, where Inch uprooted the nubile wench sharing his bed and I showed him the point of my dagger.

“You are coming with us, Murlock,” I said, and at sight of my ugly face he flinched back. He was a fat man, but strong, and his jaws shook when I twiddled the dagger closer. “You may dress or not, as you please, but you had best make haste.”

Shaking with the fear that must be torturing him with wonder how we two desperadoes had invaded his palace — for he could not know that Tilda had told us of the best secret ways in that she had learned from Marker — Murlock threw on his clothes and we three went out of his bedchamber leaving the wench neatly packaged in costly silks of Pandahem itself.

We carried him down the cliff on our backs, passing him from hand to hand like a carpet. He was near paralytic with fear; but he knew, for I had made it very plain, that a single cry would sink my dagger in his throat.

We loaded him aboard the spare mount, lashed wrist and ankles, and then we spurred in the streaming pink moonlight of Kregen along the metal-shining road. Tilda could hardly believe we had done what we had done. I shushed her up. Murlock had been blindfolded so he would not know where Tilda had hidden, and for this her people were grateful. We spurred hard toward the east, going through rich agricultural land, avoiding the farms, heading up toward the coast so that at last, with the coming of the twin suns, we were well on our way.

We rode for three days, keeping up a good pace, eating provisions we had brought and not venturing near another living soul. On the morning of that day we rode boldly into the camp of the king. His people, servants, grooms, courtiers, guards, were just rising and yawning and thinking about the day ahead. I selected the biggest tent of all, with its blue flags, and jumped down before the guard. He was a man, in half-armor, clad in a blue tunic, and for weapon he carried as fancy a long-hafted spear as I had seen on Kregen. In addition he had, of course, his rapier and main-gauche.

“Keep away, rast,” he growled, and the spear blade snapped down level with my stomach.

“Send a message to the king, insolent one, that the Lord of Strombor wishes to speak with him on a matter of treason.”

The spear did not waver.

‘Take yourself off, benighted of Armipand-” There would have been more, doubtless of a foulmouthed kind, but I stepped inside the spear, knocking it away, put a fist into his jaw, didn’t bother to catch him, and pushed through the drapes into the tent.

In the anteroom with its bright silken walls other guards started up, and their Hikdar strode forward, puffy as to jaw, bloodshot as to eye.

“Hikdar!” I said, and my rasp sounded like a mill full of buzz saws. “I am the Lord of Strombor. Rouse the king. I have news for him.”

The Hikdar hesitated and I did not miss the lifting of weapons of his men. At that moment a short and exceedingly fat man wearing the robes and insignia of a Pallan stepped out.

“What is going on?” he demanded, with some acerbity. “The king is dressing and orders that whoever is creating this disturbance shall be brought before him.”

The Hikdar lost all his color.

“It was not me, Pallan Omallin, not me! This man — he claims to be the Lord of somewhere or other-”

I pushed past them both, tripping the Hikdar, shoved into the main body of the tent. As I went I shouted back: “Bring ’em in, Inch! Come straight through. Take no notice of this rabble.”

The scene in the king’s tent was much as I had expected. Evidences of luxury lay everywhere. Rich carpets, brocaded coverings, cushions, arras to double-wall the tent, weapons glittering from the tent-poles, all I saw and ignored. On a sumptuously upholstered divan sat a corpulent man with a puffy face pulling on a pair of enormous black boots. Their spurs would cause agony to a zorca. His black bar moustache lifted as he stared at me. His eyes held a pale fanatical look. He licked his purple lips a great deal. I did not take to him, as you may wonder, for I am overly tolerant to other people until I read them through correctly.

This was the man, this King Nemo, in whose power I had placed myself and my friends. I knew of his bias toward Murlock; yet would he flout the law? There were witnesses, for the Pallan Omallin had scuttled in, gasping, after me, and the guards and their Hikdar also.

“You are the man creating the noise,” the king said, speaking with a nasal rasp that irritated. “You will be taken to the cliff-top, flogged, and then thrown into the sea.” He motioned to the guard Hikdar. “Take him away.”

“You are mistaken, King,” I said. I eyed him. “I am the Lord of Strombor. You know of the last wishes of your brother, the Kov of Bormark, concerning his grandson?”

The king reared up, puffing, scandalized, starting to shout. But Inch had walked in, and with his height ducking to get in through the tent opening. He carried Murlock over his shoulder. Tilda followed, holding Pando’s hand.

“You are mad!” shouted the king. “You will all die!”

“We are not mad, King, and I think you will listen — else it will be you who will die.”

And with that I caught his fat greasy neck in my left hand and showed him my dagger in my right. He gobbled.

I thought his eyes would fall out and roll like marbles on the carpets.

“I come in friendship, King. I would not harm you, but you must listen to me. You know what your brother, Marsilus, desired. The usurper Murlock is here, a dead man if he fails me. Also here is the Kov of Bormark.”

Murlock emitted a shrieking groan at this and Inch threw him down on the carpet. He groveled there, and I had it in my heart to feel sorry for him.

“Mercy! Mercy!” Murlock yelled. “They are madmen!”

“Not so.” With the king threatened by my dagger no one was foolish enough to make a move against me. I thought that these men here were most unlike that Lart aboard the coaster, who would probably have driven his dagger home had he been in my position, and damn the consequences.

“What do you want?” squeaked the king. “I can see the Kov of Bormark — Murlock-”

“Here is the Kov of Bormark,” I said. Tilda pushed Pando forward. He stood there, clad in his zhantil-skin tunic, gripping the hilt of his dagger, and he looked wild enough; but, withal, there was about him in the cut of his jaw some strength that showed through. I know that the king recognized in Pando’s young face the true lineaments of the Marsilus family.

“By the laws of Tomboram,” I said, in a loud voice, “Pando, the grandson of Marsilus, is the Kov of Bormark. Banish the usurper, or he dies now, beneath my sword.”

Inch had unslung his great ax and was swinging it up and down, whistling softly through closed teeth. Murlock groaned and squealed and managed to croak out: “Do not kill me! Yes, I did it!” He knew what to say, for I had made sure of my facts first. “I did send men to slay Tilda and Pando!”

The king was in a cleft stick, in one sense, for he knew nothing of Pando, who was a young lad completely out of his reckoning. He had had Murlock under his thumb. I released the king’s neck and stood back. The guards tensed, but they did not jump forward. By my actions I hoped to convince them it was all over. Tilda lifted her veil and smiled on the king.

Perhaps, when all is said and done, that smile did the business.

The king gave his judgment, there and then. It was for Pando. Murlock was given twenty burs to get out of Tomboram. He slunk out of the tent. I knew there would be trouble from him in the future; but there was little to do about that right at that moment, save kill him. And murder in cold blood is not one of my hobbies.

Now was the time for me to be properly apologetic for manhandling King Nemo. I managed this with a straight face, and when breakfast was brought and we sat down to a good meal, and Pando demonstrated that he knew exactly what being a Kov entailed — at which I winced a little — and Tilda got along with the king, as I thought then, I did really believe we had pulled it off. The king set himself to statesmanship at once.

“I was visiting Murlock because The Bloody Menaham, may Mandate rot ’em, are planning to invade my realm. They march alongside your borders, Kov Pando. I shall need many men and much money from you to defend the frontiers.”

With the simplicity of youth and with all the fiery ardor of which he was capable, Pando cried out: “You shall have all the men I can raise, and all the money in the treasury, King Nemo! We will teach The Bloody Menaham a lesson. We will march against them! We shall fight them, and kill them, and burn their farms! It will be a great victory!” He swung to me, animated and excited and hardly a little lad of ten years old any longer. “Is this not so, Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor?”

About to try to calm him down, for Tilda had somehow succumbed to emotion, and was sitting, drinking Kregan tea and sniffling from time to time, I was brusquely interrupted by the king. He was in a jovial mood. I saw through the reason for that. He had been looking forward to an interview with Murlock that would be painful to both of them, for however much Murlock may have been under the king’s thumb, any Kov is cautious when asked for men and money. And now the new Kov, a mere boy, was giving away all he had by the handful.

I saw that King Nemo felt he had done a good morning’s business. He spoke to me, later on, in much the same terms, except that he left out all advantage for himself that had occurred during my handling of him.

“You fight well, Kyr Dray nal Strombor. Right well. I have room for you in my guard. I need a man who is loyal to his employers.”

Without hesitation — and in that I made a foolish mistake — I said: “That cannot be, King. I have a mission in life, and having discharged my obligations to Tilda, the Kovneva, and to Pando, the Kov of Bormark, I must be on my way.”

King Nemo frowned.

For all my detestation of authority and sheer hatred of it when it is unfairly imposed and in tyranny and oppression destroys good simple people, much of my life on Kregen has been spent among representatives of those very people who wield the authority. I am as happy among a lower deck gang of sailors as among a palace full of Kyrs, finding good qualities in both. I was still very young and green then, as you will know from my previous narrative spoken into the tape recorder in the epidemic-stricken village of West Africa. How I was to face Delia’s father, the emperor, I had not yet decided. I simply could not stalk in and treat him as I had treated this flabby and shifty King Nemo. So I floundered on, then, in my ignorance, and only when the next morning, instead of awaking to the tent where I had been quartered, I awoke with chains galling my wrists and ankles, lying facedown in the bottom of a boat where bilge water sluiced over the floorboards, was the understanding forced in on me that I had sadly underestimated this King Nemo.

I was naked except for the gray slave breechclout.

I knew where I was destined.

The banquet the night before in Pando’s honor had seen some agent of the king’s slip a potion into my drink. He had not had me killed, despite the fact I had laid hands on him, and I guessed that, maybe, after my stint in the swordships, he would attempt to win me over again. If I give myself too much credit in thus thinking, there were good solid reasons for it.

In addition, he would be well aware that the punishment of a quick death would not satisfy him. The lingering agony of the slave benches would please him much more. Or so I tried to reason as we rowed out and were bundled aboard a swordship lying in the roads. I have told you of my life aboard a swifter as a galley slave. The differences now were there and noticeable, but the end result was much the same. I raged and cursed and broke a few heads and swung my chains and was soundly beaten and came back for more, crippling a whip-deldar, and was flogged again and, at last, came to my senses. The previous experiences of being an oar-slave should have trained me far more rapidly into the required state of dumb and instinctively willing obedience. There would come an end to the torture of this life, hauling at the loom of the oar. There would have to be. I could look forward to a life of a thousand years, and here one of the drawbacks of that state made itself horribly clear — a thousand years of life as an oar-slave aboard a swordship of Kregen!

No!

That I would not tolerate.

The swordship on which I found myself was Nemo Zhantil Faril Opaz. This mouthful was itself an abbreviation, a kind of heraldic shorthand for a much longer name which meant, in effect: “King Nemo as courageous as a zhantil and beloved of Opaz.” For a laugh, and I sorely needed something to lighten my spirits in those dark days, I translated this out into English as: “King Nemo the lion-hearted, beloved of God.” And so cursed and struck the loom of my oar, and almost despaired of ever seeing my Delia again.

We rowed eight to an oar, usually, five pulling and three pushing. The swordship, usually known as Nemo, and by we slaves with a spit and curse also, had commissioned for service up among the islands chasing pirate swordships. She was a moderately large vessel, although I did not then ascertain her measurements, not being in a position to do so; but she rowed in her single bank of oars arranged alla scaloccio thirty oars a side. There were marked differences between this swordship and the swifters of the inner sea, differences dictated by the altered circumstances of sea and weather and distances. Whereas a swifter needed little freeboard, a swordship must be built with freeboard sufficient to cope with the deeper swell-waves and the greater violence of the outer oceans. Only one bank of oars was employed. The old-fashioned zenzile method of rowing was still found among the swordships, but it was rapidly disappearing. Because of this the oars were that much heavier and longer and were not angled so sharply into the water. Up front she possessed the curved bronze ram or rostrum that is still regarded by many sailors as the principal weapon of the oared galley, despite the problems of entrapping and swamping entailed in the rammed galley’s apostis. The proembolion, the second projecting wedge designed to thrust the rammed ship off the rostrum, was as well-developed among the swordships as among the swifters. Above that the beak extended forward, and here, too, a difference was found. The swifter beaks were movable, being lifted or slung down into position for boarding, rather after the fashion of a sophisticated and modernized Roman corvus. The swordship beaks were permanent structures and built so that they extended forward short of the point of the waterline ram, and they were extended aft into the foot of the low forecastle.

All in all, as I sweated at my oar with seven oarsmen around me, I fancied the swordships were as good a bargain a navy might get from the always unsatisfactory attempt to oar a sailing vessel, or sail a galley. Their underwater lines were nowhere as fine as a swifter’s and they were deeper in draft, which made them sea cows to row. But they were still long, lean, low, and they were cranky and dangerous and wet and hideously uncomfortable.

Every time I hauled the oar I cursed King Nemo. To liken him to a zhantil was a ludicrous slander on a noble beast; if anything, Nemo was a leem — or a cramph.

This swordship Nemo boasted three masts, unlike most of the pirate galleys I had previously encountered, and the captain seemed to me to be as unhandy a sailor as any I had shipped with and always preferred to use his oars. This made life hard. We sailed north and west up along the island chain, calling in at various of the port fortresses Tomboram maintained there. We did not sight a single pirate swordship.

We saw three scraps of sail on a bright day of fine visibility; but we sheered away and later the buzz went around the slave deck that the swordships had been from The Bloody Menaham. They would have been a relief to me. Mind you, I was well aware of the horror and the shambles of the rowing benches during a fight, but my mood was black and vicious and by this time I was ready to tear the throat out of a leem with my bare hands.

Nemo Zhantil Faril Opaz got her comeuppance at last in a way that was so ridiculous that every time I thought about it afterward I cursed in delighted wonder.

We had touched in at an island that Valka, a captured Vallian and a man who appealed to me and to whom I had been closest drawn of all those oar comrades, said was deserted. A party was about to go ashore for water when, peering through the oar-port I saw a sight that created, at once, a great shout of surprise and admiration and lust all over the swordship.

Onto the beach dashed a horde of half-naked girls.

They danced down to the water’s edge and they held out their hands to the swordship in supplication. Many and various were the oaths that floated fruitily into the hot air.

“By Likshu the Treacherous!” said a yellow Chulik farther along on our oar. “Were I not held by these chains!”

We mocked him. “Were any of us not held by these chains, oh mighty Chulik!”

“Mother Zinzu the Blessed!” rang a clear call from somewhere farther along the rowing deck, at which I felt all that old pang of remembrance. Many and varied, the oaths, fruity and blasphemous and calling on gods and demons and heroes from a score or more of different cultures. But we were slaves, naked and chained, filthy and mop-beaded, bristling with hair and vermin. That rout of beautiful naked girls was not for us.

The captain and the crew brought not water from the island but rich wine in great round-bellied amphorae. The girls, clad in their strings of flowers and feathers, laughed and came out to the swordship as the twin suns sank in an opaz glory. We slaves crouched on our rowing benches and glowered and fed on crusts, an onion each, and a strip of old cheese like lenk. The Maiden with the Many Smiles rose before the suns had gone. A weird clashing of colors poured over the swordship. We slaves could imagine what was happening in the aftercastle and the forecastle now; we could hear the peals of silvery laughter and the great gusts of sailor mirth.

And then, gradually, the sounds quieted down. We heard a shrill scream, and then another, fainter. Silence dropped on the swordship. We did not even hear the watch calling the turning of the sandglass. Valka said to me, “Something is amiss.” He roused the Gon who was nearest the gangway, an unpopular position as he was nearest the lash of the whip-deldar. “Hey, dom. What’s afoot?”

The Gon’s great bristling, malodorous thatch of bone-white hair lifted. Gons habitually shave their heads skull bare. If that is because they feel shame over a mop of white hair, one must sympathize with their own foolish beliefs. As it was, this Gon experienced deep shame over his unshaven head.

“Let be, Valka. I want to sleep, and dream of those women.”

“Look aft, you hairy nit! Is the watch by the lamp?”

The Gon stretched. “The lamp is not lit.”

“By Vox!” Valka galvanized himself into instant action. “This is the one night. .” He began to tear at his chains, desperately, until his nails tore and the blood poured forth. So far I had found no implement with which to file through the iron chains, as we had done in Grace of Grodno when Zorg, Nath, Zolta, and I planned escape. Yet Valka was right. This one night was our chance! But, through the most simple and elementary precautions of the crew, nothing convenient for a slave to rub through his chains lay handily about the deck. We might all have lost our reason, then, tearing at our fetters and trying to keep silent besides. Already the unlit lamp proved the routine of the swordship had been altered, and when we were not hosed down for the night we knew beyond doubt that the crew was otherwise engaged — and in our lascivious dreams how wrong we were!

For — in the lambent pink floods of moonlight a girl stepped up onto the central gangway. Every head turned to look — but there were no cries of admiration or lust or, even, of wonder. In absolute silence that slip of a girl walked all the way along the central gangway, from aft forward, half-naked, her limbs gleaming pink in the moonglow, swinging her burden lightly from one little fist. She held that burden by its hair. Sightless eyes glared out upon the rowing benches. From the severed neck from which still strips of gristle and flesh dangled dropped the dark blood. Drop by drop as she walked the blood fell upon the gangway.

No chance guided her choice of head thus to parade.

Every oar-slave recognized that hated face.

The uncanny contrast between that lithe slip of a girl, all gleaming beautiful and pink in the streaming moonlight, and that hideous severed head, dropping its blood as she walked so gracefully along, with a swing of her hips, laughing, affected every single one of us profoundly. Not a man so much as moved. No one spoke. Every eye fixed on her and her burden, glaring like the jungle denizens stare upon their prey.

Drop by drop the blood fell upon the planks of the gangway.

Every oar-slave recognized that hated face. In a deep and scarcely comprehending silence we watched the girl carry the head along, laughing, swinging her hideous burden. We knew that dead face.

It was the face of the chief whip-deldar.