The Sword of Rhiannon

V. Slave of Sark

Boghaz recovered himself with magnificent aplomb. He bowed deeply to the leader of the press-gang, a huge black-bearded, hawk-nosed man wearing the same black mail that Carse had seen on the Sark soldiers in the square.

“My lord Scyld!” said Boghaz. “I regret that I am corpulent, and therefore slow of motion. I would not for worlds have given your lordship the trouble of breaking my poor door, especially”—his face beamed with the light of pure innocence—“especially as I was about to set out in search of you.”

He gestured toward Carse.

“I have him for you, you see,” he said. “I have him safe.”

Scyld set his fists on his hips, thrust his spade beard up into the air and laughed. Behind him the soldiers of the press-gang took it up and, behind them, the rabble of Jekkarans who had come to see the fun.

“He has him safe,” said Scyld, “for us.”

More laughter.

Scyld stepped closer to Boghaz. “I suppose,” he said, “that it was your loyalty that prompted you to spirit this Khond dog away from my men in the first place.”

“My lord,” protested Boghaz, “the mob would have killed him.”

“That’s why my men went in—we wanted him alive. A dead Khond is of no use to us. But you had to be helpful, Boghaz. Fortunately you were seen.” He reached out and fingered the stolen ornaments that Boghaz wore around his neck. “Yes,” said Scyld, “very fortunately.”

He wrenched the collar and the belt away, admired the play of light on the jewels and dropped them into his belt-pouch. Then he moved to the bed, where the sword lay half-concealed among the blankets. He picked it up, felt the weight and balance of the blade, examined casually the chasing of the steel and smiled.

“A real weapon,” he said. “Beautiful as the Lady herself—and just as deadly.”

He used the point to cut Carse free of his bonds. “Up, Khond,” he said, and helped him with the toe of his heavy sandal.

Carse staggered to his feet and shook his head once to clear it. Then, before the men of the press-gang could grasp him, he smashed his hard fist savagely into the expansive belly of Boghaz.

Scyld laughed. He had a deep, hearty seaman’s laugh. He kept guffawing as his soldiers pulled Carse away from the doubled-up gasping Valkisian.

“No need for that now,” Scyld told him. “There’s plenty of time. You two are going to see a lot of each other.”

Carse watched a horrible realization break over the fat face of Boghaz.

“My lord,” quavered the Valkisian, still gasping. “I am a loyal man. I wish only to serve the interests of Sark and her Highness, the Lady Ywain.” He bowed.

“Naturally,” said Scyld. “And how could you better serve both Sark and the Lady Ywain than by pulling an oar in her war-galley?”

Boghaz was losing color by the second. “But, my lord—”

“What?” cried Scyld fiercely. “You protest? Where is your loyalty, Boghaz?” He raised the sword. “You know what the penalty is for treason.”

The men of the press-gang were near to bursting with suppressed laughter.

“Nay,” said Boghaz hoarsely. “I am loyal. No one can accuse me of treason. I wish only to serve—” He stopped short, apparently realizing that his own tongue had trapped him neatly.

Scyld brought the flat of the blade down in a tremendous thwack across Boghaz’ enormous buttocks.

“Go then and serve!” he shouted.

Boghaz leaped forward, howling. The press-gang grabbed him. In a few seconds they had shackled him and Carse securely together.

Scyld complacently thrust the sword of Rhiannon into his own sheath after tossing his own blade to a soldier to carry. He led the way swaggeringly out of the hut.

Once again, Carse made a pilgrimage through the streets of Jekkara but this time by night and in chains, stripped of his jewels and his sword.

It was to the palace quays they went, and the cold shivering thrill of unreality came again upon Carse as he looked at the high towers ablaze with light and the soft white fires of the sea that glowed far out in the darkness.

The whole palace quarter swarmed with slaves, with men-at-arms in the sable mail of Sark, with courtiers and women and jongleurs. Music and the sounds of revelry came from the palace itself as they passed beneath it.

Boghaz spoke to Carse in a rapid undertone. “The blockheads didn’t recognize that sword. Keep quiet about your secret—or they’d take us both to Caer Dhu for questioning and you know what that means!” He shuddered over all his great body.

Carse was too numbed to answer. Reaction from this incredible world and from sheer physical fatigue was sweeping over him like a wave.

Boghaz continued loudly for the benefit of their guards. “All this splendor is in honor of the Lady Ywain of Sark! A princess as great as her father, King Garach! To serve in her galley will be a privilege.”

Scyld laughed mockingly. “Well said, Valkisian! And your fervent loyalty shall be rewarded. That privilege will be yours a long time.”

The black war-galley loomed up before them, their destination. Carse saw that it was long, rakish, with a rowers’ pit splitting its deck down the middle and a low stern-castle aft.

Flamboys were blazing on the low poop deck back there and ruddy light spilled from the windows of the cabins beneath it. Sark soldiers clustered back there, chaffing each other loudly.

But in the long dark rowers’ pit there was only a bitter silence.

Scyld raised his bull voice in a shout. “Ho, there, Callus!”

A large man came trunting out of the shadowy pit, negotiating the catwalk with practiced skill. His right hand clutched a leathern bottle and his left a black whip—a long-lashed thing, supple from much using.

He saluted Scyld with the bottle, not troubling to speak.

“Fodder for the benches,” Scyld said. “Take them.” He chuckled. “And see that they’re chained to the same oar.”

Callus looked at Carse and Boghaz, then smiled lazily and gestured with the bottle. “Get aft, carrion,” he grunted and let the lash run out.

Carse glared at him out of red eyes and snarled. Boghaz gripped the Earthman by the shoulder and shook him.

“Come on, fool!” he said. “We’ll get enough beatings without you asking for them.”

He pulled Carse with him, down into the rowers’ pit and forward along the catwalk between the benches.

The Earthman, numbed by shock and exhaustion, was only dimly aware of faces turned to watch them, of the mutter of chains and the smell of the bilges. He only half saw the round curious heads of the two furry creatures who slept on the catwalk and who moved to let them pass.

The last starboard bench facing the stern-castle had only one sleeping man chained to its oar, its other two places being empty. The press-gang stood by until Carse and Boghaz were safely chained.

Then they went off with Scyld. Callus cracked his whip with a sound like a gunshot, apparently as a reminder to all hands, and went forward.

Boghaz nudged Carse in the ribs. Then he leaned over and shook him. But Carse was beyond caring what Boghaz had to say. He was sound asleep, doubled, over the loom of the oar.

Carse dreamed. He dreamed that he was again taking that nightmare plunge through the shrieking infinities of the dark bubble in Rhiannon’s tomb. He was falling, falling—

And again he had that sensation of a strong, living presence close beside him in the awful plunge, of something grasping at his brain with a dark and dreadful eagerness.

“No!” Carse whispered in his dream. “No!”

He husked that refusal again—a refusal of something that the dark presence was asking him to do, something veiled and frightful.

But the pleading became more urgent, more insistent, and whatever it was that pleaded seemed now far stronger than in the Tomb of Rhiannon. Carse uttered a shuddering cry.

“No, Rhiannon!”

He found himself suddenly awake, looking dazedly along the moonlit oar-bank.

Callus and the overseer were striding along the catwalk, lashing the slaves to wakefulness. Boghaz was looking at Carse with a strange expression.

“You cried out to the Cursed One!” he said.

The other slave at their oar was staring at him too and so were the luminous eyes of the two furry shadows chained to the catwalk.

“A bad dream,” Carse muttered. “That was all.”

He was interrupted by a whistle and crack and a searing pain along his back.

“Stand to your oar, carrion!” roared Callus’ voice from above him.

Carse voiced a tigerish cry but Boghaz instantly stopped his mouth with one big paw. “Steady!” he warned. “Steady!”

Carse got hold of himself but not in time to avoid another stroke of the whip. Callus stood grinning down at him.

“You’ll want care,” he said. “Care, and watching.”

Then he lifted his head and yelled along the oarbank. “All right, you scum, you carrion! Sit up to it! We’re starting on the tide for Sark and I’ll flay alive the first man who loses stroke!”

Overhead seamen were busy in the rigging. The sails fell wide from the yards, dark in the moonlight.

There was a sudden pregnant silence along the ship, a drawing of breath and tightening of sinews. On a platform at the end of the catwalk a slave crouched ready over a great hide drum.

An order was given. The fist of the drummer clenched and fell.

All along the oar-bank the great sweeps shot out, found water, bit and settled to a steady rhythm. The drumbeat gave the time and the lash enforced it. Somehow Carse and Boghaz managed to do what they had to do.

The rowers’ pit was too deep for sight, except what one could glimpse through the oar ports. But Carse heard the full-throated cheer of the crowd on the quays as the war-galley of Ywain of Sark cleared the slip, standing out into the open harbor.

The night breeze was light and the sails drew little. The drum picked up the beat, drove it faster, sent the long sweeps swinging and set the scarred and sweating backs of the slaves to their full stretch and strain.

Carse felt the lift of the hull to the first swell of the open sea. Through the oar port, he glimpsed a heaving ocean of milky flame. He was bound for Sark across the White Sea of Mars.