The Urth of the New Sun

Chapter XI — Skirmish

I LAY in the nothingness of sleep, and yet some part of me remained awake, floating in the gulf of unconsciousness, which contains the unborn and so many of the dead.

“Do you know who I am?”

I did, though I could not have said how. “You are the captain.”

“I am. Who am I?”

“Master,” I said, for it seemed I was an apprentice once more. “Master, I do not understand.”

“Who captains the ship?”

“Master, I do not know.”

“I am your judge. This blossoming universe has been given to my guardianship. My name is Tzadkiel.”

“Master,” I said, “is this my trial?”

“No. And it is my own trial that grows near, not yours. You have been a warrior king, Severian. Will you fight for me? Fight willingly?”

“Gladly, master.”

My own voice seemed to echo in the dream: “Master…master…master…” There was no reply beyond a booming reverberation. The sun was dead, and I was alone in the freezing dark.

“Master! Master!”

Zak was shaking my shoulder.

I sat up, thinking for a moment that he had more speech than I had supposed. “Hush, I’m awake,” I said.

He parroted me: “Hush!”

“Was I talking in my sleep, Zak? I must have been, for you to hear that word. I remember—”

I fell silent because he had cupped a hand to his ear. I listened too and heard yells and scuffling. Someone called my name.

Zak was out the door before me, not so much running as launching himself in a flat leap. I was not far behind him, and after bruising my hands on the first wall, I learned to twist myself and strike them with my feet first as he did.

A corner and another, and we caught sight of a knot of struggling men. Another leap shot us among them, I not knowing which side was ours, or even if we had one.

A sailor with a knife in his left hand sprang at me. I caught him as Master Gurloes had once taught me and threw him against a wall, only then seeing that he was Purn.

There was no time for apology or question. The dagger of an indigo giant thrust for my lungs. I struck his thick wrist with both arms, and too late saw a second dagger, its blade held beneath his other hand. It flashed up. I tried to writhe away; a struggling pair pushed me back, and I beheld the steel-hearted blue nenuphar of death.

As if the laws of nature had been suspended for me, it did not descend. The giant’s backward motion never stopped, fist and blade continuing backward until he himself was bent backward too, and I heard his shoulder snap, and the wild scream he gave when the jagged bones tore him from within.

Big though his hand was, the pommel of his dagger protruded from it. I got it in one hand and a quillon in the other, and wrenched the weapon free — then drove it up into his rib cage. He fell backward as a tree falls, slowly at first, his legs always stiff beneath him. Zak, hanging from his uplifted arm, tore the other dagger from him, much as I had the one I held.

Each was large enough for a short sword, and we did some damage with them. I would have done more if I had not had to step between Zak and some sailor who thought him a jiber.

Such fights end as suddenly as they begin. One runs, then another, and then all the rest must, being too few to fight. So it was with us. A wild-haired jiber with the teeth of an atrox tried to beat down my blade with a mace of pipe. I half severed his wrist, stabbed him in the throat — and realized that save for Zak I had no comrades left. A sailor dashed past, clutching his bleeding arm. I followed him, shouting for Zak.

If we were pursued, it was with little zeal. We fled down a twisting gangway and through an echoing chamber full of silent machinery, along a second gangway (tracking those we followed by fresh blood on the floors and bulkheads, and once by the body of a sailor) and into a smaller chamber where there were tools and workbenches, and five sailors, full of sighs and curses as they bandaged one another’s wounds.

“Who are you?” one asked. He menaced me with his dirk.

Purn said, “I know him. He’s a passenger.” His right hand had been wrapped in bloodstained gauze and taped.

“And this?” The sailor with the dirk pointed toward Zak.

I said, “Touch him and I’ll kill you.”

“He’s no passenger,” the sailor said doubtfully.

“I owe you no explanation and give none. If you doubt that the two of us can kill all of you, try us.”

A sailor who had not spoken before said, “Enough, Modan. If the sieur vouches for him…”

“I will. I do.”

“That’s enough, then. I saw you killing the jibers, and your hairy friend the same. How can we help you?”

“You can tell me why the jibers were killing you, if you know. I’ve been told there are always some on the ship. They can’t always be that aggressive.”

The sailor’s face, which had been open and friendly, closed — though it seemed nothing in his expression had changed. “I’ve heard tell, sieur, that there’s somebody aboard this voyage that they’ve been told to do for, only they can’t find him. I don’t know no more than that. If you do, you know more than me, like the hog told the butcher.”

“Who gives them their orders?”

He had turned away. I looked around at the rest, and at last Purn said, “We don’t know. If there’s a captain of the jibers, we’ve never heard of him till now.”

“I see. I’d like to speak to an officer — not just a petty officer like Sidero, but a mate.”

The sailor called Modan said, “Well, bless you, sieur, so’d we. You think we jumped all them jibers, without no leader nor proper weapons? We was a work gang, nine hands, and the jumped us. Now we’re not goin’ to work no more without we have pikes, and marines posted.”

The others nodded their agreement.

I said, “Surely you can tell me where I’d be likely to find a mate.”

Modan shrugged. “For’ard or aft, sieur. That’s all I can say. Mostly they’re in one place or the other, those bein’ the best for navigation and observations, the instruments not bein’ blocked off so much by her sails. One or t’other.”

I recalled seizing the bowsprit rigging during my wild career among the sails. “Aren’t we pretty far forward here?”

“That’s so, sieur.”

“Then how can I get farther forward?”

“That way.” He gestured. “And foller your nose. That’s what the monkey told the elephant.”

“But you can’t tell me precisely how I should go?”

“I could, sieur, but it wouldn’t be mannerly. Can I give you some advice, sieur?”

“That’s what I’ve been asking for.”

“Stay with us till we get someplace safer. You want a mate. We’ll turn you over to the right one, when we can. You go off on your own and the jibers will kill you sure.”

Purn said, “Right when you come out that door, then straight along till you come to the companionway. Up, and take the widest passage. Keep going.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Come on, Zak.”

The hairy man nodded, and when we were outside jerked his head and announced, “Bad man.”

“I know, Zak. We have to find a place to hide. Do you understand? You look on this side of the corridor, and I’ll look on that one. Keep quiet.”

He stared at me quizzically for a moment, but it was plain he understood. I had gone no more than a chain down the corridor when he pulled at my sound arm to show me a little storeroom. Although most of its space was taken up by drums and crates, there was room enough for us. I positioned the door so that a hairline crack remained for us to look through, and he and I sat down on two boxes.

I had been sure the sailors would leave the chamber in which we had found them soon, since there was nothing there for them once they had treated one another’s wounds and caught their breath. In the event, they stayed so long that I was almost convinced we had missed them — that they had gone back to the scene of the fight, or down some branching passage that we had overlooked. No doubt they had disputed long before setting out.

However it had been, they appeared at last. I touched a finger to my lips to warn Zak, though I do not think that was necessary. When all five had passed and seemed likely to be fifty ells or more ahead, we crept out.

I had no way of knowing how long we would have to follow them before Purn would be last among them, or if he would ever be last; in the worst case, I was prepared to pin our hopes on our courage and their fears, and take him from their midst.

Fortune was with us — Purn soon lagged a few steps behind. Since succeeding to the autarchy, I have often led charges in the north. I feigned to lead such a charge now, shouting for pandours who consisted exclusively of Zak to follow. We rushed upon the sailors as though at the head of an army, flourishing our weapons; and they turned and fled as one man.

I had hoped to take Purn from behind, sparing my burned arm as much as I could. Zak saved me the trouble with a long flying leap that sent him crashing into Purn’s knees. I needed only to hold the point of my dagger at his throat. He looked terrified, as well he should: I expected to kill him when I had wrung as much information from him as I could.

For the space of a breath or two we remained listening to the retreating feet of the four who had fled. Zak had snatched Purn’s knife from its sheath, and now waited with a weapon in either hand, glaring at the fallen seaman from beneath beetling brows.

“You’ll die at once if you try to run,” I whispered to Purn. “Answer me and you may live awhile. Your right hand’s bandaged. How was it hurt?”

Although he lay flat on his back, with my dagger against his throat, his eyes defied me. It was a look I knew well, an attitude I had seen broken again and again.

“I haven’t enough time to waste any on you,” I told him, and I prodded him with the point just enough to draw blood. “If you won’t answer, say so plainly; and I’ll kill you and be done with it.”

“Fighting the jibers. You were there. You saw it. I tried to get you, sure, that’s true enough. I thought you were one of them. With that jiber—” His eyes flickered toward Zak. “With him with you, anybody would have. You weren’t hurt, and no harm done.”

“’As the viper told the sow.’ So a man called Jonas used to say. He was a sailor too, Purn, but as quick to lie as you are. That hand was wrapped in bandages already when Zak and I joined the fight. Take the bandages off.”

He did so, reluctantly. The wound had been treated by a skillful leech, no doubt at the infirmary Gunnie had mentioned; the tear in his flesh was sutured now, yet it was clear enough what sort of wound it had been.

And as I bent to look at it, Zak, bending too, drew his lips back from his teeth as I have sometimes seen tame apes do. I knew then that the wild conjecture I had been trying to dismiss was the simple truth: Zak had been the shaggy, bounding apport we had hunted in the hold.