The Tides of Kregen [Dray Prescot #12] Page 7

  I went straight in at the three fellows hauling on the shackles at the head of the procession, dragging the girls along. They all dropped the ropes and slung at me. I dodged. Three blows took care of them. Against knives a fist is a useful weapon, lacking anything better. The unarmed combat disciplines hammered into me by the Krozairs of Zy also ensured I could take out a man armed only with a knife. As for the slung stones, they could break an arm or crack a skull. Two more slavers went down, their faces abruptly bloody, as they tried to jump me. And all the time I was leaping around like a frenzied fire-dancer, trying to present so shifting and erratic a target that the slingers would be bound to miss.

  It all struck me as remarkably fatuous, not real, as though I was being run through a slow-motion reprise of what had gone on long ago in much more gory detail. But the truth was there in the blood and the screams and the agony. This was real enough. The missing factor was twenty-one years away from scenes of Kregen, I was the one at fault.

  What I had left, only moments before, still seemed more real to me. The Parisian hospital, the Prussian guns, the balloon, the blood there. Already, because one of the slavers twisted his knife as I struck him down and spitted himself, I had blood on my hands. Blood. Is blood, then, so inseparable from life?

  “They climb into the boat!” screeched Mako.

  “Don't just stand there shouting about it!” I bellowed at him, running down the beach. “Stop them!” I did not have the heart to use the great word Jikai, and I think I was right.

  An older man ran across as I started. A knife slash had brought blood in a line across his side. He was panting. “Let them go,” he said, his chest heaving. “They may kill more of us."

  I ignored him. His was the word of wisdom, of course, for the girls had been saved and the last of the slavers were evidently only too anxious to push off and row away. But I had other ideas. It was through no bloodthirsty madness that I acted as I did; I simply needed that boat. I did not know where I was but, by Vox, it was a long way off the beaten track.

  The younger element was anxious to follow my lead. In a last affray in the surf, where, I admit, I stood back at the end and let them get on with it, the last of the slavers were seen to. Up on the beach the people on whose side I had fought were going around carefully slitting every living slaver's throat.

  The girls, their shackles torn off, played a lustful part in that butchery too.

  Presently I was able to go back to the older man who was being seen to, his wound stanched by a pad of leaves. No one produced a kit of acupuncture needles. Truly, I was out in the boondocks. Something about the light at last demanded my full attention, and I looked up. Yes. Yes, up there the huge red sun preceded the smaller green sun across the sky. In the forty-year cycle, which is never really an exact forty years by virtue of Kregen's Keplerian orbit about Antares, the suns had met and eclipsed and parted again. I thought of Magdag. What did they get up to on that occasion in that infamous city, when the green sun passed in front of the red? Could the smaller sun even be seen against that massive somber red glow?

  “We owe you our thanks,” said the older man, who said his name was Mogo the Wise.

  I still remained on Kregen so I must have done the right thing.

  Looking at the people here, the girls hysterical in their relief, the men comforting them, and now a stream of other people, old men and women, youngsters, coming running along the path from the village, I wondered which of them the Star Lords had wanted preserved. They did not seem a likely lot of prospects for a great destiny on Kregen. That was not my concern. Exchanging polite greetings with the headman was not my concern. I wrapped a fawn breechclout around my nakedness and possessed myself of a knife, a poor thing with a bone handle and a bronze blade, indifferently made. These people were poor. I cut through all the chatter.

  “Tell me where this place is,” I said, then, quelling their inquiries, I added, “for I have been shipwrecked and am lost out of the sea."

  The head-shaking at this, the lip-pursing, made me wonder what they ordinarily did to shipwrecked mariners.

  “Why,” said Mogo the Wise, screwing up his eyes. “This is Inama. Everyone knows that."

  In my screaming desire to know, to return to Delia, I wondered what fool had ever called this fool wise.

  “And where is Inama? What is the next island called? The nearest mainland?"

  “The next island is where those devils of Yanimas come from. As to any other large island, there cannot be any as large as Inama or Yanima, although there are smaller. And, as for what you call mainland...” Here he turned to his people and lifted his hands to his temples. Whereat everyone laughed. I kept my temper—just.

  “Do any ships call here?"

  “Of course. But they come to kill us or take us prisoner. They sail from the Ice Floes of Sicce. We run and hide. Sometimes they leave things behind.” He held out his knife. It was of iron, with an ivory handle. “This is a great knife, left by a ship."

  Of one fact I felt relief in my dangerous impatience: these poor people talked of the Ice Floes of Sicce. That particular version of a Kregan hell, perhaps the most famous, was not the only one. I took heart from this talk of hell.

  I said: “I will take this boat."

  The headman looked dubious at this, with much pulling of his lower lip. One or two of the young bloods fingered their knives. I said, “I have saved your girls. I would like you to place water and food in the boat.” More head scratching and eyes turned to the sky. “By Vox!” I said. “And would you wish the Yanimas to find a boat of theirs here when next they call?"

  That was a two-pronged argument, but Mogo the Wise took the point as I had intended.

  “That would make them very angry."

  “And they would kill many of you. Put food and water into the boat and I will leave you."

  So it was settled.

  The hideous anticlimax, the dread truth, the damnable situation in which I had been placed screamed at me, screeching with impending madness in my skull. Here I was, back on Kregen, and I had absolutely no idea where. I was lost. And all I had for transport was a mere rowing boat. Truly the Star Lords—if they had pitched me back here—took their revenge harshly.

  But lost or not, rowing boat or not, I would set off to find Valka and my Delia. To the Ice Floes of Sicce with the Everoinye!

  * * *

  Chapter Seven

  Lost on Kregen

  Some experiences in one's life one would wish to forget. Certainly I rate that little boating excursion as among that group of experiences I would do a very great deal never to repeat.

  By the position and altitude of the suns I could make a fair stab at latitude; longitude remained as much a mystery as it used to be on Earth before John Harrison gave the deep-water mariner a chronometer that would keep time with incredible accuracy. I had two alternatives and neither appeared over-appealing.

  Despite the fact that Kregen possesses a much greater land area than Earth, there is still a vast amount of water. Here I was, in a cranky, stubborn rowing boat, adrift somewhere on the waters of Kregen and with every direction on the compass to choose for my direction.

  The other alternative, simply allowing the winds and currents to push me where they willed, in the anticipation that I would be cast up on a frequented shore, I dismissed. By more bargaining as the food and water were brought down I obtained a sheet of cloth—that fawn material the women made up from the fibers of a cottony plant—and cut down a tree to make a mast and spar. Fashioning a crude dipping lug and stepping the mast as well as I could, I determined to sail where I was going under my own power.

  The little dipping lug reminded me of the muldavy of the Eye of the World. This boat was a rough and ready affair, split logs being bent to shape, secured with treenails and with quantities of hair packed in with clay. It was more of a raft than a boat, but it would serve. It would have to serve.

  With clumsy pottery crocks filled with water, a supply of cooked chicke
ns and strips of bosk, dried in salt, and piles of various fruits of which palines formed a sizable proportion, I set off.

  No doubt the islanders thought me mad. This island of Inama was clearly situated dwaburs off the shipping lanes, and my task was to find either a ship or land as speedily as possible. It would not be easy.

  I could go east or west and be sure of striking land eventually. But if I was to the east of Havilfar and sailed east I'd be voyaging into an empty sea until I struck the lands of the other continental grouping from which came the shanks. And if I was to the west of Turismond and sailed the boat west, the same thing would result. The problem was a knotty one.

  If I sailed north I fancied I'd stand the best chance. Southward would take me toward the equator and therefore away from Vallia.

  In a similar situation on Earth there would be a strong possibility that a sailor would feel the ocean he sailed: the blue of the Pacific, the raw gray of the Atlantic, the sense of the Mediterranean. I had had no experience of these far outer oceans of Kregen, so I sailed north. The breeze veered toward the east and, accepting this as the kind of fate that had dogged me, bore away toward the northwest. The lug sail pouted, the boat more forced its way through the water than glided along, and I maintained a most strict rationing of the meager supplies.

  The day came when I could not prolong the supplies by any artifice whatsoever; I had none. I do not intend to labor overlong on the rigors of that voyage; suffice it to say I caught fish and slit them open for their small quantities of fresh water. I drank a few handfuls of seawater per day for the moisture, knowing I could tolerate that small amount of salt, and I ate fish, which I detest, not only because of the damned fishheads from around the curve of the horizon.

  Whether or not I could have survived without that immersion in the Pool of Baptism in Aphrasöe I do not know. But the day came when, almost out of my head and scarcely believing what I saw to be true, an argenter appeared, backed her maintopsail and so picked me up.

  The hands that lifted me from the boat, the faces that stared down on me, were all a shining lustrous black. I knew I had fallen into the hands of apims from Xuntal, people of the same race as Balass. I had always found the Xuntalese to be firm, thoughtful, generous, fierce when they had to be. It seemed wise to appear in worse case than I was. So they carried me below decks and I flopped in a peculiar bunk built into the side of the ship and went to sleep. Water, food, everything I needed of bodily comfort was provided when I awoke.

  There is little else to say about the argenter. She was Scepter of Xurrhuk, much after the style of those broad argenters of Pandahem, although, I fancied, not quite so wide and stubby and with another knot of speed in a fair breeze. She was painted in brilliant colors of many tones and shades and her sails were all of purest white, which delighted and amazed me, an old salt accustomed to the drab tawny sails long exposed to the elements of my own vessels.

  Her master, a tall, imposing man wearing dyed blue garments of the finest ponsho wool, invited me to his cabin. The sweep of the aft windows brought back memories. I sat and drank a very fair Maxanian, straw-colored, light on the palate, and the master introduced himself as Captain Swixonon.

  “You are a lucky man, dom."

  “Aye, Captain. Xurrhuk of the Curved Sword smiled."

  His craggy face regarded me gravely. “You are not of Xuntal."

  “No. But I count at least one Xuntalese as a good friend. Tell me, Captain, where are we bound?"

  “We sail from Mehzta to Xuntal."

  “I know a good friend from Mehzta also."

  “You are a much traveled man?"

  I did not laugh but I said, “No. I met them far from their homes. I cannot pay you now for a passage, but I know ships. I can work. Later, when I am home, I will remit payment through the Lamnias."

  “Very well.” He was a captain, a man who made his mind up rapidly.

  “Thank you."

  “And your name? And your country?"

  “I am Dray Prescot, of Vallia."

  He raised his eyebrows. I did not think he had heard of me. After all, Kregen is a large place and my doings, although making a stir in the countries I had been, would mean little elsewhere.

  “I am pleased to make a connection with Vallia. Maybe we can arrange something later."

  He was shrewd. Trading over the oceans is a chancy business. There are fliers on Kregen, as you know, but most of that marvelous world's commerce is carried on by ship or canal or animal transport. Fliers—as I well knew—are often rare and precious objects, completely unknown over many and many a highly civilized land. Havilfar holds her secrets well.

  With that in mind, I said, “I would like to hire or charter a flier in Xuntal. The Vallian embassy is still open?"

  He looked puzzled. “Why should it not be, dom?"

  “I have been away ... politics. I shall be glad to be back, by Vox!"

  In his shrewdness I fancy he read more into me than I intended to give away. He asked no questions about my arrival in a small boat, but he must have seen her and noted her lines. The rest of the journey I acted as a simple seaman and, I swear by Zair, despite the pressing urgency forcing me on, I recognized that the argenter could go no faster so I took some pleasure from the tasks of shipboard life again.

  To pass very rapidly over the next few weeks is to bring me to the Vallian ambassador in Xuntal, that island off the southern promontory of Balintol, the large subcontinent of Segesthes. Mehzta, from which came my good comrade Gloag, lay off the northeast coast of Segesthes. Here in Xuntal I was about the same distance southeast of Valka as I was of Zenicce, where Gloag ran my House of Strombor. Yet, because of Delia, it was to the Vallian ambassador I went and not the Stromborian. Between Xuntal and Mehzta lie the Chulik Islands. Between Xuntal and Vallia lie the islands of Undurkor. At least I knew where I was on Kregen.

  There was a little trouble in my seeing the Vallian ambassador. The embassy, a splendid and imposing building as befitted the Empire, lay along a shady avenue of other magnificent buildings housing various embassies and consulates. I barged right in and told the flunky I wanted to see the ambassador and to jump. I realize now that I was at fault. But I'd been away for twenty-one miserable years and I was in a hurry. They offered to throw me out.

  Eventually, carrying one guard under an arm, four or five others holding aching heads in a trail on the floor in my wake and the last and most gorgeous of them, in golden robes, thrust along ahead with my hand around his neck, I presented myself before the Vallian ambassador.

  The room was ornate, filled with light, expensive. I heeded none of it. The ambassador rose to his feet from the chair behind his desk. He had been talking to a shifty-looking Rapa who still sat, lifting his vulturine head to observe the proceedings.

  “What do you want? Get out! Rast, out!"

  I pitched the golden-robed flunky to one side.

  This ambassador was one of your red-cheeked, pouchy-eyed individuals, all choler and bile. He wore decent Vallian buff-leathers, but a fancy decoration of black and white looped around his collar. I knew those colors in Vallia. He was a member of the Racter party, the most powerful political party of Vallia, and a gang who had given me trouble before and were to give me trouble again—aye, so much trouble I wonder any of them are still alive, by Vox!

  I said; “Cramph! Your name! Instantly!"

  He saw my face. I did not know him. I do not think he had ever seen me in Vallia before. But he saw my face and some of the color fled from his cheeks.

  “Guards!” he screamed, waving his arms.

  I picked up one of the flunkies’ rapiers. I swished it around. I said, “I shall not ask you your name again."

  Maybe there is something in me, in that stupid, thickheaded Dray Prescot, which guarantees that the yrium—the charismatic power that I detest and yet cold-bloodedly use when I have to—can shine through despite my lumpen ways.

  “I am Vektor Ulanor, the Trylon of Frant! You rast, you will rue th
e day you—"

  “I am Dray Prescot, the Prince Majister. You need not abuse yourself or show fear, for you could not know me. I need a flier at once. Let there be no delay. Jump!" He gaped at me.

  I said: “I shall not ask you again. A Trylon? As ambassador to Xuntal? Very proper, for we value the Xuntalese. But you may well not be a Trylon for very much longer, Ulanor. You might not even be a noble at all, not even a Koter. You might be allowed to sweep the road of zorca and totrix droppings, in the great Kyro of Drak the Victorious in Vondium—if I am minded to be merciful."

  Well, it was all most unpleasant and distasteful; in the end I secured the flier and supplies and bid a much shaken Trylon Vektor remberee.

  Even then, as I sped through the clean air of Kregen, I wondered what this ambassador Ulanor had been up to with a Rapa in Xuntal. The Rapas, those diffs with the strong vulture-heads and fiercely curved beaks, are not often found in the guise of merchants. If plots were being hatched I would have to attend to them the moment I had assured myself everything was shipshape at home. Trylon Vektor had given me a brief rundown on the situation in Vallia. I gathered little had changed in my absence: the Emperor still ruled with his iron, despotic sway partially tempered by his Presidio, the Racters were still in strong opposition to his plans—this I had gathered by what Vektor Ulanor did not say and by his facial tic—and Valka, as far as he knew, had not sunk into the sea.

  He conveyed the impression that he would be particularly pleased had my island done so.

  After that first heated exchange he would have done as I commanded him; only afterward would he doubt his sanity and believe me an impostor. Luckily for him—I didn't care—one of the grooms in the embassy had been in Vondium with another employer and had seen me there. He was able to assuage the Trylon's fears as to my identity.

  I gave them no explanation whatsoever of my presence in Xuntal or of my absence, about which they were well informed. I did give instructions that a fair passage money with a bonus should be paid in broad golden talens to Captain Swixonon, with my thanks. I also advised him, privately, to go for business to the Stromborian embassy and to say the Lord of Strombor had sent him. I added I did not think the Vallian ambassador would be of any use to a friend of mine.