Krozair of Kregen

Chapter Six

The Renders of the western end of the Eye of the World made us welcome. They welcomed reinforcements of tough and ruthless fighting-men. They were not so sure of the three swifters we brought, for they habitually used small, fast craft, which could slip into a convoy and cut out the fat prizes. They said they could no doubt pick up enough oar-slaves for the swifters. But we would to a great extent be on our own. Rukker boomed his great laugh and swished his tail and said he’d show these people what real rending was about, what a fighting Kataki could do in the piracy business. He had found a competent ship-Hikdar among the ex-slaves to run Vengeance Mortil for him. I ran Green Magodont, and a tough and experienced swifter captain, a Krozair of Zamu, took command of Pearl. Once we filled with oar-slaves we would be a hard little squadron, and carry some punch in the Eye of the World. The Krozair of Zamu, Pur Naghan ti Perzefn, would sail Pearl back with all the Zairians who wished to return home.

These Renders were a cutthroat lot. Consisting of escaped slaves, criminals, men who could find a home neither north nor south of the inner sea, they carved out their own destiny. If you ask why I was with them, instead of pursuing my schemes in Magdag, the answer is surely plain. My son!

Jaidur — that same name that Velia had spoken, and I had not understood, when she had been dying in my arms. So my Delia had been pregnant when we’d flown off to chastise the shanks attacking our island of Fossana, where the damned Star Lords had sought to make me do their wishes. I had refused out of stiff-necked pride and fear for Delia, and so had been banished to Earth for all of twenty-one miserable years. There had been twins again, twins of whom I had known nothing. The girl, Dayra, the boy, this same Jaidur who called himself Vax out of shame.

He had rambled on a little more before falling into a drunken stupor. He was quite unused to dopa. He had known that any son of Dray Prescot, the Lord of Strombor, would receive scant shrift from the overlords of Magdag, and he had been on his way there because his sister, Velia, had been missing, reported captured by a swifter from Magdag.

Velia had, indeed, been captured. But she had been captured by Gafard, the King’s Striker, the Sea Zhantil, and they had fallen deeply in love. I believed that to be true. I believed it then, and I am sure of it now. Gafard owed complete allegiance to King Genod, and even when the king sought to abduct the Lady of the Stars, the name by which Velia was known, for the same reasons that Jaidur called himself Vax, Gafard had been unable to blame him; for the king possessed the yrium, the mystic power of authority over ordinary people.

King Genod had, in the end, taken Velia. And because Gafard’s second in command, Grogor, had shafted the saddlebird the king flew, and because the king was abruptly in fear for his life, the genius king had thrown Velia off, to fall to her death. Yrium or no damned yrium, when I caught the cramph I’d probably have trouble stopping myself from breaking his neck before I dragged him off to justice. I know about men who possess the yrium. As I have said, I am cursed with more than one man’s fair share of the yrium.

All this I, alone of our family, knew.

I could not tell Jaidur — or Vax.

I could not tell him.

I had not told him I was his father.

How could I?

There had to be a kinder, better, way of breaking that horrendous news to him. He was in very truth a violent young man. How could I lift a hand against my son in self-defense? And yet how could I stand and let him slay me? For I thought he very well might try. That would be a sin not only for him but for me, also.

His hatred was a real and living force.

Mind you, if I told him and then invited him to try to carry out his avowed intent, and so foined with him and disarmed him — no, no, no. . That would shatter his self-esteem, would turn hatred for me into contempt for himself. And, anyway, he was a remarkably fine swordsman. He might finish me. I share nothing of this silly desire to call oneself the greatest swordsman of the world — or, in my case, of two worlds. That way lies not only paranoia, but a mere killing machine without interest or suspense. Each fight is a new roll of the dice with death, a gamble of life and death. I had decided to go to join the Renders with Rukker because had I gone to Magdag, Vax would have gone with me, and in evil Magdag he might all too easily be slain or enslaved. I did not want that and would stop it. So I had turned aside from my purpose.

A scheme occurred to me whereby I might turn Vax from his path, also. It would give him pain; but nothing like the pain he would be spared.

We sailed out on a few raids and caught Magdaggian shipping and so fought them and took them and built up our stock of oar-slaves. Our base lay up a narrow and winding creek in the lush green island of Wabinosk. When I say green I refer to the vegetation. The island boasted a large population of vosks; but they were kept down by an infestation of lairgodonts. I had no further wish to meet any more lairgodonts, for the risslacas had caused problems before and, anyway, the things were the symbol of King Genod’s new Order of Green Brothers. The islands in this chain were, in their turn, infested by pirates, and we had one or two set-tos with Renders who fancied our prizes. But with Rukker booming and bellowing away we kept what we took.

One day Duhrra started talking about Magdag to Vax, who was most anxious to learn all he could. I listened.

The people we had released from oar-slavery had settled down into a pattern, taking up tasks for which they were suited. Those Zairians who wished to return home had gone in a captured broad ship. Now we had smallish crews, but we were building, and our motive power was almost up to strength. I planned to leave at the earliest moment I could; I had to be sure of Vax first.

“Zigging Grodnims,” Duhrra was saying, sharpening up his sword on a block, taking care over the work.

“All they do is build monstrous great buildings. Rasts.”

Vax egged him on to talk about Magdag. And as I listened so I caught an echo of the way Duhrra saw the rousing times we had spent as pretended renegades. “The king in Sanurkazz has our names down on his roll of infamy — and we innocent.”

“When King Zo hears what you did, Duhrra, I am sure he will pardon you. Was the Lady of the Stars, then, so beautiful?”

Duhrra spit and polished meticulously. “Indeed she was!” Duhrra rolled his eyes. “No maiden more fair graced the earth, they said.”

I felt a pang. Roughly, I said, “Did you ever see her face, oh Duhrra of the waggling tongue?”

“No, master. But I know she was. Duh — everyone said so.”

Here was a chance. I felt a pain in my chest.

“Yes, she was beautiful. Gafard loved her truly, and she loved him truly.” I did not look at Vax. “I think that does mean something important.” I leaned closer. “And here is something Gafard told me that must go no farther than the three of us.” I turned and glared directly into my son’s eyes. “Do I have your word?”

“Yes, Dak. I will not speak of it.”

“Good. Then know that this Lady of the Stars was the true daughter of Pur Dray, the Lord of Strombor.”

Before I had finished the great word Strombor, my son Jaidur, whom I must think of as Vax, leaped up. He let a terrible cry escape him. Then he turned — I saw his face — and he ran to the ladder at the stern and fell down it and so raced like a maniac into the bushes of the shore, vanishing out of sight. Duhrra stared after him, a powerful frown crumpling up that smooth, seemingly idiot face. “Duh, master!

What did I do?”

“You did nothing, Duhrra. And I am not your master.”

“Yes, master.”

I walked away, feeling the desolation in me. This was not my idea of family life. But, then what did I know of family life? I had been privileged to know my eldest twins, Drak and Lela, for periods off and on until they were fourteen. My second twins, Segnik and Velia, had been three when I’d been so mercilessly hurled back to Earth. And now Segnik was Zeg and a famous Krozair of Zy, and Velia was dead. Of Dayra I knew nothing, and of her twin, Jaidur, I must see him every day and speak with him, and call him Vax, and bear the agony; for he hated the memory of his father, a father he knew nothing of

— or, at least, knew nothing good of.

I did know one thing of Dayra. Delia had told me she had been giving trouble at school, with the Sisters of the Rose, of course. And I remembered old Panshi talking of the young prince and of my assumption he meant Segnik, when he meant Jaidur. Old Panshi had had a little frown of puzzlement. Why couldn’t I be just an ordinary simple man? But then, if I were that, I would never have won Delia, the Princess Majestrix of Vallia, at all.

We sailed out on a raiding cruise the next day, hopping from island to island, and I was exceedingly beastly to the Magdaggian shipping we caught. The three swifters acted together, for it seemed the natural thing to do, and Rukker was getting the hang of sea fighting. On this cruise we took a small swifter by a ruse, and boarded her and slew or enslaved her Magdaggian crew. Her slaves joined our ranks. She was sailed back to Wabinosk in triumph.

That night we caroused as Renders do. I had run through all my memories of carousing the nights away with Viridia the Render on the Island of Careless Repose, in the Hobolings. She had been youngish then, and with the normal two-hundred-year life span of the Kregan, I had no doubt she was still at her piratical tricks. Would I ever see her again? Would I ever see any of my old comrades — and enemies

— again?

The coveted High Jikai appeared to come no nearer.

But my words with Vax — I must think and talk of him as Vax — bore fruit Fazhan, who acted as my ship-Hikdar, told me the swifter we had taken was of Sanurkazz. She had been taken by the Magdaggians and converted to their use. As in the wooden navies of the eighteenth century of Earth, the ships of the contending nations were of so similar a type they were fully interchangeable. She had the name arrogantly painted on her bows and under her stern — the sailors of Kregen follow this fashion more often than not — and I read this aloud. “Prychan. A suitable name.”

“Yes,” said Fazhan. He reached out with his knife and scraped at the green paint. “Yes, as I thought. See, Dak, underneath. Her real name, carved as is proper; but blocked up with this damned green paint.”

We removed the offensive paint and saw the original name of the galley.

“Neemu. Yes, I see.” You know that a neemu is a black-furred, near leopard-sized killer, with a round head, squat ears, slit eyes of lambent gold, and runs ferociously upon four legs. A prychan is a very similar beast, sharing the same characteristics, but having fur of a tawny gold. I studied the lines of Neemu.

She was two-banked, a four-three seventy-two. Although she had only eighteen oars to a bank, they were concentrated in the usual way of swifters, giving her an exceptionally long forecastle and quarterdeck. She was narrow in the beam, so narrow I ordered her oars kept in the water to keep her upright. She was fast. I tried her in maneuvers and found her cranky so that she did not respond as well as — for instance — Green Magodont, which was a much larger craft, a three-banked hundred-twenty-six. Green Magodont was of that class of swifter designed to sail in the front rank in a battle, agile so that she might spin about and deliver the diekplus, shearing away an opponent’s oars. Then the second line would come in to take on what was left. This Neemu was clearly a scouting vessel, designed for high speed, yet powerful enough to tackle reasonably heavy opposition. Vax said, “I would like to take all those who will come and sail back to Zandikar.”

There was now a fresh batch of rescued Zairians wishing to go home. I said, “Why Zandikar?”

He said, without shame, “There is a girl-”

“Oh,” I said.

So the brutality of my ruse had been worth it. Vax had decided not to go to Magdag to search for his sister Velia. He knew she was dead; he did not know the manner of her dying. I had told no one that I had held Velia in my arms as she died, and of how the overlords had trampled up to take me. They had not caught Grogor, Gafard’s second in command; but he it was who had shot the arrow into the king’s fluttrell; he it was, they thought, who had slain the stikitches employed by the king. I was a mere pawn, Gafard’s man, and me they had dispatched to the galleys.

“Very well-” I started to say, when I was interrupted by a harsh and ominous screeching. I knew exactly what that raucous shriek from the sky was, and I did not look up. The Gdoinye, the great golden and scarlet raptor of the Star Lords, the magnificent bird of prey they used as a messenger and a spy, had sought me out once again. Duhrra was talking to Vax about taking Neemu back to Zandikar, and trying to urge him to go on to Sanurkazz, for that was nearer Crazmoz. Vax cocked up his head.

“What is that bird?” he said.

Duhrra looked up, also, his idiot-face peering.

“Duh — I see no bird.”

I glanced up, casually.

The confounded Gdoinye was up there, planing in wide hunting circles, screeching down. The thing spied on me for the Star Lords, that was sure.

“Up there, Duhrra, you fambly!” said Vax. He pointed. “Surely you see it? A great red and gold bird.”

“Vax — you’ve been at the dopa again.”

Vax shouted hotly at this and swung to me. “Dak — you see it?”

I looked up at the Gdoinye circling up there, watching me, telling the Star Lords what I was about

“No, Vax. I see no bird.”

“You’re all blind!” shouted Vax, and stamped off. I felt sorry for him. I wondered what he was thinking. But I thought this must be an omen. I must stir myself, or I might be thrust back across four hundred light-years, to Earth, and never get out of the Eye of the World. First, I must make sure my son Jaidur, who called himself Vax out of shame, was safe.