Transit to Scorpio

Chapter Ten

The Princess Natema Cydones of the Noble House of Esztercari had come early that morning to the stone masons’ jetty of her enclave to select new marble for the walls of a summer palace she was having built on the eastern side of her estate. That she would be taking marble destined for the building of the new water-rates building did not concern her in the slightest. As far as the princess knew there was nothing she might not have if she wanted it.

As I watched in dumb fury those idiotic Rapa slaves destroy the fruits of my planning I did not know, then, that among the knot of brilliantly attired nobles on the jetty stood the Princess Natema impatiently stamping her jeweled foot on the stone, waiting to have the coverings ripped from the marble so that she might choose the exact stones she coveted.

All I saw was the charging mob of Rapas and the sudden wink and flame of weapons in the sunshine and the ugly whirling of the iron chains.

The Rapas were not so stupid, after all. They had successfully smuggled many more of their fellows aboard the wherry. They had been aided in this, without a doubt, by my ruse with the vosks. They were a formidable scarecrow crew in their rags and chains who roared onto the landing. Almost at once brilliant emerald green uniforms were flying through the air and splashing into the waters of the canal.

There was a chance for us, after all…

“Loku!” I cried. “Now! Nath-it is up to you to show the way through the city. We depend on you-if you fail us you know what your fate will be.”

“Auee!” he cried, and he grasped his left arm with his right fist, as though it were broken. “By the Great Diproo Himself, I won’t fail! I dare not!” And he dived over the side. Those of my men who could not swim, and the clansmen often practiced the art in the lonely tarns of the moorlands far to the north, were equipped with balks of timber. They now all took to the water and began swimming for the far bank. There everything would be up to Nath. I waited, as a Vovedeer, as a Zorcander, should. A leader of a clan is called that, a leader. When two or more clans are joined together under one leader he is then entitled to take the name of Vovedeer, Zorcander, the derivations of these names being obvious. The taking of obi becomes then that much more of a responsibility. So I waited until all my men were safely away. They had thrown off their chains; I still gripped a bight of mine between my fists, ready.

The wherry had ceased its last drifting and was now nuzzled bows up against the larboard quarter of the Rapa wherry. The canal here was shallow, and the wherry with its marble freight had sunk until its bottom touched the silt and mud. Now about four feet of marble blocks stood above the water. I crouched on a block between two others, watching.

From the shrieks and screams, the pandemonium and the fierce clash of sword and spear on iron chain I guessed more guardsmen had run up and were engaged in the task, no doubt not entirely unenjoyable to the soldiery, of butchering the last of the slaves. I could take no part in that. My duty lay with my men. A new timbre arose in the din. Perhaps the slaves were not being dismissed so easily. I chanced a peek around a block and saw the sunshine lying athwart the jetty, with the guards and the Rapa slaves battling in a savage and unholy conflict. Iron chains whirled with reckless and desperate courage make fearsome weapons. I saw three men bundling a woman into a small low skiff by the jetty wall. Evidently they had been caught by the slaves’ first onslaught and were unable to escape. Now the canal was their only chance. The skiff cast off and swung and collided with the first wherry and a flung chain fairly took the head from the man at the oars so that he lolled all dripping and bloody over the side. The woman screamed. The second man seized the oars; but the body cumbered him. The skiff bounced down the side of the wherry. Now a group of slaves seized their chance.

With shrill vulturine shrieks they leaped onto the marble blocks of the wherry, bounded to the stern and leaped down into the skiff. It plunged wildly in the water. The two men, and their dead companion, were tipped overboard without ceremony. Two Rapas seized the oars. Another pair sprawled in the sternsheets, their chains still whirling in reflexive violence. A fifth jumped forward and seized the woman about the waist and pressed her to him, twisting and holding her up so that she could be clearly seen from the jetty.

His intentions were plain.

“Let us go!” he shrilled. “Or the woman dies!”

A confused shouting rose above the battle din.

The woman’s screams knifed through the uproar, and unsettled me. I thought of my men, waiting for me. I thought of Delia. I do not know what I thought.

I only know I could not see a woman killed this way, so uselessly. If you ask me if it had been human slaves escaping and using the despised body of an aristocratic woman to shield them, I do not know how I would answer.

Without a sound I jumped from the sunken wherry into the skiff. I tried not to kill. I toppled the two oarsmen overboard. The two men in the bows reared up, their chains chirring with ugly menace.

“Slave-die!” and “Human-perish!” they shouted.

Had they not shouted that, perhaps I would not have fought as I did. But I did fight. My chain blurred through the air and sliced a vulturine beak; the thing gargled and toppled. I ducked the second chain and then brought my own back so fast I nearly overbalanced. It looped around that incredibly thin and long neck, doubled on itself. I yanked and the Rapa staggered forward so that I could land a solid blow. He collapsed. I heard a shout behind me and ducked again and the chain smashed a huge chunk from the wooden side of the skiff. I sprang to face the last Rapa. He poised, the chain circling.

His beaked face leered on me; he knew all must be over for him-and yet, could he dispose of me and row for the main canal he would be away, and with a human woman as a hostage. He had all to play for. I feinted and the chain hissed. I pulled back and he leered at me again.

“Human offal!” His gobbling croak harsh in my ears stilled the mad thumping of my heart. I sized him up. That chain could break an arm, a leg, could throttle me, long before I could reach him. I flexed my legs, braced against the bottom boards where water slopped. He had not, perhaps, the experience in boats I had. I began to rock from side to side.

His arms flew up. The chain circled crazily. The woman was clutching the transom in both hands I could not see her face for she wore a heavy veil of emerald silk. I rocked furiously. The Rapa staggered and lurched, recovered his balance, toppled the other way. The gunwales of the fragile skiff were slopping water at each roll.

With a shriek of mingled fury and despair the Rapa dropped his chain and lurched down to grab at the gunwale and with a last savage rocking motion of my leg I tipped him clean out of the boat. He flew across the water and went in face first, spread-eagled. His splash was a magnificent flower of foam. I did not laugh. I quietened the skiff in the water and seized the oars. The Rapa drifted away. I turned to the woman.

“Well, my girl,” I said harshly. “You’re all right. No harm has come to you.”

I did not want her to panic, lest she upset the skiff. She regarded me through the eyeslits of her veil. She sat very still and straight. I towered above her, my naked chest heaving from the slight exertion of the fight, water and sweat rivuleting down my thighs where the ridged muscle shone hard, like iron. She wore a long gown of emerald green, unrelieved by ornament. Above the green veil she wore a tricorne hat of black silk, with a curled emerald green feather. Her hands were cased in white gloves, and on three of her fingers, outside the gloves, she wore rings: one emerald, one ruby and one sapphire.

I began to pull back to the jetty.

A story to account for my broken slave chains rose into my mind.

The woman had not said anything. She sat so still, so silent, that I thought she must be in shock.

When we reached the jetty she stood up and held out a foot in its jeweled strappings. I reached out my palm and she put her foot in that brown and powerful hand and I lifted her up onto the jetty as an elevator lifts one up through the giant trunks of the plant-houses in distant Aphrasoe.

A certain concern was removed from my mind as I saw floating in the water the form of a Rapa guard with a slave chain wrapped around his neck, his great beaked face twisted sideways and loose from his trunk. He was a Deldar, a commander of ten, and he had been the sixth guard aboard our wherry.

Slowly I climbed onto the jetty.

The woman was surrounded by a clamoring mob of guards and nobles in gaudy finery. Of slaves there was no sign save the blood that stained the stones beneath their feet.

“Princess!” they were calling. And: “We thought your precious light had been removed from us!” And: “Praise be to mighty Zim and to thrice-powerful Genodras that you are safe!”

She turned to face me, her head high, her gown stiff and tent-like about her, her jeweled feet invisible. She lifted a white-gloved hand and the babble fell silent.

“Dray Prescot,” she said, and, saying, astonished me beyond words. “You may incline to me.”

I stood there in the light of the twin suns, a reddish shadow from my heels lying north-northwest and a greenish shadow lying northwest by north, give or take a point. Nowadays, of course, a ship can be steered to a degree; it is wonderful what a difference steam and diesel and nuclear power have made to navigation of the oceans-I gaped at her.

The man I remembered as Galna thrust forward. His face was at once ugly and vengeful and gloating. His all-over green leathers glistened in that Antarean sunshine.

“I shall run him through now, my Princess, as you desire.”

He drew a rapier from a velvet lined sheath. I hardly noticed the thing. I stared at the woman. Incline to her? I did not want to die. I bowed, a stiffly formal making of a leg, my right hand elegantly waving in the air before my breast and then finishing up, fingers gracefully curled; before me, my leg stuck forward, the other back, my left arm outstretched behind me, my head bowed over low-low!

If this absurd posture, so carefully taught in the scented drawing rooms of Europe, should be taken as an insult-I heard a light laugh.

“Do not kill the rast now, Galna. He will make better sport-later.”

I straightened up. “I was freed from my chains by the Rapa guard so as to help better with the marble-” I began to say. Galna struck me viciously across the face with the flat of his rapier. At least, he would have done, had I not jerked my head back. Men jumped forward.

“Down, rast, when the princess addresses you.”

An arm laid across my back, a foot twitched my ankles, and I was down, spine bent, rear high, nose thrust painfully into the stones of the jetty where marble dust irritated my eyes and nostrils. Four men held me.

“Incline, rast!”

Perforce, I inclined. I had learned something a slave of the Esztercari Household must know in order to stay alive. Even then, as my nose bumped painfully in the marble dust of the jetty, I contrasted this barbarous posture with the graceful gestures of the ceremony of obi.

I knew that death was very near.

Princess Natema Cydones stirred me with her jeweled foot. Her toes were lacquered that same brilliant green.

“You may crouch, slave.”

Assuming this meant exactly what it sounded like I sat up in a crouching position, like a fawning dog. No one struck me, so I guessed I had learned a little more. There had been some sharp words, and muttering, and acid commands from the group and now I heard the clink of chains. A short stout man clad in a pale gray tunic-like garment bound with emerald green borders, and with two large green key-shaped devices stitched to his breast and back, now strutted forward. Under the fuming eyes and pointed rapiers of Galna and the other nobles, this man loaded me with chains. He snapped an iron ring about my neck, an iron band about my waist, wristlets and anklets, and from loops on all of these weighty objects he strung what seemed to me more than a cable’s length of harsh iron chain.

“See that he is transferred to my opal palace, Nijni,” ordered the princess, casually, as though discussing the delivery of a new pair of gloves. No-as I was prodded along by the slave-master Nijni’s sturm-wood wand of office, I knew I was wrong. She would give more concern, much more concern, to the choosing of a new pair of gloves.

I had escaped from one kind of slavery to that of another. The future loomed as dark and perilous as ever. Only one ray of hope in all this I could see-my men, my loyal clansmen, my brothers in obi, had been set free from their slavery and their chains.