Warrior of Scorpio

Chapter Five

“It’s the oldest, hoariest trick there is, Seg,” I said as we slid through the calm water toward the Pattelonian broad ship and the Magdag swifter. “But it’s all we have to work with. It’s worked in the past and no doubt it will work again, in the future. All we’re concerned with now is that it works for us this time.”

“How many men, Dray?” was all Seg Segutorio said.

“The swifter’s a seven-six-six, one hundred and fifty. That means she has three banks of oars each side, twenty-five oars a bank. The upper deck oars are crewed by seven men each, the two lower banks by six men to an oar. That’s about a thousand men or more, given spare oarsmen carried below.”

“And all slave?”

“All slave.”

“You seem to know about these things, Dray.”

“I know.”

“And the warriors?”

“That varies. Depends on the purpose for which the swifter has been put into commission. I’d guess, again, that there won’t be less than a couple of hundred. If they’re on a big one, there will be a lot more.”

I thought of my days as a slave aboard swifters from Magdag. “They crowd the men, Seg. They keep them chained to the oars and they feed them water and onions and slop and cheese and they douse them out with seawater twice a day and they fling them overboard when they’re exhausted and all the strength has gone from them and they’re lashed to death.”

“We’re approaching nicely,” said Segutorio. He laughed. “All I regret is — I do not have my own longbow with me, my bow I made myself from the sacred Yerthyr tree that grew up on Kak Kakutorio’s land. He near caught me, the day I cut my stave. I was twelve, then. I built that bow for use when I’d gained my full stature — and when I did she balanced out just right. Kak’s tree was almost black, so dark and secret green it was. He near caught me-”

Seg checked himself. I saw the way his shoulders hunched. That streak of practical common sense had thrust hard at his reckless spirit and he could apprehend clearly just what we were getting into. He was driven by hatred for the green deity worshipers and by a habitual recklessness. I was impelled by my vows, my own dark memories — and because I was a Krozair of Zy.

Being privileged to be a member of the Order of Krozairs of Zy means a very great deal to me. That they are a small group of dedicated men tucked away in an inland sea on a planet four hundred light-years away, bound up with their fanatical adherence to a mythical red deity and in absolute opposition to an equally mythical green deity, has no bearing on their inner strengths, their gallantry, their selflessness, their mysticism — which contains profundities beyond profundities — their remarkable disciplines of the sword, their essential courageous integrity. These are qualities found only in a debased coinage on the Earth you inhabit today, it sometimes seems.

Seg Segutorio hated slavery and slave-holders — as did I. Yet only when I had been the captain of a Sanurkazzian swifter and a Krozair had I, too, employed slaves. They had rowed for me in conditions little better than those of my own misery when I had pulled for Magdag. This surely must mark the power of the Order of Krozairs of Zy over me. When I had attempted to free my slaves and had adopted free oarsmen I and my crew had been so close to a horrific and murderous end as to cause nightmares.[2]

So, thus thinking, I waited as the muldavy closed the final gap between us and the swifter’s stern. Everyone aboard had their attention occupied by the dying moments of the struggle to take possession of the broad ship. I had thought she was sinking; no doubt the swifter captain considered he could plunder her and take her people prisoners before she sank. Now the high upflung curve of the stern rose from the water before us.

The swell slopped us up and down. I stood up in the bows. The swifter was large and her apostis, the rectangular rowing frame, extended well out from the smooth curves of her hull. Her oarsmen, arranged alla scaloccio, still held to their looms as the blades were all, every one, in perfect alignment. Every now and again the drum-deldar would give a signal double-beat of his bass and tenor drums and precisely together all the oars of either the larboard or starboard banks would dip and give a short jabbing thrust to keep the swifter lined up against the broad ship, beak extended and jutting over her beam. I looked up the arrogantly upflung stern and put aside instinctive thoughts of equally arrogantly upflung tails of scorpions.

Among the elaborate scrollwork and what we would call gingerbread I found easy handholds. As my bare feet gripped and heaved me up so Seg followed. We were both unarmed. I wore simply the same strip of brown cloth taken from the sorzart, and Seg wore his gray slave breechclout. Carefully, now, I put a hand on the deck below the rail. One of the steering oars extended past my back. I lifted myself gently. I looked.

The steering-deldar lay on his oar, ready with curling movements to keep the head of the swifter against the broadship in time with his companion on the other side and the occasional thrusts from the oars. The drum-deldar would be sitting with his drumsticks poised, and the oar-master would be sitting in his little tabernacle below the break of the quarterdeck. An officer — very resplendent in green silk and gold lace

— strode about looking pleased with himself. I cursed his black Magdaggian heart. As carefully I lowered myself.

Seg was looking at me. His face was wrinkled up, his whole expression one of absolute distaste.

“They stink,” he said.

“Yes.”

Swifters are built on lines laid down by naval architects of varying talents. I recognized the lines of this example and I knew my way about her as slave or captain. We made an entry into the aft lower cabin -

what would on an Earthly seventy-four be called the gun room — and found the space deserted of life. Beyond the doors opening onto the lower or thalamite bank of oars lay the manpower I needed. This galley was of the cataphract variety so that her upper thranite banks of rowers were protected by a fenced bulwark. At the time I was still undecided, as I was undecided between the long keel and the short keel theories, whether the open un-bulwarked style, the aphract with its free passage of air, was better than the cataphract which did at least offer some protection from arrows. However that might be, that extra protection afforded us an extra level of concealment as we went about our work. First out of the double-folding doors I saw the nearest whip-deldar and before he could so much as turn I held him in a grip from which he slumped lifeless to the gangway.

The slaves stared up with lackluster eyes. Their heads were bushy mops, clear indication that the swifter had been at sea for some time, for the heads of oar slaves when they clear the mole at Magdag are shaved as smooth as a shot trimmed for a twenty-four pounder bowchaser. Seg started for the other whip-deldar at a dead run.

Down here in the odors and the confinement the whip-deldars took turns at duty, or received thalamite duty as a punishment.

The fellow I had dropped carried a knife. It took me only a few moments to pick the lock of the great chain to which all the other chains were attached.

The nearest slave looked at me in a puzzled fashion. His back carried the marks of his trade. The one next to him also looked up, his jaw slack and mumbling over broken, decaying teeth behind thick slobbering lips. I experienced a moment of despair.

These slaves were completely broken. Would they rise, as they must rise, if we were to succeed?

There would be no question here of an immediate flinging off of the great chain, a gathering of their own chains into vengeful fists, and an immediate abandonment of the habits of slavery. They must see what could be done. But — the lower deck held the recalcitrants as a rule, the troublemakers, the extra-tough. Had I disastrously miscalculated?

Then from that twin channel of upturned faces, bearded, filthy, a man clambered up dragging his chains. He stared at me.

“Pur Dray!”

I did not recognize him. But he knew me. I sensed the change, then. I heard the word “Krozair!” and I hurriedly raised my hands.

“Be silent! Free yourselves now the great chain is loosed. Keep the oars at the level — you know. We will free our comrades above — and then — silence!”

Of course, they could not keep silent Once the traumatic bludgeon of release had shocked them, once they suddenly realized that they need not be slaves again, there was no holding them. Whip-marked naked bodies began to spill out into the central gangway with its slits of sky above and the long rows of naked legs of the oarsmen of the upper two banks. A whip-deldar looked over his narrow split-deck and yelled. I hurled the knife as I had hurled the woman’s weapon of my Clansmen, the terchick, and he toppled over spouting blood from his mouth. I put my foot on his body and drew the knife from his throat. I rather cared for that economical use of a weapon. The slaves were clambering up the supporting timbers of the upper banks, hauling themselves up over the inboard ends of the oar looms where they rested in the level position within the patterned rowing-frames. They were screeching and yelling and waving their chains. I knew few of them would think to release their comrades; their minds were now shocked into one desire only — to kill the overlords of Magdag. Mind you — that was a desire I then considered eminently worthy — Zair forgive me.

Like some grundal of the rocks I went up hand over hand, the bloody knife between my teeth. That, I admit, is one time when I grin.

The twisted and pulped body of a whip-deldar crunched underfoot as I leaped for the locks of the zygites’ great chain. The knife point probed, there was a click clearly audible above the uproar, and then the zygites, prepared by the astonishing appearance of their fellows from below, were roaring and raging with chains in their fists.

A few arrows fleeted down and a slave shrieked and toppled back with a shaft through him. The crew had reacted swiftly.

I had not expected otherwise.

Only the overwhelming manpower of the slaves could win the swifter for us. It is difficult to conceive of the uproar and violence of those moments. In an exceedingly long and narrow space, a mere slot walled in by timbers and chains, naked hairy men howled and struggled to reach the light. Up we went and with us went Seg Segutorio, brandishing a whip with which he took the ankles from under a whip-deldar and so brought him screeching down into the merciless talons of the slaves. On the upper deck with its central gangway and gratings to either side over the lower banks the slaves were raging like a sea breaking against cliffs. The task of reaching the locks of the thranites’ great chain would be difficult. Already soldiers of Magdag in their iron-linked hauberks were running back from the bows. Arrows were flickering through the air. I took off in a long run toward the oar-master and his tabernacle. The drum-deldar let out a single long scream and went scuttling aft. Up there the officer I had seen drew his long sword.

I wanted that sword.

Still — the locks must come first. Then Seg was with me. His whip flicked the oar-master into a gibbering panic. I bent to the first lock and an arrow feathered into the deck at my side. The officer ran toward us, leaned over, shouting. His face, browned by wind and sun, looked in the last stages of apoplectic fury.

I clicked the lock, stood up, let fly the knife.

The officer gurgled, slumped, toppled down.

I caught the long sword as it spun through the air, taking its bone grip — which I dislike — leanly into my fist. It would have been a fine catch at first slip.

“Forward!” shouted Seg. “The rasts are waiting for us!”

Indeed, the battle to take the broad ship was over. Now the swifters crew and soldiers were turning about to face the frenzied slaves. We had begun with the lowest bank so as to avoid detection. Now that all the slaves were free nothing stopped us from hurling ourselves into the fight.

“Grab a sword first, Seg!” I yelled.

“Had I my bow-” he yelled back.

I sprinted forward along the gangway, hurdling various bodies, until I could thrust through the back of the press. Hundreds of slaves were crowding forward, waving their chains, humming them about their heads in deadly arcs. But many were going down as the swifter archers shot with flat trajectories, rapidly and professionally.

The struggle for me to reach the front ranks was severe; but in a few moments I pushed aside the body of a slave who, swinging his chains, had been thrust through the belly, by a long sword. I stepped out, the long sword held in the fighting grip of the Krozairs of Zy.

Blades crossed. An arrow brushed through my hair. I kept on the move. The long sword was a fine weapon despite its bone grip and I felt it slog crushingly into the rib cage of the first Magdaggian, biting through the mesh. He fell away. There was another, whose face above the ventail I smashed in. More arrows were fleeting past — then I realized some were going the other way. An overlord before me abruptly threw his hands in the air, dropping his sword. An arrow stood out from his right eye. Seg Segutorio had found himself a weapon he knew how to use and was in action. Now the sheer mass of slaves told. Perhaps there were as many as three hundred men of Magdag aboard: overlords, overlords of the second class, soldiers, and crew. Of them all the captain of the swifter seemed alone to be alive as I reached the entrance ramp onto the lower beak. The scene was fantastic. The whole upperworks of the swifter were crowded with the naked bodies of slaves, all howling and screeching like — no, not like, they were — demented souls. I knew what emotions they were experiencing.

The long extended beak of the swifter hung over the water-slopping deck of the merchantman. She had had two masts, their stumps now jagged tangles among the raffle of wreckage, so she was a fair-sized craft. Her forecastle — it was that, proper, and not a fo’c’sle — had been badly battered by the swifter’s varters. These were mounted somewhat higher in the bows of the galley than I considered proper, and had been rigged to hurl stones, as was fit in the circumstances. The merchantman’s sterncastle, an imposing edifice of two decks, was cluttered by the raffle fallen from the mainmast. Bodies lay everywhere.

The swifter captain glared up at me. He was a big man, his mail bulging, his long sword a weapon of exceptional size. Around him among the circle of slain slaves lay sprawled other men in mail and half-mail, mercenary marines carried by the merchantman.

“Hail!” he called up.

He waved his sword in a gesture that plainly said: “Come down here where I can chop you.”

He knew that against all those enraged slaves he had no chance of survival. He was of Magdag — yet he was a brave man. Even then, when I was young and bore a hatred for the green burning in my breast, I recognized a man’s courage.

I leaped down to him.

With only a breechclout to cover my nakedness I fought at a disadvantage against his mail. But also, against his knowledge that he was doomed and his desperate determination to make a fight of it and die well, I could put my skill and my own determination, the red against the green. Our blades crossed once, and I felt the strength in his arm.

The broad ship lurched beneath our feet as water gushed in.

“You will die, slave, and join your fellows here!”

I did not answer. Again the blades crossed and I swung on the disengage, but be was quick even on that cumbered deck and avoided my blow. He bore down on me, anxious to kill me and take as many as he could with him to the ice floes of Sicce.

A slave shouted from the deck, high and exultant.

“Jikai! Chop him, Pur Dray, my Lord of Strombor, Krozair!”

The swifter captain’s blade faltered. He drew back. On his face grew such a look of fury and despair as sickened me to see.

“You-” he choked. “You are the Lord of Strombor — Krozair!”

Without bothering to reply — for I felt the broad ship’s sluggish wallowing movements and knew she would go down any instant — I leaped forward. And now our blades clanged and rang with that ferocious screech of steel blade on steel blade. He was good and he was strong but I was in a hurry now and in a quick passage of murderous blows he fell.

Someone shouted: “The ship’s going!”

And amid the tumultuous shouts of the freed slaves as they saw the hated Magdag overlord dead at their feet I leaped nimbly up onto the swifter’s beak. A florid but sea-bitten man rushed forward, his slashed blue finery proclaiming him the captain of the merchantman.

Seg was there and with the help of slaves who seemed to carry some authority among their fellows a space was cleared. The merchant skipper grasped my left hand, babbling his thanks. His ship had gone, but his life was safe. Overside now the broad ship wallowed deeper, and thrashing around her and waiting for their grisly harvest the chanks with their twin stiff upright fins, the sharks of the inner sea, patrolled hungrily.

“May Ta’temsk shine upon you, my Lord of Strombor!” He let my hand go as I began to strip away the bloodied brown rag from my loins. “We fought as well as we could, but the rashoon dismasted us. My crew fought like demons, as you can see — even my passengers fought — ah, how they fought-”

“Passengers?” I had found a length of red cloth wound about the body of a dead man — evidently one of the passengers the merchant skipper was speaking of — and I wrapped it around my waist and drew the end up between my legs and tucked it in. The brave scarlet color cheered me. “Yes — a strange lot. The men fought like men possessed. Look, Pur Dray — there is one now, dying, and yet still he thinks he fights.”

Hauled out of the way beneath a varter a man lay dying. What the skipper said was true, for he kept opening his arms wide and closing them again in the rapier and main-gauche drill known as the “flower”

although his right hand was empty. He wore long black boots and a snug-waisted brown coat which flared wide over his hips and up to his shoulders. He wore no hat, but I could guess what sort of hat he would own. In his left hand he carried a bejeweled main-gauche with which he kept up his laborious flow of passages at arms.

I knelt by his side.

“You were with Vomanus?” I said. I spoke as gently as I might, but my words cracked harsh and impatiently for all that.

“Vallians,” said the merchant skipper. “A strange lot.”

“Sterncastle,” gasped the dying man. Blood dribbled from his mouth. I looked up at the broadship’s captain.

“Alas, my Lord of Strombor. The men of Vallia were insistent that every care should be taken of the passengers and so on my orders they were shut up in the Sterncastle, for safekeeping. But the fall of the mainmast, and the ferocity of the attack — we could not get them out. I fear they are doomed.” I was puzzled. Granted that Vomanus had shipped aboard this vessel now sinking into a chank-infested sea, I couldn’t understand my not seeing him. He would never be shut up in a safe place when there was a fight brewing. The Vallian was young, handsome, with a long brown moustache and neatly trimmed beard. He tried to speak, spat blood, tried again, managed to blurt out: “They must be saved!”

“There is no saving them now,” said the captain, with a grim nod at the decks of his ship about to submerge beneath the water and the twin fins of the chanks circling nearer. “My old ship is taking them to their grave, may Ta’temsk smile on them.”

The dying Vallian opened his eyes and there was reason in them. He had stopped his ghastly phantom swordplay. I took the dagger from him, gently, respectfully. Blood gushed from his mouth as he burst into an impassioned and mortal shout.

“You must save her! She is trapped, drowning, doomed — you must! The Princess Majestrix of Vallia!

Princess-”

The blood choked him. I felt — I thought — I -

Delia! My Delia! Delia!