A Victory for Kregen (20 page)

Inch’s kovnate must have fought.”

“They both did and have kept themselves relatively clear of the vermin infesting our land; but it is mighty hard.”

He had received the news that our island of Valka had been cleaned up with joy. “I expect fresh regiments from Valka to join in the struggle,” I told him. “The job is immense.”

“Right. So between Inch and me, we can squeeze this traitorous Layco Jhansi until he squeaks.”

“You have yet to win Falinur back.”

“I’ll do that.”

He did not say that the gift of the kovnate was a poor gift, seeing it was occupied by usurpers. I felt fresh resolve in him, and knew the wise thing had been done here.

Seg Segutorio had been happy to dump Falinur. Next time around, he would run a kovnate that would be a marvel.

The voller’s speed was about five db.[5]She was not fast, but she was a useful, chunky craft with a deal of urge in her. Neither Turko nor I could place her country of manufacture. The wise men at home would have to examine her silver boxes to learn what secrets she contained. Certainly, she was unlike the fliers with which we were familiar.

The alteration of course to starboard would bring us east of Rahartdrin. A number of small islands dot the sea off the south coast of Vallia here. Some are densely populated by reason of their fertile soil, others are barren and empty. Many are ringed by fanged rocks. As the sky lightened and the first rays of palest rose and leaf green flushed the sky we saw that a gale had broomed the sea beneath us during the night. We had been speeding faster than we thought. Down there the sea heaved in long, running swells, the breeze brushed the tops into shot-silk, it was a day for expanding the chest and avoiding a lee shore.

Turko pointed. I nodded.

A ship down there, dismasted, wallowing, had not avoided a lee shore. The islands ahead reached out cruel reefs of rock and the sea spouted in climbing combs of foam. The ship was doomed, for she could never claw off the rocks and round the headland into a muddy bay opening up on the far side.

“This is what Quienyin meant,” I said. “But he had more in his mind than merely to summon us to witness a shipwreck.”

“She’s an argenter out of one of the free cities along the Lohvian coast,” said Turko. His expression remained noncommittal. What we did would be down to me, and Turko would loyally support me, for that was the way he had chosen.

“We could—” I said, and stopped and looked again, figuring angles and calculating with a seaman’s quickness. “It could be done.”

Turko mistook my meaning. “You’ll never get them all aboard, Dray!”

The deck of the argenter was packed with men. Like any ship given the appellation of argenter, she was broad in the beam, capacious, a tubby, comfortable, not particularly weatherly vessel, and fleets of argenters formed the backbone of the merchant navies of the maritime nations — except Vallia. I noticed an odd thing about those men seething on the deck below. They had all stripped off so as to be able to swim after the impending shipwreck had pitched them into the sea; but every man carried weapons strapped to his naked body. Yes, I know I say a Kregan will not willingly walk his world without weapons; but when you must swim for your life in murderous breakers, that, surely, is one occasion when you must cast away your sword, your spear, your bow? These men were naked and armed.

Turko was quite right. Taking a quick block count I reckoned there must be a hundred fifty to two hundred men jammed on the deck, all braced for the impending impact. We’d never get them all in this flier.

“Rustle out what rope we have aft, Turko. Get Andrinos. We’ll tow that argenter around the point!”

Instantly, without fussing, Turko went aft to the rope locker. We might not have enough. We could drop a line to them down there; they’d not shoot a line up to us. A pretty little calculation entered my mind as we maneuvered into position. Could even Seg Segutorio, in my view the greatest bowman of Kregen, shoot a shaft trailing a line from that ship up to us? Turko let out a yell and he waved, so I knew we had rope enough.

The trickiest part of the operation would be keeping a steady strain on the hawser. The argenter was going up and down sluggishly and rolling with that dead effect that told me she was filling. It would be touch and go. Three results were in the offing: she could strike the rocks and fly to flinders, she could be towed around the point — or she could sink before either of those events took place. The line dangled down and was seized in a forest of upraised arms and made fast to the inboard stump of the bowsprit.

Gingerly, I opened up the forward control lever and the voller moved ahead.

Aft, Turko kept a watchful eye on the line.

“And get your head out of the way. If she snaps—”

“Aye, Dray. I know.”

And, with his superb Khamorro reflexes, he would be moving and avoiding the deadly whiptail of broken line faster than the eye could follow.

The argenter proved a stubborn beast. Most Kregan vollers are soundless in flight; had engines been involved they would have been screaming in protest. But we moved. We moved!

Slowly, painfully, we hauled the argenter crabbing through the waves, seeing the white water bursting clean over her. Not a man was washed off. Her blunt bows rose and fell and churned the white froth in a welter of foam. Slowly she came around and we crawled for the point. The hawser sang.

This unknown voller might not be fast; but she could pull!

Gradually we saw the vital stretch of sea opening up as we hauled the ship away from the rocks. It was a maelstrom down there. The men clustered, looking up at us, and we prayed with them that all the gods of Kregen would smile on this enterprise.

As we passed clear of the spit of land dividing the cruel rock reef from the muddy bay, a small group of totrixmen galloped along the spiny ridge below. The six legs of their mounts spraddled out and their leathers glistened in the flung spray. They carried lances, and their helmets gleamed in the early light. They rode inland and were lost to view.

“Company,” I shouted at Turko. “We’ll have a reception committee.”

“Friends?”

And then, of course, I realized that this part of Vallia was firmly in the hands of a vicious foeman, that Kataki Strom, Rosil Yasi, the Strom of Morcray, who was a tool of Phu-si-Yantong’s and who would joy to see me dead. I may add that those sentiments were reciprocated in part.

“More likely to be enemies, Turko.”

He did not reply; but I saw the muscles along his arms bunch and roll.

Andrinos, with his keen foxy face concerned, said, “Then this ship full of armed men could be enemies going to join their friends?”

I shook my head. “It is a possibility, and a risk we must take.” I did not say that I considered Quienyin would have acted differently had this been a shipfull of enemies. Andrinos and Saenci shared the respect and caution accorded Wizards of Loh. Feeling my reply to be somewhat abrupt, and, into the bargain, hardly reassuring, I added, “I am convinced they are not friendly toward the enemies of Vallia. On the contrary, if I am right they have sailed here to fight for us.”

“We pray Pandrite and Horata the Bounteous you are right, pantor,”[6]said Saenci.

We were almost clear of the point. Beyond the crags the water ceased its frantic turmoil and smoothed into placidity. Once there the argenter could drift gently toward that muddy shore and ground without a fuss. After that, in due course of the seasons, she could molder to ruination.

At that point the hawser snapped.

Turko moved. One instant he was checking the tension and calling to me, the next he was flat on the deck, yelling a warning.

The end of the line snapped over our heads and came down like a sjambok, thwack, across the cabin roof.

With a frantic snatch at the control levers, I halted the mad onward leap of the voller. She swung about and soared back over the argenter. The men down there stared up. The seas took the ship into their grip and remorselessly pushed her down onto the rocky crags.

“There’s only one thing for it, now!” I yelled at Turko. The voller swerved and descended. We felt the force of the breeze. With finicky movements I brought her low over the sea, to leeward of the argenter.

As we passed that high, ornate poop the name leaped up, gilded and carved,
Mancha of Tlinganden
.

Tlinganden was one of the Free Cities left after the collapse of the old Empire of Loh, situated on the east coast opposite the country of Yumapan in Pandahem. This ship had successfully fought her way through the renders infesting the Hobolings. Now she was going to come to grief with all her people, if we could not save her.

Gently I eased the voller in until we nudged the surging bulk of the argenter. It was touchy business. I had to maintain the same rhythm as the sea, lifting and lowering the flier, and at the same time maintain a steady pressure against the bulky hull.

“By Morro the Muscle!” exclaimed Turko, joining me forward and craning out over the coaming.

“You’re going to push her free!”

“It’s the only way left. Just hope we don’t stove her in.”

The voller rose and fell and rolled and the argenter was like a sodden souse refusing to move along.

“Or she doesn’t drag us down.”

Water sluiced inboard, drenching us.

The pressure kept up. The black crags ringed with creamy foam seemed to be racing up toward us as we went careering down, forced by wind and sea. But the silver boxes of the voller exerted their power as I forced the levers over. Slowly, we saw the angles widen, slowly we saw the bows creep past the last disturbed confusion of water, slowly the argenter,
Mancha of Tlinganden
, rolled and sagged and pitched clear of the last fangy outcrop.

“We’ve done it!’” shouted Andrinos. His hands were clasped together. Saenci clung to his arm. “Never have I seen such flying!”

Spray burst over us. The argenter rolled uglily. Men clung to her, like bees on a honeypot. And we weren’t done with her yet. She had to be turned, now, turned poop on to the run of the sea, so that she would ground less forcefully.

And then disaster struck. One moment I was beginning to think that we had successfully done it, the next a brute of a sea surged in, crisscrossing the current, the towering sterncastle punched at us, the poop swung shrewdly, and the voller was caught and flung and toppled end over end into the sea.

The water felt like a brick wall.

Spread-eagled, cartwheeling, I crashed into that brick wall and burst through it with all the breath knocked out of me. Water buried me.

To struggle back to the surface and to gulp air... To struggle, never to give in, to go on fighting and clawing even as they shovel the grave sods over your face. That is the way of Dray Prescot, and often and often I wonder just how far it has got him. As the sea smashed into me and water clogged my nostrils I gave a few erratic strokes with my legs, turning and twisting upright, forcing myself to rise. Up. Up I went and my head broke the silver sky and the Suns of Scorpio blazed in my face.

Light blinded me. Shimmer of wavetops, spray cutting across, all a liquid movement of colors and radiance. I spat. I shook my head. I forced my eyes to remain open. I felt, I admit, like a side of beef must feel after it has been corned and stuffed into a tin.

The situation was quite other than I had expected, for the voller floated. Amazingly, the flier sat on the water, upright, rising and falling with the motion of the sea. Just beyond her the argenter
Mancha of
Tlinganden
rolled and wavered in my vision, surging on like a runaway temple to Kranlil the Reaper, shedding bits and pieces, falling apart, scattering timber as she lurched and shuddered to her doom.

A few strokes took me to the voller. I handed myself up and felt the sluggishness. The canvas had been ripped and most of her starboard side stove in. She would sink in a few murs. There was no sign of my companions.

Standing on the splintered deck of the voller, I looked about. The advantage of vision afforded by that little extra height proved sufficient. Two heads showed in the sea, among white splashes, and then a third.

Saenci’s reddish foxy hair drifted on the water and I dived in first for her. She was swimming well; but going the wrong way.

Spitting, I gasped out, “Steady, Saenci. It’s all right now. Just relax and let me—”

“Where is Andrinos?”

“He’s all right. We must reach the argenter.”

I held her in the prescribed fashion for lifesaving and swam across to the drifting ship. Turko and Andrinos swam across. We trod water and looked up and they threw ropes down for us and helped us inboard. Like half-drowned gyps we crawled aboard.

Being your ruffianly kind of mercenary, I knew I had not much time left before the voller sank to act as any proper hyrpaktun would act now. I dived back and swam to the flier.

I left the hubbub and howls of protest. Clambering onto the warped deck and working very rapidly, very rapidly indeed, by Krun! I snatched up my weapons and that superb harness of mesh links. Swimming back with the bundle was not too difficult although not a sport I’d take up for pleasure, and once again they hauled me inboard. This time I was content to lie on the deck and let my battered old carcass recover.

“You’re a right maniac, dom!” quoth a cheerful voice. I looked up.

He stood, his thick legs spread apart, his hands on his hips, stark naked but for the weapons belted to him. His face was plug-ugly, scarred, with prominent eyebrows and a mass of thick brown hair, plastered into shiny flatness by spray.

“Aye,” I said. And then, “Llahal.”

“Llahal, dom. I am Clardo the Clis. I thank you for saving us—” A gleam of gold at his belt caught my eye. He had taken his pakzhan, the little golden zhantil head that is the mark of the hyrpaktun, from around his neck and twisted the silken cords tightly around his belt.

About to reply that, Llahal, I was Jak, a sudden shadow fell over me as I sat up and a fierce, excited, bubbling voice burst about us and brought instant silence from everyone.