Prince of Scorpio (10 page)

Many of them were hauled by whole gangs and tribes of people, sturdy, open-faced folk in practical outfits, men and women, of breechclouts and short-sleeved tunics, open at the throat. They hauled with a will, and once the narrow boat was under way she could be kept going and on course by just half a dozen girls or lads to pull, and the old skipper to steer. I saw no draft animals, not a single quoffa, and this did not surprise me. There were very few halflings hauling the narrow boats, although I did see a complete outfit of two narrow boats in tandem dragged along by a squealing bunch of Ochs. On the second day I saw a sight that brought me, with my fists clenched, staring painfully at the canal.

A narrow boat approached. She was not gaily painted as were all the others I had seen, decorated with fantastic scenes from myth and legend, from song and story, and with all the flowers of the field — this boat was all a dun gray and she was large and clumsy. But the thing that so disturbed me was her motive power. Along the canal towpath trudged a gang of people, all stark naked, all hairy and dirty, all heaving at the tow rope under the merciless whips of guards.

I stared, hatred welling.

The guards were big fellows, mostly humans, but a Rapa or a Fristle stalked here and there. They whipped their charges on. The narrow boat moved lumpily through the water, heavily laden. I just stood there. The guards were dressed uniformly in buff leather jerkins, wide across the shoulder, and with the tall black Vallian boots. The sleeves of their shirts were banded red and black. I had seen those uniform colors before.

I, myself, wore the buff jerkin, but my sleeves were buff also. I knew that these banded sleeves in their color coding were the signs worn by servitors of great lords or parties; but this red and black, these were the colors of the government, of the Emperor!

I, Dray Prescot, could not just stand there.

But I had to.

For I dared not do as I instinctively desired to do and rush upon these slave-herders and rout them and free their slaves; the trouble that action has caused in the past is beyond calculation.

A girl stumbled and fell and dragged the tow rope down in her despairing clutch. She brought down an old man and one or two others, so telling me how weak they all were. The guards whipped them. But the girl just lay there. Her brown hair drifted out across the muddy tow-path. I saw the rawhide cutting into her. Could I just stand there? This same scene must be reenacted many times every day. One more repetition would make no difference at all.

None.

The girl moaned and tried to shield herself with her spindly arms. She shrieked afresh as the lash bit into her.

No difference.

I had been learning cleverness. I had controlled myself back there in Theirson’s village. I had not rushed upon the aragorn until I had a weapon.

I had a weapon now.

But — the trouble this would cause. The Emperor in faraway Vondium, the Kov Furtway here, all my plans, the love I bore my Delia of the Blue Mountains. One young girl being whipped to death was a common enough sight, Zair knew. What had it to do with me?

There was nothing I could do. Nothing.

I jumped the wall and ran down to the towpath. I spoke in a rational and quiet voice, calmly, reasonably.

“To hit her any more will do no good. She cannot rise.”

The guard swung, the whip poised. Four of his fellows turned toward me as the chanks of the inner sea turn toward their prey.

“This is no business of yours, dom. Clear off!”

“But,” I said, “if the girl cannot pull, why beat her?”

“She’ll pull.” The guard had fine strong white teeth. He smiled. “She’ll pull. Now clear off. This is Emperor’s business, as you well know. We are not answerable to you.”

“I think, dom, you are, unless you release her.”

“Release her? You’re either a get onker or you’re mad! The Emperor’s slaves are sequestered property. Clear off, or you’ll be in more trouble than you can handle.”

The guard sounded no more truculent than any man interrupted in his work. He spoke as reasonably as I. He could not understand what I was talking about. I tried for the last time.

“Please” — I said
please! — “
do not hit her any more. If you cannot release her give her time to rest.”

Another guard ran up, swearing horribly. He wore a red and black cockade in his broad-brimmed hat, above the feather. The narrow boat had gone on with her momentum and now the tow rope stretched back from the bitts on her bows.

“What’s going on here? If you Doty-rotten cramphs can’t keep your rasts of haulers in line I’ll soon Jikaida your backs! I’ll make you yell, by Vomer the Vile!”

“It’s this one here, sir,” said the guard who had been trying to explain to me.

I said, “This girl cannot pull any more. Flogging her will do no good—”

I was interrupted. The guard wore a rapier. He ripped it out. He flourished it in my face. He looked to be in a most apoplectic rage.

“This barge is on the Emperor’s service — as you well know! Take yourself off before it is too late! Jump, rast!”

I knew little of the pecking order in Vallia; that it is complicated is true; I didn’t worry about my lack of knowledge.

“It seems you insist I must make you show mercy,” I said. I started to draw my rapier. I was already working out how not to kill them all, when I heard a man in the towing party yell. “By Vaosh! Behind you, Ven!”

I turned. I was slow. The blow struck behind my ear and I pitched forward, struggling to retain my balance. A black booted foot kicked out. I heard a coarse laugh. “Swim in the canal, cramph!” And then I smashed face-first into blackness.

On the canals of Vallia

On my back I floated with the mild drift of the current, for here near the inflow of river water, controlled and sluiced, the canal waters possessed a definite movement of their own. The sky above me towered enormously high, palely blue, with the intolerable glare of Antares blinding down and streaming variegated highlights from the tiny waves I made as I floated. I knew what I was doing there. I had been stupid, as usual, and slow, which for a man in my trade is unforgivable. I knew, however, why I had been slow. My aims had been confused; a desire to do what naturally occurred to me to do and my so-clever newfound rationality had played me false. I would far better have simply rushed in swinging as in the old days. Then, instead of me floating in the canal with a muzzy head there would be six bully-boy guards floating there, and with rapier-thrusts through their bellies, like as not.

In the future I wouldn’t be slow, and I’d hit first — as I usually did.

Worry over Delia had fogged my mind. Here I was, actually on the same landmass as her, breathing air that might waft down for her to breathe and so waft back to me. An idiotic notion, but one that suited my idiotic mood.

Through the water toward me the smooth stem of a narrow boat bore on. I saw the gaily painted strakes and the fanciful representations of monsters and flowers, musical instruments, and spreading proudly to either side of the stem, the lavishly decorated picture of a Talu, one of those eight-armed mythical — as I still thought — dancers of the sloe eyes and the cupid’s-bow mouths. I had seen such a Talu carved from the mastodon tusk in that perfumed corridor of a decadent palace, when a slave girl in the gray slave breechclout had dropped and smashed a jar of water. I had cannoned into the statue and toppled with it in my arms, the eight arms a wagonwheel of wanton display about me, the fingertips touching.

I confess I was still thinking about that mastodon-tusk carving as the rope hissed into the water and I was hauled aboard.

The majority of Vallians have been blessed with the kind of strong beaked nose I have myself, and the man who stared down on me now wiped a hand across his powerful nose, and grunted:

“Welcome aboard—”

He did not add the customary Koter, or even dom, or, given the circumstances, Ven. I saw the expression on his face and knew precisely what he was thinking. If you’re not a canalman, he was saying, without speaking, then you’re a dead man.

“Thank you for pulling me out. It’s all right. The water won’t harm me.”

He perked up at that, and smiled.

“You’d best come below. Dry you off.” As I nodded to thank him and bent to descend the short companionway ladder, he whistled. I had lost my hat.

“That’s a crack you’ve had on the back of your head, Ven. Like to have killed a man.”

“I’ve a tolerably thick skull. Too thick for some folk.”

Someone yelled from up forward and my host halted to yell back. “He’s of the canalfolk. He’s had a knock, but he’ll live.”

In the small but beautifully appointed cabin with everything in its place I sat at the table and drank strong Kregan tea. Made with the canalwater, it tasted somehow as good as any tea I have ever had. “I am Yelker, skipper of the old
Dancing Talu.”
I knew, from my talk with Borg, that he would be Ven Yelker nal Vomansoir, for this was the Vomansoir Cut.

Thinking of Ven Borg made me remember my resolve.

“I am Drak ti Valkanium,” I said. This was true.

“We’re headed south so I can’t offer to take you back to Therminsax. It is a pleasant town, and we always enjoy our stopovers there. But we are for Vomansoir.”

My clothes were drying, so I sat there with a blanket about me as a girl bustled in, tut-tutted at the way my tunic had been clumsily hung up by Yelker, glanced a quick and intense look in my direction, gathered up my gear, and started up the ladder again. She paused and tossed her heavy brown hair back and stared over her shoulder. She wore an off-the-shoulder white blouse, attractively tailored beneath her bodice, and the movement emphasized her beauty, as she well knew it would. I could guess all too easily why she did not wear one of the tunics or jerkins common to the canalfolk.

“You men can’t look after a thing. I’ll hang these on the line.”

When she had gone with a flash of long bronzed legs, Yelker sighed. “That’s Zyna, my daughter. Her mother didn’t spank her enough when she was young enough for it to be effective.” Then he roared into the speaking tube that led forward, the brass mouthpiece dazzling. “Mother! That girl of yours is showing off again.”

A muffled series of shrieks and squawks spattered from the brass mouthpiece. Yelker shoved the whistle back and sighed.

“I don’t know what good canalfolk are coming to these days.”

“Ven Yelker. Will you take me south with you?” I reached for the lesten-hide bag of money I had taken from the dead men, and realized it was in the pocket of my tunic. “I will be happy to pay you—”

He held up a hand. “Not so, Ven Drak. You are a canalman, and I am a canalman. If one cannot do the other a goodness without seeking reward, then the spirit of the canals is dead.”

“Did you see how I came to be in the canal?”

“I did not. I would not ask, but I own I am curious.”

I told him of the incident. He frowned and bashed a fist down onto the table.

“Pardon me for saying it, Ven Drak. But you are a fool!”

I sat.

“Don’t you have Emperor’s barges on Valka?”

“I have not seen one. We pull our own boats, there.” I had expressed my astonishment to Borg over the non-use of draft animals, and he had simply scratched his head and said that men and women always pulled the boats. How otherwise would they get exercise and build their muscles? Animals, to haul narrow boats! He thought the conceit highly amusing.

“Well, you surprise me. We hate them. They are unfair competition. And the poor devils who are sent to the Emperor’s canal barges — well, just steer clear of them, that’s all. They have absolute priority and right of way on any cut. They force us out into the center and make us drop our tow as they pass. Oh, and they do pass!”

I had seen what I had seen. I could imagine the horror of the haulers, racing to drag their unwieldy barges past the elegant narrow boats of the canalfolk, driven on by the whip and the knout.

“I do not like it, Ven Yelker.”

“Neither do I, Ven Drak. But neither you nor I can do ought about it. And here comes Mother.” I stood up, clutching my blanket, as Sosie descended into the cabin, a plump, smiling, brown-eyed dynamo of a woman. I saw that she kept Yelker in order. I wondered where he hid his booze.

“You’ll need feeding up, young man,” she said, and the sharpness of her tones made me smile — me, Dray Prescot, made me smile — for I detected the warmth and humanity aboard this narrow boat
Dancing Talu.
Other members of the family were introduced. There were ten of them, not all blood relations but crew members indentured from other families and other boats. More often than not two or three families crewed a boat. The big thing was to keep moving. Once the initial inertia of the boat had been overcome and she was gliding with that stately smooth passage of a craft on inland waters, the whole gang could cease hauling and leave two or three to keep her moving. Naturally, I took my turns at hauling. We were all busy at locks. Then we would sweat and haul until our muscles cracked and
Dancing Talu
was under way once more. Then young Wil would go haring off to close the paddles down and shut the lock gates, and then come racing back along the towpath to take a wild flying leap onto the deck. If young Wil with his wild mop of hair and his agility had been unable to drink the canalwater he’d have been a dead rascal inside a day.

We were going south!

We were riding the Vomansoir Cut and going south toward Vondium. I knew a man, a Chuktar, the Lord Farris, who came from Vomansoir. I had met him once, briefly, aboard the Vallian Air Service airboat
Lorenztone.
I did not think I would make inquiries and look him up. He knew me as Dray Prescot, the Lord of Strombor, and the man who aspired to the hand of the Princess Majestrix.

I needed to be a lot closer to Delia than Vomansoir when I revealed my identity.

Vallia is riddled with canals. Traffic flow remained dense and constant. The local authorities of towns maintained the cuts, under the Emperor’s personal fiat, and they had put into operation a system of traffic control at intersections. Every lock worked and was efficient, and did not lose too much water. The suns shone, the sky remained clear, I hauled at the tow ropes, operated the locks, fetched and carried, and all the time we rode on southward and I was drawing nearer and nearer to my Delia. I think I achieved a kind of tranquility. I had always underestimated canals, I now realized. Also, I observed the strong fellow-feeling of the canalfolk, and as I absorbed their language and its peculiarities, a task made easy by the potency of the genetically-coded language pill given me in Aphrasöe by Maspero, I reached the understanding that they considered themselves not only a people apart from ordinary Vallians, but a cut above the rest. I was not going to give them an argument on that.