The suns of Scorpio (13 page)

She went dancing out on her satin slippers and we, like three calsanys, followed her onto a terrace from which the whole breathtaking view of the cliffs and the bay and the harbor below the town spread out below us. I could spare time later to see the view. I studied this girl, this impish sprite, this Mayfwy, who was a widow.

She wore white, a sheer white linen dress that was held in place over her shoulders by golden pins encrusted with rubies. Her golden belt circled her waist and hung low in the front and to one side, emphasizing the long curves of her. Her figure was lithe and feminine and seductive in an artless way, as though no matter what she did she could never fail to be attractive. In her curled dark hair posies of small forget-me-nots clustered.

I have little idea of what we talked about, there on that sun-drenched terrace over the blue sea. Nath took himself off to organize a wine delivery system, and Zolta was taken off by Sinkle, who had the grace to giggle as she led him out.

“Zorg,” I said, and plunged brusquely and brutally into an account of our lives as slaves. She quieted down, and listened attentively. She did not cry, and as I talked and felt the response flowing so gently from her, I knew she had cried all the tears she could shed. Captivity and slavery had worn Zorg down. This elfin sprite had once been his match. Her dark days of agony had passed when news came that Zorg’s galley had been captured. “He was sent to the galleys as a punishment for breaking the heads of those evil men of Magdag. They sought to discipline him. I tell you, Mayfwy, Zorg’s spirit was never broken.” And then I told her of what Zorg had said as he died, but I did not tell her of the manner of his death.

“He was a proud man, my Lord of Strombor. Proud. I thank you for your goodness in coming to see me.” She gestured, a half helpless little movement of one slender naked arm. She wore no jewelry apart from those blazing rubies in the golden pins clasping the shoulders of her deeply-cut gown. The scent of her perfume came very sweetly as she moved.

I thought of the Princess Natema Cydones, of the Noble House of Esztercari, in far Zenicce, and then I did not think of Natema, who must by now be married to my friend Prince Varden Wanek of the Noble House of Eward, for some considerable time.

“You are not drinking your wine, my Lord of Strombor.”

I reached for the crystal goblet.

Truth to tell I always preferred the rich and fragrant Kregan tea I had become used to on the Plains of Segesthes with my Clansmen, but this Felteraz wine was light, golden, and sweet, and cloyed not unpleasantly on the tongue.

“I drink to your eternal happiness, my Lady of Felteraz.”

It was polite, a formula; it was also clumsy.

Her face moved toward me, her eyes immense and luminous, dark with remembered pain. “Ah! My Lord of Strombor!”

I rose and walked to the marble balustrade hanging above the tremendous view. I could see three galleys, hundred-swifters, tucked in the inner harbor, their yards and masts struck down, their awnings up, their oar ports leathered over. Gulls wheeled over the sheer drop. The perfume of the flowers was overpowering.

We took time, Nath and Zolta and me, to make ourselves as respectable as three ruffianly fighting-men might for the lavish meal Mayfwy provided that evening. The dishes passed before us, served on platters of beaten gold — which always let the food go cold too fast for a real gourmet — and the goblets of wine consumed were beyond counting. Mayfwy laughed and my two companions roared and sang and told stories that brought a sparkle to my Lady of Felteraz’s eyes. Zorg was dead. He now sat in glory on the right hand of Zair in the paradise of Zim. He would not begrudge his old oar comrades some fun and relish from life, nor would he begrudge the girl he had loved the same human needs. We had seen Zorg’s and Mayfwy’s son and daughter: a fine, upright youngster with the features we had come to recognize in Zorg, and a winning little girl who at first was shy until Zolta perched her on his shoulders and pretended to be a sectrix, the while she belabored him with a stick, at which Nath cried out: “That’s the idea, my little darling! Beat him like a calsany! He can only improve!”

The evening meal which in truth was more like a banquet — and I fancied, not without a twinge of shame, a banquet in our honor — passed. Also present were the guard commander and a number of the chief men of the estates and their ladies, all good kindly folk with country ways that came as refreshing as a cool westerly after days of sweltering in southerlies.

I was left at last with Mayfwy in a small retiring room, with only three rose-colored lamps for light, with a soft sofa on which she half reclined, her linen dress changed for one in much the same style but created all from shimmering silk, with a side table on which delicate wines waited our attention.

“Now, my Lord of Strombor,” she said to me, her smooth and elfin face serious, that sensuous little mouth trying to be firm, her hands clasped. “I want you to tell me the truth about Zorg. I can stand it. But I must know the truth!”

I felt genuine distress.

How could I explain to her what her man had endured?

Such a thing was barely possible.

I could feel my heart thumping. The wine rose to cloud my vision and coiled thickly in my head. The rosy light of the lamps shed gleams on her curled gleaming hair. Her silken dress clung here and there to her body. She half reclined and gazed at me, and her ripe red mouth trembled so that I could think of nothing save obeying her commands; and yet, to speak of what I knew of the horrors of a Magdaggian galley to this girl?

“My Lord of Strombor,” she said softly, and now her breathing was as unsteady as mine. She leaned toward me, her lips half parted, yet clinging still, her eyelids half closed, her breast rising and falling.

“Please — my Lord?”

I leaned toward her.[3]

* * * *

The Magdaggian hundredswifter had turned now, reached around, her oars a smother of foam in the sea. Again a hurtling mass of rock from her aft varter skimmed over our heads. Men were yelling as arrows feathered into them. The Magdag galley turned, her oars churning, and still Zolta had not sorted out the horrible confusion on our rowing benches amidships.

“Throw them overboard, if you have to, Zolta!” I roared at him. A man at my side screamed and started back with an arrow pierced clean through his eye. “Cut them loose! Get the oars into action!” The hundredswifter was swinging around and her ugly bronze beak was building a comb of white water as she picked up speed.

In only minutes that bronze rostrum would smash into us, her beak would rend over our parados and men would come leaping like sea-leem down among us. My thinned crew couldn’t stop that strength in boarding.

Zolta’s sword flashed and flashed again as he cut down the frenzied slaves. Nath was there, down from his place at our forward varters. The whip-deldars were unchaining the dead slaves. The mass of rock from the Magdaggian varter had pulped their naked bodies like nits beneath a thumbnail. Slaves toppled over the sides. The splashes as they hit were lost in the uproar. As in the many fights I had been in, some of which I have mentioned, on the Eye of the World, once again I was struck by the absence of the smashing concussion of gunfire, the choking clouds of smoke. I could see, all right. I could hear. Both senses brought me tales of destruction.

Now our after varter could come into action and the men there let fly and at once began their frenzied efforts to wind up the windlass. The ballista was cocked again. The hundred-swifter was bearing down on us now, gathering speed, the bronze ram cutting the water, the metal gleaming and bright. Where the strengthening wales along the sides met forward at the proembolion the Magdaggian usually covered the junction with a sectrix head of bronze. Above that and beneath the beak the wales met in a bronze risslaca-head, a mythical lizard monster. After the ram had pierced and crushed us below water, the proembolion would push us back off the ram and upright so that the boarders could leap down from their gangways along the beak.

“Hurry it up, Zolta!” I roared.

My decks were covered with dead men. Arrows stood everywhere. My own archers were shooting, but I could not see the results of their handiwork past the erected palisade across the low foredeck of the hundredswifter. Her twin banks of oars rose and fell now in a quicker beat. Each blade hit the water as one, in two straight and parallel lines, churning her forward like a runaway train on tracks. I yelled at Nath again and he charged back up to the forward varter and hounded his men there into making a final fling.

My sword was in my fist.

If we were captured it would be the galleys of Magdag for us. I had tasted the freedom of the inner sea. I would not willingly go back to slavery again.

Zolta was beating all the fresh slaves we had up from the hold, herding them onto the benches. Here was one time when a single-banked swifter had advantages. Four slaves to an oar, then huddled down, lifting the looms, preparing for the stroke.

Even then the whip-deldars were chaining them down. I nodded. That was good. The oarsmen must respond at once to every order. If they were unchained they would be unsettled, thinking of seizing the chance to jump overboard. More of my men fell on the gangways as arrows flew down. Zolta waved his sword. His face was as wrathful as a whiter storm.

“Clear,” he bellowed. “Clear, Captain!”

I yelled down to the oar-master, but old Rizil was up to the job and at once his silver whistle shrilled, the drum-deldar smashed out the first booming beat, the bass and the tenor drumming in turn. The oars swooped down, hauled water, feathered and lifted in that short but incredibly powerful motion of oars arranged
alla scaloccio
. I felt
Zorg
leap through the water. All our artillery was shooting as we turned, and then the after varter fell silent and it was up to Nath as we swung around, bringing our bow against that of the green galley.

Bronze ram against bronze ram, now, we hurtled across the narrowing space of water. The foe was a hundredswifter, two banked with probably five or six men to an oar.
Zorg
was a sixtyswifter, single-banked, with four men to an oar. We would be slugged solidly backward at the point of impact.

Both captains, that man I fought and I, knew what to do in this situation. Amid the shrill of wounded men, the clang of the ballistae, and the plunging swoop of the iron birds of the air, we both stood as I stood, on the quarterdeck, waiting, judging, estimating, ready to choose the exact time.

But — which way would he go?

He would surely try to ram. As surely he would know I would seek to avoid collision and seek to shave down his side, smashing his cat head, rend away his whole double-bank of oars. But — which side, larboard or starboard?

I found my face twisting and realized I must be smiling at that Magdaggian captain’s dilemma. He wished to strike me; then he must make the decision. I must needs turn first; he would think. Yes, he surely must think that.

Zolta was at my side, his sword bloody, panting.

“If they set foot aboard, Captain, they’ll have to wade over my blood!”

“Yes, Zolta,” I said.

My men were crowding forward now, their white surcoats with that brave blazon of Felteraz heartening us all, their long swords ready. They crouched like leems, ready. I spoke quietly to the rudder-deldars. I had observed a slight incline in our passage, a slender movement with some current and the gentle breeze.

“When I give the order,” I told the rudder-deldars, hard-voiced, “turn instantly to starboard. To starboard. When you hear my order. Understood?”

“Yes, Captain,” they said, sturdily handling their rudders with a skill I had thrashed into them. “We hear.”

“Come on, Zolta,” I said. I spoke with a false cheeriness. “Let us go forward. Our blades are dry and thirsty.”

“By Zair the all-merciful!” said Zolta. “No Grodno-gasta will stop me enjoying a maiden tonight on Isteria!”

Now the hundredswifter was half-hidden before us by our own palisade stretching across the foredeck aft of the outreaching beak. We ran forward and waved a quick encouragement to Nath, who was keeping his two varters on the bows clanging away with a speed and precision his crews never reached in all the practice I made them sweat through.

I was in command of my own ship; I had been in command now long enough just to have reached a time when organization was beginning to go as I wanted; no mangy Grodno-worshiping sea-leem would cheat me of that now!

Then Nath, high on the varter platform, let out a shrilling shriek of triumph.

“May Mother Zinzu the Blessed be praised! Their drum-deldar lies like a squashed paline!”

Immediately the beat of the hundredswifter’s oars faltered. Even as the thought:
Lack of training!

flashed through my mind I turned and, funneling my hands, yelled aft: “
Now!
”

Zorg
swung viciously to starboard.

Our larboard side oars went in with a speed that clearly told of the slaves’ knowledge of what would happen if they were caught with their blades extended. I saw the cruel beak of the Magdag galley lurch away. It opened out a glimpse of her bows where the varter crew labored at the windlass. I saw the cat head disappear beneath our beak and felt the jolting crunch as our bronze-clad proembolion, fashioned into the head of a charging chunkrah, ripped it away.

Then we were roaring down the larboard side of the galley, tearing away the oars in a vast and horrible splintering of wood, shaving her side as clean as a Magdaggian harbor barber shaves the head of a slave. I knew what was happening to those two banks of slaves aboard the hundredswifter. They were men of Zair, fellows, comrades: they would understand what we were doing now, and regret it, and feel the bitterness, but their acrid hate would be for Magdag.

We shot past the upflung stern of the galley and not a single mailed man of Magdag had got aboard us. After that we lay off on our oars and shot the galley to pieces.

When we boarded, the shambles, blood, and filth had no power to sicken me. After that it was like any other successful action on the inner sea.