by John Norman
“I signed articles,” said Andronicus.
“I hear steps on the companionway,” I said.
We fell silent.
It was the fellow, Torgus, come again, with his pole.
He stood on the first step of the companionway, and carefully lowered the butt of the stick to the deck, under the water. “Good fellows!” he called. “Good fellows! The water is down. A hort! Your relief is at hand. Go to the mess, and get paga.”
As we ascended the companionway others passed us, on the way down, to tend to the pumps. I saw again, amongst them, as I had on former days, Tarl Cabot, himself, commander of the tarn cavalry, and his friend, Pertinax. “Well done, fellows,” said Tarl Cabot to us, as we passed. How odd, I thought, that officers, these two, would take their turn at the pumps. Did they not understand their station? Had they so little dignity? How could they expect to keep the respect of their men, if they so lowered themselves, if they so demeaned themselves, if they so compromised their position? But, too, I thought, would men not die for such officers?
I saw Tyrtaios wait on the steps, for Andronicus to pass him, and he would then be behind him.
This clearly made Andronicus uneasy, but he continued on.
At the next level, when we reached it, Tyrtaios, then waiting, spoke to me. “Do not forget what I have said,” he said.
“I will not,” I assured him.
I heard a passing mariner say to his fellow, “The weather is clearing.”
I took the blanket handed me at the door to the mess. I dried my feet and legs, and shivered, and stepped inside. I could smell fresh Sa-Tarna bread, roast bosk. My body ached, I was weary. I was looking forward to food, and hot paga.
Chapter Eight
The Ice; I Hold Converse with a Slave; Rations Grow Short; I Consider the Matter of Seremides
The day was dim and cold.
It must be near noon, but it seemed more like dawn. Tor-tu-Gor, Light-upon-the-Home-Stone, was low, lying almost upon the gray horizon.
The ship was not moving.
It was quiet, except for the men below, outside, moving on the ice about us, with their staves, posts, and axes, striking at the ice. Even on deck one could hear the crunch of their boots on the ice below, the striking of the posts downward, each handled by two men, on the ice, the sharp crack of the Torvaldslander axes striking on the horizontal, encroaching wall that seemed about to encircle the mighty ship. Sound carried clearly. One could hear conversations yards below.
“We are in the grasp of Thassa,” said Philoctetes to me.
“She will have her way,” said a fellow.
On the stem castle, one could see the small, misshapen figure of Tersites, hidden in furs, pacing from side to side, sometimes howling in rage, sometimes pausing to shake small, gnarled fists at the thick, white expanse, like rock, that stretched about us.
“This voyage was madness,” said a man.
“Curse Tersites, curse this ship, curse the Pani!” hissed a man.
I had heard no more of sedition from Tyrtaios, who was of the retinue of Lord Nishida. If he harbored thoughts of insubordination, even mutiny, he did not now speak them. They lay dormant, if seething, within the walls of his own dark, coiled, serpentine heart. There is a time to strike, a time to wait. What point to seize a ship, to risk one’s life, when the prize, even if won, would be without profit? Only a fool would hope to steal a wagon without wheels, a kaiila which cannot be untethered, a girl whose chain he cannot loosen, a treasure which cannot be carried away.
“Away!” called a man, standing at the rail.
One of the great saws, heavy, eleven feet in length, with gigantic metal teeth, fashioned from iron timber braces, by the ship’s Metal Workers, on its rope, was lowered over the side, to the men below. There it would be weighted, its back rings fitted with draw chains, and the whole fixed in its pulleyed frame, to be dropped and raised, again and again, and, by means of the draw chains, pulled against the ice.
I had wondered, from time to time, of the hints of Tyrtaios, those of untold wealth for all. Surely that lacked all foundation in fact, and who, save the simplest and most gullible, might be deceived by so obvious and meretricious an enticement, so transparent a fabrication? And yet, I wondered, why would one of the seeming astuteness of Tyrtaios put himself so at risk, as he would be when the vacuity of his promise became manifest, as it must, in time? He, I thought, must be as mad as Tersites himself.
In my turn, I helped draw the used ax, that which had just been replaced, freed of its weight and chains, to the open deck. Its teeth would be sharpened, and then, again, within two Ahn, it would be put to work below.
The days were short, the nights long. In the land of the Red Hunters, farther north, north even of Torvaldsland, it was said that night would reign unremitting for weeks, from passage hand to passage hand, and to passage hand again, as in their summer, oddly, Tor-tu-Gor would never set. Yet even in their night, interestingly, one might see, from the light of moons, from that of stars, and, sometimes, it was said, from mysterious, shifting curtains of light, these many things reflected from the bleakness of the silent, frozen sea.
The mighty ship had been seized by Thassa, in her fists of ice, better than thirty days ago. The ice had formed about her, and lifted her, mighty as she was, from the surface of the sea, aslant, and crooked, yards toward the sky. This had proved fortunate for, as later became clear, the massive press of ice on each side might snap apart even timbers as fearsome as those of the great ship of Tersites, might break them apart as easily as a child might snap the twigs of a play fortress. Thassa had reserves on which she might draw, the vast pressures of her solidifying surface. Twenty days ago the ice had shifted, with a great, splitting roar, and our great, weighty bulk had slid downward, deeper into the ice, then through the ice, and righted itself. We rejoiced that there was again water beneath our keel, and that we might again negotiate a righted deck, but, by morning, as the ice closed in, almost invisibly forming, Ehn by Ehn, hort by half-hort, our joy turned to terror, for one could remark the groaning of timbers, the cracking of stressed beams. “Do nothing!” had cried Tersites. “The ship is strong! She will neither bend nor break. Mightier than Thassa is she, my ship, always, in every way, do nothing!” But the ice, like the forge pliers of a Metal Worker, slowly, little by little, began to close on the wood. “Do nothing!” cried Tersites. But now none heeded him. Aetius, his confidante and loyal apprentice, in whose management was the day-to-day handling of the ship, dared to countermand his orders, this with the support of Lords Nishida and Okimoto, and the counsel of Tarl Cabot, admiral in Port Kar, member of the council of captains, and the war with ice had begun, to keep it at bay, by whatever means necessary. Accordingly, some feet of ice, with great travail, had been cleared about the hull of the great ship, and, by day, and under torches at night, flickering weirdly on the ice, men, in shifts, struck, hacked, and sawed away at the foe, the silent, ever-forming, encroaching ice.
Some men had been lost in this battle with Thassa, men who, for the most part, had been careless, and lost their footing, or beneath whose weight an unexpected edge of thinner ice had given way. Some had been caught under the ice. Most had died from the cold. In such water a man would die within Ihn. The first who had been lost in such a way was Andronicus. I had served at the pumps with him, in the forward port hold. He had been lost at night. Tyrtaios, in his vicinity, had been unable to save him.
I looked over the rail, at the gray sky, the dim globe of Tor-tu-Gor, at the horizon, the flat, white, frozen desert about.
It seemed not unlikely that the voyage of the great ship had now come to her final port, one of Thassa’s choosing.
“Days pass,” said a man, wearily.
“It is endless,” said another.
“Thassa is mistress,” said a man.
“It is hopeless,” said another.
“Be silent,” said another, “or you will be stripped and lashed, and then thrown bound to the ice.”
<
br /> It was true that the soldiers, or ashigaru, as they were called, of Lord Okimoto were amongst us.
How can one maintain morale, when all is lost?
At least some tarns were aflight.
One even now struck the deck, its wings snapping, soon to be led below.
Its rider, now dismounting, was one of the Pani, a man called Tajima, who was of the retinue of Lord Nishida, but serving in the cavalry.
Even from the height of tarn flight there was seen no break in the ice. It was everywhere about us, perhaps for hundreds of pasangs.
I was pleased to see a tarn return. Several had not. They were, after all, in a way, the eyes of the ship. It was from such saddles that one might see afar. Tersites, in his arrogance, his pride, and waywardness, had not deigned to give his vessel eyes. How then could she see her way? Is it not perilous enough to go forth upon Thassa at all, even in full cognizance, even when assured of her smiles and charms, without venturing upon her in forbidden seasons, blind? It was not known why several tarns had not returned to the ship. One suspects they had been flighted east or south, obedient to the reins of deserters, understandably loathe to die on the ice. But there were other thoughts, too. Perhaps the tarns themselves, now unhobbled, unwilling to return to the imprisonment of the cramped cots below, where they had seen their fellows die, now drunk with their sudden freedom, in the cold, fine, piercing air, exhilarated, and exultant, had chosen to reclaim for themselves their rightful realm, the deep, broad, high country of the sky. The tarn is a dangerous bird, half wild even when domesticated. It would be an easy thing to resist the reins, and turn upon a rider. And even an obedient tarn must eat, after a time. And then, presumably, one must die, tarn or rider. And if the rider survive, how will he live, afoot, alone, in the cold, in the long night?
But the man Tajima had returned.
I suspected he was an able rider.
Because of the risks few tarns were now flighted.
And tarns who cannot fly will, after a time, die.
I could see, some hundred yards off, dark on the ice, the bodies of two sea sleen. There must be a breathing hole there. When approached, they would disappear beneath the ice, for it was they who were being approached. On the other hand, some, seen first beneath the surface, a detectable, sinuous, twisting, moving body, a foot or two below, would suddenly emerge, beside the ship, snouts raised above the surface, with an explosive exhalation of breath, and then a drawing inward of air, these come to open water about the ship, to breathe. It was they who approached. It was eerie to look into the large, round, dark eyes of a sea sleen, peering at one from the icy water. The sea sleen will attack a human in the water, which it will see as food, but it is unlikely to attack one on the ice. Its usual prey is parsit fish, or grunt. In the case of the northern shark it is both prey and predator. Some sea sleen hunt in packs, and these will attack other sea mammals, even large sea mammals, such as whales, which they will attack in swarms, in a churning, bloody frenzy. We were instructed to stand in truce with these marine predators. If one came on the ice, we would push it back in the water with poles. One caught at a pole and snapped it apart with one swift, wrenching closure of its wide, double-fanged jaws, like a toothed trap door set low in that broad, viperlike head. In time one might need them for food. Thus, one welcomed them to come to the side of the ship, to breathe. To be sure, the sea sleen, like its confreres on land, is an intelligent animal, and we did not think it unlikely that it might prove quite dangerous if it were attacked, or thought it necessary to protect a breathing hole. Certainly one did not wish to risk a body, slipped from the ice, being dragged under the water and the hull before we might hurry it back to the ice, and break the stiff, frozen furs from its shuddering body. After the loss of the second man at the hull, the workers on the ice, most of them, those working close to the water, tied themselves together, that the error of a lost footing might not invariably prove fatal. In the water, it can be difficult, hands slipping, no purchase gained, to draw oneself back on the ice. One can die at the edge of the ice, scratching at it, treading water. One does not have long to live in such water. With the rope, on the other hand, one can be extracted from the water swiftly. So simple an expedience had saved more than one life. It was unfortunate that this safety practice had not been in place in the time of Andronicus. To be sure, some men would not avail themselves of the rope, and some, for ease of movement, or comfort, would sever the safety rope themselves. Andronicus, for all we know, might have been one such, so unwise. It was hard to say. And if such were the case, then, even as before, it would have been understandable that Tyrtaios, despite his best efforts, might have been unable to save him.
Of late, in the cold, and half darkness, some of the girls, lesser girls, I took it, from the Kasra keeping area, as well as several from the higher area, the Venna area, warm-shod and well furred, had been released to serve about the ship. Muchly were they pleased, these fortunate ones, to be relieved of the ankle chain, and be loosed from the dank, straw-strewn keeping areas, to which they would be later returned, to be again chained in their places. Many were the small services which these more fortunate ones might perform. Some, like the women of the Red Hunters, repairing rent garments with thong and awl, or, with their lips, teeth, and tongue, softening leather, and attending to stiffened garments, melting and biting the ice away from the fur; and many others would attend to the small, common domestic pursuits of the female slave, the dusting and cleaning of quarters, the making of bunks, the polishing of leather, the shining of the metal fittings of accouterments, laundering, ironing, sorting and folding clothing, sweeping, mopping, scrubbing, waiting upon the long tables, serving menially in the kitchens, as scullions, and such. And others served here and there about the ship in yet other ways, ways similarly appropriate for slaves, carrying messages, running errands, bringing food and black wine, not paga, to the men, both those on deck and those on the ice below, being lowered on a stirrup rope, to be drawn from the side of the ship to the ice by hooked poles, and such. Some of the women, doubtless those once of high caste, and not yet fully aware of their condition, that they were now no more than collared slaves, might, while grateful for their temporary release from the keeping areas and the greater latitudes of movement now permitted them, resent, or attempt to resent, the fact that they now found themselves put to such small, various, repetitive, servile, homely pursuits, perhaps finding in them a pretext for disgruntlement or humiliation. But soon, were their reservations noted by masters, they would address themselves eagerly, diligently, and thankfully to such pursuits, certainly after, say, having been fastened, small wrists tied high over their head, at a whipping ring. They now understood that such tasks were right for them, as they were slaves, and they were grateful to be permitted to live, to perform them. But most of the slaves, by far the greater number, being well apprised by now of the meaning and import of their neck encirclements, and radiant with collar joy, knowing they had irrevocably lost the battle with men which they had never, truly, desired to win, addressed themselves with a light heart and willing hand to such tasks, suitably enforced upon them as what they were now, owned, subdued females, and would hum and sing at their work. As slaves, they knew themselves set appropriately to the tasks and duties of slaves, this confirming upon them what they were, and desired to be, females who had no choice but to serve and please, even to the severities of the whip and chain, females joyful to be true females, females desiring to be owned by men, females wanting to be possessed by masters. In such things can one not hear the crackle of the fire at the mouth of the cave, the drums in the forest, sense the feeling of one’s wrists drawn behind one, and thonged together, snugly, and then the being seized in the mighty arms of hunters and warriors, whose they are, and who will do with them as they will?
It was the second day of the Eleventh Passage Hand.
“Hold, slave!” I snapped.
There was no confusing of men with women.
Even within the bundling of t
he furs heaped upon them their bodies could not be concealed, the figure, the slightness, and movements, no more than those of free women could be entirely concealed within the layers of their fanciful, absurd robes. What male does not sense the vulnerable, inviting nakedness of a slave within a woman’s assorted garmentures, no matter how contrived and pretentious?
And do not even free women sense that men see them thusly, see them exposed beneath their robes, see them as they would be without them, as they might be, say, were they commanded to put them aside, or as they might be, say, were they torn away? When they sense themselves under the scrutiny of men, do they not turn nicely, and stand well, and pose, and display themselves as the goods they know themselves to be? Surely they are aware, in some way, that they are slaves, and belong to men. What do they need then, but the chain, the block, the auctioneer’s cry?
She turned about, frightened, the vessel of steaming black wine, wrapped in its thick cloths, from the wool of the bounding hurt, held in two hands.
Yes, it was she, at last!
What could be special about her, only a slave?
Doubtless only the gold she might bring, were I to cast her to her knees, shackled and naked, before Marlenus of Ar.
“You,” she might have said, but it was only her lips that formed the word.
I was annoyed. I pointed to the deck, sternly.
Did she not know she was in the presence of a free man?
Swiftly she fell to her knees, and put her head down.
“First obeisance position,” I said.
She put the black wine to the side on the deck, and put her head to the boards, before me, her hands beside the sides of her head.
I let her remain in that attitude for a time, for better than an Ehn, that she might well understand herself in first obeisance position before a man, and then I knelt before her and pulled her head up, and brushed back the hood of her furs.
