Mariners of Gor cog[oc-30

by John Norman

  “You did not call for the punishment tag,” said the tarnsman, “or the thong.”

  “No,” I said.

  I did not care for the large women. I thought discipline, if required, was best administered to a slave by a male. That is the natural way, and is far more meaningful to the slave. She is, after all, his. And he is, after all, her master.

  Too, I thought the slave had been sufficiently punished.

  I glanced upward to the platform and ring, on the foremast, where Leros now stood his watch. The light of the lantern carried only partway on the mast. I shuddered.

  “I would be armed,” I said.

  “You are not an officer,” he said, “and not all officers are armed.”

  “I would be armed,” I said.

  “Then so, too,” said he, “would a thousand others.”

  “The platform and ring,” I said, “is muchly open. It is an insecure, fragile fortress.”

  “Less insecure, less fragile, I fear,” said he, “than a hundred others, remote passageways, darkened corners, blind turnings.”

  “Had I used the slave, and Rutilius heard of it,” I said, “he might have sought me out, openly, in rage.”

  “Quite possibly,” said the tarnsman.

  “And you would have been near?” I said.

  “Possibly,” he said.

  “I am bait?” I asked.

  “Possibly,” he said.

  “His name,” I said, “is not Rutilius. He is Seremides, former master of the Taurentians.”

  “I know,” said the tarnsman. “I know him from Ar.”

  “What is the bad blood between you?” I asked.

  “It is not important,” he said. “It has to do with a woman.”

  “What woman?” I asked.

  “Talena, Talena of Ar,” he said.

  “The Ubara!” I exclaimed.

  “Once,” he said.

  “Why is he here, on the ship?” I asked.

  “I gather he thinks I know her whereabouts,” said the tarnsman, “that he might somehow find her through me.”

  “For the bounty?” I said.

  “Of course,” said the tarnsman. “And an amnesty for himself, for bringing her to Ar.”

  “There would be riches and freedom for him,” I said, “and great jubilation in Ar, when she was publicly impaled.”

  “It would be holiday,” he said.

  “Do you know where she is?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “But I suspect Seremides does not believe me. I am, in a way, much pleased that he is on the ship, as here I may kill him, and, at the least, he will be unable to pursue and capture Talena, for the bounty.”

  “You know the Ubara?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “You could recognize her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Doubtless,” I said, “you would like to capture her and bring her shackled to the justice of Ar.”

  The reward for her return to Ar was considerable, amounting to a dozen wealths, which might purchase a city or hire a hundred free companies.

  “No,” he said, “I would have other plans for Talena.”

  I shuddered at the tone of his voice.

  I myself could recognize the Ubara, of course, but I did not think it judicious to bring this to the attention of the tarnsman.

  “Where might be Talena?” I wondered.

  “I do not know,” said the tarnsman.

  “We have been long at sea,” I said. “By now any of a thousand hunters might have apprehended the Ubara. She may have perished naked and screaming months ago in Ar.”

  “I think not,” said the tarnsman.

  “Why do you think not?” I asked.

  “It is late,” he said.

  “I wish you well,” I said.

  “Beware of Seremides,” said the tarnsman.

  “I shall,” I said. “I wish you well.”

  We turned about, to leave the open deck.

  I doubted that I was the less in danger from Seremides, for having forgone the use of a slave. It might have been pleasant to fling her upon the coil of rope, head down, and thrust up her tunic, but one must concern oneself with discipline, and the ship. Too, her use was not mine.

  Such things concern some men.

  Not every man will untether another’s kaiila.

  We had scarcely moved toward the port companionway leading under the stem castle when our progress was suddenly arrested by a cry from the height of the foremast.

  “Ho!” cried Leros from above. “Ho! A light, a light! Ahead, ahead, a light!”

  The bar sounded, struck twice.

  Cabot and I hurried, followed by his lantern bearer, along the narrow port passageway about the stem castle, and stood at the bow. We heard others climb the steps to the stem-castle deck. We heard others hurrying about the starboard passageway about the stem castle, and were soon joined at the bow.

  “Ahead, dead ahead!” called Leros, from above, his voice seemingly far away.

  “There!” said Cabot, pointing.

  Twice more the bar rang.

  We could see the light now, even from the deck level.

  “It is a ship!” cried a man.

  “No!” said Lord Nishida, suddenly beside us. “It is too soon, too soon!”

  At the same time, with a shift of the moist wind, a heavy, sweet odor emerged from the darkness.

  “Turn about! Turn about!” cried Lord Nishida.

  By now, given the ringing of the bar, one supposed that Aetius, and perhaps even Tersites, and the major officers quartered astern, closest to the helmsman, had come to the command deck, the stern-castle deck, whence orders might be most conveniently and immediately conveyed to the helmdeck, some feet below.

  Lord Nishida turned about and began to hurry aft. Cabot and I, and the lantern bearer, followed him. We pressed our way through excited and curious men, in their crowds, come from below decks, rushed forward.

  Save for the lanterns rushing about the deck, it was dark.

  The odor became more pervasive.

  I heard something brush the side of the hull.

  In a few Ehn Lord Nishida was at the foot of the helm deck. There were dark figures on the stern-castle.

  “Put about!” cried Lord Nishida to the stern-castle deck. “Put about! Put about!”

  From the darkness above came the shrill voice of Tersites. “Forward!” it cried. “Forward!”

  “Fools! Fools!” cried Lord Nishida.

  He clambered to the helm deck and began to fight the helmsman for the helm.

  Two mariners pulled him from the helm.

  “Forward!” cried Tersites.

  The wind turned, and was fair, swelling the mighty sails, and the great ship, like an unleashed sleen, leaped forward.

  It was an Ahn later that the sails fell slack, and the ship ceased to move.

  Once again the heavy, sweet odor was pervasive.

  One could now, in the light of the dawn, see the color about, yellow and purple, the myriads of blossoms, many a foot in width, opening to the morning sun.

  I now heard the voice of Aetius, above, frantic with concern.

  “Put about! Put about!” he called to the helmsman.

  “No!” screamed Tersites.

  “We must put about, dear master!” cried Aetius.

  “Never!” said Tersites.

  “Take him below!” cried Aetius.

  A mariner took the shipwright by the arm, and conducted him, that small, misshapen figure, protesting, struggling, from the stern-castle deck.

  “Put about!” called Aetius, to the helmsman.

  “I cannot!” he said. “I cannot!”

  Chapter Thirteen

  We Board an Unusual Ship; The Mystery of the Parsit is Solved; There is Evidence our Presence has been Noted

  I looked about.

  “It is an odd ship,” I said to Tarl Cabot.

  We had clambered aboard the vessel, from a small ship’s boat, cutting
through the masses of snarled, ropelike, blossomed vines which encircled it, covering it, almost obscuring it. It was one of several such derelicts we had noted, resting variously in the sea, a pasang or two apart. We did not know how many such vessels might lie trapped in this place, in this welter of tangled, blossoming growth which stretched far about us. At first, from several hundred yards away, we had thought them only inexplicable mounds in the sea, hills of flowers uncannily forced upward by the riot of growth, vines upon vines. Then we learned the tendrils had clasped and climbed, and covered the works of men. The odor of these enormous fields of growth, alive, rocking and swaying in the sea, with their ubiquitous, massive blossoms, yellow, and purple, which had struck me one night some weeks ago as so pervasive, striking, and unpleasant, was doubtless as physically present as ever, but, interestingly, one now scarcely noticed it, excepting with an effort of attention. The odor, in time, became a lulling odor, and, no longer noted, but invariably present, tended to produce a sense of lethargy.

  “Not really,” said Cabot. “It is only different.”

  It had a high stem-castle, and two fixed masts. It was a round ship, of sorts, a vessel not made for war. Surely there was no ram, no shearing blades, no sockets for fixing catapults or springals. It would move solely under sail. There were no oar decks. It was somewhat larger than a medium galley. What most struck me was the battening, the sail-reinforcing ribbing, to which clung the shreds of matting.

  “I wonder how long it has it been here,” I said.

  “It is hard to say,” said Cabot. “A hundred years, perhaps two hundred.”

  “That is long,” I said.

  “The hull,” he said, “is bored by ship worms, and rotted. The deck is split and the boards shrunk. Were it not for the clasp of the foliage, suspending her, she may have disappeared long ago.”

  He punched downward with the heel of his sea boot and the board broke under the blow, revealing a brown, spongelike mass of fiber.

  This was the first time I had been on one of the derelicts, but they were not unknown to many of our armsmen and mariners who had boarded them to loot the cabins and the dozens of small holds, or compartments, in each, which, at one time, though now half flooded, may have been watertight. The sea chests of many of our fellows were now heavy with pierced coins, pearls, and precious stones.

  Few skeletons had been found on the derelicts, which suggested that men, perhaps in madness or desperation, had somehow fled these strange fields or perished in the sea.

  The strange ships were flat-bottomed, and so could navigate rivers, perhaps by poling or towing, and shallow waters, as well as the sea. Several, on the other hand, possessed daggerboards, which, by means of a slot in the hull, might be raised or lowered, these, when lowered, providing greater stability in open water. But all, however fitted, had been arrested here, tangled in the growth.

  One could almost walk upon the vines, but one could draw a small ship’s boat, or raft, through them, hoping eventually to reach free water.

  The mystery of the parsit was solved, of course, as this wilderness of efflorescent plant life in the sea, floating like a vast park of life, drew myriads of small creatures, and these would draw the parsit, and the parsit would draw the shark, the grunt, and the unusual tharlarion.

  So there was no reason to believe that we were near shore.

  This growth, called the Vine Sea, is unanchored.

  Lord Nishida’s and Lord Okimoto’s course, given to Aetius and Tersites, had intended to skirt the Vine Sea by a hundred pasangs, but the Vine Sea moves, obedient to wind and current, and it was apparently far beyond its usual haunts. Lord Nishida’s distress, weeks ago, at night, was occasioned by the perfume of the Vine Sea, which informed him that the ship had come upon it, he recognizing the full horror of its hazard. The obstinacy of Tersites, a fair wind, and a fortuitous canal opening in the vines had allowed the ship to proceed too far, in the darkness, and then, the wind failing, the Vine Sea had closed about her, tendrils reaching to her timbers. Men on ropes, in shifts, for days now, had scraped and tore away the tendrils which had begun to clutch at the hull, and sought to climb it, as Tur-Pah the Tur tree.

  I brushed away insects, hovering about.

  So the mystery of the parsit had been solved.

  Most of us took it as well that the mystery of the light, that which Leros had first seen, from the platform and ring, was solved. That was seemingly solved on the second night. What had seemed a single blaze in the darkness, far off, was now attributed to the luminescence of a gigantic swarm of lamp flies, in their hundreds of thousands, of which swarms, we later learned, here in the Vine Sea, there were several. This sort of thing usually occurs when a ship is offshore, say a pasang or so, and in the vicinity of Bazi or Schendi.

  I did not know why Tarl Cabot had come to this ship, as there were others. Why this ship and not another? I did know that he and Lord Nishida had surveyed it, from a ship’s boat, this morning, as they had others, on other mornings, with the glass of the Builders.

  What was special about this ship?

  Certainly it had already been looted, its four cabins and its many smaller holds, or compartments.

  Aetius had kept Tersites sequestered in his cabin, fearing to let him be seen on deck. The crew, and the armsmen, might kill him. Always were they uneasy in the presence of the shipwright, fearing his eccentricities, the strangeness of his mind, the unpredictable and erratic exercises of his power, his officious negligence and scorn of customary precautions and ceremonies, his omission of traditional offerings, placations, and petitions, his pride, his insolence, his defiance, his seemingly gratuitous challenge to mighty Thassa, a challenge, as it were, to war, pitting his ship, a splendid artifact, but no more, against vast, deep, surgent, capricious, mighty Thassa. It was clearly his command which had sped the great ship forward in the darkness, despite the warnings of Lord Nishida, with the consequence that she was now trapped, mired in growth, bound fast in thick, living cordage, bound in the garden of the Vine Sea, surely one of the most dangerous and beautiful of Thassa’s gardens. Of what value were riches if one could not spend them, and one were to die in place, amidst heaps of treasure, the richest and poorest of men.

  Cabot, carefully, began to climb one of the ship’s two masts. It was some forty feet in height, and surmounted by what I took, despite its unusual appearance, bowl-like, but with a grated cover, to be a ship’s lamp or lantern.

  He soon attained the summit of the mast.

  He was grinning. He gestured to me. “Come up!” he said.

  I slowly made my way up the mast, hort by hort, and was then beside the tarnsman.

  “Here,” he said, “are no lamp flies.” He rubbed his hand about the grating of the lamp, or lantern. His hand was dark with soot. He thrust up the grating on its hinge, and, clinging to the mast with one hand, wiped his other hand within the bowl, and his hand, withdrawn, was moist, and glistened where soot had been rubbed away. He held his hand out to me. I could smell oil, probably from tharlarion.

  “It is fresh,” I said.

  “Fresh enough,” he smiled.

  “But the ship, I thought,” I said, “was a century or more old.”

  “It is,” he said, “at least.”

  “But this lamp,” I said, “has been fired, surely within the year.”

  “When, do you think?” he asked.

  “When Leros held the high watch,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said. He then closed the hinged, gratelike lid on the lamp, and began to descend the mast. And I followed him.

  We were soon again on the deck of the strange ship. Our small ship’s boat, with four oarsmen, was tied alongside.

  I looked at the tarnsman.

  “Lord Nishida was right,” he said.

  “I do not understand,” I said.

  I knew that the tarnsman and Lord Nishida had scouted several derelicts, surveying them with the glass of the Builders.

  “Lord Nishida,” he said, “has los
t the element of surprise.”

  “I do not understand,” I said.

  “We are expected,” said Tarl Cabot. “The lamp was set as a beacon, to lure us into the Vine Sea, where doubtless it is hoped we will die.”

  “This is the end,” I said. “None escape from here. Note the derelicts. Many brave ships with their crews have perished in this place. There is no escape, there is no wind.”

  “Yet,” said Cabot, “the beacon was lit, and those who set the trap are gone. There is thus an exit from this place.”

  “Perhaps with small boats, with rafts, or such,” I said, “but then one is defenseless on Thassa, perhaps a thousand pasangs from land, perhaps more.”

  I supposed, if Lord Nishida and the tarnsman were right, that a mother ship at the edge of the Vine Sea might have dispatched a small party to the derelict. What puzzled me was that such a ship had not been seen, even from the high watch. Perhaps, unlit, it had approached at night and set a small crew about the business of the lamp. Or perhaps we had enemies amongst us, forewarned, from months ago, even from Brundisium, or the northern forests, who would fail to report such a sighting. Had helmsmen failed to keep the charted course? The Vine Sea moves, like a vast garden in the sea, but perhaps it had not moved as much as had been thought.

  “Think, Callias,” said Cabot. “Few bodies, on any derelict, have been found.”

  “Most would have sought some sort of flight from the Vine Sea,” I said.

  “I think so,” he said, “and certainly as supplies of fresh water grew scarce.”

  “Much treasure was left behind,” I said.

  “Perhaps,” said he, “much was taken, as well.”

  “Would men not return for the rest?” I asked.

  “It seems likely they failed to reach land,” he said.

  “Then,” I said, “the Vine Sea is victorious, in the end.”

  “The lighters of the beacon have come and gone,” he said.