by John Norman
Seremides stood on the beams, regarding me.
“Noble Callias,” said he, affably. “Approach.”
I remained where I was, and looked about. I saw no one near.
“That is an order!” said Seremides.
“Deliver it to another,” I said.
Seremides looked about, and then put the knife in his belt, and then, kneeling on the beams, pulled at some floating vinage, and his narrow vessel inched toward me. He tried to urge it toward me, too, with his body. He dipped his right arm into the water, and pushed back, against the water. Again his tiny bark approached me, a little. It was heavy, and not easily moved. I did not think he would risk throwing the knife. I suspected the turning currents, the natural eddies amongst the vines, might bring us together, sooner or later. It would be a matter of time.
I wondered how many men, if about, would welcome this opportunity to do away with Seremides.
But we seemed much alone.
The nearest galley, I conjectured, from the faint sounds I heard, men calling out, was two hundred yards distant. It would probably be encircled by small boats.
Much vinage was now about, as it had drifted back, tending to close the road which had been cut through it. Such things shift in the currents, closing gaps, being arrested only against more of its kind.
Seremides stood up and looked about.
Apparently he saw no one, at least nearby.
He then, eyes glinting, once more kneeling down, tried more earnestly, even rashly, even heedlessly, to force his way toward me.
I took it he wanted to reach me before others might note our position.
I did not think it wise for Seremides to splash at the side of his support.
There was still blood in the water, from the tharlarion, from some fellows taken by sharks, and, now, from Durbar.
Too, I had seen a fin glide by, but a moment ago.
Perhaps he, then in the water, had seen it, too.
The possible danger of his activity must have occurred to him, as he soon ceased to propel his craft in that perilous fashion.
The splashing, of course, had occurred.
Hopefully, it had been unnoted.
An occasional swell, lifting the circumambient vines and blossoms, moved his small vessel, and the raft of vinage to which I clung.
“Ho!” I called, half in water, half prostrate amongst the vines, unable to stand. “Help! Help!”
But none heard me.
“Swim to me,” coaxed Seremides. “Join me. It will be safe. I will not hurt you.”
We were now some ten or fifteen feet apart.
I felt something long, seven or eight feet in length, and rough, like a rasp, pass, moving beneath the water, against my leg.
I clutched the vinage.
“So,” smiled Seremides, “you are frightened.”
He removed his knife from his belt.
I did not think, again, he would risk throwing it.
He stood, unsteadily, on his support.
“The sea is my ally,” he said. “It will soon enable me to greet you.”
I said nothing. There seemed no one about.
His small bark drifted nearer, as did a number of vines and blossoms. So, too, it must have, Ehn earlier, when bearing Durbar.
“I have waited long for this,” said he, “noble Callias.”
There was then a swell of water, and I saw it lift his vessel two or three feet, and he cried out in triumph and I knew that, in its descent, sliding down the slope of that swell, it would be upon me, and I plunged beneath the water, dragged myself down, beneath the vines, swam what I could, some yards, and then, gasping, shaking my head, I emerged amongst clustered vines, some wrapped about my body, and legs, snakelike.
But I saw nothing of Seremides.
I was terrified to be in the water, as I knew what was there.
I knew he must be in the water, but I feared him the least of what might be about.
I forced myself down again and, as I could, circled back, and, after twice emerging amongst the vines, came to some open water, and felt wood, and drew myself, panting, wiping my eyes, onto the two fastened beams which had borne, in turn, Durbar, and Seremides, and now bore me.
I saw nothing of Seremides.
I stood, unsteadily, on the beams.
I could then see two of the four intact galleys in the distance and, several hundred yards away, the great ship itself.
I cried out and waved, but did not know if my presence was noted.
I was not overly concerned about being picked up, as I was sure the great ship was far from clear of the Vine Sea, and I had little doubt that there would be a thorough search for survivors, perhaps extended over two or three days. I had gathered that every man was valued, if only as a tool or beast of sorts, by the Pani, and I was sure that I could count on the patience, and diligence, of Tarl Cabot, and several others. I took them as good officers and honorable men. They would seek the best accounting possible.
“Help!” I heard. “Help!” The cry was weak, and yards away. At first I could not locate its source, but then I saw a hand lifted over the vines, and a head, lifted, briefly, which then slipped again from sight. Something was struggling, tangled in the vines. I did not know if the two beams on which I stood had moved muchly or not. I knew I was now in relatively open water, which suggested it was part of the road cut by the ship’s boats through the vines, though it was much narrower now than hitherto, given the eddies, and the drifting of the vegetation.
“Help!” I heard, and saw the head of Seremides emerge from the vines. “I am caught!” he cried. An arm flailed about, grasping at vines. It was possible he could be pulled under, as the vines beneath the surface shifted in the currents. In any event, it seemed he was tangled in the ropelike growth, and, apparently, could neither dive beneath it, should he wish to do so, nor swim through it.
“Help!” called Seremides. “Help!” He held out a hand to me, tangled in vines.
I stood unsteadily on the beams.
“All is forgiven!” cried Seremides. “I pledge friendship! I have power! I can do much for you! Help me! I will reward you! I will secure you promotion! When the ship is ours you will stand high! Gold, women! I will see that she who was once Flavia of Ar is given to you! Would she not be pleasing in your collar? When the voyage is done, take her to Ar for the bounty!”
“Pull yourself out, by the vines,” I said.
I was not anxious to approach him, and much vinage lay between us.
“I cannot!” he said. “By the Priest-Kings, by the Home Stone of Cos, save me!”
I crouched on my small craft and caught at vines, trying to pull the two nailed beams toward him.
“You agree!” he cried.
“I agree to nothing,” I said.
“Hurry!” he cried. “Hurry!”
My makeshift bark caught in the vines. I was then some twenty feet from him. I could make no further progress.
“It is safe,” he said. “Crawl on the vines. Draw me free!”
As the vines were thick there, it was possible, on one’s belly, half in the water, half out, to reach him.
He was an officer of the ship.
He stood high.
He was much my superior.
In the swell he must have lost his footing and plunged into the foliage, submerged, swam, came to the surface, and found himself feet away from the beams, snagged in the coiling vines.
“Help!” he said, reaching out.
I lowered myself from the nailed beams, and, half swimming, half crawling, muchly supported by the dense growth, came nigh.
“Closer!” he said.
I moved closer.
“Give me your hand!” he said, reaching out.
I extended my hand, but suddenly drew it back.
In a flash of thought I recalled Seremides, from a dozen times and places, images rushing upon me, a goblet lifted, a door opened, a hand gesturing, a pen in hand, signing an order, a sword, reddene
d, held over an adversary’s throat in the early morning.
“Your hand!” he demanded, angrily.
The hand extended to me, that it might grasp mine was his left hand. His right hand was under the water.
Seremides, former master of the Taurentians, was right-handed.
“Die, Sleen!” he cried, tearing himself upward, out of the vines, the right hand dripping with water, the sun flashing on the wet blade in its grasp.
I had not given him my hand. I had kept back, a little. That meant he must close the gap between us, must move toward me, and this, in the water, given the absence of footing, the presence of the foliage, could not be easily done. He was trying to scramble toward me, half in water, half out, over the raft of vegetation. The knife struck out at me twice, three times. I backed away as I could, slipping, half sinking through the vines, while he, similarly hampered, cursing, pursued me, foot by foot. I, backing away, suddenly slipped downward, through a gap in the vinage, and felt circles of vines about my legs and lower body, through which I had plunged. I was enmeshed. I reached about. I could obtain no purchase. I was held in place. “Noble Callias!” grinned Seremides, moving a hort closer. My only chance would be to grasp his knife wrist, and I thought there was little chance of that. Seremides would not be so foolish as to make a long strike, which might be blocked or intercepted. He would prepare carefully for the kill, feinting, darting, keeping the blade forward of my grasp, but slashing, striking, again and again, at the hand, from which he might sever fingers, or slash a wrist, disabling the hand. I would then, eventually, be as helpless as if bound. I did not think he would finish me quickly. I had seen him finish more than one man slowly, pleasantly. Some had begged to be done with.
“Ho!” we heard. “Is anyone there?”
Seremides turned white.
It must be a search party, in a small boat.
“Yes!” I called, loudly. “Here! Here!”
“Sleen!” hissed Seremides, and, his leisure vanished, he lunged forward, desperately, but the blow was short. He crawled closer and struck again. There was no leverage, no footing. He struck again. I reached for his wrist, but missed it. He struck again, and I managed to grasp his wrist, with two hands, and we turned in the water amidst the vines, struggling, thrashing about. “Here! Here!” I screamed, for there were men somewhere about. I suddenly sensed the blade was no longer in his right hand, and swept backward, water in my eyes, fending myself as I could. The knife cut through my tunic ripping it across the chest. I had not even seen it. Then I saw the knife was again in his right hand. I was then muchly on my back, where I had thrown myself backward, and my arms were tangled in the vines. I saw the glint of delight in his eyes, and saw the knife raised. I could not free my arms, either to block or intercept the blow. In a moment I might work myself free but the moment was not mine. In that moment a tethered tarsk could not have been more helpless. “Now, Sleen!” he whispered.
I saw the sky, a bright blue in the spring afternoon.
“Aiiii!” I heard, a sudden, startled, weird, hideous cry, and the knife arm, and the head, and the torso of Seremides suddenly disappeared beneath the water, which churned, rocking the mat of vines, lifting and scattering the broad blue and yellow blossoms amongst the foliage.
“Where are you?” called a voice.
“Here, here!” I said.
I was not thinking clearly.
It was a moment before I understood what had happened.
I saw Seremides emerge then from amidst the vines and blossoms. He was alive. He was some eleven feet away. He no longer held the knife. He grasped at the vines. I had never seen the eyes of a man look so. I had never seen such an expression on a human face, one of such horror.
“Callias!” he whispered, holding out a hand to me.
I made my way to him, a bit before he lost consciousness. I turned him on his back, and drew him through the water, and over the vines, to where I had departed the small vessel of nailed beams. Behind us there was a trail of blood, in the water, over the vines.
I drew him onto the makeshift vessel.
The shark had taken the left leg, from above the knee.
I heard the dip of oars in the water.
“Here!” I called, standing up, lifting my hand.
In moments I, and two oarsmen, had put Seremides in the ship’s boat.
“You have saved the life of Rutilius of Ar, well done,” said the rudderman.
“He is a high officer,” observed one of the oarsmen.
“You will be commended for this,” said another.
“Why did you not let him die?” asked an armsman.
“He will bleed to death,” said another armsman.
I tore away part of my tunic and thrust it against the part of the leg left.
“Let him die,” said a fellow.
“Put him overboard, kill him,” suggested an oarsman.
“Have you twine, rope, a belt?” I asked.
“Use this,” said the rudderman, tossing me a length of knotted rope, which bore some reddish stains.
“We found it floating nearby,” said an armsman.
I fastened the rope about the stump of the leg, and tightened it. The blood slowed, and then stopped.
“He needs care,” I said, “the attention of physicians.”
“Back to the ship,” said the rudderman.
“There is no hurry,” said an armsman.
“He is going to die,” said an oarsman, looking at the prostrate figure between the thwarts.
“No,” I said, “he is Seremides, he is strong.”
“He will wish he was dead,” said an oarsman.
“He is an officer,” said an armsman.
“No longer,” said another armsman. “There are no crippled officers.”
We began to make our way, largely through open water, to the great ship.
Seremides opened his eyes. They did not seem the eyes of the Seremides I knew. He looked up at me. “Do not hurt me,” he said.
Chapter Fifteen
Seremides; The Slave, Alcinoe
“Turgus commands a galley!” said the fellow to Seremides.
“Let me alone,” said Seremides.
Seremides supported himself with a narrow, sticklike crutch, perhaps a hort in width, at the top of which, fitted over the shaft, was a small, rounded crosspiece. This was under his arm, tight against his body. Lord Okimoto had found Seremides of use earlier in the voyage; his sword had been formidable, and he had muchly facilitated Lord Okimoto’s contacts with those of us not of the Pani. He was, in a way, a liaison between Lord Okimoto’s group and the mariners and armsmen not of the Pani. As we feared Seremides, so, too, we were concerned to be found pleasing by Lord Okimoto. Tyrtaios, who was of the retinue of Lord Nishida, had a somewhat similar role, but, if he were latently more dangerous than Seremides, he did not have the temper, and the character of Seremides, which had much to do with intimidation, humiliation, and the drawing of blood. If Seremides disliked you, or was thinking of killing you, it was reasonably clear; indeed, it pleased him that you might suspect such things; but with Tyrtaios, one could not be sure. One did not know. In its way, this rendered Tyrtaios more frightening. His view was long; he was patient; he seldom acted on the moment, but each action, one suspected, rather like the carving of a bow or the sharpening of a knife, had its contribution to some end in view. Seremides no longer wore the yellow livery of Lord Okimoto, for Lord Okimoto had dismissed him from his service. Seremides, now, had no master, and no men. He wore a short, brown, ragged tunic, a cast-off. Tyrtaios, who had been of the retinue of Lord Nishida, had now been requisitioned by Lord Okimoto to fulfill the role which had been that of Seremides. Accordingly, Tyrtaios was now of the retinue of Lord Okimoto, and no longer of that of Lord Nishida. There remained four nested galleys. Tyrtaios’ place with Lord Nishida had been taken by Turgus, an officer in the tarn cavalry, who had been given the command of one of the four remaining nested galleys. When called to flight, Tur
gus’ galley was to fall to Pertinax, and if the entire cavalry were put aflight, I was pleased that the galley’s command would fall to Philoctetes, a mariner of Cos, for whom I would be eager to draw oar.
We were now beyond the Vine Sea.
It had taken days to effect our escape, against the thickets of vines, and the renewal of growth.
Our tarn scouts had been invaluable, apprising us of the movements of that frightful garden in the sea, the circumambient, encroaching barricades of which might shift radically in days. That border which might lie within a dozen pasangs on one day might, as one sought it, given the shifts in wind and current, lie twenty or thirty pasangs away the next, and what had been further might now be nearer. The ropes of vines which entangled so many ships might extend their snares, as they would, but the great movements had their rhythms, and these, with tarns, could be tracked. Thus our sea road might be cut in a direction which seemed hopeless on a given day, given the tentacles of the garden, but, given the movements of the sea, might beckon on the next. The border, so to speak, as far off as it might be in any case, tended to move, and with some periodicity; it was thus sometimes closer, sometimes farther away. Charts, prepared on the basis of the reconnaissances of the tarn scouts, plotted these movements, and we moved toward the border, or edge, which, on the whole, was often closer than farther.
Even so it seemed unlikely we could have freed the great ship, as opposed to small boats, if we had not had an enormous complement of men, a small army, to work at the vines in our path, and cut them away from the ship. After the losses of the mutiny we fortunately had still better than two thousand men who might be applied to the work, some four hundred and fifty Pani, distributed between the commands of Lords Nishida and Okimoto, and some seventeen hundred mariners and armsmen, mostly armsmen.
If it were not for the tarn scouts and the complement of men at our disposal, it seems unlikely we could have effected the release of the great ship. On the final day, we heard the cry from the foremast, “The sea! The sea!” There was much cheering, from the small boats, from the towing galleys. We redoubled our efforts. Toward noon we saw tarnsmen returning to the great ship, hastily, almost frantically. There seemed agitation about. The grasping arms of the Vine Sea, from the north and the south, were drifting toward us. It had taken us longer than anticipated to reach this point. I remembered the signal, the beacon. Lord Nishida, I recalled, had feared the imminence of an enemy. It was at this point that I was suddenly aware of the movement of wind. “Ho!” cried men. The expansive blanket of odor, of the blossoms of the Vine Sea, with their clouds of insects, surely pervasive, yet seldom noticed for days, seemed suddenly rent. Briefly I drew in the first breath of the free air of Thassa which I had drawn since the night at the edge of the Vine Sea. Licinius Lysias, who had survived the sinking of the galleys of Seremides and Pertinax, rose at the bench, and pointed backward, toward the great ship. “See?” he cried. “Yes!” I said. The huge sails which had for so long lain slack from their yards, stirred. “Wind!” cried men about us. What a beautiful sight it was, to see the shaking, and then the lifting, and swelling, of those vast breadths of canvas. “Cast off the tow ropes!” we heard. The great ship was moving, like a mountain at sea. We went hard to port. The galleys, and the small boats, scattered, some being dragged over the vines. The great ship approached. Then it was abeam, and then off the bow. One of the small boats, tardy, caught in the vines, was crushed, and men leapt to the water, to be drawn aboard others of the cutting boats. The single, gigantic rudder of the ship of Tersites, was swathed with vines, but the wind drove her ahead. We saw yards of vines being torn from the sea. By evening the great ship was free of the Vine Sea and, sails furled, and sea hooks cast, she waited, a pasang west of the vines, the odor, and insects, while the numbers of ship’s boats, and the four galleys, rejoined her. By nightfall the small boats were tiered in the galley holds, and the galleys themselves, scraped clean of vines and clinging blossoms, were nested. The wind shifted to the south, and we could no longer smell the Vine Sea. Rather we felt the sharp, salted air of bright, vast, green Thassa, fresh and clean, once more in our nostrils, in our lungs, and blood. We were again alive. Behind us was the Vine Sea.
