by John Dalmas
Tirros recoiled, stifling a scream that came out a squawk. Somehow it was like a continuation of his dream.
From the bow came a chuckle. "Took you by surprise, did it?" a man asked.
"Aye."
"They're sullsi. The one with the sword face is an oldtimer. You hardly ever see one like that."
Tirros looked again. He'd heard of sword-faced sullsi, but like many other people had thought them a myth. It had laid its head back down. "How come you've got sullsi aboard?" he asked.
"We ain't supposed to talk about that. They're friends of the lady on board; she talks to 'em. I guess I can tell you that much."
The lady on board. "Thanks," Tirros half mumbled, and started for his bed. There was only one person that could be: his sister. He'd have to stay away from her; as different as he looked, she'd still know him.
Confusion hit him then, abruptly. He'd been sailing north; that he was almost sure of. Somewhere off the Djezian coast. Or—Had he gotten turned around somewhere? Were they in Hrummean waters headed south?
He looked past the jib at the sky. The lodestar was clearly visible, in the tip of the Spear. They were headed north.
Where could they be going, with her aboard? Could she be an envoy to Djez Gorrbul? If she was, there'd be an adept with her. He'd have to be careful, very careful, and draw no more attention to himself. He'd hole up in the cargo hold when dawn came.
Sixty-Six
Vendel Kryger looked the young midshipman up and down, then smiled and spoke in Almaeic. "Hmh! Add a few inches to your stature and you'd be a perfect example of the well-dressed Gorrbian profligate!" The ambassador stepped in front of the mirror then. "I'm afraid I look more like a jaded roue."
He turned to his Gorrbian houseboy. "You may go now, Fellik," he said in Djezian, and watched him out the door, then spoke again to Werlingus. "Let's go."
They left, followed by Kryger's two burly bodyguards, Almaeic marines. The bodyguards were short by Djezian standards, but they looked formidable nonetheless; dangerous. They were. They'd been assigned to Kryger from the Imperial Guard.
Midshipman Werlingus felt uncomfortable with his role in this. Lying was foreign to his character, and distasteful, even when the lie was only implied. Even when he saw the clear necessity of it.
Not to seem covert, the four Almites left the palace through the main entrance, as they usually did when invited to parties in aristocratic homes. And tomorrow was a Freeday—a convenient coincidence that made things considerably more comfortable. No one would wonder when they didn't return.
If they'd been followed, those earlier times, hopefully the practice had been abandoned as unnecessary. Although even being followed wouldn't necessarily prove dangerous. Kryger had sent Werlingus that morning with his carefully packed Almaeic formal suit; he'd have it tomorrow when it was needed. Now they took nothing with them except the clothes they wore and what incidentals they carried in their purses. They must by all means look as if they expected to be back by morning. As before, instead of hiring a cabriolet, Kryger had kaabors waiting. They mounted and rode off down the unlit street, the hooves of their animals clopping on brick pavement.
A thirty-minute ride brought them to the city wall, where guards passed them through a narrow nighttime gate. This too was not unusual. Some of the city's wealthier merchant-aristocrats made their homes outside the walls—men wealthy enough to have and defend walls of their own.
Kryger had dropped his joviality. The eyes with which he looked about him now were calculating. Werlingus wondered what he was thinking. He also wondered what might happen to the two embassy staff they'd left at the palace. He could see why the ambassador couldn't take them all with him, but felt somehow guilty that he should escape while they wouldn't.
The road they took paralleled the beach at a distance of some two hundred yards, separated from it by fields and occasional private compounds, trees showing their crowns above stout encircling brick walls. After a mile or so, the compounds became rapidly fewer.
Finally, at one of the last, Kryger stopped. One of the bodyguards dismounted and, with a key, opened a heavy, ironfaced wooden gate. They rode inside and the man locked and barred it behind them. The place was the retreat of a merchant who'd been happy to lend it to Kryger for two days. He hoped to do a profitable business with Almeon, in what Kryger had portrayed as a coming export-import bonanza. He'd assumed, from a hint of Kryger's, that the ambassador planned a tryst with some noblewoman.
They dismounted behind the small two-story villa, and the Gorrbian groundskeeper/guard took their mounts to the shed, to feed and brush down. Normally the place had no house servants when the family was away, but for Kryger's convenience a housekeeper was waiting for them at the door. She asked if they cared for anything to eat or drink, then hurried off to prepare the spiced wine that Kryger requested for himself and Werlingus. The bodyguards would have satta; they were not to drink alcohol on duty.
Kryger was familiar with the house; he'd been a guest there before. The others followed him upstairs, where three balconied rooms faced the Inside Passage—the protected channel between the mainland and the intermittent chain of low offshore islands. He assigned the bodyguards to one room and Werlingus to another; then he and Werlingus sat on the balcony of the master's room which Kryger had taken. When the housekeeper had brought their wine, Kryger dismissed her for the night. She left wondering that they'd brought no pleasure girls or other women, wondering if perhaps the foreign lord preferred young men.
The two sat on the balcony in silence. Sleep would likely prove elusive. The fleet should arrive the next day, sometime before or around noon. It wouldn't do to be at the palace when it steamed into the roadstead and began leveling the waterfront district with naval gunnery. He'd informed the admiral of which villa they'd be at; a gig would be sent to pick up the four of them when the fleet had dropped anchor.
Sixty-Seven
After the midday meal, Tssissfu told Juliassa that the Almaeic fleet had entered the Inside Passage. The marines began hoisting mines out of the hold, and Tirros volunteered to help load the to-him-mysterious objects into the cargo net. Ordinarily he rejected even the thought of labor, but felt that working in the hold, he'd be less conspicuous, and less talked about, than lying around while others worked.
Also he'd hoped to pick up something on the purpose of the trip, and what these peculiar objects were that they were handling. The marine he worked with wasn't much for talking though, and questioning him seemed unwise. The important thing was to get ashore in Djez Gorrbul.
They didn't work hard. They'd load four of the things on the net, and with a light windlass, marines on deck would hoist the net up. Then marines unloaded it and apparently did something to the objects. It felt military to Tirros, and he discarded the notion that Juliassa was an amirrial envoy to King Gamaliiu.
Twice he saw her, on deck looking down at the loading. She paid no attention to him, and he began to feel more secure.
By supper, all the mines were on deck and their timers set. The captain kept a lookout on the foremast to watch. Meanwhile, he was counting inshore islands as the only way of knowing when he was approaching Haipoor l'Djezzer. It was dusk, and had clouded over, when he spotted the south passage into Haipoor Harbor, a mile ahead, and drew his sheets to cut speed; he wanted to enter by twilight.
* * *
A large number of sullsi were on or close off the island's seaward beach. They'd seen the huge invasion fleet arrive that morning, and knew fear. The serpents with them occasionally took a read on Tssissfu as a measure of how far away the schooners were. Now they were alert and somewhat tense; the little flotilla was getting close. A serpent, head high, called out in sullsit: "They are coming! I see them!" The sullsi began to pass through the entrance channel to join other sullsi already there.
* * *
The schooners entered one at a time and anchored less than 800 yards from the nearer Almaeic ships. Each lowered a platform with floats, tied it snu
g alongside, and sullsi soon filled the water around them. The humans could hear gunfire from the city, and in places, fire burned yellow and russet in the near-night dark.
Juliassa and a wan and wobbly Jonkka swung down onto the platform. Jonkka insisted on helping; now that they were in sheltered water, he said, he'd be all right.
The sullsi had been briefed by serpent communicators, and had organized themselves into working pairs, crews of twelve, squadrons of thirty-six. They'd scouted the harbor, seen the lay of the fleet, assigned sectors to squadrons and subsectors to crews.
But none had ever seen a mine or wrench or lagscrew. Sleekit's two packmates swam to the other two schooners to demonstrate methods. At the flagship, Juliassa and Sleekit worked together, Juliassa on the platform talking, Sleekit in the water observing and correcting technique. He couldn't speak effectively in air speech, but underwater had no difficulty making himself understood.
After a little bit, pairs of sullsi began taking mines into the water and disappearing with them.
* * *
From the rail of the Almaeic flagship, General Lord Vendel Kryger watched what little could be seen of the battle, listened to and interpreted its sounds. He kept to the fringe of the command group—the commander in chief, the fleet admiral, and the flagship's captain. There were sporadic light drizzles, and an awning had been erected to shelter them. Kryger was keeping his mouth shut. As a brigadier general he was heavily outranked, and when he'd made a suggestion earlier, the CIC had looked annoyed. Actually, no one was saying much.
Distant rifles and grenades popped, furiously at times, and now and then artillery thudded, the sounds dull in the heavy air. The Gorballis were resisting more obstinately than he'd expected, considering the new and frightening weapons they faced.
In parts of the city, fires had spread, ruddying the low-lying blanket of clouds, but construction was mostly brick, brick and stone, and thoroughfares were wide. A city-wide holocaust seemed unlikely.
Along the rail, seamen gawked too. If anyone was on watch, Kryger thought, you couldn't tell it. Loose discipline! Under the circumstances though, he realized, it hardly mattered; there was no hostile fleet to watch for. And these would be merchant seamen impressed into naval service. Even most of the ships' officers, even most of their captains, were merchant mariners.
Kryger took a match from his match safe and struck it with a thumbnail to look at his watch. After midnight, and he'd had little sleep the night before. He put watch and match-safe back in his pockets, excused himself, and went to Werlingus, who'd been watching with two of the ship's junior officers. "I'm going to bed," he said. "Stand by the wireless room and have them tell you when there's any word about the king—his capture, his death, anything."
Then he went below, opened the porthole, and went to bed.
Sixty-Eight
It was as warm as a summer evening. The front was a warm front, and the overcast held in the day's heat like a blanket.
Juliassa watched another mine disappear beneath the water, then straightened and looked around her. There were only four mines on the platform now, and there couldn't be many left on deck. A marine had one in his hands, waiting to pass it down; she and Jonkka, who'd been working with her, took it from him and set it down on the platform.
The drizzle had stopped; the moisture she wiped from her forehead was sweat. She knelt beside the tray of lagscrews and felt of how many were left. Not more than twenty. There couldn't be many mines left to set. If the other schooners had been keeping pace with this one, they'd sent out more already, by quite a margin, than there were Almaeic ships.
Or were there more than 200 ships? Perhaps even more than 300? More ships than mines to sink them with? In the night she couldn't tell.
Nor did she realize how organized the sullsi mining squadrons were. How did they know which ships they'd mined and which they hadn't? Sullsi were as intelligent as humans, but how were they at planning? At administration? Especially in an activity so utterly different than anything they'd done before. They had four fingers and two thumbs on each hand, and names for numbers to a hundred and forty-four, but how well did they deal with quantities?
(Had she been less rushed and anxious, she'd have known. For the numbers they used reached the square of their finger count! At least they were able arithmetists.)
Would some ships be missed, and others have two or three mines attached? Supposing a half dozen ships survived, or even one. Might they, or it, steam south to the firth and shell Theedalit?
She didn't give worry much time, though. It was too late. The night was half over, and they'd done what they could. It was remarkable that they'd gotten this far without something going drastically wrong; Hrum seemed to be with them.
Straightening, she thanked Hrum for that. She told Jonkka to stand by, to hand out the next mines, then reached up, grasped a handhold, and pulled herself through the gangway onto the deck to see how many mines were left there. Not more than half a dozen, and there shouldn't be any down in . . .
"S-s-st! Miss!"
She turned. The man who stood there in the night was a stranger to her. He had to be the derelict fisherman she'd heard about, the one they'd picked up at sea.
"What is it?"
"Miss, there's one of them things still in the hold, makin' a funny noise. I'll show you."
He turned away before she could reply, and crossing the deck, disappeared down a hatchway. She hesitated, then followed. What he said seemed impossible, but best not ignore it.
It was darker below than topside, the blackness almost impenetrable. Her feet found the deck, and at the same moment an arm circled her neck from behind. A knife blade pricked sharply beneath her ribs, and a voice hissed in her ear.
"Take off your pants, or you're dead!"
She knew who it was, who it had to be, and a chill ran through her. In that instant she thought of Elver and all the things they'd talked about, planned. Without hesitation she reached down, unfastened her belt, pushed her trousers off her hips, felt them slide, got one foot free of them. Oh Hrum! she prayed silently, just let me come through this alive.
He forced her down on her knees then, dropping down with her. His pants had already been open; she could feel his hardness against her waist. Then he changed his grip to her hair, the knifepoint biting deeper to say "I mean it," and pushed her forward till she was on all fours. "Now," he hissed, and told her what to do.
He was like a frenzied animal, almost knocking her on her face, and it was over in less than half a minute. His movements slowed, stopped; she felt him grab her hair again and pull her head back. He was going to cut her throat, she realized, and screaming, twisted, trying to throw herself sideways.
Tirros was taken by surprise, but stabbed nonetheless, felt hot blood gush over his hand, and letting go the knife, he rose, jumped upward, grasped the coaming and swung himself onto the deck, scrambling at once to his feet.
He recognized the face staring at him through the gangway: Jonkka, the guardsman. Tirros turned, and with a single stride reached the far rail and vaulted into the water, plunging deep, stroked strongly to get distance between himself and the schooner before surfacing, sinewy arms sweeping in an underwater breaststroke until his lungs seemed near to bursting.
He surfaced, gasping air with as little sound as possible, and breathing deeply, turned to look back at the ship more than a hundred feet away. It was vaguely backlit by fire-reddened clouds, and he thought he could make out men silhouetted at the rail, as if looking for him. There were voices too, not angry but querying, overlying one another, but he could hear no sound of swimming. Quietly he took two more deep breaths, then submerged silently and stroked another fifty feet before coming back up.
Even looking over the rail toward him, it seemed to Tirros they wouldn't see him now. And this was the side away from the mainland; he'd swim to the long, scrub-grown island and trot to the far end, then take to the water again and swim the channel. They'd never find him.
He turned on one side and began swimming away, quietly, smoothly. The shouting had died. By the time they got a boat lowered, if they did, he'd be on the island and away.
* * *
As the man vaulted over the rail, Jonkka pulled himself through the gangway. The scream had to be Juliassa, and by the sound of it, she was in the hold. There was a moment of hesitation: Should he chase the man or see to Juliassa?
He decided, climbed down into the hold, stared unseeingly around, then stumbled on Juliassa's leg in the darkness. He knelt, found a naked hip, her shirt, her—neck! He recoiled at the thick hot blood, and roared, the sound of it bloodcurdling. Clambering quickly from the hold, he howled like some nightbeast, then jumped through the gangway, landing crouched on the platform. Sleekit, in the water beside it, stared thunderstruck at him, realizing that something must have happened to Juliassa.
