Some few Imperials fell, even so, from arrows ill-aimed at the darting, thrusting pirate. And the purple-clad Household Guards suffered worse because their armour, while too light to resist the blows of Conan’s ravaging ax, was more than heavy enough to drag them underwater. Many drowned that day in the reeking mud of the harbour bottom.
Whether any mortal man less swift and powerful than Amra the Lion could have held the pier single-handed, the helpless watchers ashore doubted. As he fought, his fierce totem-beast seemed to hover at his shoulder, guarding him from death’s reach, striking fear into his enemies with its roar and its carrion breath. Dressed only in rags, menaced and cut at by blades from three sides, he danced the swift, perilous dance of tongue between gnashing teeth... barely evading the sword’s razored edge, scarcely managing to keep hold of his halberd, yet plying it to deadly effect on planks that grew heavy with bodies and sticky with blood.
Came the time when the fight was no longer equal... when the many, overawed and baffled by the savage destruction before them, began to jostle backward and retreat from the one. It was seen by all, and later denied by nearly all—to no consequence, since that was the moment Conan himself chose to turn and flee. With his weapon braced beside him, he bounded back along the pier, while furious shouts echoed at him from shore, and arrows struck and skipped along the planks at his heels.
A mighty warrior, yet his doom surely was sealed as the Imperial guards resumed their chase. Possibly his greed for victory and his too-great success had been but wry tricks of fate; for while he fought so fiercely, his stolen ship forsook the pier, and him with it. With the lower banks of oars splashing and clattering clumsily, and with nearly the whole top row still canted upward unmanned, the Remorseless had floundered out into the channel.
Now, with the shouts of sixty oar-captains resounding steadily over the clumping beat of the hortator’s drum, the ship was well away from the pier and gaining speed each moment, soon to surpass the ablest swimmer’s pace... pulling, as Conan could see, toward the ill-assorted pirate fleet that manoeuvred inshore to meet it.
There was little hope in swimming, especially with rowboats setting out in pursuit and archers closing on his track. Small chance here of pulling off the ruse he had used in Djafur Bay. Instead, Conan sprinted to the catapult waiting ready at the end of the pier. Balancing carefully, he climbed out on the weapon’s long, leg-thick beam and squatted in place on the throwing-spoon. Then, clenching knees against chin to form himself into a tight ball, he reached forward one-armed and chopped his ax blade down on the trigger mechanism.
There was a spine-jarring impact, a splitting crash, a scream of tortured air. Conan’s weapon was wrenched out of his grip; his thus-freed arm jerked downward and caused him to spin, wildly with earth and sea flickering past his vision. He felt himself flailing, twisting, flying inverted. Then water struck, flaying at him like rawhide and grinding like gravel into his mouth, nostrils, eyes. Reality throbbed and faded... he heard grotesque noises, retchings, himself sputtering and drowning at the surface of the sea. He reached for life, kicked, sucked in air. Then he saw a mighty ship’s ram foaming near, turning toward him.
The steersmen worked furiously at turning; half of the oars idled, causing the Remorseless to lose way—and Conan managed to swim a few strokes and clutch an oar blade, which was then drawn in so that he could be hauled aboard.
In the Imperial Palace, many routine activities and offices were suspended for the festive day of the sea-trials. Other functionaries, particularly the guards and servants, were already at a fever-pitch of activity, which was slow to be penetrated by stirrings of alarm from the Navy Yard.
“A thousand regrets for disturbing Your Radiance so early,” Nephet Ali begged earnestly of Prince Yezdigerd, “but there is the problem of interrupting your Imperial father’s morning slumbers. I thought he should hear the news without delay.” He hastened after the long-legged prince, who strode down the ornate, perfumed corridor of Yildiz’s apartments.
“Indeed he should,” Yezdigerd agreed. “You need not fear to disturb me, Nephet. I rise ere dawn each morning. If I had heard the news from other lips before yours, I would already have roused him myself.”
“It could mean a most awkward disruption of today’s agenda,” the Imperial engineer fretted. But as they approached the door to Emperor Yildiz’s sleeping chamber, he fell silent.
“We must see the emperor at once,” the prince announced, striding straight up to the pair of tall, pigtailed warrior-women who guarded the royal bedchamber. “It is an affair of the greatest importance, do not delay... I take it that I still have access to him!”
At the blond giantesses’ insolent looks, Yezdigerd straightened his back and gazed sternly at the panels of the gilded door. Nephet Ali, for his part, could not take his eyes from the guardians’ supercilious northern faces and their bronze-cupped breasts. After an uncertain moment, the heavy battle-axes uncrossed; wordlessly, one of them pushed open the door, allowing entry to the lavish room.
Within, half-draped on his bed of velvet cushions afloat in the mercury pool, Emperor Yildiz lay snoring. He looked old, slack-skinned, and drugged; one of his limp hands lolled off the edge of the bolster, floating on its back in the silver metal. The whole scene, with the paunchy old emperor at its centre, appeared to shimmer yellowly in the lamplight, as if clouded by some thick but invisible vapour.
Upon entry of the two nobles, one of Yildiz’s harem-wives came hurrying from the farther reaches of the chamber, averting her gaze respectfully from Yezdigerd. Keeping her fleshly charms decently screened inside a loose silk robe, she knelt beside the pool and drew the floating bed to its rim. After some spirited prodding, murmuring, and daubing with a wine-soaked handkerchief, the emperor came to slow, groggy wakefulness.
“Yes, what is it?” he mumbled blearily. “A visit from my son? What trouble portends, then? Have I slept through a war, or some high state crisis? Speak, boy!”
At Yezdigerd’s mute but evident irritation, Nephet Ali ventured forward. “Your Supremacy, there has been an escape from the Naval Garrison. Sometime during the night, the pirate Amra and his fellow prisoners overcame their guards and forced the gate of the prison. As word first came to me mere moments ago, his band was storming one of the piers in the Navy Yard... doubtless to steal a ship and rejoin his cronies in the harbour. It appears that the pirate fleet, too, is under oars.”
“It is a blatant mockery of our Imperial authority,” Prince Yezdigerd added. ‘ ‘If this escape is made good, or if it results in more damage to our fleet and reputation, the loss to our standing will be immense. On such a day as this, with half the population of Aghrapur assembled as witnesses...” He broke off, shaking his head in exasperation.
‘ ‘It will make a fine and memorable show for my subjects, that is certain.” Emperor Yildiz did not seem in the least surprised or distressed by the news. Now, with the able help of his houri, he peeled himself up from his rumpled mattress and edged his old haunches onto the pool’s marble curb. “They will not complain, at least, that their emperor has failed to match the thrill of the previous sea-trials!”
“A costly show it may be,” Yezdigerd retorted, “if it makes our rule seem slack and ridiculous. There is no question, Father, but that these pirates and all their henchmen be crushed at once, and totally. The matter requires your prompt and decisive attention.”
“It has my attention,” the querulous old emperor replied as he strained to ease a purple robe of ermine-trimmed silk over his pale, clammy shoulders. “The brigands will be destroyed, most assuredly—” he turned to his son “—by you, Yezdigerd, with the aid of your Naval Prize contestants, as we previously discussed. If I were you, I would see to it at once.”
“But Father, things have come far past that! This is no case for half-measures, and certainly no mere show for the common herd’s amusement. This requires real, irresistible force.”
“Your Majesty,” Nephet Ali diffidently pointed out, �
�too public a resolution of the matter might backfire as well. If the mob is deprived of its promised executions, it might seek to vent its disappointment in other ways.”
“Rest assured, Nephet Ali...” Emperor Yildiz shook his head resignedly “... if the mob is dissatisfied, it will find someone to execute. Never doubt that. But I intend no half-measures. Indeed, no, I shall send against these marauders the sabre-edge of our naval ability, the best and brightest weapons and minds Turan can offer... as you yourself have stated, Yezdigerd. After all, if these seers and fakirs are worth five hundred golden talents in our naval contest, certainly they can prove themselves by destroying a rabble of pirates!”
“But Father,” Yezdigerd protested again, “these ideas are experimental, not meant to be thrust into premature application...” Abruptly the prince left off arguing. As he gazed on his Imperial father’s countenance, his own face reflected a sudden coldness. “There is no alternative, then?”
“Indeed not,” Yildiz replied with an obstinate head-shake. “I hold the might of the Imperial Navy here, at the ready.” He raised to his son a half-clenched fist, which, though splotchily pale, seemed surprisingly steady to the task. “If and when I think it necessary, I will unleash its power. Until then, I leave it to you to carry out the role I have previously assigned. Let it be a test of your fitness at command.”
Without a word in reply, the prince turned on his heel and left. Nephet Ali, stuttering his respects and apologies, backed humbly away from Yildiz. Then he turned and hurried after the prince, hoping to have a say in the outcome. The emperor, impatient to be dressed for the public festival, clapped his hands and called for wine.
***
To Alaph in his boatshed, the alert came early, well before the Imperial ramship Remorseless had fallen to the pirates. It was hard, in truth, to ignore the violence and uproar occurring on the longshore almost directly in front of the naval contestants’ stations. The fugitives stormed past onto the pier, and then, even as the clash of weapons sounded, a mounted Admiralty officer galloped by, stopping at each compound to warn of an impending pirate raid on the port. Minutes later, when the alchemist had alerted his crew and made his craft ready, a footman came dashing from the Imperial Palace itself. He carried Prince Yezdigerd’s seal, and breathless orders to sail at once, without waiting for any Imperial marines.
The other contestants must have felt a similar inevitability. For days they had lived on the edge of battle, readying themselves and their vessels for this trial by ordeal. Now that the moment had come, it was almost a relief. As the stolen, poorly-manned behemoth Remorseless wallowed out into the channel, four smaller ships set out in pursuit.
Alaph’s galley was the fleetest—fortunately, since his compound was the one farthest from the harbour mouth. His water-spirits served him better than he could have hoped, puffing and hissing tamely fore and aft in their turn from steam traps pointed out over the ship’s rails. Their furious desire to escape the coffin-boiler and the two bronze steam cages made the metal-clad beam trundle back and forth in a steady, repeating motion. Meanwhile, the rows of oars, whose helves were linked to the beam by hinged bronze arms, dipped uniformly into the bay and swept astern; then they lifted and arched forward to renew their stroke, tirelessly repeating the motion and propelling the low, mastless ship through the water.
The effect, of course, was somewhat terrifying, with red flames licking the belly of the coffin amidships and dense smoke issuing from the oil pan beneath, laying down a sooty wake and accentuating the ghostly puffs of white steam from both sides. Also, the harsh, explosive roar of the escaping demons, combined with the heavy thump and clangour of wood and metal parts, was intimidating— enough so, perhaps, to be an asset in battle.
The reaction of the crowd ashore was a lively one, evidenced by shouting, pointing, even panic and fainting, all of which were reduced to a frenzied pantomime by the racket of the demon-boiler and the creaking oars. Some of the heavily armed soldiers on the dock vacated by the Remorseless even jostled back in fear as the coffin-ship passed close by, angling to starboard on its approach to the channel. With only four men aboard, including two steersmen and himself busy tending steam and fuel cocks amidst the welter of smoke astern, Alaph could not help but feel a thrill of power at his initial success.
His neighbour and competitor Tambur Pasha, by contrast, appeared to be having poor luck with his refitted vessel. The large, ungainly wheels on the sides, laughable for any form of water transport, now were equipped with trimmed sponges between the paddles instead of lead-weighted spokes. The astrologer had explained that given the power of a dry sponge to lift water upward, they could be made to weight the descending side of the wheel more heavily, thus perpetuating the ship’s motion. To this end, he had assigned six hefty slaves with mallets to pound the wetness out of the sponges as they emerged from the sea astern, draining them so that they would pass dry over the tops of the wheels.
The paddles, however, did not turn with anything like the vigour of well-handled oars. The small vessel bobbed sluggishly in Alaph’s wake, scarcely moving from the dock, with the dribbling of water and the squashing thump of mallets its only notable product. It occurred to Alaph to doubt, in all frankness, that the differential weight of the sponges as they soaked up water could move the ship forward at all. Most likely, any forward motion was a result of the heavy mallet blows driving the wheels around.
The only thing that dampened Alaph’s sense of triumph over Tambur Pasha was the realization that while the sleek astrologer wallowed in failure at the shoreline, Alaph’s highly successful demons bore him onward into mortal danger. What, then, if all but one of the contestants met their death in battling the pirates? Would the survivor collect the prize, he wondered? The potent and secret weapon he had built into his vessel would, he hoped, make the difference.
Alaph’s coffin-ship stroked into position for a forced turn around the end of the pier. Here was another test of his mechanism, for the steersmen could achieve only a slow adjustment of the ship’s course with their sweeps. Now, by swinging down a locking wooden bar that restrained the tops of the starboard oar-helves, he limited the quarter-circle sweep of the pivot arms that drove them. The oars continued to stroke along with the moving beam, but did not dip into the water and thrust. Meanwhile the craft, moved only by its port oars, executed a narrow turn to starboard. When the angle was roughly correct, Alaph slackened the control and signalled his steersmen to straighten out the ship’s course. Had he unlocked the bar momentarily at the height of the stroke and allowed the pivot arms to cross over to the other side of the arc, the bank of oars would have dipped and rowed in reverse, turning the vessel even more sharply in place.
Drawing out into open water, the alchemist soon observed that his was not the day’s only notable success. On the landward side, he drew near—perilously near—to the two-decked galley of Zalbuvulus, who had evidently gotten under oars shortly after he did. Alaph was startled to see the larger vessel bearing down on him, its bronze ram cleaving the harbour before it. Remembering the fiend-haunted crew’s history of collision and misadventure, he considered making a forced turn, or even reversing both oar-banks.
Instead, it was the Corinthian who executed a turn. Rowing smoothly and precisely, his men responded to orders as flawlessly as the best-trained Admiralty crew. While the turning ship lay momentarily close abeam, Alaph caught a glimpse of the gloomy philosopher astride his quarterdeck. Then, through his own trail of smoke and mist, he saw the upper row of oarsmen.
The sight brought a cold stirring of fear to his gut. It was unnerving because of something in the rowers’ aspect, something subtle but undeniable. This time the wretched oarsmen did not look ensorceled or afraid; there was nothing unusual about the drumbeat, nor any sign of impish djinni riding and hounding the men. They toiled expressionlessly, with utter precision. Indeed, their set, slate-grey faces showed no flicker of any human emotion, nor any bestial one, not even a glance aside at the alchemist’s
own snorting, fire-breathing craft.
To Alaph, in that fleeting moment, it was suddenly clear that they were dead, defunct, lifeless. He understood that their Corinthian master had slain them all, most likely in a sullen rage over his latest naval embarrassment. How Zalbuvulus induced them to work thereafter, how he exacted obedience beyond death... that was an arcane mystery of the foreigner’s dark philosophy. Yet his slaves' performance, freed of all feeling and mortal distraction, finally appeared to meet his high standards.
The zombie ship, slowed by its turning, fell thankfully astern. Then Alaph, keeping watch through the vapours, spied an even greater enigma away to port. Out toward the marshes, from the direction of Crotalus’s compound, there cruised a long, low, single-banked ship. Evidently the Zembabwan seer had managed to perfect his unknown magicks in time. At the very least, he had contrived to train his ignorant foreign rowers—by less dire means, Alaph hoped, than Zalbuvulus had used. The ship came on smoothly, its oars moving in almost perfect unison, at a brisk pace. Of its crew and commander, nothing could be glimpsed because of a long, low shed that had been erected over the decks and benches.
Alaph’s task was cut out for him, then. The competition looked to be fairly even, if only three-sided: demons versus dead men, versus... gods knew what. The outcome must therefore hinge on which contestant could ram and swamp the most pirate ships, meanwhile keeping his own oar-ports above water, until the Imperial Navy moved in to clean up the leavings.
Ahead, through the smoke and wavering flame of Alaph’s boilers, the pirate fleet now manoeuvred under oar and sail in the harbour. Close before him loomed the giant Remorseless, still plodding out of the estuary to join the others, under the efforts of its fugitive crew. An easy and valuable target; whether Alaph could overtake the big ship before it converged with its pirate allies, he was not yet skilled enough to judge.
Conan of the Red Brotherhood Page 23
