The paper was carefully placed within a covering of oiled silk and then, sealed by Captain Ehren's seal, into a leather pouch. “If anything happens to me, Captain, that must reach the emperor. It is vital to Vallia."
“As to that, Prince, nothing will happen to you and you will carry this vital pouch to the emperor yourself!"
Well, it sounded fine. I clapped Ehren on the shoulder and went away to stare broodingly upon that cramph of a shant.
The leem lover's vessel cut through the water with little fuss, and I suspected her underwater lines were finer than the somewhat square-cut outlines of her hull and upperworks suggested. The hull had been painted a deep, rich brown. I could see people moving about its decks, the snouts of varters and catapults, the twinkle and gleam of weapons. Quite content to parallel our course, it hung off there, dogging us. Neither of its battened lugs with their tall and slender outlines had been fully unfolded and hoisted to the trucks of its pole masts.
I rubbed my chin. Well, that sea-leem out there represented the many others of his kind who took an ever-increasing toll of shipping from the sea-lanes of the lands I knew, who descended in red horror upon peaceful fishing villages, and who, one day, must be met and challenged by us all. Still rubbing my chin, I pondered if I had carried caution too far in ordering Ehren to run and not to fight. We were in for a fight, for when we tacked the shant would be down on us without delay. I did not think he would conform to our movements and tack with us. He had his scheme working, and that scheme visualized Ovvend Barynth plundered, its people slain, and the ship itself sunk without trace. No, there was only one answer to this chin-rubbing.
“Captain! We will tack now, while we still have sea room. Stand to your arms! We go into the attack! We strike for Vallia, for honor and our lives! Hai Jikai!"
* * *
CHAPTER TWO
How Wersting Rogahan split the chunkrah's eye
The rush of bare feet upon the planking, the urgent shouts of the petty officers, the creak and rattle of blocks and the squeal as the braces hauled, the ponderous swinging of the yards and the firm heel of the vessel as she swung and then straightened up on her new course, all these old familiar sights and sounds and sensations brought a powerful pang of memory upon me. I, Dray Prescot, of Earth and of Kregen, had been for many years a salt-water sea officer, sailing down into the smoke and flame of battle. Then I had been a swifter captain upon the inner sea of Turismond, the Eye of the World. And then a render with Viridia up along the Hoboling Islands. Oh, yes, as the saying has it, the sea was in my blood. But the Star Lords, those mysterious beings who had summoned me here to this planet of Kregen in the constellation of the Scorpion four hundred light-years from the world of my birth, had given me orders, or so it seemed to me, that I must not set foot upon a vessel, must not sail the seas again.
Well, by Vox! Here I was upon a Vallian galleon and that through no design of my own, save at the end when I had smashed the confounded Hamalese skyship down and had to swim to Ovvend Barynth.
Maybe the Star Lords had repented a little in their interdiction.
As we heeled to the breeze and, with our proud Vallian flags stiff and our canvas pouting, went hurtling down on the leem lover, I looked up at the sky and around in the empty air.
There was no sign of that gorgeous scarlet and golden hunting bird, messenger and spy for the Star Lords, planing in wide circles up there. Maybe I was more of a free agent now that I had begun to suspect.
“The shant sees us!” bellowed the first lieutenant. He had leaped into the shrouds and was halfway up the ratlines, pointing, his bronzed face rapturous with the impending battle. He was a waso-Hikdar and his name was Insur ti Fotor.[1] He struck me as a fine officer, one who ran his ship tautly and relieved his captain of mundane concerns, as any good first lieutenant should. One day, Opaz willing, he would command his own vessel. “She's massing men for'ard!” shouted Insur ti Fotor. “The shant means to make a fight of it!"
[1 Waso: five.]
“Then let their own pagan gods look out for them,” growled Captain Lars Ehren.
“May Opaz curdle their livers and their lights!” came a yell from the waist. I looked down over the quarterdeck rail. The men clustered in the protection of the palisades down there, barricades of scantlings and wicker-work. As they glared up I saw the gleam of teeth. These sailors of Vallia are a hardy, independent race of men. Habitually bare-chested, clad only in loose breeches cut to a generous size, and tight leather skullcaps, they carried boarding spears or thick cut-and-thrust blades. My heart warmed to them; they are capital men in a gale or an action. With men like these—and they were almost all apims—I felt my people of Vallia stood a chance against the insane ambitions of Hamal.
Shants, the first lieutenant had called these leem lovers. Well, I often called them “shanks,” out of a memory of the sharks of the inner sea, called chanks. The sharks of the outer oceans of Kregen bear a different name.
I looked over the bulwarks again and across the shining sea. It was true: the shank was forging ahead to meet us.
Captain Ehren boomed his gusty laugh. “By Vox! He may have the heels of us. But if I can't run rings around him, I don't deserve my certificate from the Todalpheme!"
There was no drum-deldar, there was no whip-deldar aboard a galleon out of Vallia. These race-built ships relied upon the free winds of heaven for propulsion. With my old sailorman's instincts I had sniffed the wind and studied the horizon and, to my disappointment, could sense precious little sign of an impending gale. I had great confidence in these sailors of Vallia. But they had not fought against the shanks from around the world; I had.
The shank foamed along in fine style, leaning over. He was within an ulm of us—an ulm, as you know, being something like five sixths of a Terrestrial mile—and Captain Ehren must give his orders soon. I knew what those orders should be, and Captain Ehren had confirmed them. The moment of decision was the crucial factor: too soon and we'd skim past out of range; too late and we could easily smash in board and board, and that was something I had absolutely no desire at all to happen.
The atmosphere of tension on Ovvend Barynth was held in check by the seamanlike qualities of the Vallian sailors. Most galleons carried parties of soldiers, and these, in the usual way of Kregen as well as of Vallia, were composed mostly of mercenaries. If I refer to the fighting-men in these ships as marines, you must forgive an old sailor accustomed to the scarlet coats and the boots and the bayonets of the marines, clumping about a seventy-four and always providing their loyal and invaluable services. The bulk, then, of the marines in Ovvend Barynth was made up of Chuliks.
Chuliks are expensive mercenaries, commanding much higher rates of pay than most other diffs. With their smooth yellow faces, shaved heads with the dangling pigtails, fierce upthrusting tusks, black soulless eyes, they looked a formidable bunch. I was most happy to welcome this body of Chuliks to fight alongside me. Chuliks, as you know, have often figured in more unpleasant roles in my life upon Kregen.
Insur ti Fotor, the first lieutenant, had quitted the shrouds and now stood ready at the quarterdeck rail to bawl his orders the instant Captain Ehren passed the word.
The feel of a ship under me, the breeze on my cheek, the onward swelling surge of the canvas, all uplifted me. Much as I detest war and fighting, I can understand the men who talk of a red curtain dropping before their eyes in the midst of combat. My rapier lay snug in its scabbard, the left-hand dagger at my right side. In my fist I gripped a sword taken from the selfsame rack as the swords held by those about me, the wolfish sailors of Vallia. This sword, straight, heavy, single-edged, was a cheaply produced weapon with a simple iron cross-guard and wooden hilt. The metal of the blade could not compare with the superb steel of the high-quality rapiers; but it was a serviceable weapon, not unlike an Earthly cutlass. The Vallians called it a clanxer—somewhat disparagingly, I thought.
There could be only a few murs left before Ehren gave his order. He stared through
his telescope at the onrushing shank vessel.
“What do you make of them, Captain?"
He lowered the glass and turned to me. His face had set into harsh lines. I knew he had seen those evil forms upon the deck of that hostile ship.
“Devils!” he said. His voice boomed and cracked with the violence of his emotions. “Devils, Majister! Spawned from the deepest crevices of Cottmer's Caverns. They fill me with a revulsion, by Vox, that makes my flesh crawl and leaves me unclean!"
“You are not alone in that feeling, Captain Lars."
Now the moment had arrived and despite the itchy, crawly sensation I knew he was experiencing all over his skin, bringing out the gooseflesh, Captain Ehren gave his order in a harsh, ringing tone. Instantly the first lieutenant bellowed it out, the hands tailed onto the braces, the timoneer thrust the helm over, and Ovvend Barynth heeled and thrust at the sea. It spun as the evolution was carried out with faultless precision, went through the eye of the wind like clockwork, and passed at a comfortable distance along the shank's starboard side.
We were still to leeward, but going away from the shank, and in that precise moment of time we had our opportunity.
“Loose!” bellowed Captain Ehren.
Every varter, every gros-varter, every catapult, every bowman loosed. A veritable cloud of arrows and darts and rocks flew up into the air, curving in their flight, descending onto the leem lover.
“Reload! reload!” the Deldars were bellowing, raging among their crews. Sinewy backs and muscled arms hauled the windlasses to draw back the catapult arms, to bend the varter bows. Already the archers had let fly with their second volley. It would be nice to think that every missile we dispatched found a target, but some of the rocks and darts plunged into the sea in a ring of foam. I stared narrowly at that squat brown-painted ship with its ungainly above-water lines, the railings along its side, the stepped castles at bow and stern, and those two tall black-and-amber-striped sails raking above.
We were hitting her! I saw a whole lower panel of amber rip away from her foremast. Chips flew from her bulwarks where a catapult-flung rock bounced, and rebounded on to smash bloodily onto the deck. The men set up a cheer.
Then the answering broadside came in. Noise clamored about our ears. A man at the nearest varter spun back, streaming blood from a shattered jaw, stumbling to pitch over. Halyards parted and the ship-deldar—that is, the bos'n—roared his crew into knotting, for there was no time now for splicing.
With that and a thunking great hole through the waist palisades, where a rock bounced and miraculously touched no one, we escaped further damage from that broadside.
We were past.
We took the breeze and we went foaming into the northeast with the wind over our starboard beam. If everything held we were on a board that would take us well clear of the Risshamal Keys before we needed to go about again and so run into the northwest for the passage past the island of Astar and so on toward Vallia. The passage would be a long one.
Someone yelled then and I looked back, and there was that Opaz-forsaken cramph of a shank speeding after us.
“He does not mean to let us get away so lightly,” observed Captain Ehren.
“Lightly?” said the Lamnian merchant, Lorgad Endo, staring with a sickly cast to his face at the screaming sailor on the deck below. The man's comrades were tending to him, and one wrapped a kerchief about his shattered jaw, so that his awful shrieks were muffled. “Lightly?"
“What the captain means, Endo,” said the Vad of Kavinstok in his cutting way, “would be outside the understanding of a merchant."
This was blatant rudeness. The Vad had deliberately omitted the courtesy title of Koter, and as a Koter is a gentleman, and Lorgad Endo was a gentleman, for all he was a merchant and a Lamnia, then he should be addressed as Koter Endo. The others of the deputation to Hyrklana had gathered, all armored, all with weapons, and no doubt they looked a fine warlike party. I had no faith in them to stand to it when the tinker-hammering began.
The Lamnia merely turned away, and crossing the quarterdeck he engaged in conversation with Hikdar Insur.
One of the deputation, an apim, Strom Diluvon, broke into an animated running commentary on the damage sustained by the enemy vessel, and the others paid him rapt attention, so the awkward moment passed.
“He'll be up with us again, and soon, Prince,” said Captain Ehren. He thumped the telescope into the palm of his left hand.
“You have a good man on the poop varters?"
“Aye. A rascal called Rogahan. The men call him Wersting Rogahan. But he's so good a shot I had to make him up to dwa-Deldar, and overlook his rank indiscipline."
“Aye, Captain. So many good men have this streak of resentment of authority."
And then I, Dray Prescot, realized what I had said.
By Zim-Zair! Had I become so stuffy and orthodox in my old age? Had all these ranks and titles, these princes and Kovs and Stroms that loaded me down, had they corrupted me, made of me a mere establishment figure of clay, turned me from the man who kicked instantly against all authority?
Captain Ehren looked at me oddly, and away, and so I knew my ugly old figurehead of a face must have been glaring with all the malice that, to my sorrow, I know it is capable of.
I took myself off up the ladder and onto the poop.
Right aft where the taffrail had been extended out with platforms into two wings, one over each quarter, were sited the varters. A little forward of them and on the centerline, well abaft the mizzen, stood the aft catapult.
The men clustered around the machines stiffened when I appeared. Well, Zair knew, I was used to that. Wherever I went, it seemed I found myself either at the bottom of the stack—slave, prisoner, condemned—or at the top—Lord of Strombor, Strom of Valka, King of Djanduin, Prince Majister of Vallia, Zorcander of my clansmen of the Great Plains. During that recent period of my espionage in Hamal I had been a nonentity, someone more in the middle of society, as Hamun ham Farthytu, Amak of Paline Valley. But to these men I was Prince Majister of Vallia. I could order them flogged jikaider, put in irons, deprived of rations; I could make life miserable for them at the slightest pretext.
Captain Lars Ehren, I had made it my business to find out, ranked as a good and concerned captain. I would do nothing to undermine his authority, or to tread upon his firm foundations and weaken them.
One of the men with the rank marks of a dwa-Deldar looked up from where he was greasing the varter chute. He had a thin, exceedingly black streak of chin beard running under his jaws. In his close-fitting leather cap a bright red feather sported. His lean body was bare, and his buff-colored breeches had been cut off above the knees. He was barefoot. I looked at his face, at the lean jaw, the broken nose, the bright and knowing brown eyes. I saw that if I treated him with scrupulous fairness, this was a man with whom I could do business.
“Deldar Rogahan!"
“Aye, Majister."
“I hear you can split the chunkrah's eye at a distance where most men can see only their rumps."
There rose a little titter from the varter crews at this, and I felt encouraged.
“That rast following us there—” I pointed over the stern. The shank foamed along, catching us up, his canvas hoisted fully and, already, the panel we had knocked out replaced. “That cramph of cramphs needs something of your skill, Wersting Rogahan."
At this his mates chortled out loud. In their experience, officers of the quarterdeck seldom bothered to use the men's own nicknames. And a wersting, as you and I both know, is a most ferocious black-and-white-striped hunting dog. They were a free and easy bunch, these galleon sailors of Vallia, men I would be proud to number in a crew of my own and to name as friends.
“The moment he comes within range of Vela, here, Majister,” said Rogahan, “I shall spit him."
By this I knew that the varter nicknamed Vela had a better throw than the other. Men always give pet names to their weapons, as well on this Earth as on Kregen.
>
“If you loose with Vela,” I said, and I looked across at the other varter, that on the starboard side, “then I shall loose with Sosie here and try to match you shot for shot."
He laughed, for discipline relaxes on occasions such as these. “By Corg, Majister! You may try. But Sosie has a stretched cord and throws poorly these days."
I frowned. “I do not care to sail in a ship with varters with stretched cords."
“No more do I, Majister! As Corg is my witness, the stretching happened when we exercised on the way south, just to the leeward of Astar."
“Nevertheless, Wersting Rogahan, I shall try!"
“May Opaz guide your shot, Prince."
He couldn't say fairer than that.
I eyed him.
“I do not think you have the need of Opaz's guidance, Rogahan. But for Opaz's wisdom, perhaps. Shoot straight, for the glory of Vallia!"
If this was fustian stuff, I plead guilty; but then, I have used the rhetorical fustian to good purpose before in my life, and no doubt, Zair willing, will do so again.
As you who have listened to these adventures will know by now, I always feel very much at home with these rough men of the sea, hard-cases, shell-backs, and share much of that feeling of comradeship with their brothers of the land and air services. As for that chattering congregation of faerlings down on the quarterdeck, that deputation for Hyrklana, they were a drag and a bore by comparison with these fighting-men of the galleons.
One of the seamen with a red and blue tattoo of startling indecency across his chest squinted aft and turned to Deldar Rogahan.
“He's here, Rog. What are you waiting for?"
“I'm the captain of the poop varters, Nath, you great onker! I'll say when, do you hear?"
“Aye, Rog, I hear. But, by Corg, you're leaving it powerful late!"
Avenger of Antares [Dray Prescot #10] Page 2
