The distant sound as of voices in an adjoining room swelled through the air. I could understand nothing of what was being said and then, at the tail end, almost as an afterthought, a voice I was convinced belonged to another Star Lord, said: “Send Strom Irvil."
Strom Irvil! I did not burst out laughing. Well, if that ferocious and cantankerous numim went, I'd wish him well of it.
“Very well, Dray Prescot. You have convinced us your argument is sound. This is a decision not lightly taken."
By the pustular nose and decayed fangs of Makki Grodno! I bet it wasn't! The Star Lords had changed their minds. They'd heeded what a mere mortal said. This was indeed a marvel.
They went on: “You may meet a man called Wulk. Listen to him."
With that the boat rose up out of the water and sailed up into the remote blaze of that distant silver sky.
Holding on grimly, dreading that the blue Scorpion would swoop down to snatch me up—and drop me—I just hoped Ahrinye wasn't around.
The boat became cloaked in mist. I felt clammy tendrils swirl about me.
My breath fluttered short in my throat. It was hard to breathe.
Now the boat turned, lazily, swinging about, and abruptly, horribly, plunged downwards. Down and down we went and my ears went bang! and I clung on and a shining green sea opened beneath me. A coastline wended away to one side with a sprawling port with walls and towers, and ships floating in the harbor. I stared sickly. Shank ships!
The boat struck the sea in a long gliding motion that cleaved a clean path through the water. We surged on under the momentum of that stupendous fall. Straight as an arrow shot, the boat lanced for the entrance to the harbor, past the pharos, past the Akhram, swinging smoothly to fetch up against the quayside. I was staring at huge stones festooned with green growths, and weeds trailing in the still water, and iron bolts, and chains hanging down. Slimy stone steps led upwards. Perforce, I disembarked and climbed the stairs. I stepped boldly forth onto the quay to see squads of human slaves toiling, carrying bales, hauling ropes, and idly attentive guards using whips carelessly to drive on the hapless slaves. All the guards were Shanks.
No one took any notice of me.
As, somewhat bemused, I stood there like a loon, a glinting glance of golden and scarlet fire flew at my head. I ducked.
“You onker of onkers, Dray Prescot!"
There flew the Gdoinye, brilliant, in his coat of scarlet feathers, the golden feathers around his neck blinding in the suns light. The accipiter, messenger and spy of Star Lords, swooped about me. I knew no one else could see him.
His raucous caw mocked me. “You are invisible, they cannot see you. But if you do not move as fast as Karishmer of the Lightning Bolt ... You have just five murs. Run, onker, run!"
I shook my fist at him. I wore a dingy breechclout of sorts that had once been gray and was now merely dirty. He flew up there, magnificent in his scarlet and gold, cawing down his mockery.
“All right, you Bird of Ill Omen. I'll run. And one day I'll pluck your feathers and have you for dinner."
His coarse racking caw could only have been the laughter of a raptor of the Everoinye. His wings beat and he soared aloft and vanished. I made a dead run for the warehouses lining the rear of the quay. By Zair! But this day's happenings were adding pages of information to the book I made in my head concerning the Star Lords! Pages and pages!
As I dived into the welcoming shadows I wondered if the Everoinye had lost faith in their phantom blue Scorpion. That boat, was that a Scorpion replacement?
I wished now I'd taken more notice of the craft. What, for instance, might lie concealed beneath the deck?
Then there was no time for idle reflections of great and puissant superbeings as a surly voice hailed me.
“Hey, you cretin! What d'you think you're doing, hey?"
Turning about sharply I saw the fellow, miserable and slave like me. He was a Rapa, with draggling feathers and a lop-sided beak. He rattled on: “Get away from there, onker!"
He beckoned me away from the doors. We moved further into the shadows among sacks and bales. Everything stank of fish.
“I,” I said, assuming even here there would be a command structure, “am looking for the overseer.” One of the Kregish ways of expressing this is, as you know, the Wielder of the Balass Rod.
“Naghan the Marbut.” The Rapa sniffed through that bent beak. “Well, by Rhapaporgolam the Reiver of Souls! You won't find the shint out there."
This was a start. I'd picked up a name cheaply. We continued to walk through the aisles between the stinking bales. And then, with the force of a gut punch, I recognized and cringed at my stupendous folly. Here I was, pitching myself headlong into this hell on earth, voluntarily shoving my head into the dragon's mouth. And I needn't have done, in all, to outward seeming, honor. My little army of Freedom Fighters had begged me not to go. The Star Lords had ordered me not to go. I didn't want to go. By Zair! I wished then, in that fish-stinking warehouse, I wished with all my heart that I was out of it, that I hadn't chosen this path. I wished fervently that the Everoinye would stoop down and pluck me out of it—now!
I, Dray Prescot, Pur Dray, Krozair of Zy and Lord of Strombor—I dreaded the future that I had brought on myself. I wanted out. I wanted to go back to that double-ended boat and accept the other mission of the Star Lords. I felt goose pimples over my body. I felt the dampness along my forehead. I'd acted as the great and puissant superhero, the hero of myth and legend, the impossibly shining knight sans peuret sans reproche.
Had I then fallen under the illusion of my own legend? By the stupendous backside and stringy hair of the Divine Lady of Belschutz! What an incredible onker I was! Why should I go off and do this daft thing when I could have whistled across to Boromir of the Ashes—wherever away that happened to be—and then make top speed back to Vallia and Valka? I did not groan as I walked through that fishy stench following the Rapa. No, I did not. Not quite.
Now as you know this marvelous memory bestowed on me by the Savanti nal Aphrasöe, the mortal but superhuman men and women of the Swinging City, enables me to reproduce verbatim conversations of seasons upon seasons ago between persons long dead. That, undeniably, to a fellow trying to tell a plain story is priceless. But, mercifully, the eidetic memory shuts down at times.
I do remember horror.
I do remember, over and over again, cursing myself for the greatest fool on two planets for even dreaming of venturing into Taranjin among the Fish Faces.
I do remember that I saw things I will not mention.
I do not remember—rather, the memories are buried so deep that even ghastly nightmares fail to recall them—I do not recall much of that sojourn in Taranjin.
When we had boldly ventured into the town of Gorlki in Menaham, on the island of Pandahem, Nath the Impenitent, Seg and me, we had thought to see the final scenes of human degradation. Orso Frentar had shared our opinion.[10]
[10 See Dray Prescot volume 37, being volume 4 of the Witch War Cycle, Warlord of Kregen. A.B.A.]
I'd slaved in the Black Marble Quarries of Zenicce. I'd slaved for the Overlords of Magdag in the City of the Megaliths. I'd slaved in the Heavenly Mines. I'd slaved in other places and other times. Oh, yes, Dray Prescot knew what slavery meant.
That was the later part of the reasons why Delia and I so abhorred slavery and rooted it out in our dominions and by argument and precept attempted to suppress it in the realms of our friends.
Unless slavery is worked in certain ways it leads to stagnation. The Shanks didn't care for libertarian philosophy. They needed certain tasks performed, and they used humans of Paz to do the work and if they died, what of that? There were always plenty more to be rounded up.
As to the humans themselves—they existed in holes and warrens, constantly in fear, scraping their bread off the pavements, living in the atbars of the backstreets. When they were called on to work they received a few scraps of food. I call them humans in contradistinction to the S
hanks. But, of course, Shanks as intelligent living entities were humans, too. They were different from us. They couldn't tell one apim from another, one Fristle from his brother, two Rapas apart. They could tell the difference between a numim and an apim, a Brokelsh and a Khibil. Yet I know during that period of horror I forgot Shanks were a part of humanity. I wished only to see the world of Kregen rid of them forever.
Their idea of slave management sounded excellent—when a Pazzian worked for them he or she received food. There were queues at the workgates and the dockyards in the morning. The tradespeople worked independently in their smithy, or fletching arrows or building bows. They were fed according to their production. All this appeared a sound scheme.
I do remember one meeting in the atbars where I was reduced to screaming at the slaves, at folk like myself, trying to rouse them, trying to knit them into a cohesive force to resist, to rise on The Day.
The work was exhausting.
Using my skills—which Seg has honed and still mocks me for—I managed to get taken on as a bowyer. This meant I could eat on a relatively regular scale. Not so many of the slaves in the atbars. I saw people creeping along the streets, collapse and die, there in the gutter. And other folk walking past, clutching the last of their bread.Useless to give my small portion of rations away. I could not duplicate the loaves and fishes. Despite the agony of selfishness assailing me I had to eat, I had to remain as strong as I could be, so that I might go on. If I died, then what little hope these folk had would be gone.
And if you accuse me of megalomania, of imagining myself the bright shining and indispensable hero, then you are sadly adrift, my friends.
So, as you see, horror can become so great that it cancels itself out.
I do not believe even the most salacious reader could endure what I have not related.
Yet, at that time, during all that dreadful time, and despite my desire to rid the world of every last Shank blighting the face of Kregen, I still persisted in a tiny sane portion of my brain in the belief that Shanks were humans, too. They did what they did because they didn't think, didn't understand. If I could, as it were, convert a Fish Face instead of slaying him—wouldn't that be what Opaz, for one, would require?
That, I was realist enough to realize, was for the far future.
Taranjin had not been an affluent capital city. Oh, surely, there were the rich areas festooning their hills with private villas and sumptuous public palaces. The rulers, members of the riffim race of diffs, now dead and gone, had crushed all other life forms. The king's palace sprawled on a high bluff, like a lop-sided chocolate cake, grotesquely adorned. Within its lowering walls the resident Shanks now lorded it over Tarankar.
After a time the fish stinks simply became a part of the background, a part of everyday existence. People to whom I talked one day were gone, never to return, by the next. Fear stalked the streets. The compounds of the slaves continuously gave off that long low moaning of suffering that tears a person's insides out. No, this was not a happy place or a happy time.
The institution of slavery can be more abominable within one culture than another, so it is said. Dwelling on past misfortunes is, also, said to alleviate the present. I'd suffered in the Heavenly Mines, in Magdag, in the Black Marble Quarries of Zenicce. When Hunch, Nodgen and I had ventured into Moderdrin, the Humped Land, to go adventuring among Moders and Monsters, we'd been the slaves of Tarkshur the Lash. Tarkshur was a Kataki, low-browed, snaggle-toothed, with flaring nostrils and thick black hair, heavily oiled and curled. Katakis are man managers, slave masters. They have a long sinuous tail to which they strap six inches of daggered steel. You seldom see a Kataki as a slave or a mercenary or doing an honest job. They are slavers. And they are universally hated, called greeshes by the poor glahbers they enslave, torture, sell or kill.
The strange fact that when you think of someone they often turn up almost immediately is not so strange, really, given the unknown powers of the human mind. During that frightful trip down the Moder among traps and monsters I'd met Prince Tyfar and got to know Deb-Lu-Quienyin much better. So, on a raw evening when I'd slouched back exhausted from a small gathering where I'd explained what we should do, I saw the pallid figure of Deb-Lu waiting for me. He looked concerned, his face alarmed, and my heart sank.
“Deb-Lu. You look dreadful—what bad news do you bring?"
“I look dreadful! Jak! Jak! I am concerned over you—you look half dead—"
“I'll survive—just."
The tiny mud brick hut which was for the moment my home cramped in on all sides, one among rows beyond the atbars. There were rudimentary necessities needed for living. The stink of fish permeated everything—and I didn't notice it any more.
“I Remain Doubtful. Still. And, yes, I do bring some bad news."
I waited stoically.
What had happened was bad but nowhere near as bad as it could have been. The severe hold up of production of the materials for the silver boxes in Hamal coupled with the blackening of many of the boxes already installed in vollers and skyships meant a drastic reduction in aerial strength. The bad situation in Pandahem, where the Bloody Menahem continued their senseless and merciless attacks, drained aerial strength away to that theatre. A contingent had flown to Mehzta and I could not in all conscience object, for those fliers would be directly fighting Shanks.
My Guard Corps had, having become at last impossible to hold back, taken a gaggle of vorlcas and gone sailing off south.
“And there were no vollers in the fleet, Deb-Lu?"
“One.A small eight placer for emergencies."
Contrary winds had driven my lads well off course. They'd struggled back and become embroiled in a fight with a small squadron of Shanks. I gave thanks the Fish Faces were in small numbers; their black-hulled fliers could dance rings around our vorlcas, dependent as the latter were on the breeze for forward motion. The fight ended indecisively and our fleet had landed to effect repairs. They would not take long, Deb-Lu said, to get airborne again.
“So that means the armada from Hamal will arrive first."
Deb-Lu gave me their composition and numbers and I shook my head.
“This was what we did not want. Forty-five ships—h'mm. It may be needful, Deb-Lu, for you to contact Kapt Hamish ham Thanstrer.” I hated what I was saying, I detested the words as they fell from my lips. “I think it will be necessary to hold off the Hamalese Armada until all our ships can strike as one."
By these words I was condemning myself to longer sennights of this hell.
And, of course, it wasn't just me. If we wanted to gather all our forces to strike together then we'd all suffer, all of us here, suffer under the Opaz-forsaken lash of the Shanks, Djan rot ‘em!
* * *
Chapter nineteen
“Grak!Grak!"
The hateful word cracked out over the meaty sounds of whips and cries of pain. The thoughtless cruelty all about had driven many folk insane. The survivors worked and did what was commanded—and ate.
There is quite enough cruelty in two worlds. There is no need for me to belabor the point in my narrative, no need gratuitously to add to the catalogue of horrors poor suffering mankind and womankind must endure.
When you have seen two naked women, both mothers of young babes, fighting, clawing, scratching, biting, over a rotten fish head in the gutter, then, my friend, you do not lightly talk of horrors.
The Shank guards had evidently been chosen from those Fish Faces who by threatening gesture and the use of a few words of command in Kregish could keep control of the slaves and indicate their tasks. The dominant factor obsessing everyone was food. To control a populace into doing your bidding the plan is first to weaken them so that a revolt will be doomed before it has begun and then so to keep them half-starving and subjected that they will slave until they drop for a morsel to pass between their lips.
There were many, in truth, and I saw them, who simply refused to accept the situation, refused to work and so starved
to death if they were not earlier shipped off to the Ice Floes of Sicce with a Shank trident through their guts.
Having a trade in your hands in Taranjin those days was like having a passport through hell to life.
Even so, Lao-Chan the Staver was summarily dispatched because he built one too many longbows that would not shoot true.
What Moglin the Flatch, our comrade Fristle Bowman, had said remained true. I caught a glimpse, one day when I was delivering a parcel of bowstaves, of a squad of Fish Faces trying to shoot in their longbows. They were making a sorry hash of the business. Shafts stuck in the log wall at the far end of the butts and precious few even stuck in the straw targets. I kept as quiet as a woflo and delivered the staves and so scuttled back out of the barracks. The building had once been a proud palace of a riffim noble.
That was the day's work of the evening, I remember, when I called the Brokelsh, Bargrad the Pellin, the Fristle, Foke the Clis, and the apim, Nath the Rumpador, to meet in that dolorous little hut. These three, it seemed to me, were the most promising.
I told them an Armada was on its way. I had to arrange for a signal to be made to the Freedom Fighters outside Taranjin. On the Day, I said, on the Day of Deliverance, we must strike.
“The people will not rise,” said the Brokelsh in his uncouth way. His black body bristle looked gray. “They are broken in the ib."
“That may be true. But the Shanks are not Pazzians. Already we have discovered little ways to trick them. If they can be shown to be fallible, the people will take heart.” I slammed a fist on my knee. “They must!"
“Yes,” spat the Fristle. “We trick them and steal food from the warehouses. But the costs are high."
I said: “A good fire ought to help."
“Burn the shints out.” Nath the Rumpador nursed a swollen jaw where the butt end of a Shank trident had smashed him. “Yes, I like that!"
We talked and argued and eventually decided to burn a certain barracks which housed a company of particularly unpleasant Schtarkins.
Scorpio Invasion [Dray Prescot #40] Page 16
