Krozair of Kregen [Dray Prescot #14]

by Alan Burt Akers

  Anyway, there was every chance that our ram had done Pearl too serious a mischief underwater to make her seaworthy. That must be looked at, at once, and the man to do the looking was Fazhan ti Rozilloi, ship-Hikdar. I bellowed to Duhrra to sort out the men here, told Vax to see about chaining up the new slaves who had so lately been sailors and soldier-marines of Grodnim, and took myself off aft. Fazhan was cleaning his sword. I had had no time. The beautiful Krozair blade gleamed red in the lights of Antares.

  “Hai Jikai, Dak!” Fazhan greeted me.

  I pondered for perhaps a half mur. Was this a Jikai?

  Perhaps.

  It was most certainly not a sufficiently high enough High Jikai to enroll me once more in the Krozairs of Zy, that was for sure.

  “Is Pearl seaworthy, after we struck her?"

  He saw my face. “I will see, at once.” He ran off.

  In the nature of things there was a great deal of confusion. Released slaves, all naked and screaming, surged about, and I knew there would be no Grodnim whip-Deldars to chain down to the rowing benches. I saw men I thought must be of some importance—or, rather, men who had been important before they'd been captured—and tried to bash some sense into them. Our own slaves from Green Magodont had by this time some idea of what was needful in this situation. Soon all the men of Zair would come to an understanding. For the moment sheer exuberance and wild release of fettered spirits would make of the three swifters hell-holes.

  So I will pass quickly over the ensuing scenes. I took myself off back to Green Magodont and met Rukker storming back. He looked savagely delighted with his morning's work. He saw my red breechclout and the sword, and he made a face and began to make some kind of snarling remark; but he did not. His tail quivered and shot erect over his head, the tail-blade gleaming, for he had cleaned it off.

  “The ships are ours, Dak. You have served me well. Now I will resume full command."

  The Katakis formed a bunch at his back. He had them well cowed. They were extraordinarily formidable. I hefted the Krozair longsword. I opened my mouth and Vax appeared at my side, laughing, saying, “Give me your sword, Dak, and I will clean it off for you. It is a beautiful blade."

  “I clean my own sword."

  He looked offended.

  Rukker bellowed, “Now we carouse and make merry."

  The released slaves would do that, anyway.

  Some onker was bellowing that Pearl was stuffed with wine. He carried an armful of bottles, waving one above his head, the rich red wine spilling out over him. He was already half-seas over. I did not consider long. Maybe I could have halted the debauch that followed. Maybe not. I did not try. I wanted to talk to Rukker and see if the way I planned to handle the Kataki devil would work.

  He had taken a good long look at the three swifters. Fazhan reported that Pearl had taken a nasty crack, but that the sharp sheer of her stern had been enough to prevent our ram from driving home, and that she would be fully seaworthy when the planking had been repaired. So Rukker could tell me in his lofty way, “I will take Vengeance Mortil. She is the largest. You may have either of the others."

  I said, “Bring a few bottles to the cabin. We can talk there. If you wish to fight, here and now, I shall accommodate you. Otherwise, no fighting until we have decided what to do."

  Now that he had won and was in a strong position, he no doubt thought to show a facade of magnanimity. I do not think I do Rukker an injustice if I say that because he was a Kataki he was, by his religion and customs and mores, what other people would call an evil man. He could not help that; like the scorpion, it was in his nature. But I found that he had a gift denied to most other Katakis. He had a streak of humanity in him that, at first, because I did not believe it possible, I found disconcerting.

  “Surely, Dak the High-Handed. We will drink together. But there is no question of our deciding.” He emphasized the “our.” “I have decided what we will do."

  I did not answer but barged off to the cabin, snatching up a couple of the bottles the idiot from Pearl had dropped—for he had passed out, beaming idiotically, on my quarterdeck.

  My quarterdeck.

  Ah! How we arrogate to ourselves, arrogant in our pride!

  Nath the Slinger appeared. He wore bits and pieces of finery, and carried a Genodder as well as his sling. He saw Rukker. He started to say something, but Rukker chopped him off.

  “We talk, Nath the Slinger. Afterward, I may take from your hide payment for your insolence."

  Nath said, “I think the people may set fire to the swifters."

  That was a very fair chance.

  Rukker bellowed at this, and in a twinkling, a dozen of his Katakis ran out along the gangways, roaring. That was one thing I could count on. Rukker would command obedience from his own people, and I could trust them to stop a parcel of drunken ex-oar-slaves from foolishly setting fire to the swifters they so much hated.

  “Tell ‘em to make sure they don't kill too many Grodnims,” I said to Rukker, sharp.

  He bawled it after them. Then he took a bottle from a man near him, who did not argue, and rolled off to the aft cabin, swinging his tail in high good humor.

  Fazhan looked at me, uncertain.

  “You did very well, Fazhan. Now come and have a drink."

  “We should set a watch—there were three other swifters in the squadron."

  “The Katakis will do that. Or Rukker will have their tails."

  As I went along aft I admit I felt it most strange that I should be working in collaboration with Katakis. But, there it was. Those of us who had been architects in the escape gathered in the great aft cabin of Green Magodont to talk about our futures.

  I will not go into all the discussion, although to a student of human nature it proved fascinating, revealing not only the desires of frail humanity but revealing very clearly the different traits of the differing racial stocks. The problem could be broken down into one of allegiances. The released slaves fell into four main classes. There were the Zairians who wished only to return to their homes of the southern shore. There were the Grodnims who, as criminals, could go neither to Zairia nor to Grodnim. There were the mercenaries who didn't care who they fought for so long as they were paid and who, because they slaved for them, must have fallen foul of the overlords of Magdag. And there were the Zairians who, for one reason or another, could not return home.

  Of the two latter classes, Rukker and I were representatives.

  Long were the arguments and sometimes bitter the wrangling. But, in the end, it all boiled down to a decision by Rukker and most of the others, to join the Renders. These pirates infested many portions of the inner sea, of course; but they were particularly strong in the southwestern end, where many islands gave them shelter. As for the Zairians who wished to return home, they might take a swifter that Rukker did not want.

  I said, “That does not dispose of all."

  “There is no one else, fambly!” Then Rukker, sprawled in a gilt chair, an upended bottle to his lips, roared out, “By the Triple Tails of Targ the Untouchable! No one would wish to go to Magdag!"

  “I do,” I said.

  He gaped at me.

  “There is a certain matter I have left unfinished there."

  “Well, you will find not a single man to go with you.” Then he squinted at Duhrra—enormous in the corner, watchful—and grunted, and said, “Except that mad graint, of course."

  “And me,” said a young, firm voice, and I turned, and Vax stepped forward. “I wish to go to Magdag, for I have business there, also."

  Well, I fancied whatever his business was, it boded no good for some poor devil.

  Vax had been drinking. His face flushed heavily and he did not walk steadily, even though Green Magodont remained still.

  Nath the Slinger had been drinking, also, and he snarled, “No doubt it has to do with your rast of a father."

  Vax turned sharply, and nearly fell. I do not like to see young men the worse for drink—or any man, come to
that. Vax spoke in a cutting, nasty way. “Yes. For my father has done me a grave injustice. He has finished all my hopes in the Eye of the World. Yes, he bears a part, the cramph. But it is not for him I wish to go to Magdag, but my sister—"

  “Well, go to the Ice Floes of Sicce for all I care!” boomed Rukker. He roared his mirth. “Three of you, to run a swifter! Ho—one to pull at the oar, one to beat the drum, and one to steer! Ho—I like it!"

  Certainly, the image was a lively one. But I did not smile.

  Vax looked as though he would be sick at any moment, if he did not fall down. I judged he was not used to heavy drinking. I stepped over to him and sniffed. I looked down at him.

  “You young idiot! Dopa!"

  Duhrra said, “Duh—dopa! I know, master—I know."

  Dopa is calculated to make a man fighting drunk; Vax had not yet drunk enough to turn him berserk. I saw the bottle in his hand, and I took it away. He tried to stop me. I broke the bottle over a handy table and showed him the serrated edge. “This is what you deserve, you gerblish onker."

  He staggered and would have fallen. I grabbed him and propped him upright.

  “You're coming with me to a cabin where you can sleep it off. I have work to do.” I dragged him out. “I'll see about you, Rukker, when I've seen to this hulu."

  I half carried him along to the ship-Hikdar's cabin and tossed him down on the cot. As I say, cots and hammocks had previously been unknown in swifters, because they usually came ashore at night. No doubt the war was changing many things since the genius king Genod had taken over in Magdag. Vax snorted and tried to rise and I pushed him back and the hilt of the Krozair longsword slid forward. He blinked at it owlishly.

  “I was to have been a Krozair,” he said. He was growing maudlin. “Yes, I trained. Not Zimuzz, though. I worked and all I wanted in this life was to be a Krozair like my brothers."

  “Yes,” I said, lifting his legs onto the cot. “Get some sleep and you can talk about this later."

  He grasped my arm and glared up into my face.

  “You don't understand. No one here does. How can they?"

  He enunciated his words carefully, as a near-drunk sometimes does; but he made sense in what he said. He was pretty far gone, and he just didn't know he was saying what he was saying.

  “My father—"

  “Look, son. We all had fathers, and they all failed us at one time or another.” That was not true; but the intensity of this lad's hatred for his unknown father hurt me, thinking of my own father and the love I bore him.

  “My father failed my mother. He ran away—ran away—"

  “You said he died."

  “I always say he is dead, out of shame. But he was alive, all the time. All the time. He ran away and left my mother in mortal peril, and she was carrying me at the time, and he ran away and left her. They nearly got her—she told me, and she laughed—but—but I knew. He wouldn't answer the Call, the Azhurad, and it is im-impossible for a Krozair not to answer the Call. So they made him Apushniad. And serve the rast right. And I was training to be a Krozair of Zy—and they—they—So I left them, ashamed. My father, Apushniad—destroyed me. Destroyed me! Me, Jaidur, Jaidur of Valka, ruined my whole life, and if I find the kleesh I shall surely slay him."

  I just gaped, stricken.

  * * *

  Chapter Six

  Renders of the Eye of the World

  The Renders of the western end of the Eye of the World made us welcome. They welcomed reinforcements of tough and ruthless fighting-men. They were not so sure of the three swifters we brought, for they habitually used small, fast craft, which could slip into a convoy and cut out the fat prizes. They said they could no doubt pick up enough oar-slaves for the swifters. But we would to a great extent be on our own. Rukker boomed his great laugh and swished his tail and said he'd show these people what real rending was about, what a fighting Kataki could do in the piracy business.

  He had found a competent ship-Hikdar among the ex-slaves to run Vengeance Mortil for him. I ran Green Magodont, and a tough and experienced swifter captain, a Krozair of Zamu, took command of Pearl. Once we filled with oar-slaves we would be a hard little squadron, and carry some punch in the Eye of the World. The Krozair of Zamu, Pur Naghan ti Perzefn, would sail Pearl back with all the Zairians who wished to return home.

  These Renders were a cutthroat lot. Consisting of escaped slaves, criminals, men who could find a home neither north nor south of the inner sea, they carved out their own destiny. If you ask why I was with them, instead of pursuing my schemes in Magdag, the answer is surely plain.

  My son!

  Jaidur—that same name that Velia had spoken, and I had not understood, when she had been dying in my arms. So my Delia had been pregnant when we'd flown off to chastise the shanks attacking our island of Fossana, where the damned Star Lords had sought to make me do their wishes. I had refused out of stiff-necked pride and fear for Delia, and so had been banished to Earth for all of twenty-one miserable years. There had been twins again, twins of whom I had known nothing. The girl, Dayra, the boy, this same Jaidur who called himself Vax out of shame.

  He had rambled on a little more before falling into a drunken stupor. He was quite unused to dopa. He had known that any son of Dray Prescot, the Lord of Strombor, would receive scant shrift from the overlords of Magdag, and he had been on his way there because his sister, Velia, had been missing, reported captured by a swifter from Magdag.

  Velia had, indeed, been captured. But she had been captured by Gafard, the King's Striker, the Sea Zhantil, and they had fallen deeply in love. I believed that to be true. I believed it then, and I am sure of it now. Gafard owed complete allegiance to King Genod, and even when the king sought to abduct the Lady of the Stars, the name by which Velia was known, for the same reasons that Jaidur called himself Vax, Gafard had been unable to blame him; for the king possessed the yrium, the mystic power of authority over ordinary people.

  King Genod had, in the end, taken Velia. And because Gafard's second in command, Grogor, had shafted the saddlebird the king flew, and because the king was abruptly in fear for his life, the genius king had thrown Velia off, to fall to her death. Yrium or no damned yrium, when I caught the cramph I'd probably have trouble stopping myself from breaking his neck before I dragged him off to justice. I know about men who possess the yrium. As I have said, I am cursed with more than one man's fair share of the yrium.

  All this I, alone of our family, knew.

  I could not tell Jaidur—or Vax.

  I could not tell him.

  I had not told him I was his father.

  How could I?

  There had to be a kinder, better, way of breaking that horrendous news to him.

  He was in very truth a violent young man. How could I lift a hand against my son in self-defense? And yet how could I stand and let him slay me? For I thought he very well might try. That would be a sin not only for him but for me, also.

  His hatred was a real and living force.

  Mind you, if I told him and then invited him to try to carry out his avowed intent, and so foined with him and disarmed him—no, no, no ... That would shatter his self-esteem, would turn hatred for me into contempt for himself. And, anyway, he was a remarkably fine swordsman. He might finish me. I share nothing of this silly desire to call oneself the greatest swordsman of the world—or, in my case, of two worlds. That way lies not only paranoia, but a mere killing machine without interest or suspense. Each fight is a new roll of the dice with death, a gamble of life and death.

  I had decided to go to join the Renders with Rukker because had I gone to Magdag, Vax would have gone with me, and in evil Magdag he might all too easily be slain or enslaved. I did not want that and would stop it. So I had turned aside from my purpose.

  A scheme occurred to me whereby I might turn Vax from his path, also. It would give him pain; but nothing like the pain he would be spared.

  We sailed out on a few raids and caught Magdaggian shipping a
nd so fought them and took them and built up our stock of oar-slaves. Our base lay up a narrow and winding creek in the lush green island of Wabinosk. When I say green I refer to the vegetation. The island boasted a large population of vosks; but they were kept down by an infestation of lairgodonts. I had no further wish to meet any more lairgodonts, for the risslacas had caused problems before and, anyway, the things were the symbol of King Genod's new Order of Green Brothers. The islands in this chain were, in their turn, infested by pirates, and we had one or two set-tos with Renders who fancied our prizes. But with Rukker booming and bellowing away we kept what we took.

  One day Duhrra started talking about Magdag to Vax, who was most anxious to learn all he could. I listened.

  The people we had released from oar-slavery had settled down into a pattern, taking up tasks for which they were suited. Those Zairians who wished to return home had gone in a captured broad ship. Now we had smallish crews, but we were building, and our motive power was almost up to strength. I planned to leave at the earliest moment I could; I had to be sure of Vax first.

  “Zigging Grodnims,” Duhrra was saying, sharpening up his sword on a block, taking care over the work. “All they do is build monstrous great buildings. Rasts."

  Vax egged him on to talk about Magdag. And as I listened so I caught an echo of the way Duhrra saw the rousing times we had spent as pretended renegades. “The king in Sanurkazz has our names down on his roll of infamy—and we innocent."

  “When King Zo hears what you did, Duhrra, I am sure he will pardon you. Was the Lady of the Stars, then, so beautiful?"

  Duhrra spit and polished meticulously. “Indeed she was!” Duhrra rolled his eyes. “No maiden more fair graced the earth, they said."

  I felt a pang. Roughly, I said, “Did you ever see her face, oh Duhrra of the waggling tongue?"

  “No, master. But I know she was. Duh—everyone said so."

  Here was a chance. I felt a pain in my chest.

  “Yes, she was beautiful. Gafard loved her truly, and she loved him truly.” I did not look at Vax. “I think that does mean something important.” I leaned closer. “And here is something Gafard told me that must go no farther than the three of us.” I turned and glared directly into my son's eyes. “Do I have your word?"