A Magdag oar blade had welted him nastily during our last fight and he could still hear the bells of Beng-Kishi ringing in his head.
“He’s all right,” scoffed Zolta. “He wouldn’t know it if the tower of Zim-Zair fell on him. He has the skull of a vosk.”
Vosks notoriously had exceptionally thick skull bones, so I laughed, and said: “Maybe, Zolta. He should be thankful. He kept the varters going all through-”
“Vosk skull!” said Zolta, and then Nath threw a wet mop at him and I took myself off to my aft state room. It is not seemly for the captain of a king’s swifter to be seen romping with the crew. But again that nag of dissatisfaction came to me.
I have mentioned the single occasion on which I attempted to alleviate the lot of the slaves aboard my galley, and of how they rose as one man and attempted to cut the throats of all my crew.[5]Both red and green kept slaves: the red only for gallery work and a few personal body servants, the green for every aspect of menial labor they required. I had conceived it that my duty lay with the men of Zair — and I heartily loathed and hated the men of Magdag — but also I tried to remember that perhaps the Savanti had sent me here to the Eye of the World to do something positive about this abhorrent slavery. If they had, if the Star Lords also had their own requirements, I must obey, but I would do so with the clear understanding that I would make for Vallia or Zenicce just as soon as I could. The Proconia, those fair-haired people who dominated all the eastern shoreline of the inner sea, were involved in another of their internecine wars. As I have said, we always kept out of it, for we had enough to do with Magdag. This time Magdag herself had taken a hand in an attempt to dominate the only area of the Eye of the World where neither Grodno nor Zair were worshipped.[6]My new Zorg was directed to join a squadron outfitted for an expedition toward the east. This would be entirely new sea for me. I found a fresh interest in life again and Mayfwy had had made for me a new coat of mail of a fineness almost as supple as the mail worn by that mailed man in the Princess Natema’s alcove. That mesh steel had come from Havilfar, I had learned. The mesh of the inner sea was practical, lumpy, and unsophisticated by contrast.
The Victorian antiquaries who, to do them justice, revived an interest in Medieval artifacts, persisted in their odd usage, a quite erroneous nomenclature, of “chain” mail for the mesh iron coat, or hauberk, for far too long. One even still sees this silly word used of a coat of mail. I sat, I remember, in the stern sheets of my barge, feeling the iron links between my fingers, and thinking deep and powerful thoughts of nothing at all as we rowed back from Felteraz to Sanurkazz. The suns, very close together, were sinking into the sea ahead of us. The water shimmered and sparkled with the most wonderful colors. We drowned in sparkling light. The lighthouse men were climbing up the winding stairs to the pharos. A few fishing craft were sailing out. Some birds flitted against the cliffs. The glow of lamps and torches were lighting all over the city.
Perhaps I was dull, tired, maybe stale. Whatever the cause I was scarcely aware of the abrupt rush of men with dark cloaks swathed over their mail. We had just touched and bow oar had hauled us in with his boat hook and I, as was proper, was first out of the boat onto the steps. The men smashed into us in a fierce and silent onslaught. At once Nath’s long sword cleared his sheath and he was fighting for his life. Zolta, cursing, hurled himself into the fray. My men tumbled up from the barge. We would have had a hard time of it; maybe I would not have survived, had it not been for two men who appeared unexpectedly at the side of the jetty. I heard two whirring thuds, and as two men pitched screaming to the stones of the jetty I knew I was again seeing and hearing the terchick, the balanced throwing knife of Segesthes, in action.
Both victims had been struck in the face where their mail did not protect them. Zolta was yelling like a crazy man. My long sword cleared its scabbard in time to cut down the attacker who pounced on me like a mad graint. I could see the two newcomers and they were going to their work with a will. Swords flashed in the dying light. Men yelled and bodies made heavy splashes as they toppled from the stones. The attackers had been caught flat-footed by that unexpected flank onslaught; and as more of my men came racing up the stairs, green and slippery with weed, Zolta, Nath, and I with reinforcements drove them off. We had been lucky; without those two on the flank, they might have overwhelmed us by sheer numbers. Nath was puffing with his mouth open, his bulk heaving. Zolta, to my surprise, was not making rude comments. He was looking at the newcomers.
“By Zim-Zair!” he said, in wonder. “Is that a sword? Or is it a toothpick?” I knew, then. A light, arrogant, and yet pleasant voice answered. “They don’t like it through their eyes, friend. They don’t like it.”
The man who bent to retrieve his terchick from the bloodied face of a dead man wore buff clothes, short to the thigh and belted in; his legs were encased in long black boots. However, the item that truly identified him for me was the jaunty broad-brimmed hat, with the gay feather, and with those two strange slots cut in the brim above his forehead.
He straightened, the cleaned terchick in his hand. In a single rapid motion it vanished into the sheath behind his neck.
“The little Deldar,” he said, “has his uses, like the Hikdar,” and he slapped the long left-handed dagger at his right side. “And the Jiktar, my toothpick, as you so disrespectfully called the queen of weapons.”
His rapier was long, thin, and elegant, rather too ornate about the hilt, and there were spots of blood about the hilt he had not cleaned off.
Nath and Zolta were over their surprise, now. They had seafared long enough around the inner sea to have learned of the men of Vallia.
The other Vallian, who was older and stouter and whose square-cut face showed a trace of displeasure as he slapped his rapier hilt, said a few words beneath his breath that halted his young companion in his tracks.
The older man scanned us in that streaming dying light, with the dead men and the blood between us. He took a step forward. He did not remove his hat, whose feather was black.
“Which of you,” he said in a harsh voice, at once metallic and flat, “is the man known as Dray Prescot?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Remberee, Pur Dray! Remberee!”
I was going home.
I was going home to a place I had never seen.
What was this Vallia like? This Vallia of the island empire, of the fabled opulence: the ocean-spanning shipping, the fleets of airboats, the wealth and power and beauty. What did it mean to me apart from my Delia, Delia of Delphond, Delia of the Blue Mountains?
I did not forget that my Delia was known as the Princess Majestrix of Vallia. Tharu of Vindelka, Kov, the older of the two Vallians, treated me with a grim distant courtesy that puzzled me. He was icily polite. When I asked him about Delia’s father, the emperor of Vallia, he rubbed a reflective thumbnail along a narrow scar on his jaw. “He is a mighty man, sudden, all-powerful unpredictable. His word is law.”
Tharu had made all the arrangements. Vomanus, his aide, was volatile in his enthusiasm for life with a fetching kind of swaggering arrogance. I gathered from Zolta that Vomanus had a love of love also, for my two rascals, Nath and Zolta, took Vomanus out on the town as a kind of way of saying thank you. Tharu of Vindelka ripped into Vomanus on the following morning. I had insisted that they stay at my villa in the best part of Sanurkazz, and I heard the grim rumbling tones rolling on remorselessly, and the dispirited replies from Vomanus, who badly needed a hatful of palines. We got down to business that very first morning.
Delia, Princess of Vallia had returned home immediately after an exhaustive search of the enclave of Strombor, all the rest of Zenicce that could be searched by parties of allied Houses, the Eward, the Reinmans, the Wickens, and the speediest airboats’ messages and inquiries to the Clansmen of Felschraung and Longuelm. Of course I could not be found. By that time I was trying to explain why I was walking naked on a beach in Portugal, some four hundred light-years away.
“Now th
at we have found you, my Lord of Strombor,” said Tharu in his metallic voice, “we will sail at once for Pattelonia on the southeast coast of Proconia. I have an airboat waiting there. You know whereof I speak?”
I nodded. I could feel my pulses jumping, the blood surging through my veins. Delia had gone home to Vallia and had started a search operation to find me that had turned her world upside down. She had known — for how could she not so well understand? — that a mystery surrounded me. I had not told her of my origin, although I fully intended to. But she had shared with me that eerie experience of being flung in a gesture of contemptuous dismissal out of the sacred pool of baptism in far Aphrasoe, to find herself running on a beach in Segesthes. She must have reasoned that something similar had occurred again, and this time to me alone. So she had set herself to finding me. I heard from young Vomanus of the efforts that had been undertaken. He was very apologetic that he and Tharu had missed me before. I gathered that they had searched Magdag but in all that festering confusion of slaves and workers the discovery of a single man, who bore a name different from the one they sought, was well-nigh impossible and had defeated them. Chance had dictated that they had visited Sanurkazz when I was away at Zy. They had thought they had at last found the man their princess had instructed them to find, and they awaited my arrival, for they would not venture to the Grand Archboldship of the Order. They were thanked by me for waiting; they had almost certainly saved our necks.
“A message must be got back to Vallia as soon as is practicable,” said Tharu. “Then the Princess Majestrix may graciously consent to recalling all the hundreds of other envoys she has sent chasing all over the world in search of you.”
I didn’t much care for his tone.
I saw Vomanus casting an anxious look between us, and as I was conscious of my position vis-a-vis Vallia, I thought it expedient to say nothing. I told Nath and Zolta to take care of Vomanus: I thought he was a friend.
The coldness of Tharu of Vindelka’s attitude quickly made itself understandable as I talked with the Vallians. There, as everywhere, it seemed, intrigues flourished. There were parties of various shades of political opinion, for religion in Vallia was undergoing some kind of psychic upheaval and no one seemed anxious to talk on the subject, and the emperor was acting with his usual autocratic hauteur. I would have to face that man, Delia’s father, and tell him that I intended to marry his daughter no matter what he said or did. Tharu raged with anger that his party had not made the vital match with Delia, and he was forced to bottle all that frustrated resentment, for he acted under the orders, as he put it, of the Majestrix that no man may disobey. At that Vomanus pointed out that many men did disobey, and Tharu retired into that hard cold shell. He didn’t like me. He considered not only had he lost the chance to marry off his favorite son or nephew to Delia but that Delia was marrying far below her station. He was right, of course.
A broad ship had been found by Shallan, my agent, that was sailing to Pattelonia with supplies for the upcoming expedition. I had a nasty interview with Zo, the king, and quite unable to explain why I was suddenly leaving my command, Sanurkazz, and him, I went out in what was in reality disgrace. It did not matter. I was shaking the water of the inner sea from my boots.
I will not dwell on the interview with Mayfwy. She had heard the news and had been crying, but she dried her tears and put up a brave front. I kissed her gently, kissed Fwymay, who was turning into a beauty like her mother, clasped hands with young Zorg.
The problem of Harknel of High Heysh I must, perforce, leave unfinished. My natural inclinations after his last attempt to kill me on the jetty had been to take my men, march to his villa and burn it to the ground, and to hell with the high admiral and Zo, the king. Those jolly fat men of the mobiles would no doubt have gathered round, bottles in hand, and might conceivably have helped toss a torch or two. But I could not do it. I could not risk a vile retribution from Harknel upon Felteraz. Felteraz was important. Very. I had to leave all this ferment in mid-boil. But I was glad to go. I understood what canker had been eating away at me as I went corsairing on the Eye of the World. Nath and Zolta were a problem — a pair of problems.
I asked them to stay with Mayfwy. She would have need of their long swords.
“What, Stylor? Leave you now, our oar comrade! Never!”
Tharu of Vindelka grumbled, but agreed that there would be room on the airboat for the two. Vomanus was openly delighted.
“Anyway,” said Zolta, “the Krozairs will never let harm befall Felteraz. And the king will also protect the citadel, for it holds his eastern flank. Do not fret, old vosk head.”
My good-bye to Pur Zazz, the Grand Archbold of the Krozairs of Zy was formal, and then warmly fraternal. He did not seem at all perturbed that I was traveling better than a thousand dwaburs away.
“When the Krozairs have need of you, Pur Dray, and the brothers receive the summons, no matter where you are, I know you will come.”
I gripped the hilt of my long sword. I nodded. It was true.
“You will be traveling beyond Proconia, which commands all the eastern seaboard of the Eye of the World and extends her varied powers as far to the east as The Stratemsk. Those mountains are said to have no summits, they extend clear to the orange glory of Zim, and form a pathway for the spirit to the majesty of Zair.” He smiled and poured me more wine. “That is nonsense, of course, Pur Dray. But it tells eloquently of the fear and veneration in which men hold the Mountains of The Stratemsk.”
I was aware, of course, that educated men knew that both the green and the red suns were suns and not thinking beings. But many of the illiterate folk of all shades of opinion held that the suns in their majesties were entities in their own rights quite apart from being the abode of the deities of Grodno and Zair. Astronomy was a strange art, on Kregen, twisted by its special circumstances into byways unknown to astronomers on Earth. The astrological lore and amazingly accurate predictions achieved by the wizards of Loh astonished even me at a later date.
“Over the mountains you are going where no man can say.” Pur Zazz was as cultured and refined and intelligent a man as the inner sea might produce. Now he said: “Men say that beyond the mountains, in the hostile territory, there are whole tribes who fly on the backs of great beasts of the air.” He smiled at me again, not ironically, but with the seriousness these subjects merited in an oar-powered geography. “I would welcome news, Pur Dray, of your adventures, and the sights you encounter.”
“I will regard that as a first charge upon me, Pur Zazz.”
When I left him, straight and commanding in his white tunic and apron, with that blazing emblem of the hubless wheel within the circle upon his breast, and the long sword belted in the fighting-man’s way at his side, I half knew, then, I would never see him again.
“Remberee, Pur Dray.”
“Remberee, Pur Zazz.”
Saying good-bye to Zenkiren was not as easy. But I told him that a message to Strombor would always find me, and my vows to return would remain for as long as I lived.
I did not say that if the Star Lords or the Savanti decided otherwise I might not be in a position to return.
“Remberee, Pur Dray, Lord of Strombor.”
“Remberee, Pur Zenkiren.”
We clasped hands the final time, and I went down to my barge.
Nath and Zolta, very subdued, saw to getting us under way.
The hurt looks on the faces of my friends, looks they had tried to conceal, would haunt me for a very long time to come.
Two men had arrived from another world, another place across the outer oceans, mysterious and strange and with nothing to do with the Eye of the World, and I had upped and run panting like a dog running to its master. Who was this strange remote Princess Majestrix who called the foremost corsair captain of the inner sea? This is what they were saying.
But — they did not know Delia, my Delia of Delphond.
* * * *
The broad ship sailed like a bathtub.
I endured. I would far rather have preferred to make this little voyage into seas I had never scoured before aboard a swifter, but I was no longer in the employment of the king, no longer in his service.
The Magdaggian caught us as the twin suns, very close together, were sinking in the west and setting long shadows across the placid sea. She pulled toward us, all oars in neat parallel lines, churning the sea, and we could not escape.
“By Zantristar!” I yelled, hauling out my long sword. “They won’t take us without a fight!”
The sailors were running, milling. Nath and Zolta, their long swords flaming brands in the dying light, tried to beat them into a resistance. But the merchantman stood no chance. She carried perhaps thirty crew, with little stomach for a fight they knew they could not win. They were launching a longboat and clearly they anticipated rowing to a nearby island, where we had intended to lay up for the night, and from which the Magdag corsair, lying in wait, had pulled with such sudden ferocity.
“My orders, from the Princess Majestrix herself,” Tharu told me in his flat voice, “are to bring you safely back to Vallia. Put up your sword.”
“You fool!” I said. “I am Pur Dray, the Lord of Strombor, the man the heretics from Magdag will give most to have in their clutches. There is no captivity for me!”
“It is a fight you cannot win,” said Vomanus. He was fingering his rapier, and the look on his lean reckless face told me he would dearly love to join in.
“We are neutral.” Tharu spoke impatiently, abruptly. “The barbarians from Magdag would not dare to harm us. They may kill all their enemies from Sanurkazz, but they will not touch me, nor Vomanus here
— nor you, Dray Prescot.”
“Why?”
The galley’s long bronze ram curled the seas away in a long creaming bow wave that roiled down her sides where her oars flashed down and up, down and up, like the white wings of a gull. She was a hundred-and-twentyswifter, double-banked, fast. I could see the men on her beak ready to board us and others at her bow varters. Her sails had been furled, but her single mast had not been struck. Tharu of Vindelka moved to the rail so that I turned to face him. Nath and Zolta below were frantic in their despairing efforts to rouse the crew. Vomanus walked quietly aft. The longboat was in the water and an oar splintered against the broad ship’s side in the panicky haste.
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