Renegade of Kregen [Dray Prescot #13]

by Alan Burt Akers

  Well ... the bit of red cloth with the yellow edging could be a quarter ripped from my flag, that yellow cross on a scarlet field fighting-men call Old Superb. The colors were faded and, like museum pieces, gave a fusty, dusty faded look. The mesh mail, a scrap from a left shoulder and breast, might also have been mine. As for the main-gauche—my mind went back fifty years...

  Yes, I was almost sure it was one given to me by Vomanus, the young man who had so recklessly come seeking me in the inner sea because he had been told to do so by Delia. He was Delia's half-brother. He was now Vomanus of Vindelka. I thought he was a good friend. Yes, it could be his. A spot of dirt about the ornate hilt where the metal had corroded bore that out, for he was always careless of his weapons.

  And damned funny it was, to be sure, to stand and look down at bits of one's own belongings all solemnly laid out in a glass case in a museum, relics to be sighed over with awe.

  I tapped the case lightly. “How can you be sure these belonged to Pur Dray?"

  He smiled, and the smile was neither ironic nor wolfish; it was the smile of the collector who has paid a price for a dearly desired object of his affections.

  “I know them to be. I have been given proofs."

  I decided I had best display some of the chauvinistic ignorance of the warriors of the Eye of the World.

  “This dagger. It is of strange design.” I put my hand on the glass and twisted it about—my right hand. “You would hold it, but with difficulty."

  He laughed. This, the first genuine laugh I had heard from him, for he could contort his face to a polite grimace when the occasion warranted, sounded light and happy and carefree.

  “Your left hand, Gadak."

  So I went through the pantomime of putting my left hand on the glass and holding the main-gauche. I was suitably amazed.

  “You have heard of Vallia? The king no longer desires to trade with them, for now we are allied to the empire of Hamal, wherever that may be, and the ships of Menaham ply here. But there are many things of Vallian make in Magdag. This dagger is one, and it was owned and used by the Lord of Strombor."

  He did not offer to take the precious objects out of the glass case. I hadn't the heart to ask him. I could feel the weight of all those years rolling down on me, like the peaks of The Stratemsk toppling upon me, and I felt my spirit reducing, as though Grotal had me in his grip.

  Truthfully, I, an Earthman, had not yet adjusted to the normal and accepted life-span of two hundred years usual to the people of Kregen, let alone the thousand years that stretched ahead. To Gafard as well as other Kregans, the past fifty years was like twenty to an Earthman.

  And I knew what twenty years trapped on Earth was like, Krun rot the Star Lords!

  Gafard was speaking again, and I roused myself to listen.

  “...honor of the most high. She will be waiting in my saloon now. Show no surprise, Gadak, I caution you, for she has chosen this from the Vallian goods I have told you of. It is a bauble, but it augurs well for your future with me."

  Not quite sure what he was talking about I cast a last look at the scraps and relics of what once were mine, and went with him back to the saloon.

  My Lady of the Stars waited for us.

  I bowed deeply, very deeply, going almost into the full incline, and this I did without conceit or embarrassment.

  “Rise, Gadak, for I think you would be a friend to my lord Gafard and to me."

  Her voice, musical, filled with light, entranced me.

  “I will serve you, my Lady. Your standard shall never be dishonored."

  She wore no veil. She was dressed, as was Gafard, all in white. Her black hair was piled in ringlets upon her head, and she held that head erect and yet, although she held herself with pride, there was nothing of arrogance in her. I looked at her, drinking in her beauty, and then looked away, for I felt the desolation within me.

  “I wish you to wear this, Gadak. It is a trinket, a foreign bauble from some unknown place far over the Outer Oceans. Yet it has value. I would wish you to wear it in remembrance of me, and as a thanks for your Jikai with the lairgodonts.” She held out a golden chain. “And, for what is far more important, you saved the life of my beloved."

  I took the bauble. From the golden chain swung a miniature made from bright enamel and precious gems. Red and white. The semblance of a tiny bird in red and white, with spread wings and beak agape. A valkavol. This bird, this tiny harmless bird, could become frighteningly ferocious when attacked or if its young are threatened. I knew the valkavol passing well. Native to my island Stromnate of Valka, in far Vallia, the valkavol had been adopted as the emblem set atop my warriors’ standard poles.

  I looked at it, there in my hand, a tiny scrap of gold and red and white. I was to be her standard-bearer and she, all unknowingly, had given me the very symbol that decked my Valka's standards.

  “I thank you, my Lady...” I could say no more.

  Gafard boomed his laugh again. “I can spare you two burs. Then my Lady and I return to the Tower of True Contentment."

  I have absolutely no idea of what passed during those two burs. I regret that now, regret it bitterly, as you shall hear.

  * * *

  Chapter Ten

  Of red sails and green banners

  The crushing power of Magdag reached out a mailed arm across the Eye of the World.

  Ten top class swifters, the smallest a hundred-and-twenty swifter, escorted a hundred and fifty broad ships carrying twenty-five thousand troops, infantry, cavalry, artillery. The force was sizable, well-balanced, the varters brand-new, and their equipment did credit to the slave armories of Magdag.

  I would as lief have seen the lot at the bottom of the sea, save for the swifter Volgodont's Fang, which carried my Lady of the Stars.

  That flagship carried me, also, but I am an old hand at shipwreck, and so did not count myself among the blessed.

  We sailed on southerly with a fair wind and a calm sea and the oar-slaves were relieved from their intolerable burdens of pulling, eternally pulling, and the breeze blew their stinks away from the functional quarterdecks and high ornate poops.

  To me, who had once been a Krozair of Zy and devoted to the Red of Zair, the sight of all those miserable naked slaves came as an affront, but a subdued one. I could never have sat still and done nothing previously. Now I accepted what fate had to mete out—or nearly always—and reflected that I, too, had slaved at an oar not only for the overlords of Magdag but for the Krozairs of Zy as well.

  One day, Zair willing, I would return to my true allegiance. Now, I was Grodnim and intended to play that role until the bitter end. Poor Duhrra scarcely ever showed himself on deck. We had a little cubby under the forward part of the quarterdeck—the half-deck of a seventy-four—and I, too, stayed there for long periods.

  The standard for which I was responsible hung racked with the others of the overlords in the great cabin aft, blazes of green and gold and white about the cabin. My Lady of the Stars had chosen—or someone had chosen for her—a plain white and green banner with a gold device of a zhantil, a rose, and three stars.

  I harbored no thoughts that she might be from Earth, thus explaining the familiar name given to her, that was not her real name. She was a Zairian, as the tightly clustered, shining jet-black curls showed.

  She kept to the suite of cabins allotted to her. The king had appointed an agent—a kind of Crebent—to sail in the flagship, and we all knew his eyes were everywhere and full reports would go back to the king. We were all on our best behavior during the voyage.

  This galley, Volgodont's Fang, proved to be an exceptionally fine craft. She was an eight-six-three hundred-and-eighty swifter. That is, she had three banks of oars, thirty to a bank, each side. On the lowest tier there were three men to an oar. The middle bank rowed six to an oar, and the upper bank eight to an oar. These men were stripped stark naked and, as we had recently cleared the ship sheds of Magdag, every man's head was shaved as smoothly as a loloo's egg. T
hey had no need to wear the conical straw hats, dyed green, that rowers in an open-decked swifter were issued with, for this swifter was cataphract, decked in to give protection and space for the fighting-men to operate.

  Although Gafard had shown signs of haste during’ the fitting out in Magdag and the final clearances of the mole, now that we were on course he gave orders for the slow cruise speed to be maintained. Only one bank of oars was manned and the slaves took turns to pull, thus conserving their strength.

  The swifter still carried only one mast, I noticed, and I wondered yet again why the overlords did not do as the Zairians did and give their galleys two masts. Both types carried the forward boat-sail, a kind of sloping bowsprit not unlike the artemon of merchant vessels. The sail was square and reefed from the deck and was dyed a brilliant emerald green. At its center the golden device of the zhantil, rampant, glowed and glittered in glory for the Sea-Zhantil, Gafard, the King's Striker.

  The breeze remained fair and we reached the various tiny islands that lay on our course in good time each day before the suns sank. Because war vessels must be as light as possible commensurate with the strength they require, their bottoms are not sheathed in lead or copper. So they must be hauled out of the water as often as possible, otherwise the old devil teredo will go to his devastating work. I knew that the teredo worm was nowhere as active or vicious on Kregen as on Earth and warships for all their cunningly light construction lasted longer than the flimsy vessels of the Ancients of Earth. The Ancient Greek penteconters and triremes and the Phoenician biremes were manned with one man to one oar; but there is room to conjecture that the quadriremes and quinquiremes of later times had four or five men disposed pulling one or two oars. Certainly, this makes more sense than to suppose there were four or five banks vertically separated. As for the later giants of Classical times, these must have been crewed with more than one man to an oar—and, indeed, as we know, there were giants in the Mediterranean in those days.

  The Roman dekares probably crewed five men to an oar with two banks barely separated vertically, the distancing being done laterally and fore-and-aft. This is a neat system, for it reduces the height needed to contain the oarsmen and also gives the chance of a decent freeboard. This is, as I have said, always a problem with galleys. Before I'd left the inner sea all those years ago a squadron of these dekares was being built up in Sanurkazz and trials were planned in competition with swifters of comparable power in oarsmen.

  The major disadvantage of the dekares is the necessity for adjusting the beam. Kregan galleys are notoriously long and slender craft, for all the controversy over the short-keel and long-keel theories, and there were shipwrights who swore that five men above five men, giving that desirable narrow beam, were better than five men side by side with five men. As you know, I'd left the inner sea before any of this could be worked out.

  So when I say that Gafard's swifter Volgodont's Fang was a fine craft, you must understand me to mean it was a fine craft of its class.

  The two projecting platforms in the bows were armed with large and impressive varters. They were not, of course, as powerful as the gros-varter of Vallia, but they would hurl a rock with power enough to smash into light scantlings. I walked forward and studied the weapons, thinking back to wild times with Nath and Zolta, my two oar-comrades, my favorite rascals.

  Gafard found me there, leaning on the rail, watching the break and spume and the white water curling below.

  He came straight to the point.

  “I spoke to you of treachery, Gadak."

  “Aye, gernu."

  He leaned back against the rail and swept his gaze across the decks. People moved about their business. We could not be overheard. His bronzed face scowled and his right fist gripped onto the hilt of his Genodder.

  “I tell you, Gadak. For all I do for Magdag, and the king, the overlords would gloat to see me torn down and brought low."

  “Yes, I can believe that."

  “After we left the army it was surprised in the night by raiders wearing black clothes. My belongings were rifled, the great tent belonging to my Lady of the Stars destroyed."

  “But why?"

  “Why do I bring my Lady always with me, on campaign, where there is no fit work for a lady's hands?"

  He was making an opening for me. I took it, taking a chance as usual. It would be a damned long swim from here to the next island on our course to the southern shore...

  “The king sends you on errands and when you take my Lady with you he sends men to surprise you and steal her away."

  What reaction I had expected, and been ready for, mattered nothing. For this man, this bronze-faced, black-haired, fiery-eyed renegade boomed a huge laugh. He spluttered.

  “By Genodras, Gadak! You take the chunkrah by the horns!"

  I said nothing.

  He wiped his eyes and then said, sharply, “You are right. It would be your head to repeat it."

  “Aye."

  “I like you. There is something—I cannot put a name to it—that appeals to me in you. You would have been strung up by your entrails by any other overlord long before this. I do not understand why I listen to you—"

  “If the certain person we know of wishes to take my Lady from you, I do not think there is a place in all Grodnim you may hide."

  He scowled blackly and swore. But it was true.

  “Then must the guard be at all times ready. If they slay men skulking by night, clad in black, no man can point the finger at me. I am a loyal king's man. Aye, by Goyt! Despite all, I admire that man, for he is a true genius in war and statecraft, in all things, save this. And in this he has the yrium to do as he wishes and make it the right thing."[2]

  [2 Yrium: a word of profound and complex meaning, more than charisma—force, power conveyed by office or strength of character, or given to a person in a way that curses or blesses him with undisputed power over his fellows. A.B.A.]

  I wondered, privately, however much yrium Genod possessed, if he took the Lady of the Stars from Gafard how that violent man would console his conscience for his master. Or would he take sword and seek to redress his wrong, authority and power or no damned authority and power?

  Next day we all knew we faced a long haul ahead. The warships were run down into the water, the slaves in their chains whipped on into putting their backs to it. They merely labored to float the ships that were their floating prisons. The suns shone. The sky lifted high and blue, with a few lazy clouds. There would be little wind today, although I fancied a breeze would get up toward evening and if we were unlucky would be dead foul for our southerly course.

  There are many small islands dotted all over the inner sea, which is often a very shallow sea; but this day we faced a haul that would take us through the night and well into the morning of the day following before we sighted Benarej Island. Here we expected to be joined by a squadron of swifters for the final passage to the southern shore.

  Well, the day limped along. The rowers pulled. The suns shone brassily, mingled jade and ruby, streaming down on the decks and casting strange-colored splotches of light through the awnings. Everyone sweated. The thought of the slaves below and the agonies they were enduring as they took their tricks at the looms made me fidgety and irritable.

  Had I been still a Krozair of Zy I would have found an excuse to go below, would have slain the whip-Deldars and would have freed the slaves and so taken the ship back for Zair. But that, by itself, would not be enough to reinstate me. That would be the simple, ordinary, and obvious thing for any Krozair to do. And I was no longer a Krozair. So I sweated and was unpleasant to Duhrra and took myself off to stand in the bows and watch the bar-line of the horizon, burning against the sky.

  That sky changed subtly in color. I watched. This might be a normal rashoon, one of those suddenly explosive storms of the inner sea, or it might be the far more sinister manifestation of the Star Lords once more taking a hand in my destiny.

  “It would have to strike us now, when ther
e is no lee to run under."

  I turned.

  The ship-Hikdar, Nath ti Hagon, had walked forward to stare with great animosity at the growing storm. He did not like me still, and who could blame him after that scene in the aft cabin when I had first come aboard Volgodont's Fang? But the annoyance of the moment made him speak.

  “We are in for a blow,” I said, feeling that the calmest and most obvious thing to say. I turned away ready to go aft. He stopped me by speaking in a low, hurried voice.

  “You know I do not like you, Gadak. But hear me in this. If you prove false to our lord in anything I shall surely slay you."

  Shock, pleasure, annoyance? The emotions clashed in me.

  I said, “I do not need you to teach me my duty, Nath ti Hagon. But, for your peaceful heart, I am charged to protect my lord. You see that you do not fail him.” And I stalked off.

  He said no more and I guessed he was staring at me with baleful eyes and wishing to tear me to pieces as I walked aft. Hagon, his home town, lay in one of the huge looping bends of the River Dag, some sixty dwaburs north of Magdag as the fluttrell flies, although more than twice that far if you followed the curves of the river itself. Guamelga, of which province Gafard was rog, lay some eighty dwaburs to the west of Hagon, still on the same river, which looped sharply north and east, going upstream. Phangursh lay fifty dwaburs farther upstream, to the northeast. In all our operations across the River Daphig, to the east, Gafard had never troubled himself to ride across to the west and visit in his rognate of Guamelga.

  That made me think of all my own fair lands in Valka and her nearby islands, in Strombor and in Djanduin, and I cursed and hurled off below to make sure everything in our cabin was tightly lashed down against the force of the coming blow.

  The swifter herself was snugged down. Gafard, who had been a swifter captain for a long time, knew how to handle ships on the inner sea. His first lieutenant, this Nath ti Hagon, had already proved to be a tough nut, able to run a trim swifter. I had no real fears we could not ride out the rashoon.

  This displayed another facet of Gafard, for a man in his position as king's favorite, Sea-Zhantil, would act as an admiral and have a captain under him to run the ship. Not so Gafard, the King's Striker. He ran his ship like a captain, and joyed in the doing of it. Not for him the sterile and removed glories of admiralty.