by Джеффри Лорд
«Your Magnificence,» said the duke earnestly. «Can we ask of you that this man live?»
As polite as his tone was, the duke’s words made the four eunuchs gasp in astonishment. Speaking to the Emperor without being spoken to first-monstrous! Blade sensed that now Duke Boros’ and Tulu’s lives as well as his own hung by a very thin and already frayed thread, one that the Emperor could snap for good with a word or a gesture.
The Emperor jerked his head up and down three times, in a grotesque parody of a gracious nod. «We shall hear your words, Lord of Kudai.»
«Your Magnificence is gracious beyond my poor deserts.»
«They are poor indeed. But speak, and we shall give you such attention as you may deserve.»
«This man is a stranger, true. He may or may not be telling the truth. But certainly while be has been within the borders of Saram he has done nothing against your peace, your honor, or any of your subjects. In fact, he did not kill my fighting men Tzimon and Dzhai when he could have done so. Thus he spared at least one good fighter for service against the Steppemen.»
The Emperor’s eyebrows rose. «He spared a man he had defeated?»
«Yes, Your Magnificence.»
«It would seem then that this man who calls himself Prince Blade is quite mad. We are thus even more certain that he lies. If there were such a land as England, they certainly would not make madmen princes and send them to us.
«It does, however, seem to us that since he is a madman, he has small ability to do us harm. You say he is strong?»
«I have seldom seen a man so strong, Your Magnificence.»
«Good. Then it is our decree that this ‘Prince Blade’ be sent to the service of our galleys upon the Silver Sea. Let him use his strength there, and call himself a prince if he wishes. He will do us no injury by it.»
The Emperor pointed at Blade and the four eunuchs stepped forward to surround him and separate him from Duke Boros and Tulu. As they did so, the Emperor went on.
«We also wish to remind you, Boros of Kudai, that you have in some measure displeased us by speaking so boldly. We shall give only a light punishment, however. You shall within the next ten days give over to us for our service fifty fighting men and fifty serving men and women from your house. Those who have been free shall also be free in our service, and all shall return to you at the end of five years.» Blade had never in his life heard a more obvious lie. «Clearly, though, some will not return at all if you displease us further.»
At this point Blade was quite certain that there was indeed a madman in the chamber, and equally certain that it was not himself. He would have liked to express this opinion by walking over to the black marble throne and strangling the creature sitting on it very slowly with his bare hands.
It would in fact have been quite practical to dispose of the Emperor, although in a somewhat less stylish manner. The eunuch carrying the crossbow was standing just a little too close to Blade, and his weapon was cocked and loaded. Blade was quite sure he could snatch the bow and put the bolt through the Emperor’s thick torso before anyone else could lift a finger, let alone a sword.
Then what? He would have earned himself certain death. He would also have earned it for Duke Boros and Tulu, and for how many others besides? With the Emperor dead, Saram would fall into chaos. Feuds, intrigues, plots for the throne, and the vengeance of the dead Emperor’s men would take tens of thousands of lives. In that chaos the Steppemen would have a golden opportunity to strike. Their rule in Saram would probably be worse than even the rule of Emperor Kul-Nam.
No, he would not try to bring down the Emperor unless and until there was someone better to put in his place. He would go off to the galleys, looking like a good slave tamely submitting to his fate. He had been a slave before, in half a dozen different Dimensions. He was still alive, unlike most of the men who had themselves been his masters. He was reasonably sure he could do it all again.
So he stood where he was as the eunuchs closed in and drew out cords to bind his wrists behind him.
Chapter 10
Blade spent the night in a cell deep below one of the buildings along the outer wall of the House of Blood. He was alone in the cell with the usual amount of dampness, filth, bad smells, fleas, and rats. Morning brought a breakfast of sour, watery porridge and four more armed eunuchs with chains and shackles for his arms and legs. They fastened him up quietly and efficiently, then led him up and out into the sunlight. A score of other slaves who were being sold or transferred were already chained in a long line, under the guard of four mounted men. Blade was added to the end of the line; then they were marched out through the gate and off into the morning. Blade caught a last glimpse of Dzhai standing on the wall and watching the slaves depart, but neither man risked signaling to the other.
It was a long day’s march in the heat and the dust. One of the women and two of the men could not stand the pace and collapsed. They were unchained, dragged to the side of the road, and disposed of quickly and efficiently with a sword-slash across the throat.
Blade was not surprised at the weaklings being killed. What did surprise him was that they hadn’t been flayed or blinded or disemboweled before being killed. Instead, they’d been executed, with no mercy but without great suffering either. That was not something Blade had expected to find in Saram.
Perhaps indulging sadistic whims was a monopoly of the Emperor? In that case the Emperor’s underlings might do their own jobs quietly and efficiently, killing only when somebody stepped out of line. If that were true, Blade realized he might enjoy a long if not exactly happy life as a slave, provided that he behaved himself.
It was certainly worth trying. In any land good slaves weren’t usually mistreated on a moment’s impulse. They were too valuable.
Blade set out to make himself look valuable.
At the end of the first day’s march the slaves were watered, fed more porridge, and allowed to sleep in their chains in an open, grassy meadow. The next morning they started off again, with a new set of guards and four new slaves added to the chain.
So it went for ten days. The column moved steadily north, covering about twenty miles a day. That was hardly an easy day’s stroll, even for Blade. Every day one or two people dropped out and had their throats cut by the roadside. But Blade had marched half again as far, on half as much food and water. He was never in any danger of dropping out.
The column avoided all except the smallest villages and towns, but they saw plenty of traffic on the road-farm carts, trains of pack animals, carriages of nobles with whole squadrons of outriders, and more columns of slaves, some of them up to three hundred strong. In spite of the threat from the Steppemen and the Emperor’s taste for his subjects’ blood, the affairs of Saram seemed to be in good order, even to be rather prosperous.
This too did not particularly surprise Blade. The Emperor’s whims were savage, but they were probably like lightning, striking at random. For every man or woman enslaved or tortured, a hundred might go about their business quietly, living, prospering, and dying of old age.
Kul-Nam might very well be a madman and a bloodthirsty despot. Yet it was hard for Blade to believe that most of the man’s subjects would gladly exchange his rule for chaos, civil war, or conquest by the Steppemen.
On the eleventh day the column of slaves, now more than sixty strong, marched through a valley in the coastal bills onto a road running north beside the sea. That night they had chunks of salt fish thrown into their porridge and were marched into the surf to bathe. Two men drowned. Blade found an enormous relief in getting nearly two weeks’ filth off his body.
The next morning they reached the Imperial port of Garis. Those slaves who were to be sold on the open market were unchained and marched off in one direction. Those assigned to the galleys, a dozen of the strongest, were marched off to the naval arsenal south of the city.
The slave barracks almost entirely circled the harbor, a triple rank of brick buildings each three stories high, a hundre
d feet long, and obviously built to last. There was room in those barracks for the whole population of a fair-sized city.
Blade and the other new arrivals were marched up to the second floor of one of the buildings. There they were unchained, issued straw pallets, blankets, and leather buckets, and more or less left to themselves for a few days. Food and water came twice a day and the waste buckets were emptied every morning. That was all.
Blade put the time to good use. On the same floor with him were a good many men who’d been slaves for years. They despised the newcomers and would refuse to answer direct questions, or would even knock anyone down who seemed too curious. They would also talk freely among themselves, without much concern for who might be listening. Blade listened carefully and gradually built up a picture of what was facing him.
To the east of the Empire of Saram lay two large seas. The Silver Sea, on whose coast Garis lay, was about a thousand miles wide. To the north of it lay the Emerald Sea, about half as wide. The two seas were connected by a wide strait studded with islands, the Strait of Nongai.
On the eastern shore of the Silver Sea lay the Five Sea Kingdoms. They were small and weak. All five of them together had fewer people and less wealth than the Empire of Saram. They were also a long way off, so that the Empire could not do very much to them or they do very much to it.
A hundred years ago, however, matters had been somewhat different. Then the present Imperial dynasty had usurped the throne of Saram from its predecessors. A swarm of exiles fled across the Silver Sea to the Five Kingdoms, led by the heir to the fallen dynasty. The new emperor, Kul-Nam’s grandfather, followed them with a fleet and an army. It was then that the great barracks had been constructed, when the fleet of Saram was five times its present size.
In spite of all the Emperor’s expenditure of men and money and ships, he got nowhere. The Five Kingdoms joined forces for the first and last time in their history and fought like men possessed. Defending their homelands and home waters, they could not be beaten.
Eventually the Emperor recognized that fact. He was also a man from far inland, near the Steppe borders, and not comfortable far out at sea. So he proclaimed that he’d won a great victory, executed anybody who disagreed with him, and sailed for home. He left the Five Kingdoms to rebuild and the exiles to settle down in their new homes.
From that day to this the Empire of Saram and the Five Kingdoms had glowered at each other across the Silver Sea. Kul-Nam’s father had had even less interest in the sea than his father. By the time Kul-Nam himself came to the throne, the Steppemen were moving in force against the borders of Saram. He couldn’t have afforded a war against the Five Kingdoms even if he’d wanted one.
There were also the pirates of the Strait of Nongai. They swarmed out from bases on the islands, roaming the Silver and Emerald Seas and attacking ships and coasts as they pleased. The pirates were the main reason Saram still had a navy at all.
Mostly the pirates attacked the coasts, islands, and ships of the Five Kingdoms. The Empire’s ships and coasts were too well defended by Kul-Nam’s tough professional soldiers. The pirates respected their fighting ability and left them alone as much as possible.
Things were changing, though. As the Steppemen grew more dangerous, more and more soldiers marched away inland to guard the borders of Saram against their raids. The coasts and ships of Saram became more and more vulnerable, a tempting prize for the pirates. They in turn were becoming bolder and bolder, raiding in squadrons and even in fleets, when they’d only sent single ships until a few years before.
So Saram was rebuilding its navy. Able-bodied slaves were pouring into the barracks, old galleys were being repaired, new ones built, supplies and weapons gathered. A fleet was being assembled, the first in generations. When it was completed it would be sailing out looking for battles. Most of the older slaves seemed to expect no trouble finding them.
Blade considered that interesting and encouraging. If there was anything that offered golden opportunities to a slave, it was a pitched battle. If he were quick-witted and lucky, he could make himself valuable enough to win his freedom. If he were even quicker witted and a good deal luckier, he might find a chance to escape.
After a week, the new arrivals were taken out and assigned to galleys.
The galleys of Saram were all single-decked vessels, swinging thirty to fifty oars on each side, with two or three slave rowers on each oar. They also had two square-rigged masts and relied more on the wind than on their oars except in battle.
At bow and stern were mounted one large gun and several small ones. From the bow also jutted a massive iron and timber ram. Except for the bow and stern decks and cabins, the galleys were completely open, like gigantic rowboats. The slaves were chained to benches, exposed day and night to the sun, the wind, and the spray. Down the center line of the ship and on either side ran narrow gangways. Along them moved the slavemasters with their trumpets and whips. With a hundred soldiers and sailors and two or three hundred slaves aboard, a galley was packed solidly from bow to stern and from side to side.
The slavemasters and officers were not brutal or sadistic. They did not pointlessly neglect or mistreat the rowers any more than a Home Dimension sailor would have neglected a piece of machinery. But they were vigilant, well trained, and thoroughly ruthless in dealing with rebels. The first sign of weakness or insubordination meant a flogging. Too many slips meant being thrown overboard. The sea around Garis swarmed with enormous sharks, and a man overboard seldom lasted more than a minute.
Blade kept his temper and kept at his work, so that he was never flogged and seldom lashed at all. The food was coarse, but there was more than enough of it to maintain his strength.
Blade’s galley was named Kukon, which was the untranslatable name for a common sea bird. Although Blade’s brain automatically translated whatever he heard in this Dimension into English, he was never able to find an English equivalent for the galley’s name. It was one of the few times the alteration of his brain as he passed into a new Dimension had not been complete. For a little while it bothered him; then he had too much else to think about.
Day after day he labored at his oar. Day after day Kukon slipped out of the harbor of Garis for maneuvers in the open sea. Sometimes she went out alone. Most of the time she went out with four or five other galleys. Once the whole fleet went out together, fifty galleys strong, and held a mock battle that suddenly became much too realistic. Two of the galleys rammed each other. One promptly sank, the chained slaves drowning at the oars and most of the sailors and soldiers being eaten by the sharks. The other limped back to harbor, thirty dead men on her decks and the slaves on the lower benches up to their waists in water.
Blade rowed back that evening in a grim frame of mind. He’d been forcibly reminded of his precarious existence as one of Kul-Nam’s galley slaves. He might survive for months at Kukon’s oars. He might also die in the next accident or the first battle if his luck ran out. He had to regain his freedom as soon as possible. When would that be?
As Kukon was being hauled into her berth by the gang of dock slaves, Blade noticed a cluster of men standing on the pier. They were under guard, but they carried seabags and wore sailor’s clothes and no chains. One of their guards hailed Kukon’s captain.
«Ahoy, Kukon! Here’s your new lads. Six sailors, a carpenter, a cook’s mate. Free all.»
The captain nodded and waved back. Kukon bumped alongside the pier and her gangplank slammed down on the stones. The guards barked out commands and the eight men scuttled forward, up the gangplank and onto the galley’s deck.
The bo’sum met them as they came, counting them off. «Sailor-sailor-sailor-carpenter-sailor-sailor-cook’s mate-«
Blade stared at the cook’s mate. The man was big, as wide as Blade and nearly as tall. He moved slowly, though, as if he’d recently been hurt or sick. Over one shoulder he carried a long-handled axe. The other arm rode in a sling, the elbow stiff and wrapped in heavy bandages that had once
been white.
Blade stared again, then accepted what he saw as fact. Unmistakably, the new cook’s mate was Dzhai, the man he’d fought in Duke Boros’ camp in the forest, the man he’d crippled, the man who owed his life to Blade’s mercy.
Chapter 11
Blade had no idea how Dzhai had wound up aboard Kukon. Was it pure coincidence, or had someone-possibly Duke Boros-been behind it? It didn’t really matter. The important thing was that Dzhai was aboard Kukon, free, and with a weapon in his hand.
Also one in his belt. Blade’s second look at Dzhai told him the man still wore Blade’s commando knife. That meant Blade had a chance of getting it back and returning it to Home Dimension. He’d resigned himself until now to having seen the last of it.
Nothing would come of this if Dzhai didn’t recognize Blade, or if he recognized him and showed it too openly. That would be a disaster, ending with Blade and Dzhai both going overboard to make a dinner for the sharks. Blade knew he could keep his own face straight. He only hoped Dzhai could do the same.
The arrival of Dzhai and the other new sailors seemed to be a signal for an even heavier training schedule. Kukon and the other galleys spent nearly every daylight hour of the next week at sea. Then they went out and stayed for three solid days, lying-to on their oars at night.
Dzhai gave no sign of recognizing Blade, but Blade had plenty of chances to watch the man in action. His right arm was clearly crippled for life, and apparently still caused him considerable pain. But that didn’t stop him from doing a full day’s work with his left arm. He could balance a log of firewood on end, then split it squarely down the middle with a single one-handed axe blow. He could empty a forty-pound sack of grain into a boiling pot of porridge, then stir it steadily for half an hour. He could swing a cleaver and chop ten-pound chunks out of a log of salted pork.
