Krozair of Kregen

Chapter one-3

I do not laugh, as you know, nor smile readily. I kept my ugly old face as hard as a bower anchor as Rukker, the Kataki, said, “He was flogging me, not you, apim.”

“If you wish him to continue I will call him back for you.”

“By the Triple Tails of Targ the Untouchable! Were you a Kataki I would understand!”

Fazhan leaned forward and looked up past me. “But for this apim Dak, you would have been beaten, Rukker.”

“I know it. But it would be best if you did not mention it again.”

“Ah,” said Fazhan ti Rozilloi, “but it is worth the telling, by Zantristar the Merciful!”

The swifter shook and a shudder passed through her fabric. In the next instant, to the accompaniment of distant hailing above decks, we all understood we had pushed off from the wharf. A long, slow gentle rocking made us all aware that we had been cast off into our new life. Until the oars were in, the swifter would possess this gentle rocking motion, for she was of large enough build to remain steady in the water without her wings.

Rukker the Kataki and Fazhan ti Rozilloi glared for a space longer at each other, then I stuck my old carved beak head between them and said, “If we are to pull together it will be easier if we do not try to fight one another all the time.”

Rukker nodded. He was a man accustomed to instant decision.

“You say you understand these infernal things. Tell me.”

“You have never sailed in a swifter?”

“Aye, a few times. But I sat in the captain’s cabin and drank wine and the way of the vessel did not concern me.”

“It concerns you now,” said Fazhan.

“Aye, that is why I would learn of it.”

“All you need to know,” I said, and I spoke heavily, “is that you will pull the oar, and go on pulling the oar, until you are dead. All else will mean nothing.”

“Where are these oars, then?”

“We are being towed out from the cothon through the narrow channel. It is too narrow otherwise. Once in the outer harbor we will receive our oars from the oar-hulk. They will arrive soon enough, bringing misery and torment, and for some, a happy release in death.”

Rukker mused on this. His dark Kataki face scowled.

“You appear to me to be a man, Dak — of sorts. I will allow you to assist me in my escape.”

Fazhan gurgled a little cynical laugh; but it was not a laugh a refined lady would recognize. Oar-slaves do not often have either the opportunity or the reason for laughing.

We bumped and the swifter rocked, and then we bumped again and remained still. We had been moored up to the oar-hulk. Noises began from forward, spurting through the confined space, hollow, echoing. Hangings and scrapings, and at least two shrill yells. It was common for a slave to be crushed or injured when the oars came inboard. We waited for our turn and we did not have long to wait, for we pulled six oars from the bows. A sudden shaft of suns-light speared through the oar port as the sliding cover went back. Sailors busied themselves — hard, adventurous, callous men — hauling the oars in, adjusting the set and balance, cursing the slaves who brought down the round lead counterweights. The oar shoved past Xelnon the Xaffer, past Fazhan ti Rozilloi, past me, Dak, and so past Rukker the Kataki. The loom end was inserted into the rowing frame, which was hinged up to receive it, and locked, and the counterweight was hung on and locked in its turn. The four of us sat, looking at that immense bar of wood before us. The carpenters followed to affix the manette, which we would grasp, for the loom itself was of too great a girth.

I had noticed immediately on boarding the swifter that she smelled clean. She smelled of vinegar and pungent ibroi and soap.

She was not a new vessel, this Green Magodont; but she had been in for a refit and was now as sweetly clean as she would ever be. All that was about to change.

Amid the usual barrage of curses and yells, slaves came running along the grated decks and hurled sacks of straw and ponsho fleeces at us. Men scrabbled for well-filled sacks, for fleeces that did not appear too mangy. Rukker hauled in half a dozen and the slave yelped; Rukker knocked him back and examined sack after sack. He took a fine-filled one and as he discarded the others, I snatched up the best and threw them along to Xelnon and Fazhan. The fleeces were likewise gone through, and the slave, jittering with fear, reviled by the other oar-slaves opposite us, squealed at Rukker to let him have back those he did not want.

“Quiet, kleesh,” said Rukker, and the slave shook.

A marine, his shortsword out, walked up along the grated deck and I looked forward, not without interest, to a little action; but Rukker hurled the last sack back and cursed. The marine chivied the slave along and he went off to throw the fleeces down to the next set of oar-slaves. We were all busy spreading the fleeces over the sacks, arranging them. Already I had nipped three nits under my thumbnail. Green Magodont was no longer a clean swifter. I glanced up at Rukker.

“You were allowed the pick of the sacks, Rukker, because you have a tail. I understand that. But do not think to take the best of everything the four of us are issued with.”

He might have bellowed his head off then; but a whip-Deldar ran along, not hitting us but cracking his lash in the air with a sound most doleful and menacing, violent and frightening. He impressed us poor naked slaves, he impressed us mightily.

“Silence!” shouted the whip-Deldar. “The first man to speak will get ol’ snake — I promise you.”

I did not speak.

No one else spoke.

We had learned one elementary lesson we would not forget.

A deal of confused shouting bellowed down from aloft. I, who had been a swifter captain of the inner sea, could understand what was going on — but only to some extent. I knew these oar-slaves with me on the lowest tier, the thalamite bank, were raw, untrained, useless. I could not understand why the oar-master had ordered our oars fixed and threaded — that is, placed in the rowing frames. Presently, amid a deal of noise and confusion, fresh sailors and slaves poured below and took the oars from the rowing frames, slid the oar-port covers back, and we all had our first lesson in pushing the oar looms forward so that the looms lay as close to the hull as they would go, which brought the outer portions and the blades close to the outside hull. The thalamites were not trusted to pull yet, and Green Magodont would begin her journey with only the two upper banks pulling.

We heard the orders, the whistles, the sudden deathly silence in the ship. Then the preparatory whistle, and then the twin beat from the drum-Deldar, the bass, and tenor, thumping out. We heard the creak of the upper oars, the splash of water as they dug in. We all felt the swifter surge forward, slowly at first, but gathering momentum. All rocking ceased and the swifter struck a straight, sure path out through the harbor, out past the Pharos, out from vile Magdag into the Eye of the World. Wherever we were going, we were on our way.