Krozair of Kregen (11 page)

“No!”
The word was shocked from me. I could not stop it.

He glowered at me, half turned, ready to storm off to the forecastle and be among the foremost of the prijikers who would swarm along the beakhead when it thumped down onto the argenter’s deck.

“No? I am a fighting-man. I am — I was, nearly— What do you mean, Dak;
no?”

I couldn’t explain. He was my son. I didn’t want him in the forefront of the most dangerous part of the attack. A prijiker, a stem-fighter, joyed in his honor and glory and danger. I reckoned they were all more mad than other sailors. They bore the most wounds; from their numbers the most men made holes in the sea.

“I want you to be at my side.”

“But why? Do you deny me the glory?”

“There’s no damned glory in getting killed in a stupid render affray!” I roared at him. “It’s only loot out there. Are you so greedy for gold you’d throw your life away?”

He drew himself up in that faintly ridiculous way a young man indicates that he is grown up in his own estimation.

“You cannot stop me from fighting with the prijikers. If I get killed that is my affair.” He swung his sword violently at the argenters. “Anyway, they are enemies of my country.”

We were closing now and the arrows were feathering into the palisade across our forecastle. The beakhead swayed with the onward plunge of the ship. Men crouched up there, ready to spring like leems onto the decks, ready to smash in red fury to victory.

“And is that your marvelous reason?”

“It will do for now!”

And he swung off along the gangway. I glared after him. I knew practically nothing about the way he would act. He was a headstrong and violent youth, suffering under a sense of shame and outrage, carrying a heavy burden of hatred that ate at his pride. But as the fight developed and we smashed into the argenter and the beakhead went down and we roared across her decks, I had to understand that I could not do as I had unthinkingly sought to do. I had acted, I conceived, as any father would act. I did not want my son to go off fighting. But I could not hold him back. His own instincts, his pride, his youthful folly, all impelled him to rush headlong into the thickest of the fight.

Can any father thus shield his son from reality and expect to produce a man?

Sometimes the burdens of fatherhood are too heavy for a simple man to bear. Sometimes, I think, nature should have invented some easier way to carry on the generations. I did not enjoy that fight. I drew the great Krozair longsword and I went up the gangway after Vax, and I bellowed back to Fazhan to conn the ship, and I plunged into the fray like the madman I am, striking viciously left and right, thrusting and hacking, carving a bloody path through those poor devils from Menaham. We took the argenter all right. I had known we would take her. Everyone knew we would take her. It seemed idiotic to me that my son should imperil himself in so obvious a way over so obvious a fight.

But he did.

He was my son.

He was just as big a fool as I am.

When it was over and the flag came fluttering down in a blaze of blue and green and the shouts of “Hai!” rose, I saw that Vax, although splashed with blood, was unharmed. He had fought magnificently. I had been near him and there had been no single time when I had had to intervene. He could handle himself in a fight, that was plain. I knew he had been under training with the Krozairs of Zy. Their wonderful Disciplines had molded him well. He must, I guessed, have been very near to the time when he would have been accepted into the Order as a full member and have been allowed to prefix that proud
Pur
to his name.

But, all the same, despite his prowess, I was mighty glad when the fighting ceased.

Vax it was who spotted the danger to
Pearl,
ahead of us. He sprang onto the forecastle of the argenter and waved his sword.

“Pearl!
Pur Naghan’s in trouble!”

The swifter had wallowed around and broken a number of her starboard oars. The fighting on her decks looked confused. Men were spilling over into the water. There was no time to be lost.

We pulled up and launched ourselves afresh into the fray, battling up with
Pearl’s
men to take the Menaheem by surprise and so overpower their last resistance.

“Thank Zair you appeared, Dak!” panted Pur Naghan. His mail had been ripped and blood showed on his shoulder. “They fight well, these Menaham sailors.”

“Bloody Menahem,” said Vax. “I owe them.”

“You owe a lot of people, it seems, Vax,” I said.

He scowled at me, his brown eyes bright, his face flushed.

“Do you mock me, Dak?”

“Mock? Now, why should you think that?”

“If you do—”

Duhrra appeared, immense, his idiot-seeming face creased.

“You do — uh — seem to poke fun, master.”

I knew that Duhrra regarded Vax as an oar-comrade, and this gladdened me. I realized I had gone far enough.

I glanced over the side.

“And while we prattle Rukker has boarded the last argenter.”

The cunning Kataki had taken the first ship, and then pulled out and dropped down to the last. Now he had two prizes.

Pur Naghan said, “We will share this one, Dak, of course.”

Vax favored me with a scowl and took himself off. I bellowed the necessary orders and we took possession of our prizes. There were only three. Rukker’s first impetuous attack with the ram had so holed the argenter that she was visibly sinking. A great deal of hustle took place as the goods were brought up and whipped across to the swifter. Chests and boxes, for they contained treasure, were favored over merchandise.

Soon the three swifters and the three argenters began the voyage back to the island of Wabinosk. We called in at our usual island stopovers and met with no untoward incidents.

We pulled with a fine reserve of manpower.

The argenters were sailed by scratch crews and we held fair winds almost all the way, only having to tow the sailing vessels twice in calms.

At the island hideout we inspected our spoils. The ship taken by
Pearl
and ourselves contained mostly sacks of dried mergem, whereat I felt greatly amused. This seemed to indicate Thyllis was in want of food for her people. Our ship contained a quantity of the fine tooled and worked leather for which Magdag is famous. As well there were sacks of chipalines and also, to my surprise, many wicker baskets loaded with crossbow bolts. These were uniformly of fine quality. I guessed they had been manufactured by the slaves and workers of the warrens, those people who, downtrodden and accursed, I had attempted to free, only in the moment of victory to be whisked away by the Star Lords and to leave them to defeat and continued enslavement. I picked up one of the iron quarrels and turned it over in my fingers. Yes, this was a fine artifact, and it should by rights be driven from a crossbow to lodge in the black heart of an overlord of Magdag. Had we not intercepted it, the bolt might well have battered its way into the heart of a Vallian.

Of the cargo carried in the ship Rukker had taken we were concerned only with the treasure.

It seemed fitting to me that all gold and silver and precious gems should be heaped into a great and glittering pile and then be shared out equally, portion by portion according to the Articles.

Maybe I was naive in this belief. Rukker’s ship had carried the majority of the treasure paid by King Genod for the Hamalese fliers and flyers. The saddle-birds and vollers had fetched extraordinarily high prices. I lifted a heap of golden oars and let them trickle through my fingers back to the glittering mass within the iron-bound lenken chest. This was what Thyllis needed. Her treasury must have been sorely used by the war and now, twenty-odd years after, she was busily building up her reserves so as once again to send sky-spanning fleets against Pandahem and Vallia.

With these thoughts in my mind I went to the meeting with Rukker and the others of our people in positions of authority and found myself not one whit surprised that the Kataki claimed all the treasure he had taken for himself. I was not prepared to argue. I wanted to place my son Vax in safety and then see again King Genod. Only after that could I begin to think again about what to do to free myself from the prison of the inner sea.

“You may keep what you claim, Rukker. If you can maintain your hold on it. For I do not renounce either my claim or the rightful claim of my people.”

He did not sneer at me; but his look, brooding and dark, held calculation. “I take note of your words, Dak the Proud. But I think you will be hard pressed to take what you claim.”

Vax bristled and shook off Duhrra’s hand and barged forward.

“I do not renounce—” he began.

“Keep quiet, Vax,” I said.

“By what right do you—” he blustered.

I looked at him.

Duhrra said, “The master speaks sooth, Vax.” And then the old devil added, “I think you needed a father to teach you the ways of life — duh! You will get yourself spitted if you go on like this.”

“Should I care, Duhrra?”

When my son said those words I felt the hand of ice clench around my heart.

Rukker broke the awkwardness, booming out in his coarse Kataki way, “You sail for Zandikar. Well and good, for, by Takroti, I am sick of all this quibbling.” He glared around, yet he was in a high good humor. “I will sail with you and from thence back to the Sea of Onyx. With this treasure I can alter certain events at home.”

So it was settled. The local Renders were only too pleased to see us go, for not only had we beaten off their attacks on us, after the first flush of welcome, in our operations we had shown them up almost humiliatingly. The four swifters and the three argenters made a nice little squadron, sailing east, cutting through the blue waters of the Eye of the World, sailing for Zandikar.

Rukker does not speak of his seamanship

A man who has but two score years and ten to look forward to, and perhaps a little longer for good behavior, is filled with the thrusting desire to be up and doing — or he should be if he has any sense. To a Kregan with about two hundred years of life to use to explore experiences on his wild and wonderful planet, the desire to be up and doing burns no less strongly; but the Kregan can contemplate with equanimity the passing of a few seasons in doing something outside the mainstream of his life. Rukker the Kataki, as vicious and intemperate a Kregan as they come, made nothing of spending the time we had among the Renders of the inner sea. These little side excursions transform life for a Kregan. I, too, with a thousand years of life to use, shared much of that attitude, even though I had not thrown off the ways of the planet of my birth.

This trip to Zandikar to see my son Vax safe was a mere side-jaunt. I did not forget that in this jaunt Delia, Vax’s mother, would concur wholeheartedly with what I was doing.

So we sailed past those mist-swathed coasts of mystery. The Eye of the World contains many areas that remain unknown, shores of faerie and romance, as well as shores of danger and horror. We pulled across the blue waters, from island to island, dropping down to coast most of the way in easy stages, venturing out across wide bays where the portolanos told us we would fetch the opposite headland in good time. I felt no sense of frustration. I was fascinated by Vax. This journey would have been a good time to become acquainted. How I longed to ask him for all the details of his life!

Even the man I was then understood that children have their own secret areas sacrosanct from their parents’ understanding. But I hungered to know more of Vax, and through him, more of my other children. And, of course, most of all, to hear about my Delia.

I might explore the Eye of the World. I was debarred from exploring my son’s life.

Duhrra did as I asked and would often regale me with tidbits of information he had gleaned. I slowly built up a picture. Vax would freely admit he did not come from the inner sea, and once he had indicated to Duhrra that he had learned much from the Krozairs of Zy and would soon have been admitted to membership of that august Order; he did not tell anyone he came from Vallia and Valka.

“Whatever his father did, Dak,” said Duhrra, pulling the fingers of his right hand into the right shape to clasp a flagon of Chremson, “Vax felt he could no longer continue with the Krozairs. Duh — anyone who gets that close must be remarkable. The Krozairs—” He picked up the flagon but did not drink, looking thoughtful, as is proper when mention is made of the Krozairs of Zair. “Duh — they put ice and iron into a man, by the Magic Staff of Buzro! No wonder he detests his old man.”

“No wonder,” I said, and turned away.

A commotion boiled up in Rukker’s
Vengeance Mortil
and we all looked across the bright water. The sail billowed and crackled and then blew forward. The mast bent and bowed and came down with a run. We could hear the passionate yelling over there. I said, quite gently, to Fazhan ti Rozilloi, my ship-Hikdar, “Put the helm over, Fazhan. We must make a beaching. Rukker has proved once again that he is no sailor.”

“Aye, Dak,” said Fazhan, with a laugh. Rukker might be a ferocious and malevolent Kataki — with yet a spark of common decent humanity surprisingly in him — but, all the same, an old shellbacked sailorman would laugh at him for his woeful lack of seamanship and understanding of the sea.

Vengeance Mortil
might quite easily have continued under oar-power and certainly Rukker would have no thought for the well-being of his oar-slaves. We had ghosted through the islands and were now making southerly toward the southeasterly sweeping arm of the inner sea past Zimuzz. Astern we had left Zy, that famous extinct volcanic island cone set boldly within the jaws of the Sea of Swords. The coast here was seldom visited. A triangularly lobed bay southward received the waters of the River Zinkara, running from the Mountains of Ilkenesk. On the Zinkara stood the city of Rozilloi. Fazhan had heaved up a sigh when our calculations showed us we passed that longitude special to him. Zandikar lay some sixty dwaburs farther to the east. We could hope for a wind. So we set about beaching the swifters and anchoring the argenters and removing the weights. We made camp and prepared ourselves for what might come.