Танит Ли: Anackire

And I, too, live .

The men in the black galleys rocking above Lan, having seen nothing sensational, were bewildered.

There had been unseasonal storms that day, the winds casting from all directions. When night entered the world, a soundless calm drew in, as curiously unnatural as the turbulence before. In the heavy blackness the stars exhaled their glare. The moon came up from the hollow ocean. It was like some nightfall of history, aeons old.

The men in the two black galleys, hesitated uneasily and listened to the emptiness and stared out at the stars. The ships were the command of Dhaker Opal-Eye. The third of their number had gone down at Karith, when Dorthar sent Free Zakoris back into the water. Such orders as Dhaker received had then dispatched his crews to Karmiss. Dhaker had objected. His own ship carried a passenger of whose identity King Yl was informed. A Karmian of stature, relevant to Karmiss’ present predicament. The Karmians might attempt to help—or at least to capture—this man. But Dhaker had no desire to reveal at large his prisoner’s name. Evasive, he could get no purchase on the obstinacy of the Free Zakorian command then licking wounds off Ommos. So, his ships turned for Karmiss, and skirted her. Dhaker had reckoned to join the Leopard’s forces at Okris delta.

Rough weather caught them less than fifty miles from their objective. They sought to ride it out, but were blown instead, disordered, into the east.

There were weird coronas in the storm. Fires came to perch along the masts and rails. Dhaker had beheld such wonders before. He kept his soldiers busy, and gave them wine and beer, and sent beer down to the slaves. In the evening, the squall had almost parted the two ships, but the abrupt leveling of the sea brought them together again.

Then came the mystery of darkness and open water.

A few hours after, there arose a wailing from the slaves. Someone had been possessed by bad dreams, now they were all catching it like plague. The steady hiss of the whips eventually doused this noise.

“They say Rom walks over the ocean, a giant, with the moon in his hand.”

“I’ve not seen him,” said Dhaker. “Not even with my missing eye.”

Suddenly, he was moved to visit his guest.

It was dark as night, but starless, in the lowest closed place of the ship. This underdeck, counterbalance to the tall stack of the vessel above, lay below the waterline, beneath the rowing positions. It might be utilized as cargo hold, or as dungeon. Dungeon now it was. The prisoner, naked but for hair and filth, sprawled there unmoving, till the Zakorian’s lamp and feet found him out.

“Well, my lord,” said Dhaker, “did you enjoy the storm?”

Kesarh, bloody and bruised on the rusty chains that, during the upheaval, had obviously slammed him over and again into the thick ribs of the ship, looked up at him. The black eyes still had cold heat in them. They should have been filmed over, if not blind. Dhaker’s surgeon had pulled the lashes out, repeatedly. Yet, through the caked blood, the cold heat and the sight continued.

Dhaker liked this unquenchable quality. It would make Kesarh more difficult, therefore more interesting, to kill.

“Istris was in splinters, the last I heard,” said Dhaker. “Does that make you sad?”

But Kesarh’s emotions were well-chained up, you saw, like his body.

Dhaker kicked him, lightly, in the mouth. A side tooth had been broken earlier, and Dhaker had allowed them to cut the lobes from the prisoner’s ears. These he had then sent to Yl as token, with the message of capture. That was sufficient for now.

Dhaker went up again, noting on his way that the rowers had stayed restless after their discipline.

The night was fine, and Dorthar comparatively near.

It was after midnight when the horns mooed.

Some twenty ships of Free Zakoris had appeared in their path, seeming to have been storm-thrown as they were, off course, and heading back northwestward.

Dhaker’s pair of galleys rowed in among their brothers.

Not a man but was struck immediately by the silence, almost idleness of every neighboring deck.

Most of the sails were taken in, but here and there one hung from the yard, torn by the gales. The torches of Dhaker’s ships picked out on these remnants a muddy smear no longer recognizable as the war Leopard.

Dhaker’s galley came up with the flotilla’s lead ship. Like all the rest, she was poorly lit. The men on her deck stood like pillars, or went about their work as if drugged.

“To Dorthar?” Dhaker shouted out, not bothering with intermediaries.

When the call was answered, Dhaker was amazed.

The Free Zakorians were not bound for Dorthar. The war was— abandoned . They went home to Yl’s kingdom, in Thaddra.

“Are you mad?” Dhaker bellowed. He seized a rope and would have swung over, but their captain had come on deck now, and gestured him away.

“Not madness. The gods spoke to us.”

“Gods—you mean some augury—”

“Rom, and Zarduk. Their heads brushing the sun. I have seen it myself. He spoke to me, and his voice was intense. We’re to live in Thaddra. We were told. The sword’s broken.”

“Crazy. This one is crazy.” Dhaker looked at his men, who gazed in awe at the silent ships all about them, setting their inexorable course for Thaddra.

The barren dialogue was abrogated, and Dhaker’s vessels drew away.

The black flotilla with its anonymous sails went drifting on, a phantom thing, dumb and demoniac as the night it vanished into.

In the world there were days and alternating periods of sunlessness, there were hours and minutes, scenes and the responses to scenes, and weather. Below, in the underdeck, there were none of these things. There was blackness, the shackles, stench, the taste of stench, or of blood, the dull noises of the ship. Being thrown against the ribbed kernel of the dungeon, that was military engagement or a storm. Daybreak was seldom, and only a lamp. The various tortures had served in the beginning as a means of telling time—the crescendo of pain, the pain’s slow ebbing. But now pain was universal and constant and varying—the gnawing of the fractured tooth, the bite of the chains in the raw wounds they had made. It was no longer helpful.

One could think, of course, and frequently lose consciousness. Like a hibernating animal or a sick animal, Kesarh had this trick. Awake, he was never completely lucid, and knew it. All the same, he had not surrendered. He expected to outlast this misfortune, though he had neither fantasies of sudden rescue nor of an act of gods, in whom he did not believe. Nor, since he did not believe in a god within, did he presume himself capable of some feat of self-deliverance. His optimism, if such it could even be termed, had no roots therefore in fact.

His resistance was his will, stronger than all the rest of his many strengths.

He refused to finish here and in this way. Could not conceive of it.

That conversation which had taken place between the Leopard ships by night had not, obviously, been relayed below. Yet there was some insubstantial whiff of it to be sensed. Soon, if timelessly, other awarenesses swirled through the timbers. The slave-rowers picked them up, became fractious or terrified. The sharp screams of men under the less tolerable of the whips grew nearly ceaseless.

In a quintet of days—unseen, unknown: Above—Dhaker’s vessels had had other meetings. Some of these were with Free Zakorians beating a way from Karmiss, as Rorn had instructed them. They babbled of prodigies and were gone. Later, a brace of Kumaian vessels appeared around a headland, for they were in sight of the Dortharian coast by now. Outnumbered, but wild for a fight, Dhaker’s galleys had turned to attack, but the ships of Dorthar avoided and eluded them.