Troy Denning - The Obsidian Oracle

“What are you doing?” Tithian asked, alarmed.

“Agis warn Fylo you try another trick,” the giant answered, squeezing the king so tightly that he could not draw breath. “Agis say leave you here.”

“You can’t betray me!”

“Fylo get even before he go to live on Lybdos,” the giant chortled. “Good-bye, friend. ”

He flicked the king’s head with his huge index finger, and Tithian felt himself settling into a gray haze.

In the shallow trough between two dust swells lay the severed bow of a Balican schooner. It rested on its side, blanketed by a gray mantle of silt, its bowsprit rising into the air at a shallow angle. On the hull lay a man, fully exposed to the crimson sun and as still as the sea itself.

“There he is!” Agis cried.

The noble pointed toward the debris. Kester, standing with him and Nymos on the Shadow Viper’s quarterdeck, turned her heavy brow to the caravel’s port side. Her eyes quickly fell on the wreckage, for the day was a calm one, almost barren of wind and more stifling than a kiln.

“Yer sure that’s him?” the tarek asked.

Although the distance was too great to see the prone man’s features clearly, Agis nodded. “I haven’t seen any other survivors, and Fylo promised that he’d leave Tithian where I could find him.” The caravel began to slide down the dust swell’s slip face, and the noble added, “Bring us alongside.”

The tarek shook her head. “He looks dead.”

“Living or not, I’m taking him back to Tyr.”

“Not on the Shadow Viper ,” said Kester. “Ye hired me to capture a live man, not a dead one. I’ll not have his spirit plaguing me ship.”

“Then I won’t pay you for the trip home,” the noble threatened.

“Ye will pay-or I’ll set ye off over there!” She pointed at a scrub-covered island less than a mile away.

Agis shook his head. “Our agreement was that you’d help me capture Tithian-and it doesn’t matter whether he’s alive or dead.”

Kester reached for a knife, but Nymos interposed himself between the tarek and the noble. “This is foolish,” said the sorcerer, his blind eyes focused on neither of them. “Why don’t we go and see what Tithian’s condition is? If he’s not drawing breath, then you can argue.”

“A prudent suggestion,” said Agis.

Kester scowled for a moment longer. Then she shrugged her shoulders. “I’ll bring us about.”

The tarek turned her attention to the main deck, where the ship’s canvas hung furled to the yardarms. Twenty crewmen toiled along each gunnel, thrusting wooden poles, each as tall as a giant, into the silt alongside the ship. After the long rods touched the shallow strait’s bottom, the haggard slaves marched sternward, pushing the caravel along at a mekillot’s pace. To keep everyone in step, the first man in each line chanted a deep-throated dirge, “Push-ho, push-ho, push-ho or die.”

As the two singers reached the quarterdeck, they changed the chant. “Stop ye, stop ye, time to rest, mate!”

Both lines of slaves halted and withdrew their poles from the dust. After everyone had stopped moving, the man at the front of each group cried, “Front now, front now, to work with ye!” This sent them all scurrying forward to plunge their poles into the dust and start over again.

When the Shadow Viper’s bow reached the bottom of the dust swell, Kester braced herself against the gunnel and yelled, “Hard to port, Perkin!”

The helmsman spun his wheel, and the slaves along the left gunnel withdrew their poles from the silt. The caravel pivoted so rapidly that Agis had to grab Nymos’s arm to prevent the reptile from tumbling overboard. Despite the sharp turn, the noble could see that the bow would plow into the next dust swell before the ship completed the maneuver.

Growling in anger, Kester leaped past her shipfloater and took a long whip off the rail. She jumped down onto the main deck and savagely lashed at the men on the port side. Each time the scourge’s tail popped, a slave howled in pain and a welt rose on his naked back.

“I said hard to port !” the tarek yelled.

The port-side slaves angled their poles forward and pushed, as though trying to move the ship backward. The Shadow Viper’s bow snapped around instantly, the bowsprit just missing the next dust swell. Kester continued to lash her crew members, cursing their slow response and making sure to open a cut on the back of every man in line.

Agis went down to Kester’s side and laid a restraining hand on her whip. “Don’t you think that’s enough?” he asked. “It’s bad enough to crew your ship with slaves, but they don’t deserve such abuse.”

Kester bared her fangs. “This is my ship,” she snarled. Her breath was rancid, for long journeys were difficult on the tarek’s system. Instead of live lizards or snakes, she ate salted and dried meats which were only slightly better for her than the moldering faro her human crew ate. Agis suspected that the tarek’s diet fouled more than her digestive system, for Kester’s temperament had been growing steadily worse since leaving Balic. “I’ll run her as I like.”

“Not while you’re under my hire,” Agis replied, taking the whip from the tarek’s big hand.

“These men were convicts before they became slaves,” said Nymos, speaking from the rail of the quarterdeck. His milky eyes were focused blankly in the air above Agis’s head. “They deserve what Kester gives them-and they owe their lives to her.”

“That’s right,” agreed Kester. “Everyone of ’em would have had his heart cut out in the arena if not for my purse.”

“Saving a man doesn’t give you the right to brutalize him,” countered the noble, returning to the quarterdeck with the whip. “I won’t stand for it-not even from the captain of a ship.”

Kester followed him. As he returned the whip to its peg, she pointed at the flotsam ahead and asked, “I suppose what ye’ve planned for your friend isn’t brutal?”

The Shadow Viper was so close to the wreck that Agis could see Tithian lying on his face, his long braid of auburn hair coiled over one shoulder.

“I have nothing planned for Tithian, except to take him back to answer for his crimes,” replied the noble.

“And to find out what he and Andropinis are doing,” Nymos added. “Your aversion to brutality had better not keep you from loosening his tongue.”

“There are other ways to make Tithian speak,” replied Agis. “Besides, no amount of pain can make him tell the truth if he doesn’t want to.”

“Especially not if he’s dead,” added Kester. The tarek’s eyes were fixed to the starboard of the Shadow Viper’s bow, which was just passing alongside Tithian’s motionless body. She allowed her ship to creep forward a few more yards, then barked, “Dead stop!”

The crewmen lifted their poles, then angled the long shafts forward and plunged them back into the dust. The caravel lurched to a stop, its quarterdeck just aft of the derelict. The starboard slaves peered down on the wreck in weary silence, studying Tithian’s inert form.

Kester jumped off the quarterdeck and grabbed a long plank. She pushed it through a slot in the bottom of the gunnel, guiding it toward the wrecked bow. Motioning Agis to the plank, she said, “Ye be careful. Just because the silt’s shallow and the hull rests on the bottom doesn’t mean she won’t shift. If ye fall in, there’ll be nothing we can do to save ye.”

“What about tying a rope around my waist?” Agis asked, climbing over the gunnel.

“I told ye once, I’ll not have any corpses on me ship,” Kester replied testily. “By the time we dragged ye back, yer lungs would be full of silt.”