Alan Akers - Krozair of Kregen

“I believe,” said Fazhan, staring about, “that we are to go up to be zygites this day.”

It certainly looked like it. The dust from the stockade compound rose thickly as hundreds of pairs of naked feet stamped. The blue of mountains rose inland, and the sky showed that hint of fair weather that heartens the hard-bitten soul of a sailorman. I wanted no trouble. We had been working on our chains. I had experience to go on. The Kataki had the experience of the master slaver, the man to whom the guiles of slaves seeking escape were known as a part of his business. And Fazhan and Lorgad worked at our directions. So I wanted us to stay together, and not to create problems. We waited in long rows, our chains clanking as men shifted position. The Suns of Scorpio rose over the hills and flooded down their mingled streaming light. I stretched and felt my muscles pull. I was in superb physical shape; but I could have done with more food, as could all of us. A commotion broke out among the slaves to our right.

I heard a bull voice bellowing, and abruptly a whip-Deldar catapulted into the air, turning over and over, his whip thonged to his wrist whirling. He landed flat on his back amid a splash of dust. The slaves cheered. The smashing voice shouted:

“By Zogo the Hyrwhip! You zigging cramph! I’ll break your back! Duh, I’ll rip your guts out and-”

Dragging the other three, I was running.

The bellow smashed out again, louder, roaring with fury.

“Duh — by Zair! You’ll not walk again, rast!”

“Hold, Dak — what is it?” And, “You rast, haul back!” And, “By Rhapaporgolam the Reaver of Souls, you are mad!”

The three of them, I hauled along. The dust, the yells, the confusion, the stink. . I bundled headlong into the thick of the confusion.

A second whip-Deldar screamed with gap-toothed mouth, glaring unbelievingly at his left arm, which dangled with broken bones protruding pinkish white. Slaves stumbled out of my way. I bashed on to the center and there — standing like a mountain, like a mammoth beset by wolves, a boloth beset by werstings — stood Duhrra.

His bald head already grew a bristly fuzz like all of us. His dangling scalplock had gone. His naked body showed all the splendid musculature of the wrestler. His idiot-seeming face was contorted into a hideous scowl, and I sighed, for Duhrra was normally the most peaceable of men unless someone upset him. Once riled he was like to tear your head off. On the ground at his feet and chained to him lay a young man. A youth; barely come to his full growth, his body showed the promise of a superb physique. He was not unconscious, but a thread of blood ran from one nostril.

I threw a Rapa away, chopped a couple of apims, kicked a Brokelsh, and so grabbed Duhrra by the arm. He whirled, ready to smash my face in, and I said, low and hard, “Duhrra! Calm down, bring the boy, come with me. Jump!”

He picked up the boy in a single fluid motion of that massive body, and we turned and plunged back into the throng of shouting, excited, dust-stirring slaves. I had to break the neck of the whip-Deldar who reared up, flailing his whip with his right hand, his broken left arm dangling. He had seen us. I knew what would happen if we were detected. As for the other whip-Deldar — I saw a Brokelsh jump full on him and guessed his backbone would not stand the strain.

With Rukker, Fazhan, and Lorgad trailing on the chain, with Duhrra carrying the youth at my side, we bashed our way through the mob until we reached the line as yet undisturbed. I watched for guards, whip-Deldars, and anyone who showed too much interest.

“Put the boy down, Duhrra.”

I bent and scooped up dust, spit on it, wadded it.

“Stand up, lad! Hold yourself straight!”

I shoved the chunk of spittle-wadded dust up his bleeding nostril and then wiped away the blood, licking my fingers. When he looked presentable, and we had knocked the dust from one another — all of us -

I said to them all: “Stand and look stupid. By Zair! That should not be difficult! We know nothing of the disturbance.”

“Duh — Dak-” said Duhrra.

“Quiet, you fambly. Tell me later.”

Rukker, the Kataki, said, “You think fast, Dak, for an apim.”

“Shut your black-fanged wine-spout, Rukker. Here come the guards.”

We all stood there, in our chains, and looked suitably stupid. There was a considerable quantity of confusion lower down, and shouting, and the sound of the whips lashing. Some of the slaves were too stupid in all reality to run off. When order was restored and we were sorted out, the six of us were herded back into Green Magodont and chained down in the middle tier. We were to be zygites, six to a loom, and if the oar-master of the swifter discovered he had two slaves too many, he would give thanks to Green Grodno and smile. As for the swifter from which Duhrra and the lad had come, her oar-master would curse and rave — and I felt damned sure that the oar-master of Green Magodont would continue to say nothing and smile even more broadly. As the quondam first lieutenant of a seventy-four I knew only too well the avariciousness of shellbacked sailormen in the matter of ship supplies — and in the Eye of the World of Kregen, ship supplies included slaves.

Green Magodont, as I had previously observed, was broad enough to accept six oarsmen abreast on a loom. Above our heads on the thranites bank the men were arranged to push and pull, the eight men forming a convenient pattern. This tended to cramp them a little more than us lower tiersmen; but the shipwrights of Magdag had done their sums well so that the leverage and power required on the differently sized oars evened out. So we sat at the loom of the zygite oar. The six of us, from the apostis seat, the outer seat, were: Lorgad the Rapa, Fazhan ti Rozilloi,Vax, Dak, Duhrra of the Days, and Rukker the Kataki.

“Duh — master,” Duhrra had said to me as we sorted ourselves out, “I should take the rowing frame.”

He was fractionally bigger than Rukker.

I said, “Fambly! With that newfangled claw of yours! Next to the gangway! Where you will get lashed more easily!”

“Yes, master.”

“And, for the sweet sake of Mother Zinzu the Blessed! I am not your master!”

“No, master.”

As always when arguing with Duhrra on this point — for he had attached himself to me on the southern shore, when he had lost his right hand, and since then we had had a few skirmishes together and were good comrades — I gave up the argument in a kind of helpless mirth. Even an oar-slave may feel that at times, in the ludicrousness of his position; for, to all the names of the gods in two worlds, it is not a position a sane man can regard without recourse to the black humor of absurdity. Some bustle attended our departure, and we were forced to throw our backs into the work. The captain was evidently in the devil of a hurry. The stockades and the cooking fires were left on the shore so we guessed we’d be back tonight. We pulled. We heaved up on the oar, those on the gangway sides of the long rows of men shoving up, standing up, and then with all the weight of the body and bunched muscles, hurling themselves frenziedly backward onto the bench. The hard wood had to be covered by the straw-stuffed sacks and the ponsho fleeces. Had they not been we would have been red raw in no time, and unfit for rowing. This is not a luxury the overlords of Magdag extend to their oar-slaves, in the matter of ponsho fleeces and sacks; it is a matter of economics and slave-management. The swifter squadron pulled about, it seemed to me, quartering in different directions. I guessed the courses were not set at random. We either searched for another ship, or we wasted a deal of energy. Nothing — apart from the eternal damned pulling — occurred, and we eventually and to our surprise heard the terminal whistles and the final double drumbeat. The oars lifted and were looped and held, locked in the rowing frames, and we slaves slumped, exhausted.