Джеффри Лорд: Pirates Of Gohar

Blade tried to talk to the pirate chief as much as he could without danger to either himself or the prisoner. Unfortunately he got only a small reward for many hours of frustrating work. He learned the pirate chief's name, a collection of syllables Blade mentally organized into «Khraishamo.» He learned that the pirate chief hadn't expected to meet a full convoy with a crack galley escorting it. Blade asked why he'd gone ahead and attacked when he saw the strength of the opposition, but Khraishamo refused to answer that. Blade had the impression that he was ashamed of something, and not just the mistake he'd made in attacking or the defeat he'd suffered.

Khraishamo did drop a few hints about life at home, which more or less confirmed Blade's suspicions about the Sarumi. The poverty of their homeland and their increasing population were driving them to sea. At the same time, nomadic horsemen on the plains to the west of the Sea were driving them farther and farther out onto the Peninsula. Each year they had less and less secure land, fewer and fewer villages where a child could be sure of growing up in peace.

«Why don't you take up the bow?» asked Blade. «It's an ideal weapon for defending rough ground against horsemen. They make fine targets, and your people can-«

«My people-they will not use a coward's weapon,» said Khraishamo. He spoke as firmly as a king handing down a judgment from the throne.

Blade frowned. He hoped the Pirate Folk didn't carry their notions of honor to the suicidal extreme of rejecting an effective weapon because it was «cowardly.» He also knew he'd better drop the subject. He would hardly endear himself to the Goharans by urging their worst enemies to take up the bow!

Learning this much from Khraishamo took Blade five days. After that the pirate chief refused to speak to anyone, even when the sailors stopped giving him a bucket of sea water each day to pour over himself. It was Captain Nemyet who finally noticed that the pirate's skin was looking puffy and his eyes were swollen and nearly as red as his skin. After that Khraishamo got his daily bucket again.

«The Bloodskins must have been sea creatures once,» Nemyet told Blade. «Leave one dry-skinned for two days, and he'll be sick. Leave one dry-skinned for a week, and he'll be dying. Sea water or fresh, it doesn't matter, but they've got to get wet.»

«Why are you so concerned about Khraishamo's survival?» said Blade. «I thought you preferred any Bloodskin dead rather than alive.»

«Mostly I do,» said Nemyet, «But there's a famous chief among them by the name of Khraishamo. If this is the Khraishamo, he'll be worth more to me alive than dead. The Emperor may want to parade him through the streets. If the Emperor doesn't, the Prince surely will.»

Blade nodded politely, but his thoughts were less polite. So the Goharans are going to lead Khraishamo in a sort of Roman triumph. I think I'll do something about that.

What Blade did was to slip down that night into the hold where Khraishamo was chained, and give the pirate chief a small but razor-sharp knife. The pirate stared at Blade for a long time in silence, until Blade wondered if his pride was going to keep him from saying anything at all. Then: «Why, Blade?»

Blade explained. «I didn't capture you for that. It's against the customs of the English. I don't care so much for the friendship of the Goharans that I'll see them do this to you. Not when I can stop them.»

Khraishamo examined the knife carefully, testing the point and the edge on the planks at his feet. Then he looked up again. «What is to keep me from using this knife on you?»

«Two things. First, because you know that I am telling the truth. Second, because if you do I will break your arm.»

Khraishamo laughed softly. «Very good, Blade. You have the spirit of the Sarumi, in the body of a man. Very good.» His hand flickered, and the knife vanished so completely Blade couldn't even guess where it was hidden. «I may use the knife on others before I use it on myself,» he went on. He looked hard at Blade, and Blade realized he was being tested.

He smiled. «As you choose, Khraishamo. I would not presume to tell you where to put a knife.»

Another laugh. «Even better, Blade. I may use the knife on a few Goharans. No one but you and I will know how I got it. Now-best you go.»

Blade agreed. As he climbed the ladder from the hold, he wondered how long the Goharans would be able to keep Khraishamo a live prisoner. He didn't envy the men who would have the job.

At a steady seventy to eighty miles a day, the convoy ploughed its way northward. The days were still warm and bright, but now the nights were cool and the deck was slick with dew when Blade awoke in the morning. On the seventh day he awoke to find the sea shrouded in fog and the sails hanging as limp as wet laundry from the yards.

Nemyet shrugged. «If we didn't run into fog at least once coming north, I'd say something was wrong.»

«What about the Sarumi?»

Nemyet's raised eyebrows told Blade he'd been guilty of bad manners, calling the «Bloodskins» by their proper name. Blade ignored the captain. He was going to maintain a detached objective attitude, suitable to his cover story as a historian from the future. That meant not letting the Goharans lead him by the nose into all their prejudices and quarrels.

Then Nemyet shrugged. «We're farther north than they often come. Even if Bloodskins are about, they'd have to find us first. Can you see them doing that in this?» He made a sweeping gesture at the fog.

«No, and I can't see anything else, either.»

«Exactly.» The captain went off laughing. Blade rather regretted that there wasn't much chance of another attack by the Sarumi. He'd probably fight them just as hard as he'd done the first time. He'd also look for a chance to release Khraishamo and let him escape to his own people.

The convoy spent the whole day and part of the next becalmed in the fog. About noon on the second day, the mist began to break up and the wind rose until it was kicking up whitecaps. The merchant ships lurched and rolled violently enough to make Blade willing to stay seated most of the time, although his cast-iron stomach was nearly immune to seasickness. Some of the younger sailors weren't so lucky, and there was a good deal of cleaning up to be done.

That night they passed beyond the northernmost limit of Sarumi raids, and in the morning Degyat's galley was hull down on the northern horizon. «Probably wants to bring the good news of the victory to the prince,» said Nemyet. «Degyat's one of his favorites.»

«I thought you said Degyat's a good man,» said Blade. He was trying to draw Nemyet out on Goharan politics, but the captain refused to be drawn.

«He is,» said Nemyat. Then he added sharply, «Why shouldn't a wise prince favor good men?»

Blade smiled. «I didn't mean to offend. It's just that we Historians know too much about princes who weren't wise and favored men who ruined them.»

«You won't have to worry about that here,» said Nemyet, Blade hoped the captain was right.

As the day passed, the horizon became dotted with sails, and the convoy began to overtake fishing boats hauling in nets and lines. Every time this happened, Nemyet or one of his men shouted the news of the victory over the Pirate Folk. He didn't mention Blade, and the Englishman was glad of that. He was going to be getting more than enough attention when he reached Gohar.

Toward late afternoon the wind began dying again. The convoy was nearly becalmed again when the lookouts sighted two galleys on the northern horizon. By the time the western horizon was turning a sunset red, the two galleys were in sight from Blue Swallow's deck. One was Degyat's black ship, the other was a blue-hulled galley nearly three times as large, with two banks of oars, three masts, a high castle on the stern, and a gilded prow. Nemyet's eyes widened as he recognized the second galley.