Thru landed on top of him immediately, caught the knife hand, and delivered a hard blow to the man's chin. Mergas went limp once more. Thru took his knife, then turned back to Simona.
Janbur was helping her up. There was a line of scarlet along her side.
"How deep?" asked Thru.
"I don't know," she said. "Not too badly, I think." Her hand came away from her side dripping blood, and she fainted into Janbur's arms. Janbur carried her to the ship's side and, with help from Juf and Mentu, lowered her down into the boat.
Ter-Saab kept his position at the head of the ladder with an arrow drawn. The pirates dared not try to get past him.
Thru came out of the stern cabin carrying a lantern blazing high. "You will live," he told the men, "but you will suffer, and you will rue your evil actions here."
With that he smashed the lantern against the mast. The burning oil flowed out and onto the lowered sail.
The men screamed as one when they saw the bright flames flicker along the sail and catch.
Pern Glazen broke another lamp on top of the sterncastle and then dove overboard. Thru and Ter-Saab were the last to leave, jumping over the side together as the flames took hold. They swam for the boat, which Juf had taken out about fifty feet.
Behind them, the pirates fought frantically to put out the fires, which blazed high in the tropical darkness.
As they rowed for the point, with Ter-Saab hanging on in the back, they heard the men cursing them horribly. The rescuers said nothing, but exchanged grim smiles.
Back aboard the
Sea Wasp
, Janbur and Mentu examined Simona's wound. It was a slashing cut, a quarter inch deep down her rib cage and along her hip.
"It will need to be salted," said Mentu, "to keep it from infection. And we must sew it up. That will hurt horribly."
Simona bit her lip. "I am not a weak woman of purdah anymore. I will not cry out and beg you to stop."
A closer examination of Jevvi's injuries left them far less sanguine, however. Jevvi's labored breathing brought up bubbles of blood. He remained unconscious, and there were terrible swellings on his skull.
They raised the sail once more, catching the last of the offshore breeze. As they drew past the point, they looked back into the cove and saw the pirate vessel ablaze from bow to stern. The men had swum to shore and were standing in a glum line in the shallows.
Once they were out in the open sea, Mentu turned the
Sea Wasp
north. For the rest of the following day, they sailed across the Maruka channel. A day later, they had left the Marukas behind and were launched upon the huge northern ocean.
It was plain by then that Jevvi would not recover.
That evening, Thru found Mentu and Janbur sitting together in the bow while the sun sank in the west. "Why did they hurt Jevvi so much?" Thru asked.
Both men sighed and looked out to the horizon. "Why?" murmured Mentu. "Because in their lives any sign of compassion would be taken as weakness. The others would tear them apart."
"More the question, really," said Janbur, "is why you wouldn't be like them."
Thru blinked, reminded suddenly of the great gulf between mot and Man.
Two days later, far from any land, Jevvi Panst died. They had done what they could for him, but he never awoke.
Pern Glazen sang the sad songs of the Sulo Valley, which was their home, and they consigned Jevvi's body to the deeps, wrapped in a piece of old sailcloth with a ballast stone tied to his ankles.
They continued northeast, out into the vastness of the ocean with only the Land itself far ahead.
It was the fifth summer of the war. The fifth summer in which red flames licked up from burning villages. The fifth summer in which the sounds of battle rang out beneath the trees and on the beaches. The fifth summer that saw the grim burials of the fallen, whether by solemn mots in village burial grounds or lines of men aboard the Shasht fleet as the dead, with rocks tied between their ankles, were dropped overboard.
By this fifth summer, no one in the Land wondered why the army of men had been sent to haunt their lives. It was simply accepted in the way of any other catastrophe.
Aboard the Shasht fleet, the war had become a nightmare without end. But no one ever thought about pulling up anchor and sailing away to find some other place to start the colony. Too much blood had been spent fighting for this land already. They were men, and they had been sent to take this land for the Empire. They would do it, or they would die trying.
Toshak, the former professional swordmot who had once rebelled at the training at the Royal Academy of Sulmo, was now the acclaimed commanding general of the army of the Land, both North and South. Having driven the Shasht army out of Sulmo before they could burn the city, Toshak and his soldiers had enjoyed plenty of leverage in establishing that unified command.
Relations were still difficult with King Gueillo and his inner circle, of course. Some members of the Sulmese nobility would always nurse the old grievance. For them, the dream of Old Sulmo would not die. Among their circle, cooperation with Dronned and the other Northern kingdoms was regarded as subjugation.
For this and other reasons, Toshak had kept his army's base in Dronned. But within the past year he had been forced to spend most of his time in Sulmo again, where the Shasht fleet had chosen to place its forts.
Fortunately, the disaster of the battle of Farnem-Chillum had helped the Sulmese people to see the need for cooperation. Outside of the royal court, the friction that had occasionally troubled Thru Gillo and other Northern officers during the second summer of the war had vanished.
But for Toshak, it was always present. The King had never forgiven Toshak for resigning his commission in the Royal Army of Sulmo and leaving the realm to become a vagabond in the North.
He refused to let it bother him. He had a war to fight. It was a difficult campaign as well, for it forced him to keep large forces in the field all the time. Toshak understood the enemy's rationale. The men were far from home, and they were desperate to keep their casualties low. They had suffered terribly in the first two years of the war, even worse than the folk of the Land. The war of forts was a clever strategy for the Shasht fleet, for it built on their strengths. With the freedom of the seas they had the ability to land and build a strong point before the army of the Land could respond and destroy it. Thus, it was a war of sieges, which allowed the Shasht to continue the war without risking many lives.
On a warm evening of early summer, Toshak sat on the bluffs below Criek's Rock on the coast of Blana. With him was a group of special troops, gathered from the mountain towns of Creton. Known as the Mountaineers, they were all good rock climbers.
Toshak had brought them there to study the fortress the men of Shasht had built on the top of the Rock. The eighth such fort the men had built, it was well situated to dominate the surrounding country, yet Toshak had already destroyed three others.
Having seen the high stockade and the towers, the Mountaineers' attention was directed to the cliff beneath the Rock.
"Those towers really don't look down on the cliff, do they?" said Captain Oarg, of the Creton Mountaineer Company.
"Right. You can see why we wanted you to take a look at it," said Toshak.
Oarg nodded. He could indeed. The cliff was impressive, but not so difficult for mots such as his.
"The fort itself is well built. Ten-foot-high stockade wall, which is what they normally build. The towers are twelve and fifteen feet high. They even dug a ditch up there, though the ground is half rock."
Oarg continued to study the men's fort. He could see that it was a formidable place. "Not easy to attack with the siege towers either."
"We have kept them busy with fire from our catapults, but as you saw, the ground is steep below those walls, and it isn't easy to approach with siege towers. But, on this side the cliff is so steep, they haven't bothered to put up a wall."
"And the towers are well back from the cliff side, too. The climb will not be an easy one, but then again, it will not be that hard either. Look, there is a stretch on that diagonal crack that would be very quick."
Toshak studied the rock face. The big crack reached up to a place about ten feet below the edge.
"And after that?"
"Well, it looks a little tricky. But I can see some smaller cracks. I think it will take some time, that is all."
"That's what I was hoping you might say. I think we can give you the time you need."
Oarg, a phlegmatic sort, shrugged. "Then, sir, I'd say we can do it. Can you keep anyone up there from looking over the edge of the cliff for about half an hour?"
"Mmmm." Toshak scratched his chin thoughtfully. "I think we can arrange that. If you begin the ascent before dawn, on a foggy morning. We will test the outer walls after dawn and present them with a dragon to keep their interest focused."
"A dragon?" asked Oarg.
"Yes, made of wood and painted cloth, very lifelike. Of course, we won't let them see it very clearly. But they'll all be watching the forest in the hope of seeing it again. We'll keep them busy with that for a while, and then we'll attack with the new siege towers. That will really keep their attention and give you the time you need to climb the cliff."
"And then?"
"Can you take the gate from inside?"
"Two hundred of us, sir?"
"Yes."
Oarg was nodding with pursed lips. "I think we might, sir."
The plot was a daring one, but it would avoid a lengthy siege. Toshak left and traveled upstream through the woods, then across the river and up to the heights just below Criek's Rock.
The mots working on the "dragon" were housed in a ring of huts beside a grove of wild hazel. As he strode up, they spotted him and stood to attention beside the hulking shape they had been building.
"Stand easy," he said, returning their salute.
The dragon was made of cloth, bushpod paper, withe, wood, thongs, and dried grass. The wooden frame, shaped like a barrel cut in half lengthwise, was sixteen feet long. The tail, also framed in wood and withe, was another twelve feet. The dragon's head, painted with enormous eyes and a ferocious cast of teeth and red, curling lips, was five feet by three.
The project leader was a brilba named Kuli. She quickly organized a demonstration of the dragon for the commander.
They took their places, twelve mots inside the dragon body, three more controlling the tail, and Kuli holding up the head.
The dragon was now deployed. With head held at a very lifelike angle, the huge thing stepped forward, moved sideways, and then settled as if crouching on its haunches.
"By the Spirit, it looks as if it's alive!" exclaimed Toshak, impressed. "Excellent work!"
The dragon shimmied forward and gave a bow, dipping its huge, fierce head while the front half bent down and the back half and tail rose up.
Inside the temple pyramid in the city of Shasht, Basth waited, kneeling in the corner of the great room. Beside him was the water jug and the tall, silver drinking vessel that the Master preferred.
The world had changed in the most unaccountable way for Basth. Whereas before he had had to help the Master just to stand up, all that kind of physical assistance was now unnecessary.
The Master was now a giant of man, with the physique of a wrestler and the vigor of a racehorse. Basth had witnessed the transformation, heard the screams of horror as the Master climbed onto the huge body. When it was done, the Master arose in the huge young body and cast aside the old one. Basth had supervised the removal of the old body and its cremation. He had brought the pot of ashes to the Master in his new, giant body. Then the Master had cut out Basth's tongue, to ensure that the secret would always be kept.
Sometimes Basth wished fervently that he had never left his village, never even become a Red Top.
Today the Master met once more with a small group of wealthy men. They were the heads of the great banks and trading houses, and they were being squeezed mercilessly to pay for the new fleet.
Their faces clearly displayed the tension they felt.
"Worms!" snarled the Master. His huge hands, created from many years of breaking stone, clenched into fists in front of their faces.
On one recent occasion, Basth had seen him tear a recalcitrant banker out of his seat and beat him half to death in front of the others.
"I will have forty ships, or I will have your heads on poles while your hearts go to the Great God. Am I understood?"
The Master had thrown off all camouflage and emerged as the power behind the throne, and these men had had to accustom themselves to this. Tyrants, all of them, now they cringed before a greater tyrant and wondered how they had let themselves fall to this desperate state.
They had not raised a hand to save Aeswiren, and now they were paying the price.
"Any complaints?"
The small tyrants kept their mouths shut.
The Master glanced to Basth, who hurried to bring him water.
Admiral Heuze, commander in chief of the Shasht fleet, sniffed the air and noted a slight freshening of the wind. Instinctively, he looked up to check the sails, saw they were furled, and laughed at himself. His ship, the
Anvil
, was anchored in safe harbor, and he was about to go ashore.
Once he'd sworn never to set foot on the accursed land of the monkeys again. Those forests of huge trees, dark and endless, had seemed a trap. But all of that was behind him. For the past year, he had been waging the war in his own fashion, now that Nebbeggebben, the Scion of Aeswiren, was under his thumb and the priests' power in the fleet had been smashed.
The shoreline loomed half a mile to the east. Wreathed in the usual mists, the tops of the huge trees became visible where they erupted out of the fog. Cliffs, dramatically black, soared three hundred feet from the narrow beach. The fort was at the top, protected by cliff walls on two sides. The bowl-shaped bay beneath made an excellent deepwater harbor.