Authors: John; Norman
Wedges of Sa-Tarna bread were next distributed, and a half larma to each man, useful in prolonged voyages, a precaution against weakness and bleeding. The bread was placed not at my right hand, but insolently before me, half torn. The larma half was small, dry, and withered; it had been crushed, perhaps yesterday, voiding it of most juice. There was little but rind left. It may have been retrieved from garbage. I did not care for the slave’s games, nor her expressions. I wondered if others, my fellows, or the other slaves, took notice of these tiny things. Perhaps not. Alcinoë, of course, was a ship slave. I did not own her. To be sure, I did have the rights of a free man, and of a member of the ship’s company. Slowly, within me, anger began to seethe, like the boiling mead, honeyed, bubbling, and fermented, sometimes prepared in the north, in the “country of dragons,” the camps and villages above Kassau. Next, the square trenchers were to be filled at the serving table, and brought to us. I saw the slave who, in turn, would have brought my trencher, but Alcinoë thrust herself before her, had the trencher filled, and then approached. Apparently she intended to serve me herself. She moved her hips nicely. Perhaps she had learned something of her collar. I considered her squirming and begging in my arms. It is easy enough to do that with a slave. But her head was up, and her expression was distinctly unpleasant, even disdainful. Did she not know that such an attitude might be a cause for discipline? I supposed not. She struck the trencher down before me, insolently, with a crack, and gruel and strips of roast tarsk spilled upon the table. Men, surprised, looked about. I saw two of the other slaves pale. I gathered then they were not unaware of the sport, or provocations, of the haughty Alcinoë. She turned arrogantly about, but cried out, dragged backward, off balance, half falling, my hand in her hair. I then turned her about, and flung her, hands forward, to the table. I then kicked her legs backward, and she was leaning forward, awkwardly, her hands braced on the table. “Remain as you are,” I said. Two of the other slaves laughed delightedly, amused at the discomfiture of the hitherto arrogant Alcinoë. So, I thought to myself, they well knew what had been going on. “Switch!” I called, and one of the amused slaves darted to a peg on the wall, retrieved the slender, supple implement, and hurried to me, where she knelt, and, head down between her extended arms, lifted the device to me. “What are you going to do,” asked Alcinoë, frightened, uncertainly, and had the presence of mind to add, a moment later, “—Master!” I then switched the back of her thighs, with several stinging strokes, and she began to cry. But she dared not move. I then handed the switch back to the pleased slave who had brought it to me, and she returned it promptly to its peg. “More Sa-Tarna!” called a man, and the girls began, again, with the exception of the chastened Alcinoë, to serve. Conversation resumed about the board. Nothing of importance had occurred. “Kneel down, under the table, at my left knee,” I said to Alcinoë. She obeyed. She could not kneel straightly, given the height of the table. Bent over, she turned her head, and looked up at me. It was hard to read the expression in her eyes. It was something like astonishment, fear, and wonder, and perhaps something else. Paga was brought to me, and more bread, and a good larma, and another trencher, steaming and well-filled. She knelt docilely under the table, at my knee. The back of her thighs must have stung. There were tear stains on her cheeks. I took my time with the meal. I had little to do for another Ahn, when it would be my watch. “May I speak, Master?” she asked. “No,” I told her. Later, I took some Sa-Tarna from the table. “Open your mouth,” I told her. She looked up at me in wonder, and obeyed. I thrust the Sa-Tarna into her mouth. “Feed,” I said. Her mouth must have been dry. It took her some Ehn, partly choking, to down the bread. She had now been fed by hand, by my hand. Commonly this is done only between a master and his slave. She began to tremble. I took a final Paga, and nursed it. When I was finished I took her by the hair and pulled her from beneath the table, and held her, bent over, in common slave-leading position, at my left hip, and left the table. Shortly thereafter, after ascending several companionways, she at my hip, I arrived on the open deck. I put her before the second mast, and tied her hands before her. “You are tying me,” she whispered. I did not punish her for speaking without permission. I did not understand the awe, the gratitude, in her voice. I then lifted her hands up, crossed, and tied them over her head. Then, with several coils of ship’s rope, about her belly, I bound her back against the mast. “You have tied me, Master,” she whispered, squirming a little, helpless. Interestingly, she did not seem distraught, but, if anything, reassured. “Thank you for tying me, Master,” she said. “Master,” she said. “Yes?” I said. “I have always wanted to be tied by you,” she said, “even in Ar. I wanted you, even in Ar, to take me in hand and bind me, to make me helpless.” I glanced up at the foremast. “I must soon to my watch,” I said. I turned away. “Master!” she called. I turned about. “I am helpless, Master,” she said. “Will you not press your lips upon mine?” “Do you beg it?” I asked. She hesitated, and then she said, softly, piteously, “Yes, Master.” She leaned a little forward, closed her eyes, and pursed her lips. When she opened her eyes, I suspect I was already climbing the ratlines, ascending the foremast, to the ring and platform. I heard her cry out, “I hate you! I hate you!” “Do you wish to have a punishment tag wired to your collar?” I called to her. “No, Master!” she cried, frightened. “No, no, Master!” As I climbed further, I stopped, to look back at her. She was thrashing in the ropes. I had seen slaves in such a plight before. A touch can make them scream. The physicians had been right about her, and that had been long ago. She was a slave, ready to be harvested. The fellow whom I was relieving was now muchly beside me, descending the lines. “What is that?” he asked. “A slave,” I said, clinging to the lines beside him. “The weather tonight is likely to be nasty,” he had said. “Excellent,” I had said.
My watch would be over at the second Ahn.
The deck seemed muchly deserted. There would be the helmsman, and a bound slave, the stem-castle watch, and the deck watch, which was by two men, whose names I would soon discover.
There was another spattering of hail.
I heard a creaking, a straining, of the ratlines, to my right.
I doubted it was my relief. It was not yet the first Ahn.
I was unarmed.
“Who is there?” I called.
“Your relief,” I heard.
“Aeacus?” I called.
“No,” said the voice, “Leros.”
The voice was then closer.
Aeacus, of course, was not my anticipated relief. That had been a test on my part. I then realized that whoever was approaching had access, or his informant had access, to the watch order.
“Good,” I said.
But the voice was not that of Leros.
“The sign, the word,” I said, “friend Leros.”
“That is not necessary,” said the voice.
“It is required,” I said. “The tarn is angry.”
“The sleen is pleased,” said the voice, nearer now, in the darkness.
So, I thought, he who approached, or his informant, had not only access to the watch order, but to signs and countersigns, as well. Such are changed daily, sometimes more often. It might seem that such things, on the ship, in its isolation, would be pointless, but it was deemed not so. Since the mutiny the high military authorities on board, Lords Okimoto and Nishida, of the Pani, of whom I took Lord Okimoto to have priority, had increased security considerably. Passwords, and such, of course, are familiar in martial environments, at any time, but particularly at night in the field, in darkness, and so on. They can be used at gates, fords, bridges, and such. Where large numbers of men are involved they are particularly important, as one is not likely to know everyone. Access to storerooms and weapons rooms is often by sign and countersign. Even one well known, even a friend, after all, may not have authorization to enter or pass. It is not unknown for such signals to be used even in single holdings, if large enough; indeed, such holdings are sometimes labyrinthine. We used them, for example, in the Central Cylinder, in Ar, during the occupation.
I sensed a hand might have reached up, to the platform.
“May I ascend?” asked the voice.
It was not the voice of Leros.
“Certainly,” I said.
There is a moment when one climbs to the platform, if it is occupied, in which one is quite vulnerable.
As the voice had spoken clearly, there was no knife clenched between the teeth. The weapon then would have to be retrieved before it could be used, say, from a neck cord, a shoulder sheath, or such.
I could understand trepidation on the part of the climber, but only if he were uncertain of me, or thought me uncertain of him. Leros would never have asked such a question. It would not have occurred to him to do so. The mistake was tiny, but it was enough to assure his death.
By the time the stranger had got his feet under him and was able to stand, the knife would be in his hand.
“Give me your hand,” he said.
In this way I would be well located, well held.
He must have been reaching out, over the platform.
“Take instead,” I said, “my foot.”
“What?” he said.
I, clinging to the ring, with all the force in me, kicked out into the darkness.
I heard bone and face crack beneath my boot, and a weird cry, and heard the body strike the ratlines at least twice, before there was a splash below. At almost the same time I could sense vibrations in the ratlines and I knew there was another climber.
“Who is there?” I called.
There was no answer, which told me what I wanted to know. The knife would be clenched between the teeth.
“Man overboard!” I cried, loudly, down to the stem-castle watch, and then back to the helmsman.
He began to put about.
The more men I could bring to the deck the better.
I did not understand why the deck watch did not immediately sound the alarm bar.
I wrapped my cloak about my left arm.
I sensed the knife slash widely, wildly, almost at my ankles. I stumbled backward. A form lunged under the ring to the surface. I threw myself forward, against it. I felt the blade cut through the cloak, but then it was tangled in it, and I lifted my arm pushing the knife hand to the side, and clasped the wrist, and pressed the form to the side, and we grappled in the darkness. I clung to the knife wrist, with an oarsman’s grasp. A hand tore at my hair, pulling my head back, and then scratched across my face. I put my head down, and seized the body with my right arm, so his hand could not reach me, and thrust the body back, toward the ring, and pinned it against the ring, and pressed it back, and back. I heard the spinal column snap, and thrust the form over the ring, and, a long moment later, heard it strike the deck below. I could not understand why the alarm bar had not rung. I staggered back, panting, against the mast. The mast swung with the rolling of the ship, a surprising swell, perhaps from the helmsman’s work.
Almost at the same instant I sensed something pass my head, like a sudden, fierce whisper in the air.
I instantly threw myself to the platform, within the ring.
No bird so flies, not so swift, not so straight, so piercing the wind.
An instant after something new struck the mast, ringing on a metal brace, and caromed far off, over the side, abeam.
I would later discover a gouge on the brace, rather where my head, a moment before, might have stood.
Why did the alarm bar not ring?
To my relief I saw several men begin to emerge from the hatches, doubtless responsive to the ship’s change of motion. Some carried lamps, others lanterns.
It was then the alarm bar began to ring.
In the light of a lantern, below, some men crowding about, I could see the body on the deck.
I saw Tyrtaios pounding on the alarm bar.
“Ho,” called a voice from below, carrying upward, “noble Callias, do you do well?”
“Yes,” I called down.
“Praise the Priest-Kings,” said the voice.
It was Seremides.
Neither he nor Tyrtaios were armed with a crossbow. Such weapons had been perhaps cast overboard.
It was then I understood that Seremides and Tyrtaios were the deck watch.
“Launch a galley!” I called. “One is overboard!” I pointed ahead, the ship now brought about, to where I thought the first assailant had struck the water.
Within the Ahn, by one of two galleys, lanterns suspended on poles over the water, part of the body had been recovered. As I had heard no cry after the first moment of the descent, I suspected he had been dead when he had entered the water, perhaps from a broken neck. We were not clear, at that time, what had fed on the body.
Tyrtaios, below, charged that I had gratuitously killed my relief, but he was cautioned to silence by Seremides, who perhaps feared an inquiry.
By that time Leros had come to the open deck, and it was clear that neither assailant was my relief.
Below I saw the unmistakable figure of the tarnsman, Tarl Cabot.
Seremides drew away from him.
Lords Okimoto and Nishida appeared on deck.
Leros was sent aloft early, that I might be questioned. I knew neither assailant; they turned out to be two men of Lord Nishida’s retinue, neither of the Pani, Fabius and Telarion. I did not even know them. Later Tarl Cabot spoke to me. “There were five,” he said to me, “whom Lord Nishida suspected, and wished to keep close to him, convinced that one at least was a spy and one, perhaps the same, secretly of the Assassins. Two were slain in the northern forest, on the march to the Alexandra, by name Quintus and Lykourgos, and now two others, Fabius and Telarion, are gone.”