He favored me with his shrewd little Lamnia smile, and, his laypom-colored fur aglow in the glory of the suns, he went below.
Captain Ehren had given his orders, and the ship had been cleared for action and the men had beaten to quarters. The varters were fully manned, and the gros-varters, those super-ballistae of peculiarly Vallian manufacture, snouted hungrily over our bulwarks. Parties of hands stood ready to deal with all the complexities of sail-trimming orders that would follow once the maneuvering began. Again I looked at the shant — the Lamnia had called these malignant diffs “shtarkins,” just one more of their multifarious names, for no one knew the name they gave themselves — and again I frowned. The tall, narrow black and amber sails had opened out again, so that the vessel once more paralleled our course, but at a distance much closer than before. We had traveled a good distance to the northward since
Ovvend Barynth
had picked me up, and were approaching the northeastern corner of the continent of Havilfar, where the Risshamal Keys stretch their spiky fingers out to the northeast. One of those fingers of islands and cays and desolate outcrops terminates in the island of Piraju. That made me ponder. The leem lover, it seemed to me, was trying to stay to windward of us and pen us in to leeward of the Keys. We would have to tack soon and make a good offing to escape the deadly reefs as well as the sure observation of our enemies of Hamal. The next time we made a board we would be struggling up to the shant, and if we did not do so we would go piling up helter-skelter on the rocks.
As the one-time first lieutenant of a seventy-four I did not much care to be to leeward of my opponent, not, that is, until after we had shattered through his line and could rake him as we broke through and then come to leeward of him and so prevent his escape. Well, there were no stately lines of battleships here. There was a swift and deadly ship from those unknown lands around the curve of the world, and there was a not-quite-so-swift Vallian galleon. It would remain to be seen which of the two was the more deadly.
With that in mind I called for ink and paper. A desk of sturm-wood was set up on the wide quarterdeck, for I had no wish to go below at this juncture, and I set about putting down everything I knew concerning the secrets of the fliers, and the constituents and proportions of the minerals that went into the silver boxes called vaol. I looked up at Captain Ehren.
“Captain, tell me. Have you heard of anything called cayferm?”
“Cayferm, Prince?” He considered. Then he shook that heavy head so his plumes rustled. “No, Majister. The word means nothing.”
“To you and to me, by Vox! But not, I trust, to the wise men of Vallia.”
Cayferm was supposed to be a kind of steam, and cayferm was the mysterious thing — air, immaterial substance, gas, odor — that went into the silver boxes called paol. With a pair of silver boxes, the vaol and the paol, secured in their spherical sliding orbits of wood and bronze, one had complete control over gravity and motion, and could fly an airboat until the chunkrah tired, as my clansmen would say.
Putting all I knew down in cold words brought home to me the sparseness of the hard-won information I had gathered in my days of spying in Ruathytu, capital city of Hamal.
It seemed fitting to me not to use the swift, graceful cursive script of Kregen, and I eschewed the slightly more formal uncial-type lettering. Instead, I wrote in the hyr form, that solemn, dignified, utterly beautiful script of Kregen one finds in the old books. There are many kinds of books on Kregen, as on our Earth, but when reading a lif, that is, an important book, or a hyr-lif, a very important book, one expects and is not disappointed to find that high beauty of lettering.
The paper was carefully placed within a covering of oiled silk and then, sealed by Captain Ehren’s seal, into a leather pouch. “If anything happens to me, Captain, that must reach the emperor. It is vital to Vallia.”
“As to that, Prince, nothing will happen to you and you will carry this vital pouch to the emperor yourself!”
Well, it sounded fine. I clapped Ehren on the shoulder and went away to stare broodingly upon that cramph of a shant.
The leem lover’s vessel cut through the water with little fuss, and I suspected her underwater lines were finer than the somewhat square-cut outlines of her hull and upperworks suggested. The hull had been painted a deep, rich brown. I could see people moving about its decks, the snouts of varters and catapults, the twinkle and gleam of weapons. Quite content to parallel our course, it hung off there, dogging us. Neither of its battened lugs with their tall and slender outlines had been fully unfolded and hoisted to the trucks of its pole masts.
I rubbed my chin. Well, that sea-leem out there represented the many others of his kind who took an ever-increasing toll of shipping from the sea-lanes of the lands I knew, who descended in red horror upon peaceful fishing villages, and who, one day, must be met and challenged by us all. Still rubbing my chin, I pondered if I had carried caution too far in ordering Ehren to run and not to fight. We were in for a fight, for when we tacked the shant would be down on us without delay. I did not think he would conform to our movements and tack with us. He had his scheme working, and that scheme visualized
Ovvend Barynth
plundered, its people slain, and the ship itself sunk without trace. No, there was only one answer to this chin-rubbing.
“Captain! We will tack now, while we still have sea room. Stand to your arms! We go into the attack! We strike for Vallia, for honor and our lives! Hai Jikai!”
How Wersting Rogahan split the chunkrah’s eye
The rush of bare feet upon the planking, the urgent shouts of the petty officers, the creak and rattle of blocks and the squeal as the braces hauled, the ponderous swinging of the yards and the firm heel of the vessel as she swung and then straightened up on her new course, all these old familiar sights and sounds and sensations brought a powerful pang of memory upon me. I, Dray Prescot, of Earth and of Kregen, had been for many years a salt-water sea officer, sailing down into the smoke and flame of battle. Then I had been a swifter captain upon the inner sea of Turismond, the Eye of the World. And then a render with Viridia up along the Hoboling Islands. Oh, yes, as the saying has it, the sea was in my blood. But the Star Lords, those mysterious beings who had summoned me here to this planet of Kregen in the constellation of the Scorpion four hundred light-years from the world of my birth, had given me orders, or so it seemed to me, that I must not set foot upon a vessel, must not sail the seas again.
Well, by Vox! Here I was upon a Vallian galleon and that through no design of my own, save at the end when I had smashed the confounded Hamalese skyship down and had to swim to
Ovvend Barynth.
Maybe the Star Lords had repented a little in their interdiction.
As we heeled to the breeze and, with our proud Vallian flags stiff and our canvas pouting, went hurtling down on the leem lover, I looked up at the sky and around in the empty air.
There was no sign of that gorgeous scarlet and golden hunting bird, messenger and spy for the Star Lords, planing in wide circles up there. Maybe I was more of a free agent now that I had begun to suspect.
“The shant sees us!” bellowed the first lieutenant. He had leaped into the shrouds and was halfway up the ratlines, pointing, his bronzed face rapturous with the impending battle. He was a waso-Hikdar and his name was Insur ti Fotor.
[1]
He struck me as a fine officer, one who ran his ship tautly and relieved his captain of mundane concerns, as any good first lieutenant should. One day, Opaz willing, he would command his own vessel. “She’s massing men for’ard!” shouted Insur ti Fotor. “The shant means to make a fight of it!”
“Then let their own pagan gods look out for them,” growled Captain Lars Ehren.
“May Opaz curdle their livers and their lights!” came a yell from the waist. I looked down over the quarterdeck rail. The men clustered in the protection of the palisades down there, barricades of scantlings and wicker-work. As they glared up I saw the gleam of teeth. These sailors of Vallia are a hardy, independent race of men. Habitually bare-chested, clad only in loose breeches cut to a generous size, and tight leather skullcaps, they carried boarding spears or thick cut-and-thrust blades. My heart warmed to them; they are capital men in a gale or an action. With men like these — and they were almost all apims — I felt my people of Vallia stood a chance against the insane ambitions of Hamal.
Shants, the first lieutenant had called these leem lovers. Well, I often called them “shanks,” out of a memory of the sharks of the inner sea, called chanks. The sharks of the outer oceans of Kregen bear a different name.
I looked over the bulwarks again and across the shining sea. It was true: the shank was forging ahead to meet us.
Captain Ehren boomed his gusty laugh. “By Vox! He may have the heels of us. But if I can’t run rings around him, I don’t deserve my certificate from the Todalpheme!”
There was no drum-deldar, there was no whip-deldar aboard a galleon out of Vallia. These race-built ships relied upon the free winds of heaven for propulsion. With my old sailorman’s instincts I had sniffed the wind and studied the horizon and, to my disappointment, could sense precious little sign of an impending gale. I had great confidence in these sailors of Vallia. But they had not fought against the shanks from around the world; I had.
The shank foamed along in fine style, leaning over. He was within an ulm of us — an ulm, as you know, being something like five sixths of a Terrestrial mile — and Captain Ehren must give his orders soon. I knew what those orders should be, and Captain Ehren had confirmed them. The moment of decision was the crucial factor: too soon and we’d skim past out of range; too late and we could easily smash in board and board, and that was something I had absolutely no desire at all to happen.
The atmosphere of tension on
Ovvend Barynth
was held in check by the seamanlike qualities of the Vallian sailors. Most galleons carried parties of soldiers, and these, in the usual way of Kregen as well as of Vallia, were composed mostly of mercenaries. If I refer to the fighting-men in these ships as marines, you must forgive an old sailor accustomed to the scarlet coats and the boots and the bayonets of the marines, clumping about a seventy-four and always providing their loyal and invaluable services. The bulk, then, of the marines in
Ovvend Barynth
was made up of Chuliks.
Chuliks are expensive mercenaries, commanding much higher rates of pay than most other diffs. With their smooth yellow faces, shaved heads with the dangling pigtails, fierce upthrusting tusks, black soulless eyes, they looked a formidable bunch. I was most happy to welcome this body of Chuliks to fight alongside me. Chuliks, as you know, have often figured in more unpleasant roles in my life upon Kregen.
Insur ti Fotor, the first lieutenant, had quitted the shrouds and now stood ready at the quarterdeck rail to bawl his orders the instant Captain Ehren passed the word.
The feel of a ship under me, the breeze on my cheek, the onward swelling surge of the canvas, all uplifted me. Much as I detest war and fighting, I can understand the men who talk of a red curtain dropping before their eyes in the midst of combat. My rapier lay snug in its scabbard, the left-hand dagger at my right side. In my fist I gripped a sword taken from the selfsame rack as the swords held by those about me, the wolfish sailors of Vallia. This sword, straight, heavy, single-edged, was a cheaply produced weapon with a simple iron cross-guard and wooden hilt. The metal of the blade could not compare with the superb steel of the high-quality rapiers; but it was a serviceable weapon, not unlike an Earthly cutlass. The Vallians called it a clanxer — somewhat disparagingly, I thought.
There could be only a few murs left before Ehren gave his order. He stared through his telescope at the onrushing shank vessel.
“What do you make of them, Captain?”
He lowered the glass and turned to me. His face had set into harsh lines. I knew he had seen those evil forms upon the deck of that hostile ship.
“Devils!” he said. His voice boomed and cracked with the violence of his emotions. “Devils, Majister! Spawned from the deepest crevices of Cottmer’s Caverns. They fill me with a revulsion, by Vox, that makes my flesh crawl and leaves me unclean!”
“You are not alone in that feeling, Captain Lars.”
Now the moment had arrived and despite the itchy, crawly sensation I knew he was experiencing all over his skin, bringing out the gooseflesh, Captain Ehren gave his order in a harsh, ringing tone. Instantly the first lieutenant bellowed it out, the hands tailed onto the braces, the timoneer thrust the helm over, and
Ovvend Barynth
heeled and thrust at the sea. It spun as the evolution was carried out with faultless precision, went through the eye of the wind like clockwork, and passed at a comfortable distance along the shank’s starboard side.
We were still to leeward, but going away from the shank, and in that precise moment of time we had our opportunity.
“Loose!” bellowed Captain Ehren.
Every varter, every gros-varter, every catapult, every bowman loosed. A veritable cloud of arrows and darts and rocks flew up into the air, curving in their flight, descending onto the leem lover.
“Reload! reload!” the Deldars were bellowing, raging among their crews. Sinewy backs and muscled arms hauled the windlasses to draw back the catapult arms, to bend the varter bows. Already the archers had let fly with their second volley. It would be nice to think that every missile we dispatched found a target, but some of the rocks and darts plunged into the sea in a ring of foam. I stared narrowly at that squat brown-painted ship with its ungainly above-water lines, the railings along its side, the stepped castles at bow and stern, and those two tall black-and-amber-striped sails raking above.
We were hitting her! I saw a whole lower panel of amber rip away from her foremast. Chips flew from her bulwarks where a catapult-flung rock bounced, and rebounded on to smash bloodily onto the deck. The men set up a cheer.