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by these swifters possession of both ram and beak, thinking them mutually exclusive, but I had learned
just how the galleys of the inner sea were fought.
She was, of course, outrageously unseaworthy.
We labored at the oars with a smooth, short, economical stroke that would give us some two knots
speed.
I, of course, had no idea what our mission was. I was merely a chained galley slave. As my body went
through the unending mechanical motions of rowing, I pondered on that chained slave label. Between
us, Zorg and I, we had been cautiously and carefully rubbing the link of the chain that bound us to the
bench against a metal bracket-strut. Sweat-molded filth crammed into the growing breach concealed
against discovery. As we bent forward and flung ourselves backward, over and over again, and the
galley drove forward through the calm water, I could not help worrying over Zorg.
Ease up, Zorg, I whispered to him when the whip-deldar had passed, vigilant in his patrolling of the
gangway, his whip flicking, seemingly alive, hungry. The galley slaves called the whip old snake. I knew
the expression had been used on Earth. One could easily understand why.
I will bear my part, Stylor
I will push and pull that much more, Zorg. I was annoyed. He was a friend. I was worried about him.
Yet he insisted stubbornly on pushing and pulling with the best, all out of his pride. Oh, yes, I knew the
pride that burned in my friend Zorg of Felteraz.
I am Zorg. He spoke in a low mumble. We could speak while rowing this easy stroke. I am Zorg, he
said again as though seeking to hold onto that, and then: I am Zorg, Krozair! Krozair! I will never yield!
I did not know what he meant by Krozair. I had not heard the word before. Nath rowed at the oar with
a blind convulsion, his lean naked body panting for breath in the hot air. But Zolta looked across with a
quick and rhythm-breaking suddenness. His face showed shock. I fought the oar back into rhythm,
cursing in a lurid mixture of English, Kregish, and Magdag warren-filth.
We rowed.
I heard a hail.
Looking back toward the poop as I surfaced from each stroke I could see a turmoil up there. The
awnings were coming down. That was good. Now their damnable surfaces would not catch wind and
slow our progress. Men were running about up there.Grace of Grodno , I had been told, was more than
a moderately fast galley for a four-fortyswifter, and in our cutting across a gulf in order to reach Gansk
we had dropped the nearest land below the horizon.
It seemed to me as I rowed that I had been rowing all my life. Memories were faint around the edges,
other worlds and other lives away. Only Delia of the Blue Mountains remained clear and beautiful to me
in that time of inexpressible misery. I had been engaged as a galley slave in battles, when the galley of
Magdag on which I served had captured a fat merchantman from one of the cities of Zair, and twice we
had been involved in a real battle with a galley from Sanurkazz. But, so far, I had not been in action
aboardGrace of Grodno . I did not know the ways of her captain or her oar-master, her whip-deldars
or her drum-deldar in moments of emergency. Zorg and I had been through a lot together on the calm
waters of the Eye of the World. Now, the signs were clear:Grace of Grodno was clearing for action.
The drum-deldar increased his beat.
We pulled into it, keeping time, hauling the heavy looms through their prescribed arcs as delimited by the
rowing frames guiding and controlling the movements of the extreme inboard ends of the looms. As the
inboard man I had the most space to move through, and we were graded downward and outward as to
size, where Zolta, the smallest, perched almost over the water on the projecting deck-platform behind the
parados.
Soon it became clear, from the way in which the officers, soldiers, and sailors were continually looking
aft, that we were being pursued. There would therefore be little chance of the ram being brought into
action. As though confirming that, a party of sailors appeared on the low foredeck it was too small to
be called a forecastle and began to rig the forward extension of the beak. I heard shouting from the
aftercastle at the extreme aft end of the poop. Soon an officer ran forward and the sailors began to
unship the extension, amid a great deal of acrid comment.
Nath, his eyes upturned, his lungs pumping, spat out:
So the Grodno-gasta thinks he ll fight! Ha!
Grodno-gasta, I knew, was a blasphemous and extremely indelicate remark.
Zair rot him! snarled out Zolta, pulling.
We were now pulling at a back-breaking pace and still the drum-deldar stepped up the rate. Zorg was
heaving now, not using his body as a good oarsman, but trying to do the work with his biceps. His face
was a color that appalled me, slatey blue-green, something like the hide of a sectrix. He was gasping with
a convulsive effort at each stroke.
Sink me, Zorg! I said viciously. Roll with the stroke, you stupid man of Zair!
He choked and did not have the spittle to hawk. His eyes rolled. He managed to croak out words: I
will never yield! Krozair! My vows I am Zorg! Zorg of of Felteraz. Krozair! He was rambling
now, his body going up and down with the oar, hardly pulling a quarter of his weight. Then he used
another name I had not heard before, and I knew that he was no longer with us aboard this foul galley of
Magdag but far away: in delirium, yes, but not here with us. Mayfwy, he said and, again, in a long
sobbing groan: Mayfwy.
He could not escape the observation of the whip-deldar much longer. Nath, Zolta, and I were pulling
now with all the dead weight of Zorg hanging on the oar. Sweat reeked down our naked bodies. Then
the green conical straw hat fell from Zorg s head and tumbled down.
Bareheaded, Zorg was the object of instant attention.
The whip-deldar lashed him. He laid the whip unerringly across my friend Zorg s back. Old snake talked
to him.
Zorg s tanned skin split and blood oozed, then spouted out as the whip fell again and again. I, alongside,
was splattered with the blood of my friend as the whip-deldar of Magdag flogged him to death.
Get back to your oar! roared the whip-deldar. Pull!
But Zorg of Felteraz was past all the pulling he would ever do in this life on this world of Kregan beneath [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]