The Hikdar saw me.
“That’s where we’d all like to be, Naghan Lamahan. Over there having a good time.”
I nodded and forced a grimace of a smile. It looked like a town over there on the other island, with domes and towers.
“About time the binhoys were here,” I said, leaning on the wooden rail at his elbow and looking down at the slaves.
“Aye, Havil take ’em!”
“The ripe crop. .”
He laughed, a bitter laugh. “What there is of it. We have little enough to show, and the other vo’drins not much more, I’ll wager.”
As I asked my next question I was fully prepared to upend him over the rail and see him well on the way to his death before I raised the alarm and shouted the equivalent of “Man overboard!”
“What about the other end?” I said. “The destination of the binhoys, they’ll be going mad.”
“Well, let them! Hanitcha may harrow them for all I care. If they don’t know our troubles we don’t give a fluttrell feather for theirs!”
“I believe you. You’ve never been there?”
He fleered a look at me. “Who has? And I wouldn’t have the knowledge you have in your heart, Horter. I remember my vows. I want to know nothing more beyond my duties here.”
He seemed to bear me no ill will for the way I had treated him when I’d first arrived. He would have put all that down to the high and mighty ways of merkers, who notoriously consider themselves above the normal ruck of men, having access to secrets.
So I commented on the slaves and he grunted and said the wind had weakened a guy rope of the Bridge. If that was not put right — now! — Pallan Horosh would be dealing out a few of the nasty punishments of Hamal, and every one legal. I spent a few more murs in conversation so that those exchanges dealing with the destination of the binhoy loads of pashams would not stand too starkly in his memory, and then bid him Remberee.
In a culture as hard and authoritarian as Hamal, and many another country of Kregen, there are of necessity many cruel words shouted at slaves and workers, words that mean hurry up, get a move on, and all that intemperate display of power being ruthlessly used. So far I have adhered to English, but one word the Hamalians favored is, in the Kregish, grak. I can tell you the air above the Volgendrin of the Bridge resounded with “Grak! Grak! You yetches! Grak!” It is an ugly word, harsh and unpleasant, and I have seen a slave jump as though scalded with the lash when the overseer bellowed “Grak” at him. The shout of “Grak!” and the crack of the lash are inseparable.
The sky-god of draft beasts in Magdag is called Grakki-Grodno, as you know, and those Grodnims of the northern shore of the inner sea know what they are doing when it comes to making slaves run and haul and work. Among the megaliths of Magdag, as among the warrens and the swifters, the yells of
“Grak” resound to the misery of those in bondage. Well, one day I would revisit the Eye of the World away there to the west of Turismond, and how I would joy to see my two oar comrades again, Nath and Zolta! How we three would roister through all the succulent taverns of bright Sanurkazz!
I do not forget I am a Krozair brother, a Krozair of Zy.
There were family plans to be made. . and when I thought of what Delia would say to what I proposed I hastily turned to thinking about something else.
These volgendrins floated in the air like massy clouds, drifting in their own silent rhythms in vast orbits for dwabur after dwabur that covered many a kool of land beneath. The sight of their blocky hardness against the real white clouds high above, the wind catching a tree here or a high platform there, the very implacable nature of their onward progress, all these things combined to impress the volgendrins most forcibly on my brain.
We had drifted far enough now to leave the worst of the barrens to the north and the Mountains of the West a good few dwaburs off; below us a river tumbled along, still white and rapid from the hills. Scattered vegetation showed, gradually clumping and thickening. One could find a living down there, but I saw no single sign of any habitation. The volgendrins moved, I judged, at about five knots. At that speed they would tire a man on foot to keep up. The speed also meant that their shadows, never exactly the same on any following orbit, did not stunt or destroy the vegetation below. Before I went to report to Pallan Horosh for orders I saw four separate clumps of Gerawin flying high, their tridents winking brilliantly in the streaming light of the suns. They were watchful, prowling, on patrol. I noticed that every soldier from time to time cocked his head aloft and searched the bright bowl of the sky.
I, the Amak of Paline Valley, had no need to be told for whom — or what — they watched so carefully. As I went through into the Pallan’s quarters, the Pachaks passing me through without comment, I heard Horosh talking about that selfsame threat to a man who stood with his back to me.
“Three times like leems, during the last month of the Maiden with the Many Smiles!” Horosh sounded fretful, angry, and a little fearful. I fancied he was not frightened of the wild men who flew over the Mountains of the West from the Wild Lands beyond to lay waste. Rather, he was frightened of the queen in Ruathytu when his production schedules slipped. “My Gerawin fight bravely; indeed, they are fearsome warriors. And my soldiers are brave, as is any soldier of Hamal. But those wild ones still attack us, like werstings foaming at the mouth.”
“I know about werstings,” said the man with his back to me.
I stood stock still. I knew about werstings, also, and I knew this man who stood talking about them. The last time I’d heard him he’d been bellowing and screeching at the door of a voller manufactory, blaming me for the death of his wife, the Kovneva Esme, and threatening to let his pack of slavering werstings rip me limb from limb, until he’d thought of a better way of dealing with me.
“Come out, you Kovneva-murdering rast! Come out so I can plunge my hands into your guts and rip out your evil stinking heart!” That’s what this man, this Ornol ham Feoste, this Kov of Apulad, had shouted and screamed at me there in Sumbakir.
He would know me as Chaadur, the gul, the worker on vollers.
I half turned to leave but Pallan Horosh, looking past Ornol ham Feoste, called, “Ah, Horter Lamahan. You are late, sir! Here are the reports! Use your best speed back.”
Half turned, I hesitated. There was a chance. .
And those reports would be going to the place where they processed pashams. The risk was worth the prize, for Vallia. .
Swinging back and hunching my right shoulder a fraction against the Kov of Apulad, I went to the desk. Horosh lifted the wrapper with its shining seal.
The Kov of Apulad said, “As Malahak is my witness! Chaadur! The murdering nulsh who slew my wife!”
His thraxter cleared the scabbard with a screech of steel.
I made a grab for the wrapped report; Horosh jerked it back as he stumbled to his feet with a startled oath. The thraxter lunged for my midriff. I knocked it away with my right hand and, there being two Pachaks at my back, whirled away intending to grab that report and then do what was necessary. Action exploded in that sumptuous apartment.