The other men chained to the oars with us were also mostly Komarians, I gathered. Toiling at the oars, listening to brief snatches of conversation as they whispered among themselves, I began to piece together something of what had happened to them; why they had been consigned to so dire a fate.
The loutish crew who commanded the Xothun, said Klygon, looked very unlike the men chained to the oars. The crewmen were hulking and slovenly, with coarse, brutish features and peculiar blue skins. The oarsmen were slimly built, with the pale golden complexions and slanted emerald or amber eyes of dwellers in the treetop cities. Their manner suggested culture and exquisite breeding; they were aristocrats like Andar, while their masters were savages.
I soon understood the tragedy which had so recently overtaken these people. On the World of the Green Star were a wandering race of azure-skinned nomads known as the “Blue Barbarians.” They roamed from place to place; a savage, homeless horde, possessing neither culture nor civilization. Scarcely more than brutes, their ever-swelling numbers and innate ferocity made them an object of fear and dread to the more civilized inhabitants of the treetop cities.
For these Blue Barbarians, it seemed, were subject to unpredictable attacks of madness. This infected the entire race at intervals, turning them into howling, berserk maniacs. During these periodic fits of racial insanity they became monsters, attacking whatever lay in their path, destroying all who stood before them; fighting like madmen with an utter fearlessness and a resistance to pain that made them terrible. Doubtless, in one such berserk frenzy, they had ventured into the islands of the sea, hurling themselves against the fightingmen of Komar; this kingdom they overwhelmed and trampled down.
Now it was their way to overwhelm, conquer and destroy, but never to rule. Having overcome one of the Laonese cities, I understood, they had butchered its populace and left it in wreckage, wandering away in an aimless fashion. Why, then, had they in this instance remained to occupy the cities of Komar and man its ships? This change in the ways of the Barbarians seemed to me inexplicable and even frightening.
I addressed my questions to the young man chained next to me, a former noble of the Komarians called Andar. I have already spoken of his friendly and sympathetic way, under our common condition of slavery. I had introduced Klygon and myself to Andar with few details; merely saying that we were former captives of the cave-dwelling albino cannibals of the mainland forests recently escaped from captivity. I had not expanded on our adventures in any great detail; of course, the account of our most recent adventures I had given to Andar, while cursory, was no less than accurate and true.
Andar was an intelligent and gentlemanly warrior, and answered my questions without pause. According to him there had arisen amongst the Barbarians a chieftain whose name he did not know, but who was a man of greater cunning, cleverness and foresight than his brutish brethren. He had risen swiftly to a position of the highest authority among the tribe, that of Warlord. Andar guessed that by some freak of heredity, the Warlord was naturally immune to the racial madness which afflicted all the other Barbarians. He hit upon a method of using his immunity to weld the random savagery of the Barbarians into a weapon, directing the ferocity of the horde towards a planned and calculated goal.
In short, like some Napoleon, he strove to channel the racial energies of his people to build an empire for himself. The first necessity of his scheme was to find a base of power secure from outer assault; hence he had led his savages against the Komarian archipelago. The great isle of Komar itself lies in the very center of the vast inland sea, and thus occupies a position of security, ringed about with league on league of water, like a gigantic moat.
The Komarians, said Andar ruefully, were an ancient people largely given to peaceful pursuits and not a warlike race. They were great merchants and traders, as had been the Phoenicians of my own world, or the people of Minoan Crete; given to the arts and sciences and to maritime industries. Taken by surprise, outnumbered, their central citadel had fallen; the Warlord had deposed and executed their hapless monarch, himself assuming the Komarian throne. This it seemed, was but the first step in his cunning plan for world empire. He had schemed to train his hordes in the tactics of naval war, conquering isle after isle. He formed a gigantic maritime empire as the base from which to launch attacks—against the nearer Laonese cities—Kamadhong, Ardha and Phaolon being among these.
“But fate sometimes turns whimsical,” smiled Andar, “and favors the most unfortunate. For during a routine voyage to a lesser island of our kingdom, the ship on which the mighty Warlord sailed was attacked by one of the dreaded dragons of the deep and was lost with all hands. The whereabouts of the Warlord are unknown, although he may have eluded the jaws of the monster and reached the coast of the mainland. If he fled inland, he is probably dead by now, slain by one of the monstrous worms who dwell in the unbroken gloom, among the roots of the great trees. At any rate, he has left his horde leaderless and for many months they have merely drifted, not knowing what to do. This current expedition is an attempt to sound out the coastal city of Tharkoon. In the guise of an embassy, the Barbarians hope to spy on the defenses of the metropolis, as a prelude to invasion. In this, they are exceptionally unwise; for Tharkoon is ruled by a Wizard of great power, whom only the foolhardy would dare to threaten. However, lacking the genius of their former master, the Barbarians are mere savages. In their untutored state, they assume all other men are as stupid as themselves, to their eventual detriment…”
“Row, purse your hide! Save your breath for the oars,” growled a thick voice from behind us. I heard the whistle of a lash and the slap of a whip against the naked back of my companion. No sound escaped the tight lips of Andar, but he bent to the oar and we spoke no further.
Chapter 3.
SLAVES OF THE BLUE BARBARIANS
And thus it was that I lived as a slave, chained to the galleys of Komar, toiling under the lash of the Barbarians. The life I now led was grim and ugly, almost devoid of hope. Hour after hour we labored at the benches, five men to each oar, following the tireless beat of the oarmaster’s drum. For all his toughness, little Klygon groaned at this unending toil; and even I, with the vigor and resilience of youth, wearied.
When darkness fell over the World of the Green Star, only then were’ we free to rest from our diurnal labors. We were given a wooden cup of water, mixed with wine to restore us; and each man got a bowl of fish-stew and a chunk of coarse bread. Then we composed ourselves for such slumber as we could gain, sprawled on the very benches where we had labored.
The stench of so many men penned together for many days in this black hell became overpowering. Our toil at the oars raised great blisters on our hands; they broke, blistered and broke again until our hands were raw and bleeding. Some times such raw wounds became infected and festered. When this occurred, the hapless victim died raving of fever and was pitched overboard. Yet other, men broke down under the misery of living in such bestial conditions and fell into despondency. For them, the end came mercifully swift. It seemed there was no escape from the chains of slavery, save death.
It was Andar, my benchmate, who cheered us all by his example and his fortitude. For all he had a cheerful word; his manly and heroic endurance of our common suffering heartened all who slaved at the oars in the stinking darkness of that hold. When men broke down, wept or whimpered under the lash of the overseer, time and again a curt word from Andar stiffened the manhood within them, silencing their sobbing. This I witnessed many times and it never failed to puzzle me. What authority or eminence had this youth at my side over his fellow-captives?