One night, I learned the secret. The whip had scored my back that day and the pain of my raw stripes prevented me from falling into the leaden slumber of exhaustion that claimed us all at the end of the day’s toil. Thus it was that, as I lay there motionless, my head pillowed upon my manacled wrists, I overheard a conversation between Andar and the man chained to the oars behind him.
They were discussing our present position. The man behind us, a former lordling named Eryon, guessed they were nearing the coast of Tharkoon. Andar agreed.
“I almost could pity the ignorance of these vile savages,” Eryon grunted disdainfully. “Knew they aught of sails and rigging, they could have ridden the wind far swifter than by the oars alone.”
“Aye,” said Andar. “But it is ever the way of savages to pretend contempt for the arts of civilization, which they cannot comprehend. It is their way of asserting their own convictions of superiority, in the teeth of all evidence to the contrary!”
“And their navigation!” growled Eryon. “Half a dozen times in the last two days, methought the ignorant Hoggur would run the ship aground! Well, our neighbors of Tharkoon will have little to fear from even a great fleet, if all other captains of the Horde prove equally had seamen, which will doubtless be the case.”
“Yes; they are fools to threaten the Wizard of Tharkoon with invasion, even were they the finest of seamen,” laughed Andar. “The magical sciences of Prince Parimus will bring them down, which may well prove to our advantage.”
“Perhaps,” Eryon grunted. “Unless the Wizard employs his arts to sink the ships, which means a sea-bottom sepulchre for us all; conquered and conqueror alike!”
“The Wizard of Tharkoon will know by his arts that the nobles of Komar slave at the oars,” murmured Andar, hearteningly. “And he has ever been our friend.”
“Let’s hope so. Think you, lord prince, he will also know you are concealed amongst us, unknown to our captors?”
“Perhaps. But speak no more of this, Eryon, I beg you; do not call me by that title within the hearing of our captors.”
“Your pardon, sire! But the guards sleep at the stair, drunk with wine, and hear us not. There is no danger.”
After these words they slept. But I had learned an interesting bit of information.
Already I had known that the king of the Komarians died when the horde of blue savages stormed the royal citadel. But now I had discovered that the heir to the kingdom, Prince Andar, had concealed himself among the nobles and was hidden on this very ship, seeming to his brutal captors but another aristocrat.
Time passed, slowly. When one is chained to the oars, the sheer cumulative fatigue of unremitting labor, the degradation of the beslimed, filthy benches, in whose vile squalor we wallowed like beasts, tend in time to numb the mind and anaesthetize the soul. One minute—one hour—one day becomes indistinguishable from the one that came before, or from the next which follows. But gradually we neared the coast, or that part of it which lay under the dominion of the Wizard of Tharkoon.
Eryon lifted his head, sniffing the salt breeze that came through the oarlock port in the hull.
“We approach the Reefs of Angzar, my comrades,” he grunted. “Nay, good Klygon; ask me not how I can tell. I have sailed this sea all my days in the service of my Lord, the Prince of Komar; even through the stench of the hold I can read our position on the wind.”
“Reefs, you say?” muttered the man chained next to him. “Then by all Gods and Demigods, I pray the blue beasts know them not! Let the Barbarians steer us into the very jaws of the reef in their ignorance. Let the Xothun founder, her hull crushed to splinters in their stony fangs… then will I welcome a watery grave, and an end to filth, misery and toil!”
Andar spoke swiftly, comforting the poor man with words of hope and courage, as was his way. And as he did so, my faithful Klygon bent down to whisper in my ear from his place on the bench behind my own.
“Eh, lad, I’ve no taste for drowning! Shall I pick our locks and free us, to make a break for it?”
The implication of his words froze me into astonishment.
“Do you mean… you can?” I gasped. He grunted that he could.
“Saints and Avatars, m’boy I spent four-and-twenty years in the House of Gurjan Tor! Think you the Assassins’ Guild teach naught but the arts of man-slaying? If the world holds a lock old Klygon cannot pick, well, he’s yet to find one.”
Eryon, seated next to the homely little man, had caught the import of his whispered words. He swore with amazement.
“What’s that, benchmate? Can you truly pick the cursed locks and free us all?”
“As easy as steal a coin from a blind man’s purse—beggin’ your pardon, lad! See you this ring in my earlobe, friend? ‘Tis cheap copper—worthless as a bauble, which is why yon indigo-skinned heathen forebore to take it from me. But in truth, ‘tis not a ring at all, but a length o’ wire bent into a circle. Were I but to take it from mine ear and stretch it out straight, there’s not a lock here I could not pick in two xoles,” he boasted hoarsely. The interval of time he mentioned was about three minutes, by Earth reckoning.
Eryon apprised the Prince of this astounding discovery; and so it was we began to plot our break for freedom.
“There are sixty stout men and true, chained to the oars,” Eryon rumbled. “And each one would face Death with a smile, for one chance at freedom!”
Andar chuckled. “Bare hands have little chance against drawn swords,” he pointed out. “Let us wait for the right moment, when the God of Storms fights on our side.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, puzzled by his cryptic reference. In low, terse phrases he explained to me that this part of the Sea of Komar we were entering was dangerous, with sudden rainsqualls at this season. Terrific storms blew up without warning, seldom lasting more than fourteen xoles (about thirty minutes). When such a squall hit the galleon, he said, the Blue Barbarians would panic, not being by nature a sea-faring people; thus, with the diversion of a sudden storm, we could rise against our masters at a time when they were off guard, busied with other things.
“Aye, perhaps so,” muttered Klygon. “But this night I plan to start picking the locks, just in case. The Gods I hear tell, help those who help themselves. I’ve no doubt this be true of the God o’ Storms, as well!”
Chapter 4.
THE FATE OF THE SKYSLED
I have elsewhere told of the adventures which befell my dear friends, Janchan of Phaolon and Zarqa the Kalood, after they fled from the treetop city of Ardha having rescued Niamh the Fair and the Goddess Arjala from the burning temple. I told how they were captured by a mysterious race of black-skinned men of superhuman beauty and superhuman cruelty, who inhabited a Flying City in the sky; it had been built many ages before by Zarqa’s ancestors, now extinct. It has also been explained how the race of immortally youthful black men experimented upon human subjects, under the insane delusion that the human inhabitants of The World Below were naught but mindless beasts; which, while they resembled men and women, were only animals.
Of course, none of these things were known to me at this time, for Klygon and I had fled from Ardha mounted on winged zaiphs like enormous dragonflies; I did not rejoin my comrades until long after the events which I have described had transpired. At the time, I had no way of knowing what had befallen my dear friends and the beautiful princess of Phaolon, whom I loved. So I must now interpose into this narrative an account of their adventures, of which I was then completely ignorant; these details I did not learn until long after.