I confess I looked on my fellow prisoners with not a little superiority — foolish, I know, but understandable. They were just beginning the life of slaves. I had been a slave many and many a time, high and low, pampered and flogged, as stylor and as miner. They would find out. Slavery is an evil, and I grew every season more and more sure that the reason I had been brought to Kregen was to stamp out that evil. I was only partly right in that, as you shall hear if these tapes last out. . An aragorn ran into the square yelling and waving his arms. Instantly the square was filled with the sounds of blows and yells as the Katakis whipped and bludgeoned the slaves out of sight. A string of calsanys was prodded beneath the long verandah of the headman’s house, and, being calsanys, they did what calsanys always do when upset.
It was now clear with the daylight that there were more Katakis than those who had brought us in, and there were more slaves. This miserable village had been taken over and was being used as an entrepot for slaves, a barracoon on a grand scale. Katakis armed with crossbows ran across the square. Reterhan came rushing toward us, his tail high, its curved blade glinting in the suns. He carried a long strip of cloth. In all the hustle and bustle I saw what was being done.
The village was being returned to its original innocent state. Not a Kataki in sight. Not a calsany that would look out of place. Not a weapon. All the fish-gruel bowls were collected and dumped into the nearest hut. Soon — in mere murs only — the village lay under the rising suns looking like just another poverty-stricken fishing village.
I looked up.
A flier cruised into sight.
I recognized her. I had seen her first in the arena of the Jikhorkdun in Huringa, when I had fought the boloth. Her decks were crowded with people. I would have known who those people were anywhere. And I would have known the flags that fluttered from her masts — every flag the scarlet field with the yellow cross. Old Superb! My flag! Oh, yes, my heart leaped when I saw that voller come flying so serenely over the fishing village.
Then Reterhan and a comrade wrapped the length of cloth about my mouth, ramming a chunk of wood between my lips so that my teeth grated, and knotted it tightly behind my head. They did not wish to knock me out, for we would be marching soon. I thought that — fool that I was!
“Silence!” The Kataki Notor waved his tail-blade to impress on us the seriousness of the moment.
“Absolute silence, all you rasts! I’ll hang and jerk the first of you who cries out!”
I wondered if he would do that, for a slave with crippled arms is scarcely a salable commodity. But it impressed the cowed Lamnias, and Ochs, and Rapas.
Reterhan leered at me, his face filled with an evil I now recognized as being a true reflection of his evil mind.
“Lem rot you, apim! You may watch and suffer, but you cannot cry out!”
Now I understood exactly what ghastly scene was to be enacted here. Lines of Kataki crossbowmen leveled their weapons. They knelt under the cover of houses, in fishing-net sheds, behind walls. They would be invisible from the air. The voller ghosted down, her flags brilliant in the morning suns-glow, and descended to a landing in the village where the hard-packed dust made a descent inviting. Delia, Inch, Seg, and the others were looking for me, and they were searching here. But when they touched down they would be deluged with a sudden, treacherous sleeting of crossbow bolts. Those who survived would be swept up as slaves. All my friends — so soon to be murdered or enslaved!
And I was bound and helpless in iron chains, gagged so that I could not cry out a warning!
CHAPTER THREE
The flier was in truth a magnificent vessel. She moved with a sure steady grace over the village huts, and her people were hanging overside and staring down, and some of them waving. . The iron chains about me bit into my flesh as my muscles bulged. Futile! I tried to gnaw through the wooden chunk in my mouth; but the wood was balass and I merely bit down with teeth-crunching agony. I writhed about in the violence of my movements and the iron chains clanked. Reterhan looked most evilly upon me, and placed his foot on my neck, and pressed. Sparks darted and flashed before my eyes; but they were clear enough to see the flier turning, the scarlet and yellow flags dropping to their flagstaffs now as way came off. I stared. Then I dragged my gaze away. The flier had to be warned.
Vangar ti Valkanium, as the flier Hikdar, was bringing her in smoothly and gently, a perfect landing approach. Those people up there would see below them merely a sleepy, poor and innocent fishing village, with precious few people about at this time of morning.
They would not expect serried lines of crossbowmen.
Here in the continent of Havilfar, south of the equator, we were far from our homes in Vallia and Valka. But Havilfar was accounted the most progressive, the most modern, of the four continents that made up this grouping upon the face of the planet. Around the shores of the Shrouded Sea men had settled here first, long ago, and in the tumbled ruins of long-forgotten empires, in the artificial features of the landscape, in the admixtures of blood within the different species and races, were to be seen clear evidence of that long history of civilization here.
Seg, that wild and reckless bowman of Erthyrdrin, was up there in the flier. He and I had fought our way through the Hostile Territories. He would never in ordinary circumstances be taken unawares in ambush. Likewise Inch, that seven-foot-tall ax-man from Ng’groga so obsessed with his taboos, and I had battled through adventures. He, too, was a seasoned campaigner.
And — and up there on the high quarterdeck stood Delia, my Delia of Delphond!
At any moment now the voller would touch down. And then the cruel steel-tipped bolts would flash in a raining cloud of destruction.
Reterhan’s foot pressed with jovial power upon my neck.
Up in the flier was Korf Aighos, the leader of the rascally but loyal Blue Mountain Boys. Up there was Turko the Shield, that superbly muscled Khamorro of the magical murdering hands; but I felt his great shield would offer some protection, and I prayed Zair he would slap it across before Delia when the bolts whickered in. Tom ti Vulheim and his Valkan Archers were there, ready to be cut down before they could draw bow. Obquam of Tajkent, the flying Strom, would be there, and I longed for his slender powerful form to flash out on his narrow wings to scout this innocent-seeming deathtrap. Also, up there in the voller, were those new friends who had saved me in the arena by their selfless devotion: Naghan the Gnat, armorer superb; Balass the Hawk, who had earned the distinction of becoming a hyr-kaidur, Tilly, my little golden-furred Fristle fifi; and Oby, that young rascal who had aspired to greatness in the arena, but had had his dreams shattered, to be replaced by a vision of a greater future — and who must, I suspected, figure in the shadowy schemes of the Star Lords. All of them might in the next few murs be lying dead, pierced through and through with arbalest quarrels. Or they might be staggering up to be chained as was I and be carried off into slavery. Oh, Delia, my Delia!
I rolled my eyes at the Lamnia youth, Fanal. He saw me looking at him. I could not cry out. But he could. He could warn the airboat. Across my face that old evil look of power and arrogance passed, and my eyes glared with a mad berserker brilliance, so that he flinched away. But he turned his head, and would not look at me, and he did not cry out a warning.
No one would shout voluntarily.
So I must do something horrible.
Reterhan’s foot slid from my neck as I squirmed. I got my linked chains up and swung the small bight they had allowed me, and so snared that curved blade mounted at the end of his whiplike tail. Metal splines ran down from the blade to give stiffening and protection to the end two feet of tail. The chains snagged beneath the blade where it curved from its socket I rolled and lurched and staggered up and I pulled.