This had been a slave caravan. The Ugas required slaves, as was common over Kregen except where Delia and I had stamped out the practice, and we were happy to release a number of Grodnims who fell on their noses and upended their bottoms and gave long howls of thanks to Grodno for their rescue. Among the slaves I saw a group of men and women with stark white hair. I thought, as was natural, that they were Gons, that race who habitually shave their white hair religiously until they are bald, out of shame.
"Not so, Gadak," said young Nalgre, the son of an overlord of Magdag on Gafard’s staff, and therefore one day to be an overlord himself and so a candidate for the edge of my sword. He would have been a smart young man had he worn the red. As it was, he had no chance to learn what humanity meant. "They are the Sea-Werstings. Best we slay them all, here and now, and so save trouble."
"Are they so dangerous?"
"Little you know, renegade." They liked to rub our noses in it, these puppies, when Gafard was not around. "They are a sea-people and they should be sent sailing to the Ice Floes of Sicce, by Goyt!" He half drew his Genodder, scowling at the huddled group of naked white-haired slaves, and thrust the shortsword back into the scabbard with a meaningful snap.
Later there was a chance to talk to these Sea-Werstings, for Gafard had issued orders they were not to be slain but were to be kept awaiting his pleasure.
Their language was but little different from the universal Kregish, an imposed tongue, and it would have been easy to talk with them even had I not been blessed by Maspero’s coded genetic language pill given to me in Aphrasoe, the city of the Savanti.
I selected a strong man in the prime of life, who sat with bound hands and feet in a protective fashion by the side of a woman who, although not beautiful in the accepted sense, was firm of body and pleasantly faced, with a fineness about her forehead where the white hair had been cut away.
"You have fallen on hard times, dom," I said, sitting at his side and offering him a piece of bread soaked in soup. He opened his mouth sufficiently to speak, and shut it at once.
"Thank you, master. Give it to my woman."
I did so and then gave him a second piece from the earthenware bowl. I kept my weapons well away from his bound hands, just in case he had been working on his bonds.
"You are Sea-Werstings?"
He scowled. "That is the foolish name given to us by these barbarians, and by you ignorant Grodnims."
"Then what is your name, and where is your home?"
As we talked so I fed them soup-soaked bread, and gave also to the others nearby.
"We are the Kalveng. We are a seafaring folk, with havens all along the western coast of Turismond. When our long-ships breast the foam and our weapons glitter across the dark sea, then all men tremble."
"I have never been there. Is it very cold?"
He looked at me as though I were an idiot. "No more than a warrior may bear, wearing mail and wielding a sword."
"And a woman?"
"They, too, are handmaidens of Veng."
We talked more. It seemed to me the spirit of these people would not be broken by fetters and chains. Had I been a king ruling a country menaced by their depredations, I fancy I might have heeded well the advice of that young puppy Nalgre, the Magdaggian overlord’s son.
This Kalveng, Tyvold ti Vruerdensmot, clearly a proud and stubborn character, told me much of the unknown lands of northwestern Turismond. In the map I roughly sketched out I indicated that coast with a mere scrawl, a line of no meaning, for the coast there had no part to play in my story then.[1]The inner lands are riddled with vast lakes and inlets of the sea; there are fjords and rapids and marshes, a whole vast area aswarm with life and people on the move and people in their keeps and towns. As the folk of the inner sea face inward, to the Eye of the World, so the nations of the northwest hold themselves aloof from others!
"What is your name?" said this Tyvold ti Vruerdensmot.
"I am called Gadak."
He looked astonished.
"And is that all?"
"Aye."
"You do not trifle with me, for sport?"
"No. You are bound and I am free. There is no sport in that."
"I have seen it, though, when the slaves ran and the torches flew and the brands bit. You are a man with a secret."
I stood up, easily enough, and stretched my shoulders under the mail and the white tunic and the green sleeveless jacket. I looked down on Tyvold.
"And if you escaped this night. . would you return home direct?" The hunger in his face moved me.
"Aye!"
"Direct?"
He took my meaning. "Aye, master. Direct."
I said no more and turned away, leaving the empty bowl.
That night a thief broke into a stores tent and a quantity of food and clothing was taken. Also, in the morning, a Rapa guard was discovered unconscious but otherwise unharmed where the Sea-Werstings had been chained to stakes driven into the ground. The Sea-Werstings had vanished, every one, and a search failed to discover any trace of them. Gafard entrusted the leadership of the search party into the hands of his fellow-renegade, Gadak; and Gadak, although he searched diligently to the north, failed to find a single trace of the escaped slaves. With that, amid a smother of curses, the affair was forgotten. As Nalgre said, lifting his manicured fingernails to the gold lace at his throat, "They do not make good slaves. We would have had to slay them, in the end." He couldn’t leave it alone, for he added with selfish venom, "A fine opportunity for sport, lost!"
I did not answer, but walked away. I wondered what that cold northland of the Kalvengs was like. When the Grodnims said the Sea-Werstings would not make good slaves I knew what they meant. Some races seem destined to be enslaved and one must fight for them and put iron in their backbones, for no man is born slave in the eyes of Zair or Opaz.
Of the diffs of Kregen, the Xaffers are a case in point.
Other races breed men and women who will not tolerate slavery, and these simply will themselves to death, or seek release at the hands of their masters in the final death. I will not speak of these races now. And there are races of people with a stiff-necked pride that bends ill beneath the yoke. There are many of these. My fearsome four-armed Djangs will accept slavery if forced upon them; but they make their masters damned uncomfortable all the time these masters are foolish enough to enslave a Dwadjang. I had been slave many and many a time, as you know. So had my Delia, to my shame. I wondered how my children would tolerate slavery. I had last seen my eldest twins, Drak and Lela, when they had been fourteen, just at the time when they were burgeoning into manhood and womanhood. Now they were all of thirty-six. Prince Drak ran my island Stromnate of Valka and was a Krozair of Zy, and was a powerful man. Lela had refused the offers of marriage five times — at the last count. My other twins, Segnik and Velia, would now be twenty-five years old, and I had last seen them when they’d been three, running and laughing upon the high terrace of Esser Rarioch, forever plaguing Aunt Katri, joyous, gorgeous, wonderful children; and now Segnik would have himself called Zeg and was a Krozair of Zy, and Velia had received the same education as Lela with the Sisters of the Rose and was no doubt in her turn refusing offers of marriage. I wondered what they were like now, and if I would ever see them again, and so that made all the dark powerful forces of obstinacy rise up in me. I would play out this hand and act like a Grodnim and so use that as a springboard to escape with Duhrra and once more become a Krozair of Zy. Oh, yes, I’d set my hands to that task. I’d become a Krozair of Zy again, for only by doing that would I escape the Eye of the World and once more clasp my Delia in my arms, see my twins Drak and Lela, and my twins Zeg and Velia. As to the Red Brotherhood of Zy — the Krozairs — I swung a Ghittawrer longsword at my waist now and wore the green and swore luridly by Grodno. Nothing mattered besides escaping and going home to Valka and my family.