Gafard found me there, leaning on the rail, watching the break and spume and the white water curling below.
He came straight to the point.
"I spoke to you of treachery, Gadak."
"Aye, gernu."
He leaned back against the rail and swept his gaze across the decks. People moved about their business. We could not be overheard. His bronzed face scowled and his right fist gripped onto the hilt of his Genodder.
"I tell you, Gadak. For all I do for Magdag, and the king, the overlords would gloat to see me torn down and brought low."
"Yes, I can believe that."
"After we left the army it was surprised in the night by raiders wearing black clothes. My belongings were rifled, the great tent belonging to my Lady of the Stars destroyed."
"But why?"
"Why do I bring my Lady always with me, on campaign, where there is no fit work for a lady’s hands?" He was making an opening for me. I took it, taking a chance as usual. It would be a damned long swim from here to the next island on our course to the southern shore. .
"The king sends you on errands and when you take my Lady with you he sends men to surprise you and steal her away."
What reaction I had expected, and been ready for, mattered nothing. For this man, this bronze-faced, black-haired, fiery-eyed renegade boomed a huge laugh. He spluttered.
"By Genodras, Gadak! You take the chunkrah by the horns!"
I said nothing.
He wiped his eyes and then said, sharply, "You are right. It would be your head to repeat it."
"Aye."
"I like you. There is something — I cannot put a name to it — that appeals to me in you. You would have been strung up by your entrails by any other overlord long before this. I do not understand why I listen to you-"
"If the certain person we know of wishes to take my Lady from you, I do not think there is a place in all Grodnim you may hide."
He scowled blackly and swore. But it was true.
"Then must the guard be at all times ready. If they slay men skulking by night, clad in black, no man can point the finger at me. I am a loyal king’s man. Aye, by Goyt! Despite all, I admire that man, for he is a true genius in war and statecraft, in all things, save this. And in this he has the yrium to do as he wishes and make it the right thing."[2]
I wondered, privately, however much yrium Genod possessed, if he took the Lady of the Stars from Gafard how that violent man would console his conscience for his master. Or would he take sword and seek to redress his wrong, authority and power or no damned authority and power?
Next day we all knew we faced a long haul ahead. The warships were run down into the water, the slaves in their chains whipped on into putting their backs to it. They merely labored to float the ships that were their floating prisons. The suns shone. The sky lifted high and blue, with a few lazy clouds. There would be little wind today, although I fancied a breeze would get up toward evening and if we were unlucky would be dead foul for our southerly course.
There are many small islands dotted all over the inner sea, which is often a very shallow sea; but this day we faced a haul that would take us through the night and well into the morning of the day following before we sighted Benarej Island. Here we expected to be joined by a squadron of swifters for the final passage to the southern shore.
Well, the day limped along. The rowers pulled. The suns shone brassily, mingled jade and ruby, streaming down on the decks and casting strange-colored splotches of light through the awnings. Everyone sweated. The thought of the slaves below and the agonies they were enduring as they took their tricks at the looms made me fidgety and irritable.
Had I been still a Krozair of Zy I would have found an excuse to go below, would have slain the whip-Deldars and would have freed the slaves and so taken the ship back for Zair. But that, by itself, would not be enough to reinstate me. That would be the simple, ordinary, and obvious thing for any Krozair to do. And I was no longer a Krozair. So I sweated and was unpleasant to Duhrra and took myself off to stand in the bows and watch the bar-line of the horizon, burning against the sky. That sky changed subtly in color. I watched. This might be a normal rashoon, one of those suddenly explosive storms of the inner sea, or it might be the far more sinister manifestation of the Star Lords once more taking a hand in my destiny.
"It would have to strike us now, when there is no lee to run under." I turned.
The ship-Hikdar, Nath ti Hagon, had walked forward to stare with great animosity at the growing storm. He did not like me still, and who could blame him after that scene in the aft cabin when I had first come aboard Volgodont’s Fang? But the annoyance of the moment made him speak.
"We are in for a blow," I said, feeling that the calmest and most obvious thing to say. I turned away ready to go aft. He stopped me by speaking in a low, hurried voice.
"You know I do not like you, Gadak. But hear me in this. If you prove false to our lord in anything I shall surely slay you."
Shock, pleasure, annoyance? The emotions clashed in me.
I said, "I do not need you to teach me my duty, Nath ti Hagon. But, for your peaceful heart, I am charged to protect my lord. You see that you do not fail him." And I stalked off. He said no more and I guessed he was staring at me with baleful eyes and wishing to tear me to pieces as I walked aft. Hagon, his home town, lay in one of the huge looping bends of the River Dag, some sixty dwaburs north of Magdag as the fluttrell flies, although more than twice that far if you followed the curves of the river itself. Guamelga, of which province Gafard was rog, lay some eighty dwaburs to the west of Hagon, still on the same river, which looped sharply north and east, going upstream. Phangursh lay fifty dwaburs farther upstream, to the northeast. In all our operations across the River Daphig, to the east, Gafard had never troubled himself to ride across to the west and visit in his rognate of Guamelga. That made me think of all my own fair lands in Valka and her nearby islands, in Strombor and in Djanduin, and I cursed and hurled off below to make sure everything in our cabin was tightly lashed down against the force of the coming blow.
The swifter herself was snugged down. Gafard, who had been a swifter captain for a long time, knew how to handle ships on the inner sea. His first lieutenant, this Nath ti Hagon, had already proved to be a tough nut, able to run a trim swifter. I had no real fears we could not ride out the rashoon. This displayed another facet of Gafard, for a man in his position as king’s favorite, Sea-Zhantil, would act as an admiral and have a captain under him to run the ship. Not so Gafard, the King’s Striker. He ran his ship like a captain, and joyed in the doing of it. Not for him the sterile and removed glories of admiralty.
The rashoon swooped down on us and the suns vanished in gloom as the dark cloak of Notor Zan enveloped us. The wind screeched and whitecaps ran and were blown away across the tumbling sea. A galley is no ship to ride in during a blow. Men were frantically baling, and I took a hand, with Duhrra, cursing and swearing. The boat-sail was torn to shreds. In the gloom and the heaving movement, the wild shriek of the wind, the roil of the sea, I took a savage and bestial delight in battling those natural native elements, for the Everoinye had no part of this.
When, at last, the rashoon blew itself past, its violence intense and short-lived, we saw the scattered mess in which the convoy had been left. Mind you, Duhrra had a hard time not to crow aloud in his glee.
"Keep your black-fanged wine-spout shut, Guhrra! And that stupid grin off your chart-top!" I was harsh with him, for his own good, as he knew.
We had in sight across the still tumbling sea some fifty or so of the broad ships. They were scattered, but already sails were breaking out aboard and they began to straggle back into formation. I scanned the horizons; past the sails of the convoy, around over that islandless sea, and could make out not a single other swifter. Well, I knew Volgodont’s Fang had been handled superbly. She had kept up to the wind, being as weatherly as any lubberly galley ever can be, and the other swifters had all been blown down to leeward.