"My beautiful Chavonth!"
"Yes, Captain. Now, if you will go. ."
So he chivied us over the side and into the waiting boat.
Duhrra brought our effects. I hoped if by any chance a scrap of our breechclouts showed the Magdaggians would think them only drenched in blood. Duhrra had his right arm wedged into the front of his robe. I helped him with the dunnage. The Hikdar’s black eyebrows rose. He was a most supercilious young man.
The boat pulled across to the swifter. Captain Andapon could not take his eyes off his ship. The argenter, Chavonth of Mem, went down in a last froth of bubbles as we climbed up onto the swifter’s quarterdeck.
Oh, yes, the memories gushed up for me, who had been a slave in a Magdaggian swifter, and then a captain of a Zairian swifter, the foremost corsair upon the inner sea. We were escorted below and to the captain’s cabin. The men would be quartered on the upper deck, well away from the oar-slaves. Captain Andapon and I stepped into the ornate elegance of the aft cabin, and entered a world of luxury and wealth, of power and the naked display of arrogance and riches. Aides and orderlies sprang instantly to do the bidding of this swifter captain of Green Magdag. We were waved to comfortable upholstered chairs, wine was pressed into our hands. What the blood was doing to the upholstery seemed to give no one any cause for second thoughts. No doubt another raid would amply repay the cost. The captain walked in.
"Lahal, gernus. You have wine? Good. Now tell me the essentials." Captain Andapon was not only a tough hard seadog, he was also a man who had had dealings with the overlords of Magdag. He did not beat about the bush.
"Lahal, gernu. We were caught in a calm. We fought. They would have had us but for your timely arrival, for which I thank you from the bottom of-"
"Very good." This captain waved Andapon down. He looked at me. "My ship-Hikdar tells me you fought well. He says you are from Goforeng. I warn you I can smell untruths many dwaburs off. I want the truth."
How typical this was of overlords of Magdag. And, too, how refreshing! I’d been getting soft of late. I still sat as I spoke.
"Lahal, Captain. If you do not choose to believe I am from Goforeng, that is your concern." I heard the horrified gasps from his aides. Andapon drew a little away on his chair, as though to disassociate himself from this ungrateful and suicidal madman.
Before anyone could say any more, I said, in what I considered a reasonable tone of voice, "You have not told us your name."
Again the gasps from the aides. The ship-Hikdar, who had come in with some importance, half drew his sword. I glanced up at him. "Why do you draw your sword, dom? Do you wish to die?" The Hikdar’s face flushed with painful blood. He blazed out at his captain, "Gernu! Is this to be tolerated? May I have the pleasure of chopping this-"
"Softly, Nath, softly. There is more here than we supposed." He bent a frowning glance on me. I recognized it as a practiced expression designed to overawe. His black curly hair was bunched on his head, oiled and scented. His long green robe was belted in at the waist, and he wore a shortsword there, on his right side. His face was hawklike, bold, arrogant, two blue bolts for eyes, the chin of a swifter’s ram — yes, these were the externals. But in that face there was not only the consciousness of power, there was real power also.
"I think," he said, "that you should tell me your name before I tell mine. That would appear equitable." It was so, on the face of it, according to ship custom.
"Dak." I paused for only a hairbreadth of time. I had to think of some convincing name, and fast. "Dak ti Foreng." I stared up, my ugly old face hard and uncompromising. "And you?" The Hikdar bustled forward, outraged by my conduct and yet unwilling to allow the pappattu to be incorrectly made.
"You have the honor to be in the presence of Gernu Gafard, Rog of Guamelga, the King’s Striker, Prince of the Central Sea, the Reducer of Zair, Sea-Zhantil, Ghittawrer of Genod. ." All the time this Hikdar Nath rattled off the titles, and there were many more in the wearisome way of Magdag, this Gafard sat watching me with a small ironical smile playing upon his lips. In this, if nothing else, he recognized the follies of panoply and pomp. But I fastened on one fact, one single vital item in all that long imposing list. He did not bear a surname. No man with the power and rank he had, starting from that rog — which equaled the roz of the zairians; the kov or duke of the Outer Oceans — would willingly stride the world’s stage without a surname. I knew him for what he was then. The anger and bitterness in me ought not to be present, save as a general principle. I had made up my mind to quit the inner sea. Why, then, worry my head over its intrigues, its deceptions, its treacheries?
When the ship-Hikdar finished and stepped smartly back to his place, this Gafard bent his eye on me and said, "Now you know."
"Aye," I said.
This man was no true overlord of Magdag. Had I spoken to an overlord as I had to him I’d have been run outside and something diabolical would be happening to me, had I not done as I intended and broken free among the slaves chained below. This Gafard had prevented me from doing that, whereat I cursed within me, impotent to do what I wanted. No novel situation, I know, by Zim-Zair!
Gafard said, "I wish to speak to this wild leem alone. Clear the cabin. Nath, stand close beyond the door with a guard. Come running at my hail."
"Your orders, my commands, gernu!" bellowed the Hikdar, saluting, turning, bellowing the others out. We were alone.
He sat for some time at the long shining table before the stern windows, his hands limp on the balass wood, his gaze unwavering, direct, on me. Then-
"You take terrible chances, dom."
"It is necessary."
"Do you not think you might raise a gernu?"
I had made up my mind as to my tack. It was a chance, but I fancied this Gafard would be in need of what I offered — or would seem to offer, to my shame.
"What do titles mean to such a one as you?"
"Ah!" He rose and walked about the cabin on the soft rugs, his hands at his back, his head jutting forward so that his arrogant beaked nose looked even more ferocious.
"And suppose I give the orders and you are stripped and thrown below, chained to slave at the oar benches."
I did not shrug. "You might try."
He sucked in his-breath at this.
"I need men like you," he began.
I felt a premonition that the banal words might cloak a real meaning, that I was on the way to winning. He could see I read the meaninglessness of his words, for he went on, "You say you know who I am. Very well. I own it proudly! The name of Gafard, the Sea-Zhantil, is known upon the Eye of the World. I am rich, wealthy beyond your dreams. I fight for King Genod. I am a Ghittawrer in his very own Brotherhood. All these things I am, but in Zairia I was nothing! Nothing! There was no Z in my name. I fought for the Red — aye! Fought well, and nothing was my reward. I was prevented from joining the Krozairs, from joining any Red Brotherhood."
"So you turned renegade."
"Aye! And proud of it! Now I take what is rightfully mine upon the Eye of the World!" He stood before me, alert, his right hand resting on the hilt of the shortsword. He turned, ready to draw. It would be a fifty-fifty chance whether or not he could draw and present the point at my throat before I could get out the longsword. I would not attempt to draw. .
"You do appear to be doing well. And I compliment you upon your swifter handling." He saw the arrogance in my words. Yet he smiled.
"You know I am not an overlord of Magdag by birth. But I am an overlord now, by right! Any other Grodnim gernu would have had you chained to a rowing bench by now."