When they were next all awake the boaters had speared fish and proceeded now to cook it. Trond smoked his pipe, Henners carefully made his toilet, the rivermen pretended to count their paddles lest the poets had stolen one of them… so, easily, the hours passed till dark came again and the voyage was resumed. Jon-Joras knew now what the plan was and what was expected him: a landing near the thickets by the shallows of northern Peramis, a riverman to go with message to Jetro Yi, the Company man to come with the money to pay the “expenses,” and a point of honor to say nothing till time enough had passed for the guides (and guards) to be safely all away.
This was well enough with Jon-Joras. He felt slightly feverish, rather light of body and mind, day and night passed like gentle and unimportant dreams… in the background there were hints of hideous things… but only hints… and only in the background…
He was not quite sure how many of these days and nights there were (though surely not many). There was the hot smell of the grass and the resinous scent of the evergreen boughs, Trond and Henner now talking of Lora’s attempts to urge the Poets into counter-action against the nomad Tribesmen, now reciting to each other old verses or new or once again comparing couplets and quatrains and sonnets and triolets; the ruddly little rivermen squinting at them and him goodnaturedly and not understanding or caring about a word of it. There was the river at night, throbbing with its own great pulse in the incredibly yellow moonlight, golden buttery reflections rippling and melting and coalescing; and on a night like that a wedge of boats advanced towards them from downstream and another had spread out behind them from upstream, and—
“Yield! Yield!” cried voices all around, Trond swore, Henners wordlessly slipped from his clothes and was pale as moonlight as he dove into the stream, the boaters pulled their vessel around and darted for the higher shore, but then a bow twanged and one of the watermen cried out and caught at the shaft in his shoulder.
VII
“That was just for formality,” said a voice from the now hostile night. “We have guns, too. Yield!”
And added, for further formality, “—in the name of His Serene Supremacy, the Chairman of Drogue, who keeps the peace of The River.”
“We yield,” said Trond, sullenly. And the dark, swift craft were all about them.
“Go forward, boaters,” the voice directed. Two of the three played their paddles in silence, a silence broken by occasional calls from those guard-boats that had gone in search of Henners… evidently without success, for they by and by rejoined the formation.
They landed at a wharf bright with lamplight, and Jon-Joras, finally and completely emerged from the doze, or daze which engaged him through most of the trip, now observed the men who were surrounding them — after having emerged with precision from the flotilla. Challenges were evidently not the only things done with formality in Drogue; its armed force, in form-fitting black with adornments of crimson and gold, made a considerable contrast to that of Peramis, which (he remembered) was clad in loose greendrab.
“You are now under charge of arrest,” said a tall and grim-faced officer. “My report will note that you yielded on the second challenge.” He asked and received their names, proceeded: “The man Henners — who has succeeded in evading us for now — was indicted in absentia for grand robbery, lese majeste, and sedition of conduct. You, the man Trond—”
“I can produce a hundred witnesses that I was nowhere near Drogue when Henners—”
“—by your presence with the man Henners tonight, have become guilty of consorting with criminals.”
Trond shrugged. “The outworlder has nothing to do with all that,” he said. “He was lost and were guiding him back down to Peramis — that’s all.”
As if Trond had not spoken, the officer continued, “You, the man Jon-Joras, by your presence with the man Trond, have become guilty of consorting with criminals.”
Aghast, Jon-Joras cried, “But how far can you carry that?”
The officer, who had turned away with a gesture, now half-turned his head. “Infection never ceases,” he said. And continued on his way. Even before he had spoken, the black-clad river troops had closed in on Trond and Jon-Joras, bound their arms at wrists and elbows. No sooner had he uttered his last sibilant and turned his head away, than the two prisoners were led off at a fast half-march, half-trot that left no moment for anything but compliance.
The boaters had not been mentioned in the charges of arrest, had stood by with mournful faces and drooping heads, as if they knew what was coming. What came was a brusque grunt of a command from a petty officer. A pair of axes glinted, raised in the air. The rivermen broke out into a wail. The stove boat burned slowly. But it burned.
Jon-Joras, well aware that he was unlikely to find here any faintest reflection of the enlightened penal policies of his homeworld, had conjectured vision of cells dank and narrow and festooned with fetters set into dripping walls. The reality was rather different.
They passed through a series of bleak and empty rooms whose desks and cabinets hinted at some activity during daylight hours. They passed through a room full of bustle and smells of food and drink — a sort of canteen for the troops — where a few score men in black and red and gold glanced at the prisoners and then returned to their eating and guzzling and gaming. Someone of them did indeed fling a question at the convoy’s guards—
“What’s ye got, Blue?”
“Candidates for Archie,” was the curious answer. The questioner looked at them with briefly quickened interest and pursed his lips. Then he bent to his meat and turnips as if nothing else concerned him.
They passed then through a series of apartments in each of which (so it seemed) a grumbling turnkey rose up from his pallet on the floor to let them into the next, wife and children sometimes opening a sleepy eye to peer a moment, sometimes — more often — continuing to snore on. And, finally, the last thick and barred door behind them, the guard in charge rasped a metal-tipped rod against a great reticulation of a grill-work gate.
And then, impatient, seized hold of a rope and began to toll a brass-voiced bell. And at least a hundred human voices broke into clamor.
Din and tiny lights burned overhead at intervals in the vast room, filthy rushes scattered underfoot, and from heaps of these reeds prisoners were still rising as the two new ones were let in through a narrow door in the great grill.
“Fresh meat!”
“New blood!”
“Who’s them?”
“What’s ye charges?”
The warder, roused from a little wooden room like a dog-kennel, cursed ineffectually, produced (after some search) a grubby and grimy little tattered book, signed in his new charges with his tongue protruding from the corner of his mouth. By the time he was done the other troopers were gone and many of the prisoners had returned to their sleep. Others, however, still crowded around and still put their questions.
The place — it was not so much a room or a hall or keep as simply a large leftover space inside the building — the place stank abominably, and many of those now thrusting forward their eager, open mouths, stank worse.
Trond, wincing, shoved them away — not gently. He peered through the rancid gloom, demanded, “Where’s the Poets’ Corner? Any poet here?”
The crowd muttered, milled around a bit, parted, finally, for a tall and thin and stooped old man who came blinking forward to be identified by Trond before he had focused his own blear old eyes.