Chapter Four
THE CASTLE OF THE AX
A COLD NORTH WIND FROM THE STEPPES OF SHVEN STIRRED the Inner Sea and swiftly bore the Talaris southeast. The coast was a thin black line on the southwestern horizon. The dragon-spine of the Lograms should have been visible above this dark streak, but a blanket of winter cloud concealed it.
On the ship, Jorian stood on the roof of the deckhouse with the captain and the two steersmen, one to each of the quarter rudders. Karadur was confined to his cabin and the slave girls to their tent by seasickness.
"You seem to have a good stomach for a blow," said Captain Strasso.
"I've seen worse on the Western Ocean," replied Jorian. "Why, one time when I was chasing pirates—ah—I mean, when pirates were chasing my ship—well, anyway, the sea made this one look like a millpond. This sea saved us, for it swamped the pirate galley, whilst we came through with nothing worse than some wreckage on deck."
"And I suppose, mighty Master Maltho, that you were not seasick?" said Strasso.
Jorian laughed. "Spare your sarcasms, friend. On the contrary. I was as sick as a dying dog. But I think great Psaan decided that I had had enough of this affliction for one life, because I've never been seasick since. How much farther south must we sail ere the weather warms?"
"Janareth is warmer—it never snows there—but you'll find no truly tropical clime until you cross the Lograms. On the hither side of those peaks, the summers are dry and the winters wet. On the farther side, they tell me, it is the opposite… There's one of your chickabiddies now, dragging herself to the rail as to the scaffold."
"I must below, to see how the wenches do."
Strasso leered. "And perchance to improve an idle hour in their embraces?"
"A good supercargo does not handle the merchandise more than he must to insure its safe delivery." Jorian lowered himself to the deck and accosted the girl. It was Mnevis, who by force of personality had become spokeswoman for the twelve. She looked bedraggled and woebegone, having lost weight from not being able to keep food down.
"Good Master Maltho," she said, "I fear some dreadful doom awaits us."
"Oh, come! Anyone feels thus after a bout of seasickness."
"Nay, 'tis not the sea I fear, but these fearsome men to whom we've been sold. Headsmen—ugh!" She shuddered. "I shall see their hands dripping blood whenever I look upon them."
"Executioners are just like other men, save that their bloody but necessary trade arouses prejudice in unthinking minds. And these men have quit their profession for peaceful retirement."
"Natheless, the thought of them gives me the horrors. Could we not prevail upon you to engineer our escape? Or at least, our sale to men of more normal bent. We have nought to bribe you with, save our poor bodies; but these have been thought not uncomely…"
"I'm sorry, Mnevis; impossible. I have promised to deliver you to Chairman Khuravela, of the retired headsmen of Rennum Kezymar, and delivered you shall be."
Later, Jorian said to Karadur: "You know, Doctor, never before have I thought of the problem that executioners face in everyday living; yet such people are necessary, just as are collectors of taxes and of offal— two other much maligned classes:
The morning after the Talaris left Vindium, gray clouds covered the sky and the shore. Captain Strasso, turning his sun stone this way and that to catch the gleam that betrayed the sun's direction, grumbled to Jorian, "If the weather worsen, we may have to lay up at Janareth for the winter, 'stead of returning to our home port. And then will Benniver's Sons give me a wigging! That's the way of it with shipowners. Take a chance, and they berate you for risking their priceless property; take not a chance, and they betongue you for wasting their precious time and costing them profits."
"Island ahead!" called the lookout.
Captain Strasso looked pleased. "After sailing all night by the feel of wind and wave, that's not a bad landfall, now is it?" To the helmsman: "A hair to starboard… Steady as you go." To Jorian again: "No proper harbor, but two anchorages, on the north and south sides of the island. At this season, ships use the south anchorage."
It was after noon when the Talaris dropped anchors in the small bay on the south side of Rennum Kezymar. The dinghy was lowered to transfer the slave girls ashore. With two sailors to row, Jorian, Karadur, and two of the girls went first. As they climbed out on the rickety little small-boat pier and the dinghy returned to the ship, a group of men approached from the shoreward end of the pier. They were brown-skinned, turbaned, and wrapped in many layers of wool and cotton, draped and tucked in various ways with loose ends fluttering in the wind.
The man in the lead was as tall as Jorian and much more massive—a mountain of muscle, now somewhat shrunken and sagging with age, with a big potbelly straining at his wrappings. Long, white hair hung down from under his turban, and a vast white beard covered his chest when the breeze did not blow it aside.
"Are you Chairman Khuravela, sir?" said Jorian in Mulvani.
"Aye." It was more a grunt than a word.
"Maltho of Kortoli, supercargo for Benniver's Sons. I have come to deliver the twelve slave girls you ordered from the dealer Belius in Vindium."
Another grunt.
"That is the second load, coming ashore now. One more trip win complete the task."
Grunt.
"My friend, the eminent Doctor Karadur."
Grunt.
This, thought Jorian, was becoming difficult. He continued to stand in the wind, trying to make conversation. But, what with his limited fluency in the language and the wooden unresponsiveness of the giant, he had little success. The other executioners—like their chief, big, burly men of advanced years—stood about silently, fidgeting and shifting their feet.
Jorian's gaze wandered from the sands of the shore, where clumps of sedge nodded in the wind, to the higher ground of the interior. The island bore no trees, only long grass, now dead and dried, and dark clumps of ilex and spreading holly. Around the castle on the highest point of the isle, cabbage patches added a touch of color to an otherwise sad, gray, washed-out landscape. The castle was gray against the darker gray of the overcast sky.
At last the dinghy arrived on its third shoreward journey. The rest of the slave girls climbed out on the pier.
"That is all," said Jorian.
Chairman Khuravela jerked his head. "Come."
They straggled up the slope to the castle. A few former headsmen were working in the cabbage patches. A dry ditch, half filled with rubbish and spanned by a lowered drawbridge, surrounded the castle.