No, it is not necessary to detail my feelings about the men of Magdag, the men of Grodno. If I say that little Wincie, a cherry-lipped, impish-eyed, tousle-headed slip of a girl of whom I was very fond, had been killed in a most barbarous fashion, it conveys little. Her task was to bring the skins of water for the brick making and to slake our thirsts; the mailed men on one of their sporting sorties had caught her and had, as you twentieth century moralists would phrase it, gang-raped her. These are words. The reality in agony, blood, and filth is a part of the mosaic of life. It does not need to be dwelled on to make my position — the young man I then was, harsh, relentless, vicious to those I hated, malignant in my cherished feelings of injustice — clear enough to the dullest of minds. Now they had flogged to death my friend, Zorg of Felteraz.
Not all the slaves had come weeping with joy aboard the swifter from Holy Sanurkazz. Some had wailed and resisted. These were prisoners of Magdag, men sentenced to the galleys for some crime and with the eventual prospect of freedom before them. Now they would become the galley slaves of their hereditary enemies. Life was stark and brutal on the inner sea.
Lilac Bird interested me. She was a larger galley than Grace of Grodno, although not of the largest size that plowed these waters. I gathered her speed had given her captain, Pur Zenkiren, some concern, as she was new and he had had high hopes of her. She was a seven-six-hundred swifter. Simply, this means she had a hundred oars, arranged in two banks with seven men on the upper bank at each oar and six on the lower, two banks of twenty-five oars a side. I thought her length insufficient in proportion to her beam, given the ridiculous shapes of galleys, anyway; her draft was still too deep, caused by the weights, than was desirable for the swiftest of galleys. I caught myself. Here I was, starting to think like a sailor again.
“You are feeling fit in yourself, my Lord of Strombor?” Pur Zenkiren spoke pleasantly as we sat in his plain after quarters, with the arms in their racks, the charts upon the table, the wine glasses and bottle between us. They did not use beckets or swinging tables; they wouldn’t venture out if a storm was brewing.
“Fit, thank you, Pur Zenkiren. I owe you my liberty — I had some concern that you might return me, a stranger, to the benches.”
He smiled. His face was weather-beaten, his eyes dark and penetrating, and that arrogant beak nose lifted at times so that, for a heartbreaking moment, I would catch that glimpse of Zorg. Zenkiren, like Zorg, had a mass of black curly hair, shining and oiled and remarkably romantic, I have no doubt.
“We followers of Zair have a respect for a man, my Lord of Strombor.”
A single chart, of remarkably poor quality, hopeless accuracy, and miniscule scale, had been found in the locker, which showed Strombor. The whole coastlines outside the inner sea were incorrect, but the names were marked down: Loh, Vallia, Pandahem, Segesthes, with Zenicce marked and, alongside in a panel, the names of the twenty-four Houses of Zenicce, both noble and lay. The fascinating thing here was that Strombor was marked and Esztercari was not, proving the map to have been drawn well over a hundred and fifty years before.
“We have a little contact with the outside world, mainly with Vallia and Donengil, but we are an inward-looking people. The main effort to which we are all dedicated is defiance and resistance to the power of Grodno, no matter when, how, and where such a resistance shall be made.”
I looked at him. He spoke as though out of rote. Then he smiled at me again, lifted his glass, and said:
‘To the ice floes of Sicce with Magdag and all her evil spawn!”
“I’ll drink to that,” I said, and did so.
They had given me a decent white loincloth and I had washed and rubbed scented oils on my body, and I had eaten real food again. Now, sitting drinking with the captain of the swifter, I felt human once more
— or, I reminded myself, as human as I would ever feel while the canker of Grodno and Magdag continued to exist.
My feelings were made very plain to Zenkiren, who had sized me up to his satisfaction, as he thought. The many parallels of the red-green situation in the Eye of the World to that old battle between Esztercari and Strombor had occurred to me; although I found greater contrast and interest in the Catholic and Islamic conflicts of the late Renaissance, or the bitterness between Guelf and Ghibelline. I was aware, too, that the greater malice seemed always to exist between those whose beliefs had diverged from a single origin. The people of the sunset, the old original inhabitants of the Eye of the World, had built well and industriously to produce the Grand Canal and the Dam of Days, that terrifying structure I had not yet seen. They had also built fine cities, some ruined and lost, some ruined and partially rebuilt, now inhabited by the newer men who had split from the old red-green comradeship.
“Those vile cramphs of Magdag,” Zenkiren said to me as we voyaged back to Sanurkazz. “We know how they build. They are obsessed by building, diseased by it.”
“It is destroying their culture, their life,” I said.
“Yes! They think to find favor in the sight of their evil master, the false deity Grodno the Green, by every act of building, every new construction of monstrous proportions. They bleed their countryside dry for workers and wealth. So, then they must raid and ravage us in order to replenish their stock.”
“I saw a farm, a massive affair, very well-run and producing-”
“Oh, yes!” Zenkiren waved a dismissive arm. “Of course! They have millions to feed; they must produce food, as we must. But they raid us continually and take our young men and our girls and children for their consuming buildings.”
“You raid them.”
“Yes! It is the glory of Zair laid upon us.” He looked at me and hesitated; it surprised me, for he was a fine captain and a man who knew his mind. “You were the friend of Zorg of Felteraz. I have heard from Zolta of that. You are a Lord. I think-” Again he hesitated, and then, in a slower and softer voice, asked: “Did Zorg speak to you of the Krozairs of Zy?”
“No,” I said. “He used the word Krozair when he was dying. He seemed — proud, then.”
Zenkiren changed the flow of conversation, then, and we spoke of many things as Lilac Bird rowed steadily toward the south. She was followed by two other swifters, smaller galleys in this swift raiding squadron under Zenkiren’s command. They had snapped up three plump merchantmen as well sinking Grace of Grodno, and the merchantmen wallowed along aft.
In all honesty I must admit I did not even think it strange that Zenkiren should take my word that I was the Lord of Strombor. I was beginning to adopt the attitudes of mind of the leader of a House of Zenicce, and my years as Vovedeer and Zorcander with the Clansmen had given me the air of habitual authority. But I believe Zenkiren would not have cared had I been the lowliest of foot soldiers, for he did everything merely because he knew that I had been the friend of Zorg of Felteraz and had avenged his death. I was convinced the word Krozair linked these attitudes. I had seen, as Grace of Grodno finally sank, the air bubbling out and the timbers breaking free and shooting up, a white dove circling Lilac Bird. That dove heartened me. Could it be, I wondered, that the Savanti were taking a hand again? Could they be confirming my continued existence on Kregen even though I had been forced away from Magdag? I looked for the Gdoinye, the scarlet and golden raptor; I did not see it. Zenkiren had been taking a considerable risk in sailing so close to the northern shore. He had been on the lookout for choice tidbits in the way of Magdaggian merchantmen and the fortyswifter had been a delectable item to snap up. We did not know why she had been en route to Gansk, and perhaps we never would learn. Zenkiren’s concern had been for Lilac Bird ’s disturbing lack of speed. Only my intervention with the consequent interruption in the pulling of the fortyswifter had given him the chance to overhaul her, and then the Sanurkazzan galley had reached up so swiftly there had been no need to use the ballistae mounted in her bows.