Often in the hours that followed Carse found his gaze going up to the afterdeck. He had a grim desire to see this Ywain of Sark whose slave he now was.
In mid-afternoon, after blowing steadily for hours, the wind began to fail and dropped finally to a flat calm.
The drum thundered. The sweeps went out and once again Carse was sweating at the unfamiliar labor, snarling at the kiss of the lash on his back. Only Boghaz seemed happy.
“I am no seafaring man,” he said, shaking his beard. “For a Khond like you, Jaxart, sea-roving is natural. But I was delicate in my youth and forced to quieter pursuits. Ah blessed calm! Even the drudgery of the oars is preferable to bounding like a wild thing over the waves.”
Carse was touched by this pathetic speech until he discovered that Boghaz had good reason not to mind the rowing inasmuch as he was only bending back and forth while Carse and Jaxart pulled. Carse dealt him a blow that nearly knocked him off the bench and after that he pulled his weight, groaning.
The afternoon wore on, hot and endless, to the ceaseless beat of the oars.
The palms of Carse’s hand blistered, then broke and bled. He was a powerful man, but even so the strength ran out of him like water and his body felt as though it had been stretched on the rack. He envied Jaxart, who behaved as though he had been born in the oar banks.
Gradually sheer exhaustion dulled his agony somewhat. He fell into a sort of drugged stupor, wherein his body performed its task mechanically.
Then, in the last golden blaze of daylight, he lifted his head to gasp for breath and saw, through the wavering haze that obscured his vision, a woman standing on the deck above him, looking at the sea.
VII. The Sword
She might be both Sark and devil as the others had said. But whatever she was, she stopped Carse’s breath and held him staring.
She stood like a dark flame in a nimbus of sunset light. Her habit was that of a young warrior, a hauberk of black mail over a short purple tunic, with a jeweled dragon coiling on the curve of her mailed breast and a short sword at her side.
Her head was bare. She wore her black hair short, cut square above the eyes and falling to her shoulders. Under dark brows her eyes had smoldering fires in them. She stood with straight long legs braced slightly apart, peering out over the sea.
Carse felt the surge of bitter admiration. This woman owned him and he hated her and all her race but he could not deny her burning beauty and her strength.
“Row, you carrion!”
The oath and the lash brought him back from his staring. He had lost stroke, fouling the whole starboard bank, and Jaxart was cursing and Callus was using the whip.
He beat them all impartially and fat Boghaz wailed at the top of his lungs, “Mercy, oh Lady Ywain! Mercy, mercy!”
“Shut up, scum!” snarled Callus and lashed them until blood ran.
Ywain glanced down into the pit. She rapped out a name. “Callus!”
The oar-bank captain bowed. “Yes, Highness.”
“Pick up the beat,” she said. “Faster, I want to raise the Black Banks at dawn.” She looked directly at Carse and Boghaz and added, “Flog every man who loses stroke.”
She turned away. The drum beat quickened. Carse looked with bitter eyes at Ywain’s back. It would be good to tame this woman. It would be good to break her utterly, to tear her pride out by the roots and stamp on it.
The lash rapped out the time on his unwilling back and there was nothing for it but to row.
Jaxart grinned a wolf’s grin. Between strokes he panted, “Sark rules the White Sea to hear them tell it. But the Sea Kings still come out! Even Ywain won’t dawdle on the way!”
“If their enemies may be out why don’t they have escort ships for this galley?” Carse asked, gasping.
Jaxart shook his head. “That I can’t understand myself. I heard that Garach sent his daughter to overawe the subject king of Jekkara, who’s been getting too ambitious. But why she came without escort ships—”
Boghaz suggested, “Perhaps the Dhuvians furnished her with some of their mysterious weapons for protection?”
The big Khond snorted. “The Dhuvians are too crafty to do that! They’ll use their strange weapons sometimes in behalf of their Sark allies, yes. That’s why the alliance exists. But give weapons to Sark, teach Sarks how to use them? They’re not that foolish!”
Carse was getting a clearer idea of this ancient Mars. These peoples were all half-barbaric—all but the mysterious Dhuvians. They apparently possessed at least some of the ancient science of this world and jealously guarded it and used it for their own and their Sark allies’ purposes.
Night fell. Ywain remained on deck and the watches were doubled. Naram and Shallah, the two Swimmers, stirred restlessly in their shackles. In the torchlit gloom their eyes were luminous with some secret excitement.
Carse had neither the strength nor the inclination to appreciate the wonder of the glowing sea by moonlight. To make matters worse a headwind sprang up and roughened the waves to an ugly cross-chop that made the oars doubly difficult to handle. The drum beat inexorably.
A dull fury burned in Carse. He ached intolerably. He bled and his back was striped by fiery weals. The oar was heavy. It was heavier than all Mars and it bucked and fought him like a live thing.
Something happened to his face. A strange stony look came over it and all the color went out of his eyes, leaving them bleak as ice and not quite sane. The drumbeat merged into the pounding of his own heart, roaring louder with every painful stroke.
A wave sprang up, the long sweep crabbed the handle, took Carse across the chest and knocked the wind out of him. Jaxart, who was experienced, and Boghaz, who was heavy, regained control almost at once though not before the overseer was on hand to curse them for lazy carrion—his favorite word—and to lay on the whip.
Carse let go of the oar. He moved so fast, in spite of his hampering chains, that the overseer had no idea what was happening until suddenly he was lying across the Earth-man’s knees and trying to protect his head from the blows of the Earthman’s wrist-cuffs.
Instantly the oar bank went mad. The stroke was hopelessly lost. Men shouted for the kill. Callus rushed up and hit Carse over the head with the loaded butt of his whip, knocking him half-senseless. The overseer scrambled back to safety, eluding Jaxart’s clutching arms. Boghaz made himself as small as possible and did nothing.
Ywain’s voice came down from the deck. “Callus!” The oar-bank captain knelt, trembling. “Yes, Highness?”
“Flog them all until they remember that they’re no longer men but slaves.” Her angry, impersonal gaze rested on Carse. “As for that one—he’s new, isn’t he?”
“Yes, Highness.”
“Teach him,” she said.
They taught him. Callus and the overseer together taught him. Carse bowed his head over his arms and took it. Now and again Boghaz screamed as the lash flicked too far over and caught him instead. Between his feet Carse saw dimly the red streams that trickled down into the bilges and stained the water. The rage that had burned in him chilled and altered as iron tempers under the hammer.
At last they stopped. Carse raised his head. It was the greatest effort he had ever made, but stiffly, stubbornly, he raised it. He looked directly at Ywain.
“Have you learned your lesson, slave?” she asked.
It was a long time before he could form the words to answer. He was beyond caring now whether he lived or died. His whole universe was centered on the woman who stood arrogant and untouchable above him.