At The Edge Of Space (Hanan Rebellion) (26 page)

“Aye, sir,” said Val, and the ship came a few degrees over.

“They are following,” Tkel shouted down after a little time had passed. “They must think we are out of Indresul, my lord.”

“The lad is too free with his supposings,” Val said between his teeth.

“Nevertheless,” said Kta, “that is probably the answer.”

“I will join the deck crew,” Kurt offered. “Or serve as relief at the benches.”

“You are considered of Elas,” said Kta. “It makes the men uneasy when you show haste or concern. But if work will relieve your nerves, indulge yourself. Go to the benches.”

Kta himself was frightened. It was likely that Kta himself would gladly have taken a hand with the oars, with the rigging, with anything that would have materially sped
Tavi
on her way; Kurt knew the nemet well enough to read it in his eyes, though his face was calm. He burned to do something. They had fenced together: Kurt knew the nemet’s impatient nature. The Ancestors, Kta had told him once, were rash men. That was the character of Elas.

In the jolted, moving vision of Kta that Kurt had from the rowers’ pit, his own mind numbed by the beat of the oars and the need to breathe, the nemet still stood serenely beside Val at the helm, arms folded, staring out to the horizon.

Then Tkel’s shrill voice called down so loudly it rose even over the thunder of the oars.

“Sails off the port bow!”

Tavi
altered course. Deck crews ran to the sheets, the oars shuddered a little at the unexpectedly deep bite of the blades, lifted. Chal upon the catwalk called out a faster beat. Breath came harder. Vision blurred.

“They are three sails!” Tkel’s voice floated down.

It was tribute to
Tavi
’s discipline that no one broke time to look. Kta looked, and then walked down among the rowers along the main deck so they could see him clearly.

“Well,” he said, “we bear due north. Those are ships of Indresul ahead of us. If we can hold our present course and they take interest in the other ship, all will be well.—
Hya,
Chal, ease off the beat. Make it one which will last. We may be at this no little time.”

The cadence of the oars took a slower beat. Kta went back to his place at the helm, looking constantly to that threatened horizon. Whatever the Indras ships were doing was something outside the world of the pits: the pace maintained itself, mind lost, no glances at anything but the sweat-drenched back of the man in front, his shoulders, clearing the sweep in back only scarcely, bend and breathe and stretch and pull.

“They are in pursuit,” said Sten, whose bench was aftmost port.

The cadence did not falter.

“They are triremes intercepting us,” Kta said at last, shouting so all could hear. “We cannot outrun them. Hard starboard. We are going back to Nephane’s side.”

At least two hundred and ten oars each, double sail.

As
Tavi
bore to starboard, Kurt had his first view of what pursued them, through the oarport: two-masted, a greater and a lesser sail, three banks of oars on a side lifting and falling like the wings of some sea-skimming bird. They seemed to move effortlessly despite their ponderous bulk, gaining with every stroke of their oars, where men would have reliefs from the benches.

Tavi
had none. It was impossible to hold this pace long. Vision hazed. Kurt drew air that seemed tainted with blood.

“We must come about,” Val cried from the helm. “We must come about, my lord, and surrender.”

Kta cast a look back. So, from his vantage point, did Kurt, saw the first of the three Indras triremes pull out to the fore of the others, her gold and white sail taut with the wind. The beat of her oars suddenly doubled, at maximum speed.

“Up the beat,” Kta ordered Chal, and Chal shouted over the grate and thunder of the oars, quickening the time to the limit of endurance.

And the wind fell.

The breath of heaven left the sail and had immediate effect on the speed of
Tavi.
A soft groan went up from the crew. They did not slacken the pace.

The leading trireme grew closer, outmatching them in oarage.

“Hold!” Kta shouted hoarsely, and walked to the front of the pits. “Hold! Up oars!”

The rhythm ceased, oars at level, men leaning over them and using their bodies’ weight to counter the length of the sweeps, their breathing raucous and cut with hacking coughs.

“Pan! Tkel!” Kta shouted aloft. “Strike sail!”

Now a murmur of dismay came from the men, and the crew hesitated, torn between the habit of obedience and an order they did not want.

“Move!” Kta shouted at them furiously. “Strike sail! You men in the pits, ship oars and get out of there! Plague take it, do not spoil our friendship with mutiny! Get out of there!”

Lun, pit captain, gave a miserable shake of his head, then ran in his oar with abrupt violence, and the others followed suit. Pan and Mnek and Chal and others scrambled to the rigging, and quickly a “’ware below!” rang out and the sail plummeted, tumbling down with a shrill singing of ropes.

Kurt scrambled from the pit with the others, found the strength to gain his feet and staggered back to join Kta on the quarterdeck.

Kta took the helm himself, put the rudder over hard, depriving
Tavi
of what momentum she had left.

The leading ship veered a little in its course, no longer coming directly at them, and tension ebbed perceptibly among
Tavi
’s men.

Then light flashed a rapid signal from the deck of the rearmost trireme and the lead ship changed course again, near enough now that men could be clearly seen on her lofty deck. The tempo of her oars increased sharply, churning up the water.

“Gods!” Val murmured incredulously. “My lord Kta, they are going to ram!”

“Abandon ship!” Kta shouted. “Val,—go—
go,
man! And you, Kurt—”

There was no time left. The dark bow of the Indras trireme rushed at
Tavi
’s side, the water foaming white around the gleaming bronze of the vessel’s double ram. With a grinding shock of wood
Tavi
’s rail and deck splintered and the very ship rose and slid sideways in the water, lifted and pushed into ruin by the towering prow of the trireme.

Kurt flung an arm around the far rail and clung to it, shaken off his feet by the tilting of the deck. With a second tilting toward normal and a grating sound, the trireme began to back water and disengage herself as
Tavi
’s wreckage fell away. Dead were littered across the deck. Men screamed. Blood and water washed over the splintered planking.

“Kurt,” Kta screamed at him, “jump!”

Kurt turned and stared helplessly at the nemet, fearing the sea as much as enemy weapons. Behind him the second of the triremes was coming up on the undamaged side of the listing ship, her oars churning up the bloodied waters. Some of the survivors in the water were struck by the blades, trying desperately to cling to them. The gliding hull rode them under.

Kta seized him by the arm and pushed him over the rail. Kurt twisted desperately in midair, hit the water hard and choked, fighting his way to the surface with the desperation of instinct.

His head broke surface and he gasped in air, sinking again as he swallowed water in the chop, his hand groping for anything that might float. A heavy body exploded into the dark water beside him and he managed to get his head above water again as Kta surfaced beside him.

“Go limp,” Kta gasped. “I can hold you if you do not struggle.”

Kurt obeyed as Kta’s arm encircled his neck, went under, and then felt the nemet’s hand under his chin lift his face to air again. He breathed, a great gulp of air, lost the surface again. Kta’s strong, sure strokes carried them both, but the rough water washed over them. Of a sudden he thought that Kta had lost him, and panicked as Kta let him go: but the nemet shifted his grip and dragged him against a floating section of timber.

Kurt threw both arms over it, coughing and choking for air.

“Hold on!” Kta snapped at him, and Kurt obediently tightened his chilled arms, looking at the nemet across the narrow bit of debris. Wind hit them, the first droplets of rain. Lightning flashed in the murky sky.

Behind them the galley was coming about. Someone on deck was pointing at them.

“Behind you,” Kurt said to Kta. “They have us in sight—for something.”

 

Kurt lifted himself from his face on the deck of the trireme, rose to his knees and knelt beside Kta’s sodden body. The nemet was still breathing, blood from a head wound washing as a crimson film across the rain-spattered deck. In another moment he began to try to rise, still fighting.

Kurt took him by the arm, cast a look at the Indras officer who stood among the surrounding crew. Receiving no word from him, he lifted Kta so that he could rise to his knees, and Kta wiped the blood from his eyes and leaned over on his hands, coughing.

“On your feet,” said the Indras captain.

Kta would not be helped. He shook off Kurt’s hand and completed the effort himself, braced his feet and straightened.

“Your name,” said the officer.

“Kta t’Elas u Nym.”

“T’Elas,” the man echoed with a nod of satisfaction. “Aye, I was sure we had a prize.—Put them both in irons. Then put about for Indresul.”

Kta gave Kurt a spiritless look, and in truth there was nothing to do but submit. They were taken together into the hold, the trireme having far more room belowdecks than little
Tavi
—and in that darkness and cold they were put into chains and left on the bare planking without so much as a blanket for comfort.

“What now?” Kurt asked, clenching his teeth against the spasms of chill.

“I do not know,” said Kta. “But it would surely have been better for us if we had drowned with the rest.”

18

Indresul the shining was set deep within a bay, a great and ancient city. Her white, triangle-arched buildings spread well beyond her high walls, permanent and secure. Warships and merchantmen were moored at her docks. The harbor and the broad streets that fanned up into the city itself were busy with traffic. In the high center of the city, at the crest of the hill around which it was built, rose a second great ring-wall, encircling large buildings of gleaming white stone, an enormous fortress-temple complex, the Indume, heart and center of Indresul. There would be the temple, the shrine that all Indras-descended revered as the very hearthfire of the universe.

“The home of my people,” said Kta as they stood on the deck waiting for their guards to take them off. “Our land, which we call on in all our prayers. I am glad that I have seen it, but I do not think we will have a long view of it, my friend.”

Kurt did not answer him. No word could improve matters. In the three days they had been chained in the hold, he had had time to speak with Kta, to talk as they once had talked in Elas, long, inconsequential talks—sometimes even to laugh, though the laughter had the taste of ashes. But the one thing Kta had never said was what was likely to happen to Kurt, only that he himself would be taken in charge by the house of Elas-in-Indresul. Kta undoubtedly did suspect and would not say. Perhaps too he knew what would likely become of a human among these most orthodox of Indras: Kurt did not want to foreknow it.

The mournful echo of sealing doors rolled through the vaulted hall, and through the haze of lamps and incense in the triangular hall burned the brighter glare of the holy fire,—the
rhmei
and the
phusmeha
of the Indume-fortress. Kurt paused involuntarily as Kta did, confused by the light and the profusion of faces.

From some doorway hidden by the haze and the light from the hearthfire, there appeared a woman, a shadow in brocade flanked by the more massive figures of armed men.

The guards who had brought them from the trireme moved them forward with the urging of their spear shafts. The woman did not move. Her face was clearer as they drew near her: she was goddesslike, tall, willowy. The shining darkness of her hair was crowned with a headdress that fitted beside her face like the plates of a helm, and shimmered when she moved with the swaying of fine gold chains from the wide wings of it. She was nemet, and of incredible beauty: Ylith t’Erinas ev Tehal, Methi of Indresul.

Her dark eyes turned full on them, and Kta fell on his face before her, full length on the polished stone of the floor. Her gaze did not so much as flicker; this was the obeisance due her. Kurt fell to his knees also, and on his face, and did not look up.

“Nemet,” she said, “look at me.”

Kta stirred then and sat up, but did not stand.

“Your name,” she asked him. Her voice had a peculiar stillness, clear and delicate.

“Methi, I am Kta t’Elas u Nym.”

“Elas. Elas of Nephane. How fares your house there, t’Elas?”

“The Methi may have heard. I am the last.”

“What, Elas fallen?”