"Of course not. You will lend me the sum, buy them yourself, and when
you come back with them I will raise the money to repay you."
Miran didn't seem too happy, but Green knew that the fat merchant was
already planning to charge the Duke double the purchase price. As
for Green, he liked to see a man interested in a hobby, but he was
disgusted because taxes would now be raised in order to allow the Duke
to add to his collection.
The Duchess, bored as usual by her husband's conversation, suddenly
said, "Honey, let's go hunting next weekend. I've been so restless
lately, so unable to sleep nights. I think I've been cooped up too long
in this dismal old place. My digestion has been so sluggish lately. I
think I need the exercise and the fresh air." And she went into vivid
detail about certain aspects of her gastrointestinal troubles. The
Earthman, who'd thought he was hardened to this people's custom of
dwelling on such matters, turned green.
At the suggestion of a hunt the Duke didn't exactly groan, but his eyes
rolled upward in supplication to the gods. Until he had reached the
age of thirty he had enjoyed a good hunt. But like most upper-class
men of his culture, he rapidly put on flesh after thirty and became as
sedentary as possible. The belief was that fat increased a man's life
span. Also, a big belly and double chin were signs of aristocratic
blood and a full purse. Unfortunately, along with this came an
inevitable decline in vigor, which, coupled with the December-May
marriages that their society expected of them, had given birth to
another institution: the slave male companion of the rich man's young
wife.
It was toward Green that the Duke looked. "Why not let him conduct the
hunt?" he suggested hopefully. "I've so much business to take care of."
"Like sitting on your fat cushion and contemplating your glass birds,"
she said. "No!"
"Very well," he said, resignedly. "I've a slave in the work-pens who's
to be executed for striking a foreman. We'll use him as the quarry. But
I think we ought to give him two weeks to build up his wind and legs.
Otherwise it would hardly be sporting, you know."
The Duchess frowned. "No. I'm getting bored; I can't stand this
inaction any longer."
She shot a glance at Green. He felt his stomach muscles contracting.
Evidently she'd noticed his lukewarm interest in her. This hunt was
partly to suggest to him that he'd be meeting a like fate unless he
perked up and began to be more entertaining.
It wasn't that thought that made his heart sink. It was that next
weekend was when Miran's windroller raised sail and when he planned to
be aboard it. Now, he'd be gone conducting the hunting party up in the
hills.
Green looked appealingly at Miran, but the merchant's shoulders rose
beneath the yellow robe as if to say, "What can I do?"
He was right. Miran couldn't suggest that he too go along on the hunt,
and thus give Green a chance to slip aboard afterward. The day on
which the _Bird of Fortune_ was scheduled to leave the windbreak was
absolutely the last date on which it could set sail. He couldn't afford
to take the chance of being caught in the rains in the middle of the
vast plains.
6
All the next day Green was too busy setting up the schedule of the
hunting party to have time to be gloomy. But when night came he seemed
to fold up inside himself. Could he pretend to be sick, too, and be
left behind when the party set out?
No, for they would at once assume that he had been possessed by a
demon and would pack him off to the Temple of Apoquoz, God of Healing.
There he'd be under lock and key until he proved himself healthy. The
terrible part about going to the Temple of Apoquoz was that it made
death almost inevitable. If you didn't die of your own disease you
caught somebody else's.
Green wasn't worried about catching any of the many diseases he'd be
exposed to in the Temple. Like all men of terrestrial descent, he
carried in his body a surgically implanted protoplasmic entity which
automatically analyzed any invading microscopic organisms and/or
viruses and manufactured antibodies to combat them. It lived in the
space created by the removal of his appendix; when working to fulfill
its mission it demanded food and radiated a heat that assured its host
of its heartening presence. An increased appetite plus a slight fever
indicated that it was killing off the disease and that within several
hours it would successfully repel any boarders. In the two years Green
had been on the planet it had had to attack at least forty times; Green
calculated that he would have been dead each and every time if it had
not been for his symbiote.
Knowing this didn't help him. If he played sick he'd be locked up and
couldn't get on the 'roller. If he went on the hunting party he missed
the boat, too.
Suppose he were to disappear the night before the party, to hide on the
windroller while the castle vainly looked for him?
Not very likely. The first thing that would occur to Zuni would be to
order the windbreak closed and all 'rollers searched for a possible
stowaway. And if that happened Miran would be so delayed that it was
unlikely he'd sail. Even if he, Green, hid in Miran's cabin, where he
would probably be safe, there would still be the inevitable and totally
frustrating delay.
Then why not disappear several days earlier, so that Miran could have
time to reload his cargo? He'd see the merchant tomorrow. If Miran fell
in with his plans, Green would disappear four nights from this very
night, which would leave three days for the windroller to be emptied
and reloaded. Fortunately the tanks wouldn't have to be taken off,
because any fool could see that the runaway wasn't hiding at the bottom
among the fish.
Much relieved that he at least had a way open, if a very perilous one,
Green relaxed. He was sitting on a bench along a walk on top of one of
the castle walls. The sky was blazingly beautiful with stars larger
than any seen from Earth. The great moon and the small moon had risen.
The larger had just cleared the eastern horizon and the lesser one
was just past the zenith. Mingled moonwash and starwash softened the
grimness and ugliness of the city below him and laved it in a flood of
romance and glamour. Most of Quotz was unlighted, for the streets had
no lamps and the windows were shut up tight against thieves, vampires
and demons. Occasionally the torchflares of the servants of a drunken
noble or rich man moved down the dark canyons between the towering
overhanging houses.
Beyond the city was the amphitheater formed by the hills curving out
to the north and the great brick wall built to continue the natural
windbreak. A wide opening had been left so that the 'rollers, their
sails furled, could be towed in or out. Past this the great plain
suddenly began, as if the hand of some immense landscaper had pressed
the hills flat and declared that from here on there would be no
unevennesses.
Westward lay the incredibly level stretch of the grassy ground of the
Xurdimur. Ten thousand miles straight across, flat as a table top,
broken only here and there by clumps of forests, ruins of cities,
waterholes, the tents of the nomadic savages, herds of wild animals,
packs of grass cats and dire dogs, and the mysterious and undoubtedly
imaginary "roaming islands," great clumps of rock and dirt that legend
said slid of their own volition over the plains. How like this planet,
he thought, that the greatest peril to navigation should be one that
existed only in the heads of the inhabitants.
The Xurdimur was a fabulous phenomenon, without parallel. On none
of the many planets that Earthmen had discovered was there anything
similar. How, he wondered, could the plain keep its smoothness, when
there was always dirt running on to it from the eroding hills and
mountains that ringed it? The rains, too, should have done much to
wear it away unevenly. Of course, the grass that grew all over it was
long and had very tough roots. And if what he had been told was true,
beneath the vegetation was one mass of inextricably tangled roots that
held the soil together.
There was another thing to consider, though: the winds that blew all
the way across the Xurdimur and furnished propulsion for the wheeled
sailing craft. To have winds you must have pressure differentials,
which were usually caused by heat differentials. Although the Xurdimur
was ringed by mountains there were no large eminences on it for ten
thousand miles, nothing to replenish the currents of air. Or so it
seemed to his limited knowledge of meteorology, though he did wonder
how the trade winds that swept Earth's seas managed to keep going for
so many thousands of leagues, just on their original impetus. Or did
they get boosts? He didn't know.
What he did know was that the Xurdimur was a thing that shouldn't
be. Yet, the very presence of men here was just as amazing, just
as preposterous. Homo sapiens was scattered throughout the Galaxy.
Everywhere that the space-traveling Earthmen had gone, they had
found that about every fourth inhabitable planet was populated by
men of their species. The proof lay not just in the outward physical
resemblance of terrestrial and extra-terrestrial; it lay in their
ability to breed. Earthman, Sirian, Albirean, Vegan, it made no
difference. Their men could have children by the women of other planets.
Naturally there had been many theories to account for this fact. All
had as a common basis the assumption that Homo sapiens had sometime,
somewhere, in the very remote past, originated on one planet and then
had spread out over the Galaxy from it. And, somehow, space travel had
been lost and each race had gone back to savagery, only to begin again
the long hard struggle toward civilization and the re-discovery of
spaceships. Why, no one knew. One could only guess.
There was the problem of language. It might seem that if man had come
from a common birthplace he would at least have kept a trace of his
home language and that the linguists could break down the development
of tongue and link one planet to another through it. But no. Every
world had its own Tower of Babel, its own ten thousand languages. The
terrestrial scientist might trace Russian and English and Swedish, and
Lithuanian and Persian and Hindustani back to a proto-Indo-European,
but he had never found on any other planet a language which he could
say had also derived from the Aryan Ursprache.
Green's mind wandered to the two Earthmen now imprisoned in the city of
Estorya. He hoped they weren't being treated badly. They could be in
horrible pain at this very moment, if the priests felt like subjecting
them to a little demon-testing.
Thinking of torture led him to sit up a little straighter and to
stretch his arms and legs. In an hour he was supposed to meet the
Duchess. To do that he had to go through the supposedly secret door
in the wall of the turret at the northern end of the walk, up a
stairway through a passage between the walls, and so to the Duchess's
apartments. There one of the maids-of-honor would usher him into Zuni's
presence and then would try to eavesdrop so she could report to the
Duke later on. Zuni and Green weren't supposed to know about this, but
were to pretend that she was their trusted confidante.
When the great bell of the Temple of the God of Time, Grooza, struck,
Green would rise from his bench and go to what he now thought of as
a wearisome chore. If that woman could only be interested in talking
of something else besides her complexion or digestion, or idle palace
gossip, it wouldn't be so bad. But no, she chattered on and on, and
Green would get increasingly sleepy, yet would not dare drop off for
fear of irreparably offending her. And to do that....
7
The lesser moon had touched the western horizon and the greater was
nearing the zenith when Green awoke and jumped to his feet, swearing in
sheer terror. He'd fallen asleep and kept Zuni waiting.
"My God, what'll she say?" he said aloud. "What'll I tell her?"
"You needn't tell me anything," came her angry retort from very
close by. He started, and whirled around and saw that she'd been
standing behind him. She was wrapped in a robe, but her pale face
gleamed from beneath the overhanging hood and her mouth was opened.
White teeth flashed as she began accusing him of not loving her, of
being bored by her, of loving some other woman, probably a slave
girl, a good-for-nothing, lazy, brainless, emptily pretty wench. If
his situation hadn't been so serious Green would have smiled at her
self-portrayal.
He tried to dam the flood, but to no avail. She screeched at him to
shut up, and when he put his fingers to his lips and said, "Shhh!" she
replied by raising her voice even more.
"You know you're not supposed to be out of your rooms after dark
unless the Duke is along," he said, taking her elbow and attempting to
steer her down the walk toward the secret door. "If the guards see you
there'll be trouble, bad trouble. Let's go."
Unfortunately the guards did see them. Torches appeared at the foot of
the steps below the walk, and iron helmets and cuirasses gleamed. Green
tried to urge her on faster, for there was still time to make it to the
door. She jerked her arm loose and shouted, "Take your filthy hands off
me, you Northern slave! The Duchess of Tropat doesn't allow herself to
be pushed around by a blond beast!"
"Damn it," he snarled, and he shoved her. "You stupid _kizmaiaz_! Get
going! _You_ won't be tortured if they find us together!"
Zuni jerked away. Her face twisted and her mouth worked soundlessly.
"_Kizmaiaz!_" she finally gasped. "_Kizmaiaz_ yourself!"
Suddenly she began screaming. Before he could clamp his hand over her
mouth, she dashed past him and toward the steps. It was then that he
came out of his paralysis and ran, not after her, which he knew was
useless, but toward the secret door. All was up. It was absolutely no
use trying to explain to the guards. The situation had now entered a
conventional phase. She would tell the guards that he had come into her
room, through some unknown means--which would be "found out" later--and
had dragged her out onto the walk, apparently with the intention of
violating her. Why he should pick a public place when he already had
the privacy of her rooms would not be asked. And the guards, though
they would know what really had happened, would pretend to believe
her and would furiously seize him and drag him off to the dungeons.
The absurd thing about it was that within a few days the whole city,
including Zuni herself, would believe that her story was true. By the
time he'd been executed they would hate his guts, and the lot of all
the slaves would be miserable for a while because they would share his
blame.
Green had no intention of being seized. Flight was an admission of
guilt, but it made no difference now.
He ran through the secret door, shut and bolted it and raced up the
steps that led to her apartments. The guards would have to take the
long way around; he had at least two minutes before they could unlock
the two doors of the ante-rooms to her quarters, explain to the guards
just outside them what had happened and begin a search for him. As for
him, he was running like a rabbit, but he was thinking like a fox.
Having known that just such a situation might arise, he had long ago
planned in detail several possible courses of action. Now, he chose the
likeliest one and began acting efficiently--if not smoothly.
The staircase was a narrow corkscrew with room for only one person
at a time to go up. He ran up it so fast that he got dizzy with the
ever-winding turns. He reeled and had trouble keeping from falling
to his left when he did arrive at its top. Nevertheless he did not
pause to catch breath or balance but pulled the lever that would make
the door swing out. He burst through it. No one there, thank God. He
stopped for a moment, listened to make sure nobody was in the next
room, then pushed on a boss set in a pattern of bronze protuberances,
which was connected with the mechanism that operated the secret door.
The section of wall swung back silently until it was flush with the
rest, and quite indistinguishable. He then twisted the knob so the door
couldn't be opened from the other side. Green took time to give fervent
thanks to the builders of the castle, who had prepared this device for
the owners to hide within in case of a successful invasion or revolt.
If it had not been there he could not have escaped.
Escaped? He'd only put off his inevitable capture. But he intended to
run as long as he could and then fight until they were forced to kill
him.
The first thing to do was to find a weapon. As a matter of fact, he
was so familiar with Zuni's rooms that he knew exactly where he could
get what he wanted. He walked through two large rooms, making his way
easily even through the feeble duskish light that the few oil lamps
and candles furnished. Hanging from the wall of the third room was a
saber made of the best steel obtainable on this planet and fashioned by
the greatest smiths, the swordwrights of faraway and almost legendary
Talamasko. The blade was a gift from Zuni's father on the occasion of
her wedding to the Duke. It was supposed to be given by Zuni to her
eldest son when he came of weapon-carrying age. The hilt had a guard on
which was inscribed in gold the motto: _Sooner hell than dishonor_. He
fastened sword and scabbard to an iron ring on his broad leather belt,
went to a luxurious dressing table, pulled open a drawer and took out a
stiletto. This he stuck through his belt, also a huge flintlock pistol
with a gold-and-ivory-chased butt. He loaded it with powder and an
iron ball he found in a compartment and put ammunition in a bag, which
he also hung from his belt. Then, well armed, he walked out onto the
balcony to take a quick view of the situation.
Three stories below him was the walk which he had left a few minutes
before. Many soldiers, and Zuni, were standing there, all looking
up. As his face came into sight, visible in the moonlight and the
up-reaching flares of their torches, a shout arose. Several of the
musket men raised their long-barreled weapons, but Zuni cried out for
them to hold their fire, she wanted him alive. Green's skin prickled
at the vindictiveness in her voice and at the vision of what she was
probably planning for him. He'd been forced to see too many tortures
and public executions not to know exactly what she designed for him.
Suddenly overcome with rage that she could be so treacherous and
brutal, a rage perhaps flavored with self-disgust because he had made
love to her, he aimed his pistol at her. There was a click as the
hammer struck the flint, a spark, a whoosh as the powder burnt in the
pan, a loud bang and a cloud of black smoke. When the fumes cleared
away, he saw that everybody, including the Duchess, was running for
cover. Naturally, he'd missed, for he'd had almost no practice with the
pistols, being a slave. Even if he'd been well trained, he probably
would not have struck his mark, so inaccurate were the weapons.
While Green was reloading he heard a shout from above. Looking up, he
saw the Duke's round face, pale in the moonlight, hanging over the
railing of the balcony above. He raised his empty pistol, and the Duke,
squalling with fear, ran back into his quarters. Green laughed and said
to himself that even if he was killed now he would at least have the
satisfaction of knowing that he had shamed the Duke, who was always
boasting about his bravery in battle. Of course, his action had also
made it absolutely necessary for the Duke to have him killed at once,
so that Green could not tell others that he'd put him to flight.
He grinned crookedly. What would happen when the soldiers received the
Duke's orders, directly contradicting the Duchess's? The poor fellows
would scarcely know what to do. The man's commands would of course
supersede the woman's. But the woman would be furious and she would
later on find some means of punishing those who did succeed in killing
Green.
It was at that moment that he lost his smile and paled with fright. A
loud deep-chested barking nearby. Not outside the apartment's door, but
_inside_!
He cursed and whirled around just in time to see the large body
launched toward his throat, the white fangs flashing and the green
fire shining from its eyes as the moonlight struck them.
Even in that moment of panic he realized that he'd forgotten the small
door set inside the larger one so that Alzo could have admittance at
any time. And if the big dog could get through, then soldiers could
also crawl through!
Instinctively he thrust out the pistol and squeezed the trigger. It
did not go off, for there was no powder in the pan. But the barrel did
jam into the great mouth and deflect Alzo from his target, Green's
throat. Even so, Green was knocked backward by the impact, and he felt
the sharp teeth clamping down on his wrist. Those jaws were capable of
biting through his arm, and though he felt no pain, he was sickened by
the thought that he'd see a bloody stump when Alzo danced away from
him. However, his arm, though dripping blood from large gashes, was not
hurt badly. The dog had been deterred by the barrel shoved down his
throat, choking him so that he could think of nothing for the moment
but getting clear of it.
The pistol clattered on the iron floor of the balcony. Alzo shook
his head, unaware in his frenzy that he was rid of the weapon. Green
leaped up from the sitting position into which Alzo's charge had flung
him against the railing. Snarling as viciously as the dog, he braced
his feet against the juncture of the floor and railing and launched
himself straight out. At the same time, the canine jumped. They met
head on, Green's skull driving into the open mouth and knocking the dog
backward because his impetus was greater. Though the huge jaws bit down
at his scalp, they snapped on air, and the animal fell to one side,
growling. Green seized hold of the long tail, rolled away from the
teeth now snapping at his ankles, and jerked at the tail so that the
dog would swing away from him. He rose to one knee, pushed the dog away
from him, though still keeping his frenzied grip with two hands, and
jumped to his feet. Frantically, the animal twisted around and bit at
the imprisoning hands. But he succeeded only in biting his own flank.
Howling in anguish, he tried to lunge away. Green, making a supreme
effort, raised the tail in the air. Naturally, the body came along with
it. At the same time he half-turned from the animal, bent forward and,
with a convulsive motion, using his bowed back as a lever, threw Alzo
over his head.
8
The terrible growling suddenly changed to a high-pitched howl of
despair as Alzo flew over the railing and out into the air above the
walk. Green, leaning over to watch him, did not feel sorry for him. He
was exultant. He'd hated that dog and had dreamed of just such a moment.
Alzo's yelping was cut off as he struck the parapet beside the walk,
bounced off, and then dropped from view into the depths beyond. Green's
strength had been greater than he'd suspected, for he had thought only
to toss the one hundred and fifty pound beast over the railing.
There was no time for savoring triumph. If the dog could get through
that little door, so could soldiers. He ran out into the room,
expecting that at least a dozen men had crawled in. But there was no
one. Why? The only thing he could think of was that they were afraid,
knowing that if he at once dispatched the dog, he could leisurely knock
them over the head in their helpless on-all-fours position.
The door shook beneath a mighty impact. They'd taken the wiser, if the
less courageous, course of battering rams. Green loaded his pistol,
spilling the powder at his first attempt to prime the pan because
his hands shook so. He fired, and a large hole appeared in the wood.
However, part of the ball also stuck out, for the door was planked
thickly against just such weapons.
The battering ceased and he heard a thud as the ram was dropped on the
floor in hasty retreat. He smiled. As they were still operating under
the Duchess's instructions to take him alive--not yet countermanded by
the Duke's--they would not want to face pistol fire with only swords in
hand. And in the first reflex to the shot they'd undoubtedly forgotten
that a ball couldn't penetrate the wood.
"This is living!" said Green out loud. And he wondered that his voice
shook as much as his legs did, and yet he felt a wild exultance
shooting through his fear and knew that he was tasting both with a
fine liking. Perhaps, he thought, he really liked this moment--even if
his death was around the corner--because he'd been repressed so long
and violence was a wonderful therapy for releasing his resentment and
clamped-down-on fury. Whatever the reason, he knew that this was one of
the high moments of his life and that if he survived he'd look back on
it with pleasure and pride. And that was the strangest thing of all,
since in his culture the young were taught to abhor violence. Luckily,
they weren't so conditioned against it that the very thought of it
paralyzed them. No hard neural paths had been set up against the action
of violence; it was just that, philosophically speaking, they loathed
the concept. Fortunately, there was a philosophy of the body, too, a
much older and deeper one. And while it was true that man could no
more live without philosophy of the mind than he could without bread,
it had no place in Green at present. The fiery breath that flooded his
body now and made him so sensitive to what a fine thing it was to be
alive while death was knocking at the door did not rise from any mental
abstraction or profound meditation.
Green rolled back the carpets that led from the room to the balcony,
for he wanted a firm footing if it became necessary to make a running
broad jump from the balcony in an effort to clear the walk below
and drop into the moat. He'd have to have very good timing and do
everything just right the first time, like a parachute jump, otherwise
he'd end up with broken bones on the hard stones below.
Not that he was going to make that leap unless he just had to. But he
was leaving an avenue open if his other measures didn't work.
Again he ran to the bureau and drew out a large bag of gunpowder,
weighing at least five pounds. In the open end of this he inserted a
fuse, and tied the neck around it. While he was doing this, he heard
shouts and cheers as the soldiers returned to the door, picked up their
ram and hurled themselves at the thick planking. He did not bother
shooting again but instead lit the fuse with a candle. Then he walked
to the large door, pushed out the small dog's door and tossed the bag
through it. He jumped back and ran, though there was little chance
that the resultant explosion would harm the door.
There was a silence as the soldiers were probably staring paralyzed
at the smoking fuse. Then--a roar! The room shook, the door fell in,
blasted off its hinges, and black smoke poured in. Green ran into the
cloud, got down on all fours, scuttled through the doorway, cursed
desperately when the hilt of his sword caught on the doorframe, tore
loose and lunged through into the dense smoke that filled the anteroom.
His groping hands felt the ram where it had dropped, and the wet warm
face of a soldier who'd fallen. He coughed sharply from the biting
fumes but went on until his head butted into the wall. Then he felt
to his right, where he imagined the door was, came to it, passed
through and on into the next room, also filled with a cloud. After he'd
scuttled like a bug across its floor, he dared to open his eyes for
a quick look. The smoke was thinner and was pouring out the door to
the hallway, just in front of him. He saw no feet in the clearer area
between the floor and the bottom of the clouds, so he rose and walked
through the door. To his left, he knew, the hall led to a stairway that
was probably now jammed with soldiers. To his right would be another
stairway that went up to the Duke's apartments. That was the only way
he could go.
Luckily the smoke was still so dense in the corridor that those
assembled on the left staircase couldn't see him. They'd think he was
in the Duchess's rooms yet, and he hoped that when they did rush it and
didn't find him there the rolled-back carpets would give them the idea
that he'd taken a running broad jump from the balcony. In which case,
they'd at once search the moat for him. And if they didn't find him
swimming there, as they wouldn't, then they might presume he'd either
drowned or else got to the shore and was now somewhere in the darkness
of the city.
He felt along the wall toward the staircase, his other hand gripping
the stiletto. When his fingers ran across the arm of a man leaning
against the wall, he withdrew them at once, bent his knees and in a
crouching position ran in the general direction of the stairs. The
smoke got even thinner here so that he saw the steps in time to avoid
falling over them. Unfortunately the Duke and another man were also
there. Both saw his figure emerge into the torchlight from the clouds,
but he had the advantage of knowing who he was, so that he had plunged
the thin stiletto into the soldier's throat before he could act. The
Duke tried to leap past Green, but the Earthman stuck a leg out and
tripped him. Then he grabbed the ruler's arm, twisted it behind his
back, forced him up and on his knees and, using the arm as a cruel
lever, raised him. He enjoyed hearing the Duke moan, though he'd never
consciously taken pleasure in pain before. He had time to think that
perhaps he liked this because of the torture the Duke had inflicted on
his many helpless victims. Of course, he, Green, a highly civilized
man, shouldn't be feeling this way. But the rightness or wrongness of
an emotion never kept anybody from experiencing it.
"Up you go!" he said in a low, harsh voice, directing the Duke toward
his apartments, manipulating the twisted arm as a steering column. By
then the smoke had cleared away so that those at the other end of the
corridor could see that something was wrong. A shout arose, followed by
the slap of running feet on the stone flags. Green stopped, turned the
Duke so he faced the approaching crowd and said to him, "Tell them that
I will kill you unless they go away."
To emphasize his point he stuck the end of the stiletto into the Duke's
back and pressed hard enough to draw blood. The Duke quivered, then
became rigid. Nevertheless he said, "I will not do so. That would be
dishonor."
Green couldn't help admiring such courage, even if it did make his
predicament worse. He refused to kill the Duke just then because that
would throw away the only trump card he held at that moment. So he
stuck the stiletto in his teeth and, still holding with one hand to the
Duke's twisted arm, took the Duke's pistol from his belt and fired over
his shoulder.
There was a whoosh of flame that burned the Duke's ear and made him
give a cry that was almost drowned out in the roar of the explosion.
The nearest man threw up his hands, dropping his spear, and fell on his
face. The others stopped. Doubtless, they were still operating under
the Duchess's orders not to kill Green, for the Duke must have arrived
at the foot of the staircase just in time to witness the explosion of
the gunpowder. And he was in no condition to issue contrary orders,
being deafened and stunned by the report almost going off in his ear.
Green shouted out, "Go back, or I will kill the Duke! It is his wish
that you go back to the stairs and do not bother us until he sends word
to you!"
By the flickering light of the torches he could see the puzzled
expression on the soldiers' faces. It was only then he realized that in
his extreme excitement he had shouted the orders in English. Hastily,
he translated his demands, and was relieved to see them turn and
retreat, though reluctantly. He then half-dragged the Duke up the steps
to his apartments, where he barred the door and primed his pistol again.
"So far, so good!" he said, in English. "The question is what now,
little man?"
The ruler's rooms were even more luxurious than his wife's, and were
larger because they had to contain not only the Duke's hundreds of
hunting trophies, including human heads, but his collection of glass
birds. Indeed, one might easily see where his heart really lay, for
the heads had collected dust, whereas each and every glittering winged
creature was immaculate. It would have gone hard on a servant who'd
neglected his cleaning duties in the great rooms dedicated to the
collection.
On seeing them Green smiled slightly.
When you're fighting for your life, hit a man where he's softest....
9
It was a matter of two minutes to tie the Duke in a chair with several
of the hunting whips hanging from the walls.
Meanwhile the Duke came out of his daze. He began screaming every
invective he knew--and he knew quite a lot--and promising every refined
torture he could think of--and his knowledge was not poverty-stricken
in that area either. Green waited until the Duke had given himself a
bad case of laryngitis. Then he told him, in a firm but quiet voice,
what he intended to do unless the Duke got him out of the castle.
To emphasize his determination, he picked up a bludgeon studded with
iron spikes and swung it whistling through the air. The Duke's eyes
widened, and he paled. All of a sudden he changed from a defiant ruler
challenging his captor to inflict his worst upon him to a shrunken,
trembling old man.
"And I will smash every last bird in these rooms," said Green. "And I
will open the chest that lies behind that pile of furs and take out of
it your most precious treasure, the bird you have not even shown to the
Emperor for fear he would get jealous and demand it as a gift from you,
the bird you take out at rare intervals and over which you gloat all
night."
"My wife told you!" gasped the Duke. "Oh, what an _izzot_ she is!"
"Granted," said Green. "She babbled to me many secrets, being a
featherbrained, idle, silly, stupid female, a fit consort for you. So I
know where the unique _exurotr_ statuette made by Izan Yushwa of Metzva
Moosh is hidden, the glass bird that cost the whole dukedom a great tax
and brought many bitter tears and hardships from your subjects. I will
have no compunction about destroying it even if it is the only one ever
made and if Izan Yushwa is now dead so that it can never be replaced."
The Duke's eyes bulged in horror.
"No, no!" he said in a quavering voice. "That would be unthinkable,
blasphemous, sacrilegious! Have you no sense of beauty, degenerate
slave that you are, that you would smash forever that most beautiful of
all things made by the hands of man?"
"I would."
The Duke's mouth drew down at the corners; suddenly, he was weeping.
Green was embarrassed, for he knew how great must be the emotion that
could make this man, educated in a hard school, break down before an
enemy. And he reflected upon what a strange thing a human being was.
Here was a man who would literally allow his throat to be cut before he
would display cowardice by bargaining for it. But to have his precious
collection of glass birds threatened...!
Green shrugged. Why try to understand it? The only thing to do was to
use whatever came his way.
"Very well, if you wish to save them you must do this." And he detailed
exactly the Duke's moves and orders for the next ten minutes. He
thereupon made him swear by the most holy oaths and upon his family
name and by the honor of the founder of his family that he would not
betray Green.
"To make sure," added the Earthman, "I shall take the _exurotr_ with
me. Once I know your word is good I'll take steps to see that it is
returned undamaged to you."
"Can I depend on that?" breathed the Duke hoarsely, rolling his big
brown eyes.
"Yes, I will contact Zingaro, Business Agent of the Thieves' Guild, and
he will return it to you, for a compensation, of course. But before we
conclude this bargain you must swear that you will not harm Amra, my
wife, nor any of her children, nor confiscate her business but will
behave toward her as if this had never happened."
The Duke swallowed hard, but he swore. Green was happy, because, though
he was going to desert Amra, he was at least insuring her future.
It was a long, long hour later that Green came out of his hiding place
inside a large closet in the Duke's apartment. Even though the Duke
had sworn the holiest of oaths, he was as treacherous as any of the
barbarians on this planet, and that was very treacherous indeed. Green
had stood behind the door, sweating and listening to the loud and
sometimes incoherent conversation taking place between the Duke, his
soldiers and the Duchess. The Duke was a good actor, for he convinced
everybody that he had escaped from the mad slave Green, had seized a
sword and forced him to make a running broad jump from the balcony
railing. Of course, several guardsmen had seen a large man-sized object
hurtle from the balcony and fall with a loud splash into the moat
below. There was no doubt that the slave must have broken his back when
he struck the water or else he had been knocked out and then drowned.
Whatever had happened, he had not come out.
Green, his ear against the door, could not help smiling at this,
despite his tension. He and the Duke had combined forces to heave out a
wooden statue of the god Zuzupatr, weighted with iron dishes tied to
it so that it wouldn't float. In the moonlight and the excitement, the
idol must have looked enough like a falling man to deceive anybody.
The only one seemingly not satisfied was Zuni. She raised every kind
of hell she knew, behaved in a most undignified manner, screeched
at her husband because his blood-thirstiness and lack of restraint
had robbed her of the exquisite tortures she'd planned for the slave
who had attempted to dishonor her. The Duke, his face getting redder
and redder, had suddenly bellowed out at her to quit acting like a
condemned _izzot_ and go at once to her apartments. To show that he
meant what he said he ordered several soldiers to escort her. Zuni,
however, was too stupid to see how perilous was her situation, how near
the headsman's ax. She raved on until the Duke gave a sign and two
soldiers seized her elbows--at least, Green supposed they did, for she
yelled at them to take their dirty hands off her--and propelled her out
of the rooms. Even then it took some time before the Duke could close
the doors on his last guest.
The little ruler opened the door. In his hand he held a priest's green
robe, the sacerdotal hexagonal spectacles and a mask for the lower part
of the face. The mask was customarily worn when a monk was on a mission
for a high dignitary. During the time the face was covered the monk
was under a vow not to speak to anyone until he had reached the person
for whom he had a message. Thus, Green would not be bothered with any
embarrassing questions.
He put on the robe, spectacles and mask, threw the hood over his head
and placed the glass _exurotr_ inside his shirt. His loaded pistol he
kept up one capacious sleeve, holding it with the other hand.
"Remember," said the Duke anxiously as he opened the door and peered
out to see if anybody was on the staircase, "remember that you must
take every precaution against damaging the _exurotr_. Tell Zingaro that
he must at once pack it in a chest filled with silks and sawdust so
it won't break. I will die a thousand deaths until it comes back once
again to my collection."
And I, thought Green, will die a thousand deaths until I get safely
out of your reach, out of the city and far away on a windroller.
He promised again that he would keep his word as well as the Duke
kept his, but that he would also take every measure to insure against
treachery. Then he slipped out and closed the door. He was on his own
until he boarded the _Bird of Fortune_.
10
He had no trouble at all, except for making his way through the thick
traffic. The explosions and shouting coming from the castle had aroused
the whole town, so that everybody who could stand on his two feet, or
could get somebody to carry him, was outside, milling around, asking
questions, talking excitedly and in general trying to make as much
chaos as possible and to enjoy every bit of this excuse to take part in
a general disturbance. Green strode through them, his head bent but his
eyes probing ahead. He made fairly good progress, only being held up
temporarily a few times by the human herd.
Finally the flat plain of the windbreak lay before him, and the many
masts of the great wheeled vessels were a forest around him. He was
able to get to the _Bird of Fortune_ unchallenged by any of the dozens
of guardsmen that he passed. The 'roller herself lay snugly between two
docks, where a huge gang of slaves had towed her. There was a gangway
running up from one of the docks, and at both ends stood a sailor on
guard, clad in the family colors of yellow, violet and crimson. They
chewed _grixtr_ nut, something like betel except that it stained both
teeth and lips and gave them a green color.
When Green stepped boldly upon the gangway the nearest guard looked
doubtful and put his hand on his knife. Evidently he'd had no orders
from Miran about a priest, but he knew what the mask indicated and that
awed him enough so that he did not dare oppose the stranger. Nor was
the second guard any quicker in making up his mind. Green slipped by
him, entered the mid-decks and walked up the gangway to the foredeck.
He knocked quietly on the door of the captain's cabin. A moment later
it swung violently open; light flooded out, then was blocked off by
Miran's huge round bulk.
Green stepped inside, pressing the captain back, Miran reached for
his dagger but stopped when he saw the intruder take off the mask and
spectacles and throw back the hood.
"Green! So you made it! I did not think it was possible."
"With me all things are possible," replied Green modestly. He sat down
at the table, or rather crumpled at it, and began repeating in a dry
voice, halting with fatigue, the story of his escape. In a few minutes
the narrow cabin rang with the captain's laughter and his one eye
twinkled and beamed as he slapped Green on the back and said that by
all the gods here was a man he was proud to have aboard.
"Have a drink of this Lespaxian wine, even better than Chalousma, and
one I bring out only for honored guests," said Miran, chortling.
Green reached out a hand for the proffered glass, but his fingers never
closed upon the stem, for his head sank onto the tabletop, and his
snores were tremendous.
* * * * *
It was three days later that a much-rested Green, his skin comfortably,
even glowingly, tight with superb Lespaxian, sat at the table and
waited for the word to come that he could finally leave the cabin.
The first day of inactivity he'd slept and eaten and paced back and
forth, anxious for news of what was going on in the city. At nightfall
Miran had returned with the story that a furious search was organized
in the city itself and the outlying hills. Of course, the Duke would
insist that the 'rollers themselves be turned inside-out, and Miran
was cursing because that would mean a fatal delay. They could not wait
for more than three more days. The fish tanks had been installed;
the provisions were almost all in the hold; his roistering crewmen
were being dragged out of the taverns and sobered up; two days after
tomorrow the great vessel would have to be towed out of the windbreak
and sails set for the perilous and long voyage.
"I wouldn't worry," said Green. "You will find that tomorrow word will
come from the hills that Green has been killed by a wild man of the
Clan Axaquexcan, who will demand money before handing the dead slave's
head over. The Duke will accept this as true and will conveniently
forget all about searching the 'rollers."
Miran rubbed his fat oily palms, while one pale eye glowed. He loved a
good intrigue, the more elaborate the better.
But the second day, even though what Green had predicted came true
Miran became nervous and began to find the big blond man's constant
presence in his cabin irksome. He wanted to send him down into the
hold, but Green firmly refused, reminding the captain of his promise
of haven within these very walls. He then calmly appropriated another
bottle of the merchant's Lespaxian, having located its hiding place,
and drank it. Miran glowered, and his face twitched with repressed
resentment, but he said nothing because of the custom that a guest
could do what he pleased--within reasonable limits.
The third day Miran was positively a tub of nerves, jittery, sweating,
pacing back and forth. At last he left the cabin, only to begin pacing
back and forth on the deck. Green could hear his footsteps for hours.
The fourth day he was up at dawn and bellowing orders to his crewmen. A
little later Green felt the big vessel move and heard the shouts of the
foremen of the towing gangs and the chants of the slaves as they bent
their backs hauling at the huge ropes attached to the 'roller.
Slowly, oh, so slowly it seemed to Green, the craft creaked forward. He
dared open a curtain to look out the square port-hole. Before him was
the rearing side of another 'roller, and just for a second it seemed to
him that it, not his vessel, was the one that was moving. Then he saw
that the 'roller was advancing at a pace of about fifteen or sixteen
feet a minute. It would take them an hour to get past the towering
brick walls of the windbreak.
He sweated out that hour and unconsciously fell into his childhood
habit of biting his nails, expecting at any time to see the docks
suddenly boil with soldiers running after the _Bird of Fortune_,
shouting for it to stop because it had a runaway slave aboard.
But no such thing occurred, and at last the tug gangs stopped and began
coiling up their ropes, and Green quit chewing his nails. Miran shouted
orders, the first mate repeated them, there was the slap of many feet
on the decks above, the sound of many voices chanting. A sound as of
a knife cutting cloth told that the sails had been released. Suddenly,
the vessel rocked as the wind caught it and a vibration through the
floors announced that the big axles were turning, the huge wheels with
their tires of _chacorotr_, a kind of rubber, were revolving. The
_Bird_ was on the wing!
Green opened the door slightly and took one last look at the city of
Quotz. It was receding rapidly at the rate of fifteen miles an hour,
and at this distance it looked like a toy city nestled in the lap of
a hillock. Now that the danger from it was gone and the odors too far
away to offend his nose it looked quite romantic and enticing.
"And so we say farewell to exotic Quotz," murmured Green in the
approved travelog fashion. "So long, you son of an _izzot_!"
Then, though he was supposed to stay inside until Miran summoned him,
he opened the door and stepped out.
And almost fainted dead away.
"Hello, honey," said Amra.
Green scarcely heard the children grouped around her also extend their
greetings. He was just coming out of the dizziness and blackness that
had threatened to overcome him. Perhaps it was the wine coupled with
the shock. Perhaps, he was to think later, it was just that he was
plain scared, scared as he'd not been in the castle. Ashamed, too, that
Amra had found out his plans to desert her, and deeply ashamed because
she loved him anyway and would not allow him to go without her. She had
a tremendous pride that must have cost her great effort to choke down.
Probably, he was to say to himself later on, it was sheer fear of her
tongue that made him quail so. There was nothing that a man dreaded
so much as a woman's tonguelashing, especially if he deserved it. Oh,
especially!
That was to come later. At the moment Amra was strangely quiet and
meek. All she would say was that she had many business connections and
that she knew well Zingaro, the Thieves' Guild Business Agent. They had
been childhood playmates, and they'd helped each other in various shady
transactions since. It was only natural that she should hear about the
_exurotr_ a slave hiding on the _Bird of Fortune_ had given Zingaro
to take back to the Duke. Cornering Zingaro, she had worked out of him
enough information to be sure that Green had escaped to the 'roller.
After all, Zingaro was under oath only to be reticent about certain
details of the whole matter. From there she had taken the business into
her own hands, had told Miran that she would inform the Duchess of
Green's whereabouts unless he permitted her and her family to go along
on the voyage.
"Here I am, your faithful and loyal wife," she said, opening her arms
in an expansive gesture.
"I am overwhelmed with emotion," replied Green, for once not
exaggerating.
"Then come and embrace me," she cried, "and don't stand there as if
you'd seen the dead return from the grave!"
"Before all these people?" he said, half-stunned, looking around at
the grinning captain and first mate on the foredeck beside him and at
the sailors and their families on the middeck below. The only ones not
watching him were the goggled helmsmen, whose backs were turned because
they were intent on wrestling with the great spoked wheel.
"Why not?" she retorted. "You'll be sleeping on the open deck with
them, eating with them, breathing their breath, feeling their elbows at
every turn, cursing, laughing, fighting, getting drunk, making love,
all, all on the open deck. So why not embrace me? Or don't you want me
to be here?"
"The thought never entered my head," he said, stepping up to her and
taking her in his arms. Or, if it had, he reflected, you can bet that
I'd not dare say it.
After all, it was good to feel her soft, warm, firmly curved body again
and know that there was at least one person on this godforsaken planet
that cared for him. What could have made him think for one minute that
he could endure life without her?
Well, he had. She just would not, could not, fit into his life if he
ever got back on Earth.
11
Miran coughed and said, "You two and your children and maid must get
off the deck and go amidships. That is where you will live. Never again
must you set foot upon the steering deck unless you are summoned. I run
a tight ship and discipline is strictly adhered to."
Green followed Amra and the children down the steps to the deck below,
noticing for the first time that Inzax, the pretty blond slave who took
care of the children, was also aboard. You had to give credit to Amra.
Wherever she went she traveled in style.
He also thought that if this was a tight ship a loose one must be sheer
chaos. Cats and dogs were running here and there, playing with the many
infants, or else fighting with each other. Women sat and sewed or hung
up washing or dried dishes or nursed babies. Hens clucked defiantly
from behind the bars of their coops, scattered everywhere. On the
port side there was even a pigpen holding about thirty of the tiny
rabbit-eared porcines.
Green followed Amra to a place where an awning had been stretched to
make a roof.
"Isn't this nice?" she said. "It has sides which we can pull down when
it rains or when we want privacy, as I suppose we will, you being so
funny in some ways."
"Oh, it's delightful," he hastened to assure her. "I see you even have
some feather mattresses. And a cookstove."
He looked around. "But where are the fish tanks? I thought Miran was
going to bolt them to the deck?"
"Oh, no, he said that they were too valuable to expose to gunfire if we
encountered pirates. So he had the deck cut open wide enough to lower
the tanks inside the hold. Then the deck planking was replaced. Most of
these people here would be sleeping below if it weren't for the tanks.
But there's no room now."
Green decided to take a look around. He liked to have a thorough
knowledge of his immediate environment so that he would know how to
behave if an emergency arose.
The windroller itself was about two hundred feet long. Its beam was
about thirty-four feet. The hull was boat-shaped, and the narrow keel
rested on fourteen axles. Twenty-eight enormous solid rubber-tired
wheels turned at the ends of these axles. Thick ropes of the tough
rubber-like substance were tied to the ends of the axles and to the
tops of the hull itself. These were to hold the body steady and keep it
from going over when the 'roller reeled under too strong a side wind
and also to provide some resiliency when the 'roller was making a turn.
Being aboard at such times was almost like being on a water-sailing
ship. As the front pair of wheels--the steering wheels--turned and the
longitudinal axis of the craft slowly changed direction, the body of
the vessel, thrust by the shifting impact of the winds, also tilted.
Not too far, never as far as a boat in similar case, but enough to give
one an uneasy feeling. The cables on the opposing side would stretch to
a degree and then would stop the sidewise motion of the keel and there
would be a slight and slow roll to the other direction. Then a shorter
and slower motion back again. It was enough to make a novice green.
'Roller sickness wasn't uncommon at the beginning of a voyage or during
a violent windstorm. Like its aqueous counterpart, it affected the
sufferer so that he could only hang over the rail and wish he _would_
die.
The _Bird of Fortune_ sported a curving bow and a high foredeck. On
this was fastened the many-spoked steering wheel. Two helmsmen always
attended it, two men wearing hexagonal goggles and close-fitting
leather helmets with high crests of curled wire. Behind them stood
the captain and first mate, giving their attention alternately to the
helmsmen and to the sailors on deck and aloft. The middeck was sunken,
and the poopdeck, though raised, was not as high as the foredeck.
The four masts were tall, but not as tall as those of a marine craft
of similar size. High masts would have given the 'roller a tendency
to capsize in a very strong wind, despite the weight of the axles and
wheels. Therefore, the yardarms, reaching far out beyond the sides of
the hull, were comparatively longer than a seaship's. When the _Bird_
carried a full weight of canvas she looked, to a mariner's eyes, squat
and ungainly. Moreover, yards had been fixed at right angles to the
top of the hull and to the keel itself. Extra canvas was hung between
these spars. The sight of all that sail sticking from between the
wheels was enough to drive an old sailor to drink.
Three masts were square-rigged. The aft mast was fore-and-aft rigged
and was used to help the steering. There was no bowsprit.
Altogether, it was a strange-looking craft. But once one was accustomed
to it, one saw it was as beautiful as a ship of the sea.
It was as formidable, too, for the _Bird_ carried five large cannon on
the middeck, six cannon on the second deck, a lighter swivel cannon on
the steering deck, and two swivels on the poopdeck.
Hung from davits were two long liferollers and a gig, all wheeled and
with folding masts. If the _Bird_ was wrecked it could be abandoned and
all the crew could scoot off in the little rollers.
Green wasn't given much time for inspection. He became aware that
a tall, lean sailor was regarding him intently. This fellow was
dark-skinned but had the pale blue eyes of the Tropat hillsmen. He
moved like a cat and wore a long, thin dagger, sharp as a claw. A nasty
customer, thought Green.
Presently, the nasty customer, seeing that Green was not going to
notice him, walked in front of him so that he could not help being
annoyed. At the same time, the babble around them died and everybody
turned his head to stare.
"Friend," said Green, affably enough, "would you mind standing off to
one side? You are blocking my view."
The fellow spat _grixtr_ juice at Green's feet.
"No slave calls me friend. Yes, I am blocking your view, and I would
mind getting out of the way."
"Evidently you object to my presence here," said Green. "What is the
matter? You don't like my face?"
"No, I don't. And I don't like to have as a crewmate a stinking slave."
"Speaking of odors," said Green, "would you please stand to leeward of
me? I've been through a lot lately and I've a delicate stomach."
"Silence, you son of an _izzot_!" roared the sailor, red-faced. "Have
respect toward your betters, or I'll strike you down and throw your
body overboard."
"It takes two to make a murder, just as it takes two to make a
bargain," said Green in a loud voice, hoping that Miran would hear
and be reminded of his promise of protection. But Miran shrugged his
shoulders. He had done as much as he could. It was up to Green to make
his way from now on.
"It is true that I am a slave," he said. "But I was not born one.
Before being captured I was a freeman who knew liberty as none of you
here know it. I came from a country where there were no masters because
every man was his own master.
"However, that is neither here nor there. The point is that I earned my
freedom, that I fought like a warrior, not a slave, to get aboard the
_Bird_. I wish to become a crew member, to become a blood-brother to
the Clan Effenycan."
"Ah, indeed, and what can you contribute to the Clan that we should
consider you worthy of sharing our blood?"
What indeed? Green thought. The sweat broke out all over his body,
though the morning wind was cool.
At that moment he saw Miran speak to a sailor, who disappeared below
decks and come out almost at once carrying a small harp in his hand.
Oh, yes, now he remembered that he had told the captain what a
wonderful harpist and singer he was, just the man that the Clan, eager
for entertainment on the long voyages, would be likely to initiate.
The unfortunate thing about that was that Green couldn't play a note.
Nevertheless he took the instrument from the sailor and gravely plucked
its strings. He listened to the tones, frowned, adjusted the pegs,
plucked them again, then handed the harp back.
"Sorry, this is an inferior instrument," he said haughtily. "Haven't
you anything better? I couldn't think of degrading my art on such a
cheap monstrosity."
"Gods above!" screamed a man standing nearby. "That is my harp you
are talking about, the beloved harp of me, the bard Grazoot! Slave!
Tone-deaf son of a laryngiteal mother! You will answer to me for that
insult!"
"No," said the sailor, "this is my affair. I, Ezkr, will test this
lubber's fitness to join the Clan and be called brother."
"Over my dead body, brother!"
"If you so wish it, brother!"
There were more angry words until presently Miran himself came down
to the middeck. "By Mennirox, this is a disgrace!" he bellowed. "Two
Effenycan quarreling before a slave! Come, make a decision quietly, or
I will have you both thrown overboard. It is not too far to walk back
to Quotz."
"We will cast dice to see who is the lucky man," said the sailor,
Ezkr. Grinning gap-toothedly, he reached into the pouch that hung from
his belt, and pulled out the hexagonal ivories. A few minutes later
he rose from his knees, having won four out of six throws. Green was
disappointed more than he cared to show, for he had hoped that if he
had to fight anybody it would be the pudgy, soft-looking harpist, not
the tough sailor.
Ezkr seemed to agree with Green that he could not have had worse luck.
Chewing _grixtr_ so rapidly that the green-flecked slaver ran down his
long chin, Ezkr announced the terms that the blond slave would have to
meet to prove his fitness.
12
For a moment Green thought of leaving the ship and making his way on
foot.
Miran protested loudly. "This is ridiculous. Why can you not fight on
deck like two ordinary men and be satisfied if one gives the other a
flesh wound? That way I won't stand the chance of losing you, Ezkr, one
of my top topmen. If you should slip, who could take your place? This
green hand here?"
Ezkr ignored his captain's indignation, knowing that the code of the
Clan protected him. He spit and said, "Anybody can wield a dagger. I
want to see what kind of a man this Green is aloft. Walking a yard is
the best way to see the color of his blood."
Yes, thought Green, his skin goose-pimpling. You'll likely see my
blood all right, splashed from here to the horizon when I fall!
He asked Miran if he could withdraw a moment to his tent to pray to his
gods for success. Miran nodded, and Green had Amra let down the sides
of his shelter while he dropped to his knees. As soon as his privacy
was assured, he handed her a long turban cloth and told her to go
outside. She looked surprised, but when he told her what else she was
to do, she smiled and kissed him.
"You are a clever man, Alan. I was right to prefer you above any other
man I might have had, and I could have had the best."
"Save the compliments for afterwards, when we'll know if it works," he
said. "Hurry to the stove and do what I say. If anybody asks you what
you are up to, tell them that the stuff is necessary for my religious
ritual. The gods," he said as she ducked through the tent opening,
"often come in handy. If they didn't exist it would be necessary to
invent them."
Amra paused and turned with an adoring face. "Ah, Alan, that is one of
the many things for which I love you. You are always originating these
witty sayings. How clever, and how dangerously blasphemous!"
He shrugged, airily dismissing her compliment as if it were nothing.
In a minute she returned with the turban wrapped around something limp
but heavy. And within two minutes he stepped out from the tent, clad
in a loincloth, leather belt, dagger and turban. Silently, he began
climbing the rope ladder that rose to the tip of the nearest mast.
Behind him came Ezkr.
He did get some encouragement from Amra and the children. The Duke's
two boys cried out to him to cut the so-and-so's throat, but if he was
killed instead, they would avenge him when they grew up, if not sooner.
Even the blond maid, Inzax, wept. He felt somewhat better, for it was
good to know that some people cared for him. And the knowledge that he
had to survive and make sure that these women and children didn't come
to grief was an added stimulus.
Nevertheless he felt his momentarily gained courage oozing out of his
sweat pores with every step upward. It was so high up here, and so far
down below. The craft itself became smaller and smaller and the people
shrank to dolls, to upturned white faces that soon became less faces
than blanks. The wind howled through the rigging and the mast, which
had seemed so solid and steady when he was at its base, now became
fragile and swaying.
"It takes guts to be a sailor and a blood-brother of the Clan
Effenycan," said Ezkr. "Do you have them, Green?"
"Yes, but if I get any sicker I'll lose them, and you'll be sorry,
being below me," muttered Green to himself.
Finally, after what seemed endless clambering into the very clouds
themselves, he arrived at the topmost yard. If he had thought the mast
thin and flexible, the arm seemed like a toothpick poised over an
abyss. And he was supposed to inch his way out to the whipping tip,
then turn and come back fighting!
"If you were not a coward you would stand up and walk out," called Ezkr.
"Sticks and stones will break my bones," replied Green, but did not
enlighten the puzzled sailor as to what he meant. Sitting down on the
yard, he put his legs around it and began working his way out. Halfway
to the arm he stopped and dared to look down. Once was enough. There
was nothing but hard, grassy ground directly beneath him, seemingly a
mile below, and the flat plain rushing by, and the huge wheels turning,
turning.
"Go on!" shouted Ezkr.
Green turned his head and told him in indelicate language what he could
do with the yard and the whole ship for that matter if he could manage
it.
Ezkr's dark face reddened and he stood up and began walking out on the
yard. Green's eyes widened. This man could actually do it!
But when he was a few feet away the sailor stopped and said, "No, you
are trying to anger me so I will grapple with you here and perhaps be
pushed off, since you have a firmer hold. No, I will not be such a
fool. It is you who must try to get past me."
He turned and walked almost carelessly back to the mast, against which
he leaned while he waited.
"You have to go out to the very end," he repeated. "Else you won't
pass the test even if you should get by me, which, of course, you
won't."
Green gritted his teeth and humped out to what he considered close
enough to the end, about two feet away. Any more might break the arm,
as it was already bending far down. Or so it seemed to him.
He then backed away, managed to turn, and to work back to within
several feet of Ezkr. Here he paused to regain his breath, his strength
and his courage.
The sailor waited, one hand on a rope to steady himself, the other with
its dagger held point-out at Green.
The Earthman began unwinding his turban.
"What are you doing?" said Ezkr, frowning with sudden anxiety.
Up to this point he had been master, because he knew what to expect.
But if something unconventional happened....
Green shrugged his shoulders and continued his very careful and slow
unwrapping of his headpiece.
"I don't want to spill this," he said.
"Spill what?"
"This!" shouted Green, and he whipped the turban upward towards Ezkr's
face.
The turban itself was too far from the sailor to touch him. But the
sand contained within it flew into his eyes before the wind could
dissipate it. Amra, following her husband's directions, had collected a
large amount from the fireplace's sand pile to wrap in it, and though
it had made his head feel heavy it had been worth it.
Ezkr screamed and clutched at his eyes, releasing his dagger. At the
same time, Green slid forward and rammed his fist into the man's groin.
Then, as Ezkr crumpled toward him, he caught him and eased him down. He
followed his first blow with a chopping of the edge of his palm against
the fellow's neck. Ezkr quit screaming and passed out. Green rolled him
over so that he lay on his stomach across the yard, supported on one
side by the mast, with his legs, arms and head dangling. That was all
he wanted to do for him. He had no intention of carrying him down. His
only wish was to get to the deck, where he'd be safe. If Ezkr fell off
now, too bad.
Amra and Inzax were waiting at the foot of the shrouds when Green
slowly climbed off. When he set foot on the deck, he thought his legs
would give way, they were trembling so. Amra, noticing this, quickly
put her arms around him as if to embrace the conquering hero but
actually to help support him.
"Thanks," he muttered. "I need your strength, Amra."
"Anybody would who had done what you've done," she said. "But my
strength and all of me is at your disposal, Alan."
The children were looking at him with wide, admiring eyes and yelling,
"That's our daddy! Big blond Green! He's quick as a grass cat, bites
like a dire dog and'll spit poison in your eye, like a flying snake!"
Then, in the next moment, he was submerged under the men and women of
the Clan, all anxious to congratulate him for his feat and to call him
brother. The only ones who did not crowd around, trying to kiss him on
the lips, were the officers of the _Bird_ and the wife and children of
the unfortunate sailor, Ezkr. These were climbing up the rigging to
fasten a rope around his waist and lower him.
There _was_ one other who remained aloof. That was the harpist,
Grazoot. He was still sulking at the foot of the mast.
Green decided that he'd better keep an eye on him, especially at night
when a knife could be slipped between a sleeper's ribs and the body
thrown overboard. He wished now that he'd not gone out of his way to
insult the fellow's instrument, but at the time that had seemed the
only thing to do. Now he had better try to find some way to pacify him.
13
Two weeks of very hard work and little sleep passed as Green learned
the duties of a topsailman. He hated to go aloft, but he found that
being up so high had its advantages. It gave him a chance to catch a
few winks now and then. There were many crow's nests where musketmen
were stationed during a fight. Green would slip down into one of these
and go to sleep at once. His foster son Grizquetr would stand watch for
him, waking him if the foretop captain was coming through the rigging
toward them. One afternoon Griz's whistle startled Green out of a sound
sleep.
However, the captain stopped to give another sailor a lecture. Unable
to go back to sleep, Green watched a herd of _hoobers_ take to their
hoofs at the approach of the _Bird_. These diminutive equines,
beautiful with their orange bodies and black or white manes and
fetlocks, sometimes formed immense herds that must have numbered in
the hundreds of thousands. So thick were they that they looked like a
bobbing sea of flashing heads and gleaming hoofs stretching clear to
the horizon.
To stretch to the horizon was something on this planet. The plain was
the flattest Green had ever seen. He could scarcely believe that it ran
unbroken for thousands of miles. But it did, and from his high point of
view he could see in a vast circle. It was a beautiful sight. The grass
itself was tall and thick-bodied, about two feet high and a sixteenth
of an inch through. It was a bright green, brighter than earthly grass,
almost shiny. During the rainy season, he was told, it would blossom
with many tiny white and red flowers and give a pleasing perfume.
Now, as Green watched, something happened that startled him.
Abruptly, as if a monster mowing machine had come along the day before,
the high grass ended and a lawn began. The new grass seemed to be only
an inch high. And the lawn stretched at least a mile wide and as far
ahead of the _Bird_ as he could see.
"What do you think of that?" he asked Amra's son.
Grizquetr shrugged. "I don't know. The sailors say that it is done by
the _wuru_, an animal the size of a ship, that only comes out at night.
It eats grass, but it has the nasty temper of a dire dog, and will
attack and smash a 'roller as if it were made of cardboard."
"Do you believe that?" Green said, watching him closely. Grizquetr was
an intelligent lad in whom he hoped to plant a few seeds of skepticism.
Perhaps some day those seeds might flower into the beginnings of
science.
"I do not know if the story is true or not. It is possible, but I've
met nobody who has ever seen a _wuru_. And if it comes out only at
night, where does it hide during the daytime? There is no hole in the
ground large enough to conceal it."
"Very good," said Green, smiling. Happily, Grizquetr smiled back.
He worshiped his foster-father and nursed every bit of affection or
compliment he got from him.
"Keep that open mind," said Green. "Neither believe nor disbelieve
until you have solid evidence one way or another. And keep on
remembering that new evidence may come up that will disprove the old
and firmly established."
He smiled wryly. "I could use some of my own advice. I, for instance,
had at one time absolutely refused to put any credence in what I have
just seen with my own eyes. I put the story down as merely another idle
story of those who sail the grassy seas. But I'm beginning to wonder if
perhaps there couldn't be an animal of some kind like the _wuru_."
Both were silent for a while as they watched the animals race off like
living orange rivers. Overhead, the birds wheeled in their hundreds of
thousands of numbers. They, too, were beautiful, and even more colorful
than the _hoobers_. Occasionally one lit in the rigging in a burst of
dazzling feathers and a fury of melodious song or raucous screeches.
"Look!" said the boy, eagerly pointing. "A grass cat! He's been hiding,
waiting to catch a _hoober_, and now he's afraid he'll be trampled to
death by them."
Green's gaze followed the other's finger. He saw the long-legged,
tiger-striped body loping desperately ahead of the thundering hoofs.
It was completely closed in a pocket of the orange-maned beasts. Even
as Green saw him, the sides of the pocket collapsed and the big cat
disappeared from sight. If he remained alive he would do so through a
miracle.