Directly ahead of our prow, a few degrees to port, a tall peak soared on the horizon, lifting its castled crest out of the purple gloom and into the brilliance of dawn. The mountains were largely of white marl, like snowy chalk veined with sparkling gray quartz; the peak was jagged, the city built at different levels, various towers or battlements connected by airy bridgeways which spanned the gap between many of the imposing structures, looking from our distance rather like cobwebs entangled in stiff spears of grass, twinkling jeweled in the morning light.
As the frigate drew nearer I could hear the stentorian voice of the First Mate bellowing orders through his megaphones to belay all lines and secure hatches.
"Ahoy the poop!" he bawled in his foghorn voice. "Signal crew stand by the aft lines. Prepare to display colors. Look alive at the sternpost steerage, you lads―"
A fainter voice sounded from the pilothouse and the First Mate relayed it aft. "Starboard your rudder, two points!" he bellowed. Then: "Look alive at those winches! Trim your rear surfaces―hard about on that rudder, men!"
I felt a shudder run through the taut structure and the great winches above me creaked, guy-stays thrumming with tension as the winch gang feathered the aileronlike segments of the vans to turn the ship about to port. The endlessly complex process of flying the Skygull I found ceaselessly fascinating. I would have given anything to be above-decks just then, watching how they did it. I understood that the winch gangs controlled the pitch and pace of the vans, while the rudder gang did the actual steering by shifting that enormous fan-ribbed rudder fin to either port or starboard; the whole operation was coordinated from the pilothouse, the captain's commands relayed from the belvedere observation deck to the first mate, who stood atop a sort of conning tower between the twin masts; he in turn relayed orders to winch or rudder gangs.
Now we were coming about into the wind. The wingbeats were slower now, the great vans almost still, gliding on the air currents, the forward motion gradually slowing as the downwards-tilted aileron surfaces dragged against the thrust. Struts creaked as the frigate tilted to port, lurching a little, and the mate raised his voice in a roar, telling the starboard winch gang to trim their pitch. I shall not translate the sulphurous oaths wherewith his command was peppered.
Zanadar lay dead ahead now, and much nearer. Built atop a mountain, the city of the Sky Pirates had no need of walls or battlements or even a barbican. The structures I could see were built in a characteristic style of architecture that ran to four-sided buildings, with flat roofs and tiered levels shielded by bright striped awnings. The buildings were very massive and solid, with enormously thick walls, and they tapered sharply from base to summit; I suppose this style was dictated by the cold air of this altitude and the constant gale-force winds that whistled about us. The crest of this mountain broke into a number of subsidiary peaks, a dozen of which had been artificially leveled off and converted to landing plazas for the ornithopter fleet. I could just see railed runways on the surface of the nearer plaza towards which we seemed to be heading. At each side of the plaza was a sort of roofless hangar, like a dry dock. Three dry docks were occupied by frigates comparable to ours. The docks rose above the level of the amidships deck and the frigates were hauled into place by dock gangs pulling on deck lines. There must be wheels, perhaps retractable ones, on the underside of the ship, for the vessels obviously were landed in the center of the plaza and were slid down the rails into moorage, then secured by heavy deck cables fastened to mooring posts.
Now the wingtips flapped in a swift, light beat. With each agitation of the ribbed vans, the hollow compartments echoed like a beaten drum. Fantastic vistas of tower and airy span and yawning chasm swept past the open louver. I glimpsed rooftop gardens, bright with colored blossoms, ripening fruits, glossy scarlet leaves, shielded from the bitter cold of the mountain air behind glassed cupolas, as we swung about.
From each spire glowing pennants unrolled on the wind their heraldic glories. Tiered levels fell away beneath, disclosing glass-domed boulevards where bright-robed throngs strolled between flowering trees, or rode in rickshaws of gilt paper and wood. This higher level, I learned later from Lukor, was called the Upper City; here dwelt the nobles and aristocrats and courtiers, with their attendant satellites―minstrels, clowns, jugglers, mountebanks, perfumers, topiarists, paper sculptors, the composers of masques, the blenders of cosmetics, the leaders of revels. This was the leisurely, affluent class, supported by the second level and its labors.
Now, as we circled lower, riding the updraft, we flew over what Lukor later termed the Middle City. The streets here were unshielded, open to the winds; the houses more squat, the streets lined with inns, wineshops, alehouses, mercantile establishments, drinking booths, houses of gaming or pleasure. Gaudy paper lanterns swung in the wind from long nodding poles: blue, copper, witch-green, lemon-like goblin eyes in the early morning gloom. Here dwelt the great Pirate Captains of the Brotherhood of the Clouds: the lordly privateers who led their own ships, or, in some cases, entire squadrons, in raiding expeditions against the trader caravans that attempted perilous crossings through the mountain passes, or against nearby cities and towns. Swaggering in belled cloaks and swash boots, bedizened wenches leaning on their velvet-clad arms, steel rapiers dangling against bulging purses, they strode the windy streets of the Middle City in drunken and arrogant splendor.
Of the Lower City I saw but little: grubby hovels crouched around the bases of the soaring tiers, grimfaced guards and scurrying, bent figures, shuffling laborers, and grimy urchins. Here dwelt the slaves, the servitors, the thieves and the outcasts, fallen from the glittering heights above to this wallow of squalid poverty.
We hovered on motionless vans. The first mate bellowed. Screws turned, releasing pressure cocks. The squeal of escaping gases. The frigate trembled, sagged, hovered, sagged again, and then her keel ground and grated against the floor of the plaza. I heard the thud of work gangs racing to attach the cables. Then the squeak of oiled bearings and the rumble of the rails as we were towed into moorage and made fast.
Darloona disembarked from an upper-deck gangplank; I caught only a glimpse of her, laughing, pink-cheeked with excitement, resplendent in drifting silks, leaning on Thuton's arm as he urbanely saluted the port colors.
I trudged out at ground level, one of a bent-backed, shuffling line of lowly slaves.
The slave pens were in the Lower City, behind walls as thick and massive as Sequoia palisades. Here Koja and I received numbered tags, suspended around our necks on stiff wire. We would share a three-man cubicle in the giant structure, and would be on call for the next corsair of the skies who required new blood to man the wheels. In the meanwhile, we had nothing to do but vegetate.
For me, the transition from the barbarism of the Horde camp to an advanced urban civilization was unsettling. How like modern Stockholm or London, I thought wryly. Grubby slums cowering at the foot of soaring mansions and palaces; the distant clamor of laughter and music from bright pleasure gardens far above drifting down to squalid alleys and fetid hovels at their foot.
For Koja, who had known nothing but the life of camp, hunt, and war, it must have been a revelation. But the somber fellow spoke little, keeping to his own thoughts.
Ours was a lethargic existence. Twice a day guards marshaled us into double lines and we shuffled forth to feed at long porcelain troughs filled with a lukewarm greasy stew of odds and ends of meat, pieced out with chunks of some tuberlike vegetable. We had each a wooden cup wherewith to dip our slops out of this common feeding trough. The cracked, dirty plaster of the walls―the greasy, food-splattered floor―the scrape and clatter of cups dipped in the congealing slumgullion―the blurred, weary, dull-eyed faces ―how different from the spacious rooms with waxed glistening floors, where well-groomed officers and aristocrats in immaculate uniforms glittering with gold braid―and the Princess of Shondakor―probably spent these same days!