“Not this time, Lord Phadal,” Gomba called back from the quay-side. “Next week, however—on that you have my word!” And under his breath he added: “Aye, indeed you do, fat dog!”
The slave-king was thinking of a Syran slave girl who had been forced by three Theraen embalmers one night more than a year ago. They had been drunk, entering the slave quarters in the dead of night and abducting the girl for their own vile purposes. When she had crawled back to her hovel the next morning, she was out of her mind and near dead.
Better, perhaps, that she had died, for upon recovering from her ordeal she was seen to have contracted the “Theraen Scab,” and now she was riddled with it. It no longer showed so much outwardly, but inside she was crawling. Gomba was sure that Menon Phadal would notice nothing in the gloom of his little cabin, and a touch of syphilis would soon put a stop to his loathsome leching—especially when he gave it to his equally offensive wife! As for the girl herself: she only tittered and giggled and no longer cared much what happened to her.
“I’ll hold you to that, Gomba!” the fat captain called out through the mist which was now beginning to shroud the boat.
Gomba grinned and nodded, “Aye, captain, I’m sure you will. You just leave it to me….”
By now the soldiers had drawn lots for escort duty. Three of them were groaning and pulling faces as they clambered aboard and went to sit in the prow. Their swords were made dull by moisture where they laid them on their laps. Three guards for a hundred slaves, but that was enough; for each one of the hundred was now made to pick up and snap onto his wrist a manacle attached by a short bronze chain to a large stone. The stones sat between the feet of the slaves and weighed anything up to nine and ten pounds each. They were all big enough to drag any but the most powerful swimmer down, and no one but a madman would attempt to escape from the boat with one of these stones fastened to his wrist.
Now a bald, burly steersman passed among the slaves, looking to see that their manacles were fastened. In his belt, he carried a simple key designed to spring the mechanisms on all of the manacles, but he would not be using it until journey’s end. Satisfied, he drew the captain’s attention to the horizon of mist-wreathed trees on the east bank. A dull red rim showed its edge above a fringe of palms. The sun was up and it was time to get the barge underway.
“Cast us off, Gomba,” cried the captain, and the Nubian obligingly loosened ropes and tossed them into the stern. The slaves seated by the port side reed gunwales were chivvied to their feet by the steersman who briefly, expertly cracked a long whip over the heads of those closest to him.
“Up lads,” he bellowed, “you know the game. And watch you don’t trip overboard, eh?” He laughed boomingly and cracked his whip again. The standing slaves took up long poles from where they lay along the gunwale and poled the barge slowly away from the quay. The steersman stood on a small platform in the stern and used his great steering-oar to guide the craft out into the river’s current. All of the motive power would be supplied by the river itself and the vessel’s sail would not be used until the return journey.
Khai, when he had found his seat by the starboard gunwale, (or rather, when he was jostled into that position by the slaves,) had been handed his stone, chain and manacle by a scar-faced young Nubian who closed one eye in a knowing wink. Most of these slaves had been to the quarries many times and knew every detail of the journey’s routine—especially those details which one day might work in their favor. The manacle on Khai’s stone was faulty— or it had better be if he was to have a chance.
When the steersman had moved back to his platform and while the barge was being poled out into the river, Khai unobtrusively tested his manacle and in a few moments discovered the secret of forcing it. It was simply a matter of flexing one’s wrist and giving the manacle a sharp twist. He relaxed a little and began to breathe more easily. His stone was a large one and would take him straight to the bottom if he should fail to free himself in time. Nor could he simply jump overboard without it, for it must appear that he was drowned. Then, having freed himself, still he would have to make good his boast to Adonda Gomba that he could swim like a fish.
For the hundredth time, he went over the plan again in his mind. There would be three small bundles of broken reeds floating on the water. They would not move with the river, would in fact be tethered to the bottom by thin lines—except for the third bundle which would be in the form of a rough circle and anchored to the bottom with a rope. Khai would have to wait until the barge was level with this last marker before he leaped overboard. He would let the stone take him down into the water a little way, free himself and swim underwater to the ring of reeds. There, he could surface slowly until his head broke the surface within the ring where he would be hidden from the view of those on the boat.
And there he must stay, treading water until the arrival of Mhyna’s barge. By then the slave ship would have drifted on down the river, leaving him for dead and gone to the bottom, freshly drowned and food for the crocs and fishes. He shuddered as a rapid swirling in the water just a few feet from the ship’s side told of the passing of a large croc. The plan was not without its dangers. …
The mist had settled now to a milky layer that lay inches deep on the water and lapped in curling tendrils about the sides of the big barge. Caught in the midstream current, the craft moved a little less sluggishly and answered to the steersman’s huge oar. Well astern, the quays of Asorbes slowly disappeared in thinly misted distance and the trees on the banks became grey ghosts that reared silently upward, as if they reached for the light of the new day.
And indeed that light was stronger now as the climbing orange ball of the sun probed the cool morning air with its heat. The prevalent wind from the north, little more than a breeze at the moment but strengthening with the sun’s rising, would assist in dispersing the mist; but by then, Khai must be gone and fled into green deeps. So he sat there and watched the river, his eyes constantly scanning its surface between the east bank and the barge; and time and time again, he tensed the muscles of his legs, testing them for that lightning spring which would carry him over the gunwale and down into the water.
Dimly he was aware of the slaves talking in low voices, and the soldiers in the prow as they engaged in a noisy argument. He knew that Menon Phadal sat nodding in the doorway of his cabin, with his head sunk down onto his chest, and he could feel the slow surge of the river beneath the barge like the movement of a huge and ponderous living creature. It was only when his eyes began to water and twitch with the strain of staring into the floating, thinning mist that he took them off the river for a moment to glance once more at the steersman, and again at the boat’s drowsing captain. He had little need to worry about the three soldiers for they were almost hidden by the mass of the central cabin. In fact, if he moved fast enough when the time came, he could be gone before anyone even—
And there his thoughts froze, for as he gazed again at the river suddenly he saw it: the first marker! A tangled bundle of broken reeds lying there in the water, rolling a little and bobbing gently but not drifting with the current.
Almost before he could recover from the shock of the sighting, the second reed mass drifted into view through milky swirlings of mist. This one was further away from the barge, perhaps forty or fifty feet, and Khai sat up straighter, almost got to his feet as he strained his eyes and craned his neck to search the river’s surface for the third and final marker.