Cabot bent down and retrieved a blade. He cast it toward me, and, a foot or two from me, almost within my reach, it sank into one of the broad, rounded wooden, postlike bars, some five horts thick, of a tarn cage. I drew it free, with a sudden sense of exhilaration. Such a blade, though short, could reach the heart of even a larl. It bore the ship’s mark, the Tau, for the ship of Tersites. I had little doubt it had been removed, stolen, from a weapon room, perhaps from the very one we had found ransacked, and nearly emptied, save for destroyed arms.
I brandished it, sensing the heft, the weight, the balance. Yes, I thought, yes! It was the sort of blade to which one might grow accustomed, the sort of blade to which one might entrust one’s life, placing its sharp, narrow wall of agile metal between oneself and death.
Cabot grinned. “See that you use it honestly!” he called.
He had armed me.
For such an officer one would die.
I worked my way to his side.
I fenced away an antagonist, and then another. I did not see the foeman moving to my right, but I did see him fall. I owed my life to Tarl Cabot. Even in the test of combat one should be as acutely aware as one is keenly alive. Surely the foe most dangerous is he who is likely to be the least noticed.
Near the ramp, on its left, I saw Seremides fell a man. I was familiar with his skill from Ar. Few could match him. Seremides then was loyal, or not ready, now, to show himself disloyal. I saw him disable another man, and then twice slash his face, once on each side, and then his blade, swift as a striking ost, entered the throat and withdrew, only a hort, but enough. I had seen him do such things in Ar. He was fond of such death play. He was vain, and enjoyed such flourishes. Eleven times I, and others, had been invited, in the dawn, in the square before the Central Cylinder, or in one park or another, to witness his games. Often his victim, provoked to accept a challenge, would have been guilty of little more than entering a portal before him, or brushing against him in a theater or market. Seremides had his likes and dislikes, however they might be founded, and it was better not to be disliked. He could bide his time, with the patience of a concealed sleen, in ambush, waiting for his opportunity, even an opinion to be expressed, whatever it might be, and would then contradict it, and then heat the matter with aspersions and derogations to the point of martial arbitration. The opinion was immaterial; paramount would be the quarrel, the pretext, that being the quarry sought, the quarrel, always the quarrel. Wise men attended his words, intently, and graciously, spoke little in his presence, and would forbear to disagree. One tried to please him. He enjoyed killing. He was of the retinue of Lord Okimoto.
I was pleased to see him in the high tarn hold, though I would have been better pleased to see him amongst the mutineers. I had feared he might by now have departed the ship, in tarnflight, the slave, Alcinoe, bound belly up across his saddle, in some desperate attempt to reach Ar. But such an effort would be irrational, and would presumably conclude not with a sack of gold, but with the death of both on the ice. Too, he would have had to break into the Kasra area, no simple task, and even were he successful in accomplishing this, she, as the other slaves, would still be on her chain. No, this was not the time to think of bringing a slave to Ar. Not the time for either of us. And why should it be he, and not I, who would place the fugitive before Marlenus? The bounty on the high-born, beautiful, officious slut, now collared, was high. Why should the gold be his and not mine? She was a traitress, a conspirator, a criminal, a profiteer, a betrayer of her Home Stone, once even the confidante of the arch traitress herself, Talena, of Ar. Surely she should be returned to the justice of Ar. I wondered if she might make a good slave. She was attractive. It might be pleasant to have her at one’s feet, her lips pressed fervently, hopefully, to them. If she were not pleasing, or if one tired of her, one could always return her to Ar. She was highly intelligent. Such things would be easy for her to understand. It might be pleasant to have her under one’s whip, if only for a time. Why could I not forget her? Had I not, even from Ar, dreamed of her small wrists fastened behind her, in my bracelets? The bounty might win me a dozen slaves, even more beautiful than she, perhaps even a galley, but would these, together, the gold washed with blood, be of greater value to me than a single slave whom one might master with severity, but for whom one would die?
“Beware!” cried Cabot, angrily. I fended the blow. I thrust. The fellow stumbled back, bleeding.
Beside Seremides, near the ramp, was Tyrtaios, who was of the retinue of Lord Nishida.
The tarn in the cage behind me screamed, and for a moment I could not hear.
I saw more Pani entering the area, from side doors. Lower portions of the ship, I supposed, had been secured. Many men, I conjectured, had been sealed in their quarters, or warned to remain within.
It seemed clear to me that the tide of war on this strange field, a lower deck on a great ship, was not favoring the mutineers. I conjectured their numbers might have been as few as two to three hundred. Certainly they had not hoped to stand against united Pani, loyal to their lords, and better than a thousand men who might have been armed and brought into the fray from below. No, they would have hoped to strike swiftly, seize the mounts, and then, before resistance could be mustered, make good their escape. But the ship was locked in Thassa’s ice. Escape even under ideal conditions, given our presumed location, would have been unlikely. And, in any event, there were fewer tarns than mutineers, even from the beginning, and certainly after the killings, the slaughter, the injuring of birds, and the escape of several. Mutineers, I later learned, had been killing one another to attain the saddle of a tarn, many presumably having hoped to buy that place with steel, when, unfortunately for them, the ship’s loyalist forces, Pani and others, rallied and came to the first tarn hold.
“In, in, in!” cried a tarnkeeper, swinging open one of the large, wood-barred gates of a cage. Another, before one of the monsters, was shouting and raising his arms. Tarns, like larls and sleen, tend to find noise and violent motions disconcerting. Larls have been known to withdraw before a shouting child beating on a pan with a metal spoon. One of the monsters backed into the cage, beak snapping with menace, and the tarnkeeper at the gate swung it shut, hooking the latch in place. I saw another tarn down the aisle being similarly housed.