"We're humble fishermen, remember? Get a line over the side and troll."
The approaching ships were now near enough for details to be made out. One was a carack, converted from merchant service. The other had been a bireme, which now had her lower oar ports blocked to make her more serviceable in rough weather. Her oars had been shipped, but now several were thrust out through the upper ports on each side to add to her speed.
"I will not!" said Zerlik.
Jorian turned a puzzled frown. "Will not what?"
"Pretend to be a humble fisherman! I have been running and hiding ever since I met you, and I am sick of it. I will defy these scoundrels to do their worst!"
"Calm down, you idiot! You can't fight a whole shipload of freebooters."
"I care not!" cried Zerlik, becoming ever more excited. "At least, I shall take a few of these wretches with me!"
He ducked into the cabin and reappeared with his scimitar, which he unwrapped from its oilskin covering and drew from its sheath. He waved it at the approaching ships, forcing Jorian to duck to avoid getting slashed.
"Come on!" shrilled Zerlik. "I defy you! Come, and you shall taste the steel of a gentleman of—"
A heavy thump cut off his words, and he slumped to the floor of the cockpit, his sword clanging beside him. Jorian had struck him on the head with the heavy leaden ball forming the pommel of his dagger. He lashed the tiller, sheathed and put away the scimitar, got out the fishing tackle, and let a line trail a stern.
"Heave to!" came a shout through a speaking trumpet from the forecastle of the galley.
A sharp tug on Jorian's fishing pole told of a strike. He jerked the pole and felt a solid, quivering pull.
"Heave to, I said!" came the cry from the galley. "Are you fain to be run down?"
"Can ye na see that I've got a fish?" yelled Jorian, struggling with line and pole.
There was a buzz of talk on the galley. Some sportsman among the Algarthians was arguing that Jorian should be given a chance to land his catch before being pirated. The galley swung to starboard, backing water with her starboard oars. She furled her sail and rowed parallel to the Flying Fish, twenty paces away. The carack trimmed sail to follow more distantly.
Jorian landed a mackerel. Leaving the fish to flop in the bottom of the cockpit beside the unconscious Zerlik, he brought the Flying Fish into the wind and luffed.
"God den, me buckos, and what would ye with me?" he said in down-west Xylarian dialect. "Would ye buy some of me fish? There be this bonny fresh one ye seen me catch, and a dozen or three more salted in the hold. What would ye?"
More muttering on the galley. The man with the trumpet called: "We'll take your fish, Master Fisherman." As the galley maneuvered close to the Flying Fish, the man said: "What ails the other fellow, lying in the bilge?"
"Ah, the poor spalpeen—me nephew, he be—had no better sense than to try to drink the port dry, afore we cast off. So now he be as ye see him. He'll be jimp in an hour."
Someone on the galley lowered a basket on a line over the side. While several pirates with boathooks held the two vessels apart, Jorian tossed his fresh mackerel into the basket and followed it with salted fish from the hold. When the basket had been hoisted back aboard the galley, Jorian said:
"Now about me price…"
The pirate with the trumpet grinned over his rail. "Oh, we'll give you something vastly more precious than money."
"Eh? And what might that be?"
"Namely, your life. Farewell, Master Fisherman. Shove off!"
Jorian sat scowling up and moving his mouth in silent curses as the galley rowed away and broke out its sails. Then his scowl changed to a smile as he put his tiller to starboard, so that the little ship, as she backed before the shore wind, swung clockwise. The sails filled, and the Flying Fish resumed her southward course. Zerlik stirred, groaned, and pulled himself up on the thwart. He asked:
"What did you hit me with?"
Jorian unhooked his dagger from his belt. "See this? The blade won't come out unless you press this button. Hence I can use it as a bludgeon, holding the sheath and striking with this leaden pommel. I had one a couple of years ago, when I was adventuring with Karadur. I lost it later, but I liked the design so well that I had another made. It comes in handy when I wish, not to slay a man, but merely to stop him from doing something foolish—like getting my throat cut so that he can show what a fearless, gallant gentleman he is."
"I will get even with you for that blow, you insolent bully!"
"You'd better save your revenge until after we reach Iraz. I doubt if I could handle this craft alone; and if I could not, I'm sure you couldn't."
"Are you always so invincibly practical? Have you no human emotions? Are you a man or a machine of cogs and wires?"
Jorian chuckled. "Oh, I daresay I could make as big a fool of myself as the next, did I let myself go. When I was a young lad like you—"
"You are no doddering graybeard!"
"Forsooth, I'm not yet thirty; but the vicissitudes of an irregulous life have forced maturity upon me. If you're lucky, you will grow up fast, too, ere some childish blunder puts you into your next incarnation—as has almost happened thrice on this little voyage."
"Humph!" Zerlik ducked into the cabin, where he sat, holding his head and sulking, for the rest of the day.
Next day, however, he was cheerful again. He obeyed orders and performed his duties on the ship as if nothing had happened.
Chapter Three
THE TOWER OF KUMASHAR
For nearly a hundred leagues, the mighty lograms inarched along the western coast. The dragonspine of the range, clad in evergreen forests of somber hue, continued down into the sea. Hence, this part of the Western Ocean was spangled with islets and sea-washed reefs and rocks, forcing ships to detour to seaward. Then the Lograms dwindled into the hills of Penembei, green in spring but a drab dun color, with only a faint speckling of green, in autumn.
As the sun arose above these green-spotted brown hills on the twenty-fourth of the Month of the Unicorn, Jorian aimed his spyglass southward along the coast. He said:
"Take a look, Zerlik. Is that your clock tower—that little thing that sticks up where the shoreline meets the horizon?"
Zerlik looked. "It could be… I do believe that it is… Aye, I see a plume of smoke from the top. That is the veritable Tower of Kumashar."
"Named for some former king, I suppose?"
"Nay, not so. It is a curious story as to how this came to pass."
"Say on."
"Know that Kumashar was an eminent architect and engineer, over a century ago in the reign of Shashtai the Third, otherwise called Shashtai the Crotchety. Now, Kumashar persuaded King Shashtai to hire him to build this lighthouse tower—without the clocks, however; those were installed later."
"I know," said Jorian. "My own dear father installed them when I was a little fellow."
"Really? Now that I think, I believe Karadur said something of that in this letter. Did your father take you to Iraz with him?"
"Nay; we dwelt in Ardamai, in Kortoli, and he was gone for several months on this contract. He claimed your king cheated him out of most of his fee, too; some confiscatory tax on money taken out of the kingdom. But go on with the tale."
"Well, King Shashtai wished his own name—not that of the architect —inscribed on the masonry for all to see. When Kumashar said that his name, too, ought to appear, the king waxed wroth. He told Kumashar that he was getting above himself and had better mend his ways.
"But Kumashar was not so easily balked. He built the tower with a shallow recess on one side, and on the masonry of the recess he personally chiseled: 'Erected by Kumashar the Son of Yuinda in the Two Hundred and Thirtieth Year of the Juktarian Dynasty.' Then he covered this inscription with a coating of plaster, flush with the rest of that side of the tower, and on the plaster he inscribed the name of the king as commanded.