The ballista used on the ships of the Eye of the World was called a varter, and it was a true ballista, in that its propulsive energy came from two half-bows whose butts were clamped in perpendicular thongs twisted many times. The cord was drawn by a simple windlass. The varter could be adapted to shoot arrows, or bolts, large iron-tipped monstrous balks of timber, or to hurl stones. It could achieve a considerable degree of accuracy.
Every sixth day on ships of Sanurkazz the religious observances connected with Zair were solemnly undertaken with due rites and prayers. Religion, I had thought, was the sop for the masses, along with bloodthirsty broadsheets detailing the latest murders and hangings, cockfights, prizefights, and the occasional tankard of ale at the local alehouse. Religion kept the masses in order. These men of Sanurkazz, however, well though I might mock them in the privacy of my own thoughts, were very splendid in their best clothes, the ship-priest in his vestments, the silver and gold vessels, the blazing embroidery of the banners and flags, the shrilling notes of the silver and ebony trumpets, all conspiring to seduce any solid man into an euphoric haze of belief.
Naturally, the day on which the rites of Zair were performed was not the same day as that on which Grodno was similarly honored.
I say similarly; I had seen the religious services of the men of Magdag, and they were different in a way that, looking back, I can see was no different at all. Then, I considered them depraved and evil. It seems obvious that there was only one color which the men of Magdag could paint the hulls of their swifters. The ancient pirates of Greece, who roamed the Aegean, used to paint their hulls green. The men of Sanurkazz had struck a compromise. Green was of some use as a camouflage color; not much, a little. Red would have been some degrees more visible, so the galleys of the men of Zair of the southern shore of the inner sea were painted blue.
They carried three sets of sails in more or less regular use: white for daytime cruising, black for night sailing, and blue for raiding.
On this voyage back to Holy Sanurkazz, a voyage which was something in the nature of a victory triumph, we wore white sails.
Magdag stood upon the northern shore of the inner sea over to the western end; her power and law ran for many dwaburs toward the east until it tended to diminish a little as cities with their own marine wished to flex their own muscles of independence. All, however, were in some way tributary to Magdag, and all, naturally, were partisans of the green.
Holy Sanurkazz stood upon the southern shore of the inner sea over toward the eastern end, at the narrow neck of one of the dependent seas that extended southward. Her hegemony stretched in somewhat different ways from her opponent’s toward the west, where cities flourished which grew steadily weaker and less assured the farther west they had been sited. All, however, owed a single burning allegiance to the red.
It seemed clear that the strategy dominating the inner sea would be that of raiding to keep the opponent occupied, and a series of direct and violent blows against the chief hostile city. With either Magdag or Sanurkazz reduced, the other cities of the losing side would, like children deprived of parents, quickly succumb. This was a strategy that had not found favor with either the men of Magdag or Sanurkazz. The answer was obvious enough and human enough not to surprise me. Booty was for the taking upon the seas, and to strike against a smaller city was infinitely safer than any direct assault against the master citadel.
Stretching my legs on the tiny extent of quarterdeck boasted by Lilac Bird, I saw Zolta below me thoroughly enjoying himself on the central gangway. He strode up and down, clad like myself in a clean white loincloth, flourishing a whip and every now and then laying into the galley slaves. We were bucking a nasty little wind, and I had cocked my eyes at the clouds more than once.
“Hai, Zolta!” I called down.
He stared back and up, his face brown and cheerful, his black eyes glittering. He cracked the whip with a snap.
“I am collecting interest, Stylor!” he shouted up.
The drum-deldar quickened his beat. The bass and the tenor drums boomed closer together. On the ships of Zair the drum-deldar sits forward of the rowers, in the belief, I gathered, that the sounds would carry more speedily to the oarsmen on the benches. Above the heads of this top bank of oarsmen a light, fighting platform ran around above the bulwarks of the galley where fighting-men could stand in action. Below them, the lower bank of oarsmen were tugging at their shorter and more sharply angled oars. With seven men to a loom, monstrous oars could be wielded. Zolta, with his borrowed whip, intended to see the oars were moved, and sharply. The whip-deldar, from whom Zolta had so unofficially taken over, was standing talking to the oar-master in his tabernacle just below me, and laughing at the antics of Zolta. So my friends who owed allegiance to the red-sun deity, Zair, used slaves too. Could I have expected anything else? I did know that slavery was practiced mostly aboard their swifters. In their cities normal citizens carried out work, in a way that made sense to an Earthman with a European heritage, and the few slaves were mostly for personal body service.
I looked out over the larboard beam and the clouds there lowered, more black and ominous than they had been half a bur before. I had no wish to interfere with Zenkiren in his handling of his ship. Aft of us the two trailing galleys plunged heavily, and spume broke and burst from their prows. The merchantmen were riding the seas more easily and I saw they had reduced canvas.
Zenkiren stepped out on deck.
The oar-master popped up his little ladder from the tabernacle with its solidly-bolted door. He gestured to larboard.
“I see, Nath,” said Zenkiren. “We must weather this out.”
This Nath, again, was another of that common name, and not my Nath the Thief, or my oar-mate Nath, who was spending his time playing any one of the many gambling games of Kregen with the released slaves below decks.
Lilac Bird was beginning to roll now in a devilishly uncomfortable corkscrew fashion. Long and thin galleys are no sea boats. Some of the oars faltered as white water broke. The oar-master dived back to his place as the drum-deldar thumped a slower rate, and the whip-deldar jumped along the central gangway below the parados and took the whip from Zolta.
We were in for a blow.
Storms, hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones — gales of all descriptions are no news to me. The gale that overtook us now was such as to give me no cause for alarm at first. Why, snug aboard a seventy-four, or even a thirty-eight frigate, on blockade, we would scarcely have bothered over this blow. However, the swifters of the inland sea were primitive fighting machines, not the sophisticated sailing machines on Nelson’s Navy, and Lilac Bird behaved like a bitch of the sea. She twisted, she hogged, she sagged, she pitched and yawed and rolled and when she did roll she sent thrills through me I’d forgotten existed. We smashed ten oars before they were all safely inboard and stowed. That operation — I had had to carry it out myself as a galley slave — is a miserable proceeding. Then covers were dragged out by the sailors and lashed over all the openings in the upperworks. Lilac Bird stuck her nose down and heaved like a rooting ferret. I snatched a glance aft and saw the two galleys like matchsticks in the sea, foaming up and down, great spouts of white water crashing upward from their slim bows. The merchantmen were out of sight. The clouds lowered down and the sky grew black; rain began to fall. That cheered me up a little, but the way this broomstick of a craft was behaving was enough to alarm any sailor. And I had considered she should be longer!