He smiled. “I have no idea what swifter you will be given, Pur Dray. But I rather imagine you will want to call her Zorg.”
“That is my intention.”
“So be it. We now stand on the swifter Lagaz-el-Buzro.
I nodded. “Also, I shall take those two useless hands, Nath and Zolta.”
He chuckled. “And very welcome to them you are, for their drinking and their wenching. But useless? I would rather have a crew like them than one composed of the spoiled brats of Sanurkazz nobility.”
I nodded again. I agreed. There was no need of more words.
Zorg that was now Lagaz-el-Buzro pushed off. Everything that had to be done had been done. I was going back to report to the high admiral, with a strong recommendation from Zenkiren, and my future in the Eye of the World looked bright. Also, I wanted to see Mayfwy again, and the children, Zorg and Fwymay.
We drew into Sanurkazz. I reported to the high admiral, who did not like me and knew the feeling was reciprocated. But Zo, the king, was disposed toward me, for I had never caused him any offense, and, besides, I had brought him during the course of my last season’s activities more gold, jewels, and the precious commodities that are the lifeblood of the inner sea’s trading than any other of his captains. I got my ship.
I have already given some explanation of the controversy then raging in the inner sea over the relative merits of what were called, for convenience, the long keel and the short keel theories.[4]Long keels, that is, a long narrow swifter, are necessary for speed. But the short keel men, those who argued for the same oar-power packed tighter, claimed that a shorter craft for the same beam might lose a knot or so of speed but gave immeasurably greater maneuverability and turning capacity. I had not yet made up my mind. Zo, the king, appointed me to a five-hundredswifter of the short keel construction. Immediately I set about devising ways of improving the speed of my new Zorg. I had two banks of twenty-five oars a side. I carried six hundred slaves, allowing me a reasonable turnover in use and rest periods.
“I thank you, Light of Zim,” I said formally. “Rest assured. I shall bring you in a tail of accursed Magdag broad ships and swifters.” It was a rote speech, but I meant it with all my heart. I went raiding on the Eye of the World.
The seasons slipped by; Felteraz remained as beautiful as ever. Nath grew ever more corpulent. Zolta had a number of narrow escapes from the form of marriage that would have clipped his wings. We sailed and we pulled and we crisscrossed the inner sea with burning wrecks and floating corpses; the totals of our prizes steadily mounted as we pulled in past the pharos of Sanurkazz. Clever distribution of the weights was always the problem in trimming a swifter. A galley that depends on oar propulsion must possess a shallow draft, yet we were packing as many as a thousand or twelve hundred oarsmen in, besides the crew, soldiers, and varters. Sometimes shipwrights went to dangerous lengths to conserve weight. Although all the enormous deadweight of the guns aboard a ship of the line did not have to be carried, the weights were still considerable. Victory ’s longest deck measures a hundred and eighty-six feet in length, and the width is fifty-two feet. She is built of wood. A swifter of that length would measure something like twenty feet beam. The differences make for cranky, unwieldy, and extremely unseaworthy craft. But then, no galley could live in a sea that Victory, or her sisters of my old Navy, could sail with ease.
Galleys are useless on the open ocean. I know.
I had seen the Spaniards out of Cartagena wallowing as we flashed past with our royals set. I could never sail back home to Strombor in Zenicce, or to Vallia, that island hub of an ocean empire, aboard a galley.
Equally, I would not relish the journey aboard a broad ship, what the ancients also called a round ship, of the inner sea.
All my growing fortune, my success, the luxury with which I might surround myself if I so wished, the good friends I was making — to my continual surprise, for I think I have indicated sufficiently that I am a loner in life — meant little. I felt more and more restless as the long days of raiding, cruising, and carousing passed. I hungered for something I was not clearly conscious of desiring. That cunning and politely vicious man, the noble Harknel of High Heysh, continued his attempts at persecution, but I held him off, contemptuously, almost with boredom. He did not pose the kind of problem I was in the mood to deal with. Because he had not been born with the all-important Z either in his name or his place of abode, by which he was known, his resentment of that further embittered him. He had seen that his son possessed the Z in his name. I had found, not without amusement, that my name was taken as Prezcot. It had helped. A man had to have the antecedents or the newly-won right to name either himself or his son with the Z. I often wondered what Zolta’s history was, but he would never tell me. Nath, now, was the son of an illiterate ponsho farmer, who had taken to the sea in revolt against fleeces, dips, and eternal flock-tending.
At the beginning of a new raiding season, when the twin suns of Scorpio were so close they appeared almost to touch as they rose in the sky, we had returned from our first cruise, happy and successful. Isteria had witnessed some carousing the night before and we had left a trail of mayhem at our many ports of call. I had taken my last cruise aboard this swifter, and was due to shift to a new six-six-hundred-and-twentyswifter, one built on long keel lines, as an experiment. She would be Zorg, of course.
Nath wore a bandage around his head.
A Magdag oar blade had welted him nastily during our last fight and he could still hear the bells of Beng-Kishi ringing in his head.
“He’s all right,” scoffed Zolta. “He wouldn’t know it if the tower of Zim-Zair fell on him. He has the skull of a vosk.”
Vosks notoriously had exceptionally thick skull bones, so I laughed, and said: “Maybe, Zolta. He should be thankful. He kept the varters going all through-”
“Vosk skull!” said Zolta, and then Nath threw a wet mop at him and I took myself off to my aft state room. It is not seemly for the captain of a king’s swifter to be seen romping with the crew. But again that nag of dissatisfaction came to me.
I have mentioned the single occasion on which I attempted to alleviate the lot of the slaves aboard my galley, and of how they rose as one man and attempted to cut the throats of all my crew.[5]Both red and green kept slaves: the red only for gallery work and a few personal body servants, the green for every aspect of menial labor they required. I had conceived it that my duty lay with the men of Zair — and I heartily loathed and hated the men of Magdag — but also I tried to remember that perhaps the Savanti had sent me here to the Eye of the World to do something positive about this abhorrent slavery. If they had, if the Star Lords also had their own requirements, I must obey, but I would do so with the clear understanding that I would make for Vallia or Zenicce just as soon as I could. The Proconia, those fair-haired people who dominated all the eastern shoreline of the inner sea, were involved in another of their internecine wars. As I have said, we always kept out of it, for we had enough to do with Magdag. This time Magdag herself had taken a hand in an attempt to dominate the only area of the Eye of the World where neither Grodno nor Zair were worshipped.[6]My new Zorg was directed to join a squadron outfitted for an expedition toward the east. This would be entirely new sea for me. I found a fresh interest in life again and Mayfwy had had made for me a new coat of mail of a fineness almost as supple as the mail worn by that mailed man in the Princess Natema’s alcove. That mesh steel had come from Havilfar, I had learned. The mesh of the inner sea was practical, lumpy, and unsophisticated by contrast.