Janny Wurts - The Master of Whitestorm

I. The Galleys of Mhurga

Jostled from sleep by the bang of a fist against the beechwood oar which pillowed his head, Haldeth

started upright, muscles tensed reflexively. But the command he expected never came: no guttural shout

followed to trans-form the night into a misery of hardship, rowing against endless ranks of sea swells. By

the dim fall of moonlight through the aft oarports, Haldeth surveyed the lower deck of the galley Nailga.

Every slave remained hunched and still over his loom, but one. The blow which roused him had not arisen

from his Mhurgai masters, but from his own benchmate, in a useless fit of rage.

Annoyed himself, Haldeth forgot tact. “Mind your temper!” he whispered urgently.

The man at his side looked up. Confronted by gray eyes and a face which held no trace of laughter or

com-passion, Haldeth felt his breath catch in his throat. Gooseflesh chilled his skin. Although the air was

tropical and mild, he shivered and glanced aside, reminded of the first night his benchmate had been

dragged on board.

As a battered, soot-streaked captive not yet past his seventeenth summer, that savage look had been

with him then,graven upon young features by the atrocities of the Mhurgai who routinely pillaged and

burned

towns on the shores of lilantyr. But who he was, and what family he had owned before he was chained

for the oar, Haldeth never knew. The boy had grown to man-hood in stony silence.

The Mhurgai called him Darjir, sullen one, for the flat, unflinching glare he returned when anyone

addressed him. No man heard him speak, even through three years of abuse ..on Nallga’s lower deck.

Haldeth believed him insane. ~

The y of the Mhurgai drive the strongest mind to madness, Haldeth well knew. Soured by bitter

memories, he shifted a foot cramped by the bite of the galley’s floorboards. Even now, he suffered

nightmares of his wife and two daughters; they had been butchered before his eyes the day his own

freedom was lost. Daily he cursed the smith’s constitution which bound him to life and health, for other

than hair turned prematurely white, seven years as a galley slave had changed him little. Haldeth envied

Darjir’s witlessness. Better to feel nothing than to endure the ache of grief and hatred, help-lessly

chained.

Sleep alone afforded respite. Determined to take full advantage of the hours Nallga would remain at

anchor, Haldeth leaned once more across the oar and settled his head on crossed wrists. Darjir’s eyes

followed him rest-lessly, luminous as coins in the moonlight.

“Neth Everlasting!” Haldeth lifted a resentful fist to emphasize his meaning since words were wasted

effort on a man never heard to utter an intelligent sound. “Bother somebody else, will you? I’ve had

enough.”

Darjir flexed callused fingers against the oar. Then he lifted his head and spoke with sudden, startling

clarity. “I’m going to get off this hulk.” His tone cut like the wind’s edge in winter.

Haldeth gasped. Shocked, he took a momelnt to react.

No man escaped the bench of a Mhurgai galley alive.

Attempts earned agonizing punishment, and since by cus-tom the fate of the offender would be shared

by the slaves surrounding him, a man dared not trust his fellows. Through three centuries of marauding,

the Mhurgai held no record of slave mutiny; Nallga made an unlikely choice for exception. Caught by an

involuntary shudder, Haldeth shook his head. “Be still!”

Darjir moved his ankle. A dissonant rattle of chain destroyed the night silence. “I’ve had enough.”

“Ouiet, fool!” Haldeth felt fear, cold as the touch of bare steel against his neck. “The forward oarsman

will kick in your ribs if he wakes and hears you.”

“l was named Korendir. And I’m getting off.” The words left no chink for argument.

Haldeth abandoned the attempt. Nervously, he surveyed the forms of the surrounding slaves for any

trace of movement. But the lower deck remained peacefully undisturbed, quiet but for the lap of water

against the hull. Prompted by reckless impulse, Haldeth met Koren-dir’s gaze.

“I’m with you.” The steadiness of his voice amazed him. “I’d prefer the knife found me guilty.”

Korendir’s bearded features split into a slow, ill-practiced smile which left the flint in his eyes unsoftened.

“I thought you might.”

Haldeth bent once more over his oar, but sleep would not come. Years of suffering had inured him to his

fate;

he knew in his heart that Korendir’s proposition was nothing but desperate folly. Sweat sprang along his

naked back. No mercy would be shown should their plot be discovered; and even if they managed to

escape their chains, the Mhurgai collared their slaves with iron. The sea made an infallible warden.

Reminded by the cease-less slap of waves against the hull, Haldeth hoped the water would claim his life.

The knives of a Mhurga sea-man never killed. They crippled.

“Bhaka.t Bhaka.t” Nallga’s mate shouted the call to rise from the companionway ladder.

Haldeth roused from an unpleasant dream and knuck-led gummed eyelids. Dawn purpled the calm of

the har-bor beyond the oarport; in the half-light of the lower deck, the unkempt complement of Nallga’s

slaves stirred and stretched. The mate strode aft, thick hands striking the back of any man slow to lift his

head. Swarthy, round-shouldered, and short, the officer wore no shirt. Scarlet pantaloons were bound at

his waist with gemstud-ded, woven gold; a whip and a cutlass hung in shoulder scabbards from

crossbelts on his chest, companioned by a brace of throwing knives and a chased dagger.

Haldeth shifted uneasily. Mhurgai sported weapons like women wore jewelry, even to the four-inch

skewers which decorated their earlobes. Conscious of damp palms and a hollow stomach, the ex-smith

cursed his impetuous pact with Korendir the night before. Surely as steel would rust, the plan could only

lead to grief.

The mate strutted like a fighting cock down the gang-way and glowered over the double rows of

captives.. “Out oars!”

Haldeth moved at his order. one with a hundred men who unshipped fifty oars counterweighted with

lead and held them poised over the sea. A deep rumble sounded overhead, and shadow striped the

oarports as the upper-deck slaves followed suit. “Forward, stroke!”

With a drumbeat to set the speed the shafts dipped, shearing Nallga ahead against the tide. Chain rattled

in the hawse as the deck crew raised anchor, but whether the galley left port for plunder or commerce,

Haldeth could not guess. He bent his back to the oar, flawlessly coordinated with the man at his side.

Korendir’s face remained as expressionless as ever beneath his tangled bronze hair. Except for the

memory of his given name, the plot and the promise exchanged in the night might have been hallucination

caused by too many years of confinement.

By noon the air below decks became humid and close. Sweat traced the bodies of the rowers, and the

waterboy made rounds with bucket, mug, and a sack of dry biscuit. Haldeth chewed his portion,

resentfully watching the mate dine on salt pork, beer, fresh bread, and grapes, provisioned at Nallga’s

last port. Though the man’s eye-lids drooped, his ear remained tuned to the oar stroke; not even the

lethargy of a full stomach would lighten his whiphand if he caught a lagging slave.

Korendir paid the mate little mind. He pulled his end of the oar one-handed and flicked weevils from his

biscuit with a cracked thumbnail. Though bugs invariably infested the entire lump of hardtack, he never

overlooked one. Haldeth endured the extra weight of the loom without complaint. Bored to the edge of

contempt by Korendir’s fussy habit, he nearly missed the discrep-ancy even as it happened: his

benchmate passed up an obvious cluster of insects and raised the biscuit to his mouth.

Korendir tasted the mistake the moment he bit down. He choked, and with a swift, thoughtless gesture,

thrust his face through the oarport to spit over the gunwale.

Haldeth tightened his grip on the loom. Should a wave dislodge the oar from its rowlock, Korendir

risked his neck and head to a hundred and twenty pounds of leaded shoved by water with an eight-yard

mechanical advantage. Haldeth cursed and leaned anxiously into the next stroke. More than once he had

seen slaves killed by such carelessness.

Korendir ignored the danger. He emptied his mouth with unhurried calm, then executed a pitched

imitation of the captain’s gruff voice. “Alhar!” Deflected by water, the shout seemed to issue from above

decks. “Get top-side, thou son of a lice-ridden camel tender!”

The mate flinched. His sallow features suffused with rage, and weapons, mustache, and tasseled pigtail

quiv-ered as he sprang to his feet and stamped the length of the gangway. Haideth felt his heart pound

within his breast. But the mate passed without glancing aside, even as Korendir withdrew from the

oarport, stupidly intent upon his biscuit.

“Great Neth,” murmured Haldeth. Perspiration threaded his temples. The Mhurgai language was not a

tongue readily mastered by foreigners; Korendir’s ruse indicated painstaking forethought. Yet however

well planned his intentions, Haldeth perceived no advantage to be gained through a trick upon the mate.

The man was notoriously bad tempered; his unpleasant mood would shortly be vented upon the hapless

backs of the slaves.

Korendir finished his meal. He licked his fingers and returned his hand to the oar, apparently unruffled by

the raised voices abovedecks. Between strokes, Haldeth caught fragments of the mate’s protest, clipped

short by a bitten phrase of denial; the captain had summoned no one on deck, far less attached insult to

such an order. He dismissed the mate amid startled laughter from the crew. Since gossip thrived on

shipboard as nowhere else, the unfortunate officer immediately became the butt of spirited chaffing.

Haldeth knew even the waterboy would smile at the mate’s idiocy before the incident was forgotten.

Shortly, the red-faced and furious mate stamped down the companionway. Braced for trouble, Haideth

glanced at his benchmate. Korendir never flicked a muscle. His mouth described as grim a line as ever in

the past, even when the mate ordered double speed from the rowers with vengeful disregard for the heat.

The drumbeat quickened. Na!lga’s oars slashed into the water. Waves creamed into spray beneath her

dragon figurehead as the full complement of her two hundred slaves bent to increase stroke. Faster paces

were nor-mally maintained only to keep the slaves in battle trim; today, the drill extended unreasonably

long. Soon the most seasoned palms split, blistered and raw, and each stroke became a separate labor of

endurance. Blood pounded in Haldeth’s ears, cut periodically by the crack of the lash as the mate laid his

whip across some unfortu-nate laggard’s back. With lungs aching and eyes stung blind with sweat, he

reflected that Korendir’s fellow cap-tives would pound the life from his body should they discover him

responsible for the mate’s ugly mood. Yet the man himself bore the agonies of exertion with impas-sive

lack of regret.

The mate’s fury did not abate until the waterboy ar-rived with evening rations. Sensible enough to recall

that unfed slaves made slow passage, the officer restored his whip to his belt and at last slackened the

pace. Beaten with exhaustion, Haideth dropped his head on crossed wrists. Since the evening meal was

more lavish than that served at midday, the slaves ate in shifts, permitted use of both hands. But like

Haldeth, most of the men were far too winded to eat. Still irritable, the mate paced the gangway, urging

them to haste with his whipstock until the night officer reported for duty. Soon after he called the order

for rest, heavy sleep claimed the entire lower deck.

Nallga held course under reduced speed, driven by her upper oars. Midnight would bring a reversal, the

lower oarsmen resuming work while the slaves above slept until dawn. The wind blew steadily off the

starboard quarter, ;and the galley’s single, square sail curved against a zenith bright with tropical

constellations. Mhurga’s fleet plied south in winter, to avoid the cold, storm-ridden waters of their native

latitude. In expectation of mild seas and fair sky, the captain retired below, which left the quarter-master

the only officer awake on deck. Phosphorescence plumed like smoke beneath the ga!ley’s keel. The lisp

of her wake astern described a rare interval of peace be-tween the frailty of wood and sinew, and the

ruthless demands of the ocean.

“Bhaka! Out oars! Reverse stroke!” The shout disrupted the night like a warcry, its bitten, authoritative

tones unmistakably the mate’s.

The lower deck oars ran out with a rumble. Dry blades lapped into water, muscled by a hundred rudely

wakened slaves. Entrenched in the long established rhythm of for-ward stroke, the exhausted upperdeck

rowers adapted sluggishly to the change. Chaos resulted.

Slammed by the conflicting thrust of her oars, Nallga slewed. Crewmen crashed like puppets against

bulkhead and rail. The sail backwinded with a bang which tore through boltrope and sheet. Canvas

thundered untamed aloft while the oars crossed and snarled, slapped aside by the swell. Leaded beech

punched the ribcages of some rowers with bone-snapping force, and a barrage of ago-nized screams

arose from the benches.

“Oars in! Quartermaster, hard aport!”

Nallga’s captain pounded up the companionway, still naked from his berth. His hand clutched a bleeding

shoulder, and his face was purpled with outrage above his broad chest.

“Send the mate on deck!” he bellowed to the nearest seaman. While the galley rounded to windward, he

turned on the quartermaster and shouted over the crack of wind-whipped canvas. “What in Zhaird’s

blackest pit provoked that nu!lard’s act of stupidity?”

The quartermaster had no answer. Nallga rocked gen-tly, her bow pointed to windward. A stricken

groan from the benches recalled the captain to his responsibilities.

He issued rapid orders. Hands ran aloft to subdue the mainsail and assess damage. Escorted by the

heavily armed bulk of the ship’s marshal, the healer made rounds of the slave benches to tend the injured.

His task took the better part of the night.

The mate spent an unpleasant interval in the captain’s cabin. He insisted he had been asleep in his

hammock at the time the shout disrupted Nallga’s course, but re-peated denials only made him look silly.

“Thou hast made a fool of thyself.” The captain ges-tured crossly. “No crew respects an officer whose

behav-ior lacks logic. Thou art relieved of duty for the next watch. Perhaps rest will restore thy reason.

Zhaird’s hells, it had better. This vessel cannot afford another of thy mistakes.”

Na!lga resumed headway at daybreak. Crewmen la-bored over her sail with rigging knives and needles,

and the oar banks stood gapped where injuries laid up several rowers. Seven looms had snapped off at

the rowlock; replacements were fitted from a store of spares, and the broken ends stacked behind the

lower deck companion-way, their lead-spliced handles saved for salvage. Slowly the galley regained her

trim, while fore and aft, her crew-men whispered that the mate had lost his honor. Perhaps, they said, he

had been cursed with madness, and their thoughts strayed often from their work.

Haldeth bent to the rhythm of the oar and furtively studied the emotionless man by his side. Last night’s

call for reverse stroke had roused him from deep sleep. With reflexes ingrained through years of

obedience, he had run the loom half out before his benchmate stopped it with his fists.

“Wait.” Korendir fumbled his end of the oar and seemingly by chance the blade splashed short of its full

sweep. In the following second, the reverse stroke of the lower deck tangled with the entrenched beat of

the upper, with disastrous results. The mate had issued no order, Haldeth perceived at once. The voice

and words had been delivered with diabolical skill by the one man who would least be suspected: the

Darjir named by the Mhurgai never spoke, far less rendered pitched imita-tions of his masters. Now,

Haldeth watched the same oar rise, dripping from the sea. He concluded his thought grimly. If a man

sought to undermine the mate’s author-ity, no method could be better. Except Korendir’s way-ward

performance had left two slaves dead from punctured lungs; six others gained multiple broken ribs, and

their moans of pain could be heard as the day wore on.

“The dead no longer suffer,” Korendir whispered in reply to Haldeth’s silence. “And shattered bones are

a small price to pay for freedom.”

His words held a ringing arrogance which allowed no grace for reply. Haldeth did not try. Either

Korendir was a madman with a taste for cruelty, or he knew explicitly what he was doing; his implied

intent was to release every slave on Nallga’s benches. Haldeth splashed the oar into the swell with bitter

anger. More likely his benchmate would earn them all the cold taste of the knife.

Nallga entered the tiny harbor of Kahille Island late that afternoon. Mhurgai ships often anchored there,

for springs flowed like silver down the islet’s mountain slopes. Most southern archipelagoes relied on rain

cis-terns for fresh water; controlled by a water-broker, the price came dear. But Kahillans were too

unsophisticated to levy a fee, and free water made their harbor a popular port.

Nallga moored inside the barrier reef, and instantly became the target of a flotilla of native vendors in

dug- outs. Reduced swell offset their nuisance; casks made awkward handling, and the captain wished

the loading accomplished as smoothly as possible. The Kahillans did not concern him. A culture without

knowledge of metal could traffic no weapons with the slaves, and any guard spared for security left one

less man for work.

On the lower deck, Haldeth lounged at ease, grateful for the respite. An unfamiliar deckhand stood

watch.

Seated on the gangway enjoying a basket of fruit, the man was tolerant of contact between the slaves

and the Kahillan merchants. One bold wretch had managed to wheedle himself a bunch of grapes, but the

officer was too busy eating to intervene.

Korendir leaned across the shaft of his oar with his head cradled on folded arms. To an inboard eye, he

appeared asleep. Haldeth knew he was not. A Kahi!lan dugout drifted close to the ga!!ey’s side, all but

moored beneath his oarport. The occupants sat with upturned faces watching a humorous mime as

Korendir pretended to hunt !ice in his beard. By periodic stretching, Haldeth caught the gist of the

performance. The sham puzzled him until he noticed the Kahillan men were clean-shaven. For a people

without knives or steel, the fact was a telling oddity.

Evidently Korendir intended to exploit the implica-tions if he could. A final, furious round of scratching

raised applause from his audience. The men in the dug-out pushed off. Chattering and laughing as if they

shared a fine joke, they unshipped paddles and executed a graceful stroke. As the canoe slipped out of

sight beneath Nallga’s counter, Korendir shut his eyes and drowsed in earnest. Presently. Haldeth did

likewise.

“Baja!” cried a smiling native in accented imitation of the Mhurgai call to rise.

Haldeth opened his eyes in time to see Korendir lift his head and peer cautiously through the oarport.

Balanced precariously on tip-toe in the stern of his dugout, a Kahil-lan man stood with his paddle

extended above his head.

Lashed to the end was a small wooden box. Korendir squeezed both shoulders through the oarport to

reach it. Untying the knots on the waving blade took him an imprudent amount of time.

Haldeth cast a nervous glance at the watch and ob-served that the sight of a slave straining through an

open oarport did not pass unnoticed. The officer spat grapeskins onto the deck and shouted a guttural

warning.

Korendir ignored him. With an irritable frown, the deckhand rose and unslung his whip.

Haldeth kicked his benchmate’s ankle, imploring pru-dence. But with the final knot nearly undone,

Korendir refused to relinquish his prize. The string fell loose, just as the deckhand strode the length of the

gangway and uncoiled his lash. Korendir started to unwedge his shoul-ders from the oarport, but the

deckhand moved first.

Seven supple feet of braid struck, splitting through mus-cled flesh.

Korendir recoiled and skinned his collarbone on the oarport. Silent and sullen, he straightened. Gripping

his oar with both hands, he lifted gray eyes and glared at the deckhand. The insolence earned him the

whip-butt across the face in a blow that left him reeling.

“Mind thy manners,” snapped the officer. But the slave’s cold gaze left him strangely unsettled. He

blotted sweat from his lip and sauntered back to his seat.

The instant the officer’s back was turned, Haldeth caught his friend’s shoulder and whispered. “Was that

necessary?”

Korendir shifted his hand, surreptitiously exposing the corner of a small wooden box. Kahillan shaving

tools were bound to be inside, and if his brief act of defiance had distracted the deckhand from noticing,

Korendir considered the price worthwhile. One bruised eyelid dipped into a wink as he tucked his prize

under his loin-cloth. Curled once more over his. oarshaft, he ignored the flies which lit upon his opened

back with impressive single-mindedness, and presently fell asleep.

In the dark, still hours after midnight, Korendir exam-ined his contraband. Haldeth craned his neck to

see over his companion’s shoulder as the box fell open. The con-tents were immediately disappointing.

By the wan light through the oarport, Haldeth discovered that Kahillans removed their beards with slivers

of sharpened shell, each imbedded in a layer of pitch to preserve their fragile edges. A slot to one side

contained a well-used whetstone. “Neth,” said Haldeth. Disgust blunted his habitual caution. “Those

things are worthless.”

Korendir lifted his head. “They’re precisely what 1 ex-pected,” he said mildly. But Haldeth remained too

irritable to demand any ex-planation. Angered that he had permitted himself any hope at all, he hunched

at the far end of the oar shaft and sleeplessly waited for dawn, The dishonored mate resumed duty the

following day.

His jaw was clenched, and his strut more pronounced as he relieved the officer on the gangway.

Interpreting the signs as fishermen read weather, Haldeth knew the man’s temper would be short. No

slave needed Korendir’scrusted back to remind how readily the Mhurgai whip might fall. All orders on

the lower deck were obeyed as though the rowers sat balanced on eggshells.

Nallga cleared the barrier reef just after sunrise. Driven by both banks of oars, she thrust through the

swells under a stiff breeze, her forward slaves drenched in spray.

Accustomed to the shudder of planking against heavy waves, Haldeth rowed, preoccupied by thought.

Koren-dir’s exchange with the Kahillan natives had been outright recklessness. Certain the mate would

discover the contra-band, Haldeth worried. Sharpened shells were no match for Mhurgai steel. Korendir

was crazy to believe in them.

Scarcely an hour beyond the barrier reef, Haldeth noticed cold water wetting his feet. He glanced

downward, immediately suspicious of a leak. Na!lga was clinker built, her strakes lashed through eyes on

the ribs with

tarred cord; one of the lines had given way, and seawater welled between the floorboards with each roll

of the hull.

Haldeth swore. Korendir surely had been at work with his shells; the line showed no trace of chafing

previously. And with the mate’s competency questioned by the en-tire crew, now was the worst time to

discover hull failure. Yet Haldeth had no choice. Refusal to report a leak car-ried worse penalty than the

whip. Reluctantly he raised his voice.

“Zhaird’s hells,” snapped the mate. “How did that happen?” Surly and impatient, he rang the brass bell

to summon the ship’s marshal since no Mhurga seaman ever walked among slaves without an armed

escort to cover his back.

The mate strode down the gangway to Haideth’s bench. Even where he stood he saw the water sluicing

through the floorboards. The cause was certainly minor, and in his present vicious mood, the protocol

which demanded he wait for assistance rankled. The moment the marshal’s weaponed bulk loomed

above the companionway, the mate barked orders to hold stroke. Then he stepped down between the

slave benches.

Haldeth relinquished his oar and moved clear. Left to tend the loom alone, Korendir stared through the

oar-port as if unaware that an officer had arrived to inspect the leak.

The mate muttered an insult and added a curt gesture for Darjir to move his feet. Korendir complied

without haste. He fixed intent gray eyes upon the mate and ap-peared not to notice the foam-laced swell

which rose be-neath the poised blade of his oar. The sucking smack of impact tore the shaft free of his

grip. The high end of the loom rose in a neat arc and struck the mate in the side of the head.

Haldeth cried out in alarm as pounds of leaded beech thumped into skull. The officer toppled like a

felled tree. His weapons clattered over the wood of slave bench, rib, and floorboard. Korendir

controlled the shaft with a one-handed motion and swiftly bent over the fallen body of the mate.

Haldeth trembled uncontrollably. A man four years at the oar could never have misjudged the swell:

Korendir’s act surely was deliberate. The marshal had witnessed its

entirety, and his muscled, gut-round figure now pounded the length of the gangway. Both huge fists

contained knives.

Fear closed Haldeth’s throat and sealed the breath within his lungs. Only divine intervention would spare

him from hamstringing, and as he knew the. Mhurgai, he would be lucky to escape that lightly. He

remembered the mate’s knife too late; the marshal’s lumbering charge had already carried him aft.

Haldeth found himself throt-tled by a hairy wrist, while ten inches of bare steel pricked his exposed neck.

“Get back!” commanded the marshal. He spoke past Haldeth.

Instantly obedient, Korendir straightened. He with-drew his hands, which surprisingly held no weapon,

but instead had supported the mate’s shoulder to hold him clear of the bilge. Salt water welled beneath

the floor-boards, lifting plumes of blood from the man’s split scalp.

His tasseled braid was already sodden scarlet and his body lay ominously still.

Korendir shrugged, artfully emphasizing empty hands.

The marshal snorted in disgust, but his death grip on Haldeth relaxed slightly.

“Zhaird’s own fool, thou art, to have made such a move,” he muttered at the unconscious mate. Then he

fixed unfriendly eyes on Korendir. “Ship that oar, slave, and make certain it causes no further mischief.”

The marshal raised his voice and summoned Na!!ga’s healer. The man arrived, accompanied by a brace

of deckhands who removed the mate from the bilge under the vigilant eyes of the marshal. After a brief

examina-tion, the healer stood up and pronounced the mate dead. He accompanied his prognosis with a

clipped gesture toward Haldeth and Korendir.

“Those slaves should both suffer punishment.”

The marshal crossed his arms over his belted chest and spat on the deck. “I think not,” he said. “Why

ruin two fine strong backs? The mate’s own carelessness earned his death. I saw. No hand held the oar

which struck AIhar down. Any fool who thinks himself clever enough to walk alone on a slave deck well

deserves a split skull.” “The captain must decide,” retorted the healer. “l doubt the injury to A!har was an

accident.”

The marshal shrugged. He extended a hand for the healer’s satchel and helped the man back onto the

gang-way. A crewman arrived to replace the departed mate, and both officers retired abovedecks.

Interrupted at breakfast by news of Alhar’s misfor-tune, the captain heard the marshal’s account through

without comment. But when the healer insisted the slaves be tortured in retribution, Nallga’s commander

spared no patience for tact.

“Zhaird’s hells, I’m well rid of that incompetent excuse of a mate!”

The healer frowned. “That’s a dishonorable way to account for an officer who was murdered in thy

service.”

The captain’s face went white. “Alhar’s weapons were not touched.” He qualified with menacing clarity.

“Slaves who kill usually have courage enough afterward to strike a blow in self defense. We’re

short-oared enough without wasting the morning carving sheep.”

The captain sized the healer up in a manner that with-ered the reply in the man’s throat.

“Get thee gone from here,” he finished. “Quickly, or I’ll teach thee the meaning of insubordination with a

rope on the end of a yardarm.”

The healer backed through the doorway, his satchel forgotten in his haste. The captain booted it out of

the cabin with such violence that medicine flasks shattered within. With no pause for apology, he rounded

on the marshal.

“Clear that oar and get the joiner to work on the leak. Lock the slaves in the sail room, and don’t

trouble me again concerning the matter.”

Confined in the semidarkness of the sailroom, Haldeth shivered as the sweat chilled his body. The stroke

of the upper deck oars rumbled through the bulkhead at his back, and he breathed air thickened with the

smell of miidewed canvas. The new location held nothing by way of advantage. Stout chain secured him

to the ring set in the hatch grating, and a guard stood watch beyond the companionway. The man would

not sleep at his post; every to the waterboy had suffered repercussions from the ca foul

mood. Haldeth found no comfort knowing that blame rested on the slaves whose

oar had caused A!har’s death.

As though sensing his companion’s thoughts, Korendir whispered from the shadow. “1 never promised

there wouldn’t be risk,”

Haldeth’s temper flared. “What have you gained us but misery? You’ve seen what happens to those

who earn the disfavor of the Mhurgai. How long do you think it will take you to break, when they strip

your back raw because you moved to swat a fly?”

“Be still!” snapped Korendir. “I never act without purpose.”

Haldeth felt his wrist gripped, and a warm object pressed against his palm. He raised it toward the dull

streak of daylight which fell through a crack in the hatch grating, clued by the pungent scent of pine

before his eyes confirmed. Korendir had passed him the pitch which once had lined the Kahillan box.

Deeply pressed in the surface was an impression of the leg-iron key, surely pur-loined from the ring at the

mate’s belt during the con-fused moment while the marshal had raced the length of the gangway.

Sobered into reflection, Haldeth returned the pitch. Over the stroke of Nallga’s oars, he heard the

whispered scrape of a whetstone grinding shell and in darkness, Korendir’s slow smile could almost be

felt.

“1’11 have you a copy,” he said softly. “Wooden, but good enough, since the marshal so kindly oiled

the locks.”

Haideth suppressed a mad urge to laugh. Under nor-mal conditions, the leg-irons were frozen with rust.

But the marshal had nearly bent his key while unlocking the slaves for transfer to the sail room. In an

irritable fit of efficiency, he had commanded a deckhand to work the slide bars with oil, then inspected

the job personally to ascertain the work was done well. The locks now oper-ated with a minimum of

friction. For the first time, Hal-deth entertained belief that escape might be possible.

He touched his companion’s arm. “Let me help. 1 can sharpen while you carve.”

Korendir passed the whetstone and the duller of his two shells, then resumed work in silence. The joiner

would repair the leak in under an hour, and the duplicate key must be complete before the marshal

returned to fetch them back to the oar.

II. Southengard

A scant hour later, Korendir tested his finished creation on the leg irons. His own fell open with a

gratifying click, but Haldeth’s proved too stiff for the wood the Kahi!lans used to fashion boxes. The

makeshift key silvered in the lock and snapped off, “Neth,” murmured Korendir, keen disappointment in

his tone.

Haldeth felt sweat spring along his spine. Caught with one leg iron opened, and the other crammed with

splin-ters, nothing shy of miracle could spare them retribution from their Mhurgai masters.

But Korendir wasted no time brooding over consequences. “l’11 not be stopped,” he whispered. With

quick, fierce motions, he twisted off a bit of pitch and used the sticky substance to bind his own lock

shut.

Janny Wurts - The Master of Whitestorm

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