Shirley Meier & S. M. Stirling - Fifth Millenium 02 - Saber and Shadow

VIP免费
2024-12-20 0 0 447.36KB 176 页 5.9玖币
侵权投诉
Scanned by Highroller and proofed more or less by Highroller. This one was a
pain to proof. Probably more errors missed than usual. Feel free to fix missed
errors and change version number by .1
CHAPTER I
The Fehinnan ship floated on a sea that glowed in the sun like a heated copper
plate, becalmed with all sails set and hanging limp. The water stretched out
to a sulfur-colored horizon in swells like ripples in thick oil. They'd lost
the wind a week ago in the journey west across the Lannic.
The Fair-Wind Flycatcher, a baroque-rigged two-hundred tonner, had weighed
anchor out of the colony city of Niibuah near the Pillars of Heaven guarding
the strait to the Closed Sea. She carried a tight-packed cargo of nearly five
hundred slaves, ivory, dyestuffs, pepper and metal for Illizbuah, the capital
of Fehinna across the Lannic Ocean; that had been over thirty-three days ago,
more than long enough for a crossing with favoring weather. Over the days, the
press of bodies in the hold had lessened as the dead were thrown to the sharks
following the ship. When the coffles got small enough, they were brought on
deck to be fed and hosed down and exercised. The stink of shit and blood and
fear was soaked into the ship's wood, hovering, clotting as it sat, trodden
into the boards of the deck as the slaves shuffled to the sound of the
slave-dance drummer. Now, with the ship becalmed, the sharks circled rather
than following, waiting.
Megan Whitlock watched her feet lift, then fall, lift then tall to the
drumbeat, pale toes gripping, a stinging sensation rising from the oak
manacles where they'd torn old scabs off. There wasn't much bleeding though,
for which she was thankful. So tired, she thought.
Tight-packing slaves was a gamble on good winds. The captain of the Flycatcher
had lost.
The Zak woman was shorter than the rest of her coffle, though not by much.
Along with black slaves bought from the Poquay, the fortified trading posts
strung along the coast of the southern continent, there were a few criminals
from Niibuah and its settlements-Fehinnan stock and shorter than most naZak
she was used to. Where they were olive-skinned, she was pale as milk, and
though her hair was as black as theirs, it fell like straight silk, when
unbraided, rather than clinging in wiry curls. The sun burned her skin. How
many times had they been dragged up to dance? At least the slavers had stopped
demanding that they sing.
Dance. Dance to exercise us. Pound the stupid drum, pipe on the silly wooden
whistle. I'm not going to die on this stinking tub. I have to live to have my
revenge. The idea of revenge burned quietly now, put away in the back of her
mind. There were more important things to pay attention to; like holding to
life, fighting not to become a dumb beast in chains. She ignored the watching
crewfolk with crossbows and spears, and the ones with long switches ready to
keep the slaves moving sprightly.
The old Fehinnan in front of her stumbled. She caught his elbow though she
felt weak herself. "Don't fall, Jaipahl. Don't you dare die on me." In the
foul dark air of the hold, he had been teaching her Fehinnan, as she had been
teaching him Zak.
"No. Not yet." His breathing was hoarse but steady. "Megan, it would be more
correct if you used a formal tone, speaking Fehinnan."
"As if I should care to speak correctly to a master? High, formal, Fehinnan in
a slave's mouth?" Jaipahl looked over his shoulder, raised and dropped one
shoulder in a half shrug, and smiled, thin white stubble on his cheek
creasing. Fehinnan had a fiendishly complicated system of honorific
inflections, altering the whole meaning depending on the status of the
speakers. Most of the sailors and slaves around her spoke a simplified pidgin.
"So, you plan to be a slave forever, a mofoar?"
She was panting too hard to answer, just shook her head, feet rising and
falling, shuffling to the drum. She looked down at the links between them,
concentrating on keeping her feet. This bit of exercise wouldn't have bothered
her a few weeks ago.
Then, she'd been able to feed herself things like fish oil so that the growth
of her claws wouldn't leech her blood of iron. The witch/healer who had given
them to her had explained that it would strain her body just to have steel
claws, that she would have to guard against blood-weakness by eating liver and
fish oil. Megan could hardly say to a slaver, "Excuse me, but I need a special
diet." Thank Koru, Goddess, that the claws grew so slowly or she'd have been
dead by now.
In the darkness of the hold, she felt chilled even in the baking heat that
made the ship's surgeon come down naked and leave after a few moments. She was
exhausted just by moving, short of breath, wanting anything with iron in it.
She tried chewing on her nails themselves, but only ended up worrying at the
skin around them. The lock on the end of the coffle was just within her reach,
the one bit of metal that she could lick, but it wasn't enough. She snorted to
herself. Never thought I'd live tone enough to develop cravings for liver. She
kept her hands closed loosely so that her nails wouldn't catch the sun. The
slavers hadn't noticed and she'd worn a deep groove in one link of the wooden
chain strung through her ankle manacles, despite the metallic hardness of the
tropical wood. The coffle was strung together with one chain looped through
foot shackles. One good twist would snap the link and she'd be free; she and
the other nine in the coffle. I need a shoreline to swim to before I try
anything, though.
The lookout shouted and the piper stopped with a squeal, standing up; the
drummer thumped on for a stroke or two men followed suit.
"Cap! Bad weather making!"
The slaves had stopped the moment the sound had, standing like fleshy posts in
the deck. Megan raised her head, squinting at the horizon. There were clouds,
a thicker haze on the edge of the sea. Then a tiny doll-sized flash of
blue-white, horizontal lightning.
I never was much good at judging weather on a sea, Megan thought. But ...
The captain stared for a long moment through the spy-glass, then spun on her
heel, shouting.
"Get 'em below! Strike all sail but the jib, wind's comin'! Uraccano."
The bosun's pipe shrilled, sending sailors clambering frantically to pull in
sail before the wind hit. The slaves were urged back into the hold with a
shouted command, and when they didn't move fast enough, a lashing. Megan
blinked at the darkness, eyes refusing to adjust, watching the square of light
and air above as the sailors quickly snapped locks into place and swarmed back
up to the deck. Slanting across the tiny rectangles of sky, she could see the
ropes shaking as people scrambled in the rigging. The hatch cover rattled onto
its fittings with a hollow boom that echoed through the sudden darkness,
leaving only a patchwork gleam through the grillwork in the center of the
wooden circle. A mallet sounded a hollow tock as they hammered the securing
wedges home. With the hatch shut and battened, dark and smell closed in.
"They're trying to run on jibs from the feel," she murmured to Jaipahl, next
to her.
Sailcloth boomed above them, moving in the gusts that brought a stray jet of
cooler air. The Flycatcher heeled over, sending Megan sliding against her
chains and the rough wood, tearing the scabs on her back loose, bilge gurgling
below. Someone cried out in the dark and a fight was starting further down the
coffle. The wood of the ship cracked and groaned as she righted and ran before
the wind.
"I believe we have a wind," Jaipahl said calmly, loud over the noise.
Shkai'ra Mek Kermak's-kin grunted and slapped at the mosquitoes again,
crouching on the sandspit and leaning on her scabbarded saber, long ringers
wrapped around the bone hilt. The salt marsh whispered on either side, and the
shouts and crashes from the villagers salvaging the ship echoed loud across
it. The longshore swamp smelled of rot, and the overcast rolled low and
threatening over air that shimmered with heat and moisture, over oil-smooth
sea the color of grey bread mold. More knocking sounds, as the natives broke
up the shipwreck with stone-headed hammers. They had stripped out everything
of use, and now they were taking the remainder apart for the stout oak timber.
Miserable tub, Shkai'ra thought, spitting in the direction of the wreck.
It had been a three-master, a freighter out of the Kahab Sea; from Kyuba,
heading north with sugar, rum, molasses and coffee for Illizbuah, capital of
Fehinna. And one down-on-her-luck mercenary, shipping on as a marine to get
passage back to the city that was the closest thing to a home she had. The
tall woman slapped at the insects again and ignored the greasy sweat matting
her red-blond hair and running down her face; for a moment she thought
longingly of her native land far to the northwest. Cool winds blowing the tall
prairie grass like green-bronze waves, sky wide and blue . . . She shook her
head, the narrow hawk-features brooding and sullen.
Luck-she made a sign with her sword-hand-had not been good of late. No pirate
attack, just a few galleys coming out to sniff their trail off the Sea
Islands, so she had not even earned any hard coin. Then the storm that caught
them out to sea, blowing them north past Fehinna and onto a sandbar on the
Joisi coast. The natives were miserable savages in mud huts, but they had some
contact with outsiders and had taken the survivors in, for a stiff price.
A fresh shout brought her head up, and she unclipped the binoculars at her
waist, standing and scanning out to sea.
Ia! she thought: yes! Sails, a middling-size schooner. Fehinnan by her lines
and the sunburst flag.
A smoke-signal went up from the village, hidden off half a kilometer west
behind dunes and scrub cedar. The salvagers splashed back from their work.
More of the Joisi swarmed down to the beach; they were armed with long spears
and hide shields, blowguns and wooden swords set with shark's teeth or pieces
of glass. Traders put in here to barter for muskrat pelts, cedar oil and
whatever else the locals had on hand, but a village that looked too easy a
mark might be plundered and its inhabitants hustled off to the slave markets
of the Cayspec lands to the south.
Shkai'ra grinned slowly, standing. A black tomcat left off its investigation
of the long sawgrass and sprang for her shoulder, climbing up the horsehide
tunic she had worn ever since the wreck two weeks ago. She put up a hand to
rub absently at the cat's scarred chin. The jacket hid her money belt quite
handily. There had been considerable confusion when the ship went ashore in
the storm, and she had paid a last-minute visit to the captain's cabin. So
unfortunate, the captain being up on deck trying to save his ship, she
thought.
And so fortunate, that trader coming in, her mind went on as she sauntered
toward the landing-stage. The ship had dropped anchor offshore, and a longboat
was stroking for the beach. These last few days, the savages had started
looking at the metal of her weapons and harness with speculative eyes. It was
a considerable fortune, by local standards. . . .
"Back to Illizbuah," she said.
"Meeorw" the cat crooned, squinting its green eyes at the ship. He liked
ships-they generally had an interesting population of rodents.
Like being in a nightmare, only with your eyes open, Megan thought as the ship
lurched and flung her against the ring-bolt. She grabbed and clung to it,
feeling Jaipahl and the person beyond him catch onto the chain linking them
together. She blinked to test that her eyes were open. The Arkan Hell is like
this: airless. On the fairest of days, when the hold was opened as much as it
could be, a candle wouldn't stay lit on the bottom deck, fading to a red
smolder. During the storm the ship was sealed, and now it was like being
smothered: you could fill your lungs till they hurt, but it did no good.
She licked dry lips, trying to swallow, bracing herself as she was flung on
top of Jaipahl, both of them sliding in the mush of shit and piss, blood and
vomit coating the boards. "Sorry," she shouted to make herself heard over the
shrieking of the ship. She could feel him nod. It was like thunder in the
dark; the hull vibrating as it slid into the troughs of the waves, numbing the
ears. The moans of the sick and dying couldn't be heard.
The Flycatcher's bottom boards, just above the bilge, were packed with slaves
lying head to toe, four across the beam. Around the sides of the ship there
were half floors, wide enough for one rank of slaves to lie, and one more
above that, the half trestles made of cheap pine. Megan was lucky enough to be
on the top tier.
There was no way to get water, and the shitbuckets at the ends of the rows had
become dangerous missiles as the ship rolled, lurching out of their stands.
For a moment, she shuddered at the thought of what it must be like down at the
bottommost layer.
How many days: one? Two at most? She'd hesitated about doing anything as the
storm hit, even though the crew would be busy. If the slaves could get loose
in the tumult, they'd nave to crew the ship. I hate being unsure of what to
do. They were nowhere near land that she last knew, but with the storm blowing
for more than a day they'd have to do something soon or all die of thirst. I'd
heard that storms on this sea could run for days, but reading it and feeling
it are two different things. The groaning of the wooden hull was an even,
harsh grind, punctuated now and then with tooth-grating crack-pop sounds as
the Flycatcher climbed up and planed down waves peaking high as the mizzen
masthead.
Jaipahl reached out in the dark and fumblingly patted her shoulder. She
swallowed again, trying to work up spit, tasting dry bile. Jaipahl leaned over
and yelled in her ear.
"There's more water in the bilge, someone passed the word up. It's running
through the slats on the bottom tier."
Her skin crawled as she realized the ship's seams were going. The Flycatcher
was filthy but sound, and the decking hatches were still tight. The rhythm of
the waves was bad, though-a pounding twist as the slaver ploughed into each
swell, wrenching as her bow broke Free. Treenails were yielding, stringers
working loose on the frame, caulking tearing out.
She had to do something. Just then the hull-note changed and someone yelled
wordlessly from forward, a different sound from people fighting with each
other, more panicked than angry. Something went crack above their heads as
canvas gave way. That was the last sail. Seconds later the ship lurched and
groaned, the bow not meeting the waves quite head-on.
She pulled her legs up as much as she could, pulling Jaipahl's up, too. I'll
explain later. If the ship goes down well never get out in the mess. I don't
want to die. She snapped the link of the chain, caught Jaipahl's hand and made
him feel the broken edge because in the noise she couldn't explain. Even as
the ship lurched she could feel him tense, though he didn't move immediately.
The severed chain slithered through ankle-rings, leaving the coffle free.
Megan was short enough to sit up without hitting her head on the deck over her
head but couldn't brace herself. The forward hatch was ripped open then,
letting in a blast of wind and water foaming up over the hatch-combing, with a
little light. Fear came with it, but clean air as well. Three of the
Flycatcher's crew held onto the hatch, yelling down that they needed everyone
to bail or work the pumps. An ominous rending groan came from forward, and
they swung down and started unlocking chains as Megan stood up, crouched,
feeling the deck against her back.
The Flycatcher lurched, falling, and Megan lost her balance and fell three
tiers onto the people tying below. For a moment she lay, gasping, as hands
reached, touching in the dark. I'm going mad. Her chest was tight, the ship
was screaming as Megan wanted to. Out-she had to get out.
She bit down on the edge of her hand, spat out scum that crusted on her teeth,
forcing calm. Her teeth hurt and felt a little loose; not enough greens, she
thought irrelevantly. She scrambled up to her knees, realized why the person
she'd landed most heavily on wasn't protesting, and bellowed as best she
could, using the command-voice she had developed as a riverboat captain on the
Brezhan.
"DONT FIGHT, they need us to bail!"
She had to yell to be heard, in all the languages she knew, hoping that
someone had the sense to pass on the word. It was hard to tell, but clutching
hands let go.
She clambered up to the forward hatch. Another wave washed over the deck,
pouring in the open hatch with a cold impact that wrenched at her wrists as
she clung to the ladder, stinging in all the wounds and grazes.
"Hang on, Jaipahl!" Megan shouted in his ear, as they cleared the ladder,
falling flat on the pitching deck and grabbing for rope ends. It was day-black
cloud, black water washing over the stern. Sailors were handing down buckets,
calling the first out of the hold to the fixed pumps to relieve exhausted
crew. The ceramic gears whined as slaves and crewfolk heaved at the crank
handles, and spouts of filthy bilgewater scudded across the deck, lost in the
wind-blown wrack.
"There's still a lot of headway on the ship." Even the rags were dangerous in
this; bare poles would have been. The small spritsail at the bow was still
holding, keeping the ship steerable, but the forestay to the mizzenmast
thrummed like a hamstring. "Ach, Koru help us! The hull won't stand much more
of this from the sound!"
The hatch flipped out of the crew's hands, grabbed by the wind and ripped back
off its hinges like paper tearing as Megan dug her claws into the deck to keep
from being dragged loose, trying to breathe between waves.
She blinked salt water out of her eyes. Stays parted with deep musical notes,
the cables flying wildly. Five or six crew were fighting to hold the two-meter
circle of the wheel whenever the rudder was in the water. She craned her head
to look as the bow rose, and fought an internal cringe: waves, waves mast-high
in black water as far as she could see, the tops ripping off into spume under
the shrieking wind until sea and sky mixed into wolf-grey chaos. Megan
coughed, waves pressed water into her nose, wind driving air out of ner lungs.
She put her head down, clinging to water casks lashed to the deck. Jaipahl
crawled over to her like a brown bug under a waterfall, a waterfall that
poured past him through the opened hatch into the hold. Bursts of seawater
smashed the bucket brigade back into the dark, and the motion of the ship grew
more sluggish, as if she had sand under her keel and no sea room. Between one
wave and the next, Jaipahl was gone.
Jaipahlll" Megan screamed into the wind. There was no answer but the empty
rope flailing on the deck where he'd been.
Below, someone screamed, and from forward the wooden shriek of the ship ran up
the scale, making Megan's teeth hurt before the mizzenmast broke just below
deck. It swayed forward, leaned to port and pivoted in its collar, grinding
the broken butt-end through the holds. The oak deck ripped.
"Jaiiiiipahhlll!!!"
The Flycatcher lurched, leaned to starboard and turned her bow out of the
wind. A wave reared over the rail and seemed to hover for a second. The slats
all along the ship's bow sprang, pouring water below. She started to roll
broadside, hesitated a long, long instant on her side at the top of wave. The
massed screaming of the slaves and crew could be heard even over the storm's
sound.
Megan looked straight down the width of the deck and down the black wall of
water stretching below. She leaped over the gunwale, onto the side of the
Flycatcher as the ship rolled, ran down to the keel coming up out of the
water, and threw herself into the sea, trying to get away from the suction of
the sinking ship. A dark shape struck her, and she clung, driving her nails
into wood and sisal cordage.
The coaster Liquid Radiance heeled in the wind. Shkai'ra looked up from
relacing the shoulder-plate of her armor in annoyance.
It was two hours past noon, and the wind was at their backs from the east;
with the tide working for them they should reach Illizbuah before sunset,
tomorrow if the Captain decided to salvage more storm flotsam. The flat
Fehinnan coast was already a low blue line against the horizon in the west.
The dozen crew and four-what the captain euphemistically called
"rescued"-castaways all turned longing glances toward shore.
At least I'm alive, Shkai'ra thought resignedly. That had been a question of
some uncertainty, back half a week ago when the Radiance had picked her and
the Fehinnans up off the beach, on receipt of signed scrip acknowledging the
debt of passage money, as an act of well-paid benevolence to fellow Fehinnans.
Fellow Fehinnans or residents, Shkai'ra thought, wiping sweat from her face.
She envied the sailors, clad in light tunics or stripped to their
breechclouts. Half an hour of this sun would turn her into a baked lobster if
she so much as took off her shirt.
The lookout at the mast called something in sailor's argot, lowering his
binoculars and pointing. Shkai'ra rose to her feet and walked to the rail;
behind her, Ten-Knife-Foot curled on top of her duffle. When the merchantman
had beaten herself to pieces on the sand, the torn had clung to her shoulders,
yowling at the water all the way as Shkai'ra had floundered and waded ashore;
a small miracle, like others in the years since they met. Perhaps there had
been the will of a spirit in that; she made the warding gesture to the gods
with her sword-hand.
She knew no loose fingers would touch her things if they wanted to stay
attached. Ten-Knife-Foot guarded everything he considered his very well. She
shaded her eyes with a hand and peered ahead past the smooth ripple of the
Radiance's cutwater. The cat probably considered her among his possessions.
All she could see was the glittering flat surface of the water, riffled by the
steady onshore wind, and a few high clouds, land just visible on the horizon.
"What is it?" she asked the sailor next to her as he squinted at the waves. He
was a typical low-country Fehinnan, short and mahogany-brown with
close-cropped wiry black hair; he glanced doubtfully up at her long-limbed
height, as if surprised someone with red-blond braids could speak the language
of civilization. Tall fair folk were rare in Fehinna, although not unknown
north of the Cayspec or west in the mountains, and most such tribes were
savages.
"Wreck," he said shortly. "No wonder a't, wh'it storm blew itself out." The
hurricane had torn itself into mere storms against the coast, and the Radiance
had ridden out the worst of it fairly handily in the lee of the offshore
islands.
Shkai'ra nodded, then drew up her binoculars. The sea leaped close, wavering
with the motion. "It's . . ." she began. "Hmm. It's a big round piece of wood,
with bits of ropes and canvas hanging off it, and a body .. ." The distant
tiny figure moved, and a gull leaped away flapping "... no, with somebody
alive hanging on to it.'
. . . damn seagulls, . . . ow . . . get off. Megan waved a hand just enough to
scare the birds. The sun shimmered in her eyes as she blinked, trying to clear
the stinging of salt. Her left hand was still tied into the snarl of rope
where she'd lashed it when she started to fear her grip slipping; the
wrist-galls were newly chaffed open by the rope, stinging with salt. They
wouldn't fester, though she worried that the blood would draw sharks or
barracuda. At least she was clean, having been in the water for a couple of
days- wrinkled and badly sunburned, but clean. She'd had nothing but a rag
loincloth and a few scraps of sail against the sun's heat. She'd let her hair
down at first to help cover her skin against the sun, but found it catching in
every crack and tangling around her arms and legs whenever she was in the
water, so had braided it up again.
She tried swallowing, but her mouth was too dry, tongue like boot leather. She
worked her hand free and pulled herself higher up on the board though it
exposed her to the sun. From that position she could make better headway,
lying belly down with the wooden edge at her armpits, paddling with her hands.
The shoreline was a tantalizing darker blue ribbon on the horizon, maybe ten
chiliois away. Too far away to abandon the hatch-cover and just swim. Either
way, the current she was in pushed her further away.
The water had warmed and changed color, tasting less of salt-an estuary of
some kind. There were more birds in the sky and floating branches washed from
inland. She paddled, started up as her face touched the water and paddled
again, trying not to fade into unconsciousness.
I just have to make it that far. After everything,
I'm not giving up now. She edged back and laid her cheek on the warm, almost
not wood, glad for the water lapping over it, then pulled a flap of canvas up
to cover her head, rinsed and spat salt water, dribbling warm down her chin.
Gotta stop doin' that . . . be too tempted to swallow . . . crazy with salt.
She spat, waved a hand at the gulls that had settled again. Sun. Flapping
air-rats . . . damn you, won't get my eyeballs yet. Waves thundering in my
head . . . no, sails, dream ships chasing gulls away, dreaming tackle squeal,
thunder's the sails. What roused her from her daze was the shadow of the ship,
blocking the sun that had burned down on her with bone-biting intensity. A
real ship? A reaching boat-hook snagged at the ropes at one end of her hatch
cover. Koru, let it be real. . . .
Shkai'ra had sauntered back to her duffle and scratched under Ten-Knife-Foot's
chin. She sat down, leaning against the barrel, throwing her dice idly against
the deck rather than going back to the shoulder lacing. Have to figure out
what to do once I get back to the City. Not completely broke, for once.
Jaibo'll probably still be visiting his kinfast up river. . . . She glanced
over at the castaway they were just bringing onboard.
A small, pale woman lying on the boards, black braids knotted and crusted with
salt, silver nail-paint shining on her hands. Captain might get a good passage
fee from that one. Looks like she might clean up nicely, though I don't
recognize the race. White-skinned as a Payalach highlander, but tiny, like a
dwarf except that the proportions were normal. She craned her neck, more
interested, as the bosun looked up and said something to the captain, smiling,
pointing to the woman's ankles and the wooden cuffs. The captain smacked his
palms together and clasped self-satisfied hands in the small of his back as he
turned back to the wheel. The bosun sent someone below and held a cup of water
to the woman on the deck. Ten-Knife put his paws out on Shkai'ra's knee and
started to knead and purr. The castaway drank thirstily, coughed, drank more.
"Ai! Cat! Stop that!" Shkai'ra unhooked his claws from her horsehide breeches
and her skin, dice clattering to the deck, and looked up again as the crewman
Drought up a length of rope.
They're counting her a found slave. If she lives, her sale will be more than
enough to pay for her rescue. There's a good market for exotics in the City,
and there aren't many races that small. She looked down at the dice and
grinned at the three sixes showing. "la, Ten-Knife, always lucky when I don't
know it or need it."
Her head snapped up at the sudden shouting forward, hand falling reflexively
to the bone hilt of her saber. The half-dead castaway had exploded up off the
deck when they'd tried to secure her ankle chains. One crewman stumbled back,
bloody hands clamped over his face, the bosun lay on the deck with her throat
slashed open.
No blade, how-
The castaway launched herself on the next, the one with the boathook, blocked
the weapon with one forearm, snatched his belt-knife and slashed up with it in
the same motion.
Shkai'ra's mouth pursed in a silent whistle. Not bad. Other crew answered the
noise, grabbing up belaying pins and rope-ends as they ran. The captain jumped
over the poop rail to the main deck, pulling his sword. The woman backed up
against the rail, boathook in one hand, knife in the other, bloody to the
elbows. She panted, swaying on her feet. Shkai'ra found herself watching,
standing relaxed with her hand on her sword. She rather hoped the castaway
would escape; that had been a good fight.
There was a black blur from the duffle beside her as Ten-Knife streaked across
the deck, leaped up and landed, all claws out, on the captain's cotton-clad
back. He shrieked with surprise and pain, spun around, trying to reach over
his shoulder with the shortsword; the first mate reached to pull the cat loose
and pulled back her thumb bitten to the bone. Ten-Knife jumped down.
"Nia, nia," Shkai'ra said chidingly as the mate swung her wooden club back for
a blow. Ten-Knife hissed defiance with arched back and bottled tail. "That's
my cat."
The long curve of her saber flicked free; the captain turned at the sound, and
she smashed the smaller Fehinnan sword loose from his grip with a harsh rasp
of metal on metal. Snarling, the mate feinted Shkai'ra with her oak belaying
pin, then leaped back from the bright sword edge as it hissed back and forth
with negligent speed.
Its not a fight unless you push it," Shkai'ra said helpfully.
The captain left his first mate to deal with the tall red head for a moment,
staring at the small woman at bay at the rail. "You pay passage, mofoar?
"Passage, or you try and sell me?" The woman's voice was steady, her Fehinnan
clear.
"'f you got no coin, you a slave-or you can go over 't side agin."
She looked around at the ring of sailors and nodded. Then she grinned, threw
the boathook at one of the crew and somersaulted backward over the side of the
ship and into the water, taking the knife with her.
Baiwun, she'd rather drown than be a slave. Not an ekafrek, that one, Shkai'ra
thought, edging back as a few of the sailors turned her way. The oak railing
touched the small of her back.
Ten-Knife tripped another sailor by running under his feet and skittered down
into the hold.
"Rayab! Check t' water, get 't slave back," the captain snapped. "Lissayaz!
Don't go after t' animal, see t' Tahm an' t'others!" He wrenched his small
sword free from the wood of the deck. Then he turned back to Shkai'ra, weapon
held point up. It was a Fehinnan infantry shortsword, a leaf-shaped blade with
a central blood-gutter and a circular guard at the hilt.
Shkai'ra let her sword's tip make small circles in the air and set herself
against the rail; her left hand drew the long double-edged knife she wore
across the small of her back.
"You! Your animal cost'us that slave! You fishfukkin' for'n-"
He paused; the foreigner was taller than any of the Fehinnans onboard, and he
had seen enough fighters to know the coiled look of a warrior.
Any sailor could fight, and there were weapons and corselets in the arms
locker, but . . . that meter length of saber looked sharp enough to part a
hair.
"I'll pay gild for the blow I struck you," she said reasonably; her Fehinnan
had an unusual accent, staccato and guttural. "But the cat was sent to me by
the luck-gods. I can't let any harm it, or my luck might go."
He growled and sheathed his sword with a snap. "Jest see I don see t' beast
agin or ay'all do more n add t' yer fee. I've alus had a hankerin' for
catsltin gloves!' She held his eyes and nodded once, slowly.
"No sign, Cap!" the crewman called. "No swimmers!"
He spat on the deck and stalked away. Shkai'ra looked over the rail into the
green-brown water. Bather drown than be a slave. She sauntered back to her
duffle and scooped up the dice in a thoughtful mood. Spunky little bitch.
Smyna Caaituh's-kin, General-Commander in the Iron House and Grand Captain of
Fehinna, held a page of paper in the flame of the alcohol lamp on her desk.
She poked at the ashes with the ivory stem of her pipe until they thoroughly
mixed into the mess in her ashtray. Then she closed the folder in front of her
with long wire-strong fingers, tying the ribbon, dropping on a glob of hot wax
and rolling her sigil onto it with a small cylinder of inscribed stone. The
smell of the wax mingled with the Iron House's old scents: ancient
mass-concrete, well-tended woodwork, warrior's leather and metal, hints of
tobacco and smoke.
A touch on the china gong, and an aide came to file the papers in the sanctum;
another brought her a jug of pomegranate juice, sweating coolness through the
unglazed pottery surface. The soldier leaned back against her padded wicker
backrest, lighting her pipe and blowing a meditative smoke ring at the
coffered vault of the ceiling, sipped at the astringent liquid and thought.
She was a tall Fehinnan and very thin in a muscular fashion, close-cropped
black hair showing no sign of grey yet despite her forty years. The plain
military tunic of dull scarlet cotton that reached to her knees bore few of
the decorations she was entitled to, simply the golden sunbursts on the
shoulders that marked her rank; for the rest she wore a family signet ring. A
plain officer's longsword stood in its rack by the door, a single-edged weapon
with a brass basket hilt. She glanced up at it, then stared down at her hands
on the desk and traced the soldier's callus on the right as she considered the
summary she'd just burned.
"Divine Solar Light, but things were easier when I only had a cavalry regiment
to think about," she murmured softly; her accent had the liquid precision of a
tidewater aristocrat.
As General-Commander she was one of the most powerful people in the City, as
long as she didn't let either of the other two factions in the Iron House gain
any ground. Which was difficult; the problem with being at the top of the heap
摘要：

ScannedbyHighrollerandproofedmoreorlessbyHighroller.Thisonewasapaintoproof.Probablymoreerrorsmissedthanusual.Feelfreetofixmissederrorsandchangeversionnumberby.1CHAPTERITheFehinnanshipfloatedonaseathatglowedinthesunlikeaheatedcopperplate,becalmedwithallsailssetandhanginglimp.Thewaterstretchedouttoasu...

展开>> 收起<<
Shirley Meier & S. M. Stirling - Fifth Millenium 02 - Saber and Shadow.pdf

共176页,预览36页

还剩页未读， 继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

相关推荐

更多
立即下载
分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：176 页 大小：447.36KB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-20

开通VIP享超值会员特权

  • 多端同步记录
  • 高速下载文档
  • 免费文档工具
  • 分享文档赚钱
  • 每日登录抽奖
  • 优质衍生服务

作者详情

相关内容

更多

热门标签

人际关系 配电装置 动力学连接体 力的合成 高考理综 全宋诗作者索引 公务员考试
/ 176
评分 收藏
分享
立即下载 VIP免费下载
客服
关注