The Hand of Zei Read online

  Barnevelt told as much of his story as he thought wise. "… so we had to run for it. Zakkomir led the pursuers one way to give Zei and me time to escape in another direction, and we got away by walking across the vine with boards tied to our feet."

  "The young popinjay has more mettle than I should have thought. What betid him at the end?"

  "I don't know. Now tell me, why are the men so glum? You'd think they'd be glad to see us."

  "As to that, two reasons: One, if ye'll pardon my outspeaking, they like this voyage not, for that it has already cost the lives of four—five, if ye count young Zakkomir. Ye know, sir, there's many a man who's brave as a yeki in his home port, in planning voyages of hazard, but who develops second thoughts when peril stares him in the face.

  "And two: We have that young Zanzir, who mortally hates you because ye shamed him before his comrades after he's boasted of his intimacy with you. Moreover, he's lived in Katai-Jhogorai, where they have no kings or nobles, and there imbibed pernicious thoughts of the equality of all men. So he'll have it that the life of my lady Zei—no disrespect to you intended, mistress—that her life weighs no more in the scales of the gods of the afterworld than that of a common seaman, and that to trade it for four or five of theirs were no exchange but murder and oppression. And thus the crew he's disaffected…"

  "Why haven't you done something about this guy?" said Barnevelt, interrupting what promised to develop into a seminar on government. "Anybody knows you can't have democracy on a ship at sea."

  Chask said: "I take the liberty, sir, of bringing to your mind your own express orders at the start of this expedition: No 'brutality,' ye said. So now the time for a swift thrust in the dark, that might this sore have cauterized, is past, specially as Zanzir's careful to keep within arm's reach of his more fanatic partisans…"

  "Sirs!" cried a sailor, sticking his head in the cabin door. "A galley's on our trail!"

  CHAPTER THREE

  They hurried out. The morning sun showed a sail on the horizon, between them and the diminishing Sunqar. Barnevelt scurried up the mast. From the height of the parral, he could see the hull below the sail, end-on, and the bank of oars rising and falling on each side. From his point of vantage he also made out a second and more distant sail.

  He climbed down and looked around the deck. Young Zanzir, at the moment bow oarsman on the port bank, returned his stare as if defying him to start something.

  Barnevelt called the boatswain and Zei into the cabin, unlocked the arms locker, and got out swords for Chask and himself and a long dagger for Zei.

  "Now you see what I meant about the sail. It occurs to me that our young idealist might jump us when the Sun-qaro ships got close and turn us over to them in exchange for his own freedom."

  "That could be," said Chask, "though honest mariners mortally fear the Sunqaruma, holding them not men but automata animated by the fiendish magic of the monster who rules the swamp."

  "Well, if anybody makes a false move, kill him and throw him over the side," said Barnevelt. "After this, use your judgment in matters of discipline."

  Chask gave Barnevelt a ghost of a smile, though he refrained from crowing openly.

  "Now," said Barnevelt, "I'll make a'plot, if you'll help." He turned to Zei. "You'd better put on some more seagoing clothes. That gauze thing is falling apart."

  He unlocked the slop chest and got out the Krishnan equivalent of dungarees. Then he spread his charts on the table and went to work. A swell from the North tossed the Shambor about enough to make position-reckoning a bothersome chore. When Barnevelt had finished, Chask said, "If we go not soon upon the other reach, Captain, the Sunqaruma'U be in position to cut us off from the Strait."

  "Let's make our tack, then," said Barnevelt. Not wishing to sunburn his nude scalp, he put on his battered silver helmet and went out again on deck.

  The north wind, having freshened, blew spray from the bow slantwise across the deck. Water squirted in through the oar holes from time to time. With the seas so high, the oarsmen could no longer keep a regular rhythm but had to pause between strokes, oars in the air, until the coxswain called "Stroke!" at a favorable instant.

  Barnevelt took another turn up the mast, holding the rungs tightly so as not to be jerked off by a sudden pitch. The wind sang in the rigging, the ropes creaked, and the sail was stretched tautly on its yard. Astern, the pursuing galley, though nearer, labored under similar difficulties. From time to time, Barnevelt could see a burst of spray as she dug her bow into a wave. Being a bigger ship, she dug in farther than the Shambor, which rode like a cork. The galley, he now saw, was a two-sticker with a big mainsail forward and a smaller mizzen aft.

  When Barnevelt got down again, Chask called, "Ready about!" the boatswain had to ship several oars to get enough men to handle the sail in this wind. "Tiller hard down to leeward! Pay out the vang! Let go the sheet! Cast off the weather stays!"

  Watching this complicated maneuver, Barnevelt feared that a sudden gust might tear the sail, now streaming out ahead of the ship, flapping and booming like a huge triangular flag; or that the mast, now unstayed, might be carried away. In either case they'd be done for. They were drifting before the wind at no small speed, notwithstanding that the remaining oarsmen were backing water.

  The deck rumbled under the feet of the crew, scurrying about and wrestling with the sail. At last they got the yard into vertical position and, by means of a complicated tackle, shifted it around to the other side of the mast, with yelling and grunting and heaving on the lines.

  "Tiller up! Take in the sheet! Full and by!"

  The yard came down to its normal slanting position, but on the other side of the mast. The mast stays were rerigged, and the sail boomed and cracked as the wind filled it on the new reach. The men went back to their oars. How much simpler, thought Barnevelt, with a plain fore-and-aft rig, when all you had to do was to bring your helm up sharply and remember to duck as the boom swung across the deck. You could sail closer to the wind, too. He doubted they were making closer than six and a half points. Even an Earthly square-rigger (if any still existed)—could do as well as that and could also wear much quicker.

  Zei, standing at his side on the poop, said, "O Snyol, wherefore this movement? Will not the Sunqaro ship cut across our path?"

  "Not if he uses his sails. He'll have to tack at the same angle we do, and in this chop his oars alone won't be much good…" He frowned at the sky, the sea, and his own rigging. "If we get a real blow, he'll have to run for home, but we shan't be much better off. You can't wear ship with this rig in a gale, and we'd have to run before the wind to stay afloat, which would land us right back in the Sunqar."

  "What if the wind drops totally away?"

  "Then he's got us too. He has over a hundred men on the oars, compared to our fourteen."

  He wondered: If they kept ahead of the galley until night, could they slip away in the darkness? Not with three full moons all shining at once. With rain or fog it would be different, but the present weather did not look much like either. And, from the Shambor's mast, the sail of the second following galley could still be seen.

  "Your pardon," said Zei, "but I feel unwell and must needs retire… wup!"

  "Use the lee rail!" cried Barnevelt, pointing.

  When Zei had gone below to lie down, Chask came up and said, "Captain, there's one more item I'd ask you to consider. Not having taken aboard drinking water at the Sunqar, we run low. Men sweat away their water fast on a long oar-chase like this, ye wite."

  "Ration it," said Barnevelt, watching the galley, whose bearing was changing fast as the Shambor cut across her course.

  Now men were shinnying up the yards of both the galley's masts and furling the sails with gaskets, like little brown ants crawling up a straw. Although not without experience at the monkey work of sail-handling, Barnevelt was glad he was not up there with them, gripping the swaying yard between his knees like a broncho rider and clawing at the canvas.

  Little by lit
tle the galley's sails shrank until they were bunched against the yards. Then the yards sank to the deck.

  The galley crossed the Slmmbor's wake and continued north. Barnevelt figured that the galley would try to gain the weather gage of her quarry before hoisting sail again, as the difficulties of wearing a lateener would increase progressively with the size of the sail and would be even more onerous for the galley than for the little Shambor.

  The long Krishnan day wore on. Barnevelt went into the cabin, slept, and shaved his head with sea water, lest the bronze hair and beard betray his origin. The men grumbled about the lack of water, shutting up when Barnevelt walked past with a hand on his hilt and a hard look on his face.

  Evening came. The greenish sky remained clear. To the West, red Roqir set behind the galley, now closer and plowing along, its reset sails silhouetted blackly. The stars came out, shining with a hard brilliance unusual in this hazy latitude. Barnevelt picked Sol out of the unfamiliar heavens; from Star-map Region Eight, in which lay the Cetic planets, Sol was almost in line with Arcturus. The clump of moons came up: Karrim the big, Golnaz the middle-sized, and Sheb the little.

  The wind dropped a little. Looking off to the north, Barnevelt visualized a great high-pressure area lying over the Sadabao Sea, sending a sheet of cool dense air flowing southward towards the Sunqar.

  "How long should a blow like this last?" he asked Chask.

  The boatswain waved a hand in the Krishnan equivalent of a shrug. "Mayhap a day, mayhap four or five. 'Twill die of a sudden, leaving a week's calm on this stinking sea. I shall rejoice when we're back in the belt of steady westerlies."

  The men were tiring, despite the fact that the Shambor still carried enough for two complete shifts at the oars. However, the galley drew no closer; her oarsmen must also be tiring.

  "Besides," explained Chask, " 'tis unlikely they'd essay to run us down in the dark. A small craft like this can turn and dodge too well. And shooting catapults and crossbows at night, even with the moons, were wanton waste of missiles. Won't ye snatch some slumber, Captain?"

  Barnevelt had been wondering whether he shouldn't put in a turn at the oars himself, though he knew Chask would dis-approve. Moreover, he was not sure, now, whether such an act would raise or lower him in the eyes of the crew. His previous attempt to treat them as gentlemen seemed to have miscarried.

  Besides, he did not think his muscles would add much to the Shambor's car power. While he was the tallest person aboard, and strong enough by most standards—having the advantage of being brought up on Earth with its slightly greater gravity—he lacked the great bulging shoulders and horny hands of these professionals. In the end he followed Chask's advice, alternating with the boatswain on watch throughout the night.

  All night the galley hung off their quarter, a blackness partly outlined by the phosphorescence of her waterline and oar-splashes. Neither ship showed any light.

  At the end of his second watch, as the long night drew toward its close, Barnevelt awakened Chask and said, "I've been thinking that with another rig we could outsail those fellows."

  "What's this, Captain? Some scheme from the polar regions ye'd broach amongst us? To change a rig in mid-chase like this, be your plan never so good, were to my thinking plain and fancy lunacy, if my frankness ye'll pardon. By the time your new rig were up…"

  "I know, but look." Barnevelt pointed to where the galley's sails showed pink in the rising sun. "They're gaining on us, and by my reckoning we shan't reach the Strait before noon. At this rate they're sure to catch us before that."

  "Be ye sure of that, sir?"

  "Yes. Matter of fact, we're heading too far west and therefore shall have to wear ship again, which'll take us across their bows practically within spitting distance."

  "Our situation's hard indeed, sir. What's to do?"

  "I'll show you. If we plan our change-over carefully and then hop to it all at once, we may just get our new rig up before they catch us. And we shall have a better chance if we do it now before the wind rises and those guys get closer."

  "Desperate conditions dictate desperate remedies, as says Nehavend. What shall be done?"

  "Pick a couple of men you can trust and bring 'em into the cabin."

  Half an hour later, Barnevelt's plan got under way. He was not himself so sure of it as he tried to sound, but anything was better than watching the galley crawl up with the inevitability of King Canute's tide.

  His plan was nothing less than to convert the present lateen rig into a Marconi or Bermuda rig.

  First, one of the men went along the foot of the sail, cutting holes in it at intervals, while another cut a coil of light line into short lengths that would go loosely round the yard, which in the new dispensation would become the mast. When everything was ready, Chask put up the tiller and swung the Shambor's bow into the eye of the wind. The sail luffed and the rowers, knowing they had no more help from it, dug in their blades.

  The galley, seeing the maneuver, put up her helm also and let her sails flap. Barnevelt realized with a sinking feeling that she could now cut across the hypotenuse of a right triangle to intercept them, since neither was now depending on wind.

  "Lower away!" yelled Chask, and down came the great yard, stretching the whole length of the Shambor.

  The sailors glowered at Barnevelt, and he caught one tapping his forehead. But the boatswain gave them no time to grumble. A rattle of orders sent some to cast off the stays and knock out the wedges that held the mast. Chask put men holding guys at bow, stern, and sides. Others hauled the mast out of its step and set the butt of it on deck beside the partners.

  Meanwhile, the sailor who had cut holes in the foot of the sail did likewise along the leech, while another cut the straps that held the sail to the yard. Then all hands except the rowers turned to, to step the yard in place of the mast. By hauling on the halyard, they hoisted the bare pole up to the head of the old mast, now serving as a gin-pole, and manhandled the butt end into the partners vacated by the mast. The tall spar swayed perilously; the men at the guys screamed; but the stick finally went home with a thump that shook the ship and was wedged into place. Then, by shifting the guys to the yard and slackening off the old halyard, they lowered the former mast to the deck.

  The galley, with sails furled, crept closer. Barnevelt heard a faint hail come up the wind.

  When the new and taller mast was in place, they triced the short edge of the sail to the ex-mast, reeving a light line through the holes in the sail and helically around the spar. Then they triced the intermediate edge of the sail to the ex-yard, now the mast, by reeving short lengths of rope through the holes in that edge and around this spar and tying them with reef-knots to form rings. As these rings were installed, the men hoisted the sail.

  "Make haste, rascallions!" shouted Chask. "Yare, yare!"

  A louder hail came from the galley. The finishing touch was to lash the yoke that had formerly topped the ex-mast to the ex-yard, loosely enough so the ex-mast, now the boom, could swing, but tightly enough to hold it fast.

  On the galley a catapult whanged. A black dot grew into a leaden ball which arced across the water and plunked in a couple of oars' lengths from the Shambor.

  Barnevelt told Zei, "Go into the cabin, Princess."

  "I'm no coward. My place is…"

  "Into the cabin, dammit!" When he saw her starting to obey, he turned to Chask. "Think that lashing'll do?"

  "It must suffice, Captain."

  A sharp whistle, as of a whip, made Barnevelt wince. He saw a man on the bow of the galley start to wind up a heavy crossbow. A second bolt whizzed close.

  However, the endless work on the new rig seemed finally done. The sail was fully hoisted. Chask shouted, "Belay the halyard!"

  The sail hung limp, flapping gently. Another minute would tell whether Barnevelt's scheme was sound. He didn't like the look of that limber new mast, but it was too late for regrets now. He hopped up the steps to the poop and took the tiller from the seaman. />
  The catapult thumped again. The missile sailed past Barnevelt, skimmed the deck, and carried away a piece of the port rail with a splintering crash. The rowers flinched as it passed them, breaking stroke. The bow of the galley loomed close, clustered with men.

  Barnevelt pushed the long tiller arm to starboard. The Shambor responded, her nose swinging to port. The wind ironed the ruffles from the sail, then filled it. The Shambor heeled sharply as the sail took hold, bringing water in the lee oar-ports and breaking the rowers' stroke again; then recovered as Barnevelt corrected his turn.

  The whizz of crossbow bolts was punctuated by sharp drumlike sounds as the bolts tore through the taut sail. Barnevelt could see the two little holes from where he stood. Let's hope they don't start tears! he thought. That sail's a precarious enough proposition with all those ungrommeted holes in it.

  Chask, having gotten the crew straightened out, came to stand beside him. He said, "Methinks we gain^sir."

  Barnevelt took his eyes off the sail long enough for a quick glance back at the galley. Yes, she did look a shade smaller… or was that wishful thinking?

  The sound of the catapult came again. Barnevelt caught a glimpse of the ball flying past him. Then it headed straight for the mast. All they needed now was to be dismasted by a lucky shot!

  Closer flew the missile to the mast… and missed it by an eyelash, to graze the roof of the cabin with a loud bang and bounce off into the sea. It was followed by another whizz of crossbow-bolts, one of which struck the wood nearby, plunging down at a steep angle.

  "They're lofting 'em at us, being too far for direct aiming," said Chask. "In another twinkling shall we be out of range entirely."

  The next catapult missile splashed astern of the Shambor. Little by little they drew ahead. Barnevelt, still tense as a spring, glanced back. The galley, finding oars insufficient, was shaking out its sails again.

  However, as the minutes passed it became obvious that the Shambor—with Barnevelt's eye on the sail and hand on the tiller to get every possible degree of close-hauled sailing out of the new rig—could now sail at least a point nearer the wind than her pursuer. Hence the ships were on diverging tracks. The galley, making good time, drew abreast of the Shambor, but too far down-wind to be dangerous.