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of displeasure at myself for this destruction of property that gave livelihood to the poor fisher-folk and
glared out to sea to get the best line for my swim.
The boat had not moved. The Lady Pulvia still stood in the bows, gesticulating to the two Seg and
Caphlander who were vainly attempting to thrust the boat s keel into the water.
I kept down the immediate icy welling of rage. That, if I so chose, would come later.
The boat felt thick and hard beneath my hands as I reached it. At any moment the sorzarts would be
within assegai-casting range.
All together!
We heaved. The boat lurched, the keel screeched, it stuck we all bent and thrust with desperate
effort and then the boat jerked and slid free into the water. I took Caphlander around the waist and
fairly flung him up into the boat. Seg went in over the other side and I, after a last fierce thrust that sent
the craft surging out into the tiny waves, leaped in after him.
At once I seized the oars Seg had readied and fell to. I rowed with a long swing and now all those
horrific days of labor when I was an oar slave aboard the swifters of Magdag paid handsome dividends.
The boat clove the water. Spray danced inboard. I bent and pulled, bent and pulled, and only incidentally
was aware of Seg snatching an assegai from where it had plunged into the transom and, standing and
balancing awkwardly, flinging it back into the throat of a sorzart prancing in fury on the beach.
A few more assegais plunged in alongside and then they were hissing into the water astern of us.
I steadied the rhythm of my stroke and glared with a most uncharitable wrath upon my Lady Pulvia na
Upalion.
She saw that look, and her chin came up; then a deep flush spread over her cheeks and she lowered her
eyes. She breathed unsteadily.
The next time I give an order, I told her, knowing that infernal rasp was back in my voice, you will
obey instantly, do you understand?
She made no reply.
Do you understand, Lady Pulvia? I repeated.
Caphlander started to burble something about being respectful to the mistress, but Seg shut him up. At
last she raised her eyes. She had evidently made up her mind to be cutting, authoritative, contemptuous.
But she saw my face and her resolution and no doubt her set speech faltered. She opened her mouth.
Obey understand, I said, not ceasing from rowing.
Yes.
Very well.
I rowed then in a simple long rhythm that sent the little boat out across the suns-lit waters of the Eye of
the World.
Chapter Four
Rashoons command our course
I took no pleasure on the contrary I experience no little shame in thus browbeating a woman
rightfully concerned over her child and attempting to uphold her own dignity and not give way to the fears
that must have been clamoring to turn her into a sobbing ball of defenseless weakness. But there can be,
as I know to my cost, only one captain aboard ship.
And she was a slave-holder, and a representative of that class of authority most distasteful to me
after my experiences in far-off Zenicce, and more lately in Magdag.
We sailed the muldavy with her dipping lug rig safely to the town, the port and arsenal and fortress of
Happapat, and delivered the Lady Pulvia na Upalion into the hands of relations who cooed over her and
the child and whisked her off to their palace.
When their guards fair-haired Proconians clad in the iron ring mail of warriors all around the coasts of
the inner sea, and armed with long swords that were not cut down marched Seg and me off to the
local barracoon, I felt no surprise whatsoever.
This kind of attitude on the part of slave-holders seemed inseparable from their nature, as abhorrent to
Seg as to myself.
We wasted no time in breaking out, whooping, cracking a few skulls in the process, and with a couple of
wineskins and a vosk thigh tastefully cooked and browned, we helter-skeltered off to the harbor. The
fishing muldavy we had stolen in order to rescue the Lady Pulvia and her child and Caphlander lay still
tied up where we had left her. In her, I knew, there was a full breaker of water. We tossed our meager
belongings in and cut the painter a gesture of defiance, that and rowed out. We had the lugsail up
and were foaming off into the suns-set long before the guards had pulled their scattered wits about them.
And so, Dray Prescot, said Seg Segutorio, what now?
I stared with a glad affection at this volatile man with the lean tanned face and those shrewd yet reckless
eyes. He was a good sword-companion, and for a moment I remembered with a choked nostalgia all
those other good companions I had known. I am essentially a lonely man, a loner, one who stands or falls
on his own merits and I take ill to being beholden to anyone. This is a fault in me. I thought of Nath and
Zolta, my two oar comrades, those two rascals who could not keep away from wine and women. And I
remembered how Nath would lean back and quaff a full tankard, and wipe his forearm across his shining
lips, and belch, and say: Mother Zinzu the Blessed! I needed that! and how Zolta would already have
the prettiest girl in the inn perched laughing on his knee.
Sitting resting on the oars and looking at Seg Segutorio with an awakening awareness I cannot dwell
on that, as you will come to understand I remembered Zorg of Felteraz, my other oar brother, and I
thought of Prince Varden Wanek, and of Gloag, and of Hap Loder and and remember I was still
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