The Shasht War (53 page)

"There are lights over there where the noise is coming from."

"That is Heldo's house."

"The Red Tops?"

"I don't know, but we should be ready to cut the warp line."

"I agree."

Soon afterward they saw a few people gathering on the dock. A voice called out.

"Mentu, my friend, will you help us?"

Mentu went up into the stern-castle.

"Yomafin? What has happened?"

And they learned the worst. Yomafin and Heldo had fallen out. They had had a fight, and Heldo had run off. He had sworn he was going to the priests.

Yomafin thought his brother meant it, and he had brought his family, two adults and two children.

"I beg you to help us, Mentu, as we helped you. The Red Tops will come tomorrow and take us away. You are our only hope."

Mentu hesitated and turned to Thru standing beside him.

"What say you, my fur-covered friend? Are you prepared to take them?"

With a degree of foreboding, Thru shrugged. "Yes, they can come aboard."

Mentu called back. "Thru Gillo says you can come aboard."

There was silence on the dock. Then after a moment of inaction the people climbed down into a rowboat and pushed out toward
Sea Wasp
.

Climbing aboard the ship, Yomafin was greeted by Mentu, Thru, and a bareheaded Simona. The fish dealer was obviously in the grip of strong emotions.

"Mentu, my friend, how could you allow this?" He gestured toward Simona.

"Yomafin, this ship belongs to the lady. She has renounced purdah."

"I am a free woman, Yomafin," said Simona. "I will not wear the burden of purdah ever again."

"Abomination," said Yomafin in a thick voice.

"Do not say such things," said Mentu. "You owe her your life."

Yomafin's wife and children had withdrawn into a huddled group. He looked to them, felt the mute pressure of his wife's eyes from behind her veils.

"Of course, of course," he muttered. "It is your ship. You have the right to do as you please, you are no longer of Shasht."

"That is correct."

Yomafin shuddered as his eyes met those of Thru.

"But, you will excuse me if I stay below. I cannot..." Words failed him.

Mentu lead the group to the cabins in the forecastle.

On his return he found Thru visibly concerned about Yomafin.

"I foresee trouble with this man."

"We could not, in honor, refuse him."

"Unfortunately that is true."

"We must be careful, that is all. Perhaps Yomafin will want to be left in the city. He is a dealer in fish, a good one, he can make a living there."

"I hope so. I do not think he would be happy in the Land."

Mentu gave a grim chuckle.

"The tide will turn well before dawn. We will be gone before first light."

Sea Wasp
proved to be a fine, stable vessel riding along very well with a light wind a point off her beam. Mentu had opened only the big triangular mizzen sail, since they were so shorthanded and inexperienced.

Thru was not a sailor, and yet Mentu was impressed by Thru's quickness to learn how to set a sail and tighten the rigging. Thru broke some fingernails the first day on the hard, cold canvas, but by the second day he was reefing and furling with reasonable facility. Simona, too, had impressed him with her turns at the steering wheel, or hauling on a line. Yomafin may have been shocked to see a lady of Shasht without her veil, working as a sailor, but Mentu could tell that Simona was quite capable of hard work, as well as being very determined.

Very old ideas were being overturned in his mind, something that left him bothered, but at the same time intrigued. Purdah had not always existed. But very little was spoken of those times in the history of Shasht. To see a noblewoman's face was a shock, but it was also a pleasant experience. Instead of being spoken to by a veil, there were lips, eyes, and visible emotions.

In the evenings when the stars had risen, they gathered on the high deck of the stern-castle to read the heavens and discuss the navigation.

From their log readings taken throughout the day, plus the plottings of the compass, they had some idea of their course, remaining west of north, and covering another hundred miles in that day. By using a quadrant to measure the sun's height in the sky at noon, they also had an idea of how far south or north they were.

"Always the great difficulty once you've been well out of sight of land," said Mentu, "is judging your eastward and your westward progress. The quadrant helps us find our latitude, but longitude is much more difficult. That's why we have to keep logging our speed and plotting our direction by the compass. If we know our direction from the compass readings and how quickly we are moving, we can keep an estimate on our position."

Thru and Simona both nodded. They were educated enough to know that the world was round and covered in vast oceans. They had both seen a geographer's globe, and in Thru's case they had made use of an astronomical telescope and had seen the disks of the planets and the bright colors of the stars.

"But equally important at night, we use the quadrant to measure the angle of the Red Star above the horizon. That angle varies throughout the year, and it has also been shown to vary by location around the world. That is why we carry the
Book of Variables
. It gives us the angles to expect for each observation."

They made measurements to great Kemm and checked them in the book. Then they examined the chart and plotted that measurement. They were a little farther east than their first estimate, made from their daytime readings with compass, quadrant, and logbook.

"Now we have two points. We might make an estimate between them, or we might go further and take a measurement on one of the planets."

"I see great Zanth has risen," said Thru.

"You call that one Zanth, do you? To us that is Igen the bright one."

"It is bright, because it is very big. I have seen it through the telescope of Utnapishtim."

Lacking any Shashti word for "telescope," Thru used the word from his own language, and had to explain further. Once more Mentu found his assumptions of innate human superiority challenged.

They measured the angle of Zanth's rise above the horizon, checked it by the time and date in the
Book of Variables
, and used it to derive a third mark on the chart, this time a little to the north of the other two and almost perfectly in the middle between them.

"We can assume that our position is somewhere between those three points."

Their position was plotted to within a few miles of complete accuracy. Thru was impressed. Among the mots it was rare that anyone sailed out of sight of land, for the land was what they used for navigation.

"How long until we reach the city?" said Simona, looking off to the west where the land lay.

"We should raise Shark Point, here, by early morning." Mentu pointed to the map. "Means we'll be in the harbor before noon if the wind remains favorable."

This prediction proved correct, which left all three of them feeling elated. Mentu was particularly relieved, since it had been a long time since he had employed his navigational skills.

The sharp tooth of the point came over the horizon an hour after dawn, bringing a loud shout from the Eccentric.

"Land ho!"

The cry brought even Yomafin from his cabin. He took a look and then caught sight of Simona hanging in the rigging, wearing no more than a tight jacket and sailor trousers with her hair blowing free in the wind. Yomafin turned pink in the face and had to go below.

They came smoothly around the point and into the bay of Shasht. Soon they made out the opening to the estuary and the glittering city.

Within the hour they had tied up to a buoy in the outer pool, surrounded by hundreds of other craft, from fishing boats to huge four-masted vessels with sides that rose up like wooden cliffs above their heads.

As expected, the city was crowded with festival goers, come for the coronation of Norgeeben II. A mood of elation gripped the people. There was a common belief that the stability that had existed under Aeswiren would continue under his successor, who had taken such a blessed name. Great Norgeeben I was still revered for ending the chaos of the last dynasty and reestablishing the rule of law.

Of course there were complicated feelings about all this. Many folk retained good memories of Aeswiren's time. Added to this was the perennial dislike of the priests. The Red Tops were well fed and very numerous. Their yoke was heavy at times. Many of Aeswiren's followers were also heretics who had little faith in He Who Eats. So a certain feeling against the priests was abroad in the streets. The crowds felt their own power, and the Red Tops left them alone. Thus the streets and plazas were rather boisterous. The ruled became the rulers, and the rulers ventured out of their houses only with some trepidation on these days. Slaves, of course, did not count in any of these things.

For one who had had no human company in two decades, Mentu made his way through it with ease, dodging the worst drunks, even taking a cup or two of grog when it was proferred to him, and joining in the singing. Twice, men told him that he resembled Aeswiren, to which he replied with elaborate mock sorrow, "I have heard that one all my life. But, alas, it was not my lot to rule the world. I'm just a fisherman." On both occasions the men laughed with him, more grog was poured, and the dancing continued.

In the Shalba the crowds quickly thinned out. On the road to the Canalgate, he found the Erv of Blanteer's residence. The gate was barred. Mentu passed a message and traveled on so as not to arouse any curiosity. He walked up to the Canalgate itself and watched the two squads of Red Tops that were drawn up on either side. Ordinary folk flocked in and out, while the Red Tops stood there motionless. There was none of their normal preening and investigating. No one had to pay any bribes on these days, just before a coronation.

Mentu watched for a few minutes and then walked back down the road to the Blanteer house again and asked at the gate. This time he was welcomed in.

The young Erv was suspicious at first, but when Mentu passed on the things Thru had told him, he opened up a little. Mentu went on to describe how Thru had survived on his own, making a journey of hundreds of miles into the interior.

Still, there was the difficulty of Mentu's appearance. The Erv had seen the Emperor in person on many occasions of state. The similarity was too great for him not to remark upon it. When he persisted with his questions, Mentu finally revealed his own identity.

When the surprise had dissipated, the Erv pondered these things for a few minutes. He took a great risk even by meeting with this man, but he was impelled to take even greater risks by the dire situation they faced.

Moreover, he was assured to some extent that if he risked his life, then so did his visitor. As to his visitor's identity there was little question. The Erv could see the remarkable resemblance to Aeswiren, and he knew that Aeswiren's younger brother had been imprisoned long ago. Blanteer decided to risk it.

"In truth, I must tell you, because we are in a desperate strait."

And thus the Erv explained the situation as he understood it. An hour later Mentu left the house and returned to the harbor.

Aboard the
Sea Wasp
he passed on what he had received.

Four of the "strangers" had survived, Mentu had jotted down the names. Ter-Saab, Juf Goost, Pem Glazen, and Jevvi Panst. Also in hiding with the strangers was Janbur of Gsekk.

In the aftermath of his discovery, Janbur's family had felt the hand of the priests upon them. His mother had been questioned severely, and would never walk again without pain. Many friends had also been questioned, but none of those in the know had broken, and the secret had been kept.

Janbur had suffered a long illness, it was said, and had been nursed back to health by the strangers.

The current crisis was the result of exhaustion in the group that had come together to hide the mots. Of the original cabal about half had drifted away. They kept silent, because otherwise they risked themselves, but they no longer even spoke to the remainder of the cabal.

Each one of them had hidden the fugitive mots in his house at one time or another. But as time went on so the terror aroused by the priests frightened some of the young rebels into going into hiding themselves.

And so the remaining rebels had run out of hiding places. With the city packed like this, it would have been a great time to move the survivors. But no place was prepared to receive them.

Even the Erv of Blanteer could not help, so he said, because his mother had put armed men at the gates of his house to search any and all who might enter. She was determined not to allow her insane son to put the Blanteer family at risk. Everyone knew what had happened to Janbur's mother.

And so the survivors had been trapped in a small warehouse on the waterfront. The warehouse was one of those small, square buildings seen on many of the docks. This one was on the wharf marked with the sign of the Ram's Head and Two Barrels. All had been fine until a week before when the wharf had been sold to a new owner. The previous owner's mother had forced the sale, having become suspicious of her son and his friends. Everyone in her circle was also well aware of the fate of Janbur's mother.

The new owner had doubled the guard on the wharf and changed the policy concerning access to the warehouses. Food had become impossible to get to the fugitives, since the guards were searching everyone going in or out and the warehouse was locked at night.

After hearing all this, Thru took up the spyglass and went on deck. It didn't take long to find the wharf. All wharves were signified by a large sign, hung at the outermost point, combining animal motifs, barrels, and red circles.

"Tomorrow the sacrifices begin?" asked Thru.

"That is correct," Mentu replied.

Thru was determined to waste no time.

"I will go tonight."

As dusk fell over the city, a million lamps were lit. Fires soon blazed on the great plaza at the head of the avenue of the pyramid. Drums throbbed continually while great masses of men jumped and sang. On the pyramid itself the first lights of the festival were being lit from lamps filled with an oil rendered from previous sacrificial victims. The elite of the city were gathered below to witness the ceremony. All of their lives they would talk about the coronations they had witnessed, and central to all of them would be the tale of the First Lights.