Doom's Break (2 page)

"Perhaps. I don't know. It will be a decision for the Kings. Perhaps the Assenzi will invite you all to live in Highnoth."

"Ah, this Highnoth, you mentioned it before. You trained there, you said."

"I did. It is in the far north, and it gets cold in winter. You will learn many wonderful things at Highnoth. The Assenzi will teach you."

"Mmmm. I see." Mentu managed not to sound too dismissive.

"I know it will be hard at times. But you knew that from the moment you decided to come."

"Yes. That's true."

"If you or Janbur had stayed in Shasht, you would have had to stay hidden for the rest of your lives. Or you would have been killed."

Mentu nodded. He had been imprisoned in a remote tower for twenty years on his brother's orders. In doing so, the Emperor had been protecting him. But then the Emperor had fallen, and no one knew where he was or if he still lived. The priests would have come for Mentupah sooner or later.

Suddenly they heard a pounding of feet on the deck, and Juf burst into the cabin.

"We have a light, very distant."

Mentu hurried up the mast, spyglass in hand. Janbur climbed the boom they'd fished into the wreck of the foremast.

Thru climbed into the crow's nest, too. Far away to the north he saw the glimmer of a distant lamp.

Mentu frowned as he lowered the spyglass. "We had better douse our own lights and steer away from them."

"Why?" asked Thru.

"That will be a fishing boat. But the distinction between fishermen and pirates is none too fine in the Marukas. If the fishing isn't good enough, there are other ways of making a living."

They set their course south, steering by the constellation of the Porpoises with the bright blue star Bilades to the fore. Through the night they kept an anxious watch for a light behind them, but none was seen.

By dawn they were scudding south and east on a fine westerly wind. The
Sea Wasp
was riding well despite the imbalance between her two masts. Unfortunately, no sooner had they set to eating their banyams and dried fish than Pern Glazen, the mot in the crow's nest, spotted a triangular sail to the west.

Mentu studied it for a while then pronounced the worst. "That rig tells me they are Maruka fishermen. They are following us, no doubt of it."

"The fishing wasn't good enough, then?"

"They can see that we were dismasted in the storm. Perhaps they think they can catch us."

"Well, we have eight fighters," said Thru. "We can give a good account of ourselves."

"No, we are seven," said Mentu. "A woman cannot take up arms."

Simona looked at him with exasperation. "This woman has taken up arms before," she said.

Thru nodded in agreement. Simona had fought Red Top priests on more than one occasion during their strange odyssey together across Shasht.

Mentu's face tightened. "It is against all tradition, all precedent."

"Dear Mentu, you are such a conservative at heart."

Janbur said nothing, but Thru could tell that he agreed with Mentu. All Shasht men were like this about women.

Their main problem, however, was their lack of weapons. They had but a single bow, and it was small and weak. A couple of swords, some knives, a pair of axes from the ship's tool kit, and that was about it.

Thru searched the contents of the hold. Useful clubs could be fashioned from a broken spar, but of metal for arrow points there was none.

The
Sea Wasp
sailed on, and the triangular sail gained slowly but steadily. By late afternoon, the pursuer's hull was visible above the horizon.

Then came the welcome cry of "Land ho!" from Janbur in the crow's nest. Soon they spied the outlines of several small islands. Then more appeared to the south and a vast coral reef became visible. Beyond it they glimpsed a wide lagoon and a central volcanic island.

By tacking first to the north and then turning sharply south, they worked their way between two rocky isles and into a channel that was out of view of their pursuers. They steered between two outreaching arms of wave-swept coral, fled across a wide bay, and entered the lagoon. Now they were hidden from the open sea by a headland leading off the main island. They found a sheltered backwater and dropped anchor.

Above and all around them grew a riot of tropical vegetation, deep green with bursts of scarlet and yellow. Birds greeted their arrival with raucous cries and then fell silent.

Everyone went ashore. While the others looked for a tree that would be suitable for a new mast, Thru and Simona climbed to the top of the headland to spy out the sea to the north. As they climbed, Thru examined all the trees and bushes, keeping an eye out for limbs to use for bows or spears.

Although the ground was full of sharp volcanic shards, the slope was gentle for the most part, and he and Simona soon reached the top. Pressing forward through a dwarf forest of penhueche trees, they came to the edge of a thirty-foot cliff and below that a steep slope down into the forest skirting the northern shore of the headland. A mile away, across the lagoon, surf pounded on the reef. Beyond that, blue water stretched into the distance. Other islands loomed here and there, each surrounded by a ring of surf marking its reef.

They scanned the sea carefully. Thru opened the spyglass and studied the horizon. "There," he said at last. "Found them."

A small scrap of white sail danced in the spyglass.

"Where?" said Simona as he handed her the tube.

Thru guided her to the spot, farther down the channel to the east, well past the island they were on.

"Then they missed us?"

"Looks that way."

They took turns studying the distant sail until it vanished over the horizon. Then they moved back through the dwarf forest until they had a view of the main island. The volcano dominated everything, its slopes clad in green almost all the way to the top several thousand feet above the sea.

Beyond the mountain, extending off to the south and west, were long tongues of land. Again they studied the landscape with the spyglass.

"I see some big stands of banyam trees down there," said Thru.

"Yes," said Simona. "It's just like that first island, where we found so much. The same flowers are blooming."

"If we can get enough here, this will be our last stop. We'll go on to the Land."

Simona nodded. "It's a long way across the ocean."

"That's why your people never found us before."

"Do you think we can do it? In our little ship?"

"The
Sea Wasp
survived the storm."

They were so close together they were almost touching. Their eyes met. They had known the deepest levels of intimacy and remained friends. But there would always be something slightly more than friendship between them.

"What do you think will happen to us?" she said.

"You mean you, Mentu, and Janbur?"

She nodded.

"I don't know. The Assenzi will help you."

He could tell that this wasn't what she wanted to hear.

"I think I would like to live in a village."

Thru chuckled. "Simona, my friend, you are not a farmer. The work never ends, you know."

"I can work hard!" Her face was flushed with indignation.

"I know, but Highnoth will be much more interesting than a village."

"You think the villagers won't accept us, don't you?"

Thru shrugged and took her hand in his.

"Whatever happens, you will always have at least one friend in the Land." Simona squeezed his hand back. If there was one person to have as a friend in this world, Thru Gillo was a very good choice. When she considered what Thru had brought the two of them through during that long winter in Shasht, she was left amazed. The mot had an unquenchable fire in his heart.

The mots were knowledgeable about different kinds of wood, but the trees they knew grew in the Land, thousands of miles northeast of the Marukas. Mentu was their only guide, therefore, and they clambered all over the rugged slopes seeking a particular pine tree that Mentu knew was sometimes used for masts. The wood of this tree was not brittle like most tropical conifers. After surveying the scene carefully, they decided on a specimen growing in a patch of deep soil close to the edge of the cliff.

"Once we have it down, we can pretty much lower it all the way to the water," said Mentu, pointing below to the various stages in the fall of the cliff. That notion confirmed the decision.

Soon they'd brought up ropes and line and began to construct an intricate set of ropeworks that would allow them to lever the fallen tree into the air and then drop it down the steep slope in a controlled manner. Blocks and tackle, pulleys and guy ropes were all eventually used.

Next they took up the saws and began the process of carefully felling the tree. It had to be cut so that it came down close to the cable but not on top of it. They had two saws, one six feet long and made primarily of wood edged with steel and a smaller one made entirely of metal.

By careful work they brought the tree down to within a foot of where they wanted it. Then they set to cutting off the branches, removing the bark, and trimming away imperfections with the adze.

They had been at work like this for only a few minutes when Juf Goost gave a howl of pain. He jumped up and ran around slapping at his skin.

"The ants, the damned ants!"

Soon they were all busy killing the little red pests, which had swarmed out of a small nest at the foot of the tree. It took perhaps half an hour, but eventually the ants were suppressed, and work was resumed.

At ten-foot intervals along the tree, they attached a cuff of rope around the trunk. Other ropes were then relayed through the cuffs and pulled up over the cable that was stretched down the cliff. At every point in the chain of ropes were blocks of pulleys employed to increase the efficiency of the line. To gain extra braking power, they set a cradle of wood on the main line, just ahead of the tree. When they pulled down on a line leading to this wooden cradle, they jammed the tree downward toward the ground and halted its movement along the big cable.

They took up the rope and raised the tree well off the ground. Ter-Saab, Juf, and Thru seized hold of cuffs along the trunk and with considerable effort got the tree moving and out to the point where it hung over the edge of the cliff. They slowly lowered the tree down along the guiding cable some thirty-five feet to the next stage. Then they dismantled the cable and blocks from the top of the mountain and carried it all down the cliff and set it up for the next stage, a more or less vertical drop of fifty feet.

Once more they lowered the log slowly and carefully down to the next stage. The following stages were on less vertical slopes, where the vegetation grew thickly. The difficulty here was passing the log down between the tree trunks. They slung their cable, tree to tree, on relatively short hops as they juggled the trimmed tree along. It was hard work, and they were sweaty and dusty when they paused on a rocky ledge.

They hadn't sat down more than a minute or two before the first ants found them. Simona gave a squeal and slapped at her calf. Janbur followed suit.

"Oh, not again," groaned Jevvi.

This time they found the entire hillside around covered in ants.

"Look at them!" said Simona in a trembling voice.

There were millions.

"What we could do with a dozen chooks around here!" said Juf.

"Chooks?" gasped Pern Glazen, slapping at ants on his ankles. "Chooks would have run to the hills by now."

The trees, the ground, the rocks—all were deep, dark red with ants, a red that moved and shifted constantly. An angry roaring sound came up from this vast army's mandibles.

It became a race with death. While four of them fanned out with branches and brush pulled together into crude brooms, the others worked frantically to set up the tackle, lift the tree, and slide it over the cliff for the next stage, about forty feet down to a spot that overlooked the lagoon below.

The ants were very determined. The work was punctuated with a roar of oaths and shrieks of pain until they were able to get the log over the edge where it rattled down through the underbrush to the next stage. Then they ran, crawled, flopped, and slid to get down the slope as quickly as possible and distance themselves from the red horde.

Everyone was feeling the effect of so much venom. Poor Ter-Saab actually fainted at one point. They had to pick him up and carry him, or the ants would have killed him. If you stayed still too long, they went for the eyes.

At last they had the tree positioned at the top of a sandy slope that went straight down to the water.

"To hell with the ropes," snarled Mentu. "Let it roll the rest of the way."

No one cared to argue with that idea. They lined up along the tree trunk, gave it a heave over the top of the slope, and then stood back while it rumbled down the sand and splashed into the water.

They noticed that ant scouts were starting to appear around them. The whole island was alive with excited colonies.

"I'm getting off this damned island," roared Mentu, running down the slope and throwing himself into the lagoon.

Juf was the last to follow him, but only by a few seconds.

By the time the sun was beginning to set, they had hauled the log out to float alongside the
Sea Wasp
.

With considerable discomfort, they washed off the grease, dirt, and dust and gathered to eat a somber little meal by the light of a single lamp.

Even in that dim light Thru could see that they were all sporting dozens of hot blisters.

"Well, at least they didn't get onboard this time," said Juf.

"I hope that's true. I really do," replied Pern.

"I can sure understand why nobody ever settled on these islands," muttered Mentu.

"Anyone for a round of 'The Jolly Beekeeper'?" said Juf in a lame attempt at humor.

"Oh, shut up!" said half a dozen voices.

The next day they moved around a little slowly, gingerly. They worked with saws and drills, hammers and wooden spikes to outfit the mast before they raised it over the side and then, with a line from the top of the mizzenmast, lifted it slowly and carefully, and planted it in the mast hole.