S. M. Stirling - Fifth Millennium 02 - Saber and Shadow.pdf

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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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