Pirates Of Gohar rb-32, page 10
part #32 of Richard Blade Series
The clinking of Blade’s chains as he tested them brought a face peering over the edge of the hatch. It was broad, bearded, and remarkably uncurious.
«Unh, you’re awake.»
«Where am I?»
The sailor laughed and started to turn away, then stopped, turned back, and spat down into the hold, just missing Blade. «Doesn’t matter where you are, diver. You won’t be with us long. Shell Island’s the place for you.» He looked at Blade for a moment, as if waiting for the prisoner to start screaming or begging for mercy. Then he spat again, missed Blade again, and vanished.
Blade leaned back and ran what he’d learned about Shell Island through his memory. It was a nearly desert island about five days’ sailing from Gohar. It was far enough from the western shore of the Sea so that escape to land was impossible without a boat. It was also in shallow water, surrounded by reefs with only one navigable ship channel through them to the open water.
The same shallows supported rich beds of tissue-shells and pearl oysters, and schools of the small mollusks that produced most of Gohar’s valuable dyes. No single place in the Empire produced so much wealth, or was so feared by those who didn’t share that wealth.
Like Devil’s Island or Australia, Shell Island was a place for dangerous criminals the Goharans didn’t execute. At any given time, several thousand men and women lived there.
Some lived longer than others, but few survived more than five years and still fewer lived out their sentences and returned sane and healthy to Gohar.
The convicts of Shell Island lived by diving for shells, netting dye-mollusks, extracting the tissues, dyes, and pearls, and sending them back to Gohar. All the work demanded either strength and endurance or skill and care. If you were neither strong nor careful, you didn’t last very long. If the guards didn’t kill you for sport, your fellow prisoners often did. If no human being killed you, the sun, poisonous sea snakes, sharks, starvation, drowning, and fevers had their turn. If you lasted long enough in spite of all the dangers, you would probably go insane and stumble off a cliff some night as you wandered around raving.
Blade had to admit that Shell Island wasn’t his idea of an agreeable destination, but he also remembered what he’d said to Khraishamo. Shell Island wasn’t escape-proof. He wouldn’t let it be.
He soon learned that he couldn’t do much toward escaping while he was aboard this ship. The crew clearly had strict orders to ignore everything a prisoner on his way to Shell Island might say or do. None of them had even heard that any such being as a «Man from the Future» was in Gohar. Blade tried to explain himself, but only convinced most of the crew that he’d already gone insane.
«Won’t last two weeks on the island,» said the captain, shaking his head. «Waste o’ food to take him there at all.» But orders were orders, and the captain was going to deliver Blade to Shell Island or sink to the bottom of the sea trying.
At the same time, the crew knew how to handle dangerous prisoners. They fed Blade fish and porridge and gave him water twice a day. Once a day they threw buckets of saltwater over him, and rubbed oil on his skin where the shackles chafed it. Otherwise they left him strictly alone. No one with keys or a weapon ever came within Blade’s reach. Two men with spears held ready to throw stood by every time he was fed or cleaned. After the first three days Blade decided he wasn’t going to get anywhere until he reached Shell Island. It might be no better, but it certainly couldn’t be any worse than this ship.
He did learn one useful fact by listening to the crew talk. Kloret hadn’t lied. Thrayket IV of Gohar was dead, and before the ship returned from Shell Island he would be buried in the Imperial Tomb along with three hundred years of his ancestors. From the captain on down, the crew were quite irritated at having to miss the funeral. They were partly consoled by not having to miss the coronation of His Radiance Harkrat II, with all the feasts and gifts and dancing in the streets while the public fountains ran with wine.
If Harkrat lives to be crowned, thought Blade, then decided that was being too pessimistic. Kloret might be ready to plunge Gohar into civil war if he thought it would give him advantages he could gain no other way. As long as he thought he could control the prince by blackmail, he would use other and safer methods of accumulating the power he wanted.
One thought of Kloret led to another. For the first time Blade began to wonder why he was alive and on his way to Shell Island, rather than dead and dropped into the sea with stones tied to his body. He knew he’d be guessing, but he also knew he had to think through what Kloret might have in mind for him. Against a man like the Prime Minister, it wasn’t safe to sit and wait for facts to drop on you out of the sky.
Thrayket was dead, and there would be confusion in Gohar even if Harkrat took the throne without any delay or trouble. No one would be likely to notice that the Man from the Future was gone, at least until he failed to show up at the funeral and the coronation. Harkrat and Elyana would probably notice it, but Kloret had his ways of keeping them silent.
When Blade’s absence finally was noticed, Kloret would claim complete innocence of any knowledge, or perhaps hint that Blade had fled for dishonorable reasons. Kloret could do his best to blacken Blade’s reputation by accusing him of rape or theft of something valuable, which would conveniently turn up missing. Harkrat and Elyana and their supporters might not swallow the Prime Minister’s story, but wouldn’t dare call it a lie either.
So Blade would be out of sight, for most people out of mind, and discredited in the eyes of many of those who remembered him. No one would be able to trace him to Shell Island, since the sailors of the ship carrying him didn’t know who he was.
Meanwhile, he would be alive on Shell Island. So Kloret wanted him alive, and Blade could think of at least three good reasons why this was so:
One. Other Englishmen might come to Gohar, learn what happened to the Historian Blade, and take a gruesome vengeance. Kloret couldn’t be sure this was actually likely or even possible, but he couldn’t be sure there was no danger at all. Kloret would prefer to play it safe, so that if he ever faced a squad of angry Englishmen with death rays, he could say with perfect truth: «My hands are clean of the blood of Richard Blade.»
Two. Kloret might have hopes of using Blade in his future plottings, or winning him over as an ally. He might think that a promise to make Blade co-ruler of Gohar once he’d usurped the throne would overcome Blade’s scruples. Being able to claim that the Man from the Future saw clearly that he, Kloret, was destined to rule Gohar would be helpful.
Three. If he couldn’t get Blade’s help, he might still persuade or frighten Blade into telling him about the future of Gohar. Above all, he’d want to know what would happen in Mythor. Live Blades may not talk, but dead Blades cannot.
Kloret wanted him alive, and that meant his chances of survival on Shell Island were fairly good. An active, tough man, diving day after day and week after week, could earn more than enough to keep himself healthy and alert. If he didn’t make enemies among the guards or his fellow prisoners, he could last as long as he’d need to.
Blade suspected that he would need no more than a few months. He hoped it would be no more than a few weeks. There wasn’t much time to lose if he was to escape in time to help Harkrat and Elyana.
Chapter 13
Shell Island was only five days from Gohar if the winds cooperated. On Blade’s voyage they didn’t, and it took his ship ten. About noon on the ninth day Blade heard men moving on deck, and the ship drifted to a stop. Then a boat came bumping alongside and loud-voiced men scrambled aboard. The pilot to guide the ship through the twisting channel to Shell Island was aboard.
All that afternoon the ship tacked back and forth, masts and rigging creaking and groaning and the sailors cursing at the extra work. As the sky began to turn red, they gave Blade the largest meal he’d ever eaten on board-meat, a huge bowl of porridge, bread with oil and spices, even some dried fruit. He couldn’t help thinking of «the condemned man’s last meal,» but in spite of this he fell asleep more easily than he’d expected.
Blade awoke with another painful headache, a dry mouth, salt-caked lips, and a stomach rumbling with hunger and quivering with nausea. He felt as if he’d been on a truly awesome binge and was now paying the price in the form of an equally impressive hangover.
Unfortunately, there was gritty sand and small pebbles under him, a hot sun blazing on his bare skin, and a salt-scented wind blowing across his body. Not far off sea birds were crying, and waves rolled in on a beach.
Blade turned his head so that he wouldn’t be dazzled by the sun, then opened his eyes. Even then he couldn’t see anything for a while. Finally he saw that he was lying at the foot of a sand dune on the narrow gravel and sand beach between the dune and the water. Small waves splashed and died on the sand twenty yards away.
The sand dune cut off Blade’s view toward the land, but to seaward he could make out a line of white as waves broke over a half-submerged reef. From the position of the sun, it was midmorning, a few hours before noon.
He’d been drugged at dinner, then dumped on Shell Island during the night. At least he couldn’t see any reason to believe he wasn’t on Shell Island, and he was certain he’d been drugged. He sat up, tried to stand, and found that his legs wouldn’t stay under him. The movement made his stomach rebel, and up came the remnants of last night’s dinner.
Now his stomach felt better, though not his head. Gradually the headache also faded, and the second time he tried to stand he found he could do it. He still decided to stay where he was for a little longer. The prisoners of Shell Island were often hostile to newcomers until they’d proved themselves in a few fights. Blade knew he might have to fight the moment he left the shelter of the dune, couldn’t afford to lose, and wanted to be completely fit.
He stretched out on a patch of the softest sand he could find in the shade of the dune and tried to relax and breathe deeply. Now he found himself wondering why he’d been dumped here, on an isolated beach of Shell Island. Normally prisoners for the island were taken to a fort on the southern tip and registered before they were turned loose. The Goharans were advanced enough to have invented bureaucracy and bureaucrats who insisted on keeping useless statistics.
It occurred to Blade that he might be more useful to Kloret if he wasn’t registered. If nobody except his fellow prisoners, who wouldn’t know who he was, knew that he was on Shell Island, this reduced the chances of any of his friends or any of Kloret’s enemies tracing him. Of course the ship’s crew might be a link between Gohar and Shell Island, so those sailors were probably doomed. If ever there was a believer in the rule «Dead men tell no tales,» it was Kloret.
Blade wondered how Kloret would manage to dispose of the sailors, but found it hard to concentrate. The sun was getting warmer, the fresh air after days in the musty hold was delicious, and the sand under him was softer than the dirty planks. He also hadn’t got all the drug out of his system.
He looked at the sand dune, and it seemed to blur and waver. It probably would hide him for another few hours of sleep. Even if it didn’t, he was in no shape to fight. Blade’s ferocious survival instincts could recognize an impossible proposition when they saw one.
He shifted position until he was almost comfortable, and was asleep almost at once.
He woke up with a bare foot prodding him gently but persistently in the ribs. He found that most of the drug was out of his system and all his senses were normal again. He was trying to decide whether to play sick or show signs of life, when from somewhere above him a voice spoke.
«Ullo, ullo, man from the Sea. What do you here?»
The voice was a woman’s, rich and deep, with an accent Blade recognized as Mythoran. He sat up and found himself staring at a pair of magnificent breasts, supported but hardly concealed by a narrow band of rawhide. He stood up and stepped back, to survey the owner of the breasts from head to foot.
For a Goharan woman, she was almost a giant-nearly six feet tall, and big-boned as well. She’d been eating well enough not to lose her figure, but there wasn’t any fat on her. There was plenty of muscle, though, smooth and supple under a brown skin further darkened by sun and wind and soot. Her face was long, with high cheekbones, and framed in sun-bleached light brown hair. She wore a wider strip of rawhide around her waist, and sandals of what looked like snakeskin.
She looked more like a queen than Elyana ever would.
Then Blade noticed that the regal beauty was marred by an ear with a piece gouged out and a broken nose. There was also a faint scar along the left side of her chin, and an ugly one across her right shoulder and down onto the breast. On her right thigh was a broad patch of puckered scar tissue. The little finger on her left hand was missing the last two joints-Blade stopped cataloguing her injuries when he realized she saw what he was doing.
«What does the other fellow look like?» he asked, smiling.
«That long tale, not for telling here,» said the woman, unsmiling. «Can you walk with me?»
«Yes.»
«Good.» She pulled a sharpened length of bone out of her waistband, and kept it in her hand as she stepped back to stand behind Blade. «We go now.»
Blade found that he could walk, but still wasn’t quite ready to think of running. The long-legged lady behind him wouldn’t have much trouble catching him. That drug must have been powerful!
He tried to make polite conversation as they tramped across the sand dunes, without success. He did find that the battered Amazon’s name was Rhodina, and told her his name. That was all. Perhaps Rhodina wasn’t unfriendly, but she was certainly not giving anything away.
They covered nearly a mile across the dunes without getting out of sight or smell of the sea. Finally they came to a rough shelter of driftwood tied together with rawhide and covered with seaweed. Rhodina told Blade to sit outside until she called him, then pulled aside a rawhide curtain at the entrance and vanished inside.
For a little while Blade was glad to sit and rest. Then he decided to disobey Rhodina. If they were going to be together for more than a few hours, she was going to have to trust him more than this, and he was going to have to get a weapon. Anything else would be foolish. If she didn’t trust him, he could always take a weapon and clothing and move on. He got up, went to the shelter’s entrance, and pushed his way in through the curtain.
He caught Rhodina at a disadvantage. She was pushing her waistband down her legs to step out of it, leaving herself naked. All she could do for a moment was scream: «Blade! Get out of here!»
Then she grabbed for her bone knife. Blade found himself within reach of a better weapon-a foot-long chunk of wood set with shark’s teeth. He snatched it up, met Rhodina head-on, and cracked her across the knife hand with the back of his weapon while gripping her other wrist. She dropped her knife, and tried to punch Blade in the groin. He turned enough to ride the blow without losing his grip on her wrist. Then he used his judo to throw her. She went down with a crash, knocking out one support of the roof and bringing part of it down on her. She lay there, spitting out oaths and seaweed.
Blade picked up Rhodina’s knife, held it by the point, and handed it back to her. «Here. If you want to stick it into me, that’s one thing. If you want to feed me like the Emperor and take me to your bed, that’s another thing. But you’d better decide if you want to trust me or not.»
He knelt down, within easy striking distance, and started picking the pieces of the roof off her. He kept a watchful eye on her as he did, and noticed she made no effort to grip her knife. Her hands lay in her lap, clenched so tightly the knuckles were turning pale.
«Why didn’t you-?»
«Kill you? You hadn’t tried to kill me. You’d only done something annoying.»
Rhodina made a disgusted noise. «No man on this island be such a fool. They don’t kill women. Use ‘em.»
Blade laughed, and saw Rhodina cringe. Her lips trembled slightly. «You don’t-care for-«She couldn’t get the rest of the words out, but her hands moved over the scars and injuries.
Blade knelt down beside Rhodina, kissed her on the lips, then kissed the scar on her shoulder. «Rhodina, you’re magnificent, beautiful, desirable-everything any man could want.» He sensed a desperate need for reassurance under the harsh manner.
«Blade…?» It was half a sigh.
He kissed her again, and realized that if he did it a third time he might not stop. He sat back and smiled. «Rhodina, I’ll prove how much I desire you some other time, not now. The rest of that roof looks like it’s about to come down on us even without any help.»
Rhodina sat up and shook her head, then combed the last of the seaweed out of her hair with her fingers. «Good, Blade. I think you’re a right sort of man. Don’t hope to bed me, though. I-he should be back in a few days. It’s that he’s not back now, has me all-confused, frightened, what you call it. He was-is-first man I could trust. Always before, men…» She shrugged, as if there was nothing more she needed to say.
So Rhodina’s lover was missing, and this had affected her judgment. A perfectly reasonable explanation, but: «If you’d said this before, Rhodina-«He broke off as her face set in an expression of fierce pride. This woman wouldn’t admit fear or loss unless you put her on the rack-or showed some human sympathy for her.
«Anyway,» Blade continued, «If you want me to move on-«
«No. Stay. Need someone, until-until he comes back or I know he’s dead. If he comes, he and we decide. If he doesn’t, maybe you can stay?»
«Gladly.» Blade wasn’t being polite. This battered, brave Amazon woman was likely to be a better friend and ally than he could expect to find anywhere else on Shell Island.
