The Captain th-2 Read online

  “It is not far now,” said the companion of the giant.

  The purple water of a perfumed fountain spumed upward, falling back in a shower of amethysts, forming tiny crowns as they struck the water.

  As the giant and his companion, in the company of their escort, make their way across the plaza, and before they reach the first gate, in the outer wall, it may not be amiss to apprise the reader, although confessedly in the most inadequate fashion, of something of the nature of the pantheon of the empire. In it we discover various gods, such as Orak, the king; Umba, his consort; the messenger god, Foebus; Andrak, artisan and builder of ships; Kragon, hawk-winged god of wisdom and war; and the much-coveted Dira, goddess of slave girls. In the myths she had belonged, at one time or another, to various of the gods, who won her, or to whom she was given or sold. She is usually represented as being the property of Orak, the king. She is hated by Umba, the consort of the king, and by other goddesses as well. She is commonly represented as kneeling, or dancing, or humbly serving. In representations she is often seen at the feet of other gods. She is commonly represented as collared, or chained. She serves also as a goddess of love and beauty.

  Our small company was now quite close to the main gate in the outermost wall, one of the more than twelve surrounding the palace.

  Citizens fell back before the group, and many looked on, with some curiosity, or interest, having noted the barbarian. They saw only of course a fellow clad in skins, large, formidable in appearance, broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted, long-armed, large-headed, with keen eyes, and light hair, one who walked not like one from the empire, but rather as one from beyond its perimeters, one from another reality, one, curious and observant, feral and leonine, from farther, stranger, harsher worlds. We do not blame them, of course, nor hold them accountable. There was no reason then, you see, why anyone should have marked anything unusual or portentous in this particular barbarian. Surely he was no different countless others. Even we, had we seen him then, even we, would not have marked him, we would not have known him, we, no more than the others, would not have known who it was saw. No one, you see, knew him then.

  At the small door, in the larger outer gate, the party halted.

  “It will be a moment,” said the officer of the palace entering the small door.

  “Ho,” said one of the guards.

  The giant looked down, to his right, as he waited. There, to his surprise, holding her embroidered leel about her, that it not, torn, fall from her, knelt the woman from the street. She was kneeling, tears in her eyes, at the thigh of the barbarian. She looked up at him, timidly, fearfully. The guards looked on, puzzled.

  “Get up, woman,” said the companion of the giant, irritably. “You are a citizen of the empire!”

  But she did not rise. Rather, she remained as she was, clutching the leel about her, almost as in terror. As the giant had turned, to regard her, she was now, fully, at his feet, kneeling before him.

  “I do not need the whip, to obey,” she said.

  The giant shrugged. The use of the whip, whether needed not, was at the discretion of the master.

  She looked to the side, not daring to meet his eyes.

  He did not command her to open her robes.

  “Whom shall I announce?” asked an attendant, returning with the officer of the palace escort.

  This question irritated the companion of the giant.

  The attendant, a herald of sorts, looked at the barbarian.

  “I am Otto,” he said, “chieftain of the Wolfungs.”

  “I,” said his companion, irritatedly, “am Julian, of the Aurelianii,” and then he added, with some irony, and bitter pointedness, “kin to the emperor.”

  “Please enter, noble sirs,” said the herald, politely.

  The giant and his companion then entered the first gate.

  Already several cameras, monitored from within the walls, had recorded their presence, even from the time they had reached the outer edge of the plaza. This form of surveillance was continued by relays of similar devices, visual and aural, within.

  After they had entered the woman remained kneeling beside the gate, for some time.

  “Begone!” finally said a guard.

  She then rose, obediently, and hurried away, until, in the vicinity of one of the fountains, she stopped, and once again knelt, watching the gate.

  “I have never prayed to you before, Dira,” she whispered, “but I do now, for you are now my goddess and I am now your devotee. Give me your grace, dear Dira, that I may serve him well!”

  CHAPTER 3

  The adz is not an ax, though it bears resemblances to that device. Perhaps you are familiar with it. The large, flattish, curved blade is fixed crosswise to the handle, rather like that of a hoe, except that the instrument is not intended for use with the soil, nor is it as delicate as the hoe. A heavy, broad ringlike socket, one with the blade, contains the handle. The typical function of the device is to shape and trim wood, fashioning, for example, heavy beams and planks. It may also, of course, gouge and slice stumps, split kindling, and such. Whereas small adzes may be used by carvers, with chisels and knives and other instruments, in decorative work, as on the jambs of doors and gates, on high-seat pillars, on the figureheads and sternposts of river craft, such as ply the routes between fortified trading towns, and such, it is the larger adz that we are concerned with here. Its blade is better than a foot in length, and the handle is some four feet in length. It can be wielded efficiently only by a very strong man, or by a creature of some comparable or greater strength. It has a place in the traditions of numerous peoples, in particular, naturally, those of the forest. The ax and the adz, as the spear, and, later, the sword, are, in a sense, symbols of those peoples. Very briefly, this may be accounted for. Long ago, in the unnumbered times, long before calendars, long before even the rock markings, so long ago that one has now lost track not only of the moons, and the seasons, but the years, and the cycles, marked by the planting of a sacred oak, once every thousand years, the forest peoples were hunters and herdsmen. It was only later that they became farmers, as well. The typical settlement consisted of a cluster of huts, sometimes surrounded by a palisade, surrounded by a common grazing ground, in a clearing in the forest, the animals taken out in the morning and watched, and brought back, within the palisade, in the evening. As population increased, that of the villagers, and their animals, more land was needed, and so the forest was encroached upon. This pattern tended to be continued, and hastened, when agriculture, to be sure, of a primitive sort, was added to the economic repertoire of the peoples. One commonly cleared land for farming by burning off trees and brush, a practice in consequence of which the soil was incidentally enriched with wood ash. In some years, however, the rains would drain away the enriching minerals and the land would no longer produce its initial yields, at which time the peoples, as land was plentiful, and the forests seemed endless, would migrate, a pattern which was repeated again and again. Even in the days of mere hunting and herding, as hunters ranged further, and the commons must be larger to support more animals, the men of one village would tend to encounter those of others. These encounters were not always of a peaceful nature. Such encounters became more frequent with the development of agriculture, and the attendant regular movements, or migrations, of villagers. The village existence, with its isolation and precariousness, tended to develop both a sense of community within the village and a suspicion of strangers, and others, outside the village. It may be helpful, too, to understand that the practice of hunting was never abandoned by these peoples. Hunting, too, whether conceived of as a mere economic activity analogous to food gathering, which is not to understand, truly, the thrill of the chase, the ambush, the kill, or as a mere sport, which, too, tends to obscure, or trivialize, its darker, more profound appeals, provides training in certain skills which are not unallied to those of war, for example, the tracking, the stalking, patience, deception, pursuit, the kill, and such. One might think of war as
a kind of hunt, doubtless the most dangerous, and the hunt as a kind of war, the least dangerous, the most innocent, of wars. Many times, of course, as villages grew crowded, portions of villages, only, would migrate. The village would put out a colony, so to speak. These colonies, with land and game, would flourish. Linguistic and cultural ties would tend to exist, at least latently, among these related groups. Herein, it is speculated, one finds the origin of tribes, groups of related families, or clans. Naturally one tribe, or group of tribes, so to speak, might encounter others, say, of different origins, and competition of territory and resources might ensure, with not unpredictable consequences. Those tribes which were the strongest, the fiercest, the most skilled, the least merciful, tended to be victorious in such rivalries, supplanting their foes, destroying them, driving them away, enslaving them, such things. Some of these tribes, those living near seas, or inlets, or rivers, or whose wanderings brought them to such places, and learning of the existence of different forms of folks, not all of the forests, added trading, and, of course, piracy, or raiding, to their other pursuits. Indeed, whether a vessel was a trader or a raider would often depend on the nature, and strength, of what they encountered in their farings abroad. I mention these things in order to shed more light on the nature of the forest peoples, and perhaps similar peoples. For example, the Alemanni, or, as the empire will have it, the Aatii, and the Vandals, were both forest peoples, and, because of common origins and challenges, were not too much unlike, basically, despite their terrible enmity, which had lasted for generations, until the substantial pacification, or near destruction, of the Vandals by forces of the empire. All this has to do, actually, with the adz, a particular adz which we shall encounter later, on what we shall speak of as the Meeting World. Even though the Alemanni, that nation, so to speak, and her composite tribes, such as the Drisriaks, now possessed, to some extent, weaponry, and devices, and ships, which permitted them to at least harry, if not threaten, the empire, they still retained, as some peoples, do, a sense of tradition, and certain practices, the origins of which have been lost in the mists of time, antedating even a thousand of the thousand-year-old oaks. The adz, like the ax, and the spear, and the sword, was a part of this tradition, and these practices. The particular adz we have in mind lay now in a leather case on the flagship of the fleet of Abrogastes, the Far-Grasper, king of the Drisriaks, the largest and most fierce of the tribes of the Alemanni nation. In the same compartment, near the adz, on a shallow bronze plate, and covered with a purple cloth, was a heavy, sturdy, muchly scarred, peeled stump, one which had been brought from the home world of the Alemanni.

  CHAPTER 4

  “Call to the attention of the emperor,” snapped Julian, turning about, angrily, in the antechamber, addressing a servitor, bearing sherbets, “that his cousin, Julian, of the Aurelianii, and Otto, first among the Wolfungs, await their audience.”

  “Sherbets, milords,” said the servitor, placing two bowls on the marble table in the room, that between two couches. Elsewhere in the room were curule chairs.

  Julian was on his feet, as he had been, after the first hour, striding the length of the room.

  Otto, whom we have hitherto spoken of as the giant, who was chieftain of the Wolfungs, a minor tribe of the Vandals, sat, cross-legged, to one side, his back to the wall, facing the door.

  He did not wish to sit upon the curule chairs. It was not that he could not sit upon such devices, or found them unfamiliar, or uncomfortable, for he had known such on Terennia, and on Tangara, and similar things on the ship. Indeed, he had stools, benches, and a throne, or high seat, of sorts, of crude wood, in the main village of the Wolfungs, which village contained the hut of the chieftain, his hut, larger than the other huts. The reason he did not wish to sit upon the curule chairs was because, lifting the corner of the small, silken rugs upon which they sat, he had detected a fine line in the floor which, subsequently traced, suggested an opening, marking a section of the floor through which, if released, a catch undone, a bolt drawn, the chair might descend.

  “There are doubtless various panels in the room” had said Julian, irritably, “through which one might exit, if one were knowledgeable, eluding pursuers, avoiding unwanted meetings, through which guards might enter, surprising occupants, making arrests, and such. The traps beneath those chairs may even be benign, leading to stairwells from the room, or giving entry to it. Move the chairs, if you wish.”

  “Why are you angry?” had asked Otto.

  “I do not care to be kept waiting,” said Julian. He was in dress uniform, that of an ensign in the imperial navy, white, with gold braid, but, too, with three purple cords at the left shoulder, indicating the loftiness of his birth, his closeness to the imperial family itself.

  “I am sorry, milord,” said the servitor.

  This response had infuriated Julian.

  “There is nothing untoward, nor unexpected in this,” said Julian.

  “No, milord.”

  “The audience has been long arranged,” said Julian.

  “Yes, milord.”

  “You understand clearly who I am, who we are.”

  “I am sure the emperor will see you shortly,” said the servitor.

  “Convey my displeasure to the arbiter of protocol,” said Julian.

  The face of the servitor went white. Otto gathered that the arbiter of protocol must be a powerful man.

  “Convey it,” said Julian.

  “I shall commend the matter to the attention of my superior,” said the servitor.

  “Go,” said Julian.

  “Yes, milord.”

  Julian, though one of the wealthiest men in the empire, though a member of the patricians, of the senatorial class, though kin to the imperial family itself, had, following a tradition of forebears of the Aurelianii, of service to the empire, entered the imperial navy. He had qualified for a commission, and trained, as though he might have been no more than another ambitious scion of the lower honestori. He was a gifted, dedicated officer. He performed his duties conscientiously. He accorded every due respect to his military superiors. Had he been unknown he would doubtless have been accounted, with little thought given to the matter, an excellent officer, and would have been innocently and deservedly popular with both subordinates and superiors alike, fair, if severe, with the former, expecting them to meet standards scarcely less exacting than those he set himself, and cooperative and dutiful in his relations with the latter. On the other hand, he was not unknown. He was of the Aurelianii. Accordingly men sought to enter his command, hoping to advance themselves in the service, and higher officers must view him with the keenest ambivalence. Though he was young and less experienced, his blood was among the highest and noblest in the empire, and his station was one to which one might not hope to attain save perhaps through royal marriage or through a special imperial appointment to the rank of patrician, doubtless conjoined with the gift of an auspicious post, or command, say, that of prefect, or treasurer, or master of the imperial police, or palace guard, or master of ships, master of the mobile forces, master of the borders, master of the horse, such things. One must treat such a subordinate with care. Perhaps, if one is politically astute, one may advance him in such a way as to advance oneself as well. And how uncertain a thing to have him in one’s command, such an opportunity, yet such a danger, as well. Was it not, in a sense, like being under scrutiny, like being in the capital itself?

  The servitor then withdrew from the antechamber.

  “You can move the chair,” had said Julian.

  “Then they might suspect I had discovered the door beneath the chair,” had said Otto.

  “They already know,” said Julian.

  Otto had regard him, puzzled.

  “You remember the screens on the ship?” asked Julian.

  “Yes,” said Otto. He had eagerly learned all he could on the ship which had brought them to the summer world.

  Julian had then pointed to an aperture in the wall, high, near the ceiling. />
  It was then that Otto had risen and gone to sit, cross-legged, to one side. It was then unlikely that he could be seen from the vantage of the aperture.

  It had been shortly thereafter that the servitor had entered with sherbets, and had looked quickly about the room.

  He had seen Otto in his place.

  Otto did not doubt but what he had entered to ascertain his position in the room.

  Shortly after they had been ushered into the room, better than two hours ago, the servitor had appeared, offering them a choice between the ices and sherbets.

  “Inform the emperor we await his pleasure,” had said Julian, in fury. He had been already deeply angered, from what he interpreted as the first insult, that of the outer gate, when the herald had inquired as to the identities of those he should announce. The audience had been prearranged. Was he not anticipated? Was he not recognized? Did they not know who he was? Then, what Julian took as a second insult, he had not been immediately introduced, warmly welcomed, into the presence of his kinsman, the emperor. Rather, he had been ushered into this room, to wait, as though he might be no more than some petitioner, or sycophant, some provincial magistrate, from some minor world, some ambassador from some unimportant client world, such things.

  Flavored ices, not sherbets had been brought.

  The ices, in their bowls of translucent quartz, perhaps from the mines of Jaria, brought then in all likelihood through the pass, or tunnel, of Aureus, had melted, how forming soft, foamlike pools of yellow and purple.

  They had not been touched by either Julian or Otto.