Indeed, the main subject of conversation in the marketplace and on the docks was why Kethna had not already attacked. Some people speculated that Kethna had more immediate projects, such as defending itself against the pirates of Mikawuru. No one knew what the true situation was, since all communication had been cut off; of course this did not keep people from reporting all sorts of wild tales as the truth. It never had and never would.

  Hadon considered going along the coast westward until they reached a small village about thirty miles east of the strait. Here they could disembark and proceed over the mountains of the peninsula to the Sea of Opar. They could make their way along the precipitous shore to the city of Kethna. And there, hopefully, they could buy passage on a merchant ship to Opar. Or else they could purchase a small sailing ship. Or, if they had no money, steal a vessel.

  The main trouble with this plan was that the journey through the mountains, though relatively short, was known to be very dangerous. Of the two trails available, both were difficult to traverse and beset with wild beasts and outlaws. It was even said that a mountain-loving type of Nukaar, the hairy apemen of the trees, dwelt in that area. Much was said about this land, none of it good.

  Another route would be directly south of Wethna. This too would be over mountains, and the passage through these would take about five times longer than the former route. Having crossed, however, the party would be much closer to Opar. They would, theoretically, come out close to the city of Wentisuh. From there they could take a ship or even a coastal boat to the port which served the inland city of Opar. After much asking about it in the bazaar and on the docks, however, Hadon decided against the second route. It was so dangerous that nobody knew of anyone who had ever used it successfully.

  Paga suggested a third alternative.

  “Why not take a small vessel into the strait under cover of night? If there is no moon, and the ship is little enough, we could slip by the big vessels. They won’t be anchoring against the cliffs or across the mouth of the strait, you may be sure of that.”

  “No,” Hadon said. “But the strait is very narrow; it’s only about eighty feet wide at the mouth. The cliffs on both sides reach a height of two hundred feet there, though the mountains immediately beyond them tower several thousand feet. If there are marines stationed on both sides, they can observe anything that passes through on the waters below. They will most assuredly have torches or lamps floating on buoys in the mouth of the strait, and these will enable the marines to see at night too. They will undoubtedly also have large rocks ready to be cast down on a ship, and flaming oil and Kho only knows what else. They will be able to summon the blockading ships by bell or signal fire or some means, who knows?

  “Besides, there is nothing to prevent them from stretching a net across the mouth.”

  “Could we slip past the guards on either side above?” Lalila said. “Then walk along the top of the cliffs to the other end of the strait?”

  “No,” Hadon said. “The cliffs become sheer mountains. There are some plateaus further along, but I wouldn’t know how to get to them. Besides, the wild Klemqaba roam those parts.”

  While he was deciding what to do, Hadon took a job as bodyguard for a rich Wethnan merchant. Kebiwabes picked up some money by singing in the streets and in the taverns. Paga apprenticed himself to a blacksmith. Though he did not earn much, he did learn a lot about the skill of working iron. This went on for thirty-five days, at the end of which there was enough money to buy passage to the village of Phetapoeth. There was not nearly enough, however, to buy a small ship for their purposes.

  “It will take three more months just to save enough to buy a very small fishing skiff,” Hadon said. “Lalila has about four months left before the baby comes. I doubt that we could get to Opar in a month’s time—not with the troubled situation. But if we took passage on a ship to Phetapoeth now, we couldn’t leave the village after we got there. There are no jobs there. So...”

  “So we steal a ship!” Lalila said. “Or we go to Phetapoeth and then go over the mountains!”

  “I think,” Hadon said slowly, “that we will try to go through the strait after all. It is dangerous, but the least dangerous way.”

  “And if we can’t get through, then we can try the mountain passes above Phetapoeth?” Lalila asked.

  She looked anxious, and rightly so, since such a trip would make strong men look forward to it with anything but joy. For a pregnant woman and a little child to venture there with only a bard, a manling and Hadon—swordsman though he was—was madness, or not far from it.

  Hadon felt angry. Somehow he had failed her, yet what else could he do? He was not one of the heroes of ancient times, Nakadeth, for instance, who could steal a pair of magical shoes from an evil spider and walk across the skies upside down, thus going over instead of around those very mountains.

  Lalila, looking intently at him, said, “Do not be angry, Hadon. You cannot help it that you are only human.”

  He was astonished, not for the first time, at her ability to read his thoughts. Sometimes he wondered if she was indeed a witch from the sea. The idea made him proud that such a woman would love him, yet, at the same time, it made him feel uneasy too, thinking of certain undesirable thoughts he’d had. For instance, if Lalila could read his thoughts when he saw the beautiful wife of the merchant for whom he was working, what would she do?

  Come to think of it, she always had a rather peculiar smile at these times.

  “What’s the matter now, Hadon?” Lalila said.

  “Oh!” he said, staring. “Nothing. I was just trying to envision the strait as I saw it some years ago.”

  She had that same peculiar smile.

  He went to the docks that night after his shift. He inquired around, found a dockmaster and asked him about passage to Phetapoeth.

  “Why would you want to take your woman and child to that Kho-forsaken place?” the dockmaster asked. “There’s no work for a numatenu there. Besides, too many ships have disappeared on their way there. There are pirates along that route, honored swordsman. They lurk in every little bay and cove, ready to dash out and intercept any ship that looks like easy prey.”

  Hadon hesitated. His first impulse had been to tell the man that he was sticking his nose up the ape’s ass.*

  *A literal translation of a widespread Khokarsan phrase. This is based on an old folk tale which is too repulsive even for the standards of modern American publishing. However, like most old jokes, it originated in the Old Stone Age and is found, in one form or another, in all countries.

  He checked himself, however, because he did not want to anger the fellow. If he became suspicious of Hadon, he could notify the authorities and they could—no, would—arrest him for questioning. As in all countries, the spy-hunting fever was raging. Wethna was theoretically neutral, having declared for neither Awineth nor Minruth. This placed Wethna in a delicate situation, since whoever triumphed might decide to punish Wethna for not having taken a definite stand. In fact, Hadon thought, this would inevitably occur. The city fathers and mothers should have gone one way or the other, even if they had had to resort to tossing a coin.

  The reasoning for Wethna’s neutrality was the hope that the winner would be grateful to them for not fighting on the side of the enemy. Hadon considered this very unrealistic. Kings and queens always regarded the person who was not for them as against them. And history had verified that retaliation for less than wholehearted backing was a terrible thing. Entire cities had been leveled and their population, man, woman and beast, had been slaughtered because of lukewarm loyalty.

  This was not, however, Hadon’s concern. Even if it was he would have forgotten it because of a sudden and much more immediate worry. Five days before the group was to leave on a merchant galley, plague struck Wethna.

  No one knew who brought the disease into Wethna, but most supposed that some sailors were responsible. It did not matter. What did was that this particular plague, called the sweating sickness, spread with frightening swiftness. And it killed with even more terrifying speed.

  Kebiwabes was the first of the group to hear of it. He hurried home from a tavern at which he had been singing. He was bursting to tell the news, which was that several dozen people on the docks had been laid low with the disease. He found Hadon in its grip.

  It fan its course in the usual three days. First Hadon was seized with an unaccountable sense of dread, a sense of overpowering but nameless doom. About fifteen minutes later he began shivering violently. He felt as if he had suddenly been plunged into the icy waters of a mountain lake. Then he became dizzy, suffered an agonizing headache and great pain in his neck, shoulders, arms and legs. He was unable to lift even his head.

  Three hours later he felt like he was on fire and began the profuse sweating which lasted for a day and a night. The perspiring stopped suddenly, but it was followed by more headache, intense thirst, a rapid beating of the heart and then delirium.

  At the end of its course, Hadon was free of the plague’s symptoms but was forced to stay in bed for four days because of extreme weakness. He was unattended by any doctor during this whole time. Though the bard and Lalila took turns looking for a physician while Hadon was nursed by one or the other, they could not get one. The doctors were either too busy to come or were themselves sick or dead. His friends could only nurse him and hope for the best. Lalila and Paga took turns squeezing water from a rag over his feverish body and lifting his head so he could drink great quantities of water.

  The noise of the streets outside, the chatter and yelling of nearby pedestrians and the not too distant sounds of the marketplace, had died. Except for the tramping of feet and muffled booming of a drum as patrols passed, or the cry of the corpse-collectors to bring out the dead, all was quiet. Now and then a man or a woman screamed or a child cried.

  A day after Hadon’s sickness passed, Kebiwabes was seized with the irresistible sensation of impending death. Lalila and Paga now had two patients to take care of, though Hadon was no longer a constant concern.

  The bard did not die during the first day, which meant he would probably survive.

  Lalila and Paga had to take turns going out after water and food. The bazaar was closed, the sellers having fled to their homes or out into the country. But there was food to be had if one had enough money. A few merchants had set up a market on the docks, guarded by soldiers who would admit only those who could show their money. Once Lalila was robbed on her way home by a hungry trio. She was knocked down and her basket was grabbed and run off with. She made two trips that day, taking Paga with her the second time. She did not like to leave the convalescent and the sick one without any care, but if they did not get food, they would die anyway.

  Sometimes, when the wind shifted, they could smell the odor of bodies burning in the great charnel pit outside the west wall. Then the giant bronze bells in the temples of Kho and Resu would toll sadly.

  Lalila and Paga waited to be struck, thinking it inevitable. But neither was felled, and the child also escaped the malady. Abeth did become ill four weeks later, though with a sickness which resembled typhus.

  The sweating disease raged through the city, slaying ten thousand out of a population of fifty thousand. At least a third of the city fled into the country as soon as the disease gained momentum. They took it with them, of course, and it spread through the rural areas. Eighty thousand farmers, fishermen, woodcutters and artisans died. The whole land of Wethna lay under a pall of stinking smoke from corpse-fires.

  Among the victims was the beautiful wife of the rich merchant. He had stayed in the city, gathering the profits from his food supplies. She went to their villa up in the hills and was killed, not by the sweating sickness, but from snakebite. She encountered a cobra while strolling in her garden one evening.

  In seven weeks the sickness had passed through the land and was gone. The survivors came out of hiding and began to put the nation together again.

  Abeth’s sickness passed, leaving her thin and listless. Not until almost two months after they had arrived at Wethna was the child fit for travel.

  Hadon had gone back to work for the merchant since they needed money desperately. His position as bodyguard enabled him to overhear many of the details of his employer’s business. He learned about a small fishing boat which the merchant had purchased at a low sum from the widow of a man who’d died of the plague. After looking it over, Hadon decided it was just the size he needed. He bought it at a fair price and still had money saved to rerig the boat. The men he hired to do the work evidently thought he was crazy. What was the yard attached to near the bottom of the mast and running lengthwise? What was the purpose of this? And why was he cutting a perfectly good sail diagonally, so that he now had two useless triangular sails?

  Hadon smiled and said he was trying an experiment. He did not tell the truth because of what Ruseth had said about people’s reactions to his own ship. He did not want to be suspected of sorcery and subjected to a court of inquiry.

  One morning, an hour after midnight, he and the others took the boat out of the harbor. By dawn they were out of sight of the city. Hadon did not worry about being pursued. Who could care that he left? His employer would just shrug his shoulders and count himself lucky that he did not have to pay him for the last week—until he found that Hadon had charged his account for the provisions. The two sums balanced each other, so Hadon figured he had not done anything dishonest.

  They reached the strait in five days. Before then, though, they knew something had happened there. They saw the wreck of a beached trireme, and two miles further on they came across a number of corpses floating over a wide area. Hadon took the vessel up boldly in daylight to the very mouth. There was no sign of a fleet until he got close to the entrance of the strait. The stern of a bireme jutted up from the water, almost blocking off the passage of Hadon’s craft. He could not understand what was keeping the ship from sinking, since the depth here was about four hundred feet.

  He had the sails dropped, and they rowed slowly past the wreck and the western wall. The sun was directly overhead at this time, enabling them to see for some distance down into the water. Hadon whistled and Kebiwabes swore. The galley was held up by a score of other ships, piled one on top of each other.

  “There must have been a hell of a battle here,” Hadon said. “But who tried to get out? The Kethnans?”

  “More than likely,” the bard said. “They must have tried to run the gauntlet of the marines on the cliff's. And some must have made it, otherwise Minruth’s fleet would still be here. They must have closed with the blockaders then, and in the battle everybody was sunk.”

  That seemed the only logical explanation, though it could have been pirates who came through the strait, not Kethnans. Who it was did not matter; the way was clear. The marines stationed above had either deserted their posts or been killedby the invading fleet. Maybe a Khokarsan ship or two had survived the battle and taken the marines home, since one ship could not maintain the blockade.

  The strait was still going to be closed to any vessel larger than a small fishing boat for some time. Eventually the current would move the wrecks on out into the deeper waters, or else the Kethnans would clear the top wrecks. Meanwhile, Hadon and his crew, not even excepting Lalila, who was far gone in pregnancy, rowed the boat through the fifty dark, silent miles of the winding strait. Because of their short-handedness they made slow progress, having to sleep at night. It took them over a week to get their vessel through, during which they worried about pirates or Kethnans. They were done for if they encountered another craft of any size. It would be impossible to flee.

  But no one else was in the strait and, on the tenth day, they came out against the current from the darkness and the silence. Like Keth, the ancient hero who first entered the Southern Sea, they were dazzled by the brightness of the equatorial sun.

  Hadon said, “Lalila! I was afraid our child would not be born in Opar. But now we have a good chance to make it on time. If Kho is with us, we shall be in my native city a week before your term is up.”

  Lalila smiled, though she looked tired, wan and anxious. Paga, forever the pessimist, growled, “Babies do not always come on schedule, Hadon.”

  22

  Kebiwabes said that their journey from Khokarsa to Wethna had enough . material for two epics. The voyage from Wethna to Opar had enough adventures to make three epics, and it wasn’t even finished. Hadon, in a typical statement, replied that all bards exaggerated enormously, though their experiences since the flight from the capital of Khokarsa could easily make one epic, if the bard was long-winded enough.

  “And I suppose,” Kebiwabes said, “that you would compress all of the adventures into a lyric, into nine or twenty-seven lines?”

  “That would be the ultimate in poetry,” Hadon said. Then, seeing that the bard looked hurt, he added, “Don’t pay any attention to what I say now, Kebiwabes. I am tired and hungry and anxious, since Lalila is so swelled that she seems about to burst like an overloaded wine sack. And I am taking my frustration and fear out on you.” “Not to mention that you have no taste,” Kebiwabes said. He walked to the other end of the boat, which wasn’t very far, and looked out ahead. His back expressed his anger.

  What the bard had said was not really too exaggerated. There had been many times when Hadon thought they would all be dead within a minute. But somehow, with mighty Kho giving them invisible yet evident help, they had come through.

  There had been other times when no danger pressed close, yet they felt imperiled. Just three days before, at dusk, their boat was passing close to a desolate marshy region, swamps which stretched inland for miles, then abruptly ended at sheer mountains. The only protuberance between the sea and the mountains was a hilly mass about a mile inward. Hadon was telling them that this was supposed to be the site of an ancient city.