Saber and Shadow Read online

  Saber and Shadow

  Fifth Millennium

  Book II

  Shirley Meier & S. M. Stirling

  CONTENT

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIV

  Chapter XV

  Chapter XVI

  Chapter XVII

  Chapter XVIII

  Chapter XIX

  Chapter XX

  Chapter XXI

  Chapter XXII

  Chapter XXIII

  Chapter XXIV

  Chapter XXV

  Chapter XXVI

  Chapter XXVII

  Chapter XXVIII

  Chapter XXIX

  Chapter XXX

  Appendix A: Glossary

  Appendix B: Fifth Millennium Notes

  Languages

  Languages Of Almerkun (N. America)

  Kommanzanu

  Fehinnan

  Languages Of The Mitvald Zee Area

  Iyesian (LaEnchais)

  Lakan

  Yeoli

  Arkan

  Zak

  Brahvnikian

  Aenir

  Ryadn

  Mogh-iur

  Hyernic

  Srian

  Anglun

  Moryavskan

  Soldenkor

  Notes on Fehinna

  Physical type

  Costume

  Technology

  Food and Cuisine

  Family Structure

  Sexual Mores

  Racial Types Of The Fifth Millennium

  Groups

  Kommanza

  Fehinnan

  Zak

  Appendix C: The Making of Fifth Millennium

  The Fifth Millennium Series

  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.

  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.

  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 ’e
m 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.

  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.

  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.

  There was no way to get water, and the shitbuckets at the ends of the rows had become dangerous missiles as the ship rolled, lurching out of their stands. For a moment, she shuddered at the thought of what it must be like down at the bottommost layer.

  How many days: one? Two at most? She’d hesitated about doing anything as the storm hit, even though the crew would be busy. If the slaves could get loose in the tumult, they’d nave to crew the ship. I hate being unsure of what to do. They were nowhere near land that she last knew, but with the storm blowing for more than a day they’d have to do something soon or all die of thirst. I’d heard that storms on this sea could run for days, but reading it and feeling it are two different things. The groaning of the wooden hull was an even, harsh grind, punctuated now and then with tooth-grating crack-pop sounds as the Flycatcher climbed up and planed down waves peaking high as the mizzen masthead.

  Jaipahl reached out in the dark and fumblingly patted her shoulder. She swallowed again, trying to work up spit, tasting dry bile. Jaipahl leaned over and yelled in her ear.

  “There’s more water in the bilge, someone passed the word up. It’s running through the slats on the bottom tier.”

  Her skin crawled as she realized the ship’s seams were going. The Flycatcher was filthy but sound, and the decking hatches were still tight. The rhythm of the waves was bad, though—a pounding twist as the slaver ploughed into each swell, wrenching as her bow broke Free. Treenails were yielding, stringers working loose on the frame, caulking tearing out.

  She had to do something. Just then the hull-note changed and someone yelled wordlessly from forward, a different sound from people fighting with each other, more panicked than angry. Something went crack above their heads as canvas gave way. That was the last sail. Seconds later the ship lurched and groaned, the bow not meeting the waves quite
head-on.

  She pulled her legs up as much as she could, pulling Jaipahl’s up, too. I’ll explain later. If the ship goes down well never get out in the mess. I don’t want to die. She snapped the link of the chain, caught Jaipahl’s hand and made him feel the broken edge because in the noise she couldn’t explain. Even as the ship lurched she could feel him tense, though he didn’t move immediately. The severed chain slithered through ankle-rings, leaving the coffle free.

  Megan was short enough to sit up without hitting her head on the deck over her head but couldn’t brace herself. The forward hatch was ripped open then, letting in a blast of wind and water foaming up over the hatch-combing, with a little light. Fear came with it, but clean air as well. Three of the Flycatcher’s crew held onto the hatch, yelling down that they needed everyone to bail or work the pumps. An ominous rending groan came from forward, and they swung down and started unlocking chains as Megan stood up, crouched, feeling the deck against her back.

  The Flycatcher lurched, falling, and Megan lost her balance and fell three tiers onto the people tying below. For a moment she lay, gasping, as hands reached, touching in the dark. I’m going mad. Her chest was tight, the ship was screaming as Megan wanted to. Out—she had to get out.

  She bit down on the edge of her hand, spat out scum that crusted on her teeth, forcing calm. Her teeth hurt and felt a little loose; not enough greens, she thought irrelevantly. She scrambled up to her knees, realized why the person she’d landed most heavily on wasn’t protesting, and bellowed as best she could, using the command-voice she had developed as a riverboat captain on the Brezhan.

  “DONT FIGHT, they need us to bail!”

  She had to yell to be heard, in all the languages she knew, hoping that someone had the sense to pass on the word. It was hard to tell, but clutching hands let go.

  She clambered up to the forward hatch. Another wave washed over the deck, pouring in the open hatch with a cold impact that wrenched at her wrists as she clung to the ladder, stinging in all the wounds and grazes.

  “Hang on, Jaipahl!” Megan shouted in his ear, as they cleared the ladder, falling flat on the pitching deck and grabbing for rope ends. It was day—black cloud, black water washing over the stern. Sailors were handing down buckets, calling the first out of the hold to the fixed pumps to relieve exhausted crew. The ceramic gears whined as slaves and crewfolk heaved at the crank handles, and spouts of filthy bilgewater scudded across the deck, lost in the wind-blown wrack.