Short Fiction - Poul Anderson (books to read for self improvement .TXT) 📗

Corun,” said Khroman. “You’ve led us a merry chase. Once I almost had the pleasure of meeting you myself. It was when you raided Serapolis⁠—remember? I happened to be there, and gave chase in one of the war-galleys. But we never did catch you.”

“One of the ships did.” Corun’s voice was strangely soft for so big a man. “It didn’t come back, as you may recall.”

“How did they finally catch you?” asked Khroman.

Corun shrugged, and the chains about his wrists rattled. “You already know as much as I care to talk about,” he said wearily. “We sailed into Iliontis Bay and found a whole fleet waiting for us. Someone must finally have spied out our stronghold.” Khroman nodded, and Corun shrugged a shoulder: “They blocked off our retreat, so we just fought till everyone was dead or captured. These half-hundred men are all who live. Unfortunately, I was knocked out during the battle and woke up to find myself a prisoner. Otherwise⁠—” his blue gaze raked the court with a lashing contempt⁠—“I could be peacefully feeding fish now, instead of your witless fish-eyes.”

“I won’t drag out the business for you, Corun,” said Khroman. “Your men will have to be given to the games, of course, but you can be decently and privately beheaded.”

“Thanks,” said the pirate, “but I’ll stay with my men.”

Khroman stared at him in puzzlement. “But why did you ever do it?” he asked finally. “With your strength and skill and cunning, you could have gone far in Achaera. We take mercenaries from conquered provinces, you know. You could have gotten Achaeran citizenship in time.”

“I was a prince of Conahur,” said Corun slowly. “I saw my land invaded and my folk taken off as slaves. I saw my brothers hacked down at the battle of Lyrr, my sister taken as concubine by your admiral, my father hanged, my mother burned alive when they fired the old castle. They offered me amnesty because I was young and they wanted a figurehead. So I swore an oath of fealty to Achaera, and broke it the first chance I got. It was the only oath I ever broke, and still I am proud of it. I sailed with pirates until I was big enough to master my own ships. That is enough of an answer.”

“It may be,” said Khroman slowly. “You realize, of course, that the conquest of Conahur took place before I came to the throne? And that I certainly couldn’t negate it, in view of the Thalassocrat’s duty to his own country, and had to punish its incessant rebelliousness?”

“I don’t hold anything against you yourself, Khroman,” said Corun with a tired smile. “But I’d give my soul to the nether fires for the chance to pull your damned palace down around your ears!”

“I’m sorry it has to end this way,” said the king. “You were a brave man. I’d like to drain many beakers of wine with you on the other side of death.” He signed to the guards. “Take him away.”

“One moment, sire,” said Shorzon. “Is it your intention to lock all these pirates in the same dungeon cell?”

“Why⁠—I suppose so. Why not?”

“I do not trust their captain. Chained and imprisoned, he is still a menace. I think he has certain magical techniques⁠—”

“That’s a lie!” spat Corun. “I never needed your stinking woman’s tricks to flatten the likes of Achaera!”

“I would not leave him with his men,” advised Shorzon imperturbably. “Best he be given his own cell, alone. I know a place.”

“Well⁠—well, let it be so.” Khroman waved a hand in dismissal.

As Shorzon turned to lead the guards off, he traded a long glance with Chryseis. Her eyes remained hooded as she looked after the departing captives.

II

The cell was no longer than a man’s height, a dripping cave hewed out of the rock under the palace foundations. Corun crouched on the streaming floor in utter darkness. The chains which they had locked to ringbolts in the wall clashed when he stirred.

And this was how it ended, he thought bitterly. The wild career of the exiled conqueror, the heave and surge of ships under the running waves, the laughter of comrades and the clamor of swords and the thrum of wind in the rigging, had come to this⁠—one man hunched in a loneliness and darkness like a colder womb, waiting in timeless murk for the day when they would drag him out to be torn by beasts for the amusement of fools.

They fed him at intervals, a slave bringing a bowl of prison swill while a spear-armed guard stood well out of reach and watched. Otherwise he was alone. He could not even hear the voices of other captives; there was only the slow dripping of water and the harsh tones of iron links. The cell must lie below even the regular dungeons, far down in the very bowels of the island.

Vague images floated across his mind⁠—the high cliffs about Iliontis Bay, the great flowers blooming with sullen fires in the jungle beyond the beach, the slim black corsair galleys at anchor. He remembered the open sky, the eternally clouded sky under which blew the long wet winds, out of which spilled rain and lightning and grew the eerie blue of dusk. He had often wondered what lay beyond those upper clouds.

Now and then, he remembered, one could see the vague disc of the Heaven-Fire, and he had heard of times when incredibly violent storms opened a brief rift in the high cloud layers to let through a shaft of searing brilliance at whose touch water boiled and the earth burst into flame. It made him think of the speculations of Conahur’s philosophers, that the world was really a globe around which the Heaven-Fire swung, bringing day and night. Some had gone so far as to imagine that it was the world which did the moving, that the Heaven-Fire was a ball of flame in the middle of creation about which all other things revolved.

But