LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

ship’, and there were obviously other ships in the vicinity as well. It was fairly clear that these man-creatures who called themselves ‘Maags’ were not out on the face of Mother Sea in search of fish. Evidently they searched for the ships of other outlanders in order to take gold from them. Apparently, Dahlaine’s assessment of the outlanders had been correct. They were interested in gold, though Zelana could not quite understand why. The Seagull, it seemed, might be too good an opportunity to pass by. Now that Zelana could understand the speech of the outlanders, and if things went as the one called Cap’n seemed to hope they would, Zelana would be able to observe the outlanders who called themselves Maags in action. Should they prove to be suitable, their ship would make things very easy. A word or two with Mother Sea could produce a current which would sweep the Seagull to the west coast to the Land of Dhrall almost as fast as the wind could carry a mote of dust.

      The more she thought about it, the more Zelana came to believe that these Maags might be exactly what she was seeking. She would need to watch and listen, though, and that suggested that she’d probably need to be somewhere inside the floating house called Seagull. That wouldn’t be a problem of any magnitude. There were ways she could make herself inconspicuous while she watched and listened. Then, if these Maags proved to be suitable…

      They all seemed to have peculiar names that were descriptive, though not always flattering. The one they respectfully called ‘Captain’, or ‘Cap’n’, was Sorgan Hook-Beak. Zelana, walking fly-like across the ceiling of the low-roofed structure at the rear of the Seagull, noticed that Sorgan did have a nose that was much like the beak of an eagle – or maybe a vulture. The one known as ‘Ox’ had shoulders like a bull, and there was another who gave orders who was called ‘Kryda Ham-Hand,’ although ‘Bear-Paw’ might have served as well. ‘Ham-Hand,’ Zelana noticed, gave orders with his fists, and nobody seemed inclined to ignore him.

      Among those who took orders from Cap’n, Ox, and Ham-Hand were ‘the Fat Man’, who prepared their food, ‘Ado the Slow’, who appeared to be almost as bright as a tree-stump, and ‘Kaldo Tree-Top’, who was very tall. There was also a ‘Big-Feet’, a ‘Buck-Teeth’, a ‘Jug-Ears’, and a small, wiry one known only as ‘Rabbit’.

      The tree that grew up out of the middle of the Seagull was called a ‘mast’, and the sheet of heavy fabric the Maags attached to the mast was called a ‘sail’. Zelana didn’t quite grasp the significance of the sail until she saw the Maags raise it to catch the morning breeze the next day. The Maags, it appeared, were clever enough to let the wind do most of their work for them. Zelana was fond of the wind herself, so she approved of the notion.

      It was about mid-morning of that day when Ox shouted. ‘Sail ho, Cap’n!’ and there was an immediate flurry of activity. The Maags brought out their weapons – metal knives with long blades they called ‘swords’, large axes, spears, and various other implements that appeared to have been designed to hurt people.

      The Seagull raced across the water and soon overtook another ship, and the Maags stood along the Seagull’s rail brandishing their weapons and howling threats at the men on the other ship.

      The ship that seemed to be of great interest to the Maags was larger than the Seagull, and it seemed to be wide and slow. The man-things on that ship were clothed mostly in cloth, and there seemed to be more of them than there were on the Seagull.

      Then, much to Zelana’s surprise, the man-things on the other ship all jumped into Mother Sea and tried to swim away as fast as they could.

      The Maags quickly tied the Seagull to the side of the other ship and began to carry all sorts of things across to their floating home. When they had finished, they cut the ropes that bound the two ships togther.

      ‘Should we burn her, Cap’n?’ Ox asked Hook-Beak hopefully.

      ‘I don’t think so,’ Sorgan replied. ‘Let the Trogites have their ship back. We’ve got what we wanted. Maybe they’ll go back and fill her up once more. Then we can chase them down and rob them again.’

      Zelana considered some options at that point. The Maags of the Seagull had spoken of a number of times when they’d attacked various coastal settlements, so it appeared that they knew how to fight on the ground as well as out on the face of Mother Sea. They also seemed to be in the habit of bragging about their various adventures. If a sudden sea-current ‘just happened’ to carry the Seagull to the Land of Dhrall, and the crew also ‘happened’ to come across a great deal of gold and then went home to brag about their good fortune, it wouldn’t be long before hundreds of Maag ships would descend on the coast of Dhrall. Once they were there, a bit of manipulation would be all it should take to get them to attack the forces of the Vlagh. The word ‘gold’ did seem to get the immediate attention of the Maags.

      Zelana sent her thought out to Mother Sea and made a brief suggestion. Mother Sea thought it might be sort of amusing.

      Not long afterward, the Seagull was placidly quartering the wind and moving in a generally southeasterly direction. Then a sudden swirling turbulence caught the ship and swept it sideways toward the east. Hook-Beak, Ox, and Ham-Hand started bellowing conflicting orders, and their underlings tried to do several different things all at the same time, but nothing they tried – and probably nothing they could have tried – made the slightest bit of difference. The Seagull continued to move easterly, sometimes sideways, sometimes front first, and sometimes backward. Mother Sea’s grip was very, very firm.

      Zelana rode the wind high above and watched with a certain satisfaction as the Seagull moved inexorably toward the Land of Dhrall. Whether they liked it or not, Hook-Beak and his crew had just joined the forces of good in the eternal struggle with the evil of the Vlagh.

       THE SEAFARERS

       1

      Though he would deny it with his dying breath, if the truth were to be known, it was sheer coincidence that led to the discovery of the Land of Dhrall by Captain Sorgan Hook-Beak and the crew of his ship, the Seagull.

      As all the world knows, Sorgan Hook-Beak of the Land of Maag is the greatest sea-captain of all time. No man yet born can match him in the prediction of wind, weather, tides, or the probable value of the cargo of any ship unlucky enough to encounter the Seagull on the high seas.

      The men of the Land of Maag are bigger than the men of lands farther to the south, and they took to the sea early in their history. The mountains of Maag march down to the sea, and their slopes seem almost to point seaward, mutely saying, ‘Go there’. Mountains are fine for hunting, but not too good for farming, so the men of Maag farmed the sea instead, and her crops were bountiful. Fish-hooks are much easier to hammer out of iron than plows, and fish-nets harvest bigger crops than scythes. Then too, the men who harvest the sea aren’t obliged to spend all those tedious months waiting for their crops to grow. The crops of the sea are always there, and they can be harvested in any season.

      The people of the Land of Maag developed a quaint custom early in their history. They frequently used descriptions rather than names. Thus there could be several ‘Big-Foots’ or ‘Buck-Teeth’ in a Maag village, along with assorted ‘Slim-Wits’, ‘Fats’, and ‘Pigeon-Toes’. More conventional names came along later, after the Maags had made contact with the more refined peoples to the south. Sorgan Hook-Beak was proud of his name, since it suggested that others considered him to be an eagle, that noblest of all birds.

      He went to sea early in his life, and his first captain was the legendary Dalto Big-Nose, a man whose very name struck terror into the heart of every Trogite sea-captain who sailed the northern sea.

Скачать книгу