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lethargy could drug us into stupefaction, we were flogged out and herded up into the job of hauling the swifters out of the water. The wood from which swifters are built must have been placed on Kregen either by a god or a devil. This flibre, as I have said, possesses remarkable strength for a remarkable lightness. We would scarcely have shifted the ships had they been built of lenk. But flibre gives a large vessel the shrewd feather-lightness of a much flimsier vessel. As I say, flibre was put on Kregen either by a god or a devil — a god, in order to lighten the drudgery of slaves, or a devil so that the damned ships could be manhandled out of the water at all.
    At last, fed, exhausted, we flopped down on the hard ground of the stockade and slept.
    If anyone had wished to tell the story of his life to me at that time, and paid me handsomely to listen, I’d have consigned him to the Ice Floes of Sicce, and turned over and slept.
    The next day the swifters remained high on the beach and we oar-slaves sprawled in the stockade, still chained, but able to stretch out and rest our abused bodies.
    Parties of hunters went inland toward the mountains and later as the suns began their curve toward the horizon we slaves were issued with steaming chunks of vosk. How we grabbed and stuffed and ate! Provisioning swifters is invariably a complicated process, and the large numbers of men involved demand ready access to vast quantities of food. Usually we subsisted on the mash — there are several varieties — the base of which consists of mergem, that rich plant stuffed with protein and vitamins and iron that has the blessed quality of fortifying a man against his daily toil. But for mergem, which provides so much nourishment in so small a bulk, we would have been a gaunt and hungry crew and quite unfitted to haul on our looms. Onions were provided — how Zorg and I had debated the dissection of a pair of onions! — and some cheese and crusts and palines. [1] The palines helped keep the insanity levels within toleration.
    We devoured the boiled vosk with the voraciousness of leems. Then we lay back with bloated bellies, burping contentedly, to sleep the night away.
    Duhrra at last found time to tell me what had happened since we had stirred up the camp of King Genod’s army and stolen his airboat. He had had to be overpowered by the Zairians from Zandikar when I did not return in time, for he would have gone to find me. He spoke of this with some spirit of contempt for himself that he had been thwunked on the back of the head when he should have been alert not only against the cramphs of Green Grodnims but also, apparently, against the Red Zandikarese.
    “When I woke up, Dak — duh! We were flying in the air!”
    “You cannot blame the Hikdar — Ornol ti Zab, I believe his name was — he had a duty very plain to him.”
    “Maybe so. But we flew away and left you.”
    He and the lad Vax had shipped back from Zandikar and their vessel had been taken. It was becoming more and more dangerous for any vessel of the Red to venture into the western parts of the inner sea these days. The Grodnims had placed swifter squadrons at sea, which carried all before them. Only a very slim coincidence had brought us together again, and to Duhrra it was absolutely inevitable that we should meet up once more. As for Vax, he told me the youth was a fine lad, and potentially a good companion; although he would swear so dreadfully about his father, and Duhrra was strongly of the opinion that if Vax hadn’t run away from home to escape the continual beatings, he’d have killed the old devil. Or, so Duhrra believed.
    I gave him a brief — a very brief — résumé of what had happened to me after we’d parted. He expressed a desire to twist Gafard’s neck a little. We had both been employed by Gafard, the King’s Striker, the Sea Zhantil, who was the hateful King Genod’s right-hand man, when we’d been renegades, as Gafard himself was a