The Mockery of Sharane

Chapter Twelve

Something deep within Kenton whispered to him to awaken; something reached down into the abysses of his charmed slumber and drew up to its surface his drugged consciousness. Slowly his heavy lids began to rise—then stopped, obeying some subtle warning. He looked out through narrowest slits. The chains that bound his wrists to the riveted manacles of the oar were long. He had moved in his sleep and now lay with head on arm stretched along the back of the low bench. He faced the ivory deck.

There, at its edge, looking down upon him, was Sharane. Veils of palest blue, through which the hands of Assyrian maids long dust had woven golden lotuses, draped her breast, coiled round her slender waist, and fell to the delicate, sandaled feet. Her black haired maiden Satalu beside her, she leaned over, scanning him. The wide, clear eyes were shadowed by a pity that held within it half scornful wonder.

His heart leaped to her loveliness. Here was his mate—in this world or any other this was his woman! And not by any of the standards of his own lost world could she be won.

“Mistress,” he heard Satalu say, “he cannot be man of Nergal, since Nergal’s men have chained him there.”

“No,” mused Sharane. “No—in that I was wrong. And had he been of Nergal, never could he have crossed the barrier. Nor would Klaneth have taunted me—as he did—”

“He is very handsome and young,” sighed Satalu—“and strong. He fought the priests like a lion lord.”

“Even a cornered rat will fight,” answered Sharane, scornful. “He let himself be led to his chains like a whipped dog. And he lied to me! He came to me in borrowed plumes bearing a sword he could not use!”

Her clenched hands trembled; she beat with them upon her breast.

“Oh,” cried the Lady Sharane—and half of that cry was a sob—“oh, Satalu, I am shamed! Liar and coward and slave—still he stirs something in my heart that never yet has stirred for man. Oh, I am shamed—I am shamed, Satalu!”

“Lady Sharane, do not weep!” Satalu caught the fluttering hands. “He may be none of these. How do you know? Perhaps he did speak the truth. How know we what has happened in that world of ours so long lost to us? And he is very handsome—and young!”

“At least,” said Sharane, and bitterly, “he is a slave.”

“Sh-h!” warned Satalu. “Zachel comes.”

They turned; walked toward Sharane’s cabin, out of Kenton’s vision. He heard soft steps nearing him; closed his eyes. The overseer paused beside him; evidently scanning him closely, suspiciously. He put his hand on Kenton’s head and pushed it from the pillow of his arm. Kenton let it fall limply, dragging the arm down with it. Satisfied that the spell of the horn still held him, Zachel passed on.

The wakening whistle shrilled. There was a stir among the slaves, and Kenton groaned, raised himself, rubbed eyes, and gripped the oar.

Exultation was in his heart. There could be no mistaking Sharane’s words. He held her. By a slender thread, it might be; but still—he held her. And if he were not a slave—when slave he ceased to be—what then? By no slender thread then would he hold her. He laughed—but softly, lest Zachel hear. Sigurd looked at him curiously.

“The sleep horn must have brought you gay dream, Kenton,” he murmured.

“Gay, indeed, Sigurd,” he answered. “The kind of dream that will thin our chains until we can snap them.”

“Odin send more dreams like it,” grunted the Norseman.

When Zachel blew the horn again Kenton had no need of it to send him to sleep. For the sharp eyes of the overseer had seen through Sigurd’s self-sacrificing stratagem, and he had watched Kenton continually, lashing him when he faltered or let the whole burden of the oar fall upon the Norseman. His hands were blistered, every bone and muscle ached, and his mind lay dulled in his weary body. And thus it was between the next five sleeps.

Once he roused himself enough to ask of Sigurd a question that had been going round and round in his brain. Half the rowers in the pit were behind the line that separated black deck from ivory deck—that line which neither Klaneth and his crew nor Sharane and her women could cross. Yet Zachel roamed at will from one end of that pit to the other; other priests, too, for he had seen them. And although he had not seen Klaneth or Gigi or the Persian there, he did not doubt that they could come and go if they so wished. Why, then, did not the black robes swarm up the farther side and overwhelm the rosy cabin? Why did not Sharane and her women drop into the pit and lay siege to the ebon cabin? Why did they not launch their javelins, their arrows, over the pit of the rowers into the wolfpack of the black priest?

It was a warlock ship, the Viking had repeated, and the spell upon it no simple one. The slave who had died had told him that he had been on the ship since the gods had launched her, and that the same unseen, mysterious barrier shut off the side of the rowers that rimmed Sharane’s deck. Nor could javelin or arrow or other missile other than those hurled by god and goddess penetrate it. Humanly, each opposing camp was helpless against the other. There were other rules, too, the slave had told him. For instance, neither Sharane nor Klaneth could leave the ship when it hove to in harbor. Sharane’s women could. The black priest’s men, yes—but not for long. Soon they must return. The ship drew them back. What would happen to them if they did not? The slave had not known, had said that such thing was impossible. The ship would draw them back.

Kenton pondered over all this as with aching back he pushed and pulled at the oar. Decidedly these were practical, efficient deities who had doomed the ship, overlooking no detail, he thought, half amused. Well, they had created the game, and certainly they had the right to make that game’s rules. He wondered whether Sharane could roam at will from stem to stern when he had conquered the ship. Wondering still, he heard the drone of Zachel’s horn begin, and pitched, content, into the bottomless oubliette of sleep it opened.

He awoke from the sixth sleep with mind crystal clear, an astonishing sense of well-being, and a body once more free from pain and flexible and vigorous. He pulled at his oar strongly and easily.

“Strength flows up to you from the sea through blade, even as I foretold, blood brother,” grunted Sigurd.

Kenton nodded absently, his sharpened mind grappling with the problem of escape from his chains. What went on in the pit and on the ship while the rowers were asleep? What chance would offer then to free himself and the Viking if he could stay awake?

If he could stay awake!

But how could he close his ears to that horn which poured sleep into them as the sirens of old poured with their songs fatal fascination into the ears of sailors strayed within their ken?

The sirens! The story of crafty Ulysses’s adventure with those lethal sea women flashed into his memory. How desire had come upon that wanderer to hear the siren song—yet no desire to let it draw him to them. How he had sailed into their domain; had filled his oarsmen’s ears with melted wax; had made them bind him to the mast with open ears, and then, cursing, straining at his bonds, mad with desire to leap into their white arms, had heard their enchanted measures—and sailed safe away.

That was it! Some way he must shut his ears to the horn. But how?

A wind arose—a steady wind that filled the sail and drove the ship through gently cresting waves. Came command to rest oars. Kenton slouched down upon the bench. Sigurd was in one of his silent moods, face brooding, gaze far away, filled with dreams of other days when his dragons cleft the Northern Ocean, side shields draped and eager for the sword smiting.

Kenton dropped his hands upon the silken rags upon his legs; his fingers began, seemingly idly, to unravel their threads, twist and knot them into little silken cylinders. He worked on, the Viking unheeding. Now two were finished. He palmed one, rubbed as idly the side of his face, and so rubbing slipped the little silken cylinder into an ear. He waited for a time; slipped in the other ear the second plug. The roaring of the wind sank to a loud whispering.

Carefully, unhurrying, he drew them out; twisted more threads around them. Again he set them in place. Now the wind’s roar was only a murmuring, faint and far away. Satisfied, he slipped the silken cylinders under his torn girdle.

On sped the ship. And after a while the slaves came and dashed their buckets over him and the Viking; brought them food and drink.

On the very edge of the sleep horn drone Kenton slumped down upon the bench, face on forearms, the silken cylinders hidden under thumbs. Swiftly he slipped them in his ears. Then he let every muscle go limp. The droning diminished to a faint, hardly heard humming. Even so, a languor crept through him. He fought it. In it was none of that inexorable slumberous command that saturated the horn’s full note. He beat the languor back. The humming ceased. He heard the overseer go by him; looked after him through half raised lids; saw him ascend the pit’s steps and pass over the deck to Klaneth’s cabin.

The black deck was empty. As though shifting in slumber, Kenton rolled over, threw an arm across the back of the bench, rested his head upon it, and through lowered lashes took stock of what lay behind him.

The slaves at the oars lay sprawled, asleep. His gaze rested on the two blacks among the ancient, brown skinned men. Could he trust them to fight with him and the Viking, he wondered?

He heard laughter, golden, chiming. To the edge of her deck, black haired Satalu beside her, walked Sharane. She seated herself there, unbound her hair, shook the flaming red gold cloud of it over face and shoulders; sat within it as though within a perfumed, silken red gold tent. Satalu raised a shining tress; began to comb it.

Through that web of loveliness he felt Sharane’s eyes upon him. Involuntarily his own opened wide; clung to her hidden ones. She gasped, half rose, parted the curtains of her hair, stared at him in wonder.

“He is awake!” she whispered.

And equal wonder filled the face of Satalu.

“Sharane!” he breathed.

He watched shame creep again into her eyes—her face grow cold. She raised her head, sniffed daintily.

“Satalu,” she said, “is there not a stronger taint from the pit?” Again she tilted her nose. “Yes—I am sure there is. Like the old slave market at Uruk when they brought the new slaves in.”

“I—I notice it not, mistress,” faltered Satalu, pity for him in her look.

“Why, yes—of course.” Sharane’s voice was merciless. “See—there he sits. A new slave; a strange slave who sleeps with open eyes.”

“Yet he—he—looks not like a slave,” again faltered her handmaiden.

“No?” questioned Sharane sweetly. “What has happened to your memory, girl? What is the badge of a slave?”

Once more the pity-filled glance of the black haired girl. She did not answer; bent low over the locks of her mistress.

“A chain and the brand of whips,” mocked Sharane. “These are the slave’s badge. And the new slave has both—in plenty.”

Still Kenton was silent beneath her mockery; made no movement; indeed scarce heard her, his burning eyes drinking in her beauty.

“Ah, but I dreamed one came to me with great words, a bearer of promises, fanning hope in my heart,” sighed Sharane. “I opened my heart to him—in that dream, Satalu. All my heart! And he repaid me with lies—and his promises were empty—and he was a weakling—and my girls beat him. And now it seems to me that there sits that liar and weakling of my dream with brand of whip upon his back and weak hands chained. A slave!”

“Mistress! Oh, mistress!” whispered Satalu.

But Kenton kept silence, although now her mockery began to sting.

And suddenly she arose, thrust hands through shining locks.

“Satalu,” she murmured, “would you not think that sight of me would awaken even a slave? That any slave, so he were young and strong, would break his chains—for me?”

She swayed, turned; through her thin robes gleamed exquisite, rosy curves of breast and thigh; lithe loveliness. She spread wide the nets of her hair, peered through them at him with wanton eyes; preened herself, thrust out a tiny, rosy foot, a dimpled knee.

He raised his head recklessly, the hot blood rushing through him.

“The chains will break, Sharane!” he called. “I will break them—never fear! And then—”

“And then my girls will beat you as before!” she cried, and sped away.

He watched her go, pulse beating like drums. He saw her halt, whisper to Satalu. The black haired girl turned, made him a warning gesture. He closed his eyes, dropped head on arm. And soon he heard the feet of Zachel striding down the steps, go by him. The waking whistle shrilled. Why, if her mockery had been real, had she warned him?