BROTHERS OF EARTH. C. J. Cherryh

Kta seized him by the arm and pushed him over the rail. Kurt twisted desperately in midair, hit the water hard and choked, fighting his way to the surface with the desperation of instinct.

His head broke surface and he gasped in air, sinking again as he swallowed water in the chop, his hand groping for anything that might float. A heavy body exploded into the dark water beside him and he managed to get his head above Water again as Kta surfaced beside him.

“Go limp,” Kta gasped. “I can hold you if you do not struggle.”

Kurt obeyed as Kta’s arm encircled his neck, went under, and then felt the nemet’s hand under his chin lift his face to air again. He breathed, a great gulp of air, lost the surface again. Kta’s strong, sure strokes carried them both, but the rough water washed over them. Of a sudden he thought that Kta had lost him-and panicked as Kta let him go-but the nemet shifted his grip and dragged him against a floating section of timber.

Kurt threw both arms over it, coughing and choking for air.

“Hold on!” Kta ^napped at him, and Kurt obediently tightened his chilled arms, looking at the nemet across the narrow bit of debris. Wind hit them, the first droplets of rain. Lightning flashed in the murky sky.

Behind them the galley was coming about. Someone on deck was pointing at them.

“Behind you,” Kurt said to Kta. “They have us in sight- for something.”

Kurt lifted himself from his face on the deck of the trireme, rose to his knees and knelt beside Kta’s sodden body. The nemet was still breathing, blood from a head wound washing as a crimson film across the rain-spattered deck. In another moment he began to try to rise, still fighting.

Kurt took him by the arm, cast a look at the Indras officer who stood among the surrounding crew. Receiving no word from him, he lifted Kta so that he could rise to his knees, and Kta wiped the blood from his eyes and leaned over on his hands, coughing.

“On your feet,” said the Indras captain.

Kta would not be helped. He shook off Kurt’s hand and completed the effort himself, braced his feet and straightened.

“Your name,” said the officer.

“Kta t’Elas u Nym.”

“T’Elas,” the man echoed with a nod of satisfaction. “Aye, I was sure we had a prize. Put them both in irons. Then put about for Indresul.”

Kta gave Kurt a spiritless look, and in truth there was nothing to do but submit. They were taken together into the hold-the trireme having far more room belowdecks than little Tavi-and in that darkness and cold they were put into chains and left on the bare planking without so much as a blanket for comfort.

“What now?” Kurt asked, clenching his teeth against the spasms of chill.

“I do not know,” said Kta. “But it would surely have been better for us if we had drowned with the rest.”‘

XVIII

Indresul the shining was set deep within a bay, a great and ancient city. Her white triangle-arched buildings spread well beyond her high walls, permanent and secure. Warships and merchantmen were moored at her docks. The harbor and the broad streets that fanned up into the city itself were busy with traffic. In the high center of the city, at the crest of the hill around which it was built, rose a second great ring-wall, encircling large buildings of gleaming white stone, an enormous fortress-temple complex, the Indume, heart and center of Indresul. There would be the temple, the shrine that all Indras-descended revered as the very hearthfire of the universe.

“The home of my people,” said Kta as they stood on the deck waiting for their guards to take them off. “Our land, which we call on in all our prayers. I am glad that I have seen it, but I do not think we will have a long view of it, my friend.”

. Kurt did not answer him. No word could improve matters. In the three days they had been chained in the hold, he had had time to speak with Kta, to talk as they once had talked in Elas, long, inconsequential talks, sometimes even laughing, though the laughter had the taste of ashes. But the one thing Kta had never said was what was likely to happen to Kurt, only that he himself would be taken in charge by the house of Elas-in-Indresul. Kta undoubtedly did suspect and would not say. Perhaps too he knew what would likely become of a human among these most orthodox of Indras. Kurt did not want to foreknow it.

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