Yngve, AR - Darc Ages 02 - City Of Masks Page 3

  Awonso sent a distress call which he hoped the pirates would pick up, and told a lie that the ships "explosive cargo" might detonate if the ship was fired at. Then he prepared to guard the radio with his life...

  Half an hour later, the incoming three-master slid right beside the Blackwhale . It had a crew of thirty men, armed to the teeth with grappling hooks, pikes, rifles, crossbows and swords, and two laser turrets aimed at the Blackwhales sails.

  The captain of the nameless vessel waved to the Blackwhale s captain - who was standing by the ships wheel and steering with both hands as if they were navigating a storm. The sky was clear with only a few clouds. The pirates who stood lined up along the gunwale were bearded, tanned men dressed like any other sailors; many of them had several teeth left to grin with. Some sported gold teeth, others wore earrings.

  "Hello!" cried the pirate captain in a Kisilian dialect, grinning so that all his four gold teeth glittered in the sunlight. "Be a good man now, and surrender without trouble! If you thought I was going to fall for that story about the explosive cargo, then youre even dumber than I thought. Can your passengers pay ransom?"

  The Blackwhale captain nodded.

  "Good!" The pirate crew laughed and cheered, and made to throw their grappling-hooks. "Steady now..."

  There was a high-pitched whining noise, echoing across the ocean - and something glittered in the sun as it shot up from the aft deck of the Blackwhale . The canvas which had concealed now burned up in a burst of flames.

  It was Kensaburé in his flying armor, carried on a single jet thruster, sweeping across above the short space that separated the two ships. Soaring to the rear mast of the pirate ship, he spun around with great ease. The blue-hot thruster flame instantly set the sail on fire.

  Panic broke out among the pirates, and they fired wildly at the flying knight: snapping laser pulses, crossbow arrows - all of them missed. Suddenly, the jet thrust shut down, and the armored figure dropped like a stone.

  Awonso, Okono and Threo stared in horror, believing that the knights jet engine had died - if he sank into the water, he would not stand a chance.

  Kensaburé held up his metal-clad arms, fell alongside the burning sail... and crashed straight through the midship floor, which gave way like paper to a fist. There was a second crash, as he fell through the lower deck - then an explosive noise from below. He shot up through the hole with the thruster jet at full power and dropped something in his wake, into the hole he had made.

  As he flew back toward the Blackwhale , a tremendous explosion inside the pirate ship caused it to tilt backward - then a cascade of water spouted up from the hole in the deck, and the three-master began to sink very fast. Screaming and crying for help, the pirates abandoned ship.

  Meanwhile, Kensaburé hovered down toward the Blackwhale s afterdeck, and landed on the pig-iron sheets he had laid out before. He landed softly and shut off the jet. The ships crew rushed forward to cool off the hot sheets with buckets of water, before the deck might catch fire.

  Okono peeked up from the gunwale and looked at the pirate ship; it sank so quickly, one would think it was made of lead. The horrified pirates swam after the Blackwhale , but were left behind in the lapping blue waves. The battle was over before it had begun. Threo looked also, sickened by the sight of the doomed sailors down in the water.

  "It was us or them," said Okono. "Come, doctor." They joined Kensaburé and helped his servant remove the flying armor piece by piece. The knight was sweaty and flushed, but beamed with pride at his victory. The captains crew and Jacob cheered for Kensaburé, and he returned the compliment by waving his hand.

  "Goddess! If my brother could see me now, hed be speechless! I have learned a thing or two since the last Spring Joust." He climbed out of the suits legs, their metal still hot to the touch, and was dressed in the white water-cooled inner suit only; thin tubes hung from his sides. "What do you say? Was that a great surprise attack or what?"

  Okono bowed her head and said: "Reckless, but brilliant. Your skills have greatly improved."

  "Are you going to leave those men to die?" asked Threo, and gestured toward the receding debris in the water. "Shouldnt you turn around and at least pick them up? We can drop them off near the coast."

  "And run into them again on our return trip?" Kensaburé turned somber. "I trust your skills, doctor... please trust mine. The mission is what matters."

  Threo took a deep breath and restrained himself from losing his temper. He wished he could think of a joke, but he only felt nauseous and went below deck.

  "Will there be other pirates?" asked Awonso. He was shaken and trembling, yet impressed. It was almost like seeing the old Dohan clan in action again.

  "Not if you send a new message. Tell our people back home... and make sure anyone else can overhear... that Kensaburé Orbes single-handedly destroyed an attacking Kisilian pirate vessel and spared nobody. That ought to scare off other brigands."

  "As you wish."

  Okono left her bodyguard behind on deck, and went downstairs to Threos quarters. When he would not answer her knock on the narrow door, she peeked inside and saw him kneel over the metal chest he had brought along.

  The chest was open and he was rummaging through the items inside; glass clinked and rattled, and he held up a copper tube that was supposed to be attached to something.

  He turned around and saw her face, then closed the lid and locked the chest.

  "My equipment is not damaged," he said, and hunched down as he went over to the open window where fresh air blew into the cramped, low chamber. Threo slumped down on a bench and regarded the sea, and the distant speck of debris that marked the survivors of the sunken pirate ship.

  Okono slowly made her way to the window and sat down by his side.

  "You do not approve of war?" she asked.

  "Does anyone?"

  "It is what it is."

  "It brings out the worst in man. Or woman. The nobility and their hunger for glory, their twisted sense of pride. Where I come from, glory lies in saving ones people from sickness and hunger. My father cured a Leper girl and gave her a healthy new body. That is honorable. That is worth bragging about."

  Okono waited a minute, and said: "Accept what cannot be changed."

  "You speak of fate. Fate is the excuse for doing nothing. If I believed in fate, would I be here, on this rotten ship? Should I accept the Plague as our 'fate'? Your kind, and his kind... your time is over. This is the age of miracles. I have seen it. Your era is coming to an end."

  "I know. Within a generation, Lord Damon and his sage from another time, Darc, will have changed everything. But I shall hold on to what I was taught, until the end."

  "Youre..." Threo paused, and faced her. She was really quite beautiful, like no other woman he knew from home... and so utterly different in manners. The women he grew up around were loud, brash and concerned with practical realities. "Youre a remarkable woman."

  "Thank you." For a moment her almond-shaped, black eyes widened and her open gaze enchanted him. Then she seemed to correct herself and returned to her downcast, half-shut gaze.

  Threo changed subject before he might become too intimate. "Your robot, what exactly does it do? And why does it have large eyes? Are they just for show?"

  The woman smiled shyly. "It listens, and translates any language to any other language, written or spoken. I wanted it to look like a child."

  "You have children?" Immediately, Threo regretted his words. "Im sorry, I shouldnt have asked."

  "I was going to marry. But the choice of man proved to be foolish, and now no man wants to marry me."

  "I dont understand."

  Okono frowned with anguish, and took out a small device from her robe. She pushed a switch and spoke into the device. There was a noise, and she continued to speak commands. The door opened, the robot Kiti-Mo walked in on erect legs - and bumped its head into the doorframe. She flew up and caught the robots arms before it could repeat its mistake, and told it to duc
k down.

  Threo was amazed: he knew that the nobility owned talking machines - as pets, as talismans of power, as bodyguards - but he had never heard of a robot being raised by its owners, as if Okono was the - the mother of the machine.

  Smiling, Okono led the childlike, clicking robot across the floor and to the window. "Poor Kiti-Mo does not walk so well on this rolling floor. She does better on dry land."

  "You are teaching it?"

  "I have taught myself about robots from the guilds who build and maintain them. They helped me construct this one for me."

  "Yes, I can see whose idea the eyes were."

  The robot turned its large painted eye-globes toward Threo and spoke in its inhuman monotone: "Will you be my friend?"

  Threo flinched involuntarily. "Can it think? Or is it just pretense?"

  "I should leave that question to the philosophers."

  Suddenly he recalled something. "Did your clan build the spider robots which attacked our island under Tharlos Paskos command?"

  "No," she said with emphasis. "I had nothing to do with that. Tharlos Pasko bought those war robots from someone named Pan Krator, in the far north. That is all I know."

  Threo had never heard of a "Pan Krator," and his deep suspicions of robots resurged with the memories of the recent war. He got up and excused himself, then left Okono with her pet robot.

  Okono patted the robots oversized, smooth head and its eyelids fluttered shut.

  Chapter 4

  The Blackwhale suffered no more attacks. In the early morning after an eleven-day journey, it reached the port of Vanitia.

  The captain had the ship anchored, and raised the signal flag to let a port inspector arrive to clear the ship for entrance. The procedure was familiar to Threo, who had visited coastal cities in Awrica. Vaccine or no vaccine, the fear of Plague carriers remained strong and justified.

  Their ship was one of dozens waiting to be cleared for passage; the towering, gun turrets at both ends of the harbor traced the Blackwhale as it approached. Gloomy rain clouds hung over the turrets, blurring their long shadows, and made the towering guns of Vanitia seem surreal. On the far side of the harbor, the spires and steep rooftops of Vanitia beckoned.

  The captain waited an hour. He had not expected the kind of inspector who finally arrived in a propeller gondola. The inspector's boat was piloted by a hooded figure who wore long gloves and a flowing red wool robe, covering every part of his or her body. And the figure also wore a face-mask with eyeholes, through which inscrutable but recognizably human eyes watched the newcomers.

  From the sleek gondola, the inspector and his assistant climbed the Blackwhale 's stepladder. They let the crew help them aboard, and the inspector asked in a peculiar dialect: "Shomme tom capitano, piliso."

  Both of them wore identical robes of blue wool, and masks over their faces. The masks were labeled with the city's insignia and had been painted to suggest personal characteristics. The inspector's face-mask portrayed a bearded, elderly man, and he wore a wig of long white hair underneath his hat. Their clothing did not reveal an inch of bare skin.

  After a brief conversation with the inspectors in multiple dialects (plus an exchange of sign-language and handwritten communication on a wax-tablet), the captain ordered his crew and passengers to line up on the deck.

  While the assistant examined the crew for signs of disease, the inspector questioned the man who wore the crest of the Orbes and Damon families on his chest.

  Kensaburé could not understand what the inspector said; he wished now that he had spent more time abroad, and grew restless with frustration.

  Beside him, Okono worked her remote-control box and called on Kiti-Mo. The robot walked awkwardly to her across the planks and translated the inspector's and Kensaburé's speech.

  Though the inspector was masked, his gestures and head movements made clear that the robot interested him.

  Kensaburé felt extremely uncomfortable with their conversation. He wanted to ask the Vanitian to show his face, but knew this was the wrong time to make requests. And the inspector's body language struck him as theatrical, stilted and insincere. What were these foreigners hiding? He wanted to present to the inspector his letter to the city lord, but he simply could not trust it to the hands of a masked stranger.

  After a while, when his errand had been explained and he had received the vague promise of an audience with the Vanitian city lord, Kensaburé could not contain himself.

  "Why do you wear a mask?" he asked, pointing at the inspector's false painted face.

  The masked head moved in such a way as to suggest displeasure, and he replied.

  Okono's robot translated: "Why do you not wear a proper face?"

  Kensaburé frowned, and nearly lost his temper. "What do you mean? This is my face."

  Okono gently interrupted him: "Of course we will wear the proper face when granted audience with the city lord. Could you please lend us some faces for the occasion, or should we make our own?"

  The inspector heard Kiti-Mo's translation, bowed to the lady, and nodded approvingly. "The city lord's court shall provide you with proper faces," he replied, and excused himself. He departed in haste with his following.

  Kensaburé gave the others a confused glance. "Was he mad?"

  "I do not know these people," Okono said, "but there must a be a rational explanation for the masks. Perhaps a festival or celebration. Just try to play along with them. We cannot afford to offend them."

  Threo of Mechao worried, but could not put his finger on why. Masks were entirely alien to his upbringing.

  Awonso was thrilled: his first meeting with a strange foreign culture! He could not wait to send his observations back to Librian and his family.

  Okono felt strangely calm; after all, she was used to a life of wearing masks in public... though the ones in her city and family were made of living flesh.

  The traveling party had to wait another six hours for the city lord's courtiers to arrive in a group of fast rowboats.

  The group of robed courtiers, all wearing ornate painted masks, sent aboard a troupe of mask-makers. These artisans - themselves also masked - asked the passengers to sit still for their "faces" to be made.

  After an hour's work, the mask-makers gave Threo, Awonso, Okono and Kensaburé a mask each. Also their two manservants received masks. Each piece came with strips of gauzy cloth attached around the edges, so that the neck and head could also be covered.

  Buchu scowled at his mask, but Kensaburé's manservant seemed quite pleased with what he received: it was a beautified version of his face, without the old scar across his cheek.

  "Pretty," Okono said of her mask. "Very pretty." She put it on and tied the string around her head, and the cloth to cover her neck and head, then looked around. Okono's pale mask wore a perpetual frozen smile, playful and modest, its red lips slightly parted with a round opening in the center. What seemed like freckles on its ruddy cheeks were in fact tiny air holes to keep her cool. "Do I look like myself?"

  "Yes," Kensaburé said, and studied his mask. It had a beard painted on, because he had not been able to shave for the whole journey. "Someone is playing us for fools."

  "Will you not make one for Kiti-Mo?" Threo joked, indicating the robot to the mask-makers. They studied it with exaggerated consternation, debated among themselves, and decided that none of their masks would fit this robot's head. Threo tied his eyeglasses on top of his mask's eye slits. He wondered how one was supposed to eat or drink in this state of disguise.

  The courtiers applauded the masked newcomers and gestured their mannered approval from the surrounding boats. The chief courtier told the traveling party they were now welcome to visit the city lord in his palace, and should board the welcoming boats at once.

  Kensaburé ordered the captain to wait for three days before leaving the harbor.

  "Perhaps I should stay behind with the radio, as a precaution," suggested Awonso. But he was ordered to come along and carry the radio se
t with him.

  The procession of court rowboats passed quickly through the packed harbor, and through a sluice gate leading into a canal. The city's canals served as a traffic system; low, curved stone bridges crossed it at every city block.

  Scores of citizens lined the bridges, balconies and walkways above the waterway, watching the newcomers. Passing rowboats and gondolas stopped to let the passengers turn their heads and stare after the procession.

  But every single citizen, even the children, wore painted masks, and many of them also wore long gloves.

  It had begun to rain when the party arrived at the open courtyard before the city lord's palace. For a city this isolated, its splendor was imposing - and in decay. The rain fell on the peeling gold-paint of spires and steeplechases, dripped from moss-stained porcelain-tiled roofs, gathered in the pools of green bronze statues, pooled on the faded mosaics of centuries past, and sizzled in countless torches.

  There were very few electric lights in the city. Awonso, the son of an engineer, wondered whether the Vanitians lacked the kind of underground power plant that sustained most other walled cities.

  A band of musicians - in garish masks - played trumpet fanfares for the visitors as they entered the great hall. Guards with bayoneted rifles eyed them through skull-faced masks with large round eyeholes.

  A red-masked master of ceremonies announced their arrival in a loud voice: "The emissaries of Lord Dohan Damon of Castilia!"

  The great hall of the palace was housed beneath a large glassed cupola; rain spattered against the panes, and leaking water dripped down here and there on the marble floor. Some members of the court held small parasols.

  In the center of the hall, under a giant brass chandelier, sat three masked figures in opulent golden robes: the visitors understood this had to be the city lord and his closest family.

  The master of ceremonies bellowed - his red mask was a fitting caricature of a shouting man with swollen cheeks: "Our master, the most admirable protector of Vanitia and the Adriatica, Blessed by the Churches, beloved by the people, His Eminence Berluchos of Vanitia!