"But it will only require a moment. Here, open the door; I will do it myself."

Hrostilfe made a waggish gesture. "I am the most finicky of seamen. Everything must be done just so."

Zarfo, who had come into the saloon, gave the lazaret door a speculative frown.

Reith said, "Very well then, just as you like." Zarfo started to speak but catching Reith's gaze, shrugged and held his tongue.

Hrostilfe nimbly hopped here and there, casting off lines, starting the jet, and finally jumping into the control pulpit. The boat surged out to sea.

Reith spoke to Traz, who went to stand behind Hrostilfe. Bringing forth his catapult Traz checked its action, dropped a bolt into the slot, cocked it and hung it loosely at his belt.

Hrostilfe grimaced. "Careful, boy! A foolhardy way to carry your catapult!"

Traz seemed not to hear.

Reith, after a word or two with Zarfo and Anacho, went to the foredeck. Setting fire to some old rags, he held them in the forward ventilator, so that smoke poured down into the lazaret.

Hrostilfe cried out in anger: "What nonsense is this? Are you trying to set us afire?"

Reith set more rags burning and dropped them into the ventilator. From below came a choked cough, then a mutter of voices and a stamping of feet. Hrostilfe jerked his hand toward his pouch, but noticed Traz's intent gaze and his ready catapult.

Reith sauntered aft. Traz said, "His weapon is in his pouch."

Hrostilfe stood rigid with dismay. He made a sudden move but stopped short as Traz jerked up the catapult. Reith detached the pouch, handed it to Traz, took two daggers and a poniard from various parts of Hrostilfe's person. "Go below," said Reith. "Open the door to the lazaret. Instruct your friends to come forth one at a time."

Hrostilfe, gray-faced with fury, hopped below and, after an exchange of threats with Reith, opened the door. Six ruffians came forth, to be disarmed by Anacho and Zarfo and sent up to the deck where Reith thrust them over the side.

The lazaret at last was empty of all but smoke. Hrostilfe was hustled up on deck, where he became unctuous and over reasonable. "All can be explained! A

ridiculous misunderstanding!" But Reith refused to listen and Hrostilfe joined his fellows over the side, where, after shaking his fist and bellowing obscenities at the grinning faces aboard the Pibar, he struck out for the shore.

"It appears," said Reith, "that we now lack a navigator. In what direction lies Zara?"

Zarfo's manner was very subdued. He pointed a gnarled black finger. "That should be our heading." He turned to look aft toward the seven bobbing heads.

"Incomprehensible to me, the greed of men for money! See to what disasters it leads!" And Zarfo gave a sanctimonious cluck of the tongue. "Well then, an unfortunate incident, happily in the past. And now we command the Pibar! Ahead: Zara, the Ish River, and Smargash!"

CHAPTER TWELVE

ALL DURING THE first day the Parapan was serene. The second day was brisk with the Pibar pitching up and over a short chop. On the third day a black-brown cloud loomed out of the west, stabbing the sea with lightning. Wind came in massive gusts; for two hours the Pibar heaved and tossed; then the storm passed over, and the Pibar drove into clement weather.

On the fourth day Kachan loomed ahead. Reith steered the Pibar alongside a fishing craft and Zarfo asked the direction of Zara. The fisherman, a swarthy old man with steel rings in his ears, pointed wordlessly. The Pibar surged forward, entering the Ish estuary at sunset. The lights of Zara flickered along the western shore, but now, with no reason to put into port, the Pibar continued south up the Ish.

The pink moon Az shone on the water; all night the Pibar drove. Morning found them in a rich country with rows of stately keel trees along the banks. Then the land began to grow barren, and for a space the river wound through a cluster of obsidian spires. On the next day a band of tall men in black cloaks were seen on the riverbank. Zarfo identified them as Niss tribesmen. They stood motionless, watching the Pibar surge upstream. "Give them a wide berth! They live in holes like night-hounds and some say the night-hounds are kinder."

Late in the afternoon sand dunes closed in upon the river and Zarfo insisted that the Pibar be anchored in deep water for the night. "Ahead are sandbars and shallows. We would be certain to run aground and undoubtedly the Niss have followed. They would grapple the boat and swarm aboard."

"Won't they attack us if we lay at anchor?"

"No, they fear deep water and never use boats. At anchor we are as safe as if we were already at Smargash."

The night was clear with both Az and Braz wheeling through the sky of old Tschai. On the riverbank the Niss boldly lit their fires and boiled their pots, and later started up a wild music of fiddles and drums. For hours the travelers sat watching the agile shapes in black cloaks dancing around the fires, kicking, jumping, heads up, heads low; swinging, whirling, prancing with arms akimbo.

In the morning the Niss were nowhere to be seen. The Pibar passed through the shallows without incident. Late in the afternoon the travelers came to a village, guarded from the Niss by a line of posts to each of which was chained a skeleton in a rotting black cloak. Zarfo declared the village to be the feasible limit of navigation with Smargash yet three hundred miles south, across a land of deserts, mountain pinnacles and chasms. "Now we must travel by caravan, over the old Sarsazm Road, to Hamil Zut under the Lokhara Uplands. Tonight I'll make inquiry and learn what's to our advantage."

Zarfo stayed ashore overnight, returning in the morning with the news that by dint of the most furious bargaining he had exchanged the Pibar for first class passage by caravan to Hamil Zut.

Reith calculated. Three hundred miles? Two hundred sequins a person, at maximum: eight hundred for the four. The Pibar was worth ten thousand, even at a sacrifice price. He looked at Zarfo, who ingenuously returned the gaze. "You will recall," said Reith, "the ill feeling and dissension at Kabasas?"

"Of course," declared Zarfo. "To this day I become anguished by the injustice of your hints."

"Here is another hint. How much extra did you demand for the Pibar and receive?"

Zarfo gave an uneasy grimace. "Naturally, I was saving the news to be a glad surprise."

"How much?"

"Three thousand sequins," muttered Zarfo. "No more, no less. I consider it a fair price up here, far from wealth."

Reith allowed the figure to pass without challenge. "Where is the money?"

"It will be paid when we go ashore."

"And when does the caravan leave?"

"Soon-a day or so. There is a passable inn; we can spend the night ashore."

"Very well; let us all go now and collect the money."

Somewhat to Reith's surprise the sack which Zarfo received from the innkeeper contained exactly three thousand sequins, and Zarfo gave a sour sneer and, going into the tavern, called for a pot of ale.

Three days later the caravan started south: a file of twelve power wagons, four mounted with sandblasts. Sarsazm Road led through awesome scenery: gorges and great precipices, the bed of an ancient sea, vistas of distant mountains, sighing forests of keel and blackfern. Occasionally Niss were sighted but they kept their distance and on the evening of the third day the caravan pulled into Hamil Zut, a squalid little town of a hundred mud huts and a dozen taverns.

In the morning Zarfo engaged pack-beasts, equipment and a pair of guides, and the travelers set forth up the trail into the Lokharan highlands.