Swordships of Scorpio [Dray Prescot #4]

by Alan Burt Akers

  She was, as I have said, a large woman, and yet from the way she was standing and the drape of her gaudy and impossible clothes I caught the impression that she wore armor beneath that show, and the robes and clothes hung loosely outside, as though worn deliberately for effect. She half drew her rapier, and sheathed it—a motion that brought an instant reaction from her four Womoxes, a reaction as instantly stilled—and she put a hand to her mouth, which was large and generous, and pondered on the problems that I had brought into her ordered render life.

  “And who would take the prisoners for their ransom? You, Prescot, you would? And would we ever see you again?"

  “Aye!” shouted the men, swayed her way.

  “Does honor, then, count for nothing, here along the Hoboling islands?"

  A growl greeted this, and Viridia flushed darkly; but she knew as well as I that honor among renders was a matter of convenience. I went on, quickly, “Send someone you trust, if you do not trust me.” Then, as though clinching the argument, I spread my arms wide. “I simply want all the cash that is due me and my comrades. That is all."

  The upshot of it was that Viridia did not kill the prisoners but sent them in the argenter to Walfarg for ransom. We hung about off the coast, most uncomfortably, while her lieutenant transacted the business. But when he returned and the canvas bags were opened and rich fat gold coins spilled across the deck—Lohvian gold!—everyone roared their approval. Even Viridia the Render was pleased.

  She called me into her ornate and stuffy aft cabin where zhantil pelts covered the settee, arms were stowed everywhere, bits and pieces of clothing lay scattered on the deck, and toiletries cluttered a side table beneath a port. She looked at me with an expression I tried to fathom, and could not.

  I knew I trod a tightrope.

  With her, her lieutenant glared up at me in open distaste.

  He was a man called Strom Erclan, rough and yet with a remnant of faded culture and manners. For “Strom” is the Kregan title, I suppose, most nearly paralleled by “Count.” He liked the men to give him his title when they addressed him. I had considered it a harmless fad; but now, as I looked at the pair of them, I realized that this hankering after a titled man as her second-in-command was all of a piece with Viridia. Powers of life and death she had over the crews of her swordships. She fancied herself as one of those fabled Queens of Pain of ancient Loh. I thought of Queen Lilah of Hiclantung, who had been a Queen of Pain, with no pretense, and I sighed for poor Viridia the Render.

  “You're getting too big for your boots, Prescot,” said Strom Erclan.

  I glanced down. I was, of course, barefoot. Erclan snarled at me. He managed his snarl as well as a leem. “Insolent cramph!"

  I said, “I understood you wished to see me, Viridia. Do you allow a kleesh like this to mock your authority in your own cabin?"

  Before Viridia could answer Erclan's rapier hissed from the scabbard and he was around Viridia's table at me. I drew, parried, twisted, and halted my blade at his throat.

  I glared into his eyes. Almost, almost but not quite, I lost control and thrust him through.

  “Kleesh, I said, Strom. Do you die now?"

  Viridia shouted: “Hold, you fool, Prescot. If you slay him you'll never leave this cabin alive."

  Then I saw, through the aft bulkhead partition, the sudden movement and the shadow of a Womox grasping a bent bow, the arrow nocked and drawn back to the pile.

  I whipped my blade away and struck Strom Erclan across the face, open-handed with my left, toppled him squalling into a corner where he put his face into a great bowl of some nauseous ointment Viridia used to iron out the wrinkles on her skin.

  Viridia—she shocked me, then—Viridia laughed.

  “Oh, Strom Erclan, you onker! Leave this wild man and me to talk a mur or two."

  Although the words bubbled through with laughter and Viridia clearly had abruptly snapped into a playful mood, Erclan was less than happy. Ointment smearing his face, he took himself off, glowering. Viridia lifted her left hand and the shadow of the bowman eased the bow and moved back out of sight.

  “Don't try to toy with me, Viridia,” I said. I remembered some of the vainglorious boasting the corsairs of the inner sea employed when promising King Zo what they would do to Magdag. “I've eaten bigger fish than that fool for breakfast, and spat out the bones. If he's the best you can do, forget him. And that horned Womox of yours—I can get to him and spit him long before his addled brains add up what's going on."

  She bit her lip. Had she been what she pretended to be she'd have snapped her fingers to her Womox bodyguard and made me prove my words. So I finished: “Anyway, Viridia, I'd as lief stick you through as a Womox."

  She rallied. She refused. She said, “I think I shall have you killed, at the end, Dray Prescot."

  “But, until then, you wanted to ask me something."

  “Not ask!” she flashed. “I ordered you to report to me so that I could tell you I want you to take command of the varters. Valka tells me you have some skill with them."

  I nodded. But I did not answer.

  “Well, Dray Prescot?” She was surprised and not a little mortified. “Have you no word of thanks?"

  “For what? For being given the thankless task of drumming varter drill into the blockheads of your crew?"

  Her bosom rose and fell, but with the constriction I had noticed before, as though armor cased her. “Take care, man! Viridia the Render is known through all the islands! My swordships take and burn and sink—we are feared wherever argenters sail—"

  “Aye! And by ramming and boarding. I've seen your catapult and varter work. You're hopeless. If I am to train your calsanys, then I demand absolute obedience. Any man who argues back will be knocked down instantly. Is that clear?"

  About to reply she was interrupted by a Fristle messenger who put his head in at the door and squeaked rather than shouted his news, his whiskers quivering.

  “Venus is alongside and she's sinking!"

  I give the name Venus to the swordship. I could not give her real name without causing offense. She was the ship in which, in company with a crew of oldsters and weird beings without interest in what they carried, the host of maidens of Viridia's renders was carried. They were female pirates, true; but I had already seen how their talents were best exercised in the delicate business of extracting largesse from the shipping of the islands.

  We all raced on deck and there was Venus already shipping water and the lithe agile forms of her girls leaping aboard Viridia's flagship. I believe I have not given the name of Viridia's personal swordship, the flagship of her little fleet of eight craft. Seven, now that poor old Venus was sinking.

  I know why I have not given it, for it displeased me. She had called her pirate craft Viridia Jikai. It made sense, of course; but I had been trained into a different school of thought where Jikai was concerned.

  When all the pandemonium had subsided and Venus had sunk and Viridia started her court of inquiry, I was left to seek out Valka. He looked at me with a most ferocious grin, the while sharpening a nasty-looking boarding-pike.

  I said, “You got me into giving drill to these calsanys. Hauling and winding and loosing varters, Valka. Well?"

  He laughed and went on sharpening. “Certainly, Dray. I heard about you when they dumped you aboard the old Nemo.” He looked up, suddenly. “Anyway, it gets us out of the rowing benches, does it not, dom?"

  Well, there was that to be said for it—indubitably.

  * * *

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The fight on the beach

  During this period of my sojourn on Kregen many incidents occurred, but I feel that my purpose will best be served by pressing on. I am, I fondly believe, a man tolerant of other people until they prove themselves unworthy of trust; perhaps I am tolerant to a fault. But when a task has been put into my hands I am intolerant—decidedly and sometimes cruelly so—of every phase of the task until it is completed. I made those renders of the island
s aboard the swordships sweat blood over the varters and the catapults. I have previously told you of my attitude to gunnery; discipline and absolute efficiency alone count. Eagerness and willingness to work are excellent; indeed I welcome them as bonuses; but a gang of calsanys, given my methods, will stand to their weapons whether varters or thirty-two pounders, and fight a ship.

  And, as I know from experience, by the time I have finished with a crew, no matter how recalcitrant and unusable they were at the start, by the end they are as keen and eager and willing in all genuine fervor to excel, as the best volunteer crew afloat.

  As it happened I was afforded not enough time to turn Viridia's pack of sea-leems into gunners—if you will pardon the expression. We met one of the strange ships which sail up out of the southern oceans from whence no man knew, and fought her, and only a storm coming on saved us all from sinking. We ran with the gale and by the time we could shake a little more canvas out, the southerner had gone. I will talk more of these strange and terrible ships later.

  The days floated by, and Valka and I hammered at the varter crews. We transferred from swordship to swordship, and when I rotated back to one I had given some instruction, and found the calsanys had forgotten it all, there were many bruised lips and black eyes. I was not popular. And yet, despite that, Valka told me that the men respected me, for they could understand my purpose.

  “They know the risks involved in ramming and boarding. If you can force an argenter to surrender without their having to risk their hides, that will please them."

  Valka, indeed, was a tower of strength to me in those days.

  It was mainly through his instigation that I picked up, one from here, another from there, a tight little crew of men and halflings who in addition to their expertise with varters and catapults showed—again according to Valka—respect and loyalty to me personally. I was aware of the dangers. I handled these men carefully. The idea, simple, of course, of welding them into a crew, of obtaining a ship and of sailing away, occurred to me without any deep cogitation.

  The deep cogitation lay in where I would direct the course of the ship.

  Tomboram?

  Vallia?

  My duty to Tilda and Pando seemed to me to have been discharged.

  I could, in all honor, sail for Vallia.

  Valka, as a Vallian, would be invaluable.

  I am a loner. I walk singly. And yet, I am constantly aware of this strange—power, attribute, thing?—call it what you will, this uncanny phenomenon I possess of attracting the utmost loyalty and devotion from men. It is passing strange. I do not seek it. Sometimes I am embarrassed by it. I notice that men look to me for leadership. Only can it be explained, in part, by the fact that I will never let a fellow down if it is humanly possible. Perhaps some of that personality trait is responsible. I do not know. But, there it is.

  In tandem with this charisma there goes, I believe, its opposite. But you who listen to this narrative will already be aware of where that leads to...

  The dangers to which I alluded were simply that if Viridia or any of her lieutenants got wind of a knot of men devoted to me they would smell mutiny on the instant, and the steel would flicker red. So, in pursuance of plans, I must tread warily.

  Despite all you may think of me as a hotheaded barbarian warrior who flings himself into action before thinking, this is not so. The first lieutenant of a seventy-four never stops thinking and planning, believe me.

  This habit of thinking ahead and, in the night watches, of planning how to react to every foreseeable disaster must have been the root cause of my decision not to attempt to seize the ship. She was surrounded by six of her consorts. Even if I captured Viridia and threatened to kill her unless we were given free passage, I had the hunch that the captains of the other swordships, Viridia's lieutenants all, would still attack and let Viridia take her chances.

  One fine morning we espied a sail on the eastern horizon and bore up in chase. The swordships did not sail well on any point; but, as Viridia observed, they sailed well enough for the renders’ purposes, and they could row at top speed when it mattered, which an argenter could not do.

  We gained on this chase with a rapidity which led me to believe her bottom must be fouler than most. The cut of her sails was strange to me. She bore away but ever and anon kept trying to edge to the west and so reach the islands. Valka came up beside me at the fore starboard varter platform and stared across the tumbling sea. The weather was fine and the smartish breeze cooled the air gratifyingly.

  “What do you make of her, Valka?"

  He looked surprised. I had given him very little of my history, as he had given me none of his; our friendship, fragile as it was, was based in its entirety on our mutual slavery at the oars and now our positions as varterists. That varterist I had shot from Dram Constant in his passing had, weirdly, left the way open for me now.

  “You don't recognize her, Dray?"

  Incautiously, I said: “Should I? She has two masts, rigged square, and a bowsprit, and she looks a trifle unhandy. Her stern looks high but narrow. I fancy I'd redistribute the stepping of her masts had I the need to sail her any distance."

  “She is from Zenicce."

  “Oh,” I said, and could say no more.

  Zenicce! That great enclave city of a million souls, threaded by canals and boulevards, where Delia and I had been slave, where Princess Natema lived, happily married now to Prince Varden! Where I had met Gloag, my comrade who, although not a man, was all the more human for that. Where I had slaved in the black marble quarries. And where now my own powerful enclave of Strombor no doubt wondered what had happened to their Lord. I hoped that Great-Aunt Shusha—who was not my great-aunt—ran Strombor in my stead, as was her right. Then I saw the colors of the banners. They flaunted there, purple and ocher, blazing in the streaming light of the twin Suns of Scorpio.

  “Ponthieu,” I said. “She is of the House of Ponthieu."

  Well, Prince Pracek had led my Delia to the altar to wed her, although his plans had tumbled at that point Ponthieu was an enclave aligned with the foes of Strombor. So...

  Valka said, “Now how can you tell that, Dray? You must have visited Zenicce, to know the colors of the houses—"

  “Not so, Valka. Any sea-leem knows the colors of his victims."

  “True. Still, it is passing strange. All the Zeniccean colors are alike to me."

  So Valka had not heard of me all he might that night I had been dumped down into the slave benches of the old Nemo.

  We took her without trouble. I must give her name, for it was, having regard to her speed, ludicrous on two counts. Her name was Splash Zorca.

  She was clinker-built. Swifters and swordships and argenters were all carvel-built. This made me ponder.

  That same day we made the island of Careless Repose where lay our renders’ nest. We had made a good cruise and the men were in the mood for relaxation. Viridia wanted to negotiate with another pirate captain for a new swordship to replace the ill-fated Venus. From this island with its entrance hidden by a small and unsuspected vegetation-clothed islet and with its beach of white sand and its village of comfortable houses we would sally forth on our roving raids against the sea commerce of the area. So far, no King's Swordship had discovered the anchorage.

  The pirates, like any good Kregan given half a chance, started in carousing.

  I went for a stroll along the white sand of the beach by the light of She of the Veils, brooding to myself. As was my custom I wore my scarlet breechclout and my weapons slung about me. In the warm weather of these latitudes that was ample clothing, even at night. By the pinkish light of the moons—for a lesser moon hurtled past above—I walked on with bent head, pondering.

  Strom Erclan almost caught me.

  He leaped on me from a boulder beside the vegetation's edge and I saw the wicked flash of his dagger. I got his wrist in my fist and jerked him back; but he kicked me low down and sprang away, ripping out his rapier as he saw he would have to figh
t me for real.

  I drew.

  “You stinking cramph!” This Strom was reputed good with a rapier and main-gauche. I had seen him in action when we boarded and he showed no fear. I put myself in a position for fighting and waited, for I had no wish to kill him—then. “You mildewed rast! You lump of offal!” He went on shouting for a space, hoping, no doubt, to enrage me.

  After a bit, I said, “Kleesh. Walk away quietly, or you are a dead man."

  Whether his breeding goaded him into madness, then, whether he was simply mad clear through with jealousy, matters little. He threw himself on me, his blades whirling and thrusting in a positive flurry of action and a fury of venom. I parried, caught him, twisted; but he eluded that one, having been caught once before. A swordsman need only see a fighting trick once to know it again. If he doesn't, he is dead, of course.

  Our blades crossed and slithered with that teeth-vibrating screech of metal. He leaped, I forced him back, I thrust, he took my blade on his dagger and held and thrust for me to take his blade on my dagger in turn. For a space the four slivers of steel slanted up in the pink moonglow, evil and slick and lethal, smooth and unbloodied.

  Then, quick as a striking leem, he withdrew his dagger and thrust low. I swayed sideways, recovered and once more we fell into our fighting stances.

  He was good. There was no doubt of that. I thought of Galna, whom I had fought in that corridor in what was now my own palace of Strombor; yes, it is all a long time ago, now; but I can still feel the jar of steel on steel and I can hear yet again the ring of blades as they met and crossed. Then he essayed a complicated passage, and I took him, and in the pink wash of moonlight from She of the Veils, Strom Erclan slumped with my rapier through his heart.

  * * *