'Now the flamethrower's a tricky proposition,' Shend said as she opened a hatch in the square forecastle. 'It's a very effective weapon, but you can't get more'n one or two good shots out of it. Can't carry fuel for more. Now here -' A blunt hand indicated a squat, dully gleaming brass assembly. '- here's the pump, and that's. . .'
A cry from above brought her head sharply up. Fost saw she almost quivered like a hunting hound on the scent. Her hand dropped to the short axe at her belt. Tolviroth Maritime Guaranty were notorious for avoiding fights that were none of their concern, but that was only because a finely honed instrument of destruction shouldn't be blunted needlessly. But when the time came, the TMG sailors took an unholy joy in battle.
A sailor, dark and sexless against a piling of clouds, sat in a Bucket at the top of the forward mast. The lookout pointed toward the low green shoreline. They crossed delta country where several rivers drained from Lake Lolu into the sea. From the concealed mouth of one of those rivers pirates often sallied forth to attack shipping.
And that was what Fost presumed the three low, black shapes crawling like insects across the rumpled green blanket of sea had in mind.
'An outrage!' The immense Wirixer mage quivered with rage as he twisted a mottled silk handkerchief in his hamhock hands. 'That my personage should be subjected to treacherous assault! Oh, woe, woe!'
'Be silent, you bulbous bag of wind,' sneered Erimenes. 'Be a man! You should look forward with keen anticipation to the virile shedding of blood, as I do.'
'You only do that because you've no blood to shed,' Fost said dourly, trying to fit a conical helmet on his head so that the noseguard didn't scrape his skin.
The spirit ignored him.
'Besides, these vagabonds doubtless aren't attacking us to get at you. That's merely a paranoid delusion of grandeur on your part. Likely they're just run of the mill pirates. Murderers, rapists, robbers, that sort of thing.'
'Be silent, you old fool!' Ziore's voice throbbed with exasperation and worry. 'They come to attack Moriana. I know they do!'
Teetering on a rail, resplendent in gilded and shaped breastplate and greaves that would have pleased the Emperor Teom, Ortil Onsulomulo laughed gaily.
'Whatever their motives, their intentions are clear.' He waved a stumpy arm at the approaching ships.
'So are ours,' said Moriana, holding her bow between her knees as she adjusted the buckle of her own helmet borrowed from the ship's armory.
The pirate craft had become distinct shapes with discernible details. Two were low with single banks of oars, which Onsulomulo sneeringly called pentekonters. The third was more ominous, a big bireme with staring eyes painted on the prow.
'Laid down in the Kolnith Shipyards, by her lines,' the captain observed.
'You think Kolnith is backing this?' Fost asked.
'Some City State could be, but I doubt it's Kolnith. Not even the Archduke's fishheaded enough to send his lackeys a-pirating in a ship traceable to him.' Onsulomulo pointed his shortsword at the pirate ships. 'You'll notice their decks are fairly black with men, not to imply they are crewed by my Jorean cousins.' He interrupted the lecture with a short laugh. 'Each is carrying two or perhaps three times its usual crew. They've just put out from land a few hours past and don't need to worry about provisions.' He sighed and shook his large, golden head. 'We are sadly outnumbered, I fear.' 'Woe!' lamented Magister Banshau.
Though according to the half-dwarf captain the bireme would be quicker, the smaller pentekonters coursed ahead, their rowers working frantically to drive them through the incoming rollers.
'It seems they've a basic sense of tactics,' Onsulomulo said dryly.
'How do you mean?' Moriana asked.
'The two little cubs are off to worry our sheepdog while the wolf makes straight for the fold.'
The cry went up, 'There she goes!' from the Wyvern's rail, and Tiger slid under her bows, hitting the crests with loud bangs as she pulled for the attackers.
'They haven't a chance,' said Fost.
The low, black shark-ship shot between the two oared galleys, spitting arrows in both directions. In passing, the ballista mounted amidships thumped and sent a two-yard-long iron dart smashing among the crew tightly packed between the gunwale of the pirate on her starboard. Fost heard the screams.
The bireme had already turned her bow into the west and made to pass to port of her fellows to intercept Wyvern. Onsulomulo shouted for his ship to come about, leading away from the distant green shore. It seemed wasted breath to Fost. They were beating into the wind as they had for ten days and could never hope to out-maneuver the big bireme.
The Tiger swung to port trying to turn about and come to grips with her attackers again. Shend had plotted well. The other pirate galley, inflamed with the lust for loot, kept coming arrow straight for Wyvern's fat flank.
Even at the distance of several hundred yards, Fost heard Shend's voice, 'Star'rd oars, full back! Port oars, full for'ard!'
'A turnabout.' Onsulomulo's eyes gleamed.
It was incredible. The long black hull simply swiveled in the water, as deft as a waterstrider. When her spurred prow pointed the way she had come, Shend roared, 'All for'ard full!' and the ship leaped ahead as if shot from a catapult.
The men packed on the decks of the galley screamed as they saw death bearing down on them. The little galley was broadside to the swell and lost way as the rowers lost rhythm. The slave rowers were trying to tear loose from their chains and flee the path of that deadly spur.
Tiger took her broadside with a rending screech that made Fost's neck hairs rise. For a second, it looked as if the pentekonter would ride out of the blow. Then the deadly iron spur tore free with a harsh squealing of sundered wood and the irresistible pressure of seventy-two strongly pulled and perfectly coordinated oars simply rolled the smaller vessel over. The watchers in the Wyvern clearly heard her keel breaking as the Tiger ran her down.
Erimenes shrieked in bloodlust ecstasy, Moriana shouted and Fost found his throat raw now. Even Banshau had quit blubbering and gazed on intently.
Tiger lunged away from the foundering body of her prey. Still apparently fresh, her rowers pulled her past the surviving pentekonter in a quick shooting pass. Again her arrows and engines worked execution on the thronging pirates while the return missile hail had no visible effect against the Tolvirot's well-shielded complement.
A hundred yards ahead of the pirate, almost in bowshot of the Wyvern, the dromon spun in another breathtaking turnabout and went head to head with the pentekonter.
'Is she going to ram?' Moriana asked.
'Do you jest, Lady? No TMG captain would ram bows-on except as an uttermost final resort. No, Highness, you'll see. Captain Shend has more daggers than one in her fine bodice.'
The pirate oarsmen slacked off, apparently asking the same question Moriana had. Fost heard whips cracking as the rowing master frantically sought to build up headway again. If the Tolvirot really did have a suicidal attack in mind, it wouldn't do to be caught dead in the water.
Tiger veered to port to pass wide of the pirate. He almost felt the sigh of a relief go up from the enemy ship.
'Fecklessness!' Erimenes cried disdainfully.
At the last possible instant, the Tiger swung back at her foe.
'Star'rd oars, traill' Shend howled. As one, thirty-six oars snapped back alongside the ship, resting inside the line of her iron sheathing.
The pirate never had a chance. Tiger's prow ran over her oars. Damned wails and screams burst from the pentekonter as her starboard oarsmen were crushed between oars and benches. When at last the horrid grinding was over and the Tiger swung around her foe's high stern, the pirate galley lay motionless in the water.
Then with a thump and a scrape, the bireme came alongside. Fost forgot the Tiger.
Moriana had kept her eye on the approaching bireme and sent some shrewdly aimed arrows in its direction. Now she laid her bow aside and took up sword and shield. She had provided herse
lf with a light leather jerkin for body protection and her Grasslander boots were rolled up to protect her thighs. Fost hoped it was enough. He hoped he had enough, too, with shield and helmet augmenting his tattered mail vest.
Screeching like angry ravens, the pirates swarmed up over the side. The bireme only lacked a foot of Wyvern's freeboard, so there was only Onsulomulo's crew to fend them off. Wyvern held a hundred and twenty men; the bireme easily three times that many. The fight was hopeless from the outset.
'Magic!' Erimenes cried as Moriana and Fost engaged yelling pirates in a skirl of blades. 'Use your magic!'
'Can't!' she cried, taking the thrust of a boarding pike on her shield. 'Too many!'
'A fireball'd cool their ardor,' said the genie, mixing metaphors wildly. 'Shrewdly struck, friend Fost.'
'It'd set the ship ablaze, you dunce!' Fost shouted back, as the partner of the man he'd just killed swung an axe at his head.
The battle came to him in surrealistic flashes. Bearded faces distorted with rage or pain as his blade bit home; Moriana's slim sword flickered like a tongue of flame, its tip tracing lines of blood in the air as it struck and darted away; Onsulomulo danced through the crush of sweating, bloody bodies and fought using two short swords, hamstringing, stabbing kidneys, capturing swung cutlasses between his blades and spinning them away with a scissors twist; Magister Banshau, prodded in the belly by a blond-bearded pirate, raised a shrill keening of fury, swept a large tar barrel up above his head and sent it bowling down the decks like a runaway boulder crushing half a dozen pirates to bloody gruel. They all fought well. Erimenes crowed encouragement and Ziore, wincing with pain at what she must do, clouded the minds and slowed the reactions of pirates as they closed with Moriana. But it was all in vain, as Fost knew when he thrust his sword into an angry face and counted the eighth he'd killed with no slackening in the tide of enemies. The day was lost. Sheer value wouldn't offset the crushing weight of numbers.
Then with a bang! the Tiger drove its spur through the bireme's stern and her corvus thumped against the stern to allow Tim Devistri to lead the Tolvirot crew, rowers and all, up and over and in among the pirates.
The battle was as good as ended.
Later, Fost and Moriana lay exhausted in their stateroom. The sweat of battle had been washed from their limbs in a cold stream of water pumped by bloody, bandaged, grinning seamen. Now their limbs were clad in the sweat of lovemaking of a fervor unusual even for them. The nearness of death had made the sensations all the sharper.
Moriana lay at Fost's side running fingers through the hair on his chest. He yelped as they explored a sticking plaster the ship's surgeon had slapped over a shallow puncture where a lucky pike thrust had popped a few more rings of his hapless chain mail shirt.
'I never would have thought the Tolvirot could fight like that,' she mused. 'They're mercenaries, after all. They fight for money, not conviction.'
'They've convictions. They're protecting freedom of trade, and that's powerful medicine to a Tolvirot. And does a highly paid artisan do lesser work merely for being higher paid?'
'I suppose not.' The ship creaked and sighed about them, a note of smugness in the sounds, as if the ship, too, were happily surprised to find itself still alive and free.
'Most of all, I guess, they fight for pride. A sense of honor.' He shrugged. 'Most soldiers fight for that, in spite of claims for creed or country.'
'You may be right.' She turned to nibble on his ear.
He squirmed. He resisted, only for the sheer pleasure of prolonging the sensation. She reached down and grabbed none too gently.
'Oh, well,' he said as he turned eagerly toward her. 'At least we're safe. Nothing can get past the Tiger.'
CHAPTER TWELVE
The whole populace of High Medurim had turned out to greet the Wyvern, complete with a skirling and banging military band, colored streamers and a troupe of naked dancing girls and boys, without which no public occasion was complete.
'At last,' Erimenes had said, puffing up like a courting frog, 'we receive attention commensurate with our status.'
Burly stevedores had swung Wyvern's fat stern up to the pier. The joyous tumult climaxed as the long wooden ramp was let down and the weary, shaken, but nonetheless gratified travellers set foot on the ancient stone of High Medurim. Singing traditional songs of welcome, the crowd swept forward . . .
. . . and engulfed Zolscher Banshau, hauling his vast bulk up onto its collective shoulders, bearing him forward in triumph to a state carriage waiting at the waterfront. An assembly of great and learned men, if their phenomenal beards and dizzingly tall hats were any indication, welcomed him aboard, while gorgeous maidens wearing diaphanous robes and foil haloes placed a wreath on his head and smothered his moustache with kisses. Magister Banshau, lying at ease on a sumptuous divan, beamed from the depths of gaudy floral wreaths as if he'd been named the Twenty-fourth Wise One of Agift. Shouting with joy, the crowd pelted along the sidewalks on either side of the carriage. The band fell in behind while nude brightly painted dancers scattered flowers and hard candies.
'Welcome to High Medurim,' Ortil Onsulomulo called down sarcastically to Fost and Moriana from the sterncastle.
Not even Erimenes had anything to say to that.
They were still standing at the foot of the ramp when a carriage appeared. A fraction the size of the one bearing away the Wirixer mage, it was impressive enough, black enamelled and polished so obsessively that a courtier could use it as a mirror. The muffled, hooded driver brought the landau to a noisy halt in front of Fost and Moriana. A curtained door swung open and a clean-shaven man wearing a gleaming black uniform stepped out.
'I am General Falaris, Imperial Intelligence Service,' he announced. 'You are the Princess Moriana?' Startled, Moriana nodded. He bowed perfunctorily. 'Please come with me, Your Highness.' He shot hurried looks in both directions. 'Get in quickly before anyone sees.'
Fost felt nostalgic tears sting his eyes. 'Imperial Intelligence' was a contradiction in terms. Any Medurimin above the age of three knew who the shiny black landaus belonged to. They could as effectively keep secrets by hiring criers to proclaim that mysterious visitors had arrived by ship to confer with the Emperor.
The general's invitation had not included Fost. Moriana solved that problem by grabbing his arm and dragging him into the box after her. General Falaris looked doubtful at this turn of events but said nothing.
Fost went to Emperor Teom the Decadent's palace in a daze. The familiar sights and sounds of his birth city overwhelmed him. The richness, the poverty, the places of learning, the pits of dismal ignorance. He peered out from behind the golden curtains in the landau and saw urchins begging in the streets, old men, toothless and blind, directing pickpockets and cuffing the younglings incapable of stealing enough. He had been there - once.
Now he was on his way to the palace of the Emperor.
'Welcome to High Medurim,' Emperor Teom said languidly. Draped over the arm of his throne, his wife and sister Temalla smiled and nodded in greeting, as well.
Moriana and Ziore bowed. Fost stood upright until a none too gentle elbow in his ribs from Moriana made him bend forward at the waist. It wasn't that he meant to defy the Emperor. He was simply struck numb by meeting the man who had once possessed so much power over him as a youth.
'The blue ghost does not bow.' hissed the small man at Teom's left. 'He does not pay proper reverence to Your Ineffability.'
Teom waved a hand. The fingers were slightly doughy and devoid of rings.
'Peace, Gyras. Were I fourteen centuries old I'd not be reverent to a mere emperor either.' His voice rang in mellifluous low tones. Though he sprawled bonelessly across his gilded throne, he seemed to be a tall, well-proportioned man.
Flushing turquoise in pleasure, Erimenes performed a deep bow. His domed forehead sank alarmingly into the marble floor before he straightened.
'Your Radiance is too kind,' he murmured. 'Far be it from me to contradict you, howev
er, but I must point out I am fifteen centuries old, and a shade over, rather than fourteen.'
A growl emerged from Gyras's throat. Teom silenced him with a wave. The dwarven advisor drew his balding head down angrily, accentuating the hump on his back.
'I've never seen an Athalar spirit before, though I've heard of them,' Teom said.
'We are alike,' said Erimenes, fawning and again bowing so his head vanished through the floor clear to his brows, 'for I have never before seen an emperor.'
With superhuman effort, Fost bit back his reply. Fortunately, Te-malla interrupted Erimenes's sally into diplomacy by fixing Fost with big dark eyes made bigger by a liberal application of kohl and saying, 'Oh, but you must have had a long, hard journey.' Her husky voice accentuated the adjectives with undue emphasis. The Empress's voice had a curious quality about it that sent shivers up Fost's spine.
'Yes,' Teom said. A light came into his brown eyes. Reading his mood, his sister leaned forward and slipped a hand into a fold of his robe. She was of medium height, plump and with tightly curled brown hair hanging to her shoulders. Though she had not withstood the onslaught of middle years as well as her husband-brother, she was far from unattractive. The breasts hanging above the high waist of her blue gown were ample without being ostentatious, and the gown's gauzy fabric was drawn taut by her position poised on the throne arm, revealing a pleasing curve of hip and thigh. Her left hand toyed with the ringlets framing Teom's face, while her shoulder rose and fell in a gentle motion.
Fost held his breath when he realized what she did to her brother. Teom's eyes were shut and he sighed in pleasure. Fost felt Temalla's eyes burning into his. Moriana tensed at his side.
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