by Larry Niven
“Tell me,” she said softly. “Speak your truth.”
“Princess…” He wet his lips. And then sighed. “I stand before you a man who has worn many masks. Played many roles. I have done evil things, but I dare to hope that … that I…” Words seemed to fail him.
“That you are not an evil man?”
His red-rimmed eyes could barely meet hers. “Yes.” He said, voice husky, “That I am not an evil man. I thought that I did what I did to gain your mother’s favor. To gain … your favor. But now, seeing you free, knowing that somehow a lifetime of subterfuge and living in the shadows made me the man I needed to be to free you … I wonder about all of it. Wonder if it might be possible that I did those things to be ready for this moment. And that, this moment having come, I might not be able to give those things up. To be a new … a new…”
And again words failed him.
“A wizard worthy of a princess?” she said softly.
He could not speak. And then he could. “No. A man worthy of a good woman.”
She felt a great smile spreading across her face. “These are things to be spoken of again,” she said. “When we are safe. I can tell you that no one has ever done more for me. No one has ever been so worthy of my trust. My faith…”
She touched his lips softly with hers. A butterfly kiss, and his eyes widened.
“My love,” she said, just a whisper.
“Thank you, my princess,” he said in a husky voice. “I will leave you now: there is much to do. I am sure you are tired and need rest.”
He raised her hands and kissed them, then turned and left.
Princess Tahlia lay on her bed, the captain’s bed, thinking. How strange. In that moment, she knew Neoloth could have had more than a kiss. But he had not even attempted to deepen it. Her rescuer, her savior, had either not understood the depth of her gratitude … or his emotions were exactly what he had described.
THIRTY-NINE
Tattoos
Neoloth found Aros on the quarterdeck, looking out over the waves. There was no land to be seen on any side, just the waves and the sun and the wheeling, “skawing” gray and white gulls above them and the clouds and the constant hauling of ropes, painting of planks, and burnishing of brass that make up life on any sailing ship.
Aros grunted as Neoloth came to stand next to him. The wizard hoped that the Aztec might speak first, but he didn’t, and after a time he was forced to step into the silence.
“We won,” Neoloth said.
“That we have,” Aros agreed.
“I … you…” Gods! Why was this so hard? “You kept your oath to me,” Neoloth said.
“You expected otherwise?”
Behind him, the sailors broke out in song, and Shyena was dancing to the tune, entertaining them with her quicksilver footwork and dizzying hips.
“A comely wench,” Aros said. “I’ve watched the way she looks at you. You could have her, you know.”
Neoloth suspected that the barbarian’s keen senses saw more than Neoloth was comfortable admitting. He said, “She is not who I wanted.”
Neoloth stood gazing at the waves, hearing the whooping and hollering of the men behind them and the sound of the Red Nun’s quick, light steps and knew that he was a different man than he who had begun this journey.
And when he looked up into the face of the sun-bronzed barbarian with the hair cut squarely across his forehead, there was laughter in his eyes.
Suddenly, Neoloth swelled in anger. “What the hell are you laughing at?”
“A wizard in love. Who would have thought?”
Neoloth toyed with bluster but ultimately began to laugh himself, and the two of them stood at the rail and guffawed, all of the tension of the last weeks ebbing out of them like a poison.
And by the time they were done, Neoloth was nodding, as much to himself as the barbarian at his side.
“Well,” he said. “Regardless of why you did what you did…” Neoloth extracted the talisman from its case. “Very little power remaining,” he said. “Just enough, I think, to do this.”
He put one hand on Aros’s chest, and the other held the talisman, which in the early-evening light began to glow.
The barbarian flinched at first and then relaxed, eyes rolling up as a wave of bluish light rolled through his body. The sculpted chest visible through his open shirt trembled and … crawling around his side and toward the light came three tattoos.
“Wait,” Aros said. “I accept the breaking of the spell … but the girl … I’ve grown rather fond of.” He paused. “And so has someone else. Leave them in place.”
“As you wish,” Neoloth said, and the tattoos crawled back into place and were still. “The curse is gone. The other tattoos, the scars, they are with Agathodaemon.”
Aros’s eyes remained closed. He sighed, deeply, like a man laying down a great burden. Then he opened them and looked at Neoloth with curiosity. “I’d wondered,” he said.
“Wondered what?”
“If you would keep your word. After all, if I wasn’t under your curse, what would keep me from killing you?”
“Why would you do that?”
Aros’s eyes were as hard as glass. “Because you put me in that dungeon to begin with and then used that to force me to do your will.”
Flaygod, Aros’s sword, was close to hand. The barbarian could seize it, and in an impulsive moment take Neoloth’s head off. And then ransom the princess or …
But on a day such as this, Neoloth decided not to worry about such things. “Well,” he said. “What’s a little coercion between friends?”
Aros’s hand froze, and his eyes narrowed, as if wondering if the wizard was mocking him, and then his eyes softened. And he laughed.
“What the hell,” he said.
“Yes,” Neoloth said. What the hell. Then suddenly his eyes widened. “I completely forgot about Agathodaemon!”
“The snake?”
The wizard groaned. “After we deliver the princess, I’ll have to go back, unless…”
“Don’t look at me,” Aros said. “I don’t like snakes.”
Neoloth shook his head silently, and together they watched the waves, the moon dancing upon them, as the Pelican slid south toward Quillia.
FORTY
Into the Storm
It was just before dawn on the third day that it happened. The intervening days had been happy ones aboard the Pelican, with hard work for the sailors, but much sleep and rest time for Princess Tahlia, who ventured from her cabin only after a day and a half of deep, healing sleep. She tended to wander about the ship, greeting the sailors with a slightly sleepy, almost embarrassed expression, nothing regal about her.
She inquired after their health and well-being and showed great curiosity in their work such that, by the end of the second day, she was greatly admired and even loved by the crew, who proclaimed that if all princesses were made of the same stuff, the world would be a better place indeed.
She spent much time with Drasilljah, but also with Shyena, she who was called the Red Nun, asking questions about Shrike and the people in it, and how she and Neoloth had come to help her. And if she suspected that both witch and wizard were skirting some of her questions, she had the delicacy not to probe too deeply.
By the third day the mood aboard the Pelican had lifted considerably, and she found herself crying and singing and dancing spontaneously, as if finally believing that she had escaped the clutches of her captors.
* * *
Aros was enjoying himself, becoming more familiar with the Pelican, remembering his freebooter days, and wondering what it might be like to be a privateer in the service of the Quillian queen. From poop to bowsprit he explored the craft, familiarizing himself with everything about it and climbing up in the rigging, sometimes just hanging there, much to the sailors’ amusement. He was more nimble than the rest by a wide margin, save for a tiny man named Nimbett, who was an absolute monkey on the lines. And stronger than any two of them wi
th the exception of Dorgan.
Captain Gold was tolerant and amused by his explorations, and Aros used his time to roam and learn and entertain himself and the others.
Hanging there in the rigging, he would look at the sky and the sea, each in the other’s place, and think back over his life and wonder about the life to come. Where would he go now? And what of his choices were determined by whatever it was he had been until this point?
What in a man’s future was the meaning of his past? In Shrike, he had told a lie about his past. It had been a lie, hadn’t it? He did know who and what he was, didn’t he?
If he didn’t know who he had been … what did that mean about who he might become?
His head hurt. Such questions were for philosophers, not simple fighting men. Better get those tattoos back. Find the snake again.
And then he noticed something strange. Lines of smudge dropping down from the sky …
He curled up, grabbed the rope, and hung suspended there, thirty feet above the deck, looking out at the horizon. On it, he saw three lines of smoke, rising from the waves.
Fire on the sea.
Heart thundering, he went hand over hand to the foremast and stood on the crow’s nest gazing back at the horizon. Not three columns of smoke … five. Eight. More.
“Ahoy, mates!” he called out. “We have trouble coming up behind!”
The crew crowded around the forecastle, using their telescope or keen eyes to see what he saw.
A flotilla of the damned Shrike burning ships coming up behind them. At the horizon now, but not far enough.
There was little doubt that their sails had been seen.
He climbed down and joined the men who were packed along the rail, eyes shaded.
Captain Gold looked pensive. “They’ll catch us,” he said.
“You’re sure of that?”
The big man nodded his head. Fingers nervously braided his beard. He was a courageous man, but every man has his limits, and the things Aros had told him of, and hinted of, had unnerved the captain. “Aye. I’ve seen them keep up with me, even at full sail. This is a poor wind.”
“How long do we have?”
Gold looked up at the billowing canvas rectangles. “We have an east wind. Reckon I can set the sails to catch enough to make a good pace, but it’s no contest. I’d say they’ll catch us by nightfall.” His face was grave. “Aye, and then there’ll be hell to pay.”
“Can we make harbor?”
“We’re a day away from Ween’s Mask, and that’s just a beach. I’m afraid we’re on our own, boyo.” He raised his voice high. “All right, lads! We’re going to make a run of it, and then we’ll make a fight of it, and we may not live through this one, but I’ll be damned if we’ll go down without spilling some Shrike blood!”
Princess Tahlia looked up at him. “If they catch us…” Her face looked ashen. “What if I go back quietly. Surely not all of you have to die.”
The wizard had found his way beside them now. “We need to be realistic,” he said.
The Red Nun had long since stopped dancing. “We destroyed the time tunnels,” she said. “If we reach Quillia and tell our story, she will raise the kingdoms against Shrike, and there will be a war she cannot win.”
“What do we do?” the princess asked.
“Prayer might be a good idea. The sea has held mana longer than the land.”
* * *
All that day they ran, and ran, and the ships behind them began to close the distance, such that through the telescopes they could make out a few details. They could not, as yet, see men on the deck, but that would happen soon. And soon after that they would be in firing range.
“No sail ships,” Aros noted. “These steam farters are all with the Hundred.”
And that was the most likely outcome here—not capture, but death. The Pelican had to go down. A single survivor reaching a friendly ear could doom Shrike, or at the very least the plans of the Hundred. Neoloth had no idea what had happened in the kingdom since he had left, but he knew that witnesses would make it impossible for the truth to be contained.
If it could, and the time tunnel could be reopened … the plan could go forward. But only if no one knew. If the other seven kingdoms were not raised up against them.
Aros stood on the poop deck, gazing out at the southern horizon. His eyes caught against the dark clouds, a flash of lightning.
Captain Gold stood at his side. Aros knew that his old friend had to feel tense. No coward, he was realist enough to know that capture meant death to all involved.
“Looks like a storm,” Aros said.
“That it does,” Gold replied.
“Those steam engines…,” Neoloth began. “What is the advantage of such devices?”
Gold stroked his beard. “One can keep moving no matter the wind. It takes real skill to use sails to catch the wind as God intended.”
“Aye,” Neoloth said. “And that’s what I was thinking. The real advantage of a hand cannon is that it negates a lifetime of sword craft.”
Aros fingered Flaygod. It was true, and in his less reasonable moments, he considered it bloody unfair.
“What’s your point?”
“That if steam, and all these machines make experience less important, how much more likely is it that they will be used by … inexperienced people?”
“Much.” Gold’s bushy eyebrows narrowed.
“And what is the most important thing in a storm?”
“To ride her. To know when to strike the sails, when to drop anchor or turn the ship to take a wave head-on rather than broadside.”
Neoloth’s voice lowered. “And what teaches a man to do such things?”
Gold smiled. “Experience,” he said.
Then Gold raised his voice. “Ahoy, mates! Oars in the water, sails at full! Throw everything overboard we don’t need to fight!”
“The food, Cap’n?” one of his men said.
“Aye. We’re just two days out of Quillia, and we won’t starve before we get there. Everything over the side!”
The men fell to, heaving furniture and gear over the side. Oars extruded from belowdecks, and the men broke their backs straining in rhythm, digging at the waves.
“Will we make it?” the princess asked. “Is there any magic that can help?”
“I think we’re about out of magic,” Neoloth said. Looked to Drasilljah and the Red Nun.
“I’m stripped,” the Red Nun said. “In these magic-poor times, I’m surprised to have done what we have.”
Captain Gold fingered his beard. “Here’s what I say,” he said. “Before those ships reach firing distance, the water will be no sea of glass. And then we’ll see what kind of captains they have.”
* * *
The sun had disappeared behind the clouds, and the sea itself grown angry before the first cannons blazed behind them.
Aros ran back to the forecastle and used the spyglass. The ships were clearly visible, and if the light had been better, he could have made out the men on the deck. The steam farters were powerful, but not faster than a good sail under a capable captain—if the wind was right.
But the wind was starting to shift and blow against them, slowing their progress despite the backbreaking labor of the oarsmen.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“We won’t make it,” Gold said soberly. “Unless…” Something had occurred to him, and he trained his spyglass south.
“Yes. The wind has shifted. We’re slowing, but the storm is coming our way.”
“Damned good,” Aros said. “At the very least, I’m hoping we can force these bastards to close quarters.”
“It’s a fleet of the damned ships,” Gold said. “We’re probably outnumbered at least ten to one.”
“I don’t give a damn,” he said. “If I die, I die, but I don’t want to just be blown out of the water.”
“They’ll want to cripple us and come on board to be sure they’ve got the princess,” Gold sa
id, and spit overboard. “That’s one small blessing.”
“Probably want to torture me, as well,” Aros said, philosophically.
“My kind of men,” Gold said, and slapped his shoulder.
The cannon rang again.
The Pelican had two cannon positions in her stern and was capable of making a reply. As Gold had thought, their range seemed better. But although, at Gold’s command, the cannon roared, they missed … and then hit one of the steamers, and the men cheered as it burst amidships, was consumed in flame.
“We must have hit the powder magazine!” Gold cried. “That’s givin’ it to ’em, boys!”
Initial enthusiasm gave way to disappointment when the next three shots hit nothing but water, and then a shot from the steamers smashed through the gallery at the Pelican’s stern.
Some of the men screamed in pain and anger. Never fear, Aros noted. Whatever else might be said of them, these were stout rascals.
* * *
The princess stood with Neoloth, his arm around her, protecting her from the wind … and then the rain. It fell in cold drops at first, and then in sheets, and the men cheered.
They were in the storm. The waves roughened and then became walls of water slamming into them … and into the steamers as well.
“How are they handling the waves?” Aros asked.
Gold’s eyes narrowed. “Better than I’d hoped, but I’ll wager not as well as they’d wish. I think they’re getting water down the pipe, and that will trouble the fires driving the damned things.”
The oars fought against the steam engines after the Pelican struck her sails. If they hadn’t, the wind would have driven them right into their enemy’s arms.
Another fusillade from both sides. They hit another ship, which began to burn. The men cheered …
Then, with a stroke of lightning, the cheers died, because on the northern horizon were at least a dozen more of the steam ships.
“By the Feathered One,” Aros breathed. There was no way they could fight half that many ships. The courage and will were bleeding out of the men as he watched.
And then …
From behind them a roar of cannon, and with despair Captain Gold pivoted. “Damnation!” he screamed against the wind and the crashing waves. “How in hell did they get behind us?”