Swordships of Scorpio

by Alan Burt Akers

  This was Kregen, four hundred light-years from the nearest Royal Marine and his musket and bayonet. I already knew the answer, in truth, this atypical and cowardly hesitation was merely my self-excuse for once again failing Delia. I loved Delia, and Delia loved me. We both knew each loved the other. Therefore there could be between us none of these adolescent lovers’ tiffs of immature passion, those fits of jealousy and rage — no lovers’ quarrels. So much of the literature of Earth no less than Kregen is consumed by these juvenile lovers’ quarrels, and disbeliefs, and worries over faithfulness. I knew Delia would not despair of me and I knew she would not marry of her own free will; it was chicanery that I feared for her, the deep plots of her autocratic father. She would know my duty lay with Tilda and Pando for the moment and then — then to face her father. I would have to be ruthless with him. Have to be. . .

  Love gently forces one to adjust mental horizons. If love is selfish, crying: “She is mine!” and one destroys lives and hopes for the sake of this spurious love, one cannot truly love. Love demands sacrifices, it makes giving easy. And, in turn, it means that receiving, also, is a part of love.

  I went out onto the quarterdeck and everyone fell silent. All those eyes leeched on me as I stood, holding myself up, my left hand gripping my rapier hilt, and I know my beard jutted out in its swifter-ram arrogance, and my face wore its old ugly look of devilish power. But, that is me, alas.

  “There is much loot aboard the armada of The Bloody Menaham. That loot will be ours. Afterward, we will smash The Bloody Menaham and take from them wealth enough to make us all rich for the rest of our lives.”

  I turned to Valka, who stood now in the position of my first lieutenant, Spitz taking the responsibility of varter Hikdar. “Make the signal to weigh. We sail at once.”

  For a long moment there was complete silence.

  Had I failed? Would they disobey? Then Inch tossed his hat in the air. “The Bloody Menaham!” he roared. “We rend them utterly! Hai, Jikai! Hai, Dray Prescot!”

  After that it was a matter of getting the hook up and of setting all our oarsmen at pulling and heaving. One by one the other swordships followed our lead, for they recognized a strong hand at the helm and had no other plan. As we gathered into our stride a longboat rowed alongside, her oars splashing frantically. A tossed rope hauled up a chest and on its second cast fished up Viridia. She bounded onto the deck, shook the dark hair out of her eyes, and declared roundly: “By Opaz, Dray Prescot! You won’t get rid of me so easily!”

  Nodding to that ominous blackness all across the horizon, I said so that only she could hear: “You may have joined me for your last voyage, Viridia the Render.”

  She laughed recklessly, tossing the hair out of her eyes. “And if I have I would sail on that last voyage to the Ice Floes of Sicce with no other man than you, Dray Prescot.”

  The black storm clouds whirled up into the zenith and the opaz light of the twin suns was blotted out in a hell of roaring wind and smashing seas and of a blackness like an impiter’s wings enfolding us. We battened everything down and held on under storm canvas. Now the swordships must prove if they were sea boats or not. Some render captains turned back, out of cowardice, out of prudence, out of dire necessity of a sinking vessel beneath their feet. But Freedom held on across the wide Bay of Panderk, and with her sailed through those bitter seas a goodly proportion of the render armada.

  If we failed to get through, then Pomdermam was completely lost, and with the capital the country, and with the country Bormark, and Tilda, and Pando. We fought the sea, for we must not lose.

  Relieving tackles were rigged so that more men could throw their weight on the rudder. Lines were rigged across the decks. I stood lashed on my quarterdeck, spray-drenched, soaked, the wind whipping through my hair and beard and stinging into my eyes, conning the ship. We fought all the elements that the ocean could throw at us, and on the second day we emerged, sorely bruised and battered but intact, and sailed on into a subsiding sea and a dying wind.

  And then — “Sail ho!”

  Ahead of us and spreading across the horizon in a great cloud of canvas toiled the armada from Menaham. They straggled. They had caught the outskirts of the gale’s violence. The twin suns were sliding down into the sea, staining the vast expanse of ocean in bruised rubies and jades. Signals flashed from swordship to swordship, so that my fleet held back, riding out the last of the swell-waves, repairing damage, giving the tired crews time to rest and recuperate. Signals among shipping on Kregen had not reached to the sophistication of the signal book as invented by Kempenfelt and Popham; but by flag and lamp I was able to get my message across.

  The fallacy that ships may be drilled like soldiers still holds among landsmen, and although the Navy had achieved remarkable evolutionary prowess, navies still could not under the conditions of sail and oar take up long neat lines of upward of a thousand ships, in four ranks, with outriders and scouts, as though they drilled on Salisbury Plain. For one thing, the length of lines of galleys, marshaled abeam, makes for vast acres of sea coverage, and the distances are such that signals take a good long time to reach from the commander in chief to the outer horns of his lines. So I had simply adapted a Nelsonian piece of advice: “Sail or row toward your enemy whenever you see him. Any render captain who places his swordship into the guts of his opponent will not do wrong.”

  Perhaps, at another time, I will speak more fully of that battle in the Bay of Panderk off Pomdermam.

  With the coming of the twin Suns of Scorpio the sea woke to long swaths of crimson and emerald. Birds flew low over the water, screaming. The sea lay heaving in glassy swells after the storm, and the wind died to a zephyr, so that it was all oar-work, and rowing, with the men standing and flinging themselves against the oars. Benches are provided aboard swifters and swordships where anything from four to ten men may labor at a single loom, and these benches are thickly covered with ponsho skins. There is nothing of the genteel sitting in your seat and resting your feet in slides and rowing as though you pulled an eight in some university boat race. The one-man-to-one-oar zenzile craft share something of that finesse. Not so the swordships. Here men stand and grip the loom and thrust it down and then, lifting it high, hurl themselves bodily backward, crashing down with numbed buttocks onto those benches and those thoughtfully provided ponsho skins. The benches exist to prevent them from smashing back to the deck, to support them for the next convulsive effort of jumping up and thrusting down. All the body is used in rowing a swordship or a swifter. Every ounce concentrated on dragging those massive blades through the water. So we thrashed on through the water. So we thrashed on through the glassy swells, the white water creaming from our bronze rams, bearing on in lethal pursuit of the armada of The Bloody Menaham.

  The greatest problem would be that of individual renders taking an argenter and stopping for plunder.

  The drum-deldar thumped out his booming and commanding beat, bongg, bongg, bongg. A single beat, as is used aboard a swordship as opposed to the double, bass and treble, employed in swifters. Quicker and quicker the beat rose as I urged the oarsmen on. We foamed through the sea. Ahead of us spread the blue and green diagonally striped flags of the Menaham, fluttering from a hundred staffs. I selected our target. The helm-deldars swung the whipstaff. Our ram curled back the white running water. I measured the distance. . .

  “Prepare to ram!”

  Spitz’s varter men hauled back and braced themselves. A single shining instant of poising hush, a fragile bubble when everything coalesced and rushed together — and then we smashed into the stern of the argenter and the world revolved in a rending smashing and a bright chaos. On the instant I released my handholds and leaped. From our beak I crashed forward and in through the stern windows of the argenter, to be met by a flickering wall of rapiers and boarding-pikes. With my sea-leems at my back we went through the defense and roared out onto the quarterdeck. In a few murs we had taken the ship. We battened the crew below and left a small prize c
rew and then it was back to the benches and more of that straining, lung-bursting heaving at the oars with the whole body flung backward to drag the blades through the resisting water. We took another argenter, and then avoided the deadly thrust of a Menaham sword-ship, and raked her all along her side so that our cat head pulped her oars even as our own rowers shipped theirs.

  For the rest of the day we were engaged in chasing Menaham shipping and taking or sinking everything that flew the diagonal blue and green flag.

  By the time the Maiden with the Many Smiles floated into the night sky and Inch wound a great turban around his fair hair, we were masters of the sea.

  “And this is the great victory you promised, Dray!” cried Viridia, flushed, dripping blood, her gaudy clothes ripped and slashed away to reveal the mesh link armor clothing her firm body.

  “Only a part, Viridia, only a part. Now we must land in Pomdermam!”

  When we had invested the treasures of Freedom after we had taken the swordship, I had found, safely wrapped in tissue in great lenken chests in the aft stateroom, a great quantity of armor. Remember that Freedom had been a Yumapanim vessel and the Yumapanim aped the ways of old Loh, so the armor was of that refined and decorated kind I had worn when fighting for Queen Lilah of Hiclantung. Now I stripped it off, chipped and dented and blood-smeared as it was, and let it drop to the deck. I hung my rapier on a hook on the bulkhead. I was tired, but no more tired than I have been a thousand times in my life. Viridia stared at me, her eyes unreadable.

  “Tomorrow, Viridia the Render, or the day after, we land at Pomdermam. After that we drive The Bloody Menaham back to their own frontiers — or beyond — or kill them all. I do not care which.”

  She said, “Why do I do this for you, Dray? Why do the renders of the islands follow you in such desperate ventures?”

  “Plunder.”

  “Aye. That — and more.”

  I knew the fragility of the links that bound the renders to my schemes. They were pirates. They would seek always easy victims. They must be cajoled into following me against the army of Menaham. But they would follow me. I was determined on that.

  “Once the renders are let loose in The Bloody Menaham, Viridia, I believe they will find ample reward.”

  She cocked her head on one side. “And why shouldn’t we rend the Tomboramin?”

  “Because, if you do, yours would be the first head to adorn a spike over the walls of Pomdermam!”

  Because the bountiful and marvelous paline grows everywhere it possibly can on Kregen, it follows there must be different varieties, generally distinguishable by slight variations in the yellow of the fruit. A Kregan could tell you where a paline had grown by the color, and I was already picking up the knack. There are two main sorts, divided into those that grow their fruit on the old growth and those that grow it on the new, and it is of the latter variety that one may pluck a paline branch and sling it over one’s shoulder for the journey. It is a nice custom of seafarers to take a pot-plant paline with them, hoping their water will hold out, and there was a wondrous specimen aboard Freedom. Now Viridia plucked a paline and set it between her teeth, and crunched, and sucked juice.

  “You wouldn’t, would you, Dray?”

  “Don’t try me, girl.”

  With that she gave her reckless laugh and began to strip off her oiled steel mesh which was as befouled as my own armor. I sent her out into an adjoining cabin, for the sword-ship was marvelously well-off for accommodation in her after-parts, if the men slept wrapped in furs and silks between the rowing benches and on the central gangway. Watches were set with a naval efficiency I saw was strictly kept.

  From the Island of Panderk in a straight line to Pomdermam is about a hundred dwaburs, and what with the gale and the battle I figured on our making landfall the day after next. Some of the render captains had taken their prizes and gone roaring it back to the islands; but I was gratified to note that many still followed me, and their sails made a brave show against the brilliant sea and sky.

  The first sight of Pomdermam, as is so often the case with any port of Kregen, is always the pharos. At Pomdermam there are two, one maintained by the government, the other by the Todalpheme of Pomdermam. These Todalpheme, the mystic mathematicians and philosophers of the oceans of Kregen, calculate the tidal effects and issue almanacs to give warning of impending high tides. The Todalpheme of Pomdermam wore purple tassels. Since the Hostile Territories through which I had traveled had no seaboards, there had been no Todalpheme there for me to ask: “Do you know of the scarlet-roped Todalpheme? Do you know of Aphrasöe?” That had been one of my first questions when Tilda, Pando, Inch, and I had stayed here. A shake of head was sufficient answer — sufficient! Sufficient disappointment.

  I directed the course of our armada into a little cove someway to the west of the city. Although Kregen possesses a larger landmass than does Earth, there are fewer people, which is pleasant from the point of view of breathing space. No one as far as we could ascertain observed our swordships as they plummeted their anchors into the smooth water of the cove and the captains and the crews rowed ashore. I held a meeting; it was more an order group. I specifically ruled out any form of council of war. I do not, in general, believe in those.

  “You render captains of the islands! You have fought well. You have sailed through a storm that would sink a sea-barynth. You have some wealth. Now we go up against The Bloody Menaham, and the booty will be enormous.” I glared around on them, speaking from my perch atop a boulder. “If any one of you from Menaham wishes to pull out, that I understand. He is free to go, he and all his crew.”

  No one moved.

  “Very well. We take the Menaham in the flank. They will not expect us — they think an army is coming to aid them across the sea instead of you shaggy sea-leems!”

  There rose a gust of laughter at this. By Kregan standards that was a jest of high carat value.

  So we set off, marching for we had no mounts, heading for Pomdermam. We were a motley bunch. Men and half-men of many races marched in that straggly army. But one thing we shared in common. We were all warriors of the first rank.

  In the event we did not take the army of The Bloody Menaham in the flank.

  We struck them from the rear.

  They were engaged in storming the city and tearing down the walls and setting fire to the houses. The Tomboramin had fought well and stubbornly, but they were overwhelmed and beaten back. We saw the smoke and flames as we charged in. Everywhere the diagonal blue and green waved the renders charged like sea devils. Rapiers thrust and slashed. Boarding-pikes skewered past upraised arms. Our bowmen sleeted their feathered death into the ranks of our foemen. For the Tomboramin this last-minute rescue was unbelievable.

  Through all those wild scenes of carnage I fought at the head of my men, my loyals about me, driving on wedgelike into the enemy ranks. Above our heads floated my flag, the brave yellow cross on the field of scarlet. Viridia fought at my side. Inch and his incredible ax were there, striking and smiting. Valka, with a rapier like a blur of steel, thrust with me, thrust for thrust. Spitz and his bowmen cleared the path. Onward we drove and soon — very soon, to the destruction of the Menaham — we had them on the run and they were fleeing and we were looking about for booty.

  “Touch nothing of the Tomboramin,” I had told my render captains. “Any man found looting will be hanged.” I remembered Wellington and his ways. “When we strike Menaham they will yield all the plunder you can imagine, for their armies will have been destroyed. The whole country will be yours.” In that, I remembered Napoleon.

  A stubborn knot of fiercely resisting Menaham cavalry still clustered about the palace of King Nemo. Their zorcas were down and they fought afoot, and they fought savagely and well. With perilously few men left to me I led the final charge upon them, driving into them, with the yellow cross on scarlet biting into the ranks of diagonal blue and green.

  “That flag of yours leads men on!” panted Viridia as we hacked and h
ewed together. The cavalry wore armor, and we were making heavy weather of it. But, as though, indeed, that flag did lure men on to victory, we poured over a shattered breach and ravened in among the Menaham. Now, we could thrust with care, aiming to drive our blades between the armor joints.

  “Follow the flag!” screamed Viridia. She had flung down her rapier and now gripped the flagpole, the shaft all bloody in her fingers. The yellow and scarlet flamed above us. “It is superb! Superb! On! On! Jikai! Jikai!”

  Following that magnificent girl with her flaring dark hair and her steel-mesh clad figure waving the flag aloft the men bellowed over the last of the Menaham cavalry. Now were left only those who had run into the palace, ready, like cornered cramphs, to fight and die.

  “She is superb!” grunted Inch, flicking blood drops from his ax.

  “Aye!” said Valka, waving his rapier. “And so is the flag!”

  We raced up the marble stairs, hurdling the dead bodies, and so came into King Nemo’s palace.

  As I had known I would, I found Murlock Marsilus.

  Viridia, gripping the flag in her bloodied left hand, her right now wielding a fresh snatched-up rapier, used her booted foot on a double folding door, kicking it open with a crash. Spitz feathered three shafts into the room and then Inch and I leaped in. Half a dozen Menaham gathered there, three with Spitz’s blue-feathered shafts in them. The other three went down before Inch, Valka and me. Then I saw the tableau in the adjoining room, clearly visible through flung open drapes.

  Murlock was there, gripping a rapier, about to drive it down into Pando’s back as he clutched his mother about the waist.

  Tilda faced Murlock bravely. She swung a wine bottle at his head, reeling, and with a savage laugh Murlock smashed it away. But the diversion had been enough. He heard our entrance and swung about — and I reversed my rapier, hefted it, balanced, and hurled it as I had hurled javelins with my clansmen on the great plains of Segesthes.