Swordships of Scorpio

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 crew 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 Aphrasoe?” 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.