knows how to use those gadgets.'
Gadgets. Most of the troopers had now filed aboard the ship, and the handcarts were halfway down the pier. Close enough that Demansk could see their contents clearly.
The lead carts were filled with heavy two-man arquebuses and their tripods. The trailing carts, with ammunition for the weapons. Trae had wanted to bring one of the bombards along also, but the experienced seaman Sharlz Thicelt had convinced the eager young nobleman that the thin planks and lightly-built hull of the ship wouldn't be able to withstand the recoil.
The strange new weapons had been designed by Adrian Gellert and used by the King of the Isles against the Confederacy the year before. Some of the weapons in the cart below, Demansk imagined, had been captured during the fighting. But most of them-perhaps all of them-had been built by Trae's artisans in his workshop, using Gellert's design as the model. If no Vanbert natural philosopher would have ever dreamed of inventing the things in the first place, Vanbert's metalworkers and apothecaries were perfectly capable of duplicating them once shown how they worked.
In fact, Trae claimed that his own arquebuses and firepowder were superior to the originals. Demansk didn't doubt the claim. Trae had destroyed more than a few workbenches in his experiments to improve the weapons' performance. Fortunately, he hadn't killed anyone in the process. Not quite. But several of Trae's workmen, as well as Trae himself, would carry scars and burn marks to their graves.
Demansk took a deep breath. Then, forced the smile back onto his face. 'Ah, well. The gods' will is whatever it will be.' He put his hand on his daughter's shoulder and gave it a little squeeze. 'Luck be with you, child. And my blessing.'
He gave the shoulder another squeeze, this one more in the way of an assessment than a reassurance.
'You might want to leave off on the exercise,' he said drily. 'I'm not sure your Adrian fellow is going to be all that fond of a woman whose shoulders are wider and more muscular than his are.'
The jibe bounced off Helga like a pebble. She just chuckled and replied: 'Oh, his shoulders are quite wide enough, even if he isn't a legendary athlete like his brother. But then, I forget-you haven't actually met him, have you?'
Demansk shook his head. 'Not really. I ran into his brains at a distance, you might say.' His tone was a bit rueful. 'He's an ingenious bastard, I'll give him that. I just hope his mind turns as readily to other things as it does to figuring out new methods of mayhem.'
'I think he'd much rather be putting his mind to work at other things, Father. His brother Esmond, now… he's a hater, that one. Half-consumed by it already, when I knew him, and probably eaten up completely by now. But Adrian's a different sort. I think-'
She hesitated; then, softly: 'We'll find out, soon enough. But I think he'd rather be Vanbert's friend than our enemy, if he can just see a way to do it…'
Her voice trailed off, as she groped for the right word.
' 'Properly,' let's call it,' said her father. 'That's a nice neutral sort of term.'
He gave her shoulder another squeeze, this one full of affection. More in the way of a hug, really. 'And now you'd best get down there yourself. The ship will be ready to sail soon.'
When Helga came aboard the ship, her attention was drawn to the stern by Trae's cursing. Despite the volume of his voice, the profanity seemed spoken more in enthusiasm than actual anger.
'Not that way, you fucking whoresons! It's a clamp, now, not a tripod! Are you blind as well as bastards?'
Still cradling the baby, Helga moved toward the stern, working her way around the benches and equipment spread over the entire deck. The soldiers of her escort were settling into their positions, none too quickly and with a great deal of awkwardness and uncertainty. Their own confused milling was as great an obstacle to her progress as their gear.
As a rule, soldiers coming aboard a naval vessel were able to settle in easily enough. The soldiers doubled as rowers on the upper bank when the ship was not in combat. Even in sea battles, at least in the early stages, they remained on the benches. It was only when a boarding operation was about to begin that the soldiers abandoned their oars for their assegais.
But on this trip, the soldiers were unneeded at the oars. Thicelt had hired a complete crew of rowers. The task of Helga's escort, in case of pirate attack, was to remain hidden and out of sight until-and if-a boarding attempt needed to be repelled. The factor of surprise, added to the already ferocious skills of Confederate infantrymen, should be enough to break most pirate attacks.
Of course, that also meant that the none-too-spacious vessel was even more crowded than warships usually were. The soldiers, cursing almost as loudly as Trae, were trying to figure out where they could fit their own bodies as well as their gear. Not even Vanbert infantrymen could sleep standing up, after all. And this would be a long voyage, even with the prevailing winds in their favor.
Eventually, Helga worked her way through the press and came onto the cleared space at the very stern of the ship. 'Cleared' in a manner of speaking. Trae's assistants-special squad, it would be better to say-had managed to keep the regular soldiery from spilling into the area. But between their own numbers and the ship's crew, the population density was only relatively lighter than that amidships.
Trae was hunched at the stern rail, apparently showing one of his aides how to do the job properly.
'We hinged the third leg, see? On board ship, the tripod doubles as a clamp. Slide it down over the rail… till it nestles solidly… then… The gods damn this fucking thing! ' Trae's voice faded into mumbling as Helga neared him. 'There, that's it. A bit tricky, that's all, getting the screw to engage. Now… tighten it down, like this. Right-over turn to tighten, just like a screw pump.'
The man standing next to him, watching, murmured something. Trae's half-cheerful/half-exasperated cursing came back at full volume.
' Never seen a screw pump? ' The young nobleman lifted his head and gave all of his nearby special squad members a glare. 'None of you, from the ox-dumb looks on your faces! Fucking peasants! Fat peasants, that's the problem! Lounging about in the shade while the women do all the work. What little work there is on your rich bottomlands.'
His squad members were fighting grins. Obviously, they'd had enough experience with Trae to know the difference between his genuine anger and this half pretense. Judging from their appearance, Helga thought all of them were the same type of easterners who filled the ranks of the soldiery proper.
'I'm an idiot!' bellowed Trae. 'I should have engaged nothing but those barbarians from the Gya desert! They know how a pump works, even if they are a lot of savages. Gotta have pumps in those drylands.'
He turned back and demonstrated again, using exaggerated hand gestures. 'Like this, see? Hand turning to the right. You do know the difference between left and right? Please! O gods, I beg you! '
Helga was close enough to look over his shoulder. She could now see clearly what Trae was doing. He'd fit one of the arquebus tripods over the rail and, using what struck her as an excessively elaborate screw device, had clamped the hinged third leg on the wood. The tripod would now provide a solid and steady rest for one of the heavy two-man arquebuses, even in tossing seas.
'That's a stupid arrangement,' she said. Her own voice was not much softer than Trae's. 'Much too complicated. It would have been a lot easier to just leave the tripod alone, drill a hole in one of the legs, and screw in to the wood instead of trying to clamp around it.'
Trae straightened to his full height, twisted, and glared down at her with outrage. Helga gave him a sweet smile. 'You said it yourself. Women do all the work. That's what makes us smarter, too.'
And with that, she turned and ambled away, a little chorus of chuckles following. None from Trae, of course.
She spent the next hour or so getting her own quarters ready. The 'quarters' in question consisted of a section of the hold which had been set aside for the women accompanying the expedition. These were Ilset Yunkers, the wives of the four senior noncoms of the hundred, and Lortz's two concubines. Ilset was, by a considerable margin, the youngest of the seven women. And Helga suspected she was probably the only one who was legally a 'wife' to begin with. The other four had the appearance of campaign concubines. Veterans themselves, in a manner of speaking. Lortz's women didn't even make a pretense of being anything else.
