Swordships of Scorpio

to go — up or down in the scales of our judgment?

She was, as I have said, a large woman, and yet from the way she was standing and the drape of her gaudy and impossible clothes I caught the impression that she wore armor beneath that show, and the robes and clothes hung loosely outside, as though worn deliberately for effect. She half drew her rapier, and sheathed it — a motion that brought an instant reaction from her four Womoxes, a reaction as instantly stilled — and she put a hand to her mouth, which was large and generous, and pondered on the problems that I had brought into her ordered render life.

“And who would take the prisoners for their ransom? You, Prescot, you would? And would we ever see you again?”

“Aye!” shouted the men, swayed her way.

“Does honor, then, count for nothing, here along the Hoboling islands?”

A growl greeted this, and Viridia flushed darkly; but she knew as well as I that honor among renders was a matter of convenience. I went on, quickly, “Send someone you trust, if you do not trust me.” Then, as though clinching the argument, I spread my arms wide. “I simply want all the cash that is due me and my comrades. That is all.”

The upshot of it was that Viridia did not kill the prisoners but sent them in the argenter to Walfarg for ransom. We hung about off the coast, most uncomfortably, while her lieutenant transacted the business. But when he returned and the canvas bags were opened and rich fat gold coins spilled across the deck

— Lohvian gold! — everyone roared their approval. Even Viridia the Render was pleased. She called me into her ornate and stuffy aft cabin where zhantil pelts covered the settee, arms were stowed everywhere, bits and pieces of clothing lay scattered on the deck, and toiletries cluttered a side table beneath a port. She looked at me with an expression I tried to fathom, and could not. I knew I trod a tightrope.

With her, her lieutenant glared up at me in open distaste.

He was a man called Strom Erclan, rough and yet with a remnant of faded culture and manners. For

“Strom” is the Kregan title, I suppose, most nearly paralleled by “Count.” He liked the men to give him his title when they addressed him. I had considered it a harmless fad; but now, as I looked at the pair of them, I realized that this hankering after a titled man as her second-in-command was all of a piece with Viridia. Powers of life and death she had over the crews of her swordships. She fancied herself as one of those fabled Queens of Pain of ancient Loh. I thought of Queen Lilah of Hiclantung, who had been a Queen of Pain, with no pretense, and I sighed for poor Viridia the Render.

“You’re getting too big for your boots, Prescot,” said Strom Erclan. I glanced down. I was, of course, barefoot. Erclan snarled at me. He managed his snarl as well as a leem. “Insolent cramph!”

I said, “I understood you wished to see me, Viridia. Do you allow a kleesh like this to mock your authority in your own cabin?”

Before Viridia could answer Erclan’s rapier hissed from the scabbard and he was around Viridia’s table at me. I drew, parried, twisted, and halted my blade at his throat. I glared into his eyes. Almost, almost but not quite, I lost control and thrust him through.

“Kleesh, I said, Strom. Do you die now?”

Viridia shouted: “Hold, you fool, Prescot. If you slay him you’ll never leave this cabin alive.”

Then I saw, through the aft bulkhead partition, the sudden movement and the shadow of a Womox grasping a bent bow, the arrow nocked and drawn back to the pile.

I whipped my blade away and struck Strom Erclan across the face, open-handed with my left, toppled him squalling into a corner where he put his face into a great bowl of some nauseous ointment Viridia used to iron out the wrinkles on her skin.

Viridia — she shocked me, then — Viridia laughed.

“Oh, Strom Erclan, you onker! Leave this wild man and me to talk a mur or two.”

Although the words bubbled through with laughter and Viridia clearly had abruptly snapped into a playful mood, Erclan was less than happy. Ointment smearing his face, he took himself off, glowering. Viridia lifted her left hand and the shadow of the bowman eased the bow and moved back out of sight.

“Don’t try to toy with me, Viridia,” I said. I remembered some of the vainglorious boasting the corsairs of the inner sea employed when promising King Zo what they would do to Magdag. “I’ve eaten bigger fish than that fool for breakfast, and spat out the bones. If he’s the best you can do, forget him. And that horned Womox of yours — I can get to him and spit him long before his addled brains add up what’s going on.”

She bit her lip. Had she been what she pretended to be she’d have snapped her fingers to her Womox bodyguard and made me prove my words. So I finished: “Anyway, Viridia, I’d as lief stick you through as a Womox.”

She rallied. She refused. She said, “I think I shall have you killed, at the end, Dray Prescot.”

“But, until then, you wanted to ask me something.”

“Not ask!” she flashed. “I ordered you to report to me so that I could tell you I want you to take command of the varters. Valka tells me you have some skill with them.”

I nodded. But I did not answer.

“Well, Dray Prescot?” She was surprised and not a little mortified. “Have you no word of thanks?”

“For what? For being given the thankless task of drumming varter drill into the blockheads of your crew?”

Her bosom rose and fell, but with the constriction I had noticed before, as though armor cased her.

“Take care, man! Viridia the Render is known through all the islands! My swordships take and burn and sink — we are feared wherever argenters sail-”

“Aye! And by ramming and boarding. I’ve seen your catapult and varter work. You’re hopeless. If I am to train your calsanys, then I demand absolute obedience. Any man who argues back will be knocked down instantly. Is that clear?”

About to reply she was interrupted by a Fristle messenger who put his head in at the door and squeaked rather than shouted his news, his whiskers quivering.

“Venus is alongside and she’s sinking!”

I give the name Venus to the swordship. I could not give her real name without causing offense. She was the ship in which, in company with a crew of oldsters and weird beings without interest in what they carried, the host of maidens of Viridia’s renders was carried. They were female pirates, true; but I had already seen how their talents were best exercised in the delicate business of extracting largesse from the shipping of the islands.

We all raced on deck and there was Venus already shipping water and the lithe agile forms of her girls leaping aboard Viridia’s flagship. I believe I have not given the name of Viridia’s personal swordship, the flagship of her little fleet of eight craft. Seven, now that poor old Venus was sinking. I know why I have not given it, for it displeased me. She had called her pirate craft Viridia Jikai. It made sense, of course; but I had been trained into a different school of thought where Jikai was concerned.

When all the pandemonium had subsided and Venus had sunk and Viridia started her court of inquiry, I was left to seek out Valka. He looked at me with a most ferocious grin, the while sharpening a nasty-looking boarding-pike.

I said, “You got me into giving drill to these calsanys. Hauling and winding and loosing varters, Valka. Well?”

He laughed and went on sharpening. “Certainly, Dray. I heard about you when they dumped you aboard the old Nemo.” He looked up, suddenly. “Anyway, it gets us out of the rowing benches, does it not, dom?”

Well, there was that to be said for it — indubitably.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The fight on the beach