with favor!”
She blew up then.
She jumped for me and began beating me on the chest with her fists, shouting and sobbing, the dark hair swirling all into my eyes, pins and priceless gemmed hair ornaments flying in all directions. She even, like Pando, tried to kick me. I grabbed her wrists and brought her arms down and so inclining toward me, we stared face to face.
On her cheeks thick tears coursed. Her rich lips shook and quivered. “Dray Prescot! I hate you! I hate you!”
“I do not hate you, Viridia. But, I do not love you. That cannot be so.”
All the passion and fire left her. She sagged against me so that our gripping hands were trapped between our bodies and I could feel all the firm softness of her. She moaned.
“Say that is not so, Dray! Please! I am Viridia the Render! My word is law! I can have you taken out and tied up and my men will loose at you for sport! Do not say you do not love me!”
“Nothing your men can do could make me change my mind by a single degree, Viridia. And you know it, by Zair! You know it as well as you know my affection for you! But love — that I cannot give you.”
She drew back and I let her go. Her sheer robe tautened against her as she pulled her shoulders erect. That maddening dark hair swirled now about her face and with an impatient gesture and the flash of a gem-encrusted white wrist she pushed it back.
“You do not know what you are saying-”
“I know. I will faithfully support you, Viridia, in our render raids. I will be a loyal member of your pirate band. Beyond that, it is forbidden for me to go.”
I saw the glitter in the lamplit blue eyes. I saw the way her body tensed, the deep breath she drew, the way her hands hooked into claws. I poised.
“Get out! Get out, Dray Prescot! Oh, you fool! You fool! Get out!
And so, for the love of my Delia of Delphond, I left Viridia the Render shaking with passion among her pirate trophies.
Truth to tell, I felt remarkably sorry for the girl.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The next morning a macabre scene was enacted on the beach fronting the village of wooden houses with the swordships riding over their reflections in the harbor. The weather was fine and hot, with the twin suns pouring down molten rays of ruby and jade. Everyone flocked down to the beach to witness the punishment of a dozen men who had been caught stealing a boat with the intention — as they freely confessed — of sailing to the nearest fortress port of the islands. This fortress port happened to be one belonging to the country of Lome, situated in a triangle at the extreme northwest of Pandahem. Lome was not overlarge as nations go, but her colors of blue and green horizontal stripes were to be found fluttering from swordships. Even in this matter of policing the Hoboling islands and their renders’ nests, no unity of action was displayed by the fractious countries of Pandahem.
I will not go into details of the fate of these poor unfortunates. Whether they were paid spies, whether they had merely become sickened of the pirate trade, or if they had had an argument with their render chief, I never discovered. I turned away as soon as the executions began and took myself off to think. Clearly, any plan to escape to Vallia must be thought out with exquisite care, else I would end up like those poor devils on the beach.
In the event, when we put to sea again I took care to take myself aboard a swordship that was not Viridia’s flagship. We dug in the oars, for everyone took a turn on the rowers’ benches, and for all that I was now varterist in chief — the varter Hikdar — I pulled and tugged with the rest. My idea that I could for a space escape Viridia’s observation through my duties as varter Hikdar were soon dispelled. Her flagship cut water perilously close to our oars, and a stentor bellowed across, in much the same way as the stentors bellow a passage for the swifters passing Sanurkazz from the Sea of Marshes into the inner sea.
So, rather like a ponsho-trag with his tail between his legs, I was rowed across. Valka and the men whom I had trained, ostensibly as my varter cadre, were rowed across, also. Viridia was not on deck when I stepped aboard. A fine tall man with the red hair of Loh greeted me. He had been a lieutenant and now wore a smothering extra layer of gold lace and so I gathered this man, Arkhebi, had been promoted into Strom Erclan’s place.
Overside the swordship I had left gathered her boats in and then, all as one, her oars struck into the sea and with a heaving surge she took up station again. I did not feel in the mood to sweat at an oar any further this morning, and so I said: “If you’ll muster a broadside crew, Arkhebi, I’ll start in giving them a little training. I’ll make ’em jump!”
Arkhebi smiled. He was, as I remember, a ruffianly fellow; but he loved a good fight.
‘The captain ordered for you to come across, special, Dray. But she’s said no more and she’s closeted in her cabin.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “You steer small, Dray Prescot!”
“Aye, Arkhebi, I’ll do that. And congratulations on your rank.” I nodded to where our six consorts plowed the sea. “You’ll be in command yourself, soon.”
“Aye, I will be!” he said with a brightness I found charming. Reavers and rovers all, those renders, but genial with it — some of them.
With the starboard broadside crew I was soon hard at work on the varters. I concentrated more on them, for with the ballista-type weapon one could obtain a flatter trajectory than with the catapults -
they were of a formidably varying nature and kind with a plethora of technical names — and I sought to obtain the kind of accuracy and rate of fire I would tolerate on any ship I commanded. It may seem a strange and crankish thing to say, but I sometimes missed the deep-throated thunder of the broadsides of our Earthly guns.
Presently the breeze increased enough for the oars to be shipped and all the canvas to be set. Courses on fore and main, crossjack on the mizzen, topsails on the fore and main, and the spritsail ahead on its mast and yard on the bowsprit, we surged wet and uncomfortable through the sea. Swordships are a pestiferous kind of sea- animal. I would as much have them rowed as sailed providing I am not lugging an oar. As it was, she lay over and the spray lashed our faces and solid sheets of water were shipped green. But we flew along. This was what being a render of the islands was all about: discomfort and danger and, at the end, prizes and jewels, silks and wines. .
Our first victim bore fluttering at her masthead the diagonal stripes of blue and green that denoted an argenter from The Bloody Menaham. We bore down on her. A few accurate shots from our bow varters knocked away some spars, we saw the flash and gleam of weapons along her decks, and we were about to bear down, our keen bronze rostrum foaming through the sea, when Viridia, who had not appeared when called, stepped on deck.
“Avast, you dogs!” she roared, all her old callous roughness fully in evidence. “Prescot, you great calsany! Get your pestiferous varters going! Earn your plunder! Knock over that fat ponsho for me and save the blood of my men!”
To all that I simply shouted, “Aye aye!” and bent to the nearest varter. It was fully wound, a chunk of rock in the slide as big as a vosk-skull.
I touched the trigger as the swordship rose to the swell. The rock flew true. A great shout went up as the mainmast of the argenter toppled, leaned, and in a weltering smother of canvas and cordage plunged overside into the wake.
After that it was simply a matter of boarding, of brandishing our weapons, and of cleaning up. We took spices, and silks, great jars of Pandahem ware, chests of jewels, weapons and trinkets, and amphorae by the score. Rich wine of a dozen different vintages was carried aboard by the happily sweating crew and the frightened passengers who were now our prisoners.
“We can soon jury-rig her,” I said to Viridia, without really taking too much notice of her, as we watched the
