Swordships of Scorpio [Dray Prescot #4]

by Alan Burt Akers

  “So, Dray Prescot! That is why you did not take the captaincy! For concern of Viridia the Render!"

  If he chose to think that, let him. Maybe I should have disabused him, then and there; but I am not a one for giving confidences to any but those I know and trust.

  We walked up to the village and were soon well into a bottle taken from the argenter of Jholaix. The stuff was smooth and mellow and, perhaps, it loosened Valka's tongue.

  “You know Vallia, Dray? You have been to that beautiful and wicked land?"

  I considered for a moment. Then I said, “No, never."

  He sighed and drank deep. “It is a land where anything the heart desires may be found—but only for those in the privileged positions of power and wealth and authority."

  “That is everywhere the same."

  “True, true, Dray, my old dom.” He looked up and his eyes misted. “In the north of Vallia are the mountains—the wonderful mountains of Vallia! From them flow mighty rivers, pouring in a refreshing flood down to the coasts on east and west and south. Ah! The south coast. Nowhere in all of Kregen is there a place like it."

  He was waxing semipoetical on me now; but I listened with care.

  Delia had told me something of her homeland and I had heard of these mountains before. They were not the Blue Mountains. Valka drank and wiped his lips. “The whole island is connected with a network of canals. Canals flow everywhere. As a consequence, the roads are usually abominable. The canal folk are my folk. We form a community—” Then he stopped, and hiccupped, and roared some obscene jest at a render who grabbed a serving wench, and missed, and fell into a waste bucket. Full-flavored accidents like that often amuse the Kregans.

  Then he said with as much bitterness as I ever heard him speak: “I offended against a law. The Racter party are all powerful. They do as they please, them and their mercenaries. So I ran away to sea. And was captured. And ended up here."

  “And would you return to Vallia, if you had the chance?"

  He grimaced. It was not a pretty sight. “By Vox! I miss the canals. But if I return home, they will hang me, for sure."

  “The Racter party will, or the government?"

  “Government?” He spat. “The emperor wields awful powers. He is a devil. But he must walk small when the Racters frown."

  The noise of carousing bellowed on about us as we talked. Soon Valka had drunk enough for him to join in with the songs the renders yodeled out. They sang songs I had never heard of until then: “The Worm-eaten Swordship Gull-i-mo.” The part song, “The Wines of Jholaix,” which they were sober enough to sing more or less correctly through, swordship crew and swordship crew taking parts. “The Maid with the Single Veil,” which brought on a rash of giggles from the serving wenches. And they sang the old ones, too: “The Bowmen of Loh.” They even had a shot at various musicked stanzas of “The Canticles of the Rose City,” but by that time most were too far gone for exact rendering of the cadences of those old myths, three thousand years old if they were a day.

  When I wandered off to the room I had been assigned Valka and the knot of men I knew now were faithful to me, for I had seen their reactions during the aftermath of the fight aboard the flagship, accompanied me. They would sleep next door. I went in and the samphron oil lamp was lit and there was Viridia, smokily lovely in a short orange shift which showed her legs and her knees—which were dimpled, I swear it!—reclining on the bed.

  In her combed hair a blaze of jewels reflected the light and glittered magnificently. I heard Valka and the others laughing. Viridia pushed up on her arms.

  “You were asking Valka of Vallia, Dray.” She smiled and that sensuous mouth parted enticingly. “Come and sit by me and I will tell you of Vallia, also."

  “You are a Vallian?” In truth, I had heard a story that she was, but had doubted it.

  “I will tell you, Dray; but come, sit by me."

  I did not relish a repetition of that scene I had endured with Queen Lilah. I discounted women like Natema and Susheeng in this equation; because Viridia fancied herself as a Queen of Pain, which Queen Lilah had in truth been. If I give the impression of Viridia as being less of a person than she was, then I do her a disfavor. She was a real person in her own right, vibrant, alluring now she had tidied herself up, and a genuine force to be reckoned with. I fancied she wanted to place herself under my protection, now that her Womoxes were gone. As I thought of them I gave an involuntary shiver, for they had been gruesome and powerful antagonists indeed.

  Viridia started up.

  “Dray! You have a fever?"

  “It is nothing, Viridia the Render. Now, listen to me, and listen to me carefully. I shall not tell you again."

  At this she sat up on the bed and meekly put her hands together, down between her knees. Her tanned face, warm under the mellow light, assumed an expression of subservience, the eyes downcast. If she was playacting, she did it well. There were no slaves among the renders, but I guessed from this display that Viridia had been slave in her time.

  “I listen, master."

  About to bite her head off, I stopped. Very well, if this was the way she wanted to play it, so be it.

  “You are now defenseless, except for the strength and skill of your own arms, Viridia. I know you can fight and swing an ax, for I have seen you. But men lust after you."

  “That is true, master. I desire to be your slave. You must chastise me if I am bad, punish me with the knotted cord. I have killed many men who attempted me. But for you I will do as Chekumte desired you to do for him, and kiss your feet."

  I began to think she meant it.

  I was naked to the breechclout; but I began to get hot under the collar.

  “Listen, Viridia. I do not want your Makki-Grodno pirates! Keep them, and the swordships. If you want me to be your master and carry on in this foolish fashion I shall lift that short nightie of yours and spank you soundly—"

  She looked up and her eyelids flew up.

  “Oh, yes, please, master!"

  With a furious roar I scooped her up, opened the door with my free hand and then found that I could not, as I fully intended, throw her out, for she had wound both her naked arms around my neck. The next instant she had kissed me, a full, wet, soft kiss that—I confess—was pleasurable, most. Then, automatically, images of my Delia floated into my mind in a torrent and I laughed. Yes, I laughed.

  “It is no use, Viridia. I like you exceedingly well. But I do not love you. Now go to your room and Arkhebi and Valka and I will stand turn and turn about at your door. You will be safe."

  “But, Dray, my master.” She said this with a charming pout. “I do not want to be safe from you."

  I marveled. From the fierce tough she-leem of the seas, she had metamorphosed into this teasing, sensual, alluring woman. Just how much of an act was it all? Would she, when I was suitably disarmed, slip a dagger between my ribs?

  The last thing she said was: “If I am to remain in command, Dray Prescot, then I will set you in command of the swordship I have just bought."

  This sounded more promising.

  Once I had a crew under my orders and was free of the other swordships, without their seeking a lead from me, I might plan escape.

  “So be it, Viridia the Render,” I said, and carried her to her room and threw her inside. I slammed the door. Then I roused out Valka and Arkhebi and we stood guard turn and turn about all that night.

  The next day I went down to the anchorage to inspect the newest addition to Viridia's squadron and my future command.

  The moment I saw her I exclaimed: “A sea scow! Viridia, you cunning she-leem! She's a zenzile! Old, ancient, leaky—a veritable tub!"

  The smile Viridia cast at me upward and the way her blue eyes caught mine through her eyelashes made me want to spank her in very truth. I put my hands on my hips and jutted my beard out to the swordship.

  “Yes, Dray Prescot—you may think she is all of those things. But, if you wish to command a render ship in my squadron
—that is the swordship for you."

  Valka, at my side, guffawed, so I said without looking at him: “Laugh all you like, Valka. Just remember, you'll be commanding her varters.” At which Valka stopped laughing.

  It had been my custom in the Eye of the World to name any swifter I commanded Zorg. This in memory of my oar comrade. Other swifter captains had known this, and respected my wishes. But I would never dream of calling this swaybacked old zenzile swordship Zorg.

  Without another word to Viridia I strode off toward the nearest of our beached boats and my men, after one look at my face, clambered in silently and bent to the oars. I did not look back at Viridia. I knew she was laughing at me. But, in truth, this old zenzile swordship was not all that bad and she was a weapon of the sea, long, lean, low, lethal.

  The old-fashioned zenzile way of rowing incorporates what was a wonderful invention when it was first used—and just how long ago that was let the academic pundits argue—of slanting the benches diagonally so that their inboard seat is farther aft than their outboard. With three oarsmen on each bench and using oars of different lengths so that the blades formed those impeccable parallel lines in the water, the swordship presented from the beam an impression of a single bank of oars arranged in clumps of threes.

  One man rowed one oar, three oarsmen to each slanted bench, and the centers could be anything from three feet six inches to four feet apart, depending on the whims of the naval architect who designed the ship. There were twenty benches a side and thus a hundred and twenty oarsmen in all. I began to think, as I mounted the side and put my foot on the fantamyrrh and so stepped aboard my new command, that Viridia had indeed bought the scow Chekumte had been trying to sell her.

  If she had, she had done it to spite me.

  Well, that was a game two could play.

  Valka was making unpleasant comments on the sword-ship and with the group of men loyal to me strode about the central gangway and hurdled over the benches and prowled the apostis, looking over the side, for she was of the anafract variety.

  “Don't be too hard on her, Valka. Galleys like this have fought in many great engagements—aye, and they will continue to do so, just so long as men believe in them."

  “Give me a good long oar and half a dozen men on it, any time,” said Valka, with a curse.

  “This is a zorca of the seas,” I said. “At least in theory. This zenzile arrangement is fine for smaller galleys; when you come to a swifter—a swordship—of large size is when you need the packed power that scaloccio rowing gives you."

  I suppose the last time galleys had been constructed after this pattern on the Earth of my birth had been back in the sixteenth century, for the alla scaloccio system had been dated, I gathered, to 1530. The Venetians were great galley men of the Mediterranean. Zenzile rowing died out on this Earth; but I suppose these seafaring folk of Kregen clung to their own ideas with a stubbornness I could recognize.

  The name of this wonder craft was Strigicaw. A strigicaw is a powerful fast-running carnivore with a hide striped as to the shoulders and foreparts and double-spotted as to belly and haunches, in a variety of brown and red camouflage colors, and although looking not unlike a leem has only six legs instead of that voracious beast's eight.

  She was a hundred feet in length—any more would have been too much for her power-propulsion—and had just the two masts, a main and a fore, both rigged with courses and topsails. At least, she did boast a rudder and whipstaff. This is a clumsy system long superseded on the ships of Earth; no doubt soon the naval architects of Kregen will develop the wheel and cylinder steering gear. I strode about her, and, despite all, despite that she would need constant pumping, I began to get the feel of her, and to know she was my command.

  After the sinking of Venus Viridia's render maidens had been shipped aboard another of her squadron, whose crew had been distributed among the remaining ships, so that we had been crowded. Now I would have to look to bargaining and cajoling and arguing in order to obtain the crew I wanted.

  As we so stood surveying our new swordship a booming horn note rolled weirdly over the anchorage. All the busy noise of hammering and shouting, of singing and whistling, all human sounds ceased.

  Again that booming note mourned across the water.

  “The alarm!” shouted Spitz, a redheaded archer from Loh. I had marked him from the first, and sought to woo him for my little company, for in his quiver he carried arrows fletched with the brilliant blue of the king korf—and also arrows fletched with jetty black feathers—feathers I knew had been set by Sosie na Arkasson—and given to me, and loosed by me against Spitz, and so retrieved by him for further use. “King's swordships!"

  We tumbled down into the boat and rowed ashore in a welter of foam. The swordship—or swordships—prowling around the island of Careless Repose might come from any nation; but we usually dubbed any swordship attempting to police the islands the King's swordship. Viridia met us on the beach. She looked excited, her tanned face flushed, her strong body in the mesh steel armor firm in the suns-light.

  “Be ready to repel them if they venture past the concealing islet!” she rapped out to her lieutenants, captains of their own vessels, of whom I was now one. “I and my warrior maidens will seek to do their business for them.” She laughed, throwing her head back in the light so that the dark hair swirled. “As we have done before!"

  “Aye, Viridia!” the man yelled. “Hai, Jikai, Viridia the Render!"

  There was no malice in me, no regret, for the use of that great word here. Viridia, in that moment, was a lady pirate indeed.

  She took her girls off to the other side of the island and the swordship crews repaired aboard their craft and made ready to pull around the point if Viridia's plan did not work. As I had no crew, apart from my own small company of loyals, I took them, with weapons in our hands, across the island after Viridia.

  She might welcome a little help, when it came to the time.

  As it happened, she needed no help, least of all from mere men.

  A repetition of what had happened to the old Nemo took place. This swordship, commissioned to hunt down the renders and sailing out of the chief port of The Bloody Menaham, was taken in exactly the same way and by exactly the same means.

  I daresay it was the same half-naked sprite who ran along the central gangway carrying the dripping head of the chief whip-deldar.

  The King's swordship was rowed around the point and past the concealing islet and so into the anchorage where the slaves were freed from their oars. They set up a wonderful hullabaloo. All, I knew, would take the alternative of joining the pirates.

  I studied the new ship. She was a smart and efficient-looking vessel, with three sails and a spritsail on her bowsprit. Her bronze ram was fashioned into the likeness of a mythical bird of prey, something like a falcon, although, of course, the hooked beak had been smoothed into a single shaft of cutting bronze. Anything like a hook, as of an accipiter's beak, for a ram is idiocy. One has to be able to backwater and shove off from a rammed vessel, with the aid of the proembolion, before the water rushes into the cleft in her hull and the apostis, the rowing frame, settles down over your ram and drags you under.

  As for her spritsail, that was a sailor-like rigged job, nicely forward and yet well clear of her beak. I watched the ex-slaves being ferried ashore. Among those on the beach I saw a group forming around some object on the sand, and I heard loud guffaws, and hearty laughter, and many merry curses. I strolled down.

  A man, a very tall man, was upside down on the sand, his legs rhythmically bicycling in the air. Some of the men were attempting to push him over. He did, at that, look a sight. I heard him yelling. “Clear off, onkers! I must abjure my taboos!"

  A guffawing render—a towheaded man from one of the islands past Erthyrdrin—pushed the tall upside-down man and he rolled spraying sand.

  Instantly, he was upside down again, his long fair hair sand-clogged, his legs rotating.

  The renders and ex-slaves r
oared.

  “Taboos!” They yodeled, getting set for their next prank.

  I sighed.

  I strode over and unlimbered my sword.

  I stood before Inch.

  “If any man wishes to push this man over while he abjures his taboos, he must pass this rapier first."

  After that, Inch could get on with it, and I could only wait until he had worked all the accumulated taboo-breaks out of his system before I could ask him all the news.

  * * *

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The yellow cross on the scarlet field

  Strigicaw prowled the seas in search of plunder.

  “I never believed, Dray Prescot, that any man could claw back from the Ice Floes of Sicce."

  “Since I don't believe in investigating that shivery region for many years to come, Inch, your surprise is unwarranted."

  “But, man! You just disappeared!"

  “Evidently, what happened to me happened to you.” I told him, briefly, how King Nemo had disposed of me and he sighed and said: “Much the same. I suppose I was getting too big for my boots. When you vanished, no man knew whither, Tilda insisted I stay on. I had to—you see that, don't you, Dray?"

  “Of course. It was the honorable thing to do."

  My swordship, making a most unpleasant business of beating into a devilish strong wind from the wrong quarter and with a sea that made the use of oars out of the question, pitched and rolled. Spray drenched us. My flags flew stiff as boards.

  Being anafract, that is, without armor protection for the rowers, my artillery—for I may use that word of varters—must be concentrated forward. We were far more a galley than a galleass, like the other swordships. The others of Viridia's squadron were sailing far more weatherly than we and were pulling away across the tumbled sea. Again I looked up at my flags. Up there the yellow cross of my clansmen had been charged on the scarlet of Strombor. A brilliant yellow upright cross on a scarlet field. Yes, those were my colors. A momentary stab of an emotion I did not want to recognizethe render flag, a shaft of conscience, almost, that the pirate flag should wave in company with my own.