Swordships of Scorpio

by Alan Burt Akers

  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 busy scene of activity. “She will bring much Lohvian gold.”

  “Aye, Dray Prescot. And does gold please you? Is that all you seek?”

  I faced her. “Whatever you think, Viridia, I will be loyal to you and your renders. Never fear.”

  “You had best be, Dray!”

  We sighted no other sail for the next two days, and Viridia was contemplating a return to our island of Careless Repose. We were running under all our canvas and the sea was such that oars would have been impracticable. Despite my disdain for mere wealth I knew I had, personally, amassed a fair-sized sum in these piratical pursuits. I just had to find a ship to take me to Vallia. This life was seducing me.

  “Sail ho!”

  An excited rush to the rail and up the ratlines confirmed the sail, a triangle of white on the horizon. We took the wind with us as we bore down on her and soon the tall superstructures of a great argenter came into view. She was a fine tall vessel, her three masts clad with billowing canvas, her flags all standing stiff and taut in the breeze. We had the heels of her, if none of our rigging carried away. The hands began to discuss just what prospects of fortune she carried, and if she would strike under varter bombardment or if we would have to board in steel and blood.

  Then I saw the flags standing so proudly from her mastheads.

  All blue, they were, a bright proud blue. And, in the center of that blue field glared the yellow-orange head of a zhantil, ferocious, roaring, untamed.

  I knew that flag.

  “She’s from Tomboram!” shouted Arkhebi. As a Lohvian from Walfarg he would know the Pandahemic colors as well as he knew his colors of Walfarg, the flaunting horizontal stripes of red and gold.

  “Aye, Arkhebi,” I said. “And not only from Tomboram.”

  For I knew, for Pando had told me, with many a boyish twitch of muscular excitement, that he was going to charge a brave zhantil on the blue field of his flag, a zhantil in memory, so he said, of the zhantil-hide tunic I had had made for him, the courageous zhantil, he had said, that reminded him of me.

  “Booty, there, mates!” roared a squat-bodied Brokelsh, laughing, pointing, the black bristle hairs on his muscular body all slick with sweat.

  I remembered Dram Constant and her blue flags, and how we had waited for the onslaught of the sea-leems, and of how Captain Alkers had fought this very swordship on which I now found myself. I could imagine the horror aboard that argenter from Bormark in Tomboram now.

  My conscience is a slippery beast. Going a-roving had seemed perfectly respectable to me when I plundered, as I believed, the enemies of Vallia and of Bormark. But, now, I was faced with the task of capturing and perhaps destroying a ship of a friend. There was no alternative, no choice, about my dilemma; the problem was how to carry the thing off without having my head parted from my shoulders by a Womox.

  “Haul that sheet tight!” roared Arkhebi in high excitement. Hands rushed to the sheet and hauled. We were catching all the breeze there was and we were overhauling the argenter as a zorca strides past a vove.

  Our four consorts — for one had been sent away with the captured argenter of Menaham — were left far in our wake. They had been dragging their heels all the way. Now it was between us and this proud argenter of Pando’s. I saw his face in my mind’s eye, I saw Tilda’s — but I truly believe it was memory of Captain Alkers that spurred into action what little of conscience I possess.

  I picked up a long and stout length of timber that fitted snugly into my two spaced fists. I held it in my left hand and walked across to the bulwark. A boarding ax glittered in the hand of a man who stared with a leem-grin over the shining sea toward his prey. I took the ax from him without a word, swung around, and brought the keen glittering edge down across the main course braces and, in a motion so fast the ax blurred into a silvery circle in the hot air, sliced down across the main yard halyards.

  In a wild flurry and tangle of parting braces and lines the main course billowed up with a gigantic snap, and the main yard smashed down across the deck.

  At once everything was confusion.

  Viridia screamed orders, Arkhebi ran shouting and gesticulating. I walked quickly forward and repeated my actions on the foremast

  “Dray! You madman! Stop that!”

  Viridia came leaping across the deck toward me and her four Womoxes followed, shaking out their swords, their ugly faces blank with anticipation of bloodletting. I knew they did not like me, and they were ferocious and powerful in the extreme.
<
br />   “We cannot take that argenter, Viridia, that is all. The damage aboard here can be cleared up in no time.”

  Men surged in confusion, and the ship rolled, falling off as her crossjack swung her around so that any moment she would be in irons. I didn’t care. Just so that I gave Pando’s ship time to make good her escape. Immediately she had seen our plight she had at once worn and gone haring off across our bows, heading for the shelter of the islands which were smudges low on the western horizon.

  If I had hoped that Viridia harbored any sentiment for me that would halt her vengeful orders I was mistaken.

  Valka and the other men of my little group I could see clustered a little to one side and, quite clearly, they were at a loss. They couldn’t understand my actions.

  “That ship was from a country friendly to me!” I roared. “No man ravages my friends. Remember that!”

  “And no man stands between me and plunder!” shrieked Viridia. She was absolutely furious, her face as red as my breechclout. She jerked her hand at her bodyguard.

  “Seize him — do not kill. I will talk to him when you have bound him in iron chains!”

  I saw two redheaded men lower their longbows, and so I knew I had a chance.

  I threw down the ax.

  “I will not kill, then, also!” I shouted.

  Then the Womoxes charged.

  They sought to beat me down, to wound, not to kill. They rushed in with so furious an onslaught that I was beaten back and half to my knees. I used the length of timber to push myself back onto my feet. Then, gripping it as I would my own Krozair long sword I jammed the splintery end into the guts of the nearest Womox. Before he was down, vomiting, I had swung my wooden long sword full at the head of the next. He ducked with the instinctive grace of the fighting-man, but the timber cracked against one of his horns and splintered it redly from his head. He screamed. I was already dodging and weaving away from the blades of his fellows, and with that scream ringing in their ears they were out to kill. Blood-lust dominated them completely.

  They thrust now with every intention of spitting me.

  I heard Viridia yelling. I ignored her. By rapid and eye-deceiving movements, by a constant flow of action and blows I held the two Womoxes off until I could lay that wooden long sword across the ribs of one and then, as he doubled, short-arm the splinters into his face.

  He reeled back, spraying blood.

  The second had recovered from the loss of a horn and bored in. The last lowered his head as he fought and sought to rip my eyes out with his horns. I skipped back, swung the timber, cracked his skull wide open. The first one, who had been winded, joined his comrade and they rushed me together. Here was the danger. I circled them, weaving the wooden long sword. I do not believe they had experienced a long sword in the grip of a man who knew how to use one before. I dazzled them with a series of passes, ignored their daggers, which took skin from my ribs and slashed my wooden brand down across the face of one of them. He reeled back and I back-struck at the last, smashed in his rib cage and then leaped forward and finished off the sole survivor.

  The fight had been hot and brisk, but nothing was settled yet — or so I thought.

  Viridia was standing with her hand to her lips, her body gross in the swathing robes and armor.

  “Dray. . .” she whispered.

  “I bear you no malice, Viridia. But your bodyguard no longer exist.”

  At that moment I heard Valka’s voice, high, screeching.

  “Dray! Behind you!”

  I whirled. The Brokelsh, an ax high, was swinging at my defenseless back. I sprang aside and as he lunged on with all the vicious power of his swing, I smashed the timber down upon his own back. He went on into the deck. But my wooden long sword, sorely abused, snapped clean across.

  “You men!” I roared, brandishing the splintered stump. “We are comrades. There are plenty of fat ponshos sailing the seas. Another will be borne by the wind any time!”

  Viridia stood as though turned to stone. Even then I did not fully comprehend the disaster to her personally. I stepped close to her side. I tried to speak gently, although, Zair knows, that was difficult enough with the reeking blood splashed upon me.

  “Please, Viridia. Try to think. Only do as I ask in this, that you respect the flag of an ally, and all will be well.”

  “You do not understand, do you, Dray Prescot?”

  Before I could answer, a hail reached us.

  “Sail ho!”

  The reaction was immediate and unthinking. Everyone rushed to the rail, so great is the greed for plunder in a render’s breast.

  She was a broad-beamed argenter from Jholaix, as we could tell from her blue flag with the bright red amphora in its center. At sight of her I was inspired. Jholaix was fair prey.

  I sprang up into the ratlines. I threw away the splintered stump of that long sword that had served me so well, albeit the brand was wood, a mere length of lumber. I drew my rapier.

  “See!” I roared. “See what the gods have brought! Did I not say so?” I pointed with the rapier. “And you all know, you sea-leems, what a ship of Jholaix carries!”

  “Aye!” they yelled back. “Aye, Dray Prescot! Wine of Jholaix, the best in all the islands!”

  With that we set to like maniacs to repair our rigging. The task was accomplished with much cursing and bellowing and by the time our main yard was up and the canvas sheeted home our consorts had drawn level. Together we bore down on the wine ship from Jholaix. She offered not the slightest resistance, and we took her without loss of life.

  By the time the twin suns had set across the sea with the distant humps of the Hoboling islands rising against that sheeting crimson and emerald glory most of the hands were rolling merry with bellies full of Jholaix wine. The ship carried a fortune in fine wines.

  I drank a little of the best, and was well pleased.

  Viridia approached me as I stood by the taffrail. She carried no sword. Her armor hung over her arm, limp, a sheen of mesh-steel in the growing light of She of the Veils.

  “So, Dray Prescot, you have taken command.”

  I was astonished. “Not so, Viridia the Render—”

  “Do not mock me, Dray Prescot! You are captain now.”

  “Why should you suppose that? Because you chose to set your beasties on me and I was forced to dispose of them? I want nothing of command of a crew of cutthroats like this! They are yours, still.”

  “They follow you, now. You have proved yourself. You are a lucky captain, for you conjure the best wine of Jholaix from the sea, when we have not seen an argenter from there for many a long cruise.”

  “I am a man of peace, Viridia.”

  “So I notice.” In that flood of moonlight the slight curl to her upper lip was pronounced, and distressing. I did not, then, and I admit this with some strangeness, relish Viridia the Render’s contempt.

  “Put your armor back on. I do not wish to take your crew or your ship from you. You will find other bodyguards.”

  She stared at me. “I told them not to kill you, and so they did not use their Womox swords. But then—”

  “They tried to kill right enough, Viridia. You saw that.”

  “Yes.”

  So we stood for a space, and I do not know what she thought.

  Looking back, it occurs to me that perhaps you are wondering, as I was so obsessed with the desire to sail to Vallia and claim my Delia, why I did not assume command of the pirates. Then I would have a ship and could command my men to sail to Vallia. It would not have been as simple as that, of course, for a swordship would have made heavy weather of the passage. I can only say that such a course did not occur to me as being a course with a grain of sense in it. Why this should be I do not know. During the night I heard a harsh and ominous croaking from the moonshot sky above; but when I looked up I could not see the Gdoinye with the scarlet and gold feathers I knew was circling up there in wide planing hunting circles.

  So, in uneasy alliance, Viridia and
I sailed back to the island of Careless Repose.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  A zenzile swordship displeases Valka

  My changed status aboard aroused considerable controversy and speculation among the hands until I told Valka to lay it on the line for them. Viridia the Render was still the captain, still in command. We had had a little disagreement over plundering the ship of a friend of mine. That had been amicably settled. Now I was going to knock varter-work into their thick skulls — and they had seen the way I had dealt with the four Womoxes with my only weapon a wooden long sword — and they heeded my words. Valka wanted me to take over. I regarded him with a curiosity I did not conceal as we ran into the harbor and the anchorage and the hook plummeted into the calm water.

  “You say you are from Vallia, Valka. You have told me nothing of your history.” Among the render crew we dropped into the longboat and brawny arms dipped the oars and we fairly flew over the still waters to the white beach. “I do not expect you to tell me anything of yourself, but I am curious, I admit. Of what use would it be to you if I took command?” He began to speak in his quick and volatile way, but I held up a hand. “Remember, Valka, it would mean the death of Viridia. That is certain.”

  “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.”