Princess Xia stepped forward. “Please, my lords, May I speak for the youth of Konya?”
Her father was taken aback, but he nodded, go on.
“All suffer in war, my lords,” she said. “But is it not the youth who bear the worst of it? And when The Sarzana ruled, was it not to you sons and daughters that he was the most cruel? How many of your children died then, my lords? And how many more die now — as we speak?”
There was muttering among the crowd watching the proceedings, especially among the young nobility.
She put an arm around my shoulder. “You said, father, that Captain Antero has only been tested twice. I beg your forgiveness for correcting you, but there was one other time she acted — when she rescued me. She could have sailed on. Passed us by. It might even have been the wisest course, for she was in as much danger in that storm as I. But she didn’t. She risked her life for me. Her women warriors did the same to save twelve other Konyans from death.”
I was afraid she was going to move on to my confrontation with Cholla Yi, when we risked all again. That might speak highly of us, but not of him. I needed that pirate, curse his hide. I was relieved when she skipped past that rock and continued to cross the stream. But I was astounded to see where that next step took her.
“I will prove to you, my lords, how much I trust Captain Antero. I ask — nay, I demand — that I be allowed to go with her when she fights. Her fate, will be mine. She will not betray me, my lords. She will not betray the youth — the future — of the Kingdom of Konya.”
Her father nearly fell from his seat. His colleagues were equally astounded. The crowd surrounding us, however, thundered its approval.
Princess Xia’s name was roared to the vaulted ceilings of that great room. Scores surged forward to shout at the Council of Purity, demanding that I be allowed to join in the fight against The Sarzana. With Princess Xia at my side — a hostage to fortune.
The council, led by Lord Kanara, had no choice but to grant permission.
Xia’s father hammered for order and the crowd went wild — as if victory had already been won.
I looked at my new lover. Her face was flushed with excitement; eyes dancing with joy.
But there was something about her I had never noticed before: a stubborn tilt to her chin; a squareness to her flung back shoulders; a regal look in her eyes.
By the gods if she didn’t look like a queen.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
LOVE AND WAR
Some say the road we all travel in this life has been surveyed and cobblestoned by the gods. If so, then the gods must have an unhealthy fondness for strong drink. How else could you account for madness of that path — the way it twists and turns, plummeting into muddy holes, or rising to breathtaking heights? I’d like to meet the god who mapped my life. I’m not certain whether I’d cut his throat, or buy him another round. In Konya, one moment I was a most unhappy woman, awaiting my fate in the bowels of a Konyan dungeon. The next, I was the woman of the hour, my praises being sung in the greatest halls of the very people who’d locked me away. Is it too great a stretch, Scribe, to wonder if the god who mapped that route wasn’t drunk?
The days that immediately followed my meeting with the Council of Purity were crazed. We were all released from the dungeon and given most commodious quarters. Even the meanest sailor, or lowest ranking Guardswoman, had a room — and plush rooms they were — to themselves. They fed us and clothed us well. So many invitations to entertainments poured in I had to refuse them all, rather than end up accidentally insulting some Konyan noble. It was easy to plead the excuse of being too busy readying for the coming battle. Mostly, this was true. But, there was also ample time for private pleasures. I had a princess to attend to, after all.
She arranged for me to be given a small villa that overlooked the harbor and had it staffed with her most discrete servants. The day she showed it to me was warm and the air heavy with the scent of hyacinth. The villa had thick white walls and was roofed with blue tile. Roses climbed the entranceway, which let into a sunny garden. The pathway cutting through the garden was shaded by an arbor of scented gourds whose flesh was so sweet it drove a colony of wasps quite mad. They darted among the ruby red fruit, never seeming to be satiated no matter how much they ate. An ancient fountain played in the center of the garden, spilling out under a willow on one side, and feeding a soft bed of moss.
The bedroom of master’s quarters was huge, carpeted with thick rugs, upon which were piled pillows of every size and color. The canopied bed was the size of a small practice field, overflowing the largest corner and leaving a small pathway between it and the verandah doors, which opened to the most marvelous view of the harbor. It was room for sunsets and love. We fell into that bed the moment we came into the room. We were as insatiable as those hungry wasps, kissing and exploring every inch of sweetness. Shout followed shout, wail followed wail as we took each other from one height to another.
I see you are red-faced, Scribe; yet the evening is cool. Are you titillated by my descriptions of our love making — or shocked? Ah, I see it’s the latter. What could be the cause? You’re certainly experienced in memoirs such as these. Is it because they were the adventures of men, doing manly things? Isn’t such spicing permissible in a history of a woman? Or, is it that same-sex love making offends you? If this is the case, I’m not sorry. I’ve sworn to tell the truth; and the truth is that love is the same no matter the costume it wears. Passion is the nature of all things that walk, or swim, or crawl. To deny it, to ignore it, is to not fully understand the very life the gods blew into us. In the end, it is your own self you will understand least of all.
Xia and I made love until the sun neared the end of its daily journey. We lolled quietly in each other’s arms, enjoying the cool of the early evening winds.
Finally, she broke the silence. “You are not my first,” she said, eyes shyly lowered.
I didn’t think I was. She was quite experienced for one so young. But that’s not what I said. “It’s not my business. Your adventures are your own. To share, or to treasure in silence.”
“I want to tell you about it,” she said. “So you know me.”
I kissed her and let her talk.
“I’ve always felt I was strange, out of place,” she said. “It was as if I didn’t belong in my family, but was simply left at the door and taken in by my mother, who was certainly a kind enough woman to do such a thing.”
“You don’t think that’s what really happened, do you?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No. Foundlings don’t become princesses. Still, the feeling was there. I never liked boys. Not like my girlfriends who were going on about them even before we all grew breasts and started out monthlies. Actually, it was my girlfriends who first attracted me. It was all quite natural, for a time. Even though they talked of boys, we had dalliances. Schoolgirl crushes with one another. Many of which were consummated in bed. No one thought anything of it. Perhaps it’s even encouraged a bit in our society. The maidenhead is much prized in Konya, and such innocent play tends to keep it intact until families can negotiate our future — our marriages.”
“It is the same in Orissa,” I said.
Xia took this in, then continued. “All went well until I reached marrying age, which in Konya is sixteen. Since then my father has become anxious that I wed and bear him grandchildren so our line can continue.”
“But you’ve resisted?” I guessed.
“Absolutely,” Xia said. “I want no man to rule me, much less bed me.” Again, I noted that regal, stubborn look of hers. Xia was not someone I’d like to get on the wrong side of.
She continued: “It has become increasingly difficult to refuse my father. More so, because of what happened just before I met you in that storm.”
“I’ve wondered how came to find you there,” I said.
“I was sent to the temple at Selen for purification,” she said. “My father learned that I’d become the lover of an older
woman. Fiorna’s the wife of one of our generals. He was always away, which pleased her, because when he’s home he’s a brute to her and her children. Also she’s like . . . us. Fiorna prefers women to men. Anyway, a scandal was avoided — just. She was sent home to her mother and her husband was assigned to the outskirts of the kingdom. As for me, my father thought I needed to be purged of my tastes. To undergo purification. Hence, the voyage.”
I laughed, stroking her fine breasts. “The purification didn’t seem to take,” I said.
Xia made a wry face. “Actually, the priestesses there were quite helpful. They taught me how to be more discreet.”
She gave me an impish look. Her hand reached and she found a place that made me shiver. “They taught me some other things as well,” she giggled.
“Lord knows,” I said, husky, “I’ve always been an eager scholar.”
Later, as she rose to dress and depart, she said: “Would you do something for me?”
“Anything within my power,” I said.
“Would you teach me to fight?”
I rose up, startled. “You’re a princess. You have no need for that knowledge.”
She shook her head, serious. “I’ll be with you when the fight begins. And I refuse to be some helpless flower, while other women — your soldiers — risk their lives. I at least want to know how protect myself. If not more. And don’t worry, I won’t do something foolish and charge into the fray and be a worry to you. Also, I want to be something other than pretty Princess Xia in the eyes of my people. When this history is written, I intend to be more than a footnote.”
I thought over her request. It seemed sensible to me. And then she said: “Besides, we must be discrete, my love. Training with you will be a wonderful excuse for me to come and go as I please.”
“Very well,” I said. “We’ll begin tomorrow.”
We did, and she proved as ardent a pupil of battle, as she was of love.
* * * *
Meanwhile, the Konyans prepared for war. The Council of Purity might still have been babbling on about the way to wage that war, but at least there was more than talk in Isolde.
Each day saw more ships arrive off the island. Sometimes there’d be one, sometimes half a dozen, once fleets of over two dozen. Finally, there were nearly four hundred vessels. They’d quickly filled Isolde’s harbor from headland to piers and most lay in the roadstead outside the harbor mouth. They hailed from all over the kingdom — if such a polyglot collection of so many hundreds of islands can be called such a thing — especially since each group seemed to have its own customs and language. Communication was either in Konyan, which most of the ruling classes of the islands knew after a fashion; the Konyan traders’ pidgin, or through those Orissans of mine who’d been blessed with the Spell of the Tongues.
The ships were of every variety, from vessels designed only for war, to hastily-converted merchantmen and even some sharkish galleys whose crews I knew were pirates who’d decided to sail under a known banner for as long as loot was in the offing.
I was impressed by how rapidly the Konyans could turn themselves to battle and asked Xia if her people had an especial talent for bloodshed. “I don’t know about that,” she yawned. “But it seems as if someone’s always fighting someone. If you wish, I’ll have one of my servants show you the arsenal.”
I did wish and on the morrow I was escorted to a separate part of the harbor, which was fenced and guarded. Inside, I learned the Konyan’s secret. The arsenal was a row of wharves, man-made islands actually, with a long warehouse running the length of each. A narrow strand of water ran between each wharf and at either end there were wide basins.
The wharves swarmed with workmen, who reached them on wide bridges that slid out from the main dockyard. Into the basin at one end an out-of-commission ship would be towed in by lines linked to huge capstans on the shore itself. The ships had been “laid up in ordinary,” as it was called, which meant all their stores had been removed, their yards and masts brought down and the bare hulk anchored to await another crisis.
Big sliding doors opened at each warehouse as the ship was towed down the wharf. From one, masts would be taken — each marked for the ship it had come from. Cranes would restep them and shipwrights lash them into place. At the next warehouse the spars and mainyard would be lifted and mounted; following that, coils of line would appear, and the laborious process of re-rigging begun. After that canvas sails would be carried aboard. Xia’s servant told me Isolde tried to design their warships uniformly, so supplies could be as common to all as possible.
Now the hulk looked like a ship and was dragged on down the line. The rowers’ oars and benches were loaded, then came barrels of salt pork and beef, then bedding, wine and freshwater barrels and so on — with each warehouse a chandlery with a single specialty. By the time it reached the end of the wharf, the warship was ready to be manned and put out into the roadstead to join its fellows. The process was impressive, but the ships being “launched” I found less so. All of them were huge single-masted galleys, like the one I’d rescued Xia from. The Konyans didn’t fancy swift, small galleys such as Cholla Yi, or some of the outer islanders, favored.
I made it my business to inquire how Konyans fought their naval battles, and found it to be even more primitive than the so-called tactics my women had been taught when we sailed after the Archons so long before. A warship would be filled to the gunwales with soldiers — soldiers who knew even less about ships and the sea than I had when we set out from Lycanth. The captain of that warship had simple duties — he was to sail in tight company with the fleet until they encountered the enemy. The order would be given to attack, always in some mass formation designated by the fleet admiral. The captain’s final duty was to put his ship alongside that of an enemy. The soldiers would board the ship and take it by storm.
All of his weaponry, from catapults to the crows-beaks, which were spiked-end gangplanks meant to imbed themselves immovably in an enemy’s deck planking, were to produce this single end. Ramming was still considered an innovation, since all too often the ramming ship incurred as much damage as the one being rammed, or else broke free and the fighting soldiers could not carry the battle to its “proper conclusion.”
That was sea-battle the way it always had been fought, and the way it always would be fought. The Sarzana would be using ships similar to ours, so the day would be carried by numbers, force of arms, sorcery, but most of all, justice. The last, I thought to myself, I’d seldom seen on a battlefield.
I remembered what Stryker and Duban had said during the storm about Xia’s galley, and my own thoughts of direwolves bringing down a bear. This time, I did more than just remember. Late in the evenings I began holding very quiet, very private meetings with Corais, Ismet, and Dica, who I welcomed because it’s been my experience a complete novice can frequently see a better way more clearly than a veteran. Sometimes Polillo, in spite of her loud protests that she was a fighter, not a planner, took part.
I’d bought a cheap model of one of these monstrous Konyan ships in a bazaar, and the four or five of us would sit around the toy, like so many babes planning the next day’s sail in a pond, and think. Sometimes our thoughts were meritorious, mostly foolish or impossible. But I wrote all of them down in a tablet, cursing as I did so and remembering what little talent I have with words. What we were talking about, and what fruits those long hours bore, I’ll tell shortly.
* * * *
Despite Xia’s protests, I left the main part of her training to Ismet. I’ve learned that such things are best taught by others. A friend will be either too easy or too hard. Besides, there’s nothing like the impersonal appraisal of a tough sergeant to see where one really stands; so the princess drilled in the practice yard along with the other Guardswomen. She took to the bow and the spear and sword as if she born to it, and flushed with vicious pleasure when she got the upper hand of her drilling partner and gave her a good drubbing with the wooden blade. And when I saw how
quickly she learned to fire arrow after arrow into its mark, I was glad I hadn’t relented and let her show up the dashing, all-knowing Captain Antero.
Plain exercise was another matter. Every evening we ran along the ring road that circled the humped main section of Isolde. It was a good five miles, beginning at the harbor, and ending at a small tavern near my villa. It took me a week to get her built up enough to make that circle once. She was aghast at the end of that week when I told her that our next goal was to make it twice, then three times, then four.
“I doubt we’ll make the last goal,” I said. “There isn’t time to get that much strength into your legs.”
“What’s wrong with my legs,” she pouted. “You seem to like them well enough when I’m not running on them.”
“Oh, I like them fine,” I said. “And their powerful enough when you’ve got them twined about my neck. But there’s more stamina required for fighting, than love, thank the gods. A soldier’s legs are more important than even her weapons. They must carry her for miles to the fight, then hold her up under the most grueling assaults at that fight, and if it is the whim of her superiors she might have to march right out again when the battle is over.”
“We’ll be on ships,” she said. “They’ll carry us to the fight and back again. So once around the harbor ought to be more than enough.”
“Humor me,” I said.
“And if I do?” she asked, eyebrows arching up mischievously.
I whispered in her ear. She giggled. “Oh, I like that. Are you sure you don’t want to start on the next five miles right now?”
* * * *
One day, a grand meeting of all division captains was called. We were to meet our new fleet admiral. I thought I was well-prepared for this, but as usual when I attempt to predict the thinking of men when it comes to that cheap jade of command, I was wrong.
The Warrior's Tale (The Far Kingdoms, Book 2) Page 41
