Brin, David - Glory Season

by Glory Season (mobi)

  Again, a consultation with Kiel, followed by another headshake. Most reaver bands employed special champions, professional fighters among professionals. The rads knew their odds were better in a melee, though at inevitable cost. This wasn't about sharing a hold full of cotton, coal, or dry goods. Theirs was a cargo worth fighting for.

  Captain Poulandres passed on Kiel's refusal.

  "Very good," the master of the other ship replied. "Then my passengers instruct me to say, Prepare for boarding!"

  No further conversation was required. While the smaller vessel moved in, Maia saw Kiel shake hands with the captain, then leap to the cargo deck, taking up her bill and yelling to her comrades. Poulandres immediately called all male crew members aft. The seamen hurried, shouting encouragement to their female colleagues.

  Maia looked beyond the lower deck, with its crowd of nervously waiting vars, and saw Renna in earnest conversation with the ship's doctor. The old man, with an expression of someone explaining the obvious to a child or fool, motioned with his hands, pointing to the men on both ships and shaking his head. Except for women sailors, it's strictly a battle between passengers, Maia internally voiced the doctor's explanation.

  Lysos had said it first, according to texts read aloud in temple services. "Who can banish all strife? Fools who try only turn routine avarice, aggression, into outright murder. As we act to minimize conflict, let us see that what remains is balanced and restrained by law."

  Renna met Maia's eyes. His fists were clenched and he shook his head. Maia answered with a brief, thin smile, appreciating his message but also recalling the next line of verse, chanted so often in the chapel of Lamatia Hold.

  "Above all, never lightly unleash wrath in men. For it is a wild thing, not easy to contain."

  Maia glanced across the narrowing gap of open sea. There were men on that side, too, watching from their sanctuary zone with dark, brooding eyes.

  Perhaps it really was better this way, she realized.

  Renna crossed his arms and tugged both earlobes. The Stratoin signal for good luck made Maia smile, hoping that her friend had remembered to plug his sensitive ears. This was going to be a noisy affair. She nodded back at him, then turned to face the enemy.

  "Eia!" Came a roar of female voices from the other vessel. Kiel raised her bill over her head and the rads replied as one. "Eia!"

  Suddenly, the air whistled with grappling hooks and a profusion of snaking ropes. Defenders ran to cut the tautening lines, but could not reach enough cables before the hulls met with a dull boom. More hooks flew. Shouting raiders leaped, climbing hanging strands. Naroin called to her squad, "Steady, girls . . . steady . . . Now!"

  Reflexes rescued Maia from fear's rigor. Practice told her arms and legs what to do, but their force flowed not from faith, reason, courage, or any other abstraction. Her will to move came from a need not to be left behind. Not to let the others down.

  Yelling at the top of her lungs, although her cries were lost amid the rising clamor, she marched forward with her trepp locked at one hip, guarding Naroin's flank as the battle joined.

  There seemed no end to them. The reaver ship must have been packed to the bulkheads, and warriors kept on coming.

  Not that the first wave had it easy. Professionals or no, they found it hard clambering from a low deck to a higher one, while those above rained down nets, cold oil, and blocks of wood. Naroin set an example, dealing out snaring blows, hooking raiders under the armpits like gaffed fish and prying them loose to fall onto their comrades. When one snarling attacker made it over the Manitou's rail, Naroin seized the woman by her hair and halter. Pivoting on her pelvis, she hurled the invader to the deck, there to be pounced on by waiting teams, trussed by the arms and legs, and carried aft. Inspired by Naroin's example, Kiel and a tall rad from Caria also made captures, while Maia and the others fought to rap knuckles, unhook hands, and generally knock senseless those swelling up from below. Maia experienced elation each time an enemy fell. When a savage trepp strike just missed her face, the whistle of wood splitting air fed a hormone-level sense of invincibility.

  On another plane, she knew it was illusion. More raiders swarmed upward from the Reckless like members of an insect horde, unflinching at all efforts to deflect it. Soon Maia was busy parrying buffets from a corsair who managed to straddle the railing—a tall, rangy woman with jagged teeth and several fierce scars. There was no help, Naroin being occupied with another thrashing foe. Alone, Maia tried to ignore the sweat-sting in her eyes as she traded clattering blows with her growling opponent. In a sudden, twisting swipe, the corsair landed a glancing clout to Maia's left hand, drawing a startled, anguished cry. Maia nearly lost hold of her weapon. Her next parry came almost too late, the next later still. . . .

  The end of a trepp bill appeared out of nowhere, snaking beneath Maia's arm to meet the reaver's leather-bound chest with a loud thump, throwing her off balance.

  A distant part of Maia actually winced in sympathy, for the blow must have hurt something awful. But her opponent just yelled an oath of defiance as her arms flung out and she fell backward, striking the hull with her upper body. Astonishingly, the woman hung onto the railing by one scarred leg, a knotted cord of striated muscle.

  Another red-clothed head immediately popped over —a new arrival using her comrade as a scaling ladder. Not without a twinge, Maia brought her bill around to hook the ankle of her earlier foe, yanking the leg from its mooring. Both invaders fell ... to the deck of the other ship, she hoped. Though, if they splashed between the creaking, banging hulls, she shouldn't care. The code of battle said as much. "Honest risk in honest struggle."

  You're not getting Renna! That voiceless cry lent Maia strength. Adrenaline overwhelmed pain as she whirled her stave to assist the woman to her left, who had helped her the moment before. Now Thalia was corps a corps with a grim-faced reaver several centimeters taller and much heavier. Seeing no other way, Maia cut a sharp blow to the raider's thigh. The woman buckled. Taking advantage, Thalia used the yoke portion of her bill to pin her foe to the ground. An eye-flick of thanks was all she could spare.

  "Virgie, watch out!"

  The yell accompanied a flash overhead. Swiveling barely in time, Maia ducked a noose cast by an attacker riding one of the foe-vessel's mast spars. It was a nasty tactic that risked strangling the victim. Maia seized the dangling cord and gave a savage yank with all her might. The screaming invader fell a long time before crashing into a tangle of fellow red-bandannas.

  Something changed in the roar of combat, palpably spreading from that event. The rising tide, till now fed by pressure below, seemed to lose momentum. For an instant, the rail near Maia was clear for meters in both directions. "Well done!" Naroin cried, offering Maia a grin.

  There was just time for a moment's thrill before another voice—Renna's, she realized—screamed one chilling word: "Treason!"

  The starman's cry made Maia glance back just in time to flinch as Thalia collided with her, backpedaling before a fierce assault. Maia's former cottage-mate desperately fended blows from an unexpected quarter, behind the defensive line. Struggling to keep her footing, Maia gasped, recognizing the assailant ...

  Baltha! The hireling's trepp bill whirled like the vanes of a wind generator, slapping and toying with Thalia's frenetic efforts to parry. Nor was Baltha alone in her betrayal. With a pang, Maia saw the entire squad of Southern Isles mercenaries had donned scarlet bandannas, falling on the defenders from behind. Several headed straight toward where Naroin and most of the other rads went on, blithely unaware, confidently dealing with more groping hands at the rail.

  "Watch out!" Maia yelled. But her voice was overwhelmed by the roar of confused battle. Trapped behind Thalia, she knew there was nothing she could do for either of her comrades. Fractions of seconds seemed to stretch endlessly as she worked her way around writhing, struggling forms, trying to bring her own weapon up, watching helplessly as Naroin was struck from behind with an unsporting head shot that topple
d the small woman like a poleaxed steer.

  Maia yelled in rage. She found her opening and launched herself at the bosun's assailants in a fury, catching one with a belly blow that sent her to the deck, gasping. The other southerling parried Maia's strike and fought back with an expression that shifted from grimness to amusement as she recognized the young fiver who liked playing men's games.

  The ironic smile faded as Maia attacked in a blur of energetic, if inexpert blows, driving the traitor away from Naroin's crumpled form, step by step, right up to the port-side rail.

  More red bandannas appeared. Maia managed to slash one pair of hands a glancing stroke while still pressing her attack on the turncoat. The hands fell away, to be replaced by others. This time a younger face, soot-stained, flushed with heat and adrenaline, hove into view.

  Maia blocked a heavy buffet from her chief opponent's bill, and caught it in the yoke-hook of her own. Twisting with all her strength, she managed to yank her foe's trepp away.

  That face ...

  To evade Maia's followup, the panicked southerling flung herself over the railing. Maia wasted no time swiveling to divert her strike at the newcomer now struggling to bring her own weapon up.

  Maia froze, halting as if she had been quick-frozen. Sweat-blinded, save through a crimson-rimmed tunnel of terror and wrath, she peered at the face—a mirror to her own.

  "Le ... Le ..." she goggled.

  Recognition also lit the young reaver's eyes. "I'll be a bleedin' clan-mother," she said with a wry, familiar smile. "It's my atyp twin."

  Too stunned to move, Maia heard Renna's voice shouting through her muzzy shock. But Leie's presence filled every space, engulfing her brain. Glancing past Maia's shoulder, her sister said, "You better duck, honey."

  Slowly, glacially, Maia tried to turn.

  There was a distant crumping tumult of polished wood striking somebody's skull. She had come to know the nuances of such sounds, and pitied the poor victim.

  Dimly perceived movement followed, as if viewed through an inverted telescope. Perplexed by the suddenly approaching deck, Maia wondered why her muscles weren't responding, why her senses all seemed to be shutting down. She tried speaking, but a faint gurgle was all that came out.

  Too bad, she thought, just before thinking nothing at all. I wanted to ask Leie. . . . We have so much . . . catching up to do. ...

  Peripatetic's Log:

  Stratos Mission:

  Arrival + 50.304 Ms

  Myth envelopes the male-female bond. Countless generations since supposedly winning conscious control over instinct, most hominids still cling to notions of romantic love and natural conception—the way of a woman with a man. Even where societies encourage experimentation and alternative lifestyles, the presumption remains that a parental pair, one male and one female, compose continuity's spindle.

  On Stratos, few songs or stories celebrate what is elsewhere obsession. Males are necessary, sometimes even liked, but they are peripheral beings, somewhat quaint. Anachronistic.

  Passion has its brief seasons on Stratos. Otherwise, this world does not seem to miss it.

  Still, partnership happens, often through business or cultural alliances. Caria's leading symphony orchestra has long consisted mostly of musicians from four extraordinarily gifted groups—O'Niels provide the strings, Vondas focus on woodwinds, Posnovskys at horns, and Tiamats on percussion. (I hope to hear them if I'm still here in autumn, when the season starts.)

  On occasion, clans join in even closer associations. Relationships that might be called romantic, marital. They may even share offspring.

  It's simple, in practice. First, both clan A and clan B arrange to have clutches of summer offspring. If clan A has a boy child, it does the usual thing, raising him carefully and then fostering him to one of the oceangoing guilds. Except in this case, he promises to return one summer, when he's older.

  Meanwhile, clan B has had summer daughters. One is chosen to receive the best education a variant girl can get. She is sponsored a niche, even a winter pregnancy, all so she'll be ready to repay the debt when the son of house A returns from sea. Any child resulting from that union is then technically the heterozygous grandchild of both clans.

  It makes for interesting comparisons. If one likens clans to individuals, that makes the girl-intermediary the equivalent of an egg, and the boy a sperm. The two clans fill the role of lovers.

  At times I find all of this quite boggling.

  How much more can I take? I must keep my mind on the job. Yet that job is to investigate the intimate workings of this human subspecies. I cannot escape the subject of sex, from dawn to dusk. Sometimes my head feels like it's spinning.

  If only the women of this world weren't so beautiful.

  Damn.

  19

  "That thing'd break up in the first good squall. Or even sooner, when you drop it over th' cliff. How d'you plan on steerin' the smuggy thing?"

  With a bang that made Maia wince, the big sailor, Inanna, slammed down the rock she had been using for a hammer. "Bosun, you just shut up. You're no shipcrafter, an' you sure ain't givin' orders no more."

  Maia watched Naroin consider this, then reply with a shrug. "It's your necks."

  "Ours to risk," Inanna assented, gesturing at the other women, hard at work cutting saplings and dragging them toward an area laid out with chalk lines on the rocky bluff. "You two are free to come along. We can use good fighters. But all the arguin' and votin' are over. Either put up or take your samish asses to 'tarkal hell."

  Preparing to give a hot reply, Naroin cut short when Maia grabbed her arm. "We'll think about it," Maia told Inanna, trying to pull Naroin away. The last thing anybody needed, right now, was to have a shouting match come to blows.

  For a long moment, Naroin seemed rooted in stone, unmovable until she abruptly decided to let it go. "Huh!" she said, and swiveled to march up the narrow, forested trail toward the campsite. Despite being taller, Maia had to hurry to keep up. All this noise and shouting wasn't easing the headache she had nursed since awakening, days ago, with a concussion, a captive of reavers.

  "They may have the wrong plan," Maia suggested, trying to calm Naroin. "But it keeps them busy. There'd be fights and craziness without something to do."

  Naroin slowed to look at Maia, and then nodded. "Basic command principle. Shouldn't need you to remind me." She glanced back at where the women sailors of the Manitou labored alongside a half-dozen of Kiel's younger rads, cutting and trimming saplings with primitive tools, laying out the beginnings of a rude craft. "I just hate to see 'em try something so dumb."

  Maia agreed, but what to do? It had all been decided at a meeting, three days after the reavers dumped them on this spirelike isle whose name, if any, must be lost to another age. Naroin had argued for a different scheme—the building of one or two small boats, which a few selected volunteers might sail swiftly westward in search of help. That proposal was voted down in favor of the raft. "Everyone goes, or nobody!" Inanna declared, carrying the day.

  Left out was how they proposed to make such a big contraption seaworthy, then get it down the sheer fifty-meter drop, and away from the spuming interface of wave and rock. Only one place along the forested rim of the jagged promontory featured a way down. There a winch had lifted the prisoners and their provisions, just before the Reckless and the captured Manitou sailed off. Inanna and her friends still schemed to use the lifting machine, despite its metal casing, locks, and earlier warnings of booby traps. In the long run, however, they might have to resort to building a primitive crane of timbers and vines.

  "Idiots," Naroin muttered. She thrashed at the low foliage by the trail, using a short stave she had trimmed just after landfall. It was no trepp bill, but the small, wiry seawoman seemed more comfortable with it in her hands. "They'll never make it, an' I'm not drownin' with 'em."

  Maia was getting fatigued with Naroin's impatient temper. Yet, she did not want to be alone. Too many dark thoughts plagued her when solitu
de pressed close. "How can you be sure? I agree your plan would have been better, but—"

  "Bleeders!" Naroin slashed with her staff, and leaves flew. "Even a bunch o' frosty jorts oughta see that raft's all wrong. Say they do get it down, an' the sea don't smash it right up. They'll just get plucked again, like floatin' melons. If the pirates don't grab the chance to send 'em straight to Sally Jones on the spot."

  "But we haven't seen a sail since we were marooned. How would the reavers know when and where to find them unless . . ." Maia stopped. She stared at Naroin. "You don't mean . . . ?"

  The bosun's lips were thin. "Won't say it."

  "You don't have to. It's vile!"

  Naroin shrugged. "You'd do the same, if you was them. Trouble is, there's no way to tell which one it is. Or maybe two. Didn't know any o' them var hands before I hired on, at Artemesia Bay. Can't be sure of any of 'em."