Throne of Stars

by David Weber

  “If we go wandering around with naked ‘savages’ we’ll be violating various local taboos,” O’Casey explained delicately. “It might have a certain ‘kick’ to it politically, but it would be much more likely to be destabilizing.”

  “Since the local custom is to wear clothes like humans do, Cord,” Roger translated, “we’ll all have to do the same thing or these snooty locals will think we’re uncivilized.”

  “What? Cover myself in cloth?” Cord sounded incredulous. “Ridiculous! What reasonable person would do such a thing?!”

  “Pedi would,” Roger reminded him with unwonted delicacy. “The Lemmar didn’t take her clothes away to be nice when they captured her, Cord.”

  “You mean . . . Oh.” The shaman made a complex gesture of frustration. “I’m too old to have an asi—benan! Especially one I can’t even understand!”

  “Hey, don’t blame that on the language, buddy!” Roger retorted. “Nobody understands women!”

  “You’ll pay for that, Your Highness,” Despreaux warned him with a smile. Roger nodded in acknowledgment of her threat, but his expression had suddenly taken on an abstracted air. He tugged at a strand of hair for a second, then looked around the table.

  “People wear clothes around here,” he observed, and his eyes moved to Cord’s new benan. “How many did the Lemmar assign to each of their prize crews when they took the convoy, Pedi?”

  “It looked like five to ten—possibly as many as fifteen for the larger vessels. Why?”

  “Rastar?”

  The Vashin former prince looked up when Roger called his name. He’d been silent through most of the discussion, since it was related to seagoing matters, where he’d had little to add. Now he cocked his head, alerted by Roger’s tone.

  “You called, O Light of the East?”

  Roger chuckled and shook his head.

  “How many of these Lemmar do you think you can take. Seriously?”

  “By surprise, I take it?” the Vashin asked. He let one hand rest on each of his revolvers’ butts. “At least six, I believe. More if the range is great enough for additional shots before they can close. It all depends.”

  “And there, I think, is the answer to the question of how we capture the other ships,” Roger said with a nod.

  “And just who, if I may ask, backs him up?” Pahner asked darkly.

  “Well,” Roger replied with a smile of total innocence, “I suppose that depends on who—after Rastar, of course—is fastest with a pistol.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Tras Sofu had no intention of becoming a Servant of God.

  Again.

  He had escaped from the slave pens of the High Temple once. Only a handful of Servants could make that claim, and even fewer of those who had escaped had evaded recapture. That was a point which had been forcibly borne in upon Sofu when he realized that Agents of Justice were everywhere in Kirsti. That was also when he’d decided that the sailor’s life was for him. Trade among the Lemmar Islands was dangerous—there were not only the pirates to consider, but many shoals and other hazards to navigation. But given the choice between sailing the shoals and risking the Agents, he’d take shipwreck any day.

  Now, though, his bet had backfired, and he was probably headed right back to the pens. It was rumored, however, that the Lemmar would sometimes keep particularly good workers around. There were always plenty of Lemmar who wanted to work their ships—the greatest problem with the Islands was a lack of shipping, not lack of labor for the boats—but a good crewman, as Tras was, might be better than an untrained landsman. So whenever there was any little thing that needed doing, it was always Tras Sofu who was right on it. Any line that needed coiling was coiled immediately, and when the crew went aloft, it was always Tras Sofu in the lead.

  His Lemmar captors—and his fellow crewmen, for that matter—knew what he was doing. Whether the Lemmar approved or were just sizing him up for the ax was another matter, though. He knew that the pirates could give slime whether any Krath lived or died. The way they’d casually chopped the heads off of the captain and the mate had made that point crystal clear. And, truth to tell, he wasn’t all that much fonder of the pirates than he was of the Fire Priests themselves. But while a part of him hated acting as an accomplice in his own enslavement, being indispensable to his new masters was the only way he knew to avoid his old ones . . . and the pens.

  None of the other crewmen seemed to share his attitude. They were sunk into apathy, never taking initiative at anything. The Lemmar literally had to whip them into position, and they acted as if they were already Servants, beyond redemption. Certainly none of them seemed to have any interest in emulating Tras’s ingratiating eagerness.

  Which was why it was Tras, always head-up and looking out for any change he might turn to advantage, who first spotted the strange, triangular sails on the horizon. The single ship closing fast on an impossible tack, practically straight into the wind, was the most outlandish thing Tras had ever seen—and he paused for a moment, staring at the sleek, low-slung craft as the slower Krath merchantman dipped into a swell. He wondered briefly what worm had devoured the brains of anyone stupid enough to sail towards a Lemmaran ship. Of course, the merchant ship didn’t look very much like a raiding vessel, so perhaps these lunatics didn’t realize what they were dealing with. If that were the case, was it his responsibility to try to warn them off before they sailed into such danger?

  He considered the proposition from all angles for several breaths, then decided that other people’s sanity wasn’t his problem. Staying alive was, so he cupped his true-hands into a trumpet and turned towards the prize crew’s captain.

  “Sail ho!”

  Roger refused to look across at Kosutic.

  He knew that whatever emotion the sergeant major might be feeling wasn’t going to be evident. Which didn’t mean what she was feeling was happy.

  The prince’s blistering argument with Pahner had been as private as possible on a ship as small as the Hooker. But the fact that the argument had taken place—and that the captain hadn’t won—was obvious to the entire command. It was one of the very few times since their first arrival on this planet that Roger and the commander of his bodyguard, the man who had kept him alive through the entire nightmare trek, had had a clear and cold difference of opinion. And it was the very first time since landing on Marduk that Roger had pushed it to the wall.

  He was aware that that sort of rift was a serious problem in any command, but he also felt that there’d been two positive aspects to it. The first was that even Pahner had been forced to concede that he really was the best close quarters fighter in their entire force, better even than Kosutic or Pahner himself. Both of those senior warriors had started the trip with far more experience than the prince. But this odyssey had involved more combat than any Marine usually saw in three lifetimes, and along the way Roger had proven that there was no one in the company as fast or as dangerous in a close encounter as the prince the company was supposed to protect. That meant that, argument or no argument, from any tactical viewpoint, he was the right person to have exactly where he was.

  And the second positive aspect was that what he and Pahner had had was an argument. For all its ferocity, there had been no shouting, no screaming. The disagreement had been deep and fundamental, and in the end, Roger knew that his rank as a member of the Imperial family had played a major role in Pahner’s concession of his point. But he also knew that Armand Pahner would never have conceded it anyway, whatever the potential future consequences for himself or his career might have been, if he hadn’t learned to respect Roger’s judgment. He might not share it, and at the moment the captain might not be particularly aware that he “respected,” it either. But Roger knew. The spoiled prince it was Captain Armand Pahner’s task to protect would never have won an argument with the Bronze Barbarians’ company commander. The Colonel Roger MacClintock, the official commander of Pahner’s regiment, who had emerged from the crucible of Marduk, could wi
n one . . . if he argued long enough.

  On the other hand, nothing Roger could say or do could change the fact that, from Pahner’s perspective, this entire operation was completely insane. However great the political advantages of recapturing the Temple’s merchant ships might be, the loss of Roger’s life would make everything all too many of Pahner’s Marines had died to accomplish on this planet totally meaningless. Roger knew it, and he knew Pahner did, too. Just as he knew that the commander of his bodyguard was capable of applying ruthless logic to the command decisions that faced him. Which left Roger just a bit puzzled. He supposed that some officers in Pahner’s position might have looked at the shifting structure of interwoven loyalties and military discipline in The Basik’s Own and decided that it was time to apply that age-old aphorism, “Never give an order you know won’t be obeyed.” Especially not when the Marines’ erstwhile object of contempt had metamorphosed into their warrior leader . . . and into the primary authority figure in the eyes of the “native levies” supporting them.

  But that wasn’t Pahner’s style. If the captain had sensed that he was losing control—and, with it, the ability to discharge his sworn responsibilities—to a very junior officer (whatever that junior officer’s birth-rank might happen to be), he would have taken steps to prevent it from happening. And Roger had come to know Pahner well enough to be certain that any steps the captain took would have been effective ones.

  So there had to be another factor in the equation, one Roger hadn’t quite identified yet. Something which had caused Armand Pahner to be willing to allow the prince he was oath bound to keep alive, even at the cost of pouring out the blood of every one of his own men and women like water, to risk his neck on what was essentially an operation of secondary importance.

  Not knowing what that factor was . . . bothered Roger. It seemed to underscore some deep, fundamental change in his relationship with the man who had become even more of a father figure for him than Kostas had been. And though he would never have admitted it to Pahner in so many words, that relationship had become one of the most precious relationships in his entire life.

  But at least things had gone smoothly enough so far to suggest that Colonel MacClintock’s plan was an effective one. This was the fifth ship they’d approached, and each of the others had fallen like clockwork. The Lemmar couldn’t seem to conceive of the possibility that two people could be so dangerous. Kosutic and Honal were the only ones with obvious weapons, so they tended to focus the pirates’ attention upon themselves . . . and away from Rastar and Roger himself. Which was unfortunate for the Lemmar.

  Rastar wore a robe, similar to a djellabah, open on both sides, that concealed the four pistols he had holstered across the front of his body without slowing him down when he reached for them. The ancient Terran fable about the wolf in sheep’s clothing came forcibly to mind every time Roger glanced at the big Northern cavalryman. Not that he was any less dangerous himself. Pahner might have lost the argument about just who was going on this little expedition, but he’d flatly refused to let Roger take the human-sized revolvers he’d been carrying ever since they left K’Vaern’s Cove. Conserving irreplaceable ammunition for the Marines’ bead pistols was all very well, but as he’d rather icily pointed out, there was no point saving ammunition if the person they were all responsible for protecting managed to get his idiotic self killed. Which was why Roger wore a cloak of Marshadan dianda to help conceal the pair of bead pistols holstered under his uniform tunic.

  Now, as the sailing dinghy came alongside its fifth target, Roger stood behind Rastar, looking as innocuous as possible, while Honal and Kosutic handled their own weapons with a certain deliberate ostentation designed to make certain all eyes were on them.

  “Hullo the deck!” Rastar bellowed in a voice trained to cut through the bedlam and carnage of a cavalry battle.

  “Stand clear!” one of the pirates bellowed back almost as loudly. The caller was amidships, on the starboard side, shading his eyes to pick out the small craft. Most of the rest of his fellow pirates seemed to be concentrating on the Hooker, which had taken up station a tactful three hundred meters off the prize ship’s starboard quarter. On the other hand, Captain T’Sool had his gun ports open and the carronades run out. These Lemmar wouldn’t have any more clue about the deadliness of those weapons than the first pirates the flotilla had encountered, but they’d recognize them as a deliberate warning that their visitors had teeth of their own.

  “We want none of you!” the pirate spokesman added harshly. “Stand clear, I say!”

  “We’re just here to buy!” Roger shouted up at him, taking over with the toot-given fluency in the local languages Rastar couldn’t hope to match. “We’ve crossed the eastern ocean, and it was a longer voyage than we expected! We’re short on supplies—especially food!”

  He gazed upward, watching the Mardukans silhouetted against the gray-clouded sky, and glad that both Pedi Karuse and Tob Kerr had been able to confirm that it was fairly common practice to barter with chance-met ships when one’s own supplies ran short. Of course, one normally avoided dealing with people like Lemmar raiders in the process, but there was—as far as these raiders knew—no way for the people in the small boat sailing up beside them to realize they weren’t honest merchant traders.

  “We’ll send two people aboard—no more!” Roger added, his tone as wheedling as he could manage. “And we’ll transfer anything we buy to small boats, like this one. Don’t worry! We’re not pirates—and our ship will stay will clear of you! We’re willing to pay in gold or trade goods!”

  There was a short consultation among the members of the prize crew, but in the end, as all of their fellows had done, they finally acquiesced.

  “Keep your hands out from your sides—even you, vern-looking fellow! And only two! The leaders, not their guards.”

  “Agreed!” Roger called back. “But be warned! Our ship is faster than yours, and more heavily armed. And we aren’t ‘leaders’—just pursers and good swimmers! Try to take us prisoner, and we’ll be over the side so fast your head swims. After which our crew will swarm over you like greg, and we’ll take what we need and feed you to the fish!”

  “Fair enough!” the Lemmar captain shouted back with an undergrunt of half-genuine laughter. He wasn’t entirely happy about the situation, of course. After all, he’d seen how rapidly Hooker had overhauled his own lumbering command, so he knew perfectly well that he could never hope to outrun her. And however undersized those bombards looked, the strange ship obviously mounted a lot of them, whereas his captured merchantship mounted no more than four pathetic swivels. Nor was he unaware of the ancient law of the sea: big fish ate little fish, and at the moment this clumsy tub of a merchant ship might turn out to be a very small fish indeed if it came to that. So if he could get through this encounter by simply selling some of the cargo—especially for a good price—so much the better. After all, he hadn’t paid for any of it!

  And if the negotiations went badly, these two peculiar ‘pursers’ could become Servants, for all he cared.

  Roger caught the thrown line and went up the side of the ship hand-over-hand. Like the other merchantmen they’d taken, this one was nearly as round as it was long. The design made for plenty of cargo space, and with enough ballast, it was seaworthy—after a fashion, at least. But the ships were slow, terribly slow. If this thing could break six knots in a hurricane, he would be surprised.

  It was also the largest they had so far encountered, which probably meant the prize crew was going to be larger, as well.

  He reached the top and nodded at the staring Lemmar who’d thrown the rope, keeping his hands well away from his sides and the one knife he openly carried on his belt as he swung over the rail. Two of the pirates greeting him held arquebuses lightly in their true-hands, not pointed exactly at him, but close. There was a third pirate by the helmsman, and another directing a work party up forward. There’d been five pirates aboard three of the four ships they’d already ta
ken, and seven aboard the fourth, so there was at least one still unaccounted for here. Given the size of the ship, though, Roger’s guess was that there were at least three more somewhere below-decks. Possibly as many as five or six.

  Rastar climbed over the side behind him and made a complex, multi-armed gesture of greeting.

  “I greet you in the name of K’Vaern’s Cove,” he said in the language of the Vashin. “I am Rastar Komas, formerly Prince of Therdan. We are, as we said, in need of provisions. We need ten thousand sedant of grain, at least fourteen hundred sedant of fruit, four thousand sedant of salted meat, and at least seven hogsheads of fresh water.”

  Roger nodded solemnly to Rastar and turned to the obviously totally uncomprehending pirates.

  “This is Rastar Komas, formerly Prince of Therdan,” he announced through his toot. “I am his interpreter. Prince Rastar is now the supply officer for our trading party. He has listed our needs, but to translate them properly, I require better knowledge of your weights and measures, which must obviously be different from our own.”

  He paused. The prize crews of the other four ships had all reacted in one of two ways at this point in his little spiel, and he and Rastar had a small side bet as to which of those responses this group would select.

  “You said something about gold?” the larger of the arquebus-armed pirates asked.

  Ah, a type two. Rastar owes me money.

  “Yes. We can pay in gold by balance measure, or we have trade goods, such as the cloth from which this cloak is made.”

  Roger spread the drape of the silken cape to the sides, then spun on his toes to show how well it flowed. When he turned back around, his hands were full of bead pistols.

  The inquisitive pirate never had time to realize what had happened. He and his companion were already flying backwards, heads messily removed by the hypervelocity beads, before he even had time to wonder what the strange objects in the outsized vern’s hands were.