“Refill your goblet and I’ll tell you, Clarence,” Milo replied.
Epilogue
Perforce, the one time pirates of the Pirate Isles knew every inch of the still-sinking coastlines of the former kingdoms of Karaleenos and that now of the Consolidated Thoheekseeahnee in some detail, so locating safe anchorages in which to lie up and await the summons of the High Lord had presented no slightest difficulty to Lord Alexandros or any of the captains.
Referring to the maps and charts they and their predecessors had drawn over the recent years, they had decided in advance just how many of their ships each place could comfortably hold, assigned certain vessels to each of the ones farthest south, then worked out methods of staying in good contact, that none might be left behind when the time came to sail.
Of a day, a half-dozen of the long, low, lean raiders, lashed one to the other at port and stern boards, their masts all unstepped, were rocking gently in a sheltered cove well hidden behind treacherous shoals and a spit of swampy, much overgrown land, more than a fathom of brackish water beneath their keels and a steady Seabreeze sweeping most of the noxious insects inland, as well as helping to dispel the muggy heat.
Aboard the flagship, some seamen-raiders performed necessary cleaning and maintenance tasks—one detail being hard at work roving fresh ropes into the small but powerful catapult mounted just behind the fore-peak of the vessel, another using a small boat to ferry garbage and sewage ashore to be dumped for the delectation of the huge crocodilians and other, lesser scavengers, lest dumping it in the waters of the cove attract the unwelcome company of sharks. With a deafening din of metal on metal, a muscular smith worked at a small forge on deck, straightening blades of swords, cutlasses, boarding pikes and the like, restoring proper curve to the hooks of grapnels and boathooks and speedily fashioning odds and ends of needed hardware from bits of scrap metal.
Nearby to the smith, using the heat of his forge-fire to keep fluid a pot of reeking fishglue, a fletcher with a sack of feathers, a number of small and very sharp knives and a stack of dowels went about his task of feathering new shafts for arrow and hand-dart, ignoring the bright, hot sparks that often flew around him from the blows of the smith’s hammers. Within easy reach of the fishglue pot, a pointer fitted carefully chosen and smoothed sharks’ teeth of a range of sizes to the dart or arrow shafts; with practiced skill, he wrapped the threads of soaked sinew just tightly enough about shafts and glued heads to dry to optimum tightness without cracking or warping the wood. Those destined to become fire-arrows he mounted with minuscule chips of shark tooth sunk into tiny slits in the wood just behind the heads and secured them with droplets of the fishglue.
Also sharing the heat of the forge-fire was another seaman-specialist who squatted with a long-handled ladle, a set of molds, a small axe and a couple of big ingots of lead; his task was that of melting the soft metal and casting sling-bullets.
Underlying the clang-clang-clanging of the activities of the smith, a constant soft rasping, were the sounds of edges of steel and bronze blades being whetted. And, in the lee of the steersman’s deck, under a scrap of awning that stopped the rays of the torrid sun, two persons sharpened their personal armaments with handstones and light oil.
One of these was a slender but very wiry man of early middle years, clearly a kath’ahrohs Ehleen of pure or reasonably pure lineage—his skin much darkened by sun and weather, seamed with the cicatrices of old wounds. A faded strip of cotton cloth was lapped around his head to keep the salt sweat from out his dark eyes; otherwise—like the most of the ships’ crews—he was naked save for his rings, armlets and a blob of amber—encasing a fly—set in ruddy gold that hung from the lobe of his one intact ear. Squatting with his back leaned against the wooden bulkhead behind him, he was using a very fine stone to bring the blade of a heavy dirk to razor keenness.
Beside him, using a coarser stone to smooth out nicks along the cursive edge of a heavy-bladed two-foot cutlass, lounged a woman bearing an unmistakable racial resemblance to him, though their two sets of features were dissimilar in numerous other ways. To see her long, lithe, flat-muscled body with its proud, upthrusting breasts, flat belly and unlined face, one unknowing would have taken her to be a young woman of certainly less than twenty-five years; in actuality, Aldora Linsee Treeah-Potohmahs Pahpahs, wife of the Lord of the Sea Isles, was easily old enough to have been her husband’s grandmother.
Of a sudden, she stopped her whetting of the blade, closed her dark eyes and just sat, motionless. Then she opened her lids again, turned to her companion and said, “Lehkos, Milo is farcalling me. This may be our call to action. I’m going back to our cabin and lie down, relax enough to more easily receive his beamings fully.”
In far-distant Mehseepolis, relaxed on the bed in his suite, two long-fanged prairiecats flanking him, his hands in contact with their furry heads in order that their powerful telepathic abilities might meld with and strengthen the range of his own, lay Milo Morai, High Lord of the Confederation of Eastern Peoples. He looked to be asleep, but he was actually in silent converse with the High Lady Aldora, who at that moment was lying on a bed aboard her husband’s warship, Pard, some four hundred miles distant.
“Aldora,” he beamed, “the present fleet anchorage of what navy the thoheeksee have been able to patch together in the past few years is at the mouth of the river they call Ahrbahkootchee and is capacious enough for all of Alexandras’ ships as well as theirs. Tell him that I said to sail through the Florida Straits … no, he’d call that the Dragon Passage. Tell him to maintain a tight formation and maximum safe speed and not to let his corsairs go gallivanting off on any side forays. He should keep his eyes peeled for one or more small fleets of low, rakish, felucca-rigged ships, with permanently fixed masts, most of them painted a dull brownish grey with random patterns of dull green.
“He is not to fight them unless attacked, but if push comes to shove, I’d like to have a few prisoners in relatively sound condition. Stay well clear of the coasts of that long island to the south of the Dragon Passage, the one called Koobah; I’ve learned that the Witchmen have several stations there with offshore defenses that not even the Ehleen pirates could overcome without losses of more ships and lives than I’d care to see.”
“How much time do we have to get there, Milo?” the woman beamed, her unbelievably powerful telepathy never having needed bolstering of any kind for either receiving or sending, no matter how great the distances involved. “The ships are scattered in a number of coves stretching southward along the Atlantic coast, and it will no doubt take a little time to collect them all.”
“Don’t worry, my dear,” Milo assured her, “there’s little rush involved, here. I’m setting out with selected units of their army on the morrow, leaving others to follow after. Those who know the country that lies between here and the western thoheekseeahnee estimate that it will require two or, more likely, three weeks for cavalry to get there and as much as six weeks for the slower units to arrive in place.”
“Then why in hell did you call me so soon?” she demanded.
“Because, Aldora,” he patiently beamed, well familiar with her impatience and intemperance, “I want to be certain that our fleet is within quick sailing-time of the Neos Kolpos. The last thing I want to see is the bastards getting out of the little trap I’m setting for them and us having to assault their bases in order to put paid to them, once and for all. Besides, knowing Alexandras and his captains as I do, I am certain that they’ll want to sneak in and take soundings in the areas of intended combat well ahead of having to sail their fleet in, so time must be allowed for that, you see.”