Two hundred-odd years after the initial settlement, the folk of the Isles were become wealthy, their huge fleet was the largest and most powerful and modern, and enough of the mainland principalities had, over the years, suffered enough losses, broken enough teeth on the massive natural and man-made defenses of the ocean citadel to now leave well enough alone and accept their occasional losses or pay tribute in specie or goods to the Lord of the Sea Isles in order to keep his ravening, ferocious raiders from their coasts and coastal shipping.
The only mainland state that did not suffer either sea-robbers or tribute was Kehnooryos Ehlahs; some third of a century before, all raidings against them had ceased, and few of their ships had been lost since then to the ships of the Isles. Then, just as High King Zastros had been readying his huge host to march northward on his chosen course of conquest, the young Lord of the Sea Isles, Alexandras Pahpahs, had set sail for Kehnooryos Atheenahs, capital of Kehnooryos Ehlahs, and after conferring with the rulers, allied his folk and ships with the mainland confederation that had grown out of the united stand against the High King of the Southern Ehleenohee.
Moreover, possibly in earnest of the alliance, he had brought back to the Sea Isles upon his own return one of the rulers, who was the recent widow of him who had been the fourth of the original two men and two women who had ruled over Kehnooryos Ehlahs for nearly fifty years.
Sea Isle folk who heard the news thought that his ship would bear some withered, wrinkled crone. They were wrong. The young woman who leaped lightly from rail to wharf looked, despite her actual sixty-odd years, to be no more than twenty-two or twenty-three and a true kath’ahrohs—with a dense mass of blue-black hair, eyes so dark as to appear black and an olive complexion beneath her tan.
The High Lady Aldora Linsee Treeah-Potohmahs had quickly proven herself a singular lady in a host of ways. Very well coordinated, she had on the voyage to the Isles learned to scamper up and down the rigging of the sailing ship as rapidly and surefootedly as any of the able-bodied seamen. She was a master of many weapons, making up for the bulk and bulging muscles she lacked with a flexibility and speed that had to be seen to be believed; the wearing of heavy armor did not seem to ever tire her and slowed her but minimally. She could swim as fast and with as little apparent effort as any Sea Islesman, and her telepathic ability was stronger and farther-ranging than that of any man or woman of the Sea Isles folk.
She also proved herself stubborn and willful, stalking unsummoned into a meeting of the Council of Captains to demand that she be aboard one of the ships being sent to coastal waters to interdict High King Zastros’ fleet, prevent it from entering the Lumbuh River and giving aid and supplies to the land forces. She shouted them all down in the course of that stormy meeting, even Lord Alexandras and the Senior Captain, Yahnekos, his stepfather. When a Captain Mohmahros had had enough female impertinence and made to put her out of the chamber by force, she dislocated his shoulder and his elbow and cracked three of his ribs so speedily and with so little apparent effort that many of the others did not immediately realize just why the man had come to lie, white-faced and groaning, on the carpet before the wisp of a grim-faced girl.
Eventually, having worn down most of the opposition, she got her way, of course, shipping out aboard Lord Alexandras’ personal bireme, pulling her part of an oar on the benches with the rest of the ship’s complement and, in the course of the protracted, destructive, very bloody battle against the Southern Ehleen battle fleet, distinguishing herself as a paladin-par-excellence.
So respected was she become for her warlike traits and skills that she faced no argument when she elected to be one of the volunteers who went upriver in the smallest, most shallow-draft vessels to mount night attacks against the camps of the High King sprawled along the southern banks across from the sections defended by the High Lord Milo and his allies.
After the deaths of Zastros and his queen, after the abrupt cessation of hostilities on the mainland, the Lady Aldora took part in some practical voyages, even tried coastal raiding for a while. Then, however, having driven home her point, gotten her way, she put off her armor and weapons and sea-boots, taking up the attire and ways of a Sea Isles woman, living in the palace with Lord Alexandros—first as his mistress, then, after a while, as his legal wife. She was not his only wife, of course, for he wanted and needed heirs, sons, while she was barren and knew it for fact, fifty years’ worth of lusty lovers having all failed to ever quicken her. When first she began to enjoy regular sex with Alexandros, she hoped against hope … but she was of too practical and realistic a basic nature to pin the succession of his house and title on such vain hopes, so she insisted that he seek out and wed other women, even presenting some of them to him; one of the girls she had personally kidnapped from Kehnooryos Mahkehdonya and another from a seaside city in Ehspahneeah, far and far to the east across the great Ocean.
Aldora found herself to be naturally attuned to and very comfortable with the free and easy sexual mores of the Sea Isle womenfolk, mores so like to those of the Horseclans with whom she had matured. She never took another legal husband, as did most of the polyandrous women of the Isle, but she felt free and was, indeed, completely free to enjoy many lovers from among the captains, pirates and raiders while her husband busied himself with the necessary functions of procreation on his other wives. But when they were at sea together, Lord Alexandros was hers alone for the length of the voyage and she took full advantage of him and his rare ability to fully fulfill her, as lover, as matelot, as caring friend, as knowledgeable teacher in the ways of the sea.
She found that she did not miss the mainland or its people at all, after a while; what she did miss was horses and the great prairiecats. The only felines on any of the Isles were domestic or feral housecats, kept to check the depredations of rats and mice, and there was not one horse to be found. There was a small herd of runty, wild ponies on the largest of the low isles, but all of her attempts to mindspeak them had proven them possessed of little ability to none at all, with but dim intelligence. The folk of the Isles used them mostly for meat and hides, like the feral swine that shared the isle, these latter being far and away the intellectual superiors of the ponies, capable of mindspeaking with humans, but not much inclined to so do, rather assiduously avoiding close proximity to their two-legged predators.
But with the great orks, Aldora found herself at home. The mindspeak of the massive marine mammals was almost as powerful as her own rare talents, and the creatures seemed to take to her as they did and had to no other human, living or dead. A pod of varying strengths always was resident in the clear waters of the sandy-bottomed central lagoon, for sharks seldom entered from the sea beyond the circling isles and, consequently, the lagoon was a safe place for calving.
In company with her newfound friends, Aldora explored the most distant reaches of the lagoon, fearful of no other living thing while she swam among the sleek black-and-white beasts. Not even the long, scaly krohkohthehlishsee that crawled and swam in the salt swamp on the southernmost side of the Isles dared to venture into the lagoon when orks were nearby, for their armor-plated hides were no match for the crushing strength of an ork’s jaws, and fast as their flattened sculling tails could propel them, the orks could effortlessly swim rings around them; also, orks could seldom bring themselves to pass up a tasty snack of reptile meat.
When once she suggested to Lord Alexandros the extirpation of the crocodilians—which numbered among them some true giants of fifteen and twenty feet in length and took ponies and pigs on occasion, as well as a human swimmer, now and then, or a sentinel careless or foolhardy enough to leave one of the three fen-watchtowers alone and afoot—he had demurred.