“You fight well,” he said, before the bright blood frothed from his lungs and out of his mouth in a gory stream. “For a human.”
Then he fell.
Without a pause I strode across the floor and stood before the towheaded man of The Bloody Menaham. I showed him the stained blade of my rapier.
“You were saying?”
He eyed me. His face was corpse-white. “I said nothing, Dray Prescot.”
“That is good. Make it so.”
Chekumte’s render band would choose their own new captain and I wanted none of that. They were an unsavory bunch. After the room had been tidied up the carousing began again. Some had not stopped drinking throughout the whole argument and fight. Later on Viridia sent for me, one of her Womoxes padding gigantic in the misty pink moonlight from She of the Veils. I went and I went alertly, for presumably Chekumte had friends. Had he comrades willing to fight for him, I did not meet a single one. Her room in the pirate village was furnished in much the same barbaric splendor, the same untidy womanly bric-a-brac as her cabin aboard her flagship. She looked different as the Womox ushered me in and then retired. Then I saw she had taken off that armor — and it was as I had suspected. She did indeed wear armor, a pliant mesh-steel shirt that came, I guessed, not from an armory of the inner sea but from the mysterious and progressive land of Havilfar.
Now she stood by the samphron oil lamp, her tanned face highlighted and wearing makeup that suited oddly. She wore a long white shift that reached her feet. Her dark hair had been combed — and that was a job for Kyr Nath, the Kregan Hercules, if ever there was one — and her blue eyes looked on me with a melting expression that at once alerted and alarmed me. I had seen that look in the eyes of women before, and I knew the trouble it brought. I braced myself.
She advanced and held out her hands.
“You fought right well, Dray. Chekumte was feared throughout the islands as a swordsman.” Her voice was not steady.
“You might have told me, Viridia, before,” I said. I spoke lightly. I tried to be casual; but Viridia the Render had her own dark and secret purposes which were transparent and unwelcome to me.
“Do you then so much dislike me, Dray?”
“Of course not! You are what you are-”
She bit her lip. Her mouth was very generous, soft and sensuous in a way quite different from the voluptuous mouth of Tilda. Now, with Tilda, I had had no trouble at all. .
“That is not — gallant.”
“Why not? You choose to walk around as a render, a pirate captain, and you dress for the part. I understand you must be tougher and stronger and more violent than your men. So-”
“So now I am changed, Dray!” Her blue eyes caught the mellow gleam from the samphron oil lamp. She was trembling. “I have combed my hair, and I have taken the baths of nine, and I am clean and fragrant
— and-”
“You are very beautiful, Viridia,” I said, for this was true, as incongruous as it sounds. Her body thrust with firm bold curves against the sheer white robe. The material of the shift, some fabricated silk from Pandahem, was very sheer, very smooth, almost transparent. Her bosom rose and fell and the silk ruffled with her movements.
“Then why do you scorn me? You must have seen with what favor I have treated you-”
I did not laugh, but I felt my harsh lips curving into a gruesome smile. “Training a bunch of calsanys with heads of lenk! Fighting the most noted swordsman of the islands! Oh, yes, Viridia the Render, you have treated me with favor!”
She blew up then.
She jumped for me and began beating me on the chest with her fists, shouting and sobbing, the dark hair swirling all into my eyes, pins and priceless gemmed hair ornaments flying in all directions. She even, like Pando, tried to kick me. I grabbed her wrists and brought her arms down and so inclining toward me, we stared face to face.
On her cheeks thick tears coursed. Her rich lips shook and quivered. “Dray Prescot! I hate you! I hate you!”
“I do not hate you, Viridia. But, I do not love you. That cannot be so.”
All the passion and fire left her. She sagged against me so that our gripping hands were trapped between our bodies and I could feel all the firm softness of her. She moaned.
“Say that is not so, Dray! Please! I am Viridia the Render! My word is law! I can have you taken out and tied up and my men will loose at you for sport! Do not say you do not love me!”
“Nothing your men can do could make me change my mind by a single degree, Viridia. And you know it, by Zair! You know it as well as you know my affection for you! But love — that I cannot give you.”
She drew back and I let her go. Her sheer robe tautened against her as she pulled her shoulders erect. That maddening dark hair swirled now about her face and with an impatient gesture and the flash of a gem-encrusted white wrist she pushed it back.
“You do not know what you are saying-”
“I know. I will faithfully support you, Viridia, in our render raids. I will be a loyal member of your pirate band. Beyond that, it is forbidden for me to go.”
I saw the glitter in the lamplit blue eyes. I saw the way her body tensed, the deep breath she drew, the way her hands hooked into claws. I poised.
“Get out! Get out, Dray Prescot! Oh, you fool! You fool! Get out! Get out! ”
And so, for the love of my Delia of Delphond, I left Viridia the Render shaking with passion among her pirate trophies.
Truth to tell, I felt remarkably sorry for the girl.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The next morning a macabre scene was enacted on the beach fronting the village of wooden houses with the swordships riding over their reflections in the harbor. The weather was fine and hot, with the twin suns pouring down molten rays of ruby and jade. Everyone flocked down to the beach to witness the punishment of a dozen men who had been caught stealing a boat with the intention — as they freely confessed — of sailing to the nearest fortress port of the islands. This fortress port happened to be one belonging to the country of Lome, situated in a triangle at the extreme northwest of Pandahem. Lome was not overlarge as nations go, but her colors of blue and green horizontal stripes were to be found fluttering from swordships. Even in this matter of policing the Hoboling islands and their renders’ nests, no unity of action was displayed by the fractious countries of Pandahem.
I will not go into details of the fate of these poor unfortunates. Whether they were paid spies, whether they had merely become sickened of the pirate trade, or if they had had an argument with their render chief, I never discovered. I turned away as soon as the executions began and took myself off to think. Clearly, any plan to escape to Vallia must be thought out with exquisite care, else I would end up like those poor devils on the beach.
In the event, when we put to sea again I took care to take myself aboard a swordship that was not Viridia’s flagship. We dug in the oars, for everyone took a turn on the rowers’ benches, and for all that I was now varterist in chief — the varter Hikdar — I pulled and tugged with the rest. My idea that I could for a space escape Viridia’s observation through my duties as varter Hikdar were soon dispelled. Her flagship cut water perilously close to our oars, and a stentor bellowed across, in much the same way as the stentors bellow a passage for the swifters passing Sanurkazz from the Sea of Marshes into the inner sea. “Dray Prescot to co-ome abo-oard!”
So, rather like a ponsho-trag with his tail between his legs, I was rowed across. Valka and the men whom I had trained, ostensibly as my varter cadre, were rowed across, also. Viridia was not on deck when I stepped aboard. A fine tall man with the red hair of Loh greeted me. He had been a lieutenant and now wore a smothering extra layer of gold lace and so I gathered this man, Arkhebi, had been promoted into Strom Erclan’s place.