Overside the swordship I had left gathered her boats in and then, all as one, her oars struck into the sea and with a heaving surge she took up station again. I did not feel in the mood to sweat at an oar any further this morning, and so I said: “If you’ll muster a broadside crew, Arkhebi, I’ll start in giving them a little training. I’ll make ’em jump!”
Arkhebi smiled. He was, as I remember, a ruffianly fellow; but he loved a good fight.
‘The captain ordered for you to come across, special, Dray. But she’s said no more and she’s closeted in her cabin.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “You steer small, Dray Prescot!”
“Aye, Arkhebi, I’ll do that. And congratulations on your rank.” I nodded to where our six consorts plowed the sea. “You’ll be in command yourself, soon.”
“Aye, I will be!” he said with a brightness I found charming. Reavers and rovers all, those renders, but genial with it — some of them.
With the starboard broadside crew I was soon hard at work on the varters. I concentrated more on them, for with the ballista-type weapon one could obtain a flatter trajectory than with the catapults -
they were of a formidably varying nature and kind with a plethora of technical names — and I sought to obtain the kind of accuracy and rate of fire I would tolerate on any ship I commanded. It may seem a strange and crankish thing to say, but I sometimes missed the deep-throated thunder of the broadsides of our Earthly guns.
Presently the breeze increased enough for the oars to be shipped and all the canvas to be set. Courses on fore and main, crossjack on the mizzen, topsails on the fore and main, and the spritsail ahead on its mast and yard on the bowsprit, we surged wet and uncomfortable through the sea. Swordships are a pestiferous kind of sea-animal. I would as much have them rowed as sailed providing I am not lugging an oar. As it was, she lay over and the spray lashed our faces and solid sheets of water were shipped green. But we flew along. This was what being a render of the islands was all about: discomfort and danger and, at the end, prizes and jewels, silks and wines. .
Our first victim bore fluttering at her masthead the diagonal stripes of blue and green that denoted an argenter from The Bloody Menaham. We bore down on her. A few accurate shots from our bow varters knocked away some spars, we saw the flash and gleam of weapons along her decks, and we were about to bear down, our keen bronze rostrum foaming through the sea, when Viridia, who had not appeared when called, stepped on deck.
“Avast, you dogs!” she roared, all her old callous roughness fully in evidence. “Prescot, you great calsany! Get your pestiferous varters going! Earn your plunder! Knock over that fat ponsho for me and save the blood of my men!”
To all that I simply shouted, “Aye aye!” and bent to the nearest varter. It was fully wound, a chunk of rock in the slide as big as a vosk-skull.
I touched the trigger as the swordship rose to the swell. The rock flew true. A great shout went up as the mainmast of the argenter toppled, leaned, and in a weltering smother of canvas and cordage plunged overside into the wake.
After that it was simply a matter of boarding, of brandishing our weapons, and of cleaning up. We took spices, and silks, great jars of Pandahem ware, chests of jewels, weapons and trinkets, and amphorae by the score. Rich wine of a dozen different vintages was carried aboard by the happily sweating crew and the frightened passengers who were now our prisoners.
“We can soon jury-rig her,” I said to Viridia, without really taking too much notice of her, as we watched the busy scene of activity. “She will bring much Lohvian gold.”
“Aye, Dray Prescot. And does gold please you? Is that all you seek?”
I faced her. “Whatever you think, Viridia, I will be loyal to you and your renders. Never fear.”
“You had best be, Dray!”
We sighted no other sail for the next two days, and Viridia was contemplating a return to our island of Careless Repose. We were running under all our canvas and the sea was such that oars would have been impracticable. Despite my disdain for mere wealth I knew I had, personally, amassed a fair-sized sum in these piratical pursuits. I just had to find a ship to take me to Vallia. This life was seducing me.
“Sail ho!”
An excited rush to the rail and up the ratlines confirmed the sail, a triangle of white on the horizon. We took the wind with us as we bore down on her and soon the tall superstructures of a great argenter came into view. She was a fine tall vessel, her three masts clad with billowing canvas, her flags all standing stiff and taut in the breeze. We had the heels of her, if none of our rigging carried away. The hands began to discuss just what prospects of fortune she carried, and if she would strike under varter bombardment or if we would have to board in steel and blood.
Then I saw the flags standing so proudly from her mastheads.
All blue, they were, a bright proud blue. And, in the center of that blue field glared the yellow-orange head of a zhantil, ferocious, roaring, untamed.
I knew that flag.
“She’s from Tomboram!” shouted Arkhebi. As a Lohvian from Walfarg he would know the Pandahemic colors as well as he knew his colors of Walfarg, the flaunting horizontal stripes of red and gold.
“Aye, Arkhebi,” I said. “And not only from Tomboram.”
For I knew, for Pando had told me, with many a boyish twitch of muscular excitement, that he was going to charge a brave zhantil on the blue field of his flag, a zhantil in memory, so he said, of the zhantil-hide tunic I had had made for him, the courageous zhantil, he had said, that reminded him of me.
“Booty, there, mates!” roared a squat-bodied Brokelsh, laughing, pointing, the black bristle hairs on his muscular body all slick with sweat.
I remembered Dram Constant and her blue flags, and how we had waited for the onslaught of the sea-leems, and of how Captain Alkers had fought this very swordship on which I now found myself. I could imagine the horror aboard that argenter from Bormark in Tomboram now. My conscience is a slippery beast. Going a-roving had seemed perfectly respectable to me when I plundered, as I believed, the enemies of Vallia and of Bormark. But, now, I was faced with the task of capturing and perhaps destroying a ship of a friend. There was no alternative, no choice, about my dilemma; the problem was how to carry the thing off without having my head parted from my shoulders by a Womox.
“Haul that sheet tight!” roared Arkhebi in high excitement. Hands rushed to the sheet and hauled. We were catching all the breeze there was and we were overhauling the argenter as a zorca strides past a vove.
Our four consorts — for one had been sent away with the captured argenter of Menaham — were left far in our wake. They had been dragging their heels all the way. Now it was between us and this proud argenter of Pando’s. I saw his face in my mind’s eye, I saw Tilda’s — but I truly believe it was memory of Captain Alkers that spurred into action what little of conscience I possess. I picked up a long and stout length of timber that fitted snugly into my two spaced fists. I held it in my left hand and walked across to the bulwark. A boarding ax glittered in the hand of a man who stared with a leem-grin over the shining sea toward his prey. I took the ax from him without a word, swung around, and brought the keen glittering edge down across the main course braces and, in a motion so fast the ax blurred into a silvery circle in the hot air, sliced down across the main yard halyards. In a wild flurry and tangle of parting braces and lines the main course billowed up with a gigantic snap, and the main yard smashed down across the deck.