With a furious roar I scooped her up, opened the door with my free hand and then found that I could not, as I fully intended, throw her out, for she had wound both her naked arms around my neck. The next instant she had kissed me, a full, wet, soft kiss that — I confess — was pleasurable, most. Then, automatically, images of my Delia floated into my mind in a torrent and I laughed. Yes, I laughed.
“It is no use, Viridia. I like you exceedingly well. But I do not love you. Now go to your room and Arkhebi and Valka and I will stand turn and turn about at your door. You will be safe.”
“But, Dray, my master.” She said this with a charming pout. “I do not want to be safe from you.”
I marveled. From the fierce tough she-leem of the seas, she had metamorphosed into this teasing, sensual, alluring woman. Just how much of an act was it all? Would she, when I was suitably disarmed, slip a dagger between my ribs?
The last thing she said was: “If I am to remain in command, Dray Prescot, then I will set you in command of the swordship I have just bought.”
This sounded more promising.
Once I had a crew under my orders and was free of the other swordships, without their seeking a lead from me, I might plan escape.
“So be it, Viridia the Render,” I said, and carried her to her room and threw her inside. I slammed the door. Then I roused out Valka and Arkhebi and we stood guard turn and turn about all that night. The next day I went down to the anchorage to inspect the newest addition to Viridia’s squadron and my future command.
The moment I saw her I exclaimed: “A sea scow! Viridia, you cunning she-leem! She’s a zenzile! Old, ancient, leaky — a veritable tub!”
The smile Viridia cast at me upward and the way her blue eyes caught mine through her eyelashes made me want to spank her in very truth. I put my hands on my hips and jutted my beard out to the swordship.
“Yes, Dray Prescot — you may think she is all of those things. But, if you wish to command a render ship in my squadron — that is the swordship for you.”
Valka, at my side, guffawed, so I said without looking at him: “Laugh all you like, Valka. Just remember, you’ll be commanding her varters.” At which Valka stopped laughing. It had been my custom in the Eye of the World to name any swifter I commanded Zorg. This in memory of my oar comrade. Other swifter captains had known this, and respected my wishes. But I would never dream of calling this swaybacked old zenzile swordship Zorg.
Without another word to Viridia I strode off toward the nearest of our beached boats and my men, after one look at my face, clambered in silently and bent to the oars. I did not look back at Viridia. I knew she was laughing at me. But, in truth, this old zenzile swordship was not all that bad and she was a weapon of the sea, long, lean, low, lethal.
The old-fashioned zenzile way of rowing incorporates what was a wonderful invention when it was first used — and just how long ago that was let the academic pundits argue — of slanting the benches diagonally so that their inboard seat is farther aft than their outboard. With three oarsmen on each bench and using oars of different lengths so that the blades formed those impeccable parallel lines in the water, the swordship presented from the beam an impression of a single bank of oars arranged in clumps of threes.
One man rowed one oar, three oarsmen to each slanted bench, and the centers could be anything from three feet six inches to four feet apart, depending on the whims of the naval architect who designed the ship. There were twenty benches a side and thus a hundred and twenty oarsmen in all. I began to think, as I mounted the side and put my foot on the fantamyrrh and so stepped aboard my new command, that Viridia had indeed bought the scow Chekumte had been trying to sell her. If she had, she had done it to spite me.
Well, that was a game two could play.
Valka was making unpleasant comments on the sword-ship and with the group of men loyal to me strode about the central gangway and hurdled over the benches and prowled the apostis, looking over the side, for she was of the anafract variety.
“Don’t be too hard on her, Valka. Galleys like this have fought in many great engagements — aye, and they will continue to do so, just so long as men believe in them.”
“Give me a good long oar and half a dozen men on it, any time,” said Valka, with a curse.
“This is a zorca of the seas,” I said. “At least in theory. This zenzile arrangement is fine for smaller galleys; when you come to a swifter — a swordship — of large size is when you need the packed power that scaloccio rowing gives you.”
I suppose the last time galleys had been constructed after this pattern on the Earth of my birth had been back in the sixteenth century, for the alla scaloccio system had been dated, I gathered, to 1530. The Venetians were great galley men of the Mediterranean. Zenzile rowing died out on this Earth; but I suppose these seafaring folk of Kregen clung to their own ideas with a stubbornness I could recognize. The name of this wonder craft was Strigicaw. A strigicaw is a powerful fast-running carnivore with a hide striped as to the shoulders and foreparts and double-spotted as to belly and haunches, in a variety of brown and red camouflage colors, and although looking not unlike a leem has only six legs instead of that voracious beast’s eight.
She was a hundred feet in length — any more would have been too much for her power-propulsion -
and had just the two masts, a main and a fore, both rigged with courses and topsails. At least, she did boast a rudder and whipstaff. This is a clumsy system long superseded on the ships of Earth; no doubt soon the naval architects of Kregen will develop the wheel and cylinder steering gear. I strode about her, and, despite all, despite that she would need constant pumping, I began to get the feel of her, and to know she was my command.
After the sinking of Venus Viridia’s render maidens had been shipped aboard another of her squadron, whose crew had been distributed among the remaining ships, so that we had been crowded. Now I would have to look to bargaining and cajoling and arguing in order to obtain the crew I wanted. As we so stood surveying our new swordship a booming horn note rolled weirdly over the anchorage. All the busy noise of hammering and shouting, of singing and whistling, all human sounds ceased. Again that booming note mourned across the water.
“The alarm!” shouted Spitz, a redheaded archer from Loh. I had marked him from the first, and sought to woo him for my little company, for in his quiver he carried arrows fletched with the brilliant blue of the king korf — and also arrows fletched with jetty black feathers — feathers I knew had been set by Sosie na Arkasson — and given to me, and loosed by me against Spitz, and so retrieved by him for further use.
“King’s swordships!”
We tumbled down into the boat and rowed ashore in a welter of foam. The swordship — or swordships
— prowling around the island of Careless Repose might come from any nation; but we usually dubbed any swordship attempting to police the islands the King’s swordship. Viridia met us on the beach. She looked excited, her tanned face flushed, her strong body in the mesh steel armor firm in the suns-light.
“Be ready to repel them if they venture past the concealing islet!” she rapped out to her lieutenants, captains of their own vessels, of whom I was now one. “I and my warrior maidens will seek to do their business for them.” She laughed, throwing her head back in the light so that the dark hair swirled. “As we have done before!”
“Aye, Viridia!” the man yelled. “Hai, Jikai, Viridia the Render!”
There was no malice in me, no regret, for the use of that great word here. Viridia, in that moment, was a lady pirate indeed.
She took her girls off to the other side of the island and the swordship crews repaired aboard their craft and made ready to pull around the point if Viridia’s plan did not work. As I had no crew, apart from my own small company of loyals, I took them, with weapons in our hands, across the island after Viridia. She might welcome a little help, when it came to the time.