As it happened, she needed no help, least of all from mere men.
A repetition of what had happened to the old Nemo took place. This swordship, commissioned to hunt down the renders and sailing out of the chief port of The Bloody Menaham, was taken in exactly the same way and by exactly the same means.
I daresay it was the same half-naked sprite who ran along the central gangway carrying the dripping head of the chief whip-deldar.
The King’s swordship was rowed around the point and past the concealing islet and so into the anchorage where the slaves were freed from their oars. They set up a wonderful hullabaloo. All, I knew, would take the alternative of joining the pirates.
I studied the new ship. She was a smart and efficient-looking vessel, with three sails and a spritsail on her bowsprit. Her bronze ram was fashioned into the likeness of a mythical bird of prey, something like a falcon, although, of course, the hooked beak had been smoothed into a single shaft of cutting bronze. Anything like a hook, as of an accipiter’s beak, for a ram is idiocy. One has to be able to backwater and shove off from a rammed vessel, with the aid of the proembolion, before the water rushes into the cleft in her hull and the apostis, the rowing frame, settles down over your ram and drags you under. As for her spritsail, that was a sailor-like rigged job, nicely forward and yet well clear of her beak. I watched the ex-slaves being ferried ashore. Among those on the beach I saw a group forming around some object on the sand, and I heard loud guffaws, and hearty laughter, and many merry curses. I strolled down.
A man, a very tall man, was upside down on the sand, his legs rhythmically bicycling in the air. Some of the men were attempting to push him over. He did, at that, look a sight. I heard him yelling. “Clear off, onkers! I must abjure my taboos!”
A guffawing render — a towheaded man from one of the islands past Erthyrdrin — pushed the tall upside-down man and he rolled spraying sand.
Instantly, he was upside down again, his long fair hair sand-clogged, his legs rotating. The renders and ex-slaves roared.
“Taboos!” They yodeled, getting set for their next prank.
I sighed.
I strode over and unlimbered my sword.
I stood before Inch.
“If any man wishes to push this man over while he abjures his taboos, he must pass this rapier first.”
After that, Inch could get on with it, and I could only wait until he had worked all the accumulated taboo-breaks out of his system before I could ask him all the news.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Strigicaw prowled the seas in search of plunder.
“I never believed, Dray Prescot, that any man could claw back from the Ice Floes of Sicce.”
“Since I don’t believe in investigating that shivery region for many years to come, Inch, your surprise is unwarranted.”
“But, man! You just disappeared!”
“Evidently, what happened to me happened to you.” I told him, briefly, how King Nemo had disposed of me and he sighed and said: “Much the same. I suppose I was getting too big for my boots. When you vanished, no man knew whither, Tilda insisted I stay on. I had to — you see that, don’t you, Dray?”
“Of course. It was the honorable thing to do.”
My swordship, making a most unpleasant business of beating into a devilish strong wind from the wrong quarter and with a sea that made the use of oars out of the question, pitched and rolled. Spray drenched us. My flags flew stiff as boards.
Being anafract, that is, without armor protection for the rowers, my artillery — for I may use that word of varters — must be concentrated forward. We were far more a galley than a galleass, like the other swordships. The others of Viridia’s squadron were sailing far more weatherly than we and were pulling away across the tumbled sea. Again I looked up at my flags. Up there the yellow cross of my clansmen had been charged on the scarlet of Strombor. A brilliant yellow upright cross on a scarlet field. Yes, those were my colors. A momentary stab of an emotion I did not want to recognizethe render flag, a shaft of conscience, almost, that the pirate flag should wave in company with my own. Inch had given me the news. He had tried to assist Tilda, and keep Pando under some sort of control; but the wild zhantil had taken his newly-won status as a Kov to heart, and had lavished money and armament on the king and, with a great levy, had gone to war. I ached that I had not been there to help him — and by helping him to draw him back from the folly of war.
“I spoke out, Dray, and the next thing I knew was chained on the rowing beaches of a swordship -
and, mark me — a swordship of The Bloody Menaham.”
“I had noticed. They sold you, it seems.”
“The war was not going well when I — ah — left.”
“If that idiot Pando gets himself killed — although,” I spoke hopefully- “I expect he would be held for ransom.”
“We didn’t handle him the best way. The Kovnate went to his head a little.”
“Agreed. And, Inch, that was my fault. I was a fool.”
Inch had not broken any taboos as yet since boarding Strigicaw, and I had swiftly adjusted to remembering. Now he shook his head. “Not so, Dray. You could always control him, and in the best way, without a strap. I tried. But after you went he turned wild. There was no holding him.”
“Tilda?”
He smiled. “She is a good mother, and a wonderful woman and a superb actress. But I think being a Kovneva was a trifle out of her experience. She tries to cope, but she has been drinking-”
“No!”
“I am afraid so.”
“We’ll have to go back, Inch, and sort them out.”
“Yes. It seems to me that is a task laid on us, for our sins.”
“For our sins, Zair be thanked.”
And so — what of Vallia? What of Delia of Delphond?
The strongest doubts existed that this wallowing swordship Strigicaw would ever live through a passage across the open sea. She was a swift galley built for coastal waters, up among the islands. Now, through the sheets of spray, our consorts were a full dwabur upwind of us, and going hull down. Vallia would have to wait. Delia — I know I prayed she would understand and forgive me. But I was tortured by the thought that her resistance had been broken down, and she had given into that imperial majesty, her father, and married the oaf of his choice.
“By Ngrangi!” exclaimed Inch as the ship rolled and the wind tore at our canvas and water slopped green. “This tub will founder beneath us!”
“Spitz!” I yelled to the archer from Loh. “Before the flagship disappears! Hoist the white flag from the main yard!”
With a yell Spitz ran to obey.
That white flag from our yardarm, plus the simultaneous hauling down of the pirate flag from the main truck, would indicate to Viridia, if her officers could pick the signal out, that we had been forced to return to Careful Repose.
In the midst of giving the orders that would turn our head toward the easiest point of the compass for the ship, Valka sprang up through the canvas coverings we had spread over the rowing benches to keep the sea out and raced along the central gangway toward me. He glared up to the quarterdeck.
“Only just about in time, Captain, if you ask me! The seams are working something horrible. We’re shipping water faster than the pumps can clear.”
“Muster a baling party,” I told Valka. “See they jump to it. I’m taking this ship home — never fear -
unless something better comes along.”
They all laughed at that, as though it were a jest.