The new course, off the wind and sea, eased the ship and I made a tour of inspection in the wildly leaping vessel, feeling her working in the sea, and realized just how close we had been. The inspection I had given her before we sailed had not been as thorough as I would have liked, and now I could see that Viridia had been cheated — although, no doubt, that troubled her not a whit. The new swordship she had just taken would be fitted and ready by the time she returned from this cruise. Much of the underwater planking was rotten, and I could push the point of my dagger into the wood with ease. I began to entertain a conviction that the bottom would drop out before we made port. And all through the rush of departure!
Thinking baleful thoughts I climbed up on deck again and ordered a tot of good red wine for every man. When Spitz, having hauled down the white flag, began to rehoist the pirate flag I growled at him. “Belay that!”
Certain ideas were meeting and melding in my head. I knew I was sick of the pirate trade — and yet, its fascination and its rewards, given that we would plunder only enemies, could not be denied.
“Sail ho!”
I stood on my ridiculous quarterdeck as we pitched and rolled and struggled in that sea, with a scrap of canvas showing to keep us from being merely a waterlogged lump of drifting wreckage, and watched as, on almost a reciprocal bearing, so close to the wind was she, a magnificent ship foamed toward us. She passed like a queen of the seas. She took absolutely no notice of us at all. In reality, working as we were, boarding would have been an operation too costly, as I judged. As it was that beautiful ship beat past us, leaning over, all her canvas as taut and trim as a guardsman’s tunic, her colors snapping out insolently. I gazed on that ship and on those colors.
A galleon, jutting of beak, sheer of line and curve, bold in the sea, built low with forecastle and quarterdeck and a small poop, four-masted, raked, aglitter with bright gilding and flamboyant colors. She moved surely against that sea in which we floundered. A galleon. A race-built galleon. And the flags! A yellow cross, a saltire, on a red field.
I glanced up at my own flag.
That yellow Saint Andrew’s cross on a red ground — I knew it. I knew from whence that proud ship hailed. From Vallia!
The galleon from Vallia roared past and was gone and was soon hull down and then the last scrap of her canvas winked over the sea horizon to the east.
“Damn the Vallians!” said Spitz. He held his Lohvian longbow in his hand, a kind of nervous reflex.
“They think they own the sea and all who sail on it! By Hlo-Hli! They think they’ve been anointed and given the scepter of all Kregen!”
We struggled on and, to our vast relief, the sea went down, the wind backed, and we were able to make better weather of it. The twin suns of Kregen were slipping down toward the western horizon, first Genodras and then Zim, and soon the nightly procession of moons would arch through the swarming stars.
Again came the hail that warms a render’s heart.
“Sail ho!”
She was a swordship from Yumapan, the country south of Lome, on the other side of the massive mountains that divide the island into North and South Pandahem, Her colors of vertical bars of green and blue in keeping with Pandahemic tradition fluttered in the dying breeze. She had seen us and was closing fast, and even as I watched she sprouted her oars and the long looms held, as though ruled parallel, like wings on either beam, before the drum-deldar gave his first stroke and the oars dipped as one. Valka yelled at me, pointing.
“No oars!” I shouted back.
Now Spitz and others of my officers were shouting. I leaped into the main shrouds and roared them to silence.
“They are big and powerful and can take us — and who among you wants to row for the Yumapanim?
Eh? Any volunteers?”
There rose a few scattered, uncertain laughs.
Yumapan, being situated across the sea to the east from Walfarg, had been one of that robust nation’s first conquests on her road to empire in the long ago. Now that Walfarg’s empire had crumbled, the Yumapan remembered, and aped those old ways; and they had long memories. Men even said they preferred a queen on the throne in Yumapan, in remembrance of the old Queens of Pain of Loh.
“But, Dray!” shouted Valka. “No oars! How can we fight?”
“We let her ram us, of course, you hairy calsany! Let her stick her rostrum up our guts — poor old Strigicaw is done for, anyway! Then, my sea-leem — then!”
“Aye!” they roared it back at me. “Then, Dray Prescot — then!”
And so, rolling like a washtub in the sea, we awaited the bronze-rammed shock from the Yumapan swordship.
When it came, with a roaring rending of wood and the screeching of bronze against iron nails, the smash of white water and the solid reeling shock as we nearly overset, my men knew what was required of them and knew the plan. Before the swordship captain could back his oars and draw free we were up over our side. Grapnels flew. Men leaped down from our rigging.
With Spitz in masterly control of our bowmen we shot out their quarterdeck. I went in at the head of my sea-leems, handing up over the bronze ram, up past the proembolion which was fashioned in bronze in the likeness of a zhantil-mask, up to the side of the beak and so, with a heave and a squirm, over onto the beak gangwalk. I snatched out my sword and, roaring and shouting, led my men down onto the central gangway. We fought. Oh, yes, we fought. We knew that if we failed we would either die and be tossed overside or be chained naked at the rowing beaches.
This was a fight that had some meaning to it.
This was a fight we had to win.
I saw Inch with a great ax, almost the equal of his own mighty weapon he had lost back in Bormark, smiting and smiting. In expert hands the great Saxon ax of Danish pattern is a frightful weapon of destruction. It cleaved a red path through the Yumapanim. Many men leaped overboard, shrieking, rather than face the tall form of Inch with those incredibly long arms smashing that gory ax in swaths of destruction.
And, obeying my orders, selected hands of my crew were jumping down between the rowing beaches, kicking away the ponsho skins, smashing the padlocks and breaking the chains. How those oar-slaves rose to us! With snatched-up weapons parceled out by my men, the ex-slaves vomited into the battle. We began at the prow and we finished at the taffrail, and all between was mine!
Of course, looking back, how can I take a pride in all that destruction of life? How can I feel a glow of satisfaction that good sailormen had been slain and thrown overboard? But then, at the head of my sea-leem, my bloodstained rapier in my hand, I felt the full tide of gratification and lust of conquest. I had scarcely heeded that this was a part of the render’s trade. Yumapan was a foe of Vallia, was a foe of Tomboram — and, as I knew, was a foe also to Zenicce and Strombor. It was all part of the struggle that, all unbeknown, I was waging on Kregen under the Suns of Scorpio. Poor Strigicaw was almost gone.
Before the waves closed over her we took what was necessary and transferred our goods and chattels to my new command.
That brave flag of mine, the brilliant yellow cross on the scarlet field I personally bent and hoisted, high, high at the truck of the mainmast. And there it blew, proclaiming to all that this swordship was mine!
Pride, and possession, and power — disastrous, disastrous!
The released slaves would join us.
The name of the swordship had been a long and complicated farrago of high-flown pomp and circumstance, which boiled down to her and her captain being the best on the sea, and the queen of Yumapan being the greatest Queen of Pain who had ever lived. I gave orders for the whole name to be expunged, and this was done by a certain amount of high-spirited chisel work and a triple splash in the sea.