"Row well, and live," Loring murmured under his breath.
Classical reference, he thought-though in fact the film had been wrong about that. Greek and Roman rowers were free men; galley slaves were a medieval and Renaissance invention. To his surprise, Norman Arminger caught the quote.
"No slaves," the Protector said dryly, pausing as several attendants armed him. "That isn't really practical for war-craft, I've found."
Nigel nodded; he'd seen the swords and axes and bucklers clipped to the bulwarks between the benches on the trip up from Portland. From the sewer smell, less fancy tow boats pulling barges loaded with troops and horses and supplies did have crews chained to their benches. They'd passed other arrangements, one where bicycle pedals drove a propeller, and one where a big windmill whirling amidships did the same. Probably they were too complex and failure-prone to be practical just yet. Or the Lord Protector just thought galleys made a good show.
"And now if you'll excuse me: unless you'd care to spar yourself?"
"Not just now, thank you," Sir Nigel said.
Normally he tried to get in at least a little practice every day, usually with his son-who'd taught him the sword, after all-but Alleyne wasn't there. Wasn't with the flotilla, at all, although John Hordle was leaning on the railing not far away, left hand tapping idly on the long hilt of his sword. Loring didn't intend to let a potential enemy get a close-up look at his personal style with a blade. Or perhaps not so potential an enemy, either.
Nobody called Alleyne a hostage, Nigel thought, with fury that didn't reach his face. Not quite.
Arminger pulled the practice helm with its protective face screen over his head and nodded to the commander of his troop, a squat muscular man with cold blue eyes peering out of a face ugly with thick white scar tissue; that and the shaved head made it difficult to tell his age, but Loring estimated it at about forty.
"Salazar! Johnson!" Conrad Renfrew barked. Then to Arminger: "The usual reward, my lord?"
Arminger nodded again, taking up a practice sword-a yard of oak with an iron core, probably rather heavier than the two pounds or so of the real thing. The two young guardsmen did likewise. One was a little below six feet, the other a trifle above, one fair and one dark, but otherwise they were similar; in their early twenties, broad-shouldered, long-limbed, moving with deft ease in their throat-to-ankle armor despite the light pitch and roll of the deck.
"Let's see if either of you can win that horse," the ruler of Portland said. "Salazar first."
The man raised his shield and advanced; Arminger pivoted on his right heel as they circled, sword over his head with the hilt forward and blade back, the rounded top of the big kite-shaped shield up under his eyes. Then the younger man sprang. The thump and clatter of the match made good cover for a private conversation, especially when you added in the chuckle of water and the hoarse mass breathing of the rowers and the dull boom of the drum; and they both knew how to talk softly without obviously whispering. Loring leaned on the rail beside Hordle, his mild eyes blinking at the sun-sparkles off the water.
"Notice we're not on the same boat as Nobbes's folk," Hordle said. "Keeping us separate on shore too, like, as much as he can without being too obvious about it."
"He's no fool," Loring said.
"Thinks highly of himself, though, just a bit," Hordle said.
"I hope we can make something of that," Loring replied.
"Think he'll scrag us, sir? If we get the VX for 'im."
"I wouldn't put it past him," Loring replied. "But I think he'll try to enlist us first."
"But with Mau-Mau conditions."
"Quite."
That terrorist movement in Kenya had made its recruits break their own culture's taboos, acts so obscene and horrible that they felt cut off from everything but their new allegiance. They weren't the only ones who used that trick, either; it had the dual merit of securing loyalty and weeding out those with inconvenient scruples. Cannibal bands had done the same during the terrible period right after the Change.
I'm almost glad Maude didn't live this long. Things would be very awkward if she were here.
"Still, there's opportunities," Hordle said.
His eyes took in the countryside. And we've heard something about Mr. Arminger's enemies, they both thought. Anyone who disliked the Lord Protector had to have something to be said for them, and it would be strange if men with their skills couldn't make an escape. Which is why Alleyne is somewhere they can keep an eye on him.
Hordle sighed. They both knew that, too. His wide frog-like slit of a mouth quirked at Sir Nigel. He and I rescued you – now you and I will have to rescue him!
They looked up at the mountains to the south. A heliograph blinked from the top of one, a code but not Morse: blink: blinkblink… blink-blink-blink:
They looked casually down at the water sweeping by. "That's quick. Six knots."
And the heliographs would be quite quick enough to report our absence and order Alleyne killed. Their eyes met. We're going to have to be very careful about this.
"I'm sure the Lord Protector will have nothing to complain about for some time."
The white water of the Columbia broke over the snagged ruins of Bonneville Dam with a toning roar that shook the world, the bright noon sun making the froth shine like cataracts of lace fringed with diamonds as it surged between the remaining fangs of ferroconcrete. Nigel Loring shaped a silent whistle; there was no doubt at all that things were simply bigger in this part of the world, starting with the mile-wide expanse of river. The dam itself spanned that breadth across an island; the central portion with the sluicegates was the core of the ruined portion. It wasn't hard to see why, either; the rusted wreck of a big river tug rested halfway through, prow high in the air. The huge barges it had been pushing lay tumbled before it at the base of the dam's low wall, except for one tilted against its side and showing the gravel that had been its cargo; the combined weight must have been thousands of tons, and traveling fast on the crest of a flood wave from the looks of it. What the steel-and-stone battering ram of the barges had begun, the wild water of eight years had continued, until the rapids were not much worse than they'd been before the river was tamed.
"Goddamned inconvenient," Norman Arminger said from not far away, using the point of his wooden sword to indicate the broken dam and then lowering it to the deck. "For transport, that is."
The two young men-at-arms he'd been sparring with stepped back as Arminger pulled off the practice helmet with its facial mask. Below it his flushed countenance ran with sweat, and he was breathing hard; he'd just spent a goodish while sparring in relays with two men who were at least twenty years his junior, trained to a hair, and obviously not holding anything back. Nigel Loring was moderately impressed; he wouldn't have lasted quite so long before tiring dangerously himself, but then he was in his fifties rather than the Protector's midforties. The standard of swordsmanship had been high as well, though the style was different from the one the royal forces used in England, rather more edge and less point, and more use of the bigger shield.