David Brin - Glory Season

“No, sir. There’s no problem,” Naroin answered calmly. “I was just explaining that all second-class passengers will train to defend the ship’s cargo.”

The captain nodded. “You have your crewmates’ backing, Master-at-Arms,” he said mildly, and walked away.

The shiver down Maia’s back wasn’t from the north wind. Generally speaking, men were supposedly as harmless, four-fifths of the year, as lugars were all the time. But they were sentient beings, capable of deciding to get angry, even in winter. The two big seamen remained, observing. Maia sensed in their eyes a wariness toward any threat to their ship, their world.

The Chuchyin made a show of examining her fingernails, but Maia saw perspiration on her brow. “Guess I could spar a bit,” the tall var muttered. “For practice.” Still feigning nonchalance, she stepped over to the weapons rack. Instead of taking up the other padded training bill, she grabbed a trepp meant for combat, made of hard Yarri wood with minimal wrapping round the hook and prong.

From the rigging, two of the women crew gasped, but Naroin only backed onto the broad, flat door covering the aft hold, scuffing a film of coal dust with her bare feet. The tall var followed, leaving tracks with her sandals. She did not bow. Nor did the short sailor as they began circling.

Maia glanced toward the two shirtless seamen, who now sat watching, all wrath gone from their docile eyes. Once more, she felt a half-excited, half-nauseated curiosity about sex. Her ignorance was normal. Few clans let summer daughters enter their Halls of Joy, where the dance of negotiation, approach, refusal, and acceptance between sailor and mother-to-be reached its varied consummations, depending on the season. Among the ambitions she shared with Leie was to build a hall of their own, where she might yet learn what delights were possible—unlikely as it seemed—in mingling her body with one such as those, so hirsute and huge. Just trying to imagine made her head hurt in strange ways.

The two women finished their preliminary swings, waving and thrusting their bills. Naroin seemed in no hurry to take the offensive, perhaps because of her padded, ill-balanced weapon. The Chuchyin var spun her chosen trepp in one hand with panache. Suddenly she leapt forward to sweep at her opponent’s well-scarred legs—and abruptly found those legs wrapped around her throat! Naroin hadn’t awaited the traditional-exchange of feints and parries, but instead rammed her awkward bill onto the deck, using it as a pole to vault over her foe’s slashing weapon, landing with one leg across each of the other woman’s shoulders. The var staggered, dropped her trepp, and tried to claw at the master-at-arms, but found her hands seized with wiry strength. Her knees buckled and her face started to color between the woman sailor’s tightening thighs.

Maia breathed at last as Naroin jumped back, letting her opponent collapse to the sooty hatch. The dark-haired sailor grabbed the Yarri-wood weapon dropped by her foe and used its Y-shaped yoke to pin the var’s neck to the cargo door. Naroin was barely breathing hard.

“Now what’d you expect, comin’ at me that way? Bare wood against padding? No courtesy, then choppin’ a cripple blow? Try that against reavers and they’ll do more’n take our cargo or sell you for a season’s labor. They’ll sea-dump you an’ any other wench who cheats. And our men won’t lift a finger, hear? Eia! ”

The female crew shouted in refrain. “Eia!” Naroin tossed the bill aside. Wheezing, the half-Chuchyin crawled off the makeshift arena, covered with black smears. A glance at the quarterdeck showed that the men had departed, but assorted clones watched from first class, wearing amused expressions.

“Next?” Naroin asked, looking down the file of vars, no longer appearing quite so small.

I know what Leie would do now, Maia thought. She’d wait for others to wear Naroin down, pick out some weakness, then go at it with all panels charged.

But Maia wasn’t her sister. Back in school she might watch a dozen bouts without recalling who had won, let alone who parried when for points. While her churning guts wanted to find some dim shadow, her rational mind said, Just get it over with . Anyway, if Naroin was trying to encourage proper womanly combat virtues, Maia could offer a good contrast to the Chuchyin, and surprise those who called her “virgie.”

Fighting a queasy tremor, she stepped forward, silently drew the other padded training bill from the rack and faced the arena. She ignored the staring clones and vars, ritually scuffed the dust thrice, and bowed. Bearing her own cushioned weapon, Naroin beamed beneficence toward Maia’s courtesy. Both of them extended their bills, hook end forward, for that first, formal tap …

Someone splashed water in her face. Maia coughed and sputtered. It stung not only of salt but of coal. A blur slowly resolved into a face … an old man’s … the one who earlier had tousled her hair, she dimly recalled. “Here, now. Y’all hokay? Nothin’ broke, i’zer?” He spoke a thick mannish dialect. But Maia got the drift. “I … don’t think so…” She started to rise, but a sharp pain lanced through her left leg, below the knee. A bloody cut went halfway around the calf. Maia hissed.

“Mm. Ah see yet. S’not so bid. Here’s sum salve that’ll seer a beet.”

Maia felt a whimper rise in her gorge and stifled it as he applied medicine from an earthenware jar. The agony departed in waves like an outgoing tide. Her throbbing pulse settled. When she next looked, the bleeding had stopped.

“That’s… good stuff,” she sighed.

“Our guild maybe small ’n’ poorly, bit we got smart tube-boys beck in sanctuary.”

“Mm, I’ll bet.” Between shipping seasons, some men dealt with extra time on their hands by fiddling in laboratories, either as guests in clanholds or at their own craggy hermitages. Few of the bearded tinkerers had much formal education, and most of their inventions were at best one-season marvels. A fraction reached the attention of the savants of Caria, to eventually be published or banned. This salve, though—Maia vowed to get a sample and find out if anyone yet had the marketing rights.

She rose up on her elbows and looked around. Two pairs of second-class passengers were out on the hatch cover, sparring under shouted direction from the master-at-arms. Several others lay sprawled like she was, nursing bruises. Meanwhile, two female crew members sat by the forward cowling, one blowing a flute while the other sang in a low, sad alto voice.

The old man tsked. “Really pushin’ this yar. Fool’sh, runnin’ fems too ragged t’work. Not roit, boy my lights.”

“I s’pose,” Maia murmured noncommittally. She rose to sitting position and then, grabbing a nearby rail, managed to hobble onto one leg. She was still woozy, and yet felt vaguely relieved. Real pain was seldom as bad as the expectation.

Funny, hadn’t Mother Claire once said that about childbirth? Maia shivered.

One of the practicing vars shouted and landed on the hatch with a loud thump. The women playing music switched to an ancient, plaintive melody that Maia recognized—about a wanderer, yearning for a home, a beloved, all of the hearth-joys that came so easily to some, but not others.

Resting against the gunnels, Maia gazed across the seascape and found the Zeus keeping pace a bit behind, plowing through choppy waves with billowed sails. So far, this voyage had been at least as much a learning experience as her sister promised.

I do hope Leie’s finding her trip just as interesting, came Maia’s biting thought.

Two weeks later, on hitting their first landing in Queg Town, the twins finally set eyes on each other after their longest separation, and their reactions were identical. Each looked the other up and down… and simultaneously broke up laughing.