Гарри Тертлдав - The First Heroes

Two sailors had ropes on the net and were guiding it to the clear space at her feet; orderly stacks of other goods rose fore and aft, covered in tarpaulins and tightly lashed down. The early morning air was cold; the first week in November was usually chilly and raw here in southern Alba, and she could scent the faint mealy smell of snow.

"I'll be glad to get out of the harbor," she said, mentally running over the list herself.

Simple goods for the raw-native trade: spearheads and axe-blades, saws and hammers, kegs of nails, chisels, drills, printed cotton cloth, glassware and ornaments, cheap potato vodka. Wind-pumps and ore-breakers and stationary steam engines for the mining dredges Ellis & Stover had set up out east these last five years; treadle sewing machines and corn-shellers and cotton-gins, threshing engines and sugarcane crushers for the Islander settlements in the Indian Ocean. . . . She took a deep satisfied sniff of the smells, metal and oil and the pinewood of boxes and barrels. Even the bilges were not too bad; the Pride had been hauled out for complete refitting in the Fogarty's Cove shipyards on Long Island not four months ago.

"Won't we all," her brother said; he was a slim dark young man in his teens, chin blue-black with stubble despite his youth, holding his clipboard with a seriousness that made her smile.

"This is the last of the chocolate," Tim said as the net creaked to the decking.

Longshoremen sprang to unhitch it and begin stacking the cargo under the direction of the bosun and his mates; they knew the captain's fanatical insistence on neatness and having everything precisely in place. She grinned inwardly; that was another reason she and Heather didn't ship together if they could avoid it. She drove Heather crazy by being finicky, and Heather's blithe confidence that everything would come right in the end with a lick and a promise infuriated her, the more so since it seemed to work about as well as her methods instead of resulting in the immediate ruin it should. They'd been raised like twins—they were the same age almost to the day, as close as they could figure it—and loved each other dearly, as long as they didn't have to watch each other work too closely.

It's a very good thing Alston-Kurlelo Shi-p-ping and Trading has three merchantmen and a headquarters to run, now, she thought.

Lucy nodded to Tim, then sprang and planted a foot on the hook of the line that had held the cargo net and a hand on the cable. A man on deck whistled and waved, and the line jerked upward. She judged her distance easily as her head came above the hatch coaming, then jumped down to the deck, her mind on her return cargo. Tin, of course—alluvial tin washed from the streams was cheap enough to compete with the hard-rock mines here in Alba, with their high fixed costs. The West Alba Mining and Smelting Corporation had annoyed everyone during the long years it had a virtual monopoly.

Hmm. Can't expect more than a few hundred tons ready for loading. What else? There was always market for teak, but it was bulky in relation to its value. Would it be worth another thousand miles of easting to top up with cinnamon and cloves in the Celebes, then return via the Horn? If she did that, she could make a brief stopover on the coast of Peru; the locals there had silver in the ingot, and cocoa, and some excellent handicrafts. . . . Best keep a careful eye on prices via radio. That helped only so much, though. You still had to take months covering distance.

The deck was busy too, with sailors making all secure for their departure on the evening tide. The mates and the senior hands were busy as well, showing newcomers how to coil a line, or shoving them into position to clap onto a rope and haul. There was an occasional foot to a backside as well; she frowned, but there wasn't much alternative until the raw hands learned enough to be useful. Until then everyone was doing their own work and half the trainees' as well, and there weren't as many even for simple pull-on-this as she'd have liked. Another group were being shown down the line of guns bowsed up against the bulwarks, sleek blue-black soda-bottle shapes, thirty-two-pounders bought surplus from the Coast Guard a year ago. She suppressed a wish for a Gatling; that would eat half the voyage's profits, and she had over a hundred employees, two children, and four nieces and nephews to support.

"All's well, Mr. Hands?" she called to the master-gunner.

He turned and touched a knuckle to his forehead. "As well as can be expected, ma'am. Arms drill as soon as we make open water? These handless cows—"

"A week or two after," she replied. "When they can be trusted to go aloft and reef."

She was very unlikely to meet a pirate before then, but sailing into a bad blow was entirely possible.

And when she'd reached the Roaring Forties and started to run her easting down before the endless storms . . . then she wanted every jack and jill able to hand, reef, and steer.

"In the meantime, signal the tug we're ready," she said, as the crew began to batten down the hatchway. "Prepare to cast off!"

A noise on the docks drew her head up. A man was running down the quay, dodging carts and goods and passersby; a young man, with long fair hair and a mainlander's leather kilt. Her eyes widened slightly. That's the woodsrunner, the Keruthinii, she thought. And despite the recent rain, looking rather ghastly with flour-paste; doubtless there was a story behind that. He dashed for the gangway where crewmen were unfastening the lashings.

"Belay that!" she called, as they snatched up cargo-hooks or put their hands on their belt-knives. "Let him on board!"

She went over to meet him; her first mate fell in behind her, and a pair of the older hands with belaying pins from the rack around the mainmast, held casually but ready. He bounded up the plank with a stride that made him look as if his legs were rubber springs, then halted and cried her hail.

"What are you doing on my ship?" she asked quietly. The young man—Blood Wolf, she dredged out of her mind; typical melodramatic charioteer-tribe name—was breathing deeply but easily, and he grinned with a cocky self-confidence. "I came to see if you still wish my allegiance, chieftainness," he said. "For I wish to leave this dunthaurikaz, and see far lands." Lucy snorted, hooking her hands in the brass-studded belt she wore over her long sea-sweater. "I'm not taking you on board if you've broken Southaven law," she said.

He offered her a piece of paper. She snorted again; it had the municipal stamp, and the Republic's eagle; she recognized Eric Iraiinisson's handwriting and signature, as well. Apparently the youngster wasn't wanted . . . exactly.

And I could use another hand. This one looks to he quick-thinking as well as strong.

"It's fifty cents a day and your keep," she said, and looked him over.

"Eight months to a year round-trip and a share of the take to depend on how you're rated when we make the chops of Nantucket Channel and pay off. And you do what you're told when you're told, or it's the rope's end or the brig. Understood?"

He grinned again. "Command and I obey," he said with a grandiloquent gesture, then went down on one knee and placed his hands between hers.

She knew the ceremony; this wasn't the first time she'd gone through it, either.

"Mr. Mate!" she called.

"Ma'am?"

"Sign this man on; rate him ordinary and see he's issued slops and a duffel." Louder: "Prepare to cast off!"

The crew bustled about; Lucy went up the treads to the quarterdeck, taking her place beside the wheel, with the helmsman and pilot. She looked southward, to where the gray water of Southaven Water waited, and the world beyond. Down on the deck, Blood Wolf was looking in the same direction, and she could hear his clear, delighted laughter.