S. Stirling - The Reformer

It was Esmond's turn to smile. "And we've got squads with the militia in the towers either side of the harbor mouth," he said. "Prince Tenny, bless him, didn't rearrange that-and I suppose the King hasn't had time to look into details."

"So, all we've got to worry about is the Confeds," Grayn said, rising and gathering up sword and helmet, and fastening the clasps of his armor. "All twenty-fucking-thousand of them, and a couple of hundred of us. Wodep, I should have stayed home and farmed olives with my brothers."

* * *

"Wish I was going with you," Esmond whispered as Adrian put his foot on the rope ladder over the side of the Revenge .

Whispering was unnecessary; they were well beyond hearing distance from the Confed harbor, far enough away that its watchfires were simply a dim glow in the distance, a glimmer that might have been phantom lights chasing each other across a man's closed eyelids.

"I'm glad you're not," Adrian said. "There has to be somebody out there to haul my ass out of the crack, big brother." Seriously: "May the Gray-Eyed Lady of Wisdom hold Her shield above you tonight, brother."

"And over you-you're her favorite." Then he snorted laughter.

"What's funny?"

"King Casull. He'll just be getting the news we've deserted!"

Adrian grinned back at him and dropped the last foot into the launch. There was a glimmer of white, a slow chopping shssshhhh as the trireme and its companions pulled away northward and west, looping out from the coast.

"Let's get going, then," Adrian said, when the ships had vanished in the moonless dark. He turned his head, and a glowing arrow painted itself across his vision.

"Yessor," Simun agreed; he and a nephew were acting as Adrian's loaders and rowers tonight, at his gentle insistence-he was a fisherman's son, as he pointed out, and as at home in small boats as any.

"All right," the older man went on to his relative. "Now lay out-row dry, ye dickhead, and row soft, or this oar'll cob you. Show no white on yor blade when it cuts the water, now. Row soft."

The soft glow grew ahead of them as they angled in to the northeast. A half-hour, and Simun and his nephew were breathing soft and deep; he could smell their sweat in the warm summer night. A touch of mist lay on the water, low curls of it; that was helpful. It was quiet enough that the occasional plop of a jumping fish was distinct and sharp through the darkness. Now square shapes cut the night, blotted outlines against the frosting of stars on the eastern horizon.

Adrian's vision brightened with Center's passionless certainty. Now he could see the fire-baskets out on poles from the wooden forts at each end of the artificial harbor, and diffuse fire glow from the vast Confed camp beyond. And smell it, the rank odor of so many men crammed together. The fires above the water had died down to dull glows.

Careless, he thought. They should be kept bright with pine knots the night through.

They've had a hard day too, lad, Raj said. It's hard keeping men up to the mark when they're that exhausted. Although you're right; I'd have the rank-tabs off any officer I caught letting this happen.

"We're coming up on the boom," Adrian said softly from where he knelt in the bows of the small boat. "About a thousand yards. It's just barely awash. Big logs."

"Eyes like a cat, sor," Simun grunted, looking over his shoulder as he rowed. "Suppose it comes of bein' favored of the gods, like."

"Rest easy," Adrian said, clambering between them into the stern of the boat and carrying the big net of clay jars with him; that tilted its prow up, nearly out of the water. "All right-fast as you can!"

"Row!" Simun called softly to his nephew. "Fast now, boy, stretch out- rapppiipai! Rapppippipai! "

The two men leaned into their oars, rising and falling with breathy grunts of effort. Adrian waited, poised, while the towers loomed on either side like the gates of the land of the Shades-only the giant three-headed hound was lacking, and there were watchdogs enough in the towers, and in the camp behind. I am insane, went through him. This has all been a delusion, and I'm completely fucking insane-

Center's vision showed him the floating barrier of logs ahead. He waited; then the boat's keel ground on the rough wood with an ugly crackling, crunching sound.

"Forward!" he called, and leapt into the bows, using the shock of impact to power his jump.

The two at the oars followed him, and the stern came out of the water. The boat teetered, wavered. . and then slid forward with a splash that sounded to Adrian's ears like the launching of a quinquereme down a slipway, with a flute and drum corps in accompaniment. Even his own breathing was like a bellows, and he slowed it with an effort of will, hissing the others to silence. The boat drifted, the oars loose on the thongs that secured them to the muffled oarlocks. Simun scrambled back on his hands and knees, swearing softly and checking the bottom of the boat with his fingers for the welling leaks that might show a cracked strake.

Nothing; no shouts, no blazing lights. The towers were looking for bigger fish. . if they were looking at all, and not just dozing. Adrian sat for a moment controlling his breathing, feeling the slowing of a heart whose pounding shook his chest.

"All right ," Simun said, his voice low and fierce. "We did it, sor!"

" 'Well begun, half done; half done, not begun,' " Adrian said, quoting an old Emerald folk saying. The founder of the Grove had been fond of it, too; it was whispered that he'd been a stonecutter and the son of a peasant himself. "This way."

The artificial harbor was as rectangular as men could make it, in the Confed style. They hadn't straightened the beach at the inner end, though; that was a half-moon, turning the whole affair into a U-shape. The low irregular line of the rock-filled ships loomed on either side, five hundred feet apart, with waves breaking on the outer sides and throwing a little white foam over the bulwarks. This arrangement would never survive a series of winter gales, but it only needed to last as long as the siege of Preble. . and there at the base of the U were the ships.

Center's lightening of the darkness intensified; Adrian felt as if an invisible line were being wound tighter and tighter around his forehead. Then it eased, and a strobing arrow marked their course.

the four captured quinqueremes,Center pointed out.

Adrian looked up. "It's after midnight," he said. "Nobody'll be around."

"Deck watches, sor," Simun pointed out, nodding towards a dim lantern on the stern of one of the Confed vessels.

"But nobody on the captured ships, not yet. Take us in, but keep as near the middle as you can; beach her right next to the left-hand quinquereme of those four. When these"-he tapped the clay jugs-"start going off, things are likely to get a bit hairy, so be ready to push off when I get back."

"Bit hairy, sor." Simun chuckled softly. "Take yor time, but by Gellerix' cunt, don't linger, eh?"

The oars bit, and Adrian-slowly, cautiously-loaded one of the jugs into his staff-sling. The jugs held a mixture of fish oil, sulfur, naphtha oil that oozed out of rocks, and quicklime. Experiment had shown they'd burn like the heart of a forge fire and couldn't be put out. They were also fairly fragile.

"Coming up on the shore," he said. The darkness grew more absolute, as they ghosted into the shade of the captured quinquereme; it had the faint sewer stench a rowing vessel always did, even if the bilges were pumped regularly. "Lay on your oars."

The two men did, and Adrian hopped over the side. His sandals grated on pebbles and sand, and he reached back in for the sack of what Center, for some reason, called molotovs .