David Drake: Tyrant

In truth, the plants were all hardy — all the plants in Helga's part of the garden were — and could have withstood his sandaled passage easily enough. But Demansk took a subtle pleasure in avoiding destruction, as he marched toward it.

"You don't have to be so prissy, Father," Helga murmured, smiling faintly. "They'll survive."

For a moment, Demansk felt his facial muscles struggling between a scowl and a smile.

As usual, the smile won.

"In the good old days," he muttered, "girls wouldn't have dreamed of being so disrespectful to their fathers. Who" — his voice grew stern—"ruled their families with a rod of iron."

Helga's own smile widened. "Oh, please. In the 'good old days,' our illustrious forefathers were illiterate pig farmers. Standing on a dirt floor under a thatch roof, clad in rags, piglets nosing their bare feet — pissing on them, often enough — and bellowing their patriarchal majesty to a huddle of wrinkled women and filthy children. What I never understood is where they got the rod of iron in the first place." Slyly, looking up at her father under lowered eyelids: "Must have stolen it, since the beggars were certainly too poor to buy it."

Demansk grinned. " 'Stole it'? Well, I suppose. 'Plundered it' would be more accurate."

He lowered himself onto the bench next to her and added: "Say whatever else you will about those illiterate pig farmers, they were the toughest beggars the world's ever seen."

"True enough," she admitted. "Although you don't have to be so smug about it."

"And why not?" he shrugged. "Would anyone else have done a better job of ruling the world? Would you have preferred the pirates of the Isles, or the endlessly bickering Emeralds? Or the barbarians of the south?"

His daughter made no riposte. In truth, she had no disagreement with him on the subject, and they both knew it.

Demansk's gaze fell on his grandson's face. The boy had done with suckling, now, and his eyes were studying his grandfather in the vaguely unfocused and wondering way of infants.

Bright blue eyes, quite unlike the green eyes Demansk shared with his daughter — much less the brown eyes which were normal for those of Vanbert stock. And already the fuzz on the infant's head showed signs of the corn-gold splendor it would become.

Demansk cleared his throat. "Speaking of Emeralds. . There doesn't seem to be much doubt who sired him."

Helga snorted softly. "There is no doubt at all , Father."

When her green eyes came up again, they came level and even. No lowered lids, now; not even a pretense of daughterly modesty or demureness.

"There have been only three men who have had carnal knowledge of me. Counting, as the first of those, the pack of pirates who gang-raped me after I was kidnapped." The shrug which rippled her muscular shoulders would have awed the demigod who, legend had it, held up the world. A titan, dismissing flies. "I know neither their names nor do I remember their faces. Nor do I care."

Her right hand, as well shaped and sinewy as her shoulders, caressed her baby's cheek. "Then there was the Director of Vase, into whose hareem I was sold by the pirates and remained for a year. A fat old man, who managed to get an erection — so to speak — exactly twice on the occasions he summoned me." Another snort, this one derisive. "And then, I'm quite certain, faked an orgasm after a minute or so, once he felt he'd maintained his manly reputation."

Despite himself, Demansk couldn't quite suppress a chuckle. Helga's lips twitched wryly in response. And, for a moment, Demansk was as awed by that little smile as the demi-god would have been at the shrug.

No woman he had ever known — no man he had ever known — could match his daughter's calm acceptance of life and its woes. It was not that she was blind, or stupid, or naïve. Simply that she had the strength to regiment horror and misery, and turn them to her own purposes instead of being broken by them.

"And then there was Adrian Gellert," Helga continued, the flat tone in her voice replaced by lilting warmth, "who was neither old, nor fat, nor — trust me, Father — had the slightest difficulty with any of the business." Smugly: "Nor, I am quite certain, faked anything."

She hefted her baby and held him up before her. "This child is Adrian Gellert's and no other. You can be as sure of that as the sunrise. He was born much too late to have been one of the pirates', that's certain. And as for the old fat Director of Vase—"

Her soft laugh bordered on a giggle. " Look at your grandchild, Father! Even if that old toad could have managed it, do you think his son would look like this ?" Her eyes were almost glowing. Some of that glow, of course, was because of the child. But most of it, Demansk knew, was because of the memory of the father. "He has Adrian's eyes, his hair — even that whimsical smile."

Demansk sighed. His face, he knew, was stiff as a board.

Helga studied him for a moment. "I have always been blunt, Father. Why should that disturb you now? It happened. You know it, and I know it. So why should we pretend, or try to cover my shameful past with vague phrases?"

He shook his head abruptly. "It's not that. It's. ." His voice trailed off. For all his own quite-famous bluntness and directness, Demansk simply could not say what needed to be said. He had never been able to say it; not once, in all the months since Adrian Gellert had returned Helga safely to her family.

"Oh," murmured Helga. " That. " Her own face was as stiff and rigid as his own.

"Father, please. Do not insult me. For all my occasional sarcasm on the subject of our 'illustrious forefathers' and the 'grandeur of the Confederacy,' I am a daughter of Vanbert. In the bone, and the blood, and the flesh. And, for damn sure, in the spirit."

She plumped the baby back firmly on her lap. "I knew from the moment the pirates seized me that you would refuse to pay the ransom. I would have been furious if you had. The rest of Vanbert may have grown soft and corrupt, but not Demansk. Not us! Sophisticated we have become, and literate — and why not? But we, if no other family, are the true Vanbert breed."

Her green eyes were like two emeralds, as hard and unyielding as they were beautiful. "We do not pay ransom to pirates. We suffer their cruelties, if we must. And then, when the time comes, we wreak our vengeance. And our vengeance, and our memory, is a thing of terror to our enemies."

Demansk swallowed, fighting back tears. He had known, of course, what would be the fate of his virgin daughter once he refused the pirates' demand for ransom. Ravished, first, by the entire crew. Then sold into a lifetime of slavery. But—

He, too, was Vanbert. Of the old and true breed, undiluted and pure, for all the magnificence of his library and the glorious trappings of his villas and mansions. However far removed Demansk was in most respects from those ancient pig farmers, in one respect at least nothing at all had changed. He was tough.

The soft feel of his daughter's hand on his cheek startled him. He had been lost there, for a moment, without his usual soldier's alertness for motion.

For all their feminine slimness, the fingers were strong. And tough. They moved through the short gray-and-brown bristles as easily as a sharp scythe through wheat. As easily as the fingers of a pig farmer's daughter did whatever work was necessary. Without flinching, without complaint.

"Stop it." Her voice surprised him as much as the touch. The curt command was warm, almost humorous. "It wasn't that bad, Father. Really. A few horrible days, at the beginning. Then — honestly — even worse was the year's tedium that followed in the hareem. I was bored almost to the point of insanity."