David Drake: Reformer

"Where's the ram?" Adrian was half-shouting, his eyes wild. "What has that donkey-fucking idiot done with my ship ?"

* * *

"Allfather!" Demansk snapped.

The shock of impact threw him to his hands and knees on the deck, driving bits of armor into his flesh. He pulled himself upright again, watching with savage glee as the deck of the enemy vessel surged backward and the wheel beat itself to flinders on the bronze-sheathed timber of his ship's ram. Splinters rained back, as dangerous as flying knives, but he ignored them. Then the remnants of the wheel froze, and an odd muffled screaming sound came from within the. . Iron Monstreme, Demansk thought. The monster-chuffing breath ceased abruptly.

"Follow me!" he roared. "Whatever it is, we hurt it! Now we finish it off!"

The boarding ramp fell. The iron spike penetrated at least a little, and Demansk ran down it. The iron plates felt strange beneath his bare feet, but skin gripped — the only problem was that it was just short of painfully hot. He crouched, holding his round officer's shield out for balance, and ran up the low curve towards the square blockhouse forward of the smoke cylinders. He could hear men following him, and one despairing scream as somebody slipped and slid into the water on his way to the bottom, and then they were crouched around the blockhouse. It was iron plates on timber, the same as the rest of the strange construction, but steam was leaking out of the slits — oddly like a bathhouse.

A hatchway on top of the blockhouse opened, and a man stumbled up and out, wavering, pawing at his crimson face. A dart landed in his gut with a wet thwack that was all too clear at this range.

"Prisoners!" Demansk shouted. "I want prisoners!"

Men clambered on to the roof of the blockhouse, and one of them gave Demansk a hand. The hatchway proved to be about the size of an ordinary door, but the space beyond was a ghostly mass of steam and vague thrashing figures.

Like an orgy in the steam room, Demansk thought, dazed. Whatever he'd been expecting, it wasn't this .

"We surrender!" a voice coughed, hoarse and rough, an Islander accent. "Let us out, for the love of the Mother!"

"Come out with your hands empty," Demansk called down.

A man came up, showing empty palms; one side of his face was a huge blister. "Spare us, lord! Mercy!"

"Who are you?" Demansk barked. "And what is this thing?"

Even as he spoke, he realized the futility of the question. Whatever this was, it probably couldn't be explained by a wounded man at assegai-point.

"Sharlz Thicelt," the man said. "Water, lord?" Demansk nodded, and a man handed over a canteen. The Islander drank, gasped, coughed, drank again. "I'm skipper of the Wodep's Fist —or was."

He spat some of the water on the corpse of the first man who left the hatchway, and tore off his turban in a gesture of pure rage, revealing a long shaven skull. The gold hoops in his ears bounced with the vehemence of his motion as he threw the turban after the spittle. Demansk thought that if the footing had been better, he'd have run over and kicked the corpse as well.

"And that was Prince Tenny, may the Sun God reincarnate him as the blind bastard of a pox-ridden half-arnket whore. The gods-forsaken little sodomite lost us the battle."

* * *

"Lord King!" Adrian said.

The King of the Isles was still wearing his gilded armor, hacked and battered and blood-splashed. That took some courage, in a small launch. There was no need to ask what had happened to the flagship; it was not a thousand yards off, with two battered but still floating Confed quinqueremes lashed to either side.

Casull stalked to the quarterdeck, his eyes travelling over the chaos that reigned on this stretch of reddened ocean. "I do not abide by a plan that has failed," he grated. "We'll retreat." He looked at the Revenge 's steersman. "Set course for the nearest ship still in our hands. We'll have to arrange a rearguard, if we're to get to Preble in one piece."

He looked at Esmond then. "Where is my son?"

Esmond met his eyes. "Lord King, the enemy holds the Wodep's Fist. Beyond that, I do not know."

Casull sighed, his eyes dull. "If he lives, we'll hear before sunset; demands for ransom, enough to leave the kingdom poor. If not. . if not, we'll drink his spirit home to the Sun."

TWELVE

The King's eyes were alive and bitter by the time the sun had been down two hours; they were bloodshot and a little inclined to wander, as he lay on the cushions downing cup after cup of unwatered wine, but his voice was only slightly slurred. The air of the chamber was thick with incense, with attar of roses and patchouli oil from the courtesans who danced and sang and drank with men on their cushions, with the smells of wine and sweat and ointment on bandaged wounds. Light flickered from the lamps on the gilded plaster of the ceiling, worked in sea monsters and figures from legend, and on the pale stone of the walls and their lapis inlay of flowers and trees.

"A toast!" the King of the Isles said, glaring at the Emeralds where they sat halfway down the great municipal banqueting hall of Preble. The dull roar of conversation died, except for snatches of drunken song from those too far gone to care. "A toast to my son, the shining warrior, Prince Tenny!"

" Prince Tenny! " the hall roared back.

Casull threw the cup to one side, and the priceless Vanbert glassware shattered. A servant shoved another into his hand.

"And another toast! To the bastard son of a whore, Esmond Gellert, who lost the battle by running amok without orders!"

Esmond stood, graceful and tall in a plain tunic and swordbelt. His hand fell unconsciously to the place where a hilt would have been, if men could feast armed before the King. The guardsmen leaning on their great scimitars tensed slightly; a fighting man like the Emerald was never entirely disarmed. Before he could speak, Adrian rose beside him, bowing:

"O King, your kingdom's heart bleeds with you in your honorable grief for Prince Tenny, fallen like so many others on this day of sorrow!" he said, the trained rhetor's voice filling the chamber without straining. "Yet even in grief, a King remembers justice!"

The red-veined eyes turned on him. "You speak of justice, bumboy?" he grated.

"Indeed, Lord King," Adrian cut in, smoothly enough that it did not seem to be an interruption — one art both the Grove's school of rhetoric and the lawcourts of Vanbert taught. "It would not be just to punish the only squadron commander in your fleet who today sank his own numbers in Confed vessels, and brought as many more behind him, towing them in victory to lay at your feet."

That brought Casull to a halt for a second, his mouth open. Adrian swallowed, his own so dry that he was insanely tempted to stop for a drink; his temples pounded, and his body dragged with the weariness of the day's fighting. He flogged his brain into functioning, as merciless to himself as he'd been throwing grenades into the oar decks of Confed galleys.

"And indeed, he did so on my urging," he went on. Casull's eyes narrowed. "Not that I, a mere artificer, would have dared to put my word against the King's! May the King live forever! We are as dust beneath his feet. No, my own wisdom is only wise enough to know that I should never interfere in such matters. Yet before the word of the shining Prince Tenny, the hero and heir, what could I do but obey?"

"What is this?" Casull said, visibly trying to gather his wits. He didn't need to be sober for the sort of temper-fit he'd had in mind, or to give the necessary orders afterwards. He hadn't expected to be engaging in the elenchos of the Grove.