Alan Akers - Swordships of Scorpio

Then I saw, through the aft bulkhead partition, the sudden movement and the shadow of a Womox grasping a bent bow, the arrow nocked and drawn back to the pile.

I whipped my blade away and struck Strom Erclan across the face, open-handed with my left, toppled him squalling into a corner where he put his face into a great bowl of some nauseous ointment Viridia used to iron out the wrinkles on her skin.

Viridia — she shocked me, then — Viridia laughed.

“Oh, Strom Erclan, you onker! Leave this wild man and me to talk a mur or two.”

Although the words bubbled through with laughter and Viridia clearly had abruptly snapped into a playful mood, Erclan was less than happy. Ointment smearing his face, he took himself off, glowering. Viridia lifted her left hand and the shadow of the bowman eased the bow and moved back out of sight.

“Don’t try to toy with me, Viridia,” I said. I remembered some of the vainglorious boasting the corsairs of the inner sea employed when promising King Zo what they would do to Magdag. “I’ve eaten bigger fish than that fool for breakfast, and spat out the bones. If he’s the best you can do, forget him. And that horned Womox of yours — I can get to him and spit him long before his addled brains add up what’s going on.”

She bit her lip. Had she been what she pretended to be she’d have snapped her fingers to her Womox bodyguard and made me prove my words. So I finished: “Anyway, Viridia, I’d as lief stick you through as a Womox.”

She rallied. She refused. She said, “I think I shall have you killed, at the end, Dray Prescot.”

“But, until then, you wanted to ask me something.”

“Not ask!” she flashed. “I ordered you to report to me so that I could tell you I want you to take command of the varters. Valka tells me you have some skill with them.”

I nodded. But I did not answer.

“Well, Dray Prescot?” She was surprised and not a little mortified. “Have you no word of thanks?”

“For what? For being given the thankless task of drumming varter drill into the blockheads of your crew?”

Her bosom rose and fell, but with the constriction I had noticed before, as though armor cased her.

“Take care, man! Viridia the Render is known through all the islands! My swordships take and burn and sink — we are feared wherever argenters sail-”

“Aye! And by ramming and boarding. I’ve seen your catapult and varter work. You’re hopeless. If I am to train your calsanys, then I demand absolute obedience. Any man who argues back will be knocked down instantly. Is that clear?”

About to reply she was interrupted by a Fristle messenger who put his head in at the door and squeaked rather than shouted his news, his whiskers quivering.

“Venus is alongside and she’s sinking!”

I give the name Venus to the swordship. I could not give her real name without causing offense. She was the ship in which, in company with a crew of oldsters and weird beings without interest in what they carried, the host of maidens of Viridia’s renders was carried. They were female pirates, true; but I had already seen how their talents were best exercised in the delicate business of extracting largesse from the shipping of the islands.

We all raced on deck and there was Venus already shipping water and the lithe agile forms of her girls leaping aboard Viridia’s flagship. I believe I have not given the name of Viridia’s personal swordship, the flagship of her little fleet of eight craft. Seven, now that poor old Venus was sinking. I know why I have not given it, for it displeased me. She had called her pirate craft Viridia Jikai. It made sense, of course; but I had been trained into a different school of thought where Jikai was concerned.

When all the pandemonium had subsided and Venus had sunk and Viridia started her court of inquiry, I was left to seek out Valka. He looked at me with a most ferocious grin, the while sharpening a nasty-looking boarding-pike.

I said, “You got me into giving drill to these calsanys. Hauling and winding and loosing varters, Valka. Well?”

He laughed and went on sharpening. “Certainly, Dray. I heard about you when they dumped you aboard the old Nemo.” He looked up, suddenly. “Anyway, it gets us out of the rowing benches, does it not, dom?”

Well, there was that to be said for it — indubitably.

During this period of my sojourn on Kregen many incidents occurred, but I feel that my purpose will best be served by pressing on. I am, I fondly believe, a man tolerant of other people until they prove themselves unworthy of trust; perhaps I am tolerant to a fault. But when a task has been put into my hands I am intolerant — decidedly and sometimes cruelly so — of every phase of the task until it is completed. I made those renders of the islands aboard the swordships sweat blood over the varters and the catapults. I have previously told you of my attitude to gunnery; discipline and absolute efficiency alone count. Eagerness and willingness to work are excellent; indeed I welcome them as bonuses; but a gang of calsanys, given my methods, will stand to their weapons whether varters or thirty-two pounders, and fight a ship.

And, as I know from experience, by the time I have finished with a crew, no matter how recalcitrant and unusable they were at the start, by the end they are as keen and eager and willing in all genuine fervor to excel, as the best volunteer crew afloat.

As it happened I was afforded not enough time to turn Viridia’s pack of sea-leems into gunners — if you will pardon the expression. We met one of the strange ships which sail up out of the southern oceans from whence no man knew, and fought her, and only a storm coming on saved us all from sinking. We ran with the gale and by the time we could shake a little more canvas out, the southerner had gone. I will talk more of these strange and terrible ships later.

The days floated by, and Valka and I hammered at the varter crews. We transferred from swordship to swordship, and when I rotated back to one I had given some instruction, and found the calsanys had forgotten it all, there were many bruised lips and black eyes. I was not popular. And yet, despite that, Valka told me that the men respected me, for they could understand my purpose.

“They know the risks involved in ramming and boarding. If you can force an argenter to surrender without their having to risk their hides, that will please them.”

Valka, indeed, was a tower of strength to me in those days.

It was mainly through his instigation that I picked up, one from here, another from there, a tight little crew of men and halflings who in addition to their expertise with varters and catapults showed — again according to Valka — respect and loyalty to me personally. I was aware of the dangers. I handled these men carefully. The idea, simple, of course, of welding them into a crew, of obtaining a ship and of sailing away, occurred to me without any deep cogitation.

The deep cogitation lay in where I would direct the course of the ship. Tomboram?

Vallia?

My duty to Tilda and Pando seemed to me to have been discharged.

I could, in all honor, sail for Vallia.

Valka, as a Vallian, would be invaluable.

I am a loner. I walk singly. And yet, I am constantly aware of this strange — power, attribute, thing? -

call it what you will, this uncanny phenomenon I possess of attracting the utmost loyalty and devotion from men. It is passing strange. I do not seek it. Sometimes I am embarrassed by it. I notice that men look to me for leadership. Only can it be explained, in part, by the fact that I will never let a fellow down if it is humanly possible. Perhaps some of that personality trait is responsible. I do not know. But, there it is.