Jerry Pournelle - King David's Spaceship

“No harm in talking to him. Sure, why not?”

Stark nodded and went to the door. He spoke briefly in low tones to one of the guardsmen outside. “Be here in a couple of minutes, Trader. Be best if I were on duty when he came in.” Stark took his glass to another table across the small room.

Captain Loholo was a short, dark-brown man, stocky and strong-looking, with a distinct slant to his eyes, reminding MacKinnie of the starship officers he had seen. He had seen many others of his type on Makassar, in sharp contrast to the tall, blonde men like Vanjynk. Loholo wore a golden skull ornament in his left ear, and carried a large curved knife in his belt. His clothing was of finer material than was usually seen on Jikar men, and everything he wore was freshly cleaned. He stood self-confidently in the doorway, coolly eyeing the star men.

“Trader,” Hal said, “I want you to meet Captain Loholo, shipmaster and merchant. I’m told he’s the only captain left in the port.”

“Please have a seat, Captain,” MacKinnie said, pouring a glass of wine. “My guard chief tells me you can raise a crew.”

“Aye.” Loholo fingered the glass, looked at MacKinnie for a moment, and drank. “Not a very good crew, Trader. The good men are at the bottom of the sea or run off to join the pirates. But there’s men here who can pull an oar. Not seamen. Apprentices from all the Guilds, boys on tithes who’d like to be men again.” He spoke so rapidly that MacKinnie had difficulty following him, and had to have Loholo repeat his words.

“I’ve seen them,” MacKinnie said. “But Captain MacLean has not been able to recruit anyone.”

“Nor will he.” Loholo touched the wine bottle and looked at MacKinnie, who nodded. The brown man filled his glass and drank before continuing. “Your Captain MacLean is a strange man, Trader. He puts decks over the ship so that oarsmen can’t breathe properly. He has taken out most of the rowing benches. What’s left is up too high for proper leverage. You couldn’t row that ship a hundred klamaters. And all the iron he put in the hull is no more than dead weight to be carried along. The men won’t sail with him because even though they aren’t seamen, they can see your man is no seaman. The ship will be too slow to escape the pirates, and it won’t sail properly if it does get past them.” He shrugged. “Your pardon if I speak bluntly.”

“But you’re willing to come? And bring a crew?”

“Aye.”

“Go on. Why?”

“You’re not a beached captain, Trader. If you had the seawater in your blood, you’d know. My ship went out to fight with me ashore laid out by plague. She never came back. Everything I had was in that ship, Trader. Nothing left to buy the Ironsmiths’ vessel. Even if a warship is no good for trading, I tried to buy Subao, for a ship’s still a ship. I figure you’ll all come to your senses about the ship when you see it won’t work. And you’ll need a man who knows how to sail these seas. I expect to be your shipmaster a week after you leave port. If you live that long. But the chance is worth it to me.”

One way or another, MacKinnie thought. The dagger at the man’s belt had once had a jeweled hilt, but it wasn’t meant for show purposes. With his own crew aboard, Loholo could make himself master of the ship if he were that kind of man. He looked over at Stark, who obviously had the same thoughts. Still, there was a way to make use of the man, and perhaps he was honest.

“Your own crew went down with your ship?”

“Aye. Every man. It won’t be real seamen I can get you, Trader, but they’ll be willing.”

“Why?”

Loholo grinned. “I’m well known as a captain who comes back. Rich. And I’m said to be lucky.”

“Still, how will you get them to join, with the pirates outside the harbor?”

“Tell them the star men will protect them. They know what happened out in the harbor the day they landed. They’ll believe.”

“And you don’t?”

“If the star men will help you, you don’t need to have the guard captain out giving free wine to find men, Trader. So they won’t.”

MacKinnie nodded. “What of the pirates?”

“There are ways. I know these waters, Trader. When the moons come together, there’s deep water over the reefs. It goes down fast. Get over them at the right time, ahead of anybody chasing you, they never catch you. I doubt the pirates know my waters as I do. We’ll have a chance. That is, if you can row the ship. Got to put the benches back in.”

“What if I told you,” MacKinnie asked, “that after we have returned to Jikar from where we are going, we will make you master of the ship and our trading agent, with gold every month and part of the trading as well?”

Loholo looked at MacKinnie closely. “Do not tempt a desperate man, Trader. Do you mean what you say?”

“If you serve me faithfully. The first service is to find a crew of twenty men who can fight. Say that we are insane, but that you, Loholo, will get the ship past the pirates. Get us a crew without talk, and have them ready to come aboard by dark tomorrow.”

“And you’ll give me the ship when you return? Mine to sail and command?”

“Yours to sail and command. And the chance at carrying trade from starships all over Makassar. You will become the owner of many vessels if you like.”

Loholo grunted. “One is all I need. You’ll have your crew, Trader. But this man of yours commands this voyage?”

“Yes. He commands. He has a young apprentice who will be a ship’s officer. And there is my guard captain But if MacLean wants you as an officer, he’ll tell you so. I expect he will.”

“I was a crew master once, Trader. I can be one again. Until you need me.”

They sailed at dawn. Loholo, now crew master, had brought twenty young apprentices, all well armed. The stores were aboard, and MacLean had fitted the leeboards, huge, fan-shaped, wooden boards pivoted at the small end of the fan and fastened nearly amidships of the vessel. When raised they were like giant shields. MacKinnie got the crew and passengers aboard the night before they were to set out, and watched with interest as MacLean and Loholo helped the crew sling hammocks, cursing the men into place in the narrow space below decks.

MacLean had placed the quarters in a traditional manner, his own cabin right aft with smaller staterooms to each side for MacKinnie and Mary Graham. Just forward of them, Longway and Kleinst had even tinier compartments, really not much larger than bunks with doors to close them in; then Hal and his guards slung their hammocks in a compartment which stretched from one side of the ship to the other. MacLean insisted that two of Stark’s men be on duty and armed at all times, posted on the quarterdeck near the great tiller which steered the ship.

In the first light, mist still rising from the water, the crew was turned out from their hammocks to man the sweeps.

Loholo clucked his tongue at the arrangement. There were no rowing benches; instead the men walked the decks with great oars dipping down to the water, two men to an oar. The ship moved slowly away from the shore out into the bay.

“Wouldn’t it be better to go at night?” MacKinnie asked. They stood on the quarterdeck with the other Samualites, Hal and his guards in full armor. Armor for the rest of the crew was secured with rawhide lashings in convenient places about the deck. Just forward of the quarterdeck Brett and Vanjynk stood at the ready, also in armor. It was impossible to make Vanjynk man a sweep, and MacKinnie decided that it would be senseless to require Brett to do so, so the two were carried as guards. Their mounts were stabled in the hold with the cattle Subao carried as part of the food supply.