Fires of Scorpio (11 page)

“H’m. How many do you take on?”

“I would like two dozen.” In the Kregish he said jikshiv, which is one way of saying twenty-four.

“So you have to find twenty more?”

“Aye. And not a Khibil among them.”

So, up on deck we went and sat on the folding chairs on the quarterdeck, in the shadow of the sterncastle, and watched as the mercenaries trooped up the gangplank.

“That Chulik of yours guarding the armory,” I said. “He looks likely.”

“Nath Kemchug. He costs a lot; but he earns his hire.”

The first two mercenaries up the gangplank and onto the quarterdeck were twins. They wore leather, iron caps, were barefoot, and their hair was cropped short. They were varterists.

One said, “I am Wilma the Shot and this is my sister Alwim the Eye. We know our business, and—”

“Yes,” said Pompino. “I have heard of you. You are welcome and will be paid the top rate. Next.”

The four Pachaks were in no hurry to come aboard. They guessed we would hire them, for when a Pachak gives his nikobi he will fight for his employer until death or a formal renunciation releases him from his vows. The next fellow was a Rapa, big, beaked, feathered, clad in mail, carrying three swords and a dunnage bag over his shoulder. Also, he carried a shield, an oval thing of wicker, bronze rimmed.

“Rondas the Bold,” he said. Indeed, the feathers around his beak and eyes were red. Sometimes it is difficult to judge if a Rapa’s feathers are his own or decorations. “Churgur.” This meant he was a sword and shield man.

“You have served in ships before?”

“No. But I can learn.”

Gently, Pompino said: “I am more in need of archers.”

“I can shoot—”

“You do not carry a bow.”

“That is true. Try me.”

Pompino leaned a little toward me and spoke softly.

“I like his style, the blowhard. Your thought?”

“If you can get him cheap, hire him. I judge he can fight. Although he may wish to remove that mail and don leather.”

Now that the enormous conflict between the Empire of Hamal and what seemed to be the rest of Paz was over, there were many unemployed fighting men. They sought employment where they could. To be tazll, unemployed, was unpleasant.

Eventually we hired on twenty-five paktuns. In fact, only five were real paktuns, that is, mercenaries elected by their peers to wear the silver mortilhead, the pakmort, at their throat. This marked them as renowned fighters. We did not sign on a single hyrpaktun, who could wear the golden pakzhan at throat or on shoulder knot. But, as I have said, in these latter days almost any mercenary, if he — or she — was not an obvious youngster, a coy, tended to be called a paktun.

Of the twenty-five, fifteen were apim and ten were diffs.

Smells of cooking made all our mouths water, and everybody went off to their various quarters to eat. The aft staterooms were partitioned off so that, as Pompino said, we could indulge in privacy when we wished. My cabin was small, clean, smelling of sweet ibroi, and would serve admirably. I own I craved for the evening to arrive and the tide, and then we would be off. A tug, a low many-oared vessel, came to haul us out past the boom. I remarked on this extravagance.

“Yes,” said Pompino. “It is a waste of gold pieces when you have stout arms and backs in your crew. But it keeps the harbor master happy — he is a distant cousin of my wife’s — and the crew feel I intend to look after them.”

With the feel of the ship under me, the sky darkening above and scintillating with the myriad stars of Kregen, I felt a tremendous liberating gust of spiritual well-being. We were off. Off to start the Jikai against the Leem Lovers.

There were many other undertakings I might be about in Kregen right now; but this was a task set to my hands. Apart from Delia and my family and friends, it seemed to me I did not do wrong in thus setting my face toward this adventure.

Chapter ten

Decision at the Mermaid’s Ankle

No compunction troubled me in allowing Pompino the Iarvin to outfit me in style. We were kregoinye. When it came to push of pike we shared our possessions, and made the best of it. At the moment, Pompino held the money and goods; ergo, he outfitted me.

I wore a decent blue tunic, and grey trousers cut to the knee. I went barefoot. I had a red scarf tied around my head. I swung a thraxter from a broad leather belt. If we got into a fight I would have the choice of Pompino’s armory to arm and armor myself.

The days passed sailing along the coast. We sighted a few other vessels, and all was well.

Tuscurs Maiden
rolled along, breasting the swell with a deal of white smother from her forefoot. The breezes blew and the weather remained fine. To keep from idleness was not difficult.

Pompino himself supervised the handling of the mercenaries, the marine component of the ship’s complement.

Captain Linson, the master, kept his seamen well in order. They were a bright bunch, and the sails went out and came in in a handy fashion.

The Ship-Hikdar, the first officer, knew his duties and played a mean game of Jikaida. He did not drink. He had a tongue that could cut, in a figurative sense, as well as the Whip of any Sister of the Rose. The Ship-Deldar, the Bosun, an enormous man with an enormous red beard and enormous belly, rejoiced under the name of Chandarlie the Gut. The Ship-Hikdar, Naghan Pelamoin, ran a taut ship, and the Ship-Deldar used his rattan rarely.
Tuscurs Maiden
was, I judged, as happy a ship as one might expect to find, given the misery of much sailing ship life.

More rather than less of the coastlines of Kregen are festooned with myriads of islands. Here lurked danger. We sailed well out into the offing, and Captain Linson knew these waters. We were stopped by a swordship off the town of Hanmensmot where we were due to offload some cargo. Everyone crowded to the bulwarks to stare across the water as the swordship closed.

Pompino chased his Relt stylor to have the papers and passes ready for inspection. The swordship, long and low in the water, hauled her oars into a smothering wash of foam and lost way. A boat lowered and started across for us.

Studying the swordship, I became aware of Pompino at my side. He nodded across the suns-glinting water.

“A prickly lot, the citizens of Hanmensmot. But I suppose they have every right to be. Pirates are active.”

“They cannot imagine we are renders in
Tuscurs Maiden
!”

“Perhaps they can. Towns have been sacked by renders pretending to be honest seafaring merchants.”

The boat bobbed closer. She flew a huge blue and green flag in some exotic design. The swordship was smothered in flags. Her oars rested, quiescent. Her thole pins were arranged in groups of three, very close together. There were nineteen banks, giving the ship a total of a hundred fourteen oars. She was, thus, propelled on the old system of alla sensile. Sometimes it is rendered as zenzile.

Pompino sniffed. “Not like my swordships. I admit that
Whitefang
is old; but she rows on the modern system.”

By this I knew his swordship
Whitefang
employed the style known as al scaloccio, that is, more than one man to an oar. Less than three men on an oar is a system not as efficient as three oars each with one man; four or five or more men to an oar yields much greater rewards in propulsive effort. I use Terrestrial terminology here, not Kregish, for the sake of simplicity.

I said: “If we are to sail up to the Koroles, and those islands, I understand, are infested by pirates, we might do well to have
Whitefang
with us.”

“Do you think me a ninny? My other four argenters sail in company with fleets of my associates.
Whitefang
must serve her duty with them as guardship.” By his way of talking I knew he held back a secret. Guessing that was easy enough.

“So your other — and your wonderful new modern slap-up-to-date swordship — waits for us farther on?”

He growled. “Of course, fambly.”

We discharged our cargo and took on water and so weighed and set off eastwards once more.

Where there are islands and where the governments are weak or divided, then pirates tend to flourish. At the next port along, Febranden, a large and sprawling city up a sizable river, we joined a convoy bound for the east. We all felt easier in our minds as we set off, one among a press of sail. Counting ships, I made the convoy to be twenty-three argenters, ten of the small coasting type vessels, a few oddments of ships — boats, really — tagging along for protection and no less than ten swordships and risslacters spreading out around us. This was impressive.

Also, it was alarming.

“If they provide this many warships, Jak, it must mean they anticipate trouble.”

“Aye. You had no news in the marketplace?”

“Only the normal scares, price fluctuations, scandals. Maybe this is standard practice for a passage through the Koroles.”

I lifted one eyebrow.

“Well!” he flared out. “As I am kept so busy for the Everoinye I do not often have the opportunity of sailing in my own ships. Much as I would like to.”

We consulted Captain Linson.

He was affable in his piercing way, aware of his responsibilities and position. “I have known a convoy of this size to warrant five swordships, or eight or so risslacters. But not, I must admit, six swordships and four risslacters.”

“Your conclusion, Captain?”

“We are headed for trouble.”

“Nothing more specific?”

The air of devilment Linson carried, with his hooked nose and clean-shaven darkness, sparkled strongly now.

“Yes. I picked up a scrap of gossip in the masters’ saloon ashore. They were talking of a render called Quendur the Ripper. The topic was one not popular. But his is active at this time. They said he had put together a squadron of pirate vessels. This is the answer to honest sailormen.”

Pompino looked across the gunwale. Across two argenters, bluffly bursting the sea asunder as they wallowed on, the sleek shape of a swordship showed, almost lost under the sea as she cut her way through. His arrogant Khibil head lifted.

“Over there is my new
Blackfang
. Let this Quendur the Ripper taste her steel!”

“A fine craft,” agreed Linson. “And captain Murkizon is a fine skipper. As for his crew—”

Pompino rounded on the master.

“Well?”

Linson spread his hands in a tiny gesture.

“They are not what I would like to see. I would not tolerate them in
Tuscurs Maiden
.”

Pompino bristled up his whiskers. His foxy face looked fierce, and then shrewd, and then alarmed.

“D’you know how much I paid for that ship? And what I gave Captain Murkizon to sign on a top-class crew?” Pompino breathed heavily. “By Horato the Potent! If he has played me false—”

“No, no, horter!” Linson, in his turn, looked alarmed at the damage his words had wrought. “Captain Murkizon is a fine officer. Just that he did not have the best opportunities for picking up a good crew, and the ship is not yet run in. Give him time, and plenty of rope’s end, and he’ll have them all shipshape and Vallian fashion.”

This expression was not new to me — it was much of a muchness with “all shipshape and Bristol fashion” — but it did indicate what the sailors of Kregen’s outer oceans thought of the splendid galleons of Vallia.

“I hope so, by the Merciful Pandrite, I hope so.”

I walked away across the quarterdeck to take a better look at
Blackfang
. As the days progressed in convoy I was able to size her up, her and her sisters in the escort. She was indeed a superior swordship. Her hull was painted an entire jet black. Her flags were the blue and yellow of Pompino’s sailing house. She pulled twenty-nine oars a side, and Pompino told me that six men hauled on each loom. More could be assigned in moments of emergency to haul on ropes fastened to the looms. Her upper deck bristled with artillery — varters and catapults. Her end castles were not overlarge, and her beakhead lifted long and slender. Her ram cut the water ferociously, and Kregan sailors have the knack of using both ram and beak. Perhaps, although superior, she was not the absolute best of her kind, but she was a fine well-found vessel and one I’d joy in the command.

Very soon now we would call in at Mattamlad, a town situated at the mouth of the River of Bloody Jaws.

Over that river, going northwards, Seg and I had flown in pursuit of a voller carrying adherents of Spikatur Hunting Sword. We had not heard the last of that little lot yet, I felt sure. It seemed to me that after I had been snatched away from Seg on that jungle path by the lake and the great carven rock face, he and the party would backtrack. Eventually, they’d arrive here, at the mouth of the river. The Kazzchun River was a place where one did not go swimming. Everyone was extraordinarily careful getting into or out of boats. We went ashore as soon as we arrived, and I made inquiries.

No. No, horter. Our apologies. We have not had a party — or a man — as you describe through here. I started at the customs office and went to the local government bureau for foreigners and then from various taverns to various inns along the waterfront. No one had heard of Seg or the party.

So, I was in a quandary.

If I just went charging up the river and hoped to run across them I could easily miss them. Then we would just go on and draw farther apart. If I stayed here I’d miss the adventure with Pompino. If I went with my kregoinye comrade I might be leaving Seg in the lurch. So — a conundrum.

A fellow with one ear and a hang dog expression followed me out of the Mermaid’s Ankle, accosting me with a leer and a sniff. I looked at him stony-faced. Oh — and the tavern’s name merely gave expression to that warped Kregan sense of humor. The story was simple; the mermaid was no mermaid but a shishi dressed up in a skin of scales, which had rotted through and exposed one shapely foot. Where the ankle and its gold bangle came in follows on — but I will not repeat that.

“Your pardon, horter. If you want to go upriver I’m your man.”

He wore skins, his hair was a stringy mess, and he carried a long knife — in his belt.