The Tyrant

Chapter 10

"I'd feel better about this if you were part of a convoy," said Demansk. He stared out from the headland at the western ocean. It might just have been his overactive imagination, but the waters seemed to be already turning gray with the change of seasons. The last convoy of the summer had left a week earlier.

"The skies are clear," said Helga. "We'll reach Marange well before the first big storm hits. We're only in the early part of autumn."

"Still-"

"Come on, Father." She shifted the baby into the crook of her left arm and pointed to the ship moored at the pier below. "Sharlz Thicelt may be a pirate, but-like all pirates-he knows his ships. That thing must have cost you a small fortune."

Demansk scowled down at the vessel. As a matter of fact, it had cost him a small fortune. Thicelt had selected the finest "one and a half" he could find in the ports of the western Confederacy. The "one and a half"-technically called a demibireme — was a bastard design. In essence, it was a fast, two-banked galley, adapted for both sailing and fighting. The adaptations, which allowed for the quick removal of the second bank of oars as battle approached, required a great deal of expensive detail work. Demibiremes were therefore a rarity. They were only used for precious cargo-and were highly treasured prizes for pirates, for whose depredations the design was perfectly adapted.

It was the latter factor, not the expense, which was really causing Demansk to scowl. Granted, the demibireme was the ideal ship to get his daughter to Marange quickly and give her the best chance of escaping pirates. It was also sure to draw the attention of every pirate ship which spotted her.

Helga was having no difficulty following his train of thought. "Relax," she insisted. "That ship is more than seaworthy enough to stay out of sight of land, except for-"

"Every other night," growled Demansk. "Prevailing winds be damned, Thicelt still has to make landfall often enough to determine where he is. Pirates are rife all down the middle portions of the coast, in the no-man's-land between the Confederacy and the powerful Southron tribes of the interior. You know that as well as I do. If you have the bad luck to encounter a pirate nest…"

She shrugged. "We'll just move out to sea again. Even if the winds aren't favorable, that ship can be rowed almost as fast as a war galley."

Demansk left off the argument, but kept scowling. Helga was exaggerating the capability of a demibireme under oars. True, it could be rowed much more quickly than a normal merchant ship. It still couldn't hope to match the speed of a light galley, packed full with pirates at the oars. The only real chance it had was to stay far enough ahead of a pirate to exhaust the pursuers. Rowing was brutally hard work, especially at pursuit speed.

But the chance of this demibireme being able to exhaust an enemy crew in a long chase was… almost nonexistent. Most demibiremes carried very light cargoes. Gold, gems, jewels, spices, fine linens, the like. This demibireme would be carrying "And here they come!" said Helga gaily. "Come on, Father. Don't tell me that sight doesn't cheer you up."

Despite himself, Demansk couldn't help smiling. The sight did cheer him up, after all. As well equipped and disciplined a hundred as he'd ever seen, trotting down the long pier toward the waiting ship. Their thick-soled sandals, studded with iron nails, hammered the heavy planking in unison. Left, right, left, right, moving in the quick but orderly manner of experienced troopers.

Not all of them were experienced, of course. Demansk couldn't see much, at this distance, of the faces beneath the helmets. Confederate helmets, unlike Emerald ones, left the nose uncovered. But the cheek flanges, combined with the jutting forehead protector and the lobster-tail flare at the rear, still left the soldiers' features obscure. Probably a good half, judging from what Demansk could determine, were youngsters newly signed up.

But it hardly mattered. The eastern provinces, with their impoverished yeomanry, had been the traditional recruiting ground for the Confederate army for at least two centuries. Every one of those "newbies" would have been training under the supervision of veteran male relatives since they were eight years old. And, in this hundred even more than most, they were going into combat surrounded by their experienced older brothers, fathers, cousins, uncles and neighbors. What was trotting down the pier below him was as capable and veteran a unit as Demansk had ever seen. To all intents and purposes, that was the hundred his old First Spear had come from.

His eyes scanned the pier and found the man he was looking for. Jessep Yunkers himself, still technically a civilian, was following the soldiers with a group of about forty men wrestling heavy handcarts up the steps leading to the pier's entrance. Seeing those carts-and the man giving the orders to their handlers-Demansk's scowl returned in force.

"Come on, Father." Helga's tone was just a razor's edge short of a snap. Still most unsuitable, for a daughter addressing her august father. "You've got no more chance of keeping Trae behind than you do restraining a charging greatbeast with your bare hands. He is a son of Demansk, and since you've kept him out of the army he's not going to pass up this chance of getting properly blooded. You know it as well as I do."

Demansk tightened his jaws, but made no reply-for the simple reason that he couldn't. However much his youngest son was given to thumbing his nose at tradition, in this at least he was forged on the ancient anvil. Trae, like any scion of Vanbert's aristocracy worthy of the name, would earn his spear. And since, for his own purposes, Demansk had insisted on keeping him out of the army proper…

"Besides," Helga added, " I'm certainly happy to have him along. Especially since he's the only one who really knows how to use those gadgets."

Gadgets. Most of the troopers had now filed aboard the ship, and the handcarts were halfway down the pier. Close enough that Demansk could see their contents clearly.

The lead carts were filled with heavy two-man arquebuses and their tripods. The trailing carts, with ammunition for the weapons. Trae had wanted to bring one of the bombards along also, but the experienced seaman Sharlz Thicelt had convinced the eager young nobleman that the thin planks and lightly-built hull of the ship wouldn't be able to withstand the recoil.

The strange new weapons had been designed by Adrian Gellert and used by the King of the Isles against the Confederacy the year before. Some of the weapons in the cart below, Demansk imagined, had been captured during the fighting. But most of them-perhaps all of them-had been built by Trae's artisans in his workshop, using Gellert's design as the model. If no Vanbert natural philosopher would have ever dreamed of inventing the things in the first place, Vanbert's metalworkers and apothecaries were perfectly capable of duplicating them once shown how they worked.

In fact, Trae claimed that his own arquebuses and firepowder were superior to the originals. Demansk didn't doubt the claim. Trae had destroyed more than a few workbenches in his experiments to improve the weapons' performance. Fortunately, he hadn't killed anyone in the process. Not quite. But several of Trae's workmen, as well as Trae himself, would carry scars and burn marks to their graves.

Demansk took a deep breath. Then, forced the smile back onto his face. "Ah, well. The gods' will is whatever it will be." He put his hand on his daughter's shoulder and gave it a little squeeze. "Luck be with you, child. And my blessing."

He gave the shoulder another squeeze, this one more in the way of an assessment than a reassurance.

"You might want to leave off on the exercise," he said drily. "I'm not sure your Adrian fellow is going to be all that fond of a woman whose shoulders are wider and more muscular than his are."

The jibe bounced off Helga like a pebble. She just chuckled and replied: "Oh, his shoulders are quite wide enough, even if he isn't a legendary athlete like his brother. But then, I forget-you haven't actually met him, have you?"

Demansk shook his head. "Not really. I ran into his brains at a distance, you might say." His tone was a bit rueful. "He's an ingenious bastard, I'll give him that. I just hope his mind turns as readily to other things as it does to figuring out new methods of mayhem."

"I think he'd much rather be putting his mind to work at other things, Father. His brother Esmond, now… he's a hater, that one. Half-consumed by it already, when I knew him, and probably eaten up completely by now. But Adrian's a different sort. I think-"

She hesitated; then, softly: "We'll find out, soon enough. But I think he'd rather be Vanbert's friend than our enemy, if he can just see a way to do it…"

Her voice trailed off, as she groped for the right word.

" 'Properly,' let's call it," said her father. "That's a nice neutral sort of term."

He gave her shoulder another squeeze, this one full of affection. More in the way of a hug, really. "And now you'd best get down there yourself. The ship will be ready to sail soon."

When Helga came aboard the ship, her attention was drawn to the stern by Trae's cursing. Despite the volume of his voice, the profanity seemed spoken more in enthusiasm than actual anger.

"Not that way, you fucking whoresons! It's a clamp, now, not a tripod! Are you blind as well as bastards?"

Still cradling the baby, Helga moved toward the stern, working her way around the benches and equipment spread over the entire deck. The soldiers of her escort were settling into their positions, none too quickly and with a great deal of awkwardness and uncertainty. Their own confused milling was as great an obstacle to her progress as their gear.

As a rule, soldiers coming aboard a naval vessel were able to settle in easily enough. The soldiers doubled as rowers on the upper bank when the ship was not in combat. Even in sea battles, at least in the early stages, they remained on the benches. It was only when a boarding operation was about to begin that the soldiers abandoned their oars for their assegais.

But on this trip, the soldiers were unneeded at the oars. Thicelt had hired a complete crew of rowers. The task of Helga's escort, in case of pirate attack, was to remain hidden and out of sight until-and if-a boarding attempt needed to be repelled. The factor of surprise, added to the already ferocious skills of Confederate infantrymen, should be enough to break most pirate attacks.

Of course, that also meant that the none-too-spacious vessel was even more crowded than warships usually were. The soldiers, cursing almost as loudly as Trae, were trying to figure out where they could fit their own bodies as well as their gear. Not even Vanbert infantrymen could sleep standing up, after all. And this would be a long voyage, even with the prevailing winds in their favor.

Eventually, Helga worked her way through the press and came onto the cleared space at the very stern of the ship. "Cleared" in a manner of speaking. Trae's assistants-special squad, it would be better to say-had managed to keep the regular soldiery from spilling into the area. But between their own numbers and the ship's crew, the population density was only relatively lighter than that amidships.

Trae was hunched at the stern rail, apparently showing one of his aides how to do the job properly.

"We hinged the third leg, see? On board ship, the tripod doubles as a clamp. Slide it down over the rail… till it nestles solidly… then… The gods damn this fucking thing! " Trae's voice faded into mumbling as Helga neared him. "There, that's it. A bit tricky, that's all, getting the screw to engage. Now… tighten it down, like this. Right-over turn to tighten, just like a screw pump."

The man standing next to him, watching, murmured something. Trae's half-cheerful/half-exasperated cursing came back at full volume.

" Never seen a screw pump? " The young nobleman lifted his head and gave all of his nearby special squad members a glare. "None of you, from the ox-dumb looks on your faces! Fucking peasants! Fat peasants, that's the problem! Lounging about in the shade while the women do all the work. What little work there is on your rich bottomlands."

His squad members were fighting grins. Obviously, they'd had enough experience with Trae to know the difference between his genuine anger and this half pretense. Judging from their appearance, Helga thought all of them were the same type of easterners who filled the ranks of the soldiery proper.

"I'm an idiot!" bellowed Trae. "I should have engaged nothing but those barbarians from the Gya desert! They know how a pump works, even if they are a lot of savages. Gotta have pumps in those drylands."

He turned back and demonstrated again, using exaggerated hand gestures. "Like this, see? Hand turning to the right. You do know the difference between left and right? Please! O gods, I beg you! "

Helga was close enough to look over his shoulder. She could now see clearly what Trae was doing. He'd fit one of the arquebus tripods over the rail and, using what struck her as an excessively elaborate screw device, had clamped the hinged third leg on the wood. The tripod would now provide a solid and steady rest for one of the heavy two-man arquebuses, even in tossing seas.

"That's a stupid arrangement," she said. Her own voice was not much softer than Trae's. "Much too complicated. It would have been a lot easier to just leave the tripod alone, drill a hole in one of the legs, and screw in to the wood instead of trying to clamp around it."

Trae straightened to his full height, twisted, and glared down at her with outrage. Helga gave him a sweet smile. "You said it yourself. Women do all the work. That's what makes us smarter, too."

And with that, she turned and ambled away, a little chorus of chuckles following. None from Trae, of course.

She spent the next hour or so getting her own quarters ready. The "quarters" in question consisted of a section of the hold which had been set aside for the women accompanying the expedition. These were Ilset Yunkers, the wives of the four senior noncoms of the hundred, and Lortz's two concubines. Ilset was, by a considerable margin, the youngest of the seven women. And Helga suspected she was probably the only one who was legally a "wife" to begin with. The other four had the appearance of campaign concubines. Veterans themselves, in a manner of speaking. Lortz's women didn't even make a pretense of being anything else.

No others had been allowed to bring female companionship. The soldiers hadn't complained. The veterans were quite confident in their ability to obtain camp followers wherever they went, and the youngsters took their cue from them. Even, Helga had no doubt, looked forward eagerly to that new rite of passage. Southron women, like Islanders, were notorious among Confederates for their loose and passionate ways-which Helga herself found rather amusing, since her experience in an Islander hareem had taught her that foreigners had exactly the same view of Vanbert women. So much seemed ingrained in human nature. The others were always brutes and swindlers, if male; sluts and carriers of disease, if female.

Since Ilset would be the wet nurse for Helga's baby, she and Demansk's daughter shared the most "luxurious" part of the arrangement. The "luxury" amounted to nothing more than a few extra cushions and a thicker cloth to separate them from the rest of the womens' quarters-which, in turn, were separated from the goods in the hold by nothing more than a cloth in the first place. The only reason it took an hour to get her quarters prepared was simply the cramped nature of the space itself. Even something as simple as rearranging a cushion seemed to take forever. Early on, Helga and Ilset agreed that it would be best to set up another partition between them, seeing as how Jessep would be spending his nights with his wife. So Helga's quarters got reduced in size even further.

But, eventually, it was done, just as Helga felt the ship begin to move away from the pier. Coming through the thin planking of the deck above her head-"above" only when she crouched; standing erect, she'd crash her head into it-she could hear the beat of the hortator's mallets pounding the drum which kept the rowers at their rhythm. The "drum" had a distinctive sound. It was a hollow box, actually, rather than the more typical drums which would be used to give signals in a fleet.

She was tempted to go back on deck. To get some fresh air, if nothing else. She resisted the impulse. The women's quarters were already heavy with odor, true enough, but Helga knew that by the end of the voyage the air down here would be well-nigh fetid. The men at their work above wouldn't appreciate having her underfoot; not in the least. And she'd rather save her trespasses on their territory for a later time, when she'd really need fresh air.

She leaned back against one of the cushions and gave Ilset a friendly smile. Jessep's young wife gave her a shy smile in return, but it was very short-lived. They were already catching the first waves of the open sea, and the motion was apparently beginning to bother the girl. Helga found herself wondering if Ilset had ever been on a ship before.

Apparently not, judging from the girl's reaction not five minutes later. Helga managed to get Ilset's head over a bucket soon enough to catch most of it.

Most, but not all. Helga sighed and began rummaging for an old cloth in her belongings. Finding none-she never got seasick herself and hadn't thought to prepare for the problem-she stuck her head through the opening in the cloth which separated her and Ilset from the other women.

"Do any of you-"

One of the women, grinning, was already handing her a rag. Ilset had not been quiet in her distress.

"Bound to happen," said the woman, grinning widely. Helga could see that she was missing a fair number of her teeth. An attractive enough woman, otherwise. Helga thought her buxom build was probably matched by a buxom temperament, and was cheered by the thought.

"It's going to stink down here something awful," she probed.

"Beats dying," came the immediate response, as the woman passed the test with flying colors. "Even if the poor girl thinks she'd rather be dead right now."

"We'll get along," predicted Helga. "What's your name?"

"Polla, ma'am. Polla"-there came a slight hesitation, just a hint-"Hissell. He's the new First Spear. Can I give you a hand?"

"Pfaw! Just to wipe up some puke? Do I look like a prissy noblewoman?"

Polla's grin was now matched by all the other women. "Not exactly, ma'am," said one of them. "A noblewoman, yes. Prissy, no."

Helga grinned herself, ducked back into her quarters, and went to work with the rag. Soon enough, she was half wishing she'd taken Polla up on her offer. But she knew that a small amount of inconvenience was well worth gaining the allegiance and trust of the women of her escort.

Women do all the real work. That makes us smarter.

After nightfall, Trae came into her quarters. Mumbling apologies to the women in the outer quarters, as he groped his way through the half darkness-all that their one little oil lamp allowed-he eventually stumbled through the curtain.

"Uck! Stinks!" he muttered, waving his hand in front of his face. Then, seeing Ilset's wan face in the flickering light shed by Helga's own lamp, his usual good humor returned.

"Be at ease, young lady. I assure you-from bitter experience-that you'll get over it. Eventually."

He turned to face Helga. "You were right, but don't brag about it more than two days. Or I'll sneak down here and piss in your gruel. It would have been easier to design it your way."

The word "gruel" seemed to distress Ilset. She turned her face away and fought down a gag.

"Cheer up!" boomed Trae. "Always eat gruel on your first sea voyage. Easy down, easy up."

Ilset immediately proved his point. Scowling, Helga handed Trae a rag.

"All right, loudmouth. Your turn."