An Empire Unacquainted With Defeat

  It was worth a year's pay to most men. A magnificent instrument of death. It had been designed solely for the killing of men and custom-crafted to my hands and muscles. I ran my fingertips lightly over its length. For a long time the weapon had been my only love.

  I had had a woman once, but she had lost out to the bow.

  I bent it, strung it, took out the banded arrow.

  They were making it difficult over there, holding up shields to protect their helmsman. They had recognized us.

  The banded lady never missed. This time was no exception. At the perfect instant she lightninged through a momentary gap between shields.

  The caravel heeled over as she went out of control. She slowed as her sails spilled wind. Panic swept her poop. We raced in.

  Colgrave bellowed subtle course changes at our own helmsman. Our sails came in as we swept up.

  One by one, I sped my next eleven shafts. Only two failed finding their mark. One was the treacherous blue and white I had threatened to break and burn, it seemed, a thousand times.

  The Old Man brought our bows alongside their stern with a touch so deft the hulls barely kissed, as Barley, Priest, and their party leapt over. The shambles I had made of the other poop left no contest. We controlled her immediately.

  Sails cracked and groaned as both vessels took them in. Our bows crept past the Freylander's waist.

  Whaleboats threw his grapnel. I helped heave on the line.

  Screaming, our men poured over the main deck rail to assault the mob awaiting them. They were regular soldiers, Freylander troops tempered in a hundred skirmishes with Trolledyngjan raiders. Once Whaleboats made fast, I resumed plying my bow, using scavenged Freylander arrows.

  Crude things, they were unfit to caress a weapon like mine. No wonder they had not harmed any of us.

  I dropped a score into the melee, probing for officers and sergeants, then took out a bothersome pair of snipers in the caravel's rigging. They had been plinking at the Old Man, who stood like a gnarled tree defying a storm, laughing as arrows streaked around him

  He would be some match for the dead captain of the phantom.

  The caravel's poop was clear. Barley and Priest were holding the ladders against counterattacks from below. The men with them threw things at the crowd on the main deck. I decided to recover my arrows before some idiot trampled them, went aft.

  The uproar was overwhelming. Shouts. Clanging weapons. Shrieks of pain. Officers and sergeants thundering contradictory orders. The sides of the vessels ground together as the seas rolled on beneath them. And the Old Man still laughed crazily on the poop. He and I were the only ones who remained aboard.

  He nodded. "As always, well done."

  I gave him an "it was nothing" shrug. When the stern castles rolled together, I jumped across.

  My feet came down in a pool of blood, skidded away. Down I went, my head bounding off the rail.

  Colgrave laughed again.

  It was nearly over by the time I came around. A handful of soldiers were defending a hatchway forward. Most of our men were pitching corpses overboard. They were eying that hatchway hungrily. Feminine wailing came from behind it. Priest and Barley were getting ready for the final rush.

  I staggered up, planning to help with a few well-placed arrows.

  Damn! My head! And the Freylander seemed to be rolling badly.

  It was not my imagination. The squall was closer. It would arrive in a few hours.

  That was time enough for recreation. And to find the grog.

  V

  It had been another of those good battles. I sipped from a quart tankard I had found in the Freylander captain's cabin. No serious injuries for our boys. Lots of cuts and scratches, a bashed head here and a broken finger there. Nothing permanent. The gods must, as Colgrave claimed, have favored our mission. They seldom allowed any of us to come to harm.

  The men were having a grand time down on the main deck. Twelve women. A genuine princess and her ladies-in-waiting. What Whaleboats called a jackpot ship. The Virgin, I saw, was not anymore. He abandoned his conquest, scrambled into the Freylander's rigging, began dancing on a yardarm. He was naked from the waist down.

  His sureness in the tops, his fearlessness, was his great talent. He showed it off too much.

  Whaleboats, a keg of priceless Daimiellian brandy under one arm, a woman's satin bolster under the other, joined me on the poop. "Another master stroke." He nodded toward Colgrave, who still stalked Dragon's poop, muttering, cursing the luck that kept him from finding The One.

  Student joined us, glancing at Whaleboats questioningly. Whaleboats shrugged.

  Student had found himself some new books. "Squall's moving in," he observed. The water had become a bluish gray showing freckles and stripes of white. The seas were running closer together.

  "Going to be a blue-assed bitch of a storm," I prophesied. "The way it's taking its time."

  Little Mica was the next of the clique to arrive. He was half-naked, sweat-wet. "The chunky one's not bad." He grinned. His performance had been up to brags.

  He was carrying several pounds of gold and silver. We had collected a lot in our time. So much we used it for ballast. Once we found and destroyed The One, we planned to return landside rich as princes.

  "That fool Kid's gonna break his neck yet."

  He was hopping on one foot, on the tip of the yard, while hosing spurts of piss into the gap between ships.

  He suddenly yelled wildly, threw up an arm, bounced his butt off the yard and plunged seaward, limbs flailing. The seamen roared as he did a perfect belly-buster. The ships nudged together. Everyone not otherwise occupied manned the rail.

  "I told you . . . ."

  "Hold it." The Old Man was peering intently with his one eye. I saw it, too, then. Coming out of an arm of the squall that had reached landward north of us. "Two of them. Longships. Trolledyngjans."

  They were no more than three miles away. Their sails were fat with wind and distinct as they spotted us and altered course. One was a black sail bearing a scarlet wolf's head. The other was a yellow-red striped one bearing a black ax.

  They were coming after us. Already they were putting their shields on their gunwales and taking in their sails so they could unstep their masts. They looked quick and practiced. Old hands.

  Gloating, no doubt, about having caught a competitor with his pants down.

  The Old Man bellowed, bellowed, bellowed. Not much sense came through, but the men, drunk though they were, reacted. A storm of booty flew from vessel to vessel. Fat Poppo chucked the naked princess over. She screeched as she landed on her shapely little derriere. Lank Tor, laughing, planted a slobbery, wine-dark kiss on her tender young lips, tossed her back. He clouted Poppo when the fat man protested.

  "Fire time," said Student. He looked at Whaleboats in a way that must have had meaning. My friend hurried down the ladder after him.

  In moments cutlasses were chopping at lines. Bow and arrows in one hand, half-empty tankard in the other, I watched the deck force make sail. They kept tripping over plunder.

  When the proper combination of rolls arrived, I casually stepped from rail to rail without losing a drop of my drink.

  "Fo'c'sle," Colgrave growled. I nodded. "Wolf's Head first." I was not so far gone that I could not remember which had been which before they had gotten their sails in.

  The Old Man was going to fight. Of course. He always fought. He would fight if the whole damned Itaskian Navy were coming down. He believed in his mission and that he was invincible because the gods were on his side.

  The northmen were just a mile away when we finally got under way. Their oars worked with the swift precision of a centipede's legs.

  Old hands. They needed no drummer to keep the cadence. They would be tough fighters.

  Smoke poured from the Freylander. Naked women reached out to us, pleading.

  "She's not burning right," said Mica, who had followed me to the forecastle.

  As we drew away,
the women abandoned the rail, began scurrying around with buckets.

  "Student and Whaleboats better stay out of the Old Man's way," I replied. Colgrave would not be pleased.

  He set a course angling seaward, squallward, across the bows of the Trolledyngjans. Any fugitive would have done the same, hoping to evade their first rush and get into the weather before they could come round and overhaul. The ax ship sheered to cut us off and to maneuver so they could board us over both rails. Less than half a mile separated us.

  Old hands, yes, but they did not know us. They must have been used to working the coasts of Freyland. Seemed to me there was a good chance they had come over specifically to take the fish we had caught already. There was a big king at Songer, and a scattered gaggle of smaller ones who, nominally, owed him allegiance. The little kings plotted against the big one, and one another, constantly. They were not above tipping the Trolledyngjans to an opportunity to plunder their rivals.

  Politics is one specialized field of sin I haven't the wit to comprehend.

  A quarter mile. I caressed the banded arrow. Except for Mica, she and I were alone this time. Any fighting would take place on the main deck because the longships had such low freeboard. And it would involve only the ax ship. I kissed the arrow. After all our time together, I thought, we were finally going to part.

  Time. The Old Man threw the helm over hard. Dragon staggered. The sails rumbled and cracked as they spilled wind.

  I sent the banded arrow on her final flight. Ever faithful, as that slut of a wife in Itaskia could not be, she sped to the northern helmsman's heart. He sagged against his rudder arm. Wolf's Head heeled and bucked.

  We took her directly amidships, our bows surging up and over, grinding and crunching her into driftwood and halves. Her mast, which had been shipped lengthwise atop her deck thwarts, levered up, speared through, and tangled in our sprit rigging. As we ploughed the wreckage, we staggered and shuddered like a fat lady donning a corset.

  Little Mica yipped. A huge, incredibly hairy barbarian with mad blue eyes came up the mast one-handed, lugging an immense battle-ax. He sprang over the rail, howled. While he chased Mica, I dug up a boathook, then smacked him behind the ear. He was so huge it took both of us to dump him overboard. The water revived him. He splashed, cursed. The last I saw of him, he was swimming strongly toward the Freylander.

  Our turn brought us round on a southerly course once more. We ploughed through the wreckage. I stared down at bearded warriors busy drowning, clinging to debris, calling for help. The other Trolledyngjan had turned to pick up survivors but had second thoughts now that we were coming back.

  They surely thought we were berserkers then, mad killers. Losing some of the precision they had shown earlier, they stepped their mast, made sail, and fled toward the squall.

  I groaned, rubbed my stomach in anticipation. Colgrave would not turn loose. No matter that we were shipping water forward and a dozen men had to go to the pumps. No matter that we were drunk on our asses and exhausted from a battle already fought. He had been challenged. He would respond if it meant chasing the Trolledyngjan off the edge of the world.

  VI

  The waves stood taller and taller, the sea became leadish gray with ever more white running the ridges and faces of the swells. Spray salted my lips even there on the forecastle deck. Dragon bucked and rolled, her timbers protesting. Splatters of rain beaded on the decks. The air grew cooler. The Trolledyngjan entered the squall and gradually faded from visibility.

  This was more her sort of weather. Her high, curved bows, broad beam, and shallow draft made it possible for her to ride up and down even the most awesome waves—as long as she met them bow on. With her low freeboard she could ship a lot of water fast. I suspected she would put out a sea anchor once she was safely concealed in the storm.

  Dragon's altitude, fore and aft, had not been designed with waves in mind. The castles were meant to provide an advantage in battle. They made us a tad top-heavy and wind-vulnerable. In rough weather they existed solely to compound my misery.

  There was a lot of wind in that squall. And Colgrave had reduced sail only as much as absolutely compelled by the need to keep Dragon from being torn apart. The rigging cracked, screamed, groaned, as if a hundred demons were partying there. A topsail tore with a sh-whack! like the fist of a giant whooshing into a stone wall, began popping and cracking in the gale. Only ribbons remained by the time they got it in.

  The Kid was up there, helping cut parts free. Some thoughtful soul had remembered to fish him out as we were getting under way. He was a lucky little bastard.

  I was rather pleased. Though he had little use for me, I liked him. As much as I liked anyone. He reminded me of myself when I was a lot younger.

  He knew that he had been lucky. He was not clowning anymore. He was even using a safety harness.

  I collected my weapons and cases. I had to take them below and care for them. Moisture and salt could ruin them forever. Colgrave did not protest. Everyone else, cook included, had to drop everything to work ship, but I was exempted. I was the thunderbolt, the swift, deadly lightning, that determined the course of battles the moment they were joined. Colgrave did not value me as a human being, but he did value my skills and weapons.

  The seas were thirty feet tall and gray-black when I dragged myself back topside. My guts were flooding back and forth between my toes and ears. But I had to help with the work. We had reached a point where we were not only pursuing our mad captain's mission, we were fighting to survive.

  Every man had found some way to rope himself to his station. Floods raged round the tossing decks, threatening anyone not securely tied. It was a long, watery walk home.

  A caravel was not designed to endure that.

  I staggered, splashed around, lost a stomach full, snagged the rail in time to save myself. Fat Poppo handed me a safety line. I joined the men trying to control the canvas the Old Man insisted we show.

  Lank Tor, the crazy bastard, was in the crow's nest, watching for the Trolledyngjan. He should have been down on the main deck showing off his sea wisdom, not up there proving he had a pig-iron gut. My stomach revolted just at the thought of being up where the mast's height magnified motion horrendously.

  We did not regain contact till the weak light began fading from the gray, thick storm. In the interim I found too much time to think and remember, to be haunted by the woman in Itaskia.

  She had not been bad, as wives went, but had been short on understanding. And too willful. The conclusion of the El Murid Wars had made jobs for bowmen scarce. You had needed to be related to someone. I had not been. And had not known anything else but farming. I had had enough of that as a boy. She had nagged about the money. It had been good in the war years and she had developed tastes to suit. So I had done a spot of work for Duke Greyfells. Some men had died. She had sensed their blood on my hands. That had led to more nagging, of course. There is just no pleasing them. Whatever you try, it's wrong. It had gotten so bad that I had started spending more time at the Red Hart than in our tenement room.

  In alcohol I had found surcease, though more from a critical self than from a wife who, despite making her points in the most abrasive manner possible, had been right. But a man can't shake the pain he carries around inside him. All he can do is try deadening it. In my case that just made the wife situation worse.

  There had come an evening when I arrived home early—or late, considering I had been gone three days—and had learned how she had been able to maintain our standard of living, how she had been obtaining the silver I stole to maintain my alcoholic tranquility.

  It had been a double blow. A gut-wrecked and a rabbit punch. Your wife is seeing someone else. That is a decker, but you can get up and learn to live with it. But when you find out that there has been a parade, and you're living off the proceeds . . . .

  I swear by the Holy Stones, for all our troubles, I never laid a hand on that woman before, not even when roaring drunk. Not once, even prov
oked.

  A couple of men died, and the woman, and I went on the run, bitter, never quite sure just what had come over me, why, or what it had all been about. Not long afterward, Colgrave had scavenged me off a ship he had taken and shanghaied me as replacement for a man who had been washed overboard earlier.

  There were sixty-eight stories as shameful, or worse, lurking aboard the Vengeful D. Few of us talked about them. The Old Man's tale, if he had one, was his alone. All we knew was the story about the fire.

  Student, though, thought he had guessed it. And claimed he knew how to get off Dragon, to where he wanted to be. He caused a lot of frowns and nervous questions when he talked like that.

  He never would elaborate.

  VII

  The men were grumbling seditious by the time we spied the Trolledyngjan again. For hours we had been pushing westward, either into the heart of the ocean or onto the rocky coasts of southern Freyland. We had left the waters we knew far behind. Though not one of us had been ashore in a long time, we liked it handy just in case. We were not deep-water sailors. Losing all touch seemed a nightmare.

  Colgrave stood on the poop like a statue, staring straight ahead, as if he could see through the spray and waves and rain. Reports of cracked planking, broken frames, and water gushing in as fast as the pumpers could bail, bothered him not at all. He persevered. That, if any one word ever did, encapsulated him perfectly. He persevered.

  Dragon larked about on the shoulders of seas as huge as leviathans.

  "I see her!" Lank Tor cried. How? I wondered. I could barely see him. But it was my cue. I recovered my weapons, repaired to the forecastle deck.

  I could see her from there. She was a specter fading in and out almost dead ahead.

  The problem was the size of the seas. She swooped down one side like a gull diving, vanished in a trough, then staggered up the next wave like an old man in an uphill race. Her sail had been torn to tatters. Her crew had been unable to unstep their mast. Now they huddled on their oar benches, trying to keep their bows into the waves. They had no protection from Mother Ocean's worst. They were brave, hardy men. What would they do if she swamped?