“I can only assume we are targets of reavers. Therefore I must ask the paying passengers. Will you resist, and defend your cargo?”
Still blinking in surprise, Maia watched Kiel step forward. “Hell, yes. We’ll resist.”
The officer nodded. “Very well. I shall maneuver accordingly. You may consult our female crew, who will assist you under the Code of the Sea. Everyone to action stations.”
The horn blew again, this time a rapid tattoo as sailors ran to the rigging and women hurried to assemble by the forecastle. Maia looked numbly at the game board. But … we were about to find out.…
A hand took Maia’s arm. It was Thalla, guiding her to where someone had already unlocked the weapons cabinet and was passing out trepp bills. Maia glanced back at Renna, his mouth slightly agape, staring at the commotion. He’s even more confused than I am, she realized, feeling sorry for her friend from the stars.
Renna started to follow, but a sailor put a hand out. “Men don’t fight,” Maia saw him say, repeating the lesson she had taught him during the escape from Long Valley. The sailor led Renna off, and Maia turned to find her place along a row of vars, gathering with weapons in hand.
“Will you follow my tactical orders?” Naroin asked Kiel and Thalla, who represented the rad company. They nodded.
“All right, then. Inanna, Lullin, Charl, stand ready to receive squads.” Naroin assigned passengers to follow each of three experienced female sailors to positions along the ship’s gunwales. Maia was among those in the bosun’s own group, stationed toward the bow, where the rise and fall of Manitou’s cutting prow felt most pronounced. She sensed a change in the breeze as the ship altered course, presumably to try evading confrontation.
“Better relax,” Naroin told her squad. “They may be faster, but a stern chase is a long chase. Could be daybreak ’fore they catch us.” With that, she sent two vars below for blankets. “We’ll get hot soup soon,” she assured the nervous women. “Might as well stay rested. Ever’body get down, out of th’ wind.”
They settled onto the deck with their bills at hand. Naroin reached over to tap Maia on the knee. “Lucky break for someone, the horn blowin’ when it did. Judgin’ by what I seen, those dappy rim shots were the lucky ones!”
Maia shrugged. “I guess we’ll never know.” A clattering aft told of game pieces being swept into their storage boxes, at captain’s orders.
“They prob’ly arranged all this to keep you from humiliatin’ two o’ their boys,” Naroin said, causing Maia to stare back at her. But the woman sailor grinned and Maia knew she was joking. Sea captains took honor in the games almost as seriously as the safety of their ship and crew.
Women made tentlike shrouds of their blankets, covering their heads and shoulders, settling in for a long wait. True to the bosun’s word, a crewman soon arrived, carrying a kettle. Bowls clattered at his waist. The junior cook did not look at Maia when he reached her, but the cup sloshed when she took it from his hand, scalding her fingers. Wincing within, she managed to show no outward reaction. At least the thick broth was tasty and its warmth welcome, especially as gaps appeared between the clouds and the night chilled. One woman blew a flute, unmelodiously. There were attempts at gossip. None got very far.
“Say,” Naroin offered. “I found out somethin’ you might be interested in.”
Maia looked up. She had been stroking the smooth wooden stave, wordlessly contemplating what might come in a few hours. “What’s that?” she asked blankly.
Naroin brought up a hand to shield her mouth, and lowered her voice. “I found out what he does, spendin’ that extra time behind the curtain … You know? After meals?”
It took a moment to grasp that Naroin was referring to Renna. “After …?”
“He’s cleanin’ his mouth!”
Curiosity battled anger that the woman had spied on Maia’s friend. “Cleaning … his mouth?”
“Yup.” Naroin nodded. “You’ve seen that little brush of his? Well, he sticks it in seawater—even though he won’t drink the stuff—then pops it in an’ carries away like a deckhand tryin’ to finish KP in time for a party! Scours those white gnashers good, with lots o’ swishin’ an’ spittin’. Beats anythin’ I’ve seen.”
“Um,” Maia replied, trying to come up with an explanation. “Some people would smell better if they did that, now and then.”
“Good point.” Naroin laughed. “But after every meal?”
Maia shook her head. “He is an alien. Maybe he’s worried about … catching diseases?”
“But he eats our food. Kind o’ hard to see what good mouth-cleanin’ does, after the fact.”
Maia shrugged. It might otherwise be a topic worth further speculation. But right now it seemed petty and pointless. Good intentions or no, she preferred that Naroin leave her alone. Fortunately the bosun seemed to sense this, and conversation lapsed.
Durga rose, backlighting the clouds and casting shafts of pearly radiance through gaps in the overcast, onto patches of choppy sea. Those patches, and the star-filled openings above them, corresponded like pieces of a child’s puzzle and the holes they were meant to occupy. Maia glimpsed bits of constellations, and could tell the ship was fleeing southward before the wind. The bow’s steady rise and fall felt like a slow, steady heartbeat, carrying them not just through dark seas, but through time. Each moment drew new patterns out of old configurations of wood, water, and flesh. Each novel, fleeting rearrangement set conditions for yet more patterns to follow.
It wasn’t just an abstraction. Somewhere in the darkness, a fast, radar-equipped vessel prowled, ever closer. “Don’t think about it,” Naroin told the nervous women in her squad. “Try to get some sleep.”
The idea was ludicrous, but Maia pretended to obey. She curled underneath her blanket as the bow rose and fell, rose and fell, reminding her of the horse’s rhythmic motion while fleeing across the plains of Long Valley. Maia closed her eyes for just a minute …
… and woke to a sharp pain, jabbing her thigh. She sat up, blinking. “I … what …?”
Women were milling around the forecastle, muttering in a dim, gray light. There was a smoky quality to the air, and a faint smell of soot. Something poked her leg again, and Maia turned to follow the impertinent curve of a deck shoe, up a scar-worn leg to a face belonging to Baltha. The tall easterling var had stripped to the waist, her breasts restrained with a tightly wrapped leather halter. Baltha’s blonde hair was tied back with a pink ribbon that seemed anomalously gay, given the glitter of feral combativeness in her eye. She grinned at Maia, stroking her trepp bill. “This is it, virgie. Ready for some fun?”
“Get back to your post,” Naroin snapped at the tall blonde. Baltha shrugged and sauntered away, rejoining her friends near where the cook tended a steaming cauldron. The rough-looking mercenaries from the Southern Isles stretched and toyed with their bills, poking one another playfully, showing no outward sign of nerves.
A cabin boy handed Maia a hot cup of tcha, which seemed to course through her, opening veins and briefly intensifying the dawn chill. There had been dreams, she recalled. Their last shreds were already dissipating, leaving only vague feelings of dire jeopardy.
Unlike the night before, there was no wind save a faint, intermittent zephyr, but a chugging vibration told that auxiliary engines were running, pushing the ship in clumsy flight. Holding her cup in one hand, Maia clutched the corners of her blanket and looked out to sea.
The first thing she noticed was an archipelago of jutting islets—resembling upended splinters of stone that had been wave-washed smooth over epochs far longer than humanity had been on Stratos. Erupting from abyssal water, the precipitous spires stretched like a sinuous chain of blunt needles, ranging from northwest to southeast. Rather than meeting a distinct horizon, they faded with distance into a soft, mysterious haze. Some of the nearer isles were large enough for their moss-encrusted flanks to converge on forest-topped ridges, from which spilled slender, spring-fed waterfalls.
> “Poulandres was trying to reach those,” explained the young rad, Kau, when Maia wandered near the portside rail. A scar near her ear showed where Renna had tended her wound, after the fight aboard the Musseli locomotive. “Captain hoped to slip the reavers’ radar among ’em. But the wind let us down, and sunrise came too soon, alas. Now it’s going to be stand and fight.”
The dark-haired var gave Maia an amiable nudge. “Want to see the enemy?”
Do I have any choice? Maia reluctantly turned away from the entrancing isles to look where Kau gestured, toward a misleadingly rosy dawn. When she saw their pursuer, she gasped.
It’s so close!
A grimy-looking vessel cleaved the ocean, flinging spray from its bows. Only two sails were unfurled, but oily black fumes spilled from a pair of dark smokestacks. Agitated figures could be made out, milling on deck. The Manitou’s engines, generally reserved for harbor maneuvers, were no match for that power.
Kau commented. “Reavers often hide big motors inside normal-looking clippers. No getting away from this bunch, I’m afraid.”
The two girls heard a sigh. Standing nearby, looking at the foe-ship, Naroin recited:
“How Fast they came! Holy Mother, didst thou
With lips divinely smiling, ask:
What new mischance arrives upon thee now?”
There was sincere regret in the bosun’s sigh, yet Maia watched the rippling of slim, taut muscles under Naroin’s arms. Regret was not unstained by anticipation.
“Come on,” the older woman said, nodding toward Baltha’s squad. “Those southlanders have it right. Let’s get ready.”
Naroin gathered the foremost detachment of passengers, and started by inspecting their trepps, then passed out lengths of noosed rope which each woman hung from her belt. Soon she had them running through stretching routines. Maia threw herself into the exercises. The combination of hot tcha and exertion in minutes had her blood flowing, pounding in her ears. She smelled everything with unwonted intensity, from burning coal to the separate salt tangs of sea and perspiration. Colors came to her with an almost-painful vividness.
“Yah!” Naroin cried, swinging her bill. The women imitated. “Yah!” As they practiced, Maia sensed the pervading mood of fear evaporate. What replaced it wasn’t eagerness. Only a fool could not see that pain and defeated humiliation might lay ahead. Even one or more deaths, if full battle could not be avoided. Facing professionals would be more fearsome than skirmishing with part-time clone militiawomen had been, back in Long Valley.
Still, being a var meant knowing you might spend time as a warrior. Nor were these just any vars. Those who helped Thalla and Kiel had known it would be a risky enterprise. For the first time since Grange Head, Maia felt a sense of linkage to these rads. The one to her left grinned and clapped Maia on the back when Naroin called a break. Maia returned the smile, feeling limber, though far from happy.
“Hailing Manitou!” An amplified male voice caused heads to turn. Maia hurried back to the rail and choked when she saw how close the reaver was. Its bowsprit came abeam with their own ship’s fantail. “Hailing Manitou. This is the Reckless, calling for you to heave over!”
Manitou’s captain lifted a bullhorn and shouted back. “By what right do you accost us?”
“By the Law of Lysos, and the Code of Ships! Will you split your cargo, sir?”
Maia watched Poulandres turn to consult Kiel, standing by his side, who shook her head emphatically. He accepted her answer with a passive shrug and lifted the bullhorn once more.
“My employers will fight for what is theirs. The cargo cannot be divided!”
Maia shook her head. I should think not. She saw Renna, standing near the cockpit, swiveling back and forth, staring in amazement. Does he realize they’re talking about him? She gripped her bill tightly, glad that her alien friend would be safe on the neutral territory of the quarterdeck during the coming fray.
The Reckless drew closer. It was a smaller ship than the Manitou. That, plus its powerful engines, made defense by maneuver useless. Neither captain would risk damaging his beloved ship in a collision. Not without insurance that neither reavers nor rads could afford.
A crowd of women had gathered at the approaching ship’s starboard rail, clutching bills, truncheons, and loops of coiled cord. More clambered the masts, edging onto the swaying spars. All wore the infamous red bandanna. A chill coursed Maia’s shoulder blades.
“Understood, sir,” one of the bearded men at the tiller of the reaver answered through his own megaphone. “Will you accept trial by champion, then?”
Again, a consultation with Kiel, followed by another headshake. Most reaver bands employed special champions, professional fighters among professionals. The rads knew their odds were better in a melee, though at inevitable cost. This wasn’t about sharing a hold full of cotton, coal, or dry goods. Theirs was a cargo worth fighting for.
Captain Poulandres passed on Kiel’s refusal.
“Very good,” the master of the other ship replied. “Then my passengers instruct me to say, Prepare for boarding!”
No further conversation was required. While the smaller vessel moved in, Maia saw Kiel shake hands with the captain, then leap to the cargo deck, taking up her bill and yelling to her comrades. Poulandres immediately called all male crew members aft. The seamen hurried, shouting encouragement to their female colleagues.
Maia looked beyond the lower deck, with its crowd of nervously waiting vars, and saw Renna in earnest conversation with the ship’s doctor. The old man, with an expression of someone explaining the obvious to a child or fool, motioned with his hands, pointing to the men on both ships and shaking his head. Except for women sailors, it’s strictly a battle between passengers, Maia internally voiced the doctor’s explanation.
Lysos had said it first, according to texts read aloud in temple services. “Who can banish all strife? Fools who try only turn routine avarice, aggression, into outright murder. As we act to minimize conflict, let us see that what remains is balanced and restrained by law.”
Renna met Maia’s eyes. His fists were clenched and he shook his head. Maia answered with a brief, thin smile, appreciating his message but also recalling the next line of verse, chanted so often in the chapel of Lamatia Hold.
“Above all, never lightly unleash wrath in men. For it is a wild thing, not easy to contain.”
Maia glanced across the narrowing gap of open sea. There were men on that side, too, watching from their sanctuary zone with dark, brooding eyes.
Perhaps it really was better this way, she realized.
Renna crossed his arms and tugged both earlobes. The Stratoin signal for good luck made Maia smile, hoping that her friend had remembered to plug his sensitive ears. This was going to be a noisy affair. She nodded back at him, then turned to face the enemy.
“Eia!” Came a roar of female voices from the other vessel. Kiel raised her bill over her head and the rads replied as one. “Eia!”
Suddenly, the air whistled with grappling hooks and a profusion of snaking ropes. Defenders ran to cut the tautening lines, but could not reach enough cables before the hulls met with a dull boom. More hooks flew. Shouting raiders leaped, climbing hanging strands. Naroin called to her squad, “Steady, girls … steady … Now!”
Reflexes rescued Maia from fear’s rigor. Practice told her arms and legs what to do, but their force flowed not from faith, reason, courage, or any other abstraction. Her will to move came from a need not to be left behind. Not to let the others down.
Yelling at the top of her lungs, although her cries were lost amid the rising clamor, she marched forward with her trepp locked at one hip, guarding Naroin’s flank as the battle joined.
There seemed no end to them. The reaver ship must have been packed to the bulkheads, and warriors kept on coming.
Not that the first wave had it easy. Professionals or no, they found it hard clambering from a low deck to a higher one, while those above rained down nets, cold oil, and
blocks of wood. Naroin set an example, dealing out snaring blows, hooking raiders under the armpits like gaffed fish and prying them loose to fall onto their comrades. When one snarling attacker made it over the Manitou’s rail, Naroin seized the woman by her hair and halter. Pivoting on her pelvis, she hurled the invader to the deck, there to be pounced on by waiting teams, trussed by the arms and legs, and carried aft. Inspired by Naroin’s example, Kiel and a tall rad from Caria also made captures, while Maia and the others fought to rap knuckles, unhook hands, and generally knock senseless those swelling up from below. Maia experienced elation each time an enemy fell. When a savage trepp strike just missed her face, the whistle of wood splitting air fed a hormone-level sense of invincibility.
On another plane, she knew it was illusion. More raiders swarmed upward from the Reckless like members of an insect horde, unflinching at all efforts to deflect it. Soon Maia was busy parrying buffets from a corsair who managed to straddle the railing—a tall, rangy woman with jagged teeth and several fierce scars. There was no help, Naroin being occupied with another thrashing foe. Alone, Maia tried to ignore the sweat-sting in her eyes as she traded clattering blows with her growling opponent. In a sudden, twisting swipe, the corsair landed a glancing clout to Maia’s left hand, drawing a startled, anguished cry. Maia nearly lost hold of her weapon. Her next parry came almost too late, the next later still.…
The end of a trepp bill appeared out of nowhere, snaking beneath Maia’s arm to meet the reaver’s leather-bound chest with a loud thump, throwing her off balance. A distant part of Maia actually winced in sympathy, for the blow must have hurt something awful. But her opponent just yelled an oath of defiance as her arms flung out and she fell backward, striking the hull with her upper body. Astonishingly, the woman hung onto the railing by one scarred leg, a knotted cord of striated muscle.
Another red-clothed head immediately popped over—a new arrival using her comrade as a scaling ladder. Not without a twinge, Maia brought her bill around to hook the ankle of her earlier foe, yanking the leg from its mooring. Both invaders fell … to the deck of the other ship, she hoped. Though, if they splashed between the creaking, banging hulls, she shouldn’t care. The code of battle said as much. “Honest risk in honest struggle.”