Every Inch a King Read online

  Lokris’ southern peninsula is shaped like a hand or a plane-tree leaf or anything else with a broad base and several projections sticking out from it. A few islands only mildly meddle with the simile. Down and around went the Gamemeno. We saw no other sea serpents. Even more to the point, no other sea serpents saw us.

  We did see every little cove and inlet along the way, or so it seemed. Something would go off the ship-the Klephts got off at one little inlet. Something would come on. Some silver would stick in Tasos’ pockets, I had no doubts.

  One thing-no more coffins came aboard. I don’t know whether other Lokrian vampires had some sharp (one might even say pointed) questions for our intrepid skipper. I would guess not, for they might have found an answer on the order of Well, look inside a sea serpent somewhat less than satisfying. But this is only a guess. All I do know is, no vampires bothered me or Max. That we ate garlic whenever we could, that we festooned our cabin door and porthole with it, that we carried a couple of peeled cloves wherever we went-all this could be merely a coincidence. That we were not inclined to take chances…is nothing but the truth. And can you blame us?

  We rounded the last stubby finger or leaf lobe or whatever you please and started up the east coast of the peninsula. We did all this sailing around, remember, instead of just sailing through the canal. If we’d sailed through the canal, Tasos wouldn’t have been able to scatter contraband all over the Lokrian coastline. Max and I wouldn’t have had the chance to meet the vampire or the sea serpent. And we wouldn’t have run into the pirates, either.

  The pirates. I was just coming to them. I really was.

  Now, the Mykonian Sea has islands the way a dog has fleas. They’re all over everywhere. The Tiberian Sea, between Lokris and Shqiperi and Belagora and the Dual Monarchy on the one hand and Torino on the other, isn’t like that. It has islands, yes, but they all cling to the coastline that runs north from Lokris. Hardly any at all on the Torinan side. I have no answer for why that’s so. Till I started talking about it, I didn’t even know I had a question.

  I will say one thing for the islands in the Tiberian Sea. They’re shaggier than the ones farther west. They haven’t had all the trees chopped down, so their mountains have bearded cheeks. Laertes’ son came off one of those islands (Aiaia, it was) back in the ancient days-you know, the fellow whose wanderings were an odyssey in themselves. He was a man who could work wood: remember the bed back in his palace, and remember the boat he built with not much more than an axe and an adze.

  Some people say he was a pirate, too. To tell you the truth, I wouldn’t be surprised. The men who live on those islands nowadays can still work wood with the best of them. And the whoresons are still pirates, too.

  Oh, the Lokrian Navy tries. Why, there must be three or four sloops and frigates along the east coast of Lokris that do nothing but hunt pirates…and go after smugglers and keep Shqipetari and Torinan fishing boats out of Lokrian coastal waters and help Lokrian fishermen who get in trouble and go after sea serpents and do a little fishing themselves (the tunny in those waters are very fine) and run cattle and sheep from the islands to the mainland and survey the rocks around the islands and show the Lokrian flag and look impressive.

  So there we were, coming up alongside one of those islands-Aiaia itself, as a matter of fact, and making kind of heavy going of it, because the world’s wind lay dead against us. Stagiros was doing everything he could, but when the wind he called up had to fight something not far from a gale, the Gamemeno lost a lot of the speed she’d shown up till then.

  We might have been the only ship on the Tiberian Sea trying to make headway against the world’s wind. Some fishing boats sat more or less in one place, their anchors out to hold them there. Others scudded south, using the wind instead of working against it. If they wanted to go north again, they could either tack into the teeth of the gale-which was even slower than what we were doing-or wait till the weather got better.

  Tasos didn’t seem altogether displeased. “No one can chase us down,” he said. “The Lokrian Navy has no ship that could chase us down.” The Lokrian Navy certainly had none in those waters. But saying that the Lokrian Navy couldn’t do this or that was like saying a mouse couldn’t have built the wonderful buildings on Lakedaimon’s Fortress Hill. It was true, but so what?

  And Tasos, who had such a fine weatherworker, was spoiled by having him. He’d forgotten there were other ways to win a race than by speed alone. He’d forgotten cheating, as a matter of fact, which is an odd thing to have to say about a smuggler. But then, I could say a lot of odd things about Tasos, most of them much less complimentary than that.

  I was up at the Gamemeno’s bow, looking ahead toward what would be my kingdom. Oh, I couldn’t see Shqiperi yet, but the Lokrian coastline I could see wouldn’t be a whole lot different. It would have Lokrians and not Shqipetari living on it, but I couldn’t see that from however far out to sea we were.

  The winds howled and swirled. I stood right where Stagiros’ wizardly wind faded and the world’s wind grew strong. They fought each other there, now one having the advantage, now the other, now a small twister forming as neither would give way. I hung on to the rail.

  A southbound fishing boat darted past us, the four or five men in her staring at us as if amazed we could move in the opposite direction. One of the fishermen pointed back to the north and shouted something. The world’s wind blew his words away. It might almost have been jealous of Stagiros and his skill.

  When I looked north, I saw another vessel speeding along with the world’s wind. This one was bigger than a fishing boat, though a little smaller than the Gamemeno. She seemed to be coming right down on us, swelling alarmingly as she closed.

  Tasos shouted at her through cupped hands. He shouted at her through a megaphone. He could have shouted at her with Eliphalet’s great voice. The world’s wind would have flung his words back in his face all the same. The world’s wind didn’t like us that day.

  He shouted again, this time to his sailors. The rudder and the sails took the Gamemeno out of the oncoming ship’s path. An instant later, that other ship swerved so we were back in her path again. I thought her skipper must have been a clumsy, bungling oaf.

  Even I can be naive.

  Tasos, who always infested these waters, should have known better. We should have turned away from the other vessel long since. With the world’s wind and Stagiros’ working together, we could have run away from anything. But we didn’t.

  And then, when she was almost within crossbow range of us, that other ship ran up the white flag with the black hand. I don’t know how long pirates have been flying that flag. If the black hand would grab them all by the throat and choke them, I’d be a lot happier, and so would every honest sailor in the world. I do know that.

  Tasos let out a bleat like a sheep that just found out where mutton comes from. He shouted to his sailors one more time. We couldn’t just turn around and run away. That takes time and room, and we had neither. All we could do was twist aside. If once we could get the pirate ship downwind of us, we’d be safe. Her weatherworker wouldn’t be able to beat back against the world’s wind the way Stagiros could. But she had the weather gage on us, and she wasn’t about to let go on us.

  We zigged. She zigged with us. We zagged. So did she. Her captain made his not too poor but not too honest living outguessing other skippers. Tasos was a pretty good sailor, at least as long as he had Stagiros with him. Nobody, though, would ever have accused him of being long on brains-and there were good and cogent reasons why nobody would have accused him of it, too.

  He did have the sense to send crossbowmen forward and to serve out a variety of lethal hardware to the rest of the sailors. My sword was belowdecks, so for my very own I got an iron rod about three feet long. Not an elegant weapon, but one good for a few fractures here and there. Max was already armed and presumed dangerous.

  “Don’t swallow anybody else’s sword, mind you,” I told him.

  He mad
e as if to bow. “Let me write that down.” Eliphalet pickle me if he didn’t pull out a little notebook and do it, too.

  Crossbow quarrels started to fly. The pirates opened up on us before they should have. The first few shafts fell in the sea. Then they thunked into our planking. Then one of them thunked into a man. He made the most appalling noises. People aren’t made to be pierced by sharp steel points traveling much too fast. It happens all the time, but it really shouldn’t. Something should be done.

  I’d seen fighting with the Hassocki army. I knew what battle was like even then. Since those days, of course, we’ve seen the War of the Kingdoms, which made what I’d seen-and the Nekemte Wars, too-seem like playground games by comparison. Maybe that was enough to teach us all a lesson. On the other hand, maybe it wasn’t. I wouldn’t bet anything I could afford to lose.

  We started shooting back. Since we couldn’t run away, we bloody well had to fight. Pirates are not nice people. If they took us, they wouldn’t invite us aboard for tea. The chivalrous rogues of romance are murderous bastards for real. I cheered like a madman when one of them took a quarrel right between his beady eyes.

  Much too soon, they lay right alongside us. Grappling hooks flew out and bit into our rail and our deck, locking the two ships in an unwelcome embrace. Our sailors cut a couple of ropes, but they got shot doing it, too. More hooks stuck fast. Pirates began leaping from their ship to ours. Gangplanks thrust out across the narrow strip of sea between us. More pirates crossed on them. I even wished the Klephts were still on board. The pirates had the same motley assortment of ironmongery as we did, but there were more of them and they looked meaner.

  They reckoned without Stagiros.

  There, by Eliphalet’s windy homilies, was a weatherworker in a million! He turned the gale that had been in the Gamemeno’s sails on the pirates. Sails are made to withstand such a storm. Pirates aren’t. Some of them went to their knees. Some of them got blown over the side. Since the Gamemeno and the pirate ship were smashing together and then pulling apart, in the drink between them was not a good place to be. I heard shrieks, a couple of them abruptly cut off as the ships came together again. I was too busy to waste much pity on the poor uninnocents.

  The weatherworker’s gale affected his shipmates not a bit. He even remembered to include Max and me in that protection. I brought my iron bar down smartly on the head of a pirate who’d been blown to the deck. He groaned and let go of the cutlass he was carrying. Since he didn’t seem to need it any more, I picked it up myself. With it in my right hand and the bar in my left doing duty for a shield, I was a fairly formidable fellow.

  Someone’s head rolled along the pitching deck. I wasn’t sorry to see it didn’t belong to anyone I knew. Whoever he was, he was making a mess on the timbers. I would have complained, but I didn’t think he was in a mood to listen.

  Max examined his blade, which was red all the way to the hilt. “I really will have to clean this before I swallow it again,” he said, and then went back to the fight.

  That didn’t last much longer. The pirates abruptly lost their enthusiasm for it. Instead of pushing forward, all of a sudden they were scrambling to get back aboard their own ship. They pulled the gangplanks away from the Gamemeno. They might have feared we would follow them. They cut the lines that bound their ship to ours. In fact, they cut them while a couple of their friends were still on our ship. Those friends didn’t stay there long, at least not in any state to complain about the accommodations we offered.

  The pirate ship put on a full spread of canvas and sped off to the south before the world’s wind. Their weatherworker added whatever he could to it. They wanted to get away from us as fast as they could. We held in our grief at the parting.

  Two or three of the pirates on our deck were still writhing and moaning. We put an end to that nonsense in short order. After a few whacks with an iron bar, no one moans any more. We threw the bodies into the sea. There were nine of them, not counting the ones who’d gone overboard. We’d lost two of our own, plus another three wounded.

  Tasos scraped my face with his unshaven chin as he kissed me on both cheeks, a pleasantry I could have done without. “Thou art a lion!” he cried in Hassocki. “Thou art an eagle! Thou art a very dragon of bravery and might! My withers are wrung with sorrow that I might have lived my days without the boon of seeing thy valor on display!”

  Then he pulled Max down to somewhere close to his level and delivered another set of kisses. He gave Max a set of endearments not the same as mine but cut from the same bolt of fabric.

  As Max turned away, he spoke in Schlepsigian: “Well, that was fun.” I don’t know whether he meant the fight or Tasos’ congratulations. Either way, I thought I might have scented a whiff of irony in the air along with the iron stink of blood and the latrine reek of bowels loosed in death.

  I went back to the poop deck. Whether Tasos knew it or not, Stagiros was the one who really deserved all the praise he could get. “I thought we were dead men,” I said. “And we would have been, too, if not for you.”

  He shrugged. I got the idea praise made him nervous, which only proved him no ordinary Lokrian. “I did what I could,” he said. “I am no swordsman or archer. I used the only weapon I know.”

  “You saved all of us,” I said, and I think that’s true. “Whatever Captain Tasos is paying you, it isn’t enough.” Would I have talked like that to somebody I was paying? I have my doubts, but it wasn’t my money.

  And quite a bit of it evidently was the weatherworker’s. With a smile, he said, “I could buy and sell you.” From most Lokrians, that would have been bragging. The way he made it sound, he was sorry it was true, but it was anyhow. He was something special, all right.

  “Yes, well, look what you’d have once you did.” I noticed I still had the pirate’s cutlass in my right fist. I had to do some serious talking to that hand before it would let go. “Want a souvenir?” I asked.

  “Thank you, but no.” Stagiros tossed his head, the way Lokrians will. I wouldn’t have been surprised had he shaken it the way most people would. He was the most cosmopolitan Lokrian I ever met. Yes, a smuggler’s weatherworker. And he eyed me the way a natural philosopher will eye a nondescript beetle. “Why on earth are you going to Shqiperi? Why would anyone in his right mind go to Shqiperi?”

  I struck a pose. The cutlass came in handy after all. “To become King of the Land of the Eagle,” I said grandly.

  “The Shqipetari will kill you.” He could have been taking lessons from Max, except he didn’t sound quite doleful enough.

  “I’ll have fun till they do,” I declared.

  He looked at me. He looked through me. He might have been the sensible, staid man of Schlepsig, I the wild, excitable Lokrian. “Madness,” he murmured.

  I bowed. “But a great madness,” I said.

  We put in at Vravron the next day. Vravron is the Lokrian port nearest the border to Shqiperi. It has other things wrong with it, too. It isn’t one of Tasos’ regular stops. He went into the harbor for a couple of reasons-to pick up sailors to replace the men he’d lost and because Max and I asked him to.

  If it hadn’t been the day after the fight with the pirates, I’m sure this strange fit of gratitude would have worn off. Tasos was not a man much afflicted by such sentiments. But he folded both of us into a sweaty embrace and said, “My valiant ones, I can deny you nothing!” To prove he could deny us nothing, he swigged from a flask of anise-flavored spirits and handed it to me.

  I would like to know which foundry copper-plated Tasos’ gullet and stomach. I’d give them my business any time-they do good work. My own innards, being mere flesh and blood, commenced to smolder when I poured that poison down them. “Delicious,” I wheezed, amazed I hadn’t incinerated my vocal cords. I passed Max the flask.

  He’d lit a cigar. That alarmed me; I feared he’d turn into a human blowtorch. But he survived and gave the flask back to Tasos. Later I found out he’d held his tongue against the mouth of the flas
k and hadn’t drunk at all. I wish I would have thought of that. It would have saved my plumbing some serious abuse.

  When we came into Vravron harbor, customs men started buzzing around the Gamemeno like flies around a five days’ dead rabbit. Like the flies, they scented a feast. None of them ever came aboard, though, and I never saw Tasos hand out even a hemidemilepta. His hand may have been quicker than my eye, of course.

  My eye saw Shqipetari-my subjects, though they knew it not. Most of the longshoremen at Vravron harbor, and all of the sweepers and trash haulers, were men who’d come down from the north after more work, and better, than they could find in their mountains. More work they got. Better? Not likely!

  In Schlepsig, quite a few miners and quarrymen and busboys and barbers and the like are Lokrians. They do work few Schlepsigians care to do, and they do it for less money than most Schlepsigians would take. They’re convenient, even if hotheads do rant about dirty foreigners.

  In this corner of Lokris, the Shqipetari were doing work few Lokrians cared to do, and I had no doubt they were doing it for less money than most Lokrians would take. They were…convenient. I don’t speak Lokrian, but the looks and the tone of voice the locals gave them said they thought the Shqipetari were a bunch of dirty foreigners.

  They stood out. Eliphalet knows that’s so. They were tall men, most of them, long and lean-half a head taller than the Lokrians, more or less. Some had faces like falcons, narrow and fierce. Others looked more like horses. They let their mustaches droop down past the corners of their mouths, which made them look like brigands, even if, by some chance, they weren’t.

  They wore white headwraps-not quite turbans because their hair stuck out in the middle, an odd effect. I found out later that they shaved part or all of the scalp that didn’t show, which made them look even odder without the wraps. Their shirts had all started out white, too. Over them they wore short fringed cloaks. Tight black breeches embroidered in red and rawhide sandals completed the outfits.