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and hideously uncomfortable.
Every time I hauled the oar I cursed King Nemo. To liken him to a zhantil was a ludicrous slander on a
noble beast; if anything, Nemo was a leem or a cramph.
This swordshipNemo boasted three masts, unlike most of the pirate galleys I had previously
encountered, and the captain seemed to me to be as unhandy a sailor as any I had shipped with and
always preferred to use his oars. This made life hard. We sailed north and west up along the island chain,
calling in at various of the port fortresses Tomboram maintained there. We did not sight a single pirate
swordship.
We saw three scraps of sail on a bright day of fine visibility; but we sheered away and later the buzz
went around the slave deck that the swordships had been from The Bloody Menaham. They would have
been a relief to me. Mind you, I was well aware of the horror and the shambles of the rowing benches
during a fight, but my mood was black and vicious and by this time I was ready to tear the throat out of a
leem with my bare hands.
Nemo Zhantil Faril Opazgot her comeuppance at last in a way that was so ridiculous that every time I
thought about it afterward I cursed in delighted wonder.
We had touched in at an island that Valka, a captured Vallian and a man who appealed to me and to
whom I had been closest drawn of all those oar comrades, said was deserted. A party was about to go
ashore for water when, peering through the oar-port I saw a sight that created, at once, a great shout of
surprise and admiration and lust all over the swordship.
Onto the beach dashed a horde of half-naked girls.
They danced down to the water s edge and they held out their hands to the swordship in supplication.
Many and various were the oaths that floated fruitily into the hot air.
By Likshu the Treacherous! said a yellow Chulik farther along on our oar. Were I not held by these
chains!
We mocked him. Were any of us not held by these chains, oh mighty Chulik!
Mother Zinzu the Blessed! rang a clear call from somewhere farther along the rowing deck, at which I
felt all that old pang of remembrance. Many and varied, the oaths, fruity and blasphemous and calling on
gods and demons and heroes from a score or more of different cultures. But we were slaves, naked and
chained, filthy and mop-beaded, bristling with hair and vermin. That rout of beautiful naked girls was not
for us.
The captain and the crew brought not water from the island but rich wine in great round-bellied
amphorae. The girls, clad in their strings of flowers and feathers, laughed and came out to the swordship
as the twin suns sank in an opaz glory. We slaves crouched on our rowing benches and glowered and fed
on crusts, an onion each, and a strip of old cheese like lenk. The Maiden with the Many Smiles rose
before the suns had gone. A weird clashing of colors poured over the swordship. We slaves could
imagine what was happening in the aftercastle and the forecastle now; we could hear the peals of silvery
laughter and the great gusts of sailor mirth.
And then, gradually, the sounds quieted down. We heard a shrill scream, and then another, fainter.
Silence dropped on the swordship. We did not even hear the watch calling the turning of the sandglass.
Valka said to me, Something is amiss. He roused the Gon who was nearest the gangway, an
unpopular position as he was nearest the lash of the whip-deldar. Hey, dom. What s afoot?
The Gon s great bristling, malodorous thatch of bone-white hair lifted. Gons habitually shave their heads
skull bare. If that is because they feel shame over a mop of white hair, one must sympathize with their
own foolish beliefs. As it was, this Gon experienced deep shame over his unshaven head.
Let be, Valka. I want to sleep, and dream of those women.
Look aft, you hairy nit! Is the watch by the lamp?
The Gon stretched. The lamp is not lit.
By Vox! Valka galvanized himself into instant action. This is the one night. . . He began to tear at his
chains, desperately, until his nails tore and the blood poured forth.
So far I had found no implement with which to file through the iron chains, as we had done inGrace of
Grodno when Zorg, Nath, Zolta, and I planned escape. Yet Valka was right. This one nightwas our
chance! But, through the most simple and elementary precautions of the crew, nothing convenient for a
slave to rub through his chains lay handily about the deck. We might all have lost our reason, then, tearing
at our fetters and trying to keep silent besides. Already the unlit lamp proved the routine of the swordship
had been altered, and when we were not hosed down for the night we knew beyond doubt that the crew
was otherwise engaged and in our lascivious dreams how wrong we were!
For in the lambent pink floods of moonlight a girl stepped up onto the central gangway. Every head
turned to look but there were no cries of admiration or lust or, even, of wonder.
In absolute silence that slip of a girl walked all the way along the central gangway, from aft forward,
half-naked, her limbs gleaming pink in the moonglow, swinging her burden lightly from one little fist. She
held that burden by its hair. Sightless eyes glared out upon the rowing benches.
From the severed neck from which still strips of gristle and flesh dangled dropped the dark blood. Drop
by drop as she walked the blood fell upon the gangway.
No chance guided her choice of head thus to parade.
Every oar-slave recognized that hated face.
The uncanny contrast between that lithe slip of a girl, all gleaming beautiful and pink in the streaming
moonlight, and that hideous severed head, dropping its blood as she walked so gracefully along, with a
swing of her hips, laughing, affected every single one of us profoundly.
Not a man so much as moved. No one spoke. Every eye fixed on her and her burden, glaring like the
jungle denizens stare upon their prey.
Drop by drop the blood fell upon the planks of the gangway.
Every oar-slave recognized that hated face. In a deep and scarcely comprehending silence we watched
the girl carry the head along, laughing, swinging her hideous burden.
We knew that dead face.
It was the face of the chief whip-deldar.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Viridia the Render
We were given the usual alternatives.
Given them, I do not believe a single oar-slave took the choice that would see his carcass hurled over
the side and feathered with arrows in sport.
What others considered as an omen I took, also, I confess, as some kind of pointer to the future, for all
the seven moons of Kregen floated in the night sky above as Viridia spoke to us.
Never disdain the power of women, said Viridia. For my fighting-girls have laid the whole crew of
this King s Swordship low, and have taken her, and now she is ours.
I could not see Viridia very clearly, for the stump end of a varter interposed its ratchets and its winding
windlasses and loosing mechanism between, so that I caught only fragmentary glimpses of her as she
moved about, gesticulating. Seeing her like that, however, meant that I immediately recognized that
gaudy, pendulous, barbaric figure as the one I had seen strutting the quarterdeck of the swordship when
Dram Constant had been destroyed, and when I had indulged in that pleasurable contest with the
blue-feathering bowman of Erthyrdrin.
Her girls had successfully seduced the swordship s crew, poured them drugged wine, and seen them off
to the Ice Floes of Sicce. To me, the masterstroke of psychology had been to parade the severed head
of the man whom we slaves would recognize immediately as the instrument of our daily torture. Now we
were members of the pirate band of Viridia. I hesitate, even now, and remembering her as I do, to call
her a lady pirate. Viridia was no lady. She was a woman, wild, free, gross, sudden, a woman who
always or, nearly always, as you will hear kept herself in complete control. She knew what she
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