The Sea Peoples(3)
Shore leave or no, the Sea-Leopard could still be ready to sail and fight in the very short time it took the topmast hands to run up the ratlines and reach the gaskets on the sails; the catapults would be cocked and loaded by then and the anchors cast off with empty casks to float the ends of their cables for later attention. The Montivallans were among friends . . . but it never hurt to be ready.
Admiral Naysmith had been standing with her hands clasped behind her back, hard-featured square face with the little blue burn-mark of the Bearkiller A-List between her brows impassive above the white linen tropical-service uniform jacket and gold-braided epaulettes. Now she nodded at the signal-flag that went up a mast rigged on the dock ashore and turned to the ship’s captain.
“We’re ready to proceed, Mr. Edwards,” she said. “Make it so. And a signal to that effect to the Japanese flagship, in the Crown Princess’ name.”
Naysmith cocked an eye at órlaith, who nodded approval. The orders ran down the chain of command, more and more specific as they did. Signal-flags of their own went up the halyard to the mizzen-peak. órlaith politely ignored the exchange, studying the town instead; she liked and respected the blunt-spoken Bearkiller’s professionalism but they weren’t close, and she was careful not to infringe on her area of authority. As overall commander of the expedition órlaith was entitled to tell her what she wanted to accomplish, but how to do it was the Admiral’s business.
She suspected that the middle-aged Naysmith had doubts about someone of the same twenty-two years as her own eldest child—who was a lieutenant somewhere in the fleet—being in charge of a major expedition, bearer of the royal Sword or no, though of course she’d never say a word to that effect. Looking at it from the outside she had something of a point. órlaith had grown up watching famously good strategists in action, but she knew she wasn’t equal to either of her parents.
Yet. And they started as young as I am now, overshadowed by their famous parents . . . two of whom . . .
Her maternal and paternal grandfathers had been deadly enemies from the Change on and had ended up killing each other in single combat with several thousand witnesses in their respective armies whooping them on.
Ah, well, youth is the one disease age always cures . . . and we of House Artos are not a long-lived breed, anyway . . . and besides, it’s an interesting view. It’s my first time off the mainland, even if I’m not traveling just for the pleasure of it.
Hilo was a very substantial if not huge city of more than twenty thousand souls, low-built and spread out amid trees and greenery and gardens ornamental or practical or both. White walls and roofs of tile or palm-thatch showed through the greenery and even at this distance you could see the purple and blue and crimson of banks of flowers and blossoming trees, citrus and tropical fruits, jacarandas and flamboyants and flame trees.
Southward loomed the peaks of massive mountains, not steep but very high; snow glittered from the tops of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa. The sight made the hair prickle on the back of her neck, and she felt a return of that sense . . . a feeling of chambers within her mind opening . . . that she’d felt when she first took up the Sword of the Lady after her father’s death. Her hand went to the crystal pommel at her side, the symbol of the High Kingship that Rudi Mackenzie—not yet Artos the First, High King of Montival—had won on the Quest of the Sunrise Lands. In form it was a knight’s longsword, save that the guard was shaped like a crescent moon rather than a cross, and the pommel at the end of the double-lobed horn-and-silver hilt was moon-colored crystal cradled in a stag’s antlers rather than a metal ball.
Beneath that seeming . . . it could be and do many things, and you could never entirely disregard the sheer presence of it even when it was quiescent. She’d often thought that it wasn’t really a thing of matter as most understood such things, but a thought in the mind of the Goddess made manifest in the world of common day.
Now it let her sense . . .
That’s sacredness, she thought.
She inclined her head towards the peaks of the volcanoes and made the Old Faith’s gesture of reverence with the back of her hand to her forehead.
As she did, images flashed through her mind: a great canoe’s prow grinding ashore on a beach of blinding white sand, its grotesquely carved figurehead alive somehow; a giant figure roaring in mirth as he wrestled with a huge eight-eyed bat; a man of stern kingly majesty raising a carved staff as his black hair blew around a tattooed face and the sea broke at his feet in a storm of terrible power; a woman of unbearable beauty whose eyes were the fires at the core of Earth, walking atop the surface of a river that ran with molten stone . . .
But a sacredness that is not mine. Not hostile and not bad, but Powers fierce and wild and strong and . . . foreign. Stories I haven’t heard, walking the ridge of the world once more. The Change opened many doors, and the world is very wide.
The warm moist air from the shore fluttered her long hair beneath its plumed Scots bonnet, locks yellow-gold with a slight hint of copper. It bore scents from the land, some homely enough from cooking and people, others spicy and sweet and wild, welcome amid the usual war-fleet smells of tar and smoke, bilgewater and imperfectly clean sailors and troops packed in too tightly and rancid canola-oil smeared on armor and blades against the corrosive salt of the sea-spray.
And the overpowering stink of the horse-transports, which was like a badly-kept stable on a huge scale no matter how many times the bilges were flooded and the animals were put to work on treadmills pumping them out. Rank gave her a bubble of space on the warship to enjoy the contrast.