For a moment, as such thoughts crossed her mind, Rodonis felt pride in her crewfolk. To the average noble, a commoner was a domestic animal, ill-mannered, unlettered, not quite decent, to be kept in line by whip and hook for his own good. But flying over the great sleeping beast of a Fleet, Rodonis sensed its sheer vigor, coiled like a snake beneath her — these were the lords of the sea, and Drak’ho’s haughty banners were raised on the backs of Drak’ho’s lusty deckhands.
Perhaps it was simply that her own husband’s ancestors had risen from the forecastle not many generations back. She had seen him help his crew often enough, working side by side with them in storm or fish run; she had learned it was no disgrace to swing a quernstone or set up a massive loom for herself.
If labor was pleasing to the Lodestar, as the holy books said, then why should Drak’ho nobles consider it distasteful? There was something bloodless about the old families, something not quite healthy. They died out, to be replaced from below, century after century. It was well-known that deckhands had the most offspring, skilled handicrafters and full-time warriors rather less, hereditary officers fewest of all. Why, Admiral Syranax had in a long life begotten only one son and two daughters. She, Rodonis, had two cubs already, after a mere four years of marriage.
Did this not suggest that the high Lodestar favored the honest person working with honest hands?
But no… those Lannach’honai all had young every other year, like machinery, even though many of the tykes died on migration. And the Lannach’honai did not work: not really: they hunted, herded, fished with their effeminate hooks, they were vigorous enough but they never stuck to a job through hours and days like a Drak’ho sailor… and, of course, their habits were just disgusting. Animal! A couple of ten-days a year, down in the twilight of equatorial solstice, indiscriminate lust, and that was all. For the rest of your life, the father of your cub was only another male to you — not that you knew who he was anyway, you hussy! — and at home there was no modesty between the sexes, there wasn’t even much distinction in everyday habits, because there was no more desire. Ugh!
Still, those filthy Lannach’honai had flourished, so maybe the Lodestar did not care… No, it was too cold a thought, here in the night wind under ashen Sk’huanax. Surely the Lodestar had appointed the Fleet an instrument, to destroy those Lannach beasts and take the country they had been defiling.
Rodonis’ wings beat a little faster. The flagship was close now, its turrets like mountain peaks in the dark. There were many lamps burning, down on deck or in shuttered rooms. There were warriors cruising endlessly above and around. The admiral’s flag was still at the masthead, so he had not yet died; but the death watch thickened hour by hour.
Like carrion birds waiting, thought Rodonis with a shudder.
One of the sentries whistled her to a hover and flapped close. Moonlight glistened on his polished spearhead. “Hold! Who are you?”
She had come prepared for such a halt, but briefly, the tongue clove to her mouth. For she was only a female, and a monster laired beneath her.
A gust of wind rattled the dried things hung from a yardarm: the wings of some offending sailor who now sat leashed to an oar or a millstone, if he still lived. Rodonis thought of Delp’s back bearing red stumps, and her anger broke loose in a scream:
“Do you speak in that tone to a sa Axollon?”
The warrior did not know her personally, among the thousands of Fleet citizens, but he knew an officer-class scarf; and it was plain to see that a life’s toil had never been allowed to twist this slim-flanked body.
“Down on the deck, scum!” yelled Rodonis. “Cover your eyes when you address me!”
“I… my lady,” he stammered, “I did not—”
She dove directly at him. He had no choice but to get out of the way. Her voice cracked whip-fashion, trailing her. “Assuming, of course, that your boatswain has first obtained my permission for you to speak to me.”
“But… but… but—” Other fighting males had come now, to wheel as helplessly in the air. Such laws did exist; no one had enforced them to the letter for centuries, but -
An officer on the main deck met the situation when Rodonis landed. “My lady,” he said with due deference, “it is not seemly for an unescorted female to be abroad at all, far less to visit this raft of sorrow.”
“It is necessary,” she told him. “I have a word for Captain T’heonax which will not wait.”
“The captain is at his honored father’s bunkside, my lady. I dare not—”
“Let it be your teeth he has pulled, then, when he learns that Rodonis sa Axollon could have forestalled another mutiny!”
She flounced across the deck and leaned on the rail, as if brooding her anger above the sea. The officer gasped. It was like a tail-blow to the stomach. “My lady! At once… wait, wait here, only the littlest of moments — Guard! Guard, there! Watch over my lady. See that she lacks not.” He scuttled off.
Rodonis waited. Now the real test was coming.
There had been no problem so far. The Fleet was too shaken; no officer, worried ill, would have refused her demand when she spoke of a second uprising.
The first had been bad enough. Such a horror, an actual revolt against the Lodestar’s own Oracle, had been unknown for more than a hundred years… and with a war to fight at the same time! The general impulse had been to deny that anything serious had happened at all. A regrettable misunderstanding Delp’s folk misled, fighting their gallant, hopeless fight out of loyalty to their captain… after all, you couldn’t expect ordinary sailors to understand the more modern principle, that the Fleet and its admiral transcended any individual raft -
Harshly, her tears at the time only a dry memory, Rodonis rehearsed her interview with Syranax, days ago.
“I am sorry, my lady,” he had said. “Believe me I am sorry. Your husband was provoked, and he had more justice on his side than T’heonax. In fact, I know it was just a fight which happened, not planned, only a chance spark touching off old grudges, and my own son mostly to blame.”
“Then let your son suffer for it!” she had cried.
The gaunt old skull wove back and forth, implacably ."No. He may not be the finest person in the world, but he is my son. And the heir. I haven’t long to live, and wartime is no time to risk a struggle over the succession. For the Fleet’s sake, T’heonax must succeed me without argument from anyone; and for this, he must have an officially unstained record.”
“But why can’t you let Delp go too?”
“By the Lodestar, if I could! But it’s not possible. I can give everyone else amnesty, yes, and I will. But there must be one to bear the blame, one on whom to vent the pain of our hurts. Delp has to be accused of engineering a mutiny, and be punished, so that everybody else can say, ‘Well, we fought each other, but it was all his fault, so now we can trust each other again.’ ”
The admiral sighed, a tired breath out of shrunken lungs. “I wish to the Lodestar I didn’t have to do this. I wish… I’m fond of you too, my lady. I wish we could be friends again.”
“We can,” she whispered, “if you will set Delp free.”
The conqueror of Maion looked bleakly at her and said: “No. And now I have heard enough.”
She had left his presence.
And the days passed, and there was the farcical nightmare of Delp’s trial, and the nightmare of the sentence passed on him, and the nightmare of waiting for its execution. The Lannach’ho raid had been like a moment’s waking from feverdreams: for it was sharp and real, and your shipmate was no longer your furtive-eyed enemy but a warrior who met the barbarian in the clouds and whipped him home from your cubs!