Despite himself, Demansk couldn't help smiling. The sight did cheer him up, after all. As well equipped and disciplined a hundred as he'd ever seen, trotting down the long pier toward the waiting ship. Their thick-soled sandals, studded with iron nails, hammered the heavy planking in unison. Left, right, left, right, moving in the quick but orderly manner of experienced troopers.
Not all of them were experienced, of course. Demansk couldn't see much, at this distance, of the faces beneath the helmets. Confederate helmets, unlike Emerald ones, left the nose uncovered. But the cheek flanges, combined with the jutting forehead protector and the lobster-tail flare at the rear, still left the soldiers' features obscure. Probably a good half, judging from what Demansk could determine, were youngsters newly signed up.
But it hardly mattered. The eastern provinces, with their impoverished yeomanry, had been the traditional recruiting ground for the Confederate army for at least two centuries. Every one of those "newbies" would have been training under the supervision of veteran male relatives since they were eight years old. And, in this hundred even more than most, they were going into combat surrounded by their experienced older brothers, fathers, cousins, uncles and neighbors. What was trotting down the pier below him was as capable and veteran a unit as Demansk had ever seen. To all intents and purposes, that was the hundred his old First Spear had come from.
His eyes scanned the pier and found the man he was looking for. Jessep Yunkers himself, still technically a civilian, was following the soldiers with a group of about forty men wrestling heavy handcarts up the steps leading to the pier's entrance. Seeing those carts-and the man giving the orders to their handlers-Demansk's scowl returned in force.
"Come on, Father." Helga's tone was just a razor's edge short of a snap. Still most unsuitable, for a daughter addressing her august father. "You've got no more chance of keeping Trae behind than you do restraining a charging greatbeast with your bare hands. He is a son of Demansk, and since you've kept him out of the army he's not going to pass up this chance of getting properly blooded. You know it as well as I do."
Demansk tightened his jaws, but made no reply-for the simple reason that he couldn't. However much his youngest son was given to thumbing his nose at tradition, in this at least he was forged on the ancient anvil. Trae, like any scion of Vanbert's aristocracy worthy of the name, would earn his spear. And since, for his own purposes, Demansk had insisted on keeping him out of the army proper…
"Besides," Helga added, " I'm certainly happy to have him along. Especially since he's the only one who really knows how to use those gadgets."
Gadgets. Most of the troopers had now filed aboard the ship, and the handcarts were halfway down the pier. Close enough that Demansk could see their contents clearly.
The lead carts were filled with heavy two-man arquebuses and their tripods. The trailing carts, with ammunition for the weapons. Trae had wanted to bring one of the bombards along also, but the experienced seaman Sharlz Thicelt had convinced the eager young nobleman that the thin planks and lightly-built hull of the ship wouldn't be able to withstand the recoil.
The strange new weapons had been designed by Adrian Gellert and used by the King of the Isles against the Confederacy the year before. Some of the weapons in the cart below, Demansk imagined, had been captured during the fighting. But most of them-perhaps all of them-had been built by Trae's artisans in his workshop, using Gellert's design as the model. If no Vanbert natural philosopher would have ever dreamed of inventing the things in the first place, Vanbert's metalworkers and apothecaries were perfectly capable of duplicating them once shown how they worked.
In fact, Trae claimed that his own arquebuses and firepowder were superior to the originals. Demansk didn't doubt the claim. Trae had destroyed more than a few workbenches in his experiments to improve the weapons' performance. Fortunately, he hadn't killed anyone in the process. Not quite. But several of Trae's workmen, as well as Trae himself, would carry scars and burn marks to their graves.
Demansk took a deep breath. Then, forced the smile back onto his face. "Ah, well. The gods' will is whatever it will be." He put his hand on his daughter's shoulder and gave it a little squeeze. "Luck be with you, child. And my blessing."
He gave the shoulder another squeeze, this one more in the way of an assessment than a reassurance.
"You might want to leave off on the exercise," he said drily. "I'm not sure your Adrian fellow is going to be all that fond of a woman whose shoulders are wider and more muscular than his are."
The jibe bounced off Helga like a pebble. She just chuckled and replied: "Oh, his shoulders are quite wide enough, even if he isn't a legendary athlete like his brother. But then, I forget-you haven't actually met him, have you?"
Demansk shook his head. "Not really. I ran into his brains at a distance, you might say." His tone was a bit rueful. "He's an ingenious bastard, I'll give him that. I just hope his mind turns as readily to other things as it does to figuring out new methods of mayhem."
"I think he'd much rather be putting his mind to work at other things, Father. His brother Esmond, now… he's a hater, that one. Half-consumed by it already, when I knew him, and probably eaten up completely by now. But Adrian's a different sort. I think-"
She hesitated; then, softly: "We'll find out, soon enough. But I think he'd rather be Vanbert's friend than our enemy, if he can just see a way to do it…"
Her voice trailed off, as she groped for the right word.
" 'Properly,' let's call it," said her father. "That's a nice neutral sort of term."
He gave her shoulder another squeeze, this one full of affection. More in the way of a hug, really. "And now you'd best get down there yourself. The ship will be ready to sail soon."
When Helga came aboard the ship, her attention was drawn to the stern by Trae's cursing. Despite the volume of his voice, the profanity seemed spoken more in enthusiasm than actual anger.
"Not that way, you fucking whoresons! It's a clamp, now, not a tripod! Are you blind as well as bastards?"
Still cradling the baby, Helga moved toward the stern, working her way around the benches and equipment spread over the entire deck. The soldiers of her escort were settling into their positions, none too quickly and with a great deal of awkwardness and uncertainty. Their own confused milling was as great an obstacle to her progress as their gear.
As a rule, soldiers coming aboard a naval vessel were able to settle in easily enough. The soldiers doubled as rowers on the upper bank when the ship was not in combat. Even in sea battles, at least in the early stages, they remained on the benches. It was only when a boarding operation was about to begin that the soldiers abandoned their oars for their assegais.
But on this trip, the soldiers were unneeded at the oars. Thicelt had hired a complete crew of rowers. The task of Helga's escort, in case of pirate attack, was to remain hidden and out of sight until-and if-a boarding attempt needed to be repelled. The factor of surprise, added to the already ferocious skills of Confederate infantrymen, should be enough to break most pirate attacks.
Of course, that also meant that the none-too-spacious vessel was even more crowded than warships usually were. The soldiers, cursing almost as loudly as Trae, were trying to figure out where they could fit their own bodies as well as their gear. Not even Vanbert infantrymen could sleep standing up, after all. And this would be a long voyage, even with the prevailing winds in their favor.