"It's a halyard."
"No, it's a stay. T'e headstay."
The thirty-meter schooner Ima Hooker swooped closehauled
into aquamarine swells so perfect they might have been
drawn from a painting by the semimythical Maxfield
Parrish. Overhead, the rigging sang in a faint but steady
breeze. That gentle zephyr, smelling faintly of brine, was
the only relief for the sweltering figures on her deck.
Julian mopped his brow and pointed to the offending bit of
rigging.
"Look, there's a rope-"
"A line," Poertena corrected pedantically.
"Okay, there's a line and a pulley-"
"T'at's a block. Actually, it's a deadeye."
"Really? I thought a block was one of those with cranks."
"No, t'at's a windlass."
Six other schooners kept formation on Hooker. Five of them
were identical to the one on whose deck Julian and
Poertena stood: low, trim hulls with two masts of equal
height and what was technically known as a "topsail
schooner rig." What that meant was that each mast carried
a "gaff sail," a fore-and-aft sail cut like a truncated
triangle with its head set from an angled yard-the "gaff"-
while the foremast also carried an entire set of
conventional square sails. The after gaff sail-
the "mainsail," Julian mentally corrected; after all, he
had to get something right-had a boom; the forward gaff
sail did not. Of course, it was called the foresail
whereas the lowest square sail on that mast was called
the "fore course," which struck him as a weird name for
any sail. Then there were the "fore topsail," "fore
topgallant," and "fore royal," all set above the fore
course.
The second mast (called the "mainmast" rather than
the "aftermast," for some reason Julian didn't quite
understand, given that the ship had only two masts to
begin with and that it carried considerably less canvas
than the foremast) carried only a single square topsail,
but compensated by setting a triangular "leg of mutton"
fore-and-aft sail above the mainsail. There were also
staysails set between the masts, not to mention a flying
jib, outer jib, and inner jib, all set between the
foremast and the bowsprit.
The seventh schooner was different-a much bigger, less
agile, somehow unfinished-looking vessel with a far deeper
hull and no less than five masts-and, at the insistence of
Captain Armand Pahner, Imperial Marines, rejoiced in the
name of Snarleyow. The smaller, more nimble ships seemed
to regard their larger sister with mixed emotions. No one
would ever have called Snarleyow anything so gauche as
clumsy, perhaps, but she was clearly less fleet of foot,
and her heavier, more deliberate motion almost seemed to
hold the others back.
All of the ships carried short-barreled cannon along their
sides. Snarleyow mounted fifteen of them to a side, which
gave her a quarter again the broadside armament of any of
her consorts, but all of them carried a single, much
larger cannon on a pivot mount towards the bow, as well.
And every single one of them had ropes everywhere. Which
was the problem.
"Okay." Julian drew a deep breath, then continued in a
tone of massive calm. "There's a line and a pu-block. So
why isn't it a halyard?"
"Halyard hauls up t'e sail. T'e stay, it hold t'e pocking
mast up."
The Pinopan had grown up around the arcane terminology of
the sea. In fact, he was the only human member of the
expedition (with the exception of Roger, who had spent
summers in Old Earth's blue-water recreational sailing
community) who actually understood it at all. But despite
the impression of landsmen-that the arcana existed purely
to cause them confusion-there was a real necessity for the
distinct terminology. Ships constantly encounter
situations where clear and unambiguous orders may mean the
difference between life and death. Thus the importance of
being able to tell hands to pull upon a certain "rope" in
a certain way. Or, alternatively, to let it out slowly,
all the while maintaining tension.
Thus such unambiguous and unintelligible orders as "Douse
the mainsail and make fast!" Which does not mean throw
water on it to increase speed.
"So which one's the halyard?" Julian asked plaintively.
"Which halyard? Countin' t'e stays'ils, t'ere's seventeen
pocking halyards on t'is ship...."
Hooker's design had been agreed upon as the best possible
for the local conditions. She and her consorts had been
created, through human design and local engineering, to
carry Prince Roger and his bodyguards-now augmented by
various local forces-across a previously unexplored ocean.
Not that there hadn't, as always, been the odd,
unanticipated circumstance requiring last-minute
improvisation. The fact that a rather larger number of
Mardukan allies than originally anticipated had been added
to Roger's force had created the need for more sealift
capacity. Especially given the sheer size of the Mardukan
cavalry's mounts. Civan were fast, tough, capable of
eating almost anything, and relatively intelligent. One
thing they were not, however, was petite. Hardly
surprising, since the cavalrymen who rode into battle on
their backs averaged between three and three and a half
meters tall.
Carrying enough of them to sea aboard the six original
schooners had turned out to be impossible once the revised
numbers of local troopers had been totaled up. So just
when everyone had thought they were done building, they-
and somewhere around a quarter of the total shipbuilding
force of K'Vaern's Cove-had turned to to build the
Snarleyow. Fortunately, the local labor force had learned
a lot about the new building techniques working on the
smaller ships, but it had still been a backbreaking,
exhausting task no one had expected to face. Nor had
Poertena been able to spend as much time refining her
basic design, which was one reason she was ugly,
slabsided, and slow, compared to her smaller sisters. She
was also built of green timber, which had never been
seasoned properly and could be expected to rot with
dismaying speed in a climate like Marduk's. But that was
all right with Prince Roger and his companions. All they
really cared about was that she last long enough for a
single voyage.
Although she was scarcely in the same class for speed or
handiness as Poertena's original, twin-masted design,
Snarleyow was still enormously more efficient than any
native Mardukan design. She had to be. The nature of the
local weather was such that there was an almost unvarying
wind from the northeast, yet that was the very direction
in which the ships had to sail. That was the reason for
their triangular sails. Their fore-and-aft rig-a
technology the humans had introduced-made it possible for
them to sail much more sharply into the wind than any
local vessel, with its clumsy and inefficient, primitive
square-rigged design, had ever been able to do. Similar
ships had sailed the seas of Earth all the way up to the
beginning of the Information Age, and they remained the
mainstay for water worlds like Pinopa.
"Now I'm really confused," Julian moaned. "All right.
Tying something down is 'making fast.' A rope attached to
a sail is a 'sheet.' A rope tied to the mast is a 'stay.'
And a bail is the iron thingamajig on the mast."
"T'e boom," Poertena corrected, wiping away a drop of
sweat. The day, as always, was like a steambath, even with
the light wind that filled the sails. "T'e bail is on t'e
boom. Unless you're taking on water. T'en you bail it
out."
"I give up!"
"Don' worry about it," the Pinopan said with a
chuckle. "You only been at t'is a few weeks. Besides, you
got me an' all t'ose four-armed monstrosities to do t'e
sailing. You jus' pull when we say 'heave,' and stop when
we say 'avast.' "
"And hold on when you say 'belay.' "
"And hold on tight when we say belay."
"I blame Roger for this," Julian said with another shake
of his head.
"You blame Roger for what?" a cool female voice asked from
behind him.
Julian looked over his shoulder and grinned at Nimashet
Despreaux. The female sergeant was frowning at him, but it
slid off the irrepressible NCO like water off a duck.
"It's all Roger's fault that we're in this predicament,"
he replied. "If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't have to
learn this junk!"
Despreaux opened her mouth, but Julian held up a hand
before she could retort.
"Calmly, Nimashet. I know it's not Roger's fault. It was a
joke, okay?"
Despreaux's frown only underscored the classical beauty of
her face, but it was dark with worry.
"Roger's ... still not taking Kostas' death very well,
Adib. I just don't ... I don't want anybody even joking
about this being his fault," she said, and Poertena nodded
in agreement.
"T'e prince didn't maroon us here, Julian. T'e Saints an'
whoever set t'at pocking toombie on us marooned us." The
diminutive armorer shrugged. "I guess it wasn't very
pocking punny."
"Okay," a chagrined Julian said. "You've got a point.
Roger has been sort of dragging around, hasn't he?"
"He's been in a funk, is what you mean," Despreaux said.
"Well, I'm sure there's some way you could cheer him up,"
Julian suggested with an evil grin.
"Oh, pock," Poertena muttered, and backed up quickly.
After a crack like that the fecal matter was about to hit
the impeller.
"Now this is a mutinous crew, if ever I've seen one."
Sergeant Major Eva Kosutic said, joining them. She looked
from Despreaux's furious face to Julian's "butter-wouldn't-
melt-in-my-mouth" expression and frowned. "All right,
Julian. What did you say this time?"
"Me?" Julian asked with enormous innocence but little real
hope of evading the consequences. The sergeant major had
an almost miraculous sense of timing; she always turned up
just as the action was hottest. Which come to think of it,
described her in bed as well. "What would I have said?"
Now he looked from the sergeant major to the fulminating
Despreaux, decided that coming clean offered his best
chance of survival, and shrugged with a repentant
expression.
"I just suggested that there might be a way to cheer Roger
up," he admitted, then, unable to help himself, grinned
again. "I guarantee I'm right. God knows I've been more
cheerful lately."
The sergeant major rolled her eyes and crossed her arms.
"Well if that's your attitude, you'll damned well be less
cheerful for a while!" She looked at the three noncoms and
shook her head. "This is a clear case of His Evilness'
finding work for idle hands. Poertena, I thought you were
supposed to be conducting a class in rigging."
"I was trying to get Julian up to speed, Sergeant Major,"
the Pinopan said, tossing a length of rope to the
deck. "T'at's not going too good."
"I've got all the stuff loaded in my toot," Julian said
with a shrug. "But some of the data seems to be wrong, and
the rest just seems to be hitting and bouncing. I mean,
what's 'luff' mean?"
"It's when the sail flaps," Kosutic replied, shaking her
head. "Even I know that, and I hate sailing. I guess we
should've known better than to try to teach Marines to be
sailors."
"We don't really need them, Sergeant Major," Poertena told
her. "We've got plenty of Mardukans."
"We need to work on our entry techniques, anyway," Julian
pointed out. "We've been engaging in all these open-field
maneuvers, but when we take the spaceport, it's going to
be mostly close quarters. Whole different style, Smaj. And
we haven't really done any of that since Q'Nkok."
The sergeant major frowned, then nodded. She was sure
Julian had come up with that because it was more fun than
learning to sail. But that didn't mean he was wrong.
"Okay. Concur. If we wanted sailors, we should've left you
on the DeGlopper and brought Navy pukes. I'll talk the
change over with the Old Man. If he approves, we'll start
working on close combat techniques for the rest of the
voyage."
"Besides," Poertena pointed out gloomily, "we might need
them before t'en. I've never seen a place like t'is t'at
didn't have pirates."
"And then there's the 'fish of unusual size.'" Julian
chuckled and gestured out over the emerald waters. "So
far, so good, right?"
"Don't laugh," Despreaux muttered. "I read that log. I do
not want to tangle with something big enough to bite a
boat in half, even a small one."
"Well," Kosutic said, with a tug on her earlobe. "If worse
comes to worst, we can always give Roger a pocket knife
and throw him at it."
"Ooooo!" Julian shook his head. "You haven't even met one
of these little fishies and you hate them that much?"
* * *
Prince Roger Ramius Sergei Alexander Chiang MacClintock,
Heir Tertiary to the Throne of Man, turned away from the
creaming waves to look across the shipboard bustle. The
sergeant major had just broken up the huddle around
Julian, and the four NCOs were headed in four different
directions. He took a moment extra to watch Despreaux make
for the fo'c'sle. He knew his depression was beginning to
affect her, and that he needed to snap out of it. But the
loss of Kostas was the one wound that would not seem to
heal, and he'd had too much time to think about it since
the frenetic haste of getting all seven ships built had
eased into the voyage itself. For the first time in what
seemed forever, he wasn't engaged in frantic efforts to
train native troops, fight barbarian armies, build ships,
or simply hike through endless jungle. For that matter,
nothing was actively attempting to kill him, devour him,
assassinate him, or kidnap him, and a part of him was
distantly amazed to discover just how much having that
respite depressed him. Having time to think, he had
learned, was not always a good thing.
He supposed he could pull up the list of casualties on his
implanted toot. But there wouldn't be much point. When
they'd first landed, the Marines of Bravo Company, Bronze
Battalion of the Empress Own Regiment, had been just so
many faces. And the officers and crew of the Assault Ship
DeGlopper, long since expanding plasma, had just been
blurs. But since some time after the pilots of the
shuttles had brought them to deadstick landings on this
backward hell, some time between the internecine fighting
that had erupted at the first city they'd visited and the
furious battles with the Kranolta barbarians, the Marines
had become more than faces. In many ways, they had become
more than family-as close as a part of his own body.
And each loss had been like flaying skin.
First the loss of half the company in Voitan, fighting the
Kranolta. Then the constant low-level seepage as they
battled their way across the rest of the continent. More
good troops killed in Diaspra against the Boman, and then
a handful more in Sindi against the main Boman force. The
ones who fell to the damnbeasts and the vampire moths. And
the crocs.
© 2003-2026