The Warrior's Tale (52 page)

She arranged for me to be given a small villa that overlooked the harbour and had it staffed with her most discreet servants. The day she showed it to me was warm and the air heavy with the scent of hyacinth. The villa had thick white walls and was roofed with blue tiles. Roses climbed the entranceway, which let into a sunny garden. The pathway cutting through the garden was shaded by an arbour of scented gourds whose flesh was so sweet it drove a colony of wasps quite mad. They darted among the ruby-red fruit, never seeming to
be
satiated no matter how much they ate. An ancient fountain played in the centre of the garden, spilling out under a willow on one side, and feeding a soft
bed
of moss.

The bedroom of the master's quarters was huge, carpeted with thick rugs, upon which were piled pillows of every size and colour. The canopied bed was the size of a small practice field, overflowing the largest comer and leaving a small pathway between it and the verandah doors, which opened to the most marvellous view of the harbour. It was a room for sunsets and love. We fell into that bed the moment we came into the room. We were as insatiable as those hungry wasps, kissing and exploring every inch of sweetness. Shout followed shout, wail followed wail as we took each other from one height to another.

I see you are red-faced, Scribe; yet the evening is cool. Are you titillated by my descriptions of our love-making - or shocked? Ah, I see it's the latter. What could be the cause? You're certainly experienced in memoirs such as these. Is it because they were the adventures of men, doing manly things? Isn't such spicing permissible in a history of a woman? Or, is it that same-sex love-making offends you? If this is the case, I'm not sorry. I've sworn to tell the truth; and the truth is that love is the same no matter the costume it wears. Passion is the nature of all things that walk, or swim, or crawl. To deny it, to ignore it, is not to understand fully the very life the gods blew into us. In the end, it is your own self you will understand least of all.

Xia and I made love until the sun neared the end of it
s daily journey. We lolled quietl
y in each other's arms, enjoying the cool of the early evening winds.

Finally, she broke the silence. 'You
are
not my first,' she said, eyes shyly lowered.

I didn't think I was. She was quite experienced for one so young. But that's not what I said. 'It's not my business. Your adventures are your own. To share, or to treasure in silence.'

'I want to tell you about it,'
She
said, 'so you know me.'

I kissed her and let her talk.

'I've always felt I was strange, out of place,' she said. 'It was as if I didn't belong in my family, but was simply left at the door and taken in by my mother, who was certainly a kind enough woman to do such a thing.'

'You don't think that's what really happened, do you?' I asked.

She shook her head. 'No. Foundlings don't become princesses. Still, the feeling was there. I never liked boys. Not like my girlfriends who were going on about them even before we all grew breasts and started our monthlies. Actually, it was my
girlfriends
who first attracted me. It was all quite natural, for a time. Even though they talked of boys, we had dalliances. Schoolgirl crushes with one another. Many of which were consummated in bed. No one thought anything of it. Perhaps it's even encouraged a bit in our society. The maidenhead is much prized in Konya, and such innocent play tends to keep it intact until families can negotiate our future - our marriages.'

'It is the same in Orissa,' I said.

Xia took this in, then continued. 'All went well until I reached marrying age, which in Konya is sixteen. Since then my father has become anxious that I wed and bear him grandchildren so our line can continue.'

'But you've resisted?' I guessed.

'Absolutely,' Xia said. 'I want no man to rule me, much less bed me.' Again I noted that regal, stubborn look of hers. Xia was not someone I'd like to get on the wrong side of.

She continued: 'It has become increasingly difficult to refuse my father. More so, because of what happened just before I met you in that storm.'

'I've wondered how I came to find you there,' I said.

'I was sent to the temple at Selen for purification,' she said. 'My father learned that I'd become the lover of an older woman. Fiorna's the wife of one of our generals. He was always away, which pleased her, because when he's home he's a brute to her and her children. Also she's like
...
us. Fiorna prefers women to men. Anyway, a scandal was avoided - just. She was sent home to her mother and her husband was assigned to the outskirts of the kingdom. As for me, my father thought I needed to be purged of my tastes. To undergo purification. Hence, the voyage.'

I laughed, stroking her fine breasts. 'The purification didn't seem to take,' I said.

Xia made a wry face. 'Actually, the priestesses there were quite helpful. They taught me how to be more discreet.'

She gave me an impish look. Her hand reached and found a place that made me shiver. 'They taught me some other things as well,' she giggled.

'Lord knows,' I said, husky, 'I've always been an eager scholar.' Later, as she rose to dress and depart, she said: "Would you do something for me?' 'Anything within my power,' I said. 'Would you teach me to fight?'

I rose up, startled. 'You're a princess. You have no need for that knowledge.'

She shook her head, serious. 'I'll be with you when the fight begins. And I refuse to be some helpless flower, while other women - your soldiers - risk their lives. I at least want to know how to protect myself. If not more. And don't worry, I won't do something foolish and charge into the fray and be a worry to you. Also, I want to be something other than pretty Princess Xia in the eyes of my people. When this history is written, I intend to be more than a footnote.'

I thought over her request. It seemed sensible to me. And then she said: 'Besides, we must be discreet, my love. Training with you will be a wonderful excuse for me to come and go as I please.'

'Very well,' I said. 'We'll begin tomorrow.' We did, and she proved as ardent a pupil of
battle
as she was of love.

Meanwhile, the Konyans prepared for war. The Council of Purity might still have been babbling on about the way to wage that war, but at least there was more than talk in Isolde.

Each day saw more ships arrive off the island. Sometimes there'd be one, sometimes half a dozen, once fleets of over two dozen. Finally, there were nearly four hundred vessels. They'd quickly filled Isolde's harbour from headland to piers and most lay in the roadstead outside the harbour mouth. They hailed from all over the kingdom - if such a polyglot collection of so many hundreds of islands can be called such a thing - especially since each group seemed to have its own customs and language. Communication was either in Konyan, which most of the ruling classes of the islands knew after a fashion; the Konyan traders' pidgin, or through those Orissans of mine who'd been blessed with the Spell of the Tongues.

The ships were of every variety, from vessels designed only for war to hastily converted merchantmen and even some sharkish galleys whose crews I knew were pirates who'd decided to sail under a known banner for as long as loot was in the offing.

I was impressed by how rapidly the Konyans could turn themselves
to battle and asked Xia if her people had an especial talent for bloodshed. 'I don't know about that,' she yawned. 'But it seems as if someone's always fighting
someone.
If you wish, I'll have one of my servants show you the arsenal.'

I did wish and on the morrow I was escorted to a separate part of the harbour, which was fenced and guarded. Inside, I learned the Konyans' secret. The arsenal was a row of wharves, man-made islands actually, with a long warehouse running the length of each. A narrow strand of water ran between each wharf and at either end there were wide basins. The wharves swarmed with workmen, who reached them on wide bridges that slid out from the main dockyard. Into the basin at one end an out-of-commission ship would be towed in by lines linked to huge capstans on the shore itself. The ships had been 'laid up in ordinary', as it was called, which meant all their stores had been removed, their yards and masts brought down and the bare hulk anchored to await another crisis.

Big sliding doors opened at each warehouse as the ship was towed down the wharf. From one, masts would be taken - each marked for the ship it had come from. Cranes would restep them and shipwrights lash them into place. At the next warehouse the spars and main-yard would be lifted and mounted; following that, coils of line would appear, and the laborious process of rerigging begun. After that, canvas sails would be carried aboard. Xia's servant told me Isolde tried to design their warships uniformly, so supplies could be as common to all as possible.

Now the hulk looked like a ship and was dragged on down the line. The rowers' oars and benches were loaded, then came barrels of salt pork and beef, then bedding, wine and freshwater barrels and so on -with each warehouse a chandlery with a single speciality. By the time it reached the end of the wharf, the warship was ready to be manned and put out into the roadstead to join its fellows. The process was impressive, but the ships being 'launched' I found less so. All of them were huge single-masted galleys, like the one I'd rescued Xia from. The Konyans didn't fancy swift, small galleys such as Cholla Yi, or some of the outer islanders, favoured.

I made it my business to inquire how Konyans fought their naval battles, and found it to be even more primitive than the so-called tactics my women had been taught when we sailed after the Archon so long before. A warship would be filled to the gunwales with soldiers soldiers who knew even less about ships and the sea than I had when we set out from Lycanth. The captain of that warship had simple duties - he was to sail in tight company with the fleet until they encountered the enemy. The order would be given to attack, always in some mass formation designated by the fleet admiral. The captain's final duty was to put his ship alongside that of an enemy. The soldiers would board the ship and take it by storm. All of his weaponry, from catapults to the crows'-beaks, which were spike-ended gangplanks meant to embed themselves immovably in an enemy's deck planking, were to produce this single end. Ramming was still considered an innovation, since all too often the ramming ship incurred as much damage as the one being rammed, or else broke free and the fighting soldiers could not carry the battle to its 'proper conclusion'. That was sea
battle
the way it always had been fought, and the way it always would be fought. The Sarzana would be using ships similar to ours, so the day would be carried by numbers, force of arms, sorcery, but most of all, justice. The last, I thought to myself, I'd seldom seen on a battlefield.

I remembered what Stryker and Duban had said during the storm about Xia's galley, and my own thoughts of direwolves bringing down a bear. This time, I did more than just remember. Late in the evenings I began holding very quiet, very private meetings with Corais, Ismet, and Dica, whom I welcomed because it's been my experienc
e a complete novice can frequentl
y see a better way more clearly than a veteran. Sometimes Polillo, in spite of her loud protests that she was a fighter, not a planner, took part.

I'd bought a cheap model of one of these monstrous Konyan ships in a bazaar, and the four or five of us would sit around the toy, like so many babes planning the next day's sail in a pond, and think. Sometimes our thoughts were meritorious,
mostly
foolish or impossible. But I wrote all of them down in a tablet, cursing as I did so and remembering what little talent I have with words. What we were talking about, and what fruits those long hours bore, I'll tell shortly.

Despite Xia's protests, I left the main part of her training to Ismet. I've learned that such things are best taught by others. A friend will be either too easy or too hard. Besides, there's nothing like the impersonal appraisal of a tough sergeant to see where one really stands; so the princess drilled in the practice yard along with the other

Guardswomen. She took to the bow and the spear and sword as if she were born to it, and flushed with vicious pleasure when she got the upper hand of her drilling partner and gave her a good drubbing with the wooden blade. And when I saw how quickly she learned to fire arrow after arrow into its mark, I was glad I hadn't relented and let her show up the dashing, all-knowing Captain Antero.

Plain exercise was another matter. Every evening we ran along the ring road that circled the humped main section of Isolde. It was a good five miles, beginning at the harbour and ending at a small tavern near my villa. It took me a week to get her built up enough to make that circle once. She was aghast at the end of that week when I told her that our next goal was to make it twice, then three times, then four.

'I doubt we'll make the last goal,' I said. 'There isn't time to get that much strength into your legs.'

'What's wrong with my legs?' she pouted. 'You seem to like them well enough when I'm not running on them.'

'Oh, I like them fine,' I said. 'And they're powerful enough when you've got them twined about my neck. But there's more stamina required for fighting than love, thank the gods. A soldier's legs are more important than even her weapons. They must carry her for miles to the fight, then hold her up under the most gruelling assaults at that fight, and if it is the whim of her superiors she might have to march right out again when the
battle
is over.'