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"Oh, Krim," she whispered. "Oh, Krim."
"You had not realized, Your Light?" Slee asked. Pedi just looked at her, and the serf inhaled sharply. "Oh, Krim."
"By the Fire, the Smoke, and the Ash!" Pedi cursed. "I had not thought. My father will kill me!"
"Your Light," Pin said, "anyone can find themselves benan. It ... happens."
"Not for that," Pedi said, cursing even more vilely. "For forgetting."
* * *
Roger watched the freed prisoners as the discussion of how to crew the vessels wrangled on. Usually, when a ship was captured, a small prize crew was put aboard by the victors. Its purpose was more to ensure that the survivors of the original crew took the captured vessel to the capturing ship's home port than to actually "crew" the prize itself.
But the Lemmar, almost to a Mardukan, had fought to the death. The reason for that ferocious, last-man defense had yet to be determined, but so far, the reaction to the pirates' efforts on the part of the Bronze Barbarians and their auxiliaries was fairly negative. The Lemmar had fought viciously and without quarter, but not particularly well. In the opinion of The Basik's Own, that changed them from heroic defenders to suicidal idiots.
Whatever the Lemmar's reasons, there were too few left to man this ship, and much the same story was coming from all of the others. Coupled with the anticipated recapture of the convoy's merchantships to the north, it meant that most of the flotilla's present and prospective prizes would be severely underma
It was with that consideration in mind that Roger was examining the freed captives. Depending on their background, it might or might not be possible to press them into service as sailors. Thus far, though, they were looking fairly ... odd.
For one thing, it was clear that the female Cord had "rescued" (to the extent that she'd needed rescuing) was in charge. That was strange enough, since there'd been only two places in their entire journey where women were considered anything but chattels. Even in those two places, a woman would not automatically be assumed to be the boss, but in this case, she most definitely was.
There was also the question of her age. Her horns were rather short and very light in color. That smooth, honey-yellow look was generally only found in very young Mardukans, but there was a darker, rougher rim at the base, so it was possible that their coloration and condition were manufactured rather than natural. The other female captive, who had been doing most of the talking thus far, also had horns that were smoother and somewhat lighter than normal. He wondered if the coloration and smoothness was a societal symbol? If that were the case, perhaps the warrior-female's companions were deferring to her because the condition of her horns marked her as belonging to a higher caste.
Whatever they'd been talking about seemed to have been wrapped up, though, because the leader—Pedi Karuse, if he recalled correctly—was striding over to the command group with a very determined set to her four shoulders.
"Your girlfriend's on her way over, Cord," Roger said.
"She is not my 'girlfriend.' " D'Nal Cord looked down at the prince and made an eloquent, four-armed gesture of combined resignation and disgust. "I do not play with children."
"Just save 'em, huh?" Roger joked. "Besides, I don't think she's all that young."
"It was my duty," the shaman answered loftily. "And, no, she is not 'that young'; she is simply too young."
"Then I don't see what the problem is," Roger continued. "Unless you're just feeling picky, of course."
He was enjoying the shaman's discomfiture. After all the months of having Cord follow him around, dropping proverbs and aphorisms at every turn (not to mention thumping him on the head to emphasize the points of his moral homilies on a ruler's responsibilities), it was good to see him off balance for once. And for all of his rejection of the local female as "just a child," it was clear that the shaman was ... attracted to her.
Cord glowered at him, and Roger decided to let his mentor off the hook. Instead, he turned his attention to the Mardukan female as she arrived.
"Pedi Karuse? What can we help you with?"
Pedi was unsure how to broach the subject, so she fell back upon ceremony.
"I must speak to you of the Way of Honor, of the Way of the Warrior."
Roger recognized the formal phrasing as distinctly ceremonial, and his toot confirmed that the terms were in a separate dialect, probably archaic.
"I will be pleased to speak to you of the Way. However, most ways of the warrior recognize the primacy of current needs, and we are currently in a crisis. Could this discussion not wait?"
"I grieve that it ca
"Captain," Roger called to Pahner. "I need Eleanora over here, please!" He turned back to the Mardukan and raised a hand. "I need one of my advisers in on this. I suspect it's going to involve societal differences, and we're going to need better translation and analysis than I can provide."
Although the vern's accent was getting steadily and almost unbelievably quickly better, a great deal of what he had just said remained so much gibberish to Pedi. And whatever he'd just said couldn't change her obligations. Nor could the arrival of this "adviser" he mentioned.
"This ca
"I am Pedi Dorson Acos Lefan Karuse, daughter of Pedi Agol Ropar Sheta Gastan, King of the Mudh Hemh Vale, Lord of the Mudh Hemh. I bring to this place only my self, my training, my life, and my honor. I formally recognize the benan bond under the Way, and I thus pledge my service in all things, from here until we reach the end of the Way, through the Fire and through the Ash. Long may we travel."
"Oh, shit," Roger muttered in Imperial. He glanced at Cord, whose incomprehension of Pedi's language was only too apparent, and hastily consulted the cultural influence database of his toot. Then he consulted it again, cross indexing her words against the original language kernel and every other cultural matrix they'd passed through on their long trek. Unfortunately, it came out the same way both times.
"What?" Cord snapped. "What did she say?"
"Oh, man," Roger said, and shook his head bemusedly. "And you guys don't even have a language in common!"
"What?" Pahner asked, stepping over to the three of them.
"Hey, Cord," Roger said with an evil smile. "You remember all those times I warned you to think before you leap?"
"What did she say?" the shaman repeated dangerously. "And, no, that was usually myself or Captain Pahner speaking to you."
"Well, maybe you should have listened to yourself," Roger told him, begi
"Oh ... drat," Pahner said. He gazed at Pedi for a moment, then swiveled his eyes to Cord. "Oh ... pock."
"But ... But only my people recognize the bond of asi," Cord protested. "I have had long discussions with Eleanora about the culture of the People and the cultures of others we have met on our travels. And only the People recognize the bond of asi!"
Roger shook his head, trying—although not very hard—to keep his chuckle from turning into full-throated laughter. The attempt became even more difficult when he looked back at Pedi and recognized her frustration at finding herself just as incapable of understanding Cord as he was of understanding her. Their complete inability to communicate struck the prince as Murphy's perfect revenge upon the cosmopolitan shaman who had appointed himself Roger's "slave," mentor, moral preceptor, and relentless taskmaster. Especially since it looked very much to him as if Pedi was going to be at least as stubborn about this benan bond as Cord had been about the bond of asi.