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Crack. Rodriguez staggered back and grabbed at a rope, the imprint of Walker's hand across his face. Behind him Bill Cuddy picked a spare belaying pin out of the rack around the foremast and stepped forward, with McAndrews just behind him. Walker waved them back. This had to be settled right. He went on:
"Because, you dumb fuck, I told you to keep your hands off the blacksmith's woman. And you do what I tell you. What part of that is too complicated for you to understand?"
"You said we'd all get women!"
"You will… when you've earned it. Work to do first, fighting to do-and all of it when I say so. I say jump, you say 'How high, sir!' Got that? Sabe?" He gri
The Puerto Rican hesitated, wiping blood from his mouth, then whipped out his knife and lunged. Walker caught the wrist with a slap of flesh on flesh. Let's do this the simple, brute-strength, old-fashioned way.
He squeezed. Muscle stood out in cords along his forearm, and Rodriguez dropped the knife. It struck the deck point-down and the sharp point sank in enough to support it quivering by their feet. Walker kept up the pressure, until the bones in the smaller man's wrist began to grate together. He screamed and lashed out with the other hand. Walker caught that as well, twisting both arms until the seaman rose up on his toes, face livid and writhing with the unbearable pressure on his joints.
"And incidentally, Rodriguez, Isketerol is XO of this ship. So you don't call him 'wog.' You call him 'sir.' Capiche?"
"Sir, yessir!" came out in a gasp.
"And the reason I'm not pulling your arms out by the roots is that you're useful. But not that useful. So you're not going to try disobeying my orders again, are you?"
"Sir, nossir!"
This time it was more like a scream. Walker released him and he dropped to his knees, arms quivering with the released strain. The former Coast Guard officer raised his voice:
"Let's all get one thing straight. I'm in charge. Because I'm stronger and faster and meaner than any of you, but most of all because I'm smarter. I know the languages, I know the countries, I've got the plan. Without me you'd all be dead in a month-if you were lucky. Any arguments?"
There was a murmured chorus of agreement, a few grins and salutes. He went oh: "And I don't remember saying stop working." The crew split like magnetized billiard balls, back to the duties he'd assigned. "Thanks, by the way," he continued to McAndrews and Cuddy, nodding. "I'll remember that."
Good timing, he thought. Good that it had come so soon, and in such a formless way. He turned and walked back toward the wheel, passing John Martins crouched with his arm around Barbara.
"You know, John," Walker said cheerfully, "you'd better pray real hard that I stay alive. Because without me, I don't think you or your little second-wave flower child there would live long enough to dance on my grave."
He turned aside from their glares, laughing. He was still chuckling when he settled by the wheel. Isketerol was standing there, his cloak flying in the wind and feet braced against the plunging roll of the ship, one hand caressing the butt of his pistol.
"You like not mutiny, do you, blood-brother," he said with a grin. The language was Tartessian.
"Not unless I'm leading it," Walker agreed, in the same tongue; slow and halting, but understandable. He switched to Iraiina. "Better this way. I don't have laws and custom behind me, only my own strength. Now they know my strength."
"Better still if you'd flogged him," Isketerol suggested.
Walker clapped the Tartessian on the shoulder. "Maybe with your people, but not with mine, brother. That would have convinced them I'd gone mad, and they'd have killed me to save themselves."
"You know them best," Isketerol shrugged. "Will they stay obedient when they learn about the guns?"
Walker shrugged in turn. "They don't have much choice. They can't go back, and alone they're just so much meat. We still have the shotguns and pistols, anyway." He shook his head admiringly. "That is one smart bitch," he said. "Of course, look on the bright side." The Iraiina word was sun-turned, but it meant about the same thing.
"Is there a bright side to the most powerful weapons being useless?"
"Of course. We can't use them without the pins… but Alston can't either, without the guns. And we have the two Garands-they're functional."
Isketerol nodded respectfully. "You are a hard man to discourage; that is good. No plan works perfectly against an enemy."
"Interesting; we have exactly the same saying."
Walker looked up at the sky, and took a glance at the compass and his wristwatch. "We're making two hundred miles today," he said. "But we may have to reef; I don't want to risk the sails."
Isketerol flipped a hand in agreement, looking around. "What a ship!" he breathed. "The Eagle, that was like sailing a mountain-it never seemed real to me. But this Yare, I understand her. Let me sail her into Tartessos harbor, and in a year I will have four more like her with trained crews."
"And she'll be yours," Walker agreed. "Just as soon as I'm in Tiryns, with my men."
"We will do much good business together," Isketerol said, pleased.
Up. Guard, guard, crosscut, crosscut, pivot, guard…
The swords moved in perfect unison, flashing in smooth controlled arcs. Their feet rutched across the sand of the beach as one, like a mirror image set side by side as they went through the kata. Alston held the last movement, crouched with the sword out and down, until her leg muscles began to quiver slightly. Then she sank back to one knee, sword snapping sideways in the move that was meant to represent flicking excess blood off the blade. Pull the cloth out of your belt, run the sword through it, slide it back into the sheath, sink back on your heels with hands on thighs…
That night was the first time I've ever actually cut anyone with this thing, she thought as she completed the movement.
Oh, she'd shot once or twice in the line of duty; hurt men with her hands and feet a few more times in self-defense. Never used the steel to kill before, though, or really thought she would-except in the trancelike way you were supposed to imagine it as you practiced. Odd. I'd have thought it would affect me more. Instead she simply felt irritated she hadn't been able to finish David Lisketter off. Perhaps it was the circumstances; she'd been angry. Controlled enough to use it rather than be used by it, but it was nothing like action against a boatful of drug smugglers. Much more personal; her friends had been in danger of death, one hurt… she'd never felt so lifted out of herself before.
"How are you?" Swindapa asked beside her.
Alston laid the sheathed sword down before her, bowed to it with hands and forehead to the ground, and sat back. "No pain at all. Just a bit of an itch," she said, touching the wound under a small bandage. Of course, an inch this way and I'd have left brains spattered on the Athenaeum notice board.
"I was so frightened for you," Swindapa said. "I asked Moon Woman to find the good star for you, one that would stand for your birthstar and namestar."
"You did the right thing though, sugar," Alston said. "Gettin' help." Rushing in like a berserker would have been the worst possible choice at that moment.
"But you're still hurt," Swindapa went on, the hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth. "You shouldn't be all alone in that big cabin on the Eagle-"