Swordships of Scorpio

Chapter thirteen

Chapter thirteen

Viridia the RenderWe were given the usual alternatives.

Given them, I do not believe a single oar-slave took the choice that would see his carcass hurled over the side and feathered with arrows in sport.

What others considered as an omen I took, also, I confess, as some kind of pointer to the future, for all the seven moons of Kregen floated in the night sky above as Viridia spoke to us.

“Never disdain the power of women,” said Viridia. “For my fighting-girls have laid the whole crew of this King’s Swordship low, and have taken her, and now she is ours.”

I could not see Viridia very clearly, for the stump end of a varter interposed its ratchets and its winding windlasses and loosing mechanism between, so that I caught only fragmentary glimpses of her as she moved abou