The Tyrant by Eric Flint and David Drake

But once they’d left on this voyage, she’d seen no reason to keep the secret from the new friends she was making. By the time they got back to the Confederacy—if they ever did—it would all be a moot point, anyway.

When she finally had her baby down to the point of occasional little sobs, Helga turned to Polla and whispered a few words of thanks.

Polla shrugged. “Not the first time I’ve had to take care of scared kids. Not the worst, neither—not by a long ways.” She shook her head sadly. “I hate to see it, I really do. Children, specially babies, shouldn’t be inflicted with the ills of the world.”

Those words were the first thing which penetrated Helga’s still-seething fury. Broke the rage, in fact, like a needle punctures a bubble.

Children, specially babies . . .

There hadn’t been any children, of course, on the pirate ship. But . . . those “pirates,” when all was said and done, had children of their own. Waiting for their fathers to return, back in a cluster of small fishing villages.

Helga’s breath came in a little shudder. There would be no fathers returning this day. Nor any other. Helga’s vengeance had destroyed those villages along with the fathers. Within weeks, she knew, as the word of the disaster spread, the nearby villages would start predating on their own. Men would come in little bands, raiding on the outskirts at first to test the rumor. Then, seeing it was true, would swarm the shattered villagers. Kill the men left—old or crippled, most of them—then sell the women and children into slavery.

Dozens of children, many of them no older than her own, had been doomed as well by Helga’s vengeance. That vengeance had killed the fathers in less than an hour. It would torture their children for a lifetime.

“And so what?” she muttered, half snarling. She gave Polla a look which was almost one of appeal. But Polla only returned the look with those same soft, sad brown eyes.

“It’s a pity,” was all she said. “But that’s the way of the world.”

* * *

That night, as always, Jessep himself came down to the hold. The other senior men with “wives” aboard only visited them on occasion, but Jessep spent every night with Ilset folded into his arms.

“Folded,” that is, using the term loosely. Sound carried in the hold, the partitioning cloths being no better insulators than thin linen ever is. Helga had been amused, impressed—and envious, truth to tell—at the sounds issuing from Jessep and Ilset’s little partition each and every night since the voyage began. Middle-aged or no, head injury or no, Jessep Yunkers seemed to have neither difficulty nor reluctance keeping his healthy young wife entertained.

Unlike all the previous nights, however, Jessep came by her partition first. Helga heard him whisper through the cloth.

“Are you all right, ma’am?”

“I’m fine, First Spear.” Then, moved by a sudden and powerful impulse: “Come in. Please.”

A moment later, a bit gingerly, Jessep moved aside the cloth and stooped into her section. Helga was propped against a little pile of cushions, with her son asleep in the crook of her arm. With her right hand, she patted a space next to her.

“Sit. Please.”

Jessep did as she bade him, although it was obvious that he felt very awkward in such close and casual familiarity with a noblewoman.

Helga gave him a smile which she intended to be reassuring. But, to her surprise, felt the smile dissolve into a little sob. A little sob which became wracking tears within seconds.

Now it was her turn to be enfolded in Jessep’s embrace. There was nothing sexual about the contact, however. The man’s strong arms reminded her of her father’s, in the years now long past when she had been a child herself. And, though she’d always been a self-confident girl, there had been times when she’d needed that comfort.

“S’all right, girl,” whispered Yunkers. ” ‘Ma’am,’ I mean.”

A laugh burst its way through the sobs. “Call me ‘girl,’ Jessep. Or ‘lass’ or whatever else you want. Just ‘Helga’ will do fine, for that matter.”

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