“Not so fast, dammit,” she growled. When Adrian turned about, looking suitably guilt-faced, Helga gave him a fierce embrace and a kiss. Fierce, but brief. She understood that this was no time for lingering affections. She simply wanted—something.
He gave her an embrace and a kiss just as fierce as her own. So, after the door closed, she was able to face the moment with something close to serenity.
“You didn’t tell him, did you?”
That was Ilset’s voice, coming from behind her. Helga turned and saw that Jessep’s wife was standing in the doorway, her own infant in her arms and a questioning smile on her face.
“The gods, no,” growled Helga. “If Adrian finds out I’m pregnant again, he’ll never let me out of the wagon. Not once—you watch—in the whole coming campaign.”
Ilset shook her head. “Why in the name of the gods would you want to? I mean—when soldiers get into their own lingo—” She made a face. “Gods, and they say women are boring!”
Helga didn’t try to answer. There was no way she could explain. Not to someone like Ilset, at any rate. Nor, she suspected, to any woman she knew.
Her brother Trae would have understood, but he had long since departed. Trae, too, came from that ancient line which had never forgotten their duty, however much all others who claimed to be of noble blood might have done so.
She was too young to understand the absurdity of her sentiments. Her father could have explained to her how ridiculous it was to call treason “duty.” Yet, all the while, he would have understood her perfectly.
Of course, Demansk also would have forbidden her to leave the wagon during the campaign, had he known she was pregnant. In that, if nothing else, the authoritative father was just as much a creature of custom as the rebel lover. Even if, to the world at large, the two of them were about to turn everything upside down.
Chapter 18
“Casull probably beheaded every priest in Chalice before he set out,” jeered Thicelt, glancing up approvingly at the clear blue sky. “You can bet he’s had them praying for bad weather for the last three months straight.”
Standing next to him on the raised quarterdeck of the huge quinquireme which served as his flagship, Demansk smiled coldly. Whether or not the King of the Isles had actually executed any priests, Demansk had no doubt at all he was thoroughly disgruntled with them by now. And with his own deities, for that matter. Especially Lemare, the Goddess of the Sea.
The weather was perfect—had been for a week, with no sign of any change. The sea was calm, the winds just heavy enough to have made the fleet’s passage down the coast and across the Western Ocean to the archipelago a matter of an easy week’s voyage. Now, the largest fleet ever assembled in history was off the northeast coast of the island of Chalice. From his vantage point on the elevated quarterdeck, Demansk could see the caldera which formed the harbor of the capital, if not the city of Chalice itself. And, not too far to the west, perhaps ten or fifteen miles, the snow-covered Peak of the Sun God. The largest volcano in the archipelago was still somewhat active, although it had never erupted in historical times. There was a thin plume of smoke rising from its crest to the heavens—and rising almost straight up. Even at that altitude, obviously, the winds were light.
Demansk didn’t doubt that every morning for the past many weeks the first thing King Casull IV had done, rising from his sleep, was to go out upon his balcony in the royal palace and stare up at that volcano. And then curse bitterly, seeing the same steady rise of the plume.
Half a century ago, the Confederacy had conquered and absorbed the Emeralds; and then, with that example before them, had coerced the Roper League and Hagga into accepting “auxiliary nation” status. From that moment forward, with the entire north coast of the continent under their control, there had been only three things which had kept the Confederacy from finally putting paid to the obnoxious pirates from the Western Isles.