Pastwatch- The Redemption Of Christopher Columbus - By Orson Scott Card Page 0,42

Cristoforo.

"Hardly," said the captain. "We're loaded with cargo; they're not. They know these waters; we don't. And they're used to bloody-handed fighting. What do we have? Sword-bearing gentlemen and sailors who are terrified of battle on the open sea."

"Nevertheless," said Cristoforo, "God will fight on the side of just men."

The captain gave him a withering look. "I don't know that we're any more righteous than others who've had their throats slit. No, we'll outrun them if we can, or if we can't, we'll make them pay so dear that they'll give up and leave us. What are you good for, in a battle?"

"Not much," said Cristoforo. It would do no good to promise more than he could deliver. The captain deserved to know whom he could and could not count on. "I carry the sword for the respect of it."

"Well, these pirates will respect the blade only if it's well blooded. Have you an arm for throwing?"

"Rocks, as a boy," said Cristoforo.

"Good enough for me. If things look bad, then this is our last hope -- we'll have pots filled with oil. We set them afire and hurl them onto the pirate ships. They can't very well fight us if their decks are afire."

"They have to be awfully close, then, don't they?"

"As I said -- we only use these pots if things look bad."

"What's to keep the flames from spreading to our own ships, if theirs are in flames?"

The captain looked coldly at him. "As I said -- we want to make our fleet a worthless conquest for them." He looked again at the corsairs' sails, which were well behind them and farther off the coast. "They want to pinch us against the shore," he said. "If we can make it to Cape St. Vincent, where we can turn north, then we'll lose them. Till then they'll try to intercept us as we tack outward, or run us aground on the shoreward tack."

"Then let's tack outward now," said Cristoforo. "Let's establish ourselves as far from shore as possible."

The captain sighed. "The wisest course, my friend, but the sailors won't stand for it. They don't like being out of sight of land if there's a fight."

"Why not?"

"Because they can't swim. Their best hope is to ride some flotsam in, if we do badly."

"But if we don't sail out of sight of shore, how can we do well?"

"This isn't a good time to expect sailors to be rational," said the captain. "And one thing's sure -- you can't lead sailors where they don't want to go."

"They wouldn't mutiny."

"If they thought I was leading them to drown, they'd put this ship to shore and leave the cargo for the pirates. Better than drowning, or being sold into slavery."

Cristoforo had not realized this. It hadn't come up on any of his voyages before, and the sailors didn't speak of this when they were ashore in Genova. No, then they were all courage, fun of fight. And the idea that the captain couldn't lead wherever he might wish to command ... Cristoforo brooded about that idea for days, as the corsairs paced them, squeezing them ever closer to the shore.

"French," said the navigator.

As soon as he said the word, a sailor near him said, "Coullon."

Cristoforo started at the name. In Genova he had heard enough French, despite the hostility of the Genovese for a nation that had more than once raided their docks and tried to burn the city, to know that coullon was the French version of his own family's name: Colombo, or, in Latin, Columbus.

But the sailor who said it was not French, and seemed to have no idea that the name would mean anything to Cristoforo.

"Might be Coullon," said the navigator. "Bold as he is, it's more likely to be the devil -- but then they say that Coullon is the devil."

"And everyone knows the devil is French!" said a sailor.

They laughed, all who could hear, but there was little real mirth in it. And the captain made a point of showing Cristoforo where the firepots were, once the ship's boy had filled them. "Make sure you keep fire in your hands," he said to Cristoforo. "That is your blade, Signor Colombo, and they'll respect you."

Was the pirate Coullon toying with them? Was that why he let them stay just out of reach until Cape St. Vincent was tantalizingly in view? Certainly Coullon had no trouble then, closing the gap, cutting them off before they could break to the north, around the