--- Introduction ---
It ought to be every man's dream to share a small boat with a woman blessed the beauty and grace of a goddess, to be alone with her, to have both of us naked in the light of an early summer morning. It ought to send fire down my nerves and set my blood boiling to look at the slender, golden body of a young woman with large, firm breasts and smooth, sleek skin. It ought to make me lose all sense of time and place when those large, black, slanted eyes made connection with my own.
But since this woman had tried to attack me thrice during the preceding night, when what her eyes showed was nothing but contempt and hate, then one can understand that I was not feeling neither amorous nor comfortable. Take into account that I had not eaten nor drunk anything since last afternoon, and that I was sweaty and tired from rowing the boat, and you have my current situation.
===
The woman was my prisoner. That is, she was not really a true woman at all. She was a siren, of a race of she-demons that used their sugary sweet curse-song to lure sailors to their death.
Yesterday she and her flock of sirens had caused the death of the crew and passengers of the good ship Lady of Eastborne. They had been smashed to death against a reef along with the ship, or they had drowned, or the sirens had mated with them until they died from fatigue while under the spell of the curse-song.
Only one man had survived, only one had been unaffected by the singing. Me. Ward of Deepwoods, passenger on my way from Eastborne to Gnarlstraits. I had recently been dubbed and made a Gray Knight. On my way to my first assignment, a post at the House of the Knights, I had been eager to see the world, to experience life outside the Academy.
Right now I felt I had seen enough and experience enough, as I looked at the siren I had captured. I used my new, shining sword had cut off her long, black hair and so quell her powers of Wind. The now savaged head of the woman was only thing that marred her otherwise perfect appearance. Then I had forced her to travel with me in this, the only surviving lifeboat of the Lady of Eastborne.
I tried not to focus on her beauty. I planned to bring her to justice for what she and the others had done. But right now it did not seem very likely.
We had no food, no fresh water, and no direction to go. We would probably die out here on the calm ocean, and in her frustration she had tried to kill me during the night. But now, with the sun rising she merely looked at me with hate in her eyes.
--- Rowing on the Sea of Seven Perils. ---
I broke the prolonged eye contact with the siren and let my gaze wander all over the scene around me instead. It was ocean, ocean everywhere, no land, no ships, no anything in sight. The green sea with its yellow tints was strangely calm. Only a few lazy waves made the little boat rock gently from side to side.
This part of the World Ocean was known as the dreaded Sea of Seven Perils, the one place in the East-West trading routes where the ships had to sail out of sight of the shore and so be at the complete mercy of the Sea.
So far it had been disappointingly stingy with its infamous perils. There was neither much harsh Weather nor treacherous Reefs, just calm, green sea. There was the peril of the Siren, of course, but the one I had with me was not very strong and posed not immediate danger to me. I had proved immune, or almost immune, to their curse-song. Why, I did not know.
So, in lack of other perils, we were in danger from dying of thirst. I would almost relish the appearance of a Wyrm, a peril that would at least entail dying with my boots on and a weapon in my hand. I looked down at my sword lying at the bottom of the boat. I had no boots do die with, the sword was the only possession I had left in the world, that and its scabbard and belt.
I had lost everything. I was not sure why the Antlered One had put me in this plight after he had saved me from the sirens, but I knew now that I would not be able to take my post at the House in Gnarlstraits for a long, long time, yet. If ever.
With a grunt I pulled at the oars. I was not sure why I kept rowing. There was nowhere to go, and I had no idea whether I held to a straight course or not, as I had never been to sea before. The only result was that I exhausted myself, and that I was very conscious of the drops of sweat I was producing by my labor.
Sweating was my stubborn, stupid attempt to pretend that I did not care that the siren looked so divinely beautiful as she did, that I did not care to appear handsome to her. She was one of those responsible for the death of the crew and passengers of the Lady of Eastborne, she was my prisoner, and so she would damn well stand having me stink from my effort. The fact that my manhood would become as hard as a steel pole from time to time when I looked at her did not change that, no matter how embarrassing it felt.
===
I looked back at her where she sat in the aft seat of the small vessel. She was still staring angrily at me, using her hands to cover part of her nakedness. One hand was held over her breasts, the other hung between her legs.
As my shaft began thickening and rising yet again, unbidden, I decided to try to speak to her. I could not hide my desire, so I thought to distract her from it instead. Thinking about it, I realized that we had been in this boat now for an entire night, and we had not exchanged a single word. I did not even know if she could speak at all!
"My name is Ward, Ward of Deepwoods. What is your name?" I said in the tongue of Eastborne, my native language.
She looked at me with the kind of disgust the prettiest girls will give the ugliest boys when they are stupid enough to ask them to dance. But it was clear from her scornful eyes that she had not understood me, it was just my attempt at communication that she spurned.
"My name is Ward, Ward of Deepwoods. What is your name?" I said in Falconlandish. The city that took the name of the hunting bird was a powerful influence on lands on the shores of many seas.
Once more the big, black eyes glinted with derision, and her full lips curled up in a dismissive snarl. But there was no sign of her catching the meaning my words, and I was beginning to run out of languages. As a Gray Knight I had been taught more than the art of warfare, but I was no scholar.
"My name is Wa-" I began in yet another tongue.
"You speak like the gull: loud, annoying, and pure gibberish," she said in Marine. Of course, that strange language of the sea. Sailors would speak it among themselves, in one of many various dialects spread across the entire World Ocean. But those dialects were only shadows of the true Marine language. Only the creatures of the sea, it was said, spoke it in its pure form.
It was language of power, containing the raw forces of mighty storms and tidal waves and whirlpools, and I realized that the curse-song of the sirens must contain some secret words from this language, words that had driven the men of the Lady of Eastborne mad.
"You look like a gull as well. Vacant eyes and open mouth," she added scornfully as I was thinking about this.
My mouth was indeed open, I realized. Not just because I was surprised that she could speak, or even that she was intelligent enough to make scathing jokes at my expense. No, I was struck by the beauty of her voice.
When the sirens had sung earlier, I had compared their song to that of honey poured on silk. That quality remained in her speaking voice as well. So when she spoke it was as if the loveliest Princess, the youngest, most beautiful daughter of some legendary King of the world, had opened her mouth. Even her derision had a touch of elegance and smoothness in it, and the sound of it made me want to pull her to me and make love to her.
"You speak tongue call Marine?" I replied finally, haltingly. I had only learned a smattering of the language from sailors that would came ashore in Eastborne when I was a Squire there.
"And you don't, evidently," she replied, and I think I caught a hint of a smirk on her face.
I grunted, and pulled irritably at the oars. I was being outsmarted by my prisoner. She was half a head lower than me, at my mercy, and she was smirking at me!
"Call me Ward," I tried again. "Call you what?"
"What?"
"Call me Ward. Call you-"
She snorted, and yawned prettily. Even her dismissal was done with an otherworldly elegance.
"Me Ward," I said, pointing at me. "You?" I pointed at her..
"Ah, I see," she gloated. "When you try to communicate at a level that befits your limited faculties, then I manage to understand you. Good, good. Your name is, I take it, Ward. I am a Sister of the Wind, and we do not need what you call names. We know who we are."
She spoke rapidly, and I did not understand much of what she said. But that she was insulting me I gathered.
"What you call!?" I replied threateningly.
She sighed theatrically and spoke slowly, her mouth making exaggerated movements. "You Ward. Me no name. Me no call nothing."
All right, so she had no name. "Me you call Siren," I said.
"No, Sirens are what others call us. I am a Sister of the Wind."
