The King's Buccaneer

by Raymond E. Feist

  From above, the lookout shouted, “Smoke, Captain!”

  “Where away?”

  “Dead astern!”

  Nicholas and Amos hurried back up on deck and squinted against the setting sun. A plume of smoke rose like a tattered flag and Amos said, “That Keshian cutter found someone.”

  “Yes, but who?” asked Nicholas.

  —

  AMOS’S PREDICTION HAD been apt. When dawn broke, the Royal Gull was less than a mile away, slightly to the north of them. Nicholas watched as the ship slowly grew larger, then ordered the helm ported, so their own speed fell off. The tacking duel really slowed their pace, and Amos came up on deck.

  He climbed to the quarterdeck and said, “Something new?”

  “Yes,” said Nicholas. “They’re doing nothing that makes sense, except slowing down. I wonder if they’re going to turn and attack?”

  Amos looked at the other ship, “If they’re going to, they’ll be turning about…now!” The other ship turned.

  “All hands on deck!” shouted Nicholas. “Mr. Pickens, turn to port and see if we can be heading out on the upwind leg before they get turned around and their sails trimmed.”

  Nakor came running up on deck, shouting, “There’s something! There’s something!”

  Nicholas said, “What are you talking about?”

  “I don’t know,” said the little man, hopping back and forth from foot to foot. “There’s a trick here. I can feel it!”

  Anthony came up an instant later and said, “Nicholas, something strange is happening to us. I can sense it.”

  “Do you have any idea what it is?” asked Nicholas.

  Abruptly there was a sound like a giant cloth ripping, and a ringing like a chime, but loud and sustained, hanging in the air and grating on the nerves, like the shriek of broken chalk on a slate board.

  Nicholas felt his skin break out in chill bumps, and his breath came short. Then Anthony pointed. “Look!”

  Through a shimmering haze on the horizon, the droman materialized. “It’s a trick!” shouted Nakor. “They’ve hidden the ship from our eyes, and the other ship has slowed us down!”

  Anthony said, “A spell of masking.”

  Amos said, “Now we know who that Keshian freebooter encountered late yesterday.”

  “And who won.” Nicholas judged the position of the two ships. “Make ready for battle!” he called. “Mr. Pickens, bring her back to starboard. We’re taking the Gull.”

  Orders were passed, and Ghuda and Praji formed their mercenary companies, one in the rigging, the other on deck. Those prisoners from Crydee who were fit carried weapons, but most of them also carried ropes and grapples. Sailors above frantically reversed the set of sails they had begun trimming for a turn to port, and now were lengthening sheets they had just shortened, while others quickly pulled in those that they had just let out.

  Marcus and Calis were climbing to archers’ platforms in the rigging, with a half-dozen other archers. They picked their targets and began firing, their longbows able to reach farther than any other bows on either ship. Sailors on the Gull dived for cover, and when Calis killed the helmsman, the ship turned and wallowed.

  The Eagle bore down on its sister ship, and Amos called ranges for Nicholas, judging the closing distance and angle with a practiced eye. At the center of the deck, Margaret, Brisa, and Iasha, with some of the townswomen and boatmen, quickly set fire pots to burning, fanning coals to life.

  “Hard aport!” shouted Amos, and Pickens spun the wheel as fast as he could. The Eagle descended on the Gull, and men on both decks braced themselves for a ramming collision. But as the bow of the Eagle seemed ready to pierce the railing of the Gull, the Eagle turned ponderously to the left. Spars on the bowsprit and braces on the fore channel shattered, sending wooden splinters flying through the air like missiles. Then the hulls struck, a glancing blow, but with enough force that one soldier was thrown from his perch in the rigging of the Eagle, and another was left dangling from the ropes, while his sword clattered on the deck below.

  A full score of men stood ready to greet the attackers, and Nicholas shouted, “Nakor, if you have any tricks to help, now’s the time!”

  Nakor reached into his black rucksack and pulled out something that looked like a ball of smoke, black churning in his hand. Then Nicholas saw it was a swarm of some kind of insects.

  He threw it toward the Gull, and the cloud grew, and a loud angry buzzing filled the air as the two ships lurched together. The row of defenders cried out and began swatting at stinging insects.

  Nakor said, “It won’t last long. Hurry.”

  Nicholas gave the signal. “Now!” shouted Harry, overseeing the men from Crydee with the grapples, and they threw the heavy three-pronged hooks. Two bounced off the rail and fell between the ships, while another bounced harmlessly off the deck when the man throwing it let go of the rope in his excitement. But the others held, and pulled, and the two ships came together with a grinding crash.

  The men with the grappling ropes quickly tied them off, then drew their weapons to join in the boarding. Each wore a headband of black cloth, at Nicholas’s insistence, so that should any man find himself facing an inhuman copy, he would know he faced a false human, even if the face was that of a brother or friend. Each man had been warned that to lose the headband was to chance being killed by a friend, and if the headband was lost, to fall to the deck and get out of the way.

  Praji’s mercenaries swarmed the deck, while those with Ghuda swung across from the rigging above. Nicholas looked to the main deck and saw that Tuka and his boatmen, and some of the women from Crydee, stood ready. They would either carry hot pitch to be thrown at the next ship, or put out fires that might erupt on the Eagle.

  Nicholas saw that everything was as ordered as it would be, drew his own sword, and took a running leap at the rail. With one foot on the rail of the Eagle, he pushed off and launched himself across six feet of space high above two hulls grinding together, to land on the forecastle of the Gull. Nakor’s stinging bugs were gone, but they’d done their job.

  The ships were lashed together fore-to-aft, and their sails and rigging conspired to force the locked pair of ships to turn in a slow circle. Nicholas cursed the luck that forced him to take the Gull bow to stern. It would make it much more difficult to cut her loose and get away than had they overtaken her from the same direction. He hoped it would not leave them vulnerable to the approaching droman.

  A black-clad officer attacked Nicholas, and the Prince parried the first blow. The man had a tendency to follow a pattern of three blows, and the third time he began the sequence, Nicholas easily took him in the chest with the point of his sword.

  Nicholas glanced around and saw one of his own men being pushed over the side of the rail. Nicholas killed the man doing the pushing, and helped the man regain the deck. They saw they were alone on the foredeck, and Nicholas shouted, “Amos, over here!”

  Amos picked up a small cask, the sort used for brandy, and threw it across to Nicholas. Nicholas’s knees buckled, and he let out a woof of exertion as he caught it, but he held on to it.

  To the soldier with him he shouted, “Open that small hatchway, and be careful of surprises!”

  The man pushed it aside with his foot, leaning away, and a crossbow bolt shot out. Nicholas didn’t wait; he threw the cask down into the darkness. He heard a satisfying crash of wood and a cry of pain. “That’s one!” he shouted to Amos.

  Amos tossed him another, and he quickly smashed that down after the first; then they pushed the cover closed.

  Picking up his sword, Nicholas looked down at the main deck, seeing that the fighting was spread out across the deck, a no-man’s-land, with no clear-cut line separating the opposing forces.

  Nicholas swung down the ladder, planting his boot in the back of a man facing one of Praji’s mercenaries. The black-clad sailor stumbled forward, and the mercenary quickly killed him.

  Nicholas skirted the fighting until he wa
s moving along the rail closest to his own ship. Ghuda, Praji, and Vaja were holding a clear area of deck, and Nicholas joined them, forcing their way past a small central hatchway. As soon as he was there, Nicholas turned and shouted, “Another barrel!”

  Amos and Harry carried a larger barrel and had to rest it on the moving rails of the ships while Nicholas took hold of it. Harry scrambled over and helped his friend pick up the large barrel. It was ten gallons of oil, and with the rolling deck below them, they had a difficult time getting it over the hatchway. Nicholas counted three and they dropped it.

  The oil was lamp oil and wouldn’t burn without a wick under normal conditions, but Nakor had insisted that if the fire around it grew hot enough, it would aid the ship in burning, melting the pitch between the planks of the hull and either burning her to the water line, or causing enough leaks to sink her.

  Turning away from the hatch, Nicholas saw that the main hatchway was momentarily clear. “Get another!” he shouted to Harry, while he raced to stand over the next hatchway.

  Two sailors from the Gull seemed to materialize out of nowhere, and Nicholas engaged them both. He had practiced against multiple opponents in the marshalling yard as soon as he had picked up his first sword, but never before had his life been the prize. He remembered what his father and his drill instructor had told him over and over: unless the two men he was facing had practiced together, they were as likely to get in each other’s way as to help each other. Wait, defend, and watch for an opening.

  As if his father had staged an example for his benefit, the man on the left stepped in front of the man on the right. The second man bumped him, pushing him off balance, and he died on Nicholas’s sword before he could recover it. Nicholas then pushed back the second man, and took him in the throat as Ghuda arrived, carrying a large barrel. He dumped it down the hatchway and shouted, “That’s all of them!”

  “Call for the fire and get off this ship!” shouted Nicholas.

  Every man on the raiding party had been told that as soon as fire had been passed to the Gull the only order would be to fight back to the Eagle.

  Tuka’s boatmen stood around a small cooking pot, set over an open brazier, heating pitch. Above, men waited in the yards, while Nicholas’s boarders fought a retreat.

  The crew of the Gull, rather than press the advantage, sought to cut the Eagle loose, and Nicholas saw that his men were clearing the rail.

  “Now!” cried Nicholas.

  Above, Calis and Marcus began shooting fire arrows into the sails of the Gull. The other men in the yards lowered ropes and had bubbling pitch tied to them. They quickly pulled them up, for the hot pitch would cool rapidly, and the hotter the pitch, the easier to light.

  Nicholas watched with trepidation: handling fire aboard any ship was risky—during a battle it was extremely dangerous. No worst disaster than fire at sea existed, for a ship was like a tinderbox. A little flame anywhere in the sail or rigging, and the entire ship could be engulfed in minutes. Most of the material used to keep water out—pitch, tar, and oil—burned furiously, and even wetting canvas during a battle was scant protection against fire arrows or hot coals.

  Nicholas stood by the large brazier amidships, ready to dump the coals on his own deck and pour oil on the fire. If a blaze could not be set aboard the Gull, he would burn both ships, ordering his crew and passengers to abandon ship.

  In the rigging, men of Crydee cautiously struck flint and steel to tinder, and brought flame to life; they shielded the flickering ember, for their own sails were as dry and vulnerable to flame as the Gull’s. Reaching the end of the spars where the others waited, they passed along the burning brands, which were touched to the surface of the buckets of pitch. The pitch sprang into flame, and the men quickly threw the buckets onto the rigging and yards of the neighboring ship.

  Nicholas stood alone on the deck of the Gull, making sure his raiders were safely back, but as he started to climb back, a pair of sailors charged him and he found himself sitting on the rail, unable to move quickly. Someone hurled over the rail beside him, landing atop the two men. They all went to the deck in a heap, and Nicholas saw Ghuda get up. The big mercenary turned and started toward Nicholas, a smile on his face. “Let’s—” he began to say, then looked surprised.

  He took a step toward Nicholas, reaching behind him, as if trying to scratch his back, and said, “Damn me!”

  Nicholas, on the deck of the Eagle, saw Ghuda slump facedown across the rails, a knife protruding from his back. Nicholas reached over and pulled at the big mercenary, dragging him to the Eagle with a strength he wouldn’t have thought possible.

  Tuka raced forward, a burning pot of pitch dangling from one hand. He started a swinging arc, casting the pot over the rail to the Gull, when an arrow struck him in the chest. With a gurgling screech, he stumbled forward and over the rail, falling between the two hulls, which slid together with a sick, grinding crunch. The scream was cut off instantly.

  Nicholas felt ill. Anthony hurried to his side, and Nicholas said, “See to him,” pointing at Ghuda.

  Nicholas’s mercenaries hacked at the ropes that tied the ships together, while dodging sporadic arrow fire, as flames rained down on the Gull, perilously close to the Eagle. Margaret and Iasha stood ready with buckets of sand and water for any sign of flames on the deck. The men in the rigging were all carrying knives, to quickly cut loose any sail or line that might catch fire.

  Nicholas saw the crew of the Gull was now frantically attempting to combat flames in the rigging and sails, and ordered Pickens to pull away from the enemy ship.

  Pickens called back, “We’re locked up, Captain! We’re into the wind and can’t get loose until we turn!”

  Nicholas called for the boatmen to bring oars from the jolly boats and fend off the Gull. A dozen oars were carried to the rail and men attempted to push away the other ship, but to no avail.

  Lazily the two ships turned in the wind, locked together by circumstance. Then the two hulls began to slide along each other, with a grinding, shrieking sound as wood and metal scraped in a shuddering embrace.

  Then the Eagle heeled around the stern of the Gull, and with a thunderous bump the two ships struck one last time, and the Eagle rolled free.

  Small fires erupted in the rigging and on the deck, but these were quickly put out. Men who had been dumping flaming pitch on the enemies a few minutes before were now growing exhausted from hauling water up on those same ropes and dumping it on the sails, to keep sparks and embers from the Gull from drifting on the wind and firing the Eagle.

  Nicholas hurried to the aftercastle, mounting the quarterdeck, and watched as they slid past the Gull. Marcus swung down from the rigging and put his hand on his cousin’s shoulder. “We did it.”

  Nicholas said, “I hope so.”

  Then Nicholas felt Marcus’s hand grip his shoulder hard, and he saw what Marcus was seeing. As flames began to spread through the sails of the Gull, figures were running up on deck. Among those coming up from belowdecks, framed by smoke and a shower of embers, stood Margaret and Abigail, shrieking in terror.

  Close enough they could hear them, Nicholas and Marcus stood in mute horror. Nicholas glanced down at the main deck and saw Margaret there, dressed in her short shift, while the Margaret on the Gull wore a Princess’s gown.

  Then the Margaret on the Gull called, “Marcus! Help me!”

  The Abigail at her side screamed, “Nicholas! Save us!”

  With a low concussion, something belowdecks in the Gull caught fire, and flames shot up from the hatchways. The gown worn by the Margaret on the Gull caught fire, and she shrieked as she beat at the flames with her hands.

  An arrow sped from the rigging and caught her in the chest, knocking her back and out of sight. A second arrow caught Abigail in the chest, and she, too, fell.

  Calis swung down from the rigging above, landing lightly next to Nicholas and Marcus. “I saw no sense in prolonging that misery. They might be false, but the image was no less
terrible for that.”

  He nodded toward the mid-deck, where Abigail stood in mute horror, eyes wide at having witnessed her own death, while Margaret stood ashen-faced, her hands held tightly by Anthony.

  Nicholas nodded, then turned to look sternward. The droman was bearing down on them, and he shouted, “Get ready! We’re not done yet! Hard to starboard, Mr. Pickens.”

  Amos shouted, “Look!”

  Nakor and Praji came up on deck and over to Nicholas. “What?” asked Praji.

  “Who’s that in the bow?”

  Nicholas felt his heart sink as Nakor said, “It’s Dahakon.”

  A man in a brown robe, his arms folded in the sleeves, stood regarding the Eagle, and the burning Gull, impassively.

  “He must have used his arts to bring that ship here,” said Praji.

  “No,” said Nakor. “No trick to bring it here. He followed us the entire way. He only hid it from us with his trick.”

  “Impossible,” said Amos. “That ship couldn’t hold enough stores to feed the slaves and crew!”

  “Look,” said Nicholas, pointing.

  A figure moved to stand at Dehakon’s side, Valgasha, the Overlord. His skin was pale, bloated and flyblown, his movements jerky and uncoordinated. Upon his wrist the eagle spread its wings, a rotting mockery of its former splendor.

  “Necromancy,” said Nakor. “He’s an evil bastard.”

  Then Dehakon raised his hand, and Nicholas felt his skin pucker with chill bumps again. “He’s incanting,” said Anthony from below.

  Calis notched an arrow and let fly, but the shaft seemed to strike an invisible wall, stopping inches from the magician, falling to the deck.

  Men began to gather on deck, many calling down the favor of their gods as a ship of dead men approached. Across the water, figures gathered on deck, a silent force of corpses.

  Nakor closed his eyes and made a gesture, then he opened them again. “This is very bad.”

  Nicholas said, “Really?”