by Paul Collins
Minutes later, the alarmed captain and officers were gathered on the sterncastle, staring at the approaching caravels.
‘They are at least twice as fast as we are,’ observed the first mate, Henrik Ju’shron.
‘Don’t know why they’re bothering with us,’ said the purser. ‘Our cargo is bulky, and would be little more than beer money to them.’
‘The Dragonfang,’ the captain said flatly, fixing one rheumy eye on the fast approaching vessel. He passed his farsight to the first mate. ‘That does it for us. It’s the fastest three-master there is. Navigator, what is your opinion?’
‘I think we should have a nice jar of Maldera ’25,’ managed the navigator, who was being held up by two sailors.
‘Why do I bother?’ muttered the captain. ‘Master Jaelin, what are your estimates, lad?’
‘We are about twelve hours from Zaria, and we are about twelve minutes from being boarded –’
An arrow swished past Jelindel and thudded into the navigator’s chest, killing him instantly. Everyone immediately dropped to the deck.
‘– but we are already within bowshot,’ Jelindel finished.
A flurry of arrows then landed among them.
Jelindel got up. ‘The initial volley is always meant as a warning.’
Captain Porterby floundered between indecision and certainty. ‘Open the weapons racks. All hands to the deck,’ he shouted. ‘Someone run up that confounded white flag!’
It took another two or three minutes before his orders were obeyed and every seaman and officer was armed with swords and bows.
‘Now, at my word,’ the captain began. ‘All hands, fling your swords and bows overboard and make sure that the privateers see you do it.’
A murmur of dissent swept the seamen. But the veterans among them knew that to resist was certain death. Privateers often spared those who surrendered – it was bad for business to kill merchant seamen. As for those who retaliated, few were ever seen again.
When the crew had flung overboard everything that even vaguely resembled a weapon, they began to chant, ‘We surrender.’ All joined in, except those who were sent aloft to take in the sails. The flagman on the Dragonfang signalled that they should reef the sails, and the Dark Empress signalled that it was being done. Then the signal to be boarded was given.
‘I was told that we would be in savage, exciting battles,’ muttered Hargav miserably, as he helped Jelindel haul on a line.
‘Well, the navigator was killed,’ she pointed out.
‘That was only because we did not surrender fast enough. We should have … you know …’
‘Fought?’ Jelindel said.
‘That’s right,’ Hargav said, bunching his hands into fists.
‘Down to the last man, no doubt,’ Jelindel said. ‘Personally, I’d rather live to fight another day. Now keep close to me, Hargav.’ She ruffled his hair. ‘And keep your mutinous thoughts to yourself. They’ll like as not have you tossed overboard for shark bait.’
Grapples were thrown aboard, the Dragonfang was made fast to the Dark Empress, then a couple of dozen sailors came aboard and tied up the entire ship’s company. Only then did the captain of the Dragonfang climb over the rail from the smaller but faster ship.
‘I am Captain Learder,’ he said, pacing before the officers of the Dark Empress.
‘And I am Captain Porterby,’ the Dark Empress captain said. ‘Under the terms and conditions of –’
‘Silence!’ bellowed the privateer. ‘I am in command, and your lives hang by my word. Remember that, and take care that you provoke me to no angry words.’
A pirate came hurrying up from below decks and stood before the privateer captain. ‘The cargo is oil, plates and the like,’ he reported. ‘Not much worth pissing on.’
‘I already knew that,’ said the privateer, turning back to the officers of the Dark Empress. ‘But my informant also told me that a pentacle jewel is aboard.’
The faces of his captives remained blank.
‘Some of you, perhaps most of you, do not know what you carry.’ He strode along in front of the officers, searching each man’s face. ‘Let me explain. There is a gemstone aboard, probably well hidden. It is said to burn scarlet with the fires of another world. It is worth enough to buy my fleet of caravels five times over, and it is more magical than a convention of Senior Adepts. I want it.’
Captain Learder craned his neck and appeared to study the furled spars. ‘I could very well hang a man from the yardarm on the minute until my demands are met.’ He looked back at the officers. ‘But I doubt there’s one among you who knows where the gem is. Constra – get a move on and search this tub while there’s still daylight. Get on with it, man.’
‘Cap’n, sir.’
The sun was setting, and after a quick, preliminary search of the ship, the privateers moved the crew below decks. As the least likely to cause trouble among the Dark Empress crew, Hargav was kept on deck to familiarise the mutineers with the ship. The passengers were deemed to be most likely the couriers of the pentacle gem, and were held separately in the officers’ quarters for interrogation.
It was dark when Hargav was thrown down the stairs and shoved into the cabin with the rest of the crew.
He had no answers to the questions that were instantly hurled at him. All he knew was that the mutineers were tearing the Dark Empress apart in search of some gemstone, and that the merchant’s representative, Larachel, had already been interrogated. Hargav himself had been kicked and abused, and Jelindel tended to his head wounds as they sat in the gloom of a single oil lantern.
Jelindel was roused from a deep sleep. Judging by the snores in the hot, crowded cabin, no one else was awake. What had woken her? She was well used to the creaking timbers and the waves batting against the planks; the grumblings and snorting of her fellow crew members.
She sat up. The oil lantern had died and the silvery light of Specmoon and Reculemoon that pushed through the porthole did little to illuminate the cabin. In the gloom, she strained to hear beyond the immediate noises. Had it been a thump she had heard? Her skin crawled with unease. She considered waking the others, but to what end?
Someone hammered at the hatch door at the top of the stairs. Then hurried footsteps echoed down the companionway.
‘Get up everyone,’ Jelindel shouted. ‘Quick about it. Something’s happening!’
Instantly, the cabin came alive with struggling figures and confused oaths.
There was a shrill scream from somewhere above. Then frantic fumbling at the bolted door. One of the three passengers suddenly unlatched the door and stood in the hatchway, holding a spluttering lantern. It was a diplomat’s wife, Mistress Sheaghan.
‘Dead, they’re all dead!’ she shrieked.
‘Aye, they’re going to torture all of us to death until the one who has the gemstone tells them where it’s hidden,’ Henrik said above the fearful din.
‘You don’t understand,’ Mistress Sheaghan babbled. ‘It’s the privateers that are dead.’
Jelindel warily led the officers up on deck. It sounded like a trap – how could all the privateers be dead? Taking the oil lantern from the trembling passenger, she stepped through the hatchway.
The officers spread out behind her – better a death on deck than to be butchered below like cornered rats. The first bloodied corpse they found on the upper deck set their original fears aside – and replaced them with new ones.
It did not take long to search both ships. The privateers were indeed dead. Most had had their necks broken, and a few their throats cut.
The privateer officers were in the master cabin, and the bodies of their men were scattered like rag dolls throughout both vessels. Within minutes the more superstitious and illiterate of the sailors were begging forgiveness from their gods. These were indeed death ships.
The three passengers had been imprisoned in separate cabins, and Mistress Sheaghan was the only one not bound hand and foot. When no one came to question her
after several hours, she had called out, then tried the door. It was not locked.
The two male passengers were in other cabins, still bound. Larachel had been tortured but he refused Jelindel’s offer to bandage his wounds, and insisted on helping the crew look for survivors.
‘So what do we do?’ asked Henrik as the officers gathered to make sense of the situation. ‘We’d best sort out this mess before we have a mutiny on our hands.’
‘The crew are the least of our worries,’ Jelindel pointed out. ‘In the morning the other caravels will close in again, and we will have a lot of explaining to do.’
‘How so?’ asked the captain. ‘We were tied up. Clearly we’re not responsible for this … this massacre.’
‘Sir, you know that, I know that, but convincing the privateers on the other caravels is going to be a demon of a job. As it stands, we appear to have freed ourselves and butchered their comrades down to the last man.’
‘You’re right, of course,’ the captain said. ‘Surrendering a second time is not an option.’
‘This time they would hang us by the yardarm,’ said Henrik.
‘We fight,’ said the captain. ‘After all, someone killed every single privateer. Obviously, we have some experienced swordsmen aboard.’
Jelindel’s patience snapped. ‘Sir, with due respect,’ she said. ‘Attention everyone!’ An expectant hush descended. ‘All those who went about the two ships breaking necks and slitting throats, then tied themselves up again, hold your hands in the air. One, two, three!’
No hands were raised.
‘This is ridiculous,’ snapped Captain Porterby. ‘Someone did it.’ He nudged a corpse with his toe.
‘Perhaps mutineers from another ship?’ suggested Henrik. ‘They comes up, sneaks aboard, kills every one of their own people – including their leader – then sneaks off. In the morning, it looks like we did the deed. We get filled with arrows, then it’s promotions all round as they replace the dead leader and crew the Dragonfang.’
Suddenly the mystery looked a lot less mysterious, but their plight looked a great deal worse.
‘I have a suggestion,’ said Larachel. He had tidied himself up. Apart from a bruised and cut lip, he seemed no worse for wear. ‘Why not jump ship?’
‘The nautical term is “walk the plank”, and I have a feeling that the other privateers will make us do that anyway.’ The captain wrung his hands nervously.
‘No, no, good sir,’ Larachel said, patiently. ‘I mean, why not abandon the Dark Empress and sail off in the Dragonfang? The caravel can out-sail all others, and if we leave right away we may even be over the horizon before sunrise.’
‘Yes, and they might not check on the Dark Empress for hours after that,’ agreed Captain Porterby. ‘I mean, it’s only when they find the bodies that they will get suspicious.’
‘Need they find the bodies at all?’ asked Jelindel. ‘Sir, if we weight the bodies with a few crates of crockery, and drop them over the side, it would look like we were put aboard the Dragonfang and taken away, leaving the Dark Empress for the rest to loot and burn. We quickly swab the decks of blood –’
‘Lad, had that arrow not already promoted you to navigator, I would do so right away,’ said the captain. ‘Well, you heard the boy. Fetch those crates and ropes and buckets. Look lively!’
And so another nightmarish sea legend was born. The Dark Empress was found the next morning without a sign of life on board, as though all its crew had been swallowed by a mysterious monster.
Before the stars had traced out another hour in the sky, the Dragonfang was flying as much canvas as its masts and spars could carry. Behind her, the running lamps of the other caravels and the Dark Empress were dwindling in the wake. Captain Porterby called a meeting of his officers, including Larachel among them.
‘As it stands, we have lost the ship,’ announced the captain. ‘On the other hand, we find ourselves in possession of a caravel reputed to be the fastest vessel on the high seas.’
‘According to my log castings, in a good wind it would be at least three times the speed of the Dark Empress,’ said Henrik.
‘We have, however, lost the cargo,’ said the purser.
‘But gained six hundred gold oriels found in a chest under the privateer captain’s cabin. That would be enough to cover the worth of the cargo, everyone’s pay, and leave enough over to bring my retirement date forward by about five years.
‘It would seem a good plan to plot a course back to D’loom, and declare the voyage a premature and profitable triumph,’ thundered Captain Porterby.
‘We are in known waters,’ said Jelindel, eagerly. ‘Known to me, at any rate. I could get us back.’
‘If I may,’ said Larachel, after clearing his throat for attention. ‘It might profit us to continue the voyage.’
‘What?’ snapped Jelindel. ‘Were you not listening? I know the way home, that’s all. The man who knows the shoals, coasts, reefs, ports, bearing lines and constellations to the north of the Tanglesea Islands is several dozen miles astern, at the bottom of the ocean. He has an arrow through his chest and his legs tied to a crate labelled FRAGILE and FLOPSICLE BUNNY BOWLS AND PLATES FOR THE SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF DISCERNING GENTLEFOLK!’
If Larachel was angered, he kept it well hidden. ‘There are sure to be charts in the chartroom. Are you saying that you cannot read a chart?’
‘I can read a chart as well as any man!’ shouted Jelindel, thumping the table with her small fist.
‘Splendid. That means we can take my load of spices aboard at Zaria, then sail north for Hazaria, Sezel and to Mordicar.’
‘But this is a much smaller ship,’ the captain pointed out.
‘My spices will fit, even if we have to stow some bags on the deck. Just think, nobody can match our speed and we can visit all the ports on our itinerary to sell my cargo for a profit of five thousand oriels. Remember, Captain, a fifth of that profit goes to you.’
‘A thousand oriels,’ whispered the captain.
‘After a seventy-five percent deduction for bonuses to the crew,’ the purser said.
‘Still enough to bring my retirement forward to … well, later this year. Most Excellent Larachel, we accept.’
The one disadvantage to being aboard the Dragonfang was that the quarters were even more cramped than aboard the Dark Empress. Jelindel was now sleeping in a storage locker the size of Hargav’s locker on the Dark Empress. Worse still, she was sharing it with Hargav.
If he knew I was a girl he’d go out of his mind, thought Jelindel. ‘Fart once and you’re out of here and sleeping on the floor,’ warned Jelindel.
‘Master Jaelin, I would never do anything so –’
‘Crude?’
‘That wasn’t the word I was looking for,’ Hargav said. ‘But it will do.’
‘Something disturbs me about the way the privateers were slaughtered,’ Jelindel confessed. ‘A good two dozen rogues, gone. Just like that.’ She clicked her fingers.
‘It was an act of great cruelty –’
‘No, I mean it was done so quietly. Why? If another caravel’s crew came aboard, why would they bother keeping quiet for our sake? Chances are they would have slaughtered us as well, and made it look as though we had killed their comrades and were in turn slain.’
‘How can you sound so … I don’t know the word,’ Hargav said, shivering.
‘Clinical,’ Jelindel provided. ‘On the other hand, if some incredibly deadly assassin was aboard, he might have gone about in silence, picking them off one by one. He would be silent, because such odds are too steep, even for a lindrak.’
‘Lindrak?’
‘You’ve never heard of the lindraks?’ Jelindel paused, and wondered at Hargav’s almost imperceptible intake of breath. ‘You definitely needed to get away from your mother and sisters, Hargav. A lindrak is a killing machine. One that goes about its business quietly and efficiently. One lindrak could have done all that back there. I know the crew, mostly, and there are t
hree new men. As for the others, I know them too well. And I say no lindrak could ever put on such a good act of being a slob. So, three sailors and three passengers that I do not know. Not the woman, that leaves – or maybe the woman is a disguised man!’
‘Oh, no,’ Hargav said, his voice barely above a whisper. ‘A man would never do such a depraved and disgusting thing as to dress like a woman.’
‘Hargav, when we reach Zaria I really must take you on a little tour of some interesting places that only open at night. Meantime, staying alive could be quite a strain with a lindrak aboard – but what am I thinking? The lindrak must have the pentacle gemstone!’ She pounded a fist into the palm of her hand. ‘He needs us to crew this ship until he can deliver it to wherever he is going. We probably have nothing to worry about.’
‘How do you know so much about lindraks?’ Hargav snuggled into Jelindel as though the very word worried him.
‘They killed my family and burned our house.’ At Hargav’s stunned silence, she added, ‘But they can be killed. I killed one.’
‘You killed a man?’ gasped Hargav, eyes wide.
Jelindel’s knife suddenly pressed against Hargav’s throat, while she pulled his head back by the hair.
‘Mother,’ Hargav managed to whisper.
‘It crosses my mind that you are one of the three new crewmen,’ said Jelindel, then she let him go and laughed.
‘Oh, Master Jaelin, I swear that it was not me as killed all those men.’
‘And I trust your word on it. You were tied up and sitting in front of me most of the time. Ah, go to sleep. But repeat what I have told you to no one.’
Chapter 7
THE WITCHES OF ZARIA
Although Hargav had grown up in a port city, he seemed unprepared for the splendours of Zaria. Whereas D’loom was in decline, its weathered piers and moorages beyond repair, Zaria was prosperous in mercantile trading and the fishing industry. It was the first port of call for any northern-bound traders and obviously the last for those returning home after successful voyages.
