Transcendent (Ascendant Book 2)

by Craig Alanson

  “Captured?” Alfonze asked sourly. “They’ll take us for slaves, most likely, those of us they need. It depends. You know those poor souls heaving on those oars yesterday are slaves, don’t you? Pirates don’t row their own ships,” he grimaced. “If they need replacements for slaves who have died, and they die regularly on a foul ship like that,” Alfonze made a rude gesture toward the pirate ship, “they will select some of us to come aboard their ship. We’ll be clapped in irons, until we die, or they no longer need us. I’ve seen pirates dump slaves overboard to escape pursuit. The rest, ah, if they like our cargo, they’ll keep some of us to run the ship for them, until the ship gets into port, then we’ll be sold. And you can be sure that, however many of us survive the coming battle, they’ll kill a handful of survivors as a warning. Or because they enjoy killing.”

  Koren shuddered despite the warm breeze. “The battle, what will it be like?” Then they were interrupted as the first mate called them back down to the deck. They clustered along the windward rail, their weight helping to keep the ship from heeling over too far.

  Alfonze answered. “What will the battle be like? Mind you, I’ve only been in one battle, and we were fortunate.” As he spoke, other sailors crowded closer to hear. “The pirates broke away from our ship because they spotted a fatter prize.”

  “Oh. Did your ship and the other fight the pirate?”

  Alfonze shook his head. “No, lad. We hauled on every scrap of canvas we could carry, and got over the horizon as quick as we could. You have to understand; there’s not much a merchant ship can do against a pirate. Pirate ships carry large crews, to overwhelm their prey when boarding. And they have weapons that we don’t.”

  Koren was disturbed that Alfonze’s ship had not even tried to help a fellow merchant ship; it made him realize that his youthful idealized view of the world may not match how the world actually worked. “What weapons?”

  “They call it a ballista, or I’ve also heard it called a windlass.” Gesturing with his hands, he explained. “There’s a large spring, and a cable attached to it, you wind the windlass to crank the spring back. There’s a rail through the center of the spring, and the enemy shoots bolts through it. They can be large arrows, or a cluster of metal balls with spikes; one of those can knock out a whole group of men. These pirates will have something even more nasty; a bomb. It’s a metal tube with flammable oil in it, and the nose of the tube is glass. Inside the glass is more oil, and flint and steel. When the bomb hits something, the glass breaks and ignites the oil.”

  All the men shuddered. Fire at sea, in a wooden ship, was every sailor’s nightmare. A fire caused by oil could not be fought with water; throwing water on the fire would only make the burning oil spread across the deck. That explained to Koren why the first mate had ordered buckets of sand to be brought up on deck. Normally, sand was used to scrub the decks clean in the mornings, and to prevent feet from slipping on wet decks. If the pirates attacked, the sand would be used to smother burning oil.

  Koren still did not understand. “They want to take the ship, why would they burn it?”

  “They won’t,” Alfonze said without a smile. “Not the ship.” He looked upward. “The sails. They’ll set fire to our sails. Without the sails, we’ll be dead in the water. Their ship will come alongside, grapple onto us, and their crew will climb over the rails and take our ship.”

  “You said that your ship escaped,” Jofer asked, “how do you know what the pirates do?”

  “Because,” Alfonze looked down at the water, “that’s what the pirates did to that other ship. Our ship fled, but not fast enough to avoid seeing what happened. It made all of us glad that we hadn’t stayed to try fighting. We would have been dead, or slaves, also.”

  The pirate ship pursued them throughout the morning, as the wind slackened. Koren helped the crew set more sail, until it seemed like he could identify tablecloths and one of his shirts hanging from the upper spars. It was a stern chase, and the fickle, gusty, unpredictable winds kept Koren’s ship ahead of the pirates past the Noon hours. But the pirate ship was creeping closer, and the winds were dying. At times, the wind was barely a zephyr, and the sails hung limp, only to fill again and the ship heeled over and moved forward with a lurch. When the winds died, the pirate ship’s oars swung outboard, and the water alongside the pirate ship churned furiously.

  “Should we man the sweeps?” Koren quietly asked Alfonze, as they checked, sharpened and laid out sword and pikes for the coming battle.

  “No,” Alfonze snorted. “This tub weighs so much, we’d be wasting our energy. As long as the wind blows at all, we’re better relying on the sails. We’re carrying twice as much canvas, and our masts are taller.”

  “How much longer?” Koren asked.

  “Hard to say. Depends on the wind. They don’t have to catch us to hit us. They’re probably almost in range now.” Alfonze used the spyglass he had borrowed from the third mate, and pointed it aft. “Kedrun, there, you can see the ballistas. There are two of them, in the bow. The pirates are setting them up. I don’t see that either of them is wound up yet. Here,” he handed the spyglass to Koren. “See for yourself.”

  Looking through the spyglass, Koren could clearly see the pirates winding the two ballistas in the bow of the enemy ship. On each side of a ballista were wheels, almost as large as the wheel that steered his own ship. Three pirates worked each wheel, putting their weight into turning it. Koren could see they were straining to wind the windlass. He couldn’t see much of the other parts of the ballista mechanism; there was a wood screen in front of it. Koren figured that screen was there to protect the ballista crew from arrows. Although no arrow could reach across the distance between the ship.

  The ballista crew members he could see, and the other pirates who lined the rail and were gesturing and shouting at Koren’s ship, had their faces painted in gruesome designs. Or they wore hideous masks. They looked like the Acedoran soldiers he had seen during the battle of Longshire. He shuddered involuntarily. Koren knew the enemy made their faces that way in order to scare him, and that he should ignore it. His head knew that. His gut was shaking. Then he reminded himself that the enemy died just as easily as soldiers from Tarador. He had seen the enemy falling when his by arrows, or struck with swords or spears. When the enemy came over the rail to board Koren’s ship, many of them would die.

  The question was whether there were enough pirates aboard the enemy ship to take his own ship. There were a lot of pirates crowded on the other ship’s deck, even though their ship was smaller.

  “Koren,” Alfonze nudged him and took the spyglass back. “Let’s go, we have work to do.” He gestured over to a hatchway near the bow, where other crewmen were bringing up canvas bags containing swords and pikes. Koren’s task was to take weapons out of the bag, then he rotated a stone wheel while Alfonze sharpened swords. When the blades had a fine edge, Koren wiped the blades down and laid them out on the deck. While they were preparing weapons to defend their ship, Koren kept glancing aft to check on the progress of the enemy ship. It was growing close; during periods when the wind died to nothing, Koren imagined he could hear the enemy jeering and shouting curses. Some of the crew shouted back, until the first mate told them to be quiet. “Save your strength, you’ll need it later. And don’t give them the satisfaction of thinking they’ve rattled you, boys. They’ve underestimated this crew!” The first mate said with bravado that convinced none of us.

  When the weapons were ready, the first mate handed out swords and pikes to the crew; Koren was given a pike. He couldn’t tell anyone about his long practice and skill with a sword; he was supposed to be a farm boy, and farmers did not commonly use swords. He hefted the pike, and looked longingly at a basket of bows and arrows on the aft deck. Perhaps he should tell the first mate or Captain about his extraordinary skill with a bow; that could be explained by the hunting that every farmer did to provide food on the table.

  Before Koren could walk aft, an alarm bell was sounde
d. The enemy was firing on them! The first shot arced out from the pirate ship; Koren heard the shouting of the crew and turned to see a pointy black tube fly through the air and splash into the sea behind his ship. Almost instantly, the surface of the water was on fire, and the languid waves only stirred up the oil. A second bomb followed the first, with the second also falling short, but ten feet closer to the ship.

  After the first two bombs, the pirates switched to shooting blanks; the first one bounced off the stern. The second crashed into a railing on the port side, splintering it. Shards of wood flew in all directions, striking two of the crew.

  After firing four shots at the merchant ship, the pirate ship veered slightly to the west, to run parallel to Koren’s ship. “Ha!” Koren exulted. “They’re keeping their distance,” he shook his pike at the enemy. “You stay away, if you know what is good for you.” He grinned at Alfonze. “They couldn’t hit us!”

  “Kedrun,” Alfonze chided him. “They’re not keeping away from us, they’re maneuvering into position. Those shots they fired were only to test the range of their ballistas.”

  “Only one of their shots struck us” Koren protested.

  “They were only shooting to set up the aim of their ballistas; they weren’t trying to damage us yet.”

  “Then why did the first two burst into flames?”

  “That was to scare us, to show us what will happen when those bombs are fired at our sails.”

  “Oh,” Koren said sheepishly. He pointed his pike at the pirates. “Why did they turn aside?”

  “Kedrun,” think about it, Alfonze sounded disappointed.

  Koren thought hard, but he thought as a landsman, not as an experienced sailor. “Because from the side, our ship is a larger target for their ballistas?”

  “That’s true, but that’s not why. If their ship approached us from behind, then their bow would be alongside our stern when the ships make contact. That would not give the enemy much chance to come aboard; we can easily defend just our stern.” He pointed at the pirate ship, which was drawing even with the merchant ship, perhaps two hundred yards away. “This way, they can close with us, and lay alongside our full length. We will have to defend the entire rail, bow to stern. They can concentrate their strength in one spot, come over the railing, and once they get a foothold on our deck,” he shook his head.

  “Oh,” Koren nodded. That made sense.

  “Also, they have the weather gage now. You know what means?”

  Koren grinned, pleased that he knew something about seamanship. “They are upwind from us, so their sails steal the wind from ours. And they can decide when to close with us; they choose when to engage.”

  “Good!” Alfonze patted Koren on the back. “You’re learning. Yes, they have the advantage. With their slaves manning the oars, we can’t escape from them in these light winds.”

  “We can turn away from them,” Koren suggested.

  Alfonse shook his head. “There’s a reef to the east; we can’t sail in that direction for long, or we’d wreck. Because we can’t trust these winds, we don’t dare get close to the reef; the current would pull us in and we’d be struck aground. And we can’t go west because our sails can’t point as close to the wind as the pirates can. No, the captain knows what he’s doing. Our best chance is to fight off the pirates when they try to board us. If we stay together and don’t panic, we have a decent chance to keep the pirates from taking the deck. We fight off their initial attack, sometimes pirates will break off, and look for a softer target.”

  “If they can’t take us, they won’t try to sink us?” Koren asked, just before Alfonze kicked his leg sharply.

  Alfonze glared at him as a warning. The crew was frightened already, they didn’t need anyone asking stupid questions. “No,” Alfonze lied, and everyone knew he was lying. “They won’t waste the effort.”

  Slavery or death, Koren thought silently. Those were his options. This was not the future he had hoped for when he fled Linden, and took passage aboard a ship. No, that was not true. When he fled the castle, he had no hopes for his future. He had not begun to hope for his future until the ship had reach the South Isles. Then he had realized that, not only did he enjoy being at sea, nothing bad had happened around him. His jinx curse had not caused any disasters since he had caused the gargoyle to fall on Princess Ariana. Until, he thought with a sudden shock, a pirate ship had appeared close to his ship, after somehow tracking them all night. Was that his jinx? Had he caused the pirates to locate his ship, in the vastness of the ocean?

  “How did the pirates find us?” Koren asked aloud.

  “What?” Alfonze turned to look at the young sailor. “It happens, Kedrun. Pirate ships lurk along the sea-lanes, waiting for fat merchants to sail by. We were to the east of the sea-lane between the South Isles and Istandol, but we can’t go any further to the east, because of the reef. The pirates know that.”

  “Yes,” Koren pressed for an answer, “but how was that pirate ship so close to us this morning? How did it track us all night?”

  “Captain explained that,” Alfonze said worriedly. The Kedrun he knew was not so shaky. “The enemy may be using a magical device to locate us. Or it could be bad luck. With the wind out of the west last night, and the reef to the east, there was only so far we could have gone. Bad luck, is what it is. We always had a chance to be attacked by pirates on this trip; that’s why we were offered bonuses when we get to Istandol.”

  Koren was not convinced that he had not jinxed the ship. Jinxed the ship, and doomed the entire crew to death or slavery. Or slavery, then death. Either way, death was almost certain. Without a miracle, they were all going to die in battle, or be captured and suffer a slow death. “Bad luck?”

  “Bad luck, yes. Why?” Alfonze was concerned for his young friend.

  “Alfonze, I think that I brought this upon us. I’m sorry.”

  “You?” Alfonze laughed nervously. “What, were you holding a candle in the crow’s nest all night for the pirates to see?”

  “No, it’s,” Koren glanced around. Even on the crowded deck, there was no one else immediately near them. “I am bad luck. Bad luck for everyone around me. I always have been. When I was a little boy, people were afraid of me.”

  “Oh, is this some nonsense that old idiot Jofer put in your head?” Alfonze asked angrily. Sailors were a superstitious lot on their own; they didn’t need a shipmate putting dangerous thoughts in their heads.

  “No, this is me. I’ve always been, sort of, a, a jinx. I cause disasters for everyone around me.” At that moment, Koren wished the sea would swallow him, and end his misery.

  Alfonze grabbed his shoulders roughly and spun him to face the pirate ship. “You see that ship, you young fool? Those are bloodthirsty pirates. And their leaders are under the spell of Acedor. They don’t need any luck to find merchant ships out here; they spend all day tacking back and forth across the sea-lanes. Lying in wait, like snakes in the grass. If it wasn’t us they found, another ship would have fallen victim to them. I don’t believe in luck, good or bad. You make your own luck in life, by your sweat and your brains,” he released Koren and tapped his own head. “Right here, is the enemy’s best weapon. Fear. They want us to be paralyzed by fear, and to doubt ourselves, and to fight amongst ourselves. What we can do, more importantly than sharpening these blades, is to trust ourselves, and each other. This is our ship; we only need to defend the deck. Our deck is higher; the enemy will need to climb ladders to get aboard. They will come across, carrying steel, and we will meet with our own steel.” He plunged the tip of his sword into the wooden deck, and it stuck there, vibrating. “You want to help? Then stop talking childish nonsense, and prepare yourself to repel the enemy.

  “Yes,” Koren said gratefully. He did still think that he was a jinx, and dangerous, and that if the ship fell to the pirates, it would be mostly his fault. But right then, he could not do anything about the pirates having found the Hildegard again in the morning. What he could do was
pray, and fight. Pray for a miracle. He looked to the west, where only a few clouds dotted the sky. No miraculous squall would be rescuing them that afternoon. They needed to fight. Koren set the pike down, and walked aft toward the first mate. “Mister Scanton, you gave me a pike.”

  “Eh?” The first mate responded, distracted. “A young fellow like you will do best with a pike. A sword is too-”

  “No. I’d be best with a bow.”

  “A bow?” Scanton scoffed, annoyed at the interruption. “Why? Because you shot fat deer on a farm, boy? Go back to-”

  “No. I have been trained to use the bow. I. Never. Miss. Never. Not ever,” he said vehemently, leaning toward the first mate aggressively.

  Scanton reached for the handle of the knife he kept on his belt. “Kedrun, you get back to-”

  “Why not give him a chance?” Asked Alfonze, who had followed Koren. He looked at the pirate ship. “They’ll be in arrow range before long. If Kedrun here can pick off one or two before they tie onto us, that will make them keep their heads down. Sir,” he added softly in response to Scanton’s angry look. “It can’t hurt, can it? Give the young lad a chance.”

  Alfonze was well respected by the crew; he would be a first mate on his own someday, or even a captain. Scanton was new to the ship, having joined the crew only a month before Koren. With disgust, he pointed to the barrel that held bows and arrows. “Have at it, Kedrun. But if you’ve fired three arrows and not hit anyone, you go back to your pike, and I’ll not hear any more nonsense from you,” the first mate said while waving a finger in Koren’s face.