Scimitar Moon

by Chris A. Jackson

  He waited and listened, knowing the trail would be dangerous.

  She whispered something he couldn’t understand and tugged at his breechcloth. Surely she didn’t want to do that right now!

  She pantomimed crossing the trail and continuing up the ridge. She wanted to look over at the pirate stronghold.

  “You are crazy, woman,” he muttered, unable to dissuade her. He made motions to keep low, which she seemed to understand, and they inched forward.

  The boot prints on the trail were obvious and recent. Several men had come this way in a hurry. He stopped again and listened, but heard nothing. A wall of foliage edged the other side of the trail, broken only by a gap where the game trail resumed. The ridge top was only another twenty strides beyond. Maybe they could make it. He nocked an arrow and nodded to her.

  They crossed the trail in four strides, ducking into cover on the other side with only a slight rustle of leaves.

  Chula crouched and waited. Nothing but the twitter of birds and the distant roar of surf reached his ears. He nodded to the Scimitar Moon and led her up the game trail to the crest of the ridge where he got down on his belly and crawled up to the edge.

  Four hundred feet below, two ships sat upon the hard black sand of the pirate shipyard. Four more bobbed at anchor in the deep bay, and one, red sails furled on her yards, lay at the wide stone pier. Another of a type he’d never seen floated at the dock near the shipyard.

  “Hippotrin!” she hissed, though the word meant nothing to him. “Six ships ready to sail, and two in dry dock. Holy hell, look at the shipyard!”

  “Ssst!” he hissed, making calming motions, which seemed to help. She kept muttering, lower but still audible, until finally she made it clear that she had seen enough. He had seen enough at the first glance: a village of pirates, eight ships, and the channel through the giant mangroves and the reef beyond, all indelibly imprinted on his mind.

  They inched away from the edge, rose and descended to the trail. A quick glance in each direction and a hasty moment of listening confirmed that they were still undiscovered. He gave her a nudge and stepped out into the open.

  The crack-whir of a crossbow and the shocking impact of iron-tipped hardwood slamming into his shoulder sent Chula tumbling into the underbrush. Consciousness fled for a moment, but a scream reached through the haze of shock and pain. The men who had shot him had taken the Scimitar Moon.

  In a flash of pain and rage, Chula knew exactly what he had to do.

  *

  When Cynthia saw Chula fall, she thought how silly it was for him to trip. Then a hand grabbed her hair and another snaked around her waist. She screamed involuntarily, both with the realization that Chula had not tripped, and the knowledge of who had hold of her.

  She kicked and gouged and scratched, reaching over her shoulder, hoping to find her assailant’s eyes. Others moved in, grasping at her arms. She lashed and bit, unsure how many there were.

  “Here! Stop that ye little—”

  “Hold ’er, Parik!

  “I am, damn ye, but she’s go’ claws like a—”

  “Hey, look out! That—”

  With a crack like an axe biting into wood, the grip went slack. She pitched forward, rolling to look back. The pirate who had held her fell to his knees, then toppled forward into her lap, his skull peeled back above his vacant eyes, his lifeblood surging forth in torrents. For a moment Cynthia could only think to get out from under the pirate’s twitching corpse.

  As she scrabbled away the haze of panic cleared and she saw Chula fending off five more pirates. His war club wove in whirling arcs, his obsidian knife in his bloody left hand. The head of a crossbow bolt protruded from just below his left collarbone. The pirates advanced in an arc, easily fending off his attacks with their cutlasses.

  Steel met stone as Chula blocked a thrust that would have disemboweled him, but the obsidian knife snapped at the hilt. He was overmatched, wounded and outnumbered; he would be dead in moments unless she did something.

  The fallen pirate bore a number of weapons, none of which Cynthia knew how to use. She’d never been in a fight in her life, let alone a swordfight. There was one thing, however, that would draw their attention away.

  “Hey, you motherless pigs!” She picked up a rock and threw it, managing to score a hit on one of the pirates. She reached for another, and backed down the trail as their attention turned to her. “Chula! Run!” But he did not run, and took the opportunity of her distraction to smash his club into the sword arm of one of his assailants. The man went down, gripping his shattered forearm.

  “Jorry, Vic! Get the girl. We’ll finish this heathen.”

  “Chula!” she screamed, trying to make him understand. This was her fault; she would not have his blood on her hands, too. “Na! Na! Paska! Go to Paska!” She flung her stone, turned and ran down the trail, two pirates hot on her heels.

  *

  Crazy woman! Chula thought as he watched the Scimitar Moon dash away. Why hadn’t she slipped into the bushes while he had the pirates’ attention? Now he would die for nothing.

  With that thought, the last words she screamed came to him: Paska. Paska…

  No, I will not die, he decided, sidestepping a thrust and lashing out with his club to rake the shards of obsidian along the man’s arm. The pirate screamed and dropped his sword, but the one whose arm he’d broken had one of the strange sideways bows. He could not defend against that. Another scream from down the trail told him the pirates had caught the Scimitar Moon. There was nothing he could do to save her now, but he would not let the Scimitar Moon die without a fight. He would go to the chief! Yes, he would go and bring back the whole village to kill these pirates and take her back!

  But to do that, he had to live.

  He ducked into the brush at his back and flew down the game trail as only one born to the jungle could. He heard the crash and yells of men behind him, but knew they would never catch him. The trail that had taken them an hour to climb flew past in a mad ten-minute dash. A crack and whir past his ear told him his pursuers were still close. He hoped Paska was ready to go when he got there.

  “Go, Paska!” He hit the beach running flat out, yelling for her to get the boat into deep water. If he could just reach the water, he had a chance.

  He didn’t hear the crack-whir this time; he only felt the smashing blow to his leg that sent him sprawling to the sand. His breath came out in an anguished cry as the fall drove the first bolt back through his shoulder.

  He heard them approach as he pushed himself over onto his back. Fire lanced through his shoulder and leg as the bolts hit the sand, but he managed not to scream. His war club still hung from his wrist by its leather thong, and he brought it up, though he couldn’t push himself up with his other arm. All he could do was lay there and let them come.

  “Finally gotcha, you slimy heathen pig,” one of them said. The words were unintelligible, but the meaning was clear enough. The man stepped forward, cutlass at the ready. “Now yer gonna pay fer Parik, and it’s gonna hurt.”

  “Just run ’im through an’ be done wi—”

  The pirate’s words ended in a gurgling gasp, and the man standing over Chula turned.

  Paska stepped past the man whose throat she’d cut, plunged the obsidian dagger into the second pirate’s belly, jerked it to the side and stepped back. The man looked dumbly down at the pile of intestines at his feet. The cutlass fell from his hand as he clutched his eviscerated stomach, crumpling to his knees. She ended his horrible screams with another slash of her knife.

  Then the scolding began.

  “Where is the Scimitar Moon? I knew you would lose her! Is she dead, or did they take her? Here, take that one’s sword while I tend to this. Now get up! I can’t paddle that boat alone!”

  During her rant, she picked up the first one’s cutlass and economically decapitated the corpses. She then took the severed heads and stuck them onto two of the conveniently placed bamboo poles on the beach. By the time sh
e finished, Chula had managed to get shakily to his feet, though the bolt in his thigh stabbed him with every move.

  “You can’t walk with that sticking in your leg, Chula. By Odea, must I do everything for you?” She knelt, cut the head from the bolt in his leg and jerked the shaft free before he could protest. The clothing from one of the dead pirates made a serviceable bandage, though he was still bleeding. “I will take the other one out when we get into the boat. You will die from fever if we don’t get home soon, so you will have to paddle fast. I will help. Come on.”

  He just smiled and accepted her help to the boat. He knew he could not argue with her. He didn’t even want to. He just kept smiling and thought, What a woman, while they paddled through the narrow cut into the open sea, headed southeast toward home.

  CHAPTER Thirty-Nine

  Old Enemies and New Friends

  “We got ’er for ya, Capt’n!” one of her captors crowed triumphantly, dragging Cynthia up the steps of Bloodwind’s palace. She hung from her bonds, doubled over and gasping for breath, bruised and exhausted from fighting every step down the mountain. “Some savage killed Parik, but the others’re after the heathen. We’ll have his head on a pole soon.”

  “They are wrong, my captain.” A woman’s sultry voice brought Cynthia’s attention to a pair of legs clad in leathers and silks. “Your men are dead. The native and his woman are beyond the reef.”

  “No matter, Hydra.” A hand gripped Cynthia’s hair and wrenched her upright.

  The curse on her lips died as recognition kicked her in the stomach. The face had aged, but the voice was the same; it was the voice from her nightmares, the one that laughed while her parents died. Memory of that moment snapped into her mind: standing at the rail of Peggy’s Pride in bloodstained stockings, watching the ship with blood red sails drift away. He stood at the taffrail beside a ballista, the weapon that had killed her parents, his laughter searing her soul like a glowing hot sword in her heart. Now, as she stood face to face with the man, her long-nurtured hatred burned so brightly that it consumed her. Only the rope cutting cruelly into her wrists kept her hands from his throat.

  “Thanks to your skull sentinels we landed the big fish.” He stepped up to Cynthia and smiled broadly, thumb and forefinger tracing a line down her bruised jaw. Her teeth snapped just short of taking a finger, and his laughter burned her like hot coals. “Well, well indeed, Miss Cynthia Flaxal, so very spirited. We were worried you’d been lost at sea. In fact, several of my men told me that very thing. How ever did you manage to save yourself?”

  “Yes, how did you survive?” Yodrin asked from behind Bloodwind.

  Her eyes swept the group before her for an instant. She ignored Yodrin and the red-headed whore draped over Bloodwind’s arm. Koybur earned only a scathing glare. For a moment her gaze met that of the one he had called Hydra, and her insides turned to ice. Those eyes shone fathomless black, as if something stared at her from behind dark, false windows, something hungry and not at all human. She looked away quickly, centering her hatred upon Bloodwind.

  “I was rescued by a pox-ridden sea hag. She said she was your mother.”

  “Delightful, delightful. And so very ladylike. I imagine the natives showed you an easy time of it with such feminine wiles to barter. Is that how you made your way to my doorstep, by laying with all of them?”

  Her spittle reached him easily, the surprise on his face worth the clout she received from the man holding her arms. She was not, however, ready for the dagger that suddenly hung before her face. Cynthia realized that she had just done something very stupid; this man could make the rest of her short life a sea of agony.

  “Someone bring me a pair of pliers. I think this fishwife needs her wagging tongue shortened.” Laugher rang around the crowd, but the request proved to be no joke, for a pair of pliers was quickly thrust into Bloodwind’s waiting hand. Cynthia’s eyes widened in terror as the knife and the pliers were held up to her lips. “Now someone hold her still.”

  “She’s of no use to you if she can’t speak, my captain,” the redhead beside Bloodwind said smoothly, drawing his attention long enough for Cynthia to swallow and clench her jaw against the rough fingers trying to pry her mouth open.

  “Hmmm, perhaps you’re right, Camilla. But I think something must be done to instill the proper courtesy. Turn her around.”

  Before Cynthia could voice a protest, the pliers closed around the smallest finger of her left hand and pain exploded up her arm. She screamed through clenched teeth, collapsing against her bonds, but the men dragged her upright and turned her back to face him as her screams devolved into a whimper.

  “Let this be a lesson to you, Miss Flaxal.” Bloodwind held her severed finger up before her tear-streaked face, then cast it aside. Hydra’s eyes followed it like a dog’s following a thrown stick. “You’ve got nine more lessons, then we start on your toes.” He held the bloody knife up before her eyes. “Do you understand me?”

  “I understand you,” she said through clenched teeth, fighting back the urge to vomit.

  “Good.” He cleaned the knife on the lapel of her blouse and returned it to its sheath, then took a step back and held up his arm for his woman. She came forward to take it. “Bind her hand—she’s bleeding on my steps—and chain her in a cell, but no liberties. Nobody touches her but me, understood?”

  Murmurs of assent filtered through the crowd as someone wrapped something around her bleeding hand. Bloodwind and his entourage turned away, but three eyes followed her progress into the palace. The sympathy in Koybur’s ruined visage struck a thousand memories in her mind; all the years he’d spent teaching her everything he knew about sailing and ships. She forced the memories aside. They were nothing but lies. She could not read the red-haired woman’s face, but something in it nagged at her memory as her captors dragged her into the palace and down to the dungeons.

  *

  Feldrin shot out of his bunk and reached for the dagger at his belt before he realized that he wore no dagger, no belt, and no pants. He wondered briefly what had shattered his sleep when another cry rang out, barely audible, and Horace’s harsh call answered.

  “Heave to, Mister Rowland. Rig a harness and put someone on the boarding ladder. Bosun, bring an armed party amidships.”

  He was into his trousers and out of his cabin before the last words reached his ears. He emerged onto a deck lit by the subdued glow of a spectacular sunset. They were on a westward reach, but Horace had hove to just upwind of a small outrigger canoe.

  “What’s this about, Horace?” he asked, squinting down at the two dark-skinned figures in the small craft. One was a woman clad only in a breechcloth, which drew some laughs and cat calls from the crew, but the other, a man, sat slumped over his paddle. A broad swatch of cloth over his shoulder and another around his leg were both stained the color of the sky.

  “Don’t know as yet, sir. Couple of natives, but the man’s hurt and the woman’s got a cutlass.”

  “Cannibals?”

  “They don’t have the look.”

  “I think I can understand a word er two of what she’s sayin’, Capt’n,” Rowland said from his position at the wheel. “She keeps pointing to the bow of the ship and sayin’ somethin’ about the moon.”

  “The moon?” Feldrin looked over the side at the small craft. The woman had not shut her mouth since he came on deck, continually gesticulating and crying out. “She crazy?”

  “Maybe, but… Wait a second. Sword moon? What the hell?” Rowland called out a few halting words in that same strange language, and the woman fell silent. Then he said a few more, and the woman answered. “Holy Odea! She’s sayin’ ‘scimitar moon!’ You remember Cynthia’s medallion? She’s pointing to the figurehead, Captain! They’ve seen her!”

  “Rig a harness! I want ’em aboard right now! Horace, I’ve got the watch. Row, talk to ’em and find out what they know. You there! Rig a lift and bring that canoe aboard. I want someone to go over it with a lantern and bri
ng me any scrap of anythin’ you find.” He looked around for something, then swore. “Rowland, have Marta get hot food for ’em, and a cup o’ rum wouldn’t hurt.”

  Sailors scrambled like monkeys in a burning house; in moments Rowland sat on a tarp with the two, talking and offering them hot blackbrew spiked with rum while Marta examined the man’s leg wound.

  “The woman says the pirates took Cynthia. Says she and the man belong to her, and were takin’ her north to the big land, the mainland I guess, but they stopped on Plume Island, and the pirates took her.”

  “Plume Island? So that’s where they’re holed up. Bloody, bloody hell and high water! We got ’em!” His fist met his palm with a report like a jibing sail. He looked at the dimming sky, then at the northern horizon. “We’re due ta meet Winter Gale tomorrow evenin’ just south a Plume Island. We’ll meet up an’ send a runnin’ message up the isles.”

  “Wait, Cap’n. She’s sayin’ somethin’ else. They found her on their island, Vulture Isle as near as I can guess, and they want to go there. Says the chief’ll bring the whole village to get the Scimitar Moon back.”

  “Bloody hell.” He remembered the notation on the chart that Rowland had been interested in. “Whuafa’s people…”

  The native woman’s eyes shot open at the name, and she rattled off something so fast that Rowland had to ask her twice to slow down before she understood.

  “She says yes, they are Whuafa’s people. The one who knew the Flaxal. I think they mean Orin Flaxal, Captain.”

  “Odea’s green garters,” he muttered, chewing his lip. Calculations flashed through his head, distances, tides, currents, and the intensity of the trade winds. “Set a course sou’-sou’west, helmsm’n. Lookout! Well done spottin’ that boat. Watch fer the reef to the south. As soon as we’re clear, give a call.” He turned to Horace. “Soon as we clear that reef, I want sou’-sou’east, an’ I want every single stitch o’ canvas aloft. If we’re not dippin’ a rail on the down-roll, I wanna know why.”