Scimitar Moon

by Chris A. Jackson

  “What do you mean? Who?” Bloodwind paused in his ordering of the ship’s crew, his features wrinkled in concern.

  “I know not who. Perhaps there is a shaman, or a priest of Odea among them. It matters not. They wield no power I cannot counter.”

  Oh yeah? Cynthia thought, relieved that the witch could not pinpoint the source of her opposition. She might be a seamage, but a knife would still end her life readily enough. She glanced around the cove as Hippotrin slipped into the channel between the towering rows of mangroves, and took in the positions of the other ships. Sailors struggled to free Orin’s Pride and Syren Song, and she knew just how to help. She felt the open sea outside the reef, and asked it to come to their aid.

  Hippotrin slowed as the tide turned and water flowed like a river up the channel into the cove.

  “What in the name of the nameless serpent just happened, Hydra?” Bloodwind swore as they drifted perilously close to the leeward reef with the opposing flow. “What game are you playing?”

  “This is not my doing! The shaman calls the sea to his aid!” She clutched her abdomen, her skin shriveling around the corners of her mouth as she grimaced.

  “Well, do something about it!” He barked orders to his helmsman, cracking the man across the back with the flat of his cutlass. “Orin’s Pride’s the only ship that can catch us. If they get free of that sand bank, they’ll be after us.”

  “Very well, Captain, but I will need sustenance to wield such power.”

  Bloodwind cast about the deck. His last remaining slave cowered in the lee of the low cabin, her hands bound securely to a cleat. He cut her free and thrust her at Hydra like a scrap of meat. “Here. Take her, but stop that ship!”

  *

  “The tide rises!” Horace cried as Brelak and the others climbed aboard, soaked and bloodied. “Rowland, get the wounded below. Captain, somethin’s bringing the tide in like a mill race. Do you feel it?”

  “Aye!” He braced himself as the ship rocked on her keel. “And somethin’ knocked that corsair flat right when it was set to pick up Yodrin. Man the capstan! Get us off this shoal and set sail!”

  “What do you think? I mean, could it be Cynthia? You think that Whuafa feller was tellin’ the truth?”

  “Chula said he saw her make water move, an’ that they rode a single wave fer a whole night. If she can do that, maybe she can make the tide rise.” The ship lurched and the men on the capstan cried out as the load on the anchor rode went suddenly slack. Orin’s Pride wheeled around, her bow pulling free of the sand. “Cut that cable! We don’t have time to retrieve it. Set all sails! Horace, make for the channel. Seamage or no, we’re gettin’ Cynthia Flaxal back!”

  CHAPTER Forty-Two

  Odea’s Chosen

  “Now we will see who is the stronger,” Hydra said, rising from her repast. Cynthia cringed at the gruesome spectacle. Hydra either no longer cared about her appearance, or hadn’t the power to maintain the illusion. Skin hung in flaccid folds around the bloody smear of her mouth, her hair a gray-green mat of oily tendrils plastered flat on her skull.

  Cynthia realized that woman was a witch—not a sorceress or mage, but the bride of a demon from one of the Nine Hells. She’d heard the tales of such creatures, those who traded their souls for power. The tales always ended poorly for the witch. She hoped desperately that they were true.

  As Hippotrin cleared the outer reef and jibed to the north, hands like claws gestured toward the sea behind them and Cynthia felt the corrupt power swell like a swarm of maggots writhing through her. Nausea doubled her over to retch onto the deck. This brought laughter and some comments about weak sea legs from the crew, and a sidelong shake of the head from Koybur. She forced herself upright, squinting into the morning sun at the ship emerging from the wall of giant mangroves, and felt Hydra force the sea into a massive wave.

  Cynthia reached out with her senses, feeling the ship, the hull, the sails. A grim smile touched her lips. She turned away and did nothing.

  The wave rose behind them, sweeping toward the shore, gaining in height and momentum with every yard it traveled. It crashed over the reef and swept up the channel, a wall of killing force towering half the height of the hapless craft’s mast.

  “Hydra! No! That’s Hellraker!” Bloodwind’s warning came far too late for the witch to do anything but gasp in horror.

  Hydra stared wide-eyed into the rising sun as the mountain of water lifted the ship up and over the reef, sweeping it into the mangroves. The corsair’s sleek hull struck the unforgiving coral with a thunderous crack of splintering timbers, her masts felled, her sails shredded and her keel broken. The waters receded, carrying a slick of corpses and flotsam, leaving the broken ship high and dry.

  Bloodwind raged at the witch, his cutlass at her throat, but her stance did not waver and her eyes showed no fear. With the crew’s attention focused elsewhere, Cynthia extended her senses once again, feeling her way up the channel. She smiled as she felt Orin’s Pride ease over the diminished remnants of the destructive wave and continue on under full press of sail.

  “That is Orin’s Pride!” Bloodwind bellowed, his cutlass pointing to the schooner’s distinctive bowsprit as it nosed from the gap in the mangroves. “That is the ship you must stop, Hydra. Is that clear? That ship and that ship only! Do it now!”

  “I have not the strength. Something opposes me, saps my power.” Her shoulders slumped with the strain of commanding the sea so violently. “I must feed before I use my powers again.”

  “You’ve fed your last, witch. I’m out of slaves. You stop that ship, or we have to fight them hull to hull outnumbered two to one.”

  “If I expend my strength without sustenance, we all perish.” Her voice had taken a tone as cold as death. Cynthia looked eagerly toward Hydra, hoping beyond hope that she had gone too far, that her power would consume her. Then those pitiless eyes turned toward her, sending a chill down her spine. “I cannot raise another wave without blood. The blood of the get of Orin Flaxal would give me much power.”

  “And if you fail again, there is nothing to keep them from using that fire catapult on us. No, Hydra, she is our protection, and I’ll not sacrifice any of my crew to sate your thirst. If you cannot use your magic, we’ll just have to do this the old fashioned way.”

  Bloodwind turned to his crew and began barking orders to set more sail and jettison any unnecessary weight. He adjusted their course to a more northerly heading as they rounded the last reef of Plume Isle, pointing them straight into the tangle of reefs and shoals of the Shattered Isles. Hippotrin responded like a thoroughbred, leaping forward, her sails taut with the wind hard on her beam.

  Cynthia squinted to the south and saw Orin’s Pride trimming her sails to follow.

  Now, she thought, her spirits rising with the motion of the sea under her feet. Let’s see what we can do. She eased her senses into the sea around them and increased the pressure on Hippotrin’s hull. Hopefully Hydra would not detect such a subtle use of power, but the pressure would slow them. Orin’s Pride sailed only a mile or so behind, and with Feldrin Brelak at the helm she did not doubt that he was bending every spar to catch up.

  *

  “We’re gainin’, Capt’n,” Rowland said, lowering his glass and grinning up at the dour Morrgrey. “We’ll have ‘em by mid afternoon.”

  “Aye, and I wonder why. With that sea witch aboard, you’d think we’d be fightin’ a headwind.” He looked through his own glass, accepting a cup of blackbrew from Marta with his bandaged hand. “Looks like he’s leadin’ us right through the narrow bits. Put yer best lookout on the foremast, Horace. Row, bring up the charts and the black book from my chart table. I’m gettin’ the feelin’ I’m bein’ led into a trap.”

  “You know these waters as well as anyone. Why worry?” Horace barked orders and a sharp eyed youth scampered up the ratlines.

  “I thought I knew ’em, too, until I read Orin Flaxal’s journal. Makes my charts look like a two year old’s scribbli
n’s.”

  “So what’s the plan when we catch them?” he asked, his voice pitched low enough that only the helmsman and a few others could hear. “Bloodwind has at least one of them ballista on that ship. He could set our sails afire before we get close enough to grapple, and we can’t use the fire catapult with Cynthia aboard.”

  “I’m wonderin’ how many bolts he has left fer that thing. The guards who were aboard during the attack fired quite a few. I don’t think Hippotrin was ready to set sail, so they’re probably short on provisions, too.” He accepted the black journal from Rowland and began flipping through pages as the charts were laid out. “I’m thinkin’ to get close enough for him to take a few shots at us, but far enough to make his aim difficult. When he runs out of bolts, we close the gap.”

  “And if he gets lucky and catches our foresail afire?” Rowland asked.

  “We cut it free and raise another. We’ve a spare for every sail on the ship, and enough canvas to stitch half a dozen more.” He found a page in the journal that gave details for the intricate maze of reefs north of Plume Island. “There. That’s where he’ll try to run us aground. Somewhere in there.”

  “Looks like a real meat grinder,” Rowland said, squinting at the drawings. “I can’t believe the detail Flaxal put into this. How do you suppose he got all these soundings?”

  “Don’t know. I just hope they’re accurate.”

  “And if they ain’t?”

  “Then we’ve got bigger problems than a few flamin’ ballista bolts.”

  *

  “They’re gaining on us.” Bloodwind lowered his spyglass and moved to the helm. He took careful bearings of three different points on nearby islands, considering them for a moment before telling the helmsman, “Half a point to windward.”

  “Aye, Capt’n!” The crew responded, trimming the sails to take best advantage of the new heading.

  “They shouldn’t be gaining on us,” he muttered. “Identical ships, identical sails, and we’re the lighter by far. Why are they gaining on us?”

  “The sea is against us, Captain Bloodwind,” Hydra said, one craggy hand clutching her abdomen. “I can feel the power that opposes us. It drags at our hull like a growth of weed and taxes my strength. Someone on that ship wields power.”

  Bloodwind’s eyes narrowed at her then swept across the deck, gauging his crew, their mood and their loyalty. He glared down at the ballista mounted upon Hippotrin’s poop deck; there were only four more bolts for it, and the one on the bow had none. These he would save for his last defense, or for Feldrin Brelak if the opportunity presented itself; four bolts would not keep Orin’s Pride at bay.

  “Tommy, call ’em together.” In a few moments most of the crew stood facing aft, forty-five strong and not a faint heart among them; everyone but the helmsman and the lookout above.

  “We are in battle, lads and lasses,” he began, drawing his cutlass and pointing it toward Orin’s Pride while pacing back and forth across the deck. “That ship carries a wizard, and right now he’s usin’ magic to slow us down. When they catch up, they’ll either board us with twice our numbers, or stand off and lob one of their fire casks onto our deck. Hydra can destroy them, but she needs blood to feed her magic.”

  He whipped around without warning and brought the pommel of his sword down on the back of the helmsman’s head, felling the man and grabbing the wheel before the ship could veer off course. The massed crew stared wide-eyed, shocked into immobility.

  “I did that to save our lives,” he bellowed, leveling his cutlass at the massed crew, “just as I would order any of you to lay down your lives in battle. This is battle. Either we fight back, or we burn.” He nodded to the unconscious man and said, “There’s your blood, Hydra. Don’t waste a drop.”

  As she fell on the man, murmurs ran through the crew. They had all faced death in combat, but being fed to a witch was something else entirely. Bloodwind ordered another man to take the wheel, but did not put his sword away. He knew they would not mutiny, not yet, but he dared not show weakness. They were, after all, pirates.

  “Reef! Two points off the port bow.”

  The call from the lookout broke the tension and brought a smile to Bloodwind’s lips. “That’s your target, Hydra. We’ll pass within bowshot of that reef. Put them on it.”

  “Yes, my captain,” she said, her grey-green tongue licking the last of the gore from her lips.

  *

  “Reef off the port bow, Captain! We’ll clear it by two boat-lengths on our present heading.”

  “That’d be Hobart’s Reef, accordin’ to this chart,” Brelak said, marking their position and taking a quick sighting of the nearby headlands. “We’re right on the mark.”

  “A lee shore. How comfortin’.” Horace’s sarcasm would have flowed out the scuppers if it had been as palpable as it was audible.

  “Relax. Deep water fer a mile east. Take her up a point if you want. Tell Rowland to make lunch, somethin’ special for the whole crew. We’ll have a fight this afternoon, one way or the other.” He turned to leave just as a hysterical call sounded from the foremast lookout.

  “Rogue wave!”

  “Hard a starboard!” Horace and Brelak shouted as one, both realizing intuitively the trap they were in.

  The wave bore down on them from windward, a sheer cliff of water rising out of nowhere. It towered as tall as their mast, capped in plunging white. Even if they could bring the bow into the wave, the ship would be flipped backward onto the reef, if not crushed outright by the weight of water.

  “I bloody knew it!” Horace raged, shooting orders for the crew to haul on all sheets as they came into the wind. “All hands, hang on for your lives! Get these below!” Without waiting for anyone to obey, he scooped up all the charts and Orin Flaxal’s black journal and pitched them down the companionway, then slammed the hatch and dogged it tight.

  A sudden gust of wind and thrust of force on their stern caught everyone by surprise. Orin’s Pride surged forward, rounding up into the wind, her bowsprit pointed at the wave like a spear.

  “Shambata Daroo!” Chula cried, clutching a shroud and thrusting his war club at the wave and laughing like a fiend. Paska took the more prudent approach of crouching behind the mainmast, though her voice also rose on the wind with the call.

  “They think Cynthia’s helping us!” Rowland cried, lending his weight to the wheel along with Brelak and the helmsman.

  “I think they’re bloody right! Look!” He nodded to the wave bearing down on them. “It’s thinning out in the middle!”

  They could see light through the center portion of the wave. With their sudden burst of speed, hope rose in their hearts.

  *

  Cynthia clutched her hands behind her back, ignoring the wave of nausea and the pain of her mangled finger, willing herself into the sea. The force of the witch’s magic was staggering. Without actually touching the water, she knew she could not counter that much raw power. She could, however, help Orin’s Pride.

  “Someone fights me!” Hydra cried, raging at the sea to crush the ship. “Someone helps them!” She fell to her knees and screamed her venom at the sea, whipping the wave forth.

  The intensity of hatred welled up inside Cynthia like a tide of filth filling her until she thought she would scream. “Please,” she muttered under her breath. Please just a little… less… water… right… there.

  It felt like asking a man under torture to please help her dull the knife being used to part his flesh. The more she poured into the effort, the more Hydra fought her, and the more corrupt power poured into the sea.

  All eyes save Cynthia’s were locked upon Orin’s Pride. Considering the strain on her features, this probably saved her life. She did not need to see; she felt the pursuing ship ride up the base of the massive wave until her deck inclined halfway to vertical, wind and water pushing her forward at Cynthia’s urging. Hydra had meant to smash the wall of water down onto the broad side of the ship like a hammer upon an anvi
l. But with Cynthia’s aid they had turned the ship fully so that they met the wave head on; instead of an anvil, the hammer struck the tip of a spear.

  Orin’s Pride impaled the wave, her bowsprit and foredeck knifing through for the main hull to follow. Her momentum continued to carry her up as the wave swept past, leaving the entire ship airborne for a moment before she drove back down into the sea, burying her bow into the calm behind the wave. She bobbed up, decks awash, some canvas in tatters and some spars snapped, but her main rig intact.

  Cynthia eased her breathing, opened her eyes, and then wished she hadn’t.

  Hydra had fed again.

  *

  “Man overboard!” Brelak bellowed as the schooner’s bow plunged down the mountain of water. He’d heard the fore topmast part, and knew the lookout had not made it to the deck before they hit, but the ship itself had passed through the wave with miraculously little damage. “Get her bow around, Horace. Lookout aloft! Watch for another wave.”

  “Aye, sir. Man in the water dead astern!” Horace grabbed a coil of line tied to a cleat on the taffrail and threw it toward the floating shape. “I still don’t like that lee shore. We’re dead if that witch puts another wave on us right now.”

  “I know. We’ll circle once for survivors then get away from this rock. You there, cut that wreckage away. Topmen, get aloft and clear that broken yard! I want a new fore-top on her right now!”

  Orin’s Pride came around in a tight circle, dragging lines in the water, but only one man could be retrieved; three others had vanished. As they resumed their former course, a call came down from the new lookout.

  “Captain! Hippotrin’s turning! She’s tacking!”

  “Tacking? That don’t make any sense at all!” Brelak pushed through the men struggling to bring a new spar up from the hold and braced himself on the foredeck, raising his glass to view the distant ship. As the lookout had said, Hippotrin had tacked. She was headed southeast, sacrificing much of the lead she had gained.