The Corsairs of Aethalia: A Thalassia novel

by Patrick McClafferty

  “Land ho!” The shout came from the lookout. “Two points off the port bow.” Jorse craned his neck. There! He looked back at the Corsair and felt his stomach clench. They weren’t going to make it.

  “Stand by to repel boarders!” Jorse slid down a convenient stay to join the throng on the main deck while Hudak began handing out cutlasses and dirks to grim-faced crewmen. “Take this, boy.” He said, handing Jorse a curving cutlass and a needle point dirk. “You stay up there.” He pointed a dirk at the top of the mizzen mast. “If they grapple, you do yer best to cut their rigging. Drop their yards. If we can beat clear, the Capn’ll get us safe home.” He put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Yer growin fast, but yer still to small fer the deck fightin, so’s we all do what we can, eh?”

  Jorse nodded. “I thought you said the Dagfred was fast?” He asked, shoving the dirk in his waistband and hanging the cutlass over his shoulder.

  Hudak touched the railing with something like love. “She be a fast ship boy, but she ain’t no Raider.” He looked back at the approaching lanteen sails. “They be un-natural.”

  Captain Svetla stood on the quarterdeck wearing her best black frock coat. Hanging from her waist was a slim rapier, handle wrought with a fine gold filigree on a silver ceramic blade. Jorse gaped.

  A dull boom echoed across the water, and Jorse saw that the bow of the Corsair ship was wreathed in smoke. A tall plume of water shot skyward—a scant cable length from their stern.

  “The bloody devils have a cannon.” Hudak muttered.

  Jorse looked at the Corsair intently, then at the stern of the Dagfred. An idea blossomed in his mind. Not one that would help them now, he realized, but if they did survive... He stepped up to the quarterdeck, and saluted the captain respectfully.

  “May I have a quick word, ma’am?”

  She looked down, surprised. “Yes, Marko. Are you frightened?”

  “Yes, uh, no... I mean, this doesn’t have to do with me being afraid or not, ma’am. I was looking at the Corsair ship and I was thinking that if WE had a cannon or two of our own, hidden like in that big stern cabin of yours, then if a Raider came up from behind we could wait until he got close like, then un-hide our cannon and give him a taste of his own medicine.”

  “Oh, Marko” She laughed. “You have such an imagination. That is just plain silly, it’s ...” Her voice trailed off, and Captain Svetla got a faraway look on her face. Her eyes widened. “That would be some trick, Marko, some trick indeed. It might just work, if we can survive today.”

  The boy grinned. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Now to your post, my boy, and be quick about you. We have some hot action ahead of us.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain.” He saluted and was gone.

  The captain watched his slim back disappear up the mast. That would be a trick indeed.

  Boom! A tall waterspout appeared alongside the Dagfred, and Jorse felt the ship shudder.

  “They’re launchin a bloody boardin pod!” Hudak bellowed.

  In the distance Jorse saw a long sleek shape being swung out from the side of the racing Corsair. Sleek fins and tail swept out from the greenish sides and a long transparent half dome covered the top of the vehicle. Jorse could see fifteen or twenty heads inside the vessel. It resembled a well fed green shark, Jorse mused, with a transparent back.

  The Dagfred turned hard to port, and for a moment Jorse was very very busy. When he looked back the pod was streaking toward the stern of the ship. He didn’t believe that anything could travel so fast. Sitting high on the mizzen mast in the stern of the ship, it looked like the pod was headed right for him. It was a cable length away. Less! Half a cable now!

  Boom!

  There was a terrific crash. The top half of the mizzen mast, the part with Jorse clinging to it, began to topple. Jorse had only seconds. He could jump and make it into the water or... He studied the sagging rigging and slashed a line with his cutlass, and then another. The mast twisted and a yard skewed, aiming like a spear toward the approaching pod. The mast tilted more and fell, the large yard striking the approaching craft like a harpoon. Mast and Jorse hit the pod at the same time. In the din he heard shouting.

  “Cut the mast free, boys!”

  And then someone else shouted from his ship. “Hell, they’ll never catch us now!”

  Clinging to the wreckage of the half sunken pod and the fallen mizzen mast, Jorse watched the Dagfred sail away—without him.

  Chapter 4

  They were arguing and they sounded mad. I hope they aren’t arguing about me. His ears were ringing and he had to concentrate on the discordant voices. They weren’t.

  “You bloody, thrice bedamned fool! I told you not to shoot that damn cannon when the pod was close, but no... Now you’ve all but sunk the bloody pod, killed three of our men and lost the prize to boot!” The shouting woman sounded angry. No, she sounded furious.

  “I be most truly sorry, Cap’n.” A lower, rougher voice said, sounding scared. “I jes wanted to put a hole in her sails, maybe slow her down a bit for you. I didn’t think it would hit ...”

  “You didn’t think!” The woman shouted in reply. “That’s for sure. Full forfeiture of shares for this voyage! Your shares will be divided between this ship, for repairs to the pod which will probably need to be completely replaced, and the families of the fallen crewmen.” There was a pause. “And twenty lashes for your lack of discipline.”

  “What!” Wailed the deeper voice. “Wait, I...” There was a pause. “This here boy,” Jorse felt a toe push his hip. “This here boy caused all the problems. He was the one who cut the riggin an skewered our pod with the fallin yard. It was all is fault. I saw him do it, by the gods.”

  The woman’s voice was covered in thick glaciers and Jorse, wet and lying on the hard deck, shivered. “You saw this boy doing his job, you idiot. Doing what he was paid to do. He saved his ship. That’s more than you can say.” There was a grumbled, unintelligible reply.

  “So, what do we do with him, Cap’n?” The grumble asked. “I say we throw him overboard and let him swim. He caused us enough trouble.”

  Jorse opened his eyes and saw—boots. They were black and shiny and had laces that ran up the slim front. Nice...

  “If that’s the case, Mister Radoslaw, then I suggest that you swim with him for you both share equal blame.” The black and shiny boots backed up. Jorse looked up to see a woman standing, hands on hips, glaring somewhere beyond him. She was tall, he guessed, and weathered like Captain Svelta. Her hair was a golden wheat color and held back with a fancy bone clasp. Intricately carved bone earrings hung from her ears.

  “No!” A young voice, female by the sound, proclaimed loudly. “Don’t throw him overboard. He’s so young. Surely we can train him. We lost three good men, after all. We need the replacement.”

  Jorse saw the captain turn. Her voice softened just a bit. “You want to save him, then you save him, Llinos, and you train him. If he doesn’t train well, he goes over the side. He’s your responsibility.” Smaller boots entered his field of vision. He assumed it was Llinos.

  “Aye, Captain. I’ll take care of him.”

  “Put him in one of the vacant bunks and have Lilith take a look at him. He might need some patching up. He fought well for one so young.” There was a note of respect in the voice. The captain’s black boots moved off. The smaller ones stayed.

  Jorse coughed and moved, tried to move. He felt as though he had been beaten across every square inch of his body. He coughed again, and salt water dribbled down his chin. Warm hands lifted his head and a glass was pressed to his lips.

  “Drink.” Llinos, he assumed it was, said gently. “It’s hot Klaa.” He sipped. The hot salty sweet drink was the same he had had his first day on the Dagfred. He drank, coughed, drank some more. The spices he smelled in it were tart and bold, this time familiar. “Can you tell me your name?” Blue eyes stared down into his green ones.

  “My name is Marko.” He whispered.

  �
�No!” An old woman was squatting next to Llinos. Her voice was sharp, grating. “That is not yer name and you know it. Old Lilith is many things, and I can tell a lie from a truth, boy.” She leaned close. “Now speak the truth. Who are you?”

  “I was named Jorse, old woman.”

  “And who were your parents?”

  He opened his mouth to say Zoya and Jared, and stopped. “I would rather not say. I was raised...” He hesitated. “I was raised by strangers and grew up an orphan.”

  “There are many strange things about you, boy. Very strange.” She reached out a thin, age-spotted hand. It brushed his forehead and she gasped and drew it back. Standing quickly, she backed away from the boy, yet never taking her eyes from his face. “I’ve heard about people like you, boy. They say you are possessed.” Her eyes were wide.

  Jorse sighed. He’d about had it with this nonsense. Slowly he moved out of Llinos’ arms and knelt up straight; he knew for a fact that he couldn’t stand, with his eyes fixed on the old woman. He forced his eyes to open as wide as they could possibly go and he leaned forward. The old woman seemed to be holding her breath. “Boo!” He shouted, and then fell over onto the deck, laughing and coughing at the same time.

  At the sharp word, the old woman backed into the mast with a thump, banging her head on a cleat. She glared at the boy laughing on the deck, then, finally, started laughing herself. “Aye, I was right, ye know. Ye are possessed of the devil—as are all boys. I had forgotten what it was like.” She eyed him warily, however. The purple and yellow and greenish bruises on Jorse’s body disappeared in a day. That brought more sidelong looks from Lilith, but he said nothing. He had enough problems.

  The cabin was smaller than on board the Dagfred, cramped and smelled of dirty clothes. The three empty bunks in it had belonged to the three men he had killed today. The crew of the Donner-kind knew what he had done was only business while he was serving another employer. That was the way it was explained to him, and it raised the hackles on the back of his neck. He opened the small door and slowly, painfully, made his way up to the deck. He had managed to sleep for six hours before the strange shipboard noises woke him.

  It was a cold night on the fo’c’s’le, just a slim shade above frigid, and the stars were standing naked beyond the railing. He winked back at them. They were his old friends; the only ones he had left. The ocean slid by with a sibilant hiss, phosphorescent feathers spreading out into the water and slowly fading. The air smelled clean and knife-sharp.

  He heard light footsteps come up behind him. “You should be in bed.” It was Llinos.

  He didn’t reply right away, but kept his stare on the distant stars. “Why did you stand up for me, Llinos?” He asked quietly.

  “You can call me Lin.” Her reply was just as quiet. “I saved you because... because you didn’t have anyone else, that’s why. I saved you because I didn’t want you thrown overboard. After we saved you once, that wouldn’t have been fair.”

  He smiled into the dark. “Thank you, Lin.”

  Lin was a tall willowy girl about two or three years older than he, and she served as the captain’s cabin boy and Lilith’s assistant in the sick room. Unlike most of the crew, Lin kept her hair cut short, the sides and bangs of her bob framing her delicate face and the curled end stopping just above the shoulders. Her hair was jet black and her blue eyes had just the slightest hint of an exotic tilt to them.

  “You said that you know how to navigate. Was that the truth?”

  Everyone on the Raider seemed intent on finding out the truth of things. “Yes. I’m familiar with maps and navigation.” Jorse didn’t bother to mention that he was still in training.

  “Good.” Lin’s voice was firm. “One of the men who died today was a helmsman, and with a little work you should be able to replace him.”

  “Not again!” Jorse groaned.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The helmsman on my former ship tried to stick a knife in me. I convinced him that he should take a swim in the ocean instead.” Jorse shrugged. “He never told me he couldn’t swim. I had to take over his job, along with foretop man and cabin boy. I was busy.”

  “And you said that you are thirteen years old? My, my. You are a fast learner.”

  “I’m closer to fourteen, and I had a good incentive.”

  “Oh?” Lin leaned forward.

  “My former captain threw her old cabin boy overboard when he displeased her.” There was a chuckle in the dark from Lin.

  “You can expect the same treatment on this ship from Captain Jolenta. She’s fair, but watch out for Pandaros, the First Mate—sort of.”

  “Sort of?” Jorse turned and frowned. “What do you mean sort-of?”

  “Well, Captain Jolenta, she never really made him First Mate, official-like. He does the job, but he doesn’t get the pay.”

  “I’ll bet that makes him a bit unhappy, sort-of.” Jorse returned the chuckle.

  “It makes him mean. Watch out for him.”

  The two stood, shoulder to shoulder, watching the slow lightening of the eastern sky. Ahead of them the water turned from black, to leaden gray, to blinding silver as sun broke the far horizon. Lin told him about their ship, the Donner-kind. She said it meant Thunder Child in the old language, and he wondered what “old language” she was talking about, and who had spoken it. She told him what was expected of him, and most importantly, how much he would be paid. The word PAY was very important in the Raider society. In his turn Jorse wove stories of his past, fanciful fabrications with not one word of truth in them. Orphan boy taken in by a kindly chandler. It sounded wonderful. Robbers and fire in the night—he was forced to go to sea. So sad. He had signed on to the Dagfred as a cabin boy to Svetla. The rest was, more or less, the truth. He didn’t know if she bought the story, but in reality, he didn’t care. In the back of his mind he could still see Dala’s sad dark eyes and he wondered if he would ever see her again.

  The blow hit him in the side of the head and sent him sprawling across the deck. Things swam for a moment, and then steadied as the pain went away. Blood dripped from his nose, and he wiped it on a sleeve, leaving a long red smear, and there was the coppery taste of blood in his mouth.

  “I told ye to be here at the start of the dog watch, trader boy.” A rough voice snarled. “Ye were late. I’ll teach ye to be late on my watch, trader boy.” A toe caught him just under the short ribs and the air rushed out of his lungs with a whoosh. Jorse rolled into a ball of pain.

  “The... the captain wanted to see me, Mister Pandaros.” He gasped. “I didn’t mean to be late. I really didn’t.” Jorse saw the leg of the First Mate draw back for another kick.

  “Mister Pandaros!” The voice belonged to Captain Jolenta. “That will be enough of that. I was speaking with the boy, now let him get to his post.”

  The First Mate growled under his breath. “There’ll be other times, trader boy, and the cap’n won’t be around to save yer sorry ass.”

  Jorse finally got to his feet and made his staggering way to the massive ship’s wheel. The older sailor he was relieving looked at him with sympathy.

  “Jes stay away frum that one, lad. He’s mean clear through and he blames you for the death of his one and only mate. Well, he wasn’t much of a mate, he was the only one aboard that would speak to the bastard.” The grizzled old sailor chuckled, and scratched his beard. “We’re about a hunnerd leagues from the depot.” When the boy frowned, he continued. “That’s where we can git are pod fixed, or trade it for a new one. Stretch our legs ashore for a bit. It’ll be good, an then there’s the Sandritch.”

  “What’s that?” Jorse asked, taking over the wheel. “Something to eat?”

  “Games o skill, boy. Wrestling, swordplay, staves, archery, you name it. Ye kin make a bloody fortune if ye bet yer money right.” He put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Keep her on this same heading. Wind should be true for the watch.” He turned and was gone.

  Life for the last three months h
ad been the same way, a continual battle. Pandaros was a sour smelling, sour acting fellow and he looked for any excuse at all to assault the boy. He stood a full head taller and outweighed Jorse by a full ten stone. Rules of the Raiders supported their own authority. Crewmen had no rights and whatever Authority said was law. Fighting was punishable by death. He looked up and saw the First Mate glaring at him across the long low main deck. Someone had stolen his pouch a week after he had come on board, with his few bits of money and the silver locket he had reclaimed at Boktor. He had good idea who it might be and he intended to get it back.

  The depot was a huge mobile platform that was towed by four lumbering scows, to the downwind side of a sharp peaked, squareish island, thereby staying out of the worst of the weather no matter what direction it came from. The depot had long slips built into it that would allow a Raider to be raised out of the water for hull repairs. There were a half dozen sleek Corsairs, sails neatly furled and the long lanteen yards all set at exactly the same rakish angle, floating at anchor within a few cables of the structure. A Raider was raised up in the dock, getting long tendrils of seaweed and barnacles scraped off her hull. On the island, warehouses lined the long beach, and a section of the forested inland had been cleared to make room for a massive log dome, obviously the site for the Sandritch games. Bright flags and pennons flew from flagpoles set around the structure, snapping in a wind that was warm, moist, and filled with the heady scents of growing things. Birds ducked and wheeled, raucous calls filling the air around the ships.

  The anchor of the Donner-kind, a huge flat-bladed stone carved to grip the sea bottom, splashed thunderously into the shallow blue green water. A thick woven anchor cable was quickly snugged home, and in a short time the ship was swinging peacefully at anchor. Captain Jolenta stood by the railing, doling out pay to each man as they departed the ship. Again, that word PAY. She looked up at Jorse.