At the advice of Pavel Tonsho, former Chief Deputy of Kara-Est now the governor of the conquered city, the Sky Citizens had given Onsulomulo a ship, crew and a fat indemnity and sent him on his way.
The Wyvern seemed designed especially for Ortil Onsulomulo. Like him it was a freak, a crossbreed. Laid down in the Estil shipyards as a gigantic round-sterned cargo ship, its construction had been halted midway when the backing company had gone bankrupt. The receivers couldn't afford to complete a vessel of this size, but neither did they wish a half-constructed ship to go to waste. So the hull was cut down. The Wyvern was transformed into a cog. And it was ugly.
It had just slid – or waddled – down the ways into Kara-Est harbor when the Sky City appeared overhead. No one knew or cared if it was seaworthy; the crew sent aboard after the battle got horribly seasick on a bay as smooth as a mirror, which wasn't a good sign. But no one said the Sky City had to offer Onsulomulo guarantees, just a ship. He took it.
Perhaps no other mariner could have sailed the Wyvern. Probably none other skilled enough would have stayed aboard longer than three minutes. Onsulomulo fell in love with the ship at once.
He did more than sail her. He took her up the Karhon Channel to Tolviroth Acerte, a journey which made the refugee Estil seamen wonder if they wouldn't have been better off taking their chances with Prince Rann. At the City of Bankers, he took on a cargo so valuable that he hired a Shark class dromon from TMG to squire him to High Medurim, the port of delivery.
As the Wyvern's boats had warped her around the end of the breakwater, the fugitives had speculated among themselves as to the nature of the cargo. Moriana thought Wyvern carried strategic materials vital to Imperial security; Ziore, priceless art objects; Erimenes staunchly held out for aphrodisiacs. Knowing High Medurim and its Emperor Teom the Decadent, Fost tended to agree with Erimenes. As it happened, he'd been as wrong as the others. He felt the deck quiver under his feet.
'Good morrow, Magister Banshau!' called Onsulomulo, launching himself into space off a battered crossbeam. Fost shut his eyes as the dwarf dropped ten feet from where he had been inspecting the mast and landed jarringly on the deck. None the worse for the experience, the captain strolled past Fost to greet the newcomer who had emerged blinking and puffing into the daylight. 'I trust the morning finds you well?'
'I am not!' roared the corpulent man blocking the hatch. 'I couldn't possibly be well, forced to ride in this wallowing monstrosity. How you could think for one instant that I might be, completely eludes me.' 'I thought you Wirixers were used to boat as such,' said Eri menes. 'You live in the middle of a lake, after all.
The man glared at Erimenes with beady black eyes almost lost in a face like a full moon. He reached chubby, ring-encrusted hands to straighten the square green felt hat, then smoothed the golden silk cord fastening his purple robe about his vast equator. He shuffled bright orange toe slippers into a wider stance, as if bracing to attack the spirit, and blew out through his moustache like an angry walrus.
'Of all the nerve, you ghastly blue violation of the laws of nature!' he bellowed. 'You insult my vast intelligence! Wir is a lake, and this, as even the ghost of a discredited philosopher ought to be able to see, is an ocean.'
'A discredited philosopher, am I?' bristled Erimenes. 'You bilious cretin!'
'Justly are Wirixer sorcerers renowned for their wisdom,' Ziore declared in fervor.
In unison, Fost and Moriana sighed. This was the cargo Onsulomulo carried to High Medurim, the cargo that rated escort by the Tiger. A Magister of the Academy of the Arcane Arts in Wirix was a rare commodity, but not rare enough to justify the enormous expense of TMG protection. There had to be more to Zloscher Banshau than met the eye.
A three-way screaming match ensued among the two Athalar genies and Banshau. Captain Onsulomulo stood to one side smiling slyly. The mage's elephantine rage had been deflected from him. Truly, he was beloved of the gods.
With common accord, Moriana and Fost unslung their satchel straps. They looped them over a belaying pin and went below. The music had gone out of the day.
Moriana yelped as a wave clawed at her feet before falling back to lose itself in the chaos of the sea. A few more quick heaves on the line by grinning Tolvirot sailers and she was swaying above the decks of the Tiger, dripping legs dangling from the boatswain's chain.
She was too high up for Fost to reach her. Tiger's first officer stepped up beside him, reached, plucked the tall blonde woman from the chair and handed her down as if she were a child. Tim Devistri was the tallest human Fost had ever seen. He had the mahogany skin of a Jorean tanned the black of Nevrym anhak by the sun. It was all but unheard of to find a Jorean serving as a mercenary of any kind, not that the TMG sailors thought of themselves as mercenaries.
'Why so skittish?' asked Fost. 'I thought you were used to being up in the air.'
'Over land,' the princess told him. 'That doesn't come right up and grab you.'
Ignoring a lewd comment from a female Tolvirot sailor, Fost said, 'You know, you've turned the most amazing gray-green. Almost as if you had Vridzish blood.'
She turned deathly pale. He let go, stepped back and watched killing rage in her eyes change into shocked hurt. 'Forgive me, I didn't know. That is, I was thoughtless…'
'No,' she said, shaking her head sadly, 'I'm the one who is sorry. I don't know why I reacted like that.' She gave him a wan smile and squeezed his arm.
He watched her turn, wondering what had happened to her in Thendrun. It couldn't have been pleasant, he decided.
Captain Nariv Shend took them for a tour of her ship. She was a stocky woman of middle height and years. Incredibly broad shoulders and back showed she still took her turn pulling an oar, as did many TMG captains. There were no slave rowers on a TMG ship, only skilled and highly paid professionals.
At the moment, those professionals lounged about the narrow deck, the men barechested, the women in scant black halters. Others slept in the crowded hammocks slung between the benches below while the Tiger beat southwest under sail.
Bareheaded so that her short-cropped black hair was ruffled by the breeze, the captain herself led them on a tour of the ship.
'A Tolvirot dromon's the epitome of the naval architect's art,' she informed them in a voice gone husky from bawling orders over the years. 'Tiger's the latest design. She lives up to her name, too. You'll not find a tiger shark sleeker or deadlier. We're only fifteen feet shorter than the tub Wyvern -' She gestured with contempt at the larger ship, which even in the mild sea wallowed worse than the slender warcraft. '- but we're less than half as broad beamed and don't displace a fifth of what she does. And look at this.' She bent over the starboard rail and pointed down at the hull. When the ship surged up as it came off the crests, they saw shiny yellow streaked with green. 'Copper sheath. Cuts through water like a knife. And our spur up at the prow can punch through an enemy's hull like a spear.' If Erimenes were here, Fost reflected, he'd make some comment about the captain's propensity for metaphor. Which was only one of the reasons the genie wasn't here.
She straightened and looked at them. Her eyes were pale blue and almost hidden in wrinkles etched by squinting against the harsh sunlight blazing down and glancing off the broken surface of the sea.
'That's with rowers, of course. Peaceful times, when there's any kind of wind, we sail and let the rowers off.'
Fost thumped a boot heel on the stout anhak deck that covered the ship from rail to rail. 'I thought most rowed vessels were open.'
'Tiger's fully armored. The deck gives us a good fighting platform in a boarding action. And you see our gunwales are pretty high, and we've these stout mantlets for added protection from archers.'
She led them around her ship while they looked on and tried to ask informed questions. The Tolvirot sailors watched with amusement but no contempt.
'And up here in the forecastle, we've got the pump for our flame projector.' She nodded to her first officer, who stood by the forward mast direc
ting a sail drill in a voice like a thunderstorm. He acknowledged and went back to the drill. Like this captain and everyone else aboard, he wore a short blue kilt with a dagger at his belt. But he didn't wear a short-sleeved blue tunic like Shend. His titanic chest was bare. Fost eyed him, hoping that no turn of events pitted them against one another. And in the same thought, he hoped Moriana wasn't eyeing the enormous sailor too closely, either.
'Now the flamethrower's a tricky proposition,' Shend said as she opened a hatch in the square forecastle. 'It's a very effective weapon, but you can't get more'n one or two good shots out of it. Can't carry fuel for more. Now here -' A blunt hand indicated a squat, dully gleaming brass assembly. '- here's the pump, and that's…'
A cry from above brought her head sharply up. Fost saw she almost quivered like a hunting hound on the scent. Her hand dropped to the short axe at her belt. Tolviroth Maritime Guaranty were notorious for avoiding fights that were none of their concern, but that was only because a finely honed instrument of destruction shouldn't be blunted needlessly. But when the time came, the TMG sailors took an unholy joy in battle.
A sailor, dark and sexless against a piling of clouds, sat in a Bucket at the top of the forward mast. The lookout pointed toward the low green shoreline. They crossed delta country where several rivers drained from Lake Lolu into the sea. From the concealed mouth of one of those rivers pirates often sallied forth to attack shipping.
And that was what Fost presumed the three low, black shapes crawling like insects across the rumpled green blanket of sea had in mind.
'An outrage!' The immense Wirixer mage quivered with rage as he twisted a mottled silk handkerchief in his hamhock hands. 'That my personage should be subjected to treacherous assault! Oh, woe, woe!'
'Be silent, you bulbous bag of wind,' sneered Erimenes. 'Be a man! You should look forward with keen anticipation to the virile shedding of blood, as I do.'
'You only do that because you've no blood to shed,' Fost said dourly, trying to fit a conical helmet on his head so that the noseguard didn't scrape his skin. The spirit ignored him.
'Besides, these vagabonds doubtless aren't attacking us to get at you. That's merely a paranoid delusion of grandeur on your part. Likely they're just run of the mill pirates. Murderers, rapists, robbers, that sort of thing.'
'Be silent, you old fool!' Ziore's voice throbbed with exasperation and worry. 'They come to attack Moriana. I know they do!'
Teetering on a rail, resplendent in gilded and shaped breastplate and greaves that would have pleased the Emperor Teom, Ortil Onsulomulo laughed gaily.
'Whatever their motives, their intentions are clear.' He waved a stumpy arm at the approaching ships.
'So are ours,' said Moriana, holding her bow between her knees as she adjusted the buckle of her own helmet borrowed from the ship's armory.
The pirate craft had become distinct shapes with discernible details. Two were low with single banks of oars, which Onsulomulo sneeringly called pentekonters. The third was more ominous, a big bireme with staring eyes painted on the prow.
'Laid down in the Kolnith Shipyards, by her lines,' the captain observed. 'You think Kolnith is backing this?' Fost asked.
'Some City State could be, but I doubt it's Kolnith. Not even the Archduke's fishheaded enough to send his lackeys a-pirating in a ship traceable to him.' Onsulomulo pointed his shortsword at the pirate ships. 'You'll notice their decks are fairly black with men, not to imply they are crewed by my Jorean cousins.' He interrupted the lecture with a short laugh. 'Each is carrying two or perhaps three times its usual crew. They've just put out from land a few hours past and don't need to worry about provisions.' He sighed and shook his large, golden head. 'We are sadly outnumbered, I fear.' 'Woe!' lamented Magister Banshau.
Though according to the half-dwarf captain the bireme would be quicker, the smaller pentekonters coursed ahead, their rowers working frantically to drive them through the incoming rollers. 'It seems they've a basic sense of tactics,' Onsulomulo said dryly. 'How do you mean?' Moriana asked.
'The two little cubs are off to worry our sheepdog while the wolf makes straight for the fold.'
The cry went up, 'There she goes!' from the Wyvern's rail, and Tiger slid under her bows, hitting the crests with loud bangs as she pulled for the attackers. 'They haven't a chance,' said Fost.
The low, black shark-ship shot between the two oared galleys, spitting arrows in both directions. In passing, the ballista mounted amidships thumped and sent a two-yard-long iron dart smashing among the crew tightly packed between the gunwale of the pirate on her starboard. Fost heard the screams.
The bireme had already turned her bow into the west and made to pass to port of her fellows to intercept Wyvern. Onsulomulo shouted for his ship to come about, leading away from the distant green shore. It seemed wasted breath to Fost. They were beating into the wind as they had for ten days and could never hope to out-maneuver the big bireme.
The Tiger swung to port trying to turn about and come to grips with her attackers again. Shend had plotted well. The other pirate galley, inflamed with the lust for loot, kept coming arrow straight for Wyvern's fat flank.
Even at the distance of several hundred yards, Fost heard Shend's voice, 'Star'rd oars, full back! Port oars, full for'ard!' 'A turnabout.' Onsulomulo's eyes gleamed.
It was incredible. The long black hull simply swiveled in the water, as deft as a waterstrider. When her spurred prow pointed the way she had come, Shend roared, 'All for'ard full!' and the ship leaped ahead as if shot from a catapult.
The men packed on the decks of the galley screamed as they saw death bearing down on them. The little galley was broadside to the swell and lost way as the rowers lost rhythm. The slave rowers were trying to tear loose from their chains and flee the path of that deadly spur.
Tiger took her broadside with a rending screech that made Fost's neck hairs rise. For a second, it looked as if the pentekonter would ride out of the blow. Then the deadly iron spur tore free with a harsh squealing of sundered wood and the irresistible pressure of seventy-two strongly pulled and perfectly coordinated oars simply rolled the smaller vessel over. The watchers in the Wyvern clearly heard her keel breaking as the Tiger ran her down.
Erimenes shrieked in bloodlust ecstasy, Moriana shouted and Fost found his throat raw now. Even Banshau had quit blubbering and gazed on intently.
Tiger lunged away from the foundering body of her prey. Still apparently fresh, her rowers pulled her past the surviving pentekonter in a quick shooting pass. Again her arrows and engines worked execution on the thronging pirates while the return missile hail had no visible effect against the Tolvirot's well-shielded complement.
A hundred yards ahead of the pirate, almost in bowshot of the Wyvern, the dromon spun in another breathtaking turnabout and went head to head with the pentekonter. 'Is she going to ram?' Moriana asked.
'Do you jest, Lady? No TMG captain would ram bows-on except as an uttermost final resort. No, Highness, you'll see. Captain Shend has more daggers than one in her fine bodice.'
The pirate oarsmen slacked off, apparently asking the same question Moriana had. Fost heard whips cracking as the rowing master frantically sought to build up headway again. If the Tolvirot really did have a suicidal attack in mind, it wouldn't do to be caught dead in the water.
Tiger veered to port to pass wide of the pirate. He almost felt the sigh of a relief go up from the enemy ship. 'Fecklessness!' Erimenes cried disdainfully. At the last possible instant, the Tiger swung back at her foe.
'Star'rd oars, traill' Shend howled. As one, thirty-six oars snapped back alongside the ship, resting inside the line of her iron sheathing.
The pirate never had a chance. Tiger's prow ran over her oars. Damned wails and screams burst from the pentekonter as her starboard oarsmen were crushed between oars and benches. When at last the horrid grinding was over and the Tiger swung around her foe's high stern, the pirate galley lay motionless in the water.
Then wi
th a thump and a scrape, the bireme came alongside. Fost forgot the Tiger.
Moriana had kept her eye on the approaching bireme and sent some shrewdly aimed arrows in its direction. Now she laid her bow aside and took up sword and shield. She had provided herself with a light leather jerkin for body protection and her Grasslander boots were rolled up to protect her thighs. Fost hoped it was enough. He hoped he had enough, too, with shield and helmet augmenting his tattered mail vest.
Screeching like angry ravens, the pirates swarmed up over the side. The bireme only lacked a foot of Wyvern's freeboard, so there was only Onsulomulo's crew to fend them off. Wyvern held a hundred and twenty men; the bireme easily three times that many. The fight was hopeless from the outset.
'Magic!' Erimenes cried as Moriana and Fost engaged yelling pirates in a skirl of blades. 'Use your magic!'
'Can't!' she cried, taking the thrust of a boarding pike on her shield. 'Too many!'
'A fireball'd cool their ardor,' said the genie, mixing metaphors wildly. 'Shrewdly struck, friend Fost.'
'It'd set the ship ablaze, you dunce!' Fost shouted back, as the partner of the man he'd just killed swung an axe at his head.
The battle came to him in surrealistic flashes. Bearded faces distorted with rage or pain as his blade bit home; Moriana's slim sword flickered like a tongue of flame, its tip tracing lines of blood in the air as it struck and darted away; Onsulomulo danced through the crush of sweating, bloody bodies and fought using two short swords, hamstringing, stabbing kidneys, capturing swung cutlasses between his blades and spinning them away with a scissors twist; Magister Banshau, prodded in the belly by a blond-bearded pirate, raised a shrill keening of fury, swept a large tar barrel up above his head and sent it bowling down the decks like a runaway boulder crushing half a dozen pirates to bloody gruel. They all fought well. Erimenes crowed encouragement and Ziore, wincing with pain at what she must do, clouded the minds and slowed the reactions of pirates as they closed with Moriana. But it was all in vain, as Fost knew when he thrust his sword into an angry face and counted the eighth he'd killed with no slackening in the tide of enemies. The day was lost. Sheer value wouldn't offset the crushing weight of numbers.
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