by Simon Archer
The day wore on as the bright sun beat down on us. I narrowed my eyes against the glare and held our course. We’d reach the little island by late afternoon at this rate. I gazed off into the distance, then scanned the deck as the crew went about their work. Some of Bord’s dwarves were already hammering away, patching the damage we’d taken in the fight. The cannonmaster himself was among them, and when he noticed my gaze, he came stomping his way up to the aftcastle deck.
I gave him a nod.
“Well, she worked, Cap’n,” Bord growled. His beard was slightly singed, and there was a stain of powder across his bulbous nose.
“Hm,” I grunted. “Heard ye firing away with it. What kind o’ damage did ye do, or did ye get a chance to look?”
He guffawed and hooked his thumbs in the broad belt around his waist. “Punched holes clean through that damned galleon, Cap’n. Overcharged the powder an’ used the scored shells I cast back in Caber.”
I focused on the dwarf and narrowed my eyes. “Ye say true?” If the dwarf’s modified cannon could punch clean through the wood and iron that armored an Imperial galleon, then it might just serve to put holes in The Pale Horse or any other enchanted ship.
“Aye, Cap’n,” Bord nodded and grinned through his beard, then held up a leather-wrapped spyglass. “Watched with me own eye an’ saw yon sloop sailin’ on the other side o’ her.” Then he pointed back at the turtle-back-borne hulk. “Have a look if ye don’t believe me.”
“Damn me for ever doubtin’ ye, then,” I said. “Can ye fit any more o’ the cannons like that, single-shot be fine.”
“Not at sea, Cap’n. Need to have me a workshop an’ a good hot forge, as well as a crew o’ strong backs to move shite around,” he grumbled. “Better to cast a new round o’ six-inchers an’ mount ‘em three or four to a trap. Imagine havin’ the same as thirty-six o’ yer big sixteens or eighteens on each side o’ The Hullbreaker , each one o’ them capable o’ punchin’ clean through a man-o-war an’ maybe even hittin’ somethin’ on the other side.”
I grinned broadly. “Well, tell ye what, old dwarf. Ye’ve sold me. Once we claim the booty we seek, I’ll pay for ye to refit my ship, an’ I’ll help ye sell the idea to the other captains, too.”
Bord beamed and pounded his chest in an orcish salute. “Thank ye, Cap’n! Glad am I that ye gave me the chance to prove this could work.”
“I’m bloody glad I did, too,” I told him. “So, can ye cast these shells o’ yers hollow an’ fill ‘em with powder, so they explode when they hit?”
The dwarf’s eyes lit up like a touched-off powder keg. “Aye, Cap’n. I believe I could.” With that, he darted off as fast as his stumpy legs could carry him, yelling for his assistant.
I chuckled as I watched him go.
“Don’t think I’ve ever seen him happier,” Mary observed from behind me.
“Ain’t ever promised him the gold to refit all our cannons before,” I said. “Likely, I’ll regret it, but maybe not.”
She drifted up close and ran a warm hand along my arm, then tilted her head back and smiled up at me. I took the hint and bent down to kiss her, then straightened. “We’ll be at the cove late afternoon,” I told her. “Gol should be seein’ the island on the horizon within the hour, too.”
“Hm,” she said, regarding me thoughtfully. “Ye sense it, don’t ye?”
I nodded. “If I listen just right, they tell me the fastest currents, air and water, that will get me where I want to go.”
“It’s quite a feeling, is it not?” Mary asked softly.
“Aye, it is,” I replied. “Ye know it, don’t ye?”
She nodded and smiled up at me. “Some witches are born with that skill, some learn it during their training. I was one of the lucky ones, I suppose. Spirits liked to talk to me. It got so bad that I had a hard time telling what was real, and being a changeling, folks quickly reckoned I was barmy.”
“‘Til the Sisterhood took you in.”
“Aye. I wonder that so many renegade witches hide out here, sometimes. Then, I realize that I am one.” Mary looked away and barked a wry laugh. “I wonder if the Sisterhood back in Erdrath knows truly what goes on in the Admiralty, or if they are just as corrupt and lost as many of my sisters seem to be.”
“‘Tis strange that the most kindly witches be the ones that work with pirates, aye?” I asked, frowning slightly as I adjusted our course.
“I’m hardly kind, my Captain,” she replied.
“Ye be a good person, Mary Night, at least by my reckoning,” I told her and flashed a tusky grin. “An’ as yer captain, my reckoning is all that ye should be concerned with.”
My witch let out a laugh and a genuine smile brightened her lovely face. “Ye know just what to say, do ye not?”
I shrugged and looked back out to the fore.
“Land ho!” Gol the Clanless cried from the crow’s nest.
“Right on time,” I muttered, smirking to myself. My sense of time and distance had only improved since I started listening to the elements with a clearer head and greater focus.
Mary nodded and placed a hand on my shoulder. “Thank you, Bardak,” she said softly.
I gave her a sharp look. She only rarely used my name, preferring to call me ‘my Captain.’ It was something I found oddly endearing, though having her call me by my name pleased me.
She shrugged, and her cheeks grew pink.
“Ye know, I think I prefer it when ye use my name,” I observed.
“Really?” she blinked up at me.
“Aye,” I replied with a nod. “Not that I mind being yer Captain, though.”
Mary chuckled softly and shook her head. “Are ye teasing me, my Captain?”
“Not entirely,” I answered. “I do like it when ye say my name, though.”
A smirk teased over her face. “How about when I scream it?”
I just stared at her, then grinned, and she started laughing. It was contagious, and after a moment, I started to chuckle, then soon was laughing along with her.
“Am I interruptin’ something?” Jimmy Mocker leaned against the rail nearby, a broad smirk on his face.
“Oh, nay, Jimmy,” Mary replied. “The Captain and I were just having a bit of a laugh over the irony of our current situation, is all.”
He nodded slowly and looked to me. “I suppose if ye can laugh about it, ye might as well.” His smirk stretched out into a grin. “We made it through the bloody fight with the imperials with only some injuries, Cap’n. Miraculous, if ye ask me.”
“Good,” I stated. “We needed this kind o’ victory. Maybe the damned Admiralty will give us some space, aye?”
“Not bloody likely,” Mocker laughed, “but we can dream.”
“We can indeed,” Mary added, and I caught the brief, wistful look in her eyes.
So, in addition to defeating Commodore Arde as an undead horror, sinking The Pale Horse, and sending Admiral Justin Layne to a watery grave, I needed to figure out some way to make my dear little changeling witch happy.
I could do it. Hell, perhaps I already was. At least she seemed to be at home aboard my ship, now, instead of just sailing on it. I’d have to have a talk with her, and maybe with Ligeia, too. That was one thing I did seek to achieve with my life, aside from glory and honor. I wanted a clan of my own, that would remember me long after the seas had claimed my bones, and that would give a true home to all the misfits and wanderers that I’d brought together in my travels.
My gaze lifted to the flag flying from the mainmast, an orc skull glared out at the world in front of a pair of crossed axes, the whole set in a black field. That was our colors, and that was the mark of my clan. Likely only a few of my crew even understood what I did, but they would all learn, and hopefully, it would please them.
“Ye know,” Jimmy continued. “Bord’s goin’ on and on about his new bloody cannon and workin’ his men into a frothing mess about it. Did ye really say ye’d change out all of our cannon?”
“Actually, I did,” I replied. “Seems his test played out if ye didn’t hear. Punched a hole clean through the Imperial galleon. It was point-blank, true, but none o’ the other cannons did that, an’ with a bloody six-incher to boot.”
My first mate nodded slowly. “That’s fuckin’ impressive, Cap’n,” he said, eyes wide.
Mary snorted, and I suspected the words had twisted themselves in her head.
“Aye. I’m sold. If we harvest enough of a take from The Golden Bull to cover the cost, Bord can replace all our guns. I do need to get him to show me what the accurate range o’ that monstrosity of his is, though.” I grinned as I said that. “Imagine our fore an’ aft guns able to punch holes in a man-o-war rather than just sendin’ the crews for cover.”
“Count me in,” Jimmy exclaimed. “I let the old bastard tune me musket right before we had that dust-up in Winemaker’s. He gave me some new bullets, too, and I was picking men off from over a hundred yards with the tuning he did. Said he was going to attach a spyglass, too, but I told him I didn’t have time for that, now. I’m starting to think maybe I should bloody well let him.”
I thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “Aye, ye might want to turn him loose, but make sure ye get some practice time with whatever he does.”
“Dwarves know more about cannons and guns than they share with the rest of us, I suspect,” Mary observed.
“At least Bord seems happy to share what he knows with us,” I said.
“Aye.” She tapped the side of her nose. “He and his men are exiles, though, aren’t they?”
I nodded slowly. The cannonmaster and his crew had been prisoners of the Milnest elves when I’d acquired them, and they joined my crew to a man. They didn’t speak of other dwarves, nor did they make any effort to contact the holdings I knew of. Since I’d never pressed Bord for answers, I didn’t know for certain, but I suspected that either he and the dwarves under his command were the last of their clan, or they were exiles. Either would explain a lot.
Ahead, the small island loomed in all of its verdant glory, and I adjusted our course to circle around to the leeward side, where the protected cove lay. It would be a good enough place for us to anchor long enough for a meetup with Eustace Brill, so we could finally learn the location of the bloody sunken treasure.
We still had to outrun The Indomitable, too.
20
Sebastian Arde
T he wind moaned in the sails as if the very touch of The Indomitable caused it pain. Undead crewman, still wearing the flesh they’d worn in life, roamed the broken deck, carrying out a grim mockery of their duties while I stood at the helm, one hand on the damp wood of the ship’s wheel. I drew no breath, and my heart was cold and still in my shattered chest. The mortal wound dealt me by that damnable orc pirate, still gaped where it split me from shoulder to belt.
Whatever dark magic animated me held me together, though, and it amplified the rage and indignation I felt towards Bardak Skullsplitter. I could sense him, far to the south but growing ever closer. Overhead, the sky darkened as The Indomitable passed beneath it, storm clouds gathered to mark our passage, and nothing would stop us.
Lines flapped loose in the cold wind that drove my ship forward. The tattered sails billowed and danced, nearly useless, but more than enough. It wasn’t anything natural that propelled the ship, but the cold breath of the goddess of death herself.
“Lack went too far,” Rhianne hissed from beside me. The witch always stayed at my side, now, an odd, forlorn expression on her beautiful face with its ruined eye.
“We live, after a fashion,” I observed. “And we will have our revenge, in the Admiral’s name.”
What would I do to the orc? A portion of me leaned towards flaying him alive, then keelhauling him. But that might be too quick unless I could somehow keep him alive, trapped in the half-world between life and death.
I would happily torture Bardak Skullsplitter forever for what he did, but first, we had to catch him and defeat him. My gaze slipped sideways to the witch. She was cloaked in shadow almost entirely, but for the green fire burning in the socket of her missing eye. Since our return to the land of the living, she had said nearly nothing, only the occasional morose observation about how Lack went too far by bringing us back.
“You want the witch, do you not?” I asked her, my voice gurgling with the liquid that half-filled my dead lungs.
“Perhaps,” she replied. “Maybe that will free me. Although…” Her voice trailed off.
“You feel it, do you not?” I grimaced. “The power he gave us. It is beyond imagining.”
“Can you also not feel how the world itself rejects us, Sebastian?” Rhianne murmured. “We should not be here.”
“And yet we are,” I snorted a liquid laugh and gazed out to the fore. The air around The Indomitable rippled, like the smooth water on a pond when a drop of water hit it. Despite my confidence, I sensed what the witch sensed; the reluctance of the living world to give us passage. Instead, we forced our way through, like a knife through flesh, and reality bled behind us.
A sudden flash of awareness came to me. Life. There was a ship nearby, the dozens of little lives within it called to me and I felt a surge of something that I hadn’t felt in what seemed like ages.
Hunger.
Bardak would not escape me, not so long as I could sense him with barely any effort. I had time to indulge a little, time to revel in the power that Lack had given me.
“Land ho!” croaked one of the undead sailors, and I focused my dark gaze ahead. In the distance, past the wallowing merchant ship I’d sensed ahead, lay one of the smaller free towns.
Rhianne looked down at her hands as I spun the wheel, angling The Indomitable towards the merchantman. It was going to be our first kill, then the town. We would feed, and then we would hunt.
I tilted my head back and let out an inhuman howl that echoed from the dead throats of my crew. Dark energy swelled in my shattered chest and spilled from my wound and my eyes. The Indomitable surged forward at my command, and we bore down on the other ship as it tried to flee.
If only this were that damned orc.
21
T he island was small, but it had an expansive beach and a thriving forest, complete with a freshwater river. We pulled up our dinghies on the shore, built a bonfire from scrap wood, and set to cooking and drinking, or at least our crews did. Tiny himself dragged the galleon halfway up onto the shore so that we could strip it, and I set the men to doing that. Bord and his crews were already hard at work making the repairs to our ships.
We four captains and our witches gathered near the fire to discuss the future, and I brought along old Eustace Brill. The crew went about gathering wood, fishing, drinking, or doing maintenance on their gear and the ships while the sun dipped low towards the distant horizon.
“Eustace!” Tabitha bounced to her feet as I approached with the old men.
“Tabby cat!” He stepped forward and held out his wrinkled hands to her. She took them as I exchanged glances with the others. “I hoped to see ye!”
Captain Binx turned to the rest of us. “We be friends,” she stated, her eyes narrowed as she gazed from one to another. “I helped him find a place in Potter. ‘Tis how I knew where to find him, and that he’d share the location o’ The Golden Bull.”
The old man bobbed his head. “The dear kitten found me when I was halfway down a dark path,” he explained, then shuffled over to settle in next to the fire. The black-furred Ailur helped him gently ease down to sit on a low log, then crouched in the sand beside him.
I couldn’t help but notice that her stance was at least nominally defensive.
“Peace,” I rumbled. “Like any o’ us would make trouble for a friend we just fought the Empire for.”
“‘Tis no one here concerns me,” Tabitha said softly, her voice barely audible above the crackle of the fire.
My eyes flitted about and lit on a shadowy figure moving nearby. The light from a match b
riefly illuminated the face that I could see clearly despite the dim light: Drammond Screed. He was close enough to listen in but far enough away that it wouldn’t be obvious.
I wasn’t the only one to catch the furtive movement, and Shrike slowly let his right hand drift towards one of the long knives at his belt. No one really liked the new addition, but we couldn’t justify acting against him outright unless he did something that was unmistakably against the interests of the crew.
Kargad caught my eye and shrugged helplessly. I shook my head at Shrike, and he let out a disgusted sigh. “What be the plan, then?” the thin man asked.
Tabitha smiled at Eustace. “I think that me dear friend here will tell us where we need to go, then we set sail again.”
Eustace bobbed his head like a seagull, and I half expected him to squawk. The captain of The Black Cat might trust the old man, and apparently, the Admiralty believed he was important, too, but I couldn’t help but harbor a few doubts. Brill was old and frail-looking, with deep-set eyes and wispy hair. He must have been middle-aged when The Golden Bull sank, and the intervening years had not been kind.
“Get on with it,” Shrike muttered and took a drink from a hip flask. He wasn’t a terribly patient man, and it looked to me that this whole escapade was wearing on him.
Hell, it was wearing on me. I squatted down by the fire and looked over at Tabitha, Eustace, and Ember expectantly. Mary settled down cross-legged beside me. Next to Kargad, Adra stared into the fire, her mind pretty obviously elsewhere. Nagra, though, like Shrike and Kargad, was intent on the Ailur and the old human fellow.
Tabitha saddled her ears, and her tail gave a nervous twitch, but that was all that betrayed her discomfort at being at the center of everyone’s attention. Eustace just cackled and leaned over to drag a thin, bony finger through the soft sand.
