Rémy leapt up from the controls — they were useless for now, anyway. She ran for the airship’s ramp and the small axe that hung beside it. If she could sever the tethers that were drawing the airship in …
The sight that greeted her as the ramp came down was terrifying. The airship had been pulled so low that the hull was almost level with the pirate ship’s deck. A dozen ropes with climbing spikes had been hurled toward her craft, embedding themselves into the hull as easily as a bare foot pressed into wet sand. Each rope was held in the grip of two pirates — they had looped the other ends of their ropes securely around their ship’s guardrail and were now straining as they pulled the airship in, inch by inch. More stood by, screaming encouragement at their fellows. They were all terrifying to behold — scarred and tattooed, painted and bejeweled; they bared their teeth, screaming and shouting, caught up in a bloodlust meant purely for Rémy and the airship they were claiming as their prize.
Rémy edged as far out onto the ramp as she could, knowing she only had a matter of seconds. Raising the axe, she aimed for the farthest rope and swung, severing the thick cord in one heavy strike. The pirates who held the other end lost their balance as their weight suddenly had nothing to counter it. They sprawled backward, ending up on the deck in a pile that briefly filled the air with bellows of laughter instead of murder.
She swung for the next rope and did the same, scrambling backward as it flicked free, and then immediately swung for the next. The airship’s nose twisted away as the tethers loosened their grip. For a moment Rémy felt a surge of hope — it was working! Then she felt a vibration shaking the ramp and turned. Over her shoulder she saw one of the pirates climbing nimbly toward her up the ropes that still tied the airship fast.
It was a woman. Her white teeth were bared in a terrifying grimace, the blade of a talwar clamped between them. Her hands, bedecked with spiked rings, gripped the twanging ropes as she surged toward Rémy, her blue eyes sparking fury. Rémy could see another long-bladed sword strapped to her back. In a second she was on the ramp, grabbing the sword from between her lips with one hand and grasping Rémy’s shoulder with the other, hauling her back up the ramp and into the airship, knocking the axe from her hand.
The pirate woman dragged Rémy upright, her sword coming up to press viciously against Rémy’s neck as she stared at her, seemingly transfixed by her face.
“Who are you?” the pirate demanded. “Who sent you?”
The airship juddered again and another pirate — a man this time — appeared in the open doorway.
“Bring her down,” he said, dipping his head to fit his bulk into the small cabin. “He wants to —” The man broke off as he looked up and saw Rémy. Surprise burst across his face, creasing the ugly, jagged scar that bisected his left cheek from ear to mouth. A second later suspicion settled where the surprise had been a moment before. “He wants to see her.”
“You,” said the woman, hissing sharply into Rémy’s ear, “are wanted below.”
“What about the ship?” Rémy gasped, feeling the bite of the cold blade against her neck with every struggle. “I can’t just leave it.”
“It’s secure,” the man whom Rémy named to herself as Scar Face growled. “We will tow it behind us.”
“But —”
There came another shout from outside, but this one was different. It was urgent, full of warning, and came from the bird’s nest at the top of the main mast.
“Ship ahoy!” bellowed the voice. “Look lively, lads! They’ve got their cannon —”
There was the sound of a huge crash, like thunder rolling in the distance, followed by a low, swift whistle. The pirate holding Rémy swung around, looking out of the open ramp. Below them on deck, the pirates scattered, yelling, running for their posts as the whistle grew louder.
A second later a cannonball broadsided the pirate ship with a force that caused the entire vessel to buckle. It crashed through the second deck, sending wave after wave of splintered wood into the air, carried by the wind. Pandemonium reigned above — pirates wielding rifles and pistols, huge spiked metal balls on chains and all manner of swords. Then they let loose their own cannon, two at once — one from forward and one from aft, the recoil shaking the ship almost as badly as the strike had done a moment earlier. The airship slewed sideways, buffeted by the force as she strained against her tethers.
“Incoming!” bellowed the lookout in the bird’s nest. Another rolling crash of cannon-thunder echoed over the melee. The sails of the pirate ship flapped and shuddered and as they dipped, another ship came into view, swung sideways and with all her cannon gates open.
“It’s the British,” cried one of the men. “They’ve found us. That infernal air-boat has led them to us!”
“Listen to me,” Rémy cried. “If one of those cannon balls hits the airship, we will all burn — your ship and mine! It’s not like your ship, it cannot take a single strike — it will explode!”
The female pirate shook Rémy like a rat. “You lie!”
“No! I don’t! You have to —”
The second cannon caught the pirate ship a glancing blow forward, smashing into its nose. Flames licked along the guardrail and there were shouts for buckets and water.
“I swear,” said Rémy, “I am not lying. Just one flame like that one and we’re all done for.”
The female pirate snarled with anger and released Rémy, flinging her away so that she crashed against the airship’s control panel and stumbled against the chair. Just as she did so, another cannonball fired from the British frigate crashed into the ship below. Rémy couldn’t see what was happening, but from the frantic cries of the people below she knew it must have been a hard hit.
“He’s going to have to run for it,” exclaimed Scar Face. “We’re no match for their firepower, but the Black Star can outrun their bucket of bolts! We’re not at anchor! Why isn’t he running?”
As if someone below had heard him, a shout echoed up from below. “Cut it loose!” came the cry. “The air beastie is dragging us back. The British have got us like sitting ducks! Cut it loose!”
The woman pirate leaned out of the window. “We cannot lose this prize!”
“Take it to the cove at Maginapundi,” came back the answering shout. “Do it now!”
With a curse, the woman raised her sword and slashed at the tangled ropes still holding the airship fast to the deck. With a jerk the airship was free. It rose away from the pirate ship, soaring into the air like a freed bird. Rémy leaned over the controls, yawing the craft around as she almost tangled with the pirate ship’s sails. She swung the airship toward the coast as the female pirate and Scar Face dragged up the ramp and secured it shut.
A second later Rémy felt the bite of a blade at her neck once more.
“Now,” hissed the woman into her ear. “I have had to abandon my ship for you, anukarana. So one wrong move and I will not hesitate to part your head from your shoulders. Understand?”
{Chapter 14}
INTO THE VALLEY
They crested the stony ridge and fell into a different world.
Unexpectedly soft earth dropped away from him and Thaddeus stumbled, fetching up against the rough trunk of a tree that barred his descent. He crashed to his knees, feeling a stab of pain in his shoulder where the tree’s harsh bark had scraped the skin. He shook his head as if to clear it — convinced for a moment that he had gone deaf. Ahead of him, farther down the slope that careened sharply into the valley’s dim depths, he could see J helping Dita to her feet. Thaddeus heard the crackle of twigs as the two youngsters regained their footing, and realized after all that he hadn’t lost his hearing. It was just that the valley had sucked them into the kind of ringing, noisy quiet that stuffed the ears as surely as scraps of rag. After the noisy chaos of their fight with the raja’s men, the sudden cease of sound was doubly confusing and distinctly unsettling.
He got to his feet, looking around for Desai. The older man was gingerly making his way down through the trees toward him. Of the raja’s soldiers there was no sign. It was as if they had disappeared into thin air.
“What happened?” Thaddeus asked. He spoke in a whisper but his words still sounded loud in the valley’s cloying quiet. “The soldiers — where did they go?”
Desai paused, turning to glance back up the ridge. Then he looked at Thaddeus with a slight smile. “They are afraid to enter the valley. More afraid than they are of disobeying their master’s orders.”
Thaddeus looked around, feeling a deep prickle of unease move across his shoulder blades. “Why? Just because of the legend?”
“Yes. It is superstition, mainly.”
He looked back at Desai with one eyebrow raised. “Mainly?”
Desai clapped him on the shoulder. “Courage, Thaddeus. I know you have such a quality or you would not be here at all. Come — night will fall early here, and we should cover as much ground as we can before then.”
Thaddeus watched as his friend went ahead to Dita and J, who were looking as troubled as he felt. Then, quietly, slowly, they all began to move — Desai in front leading the way, Thaddeus making up the rear.
“Stay close,” Desai counseled them all in a whisper that would have carried like a leaf on a breeze anywhere else, but here cracked like a dry twig, “and stay alert. We are in strange country now.”
It was true. Even the foliage looked different. The trees squatted fatly over their heads with large leaves far thicker than the ones Thaddeus had grown used to seeing over the months of their journey through India. The greens were deeper, darker, tinged with purple and veined with faint silver lines that glittered in the gloomy afternoon light. The ground was thickly clogged with dead leaves that shifted under foot as Thaddeus walked, rippling as if he were walking across a serpent’s patterned spine. But there was no life here, save for the trees. No creatures rustled in the dull branches as they passed beneath, no insects skittered from the wake of their footfall. Save for the strange leaves, the valley felt abandoned — and if so, Thaddeus would not blame those who had chosen to flee. He wasn’t so far off doing so himself, however courageous Desai thought him to be.
Still, Thaddeus thought to himself, this awful quiet does give us one advantage — we’ll hear any attackers coming a mile off.
They walked on, deeper and deeper into the valley. The light here was mediocre — fading as if the sun was setting, although it could barely be later than four o’clock in the afternoon. Thaddeus looked up and saw above him a dense roof made from the overlapping leaves, so thick that it stopped almost all light from filtering to the ground.
Mist twisted through the trees, weaving around the trunks like snakes. The air grew colder, as if the heat of India herself had been siphoned from the valley.
“I don’t like this,” muttered J. He and Dita were walking with their hands clasped tightly in each other’s, shoulders bumping as they huddled close together.
Dita said nothing, staring fearfully around her as the mist seeped toward the group, growing denser by the second.
“We must move faster,” said Desai, his voice echoing to Thaddeus as if from a great distance, even though he was only a few feet away. “And try to stay out of the mist.”
“How?” J protested. “The stuff is everywhere! It’s like wading through cold molasses, an’ —”
Dita emitted a sharp scream that made them all jump. She clutched J even closer, her thin fingers bunching into his shirt as she peered wildly through the mist.
“What?” Thaddeus exclaimed his heart pounding. “What did you see?”
“I — I don’t know,” Dita cried. “A — a face, I think. A face without eyes, only black holes where the eyes should be, and … and …” Her voice faded to a whisper and Thaddeus could see that she was shaking.
“And what?” he probed gently, trying to sound calm even though he felt as terrified as the girl looked. “What else, Dita?”
“Teeth,” she whispered, so quietly he had to lean forward to hear her despite the silence around them. “Rows and rows of sharp white teeth.”
“Come,” said Desai, “we must keep walking. This mist — it pulls strange tricks on the mind. Do not believe everything you think you see.”
“What should we believe then, eh?” cried J as Desai waved them on. “If we can’t believe our own eyes, like, then what should we believe?”
“We’ll be fine, J,” said Thaddeus, trying to tell himself that it was true. “We’ll stick together and keep moving, all right? Everything will be fine.”
They followed Desai, but Dita was still shaking like a leaf. With every snap of a twig beneath their feet or fresh billow of mist reaching out at them as bony fingers would, she flinched, her thin face pale.
“We ’ave to go back,” said J, “Whatever’s down ’ere, we ain’t ready for it. There ain’t enough of us, fer a start!”
Dita raised her head from his shoulder. “No,” she said firmly. “We must go on, ja? We must.”
“But you —”
“You stay close to me,” she said. “You stay close to me and I will be — how do you say it? Right as rain, dirty boy. Right as rain.”
J hugged her and they stumbled on, although by now the mist was so thick that it was hard to see more than a foot or two in front of them. Thaddeus stumbled over a gnarled tree root protruding like a broken limb from the leaves under foot. In the second that it took him to right himself, he’d fallen behind enough to lose the others. A spark of panic burst through his heart.
“Desai!” he shouted. “J, Dita! Wait!”
The mist rushed in around him, sheets of thick gray coldness as palpable and heavy as blankets left out in the rain. Thaddeus batted it away from his face and arms, shouting for his friends again, trying to stem the panic as the mist touched his face and slid along his hair.
Ahead of him he heard noises — another piercing scream from Dita, shouting from J and, he thought, even from Desai, too. Thaddeus stumbled forward, trying to head for the sounds — it felt as if he were forcing his way through a heavy curtain as he battled against the mist. He could hear other noises now, too — a strange, low chanting, rising around him like another wave of fog. It was impossible to make out the words — if they even were words — but they rolled closer before snapping away sharply, as if whoever was speaking them was darting in close to his ear and darting away again before Thaddeus had a chance to turn and see them.
Then, as quickly as it had enveloped him, the mist rolled back. It was as if someone had opened a window and pulled it out. As he watched, it drew back in columns that looked disturbingly like tentacles — coiling, curling, sinuous, it crept back between the trees to wherever it had come from.
Thaddeus found himself out of breath, as if he’d been running. He spun around, looking for his companions. They emerged from the mist like statues — Desai, J … but no Dita. He looked around wildly, searching the forest as it came into view.
“Dita!” J shouted, frantic. “Where are you?”
There was no answer. The forest was as silent as it had been when they first rushed over the ridge. Thaddeus went to J and grabbed his arm.
“What happened?” he asked, but the boy shook his head miserably.
“I don’t know! She were here one minute — holding on to me, like, and then … and then … she were gone. She told me, Thaddeus, didn’t she? She told me to stay close, and she’d be fine. But she wasn’t fine — she wasn’t …”
Thaddeus hugged him. “We’ll find her, J. Don’t worry. We’ll get Dita back, and she’ll be just fine.”
Desai moved to Thaddeus’s shoulder, although he was looking out into the darkness, which seemed even deeper than before.
“We must go,” he said. “The power of the Sapphire Cutlass has already gr
own stronger than I realized. They will not stop until they have us all, and if we want to save Dita then we must stay free.”
J sniffed and wiped the back of his hand under his nose. “All right. Which way is it then? I’m all turned about after the mist, like.”
Desai paused for a moment, looking around. Then he gestured. “It is this way.”
“You sure?” J asked defiantly. “Because it all looks the same to me and I don’t want to end up wasting time going in the wrong direction, right?”
Desai looked at the boy steadily. “J. Trust me. I know where we’re going.”
J stared back again for another moment. “All right then. Let’s get on wiv it.” He turned and stomped off.
“J,” said Thaddeus, catching up with him and laying a hand on his shoulder. “Calm down.”
J shrugged him off, his face a picture of anger. “I said we shoulda turned back. Didn’t I? Didn’t I say so, Mr. Rec?”
“Yes, J, you did. And Dita said no, didn’t she? She wanted to carry on, because she knows how important this is. So that’s what we’re going to do. We’ll carry on, we’ll get her back, we’ll get out of here, and we’ll do it together. All right?”
J didn’t have a chance to answer. There came a warning shout from Desai, and Thaddeus turned to see the mist rushing in again. It came faster this time, a gray wall that swallowed them up almost before they’d even seen it coming. He reached for J, standing right next to him, and felt the boy being pulled away even before he heard him yell.
Thaddeus heard Desai shout, too, and then a commotion that could only mean the older man was fighting an attacker. Thaddeus felt solid shapes moving around him, had the fleeting impression of faces in the mist, darting in and darting away again. The chanting returned — louder this time, he thought, but it could also just have been that it was closer.
The Sapphire Cutlass Page 9
