by Chris Bunch
Labala started laughing.
Gareth grinned wryly.
“At least we’re learning how to be pirates without getting hurt. And now we’ve got something to chew on while we’re waiting for our next lesson.”
• • •
Two hours later, the sun was up, and the four former slaves rowed toward the distant shore.
Gareth felt somewhat swimmy-headed: two of the slaves came from different tribes, and now he had three new languages swarming around in his mind. He knew their tongues, but nothing of the people, other than they’d been stolen somewhere in Kashi — there weren’t enough details on Gareth’s maps, and they didn’t know how to read them, anyway — along the coast, taken by raiders and sold to the Linyati who had crewed this ship.
Gareth asked if the crew had owned the ship. Only one of the ex-slaves had known what it meant to own property, and he said he thought not, but he had no idea whose orders they followed.
Gareth watched the small boat course toward the beach, and turned to Froln.
“Now we’ll sail this spit kit back into the islands we passed through and careen it. Maybe one of them will have trees straight enough to cobble together a new mast.”
“And then what?”
“We’ll put a small crew aboard and use it as bait. Then we’ll seize a proper cargo to fill its hold with.”
Gareth didn’t let himself think about the obvious — the second prize had better be more worthwhile, or his men might start thinking their captain was unlucky.
• • •
Their first prize’s mast was replaced, although lashed-together green trunks were a temporary repair at best, and the five men assigned to her got Labala to make weather charms for them. He admitted quietly to Gareth that he had no idea on how to cast such a spell, but mumbled some words over tiny seashells and gave it to the men anyway.
“At least it’ll maybe help ‘em stay brave when it comes on to blow.”
Gareth thought of naming the ship the Cosyra, decided she warranted a far greater ship, called it the Goodhope instead, and sent it out to troll the waters between Batan and Noorat, pretending to be a fisherman. He didn’t know whether the Linyati ate fish or not, or if their ships had some sort of identifying charm, such as Luynes’s had been given. He’d had the Goodhope searched from truck to keel and found nothing magical, nor did Labala sense anything.
The Steadfast lurked just on the horizon, the Goodhope’s mast a thread in the distance, watched by two lookouts with glasses.
On the third day, the Goodhope ran up a long banner to the peak of its mainmast, signifying they’d spotted a ship, and the Steadfast put on full sail.
• • •
“Uh, Cap’n,” the sailor said, standing in the companionway. “Th’ cargo’s nothin’ but feathers.”
Gareth tried to keep a still face.
“Yessir, feathers, sir,” the man went on. He held up a sheaf of brightly colored plumes. “Guess they’re used to dec’rate hats or gowns or somethin’.”
If there hadn’t been three dead men sprawled on the deck, it might have been funny, at least to everyone but Gareth, who could feel the sands of his captaincy running out.
The Linyati ship they’d taken was bigger than the Steadfast, a wallowing three-masted twin-decker, square-rigged, with six cannon. The crew had fought hard, and only a handful, all wounded, stood on the maindeck, well guarded. About a dozen slaves were on the other side of the deck, eyeing their former masters malevolently.
Why would anyone have fought so hard for feathers? Gareth wondered. Magical? Religious? Nobody’s that weird in their worship. Are they?
He heard a shout from belowdecks, and Knoll N’b’ry pushed past the sailor in the companionway.
“I moved some of the feathers aside,” he said, “nicely baled as they are. And below was the ballast.”
He held up a rectangular block wrapped in canvas. It was evidently quite heavy.
“Maybe the Linyati are neatness itself,” he said, “but I’ve never seen ballast wrapped like presents. So I unwrapped one.”
He let the canvas wrappings fall away, and bright gold caught the sun’s dying rays. The crew shouted loud.
“Half the bottom’s covered with these,” he said, hefting the ingot. “Probably melted-down treasure stolen from Kashi. Now we know why the damned ship sailed like a man trying to walk with a full load in his breeches, eh? And why the bastards fought so hard.”
Gareth felt every muscle sag in relief.
• • •
Three of the ship’s lifeboats were being readied to release the Linyati and the ex-slaves when one of them came to him.
“Leader?” he asked, bowing. He was big, shaven-headed, dignified-looking, and Gareth wondered why his masters hadn’t done away with the man. Slaves weren’t supposed to do anything but crawl.
“I hear you,” Gareth responded, in the man’s tongue he’d learned a glass earlier.
“We thank you for freedom, and for the boats. But most of us come from a land inland, up a great river, and far west of where we are. I know where we are, roughly, for I learned to read the sun’s position and later the Linyati compass and a map, as many of us have learned the skills of a sailor from the snakes we were forced to serve. I am named Dihr, by the way.
“We have enemies, longtime enemies, between us and home, and, besides, many of us have been years or more slaves, and our women will have remarried and our children finished mourning us and most likely remember not our names.”
“You wish, then?” Gareth said.
“You are a man of luck, it is obvious to see. None of us witnessed our masters loading the gold, yet you and your sage, the fat one, who I also see has great power, sniffed their riches out.”
Labala made an irked “garumphing” noise, and Gareth realized he must be learning all these Kashi tongues as well, which was all to the good.
“We wish,” Dihr continued, “if you would have us, and if you would not be shamed to serve with men of another color and those who wore chains, to join you.
“The most precious thing, we have decided, would be to be able to kill Linyati, many, many Linyati, perhaps ten for each year each of us has spent in bondage.
“What do you say?”
“I must consult with my men,” Gareth said. “For my crew is composed of equals, each having a full say in things.”
The man looked surprised.
“Hey-up!” Gareth shouted. “Everyone back to the Steadfast except you and you, who keep good watch on our prisoners.”
Minutes later, the crew had obeyed. Gareth told them the man’s proposition.
“It’ll cut th’ size of our share is the biggest drawback,” Froln said.
“So’ll gettin’ whittled by the Linyati till we can’t stand against them or man th’ yards proper in a storm,” a sailor said. “We lost three today, an’ I don’t see us goin’ back to Ticao to recruit anytime soon.”
“True,” Froln said. “An’ besides, we’ll be able to find out more about our prey. I was just thinkin’ out loud.
“I vote we take ‘em in, at least on a prospect basis, at a share. If some turn coward, or don’t work out, we can always put ‘em in the boats later, can’t we?”
There were only two dissenters to the shouted vote. Gareth went back to the Linyati ship.
“We welcome you,” he said. “As for killing Linyati, you kill only those who fight back. We are not yet cold-blooded murderers. And you will be paid equal wages in what we capture, with the rest of us.”
The man smiled.
“Now I see why you are lucky. You are not afraid to take chances.”
• • •
Gareth thought the waters off Batan might be getting warm, and wondered if he’d been right in letting the Linyati he’d captured live, instead of tying a largish boulder to their feet and introducing them to the nearest sea monster.
But he’d done what he’d done.
The three ships, the new pr
ize named the Revenge, sailed west-southwest, deeper into Linyati waters. The course of the three ships might be leading into greater danger, but this was where the prizes would be taken. Also, Gareth thought he might be misleading the Linyati sorcerers by such a plan, and they’d not look for him close to their heartland.
The ex-slaves, given language spells in Sarosian, quickly melded with the other sailors, and proved themselves indeed experienced. Surprised that no one used the rope end or worse against them, a few slacked and let others do their work before they realized they could no longer use the stupid expression and drawled incomprehension all slaves use against their masters, and that if they didn’t perform a task it might mean their own doom.
He quizzed Dihr and the others over and over about the Linyati. But their knowledge was amazingly sparse — the Slavers kept their slaves at a distance. Interestingly, slaves were only permitted to go to sea in Linyati or Kashi waters. Slaves aboard the craft trading into foreign waters were nothing more than cargo. The Linyati were indeed a secretive race.
Ashore, the slaves were kept in barracks. No one ever saw a female Linyati, and Dihr thought they might be kept in isolation, “like certain very stupid savages in our own lands do.”
One slave reported something chilling: he’d been taken to the ship, when he saw half a dozen Linyati herding some very fat children, brown and white-skinned, toward a low building that reminded the man of a slaughterhouse. “As if they were sheep. And they were fatter than normal children should be, even a chief’s son. I thought they’d been caponized.”
Dihr added an unsavory detail — he’d seen casks taken from this building to their ship before it set sail, and at certain special occasions a brazier would be set up on deck, a cask broached, and the meat within roasted, with never a morsel offered to the slaves.
Dihr added that none of them wanted any of the meat, particularly after another slave observed thoughtfully that the cooking meat smelled exactly like a funeral pyre.
Gareth swallowed hard, asked for details about the Linyati at sea. They were exceptionally skilled seamen, their officers willing to take hazardous courses without hesitation. When one of the Linyati died or was killed, his corpse was dumped overside without ceremony. At the next port, a replacement would be waiting, and it seemed as if he was already fully trained for his tasks.
Offwatch, they kept to themselves in their own quarters, from which strange singing and screeches which the slaves thought were laughter could be heard. If they worshipped any gods, it wasn’t within the slaves’ sight or hearing.
They were, as the pirates already knew, utterly merciless in battle and toward any sick or injured slaves.
Sometimes they took their own wizards aboard, mostly seemed to need or want none.
Gareth wondered if they were human at all, if they were demons.
He remembered when the Steadfast had first encountered Linyati warships, and the strange squealing that came from the closed stern cabin of one.
“I’ve heard it,” Dihr said. “But only from their ships of war … no, once, when this ship sailed with others, going into Kashi, to that great city of theirs, the leader’s ship would sail up and down the line, and every once and again the shrieking would come across the water, orders, and the sailors on Dihr’s ship would rush to obey.”
“Show me on the map where this city is.”
“I can try.”
Gareth found a marked river on Luynes’s main chart about at the midpoint of Kashi, with a dot and a question mark at its mouth.
“Yes,” Dihr said. “Their city they name Cimmar, which they built to hold the mouth of the river. The river, wide enough for a hundred ships like this to sail abreast, is the Mozaffar. But it does not stop just inland, as this map shows, but winds south and then east, through my homeland.”
Little by little Gareth was learning the measure of their foe.
• • •
They captured four more merchantmen, each with a valuable cargo — silks, brass objects of art, and two carrying spices fully as rich as Luynes had promised.
Gareth knew he had to do something with his fleet before the Linyati came after him. For the moment, he ordered his prizes sailed back with skeleton crews to the cover of that nameless island they’d first found, while he stayed a-raiding with the Steadfast, Goodhope, and Revenge.
• • •
The next ship they sighted was huge, a four-masted triple-decker. There were two of the small, rakish three-masters sailing as escort ahead of the triple-decker.
Froln grinned tightly.
“Wi’ guard’yans that’ll mean there’s sure some’at worth takin’ aboard the big ‘un, Captain.”
Gareth found himself smiling back, and knew his expression was the same as his mate’s, a wolfish glee. He had an instant to wonder how much he was changing, pushed the matter away as nonsense, ordered the men to fighting stations, and ran up the Steadfast’s colors.
The skull flag cracked in the wind, and the pirate formation closed on the biggest ship.
The two warships tacked back, but the three pirate ships refused to close, and raked them with their main guns, aiming for their masts, until the Linyati lay dismasted and helplessly dead in the water.
Then they went after the three-decker. Gareth counted half a dozen guns per side with his glass, and more, lighter cannon in the stern and bow. The ship was a slow sailor, the Steadfast and Goodhope able to close easily, the slower Revenge having about the same speed.
“We go broadside to broadside wi’ th’ bugger,” Froln said, “we’re liable to come up second or worse. P’raps we close on th’ port side, send the Revenge t’ th’ other, and mebbe confuse ‘em or scare ‘em a trifle?”
“Better,” Gareth said, and gave orders to Froln, signal flags fluttered.
“If this works,” he said as the Steadfast closed on the huge Linyati ship, trying to ignore the swirlings in his stomach as he saw the bore of the cannon in the ship’s stern cabin getting larger and larger, “we’ll be rearranging our guns.”
Smoke billowed from the Linyati ship’s stern, but the balls fell well short.
“Appears she’s carryin’ bombards or such in the stern,” Froln said.
“We’re in range,” Knoll N’b’ry shouted.
“Ready about,” Gareth ordered.
“Sir,” the quartermaster called; then, to the helmsman, “Helm a’lee!”
“Helm’s a’lee,” the helmsman shouted, and the wheel was put down.
“Let go the headsheets … let go the spanker,” Galf shouted, and sailors ran to obey.
“Stand by the guns to port,” Gareth ordered.
“Ready … ready,” came the reply.
“Mains’l haul!” And the Steadfast turned broadside to the Linyati ship.
“Fire when you bear!” Gareth shouted.
A moment later one, then the second demicannon on the Steadfast boomed.
“Take her about and do it again,” Gareth ordered.
A grim roundelay started, with the three pirate ships sailing up on the Linyati’s stern in turn, tacking, firing a broadside, and recovering.
The little Goodhope came too close, and one of the Linyati short-range bombards blew away her bowsprit. She fell back, her small crew swarming up to make repairs.
Then there was a smashing explosion from the Linyati ship’s stern, and part of the hull tore away and one of the bombards toppled slowly into the ship’s wake.
Gareth ordered the Steadfast to close and sweep the quarterdeck with grapeshot, then the Revenge to board.
The Steadfast came alongside to starboard, through the boiling smoke and red cannon fire, and her men went across as the Revenge’s crew leapt over the Linyati’s port railing.
The fighting was savage, with no quarter given, but in a quarter glass all the Linyati on deck lay sprawled in their blood.
Gareth winced, rubbed his arm. A pistol ball had ricocheted off a mast and grazed him. Thom Tehidy had a slash down his s
ide, which he was bandaging with a shirt torn from a Linyati corpse. Four men clenched teeth to keep from screaming, two others thrashed in agony, three lay motionless in death.
“Why’d the bastards fight so hard?” he wondered. “I suspect we’re rich.”
There was a bang as a maindeck hatch came open, and a ghastly stench rolled up, followed by piteous wails and screams.
“Mercy of Megaris,” somebody shouted. “We took a slave ship.”
And so it was.
There were four slave decks below, each just high enough for a man to sit up on, divided into narrow berths. There were passages down each row, where the Slavers could pass out water and bread when they bothered.
The slaves’ excrement slid down between cracks in the bunks, into the bilges.
There were four hundred seventy-three men, women, children still living, manacled to their bunks. There were another one hundred thirteen bodies in chains.
Labala cast every spell he could think of for perfume, for fresh winds, but it did little good. The sailors cursed the dead Linyati as they carried bodies into the open, where Dihr said a prayer that should help them find a better life, then slid the bodies into the water, not looking at the swirling wakes of the feeding sharks.
Dihr told Gareth that these slaves were “primitive ones, Captain. Not educated, not seamen like us. They’ve been fresh-taken from their lands and put in this hells-ship for transport to the slave markets of Linyati.”
These bewildered, half-starved people were fed as best the pirates knew how, first with delicacies, which made more die, then with simple gruels and fruit.
Labala found himself being their chirurgeon, although he claimed little skills. No one else did, either, but most everyone found himself tending to the sick. Slowly the people began to recover, although children still died, and it tore at Gareth every time he put a small corpse overside.
They sailed back to the island where the rest of their prey lay anchored, and Gareth took stock.
Tehidy and Froln came, asking what he planned next.
“We’ve got to get rid of these Kashians,” he said. “And that ship we took, with its smashed stern, needs better carpenters than we have. We should be deciding which of the ships we’ve taken are to be disposed of, and in what way. Also, all of our hulls are foul and need cleaning, and our upperworks need rerigging.
