by Chris Bunch
Dafflemere’s cabin swarmed with excited pirates, dripping arms and gold-lust. After everyone except Gareth had a mug of brandy from a small, bashed-top keg, Dafflemere hammered for silence with the butt of a — hopefully — unloaded pistol.
“We’re here,” he announced, “and there’s been no sightings of any Linyati or Kashi ships, so we’re still unknown in these waters.
“I’ve cast small spells to divert any magical attention, and shall start other spells to find the location of the treasure fleet.”
There was a clamor of agreement. But Gareth stood. “A suggestion?” he said.
“Go ahead, Cap’n Radnor,” a captain said. “You’re worth listening to.”
“I’m no wizard,” Gareth said. “But isn’t it possible, Dafflemere, that your spell seeking the Linyati might be discovered by the mages that must be aboard their ships, and sound an alarm?”
“Not likely,” Dafflemere said. “I cast with exceeding care. But there’s a possibility.”
“What about this, instead?” Gareth said. He went to the large map pinned to a bulkhead.
“I’ll take the Goodhope,“ he said, “since it’s Linyati, and a recent prize, so maybe it doesn’t smell as much of pirates as some others, and sail west, along the bight of Kashi. I’ve noticed that the Linyati like to keep within smelling distance of the land, so I’ll do the same.
“As soon as I’m down-horizon, another fast ship comes after me, always keeping my masts, no more, in sight. Perhaps your Mystery, Captain Libnah, since it seems fast. Then another when the Mystery is almost out of sight.
“When I sight the fleet — which should be easy for anyone who isn’t stark blind — I’ll make a signal; the next ship repeats it, and so on, back to the fleet, which should give more than enough time to deploy.”
The pirates took only a few seconds to consider that and pronounce it a great idea.
“I’ve got a question, as well,” Gareth said. “Dafflemere, do you have powers enough to raise a wind?”
Dafflemere growled in his beard.
“Sometimes yes,” he admitted. “But sometimes no.”
“Ah,” Gareth said.
“Why’re you asking?”
“Just curious.”
Dafflemere looked skeptical, about to pursue the matter, when another, gray-bearded pirate snorted.
“An’ ain’t it strange for us hardened whores to be listenin’ to a nigh-virgin, now.”
“The virgin came in with seven ships, Cunedda,” another pirate said. “Last prize I remember you taking was a clamboat.”
There was laughter, and, surprisingly, Cunedda had the grace to chuckle.
“So we have an idea,” Dafflemere said. “And I can cast passive spells just in case weather or some’at ruins Radnor’s observations.”
Another round of brandy, and the pirates went back to their ships. Gareth turned the Steadfast over to Thom Tehidy, went aboard the Goodhope, was away from the fleet within the hour.
• • •
The Goodhope was — almost — alone in enemy waters. Her only companion was a pair of masts the size of toothpicks on the horizon, the link to the freebooters.
Gareth had Dihr keep the faint smudge of land just in sight to port. There were four lookouts in the bows, another, precariously, at the main masthead, and Gareth changed them hourly.
He dreaded the thought the Linyati would pass him in a fogbank, or, worse yet, be on a course farther out to sea. But at least they’d be spotted, most likely, by one of the following ships, even though he would be then considered a young, arrogant incompetent.
Labala was hovering anxiously, hoping for some task as soon as the Slavers were spotted. At least he wasn’t as prideful as other wizards, making no insistence that his spells would never ever alert the Linyati, unlike poor Dafflemere.
Not wanting to sail down the Linyati’s throat, he kept the Goodhope to a moderate speed. Two days out, Gareth was given a present by the gods he didn’t believe in: a lookout spotted a dozen or more fishing boats with strange, triangular sails, that must be Kashi. Best of all, they were slowly moving east.
Gareth ordered all sail except the mainsail down, and that sail goosewinged to keep the Goodhope moving just a bit more slowly than the fishing boats.
Another day passed, and there were mutterings of boredom, which Gareth ignored.
Dihr did not:
“You men, I laugh at you,” he shouted. “Soon enough there be blood up to your worthless bellybuttons, and then you shall whine to me about too much excitement. What is this madness of sailors that they never are happy with what they have, always wanting more or less?”
“ ‘At’s what keeps us goin’ from ship to ship,” someone answered. “Yer don’t think we’re doin’ this fer pleasure, do you? Man that’d go to sea for pleasure would futter demons just for the pain.”
Gareth went to the captain’s cabin Dihr insisted he take, pretending he’d heard none of the exchange, and again studied his charts.
Two hours later the cry came:
“Ahoy the deck! Those fishermen’re packing on full sail, goin’ like stink for the beach!”
Gareth was on deck and up the mast, a glass tucked in his breeches. He clung to the slanting yard and looked out.
“Good call,” he said to the lookout beside him.
“Thankee, sir. Looks like barnyard geese when the dog’s loose.”
Gareth nodded. “Now, keep your eye sharp on the horizon, just there, and you might see the dog himself in a bit. Pass that word on to your replacement when you’re relieved.”
“Aye, sir.”
Gareth shinnied back down, and had the guns loaded and the best men put on watch. Then they waited.
It was midafternoon when the next cry came:
“Sail ho! Sail ho!”
“Whereaway?” Dihr shouted up.
“Two points off the port bow … one ship, no, two more of ‘em … hells, too many to count. Big ships, carryin’ full sail.”
It was the Linyati treasure fleet.
Gareth gave commands to Dihr, and raised signal flags:
ENEMY IN SIGHT. BEARING SSW MY POSITION.
His original plan had been to make just this report, then return to the fleet. But with a favoring onshore wind, and the lateness of the hour, he chanced getting closer for more information.
The Goodhope raced in a long curve until it was due east of the oncoming Linyati, with the lowering sun at her back. Then Gareth eased her closer, under small sail, while he used his most powerful glass from the masthead.
He whistled when he had a count: there were at least twenty ships. Twelve of those were fat, four-masted, awkward merchant ships, like the Freedom, except with five decks above the waterline.
These sailed in three rows of four each. In front of the convoy Gareth counted three rakish warships, much like the ones he’d seen when the Steadfast first ventured into these waters, except larger. Along the seaward side of the convoy were four more, tacking back and forth to keep from outrunning the merchantmen.
Interestingly enough, he saw only one, possibly two, warships at the convoy’s stern, and only a single ship on the landward side, from whence, of course, no attack could ever come.
Interesting, indeed.
But he had enough for the moment.
He came down from his platform, ordered the Goodhope to the fleet at full sail.
• • •
“Hmm,” a captain said, looking at the chart and Gareth’s proposed line of attack. “Risky if the wind changes. I dislike sailing close to the shore, especially with an enemy holding the weather gauge.”
“That’s if Dafflemere’s spell fails, at worst,” Gareth argued. “They’ll not be looking for us inshore of their course, you’ll admit.”
“I’ll admit. Only a fool would chance getting that close to land before a battle.”
“A fool,” Dafflemere said. “Or a pirate.”
There were low laughs at that, less amu
sement than the hungry meditations of the tiger.
“They’ll reach here, where the coastline reaches south,” Gareth said, touching the map, “in another two days, about dawn. Most likely they’ll stand a bit away from the land, which’ll give us more searoom.
“Since they’re sailing in close company, they’ve got lights out to keep from ramming each other.
“I’d propose we stand inshore, here, at night and lay to,” he went on. “At first light, when they’re grumpy and sleepy and changing watch …”
“Then we smash the bastids,” Libnah of the Mystery said eagerly. “I’m superstitious, so I’m not dreamin’ about the grand estate I’ll have, and the scandal I’ll bring to the neighborhood wif me doxies and carryin’ on. But if any of you knows a good land agent, I’ll be grateful for the reference.”
Cunedda studied the map, nodded.
“It’s a good plan, Cap’n Radnor. Something you didn’t mention is the dawn wind is generally offshore, which’ll help the spell you want Dafflemere to cast. A good plan indeed.”
“Do we need to take a vote?” Dafflemere said.
Headshakes, negative mutters.
“Then let’s go out and make ourselves into grandees, rolling about in gold,” he said, lifting his mug.
“Good luck to us … and a long, slow dying to the Linyati!”
• • •
The night was clear, and a waning moon hung overhead. The seas were low, and there was no wind.
The pirate ships, masts bare, rolled in the slight swell, waiting.
Sometime after midnight, the Steadfast’s lookout called, said he saw lights off the port bow.
It was the Linyati, trudging along the coast toward Noorat and then into Linyati.
No one was asleep aboard the Steadfast, not even the usual fakers who shammed calm before battle.
• • •
Slowly, imperceptibly, the darkness faded, and Gareth could see the face of the helmsman across the quarterdeck from him.
A breeze came from the land, and Gareth smelled orange blossoms, swamp muck, the too-sweet reek of flowers he didn’t know the names of.
The lights of the Linyati ships were to starboard now, and it wouldn’t be long before their lookouts must see the waiting corsairs.
The breeze became a wind as Dafflemere began casting his spell.
“Make full sail,” Gareth ordered Tehidy.
“Aye, sir,” and wooden blocks whined as halyards were heaved on, and seamen’s bare feet slapped the deck as sails opened to the wind.
Tehidy had asked, when Gareth returned from the final conference aboard the Thruster, if there’d been some grand strategy developed. Gareth looked at him wryly, and Tehidy started laughing.
“It’ll be ‘go for the closest and richest’ for most of them,” Gareth said. “We’ll hold to the tactics we’ve practiced.”
Not that Gareth had come up with any subtle tactics, other than strike for the Linyati ships’ sterns, and for his five ships to hang together in the initial attack.
“We’re seen,” Tehidy said.
That was obvious as Gareth glassed the Linyati. They, too, were putting on all the canvas they carried in a rather futile attempt to escape. Two of the warships in the convoy’s fore were tacking back to support the single ship guarding the landward side of the convoy.
The pirate fleet swept out, spreading as captains chose a target.
The air was salty and sweet to Gareth as they closed on the Linyati. He touched the three pistols in his sash, made sure they were half-cocked and ready, and his sword loose in its sheath.
The closest of the huge hulks saw the five pirates coming down on him, and someone panicked — strange for the Slavers. Its helm went hard to port, and the ship strained onto a new course, directly across the convoy lines.
“They’ll be ruinin’ themselves an’ all we’ll have to do is watch,” someone on the Steadfast’s maindeck shouted, and so it was as the veering merchantman smashed into the stern of another ship.
“Signals to Freedom and Naijak,“ Gareth snapped. “Attack those two ships first,” and flags went snapping up the mast.
“We’ll take …” Gareth considered, “that fat one on the rear. Signal to Revenge and Goodhope.”
“Sir.”
“Helmsman, we’ll go close under her stern.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Run out the guns!”
Gunports banged open, and the wooden trucks of the gun carriages squealed on the deck. The Steadfast closed on the Linyati ship. White smoke plumed down the Linyati’s side, and moments later the dull thud of her cannon rolled across the water.
“Still out of range,” Tehidy said. “And whoever laid those guns is as blind as a flop-eared pig.”
Gareth nodded absently, watching the Linyati ship.
“Gunners,” he shouted. “This one has a lower gundeck in her stern. Break that up for me.”
Gun captains crouched over their cannon, motioning to gunners to muscle the gun left, right, using handspikes to adjust the elevation.
Tehidy chortled, and Gareth glanced over, to see a broadside from the Thruster smash into the convoy’s sole landward escort. A moment later, the ship exploded. White, then black smoke boiled, and Gareth could see things — Linyati, masts, cannon — spinning through the air.
“Thank you, Dafflemere,” he murmured. “But there’s no gold sinking warships.”
“Nor much of anything else on that one,” Tehidy said.
The Linyati merchant ship was very close, and again, the gunners in the stern deck fired too soon, and balls arced past, well in front of the Steadfast’s bows.
“Stand by …” Gareth called. “Bow guns, fire when you bear.”
The small falconets barked, and one of the Steadfast’s main guns as well. That premature ball thudded into the Linyati amidships, but Gareth saw the smaller balls of the falconets smash into the stern deck, and he imagined he heard screams.
“Damn that gunner,” Tehidy said. “You, Gun One, if you can’t fire when you’re s’posed to, I know a man who can.”
“Main guns … fire at will,” Gareth shouted, and the only cannon bearing blasted into the Linyati.
“Bring her about,” Gareth ordered, “and hit her again!”
The Revenge was just behind the Steadfast, and its broadside slammed into the Linyati stern as well. The little Goodhope, unnoticed by the Linyati, cut under her bows and, her cannon at full elevation, blasted the foredeck of the Slaver’s ship with grapeshot, skittered out of the way.
“Good,” Gareth said. “We’ll strike her again, then lay alongside for boarding.”
Again the cannon boomed, and as the Revenge cleared the Linyati, Gareth ran down the ladders, across the maindeck, and up to the foredeck.
He could feel his heart thudding wildly as the Steadfast drove into the Linyati stern. There was someone at a cabin window, aiming a musket, two other Linyati behind him. The falconets, firing grape this time, banged, and there was no one in the window, and smoke poured out.
“You men with the grapnels,” Gareth said, and the two muscled sailors swung the hooks about their heads, let them go, and they thunked solidly into the Linyati ship.
A musket fired, and a man beside Gareth went down, and he saw a Linyati leaning over, trying to cut the grapnel’s rope with a bill.
“I don’t think so,” he said aloud, a pistol leveled across his forearm, and it went off. The Linyati, face still expressionless, leaned farther and farther forward and fell into the closing space between the two ships, and his corpse was crushed.
“Away boarders away,” Gareth shouted, and leapt for that window the musketeers had been shot away from. He caught the splintery wood with his forearms, pulled himself up, and rolled into the cabin, spinning away, not giving anyone inside a chance to kill him.
Gareth was on his feet, but he realized there was no danger as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. The falconet’s shot had blown the three Linyati apar
t. The dripping walls and overhead looked as if they’d been freshly and carelessly painted, and the color was dark red. Gareth made out some pieces that might have been men, felt nothing as his fighting rage built, going across the room and kicking the cabin door open.
There were other pirates coming up behind him as he burst out onto a gundeck with six guns to a side. Linyati sailors saw him, shouted, and some of them had daggers or swords out, rushing him.
“Getcher ass outa the way,” someone shouted, unceremoniously pushing Gareth to the side. There were half a dozen men with muskets, kneeling, and they fired, and the Linyati reeled back. Another rank fired as the first reloaded, and the Linyati fled up a ladder toward the main deck.
Gareth and the boarders went after them, broke out onto the main deck.
He blinked in the tropic sunlight, flinched as the sailor beside him screamed as a musket ball ricocheted off the deck and smashed his kneecap.
Gareth shot down that Linyati as the Slaver scrabbled with ramrod and powder, dropped the empty pistol to the deck. Someone handed him a loaded weapon, and three Linyati rushed him. He shot one, who collapsed into his fellow. Gareth ran that Slaver through, parried a cutlass slash from the third, and put his own blade through the man’s neck.
The Linyati’s momentary panic had vanished. The maindeck, already littered with bodies, was a clash of steel and the snap of muskets and pistols. The Slavers were covering behind masts and cannon, firing steadily. Four Linyati rushed the companionway Gareth had come up, slammed the hatch and barred it.
Reinforcements cut off, the Linyati shrilled glee and closed on the pirates.
A man wearing finery on the deck above was shouting orders. Gareth saw an unfired musket on the deck, had it, knelt, and shot the officer down.
But the Linyati’s fighting calm didn’t break.
The pirates were forced back, toward the bow of the merchantman.
“A hand here,” Thom Tehidy shouted, pushing at a squat cannon. Labala, unnoticed blood dripping from a sword-slash across his chest, was beside him, helping.
