Black Arrow

by J. P. Ashman

  ‘What happened?’

  Hitchmogh barked a laugh and moved away. ‘He’s fine, Cap’n,’ Hitchmogh said, leaving the darkened room.

  ‘You, young man,’ Captain Mannino leaned in where Hitchmogh had been, ‘are very lucky to be alive. As are we all, after what befell us.’

  Spendley looked about, the movement sending rocks tumbling within his skull and neck. He saw a familiar smile.

  ‘Nearly had us they did.’ Lefey winked.

  ‘I owe you a debt,’ Spendley said, locking eyes with the woman, who scoffed.

  ‘Hardly that, mate.’ She smiled before leaving the room, Spendley’s bloodshot eyes following her out.

  ‘Yes, you do, man,’ Mannino said, sitting on the edge of Spendley’s bunk. ‘As you do the rest of Sessio’s crew, for almost losing the ship, and our lives.’

  Spendley swallowed hard, but managed to meet his captain’s unreadable eyes.

  ‘But,’ Mannino said, before Spendley could reply, ‘I doubt I would have fared any better, nor would any of the other men aboard.’ He stood again, leaving Spendley to wonder why he’d sat down in the first place. ‘However,’ Mannino continued, moving to the wall of the room and pressing both hands against the wood, ‘I hope next time Sessio is in your hands, Master Spendley, that you use what you have available to you, which would have been Lefey in this case, and not try and take on the impossible yourself.’ He looked over his richly adorned shoulder, half his face lit by lamplight, the other lost to shadow. The eye that was visible creased in what might have been mistaken for a smile, if Spendley didn’t know any better, before Mannino spun dramatically and crossed to a clay jug full of rum. ‘Anyway,’ the captain said, pouring a small cup and offering it to a now sitting rather than laying Spendley, ‘It’s time for you to get off your backside and get on deck, we’re about to make port.’

  Taking the offered cup, Spendley frowned.

  ‘Tri Isles,’ Mannino explained, taking a deep breath afterwards, whilst fingering the ornate basket hilt of his sheathed cutlass. He caught Spendley’s prolonged look of horror and nodded. ‘I know, Master Spendley, but needs must and oh do they ever. It seems Squall wasn’t looking favourably upon us at all this trip, for we took damage shortly after the sirens were dispatched by Lefey and her sister-mates, and these damned and cursed islands were the closest port available to us.’ Offering what Spendley thought was a tight smile, Mannino pursed his lips and made for the door.

  ‘The boy, Captain?’ Spendley asked, leaving his formulating thoughts and fears about the port behind as the boy in the crow’s nest sprang to mind.

  ‘Is well…’ Mannino looked back once before exiting the room ‘…thanks to you!’

  Spendley slumped with relief as the door closed behind the captain. ‘Well at least there’s that,’ he said aloud, before necking the rum in one and climbing to his feet. ‘At least there’s that.’

  Squall’s salty bones, Spendley thought heavily, whilst placing the empty cup on the side. Of all the places to make port, the bloody Tri Isles… and after all that’s happened to this crew there.

  ‘Squall and ’morl save us,’ he said finally, pulling on the clothes laid out for him. ‘We’d have been better with the bloody sirens.’ His face flushed at the recent yet vague memory.

  ‘Remember, lads and lasses,’ Hitchmogh said to the gathered crowd on board Sessio’s main deck, ‘ye’re to lay low, to keep flapping lips battened down and for Squall and ’morl’s sake, ye’re not to attract the attention of the Adjunct’s Guard, do I make meself clear?’

  A chorus of ‘aye’s’ followed.

  ‘Grand,’ Hitchmogh said, before looking to Mannino, who nodded back to him from the front rail of the aft-castle.

  ‘Feck off then, the lot of ye,’ Hitchmogh shouted. A cheer followed and a surge for the port ramps. Hitchmogh grabbed two passing sailors, who leaned in to hear him over the din of the rest.

  I said lay low and they cheer, Hitchmogh thought, shaking his grizzled head before speaking to the two he held onto.

  ‘Make sure those with duties on land carry them out, will ye?’ Both of the women nodded. ‘And make sure everyone’s back before sunset, too. I’m holding you two accountable if owt happens.’ Two groans followed that, but two acknowledgements thereafter. ‘Now crack on with it,’ Hitchmogh said, whining as he pressed a small pouch of coins into the closest hand of each sailor.

  Beaming, Lefey and her friend rushed from the deck and off into the milling crowd that accompanied any busy wharf.

  Reaching the top of the aft-castle’s steps with a huff and an over exaggerated puff, to be heard over the countless gulls above, Hitchmogh moved beside his captain and leaned on the rail, the two of them watching the majority of their crew disappear into the crowd and surrounding blue tiled, white buildings.

  ‘You think we should have limped on to a Sirretan port?’ Mannino said, eyes on the crowds as he drew on an empty pipe. Hitchmogh stood straight and packed tobacco into his own ivory pipe.

  ‘No, Cap’n.’

  Mannino looked to Hitchmogh, who glanced back.

  ‘I don’t,’ Hitchmogh reasserted, lighting and drawing the smoke into his lungs before letting it out in a vivid ring that dissipated on the salty breeze.

  ‘You surprise me, Master Hitchmogh,’ Mannino said, running his hands back and forth on the wood of the rail.

  ‘I surprise myself sometimes.’

  Both men smiled, which was followed by a companionable silence, bar the cry of gulls, the clanging of rigging on masts and the hundreds of voices that assaulted them.

  After some time, Hitchmogh turned about and took in the great Scales in the distance, and the two suspended land masses those Scales supported. A shudder ran through him. He turned back, removed his pipe from his mouth and spat over the side. ‘Have that, Squall,’ he said, before descending the aft-castle steps once more.

  ‘Master Hitchmogh,’ Mannino said from above.

  Hitchmogh looked up, the sun offering a halo behind Mannino’s head.

  ‘We don’t know the state of the Sirretan ports, man.’ Mannino was nought but a silhouette now, his expression unknown. ‘I can’t risk Sessio to unknowns, not when we’re damaged; not when we’re slow and vulnerable. Otherwise—’

  ‘I know,’ Hitchmogh said, nodding all the while. ‘I know.’ He offered a smile to Mannino and made for the main mast. ‘I’ll check on the boy,’ he said, largely to himself. Common sense tells me I’ll serve Sessio better up there with him whilst we’re docked here.

  Putting out and packing away his pipe, Hitchmogh started the painful climb to the fortified crow’s nest above and the lad who’d spent his life living in it.

  ‘This must be a bloody record, Lefey,’ Hitchmogh said, hanging over the side of Sessio’s crow’s nest and staring at the wincing face below him, mere hours after he’d sent her and the rest of the crew forth.

  Lefey swayed on the rigging she clung to. ‘I think it could be,’ she offered, wincing once more at Hitchmogh’s colourful string of curses. She looked about, to the azure waters below, the milling crowds, off to the cloud cutting Scales in the bay.

  ‘Lefey?’

  ‘Aye? Apologies,’ she said, realising that his curses had flowed seamlessly into a question.

  ‘I said, do you know who has them?’

  Lefey shook her head.

  ‘This gets worse.’ Hitchmogh chewed his bottom lip a while, before looking back to the woman. ‘Does the captain know yet?’

  ‘Not by my mouth.’

  ‘Well, he needs to. Anywhere else, you, Spendley and me would sort it, but here…’ he looked at the hovel clad land rising up to the mountain that matched the great Scales for height. ‘Here we need the captain involved.’

  Lefey closed her eyes, took a deep breath and sighed long and hard.

  ‘That sigh be about right, lass, to describe the shit we’re in. Mannino told me to tell ye all to lay low. Ye think anyone were actually listening when I sai
d that?’

  ‘Course,’ Lefey said, nodding several times, ‘but it’s… well… it’s the Tri Isles, ain’t it? If owt’s to go wrong off the ship, it’s to be here.’

  It was Hitchmogh’s time to nod. ‘Aye, but we had no choice and you lot’ve been cooped up below for far too long, never mind how big Sessio gets below the waves at times.’

  ‘What’re we to do, Master Hitchmogh?’

  After a pause Lefey didn’t dare interrupt, Hitchmogh hawked and sent a gob full of phlegm far and wide. They both watched it arc, twitch in the wind and land in the waters below.

  ‘Right you are,’ he said finally, locking eyes with Lefey. ‘Ye’re to go see Spendley and bring him to the aft-castle, and I’ll do the same with Mannino.’

  The relief on Lefey’s face was clear. ‘Thank you,’ she said, before descending.

  ‘Yer welcome, lass. Ye’re a good’n and I wouldn’t be askin’ ye to tell the captain this news, not here, not now. Not before we’ve even bloody effected repairs on his girl.’

  Patting the side of the crow’s nest and calling a quick explanation into the depths of said nest, for the boy, Hitchmogh hauled himself over the edge, swallowed down the vertigo that threatened his senses, and began his slow descent to the main deck.

  ‘I hope ye’re in a good mood,’ Hitchmogh said into the wind. ‘For it ain’t gonna last, Cap’n. It ain’t gonna last.’

  Chapter 9 – And so it begins

  ‘Decided to re-join me have you, Master Hitchmogh?’ Mannino’s eyes remained forward, his back to a narrow alley.

  A crooked toothed smile was the only reply Mannino received from his first mate.

  ‘Well, I can’t very well blame you, man,’ Mannino said, fingering the empty pipe in his hands. ‘That goblin sends shudders through me every time I see him.’

  ‘Aye, he does me too.’

  ‘Admiral Charlzberg, Hitchmogh. Can you believe him?’ Mannino scoffed. ‘Admiral!’

  Hitchmogh hawked and spat.

  Mannino shot Hitchmogh a sidelong glance and pointed across the street their alley adjoined, changing subject. ‘Is that the place?’

  Hitchmogh nodded, right hand wringing the hilt of his cutlass.

  Mannino rubbed at the back of his neck, beneath his high collar.

  A few moments passed with neither saying a word, eyes locked on the door of the tavern opposite them. They watched the patrons come and go. They watched the street urchins come and go too, although none got too close to the tavern door.

  ‘Were they gambling, Master Hitchmogh?’

  After a deep breath, Hitchmogh answered. ‘Gambling, aye, Cap’n, but mores to the point, they were gambling with the wrong sorts, see. They were gambling with Hillside gangers.’

  Mannino closed his eyes before watching the door once more. ‘Is the rest of the crew aware?’

  ‘Most,’ Hitchmogh said. ‘Lefey and Master Spendley have rounded up those they can. Spendley will watch Sessio for you, with a good crew to hold her if needs be—’

  ‘And Lefey?’

  ‘Is in position,’ Hitchmogh said through his fingers, whilst chewing his nails. ‘Or will be,’ he added, ‘if we give her a little while longer.’

  Nodding, Mannino strode towards the tavern. Hitchmogh jerked before following suit.

  ‘I’m thirsty,’ was all Mannino said as his long strides took him across the road.

  ‘And I don’t believe you,’ Hitchmogh muttered.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Nothing, Cap’n. Nothing,’ Hitchmogh said, hot on Mannino’s heels.

  Laughing rippled out from a corner of the taproom as a man picked himself from the floor, his cheeks reddened.

  ‘Reckon’ he’ll hit back?’

  ‘No, Master Hitchmogh, I don’t,’ Mannino said, only half looking at the commotion on the far side of the fire pit.

  Hitchmogh wrinkled his nose and sniffed, drawing Mannino’s attention.

  ‘You do?’ Mannino asked, frowning. He turned to look at the blushing man who’d been knocked to the floor. Hitchmogh grinned.

  A collective and prolonged ‘Ooh’ was the next sound to ripple through the patrons of the tavern, as the blusher slotted the rather rotund man who’d originally knocked him to the ground.

  Mannino and Hitchmogh winced as several fists, feet and foreheads started flying, making connections here and there. Everyone was watching now, everyone except Mannino that was. He turned his gaze back to a table of gamblers in the opposite corner to the continuing brawl. The men sat there returned to their game. Mannino, ignoring the sound of shouts, curses and threats, watched one man in particular. He was poorly dressed yet he won hand after hand. He certainly wasn’t the sort Mannino would have pinned as a professional player. Brow furrowed, Mannino watched on, quickly catching the scam for what it was. He sighed as he imagined his sailors cottoning on to the very same, mid game.

  ‘Oh lads.’ Mannino sighed.

  The rotund man who’d started the fight was dragged passed Mannino, unconscious. Pulling in his stool a little, Mannino looked to Hitchmogh who looked back, eyebrows raised.

  ‘The big lad, Master Hitchmogh, at the gambling table…’ Hitchmogh glanced over, then back, ‘…he’s in league with two of the others, who, I suspect, are making him look better than he is.’

  ‘Which would have been happening whilst our lot were at the table, too.’

  Mannino nodded, eyes on the gamblers.

  Hitchmogh took a deep breath and released it as a sigh, before finishing the pot of ale before him. ‘They wouldn’t have taken that.’

  ‘No, Master Hitchmogh, they wouldn’t. Alas, I would think that here, in the numbers they were in, they were very much the smallest fish in the pond. They certainly shouldn’t have challenged what they suspected.’

  ‘Walk away? Our lot?’ Hitchmogh grunted a laugh.

  ‘When the situation dictates it, man, yes. Coin and pride isn’t everything. You know that.’

  Hitchmogh conceded the point with a nod. ‘We both know that.’

  ‘Well drown me, man, if I didn’t think we’d taught our crew that too.’ Mannino reached for his glass of port, before realising he’d finished it already.

  ‘Another, Cap’n?’

  ‘No, man, no. I think it’s time, now we suspect who has our men, to make enquiries.’

  Hitchmogh leaned across the small table, voice hushed now the trouble in the corner had abated. ‘I could go over there, plonk myself down and, well… ask?’

  Mannino’s tailored coat raised at the shoulders as he snorted a laugh. His first mate sat back like he’d been mocked, so Mannino held up his hand placatingly as he explained.

  ‘You go over there and do the sort of thing I think you’ll do, and the Adjunct’s Guard will be in here and on us faster than you can say ’morl’s balls.’

  A quiet curse came before Hitchmogh’s reply. ‘There is that, I guess.’

  ‘Guess? Oof, what! You know, Master Hitchmogh. You don’t need to guess.’ Mannino shook his head at his first mate, before reaching again for his empty glass and holding it aloft. After a few moments, a bar girl came over and refilled it with port. Mannino saw the big gambler’s eyes stray from his cards; the shaved headed lad’s eyes strayed Mannino’s way, or to be specific, the girl’s way. Mannino caught the girl’s blue eyes before she smiled and moved on.

  ‘Pretty,’ Mannino whispered, drawing a further frown from Hitchmogh.

  ‘Aye,’ Hitchmogh said, ‘but in a plain way and not enough to be a distraction to ye, Cap’n?’ Hitchmogh said, knowingly.

  ‘No, my good man.’ Mannino offered a wolfish grin that didn’t become him. ‘Not a distraction, but an opportunity; an opportunity has presented itself that we cannot pass up, not if we’re to move soon, and without turning the streets into a bloody battleground.’

  Eyes wide, Hitchmogh glanced back at the gamblers, all of which were again engrossed in their game of not so chance, and across to the unusually fair haired girl now
behind the bar. His following smile matched that of Mannino’s, and before anything else happened, Hitchmogh flashed a combination of finger movements to a table across the way, before watching Lefey and another girl rise and move to the bar.

  ‘And so it begins,’ Hitchmogh said, looking back to his captain.

  ‘And so it begins,’ Mannino replied, knocking his port back in one.

  Chapter 10 – Cornered

  ‘I told you, I don’t know… I can’t tell you anything about it,’ Emms said, her eyes red from the tears she’d shed, through fear of those who’d cornered her, and another.

  A long sigh escaped the one called Lefey. ‘Can’t or won’t? That’s what I’m not sure about here. Can’t,’ she said slowly, ‘or won’t?’

  Swallowing hard and looking about for help she knew wouldn’t come, Emms shook her head and shrugged. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, breaking down into tears once more. Would they beat her? And even if she knew and told them, would her man, her Badham, be forced to beat her again, so as not to lose face in front of his soldiers. The latter scared her more than the former, although she found it hard to admit it to herself. The fear of her new love was exhilarating, or had been. Right now it was just fear, plain and simple.

  ‘For Squall’s sake, lass, I’ve not even laid a finger on…

  ‘It’s them, isn’t it?’ Lefey said, leaning close and catching Emms’ eye. ‘You’re scared of them, not us two?’

  Emms’ eyes flicked past Lefey to the second woman, who was looking up the street, hands on the knives at her belt. Emms nodded whilst looking back to Lefey.

  Lefey offered a tight smile and leaned back. ‘Fair enough, lass, I get that. These ganger types can be exciting, draw you in and…’ Lefey sighed again. ‘You’ve got caught up with one and now you can’t get away, am I right?’

  Emms shook her head, felt a surge of anger and resolve. She straightened her back and lowered her hands as she replied. ‘I don’t want to get away from him,’ she said. ‘Why is it everyone thinks they know what I want more…?’ Emms stopped as she saw a smile play across the flat features opposite her.