The Queen's Pardon (Alexis Carew Book 6)

by J. A. Sutherland

“Oh, it burns!”

  “Shut up.” Damn him, but the pirate leader would be no use. She glanced away for a moment, trying to keep track of the fight and Blackbourne at the same time. She needed the pirate leader alive, at least for a time, for her full plan to work, but that meant guarding him and not engaging the others. It galled her to stand still while her lads ran into the fight.

  Nabb and Dockett were in the nearer boat, while several others of her crew dashed up the ramp. They’d likely have that one well in hand, if the pirates hadn’t left many men aboard — and she didn’t think they would. Possibly only the pilot, or not even that.

  The second boat, though, was another matter.

  The two pirates at the ramp, one favoring his leg where Warth shot him, were ducked behind the ramp’s struts, thin cover as they were, and firing at her lads, who’d ducked to the edges of the dike for cover and were firing back. That no more than fifteen meters separated the groups, while so many lasers and projectiles struck the boat’s hull and the dirt and water of the fields without striking any man told Alexis that she should work her lads more on their small guns. The boarding actions they were used to were more of a jam-the-barrel-in-a-man’s-belly-and-pull sort of thing than needing any particular skill at aiming — and that was if they didn’t just rely on their heavy cutlasses to lop through the enemy’s vacsuit.

  Warth fired again, showing his worth, and the uninjured pirate at the ramp fell limp, a bit of his skull and hair disappearing in a haze of vapor.

  “Oh, lord, it hurts!” Blackbourne moaned.

  Alexis was tempted to shoot the pirate again to make him shut up.

  “Aargh! It burns! Put it out, y’Dark-tainted witch! What’d y’do t’Old Blackbourne?”

  “What did you call me?”

  “Witch! Y’bloody, Dark-lovin’ witch! Shootin’ fire from yer finger at poor Old Blackbourne’s tackle!”

  Alexis was caught between amusement at Blackbourne’s plight — she’d not shot him that much, after all, only a dozen or so flechettes, certainly — and irritation that she’d traveled all the way to the Barbary and shot a pirate in his “tackle,” only to find the best he could call her was only one letter removed from what she otherwise heard so often.

  “Is it a lack of creativity or —” she started to ask, then, “Never mind. Shut up or I’ll burn the bloody thing right off.”

  “No, don’t take Old Blackbourne’s johnson from ‘im, witch-woman!”

  The one pirate remaining at the second boat’s ramp was crawling up it, wounded leg useless. Alexis’ men broke cover on the dike and rushed forward. She had a moment’s hope, then the boat began to lift — its pilot likely wanting no part of those rushing to board.

  Warth fired two rapid shots, faster than Alexis would think he could reload, but they splashed harmlessly off the boat’s nose, not powerful enough to penetrate to the cockpit.

  “Make it stop, witch-woman! Make it stop!”

  “The only way to stop the pain is to cut it off all entire,” Alexis said. “Would you like that?”

  “No!”

  The second boat was lifting and Alexis could see that her lads wouldn’t make it to the ramp in time.

  “Gutis!” she yelled. The only hope was for them to get the pilot into the first boat, lift, and shoot down the other — all before the pirate pilot was able to get a message of any sort off to the other pirates. With luck, he’d be so focused on clearing the farm and attackers that he’d wait on that. “Passing the word for the pilot, and he’s to take down that bloody boat!”

  Out of the mass of mud-covered men running for the second boat on the dike, a smaller form dashed forward.

  It was Aiden, the New Londoner who’d joined her group from Kannstadt’s men in the cave.

  How he’d snuck in with her men in the fields without anyone noticing — or telling her if they did — she didn’t know. Last she’d seen of him, he was back at the farmhouse guarding the inhabitants.

  But he did have speed, and he made the pirate boat with just enough time to leap and catch the very edge of the lowered ramp.

  “Witch-woman, say what you want! How’s Old Blackbourne t’save his bishop?”

  “Quiet!” Alexis kicked Blackbourne in the head. She could understand the man being in a bit of pain, but this degree of whinging was beyond tiresome. “Gutis! Where’s the bloody pilot?”

  The rest of Alexis’ men reached the second boat with just enough time that their leaps barely brushed Aiden’s feet, then the boat and boy were both out of reach and rising.

  Alexis watched helplessly as their plan all went wrong. The pirate pilot would certainly calm himself in a moment — he was rising slowly enough and not maneuvering, perhaps concentrating on letting his fellow climb the ramp and get aboard. Once that was done, though, he’d surely be on the comms to his fellows and their surprise would be lost.

  Fifty meters up, she could still see Aiden swinging from the ramp’s edge. The boy gathered momentum then got a leg over the edge and crawled up.

  Then, for a heart-stopping moment, Alexis thought it was Aiden falling as a body came off the ramp, arms and legs flailing. But she saw this body was too large and wore different clothes before it hit the fields, crushing cattails beneath it and sending up a plume of muddy water.

  Gutis rushed up to her, chest heaving to get air. He’d been part of the group assaulting the second boat and took time to rush to her at her call.

  “Get aboard and take that other boat down,” Alexis ordered.

  “Aye, sir, but —”

  “No matter the boy,” Alexis said, though her chest ached at the need. Still, the pirates had enough of a force on Erzurum that any alert would doom their plan. “If that boat gets away or even sends a message off, then we’re all done for. We can hope Aiden’s keeping the pilot too busy for a message, but …”

  “Aye, sir.” Gutis gasped a lungful of air and rushed for the still grounded boat.

  Twenty-Nine

  She shot one in the eye, she did.

  She dumped one out the lock.

  Then to make their bloody fate more clear,

  She shot one in the ... Oooohhhh…

  Before Gutis could even make the ramp, though, the fleeing boat began to behave strangely, first making a sharp turn to port, then diving for the ground before leveling off and rising again, straight up on its antigrav, but with no forward motion. It rolled side to side several times, very nearly going the whole way around, but then stopped and hung in the air nearly three hundred meters up, twisted and canted, as though no one were at the controls.

  Gutis paused at the ramp and looked back to Alexis. She held up a hand, palm out, to stop him.

  All movement on the farm ceased, with everyone staring up at the hovering boat and waiting for it to do something.

  All save Blackbourne, that is, who still rolled from side to side, moaning. He looked up at Alexis and from his perspective it must have appeared that Alexis had her outstretched palm pointed directly at the still, hovering boat.

  “Witch-woman,” he moaned.

  The frozen tableau of watchers broke when a figure appeared at the open hatch of the hovering boat.

  Small and covered in the distinct grey mud of Erzurum’s fields, it was clearly Aiden, and a cheer went up from the watchers.

  Aiden grasped one of the ramp’s struts and looked over the edge at the farm two hundred meters below. He seemed to draw himself up and cupped his hands to his mouth, but whatever he yelled was impossible to pick out over the cheers of his fellows on the ground.

  “Quiet!” Alexis yelled, but only those nearest her could hear. “Belay that! Quiet now!”

  Dockett sent two men into the grounded boat, likely to keep watch over that boat’s pilot in whatever condition he and Nabb had left the pirate, and added his bellow to hers. Eventually word traveled through the group and the cheering stopped.

  “… down!” Aiden’s voice came from above, barely audible even with the men being still.r />
  “Say again, lad?” Dockett bellowed back.

  “How … do … I … get … down?”

  It took several minutes of Gutis putting the grounded boat’s comm laser on the hovering boat and then quite a lot of shouted instructions before Aiden got the right control to press in response to the incoming signal. Minutes that were a bit breathless for the watchers as there was more than one wrong control pressed as well — which sent the boat to twitching and turning in the sky.

  Once communication was established, though, it was a nearly simple matter talk Aiden through the landing process.

  “There ya go, lad, easy now — we’ll have ya down in a jiffy,” Gutis said, craning his head to see the descending boat from where he sat in the landed one’s cockpit.

  “Aye, sir, thank you, sir,” came Aiden’s shaking voice from the comms.

  Gutis muted his own comms for a moment and turned to Alexis.

  “The safeties are off for it to lift with the ramp down like that, an’ I’d not want to talk him through raising it, as well,” he said quietly. “Straight down’s best, but he’s not over a dike.”

  “Just get him down safely,” Alexis said. “We’ll worry about what’s next after that.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Back to his comms, Gutis leaned forward again so he could see the other boat.

  “Alright, lad, now, ya see that stick in front of ya with all them buttons?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The hovering boat suddenly tilted forward, rolled to starboard, and fired its forward guns. Gouts of water, steam, and cattails exploded from one of the farm’s farther fields.

  “Don’t touch it!” Gutis yelled.

  He took a deep breath and closed his eyes as the boat stopped its twisting and righted itself.

  “Sorry, lad, should have said that bit first, I guess.” He cleared his throat. “So, the don’t touches, lad — that stick, for a one, and none of the buttons on it, right?”

  “Yes, sir — I mean, no, sir.”

  “Nor that sort of slidie thing to your left — that’ll send you off an we’ll never get you back, then.” Gutis took a look around his own cockpit. “Fact is, lad, don’t touch nothing — not a thing, mind you, save one. By your left side, there’s a big lever. See it?”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “All right, now, you give that lever a bit of a press down, just a bit, mind you an’ —”

  “Oomph!”

  The hovering boat tilted forward, almost standing on its nose.

  “Lad! What’d ya —” Gutis glanced down at his own seat. “All right, lad, there’re two levers by your seat there. That one’s your seatback an threw y’into the stick — ease that up and you’ll —”

  The boat righted itself to level once more.

  “There ya go, lad.” Gutis muted the comms and turned to Alexis. “Bloody boat builders never met a proper pilot, I’ll tell you, sir, puttin’ the —”

  “Might we get the lad down first, Gutis?” Alexis asked.

  “Oh, aye, sir.” He turned back to his comms. “So, lad, t’other lever there — the bigger one — see it?”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “All right, lad, you grasp that, easy, now, mind you, and you push it down just a bit, see?”

  The hovering boat descended a few meters.

  “That’s it, lad, you’ve got it. Press it a bit and hold it there — don’t press more.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Slowly, the second pirate boat descended and Gutis continued to offer Aiden encouragement, as well as warnings not to bloody rush it.

  The boat’s maneuvers had placed it over one of the fields and cattails waved and water rippled as the boat neared, then the landing struts parted the crop, bending and breaking those that weren’t pushed out of the way.

  “Aye, slow and easy. Just a bit more, lad, a bit — ya’ve got to sort of feel it when to let that lever go, see? I can’t see where the ground’s at for you.”

  The boat settled further, its open ramp’s edge disappearing under the water.

  One of the landing struts moved, and Alex could see its hydraulic cylinders compress a bit.

  “There’s one,” Gutis said. “Ground’s uneven in that field, lad, from the mud, I reckon.” He shrugged. “Let go of that stick now and ya see that button under a cover in the middle of the controls? That’ll cut the anti all entire and you’ll be down. Safe as houses, lad.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Well, you flick that cover open and press it now.”

  The boat lurched, tilting and settling lower in the muddy field before its landing struts compensated and leveled it out.

  A startled yelp came from the comms.

  “No worries, lad,” Gutis said. He looked forward from his own boat’s cockpit, perhaps picturing the massive bole of a tree just ahead. “No worse than my last landing, sure.”

  Thirty

  O’, pull me hearties, pull me mates,

  And later raise a glass,

  For our Queen and Little Bloody Bit,

  Who'll kick pirates in the arse!

  With both boats down and no indication that either pilot had made use of his comms during the sudden and unexpected attack, Nabb and Gutis took Aiden aside with some few of Alexis’ boat crew and a bottle liberated from somewhere in the boats’ stores. The lad had just seen the stuff of a hand-to-hand battle for the first time, and the aftermath of the second boat’s pilot being well and truly dead, and there were certain proprieties and priorities the men felt necessary.

  “Do see that any other spirits aboard those boats are locked up, will you, Mister Dockett?” Alexis asked.

  “Aye, sir. See to it —” The bosun’s voice trailed off as he eyed the group huddled around Aiden.

  It was a group that was growing, with even some of Kannstadt’s Hanoverese joining the New Londoners now they saw there were spirits about.

  “Though I’d have you be sure there’s enough for everyone to toast the lad,” Alexis allowed with a sigh. “His saving the day and all.”

  “Aye, sir!” Dockett brightened. “Splice the mainbrace, is it?”

  “So much as you’re able, but not so much as they’re unable, if you take my meaning? We’ll be lifting soon and I’ll not want the men fortified to the point they’re bloody walls.”

  “No, sir — I’ll see to it. It’s only the lad —”

  “I understand.”

  Alexis did. Beside his first ground battle, which he’d been in the thick off, laying amongst the reeds to wait and along the dike while the pirates’ shots struck around him, Aiden had also just killed for the first time, and twice. Throwing one pirate from the ramp and … well, the battle for the boat would be a tale the lad told when he was able. The scratches and bruises on both his face and the boat’s pilot told of a close, hard-fought struggle that ended with Aiden’s hands clamped around the pilot’s throat and one of the lad’s eyes so swollen it might have been gouged out if things had gone a bit longer.

  The men clustered around him were clapping him on the back in thanks and congratulations or leaning close and offering a whispered word, depending on their own views of such things.

  “Would you have Blackbourne here taken to the house first?” Alexis asked.

  “Aye, sir.”

  Dockett moved off, shouting for two men to come and carry the moaning pirate, who they deposited, none too gently, on the farm’s dining room table, it being the best place on the lower floor to put him for treatment. Two of the other pirates — the pilot from the first boat, who Nabb and Dockett had subdued, and one of those at the ramp who’d been shot through the shoulder and leg but might survive — were tied to chairs along the room’s wall.

  Alexis’ own injured from the crash, brought up on their stretchers after the farm was taken, were along the other walls. One of Kannstadt’s men had been using the farm’s medical supplies to treat them and, save for Morgan, they were all looking the better for it.

 
Alexis wondered if Isikli and his family would ever view this room the same after their own captivity there and its turning into a medical ward for their captors.

  “Aarrgh!” Blackbourne moaned as he was set down.

  Kannstadt and Ellender looked at the pirate. Blackbourne was on his back with one hand pinned to his —

  “Oh, lads, the gherkin — save Old Blackbourne from the witch-woman, won’t you?”

  — his other hovering over as though to either protect himself from further harm or afraid to touch the dozen or so flechettes protruding from him.

  The two captains shared a look, then glanced at Alexis and shared another.

  “What?” Alexis demanded, perhaps a bit more crossly than she should.

  “Nein. Nothing,” Kannstadt said quickly.

  “It is only … did you have to …” Ellender’s voice trailed off.

  Alexis snorted with disgust. “The two of you were quite prepared to visit bloody torture and worse on Mister Isikli and his family, yet you’ll balk at a shot pirate?”

  “It’s not the shooting,” Ellender said, “it’s the —”

  “Some things are not done,” Kannstadt added.

  “Yes, well, I’m bringing all manner of changes to Erzurum, it seems.” Alexis pointed to Blackbourne’s injury. “Now will you have your man remove those so we can get on with things?”

  “No! Don’t let the witch take his majesty for her Dark-driven rites!”

  “Oh, shut up, you bloody whinger — I meant the flechettes, for …” A sudden thought struck her. “Are the Blackbournes and Creasys related by any chance?”

  “Old Blackbourne’ll give you no more names for your spells, witch-woman!”

  Kannstadt’s man leaned over and examined the pirate before rattling off a string of German.

  “Renke says, this will hurt,” Kannstadt said with far more sympathy than Alexis thought the pirate warranted. Another exchange of words. “He also says that you should show more care in your use of this, as you have an infection and this is why it burns so from the cuts.”