By this time, the battle was done. The remaining crew members begged for mercy, only to have Halim slit their throats with his kris. The rest of my men went about the dead bodies, making sure the crew remained dead. The ship was carrying stolen cargo: three boles of expensive Chinese silk and two large cedarwood chests. Upon opening the chests, we found eighty gold and silver ingots in each. They must have recently attacked a merchant ship to have such riches. We were in luck. I thanked all the deities, even the saints and bodhisattvas. I was already planning to give some of the gold to Ibu in my next visit to my family home.
Dagger in hand, Maria stood in the sea of corpses, staring numbly at the dead men, including the body of her father’s killer.
“It’s done,” she said in a soft voice. “Rest in peace, Papa and Mama.”
She didn’t cry. After wiping her dagger clean of blood, she helped the men carry the cargo across the plank, back to our ship.
We left the perahu adrift, the fate of every lanun who died at sea. Sri Matahari sailed away, richer and heavier.
“I am voiding our agreement,” I told Maria when the ship found shelter at a quiet mangrove swamp. Halim was wading in the soft mud, ready to hunt for the large meaty crabs. We would celebrate later with a meal of boiled mud crab.
“Why? I promised to pay you,” Maria sputtered. She seemed to have weathered her first kill well.
“We have two chests of ingots. I am going to give you eight of the gold ones. I hope you can start a new life with them.”
“Eight gold ones,” Maria let her words trail off.
“We will drop you back in port tomorrow,” I said. “Go back to your friend. Pay her one gold ingot as compensation.”
“No, I want to stay,” Maria said firmly. “I want to stay on the ship. With you.”
“I am not your protector.”
“You are not,” Maria said. “But we swore an oath, remember? Your life is now mine and my life is now yours.”
“Ah.”
“I want to uphold our oath,” she said, watching Halim catch his first mud crab. He was chuckling away like a little boy with his first catch, his face and legs smeared with mud. The men laughed too. It had been a bountiful day.
“I want to travel the Golden Chersonese with the ship...with you,” she continued, her gaze returning to rest on me. She was very close now. I could smell her. She washed herself thoroughly with our water after the encounter with the lanun. She bore the fragrance of sea salt. Her dagger rested tucked in her belt. “I want to know you better,” she said shyly.
My heart rose at those words. I tried to maintain a stern demeanor. “You might get more than what you bargained for.”
“The Peranakan matriarch bitch made me do all the menial chores,” Maria snorted. “I can endure anything.”
“Anything? Including me? I can be rather unbearable, just ask Halim,” I replied. “Are you sure?”
“You are interesting, Captain Neo,” Maria giggled.
“I am only interesting?”
Maria laughed her first real laugh. Such a wonderful sound. The men glanced quickly at her, startled by her sudden gaiety.
“Of course,” her eyes sparkled merrily. “That is why I want to know you better.”
“Indeed,” I said. “Indeed.”
So, you came into my life like a bodhisattva. We sailed the Golden Chersonese together, you and me, straddlers between the worlds. With two of the gold ingots, I bought you a pair of new boots, no more beaded slippers, but in the latest fashions outside the Golden Chersonese. They were apparently the rage in the courts of the kings and queens. They were made of the finest leather, with the tracery of yellow flower embroidery curling along the edges and the softest of velvet lining their insides. You laughed and said you could run faster with bare feet. “Don’t be silly,” you said as the sun rose above us in reds and oranges.
I laughed back. You kept the shoes in your private wooden box with the kebaya and sarong. You still wore your silver necklace.
And all was right in the world again.
The Doomed Amulet of Erum Vahl
By Ed Grabianowski
* * *
Captain Jagga crouched by the quarterdeck rail. Beside her, the steady rattle of lead shot striking the side of the ship rang in her ears. “Hard to port. Put on speed, Tripton!”
The sailing master, his demeanor that of an aggravated professor, was scrambling on all fours above a hatch on the gun deck. “Hard to port,” he yelled down into the opening, then turned back to Jagga. “We can’t do both at the same time, you know.”
Below, the helmsman heard Tripton’s call and pushed hard on the whipstaff, cranking the rudder far beneath him and shunting the ship to port. The Hammer of Triel groaned and came about.
The chatter of gunfire and other projectiles against the hull let up for a moment, and Jagga dared a look over the rail. To starboard was the lush jungle shore of Brathi; just aft were the low-slung, golden gunboats of the Redhands, mercenaries hired to protect the coastal trade routes. The same trade Jagga intended to take a piece of for herself. She flashed a manic smile at Tripton. “Do what you can, sir.”
Tripton looked up toward the fore of the ship, one last futile spray of lead peppering the rail to his right. The carefully sculpted goatee and wire spectacles riding low on his nose gave him a delicate look, but his skin was weathered and brown, and his gentle, precise voice changed to a sailor’s rough bark when he relayed orders for the captain. “Oi lads, straighten out and away from the shore, full sail. Got to get off these breakers.” The crew, no longer ducking rifle fire, moved about the rigging and set The Hammer of Triel on her new course.
Jagga watched the gunboats give up the chase and fade into the distance. She’d lost this engagement by coming in too far from shore, her four-mast barque easy to spot against the horizon. The Redhands had been ready for her, and Jagga wasn’t overly fond of a fair fight. “Tripton,” she called mildly. “A word please.”
He joined her on the quarterdeck and they watched the coast recede behind and to starboard, the sleek ship gaining speed as it got farther from shore, slicing along the ocean swells rather than crashing through breaking waves. They were headed south, the wind at their back, the sky clear and blue, though the air was thick with humidity. Jagga eyed Tripton’s heavy leather coat. “How you can bear the heat in that thing? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you take it off.”
He turned slightly and brushed away some lead shot that was embedded in the folds and creases of the coat, not quite resisting the urge to grin. Jagga laughed.
“My aim is to go another day south and try our luck again,” she said. “I consider this a trial run. Now we know the merchants hire mercenaries, and they have guns. Not very good guns, but those Redhand gunboats are too small and fast for us to hit with our cannons.”
Tripton shrugged. “I don’t see as we have much choice. We can’t very well return north. Not without an impressively large amount of gold to bribe our way past your many admirers.”
Jagga knew her reputation. They called her Jagga the Ripper, or Jagga the Bitter, or Jagga the Thorn of Gael. In the darker corners of Ulsh and Covengate they had much fouler names for her, filthy epithets that made her smile when she heard them. She’d spent the last year flying the jade flag of the Azeth Rebellion on The Hammer of Triel’s mast, patrolling the coast of Ulsh for any shipping between Ulshan loyalists and the exiled royal family. The Azethans paid her well, but when the King of Ulsh came roaring into Jaidh Bay with a full war fleet, she slipped away and headed south. She’d backed a rebellion, the rebellion had been crushed, and now it was Jagga who was in exile. The Ulshans knew The Hammer of Triel well, its low hull painted gloss black, Jagga at the helm, unmistakable, pale and tall, black hair chopped at ear length like an afterthought, tattoos winding along her arms and up her neck. Going back meant braving either the Ulshan navy or the knife-sharp ice floes of the far Upper Sea.
“The wind blows south. We go south,” she
said. “And hope it’s a wind of good fortune.”
Tripton snorted.
They sailed the rest of that day, keeping the coast just in sight. Once the sun set, they anchored, unwilling to sail blindly into unknown waters. The northern kingdoms, consumed by centuries of savage war, had little contact with Brathi. Only in recent years had traders and explorers crossing the Ulash Mountains returned laden with silver and jade, and tales of a rich confederation of city-states united by a tightly controlled merchant’s alliance. Jagga, so inspired, had decided to try her luck, guessing shipments along the coast would be ripe for plundering.
Come morning, massive pillars of dark cloud thrust high into the western sky, far inland. Jagga stood at the forecastle with Myelle, her quartermaster, beside her. Myelle was startlingly thin, with a braided beard hanging to his waist. He eyed the distant storms. “If those clouds aren’t wrung out by the time they reach the coast they could be a problem.”
Jagga nodded. “Think how fast we’ll move under sail in a hurricane.” She gave Myelle a jovial elbow, but he was unamused.
The crew of thirty-five was generally in agreement with Jagga’s plan to look for Brathi merchants a little less prepared than the ones they’d faced the day before. Decisions on the Hammer were made on a semi-democratic basis, mainly because the majority opinion could hold sway by force, though it was expected that Jagga would encourage consensus at knifepoint from time to time. But just before midday, the coast changed, and so did the plan. The jungle gave way suddenly to a rough brown desert just a few miles wide, so sparse they could see where the foliage continued again farther along the coast. It was as if something had taken a massive bite out of the jungle, leaving a three-mile semi-circle of bare sand.
In the center of this desolate spot, just a few hundred yards from shore, stood a black temple, a pyramid with four tall monoliths, one at each corner. It gleamed in the sun as if it was carved from solid obsidian. Tripton and Jagga stood at the quarterdeck rail squinting at the strange edifice. Tripton withdrew a small spyglass from his coat and took a closer look. “Well, shit,” he said.
Jagga took the spyglass, and after a moment scanning the weathered yellow shoreline she saw what Tripton had seen. There was a woman fleeing the black temple. She’d seen their sails and was waving her arms frantically at them. Jagga lowered the spyglass and looked at Tripton. “Well, shit.”
Jagga gathered the crew to convince them it would be worthwhile to have a look at the temple, that it was bound to house valuable relics or hidden chambers of gold. But they’d been with Jagga too long, and knew better. A crewman named Plagg spoke up first. “Yer jus’ soft-hearted, Jagga, and always will be.”
“Jagga the Kind,” someone called out in a high-pitched, singsong voice.
“It’s a woman in distress, then?” shouted someone else. “Jagga just wants someone soft for her bed!”
The crew roared, Jagga along with them. “Jagga the Seducer,” she cried. “Oh, I see I’ve no secrets from you lot. But mates, you can’t see much at this distance. She might have a face like a walrus and naught but three teeth.”
As the crew laughed, Jagga heard Tripton murmur, “Jagga the Not Terribly Picky When It’s Been Rather a Long Time.”
Jagga’s only reaction was to show the crew that half-crazed grin. “Bring her in close and we’ll take the ship’s boat to shore. Maybe bring back a prize or two.”
The woman waded out to greet them. She was young, maybe twenty, with a tangle of dark hair and a semi-feral gleam in her eyes. She wore only a simple cotton shift, which covered her from neck to feet but was rendered nearly transparent by the spray of the ocean waves. Jagga caught herself staring.
“Neri,” the young woman said, pointing to the center of her chest.
Myelle stepped forward. “Greetings, Neri. I am Myelle and this is Captain Jagga. Are you in danger?” He spoke in Brathi—not perfectly, but he alone among the crew had traveled far enough south to learn a little of that sweetly flowing language.
Neri’s face lit up and she replied in rapid Brathi, pointing frantically back toward the temple.
“Slow down, Neri. Slow,” Myelle said.
She took a deep breath. “Eiyeria o considorae delomelai. An hah haani ery. Soenisohn sepidesonn eiyerio,” Myelle translated. “It is a haunted place. Something hunts me. I am alone and must escape this place.”
Jagga nodded. “We’ll have a look.” She waved the crew forward with her, striding across the sand toward the temple.
“No!” Neri cried. She reached for Jagga and clutched at her arm, pulling her back toward the sea. “No, please.” She said these words in Covantish, the North’s most common tongue.
Jagga gave Myelle a wink, then reached up to place a hand on Neri’s cheek. “It’s ok, girl. We’re warriors. Whatever hunts you, we’ll destroy.”
Neri sobbed, “No,” and pressed her face to Jagga’s shoulder.
The crew turned in unison to stare up at the massive temple. It seemed to cast a shadow on them, though the sun was nearly straight overhead. The oily iridescence of the walls towering over them felt deeply unnatural. The side of the temple facing them appeared to have no door, although the seams of massive bricks could be seen at this distance. Its strange, baleful presence felt like cold hands tugging at their spines.
“Eh, I’m no ancientologist, captain,” Plagg said. “I’m good at aiming cannons and climbing rigging and naught else. Something’s wrong with that place, there is, and I don’t think I’d like to go inside it.”
The rest of the crew muttered agreement.
Jagga held her gaze on the temple, one arm carelessly looped around the small of Neri’s back. The salt air of the sea and the warmth of the girl in her arms swayed her. “Hurry back to the ship, then. If we’re going to make a habit of running away, we might as well be quick about it.”
As the ship’s boat made its way through the waves back to The Hammer of Triel, no one looked back. No one wanted to feel the presence of the obsidian crypt again. No one saw the sand at the shore stir and shimmer. And if they had, they still might not have seen the cold yellow eyes glaring out of the impossible shadows at them.
The hatch leading down to the hold was already open when they climbed back aboard the ship. One of the crew pointed at Neri and offered a crooked, malevolent grin. “Down you go with the rest of the cargo.”
Jagga came over the rail. “No.” She didn’t yell; in fact, she spoke rather gently, but there was no mistaking the command in her voice. It was rare for the crew to hear that tone—Jagga knew she couldn’t lead a crew of misfits and outlaws with too tight a fist, but her sharp wits and tightly muscled arms had earned her enough respect to demand authority when needed. The barbed blades she wore on each hip functioned as her badges of office. “Myelle, bring fresh water up, and some food. I fear she hasn’t eaten in days.”
“Very well.”
While Myelle went into the hold, Jagga led Neri to the quarterdeck and through the small door into her captain’s quarters. Digging through a half-empty chest, Jagga emerged with some clothes that were, if not clean, at least dry and better suited for life on a ship. “Here, these are for you. I’ll wait outside while you...”
Before Jagga could finish, Neri had dropped her cotton shift around her ankles, and Jagga discovered that Neri was wearing one other thing: an amulet, wrought of flat black iron in the shape of an elaborate and unfamiliar symbol, hung from a twisted length of rope around her neck. It fell just between Neri’s bare breasts, a harsh contrast with the lush umber of her skin. The amulet wasn’t the first thing Jagga looked at, but when she did, she felt a cold, uneasy tension in her gut, a strange echo of the feeling she had standing near the black temple. She lifted her gaze to Neri’s eyes and saw gratitude there, and an invitation. Jagga swallowed, her throat suddenly dry. “Your...your food will be waiting on deck.” And she left Neri alone.
The Hammer of Triel was quickly underway again. Jagga, Neri, and Myelle spent much of the af
ternoon on the forecastle, learning each other’s languages. Neri knew more Covantish than expected, so they were soon deep in conversation without Myelle’s translations. He left to grimace and glare at the rest of the crew, one of his favorite ways to pass the time at sea.
“My town was attacked, my family killed,” Neri said. “I fled into the jungle and stumbled upon the temple. I was desperate for shelter, but I fear my presence there awakened something.”
“Who attacked your town?”
Neri paused, narrowing her eyes against the low afternoon sun. “The town lies near the coast. Raiders from the interior come to disrupt the silver trade.”
Jagga felt an unfamiliar pang of guilt. “Ah. And something came after you at the temple?”
“A phantom. It came out of the shadows.”
“Well. You’re a long way from there now. You may be stuck with us for a while, though. We’re not often welcome at coastal towns.”
Neri smiled. “I understand. I don’t know where to go. For now, I just want to keep moving.”
They stayed in each other’s company quietly for a time, listening to the thud of waves slapping the hull, the sails snapping in the wind. Sea birds turned and dove into the sparkling water. Neri finally broke the silence. “Thank you.”
“It’s a bad habit of mine, rescuing people,” Jagga said.
“No, a good habit. You are kind.” Neri leaned her head to Jagga’s shoulder, and the only thing that tarnished Jagga’s joy at this was the fact that most of the crew was likely watching. She’d never hear the end of it. She took a short step away.
“There is a reasonably comfortable sack of grain in a storeroom beside the galley. You can sleep there if you like, or on deck if the weather holds.”
Scourge of the Seas of Time (and Space) Page 6
