“You were taken by the pirate Zathdar,” he said clearly. “Where did he take you?”
“. . . and what is that smell? I smell sweat. Old sweat, some mud. Mud on a ship—you don’t get mud on a ship—from the swell I’d say the wind is out of the northwest . . .”
Randart raised a hand, then hesitated, not wanting her blood dirtying his hands. So he gripped her hair and yanked her head so she faced him.
Tears filled her eyes.
“Hurts! Pain—stab of needles, hot needles, not on the scalp but down my neck my stomach boils I might puke I don’t want to puke I had nothing to eat my head aches feels like a cloth tied around it—”
Randart sighed in exasperation.
“Zathdar!” he said sharply.
“Pirate,” Elva responded. “Those colors ugly colors brown, brown, brown all around am I wearing my blue tunic I need a cleaning frame don’t want it ruined—”
Thumping and yells on the deck distracted Randart, who bent closer to hear the continuous stream of whispered words.
“Where. Is. Zathdar’s. Land. Base?” he enunciated distinctly.
“. . . different pain from my arms, that’s red pain, white pain is the sudden sharp one maybe it’s like the glow of a dying fire . . .”
“Atanial! Zathdar!”
“Princess. Pirate name.” Elva blinked, her eyes losing focus. “Ugly—my clothes are never ugly I don’t like choosing clothes blood on my sleeve I can feel the wet against my arm it smells like sweet salt but with iron rust—”
The rumble of feet overhead caused Randart to glare at one of his aides. “Tell them to stay quiet on the ceiling. Whatever they are doing can wait until I am done.”
The door whisked open. The noise from outside the cabin was briefly louder.
“Voices,” Elva babbled on. “Do I know anyone I don’t think I know them my head does hurt so—”
Randart cursed, irritated by the increase in noise from the sailors above. Were they possibly making it on purpose? He’d have them all flogged as mutineers. He was also irritated by this fool of a girl, who should, by rights, be spewing memory, not inanities about whatever she saw right in front of her nose.
His aide returned and took up his position beside the door as Randart glared at the mage. “I thought you people were supposed to be experts with kinthus. I can do better. Have done better my very first interrogation.”
She opened her hand as if to say Be my guest, but said only, “I am not trained in interrogation. My expertise is wood. However, it appears she’s caught in an immediate thought stream. It can happen to some, with green kinthus.”
She sat back, hands folded. She had been ordered to cooperate with the war commander, and her oath to the king required that she strictly obey orders. But he made her so angry she would not offer him a single breath of aid beyond what he’d ordered.
So if he didn’t know that the girl had managed to shutter off her memory, Magister Lorat wasn’t going to offer the information.
For a time the magister watched, impassive, as Randart shook the girl, slapped her again and barked words at her, but all she did was talk about what she was seeing, hearing. Feeling. Especially feeling. When she started commenting on the revulsion she felt at the commander’s proximity, and there was a revealing scrape somewhere behind them—probably someone trying hard not to laugh or even to breathe—he flung her down.
“Is there any use in continuing? How about giving her more?”
“She is on the verge of falling asleep as it is,” the mage replied tonelessly. “Any more will probably kill her.”
“Save the herb.” He looked up at his aide and the day captain of his personal guard. “Take her out and hang her.”
The guards were in the act of picking up Elva by the arms when there came a rap at the door.
“What,” Randart shouted over his shoulder.
“Pardon, Commander,” came the voice of the ship’s captain. “But I felt you should be informed that we are under attack.”
o0o
“Lower the cutter,” Zathdar ordered.
Robin frowned. “You’re not going to board the flagship?”
Zathdar paused on his way to the weapons locker, and glanced back. “Who else?”
“Anyone else. How did that fool get herself caught anyway?”
“I’m afraid it’s our fault,” Zathdar said.
Robin scowled, for she hadn’t liked that Elva Eban, always grumping about on the deck with her sniffy attitude. As if she were the princess, whereas Prince Math’s daughter had been instant mates with everyone, without a hint of swank. And she could have swanked, not only because she was a prince’s daughter, but because she was one of the best fighters in the fleet.
Zathdar could see Robin’s thoughts fairly clearly, and so he stepped close and murmured apologetically, “Owl’s mistake, actually.”
Leaving her nothing more to say on the matter.
That is, until he drew out a fine Colendi dueling blade, long, thin, edged but not as strong as a saber. She gasped. “Take the cavalry sword. You can’t defend yourself with that!”
“It has an edge, and a point, which is all I ask. Remember, Randart has seen my fighting style with the cavalry sword. But not with this.” He swung it, making it whistle. “That might be the only disguise left to me, besides these absurd clothes, so I’ll take what I can.”
You shouldn’t go at all. She kept her teeth gritted as she lent a hand lowering his boat. After he called for volunteers and chose among the forest of hands that instantly shot up, she said, “Orders?”
“As much chaos as possible.”
He leaped down into the cutter, which was really a one-masted pinnace, but made to his own design on the lines of larger cutters, lean and fast, its sides painted a camouflaging bluish gray.
They raised the sail, tacking directly in the lee of the Zathdar, hidden from view of the oncoming fleet.
Robin returned to the wheel and took over. They were nearly in bowshot. On the enemy ships, naval crews scrambled aloft to the tops, taking up their stations on the mastheads, drilled and waiting. On the merchant ships, sailors scurried about and warriors ran around, all getting in one another’s way. She laughed, watching the glint of sun on swords being waved, sails jerking as their unprepared crews tried to figure out how they were going to fight and sail at the same time.
Chaos he wants, chaos we will give him. I’ll buy myself a new silk shirt if I can get two of these stinkers to crash bow over stern. She spun the wheel and lifted her voice. “Sail crews, let’s make Zathdar dance. Bow teams? Prepare for attack!”
The smell of rancid oil drifted down, whipping away on the wind, as the fire crews above dipped their arrows.
o0o
Randart shoved his way to the forecastle. All the sailors scrambled back. He had his glass, but didn’t need it to see the three pirates bearing down, sails taut against the wind.
“They’re moving faster than we,” he snapped.
The captain was an old man, weathered from years of sun and sea. “They have the wind. As we reported to you before, War Commander.”
Randart gritted his teeth against snapping back a futile question. Obviously the fleet couldn’t regain the wind, whatever that meant, not under strict orders to give chase.
But one question he could ask. He glared in narrow-eyed fury into the dark eyes of the waiting captain. “Why did you not report this attack at once?”
“I sent someone, but your aide said you couldn’t be disturbed in the cabin. And you did say to give chase, so now we’re closing.” His raspy voice was devoid of expression, but Randart felt his antagonism.
“If I get even a hint,” he said in a low, venomous murmur, “there was any treason in this spectacular exhibition of incompetence, I’ll have you flogged to death on your own deck.”
The captain’s face stayed stony, his gaze steady. “Why would we do that? We were promised a year’s pay for a single capture. But you said that th
e orders have to come from you. War Commander.”
“Then your orders now are to defeat these pirates.” Randart turned his head. “Signal to use ramming force and fire. I want the pirate Zathdar captured if possible, otherwise I want those ships destroyed, and no survivors.”
He caught sight of Samdan limping on the companionway. Behind him his men waited, the Eban girl hanging in their grip, her lips still moving. He wanted the pirates to see her dead body hanging from one of those big pieces of wood holding up the sails. But both crews were far too busy, one dealing with sails, the other getting to their fighting stations, to make the exhibition he desired. There was no point in staging an execution as a lesson if no one was watching.
“She can go in the brig for now. We’ll hang her as soon as the pirates surrender, before we fire their ships.” He stepped to the rail, glass in hand. “She’ll hang side by side with the pirate. After I’m through with him.”
The thought of what he would do to the pirate—and how long it would last—brought a grim smile.
The captain of the ship flicked a summoning glance at his first mate, who also happened to be his wife. Together they retreated to the captain’s deck. The captain took up station behind the helmsman, making certain his own crew were the only ones in earshot, “I am told that Zathdar never kills.”
His wife’s gray, grizzled brows rose, then her chin came down slowly. She turned away to supervise the sails and gave her own crew orders for the issuing of weapons. Around them warriors took up the fighting positions they’d drilled.
Above, signal flags rose, fluttering. Along the columns, now breaking apart to encircle the pirates, sails raised and lowered, crews ran about on decks—efficient on the navy ships, full of energy but less purpose on the merchants, for none of them knew what to do when under attack.
As the pirate drew between the first two ships in the column, fire arrows arced in glinting gold pinpricks against the blue sky. They flew in both directions, striking against the fleet’s upper sails. Next, the stink of smoke reached the captain’s nostrils—the distinctive stench of manure bricks mixed with sugar and set on fire, which burned messily but didn’t do much else—and he chuckled softly to himself.
o0o
“Here, you, stand guard. You can’t fight on deck with that knee,” the patrol captain said to Samdan, motioning him to follow down into the hold. The two men dumped the girl into the tiny cupboard the commander had designated as the brig, slammed the door, slid the bar, and one turned, handing him a sword.
The lamplight shone on his grin. “My guess is, they won’t get down this far, but you never know. May’s well have a measure of safety.” He indicated the length of the blade, and then the two vanished, their boots clattering, their curses not quite muffled as a rolling lurch of the ship slammed them back and forth in the hatchways.
Samdan sat slowly on a barrel, listening to the girl’s soft whisper. He wondered if he should use the blade on her. That would be better than hanging and whatever other fun and games the commander might be inspired to try first. Or maybe he should just use it on himself.
o0o
Randart’s smile had faded. He glowered at the mage.
“My training is in helping to help defend the integrity of the ships’ wood,” Magister Lorat stated. “That I can and will perform.”
“Can you damage the wood of the enemy ships?”
She rubbed her lip as she stared over the water. “If I can get close enough to focus, I might enable them to waterlog, but that’s only if their wood is not warded against such spells. Most well-kept ships, even pirates, are warded as a matter of regular maintenance.”
Randart sighed, thinking once again that magic was basically useless for anything but housekeeping. “Do what you can. If I see evidence of your aid in defeating them, I will see to it Zhavic rewards you suitably.”
Anger flashed through her, but she hid it. “I will do my best, War Commander.”
He moved on, forgetting her within two steps.
She stared down at the water. The best of nothing is nothing.
o0o
Smoke billowed from the pirates in grayish cotton streamers, carried by the wind toward the fleet. The three in the cutter watched the navy ships tacking desperately against the wind in order to come around and close on the Bug and the Mule.
Gray, one of Zathdar’s strongest and steadiest crew members, said pleasantly, “You know this madness is going to get us all killed.”
Zathdar laughed. “Hinting for double pay?”
“If we’re alive to spend it, might be nice.” Gray gave his captain a mocking salute.
“Ship ho,” Gliss called from the tiller as she came up under the lee of the smoking vessel.
Tham dropped in, sending shudders through the craft, which was already picking up speed.
“Going to rescue the Eban girl?” Tham asked.
“That’s the idea,” Zathdar said.
Tham laughed. “I would rather die heroically rescuing that wheat-haired princess, if you asked me.”
Zathdar said, “It might come to that. If we find her. Right now, consider. Randart, who knows nothing of fleet actions, has had plenty of time to sow resentment among all these sailors.”
“You think that’s gonna help us?” Tham asked, and the others looked askance.
Zathdar spread his hands. “On land, I wouldn’t dare go up against him with four swords, doughty as you are. But now—whatever chance we have, we must take. As for our target, Elva Eban is crew. And you know the rule.”
No one argued with that. They all knew it could have been one of them on that ship.
A grinding crash snapped everyone’s eyes south as a merchant craft, half-hidden by the increasing smoke from the scattering bursts of new fires, jammed its jib over the taffrail of one of the naval ships. Faint cries of rage carried over the smoke from both ships, creaks and cracks of wood, and the beating ruddy glow of sky-reaching flames.
“Oars,” Zathdar said. “There’s the flagship.”
Chapter Twelve
“It’s a disaster.” Randart wiped his smoke-burning eyes again.
A disaster with at least one mind familiar with siege tactics employed against them. Randart knew the distinctive smell of manure-brick-and-sugar fire, called smoke screen in the military.
He watched in growing but helpless fury the slow, disastrous collapse of order at this end of the fleet. Impossible to see if the naval ships were closing in from the other side. Probably not. The smoke seemed to kill the wind, and the ships had slowed even more, wallowing as fast and furious arcs of flame hissed at them.
The pirates shot a ceaseless stream of fire arrows. He had ordered his men to kill, but they couldn’t see their targets.
Randart controlled the urge to strike out at the closest target. Though he could not ride, or bugle for a troop to thunder up and encircle the enemy, he did have one last possibility. All he needed was to spot the lead pirate ship, then he could order down the boats and send his men over to take it. Wrest something from the turmoil.
But the smoke thickened, obscuring even the two ships at either side. All he could see were the tiny pricks of light of the fire arrows. The arcs now went out in both directions. His men were shooting from the topmasts above him, he was glad to see, though he had no idea who they were aiming at. Maybe a defensive measure. They certainly couldn’t see any pirates to shoot.
The smoke was making his throat raw. Usually he kept his command center upwind of smoke screens, but the pirates had the wind.
He retreated to his cabin, and was downing his second cup of water when Jehan’s cutter eased up under the stern, directly below him—and unseen because it never occurred to him to peer out the stern windows.
Gliss, at the tiller, stayed in the vessel to fight off anyone who tried to take it. She’d come aboard if summoned as last-ditch backup. Hoping for a chance, she kept the boat as close under the stern as possible, out of sight from the rail.
&n
bsp; The other four climbed fast, Jehan’s colorful figure first.
He murmured, “No deaths if you can avoid it.”
“Even army?” Tham muttered, though he knew the answer.
“Yes.”
Tham sighed, not surprised. He knew that Randart would be angry enough to feel no such compunction when giving orders to his men.
Jehan leaped lightly over the rail, dueling rapier in one hand, knife in the other, the others behind as backup. And as Zathdar paced past the old captain at the helm, raked his gaze down the unarmed man and moved by, the captain flicked a glance at his wife, who promptly went about her inspection as though she hadn’t even seen the intruders.
Gray, hefting his sword behind Tham, whistled softly, long and low. Zathdar had been right. Randart had made enemies of these sailors.
They might actually survive.
The breather lasted another ten heartbeats. A patrolling warrior spotted them, and yelled up at the first mate, “Hey! Who’s that?” But she was coughing too hard from the smoke, and groped helplessly as she stood at the rail, whooping for breath.
The patroller stared at the slim man in garish colors. He came on fast and the warrior pulled his sword, yelling, “Pirates! We’re under attack!”
The ship erupted in cries, crashes, and desperate fights. The warrior detachment boiled up from below, each wanting badly to bag a pirate and the promotion and reward that came with it.
The sailors all yelled “Attack!” and “Defense!” and waved their weapons, running into one another and dropping armloads of sailing gear that suddenly everyone seemed to be carrying.
Tham, backing up Zathdar, found himself pressed against the rail by three good fighters in the king’s brown. He was mentally bidding farewell to a good, though short, life, when a cry from overhead startled everyone—and a sailor landed on top of two of the warriors, knocking the third spinning. Tham promptly jabbed his knee and the opposite shoulder, putting him out of action, as the sailor held up a frayed rope end and said loudly, “It broke!”