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.
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 the 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. “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.
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 fighting positions along the rail as 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.
“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 and 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.
Randart was, at that moment, glowering 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.
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.
A moment later 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 u
s?” 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 were shooting 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 of the flagship. 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.
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 lead pirate was a slim man in garish colors. He came on fast and the warrior pulled his sword, yelling, “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!”
Three big blocks dropped from above, two clonking onto the heads of warriors. One warrior was knocked out, the other staggered toward the rail, a cut over one eye. Crew members leaped to help, getting in the way of Randart’s men who tried to close in on the pirates.
“Get out of the way!”
“Where?”
“Help, help, the boom is about to drop!”
“I can’t see!”
The first mate stood at the rail, apparently blind to the chaos as she coughed from the smoke.
A party of five sailors chose this moment to haul up a huge sail between the pirates and the advancing guards. Gray and Tham covered Zathdar, who dropped down the hatch.
He slashed his blade across the forehead of one fellow, nailed the elbow and hip of another, then jumped to the second hatchway. Now the search would begin. Where would they would stash a prisoner?
Randart emerged from his cabin to discover fighting all over the deck, warriors slipping in spilled oil, smacked in the back of the head by swinging blocks of wood from the sails overhead, bumped into by groups of sailors running about, some carrying huge sails, others with long snarls of rope, everyone yelling at the tops of their voices.
“Pirates?” Randart roared. He spotted them, three around the main hatchway. On guard, it looked like.
Why? It couldn’t be the Eban girl they were after—
A loud rattling sounded overhead, and a sail swooped down and dropped over him, knocking him flat.
“We’re on fire!” someone screeched above.
“Mizzen top down! Mizzen top down! Sail crew!” the ship captain howled, and feet trampled over Randart, squashing him flat.
Randart shouted, “Get off me!” but the noise of the sailors bellowing arcane sail jargon at one another, the captain bawling orders, the noise of fighting, of sails flapping, of coughing and whooping caused by the smoke, drowned him out.
Below, Zathdar began grimly on his search, waiting for the inevitable squad to descend from the deck, each intent on winning fame and fortune by some judicious pirate killing. Take every chance to its end, he’d been taught at the academy across the continent, where dying in battle was considered the best end, far better than a quiet death after a long life.
Jehan, if offered a choice, preferred the quiet death after a long life, but that did not seem to be the chance coming his way.
Then a cough caught his attention, and he whirled, blades up.
A man’s head popped up from the deck below, barely lit by the single swinging lantern. “She’s here.”
It was one of Randart’s warriors.
Expecting a trap, Zathdar hefted his weapon and dropped down to the dim, low third level, which was usually used for storage, to find himself alone with a man with a bound knee. The face was vaguely familiar.
“He’s going to hang her.” Samdan looked at the pirate dressed in ridiculous clothes, like a traveling player. But there was nothing silly about the narrowed eyes, twin gleams from the lamp flame reflecting in his steady gaze, or the way he held those red-tipped weapons. “Did you kill anyone?”
A shake of the fringed bandana.
“Yes. Well, she’s there.” A point.
A step, a kick to the wooden bar, and indeed, there she was, on her knees, arms bound. One slash and her hands dropped to her sides, her mouth moving as she chattered a stream of nonsense
observations in a low, monotonous whisper.
“You’d best thump me.” Samdan turned his back. And if you kill me, well, it’s only just.
The pirate nodded once, and didn’t make the man wait. Tossing his knife up, he caught it by the blade, brought the handle down behind Samdan’s ear.
Samdan dropped to the deck, his weapon clattering out of his hands. Zathdar stared at Samdan’s knee, remembering where he’d seen the man last—lying wounded in the transfer-tower courtyard. Bending, he lightly nicked Samdan where it would hurt least but bleed most, the better to make it seem he’d put up a good fight, and cut the rest of Elva’s bonds.
“Can’t use hands,” she murmured, in the slurry voice of someone who was under the influence of kinthus.
“Stop talking.” The kinthus would make her obey, and thus she would also be able to halt the weird chatter.
He slid his arm under hers and supported her up one ladder—propping her against a bulkhead to step out and look round. There was only one sailor, with the galley and the officers’ wardroom blocked off by barrels. The man looked at them, turned his back and dropped another barrel onto its side.
“I’m trying to get you out, but someone upset all the food stores,” he bellowed to the officers shouting and trying to batter the blocked wardroom cabin door.
Zathdar helped Elva up the last ladder, where they found the deck in chaos, sails hanging loose or dropped altogether, fires being busily put out with water splashing everywhere. And what were these impossible tangles of ropes?
A rush of warriors toward them turned into a mass skid as someone fell over a barrel of oil that had gotten spilled all over the deck.
There were Gray, Tham and Vestar, bloody but alive.
They closed around him, Gray pressing up on Elva’s other side. Together they lifted her as they mounted to the captain’s deck, where the first mate was busy yelling at a disaster with the mizzen topsails. A web of tangle rope jerked upward, blocking off the scrambling warriors who’d gotten past the oil.
A boom swung out from the other direction, lifting the rest of the pursuit off their feet, to crash onto the mizzen sail still being trampled and splashed with buckets of water.