Silke, the retained master of the Safire, came aboard the Rumour once to speak with Luka. He was a shabby man with great, broad shoulders from which his ankle-length green silk robe hung like a kite. He had seven tight pigtails poking down from the edge of the orange turban on his head.
Roque drilled the watches hard, counting time as they raised the targette shields at the blow of a whistle. At least half the ratings were trained with calivers, or had skill with a crossbow, or were teamed to man the swivel guns mounted along the rail. Every few hours, a whistle would blow and Roque would saunter along the deck as the watch drew pikes with a clatter, slammed up the targettes and iron pavises on port or starboard, and stood ready with grapnels. The calivermen and swivel-gun teams took station and fired off a crumping salute without lead.
“They’re slow,” Sesto heard Luka tell Roque. “Guido’s let them get lazy.”
They didn’t look lazy to Sesto. In under two minutes, the crew of the Rumour could armour either flank with targette boards, rattle off a salvo with caliver and swivels, fire a flurry of crossbow bolts, and make the ship bristle like a porcupine with long-hafted pikes. And that didn’t take into account the individual weapons the men carried: hangers, sabres, sashes and baldrics laden with wheel and match-lock pistols, muskets, axes, rapiers and poniards, dirks and daggers, kidney knives and short, fat, single-edged swords they called cutlasses.
Sesto tried a cutlass for size. It was weighty and crude, a little more than a heavy dagger and a little less than a small hanger, but it sang well, and it was short enough to wield without snaring the shrouds or striking the ceiling below decks.
On the second day, Sesto sneaked down onto the red-washed gun deck, and admired the brig’s guns. Six cannon each side and three culverins, along with two sakers placed as stern chasers. He was impressed to find that the cannon were laid up on wheeled trucks that could be easily dragged back inboard for reloading. The warships of the Luccinian fleet still mounted their cannon on field carriages, much more cumbersome to move and draw in. No wonder, then, the Sartosan reputation for multiple broadsides. Sesto noticed the wooden pegs laid out ready to be hammered in under the back of each barrel to adjust the angle of fire, and the brass monkeys of stacked shot—solid ball, chain shot, case shot and stone-buck. Peeking into the powder magazine, through the heavy curtains of mail-link, he saw only a stack of the small kegs made for pistol and caliver powder.
“Looking for something?”
Sesto glanced round and found himself facing Sheerglas, the Rumour’s cadaverous master gunner. At some point in his long career, Sheerglas must have been marooned in the settlements of the Southlands, for there was no other explanation Sesto could think of for the way Sheerglas’ canine teeth were filed down to a point. Sheerglas never came above decks. He lurked in the ruddy twilight of the gun deck, haunting the shadows.
“I see only pistol powder,” Sesto said.
Sheerglas smiled, an unnerving sight. His sharp canines drew spots of blood from his pale lower lip. “On the captain’s orders, we use only pistol powder,” he said.
Again, Sesto was impressed. Bulk-barrelled gunpowder, especially in Sartosa, was notoriously crude, diluted with ash-mix and prone to misfire. Pistol powder, though much more expensive, was finely milled and purer. The Rumour’s guns would fire well, and every time.
“I was merely interested,” Sesto said.
Sheerglas nodded. “I like a man who takes an interest. You’re the captain’s friend and companion from the mainland, aren’t you?”
“Y-yes.”
Sheerglas beckoned with the linstock in his bony hands. It was an ebony baton, the tip carved in the form of a lion’s mouth to take the match. “Come aft with me, to my quarters. We’ll take a reviving drink, you and I.”
“I thank you, but no.”
“Come now,” Sheerglas whispered, more insistent.
“Let him be, Sheerglas,” snarled a voice nearby. It was the ubiquitous boucaner.
“I meant him no harm, Ymgrawl,” complained the master gunner.
“Thou never dost. But let him be.”
Sheerglas scowled and shuffled away, back into the gun deck. Now Sesto felt as trapped by the boucaner as he had by the gunner. The rough-made man surprised him by standing aside to usher Sesto past and up the companionway. Sesto turned to the side so he could get by. Close to, the man gave off the gross reek of tanned hide.
“Watch thyself,” the boucaner growled.
“I will,” Sesto assured him, and hurried aloft.
IV
The day sun rose with a lively westerly, and they put to sea. There was no fanfare or salute. Sesto suddenly realised they were under way. The voyage had started with the same abrupt lack of ceremony as the code-duel between Luka and his brother.
With the Safire leading off, they came around the harbour head and made sail for the west, along the so-called Pirate’s Channel and into the blue, sunlit dish of the Tilean Sea. With the wind running and all standing, the Rumour and the Safire made spectacular speed. Land fell away behind; a ribbon of headland dead astern, fading to a smoky line, and then nothing.
As soon as there was nothing in sight but open sea, a fair number of the crew went to the rail and cast offerings into the rolling green water. A coin for good luck, a stone for safe return, a button for rich pickings. Sesto saw some men, Fahd amongst them, wring a chicken’s neck and throw the dead bird in. Sesto shuddered to think of the cruel water-gods, like the sea daemon, these otherwise godless men were attempting to appease.
Belissi, the ship’s carpenter, made the strangest offering of all. With his chisel and plane, he had shaped a rude copy of his wooden leg, and made a great show of casting that into the swell, shouting out: “Mother mine hast take my leg, now take it again and be content, and come not after the rest of me!”
Shaking his head, Sesto went up onto the poop and stood with Luka, Casaudor and Benuto, feeling the sway of the deck. Tende’s fists were clamped to the king-spoke of the gold-painted wheel with a thick-necked lee helmsman called Saybee at his side. Sesto leaned over the taffrail and watched the sleek Safire racing ahead, its huge jibs bellying out from the long bowsprit. A piece of work, that sloop, its hull artfully light enough for speed, yet strong enough not to crack under the extreme pressure of carrying more sail than was usual for a vessel of the size.
Luka had laid out a waggoner, and was tracing a course across the parchment for Casaudor’s benefit. Sesto heard him explain his intention to make speed for the western islands along the coast of Estalia, perhaps tracking even as far north as the waters of Tobaro. Casaudor said nothing, but Sesto didn’t like the look in the master mate’s eyes.
Luka himself seemed as animated as his craft, as if the wind was filling his sails too. Already, colour had returned to his skin, a ruddy, tanned look that melted the pallor imprisonment had lent him. He was becoming his old self. In the two months he had known Captain Luka Silvaro, Sesto had begun to trust him, almost like himself. But now they were at sea, Luka was changed. He was wildly free again, cut loose, and Sesto wondered how long the terms of their fragile agreement would last.
On the second and third days, the wind declined, and they made slower going, though the weather was still fair. They’d seen nothing but open water, deep ocean birds and, once, a silver flurry of flying fish that dashed and leapt through the waves ahead of them.
Then, at noon on the third day, the man in the main’s topcastle sang out. A sail.
The lookout had a view of about fifteen miles in all directions, and his arm pointed to the south-west. The sail he’d sighted was behind the horizon from the point of view of those on the deck. Luka had some sail struck on both vessels, and as they gybed and close-hauled around, he took his brass scope and went aloft himself.
By the time he returned to the deck, two tiny white dots had come into view.
“It’s Ru’af,” he said to Casaudor. “Both his galleys, if my eyes are not mistaken.”
?
??Then we press on,” said the master mate.
Luka shook his head. “I’d hail the old devil and take his news. In these unhappy times it might pay to take what intelligence we can.”
“Even from Ru’af?”
“Even from him. Set us about to meet him and hoist the black.”
Casaudor began barking orders to the crew, and the top gangs ran up the yards like monkeys. Sesto saw the Safire had trimmed sail likewise and was now running on their port quarter.
“What are we doing?” Sesto asked Luka, drawing the captain to one side for a moment.
“The sails are those of Muhannad Ru’af. Corsair galleys. We’ll find out what he knows.”
“Corsairs?”
“Aye, Sesto.”
“Who will just come alongside and talk?”
“Oh, they’re rivals, and there’s no love lost, but they sail by the code too. Remember the code?”
“How could I forget?”
“We’re safe if we show our colours.”
Luka gestured aloft, and Sesto saw the Rumour was now flying a ragged black flag on which was a hand-stitched white skeleton and hourglass. The Safire flew a similar badge: crossed white swords on black.
Pirate marks. The flags that warned a victim ship to give over without a fight, or informed another pirate of a fellow. If a pirate displayed his black before an attack and you surrendered without a fight, he was obliged to show mercy.
In the space of about half an hour, the corsair ships hove into view. The Reivers’ vessels were almost at a dead stop, turning out of the light wind. Muhannad Ru’af’s craft were galleys, and came on under Power of the massive banks of oars. Ru’af’s flagship, the Badarra, was a sixty-oar trireme painted red, white and gold, much longer and narrower than either of Luka’s ships, and dominated by two mighty lateen masts, the sails now furled. It had a raised, crenellated fighting castle at the bow. Its consort, the Tariq, was a forty-oar bireme, similar in aspect to the Badarra, but smaller. A great structure of red-painted wood was raised almost upright from the bowcastle.
They were closing still closing fast, oars stroking, approaching the Rumour at the port beam.
“Lower a longboat,” Luka told Benuto. “I’ll go across myself as soon as they swing about. Get some—”
“Have a care!” Casaudor suddenly hollered. There was a general shouting from the crew. Sesto jumped, scared, and heard Roque blowing his whistle.
Sesto saw what Casaudor had seen. As they closed on the Reivers’ vessels, the corsair galleys had struck the black marks they had been flying and had run up plain red flags.
The bloody flag. The jolie rouge. The sign of death without quarter.
V
There was a distant banging and Sesto realised the galleys had fired their fore cannons. He heard whistling, whizzing sounds in the air around him. A section of the quarterdeck rail exploded in a shower of wood splinters, and two ratings shrieked and tumbled to their knees. A main topsail shredded and hung limp. The sea around them churned with splashes and spouts.
Another crump of fire. Flames and wood gouted from the port bulwarks. At least one man fell into the sea. Case shot ripped across the quarterdeck, bursting to release whipping chains and lead balls that turned barrels, ratlines and three men into sprays of fibres and bloody fragments.
There was a look of sheer incredulity on Luka Silvaro’s face.
The Rumour’s guns began to return fire. Oar staves shattered and pieces were thrown high out of the water. A pall of smoke filled the space between the ships. Shouts and screams cut the air.
Roque, blasting on his pipe, had succeeded in drawing the port watch to the rail, clattering their targettes together as they threw them up to form a barricade. Pikemen thrust their long-poled weapons out from the thick shield-line. The deck shuddered violently, both with the impact of cannon-shell and the discharge of the Rumour’s own ordnance.
Retorts of a higher pitch, like branches snapping, rolled down the port line as the calivermen began firing. Crouching down by the taffrail on the poop, Sesto saw the figures of men toppling down on the Badarra’s deck or plunging into the frothing sea. Swivel guns on both ships began to thump. A section of Roque’s shield wall went down as a ten-pound ball from a corsair saker bowled through it, spilling broken men and twisted segments of pavise before it.
The Tariq had powered across the bow of the Rumour and was coming in from the starboard side. With precious little wind, there was slim chance of out-manoeuvring it. The Safire, however, was pulling away from the grappling mass of ships. Sesto saw that Silke had put out four longboats, laden with men, and these crews were now all rowing fit to break, towing the sloop clear on long lines.
Was he running? Was Silke failing his test of loyalty so early?
The red-painted projection raised from the Tariq’s bowcastle began to lower, and Sesto realised what it was. A hinged boarding ramp, known as a corvus, large enough for two men to come down it abreast, and armoured along the sides with wooden targettes painted with Arabyan motifs. The corvus had a huge spike extended from the lip of its front end.
As Sesto watched, the Tariq slammed in towards the Rumour’s waist as if to ram her, oars stroking like the legs of some gigantic pool-skater. Then the cables securing the corvus were let out, and the wooden bridge came smashing down, disintegrating the toprail and slamming against the deck, the spike biting deep through the scrubbed oak boards. Ululating, corsairs began to pour across: ragged, wild-haired men in florid silks and linens, brandishing wheel-locks, shamshirs and lances.
Roque and Benuto had mobbed the starboard watch and all the available top-men to repel. There was a firecracker peal of handguns blasting at short range, and a clatter of pikes and lances. Brutal hand-to-hand fighting—a tangled, blurry confusion—spilled across the Rumour’s waist.
Luka was at the port rail with Casaudor when the crew of the Badarra began to board. He had a ducksfoot pistol in his left hand and a curved Arabyan shamshir in his right, and bellowed orders at the pikemen and the targetters. Calivermen and crossbowmen were now wriggling aloft in the shrouds under the direction of Vento and the old sailmaker Largo. They began raining shot and bolts down onto the railside of the Badarra. Arrows and smallshot loosed back, and Sesto saw one caliverman drop like a stone from the rigging, and another, an arrow through his throat, fall and dangle, suspended by one foot, pouring blood like a strung hog.
Vento, his white coattails tucked into his breeks, straddled a yard-arm like a man on a horse and fired lethal stone balls from a heavy bullet-crossbow with double strings. Largo, higher up still, had rammed a gold Estalian comb morion on his head for protection, and was shooting with a curved horse bow, spare arrows clutched between the fingers of his left hand so he could nock them quickly.
“We’ll not overmatch them, man-for-man!” Luka yelled at Casaudor. “Let’s take it to them! I want Ru’af’s heart for this infamy!”
Sesto watched in disbelief as Luka raised a boarding action to counter the Badarra’s assault. Outflung grapnels closed the distance, dragging galley and brigantine side by side, and boarding planks and ladders slammed out through the targette wall.
Luka led the attack. As he leapt over the boards, he fired his ducks-foot, and the five splayed barrels of the grotesque pistol roared simultaneously. Casaudor was beside him, blowing two corsairs off the plank bridge with a blast from his blunderbuss. The heavy weapon had a spring-blade under the trumpet, and Casaudor snapped it out and impaled the next corsair on it. Dying, the corsair took the blunderbuss with him as he pitched, screaming, into the sea, and Casaudor drew a cup-guard rapier instead and set in with that.
Many of the Reivers had multiple pistols strung around them on lanyards or ribbon sashes, so they could be fired and then dropped without being lost. There was no time to reload. Surging across the gap, the men fired each weapon in turn until they were spent, and then resorted to cutlass, boarding axe and sabre.
Corsairs, swinging on lines, were now swarm
ing over the poop rail. Tende, hefting a long-handled stabbing axe of curious and no doubt Ebonion design, led a repulse with ten men, including Junio and Fahd. Backing away, numb with terror and wondering where on earth he could run to, Sesto heard the swishing of steel, the crack of breaking bone, the yelp of the dying. Blood ran across the decking, following the lines of the boards. The corsairs surged again, pushing more men through onto the poop, despite the loss of half a dozen picked from the swing-ropes by the fire of Vento’s marksmen above.
Sesto found himself in a haze of smoke. He staggered around, eyes watering, and got his hand around the grip of his pistol. Junio loomed out of the smoke. The side of his head was cloven in and he looked more than ever like a goat, a sacrificial goat. He fell into Sesto’s embrace, soaking the gentleman from Luccino in hot, sour blood.
With a horrified cry, Sesto fell back under the dead weight. A toothless, raving corsair with a bloody adze came charging out of the smoke, and Sesto fired his pistol from under the armpit of the dead storekeeper. The ball bounced off the side of the corsair’s head and pulped his ear. As he fell, yowling, two more followed him into view, lunging at Sesto.
The first sabre slash struck Junio’s back, and Sesto was forced to use the pitiful corpse in his arms as a shield. One of the corsairs stabbed with a lance, and the iron tip came spearing out of the storekeeper’s gaping mouth towards Sesto’s face. Sesto yelled and retreated, dropping Junio face down.
The corsairs hurled themselves after him. Sesto tried to draw his smallsword, but slipped down hard on the bloody deck.
Ymgrawl the boucaner appeared from nowhere and interposed himself between Sesto and his attackers. The boucaner’s cutlass ripped the lancer across the eyes, and then he turned, breaking the other’s jaw with a blow from the blade’s heavy stirrup-guard. Ymgrawl grabbed hold of the dazed corsair by the hair and wrenched him head-first over the rail.
“Get thee up!” Ymgrawl yelled.