Blaggard's Moon (42 page)

The Gatemen closed in on Ryland's army.

“Now we got a fight!” Sleeve crowed. The rest of the forecastle rumbled its agreement.

“Aye, it's a fight,” Ham Drumbone confirmed. “And no one-sided ambush this time. A full-on brawl between a hundred outlaws and a hundred Gatemen, evenly matched in weapons and in the ability and the desire to use them.”

“Who won?” Dallis Trum asked.

“Who do ye think?” Sleeve answered scornfully.

“I don't know,” Dallis replied truthfully. “Is this the big fight that ends it all?”

“Naw, how could it be?” another sailor called. “Conch's a thousand miles away.”

“Shut up and let Ham tell it!” another sailor yelled, and others agreed.

They quieted almost instantly, and Ham began again.

“Hold!” Motley said, standing by his boss. “What's that?” He was looking up at his men along the rails of the ships, most of them milling about on deck. But Motley was listening to the creak of footsteps above his head. “Did you put men on the roof?” he asked Ryland.

“Me? You're the one organizing this.”

“They
tricked
us,” Motley said angrily, as if somehow the Gatemen had cheated. “The rooftops, boys!” he shouted. “They're on the roofs!”

That's when the shooting started. First, a single crack, fired from a ship. Then that shot was answered from a rooftop. Two more shots, then three more at once. Then Motley shouted, “Fire, ye blaggards!”

And then there was a countering call from above: “Remember Slow Slim's!”

And suddenly the docks were a match struck in the dark. Flashes of fire and plumes of smoke crisscrossed the docks, lacing the air with musket balls that ripped through anything in their path. Pirates and brigands on the decks of Ryland's ships found plenty of cover, and shot across or up at the rooftops. Those still on the docks below aimed upward as best they could, but the Gatemen were well concealed, and they rained gunfire down onto the docks and the decks at will.

It was equal give and take for a minute or two, until the second wave of Gatemen arrived on foot. Then, under cover of heavy fire from above, they started a bloody push, moving the pirates across and down the docks, toward the ships, toward the end of the pier. Muskets and pistols fired, swords came out of scabbards and plunged into enemies, knives flashed and disappeared, reappeared red. And then they were upon one another with fists, teeth, knees, elbows. The Gatemen moved forward yard by yard, foot by bloody foot. The outlaws did not retreat; the Gatemen simply moved them backward. Men fought, and stumbled, and fell. Had the outlaws had any protecting fire from above, they might have prevailed. But Damrick's men had the higher ground. Ship-bound brigands who tried to shoot down on their attackers left themselves exposed to fire from the rooftops.

Finally, all engaged on the docks saw the end coming. Several of the outlaw horde broke, trying to flee up the gangways. They were cut down with swords and pistols. The Gatemen kept driving, those in the fore fighting hand to hand, those in the back using the fallen—their own and their enemy's—as cover as they reloaded.

Damrick pulled his knife from a fallen enemy, and sheathed it. Blood-spattered, he called out. “Lye!”

Lye's pistol, pressed close to a pirate's belly, fired. He looked at Damrick as his opponent fell. “What?”

“Follow me.” He gestured with a nod toward the Harbormaster's front stoop. “Grab a couple of men!” Without waiting for an answer or watching Lye's reaction, Damrick moved back the way he'd come, down the alley, circling around behind the buildings.

As the bloody advance inched forward, Motley and his three lieutenants
fired from the Harbormaster's stoop, kneeling behind the low, loosely spindled rail. They were protecting Runsford Ryland, who was seated behind the four men with his arms around his knees, his back pressed against the door of the Harbormaster's office, as low and as invisible and as out of the line of fire as possible.

Suddenly, the lock behind Ryland clicked, and the door at his back opened. He was jerked inside. Then a Gateman with two double-barreled pistols stepped out and fired three shots, killing three of Ryland's goons. Motley turned and aimed, but he had not finished reloading. Damrick Fellows's eyes were hard and shimmered like crystal. His hands were bloody, and red spatters covered his face. He shook his head, and droplets of sweat fell from wet hair. “Put it down, and get inside,” he ordered. With a sour look, Motley obliged. Lye Mogene and his two companions tied the two new prisoners securely, while Damrick joined his Gatemen in pressing the attack once again.

The smell of gunpowder was heavy when Lye rejoined the fray; a low cloud of pungent gray mist swirling across the docks as men moved through it, fought in it, added to it with every shot fired. At the front of the line was Hale Starpus, leading his men. He and the Gatemen shot when they could, cut and slashed when they couldn't reload, punched and kicked and bit when they couldn't even move or remove a blade—always pushing toward the ships. Now several of the last brigands standing on the wooden decking splashed into the water, trying to swim for safety. They were shot by Gatemen.

“Charge 'em!” Hale shouted. And with one final push, the dock was theirs.

“Up the gangways!” Damrick ordered. The pirates and brigands on the decks of Ryland's ships now rose, risking exposure to turn their weapons on the three narrow gangways. Hale took the lead and began ascending the
Destiny
under heavy fire. He stopped, pinned down from above, and took cover behind the bodies of those pirates shot and hacked while attempting to flee from the docks.

Then the cannon fire began. Hale was not one to shrink from any attack, but he froze now. He heard cannon shot shatter wood. He looked to his right, saw the source, saw more flashes from a dark ship not a hundred yards away. “Back down! Back to the docks!” he shouted behind him. And as the Gatemen retreated, two explosions rocked the
Ayes of Destiny
.

Fire from above dwindled.

“We just hold still, them pirates on that ship'll kill off their own kind!” Hale marveled.

More cannon fire rocked the
Destiny
. Now panic swept the decks of Ryland's ships as brigands raced to the far port rails and waved their arms, shouting for their allies to cease fire. For their trouble, they were picked off like so many pigeons on a fence. Cannon shot hit the
Lion's Pride
, and then the
Blue Horizon
. Debris and splinters leapt from all three ships, and the entire dock shuddered.

The chaos on board gave the Gatemen sharpshooters on the rooftops every advantage. Within two minutes, the small arms fire declined. Inside one more, it stopped altogether. Shortly after, the cannons ceased to roar. Acrid smoke drifted across the entire scene. Surviving Gatemen stormed up the gangways, finding the dead everywhere, assuring that the wounded joined them.

“Fire into the air, boys!” Hale called out. “Those pirates expect a pirate's celebration!”

Several of the Gatemen whooped and fired off their pistols. Many more would not waste the ammunition or the energy, just to fool a shipful of enemies. But the meager effort did the trick. The pirates out in the harbor joined the celebration. Pistol fire answered back, and an echoing roar rose from that distant deck. The pirates put up their guns.

Hale Starpus, dripping sweat and blood and nursing a badly cut shoulder, stood at the prow of the
Destiny
, and waved at them. “Our thanks, until we meet again…” he said softly, through a smile, “…and we shoot ever' last condemned man of ye dead between the eyes.”

“That may be sooner than you think,” Damrick told him. He was watching a ship's boat being lowered from the davits of the pirate vessel. “Let's go change the outcome of this fight. Now.”

“Yer sure this is the right thing—”

“You have your orders! Get that armband off.” Damrick handed him a fat wad of braided leather lashes. “We don't have much time.”

“Aye, sir.”

“And find Lye. He left our pair of prize prisoners alone, and we need them gone.”

Hale looked down at the docks. “Looks like he's already doin' it.”

A battle-weary Lye Mogene was headed back into the Harbormaster's ofice, two men with him.

“All right, you two. Get up and let's go!” Ryland and Motley were lying on
their sides trussed like hogs, hands tied behind them, feet bound together, hands lashed to feet by a short length of rope. They were gagged.

The two Gatemen with Lye, one young and stocky, one weathered and thin with a drooping, clouded eye, cut loose the men's feet and stood them up.

“Take a look out there,” Lye said, pointing out a broken window at the docks, which were now littered with the dead. “What happens when ye go up against Gatemen. Got a good look?”

Ryland nodded, his gag tied tight and deep. Motley narrowed his eyes with hatred.

“Let's have them sacks.” Lye pointed to burlap bags behind the counter. He put one over each man's head. “We're takin' you two out the back way.”

The jolly boat sent from the pirate's ship docked just in front of the prow of the
Ayes of Destiny
. Two sailors climbed up onto the dock and began picking their way through the dead. One of them was a big man with dark teeth and a lumpy skull, clearly visible under a thin stubble of hair. He held an enormous pistol in his right hand. The other was a woman, dark, wearing black forester's leathers. The woman's pistol was in her left hand. She held a sword, a fine and polished rapier, in her right.

Damrick and Hale Starpus watched them from the rail of the
Destiny
.

“Who's the woman?” Hale asked. “She looks foreign.”

“She's Drammune. I've heard of her. She sails with Scatter Wilkins.”

Hale's mouth opened. He spun to look at the pirate ship anchored in the harbor. “That's the
Lantern Liege
?” Her markings were still not visible at this distance, in this light. She was silhouetted against the rising sun.

“I'd say so.”

Hale looked back to the dock. The big man kicked the shoulder of a lifeless body, his toe at the leather armband tied above the bicep. “That's Scatter hisself, then?”

Damrick shook his head. “Not unless Captain Wilkins is taking orders from a woman.” The woman pointed with her sword at the gangway, and the big man walked toward it. Then she looked up at the rail, caught Damrick's eye. Even at this distance he felt a chill, as though he were prey measured by a predator.

“You really think we can make 'em believe we're the pirates?” Hale asked.

“We'd better, if we want to get to the Conch.”

The woman moved like a cat up the gangway, her eyes constantly scanning. When she reached the deck she glanced calmly around at the faces that watched her, and then she walked straight to Damrick. Without any hints or help, signs of office or insignia, with little more than a sideways glance from a Gateman or two, she had determined that Damrick was in charge. He felt the chill grow as she approached. This woman was not only cunning, but clearly in her element, energized by the bloodshed and the danger around her.

“Where is your captain?” she asked. Her accent was thick, with heavy rolling R's. Her dark hair was braided tight against her head at one ear. A heavy scar ran down a cheek.

“Who wants to know?”

“I am Talon. Captain Scatter Wilkins wants to know.” She held her sword at an angle to the deck. Her pistol was pointed downward as well.

“Then your captain can talk to me.”

“
I
will talk to you.” Her sword twitched, but did not come up. Still, it struck Damrick as a warning.

“This ship is mine now,” Damrick said flatly. “We thank you for your help, but we didn't need it. Me and my men, we're claiming Conch Imbry's reward. So you can tell that to Scatter Wilkins.”

She looked Damrick up and down, her eyes pausing on the bloodstains, the spatter. Then she looked around at Damrick's men, seeming none too impressed. She scanned the bodies along the decks, most of them wearing leather armbands. “Where is Damrick Fellows?” Now her eyes came back to him.

He felt she was probing him, and had the sense that she knew he was concealing something. “No idea. Maybe one of these dead. Then again, maybe he ran.”

“And who are you?”

“I'm the man who's through answering your questions.” He drew his pistol. But before he could bring the barrel up, well before it was aimed in her direction, the tip of her sword moved, and his weapon dropped to the floorboards. A gash along the back of his right hand began bleeding. He covered the wound with his left hand as more than fifty weapons came up, and dozens of hammers cocked back all across the deck.

“Move that sword again, woman, and there'll be two more dead on this deck.”

“Put it up, ye stupid witch,” the big man hissed at her. “Get us both
killed fer nothin'.” He showed brown teeth and a bad disposition. To Damrick, he said, “I'm Jonas Deal, Cap'n Wilkins's first mate. He didn't send us to fight,” he glanced at Talon with contempt. “Just to see what's what. Cap'n Wilkins ain't after no reward. He wants to know the Gatemen are dead, is all.”