Corsair (22 page)

“It’ll be ‘go for the closest and richest’ for most of them,” Gareth said. “We’ll hold to the tactics we’ve practiced.”

Not that Gareth had come up with any subtle tactics, other than strike for the Linyati ships’ sterns, and for his five ships to hang together in the initial attack.

“We’re seen,” Tehidy said.

That was obvious as Gareth glassed the Linyati. They, too, were putting on all the canvas they carried in a rather futile attempt to escape. Two of the warships in the convoy’s fore were tacking back to support the single ship guarding the landward side of the convoy.

The pirate fleet swept out, spreading as captains chose a target.

The air was salty and sweet to Gareth as they closed on the Linyati. He touched the three pistols in his sash, made sure they were half-cocked and ready, and his sword loose in its sheath.

The closest of the huge hulks saw the five pirates coming down on him, and someone panicked — strange for the Slavers. Its helm went hard to port, and the ship strained onto a new course, directly across the convoy lines.

“They’ll be ruinin’ themselves an’ all we’ll have to do is watch,” someone on the
Steadfast
’s maindeck shouted, and so it was as the veering merchantman smashed into the stern of another ship.

“Signals to
Freedom
and
Naijak,
“ Gareth snapped. “Attack those two ships first,” and flags went snapping up the mast.

“We’ll take …” Gareth considered, “that fat one on the rear. Signal to
Revenge
and
Goodhope.
”

“Sir.”

“Helmsman, we’ll go close under her stern.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Run out the guns!”

Gunports banged open, and the wooden trucks of the gun carriages squealed on the deck. The
Steadfast
closed on the Linyati ship. White smoke plumed down the Linyati’s side, and moments later the dull thud of her cannon rolled across the water.

“Still out of range,” Tehidy said. “And whoever laid those guns is as blind as a flop-eared pig.”

Gareth nodded absently, watching the Linyati ship.

“Gunners,” he shouted. “This one has a lower gundeck in her stern. Break that up for me.”

Gun captains crouched over their cannon, motioning to gunners to muscle the gun left, right, using handspikes to adjust the elevation.

Tehidy chortled, and Gareth glanced over, to see a broadside from the
Thruster
smash into the convoy’s sole landward escort. A moment later, the ship exploded. White, then black smoke boiled, and Gareth could see things — Linyati, masts, cannon — spinning through the air.

“Thank you, Dafflemere,” he murmured. “But there’s no gold sinking warships.”

“Nor much of anything else on that one,” Tehidy said.

The Linyati merchant ship was very close, and again, the gunners in the stern deck fired too soon, and balls arced past, well in front of the
Steadfast
’s bows.

“Stand by …” Gareth called. “Bow guns, fire when you bear.”

The small falconets barked, and one of the
Steadfast
’s main guns as well. That premature ball thudded into the Linyati amidships, but Gareth saw the smaller balls of the falconets smash into the stern deck, and he imagined he heard screams.

“Damn that gunner,” Tehidy said. “You, Gun One, if you can’t fire when you’re s’posed to, I know a man who can.”

“Main guns … fire at will,” Gareth shouted, and the only cannon bearing blasted into the Linyati.

“Bring her about,” Gareth ordered, “and hit her again!”

The
Revenge
was just behind the
Steadfast,
and its broadside slammed into the Linyati stern as well. The little
Goodhope,
unnoticed by the Linyati, cut under her bows and, her cannon at full elevation, blasted the foredeck of the Slaver’s ship with grapeshot, skittered out of the way.

“Good,” Gareth said. “We’ll strike her again, then lay alongside for boarding.”

Again the cannon boomed, and as the
Revenge
cleared the Linyati, Gareth ran down the ladders, across the maindeck, and up to the foredeck.

He could feel his heart thudding wildly as the
Steadfast
drove into the Linyati stern. There was someone at a cabin window, aiming a musket, two other Linyati behind him. The falconets, firing grape this time, banged, and there was no one in the window, and smoke poured out.

“You men with the grapnels,” Gareth said, and the two muscled sailors swung the hooks about their heads, let them go, and they thunked solidly into the Linyati ship.

A musket fired, and a man beside Gareth went down, and he saw a Linyati leaning over, trying to cut the grapnel’s rope with a bill.

“I don’t think so,” he said aloud, a pistol leveled across his forearm, and it went off. The Linyati, face still expressionless, leaned farther and farther forward and fell into the closing space between the two ships, and his corpse was crushed.

“Away boarders away,” Gareth shouted, and leapt for that window the musketeers had been shot away from. He caught the splintery wood with his forearms, pulled himself up, and rolled into the cabin, spinning away, not giving anyone inside a chance to kill him.

Gareth was on his feet, but he realized there was no danger as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. The falconet’s shot had blown the three Linyati apart. The dripping walls and overhead looked as if they’d been freshly and carelessly painted, and the color was dark red. Gareth made out some pieces that might have been men, felt nothing as his fighting rage built, going across the room and kicking the cabin door open.

There were other pirates coming up behind him as he burst out onto a gundeck with six guns to a side. Linyati sailors saw him, shouted, and some of them had daggers or swords out, rushing him.

“Getcher ass outa the way,” someone shouted, unceremoniously pushing Gareth to the side. There were half a dozen men with muskets, kneeling, and they fired, and the Linyati reeled back. Another rank fired as the first reloaded, and the Linyati fled up a ladder toward the main deck.

Gareth and the boarders went after them, broke out onto the main deck.

He blinked in the tropic sunlight, flinched as the sailor beside him screamed as a musket ball ricocheted off the deck and smashed his kneecap.

Gareth shot down that Linyati as the Slaver scrabbled with ramrod and powder, dropped the empty pistol to the deck. Someone handed him a loaded weapon, and three Linyati rushed him. He shot one, who collapsed into his fellow. Gareth ran that Slaver through, parried a cutlass slash from the third, and put his own blade through the man’s neck.

The Linyati’s momentary panic had vanished. The maindeck, already littered with bodies, was a clash of steel and the snap of muskets and pistols. The Slavers were covering behind masts and cannon, firing steadily. Four Linyati rushed the companionway Gareth had come up, slammed the hatch and barred it.

Reinforcements cut off, the Linyati shrilled glee and closed on the pirates.

A man wearing finery on the deck above was shouting orders. Gareth saw an unfired musket on the deck, had it, knelt, and shot the officer down.

But the Linyati’s fighting calm didn’t break.

The pirates were forced back, toward the bow of the merchantman.

“A hand here,” Thom Tehidy shouted, pushing at a squat cannon. Labala, unnoticed blood dripping from a sword-slash across his chest, was beside him, helping.

Laboriously they pulled the gun back from the battery. Tehidy slashed the breeching rope, and they turned the gun around, pointing across the ship’s main deck.

Someone tossed a torch through the air, and Labala had it, rammed it against the cannon’s touchhole just as Gareth wondered if the thing was loaded, and the squat cannon belched fire across the deck, grapeshot scattering the Linyati.

Pirate gunners sheathed their swords, and hurriedly began reloading the gun.

Gareth heard a high squealing he remembered from his first encounter with a Linyati warship, just as the
Revenge
came alongside and reinforcements poured over the railing.

A cabin door on the deck above the fighters slammed open, and a nightmare burst out.

It was an enormous, tailless lizard, half again as tall as a man, with a long, fanged head like a crocodile. Its skin was composed of rainbow-hued scales, and it carried a forward-curving sword in each four-clawed hand. It moved impossibly fast, leaping down the ladder, slashing into pirates, spinning away from counterthrusts and lunges, squealing all the while.

Gareth shot at it with one of his pistols, missed, and, guts clenching, went for the monster with his sword.

Then the cannon went off again, and balls riddled the creature. It fell, but was up again, and then Labala came from nowhere with a huge ax and smashed it into the reptile’s skull.

It shrieked, writhed, and fell. Labala, not taking any chances, yanked the ax free and smashed it down again, beheading the monster.

Very suddenly, the battle was over. Surviving Linyati seemed to lose all heart. Some dropped their weapons and slumped to the deck; more ran for the side and leapt overboard.

Gareth paid no mind. He gaped at the dead monster as its muscles curled and spasmed.

Labala was shaking.

“That’s their god?”

“Or demon,” Gareth managed.

“Forget him,” Thom said. “He’s dead. You and you, put this overside, just to make sure.”

The two ordered pirates, pale-faced, picked up the creature, staggered to the railing, and rolled it over. Then one looked at the slimy ichor on his hands, and threw up.

The companionway was opened, and the bottled-up crew of the
Steadfast
stormed out, to find no one left to fight.

Gareth went to one of the Linyati, pulled him to his feet. The man slumped as though he was boneless.

“What was that?” Gareth demanded.

He had to ask twice more before the man looked at him.

“We call them Runners,” the man said slowly, dully.

“What are they? Your gods? Demons?”

“No.”

“Are they your priests?”

“No.”

“Magicians?”

“They have great magic, but they aren’t just our wizards.”

“Then what?”

“Runners,” the Slaver said.

“You follow their orders?”

The man nodded.

“Where did they come from?”

The man shook his head.

“Why do you follow them?”

“Because,” the Linyati said, “they made us.”

“They created you? Are you not-men?”

“We are men,” the Linyati said.

“What do you mean, then?”

But the man refused to answer any other questions.

Gareth was considering whether he could stomach putting the man to torture, thought the Linyati still wouldn’t answer, when someone shouted.

“Cap’n Radnor! Come below!”

He put the matter aside to think on, followed the voice down a ladder into the hold.

Three pirates with torches stood, gaping.

The hold gleamed silver, gold, other colors at them. Carefully lashed down was an incredible treasure, from golden ingots to strangely wrought, small statues in metal Gareth had never seen to hand-worked ceremonial weapons in gold.

He picked up a small, perfect onyx statue of a naked woman, then heard the burble of water.

“We holed her,” he said. “One of our shots must’ve gone low.”

He went to the hatch, called up to Thom Tehidy.

“Thom, get men down here! The ship’s sinking, and we’ll not let it go down with
this
cargo!”

Pirates streamed down and the riches were cut free, passed to the deck, and overside into the
Steadfast
and
Revenge.

Two Kashi went overside to see if a sail could be fothered to seal off the hole the cannon had made. They surfaced, shaking their heads.

“The gun tore away several timbers,” one called up to Gareth, “and the sea has taken others away. This ship is dying.”

Gareth thought of stripping off and diving down to see for himself, decided there wasn’t time.

There were still other Linyati ships to be taken.

• • •

Within moments after the corsairs had streamed back to their own vessels the great Linyati merchant ship began listing heavily, going farther and farther over as each minute passed. Its railing went under, and the sea flowed, unchecked, into the open hatch. The hulk rolled, and its stem lifted, showing the cannon wound that had doomed her.

Then her nose went down, and her stern rose high in the air, and she slid under.

“Now, let’s look for another victim,” Gareth ordered, and they raised sail and turned east.

The shattered Linyati convoy was a melee of ships, some still with headway, fighting with their cannon or trying to flee. These were being pursued, or brought to battle with gunfire or boarding.

The battle was not one-sided. Gareth saw a ship with the black flag at its truck sinking, a scattering of boats pulling away.

There was no question of stopping to pick up survivors while the treasure ships were still to be taken. After the battle there’d be time … and riches … enough for mercy, and no pirate expected otherwise.

Gareth wished he had something better than signal flags to let Dafflemere know about these Runners, and to try to bring them down, for it seemed, mostly, to break the Linyati’s spirit.

But not always.

The
Freedom
and the
Naijak
found them. They’d boarded the two Linyati who’d rammed each other, and also found great treasure, although the
Naijak
had been swept with two broadsides as the boarders were going across, losing men on its gun deck and its mizzen mast.

But there were no Runners aboard, so unless the monsters had gone overboard, or hidden, they weren’t always to be found. But these Linyati fought to the last man.

Again, a puzzlement, and for another day.

This day was for loot.

The
Revenge
and the
Steadfast
caught up with another merchantman, this one less full of fight than the first. They stood off and cannoned its guns into submission, the little
Goodhope
nipping here and there like a terrier after a bull.