Jane Carver of Waar (41 page)

The marines returned fire, mowing down half the pirates who were pulling us closer to Kedac’s ship. We were going to lose the race. The marines would fire their big guns and sink us before we got to them. At least they would if Mrs. Carver’s little girl didn’t get off her freckled pink ass and do something about it.

Up ’til then I’d been trying to decide if I wanted to sit this one out. My heart wanted in on the finish. If I didn’t get a piece of Kedac this whole trip would be for nothing, but my body was telling me that I needed a breather, maybe even a short stay in hospital. The cut Kedac had given me had stiffened up my arm so much it felt like I was wearing a concrete cast, and the rope burn where the sail-rigging had caught me felt like somebody had got after my armpit with a belt sander, and I was pretty sure I had a broken rib.

Take a break, my brain said. You’ve already done the impossible. You got the message to the pirates. Let somebody else take it from here. But nobody else could do this. If I didn’t go, they’d pop our balloon and we’d freefall to pavement.

The gun-crew to my right was getting closest to ready. I got into a crouch. My muscles told me to lie down again. I told them to fuck off. I had to shout.

I hopped onto the rail and kicked off into a somersault dive over the closing gap. A couple of crossbow bolts zipped by. I landed off-balance on the stock of the giant bow and swung lamely at the crew with my sword. I missed by a mile, but they jumped back anyway, surprised.

Then I had a thought. Taking out the gun crew wasn’t going to do much. New guys would just take over as soon as I jumped to the next one. What I needed to do was to put the crossbow itself out of commission.

Nothing easier. I backhanded the heavy crossbow string with my sword.

Stupid!

The cable split no problem, but I forgot about the recoil. When it parted, that baseball bat-thick rope snapped back like a whip and cracked me across the thigh and ass-cheek.

Nothing has ever hurt worse—swords, clubs, gunshots, ditching my Harley naked—don’t ask—nothing. It hit me like a club, knocking me off the crossbow and bruising me down to the bone, but worse, it laid me open like it was made of barbed wire and broken glass. I fell down under the nose of the bow, writhing and screaming, my leg covered in blood and greasy sweat.

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” The pain just kept coming. It felt like my ass had been napalmed.

Shapes were moving above me. The gun crew, working their way around the bow, trying to get at me with their swords. I could barely see them through the tears in my eyes. I had no idea where my sword was. Hell, I didn’t have a real good idea where my hands and feet were.

A crew man swung at me. I tried to roll and kick. I have no idea if I connected, but the fact that I’m telling this story proves he missed. The rest were closing in. Their swords went up.

I’d like to tell you that my life flashed before my eyes and I apologized for all the crappy things I’d done, but all I can remember thinking was, “Well, shit.”

Then one of the guys was twisting and screaming, and the rest were turning. The screaming guy flopped on top of me and the arrow sticking out of his back poked me in the tit.

The other guys fell back as a wave of pirates came over the rail, swinging steel and screaming bloody murder. They’d made it.

I wanted to get up and help, but my parts weren’t talking to each other yet. My leg and ass were giving off too much static.

Something blocked out a big chunk of the sky. I thought it was another marine and groped around for my sword. It was Burly. He laid my sword across my chest and patted me on the shoulder. “Smartly done, lass. We’ve cleared the other ballisti. Join us when you’re ready.”

Ready, hell. A gang of marines were stabbing at us right now. Burly knocked one sword aside with his armored sleeve and kicked another guy’s legs out. I fumbled my sword up in front of my face in time to stop another guy’s chop an inch from my nose. Ready or not I was in the fight.

I grabbed my attacker’s ankle and pulled. He fell into the guy next to him. Burly skewered a third guy and stood. I tried to join him. White-out again. I fell against the big crossbow, blind with pain. Marines dropped from the rigging. Burly fought them off. I couldn’t help. I was too busy heaving.

When the bile stopped rising, I swung my leg a little and put some weight on it. The pain jacked through me again, but I was ready for it this time. It only made me scream.

“Goddammit!”

There was no time for this. Burly was getting swamped. He had a cut over his eye. I stabbed with my sword and gutted one of his attackers, fighting another blackout. Two more turned on me. Less for him to worry about, but too much for me. I fought ’em off through a haze of agony. The pain made everything else harder to focus on, like having a woodpecker tapping on the back of my skull.

With Burly’s help I cleared two guys and we took as quick look around. Things weren’t so good. The pirates had the marines outnumbered two to one, but these were Kedac’s crack troops we were talking about here. They were his elite personal guard. Not only were they better fighters, they were more organized. We had some seriously tough hombres on our side, but they didn’t work together like marines. A cold sweat of panic made my palms slick. We couldn’t lose it all now. There had to be some way to level the playing field.

I looked around for Kedac. If I could take him out of the fight, that might take the fight out of the marines.

He was up on the poopdeck fighting with Kai-La and the rat-faced pirate, but as I watched, Rat-Face spun away from Kedac, spraying blood everywhere, his throat cut to the spine. Kedac turned his full attention on Kai-La. She backed to the rail, sweating like a whore on dollar-day. And she wasn’t the only one. We were getting our asses handed to us all over the deck.

Wait a minute! Level the playing field?

Burly saw Kai-La getting slammed and started forward. “Captain!”

I stopped him. “I’ll go. I’ve got an idea for you. What would happen if you dropped some ballast on the little ship?”

Burly’s eyes clouded as he thought it through, then he grinned. “Brilliant, lass. I’ll get some lads on it and spread the word.”

“Aces.”

I turned back toward Kedac and almost swallowed my tongue. Kedac was turning Kai-La into Swiss cheese. She was bleeding from a handful of cuts and he had her bent back over the rail, making gnat’s-ass parries.

There was a deck full of brawling bodies between us. I’d never make it unless I took the highroad. My leg was still burning like I’d soaked it in battery acid, and cramping so bad I could barely stretch it out straight, but it would only get worse if I stood still.

I jumped and kicked off the shoulder of a marine, ruining his swing at a pirate, then sprang off another super-bow and arced toward Kedac, raising my sword overhead. “Death from above!”

I snagged something with my sword and stopped dead just as I cleared the poopdeck rail. I crashed to the boards. The pain of jumping was nothing compared to the pain of landing on my leg. Jet engines roared behind my ears.

When I could think again, I looked up to see what I’d hit. There was a two yard rip in the underside of the balloon. The edges were fluttering as the levitating air escaped. Oops!

I pulled myself up, hissing through my teeth, and stepped toward Kedac, but somebody jumped in front of me—a huge, bullnecked son-of-a-bitch in a deckhand’s loincloth, his eyes shining like a street crazy’s. “I swore vengeance upon you, demoness, and the Seven have delivered you to me at last!”

He swung a sword at me. I fell back. Who was this guy? What was he talking about? Then I remembered. He was the dude I’d lifted over my head at Kedac’s shindig, the guy who Kedac had busted down to deck-hand, Lut-Gar. I hardly recognized him without all his medals.

I groaned. Not now! Kai-La was halfway over the rail and losing blood like a sieve. I tried to knock Lut-Gar aside and get to Kedac, but even though he was dressed like a deckhand, he still fought like an officer. He dodged my blade and lunged. I had to twist sideways to miss getting poked.

I swung. He parried, binding my blade. Fucker was strong. He stopped me cold. I kicked him in the chest. That worked, though I almost fainted from using my leg. He bounced off Kedac’s back, jarring his sword arm.

Kedac glanced back, glaring. “Mind your swing, curse you.” Then did a double take when he saw me. “You!”

Kai-La swung at him, but even distracted, Kedac was too fast. He blocked, but at least she managed to stagger clear of the rail and reset herself.

Lut-Gar stepped between me and Kedac like a jealous boyfriend at a highschool dance. “I have her, Kir-Dhanan. I have her. Fear not.”

Kedac looked like he was going to say something, but Kai-La swiped at him and he had to get back to work.

I blocked Lut-Gar’s swing and chopped at him, but again I underestimated him. I was so worried about stopping Kedac I wasn’t thinking about the fight I was in. Lut-Gar punched me in the temple. My knees sagged. I saw double.

He beat my blade aside. It bit into the rail and got stuck. I tugged at it, but my brain was a million miles away from my hand. Lut-Gar raised his sword, eyes glowing in triumph. “At last I am avenged! At last I make recompense for the indignities you have suffered upon me!”

If he’d shut up he might have got me, but suddenly the deck tilted—a twenty degree sideways list. Burly had come through. Dropping ballast from the little ship had shot it higher, pulling Kedac’s ship up on one side by the grapple ropes. Lut-Gar stumbled backward, downslope, tripped over Rat-Face’s body, fell against the siderail, and flipped up and over, ass-first into the wide blue yonder. Dignified to the end.

I staggered up and turned toward Kedac. The tilt had taken him by surprise. Hell, it had taken
me
by surprise and I knew it was coming. He was pulling himself upright. Unfortunately it had caught Kai-La off guard too. She was on her knees, clutching her bleeding forehead. She’d brained herself on the rail. Kedac moved in.

I dove forward, sword first, and shouldered Kai-La sideways as Kedac’s blade shot out. His steel screeched off mine and passed a quarter-inch to the right of Kai-La’s ear. She was too gone to notice.

Kedac turned on me, eyes burning with hate. “You meddle too often in affairs not your own, demon bitch.”

He slashed down at me. I blocked one-handed and hauled Kai-La out of the way with the other. I shoved her toward the stairs. “Get out of here! Go down and help your pals.”

Kedac nearly cut my head off before I got back on guard. You couldn’t do two things at once around Kedac. If you weren’t one-hundred percent focused, he’d slip something by you and come away with your liver. My plan was to keep him busy until Sai got down off the balloon and challenged him like it said in the script, but right then I was too busy just keeping his sword out of me to worry about plans.

Christ, he was fast! Not even in gladiator school had I faced somebody this good. And I wasn’t exactly fighting fit. This wasn’t how I dreamed about facing him. Beat to shit. I couldn’t jump. I could barely fucking walk—especially not on this slanting deck. This sucked!

Kedac, glared at me over our swords. “To think I found you arousing, putting Lut-Gar in his place. I would have paid you handsomely for the pleasure of mastering you. Instead you defy me at every turn.”

I laughed. Even that hurt. “How are you supposed to master me if I don’t defy you once in a while?”

“You were to defy me in private! Instead, you continue to humiliate me in public. You reveal my coup before time, and worse, expose my nakedness and the inner secrets of my heart in front of the flower of Oran nobility!”

“Yeah? Well, after what you did to me, we still ain’t even.”

He actually looked confused. “I? What have I done to you?”

He didn’t know? “You stuck your finger up my cunt in front of a roomful of laughing yahoos, asshole!”

His face turned red. He looked like an angry plum. “And you found the attentions of a noble Oran insulting? You were offended that the Kir-Dhanan of all Ora favored you with his touch?”

I couldn’t believe it. He was actually pissed that I wasn’t thanking him for groping me. “Nobody touches me without asking first.”

Kedac laughed. “And should I ask my krae if I may mount her too?”

There it was, stripped naked. The fucker might be talking to me man to woman and fighting me warrior to warrior, but when it came down to it, I was an animal, an educated parrot that could talk but wasn’t really human. That’s when I really got mad.

I know you’re supposed to give people from other cultures a break on shit that they’ve grown up with—I’d cut Lhan and Sai some slack on the whole slave-owning thing, but Kedac was an asshole. Sure his culture didn’t treat women too well, but Sai and Lhan came from the same culture and they’d treated me like gentlemen. Kedac enjoyed humiliating me. That night at his party he’d got off knowing that no matter how strong I was, because he was an Oran noble, he could fuck with me anyway he wanted and I couldn’t fuck back. He was a bully.

Have I mentioned how much I hate bullies?

The red boiled up in my eyes like I’d put on blood-colored sunglasses. Everything except Kedac went away—the battle going on around us, my wounds, my pain, my exhaustion. Five minutes before I’d told myself I’d save Kedac for Sai. I’d honor my promise and let him have his shot. All that went away too. Fuck honor. Fuck promises. Fuck Sai, Lhan and going home. None of that mattered. Consequences were for afterward. The only things in the whole world were me and the fool in front of me. I’d never seen a man more in need of killin’.

I was so focused that Kedac seemed to be moving in slow motion. I watched him start moves and knew exactly where to be to stop them. My big sword moved twice as fast as his thin one. It took him longer and longer to parry my cuts. He was blocking inches away from his body now, and I’d opened up little gashes in his forearms and thighs. Blood was running across his fingers, slicking the handle of his sword. His grip was slipping.

But the best part was his face. It had a new expression on it. One I’d never seen there before. His eyes were wide. His teeth were clenched. His forehead was drenched in sweat. He was afraid!