Kingdoms of the Night (The Far Kingdoms) (24 page)

“Two years,” she went on, “and then one day it clicked and I
felt
it.”

I understood, slightly. “I can’t see how any army could teach such a craft.”

“No. Soldiers need to spend too much time polishing their armor and being bodyservants to their officers to actually have enough time for soldiering. Besides, there are two things I haven’t told them. One is the skill, the art, is what is important, not the choice of weapons. If they learn but a part of what I know, say to prefer a sword or a poignard, they’ll have learned less than nothing. Weapons are crutches and can make a man limp and continue their use even after the wound has healed. The other is this craft of mine works best when facing a real enemy, someone who intends deadly harm.

“Here, with none of these men meaning real danger, it’s no more than a plaything. And even in moments of peril there are times the craft does not evince itself in time.”

She touched the bridge of her nose where it’d been broken and never healed properly. Perhaps she was about to go on but there came a cry from the masthead:

“Sail ho! Three points off the port bow!”

We’d found our pirates.

Or rather, they’d found us.

* * * *

We counted ten lug sails but it wasn’t the disaster that might be thought. The sails were small, no larger than a fisherman’s smack might raise. We were being attacked by a mosquito fleet. We’d had sufficient warning since our lookout sat higher than any of their men and so we had the honor of first sighting. Our hulls were still below their horizon and would be for some minutes.

I seized the advantage and ordered Kele to drop sail on the
Ibis
and for the
Firefly
and
Glowworm
to strike at full speed for our attackers. We knew them to be pirates or warcraft of some type because no one approaches a strange ship without taking due caution unless they intend harm.

Janela had already opened several of our bags of wind and they gusted hard, aided by the already-strong wind blowing from the south that made both our ships and the pirates tack constantly to hold our converging courses.

Now we were nearly a mile behind our other two ships and had room enough to maneuver. We had the wind’s advantage as well, as we changed to a heading of south-southeast, holding that for two turnings of our glass, then set a new course to due east and beat to windward as closely as the
Ibis
could manage. Kele herself had the helm and kept one eye on the tops’l and paid off the helm each time the sail began to back.

My intent was to sail around the pirates and attack them on the flank by surprise as they became engaged with the
Firefly
and
Glowworm
.

I knew we’d made two sides of a triangle when we saw sails again, the two from the
Firefly
and
Glowworm
to our left, the sprinkle of time-aged canvas that was the pirates and then something new. Far behind, to the northeast of the pirate sails, the lookout reported another ship. Dreading a fall but knowing I must see what was there, I chanced going up the ratlines myself.

The ship stood clear. It was larger and looked to be a three master. That explained something I’d been curious about — just how the tiny pirate ships were able to sail so far from land, although I’d wondered if they’d set out from nearby islands. The larger craft was the mothership.

I clambered down with care. Adventure isn’t best served by slipping on a rope and braining yourself before battle is even mounted.

On deck I issued new orders — sail directly for the mother ship. Then we tried a new device Kele and Janela had developed and tested on the way out — a wonderful device that worked three times out of five.

They’d had the
Firefly
’s sailmaker choose a good piece of light cloth. On it, each of our normal signal flags was painted in miniature three times, duplicates of the full-size signal bunting we used normally to sign from ship to ship. Then these minuscule flags, which might have been intended for a luxury craft on a boat pond, were cut apart, and spells were said over them by Janela. The theory was that they held similarity and to do something with one flag would cause the others to react.

It did. Well… sometimes.

Now we laid out four of these miniature flags: FULL SAIL, EAST, FOLLOW and ATTACK.

Janela picked each of them up and said:

Speak now

Speak to your sister

Call her name

Make her heed

She gently shook each one, then set it down. She sent this message four times.

If Beran and Towra had their wits with them they would see the matching flags move on the racks that were mounted next to their ships’ binnacles, fill in the blanks and bypass the pirate boats, which shouldn’t be too hard if they held full sail and had their boarding nets raised. The pirates were in for a surprise anyway, since our initial plan had armed men hiding under the bulwarks until the last minute.

On order, they were to volley into the corsairs, hoping to shatter them on first contact, then destroy them singly while the raiders reeled in dismay at having walked into a trap. But now I wanted my other two ships to follow me and hit the mother craft.

All this might be thought bravado or foolishness since we had but seventy five men on all three ships. But I didn’t think the pirates would have many more — they don’t like to increase the number of shares of conquest any more than one of my contract traders does.

We had other advantages as well — our ships were almost new, with clean bottoms to give us speed and maneuverability, my men were determined to conquer and finally we had surprise on our side. Nothing shocks the ambusher, as Quatervals had known, more than being ambushed himself.

Our ship was hard on its lee as we closed on the mother ship, sails hard in the wind and watersmoke curling past our bows and now we could make out our opponent fair. I nearly laughed aloud, seeing that my opinion was confirmed. The sea rover’s ship was dirty, old, barely more than a hulk. It was large, probably once a merchantman, and did have three sails. It resembled a type of ship I’d seen often in Valaroi called a flute, although it was different enough so no one would think it’d ever been constructed in a familiar yard.

It would serve well to berth the small boats the pirates used to board a victim and carry them back to whatever dark port they sailed from, but little more. Again, I was unsurprised — thieves never spend time or money polishing their swords or making sure their clubs are sound. The only time a villain will carry a soldierly-kept weapon is when he’s stolen it from that poor private’s body.

Kele held her course full at the side of the pirate as if intending to ram. Now we were close enough to hear yelps of alarm, and slowly, laboriously, the ship began to come about. I could see but few men on the decks — of course most of them would be off with the raiders. At the last moment Kele put the helm over until we were sailing a nearly parallel but still closing course on the vessel. Kele’s chief mate Ceram shouted to the men aloft and we dropped sail and pulled level with the pirate. My sword was ready in my hand.

I looked at Janela and her blade was out, a tight grin without humor on her face.

Quatervals shouted and three men hurled grapnels over, prongs digging deep into the flute’s bulwarks and then they were pulling us together, whipping grapnel lines firm around bollards and Quatervals led the boarding party over the rails.

Janela and I were just behind and we fanned out on either side of the wedge Quatervals had his few soldiers formed into. Otavi bashed a man with the flat of his ax and he staggered into the long dagger Pip preferred and dropped, his guts coming away as he fell. I saw Chons, pulling his blade out of another corpse, then a man poked at me clumsily, not even a thrust, with a halberd and I brushed the blade away and cut him down as another man slashed with a cutlass.

I ducked neatly under it and spitted him.

“The bridge,” I shouted, “Take the bridge,” and we were running, only a few standing against us, and going up the companionway to the quarterdeck. There were two men and a woman there, the woman at the helm and one of them stood on guard, his blade weaving like the skilled swordsman he was.

“Beg quarter and you’ll live,” I bellowed and that made them hold for an instant, as I knew it would — coast guard ships or naval vessels
never
let captured pirates live and few of them even see trial before they’re dancing on the thinnest of air at the end of a yardarm.

The swordsman spat defiance and came at me but Janela was between us. Her blade flicked, shone in the now-noon sun, flicked once more, brushing his lunge aside and darted out like a serpent striking, deep into the muscle of the man’s arm. He shouted in pain and dropped his blade. Then he stood waiting for Janela’s deathblow. Instead:

“Beg quarter, you fool,” she snarled, holding, ready to cut him down if he made any motion other than the one he eventually did — holding out both hands, palms up.

Others on the decks saw him and there were shouts and the clatter of weapons falling and a chorus of voices crying “Quarter, quarter,” in a medley of languages and we had the pirate.

Ceram was at the flagstaff, pulling down the banner the pirates called a flag — it was black, of course, with a shark’s jaws in white and I had a moment to wonder who in the hells was still back on the
Ibis
, since everyone seemed to be in the boarding party and then I saw Glowworm and Firefly sailing toward us, hotly pursued by the pirate ships they’d refused to battle.

The discussion that would begin now might be most interesting.

* * * *

The pirate captain, a few years younger than myself, was completely unremarkable and would be taken as a struggling merchant ship officer in any port in the world, with one exception — he had a red scar circling his neck. His proper name was Lerma but one of his men said he was also known as “Half-Hanged,” since someone or other in his past had almost rid the seas of a rogue.

He was almost charming for a murderous thief. I had him, his mate and helmsman bound and left on the foredeck while we dealt with the others.

The pirates in the small boats hadn’t put up much of a struggle, particularly since we not only held the heights by being aboard ships with decks above their small boats, but also since we had the only vessels that stood a chance of weathering the next storm aboard.

I ordered them aboard the flute, which I was told went by the charming name of
Searipper.
I put them in the ship’s waist and lined the forecastle and quarterdeck with archers. I told them they were prisoners and since they’d surrendered would be shown quarter. But if any of them even breathed heavily my mercy, such as it was, would be withdrawn. I asked who their wizard was and one man told me he’d been killed when we boarded the ship.

I had my men go through the ship’s hold and below decks and bring up anything of value or any weapons. There was an amazing pile of death dealing merchandise but very little in the way of gold or jewels.

“Bein’ a pirate’s hard cess in these seas, eh,” Quatervals observed jovially to Half-hanged Lerma.

Lerma scowled but his mate, the duelist, a scarred murderer who called himself Feather, glowered and muttered the gods had been against them for nigh a year and this was just the final stroke.

“Ah then,” I said, seeing an opportunity, “since we happen to be well-blessed by the gods, your willingness to help us will no doubt put you back in their graces.”

Both of them gave me a look of utter disbelief. I shrugged — it’d been worthwhile to see if they happened to be superstitious. Even if they weren’t the planting of the idea would do little harm.

Now there was nothing below decks the pirates could use for weaponry to try to retake their ship, we herded them into the hold and nailed the hatchways firmly shut.

That left only Lerma, Feather and the helmswoman, who squatted nearby, dully waiting for whatever would happen to happen. She might have been decent-looking once, I thought her most likely to be the daughter of some fisherman kidnapped from her village and then promoted for her seafaring abilities and possibly other talents.

I had Feather and the woman sent to the cabins in the stern and kept separated.

While all this was going on Quatervals was busy. He’d found a small brazier and started a fire in it, adding coal as it built. Whistling merrily, he laid out a selection of implements found on deck — sail needles of various sizes, some metal splicing fids, a pike, a coil of rope, tongs, a cook’s cleaver and then, with Otavi’s help, lifted a grating and lashed it to the rail.

Janela and I had remained silent and Lerma’s eyes kept following Quatervals. The man wasn’t stupid and it didn’t take long for all those implements, the grating that Lerma himself no doubt used for floggings and the brazier to suggest something:

“You gave me quarter,” he said hoarsely.

“Quarter means your life,” I said casually. “It does not necessarily guarantee you life with a full complement of the usual accessories such as eyes, fingers or even legs.”

“Besides,” Janela said, “since when is it wrong to break your word to a murderer and a thief?”

Lerma looked deep into our eyes and I did my best to appear like someone who generally spent dull afternoons at sea torturing pirates, evidently with some success, because he paled, the rope burn on his neck standing out even more vividly.