On Discord Isle (15 page)

Chapter Nine

They were laughing again.

Her husband’s obnoxious voice echoed up through the knothole at her feet. Natasha stamped on it. Their noise stilled for a moment. Then Fengel said something and his new cronies were back to snickering again.

Natasha kicked out, this time in general frustration. The chains around her ankles clattered. She wasn’t held in a proper brig, or even a cell like the one below. Instead, she stood shackled to a ring hammered into the gun deck. Fat black cannons to her left pointed their noses out the starboard-side gun ports at her back, and the wall of the stern powder magazine framed her to the right. The scents of iron and sawdust filled the air. A shaft of early afternoon sunlight warmed the back of her shirt.

After two days of capture, no one stood direct guard over her anymore. At first word had spread quickly, bringing plenty of the
Goliath’
s crew to visit their attractive captive. The tactic of appealing to her captors having failed rather miserably, she didn’t bother even trying anymore. Instead, she glared in sullen silence, unleashing a torrent of verbal abuse when their leering faces had grown to be too much. Her father had been right, of course: never make allies when you can make victims.

Most of the Perinese crew went away eventually, though late that first night a portly sailor had paid the guards to look the other way for a bit. But the fools left her hands free. After the man had been hauled away screaming and without his nose, her guard was changed, and no more visitors were allowed to see her save the commander’s boy when he came by to dole out her gruel. Midshipman Paine said little and slid her food over with a ten-foot pole.

Fengel made another joke in the deck below. There was silence, and then at least five people laughing. Natasha grit her teeth. His guard normally was just two men.

I’m going to make him sorry,
she fumed.
Going to teach him a lesson he’ll carry in his bones, the pompous, smarmy bastard. That windbag blowhard. Arse-headed jabbering idiot. Fool. Clown.

She’d run out of insults for Fengel a day or so ago. Now she struggled to come up with anything really original. Natasha didn’t care. All she could think about were his last words to her. They haunted her, as did their last argument. Fengel had told her what he really thought. He mocked her accomplishments, all that she’d ever done and been. Just thinking of it made her breath come short and her heart hammer in her chest. No one talked to her like that and lived. No one.

But it was worse than that. He’d taunted her, told her what she’d done wrong and how he wouldn’t have made the same mistakes, how he would succeed where she had failed. Fengel promised that he would claw his way back up on top, and bring her too, but only if she begged it of him. And he was making good on his promise. He was winning. He had company all hours of the day now. Commander Coppertree had even sent him tea.

Natasha glowered. She would not beg. Instead, she would find another way out. Somehow.

And then he’ll pay,
she vowed again.
And these fools here. And those traitors on my ship
.
They’ll all pay. Every last one. In pride and gold and blood.

But first she had to escape.

Natasha sat down roughly with her back against the bulkhead. The manacles around her ankles hung a little loosely, but not quite so much that she could slip from them. The chain running between the two cuffs was thick and heavy. Even if she’d had a file, it would have taken a day of constant unsupervised work to cut through. Conceivably, she might just pull up the ring, but then she’d still be shackled and the guard at the other end of the deck would hear her.

She kicked out and the chain checked her leg, stopped her short. The rattle of the links sounded like mocking laughter. Natasha imagined it as the voice of her mutinous crew, of Fengel, of the fools aboard the
Goliath
. She stoked her anger with the injustice of it all and let it drive her further in her desire for escape, but she didn’t rage. She tamped it down and hunted the deck about her for something, anything, anything at all that she could use.

The tools for the heavy cannon at her left might have been of use, but they were all racked up near the ceiling, just out of her reach. The weapon itself offered no purchase, though if she could have turned it around and fired it down toward the ring, her shackles, and Fengel’s head, she would have.

Natasha rolled around to face the wall behind her. Though the chain at her feet twisted, it allowed the movement without too much awkwardness. She grabbed at the lip of the gun port opening and peered out at the island of Almhazlik, framed like some penny-playwright’s dream. The Atalian Sea rolled past the
Goliath
into a surf that curled up onto the beach with a crash. Just beyond lay the encampment, the crew of sailors and Bluecoat marines working like busy ants at innumerable tasks that she didn’t care to contemplate. Past them rose the jungle, lush and green, filled with strange flora and fauna. And at the center of the isle rose the volcano, studded with its weird formations and the massive draconic statue. White smoke puffed lazily from the summit.

Movement down in the camp caught her eye. A trio of men dressed in officer’s clothing walked with steady purpose throughout the bivouac. She recognized the useless Sub-Lieutenant Hayes, the ship’s aetherite Dawkins, and Commander Coppertree himself, the leader of her not-quite-floating gaol.

Natasha ground her teeth at the sight. Last time she’d seen the man, he had been on death’s door. Now he inspected the camp in full uniform, if using a cane and not walking quite as quickly as he probably could. Just like Fengel had intended, she’d heard every single conversation with his guard about the commander’s illness. Apparently, his suggestions were being followed with a regretful effectiveness.

Her husband was proving more successful in his plotting than she had thought.

The master of the
Goliath
stopped at the makeshift armory of the encampment. His two men halted behind, trying not to bump into him. The “armory” was simple, a stack of powder barrels and cloth bags full of shot, with muskets heaped around a trestle table wrestled down from the ship. A small ship’s forge stood dangerously close by and served both the armory as well as the carpenter’s “workshop,” a similar arrangement consisting of a nearby table heaped high with a mishmash of broken tools in need of mending. Commander Coppertree made a show of inspecting the arrangement, then gave a number of orders to the carpenter working there. The aetherite looked bored. Hayes nodded emphatically at everything the Commander said, like a small dog trying to please its master.

Natasha glared at the scene. Her frustration and anger grew by the moment, all the little insults and failures stacking until she could barely see through her rage. Natasha sputtered and choked, trying to find the words to express everything she felt.

She took a breath and yelled out at the beach, “You scurvy-ridden, donkey-loving, scryn-sucking arseholes! When I get out of here, you’ll pay! You’ll all pay! I’m going to gut you and wear your intestines for a belt! I’m going to burn your homes and loved ones alive and then dance in the ashes! You’re all going to pay! You’re all going to pay for what you’ve done to me!”

Natasha screamed at them until her breath gave out, and then a little more. She screamed until she collapsed, panting, against the bulkhead. It smelled of oiled wood and sulfur from the guns. The tropical sun warmed her hair through the opening of the gun port.

They’re going to pay,
she vowed for the hundredth time. Natasha caught her breath. She pulled herself up again, hands on the lip of the port. Screaming at everyone felt good, but it didn’t get her any closer to her freedom. No, she needed to get back to examining her surroundings. As she stood, however, Natasha noticed something odd out on the beach.

A small ridge of rock jutted out from the jungle, just west of the camp. No more than ten feet high, it didn’t even stretch all the way down to the shore. She’d noted it before; the
Goliath’s
marines simply avoided it when the their patrols took them down the beach in that direction. Now, however, Natasha spied a figure laying low across the top of the ridge; someone furtive was watching the camp.

They were too far away to make out clearly, but she thought she spied a fringe of red beard below a dusky face. He wore a brown leather vest and clutched an unsheathed scimitar in one hand. Whatever he was, he certainly wasn’t Perinese.

“Hello,” Natasha muttered aloud. “What’s this now?”

Two more figures appeared atop the rise, heads bobbing as they crawled up into view. One was large, with long dark hair, while the other was short and stout. They appeared much the same as their fellow. It came to her then: these were the Salomcani that the
Goliath’s
crew were so concerned about.

Natasha tapped her chin. Was this just a scouting party? Or a raid? And how could she use it to her best advantage? A distraction would give her time to work at her fetters, maybe slip free. But without any tools she wasn’t going to break her chains.

She scrabbled to her feet and looked down at the other end of the deck. Her guard sat on the stairwell there, half dozing. If she could get him to come over she might have a chance. But she had to hurry. If an attack was imminent, he’d leave the gun deck as soon as the noise started.

“Hey!” she hollered. “Hey, you blue-breasted arsehole! Get over here!”

The man started awake, looked around until he identified her as the source of the noise, then shuffled slightly out of sight.

Damn you to the Realms Below,
she cursed. She could swear at him some more, try and taunt him over. That would take time, though, a luxury she did not have. Seduction was out of the question, too.

Natasha looked up above the nearest cannon. The tools used by the cannon crew hung from a rack attached to the ceiling for easy reach: a swab on a long pole, a staff-like rammer, and the linstock. The last was the her best option, a short polearm with a long blade at the end and a complex jaw arrangement along the crosspiece for holding a match. If she could get her hands on that, maybe she could pry up the ring in the floor, or break the links on her chain. The idea had crossed her mind before, but she’d thought herself too far away from the tools to reach them. Maybe she simply hadn’t tried hard enough.

The chain rattled as she pulled it to its length. Natasha reached, stretching herself toward the wooden pole of the linstock. Her fingers almost brushed it, tantalizingly close. She put one hand on the iron cannon to brace herself and tried again. Then she fell against the weapon with a clatter.

Natasha cursed and flung herself upward. The wooden pole brushed against her fingertips.
Why didn’t I keep one of those bowls of gruel?
she wondered.
Or a spoon?
That might have given her the reach to get the linstock down. Instead, she had wasted them, using them as ammunition against the young midshipman assigned to feed her.

Her chains rattled as she struggled. When she fell again, her elbow struck the side of the cannon painfully before she collided with the deck. “Hogspit!” she cried in anger and frustration. Natasha slammed a fist on the deck and kicked out, sending her chains rattling. “Poxied gut-leavings of a diseased whore!”

Heavy boots tromped up the deck. Her guard rounded the rear of the cannon into view. He held his musket up, armed and ready. This one, at least, took her seriously.

“Here now! What are you on about this time?”

Oh sure, now you show up,
she thought. “Oh sure,” she said aloud. “Now you show up.”

The man glared at her. He was shaped roughly like a potato, and sweated in the tropical heat. “What? Get away from that cannon. Hayes has had them all kept loaded and primed. I’m not to let you muck about with them.”

Natasha stared at him. Then she looked at the cannon.
Loaded? What kind of ass keeps a whole gun deck primed?
What were they even going to fire upon? The tilt of the ship aimed the broadside at the beach.

She pushed that detail away. Her fish had been hooked. She just needed to pull him alongside.
Carefully now, carefully. This is going to take subtlety. I can’t threaten him. Got to convince him to come close. Demure. I’ve got to be demure. Wait. What does that mean?

“Oh,” she said. “I just need—”

A great battle cry from outside the ship interrupted her. Shouts of alarm and surprise echoed from the Perinese in reply, accompanied by a great clatter of swords and the crack of musket and pistol shots. Her guard started.

“What in the Realms Above is that?” he cried. The Bluecoat stepped over Natasha to peer out her gun port. “Goddess above! The Salomcani are attacking!”

All right,
thought Natasha.
Or he could just step over here on his own.
She didn’t stop to consider her luck. Instead she coiled her legs and prepared to trip him. He was too close to use the musket. That meant he was hers.

A thunderous explosion roared on the island outside. Natasha instinctively ducked, covering her head. Half a second later, the bulkhead wall of the ship resounded with dozens of sharp thumps as a scattering of debris rapped it from outside. She peered up, hoping the marine hadn’t fallen back.

The man stood still before the gun port. Then he toppled back to the deck in a slow arc, dead. A half-repaired hatchet stood embedded in his face.

What in the world?
Natasha peered outside. Battle raged up and down the Perinese encampment. The armory, however, was a blackened crater. Someone had knocked a powder barrel against the ill-placed forge.

Natasha didn’t stop to question her luck. She crawled over to the Bluecoat and grabbed the haft of the hatchet. The man twitched distressingly; it seemed that he wasn’t quite dead yet. Tugging and pulling, she eased the tool out an inch at a time, eventually coming free with a spray of blood that drenched her face and shirt. Natasha spat, but the coppery taste still remained.