Inda (71 page)

No cut booms on these. Inda had learned by watching that they required skillful handling—too close in to a much heavier ship and the booms just tangled, could even cut into the mast, immobilizing the pirate.

These two relied on speed, then, so they’d be boarding, which meant—

Kodl faced Inda, flashed his hand open: over to you.

Inda turned his head up. “Jeje!”

“I see it,” she cried down. “Cut-arrows ready!”

“What’s the matter? What’s the matter?” asked the cargo master, a nervous landsman dressed in Guild Livery, his fashionably short blond hair lifting in the wind.

“Sails are wet,” Inda replied briefly.

“That’s bad? That’s good?”

“Go below and guard your cargo,” Kodl snapped.

A sound like a whimper escaped the man, who wrung his hands. “You’re supposed to be the best! You were paid double—”

“Get!” snarled Scalis, waving a freshly honed cutlass.

“Dun,” Inda said, forgetting about Kodl being in command. He was too intent on watching the perfect tacking of those low, fast craft, narrow built, clean lines. Men, mostly young, crowded in the bows, armed and ready to leap over.

“Wet sails,” Dun observed at Inda’s left, standing in his accustomed shield arm spot.

Kodl frowned. “They planned for
us
.”

That’s what getting a rep means,
Inda thought.

Up on the yard above, Tau leaned toward Jeje, who stared down, her face unhappy. “Worried?” he murmured.

Jeje flicked him a glance. “About Inda. Why does Kodl watch him like that?”

Tau laughed inwardly at himself. So much for thinking he was the only observant one. “Kodl doesn’t understand Inda. He doesn’t see that the problem, when it comes, will be Scalis.”

Jeje glanced down at the forecastlemen, who laughed and joked, stroking their weapons. “You think he wants to turn pirate?”

“Not yet, but—” No time to finish his answer. The first ship came in, as usual on the weather side, the other sailing for the lee. Inda signaled to Jeje and steel-tipped arrows whined across the intervening sea, all aimed at the weather-leech of the mainsails, the ones tightest and drawing the most against the wind.

The arrows cut through again and again, making tiny holes. Inda forced his eyes away; though it was a desperate measure, it had worked twice against pirates who had attacked under the cover of rain squalls, but in sails that were worn, or badly made, causing them to rip and flag out, catching in shrouds and lines, and spilling way off the ship.

Then he forced his attention away. It would either work or it wouldn’t.

He signaled to Scalis and Dun. Both bands crept along the rail under the hastily put together spiked shields, bows and steel thrust in clothing, even clenched in teeth.

Arrows whizzed overhead, some aimed at Jeje and her band, others shot high, with little licks of flame to catch in their own sails. Yan would already have the regulars organized into a pump team, so Inda did not even look; he gauged the oncoming ship, felt the wind, shook his head, and signaled to the helmsman to put the helm hard over.

The heavily laden trader moved too slowly, and the lee pirate’s bowsprit caught in the foremast shrouds. The wood creaked and groaned, the ship’s own bulk worked against it, and with a rending crack the foremast came down, flinging the upper-yard sailors into the sea.

The first pirate boarding party screamed in triumph, brandishing weapons as they stood on their rail or held onto the mainchains, ready to climb onto
Dancy
’s higher deck the moment the two ships came together. With a roar Dun’s band lunged up—Wumma, the Sartoran brothers, and Tau—shooting arrows with practiced, lethal accuracy directly into the pirates. Few were wearing mail, which was not liked at sea—no one could swim long with mail weighing them down—and they started falling. The spiked shields slowed the boarders. Scalis’ band hacked into the few pirates who actually made it over the rail and flung the bodies right back onto the pirates’ deck.

Inda motioned to Hav and a forecastleman. Dun came, pushing Hav aside, who shrugged and rejoined his band.

“Oil,” Inda said.

Niz and his fighters flung lighted empty barrels and bits of flotsam down at the pirates, who were hanging back, many looking to their own captain for a change in orders.

Dun led in bowsing up the mizzen course tight, then fashioning a net sling at the end of the boom. Arrows flew all around them, one hitting Testhy in the side. He staggered, but did not let go of his rope. Dun and a big forecastleman wrestled a barrel of oil into the net sling, set it afire. They waited to see the blue flame curling up from the surface and then Inda cut the rope holding back the boom, which snapped out, causing the entire ship to lurch. The barrel launched across the short distance to the deck of the pirate ship, where it broke, spreading flaming oil in all directions.

Another barrel. They readied the third and the big forecastleman holding it recoiled, shot through the neck. As he fell, Dun caught the barrel, slapped it into the net. They released it upward at the long, beautiful curving mainsail of the second ship, setting it alight.

A launch full of pirates shot around from the far side of the second ship, oars like beating wings. Scalis shifted his attack of fiery debris toward it, but it hit
Dancy
with a crash, sending a judder through the hull. The pirates climbed up in a tight mass, some wearing shields on their bent backs; hammers and carpentry tools took care of the spiked shields along the rail as arrows clinked and plinked unmusically on the shields the pirates wore, falling harmlessly into the sea. They swarmed up.

Inda whistled sharply. Kodl’s own feet and hands obeyed, falling into position, cutlasses, knives, and the wickedly efficient dragoon staves that Inda had drilled them with at the ready. The
Dancy
’s sailors watched in amazement as their defenders charged the boarders, stabbed those in front, and the reaction rippled back through the pirates, who recovered in a few moments, stampeding over their fallen crewmates, roaring and shrieking, weapons high. In a single movement the defenders twisted their staffs apart and waded in swinging two humming cudgels with deadly effect.

Inda led the wedge into the mass of attackers, Dun fighting shield-arm position behind and to his left; Kodl took a hard-held position at the right.

They ripped into the enemy like a knife cutting rotten rope. A spike of sharp triumph flared through Inda, igniting bones and muscle with high-singing joy. The attackers began to fall back, some of them slipping in the blood of their fellows who fell with crushed throats and cracked skulls, hacked limbs, smashed ribs. Inda felt none of the blows and jars inevitable in hard fighting—his mind had disengaged, he had fallen into that cascade of events, only he was the power driving it, driving it—

Up above, Thog, daughter of Pirog had been peering intently at the pirate ships between shots. Jeje, puzzled by the strange behavior of the Chwahir girl, was busy scanning for Inda and Kodl’s next signal, and so she almost missed it when Thog suddenly smiled—a horrible smile with her teeth bared—and raised her bow. She said something in her native language and then shot one pirate captain square in the chest. A heartbeat later she whirled round on the masthead they shared, aimed at the second pirate captain she’d obviously marked before, and shot. And as he fell, an arrow through his throat, Thog laughed, her voice high and shrill as the cry of a gull.

Chapter Twenty-four

T
HE next day they listed into Freeport Harbor, foremast fished with timber and rope, red flag at the mizzen and white at the main, sailors either cleaning or nursing the sails at the jury-rigged mast with tender care.

Damage was always interesting. The docks and boardwalk lined with idlers and workers pausing in their labors as the
Dancy
was signaled for a place close in; they’d get a dock as soon as one of the refits warped out.

“Ho
Dancy,
” came a bull’s roar of a voice from the dock as the oars on the first launch began to dip. “What news?”

“Pirates,” cried
Dancy
’s first mate, in an equally topmast-in-a-squall voice.

That was obvious from the damage.

“Brotherhood-allied?”

“No. Fire Islands.”

“Brisk fight, eh?”

“Brisk enough,” came the justly proud answer. “Burned one, drove t’other off, listin’ bad.”

“This is going to kick our price up,” Kodl muttered to Inda and Scalis as they clambered into the second launch.

Scalis chuckled at the thought of more gold to fling about, and Niz muttered, “Winter’s on us. You keep that gaff bowsed up tight, mate. Us’ll need t’make our pay last—Inda wants us havin’ all kinds o’ new weapons.”

Scalis spat over the side, his glee undiminished.

Niz said to Testhy, their official purser, “Don’t let him chousel you outa no extree, now.”

“I won’t,” Testhy said cheerily. “I know his tricks.”

Scalis uttered an explosive snort.

Inda, sitting at the bow oar, thought:
You are not going to have time for tricks. And you’re going to be too tired for sex.

Kodl thought,
They say Inda, not Kodl. But he’s the one with the ideas.
He’d already wrestled with his inward conflict: there was a way of military thinking he just hadn’t grasped yet. Inda saw a weapon, he thought of the easiest way to resist it. Spiked shields that flip up to resist cut booms . . . the cut arrows . . . This idea of force against force was simple when Inda explained it, but as for actually carrying it through . . . Kodl knew he just did not have the experience applying it in real terms.

So where does a small boy get that kind of experience?

To dismiss his uncertainty, he leaned forward. “Inda, what first?”

By the time they reached the main dock, Inda and Kodl had begun revising the drill schedule.

Inda, sore from the fight and desperately hungry, loathed the prospect of the long walk up to Lark Ascendant. At least this time it was Dun’s and Scalis’ turn to make sure the wounded got over the side and to their beds; though their injury count was about half the band, they’d only lost one of Scalis’ forecastlemen in that fight.

The dock master was waiting as they tied up. Within moments he was in conference with the
Dancy
’s captain about harbor fees. Inda climbed up the slimy ladder, glancing at the dock support poles to check the height of the tide, an automatic glance. It would be months before they launched again.

He hoisted his gear bag into a better position on his back as he passed the captain and dock master. Behind them lounged the assistant who kept records for the harbormaster, a tall, thin, young man dressed in plain sailor wear—long vest over shirt and loose trousers—but who always managed somehow to look elegant. Tau, who was always equally elegant, could have told Inda that that was what you got when you had your clothing tailored, but it had never occurred to Inda to ask. He had no interest whatsoever in clothing. Despite the others’ teasing he still made his own shirts the way Sails had taught him when he was eleven and a new rat on the
Pim Ryala
. It was something to do with his hands when he had watch on rainy nights, when he could revisit old memories and try to imagine where his friends were now: did Sponge ever get to Daggers? Did Tanrid stop going now that he was a Guard? And Tdor . . . she had to be . . . he mentally counted. He had turned sixteen sometime before they took the
Dancy
hire. So, if that was true . . . he was stunned to realize that if he was sixteen, she’d be eighteen come spring! Tdor seventeen? Not in memory. In memory, she was forever twelve.

The real world intruded itself once again when the harbor master’s assistant spoke. “Ho, Inda.”

“Heyo, Woof.”

“Squalls ahead,” Woof said in Sartoran, motioning behind by rolling his eyes and flicking his head.

“What news?” Inda flexed his aching wrist.

“Came in with Ramis,” was the surprising answer.

“What? Ramis One-Eyed? Is he here?” Inda turned around and surveyed the harbor in the fast-fading light, but saw no sign of a tall-masted, square-sailed Venn warship with its raised, curved prow.

“Was. Left on the morning tide, stayed just till the ebb. Off to some secret base to refit, some say.” Woof jabbed toward the sea with his quill. “You think
Dancy
looks dusted up, you should’ve seen
Knife
. Norfa—on morning duty—she heard they took on three Brotherhood, two big cut-boom brigantines, and a schooner. Sank two, took the third. And when I say took, I don’t mean took a new ship, I mean sent ’em right into night, though it was the middle of the day.”

Norsunder again.
“Three! What does he look like?”

“Ugly.” Woof smacked the side of his face. “Half burned off. All over purple, eye patch. They say that the dead eye looks straight into Norsunder. I don’t want to know.” Woof grimaced. “The good one is terrible enough. But he brought—”

“Elgar!” Kodl yelled from across the cobblestone causeway, Testhy close behind him.

Woof stepped back, made a gesture both courtly and ironic, and Inda, remembering the beginning of the conversation, wondered what awaited them. Surely not a disgruntled captain!

Testhy looked glum as he fingered his bandaged side. His light eyes flickered to either side. “I hate it when anyone asks for me by name. Just means trouble. I hope it’s just Scalis’ unpaid shot in some den. He has the money to pay it now.”

“Why us, then?” Inda countered. “Wouldn’t the person he owed ask for him? And if some captain wants us to hire, shouldn’t it be Kodl?”

Of course Testhy couldn’t answer these questions. He just hitched his shoulders closer to his ears.

The trader clerks waved them through canyons of silk bales stacked neatly and well away from the big rooms with their damp air, past other sorts of cargo, some of it hidden in boxes painted with cryptic markings, to a small office with a battered door.