On the Oceans of Eternity (70 page)

“Let’s get these goddamned fires out—” he began. An overturned lantern could become a catastrophe very quickly.

An unearthly shriek came from the forward part of the deck, where a partition and sheet-iron chimney marked the galley. A fat man staggered around the enclosure holding his hands to his face; they could see the huge blisters spreading beneath his fingers and all down his throat and chest and belly—the sort of marks that you got when someone threw boiling olive oil on you. Giernas raised his rifle to put the man out of his misery, but before he could pull the trigger an Indian woman came after the Tartessian cook. She was naked, and they could see that some of the hot oil had spattered her here and there. That didn’t affect her grip on a big iron frying pan; she swung it like a baseball bat, knocked the man down, and began to beat him with it as if she were threshing grain, hard crunching blows that went on after his head split open.

More Indian slaves swarmed up out of the hold; their local allies came down the companionways as well. The rangers pushed and shoved and showed how and ended up stamping out the small puddles of flame themselves, smothering with sand and water from the buckets. The locals were more interested in scouring the ship of the last Tartessians; it had turned from a fight to a hunt, and when a squealing ship’s boy barely old enough to raise a whisker was dragged out from a cupboard in the captain’s cabin and clubbed, Giernas turned aside in disgust.

Jesus knows they’ve got reason to hate the Iberians,
he thought.
Still and all—

“Is there something we’re forgetting?” he said, then looked up at the sound of a shot. He held up a hand to mark a pause and leaned out of a gunport. “Sue?” he shouted.

“Here!” her voice came back from the deckhouse behind the wheel. “One or two of them got into the maintop with a rifle. Careful about how you come on deck—I’ll keep him pinned down from here.”

Jaditwara had gone into a trance of remembering. Her eyes flew open very wide, their pale blue glittering in the lamplight.

“Barrow Woman’s teeth!” she blurted. The Fiernan had shipped as a deckhand before she settled at Providence Base, got her immigrant’s papers, and drifted into the rangers. “The powder magazine! It’ll be on the orlop deck—under the waterline—this way!”

She took off at a flying run with Eddie on her heels. Peter looked around. The locals had broken open the ship’s spirit store, and they were passing bottles of wine and brandy from hand to hand; one of them even had a small cask in his hands, holding it up until the pale violent spirits ran over his face and dripped down his bare brown chest, mingling with the streaks of blood.
Be some almighty sore heads tomorrow,
the ranger thought. Or possibly some deaths—that much raw alcohol on stomachs not accustomed to it. The slaves had pulled out the food supplies from the galley and were eating with a dreadful concentrated hunger, some of them weeping as they stuffed bread and hard biscuit and dried fruit into their mouths, or gnawed on tough jerked meat. One who had learned something about blacksmith’s tools had found a hammer and chisel, using them to split the soft wrought-iron rivets that held the captives’ manacles closed.

Some of those poor bastards will be dead tomorrow, too,
he thought sadly—burst bellies, from cramming in too much too soon on a gut shrunken by hunger.

He shook his head. The rangers were foreigners here, barely able to exchange a few sentences. They certainly didn’t have any authority, and trying to exert it would only result in disaster.
With some luck. we can keep them from destroying the ship. We may be able to use her.

Instead he turned to the aft companionway, coming up near the wheel, keeping his head below deck level where the roof of the deckhouse cut off the mainmast top. “Sue?”

“He hasn’t moved for while—wait a minute—”

There was a shot from the mast, a scream from the deck, and the sharp close-at-hand whipcrack of Sue’s weapon. Giernas leaped out of the companionway, vaulted the compass binnacle, and threw himself down beside the young woman. Another shot came from the top, and the bullet knocked splinters out of the planks overhead.

“Hi,” she said, grinning through powder smuts. “Eddie and Jaddi?”

“Looking after the magazine,” he said

“
Whoa
! Should have thought of that. One of them could have blown us all sky-high.”

“Jaddi’s closer to a sailor than any of us, and
hi
yourself,” he answered. “How’re we going to shift this bastard?”

“I don’t know. There may be two, he reloads almightly fast, like it was two guns and he was handing off to someone else who was loading
for him.
Doesn’t seem to be short of ammo, either. There are about twenty or thirty locals out there, hiding behind stuff and on the raft,” she said.

“Wish we could figure out a way to use ’em before they all get at the liquor,” Giernas mused, rubbing his beard. His eyes roved about. “Think you could cover me as far as the mainmast?”

The slanted blue eyes narrowed. “Maybe, but—”

“Hey, cover us!” That was Eddie’s voice.

“Wait a second.” Giernas took out a pocket mirror and held it up gingerly. It was hard to say in the darkness, but—

“I think he’s behind those hammocks, right over to the port side of the tops. I’ll go first, you on the count of two.”

“Right.”

“Wait for the word, Eddie. One—” He came up to one knee and fired, smooth and quick.
Crack,
and he shouted:
“Two!”

Crack
from Sue’s rifle, and the other two rangers rolled into the shelter of the deckhouse. “Found the magazine,” Jaditwara said. “Safe.”

“One of the Tarties was trying to get in,” Eddie amplified. “But the locals scragged him first.” He held up a key, which nobody born around here would recognize. “Padlocked. I took a look in—we’re not short of ammunition anymore. They must have been bringing it in for their settlement here.”

“Right,” Giernas nodded. “You three cover me. I’m going to get to the base of the mainmast and see about shifting our friend up there.”

“Hey, why do you get all the fun?” Eddie said.

The other three looked at him for a second. “I’m a better shot,” Giernas pointed out; which was true. Not that Eddie wasn’t very good. “Get ready.”

His testicles tried to crawl back up inside him for protection, and he grinned at the sensation; his bladder felt too full, too. Wait until everyone was in position, rifles primed and cocked. Blow the priming out of his own and renew it.

“Go!”

Jaddi’s gun, blasting into the rolled hammocks around the maintop. Giernas rose as he saw her finger squeeze, his soft moccasins thumping on the quarterdeck as he drove himself forward. A malignant red eye winked at him from the top, and splinters flew from the idol of Arucuttag of the Sea that stood by the binnacle.

Crack! Crack!
Sue and Eddie fired.

Over the quarterdeck railing, vaulting on his left hand.
Crack!
Jaditwara firing again, and there was a hoarse cry from above. His moccasins thumped down on the main deck; it was a six-foot drop, and he took it on flexed knees and then dived for the base of the mast, sliding the last six feet over the smooth deck planks as if he was sliding for home plate. His feet touched the raised collar around the mast, and he brought the rifle up with a smooth searching motion. The floor of the maintop was a latticework. The figures moving on it were outlined against moonlight and starlight. His finger stroked the trigger, feeling a familiar light, crisp resistance.

Crack!
The recoil was worse than usual, with his shoulder pinned to the deck. He’d have a bruise there, in a while.

Someone screamed. A rifle fell over the edge of the fighting platform, pinwheeling down through the lamplight and into the dark with a splash. Peter raised his legs high, flicked himself back to his feet, and sprang to the rail and the ratlines. Eddie whooped and sprang down from the quarterdeck, bounding to the other side of the ship and swarming up faster than the bigger man. Sue and Jaditwara came to one knee, covering them. Giernas reached down and drew his bowie as he climbed, then put it between his teeth—climbing was about the only situation where that actually made sense. The thick back fillet of the heavy blade filled his mouth with its unpleasant, bitter taste of oiled steel. Any second now someone would lean over the tattered hammocks around the fighting top and blow the top of his head off at point-blank range ...

Nothing happened, except that the sound of wheezing grew stronger. The triangular basket of the fighting top was occupied by two figures. One was a man in his thirties—from the elaborate decoration on his tunic, probably the captain of the ship. He’d been wounded in one arm and patched it up with a cloth; the second bullet hole was through the upper part of his chest, just where the breastbone gave way to the neck. Blood ran out in a flood, slowing as he watched. The other was much younger, scarcely more than a boy; even in the starlight he could see the resemblance in the faces. Blood spread black in the moonlight across his torso as he struggled to lift the rifle across his lap. It wobbled, and then the muzzle sank. The boy’s head slumped forward as well, and he gave a long sigh and stopped struggling for breath.

Giernas opened his mouth, catching the hilt of the bowie as it dropped and sliding it back into the sheath on his right leg.

“Hey, looks like they’re both dead,” Eddie Vergeraxsson said.

“Yeah,” Giemas replied heavily. “They are.”

 

Spring Indigo Giernas woke in the darkness. She knew at once that it was very late; the moon was down, and the woods by the river were quiet, the air cool and full of a deep stillness. The baby in his rabbitskin blanket was still, she could hear his breathing slow and even. It was a tickle against the soles of her feet that woke her; Perks raised his head from where he lay curled at the opening of the tent.

“Qesh‘Perks’huo?”
she mumbled, hoping it wasn’t just the howl of some coyote. Perks was an excellent watcher and far better trained than any hound of her parents’ people, but his ideas of what was important enough to wake up for weren’t always the same as a man’s.

She could see the outline of the wolf-dog against the lesser darkness of the tent’s open flap. First his head, ears pricked; then he came to his feet and crouched, with a sound half whine and half growl. The other dogs were stirring now, too. Spring Indigo felt a cold chill at the base of her belly. A fire smoldered under its own ash outside the tent, with a low earth mound at its back to throw the heat inward; she fought down an impulse to poke it up and throw on lightwood. Instead she scrambled into her clothes—the leather kept warm and supple by lying under the blanket with her. That took an instant; snatching up the saddlebags, throwing them over a shoulder, sticking the pistols through her belt, taking up her crossbow in her right hand and her child in her left arm, scarcely longer.

A deep-chested rumble of a snarl from Perks. “Quiet!” she hissed.

He obeyed and so did his son and daughter, but suddenly there was barking from other dogs—those in the camp of the people of the land near here. Fires were prodded to life there, and sparks flew up among the big trees. Then a voice shouted—another screamed—and there was the flat unmusical
crack
of a gunshot.

The baby stirred in drowsy protest. She paused to give him the breast for a moment; it was worth the time, to keep him sleepy and content.
I am not as afraid as I thought I would be,
she thought as she ducked out the flap of the tent and moved northward toward the horse lines, crouching.

Yes, her mouth was dry, and her heart beat like a Summoner’s drum in her ears. But it was not as bad as the fear of the Dog People, in that last hopeless flight before Peter and the other Islanders came.

I am older,
she thought.
I
have learned much.
I will
save my
son, and greet my husband once more.

Perks and Saule and Ausra—the names meant
Thunder
and
Moon
and
Dawn,
in a language that was not English—came close behind her heels as she headed through the dew-wet grass. The two horses on the picket line were stirring, throwing up their heads against the reins that bound bridles to the hide rope stretched between two trees. Their hooves spurned the cut grass heaped for them to eat, sending wisps of it floating toward her. The others whickered and milled in the crude brush corral. Closer, quick and quiet, and ...

Shadow-figures stood by the corral wall. Starlight let her see just enough of them to make out the distinctive outlines of men raising rifles to their shoulders, and she went to the ground with her body curled over her son. Perks froze for an instant. Then he charged with his belly to the ground, silent as death, a dark-gray streak in the darkness. Saule and Ausra attacked with a good deal more noise, bounding to keep their heads above the tall grass.

Crack. Crack.
The muzzle flashes blinked like red eyes in the night. A howl was broken by a yelping moan of pain, and then a roaring snarl and a man’s scream. Spring Indigo forced herself to come upright on her knees—Jared was crying and struggling against the rabbitskin wrapper that held him, but she had to see what was coming.

A Tartessian, swearing and limping. He was looking about for another man, something on a level with his eyes, and didn’t see her until almost the moment she raised the heavy flintlock pistol and fired both barrels at him from less than ten feet away.

Even with her eyes slitted, the double red flash nearly blinded her. The weapon bucked in hands smaller than it was designed for, the hammers nearly gouging her forehead as it recoiled. The Tartessian spun and fell, screaming and thrashing. She tossed the weapon aside and pulled the other, scooping up the solid weight of the toddler as she went. On, past the limp body of a dog, and to the picket line itself. There two figures rolled and snarled, man hardly to be distinguished from beast. Teeth flashed in the starlight, and the bright gleam of a steel knife blade. Spring Indigo ran over and thrust the pistol barrels into the body of the man lying beneath Perks and pulled the trigger; the sound of the shot was muffled, but blood and matter blew back across her, and this time the pistol
was
wrenched out of her grip.