Sasharia En Garde (44 page)

“I sent someone, but your aide said you couldn’t be
disturbed in the cabin. And you did say to give chase, so now we’re closing.”
His raspy voice was devoid of expression, but Randart felt his antagonism.

“If I get even a hint,” he said in a low, venomous murmur,
“there was any treason in this spectacular exhibition of incompetence, I’ll
have you flogged to death on your own deck.”

The captain’s face stayed stony, his gaze steady. “Why would
we do that? We were promised a year’s pay for a single capture. But you said
that the orders have to come from you. War Commander.”

“Then your orders now are to defeat these pirates.” Randart
turned his head. “Signal to use ramming force and fire. I want the pirate
Zathdar captured if possible, otherwise I want those ships destroyed, and no
survivors.”

He caught sight of Samdan limping on the companionway.
Behind him his men waited, the Eban girl hanging in their grip, her lips still
moving. He wanted the pirates to see her dead body hanging from one of those
big pieces of wood holding up the sails. But both crews were far too busy, one
dealing with sails, the other getting to their fighting stations, to make the
exhibition he desired. There was no point in staging an execution as a lesson
if no one was watching.

“She can go in the brig for now. We’ll hang her as soon as
the pirates surrender, before we fire their ships.” He stepped to the rail,
glass in hand. “She’ll hang side by side with the pirate. After I’m through
with him.”

The thought of what he would do to the pirate—and how long
it would last—brought a grim smile.

The captain of the ship flicked a summoning glance at his
first mate, who also happened to be his wife. Together they retreated to the
captain’s deck. The captain took up station behind the helmsman, making certain
his own crew were the only ones in earshot, “I am told that Zathdar never
kills.”

His wife’s gray, grizzled brows rose, then her chin came
down slowly. She turned away to supervise the sails and gave her own crew
orders for the issuing of weapons. Around them warriors took up the fighting
positions they’d drilled.

Above, signal flags rose, fluttering. Along the columns, now
breaking apart to encircle the pirates, sails raised and lowered, crews ran
about on decks—efficient on the navy ships, full of energy but less purpose on
the merchants, for none of them knew what to do when under attack.

As the pirate drew between the first two ships in the
column, fire arrows arced in glinting gold pinpricks against the blue sky. They
flew in both directions, striking against the fleet’s upper sails. Next, the
stink of smoke reached the captain’s nostrils—the distinctive stench of manure
bricks mixed with sugar and set on fire, which burned messily but didn’t do
much else—and he chuckled softly to himself.

o0o

“Here, you, stand guard. You can’t fight on deck with that
knee,” the patrol captain said to Samdan, motioning him to follow down into the
hold. The two men dumped the girl into the tiny cupboard the commander had
designated as the brig, slammed the door, slid the bar, and one turned, handing
him a sword.

The lamplight shone on his grin. “My guess is, they won’t
get down this far, but you never know. May’s well have a measure of safety.” He
indicated the length of the blade, and then the two vanished, their boots
clattering, their curses not quite muffled as a rolling lurch of the ship
slammed them back and forth in the hatchways.

Samdan sat slowly on a barrel, listening to the girl’s soft
whisper. He wondered if he should use the blade on her. That would be better
than hanging and whatever other fun and games the commander might be inspired
to try first. Or maybe he should just use it on himself.

o0o

Randart’s smile had faded. He glowered at the mage.

“My training is in helping to help defend the integrity of
the ships’ wood,” Magister Lorat stated. “That I can and will perform.”

“Can you damage the wood of the enemy ships?”

She rubbed her lip as she stared over the water. “If I can
get close enough to focus, I might enable them to waterlog, but that’s only if
their wood is not warded against such spells. Most well-kept ships, even
pirates, are warded as a matter of regular maintenance.”

Randart sighed, thinking once again that magic was basically
useless for anything but housekeeping. “Do what you can. If I see evidence of
your aid in defeating them, I will see to it Zhavic rewards you suitably.”

Anger flashed through her, but she hid it. “I will do my
best, War Commander.”

He moved on, forgetting her within two steps.

She stared down at the water. The best of nothing is
nothing.

o0o

Smoke billowed from the pirates in grayish cotton
streamers, carried by the wind toward the fleet. The three in the cutter
watched the navy ships tacking desperately against the wind in order to come
around and close on the
Bug
and the
Mule
.

Gray, one of Zathdar’s strongest and steadiest crew members,
said pleasantly, “You know this madness is going to get us all killed.”

Zathdar laughed. “Hinting for double pay?”

“If we’re alive to spend it, might be nice.” Gray gave his
captain a mocking salute.

“Ship ho,” Gliss called from the tiller as she came up under
the lee of the smoking vessel.

Tham dropped in, sending shudders through the craft, which was
already picking up speed.

“Going to rescue the Eban girl?” Tham asked.

“That’s the idea,” Zathdar said.

Tham laughed. “I would rather die heroically rescuing that
wheat-haired princess, if you asked me.”

Zathdar said, “It might come to that. If we find her. Right
now, consider. Randart, who knows nothing of fleet actions, has had plenty of
time to sow resentment among all these sailors.”

“You think that’s gonna help us?” Tham asked, and the others
looked askance.

Zathdar spread his hands. “On land, I wouldn’t dare go up
against him with four swords, doughty as you are. But now—whatever chance we
have, we must take. As for our target, Elva Eban is crew. And you know the
rule.”

No one argued with that. They all knew it could have been
one of them on that ship.

A grinding crash snapped everyone’s eyes south as a merchant
craft, half-hidden by the increasing smoke from the scattering bursts of new
fires, jammed its jib over the taffrail of one of the naval ships. Faint cries
of rage carried over the smoke from both ships, creaks and cracks of wood, and
the beating ruddy glow of sky-reaching flames.

“Oars,” Zathdar said. “There’s the flagship.”

“It’s a disaster.” Randart wiped his smoke-burning eyes
again.

A disaster with at least one mind familiar with siege
tactics employed against them. Randart knew the distinctive smell of
manure-brick-and-sugar fire, called smoke screen in the military.

He watched in growing but helpless fury the slow, disastrous
collapse of order at this end of the fleet. Impossible to see if the naval
ships were closing in from the other side. Probably not. The smoke seemed to
kill the wind, and the ships had slowed even more, wallowing as fast and
furious arcs of flame hissed at them.

The pirates shot a ceaseless stream of fire arrows. He had
ordered his men to kill, but they couldn’t see their targets.

Randart controlled the urge to strike out at the closest
target. Though he could not ride, or bugle for a troop to thunder up and
encircle the enemy, he did have one last possibility. All he needed was to spot
the lead pirate ship, then he could order down the boats and send his men over
to take it. Wrest something from the turmoil.

But the smoke thickened, obscuring even the two ships at
either side. All he could see were the tiny pricks of light of the fire arrows.
The arcs now went out in both directions. His men were shooting from the
topmasts above him, he was glad to see, though he had no idea who they were
aiming at. Maybe a defensive measure. They certainly couldn’t see any pirates
to shoot.

The smoke was making his throat raw. Usually he kept his
command center upwind of smoke screens, but the pirates
had the wind.

He retreated to his cabin, and was downing his second cup of
water when Jehan’s cutter eased up under the stern, directly below him—and
unseen because it never occurred to him to peer out the stern windows.

Gliss, at the tiller, stayed in the vessel to fight off
anyone who tried to take it. She’d come aboard if summoned as last-ditch
backup. Hoping for a chance, she kept the boat as close under the stern as
possible, out of sight from the rail.

The other four climbed fast, Jehan’s colorful figure first.

He murmured, “No deaths if you can avoid it.”

“Even army?” Tham muttered, though he knew the answer.

“Yes.”

Tham sighed, not surprised. He knew that Randart would be
angry enough to feel no such compunction when giving orders to his men.

Jehan leaped lightly over the rail, dueling rapier in one
hand, knife in the other, the others behind as backup. And as Zathdar paced
past the old captain at the helm, raked his gaze down the unarmed man and moved
by, the captain flicked a glance at his wife, who promptly went about her
inspection as though she hadn’t even seen the intruders.

Gray, hefting his sword behind Tham, whistled softly, long
and low. Zathdar had been right. Randart had made enemies of these sailors.

They might actually survive.

The breather lasted another ten heartbeats. A patrolling
warrior spotted them, and yelled up at the first mate, “Hey! Who’s that?” But
she was coughing too hard from the smoke, and groped helplessly as she stood at
the rail, whooping for breath.

The patroller stared at the slim man in garish colors. He
came on fast and the warrior pulled his sword, yelling, “Pirates! We’re under
attack!”

The ship erupted in cries, crashes, and desperate fights.
The warrior detachment boiled up from below, each wanting badly to bag a pirate
and the promotion and reward that came with it.

The sailors all yelled “Attack!” and “Defense!” and waved
their weapons, running into one another and dropping armloads of sailing gear
that suddenly everyone seemed to be carrying.

Tham, backing up Zathdar, found himself pressed against the
rail by three good fighters in the king’s brown. He was mentally bidding farewell
to a good, though short, life, when a cry from overhead startled everyone—and a
sailor landed on top of two of the warriors, knocking the third spinning. Tham
promptly jabbed his knee and the opposite shoulder, putting him out of action,
as the sailor held up a frayed rope end and said loudly, “It broke!”

Three big blocks dropped from above, two clonking onto the
heads of warriors. One warrior was knocked out, the other staggered toward the
rail, a cut over one eye. Crew members leaped to help, getting in the way of
Randart’s men who tried to close in on the pirates.

“Get out of the way!”

“Where?”

“Help, help, the boom is about to drop!”

“I can’t see!”

The first mate stood at the rail, apparently blind to the
chaos as she coughed from the smoke.

A party of five sailors chose this moment to haul up a huge
sail between the pirates and the advancing guards. Gray and Tham covered
Zathdar, who dropped down the hatch.

He slashed his blade across the forehead of one fellow,
nailed the elbow and hip of another, then jumped to the second hatchway. Now
the search would begin. Where would they would stash a prisoner?

Randart emerged from his cabin to discover fighting all over
the deck, warriors slipping in spilled oil, smacked in the back of the head by
swinging blocks of wood from the sails overhead, bumped into by groups of
sailors running about, some carrying huge sails, others with long snarls of
rope, everyone yelling at the tops of their voices.

“Pirates?” Randart roared. He spotted them, three around the
main hatchway. On guard, it looked like.

Why? It
couldn’t
be the Eban girl they were after—

A loud rattling sounded overhead, and a sail swooped down
and dropped over him, knocking him flat.

“We’re on fire!” someone screeched above.

“Mizzen top down! Mizzen top down! Sail crew!” the ship
captain howled, and feet trampled over Randart, squashing him flat.

Randart shouted, “Get off me!” but the noise of the sailors
bellowing arcane sail jargon at one another, the captain bawling orders, the
noise of fighting, of sails flapping, of coughing and whooping caused by the
smoke, drowned him out.

Below, Zathdar began grimly on his search, waiting for the
inevitable squad to descend from the deck, each intent on winning fame and
fortune by some judicious pirate killing. Take every chance to its end, he’d
been taught at the academy across the continent, where dying in battle was
considered the best end for a warrior.

A cough caught his attention, and he whirled, blades up.

A man’s head popped up from the deck below, barely lit by
the single swinging lantern. “She’s here.”

It was one of Randart’s warriors.

Expecting a trap, Zathdar hefted his weapon and dropped down
to the dim, low third level, which was usually used for storage, to find
himself alone with a man with a bound knee. The face was vaguely familiar.

“He’s going to hang her.” Samdan looked at the pirate
dressed in ridiculous clothes, like a traveling player. But there was nothing
silly about the narrowed eyes, twin gleams from the lamp flame reflecting in
his steady gaze, or the way he held those red-tipped weapons. “Did you kill
anyone?”

A shake of the fringed bandana.

“Yes. Well, she’s there.” A point.

A step, a kick to the wooden bar, and indeed, there she was,
on her knees, arms bound. One slash and her hands dropped to her sides, her
mouth moving as she chattered a stream of nonsense observations in a low,
monotonous whisper.