“Doubtless you’ll tell me how a few jars are going to save the
Lamprey?
”
“Doubtless, I will,” Nesaea agreed, and did. While she spoke, Captain Ostre listened, first with a look of shock and doubt, then with grudging acceptance. And finally with a glint of grim enthusiasm in his dark eyes.
“You’re mad,” he said, laughing his approval.
“We are Maidens of the Lyre,” Fira rejoined, one fist pressed to her belly, the other hard on the hilt of her sword.
Ostre raised a bushy eyebrow. “To pull off such a feat would make legends of the
Lamprey’s
captain and crew.”
“So,” Nesaea said, “will you become a legend this day, Captain Ostre, or remain the tethered lamb?”
Ostre’s smile had nothing of the lamb in it, and all of the wolf.
Chapter 16
“Damn the lot of you, make ready!” Ostre called for the tenth time. Despite the chill wind, sweat ran from his brow into the wild tangle of his black beard. The crew of the
Lamprey
awaited Nesaea’s command, each man with a pitch- or wax-sealed earthenware jar at his feet. The ship’s bone-thin cook had not been well-pleased to lose his containers, and less so after he learned the reason. It had taken Ostre belting him across the mouth to end his griping.
Below decks, oarsmen continued to drive the ship toward the Demon Gate, long sweeps churning the slate-green waves to froth. Clouds once on the horizon had swept north and east, overtaking the
Lamprey
and the dying light of day.
Astern, the
Crimson Gull
flew ever closer, red sails cracking in the gusts, rigging lines singing the promise of doom. Nesaea avoided thinking of the number of things that could go wrong. If she guessed wrong about the booty the
Crimson Gull
carried in her hold, if the crew of the
Lamprey
failed to act when she gave the command, if…. Too many uncertainties to bother fretting over. Her plan would work, or it would fail.
“Gods,” Ostre breathed, “look at her crew. Must be four, mayhap, five score.”
“And bold.” Nesaea noted the ragtag crew lining the rails, some in mismatched armor, most not. All held short swords or truncheons. Below them, long sweeps ripped the sea apart, driving the galley closer by the stroke.
“Aye, bold, for they have naught to fear.”
“We’re counting on that,” Nesaea reminded him.
“You’re sure about this?” Fira asked next to Nesaea’s ear, grim-faced, if still green.
Nesaea put on a wry grin. “After all we have survived together, you must ask?”
Fira shook her head, throat working as she tried to swallow a fresh wave of sickness.
Ostre looked beyond the
Lamprey’s
raked bowsprit to the headland that rose black and toothy out of the sea. “If we don’t heave to, the tide will draw us into the Demon Gate. Mark me, that’s no place for a sea battle.”
“Then, by all means, heave to,” Nesaea said, voice low, eager.
The captain needed no further urging. “Now!”
At once, the long oars reversed stroke, backing water. The deck crew began hauling lines, furling the
Lamprey’s
big square sail.
“Bring us about!”
The steersman flung his weight against the tiller, and the slowing
Lamprey
turned broadside to both the waves and the closing galley. The fat-bellied ship wallowed like a tub in the turbulent seas. Crewmen not tending rigging picked up their jars, as a gray mountain of water crashed over the deck. For a moment, a flood of foam and spray made the
Lamprey
part of the sea. Nesaea held fast to the rail with one hand, and gripped Fira with the other. Frothy seawater soaked every inch of them, cold enough to hurt. When the surge washed off the deck, it took three yelling men overboard.
When a few of their fellows rushed to toss out ropes, Ostre bellowed, “Let them swim!” Now hatless, he shook the wet from his dripping hair and beard. He grasped Nesaea’s arm. “You’re sure of this?” he demanded, echoing Fira’s earlier query.
“Yes,” Nesaea said, casting a wild look at the thrashing sailors riding the waves beyond the ship. “Sure or not, there’s no reason to let your men drown.”
Ostre snorted laughter. “We’ve only the finest swimmers aboard the
Lamprey
. Besides, those stinking wretches needed a bath.” He sobered. “Mark me, girl, if this fails, they’ll be better off under the waves, than those of us above them.”
“We will not fail,” Nesaea said, reassuring him as much as herself.
Ostre gave her a clumsy bow. “Then I give you command of my ship and crew.”
Stiff with cold, Nesaea marched to the rail. The
Crimson Gull
was backing water and furling her sails. Her boarding party looked with curiosity at the
Lamprey’s
abrupt maneuver, but showed no alarm. The same could not be said for the men waiting expectantly at Nesaea’s back.
“Hold,” she called, as the
Crimson Gull
came about. Grapnels trailing hempen lines began falling over the
Lamprey’s
rail, and were quickly pulled taut. When the ships slammed together, a curtain of seawater sprayed up between them.
Nesaea stared up at the
Crimson Gull’s
crew, hard-faced men all, with not a whit of mercy shining in a single eye. Some few of those gazes fell on her and Fira. Lustful smiles blossomed. Those who dealt in the flesh markets of Giliron cared not if the girls and boys they sold retained their virginity, only that they came pretty and unmarked to the auction block. Seeing such cruel hunger on so many faces killed all mercy in her heart.
“Throw!” Nesaea commanded.
A dozen jars launched from the
Lamprey
to fall and shatter among the crew of the
Crimson Gull
. Another dozen jars followed. Some corsairs looked puzzled, a few hurled taunts, the rest laughed at the foolishness of such pathetic resistance.
Nesaea raised a veil over her mouth and nose. All those aboard the
Lamprey
mimicked her. She waited, eyes wide, pulse making her chest ache.
One of the laughing corsairs retrieved a damp rag from the broken jar at his feet. He spun it overhead, unaware that he was fanning the vapors of a potent sleeping tonic into the noses of his mates. Others laughed with him. They stopped laughing when his eyes glazed over and he toppled headlong from the galley’s rail. He hit with a bone-jarring thump upon the deck of the
Lamprey
, much as the gaoler in the dungeon of Dionis Keep had fallen off his chair. The difference being the corsair would not wake from his broken neck.
Laughter aboard the
Crimson Gull
died as more men pitched over, limbs stiff and eyes rolling, as though poleaxed. In moments, most of the crew was down. The few corsairs still awake flapped limp hands at the rail, struggling to keep their feet. Somewhere behind them, the captain of the
Crimson Gull
began calling up reserves in a panicked voice.
Now it was Nesaea’s turn to smile. “Time to make legends, Captain.”
Ostre jerked his cutlass free, a nasty bit of curved steel a hand span wide, notched and pitted over its length. “Take this whore!”
The
Lamprey’s
crew howled across the pitching deck, waving swords, knives, belaying pins, anything and all that could end another man’s existence. Before the
Crimson Gull’s
reserve force could shake off their shock, Nesaea and Fira joined the
Lamprey’s
crew in shinnying up the grappling lines to gain the deck of the
Crimson Gull
.
Screaming fury raced to meet them at the rail, a wall of two dozen faces twisted by rage, eyes alight with hope of vengeance.
Nesaea’s dagger ripped out a throat before she could set her feet amongst the men sprawled on the deck. Blood splashed across her face, the sharp odor of it sinking into her veil. Choking, the man reeled past her and flipped over the rail.
Drawing her short sword, she stepped forward to give those at her back room to board. Her sword battered aside thrusting steel. Her next stroke buried the short blade in the attacker’s neck. She yanked the blade free, its keen edge slicing to the bone.
Nesaea spun under a thrust, her dagger opening a swaying belly. Intestines boiled from the wound, catching round her feet like slimy ropes. She went down, slid through the reeking mess, fetched up against the legs of a sailor battling Ostre. Before she could roll clear, the captain chopped off his opponent’s sword hand. With a frantic back slash, he then split the man’s cheeks. The twitching hand and a bit of severed tongue bounced off Nesaea’s face.
She came up to see Fira run her blade through a corsair’s groin. She give the blade a brutal twist, and kicked the howling sailor away. She whirled, face not green now, but splattered with running scarlet lines. More blood matted her fiery hair. Her eyes flickered toward Nesaea, a brief grin showed stark white teeth, then she was off into the fray, slashing blade a lethal blur.
Liamas, the fair-haired Prythian giant, caught a man’s throat in his massive fist, lifted him high, and swung a short-handled axe better suited for the field of battle than a ship. One of the axe’s two crescent blades devastated the corsair’s skull. Liamas hurled the thrashing corpse away, unmoved by the spatter of gore flecking his bare chest and stony face.
A fist cracked against the back of Nesaea’s head, dropping her to her knees. She skidded over the blood-slicked deck, dropped her shoulder and rolled. She came up in the middle of a tempest of clashing steel, her assailant nowhere in sight. She shook her head to clear it, then sheathed her dagger in a corsair’s back, driving the tip deep up under his ribs. He flinched away with a shriek, his truncheon clattering to the deck. He fled two steps, and Liamas took off the man’s head with a single stroke of his axe.
Nesaea registered the spreading carnage with a distant mind. She had seen such before, and felt neither joy nor revulsion. Emotion would come later. If she survived. And surviving meant getting below decks to the ship’s stores.
She wheeled, slamming away a sword stroke, her own blade filling the gap and plunging into a snarling man’s eye, sinking hilt deep and bursting out the side of his skull. She shoved him away, cast about, and found the hatch standing open behind a seething tangle of fighting men.
“Fira! Ostre! Liamas! To me!”
Three heads turned her way. She did not wait for them to join her. Four strides took her through the jostling sailors, her flashing blades keeping foes at a distance, or laying open vulnerable flesh where they could. The reek of tar and fish wafted from the hatch, more pungent than the blood staining Nesaea’s veil.
“Sooner done, the better,” Liamas rumbled at her shoulder. With a thundering cry, he leaped through the square of darkness, bloodied corn silk hair flying. Nesaea and Fira clambered down the steps, with Ostre coming hard after them.
Like a golden god of death, Liamas waited for them. At his feet sprawled two motionless men, one whose torso had been torn nearly in half by the Prythian’s axe, the other split the other way, from crown to sternum. “The rest of the crew must be above,” he said, as though disappointed.
A pair of swinging oil lamps gave fitful light to the ship’s upper rowing deck. Nesaea sheathed her dagger, took a lamp by its wire bail, and followed her sword to the forward hatch. Nothing moved below. She climbed down another steep set of steps to the lower rowing deck, went through a third hatch and into the hold.
The iron-barred brig was nestled against the forward bulkhead, surrounded by bales of fabric, barrels, chests, stacked crates. Thankful there were no prisoners, Nesaea raised the lamp and made her way aft, searching for what she hoped was aboard. There was only one reason to raid whalers. At the rear bulkhead, she found what she wanted.
“Liamas, if you please?” She nodded to a stack of oaken casks, their heads stamped with a whale spewing flames from its blowhole. The Prythian sank his axe into a cask, and a stream of honey colored oil began pouring over the decking. Nesaea flung the lamp down, and a whoosh of heat and licking fire erupted.
The foursome fled. By the time they reached the main deck, they were red-eyed from the tarry black smoke pouring up through the ship and out of the hatch.
Topside, they found the deck awash in blood, bits and pieces of men, and the dead and dying. What remained of the
Lamprey’s
crew had tied the
Crimson Gull’s
captain to the mainmast. The opposite of Ostre, he stood pretty and dashing, with fair hair and pale skin. Some of that prettiness was ruined by the furious veins bulging at his neck and temples.
“Fools!” he shouted, spittle flying. He cast about, eyes hard and gray as new-forged steel, quivering beard fashioned into golden serpentine spikes. “You will all dance in the shadow of the gibbet for this treachery!”
Ostre strode out of the billowing smoke. “You mistake your present condition,
Captain
,” he growled, and with three strokes from his heavy blade, hacked off his peer’s head. Ostre raised the grisly prize to shouts from his crew.