Prince of Outcasts (13 page)

The First Mate came on deck, stripped to a twisted loincloth and beads of water glistening on his lean dark body; he'd been leading the team working on the leak personally and hands-on.

“Cap'n!” he called. “Permission to move stores aft to dress her trim!”

“Make it so, Mr. Mate,” Feldman replied and gave him a wave.

He nodded and disappeared back into the hold with a casually agile hop. Orders sounded down there, and after a while thumps and the rumbling sound of barrels being rolled.

“They're going to catch us, Captain, aren't they?” John said, looking aft and raising his binoculars.

The two Korean ships didn't look as tidy as the
Tarshish Queen
. There were rattails and loose lines in their rigging, and one of them canted visibly. They'd been damaged in the howling storm that blew them south and west from Westria too, and hadn't done as much to repair it.

Or possibly they just don't care about appearances. We haven't been able to shake them, after all.

“With this much water in the hold, and if they don't founder before we do, yes,” Feldman said, stroking his beard. “In about three days, give or take, if this wind holds. Unless we do something about it.”

“And not what Captain Ishikawa proposed, either,” John said.

They smiled at each other. The Nihonjin sailor had said they could do a quick turn and let him and his Imperial Navy sailors board one of the enemy ships to smash incendiaries on the deck and fight off the crew until the flames had taken hold. He'd been perfectly serious, too, though he hadn't fought very hard when they turned him down.

“This is becoming . . . monotonous,” the Captain went on, as the First Mate reappeared and paced slowly from bow to stern, checking the waterline's tilt against the ship's Plimsoll line and hence their trim.

John snorted slightly. That was one way to put it. They'd tried dodging the pursuers before but the two of them were enough to bracket the course of the
Queen
. If the Montivallan schooner turned either way, one
of them could cut the cord of the course and overtake them, and if they tried to fight past the other one would come to its aid before they could sink it; the
Queen
had heavier broadsides, but wooden ships were very difficult to destroy except by fire. There wasn't much between the three vessels in speed; the only safe course was to continue directly away, with the wind on the starboard quarter, which was their best point of sailing.

That meant continuously heading south and west; they'd crossed the equator some time ago, and hadn't been able to make the waters that were occasionally patrolled by the friendly Kingdom of Hawaii.

“Or they could run out of food and water,” John said hopefully.

“Water, possibly. With them, they only run out of food when the last man finishes gnawing the bones of the second-to-last,” Feldman said.

John winced. That was only a slight exaggeration. He'd seen things through the binoculars that he
really
would rather have not added to the images in his mind.

“And I think they topped their water tanks just before we left,” the merchant skipper added. “While they were hiding amid the wrecks in San Pedro.”

“We could try and turn in the night again,” John said.

Feldman shook his head. “The sky's clear, the moon is full, and the weather in this part of the Pacific is pretty consistent this time of year. We lost distance the last time we tried and we haven't made most of it up.”

There was a gap in the rear railing not far from the stern chaser catapult where a six-pound roundshot had come home that night and left a deep dent in the catapult's shield before it went off into the dark amid a sound like a hammer in God's smithy. If it had cut a backstay or hit the mast, or even crippled the wheel and made it impossible to maneuver quickly for a crucial few minutes . . .

He looked around, and John could see the maps in his head. “If we could shed them for a day or two, we could make landfall. Mind you, it's best to be careful in this neighborhood even with a fast well-found ship, much less beached and doing repairs. Very careful; put up a palisade, remount the catapults ashore to cover it, the lot.”

“Pirate waters?” John said.

“Yes, and bad ones. This whole part of the world fell apart like a pot dropped on a rock after the Change and it hasn't got any better. Worse, because the knack for building modern ships has spread.”

“Not to the Death Zones?” John said.

Feldman shook his head. “No, Java was wrecked like California, and most of Sumatra and big chunks everywhere around the major ports; you don't put in to those places, unless you're a salvager working the dead cities. And you're insane, which is why most of them are from Australia. The rest is a crazy-quilt, apart from a few places like New Singapore, and Bali and its possessions, and Capricornia. Those are as civilized as home is, in their way. Elsewhere one little stretch may have palaces and scholars and artists and dance festivals, and a day's sail away it's jungle and swamps with dugout canoes festooned in skulls trying to swarm you at midnight, bones through the nose, knives in their teeth and showers of poisoned darts from
sumpitan
.”

John made an enquiring noise, and Feldman translated:

“
Sumpitan
, blowguns. And everything in between. There's enough trade to sustain a lot of pirates, and enough ordinary fishermen and farmers for longshore raiding for slaves and loot, but nobody strong enough to keep order. The Sulu Sea and south Mindanao just northwest of here are very bad, corsair nests. Nobody honest goes there, though
somebody
is selling them catapults. Then there's the Bugi men. . . .”

“Bogymen?” John said, blinking.

Then he crossed himself.
Ships decorated with skulls . . . warm seas . . . this is starting to remind me of that dream I had. Maybe next it'll be that old man shouting. Not good, John, not good! Órlaith and Reiko had prophetic dreams and look what it got
them
into! They got out again, but that's no guarantee
I
would.

Feldman went on, answering his last word rather than the thought:

“Bogymen? The Bugis are where that word comes from! Sea-nomads, some reasonable enough, some reasonable as long as you look heavily armed and alert, some very dangerous even then; and there are the Iban
too, the Sea Dyaks, and then just all-round pirate sons of bitches from no place in particular. So those Koreans on our tails aren't the only potential problem. If it's any consolation, the local lowlife would attack
them
, too. For their catapults, mainly; those are worth more than gold out here.”

“Not much consolation. What's right ahead?”

“Maluku and then North Sulawesi. But there are islands close, this area has them like a teenager does pimples, and we could sail reach across this wind easily enough.”

His eyes narrowed a little. “Now, if these Koreans were ordinary pirates—we've been using our navigation lights every night, there's a little trick you can play—put a raft astern with lights rigged so that they look the same, douse our own, and then cut it loose to draw them while we sail off darkened. It's surprisingly convincing, if you're used to seeing the real lights.”

Suddenly Feldman stiffened, dropping the abstracted air of someone speculating.

“Wait a minute!”

He leveled his telescope again. “
Beshum ofen lo!
They're shooting, broadsides, and at each other!”

“Yes, they do that!” Radavindraban said in glee, running up and using his own glass. “Bloody fool, bloody fool!”

Feldman kept the telescope steady for a long moment. “No . . . one of them's firing into the water and the one to the southward is firing in the general direction of the one to the north!”

John used his binoculars again. The two Korean warships had changed course, slanting towards each other, and they were shooting their broadside catapults at something between them, something he couldn't see. They were shooting rapidly, too, one discharge after another. Water fountained upward, white against blue, as roundshot struck. Then a streak of yellow fire and black smoke as flames played across the water; a napalm shell. Sharper splashes as they switched to bolt that zipped into the sea like needles.

And then one of the ships staggered in the water. He could see cables
snap and writhe, and the foremast went over, beginning slowly and then gathering speed until it crashed into the bowsprit with a crunching, tearing sound audible even here.

Feldman nodded crisply.

“They ran into something. All hands on deck, action stations, fighting sail only. Helm, come about!” he barked and followed it with a volley of nautical jargon whose gist was
turn right around and head for them
. “Catapult crews, load firebolt!”

Sailors ran past him and flung themselves on the stern chaser catapult. John hopped down from the quarterdeck, taking the four-foot drop directly so as not to get in the way on the companionways. More sailors, including Ishikawa and his Nihonjin, were tearing the covers off the broadside catapults and the bowchaser, unlimbering the pump-handles that powered the hydraulic jacks to cock the weapons. More tallied on to the windlasses and deck lines that controlled the fore-and-aft gaffs, or ran up the ratlines to furl the square sails on the main and foremast tops.

Dodging the working parties on the main deck wasn't easy either, as the ship heeled sharply to starboard and then steadied on its new course. John filled in the others as they edged forward to the space in front of the foremast, which was the nearest the ship had to clear when everyone was in action. It also gave them a better view, though Radavindraban pushed by supervising the opening of the arms chests and the racking of gear where it was easy to hand. The sailors slipped the scabbards of their bell-hilted cutlasses through the loops on their belts as they had the opportunity and they always wore at least one knife as a working tool, but the rest was clipped where it could be grabbed easily—boarding pikes and crossbows, bucklers and helms and reinforced walrus-leather cuirasses.

John felt the situation catch up with him, a combination of excitement quickening his pulse and a twist in the stomach at the thought of edged metal and strangers with murderous intent. He understood Feldman's actions perfectly; anything that altered the balance like this gave them a chance to settle with the pursuers. Then they could repair the ship at leisure—or labor, rather—and go home.

Fayard had his crossbowmen formed up—crowded together, in fact—and looked a question. John replied, to him and Evrouin who had the sack with his suit of plate.

“Just helmets and weapons now,” he said. “We'll let the situation develop.”

They could get into half-armor quickly, helping each other, and with luck the action wouldn't come to boarding. If it did, the protection would be worth the risk of ending up in the water with steel strapped to you. If it didn't . . . well, every naval weapon that had a range of more than a hundred yards would go through ordinary armor as if it were cloth; they were designed to injure the massive fabric of ships. Fayard looked slightly dismayed, since the doctrine of the Protector's Guard called for armor in all combat situations, but he obeyed.

“Different rules at sea, Sergeant,” John said; his parents had always said you should tell the
why
of an order if you had time. “We know Captain Feldman isn't going to get into a boarding action if he can help it; those enemy ships have around three times our total numbers. Each.”

Plus, he thought but didn't say, we have no earthly idea what's going on there.

“I have an ill feeling,” Deor said quietly, touching the triple triangles of the
valknut
hanging at his throat, the mark of Woden. “There's something at work here, but it doesn't . . . taste or feel of anything I've felt before. And Thora and I have sailed these seas. If these were northern waters I'd be thinking of etins or trolls.”

John crossed himself and touched his crucifix to his lips, wishing he'd had time to be confessed and take the Bread and Wine much, much more recently than many weeks ago.

The distance between the ships closed with that shocking suddenness that came after intervals when nothing seemed to happen at all. Soon the clanging thumps of the catapults were clear, and so were screams—war-cries and plain raw terror. Whatever it was, they were fighting something.

“Fighting and losing, I think,” he murmured to himself.

Radavindraban came by, hopped up onto the rail with his binoculars
to his eyes, then blanched. That wasn't easy for someone of his shade of very dark brown, but his skin turned muddy gray in spots.

“Bujang senang!”
he screamed as he let the glasses fall and pointed, in no language John knew.

But not his native Tamil either from the sound.

“Bujang senang—Bujang senang raja!”

John felt like screaming himself, as they closed rapidly on the action. The first Korean ship lurched again, as if it had struck a rock, and it was farther down by the bows now. Something shot out of the water as if propelled by an invisible trebuchet, spray exploding forward with it. Scores of feet of scute-armored muscle, tons of weight crushing down on splintering wood as it sprawled across the forecastle of the ship, jaws the length of a man lined with serrated ivory knives. They gaped and clamped down on something that rolled sprattling and down the slanting deck towards it, ignoring the double-headed axe he cut it with. Then it tossed the man up like a gobbet and swallowed him whole save for the arm holding the axe. That fell down on the deck, a tidbit ignored.

A bristle of long spears pointed towards it, which was remarkable discipline when you imagined this
thing
exploding out onto the deck you were standing on. It turned and the tail swept sideways like a flexing war-hammer. Pike-shafts broke like straws, and bodies went tumbling through the air like leaves. The beast turned and clamped its jaws shut on the edge of the deck as it threw itself into the water, spinning. Wood parted with shrieks louder than the voices of the damned, and the water flowed in as it disappeared beneath the surface again. What had been a warship was now a stationary hulk, sinking by the bows and heeling far over as the sea unbalanced her.