Scimitar Sun (7 page)

Chapter Four

Cutthroats

“Sounding, damn you!” Captain Seoril bellowed from beside the wheel of the
King Gull
. He swatted at the host of biting insects that were feasting on his blood, but didn’t really pay much attention to the discomfort. He was too occupied with not running his ship aground in this blasted tiny inlet. It was barely big enough to fit his little finger, let alone a galleon.

“Three fathoms!” came the call from the fore chains. “Sand and mud!”

“Boat crews, pull ahead!” The two sweating crews, forward of the ship, strained at their oars, pulling the small galleon forward. There was no way to sail up the channel in anything larger than a fishing smack. He often wondered how Captain Parek had ever found this blasted ditch in the first place.

An overhanging mangrove caught one of the shrouds and showered the deck with leaves and broken twigs before a crewman with a machete hacked the branch away.

“Blast this blasted ditch to the Nine Hells! Keep the blasted trees out of the rigging or I’ll send you out with the next jungle party!” He had ten men on the ratlines and two on the close-braced foremast yards to fend off the snagging foliage, and still they caught the trees at every turn.

Finally, after hours of work, they entered a space wide just enough for their ship to turn around. Here, kedged off of the mangroves, sat a sleek-hulled corsair. The peeling golden paint on her transom read “
Cutthroat
” and a small catboat lay tied to her side like a tender. Two men at the corsair’s taffrail pointed their loaded ballistae away from
King Gull
’s prow when a voice boomed out to stand down.

“It’s the
Gull
, boys!” a shriller voice called out, eliciting a ragged cheer from the deck crew. Captain Seoril recognized the slim form standing upon the poop of the corsair.

“Ahoy,
Cutthroat
! Is that you, Sam?”

“Aye, Captain! Tell me you brung a cask of spiced Scarport rum and I’ll kiss you!” The girl who hopped up atop the taffrail was skinny as a yardarm and not more than fifteen, but she wore a cutlass at her hip and was well acquainted with its use; a pirate as true as any that sailed the sea.

“By the Nine Hells, I’ll kiss you
myself
if you brought a cask of Northumberland single malt!” Captain Parek bellowed, joining Sam at the rail. “Why are you late, Seoril? I expected you a fortnight ago! Thought you were sunk, or ratted us out for the price of a cheap doxy.”

“It’d take more than
one
cheap doxy to tempt me to rat
you
out, Parek.” He shouted some orders to his crew to bring
King Gull
into the north bank and kedge off, then turned back to the captain of the
Cutthroat
and bellowed, “Maybe
two
cheap doxies! I was held up at Rockport, tryin’ to unload that rotten load of wool. Didn’t get near what you wanted for it, neither! Seems it got wet and went moldy.”

“Well, as long as you brought us some stores, I’ll not hang you for it. Bring a cask of rum over when you come. We got business to conduct.”

“Aye, and I got news you ain’t gonna like, Captain Parek. Best have a tot or two before I unload it on ya.”

“Aye. Nothin’ makes bad news go down easier than smooth grog, ay lads?”

The massed crew of the
Cutthroat
roared in a ragged cheer. They launched their only skiff to help offload the provisions
King Gull
had bought with their hard-earned plunder.

≈

“Fire boarding hooks!” Feldrin Brelak bellowed as
Orin’s Pride
came up on the freebooter galley’s beam. The two ballistae mounted on the schooner’s port side cracked in unison, and wrist-thick shafts of iron-tipped hardwood plunged into the galley’s hull.

“Slack sheets and haul on the capstan!” he ordered, racing forward from the wheel as the sails flapped, and dodging a ragged volley of arrows that flew from behind the shields that studded the pirate ship’s bulwarks. One man screamed and fell, but most had known to take cover. The heavy lines trailing from the imbedded ballistae bolts came taut as five men cranked madly at the windlass, and the two hulls met with a crash of splintering wood.

“Arrows!” someone shouted, and Feldrin ducked behind a row of lines purposefully coiled and stowed on the shroud belaying pins. A barbed shaft quivered in the wood of the cap rail a hand-span from his knee, and he leapt up before the enemy archers could fire another volley. “Now! Boarders with me!”

Twenty well-armed sailors lunged up and leapt over the row of colorfully painted shields into the midst of the enemy. One of Feldrin’s boarding axes clove a man’s skull like a melon, even before his feet met the deck of the enemy ship. A shipmate to his left went down with a spear through his leg, but put his cutlass into his assailant’s belly as he fell. Feldrin hacked down a bewildered archer and took a step to cover the fallen man, knocking aside another spearman’s weapon with his right-hand axe and gutting him with his left.

Something hit his shoulder from behind hard enough to penetrate his thick leather corselet, and momentarily numbed his right arm. He slashed back without looking, and was rewarded with a meaty
thock
and a horrible scream. He turned to see the swordsman crumple, his hands clutching his destroyed face. He ended the man’s agony with a quick stroke and turned, looking for another opponent, but there were none to be had. The pirates had all either fallen or dropped their weapons.

“Horace!” he bellowed, looking around for his first mate, then checking the man at his feet. The spear had passed right through the
man’s thigh, but looked to have missed the bone. The sailor was staring at the inch-thick shaft transfixing his leg, his eyes wide with pain and panic.

“Aye, Captain!” Horace came forward, sporting a gash on his forearm but otherwise hale. Horace was the only man Feldrin knew who had turned down a captaincy to be a first mate. He’d commanded the
Hippotrin
for Cynthia Flaxal for more than a year, then told her he’d rather go back to being mate on
Orin’s Pride
. Feldrin had never asked his reasons, he’d just welcomed him aboard. “By the Nine Hells! Keefer, yer supposed to knock the damned spear
aside
before you leap on the man, ya dolt!”

“I…I missed, I guess,” the young man said dully.

“Secure their weapons, Horace, and take a squad below decks. Be careful! I don’t want any surprises!” Feldrin knelt at Keefer’s side and drew a heavy knife from his belt. He despaired at the blood that jetted rhythmically from the wound, but kept his voice encouraging. “You did fine, lad! You got him before he could finish the job. Now hold still while I cut the head off this spear and we get it out of your leg.”

In ten minutes the enemy ship was secured, the surviving pirates were in chains, and the young man Keefer was dead. Even though they removed the spear with the utmost care, Janley, the ship’s carpenter who doubled as their surgeon, could not stop the bleeding. Feldrin had held the man’s hand, assuring him that everything would be fine, even when he knew it was hopeless. A priest or even a simple potion would have saved the man’s life, but they had neither.

“Nasty bloody business we’re in, Horace,” Feldrin said as he wearily scrubbed Keefer’s blood from his hands. Now that the energy of the fight was fading, he felt the throbbing ache in his shoulder. “Help me off with this corselet, would you? I got nicked.”

“Sorry about Keefer, sir,” the mate said, loosening the buckles on one side of the stiff leather armor. It was hard and padded thickly enough to stop an arrow, even from one of the strong Marathian horn-bows that the pirates used. It would not, however, stop a sword thrust.

“Not your fault, and he knew the risk.” Feldrin told himself the same thing every time someone under his command died. It didn’t help much, even if it was the truth.

“Aye, but hold on, there. You’re bleedin’ a bit under here.”

“Bloody hells!” Pain lanced through him as Horace stuffed something into the gash in his shoulder. “Easy there. Don’t tear my bloody arm off!”

“I’m tryin’ ta keep your bloody arm
on
, Captain! Now hold still! Janley! Bring a hot iron! This bleedin’ won’t stop!”

“Didn’t think it was that bad,” Feldrin said, taking a seat on the windlass cap as his knees began to shake.

“What happened?” Janley probed the wound with fingers still bloody from another man’s injuries.

“Sword, I think.” F
eldrin gritted his teeth, concentrating on not
fainting.

“It hit the bone, but your armor took most of the blow. You’re lucky it wasn’t a hand-span to the left. It could have gotten your spine. Now hold still.”

Burning flesh hissed and Feldrin managed to remain conscious, though he did shout a string of curses that shocked even
his
crew. The smell of burning meat almost made him retch, more from the thought that it was
his
meat burning than from the acrid odor itself. When it was done and a thick healing salve and bandage had been applied, he felt much better.

“What was she carryin’, Horace?” he asked, pushing himself to his feet with only a slight wobble.

“A mixed load. About twenty bails of good wool, some kegs of somethin’ that are marked in that western script, probably rice wine, and some finery: silks, silver trinkets and such. Might be more tucked away. We’ll know when we tear her apart.”

“You fit to take her to Terokesh?” he asked, grinning his first grin of the day.

That was a good load, and the ship itself would be worth a tidy bit as well. Prince Mojani, the new sultan of Marathia, paid well for hulls that were not badly damaged. He was eager to rebuild his navy after more than a year of civil war, and had jumped at the chance to hire
Orin’s Pride
as a privateer. There were still many pirates working the Sand Coast, most in low xebecs or dhows, others in larger war galleys like the one they’d just taken. Some of the ships were the old Sultan’s former naval vessels, their captains turning pirate rather than face the new sultan’s swift justice.
Orin’s Pride
, outfitted with two ballistae on each side and the fire catapult mounted on her bow, could out-fight and out-sail any of them.

“Aye! I’d appreciate it if you stayed close by, though. I wouldn’t like to run up on one of this fella’s friends with a short crew and a hold full of prisoners.”

“I’ll be right on yer lee, Horace. She’s all yours. Pick yer crew, but leave me Johansen fer a mate. I’d like to get this sorted out and get underway afore dark.”

“Aye, sir!” Horace turned to go, but stopped when Feldrin grabbed his sleeve.

“And Horace, tell the crew that after we settle this up, we head for Southaven. I’ve got to get back before Cynthia pops, or I’ll never hear the end of it.”

“Aye,
sir
! Homeward bound! That’ll be welcome news!” He turned and started bellowing orders, but Feldrin had already fixed his mind on the course ahead and the trip home.

“Aye, home,” he said to no one, heading for his cabin and something to ease his pains — both in his shoulder and his soul. “Been too long since I seen home…”

≈

Seoril sipped his rum and sighed. They were well into their second bottle, and none sitting around the main mess table were feeling much discomfort. “That moldy wool was hard to move, but the rest of it fair flew out of our hold.”

“Good. We got a bit more for you.” Captain Parek reached for the bottle, but a slim hand snatched it up first. He scowled at Sam, but then smiled as she pulled the cork free with her teeth and filled his cup, then
topped off her own and the rest. “Not a hold full, but enough to pay for a trip. We stumbled across a two-master haulin’ spices and copra.”

“Not much money in copra around these parts, ay?” Seoril said, lifting his cup in thanks, his eyes narrowing at Sam. That she warranted the privilege of sitting at the table with the officers had surprised him, but any fool could see that she was Parek’s favorite. Watching her loose shirt as she leaned over the table to fill everyone’s cups, it was easy enough to see why.

Sam might have been young, and was undoubtedly thin even for her age, but there was wiry muscle there, and she was growing into her womanhood quite nicely. Seoril saw that Parek’s dark eyes were watching him eye the girl, and he fixed his gaze elsewhere. Parek was a shrewd man and a fine ship’s captain, but he tended to hold onto his possessions tightly. Not as tightly as Bloodwind had, but there was nothing to be gained by making him angry.

“Naw! We let it sink with the wreck,” Farin,
Cutthroat’s
first mate slurred, blinking to try to focus his eyes. The mate had drunk more than his share of the rum.

“Well, that’s fine. I can unload the spices anywhere. I think I’ll work the south coast for a while. I’ve been in Rockport too much.” He sipped and stared again at Sam, who sipped and stared at her captain.

“So, what’s this bad news you spoke of, Seoril? Did the sea witch give birth to a sea drake?” Parek sipped his rum and ignored Sam’s attention, or seemed to.

“No, thank Odea, or at least not to my knowin’.” Seoril heaved a sigh. There was no easy way to tell it. “We was passed by a warship on the way south from Rockport. A small two-master. Didn’t pass close enough to see a name, thank the gods, but it was a Tsing warship sure enough, and makin’ a good twelve knots!”

“A warship?” Sam’s eyes widened and her gaze flicked back and forth between the two captains.

“Aw, it couldn’ta been! Wha’s a warship doing down here? Pro’lly headed fer M’rathia, and good riddance!” Farin downed his rum and reached for the bottle, but Sam snatched it first.

“Hey, now! Gimme that, ye li’l rat!” The mate tried to stand, but couldn’t quite manage it.

Sam’s quick eyes glanced a question to Parek, but he just smiled and said, “Pour Farin another drink, if you please, Sam. It’s his last tonight.”

“Best make it last, mate!” she said, pulling the cork and pouring him a scant measure.