The Fox

by Sherwood Smith

Boruin ran up on deck, caught a whiff of moldy vegetable: leddas oil. Some idiot must have dropped a lamp.

  “What and where?” she called up to the foremast.

  The lookout yelled, “Big one coming, dead on the starboard beam. Black sail. Maybe red.”

  Black sail! Boruin’s heart hammered with anticipation as she peered over the rail. It was hard as damnation to see color at night. She willed it to be Ramis of the Knife. Whoever took him would soon be Marshig’s lead captain—and assassin.

  The moon slid, round and blue-white, between two fleecy clouds and the lookout above called, “Red sails.”

  Boruin’s temper flashed. She glanced around for someone to take it out on. No one—they were quiet, in place. But she would. Oh, she would. “Brotherhood? Back?” Without sending a messenger-scout or even a signal? She sifted plans of retaliation. So some encroaching shit was using the western war as a ploy to make a grab for her position.

  Well, Boruin knew what to do about that.

  “An old merch,” the lookout responded, and snorted a derisive laugh. “Can’t be ours. I see a raffee. Two sloops and a cutter farther back. That raffee’s lines look familiar. Got to be Walic’s Coco.”

  Delicious. Boruin had been hearing about these fools for the past couple of weeks, cruising about, daring to wear red sails, as if looking for her. What swagger!

  “Ru?” Majarian, her first mate, appeared from forward, moonlight glinting on his teeth and the bare steel thrust through his sash. “Haul wind? Signal the consorts?”

  “No. They’ll figure it out. I want this big old bucket all to myself. Eager, isn’t he? You want to bet Elgar is over there, bowsprit up and sharp to get into my basket?”

  Majarian laughed.

  “Let ’em think we’re asleep. Get the bow crews ready. I want them doubled but hiding. And Mawj, put poison on every arrow. Make ’em scream. I want the platter-faces to hear the screams on the mainland and pee in their beds.”

  Majarian laughed again as he snapped his fingers at the waiting fight team.

  Boruin watched the big caravel lumber closer, and yes, they had a cut boom ready to swing out against their rigging while they shot down from that damned high forecastle onto Boruin’s low, flush deck. “Come, Elgar, come on. I got my knees spread just for you,” she breathed, peering at that high forecastle from behind her mizzenmast. Was that a flicker of movement abaft the mizzen?

  She called, low-voiced, up to her lookout, “How many do you see?”

  The lookout bent, her hand cupped around her mouth. “They’ve all gotta be hiding. Only seen one or two darting about aft. Think the helm’s tied down.”

  Then they were coming in to cut her shrouds before boarding. So they’d all be crouched down behind the rail, ready to leap over. Surprise!

  I’ll surprise you, Elgar, you shit. I’ll surprise you every day for a month, until your last surprise is the taste of your own guts.

  The caravel lurched up, old masts groaning. Closer, the red sails belling in the moonlight. What conceit! What stupidity! That old merch might be heavy enough to support a cut boom that large, though she doubted it, but it was not nearly fast enough.

  Well, let them come—and fail. She looked up, but her crew was still, waiting on her signal, taking none of the defensive measures that would make it so easy to fend off that rotting tub.

  Boruin licked her lips, shedding anger by counting the things she’d do to Elgar with his own weapons. She’d practice for Ramis on him. And then send his ribboned guts to Freeport Harbor as a sign of what they could expect when she sailed south.

  Closer . . . closer . . . had to say they were well hidden. Not that that would benefit them any. What kind of dye did they use to give those sails a sheen? Sag—no, there must have been a squall upwind—smell of leddas oil— wait, wait, no, that’s whiskey! Reminded her of that old soul-sucker Raskan, and the way he used to get people drunk before he played with them. Were they drunk over there?

  Only way you could get courage to face me, hmmm?

  The whiff was supplanted by the weirdly sweet scent of pepper-poison from overhead, freshly brought from the heights of Chwahirsland, as her fight crews busily smeared their arrowheads. The Chwahir used it in small doses in drink to keep their warriors warm and awake on long marches; what interested her was that in larger doses it enhanced pain to an exquisite scale.

  Expensive—she’d lost four hands while torching the town that had furnished their latest supply—but worth it.

  She laughed to herself as she watched her fight crews slither up to the tops in the dark, hidden by her own bellying red sails. All along forward, where the clumsy forecastle was heading, boarders crouched down, grinning fiercely, gripping their weapons.

  Wait, wait, wait . . . and . . . “Helm hard over!”

  Just before the caravel stole their wind the ships swayed together side by side, that boom swinging uselessly forward of the foremast. She’d made them miss their sweep, the stupid shits! “Fire arrows!”

  Hissing fire arrows arced up at the mastheads and down onto the deck where the clustered attackers would be hiding.

  No one heard the splashes on the far side of the caravel’s stern as Tau and Fox dove off, then struck out swimming to the lightless longboat following in the caravel’s wake.

  Both were underwater when the first arrows hit the sails. They saw only pinpoints of ruddy flame sending wavering reflections in the water.

  It was Boruin’s boarding crew, ready to swing over, who froze in horror as the little licks of flame on the sails whooshed upward in billowing, roiling balls, then blasted outward.

  They had soaked the entire caravel with oil! A fire ship? You heard of them, but who was reckless or rich enough to actually—

  BAVOOM! The explosion, louder than thunder, punched her ears. A flash of blue-yellow light blinded her; tiny stars swam across her vision until she realized she lay flat on the deck as tiny fireballs rained down through her sails and rigging.

  She scrambled to her feet. “Helm alee! Helm alee!” Boruin shrieked, but the roar of the flames drowned her voice.

  “WATER CREWS!” Majarian bellowed, waving his arms at the flaming bits of sail and rigging and burning blocks that fell. Some of the crew dashed about, desperately stamping on flames; the bow crews flung their long-bows to the deck with a clatter, heedless of anyone below, and slid down the stays to the deck.

  Just as the longboat full of picked fighters crept up the stern, slipped over the side, and—shrieking a strange, harrowing cry—Yi-yi-yi!—took them by surprise.

  “Boarders aft!” was the last thing a pirate shouted before Fox nearly decapitated him with a whip-fast backhand slash.

  Majarian seized his long boarding sword and Fox closed with him, knives glinting with reflected firelight along his forearms, teeth showing in a manic grin.

  Boruin ran to the rail, screaming orders. Boarded! The first time in ten years she’d been boarded and here she was, no weapon—

  Almost witless with fury she started toward her cabin to fetch a sword when something hot whiffled by her cheek, leaving a burning stench. She jerked her head up and saw in the ruddy light of the burning caravel two net-draped sloops sailing, one fore, one aft, shooting lit arrows.

  Behind her new boarders swarmed over the prow, led by a skinny fellow with a face like a rat, a knife between his teeth.

  She smacked her glass to her eye, screaming threats at the captain of her second consort—threats overpowered by the roar of the fire. Why wasn’t he here at her aid? Because, she saw with incandescing rage, Walic’s raffee had penned her consort hard against the burning caravel so it could sail down her consort’s length, steel-tipped cut boom ripping the shrouds all down the consort’s weather side.

  Boruin whirled around, gripping her glass as a weapon. She would kill the first person she saw, didn’t matter a damn who it was. There was Mawj, swinging at a tall shit in black who fought with two knives so fast they seemed to be on fire, steel reflecting t
he caravel’s blaze. She grinned, having found her target, and cat-stalked around his black-scarf-tied head, the glass upraised to attack him from behind.

  “Are you the captain?” The voice was polite—even pleasant.

  She whirled around, staring into a face of astonishing beauty, pale, drifting hair haloed in reddish flame.

  She smiled. Such a cultured voice, so beautiful a face— had to be a toff, with their ridiculous rules.

  Widening her eyes and holding out her hands, she pouted. “I don’t have a weapon. You wouldn’t dishonor yourself by attacking a person without a weapon?”

  “Yes,” the golden vision sighed as he feinted with one knife, and when she swung the glass to ward the blow, he brought up his second knife and ripped it across her throat.

  A short time later Dasta brought Cocodu alongside the lee-side of Boruin’s rake-masted trysail. Inda swung down onto its deck, then pulled his knives free as he cast a quick glance around. The pirates had retreated forward; Fox and Barend stood at either end of the captain’s deck. The two corpses lying in blood pools at their feet had to be Boruin and her mate.

  Inda’s eyes lingered as he comprehended the restless, shifting pirates yelling curses: anyone could have slit Boruin’s throat, but Majarian lay there striped with a hundred thin cuts, black in the firelight. Only one person fought with such skill and savagery when he was angry.

  Inda lifted his gaze to Fox, who appeared unarmed. He stood with his feet planted apart, arms crossed, knives turned up along his forearm, grinning a challenge at the pirates.

  Defeat in the mind.

  “Elgar the Fox,” Barend howled, sweeping his cutlass toward Inda, whereupon Boruin’s crew threw their weapons down, some raising hands and crying, “We’ll join! We’ll join!”

  Just as they had on the third consort, which had surrendered after the fire ship went up in flame, the Cocodu crossing its bow. Inda had sent over Tcholan’s fight band to secure it before they’d moved on to the second consort, which was in dangerous proximity to the fire ship.

  More than half the crew had been in the tops of that one, some waiting to defend with arrows, most frantically changing sail to keep them from colliding with the fire ship. Their danger from fire had been desperate enough that they had not seen the Cocodu raffee ease up on the other side until the first shrieking grate of the cut boom in the shrouds alarmed them, but by then it was too late. Many fell into the sea; the rest had surrendered.

  So here Inda was, facing Boruin’s crew as they too surrendered.

  It was too easy. Pirates might not fight in drilled teams, but they had to have other strategies—

  “Same orders as before,” he called to Barend. “Take the weapons and shift ’em all to boats. I don’t want any of them, I don’t care what they offer. If they pull hard they can make it to Chwahirsland and be dealt with there.”

  Chwahirsland had been Boruin’s main cruising ground. It seemed just to Inda.

  Pirates started pleading, arguing, bargaining. Inda left them to Barend and Fox and ran forward to check the status of the third consort. He was distracted for a moment by a whiff of burning oil—and was that whiskey? Maybe a result of the explosion.

  The dismasted second pirate ship seemed largely empty.

  Ah. The third consort—the one that had surrendered as soon as the fire ship went up in flames—seemed to have changed its mind, and it looked like Tcholan’s fight band was fully engaged. Clangs and clashes carried over the water. Arcs of arrows gleamed in the firelight from the sloops, but Tcholan’s band, divided between two ships, needed reinforcement.

  Inda found Barend’s signaler on guard at the hatchway. Inda took his bow, pulled a whirtler from the quiver, and shot it over the Vixen. He saw the sweet curve of its sail alter, pick up wind.

  Tau came up, his hair ruddy gold in the firelight, one of his fine linen sleeves ripped by a sword cut, drying blood on his arm. He tore the rest of his sleeve free and began binding it around his bicep. “What now?”

  “Third one—something looks wrong. Let’s get some backup to Tcholan.” He lifted his voice to be heard on the Cocodu, its stern abreast. “Dasta! Helm to Mutt and get your band to the third!”

  Fox appeared, jerking his chin to sling sweat from the fringes of his black fighting kerchief. “Well?”

  “Hold here,” Inda said. “Get ’em over the side.” Behind them shouts, curses, pleas rose—some were fighting again. Fox whirled, ran to Barend’s aid.

  While the Vixen neared Inda scanned again. Little boats clustered around the second consort. Uslar was visible on the foredeck motioning to figures climbing down the sides. Uslar? He and Nugget and Thog had been ordered to stay on the Vixen, bows in hand to protect Jeje as she threaded through the ships.

  Cocodu had drifted forward to stay free of the burning caravel, which was still showering down bits of burning wood and sail.

  Vixen glided under the trysail’s lee. Inda jumped onto the Vixen’s deck. The brothers were both at their posts, tending sail instantly; Jeje handled the tiller, ignoring blood staining the side of her tunic.

  “Where are the Chwahir?” he asked. “And Nugget?”

  “Took the gig. Went aboard number two,” Jeje said, breathing hard. “Didn’t see ’em leave.” It hurt to talk, so she decided against saying that the gig had also carried something covered by old sail. Didn’t seem relevant.

  Inda again caught the pungent rotting garden smell of leddas oil drifting over the water and said, “We’d better get everyone away from the caravel. It may blast again, and we don’t have enough people to be putting out fires the wind might start.”

  Jeje waved to the brothers. One sent up the single whirtler alerting them to a flag signal and the other raised the flag for dispersal.

  Jeje clamped her forearm against her ribs as she surveyed the ships. Pirates forced over the sides into the boats—crew tending sail, putting out fires—everyone busy with at least one task, if not two. But why did Thog leave like that and go on board the second pirate ship?

  No one to ask: Inda was gone, scrambling up to the deck of the third pirate ship, a raffee-rigged brig with a broad hull that had probably begun its sailing career as a luxury merchant vessel. As he reached the captain’s deck there was a splintering sound and the nailed hatchway flew apart in chunks; Tcholan and his band had hastily hammered most of the pirates below before dealing with the hands in the tops who’d dropped down to fight.

  Pirates surged up, weapons brandished, surrender forgotten. They vastly outnumbered Tcholan’s band and the hottest fighting of the night broke out.

  Inda grabbed up a boarding ax and a short staff and led the way into battle. Dasta took up shield arm position at his left.

  Hot, ferocious joy suffused Inda as he whirled and struck, blocked, whirled, struck again, fast and deadly, so fast and deadly no one stood long against him.

  Again he was subliminally aware of an attack behind him—like a poke inside his skull, warning him. Every time he heeded that inward poke he was just in time to ward off a deathblow.

  From the trysail Fox watched Inda through a glass, amazed at the astonishing change that came over Inda in fights to the death. In practice he was formidable, but Fox was better. In combat, Inda fought as if he were two men— as if he had eyes in the back of his head. Before his ceaseless onslaught the press of pirates began to retreat.

  And Tcholan’s and Dasta’s attack bands, small as they were, backed him perfectly. No pirate passed that drilled, lethally effective line. The ones at the back, seeing their mates falling, wavered, some diving overboard.

  The defeated pirates were forced down into the longboat. Many of them stared up at Inda, grim, some desperate, but he stood on a barrel, one foot propped on the rail, sword ready. Splashed with other people’s gore. No one was willing to try him again.

  When the last one tumbled into the longboat the craft was full pirates struggling for space, the railings barely clearing the black water. Inda turned away as the di
stance between the boat and the ship widened.

  “I’ll oversee cleanup,” Tcholan croaked, fire from the caravel reflecting in his black eyes.

  “I’ll scout the cabin.”

  In the captain’s cabin Inda found water in an ensorcelled basin and stuck his entire head in, sucked up mouthfuls of water until his nose stung, a cut—unnoticed till now— stinging his temple. A scan of the cabin revealed charts, a log book, a chest of clothing, and, far more to his interest, an entire closet full of arms.

  Through the open scuttle came Dasta’s voice, “Hai, what’s going on?”

  “Who gave them orders?”

  That was the raspy voice of Sails, once the first sail-mate of Walic’s fleet, now second in command in Dasta’s attack band as well as Cocodu’s first sail-mate.

  Inda dashed out, ax in hand. He emerged topside as the longboat reached the middle pirate ship, the one with the fallen foremast and ruined rigging. Smoke and fitful light from the caravel drifting southward made it difficult to make out anything but silhouettes running about on deck.

  He dashed to the binnacle and found a glass. The second ship, empty before, was now crammed with pirates—and his own assigned prize crew nowhere in sight. Had the pirates retaken the ship? Wait. There was the prize crew, in the rowboat hooking onto Cocodu!

  Anger scorched through Inda, smothering the aches and exhaustion as the longboat pirates swarmed up the sides of the second consort, calling greetings to their mates. All around the ship launches and gigs tossed on the sea, some of them swamping. Someone had broken their bottoms with an ax. Aboard the ship laughter and invective echoed over the water.

  Between Vixen and the consort Thog stood up in the sternsheets of the Vixen’s gig. Uslar sat at her feet, Nugget behind, busy wrapping an arrow. The girl handed her arrow to Uslar, who bent briefly over it, then raised a smoldering fire arrow to Thog. She took it and raised her bow. Efficient, swift—and orderly.

  Inda rubbed smoke-burned eyes, coughing as his thoughts ran in too many directions. He needed to get reinforcements to the second consort. He needed to understand what the two Chwahir and Nugget were doing in that damned gig.