by Aeryn Rudel
“Do we run?”
“Hah!” Bloodbrine spat. “Run where? You see the smoke coming off that thing. It’s got two paddlewheels and is running at full sails against the wind. She’d catch us easily.”
“Then what do we do?” Nyra said.
“We stay right here and see what she wants,” the captain said with a shrug.
“And what if that’s to take what’s in our hold?” Aiakos said, drawing another glare from Nyra. The captain, however, turned and gave Aiakos a sickly grin.
“Then she takes it, and we hope she doesn’t send us to the bottom of the Meredius just for spite.”
Morbid Angel was the biggest ship Aiakos had ever seen, an onyx-hulled leviathan bristling with cannons. It completely dwarfed the Scythe. As the huge ship pulled alongside, its black sails blotted out the sun and cast Captain Bloodbrine’s vessel into deep shadow. Thick smoke that smelled of death, the stench of burning necrotite, belched from the blackship’s stacks, and its twin paddles churned the sea into white froth.
Captain Bloodbrine had been right. There was nowhere to run, no possible way this mammoth ship would not find and destroy them. The captain stood on deck, dressed in his finest coat, hat, and boots. They looked like they hadn’t been worn in decades. Nyra stood beside him, along with most of his officers. The captain had ordered his crew to stand behind them, in full battle dress, to meet the captain of the Morbid Angel.
It was clear Captain Bloodbrine recognized the blackship, as did many of the crew. Aiakos had heard tales of blackships commandeering Cryxian pirate vessels to aid them in their inscrutable goals. There were also tales of blackship captains simply boarding ships, taking what they wanted, and then killing the crew and turning them all into undead thralls. It was clear Scythe was going to be boarded. What wasn’t clear was whether that boarding would be a civilized meeting or a bloodbath.
The blackship hadn’t fired on them, and its crew was visible on the deck—scores of sailors and skirmishers as well as the crab-like iron bodies of bonejacks and helljacks. The sight of these machines stirred something within Aiakos. He’d never seen one up close, and he was intensely curious about how they operated, how they were controlled. He had heard rumors they enjoyed killing for its own sake, but did they actually think for themselves? He secretly hoped at least one would be among the boarding party.
A heavy boarding ramp was lowered from the Morbid Angel’s deck to the Scythe’s, and Captain Bloodbrine ordered a handful of sailors to secure it to the deck. He was obviously betting on the boarding party having something else in mind beside seizing his ship and killing his crew.
The boarding ramp stood empty for a moment, the iron and wood bridge creaking loudly as the two ships it connected rose and fell with the waves. Then a tall figure appeared and began moving down the ramp.
“Axiara Wraithblade,” Aiakos heard Nyra, who was standing directly in front of him, whisper to her father.
The captain nodded but said nothing.
The name of Admiral Axiara Wraithblade was well known to any Cryxian pirate. A powerful and ruthless Satyxis warrior, Wraithblade commanded the entire raider fleet in the name of the Dragonfather. She was both a skilled naval captain and a ruthless sea pirate in her own right.
Axiara came down the boarding ramp followed by a pair of hulking black ogrun, each armed with a formidable blunderbuss and boarding axe. Behind these two brutes came a pair of bonejacks, their tusked skeletal heads marking them as Deathrippers. The bonejacks were following the shouted commands of a human man behind them, a ’jack marshal. Finally, a score of Axiara’s skirmishers followed the bonejacks. Each had the look of a seasoned fighter, and Aiakos knew that it if it came to blood, these cutthroats alone could likely kill most of Bloodbrine’s men by themselves, to say nothing of the ogrun, the bonejacks, or Axiara herself.
The admiral stepped off the boarding ramp and onto the main deck of the Scythe. She wore a short black coat with polished silver buttons, grey trousers, high black boots and a loose muslin shirt. Her face was long, with thin lips, high cheek bones, and large almond-shaped eyes the color of freshly spilled blood. A pair of spiraling horns rose from Axiara’s head, sweeping backward, and adding a full foot-and-a-half to her already impressive height. She was armed with a straight-bladed sword with a black hilt sheathed at her waist and a heavy pistol on her left hip, its wooden butt covered in spiraling green runes.
“Admiral Wraithblade,” Captain Bloodbrine said. He removed his hat and bowed. The formality looked odd on him. “I welcome you to the Scythe. I am Captain Bloodbrine. How can I be of service?”
Axiara glanced around the deck and smiled. Her teeth were very white. Aiakos was reminded of a shark’s gaping maw just before it bites. “Captain. I’ve been told you have a good crew here,” she said. Her voice was low, scratching, almost strained, as if it were unaccustomed to anything beyond shouting orders and screeching battle cries. “You have fared well in these waters.”
“We have, Admiral,” Bloodbrine said. “We’re making for Blackwater with a full hold. You’re welcome to anything—”
“If I wanted what was in your hold, Captain, I already have it,” Axiara said, cutting him off. Behind her, the two bonejacks shifted their clawed feet on the deck, the green luminance from their furnaces glowing brighter. Aiakos noted their agitation with a thrill of interest.
Bloodbrine swallowed and nodded. Aiakos had never seen him like this; the captain was terrified. “Of course,” he said. “How can the Scythe be of service to you?”
Axiara took a step forward, towering over the captain. “A word, Captain Bloodbrine,” she said, smiling, predatory again. “In your cabin.
Bloodbrine nodded. It was clear he had absolutely no choice. “This way, Admiral,” he said and moved off toward the poop deck beneath which his small cabin lay. Axiara nodded to the two ogrun she’d brought with her and then followed Bloodbrine. Aiakos watched them disappear into the captain’s cabin and wondered if Bloodbrine would ever come out again.
An hour later, Bloodbrine emerged unscathed from his cabin. Axiara and her men returned to their ship soon after, and the Scythe was under way again, following behind the Morbid Angel. They had changed course and were headed northeast, back toward the coast of western Immoren. Bloodbrine hadn’t said where they were going; he’d simply ordered the crew to set sail and follow Axiara’s ship. He’d then returned to his cabin, while Nyra made sure his orders were carried out.
They soon rendezvoused with two additional pirate ships, both smaller than the Scythe. They had watched Axiara board each in turn, no doubt giving them the same orders: follow the Morbid Angel. Both ships had obeyed. What choice did they have? Aiakos had heard of both of them, Gutter and Iron Wave, although he didn’t know their captains or crew.
Their change of course and the addition of the two pirate vessels elicited many rumors among the crew of the Scythe, but Aiakos paid them little mind. When he went to his berth he simply ignored their fearful whispering. Axiara hadn’t destroyed them and she was obviously using them for some purpose. That meant opportunity. If he could somehow gain her notice and prove himself useful to her, she could be a powerful benefactor.
Lying in his berth, Aiakos listened to the conversations of the other skirmishers around him. They were afraid. He was not. They had nothing to offer but their lives, and to someone like Axiara that was hardly a precious commodity.
Hours later, the bosun’s whistle pulled Aiakos from the light sleep he’d drifted into. He was out of his berth, weapons in hand, and on his way to the main deck in minutes. The rest of the skirmishers followed suit.
On deck, Aiakos found Nyra Bloodbrine waiting for them. She wore a shirt of chain links beneath her long coat and gripped her favorite weapon, a gaff-hook with a blade as sharp as a dragon’s fang.
“I’ll be leading you lot in a combined boarding action with men from Wraithblade’s crew,” she said without preamble. “You’ll fight well or you’ll die.”
�
�A boarding action against what?” Viger said. Nyra favored him, and she allowed the question.
“We’re chasing an Ordic merchant vessel, the Viper, and its escort,” she said. “When we find them, Gutter and Iron Wave will deal with the escort while we board the Viper, kill the crew, and take what Axiara wants. What she wants is the captain of this ship. Alive. Understood?”
Nods all around. No one was foolish enough to defy the dreaded Satyxis admiral.
Aiakos look out over the forecastle and saw the backside of the Morbid Angel some hundred yards ahead. The big ship was moving under sail only, likely so the Scythe could keep up. The Gutter and Iron Wave followed behind her.
“Wait in the hold until we catch the Ordic ships,” Nyra said. “Dismissed.”
They didn’t have to wait long. Shouts from the crow’s nest pulled Aiakos from his berth and on to the deck. They’d found the Viper and its hulking war galley escort. The Viper was large and looked like a refitted war galley itself.
The Ordic war galley was heavy and slow but well armed. Its cannons soon sounded, belching smoke into the air. Cannonballs fell into the water around the Scythe. Two smashed into her, but at this range they barely made a dent in the hull.
Gutter and Iron Wave changed course and drove straight at the Ordic war galley, their own cannons firing as they went. The smaller pirate ships had little chance in an open sea battle against their Ordic enemy; they would have to get close and board the war galley if they were to survive.
The Scythe and the Morbid Angel moved away from one another so they could come at the Viper from two directions and hit it with two broadsides, one from either side. The Ordic vessel turned toward the Scythe, possibly thinking it could take out the smaller Cryxian ship and then escape. Cannons flashed, and the Scythe was enveloped by the broadside. Cannonballs and grape shot raked the deck, cutting down sailors and splattering gore into the sea. Aiakos kept his head down, ducking into the wide stairway leading into the cargo hold.
The Scythe survived the fusillade, allowing the Morbid Angel to move into position and blast the Viper with a forty-cannon broadside. Axiara’s cannons had been loaded with grape and chain shot, and Aiakos watched the Ordic ship’s masts and rigging all but disappear in a hail of smoke and fire. Their prey couldn’t run, and it was time for Aiakos and his fellow skirmishers to do their work.
Gutter and Iron Wave had succeeded in grappling the Ordic war galley but had taken a pounding in the process. Aiakos knew Gutter especially was doomed; she sat far too low in the water, and the sea was likely flooding in through her wounds, soon to drag her down to the bottom.
Scythe and Morbid Angel pulled alongside the crippled Viper, weathering a few more blasts from her cannons in the process. The cannon fire faded as grappling chains were cast from the Cryxian vessels and the Ordic ship was reeled in and pinned between them.
The bosun’s whistle sounded, and Aiakos bounded up from the hold, Viger and the rest of the Scythe’s fighting men behind him. Nyra was waiting for them as boarding ramps slammed down onto the Viper’s main deck, and rifle fire from sailors aboard the Scythe and the Morbid Angel picked off enemy sailors trying to cast them off. Aiakos watched as the Morbid Angel deployed a type of boarding ramp called a crow’s beak, a massive ramp with armored sides tipped with a three-foot-long iron spike on its bottom. When the crow’s beak came down, the spike slammed through the deck of the Ordic vessel, holding the ramp in place. Aiakos saw the coal-black forms of helljacks surging along the ramp soon after. One of them turned toward him, and he felt . . . something, some connection, just for an instant. It might have been his imagination, but he thought he could feel its eagerness and its hunger for the kill.
“Go!” Nyra shouted, waiving her gaff-hook toward the Ordic ship. Aiakos charged forward, cutlass in his left hand and his harpoon cocked over his shoulder with his right. He was not armored, relying on speed and ferocity to keep him from harm.
Aiakos hit the boarding ramp and began moving across it. Viger was right behind him, then Nyra, then the rest of the fighters. The ramp was some twenty feet long, giving the desperate crew of the Viper time to pepper them with pistol and rifle fire as they crossed.
Bullets whizzed by and Aiakos crouched low, moving crab-like toward the enemy ship. Behind him a muffled scream told him one of the boarding skirmishers had been hit. Hoping it was Viger, he quickly glanced backward and saw that, to his immense disappointment, the former Quay Slayer was still moving behind him.
They reached the gunwales of the Ordic vessel and Aiakos sprang up and over. His harpoon skewered the first Ordic sailor he encountered as the man raised a pistol, and he cut down another with his cutlass as he yanked the harpoon from the corpse of the first.
Gunfire sounded from all around, and Aiakos crouched behind a mass of tangled rigging to get his bearings. Behind him Viger, Nyra, and the rest of the skirmishers were storming onto the deck. They’d come aboard amidships on the main deck, slightly closer to the forecastle deck than the stern. Directly across from them skirmishers, black ogrun, and a pair of helljacks had crossed from the Morbid Angel and were engaging what looked like a large majority of the Viper’s fighting crew.
It was clear to Aiakos that many of the Ordic fighters were hired mercenaries and not mere sailors. They wore light armor, all of a similar type and cut, and their weapons were of good quality. In addition he saw a pair of Buccaneers, warjacks common on mercenary ships, moving swiftly from the forecastle to engage the helljacks from the Morbid Angel.
Viger moved up beside Aiakos. His cutlasses were smeared crimson. Nyra crouched down behind them and waved the rest of the Scythe’s skirmishers forward. They moved swiftly across the main deck, breaking into smaller groups of two or three as they encountered enemies.
Aiakos nodded, but he wasn’t ready to move yet. He wanted to see what the helljacks could do. Both were Slayers, towering black machines with metal talons and spiraling horns. Black smoke rose into the air from their stacks, and the Cryxlight from their furnaces pulsed brighter as they moved to intercept the Buccaneers. The smaller warjacks would be no match for helljacks, but they and a score of the Ordic fighters were keeping the Morbid Angel’s boarding party pinned down.
Most of the Ordic sailors and mercenaries seemed to be on the quarterdeck or battling the boarding party from the Morbid Angel. The quarterdeck was behind them, and Aiakos saw most of the mercenaries there were armed with long rifles. They were picking out targets and firing with impunity, and they seemed to be targeting Axiara’s men instead of the helljacks. One of the black ogrun went down under the hail of bullets, and Aiakos saw the Slayers’ ’jack marshal take one in the arm. The helljacks would be far less effective without his direct guidance.
Nyra was rising, obviously about to rush off and fight her way to the Morbid Angel’s men. Aiakos reached out to pull her back down again but found the point of her gaff-hook at his throat before he could.
“Wait,” he said, pushing aside the hooked blade and pointing to the quarterdeck. “Those mercenaries are more of a problem at the moment. If we engage them, the Morbid Angel’s men and helljacks can clear the main deck, while we move up to the poop deck. That’s where the captain’s likely to be anyway.”
“The three of us take ten men?” Viger said. “That’s fool’s talk.” Aiakos bristled at the admonition but said nothing.
“These mercenaries are well armed, but they’ve likely never seen action like this,” Aiakos said. “They’ll fall back—and we’ll cut them down.”
Nyra’s eyes narrowed. “We can take them,” she said. “I don’t like the idea of Axiara’s men finding what she wants before us,”
Viger glared but nodded. He would do as ordered.
“Okay,” Nyra said. She popped up from her crouch, pulled a pistol from the brace across her chest, and fired. One of the mercenaries on the quarterdeck went down clutching his throat, blood fountaining through his fingers. “Let’s go.”
They raced across the main d
eck, bullets whizzing by their head or kicking up splinters at their feet. They hitting the bulwark beneath the quarterdeck, and Nyra reached up with her gaff hook and yanked one of the mercenaries standing above her off his feet. He tumbled forward and fell the eight feet to the main deck, and Viger took his head off as he was struggling to rise.
The men above them turned their attention away from the Morbid Angel’s fighters to this new threat. Ordic marines and mercenaries on the main deck had spotted them as well, and pistols and blunderbusses were turned in their direction.
Aiakos didn’t give the mercenaries on the main deck a chance to fire. He sheathed his cutlass, then leapt up to grab the lip of the quarterdeck with one hand and pull himself up and over. There he sprang to his feet, knocked away a rifle thrust into his face, and shoved his harpoon into the belly of the woman behind it. Ahead of him eight men with rifles were packed into the tight confines of the quarterdeck. Even as they swung their firearms in his direction he ripped his cutlass from its scabbard and charged forward. Several fired but missed, and he used the weight of his body to smash into their formation, sending them staggering back. This forced their rifles up, and two more discharged harmlessly into the air.
Behind him, Aiakos heard Viger and Nyra mounting the quarterdeck. The mercenaries had dropped their rifles and were pulling hangers and pistols. Aiakos whirled into them, thrusting and slashing. Viger was soon beside him, cutlasses blurring silver and crimson. Nyra fought along aside them, her gaff hook darting between Aiakos and Viger’s attacks, ripping flesh or snagging men and pulling them forward into Aiakos’ harpoon or Viger’s blades.
As he’d suspected, the mercenaries had no taste for this type of battle—close, ugly, and brutal. He, Viger, and Nyra killed eight of them in the span of a minute, easily turning aside their desperate attacks.
Aiakos turned and saw that one of the Slayers had broken away from the combat farther across the deck. The helljack was moving in their direction as it chased one of the Buccaneers, driving the smaller warjack back with ripping strikes from its claws. It was the same one he’d felt a strange connection to before the boarding action had begun.