“May the gods have mercy upon us all,” Reedis muttered. Ford turned to the middle of the ship where the stokers — ex-convicts all — and the nervous young apprentice were gathered.
“Mr. Bennet! Is the engine ready?” Ford called.
“Aye sir, ready when you are!” the young Mr. Bennet called back. He had brown hair that had begun to thin far earlier than most.
“Very well,” Ford said. “Mr. Reedis, you may begin the spell.” He turned to Knox and nodded.
Knox gave him a momentary look of confusion, then knuckled his forehead in a salute and bellowed, “All hands, single up all lines!”
“Single up, aye, sir!” Sykes called back from amidships. A moment later he added, “All lines singled!”
Skyes would have been considered attractive, if he wasn’t so covered in dirt and the stench of the jail. His hair was blonde and his face was pock’marked.
“I can’t believe I’m going say this,” Mr. Knox muttered sourly to himself before bellowing back, “Very good, Mr. Sykes!”
“Start lifting,” Ford called to Reedis who had walked forward to be directly under the ten different colored lifting balloons.
“Lifting, aye!” Reedis called back. He spread his arms under the balloons, closed his eyes, and began chanting his spell.
“Mr. Bennet!” Ford called. “Be ready to deploy the booms!”
“Yes, sir!”
“Mr. Knox?” Ford said.
“Let go the fore line!” Knox called. “Prepare to release the stern line!”
“Fore line released!” an airman called back.
“Ready aye!” called an airman from the rear line. Knox glanced at their forward elevation, glanced over to Ford, and called, “Release the stern line!”
“Stern line, aye!”
Slowly the ship rose into the air.
“Deploy the booms!” Knox called. “Prepare to engage propellers!”
“Boomsmen, to your stations!” Bennet called.
Knox and Ford exchanged winces. The boomsmen should already have been sent to their stations.
“Stations, aye!” the lead boomsman called back.
“Deploy the booms!” Bennet called.
The two large booms at the end of the ship were lowered from their upright position to the sides of the ship.
“Ready propellers,” Bennet called. “Prepare to engage!”
“Wait!” Ford called hurriedly. They had not cleared the tops of the buildings.
“Engage!” Bennet ordered.
“Belay that!” Ford shouted, running toward the lead boomsman. He quickly saw that the boomsman hadn’t relayed the engineer’s order. “Mr. Bennet,” Ford called in a lower voice, “please await my order.”
The young engineer turned bright red and couldn’t speak for his embarrassment. Finally, in a small voice he said, “Aye, sir.”
Ford glanced toward the skyline and then toward Knox. A moment later he called, “Someone see to the mage!”
Reedis was kneeling on the deck, clearly exhausted from his efforts.
“Have the cook bring up a cup of tea immediately!” Ford ordered. He turned back to the stern and shouted, “Mr. Bennet! Engage the propellers!”
The four blades of each propeller fanned out from their respective booms, locked in place in large crosses and slowly began to turn.
Presently Spite was moving forward into the crisp morning air.
Ford glanced above and shouted, “Jenkins, how fares the day?”
Jenkins, in his place at the top of the foremost upper balloon shouted back down. “The air is cold and threatens snow, sir! The clouds are scattered and broken!”
“Good man!” Ford called back to the ex-guard. “Keep a sharp eye out!”
“Aye sir!”
Knox came toward him and saluted. “What course, captain?”
Ford gestured to the shore line. “To the sea.”
“Sir?”
“We’ve some mutineers to catch,” Ford told him.
Knox looked surprised for a moment then grinned viciously. “Aye, sir!” He raised his voice to the helmsman, “Helmsman, come about, we’re heading to the sea!” He raised his voice to the balloons above and shouted, “Jenkins, we’re heading to sea! Call out any sail in sight!”
“Aye sir,” Jenkins called back.
Ford waited until Spite was firmly on its new course, steaming steadily, before turning his first mate. “I’m going below,” he told him. “When Mr. Reedis is ready, have him join me.” Formally, he added, “You have the con.”
“Aye, sir,” Knox said with a broad grin. To the ship he shouted, “First watch below! Mr. Knox has the con!”
Ford smiled in response to the former boatswain’s evident delight, nodded once, and went down the hatchway to his cabin in the stern. They were once again in the air and, aside from a few mistakes by the young engineer, all was well.
#
“What I want to know, sir, is where that mechanical man of yours disappeared himself to,” Reedis said as he sipped gratefully on his cup of warm tea.
“Yes, he did a rather good job of disappearing from the king’s jail, didn’t he?” Ford agreed.
Reedis narrowed his eyes at him. “You don’t seem disturbed by it.”
“I’m not sure what we could have done with him,” the captain replied with a shrug, “after all he must weigh several hundredweight.”
“I could have lifted him,” Reedis sniffed with wounded pride. “After all, I can raise your ship!”
“Indeed,” Ford said mildly. “In fact, I’m sure that he would not have plunged through the decks as I’ve had him aboard this ship before.”
“Have you?” Reedis said, his brows rising. “You mentioned rescuing him from corsairs once…”
“I did,” Ford agreed. When Reedis implored him with an uplifted hand, the captain shook his head. Reedis gave him a crestfallen look. Ford laughed. “Have you not thought, my good mage, that a large metal man is rather hard to hide?”
“A metal man…?” Reedis tried the words on his lips and then, irritatedly, shook his head. “You can’t follow him with a compass!”
“Nothing quite so distractible,” Ford agreed. “But I have my ways.”
“Your ways?” Reedis repeated. He spent a moment recalling Ford’s past ways and then his expression brightened. “You set the little street urchin on him?”
“Her name’s Ellen, by the way,” Ford said, nodding. “And she told me quite the tale of a pair of large boot prints appearing outside the king’s jail with no sign of their maker.”
“He used an invisibility spell!” Reedis’ brows furrowed as he added, “But why didn’t he disguise —”
“It was snowing,” Ford said. “Perhaps he forgot about that.”
“Or he wanted only smart people to find him,” Reedis said thoughtfully.
Captain Ford rewarded him with a smile and a dip of his head.
“Did you find him, then?” Reedis demanded.
“Did you have a good meeting with the King?” Ford asked. At Reedis’ blank look, he expanded, “While I was closeted with first minister Mannevy.”
“It was quite odd, really,” Reedis said. “He wanted to know all about the balloons and my magic. I got the impression he was hoping that they could be deflated or something.” He paused for a moment, then added worriedly, “And there was a page with him, listening the whole time. Listening quite intently.”
Captain Ford took a moment to digest this news.
“When we return, before we set out north, we’re to take on the prince,” Captain Ford said. He paused, taking another sip of tea, before saying, “The Queen was most adamant that he return unharmed.”
“Understandably, she is quite fond of him,” Reedis allowed.
“The King had s
imilar words on the topic.”
“Did he?” Reedis inquired with a gleam of his eyes. “And his intent…?”
“Exactly the opposite of the Queen’s,” Ford said grimly. He saw the way Reedis reacted to the news and allowed himself a slight grin. “Which got me to wondering if the King had as much affection for us as he conveyed with his words?”
“Kill us all?” Reedis asked in a whisper. Ford nodded silently. Reedis’ eyes flared in anger. “But he can’t! He’d have to have —”
“Help?” Ford finished for him quietly. After a moment, he said, “Did you have any luck with that life-balloon idea of mine?”
“I haven’t had time to work on it,” Reedis replied brittlely.
“Perhaps you should invest some effort,” Ford said.
“I shall, rest assured, I shall,” Reedis promised, finishing his tea. “In fact, if you don’t need me, I think I’ll get to work on it immediately.”
Captain Ford rose from his seat, smiling. “I think that’s a most excellent notion, Sir Reedis!”
Chapter Four: Action Overhead
“Two sail, dead ahead!” the lookout — neither Marden nor Senten of the original crew — called from his perch on the bowsprit.
“How far?” Lieutenant Knox called.
“A league, maybe less,” the lookout allowed.
“Sir Reedis,” Captain Ford called from his position by the helm, “you may start our descent!”
“Aye, sir!” Reedis called back, moving to stand amidships, directly below the center of the ten balloons that magically lifted Spite into the air.
“Mr. Bennet, bring us to two-thirds power!” Captain Ford called to the engineer apprentice. He turned to Knox. “Have the port guns manned, loaded and run out, if you please.”
“Man the guns port side!” Knox bellowed. His order was followed by the patter of feet as men ran to their stations. “Cook! More rum for the stokers!”
“Only a half-tot,” Ford corrected mildly. “We’ll give them more when they earn it.”
“A half-tot only!” Knox called in agreement. In a lower voice, he said to Ford, “Hadn’t considered that.”
Ford dismissed that with a wave of his hand. “I’m going forward.”
“What’s our purpose, captain?” Knox asked before Ford walked too far. Ford turned back and smiled at him.
“You remember our mutineers?”
Knox nodded, spitting angrily on the deck.
“I know where five of them are,” Ford said. He gestured below them. “Mr. Newman told us — they’re on Warrior.”
“He did, didn’t he?” Knox said, his expression growing cheerful.
“And you know what they say about mutineers from a king’s ship,” Ford said.
Knox cocked his head in question.
“Any ship harboring a mutineer is a prize,” Ford said.
“It is indeed!” Knox said, his expression growing into a huge smile. Then he frowned. “But that’s Warrior, sir! She mounts twelve pounders, we’ve only got a poor broadside of six pounders!”
“Ah,” Ford said, tapping the side of his nose in the universal sign of a man with a secret, “but those guns don’t shoot up!”
Knox nodded and chuckled, throwing a congratulatory salute to his captain.
Ford returned it with a grin of his own and turned back to his task. He strode quickly down the deck, clapped Reedis on the back in acknowledgement of his exertions, then nodded to the gun crews who had formed up and were steadily loading and priming their weapons.
“Can you make them out?” Ford called as he started easily down the bowsprit toward the lookout. He turned his head over his shoulder to shout, “And another man on the lookout!”
“Aye sir!” Knox’s voice came back the length of the ship.
“There they are, sir,” the grizzled old airman said. Ford smiled at him. He knew this man from of old. His name was Quirrel. He was nearing the end of his life as a seaman — airman, Ford corrected himself. He was one of the men Ford had taken from jail. Apparently he’d been trying to drink himself to death but one of his in-laws wanted to speed up the process and there’d been an altercation involving a knife and stitches, and a drunken party of contrition ending with the surprise of waking up in jail. “That’s the Warrior nearest us. The other one, don’ know but I figure her for some Sorian merchantman.” He creased his brow. “Are we at war with them, sir?” A moment later he added, “Because it looks like Warrior is flying the King’s marque, sir!”
“If not now, we soon will be,” Ford predicted, watching the flash of smoke rise from Warrior’s side as she fired a full broadside. He glanced down again, measuring the distances, then asked, “How do you feel about prize money?”
Quirrel smiled, showing his three remaining teeth. “I’d like that a lot, sir. I’d like it a lot!”
“Then let us take some prizes, airman Quirrel!” Ford clapped the man on the back, noted how bony Quirrel was, and started down the bowsprit.
“Mr. Knox!” he called as he strode down the length of the ship. “What do you say to two prizes?”
“Sir?” Knox repeated in surprise before adding enthusiastically, “I’d say that’s a good start, sir!”
“All hands, prepare for action!” Ford bellowed.
“All hands on deck!” Knox roared in agreement. “We’re going to take prizes!”
The crew roared in approval and moved to their stations with gusto.
#
Captain Nevins smiled to himself as the smoke from his broadside billowed back and he saw the damage to the merchantman’s sails. Good, he thought. He’d ordered his crew to fire for the rigging; he didn’t want to hull the ship. Makes it harder to tow back.
The Sorian ship staggered as its rigging fell and it lost way.
“Prepare to board!” Nevins shouted. He glanced to Jens and his crew. “You know what to do.”
“Aye sir!” Jens, formerly lieutenant Jens, replied with a bob of his head. Jens’ head was shaved and his skin weathered from the sun. He wore a gold earring in each of his ears. “Their captain and officers —” he made a throat-slitting gesture with one hand. “Marder! Senten! To me!”
The named crew, also formerly of His Majesty’s Airship Spite, along with the two other deserters, rushed to his side.
“Bring up the helm!” Nevins barked. “Prepare to board!”
A shout went up from the crew. Nevins smiled to himself. It was going to be a good day!
A sudden roar from above startled him. Warrior shuddered and staggered as shots hit home. Nevins turned toward the sound, eyes wide with fright and fury. What the hell —?
“Ahoy, Warrior!” a voice called down the from the sky that was shrouded in smoke. “Prepare to strike all sail and surrender!”
Nevins grabbed a speaking horn and bellowed back, “Strike! I’ll see you in hell first, sir!”
“Doubtless so,” the voice above returned smoothly, “but if you want to avoid the Ferryman today, you’d best strike!”
“By whose orders?” Nevins shouted back, trembling with fury. “I carry the King’s mark!”
“By my orders, as a captain of the King’s Navy, you cur!” the voice roared back. “Strike now or feed the fishes. Your choice, Captain Nevins!”
Nevins recognized that voice. “Ford? You bastard, you fired on my ship!”
“I’m going to take your ship and the mutineers you have aboard her,” Ford told him calmly.
Spite floated out of the sky, still well above Warrior’s guns, her cannon run out and manned by grinning seamen. Well, Nevins thought grimly, not seamen.
“And what of my prize?” Nevins bellowed back.
“My prize, you mean?” Ford called back spitefully. “Why, I’ll thank you to restrain yourself from further damaging it, if you will.” His voice grew harder as he
said, “Now strike your flag!”
Nevins looked up at the ship that he’d never seen until it had fired on him. It took him a moment to realize why he hadn’t spotted it — it had sailed against the wind! No wonder he hadn’t been looking for it!
That enough to convince him. “Strike the flag!” he shouted to his first officer. He pointed his sword to his coxswain. “Arrest those five and hold him for Captain Ford’s pleasure.”
“And the prize, sir?” first officer Smythe said.
“They’re to surrender to Spite,” Nevins said bitterly.
“Sir!” Smythe protested.
“Our foremast is gone, we can’t fire up to hit him and he can fire down right into our hull,” Nevins said sourly. “What do you propose to do, drown?”
“Sir, we can fight when they board,” Jens cried from his position surrounded by hostile crew.
“They’ll haul off and pound us into kindling,” Nevins said, shaking his head. He turned to Smythe. “There’ll be other days.”
“Sir,” Smythe agreed with a sigh. He turned to the crew. “Prepare to be boarded!”
“No need!” Ford called down from above affably. “Just make repairs, and turn about for Kingsford.”
“Kingsford!” Nevins called. “Are we to be herded back to port like a dog with our tail between our legs?”
“Yes,” Ford agreed heartily, “except you’ll be flying my flag as prize.”
Nevins grit his teeth. “Very well,” he growled.
“And I’m going to lower a line in a moment,” Ford said.
“A line?” Nevins called back. “You mean to take us in tow?”
“No,” Ford replied, “I mean for you to send me up Jens and my four mutineers.”
Nevins heard a struggle from amidships as Jens and the four former Spite airmen fought to break free. He smiled to himself as he heard the hard crack! As the coxswain brought a belaying-pin down on their heads, knocking them unconscious.
“It will be a pleasure!” Nevins called back, smiling to himself. I didn’t like them, anyway.
Chapter Five: Prize Money
“Sire, sire!” a page called as he rushed excitedly into the royal throne room. “Spite has returned!”
Twin Soul Series Omnibus 1: Books 1-5 (Twin Soul Series Book Sets) Page 14