by Nathan Long
The ground crews threw off the hawsers and the whole field of sky-ships rose like a school of whales surging toward the surface of a purple and gold sea. It was as beautiful as a movie. I stayed at the rail long after Sai and Lhan split to the upper deck for more fencing practice.
***
For two days that was pretty much the routine: me looking over the rail and watching the skelshas zip from ship to ship, carrying messages and passengers; Lhan and Sai hacking at each other on the top deck, out of the way of the airmen who were constantly climbing up and down the rigging and winching in and out the steering wings.
I wanted to join in the fencing practice, but I was still waiting for my palms to heal from the skinning they got sliding down the rope. Even if I’d been one-hundred percent I couldn’t have played: not if we wanted to stay incognito. Sai and Lhan could strip down to their masks and undies and still be in disguise. But I was busted if I took off even one layer—busted by my bust—and I didn’t feel like sweating into these rags anymore than I had to. I might start some kind of bacteria culture and kill the whole planet.
So I watched the landscape go by. It was worth watching. The shadows of the airships chased each other across the landscape like a flock of ghost sheep. We flew over a red, orange and blue patchwork of fields, dusty khaki areas of dry wilderness, and blue-black forests. Roads wandered through it all like the marks a kid makes dragging a stick through the dirt. The roads would come together now and then in a cluster of houses or a castle or a town, and then split apart again. Twice I saw one of the Seven’s super roads, ruler-straight and running from vanishing point to vanishing point.
I finally saw a lake or two, though they were more like wide places in the rivers, and once, at sunset, way off on the horizon, a silver flash that might have been a sea. So little water. It made me wonder why the whole damn planet wasn’t a desert. How did the plants grow? Did it ever rain?
***
Boy, did it rain. I found that out the hard way the second night out. I woke up to horns blowing and a spatter of raindrops on my face. There were airmen rushing all around, shouting, and horn lanterns swinging on hooks where the torches usually were. A cold wind hummed through the rigging. I was surprised. Even as high up as we were it had been pretty warm both day and night. Now I was shivering.
Sai and Lhan woke up too. Lhan grabbed a passing airman. “What goes on?”
“Storm!”
“But storm season doesn’t start for two quarters.”
“Tell that to the wind.”
The storm had come up fast in the fourth dark when both moons were out of the sky. The airmen hadn’t noticed it until too late. The normal procedure in storms was to drop to the ground and tie off until it blew over. Trouble was, if you started down too late you could get dragged across trees and rocks and smashed into mountains.
That’s what had happened to us. Some ships were halfway down and just now realizing it was too late to go further. All of them were battening hatches and tying off the steering sails, hoping they’d be able to ride out the storm in one piece.
With a roar, the sprinkle of rain turned into a fire hose. Everything went gray. I couldn’t see. It was like a TV station suddenly going to static. The wind kicked up so hard that the downpour was blasting left to right across the deck. The ship tipped like a bike leaning into a turn. Lhan, Sai and I started sliding toward the rail.
Lhan shouted, clutching his pack. “We must go below!”
I grabbed the rest of our stuff and we hunched our way to the nearest hatch, holding on for dear life. A boson stepped in our way. “You don’t go below, remember, priest?”
I grabbed the guy’s harness and picked him off the deck one-handed. “We go below or you go over.”
His eyes bulged out. “Go and be damned, then.”
I dropped him and we went below. Snarling airmen and merchants pushed us out of every cabin and hidey-hole we found, shouting, “Stinking priests, find your own place!” and, “Filthy vermin, no room!” It was just like being a biker.
We ended up down in the ballast, as far from the rest of the passengers and crew as we could go. This was a stuffy, black pit below the lowest deck, filled almost to the top with crates and rocks. We were wedged into the gap between the shifting crates below and the creaking beams of the deck above.
I didn’t like it. I really didn’t like it. I couldn’t see. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t even roll over. My claustrophobia kicked in big time, and having my chest strapped up wasn’t helping. I felt like a goddamn python was putting the squeeze on me. It took every ounce of restraint I had not to start thrashing and screaming like a shock treatment case.
It got worse when the ship started bucking like a drunk rodeo bull. The hold was hotter than Baton Rouge in July, but I was sweating ice water. My breath came in little Chihuahua pants. I puked. It did nothing for the atmosphere.
Lhan’s voice chuckled in my ear. I flinched. “Have we found your weakness at last, Mistress Jae-En?”
“Fuck off.”
He slipped his hand into mine. “I know you are strong, Mistress, but you may squeeze as hard as you like until your panic passes.”
He didn’t know what he was offering. I could have crushed his hand like a bag of pretzel sticks. It was even money I would rip his arm out of its socket. But it’s funny. Squeezing helped. Human contact—okay, almost human—and the concentration it took to keep squeezing, but not too hard, took my mind off where I was and gave me something to do. Maybe he did know what he was offering.
***
I must have fallen asleep. The next thing I remember was Lhan pulling his hand away. The ship was still and quiet. The wind had stopped. A line of flickering light appeared overhead as Lhan pushed up the hatch and peered into the gangway above us. An airman was passing by. Lhan hailed him. “All clear?”
“Aye. Now get back on deck where you belong, filthy mountain trash.”
Fly the friendly skies, my ass.
We crawled up on deck. I took so many deep breaths of cool, clear air I nearly passed out. Sai and Lhan looked around. After a minute with my head between my legs I joined them. We were under gray clouds and over craggy mountains. There were only two other airships with us, a big merchantman and another little trader like ours, both as tattered and smashed as we were. The navy was nowhere in sight.
“Where are we? Where are the other ships?”
Sai ignored me, staring at the merchantman.
Lhan answered. “The storm appears to have dispersed the convoy. We are separated from our escort.”
Sai pointed. “Wen-Jhai’s ship! That is Wen-Jhai’s ship! We must...”
Lhan interrupted. “I would not approach Wen-Jhai before facing Kedac, Sai. She might again misconstrue...”
“Yes, of course. But then we must reunite with the rest of the ships as quickly as...”
An airman shouted from the rigging. “Pirates!”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
PIRATES!
The whole ship turned to look. Dropping out of the clouds, like black ghosts sinking through a gray ceiling, were four evil-looking air ships, with spear head hulls and long, football-shaped balloons, all painted up with snaky red designs.
The ships made a bee-line for the fat merchantman.
Sai screamed. “Wen-Jhai!”
Our ship and the other trader were in the clear, for now, and our cherry-headed captain was bellowing for evasive action. Sai jumped to the helm. “Attack! You must attack!”
“Fall away, priest! You’re mad! All sails out, lads! Due west. It’s our only hope!”
Lhan grabbed the captain’s arm. “You think you can escape? You cannot match speed with those cutters.”
“Watch me try!”
Sai shook him. “No, you mustn’t!”
The captain flailed away and drew his short sword. “Will no one free me of this plague of priests?”
But Sai, for once, was quicker. He put his blade to the captain’s neck, eyes cra
zed. “Attack or die, Captain. The choice is yours.”
The captain swallowed. His Adam’s apple touched Sai’s blade. “Attack, lads! Due east! It’s our only hope!”
Personally, I was kinda with the captain on this one. It was going to take the pirates a while to take care of the big ship. We’d be miles away before they came after us, and with all the cloud cover they might never find us. But since I didn’t have a hope in hell of convincing Sai not to attack the pirates, and since I wanted my chance at Kedac, I had to stick with Sai’s script. I sighed and stepped behind the captain and tried to look menacing.
The ship wallowed around, barely able to steer because of its crippled sails, and headed for the pirates. The other ship followed our lead. I don’t know if they did it ‘cause we did, or if their captain was braver than ours.
Sai and Lhan tore off their masks and priest cloaks. I ripped off my junk too. I could hardly move in the damn stuff. Some of the airmen stared, but this wasn’t the time for disguises. I would have stripped off my shirt and leggings too, but we were closing too fast. I unwrapped my Aarurrh sword.
Grappling hooks snaked out from the pirate cutters and bit into the merchantman’s rails. The pirates pulled their ships close on all sides. Sword-waving silhouettes leaped the gaps and poured onto the merchant’s deck, but just before the whole ship was overwhelmed we saw a skelsha dive from the aft rail with someone on its back. The pirates shot arrows and spears after it, but it was a dot against the clouds in seconds.
Sai gasped. “Wen-Jhai?”
Lhan shook his head. “Mai-Mar.”
“She abandons her charge?”
Leave it to Sai to put the worst face on everything.
“Maybe she’s going for help.”
Sai looked at me and touched his heart and forehead. “May you be right, and may The Seven help her find it.” He turned and glared over the rail. “Now, by the black blood of The One, why do we move so slowly?”
I was amazed. Sai was positively itching to get into this fight. Was this the same guy who curled up like a pill bug at the thought of facing Kedac?
Five minutes later, our ship and the other trader mashed into the pirate cutters. Sai leaped to a pirate deck, leading our wimpy charge of about fifteen guys, mostly terrified airmen and a few merchants who had their bottom line to motivate them.
Lhan and I exchanged a glance and hurried after Sai. He might have grown a pair, but he still wasn’t much use in a scrap. We were going to have our hands full keeping him alive.
There were no pirates to fight on the cutters. They were all on the merchantman, cutting up an outnumbered squad of Oran Marines. A pirate lookout saw us coming and called a warning. Half the raiders turned to face us, and by the time we’d crossed the cutter’s deck, the rail of the merchantman was a solid wall of pirate steel.
Sai leaped at them like a berzerker. He was dead meat, unless...
I kicked off the rail and jumped ahead of him, unslinging my Aarurrh sword in a big circle as I came down. The blade rang off swords, armor and helmets like a shootout in a bell tower. The pirates fell back, some of them bleeding. I’d bought us about ten square feet of beachhead. “All right, motherfuckers, who’s next?”
Now I really felt like Schwarzenegger.
Sai and Lhan landed behind me, along with the rest of the trader’s crew, and the two sides slammed together like surf on rocks.
When he paid attention Sai almost pulled his own weight, but half the time he was looking over the pirates’ heads, scanning and shouting for Wen-Jhai, and when he got like that he was scarier than a three-year-old with a butcher knife. Not only did we have to keep him alive, we had to avoid getting winged by one of his distracted backhands. Lhan and I ended up staying wide to his left and right and clearing a big ring around him.
I’d like to tell you that I felt sick and disgusted committing multiple murders. I didn’t. Not right then at least. When it’s second to second and kill or be killed, it’s a pretty easy decision.
Actually I was more than all right with it—I felt great. Free. This was what I was made for. Somewhere deep inside of me, my filthy, kilt-wearing, cattle-thieving ancestors were singing a Cumberland war song. My blood pounded out the beat. I could hear bagpipes. My brain turned off and pure animal instinct turned on. See threat, block it, break it, throw it over the side. See opening, stab it, kick it, kill it. I was laughing, giddy as a kid on a tilt-a-whirl.
After all that I’d also like to tell you we won. Sorry. Didn’t happen. Sword to sword I could have gone all night. Lhan was right. I wasn’t going to meet too many swordsmen in his class. These guys were lumberjacks with cutlasses. I was knocking ’em all over the shop, but I was also the biggest target on the deck, and I got so carried away playing Conan the Barbarian I didn’t even think about arrows until there was a yard-long shaft through my right shoulder—yes, same fucking shoulder as before—and two more dangling from my shirt. I would have kept fighting even then except my sword wouldn’t lift anymore. I fell back, trying to switch hands, and tripped over a body. I landed on my butt.
Without me guarding his left, Sai took a club to the head and dropped. Lhan stepped over him and snatched up a second sword. I struggled to get back up and help. I had too much invested in the little turd to let him die.
The pirates smelled blood and moved in, but a voice shouted behind them. “Stop! Enough! Dead meat don’t pay like live slaves! Take ’em whole.”
The pirates stopped. Lhan and I stayed on guard, ready to fight to the end. None of the pirates looked like they wanted to be the first to try and take us alive, but then the owner of the voice, a little rat-faced dandy in a green leather harness pushed to the front. “Unless you want to look like a spinefish, you’ll drop those weapons right quick.”
He gestured up. The rigging was filled with archers, all aiming at me and Lhan. “Don’t be fools. Your mates are dead or surrendered. You can’t win.”
Lhan and I looked around. Rat-Face was right. Our merchant buddies were on their knees behind us. Pirates were rounding up the airmen and passengers from the other ships: men, women, even a few children. Others were throwing open hatches and cargo holds. We exchanged a look and put down our swords.
The pirates swarmed us. They tied our arms, then jerked us onto a cutter with the other prisoners. Rat-Face hopped aboard and his crew cast off; unhooking the grapples, dropping a couple tons of ballast through holes in the hull, and rising into the clouds.
As we climbed, I watched the pirates below transfer the cargo from the two smaller ships to the other cutters. The big merchantman they didn’t bother unloading. They just replaced her crew with pirates and prepared to make sail. The last thing I saw before we were sucked up into the gray clouds was Wen-Jhai being led out onto the deck, proud and defiant.
I looked at Sai, sagging beside me. He’d seen her too. There were tears in his eyes.
We came up out of the clouds into a sushi sunrise: raw and pink. Hanging in front of it was a pirate ship as big as Kedac’s man-o-war, with two more cutters tucked by its sides like baby dolphins sticking close to mama. The big ship was a two-balloon job, with the hull painted same red and black color scheme as her attack ships. The twin balloons, however, were purple, and maybe it was just me and my dirty mind, but from the front, they looked like a huge pair of tits.
***
On board the big pirate galleon, Rat-Face lined us up on the main deck. Lhan, Sai and me ended up parked pretty close to Wen-Jhai. Sai kept shooting longing glances her way, but she wouldn’t give him the time of day.
The arrow through my shoulder, which I hadn’t even felt during the fight, was killing me now. It was one of those layered pains. A deep ache in the muscle that pulsed all the way to my fingertips, a steady branding-iron burn where it went in and came out, all topped off with zesty, eye-blinding spikes of agony whenever I moved or bumped the shaft. I stood real still.
When we’d all quieted down, a big guy with gold fringe all over his harness
stepped forward. He was my height, and twice as beefy, with a big beard and a thick mane of hair. He had a big smile too, and a big voice.
“Welcome, friends! You may have heard that we corsairs of the air are a bloodthirsty lot. ’Tis a view we encourage. But in truth we’re fair men when it comes to trade and promises kept. We only kill fools. The rest get a choice. Three choices, really.”
He looked at a group of merchants. “Those of you who have rich relations or associates in your homelands may ask to be ransomed. You will find our rates reasonable and our accommodations comfortable.”
He turned to the airmen from the merchant ships. “Those of you who yearn for freedom and adventure, not to mention generous shares in all spoils, step forward and join us! And we speak to the women among you, too. The law of your fathers holds no sway here. In the sky we are free of all laws, and many a merry messmate swings a pair of tits as well as a sword.”
To prove his point he pulled a little spike-haired chick with a brace of daggers in her harness out of the gang behind him and put a rough arm around her neck. She elbowed him in the ribs with a grin. I gaped and looked around. Sure enough, about one in fifteen of the pirates was a woman. And now that I thought back, there might have been some women fighting on the merchantman. I’d been so focused, anything but swords and spears had been a blur. My heart pounded. Finally on this planet of naked Victorians I’d found people who thought like me!
The burly pirate was still in mid-spiel. It was suddenly hard to listen.
“Sign our articles and all is forgiven. You’ll get a place in the crew to match your skills and a share of all spoils. But those of you who find freedom not to your liking, and who are not fortunate enough to have wealthy friends have a third choice. Our next stop is the slave market of Daest, where freedom will no longer trouble you.”
That got everyone jawing. Most of the merchants and first class passengers started signaling Burly to cut ransom deals. Some of them must have done this before. They acted as bored and business-as-usual as smugglers at the Tijuana border. As for the merchant airmen, I was surprised how many stepped forward to join the pirates, considering how hard they’d fought. I guess for airmen a ship is a ship, and the thought of slavery was one hell of a motivator.