Dark Empress

by S. J. A. Turney

  Course had been set as soon as the eagle rock had come into view and the rudder locked into position at the top. That needn’t matter and, in fact, would prove beneficial, meaning that no sailor would be close enough to the rear rail to notice her work.

  Her assessment from her cabin had been correct. The two wooden struts that held the rudder into the hinged mechanism were long past due for replacement. One was white with age and had been seriously attacked by salt and weather. The other had already snapped, though the damage had gone unnoticed as the safety rope continued to hold it together.

  However, if the other wooden spar went…

  Reaching the mechanism, Asima grasped the shipward end and drew her knife. Inserting it into a natural stress crack in the wood, she began to slowly and carefully work the solid, heavy blade back and forth. She smiled as she felt the wood beginning to give easily under her assault, and small flakes and fragments of ruined timber twanged off and floated down into the water.

  She sighed with relief as she realised that this was going to be considerably easier than she had initially estimated. There was a quiet crack and a large piece of the strut disappeared down into the waves. Just a moment longer…

  She almost lost the knife as the strut split with the last push, grabbing madly to retrieve it. The effect was more sudden and obvious than she’d expected. Though still attached by the rope, the lack of any solid support had allowed the rudder a great deal more leeway than before. With a crack, it slipped sideways as far as the restraints would allow.

  The whole ship lurched and banked with the new direction of control and Asima was almost thrown from the ledge, the starboard side of the ship rising alarmingly. She heard shouts of alarm from above and knew she had only moments.

  Flinging caution to the wind, she ran along the narrow ledge, trusting the new raised angle would push her further aboard rather than tipping her over. She reached the corner and flung herself around it, grasping the rail for safety just as the heads of the sailors above appeared at the upper edge, desperately trying to see what had happened to the rudder.

  She grinned as she realised she had done it.

  The ship would suffer badly in its manoeuvrability and would not be able to continue its journey across the open sea with the rudder floundering around. By her estimate it would take some serious work with ropes and all the strength of four men to keep the course steady enough to get anywhere to repair it. Ghassan would have no choice but to make for the nearest port which, according to the chart in her cabin, lay some three miles along the island’s coast from the eagle rock.

  The rest should be easy. Once the Wind of God was in dock, she would have the easy task of slipping away into the small town. It would be Pelasian territory and there would be fishermen with sailing boats that could take her from island to island until she found herself on the mainland and away from Ghassan and his principles. Passage would be easy to buy with the riches she carried, as would the silence of anyone involved.

  She would shortly return to Pelasia to plan her rise to prominence and Ghassan would have to head back to Calphoris and be disciplined for his failure. Unfortunate for him, but he must be used to failure by now and, besides, he shouldn’t have got in her way.

  She…

  Asima’s smile fell as she reached the end of the narrow ledge and turned the corner back toward her cabin and came face to face with a burly sailor.

  Momentarily, she considered knifing him and tipping him overboard, but decided against it. Not only did he carry a heavy belaying pin that he may be able to hit her with first but also, if she attacked him and failed, she would compound her guilt in Ghassan’s eyes.

  Whatever happened, they would still have to put in at the island and she would find a way to leave. Nothing had changed.

  In which the reunion is completed

  The young captain growled angrily and Asima merely shrugged.

  “I could lie to you if it would make you feel any better, Ghassan. Perhaps I heard a dangerous crack from my cabin. Not wishing to disturb the poor, hard-working crew, I risked life and limb to make my way out to the source of the noise and try to help. I barely made it back with my skin intact when the thing gave way just as I approached.”

  She smiled with the most unpleasant falseness she could muster, right down to the curl of a sneer on her lip.

  “Does that make you feel better, captain?”

  Ghassan stood and stared out of her cabin window. The sun had been up for a little more than an hour now. He had refused to order his men to carry out any work in the conditions last night, what with the darkness, slippery wood and the ship lurching every now and then. As soon as dawn had crested the horizon, though, he had sent three men down to the rudder to completely remove the damaged hinge mechanism and tie the pole tightly in place. The Wind of God bobbed on the calm sea, drifting as the current took it.

  “What did you hope to achieve?”

  Asima shrugged again.

  “I have no wish to visit Velutio and I believe the word you’re looking for, Ghassan, is sabotage. You’ll have to put in at the nearest island and I will find a way to leave you whatever you do to contain me.”

  Ghassan snarled at her.

  “You stupid woman! You risked your life and ours because you are so damned spoiled that you will have your own way whatever the cost? Just how selfish have you become, Asima?”

  She allowed her sneer to remain while the smile fell from her face.

  “Your words mean nothing to me, Ghassan, because you mean nothing to me. I have been mere steps away from becoming one of the most powerful queens the world has ever seen and I will have that again, despite the interference of mindless soldiers.”

  Ghassan laughed without a hint of humour.

  “Well I’m afraid you’ve failed this time. I have no intention of putting to port. It will take the best part of a day for my chief carpenter and his men to work up a replacement and a matter of hours to fit it. By this time tomorrow we will be on our way once more.”

  He turned and pointed angrily at her.

  “In the meantime, you are restricted to your cabin. It will be locked from the outside and your window will be barred, even though I doubt you would fit through it. The only contact you will have with the crew is when Palas brings you your meals and you’ve never met a more straight-laced and unfriendly man than Palas. He will have none of your charm. Were it not for the fact that you are supposedly a noble guest and I am duty-bound to look after you, I would have you locked in one of the equipment rooms down below in the dark.”

  He smiled his least humorous smile.

  “And if there is the slightest hint of trouble from you for the rest of the voyage, I will be seriously tempted to tip you over the side in chains and tell the commodore that you leapt to your death. Do I make myself clear?”

  Asima flashed him a haughty and disobedient look.

  “Just leave me. Your stench will settle in the cabin for days otherwise.”

  Ghassan let his glare linger on her for some time and then strode from the room, stopping at the door, removing the key and placing it in the outside. As he shut the door and locked it, he addressed the junior officer in the corridor beyond.

  “The lady Asima is refused permission to leave her room. She will be brought three meals each day and once a day a boy will be sent in to replace her shit-bucket. Clear?”

  The young man saluted with a nod and Ghassan strode angrily off down the corridor and out into the light. Eying the inactivity on the deck with frustration, he considered bellowing orders out to the lounging oarsmen to scrub decks or re-coil ropes. No use taking it out on them, though. They worked hard when needed and it was hardly their fault that his childhood friend had turned into a saboteur. What he’d really like to do was to cuff Asima round the ear and try to knock some sense of decency into her.

  He turned, grumbling, and climbed the steps to the command deck. Half a dozen carpenters were at work near the rear rail, putting
together a replacement mechanism for the rudder. He’d known it was on its way out, but it should have lasted the journey and Velutio had some of the most famous docks and shipwrights in the world. He would have easily replaced it within an hour at the capital.

  Now, his men worked tirelessly to form a new one from bare chunks of wood with their saws, chisels and planes, but he knew his men and was quietly confident that the new item would be finished and in position before the end of the day, let alone tomorrow.

  Calamon, the first officer, nodded at him from the other side of the deck.

  “Captain.”

  Ghassan strode over to join his second. Calamon was young for the position, much like his captain, but had previously served with distinction and had done an excellent job in the last few weeks on board. The tall, olive-complexioned man was a native of Germalla to the north and spoke with an accent that still occasionally caught Ghassan out and needed repeats.

  “Calamon.”

  The two men stood, looking down into the calm water as shoals of fish came close enough to investigate the giant thing that had invaded their habitat. The first officer appeared to be a quiet man, possibly a result of the slight language difficulties, but he tended to keep himself away from the crew, often standing alone at the rail.

  “You have questioned the princess, captain?”

  Ghassan snorted.

  “If that’s what you wish to call her. She can call herself princess, concubine, queen or goddess if she wants. What she is is a spoiled brat and possibly the most dangerous thing we’ve ever had on board.”

  Calamon’s face dipped into a frown.

  “I thought when she came aboard that you were friends, sir?”

  The captain shook his head.

  “We were, when we were children in M’Dahz; the two of us and my brother. But while I chose an honourable path and am making a life and serving a greater good, she appears to have spent the last two decades serving only herself and growing to resent everything else. When I was a boy I was always fascinated by tales of the Pelasian satraps and their armies, with elephants and armoured cavalry and their perfumed palaces and so on.”

  He sighed.

  “But I see now that Pelasia, whatever it is truly like, has ruined Asima; turned her into a spiteful witch.”

  With a laugh, he gestured out to the northwest.

  “I can only pity the poor bastards in Velutio that are going to get saddled with her for the next few decades. She’s been on board for just over a day and she’s already ruined my ship.”

  Calamon smiled.

  “Hardly ruined, captain. Think how much worse her sabotage could have been if she knew the first thing about ships…”

  “I suppose.”

  Once more the two men fell silent, staring out at the sea.

  “Did you lock her in?”

  Ghassan turned to regard his first officer.

  “Had to. Why?”

  “Very unpleasant with no fresh air, sir. Trapped in a room with a slop bucket. It’s not as though she could do much during the day with the crew up and about, sir.”

  Ghassan shook his head.

  “At the very least she could make another run for it. I really wouldn’t put it past her to jump overboard in her underwear and swim for the nearest island.”

  Calamon opened his mouth to reply with a sly smile, but was interrupted with a call from aloft and his words went unsaid.

  “Sail ho!”

  The two senior officers snapped their heads back and peered up through the rigging. The boy at the top of the main sail was gesturing desperately out to the east past where the workmen dealt with the damaged rudder and off beyond the stern.

  Ghassan and Calamon ran across the deck to the rear rail, hurdling the carpenters who sat cross legged, working feverishly.

  Shading their eyes and squinting into the low morning sun, they could just make out the shape of the ship ploughing toward them on a direct course.

  “Tell me there are other naval vessels out this far, Calamon.”

  The first officer shook his head.

  “I’d seriously doubt it sir. Too close to Pelasian waters for anyone unless they’re making for Velutio like us.”

  “And that’s coming from the wrong direction for a Pelasian” Ghassan grimaced. “Besides, I think the sail shape’s wrong.”

  As they watched, Ghassan started in horror to see a sudden flare as a mass of burning material arced up from the other ship and shot toward them across the waves, the orangey-green flare joining the bright glare of the sun for a moment before it crashed down with a splash into the water several hundred yards from the hull.

  “How the hell did it get that close without the lookout seeing it earlier, captain.”

  Ghassan grumbled.

  “It’s facing this way and coming out of the sun. We’re lucky he noticed it that soon. Whoever that is, they knew we were here and they planned it carefully. And they’re testing the range with their artillery, so they have no intention of treating this as a light engagement... they’re out for blood.”

  Calamon nodded.

  “Pirates. Permission to stand the crew and the artillery to and get us moving as best we can?”

  “We’re barely manoeuvrable, Calamon.”

  “Better barely moving than a stationary target, sir. If we sit here and wait, they’ll find the range and burn us to cinders.”

  Ghassan grumbled. The man was right. They had to at least try and manoeuvre their way into a better position.

  “Alright, turn us into them. Use the oars as rudders like they used to do in the old days. Once we’re on course, give me ramming speed.”

  Calamon blinked.

  “Are we not going to try and outrun them, captain?”

  “We’d not succeed, Calamon, but at least if we close the gap we make it harder for them to bombard us and it’ll come down to a matter of marine versus cutthroat. If we’re really lucky, they’ll turn as we get close and we’ll manage to ram them. I doubt they’ll be that stupid, but it’s possible. The Wind of God has got a bit of a reputation, after all.”

  The first officer nodded, saluted, and ran off to shout orders around the deck.

  The oarsmen, woken rudely from their rest, ran to their seats and began very professionally to ship their oars. The engineers clambered into the artillery tower and started to arm, turn and crank their grisly weapons. Marines poured from the doorway below deck and formed up in the centre under their commander’s gaze, settling their armour into place and readying their weapons.

  “Oars to the water” Ghassan bellowed. “Get us moving! Bank to starboard with the steering oars and bring us about!”

  Ghassan took a deep breath. As if he didn’t have enough to deal with, now it was pirates too. He stared up to the lookout aloft.

  “Can you get any detail?”

  “Not sure, sir, but I think it’s the Empress!”

  Ghassan rolled his eyes and slammed his fist on the rail. Of course it was the bloody Empress. What else could go wrong with this voyage. That at least explained how they’d managed to get into such a position. Samir must have found out they were taking on Asima at M’Dahz and shadowed them until they were in the middle of the open sea.

  He slapped his forehead in amazement. Asima must be working with him. She’d effectively crippled the ship just in time for him to bear down on them with his artillery firing as he came.

  There was an old superstition that having a woman on board was unlucky.

  Certainly this one was.

  In which captains clash

  Samir frowned at the man in the bow, staring out into the blue.

  “And you’re sure it’s her?”

  “Sure as shit, sir.”

  The captain of the Dark Empress shook his head in puzzlement.

  “Then what the hell are they doing? Ghassan’s a good sailor and has uncanny sight. He must have seen us by now, so why are they just wallowing like that?”

  The looko
ut shook his head.

  “Can’t see anything wrong with her. Maybe they haven’t seen us yet?”

  “Well I wouldn’t want to be accused of being all sneaky, mister Col” Samir grinned. “Let’s wake ‘em up.”

  Turning away from the bow, he rushed across to the central artillery castle and pointed at the fire thrower.

  “How close can you get to the enemy with that thing without actually hitting her?”

  The artillery man shrugged.

  “If we wait a few minutes, I can part their hair with it, captain… well, singe it anyway.”

  Samir shook his head.

  “I want to give him enough warning to face us properly. Fire a few ranging shots as we close.”

  The burly engineer frowned.

  “What for sir? Surely the less prepared they are, the better?”

  “Not in this case. Every chance Ghassan’s had to take me on, he’s hit us by surprise and tried to trap us. He likes to think he’s better than us, because he’s working for the government, but we’re going to extend him courtesies he wouldn’t to us.”

  “But why?”

  “Because,” Samir grinned, “when I steal his cargo and sink his ship, I want him to know he had every chance and we were simply better.”

  The artillerist shrugged.

  “It’s your ship, captain.”

  Turning away, he issued the commands to his men and the fire thrower was loaded and aimed quickly and efficiently. While they worked, Samir strode back to the bow. How the hell could Ghassan not see them? Alright the Empress had the sun at her back, but Ghassan was better than this, so there must be something else going on. Briefly, Samir wondered if his brother had laid some sort of elaborate trap, but there was nowhere close enough to hide another vessel. The archipelago was just too far away.