A few stood out, as always. His first mate and steward sat near the bar, exaggerating tales of their latest adventure, Lucian occasionally glancing over his shoulder to eye Omari. Crewmates and rival pirates both sat rapt, uttering occasional guffaws of disbelief. In the center of the room, Gunney Lome challenged all comers to arm wrestle. Fengel watched her crush Nate Wiley with a mighty yell and then take up the tankard beside her with frayed exuberance. Somehow, she’d completed the task of relocating all the Revenants aboard the Dawnhawk down to a Waterdock warehouse.
Michael Hockton and Allen the apprentice Mechanist had also been assigned to that unpleasant job, and both now sat disheveled and stinking at a table nearby. The young men were frantically attempting to drink each other under the table. It wasn’t entirely their fault—Miss Stone sat nearby, egging them on while she consoled her vile and ill-tempered pet.
Natasha, as always, held court near the unlit fireplace. His wife never lacked for an audience when in town.
“If it is good luck,” insisted Omari, “then you can take care of it.” She shoved Cubbins back across the table, forcing Fengel to pull back.
Fengel usually drank alone, more for image’s sake than anything else. He would spend the evening looking out upon Haventown after nightfall, the stoic and mysterious captain. To be fair, it was a picturesque scene, if a little boring. The lights of the Waterdocks glowed brightly from here, reflecting from the great bundled chimney of the Gasworks on the second terrace and the wide platform it supported. Far up above hung the Skydocks and its airships, likewise reflecting the glow of the Yellow Lantern Terrace from their great, soft gas-bag envelopes. Tropical birds called in the distance, and the occasional breeze brought earthy jungle scents.
“Omari,” sighed Fengel. “I already have far too many animals aboard my ship to take care of, including a scryn, a bird, numerous diverse pirates, and a wife. You were in such a hurry to be rid of us. I can’t be held accountable that this animal decided to follow you.” He looked up as a shadow fell across the table. “Yes, what is it?”
One of the waitresses had appeared, a tankard of ale in hand. “Here ya go, captain.”
Fengel shoved the cat away again and took the drink with a frown. “Obliged. But I don’t remember ordering another.”
She jerked her head back inside. “Compliments of Captain Blackheart, who’d like you to join her.”
“Oh.” Fengel glanced back to where Natasha sat, surrounded by a gaggle of hapless local admirers. “Tell her I’m just fine out here, but thanks.”
The waitress raised her eyebrows. “Not unless you’re tipping in diamonds, Captain. Everyone who gets caught between the two of you gets shot or set on fire.”
Fengel watched her leave in mild vexation. The complaint wasn’t entirely true. No one’s been set on fire since the wedding.
He returned to his drink while Omari harangued him, trying to appeal to his reason in vain. Fengel ignored her to watch a flickering light up along the Skydocks. Someone was either playing with a lantern or sending covert signals back down to the town below. The latter was more likely. Some skullduggery was always going on in Haventown—shipboard politics, say, or some crewman trying to slip their doxy aboard. Fengel rather looked forward to hearing about it later.
A shadow fell across the table. Glancing up, he saw his wife glaring malevolently down at him. Butterbeak squatted on her shoulder, mirroring her black gaze.
“Leave,” she said without looking at Omari.
“But I’ve got to do something with this cat—”
Natasha grabbed the animal roughly. Then she turned and threw it across the taproom. Cubbins sailed through the air with a yowl and landed on the surprised face of Allen the apprentice Mechanist, who shrieked in surprise and pain. He collapsed beside the bar as the cat savaged him while Lina Stone and Michael Hockton both stared.
Natasha turned back to face Omari. “Leave,” she repeated.
The other woman took the hint this time. She slunk away from her seat, which Natasha promptly occupied. Her parrot took flight, more interested in the chaos near the bar.
“I bought you a drink,” she snarled at him. “I was being nice. It doesn’t happen often. You were supposed to pay me back by coming over and joining me.”
Fengel gave this a distracted shrug. “I...don’t usually drink with anyone, here.”
His wife gave him a look that would have set sailcloth aflame. Then she relaxed abruptly, the fight going out of her, leaving her looking weary. “Horseshit,” she sighed. “You’re still hung up on that meeting with my father.” Natasha took his mug and quaffed from it. Then her eyes popped wide. Gingerly, she removed a long orange cat hair from between her lips. “You think that wasn’t awful for me too?” she asked sourly. “Two weeks ago I killed a man with his own trousers. Yet my father still treats me like I’m five years old, with a head full of dragons and dashing princes.” She shook her head. “You can at least admit you’re still troubled over it.”
A piercing screech startled them both. Fengel glanced back to see Butterbeak fly past Lucian’s table. The malevolent, absurdly colored little thing defecated in Lucian’s tankard just as Fengel’s first mate was about to take a drink. Lucian cursed and dropped his tankard, then took a swing at the parrot. It dodged, screeching again as it flew up into the rafters.
The taproom burst out into laughter. Natasha smiled. Long, painful hours had gone into training the parrot.
Captain Fengel gestured at the scene. “That fairly much sums it up,” he admitted.
Natasha only rolled her eyes. She glanced at the airships and the evening sky above them. “You’ll live,” she said. “Which means that you can damned well come over and keep me company with all the horny bastards who think they’ve still...got...” She trailed off with a frown. Then her eyes widened in surprise. “Goddess’s hairy arms!”
Fengel followed her gaze. The flickering glimmer he’d seen a moment ago was larger now. A cold thrill of fear shot through his belly—what he’d taken to be a lantern was now several blazing fires, each as large as a man.
He shot to his feet. “Fire on the Skydocks!” he bellowed aloud.
Garvey’s Hole evacuated. Some pirates ran off to fetch their captains, others to spread the word. Fengel led his crew towards the stair up to the upper terraces, with Natasha right beside him. Visions of the Dawnhawk aflame hung foremost in his mind.
Not again. Oh Goddess, not again. His last ship had died burning, eaten by a living magical fire. He’d got almost all of his crew safely away, but the final eruptive blast that ended her still haunted his dreams.
The gaudy structures of the Yellow Lantern Terrace flashed by. Whores, sots, and sailors looked up from dim alleys, or poked their heads out the windows as the pirates raced past. Fengel ignored them all, intent on the walkways that provided the fastest way through the ramshackle warren that was night-shrouded Haventown.
Fengel rounded the last corner before the stair to the terrace above and slammed into someone. Natasha ran into him in turn, followed by their crew, colliding into a confused knot of people rushing for the stair from the other direction. Fengel shoved his way free, until he could clearly see the hirsute man he’d collided with. It was James Glastos, captain of the airship Powderheart. He was not on congenial terms with the fellow.
“Fengel!” cried Glastos, reaching for his cutlass. “Set me adrift at sea, will you? Well, damn you to the farthest Realm Below. I’ll gut you like the whoreson dog you are!”
Natasha appeared with a dagger tight against the man’s throat. “You’ll do nothing of the sort,” she snarled, low and dangerous.
Blades and truncheons appeared in the hands of the pirates around them, Natasha’s and Glastos’s both. Fengel frantically threw up his hands. “There’s no time for this! The Skydocks are ablaze!”
Captain Glastos stepped back and pushed Natasha’s dagger away. “I’ve a pair of eyes myself. Where do you think I was going before you and your buffoons t
ripped into me?”
Off to catch the pox, most like. Outwardly, Fengel only glared at the pirate. He was insulting, irascible, and ultimately intolerable. There was a reason Fengel had abandoned him to die once. But there were more important considerations at the moment.
He stepped back, bowed low, and gestured at the stair hugging the cliffside with exaggerated theatricality. “Please, my good captain. Do go first, so long as you and your men move.”
Ugly glares were shot back and forth among the crewmen, but Glastos only nodded and bolted for the stair, climbing with Natasha and Fengel just behind.
They ascended to Nob Terrace, where crowds were already forming. A few of the more quick-witted were pounding desperately against the compound wall of the Brotherhood Yard, shouting for help with the strange, explosive gasses that lifted the airships, which only the Mechanists knew how to handle.
Fengel raced alongside his fellow captains, bellowing with all the practice of long years at sea, shouting at the bystanders to clear the way. Past the taverns and costly homes of Haventown’s elite, the Skydocks were a beacon, its airship gas bags reflecting the infernal blaze of the decks below.
Not again! He turned a corner past the Sindicato mansion where Mr. Grey did his business—and felt his heart drop into his belly.
The Skydocks were a stair-step structure, complete with landings and a rail, surmounting a small hillock at the far end of Nob Terrace opposite the Brotherhood Yards. Otherwise, it was built much the same as the Waterdocks so far below, composed of a series of piers jutting out into space above the rest of the pirate township, buttressed against the cliff face.
Flames licked the gunwales of the two nearest airships. Fengel recognized them: Captain Glastos’s own Powderheart and Captain Duvale’s Windhaunter. Fortunately, the flames were contained to the wooden hulls and had not reached the gasbags themselves. Which meant they only had a little time, as opposed to none at all. The Powderheart was aptly named—Glastos preferred to smash his prey with bombs dropped from above, thus requiring a black-powder magazine aboard his ship. Should the flames reach that, it would be just as catastrophic as if the flammable envelope caught ablaze.
“My ship!” cried Captain Glastos. He darted up the stair to the first Skydock landing where the Powderheart was moored, with Fengel and Natasha just behind. Cranes for unloading cargo stood beside bins of sand along the pier, the latter for emergencies just such as this.
Up close, the fires were burning along the bow, the gunwales, and the stern of the Powderheart, their conflagrations all strangely separate. The sweet char scent of burning wood surrounded them—but not the acrid stink of light-air gas about to ignite. What Fengel could see of the Windhaunter on the next pier above was the same. We can still save both of them, but we’ve got to work fast. Fengel offered up a prayer that the flames hadn’t started belowdecks.
“Lucian! Gunney Lome!” he cried, gesturing. “Get up to the next pier and form a brigade. Henry! Grab Cumbers and Nate Wiley and get some hands started down—”
“To the Realms Below with Duvale’s ship!” yelled Glastos. The pirate captain charged halfway down the first pier to the Powderheart’s boarding ramp. “We’ve got to save mine first!”
“You squid-arsed sack of bilgewater!” snarled Natasha. “If we don’t save them both, they’re all going to go—”
An explosion cut her short. Fengel acted reflexively, throwing himself at his wife and falling with her to the wooden platform at their feet. He crouched above her, heart in his throat, waiting for the deadly rain of burning debris to shower them. He might be damned and gone, but she had to survive.
None of it came. Fengel opened his eyes to see Natasha, frozen and expectant just as he was. He glanced up to see that the rest of the assembled pirates had crouched as well. But both airships were still intact and ablaze.
A figure stood on the deck of the Powderheart between two of the fires. It was a Bluecoat Marine of the Kingdom of Perinault, unmistakable in his uniform and round black hat, holding a smoking musket. Behind him stood a man with another firearm, passing it up. Incredibly, Fengel recognized him; it was Hayes, the ambitious but incompetent first mate of the H.M.S. Goliath.
The raging fires were no coincidence.
“Take cover!” Fengel cried. “We’re under attack!”
More men appeared on the deck of the Powderheart, who were soon joined by others against the gunwales of the Windhaunter above. They were a mix of naval sailors and Bluecoats, but the muskets in their hands were no less deadly for that.
Fengel crawled behind the nearest wooden sand bin, trusting his wife to do the same. Out the corner of his eye, he saw the other pirates likewise scattering for cover. Captain Glastos himself appeared to be the only casualty so far; he hunkered behind a crane ahead, clutching a bleeding arm.
“Kill them!” shouted Hayes from the deck of the airship. “Kill them all! Especially that one with the monocle!”
The Perinese fired just as Natasha scrabbled up against the bin beside him. The reports sounded like a chain of holiday fireworks. Hot lead hissed all around Fengel, splintering wood and perforating clothing. The chain of a crane on his right snapped, sending the rest of the assembly crashing to the Skydock pier. Pirates everywhere cried aloud in pain.
Fengel felt his arm jerk as a glancing shot took off his left cufflink. He stared at his sleeve, incensed. Then he leapt to his feet, brandishing his saber. “Pirates of Haventown,” he cried, “to me!”
He vaulted over the bin and ran down the pier for the Powderheart’s boarding ramp. Behind him the assembled pirates roared their defiance, and the wood of the pier rumbled with the hammer of their bootsteps as they followed his charge. Somewhere above he heard Lucian and Gunney Lome direct a similar action against the Windhaunter.
The Perinese worked frantically at reloading from their place along the gunwales. A few of them fell back with cries of pain as some of the pirates fired back with pistols. At their back stood Hayes, shouting incoherent orders that were promptly ignored.
A trio of Bluecoats with smallswords moved to keep Fengel from boarding the Powderheart. Two took flanking positions along the gunwale opening while the third descended the ramp halfway. He was a brute, ugly and scarred. Fengel had known the type well during his own years in the service—he probably had more scars across his shoulders from the bite of the cat than a shark had teeth.
Fengel flicked out a feint to force the man on the defensive, then curled the tip of his saber down into a vicious hack at his blue-trousered shins. The Bluecoat hissed in pain and sagged as the blade bit, yet he still managed a vicious swing for Fengel’s head with his own blade. He had both strength and the higher ground of the ramp but lacked speed and skill, too eager by half for a killing blow. Fengel parried and hacked again at the injured leg. This time the man screamed, dropping his sword as he collapsed. Fengel stepped aside as he rolled off the ramp, falling between the hull of the Powderheart and the Skydock pier.
The marines at the top of the ramp were a more difficult obstacle, covered as they were by the gunwales and each other’s blades. Fengel threw himself against the one on the left, forcing him into a distracted parry, from which Fengel immediately withdrew to strike against the soldier on the right. But that man was already dying, slipping down to the deck of the airship with Natasha’s thrown dagger buried in his eye. Fengel gave a curt nod of approval and returned his attention to the lone soldier still standing, beating against his smallsword in a furious assault until the marine’s defenses were broken, leaving him wide open for a lunge that left him transfixed upon Fengel’s saber. As he slumped to the deck, Fengel withdrew his blade, stepping onto the Powderheart with Natasha and the Haventown pirates at his back.
Only a dozen Perinese soldiers remained aboard the airship. The majority moved to contain Fengel’s advance, with just two still wielding loaded muskets. They fired wild shots, one going wide and the other dropping one of Captain Glastos’s men to the deck. Then the melee w
as joined in a press of clashing blades.
Fengel deftly sidestepped a wild lunge and slashed the face of the man behind it, folding his free hand tight behind his back as he turned to face another assailant. It was Hayes, surprisingly. The pale, sunken-eyed sailor hacked at him with a smallsword, a grimace of hate twisting his features.
“You!” snarled Hayes. “You’re the one. You’re responsible for everything that happened to me!”
Fengel parried each blow with ease. “Mr. Hayes—for I cannot believe you have kept an officer’s rank—trust me when I say that you have always been at the root of your own problems.” He sidestepped a lunge and punched the man with the bell guard of his saber. “Were you born someone completely different, then perhaps your deficiencies could be resolved.”
“Shut up!” Hayes threw a feint that Fengel ignored. “I’m going to kill you here and burn your ships and take your damned wife back in chains, you—”
Fengel hacked down, lopping off Hayes’s hand. It fell to the deck with the clatter of the smallsword it held. Hayes stared at the stump, spurting with blood, and opened his mouth to scream. Fengel buried his saber in the man’s chest up to the hilt.
“No,” he said simply, “you will not.”
The dying man stared up at him hatefully as he slumped to his knees. Fengel put a boot to Hayes and kicked him off the blade, flicking it once to clean the gore covering its length. He turned away and joined in the rest of the struggle raging across the deck.
It would be finished in a matter of moments. The Perinese saboteurs had a few skilled men with them but worked poorly together. In comparison, the pirates had united to fend off their attackers, knowing that every moment spent was time lost to the flames spreading about them.
His wife teamed with Reaver Jane and Andrea Holt to surround two navy men with boarding hatchets while Lina Stone flung her cantankerous pet into the face of a marine trying to reload a musket. Farouk and Etarin teamed together, new on the Dawnhawk’s crew but old hands at this kind of work. The little Draykin Rastalak was a reptilian terror, leaping and hissing about. Captain Glastos fought arguably the hardest of all, cursing his own men as he skewered two marines at once with his cutlass. Fengel watched Allen the Mechanist and the ex-soldier Michael Hockton compete to shove a hapless marine over the side of the airship.
Beneath a Burning Sky (The Dawnhawk Trilogy Book 3) Page 5