“It’s the Tyger all right,” Xabi muttered. Deep in his belly, he felt the familiar nervous thrill he always felt before a fight. The brine-and-tar scent of ship and sea turned to smoke and blood in his nose as the old battle-hunger rose, blurring his vision.
“Men in the rigging, Capitan,” Mateu cried. “We’re spotted. I think they are prepping the turn.”
The Tyger was a ship Xabi knew from the reports. She was suspected of sinking Eregensian trade vessels, but no one had ever been able to bring proof enough for a war declaration. If Xabi tangled with her now, it was quite likely none of his crew would survive to carry this tale, either. Not that the Senyera wasn’t a fine vessel, but she was built for speed and show more than battle. Good for taking the two Ineo ambassadors and the signed treaty back to the Whispering Isles, piss and culo for outfighting the heavy Zerrijk galleon.
Xabi’s mind raced, listing their advantages against the enemy. They had just sailed out of a spring storm, and many of the sails were still stowed to ride out the gale, but they had the windward advantage on the Tyger and would be able to maneuver more easily than the heavy galleon for a little while. But the Senyera lacked the sail power and top speeds of the galleons and was loaded down with gifts for the Ineo; riding low and pregnant in the water.
Not that it mattered. It wouldn’t be one ship he’d have to outmaneuver and outrun.
“Where goes Berkhout, goes Van Zeyl,” Prime Teniente Porras said. He and Xabi had come up on the ships together, through the line from Guardiamar. It hardly surprised the Capitan that Porras seemed to read his brooding thoughts.
The Tyger and her Capitan, Berkhout, never sailed without the sister ship the De Brack and Capitan Van Zeyl. Two war galleons lurking in these waters left no doubt in Xabi’s mind that they were laying in wait for his smaller ship and her precious cargo. It was an act of war, if anyone made it out alive to report home.
How the Zerrijk had found out about Eregensia’s plans and the treaty, he couldn’t speculate. Not yet, at least. Though the word “traitor” teased his mind.
“Capitan?” PT Porras tapped Xabi’s arm gently.
Xabi looked down at Porras’s weathered and scarred hand resting on his green coat-sleeve. Orders. He had to give orders. Now. He felt the weight of his men’s eyes on him, at least those who weren’t in their hammocks catching up on needed sleep after the gale.
“Rouse the full crew. Set the sails. Send Mar Alben and Mar Tosell up top mid and mizzen. I want to know where the De Brack is as soon as she shows herself. For all we know, Berkhout might be pushing us right into her, showing his sails so that we’ll run.” It was what Xabi would have done in his place.
His men left the rail of the poop deck, crying out his orders and adding their own. Pride lifted his heart from its black reverie for a moment. At least the Almirante had let him choose his crew for the journey. Escorting the Ineo was a punishment duty disguised as an honor. The treaty was important, granting Eregensia the right to sail her trade ships through the Southern Passage. It was the first such agreement signed between a human empire and the elusive Ineo.
But a Brigadier-Capitan should be commanding war-class ships and keeping the waters off his kingdom safe from encroaching powers like Zerrijk. The Zerrijk had been skirting open war for a year now. He shoved his resentment away. It was that sort of blunt anger that had him hundreds of nautical leagues from his home waters, playing host to two foreign civilians. He was, as the Almirante had put it, supposed to be out here on the Southern Ocean cooling his boots and considering an early and graceful retirement.
Xabi snorted, thinking he’d retire when the sea herself closed over his balding head and not a breath before.
The call came down from the foremast nest as Xabi descended to the quarterdeck, trying not to crowd his Capitan-Navie as the huge man gripped the wheel and looked to him for direction.
“Sails sighted fifty degrees east,” Mateu repeated.
“Make for the west, three-hundred,” Xabi said, pleased his voice carried none of his agitation. The De Brack was between them and the Barren Coast, where, with a little skill and a lot of the God’s luck, the Senyera might have been able to slip through and hide in the shallower water. The only options were to fight or sail to the west, where the two war galleons would eventually hunt them down on the open water.
There was, of course, a terrible option. From the look in Mateu’s eyes as he pulled the wheel and called out the orders, Xabi knew that his Navie-Capitan had thought of it as well.
A smooth blue-green head that seemed carved out of jade and painted for a child’s fancy crested the steps to the deck. The Ineo’s thick, muscular body barely shifted with the movement of the galley, even as the wind caught the unfurling sails and pulled the ship starboard. The afternoon sun glinted on the Ineo’s scales and off his flamefish-skin robe. Xabi acknowledged the Ineo, who went by the name Sun Sin, with a nod.
“My sister and I offer help, Capitan,” Sun Sin yelled over the creak of lines and snap of sails catching wind and shifting.
The offer made Xabi smile. He had taken this assignment with great protest and decided before even meeting the two sea folk that he wasn’t going to like them and that they’d better just stay out of the way. The Ineo had done just that these last five weeks, but they’d slowly won over the crew with their steady ways, their lovely singing voices, and their uncanny ability to lose at dice and cards.
Out of pity for Sun Sin and Min Yi’s cache of personal coin and jewelry, Xabi had started inviting them to dine in his cabin and taught them the board game of King’s Defense. Apple brandy flowed, conversation followed, and a tentative friendship based around admiration for the sea and love of tactics and strategy.
“I accept your offer,” Xabi said, “though I’m not sure of the diplomatic consequences.”
“If we are killed, treaty dies.” Sun Sin’s expressions were difficult to read, his broad facial muscles less expressive than a human’s and his large green eyes pupil-less and unblinking, but Xabi caught the dark amusement in his tone.
“It would help if we dropped weight. We can’t outrun them on open water, but we might be able to lose them if we can find shallows.”
“Shallows?” Sun Sin tipped his head to the side in question.
“He means the Boneyards,” Mateu said, spitting over his left shoulder as he named the cursed atolls.
Sun Sin’s thin lips split over his sharp black teeth. “Good, put risk onto enemy,” he said. “Drop whatever gifts you wish into sea. In face of danger, it becomes . . . how you say? Baboui geum, false riches.”
“Thank you, my friend,” he said with a slight bow, praying his idea would put risk, as Sun Sin phrased it, onto the heads of his enemy.
Xabi saw Fraga Teniente Banxar’s bright copper head ducking and weaving among the mizzenmast shrouds and descended, yelling for the young Teniente to join him as he moved for the hold.
“Come, Fraga Teniente,” he said, fighting the nervous, thrilling urge to grin, “let’s go feed a fortune to the Lady of the Sea.”
* * *
The Boneyards were a string of bleached and barren coral atolls that stabbed up through the churning sea around them like discarded monstrous bones. Sailing south from Eregensia, ships always took the inner passage, staying a score of naut leagues off the cliffs where the water was deep and the winds stable until the continent curved away to the east. To sail near the Boneyards was to beg trouble. The currents were wild there, and the winds changed at the whims of the gods. Depths were unpredictable due to the breaking and shifting of the coral reefs and the constant rumbling of the seabed.
Xabi strode the length of the main deck, watching his men, calling out instructions when needed, his shoulders tight with anticipation and his heart full of quiet pride in his men. There wasn’t a man among his crew of sixty he hadn’t sailed with before and found as steady in a storm as in a calm. Even his youngest officer, Castel, one of the Guardiamar, had bright, excited eyes un
clouded by panic.
Of course, the young man hadn’t ever seen combat. The way sails and rigging tore and crushed men beneath them under the onslaught of sail-rippers fired from shipboard ballistae, the giant crank catapults bolted into the decks of most warships. The way man and metal and wood burned in the unquenchable fires of Foc’deu, the green fire that burned on water. Once the warships got within range, there would be no more options. No escape. No retreat.
“Depth-finders!” Xabi called out. He strode up to the forecastle, joining the two Ineo who stood silently out of the way at the bow.
“Capitan,” FT Banxar said as he brought two Mar with him carrying the fathom weights and line used for checking depth when sailing in uncertain, tight passages. “The De Brack has swung away to the south, but the Tyger stays the course.”
“They mean to cut us off if we cross the Boneyards, Capitan,” said Mar Roig, a cheerful young man who had been on ships since he graduated his smallclothes.
“But we do not mean to cross,” Xabi said with a slight smile. He and the Ineo had come up with a plan so stupid it might have turned the edge of midnight back to bright again. If it worked.
“Capitan?”
“Turn the foremast, slow the ship,” Xabi called out and a dozen Mar leapt into the rigging, pulling the sails perpendicular the main and mizzen sails, dragging the ship to nearly a full stop.
“Depth?” Xabi asked. The waves were choppy here and water swirled in tiny maelstroms beyond the bow of his ship. The ivory bones of the nearest atoll loomed closer with every wave roll even as his crew shortened sail.
“Tyger’s gaining, Capitan,” his hirsute Segund Teniente, Laque, called out, the message passed down from the nest.
Xabi looked at Sun Sin and raised an eyebrow in question. It was the Ineo woman who answered him in her softer, lower toned voice.
“We need twelve fathoms,” said Min Yi. She was a twin to her brother, same gemlike eyes and muscular body beneath a shimmering robe.
“Prime Teniente Porras! Men ready?” Xabi called down to the main deck.
“Men ready,” came the relayed call back.
“We’re losing the light, Capitan.” FT Banxar shifted from boot to boot on the deck.
“When I need you to point out the obvious, I’ll give you the order, Fraga Teniente,” Xabi growled. He didn’t mean to be rough with the man, but timing was key now, essential even, if he hoped to pull his ship and his crew free of this trap alive.
Among the treasure below decks, he had found a ship-wrecker chain, clearly intended as a novelty gift and show of goodwill to the Ineo. It was a large, spiked chain made for holding entrances to bays and protecting harbors, designed to crack ship hulls. There was no time to set it up at a narrow point in the Boneyards, even if they had known the terrain enough to try. The best that Xabi and the two Ineo had come up with was to find a place where his ship could sail over and the Tyger or De Brack could not quite touch. That meant at last ten fathoms but no more than twelve.
It also meant letting the Tyger close enough that they could potentially get off their ballistae or launch pots of Foc’deu.
“Twelve fathoms, Capitan,” Mar Roig called out.
Xabi took a deep breath. Then a second. Out to the east he saw the sails of the Tyger, the galleon sailing close enough now that the blood-red hull leapt above the waves like an unsteady flame. All commands carried risk.
“Drop chain! Furl sail!” he yelled and listened to the echo as the commands were given down the length of his ship. The heavy chain went over the stern, lowered like an anchor and draped out behind the Senyera, an invisible and deadly fin beneath the waves.
The Tyger drew closer, shapes resolving themselves into red-uniformed men crawling the rigging and decks like vermin. His own men loosened their swords and readied crossbows, but Xabi hoped it would not come to a fight. The enemy ship was half again the size of his and carrying over double her crew. As much as his blood sang for a good battle, blade to blade, he had long and many scars ago learned the folly of such glory. If only he’d learned to keep his tongue as sheathed as his sword. He shook the thought off.
The chilling scream of a ballista spring, the shrieking release of wire and rope cranked tight and now freed to fire a thick bolt, as though from a giant crossbow, whistled across the churning waters. Sail-rippers.
“Make room!” came the cry from the poopdeck Guardiamar, a serious and capable lad called Mata for how many men he’d killed in a pirate raid his first summer aboard ship.
The sails were pulled in; making smaller targets, but the thick missile with its toothy, broad head caught the rigging in the mizzenmast. Braces and halyards caught and tangled, ropes ripping free. The second sail-ripper finished the port lift on the topmast and yard, tearing the whole rig free as it swung and dragged itself down.
Xabi moved without thinking, leaping off the forecastle to the main. There had never seemed to be so much room on a ship before, and yet so many things in his way. Men yelled and screamed, and the ship herself tipped to port as the mizzenmast groaned. It was too far.
“Capitan!” A huge, sweaty body shoved Xabi back as he gained the quarterdeck. The top mizzenmast and yard hit the poop deck only a few strides ahead of him. He looked up into his Navie-Capitan’s eyes as men screamed and others rushed to pull rigging and the splintering yard free of the wounded.
Xabi shoved Mateu aside and drew his long knife, diving in among his men as they cut rigging and tried to restore order to the deck.
“Crossbows aft!” Xabi yelled as he dragged a bloody but still conscious man free from a tangle of halyard and lines.
“Fire pots!” came the cry down from the nest.
“Sand!” came the order, given so in tandem with his Navie-Capitan that Xabi wasn’t sure who had spoken first. They’d laid the sandbags along the rails and around the masts as they sailed for the Boneyards. It was the only way to quell the endless rage that was the green Foc’deu.
“I’ve got him, Xabi.” Noguerra, his ship’s surgeon, gently pulled at Xabi’s bloody sleeve as he helped the injured Mar to his feet. “This blood his or yours?”
“His, his,” Xabi said, waving the doctor off.
“Good, this is not the time for stupid heroics,” Noguerra said. He lifted the aging soldier half onto his broad shoulders.
Xabi bit back his response that this was exactly the time for stupid heroics. He staggered to the rail, eyes on the enemy as the crimson uniforms scurried to reload and crank the ballistae, this time with pots. Where was that damned chain? The galleon was too wide to have missed it. Had they misread the depths or her draft?
A deep and echoing crack answered his doubts, and for a moment, men and ship seemed to quiet and grow still. Then a terrible cry went up from the Tyger and the red shapes moved more quickly. The big galleon groaned again, her creaking and splintering cries carrying easily over the water to Xabi’s grateful ears. The Tyger stopped her forward push through the water, foundering as her deck pitched and buckled. Smoke and green flames leapt into the air as the fragile pots of Foc’deu dropped and cracked.
“We’ve knocked her knee and stem, Capitan!” Mateu grinned.
“Capitan! Capitan! Capitan! Eregensia Invictus!” echoed from his own ship, and Xabi found himself taking up the cry along with his men.
Then he dropped his sandbag and turned, calling out for Mateu. The work wasn’t done. The sun had dropped to a burning smear on the horizon in front of them, temporarily restoring some of the coral pink to the Boneyards’ grim shapes.
It wasn’t over. The Tyger wouldn’t trouble them, even if she managed to put out the fires. Her stem and hull were damaged beyond ocean-bound repair. The best Berkhout could hope for would be to put the crew into cockboats and hope Van Zeyl could rescue them.
“Capitan,” Segund Teniente Laque called to him from the quarterdeck, and his voice sounded far from victorious.
Laque knelt over a still, stout body on the quarterdeck, blood staining
the scrubbed wood at his feet. Men parted for their Capitan but Xabi moved forward reluctantly. He recognized the weathered boots with their silver buckles tarnished and pocked by the salt water. He knew those strong, scarred hands dusted with gray hair.
One of the heavy wood and iron braces had swung free of the mizzenmast and caught Prime Teniente Porras full in the side of the head as he tried to help his men clear the deck before the yard came down. His chest rose and fell and his eyes were open but his life was leaking away from his broken head in a slick, dark stream.
“I can’t . . . move . . . my toes,” Porras said, his voice thick and halting, as though he spoke around a mouthful of sailcloth.
“I’ll move them for you, if you tell me where you want them to go,” Xabi said softly, kneeling down beside his old comrade and friend.
“Order me . . . not . . . to die.”
Xabi blinked hard, willing his eyes to stay dry. There was no crying in the Eregensia Navy.
“I order you not to die, Prime Teniente. If you disobey me, I’ll have you keelhauled and feed your jewels to the Lady of the Sea.”
Porras groaned, and his lips pulled in a terrible parody of a smile. “Gillipollas.”
The insult was the last word he spoke. As the light died in his friend’s eyes, Xabi rose, pulling the mantle of command around himself like armor. Like a shroud.
“Clear the decks, give me the damage reports. Casualties. Injuries. Carry on, men.”
Besides Porras, they lost three others, all Mar. Petit, Alben, Flor. Xabi committed their names to his memory, adding them to the long list of the fallen who haunted his dreams, grim reminders of his failures as a commander. They had lost the use of the mizzenmast until they could repair the rigging and jury-rig a new topsail and yard. The burning Tyger lit the night behind them. Xabi had the men lower a cockboat and head out in front of the Senyera to test the depth and find a way forward through the ghostly Boneyards.
Sun Sin and Min Yi moved quietly among his crew, helping Noguerra get the wounded below deck and offering their muscle wherever it might be needed. As twilight turned to full dark, the two sea folk came up beside Xabi where he brooded at the rail, watching the lanterns of their guide boat blink and bob. Sun Sin carried a long wooden case, decorated with mother-of-pearl in swirling shapes. Xabi wondered if that held the treaty, and if so, why they would bring it up on deck.
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