"Damn, Holder," he said.
Holder just smiled and shot again.
This one tore through Lightman's right arm. He dropped to his knees.
"What the Hell you do that for?" he asked. With an effort, he forced himself back to his feet. Ready to run if Holder raised the gun again.
Holder chuckled, and his laugh led into a coughing fit. When he was done, blood and saliva glistening on his chin, he said, "I'm a dead man, Avery Lightman. We're all dead. But you're alive, forty miles behind enemy lines.
"You got two good legs, you can walk out of here. If you're lucky. Traveling at night, hiding during the day. But I don't expect you'll be carrying any strongbox full of gold with you, not now. And I don't expect knowing you're to blame for the troop being killed will make it any easier on you. Who you got in the world, Lightman? Anybody give a damn you're alive or dead? I hope so, because I want you to have a reason to try to get home.
"Wherever I am, I'll be watching you try. And laughing my ass off."
Holder chuckled once more, closed his eyes. His head fell back against the strong box. He was gone.
Lightman looked at the box again. All that gold.
Blood ran down both arms. He didn't have the strength to move Holder's corpse, much less carry gold.
He started walking, toward the rising sun.
COMES THE STORM
by Ree Soesbee
The dawn broke in thin shades of gray and black, and huge sheets of rain pinned themselves to the clouds. Red Petals Su leaned forward over the jib, cursing the storm with all her breath as the wind threatened to tear her sailors to shreds. The iron ship, Abysmal, creaked and groaned with the weight of the crashing waves. Ship-hands scattered, pulling ropes and sealing bilge-chutes.
The storm had not been unexpected, but Su had hoped it would turn to the south, avoiding their path. From this angle, through the rain, the openings to the Maze seemed thin cracks in a great wall of earth and stone, plastered with seaweed and rivers of mud. The storm had not veered at all. In fact, it had come straight for them like a tiger sent from Hell.
"No choice," yelled Shoi-ming, the first mate. "No choice, Capt'n, we'll have to go in!"
Su turned from her threats and glared at him. Her black hair whipped in the thick wind like the sail on the masthead, and her yellow-brown eyes narrowed with anger.
"No choice!" Shoi-ming repeated, clutching to the rope on the rudder with both hands. "If we don't go in, we'll lose th' engine, certain, Capt'n. We'll be adrift!"
"Hard to port!" Su's voice out-roared the thunder, and the men struggled to obey her command. The Abysmal wasn't built for Maze-running: its great iron hull was too low in the water, too slow for turning at speed. Her guns, twenty to a side, hung sheathed in iron portholes and her engine was built for a flat run, not the dodging and twisting of the Great Maze.
Yet the stone walls of California's coast opened before them as the sea raged beneath their bow. Clay walls covered granite towers, forty feet above the waterline. The Abysmal turned blindly, her steam-powered engine laboring to churn the waves, and the ship and crew were swallowed by the open maw of the Maze.
It had been as inevitable as the tide, but that didn't soothe Su's spirits. Red Petals Su was a beautiful woman, as hard and cold as her iron ship. Head of the Warlord Kang's armada, she had a reputation to uphold, and neither time, tide nor death would make her fail the Warlord's wishes. Her thick red nails clawed uselessly at the iron railing of the captain's deck and rain slid into her eyes. Black hair clung to the Chinese-red vest as she strode down the stairs to the main deck.
"Get me when we're past th' line of th' storm." With a clashing punctuation, the door to her cabin slammed and the mate was alone with the broken wind.
"Aye, aye, Capt'n," Shoi muttered.
Not a man aboard the Abysmal would have traded their lot for his.
"Six days?" Su's voice was low, almost purring. Soft.
Shoi winced as if he had been struck, and bowed politely. "Yes, Capt'n. At least. Th' hull of th' starboard side's been crushed, and there's water come through the ribs in th' lee of the cargo hold. We can't risk..."
"If we're six days late to Shan Fan, Kang'l have our heads."
"If we take to the open water, Su, we'll sink 'er.
Su's poured ivory features tightened, and she reached for a map above the desk. "Then we won't go to sea, and we'll still make our meeting with Kang."
"Cruise the Maze? In the Abysmal?"
Her eyes pierced him, and her fingers gently set the map on the table's surface. Within seconds, he had bowed again, in apology. " 'Course," he choked.
"This way..." She pointed, and he peered down at the map. Seven years in the Silver Tiger Society had not prepared him for his time aboard ship. The coterie of dedicated martial artists had educated him in many ways, and he was ready for fighting, killing or dying. But they hadn't considered Red Petals Su. Ten thousand prayers of enlightenment, seven hundred elaborate kada to sharpen the mind and hone the body, and it took one woman to send it all into chaos.
"There's no marks on this channel, but it goes through." She continued, and he cleared his thoughts again. "We'll go north-b'northwest until we reach the end of the map, and then make a turn to th' starboard ten degrees. If that doesn't take us to the Corridor of Bells and the way to Shan Fan, then we'll blast our way through the walls of th' Maze 'til we find ocean. Understand?"
He nodded, once. "Aye, aye, Capt'n Su. We'll do what we have to, to get through."
Su looked at him sharply, wondering if the words were in sarcasm, but Shoi's face was neutral as he studied the map. "You don't like me much, do you, Shoi-ming?"
The Silver Tiger did not bother to look up from tracing the path on the large map of the Maze. "No, Capt'n."
"Hmmph." Red Petals Su stared into his face, but he did not look up from the text on the table. Shoi was a thin man, his greasy ponytail pulled tightly back from his face. In his belt, a pair of deadly nunchaku hung. She had often seen him practicing with the weapon, but never had there been a reason for him to use it. Shoi was a newcomer to her ship, sent by Warlord Kang to 'keep her safe.' More likely, to keep an eye on her.
"We've got thirteen days to Shan Fan, Shoi. It's a long trip, but if we're lucky, we'll make it. Get ready for a long haul."
"Aye, Capt'n."
"And you better get used to me," Su snarled, slamming one red-nailed hand in the center of the map. Shoi-ming jumped slightly, unprepared for the action, and fire leapt to his eyes. "Because I'm Captain of this ship, and if I don't like you, I'll throw you overboard to the bilge-scum and the Maze Dragons. You got it?"
"Aye, Capt'n." They both knew the threat was most likely hollow—Kang would be furious if Su killed his best agent aboard her vessel. Nevertheless, she could probably do it. And if she was angry enough...
"Now go get the crew ready. You're th' first mate, they need to be able to work with you. Get 'em up, get 'em scrubbed, and get 'em moving. We're losing time already." Shoi nodded, bowed slightly, and backed out of her cabin as she rolled the map and put it away once more.
It was going to be a long journey.
Four days later, the crow's nest bellowed a warning, and two hours after that, the wall hove into view. Su leaned one foot on the deck cannon as she peered forward over the bow.
"Mine! There's a ghost mine ahoy!"
Shoi-ming allowed himself a slight smile. Su would be pleased. There was no mine marked on the map in her cabin-Hell, this entire section of Maze wasn't marked on any map-and this was sure to be a rich find. Perhaps enough to make up the lost time, in Kang's eyes.
Red Petals Su swung up the tall post that served as the Abysmal's crow's nest, and peered through the crewman's telescope. With a sharp-toothed grin, she clapped him on the back and leapt down as lightly as her namesake.
"Huge, Shoi." She grinned, ordering the men to ready another small boat. "Nearly big enough t'sail the Abysmal into."
As it hove into sight
over the crest of the waterline, Shoi could see that she was right. A massive cleft split one of the tallest cliff sides he'd ever seen in the Maze, and boards and rigging hung limply from the open side of the cavern. Someone had been mining there, that was certain.
"I'm taking the sampan in. You'll come."
It wasn't a question, and Shoi knew it. He wondered why no one stood on the riggings outside the great cavern. He stared at the broken ropes, and for a moment, considered the age of their wear.
No matter. Su wanted to investigate, and that was enough.
The cavern opened before them and the waves steadily pushed them inside. The rowers on either side of the small sampan hardly moved their oars. They didn't have to. It was as if the mine itself drew them along, deeper into the darkness.
"Ahoy!" Shoi yelled, and saw Su grin. "Ahoy!" he called again, but only the echo of the depths called back to him. The waves splashed gently against the side of the boat, and Chinese lanterns skittered crazily, their faint light dancing on glittered walls. The prow of the ship, a carved dragon, cast fanged shadows that slid along the wall as the sampan moved steadily past.
Red Petals Su reached for one of the paper lights, unlatching it from the boat's bow and holding it aloft so that its light shone steadily ahead of the sampan.
"Nobody's here, Capt'n Su."
She nodded, her grin spreading wide. The lantern's flickering candle darkened the shadows around her eyes and colored her red lips with blood. "Then I guess it's ours. I..."
Her voice faded as the light from the opening shrank slowly in the distance. In the rear of the great cave, a tall mast loomed up from beneath the waves, half-covered by rock and buried in tons of granite. The ship was crushed, half-in and half-out of the rear wall of the small bay. Though half the size of the Abysmal, she must have stood tall in the water some ten years back, her double-masted deck ringing with the sound of men laboring to pull ropes along mastheads and scurry through rigging and twine.
Now, she was nothing but a hollow wreck, buried in earth and water, her foredeck jutting above the water like some arcane lighthouse.
"Black Bess?" One of the sailors read as they pulled alongside the hulking mass. Beneath the mold and the barnacles, golden letters still read true, obscured by a decade of slime and muck.
"Never heard o'er." Su ignored the ravaged vessel and ordered the sampan close to the wall. "Look at this." She lifted her lantern high and reached out, stepping up onto the rafters. A strange cat, perched on a limb, her grace belied the danger. She broke a chunk of earth from the wall of the cavern with a solid wrench, and Shoi felt the sampan shake slightly in the water.
She held it out, rubbing it against her breeches. As she did, a faint glow lifted from the surface of the rock, and a whispered moan flowed through the water beneath the boat. "Ghost rock. It's all over the cave." The black surface of the stone she waved beneath Shoi's nose glistened and glowed with a dark aura.
Shoi paused, looking down into the water as Su shared her stone with the men. He leaned over the side of the sampan and stared down at the wreck. A skeleton grinned up from beneath the waves, battered pistols at the ready. He leaned against a barnacle-covered chunk of iron that may once have been a cannon, and a cold chill shook the Silver Tiger's spine.
The Silver Tigers would have thrown Shoi out of the temple for that single moment of doubt. His vision drained down into the skeleton's empty, moss-filled sockets, and a strange shock of fear chilled his spine. Destiny clutched him in its dark hand, and Shoi felt the fingers close around him. Shoi breathed once, a ragged inhalation as a fist broke the water in front of him, sending ripples through the image. Shoi-ming stared down as Red Petals Su thrust her find into the ocean, cleaning the grit and caked mud from its slick surface. Her hand, the yellowed ivory of old chopsticks, darkened from its touch.
But all Shoi could see was another skeleton, standing directly beneath the sampan, pinned to the deck of the gutted ship by a ton of rock and clay.
"It's ours now, Shoi-ming. Ready th' other sampan to take a'couple loads from here before we go. We'll leave one behind, to guard 'til Kang's miners arrive." She tossed the chunk into the air, catching it again in a determined fist.
And Shoi could have sworn he saw one of the skeletons smile.
The sampan slid out of the crevice as easily as it had come, and the men on the Abysmal let out a cheer when they saw what Su was holding.
"Richer than kings we'll be, Shoi. Even a small take of that mine is worth millions." Su's voice was cheerful, optimistic. "And then I'll convince Kang to let me be rid of you. With all the haul we'll be bringing, he can't refuse. You can go back to your little monastery, and leave me to pirating. Good enough for th' both of us, eh, Shoi?"
Shoi-ming nodded thoughfully, looking back once more at the ship, buried in its watery grave. "Good enough, Capt'n Su," he agreed. Still, something stirred deep beneath the waves of that place, making his skin crawl.
As soon as they returned to the side of the Abysmal, Red Petals Su started giving orders, commanding her men to send more boats into the cavern and pull what they could from the walls, from beneath the water. "Strip what you can, and we'll let Kang send miners for th' rest."
Three more sampan, fully loaded, left the cavern that afternoon, filled to the gills with ghost rock. Seven men, armed with pistols and sabers, stayed behind. The Abysmal turned, labored with its battered engines and bleeding water from its hull, and began the final leg of the journey through the Maze to Shan Fan. Su's map said it wasn't far now, only another four days.
A cold breeze brushed Shoi's face, and Su turned to smile. "A good find, Shoi. I've never seen easier pickings."
The first mate opened his mouth to say something, but Su had already turned away. As the sun hid beneath the curve of the land, the sea grew dark behind the Abysmal. Her engines continued with their puttering crawl, so different from the open roar of the engines at sea.
"Ten women and three guns with my share!" A sailor's voice rose greedily above the din. Laughter shook the air as the men guffawed.
"With your ugly mug, you'll be lucky to buy one woman!" More laughter.
The sun vanished behind the towering cliffs of the Maze. The ocean turned cold and sullen. Blackness crept through the wake of the Abysmal, dark as the stain of the ghost rock in the water of the cavern. "Get some sleep, Shoi. You look pale as death."
He slept, though it grew darker still.
***
"Ship, ahoy!" Well past the time the torches were put out, the crow's nest cried from its height. Another shout, and then the man's voice cracked, broken from surprise.
Shoi leapt to his feet, Su only a moment behind, buckling her saber to her side as she leapt from the Captain's cabin. Shoi-ming called up to the mate in the nest. "Friend or foe? Does she fly the 'fedrate flag?"
No answer.
Su cupped her mouth in her hands to yell more loudly. "Hoy, mate! Is she friend, or..."
Shoi's hand clutched her arm, and Su stared at him, surprised. "Shoi-ming, what the Hell are you doing?" But her first mate did not look at her, did not turn his face from the stern of the great iron ship. Su cursed and turned, drawing her saber reflexively and shaking off his grip.
Then she saw what had captured his attention.
A greenish mist spread across the twilight sea behind them, rolling forward over the churning waves. Sea-foam twined within it, spraying out in white gouts like a whale's spit, and above -it all loomed a single ship, barely aloft above the fanged, changing green foam. As the mist touched it, the spray turned to blood, drenching the sea with reddish gouts and creeping beneath the waves Its twin masts were half-broken, and carried the weight of tattered sails still wet from the grave. Her bow hung in pieces, the ribs of the ship poking out through molded planks, and the figurehead was an albatross, covered in barnacles and bones. Her flag flapped loosely, though there was no wind, and she could see the guttered flames of bluish torches casting infernal shadows across its bow.
The ship raised up on the mist, nearly breaking its spine on the downward crash. No wind blew to distend her blood-filled sails, and no oarsmen steered her forward. There was no sound of steam, nor smoke from any engine, but still she closed -closer still. And now, upon her foredeck, rose the skeletons of drowned men. Their calls echoed on the suddenly silent ocean, gibbering with madness and revenge. And on her bow, by the red-sprayed albatross, golden letters gleamed.
Black Bess.
When the mist hit the Abysmal, Shoi heard Su scream for the engine. Beating upon frozen backs with her fists and the pommel of her saber, she howled like a wildcat. The sailors, stiff with fear, suddenly realized one thing: The ghost ship wouldn't kill them-Su would get them first.
They moved.
The Abysmal started to turn, preparing the ten guns on her starboard side for battle, but the ricochet of cannon came first from the ghostly enemy. Blue fire filled with screaming faces arched through the air, catching the Abysmal in her starboard flank. The ship, made of iron, had never burned before. There had never been fire hot enough, but it burned now, and the flames were blue and cold. Sailors screamed as it leapt to their arms and faces, devouring their souls along with their bodies. Some leapt over the side, hoping to quench the flame with salt-water. The ocean kept those, and the waves turned red and foul.
In the echoes of the mist, Su heard the captain's cry aboard the Bess. "Reload!"
Su's answer was simple. "FIRE!" She howled, and the Abysmal responded with a roar of flame and fury. Ten cannons—twice that of any other ship that prowled the Maze-unloaded their Hell's furnace upon the direct bow of the Bess. Iron balls tore into the side of the other vessel, wreaking holes the size of a man's head right at the waterline.
But the Black Bess didn't flinch. As Su's cannons echoed through the blackness of night, mocking laughter could be heard across the ocean, and the Bess prepared to board.
More cannon reports, more blue flame, and the Abysmal lurched in her cradle as the steam engines below decks began to give a choked, gurgling sound. Men screamed and howled, both in fear and in fury, and the crew of the iron monolith began to disintegrate into chaos.
A Fist Full O' Dead Guys Page 18