Corsair

by Chris Bunch

  “I think we should investigate the charms of Freebooter’s Island.”

  Ten

  Freebooter’s Island was, in fact, a ring of islets, with jutting skerries offshore and a deep lagoon in the center.

  Gareth signaled his seven ships to heave to, while he sailed around the island to see what was what.

  There were gaps in the islets, but he couldn’t tell if the passages were navigable. Two tiny offshore islands had low-walled forts. But the forts were unmanned, the cannon stoppered, and he saw no sign of life.

  Inside the lagoon were some sixteen ships of various types. On several of the islands, white stonework gleamed.

  A lookout shouted down, saying the passage just off the beam was guarded by other forts. Gareth glassed them, saw more cannon, these manned and with open muzzles.

  He guessed that passage would be the main channel, but didn’t know what pirate’s protocol, if any, was toward uninvited strangers.

  Again the lookout called, reporting a small cutter sailing toward the passage. Standing in its bows was a long-bearded man wearing a star-studded turban and a thigh-length wrap. He seemed to have no problem keeping his balance as the small boat tossed in the low waves coming through the passage. Two nearly naked, brown-skinned men crewed the boat.

  “Helmsman,” Gareth called, noting the Steadfast had a fair wind abaft.

  “Aye.”

  “Make for that passage.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Thom, take in all sail but the mains’l, and shorten that. We’ll crawl in. Nomios, all hands on deck, and the guns manned but not run out.

  “And hoist our colors. We’ll find out soon enough whether we’re among friends.”

  The Steadfast ghosted toward the cutter, which held its course toward them.

  “Ahoy the Steadfast,” the man in the cutter called.

  Gareth started.

  “You know us?”

  “Aye,” the man shouted. “My casting spotted you a day out. Good thing, too. With all your ships, folks around here could get nervous, thinking the damned Linyati had mounted an expedition against us. Or that we’re a little slow in hearing of the politics up north and somebody’s decided to try to destroy us again.”

  The cutter dropped sail, and the man jumped easily for the ladder, swarmed up it through the gangway where Gareth, Labala, and the mates waited. He was tall, and at one time would have had the muscular build of a warrior. Now, though, his face was a cheery red under its beard, explaining the great gut he seemed to carry with pride.

  “I hight, like they used to say, Dafflemere, once Lord Dafflemere, now one of the Brethren of the Sea, with a bit of the Gift that at least one among you shares.”

  “Labala,” the large man said. “I’m that man. I think.”

  Dafflemere made a general bow.

  “We greet you, welcome you to Freebooter’s Island, wish you all the luck and the best while you’re here. I’d guess you’re the men who’ve been playing hells with the Linyati off Noorat?”

  “How’d you know that?” Froln asked suspiciously.

  “I could be magical, and say I’ve got my ways, but civilized magic tends to sometimes get fuzzy around the Linyati.

  “One of the Brethren was planning on raiding down that way, and was hailed by a neutral he knew from other times. That ship, fresh from trading with the Slavers at Noorat, told him the seas were buzzing like a teased-up wasp’s nest, suggested he maybe wanted to seek his benefice elsewhere.

  “Don’t get angry … I know a lot of things, tell nobody. But I don’t know your name, sir.”

  “I’m Gareth Radnor,” Gareth said. “Elected captain of this ship and master of the others beyond.”

  “Pleased. I’ll ask your business here, if I’m not intruding. You’re welcome whether you came just to drink or sell whatever goods you’ve acquired.”

  “Trading our spoils is the first item,” Gareth said. “Refitting. Looking for new hands. We’ve got a ship that needs its stern rebuilt before it can take some people home to Kashi.”

  “You seized slaves?”

  “We did.”

  “You needn’t trouble yourselves with them beyond this island,” Dafflemere said carefully. “The Brethren practice complete freedom for all, and there’s those who’d be happy to take them off your hands for hard coinage.”

  “Freedom for all,” Gareth said, his voice a bit hard, “except for slaves, you mean.”

  Dafflemere gave Gareth a chill look. “Some, perhaps most of us, feel slavery is not good. Others …” He shrugged. “As I said, all are free to do as they wish.”

  “Let me ask something,” Labala said, changing the subject. “What would’ve happened if, say, we were Linyati, and had cloaked your magic? What would have happened then?”

  “I’m happy to satisfy your curiosity, my friend. First, seizing me is, shall we say, a bit harder than appears, and I’ll give you no details, since today’s friends may be tomorrow’s foes. Second, there are cannon on either side of the passage, with well-trained gun crews.”

  “We saw them.”

  “Third … well, come here.”

  Dafflemere went to the railing, swirled in the air with his hand. Gareth found his gesturing hard to watch.

  Then a greater swirling in the water below came, and something just below the surface looked at them, a great eye, as big as a man’s torso. Two tentacles lifted, curled, almost as high as the Steadfast’s mast, splashed down, and a beak came out of the water and clattered.

  “There are other of his ilk below,” Dafflemere said. “I have learned to call to them, and they think of me as … perhaps … a friend. Or at any rate someone who ensures they feed well from time to time.

  “That is the only caution I must give you. Killing is forbidden on Freebooter’s Island, other than in fair duel. And, by the way, the fairness of that duel is open to question by the Brethren. Those who offend are tried by a court of the Brethren, and if guilty become a dainty nibble for my friends here.

  “Our other crimes are rape, assault on an unequally armed foe, and theft. The penalties for all are the same as murder.

  “Now, if you’ll signal to your ships to follow your lead, you can find an anchorage at one of the cables that stretch between the buoys you see. The bottom of this lagoon is far too deep for any anchor chain to reach.

  “Again, I bid you welcome, fellow corsairs.”

  Gareth looked at Thom Tehidy and Knoll N’b’ry, and felt a thrill at the words that went all the way back to their childhood.

  Corsairs they were in truth, now.

  • • •

  “Here is what I propose,” Gareth said to his men, assembled in the waist of the ex-slave ship. “We shall keep the Steadfast, of course, and the Revenge and the Goodhope, out here for another foray. We’ll also keep ownership of two, maybe more, of the other ships, to take what cargo we don’t dispose of here to a neutral port to await our homecoming, as we agreed.

  “The men, women, and children from Kashi will be taken back by volunteers and set ashore as close as possible to their homeland.”

  “Damned if I like that,” one of the older men said. “They’re brown gold … and I heard that magic-man say we could sell ‘em here.”

  “I’ve thought of that,” Gareth said, “and of our agreement, in the Articles that all of you signed,“ he said with emphasis. “But I wish no grumbling. I’ll let go one of my shares, to be split among those who feel wronged, to compensate for the slaves. That is my only offer.

  “Anyone disagreeing is welcome to call for a vote on the matter.”

  Gareth knew he had the majority, and anyone calling for a vote to sell the Kashi men as slaves would, most likely, be cut from the Articles and told to leave the Company.

  “Now, as to the cargoes we’ve taken,” he went on, after waiting to see if anyone else said anything. “The first option is that each man can draw his share of raw goods, take it ashore to dispose of as he wishes, on whatever ter
ms he can make.

  “The second option is for it to remain with me, for either disposition here for items we either need to continue our voyaging or ones I think will be more valuable back in Saros, or for shipment and sale when we return to Saros.

  “The items gotten rid of here will be either traded for or sold for silver or gold. I can safely say that the prices I think I’ll get here will be far lower than in Ticao.

  “Any of the ship’s Company who want their share in gold after I trade or sell can take it here, or, again, leave some or all with the Company.”

  “Long’s I get enough for proper food, a crawlin’ drunk, and a couple of women at m’ head an’ feet, I’ll let th’ rest stay with you,” a sailor said, and, amid laughter, there were shouts of agreement from some, headshakes from others.

  “I’ll take all I can here,” a grizzled seaman said. “For what’re the odds of us living to see home again, anyway? Most likely we’ll bleach our bones at forty fathoms before we see cold green seas again.”

  There was an uneasy murmur of agreement from too many of the sailors to that.

  • • •

  The first order of business for Gareth’s pirates was getting under the weather, and the residents of Freebooter’s Island, as well as the other corsairs harboring there, seemed quite happy to join in.

  The island was a celebration of anarchy. Here someone had put up a building from the island stone, laboriously cut and fitted into shape. Next to it four driftwood logs had been hammered into the sand, given a palm roof and indifferent siding from scavenged lumber. There was a central marketplace, but not much in the way of roads radiating from it.

  There weren’t many houses — the pirates weren’t ashore long enough to build them nor, Gareth suspected, confident enough of their life span to justify the work.

  Businesses were trading shacks, taverns, crude inns, brothels, and craft shops, these last run by Kashi natives who’d been rescued from the Linyati and chosen not to return to their homelands.

  But Gareth’s observations were made in a scattered fashion, as a feast, vaguely in honor of the newcomers’ successes against the Linyati, swirled.

  Hogs were butchered, dressed, and set on great spits over charcoal to slowly cook, basted with sauces. Chickens were chased down, killed, cleaned, and put into pots with fresh vegetables and fiery peppers. There were salads of strange fruits and bamboo hearts, drenched in spicy dressings.

  For drink there was a dozen varieties of liquors, some made on the islands, more the local tipples from northern ports, a few even captured from the Linyati. The favorite among the last was known as Axkiller, not only for its immediate effects but for the way its drinker felt the next day.

  About the only thing missing was salt beef and fish, for obvious reasons.

  “We wish we could have fresh beef,” said a ship’s cook, now volunteering to turn one of the roasting pigs, “but th’ island won’t carry ‘em yet. If we had some folks willing to work on land, we c’d clear an’ plant one of the other islands, and bring in beeves to graze.”

  Gareth took a heavy-laden wooden plate and a concoction of various tropical fruits, found an empty brandy keg to sit on, and watched the party as the day turned into dusk:

  Here a swarthy, muscled dwarf was juggling half a dozen bottles, pausing now and again to drink from one of them;

  Three women were dancing, hand in hand, around a supine, snoring sailor;

  Labala was singing in some unknown tongue, half a dozen brown-skinned natives playing instruments like Gareth had never seen, in keys Gareth had never heard;

  Thom Tehidy and Knoll N’b’ry were arguing intensely about the correct way to lay nets for sea-trout, using bottles in the sand for their boats and twigs for nets;

  Froln, seemingly quite sober, disappeared into a hut with a woman in each arm, gold coins clenched in his teeth;

  Bosun Nomios and Dafflemere sat on the sand, playing some sort of board game, but the pieces were small glasses of brandy, and the winner or loser, Gareth couldn’t tell which, was required to upend the glass. After a while, Nomios very sedately pitched onto the board and began snoring. Dafflemere got up, tried to dance a victory jig around him, collapsed on the ground and stayed there.

  Gareth sat alone, yet quite content, wanting, as far as he could tell, nothing, needing nothing. No, he thought. Not quite. Cosyra would be nice here. That’d be someone who could honestly tell him what Axkiller tasted like.

  A brown-skinned boy lounged nearby against a palm tree, a brightly colored flower behind one ear. He was curly haired, handsome. He smiled tentatively at Gareth, who smiled back politely, then shook his head. The boy shrugged, found another’s attention, and went up a winding path with him a few moments later.

  A quite small, very well built woman, not much more than a girl, sat beside him.

  “You are the captain of these?” she asked.

  “At the moment,” Gareth said.

  “A man like yourself, as young as you are, must have much karaba,“ she said. The various languages Gareth had learned swept through his mind. There. Karaba. Courage. Manliness.

  “Uh … thank you.”

  “I am Irina,” she said.

  “And I’m Gareth.”

  “You are by yourself.”

  Gareth nodded.

  “I saw you turn away that boy. Am I better?”

  “Uh … well, yes, I mean, I’m more attracted to you than men,” Gareth stumbled.

  Irina preened.

  “Then I would be proud to be the consort of a captain … for an hour, or as long as you linger here.”

  “You, uh, honor me deeply,” Gareth said. “And I’m enchanted.” He wondered why he was sounding like such a bumpkin.

  “But …” Irina said through her teeth.

  “There’s someone in Saros that, well …”

  “What of that?” Irina said. “I’m not offering to company you for eternity, or to bear your brats, now.”

  “But — ”

  “Is this woman some sort of witch, that she could sniff out what we do when, or if, you return?”

  “No, but — ”

  Irina gave him a look as good as a broadside, hissed something untranslatable by the language spells Gareth had learned, and stalked away.

  Now what the blazes am I supposed to do about something like that? Gareth wondered. I always thought someone who’s given an honest answer about something like this would be, well, maybe not respectful, but at least understanding. And now I’ve made another enemy.

  That woman was behaving like . . . like a man!

  Suddenly he found everything enormously funny, burst out laughing, and decided it was time for him to go back to the Steadfast. He had to decide how to go about trading. And not think about how very pretty Irina was.

  • • •

  The Steadfast was beached on soft sand, and sailors had attached block and tackle between masts and large palms and careened her. Her hull was green, filthy, and already the stink of the dying barnacles drifted everywhere.

  “They didn’t tell us about this in the romances,” Knoll N’b’ry said, then shouted, “All right, men. Off your soft asses and set to.”

  Crewmen lounging in the shade groaned, got up, picked up scrapers and lit torches, and went back to cleaning the hull. But they worked hard and fast. No man wanted to think about his fate if a Linyati squadron warped into the lagoon, with a ship incapable of fight or escape.

  The Linyati slaver, which Gareth had decided to name the Freedom — a little irked that he’d already used Revenge, considering the ship’s purpose and how he intended to use it in the future — was being warped toward the beach as the title rushed out of the lagoon.

  Standing in the shallows was Dafflemere, chanting a spell, wearing only a cut-off pair of breeches. Beside him was Labala, earnestly mimicking the sorcerer’s gestures, aping his speech.

  There were no more than a dozen men on the ropes, pulling at the ship; steadily, under the i
nfluence of the spell, it came closer to shore as if pulled by invisible shipyard winches.

  There was a loud scratching as it grounded. Experienced islanders ran close with balks of lumber, braced the ship to keep her from falling on her side.

  Dafflemere stopped his spell.

  “Now, m’friend,” he told Labala. “As I taught you, go in and brace your ship.”

  Labala nodded, picked up a rock, ran close to one length of timber. He touched the rock to sand, chanted:

  “As you once were

  Be again

  Be solid

  Pay no need to water

  Or wind

  Stand true

  Stand solid.”

  Dafflemere waded ashore.

  “A promising sort,” he said. “All he lacks is the ability to cipher.”

  “Which I’m teaching him,” Gareth said. “In my copious spare time.”

  “I’d be willing to take on that chore.”

  “For how much? You certainly set a price for the services of your shipyard.” Gareth politely refrained from commenting on what he thought of a shipyard made up of a long stretch of sloping beach, fifty half-naked men, and a largish pile of lumber, with nary a dry dock or victualing dock.

  Dafflemere looked hurt.

  “I’ll be happy to do that without fee, Captain. For it’s always good for a man to have knowledge, is it not?”

  Gareth looked at Dafflemere closely, saw no sign of intrigue or mockery.

  “My apologies, sir,” he said, “for I’ve become used to everything on these islands being for sale.”

  “Ah,” Dafflemere said cagily, “you fail to understand my subtlety. I’ll instruct your wizard, and both you and he will owe me, for I sense that both of you are unfortunately cursed with a sense of morality.

  “Sometime in the future I shall need a favor, and you won’t be able to begrudge me.”

  Gareth managed a grin.

  • • •

  “The most I will give you,” the man with an eyepatch said, “is two, no three of my heavy falconets for your silks. I expect to go out soon, and will need every gun I have.”