Corsair

by Chris Bunch

  Gareth nodded somberly.

  “I just wish I could’ve come up with a good storm,” Labala said. “I need to do more studyin’.”

  He slumped off the quarterdeck.

  A sailor’s head appeared at the top of the maindeck ladder, the same one who’d questioned his orders.

  “Cap’n? Sorry I said what I said.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “You’ve got battle luck,” the man said. “Real battle luck.”

  “Tell me that when we find the others,” Gareth said, a bit uncomfortably. “We’ve still got four of the Slavers after us.”

  “Aarh, the hells with ‘em,” the sailor said confidently. “We’ll lose ‘em in a watch.”

  But by nightfall the four Linyati were still there, as the swells grew higher and the wind sharpened. Just at dusk, the lookout aloft reported sail dead ahead, and they were closing on the rest of the Company, their progress slowed by the unhandy Freedom.

  • • •

  The next day, the wind and waves had worsened, but the wind stayed generally from the east, so they weren’t being driven back on their pursuers nor toward Kashi. The squalls kept the seamen busy, blowing in a fan shape, so the sails required constant trimming.

  Gareth was able to exchange occasional communication with his three other ships. Some of the crew wanted to go about and sail down on the warships, given even odds.

  “No,” Gareth said decisively. “It’d be not quite one to one, considering how small the Goodhope is. And with our cargo, we’re not as maneuverable as we should be. Even if we sank them, we’d still lose members of the Company.”

  Someone muttered that the shares’d be that much larger, but he said it with a smile.

  Gareth went up to the masthead at least twice a watch. Slowly his ships were pulling away from the shallow-drafted Linyati.

  But they still kept up the pursuit.

  • • •

  Labala had talked to every man in the crew, asking him what was the first thought, that came, after fear, when a storm hit.

  When it was Gareth’s turn, he thought, then said, “How much saltier the air is when the wind blows spume up from the water.”

  Labala thanked him, scribbled on his tablet in the writing he’d half learned from Dafflemere, went on.

  Later that watch Gareth was below, making sure the patchwork on the hull was holding. On his way back topside, he passed by the small compartment the crew had rigged for Labala as his own quarters — less, Labala told Gareth later with a snicker, “due to respect than they’re ‘feared I’ll mistake a spell and there’ll be nothing but mice scurryin’ about the deck.”

  The curtain was open, and Gareth glanced in. Labala had a large candle and was muttering words, sprinkling incense into its flame then blowing it out. He’d relight it, mumble, and blow it out again.

  Gareth, having no idea what Labala was doing, and being, like most sensible people, leery of anything resembling wizard’s business, went on his way.

  • • •

  “I relieve you, sir,” Petrich said.

  “No,” Gareth said. “I’m still doing fine.”

  “You’ve been on the quarterdeck for three straight watches,” Petrich said firmly. “What reserves’ll you have left if the Linyati suddenly come on us?”

  Gareth realized Petrich was right.

  “Only long enough to freshen up,” he said, feeling the repressed fatigue come to in a wave, hitting him in the knees and back.

  “That, and have something to eat, and get your head down. I promise I’ll call you at the changing of the watch.”

  “Or if anything — and I mean anything — happens.”

  “Very well,” Petrich said. “Oh. One other thing, if I can take a moment.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I’ve talked to my fellow officers and warrants, and we think it would be appropriate if you set us ashore in Lyrawise. I do not think I want to have to stand before Lord Quindolphin and explain first why we decided to run up the black flag after Ozerov was killed, second why I chose to serve under your banner, third why we went a-pirating instead of staying in the nice, safe slavery trade, and last where in the hells his damned expensive ship is.

  “None of those questions do I have answers for, at least not ones that would turn away the Lord’s anger.

  “We’d already decided we wouldn’t be taking the Naijak up the Nalta River into Ticao for all but one of those reasons.”

  Gareth laughed. “Of course, Petrich. First, if we reach home with the gold we’ve already gotten, every man jack of us is rich, so we can do what we want and not worry about Quindolphins.”

  “What I want,” Petrich said, “is go a-shopping in Lyrawise for another ship. Then, when — or, rather, if — you decide to sail out again, I wouldn’t mind taking another shot at the Slavers, under your command.”

  “I thank you, sir. But I have no idea of my future plans, other than” — and Gareth yawned jawcrackingly wide — “a bar of soap, a nice quiet time in the jakes, and perhaps some lemonade.”

  Naturally, he’d barely emptied his bowels — sitting in the open head in his gallery off his cabin and almost getting washed overside for his daintiness — and decided he’d best wash, when another wave of exhaustion struck.

  He got to his feet, stumbled a few steps, and fell face-first on his bunk.

  Needless to say, Petrich didn’t waken him that watch, nor the next.

  When Gareth was shaken awake, there was warm soup and, somehow, fresh-baked bread, drenched in salted butter, waiting.

  And news the storm was worsening.

  • • •

  The day was bleak, the sky and sea an indistinguishable wall of gray, perforated by white here and there as the wind tore wavetops away and dashed them against the hard-pressed corsair ships, all laboring under reduced sail, barely making headway.

  Gareth had gone aloft, scanned the horizon, wiping his glass every look with a wet chamois. Of the Linyati he saw nothing.

  He tried to allow himself hope, went back down, the wind trying to pluck him from the shrouds and whirl him away to his doom.

  • • •

  It was just at the changing of the watch when the lookout shouted he had signal flags from the Freedom. Everyone on the quarterdeck tried to read them as they whipped and flapped in the gale.

  “… water … forehold,” Gareth made out.

  “Taking is the top signal,” Tehidy said. “And I can’t make out the one below that. But the two others are “request assistance.”

  “I have the third,” Petrich said. “Sinking.”

  “Hands to quarters,” Gareth ordered. “Here we go again.”

  • • •

  The Freedom wallowed, visibly bow-down. The Steadfast was to her starboard, Avenger to her port, and the little Goodhope in her wake, ready to pick up anyone who went overboard, although in this storm any victim would have little chance.

  The Freedom, like other Linyati slave ships, was a pig at best in a seaway, intended only for sailing close to shore, scurrying for shelter at the slightest storm. But the ship’s behavior was far worse than it’d ever been before.

  A signal from Froln, her captain, explained all. Evidently during the battle she’d been struck well forward in her hold, and no one had seen the damage until it was too late.

  Gareth sent back asking how much longer the Freedom would stay afloat, hoping they’d be able to stand by until the storm abated, then attempt salve or rescue.

  Froln’s signal said he’d go down within the watch.

  Gareth didn’t know what to do. Then Tehidy called attention to a long series of signals from the Avenger. Galf had vastly more experience before the mast than Radnor and had an idea.

  The first stage would be to take off as much of the cargo as they could.

  Her crew struggled to bring up portable pieces of the Linyati treasure to the deck, and lashed them into the nets used to keep boarders off.

&
nbsp; Then the Avenger came as close as she dared as a seaman hurled a line across. The line was run up to a cargo boom. The line was taken up, then men aboard the Avenger yanked at the boom’s lines, bodily pulling the net up and out. The Avenger rolled as a wave came across the maindeck; the net full of gold dipped below the ocean, and Gareth heard the moan on his own ship.

  The net came back up, dripping but intact, and was hauled by main force aboard the Avenger.

  Then it was the Steadfast’s turn. As the men took up the slack on the boom line, the Freedom yawed, almost colliding with the Steadfast. The helmsman put his wheel over, and the ship pitched away. The line to the cargo net on the Avenger’s deck yanked the net across the deck, smashing the railing and into the water before it, too, was safely brought aboard.

  “Enough of this,” Gareth said. “Gold isn’t worth lives.”

  Now the real risk came, as both pirate ships came close aboard the sinking Freedom and once again used grapnels on long lines to secure to the other ship. This time the nets were slung out, below the railings, over the seething waters, to catch anyone who jumped for safety and missed. Four men went in them first, and three were pulled up to safety.

  The last missed the hand reaching for him, fell back toward the net, and struck its headrope. He scrabbled for a hold, had one for an instant, then his hand slipped and he dropped into the foaming surf between the two ships.

  But the other hands aboard the Freedom made it across, with no more loss. Then they cut the grapnels free and put their helms hard over — just as the four Linyati ships, in close formation, broke out of the howling sea mist at them.

  The first fired from its bow guns, then the others, and a ball came close to the Steadfast. Others smashed into the abandoned Freedom.

  They were caught quite cold, cannons unloaded, unmanned and stoppered, and the gunports closed against the storm.

  Gareth wondered how the Linyati were able to man their guns on those ships with their gundecks barely above the water line, fought to keep from ducking as gun smoke swirled from the Linyati ports, and a pair of cannonballs smashed into the Steadfast.

  Men, waist deep in water, were struggling on the main deck, trying to get the guns loaded, keep the powder dry, get a slowmatch up from the galley without it being drowned out. Gareth saw a man drop a cannonball on his foot, scream in pain, not seeing the wave that came aboard and took him away, still screaming.

  Then he saw Labala on the foredeck, leaning out. He was stripped to the waist, heedless of the storm whipping about him. He was waving something as he paced back and forth.

  It was the candle Gareth had seen him studying — somehow, in spite of the gale, it stayed lit.

  Labala leaned over the candle and blew hard, harder.

  Gareth heard, above the shriek of the storm in the rigging, the howl of a great blast, started to cry to the quartermaster to get all sail down, but felt nothing.

  But the boiling seas ahead of the Steadfast whipped high, as he’d seen only once in his life, and that safely ashore, from a headland.

  The wind, from nowhere, was more than a gale, more than a hurricane. Its blast caught the four Linyati ships. Masts aboard the first two Slavers snapped like toothpicks. The third, less fortunate, had sturdier timber, and the wind knocked the warship on its beams, as a child’s toy boat is knocked over in a pond by a zephyr.

  The wind took the fourth ship’s sails, tore them from their masts, left it dead in the water.

  It came once again, veering to a different quadrant, bringing waves up before it, over the Linyati ships’ sides, drowning their cannon and cannoneers and leaving the ships dead in the water, sinking.

  The Steadfast came close to one of the Linyati ships, and Gareth looked over, saw Slavers fighting for their lives, for their ships; he knew it was useless.

  He felt a moment of pity, then hardened his heart.

  Labala pulled himself up the ladder, a grin dividing his face almost in half.

  “I couldn’t do a weather spell,” he shouted. “But at least I got you a gods-damned little breeze, didn’t I?”

  Fourteen

  Two months later, at the beginning of autumn, the Steadfast rode up the Nalta River into Ticao on the rising title.

  Gareth Radnor was making his homecoming.

  The Company had fled east for two days after Labala’s storm, tending their wounded and burying and mourning their dead. There were far too many of both for it to be easy to rejoice over the gold in the ships’ hulls.

  Gareth had signaled heave-to when Labala said he sensed no signs of pursuit, then called for a conference of captains and a representative from each ship of the men of Kashi.

  He offered the ex-slaves the Goodhope to return to their native lands, along with their promised shares, lessen the price of the ship.

  The Kashi men went back to their ship to report the offer to the others. Dihr returned to the Steadfast

  “We said once we’d been corrupted by seeing things other than our own jungles,” he said. “Now, having spent time with you evil men of the sword, we can hardly return to innocence.” He grinned. “So, if the Company will still have us, we’ll sail on with you as pirates.

  “Unless your lands have some hatred for men of color?”

  “I know of none,” Gareth said truthfully. “Especially not rich men of color, which you all are. Thanks for your faith, even after the disaster.”

  Dihr shrugged. “The plan was not yours, nor a bad one. As the saying goes, some days you slay the dragon, some days the dragon burns you alive.”

  The Company had no troubles on its long passage from the seas of Kashi across the Great Ocean to Juterbog. They’d had a joyous, and drunken, reunion with the prize ships in Lyrawise.

  When sobriety finally set in, they’d given Petrich and the other men of the Naijak their shares of the Linyati gold, and their hope of seeing them again, when the winds blew soft, the seas were azure, and the Slavers had more gold to take.

  Thom Tehidy had wanted to scrap Gareth’s precautions and sail directly for Ticao with the full fleet. But Gareth held firm and ordered N’b’ry to keep charge of the five other ships until his word. Those men who wanted to be paid off, who couldn’t bear waiting anymore, could be given their shares and signed off.

  Then Gareth, with a picked crew, sailed across the narrow straits for home.

  Gareth saw little of the passage, leaving the deck to Froln and N’b’ry while he stayed below, writing two full accounts of their passage.

  When they reached Nalta Mouth, he hired couriers to take those accounts upriver, the first to his uncle, the second to Cosyra. With Cosyra’s, he sent a wonderfully cast, stylized solid gold and gem-set icon of a Kashi eagle, and the note:

  Buy oysters. Buy many oysters. I’ve decided I love you.

  They’d begun the tedious sail upriver to Ticao, endlessly tacking, sometimes anchoring to wait for the title to turn. Gareth had tried to keep his sailors away from the dockwallopers and layabouts at Nalta Mouth, so his tale would arrive fresh in the capital, but doubted he’d had any success. Keeping a sailor from yarning was almost as hard as trying to keep him sober.

  He stood on the quarterdeck, seeing, about a quarter league ahead, his uncle Pol’s wharfside factory. Even from here he could see it was freshly painted, so his uncle had seen continued prosperity.

  There was a crowd along the quay, he hoped waiting for him.

  This was the homecoming he’d dreamed of when he was a boy. He knew he looked his best, darkly tanned from the tropics, hair bleached to a dark blond, hanging in ringlets to brush his shoulders. He wore thigh-top, loose boots, dark velvet breeches, and a deeply veed white silk blouse worked with golden thread, that’d been made from captured Kashi cloth. Cosyra’s dagger and sword swung at his waist in richly worked leather.

  “Hern Froln,” he ordered. “Bring her in to the dock. Smartly, if you will. We’ve an audience.”

  “Aye, sir. Back all sails,” Froln called, then gave order
s, till the foresail caught a bit of the wind and slowly the Steadfast moved toward the dock.

  “Berthing party, for’rd!”

  Hands, wearing the colorful garb they’d had made up in Lyrawise, went into the bows with lines, where men waited to catch them and draw the ship neatly to its berth, tying the ropes to bollards.

  Gareth scanned the crowd, remembering the surprises of his last landfall, was surprised to see no one he recognized — not his uncle or family, and not Cosyra.

  The gangway was lowered, and Gareth descended.

  Two men, both with swords ready, moved forward, and others in the crowd, wearing red and black livery, tossed back concealing cloaks and lifted muskets, steadily aimed at the sailors.

  Gareth recognized one of the two, slender, a bit taller, pinched lips over a beard that had filled out a bit since he’d seen him last.

  Anthon Quindolphin!

  “Gareth Radnor and crew,” he said in his grating voice. “In the name of King Alfieri and in the name of the King’s Justice, I order your arrest on the charge of high treason, and also order the holding of your men as witnesses to your incredible crimes as well as possible accomplices, in which event they are also to face the King’s Justice. I have this warrant, ordering you, Gareth Radnor, to be taken immediately into custody, to await the stern pleasure of our king, and you others to be taken to a common prison.

  “Do not resist us, any of you, or we’ll use deadly force without hesitation.”

  There was utter silence but the plash of the river waves against the Steadfast’s hull. Then snarling laughter came, and a man rode out of an alleyway.

  He was big, solid, clean shaven, in late middle age. Gareth had never seen him before. But his tight lips and glaring eyes made it easy for Gareth to realize he had finally been taken by his worst enemy: Lord Quindolphin.

  “Seize them,” he ordered, and the men moved forward.

  The sailors looked for succor, but there was none. Suddenly there was a splash from the Steadfast’s stern. Gareth turned, saw a large brown arm sweep up, then another, and watched Labala swim strongly away.