by Chris Bunch
Eighteen
Somewhat damned impressive,” Knoll N’b’ry whispered, although the Linyati fort was at least a third of a league distant. “I doubt if any of our cannon can elevate enough to reach the fort, let alone break through those walls. What we need is a damned great bombard, which I somehow forgot to pack in my seabag.”
Gareth squashed a mosquito, nodded.
“A master wizard — which I’m not … yet — would have to come up with a bogglin’ spell to break those walls down,” Labala agreed.
Gareth didn’t respond. Making a task seem harder wasn’t a very good way to find a solution.
“Could we just sail into Noorat down the middle of the passage?” N’b’ry said. “Maybe their cannon can’t reach to midchannel.”
“Care to bet our ship … or anyone’s … on that?”
“No.”
The city of Noorat had been built at the midpoint of a great, rocky C in mid-jungle. The land rose to promontories at either side, and on these, stone forts, with thick walls about forty feet high, had been built.
Gareth had begun by spying out the fort on the west side of the bay, now this one.
“How the hells did they get those stone blocks up here? Slave power?” Tehidy wondered.
“Magic,” Labala suggested. “And then haulin’ those big damned guns up after them — what are they, anyway?”
“I’d guess big culverin, which’ll give them range, and maybe some perrier, lobbing high over the bay,” Tehidy said.
Gareth noted, however, that the only direction those cannon were facing was to sea.
The city inside the bay beckoned to Gareth, with warmth, civilization, and, most of all, gold. Gold now, more gold for the taking when this year’s treasure fleet arrived.
“Mmph,” he said at length. “Let’s go.”
“Did you come up with something?” N’b’ry asked, as they slithered back down the knoll and started downhill to where their boat waited.
“I did,” Gareth said. “All I had to do was discard the impossible, and what was left over was what we’ll attempt.”
“Which is only …” Labala asked.
“Preposterous,” Gareth said.
• • •
“I think,” Tehidy said, studying the map, “I’m most glad to be a sailor, instead of an infantryman.”
“My deepest sympathies,” Gareth said sorrowfully. “I deeply regret having to tell you every man not required to keep the ships afloat suddenly shines with soldierly virtues. Or hadn’t you noticed that our bills of lading included packs, canteens, slings, weapons belts, and great clonking boots for all of us, not just the soldiers?”
“Including me, I hope?” Cosyra said. “I’m starting to feel, no offense, like you’re keeping me in cotton batting.”
Gareth hesitated. He was in fact wanting to keep her from harm’s way. Which he’d better not continue, he realized.
“You’ll be marching right in front of me,” Gareth said.
Tehidy studied the crude map again.
“I’m too fat to be doing this kind of thing,” he complained.
“Who isn’t?” Gareth said. “I’ll want you here, on the eastern side. You and Froln will be in command of that landing force, with mates from the other ships to back you up.”
“And you’ll be over here on the west?” Tehidy asked.
“Yes.”
“Having all the fun, while we dance around, diverting the Slavers — and probably getting our asses shot off.”
“I hope so.”
• • •
The pirates had made their approach cunningly, steering well east of Noorat, almost to Batan, then holding close to the coast while sailing along the isthmus. Dafflemere and Labala had cast the most powerful weather spells they could devise; powerful yet subtle, so the wizards of Noorat hopefully wouldn’t scent them out.
Labala swore he’d done no good, but the weather had been ideal for their purposes — hazy and squally, with visibility no more than two or three leagues. Gareth felt a little proud that he’d thought to have the fleet’s sails dyed gray, even though most of the ships’ bosuns had muttered, wanting to at least sail out in perfectly tidy form.
Then he fell into his usual moroseness, going over his intentions, and how the Linyati would inevitably destroy him, again and again. Cosyra noted his moroseness, asked if he was always this moody before action.
“Probably,” he said, remembering other times, other glooms. “I guess it’s my way of praying for luck. If I don’t believe in gods, then not believing in luck would be one way of praying, wouldn’t it?”
“You, sir, are a loon,” Cosyra announced.
Once Gareth had a plan, and it was a little too complex to make him happy, he brought his captains together. The fleet was hidden behind an island, about half a day’s sail away from Noorat.
The ships’ officers muttered for a while after Gareth had finished, feeling they were liable to take far too many casualties in the assault, and that no one who knew anything of battle ever split his forces. But no one could come up with a better way to seize Noorat.
So, that night, half the fleet, with two-thirds of the troopships, raised anchor. Well clear of land, they sailed east. Then they turned back until they closed on land, and found a somewhat sheltered anchorage. It would be a long hike back to the eastern fort for the landing party, but they wouldn’t be seen. Hopefully.
Gareth and the others waited for a day after Froln and Tehidy’s departure, in case the eastern party had problems and was delayed. Then they, too, closed on Noorat, and, in the depths of the night, the second landing party went ashore.
The mercenaries formed up, cursing under their breath, being cursed when they fell or raised their voices by bosun mates and their own officers and warrants.
In a sweating line, they crept toward the promontory through the depths of the jungle.
It was hot and sticky, and the ground under Gareth’s unaccustomed boots was muck. He heard strange cries he hoped were animals or night birds, and the night was full of ominous rustlings and whispers. Mosquitoes and other biting insects hummed around, and he wondered what they fed on when there weren’t nice, succulent pirates to nibble on.
He held as close to the beach as he could, just in the fringes of the jungle. The men behind him, unaccustomed to moving as a unit, accordioned back and forth as the column snaked along.
It was quite dark until after midnight, when the moon came out and then they could move faster. They encountered no guards, no patrols, and Gareth hoped the men to the east were having equal luck.
The promontory loomed, and the ground rose in front of them, the trees reduced to a scatter of brush.
That was far enough, and they held in cover. Now all there was to do was wait.
He wished the forts were manned by normal men, who might get sleepy or lackadaisical, not Linyati. The Slavers would be as alert, guarding this fort where nothing ever happened, as if it were the first time the post had been manned. But, his mind reminded, if wishes were fishes, we’d all have some fried.
If all went well … and since when did that ever happen in battle, Gareth thought, and pressed Cosyra’s hand for morale’s sake.
The sky had just begun to lighten when Gareth heard, across the water, the thud of musketry. The eastern force was attacking the fort on the other promontory.
That was his cue to move forward, with twenty men, all sailors, to the foot of the fort’s walls. He crept around the side until he could see the sallyport.
Again, he waited.
Across the mouth of the bay, white smoke billowed, then came the louder slap of a cannon. Gareth made a face. Either he’d missed a cannon on the landward side, or the Linyati across the water had a field gun that could be easily muscled about.
A metal gate rattled open at the sallyport, and Gareth shrank back into cover. Two groups of Linyati — Gareth hastily counted them, got around thirty — hurried down the hill to a dock, where a doze
n boats were moored.
After a time, he chanced another look, saw the boats moving steadily across the bay’s mouth to reinforce the eastern fort.
Above that fort, a dark swirl formed in the sky. Everything was going as planned. That was Dafflemere and Labala’s casting, a smallish cyclone, hopefully able to pluck a man from a wall and drop him to his death.
The swirl moved across the fort, and Gareth thought he could hear screams.
Now Tehidy and Froln should be retreating. Instead he heard the musketry grow louder, and the field gun bang once more. The deception appeared to be turning into a full-scale attack.
He trotted back to where the sailors waited, and motioned. They spread out, unslinging the grapneled lines wound over their shoulders.
A sailor cast. His grapnel didn’t find a hold, but grated against the stone and fell back. Gareth winced, knowing the sound must have alerted the remaining Linyati within, but there was no challenge.
Nomios threw next, and his hook caught firm, then another and another grapnel arced up. As soon as a sailor’s grapnel caught, he swarmed up the knotted rope. Other men came out of the jungle, and went up the ropes behind them. These carried other ropes, with loops for the unhandy soldiery.
Gareth had no time to watch, was climbing up, hand over hand. He saw a olive-complected head peer over the parapet, cry the alarm. A musket barrel came next, and fired down.
Gareth heard a grunt, saw, out of the corner of his eye, a sailor release his hold and fall limply down onto the fort’s talus.
That Linyati made the mistake of looking at the results of his shot Gareth had a precarious toehold and a pistol out when Cosyra, on the next rope, fired, and the Linyati sprawled, motionless, over the battlements.
Other ropes were tied off by sailors and dropped down, and bundled, loaded muskets were pulled up as Gareth reached the top of the wall.
A Linyati ran at Cosyra, pike leveled, and Gareth shot him down, pulled a second pistol from his sash.
The fort was simply constructed, the walls sheltering a barracks at one end, a magazine at the other, a cookshed at the third, and a small drill ground on the last.
Pirates swarmed over the walls as the Linyati formed a wedge, came up a ramp to the parapets. Musket fire volleyed down at the Slavers. They fell back, came again, were shot down.
Discipline like this was completely foreign to the sailors, and with a yell, in spite of shouted orders from officers, they charged down into the square into a vicious melee, no quarter asked or given.
Gareth grimaced at his men’s independence, and knew he had to be at their forefront. He ran halfway down the ramp and leapt into the rear of a knot of Linyati. He shot down two with his remaining pistols, realized he should have reloaded before he jumped, and then a giant Slaver was on him, swinging a double-bitted ax, face wide in battle-madness. Gareth knew better than to parry with his thin blade, and back-rolled into the dirt, across a body. The Linyati came in again and Gareth heard the crack of a pistol, and the Slaver’s throat vanished in a spray of blood.
Cosyra was behind him, dropping her empty pistol and pulling her rapier. A Linyati came at her, and she brushed his sword aside, drilled him neatly through the heart, pulled her blade free as another attacked shouting something.
Gareth, from behind, put his sword into the back of the man’s skull. He spasmed like a headless chicken and went down, as another Slaver cut at Gareth, and Radnor slashed his guts open.
Then there was no one left to kill, and even the wounded Linyati wouldn’t let themselves scream in pain.
Gareth spotted N’b’ry.
“Look for Runners on that side,” he shouted, grabbing a freshly loaded musket from a man who’d remembered his orders, unlike the others.
“Come on,” Gareth ordered, pointing. “You — you — you — check for any survivors. We could use a prisoner.”
They quickly combed the barracks, then the cookshed, found no Linyati alive, none of the dominating Runners. N’b’ry shouted the cookhouse was clear as well.
Gareth ordered him to take more men and make sure there weren’t any manholes or secret rooms, remembering the cleverness lizards had in hiding themselves while waiting for prey. But the only living beings in the fort were the pirates.
And the flies, swarming in, smelling blood, as the sun rose higher, turning the fort into an oven.
Gareth told Nomios to raise the flag he was carrying wrapped around his midsection, and moments later, the pirates’ banner lifted over the fort.
Gareth went to the battlements with a glass he’d found in the barracks, peering across the water at the other fort. Smoke still boiled, and he heard the crackle of musketry.
He wondered why Froln and Tehidy hadn’t withdrawn, as the plan ordered, and why the Linyati cannon had fallen silent.
A pirate with very sharp eyes pointed across, and shouted in glee.
Gareth hastily refocused his glass, and saw his black, green, and white skull-embroidered flag float into sight, above the other fort’s parapets. He heard cheering from behind him.
Now they had the Linyati, Gareth thought. With both sides of the bay controlled, there would be nothing for the Slavers to do but surrender.
Which brought a host of other problems to mind.
But first was celebrating … and counting the price.
• • •
It was high. Almost seventy-five soldiers had been shot down charging across open ground outside the other fort, the Linyati grapeshot sweeping their line. They’d paid no mind to the plan of withdrawal once the shooting had begun, but kept attacking. Eventually a man had scrambled to the top of the wall and held the parapet long enough for others to clamber up.
They jumped down into the courtyard and opened the gates for the rest of the attackers. Fifteen seamen had died in that struggle.
Gareth didn’t like it, but if Froln and his men had withdrawn, as planned, they’d still have to attack that fort sooner or later.
In his own attack, twenty-five soldiers and eleven sailors were casualties. Labala and one of the two chirurgeons with the expedition were busy treating them.
Gareth ordered the fort’s guns loaded and run out, and gunners were detailed to the cannon. Then there was nothing to do but wait, and meditate on what to do next.
The problem was, no one really knew very much about the Linyati. Gareth, because of his interrogation of captured Slavers, knew more than most, and realized how ignorant he was.
On the voyage out, he’d quizzed Dihr and the other men of Kashi who’d been Linyati slaves, and found out how secretive these people were.
None of the slaves had ever seen a Linyati woman or child.
All of the men from Kashi had served in the Linyati cities along the Kashi coast, none being taken to the homeland.
None of the slaves knew anything about Linyati social customs — slaves were used, unlike in other countries, strictly for outside work and manual labor, so there was no one who could provide information on the Slavers’ private lives. Once they disappeared into their blank-walled houses, all knowledge stopped.
So Gareth had no idea what to expect inside the low walls of Noorat.
He chanced taking a small boat with a white flag toward the city — but he crewed the boat, a very quick little cutter, with sailors with boat racing experience. Of course, he was behind the cutter’s tiller.
The sea was calm, the sky clear, and the white stone walls were silent. He saw no sign of life as the cutter closed on Noorat, nor was there a response to the white flag.
Not for a long moment, until he saw smoke boil up from one of the walls. A cannon ball flew overhead, and Gareth put the tiller hard over and, zigging, fled back to the mouth of the bay. Other cannon fired, and Gareth noted with interest they were all small bore and short-ranged.
So the Slavers wouldn’t be logical and surrender.
Very well, it would be a fight. But it would have to be won quickly, for Gareth estimated the treasure fleet woul
d be due in about a month.
• • •
The pirate fleet sailed into the bay, and the transports anchored under the cover of the forts’ guns.
The warships went on line and sailed back and forth, just out of range of Noorat’s cannon, slamming broadsides over the city’s walls. But again, there was no sign of surrender, and the only mark of infliction Gareth could see was an occasional plume of smoke.
Small groups of men were secretly landed, and reconnoitered the land around Noorat. To the east was tropical forest, to the west, swamp. Only to the rear of the city were there fingers of land, leading into the unknown interior.
So the Slavers’ city would have to be taken the hard way, by main force.
• • •
Cosyra came to him the night before the attack, as he was pacing the quarterdeck of the Steadfast.
“About the fight?”
“Yes?”
“We break into the city … and then what?”
“We put anyone who resists to the sword,” Gareth said. “And seize whatever gold they’ve got stored, like good pirates are supposed to do.”
“What about the Linyati women?”
“We don’t even know if they have any.”
Gareth saw Cosyra was looking at him steadily in the light from the binnacle.
“What if there are?” she asked again.
Gareth shifted uncomfortably. “Do you mean they’ll come to harm? I’m afraid so,” he said. “I don’t think there’ll be holding my sailors back, let alone the soldiery, if they see the chance for rape.”
“Even if you ordered anyone doing that to be shot?”
“Cosyra, I won’t … I can’t … do that,” Gareth said. “My men wouldn’t stand for that order, and I know very well the mercenaries would either hoot and ignore me — or shoot me down where I stand.”
She looked at him, then at the scattering of lights from Noorat, said no more, but went below.
• • •
At dawn, a dozen warships sailed as close as they dared to the wall marking Noorat’s eastern border, and began shelling it. The shelling lasted all day, and the Linyati began moving their guns to that wall to respond.