Corsair

by Chris Bunch

  The sailors nodded, waited for Iset or one of the others to disagree.

  “Parlous times,” Iset said instead. “But I suppose there’s no other option.”

  “When we march, we’ll alternate units, so everyone gets experience breaking trail,” Gareth went on. He explained his plan.

  “Dihr, I want you and any Kashi men in separate units behind the men in front, then scattered through the column,” he said. “We’ll need your knowledge.”

  “There’s only a couple of us, men who we freed in Noorat, who know these jungles,” Dihr said. “Just because we’re all brown doesn’t mean we’re the same.”

  “Of course not,” Gareth said, a bit impatiently. “And don’t think I’m judging you quickly. But you might have a bit more knowledge in common than you think. What sort of plants are around a swamp. What noises a little animal makes, and those of a big killer one.

  “Maybe even what fruits we can eat, or plants we can boil.”

  “Mmmh,” Dihr said. “Sorry, Cap’n. I spoke too fast.”

  “Break your men into … oh, ten-man units,” Gareth went on. “Put men who’ve served for a while in charge of each team.”

  “That can be done.”

  Gareth was about to continue when he heard shouts.

  Men were on their feet, grabbing muskets, swords, when the call came up the line: “Two men, coming up from the rear. They’re not Linyati.”

  “Tehidy,” Gareth said. “Take five men and go collect those stragglers.”

  “Sir.”

  Cosyra unobtrusively held up crossed, hopeful fingers, and Gareth nodded.

  “The rest of you, back to your men,” Gareth went on. “One more thing. Anyone with any experience cooking, send him up here. We’re short on provisions and won’t be able to afford separate messing like we did aboard ship.”

  A few minutes after the officers had dispersed, Knoll N’b’ry and one of his volunteers came into the middle of the camp.

  “Evenin’,” he said, as casually as if he’d encountered Gareth strolling along the banks of the Nalta River after evening meal.

  Gareth might have been willing to play along, but Cosyra wasn’t.

  “Damn you,” she said fiercely. “You can make someone worry.”

  “Now, now,” N’b’ry said. “Didn’t I promise I wouldn’t let them get me?”

  “I’m glad you’re a man of your word.”

  “I am that,” N’b’ry said. “But I had to come along in a bit of a hurry. It seems you’ve got friends.”

  Gareth’s smile vanished.

  “After the broadside, my friend here and I took off at our best speed in your tracks,” N’b’ry went on. “Which was a very good thing, for the damned Linyati landed, took no more than an hour to search Noorat and realize it was empty, then their troops promptly found our trail, like they were damned hounds or something, and are only about three hours behind.

  “Moving slow, but steady,” he said. “About a thousand, maybe fifteen hundred of them. All soldiers, with armor and muskets and all.”

  “Son of a bitch!” Cosyra said.

  “Perhaps,” N’b’ry said, “about dawn, you’d like to go back and have a look?”

  • • •

  “I think,” Gareth said, lowering his glass, “Cosyra spoke for all of us last night.”

  Labala, without asking, took up the telescope, peered through it.

  There were the two of them, plus four soldiers for security, Iset, and Thom Tehidy.

  Just on the far side of the great swampy clearing, the Linyati wound into sight. There were three columns, moving parallel with the rough animal track Gareth was following, which slowed them down a bit, but was intended to keep them from being ambushed.

  Even Gareth could tell they were trained infantry, wearing breastplates, knee boots, and curved, open-faced helmets. They were heavily armed, and Gareth had seen six Linyati men staggering along under the weight of a tiny, short-barreled moyen carried in a cradle. He counted five other guns.

  “The thing that I don’t like,” Gareth said, “besides their being here at all, is that they were able to mount the pursuit so handily. Labala?”

  “You’re right,” the big man said, lowering the glass. “I see men in robes, muttering as they walk. They’ve got wizards scenting us.”

  “Can you block them?”

  Labala thought, then grinned, not pleasantly.

  “If I can consult with the good captain Iset for a moment, perhaps I can come up with something nasty.”

  • • •

  The creek was just too deep to wade across, and a dozen and a half feet wide, with steep banks. Just downstream, the water shallowed into a deep swamp, and upstream the banks were higher and the trees thicker.

  There was more than enough evidence of the pirates’ crossing here. The Linyati put out a line of muskets along their bank and ordered a handful of scouts across.

  They slid into the water, splashed, flailed, and one of them showed near-humanity, shrieking as he went under.

  The Slaver’s commander sent two men downstream to try to rescue him, and had a man doff his armor and go across with a rope.

  The scouts tried again, pulling on the rope, naked but for their sword belts, and this time made it across.

  They went, as ordered, a dozen yards into the brush, then came back, reported the crossing was clear.

  The commander put a company on the other side, and by that time the rest of his formation had closed on the river, packing the banks. Five ropes were over, and soldiers were pulling their way across.

  “Now,” Iset whispered, and brush was ripped away from the mouth of the two cannon just upstream from the crossing.

  Grapeshot tore into the packed Linyati, and they shrieked, panicked, and wallowed back.

  Tehidy and his gunners reloaded and men with muskets moved past them, sent a volley, then another, into the Slavers on their bank.

  They, too, broke, dropped their weapons and jumped into the water.

  The cannon blasted once more, one into the far shore, the other into the men in the water.

  “Go,” Gareth said, and men took the ropes of one cannon and began pulling it away, back onto the trail.

  “You too,” he told Labala, who stopped muttering words and went after the cannon.

  The second cannon fired another blast, then it, too, retreated with the covering soldiery.

  Gareth, following Iset and Labala’s plan, had dropped off two cannon, the magician, and three groups of soldiers, and ordered the column to march on, leaving as wide and sloppy a track as they could. The cannon had been moved back to the ford, and the men waited for their target, while Labala cast what he called an “easy dissemblance … Dafflemere taught me this one.”

  “That little ambush we laid,” Iset said, “is called a buttonhook.”

  “Thank you, sir, for your invaluable illustration of an obscure principle,” Gareth said politely.

  “It damned certain discourages anyone on your trail from closing too fast,” the soldier said. “I think we put it to them well.”

  “Let’s make sure they’ve learned their lesson,” Gareth said.

  Twice more that day, but without the balky cannon, picked men fell out of line, waited for the Linyati to approach, fired one volley, then ran before the Slavers could charge. By nightfall, Gareth had taken only three casualties, all wounded, with no idea of how many Slavers he’d killed.

  • • •

  Then it was the Linyati’s turn. They must have picked a small unit, no more than fifty men, and marched all night until they closed on the pirates’ circled camp.

  At dawn, as men were waking, stumbling about, they fired once, then charged with pike and sword.

  The corsairs fell back in shock, then regrouped and counterattacked, shattering their foe.

  If any Linyati lived through that, they must have fled quickly. The Slaver infantry must have been accustomed to fighting primitive tribesmen, not trained m
en-at-arms.

  But Gareth still had twenty men down, ten killed.

  They made stretchers for the wounded and pushed on.

  • • •

  Gareth considered his musketry, had a rather evil idea. Men who were known for their shooting ability were left behind in hides. They would snipe the Linyati when they hove into sight.

  But Gareth had made things a little more sophisticated: the musketeers were to shoot down any Linyati carrying the cannon, any Linyati in robes, anyone who seemed to be giving orders, and of course, any Runners.

  Iset added another category — anyone who walked in second or third place behind the Slaver at the point of the column. These, he explained, would either be officers or experienced soldiers taking a breather from being on point themselves. The point men would also be shaken.

  Gareth went back with a three-man team, was offered a shot when the Linyati were in sight. He shook his head. It seemed, illogically, a little too much like cold-blooded murder, even though he knew the Linyati weren’t human at all.

  What they were, he didn’t know yet.

  His high moral resolve broke as he saw a Runner. He took a musket, aimed, fired, missed.

  The other three, cover broken, shot quickly at the center of the column, then ran, seeing skirmishers move out from the main column.

  • • •

  As the days passed, the sailors grew leaner, more able to keep the march. Gareth thought they were moving just a bit faster than the Slavers, and allowed himself a bit of hope.

  Labala announced that he had a new skill: blister mechanic.

  • • •

  The snipers reported seeing two, possibly three other Runners with the column; they tried to shoot them, but they seemed to be charmed.

  • • •

  They’d marched eight days from Noorat, and each patch of jungle, swamp, small clearing, seemed exactly the same. If it weren’t for their compasses, Gareth would have thought they were marching in circles.

  According to his plot, the pirates were now even with Batan, but with the pursuit, he dared not turn to the coast, for fear of being trapped.

  • • •

  Labala rubbed out the triangles scrawled in the dirt, blew out the smoldering brazier.

  “All I can give you, Gareth, is my feeling. Which isn’t good. The wizards with them are seeking a specific person with our column.”

  “Me?”

  “No,” Labala said. “So you needn’t come up with another noble self-sacrifice. Nor me, which was my next thought.”

  “Who, then?”

  Labala held out his hands, perplexed.

  • • •

  “This,” Tehidy said proudly, “is mine own creation.” He pointed up thirty feet, to the crotch of a tree. In it, on end, was a log about as big as a man’s trunk. Stuck into it were sharpened lengths of wood.

  “Now, you see,” Tehidy said proudly, “a poor Linyati comes loping along this path, probably looking all about for one of our shooters, and he never sees this little vine across the trail.

  “He kicks it — please, Gareth, don’t get too close, I don’t trust your coordination — and the vine, which runs around that branch and up to yon log, which is poised most delicately, yanks said log down, swinging all along the track, impaling the first, probably the second, and possibly the third man in line.

  “No waste of gunpowder, or of men,” he said. “Now, the new man in front will be watching the trees, and he won’t see the pit we’ve dug farther up the trail, with spikes at the bottom.”

  “Ingeniously nasty.”

  “From you, that’s high praise. Now, my friend, I’d like to comb out all ships’ carpenters and have them form a rear element, building these traps as we go.”

  “Do it,” Gareth said.

  The traps, of various styles, worked to a greater or lesser degree.

  But the Linyati kept coming.

  • • •

  “This pirate’s life isn’t as romantic as it should be,” Cosyra said, using a smoldering ember to tease a leech fastened to her leg. It dropped off, and she stepped on it, grimacing.

  “I had romantic images, even back in Noorat when you decided we were going to take a little hike, of pastoral campfires at night, me dancing some sort of wild dance in the firelight, while the pirates clapped in unison.

  “Then we’d go off into the shadows, where you would have built a leafy bower, and make mad, passionate love.”

  “That’s hardly fair for the others,” Gareth said. “Ignoring the fact I’m not even sure what a leafy bower is, let alone how to build one.”

  “Screw the others,” Cosyra said. “You’re the one I’m in love with.”

  “Speaking of which,” Gareth said, “have you considered what you want to do when we get back to Ticao?”

  “That’s why you stay captain,” Cosyra said. “It’s your incurable optimism.

  “But I’ve given it a thought. Assuming my fellow lords don’t want to have me up before the king for some sort of malfeasance, running off with a rogue like you, maybe I’ll consider marriage.”

  Gareth gulped.

  “Or maybe not,” she said. “Speaking of which, I’ve arranged things so I’ve got third watch, at the head of the column.”

  “Glad to see an officer doing her duty,” Gareth said, not sure if he was glad of the change of subject.

  “Duty my left nipple,” she said rudely. “There’s nobody around at that time of night, and I don’t think we’re likely to be attacked from the front, so you might come visiting.

  “Also, you’ll note my hair is a little wet? I slid off and dunked myself downstream in that creek we’re getting water from. So I’m clean.

  “Doesn’t that suggest, o my captain, you might do the same? Pirates don’t have to be stinky all the time, you know.”

  • • •

  The animal track they’d been following crossed a definite path the next morning. That would make easier going for the column … and for the Linyati. Also, it led further into the interior, rather than to the coast, petering out in a tumble of abandoned stone shacks less than a mile east.

  Gareth thought a moment, then decided that any semi-civilized people in this wilderness must, of course, be enemies of the Slavers.

  He ordered the troops to take the path west, then consulted Labala.

  “I’ve sensed more watchers,” the wizard decided gloomily. “Different from the Linyati.”

  “Friendly? Enemy?”

  “Dunno,” was his reply. “Guess we’ll have to wait to see whether we get hit with rocks or posies to find out.”

  The men at the head of the marchers also reported eerie feelings of being watched, invisibly.

  The first watcher was seen, or perhaps sensed, by Labala, who looked up into a tree, yelped surprise, and swarmed up it, moving with incredible speed for a man of his bulk.

  The young man squatting in the tree, watching, gape-mouthed at the monster coming at him, fumbled an arrow out of his quiver, and then Labala had him in an armhold.

  Squirm as he might, the man couldn’t get free, and Labala brought him to ground. The young man was roped to a tree, and Gareth and Cosyra came forward.

  The man’s eyes were like saucers in his brown face, especially looking at an armed woman.

  Dihr and his crew tried all the languages they knew, but without success.

  Labala used his language spell on himself, Dihr, and Gareth.

  “Who are you?” Gareth asked.

  The young man shook his head violently.

  “I am Gareth,” Radnor said. “I lead these men. We mean no harm.”

  “Then why my name?”

  “It is our custom.”

  “Magic men want names,” the young man said. “It gives them power over you.”

  Gareth muttered.

  “Very well. We’ll call you … Wind, for if it weren’t for our wizard, you could have blown right past us.”

  “That is not a bad name
,” the man grudged. “I will allow that.”

  “Godsdamned big of you,” Froln growled.

  “Where are your people?”

  “My people? Half a day march, in a direction I will not name. My masters? Two days up the path.”

  “Masters?”

  “Masters, with strong powers, like you must have, to chance these cursed jungles and their demons.”

  “But you did the same.”

  “Only because I heard you coming, and my curiosity bit me, and my village knows me to be a fool at times. Now I’m doomed to be your slave.”

  “We have no slaves.”

  Wind looked skeptically at Dihr.

  “Then who is he? Dark men like me with light men are always slaves.”

  “I am one who chooses to march with these men,” Dihr answered. “But I was a slave once. Of the evil ones who wear metal hats.”

  “I know them,” Wind said excitedly. “They come into our land, take slaves, burn our villages. Sometimes our Masters can fight them with their magic, but mostly the Masters are too taken with their own business, or are too lazy to come help us, for they consider us far beneath them.

  “I should not have said that,” he said. “I will be punished if you tell my Masters I said they were lazy.”

  “We will tell them nothing,” Gareth said.

  “Poor timid bastard,” said one of the pirates, Shenshi, the one who’d lost a duel to Cosyra. “Scared of us, scared of his damned Masters, scared of the jungle … but you can’t blame him.” Shenshi picked up the bow Wind had carried, took an arrow from the quiver.

  “Look at this damned toy,” he said.

  “No, no,” Wind protested, trying to reach for the bow.

  “Keep a quiet tool, there, sonny,” Shenshi said. “I won’t hurt your little toy.” He fiddled with it, shook his head.

  “No more’n, what, ten, maybe fifteen pounds pull? Arrow’s about as straight as my old woman’s lies. Feathers don’t look like they even came off the same bird. Not even a stone or metal point, just sharpened wood.” He touched the tip. “Ouch. Sharp, though. Guess it’d do for monkeys or birds. Small birds. Haw.”

  “Forget about that,” Gareth said. “Wind, what are your Masters like? Do they look like you?”