The Queen's Pardon (Alexis Carew Book 6)

by J. A. Sutherland

  “Then we should take those neighboring farms now,” Ellender said, “and add the enslaved crews there to our own forces.”

  “We shall, Captain Ellender,” Alexis said, “but each of those battles will be yet another chance for us to be discovered, and brings us closer to Téneto, which we do not have the forces to take outright.”

  Kannstadt nodded. “If the pirates discover us, Kapitän Ellender, before we have retaken Kapitän Carew’s ship, and the other ships in orbit, then all is lost.”

  “If Lieutenant Carew’s ship is so bloody important — and I suppose I must agree it is — then we must have more men to take it! And more than a single boat to carry them! Not rely on this bloody, dishonorable trickery from some man she’s as much as admitted is a pirate himself!”

  “One boat,” Alexis said firmly. She was tired — weary in both body and mind after the trek through the swamp, the battle for the farm, and, now, the interminable discussion with Ellender, who seemed to have no tactical sense other than to acquire and apply overwhelming force. The very thought of stealth and guile being useful seemed to bewilder him — or, perhaps, anger him, as the current plan did. The man’s insistence on calling her lieutenant, instead of captain, which, even were Mongoose a Royal Navy ship, she’d be entitled to as having command, was yet one more barb under her skin. “We’ve been round and round about how to acquire more than one, Captain Ellender, and there’s simply no way that doesn’t carry too much risk of tipping our hand. More than that, what are we to do with the dozen boats you wish us to acquire? Do you not think those ships’ crews will find it odd that so many boats lift from Erzurum and make for orbit?” She grasped her legs to keep her hands still instead of waving them about as she wished. “One boat might make an excuse to approach — a dozen, never.”

  “My men and I will be on the boat, then,” Ellender said, renewing an old demand.

  “No, sir, they will not,” Alexis said.

  “Damn you, Carew, I’m your —”

  “We’ve been over that, sir — and I grant you that title as a courtesy only. The Navy saw fit to set me on my own bottom, and that’s where we are for the moment.” Alexis squared her shoulders, drawing herself up in her chair — which, she supposed, only served to emphasize her short stature, given where the farm’s dining table still fell on her. Standing would do no better, though, for she’d find herself barely above the two seated men. There were times she thought she might have Nabb carry a little folding platform about with them for when she wanted to address a crowd or speak to a man’s face instead of his elbow. “Mongoose is my ship, sir, and I’ll have no man aboard during this who’s not sworn to my command. Moreover, my men know her well and yours do not. What space is left will be filled by Captain Kannstadt’s men, as he’s agreed to put them under my command for this.”

  She shared a look with Kannstadt, who nodded. It was very odd to find herself allied with the Hanoverese, who’d readily agreed to instruct his men who’d be filling out Alexis’ in the boat they hoped to capture that they were under Alexis’ command for the duration. Odder still that she now trusted the Hanoverese captain’s word on that more than Ellender’s and hoped the New Londoner would not reverse himself and offer those men, for she couldn’t bring herself to trust his word.

  Ellender ground his jaw together and glared at Alexis, who met his gaze blandly.

  “Very well,” he said finally. “My men and I will be in the second trip, then.”

  Alexis looked to Kannstadt. Whoever made the second trip would be taking one of the other pirate vessels in orbit. Kannstadt shrugged, despite what Alexis was certain was a desire to put a ship around him again with no delay, after his months in Erzurum’s muck and slave pits.

  “As you wish,” Kannstadt said. “You will need some of my men to fill your crew, as Kapitän Carew will have. They will be sworn to obey your orders, I assure you.” Kannstadt frowned. “You do speak some German, hein?”

  Alexis fought the grin that sprang to her face as Ellender realized he couldn’t very well fight his captured ship if half or more of the crew couldn’t understand him, and he had no tablet to translate as Alexis did, nor even the poor command of the language she had. There were the tablets of Isikli and his family, but they weren’t even in German and there didn’t seem to be a setting to change the language.

  “Bloody foreigners,” Ellender muttered.

  Alexis, Nabb, and Dockett stood on one of the farm’s dikes, hands bound behind them, though not securely. She kept her hands still, not fiddling with the rough ropes to ensure they’d fall away quickly, for fear they’d do so before she wished.

  Isikli stood beside her, one of the farm’s rifles — unloaded — over his shoulder and grasping her upper arm.

  “I be good,” Isikli said to her. Very nearly the only English he’d admit to knowing, learned from the pirates visiting his farm. His fearful, obsequious tone set Alexis’ stomach to churning.

  “Sons be good,” he said, nodding to his two sons holding Nabb’s and Dockett’s arms as well.

  “It will be all right, sir,” Alexis said, hoping to reassure him.

  Isikli didn’t seem to understand — or if he did, he said nothing more. He only looked back to his farmhouse, where Alexis’ man, Warth, dressed as one of Isikli’s farmhands, held the cupola atop the roof with his rifle trained on them. Then Isikli looked forward to the wide part of the dike where the pirate boat would land, carefully keeping his eyes away from the water-filled fields to either side.

  “I be good. Sons be good,” the farmer repeated.

  Alexis felt sorry for the farmer, slave-owner though he might be. Ellender couldn’t say that he and the others had been particularly ill-treated by Isikli or his family — roughly, perhaps, but no more than they should expect as prisoners, he admitted under Alexis’ questioning. Not that she forgave him and the other inhabitants of Erzurum for their slave-keeping, only that she now knew it was a way of life forced on them by the pirate band.

  For Isikli now, he was between the fire and the pan.

  Alexis only trusted him to do his part because she believed the pirates would kill all of the farm’s inhabitants for allowing it to be taken by the slaves. The man had no choice but to cooperate in the hopes that Alexis’ crew and the escaped slaves would prevail and be more merciful — that Alexis would be true to her word and take him and his family with her back to Dalthus.

  That the rest of the farmer’s family was still in the house under the guard of Kannstadt and his men, while Warth had made it clear his rifle would be trained on Isikli’s head the entire time, only made the farmer more cooperative.

  He’d certainly said nothing untoward when contacting the pirates. Alexis, Kannstadt, and Ellender had stayed near the farm’s comms unit, out of sight, and Alexis’ tablet quietly translating, as Isikli called the pirates in Téneto and informed them that he’d captured a small band of slaves raiding his fields. He would normally keep such a valuable find to work his own fields, but these slaves were different, he told the pirates. They were clearly new to Erzurum and wore, though much worn by the rains and mud, ships’ jumpsuits and good boots, which were always taken from new slaves by the pirates, in Isikli’s experience.

  Was this of interest to the pirates?

  Oh, yes, the pirates were interested and would come to pick up Isikli’s captives, but it surprised Alexis that they first asked if one of the captured slaves might be a particular man of, perhaps, fifty years with dark hair and a square jaw?

  The pirates seemed disappointed when Isikli told them, no, it is only an older man, squat and with a fat face — Dockett bristled at that — and a young man and girl.

  Now they were just waiting for the pirate’s boat to arrive and land.

  Rain settled on Alexis’ face and hair, running down her neck in an annoying rivulet she couldn’t wipe away with her ostensibly bound hands. She was almost to the point where she thought she might ask Isikli to do it when the pirate boat appeared, c
ircling down out of the overcast.

  Then, behind the first, came a second, and Alexis felt a chill from more than just the rains.

  Their plan was for one boat, not two.

  The first pirate boat came lower and circled the farm, perhaps examining the swampy forest surrounding it. The second stayed higher, keeping watch. It was a caution Alexis wouldn’t often attribute to pirates and it made her heart sink. If that second boat stayed in the sky above the farm, then they had no chance at all — even if they took the one that landed, the second would have them at its mercy.

  Isikli turned her to face him and she saw real fear in his eyes.

  He knew the plan and could tell the implications of that second boat staying aloft as well as she.

  “I’m sorry,” Alexis said.

  Whatever happened to her and her lads now, killed or simply taken by the pirates and sold as workers onto some other farm, Isikli and his family were almost certainly doomed.

  The farmer’s eyes shot from her face to the circling boat, then to the higher one. He took a deep breath.

  “Trust?” he asked. He touched his chest. “Güvenmek? Vertrauen? Trust?”

  Alexis stared into the farmer’s eyes for a moment, then glanced at the sky. Both boats were behind her and couldn’t see her face. So much of her time on Erzurum did seem to have come down to that. Trust Kannstadt, despite his being Hanoverese and his despicable attempt to coerce Isikli through the man’s wife and daughters? Trust Ellender — her countryman and from the same service? Trust Isikli — a poor man trying to get by as best he might, or slaveholding ally to pirates?

  She made a decision. Isikli would do as he saw best for his family, and, for the moment, she thought that course was with her.

  “Warth, stand down!” she yelled. “Let him do as he will!” She met Isikli’s eyes again. “Yes, ja. Trust.”

  The farmer nodded and rattled off a string of instructions. One of his sons, the one holding Dockett, said something, perhaps to argue, but Isikli cut him off. The son bowed his head and released Dockett, handing his rifle to Isikli, and dashed toward the farmhouse.

  “Trust,” Isikli said. “Please?”

  “We’re all doomed if I don’t, Mister Isikli,” Alexis said.

  “What’s he up to, sir?” Dockett said.

  “I’ve no idea,” she admitted. “I can only hope he sees the situation as clearly as we do and knows the pirates well enough to have some plan.”

  Isikli’s plan became clear enough in a moment as his son came back out of the farmhouse, along with Isikli’s wife, daughters, and the son’s wife. The women moved hesitantly at first, but Isikli shouted something to them, waving his hands, and they were soon moving along the dike, looking up at the pirate boats, smiling, and waving.

  The circling boat seemed to shiver in the air, then turned in toward the dike, while the higher boat swooped down behind it.

  “Well, that’s clear enough, then,” Dockett muttered.

  Alexis nodded. She shouldn’t be surprised that the Erzurum farmers and their families might sell more than crops to the pirates. She could tell from the set of Isikli’s jaw as he returned that it wasn’t something his family normally engaged in, but it must be frequent enough at other farms that the pirates recognized the waving women as some sign of their availability.

  There was barely enough room on the wider portion of the dike for both boats to set down. The second had its aft third hanging over a field, so couldn’t lower its rear ramp. Not that either bothered. They both lowered fore ramps on the starboard side, and only three men exited each.

  The three from the second boat stayed around the ramp, while the first, the nearer one to Alexis and her group, left one man at the ramp while two approached.

  Isikli grasped Alexis’ arm again and stepped forward to meet them, but the lead pirate waved him off.

  “Yeah, yeah, Old Blackbourne’ll get to you in a minute,” he said, then, “Inno minuteo, you wog bastard.” He nodded toward the farm’s women who’d stopped midway down the dike when the boats landed. “Your whores’ll get their coin too, but first —” He approached Dockett. “You’re off that ship what crashed a boat, eh? Where’s your captain? He weren’t with those who left, we searched every boat in orbit a’fore they left.”

  Dockett frowned and Alexis answered for him.

  “If you’re searching for Mongoose’s captain, you’ve found her.”

  “Mongoose, Old Blackbourne’s wrinkled arse,” the pirate said, turning to her. “That’s the bloody Elizabeth, so now where’s that sneaky bastard Avrel Dansby?”

  Twenty-Eight

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Alexis said. “Mongoose is mine.”

  “That’s shite,” the pirate said. He stepped close to Alexis, his chest in her face and forcing her to look up at him. “Old Blackbourne served on Elizabeth near three years under that black-hearted bastard — there’s no way in the Dark Dansby’d let another command her in the Barbary, not knowing we was still here. Now, Captain Ness, he thinks different — thinks the old bastard’s got himself another, bigger ship out there somewhere. That’d be why he’s off shadowing them flouncy privateers before taking more prizes. But Old Blackbourne? Well he says to hisself, he says, ‘Tristian Blackbourne, that bastard Dansby’s not a man to hang back, so if he weren’t on the hulk of Elizabeth and he weren’t on the boats that come up then he must be on the boat that crashed.’ Y’wouldn’t wish to call old Tristian Blackbourne a liar, now would you, girl?”

  The pirate’s, Blackbourne’s she presumed, breath was rank as he leaned closer to Alexis to ask that last and she drew back from him.

  Whatever is the matter with pirates and brushing their bloody teeth?

  Blackbourne straightened to look down on her from his full height.

  “Are y’not likin’ Old Blackbourne, now?” He turned his head over his shoulder to call to his fellows. “She’s not likin’ Old Blackbourne, lads! Not like them farmgirls just waiting for your coin!” He gave a nod toward the farmer’s wife and daughters still midway between the farmhouse and the boats, then returned his attention to Alexis.

  “Oh, you’ll like Old Blackbourne soon enough, lass,” he said, grasping himself with one hand and thrusting his hips at her. “An’ you’ll whisper all o’ that Dark-hearted Dansby’s secrets to him, you will.” His grin widened. “In a’tween the screams, an you’ll —”

  “Now,” Alexis said.

  “What?” Blackbourne asked. “No, not now, Old Blackbourne prefers a bit o’ privacy an’ —”

  Alexis stepped back from him, let the ropes fall from her hands, and drew her flechette pistol from its pocket at the back of her vacsuit liner.

  “What’re y’pointin’ at, girl?” Blackbourne asked, looking down.

  I really should purchase a larger pistol, so a man will understand when I’m about to shoot him instead of thinking I’m bloody pointing.

  Nabb and Dockett dropped their own bonds as well, pulling hidden pistols and dodging to the side.

  Blackbourne started to move as they did, reacting more to the men than to Alexis, but before he could so much as twitch his hand, she fired. Not for his head or body, for he seemed to be the pirate’s leader and she wanted that one alive.

  Alexis shot Blackbourne in the hand, pinning it with needle-sharp flechettes to what it grasped.

  That was the signal.

  Or, at least, a sufficient one.

  The sharp crack of ionizing air split Blackbourne’s screams as Warth fired from the farmhouse’s cupola. The former poacher’s shot took one of the pirates at the second boat’s ramp in the eye, dropping him to the ground.

  Dockett and Nabb sprinted for the near boat, firing as they went.

  Isikli and his son dove off the dike, landing in their muddy fields in twin sprays of dark water, followed closely by his other son and the women farther down the dike. Alexis didn’t blame them, they were unarmed and no further use in this fight.

&nb
sp; Kannstadt’s and Ellender’s men, those not with Alexis’ and armed with the extra weapons from Mongoose’s boat, streamed out of the farmhouse. They’d be of little use, without guns and starting far away from the boats, but would at least feel part of the action and provide a bit of a distraction to the pirates.

  The rest of Alexis’ men were closer, heads and faces covered in Erzurum’s thick mud, and ducked down amongst the cattail reeds of the farm’s fields all along the dikes.

  They emerged now and raised their own weapons — the guns’ workings were made for keeping the vacuum of darkspace out, so just as effective with Erzurum’s water and mud. Those with rifles fired immediately while those with pistols dashed for the boats — dashed as well as one could through the knee-deep muck, until they reached the dikes and could run faster.

  The pirates were quite taken by surprise. They were armed, but not prepared, perhaps lulled into a further sense of security by the unexpected offer of the farm’s women. Of the six pirates who’d exited the boats, four had rifles of one sort or another — but those were kept slung over their shoulders and not readied. The rest had pistols at their hips, but only those at the farther boat were able to draw.

  Those at the closer boat fell to shots either from her lads in the fields or Dockett and Nabb, who raced past the bodies and up the boat’s ramp.

  Warth fired again from the cupola, this time taking a pirate at the second boat in the leg.

  Alexis stayed with Blackbourne, reaching down to pull the man’s own pistol, while keeping her own trained on him in warning.

  “Tell your men to stand down!” Alexis ordered.

  The pirate leader rolled on the ground, clutching himself with both hands now, and crying out.

  “Oh, sweet Dark, y’ve done for Old Blackbourne!”

  “Quit your whinging, man, and surrender,” Alexis said.