Captain Aketz of the Cipac lowered his spyglass and looked to Ahmaddi, the skinny Behrenese man standing beside him.
Ahmaddi shifted nervously, which brought a little grin to the face of the Xoconai captain. Aketz Fiatl was not a tall and thick man, standing just over five feet. Few had expected him to survive his earliest days, so sickly was he, and never in his life had he been physically imposing. But he more than made up for that with the severe widow’s peak of his raven hair and the set of his small black eyes—too close together beside his thin, long, and hooked nose—which verily glowed bright red as if with unrelenting anger. The ability of Captain Aketz to shatter the nerves of those around him had only grown with his reputation as he sailed these eastern waters, offering no quarter to those who would impede the glory of the growing Tonoloyan empire.
Aketz tried not to laugh and break the spell, but the man’s appearance alone amused him. This one was so skinny indeed that his black hair and beard extended out beyond his shoulders! “What is her name?” Aketz asked.
“The Swordfish.”
“And her captain?”
“Jocasta. Captain Jocasta. She hails from my village.”
“And she is a buccaneer? She sails her ship under the red ’n’ black?”
The small man shifted in a strange and jittery fashion but nodded emphatically.
“Or is she just a woman who scorned you?” asked Cayo, the Cipac’s first mate and high priest, who was standing just to the side.
“I would not lie to you. Why would I lie to you?” Ahmaddi stammered.
“For the reward, of course,” answered Cayo. “And for revenge.”
“No, no, she did not scorn me,” Ahmaddi said. “No, no. She dishonors my village, but only because she is a pirate.”
“If she is a pirate from a village within Behren, does she not sail with a Letter of Marque and Reprisal from Chezru Chief Brynn Dharielle?” Captain Aketz asked.
Ahmaddi swallowed hard, his obvious panic weakening his claim. He was turning in a pirate and he wanted the reward, and more than that, he wanted to stay in the good graces of the ferocious Captain Aketz.
“So how does that dishonor your village? Is she not in service to your queen?”
“Not all of Behren agrees with Chezru Chieftain Brynn,” Ahmaddi quietly replied.
“More likely, the reward of gold allows Ahmaddi to care less about such politics,” said Captain Aketz, and he snapped his telescoping spyglass closed and shook his head, starting away.
“But that does not take the name of Swordfish off her stern,” Ahmaddi pleaded.
“A name that means nothing to us,” Cayo answered as the captain walked away. The tall and broad-shouldered first mate hunched his golden-colored robes to make himself appear even larger, then leaned over Ahmaddi, making the man appear, and clearly feel, even smaller.
“Because she is new to the waters,” Ahmaddi sputtered. “She is just out…”
“Convenient,” said Cayo. “And you, of course, knew of her, and her intent, before the Tonoloya Armada had ever heard of the ship? Before a single report of a skirmish?”
“Sister ship to Port Mandu,” Ahmaddi blurted, and Cayo fell back.
“What did you say?” demanded Aketz, who was several steps away.
“Jocasta… now Captain Jocasta, who was first mate of Port Mandu,” Ahmaddi explained. “Captain Wilkie Dogears caught her a ship. That ship, the Swordfish. She is his second, his escort, his flank, his…” The man held up his hands, searching for a word to better explain in this language, Xoconai, which was not his native tongue.
Aketz came forward again and telescoped his spyglass, suddenly very interested once more. He had never heard of the Swordfish, but the Port Mandu was a different matter altogether.
“Who have we aboard who knows anything of Captain Wilkie and his crew?” Aketz asked Cayo.
“I will see,” the man replied, and rushed away.
“You believe me now?” Ahmaddi asked.
Aketz turned a scowl his way, sized him up and down without bothering to hide his contempt, then went back to his spyglass.
“I will be given the reward, yes?”
“If you do not shut up, you will get wet. Very wet, and very quickly.”
Ahmaddi swallowed hard yet again and shifted from one foot to the other, something he continued doing for some time, until First Mate Cayo returned to the captain’s side.
“The Port Mandu was known to have a Behrenese first mate,” Cayo confirmed. He turned to look at Ahmaddi as he finished, “A Behrenese woman named Jocasta.”
“Your fellow augurs would minimalize my efforts here to secure the seas,” Aketz remarked.
“Captain?”
“They seek better ways to move the gold. They fear the pirates.”
“No, Captain Aketz,” Cayo answered, shaking his head vigorously. “They know that the buccaneers must be defeated fully and forever, and that Captain Aketz and Cipac are the spear to skewer the foul sidhe.”
It was a rehearsed line, Aketz recognized. There was a measure of truth to it, perhaps, but he knew that his superiors in Entel were growing frustrated by the continual nuisance of the buccaneers, particularly because of their alliance with the dangerous kingdom of Behren. In normal times, Aketz would have monitored the Swordfish, perhaps approached and boarded her to ensure that she had no ill-gotten loot aboard.
But these were not normal times. He needed a prize.
A kill.
“Full sail,” Aketz ordered. “Keep us just to her starboard. Do not let her turn for the shallows.”
Aketz didn’t bother to look over at Ahmaddi anymore, but he didn’t try to suppress the grin on his face, even though he knew it would put the little snake of a man more at ease. He couldn’t deny the truth of this opportunity. Wilkie Dogears had finally been caught in an act of piracy, only a few weeks before—perhaps even the incident that had allowed him to acquire this ship. Ever had the Polite Pirate escaped Aketz’s wrath, and so he would again if Aketz allowed some time to pass, some time for Wilkie to once again charm with gold those Xoconai captains and merchants who listed the wanted buccaneer outlaws. The sister ship to Port Mandu would be a prize in this short window of opportunity, no doubt, and Port Mandu a bigger one still.
He considered the possibilities. He could shadow this square-rigged sloop and hope it would lead him to Wilkie—he had no doubt that the Cipac could sink them both in a single battle. But no, he decided. He’d take this ship alone and get his answers from any who survived the battle.
The Swordfish wasn’t going to see land again, he decided.
Captain Jocasta paced in circles around the mainmast of the Swordfish, glancing up every few moments to Chimeg, who stood tall in the crow’s nest, peering intently astern.
“It’s a hunter, no doubt,” said Calloway, the first mate. “And a big one.”
“Many of the big Tonoloya ships are for cargo,” Jocasta reminded him.
“How many cargo ships pursue buccaneers?” Calloway came back, and Jocasta stuttered in search of a reply.
Chimeg came down beside the two, then, sliding easily along a rope to the main deck.
“Three-masted,” she said. “Rigged both square and lateen, and sailing under the flag of the Tonoloya Armada.”
“A frigate. Then it’s the Crocodile, to be sure,” said Calloway.
“Cipac,” Jocasta murmured, the formal name of the ship, the Xoconai word for “crocodile.” “What would Captain Aketz want with us?”
“Same thing he wants with every buccaneer,” Calloway said through clenched teeth. The man slapped a hand against his leg and spun away, spitting curses under his breath.
“We fly no red ’n’ black,” Jocasta reminded him. “We have attacked no one. To all, how can we be known as anything more than a simple trader? These lanes are filled with traders.”
“We have been seen as Captain Wilkie’s escort these last weeks,” Chimeg noted.
“Or we have been seen as sailing under the protection of the Port Mandu,” Jocasta decided. “And that is the story we must present.”
“Then you mean to let them catch us?” Calloway asked.
“We cannot outrun them,” answered Chimeg. “And they remain pointed between us and the shallows, where we can go and they cannot.”
“I do not mean to let them do anything,” Jocasta assured the first mate. She shielded her eyes with her hand and looked to the westering sun. “Hold our course until the cover of night, then place one of the hourglass decoys and take us hard to port and the open waters.”
That brought some raised eyebrows from the two beside her.
“Straight east, then back to the north,” the captain explained. “If we can fool the Cipac even for a single night, we can run for Freeport before they can catch us.”
“And if not?” Calloway asked, but he was nodding in agreement with the plan.
“Then we keep our red ’n’ black stowed and present ourselves as simple traders, out on the waves on our maiden voyage.”
“A simple trader with that?” Calloway asked, pointing out the catapult on the Swordfish’s raised quarterdeck.
“If we again see Cipac’s sails when the sun rises, dump it off our starboard rail,” Captain Jocasta ordered.
“Dump our catapult?” Calloway’s mouth hung open as he finished.
“Do you think that we can fight Aketz? Do you believe that a few throws of that meager war machine will cripple the Cipac enough to keep us ahead of her?”
“Permission to speak freely?”
“Of course,” said Jocasta.
“I think I would rather be scuttled in a fight than just surrender,” Calloway replied bluntly.
“Even if it means your death?”
“Yes.”
“Even if it means the death of all aboard?”
“Did anyone here sign their papers without knowing that possibility?” Calloway replied. He gave a little snort. “How many of the original buccaneers are still alive? We all know our fate, captain, and all knew it when we decided that we’d rather live short and free than live long under the weight of Xoconai oppression.”
Jocasta looked to Chimeg, who pulled her compound bow off her shoulder and held it tight against her. “As long as I kill more of the goldfish, I die content,” the deadliest of archers said.
Captain Jocasta nodded to her dear friend, the only member of Wilkie’s crew who had joined her when she had acquired her own ship, taken in a pursuit when the crew had abandoned her to the chasing Port Mandu. “Perhaps it will not come to that. Let us see what the morning light shows us.”
“Do you believe it will really help?” Aketz asked Cayo and the other augurs who had gathered in his cabin. Dusk was falling about them, with their prey still some distance ahead. They had closed the gap, but Aketz, realizing he could not catch the Swordfish before nightfall, had slowed. If their prey knew of the pursuit, keeping them located in the dark night would prove no easy task.
“If you expect it to ignite her sails, then no,” Augur Cayo admitted. “But it will dry them to better prepare them for arrows and pitch.”
“It seems a lot of work for minimal gain,” Aketz said, shaking his head. He looked at the contraption the augurs had brought to him. Its center was a large, multifaceted crystal ball, one set on a pike so that it could be spun. It was surrounded by a quintet of narrow, waist-high sheets of polished gold. “You will take all my augurs from the fight for many minutes to accomplish something minimal or not at all.”
“You must be forward-thinking, Captain Aketz,” said Cayo. “We have been three years of near-constant sea battles. Our enemies improve their designs. Once, a simple fireball would light up the sails. A simple lightning bolt could split a hull. Now they have perfected gels to wet the sails, and that… caoutchou, that rubber, to seal their hulls. Our enemies’ vessels are growing faster and stronger, and so we, too, must pray to Scathmizzane for guidance that we can continue to properly vanquish them.”
“Then you use Cipac as a trial platform,” Aketz said sourly, his tone reminding them all that Cayo had not been his original first mate, and that he had never meant for the augur to ascend to such a post. Most in the room had witnessed the shouting between Aketz and City Sovereign Popoca of Entel that day two years previous when Popoca had informed the captain of the change in his crew.
Cayo laughed the thought away. “The Cipac strikes fear into the hearts of the buccaneers. With Scathmizzane’s golden light, that intimidation will only grow. A trial platform? No, my captain, we view Cipac as the only hunter worthy of our efforts, and as we strengthen the power of Scathmizzane-granted magic, your legend will only grow. Truly and clearly, this is the flagship of the Tonoloya Armada in the east. And when we are done, the Cipac will be on the lips of every Xoconai throughout Mayorqua Tonoloya, spoken with pride and reverence, while our enemies utter…” He paused and looked to his fellow augurs. “What is the sidhe word?”
“Crocodile,” answered one.
“Ah, yes, the sidhe from Durubazzi to Vanguard and everywhere in between will tremble and glance about nervously as they utter ‘the Crocodile’ with a very different manner of respect.”
All about Cayo, the augurs nodded and murmured quiet prayers.
Captain Aketz knew they were playing on his vanity here.
But so be it. He wasn’t a religious man and only attended the services to avoid scandal, but he couldn’t deny that the augurs had proven themselves over and over again in the last battles. Whether this new toy they had brought aboard would prove useful or a waste of time, he owed it to them and to Popoca of Entel to give them their trial.
“If it is ineffective, you will fast abandon your attempts and return to the duties of our last battles,” he told the first mate.
“Of course, my captain. But by the will and promise of Scathmizzane, it will not be ineffective. Believe, my captain. Believe.”
Aketz mulled on that for a bit, then nodded and told Cayo to make sure that the Swordfish could not get close to the coast of Behren. Knowing it would be a long and dreary day, the captain then retired to his chamber, climbed into his hammock, and considered the best ways he might use this opportunity—if Ahmaddi wasn’t lying—to somehow get to Captain Wilkie Dogears.
The originals were always the best trophies, after all.
With fantasies of scuttling Port Mandu dancing in his head, Captain Aketz dozed, sleeping lightly, but enough so that he was a bit confused when he looked across his room to find it dark.
He rolled out of the hammock, straightened his clothing and hair, and went out onto the deck with the stiffened gait, straight back, and high chin expected of Xoconai aristocracy.
He found Cayo standing on the forecastle deck, leaning on the top ladder post, and staring out to the south, at the dark sea.
“Still so far ahead?” Aketz remarked when he joined the first mate, immediately noting the stern light of their prey some distance ahead. “Swordfish is faster than we thought, it would seem.”
“We were gaining faster before the sun set,” Cayo answered. “I do not think we have closed at all since the onset of night.”
“She’s carrying a second sail set, do you think?” Aketz asked, drawing forth his spyglass. “There are whispers of exotic vessels that can raise side sails like wings to better catch a trailing wind, as we have this night.”
He lifted the spyglass and focused in on the distant light.
He couldn’t make out much about it, though, for it was simply too far away.
But then he noticed that it was bobbing and bouncing considerably, much more than he would have expected in the calm seas now beneath his own ship’s sturdy hull.
He lowered the spyglass and considered that for a moment, even started to ask Cayo about it.
Then Captain Aketz blew a long growl and a resigned chuckle, figuring it out.
“Sinking sand light,” he told Cayo.
The first mate looked at him in puzzlement.
“They dropped a raft or a dinghy,” Aketz explained. “And upon it, they placed a running light, a large candle, supported on a platform that rested on a bed of fine sand. Like the top of an hourglass, and with the sand running below, slowly, sneakily, lowering the lantern.”
“To make it seem as if they remained ahead of us,” Cayo reasoned.
“And to make us think that they were indeed pulling away from us.”
“So they must be if they are running ahead of this decoy…” Cayo didn’t even finish the thought before he noted Aketz’s amused and perhaps disappointed expression. The first mate realized his error then and just sighed and shook his head.
“How long have we been sailing in full darkness?” Aketz asked, looking up at the stars.
“Less than two hours.”
“And how far ahead of us was the Swordfish when last you saw the ship itself?”
“Perhaps two hours. No more than three.”
“Then expect that we’ll be up on this drifting decoy soon enough.”
“But the Swordfish will be long in front of…” Again, Aketz’s look stopped him and corrected his reasoning.
“She turned,” Cayo said, and the captain nodded.
“You have kept us straight and angled to her starboard?”
“As you commanded, yes.”
Aketz looked around the forward rail, then up at the crow’s nest at all the assigned lookouts, all seeming diligent, as he knew his crew would ever be. If the buccaneers had turned to starboard to run for the shallows, someone would have likely, or at least possibly, seen Swordfish’s silhouette.
Captain Jocasta had trained under the clever Wilkie Dogears. She would know that.
Captain Jocasta had trained under the bold Wilkie Dogears. She hadn’t headed for the coast of Behren.
“Half to port, Cayo,” he ordered. “All lights out, all decks. Line our port rail with watchers and tell them to keep their eyes staring just above the horizon.”
“You think she went to deeper waters?” the first mate asked, the surprise in his voice evident.
“I think she might already be past us out in the east, sailing north for Freeport,” Captain Aketz replied. “A ghost in the night, while we are chasing a lantern.”
Cayo stepped ahead, peering intently forward, shaking his head as if he didn’t believe they had been deceived.
“Should we not find this decoy and ensure—”
“Half to port,” Aketz told the man. He produced a small sandglass and handed it to the first mate. “Ten-minute intervals,” he explained. “And with each passage, take us ten degrees farther to port until our bowsprit is aiming straight for Freeport. The pre-dawn glow will show us her sails, and then she is ours.”
He saw the first mate’s doubting expression, but he didn’t give Cayo any signs that it was warranted.
Even though those doubts were valid, of course.
Aketz was guessing, playing his gut here. He knew what he would do if he was being pursued by a ship he could not hope to fight, and he was a fine captain.
Captain Wilkie was a fine captain, too, daring and unconventional.
Now Aketz had to hope that the Polite Pirate had passed that cleverness on to his protégée.
A feeling of uneasiness accompanied Captain Jocasta’s awakening senses when the pre-dawn light entered her cabin.
She knew they had executed the ploy perfectly, and by all reasoning, the run to Freeport should be clear and easy.
But she knew, too, that this was Aketz and Cipac—the Crocodile—giving chase.
She hadn’t undressed when she retired, so she gathered up her sword and went out from her cabin quickly.
She looked to the east, to the brightening sky.
She turned to the west, peering into the gloom.
The daylight growing by the minute, and soon the full and ample sails of a three-masted frigate came into view, ghostly in the gray of the marine layer. Jocasta knew that the warship had a better view of the Swordfish, with the pre-dawn glow behind her, than she had of them.
“To starboard and out to the open sea?” First Mate Calloway asked, rushing over to her, Chimeg beside him.
“To what end?” Jocasta replied. “That would only admit our guilt.”
“Did we not already do that with our ploy?”
“The flag of the Cipac was not visible to us then, so perhaps we tell them that we thought her a buccaneer. Now it is visible. Captain Aketz knows now that we know we are being pursued by a Tonoloya warship.”
“You don’t believe that,” Calloway remarked.
Jocasta rubbed the remaining weariness out of her face. She wanted to argue, but he was right, of course. That excuse would not work.
“Wake all the crew and bring them up here,” the captain ordered. She moved to the port rail, leaning heavily upon it and staring out to the southwest and the swift-sailing warship. Even if they turned and tried to flee straight away from her, her considerable war weapons would be in range long before the morning sun reached its zenith.
She had barely begun her contemplations when Jocasta was distracted by Chimeg, who had cut her wrist and was bleeding it into a pail. The To-gai-ru had quite a bit of red liquid in the bucket and covered it tightly with a cap of rubber as the crew gathered all about.
“What are you doing?” Jocasta whispered to Chimeg before addressing the others.
“Being clever. I do not intend to die out here without finding every opportunity.”
“So, you would prefer that we surrender?”
“You think that a possibility?” Chimeg’s tone was almost mocking, and Jocasta winced at the edge in her voice.
The captain shook it away as the crew gathered about.
“We cannot outrun the Crocodile, and we know her reputation,” Jocasta told them all. “Three choices I see before us. We can dump our catapult starboard and pretend that we are simply a trader heading for Freeport.”
“They’re close enough to see that,” one woman replied.
“Traders don’t turn one-eighty after sunset,” another man chimed in.
“Or we can strike and surrender,” Jocasta continued, trying not to grimace at the doubting comments. “My life will be forfeit, but so be it.”
“Others, as well!” someone said.
“Calloway!”
“Chimeg!” another added. “She is the scourge of the sea, raining death arrows from her perch in the nest! Killing her would be a true feather for the cap of Captain Aketz.”
Jocasta looked to Chimeg, who merely shrugged. If she was the least bit concerned, she wasn’t showing it.
“Still, it is possible that many of you will be spared,” the captain told them.
“Spared to work as galley slaves or deck swabs under goldfish whips!” one said, to many agreeing replies of “Aye!”
“Then what’s the third choice, Captain Jocasta?” asked the woman who had first spoken. “Tell us the third!”
“We fight,” Jocasta said, and before the words had even left her mouth, the cheers rose all around her.
“We cannot beat the Crocodile,” Jocasta warned.
“If I kill two goldfish afore they cut me down, I’ll be dying with a grin that’ll follow me all the way to St. Abelle’s waiting arms,” said that same woman, and again came the agreeing calls and cheers.
“Bah! But he’d only catch the likes o’ yerself to throw ye back to the waitin’ claws o’ the demon dactyl!” another woman taunted, and all had a good laugh.
The captain was taken aback by the remark, the reply, and the cheering, but when she leaned back on her heels and considered it, Jocasta found that she really wasn’t surprised. These were buccaneers, pirates, running in waters thick with powerful warships, knowing that every sail could be their last, and that one most surely would. There were only a few ways out of this life: scurvy, dead from the weather, whether becalmed or taken by a storm, or killed at the end of a goldfish macana.
They knew it. They didn’t just say it, no, but they knew it, and had known and accepted that fate from the moment they had decided that their lives free and full of flavor were worth that inevitably early death.
And now they were showing the truth of that. Jocasta looked all about her crew of twenty-five and saw not a doubt or a regret.
“As she nears range, Mister Calloway,” she said, “put her on our stern and fill our thrower with chain. Maybe we will find some luck and take enough of her sails to let us get away.”
“Not with a dozen shots,” she heard Chimeg whisper grimly, and Jocasta looked down to see the archer sitting by her pail of blood and chuckling softly.
She dismissed the crew and turned to her dear friend. “How many will you kill today?” she asked.
“If less than a dozen, know that I die disappointed.”
“Here’s hoping that you get a shot at Aketz himself, or an augur.”
Grinning wickedly, Chimeg pushed her pail of blood aside and pulled another bucket over. When she removed the rubber cover of this second one, the stench of the chamber pot nearly gagged Jocasta. She fell back and covered her mouth and nose with her hand, watching as the archer dipped her many arrows into the feces, one by one.
“And here is hoping that they die slowly,” Chimeg said, taking up her bow and quiver and heading for the crow’s nest.
The sheer coldness in her voice unnerved Jocasta. She only heard such a venomous tone from the normally calm lookout when the goldfish were involved. She didn’t know much of Chimeg’s past, as the woman didn’t speak much of her years since leaving the steppes of her homeland in the distant west. Jocasta was certain that something bad had happened to her friend at the hands of the Xoconai.
She hoped Chimeg would get some measure of revenge this day.
Cipac was truly coming on fast, and the Swordfish began her starboard turn before Chimeg had even reached the nest. Even then, running straight at full sail away from the warship, the distance was noticably closing by the minute.
Jocasta went to the quarterdeck, all the way to the taffrail, to study the predator—and truly the Cipac looked the part. Her bow was flared on either side by side-mounted catapults, readied and pulled to throw, and appearing like the widely opened jaws of a striking snake or, fittingly, like the flared maw of a crocodile.
“Captain, we’re coming into range,” one of the catapult crew called to her.
Jocasta looked to her catapult, a small thrower, neither accurate nor particularly strong. She glanced back at Cipac, at those “jaws,” and knew them to be far superior.
“If we are in range, they certainly are,” she mentioned to Calloway, who came up the ladder beside her. “And have been for some time.”
“They see our catapult,” the first mate replied. “Why are they holding their shots?”
Confidence, Jocasta knew, but didn’t say. There was no need to heighten the tension any further on the deck of the Swordfish.
“But now we can hit them,” Calloway pressed.
The words leaked out of Jocasta’s mouth before she could reconsider. “They don’t care.”
She spent only a moment reminding herself that this wasn’t some prelude to a call for surrender, and hearing again in her mind the determination of her crew not to become slaves of the goldfish. She moved past Calloway to the rail. “Fire at will,” she told the man, and she went back down to the main deck. Before she had crossed the bottom step, she heard the great rush of the beam and felt the shudder as the Swordfish’s first volley flew away.
Captain Jocasta rushed to the rail and watched the chains flying away through the air like a rumba of the flying jaculi rattlesnakes of the Durubazzi jungles. The throw was perfect, a couple of the chains hitting the Cipac’s jib, while most soared in against the square foresail.
As she had known, and feared, the heavy canvas held its ground. There were tears, of course, but little to slow the hunter.
She heard Calloway frantically calling for the crew to reload.
Jocasta blew a resigned sigh. She had guided Port Mandu’s capture of this light sloop only seven weeks before. She had overseen the reconditioning and the renaming of the vessel, officially inaugurated as the Swordfish only three weeks ago.
This was only her third sail since that recent launch, and her first away from the Behrenese coast.
This was certainly the Swordfish’s last sail.
Jocasta stepped back from the rail and put her back to the quarterdeck ladder. She took a deep breath, trying to come to terms with the near certainty that her life would end this day. She thought she had been ready for it, but now that the moment fast approached…
She had to think of her crew. She had to give them the best chance to work this into a surrender of some sort, at least, no matter their stated desire to fight to the death.
She turned for the wheel, thinking to help out as the battle closed, but a cry of surprise and concern from the quarterdeck had her rushing back to the rail and peering out at the warship.
She winced at the sting of the brilliant light and turned her head, shielding her eyes, then peeked out carefully at the impossibly bright flare on the Cipac’s forecastle, like a bit of the sun itself stolen from the sky. She didn’t stare at the source of the light itself, but did indeed watch with unblinking fascination as a different sort of light altogether streamed out past the warship’s bowsprit.
Like a living serpent, flat and wide, it swerved left and right, up and down, as the swift-sailing ship bounced and rolled. Slowly, tantalizingly, the unnatural wave of illumination reached forward, closing the gap between the vessels.
“What is it?” she heard Calloway yell out from above her. She looked up to see the man backing toward the ladder.
“Load and throw!” he ordered his artillerists. “Hit it! Hit it!”
The serpent light neared the Swordfish’s stern, then rolled upward and over the taffrail.
And the screaming began.
Calloway jumped down from the quarterdeck, tumbling to the planks, then rolled about, his hands trembling as he tried to grasp his face—and both of those hands and his face were beet red, as if he had fallen asleep for a week in bright sunshine.
Jocasta moved for him, but fell back when the serpent light passed over her, going against the sails, which began to hiss immediately, wisps of smoke appearing in various spots.
The captain had no idea of what to do, of what order to give to counter… whatever this was. She had been sailing these seas for years and had never witnessed, had never heard any wild stories of, anything like this.
But the light passed. The sails weren’t burning, and Calloway sat up, his face bright red but hardly disfigured.
“What?” he asked, holding his reddened hands out wide.
Before she could answer, Jocasta heard the crocodile jaws of the warship spring, and cries of “Cover!” echoing all about her ship.
Before she even saw the swarming bits of burning pitch, before the air filled with dozens of flaming arrows behind those catapult throws, Jocasta had solved the mystery.
They had dried out Swordfish’s sails and her quarterdeck, had turned sea-seasoned and wet canvas and wood to parched kindling.
“Oh, clever bastard,” she muttered.
High above the main deck, Chimeg watched the snaking wave of brilliant light reach out from the Cipac and wash over Swordfish’s quarterdeck, the catapult crew all diving down and trying to cover against the intensity of the magical attack, hands slapping over burning eyes.
The light stung her eyes as well, but she wasn’t directly in the line of the attack, and she squinted and didn’t turn away. She felt the heat as the light washed through the sails below her, and noted the mist wafting off the cloth.
She, too, understood, and shook her head, knowing the fight was already lost when the flaming pitch and arrows came soaring in.
Fires erupted all about the deck. The sails ignited, flames rushing up the dried canvas, dark smoke billowing from those select areas that had not been fully dried by the magical light. Flames reached all the way up to the crow’s nest, some fifteen feet above the topsail, smoke wafting out from the boards below Chimeg’s feet.
She knew that she was almost out of time, and that things were only going to get worse. She looked to the fast-closing warship. Seething hatred burned in her eyes. She had always known it would come to this.
So be it.
Chimeg collected her pail of blood, checked the seal, and slung it over her shoulder, then climbed to the rim of the crow’s-nest wall. She slung her bow, too, and put a sharp knife between her clenched teeth. Peering through the flames roaring below, ignoring the screams on the deck, she leaped out and called upon the magic in the gemstone set in her anklet, the same type of stone as the one set in the leather band she had strapped around the mainmast just above the topsail.
These were lodestones, gems that could attract and repel ferrous metals, and even more powerfully attract or repel each other.
Now she used the repelling power, the magic and the spring of her leap sending her out wide to starboard, to the end of the rope fastened about her ankle. As she reached the end, she tried to use the magic to slow her downward swing, but still, she hit the top yardarm hard, almost losing the knife from the jolt, and barely catching onto the yard. She steadied herself and secured herself, then cut away the sail, the flaming thing rolling over on itself below her, buying her some time.
She sheathed the knife and pulled her bow from her shoulder. Setting herself solidly on the yard, she studied the warship as it circled to Swordfish’s starboard flank, noting the golden object on its forecastle and the augurs gathered about it.
Another wave of arrows flew out, this time without the fires, many sent to sweep the deck of Swordfish. Chimeg cringed when she saw her friend Jocasta take a hit.
Chimeg leaped away, back around toward the stern to avoid a volley of arrows aimed her way. She used the magic subconsciously—it had become as much a part of her as her own muscle reflexes. For now, Chimeg went into her dance, the magic of the lodestones giving her the magical pushes to circle the mainmast, to swing out wide, forward and back, starboard and port, and to change direction as easily as she could turn in a run. She stood upright against the rope, hooking her free leg over her tied one for some stability and bracing her back shoulder against the line as she raised her bow.
Stay unpredictable, she told herself over and over, reaching out through her affinity with the stones, sometimes using the base to pull her back, other times to throw her out wider. Trained from birth to use her core strength in such a way as to keep her upper body steady while her legs absorbed the shock of even violent movements—riding a horse on the steppes of To-gai in her earlier days, and now riding the wild swings of the rope—Chimeg began to fire off a line of arrows, concentrating on that forecastle.
Even with her clever emergency plans, she was certain she was going to die and had already set the parameters of making her ending be worth it.
She would have had the man she identified as the lead augur with her very first shot, except that a goldfish archer rushed before him at the last instant, inadvertently taking the arrow, mortally, in the side of his head.
The augur’s eyes widened at that, surely, and he looked from the dead archer right up at the swinging Chimeg, and he dove aside as her second arrow came whistling in, stabbing into the base of the golden item on the forecastle.
The augur went behind the strange weapon, a third arrow clipping him—his robe, at least—in the backside.
Chimeg used the magic to send her far out aft, trying to keep in line with the passing adversary. With the augur out of sight, she quickly adjusted and let fly at another archer, taking her down even as she let fly at Chimeg.
The returning arrow missed as Chimeg swung back in at the mast, her speed heightened by the attraction of the gemstones. She deflected at almost a right angle, the magic shoving her in a swing out to starboard, nearer the enemy ship.
A different Xoconai augur ran to tend the first man she had shot, and so Chimeg, now so suddenly much closer, wasted no time in putting an arrow into that priest’s back, then a second arrow to sting him again when he pitched forward to the deck.
Back she swung toward the mast, and she knew she had to fly out wildly when a swarm of arrows came flying in at her!
But she saw yet another goldfish in augur’s robes rush out from behind the magical weapon to sprint across the main deck for the quarterdeck cabin. Instead of going to the pole and using the magic to launch her back toward Swordfish’s prow, Chimeg growled in defiance and magically kicked herself right back out toward the Cipac.
It felt like a punch when the first arrow slammed into her thigh. It felt like a knife blade as a second sliced across the side of her face, leaving a deep gash from the right corner of her mouth all the way to her ear. Then came some painful sensation that seemed a combination of the first two hits, sharp and dull, when a third arrow jabbed through her left shoulder.
She flinched, but she didn’t surrender her shot, and when she reached the zenith of the swing, nearly over Cipac’s starboard rail, the augur in plain view below her and running for his life, Chimeg drew back and let fly.
Her missile hit the man atop the back of his head and drove straight down through his skull.
No poison was needed here for a long and cruel demise.
No, this second Xoconai priest was dead before he hit the planks.