Captain Quauh of the carrack Uey’Lapialli rested her hand on the main boom to steady herself as the Uey rolled about in swells nearing twenty feet, the darkness of the chasing storm, a veritable wall of opaque dark gray, all too clear behind them to starboard. Had she miscalculated, she wondered, in leaving port with the southern skies darkening?
She shook the doubts away. It hadn’t really been her choice to make, after all.
The tall, thin woman, standing straight-backed and steady on the rolling seas, brushed her long yellow hair back from her face, her Xoconai colors shining even under the gray clouds. Not yet even twenty-five years of age, Quauh was so very young for her commission, let alone the level of responsibility that had been put upon her at this particular time. She had been on the Uey for several years, yes, but this was only her third voyage as the carrack’s captain.
She reminded herself that she had come by this command honestly. Captain Mahuiz had not died, allowing her to merely inherit the post. Indeed, he had been the one to recommend her, citing her exemplary work as his first mate on several long southern runs, particularly in two that had included bloody ship-to-ship battles.
“You are here because you belong here,” she told herself quietly, her words not even reaching her own ears in the howl of the wind and the crash of the waves.
She stood on the high quarterdeck, staring out to the darker waters to the east across the mighty Mirianic. They were running north, far off the coast of the kingdom of Behren, though occasionally, those in the crow’s nest spotted the distant desert land.
With her broad, square sails, the Uey was among the fastest cargo ships in the growing Xoconai armada, and one of the largest, at more than seventy feet and with a crew of threescore and ten skilled sailors. The wind had begun strong off the hot sands of Behren this day, but even in that following breeze, the overladen Uey had been lumbering along. She was rated at 120 tonnes and weighed every bit of that now and more, her planks groaning, her hold full of gold panned on the treacherous rivers in the dangerous, monster-filled, steamy jungles of Durubazzi.
Now, though, the storm out in the deeper waters had drawn nearly even with them, and Captain Quauh watched with growing concern the increasing luffing of the sails as the winds encircling that hurricane rolled around from the northeast. The Uey needed speed, she knew, and that was becoming more and more difficult.
“We had to go,” she said under her breath, chasing away her second-guessing insecurities. Weathering the storm in port had not been an option, particularly with so many unsavory characters bringing their ships into that same sheltered harbor on the island of Watouwa for exactly that reason. Had she not put out to sea, Quauh and her crew would have been sitting in the bay surrounded by pirates, and any whisper of the tempting cargo in her hold would have been the end of the ship and the crew.
“Not seeing any, anymore,” the first mate, a thick-limbed Xoconai named Matlalihi reported, as if reading Quauh’s mind. “Wretched tepits.” He spat over the rail.
Everything about this man was exaggerated and over-the-top, Quauh thought. His muscles, his emotions, his reactions, his yells, even his teeth and his wide and square jaw. Whispers of “A set of choppers fit for a horse” often followed Matlalihi. He wore his shirt unbuttoned almost to his navel, showing off his large chest and plentiful body hair, and accented that bravado look with a thick chain of silver links.
Too thick, like everything to do with Matlalihi.
“Tepits,” Quauh echoed, and she snorted and shook her head, her long and wavy golden hair gathering about her shoulders. The name translated to “little,” and Quauh didn’t think it fitting of those she feared to be now pursuing the Uey, or worse, laying a trap for her. They were dwarfs, yes, but hardly diminutive in any manner other than height. Barrel-chested and as tough as anyone Quauh had ever known, the estli-kau—or as the humans called them, the bloody caps, or powries, were simply too formidable to be labeled in such a deprecating manner.
Quauh understood the desire of the fleet commanders to minimize the enemies of Mayorqua Tonoloya, but she also realized that if her crew underestimated these enemies, they’d find a fast trip to the bottom of the dark ocean.
“Don’t doubt, Matlalihi. They’re out there.”
“Surely they cannot pace us in those half-drowned tubs,” Matlalihi replied with an emphatic snort. “Our sails catch the wind while they turn blades with their pedaling feet, and in tubs more beneath the waves than above!”
“No, they cannot pace us, as the wolves cannot pace the fleet deer.”
“Then we left them far behind.”
“We left one of them far behind,” Quauh corrected. “One that was likely in place simply to monitor our passing. The estli-kau powries hunt in packs.”
Barely had she finished speaking when a lookout called down from on high, “Barrel to the starboard-forward!”
Quauh and Matlalihi looked out to the northeast.
“Clever bastards,” Matlalihi muttered.
“Leeward, you’ll note,” said Quauh. “To sail faster, we will have to sail through them.”
“Them?”
“Packs,” Quauh reminded. “Put the crew to fighting stations. We will not get by them unscathed.”
Matlalihi ran off, shouting “Quarters,” leaving Quauh alone on the quarterdeck. The captain looked to the sails, measuring the wind, hearing the protesting groan of the heavily laden Uey’s main and mizzen. She knew that she couldn’t push the carrack much harder, but knew, too, that she wanted no part of a fight with powrie barrelboats with her hold heavy with gold.
“Second barrel!” the lookout yelled, and before she even continued, Quauh could guess where it was: starboard and farther to the north.
The pack was herding.
“Keel over!” one of the pedaling powries yelled when the barrelboat lurched upward, then leveled and swerved hard to port.
“Benoyt!” screamed the gray-bearded commander of Six o’ Six, a surly old fishbiter named Pinquickle. “Kick her four bits to port, ye dope! Put us straight to the swells or I’ll throw ye to the sharks!”
At the back of the barrelboat, which really quite resembled an elongated barrel, Benny McBenoyt kicked the bar beneath his right foot repeatedly. His audible response was simply a growl, but in his mind, all sorts of curses bounced about, some for Pinquickle and others for just being out so far in a barrelboat on seas this high. A barrelboat was designed to have more of her hull underwater than atop it, much more, but with these kinds of swells lifting and breaking, she was catching too much air, and often at odd angles.
No powrie could work a rudder better than Benny McBenoyt, and he knew that he was doing a truly impressive job even now, since no less than two of the other five in the hunting pack had already rolled over at least once, and this boat, chasing the goldfish ship’s taffrail, had a lot more to do than simply hold steady, as with the other members of the hunting pack.
They went up again and all twelve aboard were jarred to the right this time, then lifted as the barrelboat dropped off the wave and crashed into the low wake behind.
But the ten pedaling kept pumping their legs, Benny kept fighting the unwanted swerves, and Pinquickle kept swearing.
Until Pinquickle was spitting salt water, for the powrie captain went up the tower and popped open the hatch just in time to eat a bit of a wave. He coughed it all out, then urged his boys on harder.
“Uey’s slowin’!” he shouted to them. “She’s seeing our waiting hunters and she’s got a luff in her sails, what ho and whack the goldfish!”
“What ho and whack the goldfish!” the pedaling dwarfs returned, using the term that all the powrie and other sailors of the Mirianic seaboard used for the Xoconai, because of both their gold-colored uniforms and their golden skin.
Benny didn’t join in the chanting that ensued. He kept his focus on the rudder’s foot controls before him, fighting hard to keep Six o’ Six straight and perpendicular to the swells. The sooner they got the bright-faced humans to strike their colors, the sooner the barrelboats could get back inside protected shoals and calmer seas.
And hopefully, with barrelboats using gold for ballast, instead of sand and rocks.
“If a barrelboat rams us below the waterline with the weight we’re carrying, we will be swimming like a stone,” Matlalihi reminded Captain Quauh.
She didn’t turn to regard the man, her gaze locked out to the southeast and the approaching storm, then swinging north to try to get some idea of the barrelboat locations (though she spotted none), then around back to the west and the shallower waters.
She settled that gaze over Matlalihi’s shoulder, to the two teams of Xoconai sailors trying to carefully maneuver the giant wheeled arbalists to the starboard rail. She nodded approvingly at their efforts, confident that the weapons could put one of those heavy eight-foot spears through the hull of a barrelboat.
Getting a good shot at one of the mostly submerged, hard-to-spot craft was an entirely different matter, she knew, particularly in these rolling seas.
“They won’t ram us,” she finally answered Matlalihi. “They know why we are running, know where we came from, and know what we are carrying. Mayorqua Tonoloya’s gold won’t do them much good at the bottom of the ocean.”
“The estli-kau are deep divers, I am told.”
“We have fifty fathoms beneath us,” she reminded. “They will call for us to strike our colors.”
“And?”
Captain Quauh arched an eyebrow at the ridiculous question before answering, “And hopefully one of those arbalist teams will have a proper answer ready.”
Matlalihi smiled and nodded at that, but Quauh noted a twitch, a grimace perhaps, as he did. Was he so hungry for a face-to-face fight with powries? He grabbed the rails of the ladder and slid down to the main deck, barking orders to prepare the captain’s preferred answer.
“Get two sets of hands on each wheel,” she called down to him. “And have every free hand at the sheets. When we turn, bend her low, Matlalihi. You make the yard tickle the waves!”
“My heart, my arm, my very life for Captain Quauh!” he shouted back properly. The man’s heightened emotions and responses caught Quauh as uncharacteristic, but she considered their situation now and took it as a sign that this was likely the most desperate predicament she and her crew on the Uey had known in their years of sailing the southern waters.
Captain Quauh caught a glimpse of the pursuing barrelboat then, its signature ramming beam protruding from a swell for just a moment before the water broke over it yet again. She scanned the length of that breaker, then nodded, confirming her guess that this one was the raiders’ last resort. She rushed down the rail and across the main deck, Matlalihi swept up in her wake, right behind as she climbed to the forecastle.
“Set the arbalists starboard, just forward of the mainmast,” she told her first mate. “You tell them to make their shots score. It is all on them, Matlalihi. All our lives on them.”
“Red cap waving!” came a cry from above, and Quauh nodded and scrambled up to the forecastle and to the prow. She spotted the powrie immediately, standing wide-legged, leaning against a beam, and likely tied to it, as the barrelboat rolled about some hundred yards ahead.
“Strike and be spared!” he was yelling, or seemed to be yelling, for with the sloshing seas, Quauh and the others couldn’t make him out clearly. It was obvious enough, though, given the situation.
“Pass the word that the dwarfs will put half of us to the sharks, whatever they might promise,” the captain whispered to a couple of nearby crewmen, and the pair ran off.
The Uey closed, but caught a wave sidelong and pitched. Captain Quauh winced at the sound of the arbalists rolling and crashing about the main deck. The handlers were on them fast, trying to pull them back to starboard, so intent on their work that they simply left one of the crew who had been caught between the war machine and the port rail writhing on the ground, grabbing at her shattered legs.
As swell after swell rolled from the east, Quauh spotted another barrelboat, then a third.
And beyond them, the blackness of the swirling storm.
She had to delay. She wanted those arbalists to send a powerful message before the inevitable chase ensued.
“Steady!” she barked out, and she saw the crew straining with the sheets, and though they weren’t in her line of sight at that moment, she knew well that the four pilots on the double wheel were fighting mightily to keep Uey in line and perpendicular to the swells.
Trusting in her crew, Captain Quauh went to the prow and stood tall.
Now merely fifty yards ahead, she saw the dwarf standing on the barrelboat. Closer than that, she saw the second boat.
“Be smart, Matlalihi,” she whispered under her breath, and to the powrie negotiator, she yelled, “I am Captain Quauh of the Tonoloya Armada, aboard the MTS Uey’Lapialli!” She repeated those letters, MTS, Mayorqua Tonoloya Ship, officially commissioned, a reminder as clear as the golden dragon on the main pennant that this was no privateer, but a true representative of the Xoconai.
“We know yer name and yer gold,” the powrie shouted back. “Ye wantin’ to talk or ye wantin’ to swim?”
Quauh resisted the urge to glance back over her shoulder, not wanting to give her next move away.
“We are wishing to sail home to Entel port,” she replied.
“And ye might well do so, and might well do so faster when ye’re ridin’ higher in the water, ayuh? Might even outrun the storm once yer sails ain’t groaning under the drag.”
“Matlalihi!” she yelled.
“Hard aport!” the First Mate ordered, and he leaped at the wheels, adding a fifth set of hands, and the crew at the sheets hauled for all their lives.
The Uey was too heavy to be nimble, but clever Captain Quauh had timed her call for the turn perfectly. The masts and yards groaned in protest, the five at the wheel turned it, and so turned the rudder, just a bit, but it all happened as the next swell rolled under the boat, and the angle of that wave bent the carrack over and spun her hard.
As soon as that swell passed and the Uey settled, the arbalists let fly. One harpoon missed badly in the rolling seas, even though the powrie marked that boat as less than twenty-five yards to port, but the second ballista sent its missile flying in low, skimming the ocean like a surfing Durubazzi tablist riding his footboard before a wave to the beach. The spear hit right below the wide-legged negotiator, whose “Bah!” was erased by the hammer’s crack.
The whole of the barrelboat lurched backward, the negotiator flying forward to bend at the waist, staying atop the craft only because he was indeed lashed to that vertical beam.
It didn’t much matter, though as the barrelboat began immediately taking on water, more dwarfs climbed up and out of the hatch.
Running the wave to the west, the Uey crew who witnessed the barrelboat’s seemingly fatal roll burst into cheers.
Captain Quauh couldn’t see the spectacle from the forecastle, but she understood clearly enough what had happened. She muted her response.
There were at least four more barrelboats in pursuit, five if her guess as to the name of this particular band proved correct, and she knew well that these powries weren’t about to surrender such a treasure as sat in Uey’s hold over the loss of a single craft.
She knew, too, that the storm was chasing them all, that they were running to shallower, reef-filled waters, and that the shores of Behren were not that far in the west.
Lady Dharielle’s dragon could fly quite swiftly, she had been warned.
“Hah, but she’s running into the settin’ sun!” Pinquickle called to his eleven crewdwarfs. “Aye, and won’t her pretty square sails make a fine vision to follow? Bend yerselfs at the waist, boys, and dig yer legs in hard. We’ll be chasing her through the night, and here’s hopin’ she gets herself into shallower waters, where we can put her to the bottom instead o’ begging the goldfish for a strike o’ colors, what!”
“Ho hoi!” the crew yelled back. Not Benny, though, who was too busy fighting every twist and swerve of the waves. The thought of an extended chase, whatever the outcome, wasn’t sitting well with him, as he was already aching from the rough seas. And all that was only exacerbated when another of the crew yelled back to Pinquickle, “Oy, cap’n, should we might shift our seats a bit?”
“Flip yerselfs now left ’n’ right,” the captain told them. “Front to back one at a time, that ye’re drivin’ harder with yer fresher leg.”
“Oy, but cap’n?” Benny started to say, but another made the point more clearly, asking if someone should swap places with the steering powrie.
Pinquickle shot that notion down fast. “Quit yer bellyaching, Benny McBenoyt,” he barked. “Earn yer damned gold!”
Benny said nothing—what would be the point?—and focused on battling the swells. He had the toughest and most demanding job by far on the barrelboat, but he reminded himself that working the rudder meant that he’d be the last out when the fighting started, and maybe some of the others would have caught all the javelins the goldfish threw their way.
He also reminded himself that if he failed in the job demanded of him, the whole raid could fail. Six o’ Six was the chase boat, the back gate to lock their victim in the corral the other five were weaving about her. If Benny couldn’t keep her in position, the Uey might turn back to the south and catch a favorable wind and so be out and away from the trap that had been meticulously planned and set in place.
“They cannot still be out there,” Matlalihi said to Captain Quauh long before the dawn. The night had started full of stars, but they were gone now, blocked by the outer bands of the swirling storm—a storm that had accelerated as the Uey had turned, and now, as if the powrie barrelboats weren’t enough of a concern, the laden ship’s chances of outrunning the hurricane had greatly diminished. “They cannot.”
Quauh tried not to mock the man with her incredulity. These were powries, and he understood that. Of course they were still out there!
“Let us hope,” she humored him.
Even as she finished the remark, a bright light sparked in the east, then soared up into the air and arched in their direction, flaring brighter and brighter as it went. It came down from on high as a flare, illuminating the area, showing the sails of the Uey clearly to any nearby.
“Tletletepo,” Quauh said in response to Matlalihi’s slack-jawed expression. “The thin strips of gray metal. The powries make some quarrels of them for their crossbows.”
“To light up the night,” the first mate replied. “So they are still out there and they certainly see us.”
“They never lost sight of us.”
“We have had full sails for much of the run!”
“And powrie legs can turn their propellers tirelessly. They never let us out of sight, and they didn’t light up the night about us for their benefit.”
“Then why?”
In response, Quauh glanced over her shoulder to the east, where the coast of Behren was now in sight—or would be when day broke, certainly.
“The clever dwarfs are telling any eyes peering out from the desert sands of Behren that we are in their waters,” Quauh explained.
Matlalihi glanced over his shoulder nervously, for the Mayorqua Tonoloya had no treaty with Behren, and no leave to be anywhere near the shores of the kingdom ruled by the warrior queen, Chezru Chieftain Brynn Dharielle.
“They are going to demand again at dawn that we strike colors.”
“Then we fight.”
“You know who they are, yes?” the captain asked.
“The powries?”
“Six Bits,” Quauh told him, and he seemed confused for only a moment before the name seemed to spark recognition, and his eyes widened in a combination that was perhaps shock and horror.
“You have heard of them?” Quauh asked, not quite registering Matlalihi’s expression.
“Heard about them, aye,” Matlalihi replied. “I thought they were a myth.”
“Oh, my friend, they are very real.”
“You have fought them before?”
“Not as captain.” Quauh shook her head. “But I have seen their work. Their reputation is not exaggerated. They know how to fight. Six boats, each with a dozen powries inside.”
“A fair fight, then, for we have a like number and the high ground.”
Captain Quauh just shook her head. She knew that going against them with an even number meant that you were sorely outnumbered.
“And might only be five now,” Matlalihi added. “One boat ate a spear and might be on the bottom, or at least is sure to be far afield.”
Even five are too many, Quauh thought, but did not say.
“Turn us parallel to the coast,” she told him. “We will ease Uey back to starboard a bit at a time, trying to stay in deeper water—they know what we are carrying and won’t sink us if we stay deep—and stay ahead of that storm.”
“And if they catch us and demand a strike?”
Quauh wore a grim expression but didn’t answer.
“You cannot be thinking of surrendering?”
“If they lost powries to our spear, they will kill twice that number when we are taken if we strike colors. If we fight them and they take the Uey, we will all be fed to the fishes.”
“And when we fight them and defeat them, let the fish eat powrie meat.”
“Go. Run us parallel now,” Captain Quauh told him, and she waved him away. She knew about Six Bits, indeed, and understood that there was little chance of any victory here. If they fought off the boarding powries, one of the barrelboats would drive its ram through Uey’s hull. The carrack was well-built and could possibly survive that, or even two such strikes.
But then they’d never outrun the storm, and low in the water, overladen with heavy gold, their outlook would seem very grim.
Quauh looked up to the sails. Their only chance was to outrun the powries as the dwarfs inevitably tired.
But the wind was swirling, the sails blowing tight, then luffing, over and over. The outer bands of the rotating storm in the southeast were gusting from starboard forward, while the sunbaked sands were countering with the steady, hot desert breeze.
Another flare fired up into the air behind the Uey, a stark reminder that Captain Quauh’s ship was being herded.
And into waters she did not know.
She went to her cabin, telling herself that she needed to get some rest—she had long given up on any thoughts of sleep. Still, she knew that she would need to be sharp and at her very best in the morning, or even before if the powries stopped the Uey from turning parallel to the coastline. She heard Matlalihi barking his orders and cheering the crew on, promising a bloody row in the morning that would turn the waters red with powrie blood.
Quauh expected that Matlalihi was half-right.
Almost certainly, the waters would turn red.
“Drink yer rum, ye waggyskals, so yer brains’re rolling to keep up with yer bellies!” Pinquickle ordered, as did the captains of all the other barrelboats. Unlike the sailors on tall-masted sailing ships or the oarsmen of the open-decked knorrs and balingers favored by the Behrenese, powries pedaling in a barrelboat didn’t really fear the giant ocean storms. Skimming along, mostly submerged, such a craft could take a tremendous beating. A barrelboat would be tossed about, certainly, and often rolled in the swells, but a skilled crew could roll it back upright easily.
The barrelboat raiders of Six Bits were filled with the most skilled crews the powries could muster in the south Mirianic, perhaps as skilled as any powrie crew outside of their homeland on the Weathered Isles, far to the north and east.
As morning came to the Mirianic, the waves grew higher and sharper. The sound of rain began to drum on the top of the barrelboats.
“She’s gonna have to strike!” Pinquickle began to sing to his crew, who took up the ditty:
Rollin’ left and rollin’ right,
Her yards’ll scrape the sea
And soak her masts and lay ’em flat,
She’s no way left to flee!
So take her quick
And kill ’em fast
O’er the rails they fly!
Show us yer measure
And get to her treasure
Below the heavy sky!
Faster! Faster! Fast ye must be!
With a belly o’ gold
Her planks’ll fold
And not a coin for thee!
But oh, what ho!
She’s got to know
She’s not a chance to fight
So give her a shout
And tell her what’s ’bout
She’s gonna have to strike!
In the back, straining with all his might, feeling helpless as a white gull in a cyclone, Benny McBenoyt put every bit of remaining strength he had into his stretching legs, trying desperately to flatten both wings of the dual rudder to create some drag, at least, to slow the pitch and roll of Six o’ Six. He wasn’t singing with the others.
He was just sweating and aching and wondering why Pinquickle had held him in the rudder throughout the run.
Six o’ Six lurched hard to starboard, came over the top of a wave, and pitched down hard, sending the powries in a crush to the curving port wall.
“Benny McBenoyt, ye fool!” Pinquickle yelled. “Ah, but you’ll be number seventy-two afore I’m letting ye count thirteen!”
Benny simmered at the thought of a demotion, given his tireless efforts, but he didn’t doubt that possibility of the threat from the ever-nasty Pinquickle. He growled it away and kicked hard and fast with his left leg, flapping the rudder, fighting to realign Six o’ Six. He gripped his sidebars hard, feeling the sea through them, trying to judge the angle of the swells to keep the run perpendicular to the sudden mountains of water. He closed his eyes and focused, trying to block out the continuing berating of Pinquickle.
But that first promise had stung him, for he almost expected it now, and also didn’t doubt that perhaps Pinquickle had left him on the rudder all night—too strenuous a task for any powrie—for exactly that reason: to put him at seventy-two. For the captain was talking about the shares of the booty here. As helmsdwarf on Six o’ Six, Benny was twelfth in line to pick his share of the treasure: the six captains and the helmsdwarfs of One o’ Six through Five o’ Six ranked ahead of him.
A simple demotion could drop Benny to thirteenth, but a “break-a-rank,” an egregious failure, would throw him to the very end, seventy-second of the seventy-two!
He tried to keep his gray eyes closed so that the scoundrel Pinquickle wouldn’t notice the murderous hatred flashing in them.
He tried not to growl threats that the surly Pinquickle might hear.
He tried, but failed, at both.
For all her doubts, Captain Quauh did fall asleep in her cabin. She didn’t know for how long, but she came awake quite abruptly when she was thrown from her bunk. Books and flagons, a bottle of wine and a flask of water flew and smashed all about her.
She scrambled to her feet, nearly falling over the other way and only catching herself on her hammock when the Uey rolled back to even keel—or almost even keel, for the carrack was listing to port now, only a few degrees, but noticeably so to the seasoned sailor. She stumbled out of her chamber, stuffing her arms through the sleeves of her long double-breasted pilot coat, dyed golden and with thick silver buttons to fasten the heavy wool. She managed the rolling of the deck brilliantly with widespread steps, while she untangled the bright red sash of her long weapon.
Captain Quauh wanted her fearful crew to see her standing firm even with no handhold, and to see that formidable two-handed macana strapped across her back, to have that assurance.
Water streamed off the main deck, barrels and crewmen all scattered about and discombobulated, a testament to the violence of the approaching hurricane.
“Rogue wave, captain!” a woman up above called down to her. “Crossing swells leaped astarboard and sent both their weights against us!”
Quauh brushed her hair out of her face, the locks already soaked from the driving rain. Out to the east, the sky was brightening under the angry black clouds of the hurricane. She called for First Mate Matlalihi, sending some others rushing about to find the man, then slowly turned about to watch the actions of her skilled and veteran crew, making sure that they knew their duties in the battle she expected would soon erupt across her decks. She removed her weapon, and sheath, which had been belted tightly against her back, and loosened the strap on the scabbard. Most macanas were about three feet long, handle to rounded bat end, but Quauh’s was a bastard design, fully five feet long and fashioned to be wielded with either one hand or both. She looped the weapon’s sash over her head, adjusting it for an easy draw over her shoulder, plopped her bright gold, red-trimmed, and black-plumed tricorne on her head, and made her way to the forecastle.
And there she stood and she watched, trying to find a new gauge for their position, the storm, their enemies. She said nothing when Matlalihi joined her.
“The wave sent some crates tumbling,” the first mate explained. “I’ve got ten hands restacking the gold, to put us to even keel, but I’m hardly seeing the point of it.”
“Do you think I care what you’re seeing the point of, Mr. Matlalihi?”
“Of course you do not.”
“And?”
“And should not, captain,” he replied appropriately, but hardly seemed convinced.
“Should we bother to cover the crates with cane again?” he asked.
Captain Quauh, her gaze locked on the dark waters to the northeast, gave a slight shake of her head. It hadn’t been simply a guess by the bargaining dwarf back before nightfall. The powries knew about the gold. She didn’t know how they knew.
But they knew.
Thus, she was not surprised when one last flare went up from a barrelboat, some two hundred yards to starboard amidships.
They hadn’t outrun the stubborn, bowlegged devils, and the storm had gained, its fury more clear to see, east and south, as the day brightened with the rising sun.
But it brightened only a bit, for the rain poured down and the seas were rolling, the wind coming in powerful gusts. The mere thought of a ship-to-ship, or ship-to-barrelboat, fight seemed absurd to Captain Quauh this morning, but these were powries, and bloody caps of the notorious Six Bits. Everything she had ever heard about them seemed disappointingly true.
By this time, from the calls of the lookouts and her own observations, Quauh realized that five barrelboats were within a hundred yards of the Uey. None were even trying to hide—why should they, after all, when the rolling waves made using the heavy war machines of Uey impossible, and had the barrelboats disappearing with every swell?
Quauh, Matlalihi, and the rest on Uey’s top decks watched in amazement as a powrie appeared on the boat nearest their prow, the bowlegged dwarf scrambling up out of the hatch with surprising ease and disregard, casually navigating the rolling craft to the vertical support beam, where he strapped himself in. He turned his attention to the carrack and crossed his arms over his thick chest.
“Hey, Cap’n Sparkleface, ye ready to talk now, or ye thinking to shoot one o’ yer puny spears at me boat?” he yelled. “And know that if it’s that, ye’ll get a hold full o’ rams afore ye pull back yer drawstring!”
“Shoot the wretch,” Matlalihi whispered, but Quauh kept her hand up high, holding her bowmen and atlatl throwers at bay.
“How long do you believe we stay afloat if even one of those barrelboats breaches our hull below the waterline?” she asked.
“We shot the first,” Matlalihi protested. “And I am only noting five of the six barrelboats coming against us now.”
“That was in deeper waters,” Quauh reminded him. “If they had put us down out there, they would never have retrieved our gold. Now we’re not more than ten fathoms.”
“Then we should have fought them out there!” Matlalihi yelled, loud enough for others nearby to hear.
Captain Quauh grimaced and tried to find an answer to that. But she had none that would make her crew feel better about their present dilemma. She had hoped against hope that the Uey, even so heavily laden, could outrun and evade the powries and get back on course through the night.
Still, she didn’t regret her choice, even with its failure. Out in the deeps or here in shallower seas, she had understood from the moment she had taken a good measure of their attackers that the best she could manage if it came to blows was a draw—and one that meant the death of everyone involved.
Captain Quauh and the Xoconai admiralty had gone to great lengths to try to disguise MTS Uey’Lapialli’s true purpose. They hadn’t sailed all the way to Durubazzi to collect their treasure, but only to Watouwa, a relatively small and insignificant island in the southern waters known as the Eileanan Sea. Watouwa was known for its sugarcane, only that, because the wider world, or even the vast majority of people on the island, did not know that the Xoconai had planted a pyramid with some gold transport mirrors deep in her jungles, amid the waves of giant ferns and swaying palms. The Durubazzi gold was making its initial voyage with magic, away from the many buccaneers ever about the jungle coastline.
Even so, and even here where none should have known about the huge shipment, the loading of the Uey had been secretive, with the gold ferried aboard in small crates in the dark of the island nights, and with those crates covered immediately in layers of cane. Their primary defense in their run back to the north and Entel was to appear not to be valuable enough to attract the attention of such notorious pack hunters as Six Bits, who didn’t waste their time on such middling targets. Any single pirate along the southern reaches of the shipping lanes would have no chance battling against the Uey.
Those hunting packs would never bother with a ship full of cane, particularly not with such a storm rolling up the coast.
But here the Uey sat, facing one of the most notorious packs of all. How?
Someone had tipped them off, Quauh knew. She very likely had a traitor aboard.
She filed that thought far away for another time, and hoped that she’d have another time.
“C’mon then, Sparkleface!” the powrie called. “I’m getting rained on here and it’s washing me second breakfast out o’ me beard afore I get me chance to eat it. Ye gonna strike or sink? ’Cause them’s yer choices.”
“What are your terms?” Captain Quauh shouted back, and a chorus of gasps and muttered protests and curses sounded all about her.
“Two crew to the sharks and we’ll let ye pick ’em. That’s for killin’ me friend on One o’ Six, poor fat fellow. And yer gold, o’ course. All we can carry.”
“We carry sugarcane.”
“Aye, sure ye do! That’s why the water’s lickin’ yer rails. Stop yer lying, Sparkleface. Strike and we’ll take whate’er gold we can hold and leave ye the rest. Keep making me stand in the rain, or lie to me again, Sparkleface, and we’re adding a third goldfish to the sharks for our bargain.”
“You cannot surrender,” Matlalihi whispered.
“Two killed or all?” Quauh whispered back. “Half the gold or all the gold?”
“C’mon now!” the powrie roared. “Ye know ye can’no outrun the storm with so much ballast anyway!”
“The safety of all my crew!” Quauh shouted back.
“We’ll bring the bounty down to one if the one’s yerself!” the powrie countered, and Captain Quauh closed her eyes, considering the box that she had just foolishly constructed around herself. The Seafaring Code of the Xoconai Armada forbade any captain from accepting such an offer and the sacrifice, of course, for a captain was worth the entirety of her crew and more. But convincing Matlalihi and the others of that wasn’t going to be an easy proposition.
Did she have enough support here to save herself?
A great gust of wind bent the Uey to port. Not too far in the east, a bolt of lightning crackled across the sky, sending a thunderous boom.
“C’mon!” the powrie yelled. “Strike or…”
The dwarf’s last word was lost to those on the Uey in the sudden and unexpected jolt, the explosion of a ram driving through the thick hull of the carrack, for a great swell rose behind the Uey, a barrelboat floundering atop it. And that wave broke just back of the carrack, launching the powrie craft clear of the water.
It came down from on high, plunging through the Uey’s port wall just below the afterdeck, and there it hung, back end angled up, sticking from the carrack like a harpoon sticking from a whale.
“Benny!” screamed Pinquickle, or more like, “Bennnnnny!” when Six o’ Six flew off the wave, diving down.
No less terrified than the captain, Benny pumped his feet, but there was no resistance, not through that terrifying eyeblink of falling, not in the moment of collision when he was slammed into the bracing pole centering the rudder works and the other ten crew went bouncing and tumbling forward, living missiles flying for the shrieking captain.
The sudden stop left them angled and dangling, and Benny’s pumping legs still felt no resistance, for the tail end of the barrelboat wasn’t in the water.
In fact, little of the powrie craft was actually in the water at all, other than the long ram up front, but the impact had cracked the barrelboat’s hull along several seams, and as the waves rolled by, the hungry sea began pouring in.
“Ah, ye dog, McBenoyt!” Pinquickle sputtered. “What’ve ye done?”
Nothing. The answer was nothing. Benny had positioned the barrelboat perfectly, he knew from the consistency of the angle of descent all along the hold, but the wave had simply overwhelmed the small craft.
Still hugging tight to the vertical beam, he watched his shipmates sputtering and battling and punching, trying to climb over each other and to the hatch or to climb higher for the stern, as more water flushed in with each roll, flooding the front.
With each roll of the Uey, Benny realized, and he understood what had happened and why they were now stuck at such a ridiculous angle.
He also understood what would happen to him if Pinquickle got out of this, for the vicious captain would surely blame him, and publicly, to deflect his own culpability. Pinquickle couldn’t blame the sea, of course. No powrie would ever blame the sea or a storm.
Benny said nothing in reply, but he studied the jumble of tossed powries carefully, measuring friend or foe coming nearest, his boot ready to kick back any he thought supportive of the captain. He glanced to the side, to his long and curved knife and his small crossbow.
“Ah! By the rolling luck o’ the salt-spittin’ gods!” the powrie standing atop the other barrelboat shouted when he realized what had happened. “Just take her, boys! Get as much as we can afore she’s dragged into the reefs!”
Dazed and bruised, Captain Quauh began to pull herself up from the base of the rail, thinking herself lucky that she hadn’t tumbled over—a fate that several of her crew hadn’t escaped, apparently, given the shouting all about the decks. She heard Matlalihi barking commands behind her—to the powrie, she realized—then felt the man’s strong hands hooking under her arms, helping to hoist her.
It took her a moment to understand his shouting and to decipher his meaning.
“Strike! Strike!” he was screaming. “We’re done for!”
Upright now, the captain saw the barrelboats nearing, powries coming forth. The first bowlegged dwarf up atop each boat stepped back from the perch post, moving to a second, lower rail. There, the leading pirate kicked out a peg, releasing an unseen counterweight, apparently, or freed a spring or bowstring, for a sharp report followed, bars righting like the arms of a catapult on either side of the narrow barrelboat, throwing forth a long and weighted rope ladder from the craft’s stern.
Clever bastards, she thought.
But her clearing thoughts were drawn back to Matlalihi and his curious response.
“We strike!” he shouted again, then added, “Here’s yer pay!”
And he pushed Quauh forward over the rail.
She felt her legs go flying up as she tumbled, and she instinctively twisted and threw back her right arm. The first mate came forward behind her, determined to shove her clear, but she somehow slipped the force of his push as she fell free, and he bent just enough at the waist for Quauh to grab onto the heavy silver chain he wore about his neck. She hooked her right hand and had the presence of mind in that heartbeat of time to turn her wrist and so twist the heavy chain about it.
Matlalihi made a strange guttural sound and clutched at the rail, just barely holding on, and holding a free-swinging Captain Quauh below him as the thick silver links dug into the back of his neck. He slapped frantically with one arm to try to break her free, but her hand and wrist were too tangled.
So he pulled out his long knife as a mate rushed up to help brace him.
Quauh knew she was doomed and that a wet death awaited her, but stubborn as ever, the captain wasn’t going alone! She got one foot against Uey’s hull and kicked off, swinging outward, far outward as a swell rolled under the ship, leaning it over her.
She braced and bent with all her strength, getting both legs up in time for the swing back into the hull.
“I’ll take your hand!” Matlalihi promised, flashing the knife.
Quauh planted both feet against the hull just below the rail. She clenched her jaw, blocking out the pain when that knife dug hard into her wrist and hand, resisting the reflex to thrash and try to get away.
She had to wait, just a moment.
Another swell rolled under the Uey. With all her strength, both feet fully braced, Captain Quauh forced her legs to straighten, pulled herself away from the side.
Over the rail went Matlalihi, and when the woman helping him lurched forward beside him, the rail cracked and splintered and all three dropped from the forecastle, splashing into the dark waters of the stormy Mirianic.