They parted ways with Captain Thorngirdle and his remaining fellows back in Dinfawa. The powrie commander promised to rebuild his pack. “Six Bits,” he kept insisting all the way on the long sail to the west and the coast of Behren. “Three weren’t enough. Six Bits!”
To the surprise of Captains Wilkie and Massayo, the five powrie crew members serving on Pinquickle’s Folly declined Thorngirdle’s offer to rejoin his hunting pack.
“We’re doing good work here,” Columbine told the great powrie.
“Aye, and learning lots to take with us when we’re back with our own later in this life or the next,” Benny agreed.
Thorngirdle wasn’t happy with the decision, but these boys and their captains had saved his life, after all, and from a death from which he could not have been reborn with his memories intact.
“Ye’re fore’er on me good side, unlessin’ ye’re giving me a reason to put yerselfs on me bad side” was his parting salute to Wilkie and Massayo, to which Wilkie responded by giving him a bag of gold, enough to buy a new barrelboat.
“It’s a loan,” Massayo explained. “One we’ll need to call in someday, as you call in your own.”
Smiles and handshakes followed.
Standing at the side, Quauh wasn’t smiling. She wasn’t upset, just confused by the level of comradery here among these thieves and killers. She knew she shouldn’t be surprised, but yet again, she was.
Port Mandu put out of Dinfawa only a couple of days later, but Pinquickle’s Folly remained in port for the better part of a month for repairs and refurbishment. It had all been arranged before they had sailed across the sea to the Leewards, for Massayo had at last assembled a team of builders and parts to at last test out his design.
He unveiled it, the bullhead, to Captain Wilkie the day of the man’s return to Dinfawa.
“You’re a damned fool” was Wilkie’s initial response as he walked around the war machine. A beam in the shape of a huge Y centered the circular platform of the weapon, with a huge strap of rubber hanging limply, affixed to each fork of the Y. “It’s taking the whole of your forecastle!”
“Not much of a forecastle,” Quauh remarked with a shrug.
Wilkie turned to her with a snort. “Not much of a boat,” he said. “And not much of a weapon. Can it throw a load as strong as the catapult on Mandu’s quarterdeck, or as far?”
“No,” Massayo admitted. “Not this one, but a larger…”
“Larger?” Wilkie huffed. “It’d sink your ship!”
This ship, Massayo thought but did not say. Captain Wilkie didn’t know about his gold stash, or about his greater plans going forward, and for now at least, he wanted to keep it that way.
“We’ve no room on the Pinquickle for a catapult like yours,” he did reply. “We would need a smaller one, of course, and that would be nowhere as good in range and load as this bullhead. And the bullhead loads and throws more quickly, and more accurately—far more accurately.”
Wilkie snorted again. “Show me.”
Pinquickle’s Folly put out of port and sailed to the southern side of Dinfawa, out of sight of the small village. There, Quauh lined her up facing the rocky cliffs, and the gunnery crew showed their work, Benny and Aushin loading the pocket, then helping Toomsuba tug back the band and set it on the trigger pole.
Massayo’s grin was ear to ear, and he never took his eyes off Captain Wilkie as he told Quauh to let it fly. That grin became a toothy smile indeed as he watched Wilkie’s eyes open so wide that they seemed like they might just roll out of their sockets.
The rock flew across the expanse to slam against the cliffs.
“We can shoot it higher or skim it lower simply by which notch we set the tie in on the trigger pole,” Massayo was explaining, but Wilkie clearly wasn’t listening.
“Calm water and a mountainside for a target,” Wilkie said with sigh and a headshake.
Massayo knew he was impressed, and understood well that he wasn’t about to admit it or show it.
“How might you do in the rolling swells?” Wilkie asked.
Massayo could only shrug.
“Well, we’ll know soon enough,” Wilkie announced. “I got a good lead on the way in, and we’re out tomorrow. We’ve sailed beside each other enough to be ready for a fight, and you’ve your dream weapon, whatever that might prove worth. Season’s getting late and the isles of Inudada are readying for our winter respite. Past time for the Port Mandu and Pinquickle’s Folly to show the goldfish that there’s a new pack in town.”
“Aye!” Massayo and all the crew cheered.
All except for Quauh. This was it, she realized. To this point, they had been gambling and drinking, sailing and rescuing who and what they might from the fight far in the east, but now, it seemed clear, they were about to live up to their names.
Pirates.
Pirates against the Tonoloya Armada and merchant fleet.
Pirates against her own people.
“The plan, first mate?” The hunt was on, the spray whipping, three ships in a line. First, the prey, a carrack named Golden Augur, flying under the flag of Tonoloya, but not under the markings of a warship. This was a private ship, a merchant and not of the Tonoloya Armada. Closing fast on her stern came Pinquickle’s Folly, having just run past Port Mandu, the small refurbished sloop showing all the speed and agility Massayo had hoped for.
“Stay to port,” Quauh answered Massayo, who stood behind her, between her and the wheel of Pinquickle’s Folly. When she glanced back at the man, she did a double take, curious. Almost continually when out on the water, he had been wearing her old coat, the golden coat of a commissioned Xoconai captain, which he’d had altered in Djinnit early on by a seamstress friend so that it would fit him. But now he’d changed back into his simple leather jerkin. Was he afraid of the ramifications? she wondered. Of what the Xoconai might do to a pirate wearing a pilfered captain’s coat?
“Port’s that way, you know,” Massayo said dryly, pointing to his left, toward Behren and shallower waters.
“Stay to port,” Quauh insisted, and at the wheel, Benny snorted.
“We want to drive them to the shallows,” Massayo reminded her. “Not keep them out in deeper waters. You understand that we do that by getting up on the deeper side of our prey, yes?”
“Aye, and that beach is left when I’m facing forward, right when I’m facing stern,” said Benny. “The beach is port, eh? We’re wantin’ them to go to port—ye think they’re to turn and ram us, do ye? Or did losing yer hand take all notions of left and right from ye?”
“Stay to port,” Quauh said again. She turned to see the captain and Benny exchanging glances, with Benny’s expression clearly incredulous. She was pleased to view Massayo, though, for while he looked confused, there was a wry grin underneath it all revealing that he was beginning to recognize that she had a plan here, and one that he had not thought of on his own.
That trust in her reinforced all the claims he had made those two months before, when bringing her aboard as his first mate instead of trading her to the Behrenese or selling her back to the Xoconai.
“The typical move would be to run abreast of her starboard,” Massayo said quietly. “Then angle in to force her nearer to shore.”
“They’ve no chance at fighting us both,” Quauh explained. “They know it, and they probably already know how this will end—and they’d prefer that culmination to be in deeper waters, not beached near to a land so hostile to them.”
“That’s why we’re not givin’ them the choice, eh?” said Benny.
“If we run up on them to starboard, with Port Mandu closing fast from behind, they’ll turn starboard and try to fight past us,” Quauh explained.
“So we fight,” said Benny with obvious enthusiasm.
“They will not go shallow, in any case,” Quauh continued. “If we go port, they’re going to see their chance and hard turn for deeper waters.”
“Which is what we do not want them to do,” said Massayo.
“She’s at battle sail now, but she’ll go full sails, and she’s square-rigged,” Quauh emphasized. “Fill the bullhead thing you made and installed with chains and aim it high when she opens wide her sails.”
Massayo laughed and nodded and seemed impressed. “If they do not turn, though, we will be in for a long chase—maybe too long.”
“Golden Augur will turn. She’s big and wide, and wants higher seas beneath us all, do not doubt. Her archers will have the advantage if we are rolling in the swells. When we come up on her, she’ll go at once to half mast, as if conceding that we’re about to fight, but then she’ll turn and go to full sails, and quickly, thinking to surprise us while we are only then dropping to battle sail. That will be our chance.”
“Hmm,” mumbled Benny, with no sarcastic argument following.
“Her captain doesn’t want a fight,” Quauh explained. “The Golden Augur’s got more passengers than crew, and many no doubt wealthy and influential. Getting robbed is a terrible thing, aye, but having important Xoconai killed in a sea battle is far worse.”
“Keep us port, Benny,” a convinced Massayo told the helmsman.
“Some song, if you will!” Quauh yelled to the band, walking forward across the deck. “Horns and drums, and a fast heartbeat!”
Dalila, Ibtisa, and Dawoud rushed from their stations to the small “pit” Massayo had built amidships, which was really just a portion sectioned off with gardening ties to keep them separate and keep the large chest with the instruments secure on the rolling deck. The captain had spent a lot of gold in refurbishing the little sloop—particularly since, by all accounts, including his own remarks when in private, he wasn’t planning on having it for long.
“And keep those sails full! Get us up on her!” she added to Toomsuba, who tugged at his guide rope with a bit more enthusiasm.
By the time she got to the prow, walking beside the new bullhead, the song and music were loud about her, with Ibtisa blowing a horn, Dawoud thundering a fast cadence on a drum fashioned of a hollow tree trunk and deerskin. Dalila strapped a curious stringed instrument—a score or more of strings, Quauh noted—about her waist and over her shoulders. Braced against her abdomen, the body of it seemed to be made of some melon husk, with a long hardwood neck running up and out diagonally from her, with more than half its four-foot length covered by multiple tuning rings. She plucked the strings almost equally with either hand, left and right, along the gourd body, producing delicate and distinct notes, reminding Quauh of the clavichords she had heard in the west. And though the construction of this particular instrument seemed somewhat cruder, Quauh could not deny that the music was equally enchanting and sophisticated.
Dalila was a small woman, but there was nothing small about her voice!
Ho, ho, the sails, loaded with wind!
Ho, ho, the crew, loaded with gin!
Ho, ho, the bullhead, loaded with chains,
Run her, boys, run her, for fun and for games!
Quauh held on to a guide rope at the prow of Pinquickle’s Folly, feeling the wind and the spray on her face. How she loved that feeling! She glanced to the side, to the large fork in the throwing Y, taller than she. Between them hung that thick strand of rubber, the caoutchou sap material from which Massayo had once built his thriving business. The band was fastened to each of the beams securely, and at the back end of the bullhead, some seven paces toward midships, was the trigger post.
Quauh smiled when she recalled Massayo showing her his model of this weapon, which he had then called a sling-shooter. He had drawn back the small caoutchou band in that demonstration, pinched between his fingers and holding a sling bullet, then let it fly, quite accurately and quite impressively.
Despite the testing and practicing against the southern cliffs of Dinfawa, though, this “bullhead” had Quauh more than a little skeptical. She glanced to Toomsuba—yes, he was stronger than any man she had ever known, but could he really pull that band in rough seas and set it with any accuracy?
In the end, she had to just shrug and let it go. This was Massayo’s call, and he had made it, and now he had to prove it all out. Quauh’s job was to get them the desired shot.
The crew joined in the song around her, the music blending perfectly with the rush of wind and the splashing. Oh, how Quauh felt her blood rising then! The chase! A pang of guilt found its way through. They were chasing a Xoconai ship here, one full of her people.
That flicker couldn’t ignite anything too strong within her, however. Her sensibilities would allow her to sustain no guilt for more than a fleeting moment, for the rush, the smell, the sounds of the hard-charging sloop proved to be simply too exciting.
Pinquickle’s Folly came fast over one swell and pitched down hard, like a bucking cuetzpali, rocking Quauh where she stood—but she had her sea legs as well as anyone ever could, and the impact below the swell just reminded her of the power of this beast, the sea, they were riding, and riding so joyously and swiftly, with billowing sails and the spray, oh the spray!
“Golden Augur, you say?” Massayo said from beside her. She hadn’t even noticed his approach.
Quauh pointed to the stern of the ship, the lettering of her name emblazoned upon it. “Golden Augur,” she read.
“You do not know her?”
“I am trying to remember, but no. I’ve heard of her and seen her in Entel’s port, but I know nothing of her crew. She’s no warship, but like any ship sailing this far south, she’s a capable fighter, I’m sure.”
“Well, we have a good plan,” Massayo said with a smile and a nod of appreciation to his fellow planner.
Quauh took the compliment in stride. Her thoughts were spinning around now, the focus of a hunter looking for advantage. “Go and get your captain’s coat, Captain Massayo,” she said, and turned her head to look the man in the eye.
“Your coat?”
“It is yours now these last weeks, is it not? And no, I do not ever want it back.”
“I thought that wearing it would make our intended prey this day less likely to strike her colors.”
“I think that seeing you in it will signal to them that we are formidable,” Quauh replied. “Here in the east, there are merely two score of those coveted items, and they are hard-earned through grueling experience. When our prey turns and we rip her sails apart because we are not surprised by their turn, they will have a choice to make. Seeing the captain of the pirate chasing them wearing the coat of a vanquished Xoconai captain will help them to make the correct decision.”
“Privateer, not pirate,” Massayo corrected with a wink and a wry grin. He ended the conversation with a nod and headed for his cabin.
Quauh was watching him go when Chimeg yelled down from above, “Catapult!” Quauh spun back to see a ball of fiery pitch rising from the afterdeck of the ship before them, arcing in the air.
Quite a shot, she thought, when the ball splashed sizzling into the water no more than a few yards to her right. It should have been unnerving, and would have been to a less veteran sailor, but for Quauh, like the wind and the spray and the music, the enemy’s throw proved merely exhilarating.
“Come on, boys!” she cried to her crew above the song. “Fill those sails and get us up beside her!”
She ducked then, instinctively, as an arrow cut through the air very close to her.
“Chimeg!” she yelled, and looked up.
And then, so quickly, she understood the value of this To-gai-ru acrobat.
Back in Dinfawa, Pinquickle’s Folly had been altered to Chimeg’s specifications, the mainmast extended, with a second beam rising a dozen feet above the top rigging. The crow’s nest had been relocated up there and fashioned more completely than the simple cross plank set up below, now showing the typical half-barrel design. Quauh hadn’t put much significance in that alteration given the other repairs and the massive alteration of the bullhead. She figured that the higher mast gave Chimeg, or whoever was on lookout, a more secure perch, and a place to put some water, or arrows, or a warm coat.
But then, a few feet below the crow’s nest, Chimeg had added her own touch, in the form of that leather strap set with a gray stone that wrapped about the very tip of the original mainmast. A similar stone to the one in the anklet she had donned before climbing up to her post. A couple of feet above that strap, Chimeg had also added a foursome of quivers, full of arrows, strapped to the extending pole.
Now the woman came forth from the crow’s nest, bow in hand. Instead of using the walls of the perch for defense against the incoming fire, she put her foot in the loop at the end of a short rope and leaped from on high. She came down upright at the end of the line in a swing just above the top rigging, and as she swooped about the mast, she plucked an arrow from one of the quivers, nocked it in the same movement, and sent it flying out at one of the archers at Golden Augur’s taffrail, who dived aside just in time.
Quauh kept her eyes on Chimeg, thinking the woman mad, for though she was swinging on that rope, such swings were predictable and any decent archer could correctly lead her.
Except, Quauh then realized, and a smile creased her face, there was nothing predictable about Chimeg’s swings. At one point, she went out wide with the roll of the ship and came swinging back fast for the mast, and Quauh grimaced, expecting a brutal impact despite the display she had seen in the calmer waters near the fishing village.
As with then, at the last moment the To-gai-ru deflected from the mast before ever hitting it (and still plucking another arrow from the tied quivers, leaving the quiver on her back full), flying out to stern in a circular flow. Around she went to starboard, one arrow flying—and taking down the same archer who had dodged her first shot and was now trying to get back to position.
A second arrow went out, and Chimeg changed direction immediately. Instead of continuing forward along the starboard rail, she somehow cut straight across, just behind the mast, and out to port!
Quauh blinked, thinking that her eyes deceived her. It was one thing to watch this type of movement in practice in calm seas, but quite another in an actual fight, and even more astounding to see the accuracy with which the woman could shoot in the midst of such swings and tumbles! She continued to stare, mouth agape for another few heartbeats, as Chimeg flew zigzags, shortened wide swings with startling suddenness, and was always back by the mast without ever colliding with it. Her stream of arrows reached out at Golden Augur’s stern, and the rain of arrows from the fleeing ship turning into a sprinkle of misaimed shots from archers who couldn’t come near to hitting Chimeg, and who dared not show enough of themselves to take an arrow from the deadly woman.
Quauh had never imagined such a display, let alone witnessed one.
“Where’s my first mate?” she heard Massayo yell, and she moved out from her position on the other side of the bullhead and called to the man, who was indeed now dressed in the golden jacket that had been her own.
Massayo bounded over to her, hands up, questioning.
“They know what to do,” Quauh assured him.
“You are supposed to remind them every breath.”
In response, Quauh pointed straight up.
“Ah,” the captain replied, nodding. “You have never seen Chimeg truly at her work before. You are forgiven your distraction.”
“It is amazing, and wonderful.”
Massayo flashed his wide and toothy smile.
Pinquickle’s Folly leaned left then, easing to the west to make her run up Golden Augur’s port rail.
“Twenty yards, yardarm from yardarm, Benny!” Quauh called to him. “Don’t bring us up too close. And Toomsuba, take up that rope and ready the bullhead!”
“You think she’ll turn?” Massayo asked.
“I know she will. But be ready, captain, they will be quick in their starboard turn,” she warned. “When they drop the side-drag, their turn will surprise you.”
“Side-drag?” Massayo asked. “An anchor?”
Quauh tensed up, realizing from the response that she was about to give away a Xoconai secret, a fairly recent innovation the western people had put upon their more lumbering ships that had not been replicated in the east. The part of her that had allowed her to rise through the ranks and become a commissioned officer, the loyalty and dedication to duty, wanted to avoid this conversation.
But the other part, the part of her awakening to the realities of the cruelty her people were inflicting upon the people here, who were not sidhe, who were not lesser humans, battled back. She was alive now, and free to sail, to command, because of the powrie at the wheel and the captain of the sloop standing right beside her.
“Some of the heavier ships carry one to port and one to starboard. An anchor, yes, heavy and hooked, and dropped just behind midships. When it catches, it is like having a paddle in the water on a canoe.”
“It becomes a pivot point.”
“Yes, and they will cut it free when the hard turn is executed.”
Massayo lifted his gaze to the carrack, clearly intrigued. “I will learn more about this when we find the time,” he said, nodding and smiling.
Quauh nodded back, still torn about whether she should have revealed that information. She felt like a traitor, and why not?
Wasn’t she exactly that?
“They would kill me for losing the Uey,” she whispered under her breath, a needed reminder in that moment of doubt.
“And I will scold you if you lose Pinquickle’s Folly,” Massayo said, startling her, for she hadn’t even realized that she had spoken the personal reminder aloud. “But I will not kill you, on my word,” he added lightly, and flashed that smile and a wink to Quauh.
She knew that he wasn’t lying, or at least, she had to believe that.
“And I trust you in your insistence that she will turn,” the captain added.
“Her captain assumes that anything we will throw against her beyond our arrows will be grape and that we’ll run past her and fast pivot so that we can try to rake across her low deck as she passes. We cannot get that shot over her high taffrail with any angle to strike down anyone on the deck, obviously.”
“Then perhaps she’ll turn to port to ram us.”
“Not with Wilkie chasing. The captain of Golden Augur wants no part of that fight. And besides, she’s going to turn before we are.”
“You seem very sure of yourself, First Mate Quauh.”
Quauh started in response as if she had been slapped, but Massayo smiled all the wider. “That was a compliment,” he explained, then called out for his band to pick up the cadence, and called to Benny to be ready to pull the sloop around to starboard to its very limits. Then he restated Quauh’s order to Toomsuba, and told Aushin and McKorkle to help him.
Pinquickle’s Folly filled her sails and began her run, gaining fast. A second ball of pitch flew out from the fleeing Xoconai ship, this one clipping Pinquickle’s starboard rail, spitting across the deck and lighting small fires.
Chimeg answered by swinging out wide to port and plucking one of the cannoneers right from the raised catapult platform with a barbed broadhead, driving into his shoulder and throwing him to the deck, howling in pain.
Now came the most dangerous part of the plan, with Pinquickle rushing up alongside the prey. Arrows flew all about. Golden Augur had a dozen archers still firing, many of them trying to hit the lone archer flying about up above.
Then Golden Augur had eleven.
Then ten, as the To-gai-ru acrobat soaring about up above plied her craft.
Chimeg took a hit in the leg but kept returning fire and kept swinging.
“Come on,” Massayo growled, keeping the beam of his mast between him and the enemy ship.
“Turn, turn,” Quauh whispered beside him, as if trying to urge the merchant ship. She glanced stern and saw that Port Mandu was at full sail and charging ahead, but still a long way away.
The powrie Columbine shouted out in pain and sprawled to the deck, clutching the vibrating shaft of an arrow sticking from his shoulder. Then Dalila was clipped just under her ear. She grabbed the wound with her hand, then brought it back before her eyes, covered in blood.
Quauh grimaced and whispered, “Turn,” yet again. Had she been wrong?
Pinquickle’s Folly pressed ahead of the slower carrack, her stern passing midship, then to the prow and beyond, and the arrow barrage lessened from Golden Augur, though Chimeg kept her line of bolts flying out from on high.
Now was the moment, Quauh knew, as did Captain Massayo, she could tell from his suddenly tense expression.
Would the carrack turn port or starboard?
Would she run or would she ram?
She ran, as suddenly hard starboard as her crew could manage, dropping the side-drag anchor to catch the floor and help tug her around. Her beams and planks creaked and groaned in protest—one sailor even slid across the deck and flipped over the starboard rail, hanging on desperately, his feet skimming the ocean in the ship’s deep lean. Augur’s crew was skilled, clearly, her sails pulling up full before she had even completed the turn.
The others couldn’t get to the hanging sailor in time, though, and so he went into the dark and cold waters, and Quauh couldn’t help but grimace in sympathy.
She let it go and focused on the carrack. She had performed quite a fine maneuver, and despite her own change of allegiance, Quauh the Xoconai felt proud of her kin on this supremely practiced crew.
“Benny!” Massayo and Quauh yelled in unison, but the powrie was already spinning that wheel!
Pinquickle’s Folly dug deep into the water in her pursuing turn, Benny plying the wheel furiously to square her up to any swells. Toomsuba, carrying two arrows stuck into his large frame, dug in his heels and tugged that band of rubber toward the triggering finger.
“Get off the deck, dwarf!” Toomsuba yelled at Columbine, who dragged himself up to his knees, then feet, then went back to the rigging.
“On my count,” Massayo told Quauh. “You earned the trigger.”
Quauh nodded.
“You keep them off us!” Massayo yelled up to Chimeg, who responded by dropping the first Xoconai archer who came to Golden Augur’s taffrail.
Chimeg swung out far to starboard as Pinquickle’s Folly bent and groaned in her fast turn, and so suddenly, they were directly behind the Xoconai carrack again.
But now Golden Augur had her sails blossomed full, and now they were running straight east, away from the shore.
Back to the south, Port Mandu veered to starboard, taking an angle to intercept, but she was still a long way away.
Toomsuba set the bullhead. With help from Aushin and McKorkle, he got the weapon’s pocket in place, fully loaded.
Up went the sloop over the high swells, prow up, then down. Quauh knew that she and Massayo would have to time it perfectly, coming up the front of a swell, to properly angle the shots. And they were running out of time. They weren’t far behind, but they weren’t going to run with the heavy carrack in these high seas for long.
The carrack, with its side-drag, had turned inside the sloop, remarkably, but the work of Benny and Toomsuba and the team, under the crisp and decisive commands of Captain Massayo, soon had the small vessel back in line directly behind their prey, just as before, except that now Golden Augur’s sails were opened wide and full of wind.
Massayo looked across the deck to his first mate and the trigger for the bullhead.
“On my two-count,” he yelled to Quauh.
She nodded in reply. The angle of the catapult shots would be wholly determined by the angle of the prow—the bullhead’s firing angle could not be easily adjusted on the fly.
At full sail now and in the middle of the flattened wake of the larger ship, they were gaining on their prey, but barely, and with the swells rolling beneath them, Quauh knew—and expected that Massayo knew, as well—that a single off-angled breach of a swell could spin his smaller vessel enough so that it would take them a long time to recover and rejoin the chase. She wasn’t surprised, then, when she heard Massayo call out to her, “Next climb!”
Pinquickle’s Folly pitched down over a rolling wave, the prow coming clear for just a moment before splashing down and sending the spray up in her face. Before she had wiped her eyes, the swift sloop began to scale the next wave.
Up went the prow. Up, up, the carrack lost from sight for just an eyeblink before it ascended the wave ahead of them.
“One!” Massayo yelled, then, “Two!”
But Quauh hesitated, something within her overruling Massayo. She felt the roll of the ocean, heard its voice, understood not only this swell, but the next they would soon be climbing.
That one was correct, she knew.
“Two!” Massayo yelled again. “Let fly, first mate!”
She didn’t have to glance his way to know he was coming at her. But the moment was lost, Pinquickle’s nose rolling level and down.
She closed off the yelling—it was more than Massayo shouting at her now—and listened only to the sea, whose voice she knew so very well.
Her eyes weren’t even open when she felt the climb, when she knew not only the swell beneath her, but the next in line that was now lifting the Golden Augur. She tugged hard on the trigger lever and the whole ship shuddered with the release, the caoutchou band contracting like a striking viper, presenting the basket forward with such suddenness and violence that the sheer rush of it had Quauh holding on to the rail with whitened knuckles.
Only then did she understand the true potential of this strange bullhead weapon, for the contraction of that band showed more power than any ship-mounted catapult she had ever seen—and she had seen the finest designs of the finest navy in the known world!
So shocked was she by the display, by the sheer power of the throw, the chains spinning out with tremendous speed, that it took her a moment to even consider the shot itself—and she heard Massayo’s cheer, now from right beside her, before even looking at that which he was cheering.
The throw had gone in perfectly, with great spread of the flying, spinning, weighted chains, which were sharpened at every juncture. They blew through fabric and rigging lines alike, splintered the yards, clipped and removed Golden Augur’s taffrail, and removed, too, a pair of archers huddling there.
Poor fellows.
Much of Golden Augur’s starboard rigging was simply gone, and now half the mainsail flopped about, waving wildly in the strong winds.
The Xoconai carrack was slowing and wavering on her course, and Benny began the expected left-hand turn to get them north of the prey, with Port Mandu coming up from the south.
“Hard to port!” Massayo screamed to the helmsman, and his desperation was clear and Benny pulled all the harder, Pinquickle’s Folly leaning deep and turning hard—so much so that the next wave rolled under her to starboard and sent her back some distance, her sails luffing.
But that was good, Quauh understood, if the others did not, for their prey only had her port side-drag left. Golden Augur was going to turn and fight broadside, with all she could manage before the second pirate ship could join in the battle.
“No, Benny, starboard!” she yelled. “Starboard! Bring us around behind her!”
“What are you doing?” Massayo began to yell at her, but as Quauh had expected, the carrack’s port side-drag anchor dropped, and the struggling ship began a left-hand swing.
Pinquickle’s sails flapped and luffed repeatedly as the sloop turned and rolled with the swells, but once Benny got her aimed to starboard, those sails caught the wind anew and sent her on her way.
Arrows flew at them from the carrack, but the two ships never got close enough for the Golden Augur archers to do much damage, and by the time they were behind the floundering larger boat, Chimeg’s continuing rain of arrows had the carrack’s aft section fully under control.
“No rush now!” Quauh called to the crew. Out of the corner of her eye, she noted Massayo staring down at her.
“I said two,” he told her.
“The sea told me that you were wrong.”
“But I am the captain.”
“And I am your first mate, and it was my responsibility, from you, to make the shot count.” She looked up and guided his gaze with her own to the floundering carrack. “It counted.”
Massayo burst out in a great laugh. “Keep us away from her until Captain Wilkie joins.”
Quauh nodded, but assured him, “She’ll strike her colors, do not doubt. She’s not up for this fight now, and she cannot run.”
“If you think me pleased, you are wrong,” Massayo said, but his smile betrayed him. He leaned forward and whispered, “If you keep showing such brilliance, I may have to kill you so that my crew doesn’t mutiny and put you in charge and feed me to the sharks.”
Quauh beamed with pride and excitement, those feelings overwhelming any doubts she might have had about hunting a Xoconai ship.
The carrack rolled with the swells, meandering. Golden Augur’s crew didn’t cut the drag anchor free, which was very telling to Quauh.
“They’ve little control,” she informed her captain, who nodded with every word, having clearly come to the same conclusion. “They’re using the side-drag for some measure of stability.”
“They’re trying to keep us behind their high stern rail to give their rigging teams some time to repair,” the captain explained.
“Load for a second volley?”
Massayo considered it for just a moment. “Load the bullhead and tug it back to ready,” he instructed Toomsuba. He glanced starboard to measure Port Mandu’s progress. “But I do not think we will need it.”
“Unless it is to convince their captain to strike colors, since we are simply not going to allow them to repair that rigging.”
“Always an option.”
“Keep us on her stern, off thirty yards,” Quauh called to Benny.
The powrie replied with a grunt and a groan, then spat repeatedly.
“No,” Massayo called out in contradiction, surprising Quauh. “No, not yet. Circle her, Benny, at fifty yards.” More quietly, to just Quauh, he added. “Let’s take a good look and see what they’ve got, and let them know that we can, quite literally, run circles about them.”
“They have a capable catapult crew,” Quauh warned.
In response, Massayo looked up at Chimeg, who was against the mainmast then, solidly so, as if she had fastened one boot to it. She stood there comfortably, her bow up and ready.
“Dear Chimeg,” he called up. “Do kill anyone who goes near to that catapult.”
Chimeg flew out suddenly to port, as if some great gust of wind had hit her and hurled her.
An arrow cracked into the mainmast where she had been standing.
Out at the end of her rope, the To-gai-ru suddenly wasn’t far from Golden Augur, and she let fly and made the would-be assassin pay dearly, as confirmed by a sudden cry of pain from the carrack.
Back she swung toward the mast, but she turned a right angle as she neared, and swung out toward Pinquickle’s stern. “As you wish,” she calmly replied.
“How is that even possible?” Quauh asked Massayo.
“The shooting or the swinging?”
“Yes.”
“Her people are equestrians, always sitting a horse, and they are the finest archers in the world. Our dear Chimeg is surely skilled even when rated against that talented group. She grew up shooting while riding or even standing on the back of a galloping horse. The rest of her aerial act is magical, both that band and her anklets. Some of her arrows probably are, as well—she had some fitted with tips of material that can seek out certain metals, I am told.”
“Why would she want to shoot into metal?”
In response, Massayo held the pose of an archer and looked to his hand drawn against his breast. “A bracelet? A necklace? A belt buckle? You tell me.”
Up above, Chimeg went soaring back to the mainmast, and there held.
“They are trying to repair the starboard rigging,” she called down.
“Do make it difficult for them,” Massayo answered.
Chimeg shouldered her bow and quickly climbed back into the crow’s nest. A few moments later, some smoke rose from that high perch. Out leaped the archer, swinging down fast, her nocked arrow showing a glowing, rounded tip. She swung back in, then flew off fast to port, propelled again on unseen magic. Up high above the starboard rail of Golden Augur, she tapped the arrow tip, which flared brilliantly, then drew her bowstring and let fly.
No cries of pain followed this time, but many calls of “Fire!” and some smoke, just a bit, began to rise from the carrack.
“A small bit of pitch won’t burn her sails,” Quauh said.
“Aye, but a powrie flare might, particularly if it is well-placed. Chimeg will weaken some corner of those sails and the ropes to which they are tied. She will keep our enemies busy.”
Pinquickle’s Folly moved away, then, out to fifty yards, and began her turn to port, running an eastern hurricane’s rotation around the wounded carrack. By the time they were crossing the carrack’s bowsprit, they noted Port Mandu dropping to battle sail and approaching the carrack’s port.
Massayo climbed up onto the rail. “You would do well to strike your colors, commander!” he yelled across. “We have no desire to slaughter civilians, surely, but know that you are not escaping.”
It took a few moments, but a call came back, “State your terms.”
“Would you do all the work and take all the fun from me?” came a third voice, that of Captain Wilkie Dogears, addressing Massayo. To the carrack commander, he called, “If we must fight to board you, there will be no terms, not for you, and not for any goldfish aboard!”
“I ask only for the safety of my crew and passengers,” the carrack commander returned.
“And yourself, I presume?” Wilkie shouted.
“I am vanquished. That is at your suffrage, Captain Wilkie Dogears.”
“Ah, you know me! Then you know that I do not take pleasure in killing. Drop your sails, drop your bows, and show your crew in full!”
“We have a deal?”
“We have a deal.”
Massayo patted Quauh on the shoulder. “Your insight and judgment likely saved many lives this day,” he told her.
“Does that please you?” she asked as he walked away.
Massayo stopped in his tracks and turned back to look at her, his expression a mixture of surprise and wound.
Just the reaction Quauh was hoping for.
With Pinquickle’s Folly still circling like a hungry shark, Port Mandu sidled up to the Xoconai ship and dropped her boarding planks.
Quauh noted that Captain Wilkie himself led the way across onto the deck of the surrendered ship and was greeted by the Xoconai commander, who offered his macana. Quauh breathed a sigh of relief when she considered the next group crossing the boarding planks, for among them was the Xoconai sailor who had flipped over the rail in their desperate evasion—Port Mandu had slowed enough to pluck the poor sailor from the ocean, and were now returning him.
“This is the secret to the success of Captain Wilkie Dogears,” Massayo whispered to her, as if reading her mind. “Those put in a helpless situation by this man known as the Polite Pirate know that their surrender will not be disastrous. Count the crates that cross over those boarding planks in the next hour. It will not be half of Golden Augur’s booty, and Wilkie will leave the carrack enough supplies to get to Freeport, surely, for no goldfish commander wants to put in to a Behrenese port, or anywhere else along the coast that is whispered to be patrolled by Chezru Chieftain Brynn’s hungry dragon.”
“Have you ever seen that dragon?” Quauh asked, turning to regard the tall man.
“No, not I, and I am glad for that! But ask our minstrels and I am sure you will get a different answer. Almost all the folk of the desert kingdom have seen the great beast—or perhaps they were all instructed to say that they have seen it whenever asked by outsiders, to keep us away.”
“Or at least, to keep you in line,” Quauh offered to heighten the joke, which Massayo clearly appreciated.
“You should ask them on a quiet day,” he said. “Perhaps they have songs to play of Brynn’s great dragon.”
“Perhaps I shall.” She continued watching the scene unfolding on the carrack’s deck, particularly the conversation between the captains, which seemed to have taken a jovial turn!
“Will we be boarding her, too?” she asked a short while later.
“Does that concern you?”
Quauh considered that for a bit, glad that Massayo had taken note of the potentially troubling possibilities for her. She might be recognized up close, after all, and what would that mean for her should she ever again fall into the hands of the Tonoloya Armada?
“No,” she answered anyway, and honestly, she was surprised to realize.
“Yes, we are going over there,” Massayo told her. He pointed to a small pennant that had just been run up Port Mandu’s aft halyard line, barely visible.
“What is that?”
“Golden Augur has benefited from impressment, it would seem,” Massayo explained. “Captain Wilkie uses that pennant to tell me this.”
“You intend to take those slaves from the carrack?”
“We are in need of crew, even now, and will need more soon enough.”
“So you will press them into your service instead?”
Massayo laughed, shook his head, and walked away. “Go and assist Chimeg,” he ordered.
Quauh found the To-gai-ru woman along the port wall of Massayo’s cabin, shielded from anyone watching from the captured carrack. She was kneeling beside the seated Toomsuba, one hand working the flesh about an arrow the large man had caught in his shoulder during the exchange, her other hand holding a long feather, perhaps from a goose. On the ground beside them was a second arrow, red with Toomsuba’s blood.
“Keep the skin stretched wide,” Chimeg instructed her when she moved beside them.
Quauh placed her thumb on one side of the arrow, her index finger on the other, and increased her pressure as Chimeg let go.
“Yes, like that,” Chimeg said. She inverted the feather before her mouth and blew on the end of the hollow shaft, then slipped that shaft in beside the arrow. She closed her eyes and let her fingers “see” for her as she worked the quill about. Nodding, she left it there, sticking up just beside the arrow shaft, and produced a second feather.
“Shift your fingers to the other side of the arrow,” she instructed, and as soon as Quauh had them correctly set, widening the wound on the far side of the shaft, Chimeg went to work again.
She retracted her hand and smiled at Quauh, then gently grasped the arrow as close as she could to Toomsuba’s skin, and easily slid it out.
Quauh’s jaw hung slack as she stared at the arrow, its barbs sheathed by the hollow shafts of the feathers.
Toomsuba sighed in relief. “It does not hurt so much,” he said.
“You have so much fat, I am not surprised,” Chimeg teased.
“It is all muscle. Should I throw you up to your crow perch to prove it?”
Chimeg winked at him and motioned to Columbine, who was patiently waiting his turn.
“I will show you how,” Chimeg told Quauh. “I will take the arrow from Columbine, and then you will repay your debt to Benny by removing the arrow from his belly.”
“Benny?” she asked with more concern than she would have expected.
“He got hit in the first volley.”
“I didn’t know.”
“He’s Benny. He didn’t want anyone to know, and certainly he was not about to surrender the wheel in the middle of a fight!” Chimeg said. “He saved you. It is only fitting that you save him.”
“It is so simple,” Quauh marveled. She had never heard of any technique like this before. Simply using feathers to defang barbed arrows for extraction? It was so brilliant in its simplicity! “Like making a clavichord with a gourd,” she whispered under her breath.
Again, the woman scolded herself for her arrogance. She had come to the east, like all her people, thinking the conquered lands full of sidhe. Not populated by fellow humans, but with sidhe. Primitive, barbaric, monstrous sidhe.
How wrong they had been. How wrong she had been!
When her turn came to extract the arrow, she hesitated and held up the stump of her right arm. “I am, I was, right-handed.”
“You can do it,” Chimeg assured her.
Quauh took a deep breath and took the first feather in her left hand, leaning in close to study the wound.
“Let your fingers see the barb,” Chimeg instructed.
Only moments later, two feathers lining the arrow, Quauh easily slid the barbed head out of Benny’s body. With her relief came the enormity of it all—and not just of this simple procedure. All of it, all the weight of her remarkable few weeks hit her in that moment. She hadn’t been shaking when she treated Benny, calling on the same sense of purpose and duty that had made her a fine sailor and fine captain, but she was shaking indeed when she handed the extracted arrow over to Chimeg, whispering, “Thank you,” repeatedly.
She meant that for all of them. She had been rescued from bloodthirsty pirates, rescued from certain indenture to the Behrenese, but most of all, Quauh was beginning to realize, she had been rescued from herself, and from a limited and arrogant view of the wide, wide world.
Soon after, Massayo called Chimeg and Quauh back to their stations. Across the way, the boarding planks went up and Port Mandu was pushed away from Golden Augur with long poles, clearing the way for Massayo to sidle his sloop up and board.
Quauh accompanied him as he crossed the boarding plank. He was dressed in a splendid gold jacket of a commissioned Tonoloyan captain, and there she was, right behind him. She studied the stares coming back at her from the Xoconai sailors and officers, and even the civilians—people of great wealth and power, she knew. She didn’t recognize any of them and was fairly sure that none recognized her, thankfully, but would the commanders they reported to back in Entel have to know the particulars of who she was to put it all together?
“Filthy pirates,” she heard one finely dressed woman remark as Massayo walked past.
The captain pulled up short. “Filthy?” he echoed. “It is not dirt, dear lady, just the color of my skin.” His shining smile disappeared in a flash, an ominous, almost wild, look coming over him. “My skin,” he said again in a more even and threatening tone, “which is the same as the color of my mother’s skin, and if you call my dear mother filthy again, I will bind you with a long rope, drop you from my prow, and pull you the length of my ship beneath the hull, which I assure you is thick with sharp barnacles.”
“Good captain,” the Xoconai commander said, “this is an amicable meeting of gentlefolk.”
“Good captain,” Massayo returned, “I remind you that you are defeated. Even gentlefolk are known to practice the art of keelhauling, yes? As they are known to enslave… I’m sorry, as you might more politely put it, to impress into service?”
Glancing from one to the other, Quauh noted one of the sailors of the carrack, a thin but muscular dark-skinned man with kinky hair. He was holding one of the ropes but dropped one hand from it and subtly pointed his index finger down, then his pinkie, then shook the hand to make it look like a headshake from a horned bull.
Massayo took note, she knew, when the sailor pointed at the Xoconai captain, and then, dropping his hand to his side, extended his pinkie a split second before opening the hand fully.
“How many?” Massayo asked.
“How many what?”
“Men and women who are here not by choice, but because you think them lesser and so determine their station to be one of serving you?”
“I?” the captain returned innocently. “I was given those…”
“Given? You were given other humans as if they were cattle?”
“Filthy barbarian,” the fancy woman to the side muttered under her breath.
Never taking his stare from the Xoconai captain, Massayo reached out, grabbed the impertinent snob by the collar, and jerked her toward him, before shoving back and pitching her in a tumble over the rail. She dropped between the two ships into the water.
A couple of nearby Xoconai started for the rail, a movement that was halted when an arrow stabbed into the rail right where the woman had gone over. All eyes went up to the archer, Chimeg, standing on the edge of Pinquickle’s spar, another arrow nocked and ready.
Quauh shifted uncomfortably, and even thought to challenge Massayo by going over the rail herself to save the woman—who wouldn’t be up for long, certainly, with her long and many-layered dress pulling her down.
“How many?” Massayo asked evenly.
“Seven.”
“Get them. They are with me now.”
The Xoconai captain stared hard at him.
“Get them, and have your crew go and save that ridiculous woman,” Massayo said.
The captain nodded. A Xoconai man and woman dove over the rail, while others went to collect Golden Augur’s slaves.
“You have wounded,” Massayo said. “Bring them to my ship now.”
“We have two dead,” the captain replied through his clenched jaw.
“Then perhaps you should not have fired upon us.”
“You ask me to surrender Xoconai wounded. What will you do with them?”
“I will heal them, you idiot.”
“We can heal our own.”
Massayo mocked him with a snort and pointed across the deck, where a distressed, grimacing sailor was seated against the port rail, grabbing at his thigh. An arrow was stuck there, buried deeply into his flesh, with a woman gingerly grasping it and trying to work it back out. Blood flowed and spurted all about the wound.
“If she pulls it back, she will likely tear his veins and he will die in a deep puddle of his own blood,” Quauh interjected, speaking in the tongue of the Xoconai.
Massayo gave her a suspicious look, but she held up her hand, begging his trust.
“If she pushes the arrow through, the damage will be extensive, perhaps fatal, and will cost the man at least his leg,” she told Golden Augur’s captain.
“Who are you?”
“No one who matters.”
The Xoconai captain looked around, his eyes falling on Massayo’s golden jacket before snapping back to Quauh.
“You are from the Uey,” he stated.
“No, the Kikikuli,” she answered, recalling the name of a ship that had been declared lost on the very day she had arrived in Entel for the first time. The Kikikuli had been presented to the new arrivals as an example of the dangers of the eastern sea. The Xoconai did not know what had happened to that ship, only that she had never returned from a short voyage to Freeport, a journey that barely had them out of sight of land. Perhaps it was pirates or a powrie barrelboat, perhaps a rogue wave, perhaps a monster from these unknown waters.
The captain sucked in his breath, his eyes wide. “What happened?”
“A dragon,” she lied. “A great flying beast breathing walls of fire upon us.”
All about them, Xoconai sailors and civilians alike shifted nervously. Quauh glanced at Massayo. Because of his limited command of the language, he couldn’t understand the whole of the conversation, she believed, but his wry smile told her that he approved of what she was doing, whatever it might be.
“I will trade for you,” the Xoconai captain offered. “I will bring you home.”
In the common language of the lands, so that all nearby could understand her, Quauh flatly replied, “I am already home, good captain. Now please, give us your wounded so that we can heal them and return them to you at once.”
“Abellican magic,” he replied derisively, and dismissively, in the Xoconai tongue.
Quauh slowly shook her head. “Simple human cleverness.”
A short while later, the very drunk—so drunk that they had no idea of what had happened to them after they had been blindfolded—Xoconai patients were escorted back to Golden Augur, along with some extra linen to repair the carrack’s shredded sails, well enough, at least, for the ship to limp back to Freeport in the north.
Massayo and Quauh stood side by side at the rail of their ship as the planks were lifted and the ships pushed apart.
“A dragon, you say, with breath of fire?” Massayo quipped, and it took Quauh a moment to realize that he was speaking in perfect Xoconai.
“I would have traded you to him, if I thought you so desired, even before your conversation,” Massayo assured her, and walked away.
Quauh stood there smiling, truly content.
Truly at home.