The raffee drew nearer. It had the wind, which was so mild the Nofa could not possibly outrun it.
Captain Taz-Enja felt the pressure of imminent decision; there was no time to peruse that long list, so he wordlessly handed it to his lieutenant. While the latter pored over the paper, the captain watched the pirate ship, his bow teams crouched above, weapons to hand, the sail crews gathered in silence along the companionway to either side, boarder-repel teams armed and waiting. Everyone waiting for orders.
“Here it is,” the lieutenant exclaimed. “Update end of last summer. Walic defeated by one Inda Elgar, pirate, operating out of Freeport now. This same Elgar was posted as a pirate end of oh-nine.” He brought the paper close to his nose. “Known under some other western-sounding name, hard to make out in this light. A prince?”
“Prince?” the captain repeated. “What would a prince be doing with Gaffer Walic? If he wants his own ships, why doesn’t he send a minion out to buy some?”
The lieutenant flicked the paper with the back of his fingers. “That’s what it says here. At least, so it seems. Why do they have to write the side-notes so tiny? Description: blond, brown eyes, short. A boy? Marlovan out of Iasca Leror. Mutiny, took three trading brigs, reward—tagged as wanted by the Venn. Must have been some mutiny to catch their eye!”
“All Marlovans and Iascans with any kind of rank get that tag,” the captain said low-voiced as the pirate ship drifted closer, its towering triangular sails bellying gently. “A prince would go straight to the capital list as soon as he crossed their border, no matter how law-abiding.” Taz-Enja could make out details now: the tops full of bow teams, though they had not stripped to fighting sail. And there was no battle pennant at the fore, though he knew pirates did not always signal their intentions. “There’s no brig in sight, only the raffee, and that sloop windward.” The captain brought his glass down and rubbed his eyes, blinking rapidly to get his focus back.
“Scout cutter, too,” the lieutenant said, swinging his glass. “Approaching! A little girl at the tiller, looks like a mid tending sail. What does that mean?”
Captain Taz-Enja brought his glass back up to his eye. After a moment, “Pirate ruse?” He voiced the worst, though the signs did not add up to an attack: the cutter moved far too fast to be loaded with pirates below its narrow deck.
Still his heartbeat was loud in his ears as he moved from the stern rail to the side, then gestured to the starboard bow crews to take aim. Anyone who could take Gaffer Walic would be clever as well as bold.
The scout craft was clean, beautiful in line, its long sail curved in a smooth, elegant line like the raffee. Typical pirate arrogance. It glided as effortlessly as a swan over the glassy sea. The strengthening light marked out a girl no more than eleven or twelve with a head full of unruly curls. She controlled the tiller. The youth tending the jib sail line appeared unarmed. He put a bare foot up on the rail as he peered up under his hand at the warship.
(“Inda, Inda, he’s looking at me! He is, he is!” “That’s all right, let ’em look. Long as they don’t start shooting.”)
The captain swept his glass past their lifted faces and studied the raffee. So far it had made no move to close. Its crew was not motionless; though the tops were full of bow teams, he could make out a work party busy aft, repairing what looked like fire damage, and arrows spiked the hull below the mainchains. Near the wheel a tall figure in black lounged, a glass dangling from his hands, a lock of red hair loose from his queue lifting in the weak breeze. As Taz-Enja scrutinized him for any sign of imminent order to attack, the redhead leaned his forearms between the spokes of the wheel, the glass still dangling from loose fingers; he ignored the war ship as he observed his work party.
The pirate ship had been fighting, and recently, too; from the look of things they’d just put out a fire aboard.
The racketing of sailcloth brought his attention back to the little scout craft, which had spilled the wind as it drew alongside.
The captain nodded to his lieutenant, who bawled in Sartoran, then in Dock Talk, “Hail the boat.”
(“Inda, please let me answer, pleasepleaseplease!” “Go ahead—but not threatening, just official. Remember, Nugget, they might think we’re pirates but we’re harmless, friendly, nice pirates.”)
The curly-haired little girl straightened up proudly. “Vixen scout craft belonging to Cocodu independent, out of Freedom Isles,” she shrilled in Khanerenth-accented Sartoran.
Freedom Isles—though the Khanerenth government officially condemned them as pirates, everyone knew who they were and why they were there. And Khanerenth’s new royal navy was not gaining friends these days with its recent policy of stop-and-search on every vessel they met—their excuse was they were looking for their own former navy, now condemned as criminals. Some of them interpreted their orders to include the confiscation of “suspected smuggled goods.”
“How long out?” the lieutenant shouted.
“Two days,” the girl replied promptly.
(“Inda, please let me hold my knife. Or my bow!” “No, we’re supposed to look nonthreatening.” “But that boy on the mainmast shrouds stuck his tongue out at me!” “Stick your tongue out back at him, if you want. But no weapons.”)
The captain did not see the exchange between his cabin boy and the girl at the tiller in the scout craft. He stared up at the lean pirate vessel, considering. Anyone sailing from Freedom Isles would go straight north through the Starborns, or else west past Prince Sahan Island, and then either swing north or continue on westward toward Sarendan. They’d left Prince Sahan two days ago themselves. So it was plausible they really were just out of Freedom Islands, which meant they were either privateers or independents, because former Fleet Commander Dhalshev had no dealings with real pirates.
Though these sailed an infamous pirate ship. And what about those notes on the capital list?
So far no challenge—no arrows, no flags, no shouting. Yet the big, sinister pirate ship was in arrow range now.
Both captain and lieutenant tensed. Now would be the time for the raffee to haul over and attempt a boarding if it was going to; they were glumly aware they did not have enough wind to evade.
“Stay off,” the lieutenant warned, at a look from the captain. “Or we will shoot.”
The boy in the scout craft’s bow spoke up for the first time. “We’re not looking for a fight.” His voice was not as high as a boy’s. Young man, then. “Just finished one, with the brigantine Brass Dancer.” His Sartoran was peculiar— both aristocratic and quaintly old-fashioned.
Captain and lieutenant exchanged glances, each seeing his amazement mirrored in the other.
The captain said, “That was the pirate we have been chasing.”
“We caught him cruising too close to Freeport Harbor. Took a prize.” The young man waved toward the sloop windward of the big pirate—all they could see were its sails.
Captain Taz-Enja called, “There’s a reward, a big one, in Sarendan for anyone who captures the Brass Dancer. Or Dal Raskan, its captain.”
The young man looked like a youth again when he grinned. Blond, brown eyes, short. “I’m afraid the ship itself has already sunk. There seems to have been distilled liquor in the captain’s cabin, and fire reached it—” He waggled a hand.
His hair wasn’t blond, it was brown, though the top layer, especially around his face, was sun-streaked. Maybe he was more blond when the report was made? Anyway he was definitely short. So . . . was this fellow Inda Elgar? No prince in his experience would be seen publicly in bare feet and plain deckhand clothing. But then what prince turned pirate? More to the point, what boy could lead a successful mutiny against the likes of Walic?
“Whiskey? That’s Raskan,” the lieutenant said, breaking into the captain’s thoughts. “Rumor has it he kept a tub of triple-distilled malt whiskey to bathe in, or to treat his crew when they did well, or for use in questioning. No stories agree on what he did with it, but they all said he had it. A
nd you’d be staggering from the fumes if you were in there long.”
The boy—Elgar?—said, “What was left alive of their crew was in a longboat, if you want to catch them. In return, have you any news of recent movements of the Brotherhood of Blood, specifically one who calls herself Boruin Death-Hand?”
Taz-Enja studied that upturned face. No hint of what was going on behind those mild brown eyes. He said, “Most of the red sails have gone west. Except for the pirate Boruin Death-Hand, whose cruising station is north at The Fangs.”
The mysterious young man—pirate or prince, neither seemed quite to fit—waved a hand in farewell. He turned away to address the child, who made a horrible face at someone aboard his own ship (the captain realized whom when he heard suppressed chuckles behind him). Then the girl gave a self-important little twitch of her shoulders, rubbed her hands, and swung the tiller. The strange young man tightened sail again.
And the entire crew of the Nofa watched the long, elegant sail fill as the scout craft picked up speed, crossed the bow of the big raffee, and vanished on the lee.
The black-sided ship slid past, the tops full of pirates in silent, waiting defense teams, the work crew below busy hammering and sawing.
“We will have to report that,” the captain commented.
The lieutenant had not been asked his opinion, so strictly speaking he was not supposed to answer with anything but “Yes, captain.” But the day had begun so unreal he observed, “Will anyone believe us?”
The captain swung around and watched the pirate ship head toward the horizon as an east wind strengthened with the morning light, the sea now a brilliant green-blue, full of choppy waves. He smacked his glass to and said, “They will if we catch those pirates off the Brass Dancer. All sail, straight south.” His voice lowering slightly, “Dranon! Did you want to join the pirate?”
His cabin boy appeared, face scarlet. “No, sir.”
“Your notion of discipline seems to match theirs.”
“She was showing off,” Dranon observed to the deck.
“If the worst a pirate ever does is stick her tongue out, the world will be an easier place to live in. You may think about that for the rest of the day at the masthead.”
Sigh. “Yes, sir.”
Nugget gloated about her exchange with the Sarendan navy cabin boy for the rest of the week, to Uslar’s envy and Mutt’s disgust.
As the Cocodu sailed northwards, Inda mulled over that devastating blue-yellow explosion. He also considered the nature of rumors.
If Boruin knew as much about them as they knew about her, he had to use what she knew. Or what she thought she knew.
So, what he knew was this:
She had three capital ships, he had one. Her reputation for relentless cruelty gave even some pirates pause. The only people who survived being taken by her were the rich, and she got the maximum ransom by sending with her demands a finger or toe, once an eye, from a duke’s daughter who had been too haughty.
She and her first mate Majarian, a runaway murderer, had picked a crew as strong and vicious as they were. Ganan Marshig, Commander of the Brotherhood of Blood, had selected her to cover the east end of their cruising grounds. The rest of the fleet under Marshig sailed west to plunder Iasca Leror under the watchful eyes of the Venn. When they returned, if she still held control, she would be acknowledged leader of the eastern fleet, young as she was.
Inda stood at the rail watching the sea, or pacing around and around on the captain’s deck, pounding a fist on rail, binnacle, wheel, rail again as he made his way around and around. When at last he stopped pacing, he looked bemusedly around the deck, addressing the air. “Where does one buy casks of whiskey?”
Thog, busy smoothing arrow shafts, said softly, “Chwahirsland is where you will get the best, whether corn, rye, or malt.”
“Then we are going to Chwahirsland first.” Inda started his round again, brow knitted.
“He giving up?” one of the new mates asked Dasta.
“No,” Dasta said. “He’s thinking. You’ll see him back among us again when he’s got a plan. Now get that deck swept.”
The fellow, about Dasta’s age, on the sea all his life, applied himself vigorously to his sweeping, keeping to himself his annoyance at having to dodge around Inda’s ceaseless barefooted march.
Chapter Fifteen
THE encounters they had along the way were short and sharp, twice driving away cruising pirates, once a Khanerenth warship determined to board them, and last, some fast-moving coastal galleys, fisher folk who turned pirate when it suited them. They fought haphazardly, relying on surprise. Since they were close to shore, Inda had his crew sink their ships, sending them rowing and swimming back to land. Jeje circled round them in the fast Vixen, Nugget and Mutt gleefully sending fire arrows into the rowboats’ sides.
The new crew discovered that Fox considered these encounters mere practice, so those who’d gotten in the way of weapons when fighting off attempted boardings wrapped their wounds and kept their mouths shut. Fox required them on deck for drill as if nothing had happened.
As they angled in toward the rocky, dangerous coast of Chwahirsland, they captured two vessels off another fleet of pirate galleys: a big, ugly old caravel and a fine little sloop.
This pirate galley fleet had been lying in wait for a convoy of Chwahir merchant craft outside the mouth of a narrow harbor. It made sense to take the sloop darting about between the galleys. It did not make sense to board and carry the round-hulled, top-heavy ancient transport caravel that the pirates had been using to store loot.
But no one said anything, at least to Inda, who walked back and forth along the companionway, his feet smacking slap, slap, slap on the wet deck as a brief shower passed overhead.
The ship was squared away to Barend’s satisfaction and Fox was overseeing boarder-repel practice when Inda stopped his latest circle of the deck, looked around, and said, “Where’s the bosun? Carpenter?”
By the time those two emerged on deck, everyone was listening.
Inda said to the bosun, “Is the treasure transferred aboard us?”
“Stowed where it will stiffen us best,” replied the bosun, who was scarcely older than Inda.
Inda waved a hand, then turned to the carpenter. “Build me a cut boom on that tub.”
“Cut boom?” The carpenter who had replaced Dun and Wumma was an older man, experienced with wood, but not imaginative. He stared aghast at the clumsy ship rolling leeward, his carpenter’s mates still cleaning up and repairing after the fight. Then he rubbed his jaw, ambivalent about arguing with the commander.
Everyone stared in varying measures of disgust and distrust at the old trader caravel.
“What?” Barend laughed. He had no difficulty arguing with Inda. “You try booming a pirate’s shrouds with that old bucket and it’ll fall to splinters. We’d have to reinforce it right down to the keel, and where’s the use in that, even if we had a convenient port in which to do it?”
“I want a big, strong-looking cut boom, metal inset all the way to its point, and I want it off the foremast, with enough preventer stays to make it swing easily, and look wicked seen through a glass,” Inda said. “I also want the whiskey casks we’re going to buy stored on deck as well as below.” And, as they looked at him as if he’d boiled his brains, he opened his hands. “It’s a ruse.”
A ruse! Inda had a plan at last. Word spread through the ship, and all free hands got to it, stripping the bulkheads in the moldy hold to get enough wood to make a foremast cut boom that would overreach even that on the Cocodu.
As they sailed on fragrant winds from the islands behind them, Inda spent long watches in the caravel, which shouldered clumsily through the sea, masts corkscrewing. The rapping and sawing of the carpentry crew went unnoticed as he experimented with whiskey in small wooden mugs, Thog and Uslar and Mutt helping him.
A full mug did not set fire. A half-filled one did, and they had the singed eyebrows to prove it. Something abo
ut fire and fumes combined produced those blue explosions of flame. He did not need to know why; he only had to know what would work.
The false cut boom was finished by the time they rounded the juts of the Jessachwa Mountains. Now they were heading for the strait—and though the Brotherhood might be down to one fleet this far east, this area was also controlled by the Venn. No one knew how many of them had gone west and how many remained to patrol the strait.
Two weeks they sailed, tacking steadily, for the winds had shifted into the west. That brought the weather that was best for covert sailing: cold rain and fog mixing with the warm current going northward.
Inda brooded over his charts whenever he was not on deck. Barend drove the sail crews to better speed. And Fox drilled them all until they fell into their hammocks, muscles trembling with fatigue. Drilled them all, including Inda. There were no complaints, not when everyone could see Fox and Inda on the forecastle sparring an entire watch, every day, in all weather.
They saw no one but Chwahir fishers until one morning, the rising sun lit a jagged line of mountains in the south: the western border of Chwahirsland, east of the Fangs.
“Send Jeje’s signal,” Inda said, coming up on deck.
Mutt and Uslar embarked on a friendly scuffle. Mutt shot off the whirtler, and the boys laughed at the sound as it arced down to cross the Vixen’s bow. They now knew why Inda liked signal arrows instead of flags whenever practical. Barend had told them stories about the plains warriors of the west, and Mutt and his friends had begun using horse jargon (or what they imagined to be horse jargon) , even though the closest they’d ever been to the animals was dodging them in mainland ports.
Jeje brought the Vixen smartly up, the brothers spilling wind as Nugget tossed up the hook. But Inda tossed it back, and boomed down a heavy bundle wrapped in greenish canvas. Then he leaped down onto the Vixen’s deck.
“What are you doing?” Dasta called from the foremast.
Inda shouted back, “Scouting. Wake up Fox, tell him he’s in command. Put up Walic’s red sails and cruise as showy as possible north and south. Circle the Fangs. Poke past every island harbor. No mainland.”