The passenger vessel, a rather small corbita, rocked somniferously in the gentle surf. They’d come to a stop, as the stillness of the air suggested. It was early afternoon, and the high sun blared down, unmolested, reflecting viciously off the low crests of airy white water.
Like a humid kiln. Or a boiling pot.
The sails all tied up, the cutting of oars not to be heard: Mierel felt all the anticipation as distinctly as the sunburn on the tip of his nose, and the crown of his scalp. He itched with it. But in a different context, he considered, not a bad time for a nap.
All the free deckhands stood, in lazed attention, by the starboard rails, while the shorn, scarred, and salt-bitten slaves were made to shuffle back down into the galley. Only the captain, and his two closest officers, waited at the larboard. The former, with an easy enough demeanor--no sense of urgency. Beyond them, the blue sea. Below them, a galley sitting low on the water, just out of sight, which had sidled up to the passenger ship some ten minutes before.
Ayricalt and Mierel stood by the silent ones, whom Baramethi called the Tushikans, in the one thin line of shade left on the baking deck. There, their heels, exposed from the open backs of their clogs, found adequate relief. They squinted at the Galites, pressed up on the prow, who in turn watched the pirates down below. The bald one was smiling--that wide, devilish grin which wrinkled his whole scalp, and sent his oiled whiskers up like a fighting bull’s horns. The darker one looked somber, but Mierel could hardly imagine the big, dark bastard appearing anyway but.
If he ever did smile, Mierel snickered, it’d be the toothy baring of an arbor wolf. He wasn’t quite Ayricalt’s size, but he looked stronger, cleverer, and by their combination, meaner.
“What do you suppose is going on?” asked Ayricalt placidly. Like he could have been yawning.
“Pirates, Ayry,” spat Mierel. “Noriac pirates. Whole damned sea’s probably full of the soggy bandits.”
“What do you suppose they want?”
Mierel grinned, mirthlessly. “Our hides, Ayry. Just like the pirates from your homeland.”
At once, the lines came soaring over the rails. Broad, heavy iron hooks, tethered on thick, knotted ropes. They clung to the rails, dug fastly into the wood, and strained tight.
“Mierel,” said Ayricalt, his frown more insightful than normal, “you’re only saying that because all the pirates you’ve met have tried to kill you.”
“That’s…yes, Aryicalt. That’s right.”
“But the only reason they were ever trying to kill you is that you were trying to kill them.”
Mierel shrugged. “Well they’re fucking pirates, Ayry--not boars. A hundred times to one, I won’t take that chance.”
“Well…” Ayricalt was looking at the tethered hooks, shivering into the wood, shaving splinter. The ropes, thrumming tightly. No sooner than a moment before five of the sea dogs appeared, swords in their mouths, ambling up the ropes like…well, not quite like arbor wolves--maybe more like particularly ravenous squirrels.
The blades, in their too-few toothed grips, formed easy, warlike snarls on the brigands’ sea-beaten faces. They walked right past the captain, who nodded pleasantly at them and uttered just a few words. A request, perhaps, and ignored.
“What in Ans’ wide prairie was that daft queen thinking?” seethed Mierel. “He’s one of the enemies!”
Ayricalt frowned. “I don’t think the queen has boats, Mierel.”
The pirates, stretching their hands and finally removing their arms from their mouths, shouted quite authoritatively. Ostensibly for silence. Mierel kept it shut, just in case. Then they set about corralling the Galites and the Litherians, and brought them over to the base of the poop deck where the Spunishmen stood next to the Tushikans. Everything went cordially enough, and they were all rather non threateningly pressed up against the shaded wooden wall.
The pirate captain came aboard, then, from a wooden ladder which had been painstakingly erected for the occasion, and presently came face to face with their own. She had a shrewd, old face, drawn with boredom. And she was dressed, in piratical fashion, not unlike the highborn courtiers at Ellusen. She wore a sleeveless dress above a sheer, loose shirt. Sashes, stuck with sundry flowers, gems, and the tails of small animals, strapped over her shoulders, and folded back below her waist. Her boots were fine leather, clasped with silver. The only differences, then, between her and the bluebloods, were of context, and the broadsword she kept tied up at her hip.
She bore all the affected disinterest of a more honest merchant, a bargainer, and gently harangued the corbita’s captain for several minutes. He, in turn, politely contested her. It didn’t take long for things to sour. She nodded at her loitering subordinates. They nodded back.
The corbita’s captain turned, his eyes slits of panic, his smile strained. Mierel rolled his eyes.
“Get ready for trouble, Ayry,” he muttered. Ayricalt hummed curiously.
Then the five pirates approached, and a wrenching of wood and rope suggested still more were preparing to board. They came into uncomfortable proximity, their missile spittle buffeting Mierel’s face, forcing him to blink, purse his lips, and flinching turn his head back into the hard wood behind. Their breath all smelled like rotted matter, scurvy teeth and a diet of sun-cooked offal.
“I think they want our swords,” said Ayricalt. He was watching them pick up the Tushikans’ numerous daggers off the deck.
Mierel principally objected to such treatment, but sure enough he saw the two Litherians forfeiting their own long, triangular daggers, and then the Galites, who produced from their thickly layered robes some strange, curved swords, surrendering them. He looked to Ayricalt.
Ayricalt wore a perturbed wince, and gripped the hilt of the sword at his own belt with an almost childlike jealousy. He looked perfectly reluctant to do what he inevitably would.
The pirates advanced. Shouts from the transport crew began to mingle with their ceaseless demands. Finally, one reached out, and made the mistake of gripping Ayricalt’s belt.
In a moment, the pirate’s hands hit the deck, severed quite completely from their constituent arms, and in the next, Ayricalt had stepped forward, and cut down another, whose own arms were full of the party’s surrendered weapons. The sundry swords of their companions fell to the deck, trickling like metallic rain. Mortal yelps met furious commands in the still, autumn heat. But it was all gibberish to Mierel, who beheld this sight with a kind of ecstasy, tracing Ayricalt’s blade, which glittered like moonlight, through the flying arcs of hot blood.
A beautiful dance, he laughed, admiring the expression of bloodcurdling fury on his erstwhile placid companion’s face. His weathered cheeks stung with the tightness of his smile. And a tightness in his groin matched the thumping, growing, all consuming rhythm in his chest.
He ripped his own sword up from his belt, and, howling, joined his partner on the dancefloor.
Amidst the bedlam, the pirate captain quickly dispatched her more civilian counterpart. A great blowing of horns came up from the water’s surface, and a fresh set of pirates clambered up the tethers. Another few hooks came flying up, too.
Mierel chased the larboard rail, hacking at the thick grappling lines, and stabbing down at the pirates who climbed them. His right arm was always swinging, wedging out frayed ends from the sturdy rope, then glancing off yowling pirate skulls. It was perilously slow progress. With his left, he called upon all the meager fire in his soul to burn through the damnable ropes, but never succeeded in giving them more than a finger-wide char.
“Help, damn it!” he blithered, craning his neck back to look at his companions. He caught, in a peripheral glimpse, the turbaned Galite skewering through the assailant captain, then throwing her off, like some detestable burden, back onto the deck.
But it was Ayricalt’s approaching figure which commanded his attention. He marched resolutely, and in short order he was cleaving through the several ropes with strong, singular swings of his shining shortsword. Mierel cheered, then ignoring the ropes in favor of the more vulnerable climbers thereon.
When all the ropes were cut, and the strait between the vessels stained like wine and littered with half-floating bodies (both dead and still drowning), Mierel finally pulled back, stumbling over to the Tushikans in their meager shade, and sat beside them.
Between heaving breaths, he guffawed.
“What a fight!”
Soon Ayricalt came and joined him by the wall. The muted shouts of the pirates, struggling to row, struggling between themselves, or to pull their still living comrades from the literal bloodbath, resounded up from the larboard hull.
“What a fight…” But the other travelers didn’t seem to share his enthusiasm. The dark Galite, more brooding than ever, prayed above the dead bodies of the captains, his broad hands, clenched into pale fists, crossed over his breast. The bald one looked particularly sour, glowering from a far corner of the stern as he studied his flared, sweep of a blade for damage. He was whistling…grunting…squeaking? And the object of his ire appeared to be a seagull floating circles behind him--the only such bird not already busy at work on the sodden corpses the opposite side of the ship--though he directed his strangulating glare as often at the rest of the passengers.
But for odd noises, Mierel had to admit that the sound the Tushikans were just beginning to leak was far stranger still than the Galite’s bird-speech. They weren’t so loud about it--but Mierel had made the mistake of sitting next to them. The melody (melodies?) rose and fell quite at random, the line of one always chasing that of the other, and they combined to a counterpoint of striking discordancy.
Mierel, quite shocked by un-self-conscious paucity of this display, turned to glare at them. He saw they had tears pooling at the tops of their cheeks, just starting to fall down…
And the deckhands were coming to terms with their new circumstances in much the same way that pirates, apparently, did--a few arguments already gone to fists.
“Sod this,” snorted Mierel, standing with a groan, “I’m getting out of here.” He looked expectantly at Ayricalt, eyebrows raised. Ayricalt looked back, raising only one. “You’re coming with me, big lad,.” He grabbed Ayricalt by the intersection of his robe’s collar, and yanked him onto his feet, pulling the big lad’s face down, to meet his.
“Come on, then.”
The Sprunishmen came back up from the hold, tired eyes bedazzled in the light, just as Kordos had finished wordlessly cowing the deckhands into submission. In fact, the clamor had all died down--the Tushikans, finished with their mournful moaning, and the bald Galite no longer bickering with a dumb seabird.
They all stood at wide intervals about the deck, these four pairs, and--looking each from side to side--seemed naturally to converge at the aft side of the mast.
Then Kordos spoke. And he spoke, apparently, only in Litherian, so the young Baramethi had to translate for the Sprunishmen, and the taller, darker Galite translated for his counterpart.
The Tushikans hadn’t moved, during their wailing or after, except to recollect their items, and had sat back down in just the same positions. If they understood Kordos’ speech--or indeed if they didn’t--they gave no indication. They simply stared intelligently at him.
“There will be more pirates,” said Kordos, through his translators“so we’d ought to be prepared, at all times hither, for battle. Now the Sprunish are a typically hot-tempered people, so we shall not blame the poor devil for his folly. Besides, it’s clear as the springs of Stengar that the lad has an elvish blade.”
Mierel didn’t care for the old man calling his Ayricalt “lad.” More significantly, the Galites didn’t seem to care for this revelation about Ayricalt’s sword. They glared at him with most disparaging frowns.
“I wouldn’t forfeit enchanted steel, either,” Kordos continued, chuckling easily. “Now, we’ve hardly taken the time to gather up and at least introduce ourselves, so…”
So, introductions were made.
The darker of the Galites, with the thick, square beard shimmering like jet, was named Oberoto, and claimed to be the king of a polity in Shu, on the southern shores of the Sea of Gales. The other, paler one, whose eyes now cracked with red like lacquered cross-sections of a still-burning log, called himself Kelcetrix. He made no mention of his provenance.
“That’s Ayricalt of the Isles,” said Mierel.
“That’s ‘Prince of the Kara--”
“And I’m Mierel of the Sote.”
The Tushikans said nothing--though Kordos offered an inviting pause.
“Well,” he continued, “perhaps we can again rely on their…intuition.” Mierel scoffed. “There are stranger arts than clairvoyance, Sprunishman. Do not doubt all that you don’t understand.”
Not that he doubted it, really--just that he failed to see the wisdom in it. Tragedy at every corner. Tragedy always just beyond the horizon. Blood and death and whatever other pestilences always following your footsteps…
“Presently, we need a captain,” Kordos continued. “Do any of you gentlemen think you can operate this vessel?”
Ayricalt caught Kordos’ eyes, and nodded.
“Think you can get us where we need to go? Find our way to the Bluebird Isles?”
Then Ayricalt frowned, looking up at the increasingly murky skies to the west. He held his hand up vertically, squinted in the sun’s direction, then walked to the rails, leaned his head out and looked over the endless waters. Finally, he returned, and nodded again.
Ayricalt the sea captain was a good deal more pleasant than Ayricalt the boat passenger, Mierel thought. Not more thoughtful, nor talkative--and he still had that corpse-like tinge of grayness about him. He hadn’t even quit his incessant walkabouts. But the added purpose--the authority--made all the change in the world. Ayricalt was seldom authoritative.
Mierel relished seeing it again--just the way his partner had been behind the walls of Sacrianos, where he donned shimmering, bronze armor of the Litherians, and at the Field of the Mendicants, where he led them to glorious defeat.
The way he’d been before he was titled “the Prince of the Karafins,” and patronizingly lavished upon. He’d always been passive, from what Mierel could tell--taken through life like a maple seed on the wind, or a jellylotus on ocean currents. He’d never grabbed at anything in life--hell, even the generalship of Sacrianos came by accident. But when he was put in charge of something, or even when his paltry conversations turned to blows, he’d shown a pattern of acting quite admirably. Not cleverly, nor necessarily effectively, but admirably all the same--took to it with the sum of his relatively thin mental energy.
So Mierel endeavored to follow his fevered pace around the deck. It was worth it, anyway, to see Ayricalt back in action. He looked like one of those bald condors from the southern canyon country--enormous, with a blanched white, skeletal mask, and a thoughtless, burning focus which drew his stare miles out into the smoky distance. This dwarf giant tugged tackle harder than all the deckhands combined, wrapping thick ropes in his long, glistening fingers. He lathered his hands regularly in the sea spray, and spat in them sometimes. He drove the hard, block soles of his clogs against the deck, and his back churned. The lines of rigging, (Whatever the hell they were!) flew out behind him, yard by slack yard.
Now, if he’d only don a proper captain’s gallant dress…
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Unfortunately, such displays did not readily warm the free sailors to him. Not really, anyway. They never lipped at him, but the cold, fearful glares they directed at the back of his skull could make even a kindly lord shiver. And they went about their assignments so unenthusiastically it must have been deliberate--especially the Sprunish among them.
Hardly surprising, thought Mierel, I’ve never known a Sprunishman who liked him at first glance.
The slaves, on the other hand, showed absolutely no concern for the current predicament, and blessedly fulfilled their tasks. They all looked vaguely Sprunish, to Mierel’s eye, though it was hard to tell. They were quite thoroughly shorn, only in their armpits and inner legs did dark patches of lousy hair remain. They all had gray eyes--whether they’d once been brown or green. They didn’t speak much more than the occasional low-toned mutter to one of their comrades, and they didn’t spend too much time on deck--not especially after the pirate corpses had been jettisoned, and their blood all swabbed off. They were, apparently, blessedly intent on reaching shore.
Within the hour, the marigold sun had fallen behind that black curtain of clouds. The mood over the deck was tense, but everyone carried about unshaken. The seas certainly weren’t getting any rougher. Indeed, unless Mierel was greatly mistaken (and he didn’t think he would be, on this account), they were actually getting calmer. And the weather, milder.
“I don’t think this is a storm, Ayry,” said Mierel, finding it easier to speak against the water’s gentle lapping at the ship’s bow.
“What makes you say that?”
“Well, it’s…you’re joking, right?”
If he was, he didn’t show it. Didn’t laugh. Didn’t utter a single noise, though his mouth kept moving in manic formations, wordless partings of the lips. His mean focus, rapt.
Mierel, after a brief moment’s confusion, smiled to himself. “That’s your bug-talk, isn’t it?”
“The cricket’s voice,” he calmly corrected, his words the softest whisper, shivering telephonically in Mierel’s inner ear, and went about his other silent mouthings.
“What are you telling them?”
“How to sail a ship,” he replied. The tickling intimacy of it sent warm, homey convulsions through the course of Mierel’s nerves. Then, grinning sheepishly, in a full voice, though still softly: “How to sail my ship.”
They worked sleeplessly through that one uneasy and starless night. Well the crew did, anyway, and Ayricalt, too--but the rest of the adventurers stayed vigilant, withal. Not so much as a tired nod from the Galites, nor a heavy-lidded wink from the Litherians. They all stayed on deck, biding through the anticipation with a hardy calm, an undesperate desperation.
The hours went gently, slowly by. Slower and slower, in fact, and gentler, too--by dawn, it was clear that the ship was hardly moving at all. The sails hung mostly slack, canvas rippling meekly in the airy stillness. Long, oar-like rudders worked rather hopelessly to propel the creaking ship.
But the mood on deck was practically elated. After all, they’d made it to morning, and not just in the temporal sense. The western skies, plum-stained and pocked with decaying starlight, contrasted against the black overcast. The cloud had come to an end.
And at the horizon line, against this nascent dawn’s paltry illumination, they could see a darkened blotch. But this stalwart silhouette was like the brightest beacon to the beleaguered crew, and their fated passengers. The Litherians embraced each other dramatically. The Tushikans did nothing. Kelcetrix, the rotund Galite with fiery eyes, was busy at the bow, apparently cavorting once again with seagulls. He did not look at all pleased, and cast shifting glances at his more stately companion, who rested his broad hand upon the rail, and kept his eyes fixed westward, toward the land.
“What’s he on about?” cried Mierel. “First sight of a Bluebird Isle and Mr. Grins is frowning.”
But Ayricalt must have seen something in the man’s bestial conversation. He bounded off to the rigging, climbing up with all the comfortable swiftness of a practiced seaman. Then Kelcetrix yelled something to Oberoto, who immediately yelled it out in Litherian. Kordos and Baramethi sobered up grimly.
“Well?” shouted Ayricalt.
“Ships, rowing out of port,” Baramethi blurted out with a start. “A galley--a war galley--and more.”
“And just how on the Horselord’s hooves do they know that?” snapped Mierel. He was, presently, greatly ignored.
“Baramethi!” shouted Kordos, and he grabbed at the gold-roped fastening of his long, blood red cloak and tore it off. Beneath, he wore a loincloth with a bronze codpiece, and a rear skirt of boiled leather scales stretched nearly to the knees in the back, giving him the impression of an enormous, bare-chested owl. Mierel shook his head, smirking. Litherians, he thought, all skirts and oiled skin. But as the elder prince snapped off an order to his squire, he certainly looked the part of a ruler. Baramethi scurried off below decks. Mierel flushed.
Maybe a little action looks good on everyone.
Everyone, of course, except the Tushikans. In the face of this possible onslaught, they stood quite abruptly and followed Baramethi into the hold.
“If sitting down means pirates,” mused Mierel, though none could hear him. “What do you suppose they prognosticate by hiding?”
“Storm,” called Ayricalt from up by the crow’s nest, just before a gust, rippling the seas beneath it, hit the larboard side. The corbita, groaning long and reluctantly, careened to one side, then bobbed back like a tight spring. Mierel, thrown to the side, grasped desperately around the rail, wrapping his arms up tight around the banister. He felt his bones bend as they rocked back to some equilibrium.
Bewildered, Mierel took stock of the deck. Half a dozen sailors piled up against the rails, sprawling forms. They shoved each other off, fought to stand, crying and gesticulating as they threw down lines to recover their overboard comrades. Mierel blinked. Instinctually, he looked at Ayricalt. The big man was still tangled up in the riggings, shocked but secure. Then he looked to the Galites--still propped up at the prow, glaring back aftward--and to the Litherians…
His jaw dropped. “By His own hooves…”
It must have been some illusion, caused by the sudden winds and the ship’s violent oscillations--but he could swear he actually saw the air rushing into Kordos’ open mouth. The old prince looked like a howling barbarian, legs spread wide, arms flexing indignantly at his side. But no sound came out. Instead, he appeared to be inhaling--with such intensity that Mierel winced.
In fact, he was inhaling. And the air was indeed rushing into his open maw. Mierel could see the definition of his ribs as they pressed out against the pale shine of his stretching breast. There was no expiration. He simply kept expanding, breathing in.
Mierel bit his lips, half expecting the old soldier to suddenly pop. It was a bizarre anxiety. Was he more put off by the sheer possibility of breathing oneself to the bursting point, or the threat of the Litherian gut-shower which might ensue?
Either way, he could not take his rapidly blinking eyes away--though he was conscious to keep his lips firmly shut.
The wind had now died down just as suddenly as it had come up, like a gust of stillness. But Kordos’ beard still whipped around like dragonfly wings. His face was red as a sunburned northerner, veins bulging from his throat like webbed fingers pressing out desperately against a filmy prison. His eyes, red and thick with wetness, shivered madly as he finally shut his mouth. His cheeks blew up like a squirrel’s in autumn.
By Ans’ shining mane, Mierel feared, squeaking out a worried groan, he’s going to burst!
In a moment, Baramethi finally emerged, a cylindrical bundle of straw mat propped up on his left shoulder. With an admirable single-mindedness, he lugged the awkward package up the ladder, and set it on the poop deck with a dull thump. He nodded politely at his ballooning master, apparently unfazed by this condition, and set about unfurling the mat, revealing a stack of bronze-tipped javelins.
Kordos nodded back. A pitched squeal escaped from pressed-tight lips. He’s seething, Mierel, rather scandalized, decided. Like a lidded stew. Only this stew sang the screech of a thousand children blowing grass flutes. And it must have actually been a word, because Oberoto, the Galite king, responded.
Then the hideous squeal once again. Mierel couldn’t make heads or tails of it--he could hardly have stayed on his feet, if he wasn’t still wrapped up in the railing. His ears rang already.
Oberoto, looking rather alarmed, conveyed the noise’s content to his bird-talking fellow. Kelcetrix grinned, his mustache rising quite hideously, and nodded.
Then Kordos beckoned to his own compatriot, and Baramethi rather composedly picked up a short spear and handed it to him. Kordos squared his stance--he didn’t look spry, but the display of strength was unquestionable. He took one tenuous step, then a careful one. Then he accelerated quickly, and before he’d cleared half the deck Kordos twisted his back and hurled his missile.
It whistled off, dropping into a dull, rending screech as it hurtled across the sea. Everyone looked to Kelcetrix, who examined the bird’s in the sky thoughtfully. In a moment he turned to Oberoto, and flashed a thumbs up.
Kordos’ laugh, nonetheless victorious, sounded pained--a discombobulating squeal through the still air. Mierel gripped into the wood with his nails, and gritted his teeth to fight the shakiness in his knees. Then Kordos looked solemn again, and much deflated, and he nodded at Baramethi, who handed him another weapon. This he threw in a much the same fashion, and it didn’t seem any less unfathomably fast for the old man’s apparent exhaustion.
He fell on his rear almost immediately, panting for air, and Baramethi went to support his back. Kordos said something, it couldn’t have been more than a whisper, and it had a clearly disconcerting effect on his loving squire.
Meanwhile, Mierel directed his attention to Kelcetrix, who put his hand out horizontally, an unconvinced frown drooping his mustache, and wavered it. Ayricalt went down to see the lying king, and Mierel joined him presently.
“This normal?” asked Mierel, flippantly.
“Not normal,” Baramethi replied. “Not at all normal. He says there’s something dark, something malicious in the air. This isn’t a typical storm.”
“All storms are dark,” Mierel said with a shrug, “and I’ve yet to see a portentous one.”
Baramethi shook his head severely. “This isn’t a storm,” he declared, “it’s an omen.”
Mierel (characteristically) scoffed--though, of course, he knew the young Litherian was onto something. In the thin and growing light, something about the cloud was quickly becoming apparent. Mierel traced it along the whole horizon, south to south-west, then falling behind the shadow of land, emerging once again and wrapping all the way north, back to where they’d just passed under it.
But he wouldn’t be caught dead saying that. Ayricalt, returned to the deck, was already shamefully holding his face in hand when Mierel responded:
“An omen indeed--of your king’s advanced age, no doubt. Arsory like that is…well--”
“Is what?” Baramethi snapped. “Beyond the comprehension of your savage, rustic mind?”
Mierel sneered, and didn’t save time to blink before he threw his first punch, which sent the young Litherian sprawling. Kordos’ unconscious head smacked resonantly against the deck, but Mierel didn’t grant his victim a second to protest. He was immediately upon Baramethi, applying eager fists to his unguarded skull.
Ayricalt pulled Mierel up by the collar of his robe, his feet clearing the deck as they savagely kicked to find purchase, and threw him back. Oberoto, meanwhile, stepped between them and the victim.
“There’s for your fucking arsory, skirt-wearer,” Mierel spat. But he didn’t look much better than Baramethi in the aftermath. The latter grinned, blood in the cracks between his teeth, and dripping from his nose.
“Hurts, does it? I’d like to tell you it gets better, but…it doesn’t.” He cackled himself into a coughing fit, and hurled a glob of bloody phlegm upon the deck.
“Mierel?” said Ayricalt, a cross between concern and bemusement playing on his lips.
“It feels like a fucking jellyfish got me.” He pulled his robe over his shoulder, showing the left flank of his ribcage, but it looked just as tanned and greened with old bruises as normal. “Well, believe me, it fucking hurts,” he finally muttered, after a tender prodding with his fingers.
“I’ve been made captain, Mierel,” Ayricalt breathed with an exasperated sigh. “I’ll have to put you in the brig for this.”
“No.” The voice was familiar, but the accent, alien. They both turned to Oberoto, who had them locked in a stern gaze, his great beard sticking out imperiously as he spoke side-mouthed to Baramethi.
“He says that last throw didn’t sink the ship, just took a chunk out of the aft--rudderless, but not rower-less. We’ve got about three dozen angry pirates at hand.”
Ayricalt examined their own ship, the dead sails and the crew, praying and trembling with fear. “All out of wind,” he said with a frown.
“You’d prefer a storm?”
“We’d prefer,” interjected Mierel, “that your sovereign had hit his targets.” Baramethi sat up painfully to protest, but Ayricalt held up a warding hand for silence. He had the corner of a wry smile. He looked at the crowding, discontented crew, and whispered. Mierel could not hear the words, nor Oberoto (though he wouldn’t understand them anyway). The crew, however, turned alert. They had enough Sprunish amongst them that they disseminated the orders rapidly, and began shuffling through and around the adventurers. They carefully picked Kordos up by his arms and legs, and took him with them as they made for the hold.
“What did you tell them?” asked Mierel.
“To get below deck, if they don’t want to get bloody.”
“We’re fighting, then?”
Ayricalt nodded.
“You can’t be serious,” Baramethi whined, with a pained chuckle. “We’re in no condition--”
“You mean your prince,” Mierel snapped. “Captain’s given his orders.” A moment later, one of the sailors reemerged from the hold, carrying a long, cloth wrapped pole. Though quite bald, he had the distinct hazel eyes of a Sprunishman, and he muttered a few hopeful words to his impromptu captain.
Ayricalt unwrapped the package, revealing what looked like a sword affixed to a six-foot spear shaft, or rather a large axe which had been stretched and straightened into something more fit for supporting a tent than for combat.
“Words for confidence, captain?” groaned Mierel, as he rose, slow and painstakingly, to his feet.
“Let’s hope these Galites can fight, Mierel.”
They waited anxiously upon the deck, searching the horizon for their eventual assailants. All except for Kelcetrix, who leaned against the bow with all the unconcerned cool which had become characteristic of his presence, his toothy grin returned. And he continued to fraternize with the gulls there, actually laughing at their dumb squawking, and looking intermittently up into the sky with a curious expression.
The shadowy figures of the oncoming ships oscillated over the waves on the horizon. Heavy breaths met the hardening of resolve, the tightening of grips about various hilts. It was then that the hold door creaked open, and the Tushikan duo emerged like serpents, winding over the gently rocking deck toward Ayricalt.
“You’ve chosen conflict,” said one, though it was hard to tell which by their heavy hoods and gestural silence.
Ayricalt mulled this over for a moment (if he was surprised, he hid it well), the Tushikans, meanwhile, waited patiently. “I rise to conflict,” he decided, “but I didn’t come to the Bluebirds to fight men.”
“Hold on,” shouted Mierel, grabbing at his side in duress, “if we’d had your way, we’d be locked up in some moldy prison, awaiting the generosity of a foreign queen.” Now the larger, male Tushikan leaned back and crossed his arms, but said nothing. “Ah, why should we listen to them anyway. They haven’t said anything helpful, yet.”
“Fear is the coward’s defense to ignorance,” said the shorter female.
“And since when do you talk,” Mierel accused, though the force of it made him wince and he almost doubled over from the pain.
“You wouldn’t say much, either,” the male reprimanded, practically spitting, “if you actually knew how to think. Tell me, how many languages have you learned in the fortnight hence? Five? Six?”
“The eye of the mind sees nothing with its lids left closed,” nodded the female, notably calmer. “To speak is to blink.”
Mierel blinked. “Look,” he grunted, “if you’re here to help--”
“You have chosen conflict,” repeated the man, self-righteously, “and the spirit’s cry for your fate.”
“Our fate,” chided the woman, “we will aid each other.”
The ensuing fight came slowly. First, it was the better part of an hour before the half-ruined galley could be towed up to where the corbita sat motionless by the single-masted vessel which escorted it (itself operating on an insufficient crew of rowers). The adventurers looked at the ship dim with amazement. Truly, the rudder had been blown off the ship, but it had gone with a good deal of the aft deck and the rear dozen or so benches and oarsmen. It was, to Mierel’s landlubber mind, frankly a miracle that the ship was still above the surface.
Secondly, there was a painfully long interval of parley between Ayricalt and the pirate leader, translated by the linguistic Tushikans. Ayricalt made mostly vague but suitably dire threats, leveraged only by the outlandish attacks committed by the notably absent prince of Ithosphthoros. The interloping captain, clearly obliged both to trust and doubt these threats, mostly scoffed, and insulted the adventurers--though he was certainly slow to steer the conversation toward anything like action.
But the pirates grew restless first. It wasn’t too long, really, before the missiles of war started scoring the sky. The Tushikans dodged the incoming javelins gracefully--Ayricalt and Mierel, not so gracefully. Meanwhile, the sailing craft had maneuvered around the starboard side, and more of the galley’s arrows assailed it than their intended target. But, before long, the spears dried up, and the arrows came sparingly. Grappling hooks were thrown, and the corbita was presently sandwiched by pirates on both sides.
They threw themselves over the rails familiarly. Swords in mouth. Ayricalt spread his feet out on the deck, breathed deeply, and adjusted his grip on the spear. Mierel crowed, worked up a handful of embers and blew them into the attackers’ eyes.
They started cutting.
Not one pirate was left alive, not least because a furious swarm of gulls descended for the eyes of those trying to swim away. Mierel looked over the result of their handiwork and whistled, then counted the corpses up out loud.
“...twenty-five, twenty-six…well, unless I’ve counted two halves twice, that’s twenty-seven. Not bad for seven, I’d say. Wish I got to see you all fight.” He was relieved enough to see Ayricalt back in action. The year of courtly decadence had taken its toll, sure enough. Mierel felt slow, and he saw Ayricalt heaving for breath. Perhaps this little trip would be useful, after all--if only for the exercise.
The Tushikan’s wailed mournfully for the better part of an hour. No one, not even Mierel with his still smarting side and generally antagonistic disposition, beseeched them to stop. They all caught their breath, turned each corpse by one into the sea, and cleaned their weapons. Mierel made no secret of the fact that the fight had left him pitiably aroused, despite his physically poor state. Ayricalt ignored him. The Tushikans ignored all, tranced in their mournful prayer. Baramethi had slipped back into the hold to tend to Kordos, and Kelcetrix reclaimed his spot at the bow, petting and clucking for the gulls. His eyes now looked a clean, bright red.
Afternoon was dragging into dusk. Ayricalt limped up to the poop deck, stretched his sides and his hips, then took a wide battle stance. He took deep breaths, just the same as before the attack. Meanwhile, Mierel threw embers at the deserted pirate ships, encouraging the growing flames with perverse exclamations.
They roared in response. The wind had come upon them like the sunrise--in a moment it was there. It breathed life into the sputtering plumes of smoke, and shook the corbita’s sails to rigid life. Ayricalt fell to his knees, and the Tushikans went to usher the sailors back to work. Mierel yawned as the pressure shifted, as sleep beckoned with a promise of lusty dreams. He inhaled deeply, relishing the smells of blood and smoke over the salty sea. The ship lurched, fell, and rocked back into its constant rhythms--bearing west, once again, toward the Bluebird Isles.