Beggar's Flip Page 10

  “Captain, we have to reef!” Regon yelled at me, raindrops pounding on his forehead. “At this clip, you’ll capsize her!”

  “All right, all right!” I snapped at him, but already I was distracted by the bigger problem. The Banshee was one ship. The corsairs had two. Whichever of them I chose to grapple and board, the other would be left free to go after the Sod Off, and Flint’s twelve-man crew. Maybe Latoya would be able to even things out a bit, but I still wasn’t happy with the odds.

  If only I had more of my ships with me! With the Black Rush on one flank and the Destiny on another, and the Idiot Kid lurking by for emergencies, I could have carved through the corsairs without slowing down. Wasn’t that why I built a damn fleet in the first place? And here I was, in a single ship, with the Sod Off in trouble and my thumb up my arse. How stupid could I possibly . . .

  Stop it. I actually slapped myself in the face. I knew better than to get locked inside my own head when there was work to do. Focus—that was what Lynn would tell me. Focus on what you have, not what you don’t. I didn’t have any extra ships. I did have the Banshee, my beautiful Banshee, and I loved every plank and peg in her, but still . . . she couldn’t turn as swiftly as the smaller corsair vessels, couldn’t manoeuvre as easily. She was too large, too heavy, too . . .

  Yes. Heavy. Use what you have. Yes. Use what you have. Buggering fuck against a spiky tree, that was it.

  The Banshee surged forwards. All around me was a clutter of sound, the blatting of the rain, creaking of ropes and the barking of orders, as my crew prepared to shorten sail. I raised my voice over all of it, “Belay that!”

  “Captain?” I couldn’t see Regon, but I could hear him bawling in the grey mist.

  “Don’t shorten sail!” I roared, clambering towards the helm. I’m not one to stumble on board ship, but we were moving so fast, even I had to grab at the lines to stay upright.

  “Captain?” Regon said, a note of pure panic entering his tone. It wasn’t hard to translate: She’s gone off the deep end at last. I always knew this day would come.

  “I need her going full bore!”

  “Captain, we’ll capsize! The wind’s too fast; she’ll go straight over!”

  “Not my ship!” I yelled in no particular direction, shoving the helmsman away from the wheel so I could take his place. “Not my beautiful girl!”

  I wasn’t the best helmsman among my crew, not by a long shot. But at a moment like this, with the Banshee ploughing through the water so fast that the planks quivered and groaned, and the wind so hard that we’d tip if someone sneezed in the wrong direction, I needed to be in control of things myself. I needed to feel my ship moving beneath me, responding to my every nudge and gesture, sweet and pliant as a thoroughbred mare, or . . . well . . . Lynn.

  On and on the Banshee lumbered. Now the masts were creaking painfully, straining as the vicious wind surged against the sails.

  “Captain!” Regon yelled at me. “We’ll lose the mainmast; we have to lower sail!”

  “She’ll manage,” I gasped out, fighting to keep my grip on the bucking helm. “I just need another minute.”

  “Captain!”

  Now we were so close to the corsairs’ ships that I could count the daggers tucked into their sashes. As I’d expected, they’d split so they could hit the Sod Off from both flanks. I chose the vessel to starboard and angled the Banshee so she’d strike the smaller ship broadside.

  A gust hit hard, and the Banshee listed so badly that half the sailors went sliding across the deck. I snarled, but held course.

  “Captain! What the hell are you playing at? We’ll never . . . aw, what’s the use.” Regon raised his great bullhorn of a voice, which could boom with twice the thunder of a south sea storm. “All hands, grip and brace!”

  As the Banshee reached her target, the whole world slowed for a moment, as if we were going to balance forever at the very tip-top of the wave. I saw a corsair gaping at us, and it seemed as if I had forever to study the wooden toggles on his ragged vest, and the hair bristling in clumps from his nostrils. Then, the world spun back to its normal dizzying pace, and the Banshee’s side slammed against the corsair sloop. My teeth nearly shattered with the force of the impact, and my vision blurred. At first I didn’t know whether I’d wrecked the Banshee, or the corsair ship, or just killed all of us.

  Then I saw the wet, slick belly of the corsair ship, floating uppermost on the surface of the sea, and I started to breathe again. It had worked. A whack from the heavy Banshee, travelling under full sail with the force of the squall behind her, had been enough to make the smaller ship turn turtle. But the force of the blow had also sent us yawing, almost out of control.

  “CUT AWAY SAIL!”

  Regon and I yelled this at almost the same instant, and barely half an instant after that, there came a sound like flump-flump-flump, as the heavy folds of the soaking mainsail dropped to the deck. Spinner and Lynn—lords of the deep love ’em both—had known what was needed, and they’d slashed the taut lines as soon as the sloop went over.

  With the mainsail gone, the Banshee slowed and righted itself, like a runner taking breath. I spun the wheel once, sending us towards the surviving corsair ship at a more sedate pace.

  Regon whistled beneath his breath. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re a cheeky bloody bastard?”

  “Often. And loudly.” I unclenched my hands from the helm and shook out my stiff fingers. “I’m off to play with pointy objects. The ship is yours. See if you can hold her together. And keep Lynn away from the fighting.”

  “Captain . . .”

  “Just do your best, Regon, I don’t expect miracles!”

  The sea was alive with bobbing heads, the flotsam from the capsized ship. I wondered whether dajiki root helped you to swim.

  Meanwhile, Ariadne was clutching the Banshee’s mainmast for everything she was worth. She had the look of fixed concentration that people get when they’re trying not to vomit on their own shoes. The Banshee rocked as her grappling hooks sung through the air, and Ariadne gulped desperately.

  “Get below, princess,” I told her—and that was all the time I had for her. Ripping my cutlass from its sheath, I sprinted for the quarterdeck.

  The grappling hooks had done their work, sinking deep into the wooden gunwales of the enemy ship. Now twenty pirates stood straining at the winches, hauling the corsair sloop towards the Banshee, closer and closer. Twenty more of my men waited on the quarterdeck, their faces lean and eager.

  Corto, the quartermaster, had his foot up on the rail. His cutlass was already drawn, slick and silver in the rain, his main-gauche clasped between his teeth. I’ve known better sailors than Corto, but in the red hurly-burly of a battle line, with a blade in each hand, he was a whirling devil.

  I took my place in the line, on Corto’s right. If she’d been on board, Latoya would have been at my other flank, with a length of anchor chain. You don’t usually think of bloody destruction when you see a chain, but the thing was easily the most deadly weapon on the Banshee. Once Latoya got it going, it ripped skulls apart like melon-rinds and snapped limbs like runner beans.

  The two of them, Corto and Latoya, were the best fighters in my fleet. If I’d had fifty more like them, I could have put an end to the war in about forty-two minutes. I didn’t have fifty more fighters like them, so I made sure that they both ate very well and I tried not to get in their way when they were working. They would scythe their way through the melee, and I’d trot along behind them, cleaning up.

  The winches groaned. The ropes tightened. A wave broke, and the sloop’s side slammed into the Banshee. Corto leapt, and when his feet hit planking, it was on the enemy ship. He spun into the crush of the corsairs, his blades moving as fast and light as silver scarves in the hands of a dancing girl. I vaulted the gunwale to follow him, hardly feeling the wood under my fingertips, and then the whirlwind took over.

  You don’t think a series of connected thoughts in mid-battle. I don’t, anyway.
It’s all a bunch of jagged, divided pictures: man with a sword, another man with a sword, bad breath, hairy chest, slashed someone’s gut open, rain in my boot, man with a huge pimple and a sword, ducked a punch, cut off someone’s ear, slipped in gore. Still, at some dim level I knew that they were forcing us back, taking the fight to the Banshee’s deck. Not good.

  I shouted for Corto, with some vague idea of a clever counterattack, but that was a mistake. As he turned towards me, a scar-faced raider with a smile full of broken teeth closed in. One quick slash, and then a spraying arc of blood, the scarlet raw and hideous in the rain. Corto staggered, looking thoughtful, and tipped over sideways, crashing to the deck.

  Broken-Tooth was raising his sword for the killing strike when there was a horrible crunching sound. Broken-Tooth’s eyes, which had been alight with dajiki-fire, went dark. He crumpled like a rag, and there was Lynn, stooping over the body to retrieve her long knife. She had thrust it in at just the right place, the spot where the base of the skull meets the spine, and he never knew what hit him.

  Good so far as it went, but now she was standing there in full view, which was exactly where I didn’t want her. Lynn belonged to the kill-them-before-they-see-you school of warfare, and her favourite weapon—the garrotte—wasn’t something you could whip out in a duel to deflect a sword strike.

  “Get out of here!” I roared at her.

  “Gods, you’re bossy today,” she said absently, trying to wiggle the knife free from Broken-Tooth’s spine. “Oh, damn.”

  “Oh, damn” was Lynn’s only comment on the fact that a berserker was bearing down on her with a wicked-looked axe, bloody foam streaming down his jaws as he gibbered and howled. Lynn tugged twice more at her knife, but it was stuck tight. Barehanded, she rose to her full height, all five feet of it.

  “I screamed again, ran a corsair through, and kicked the body off my blade. I was trying to chop my way to Lynn through the crush of milling men, but there was just no way. I was seriously considering trying to pole-vault in her direction when I saw her tense herself, raise her fists, and lunge towards the axe-wielding madman.

  She was going to punch him. She was going to punch him? That would not end well. I’d taught Lynn something about hand-to-hand fighting and there was nothing wrong with her technique, but she didn’t have the weight to drive home a blow. The axeman grinned at her, hoisting his weapon overhead.

  As my body turned liquid with horror, I saw Lynn’s thumbs protruding from her fists, and realized what she had in mind.

  Lynn dove in close to the axeman, so close that his breath left flecks of foam on her face, and thrust up with both thumbs. With a wet squelch, they disappeared into his eye sockets. While he was still pawing at his face, yowling, she snatched the dagger from his belt and slashed his throat.

  I cut down one more corsair and finally, finally, reached her. She was pinned to the deck by the body of the blinded axeman. I yanked him up to let her wriggle free.

  “That,” I said, “was horrible.”

  She was wiping her thumbs clean on the axeman’s trousers, but at that, she looked up in irritation. “What? Was I supposed to kill him nicely?”

  “You should have stayed up at the masthead, that’s what you should have done, you bloody contrary-minded wench!”

  “Yes, yes. I was bad; no biscuit for me. Why are you yelling at me in the middle of a battle?”

  “Because I’ll yell at you whenever I bloody well choose!”

  “Yes, Mistress, but in the interests of us not dying, could you hold it in for a while? At least until the battle’s over?”

  Right around then came the whining sound of a chain whipping through the air in circles—then the thunder crack of a shattering skull.

  Latoya, and her anchor chain, had finally made it to the party.

  I cast a look of triumph at Lynn, and she sighed, surrendering.

  “Battle’s over,” she admitted. “Yell away.”

  THE SQUALL ENDED as quickly as it had begun. Sunlight burned away the grey mist, leaving the horizon clear. Rainwater, murky with blood, drained through the Banshee’s scuppers.

  Regon muttered to himself as he sloshed through puddles. I had to kick him to get his attention. “Where’s Flint? I’ll want to talk to him.”

  “Now, Captain?” Regon said plaintively. “We’re not exactly ready for guests.”

  To illustrate his point, he grabbed a corpse by its ankles and upended it over the side of the ship.

  “It’s just Flint. You don’t have to change your shirt.”

  “That’s comforting,” he said, picking up a severed arm and pitching it after the body.

  “The corsair sloop isn’t damaged, Mistress,” Lynn said, passing by me and looking none the worse for the vicious scolding she’d just received. “That’s another one for your fleet.”

  “Fine. Have you named it yet?”

  “I was thinking Contrary-Minded Wench, but it’s a work in progress. I’ll give it some more thought once I’ve helped get Corto down below. By the way, Latoya’s looking for you.”

  I could see Latoya already, looming head and shoulders above the rest of my sailors as they cleared the decks. The coil of chain draped over her shoulder was smeared with bits of things that I didn’t want to think about. She had been busy.

  As Latoya neared me, I had the noble intention of giving her something like an apology for sending her away to face my horrible father. That didn’t work out. As soon as I got a good look at her—or, more correctly, at what she was carrying—I turned pale and grabbed for her belt.

  “Captain. Captain!” Latoya held me off with one hand while she unhooked the scroll case from her belt. “There. Take it. And next time, get someone else to carry your mail.”

  She stomped away, I guess, but I never saw her go. My whole being was focused on the scroll case, a tube of leather one foot long and three inches wide, treated with grease to make it waterproof. A hawk’s head was branded into the tight-fitting wooden stopper.

  During the thirteen years I’d spent on my father’s merchant ships, I constantly had one of those cases at my elbow, filled with despatches and instructions. Just touching one was enough to transport me back to that long-ago time. My fingers shook so hard that I had to use my teeth to pull the stopper.

  Inside, there was a single roll of paper. I fumbled to break the seal, but paused. What could my father have to say to me that I would possibly want to read? What with the banishment, and the assassination attempts, and all, he’d kind of forfeited any claim on my affections. So why should I give a red-hot damn? Why didn’t I just toss the tube over the Banshee’s side, collect my slave girl, swagger down to my cabin, and call it a night?

  It could be anything, I reminded myself. A death threat. A ransom demand. Hell, a shopping list. There was no sense in making too much of it. But my heart was still pounding at a speed that it usually only reached during lovemaking or war.

  Somewhere nearby, Lynn was probably waiting for me to resurface from my haze and get back to work. And I would, I would, of course I would—but couldn’t I take five seconds away from piracy to remember the life that I used to live, and pretend that I still meant something to the people who used to love me?

  I rolled the scroll between my fingers. I broke the wax seal. I flattened it out.

  It was a letter. Eight words long, that was all. My distracted eyes first took in the signature at the bottom: Konrad. My father’s heir. My oldest brother.

  Then I read the first line. It said simply, Our father is dead.

  Below that were several ink-blots, as though Konrad had sat over the paper for some time, collecting his thoughts. Long enough for the pen to drip at least three times.

  There was one more sentence below that, in neat, precise handwriting that showed how much thought had gone into the decision.

  Please, it said. Come home.

  PART TWO

  BLOOD AND BONE

  CHAPTER SIX

  Darren, formerly o
f the House of Torasan (Pirate Queen)

  “NOT NOW.”

  “But Lynn—”

  “Later.”

  “Can’t we—”

  “We’ll talk later, Darren.” Lynn’s voice was apologetic, but firm. “If you think about this, you’re going to get lost in your own skull, and that can’t happen right now. You’re needed. We have to secure the prisoners, tend the wounded, and deal with the dead, in that order. Then we’ll have time for family drama and I’ll listen to you until my ears bleed—but not now, Darren.”

  I hissed out a long, long breath. “Fine. I’ll help Regon clear the decks.”

  Lynn paused with the utmost delicacy. “Or . . .”