The Fox (15 page)

Inda gave the crew a brief rest; then it was time to rise and work again. Those too hurt to climb cleared the deck of the worst of the blood and battle debris; those in better shape gave a hand with readying the block-and-tackle that would be used to raise the spar expected from the second mate and his crew. Inda occasionally asked Barend to run questions or instructions to those belowdecks.

He gave no orders to Fox.

Chapter Eight

AT sunset one of the two big consorts appeared in the cloud-streaked east. It was frapped under the hull by their newly-made red sails to plug a great gash below the waterline, and sailing slowly under a single jury-rigged mast.

The lookout shouted down, “
Sea-King
on the beam!”

The rest of the fleet was still gone, either overcome by the storm or by the storm-supplied opportunity to flee Walic’s control.

Barend rowed over to the
Sea-King
with demands from “Captain Walic” for hands, Dasta among them. Captain Halliff, dazed and exhausted, was too afraid of Walic to argue about relinquishing hands, though he needed them. He had far too many of Walic’s spies placed in his crew who would be listening, and he feared what Walic would do if he even expressed reluctance. The memory of what had happened to the last consort who tried to leave Walic’s fleet kept him strictly obedient; his only reaction as he watched the requested hands climb up the hatch, gear bags over their shoulders, was a tired wish that Walic would take his own spies back instead. Who ever knew what was in Walic’s head?

No, he knew. It was inevitable. After a defeat, or a weather disaster, he inevitably cheered up his crew with one of his “entertainments.”

So when Barend paused on the rail and looked back to say, “I forgot. Cap’n wants you to sail round to the western side to repair. More timber there, and you can watch the west while we, in turn, repair,” Halliff nodded, too weary and relieved to question. If he sailed all the way to the big trees, he wouldn’t have to row back to the
Coco
and witness the torture party.

As soon as the rowboat was out of hearing range, Barend explained to the tired, surly hands what had happened. He enjoyed watching their wariness turn to disbelief. And as he described the fight with bloodthirsty pleasure, their faces changed from disbelief to glee—and then to speculation.

All except Dasta, who stared at the damaged pirate flagship. Inda was there. Inda, who had said “We don’t abandon crew.” As Dasta gazed the sharp lines of the
Coco
were blurred by tears he did not bother to wipe or to hide.

After dark, Jeje and the
Vixen
drifted up on
Coco
’s lee. The scout’s deck was crowded with tough, experienced privateer hands from Freeport Harbor.

Jeje clambered aboard, square and sturdy, her narrow face alert as she scanned the deck under the lanterns hanging in the rigging. Her new hires climbed up behind her.

Tau saw her expression ease only when she found Inda—blood-covered and filthy as he was.

“I thought Walic might try to hide in the lee of these islands when that storm came up,” Jeje said.

Inda crossed his arms. “Aren’t you leaving something out?” He smiled.

“Not much.” Jeje flushed, and Tau tried to figure out what he’d missed, but he was far too tired. “I couldn’t find any help in Khanerenth,” Jeje said. “So I took Nugget back to Freeport. She tried to come with me, and Woof ended up locking her in the harbormaster’s tower. We could hear her wailing and cursing him as we sailed from the dock.”

A soft laugh from those few who knew Nugget was the only reaction.

“These here had been waiting to sign on with our marines. Said they didn’t mind fighting a few pirates as practice.” She indicated her crew, now standing in a row behind her, some of them staring aghast at the considerable storm wreckage, and then back at Inda’s gore-stiff clothes and hair. “All the way north we drilled to sneak on board like they did the
Toola,
and take it at night. Glad our practice was needed,” she added, rolling her eyes, but everyone was too tired to laugh at the mild joke.

“Fighting pirates,” Inda repeated, scratching his gritty scalp. The smell of dried blood made his stomach lurch, and he hastily lowered his hand; before he did anything else, he’d get the bucket and dunk his head. “Sounds like we were galloping down the same track.”

Jeje said, “Huh?”

Inda smiled briefly. “Later. Now, we need ’em,” Inda said, indicating the new crew. He lifted his voice so everyone on deck could hear. “The wood party didn’t take a glass. I was watching. But they have to have figured it all out by now, which is why we haven’t seen them. I think they’ll show up at dawn, with the spar so we won’t suspect anything, but they’ll have plans. We’ve tonight to drill.”

There is nothing, throughout the history of human beings anywhere, like a threat followed by an immediate goal to cohere a disparate horde. Walic’s former crew, though some might be uncertain about Inda, knew the second mate. If he won, his retribution would be cruel and lingering.

And so, at dawn, when it fell out exactly as Inda had said, they were ready, both those on deck with weapons hidden carefully in chosen spots, and those hiding, their weapons gripped in sweaty hands.

The second mate and his crew rowed up, towing the spar, and together everyone worked to boom up the great tree trunk that they’d spent a day trimming and smoothing— the mate’s eyes moving constantly over the deck. They all knew those darting glances were furtive attempts to locate the first mate or the captain, who had never left the deck unwatched by at least one of them.

He recognized all those in the open. Jeje’s new crew were hidden below deck level in the hatches, behind the door of the cabin, crouched at the binnacle. Jeje and Thog squatted out of sight on the mastheads, composite bows from the
Vixen
and spiral-fletched arrows to hand.

Fox and Inda watched him watch. Inda stood at the forecastle haul line, mouth open, and Fox worked with the party maneuvering the long, heavy spar to the deck.

Tau leaned against the taffrail, the ends of his long, loose hair brushed by the wind over his relaxed hands. The second mate eyed him, brow furrowed, then shook his head until his chimes rang.

At the helm Barend saw him squint his way too long and thought:
He won’t ask questions because he wouldn’t believe us anyway. He wants to take us by surprise—but first he wants to figure out who’s in command
.

Once the spar was on deck the second mate backed to the taffrail, raising his ax.

He whistled sharply, then snapped his attention back to Inda, who no longer had his mouth open; he stood at the bow where everyone could see him. Gone was the vacant face, the shambling, purposeless slouch. The mate had had an entire night to rest and think, was too experienced to miss the tautness of the fighter poised to fight.

The first mate had been right!

The two pirates who had hidden in the mainchains leaped over the rail. “That one!” The second mate pointed his ax at Inda. “
Long
will you linger under my knife,” he vowed in his home language. Then he bared his teeth and swept the ax around. “Kill them! All except—”

“Now!”
Inda shouted.

Both sides charged.

The fight was short and vicious, the summer air filled with the crashing of weapons, screams, shouts.

Spang! Spang!
The pair sent after Inda dropped within five paces of one another, arrows in their chests from Thog and Jeje on the main masthead.

The mate swooped down, grabbed up a fallen blade, and hurled himself at Inda, sword in his right hand held behind his head for a killing downstroke, the ax gripped in his left fist held out horizontally, ready to either block or attack.

Four bodies intervened: two pirates trying to get at Inda first, and Fox and Tcholan trying to fend off the huge mate. Tcholan barely escaped death, rolling a hair’s breadth from decapitation. Fox ducked a slash on his left, risked a glance, and stumbled when a downed pirate kicked viciously at his legs. Fox chunked his knife into the man’s chest as he fell. Another pirate loomed, roaring as his blade whooshed downward.

The two pirates bracketed Inda between them.

Fast as a heartbeat Inda slung his cutlass into the chest of the one about to decapitate Fox; his wrists flexed, and knives dropped from his sleeves into both hands.

Those who glanced his way were astounded at the continuous whirl of those blades. Inda seemed to have eyes in the back of his head, for he always knew just where to block and to strike. The two pirates’ longer blades fouled one another, and because the two had never been drilled in fighting together, they frustrated one another, neither willing to give ground, the idea of reward for being the one to kill Inda their single thought.

Elsewhere on the deck pirates dropped, several with arrows in them, most with killing wounds, dead before they hit the deck. Inda’s two joined them. He backed up, looking for Walic’s second mate, who was a few paces away, fighting to get at him. Inda spotted him, leaped forward— and slipped in slick blood. He landed flat on his back, arms outflung, knives clattering to the deck and spinning away in the gore.

The mate leaped toward the forecastle, his chiming braids swinging and steel in each big fist as Inda’s feet slithered in the blood without gaining purchase.

But by then Fox had cleared a space around him. He flicked a glance. Cook was just behind him, having finished off a spike-wielding enemy. He summoned Cook with a jerk of his head, and the two moved to either side of the mate.

It took Fox and Cook together to bring him down, fighting to the limits of their dwindling strength, but bring him down they did, until he lay a hacked and bleeding mess on the deck. Fox bent, hands on knees. Cook spun and threw his blood-smeared carving knife into the sea.

After the bodies were gone, they had to finish smoothing the mast and step it. The sky was full of marching lambkins, heralding more rain somewhere beyond the curve of the horizon.

Tau drifted up to Inda where he leaned for a few moments against the taffrail, rewinding a blood-soaked bandage around his upper arm. He said in a private voice, “Coco keeps offering promises to those who go below. Some of them have gotten into the drink and want to let her out for either sex or torture.”

Inda sighed. “Will letting her free settle ’em?”

“No. She’ll suborn the weakest and start trouble.”

Inda looked up, his eyes bloodshot, but his face eased of the closed-in blankness of the previous weeks. Tau wondered if he would ever find out what had caused the sudden change in Inda.

Inda squinted up, as the men chanted an old sea song, ropes tentacling out fore and aft. “There. Soon as that mast is fidded and the shrouds rattled down, we’re under way. So let’s get rid of her. We’ll give her the rowboat, as all the others took too much damage, and I want the longboat for us.” Inda fought a jaw-cracking yawn. “Oh. And Tau. If there are any others you think ought to go in that boat with her, let me know.”

Taumad shaped the word “Fox” but did not speak it.

Barend and Fox climbed up to their old retreat, the foremast head, to bend the new topsail. When they were up on the masthead together, Barend cast an assessing glance at Fox, whose sweat-streaked profile was hard as he stepped onto the footropes either side of the gaff. “Are you going to turf Inda?” He was too tired for anything but bluntness.

Fox’s head turned, a sharp movement.

Barend’s head pounded, but he knew everyone else’s head ached the same, if not worse. They kept moving, despite thirst, hunger, and heat. “Command. You used to talk about the heavy mantle of command. You could kill Inda,” he said. Hating the question, almost hating Fox. But he had to know—and he would warn Fox if he could. “Inda’s fast with his hands, but you’re much better. Proved that when we first took them.”

Fox was busy seizing the sail to the gaff. One, two, three, he tightened with expert knots, as though he hadn’t heard the question. Barend returned to his own task; he worked by sign with the mainmast crew, who were raising the new topping lift for the foremast. He’d only known Fox a couple of years, if you could call this furtive life knowing. But he’d come to understand some of his ways.

They kept working in tandem with the mainmast crew. The pendant was spliced to the end of the boom, an eyebolt hooped to the front, the tackle linked to both, and then let fall, to be belayed to the mast. The sultry breeze was slowly shifting into the east and cooling; the sail hoisted at last, with those below chanting hoarsely. The last of their strength rapidly gave out, leaving them just enough to seek the promised rest.

Fox and Barend were now alone on the masthead.

Fox leaned back against the mast and clasped his hands around one knee, face angled into the rising wind. “I dreamed for years of my mutiny. Taking this ship.” He talked fast, a restless stream of words. “But when the time came Inda saw it. I didn’t. Then out of nowhere comes that short, dark-browed . . . Jeje, is it? She crossed the ocean just in case Inda needed her. He’s what, sixteen, and he’s got that kind of loyalty.”

Barend frowned at Fox’s faint, mocking smile, and said, “Are you going to turf him or not?”

Fox turned his head. His bloodshot eyes looked very green, reminding Barend of Sponge and the Sierlaef. But then the two kingly families had intermarried before the civil war that put one family in inland exile, and the other on the throne.

Fox drawled, “Why do you ask? Would you?”

Barend snorted. “I’ve spent enough time around kings and brothers of kings and heirs to kings to hate, and I mean really,
really
hate, what your shit-stinking heavy mantle does to people. So, in case I’m not clear, no.”

“So . . . what?” Fox gave him a long, sardonic look. “You planning to go after me if I do?”