The Fox (36 page)

Swift looked around at his new allies. “We counted the red sails going north to join Marshig and his fleet of eleven. Thirty in all, not counting a few small craft. We do not know who maybe joined him from the north, coming down from over the strait. Not as many, as apparently that fleet took a terrible beating at the Nob.”

The woman spoke up in broken Dock Talk, “They was taking it out on the coast here ever since.”

“Trying,” the younger of Swift’s captains said, with a sardonic lift to his brows. “The horse boys been handing it right back. What you can say is the Brotherhood has destroyed all trade. Nobody goes into any western harbor except on attack. Pirates or Venn get ’em out at sea.”

Tau drifted along the back of the cabin, watching the people. He knew he was useless in making military plans. He’d go where he was ordered and do whatever had to be done. Where he was of use to Inda was in observing the individuals who made up the captains of Inda’s fleet.

And what a fleet!
If we manage to survive, what will history say of us?
Tau wondered, watching the night-black heads of the three Chwahir captains bend near Inda’s sun-streaked brown head, a startling contrast to Fox’s ruddy waving hair strictly schooled into its long queue; on the opposite side of the table was the silvery-black braid of old Captain Swift, tied with a ribbon Colendi-style, though he had come from the continent of Toar.
Will the stories go out reducing us all to faceless and equally disreputable pirates?

He laughed to himself, glancing past the Chwahir to Tcholan and two hand-picked mates from Freeport Harbor who were now captains of the three old, round-hulled brigs Inda had bought the day before.

“What I figure is this.” Inda looked from face to face. “They know we’re coming. Makes the most sense to be waiting right on the other side of the Narrows. They’ll know we’ll sail with the wind, on flood tide. So they’ll have the position of strength, squatting in the bay waiting for us to emerge one by one. And Swift says that Marshig’s usual strategy is to send his worst in. Then charge our flank—” Inda shook his head impatiently. “Tack in from both sides for the kill.”

A pause as everyone glanced Captain Swift’s way, then back to Inda. He frowned, organizing his words in his mind. He’d spent the previous day working out exactly what he’d say. These people were all much older than he— Swift had said casually a couple days ago, “You scarcely look twenty, Captain Elgar. Your experiences don’t seem to have aged you outside of a few scars.”

Inda did not want them knowing he was younger than that by a couple of years. Though he felt stupid at the idea of dressing flash, he had taken seriously Tau’s words about part of success being in the mind, of being how one was perceived. That meant he had to sound older than he was. And more assured.

He glanced down at the map. “What we don’t have in strength we have to make up in trickery. They will have been told about Boruin’s defeat. Might expect us to use a fire ship. What I hope will not be expected is that all three brigs will be fire ships. And they’ll come out behind me.”

A muted intake of breath.

“But you filled them with supplies,” Captain Swift said.

“Right,” Inda said. “Necessary for the ruse to work. You know as well as I that at least one spy is ahead of us, sailing something fast and small through the Narrows right now to report on everything we did in the harbor.”

The Chwahir fleet commander spoke, his accent so flat it was impossible to distinguish any emotion behind his words: “How do you see the order of battle, then?”

“The
Death
goes in the lead. So they see Boruin’s famed trysail. See the crew at the ready. The three come right behind me, with real people moving about on their decks. When they start closing in on me, then the three can split their line and do the most damage. That means the three cannot look like old firewood, but must appear to be fighting ships ready for battle. Marshig’s ships will probably be in at least two lines in order to keep us from fleeing. I want the fire ships to break the first up so thoroughly the second line can’t move in concerted attack.”

The Chwahir said, “You will take terrible damage.”

Inda sat back. “Probably. I’ll shift to the
Vixen
when we’ve broken the line. Then Fox commands the
Death
.”

Glances Fox’s way. He straightened up and leaned against a bulkhead, looking far more like a pirate than Inda.

“But there are too many of us, and we will be too spread for me to count on commanding from
Vixen
. Therefore I’m dividing you into three fleets, and if you cannot see my signals—we’ll use flags and screamers both, for as long as we can—then command goes to the fleet captains. Your orders are to divide their lines, board, carry, set fire. Jeje, your fleet of scout craft has the same orders. I want the enemy scouts put to work for us, either as fire ships or to carry boarding teams, or to foul their hawses. So your scouts will have extra crew to board and take as many as you can.”

Jeje signified agreement. Inda was speaking for the others to hear; they had already planned her part out between them, deciding whom she’d take. She was going to get most of the younger, more disciplined fighters, capable of independent thinking—new crew would be under Fox and Dasta.

Inda spread his hands. “Work out your signals, fleet captains. The only way we will win is by concerted action. Marshig has numbers. We’ll have discipline.”

Tau wondered if anyone saw the Marlovan in Inda now—the narrowed gaze, the aspect of command.
But they
want to see command, they rely on it. You can only follow someone you believe will lead you through to life, to light, to safety
.

Inda said, “There are two things that could destroy our plans at the outset. The first is the Venn. No one has reported any sightings, but that means nothing. We all know they can navigate in the deep waters, so they can appear where they want. If a huge force of them come hull up in the west, I will turn and run. Thirty pirates with no habit of order we might be able to take on, but a fleet of Venn warships, drilled for years, will destroy us as mere drill.”

Inda saw acceptance, and continued. “The second possible destruction of our plans could be the appearance of Captain Ramis and the
Knife
.”

Dasta spoke from the other side of the Chwahir captains. “He’s by way of an ally, yes?”

Inda shook his head. “He’s been fighting the Brotherhood commanders, that much we know. But we don’t know why. One of the few consistent stories about him is that he then sends them straight to Norsunder. So I would not call him an ally. Not when he might be recruiting. Pirate-style,” he added, when he saw subtle signs of unease in his listeners. “No asking for agreement, that too I heard; he just sends them beyond the world. If he’s taking warriors for Norsunder’s future battles, then his purpose is so far from ours that in his eyes we might be no different from Brotherhood. He could blast us out of the world because we know how to fight.”

Silence, except for creak of the hull and the moan of the wind in the rigging.

“So if you see his black sails, you run. I will, if I can. Now. Fire ships. No towing empty gigs. That’d give away the plan. If we do attack at night—flood tide being late this time of year, Swift says—then the crew can drop off once the course is set and
Vixen
or the sloops will pick them up. But our captains have to steer right into the enemy. Then light the fires. Last, escape as they can.”

Pause. Everyone thinking of winter’s cold, and the horror of how fast icy water could take you down. Riding a fire ship into battle, jumping into water trusting to be pulled out, then sitting in a tiny scout craft, trying to dodge the second wave of attacking ships . . . that required either fanatic dedication or cold-eyed courage.

“We’ll call for volunteers for that,” Inda stated.

“I’ll lead one,” Barend said from the far side of the circle, his hands behind his back, his manner the same strange, remote distance he’d maintained ever since the day they’d first docked at Pirate Island, the week before.

Now
that,
Tau did not understand. You listened to people, watched them, learned their language and their mannerisms; after time you thought you could predict them under any given circumstance. Then, quite suddenly, they did something unpredictable, totally out of your experience of them.

The night of their landing at Pirate Island Jeje had privately told Dasta and Tau what Fox had discovered. The fact that Barend’s royal father had sent pirates against Inda’s father was certainly terrible, but not exactly recent news, Inda’s old sailing mates had agreed in their low-voiced conversation on the masthead. Since neither Inda nor Barend were even remotely involved with what had happened a generation before, it made no sense for them to have come back from that charthouse as if someone had died, and rarely speak to one another ever since.

Barend spoke to no one, in fact, existing as if an invisible wall had closed him off.

Tau was startled to hear Barend’s voice now: “I’ll lead.”

Inda turned his way. Their eyes met, cool remote gazes, revealing nothing. Then Inda struck his fist to his chest.

Barend ducked through the cabin door, and his quick steps diminished down the companionway of the
Death
.

Tau sighed, feeling that life had slipped into a dream, and an ugly one at that. Here he was, heading straight toward the entire Brotherhood fleet waiting clustered beyond the Narrows—and beyond that lay the coast, specifically Parayid Harbor, his old home.

“I may as well be next,” he said. No, he heard himself say. And knew it was another attempt (and it would be equally unsuccessful) to make a kind of internal restitution for that day on the deck above them when he’d cut down unarmed Boruin—and took pleasure in the act.

Tcholan spoke up from the back of the cabin. “I’ll take the third.”

Inda looked up, his brown eyes tired. The appraisal there was quick, and kind, and finally grateful. “Thanks, Taumad. Tcholan.” And to the others, “Barend, Tcholan, and Taumad will steer the fire ships. The rest of the week we’ll make our fire ships seaworthy. Believable from a glass. Weather permitting, we enter the Narrows eight days from now. Now, let’s go over the signal plan . . .”

Twelve days later they sailed in a row between the huge, dark-rock palisades and sheer cliffs at the narrowest part of the passage, a grim, watchful trip that in places was almost like shooting down a river seldom touched by the sun for six months at a time. Another couple of weeks—maybe a matter of days—and the waters would be full of ice. It was dangerous enough now; they’d had two northerly squalls, with more promising to come. If the wind hauled around at last and stayed in the north, within a couple of days they’d smash to splinters on forming icebergs.

So they sailed as fast as they dared in a long, snaking line within a cable’s length from one another. Everyone on watch tended sail with haste and solicitude, evidence of their dread of the grinding scrape of rock on the hull or the sudden thud that would give them a heartbeat’s warning that the ship was about to founder, flinging everyone into near-freezing water, rescue impossible before they turned numb and drowned.

Fox now captained the
Death
. He was captain because Inda had put him there, an irony he contemplated as he walked the command deck, gazing up from time to time at the sheer cliffs walling them in on either side. Walls that forced him in only one direction, toward the battle that Inda wanted to fight.

Dasta was now the acting captain of
Cocodu
. His fight team had formed around him as crew, steady independents and privateers all. They appreciated Dasta’s even-tempered steadiness, and readily adopted his unswerving loyalty to Inda.

Faint sounds of singing came from that ship now, the rise and fall of voices in an Old Sartoran winter song, as they hauled their mainsail around tighter.

The
Death
was so narrow and sharp of keel the crew seldom had to touch brace or sail. Yet they were all there on deck, sailors waiting by the halyards already laid along, mittened hands tucked in armpits or in pockets, breath clouding, as Fox continued to walk the command deck, a ceaseless, restless pacing broken only by his occasional scans of the heights through the glass.

Inda also watched the heights for the expected signal fires as they sailed north. The sounds were the creak of wood, the hum of wind in the ropes, the racket of sail, and the continuous screeling wail of the armorers’ treadles as they worked to hone sharp the steel weapons of each ship, the noise echoing like shrieks up the cliffs. When they anchored for the night, the sounds were the roiling surge and hiss of the sea, and far away the faint hooting cry of unseen birds.

Jeje, skimming the
Vixen
between two of the fire ships, hauled up on the lee of the first, and Thog and Uslar climbed down, both looking tired. The ruse crews had been working day and night—at night under weather awnings, lamps shrouded, so that spies on the heights peering down saw nothing but a row of ships under weather awnings. There was no evidence that under three of the long row of ships, straw-stuffed old fabric and worn canvas were being fashioned into the semblance of hands hiding in rigging and along the deck.

Thog dropped to the deck, wringing her fingers, which were pricked all over with tiny blood spots. It was difficult to sew with numb fingers, but she couldn’t work with gloves. Her palms were covered.

“Here.” Jeje pressed a cup of mulled wine into her hands.

Thog thumped onto a hatch cover, enjoying the warmth as the weak sunlight vanished with perceptible speed. A whirtler from Inda’s flagship arced up. Time to anchor for the night.

Jeje waved at the Fisher brothers, who set about anchoring bow and stern. From below came the delicious smells of food. Uslar, who had been learning Sartoran recipes from Lorm, had joined Nugget in fixing supper. Uslar’s breaking voice and Nugget’s high one drifted topside, happily wrangling over the best method of cooking fish fillets.