Beneath a Burning Sky (The Dawnhawk Trilogy Book 3) (7 page)

The Skydocks were a stair-step structure, complete with landings and a rail, surmounting a small hillock at the far end of Nob Terrace opposite the Brotherhood Yards. Otherwise, it was built much the same as the Waterdocks so far below, composed of a series of piers jutting out into space above the rest of the pirate township, buttressed against the cliff face.

Flames licked the gunwales of the two nearest airships. Fengel recognized them: Captain Glastos’s own
Powderheart
and Captain Duvale’s
Windhaunter
. Fortunately, the flames were contained to the wooden hulls and had not reached the gasbags themselves. Which meant they only had a little time, as opposed to none at all. The
Powderheart
was aptly named—Glastos preferred to smash his prey with bombs dropped from above, thus requiring a black-powder magazine aboard his ship. Should the flames reach that, it would be just as catastrophic as if the flammable envelope caught ablaze.

“My ship!” cried Captain Glastos. He darted up the stair to the first Skydock landing where the
Powderheart
was moored, with Fengel and Natasha just behind. Cranes for unloading cargo stood beside bins of sand along the pier, the latter for emergencies just such as this.

Up close, the fires were burning along the bow, the gunwales, and the stern of the
Powderheart
, their conflagrations all strangely separate. The sweet char scent of burning wood surrounded them—but not the acrid stink of light-air gas about to ignite. What Fengel could see of the
Windhaunter
on the next pier above was the same.
We can still save both of them, but we’ve got to work fast.
Fengel offered up a prayer that the flames hadn’t started belowdecks.

“Lucian! Gunney Lome!” he cried, gesturing. “Get up to the next pier and form a brigade. Henry! Grab Cumbers and Nate Wiley and get some hands started down—”

“To the Realms Below with Duvale’s ship!” yelled Glastos. The pirate captain charged halfway down the first pier to the
Powderheart’
s boarding ramp. “We’ve got to save mine first!”

“You squid-arsed sack of bilgewater!” snarled Natasha. “If we don’t save them both, they’re all going to go—”

An explosion cut her short. Fengel acted reflexively, throwing himself at his wife and falling with her to the wooden platform at their feet. He crouched above her, heart in his throat, waiting for the deadly rain of burning debris to shower them. He might be damned and gone, but she had to survive.

None of it came. Fengel opened his eyes to see Natasha, frozen and expectant just as he was. He glanced up to see that the rest of the assembled pirates had crouched as well. But both airships were still intact and ablaze.

A figure stood on the deck of the
Powderheart
between two of the fires. It was a Bluecoat Marine of the Kingdom of Perinault, unmistakable in his uniform and round black hat, holding a smoking musket. Behind him stood a man with another firearm, passing it up. Incredibly, Fengel recognized him; it was Hayes, the ambitious but incompetent first mate of the
H.M.S. Goliath
.

The raging fires were no coincidence.

“Take cover!” Fengel cried. “We’re under attack!”

More men appeared on the deck of the
Powderheart,
who were soon joined by others against the gunwales of the
Windhaunter
above. They were a mix of naval sailors and Bluecoats, but the muskets in their hands were no less deadly for that.

Fengel crawled behind the nearest wooden sand bin, trusting his wife to do the same. Out the corner of his eye, he saw the other pirates likewise scattering for cover. Captain Glastos himself appeared to be the only casualty so far; he hunkered behind a crane ahead, clutching a bleeding arm.

“Kill them!” shouted Hayes from the deck of the airship. “Kill them all! Especially that one with the monocle!”

The Perinese fired just as Natasha scrabbled up against the bin beside him. The reports sounded like a chain of holiday fireworks. Hot lead hissed all around Fengel, splintering wood and perforating clothing. The chain of a crane on his right snapped, sending the rest of the assembly crashing to the Skydock pier. Pirates everywhere cried aloud in pain.

Fengel felt his arm jerk as a glancing shot took off his left cufflink. He stared at his sleeve, incensed. Then he leapt to his feet, brandishing his saber. “Pirates of Haventown,” he cried, “to me!”

He vaulted over the bin and ran down the pier for the
Powderheart’s
boarding ramp. Behind him the assembled pirates roared their defiance, and the wood of the pier rumbled with the hammer of their bootsteps as they followed his charge. Somewhere above he heard Lucian and Gunney Lome direct a similar action against the
Windhaunter
.

The Perinese worked frantically at reloading from their place along the gunwales. A few of them fell back with cries of pain as some of the pirates fired back with pistols. At their back stood Hayes, shouting incoherent orders that were promptly ignored.

A trio of Bluecoats with smallswords moved to keep Fengel from boarding the
Powderheart
. Two took flanking positions along the gunwale opening while the third descended the ramp halfway. He was a brute, ugly and scarred. Fengel had known the type well during his own years in the service—he probably had more scars across his shoulders from the bite of the cat than a shark had teeth.

Fengel flicked out a feint to force the man on the defensive, then curled the tip of his saber down into a vicious hack at his blue-trousered shins. The Bluecoat hissed in pain and sagged as the blade bit, yet he still managed a vicious swing for Fengel’s head with his own blade. He had both strength and the higher ground of the ramp but lacked speed and skill, too eager by half for a killing blow. Fengel parried and hacked again at the injured leg. This time the man screamed, dropping his sword as he collapsed. Fengel stepped aside as he rolled off the ramp, falling between the hull of the
Powderheart
and the Skydock pier.

The marines at the top of the ramp were a more difficult obstacle, covered as they were by the gunwales and each other’s blades. Fengel threw himself against the one on the left, forcing him into a distracted parry, from which Fengel immediately withdrew to strike against the soldier on the right. But that man was already dying, slipping down to the deck of the airship with Natasha’s thrown dagger buried in his eye. Fengel gave a curt nod of approval and returned his attention to the lone soldier still standing, beating against his smallsword in a furious assault until the marine’s defenses were broken, leaving him wide open for a lunge that left him transfixed upon Fengel’s saber. As he slumped to the deck, Fengel withdrew his blade, stepping onto the
Powderheart
with Natasha and the Haventown pirates at his back.

Only a dozen Perinese soldiers remained aboard the airship. The majority moved to contain Fengel’s advance, with just two still wielding loaded muskets. They fired wild shots, one going wide and the other dropping one of Captain Glastos’s men to the deck. Then the melee was joined in a press of clashing blades.

Fengel deftly sidestepped a wild lunge and slashed the face of the man behind it, folding his free hand tight behind his back as he turned to face another assailant. It was Hayes, surprisingly. The pale, sunken-eyed sailor hacked at him with a smallsword, a grimace of hate twisting his features.

“You!” snarled Hayes. “You’re the one. You’re responsible for everything that happened to me!”

Fengel parried each blow with ease. “Mr. Hayes—for I cannot believe you have kept an officer’s rank—trust me when I say that you have always been at the root of your own problems.” He sidestepped a lunge and punched the man with the bell guard of his saber. “Were you born someone completely different, then perhaps your deficiencies could be resolved.”

“Shut up!” Hayes threw a feint that Fengel ignored. “I’m going to kill you here and burn your ships and take your damned wife back in
chains,
you—”

Fengel hacked down, lopping off Hayes’s hand. It fell to the deck with the clatter of the smallsword it held. Hayes stared at the stump, spurting with blood, and opened his mouth to scream. Fengel buried his saber in the man’s chest up to the hilt.

“No,” he said simply, “you will not.”

The dying man stared up at him hatefully as he slumped to his knees. Fengel put a boot to Hayes and kicked him off the blade, flicking it once to clean the gore covering its length. He turned away and joined in the rest of the struggle raging across the deck.

It would be finished in a matter of moments. The Perinese saboteurs had a few skilled men with them but worked poorly together. In comparison, the pirates had united to fend off their attackers, knowing that every moment spent was time lost to the flames spreading about them.

His wife teamed with Reaver Jane and Andrea Holt to surround two navy men with boarding hatchets while Lina Stone flung her cantankerous pet into the face of a marine trying to reload a musket. Farouk and Etarin teamed together, new on the
Dawnhawk’
s crew but old hands at this kind of work. The little Draykin Rastalak was a reptilian terror, leaping and hissing about. Captain Glastos fought arguably the hardest of all, cursing his own men as he skewered two marines at once with his cutlass. Fengel watched Allen the Mechanist and the ex-soldier Michael Hockton compete to shove a hapless marine over the side of the airship.

I do not like him
, mused Fengel as he leaped about the fray, feeling the heat on his face from the flames. Once, a man named Hockton had tried to kill him. Young Michael wasn’t the same fellow, but Fengel didn’t really care.

The last of the Perinese assailants fell, but there was no time to relish the victory. Fires raged about the deck now, almost out of control. Fengel sheathed his saber and organized a bucket brigade from the sand bins, half blinded by the thick smoke, while Glastos screamed at his men to try to control the spread of the blaze.

Fengel grabbed a bucket of sand from Reaver Jane and heaved it out at a blaze along the port-side deck. The flames danced and curled as the grit rained down on them but did not go out. Frowning, he passed the bucket back and reached out for the next one.

Someone shoved him roughly out of the way. Fengel turned with a curse on his lips and froze. It was a Mechanist, leather greatcoat shut tight, goggles down, and wearing a respirator mask. The man carried a cannon-shaped mechanism of brass and steel in both hands, attached by a hose to a tank on his back. Wasting no time, the Brother of the Cog pointed his device at the flames before Fengel and fired. A torrent of white mist erupted at the flames, which seemed to resist for a moment before guttering and dying.

Other Mechanists pushed past, similarly equipped. With quick, almost ant-like focus, they spread out in a pattern across the wounded
Powderheart
, neatly extinguishing the fires. More arrived on deck, these with tethers and axes. One stopped in front of Fengel.    

“We have the situation under control,” he said in a muffled voice. “Please exit the airship.”

Fengel wanted to complain; they had just spent their own blood, after all. But the Mechanist moved away, leaving a pair of Brothers to escort him clear. Captain Glastos loudly protested but went all the same. No one was better equipped than the Mechanists to repair the airships they had built.

He left the
Powderheart
, descending down the ramp to the pier. A glance up past the pirates, now milling about aimlessly, told him that the assault upon the
Windhaunter
must have gone similarly well—Mechanists were moving about the deck, spreading their strange white mist, which fell over the sides of the injured airship.

Natasha stepped up beside him, covered in blood. “S’not mine,” she said, answering his unspoken question with a wicked grin.

“Of course not,” he replied, pulling her close for a kiss.

Someone coughed beside them.

Fengel looked up to see Lucian Thorne and Sarah Lome. His officers wore a few new cuts and bruises, but nothing seemed serious. The rest of the
Dawnhawk’
s crew were gathering as well.

“Captains,” Lucian said somberly. “
Windhaunter
is going to be all right. But I’ve got a spot o’ news for you.”

“Yes,” replied Natasha, sounding mildly irked. “Those were Bluecoats. We saw.”

Their first mate shook his head. “It’s not just that. There was a smaller contingent aboard the other airship, and Oscar Pleasant was among them.”

A murmur of surprise went out among the assembled crew. Fengel raised an eyebrow in surprise. Oscar had never been his favorite pirate, but the man had been with him for a long time. Though come to think of it, he hadn’t seen the fellow in a while.

“Lucian,” he said. “How could that be?”

His first mate looked away embarrassedly. “Well...we sort of lost track of him, during your recent...holiday...on Almhazlik Isle. And then...uh...never really went looking for him.”

“It wasn’t a holiday,” said Natasha flatly, glaring at Lucian. Butterbeak mimicked the motion from her shoulder. Fengel noticed, disconcertingly, that its beak was covered in blood.

“I’m surprised at you, Lucian,” said Fengel, emphasizing the disappointment in his voice. “We’ve never left anyone behind before, no matter how obnoxious their personal odor.”

“I know, sir,” replied his first mate with a wince. “We’d always meant to go back. There were always just more important things going on. He’s not dead, though—fellow slipped away in the fight. So he’s somewhere in Haventown.”

“But what was he doing with the Perinese in the first place?” asked Lina Stone.

Sarah Lome stepped forward, halting all discussion. “Look. There. What’s that?”

The huge gunnery mistress pointed out beyond the pier. There, in the night sky above the distant jungles beyond Haventown, floated an airship.

It was like none Fengel had seen. Armored plates covered both the gondola and the gasbag itself. Great propeller assemblies were spaced evenly along the gondola hull, not just at the rear. A sigil was painted on the gas bag, and though he couldn’t see it completely in the dark, Fengel knew it would be in black, blue, and gold: the suburst insignia of Perinault. The strange airship lifted away from Haventown, turning with far more grace than Fengel would have thought possible.