Blaggard's Moon (21 page)

“Don't he pay enough?”

Damrick took a deep breath. “He's dishonest. He cheats me.”

“Rat badger.” Lye's face bunched up.

“The highwaymen have been robbing me for a little, but when they find out I won't help the rich man, who they're robbing for a lot, suddenly they don't like me anymore. Because I won't help the rich man get richer.”

“Which means you won't help the bandits get richer.”

“Exactly. So what do the brigands do with me now?”

“They shoot ye.”

Damrick nodded. “Or run me off.”

Lye raised the mug to his lips without looking at it. “Well, I don't like any of 'em.”

“When my daddy and yours were our age, everyone with a boat could make a coin or two hauling someone's freight from city to city.”

“I remember that. There were a lot a' them tramp freighters when I was a kid.”

“Tramp freighters. That's right. But they're gone now. Those that weren't bought out got out while they were still alive, set up a shop, or got themselves some farmland. Somewhere safe.”

Lye thought for a moment, raised his mug to drink again, then settled it back down unsipped. “Yer sayin' that when we took out Sharkbit, we took on the pirates
and
the big shipping lines.”

“That's why they aren't thankful. My bet is, Mr. Runsford Ryland is no more pleased with us than Captain Conch Imbry is. We're tipping everyone's handcart.”

“You think it's
everyone
?”

Damrick shrugged. “Our own captain let Sharkbit go. And he's Royal Navy.”

Lye pushed his dinner plate away as though it had betrayed him. “So the Navy's in it.”

“You tell me. Three years we chased pirates. Never caught a single ship until our last day.”

“They're fast and sneaky.”

“Yes. But we ran up on the
Savage Grace
and caught her fair. Look what happened.”

“We let 'er go.” Lye looked over at the sea captains, and as he watched them, they turned and looked toward Damrick's table. Their eyes seemed hard and hateful. He looked back at his mug, left it on the table. “Boatloads a' rat badgers,” he said in dark awe.

“What are we good at, Lye?”

He shrugged. “Not too much, I reckon.”

“But what? What have we been training to do, these three years?”

“Fight, is all.”

“Sailing on ships and shooting guns. Big guns. Little guns. And now we come to my point. None of these congratulations matter, not one, until a man with a ship stops by looking for help. Then we got ourselves a real job.”

“Go into business protecting the small ship owner.”

“Protecting the small ship owner,” Damrick echoed.

“From pirates.”

“From pirates.”

“And from shipping companies.”

Damrick shrugged. “Them too.”

“And from the Navy.” Lye had grown glummer with each additional enemy.

Damrick sighed. “Who knows? When push comes to shove, Lye, it's going to be very hard for the king to order his Navy to attack a ship that's taking down pirates. If everyone knows that's what we're doing.”

“Not even the king can stop us doin' God's work, eh?” He didn't say it with enthusiasm. “But the Navy don't need to attack us, Damrick. They just need to stand by while we get attacked.”

“Ah well.” He took a sip. “What else were you planning to do with your life, Lye?”

“No plans,” he answered. He had mulled it as far as he was able. “I guess everyone dies somehow. Might as well cash out yer chips doin' the world some good.” And now, finally, he drank down his ale.

The next day handbills were posted along the docks, and in various parts of the city where shipmen—and former shipmen now in the dry-goods business—could find them.

H
ELL
'
S
G
ATEMEN
We Safeguard the Seas! Let the Men who Sent
Sharkbit Sutter
Back to the
Devil
Protect your Ship from Pirates

And down in the lower right-hand corner it gave an address where anyone could find, or join up with, a man named Damrick Fellows.

Conch Imbry had a sheet in his hands and a sour look on his face. “ ‘Safeguard the seas.' Who in yellow blazes is Damrick Fellows? ‘
Safeguard the seas.
' ”

The unimpressive Mart Mazeley shook his head. “A marine ensign and a sharpshooter. Or was. He just got the idea in his head, they say, and took out after Sharkbit.”

“Ensign, eh? Got lucky then, I say.”

“Perhaps. But he killed Sharkbit Sutter.”

“Just him by hisself?”

“There were two of them. They shot three or four sailors, plus Sharkbit. Disarmed the rest of a skeleton crew aboard the
Savage Grace
. Daring raid, by all accounts. He and the other man rowed out in the darkness, pretending to sign on.”

Conch's eyes scanned the paper one last time, then he handed the page back at Mazeley. “I want him dead. Kill 'im, will ye?”

“Yes, sir.”

Conch twirled a moustache around the tip of one finger. Then he pulled on it. “He get any takers on his offer?”

“We don't know. They're singing songs to him in the pubs.”

“Songs?” Conch's eyes were slits as he glanced around his stateroom, finding no place they could rest. “He'll be famous all over the city, then. Go tell the men we're shovin' off fer Mann in one hour. Get all hands aboard, and on deck. I'll show 'em who's famous.”

“The men are on leave, sir.”

“I know where they are! Round 'em up! How many places could they be in this rat hole of a city?”

“Six or eight, at least.”

“Go roust 'em. Get Chasm to help. We're fit and loaded. Just get 'em here on board, I don't care what condition.”

“Yes, sir. But I don't recommend leaving port shorthanded. These Gatemen—”

“There ain't no
Gatemen
!” His eyes blazed at Mazeley. “You're believin' this tin hero has what, a whole fleet? You think he's got the stuffin's to take on the
Shalamon
? He's puke in a bucket. I'll kill 'im. I'll kill 'im so dead they'll be singin' songs about how dead he is. They'll sing songs about how no one ever got hisself deader faster than Damrick floodin' Fellows.”

Any other man would have backed off. When the Conch started talking about men dying, one or more of them usually did. But Mazeley was unmoved. “Whatever Hell's Gatemen are or end up becoming, Captain, we know what they will
not
be. They will not be afraid. This Fellows met Sharkbit face-to-face and took him down. And Sharkbit was a man who could make the devil seize up inside. Now the whole City of Mann is reveling in this act. He can sign up scores of discontents who can shoot and sail. Don't underestimate this, Captain. Crush him, yes. But I recommend a full complement of men to do it. If you'll pardon me.”

This just made Conch sour. “Two hours, then. We sail in two hours wif whatever we can scrounge. You watch me, Mr. Mazeley. I'll put six holes through Damrick Fellows and slice 'im gut to chin before he even knows he's in a fight.”

Mazeley smiled. “Aye, sir.” He pulled a sheaf of parchment from his jacket. “Thought you also might like to send something like this along to the mayor.”

Conch read it. He softened. “Ye got a way wif words. I'll sign it.”

The mayor, once he read the note, immediately sent official word to all shipping lines with offices in the city, which meant, effectively, all shipping lines that did business up and down the western shores of the Vast Sea, north and south as far as men could sail. The message was this:
Any merchant doing business with Damrick Fellows or Hell's Gatemen would lose all harbor privileges in Skaelington, and all associated goodwill. The proclamation didn't need to elaborate. Everyone who read it knew what loss of safe harbor in Skaelington meant. It meant the loss of Conch Imbry's protection. Without Conch to answer to, every pirate up and down the coast would be free to attack. They would be effectively invited to attack.

Just that quickly, any ship or shipping company aligned with Damrick Fellows was marked. Fair game, open season.

Damrick looked over the merchandise once again. Every knife, musket, sword, pistol, bow, and crossbow for sale in the small shop was pulled out once again, and then some. And then quite a bit more some. All the weaponry that the store's proprietor could scrounge from all his suppliers and every neighboring store was piled high on countertops, on every free inch of floor space, on top of chairs, barrel tops, sacks of flour—everything that wasn't an armament itself became a display for everything that was. Three hundred square feet of space was now two feet deep in weaponry.

“This all you could find?” Damrick asked, disappointed.

The merchant blanched. “I rounded up all I could, like you asked.”

“Can you get more?” He picked up an ancient blunderbuss. “Just new weaponry, though. I don't need to wonder what will work.”

“I can try.”

“Then try. This won't be near enough. Did you get my cannon?”

The owner crossed his arms. “You paid your bill on the last one, Damrick, but this…”

“I have Sharkbit's reward money. I'm prepared to turn it over to you.”

The merchant did the calculations in his head. “All right. I'll see what I can find.”

“What are these?” Damrick looked at strips of braided leather, each about two feet long, that hung on a peg by the counter. He took one down, examined it.

“Tie-downs. Lashes. My mother used to make them, and we always found them handy for something.”

“I'll take forty. Can you get me forty of them?”

“Sure.” Then after a pause, “Damrick, does your daddy know you're doing this?”

“Yes.”

“Then why isn't he stocking you?”

Damrick stared at him. “Do you want the business?”

“Sure I want it. It just seems rightly to be Didrick's business, unless there's something I'm missing.”

Damrick aimed a long rifle out a window, admired its weight and balance. “Fellows Dry Goods has closed its doors.”

“What? Why?”

“Because its proprietor has gone back to his first love.”

“Who's that?”

Damrick looked at him evenly. “Not who. What.”

“What then?”

“Shipping.”

Calliope
was not a noble ship. She was not fast, nor sleek, nor maneuverable. She could not hold more than a hundred cubic yards of cargo, and even that had to be weighed carefully or she'd sit too low to be seaworthy. Her hull was heavy, and her beam was wide. She had long been at harbor, tended at no small cost by a dry-goods merchant who sailed her almost never, but couldn't bear to let her go. She was the prize possession of Captain Didrick Fellows.

His son, Damrick, was proud to serve aboard.

“That thing won't hold off a determined shark, much less a pirate, son.” The elder stood on the dock, watching as the iron swivel gun was lowered by a boom onto the deck.

“This little cannon will surprise you. It's a long-range gun.”

“I thought that barrel was unusual.”

Damrick patted the breech. “Tempered steel right there. She can handle twice the powder of a standard swivel cannon of the same size. Twice the power, twice the range.”

“What's that, a four-inch bore?”

“Three-and-a-quarter.”

Didrick shook his head. “And you've only got two of them. Any pirate ship will have four times that number at least, and all of them twice the size of that popper.”

“I know what I've got, Captain,” Damrick replied, guiding the dangling weapon to its appointed spot on the deck. “Sharkbit paid well, but not so well as to turn a freighter into a frigate.” He and two of his new Gatemen easily maneuvered the small cannon onto its plate and began turning bolts to secure it to the deck at the port rail. The second gun, for the starboard rail, lay in an open box on the dock.

“You think a couple of cannons and a little courage will get you past the likes of Skewer Uttley or Scatter Wilkins?”

“I think I've got an idea what it'll take.” Damrick, wiping sweat from his forehead, tucked a wet strand of hair behind an ear. He looked up at his father. “Uttley's retired, anyway.”

“They say.” The sea captain turned merchant turned sea captain again crossed his arms. He was not as tall as Damrick, but he was broader in the shoulders. With a full head of hair he would have looked very similar. He had the same sharp eyes, which bored into his son now from above. “You've got an idea, do you?”