Corsair (40 page)

Muskets cracked, first singly, then in a volley, and the Slavers, too, broke and ran.

“I think,” Cosyra said wearily, “the way is clear now.”

• • •

“I know you won’t let me marry her,” Labala said earnestly to Gareth. “But I’ll accept lifelong slavery for her saving me.”

“Oh stop it,” Cosyra said. “You men were standing around with your fingers in your poop, and somebody had to do something.”

They were outside Herti, marching through overgrown pyramids and abandoned farms.

“Well,” Thom Tehidy said, “at least we’ve seen the worst of what Kashi can offer us, even if those frigging Slavers are still on our track.”

He made a face. “Anyway, I can only
hope
we’ve seen the worst.”

A month later, they’d left the jungle behind and were crossing a high, grassy plain dotted with occasional groves, springs, and pools.

There were less than three hundred of the corsairs left. Both chirurgeons had been killed in Herti, so the casualties either healed with what sorcery and rough medicine Labala and the two assistants he was training could offer, or else died, were buried, and the column marched over the grave, to leave no trace for the still-pursuing Linyati.

Twice Gareth laid an elaborate ambush, but the Slavers now seemed able to sense danger, and turned away before entering the killing zone. At least his rear scouts were still able to snipe a victim now and again, and sometimes waylay an unwary skirmisher. But they were still outnumbered more than two to one.

They’d encountered half a dozen empty monolithic cities before leaving the jungle. They’d sheltered in one against a storm, but the horrible dreams that came made the driving rain welcome, and they’d not chanced entering another.

Gareth wondered whether these cities, which showed signs of fire and battle, had been destroyed by the warriors of Herti or by Slavers.

As they climbed higher, still holding east, still hoping to somehow elude the pursuit and turn back to the coast, they’d found empty villages, and even seen the villagers fleeing in panic with what they could carry.

“In these parts,” Dihr said, “the white man is a slaver, no better.”

Gareth had ordered the villages left alone, but pirates being pirates, four men had slipped away from the night’s camp, looking, their friends said later, for women and drink in the nearby village, ready to pay with either gold or steel.

After midnight, the sentries had jolted to full alert, hearing terrible screams from the village. At dawn, Gareth sent a strong patrol in to look for the fools.

They found nothing but patches of blood on the ground, pools larger than a man’s body should contain. But there was no sign of the four men, and the column marched on, into the grasslands.

The weather was hot, but not as muggy as it’d been in the lowlands, and it rained every day or so, gentle showers that the men welcomed.

Their clothes were ragged, and those with seaboots had long since cut them into sandals. They had no problem with provisions, the land being thick with game animals.

The biggest shortage was gunpowder. The best musketeers became hunters, and prided themselves on never needing more than a single shot to bring down an animal.

One day, the scouts reported springs ahead, an ideal campsite. But the second report returned they were sulfurous, poisonous, and stinking.

Cosyra mentioned wistfully that great Sarosian ladies paid well to visit a resort and soak in the sulfur springs, and perhaps they could pause for a day.

Gareth looked at her skeptically, and she burst into laughter, having gotten the rise she wanted. Tehidy and Labala came and asked if they could stop for a few hours while they had a work party mine some sulfur, which they refused to explain the reason for.

Gareth approved, which gave the sailors and soldiers a chance to mend their gear and break from the ceaseless marching. The work party came back with crude sulfur bricks wrapped in leaves. Everyone was to take a brick and put it in his pack.

Why? “Magical reasons,” hissed Tehidy, while Labala nodded agreement, and that was enough to stop questions from most.

When they marched on, Gareth sniffed Cosyra’s hair. Sulfurous. She smiled blandly and said any noblewoman worth her salts could always find a way to slip away and do what she wanted, regardless of man’s intent.

The nonsensical catchphrase “Is this Tehidy’s worst?” ran up and down the column, no matter whether the event was good or sour. Gareth felt the morale was as good as could be expected, but not much better. The Linyati, always behind them, always a threat, drained the men’s spirits. They needed a victory, or at least a change away from these utterly foreign grasslands — well-watered deserts to most.

Labala crafted small amulets, gave them to the scouts, and told them to feel the amulets from time to time and notify him if they grew warm.

A day later, they camped near a small river. The scouts had chased a small herd of antelope into nets and butchered them without wasting shot.

For once there were no problems reported, and Gareth lay in the shade of a tree, Cosyra’s head pillowed on his chest. He had a mug of cool water beside him and could smell the succulence of antelope roasting on nearby spits.

“This is too good,” Cosyra said, and moments later was proven right as a sentry yelped alarm.

Far out, in the grasslands, Gareth spotted movement. The air was still, but the high grass was waving, as if some hidden creature was leaving a wake. But the wake was impossibly long.

No one could see what was making the track, but Gareth ordered everyone to stand to, weapons ready.

Two more of the wakes were reported. But they did no more than circle the camp, then disappear.

Gareth told the night watch to be very wary, knowing he needn’t have spoken. The men were watchful, jumpy, as night came.

No alarms were shouted, but the morning watch guards, going out to relieve the graveyard sentries for the last shift before dawn, reported one man vanished, with never a bloodstain or outcry.

They moved on, and again saw the marks of these unseen creatures, tracking them. Labala tried to cast a spell to find out what they were, and got nothing.

That night, two more sentries vanished.

Gareth considered what might be done. He was assuming their enemy wasn’t human or a demon, but some fleshly creature. His skin crept at the plan he arrived at. But he had only the one, and he couldn’t ask or order anyone to take part but himself.

He chose the campsite well for that night, on a low knoll above the grasses. He had one cannon loaded and pointed at a spot about twenty yards distant, near two boulders. Then he consulted with Labala for a charm.

Guards reported, as it grew dark, the “wakes” once more, closing on the knoll.

The sentries were in threes, stationed close to the rest of the fully alert men.

“You are one damned fool,” Cosyra raged at Gareth.

“Maybe,” Gareth agreed. “And I’m the captain.”

“Which means you’ve got to go down there, waving your bottom as bait? Why can’t you ask for volunteers?

“Never mind,” she went on. “I know the answer. Because you’re the captain. I’m starting to figure it out. Well, kiss me, and try not to get vanished, all right?”

“I’ll definitely do my best.”

Gareth had two pistols in his belt, a cutlass, and a musket. He went downhill, to the cannoneers. He gave one end of a cord to Thom Tehidy, who would be his lead gunner, and tied the other around his wrist.

“I hope you’re well laid,” he said, dry-mouthed.

“I am,” Tehidy said, wanting to make some sort of jest, not finding any.

Gareth went on down to the boulders, and waited.

It grew dark, darker still, as the column’s fires above him were banked, and the minutes stretched like hours.

He was as alert as his fear and Labala’s spell could make him.

Time dragged, and clouds scudded across the moon.

Twice he started before realizing it was only a mouse or some other harmless creature scurrying to his front.

Then his palms were sweaty, and he sensed something was out there — something big, something dangerous. He licked his lips, waited, knowing it was closing on him.

Close enough,
his building terror shrilled, and he dove into the shelter of the boulders, yanking on the cord.

A moment later, the cannon fired, flame spurting toward him, grapeshot spanging off the boulders above him, and something screamed.

It was more than a scream — a shriek of agony to the gods. Gareth forced himself to his knees, saw something like a snake looming high above, thrashing down as he ducked; the snake’s body, if that was what it was, was as big around as a man’s torso.

He had the musket up, fired into the writhing bulk, tossed it aside, and was scrambling back to the shelter of his gun.

It was reloaded, waiting, as he rolled past it. Tehidy held the match to the touchhole, and again it fired into the night.

The scream had never stopped, and now it burbled, like a great fish gaffed through the gills, and the thrashing faded, as if the monster was rolling away in its death agonies.

Gareth found his hands shaking, made his way back to the center of the camp, ordered the fires built up.

Cosyra came to him, pale-faced, and kissed him, holding him close, not saying a word.

At that moment Gareth wished he could be like other men, and find solace in drink — then remembered they had almost none.

He tried to sleep, only to wake shaking once more from a dream he did not want to remember. He sat up next to Cosyra, who was busy pretending sleep, for the rest of the night.

The dawn showed the grass where Gareth had lain as bait flattened, and the ground torn up. There were splotches of a disgusting-smelling yellow ichor here and there, and the ripped ground formed a trail.

No one volunteered to follow it to see what might lie at the end.

The column went on, and they were not troubled again by the nightmares, whatever they were.

• • •

“And am I not a genius,” Thom Tehidy boasted, ducking out of the narrow cave the scouts had located.

“The genius, sir, is I,” Labala said. “For was it not I who built the amulets that scented out your cave and your saltpeter?”

“A mere device, a tool,” Tehidy said, “with the inspiration provided by the real brains behind this stumbling bunch of yahoos.”

“As Captain Yahoo to you scum,” Gareth said, “would you two mind explaining what wonderful feat you’ve accomplished?”

“Seventy-five parts of saltpeter,” Tehidy said, “five parts of sulfur, and if you’ll observe the banks of yon creek, you’ll see willow trees, regarded by us artillery experts as the finest source of charcoal — five parts — and there you have it.

“Gunpowder, Gareth. All we need do is mix up our ingredients, with my colleague here’s slight sorcerous assistance. I learned from the Royal Cannoneers back in Ticao, once I realized you’d stuck me behind a gun forevermore, a bit of the noble trade of killing folks with large guns, and found gunpowder’s a bit chancy.”

“I’m not th’ one for gettin’ my head blown off,” Nomios grumbled, “while you two lackwits fool about.”

“ ‘Tis seldom gunpowder fails in that regard,” Tehidy said. “Unfortunately. More likely it fizzles like a damp squib. So, as I was saying, we gather our ingredients, wet them down a bit so they’ll mix thoroughly, which is termed corning, add a bit of ensorcellment, and
bang.
”

“Bang ‘tis,” Nomios agreed. “And bang it can always be, for I’ll keep m’ distance from both you loons.”

“Oh ye of little faith.”

For once, everything worked, although Labala and Tehidy were up most of the night experimenting, making vile smells and fizzles before, around dawn, they produced a nice proper bang that brought everybody up, scrabbling for a firearm and cursing.

And they had gunpowder, almost twice what they’d had before. It wasn’t as strong as the powder they’d carried with them, requiring almost half again as much for the same power, but it worked.

Gareth felt that maybe his boasted luck, which had been more than a bit in abeyance, might be returning a trifle.

• • •

Gareth, trying to keep from thinking about how many paces before him until the day’s march ended, trying to think of something to get them off this cursed treadmill they were trapped on, plucked something that looked a bit like the dandelions of home, except far bigger, and green. He blew it at Cosyra, watched the bits of fluff blow away.

“Did you make a wish?” she asked.

“I did,” he lied, taking another step.

He looked up at the sky, and saw, very high, a huge bird drifting in the wind, drifting north, toward the distant sea. The northerly breeze blowing down here on the ground must be stronger up there. If he had wings, if Labala could ensorcell a bird, he could get an idea of where they were, where they were heading, rather than pursue this blind travel east, trying to guess when they might turn north and look for a settlement that would have ships for purchase or theft.

Perhaps it was high adventure, sailing into the unknown, making your charts as you went. But he was a corsair, and his world was the ocean, not these damned swamps and plains and jungles!

He had a bit of an idea, considered it over another fifty paces, thought it might have some merit. He dropped back to where Labala marched with Tehidy, in front of the column’s lead cannon, to ask if it might be possible.

• • •

“You realize, of course,” N’b’ry said cheerfully, “the whole Company thinks you — and your pet magician — are madder than a pair of pigs in clover.

“Collecting butterflies, indeed,” he said.

“Shut up,” Gareth said. “The idea sounds daft enough without your contributions.”

“Shut up is right,” Labala said. “Dewinging a dead butterfiggle’s hard work.

“Now, Gareth, take these wings, and touch them to your eyes. Gently, dammit. I don’t want to have go chasing around for more of ‘em when it gets dark.”

Gareth obeyed.

“Now, drink this.”