Warrior Mage (Book 1) (22 page)

Dak shifted his gaze down to Yanko.

“I know Nurians are all... the enemy to you,” Yanko said, “but these are my people. The prison was already a mistake. I never meant to help criminals. Or become one myself.”

“The freighter might not have been salvaged, since it’s so close to those warships. And since it hasn’t been out there long. It does have a few cannons, so there may be stores below decks.”

“Good,” Yanko said, in response to the information and also to the fact that Dak hadn’t called him a sissy or a hypocrite. “I’ll see if I can find them.”

Yanko spent the next fifteen minutes in the shadows—Minark’s orders to douse the lamps had been followed—sensing out the layout of the sunken freighter. Since he hadn’t had time to rest after the prison breakout, his brain protested further use. There was a school of thought that said the more a mage practiced and pushed himself to the reaches of his endurance, the stronger and more capable he would become. Another school of thought proclaimed that mages who pushed themselves too hard broke and went crazy. He hoped the former would prove true for him.

A great deal of water had flowed into the freighter through a huge gap in the hull, one received when it had run into that rock. In other spots, cannonball holes dotted the exterior, though they hadn’t caused as much damage. He worried that any powder room that might be below decks would be underwater, but the wreck was high enough on the rock that the upper level cabins and store rooms remained dry. He clenched a pleased fist when he found mostly dry kegs of powder.

He could have simply lit the wood of the ship on fire, but this would require less power on his part, and it would create a much bigger boom. More smoke. Smoke, Yanko would add to, after he put his first distraction into play.

More crew members had come aboard while he concentrated, most heading straight to duty stations. A couple carried lanterns, so they noticed Yanko’s robe as they passed. The Nurians bowed and greeted him as Honored Warrior Mage. Those from other nations offered greetings that ranged from, “Good, a mage,” to “Nice dress.” Yanko didn’t see the men who had tried to mug him, so he hoped they hadn’t been a part of the crew. It comforted him that Dak had remained close while Yanko had been concentrating on other matters. He may not consider Minark a threat at this point, but the rest of the crew was new.

“We’re ready,” the captain said, walking over. “You have a plan, kid?”

“All of your crew is here already?”

“Enough of them. Those who didn’t hurry to get aboard will miss us in the morning when they’re looking for their pay.”

“Hm. Yes, I have a plan.” In addition to scouting the wrecked freighter, Yanko had reached out to the animals in the zoo and had examined the locks on their cages. All of them had been simple, far easier to break than the one in the prison. Now, with the captain looking on, he waved a hand, severing one lock after the other. Nobody would be able to see that far from the ship, but one of the coyotes howled, and a tiger roared, pleased at its freedom. Dogs answered the wild cries from the streets of Red Sky, and it soon sounded like a jungle had descended on the city.

“You doing that?” Minark asked.

“Step One, yes.”

Minark extended his spyglass toward the warships. Someone drew up his ship’s anchor, and the
Falcon’s Flight
glided away from the dock.

“They’re going to be looking right over us to check out that noise. I don’t know if this is a good idea,” Minark said.

Yanko waved his fingers again, shifting his focus out to the freighter this time. The first keg exploded with a deafening roar. Minark jerked around, gaping in that direction.

“Steer us around the back side of the wreck,” Yanko said, “between it and the south jetty. I’ll make sure there’s a
lot
of smoke in the air.”

Minark’s eyebrows rose with skepticism. “We’ll give it a try.” He jogged toward the helmsman at the wheel.

“I see he’s supremely confident in my abilities.” Yanko glanced at Dak, whose hand was resting on the hilt of his sword. “You must be too.”

“I do not like to rely on magic.”

Thus far, Dak hadn’t shown surprise at any of the mental science usage that had gone on around him, but it would be shocking if a Turgonian embraced it wholeheartedly.

“Does that mean you think the odds are against us getting through without being fired at repeatedly and then boarded?” Yanko asked.

“Yes.”

“You’re a pessimistic man.”

Dak gave him a sidelong look. “You’d want an optimistic bodyguard?”

“I suppose not. I wouldn’t want him to believe nothing bad would happen to me, then wander off to play dice instead of watching my back.” Maybe pessimism was listed as a desirable quality in that bodyguard handbook Falcon had mentioned.

“Tiles.”

“Pardon?”

“We Turgonians play a strategy game called Tiles.”

“Strategy? So even your games revolve around war?” Yanko shouldn’t be surprised. The Turgonians had conquered their entire continent within a matter of a few generations and had kept Nuria at bay for centuries, despite their unwillingness to study the mental sciences.

“Yes.” Dak nodded toward the freighter, which was blazing impressively in the aftermath of the explosion. “We’ll be behind it soon.”

“I know.” Yanko had already been creating extra smoke, and he pushed the process even further so it clouded the air above the ship and also close to the water. With luck, those watching would believe something like pitch was burning. He wished he could add that to the scent of burning wood, but he had never studied making illusory smells. It would take a lifetime to learn all that was possible with the mental sciences, if not a hundred lifetimes.

Roars and human cries sounded on the waterfront. With the freighter burning, Yanko didn’t know if anyone on the warship would be focused on the animal chaos ashore, but twice the number of lights were burning over there now, as people ran around with bows and lanterns.

The
Falcon’s Flight
glided into the smoky pall. It had passed the last of the docks and was angling toward the south jetty. Crewmen scampered soundlessly through the rigging, putting out the sails. Aware of how high the masts stretched, Yanko worked to spread the smoke, creating a vertical cloud and not just a horizontal one. He also did his best to obscure the auras of the living beings on the ship, lest the mages sense their presence, just as Yanko could sense the presences of others, when he thought to look for them.

“Your animals are eating people,” Lakeo said, joining them, her bow in hand as she cast nervous glances toward the warships. She also had the pessimism necessary for the bodyguard position.

“They’re simply scaring them,” Yanko murmured without taking his focus from the smoke. “I made a deal with them. Their freedom for some noise before they run up into the mountains.”

He was trying to keep the flames from burning too brightly on the wreck, lest it light up their masts and sails even in the haze, but he could only manage so many things at once. Already his head throbbed. He tightened his hands around the railing for support. Once they made it past those warships, he could rest. Assuming none of them gave chase...

“If you say so. I just saw a city watchman run by with a patch torn out of the seat of his trousers.”

Yanko ignored her, knowing she couldn’t see anything in the smoke. He could barely see
her
three feet away.

Then an unfamiliar presence whispered across his senses, one he immediately identified as the probe of one of those mages. At least one person was suspicious. Yanko tightened his grip on the railing and tried to further camouflage their ship from mental senses, not just visual ones. But he was trying to do too many things at once. A gale of wind blew in from the sea, shredding his clouds of smoke into ribbons.

Dak stirred at his side. “We’re going to be visible.”

Yanko tried to regather the smoke, to create more to combat the wind, but it was too late.

“A ship!” someone in the blockade cried. “Ready weapons!”

Thumps and clanks came from behind Yanko. He spun around, reaching for his own weapons, for his
kyzar
, anyway—he didn’t have the mental energy to contemplate an attack with the mind. Minark was stomping toward him, fury in his eyes.

“Kid, you better—”

Dak intercepted him, planting a hand on the captain’s chest. Minark snarled, grabbed it, and tried to shove Dak to the side. He might as well have tried to shove a mountain. Not only did Dak not budge, but he flipped the captain onto his back and, in less time than it took to blink, had a dagger pressed to the man’s throat.

“I’m working on it,” Yanko said, though his mouth was dry. He hadn’t expected that degree of initiative from Dak. Of course, the moment Minark had attacked him, it had become self-defense rather than bodyguard work.

Trusting Dak to keep the captain at bay, Yanko spun back toward the railing and the warships. Enough smoke remained that his view was obscured, but he knew they were out there, full of armed men, weapons, and wizards. He groped for some brilliant solution, some way to delay their attack until the schooner could make it past the jetty and out into open water, but the only thought that popped into his mind was sending fish, one by one, leaping out of the water to smack into the chests of the mages. It was idiotic, and he did not have the mental energy left to find a fish, much less compel one to work for him. He wished he had not wasted precious strength on communicating with the animals in the cages and freeing them. He might have wanted to let them out because of personal feelings, but what had that done to help against the warships?

A boom rang out from the mouth of the harbor, the noise drowning out the crackle of the flames from the freighter. Yanko winced, hoping the cannonball would fly wide, that it would take the warships time to find their range. But what would happen when they
did
? A light craft meant for speed, the smuggler’s schooner wasn’t armored. Yanko fanned more smoke to life. It was all he could think to do, create more camouflage and hope it made them hard for the gunners to target. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t matter to the mages, who could see with more than their eyes.

A second boom rang out, coming from one of the center warships.

“Fire back, Captain?” someone called from the schooner’s guns.

“No,” Dak said before Minark could answer—if he could answer. He and Dak must not have come to agreement yet, because a blade was still pressed to the captain’s throat. If a man could look terrified and furious at the same time, Minark did. “They’re not shooting at us.”

Yanko blinked. He had assumed the cannonballs had simply splashed into the water, and he hadn’t heard the sound over the chaos, but was Dak right? Were the warships not firing at the smugglers at all? Who else would they be shooting at?

An entire chorus of booms rang out, not from the mouth of the harbor but from somewhere beyond it. More ships?

Dak sheathed his sword and hefted Minark to his feet. “You’ve got your distraction, Captain. I suggest you use it.”

Minark gaped toward the mouth of the harbor, even if he couldn’t see through the smoke any more clearly than Yanko. At least Yanko assumed that to be the case, but he touched one of the charms on his belt, and his mouth dropped even further open. “You’re right. There’s a whole fleet out there.”

“Nurians?” Yanko asked. “Or someone else?” He could have looked with his mind, but the throbbing pain behind his eyes deterred him.

“They could be Turgonians, and I wouldn’t care,” Minark said, though he glared heroically at Dak before adding, “Not right now, anyway.” Then he was off, sprinting for the wheel.

Their ship had glided away from the wreck, and Yanko struggled to keep the smoke following them. The sheer numbers of cannons firing in the distance sounded promising, but he couldn’t know for sure that all of the warships had forgotten about the vessel escaping from the harbor. The closest warship was turning slowly, maneuvering its side full of cannon ports toward the sea. They were close enough that Yanko could see the crew, see that they were focused away from the schooner.

“More Nurian ships,” Dak said, a spyglass to his eye. “This must be your government’s retaliation. It was inevitable.”

The schooner started rocking, rising and falling on the waves as it passed the jetty and entered the choppier waters of the open ocean. Nobody was speaking, though they wouldn’t have been heard, anyway, over the booms of those cannons. But more than one crew member leaped into the air or pumped a triumphant fist as the
Falcon’s Flight
passed the southernmost warship, and nobody on board aimed a rifle at them. The sea lit up with the flashes of orange from cannons firing, but the schooner turned to the south, away from the chaos. They would have to find a northeasterly route later, but Yanko couldn’t fault the captain for taking them well out of range of the battle before changing directions.

Strange, since this was all that he wanted and he had his mission to think of, but Yanko felt cowardly for fleeing. Had he gone to Stargrind and graduated, he would have been aboard one of those ships one day, presumably one of the ones working for the Great Chief. He couldn’t imagine signing up for an insurrection.

“Someone else is taking advantage of the chaos,” Dak observed, lowering the spyglass.

“What do you mean?”

Dak pointed, not at the ships engaged in battle, but toward the jetty. It was receding from view now, as the
Falcon’s Flight
filled its sails and took advantage of the wind. Still, Yanko made out a faint dark smudge on the waves. Another ship. One with a low profile—a steamer instead of a sailing ship?

“Anyone you know?” Yanko asked.

“No.” Dak frowned over at him. “I was going to ask you the same question.”

“Me? I don’t...” Yanko stared at the dark outline of the other ship. Maybe he hadn’t shaken the assassins, after all.

Part II
Chapter 11

T
he equatorial sun beat down on Yanko’s shoulders as he ducked, darted, and lunged in, attempting to strike. Dak had not grown any slower in the six months since their sparring sessions in the mines. There wasn’t a lot of open space on the schooner, but he didn’t need it; Yanko was the one dancing around, trying not to be hit and also trying not to run into people, masts, lifeboats, or coils of rope. Thanks to the rough sea, he had the added challenge of keeping from tumbling overboard every time the ship crested a wave.