Tides Collection by R.A. Fisher

Author:R.A. Fisher [Fisher, R. A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Next Chapter

16

THE SALAMANDER: NINE MONTHS BEFORE THE TRIAL

I handed the lens back to Rohm. We stood on the port deck together. Behind us milled the hundred soldiers I’d called up from below, awaiting orders. The Corsairs were closer—two ships behind and one ahead. The dirigible that had been following us on the horizon for two days was still floating far to the west, now rendered invisible by the sun behind it, but I knew it was there. It would be closer now.

“I thought our signal flags were up to date,” I said. The comment was pointless, but I felt a juvenile need to say something.

“So did I.”

We’d been lucky until then. Even the karakh had been calmer than Dakar had predicted they would be, despite their confinement and the endless rocking of the ships. I’d only lost one man to them since we’d departed from the Upper Peninsula a month ago, and him because he’d been careless and went into one of the stables without a shepherd. Nobody ever could figure out why.

I was glad I’d taken Dakar’s advice to modify the holds—the six weeks it took to fortify the doors and attach the chains in the Salamander and the Bishop’s Flame was nothing compared to the nine months or more it would have taken to get to the Black Wall overland, a trip that would have been even more perilous in any case. Of course, there was always the Great Road. It would have been fastest, but the Arch Bishop had insisted on secrecy. I had the feeling even the Grace of Fom only had a vague inkling of what we were up to.

We weren’t a secret now. Not to Ristro. The pirate in Maresg had sworn our signal flags were up to date. Maybe they had been when I’d paid four thousand Three-Sides for them, but whether he ripped us off or we’d just been too slow, it didn’t matter anymore.

I snatched the lens from Rohm again. The pirates rumbled toward us, accelerating, low in the water, coughing black tarfuel smoke streaking the azure sky with thin, twisted fingers. My own ship, the White Streak, still had her deck guns, but we’d removed them from the other two to lighten them for the karakh. All three ships were large and slow—ill-equipped for a fight. They were cargo vessels, not military. The Arch Bishop’s damned secrecy again.

“Suggestions?” I asked.

Rohm shuffled where he stood and took the lens again, peering through it east, then west toward where the blinding sunlight concealed the airship. “You’re the general.”

I didn’t bother hiding my frown. “And this is my fourth time at sea in seventy years, and the first time I’ve faced Corsairs. So, suggestions?”

“What about the time on the Upper Great Road? Your annihilation of them is legendary.”

I spat on the deck. “The stories are exaggerated. Anyway, they weren’t Ristroan Corsairs. Just raiders and vagabonds from Maresg. So I’m asking you again. Suggestions?”

Rohm handed the lens back to me again and thought. The dirigible had left the orb of the sun and was now a growing black speck above it.

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