The Black Ships

 

The monsoon season died, and the rains receded, so that they came daily over the sea, rather than in the ageless storms that lasted for weeks.  Birds ventured over the water, and the winds blew again from the east, sending the trade ships and fleets once more across the azure sea.  This was the time of year when the colonies forged by the Mordani invaders gathered their accumulated wealth and sent it home across the waters.  This was the season when poor men became rich men, and rich men became princes.

In the harbor of the great city of Sinasekan, walled in by white cliffs and guarded by stone towers, the black fleet gathered.  Six ships, then ten, then a dozen.  Day and night, slaves carried the treasure of the islands over the gangplanks and into the dark holds under the watchful eyes of armored guards.  All year the mines of the islands were worked, gathering a fortune in silver and gold in the court of the viceroy, and when the rains ended, the treasure was loaded aboard ships with white sails and black hulls, and then the fleet sailed away, over the long course to Morda, on the other side of the world, there to make the king even richer, to pay for the wars with Achen and Savindria, so that the black stallion banner would fly over new lands and new conquests.

For three weeks the ships gathered, loaded until they were slung low in the water.  The port city seethed with spies and counterspies as corsairs sought the exact date of the departure and the Viceroy’s agents sought to conceal it, catch those who sought it.  Spies for the pirate brotherhoods were caught and hanged from gibbets, slaves who spoke too freely had their tongues torn out with red-hot pincers, and gossips who spoke unguarded were arrested and had their eyes put out, whether woman or child.

Lookouts on the cliffsides and headlands kept their eyes on the far horizons, for they knew the black fleet could not sail without warships to guard it.  The treasure ships were so loaded with wealth there was no room for fighting men or for much powder for the guns.  Each was so heavy that they wallowed like pigs in muck, and would be so slow they would be easy prey for any raider.  The traveled in a fleet so that even if one was picked off by a buccaneer, the others would escape while the one was looted.  In the twenty years since the ships began to sail, not one had been lost.

The Iron Brotherhood

 

It was dawn when the ship came out of the sea-mist, the ropes and planks creaking as it shifted on the waves.  It was a long, low sloop of war, with a dozen guns in closed ports along the sides and deck guns mounted on swivels along the rail.  The sails bellied somnolently, the wind barely enough to push the craft along, and when it came in sight of land a cry went up, and men moved on the shadowed deck.

Jaya went to the prow, wanting to see.  The island emerged from the hollow shade of misty dawnlight as a shadow without feature or mark.  The waves turned white as they crept into the shore, and beyond that the land was a dark mass that rose up and up toward the unseen peak at the center.  She saw the forest dark as night, heard the cries of the nightjars like little questions and the whooping of the monkeys as they came down to the sea to hunt crabs.

Her ship was crewed by Utani and by Ekwa she had gathered to her side.  Bastar steered the ship at her order, and Dhatun was her second.  She had taken this as her ship because it was the swiftest, the most agile in the water, quick as a shark or a falcon.  Unjarah, she had named it – the Reaver.  A name given to both hunters and killers.  To those who stole and devoured and could not be stopped.  So some called the Ekwa themselves, so some called the outcasts who dwelled in hidden places and came by night to rob and kill.  Her ship was dark, the hull painted black, weathered skulls hanging from beneath the bowsprit.

They came closer to land, and she signaled for the anchors to be lowered, the heavy iron hooks dropped into the sea with a sound she was sure could be heard all over the island, even if she knew it was not so.  She watched, seeking a flicker of a torch or a lantern, but the land remained dark, and the only sounds were those of the jungle.

Half a year since she had taken Jinan, and the fleet with it.  Jaya was not the same woman she had been.  Tattooed and painted with the marks of her people, as well as those of the Ekwa and the disciples of Hamau, she wore her hair in braids, some of them bleached white and set with shark teeth.  She wore hard leather vambraces and a piece of steel armor over her left shoulder, a keeled breastplate guarding her heart.  She wore tall sea-boots and necklaces of bones and teeth clacked around her ankles.  Always at her side was her father’s sword, still keen and bright, still hungry to take heads, and she wore two pistols ready in her belt.

A boat was lowered on pulleys and she climbed down, gathered in it with a dozen of her men and Bastar at her side.  She wanted Dhatun to guard the ship, and she could not leave the two of them alone, for one of them would be dead when she returned.

The men rowed, pushing the longboat across the fallow sea until the bottom scraped on the sand and they leaped out, drew the ship into the shallows.  Jaya stepped out from the boat and set foot upon the land, feeling a tremor in her heart.  It had been so long.

The Storm of Blood

 

Down from the hills the land was a pattern of green fields and darker gatherings of orchards and forest flowing to the sea, where the city of Jinan hunched like a barnacle clinging to the shore.  It looked ugly to her, and Jaya took pleasure in thinking she would soon wipe if from the face of this sacred island.  The afternoon sun slanted down across the water, setting the clouds on fire, and the whole sea was the color of blood.

The southern horizon, over the water, was all a black frontier of churning cloud and lances of violet lightning.  The monsoon had begun, though it had yet to come ashore.  For days she had watched ships scuttle in from the sea to take shelter in the harbor here, anchoring themsleves securely, ready to hold out through the torrents of rain and wind they knew would come.  Even the outlanders had learned the ways of the great storms that came when the seasons turned.  She would use that to grind them into pieces.

It was good to look on the sea again, to watch the waves roll and swell and fall in on themselves, the crests growing higher and higher as the storm out to sea gained intensity.  The thunder was distant, but that would change.  She felt the winds shifting as she closed her eyes, feeling the breath of the sea on her face, smelling the salt and blood and the seaweed and dead fish rotting on the beaches.  As familiar as her own voice.  The gods were close to her now, and she remembered all they had laid upon her.  The favor shown by Arang who had saved her life, of Ularu who had spared it, of the blessing of Sa-Hantu who lit the deep with his fire, and of Hamau the tigress, who haunted her wake like a promise of vengeance.

Dhatun stood by her, and she was glad of his presence.  He frowned down at the town spread along the shore.  It had not been made for defense, and the walls were low and old, but it was plain measures had been taken since the battle at the Basu, and from here they could see barricades raised to block the streets inside the gate, and logs used to raise the walls higher and reinforce them.  The two cannons she had captured would not breach a hole easily.