Rising, duckwalking the deck, Adira hooked a tarred mainstay and parked her hip against a rail. "Jedit Ojanen, we must have words."
The tiger-man regarded her silently. His eyes were slit against the wind so looked to have three parts, green, amber, and green, an unnerving display. Further, Adira was peeved the tiger could stand on a pitching deck without any handhold. Possessing perfect balance, he never stumbled, never blundered, making humans feel spraddle-footed and awkward and stoking Adira's famous temper.
"Jedit, I don't like you striking out on your own hook. It happened half a dozen times in Buzzard's Bay." Adira fumed at the huge tiger. "If you pocket my coin, you obey my orders! Don't order my crew about, no matter how nasty our crisis! If you want to seize command, you'll fight me with matched daggers, elsewise you carry your hat in your hand! Is that clear?"
"Aye, aye," the tiger purred above the shrill of the wind. "If I give offense, I'm sorry. I'm new to human ways and still learning. I appreciate that you let me join your band. Such kind generosity I can never fully repay."
"Oh." Adira's temper sputtered as if doused with ice water. Expecting an argument, Jedit's sincere apology and gratitude flummoxed her. Gruff, she snapped, "Just bear it in mind, Stripes, or blood'll be spilt between us."
Stalking back to Simone, Adira plunked on her bucket and savagely unraveled rope.
"My, my," murmured Simone, "see his fuzzy round ears smoke."
"Shut up."
"Sail!" A cry from Heath in the crow's nest. "Six points abaft the starboard beam!"
Immediately everyone dropped chores to cluster in the ratlines. Simone the Siren scurried a dozen feet above deck to see the new vessel, a stumpy carrack straining under all sail. Some Buzzard's Baymen clucked their tongues.
The pirate lieutenant said, "So we're not the only lunatics to brave the blustery deep!"
"All hands!" came Master Edsen's sudden cry. "Prepare to repel boarders! Crack the cutlass locker! Fetch the spare canvas and netting! Lively, lads! You, Strongheart! Front and center!"
As coasters jumped, suddenly in a hurry, Adira swallowed her temper at being summoned like the rankest cabin boy.
Striding to the deck, she grated, "Sir?"
"What's this about?" Edsen glanced astern as if a tidal wave loomed. His teeth were bared, but his eyes flashed fright.
"What?" asked Adira. "Yon ship chases us?"
"You know damn well it does!" Edsen glared. "This is your infernal trouble-making again, ain't it? Buzzardmen don't attack Buzzards. Even Rimon sticks to that rule. So if Drumfish chases us like a hound after a hen, it's your fault! I've a mind to dump you and your patchwork pirates into a longboat without oars and let Rimon snap you up!"
Already fuming, Adira let slip her temper. "You'd never maroon us in this life, you hamhanded mucker! My crew'd split you brown-water bastards from gills to gullet and chuck your heads to bob in our wake! Jedit! Whistledove! Simone, pipe up the Seven!"
Edsen's crew, busy breaking out boarding pikes, axes, netting, and spare canvas, stopped to goggle. One second Adira Strongheart argued with the master, and the next she was surrounded by her half-mad bodyguard. Even the brownie clinging in the rigging clutched a rapier in her fist.
In command, calm again, Adira asked, "What are your orders, Captain?"
Edsen gulped and looked to officers for support, but they steered clear of mutiny and massacre.
Finally the bayman husked, "Uh, stand by to repel boarders. And get… off my quarterdeck."
Nose in the air, Adira skipped to the main deck with her Circle of Seven in tow. Other shipmates shied away to cluster on quarterdeck and forecastle.
Simone asked with a grin, "Your orders, Captain?"
Glancing about, Adira said, "Looks like these crawfish want us to defend the waist alone. So we shall. Make ready to repel boarders, but watch your backs. One by one, slip below and fill your pockets with anything precious. We might have to quit the ship on short notice."
Adira's pirates nodded, used to crises striking like lightning. The lubbers looked at the angry gray ocean and wondered how cold the water might be, but, shepherded by the lieutenant Simone, they fell to tasks with a will. Adira perched on the ship's gunwale to study the sea, the sky, the ominous lee shore, and the oncoming Drumfish.
The corsairs' ship was a carrack, built like a box to carry diverse loads, with three masts. The versatile sails and lack of a load made the pursuing boat fast but awkward. She skittered sideways as much as punched ahead, her crew tacking endlessly. At this distance, Adira could see her rigging was black with corsairs like spiders in a web. Pirate ships typically carried three or four times the crew of a merchant vessel.
"Edsen's rats'll likely roll over and squeal for their lives. So… eighty-odd fighters oppose my Circle of Seven, or nine, and all the time Edsen's eager to stab us in the back." Adira juggled odds and options and her meager resources. Her eye fell upon, of all things, the druid looking lost as a fish in a forest. "Hoy, Jasmine! Here, woman! Tell me. A ship's built of wood, but dead wood, true? Still, could you…?"
Two frantic hours had passed, and the sun had cracked the western sky just before setting, when Drumfish crept to windward within hailing distance. Both ships pitched and rolled on a steepening sea. Rising wind, harder to fight by the minute, blew toward the forbidding coast and its gnashing rocks a mere five miles away.
The corsairs from Buzzard's Bay were ready. Not as many as Adira had reckoned, some sixty fishermen-turned-raiders were poised with swords and pikes to slam alongside Conch and swarm aboard. Under Edsen, the merchant ship had made only token efforts to arm. Her twenty-odd crewmates carried sharp cutlasses and had lined the ship's sides with a wall of netting and spare canvas, but all the baymen and women hoped Edsen could cave in quickly. More than their cousin corsairs, the sailors feared the coming storm and threatening shore. Only Adira's Circle of Seven expected a fight.
"Ahoy, Conch!" Captain Rimon of the Drumfish bellowed through a leather speaking trumpet. "Give us Adira Strongheart, and you can sail on free!"
"Drink bilge and drown!" came a cry, not from the quarterdeck, but from the waist. Adira Strongheart didn't need a trumpet to bawl above the wind. "Think ye'll take Johan's blood money with one hand and the Circle of Seven with the other? You yellow hagfish! Earn your pay or eat dung like a dog!"
"Don't listen to her, Rimon!" shouted Master Edsen from the quarterdeck. "She don't speak-"
"Edsen's a coward!" Adira drowned out the quavering master. Oddly, she was the only person in sight in Conch's waist, standing beside the midmast with a cutlass upraised. "An eye-picking, gut-eating, bottom-feeding crab! He won't lift a claw to save his own ship! But you're worse, Rimon!
Turning against your own kind to kiss Johan's backside! He killed your kinfolk, yet you skulk the sea lanes at his bidding and break the only truce you ever knew!"
The pirate queen went on to curse Rimon's mother, father, ancestors, and crew in filthy tones. The waiting corsairs fairly chipped their teeth sputtering in anger.
"Die in the deep, Strongheart!" roared Rimon from his quarterdeck. "You're our meat dead or alive! Helmsman, hard a port.'"
Roaring a war cry, Rimon's corsairs braced their feet as the helmsman spun the wheel. Shoved by rudder and wind, the corsairs' carrack jumped through the water and pounced on the Conch, slamming her so hard sailors were jolted off their feet. Two corsair officers called "Loose!" and a cloud of crossbow quarrels flew from Drumfish to stipple the wood and a few Conchers. In the corsair's waist, Drumfishers shoved for elbowroom to lay out grapnels and chains that would bind the two ships for boarding.
Yet a curious sight gave the raiders pause. For along the amidships of Conch suddenly rose a yellowed sail like a theater curtain in reverse. Cleated to a spare yardarm and jerry-rigged blocks-and-tackle, the sail zipped upward and was quickly lashed in place by Adira's crew.