“He’ll be fine. Complains that his arm hurts more now that it’s healing than it did when he was shot.” Alli squinted at the city. “How is Mage Asha doing?”
“Half of her is a glorious tapestry of blacks and blues,” Mari said. “She must hurt every time she breathes. But not a word of complaint. The healers say she’s doing well, but it’ll be a while before her ribs mend.”
“I had no idea Mages were so tough,” Alli said. “Hey, what’s that?”
Mari had spotted it too and was focusing on the distant activity. “People running to some boats. I think I see sun glinting off weapons. They’re pushing off from the pier. One… two… three. Three boats. All three are raising sails.”
“These are ugly-type pirates, right?” Alli asked. “Not nice daughter-of-Jules pirates like us?”
“That’s what I understand,” Mari said. “Do you have to keep using that word?”
“Yes. Yes, I do. Is there any chance we could just wait here until those three boats catch us and then show them how bad a mistake they’ve made?”
Mari stopped to think, lowering the far-seers and gazing at the sad remnants of Minut. “That’s tempting. I’ve noticed something, Alli. Whenever something is tempting, it turns out to be something I shouldn’t have done or tried to do.”
“How can it be wrong to take out those pirates?” Alli asked.
“I don’t know. But it would be… well, we’d kill them, right? Not because we had to, but because we wanted to. We can get away from them easily enough. If we wait here just to kill them when they get close…” Mari shook her head. “It feels wrong.”
Alli gave her a searching glance. “You’ve got a good feel for that sort of thing, Mari. Maybe sometimes when your gut tells you something is wrong, what it’s really saying is that something is more dangerous than it looks.”
“That could be,” Mari said.
The Gray Lady shifted course, swinging closer to the Pride. Mari saw the Lady’s captain raise a speaking trumpet to his mouth. “Those boats are bait!” he yelled across to the Pride. “I was warned of this. They’ll provoke us with crossbow fire in hopes we’ll chase them and end up closer to shore. They’ll prolong the chase until the sun sets, then under cover of the dark many of their friends will swarm out in other boats to overwhelm our crews.”
“It’s amazing what you can learn in waterfront bars,” Alli commented. “Maybe I should spend more time in them.”
“You’re joking, right?” Mari said as she waved an acknowledgement to the Lady’s captain.
“We’re all pirates, aren’t we? And I know Calu would love to show off his scar and boast about it. Aye, there we were at Edinton, dragons on all sides and assassins charging from the front. I’ll hold them off, I said, while the rest of you get to the ships with the loot.”
“Aye, the spirit of Jules was with us that day!” Mari said, and laughed. “Let’s hope that spirit is also with us at Pacta Servanda. Jules managed to found a city and help cobble together the Confederation. We’re going to need those kinds of skills.”
She stayed at the rail for some time after Alli went below decks. She watched the pirate craft come closer, loose a few crossbow bolts at long range, then lose ground increasingly as the Gray Lady, the Pride of Longfalls, the Worthy Son, and the Dolphin put on more sail and left the pirates of Minut in their wakes.
Three days later the small fleet arrived off the town of Pacta Servanda. Mari saw everyone on the ships staring at the land of Tiae as the ships wore into the small harbor. For as long as she could remember Tiae had been the Broken Kingdom, a place of anarchy and violence. Like everyone else on the four ships, Mari had never expected to see Tiae, let alone choose to go there.
She raised her far-seers, spotting the green and gold banner of Tiae still flying over the town. “Our information was correct. Pacta Servanda still considers itself to be part of the kingdom.”
“A kingdom that no longer exists except for this town,” Captain Banda commented. “What is happening there on the left?”
Mari swung her far-seers to view that part of the defensive wall. Pacta Servanda occupied a small peninsula which both shaped the town’s harbor and limited the land approaches to the town. The wall guarding the town was still intact, but where Banda had indicated Mari could see a mass of armed fighters surging at its base, trying to put up ladders that would get them to the top. Behind them a single ballista was hurling rocks against the city and the wall. “Pacta Servanda is under attack,” Mari said.
Captain Banda had been studying the situation through his far-seers as well, and now shook his head. “There aren’t nearly as many defenders on that wall as there are attackers trying to get in. It looks bad.”
Alain declined Mari’s offer of her far-seers as he always did, having a Mage’s discomfort with Mechanic devices, instead shading his eyes to view what he could from this distance. “We may have arrived just in time.”
Mari took another look at the battle, and at the attackers in a variety of cast-off armor and clothing swarming at the walls. This was no army deserving of the name. One of the warlords who had caused so much suffering in Tiae was trying to extinguish the last vestige of the kingdom. “Or we may have arrived just too late.”
Chapter Thirteen
“We have a hundred soldiers with Major Sima,” Mari said. “If we send them into the city to reinforce the walls… what?”
Alain shook his head. “The people here know nothing of us. If they see us landing soldiers on the waterfront, they will assume we are also attacking the town.”
Captain Banda nodded in agreement. “And if they think they need to defend the waterfront, they’ll strip some troops from the walls, weakening their defenses there and possibly ensuring the city falls.”
“We’ve got to do something!” Mari said. “We can’t just sit here and watch that town fall because we didn’t arrive a half-day earlier!”
“We have the Pride’s deck gun,” Captain Banda said. “It’s a light-caliber weapon, but still ought to impress anyone we fire on.”
“Your gun has enough range to reach the attackers?” Mari asked hopefully.
“We’ll have to get closer to ensure accuracy, but yes.” Banda grimaced apologetically. “We are low on shells, though. The Guild has allowed us only ten rounds.”
“Ten?” Mari felt like yelling in frustration. “If the Senior Mechanics were going to pay to put a light gun on this ship, why wouldn’t they pay the much smaller sums to provide it with a decent amount of ammunition! What else can we do? Alain, can you or the other Mages do anything without getting close to the fight?”
Alain frowned in thought. “We are still on the water and have access to little power to change the world illusion… An illusion. That is something that can be done without the use of Mages. We do not have enough soldiers to assault those who are attacking the town. But the attackers do not know that. If the ship Dolphin moves as if preparing to land soldiers outside the town, and our soldiers are seen on the deck, it will look to anyone watching as if we are readying a powerful strike against those attacking the walls.”
Calu had joined them, his arm still bandaged. He nodded. “They’ll have to break off the attack. Have the Pride’s gun go after that ballista first, and if we knock it out drop some shells on the guys just outside the walls.”
The Pride and the Dolphin moved slowly closer to the coast, feeling their way through an unfamiliar harbor, while Mari tried not to scream with frustration at how long it was taking. She kept hauling out her far-seers to check on the defense of the town, seeing the thin ranks of those on the wall repeatedly throwing back attempts by their attackers to reach the top.