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[continuing chapter 2]"They won't be able to outrun us,"
One-Eyed Lum said to Wen. Today the eye
patch was over his left eye, for the second consecutive day. Wen had given up trying to get a comprehensible
answer from the mate as to why he wore the eye patch at all, much less why it
seemed to move about. "We're
between them and deep water," Lum said, nodding in the direction of the
cargo ship that Jade Maiden was
chasing. The ship was a fuchuan, a high-prowed, sharp-keeled
three-master designed for long, deep-water voyages. As with all the Chinese vessels encountered
in the waters off Fusang, its design was hundreds of years old and had never
altered. "If they try to increase
speed this close to shore, they'll end up on the rocks. They know it, too. Only a matter of time, now."
Wen felt an unhappy tightness in his throat and bowels, the
sort of feeling he had often had when about to break into a house whose empty
status he'd been unable to confirm. I
could use some reassurance, he thought.
But the ancestors, who made such a point of hounding him when he wanted
to be alone, had ignored him all day. It
was as if their primary concern was with making him suffer, and if Chin Gwai—Wen
was beginning to think he'd made a serious mistake in joining the rebel's band—was
prepared to be the agent of Wen's suffering they were happy to take a break
from tormenting. "Will they just
give up, then?" he asked Lum.
"I know I would."
"If they were wise they would. But they're probably not that wise, or they
wouldn't be carrying the sort of cargo they're carrying, and they definitely
wouldn't be carrying it through these waters."
"What's on that ship?"
"Rice."
"You're joking.
This is all about rice?" Wen
looked at One Eyed Lum. He saw no
evidence of joking.
"When was the last time you ate rice?" Lum asked.
"I've never had rice.
Have you?" Fusang was, for
the most part, a dry place. Rice was
hard to grow here, and irrigating the fields required a combination of
hydraulic engineering and Daoist manipulation of nature that was in short
supply.
"A couple of times," Lum said. "After taking prizes like this one. It's not fair, Chin says, that only the
nobles and senior administrators are allowed to eat rice. That's one of the things he wants to change
when he becomes emperor."
"How does he propose to grow more rice?" Wen
asked.
"What?"
"Oh, never mind."
Wen looked at the cargo ship, which they most definitely were coming
closer to. "Rather tall, isn't
she? We'll have to climb."
"Almost always do," Lum said. "It's all right, Wen. The sorts of archers they hire on those ships
are far worse at it even than you. We
almost never lose men boarding ships."
"Only when you're on them, then."
"Right."
Lum smiled. "You're better
off not thinking about that, though.
Just do your job and try to stay out of Chin's way."
"Believe me," Wen said, "you have nothing to
worry about from me." I intend to
stay out of everyone's way, if I can possibly help it.
The archers on the cargo ship were every bit as bad as Lum
had said, possibly worse. They began
loosing arrows while Jade Maiden was
still several hundred feet away, and other than one or two that lodged in the
bamboo sails not one arrow hit anything that wasn't water. By the time the Maiden's crew had lashed the two ships together, the opposing
archers were out of ammunition, and Chin hadn't had to fire a shot from his
cannon or his bomb-launcher. Wen
understood the impulse behind that: a damaged ship was worth less than one
still intact.
Shouting what he hoped were bloodthirsty words of
encouragement, Wen rushed to the rope
ladders that had been shot into the side of the cargo ship's hull. Then he took great care to help the other men
up onto the ladders; only when the last of them had scampered up did Wen begin
to climb.
To his considerable surprise Wen saw that most of the cargo
ship's crew had clustered near the bow, having dropped whatever weapons they
were carrying. The only fighting that
was happening was near the entrance to the big cabin at the stern, where a
small group of armored men stood in a rough semi-circle before the cabin
doors. Only those members of the Jade Maiden's crew who likewise wore
armor had engaged the soldiers, and the combat consisted of little more than
one man smashing another's armor with a sword, accepting a return blow and then
trying again. Mah the Knife, he thought,
would be disgusted if he could see this.
Chin should have been able to make short work of the
soldiers—he was easily half again as tall as most of them—but Wen couldn't see
him at first. It was only when he
listened carefully that he was able to locate the general, by the
bellowing. Chin, it turned out, was
pinned, spread-eagled, to the main mast up at the top spar of the bamboo
sail. He was howling with a mix of rage
and frustration; the only word Wen could clearly make out was
"Liang"; Chin was calling for his Daoist sage to help get him down. Liang Sheng was nowhere to be found,
though. Probably hiding in the Maiden's hold, Wen thought, and if he is
he's smarter than I first gave him credit for.
What, Wen wondered, was in the cabin that required soldiers,
and probably a Daoist adept, to guard it?
Presumably the rice was in the hold.
"Hey," he said to one of the rebels, like him standing and
watching the fight. "Do you suppose
we could get around those people and try to find another way into the
cabin?"
"Are you crazy?" the man said. Then, after a pause during which he appeared
to be thinking, he said, "Oh, all right.
This isn't going to end anytime soon anyway."
A moment later Wen had gathered a group of four, including a
bemused One-Eyed Lum, and they were pulling themselves along the side of the
ship, using ropes and grapnels. They
reached the stern without finding another way in, but there were windows facing
back from the rear of the cabin, and those were easily big enough to allow a
man inside. "That's perfect,"
one of the men said, throwing his hook up so that it neatly wrapped itself
around the railing and one of the flagpoles at the top of the cabin. Swinging out and around, he quickly climbed
up the rear of the cabin and reached one of the windows. Opening it, he crawled inside.
Then he reappeared.
Flying rapidly backward.
The man flew a good thirty feet before suddenly plummeting
into the sea. Wen cursed; hanging from
his own rope he was completely at the mercy of whoever or whatever had just
blown his shipmate into the ocean.
"What now?" Lum asked.
Wen held on, thinking. Definitely
a Daoist adept in there, he decided.
"I recommend trying another window," Wen
said. "If we all go up to separate
windows, whatever or whoever is in there can't possibly get all of
us." He scrambled up the back of
the cabin before his brain could point out the logical fallacy of assuming that
something or someone that could blast a man thirty feet through the air would
automatically be susceptible to attack from more than one direction. When he reached an as-yet closed window he waited. Only when the other three men had joined him,
each at his own window, did Wen crack open the window immediately above him.
The windows all opened into a single, large cabin. Tables suggested that this was where the
important passengers and officers ate and relaxed; it was a very nicely
appointed cabin.
It was also empty.
Something made Wen look up, and he saw... feet. Small feet, wearing very expensive
slippers. There was an open hatch or
skylight overhead, and the feet hovered, some ten feet above him and above the
top of the cabin. And above the feet was
a young boy—no, a woman, but dressed as a boy.
She was floating in mid-air, her tunic swirling around her as the wind
played with it, and as Wen stared she gestured with her hands and someone out
on deck howled.
They do have an adept, Wen thought. A female adept. I thought female adepts only existed in
legends of the Daoist Immortals.
An arrow halted abruptly, a mere hand-span from the woman's
head. She said something—her voice was
pleasantly musical, or at least he assumed it would be were she not cursing—and
the arrow dropped. Somebody howled
again.
What in the world have they got in here that's so important
they'd recruit a girl to guard it? Wen asked himself. After a moment he felt himself grinning: it
didn't matter what it was; the mere fact that its owners wanted to protect it
this badly made him want it all the more.
Wen heard a soft sound and looked down to see that the
others had got into the cabin and were, like him, staring up at the woman. Shushing them, he crept back to the window,
leaned out and unhooked his grapnel from the cabin's frame. Returning to stand directly under the woman, Wen hefted the grapnel. It was undoubtedly too heavy, but in a crisis
you used what you had to. He swung the
grapnel in a tight vertical circle to build up momentum, then let it fly
straight up. As the grapnel fell back
toward him one of its spines snagged on the back of the woman's tunic. Wen pulled the rope, hard.
"Oof!"
Evidently, the woman's magic only worked when she was aware of an
incoming attack. Suddenly no longer
floating, she dropped down.
Into Wen's arms.
The two collapsed to the floor. Wen smelled sandalwood, and then he was aware
of nothing for an instant.
When he was back in the world, he heard laughter and an
angry young woman trying to shout something.
He sat up. The woman had been
tied up and a cloth stuffed into her mouth.
Whatever magic she could do was evidently triggered by word or gesture,
because now she seemed quite helpless.
And afraid.
Next Prologue Chapter 1 Chapter 2
