[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.
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