"Is everybody ready?" Wen paced the deck, feeling stupid at being so nervous, and wondering if this afflicted all captains, or only those who had suddenly discovered they were in too deep. "You all know what to do?"
"We know, Wen Xia." Yin Fengzi stepped in front of him. "It's not as if this is Beijing Opera we're performing here. Stop that pacing," she added as Wen tried to dodge around her, nearly colliding with the mainmast in the process, "or I will turn you into a carp and put you in a bucket until this over."
"This is going to work, isn't it?" One-Eyed Lum gazed miserably at the collection of half-barrels, bamboo tubes and pig intestines spread along one side-rail of the Jade Maiden. "That's a lot of our fresh water tied up in those barrels and—and sausage casings."
"We're not so far from Penglai, or even the coast, that we can't restock if this doesn't work. And it's going to work," Wen added hastily. It wasn't that sailors were superstitious, he'd decided. It was that they were too lazy to consider making any changes to an established routine. Clean the deck. Trim the sail. Chase down a ship. Slaughter the people aboard, losing several of your own in the process. Next day, or the day after, repeat. They just hadn't wanted to understand the plan he'd developed after his Dragon Emerald Eye had shown him the small coaster shortly after dawn.
"Remember, Lum," he said, "we want to stay on the landward side of her. We want her to be able to escape to deeper water if she decides to run for it."
"Remind me again of the why, captain."
"Because we are so confident of our ship and ourselves that we will spot them any advantage they want," Wen said, trying to hold on to a reserve of patience. "We want them thinking we're utterly unstoppable, so we don't care what they do."
"Even though we do care."
"Now you've got it!"
"No." Lum shook his head sadly. "No, I don't think I have."
"In that case, stop asking questions and just do what I say." Wen turned back to Fengzi. "You're only going to have one chance at this," he said.
"I told you before, I'm ready." She glared up at him, and her eyes reminded Wen far too much of the dragon's eyes. "And I can do what I have to and still have enough energy to give you scales, gills and a tail. Captain."
"All right, all right. I believe you." Wen walked back to the steersman. "Take us in close, but be ready to skip sideways if she turns out to have cannon." The helmsman, bless him, had no smart retort available, and so Wen felt himself free to leave the man to his duties. If this worked, within weeks—possibly days—the Jade Maiden and her new captain would have a splendid, if thoroughly unjustified, reputation for viciousness and bloodthirstiness up and down the Fusang coast. And perhaps he would still be able to raise the money he needed to save his father. Number One Grandfather had assured him that Father still lived, though Wen had got the impression that it wasn't much of a life, anymore. Still, he was grateful the ancestors had stayed away today. So far.
He walked forward, passing those members of the crew whose weapons had been slung over the side in nets, the better to be retrieved when the men went overboard and into the water, as planned. "You look good," he told them. "Very believable."
"I feel stupid," one of the men said. Mark that man for promotion, Wen thought. I want a man who'll talk back from time to time.
"You're supposed to feel stupid," he said. "Remember, you're imperial officials. Stupidity is your birthright."
At the bow he wedged himself in next to Foghorn. Foghorn was a short man—a lot of sailors were short, he'd noted—but with a chest broad enough for two sing-song girls to do a sword-dance on it. When he wasn't terrorizing the wicked, Foghorn's job was to pass the captain's orders to all hands, to hail passing ships and, where necessary and as his name implied, to identify the Jade Maiden's position in the unhoped-for event that she had to sail through fog.
"You're ready," he said to Foghorn.
"YES. Sorry; yes, captain. I'm worried about being able to remember everything you tell me, though."
"Don't worry. I'll keep my sentences short and pithy. The crew on our target have to be able to understand them, after all."
They were rapidly gaining on the coaster. It was a lot easier, Wen saw, when you weren't so worried about keeping position between the target and the rocky coast. He cast a glance shoreward; the Dragon Emerald Eye was pretty much useless for far-seeing over land, but it still worked as well as any human eye, and perhaps was a bit more acute. There was a village along the shore, and he could see a couple of poorly dressed soldiers—county militia, no doubt—assembled alongside the group of villagers who'd come to watch the show. Well, he thought, here's hoping we give 'em something to tell their grandkids. If only to scare 'em into behaving properly.
No comments:
Post a Comment