CHAPTER
The brig was going to run aground at full speed. It was right up against the reef, so close to it that the ship cut diagonally through the waves as they started to curl, teetering from one side to the other like an inebriated monstrosity. Spratling could see it all perfectly from the small platform that served as the Ballan’s crow’s nest. He was about to watch as the prize he had been chasing for four days had its hull ripped out and its bounty spilled into the sea. He would have a bird’s view of it, and he would have to tell Dovian all about it when he returned empty-handed. Do something, he thought. Bloody do something, you fools! I haven’t chased you all this way just to-
The old pilot, Nineas, shouted up at him. The veteran sailor had a way of making his voice heard no matter the circumstances. “They’re tacking back toward us! Spratling! You still want me to hold?”
The young captain yelled back that of course they should hold! Of course! Their quarry was a league vessel, not one of their large open ocean crafts, but still a catch of enormous value. It was one of the brigs they used to transport their senior members from the coastline out to their platform base, a floating city anchored to the ocean floor about a hundred miles northwest of the Outer Isles. Normally, the brigs traveled within the shelter of several warships, each of these manned with soldiers of the league’s private military force, the Ishtat Inspectorate. Had it carried one of their board members, it would likely have borne riches unfathomable to a Sea Isle raider like Spratling. But it would have been impossible to get near without a fleet of ships. No one had ever even tried such an attack. This one, however, sailed all but empty by league standards, with no senior member aboard and not enough trade goods to merit deploying the Ishtat.
Spratling knew this because one of Dovian’s spies, a so-called shifter, a master of disguise who had infiltrated the dockworkers of the league’s coastal base, had sworn this vessel was likely to be the only vulnerable one they would see the rest of the year. The message had arrived the night before the brig sailed, but Dovian was confident they could act on it. With his blessing, Spratling had sailed the next morning. The Ballan was a slim clipper meant for speed, with a tall mainmast and light construction. It was not a warship by any reasonable standard. Because of this, the brig had likely disregarded them the first day they trailed her. They might have noticed the strange contraption lashed to the ship’s bow, a sort of iron-backed series of connected planks tilted up on a large, reinforced hinge. At the top of it, projecting forward, was a hooked metal barb, treacherous looking at over seven feet long, sharp at the end, and as thick around as an arm for most of its length. It looked like a gangway that could be set down across a pier and hooked into place if the ship was to be unloaded over the bow, which would have been useful in the busier ports of the Inner Sea. But the purpose of the contraption was not nearly so benign, as Spratling hoped to prove. It was his design, after all. His “nail,” as he liked to call it.
They had followed the brig through the Shallows and along the chain of islands that marked the best route through the Outer Isles. There had been other ships around, and Spratling had no desire that his attack be observed. He sailed casually, stopping at several harbors as if to trade and then using the Ballan’s superior speed to make up time. It was always easy to spot the brig, as its sides were a brilliant white, luminous and unnatural to behold.
By the third day the brig had grown wary. It increased its pace, all sails unfurled, but it was not until the morning of the fourth day that the Ballan chased the other ship to the brink of the shoals of one of the small atolls at the northern edge of the Outer Isles. The horizon was empty all about them, and Spratling let it be known this was the day. They would have the ship’s treasures today or not at all. They pursued them with the wind at their backs. Speed was theirs, but it was no easy task maneuvering into position to use the nail. But then the brig careened around on a tack back from the reef, directly into their angle of sail. The captain must have known the reef better than Spratling imagined, but no matter. The angle of attack was finally right.
Though he hollered at the top of his lungs, he was not at all sure that they would hear him on the deck far below. With the whip of the wind and the spray flying up from the prow his words likely darted away into the sea vapors. Afraid lest his pilot choose from timidness to adjust his course, Spratling grabbed for the rope that stretched down from below the nest all the way to the deck. He wore the fingerless gloves he had adapted to this purpose in boyhood, during his first years at sea. He clamped onto the rope with a two-handed grip, his fingers interlacing over one another, and then he leaped free. He zipped down toward the deck with his usual dizzying speed, and was standing beside Nineas a moment later.
“Don’t you even think about changing course!” he bellowed into the man’s ear. “Steady on to meet them.” He raised his voice even louder and projected it forward across the deck, which was crowded with his men, burly-armed raiders of various races, each with his own proclivities, his own chosen weapons, his own grievances and desires and reasons for having chosen a life of plunder. Slim and of medium build as he was, face handsome and boyish, muscles those of casual, easy youth, Spratling hardly looked man enough to direct this company. And yet, neither could he have looked more comfortable in the role. He spoke with ironic cordiality. “Everything as we planned, gentlemen. Everything as planned, and nothing before I shout the signals.”
The prow of the brig dwarfed the Ballan’s crisp lines. It shoved its way through the water like a buxom barmaid through a drunken sea. It was so very white it did not look to be made of wood at all, though it had to be. Wire-framed posts bulged from the side of the brig in two lines, one row on the upper deck and one on the lower. They were just the size and shape to cradle the upper half of a man’s body as he leaned out over the water. Crossbowmen squirmed into them and let loose an instant barrage of bolts. This was a weak defense considering what a fully manned league brig was capable of. There would have been two or three times the number of bowmen on a properly defended ship. Still, the missiles were smeared with a flammable pitch. Something in the mechanism of releasing them sparked them to flame. The ones that hit the Ballan’s side or deck or darted into the sails burned with an undousable flame. The best the Ballan’s men could do was to use shovels to knock the bolts loose, scoop them and the pitch up, and hurl them overboard. This attack had been expected.
The two ships carried on with their trajectory of collision. So near were they now, the Ballan’s speed seemed obscene, reckless. Spratling almost called for the wing sails to be furled, but there was not time. One of them had taken a bolt low, and the flames had already eaten a sizable hole in it anyway. Instead, he yelled to the men operating the nail, “Be ready! Await my word!” Watching the distance between the two vessels close, he added almost as an afterthought, “Men about the deck, you might want to grip something.”