In the last moments he ordered a turn to better match the brig’s trajectory, to lessen the impact. The Ballan leaned to the effort of this, but when the two boats collided the force was something beyond the young captain’s imaginings. The sound was horrendous, as was the wrenching pressure of the impact. Men pitched all about the boat as the deck leaned over to one side. A shoulder of water rose up and swept across them, taking two men away as it drained. The small fires sputtered and hissed and flared to life again. Spratling had managed to get out the order to release the nail before he went careening across the deck on his back. The great arm of the thing tilted into motion quite slowly, falling with its own momentum. Spratling, watching it from where he lay tangled against the railing, drenched and gasping, thought sure the mechanism had jammed in some way. It was falling too slowly. It might not even carry through the wood of the other ship.
But the weapon found its weight and speed. The steel point of the thing crashed through the other ship’s deck. The sectional design of it worked perfectly, bending so that the point dug deep and then flexed the instant the weight of the two ships tugged on it. It tossed up fractured beams on either side of the impact and punched a hole that sucked several of the brig’s men into it. The hook tore a jagged trench of splintering decking and beams in the brig as it carried on forward. It yanked the Ballan, and for a few moments Spratling could not get words out of his throat. They were like a pilot fish fastened precariously to an angry whale. He felt the iron point catching on crossbeams, felt them snapping under the force, one after another. Several of the crossbowmen were crushed between the two boats; the others all but gave up their attack and scrambled backward from their nests. All fine, except the nail was not going to hold! If it did not, they might well capsize from the jolt of coming unstuck and in the turmoil of waves and currents in the brig’s wake.
Spratling made out Nineas’s voice, asking him what they should do. Had he orders? He did not, but fortunately his momentary blankness was to go unnoticed. The nail finally caught and held fast. The Ballan seemed to find some amount of peace with its new position and steadied enough so that the men could get their feet under themselves again. A few faces turned to find Spratling, who shot to his feet. The next order was obvious.
“Board!” he yelled. “Board, board, board!”
Their clamber up the planking was mad and precarious, only manageable at all because they did not think it through. Spratling, like the rest of them, just acted. He ran, clawed, jumped, all so fast it passed in a trembling, jolting blur. It was startling to plant his feet upon the deck of the brig. Everything in sight was layered in a thick, slick white paint, just as the sides were. It coated each contour and protrusion as if the whole vessel had been dunked in wax and hung to dry. Spratling and the men tumbling aboard all around him stopped in their tracks, bewildered by the strange appearance of it. But this did not last long. They had business to attend to. There were sailors coming toward them. Bolts scorched through the air all around them. The sound of clashing swords already struck music into the din. It was likely to be bloody for a few moments at least, but such was raiders’ work.
Three days later Spratling strode up from the docks, his feet crunching on the crushed white shells of the path into the raiders’ town they called Palishdock. He walked at the vanguard of a growing crowd of people, his crew chief among them but swelled each step of the way as others joined them. Children clamored and exclaimed and shouted questions. Even the town’s dogs could not contain their enthusiasm. Their proud son had returned triumphant, with booty to benefit them all! Spratling could not keep the grin from his face. Small, ragtag company of persons and animals that this was, still it pleased him to stand at the center of their adoration, to be important, loved, to see the faces of young women flushed and admiring him. Such a role in many ways came easily to him, but he did not take it for granted. He strove daily to earn it and to make Dovian proud. In this way he was still a boy and Dovian a father figure larger even than his weighty frame.
Palishdock had not begun as a permanent settlement. Though it was six years old now, one could see a transient laziness in the shoddy construction of the huts. They were breezy structures set into the knobs and hollows of the sandy landscape, with gaps in the boards and simple palm-frond roofs. The walls were often little more than a screen thrown up to provide shaded semiprivacy. Many people cooked on open fires outside their homes, leaving the scraps for the dogs and the thronging population of cats. The town had about it a casual air, as if the whole place might be abandoned at a whim if the mess became unbearable or their fortunes faltered. Of course, it did have a wonderful harbor. It was a little shallow but soft-bottomed, with a single narrow entry point that was barely visible from the sea due to the rippling shape of the shoreline and the camouflage of the high dunes. Indeed, the whole town sat sequestered from view. Only smoke might have given them away, but the hard wood of the shrubs that grew all about the island burned cleanly. Few passing on the sea would have thought the white vapors above the place anything other than a peculiar blanket of haze. It was a perfect raiders’ retreat.
It had been Spratling’s home since its founding, an event which he remembered well. He stood-a child still-at Dovian’s hip when the big man looked about the harbor, grinning, declaring that this was it, this was just the place for them, hidden from the world and a fine location to get at the business of raiding and profiteering, kidnapping and whatever other forms of thievery struck their fancy. He had said it could be so, and with the boy at his side, he had fashioned a world to live up to those dreams.
Leaving the jubilant crowd in the courtyard of Dovian’s Palace, where Nineas and the younger crew members could spin the grand tale of their capture of a league brig, Spratling ventured inside. He carried with him a single narrow box of ornate gold. Dovian’s Palace was not, of course, an actual palace. It was a rambling hodgepodge of rooms and corridors only marginally better constructed than the huts of the village. Here and there beams and planks and sometimes entire sections of captured vessels had been used in the construction. The walls were hung with emblems, with nameplates and various samples of rigging, souvenirs won over the years. More than anything, the place resembled a labyrinthine fort best suited to boyish games of hide and seek, pirate’s eye, and thump the tail. Spratling had played all these games and more in these corridors, never loving them more than in the days when Dovian was still up and about on his feet, nimble despite his size, as willing to run and play as any boy.
Spratling knocked on the doorframe of the man’s room with his foot. Hearing the invitation to enter, the young man did so. There was no light except for that slipping through the numerous cracks in the walls and ceiling, but as his eyes adjusted, this proved sufficient to see by. Dovian was just where he had been for several months now, when he had taken sick with a pain deep in his bones, a cough that racked his chest, and limbs that were tingly and numb. His bed stretched along the far wall, and his form lay on it, a great mound of humanity propped up by feather pillows nearly flattened by his weight. His face was in shadow, but Spratling knew the man’s eyes were on him.
The young captain stood at the edge of the room and recounted the details of the raid. He named the men who had been lost, saying a word of praise for each of them. He described the taking of the ship, the damage the Ballan suffered, the performance of the nail. It had worked well, he said, but they should put it on a different ship and probably use it only against smaller vessels. In truth, it had almost torn the Ballan to pieces. He described the brawl that took place on the brig’s glistening white deck and detailed the treasure they had found inside. By league standards the ship was empty, but their standards were out of all natural proportion. His men had stripped it of every gold fixture they could find, all the silver cutlery, the ornate mirrors, the woven rugs, carved furniture, beautiful glass lanterns: all the trappings normal to a league vessel. Also, they had found a safe room and coerced the captain into opening it. He must have thought it was empty, because he seemed surprised to find a small shoebox-sized chest of league coins in it, the same chest Spratling now held in his two hands.