Duglin strained as he, Tash, and Elran heaved the pinnace off the rocky shore and into the uncomfortably warm water. Hurnie was sitting at the prow with Marsel, aiming his primed pistol square at her chest. The small vessel was heavily laden with filled barrels of water, and unlike the Vesper’s launch, she possessed a mast which had been dismantled on this occasion.
“Alright, get in, you lot,” Hurnie said while keeping his pistol trained on Marsel. He glanced at his ship, the Nomad that was resting at anchor two cables further out into the bay.
Duglin spied a man on the quarterdeck watching them as they climbed onto the pinnace. However, there was no indication, no shout or ringing of bells to alert the rest of the crew.
“Pick up and oar and row us over,” Hurnie ordered. “You, boy, you take the tiller. The big woman and the slave can row.”
Elran blanched at being called a slave, but the doctor held his tongue and obediently picked an oar up. Duglin’s heart was pounding as they began to row. As he steered the pinnace towards the Nomad, he saw the cannons gleaming from the gunports. By his best guess, there were eighteen guns on board in all, the smallest of which dwarfed the Vesper’s four puny six pound gun, her cargo notwithstanding.
As passed under the bow of the Imperial frigate, Marsel and Tash exchanged looks, and the sailmaker spoke. “Say, what’s your Captain like?”
Their captor broke into a relaxed grin. “You’ll find out soon enough, little missy.”
“What’s an Imperial ship doing all the way out here?” Tash piped up.
Hurnie’s eyes turned cold. “You just focus on rowing.”
The man had only taken his eyes off Marsel for a moment, but a moment was all she needed. The young woman grabbed the man’s pistol, jamming her finger under the finger. As they struggled, Tash and Elran darted forward and joined the fray. The commotion caused the heavily laden pinnace to rock violently, obliging Duglin to stay where he was, and attempt to counter the rocking by shifting his weight.
The scuffle was brief, and Tash soon hurled their captor overboard. The man surfaced quickly sputtering, and Duglin felt a pit of ice form in his stomach when he saw the pistol in his hand. Hurnie levelled his weapon at Duglin, who was the closest to him and pulled the trigger. The boy closed his eyes and heard a loud click. When he opened them again, he saw the Imperial cursing at his waterlogged weapon.
“Come on, let’s get out of here!” Tash cried as they manned the oars once again.
“Where do we go?” Duglin gasped. Everything had happened so quickly, and he could scarcely understand what was going on. “Back to shore?”
Tash shook her head. “We’re going out to sea.”
“But what about that?” Duglin asked as they passed under the heavy guns on the ship’s broadside. “We won’t survive a hit from those cannons!”
“Hopefully, by the time they realize their man’s gone for a swim, we’ll be under her stern,” Tash said. “There isn’t much space in this bay, so they won’t be turning in a hurry without help from their launch.”
“Good thing it’s in safe hands, then,” Elran grinned.
“We still have to worry about their stern cannons,” Marsel warned as she made her way to the back of their vessel. “Raise the mast, I’ll steer.”
Duglin rushed to obey and kept a wary eye on the frigate as he assembled the mast. It had been dismantled in a way that made it quick to deploy the sail, if necessary, which helped, but it was in reality still a two man job, and Duglin was unfamiliar with the rigging and took a moment to understand how it worked.
“Hurry up,” Tash warned as a bell began to sound on the Nomad.
They passed under the stern and saw men looking at them, agog through the windows of the great cabin.
“We need to get out of musket range quickly!” Tash cried as Duglin hurriedly raised the mast. “Turn us into the wind!”
“I can’t,” Marsel said as she looked over at the Nomad’s stern. “See those two windows? Those are the gunports. They don’t have a shot on us so long as we stay on this angle.”
“I see guns!” Duglin warned as men armed with muskets ran past the gunports. “What do I do?”
“Help us row!” Elran bellowed.
Duglin heard loud cracks as he picked up an oar. Splashes of water nearby marked where the shots landed. They were dangerously close.
“Keep your heads down!” Tash cried.
“Maybe we should lighten our load!” Elran suggested as he glanced at the six filled water barrels.
“We can’t stop to wrestle them off,” Tash replied. “Besides, we need the water!”
Her sentence was punctuated by a roar of thunder as the Nomad fired one of her stern cannons. A gout of water erupted twenty yards to their left, showering them in warm, stinking seawater.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
“That was close!” Elran yelped, giving Marsel a concerned look.
“That was as close as they will get unless…”
“Unless what?” Duglin cried after Marsel’s voice trailed off.
“Unless they pull in their anchors to turn their ship,” Tash answered.
The muscular woman stopped rowing for a moment to check the wind and then began hoisting the sail.
“Wait!” Marsel cried.
“We’ll have to outmanoeuvre them!” Tash yelled back.
The pinnace lurched as the wind gathered in her sails. Tash ordered her oars shipped as she took over at the tiller and the others could only look over their shoulders anxiously as the Vesper’s helmswoman took them on a course that would carry them across the Nomad’s stern.
There was another roar of thunder as the Imperial frigate’s other cannon fired. Tash had anticipated this and altered course abruptly, throwing her crewmates about. The cannon shot passed dangerously close, and Duglin felt a rush of air as it whistled just ten yards shy of their vessel. Tash’s violent manoeuvre caused a filled water barrel to oscillate dangerously, and Duglin and Elran managed to steady it before it tipped over.
Duglin looked ahead and saw an opening in the reef. He then looked back over his shoulder at the Nomad. There was a gout of flame followed by a puff of smoke as the first stern cannon fired again. This shot splashed into the sea thirty yards to their right.
“Bloody good crew to fire off a second shot that quickly,” Marsel breathed. “The good news is, I believe that’s as far as they can angle their cannon.”
The Nomad’s crew continued firing their muskets, but the pinnace was well out of range by now, and Duglin watched, relieved, as the shots fell into the sea, well behind them. Soon, they stopped firing, and Tash frowned.
“I don’t like it,” she frowned.
On deck, Duglin could see the sailors scurrying about on the quarterdeck. Meanwhile, Erlan slumped over with his back against a gunwale. “Maybe they decided they were just wasting gunpowder.”
“They’re up to something,” Duglin warned.
“Well, it scarcely matters,” Tash said as the distance between their vessel and the Nomad steadily increased. The open waters of the sea beckoned from beyond the reef up ahead.
Marsel raised a hand to shield her eyes from the sun. A moment later, she exclaimed. “Tash, hard to port!”
The boat rocked as Tash turned the tiller hard over before asking. “Why? We’re almost out!”
A loud boom answered her question, followed by a crash. Elran cried out in pain as a filled water barrel landed on his outstretched leg, spilling its contents all over the boat.
“Bail that out!” Tash cried as she rolled the rapidly emptying barrel off the doctor’s leg.
“But Elran!” Duglin protested as he began scooping the fresh water up in a bucket and tossing it over the side.
“The doctor will have to wait!” Tash exclaimed. “We’ll capsize if we go out into open seas with all that water sloshing about!”
She then turned to Marsel. “What was that?”
Marsel held up a hand, and the pinnace’s occupants fell silent when they became aware of a whistling sound fast approaching them. Duglin looked to the sky and felt a pit of ice appear in his stomach when he saw a black ball plummeting from the sky.
“Mortar!” Tash cried as another boom echoed from the Nomad’s quarterdeck.
Moments later, the first shot impacted the sea just yards ahead of their prow, showering them with seawater.
“Start rowing, start rowing!” Tash roared as their boat foundered from the sudden turn. Elran tore his attention from his leg and gritted his teeth from the pain as he repositioned himself.
On Tash’s orders, Duglin began rowing from the left while Marsel helped Elran on the right. The wind picked up again, and the pinnace picked up speed towards the gap. Then came a third roar from the Nomad as she fired her mortar again.
“Here it comes!” Marsel cried. “Take cover, this one is going to be close!”
The occupants of the pinnace ducked their heads. Their small vessel rocked violently as the shot plunged into the water less than five feet to her left.
“Row! Row for your lives!” Tash cried as they bobbed in the water, tossed about by the violent ripples the shot had created.
There was no fourth shot even after the third shot fell well short of their vessel, but none on board could relax. The Imperial vessel could well still be hiding a few tricks up its sleeve. The Vesper’s shore party eyed it warily as they rounded the reef and sailed along its outer circumference.
“How is it, doctor?”
Elran gingerly touched his leg and sucked in his breath suddenly. “I’d say it''s fractured at the very least…”
“What do we do now?” Duglin asked as he looked to the sky.
“We find the Vesper, Tash said.
“But we haven’t found the second beacon,” Duglin pointed out.
Tash shrugged. “At least we have fresh water and now know we’ve caught up with the Imperials.”
“They won’t be leaving that bay in a hurry without their launch,” Marsel remarked.
“And what about ours?” Duglin asked.
“We’ll have to leave it behind,” Tash replied. “We can’t risk going back for it.”
“It’s lucky we have a replacement,” Duglin offered as he went through the lockers under the seats. He frowned when he pulled out a small canvas bag.
“That’s a medical pouch,” Elran said. “Good find, Duglin. Could you hand it to me, please?”
The doctor opened the pouch and grunted. “It seems that this vessel is called the Vagabond.”
Tash made a face. “We’ll have to rename it.”
“Why didn’t our old launch have a name?” Duglin wondered.
“Because we lost so many for one reason or another that we just gave up on naming them,” Tash grinned.
The light was beginning to wane when Marsel spotted the Vesper on the horizon. They had circumnavigated the island and seen no sign of the second beacon through the hazy skies. Their ship had been wary when they first spotted them, not recognizing the pinnace, but the confusion was cleared up soon enough, and the crew who had remained behind lined the deck as the shore party rowed their vessel alongside.
“We’ve brought water,” Tash declared to cheers from the crew.
“My eyes must be playing tricks on me because that doesn’t look like our launch,” Inder observed as the crew prepared to winch the barrels on board.
“Courtesy of the Empire,” Marsel called up softly from the pinnace, mindful of their passengers. The mood on board turned sober almost at once.
“I’m afraid we didn’t sight the second beacon either,” Elran added. The doctor’s leg was in a splint. The wound had not broken the skin, but his exposed leg now had an ugly purple black weal on it.
“So, you bumped into the Nomad, and stole their launch,” Firch remarked.
“In essence,” Tash said. “We’ll give you our report later.”
Firch nodded and turned to Raimala. “It looks like we’ll have to go by dead reckoning. Are you up to it?”
The pilot offered her Captain a feeble smile. “It’s not as though we have a choice, do we?”
“I’ll help where I can, but dead reckoning was never a strong suit of mine,” Firch said.
“Can we sail around the island so I can be sure of our bearings?” she asked.
Firch looked down at the launch at Marsel, who had been listening. The young woman shook her head. “Even without the help of a launch, that Imperial Captain will be out of the bay by now if he knows what he’s doing. He could be lying in wait.”
“Or departing for our silver mine under full sail,” Firch said. “We did well to catch up to them, but let’s not let our hard work go to waste now, do we?”