Jedit

Chapter 10

"Must everything in this port stink of cold fish?" Jasmine sniffed her arms and a hank of hair. "I reek offish!"

Adira Strongheart, Jasmine Boreal, Simone the Siren, Sister Wilemina, Lieutenant Peregrine, and Whistledove Kithkin descended the wide stairs of the guildhall. Some tripped daintily while others clomped in sea boots. Despite a late night, the pirate chief had kicked all the women awake. Yawning, Wilemina tried to braid her hair and walk, and almost pitched down the stairs.

"What would you rather stink of?" Adira Strongheart scratched her unruly auburn curls and tied her green headband. In town she wore bangles at ears, wrists, and over her boots, so she jangled like a windchime. "Everyone in Palmyra smells like a camel, but if I've picked up fleas from bunking on the floor, blood'll run out the scuppers."

The Adventurer's Guild main floor was one big room crammed with scarred sturdy tables and benches. For the morning repast, a mix of fifty or more transients and locals slurped, dabbed, and chomped. This being a seaport that served all of Dominaria, every color of mankind was represented, and not all the sailors and travelers were human. A clutch of bearded dwarves gargled in low voices, a brace of barbarians gnawed brown bread with slack jaws, and two hangover centaurs at the bar quibbled in brays and snorts.

Adira braced the bar and plunked down a thick Brycer danat. "Breakfast for six, whate'er it be. And ale. Who's your guildmaster?"

Like most coasters, the barkeep was big and brawny from a lifetime diet of fresh fish and red meat.

Before answering the barkeep wadded a towel and lobbed it at a kitchen boy. "Go fetch Fedelm, will ye? I've somewhat to tell him." He then lifted a small scale to the bar top and proceeded to weigh Adira's silver and make change. "The guild-master eats at home because his wife don't trust my kitchen. Speaking of which, have you got a husband in port, sweetie, or are you still footloose?"

Adira ignored the come-on. Everywhere her mane of chestnut hair, striking beauty, and voluptuous curves, two bulging from her old shirt, drew men like bees to honey. She took three "fisheyes" in local coin and plunked on a bench with her female crew.

"What about the men?" asked Wilemina.

"What about them?" asked Adira, peeved.

"I mean, shall we send a boy to summon them?"

"Let the bastards starve."

Breakfast was fish chowder, black bread, wedges of cheese, and dark, foaming ale. The women dug in hungrily.

Lieutenant Peregrine had set her turbaned helmet on the bench. Her fair skin was tanned dark as mahogany from desert campaigning, a stark contrast to her fair, square-cut hair.

She mumbled, "If this is pirating, I can endure it. You lot eat right fine."

"You sound like Murdoch," snorted Adira. "He makes up for years of army chow by clearing the table at every meal. I'd think love of food made him join the Seven, but t'was Wilemina recruited him. Why Murdoch chases a virgin devoted to chastity fuddles me, but many things do."

Women chuckled as the archer blushed. Jasmine Boreal, not usually one to chatter, swallowed cheese and called down the table, "Is that true, Wilemina? You've no plans to drop your bow and don a veil?"

"Jasmine, I thought you fancied Heath," teased Peregrine. "While riding, your eyes bore holes in his back."

"Never!" snapped Jasmine, suddenly serious. "Who could fancy a man with a face like a corpse and hands like ice?"

"When have you felt his hands?" asked Whistledove, impishly.

"Take Murdoch or Heath, or both!" laughed Simone. "Wilemina sleeps with her bow!"

"Forswear demeaning gossip, if you please!" Embarrassed, Wilemina grew formal. "Everyone knows the tenets of Lady Caleria. To surrender our greatest treasure to carnal sensuality robs a warrior of skill in the hunt. Murdoch is well aware of my leanings."

"Just see he doesn't lean too far and tip you over," jibed Simone, and everyone laughed.

"Be you Adira Strongheart?" demanded a loud voice.

Calmly, Adira regarded a big-bellied man bearing an oak club. The weapon was substantial, for the thick head was drilled out and weighted with lead. Behind him waited two men just as big and also armed. A sheriff and his deputies.

Lithe and lethal, Adira slid off the bench to set her back against a post. Gently she shifted her cutlass scabbard jammed in her sash. Patrons of the bar watched the exchange, hoping for a fight. Simone nodded to the Seveners to mop their bowls and get clear of the table. When she stripped the bangles from her wrists, they knew a fight was brewing.

"I'm Captain Strongheart. Thirty-six days out of Palmyra, though we came overland. What is it?"

The sheriff's fat face, wreathed with a gray beard and framed by a brimmed leather hat, was stamped in an official frown. "What d'ya know about the death of our sage, a woman named Hebe, three days ago?"

"Not a damned thing," retorted the pirate chief, though she smelled trouble spelled Johan. Casting about for time, she asked, "Who are you?"

"Fedelm. Sheriff." He waggled his club, the badge of office. "Rumor has't you know somewhat of her death."

"Rumor has a big mouth but little brain." Adira was doubly irked that the barkeep had both cozened her and sicced the sheriff on her. The pirate queen watched idlers drift up to listen. So far, no one looked perturbed except the sheriff. To judge by hard looks, Fedelm was not popular.

Still, Adira ordered, "Simone, pipe grog, will you?"

A deputy clamped a hand on Simone's silk shoulder to keep her seated. The black pirate bumped the man back with her generous rump. Sashaying to the foot of the wide stairs, she shoved two fingers in her mouth and whistled "Grog call" loud and shrill.

In less than a minute, the stairwell resounded to clunks and clatters. Into the hall thumped the grizzled Virgil and natty Murdoch, both red-eyed, Heath, the pale archer, always with his ebony bow, and, ducking the lintel, the great orange-black tiger Jedit Ojanen. Many patrons goggled at the last. Once the bleary men saw Adira braced against a post by three bullies, their hands fell to swords and an axe. Onlookers backpedaled out of reach.

As tension crackled in the room, Adira raised a hand. "Back your sails, lubbers. Sheriff, I'm friendly as a fork-tailed mermaid, but if you don't claw off half a cable, we'll tangle spars."

"We'll fare worse than that!" The sheriff flaunted his authority before the audience. "You'll come quiet and answer our questions! Hebe was well-liked in this port, and whoe'er kilt her will sink for't, mark my words!"

"D'you hear your own blather, you slime-whiskered codfish?" Adira might warn her crew to stand easy, but a captain could indulge a temper. "You said this Whatsername was killed three days past! We just broached your headland yestereve! Look yonder! How many talking tigers does this town sport? Think we've waltzed around unnoticed for three days?"

Suddenly a man called from the back of the crowd, "Don't listen to her! Hebe was murdered by a black hand!"

"Magic murder!" called another spectator, very loud. "We had to bash the door to splinters! It was locked tight with magic!"

"Who speaks?" demanded Adira. "Show yourself, flap-lips!"

No one stepped forward. Some in the throng turned in curiosity as the first voice crowed, "Poor Hebe was poisoned and strangled, I heard!"

"And burned with acid or fire!" echoed the second. "Horrible way to die! Some bastard must pay with hands or head!"

"A good woman cut down in her prime!" came yet another voice. "One of our own venerable elders, beloved by everyone!"

"Belay that bilge!" Thinking fast, Adira couldn't decide whether to name Johan or not. Even pursuing him was dangerous, for strangers might condemn his enemies by association, and Adira hadn't yet gauged the town's loyalties. Buzzard's Bay verged on the Northern Realms, so the populace must know of Johan. The locals might loathe the tyrant or else encourage his southward conquest. Northerners had served in Johan's doomed army, and Adira had been instrumental in destroying them.

Now three begrudging loudmouths shifted position behind the crowd while trying to rouse it. Adira's anger evaporated as she smelled a trap. Why stir up trouble, unless…

"Round 'em up, Fedelm!" called a disguised voice. "Lock 'em up! We'll help corral 'em!"

"Thump "em!" urged someone unseen. "Bash their heads in! Make 'em pay for hurting Hebe!"

Adira's Circle of Seven had closed ranks around the table.

With a hand on his belted boarding axe, Virgil growled, "No one's locking me up!"

"Hush, you guppy!" snapped Adira. "Sheriff, let's step outside, free of these hecklers. We're plain innocent, but we can-What's this muck?"

Fluff like dandelion seeds floated above the crowd. People wrinkled noses, and a few sneezed as the thistledown bobbed in the air. Someone laughed.

Then came growls.

"It's not fit," carped a man who'd hitherto kept silent. "Strangers creeping into town and killing our folk!"

"Drive 'em out!" said a fishwife. "Whip 'em out of town!"

"A pox on all foreigners!" rasped a dwarf. "They don't belong in Buzzard's Bay!"

Adira and her Circle turned just as ugly and vulgar. Virgil shouted into a man's face while Simone shrilled blistering curses. Heath curdled his nose at being called "stinking baby-stealing elf-kin" by a fisherman. Peregrine tugged on her helmet only to have it slapped off. Sister Wilemina was grabbed by a braid.

The storm broke. Yelling "For Yerkoy!" Murdoch drew his broadsword and punched a man aside the head. Wilemina whipcracked her knuckles into a woman's nose. The knee-high Whistledove, fearful of being trodden, scaled a post like a monkey but was knocked off by a hurled beer mug. Simone the Siren snarled and flung mugs off the table, full or not, one, two, three. The air grew thick with flying furniture, mugs, weapons, fists, and a few people.

Adira Strongheart fought more fiercely than anyone. Gargling epithets, the pirate queen tilted on one leg like a stork and rammed her boot into the sheriff's fat gut. The man whooshed and collapsed like a punctured bladder, but his deputies waded in to swing leaded clubs at Adira. She snatched behind her back to grab her matched daggers but clutched them pommels down with the blades laid along her forearms. Quick as a cobra, she jumped at one deputy, landing inside his defenses, and hammered a dagger pommel between his eyes. Stunned and blinded, the man reeled backward, until someone jostled him into Adira. Tangled, she couldn't strike the other deputy, so instead she caught and propped the drooping deputy just as the second deputy swung. With a fearsome crunch, he walloped his companion's head. Adira leaned around the staggered man and shot out her right arm. A silver pommel bashed the deputy's jaw and clacked his teeth shut.

Yet despite her magically induced battle fury and so much noise it was impossible to think, Adira knew she'd been tricked somehow. These locals were not real enemies. Swearing, ducking to avoid flailing fists and knives, she shouted in her hurricane-besting bawl, "Seveners! Don't kill-uhh! — don't kill anyone! We're all bewitched!"

"What?" Furious but fuddled, Virgil knew enough to drop his fighting axe lest he split a skull. A blond bruiser with a doubly braided beard charged. The scruffy pirate snatched both braids and pulled as he raised his knee. Knee smashed nose, so blood gushed. Splashed with crimson, Virgil let go the squawling man and sought another victim. He found two who swung meaty fists and only dodged one. The other fist bowled him clean over a table, so he clattered amid fallen benches.

Lieutenant Peregrine had been trained to disperse crowds of surly citizens without doing harm, but since some of these bayfolk were kin, a family fight meant no holds barred. Mobbed from all sides, the officer hopped and caught a beam overhead, then drove both boots into faces. Landing in a cleared pocket, Peregrine rammed her thumbs into throats and eyes. Tipping a table, she tried to drag together a makeshift shield for Adira's crew to gather behind.

With everyone mad as wild bulls, Wilemina found her braids grabbed again and again, once so hard her neck popped with a white-hot jolt. Vowing to shave her head at first opportunity, the Calerian archer jabbed viciously with her ornate horn-and-ivory bow. She rammed a crotch and a brisket, got her hair free, then jolted the armpit of a grasping man. Braids whipping, she sought her companions and spotted Heath dodging and jabbing. Backing, she bumped rumps with the part-elf.

"Wait! It's Wilemina! I hope Adira has a plan to get us loose of these cretins!"

Heath grunted, too busy to answer.

Heeding Adira's orders, Simone whacked coastal heads with the battered cup guard of her cutlass. Two dull-witted barbarians bulled into her belly. The pirate was rammed rearward until her spine smacked the bar. Aching, with her kidneys crushed, pinned by a mountain of muscle, Simone hammered both hands on the duo to no effect. An iron-hard hand caught her wrist and cutlass and bent both cruelly against the bar to break or dislocate her arm. Cursing through gritted teeth, helpless, Simone gave up and relaxed, momentarily confusing her attacker, who fell back a hair. Instantly Simone jackknifed her knees into the air. Squirming a lopsided somersault, she skittered across the bar and tumbled behind it, wrenching her arm loose but losing her cutlass. Still, she was free. Seizing a keg slopping with ale, she hoisted it overhead, sousing herself with beer, then smashed the keg into staves and hoops over two blocky heads.

Jedit Ojanen saved Whistledove's life by brushing half a dozen coasters aside and scooping the brownie from the floor where she was in danger of being crushed under churning feet. The feisty fighter had tears of rage in her big eyes and her rapier out ready to sting. Jedit took it away and stuck it into a ceiling beam like a needle.

Above the noise, while flicking aside fists and daggers,

Jedit said, "Adira desires we not kill. Do you know why we fight at all?"

"Eh? Let me go! I want to hurt the bigfoots!"

Whistledove leaned from Jedit's arms and snagged a woman's ear to bite it. Jedit jostled her loose.

Whistledove panted, "What's wrong with you?"

Jedit asked himself the same question, not realizing he was immune to the prejudice-invoking charm blown about the room by Johan's hired agent. In fact, the tiger-man was the only being in the room not outraged. With wry bemusement he watched humans shout and mill and brawl, unsure if this was normal behavior. He decided to ask Adira for guidance, so flipped the brownie across his shoulders like a sheep, then waded through the mob.

A double drumming pricked Jedit's ears. The two centaurs galloped headlong down the room, heads ducked below the beams and heedless that they trampled fallen coasters. The dark-furred horse-men bore bruises and gashes from their scrap with the tiger not twelve hours past. Whether they were ensorcelled by the prejudice charm or just hung over didn't matter much, for they raced at Jedit with murder rimming their round black eyes. Weapons jingled from their harnesses, but they rushed with giant, four-fingered hands outstretched as if to tear the tiger between them like a chicken.

One bellowed as he charged, "Meat eater! This time we'll break your back and stomp your limbs to pulp!"

Whistledove bleated and leaped onto a ceiling beam. Jedit made no move except to push some coasters aside, then lazily half-turned and dropped one paw behind his hip.

As the centaurs thundered within arm's length, the tiger draxvled, "Pull dung carts, you cud cutters." He swung.

A fist big as a smoked ham whistled through the air and walloped the first centaur alongside his long jaw. Bones shattered as the horse-man was hoisted off all four hooves to crash into his partner. The building shook like an earthquake as tons of horse-human flesh crashed to the floor. Jedit overstepped the kicking, groaning tangle to again seek Adira Strongheart.

Swamped by brawling bodies, Jasmine the druid, never comfortable indoors, found herself stranded as a fish out of water. Desperately she ran down her mental list of spells. Nothing seemed useful. Cowering between the howling Murdoch and Virgil, Jasmine noted the Circle was being overrun by baymen with more spilling in the door. On such a bright morning, she thought, half the town might attack them…

"But we sit by the ocean!" she caroled alone.

Casting amid surging bodies, Jasmine ducked under Virgil's arms as he throttled a dwarf and splashed her hands in beer spilled on the floor. Rising to a crouch, Jasmine flicked her wet fingers at the ceiling three times, each time chanting, "Sav-be-gol, lav-be-nol, tel-be-tolloh!"

Nothing happened. The druid strained her eyes and wracked her brain, wondering how she'd flubbed the incantation. Then, slowly, the wooden ceiling was obscured. A cloud grew, mushrooming across the ceiling, then billowing downward. Jasmine grinned when the first wetness kissed her face. Already she couldn't see the tavern door. A few coasters noticed too. One shrieked in fright. Some raced out the mist-filled doorway.

Adira Strongheart wondered if she'd been thumped and rendered half-blind. Fog clung about her head. Even her own crew seemed ghostly just a few feet off. Cool air soothed her fiery brow and flushed away the last of the prejudice-invoking charm. The pirate queen could think clearly. Funny, though, that a fog should roll in at mid-morning.

A pair of beefy coasters still pressed Adira, one fencing with a long knife and the other plying a stool. Tired of fighting, Adira feared she must kill the coasters to stop them. Feigning a stumble, she lured the stool wielder close, then flicked her blade past the wood to pink his arm. As he yelped and dropped the stool, Adira caught and reversed it just in time to block the other's dagger. As the point thun-ked in wood, Adira twisted and plucked the weapon away. Two quick thumps with the stool laid the coasters at her feet.

Fog blanketed the room from end to end. Adira's breath frosted, and the clammy touch chilled her heated bosom. Only a dozen people were even in sight.

Huffing, dappled with dew, Adira called, "What a pea soup! Robars! Make ready to break free!"

"How?" called someone.

"Follow me," came a growl.

An orange-black nightmare loomed from the fog like a sea serpent. Jedit Ojanen laid gentle paws on two brawny coasters and heaved them a dozen feet to clatter amid spilled stools and benches. Between fog and fights sparked just among coasters, the pirates enjoyed a tiny respite.

"Follow you?" Adira's bosom heaved as anger surged anew. "Who in blazes elected you captain?"

"I only seek to help," rumbled the tiger. "Is that wrong?"

"Damn right it is!" rapped the pirate queen. "I give the orders, you numb furball! Step on my toes, and I'll carve out your liver! Robars, brace up! Jedit, grab a table and clear a path to the door!"

"Very well." Looking up, Jedit put out a paw and caught someone lurking in the dense fog. Whistledove Kithkin had skipped along ceiling beams to retrieve her rapier and find the pirates. Tucking the brownie on one shoulder, the tiger-man hefted a scarred table big as a coffin and marched for the door. Caught in swirling fog, Buzzard's Baymen and women were bowled aside like tenpins as the tiger bore down like a barge.

Cursing, Adira tugged her crew by sleeves, belts, and collars. Murdoch and Heath had to drag Virgil off the floor, for he'd been hammered from behind. Wilemina bit a man who'd slid his hand down the bodice of her leather vest. Jasmine broke a stoneware mug on his skull. Lagging and lurching like a batch of balky children, the Robaran Mercenaries blundered after the tiger's broad back and swinging tail.

Fourteen paces in blinding fog spilled them through a doorway into open air. Gasping, tugging clothes and tackle aright, mopping off blood and sweat and beer, the pirates blinked about, for even an overcast morning seemed eye-squintingly bright.

Adira cursed. Outside would prove as dangerous as inside. Dozens of bay folk had spilled outdoors to see the fracas. Bewitchments notwithstanding, their friends had been thumped by Adira's crew. Already some coasters pointed at the disheveled pirates.

"Have we a plan?" lisped Simone around a split lip.

"Aye!" blurted Adira. "Run like nine devils!"

"What in Stangg's benighted name happened back there?"

Murdoch puffed as he and Heath lugged Virgil, whose toes trailed furrows in mud. Jedit, still wearing Whistledove on his shoulders, picked up Virgil like a kitten. Trotting, they made better time as the crowd behind shouted.

"It was deuced strange!" chirped Wilemina. "One minute everyone's talking polite as you please, and the next we're all shouting and fighting!"

In a pack, Adira's crew jogged into narrow alleys between warehouses and boathouses. The high buildings gave them momentary cover, but Jasmine fretted, "We'll be trapped against the water!"

"That's what we want!" said Simone but shivered in the keen wind, for she was doused to the skin with beer.

Bangles at her booted ankles jangling, Adira Strongheart chivvied her underlings with a hard hand. Fortunately, only Virgil was knocked groggy, and they all had weapons.

"Hush, all! Let me think!" Adira blocked a mucky alley, cutlass at the ready. At the far end, fishermen and laborers pointed her way. She panted. "The room was hexed. Johan must've left agents behind to muddy waters against us. If we don't get a chance to talk, we might be lynched first and questioned later. These locals share more than a drop of berserker blood. Sheer aport!"

Past the warehouses they ran out of street. A corduroy wharf of pine slabs on mud gave way to ramshackle docks and piers in a ring. At midday, the fishing fleet was out, all the nearby slips bare. Farther out were moored deep-water vessels: south-sea luggers, carracks, and caravels like upturned shoes. A few nets lay idle, for fishermen repairing them had wandered up the street to see the fuss.

"Give me Palmyra," rasped Adira, "where citizens mind their own business! We need a boat, damn it!"

"There!" Sharp-eyed Heath pointed along the line of warehouses.

Adira ducked and glimpsed a rudder past big open doors. "That'll do! Get it! Fight if need be, but for love of Lustra don't kill anybody! I'm hoping we can talk our way off this lee shore!"

The tall buildings were of unpainted wood silvered by seasons of salt and rain. Adira's crew veered into the fourth. Larger than its neighbors, the combined warehouse and boat-house sported tall doors on the street but also a rear entrance that jutted over the water. The pirates clattered for it. Shouts behind gave them wings. Chestnut hair flying, cutlass flashing, Adira charged first.

The echoing space smelt of salt, fish, tar, hemp, and seaweed. A fishing smack with a lateen sail furled was dogged to bollards. One old sailor guarded a cargo of wall-eyed cod.

He goggled like the fish as the pirates stampeded toward him.

Adira hooked a callused thumb.

"Git."

He got, and Adira barred the streetside door.

The pirate queen's cutlass pointed around her Circle of Seven. "Heath, Murdoch, brace the door. Simone, Wil, cast off this pig-boat. Peregrine, Jasmine, pitch the cod overside."

Jedit still wore Whistledove on his shoulders while Virgil hung in his big paws like a dead skunk.

"Jedit, wrap Virg in a tarp to keep him warm, then hang back as reserves. Whistledove, watch Virgil. Weigh anchor!"

People scurried to posts.

•"Wait! I'm sick of being jerked in circles like a cow!" Pausing for a moment, Wilemina whipped a knife from her belt, tugged her flaxen braids out straight, hacked them off just above her ears, then tossed them in the greasy water. Belatedly she chirped, "How do I look?"

"Your head looks like a dog's hind end!" called Murdoch from the door.

The archer clapped both hands to her ragged scalp. "Call of Caleria, that bad?"

"I'll cut off your head!" Adira booted the skinny archer onto a heap of slimy cod. "Fish or chop bait!"

Simone whacked lines short with her cutlass rather than untie them. Beside her, Peregrine grimaced and chucked fish overboard with her bare hands.

The desert soldier asked, "What use is such a small boat?"

"It gains us the harbor!" snapped Simone.

"And then?" insisted Peregrine.

"We steal a ship! We're pirates, remember?" Adira hopped into the boat and popped an aft hatch. Needing light, she stroked one hand and barked, "Ai-siisc!" Her skin glowed with cold light like a firefly's. She stuck her head into the stinking bilge to see if the craft needed pumping.

Hollowly, she called, "Out there we'll have our pick of the fleet. I can sail anything with a keel below and rags aloft."

"What about our horses?" asked Jasmine. "Our blankets and saddlebags are still at the tavern!"

"If this town doesn't crucify us," Adira clapped shut the hatch, "I'll buy you new ones!"

"Ram!" Murdoch backpedaled from the door, sword in hand.

"Ram?" asked half a dozen voices.

BOOM.' The building rocked as the big wooden doors creaked inward. Coasters had fetched a timber log for a ram. At another bash, the pirates saw daylight peek through. The shouting of townies rose higher.

"You'd think folk could find other entertainment in a port this size." Simone the Siren slotted the rudder into its greased iron socket. "Why don't they take up dancing?"

"I can't cast half my spells without my potions and oddments!" Jasmine complained as she caught cod by their red gaping gills. "And druids don't go to sea!"

Adira dropped her cutlass and picked up an oar to lever against the dock. The smack eased from the dock, black water gapping. "First thing you learn in the Robars is to keep anything precious in your pockets. I've lost ten fortunes ten times from having to cut and run. Up gangplank!"

"Wait for me!" As the ram smashed the doors and the bar tore loose from its brackets, Murdoch jumped the intervening five feet and crashed atop Simone. Frantically pirates grabbed oars to paddle out of the boathouse into open water.

"Adira!" Whistledove again perched on Jedit's shoulders. The brownie pointed at the harbor. "Boats are coming our way!"

"What?" In two lithe bounds Adira leaped atop the furled yards, balanced as a tern. Just past two docks sculled two long whaleboats, rapid as water beetles. Evidently the fishermen had been signaled from shore by the crowd to block the outer passage.

Too busy to curse, Adira thought aloud. "And us back- asswards as a beached whale. Better afloat than marooned ashore. We'll ram and cut free with cutlasses. Make way! Out oars!"

"Adira." Useless on a boat, Jedit Ojanen stood in the bow out of the way. He crinkled his muzzle of orange, black, and white stripes, exposing long lethal fangs. Sniffing the air, he called, "You should know-"

"A-BOOM" With a hearty roar, the coasters shattered the big warehouse bar and doors with their ram. Rugged blond men and women spilled on their hands and knees. Others, some worse for drink, climbed over them to be heroes at the forefront of battle.

"Jedit, Murdoch, knock boarders into the water! The rest'a you, ply hooks and oars against the boats!"

The fishing smack had barely backed her stem into open water before an incoming whaleboat bumped noses. The jolt shocked the landlubbers to their knees. Seasoned sailors like Simone and Wilemina rammed boathooks into the bellies of careless fishermen, fending the wiser ones back. Meanwhile citizens of Buzzard's Bay surged along the wharf, looming over the pirates in the trapped smack. In the whaleboat, men shouted comrades to move aside. They hoisted rusty shark hook gaffs and tomahawks, then perched on whaleboat thwarts and gunnels, ready to jump aboard.

Boxed in at both ends, Adira Strongheart lifted her cutlass for all to see. "Avast! First one steps foot aboard my craft loses his lights! Hear me! We didn't come begging trouble, but we're ready to deal death unless you sheer off! Will you let me speak or stop steel with your guts?"

A tense silence strained the air. Men and women muttered, unwilling to take the first step. Some townsfolk whispered questions, trying to recall what started the trouble. Virgil came to, moaning and clutching his head.

In the stillness, Jedit's growly purr set hair tingling on arms and necks. "Adira, I wished to tell you, there's fire in the next building."

"Fire?" The bleat was immediately echoed in the street. "Fire! Fire on the docks! Fire!"