Jedit

Chapter 11

With homes and shops and ships in danger, the coasters quit the riot and surged out the door yelling. Two drunkards tumbled into the drink. Men in the whaleboats, with sailors' instinctive terror of fire, fumbled oars to row free of the warehouse.

Shouts rocketed up and down the docks. "Fire in Noah's warehouse! And Heta's loft! Call out the bucket brigade!"

Adira cocked an ear and immediately heard a spine-chilling crackling and muffled roar. She imagined heat licking at her neck and stifled a panicked urge to leap from the boat, even into the bay, to get clear. Docks, boats, and chandlers' supplies, layered with paint and varnish and tar and dried years in the sun, burned more brightly than any forest.

"Adira!" Simone pointed toward the bay. With the whale-boats gone, the way was clear. "Shall we scull out?"

Adira Strongheart bit her lip for just a second. Years of pirating and captaining had honed her wits razor-sharp. She could shift course like a jackrabbit when needed, and she did so now.

"Belay! Dock us! Aye, and be quick! Dump your weapons and tail on! And fish out those two drunken fools before they drown!"

Within seconds, and without understanding, Adira's crew found themselves dashing into a smoky street toward the very crowd that had pursued them. Teams of townsmen had formed a bucket brigade while others fetched giant firehooks: long poles with iron ends used to pull down burning buildings before the tire spread. They attacked the warehouse next door. Engulfed in flames, three walls were etched in stark yellow. Curling smoke vomited from ragged holes in the roof. Cedar shakes broke free to rain like autumn leaves or else skid into the water with hisses like snakes. Sparks spat and danced and flitted on an on-shore breeze. Already the warehouse Adira had commandeered was charred on one side and roof. As flaming debris spun into the bay, dinghies and smacks, piles of cordage and lobster traps, nets and sails strung to dry, all were dappled with hungry orange flames.

"They'll lose half the town!" cried Sister Wilemina.

"Someone set that fire to cook us!" gasped Murdoch.

"Best grab our horses and go!" yelled Simone. "We shan't get another chance!"

"Nay." Skidding to a halt on boot heels, Adira tolled off. "Virgil, you're hurt. Sit and stay put. Jedit, accompany me. The rest of you, help fight the fire. Make sure the locals see you do it. Tell 'em you're pirates, even. This is our chance to mend fences and learn a thing or two."

"Or fry!" countered Simone, her black face shining with sweat from the fierce heat.

"That too. Go!" Taking her own advice, Adira got busy with Jedit trotting after her like an overgrown puppy.

Pirates lurched from crisis to crisis on land and sea. Acting on Adira's daring orders, the Circle of Seven split up and plunged into firefighting, jostling elbow-deep amid locals who only moments before had been hot to hang them.

With a hunter's stealth, Heath slithered into a crowd grappling a twenty-foot firehook. People skidded in mud trying to manhandle the long hook through the air and let it fall amidst the burning rafters of a boathouse. Jumping high and grabbing the sooty shaft, Heath whirled off his cloak and flipped it underfoot for traction.

He yelled, "Come, friends! Doff your jackets! That's it! All together, set your feet! Prop the butt! Ready? Then let fall and pull!" With a few coordinated yanks, charred rafters broke. Fiery debris cascaded into the building in gouts of sparks. Townsfolk grinned as the grimy Heath called and joked and helped them work together. Within fifteen minutes, the fire-hook shaft had burned through, but the boathouse was a pile of burning rubble safely collapsed into its cellar.

Reckless as a rooster, Simone the Siren dashed through a crowd and ran what looked like the wrong way. Over her shoulder she asked if Jasmine Boreal could swim. Of course, the druid replied, and before she knew it she was bounding along a springy floating wharf where dinghies, prams, and pinnaces were jammed thick as cockleshells. Fishermen and sailors shouted as they shoved the boats clear before the pier could Liurn. Stealing oars from a rack, Simone and Jasmine hopped into a rain-washed pram and rowed furiously. Now Jasmine saw what busy others had missed. Freak eddies of wind had carried sparks to one of three fishing smacks moored together. A sail left drooping to dry had ignited. Ugly black rings ate into faded canvas. Bumping the boat's side, Simone boosted the lean strawberry-blonde aboard just as the sail caught fire. Drawing cutlass and knife, Simone slashed furiously at burning canvas.

Adira's lieutenant ordered the druid, "Draw aft the staysail sheet and cast off the port running rigging!"

The terms were gibberish to the woods-lover, but between them they severed the proper lines. Freed, the burning sail flapped once like a dragon's tongue, then flopped into the harbor and sizzled to extinction. Simone bowed theatrically to sailors sculling out in prams, making sure they knew who'd saved their vessels. She clapped the druid's shoulder with a sooty hand.

"Kiss the wind, Jasmine! You're a sailor!"

Despite valiant teamwork, the warehouse fires spread as the afternoon wind freshened. Sparks fanned across the seaport. Boats, shops, and cottages were in danger. Everyone turned out for the alarm. Men formed bucket brigades and scooped water from the bay. Crews jogged hither and yon with firehooks to rip flat flaming buildings. Mothers bearing babies strapped to their backs directed children with wet brooms to swat sparks. Two sober centaurs, one with a bandaged jaw, manhandled cauldrons to pitch gallons of water at burning houses. In the harbor, barbarians were given axes and mallets to smash the planks of burning boats, so they sank in great geysers of steam. Dwarves scaled rooftops to stamp out fires or rip loose burning shingles with axes and mattocks.

Through the long chaotic day, Adira's crew worked hardest both to fight the fire and to be seen fighting it. Used to high rigging, Virgil teetered atop a ladder to pour bucket after bucket through a charred hole in the tavern roof. Lieutenant Peregrine barked orders in parade-ground tones, shepherding volunteers to break doors and make sure no one was trapped in dead-end alleys or between buildings while flames skipped from roof to roof.

Throughout, Captain Adira Strongheart watched people as much as the fires, so she often spotted potential disaster first. Late in the day, Jedit Ojanen labored to upend a hogshead to pour water into the first floor of a burning house. Whistledove helped by scaling a hot roof like a squirrel and spying through eye-smarting smoke with her superior vision. She jolted as Adira shouted to descend while snagging Jedit's elbow.

"Forget that! Someone's trapped on the docks!" ~ Racing past people running every which way, Adira led brownie and tiger near a warehouse that burned so furiously it distorted the overcast sky in wavy ripples. Skidding to a halt, Adira squatted and pointed below the smoke. Through squirming haze the mismatched pair saw shapes dance at the end of a distant pier.

"See 'em?" demanded Adira. "These blokes attacked the fire from the harbor end but flubbed it. Their boat's adrift, and they're trapped, and the building's an inferno. We must- Where are you bound?"

Leaving humans dizzy with his power and speed, Jedit Ojanen made three mighty bounds and arced into the harbor. A geyser blew as the tiger crashed underwater, then greasy waves churned as he swam for the pier. Firelight from the flaming warehouse glistened on his orange-black hide until he seemed some elemental composed of living flames and roiling water. Sparks and flaming chips spattered around him, hissing like vipers. Adira and Whistledove and some coasters watched, helpless and awed, as Jedit Ojanen cut the water like a shark, reached the tarry pilings, and climbed from the deep streaming water like a sea monster or sea god.

Through rippling smoke, Adira saw the tiger address the four trapped townies, three men and a woman.

Whistledove asked, "Why don't they swim?"

"Many can't," said Adira. "Probably the others won't desert him or her."

A fat man and woman obviously couldn't swim, for both protested with upraised hands, hoping for a boat rescue. Jedit Ojanen solved the problem handily. Grabbing with claw-sheathed paws, the tiger-man hoisted the tubby man and lobbed him shrieking into the harbor. He said something to the woman, and she gamely jumped after, as did the other two. Last to leap, Jedit dived and burst free of the water like a tiger shark with the spluttering fat man and woman in tow. Jedit let them lock arms around his neck. Still treading water despite their weight, Jedit beckoned the last two swimmers to latch onto the fat man, for the water was paralyzingly cold. Then, with inhuman strength and despite the deathgrips throttling him, Jedit twisted like an eel and stroked outward toward open water, away from the dire flames. Soon he reached a sturdy fishing boat. Paddling, clinging with iron claws, Jedit hung slack while the humans climbed his huge frame to get aboard. When all were safe, Jedit clambered aboard, shed gallons of water by shaking like a dog, then turned toward shore. Spotting Adira and Whistledove, the tiger saluted, grinning so white fangs shone.

Laughing, the two pirates waved back.

Adira crowed, "Love of Lustra! Had I a hundred tigerfolk in my crew, I'd usurp Johan's throne and become empress of Jamuraa myself!"

"… So, humbly, we thank you for most dire-needed aid. Know you carry the gratitude of all the good citizens of Buzzard's Bay in your bosom."

Night was full on. The dark sky loomed without stars or moons, so rings of torches illuminated the impromptu ceremony. Plenty of scrap wood lay about to be kindled. The wind off the bay was brisk, but none of the locals seemed to notice.

The speaker was a lean man in oyster-white robes with an enameled blue medallion of stars hanging on his breast. His white wreath of hair and beard accentuated his angelic appearance, an oddity in a town of burly fishermen and loggers, but one callused hand sported four crooked fingers broken long-ago in some mishap. He was Bardolph, a cleric of the Holy Nimbus, acting spokesman for Buzzard's Bay, for the sheriff was incapacitated, and their only other authority was a once-a-summer folkmoot.

"You're welcome. We were glad to help." Adira's hair and face and clothes were smudged with ashes, and she reeked like a campfire, but she was happy because her charges had fought the fire bravely and won over the townsfolk, and a daring captain loved to see a crazy scheme succeed. Her Circle of Seven attended her, some proud, some embarrassed. All chugged beer handed 'round by a tavernkeeper who'd rolled up a keg on a barrow. Throats were parched from eating smoke.

Adira slurped and said, "We never sought trouble. Rather we hunt Johan, Tyrant of Tirras, who is our enemy."

Adira let the name hang in the air. She'd thrown all her dice on this calculated gamble. Sooner or later Buzzard's Bay would learn why the pirates had come. Best get it out while half the town was assembled and grateful.

"Johan is Emperor of the Northern Realms, as you must know," announced Adira. "What you don't know is that we hail from Palmyra, the first obstacle crushed under his boot on the march into the sands of the Sukurvia. Our alliance of southerners opposed him until a sandstorm smothered them. Yet Johan crawled out of some hole and escaped, and he still sows mischief. We want to stop him. For that, we need your help."

Buzzing murmurs. Adira watched faces closely. Anger and regret glowered, but none was directed at her.

''We know Johan," said the priest. He pitched his voice high as if preaching. "He enslaves our mountain kinsmen. We saw signs of the great sandstorm. Even here the sky was dark for days. Sand rained on the Blue Mountains to the east, an event never witnessed. Though many of our cousins died, we blame not you, but Johan. He is evil incarnate. Destruction follows in his wake as death and despair trail a dragon."

"This is Johan's work." Adira nodded at the charred and ruined warehouses and ships. "Or that of his agents."

The crowd rustled at the word "agents."

Virgil muttered to the Circle, "Destruction follows in our wake, too."

Simone jabbed his ribs.

With half a town listening raptly, Adira told how Johan had escaped east and found "this child of the forest," meaning

Jedit, which drew a laugh. Laughter died as Palmyra's mayor recounted the savagery that ravaged her marketplace.

Throat raspy and seared, Adira finished, "We tracked Johan here, only to learn he killed a kindly old sage named Hebe."

"We imagine it was he," corrected Bardolph the cleric. "No one witnessed his crime. Among our kind, only a confession or two witnesses can sink a criminal."

"Johan killed her, Bardolph." A broad-chested man with a yellow-gray beard had eyes and face red from fighting fires. "We all know it, even if we can't prove it. No one else had reason. Hebe was poor as a mouse and harmless and well liked. Ofttimes she tended ailments for no pay when the fishing was poor. The murderer had to be Johan, a stranger wreaking havoc and hate. But I want to know why he killed her."

"I can't say for certain," returned Adira, "except Johan dislikes leaving witnesses alive. Most likely Johan asked Hebe some questions, since she's local, and he doesn't know the region. We don't know what the tyrant seeks or where he goes, but both must link to magic. Hebe was a spellcaster, but only a small sage, you say, so it's unlikely Johan needed sorcery. That leaves only local knowledge. What might be Johan's destination that relates to magic?"

"Which way did he go?" asked a woman in a thick, soot-stained shawl. "Someone had to see the tyrant leave town. He rode in a sedan chair, and we don't see many of them! And he had that big crowd to feed!"

Murmurs drifted through the crowd. Heads were scratched. With Bardolph moderating, people came forward to offer facts. A vintner sold Johan's scribe three casks of wine. Johan's dotty old seer bought new shoes. The barbarian bearers had purchased a peck of oysters. As hours of testimony and debate dragged, Adira Strongheart gritted her teeth and stifled the urge to scream over dreary details. She was relieved that Johan had not booked passage or bought a ship. If the cruel tyrant sailed into the sunset, he might as well visit the Mist Moon for all Adira could find him.

Then someone mumbled that Johan's party vanished.

"Vanished?" blurted Adira. "How so?"

"Dunno." A blond, beardless lad was reluctant to speak. "I saw them quit the Dandysprat. The barbarians scooched, so the master might mount the chair. I thought it a powerful queer time to be departin', for t'was after midnight. Where could they walk by night? But the bald man waved a hand and off they trotted. South. Johan craned his head around like a vulture, but he didn't see me in the shadows. Lucky, I was, I know now! Then he twinkled his fingers, an' the whole party disappeared!"

"Invisible," said Adira, who possessed that trick herself.

"Yes, cap'n. Must'a been."

"South, they turned?" Musing, Adira faced that way. Night cloaked the coast, but Adira had seen that a rugged rise verged on a high plain, then trees.

She asked, "Are there roads along the coast through the forest?"

"We only venture south in ships," said a dark-tanned woman. "Precious little beachhead exists along the Storm Coast. Not till you round Sheep's Head."

Past that bald knob, the shore veered east to become the Craggy Coast on the way to Bryce.

"There's ox-paths for logging, but they dead-end," said a logger. "They don't like us venturing too deep."

"'They'?" Adira wished she could throttle these slow-speaking folk and shake out quicker answers.

"The people of the pines," said a lithe woman in furs with the look of a scout. "They don't welcome trespassers. They allow some logging, for they like coin to buy our iron and brassware. Too, they barter furs. But they ain't friendly about it."

"Arboria," put in Bardolph, "so they name the pinelands.

A mysterious clan. They've reappeared these past three years. For decades before they were gone."

"Where?" asked Jasmine Boreal, a wanderer of the woods. "Why disappear for decades, then come back?"

"And what," asked Adira, "could Johan seek in the depths of a dismal forest?"

Fear skittered on the night wind. People stared at the ground. Puzzled, Adira repeated the question.

With a pained sigh, the cleric Bardolph admitted, "Legend speaks of… an undying mage who inhabits a castle in the forest."

"Name?" prompted Adira.

More gloom. Bardolph shook his head. "We dare not invoke her name. The less said, the better. But be warned. She's capable of greater evil than Johan can conceive."

"She?" Adira waited, but no one sullied the silence. Finally she sighed and rubbed her smudged nose. She craved a solid meal, a bath, and a day's sleep, but likely she'd get none. Pondering the sparse news, she mentally shrugged. Many mages were undying or very old. Johan was centuries old, by all accounts. Yet he'd been bested by a ragtag army and Hazezon Tamar's sorcery.

For just a moment, the pirate queen's thoughts drifted to her ex'husband. She wondered what Haz was doing now and how he might have aided her quest. Mostly she wondered how two people so in love couldn't live together. Their marriage-had had to end peaceably before it erupted in blood. Still…

"Dira?" Simone the Siren touched her chief's elbow.

"What? Oh. Bless me, I'm luffing." Adira's apology made the Circle glance about in amazement. "It makes sense. Johan would visit a local mage to learn about another mage living in the nearby forest, then he'd kill the informant to cover his tracks. He hired agents to slow us further."

"Oh, yes," said Bardolph. "You mentioned agents before. Do you suspect someone in Buzzard's Bay stirred up strife?"

"I know it," said the pirate chief. "Meaning no offense, but one minute I was talking to your sheriff civil as I might, and the next some fluff sparkled in the air. Everyone turned ugly and riotous, including my crew, and here we be."

"Oy, I remember!" A lean man in the crowd rose on tiptoe to peer around. "It was Darswin and his gang shouting you down. Queer, them talking like patriots being offended. None of them wastrels was ever civic-minded. The whole bunch needs a good hanging."

A woman bleated, "I saw Darswin and one of his brigands duck into Noah's warehouse just before the fire! I thought they was pilfering."

"They must'a fired Noah's warehouse to kill the strangers!" bawled a man. "That arsonous son of a-"

"Find the bastards!" rose a chorus. "Find Darswin and his cronies! Scour the town! Find 'em!"

Roaring, coasters fanned out through dark streets. They left no door closed, no barrel standing, no shed unexplored. In the meantime Adira and her crew accepted Bardolph's invitation to sup in his small rectory. Slabs of coarse black bread and cheese were washed down with more beer. While Adira questioned Bardolph about forest lore, Jasmine Boreal and Whistledove Kithkin sat rapt. Virgil and Wilemina and others dozed off, Murdoch actually standing upright. The halloo of the hunt, like a pack of dogs chasing a scent, seemed to echo off the surrounding mountains.

Adira and Bardolph halted as halloos turned to cheers. Bardolph sighed. "Our quarry is treed. I must preside at their last sunset."

With pirates tagging along, the cleric paced sedately to the far end of Seafarers' Quay where most of the town congregated. Big men stood over three quailing suspects who had been shoved to their knees with hands bound behind. The criminals bore black eyes and bloody noses. Adira's pirates felt no pity, having fought fires that claimed half the shorefront.

Unfolding hands from his sleeves, Bardolph asked mildly, "Have they confessed?"

"They have," boomed a man. "They wanted to unchain their souls before they died. Darswin was recruited by Johan's huntsman and instructed by the high lord himself. They was to stir up strife and get these newcomers killed. They squealed like rats in the bilges."

Bardolph nodded. "It's a shameful life you've led, Darswin, and doubly a crime for roping your friends into assassination. We are all born free under the skies, masters of our fate. You three chose the twisted path to the end of this dock."

The ominous words hushed the crowd. Adira's pirates wished they were elsewhere, but they burned with curiosity. The crowd parted. Sailors bore rolls of canvas like rugs. Darswin began to curse and another thug to sob. The criminals' bonds were cut, but a dozen strong hands mashed each flat on an unfurled canvas: an ancient linen sail. Still pinned, the felons were rolled over and over, swaddled so tight only their heads and feet stuck out. A sailmaker ripped a scrap from the edge and tied a stout knot around the wrapped men. All in silence.

"By the light of the Holy Nimbus," intoned Bardolph, "the ever-shining star that guides us home, I charge you three to change your ways and return better beings. Now go, washed free of all sorrows."

"Return from where?" whispered Virgil, but was shushed.

Solemnly three men hefted each swaddled offender, swung them thrice without counting aloud, and pitched them off the docks. Darswin shrieked as he hit the water with a great splash that scared cormorants and gulls off the water. The trio sank in a light froth of bubbles.

One big-bearded man dusted his hands. Gruff, to cover emotion, he said, "That's that. No use dallying here. Let's get those burnt timbers cleared away." Quietly the crowd trickled into the night.

Adira Strongheart and her crew stood gawking at the bay and the grisly execution.

Gently Bardolph explained, "Thus is always our way. Offenders are cast into the sea to begin life anew. Thus we speak of their future return."

"In the meantime," said Simone in a hushed voice, "they feed crabs and lobsters."

Bardolph nodded sadly. "The current is swift. Things on the bottom are swept out to sea. But you're right. No one in Buzzard's Bay eats shellfish. We chuck those to hogs."

"We sail on the tide. Our ship's the Conch of Corns, wherever that is. The master seems to know his stuff."

On the third floor of the Adventurers' Guildhall, Adira Strongheart and her crew packed bags and tied blanket rolls. Sister Wilemina, lacking her butchered braids, sat on a stool while Jasmine used borrowed scissors to trim her hair by her ears. Whistledove Kithkin stitched armholes in a newly bought sheepskin vest. Other preparations bustled.

Adira aired new knowledge and future plans to her lieutenant, Simone. "Just as well we hoist anchor. Our honeymoon as heroes will end soon. Some loudmouths will tar us with the same brush as Johan, claiming half the docks were burnt because of us. My, how fish blow bubbles! Never mind. I spent the night with Bardolph — "

"We know," interjected Simone with a grin.

"— trading tales over mugs. The man's closed as a clam, but I oiled his hinges with brandy. We seek Fulmar's Fort, which is a jumble of rocks above a swift river sixteen leagues south. Follow that inland to find the castle. Some folk visit the place, it might be. According to Bardolph, four times in the last three years a ship from the far west debarked men with a yellow cast to their faces. They don't say much and always march south at first light. Dock workers think they're foreign mercenaries. Where they go is a guess, but most reckon it's the castle."

"Can we beach at this pile of rocks?" As Adira's lieutenant, Simone often had to carry out impossible orders. "What of these pine people? Will they let us pass? Will they demand a tariff? How much?"

Adira flicked a callused hand. "None knows for sure. The pine people were gone for decades, then suddenly were back, lurking in the forest and taking trade goods for timber rights. Elders remembered their claim to the forest and respected it- mostly. One rough-cut logger said he'd be damned if he'd pay for trees and went in cutting where he willed. His whole crew was lost."

"Bonny." Simone the Siren lashed her oilskin jacket over her leather rucksack. "If we get past these murderous tree-toads, what then? Waltz up to this hag-mage's door and demand she hand Johan over for punishment?"

"Cheer up." Adira slung her saddlebags over her shoulder. "We might drown in a storm."

"Better than being ensorcelled into swine." Simone hefted her bag to go. "Did you pry out the name of our new enemy-to-be?"

"Oh, aye, but not till very late." Adira lowered her voice, for some of Bardolph's trepidation had carried with the name. "It's-Shauku."

"Hire a horse and ride 'round. Gather a crew. Have 'em fetch enough gear for a fortnight and bring all their cutting tools."

Captain Rimon, with a forked blond beard, was a big man who looked bigger in a quilted coat that stretched to his knees and a vest of mink with the fur turned inward. His vest was smattered with mackerel scales, but now he picked up a chip of cordwood to scrape them off. His audience was a fisherman with a crooked nose, sometimes his sailing master. This tiny cottage perched on rocks at the north of Buzzard's Bay, where many fisherman made their homes. A fishwife stood by her hearth not speaking, nor did she offer Rimon refreshment.

"Thank the Sea King that bald outlander washed up at our shore," Rimon went on. "No more fishin' for us. Once we sink Adira Strongheart, we'll split a goodly treasure, for she won't travel without one. With her breathing on the bottom, we'll be famous up and down the Storm Coast as folks to fear and can stick to corsairin' year round." He used the local polite term for pirating.

"If," said the sailing master.

"We'll sink her," insisted Rimon. "It's folks spreading stories that make her out a bold sea captain. She don't know nothin' about broaching the Storm Coast. We'll snare her like a duckhawk takes a duck. 'Sides, I got this."

The captain displayed a small nautilus shell hardly bigger than a walnut painted with black lacquer. The opening was sealed with wax.

"What's it do?" asked Crooked-Nose.

Rimon didn't know, so hedged. "It's powerful magic, be sure o' that. Now get gone. I'll see Drumfish outfitted. Tell the crew to be aboard by dawn."

Rimon tromped out in sea boots, letting in a gust of wind. The corsair with the crooked nose opened a chest to pack his spare shirts and stockings.

He asked his wife, "Where's Matty? It's time that boy learned real sailing. Sharin' treasure will see us through the winter."

"You'll not take Matty on this voyage." The fishwife's tight lips suggested no compromise. "Coin' to corsair is bad enough, but goin' after the woman Strongheart is plain foolish."

Crooked-Nose frowned. "It's just made-up stories they tell 'bout her. I never believe a tenth what I hear 'bout anyone."

"Neither do I," retorted the wife, "but if even a tenth of what's touted about Strongheart is true, she'll break Drumfish in half and hang Rimon's head from her spritchains-and yours too."