'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!'
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!'
