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
