Quest for the Well of Souls

developed. The sun was still mostly obscured to the northeast, but it was possible to take a sextant reading. “Ship ho!” called a lookout from midway up the forward mast. Mavra and Joshi had the same thought: the pursuing Ambreza had been patrolling the edge of the fog, waiting for the inevitable emergence of the Toorine Trader.

They trimmed the sails until they were balanced against the strong southerly current and stood almost still in the water. Mavra and Joshi ran to the side and jumped up to the low ship’s rail. Their forelegs were near the top and they were almost vertical, supported by their hind legs. It wasn’t entirely comfortable, but it gave them vision.

Tbisi came up to them silently on his padded pipe-cleaner legs and looked out with them.

“A little ship,” he muttered. “A small black cutter. Fast, but no threat to us, I shouldn’t think.”

“Ambreza?” she asked nervously. Tbisi extended his long, impossibly thin neck and peered into the mists. “No, I think not. Not the kind of ship they use. Aluminum hull and armored, it looks like. The ship is Oglabanian— don’t ever see ’em over on the west side—but it’s been heavily modified. I’m afraid I don’t know exactly what it is.”

The small black ship suddenly seemed to explode in a series of bright, blue-white flashes.

“Signal to Trader!” yelled the lookout. “Stand to for board and search! They’re using standard customs codes, but it’s not a government ship for sure!”

The voice of the Trader’s strange captain came through its translator sounding like a cross between a foghorn and a steam whistle. “Board and search be damned!” it yelled. “Not my ship! Signal: We are in mutually neutral waters. Go about your own business.! ”

A huge lantern was mounted forward, filled with something that glowed brightly but didn’t melt the ulterior of the lamp. A weasellike creature perched to one side moved a lever back and forth several times, unmasking the forward section of the lamp and projecting a blazing glow into the haze. “Done, Captain!” it yelled.

The Trader waited tensely, wondering what the small cutter would do next.

Mavra, as tense as any, turned to Joshi. “You know, they could be the same ones who attacked us the other night. They must have come by ship—I bet that’s them.”

Joshi nodded without taking his eyes off the unknown ship. His throat was dry, and he could hear his heart pounding. An idle part of his brain hoped that his fear wasn’t all that apparent to Mavra; it never occurred to him for a second that she was feeling the same things.

“Cannoneers to station, pump ballast to port side,” the captain ordered. The crew was experienced; in short order the cannons were manned, loaded, the hatches through which they fired were lowered, and the cannons themselves were pushed up on small rails.

Joshi suddenly became disconcerted. “I think we’re sinking!” he exclaimed.

Tbisi laughed. “No, we carry large tanks of liquid as ballast and pump water into them selectively to balance the ship when we have an uneven cargo load. Now they’re hand-pumping all of it to this side of the ship, so that we’ll present the least hull for them to hit.”

“But that tilts the deck into them!” he noted. “Isn’t that worse?”

Tibby laughed. “No, we can stand a lot of direct hits on the superstructure. Messy, but it won’t sink us or drive us out of control. A shot below the waterline that got between two watertight hatches might send us to the bottom, though.” He turned to face them. “Better take cover, you two. It could get nasty around here. I have to get to my command station in the auxiliary bridge.”

Mavra nodded and then said, “Come on, Joshi. We’ll be no good later on if we’re in bloody pieces.”

He was reluctant to leave; he wanted to watch the battle. However, he never questioned her judgment or common sense. He went.

“They’re angling bow into us, Captain!” shouted the lookout. “Looks like we got a fight!”

“Trim sail completely!” ordered the captain. “I’m going to let the current carry us back into the fog. Hard port! Man stern bridge!”

The sails came immediately down; at the same time, the Trader turned slowly to present the least profile to the challenger. It also started to move slowly backward, at the mercy of the southern current now.

“All aloft, below!” the captain yelled, and everybody, lookouts included, got down fast and went to their stations. Large barrels of water were made handy to wash down the cannon deck. Torches were lit.

The cutter, seeing their maneuver, had matched it. The same current that carried the Trader would carry it, and as long as both were current-propelled, the big ship could not make any speed on the little one.

There was a bright yellow flash and a boom from the foredeck of the cutter, and a smoky plume rose from its bow, then angled toward them.

“Steady as you go… steady… steady…” the captain murmured. They had now turned completely around, bow away from the cutter, the captain on the stern bridge. The smoke plume looped, started to come down.

“Hard port, now!” yelled the captain.

The ship’s massive rudder turned under heavy, trained muscles, the chains that controlled it groaning and the masts swaying as it suddenly turned to present its profile.

There was an explosion about thirty meters out, a tremendous blast as the rocket hit the sea in front of them and struck the surface at a velocity sufficient for spring-loaded detonators to ignite.

Fragments of metal ate into the ship even from that distance, but it was a clear miss, and nothing flew but a few splinters.

The cutter turned sharply now, so that it was apparent that they had only two launch tubes, bow and stern. In the time it would take them to get the stern tube in position, they would have to present a brief but inviting broadside to the Trader.

The second mate, who was in charge of the gun crews, waited his moment. Then, suddenly, for a brief period of time, both ship’s sides were parallel.

“Fire all guns!” he shouted, and immediately bright-burning torches were touched to fuse holes in the rear of the cannons. There was a repetitive series of explosions that shuddered through the ship as sixteen cannon shots went off in series.

They were short. Though great plumes of water rose all around the cutter, and it looked as if the smaller craft had been completely destroyed, as the water calmed, it became clear that none of the missiles had come within fifty meters of the attacking craft.

The Trader continued to turn, bow now facing the pursuer’s stern. The exceptionally strong current allowed the smaller craft to close, but, with the cannon-washes from the salvo, it wasn’t any easier to turn than the much larger vessel.

Ordinarily the Trader would accept such a challenge and engage at a fixed distance circularly, ship-to-ship, but the cutter’s rockets gave it added range, and the captain dared not let it come in too close. That was frustrating; the rocket mines obviously had a greater range than the Trader’s cannon, and, although the big ship could stand some hits, it could not do so without casualties, and if they didn’t immediately disable the opposing craft they’d soon be at the attacker’s mercy. The captain wasn’t one to take such risks if he could avoid them.

Looking out at the attacker, whose second missile was already in the air, the eerie face and glowing eyes of the captain never wavered, but he shouted to the navigator, “Did you get me a fix?”

Before the navigator could reply, the grenade struck, closer this time, metal fragments flying from it and causing a series of nasty gashes in the Trader’s side and forward superstructure.

The captain shouted corrective orders; the fog was becoming thick again, and the cutter was becoming harder to see—as was the Trader. In a matter of minutes they would be invisible to each other. This, oddly, favored the cutter, which would continue to close because of its smaller, lighter nature as they both followed the current.

Joshi peered out from under a tarpaulin. “God! I wish I could see what’s going on!” he complained. “Fog’s getting thick again!”

“You’re better off alive!” snapped Mavra Chang. “Get back under here and stay here! This captain knows what he’s doing!”