The ridiculous thing was that, with such attention being paid to Samir’s ship, those captains who had fewer morals were considerably freer to go about their bloodthirsty and murderous business. Samir had seen some of the nastiest captains at Lassos buy Khmun a drink for taking the heat off them.
The last half dozen years had brought a few near misses between the brothers. Samir had privately explained the situation to Khmun and the captain had agreed that, in addition to the desire to save the crew from unnecessary loss of life, the fact that someone on board the Wind of God may be able to predict their tactics meant that they should avoid contact with that particular vessel at all costs. On a personal level, Samir knew he must stay out of contact with Ghassan. What had been done could not be undone and they had both sworn to give no quarter when next they met. As far as Samir was concerned, that simply meant that they must, under no circumstances, meet.
There had been a number of engagements with ships of the Calphorian militia and black vessels bearing the flags of the satraps of Pelasia, but in all this time, Khmun and Samir had succeeded in pulling out of any engagement that involved Ghassan’s ship. The closest Samir’s brother had managed to boarding the Empress was last year when they lay in wait, hiding in a cove near the current arbitrary border of satrap Ma’ahd’s lands. They had just been getting underway when the Wind of God appeared around the headland at full speed and ready for action. The artillery master on board the militia daram had managed to strike their foresail with a flaming mass and the resulting combustion and panic had almost cost them their lives.
Khmun and Samir, thinking quickly, had sacrificed a lifeboat to save the ship, filling it with combustible materials and quickly severing the ropes so that it dropped to the water behind the Dark Empress. As they did so, Afad and his men managed, with only a few minor wounds and burns, to cut the flaming sail free. As the drum began to beat out the rhythm and the oarsmen rowed as though the guardian of the underworld were slavering at their heels, the crew dumped the burning mass into the lifeboat and watched it explode into a fresh inferno.
The Wind of God had been forced to reverse their oars and arrest her speed as much as possible in order to give them the time and space to turn and avoid the burning obstacle, by which time the Empress was already accelerating and racing across the waves to freedom.
By the time they’d gone half a league, the replacement sail was already up and the artillery armed and positioned. Twice in Samir’s time on board they had come very close to disaster with Ghassan’s ship and both times they had been saved by fire.
The time was coming when he would have to deal with matters, though. He would soon be forced to move on either Ghassan or the satrap Ma’ahd. Samir had tried several times, both on board and back in port at Lassos, to persuade the captains that M’Dahz was a prime target and that Ma’ahd needed removing for their own safety.
That last was true, as well. Ma’ahd had constructed quite a navy over the years since he had taken M’Dahz and the black ships plied the coast dangerously close to Calphoris and even close to the island of Lassos, though should they ever find it, which was said to be impossible, they could never navigate the reefs of the dead.
There was another long pause in Samir’s train of thought as he retched repeatedly, failing to bring up anything. He slumped once more, his mind spinning. What was he thinking about? Oh yes… the reefs.
No… Ma’ahd.
That would have to wait, he’d finally realised, until he was a captain in his own right, though such a time may not be far off.
Though Khmun had made no announcement, things were falling into place that suggested a certain sequence of events in the coming days.
Firstly, Khmun had, over the last year, increasingly involved Samir in his strategy and planning meetings. The captain had shared what wisdom he had with his first officer and seemed to Samir to be grooming him for the position.
Secondly, there was the wound. A few years before, a lucky shot from a defender on a Calphorian ship had sent a missile through Khmun’s leg and the arrowhead had lodged in the man’s knee. Though it had been removed and the captain had made what he deemed to be a ‘full recovery’, Samir had noted the wincing that went on whenever the ship lurched or shook. Moreover, Khmun had acquired that age-old mystical ability to predict cold and wet weather by the discomfort in his leg. Khmun was starting to tire of life aboard ship.
Finally, there was the matter of the council of twelve. The council was to the pirates of Lassos what a government was to a country, and the head of the council, a retired captain by the name of Surafana, was ailing fast. Word among the drinking pits of Lassos was that Khmun was the favourite to replace him.
Of course, the moment Samir could be sure would be when Khmun gave him the compass. In seven years of serving in various capacities on board the Empress, Samir had never found anyone that could tell him how the captain navigated the reefs of the dead, and it had only been with his ascension to the position of first officer that things had been made relatively clear to him.
On every ship based in Lassos, only two men knew the secret. For centuries the captains had used the so- called ‘dead man’s compass’ to find their way through the reefs. There were said to be only two of them, and no more would ever be created. And, even as first officer, in two further years Samir had never seen the compass but, in a way, that was comforting. The day Samir knew that Khmun was ready to retire and Samir to take his place as captain of the Empress would be the day that Khmun showed him the compass and explained its use.
The time was coming for Samir to take on the ultimate challenge that life on board the Empress had to offer, and when that time came, he would use it to turn the wrath of the most dangerous men within a thousand leagues on the satrap Ma’ahd. Whatever Ghassan thought he was doing, Samir had not lost focus on the goal ahead.
Soon, Ma’ahd… soon.
In which a fleet is found
The wind rushed through Ghassan’s hair as he leaned over the prow and gazed ahead. Without taking his eyes off the black sail some distance in front, he sniffed. There was a barely-perceptible change in the wind and he bellowed commands over his shoulder back to the men under his command. Captain Jaral, way back at the stern with the other officers, would receive any appropriate information, passed from man to man along the deck, while relevant instructions would reach the correct people en-route.
Since Ghassan’s promotion to second in command this summer, there had been a shift in the purpose of the Wind of God that only he and the captain seemed to have recognised. There had, over the last year or more, been fewer and fewer complaints among the merchants of Calphoris concerning pirate activity. Looking into the incidents that had been reported, along with information from other sources, it was clear to Ghassan and his captain that the pirates of the coastal waters had inexplicably turned their focus toward Pelasian shipping.
Inexplicable to most, but not to Ghassan. On first discovering the situation, he had recognised instantly the hand of Samir in this. Somehow, probably through gaining higher rank, Ghassan’s brother had managed to steer the pirates to more Pelasian targets. Oh, it wasn’t a black and white situation, by any means, since there were still incidents with Imperial merchants; even horrible ones. But the frequency had declined.
Moreover, Ghassan had noted with a sense of optimism, the Dark Empress had not been in a recorded incident with Imperial shipping in at least a year. Samir had turned his attention at last to the wicked satrap Ma’ahd and that suited Ghassan just fine.
The end result of this shift in pirate activity was that Ghassan had managed to persuade the captain also to take more of an interest in the movements of Pelasian shipping, though, in truth, he hadn’t taken much persuading. Over the years, they had located and chased down the Empress numerous times. They had almost caught her once, but the pirate crew seemed almost prescient. They were always either already running when the militia turned up, or prepared to get away at a moment’s notice. Though Ghassan had tried to take the pirate vessel to the best of his ability, he found that somewhere, deep inside, he was profoundly grateful that they’d never managed to capture Samir.
Besides, the Pelasians were making a nuisance of themselves these days. Though years ago the militia had put paid to Ma’ahd’s attempt to extend his territory east, sending missives after that first meeting to the God-King in Akkad, demanding that he keep his satraps under control, there was still a constant threat.
A line had been drawn, metaphorically speaking. Watch posts of both the Calphorian militia and the Pelasian satrap had been constructed from the coast into the desert sands, glaring at one another warily over a half mile of
