Godslayers

The island of Baros was currently my least favorite place on the planet. Part of that was the temple to Horcutio hidden in its jungles, and part of it was the suspicion that we'd seen this temple before—the day we'd made planetfall, dropping right into Kives's initial ambush.

But mostly I hated this island because I'd been staring at the map representing it for like three fucking hours.

"We'll just have to row in," Erid was saying. "You can't trust the wind around those reefs."

"But the men will be tired," Pellonine argued. "This is the first battle of the campaign. We need to minimize losses."

"Can't be helped," Erid said. She was still wearing my tricorn hat. Apparently she considered it spoils of war, and Val wouldn't print me more money to buy it off her. "Besides, they're heavy infantry. The pirates won't have the kit to match."

"Orrrr we could go for the temple," I said. "You know, like I suggested an hour ago. They'll have to defend it."

Baros was shaped somewhat like a comma, with a small harbor tucked between the dot and the tail. The crux of the problem were the reefs sheltering the harbor from broader access to the sea; if the maps were accurate—and either they were, or Kives had already sprung her trap—the fleet would have to approach one ship at a time, hugging the inside of the tail.

The temple, meanwhile, was situated more to the north of the island, and there were no reefs bottlenecking our approach. We could march the dudes in there, rededicate it to Varas, and then march overland to hit the harbor from the north.

"Pirates are cowards," Pellonine said. "They'll scatter to the winds. It's just creating problems for later."

Problems that I wanted them to have, but obviously I couldn't just say that. I tried a different approach.

"'Courage is cheap when hope is scarce,'" I quoted from The Road of Spears. "If they don't scatter, they'll be unified, they'll be holding their ground, and they won't be splitting their attention to find a way out. If we hit them from the harbor, they'll fight like their lives depend on it. If we push them out into the harbor, they'll have to navigate the egress one at a time. It'll be a rout."

Erid watched me carefully. "Will it be a rout, or will they flock to defend the temple like you said an hour ago?"

"I'm expecting some of both," I said. I hesitated; how advanced was their military thinking? Could I afford to give them more strategic technology? I stalled for time. "Actually, we've got an informant right here. Dal Salim? Will they defend the temple, or will they flee?"

While Dal Salim talked around the answer I'd expected—that these pirates weren't an army, they were a disorganized gang of outlaws who would all react differently to the invasion—I pinged the commander.

"Do these guys know about defeat in detail?" I asked him.

"It's on the green list," Aulof replied. "Go ahead."

I pinged back in the affirmative.

"I think that settles it," I interjected as Dal Salim wound down whatever poetic metaphor he was torturing. "If half of them fight and half of them flee, then engaging them with our full force keeps losses to a minimum. You know, instead of a one-to-one engagement, we get two engagements at two-to-one."

"That's the best argument I've heard all morning," said Erid.

Someone pounded at the door.

"What is it?" Erid yelled. "I'm an old woman, I haven't got time to wait around!"

The door cracked open, revealing Enochletes. He had an anxious look on his voice, though it brightened when he saw me. I pursed my lips but didn't otherwise react.

"Captain," he said. "We've sighted a ship. The helmsman thinks they're pirates!"

"Fantastic," I said brightly, shooting to my feet, antipathy forgotten. "Lead the way! Meeting adjourned, let's go get some intel!"

"Always eager to leap into battle, aren't you," Erid said.

"What are they going to do?" I asked. "Stab me? C'mon, let's go! We've got a ship to take!"

*

There were a lot of reasons a ship might be sailing these lanes, but we were reasonably sure this one was crewed by pirates. Most ships, you see, wouldn't have deployed oars and tried to run at the sight of Trade Fleet banners.

To a pirate, that meant a battle, and even the boldest of pirates would exercise the better part of valor when they were outnumbered five to one. It was looking like they might get away, too—the Fool's Errand wasn't the fastest or most maneuverable ship, having been essentially designed as a floating battering ram pulled by whales.

But I had a plan, so I wanted that ship.

"Lilith to Face Sponge," I subvocalized. "Commander Blackfin, can you sabotage that ship's propulsion without sinking it?"

"We are capable. What are the parameters?"

"Our proxy force needs to engage them in combat. We just need them slowed down."

"Acknowledged. Fifteen minutes."

Using remote telemetry data, my augs painted a blue outline around the Face Sponge as it closed on the pirate ship. It was deep, maybe two hundred yards beneath the surface, moving at a cautious speed. It took nearly three minutes to close the gap with the fleeing pirates.

Then its motion slowed, matching their speed. Blackfin had said fifteen minutes—what were they going to do?

My comm received a notice that Blackfin and Left Flank had deployed. I magnified my field of vision, trying to catch sight of them. My search was fruitless for a few moments, but then I saw the dolphin underneath their single row of oars. It seemed to trying to keep pace with the rowers' strokes.

Then it slipped under the waves. I resisted the urge to ask for an update; I wanted, if at all possible, to avoid questioning the competence of the aquatic murder machine. But it still left me fidgety.

"Still get the pre-battle jitters, eh, Idiot?" asked Erid. "You might as well calm down. We're not catching them."

"I shouldn't be fighting anyway," I said. "This is supposed to be your victory."

"No one's fighting," said Erid.

I didn't contradict her. There was a time and place for dropping cryptic hints, and, speaking from experience, "sailing with Erid" was neither.

She regarded me. "You don't believe me."

Yeah, sorry, no. Not touching that. I channeled my inner Val and raised an eyebrow at her. She laughed.

"Look behind us," she said. "Perseverance and Sel Pelucunues are flanking to port and starboard. Rubiades is cutting across the wind to block escape on that end. Speed versus numbers. If they want to escape us, they'll have to head over there."

She pointed at a stretch of ocean that looked no different to me than any other stretch of ocean.

"Over there?" I said.

Erid scoffed. "I guess being a Calamity doesn't make you a sailor. That direction is deep water. The farther they get from the trade currents, the more they have to work their rowers. They're a light ship; they won't have many supplies Let the sea kill them and spare us the work."

"It's not like they'll run out of rowers, though," I said.

Erid shook her head. "'Course they will. At this pace, they'll start dropping within the hour. Pirates usually don't feed their slaves well."

There was a pit opening in my stomach. "And… our slaves?"

Erid shot me a sharp look. "Ain't any on this ship."

My tone was icy. "Our bondsmen, then."

She continued eying me.

"Yeah," she said eventually. "We don't starve 'em, but—yeah. It's strenuous work. The crew works in shifts, so they'll be fine. The bondsmen… some of 'em will drop."

It made a twisted sort of sense, when you thought about it. Early humans were persistence predators. Our sweat glands, our gait, our spines—all adaptations to continue chasing our prey across the savanna, walking it down until it died of exhaustion. From a certain point of view, these were just the old ways, writ at scale.

From another point of view, homo sapiens had spent their sweat to keep the strain at bay. These ships would be spending lives.

"I guess we can always hope for a miracle," I said.

"You're real strange for a Calamity, you know that?" Erid said. "Wouldn't have thought you the type."

"I hate miracles," I said honestly. My tone became dry. "But glory be, something strange and unexpected has happened with their oars."

The ship had begun to turn. Not, it seemed, on purpose. With my eyes, I could see the oars on the port side were trailing in the water, moving erratically, or otherwise out of sync with each other. Their starboard was more organized, but their strokes weren't as clean, and some had stopped moving already.

"I have achieved the objective," said Blackfin. "Face Sponge will return to perimeter defense. Good hunting."

I stared at the ship as its rowing teams struggled to get it pointed in the right direction. The Trade Fleet armada was closing in on the crippled vessel. Barked orders echoed across the water; on the other ships, I saw soldiers assembling, prepping the boarding ramps that were the main mechanism of Estheni naval combat.

I'd asked Blackfin to "sabotage the propulsion." He had, with clinical efficiency, done exactly that. And for some reason I hadn't thought about the methods he'd use to do it.

Those rowers were probably all dead. It wasn't like all the whispers I'd killed back in Bulcephine—those were enemy combatants, and a lot of them were trying to kill me back. These were civilians, and it sounded like most of them didn't want to be here.

I didn't say anything on the ops channel. I could be a little more vulnerable with the team; they at least respected the concept of ethics, even if their ethics had the occasional immortality-related timescale weirdness to it. But I wasn't going to challenge the uplifted sea animal who'd just killed dozens of my species without any apparent effort.

So instead I steeled myself and shoved the emotions away. I was a fire; let it fuel me. I still had objectives to accomplish here.

"We need that ship," I said, looking at Pellonine. "Can you make sure they don't sink it during the battle?"

"We don't need that ship," she said. "It's an ancient tulim and it's falling apart."

"Not for combat," I said. "You said you were worried the pirates would escape if we attacked the temple."

"I did," she said carefully.

"So," I said. "We'll let them. And then, once they're scrambling to flee, we'll sail that tulim right into the mouth of the harbor. Ground it on the reefs or something so they can't get away. In the chaos, they'll have a hard time mounting a resistance. We could force their surrender without a substantial engagement."

Pellonine nodded thoughtfully. "I could see that working. We'd need to time it right."

"Easy enough," I said. "Put me on the ship. I can see your signals."

Erid laughed. "Has this all been a ploy so you could captain a pirate ship?"

Denying it would look like a confirmation, so I deflected.

"Assign a captain you trust if you have to," I said. "We just need a small team that can maneuver it."

"Logistics later," said Pellonine. "It's time for battle."

"You want me down there, or no?" I asked Erid.

"Forgive me if I'm not eager to discover whose side you take once you're down there," she said.

"Ouch. Fair, but ouch."

The first arrows were starting to fly.

"Shields!" Erid bellowed. "They have bows!"

I saw members of the crew carrying out a mixture of shields and what looked like wooden pallets. The pallets were quickly assembled into a boarding ramp with an efficiency that told me they'd done this before. A pair of wooden screens were set into grooves in front of the till, shielding us from incoming fire.

The enemy ship was in range. We were closest; the Perseverance was right behind us, but they were taking a wider arc to board from a different angle. Arrows flew, to little effect. One woman took an arrow to the arm and was dragged inside. The rest clattered off our defensive measures.

Crew members paired up, one with a shield and the other with a grappling hook. The hooks were tied to hoops nailed into the deck, then flung at the pirate ship from behind shield cover.

"READY!" Erid bellowed. "PREPARE TO BOARD!"

A handful of sailors stepped up with bows, peppering the enemy deck with shots. We had the height advantage, and they had no room to dodge. I saw pirates going down to bowfire, some retreating inside the cabin. One woman, who might have been their captain, was waving a spear and shouting orders to the rest of the crew. A stray shot took her down, throwing the pirates into disarray.

"BOARD!"

The ramps descended to the enemy's deck. Our fighters braced their shields and charged.