Free On Discord Isle by Jonathon Burgess Page B

the captain again.
    Lina knelt to listen. Runt landed suddenly on her shoulders, shifting her off-balance and chirping happily through a bloody maw.
    “We’re out of Breachtown,” said the captain. “And the pacification there—”
    “Marines forward!” cried a voice.
    The recessed door to the sterncastle cabin banged open. Men in blue coats and tricorn hats boiled out with muskets held at the ready. They fired as they came, sending a hail of lead balls down the ship. Pirates and sailors both yelled in alarm. The Bluecoats shot indiscriminately; the first mate and captain of the Kingfisher both went down.
    A ball smacked into the yardarm Lina perched upon, sending a spray of slivers up at her. She cursed and scrabbled back behind the bulk of the mast for cover. Below, she heard Lucian calling the rest of their crew to face the threat.
    Lina waited a moment to peek around the mast. The Bluecoats had finished their first volley and threw themselves at the pirates with bayonets and sabers. Her crewmates fell back a bit at the charge, but with nowhere else to go, they rallied quickly. The two sides met and broke apart into individual struggles that spread out across the deck.
    A figure appeared from the captain’s cabin. He was a tall man in an officer’s uniform with a long wig of powdered curls. The epaulets on his shoulder denoted him a colonel. He drew a ridiculously ornate saber and casually climbed the stair up to the poop deck. Two marines framed him as guards, swords drawn and at the ready.
    The colonel gazed out at the melee below him. “Kill them all and take the airship,” he cried. “Admiral Wintermourn’ll make us rich as princes if we do. No quarter for pirate dogs!”
    Oh Goddess on high. This whole thing was a trap. No wonder the Kingfisher hadn’t run. The Bluecoats aboard had made her play honeypot for the Dawnhawk . Every kingdom back on Edrus offered a ludicrous bounty for an intact airship. Whoever this man was, he obviously thought he could claim it. Lina felt a surge of anger; they’d walked right into it. No. No way in the Realms Below they’re taking our ship from us.
    The marine colonel said something quietly to one of his men, who nodded and sheathed his blade. The Bluecoat walked over to the sternside railing, where a fat steel tube was attached to a pivot.
    A swivel gun.
    Lina stared. A swivel gun was a small cannon, usually used in boarding actions. No sane commander would use one against his own ship. But the Bluecoats had already shown a willingness to gun down their own sailors. Loaded with shot, it would devastate those fighting on the deck, including the Bluecoats there. Somehow Lina didn’t think that the stodgy Perinese colonel would care overmuch.
    The marine tilted the gun upright and knelt for a small powder keg and bag of shot stored under the gunwales beneath it. Thankfully, they still had to load the thing.
    I don’t have a lot of time. Lina glanced down and around. No one else on her side seemed to have noticed the danger. There was one ally close at hand, though. Reaver Jane stood with her back against the sternmost mast, fending off two marines at once with a cutlass and a long knife.
    I’ve got to get down there. But how? Lina glanced around for another way, and her gaze caught on a loose rope laying on the yardarm at her feet. The far end was part of the topsail rigging for the stern mast. Likely it had been torn free by the grapnels thrown earlier.
    A pistol-shot rang out below her. The ball whipped past her head, agitating Runt into a screech. Lina started in surprise as well. Acting on reflex she grabbed the rope and kicked away from the yardarm.
    “Chirr!” screamed her pet.
    Lina sailed through the air, over the melee, dead-on for the mast and Reaver Jane’s struggle. She collided with a Bluecoat feet-to-back in a blow that stunned her and dropped them both in a heap.
    Runt writhed away off her, taking flight in indignation for the relative safety of the