Shadow Road: Book 1 of the Shadows Rising Trilogy

9. The Angpixen

15th of Uirra, Continued

An hour after I wrote that last entry, the clipper had drawn close enough to make out the fore royal.

Slowly, all the cheering and hugging petered into an uneasy silence as everyone got a good look at what they had welcomed a few minutes before.

"Is that..." Dr. Turragan finally asked out loud.

"Aye. That would be the Vixerox," the Navigator said grimly. "And with 'er flyin' over that black hull, I'd bet my life that's the Angpixen."

A young man I knew only as Teg piped up with, "What's an Ang Pixie?" and all the sailors turned to look at him like he had rocks where his brains should be.

"What's funny?" Teg quavered, turning red.

"The Angpixen is the Bloody Fox's fastest bloody ship, that's what t'is," muttered one of the other passengers, shading his eyes against the sun overhead. "Don't you read the Dailies?"

One of the sailors turned to look at the ship again, his voice wooden. "I thought Cap'n Arr'my were givin' NaVarre a what-for in the Adro-pee-dees."

"That's what I heard too," the Navigator said, wearily taking a seat on the gunnel of the lifeboat he was in. "But no one else dares fly those colors. That's Bloody Fox NaVarre, sure enough."

"What are you saying?" demanded Doctor Turragan's wife after a moment, giving voice to the realization dawning over the rest of us. "That's a pirate ship? We're about to be taken by pirates?" she cried, her words increasingly shrill.

Her wail was echoed by a few sobs of dismay and panic, but most of us simply went quiet. A pall fell over our little floating island. After six days of fighting the cold, living on the awful hard biscuits from the ration tins and the pitiful amount of fresh water the survival filters produced, we were all too weak to muster any sort of resistance. There were only a handful of weapons among the lot of us. Vastly outnumbered, unable to flee and too starved to fight, we were exceedingly easy pickings.

When she was about fifty yards off, the Angpixen canted gently to the right, presenting us with her port broadside. She passed close enough that I made out a man standing at the railing of the quarterdeck. There was no mistaking his authority, even from that distance.

An army of pirates were gathering at the rail and scaling the rigging, but while his men were readying for action, the man on the quarterdeck remained calm, gazing down at us as his ship swept in an ever-tightening circle around our flotilla, the wash of her wake sending us rocking. Then, when the sleek, glossy side of the Angpixen was just shy of scraping the outermost lifeboats, the man lifted his hand, gesturing in our direction before he turned and walked out of view.

The pirates immediately began launching themselves from the ship, swinging out over us on ropes, shrieking and howling like monkeys.

It was almost comical, really, just how peaceful our abduction was. A few of the men made an effort to resist, but it was more out of pride than any hope of success. They were beaten into submission and that was the end of it. There were a few people who sobbed and begged, and some of the children screamed as they were pulled from their parents, but it was mostly haphazard sounds of distress and exertion as the pirates dropped into the lifeboats and began gathering us up.

I was 'caught' by a big, swarthy monster with a badly scarred right arm, who landed nearly on top of me. I didn't say anything. I just ground my teeth as he grabbed at me with his big, rough hands and slung me over his shoulder like a life-sized rag doll. Then he leaped acrobatically into the air, caught the same rope that was tied around his waist, and used it to pull us both back up the outside of the hull, over the railing, and onto the deck. He carried me to the foot of the main mast and dropped me there like a sack of potatoes, then went lumbering back over the rail for more.