Retribution Falls - Chris Wooding [37]
It didn’t matter that piracy and murder carried the same penalty: hanging. It was the principle of the thing. It was all so tragically unfair.
He slowed as they spotted a trio of Ducal Militiamen coming toward them. They were striding along the road from the docks, clad in the brown uniform of the Aulenfay Duchy, all buttoned-up jackets and flat-topped caps. The path afforded nowhere to duck away without looking suspicious.
“Cap’n …” Malvery warned.
“I see them,” Frey said. “Keep walking. It’s only me they’ll recognize.”
Frey tucked his head down into his collar and shoved his hands into his pockets, playing the frozen traveler hurrying to get somewhere warm. He dropped back into the group, keeping Malvery’s bulk between him and the militiamen.
Their boots crunched on the path as they approached. Frey and his crew moved to the side of the path to let them pass. Their eyes swept the group as they neared.
“Bloody chilly when the sun goes down, eh?” Malvery hailed them with his usual booming good humor.
They grunted and walked on. So did Frey and his men.
The landing pad was busy with craft and their crews, loading the day’s catch onto the vessels for the overnight flight inland. A freighter was rising slowly into the air, belly lights bright. Its aerium engines pulsed as electromagnets pulverized refined aerium into ultralight gas, flooding the ballast tanks.
Frey had planned to avoid the rush and leave in the morning, since his cargo wasn’t nearly as perishable as fresh fish, but now he was glad of the chaos. It would provide cover for their departure.
They passed the gas lamps that marked the edge of the pad and wended their way toward the Ketty Jay. Crews labored in the dazzling shine of their aircrafts’ lights, long shadows blasted across the tarmac by the dark hulks that loomed above them. Thrusters rumbled as the freighter overhead switched to its prothane engines and began pushing away from the coast. The air was heavy with the smell of fish and the tang of the sea.
“Harkins, Pinn. Get to your craft and get up there,” said Frey. “Harkins, I know you’re drunk, but that’s my Firecrow, and if you crash it I’ll stuff you into your own arsehole and bowl you into the sea. Clear?”
Harkins belched, saluted, and staggered away. Pinn scurried off toward his Skylance without a word. The mention of the Century Knights had intimidated him enough that he was glad to get out of there.
Silo was standing at the bottom of the Ketty Jay’s cargo ramp when Frey, Malvery, and Crake arrived. He was idly smoking a roll-up cigarette made from an acrid Murthian blend of herbs. As they approached, he spat into his hand and crushed it out on his palm.
“Where’s Jez?” Frey demanded.
“Quarters.”
“Good. We’re going.”
“Cap’n.”
Silo joined the others as they headed up the ramp and into the cargo hold. The hold was steeped in gloom as always, stacked high with crates that were lashed untidily together. The reek of fish was overpowering.
Frey was making for the lever to raise the cargo ramp when a gravelly voice called out: “Make another move and everybody dies.”
They froze. Coming up the cargo ramp, revolvers in both hands, was a figure they all knew and had hoped to never see. The most renowned of all the Century Knights. The Archduke’s merciless attack dog.
Kedmund Drave.
He was a barrel-chested man in his late forties, his clumsily assembled face scarred along the cheek and throat. Silver-gray hair was clipped close to his scalp, and he wore a suit of dull crimson armor, expertly molded to the contours of his body by the Archduke’s master artisans. A thick black cloak displayed the Knights’ insignia in red, and the hilt of his two-handed sword could be seen rising behind his shoulder.
“Back away from that lever,” he commanded Frey. One revolver was trained on Frey; the other covered the rest of the crew. “Get over with your friends.”
Frey obliged. He’d sobered up fast. The effects of the alcohol had been canceled by the chill