In the dim starlight she saw that the gridwork over the main hatch was open and heard voices from below. They grew louder until one of them yelled, “Captain! Found the fishbait sawing at a rudder line.”
“Bring him up,” Royan called. “Rig the spare line. And mount the bells in place.”
Bells? Dorrin hadn’t heard or seen any but the one ship’s bell that marked the watches. Now she saw shadowy figures pulling the strange pots from the center of the ship to the rails, where they clanked on something. Meanwhile, two sailors ran up the ladder from the hold, then hauled up the man they’d captured and bound. The captain came down to the main deck.
As Dorrin watched, the mate and two crewmen forced the man’s arms across the rail. “You would leave my ship rudderless in the ocean, helpless when your friends come,” Royan said. “I will leave you armless, helpless when the fish come.” The man screamed for mercy, but two quick strokes with the captain’s cutlass and his hands and forearms fell overboard as his blood spurted out. “May your blood call Barrandowea to my aid,” Royan said. Then to the mate, “Overboard with him.” They threw the man overboard. Dorrin heard only one splash and could see nothing of him.
Dorrin’s stomach turned, but she clenched her jaw and said nothing. The man had betrayed them to pirates and intended evil to everyone on board. They sailed on through the night, and the captain explained the use of the “bells,” the great bronze pots now fueled with sap from the forests of Kostandan.
Dorrin had become used to the ship’s noises—the flapping of sails, the creaking and groaning of the ship as it rolled, the slap and thud of bare feet on the deck, the wind whirring or whistling through the rigging, all the sounds water made against the hull. Now she heard something else—but before she could react to it, a hideous howling arose from all around the ship. Then a score or more of grapples trailing ropes flew up over both sides of the ship, smashing into the less cautious sailors who rushed to the rails at the noise. Some caught in the rigging, some scraped across the deck to lodge under the rail.
But Blessing’s crew had been through pirate attacks before. Lights appeared on the deck, set into the polished bronze bells Dorrin had puzzled over. Though dim, they made it possible to tell sailors from pirates. “Cut the ropes—the grapples—” the captain told her. Sailors were already doing that, cutlasses thudding into the rails, slashing lines hanging from grapples in the rigging. From high above, the first fire-tipped bolts flew down, aimed at the pirates’ sails. Dorrin slashed at lines she was sure weren’t the ship’s own rigging and at the arms of a pirate about to climb over the rail. Blood spurted; he fell backward with a cry. She ducked as another grapple sailed past her head, skidded on the deck, and snapped into place under the rail.
Shouts and screams forward—Dorrin chanced a glance that way and saw a confused mass of men, pirates pouring over the bow railing, pushing defending sailors back and off the foredeck. “Stay back,” the captain called. “Keep them off the port side, away from the ladder up here. Use the fire-rings!”
Dorrin picked up one of the pitch-soaked rope rings, lit it at the nearest bell, and hurled it at the pirate sail that had come alongside; flames wreathed it as it flew, and it hit, clinging. The sail caught; flames rose, giving more light to see two pirates just coming over the rail. Dorrin struck one with her cutlass and pushed a lit fire-ring onto the other. Screaming, he dropped his cutlass and jumped back over the rail, but instead of water, he landed on the pirate ship’s deck. Dorrin scooped up his cutlass but had no time to see what happened to him, as more pirates had come over the opposite side.
The fight raged over the deck, but gradually the crew prevailed, as their use of fire had set three of the pirate galleys aflame. Dorrin wondered at first that the pirates did not use fire against Blessing but then realized they wanted the ship and its cargo. The last few pirates on the main deck were backed against the starboard rail, fighting for their lives, when she heard a yell from the upper deck. She ran up the ladder to see a clump of pirates, the steersman lying in a pool of blood, and the captain fighting for his life.
Dorrin charged into the pirates, both cutlasses at work; she and the captain together took down those then the next who tried to climb over the stern rail. Finally, it was over … the ship sailing on, the dead pirates thrown overboard without ceremony, the dead crew—only four, Royan said, after he had committed each to the sea with a prayer to Barrandowea to give them a fair voyage to their next home. The steersman was alive but injured and in bed in the other passenger cabin. In the dawn light, the crew cleaned the decks of blood and other debris from the fight, cleaned out the great pots, and lowered them into the hold again.