“Drop sail!” Miss Loral shouted out. “Let the Doc catch up!”
Ryan caught Loral’s eye. “Acting Commander, I didn’t mean to—”
“You did just fine, Mr. Ryan.” Miss Loral shot her wolf grin. “You’ve been told before. There’s a reason most ships never land in the Deathlands—because you’re all mad, bad and dangerous to know.”
Chapter Fifteen
“Cove ahead!” Ricky cried out. “Looks like it has anchorage!”
“Thank you, Mr. Ricky!” Loral called. Optics broke out across the deck. The
Glory
had spent most of her second career after skydark in short jaunts and island hopping. Few of her current crew were used to this kind of long, unrelieved, undermanned, endless open ocean sailing. Most were very ready for a stretch of their legs on land.
Ryan observed the coastline of Argentina. It was cold, gray and miserable, and it was snowing. They had raised Uruguay the day before. He had caught long-distance views of the blasted corpse of Montevideo and his rad counter had ticked up a few clicks. They had sailed on across the mouth of the Rio Del Plata and his counter had clicked higher. No one had any desire to sail upriver and see what had happened to Buenos Aires. The air had freshened and the wind had grown colder as they had rounded Cabo San Antonio. Ryan hunched deeper into his coat.
The
Glory
was not ready for winter in the South Lantic. They had cut every spare blanket into capote coats and capes, and with all the casualties, the crew were able to layer with hand-me-downs. They were in desperate need of woolens, slickers and cold weather gear for the Horn. Ryan was doing all right for the moment with his fur-lined jacket and his weaponized scarf. He had wrapped his feet Russian style in scraps of wool and pulled his combat boots over them.
Ryan sniffed something almost like coffee and turned.
“Cold enough for you, Orca Whisperer?” Mildred asked. She wore a blue plaid blanket coat and a pair of borrowed binoculars around her neck. Mildred bore two steaming stoops and held one out. “Last of the chicory.” Ryan gratefully accepted and sipped the hot, bittersweet brew. Mildred smiled. “Last of the sugar, too.”
“Thanks.”
Mildred gazed out over the gray water at the Argentine coast. “We’re in a heap of trouble, aren’t we?”
“Yeah.”
Mildred raised her binoculars and scanned the coast. “I always wanted to go to Argentina. See and hear the real tango in the square at San Telmo.”
“What’s tango?”
“Just the most sensual dance in the world.”
Ryan liked dancing. Despite his chilling reputation in the Deathlands, he was also known for being able to shake a leg at a festival or ville hootenanny. Dancing with Krysty usually led to some very energetic lovemaking. “How’s it go?”
“You could spend your entire life perfecting it.” Mildred scanned the empty, snow-drifted beaches. “There were dancers in my time who did nothing else.”
Doc joined them. He wore both his uniform coat and his frock coat over it. “Oh, the tango, the samba, the dances of South America, they were such exquisite things, Ryan. I do hope they have been preserved.”
Ryan tried to wrap his mind around doing nothing except dancing.
Mildred’s voice dropped. “Now there’s something you don’t see everyday.”
Ryan snapped up his spyglass. A man was riding along the beach atop what appeared to be a giant long-necked bird without wings. The man wore a broad-brimmed black hat. His long black hair flew behind him as did his fancifully colored woolen cape. He pulled off his hat and waved and shouted. Sand and snow flew from beneath the huge bird’s massive clawed feet as the rider spurred his mount to renewed speed. Ryan had to admit this was a new one for him.
“Cowboys, riding ostriches.” Mildred shook her head. “Wow, we missed Argentina completely and raised the Island of Misfit Toys.”
Ryan chalked it up to one more bastard obscure, predark Mildredism.
Doc tsk’ed. “No, that is a gaucho riding some mutated or upbred form of rhea, I should think.”
Mildred rolled her eyes. “Fine, gaucho and the Technicolor Dream Poncho, whatever.”
The one-eyed man scanned the bird rider. He didn’t appear to have a blaster, but he carried some sort of coiled rope whip or flail on a wide leather belt sewn with silver coins. Beneath the belt he bore what appeared to be a silver-handled chef’s knife big enough to behead a horse. He carried a small guitar-shaped case on his back and saddlebags across his bird.
“Miss Loral!” Ryan called. “Contact on shore!”
Loral squinted through her binoculars. “Don’t see that every day.”
Mildred sighed. “That’s what I’m saying.”
Miss Loral snorted at the sight. “Rad-addled ridiculous.”
Koa glanced at the rider and then up at the sails. “Ridiculous or not, the way he’s catching up, Bird Boy is doing close to thirty knots.”
“Thay!” Onetongue lisped admiringly. “That’th one fath’t bird!”
“Fast indeed,” Doc agreed. “The African ostrich has been known to sustain speeds of up to forty miles per hour. However, this Ratite seems twice the size of any ostrich I have ever heard of, and, unlike the African ostrich or the usual South American rhea, which mainly eat plants and insects, the overlarge and somewhat scimitar curve of this noble creature’s bill bespeaks of a predatory bent.”
Oracle called from the quarterdeck. “Miss Loral, take us into the cove! Furl sails and break out the sweeps. Bring us within hailing distance and have Mr. J.B. load canister! Sharpshooters to the tops! We are on foreign shores. Let us see if this man has anything useful to say.”
“Aye, Captain! Sweepers to the blaster deck! Prepare to furl sails!”
The
Glory
turned landward. The bird rider noticed this development and spurred his bird on. The topsmen rolled up sail and down on the blaster deck six pairs of very long oars slid out the blaster ports and began back rowing to bring the ship to a halt.
J.B. shouted up the gangway. “Starboard battery loaded with canister, Captain! Blasters run out!”
“Thank you, Mr. J.B.!” The
Glory
slowly stroked into the cove. The cove contained a cracked concrete quay that looked like it might service a fairly large ship. A few collapsed buildings bore the unmistakable signs of having been harvested of all valuable metal and timber long ago.
“Mr. Hardstone! Throw the lead!”
Hardstone stood on the ship’s chains and heaved the lead. The weight plunged into the water, and he payed out line. “Seven fathoms by the deep, Captain!”
“Back sweeps!” Oracle ordered.
The sweepmen groaned like galley slaves belowdecks as they heaved against the oars and stopped the
Glory
’s
forward motion. She came to a halt about thirty meters from the quay. The bird rider came tearing up to edge of the barnacled concrete and leaped from his saddle. He swept his hat and bowed low.
“Hello, ship!” the man called out in a thick accent. “Hello, ship! Ahoy!”
Oracle strode to the rail and called out across the nearly still surf.
“Buenos dias, Senor!”
“Buenos dias, Capitán!”
Oracle called out in English. “May I ask your name?”
“I am Strawmaker! Walter Strawmaker!”
“How may my ship and I be of assistance to you,
Senor
Strawmaker?”
“I wish to take ship with you immediately.”
“You wish to buy passage?”
“I will work for my passage.”
Oracle regarded the man shrewdly. “Passage to where?”
“Well, wherever you are going.”
“I see.” Oracle shrugged. “What skills have you?”
“Well.” Strawmaker grinned. “I have my ax!”
Atlast scowled from the bowsprit. “Doesn’t ’ave an ax, does he? He’s got a great big knife!”
Mildred struggled for patience. “An ax is a guitar.”
Strawmaker reached over his shoulder and a dozen blasters locked on to him. He slowly held up what appeared to be a ten-string ukulele.
“Well, then he doesn’t have a guitar!” Atlast protested. “He’s got a bloody opossum with a stick in its mouth!”
“I believe it is called a charango,” Doc mused.
“Ah!” Strawmaker pointed at Doc happily. “I see you are a man of culture and discernment.”
Ryan sensed Oracle was using the banter to his advantage. The captain stood impassively. Strawmaker reached into his saddlebag and produced a gleaming brass instrument. “I play the trumpet. And the piano. Do you have a piano?”
“Am I to understand you are a minstrel?” Oracle asked.
“I prefer the term
travador, Capitán,
but given my circumstances, perhaps wandering minstrel might truthfully apply.”
Ryan was keeping one ear on the conversation and his one eye through his spyglass on the surroundings. “Captain, mebbe fleeing minstrel might be more accurate.”
All eyes scanned inland.
Oracle nodded. “Indeed.”
Mildred deadpanned. “Wow, charge of the chicken brigade.”
Nearly a hundred men riding birds like Strawmaker’s boiled out of the dunes for the quay. They carried gleaming eight-foot lances held over one arm, and most had some form of single-or double-barrel blaster over their saddlebows.
Oracle’s voice went positively droll. “
Senor,
am I to understand there is a ville whose baron you have offended?”
“Baron? Ah!
Barón!
No,
Senor
Spada would be the
Jefe
of the
estancia
.”
Doc spoke low. “An
estancia
is a cattle ranch, Captain.
Jefe
is a chief. In my time, in this land, some
estancias
were rumored to be the size of small countries. Spada will be every inch a baron. Oh, and Spada means sword.”
“Thank you, Doc.” Oracle raised his voice. “Tell me, troubadour, how many of
Jefe
Spada’s women did you impregnate?”
Strawmaker kept snapping looks backward, but he made a show of offense.
“Impregnar!”
“Despite the willingness of both parties, how many of those lancers have you given good reason to chill you?”
“I will modestly say...a number. However, in my defense I will also say that one of the said
senoritas
whispered to me that Spada intended to make me a permanent part of his
estancia
, and he intended to ensure my service by cutting off one of my feet.”
“And now?”
“Now? I believe they intend to strip me and paint my
pene
white, like the ñandú’s favorite grub.”
“I gather the ñandús are the birds you ride?” Oracle inquired.
Strawmaker started taking desperate looks back at the avalanche of oncoming ñandú riders. “Yes.”
“Go on.”
Strawmaker cleared his throat. “Then I shall be dragged behind one ñandú at speed while they entice several others to give chase and fight for the prize.”
Mildred made a face.
“Then they shall hang me by my hands and use me for lance practice. After that they may decapitate me and play some polo to bring back
Jefe
Spada a properly abused head, though it is a little cold for it.” Strawmaker took a knee and spread his arms as the lancers descended. “
Capitán,
I am at your mercy. I will tell you I am not afraid of hardship, and I have played from the Rio Del Plata to the shores of Ushaia. I can be of use to you as a guide, if nothing else.”
“Do your people recognize the white flag as a sign of truce?”
Strawmaker sighed as he saw his death. “
Si,
I believe it is universal.”
“Commander!” Oracle ordered. “Run up a white flag!”
The white ensign rapidly shot up the flag line and caught a bit of breeze. Krysty spooned into Ryan unhappily. “What’s the captain doing?”
Ryan didn’t like it any more than Krysty, but he understood it. “Oracle needs supplies and with luck permission to recruit men, which he needs more than he needs a minstrel. Much less a possible war with a baron and giant chickens riders runnin’ up and down the coast sayin’ the
Glory
is hostile.”
Strawmaker carefully put his musical instruments in their cases and neatly piled his belongings. He donned his black hat, wrapped his cape around his left arm, drew his knife and turned to face his tormentors. Four gauchos leaned far out from their saddles and whirled their bolas in huge blurring arcs. They released and the weighted straps scythed toward the musician. Strawmaker sliced one bola neatly out of the air. The next two hit him a heartbeat later at chest height to entangle his arms. The fourth hit him at the knees and toppled him. Ryan’s eye narrowed. Strawmaker was down, but the gauchos weren’t slowing. They spurred forward, lances leveled. Bolas whirled. Those with blasters drew them. Krysty blinked. “You don’t think...”
The gauchos let out a battle cry. Their birds gave a booming hoot in unison and shoved out short stub wings. The formation charged off the edge of the quay like lemmings. The giant birds spread their massive clawed feet to display webbing. Their wings vibrated and drummed the air like hummingbirds. Some sank up to their backward knees and rose back up, legs churning. Some barely dipped into water at all.
The charge continued straight across the water.
“By my stars and garters!” Doc exclaimed. “I have had the pleasure of seeing the Western Grebe dance upon the waters with its mate in courtship, but a giant ratite! Bearing an armed rider and water running! Such adaption is—”
“Drop the flag of truce!” Oracle ordered.
The gauchos charged across the cove on their terror birds in a wedge. The cold black waters of the cove boiled white beneath them.
Commander Miles sliced the cord holding the white flag and it fell toward the deck like a ghost that had been shot out of the air. Oracle watched its descent. Ryan leaped to mainmast and grabbed a half pike from the rack. Krysty took a knee with her ship’s knife and marlinspike in either hand. “Gaia...give me strength...”
The gauchos howled and whooped, firing their blasters and sending bolas humming through the air. Crewmen ducked. The marksmen in the tops glanced down for the order to fire. Ryan dodged a bola and glanced to Oracle.