Nobody Likes Fairytale Pirates (25 page)

“I don’t see…”  He began. 

“If he’s got no arms, he can’t
exactly win a swordfight, ‘Rai.”  Her tone made it clear she thought Uriah was
an idiot.  “Use your head.”

“That doesn’t really…”  The man
punched Uriah in the stomach.  Hard.  And the rest of Uriah’s words came out as
a wheeze.  “…help… me… much.”

Ryle vaulted over the back of the
seat and Ester’s luggage, positioning himself next to Uriah.  “Now I’m being
attacked by magical Adithian zombies or something…”  He blocked the Gardener’s
strike, the force of the blow causing him to skid backwards a foot.  He glanced
at Uriah.  “This is not my favorite kidnapping, man, I just gotta tell you.”

“Did you cut his head off yet?” 
Ransom urged the horses faster, not bothering to turn around.  “’Cause that
might work.”

“
Nothing can defeat me!
” 
The Gardener cried, swinging his blade and barely missing Uriah’s throat.

“
You
‘cut his head off’!” 
Ryle shouted at Ransom incredulously, dodging to the side to avoid the man’s
huge fist.  “Me?  I’m just trying not to die!”

The Gardener captain pushed forward
towards Ransom again.  “Once I have finished off your meaningless pawns, I will
at last get the pleasure of gutting you!” 

“’Pawn’?”  Ryle made a face.  “I’m
not a ‘pawn’.”

“He’s a hostage!”  Uriah agreed,
punching the Gardener in the side and feeling like he’d just hit a brick wall. 
“You can tell because pawns actually have a use.”

The Gardener’s eyes darkened,
ignoring Uriah completely and staying focused on Ransom.  “Do you have any idea
how long I’ve waited to see you die?”

“You want to fight
me
?” 
Ransom asked calmly, but sounded almost amazed.  Generally, people usually
wanted to kill Uriah.  They typically ignored Ransom altogether.

Uriah delivered a vicious slash to
the man’s knee which damn near took his leg off, but the Gardener disregarded
the devastating wound.  He pivoted and backhanded Uriah hard enough to make him
see stars and knock him off his feet.

“No!”  The Gardener shrieked.  “
There
will be no fight!
”  He started forward again.

Uriah bounced back to his feet and
grabbed the man, trying to hold him back.   The Gardener continued pressing
forward, using his incredible strength and un-killability to overpower Uriah
and Ryle.  “Your death is a ritual slaughter.  A sacrifice to the gods for the
continued glory of our Empress!”  He raised his weapon.  “My only regret is
that I didn’t finish you off before, rather than this broken and scarred
thing
which you’ve become.”

Uriah used the hook of his Khopesh
to hold the man’s arm back, keeping it from descending and killing his partner.

“If anyone has any ideas…”  Ryle
tried to shove the man backwards but it was like trying to push a mountain. 
“…now would be a good time!”

“Again, I’m going with
decapitation.”  Ransom suggested.  “That’s usually my ‘go-to’ option in a fight.”

The Gardener wrenched free and slugged
Ryle hard enough to spin the Swab around and knock him to the ground, where he
didn’t move.  That boy’s face was now covered in blood and he wouldn’t be
eating solid food for a few days, from the look of it.

“He wants to fight me.”  Ransom
nodded.  “I can do that.”  She spun and threw the metal hook which had been
used to secure the old woman’s luggage in the wagon.  The hook flew towards the
Gardener... but missed him by several feet.  The hook began to clank and rattle
along the cobblestones behind the wagon.

The man moved to swing his weapon
and Uriah hooked his arm with the Khopesh again.  He applied more pressure to
the weapon, moments away from cutting the man’s arm off at the elbow with the
sharp interior curve of his blade, and hoping it would be fast enough.  “I
don’t know what that was supposed to do, but I don’t think it worked, Dove.” 
Uriah informed his partner.

The Gardener captain spun around to
shake Uriah off, punching him in the face and knocking him back a step.  The
man moved to hit him again, but Uriah caught the man’s arm, twisted it, then
slammed the pommel of his weapon down onto the man’s shoulder, dislocating it
and fracturing the socket.

The man swore and turned around,
cradling his now immobilized arm and trying to snap it back into place.

Uriah hacked his weapon into the
back of the man’s other knee, expecting him to fall to the ground or at least
react in some way… but not so much.

“I wanna go left, Uriah.”  Ransom
announced, seemingly trusting that Uriah could handle their assailant.

“Huh!?!”  He was pretty sure he
didn’t hear that correctly, distracted by the fact the Gardener had recovered
and was once again trying to push his way toward Ransom.  “You want to
what?
”

“Left!”  She repeated, yelling over
the sounds of the struggle behind her.

Uriah turned his head to watch the
city whizz by, waiting to give her the signal.  “Three… two… one…” 

Ransom pulled the reins sharply and
the horses changed directions, rocking down the side-street.  Uriah had no idea
what the woman’s plan was, or why changing directions was so important, but…

He frowned, realizing that the
clanging of the hook had stopped.  Uriah took a second to glance behind them,
to see that the hook had caught one of the lamp poles positioned at the street corner
where they’d turned, the rope connecting the hook to the wagon getting longer
and longer by the second.

His eyes widened in understanding.

“I’d duck.”  Ransom advised.

Uriah swore, forgetting about the
Gardener, and instead pulled Ryle to the floor of the wagon as the boy tried to
stagger back onto his feet.  A split-second later the rope caught, yanking
Ester’s heavy trunk straight out of the wagon and propelling it backwards,
where it slammed into the Gardener with a shattering force.

Uriah winced at the sound of
cracking bone.

The case fell to the cobblestone
street, crushing the man beneath it so that only his arms and legs were
visible.

“Who’s ‘broken’ now, asshole?”  She
called over her shoulder, extending her finger in an obscene Adithian gesture.

Uriah pulled himself to his feet
and threw his head back, laughing merrily.  He braced his foot on the back
panel of the wagon.  “There’s nothing quite like piracy, is there!?!”  He
spread his arms wide.  “Goddamn, I love this job!”

“People are always trying to kill
me.”  Uriah told the ship at large, strangely believing that was somehow news
to them.  “I just don’t understand it.”

Beside him, Ryle didn’t sound at
all sympathetic.  “Well, at least they’re not kidnapping you.”  He tapped a
finger to his own chest, producing a small sound.  “Me?  They try both.”

“That’s your own fault.”  Uriah
told the boy, obviously believing himself to be imparting vital information. 
“You make yourself too easy a target, Swab.”

“We gotta toughen him up.”  Ransom
agreed.

“It’s getting to the point that I’m
embarrassed to be seen with him.”  Uriah’s tone was one of mortification at the
thought of one of his pirate friends seeing him in such company.  “He’s
positively
dripping
in decency.”  Uriah sounded utterly disgusted over
the idea.

“Yep… yep.”  Ransom nodded in
agreement.  “Absolutely.”

The three of them were currently on
the ship, sitting on some crates which were strapped to the deck, trying to
pass the time.  Thus far, most of the journey had involved listening to Din and
Ester argue and say cruel things to Dory.

All in all, it wasn’t a pleasant
voyage.

“This is just yet another example
of your
bugling,
Din.”  The old woman yelled, tromping back and forth
across the deck.  “Whatever possessed you to hire these fools!?!  And this
ship!?!”

“I recognized that you had given me
enough money to hire the dregs, so that’s what I was forced to get!”  Din
shouted back.  “If you wanted a private army and a fucking
yacht
, you
should have sent more than the paltry scraps you’ve always given me!”

Dory cleaned her throat.  “Mother,
you know that Din and I are grateful for the…”

“I don’t need you to speak for
me!”  Din screamed at his wife.

“Don’t you yell at my daughter!” 
The old woman bellowed in reply.  “Her life is hard enough as it is!  Do you
have any idea what I had to endure just raising her!?!  Putting up with her for
that long!?!  DO YOU?!?  It’s not like rearing the little fool was a dream for
me and I’ll be damned before I let you disrespect my achievement!”

“You made her into you!”  Din
insisted.  “That’s the problem!  Every goddamn day, I have to listen to your
criticisms and nagging, only coming out of
her
mouth!”

The argument continued unabated,
for what was at least the fourth hour by Ransom’s reckoning. 

She tried to ignore it, and instead
focused entirely on tending to the most serious of the wounds Uriah had
received in his battle with the Adithians.

Her partner had refused treatment
until they were safely away from the shores of Adithia and out of reach of
their navy, but he still didn’t seem overly pleased about the idea of sitting
still.  He wasn’t really someone who liked to be fussed with… which was simply
too bad.  Because that’s what was going to happen anyway, whether he liked it
or not.

Ransom wasn’t going to let him hurt
himself just because he was stubborn. 

And on a strictly personal level,
she could think of worse ways to spend an afternoon than running her hands
across his body.  Touching him was always… fascinating. 

She frowned in concentration, then
shook her head.  “He dislocated your shoulder, ‘Rai.”

“It’s fine.”  Her partner insisted.

“No, it’s not.”  She touched his bare
shoulder and his whole body jumped.  “See?”  She motioned for him.  “Give me
your arm.”  When he didn’t immediately produce it, she simply grabbed his
wrist.  “You big baby.”  She braced her foot and yanked his arm forward,
producing a popping sound as the joint snapped back into its socket.  Uriah
gave a soft hiss of pain, but was otherwise silent.  “Better?”  She didn’t bother
dropping his hand.

“Like a new man.”

She couldn’t tell if that was
sarcasm or not.

“You know, you could have just seen
a doctor.”  Ryle told no one in particular.  “Or I could treat you, instead.  It
would probably be easier than having the blind lady do it.”

“Tossing you overboard would be
easy too.”  Uriah observed.  “Just because it’s easy doesn’t necessarily make
it the best option.”

“To be fair, I don’t think we’ve
really decided on whether or not tossing the Swab over the side is the best
option.  Last time I checked, we were still discussing it.”  Ransom sank down
in front of Uriah, gently running her fingers across the wound to his chest. 
Her stomach dropped, not expecting the cut to be so deep.  “Oh, gods, baby.” 
She swallowed, suddenly realizing how close he had come to dying.  “He really
got you good.”

Uriah sat straighter, suddenly
paying attention.  “What?”  He asked quickly.  “What was that?”

She cursed at herself for the
slip.  “I said… I said: ‘he fucked you up.’”

Uriah relaxed, slouching back down
again.  “At least I still have my intestines, my left leg and my right arm.  I
don’t think the said can be said of him any longer.  Oh, and no one blew me up
with three barrels of black powder.”

“Yeah, what was the deal with that?” 
Ryle asked.  “Why didn’t he stay down?”

“Magic.”  Her partner sounded so
calm and uninterested that he might as well have been discussing the weather or
attributing the man’s survival to squirrel migration.

“I hate magic, Uriah.”  She reached
for one of the bottles of medicine from her bag, carefully making sure she had
the right one, then began to use it to softly clean his wound.

“I know you do.”  He kept his voice
even, but Ransom could feel his body stiffen in pain.  His muscles tensed
beneath her fingers, trying to keep from letting her know how much it hurt.  “It’s
not like I knew this was going to be a job which would force us to encounter
it, Dove.  I’m sorry.  If I had known that we’d run into it, I would have asked
Agatha to join us.”

“Oh, swell.”  She snorted in
contempt.  “Yeah, she could accidentally turn us all into
cows
again. 
She’s a
moron
.”  She added more ointment to the wound.  “I hate magic,
which means I hate people who can
do
magic.”

“I can’t seem to help it, I just
randomly run into strange magical beings.”  Ryle put his feet up on the box
across from them, each boot making a “thump” sound as it impacted the wood.  “I
don’t get it.  And never the cool ones, either.”  He sounded quite dejected.  “Just
once
, I want a sexy mermaid to show up instead of furious ogres or evil
un-killable badasses.”  He raised his voice, as if shouting to the Universe.  “Is
that too much to ask?”

She took a needle and thread from
her bag and began to close Uriah’s wound.  “Maybe you’ll get lucky and an evil
un-killable sexy mermaid will capture you.”

“Strangely, that still sounds
better than my situation as it currently stands.”  Ryle sighed deeply.  “No
offense, but I really hate you two.”

“See?”  There was a touch of
victory in Uriah’s tone.  “Everyone hates me.  Told you.”

“Everyone doesn’t hate you.”  She
made a face at him, pulling the thread through his skin.  “Only the people who’ve
met you.”

He snorted in laughter, then was
quiet for a moment as he listened to their clients continue to yell at each
other.

“Have you noticed that our clients
seem capable of fighting to the death over everything, as if it were the last patch
of livable ground on earth?”  He wondered aloud.

“Not at all.”  She cut the thread with
her teeth and set about bandaging the area.

“They were screaming at each other
for an hour this morning about whether or not a dog they saw was a Pomeranian.” 
Ryle informed them.

“Was it?”  Uriah sounded
interested.

“Doubtful.”  Ryle slouched lower.  “Since
it was a whale.”

Ransom started laughing.  She was
still chuckling in amusement as she finished securing Uriah’s bandage.  “That
should be okay in a few days.  But I think it’ll scar.”

He shrugged.  “Well, at least the
chest will match the back now.”

Her partner’s shoulder blades and
back were covered with a patchwork of thick scars, the result of a beating he’d
taken during the same incident where she’d lost her sight.  Assisting him in
tending to the severe wounds were some of her earliest memories.

The feeling of his blood on her
hands still gave her horrible nightmares.  He was… he was
Uriah. 
He was
an idiot sometimes, sure, but he shouldn’t ever be in pain.  The man was
bigger
than pain somehow.

He was simply too strong for it.

Uriah was the kind of man who
should be able to walk out of any fight or war, without a scratch on him.  Like
some kind of heroic knight, blessed by the gods and his own valor.

In her opinion, her partner was the
closest thing to a hero left in this world.  Possibly the closest thing it had
ever had, in fact.

He was… amazing.

And the thought of him engaging in
a fight he couldn’t win terrified her.

She tore open the leg of Uriah’s
pants and ran her finger over the arrow wound which had caused him to limp all
night.  “Again?”  She arched a teasing eyebrow.

He’d also received an arrow wound
to the shoulder during that long-ago fight she didn’t remember, which for some
reason had never quite healed correctly.  Uriah informed her that she had given
it to him, but she had no memory of such an event.  That didn’t mean she couldn’t
tease him about his tendency to get shot though.

“Well, it was so much fun the last
time, I thought ‘Hey, why not try it again?’”  He snarked.  “But if it’s any
consolation, this arrow scar won’t be nearly as important as the last one. 
That one has real character and I’m still honored that you bestowed it on me.”

“Uh-huh, I’m sure.”  She used her
jackknife to hold the wound open and then yanked out the remains of the
projectile.  Her partner jumped, not expecting that.

“Ow!”  He yelped.  “How about a
little warning, huh?”

She made a face at him.  “Baby.” 
She fished a more powerful antiseptic from her bag and began to apply it with
her fingertip.

She’d spent way too much time
patching up her partner over the years.  He took too many chances with his life,
and no matter how hurt he was, he generally preferred to ignore it.  So, the
job of keeping him alive usually fell to her.  She had no real objections to
the system, since it also ensured that she could be positive that the job was
done
correctly
and that he was taken care of.  She didn’t really trust
anyone else to do it.

Her fingers gently caressed his
thigh and she found that she was enjoying the sensation far more than was
appropriate.  Touch was now one of her most important ways of gathering
information, and up until now, she’d never had occasion to explore quite so
much of Uriah’s body.  Or at least not the truly
interesting
areas,
anyway.

Of course, it wasn’t like she was
sitting around and hoping that someone shot him or stabbed him in the groin or
anything, just that his thigh muscles were hard and toned, and as her fingers
moved over them, her own body instantly responded.

But she had a job to do, so she
pushed it from her mind.

She applied more of the medicinal
potion to the wound and then softly blew on it to dry it so that she could
apply the bandage.

“Please don’t do that.”  He
croaked, his voice breaking.

“Why?”  She gasped, loosening her
grip at once.  “Does it hurt that bad?”

He was silent for a moment.  “No.” 
He finally got out, every muscle in his body straining.

“Then…”  She trailed off,
recognizing the problem.  “Oh…”

They were silent for several
breaths, both apparently recognizing the inappropriately sexy nature of this,
as she knelt in front of him and softly blew on his inner thigh.

Her hand stayed where it was, her
thumb moving slowly caressing his straining muscles.

She swallowed, feeling her skin
grow warmer as she became more and more aware of how incredible it felt to be
touching that man. 

Her hand slid up his thing…

“You know… I got injured too.” 
Ryle offered, breaking the erotic tension.  “I’m liking your ‘bedside manner,’
so can you tend to me next?”

“
No one cares about you
.” 
Ransom bit out sharply, annoyed that he had ruined her moment.  “Least of all
me.”

“She has a point, Swab.”  Uriah
agreed, also sounding irritated with the boy.  “Our expedition seems to have us
scrambling from one future doom to the next.  At the moment, your sister is
just one of
several
power people trying to kill us.  Sadly, your
significance to us is thus
severely
diminished.”

“All-time low.”  Ransom nodded, sewing
up Uriah’s leg and beginning to wrap it in bandages.

Ryle made an unimpressed sound. 
“Well, you’ll forgive me if I’m not exactly crying over the mess you two got
yourselves into.  Personally, I probably would have worked a little harder not
to piss off the prince of Adithia and his evil army.”

They were both silent for a beat.

“Wait…”  Uriah sat straighter. 
“What?”

“The magic guy.”  Ryle clarified. 
“That’s Prince Csejte, captain of the Gardeners.”

“Oh, how do
you
know that?” 
Uriah snorted, dismissing the boy’s ideas.  “You’ve never been outside your
stupid village unless it’s because someone’s kidnapped you.”

“I know because Cormoran is at war
with Adithia!”  Ryle defended, sounding insulted.  “I tend to make it a point
to know something about the people who are trying to kill me.  I realize that
it’s probably more difficult for you, given that that would literally be
everyone in the known world, but try and keep up, okay?”

They were all silent again.

“Dove?”  Uriah asked her softly,
worry in his tone.