Cinnamon Bun

Chapter Five Hundred and Fifty-One - Become the Hunter

I didn't expect us to actually encounter pirates.

Like, sure, we joined the convoy explicitly to avoid pirates. That was one of the major reasons the convoy even existed in the first place--though there were a few other advantages. But still, I didn't expect pirates to be an issue. After all, any pirates would have to fight all of us! Not a very appetizing target.

That's probably why I was caught a little flat-footed when Gordon let out a shout, saying that he spotted a ship on the horizon.

Calamity came out, and squinted his cat eyes while shielding his vision from the sun. The ship was barely a dot on the horizon, with the sun more or less behind it.

It was late enough in the evening that the ship didn't have to be too high in order to come in with the light of the sun at its back, and we were pretty lucky that Gordon had spotted it at all, even though the harpy couldn't make out many details.

Calamity could, though. He had good eyes, probably because he was a hunter by trade and good eyesight was a boon for that.

"What do you see?" I called out to him.

Calamity turned and glanced up. "I think it's pirates, Broc."

I blinked, my ears twitching as if to make sure I'd heard correctly. "Pirates?"

The catboy made his way over so that I wouldn't have to shout. "N'yeah, I think so," he said. "It's a pretty big boat. Looks a lil' worn out. The bottom half's painted a sort of blue-grey and the top half's all yellow-white."

"Is there a jolly roger?" I asked.

"A what?" he asked.

"A pirate flag," I said.

"Do pirates tell people that they're pirates? That seems a lil dumb to me," he said. "But nah, no flags that I can see from here. But it's still far, even for my eyes."

I glanced over, and yeah, the ship was just a tiny black smudge in the distance, no bigger than a fly across a room. I was impressed that Calamity could see enough of it to make out colours, even. "How are you sure that it's a pirate ship, then?"

"Well, I figure paint like that's for hiding better. There's only two reasons animals hide. If they don't want to be spotted by predators, or if they're ambush predators themselves."

"That kind of covers both sides of the predator-prey thing," I said. "Doesn't that mean everyone would use camouflage like that?"

"No--you only need to camouflage yourself if you're afraid of getting discovered." He grinned, "Us social races don't usually need to fear discovery. But maybe pirates are not as social as civilized folk. Call it a gut feeling."

Who was I not to trust in the gut feelings of my friends? I found some semaphore flags and then moved up to the foredeck where I waved the flags for attention. As soon as I saw a reply from one of the Pyrowalkian ships, I sent a message back. "Ship sighted. West high. Incoming. Danger."

The message was repeated back to me, then I saw it being repeated on the ship's other side. It only took another two minutes before we received instructions. "Turn. 20 degrees. Starboard. Observe."

That made some sense. The turn would have us flying a bit off-course from the maybe-pirate ship, presenting our sides. The 'observe' order was just common sense as well. Obviously we'd be keeping an eye on that ship.

I relayed the order to the helm, and we turned, following the convoy into a gentle curve that had up pointing in a new direction. Once we settled into our new course, there was a new message. "Engines full. Thirty knots."

That was hardly our top-speed, but it was a bit faster than what we were moving at. We let the convoy kick their engines into full, then easily caught up and matched speeds with them.

In the meantime, I let my friends and crew know that there might be trouble. It was as good a time as any to prepare for it. That meant getting bows out and stringing them, finding ammunition and setting it out, preparing water-collection spells to fill buckets in case of a fire, and doing some last-minute preparations like securing anything loose so that it wouldn't tumble around in case of tight maneuvers.

It was important not to have loose things on an airship, but sometimes it was just more convenient not to tie everything down. Now wasn't the time for that, though.

As we had sped up and changed course a little, we were no longer going to be in the same spot as before, which meant that the ship that would have intercepted us needed to change its course if it wanted to do that.

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And it did. There was a subtle change in its distant shape as some sail was deployed and the ship turned to a new heading, one that looked very much like it would cut us off.

"Alright," I said. "I guess that they are pirates after all."

Now that the sun wasn't behind the intercepting ship, I could safely point a spyglass at it.

It was still so distant that I still couldn't make out too many details, but Calamity's description had been accurate. The ship was of a more... Pyrowalk-y design. It had a large balloon, long and narrow, with a long structure beneath that ran almost the entire length of the balloon from bow to stern.

There were six nacelles poking out of the middle of the balloons, each one with a propeller at the front and rear. Surprisingly, there was little smoke coming from those. So maybe the engines weren't running at their fullest?

The top half of the ship from the middle-up was painted a pale yellow-orange, with mottled patches of beige and grey. The bottom half, including the main structure of the ship, was painted in a blue-grey kind of colour. It actually happened to match the early evening sky very well, which I supposed was kind of the point.

It reminded me a little of pictures of world war two aircraft, with their two-toned camouflage patterns.

I squinted into the spyglass, trying to hold it even so that I could make out more details. There were three platforms on this side of the ship, all of them equipped with what looked like smaller ballistas. Smaller, but not tiny. There were some figures around them, so I knew that the arms on those were about as wide as a person was tall.

That was a lot of weaponry.

I looked back at the ships in our convoy. Each had a single ballista, and I wasn't sure if the crews were as ready or trained to use them.

I was just starting to worry in earnest when Bastion came up next to me. "An interesting situation," he said.

"A bad one," I replied. "You're good at fighting and stuff. What do you think our odds are?"

He stared at the distant ship, then at the other three ahead. "If the enemy thought that the convoy here was such easy prey, then they wouldn't be waiting so long to attack. They're moving slowly, trying to come in from ambush. It might just be caution on their part, of course, but when you have an overwhelming advantage, it's usually best to use that advantage aggressively."

"So it's not that bad?" I asked.

"Oh, I didn't say that. I think the Beaver is a well-crewed ship, all things considered. It might well be able to hit far above its weight class. But that vessel looks like it very much is above our weight class."

I chewed on my lower lip. He was probably right. "So, what do we do?"

"I'll tell you this much. Sticking to a nice, easy formation like this isn't going to scare them off," Bastion said. "They've already committed to the attack, though by the looks of it the battle won't have its first shot for another hour or so. My point is, they've decided to attack. The goal of the convoy, to scare off the threat, failed."

"Right," I said. "Now we fall on the second goal, having friends close by to make the fight easier."

Bastion nodded. "That means hoping that those three merchant ships can hold their own in a fight."

I winced. I didn't know the crews or captains. All I knew was that they weren't super well-armed.

This was going to be tricky, wasn't it?

Then I glanced over as Awen came over, with Calamity next to her. "Ah, hi. I have an idea," she said.

"Go on," I replied.

"We were talking," Calamity said. "About ranges. And with the thinner air, I'm pretty sure that with a bit of altitude and maybe a spell or two, I can probably shoot an arrow a good kilometre and a half."

"What's the range of a ballistea?" I asked.

"On even ground, half a kilometre," Bastion said immediately.

I blinked. "Okay, so that's good, but one arrow probably won't do too much to a whole ship?"

Awen nodded quickly. "You're right. Unless the arrow is designed to carry a payload." She pulled something out of her pocket. One of her bolts for her ballista, with a glass bulb on the end. "Like this. Filled with explosive liquids and with plenty of room for a few added spells."

"Well then," I said as I glanced back at the pirates. "You said a kilometre and a half, but that's if we're flying even to them, right?"

"Yup," Calamity said.

"And if we're higher?"

He grinned.

***