The Briny Deep Read online

  The Briny Deep

  Orc Pirate Book 2

  Simon Archer

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  3. Tabitha

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  20. Sebastian Arde

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  32. Adra Notch-Ear

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  39. Justin Layne

  A Note from the Author

  1

  “ D on’t ye fret, me old friend. After all, yer Bardak Skullsplitter, the up-and-coming greatest pirate in the archipelago,” Kargad Toothbreaker said as he poured another round. Formerly my first mate, now the captain of Sirensong, the second ship of my little fleet, he sat with me and drank. Like me, he was an orc, but a little shorter, and maybe a little broader in the shoulder. His black hair was pulled into a ponytail, and he’d trimmed his beard into mutton chops. “Have ye thought about purchasin’ a couple o’ sloops instead o’ pining over that galleon?”

  “I ain’t pining, just annoyed that our three ships were bloody expensive, and after doling out shares and taking care of the refits to the three vessels we already have, there’s far less gold left than I’d like,” I said with a snort and drained half my mug in a single gulp. “And to make matters worse, we need something with more gun than The Witch’s Promise if we want to harry Empire shipping right an’ proper. They’re sure to increase the size of the escorts for supply ships to Avion and Insmere, especially if the free towns begin discouraging Imperial landings.”

  He shrugged and looked around the dark, smoky interior of the dive. A handful of shadowed figures were scattered among the seven tables, and a large, sallow-skinned woman with a lazy eye tended bar. I gave her a sidelong look. Half-ogre, maybe. She looked soft, but she was as broad in the shoulders as I was and maybe half-again as heavy.

  “At least the crew’s enjoyin’ their ill-gotten gains,” Kargad observed and lifted his mug to his lips. “Why didn’t ye just promise a larger share when we finish this, Bardak?”

  I glared at him for a moment, my eyes narrowed, then I heaved a sigh and said, “Because they deserved it, old friend. Ain’t like this is going to be a short campaign, aye?”

  “Truth,” he smirked. “I’ve an idea, Cap’n, if ye be willin’ to listen.”

  “When did I ever not listen to you?” I asked in Targik, swapping to our shared, native tongue to give us a modicum of privacy.

  “I can name a few times,” Kargad teased, then looked down at the table for a moment before his gaze met mine. “Instead of building or buying your own ships, you could look into recruiting some of the more honorable scoundrels sailing the archipelago.”

  “Honorable scoundrels,” I said with a snort. “I’d hardly be willing to trust many of that scurvy lot.”

  “Scrape the bottom of the barrel, Bardak. Offer the little operators a chance to make it big. Cultivate them, help them out. Take a share of anything they pillage.” A huge grin spread over his face. “You’ve got three ships and a gods-damned Dragon Turtle named Tiny. Not to mention two witches, Mary Night and my daughter Nagra, Adra Notch-Ear the tuskless spiritcaller, and Ligeia the siren. Nobody’s going to want to cross you.”

  “I want loyalty, old friend, not fear,” I said with a shake of my head.

  “Keep giving out shares like you did with Bloody Bill’s gold, and you’ll have that quick enough.” He laughed and took another drink. “Men always like a good payday.”

  I snorted and rolled my eyes, hiding my smirk behind another gulp of local rum that was strong enough to peel the paint from a ship’s hull. The stuff burned like fire down to my stomach, where it gathered in a warmth that spread through my body. Kargad was right, of course, and I’d already thought about his suggestion. There were a number of privateer and pirate captains in the archipelago who owed no particular allegiance to the Empire or the Admiralty.

  Could I convince them to join me, though, and what would be their price? Those were my primary concerns.

  “Thought I smelled greenskin,” a snarling voice pulled me out of my thoughts. Kargad and I raised our heads to see four men, docksiders or stevedores maybe, gathered in a semi-circle around our table.

  A low growl came from the bartender before she challenged them in a surprisingly shrill voice, “No fighting!”

  “Shut it, Sharin,” one of the men turned on her, brandishing a blackjack. “Ain’t gonna be no fight if these two don’t make trouble.”

  “They’re payin’ customers, Cav, same as ye and yer louts!” the woman protested. “An’ well-heeled, to boot.”

  “Well-heeled, eh?” Cav looked back at Kargad and me.

  More toughs slipped into the crowded interior while the previous customers squirmed their way around and out. The proprietress flapped her hands and continued protesting, but her words were lost on the growing mass of thugs.

  I felt a smirk tug at the corner of my lips. This was going to be fun.

  “Aye,” I replied to the man as I looked him over. There wasn’t much to see, except he had that lean and hungry look common to folks on the wrong side of what few laws there were in the free towns. “Ye want me to buy ye an’ yer lot a drink or something?”

  Kargad snorted and shook his head as Cav scowled and said, “What I want, greenie, is for you an’ yer boy there to shuffle off yer coin purses and ship out.”

  “Not going to happen,” I said flatly before draining my mug. “We ain’t done drinking, yet. Besides, I’ve scraped tougher shit from the bottom o’ me boots than you lot, so I’d suggest ye take yer leave an’ go rattle up a toddler or babe-in-arms. Ye know, somethin’ more yer speed.”

  All the men froze, and Cav was speechless for a moment, his mouth working like a fish out of water.

  Kargad let out a loud guffaw that broke the sudden silence and told them, “And if ye drop a coin or two for the lady’s trouble, we won’t have to kick yer arses on the way out.”

  I’d been expecting something out of my old mate, and he didn’t disappoint me. Thing is, it broke the shocked silence that my statement had dropped over the room. Cav’s face grew hard, and he swept his blackjack across our table, shattering the earthenware pitcher of rum and sending shards and alcohol over us, the table, and anyone else nearby.

  “Now yer done,” the tough growled and pointed his weapon at me.

  I shook my head. “No, ye idiot landlubber, yer done.”

  Kargad knew what was coming and kicked back quickly from the table as I brought my hands up underneath the closest edge, flipping the whole thing and sending spilled rum, pottery shards, and everything else up into Cav’s surprised face. There was a loud thud as the wooden table met the man’s skull, and he fell backward with a cry.

  Everything degenerated at that point. There was no telling how many toughs the rabble-rouser had managed to crowd into this nameless dive, but they all swarmed over Kargad and me.

  Unlike Bloody Bill, I wasn’t the kind of man to go straight to murde
r in a bar brawl, and neither was Kargad. It was kind of funny considering that we were orcs, but we’d spent years learning concepts like honor. Besides, none of them had pulled anything more dangerous than a belaying pin. It looked to me like they meant to run us out and embarrass us rather than anything more permanent.

  Their mistake. My old friend and I had been spoiling for a fight, and this was a perfect opportunity.

  I ignored several body blows from my assailants and shifted my stance to keep my feet as they hit me like a wave. Someone grabbed one of my arms, and a blackjack cracked me right between the eyes.

  What the hell was this, a press gang?

  The headshot didn’t even make me see stars. Orcish skulls were pretty damned thick, and these fellows may have been strong for humans, but they really weren’t much more than angry children to Kargad and me. I caught the man on my arm with my free hand and threw him across the bar into a clump of his mates. Every one of them went down in a heap, taking one of Sharin’s tables with them.

  Kargad let out a roar, and another man flew past me and hit the wall with a crunch before sliding down it, unconscious. The meaty thwacks of fists and clubs on flesh came from behind me as the fight continued.

  At this point, I just started slugging it out with Cav’s men. Two more went down under my meaty fists, but more crowded in, brandishing various cudgels. I grinned and swung on them, too, my fists sending them sprawling away even as they bounced their clubs off of the iron-hard muscles of my shoulders and arms. They were strong, for humans, but bludgeons did little more than annoy orcs.

  With a moment’s breather as the thugs on me tried to regroup, I was able to take the fight to them. Grabbing two of the men by their shirts, I yanked them off their feet and slung one back into his comrades. The other one got off lighter when the cloth just ripped in my hand, but I turned the grab into a punch that almost caved in his chest and dropped him gasping to the sawdust-covered floor.

  Suddenly, the crack of wood on bone sounded from Kargad’s direction, and I spared a glance at my friend. He had a belaying pin in each hand and was laying about gleefully, throwing men back and away with bruised and broken heads while he laughed like a madman.

  I grinned before I threw two more men across the bar, kicked a third in the chest, and sent him sailing out the bat-winged entry doors. Then I let out a roar of my own that shook the rafters and brought a pause to the combat.

  Nearby, Cav staggered to his feet, both eyes swollen mostly shut as blood streamed from a flattened, broken nose.

  “Get these green-skinned whoresons!” he slurred before almost falling over on his face.

  A couple of the men still standing caught him as the group swarmed us again. I punched the first man to close with me square in the face, clotheslined two more, then the rest piled on me. A chair shattered against my back and staggered me for a moment, and I saw Kargad drop to one knee as several men just jumped on him.

  I was tired of playing, but I didn’t want to kill any of these morons. Well, not intentionally. At least the ones we’d put down were smart enough to stay there, or maybe they just couldn’t get up. Either way, so long as they didn’t rejoin the fight, I wouldn’t bother with them. The rest of these men, where the hell were they all coming from? It was like half of Caber turned out just to fight a pair of orcs.

  I snatched one of the men off his feet and held onto him as I slammed his flailing body into one member of the group overbearing Kargad. The whole mess went over, and I waded in after I hurled my impromptu weapon across the bar and through another table.

  The bartender shouted something I couldn’t quite make out through all the shouts and impact of fists and blunt weapons on flesh. Kargad rose, still grinning, though he had a cut over one eye that dripped red blood over the creases in his face. I swept aside another attacker and bellowed, cowing the closest of our assailants for just a moment.

  Then a shot rang out, and everyone, myself and Kargad included, froze and turned towards the door. Silhouetted against the dim light from the street beyond stood a figure holding a cutlass and a smoking flintlock. Cav lay sprawled at her feet, half his head blown away.

  “Oy!” shouted a husky female voice. The r’s trilled slightly as she spoke. “Next o’ ye lubbers moves an’ I’ll slice off yer balls an’ feed ‘em to ye with a swallow o’ grog.” Her eyes shown green with reflected light. “Or maybe dry, if ye piss me off any more.”

  Kargad and I exchanged glances. Who was this?

  All of the men froze and went silent except for the groans and squirms of the fallen while the woman stepped rather daintily over the threshold and swept the barrel, or rather barrels, of her flintlock around the barroom. It was a double-barreled pistol, and one of the hammers was obviously cocked.

  “I’m lookin’ for Bardak Skullsplitter,” she said in her husky, purring voice as her glittering gaze swept the room and focused on me. “And it looks like I’ve found him.”

  2

  T he fighters still standing all inched back from the newcomer as she shouldered her cutlass and began a carefree saunter across the room towards me. She was an Ailur, a feline humanoid from the southern reaches beyond the borders of the Erdrath Empire, and she was short, a little taller than Mary, maybe. Her fur was a glossy black, with a thick sort of mane in place of hair, and triangular ears that poked up through it and swiveled to catch errant sounds.

  In build, she was compactly muscular, with all the right curves, and a generous amount of furred cleavage that was barely constrained by her blouse. A long, sinuous tail lashed behind her.

  Now this woman, if she wasn’t a pirate, she certainly dressed the part in colorful clothes of red, gold, and blue, with scarves of every color of the rainbow strategically tied about her person. Bangles and necklaces of various precious metals, adorned with glittering gemstones, finished the getup. A brace of pistols rode on a low-slung pair of belts that draped her hips, and a cutlass frog sat empty on the right.

  She was gorgeous and terrifying, or she would have been if I wasn’t an orc.

  I straightened my back and squared my shoulders as the tiny feline woman closed with me.

  Kargad shoved aside an errant table and drifted up on my right. “Cap’n?” he asked.

  “It’s alright,” I answered, my right hand raised. “She’s not attacking us, I don’t think.”

  One of her large ears flicked, and a sly smirk spread over her black-furred face. “Ye’d know if I was, me hearties,” she said as she stopped and looked up at me appraisingly. “Cap’n Bardak Skullsplitter, eh? Thought ye’d be hairier.”

  Kargad snorted, and I just grinned. I knew this woman by face and reputation if naught else. “Cap’n Tabitha Binx,” I said. “Thought ye’d be uglier.”

  The grin on her face spread wide, and she gave a hearty laugh. “Plenty o’ blackhearts have tried scarring my looks,” she complained. “An’ I’m still pretty. Meanwhile, they be pretty dead.”

  “Ye are, at that,” I mused.

  The general silence had broken in the nameless bar, and the many attackers were scuttling out, dragging their wounded, but rather pointedly leaving the one dead man.

  “Yon daisy-pusher was an agent o’ the Admiralty,” she explained. “One o’ me girls heard him recruitin’ at the wharves for some bully-boys to take ye unawares. I thought to follow the bastards since I’d been lookin’ to meet with ye.” Her large eyes fairly glowed as she gazed up at me.

  With the place mostly cleared out, the grumbling bartender began righting tables and chairs before she started raking together the debris of everything that had been broken during the battle. Occasionally, she spared us a hairy eyeball.

  Kargad dragged over a table and three chairs, then marched over to speak with the burly woman while Tabitha and I made ourselves comfortable.

  “Why were ye lookin’ for me?” I asked, unable to contain my curiosity.

  “Reasons,” Tabitha replied coyly. “Scuttlebutt says ye had a hand in puttin’ an end t
o that gobshite Arde, an’ I wanted to find out just how true that was.”

  “He and The Indomitable now grace the floor o’ the sea at the mouth o’ the Aigon Straits,” I confessed. “From the reception the Admiralty had waiting, I reckon the news reached Layne.”

  “Like as not,” she purred. “Then again, might just be they’ve folks watchin’ the free towns for pirates an’ troublemakers. I’ve seen me own share o’ men like our dead friend over there.”

  Coins clinked as they changed hands, and my old friend returned with a small cask of rum and three mugs.

  “Tipped a bit for the trouble,” he said. “Probably enough to buy this place outright, but I figured it might be good to stoke a little goodwill.”

  “Aye.” I broke the seal on the cask and poured the cups full of the dark, sweet stuff. It was more of the heady local drink, heavily spiced and with enough kick to send a ship out of dry dock.

  “To timely meetings,” I said and raised my cup to Tabitha Binx.

  She laughed and raised her own. “Hear, hear.”

  Kargad joined in with a laugh, and we toasted and drank. All the while, I studied the Ailur captain.

  She was a rare breed. Ailur didn’t tend to travel far from their own lands, although I’d heard they did have a fascination with sea travel. Despite this, very few made it out to the archipelago, and fewer still to the orcish lands of northern Erdrath. I’d only seen a few in my life and never crossed blades with one.

  This particular feline had come out of nowhere a few years back and made a name for herself as a fully lettered privateer leading sorties against Milnian shipping. Then, just as quickly as she’d appeared, she vanished, only to reappear a year or so later with a new ship and a pirate crew of the roughest, most dangerous women to ever grace the shipping lanes.

  Her ship, The Black Cat , was a twelve-gun sloop. A fast and maneuverable little thing that could run circles around larger vessels while cutting away their masts and rigging with chain shot, and tearing up their crew with grapeshot.

  At least that’s what the sea-tales said.