On Discord Isle by Jonathon Burgess Page A

off at any moment. Amazingly, none did.
    The colonel and his man stood at the port-side stair down to the deck. Reaver Jane was only a few feet below, making up for her lack of advantage with sheer ferocity and bloody-mindedness. The third man was on his back, a bloody hole in his forehead where Jane’s ricochet had taken him.
    Lina got her leg up to the sterncastle and scrabbled upright. She grabbed the broom-handle haft of the swivel gun and pulled it around to face the colonel. The cocking mechanism was already primed, and the flint-headed hammer was up.
    “Hey arseholes!” she cried. “Leave off if you don’t want to be chumming the waters with yer innards!”
    The colonel glanced over his shoulder. He stared at her, the tip of his blade dropping in surprise. The man at his side gave a yell and collapsed as Jane slipped in a blow at his shins. She quickly moved up the ladder and held her blade to the colonel’s throat. He started in surprise, then threw his weapon down in disgust.
    “I surrender,” he said sourly.
    “Lucky for you, you son of a bitch, we’re actually taking it today.” Reaver Jane narrowed her eyes. “Call off your men.” The Perinese soldier frowned, but raised his voice to comply. One by one, the small struggles died down on the deck below them.
    No one threatens my ship, Lina thought savagely.
    Overhead, Runt screeched their victory.
     

Chapter Six
     
    The parrot was screaming again.
    Natasha rolled over to glare at it. The motion made her shirt bunch uncomfortably between her body and the dusty earth. A root now stabbed at her ribs. She ignored these to focus her hate on the obnoxious avian above her.
    Die, damn you .
    The creature was colorful. Its stumpy legs were a bright orange. The great oversized beak was a soft, butter-yellow. Whenever it stretched, brilliant plumage stood out in a vibrant explosion made all the more intense by the soft green backdrop of the foliage.
    But the bird was also loud.
    It had a raucous, piercing cry that shattered any sense of peace in the jungle about her. Since just before dawn when she’d finally fallen asleep, it had sat in the canopy above Natasha’s head. Periodically it broke out into a harsh, ear-splitting racket, no doubt attempting to attract some tone-deaf mate.
    Natasha fumbled for something to throw at the bird, fingers searching across the ash-dusted earth and finding nothing that she could use. Irritated, she rolled back over and glanced around her encampment. It was small and mean, positioned under the spreading branches of an ancient baobab. The tree had outfought all competitors, leaving the ground beneath it a bare clearing covered with deadfall and surrounded by the thick green jungle. Directly above, the branches were burned and bare of leaves. A slant of early morning light filtered in through this hole to brighten the space.
    She grimaced as she took in the damage. Trying to make a fire had seemed like a good idea last night, in the dark and in the cold. How was she supposed to know that a bigger pile of wood would burn hotter, not longer?
    Her unused tent lay against the base of the tree trunk. It had collapsed again, an ugly and misshapen thing she’d gotten fed up with trying to fix sometime after midnight. Seeing it in the daylight just stoked her anger. A tent shouldn’t have been that hard to throw together, not with the cloth and twine left behind by her rebellious crew. Just before the cobbled-together thing lay her ill-conceived fire pit, an ash-covered scar she’d failed to dig nearly deep enough. Amazingly, when things had spiraled out of control, the tent had not caught fire.
    Other bits scavenged from the beach lay about the clearing. Most were garbage now, trod into the ashy dirt and broken, burned or inedible. After putting out the blaze, she’d not bothered to reclaim them before collapsing to the dirt in exhaustion.
    Her eye landed on a piece of hardtack biscuit only a few feet away. Natasha grabbed it up