Islands in the Sky

6.11

Sema looked along the ship, towards the group of woodcutters in the middle of the deck. Most of them were crouched down behind the rail, like Sema was, and that they were crouching probably helped, Sema thought, because it kept them out of sight, and made how many of them there were less obvious from the island-ship.

She thought about numbers. She looked at the woodcutters, getting ready to fight. There were fifteen of them, and about the same number of sailors on the ship.

There were fifteen woodcutters, and that didn’t seem like many. Worried, she began to wonder how many enemies they would face. She wanted to know. It seemed important. For some reason she wanted to know right then, and badly enough that she was prepared to risk the archers to find out.

She looked over the rail, carefully. The island-ship was only a hundred paces away now, and she could see the people on it quite clearly. She began trying to count them, quickly, trying to stay as still as she could while she did, so none of the archers noticed her.

She counted.

She could see a few people in the island-ship’s trees, operating the sails, as the sailors were on the woodcutting ship. She could see four more people using the tiller, probably that many because it was so large, and difficult to push. She could two or three archers, still shooting arrows, and also ten more people standing along the nearest shoreline, waiting, with swords and pikes and spears, apparently ready to climb over onto the woodcutting ship and attack when it was closer. Those ten, she thought, and the archers behind them, and that was all the people who were going to fight.

Ten people presumably planning to fight, she thought, and also cruel and heartless enough to do it.

It didn’t seem like many.

There were only about twenty people on the island-ship, less than were on the woodcutters boat, and if only half of them were planning to fight, then perhaps this situation wasn’t so desperate after all.

Sema thought. Usually, she supposed, it would be ten people who had the advantages of surprise and confusion and frightened victims. Especially the fear, she thought, when the island-ship appeared unexpectedly, and began to attack without warning.

Usually, that fear probably helped, but it didn’t seem to matter here.

Here, the woodcutters were scared, but were willing to fight, too. Here there were fifteen woodcutters, and presumably some sailors, as well. Fifteen woodcutters with sharp axes, which seemed like it might be enough. Sema knew nothing about war, but those numbers didn’t seem so hopeless, after all. The woodcutters weren’t soldiers, and probably weren’t used to fighting, but they were scared, and knew they were in danger. And, Sema supposed, a person was a lot easier to chop through with an axe than a tree, even if a person moved around more.

Sema thought about that. She wondered which was more important, that the woodcutters had strength, or that they weren’t used to moving targets.

She actually wasn’t sure.