Sky Pirates

Chapter 3

Lord Parker Greene awoke with a start to the sounds of swords clashing. He instinctively tried to reach for his sword astonished to discover himself shackled. Greene studied the getup: hands, bound in iron cuffs encircled with heavy, rusty chain. He followed the chain to a loop through cuffs at his ankles which then threaded through an iron coupling in the wooden floor. As his vision cleared, he was flabbergasted to discover he was in his own, private chamber aboard the HMS Barkley.

He stood, tried to stretch, but couldn't move his arms beyond his chest. Greene tested his tether's distance and found he could move rather freely for about three feet in all directions from his berth. While his range didn't allow him access, he was pleased to discover that his walking stick remained resting upright in its corner. His hat was still on its peg.

Greene's head ached. He reached for it, but was reminded of his imprisonment by the rattling iron. "At least, I'm alive."

After some maneuvering, he felt the pockets he could touch with his limited range of motion; it seemed that everything he'd selected to take with him, the watch, compass, and even the small pistol were still on his person. The only thing not there was his sword, although, after further assessment, he realized his scabbard remained over his shoulder. "How curious." Greene smiled to himself at his captor's choices.

All the while, as he studied his surroundings, the battle that caused him to awake continued unabated, not close by, but near enough to hear the individual clink and clash of sword against sword. Was it possible that the fight between the pirates and the Barkley's crew continued?

Greene moved as close as he could to the portal. If he pulled the chains to their furthest point and tilted his head in just the right way, he could see that his airship was now aboard the deck of the great pirate ship. Despite the horrible headache he felt, Parker strained his neck a bit more and, for a brief moment, caught a glimpse of another of Her Majesty's mail schooners floating next to the pirate's ship, just as the Barkley had been before he'd been knocked unconscious. From his current precarious vantage point, he saw an army of pirates—not their bodies, only their heads—moving from the deck of their ship onto the schooner's deck. Hundreds and hundreds of them moving in that ant-like column, just as they'd boarded the Barkley.

"Ah, you're finally awake."

He turned and stumbled to find a dwarf dressed in a page's uniform akin to those worn hundreds of years ago during the reign of Henry VIII.

"We weren't sure if you'd come back around after that nasty bump we gave your noggin." The dwarf smiled at Greene before closing the cabin door and approached a bit closer. "Now, don't try anything silly, Lord Greene. You want to stay on my good side." The little man turned a bit. "Which is this side." His eyes sparkled when he laughed and exposed a cheek with a small, ragged scar. "I may not look like much to you," he continued in a singsong way, "but with this,"—he showed off a ring on the pinky of his right hand—"with this, I'm a giant."

Like so many, Parker Greene was drawn to dwarfs, as if they were curious creatures, rather than humans. He couldn't help but smile at the petite man's good nature, all the while inspecting the ring as best he could from his current distance to discover a flat surface with a spike, like a sun dial in the center.

"It may not seem like it at the moment, but truly, we mean you no harm." As he spoke, the dwarf opened up the flap of a leather satchel, the strap of which looped over his shoulder.

"It didn't seem like that when you were slaughtering my fellow airmen. Did anyone survive?"

"Well, when men resist, we cut them down." The dwarf had raised himself with some effort on to Greene's berth. The small creature smelled of mint and lavender soap. Not like a woman, exactly, but he was the freshest airman Greene had ever encountered. Now, standing eye-to-eye, the small man said: "Some young crew survived, most didn't. Others have been captured and...dealt with. Please turn around so I can take a look and change the dressing on your head." He held up the bag he wore around his neck that caused the red cloth flower on his breast to rumple.