Screams.
The ship lurched suddenly, as if a great weight had been placed on it.
She heard the guards outside the door exchanging worried murmurs.
More calls, shouts, alarms.
Then came a sound she’d never heard before, a discordant roar as if a hundred people were shouting at once in anger but were unable to form any words. Jules felt the hairs on her skin prickling as she stared at the door.
Mages. It had to be Mages attacking.
As the noise outside rose to the din of battle, booted feet came rushing to the brig. “All hands on deck! Now!” Ian’s voice ordered.
“But—” one of the guards began.
“Captain’s orders, all hands on deck, now!”
The guards took off at a run.
Jules heard the bar across the door being lifted. The door swung open.
Ian stood there, his face still a mask of stone as he looked at her.
Had he come to kill her?
But, after a moment, he pulled out a ring of keys and bent to insert one in the shackle holding one of her hands.
As the shackle fell open, Ian stepped back, tossing the keys at her. “Save yourself.”
He’d turned and nearly gone out the door before Jules found her voice. “Ian! Please! I didn’t kill him!”
Ian paused in the doorway, his back to her.
“Your father used one of my blades to kill himself, to ensure no dishonor would come to his name and so you and the rest of his family would be safe! I swear that’s the truth! I’d never have killed your father, Ian!”
Another moment of hesitation, then Ian bolted away. She heard his boots running across the deck and up the ladder.
Flexing her hand stiffened by being in the shackle for so long, Jules fumbled with the keys, trying to get her other hand free, cursing as her shaking hand had trouble inserting the key into the shackle. But finally it fell free and Jules got to unsteady feet as the ship lurched once more.
She staggered out of the brig, one hand against the nearest bulkhead, moving as fast as she could toward the ladder up to the next deck. This deck was deserted, everyone in the crew probably on deck taking part in the fighting that could be clearly heard. Her legs regained steadiness as she moved, but it was still hard to get up the ladder.
On the next level, just beneath the main deck, the noise of fighting resounded much louder. Light showed through the hatch leading out onto the main deck, but it wasn’t sunlight. Instead it flickered with the orange unsteadiness of flame.
Bracing herself at the foot of the ladder, Jules went up onto the deck as fast as she could.
It was night, but there was plenty of light to see by because the bow of the ship was on fire, the flames having already reached the foremast, dancing their way up the mast and racing up along the rigging.
The light silhouetted a massive, horrible sight near the mainmast. Taller than any man or woman, and perhaps three times as broad across, raged a creature with unnaturally long arms ending in massive, malformed hands.
A Mage troll.
As Jules reached the deck and caught sight of it, the troll roared again, the awful noise almost as unnerving as the sight of the creature.
Jules faced the backs of a double row of legionaries and sailors who were facing the creature, Captain Kathrin behind them ordering them into renewed attack. As she watched, the troll swung its long arms at the Imperials, scattering legionaries and sailors as if they were dolls, some striking their captain as they fell so that she went down as well.
That removed one obstacle for a moment, but the monster still stood between her and the pier.
Ian came running from one side, his sword poised, driving the point into the troll’s skin. But the sword barely seemed to scratch the beast, which swung a backhand that hurled Ian away.
It was powerful beyond belief, but it was sluggish in its movements.
The troll’s eyes rested on Jules as she sprinted forward, breathing fast, terrified.
It reached toward her as she got close, but at the last moment she dropped, sliding across the deck between the legs of the creature that reacted too slowly to grasp her. As Jules scrambled to her feet behind the troll, it pivoted, swinging one huge fist that met the mainmast before it reached her. Splinters flew as the mast shattered. Jules darted toward the pier as the mainmast fell, the snapping of stay lines echoing over the sound of fighting like smaller versions of the noise made by Mechanic weapons.
She leaped over the ship’s rail onto the pier, finding herself in the midst of at least a dozen small fights between Mages and legionaries or sailors. As Jules’ feet landed on the pier, a small group of nearby legionaries flew in all directions as the wooden planks at their feet exploded in a shower of heat and splinters. One of the legionaries came to rest next to Jules, already dead, one side of her body scorched black with extreme heat. Jules knelt by the body, pulling the legionary’s dagger out of its sheath.
Straightening, she found herself facing a Mage who swung his knife at her, his eyes resting on Jules without any visible feeling as he tried to kill her. She managed to parry the knife, then slammed the palm of her hand against the Mage’s head hard enough to stagger him.
Backing a step, Jules looked around frantically for a way through the mass of individual fights.
Her eyes met those of a legionary.
“It’s her!” he shouted.
Instantly, the many individual melees turned into a single battle, centered on her.
Jules hesitated, seeing no way out, as legionaries and Mages charged toward her from all sides.
Impossibly, a large hole in the formerly solid pier suddenly gaped below the feet of some of the legionaries. They fell through it with cries of shock.
With no other option, Jules dove through the hole after them.
She hit the water, coming up again gasping for air, stunned to see that the hole in the deck of the pier had disappeared as mysteriously and quickly as it had appeared. Legionaries were all about her, but none of them spared a thought for Jules as they all splashed desperately to shed their armor before it dragged them down and drowned them.
Jules lunged toward the side of the pier away from the Imperial sloop that had been her prison. She’d almost reached one of the piles supporting the pier, a thick pillar of wood worn by years of exposure, when Jules saw one of the legionaries who’d fallen through going down for probably the last time. Angry with herself, Jules halted long enough to reach into the water, grab the woman’s arm, and pull them both to the pile. Shoving the legionary’s hands to the wood, Jules snarled at her. “Hold on to this!”
As the nearly-drowned legionary looked at Jules with dazed eyes, Jules felt around the legionary’s belt, finding her dagger and pulling it out to add to the one she already had. Pushing off from the pile, Jules stroked desperately for shore, reaching the sea wall which was a steeply sloping fortification of rocks ranging from big to very large. Pulling herself up onto the rocks, Jules breathed deeply a couple of times, then launched herself up the slope, which fortunately was only about a lance in height between the water and its top.
Rolling onto the waterfront, Jules paused on one knee to stare back at the pier, momentarily paralyzed by the sight. The fire on the sloop had spread along the deck, reaching the fallen mainmast, which was blazing furiously. The foremast formed a pillar of flame rising into the night sky, clearly showing that the troll had fallen through the main deck. It had smashed through the near side of the ship and was now plowing into the side of the pier, massive fists shattering wood and anyone unfortunate enough to be in their way, trying to reach the spot where Jules had dived through the hole that wasn’t there. Mages, Imperial legionaries, and sailors were battling on the pier, or trying to escape the flailing of the troll, most of them apparently unaware as of yet that Jules had escaped the melee.
Run, you idiot, Jules told herself as she realized she was staring at the fight instead of getting away.
She c
ame to her feet just in time to see a Mage’s long knife coming at her in a thrust, the woman’s impassive eyes a strange contrast to the deadly intent of her actions. Jules managed to dodge the thrust, hurling one of her daggers at the Mage. The dagger hit the Mage’s throat, though whether it penetrated or got stopped by the Mage’s robes Jules couldn’t tell. The impact knocked the Mage back and down, though, and Jules vaulted over her and dashed to join the merchant sailors from other ships on the waterfront who were fleeing the area of the fighting.
She wended through the sailors, trying to blend in, as the battle continued to rage behind her. Alarm bells were ringing in the city, calling both firefighters and Imperial police to the site.
Another inhuman bellow from the troll echoed off of nearby buildings. Jules glanced back, seeing that the entire sloop was now engulfed in flames. The troll stood amid the ruins of the pier, still striking out at anything within reach, though the number of Mages on the pier seemed to have dropped dramatically.
If Ian hadn’t given her the means to escape her shackles, she’d have still been chained in the brig of the sloop when the troll finished smashing its way through the ship to reach her. Or she’d have been chained in there when the fire got far enough aft to consume the brig.
Had Ian survived? Had he made it off the sloop? Would Imperial commanders blame him for her escape even though it had been the only thing that had prevented her from dying inside that brig?
And he’d done that, run that risk, even while believing that she’d chosen to kill his father.
Which led to a thought of Captain Kathrin, who’d probably told Ian that Jules had boasted of killing his father. If she was alive, was she bitterly remembering Jules’ warning that the Mages would destroy her ship to get at Jules? The thought of that was almost enough for Jules to wish Kathrin had survived the attack.
Shoving those thoughts aside to concentrate on escaping, Jules followed a stream of refugees from the fighting onto a side road leading away from the waterfront. She hadn’t gone very far down that road when she saw Imperial police ahead, arriving and forming a line to seal off the area. That’s what they did in such cases, she knew, forming a tight perimeter and then arresting everyone inside it on the theory that they must all be guilty of something.
Which meant she couldn’t be found inside the police lines.
Frantic sailors fleeing the troll and the Mages were coming up against the line of police, battering at them and making a mess of their line. Jules went for what seemed to be the biggest gap, and had almost made it through when a heavy hand fell on one of her shoulders. She pivoted, looking at a large police officer whose eyes widened as he stared at her. There were far too many Imperial wanted posters with drawings of her on them, Jules thought as she slammed the dagger she still held into the police officer’s chest. The force of her thrust and the blade of the dagger easily penetrated the leather chest armor of the officer, piercing his heart. She pulled out the dagger as the officer unsuccessfully tried to yell, staggering and falling. Jules squirmed through the mess of sailors, trying to avoid being seen, as more shouts arose where the police officers were now wielding their hardwood clubs with abandon on the sailors trying to get past them.
Another street, the fleeing crowds bigger now as citizens who lived in this part of the city also fled as word and rumor spread of a battle involving Mages and one of their monsters. Spotting a woman wearing a cloak with a hood, Jules worked her way through the mob until she was next to the woman. Tripping her, Jules went down along with the woman as if they were falling together, but really aiming to ensure that her head hit the cobblestones hard enough to stun. Using the threat of her dagger to create a small, momentary gap in the panicky crowd, Jules yanked off the woman’s cloak and pulled it on. Grabbing the still-stunned woman’s arm, Jules pulled her to the side of the street where she wouldn’t be trampled, then rejoined the mass of people running away from the water.
She was alone, in an Imperial city, surrounded by who knew how many hundreds or thousands of legionaries and Imperial sailors, all of whom would be looking for her. Of the thousands and thousands of citizens in Landfall, many would turn her in immediately if they recognized her, either in hopes of reward or out of loyalty to the Emperor. Any citizens who sympathized with her would be too scared to help her. And the Mages knew she was here, and would quickly learn that neither the troll nor any of the other Mages at the waterfront had managed to kill her.
But she’d escaped another cage. She was alive, she was free, and she had a dagger.
That would have to be enough.
She would escape this city, she would make it back to the sea, or die trying.
ALSO BY JACK CAMPBELL
THE PILLARS OF REALITY
The Dragons of Dorcastle*
The Hidden Masters of Marandur*
The Assassins of Altis*
The Pirates of Pacta Servanda*
The Servants of the Storm*
The Wrath of the Great Guilds*
THE LEGACY OF DRAGONS
Daughter of Dragons*
Blood of Dragons*
Destiny of Dragons*
EMPRESS OF THE ENDLESS SEA
Pirate of the Prophecy*
Explorer of the Endless Sea*
Fate of the Free Lands*
THE LOST FLEET
Dauntless
Fearless
Courageous
Valiant
Relentless
Victorious
THE LOST FLEET: BEYOND THE FRONTIER
Dreadnaught
Invincible
Guardian
Steadfast
Leviathan
THE LOST STARS
Tarnished Knight
Perilous Shield
Imperfect Sword
THE GENESIS FLEET
Vanguard
Ascendant
Triumphant
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
Ad Astra*
Borrowed Time*
Swords and Saddles*
STANDALONE NOVELS
The Last Full Measure*
* available as a JABberwocky ebook
THANK YOU FOR READING
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Explorer of the Endless Sea Page 31