by Logan Jacobs
“We’ll need to take the back alleys to reach Edward’s palace,” I answered. “Let’s focus on getting there for now and try not to draw too much attention to ourselves. Hopefully, some of Edward’s guards will still be around and can help us fight. We’ll make sure any civilians we come across are safe, get Yvaine’s ring, and then figure out the best way to deal with the pirates.”
I wasn’t so naïve that I thought we wouldn’t run into any of the pirates on the way and have to fight, but I wanted to take a stealthier approach until we could get our bearings.
“You got it, boss,” Lavinia replied with a confident smirk.
Then I turned to Rezo.
“You’ll probably be safer with the other refugees,” I said. “We can come to find you after we’ve dealt with the pirates.”
“I’m sure that’s true,” Rezo replied solemnly. Then, to my surprise, he grinned and reached into the trunk of the carriage and pulled out a rapier with a hilt of swirling silver. “But I wouldn’t want to miss all the fun. I can do more than knife the occasional tavern bully, you know.”
“Well, alright then,” I answered with a surprised laugh. “You’re more than welcome to join us.”
We decided it would be safe enough to take the carriage a little closer since the encroaching gloom of evening would provide us with some concealment, but a few hundred yards outside of the city, we were forced to leave it behind and continue on foot. Kepa seemed to be still caught in that perpetual sunset as flames licked up between the buildings and cast the walls in an orange glow, but there was no way to soften the roar of the flames or the boom of the cannons. I couldn’t tell if they were the ship’s guns or if there was still someone at the fort who was attempting to mount a defense, but I hoped that it was the latter.
The wind had stilled, and the smell of smoke was thick in my throat as we slipped through the main gate and made our way toward the plaza the girl had mentioned. Refugees still swarmed through the streets, and I could hear people screaming and crying even above the sounds of cannon fire and the crackling flames.
An old woman jostled me as she shoved past with a cat wrapped up in her shawl. “You’re going the wrong way!” she hissed.
I didn’t bother to respond, but we were soon forced to press ourselves along the walls of the buildings that lined the streets to make way for the crowds as they ran, but I could see the opening of the plaza up ahead and the fountain. The stone figure in the center had been destroyed, but water still bubbled up from the rubble in the center of the pool.
“Right up here,” I called back to the others. “Then we stick to the back streets.”
Just then there was a sharp bark of laughter from up ahead, and a burly man emerged from the smoke with a torch in one hand. He was quickly flanked by two other men, all with torches. Their ragged clothes were covered in old blood and sweat stains and faded by the sun and salt, and there was an eager, chaotic glint to their eyes in the torchlight.
“Lavinia--” I started, but even as I turned, the ranger had her bow up with three arrows nocked. She gave me a wink, and when I nodded back, she let the arrows fly.
As always, the ladona woman’s aim was unerring, and the pirates were dead with arrows sticking out of their chests before they could even realize they were being attacked. Their torches fell from their slack grips and rolled onto the street where they guttered out.
“Keep an eye out for others,” I said in a low voice, “and stay low and quiet.”
Since we had to take the back alleys from here anyway, that last part wasn’t difficult. The few pirates that we did see we took out quickly and quietly with arrows or poisonous smoke bombs, and we continued steadily upward toward the high walls of the fortress and Edward’s palace.
The wall which looked so mighty and impenetrable from a distance had been turned to rubble in several places by cannon fire, and it wasn’t difficult to find a way in. We were careful as we hauled ourselves over a broken section of the wall one by one, but it seemed like the real party was inside, because none of Quikk’s crew was around to witness us.
If anything, the estate grounds looked worse than the rest of the city. Scorch marks marred the perfectly manicured lawn, rose bushes and topiaries smoldered, and the ground glittered with broken glass around a stately greenhouse whose windows had all been smashed in. Worse, though, were the bodies. Some wore the uniforms of guards and still had weapons clutched in their lifeless hands, but others were obviously civilians, though they’d been slaughtered just the same.
Anger swelled in my chest as I led my guild across the blood-slicked grass toward the seaside wall of the fort. The cannons had stopped firing, but I hoped that didn’t mean the last of the defenders had already been killed. I knew we would need to find Edward, but none of us would have any idea where he might be hiding, or if he was even still alive, and the palace was huge. No doubt we’d meet the rest of Quikk’s crew inside, and I wanted to rally as many allies as I could before we launched our counterattack.
I kept my hand on the hilt of my dagger as I started up the steps that led to the top of the fortress wall where the cannons were mounted. I paused near the top, but all was still and deathly silent. The smoke was worse up here, chokingly thick and hazy, but even so, it didn’t mask the smells of blood and burnt flesh as we moved forward.
Torches set in sconces along the wall at intervals provided light for the grisly scene. The cannons sat still in their lines, and between them were the bodies of the fort’s guards as well as some of the pirate crew, some slumped against the walls in pools of blood, some flat on their backs, sightless eyes staring up into the night sky. Broken weapons and burnt-out torches were scattered between the corpses, as well as some magical weapons that I recognized, bombs which, when they exploded, would freeze everything in a ten-foot radius and thin wands that one could snap open to release a flash of blinding light. I gathered up those that were still intact and kept a few, then passed the rest back to the others.
“There’s no one up here,” I said as I scanned the rest of the wall and the grounds below. There was no movement aside from the flickers of errant fires.
“They must all be inside,” Lavinia said. “That’s where all the good loot is.”
I nodded and was about to suggest that we look for a way in when Emeline spoke, her voice high and nervous. “Uh, guys?”
I turned and followed the panthera woman’s gaze over the other side of the wall to the bay, and my stomach dropped. There was another ship in the bay, and it was approaching fast. Its blood-red sails seemed to reflect the burning city, but the flag it flew was as black as night. It was too far away to make out the design, but I doubted it would be comforting.
Even as we watched, the ship dropped anchor and crewmen began to file into the longboats to row to shore. In the dark, it was hard to make out much about them, but I didn’t miss the gleam of their weapons in the moonlight, and I knew they weren’t here for a tea party.
“Fuck, what are the odds that this place gets attacked by two pirate crews at once?” Lavinia muttered.
“Oh, dear, this is not good,” Maruk murmured. The orc’s face had paled considerably, and he looked as though he might be sick.
“Just figuring that out?” Lavinia asked, but Maruk didn’t respond with their usual banter.
“No, you don’t understand,” he insisted as he managed to tear his gaze away from the other ship and looked around at each of us. “That’s my family.”
Chapter 6
“What?” Emeline and Rezo asked in unison, shock plain on their faces.
“Maruk’s family are all pirates,” Aerin explained. She tried to sound nonchalant about the whole thing, but given our current state of affairs, I doubted Emeline and Rezo took much comfort from her tone.
“Yes, and if I’m not mistaken, that’s my cousin Drakon,” Maruk cleared his throat, “the Disemboweler.”
“But if they’re your family, they wouldn’t attack you, right?” Emeline asked wit
h a frown. “Couldn’t we talk to them or something?”
Maruk’s shoulders slumped, and he frowned deeply. “That’s what I’m afraid of. They always tease me, and their insults are so banal.” Maruk made his voice deeper and gruffer. “‘Oh, Maruk can’t tear a tiger shark apart with his bare hands, he’s so small and dainty.’ Has anyone considered that maybe I don’t want to rip creatures apart? There’s more to life than pillaging and--“
I sensed that Maruk was about to launch into an impassioned speech if I didn’t stop him, so I laid my hand on his arm.
“If that is your cousin, maybe you could convince him to help us fight Quikk and his crew?” I asked.
“Or you could all go, and I could wait here where I won’t be subjected to verbal harassment?” Maruk suggested hopefully.
“They don’t know us, Maruk,” Aerin pointed out. “You being there is kind of the whole point.”
Already, I saw that the first of the longboats had made it to shore, and each of the orcs that jumped out onto the sand was bristling with steel and iron. At the same moment, there was a boom from somewhere inside the palace, and the ground trembled beneath our feet. The orcish pirates in the bay shouted what I guessed was some kind of war cry and began to run for the gates.
“Maruk?” I prompted.
“Fine,” he answered unhappily. “I’ll talk to them.”
Drakon’s crew were headed for a breach in the fortress wall that was almost directly below us, and we had barely made it back down the stairs before the thundering of their footsteps, and the clatter of their weapons announced the approach of Maruk’s pirate family. They charged as one fearsome, unstoppable force up the hill toward the collapsed section of the wall, and their collective cries were like the roar of a hurricane.
“Wait here,” Maruk said as we reached the bottom of the steps in the relative shelter of the corner of the fortress wall. His back was straight, and his shoulders squared as he walked out onto the grounds and placed himself in the path of the charging pirates, and I recognized the shield warrior’s stance as the same that he took when facing down monstrous enemies like the giant harpy.
What happened then was like a game of chicken. Though they must have seen him, none of the pirates showed any sign of slowing as they flooded onto the grounds and shook their weapons. My stomach clenched. They didn’t recognize him in the dark, or they didn’t care, but I became certain that Maruk was about to end up skewered on the end of one of the pirate’s swords and moved to help when Lavinia grabbed my arm and pulled me back.
Maruk tensed, but he held his ground as the horde descended until, finally, they stopped with less than six feet of space between them.
The orc pirates were a force to behold, and I realized with no small amount of shock that seven-foot-tall Maruk was among the smallest of them. They were all built like champion super heavyweight weightlifters, and they didn’t hide their physiques behind bulky armor. On the contrary, most went bare-chested or wore only simple leather pauldrons, arm guards, or fur capes. Like Maruk, they all had green skin, though it ranged in tone from olive to sage to juniper. Unlike Maruk, all the pirates had donned some sort of war paint, and they had thick stripes of blue and red smeared down their faces and over their tattooed arms and chests. A few had ever daubed color into their hair and painted their armor.
That wasn’t where the family resemblances ended, however. Though many of the pirates shared Maruk’s white-blond hair, Drakon and his crew had twisted and braided their hair into complicated styles and even shaved it off in sections to reveal the tattoos on their scalps, and I was reminded of a documentary I’d seen once about Vikings. Although I was pretty sure the Vikings hadn’t worn necklaces made out of skulls, and the orcs absolutely did. One appeared to have constructed some kind of belt out of the ribcage of what animal I could only guess, and many others had similar grisly ornamentations.
In front of them all, Maruk stood tall and unwavering, though the confident set of his shoulders now seemed to me to be more rigid with nerves. The orc who had led the charge, a man at least eight feet tall with a headpiece fashioned out of a sea dragon’s skull, leaned forward so close that he and Maruk were practically nose-to-nose. I didn’t need Maruk to tell me that this was Drakon, the captain.
“Well,” Drakon pronounced with a wide grin, “look who it is, boys! Wittle baby Maruk!” He lashed out and wrapped his arm around Maruk’s neck in a chokehold and ground his knuckles into the top of Maruk’s head. “What are you doing out here? Finally returning to the family business, are you? Auntie Hrudul keeps asking about you.”
Maruk shoved him off and swept his fingers through his hair. “Actually,” he said proudly as he drew himself up again, “I’m still with my guild. It’s going very well, and I’m very happy.”
“Auntie Hrudul also thinks you’re making this guild thing up,” Drakon replied. “She’s worried you never bring any of them around.”
“I am not making them up!” Maruk insisted, and he flung his arms out toward where the rest of us were still crouched in the shadows by the steps. “They’re right over there!“
At once, the entire orc crew turned to look at us, and I heard Rezo gulp behind me. The pirates stared us down for a moment, as though they expected we were just a trick of the light, and I forced myself to meet their gazes and wondered if I should wave or something.
“Huh,” Drakon said at length. “They’re kind of small.”
I decided that was as good a time as any to approach, and I knew we still needed to find Edward and deal with Quikk and the rest of his crew.
“My name is Gabriel,” I said as I stepped up to Maruk’s side. “I’m... Maruk’s friend.”
The others came up behind me and introduced themselves as well, and the orc pirates looked us over with interest. It was hard not to feel intimidated with roughly three dozen pirates looming over us, but I forced myself to remain calm.
“So, uh, what are you doing here?” Maruk asked.
At that, Drakon and the other pirates burst into laughter, and Drakon punched Maruk on the arm. It was probably meant to be a playful gesture, but nevertheless, the blow was strong enough that Maruk was almost forced to take a step back.
“What are we doing here?” the orc captain repeated. “We’re here to pillage and plunder, of course! Honestly, Maruk, did you think we would come all this way to, what? Recite plays?” That earned another peal of uproarious laughter from the rest of the crew, but Maruk just looked uncomfortable.
“You don’t recite plays,” he muttered. “You perform plays, you recite poetry.”
I summoned my courage and took a step forward to address Drakon. “Our guild is here to recover something from the lord here, and we could use your help in fighting Quikk and his crew,” I said, as clearly and levelly as I could.
The orc captain turned to me with an amused grin. “Well, at least some of you have backbones,” he mused. “Sure, we were gonna raid the place anyway, and now, we can finally see little Maruk in action.”
“The thing is, this lord is related to a friend of ours, so we’d appreciate it if you didn’t raid here--” I started, and Drakon’s smile slipped into a frown.
Before either of us could say anything, however, Aerin spoke up quickly. “Buuuuut you can take whatever loot you want from the other pirates!” Her tone was cheerful if a little forced. “Their weapons, their ship, their money, it’s all yours. That sounds like a good haul, right, guys?”
I turned to the redheaded elf in surprise. It wasn’t every day that Aerin willingly offered to give away money. I knew what she was trying to do though. Drakon and his crew had no real reason to spare Edward and the rest of the city, and they wouldn’t want to leave without spoils of some kind.
“There’s not much here that’s really worth taking for orcs of your stature, anyway,” Aerin went on, now completely in her element. “There are way better places to pillage, trust me, and you know, if you take Quikk’s ship, you’ll have two which is...”
she paused as she sought for a description of the ship’s value “... more than one.”
Drakon considered that for a moment though it was hard to tell if he was debating the merits of leaving Kepa alone or simply trying to check Aerin’s math.
“Aerin’s right,” Maruk put in enthusiastically. “This place really isn’t worth your time.” He turned to Lavinia. “What was that place to the east you were telling me about with the treasure and the whirlpool and the sea monster?”
“Demon’s Sink?” the ladona ranger supplied.
“Demon’s Sink!” Maruk repeated with a grin. “That’s much more your style, Drakon. I mean, think about it, you go home and tell everyone you raided Kepa, are they really going to be impressed? But if you tell them you got treasure from Demon’s Sink, that just sounds so much more, uh, badass, wouldn’t you say? And I know how much you love fighting sea monsters.”
Drakon frowned thoughtfully. “I do love fighting sea monsters,” he admitted solemnly. “Is it a big one?”
“Is it a big one, Lavinia?” Maruk asked hopefully.
“Oh, huge,” she answered. “Swallows-entire-ships-whole big, and uh, supposedly its stare drives sailors mad with fear.”
Drakon’s eyes lit up.
“Excellent!” He clapped Maruk on the shoulder. “I will strangle it with my bare hands and make a cape from its bloody hide!“
“That’s quite nice,” Maruk replied quickly. “Shall we go deal with Quikk now, so you can get your second ship and be on your way?”
“Yes!” Drakon shouted. “Let’s go, men!”
Another cheer went up from the crew as Drakon led them forward at a charge toward Edward’s palace and left the rest of us standing by the wall.
“Ha!” Lavinia shouted with a broad grin. “I love your family, Maruk.” The ranger fitted another arrow to her bowstring and took off after the orcs.
“They don’t really strategize, do they?” I asked blankly.
“No, they do not,” Maruk replied apologetically.
“Well, I suppose if you are part of a group of battle-hardened orcs almost forty strong,” I admitted with a shrug, “you don’t really need to finesse your battle tactics.” I moved to follow Drakon and his crew. “Alright then, let’s go find Edward.”