The Scourge of Malice was the largest of the Awildan warships and dead centre of the fleet with precious little room to safely manoeuvre. The inquisitors would be unable to resist turning their power on her as soon as she came into range. Verena clutched Irusen tight and moved to the bow of her ship. Her only hope was that her furry little friend’s strange power could help protect the ship long enough to allow her ships to escape. Or to give the Awildans a chance to kill them – one could always hope.
“Crowd sail!” she shouted. Her crew set every last one of the Scourge of Malice’s sails and the ship groaned as she caught wind, building up a fearsome speed cutting through the waves.
The lead ships of Verena’s fleet erupted into flames, gutted and falling apart, but behind them more Awildan ships ploughed through the debris and bodies. Catapults sent balls of fiery pitch soaring towards the enemy, only to be met in mid-air with bolts of golden fire. The catapult shots exploded harmlessly in the air, producing only a pall of thick black smoke and a few quickly extinguished droplets spattering the enemy’s decks. The swifter ballista bolts proved more effective, piercing men and hulls and fouling the rigging.
“Punch through, then come about and lure these Lucent warships away to the south,” she shouted to her first mate. The Scourge’s square sails and cunning rigging would allow her to easily outpace the Lucent ships, especially sailing into the wind. It seemed their inexperienced captains had little idea of how to manage anything at a decent speed.
“Keep us as far from their lead warship as we can manage.” Her crew moved lively under First Mate Aleeva’s whip and were about their work even before Verena had finished giving the order.
Two more Awildan ships were gutted by inquisitors’ golden fire, their crews incinerated. The Falcon Prince’s power consumed another three, his greater range taking a dreadful toll.
The smoke thickened around the Scourge of Malice, making Verena’s eyes water and catching the back of her throat. She stood at the prow of her ship surrounded by her armoured guards holding heavy shields. Stomach sinking, breath held, she prayed the little slynx around her neck would be strong enough to ward off this god-fire. Irusen hissed and swiped a paw at the air. A bolt of holy fire was batted aside and hissed into the sea. Verena breathed again as several sharks surfaced and rolled belly-up.
The Awildan ships ahead of the Scourge of Malice sped between the Lucent warships, exchanging arrows. The smoke was so thick it muffled the screams and the crackle of flames. Catapults and ballistae aimed and loosed with hope more than skill. Holy fire cut through the air like a knife. Burning shot arced dimly through the smoke.
Arrows thudded into a shield guarding Verena and she exchanged a grateful glance with her guard. More arrows – one taking a pirate in the shoulder. Her crew bent their own heavy bows and loosed arrows at any shadow they could see. Men screamed. Ships shattered and came apart, gifting sailors to the swarming sharks. Somewhere far to her right in the smoke and gloom, the clash of steel on steel announced a boarding action.
Minutes ground past, every moment fearing another flash of golden fire. As they pulled ahead, the smoke began to thin, and the Lucent invasion fleet came back into view. The sea to the north was now filled with burning cargo vessels – deprived of their guardian warships, the heavily laden hulks had been easy prey for Sly Maldane’s force. His fleet had come in from the west, unseen and unexpected by the Lucent forces fixated on the battle raging ahead of them. Before the enemy could react, Maldane had lit his fire ships and cast them adrift among the tightly packed enemy fleet. The inexperienced fools had never considered “safety in numbers” to be a fallacy at sea. Flames eagerly leapt from ship to ship, sails and rigging quickly catching light, and there was no room for their ships to escape without colliding. Soldiers leapt overboard, clusters of men thrashing wildly and churning the sea to froth as they fought to stay afloat, their ships abandoned to drift into others. Many men couldn’t swim at all, or were pushed under by the desperate flailing and grabbing hands of others.
Verena laughed grimly. “Take that, you fatherfucking land-pigs.”
A heavy impact to port toppled her to the deck, timbers grinding and splitting. She wasn’t sure who was more shocked: her crew or the smaller Lucent cargo ship that had unwittingly crushed its shoddy prow against her hull. The Scourge of Malice groaned as the Lucent warship listed and began taking on water.
Her own crew reacted first, arrows raining down on the human cargo packed into the enemy ship like a sinking bucket full of rats. The Lucent soldiers scrabbled for shields and weapons. They tried to climb to the higher deck of the mighty Awildan ship, but it was a disorganised assault and nobody came close to reaching her deck.
Golden fire bloomed, eating through part of the Scourge’s hull and ashing some of her crew who had sailed with her for ten years. A shining silver blur leapt through the smoke to thump onto her deck. The inquisitor’s sword burst into flame and sheared through Krevan and his catapult with a single swing. Arrows tinged uselessly off heavy plate as he stormed towards Verena, butchering a pirate with every step.
Two of her guards stayed to defend her as the others rushed forward, shields slamming into the holy knight, who did not give ground.
The knight’s boot thundered into a shield and blasted the man backwards to crash senseless into the rail beside Verena, his shield in ruins. The burning sword carved through steel and wood and the hands behind them like they were soft cheese.
Verena’s two remaining guards swore and thought about diving overboard, quite rightly surmising they had better chances swimming with the sharks.
“Fuck it,” Verena said, lifting a protesting Irusen from around her neck and carefully setting the little slynx down to one side where she would be safe. She drew a knife from her belt and pushed past the dumbfounded guards, hissing under her breath: “Get ready to shove him up and over.” She spat and raised her voice, addressing her attacker. “Come on then, fanatic! Let’s see how you handle an old woman.”
Aleeva had rallied the crew and she was coming to aid Verena with a cutlass in each meaty hand, but she would arrive too late.
The holy knight charged, metal-shod feet pounding the swaying deck, eyes behind his visor mad and red from smoke. An arrow deflected off his helmet and another embedded itself in the mail rings and gambeson protecting his armpit but drew no blood. His charge was unstoppable.
The inquisitor lifted his sword high to cut her in two, but she had no thought of trying to parry. She flung her knife at his eyes and dropped to the deck like a sack of grain. He flinched, a moment of distraction, and found a new obstacle tripping him up.
She grimaced as his feet thudded into her side, but his unstoppable charge carried him forward, flailing for balance, to be met by the shields of her guards ramming up into his face and body. They shoved him up and out over the rails. The heavily armoured knight’s screams were abruptly cut off by a splash of water.
Her guards helped her up and Aleeva arrived, wiping sweat off her bald scalp as they all peered over the side. Light flashed somewhere below, illuminating the shapes of sharks underwater. Steam and a torrent of bubbles erupted as the light dimmed, sinking deeper as his armour dragged him into the depths.
Aleeva’s eyebrows were raised as she turned to her queen. “That was…” she paused, carefully considering her next words.
Verena grunted. “As elegant and skilled as a sack of shit. But it worked. That lot have no sea legs.”
No other Lucent warship was close enough to pose a threat, offering them a few moments of respite. Aleeva nodded her head towards the massed Lucent invasion fleet. “We have more problems. Sly Maldane is burned to ash and his ships are retreating in disarray. Even more of those fire-spitting pricks are on board the cargo ships.”
“Tits on a fish,” Verena said, peering through smoke at the embattled remnants of her fleet as her crew brought the Scourge of Malice about. Awildan warships and fire ships were inflicting heavy casualties as they tr
ied to disengage and flee, but that holy flame the inquisitors tossed about was taking a hideous and unsustainable toll. She was losing badly, and right when she thought the tide had turned! She was tempted to back off and let them land their army at Tarnbrooke to plague Black Herran, who deserved to die. But after seeing what the enemy could do, she was under no illusion that they would leave her precious islands alone once they were done with Tarnbrooke. Her only option was one that she had never imagined she would ever have any cause to resort to, and she had to strike while they were all gathered in one place. With any luck, she would take care of the Falcon Prince and end the Lucent threat forever.
Fleeing had taken a terrible toll on the Awildan fleet, but it had to be done or they would all have been doomed. “Keep the Scourge of Malice just ahead and out of range of their fire. Taunt them to give chase.”
The Lucent warships recognised her flag and took the bait, abandoning the chase of her fleet to focus on running down their queen. Her crew set to it while Aleeva waited in silence, knowing yet more horror was coming.
Verena’s stomach churned as she paced the deck. She felt a cold sweat slicking her forehead and underarms. It was the only way to take down the invasion fleet without risking every man and woman sailing under her flag. She was an Awildan queen, and that came with grave responsibilities her line had honoured for generations. She would kill herself before she stood aside and watched her people burned alive at the whim of some cruel foreign god.
She stopped and spun to face her first mate. “Bring me that traitor Gormley and a sharp axe.”
Aleeva gave the orders, offering no judgement as the prisoner was dragged out and she handed a hand axe to her captain and queen.
Verena nicked her thumb on the edge of the axe, and drew an undulating eldritch sigil on Gormley’s forehead, marking him as a sacrifice for the Kraken. Then she waited for the right time to strike. She bore witness to the remnants of her fleet disengaging where they could, or attempting to smash through the Lucent line and keep on going if they could not. Those who survived fled out to sea with their sails full.
When the last of her ships fled the area, shedding barrels and bodies, it was time. Her crew pinned Gormley to the deck and Verena unceremoniously beheaded the traitor with two swings. She kicked the corpse overboard and spat after him for good measure. Then she laid her left hand flat on the wooden rail and raised the axe in her right. She shuddered, swallowed, then brought the axe down on her wrist, screaming as steel bit through flesh and bone.
The axe and severed hand dropped to the deck and she lurched back clutching the spurting stump.
Aleeva grabbed her arm and squeezed it tight in both hands to stem the flow. “What have you done, you madwoman?”
Verena forgave the insult. It was indeed utterly mad. No madder than her severed hand moving of its own volition, using fingers as legs as it scuttled across the deck and leapt overboard, sacrificing Verena’s royal flesh and blood to something far older than the gods of the sea.
Many sailors claimed to have the sea in their blood, but only the Awildan queens could prove the truth of it.
Waves stilled and the wind died, becalming every ship still in the area. Verena’s slynx crawled up her leg and curled back around her neck, cowering.
Something was coming, a looming dread building in human blood and bone telling them to flee for their lives. Nobody now alive had ever seen it, nobody that was, save Verena Awildan.
She trembled, more from fear than pain. “The Kraken is coming.”
CHAPTER 31
Tiarnach leaned against the wall and watched with interest as Lorimer Felle removed his fingers from the suppurating hole in Wundak’s cold thigh, if those malleable appendages of his could still be called fingers. Being a shapechanger had its advantages.
“This wound is not deep,” the vampire said. “Despite the strangely advanced decay, she did not die from this. Her heart appears to have simply stopped, from what I can determine.”
Amogg pounded a wall in denial, her tusks sheathed in anger-froth. “Bad heart not kill elder orc.”
Tiarnach cleaned dirt from his nails with the point of a knife. “If it wasn’t the wound, a bad heart or holy fire, then which was it: poison or sorcery?”
The vampire paused and then turned away from Amogg to face Tiarnach, his eyes pleading for assistance. “The powers of gods are unknown to me. Other than their damnable fire, could these god-touched Lucent knights have other magical weapons at their disposal?”
Tiarnach paused for a moment, then nodded. “Even at my best I was never as strong as their bloody big goddess. So many devout believers and deluded fanatics… If you are asking me if her power could cause a wee wound to kill or cause a stout heart to give out later… aye, those bastard inquisitors could likely do that with her power.”
Amogg howled and rammed her fist through the wall of the hovel. The building groaned and shifted, then settled back down. “I kill them all,” the huge orc snarled. “I train Tarnbrooke warriors hard. We butcher the rest of Lucent army.” She stormed out and the two men watched her leave, then turned wary eyes upon one another.
“Was a good lie,” Tiarnach said. “A raging orc is a right useful thing to have on your side.”
The vampire’s skin shifted, hints of spines and ridges moving below the surface. “I do not lie.”
“And you don’t thank a man either, eh?” Tiarnach wagged his knife at him. “Maybe no’ a lie, but don’t think I didn’t notice you avoided a straight answer. You might not have said the words, but you were asking me to aim Amogg Hadakk at our enemies instead o’ our own so-called allies.”
Lorimer loomed over the warrior, exposing razor-teeth in a shark-smile. “And what exactly are you suggesting? You provided no alternative explanation.”
Tiarnach snorted. “Which one was it then, the corpse-botherer or the batshit alchemist? Makes no difference to me. Whatever best gets me revenge on the Falcon Prince.”
Lorimer’s skin and teeth settled down and he appeared wholly human again. “Jerak Hyden would not have wasted the chance to skin an elder orc and poke about its insides. Which leaves one.”
Tiarnach nodded. “It’s no skin off my nose normally, but Maeven just cost us a huge orc. That’s…” his brow furrowed, deep in thought, “…what, worth twenty militia? Probably more. If the bitch fucks us over again, I’ll shove a knife through her eyeball.”
Lorimer looked away. “Until she assists me in retaking my home of Fade’s Reach, touch her and die. After that you may do whatever you like with my enthusiastic blessing.”
Tiarnach studied the vampire lord. “Why make deals with the likes o’ her to retake your home in the first place? Amogg or Verena could help just as much, no?”
“I need her magic,” Lorimer replied. “It will counter the holy fire of their inquisitors, and every corpse she raises to fight for me means one of my people does not need to.”
“You’d be better off making deals with demons,” Tiarnach replied. He shook his head and put his knife away. “You’ll regret this and no mistake.”
“I already do,” the vampire replied as he walked out the doorway.
Tiarnach didn’t linger much longer in the ruined hovel, just enough for the cold and stinking corpses of two great warriors and the ghost of Amogg’s pain to thoroughly remind him of the Cahal’gilroy. What was the point of a god when you were all alone and weak as any other mortal man? He had been human once, in another age – or so his dim recollection suggested – before his prowess and mad bravery gathered a mighty warband and made him something greater. His life had been filled with fighting, fucking and feasting, and what was he now but a pathetic ghoul still clutching onto mouldering bones. The wheel had turned full circle and had ground his life into dust beneath it.
He left the hovel and stared into the distance, walking the streets unseeing, dwelling on his many failures for what seemed like hours. His feet, inevitably, found their way to an ale house, that familiar old
thirst upon him.
It was a seedy sort of barn on the outskirts of town, pressed right up against the makeshift palisade. The floorboards were caked in mud, and the owner had given up trying to sweep it all out. It was packed with unwashed townsfolk but quiet as a tomb. People were not here to carouse but to silently drink themselves into oblivion in an attempt to wash away the sight of friends and family slit open by spears and swords, or burnt away to drifting ash. And they knew the enemy would soon be back for more. If all roads south hadn’t been infested with Black Herran’s demons most of them would have fled; here, all they had to face were mortal men.
He silently wished them good luck as he shouldered his way through the throng and signalled for ale. He had tried to forget his own woes for a mortal lifetime, and all it had brought him was more misery. He. Could. Not. Forget.
He downed warm, bitter ale like it was water and fell into black brooding. He didn’t get the blessing of a numbing stupor, but fell into maudlin introspection. Despite his sadness, a spark of hope niggled at the brooding. For a little while there atop the wall, he had felt like his old self. He had a sword in his hand and the thrill of the fight had temporarily burned away all his fear. Now though, his hands shook and his belly churned.
Somebody nudged his elbow and spilled his ale. His hand clenched into a fist and he turned, a cruel smile on his lips.
“Sorry, chief,” a young woman with wild curly hair said, a mug of ale clutched tight in her own trembling hands. Her eyes were red and dark-circled, but she was putting on a brave face.
Drunk as he was, he still remembered her name. His fist unclenched with reluctance. He would have welcomed the pain, but she had fought beside him and she didn’t deserve it. “Red Penny, eh. Come to Tiarnach for a good time, have you?” His heart wasn’t in it. She knew it and ignored the comment.
The Maleficent Seven Page 27