Thanks to the flames on the burning sails, it seemed like daylight rather than night on deck. There were few shadows in which to hide. Taylina only made it halfway before someone cried out and pointed in her direction.
She had no idea what his words meant, but she could understand the gist: intruder.
At that moment, Bhrava Saruth changed from his human shape to his dragon one. Out on the center of the deck, near the burning mast, he sprang into the air to meet his oncoming foes. Before flying far, he craned his neck and breathed fire across the deck he’d just left.
Taylina skittered back to the railing. The man who’d been pointing at her screamed as flames arose right behind him, catching his jacket on fire. He raced toward Taylina, and she lifted her staff. But he barely glanced at her, instead leaping over the railing and into the water.
Other soldiers in or near the fire did the same thing. Taylina would have let loose a cheer for Bhrava Saruth, but something slammed into him like a cannonball. The other gold dragon. They tumbled through the air over her head, and one of them screeched in pain. The silver dragon shot after them, clearly there to lend its help.
Taylina hurried up the stairs. She had no idea how much time she had—how long could Bhrava Saruth fight them both off?
A part of her wanted to continue up to the highest deck so she could club the plume-hat-wearing man with her staff, but he would easily see her coming and have time to defend himself. Better that he was up there, distracted.
She made it to the closest hatch without anyone else pointing her out. The fire was roaring on the deck she had just left, the crackling filling her ears, the heat warming her back. After all that damage, how much longer would the ship stay afloat? As she opened the hatch, she imagined Jessa drowning because she was chained in a submerged cabin.
“No,” Taylina whispered. “There’s still time.”
A wardroom opened up before her with four interior doors. Taylina almost tripped in her haste to hurry in and find her sister. Or maybe that was the tilting floor and the upturned chairs that made her trip.
She flung the first door open. The cabin was empty.
Something struck the ship, and the deck heaved over further, tossing her against a wall. Alarmed cries came from behind one of the two doors at the back of the room.
“Jessa?” Taylina called, hustling around a chair.
Something thudded against the door. That had to be Jessa.
“I’m here,” Taylina called, reaching the door.
It was locked. Of course. She took a deep breath, struggling for calm, and rested her staff against the locking mechanism.
A painful twinge in her mind made her gasp. It was like a dagger poking her between the eyes.
She looked around, half-expecting some sorcerer to leap from hiding. But she was alone in the wardroom, nothing but upturned furniture meeting her gaze. Then she realized what was happening. Earlier she’d known when Bhrava Saruth had been hurt through whatever bond they had now, and he must have been hurt again. Hurt worse than before—last time she hadn’t felt true pain. Or maybe this simply meant he was closer.
Forcing that calm she needed, she imagined the lock opening under the staff’s touch. At first, nothing happened, and she almost resorted to beating on the door, imagining she could somehow bash it open. But she concentrated harder, ignoring the tilt of the ship, the smell of smoke, and the shouts coming from the deck above. The lock clicked.
She pushed the door open, but it bumped against something on the floor. A naked leg.
10
Taylina’s heart lurched into her throat at the sight of the leg, at the thought that her sister lay dead on the deck. But after a couple of frozen seconds, the flywheel in her brain started working, and she realized that it was too hairy to be a woman’s leg. She eased her head around the door. A very still, very bloody man was attached to that leg. A dead man. His trousers were gone, as were his boots, but his shirt was still on.
A gasp came from behind him, and Taylina looked up. Two women in torn clothing stood in the center of the cabin with cut ropes dangling from their wrists. One held a bloody letter opener, though she looked like she had been in the process of trying to hide it.
“Aryna? Ramy?” Taylina asked, recognizing them as the women that Eritha had mentioned, pretty red-haired sisters that were a couple of years older than Taylina. They worked in the town gardens and tended the olive grove. They had tended it.
“Tay!” a familiar voice cried from the bed behind them. Jessa.
Taylina rushed past the others and toward her sister. Jessa was fully clothed, but her wrists were tied to an iron circle attached to the wall next to the wide bunk. Three other identical circles dangled from the wall, two with cut ropes still hanging from them. Had all the women been tied to them?
Taylina hugged her sister, pushing her tangled hair back from her face, but she forced herself to make it quick. Jessa made a distressed sound when she couldn’t pull her arms from the wall to return the hug.
“Here, Tay,” Aryna said, holding the letter opener toward her as Ramy pushed the door shut. “This is how we got out. We were lucky we had it when he came at us.”
“Who is—was—he?” Taylina eyed the bloody blade, not wanting to touch it, much less put it to use, and glanced toward a desk built into the bulkhead, hoping there might be a cleaner dagger or perhaps a pair of scissors. All she saw was an orb nestled on a wooden stand. Gray and green mists seemed to swirl beneath the glass or whatever it was made from.
“The first mate,” Aryna said. “He was going to find the best one of us for the commander’s uses. Asshole.” She bared her teeth, and Taylina wasn’t sure if she meant the mate or the commander. Maybe both.
Taylina leaned toward the desk to try a couple of drawers.
“Tay, did you see the dragons?” Jessa whispered, her eyes wide and excited, as if she weren’t chained next to some heathen’s bed, as if she were ten instead of almost twenty. But Jessa had always had a simple mind, simple thoughts. Without any cruelty or meanness in her. She surely didn’t deserve to be here.
“I did.” Taylina hissed in frustration when she didn’t find knives in any of the drawers, only papers, quills, and inkwells.
“They were wondrous,” Jessa said, awe in her voice.
“I know one that will agree with you.” Taylina hoped Bhrava Saruth survived his battle and that she could introduce him to her sister one day.
“What should we do with him?” Ramy whispered, pointing at the body.
“Leave him there. We’re not staying.” Taylina nodded toward a large porthole that looked out over the promontory where she’d walked earlier. The view was tilted at an angle, just like the deck.
“Here, we can use this,” Aryna said, stepping toward Jessa with the letter opener. She wiped the blood off on her ripped dress and sawed at the ropes.
Taylina grimaced at using a murder weapon as a tool, but she could not argue with the practicality.
The mists cleared on the orb, drawing her eye. She jumped back as a man’s face appeared in it, his head shaven in the Cofah style. His eyes seemed to lock onto Taylina, and she dove onto the bed to hide from his sight.
She cursed, fearing he’d already seen her. That had to be a communication device. She’d heard of such things, but had never seen one. Could the man see her? Where was he? On one of the other ships? Back in the Cofah empire? Was communication across such distances possible?
The Cofah man said something, his voice tinny as it came out of the orb. He didn’t sound alarmed or suspicious, but Taylina had no idea what the foreign words meant.
“Relax,” Aryna said, sawing at Jessa’s ropes. “That’s at least the tenth time he’s come on and said the exact same thing. I think they’re the commander’s orders.”
“He’s… not really there?” Taylina pushed herself off the bed, almost falling when something thudded into the ship. An ominous crack echoed from the deck above. Though the door and porthole were sh
ut, she could smell smoke, more of it than before. It reminded her that they needed to hurry and escape.
“I don’t think so.” Aryna cut through the second of Jessa’s ropes, freeing her. “That’s it. We can get out of here. Or do we need to find the others? Tay, dozens of us were taken. I think they’re—”
“They’re already freed and should have swum to shore by now.”
Aryna blinked a few times, staring at her, as if seeing her for the first time. “You freed them?” She looked to the door. Expecting an army of their people to burst in as reinforcements? “By yourself?” Her gaze dropped to Taylina’s bad leg.
Taylina gritted her teeth, wishing she could say that she’d done it all by herself. “I had help. I’ll explain later, but—”
“Dragons!” Jessa blurted.
She’d left the side of the bed and had her hands pressed to either side of the porthole as she stared out. “They’re fighting. Three of them. There’s so much fire. Oh, that one’s losing.”
Taylina rushed to the porthole, peering over her sister’s shoulder. A gold dragon—that had to be Bhrava Saruth—swooped between the masts on a ship already aflame. The other gold and the silver came after him, breathing fire. Some force struck Bhrava Saruth and hurled him into one of the masts. The great timber snapped and toppled over even as he smashed to the deck, soldiers fleeing before they could be squished. The two dragons pounced on him. He tried to spring away, his tail snapping another mast as they wrestled on the deck.
She shook her head. He was losing, but he was laying waste to the Cofah fleet in the process. Of the three ships Taylina could see from the porthole, two of them were burning.
“Open that,” Ramy said. “Let’s get out of here, before someone thinks to check on us.”
Taylina pulled Jessa back so the other women could pry at the porthole.
“Wait,” she blurted as one wrenched it open. “We have to make sure they leave and won’t come back.” She’d been so focused on getting Jessa that she’d almost forgotten that. With all the forces the Cofah Empire could bring to bear, there would be nothing to keep them from regrouping, calling in more reinforcements, and returning. That was assuming Bhrava Saruth was able to drive them away to start with, and that was questionable. He was doing a great deal of damage, but those dragons were hurling him all over the harbor. How much damage could he take? And what happened if she lost him? Her only ally capable of battling the Cofah? Her only ally who wanted to heal her leg and make her a high priestess.
“How are we going to do that?” Aryna demanded.
“Kill their commander?” Ramy suggested.
“With what? A letter opener?”
“It worked on that idiot.”
“Because his trousers were around his ankles, and he was trying to—”
“I know what he was trying to do.”
Taylina lifted her hands to still the sisters’ argument and was surprised when it worked. “Brute force won’t work. We need to use trickery.” She smiled faintly. “Cunning.”
“Like what?”
Like what, indeed.
Taylina returned to the desk, pitching into it as the ship heaved, tilting further on its side.
“We’re sinking,” Ramy said, shouldering Jessa to the side again so she could see out the porthole. “The cabins below this one are already in the water, I bet.”
“The dragons are magnificent,” Jessa breathed, her gaze never wavering from the battle.
Taylina hoped Bhrava Saruth wasn’t about to become magnificently dead. She pulled one of the inkwells from the drawer, along with a quill. She wobbled toward the door, her balance severely tested as the ship creaked and shuddered. She leaned her staff against a bulkhead and dropped to her knees beside the dead man. She avoided looking at his face, glad it was turned toward the deck, and instead started inking dots all over his bare legs and butt cheeks.
“What are you doing?” Aryna demanded incredulously.
“Wishing this looked more realistic,” Taylina muttered, curling a lip at her efforts. This wasn’t going to work.
“What?”
“I thought that if we could convince the commander that there’s some kind of pox or plague on our island, he would sail away and tell his people never to return.”
“That looks like someone threw an inkwell at him, not a pox.”
“I know. Damn, the idea could have worked if we’d had time for preparation, found some makeup and painted our people ahead of time.” Taylina looked around the cabin, as if she might find makeup pots stacked in a corner. Not likely.
I cannot hold them off much longer! Bhrava Saruth cried into her mind, the words ringing like a gong, as they had when he first communicated with her.
She winced but could not blame him for not concentrating on softening his power right now. You’ve been wonderful. Get yourself to safety. No, wait— Taylina looked at the communication sphere sitting on the desk. Can you see, er, sense the magical orb in this cabin with me?
Yes.
Do you know how it works?
It’s a very simple human tool.
Is there any chance you could change the message the man in it is saying? Taylina knew her magic-ignorant words were simple and imprecise, so she hoped he understood what she meant. Do you understand the Cofah language?
Of course. How would I be taunting these Cofah dragons in a language both they and their riders would understand, if not?
At the porthole, Jessa gasped.
A now-familiar stab of pain came to Taylina’s mind, and she knew Bhrava Saruth had been hurt again. She winced, regretting distracting him, but if there was any chance his magic could save their people…
Can you change the message and have the Cofah man order the commander to leave as soon as possible, to say that they’ve received reports that there’s a plague on these islands, and that all prisoners should be left behind? That they can’t risk bringing the plague back to their people?
Jessa gasped again, then cried, “Nooo.”
A thump sounded at the door, and Taylina leaped to her feet, almost spilling her inkwell. Ramy must have locked the door, because the latch rattled, but it did not open. Not yet.
“We have to get out of here now,” Aryna whispered from the porthole.
“Go, jump out and swim.” Taylina grabbed her staff, plugged the inkwell, returned the items to the drawer, and lunged over to the porthole.
Ramy leaped out as another bang sounded at the door, flinging herself into the water, water that wasn’t very far below the level of the porthole. Aryna clambered up into the porthole next. Before she blocked the view, Taylina had a glimpse of what was riveting Jessa’s attention.
A gold dragon, wet blood gleaming on his scales in the light from dozens of burning fires, was tumbling through the air, his wings appearing broken—his whole body appearing broken. He hit the water hard and disappeared into the harbor. The other gold dragon and the silver followed him to the surface, but then flew back up before hitting it. They, too, were bloodied, but their powerful wings still beat at the air. They flew over the ships. All the flames on one disappeared as the gold sailed above the deck.
Taylina rested a hand on the wall, her shoulders slumping. That had been Bhrava Saruth going into the water. Injured? Dead? Either way, the other dragons now had the freedom to help their people.
The door rattled again, this time nearly coming off its hinges. Someone had found something to use as a battering ram.
“Outside,” Taylina whispered, giving Jessa a boost. There was nothing else they could do. “Swim for the promontory.”
Jessa made a protesting noise, tears in her eyes—tears for the dragon she didn’t even know?—but allowed herself to be pushed through the porthole. Before following her out, Taylina glanced at the desk. The man was speaking in the orb again. Were the words different than before? Had Bhrava Saruth sacrificed himself, paying attention to the magic required for an illusion instead of watching his enemies?
&
nbsp; With a lump in her throat, Taylina gripped her staff tightly and jumped from the porthole. She heard the door slam open behind her as she dropped into the water. At least she had succeeded in freeing her people and finding her sister. She only hoped that enough damage had been done that the Cofah fleet would leave—and that, with the tool shop destroyed, they had no reason to return.
She swam for the promontory, seeing Jessa, Ramy, and Aryna ahead of her. Dawn hadn’t yet come, but the harbor remained bright, thanks to all the fires. Their glows reflected orange on the dark water.
It seemed to take Taylina much longer to reach the rocks than it had to swim out from them. Maybe because her arms and legs were weary after all she had been through. So weary. With great effort, she hauled herself onto the rocks. The others were climbing toward the path at the top, but she turned back toward the harbor, looking for signs of Bhrava Saruth. She couldn’t feel any pain in her mind now. She couldn’t feel anything.
The flagship was on its side, sinking. Longboats were being rowed to the other ships, less damaged ships. With the dragons helping, the fires had already been put out on most of them. Taylina thought she spotted the commander with the plumed hat in one of the longboats. Had he had time to look at his communication orb? Had Bhrava Saruth been able to change the message?
Longboats rowed out from the docks, too. The soldiers returning to their ships. Had they been called back? Were they leaving?
Shivering, she remained on her rocky perch for a long time, watching as the Cofah regrouped. And then her heart lifted slightly, for they slowly trundled out toward the breakwater, toward the sea and away from the island. They were leaving. Whether her ruse had worked or they simply wanted to get away after all the damage they had received, she did not know, but at least her people would have some kind of reprieve.
Beginnings: Five Heroic Fantasy Adventure Novels Page 12