Scimitar Moon

by Chris A. Jackson

  “Here, gimme them keys!”

  “Not on yer life, Tommy. You ain’t no captain!”

  “You’ll bloody gimme them keys, ’er you’ll be eatin’ yer own liver!”

  “Oh? And who’s gonna—Uhhh!”

  Keys rattled again as a man approached the barred door to her cell. Her nausea subsided slightly, as if a raging hangover ebbed away to only a minor irritation. The man tucked a bloodied cutlass under his arm and started trying keys. Cynthia watched, wondering what was going on. The lock finally clicked open and he pushed the door aside. He went to work on her manacles without a word, trying smaller keys.

  “Who sent you?” she asked, thinking the question her safest gambit.

  “Shut yer mouth a’fore I lose my patience and cut you out’a these damned things instead’a findin’ the damned key.”

  She shut her mouth.

  The locks finally clicked open and he grabbed her by the hair. “Up, wench!”

  “Ow! Damn it, my legs are numb, you dolt! Give me a moment.” Her protests went unheeded. When her legs really did prove shaky, he simply pulled harder. Halfway up the stairs, another bout of nausea struck her like a kick to the stomach, doubling her over and sending her to her knees.

  “Up, you lazy cow!” He punctuated his command with a kick that sent her sprawling, bruising her arms on the steps. He grabbed her collar and hoisted her up without breaking stride, forcing her forward. “I got no time fer foolishness.”

  Sunlight blinded her as they emerged from the palace, but the clamor of battle and the acrid smell of smoke gave her an accurate picture of what was going on. Bloodwind’s secret base had been breeched. She blinked and squinted, and almost toppled over at the sight of Syren Song being attacked by a sea drake made of nothing but water and magic, its maw spewing a column of water as thick as a man’s chest. Men clung to rigging or hid behind bulwarks as the ship veered off course into the shallows.

  Then she saw Bloodwind’s sorceress and nausea rose in her like a tide. The bodies of four slaves lay around her, their blood smeared across her arms and face, running down her neck in rivulets. Bloodwind’s men held two more screaming wretches, food for her power.

  Cynthia’s knees buckled. She could feel Hydra’s corrupt magic forcing the sea to do her bidding. The sensation of that malevolent force bending the sea to its will felt like a personal violation.

  “Yer gonna have company right quick, Capt’n,” Koybur said, drawing her attention from her misery. He pointed to the bow of Orin’s Pride, where men swarmed down a cargo net slung from the bowsprit. At the forefront, Feldrin Brelak waded ashore, a boarding axe in each massive fist.

  “To Hippotrin! Now! We can’t wait on Yodrin any longer.” Bloodwind grabbed Camilla and led them forward, thrusting another slave at his sorceress in passing. “Come on, Hydra. You’ll have to eat on the run.”

  Cynthia managed to walk, the nausea subsiding as the sorceress paused in her corrupt manipulation of the sea, but the sight of the creature feeding on the hapless slave left her gagging. The woman’s mouth stretched impossibly wide, rows of black needle-like teeth visible for an instant before she ripped a hole in her victim’s throat. Cynthia turned away in disgust.

  Bloodwind urged his guards toward the shipyard where Hippotrin lay at the dock. The area was quiet, the workers having not yet made their daily migration from the shanty town. A guard crew manned the schooner, and they were keeping the few small craft straying in their direction at bay with crossbows and the ship’s two ballista. Syren Song lay heeled over, her hull resting on an oyster reef near the mangroves.

  They would reach Hippotrin unopposed.

  CHAPTER Forty-One

  Fight or Flight

  “Hurry!” Brelak yelled, urging his force forward at a reckless pace. They met some opposition: knots of pirates from the palace and an occasional bow shot from Bloodwind’s retreating group. They were gaining, but far too slowly.

  An arrow whistled past his ear and a man behind him yelped in pain. His landing party had been supplemented by native forces. Chula and Paska stalked at his sides, both clad only in loincloths and crimson paint.

  Orin’s Pride had sailed past Plume Island at the dark of the moon two nights before, packed to the gunwales with the majority of the tribe and towing a string of outrigger canoes in her wake. Before they met with Winter Gale and Syren Song, Chula provided detailed drawings of the cove, the defenses, and most importantly the channel through the reef.

  Brelak spared a glance over his shoulder at Winter Gale and the burning town. The galleon tacked sluggishly in the light air, a victim to the two corsairs cutting nimbly around her, just beyond range of her catapult but well within striking distance of their ballistae. The pirates learned quickly.

  Ahead, Bloodwind’s group reached the dock and clamored aboard Hippotrin. Dock lines fell into pieces under their cutlasses, and the ship’s jib shot up the forestay to pull them away. A weak hail of arrows landed among Brelak’s force as they mounted the dock and raced forward, but the gap was already too great to leap.

  “Grapples! We should’a brung grapples!” Brelak waved his men to cover, but stood and glared at the ship. Fifty feet separated them; it may as well have been leagues.

  “Cowards!” he bellowed, brandishing his boarding axes. “Come back and fight, Bloodwind!”

  “Perhaps another day, Master Brelak! Until then, accept this with my compliments!” The pirate captain turned a massive ballista toward the dock and fired.

  Feldrin didn’t have time to react, dodge, or even turn to evade the wrist-thick bolt of steel-tipped hardwood. He felt a jerk, and a line of pain across his shoulder. A quick look brought a rueful grin to his lips. Only a thin cut showed through his torn shirt; a foot to the right would have killed him.

  “You talk better’n you shoot, pirate!” he bellowed across the widening gap, but Bloodwind just grinned and sketched a mocking bow before turning to bark orders to his crew. More sails unfurled into the freshening breeze, and Hippotrin pulled away.

  “Less talk, more action, Feldrin,” he muttered to himself, turning to join his squad of fighters. “Back to Orin’s Pride. We’ve got to get her off the sand!”

  “Captain! We got problems!”

  He looked to where a crewman pointed, and gritted his teeth. A tight knot of fighters descended the steps of the palace, Yodrin in their midst. Behind the traitorous captain, the half-elf Ghelfan hobbled between two burly guards.

  “Bloody hell! After ’em before they can get out the pier. We can’t let one of them corsairs pick ’em up!” They raced back the way they’d come, but again, arrived behind their quarry.

  The knot of pirates hastened onto the pier and out toward the burning hulk of Guillotine. On the water, one of the corsairs disengaged Winter Gale and tacked around toward the pier. The pirates reached the end of the long stone structure and stood with their backs to the water, cutlasses bared and ready as Brelak’s force charged into them.

  With a scream of challenge and a clash of steel, wood and flesh, the two forces met. Brelak knocked the cutlass facing him spinning away with one of his boarding axes, and clove through half a dozen ribs with the other. The man fell, but another thrust his blade at Brelak’s throat. Chula knocked the pirate’s blade up and away, and Paska sliced across his stomach with her captured cutlass, all the while loosing a steady stream of language that sounded suspiciously like criticism.

  “Push’em hard! Watch that corsair!” Fifteen feet separated Brelak from Yodrin and Ghelfan, but the corsair was closing fast. The burning Guillotine blazed hot on their left, but there was enough room beyond her transom for the corsair to pass. In seconds they would be close enough for the assassin and his prize to jump to safety.

  “Down!”

  The call came too late as a ballista bolt ripped through his crew, killing one and maiming another in passing. The wounded man fell into the crimson-stained water between the burning ship and the pier, and screamed anew as a dark shape
took him from below. Battle and blood had called the wolves of the deep. Anyone who fell in the water would be devoured, alive or dead.

  Another pirate fell at Brelak’s feet. One step closer—ten feet and two rows of defenders separated them. Brelak seethed in rage as he noted Yodrin’s calm demeanor; the pirate looked back and forth, gauging the approaching corsair and the proximity of his foes. In his left hand he firmly grasped the collar of Ghelfan’s shirt.

  Brelak parried another thrust, smashed his fist into the man’s nose and hooked his other axe into his opponent’s groin. Another quick glance at Yodrin and his heart sank; they would not reach the assassin in time. The corsair’s bow swept past the end of the pier, and Yodrin turned to make the leap that would save his life.

  Gale force wind rose from nowhere, slamming into the corsair’s taut sails. The ship’s masts groaned as they were pushed over by the gust. The hull lurched away from the pier in a violent yaw that plunged the ship’s leeward rail into the bay. Spars snapped like kindling as the masts were hammered into the water. Men tumbled into the sea and screamed in horror as sleek shapes converged on them from below. The water in the corsair’s wake ran red, her barnacle-encrusted hull exposed as it passed, too far away for Yodrin to leap to safety.

  Brelak howled in triumph, smashing a pirate’s face with the haft of one axe while hacking through the wrist of another. The defenses were melting away, and Yodrin could not escape. For the first time, Brelak saw fear in the assassin’s eyes.

  *

  Cynthia grimaced in pain as the rough hemp cinched tight, binding her to Hippotrin’s starboard mainmast shrouds. The pirate grinned at her, his bearded visage an inch from her face. She turned away, and chance brought her gaze to the forces of Feldrin Brelak and Yodrin clashing on the pier.

  It all struck her in an instant: the approaching corsair, the lines of combat, and Yodrin watching it all, readying himself to leap with Ghelfan to safety.

  “No,” she muttered, calling all the strength she could muster and reaching out with her will. She pleaded with the winds and felt the sudden response, the ethereal joy of the air as it came to her call. It slammed into the corsair’s sails, heeling the ship over, ripping sails, cracking spars and snapping lines. She held the wind against the sails until the ship passed the pier, then released it, thanking the wind and feeling its answering elation. The ship righted, but her rig was in tatters, her crew decimated. Then a scream rent the air, the most inhuman sound ever to reach Cynthia’s ears. It was Hydra, and she was in pain.

  *

  “It’s over, Yodrin!” Brelak called out, hacking aside a cutlass and felling the pirate who wielded it with a blow that clove him to mid-sternum. The last man between them fell away in a welter of blood. Three pirates stood beside the assassin, horror painting their features as they realized they were trapped between fire, steel and shark-infested waters. “Hand Ghelfan over, and we’ll take you alive.”

  “To kick at the end of a yardarm? Not likely, Morrgrey.” Yodrin leveled his cutlass at Feldrin’s eyes and laughed. “You’ll walk away, or your friend Ghelfan goes for a swim. You may have won the fight, but there’s no prize for you.”

  “My prize is yer head, Yodrin. Killin’ Ghelfan won’t save you. Drop yer sword or die.”

  “Or I kill your precious shipwright then cut your fat throat.”

  Brelak raised his two gory boarding axes and grinned. “I thought you were more the type for stabbin’ a man in the back, like yer friend Karek. Yer facin’ a blade, now.”

  “Better a blade than a rope,” Yodrin said. He pushed, and Ghelfan toppled backward.

  Before they even heard the splash, Yodrin lunged, but Feldrin was ready, and the cutlass skittered along the haft of his axe. The Morrgrey’s counterstroke met a dagger, which kept the axe from hacking through the pirate’s stomach. Two of the pirates next to Yodrin went down, overwhelmed by the rush of Brelak’s men, and the third fell wounded into the water. Screams of horror and agony rent the air, but none could spare a moment to see how Ghelfan fared.

  Yodrin faced four weapons: Brelak’s two axes, Chula’s war club and Paska’s cutlass, but the assassin knew his business, and his own blades blurred in lightning parries and thrusts. He cut a line across Paska’s torso with the tip of his sword, adding more crimson to her body paint, then turned another of Brelak’s blades with his dagger and ducked under the sweeping arc of Chula’s club. His dagger raked the Morrgrey’s knuckles, and he blocked a killing stroke from Paska, who seemed undeterred by the gash in her breast.

  Chula swept his club low—too low for Yodrin to parry—and it cracked into the half-elf’s ankle. The obsidian spike on the end of the club fractured bone, and Yodrin totterred backward.

  Horror contorted the assassin’s features as he parried another axe stroke, his balance ruined and nothing behind him but water and blood. He dropped the cutlass and snatched the bloody haft of Brelak’s axe, teetering at the brink on his one good foot, his broken leg dangling uselessly. For a moment, everything stopped, Yodrin’s terrified eyes locked with those of his nemesis.

  “I saved your life in Tsing, you know,” he said, grimacing at the pain in his leg.

  “I wondered ’bout that,” Feldrin said with an utter lack of pity. “Figgered you did it to put yerself in good with Cynthia. No suspicions’d fall on you after that.”

  “But I did save your life!” Another horrible scream from over his shoulder ended in a gurgle, and all hope fled his features. “A blade, if you please. Better than that.”

  “Who said you had a choice?” Brelak’s blade separated the assassin’s hand from his arm. Yodrin toppled back in a spray of blood, his features registering only surprise as he fell.

  Brelak stepped forward as the assassin splashed into the water, then stood in shock at the sight of a huge shark closing in. The creature measured five strides from nose to tail, and it rolled over slowly to take Yodrin. The assassin’s scream split the air as the beast shook him like a rag doll. Then it was over. The animal swam away with half its prize while the other half bobbed lifelessly once, then sank, right next to where Ghelfan treaded water.

  “Hold my legs!” Brelak yelled, lunging forward with one boarding axe, trying to hook the shipwright’s collar. He came up short. “Further!” he commanded as four strong men grasped his ankles.

  The blade hooked cloth, and he drew him in.

  “Now heave!”

  Men groaned with the strain, but managed to haul the weighty Morrgrey and the stunned shipwright up onto the pier. The two of them lay there for a moment, gasping for breath as Paska cut the half-elf’s bonds and gag.

  “Master Brelak, your timing is flawless.” Ghelfan rubbed his wrists and smiled. “Though I haven’t a clue why the beast didn’t eat me, I can’t say as I’ll argue with its culinary preferences.”

  “Never question yer own luck,” Brelak said with a grin, standing and helping the half-elf to his feet.

  “Captain, look! Hippotrin’s near out the channel!”

  One glance told him the tale: Winter Gale tacked sluggishly after the one corsair still under full sail, which had broken off and headed for the channel behind Hippotrin. Boatloads of natives and sailors from Syren Song were clamoring aboard the crippled corsair, whose remaining crew were vastly outnumbered. Orin’s Pride still lay hard aground.

  “We’ve got to get the Pride off that bank. She’s the only ship that can catch Hippotrin! Come on, lads!”

  “You’ll forgive me if I sit this one out, Captain,” Ghelfan said as the group turned to race down the pier littered with dead and wounded. “I’ll see what I can do for these men.”

  “Have a care, Ghelfan! You’ll have company soon enough.” Brelak gestured toward the broad black sand beach where the force from Winter Gale had finished with the disheartened populace of the shanty town. The ground looked like a slaughterhouse floor.

  “Fare well!”

  Ghelfan knelt near a man with a bleeding head wound and began tearing hi
s shirt into bandages, feeling nothing more than lucky to be alive.

  *

  Hydra’s inhuman wail rang in Cynthia’s ears as she watched Ghelfan fall. She could feel the hunger of the great predators cruising under the surface of the lagoon. Blood had called them, and in their small minds, anything that moved the wrong way in the water meant food. Then she recalled Whuafa’s words about his first meeting with her father: “Sent dat shark away wi’ a wave of ’is ’and.”

  Maybe… She stretched out her feelings and knew instantly that she had no way to tell the sharks to go away. Her link was with the sea itself, not its denizens. So how could her father have sent a shark away?

  Without actually touching the water her senses were dampened, as though trying to feel something through a layer of cotton. She did, however, feel the vibrations of the ships moving through the water and the thrashing of more than a dozen swimming men. This thrashing, even more than the blood, was what frenzied the sharks.

  Maybe that’s it, she thought, feeling her way around the kicking shapes. It was easy to find Ghelfan; his arms were tied. He was staying afloat by kicking his legs and bobbing up and down, catching a breath every time his head broke the surface. This sent out fewer vibrations than the wounded men around him, but still enough to attract the predators. Cynthia asked the sea to insulate him, to absorb those vibrations, to make him invisible to the circling hunters.

  Ghelfan vanished to her senses. One instant he was there, the next gone. The big predators cruised right past him. She felt something hit the water close by where he had been, and the huge animals reacted. A high-pitched scream drifted over the water.

  “Someone is wielding power, Captain Bloodwind!” Hydra’s voice sounded strained, as if suppressing fear or pain. Cynthia hoped it was pain.