by Kirby Crow
Liall found another hook and chopped the rope free with his sword, then instinctively dropped to one knee when he heard a whirring at his back. The axe that narrowly missed his ear smashed into wood, and he stabbed back with his knife without looking, and the gut-stabbed mariner tumbled over him. Liall helped him into the sea while keeping a firm grip on his knife. Losing a blade stuck in another man’s throat or kidney had killed more mariners over the years than scurvy.
It was close and dirty fighting from that point: stabbing up under the ribs, wielding the sword crudely, chop and hack and slash as the battle became more like butchery than war. He went down once under a press of Morturii and took the opportunity to hamstring two or three of them, then rose from the deck, throwing the bodies off him with a roar. A Minh swordsman darted in under his guard and thrust upwards. Liall danced aside, but not swiftly enough, and the enemy blade pierced his shoulder where the Morturii had stabbed him already, deep but not lethal. If he had not turned, the Minh would have taken him down and impaled him to the wooden deck.
Fresh blood could steam like hot water in the north, and new blood poured out of him in a misty fount, hot and smelling of slaughter. Howling, Liall hacked at the Minh swordsman until he had lopped off an arm, then kept going from there. The Minh was considerably abbreviated when he was done.
When Liall blinked away the haze before his eyes, he saw that Scarlet had disobeyed him and joined the battle. He was near the bulkhead that supported the quarterdeck, fighting a spear-wielding Morturii a head taller than him, and as Liall watched, Scarlet slashed with his long-knife—too slow!—and narrowly avoided being spitted.
Liall went a little mad as the berserker rage took over, but this time he welcomed it. He only knew there was a roar in his ears like the sea and his throat hurt from screaming, and all around him was steaming blood and the stink of fear and men falling like wheat under his blade. He saw Scarlet twice more: once hacking away at a grappling rope while a hulking Minh ran at him. Scarlet fell back and grabbed the nearest thing, a broken spar with a jagged end, pointed it at his enemy, and let momentum do the rest for him. Liall tried to fight his way to Scarlet’s side, but Scarlet had already moved closer to the half deck, where the fighting was less, having achieved his goal and dislodged the rope. The second time, Liall saw him locking blades with a Minh who was a much better swordsmen. The Minh slapped the blade out of Scarlet’s grip with his sword, slicing the back of his hand, and Scarlet danced back a step and looked wildly around for another weapon. Liall threw his dagger at the Minh and caught him where his spine joined his neck. The Minh fell to the deck, his feet jerking as he convulsed and frothed like a rabid dog. Scarlet stared at Liall, dazed and pale.
“Get below!” Liall roared.
The Minh fell before Scarlet with Liall's dagger in his neck, and Scarlet fell back against the ship, pressing his body against the reassuring strength of solid wood. The deck felt slick beneath his feet, and he looked down and saw that his boots were washed with blood. Everywhere he looked he saw visions of madness. Men hacked into each other, their faces twisted into unrecognizable masks of straining fury, as blood sprayed from the wounds of their enemies, bathing all in crimson. He ran.
Suddenly, another Minh warrior loomed before him. The Minh's dark armor blackened the sky, seeming to shut out hope. On Deva danaee shani, Scarlet prayed automatically. He had no more weapons, and the bodies of the dead blocked his escape from all sides. Scarlet knew that he looked on his death.
The Minh raised his axe. Liall, Scarlet thought in profound loss, and then the Minh opened his wide, bearded jaw, and a torrent of blood flowed from it like a red stream.
Scarlet gaped as the Minh fell, revealing Qixa's broad figure standing behind the fallen warrior. The captain locked eyes with Scarlet and shook his head, a small smile on his lips, as if ridiculing himself for the act of saving a worthless lenilyn.
“Get off the deck, Byzan child,” Qixa growled.
Scarlet’s whole body was shaking as he nodded at Qixa, unable even to summon a word of thanks. Qixa turned and barked orders to the crew, and for the moment the battle moved away from them both, giving Scarlet a much-needed moment to breathe. He spied a long-knife on the deck and took it up, and then looked out over the water to the enemy schooner.
The Rshani crew had cut away the last of the grappling ropes, and the schooner lurched away from the brigantine. Even Scarlet, novice that he was, could see that it was only a temporary respite. The schooner was faster and could turn much quicker than the brigantine. She could stalk them for weeks on the water, attacking at any moment of her choosing, picking a little more of the Rshani crew off each time, until there were not enough mariners to beat the enemy crew back, or until the winds failed the Ostre Sul and she became a sitting target.
Scarlet's eyes fastened on the billowing sails of the schooner, and he suddenly wished he had Scaja’s talent of farcasting his Gift. Scaja had spent many nights teaching his son how to cast the withy on something outside of the house that neither of them could see: a piece of wood in the lane, or a fish deep in the pond. Scarlet had always been able to use his Gift on objects or creatures within arm's reach, but to cast across distance required special skill. A fire on the schooner would solve many things, and if the wind was in their favor, might even do the job for them.
He knew it was useless, and the schooner was pulling further away with every second. Yet, even as he thought of setting a withy to the enemy sails, he felt a tingling in his skin, like a ripple through his veins, and a flush of heat flooding his face. I can do it, he thought.
He had never tried with anything this far away before, but that fact seemed irrelevant. He stared at the sails, his eyes very wide, and thought: fire.
A curl of smoke huffed from the edge of a white sail. Scarlet trembled, for he now felt like he was holding a wild beast by the neck. Flames licked the sail and sent testing fingers to the wood of the schooner’s mast. Power surged through Scarlet’s body, stirring his blood, hammering his heart, and he recoiled in horror as he felt a man’s clothing catch fire on the schooner. He could feel them burning.
A shout went up among the Rshani as one of the schooner’s mainsails was engulfed in flames, and Scarlet jumped, startled, as Qixa bellowed at his men, giving an order Scarlet could not translate. The ten Rshani archers in reserve on the quarterdeck opened fire, felling the enemy fighters who had dropped their weapons and were attempting to put out the fire on their decks.
Qixa gave another order, and the archers launched two volleys of oil-soaked arrows. Twenty trails of flame went up.
Scarlet knew almost nothing of seafaring, yet he instinctively understood that all mariners must have a terror of fire at sea. One look at the blood-soaked deck of the brigantine told him that the Rshani crew could not withstand another assault. There was no other way.
A sail rigging caught fire on the schooner and then another at the aft, and then a great many of the schooner crew began to ignore the battle to fight the more pressing war on their own deck. The wind chose to shift at that moment, fanning the flames and dragging the brigantine safely away. Scarlet lost sight of the schooner in the fog.
No doubt they fought it bravely, but not much later, when the screams floated ghostlike over the misty swells, Scarlet knew the schooner crew had lost their battle with the fire. In the new quiet, he grabbed the rail with both hands and leaned over, breathing in great gulps of cold air and trying not to vomit. His mind was like a fly caught in a web, tearing and flailing at itself to escape. What’s happening? he thought in dismay. How did I do that? Not even Scaja could have sent a withy like that, and I sent not one, but many, and much stronger than anything I’ve ever seen Scaja do! What’s happening to me?
Behind him, Qixa moved among the crew and ship, surveying the damage. The masts were whole and only one sail was damaged, but all the ship’s rails were seriously marred and weakened, as well as the deck on the port side. They would have to drop men over the side on rope
s to inspect the hull and determine whether the impact from the schooner bellying up to them had pushed in the wooden hull below the waterline. As for the dead, Scarlet counted eighteen Rshani, among them Mautan the mate, who would never smile again. He did not see Liall anywhere, and fear clutched his heart.
The mariners were dumping the pirate dead overboard when Scarlet finally spotted Liall on the main deck, near the stern. Liall had a sword sheathed at his waist and he held a bloodied hand to his shoulder. He was shouting hoarsely.
“Scarlet!”
“Here!” Scarlet called. He watched, dazed, as Liall came toward him in a rush and seized his shoulders.
“I told you to stay below!” Liall shouted, and then jerked Scarlet this way and that to see if he was whole. “Are you hurt?” he demanded.
Dark blood was spattered at Liall’s shoulder and painted down the front of his coat.
“No, but you are.”
Liall was breathing heavily. “It is nothing.”
Scarlet yanked Liall’s coat open and flinched when he saw how much blood was soaked into the gray wool of his shirt. “You said there was a curae on board?”
Liall waved that aside, seeming unconcerned. Blood began dripping in a steady trickle from the end of his shirt, spattering the crimson-washed deck. “I am not the only man wounded on this ship, and there is still work to be done.”
“And you’ll be no help to anyone if you faint.”
Liall scanned Scarlet’s body up and down. “Is any of that blood your own?”
Scarlet looked down at his clothes and felt briefly giddy, seeing all the gore. He looked worse than Liall did. “No.” His stomach turned over and he was mortally glad he had not eaten for hours. “Never mind me. I have to look at that wound.”
“The bleeding has stopped, mostly,” Liall said as a last protest.
Scarlet thought Liall looked pale, considering his usual color, and without asking he shoved his shoulder under Liall’s arm and steered the man toward their cabin.
Captain Qixa stopped them on the way and spoke to Liall. Liall locked eyes with the captain and gave him a look of deep regret. “This is my fault,” he said in Bizye. “You know what they were really after.”
Qixa shook his head, his face proud but haggard with loss. “No one makes me do anything, ap kyning. I knew the risk.”
Liall bowed his head, equal to equal, and Qixa returned it with the aplomb of a king before barking an order to the crew in Sinha. The mariners began to throw the corpses overboard. All, that was, save the Rshani. Mautan they bore gently away on their shoulders, singing a song of death.
Liall allowed Scarlet to guide him into the cabin, and sat slumped on the bunk as Scarlet hurried to find the small pack of medicines he always carried on the road. He left to dip a basin of fresh water from the barrel on the main deck and returned to find Liall flopped onto his back.
Frightened, Scarlet leaned over Liall and roughly shook his uninjured shoulder. Liall opened his eyes blearily. “What?”
“I thought you’d passed out.”
“I did.” Liall sat up painfully. “This is how I heal.”
That explained much, including how easily Liall slipped into sleep at the inn at Volkovoi and how quickly his bruises had vanished afterwards. Scarlet managed to get Liall out of his coat and shirt. The wool shirt was ruined, cut in several places and soaked through with blood. He laid it aside and bit his lip when he saw the wide gash at Liall’s shoulder.
“This will need stitching,” he said.
Liall assessed Scarlet quietly with that measuring gaze of his, his pale eyes revealing nothing. He nodded. “Help me get my boots off. I am covered in blood.”
Scarlet helped him to undress before turning to the small brazier. Water would have to be heated, and there were bandages to make. He wished suddenly that Hipola the midwife was here, or even Scaja, who had known much more about healing than he did. He could find no suitable cloth to bind the wound with, but he tore one of his older shirts and boiled it in the water. They would do for cleaning the wound, anyway. With the sterilized cleaning cloths laid aside, he dumped the hot water and refilled the iron pot with clean water to heat, boiling it for several minutes to kill off any lingering poisons.
Scarlet took a deep breath and set to work on Liall’s shoulder. Liall shuddered a few times as he cleaned the wound thoroughly, but otherwise held perfectly still and made no protest, even when Scarlet’s fingers dug inside his torn flesh to check for bits of metal or wood lodged in the wound.
The cut had bled profusely. A smaller man, a Hilurin or Aralyrin, would have been dead already from it. Liall began to shiver as Scarlet wiped the last of the blood away and heaped blankets over him and around him, leaving only the wound bare.
“I’ll get the thread,” Scarlet said.
“Do you know how to do this?”
Scarlet took a deep breath. “Yes. Scaja showed me. I’ve done it for horses, but never a man.”
“Flesh is flesh. You will do fine.”
Scarlet smiled wanly over his shoulder. “I should be the one comforting you, not the other way ‘round.”
There was a knock at the hatch and Liall snapped to alertness. Scarlet answered it and found a straight-faced mariner with a bundle in his hands. The bundle proved to be clean linen for binding and dressing a wound. Scarlet thanked the man, but the mariner turned on his heel and left, not acknowledging him. It seemed that Byzans were still enemy even after they allied with Rshani in battle.
Scarlet set the bundle near Liall and opened his small packet of medicines to take out the needle and boiled thread. There was some yellow sulfa powder in there, too, fine as dust and smelling faintly of rotten eggs. This he sprinkled painlessly on Liall’s wound before he put the needle through the candle flame. It took him three tries to thread the needle. He sat beside Liall.
“You’ll need to hold very still,” he warned.
“Just do it.”
Liall held quiet, aside from an occasional tremor as his muscles tightened. Scarlet forced himself not to think of it as living flesh as he concentrated on making the stitches small and neat. The wound was cleanly-made and the cut had slid deep sideways, rather than in. To Scarlet, it appeared that Liall had spun out of reach before the blade could thrust forward, and the edge had slid over the top of his muscle, creating a long, deep gash that bled much, but had failed to strike any vital areas.
Liall was barely awake when Scarlet cut the last stitch and readied the linen packing for the wound. He wound strips of linen under and around Liall’s arm, and then made a small, careful knot.
Scarlet nodded with satisfaction. “That should hold.”
“Good job,” Liall said faintly. “Now... I will rest for a bit.” But he struggled to open his eyes. “I told you to stay below.”
Scarlet shrugged.
“I looked for you,” Liall said. “At the end, when the battle turned to our favor, I could not see in the mist and the smoke. I was frightened,” he admitted.
“You?” Scarlet scoffed. “Never.”
“I realized,” Liall said slowly, “what an opportune moment it was to be rid of an unwanted passenger.” He flinched when he saw the shock in Scarlet’s eyes. “One well-placed knife in the midst of battle and no one would think it strange.”
“I know the crew doesn’t care for me,” Scarlet said, shaken. “But why would any of them want me dead?”
“I did not say they did. And I do not truly believe that anyone is planning it, but... my experience with the nature of men does not allow me to take risks.” Liall reached for Scarlet’s hand and his voice turned softer. “I really did not believe you would stay below. You have too much heart to stay hidden while others fight for their lives.”
“Don’t bet on it,” Scarlet returned tartly. “Now that I’ve seen a battle, I realize I don’t care to see another. Ever. If those pirates come back, you might find me hiding in a barrel.” He belatedly remembered Liall throwing the blade into the Mor
turii’s throat. “Thanks for throwing that knife.”
Liall produced a sickly grin and Scarlet pulled the last blanket over him. He burned the cloth he had used to clean Liall’s wound in the brazier, and when he finished this task he saw that Liall was fast asleep. Now he could see to his own injuries, if there were any.
His clothing was beginning to stiffen with blood, so he stripped to the skin in the cold cabin, shivering as he washed himself with the last of water. It was then that he discovered that some of the blood on him was his own, after all. He had a few slashes here and there, nothing that cleaning and salve would not take care of. He washed the cuts carefully with water and pressed the yellow powder over the red lines and forgot about them.
Captain Qixa entered the cabin without knocking just as Scarlet had finished dressing in his only other set of clean clothing. Qixa cast a narrow look at him as he checked Liall’s wound, pursing his lips and nodding in grudging approval.
“Very good,” he said in heavily-accented Bizye. “He will sleep now, and wake strong. Watch for fever.”
Scarlet nodded. “I’ll care for him.” It was the first time he had spoken to Qixa since the voyage began.
Qixa stared at Scarlet. “You fought hard, lenilyn child. The odds were very bad, but we won anyway. Perhaps you are not bad luck, after all,” he said, and then went out quickly, as if he were afraid Scarlet would take it as a compliment.
Scarlet gave the hatch a sour look and piled their bloodied clothing into a heap. Later, he would see about washing it, but just now the constant, brassy stink was making his head hurt. Liall was snoring softly.
“Sure, leave me all the work, just like at Volkovoi,” Scarlet muttered in amusement. “I’d rather be working than hurt, though, so you sleep on, Wolf.”
Liall sighed in his sleep. Clean and dry, Scarlet carefully crawled into the bunk beside him and closed his eyes as exhaustion claimed him. They could all have died out there in the cold sea, their bodies dumped, the ship stolen, and no one would have known what happened. Annaya would never have known, and Liall’s Kasiri tribesmen would have waited and wondered until Liall the Wolf faded from memory.