by Barb Hendee
“He say we run,” Klâtäs answered. “Even under full moon, we maybe lose them in dark.”
Persuasion was not working. Welstiel spoke calmly to Chane in Belaskian but kept his eyes on the helmsman.
“Kill the captain . . . and show them what you are.”
The captain barked a question at Klâtäs, stepping toward the smaller man.
In the same instant, Chane thrust out with his longsword.
The startled captain tried to raise his shortsword in defense, but Chane’s sword was already embedded through the side of his leather armor. The shortsword clanged against Chane’s steel anyway. The impact jarred the longsword, twisting it in the captain’s ribs. He buckled to his knees.
The fight should have been over, but Klâtäs reached for his saber. Welstiel pulled his sword before the helmsman could draw his and grabbed Klâtäs by the throat. He heard Chane’s hiss grating like some enraged reptile.
The captain wrapped his thick hand around Chane’s embedded blade.
The crewman at the helm abandoned his post to rush in.
“Move and you die,” Welstiel growled in Klâtäs’s ear, and lashed out his sword.
The tip clipped the rushing crewman and tore through the side of his face. The man twisted away, screaming as he tumbled to the deck.
Chane opened his mouth, exposing jagged, elongated teeth.
The captain tried to raise his shortsword again. Blood ran along Chane’s blade in his side, either from the wound or from his free hand gripping the sharp steel. Chane lifted one booted foot.
He stomped down on the captain’s forearm, just above the man’s grip.
The captain’s fingers sheared off on the longsword’s edge. He dropped his shortsword with a guttural cry.
Klâtäs bucked in Welstiel’s grip.
“Tell your men to stay back or they die!” Welstiel shouted. He dropped his sword to grip Klâtäs’s hair. “Tell them now . . . or I save you for last.”
Chane slammed his jaws closed on the captain’s throat. He thrashed his head like a wild dog ripping prey in its teeth. Dark blood splattered across the deck, and flecks of it struck Klâtäs’s face and chest.
Cries of hunger and desperation rose from somewhere in the belly of the ship.
Chane dropped the captain’s limp body in the red pool spreading on the deck. He spit out torn flesh and turned glittering eyes upon the closing crew.
Welstiel focused his mind on his ferals below.
“Come!” he shouted. “Come to me now!”
Screams of release filled the ship’s hull as Klâtäs cried out to his men.
Wynn spotted a point of light on the sea as the elven steersman called for his hkomas. But she could not see a ship. The light vanished as the hkomas came at a jog. He glanced at Wynn standing on deck in her shift—without Osha or Sgäile—and stopped below the aftcastle.
“I have lost sight of it,” the steersman called, releasing the wheel to a crew member beside him. He came down to the deck and pointed. “It was there, ahead of us.”
Chap began to growl.
“What is it?” Wynn asked.
He only huffed and rumbled.
“Go below!” the hkomas shouted at her.
"I will not! Look at him.” She gestured to Chap. “Something is very wrong.”
“Wynn—where are you?” Osha emerged below the forecastle, holding his gray-green cloak closed against the wind.
“Here,” she answered, then turned quickly back to Chap. “Tell me what you see!”
Chap’s growl deepened, but he would not look away from the ocean.
The steersman grabbed the back of Wynn’s cloak. “Do as you’re ordered!”
Osha reached Wynn’s side and snatched the man’s wrist. He shook his head slowly until the steersman released his grip.
“What is wrong?” Osha asked.
“An unknown ship ahead,” Wynn answered, “and it is making Chap uneasy.”
Osha leaned over the rail-wall, following Chap’s gaze. “I see nothing.”
“It vanished in the dark, but it must be there.”
“Ship ahead!” someone called from up the front mast. “Human sails in moonlight, turning seaward.”
“Human?” the hkomas repeated.
“Could it be the one?” the steersman asked.
“Ylladon!” the voice above cried out. “It is Ylladon!”
Osha glanced upward once, his expression confused. “You are seeking a ship?” he demanded.
“At our last stop, we heard of a raid on a lower coastal enclave,” the hkomas answered, and the steersman rushed for the aftcastle as the hkomas called out, “All crew on deck! Full sail—and tell lhkasge to rouse the ship!”
Wynn turned to Osha at this new name. “Who is . . . Closing-Stone . . . and why must he wake up the ship?”
“He is our vessel’s hkœda,” Osha said quickly. “Even asleep the ship keeps swimming, but the hkomas now wishes for more haste. You should go below.”
“Chap, come on,” Wynn said.
The dog remained poised. Wynn grasped Chap’s shoulders, and he growled at her without turning.
The stairwell’s hatch shattered outward, and feral monks poured onto the deck.
Chane knew he was trapped.
Somewhere behind them, Wynn was on that other ship.
He had followed Welstiel’s every demand. If not, Welstiel would have been overrun by the crew, leaving Chane alone amid marauders and a pack of ferals with no master. And killing the Ylladon captain had made his head swim with euphoria.
He tried to clear his mind as scattered sailors grabbed for weapons to fend off the monks. Welstiel still gripped the helmsman, but his face . . .
His colorless eyes glowed in his pale white features. His lips pushed apart around elongating teeth.
Chane had never seen Welstiel in full vampiric state. Perhaps the man had fallen so far over sanity’s edge that his aristocratic veneer had cracked completely. The sight ate at Chane, until all he wanted was another warm body to tear apart. And someone kept squealing behind him.
He snapped his head to the side, glaring over his shoulder.
The sailor Welstiel had slashed rolled on the deck, clutching his face with blood dripping between his fingers. Chane jerked his sword from the captain’s corpse and skewered the crewman through the heart. The man fell silent and limp.
Half of the crew had recovered from their initial horror and were now facing down the monks. Ferals worked their way around the sailors to cluster near Welstiel.
Sabel looked to Chane, sniffing the air, and then her gaze found the pool of blood around the captain’s corpse. Chane backed against the starboard rail.
Could Welstiel control his children cut loose among the living?
“Tell your men to get back into the rigging!” Welstiel hissed into Klâtäs’s ear. “You turn this ship back . . . or you’ll be bloodless before your body hits the deck.”
“They not do this,” the helmsman choked, “not charge elven ship!”
“Look around! Who do they fear more . . . the elves or us?”
Welstiel felt the helmsman’s pulse under his hand and heard its pounding rhythm in his own ears. The hunger it brought made him sick inside— because he wanted to feed.
The crew stayed beyond the reach of the hissing, sniffing ferals, but their faces were tense as they clenched their weapons. Klâtäs finally shouted at them.
Two shook their heads, and one lost all color in his face.
Welstiel shoved the helmsman into the wheel.
Klâtäs caught himself on a spindled handle, but he glanced down in horror at his captain’s body. He began shouting again at the crew, but not one of them moved.
Welstiel needed at least six of them, more likely ten, enough to man the ballistae and at least keep the ship on course once it turned.
“Feed!” he snarled.
All five ferals rushed the crew with wild cries of release. Only two crewmen stood their
ground as the others scattered.
Welstiel retrieved his sword. “Turn north, along the coast . . . while some of your men are still alive.”
Klâtäs threw his weight into the wheel, cranking it hard. “Stop your beasts!”
Welstiel grabbed the side rail as the ship listed sharply and looked out across the deck.
The two sailors who had stood their ground were already dead, hidden beneath growling and tearing ferals. Their feast was broken as their bodies slid along the deck’s tilt. Stumbling monks turned frenzied as each tried to close on the bodies first.
Welstiel counted off crewmen within sight. Four or five more were not to be seen—likely in hiding—and the rest had fled into the rigging.
“Halt!” Welstiel shouted in Stravinan.
As the deck leveled and the ship’s prow swung north, he stepped out among his cowering minions. Again, the curly-haired man was last to back away from the torn bodies, his neck and forearms ridged with straining muscle. He still clutched at the deck, reaching for the nearest slaughtered crewman.
Welstiel raised his face to the ship’s heights and the crewmen clinging to the rigging. Klâtäs shouted at them, and they scrambled to their duties.
Only moments had passed, and Welstiel remembered his companion. He turned to find Chane standing at the rail.
“Go forward and below,” Welstiel said, “to the captain’s quarters. But first check his body for keys. Behind the table in there, you will find a loose panel in the wall. Break it in and bring me the prisoners you find inside the wall.”
Chane’s eyes narrowed, but he silently searched the captain’s corpse. He stood up with a soft chitter of keys and slipped away toward the bow.
Someone shouted from the rigging, and Klâtäs craned his head to search the night ahead.
“What is it?” Welstiel asked.
“The elf ship . . . come fast . . . we are seen!”
Welstiel looked out past the prow. “Put men on the ballistae. Now!”
Leesil roused from half-sleep as Magiere thrashed against him. She rolled toward the narrow bunk’s edge, and he tried to grab for her, but she slipped over to the floor.
“Magiere?”
He pushed up onto one elbow, trying to come fully awake in the dim light.
Magiere crouched on all fours. Both of them were fully clothed, since they had to share a cabin with Wynn and Chap. Amber light glinted in her black hair hanging around her face—and she was panting.
Had she been dreaming again? Perhaps another nightmare?
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
He clutched blindly for the lantern or whatever light Wynn had forgotten to put out, but he couldn’t get a grip on it.
“Leesil . . . ?” Magiere whispered, and started to lift her head.
With a frustrated grunt, Leesil sat up and reached out. The light didn’t come from a lantern.
At the head of the long bunk ledge, he saw the topaz amulet Magiere had given him. It glowed softly.
Leesil sucked in a harsh breath and looked at Magiere.
Yellow light exposed her pale features through the tendrils of her hair. Her irises were blacker than the room’s shadows.
An eerie wail rang out from somewhere in the ship.
“Chap?” Leesil said, but Chap wasn’t in the room—and neither was Wynn. “Oh, dead deities!”
Magiere scrambled up, snatched her falchion, and jerked open the cabin door.
“Where are they?” Leesil growled. “And how could an undead get on board?”
She didn’t answer and ran out as he snatched up the amulet and pulled its loop over his head. He grabbed one of his winged blades, but with no time to strap it on, he threw aside the sheath and raced out.
Running, he caught up to Magiere as she slammed the hatch door with her palm. Its latch shattered, and they both burst onto the deck at the ship’s seaward side.
The crew raced about purposefully. Several of them strung longbows and shouldered quivers. But Leesil saw no sign of a conflict or fight.
“Wynn?” he shouted, and then spotted her before his call faded.
She ran toward him with Osha close behind as they rounded the cargo grate. She skidded to a stop before the shore-side forward hatch.
“Leesil . . . Magiere? I was coming for you.” Wynn whirled, pointing ahead. “Undead . . . another ship ahead . . . Chap sensed undead and ran up the forecastle!”
Magiere leaped to the cargo grate’s edge, running past Wynn, and Leesil heard Chap cut loose another shuddering howl. Several elven crew members cast frightened glances toward the bow as the sound spread over the deck.
Leesil started to follow but stopped short when Sgäile appeared from the other forward hatch. He was struggling to pull on his tunic. All around, crew scrambled as the hkomas shouted over Chap’s howls. Sgäile twisted about in the commotion, pausing to listen to elven voices. He grabbed for Leesil as he stepped in beside Osha.
“The ship will need a wide berth,” he said. “The hkomas will head seaward to bypass the other vessel. Be ready to assist as needed.”
“No,” Wynn said quickly. “The other ship turned out to sea. We are closing for a look.”
“What?” Sgäile asked in open surprise. “If it is Ylladon, that is folly! This is not a fighting vessel.”
Chap’s howls waned, and Leesil stepped back to peer up into the forecastle. The dog hung upon the forward rail-wall with Magiere.
“Show me!” she growled, her voice nearly lost in the noise on deck.
Chap stretched his head out as far as he could. Magiere leaned over the dog to follow his sightline.
“What is that?” Sgäile whispered.
Leesil glanced at him in confusion and found both Osha and Sgäile staring at him. No, rather, at his chest. He looked down once to the soft yellow glow of the amulet.
“Magiere gave it to me,” he said, frustrated by the distraction. “It glows when we’re near an undead.”
“That is why Chap is howling,” Wynn added urgently. “He wants to hunt . . . because he senses an undead. And it is on that other ship!”
Sgäile exhaled sharply, as if overwhelmed.
Two pairs of elven sailors thumped up the aft hatchway. One set carried a tall, stout wooden stand, while the other hauled a long heavier bulk wrapped in canvas. They trotted along the seaward rail-wall and up onto the aftcastle.
One pair set the stand on the aftcastle’s seaward side, and the second pair mounted the canvas bulk on top. When they ripped off the covering, the first two lifted a broad steel bow, and then locked it down across the mounted stock of a ballista.