"In other words, could Orlen be making up visitations to advance his own agenda."
"More or less." Dante grinned. "Neither more nor less, actually. Exactly that."
Mourn set down his papers and gazed at the black waters with an expression that was cousin to a frown. "Humans do that, don't they? Put themselves ahead by making up whatever they want about their most sacred beliefs. Cheapening everything with false prophecy. Well, we don't. Not about Josun Joh. When he speaks, it's to save our lives."
Dante's natural instinct was to question that—in fact, to mock it—but there was an earnestness to Mourn that made his claim approach credence. It wasn't that norren never lied, or were too rarefied to consider manipulating others through their beliefs. But there did seem to be a level they just wouldn't stoop to. Perhaps it came from being bullied, enslaved, and slaughtered by the kingdoms of men for so long that the notion of betraying each other's deepest trusts had become as anathema as barbecuing your own newborn. Perhaps they were simply different, baked from a different blend of the nether that rose in men's souls. Whatever the case, it wasn't that Dante could rule out the idea that Orlen could be lying. He just didn't think it was the most likely explanation.
He slept at dawn, rising a few hours later to check on Lira, whose face, once paled by the experience of looking Death in the eye, had resumed an olive shade rather close to Dante's own. Varlen had seen no further sign of shipwrecks. That afternoon, they set to port in Honder, a thriving norren city with a healthy human minority, a city that embodied the late days of winter: a cliffside place of mist, frost, and starkly high, cone-capped towers. There, they took on fresh water and the crew swabbed belowdecks while the clan, smelling rather righteous after days cooped downstairs, bathed in the frigid waters, splashing and laughing at each other's hairy bodies. Dante, Blays, and Mourn checked in at a portside tavern for word of the Bloody Knuckles, finding the news matched Orlen's word from Josun Joh—the Ransom was last seen far downstream, by all indications bound for Gask's human lands.
That was enough for Blays, who retired for a nap once the stars turned to the small part of the morning. Dante remained in the prow, accompanied by a blanket and tea gone cold. In his heart, he knew he was only feeding his own unreason; the captain had his own sailors out on watch, men plenty used to the noises and darkness of the riverway, less prone to imaginary glimpses of hostile faces or cruelly curved figureheads appearing from the misty drapery. Even so, he remained, watching the waves, using the idle hours to contemplate the ways to let Setteven know the bow was in service of supporters of the norren without exposing that it was specifically Narashtovik doing the supporting.
Hours later, darkness moved on the waters. Dante leaned forward, as if that would bring him any closer to what he was seeing, blanket slipping from his shoulders. The mist had thinned to something more felt than seen, and the gappy clouds showed stars by the dozen. It wasn't a shape on the water that was dark: it was a patch of the water itself, blank as a cave. Nearby waves flashed pricks of reflected starlight. Waters had strange textures to them, of course. Dante had spent enough time looking down on Narashtovik's bay to see the ocean, through some function of the light, banded with light and dark strips of blue. At times, parts of the surface nearly boiled with fury while others washed on as flatly as a table.
Running bodies of water, in other words, didn't make a ton of sense to the eye, particularly when you've been staring at them for minutes on end. But after several more minutes, the black patch was demonstrably closer—Dante had fixed its position to a rocky outcropping on the left bank, and while the Boomer's course had taken them nearer the patch, the darkness had moved, too, advancing past the swell of rock.
Against the current.
In the gloom, it was hard to place its precise distance; it was only slightly darker than everything else and its amorphous edges blended with the rippling river. Less than a mile away, though. Perhaps as little as half that, and growing nearer. He'd never worked the nether at such a distance—the further away you got, the clumsier and more draining it became—but he brought the shadows to him nevertheless, condensing them in his hands and unspooling them in a dark thread that reached across the water towards the coming darkness. When the thread intersected the patch, the nether disappeared, fizzling away from his command.
Dante's blood ran cold as the river.
With a focus fine as a needle's tip, he tried again. When the forces intersected, he was ready for the unseen attack, holding fast to his thin thread of nether and probing beyond. The black patch was nether, too: a vast cloud given color and shape, obscuring anything that lurked within it.
He withdrew. He pried open the scab on his hand. The nether filled him like a deep breath after a long dive. He lanced toward the nethereal fog, driving into it with all he had, shredding and rending its ties to the physical world, driving it back to its lairs in the dark places of the world. In its place, he shaped a starburst of cleansing light.
In the ghastly white noon some three hundred yards away, a galley slashed through the sluggish current, light glinting from its heavy bronze ram. Above, two wicked horns curled from its prow.
4
"The Ransom!" he shouted. "The Ransom is here!"
He needn't have bothered. The night watch had already begun to cry out, first in wordless animal surprise, then in the coded language of a ship at war. Ahead, the Ransom's oarsmen redoubled their beat, thrashing the waters. Varlen's voice boomed through the night. The ship lurched starboard.
Dante pounded up the aftercastle steps. "They're going to ram us!"
"No shit," Varlen rasped.
"Flaming arrows, too."
"Oh shit."
"And a sorcerer."
The captain flung up his pudgy hands. "Lyle's bruised balls! What hell have you sailed us into?"
The Boomer continued to veer right. A hundred yards away, the Ransom matched course, its captain roaring orders that echoed between the cliffs. Against all instincts of self-preservation, Dante raced down the steps towards the prow, joined along the way by an armed and sleep-angry Blays.
"What's going on?" Blays called.
As he raced by, Dante gestured to the men hauling ropes and canvas through the rigging. "I think those shouts translate to 'We're about to be murdered.'"
He pulled up to the railing. Blays leaned over next to him, gaping at the oncoming vessel. "It looks like we're about to be rammed."
"Yep."
"Then what the fuck are we doing up here? Drawing them a target?"
"We're here to stop them." Water splattered from oars, spilling off the Ransom's glinting ram. The galley closed, impossibly fast yet horribly slow. A lone silhouette ran from the rail of its high topdeck. A voice bellowed through the darkness; the oars retracted from the water, slipping smoothly through the slots in the hull. The ship hurtled closer and closer, as massive as the wing of a castle. Dante grabbed hard to the rails.
The Ransom gashed by mere feet away, near enough that anyone on its deck could have leapt down to the lower Boomer. Its crew was braced for impact, though, and Dante didn't see a single enemy face as the ship's slick wooden hull whisked by, stirring the cold freshwater air. The Boomer's crew groaned in relief at the miss. The topdeck of the Ransom blossomed with a string of tiny orange fires.
"Get down!" Dante shoved Blays to the deck and followed him down.
Blays socked him in the shoulder. "Ask next time!"
Lines of light creased the sky. The flaming arrows whacked into the deck, slashing through the sails. One thumped into the prow feet behind Blays. A man fell screaming from the rigging and thudded on the deck.
Men with buckets rushed to douse the flames. The warriors of the Clan of the Nine Pines swarmed from below, bows in hand. Others carryied heavy furs taken from the walls of their yurts which they draped over the railings. The archers took up behind the makeshift screens, pelting the men on the Ransom with return fire. Dante narrowed his eyes and focused the nether. Fl
ame leapt up from the rear of the enemy vessel. It was quenched before Dante made it five steps toward the stern.
The two boats carried their opposite ways, firing arrows back and forth across the widening gap. The Ransom's oars dipped back in the water and the ship began the slow business of circling around. Dante neither saw nor felt further sign of the Bloody Knuckles' sorcerer. By the time the Ransom came about and took up chase, the two boats had fallen out of bow range; the enemy still took the occasional shot, gauging range with their fiery arrows.
"Ugly," Blays said.
"What?"
"The deck of this ship once they start boarding it."
"Suppose I'd better fetch my sword." Dante started for the staircase down. "Oh, don't forget. Leave at least one of them alive to torture the slaves' location out of."
Blays' mouth quirked. "Do you have to put it like that?"
The planks were slick with water, scarred with scorches, and prickled with arrow shafts. Dante hadn't been belowdecks in a couple days and the stench of sweat was thick as mud. Torn-apart yurts scattered the floor. Clansmen loaded their arms with swords and spears and thudded upstairs. Dante found his sword in a chest near the rear and returned to the surface. Arrows whispered from the norren archers, who'd relocated from the larboard railing to that on the back of the aftercastle. Others hid at the aft's base, the wooden rise sheltering them from enemy fire, and emerged to batter down any fresh flames with their furs. Blays was there too, along with Mourn, who carried a curved, single-edged blade.
"You might want to get belowdecks," Dante said.
Mourn glanced up from rubbing his sword with a rag. "Why would I want that?"
"To avoid anything unpleasant. Such as dying."
"I would rather die than hide downstairs to listen to the screams of my clan."
"That's the kind of thing that sounds a lot less noble when you're moaning in the blood with a sucking chest wound."
Mourn cocked his head, meeting Dante's eyes. "I'm not trying to be noble. I would literally prefer to die fighting for my friends and blood-family. Why would you suggest I wouldn't? Do you think I would enjoy crying in the dark?"
"Forget it." Dante climbed the steps to get a glimpse of the Ransom. It was closing rapidly, oars circling through the water while the Boomer relied on currents and a rather slack wind. Not that they were trying to outrun the Bloody Knuckles, so far as he knew. In fact, he had the impression that appearing to flee at full sail was a mere ploy to keep their would-be predators on the hunt. To avoid the ram too, he supposed. He was no admiral.
The next few minutes were confusing ones. Dante waited behind an open door while the archers fired and crew strained with the rigging. Three men jogged down the aftercastle steps bearing a grimacing norren, an arrow projecting from his ribs.
"Lay him on the deck!" Dante rushed into the open deck. The men stopped, glancing between each other as if he were a stranger in the street. Dante circled in front of them. "Put him down, gods damn it."
They stretched the wounded man on the damp planks. Dante knelt, stripping the norren's shirt away from the arrow buried in the side of his furry chest. Blood slid to the wood. The man's eyes were open and moving, but he did no more than grimace as Dante tested the arrow, then yanked it wetly from the wound. Dante slung it aside and clamped his hands to the bleeding. Within moments, the blood stanched, scabbing.
Dante rose, wiping his hands on his pants. "Get him below."
"Will he be okay?" one of the clan warriors asked.
"He's less fit to fight than a dropped baby bird, but he'll be fine."
The norren knelt to offer the wounded man his shoulder. They limped towards the stairs. On the castle, men shouted. The Ransom loomed above the railing, oars pulled in as it swung alongside the smaller craft. Hooks and grapnels arced from the pirate vessel, clunking into the Boomer's planks and rails. Sword-bearing norren charged to the railing to hack at the ropes drawing the two ships together. Arrows whisked from above, dropping two warriors and driving the others back.
Men with knuckles wrapped in red cloth vaulted down the eight-foot rise between the ships. The norren met them, heavy swords hammering the pirates to the deck. Sabers and short swords flashed in the enemy's hands. Norren dropped along the line. Blays charged a tall, ragged-haired man, intercepting the enemy's incoming thrust with his left-hand blade, flicking his wrist and elbow in an upward snap. The parry deflected the pirate's sword past Blays' shoulder; Blays' right-hand weapon buried itself in the enemy's gut. Dante moved to Blays' flank. A spear jabbed at his ribs. He battered it down with a clumsy strike, then thrust out his empty hand. The nether punched straight through the spearman's neck. He collapsed into the railing.
Nether speared down from the upper vessel, knocking three clan warriors from their feet. Blood pattered the deck. Above, a man in a long coat with a single stripe of hair atop his shaved head raised his hand in an eagle's claw. Dante fell back from the clanging melee, lashing a bolt of shadows at the chest of the man in the coat. The sorcerer's face blanked in shock. He jerked backwards, blasting raw nether at the incoming force, dashing it into the night. His gaze snapped to Dante. A rush of piercing energy followed. Dante knocked it aside with a wedge of shadows. They struggled this way for some seconds, needles of nether twining around one another and boiling away into nothing.
Dante eased his resistance, falling back a step as the other man's dark tendrils wormed forward. The man in the coat smiled. Dante lashed out for the Ransom's railing instead, pelting the man with a hail of hard splinters. His focus collapsed. Dante drove forward, lancing the man's heart with a bolt of raw force.
To his right, a blade flicked at his face. Blays intercepted with crossed swords, scissoring the enemy weapon into the planks, then rolled his forearms, swinging his blades through a tight circle and snapping them into the attacker's jacket-padded collarbones. As the man staggered, Dante took him under the ribs with his sword.
Humans and norren flopped and bled. No member of the Bloody Knuckles remained standing on the Boomer. The norren warriors sheathed their swords and clambered up the ropes marrying the two vessels, archers covering them from below. Dante climbed up, too, but the Ransom's topdeck was nearly empty. As two small skirmishes broke out, a handful of men with red-wrapped knuckles fled belowdecks or leapt off the side.
"Think you've got this?" Dante said to Blays.
"Considering I've got thirty sword-wielding norren monsters on my side, I'm going to say yes."
Blays raced to catch up with the pursuing norren. Dante slid back down the rope to the barge, treating the wounded until his commandhe nether faltered and the shadows refused to venture from their crannies. His nerves felt as raw-scraped as a fresh hide. By the time the battle finished, the five surviving members of the Bloody Knuckles matched the total number of Nine Pines dead. Their original numbers had been roughly equal, but that was the nature of armed conflict, particularly in smaller scale, where an advantage in strength, size, and the sudden removal of the enemy's nethermancer could be exploited for an overwhelming victory. The man in the long coat had been the cornerstone of the Bloody Knuckles' terror. There were likely just a few hundred men and women in all of Gask with any real talent in the use of nether or ether, and mere dozens with the skill to match the dead man's. Combined with the pirates' willingness for stark and sudden violence, it was no wonder they'd terrorized the local waterways for over a decade.
Orlen's response to the pirates was no less violent. The few who tried to hide among the oar-slaves were quickly ratted out, then just as swiftly executed and flung over the side of the galley. The five survivors were brought to the Boomer, where the deck was still being cleared of bodies and swabbed of blood. A man with a shaved head and a bleeding, smashed nose was forced to kneel in front of Orlen. The norren chief's heavy sword hung from his hand.
"I'm going to ask once, because the question is so simple failing to understand it will tell me you have no brains to spill. One month ago, you too
k possession of a group of norren of the Clan of the Green Lake. Where did you take them?"
The man hawked blood on the planks. "Their rightful owners."
Orlen's sword flashed in the torchlight. Pink matter spattered the deck. Orlen blinked at his sword in surprise.
"Oh. Brains! I was wrong." He beckoned to two warriors, who thrust another pirate to his knees. Orlen stepped forward. "Where did you take the norren of the Clan of the Green Lake?"
The man tried to wriggle away. He toppled, crashing to the floor. "Dollendun. One of the beefers there. Uglier than dysentery. Name's Perrigan. Don't know from there."
"Thank you," Orlen nodded. He slit the man's throat. The man gaped at him, eyes bright with betrayal. While he bled out, the warriors took their blades to the other three survivors, dumping their remains into the river.
"Seems wrong," Blays muttered.
"I know," Dante said. "Should have at least interrogated them properly."
"I'm talking about the part where they were butchered like hogs. Treasonous hogs. Hogs who tried to stick their hog noses up the farmer's daughter's skirt."
"They were murderers."
"We don't know they all were. There must be some good pirates. Maybe we executed the guy who wanted them to change their wicked ways."
Varlen cleared his throat. His face was haggard and sooty. "We got a few things to figure out before weighing anchor. The Ransom, for instance—"
"Will be scuttled," Orlen said.
"Hold on a minute. That thing is a proper galley of war. You could threaten a barony with it. You taken a look at the old lady you're standing on?" He gestured to the Boomer's slashed sails, its torched canvas and smashed rails and bloodstained decks. "I'll be lucky to break even from what you paid me. The point of pirate-busting is to thrust your hands into their deep and jingly pockets."
"Thrust away. The ship itself was a vessel for killers and slavers, who can continue to enjoy it as their tomb."
Varlen rolled his thick lips together. "You hairy bastard. This is dumber than a cotton bottle."
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