Where Loyalties Lie (Best Laid Plans Book 1)

by Rob J. Hayes

  “Is sailing into that storm really a good idea?” she said.

  Drake shrugged. “I’ve had worse.”

  Just a few hours later, Drake found himself reconsidering his statement. Sailing into the storm was quite possibly the worst idea he’d ever formed. Wind whipped in a hundred different directions all at once, and every lick of it was accompanied by salty spray that felt like it could tear flesh from bone. The clouds overhead were dark and roiling, thundering together with claps so loud they rattled the teeth and loosened the bowels.

  The Fortune levelled out for just a moment before her bow tipped forwards at an alarming angle and she started down the crest of the wave. There was little so frightening as seeing nothing but water in front of a ship, and the fact that it was too dark to even see that did little to alleviate the terror coursing through Drake’s veins. He trusted the ship to get them through, and he trusted the crew to help her, but even the sleekest of ships and even the most experienced of crews could be lost during a storm – and this was one hell of a storm.

  As the Fortune crashed into the base of the wave she started levelling out again, and a sheet of water rose up above the bow, soaking everyone and everything on the deck. Drake shook away the wet hair that clung to his face and stared out into the dark churning waters, hoping to see the next wave before it hit.

  “She’s tuggin’ hard, Cap’n,” screamed Huin, the ship’s navigator. Drake looked back to see the man clearly struggling with the wheel, and wasted no time in ordering the second navigator on deck to lend a hand.

  The storm canvas helped; smaller and thicker, it could catch the wind without pulling the ship down, and it was likely the only thing keeping the Fortune sailing over the monstruous waves.

  They started the ascent up another wave just as a cry sounded from above. A moment later a screaming body crashed into the stairs leading up to the poop deck, turning the railing into kindling. One stolen glance told Drake the unfortunate pirate was dead, and he thanked Rin the man hadn’t landed on anyone else.

  “Rope loose!” The shout drifted down from above, and Drake looked up to see the canvas flapping.

  “Get that rope tied off or we’re all dead and worse!” Drake bellowed even as two pirates startled scuttling across the rigging to do just that.

  The Fortune was rising now, her stern well and truly below them all. Drake saw the body of the dead pirate start to roll backwards up the stairs before it snagged on the splintered railing. Higher and higher they rose, until ahead of them Drake could see nothing but dark, boiling cloud. Then the Fortune lurched forwards and tipped the other way. Up became down, and down became up. There was a crash from somewhere below as something in the hold came free of its anchorage, but there were more important things for Drake to think about, and he trusted that someone below decks would see to the loose cargo’s proper stowing.

  Lightning flashed, forking down from the sky into the water, and for just a moment Drake witnessed the sea around them. Waves taller than any building he’d ever seen surrounded them on every side, and the water churned white on every side. Sheets of rain crashed down, and the clouds blotted out all light from the stars and moon above. They were truly in the thick of the storm now, and in all his years at sea he’d never seen another like it.

  “Drake!” Beck stumbled across a sloping section of deck, using her fingernails as claws to hang on to the planks. As she reached the railing Drake was holding on to, the Arbiter almost flung herself into his arms, such was her enthusiasm to find something secure to cling to.

  “Best get below deck, Arbiter,” Drake shouted over the noise of the storm. “This is gonna last…”

  “I saw a sail!” Beck pointed off the starboard side of the ship.

  Drake stared at her for a moment before shaking his head. “Light playing tricks on ya.”

  The Fortune hit the water as it completed its descent, and a solid sheet of ocean rose up towards them. Drake attempted to shield Beck from the spray and only ended up dragging himself down to the decking with her on top of him. He lay there for a moment, staring at her as she attempted to remove her sodden hair from her face and the Fortune started tipping again. Already they were climbing another wave.

  Pushing the Arbiter away, Drake surged to his feet then hauled Beck to hers next to him. She looked a little dazed from the fall, or maybe just from the storm in general. Drake was feeling a little blurry himself – not that he’d ever admit it to anyone.

  Something smashed into the ship and she lurched to port. Drake managed to hold both himself and Beck upright. Judging by the shouts and crashes, there were plenty of his crew who hadn’t been so lucky, the navigator included. The man was back on his feet in a moment, but by then the damage had been done. With only one man on the wheel, it had got away from them and the ship was listing to port.

  “Get her under control,” Drake roared, “or we’ll all drown at the crest.”

  Another sheet of spray whipped across the deck and Drake took a faceful, blinding and choking all at once. Strong hands gripped his arm even as the ship lurched again, and Drake tore his eyes open to see Beck holding him close and tight, her eyes unusually dark in the poor light. For a moment they just stared at each other, then she looked past him and Drake saw what little colour was left drain from her face.

  “What the fuck?” Drake heard the navigator scream.

  Slowly standing from its resting place amidst the broken and battered port railing was the corpse of the pirate who had fallen to his death. The ship was still tipping backwards as it climbed the wave, yet the dead pirate seemed to have no problem finding his balance. His neck was obviously broken, resting on his shoulder, and Drake could see bone protruding from the left arm. With an inhumanly loud groan that sounded clearly over the storm, the corpse staggered towards the navigators holding the wheel.

  “Don’t you dare move from that wheel,” Drake roared as he fought for balance and stumbled towards the dead pirate.

  Another flash of lightning lit the corpse’s face in a horrible grimace that resembled nothing human. Again the ship levelled as it crested a wave, and Drake, already with sword in hand, found himself fighting for balance. He knew he had to find something to hold on to before they began the descent. The dead pirate fell, hitting the deck, and began crawling towards the navigators.

  The deck fell away from Drake as the ship tipped downwards, and without anything to hold on to, he fell as well. Something as hard as iron clamped around his wrist and held him fast while his feet scrabbled for purchase on the water-soaked deck. Drake opened his eyes to find Beck holding on to him with one hand while the other gripped, white-knuckled, some rigging attached to the mainmast. Chanting furiously, she pulled Drake up to the rigging, which he gratefully grabbed with both hands, only then realising he’d let go of his sword.

  “The dead,” Drake shouted, pointing up towards the wheel, where he could see the dead pirate still crawling slowly across the deck.

  “I see it,” Beck yelled back, whipping her head to the side to get her sodden hair out of her face.

  The mast above Drake gave a worrying groan, and he sent a quick prayer to Rin that it would hold. If the main mast snapped now they would all likely follow it into the cold dark below them.

  “Shoot it!” Drake shouted at Beck.

  The Arbiter shook her head just as another flash of lightning made plain the fear on her face. “Powder’s wet!”

  With a growl that was half frustration and half determination, Drake dropped to his hands and knees and began a painstaking climb up the deck towards the navigators still straining against the wheel. The dead pirate continued his own slow crawl just a few metres away. All it would take was one of the men on the wheel to let go, and the ship would careen and be lost beneath the waves.

  Hand over hand, his boots scrabbling for purchase on the soaking deck, Drake edged closer and closer to the dead pirate until he was almost close enough to grab hold of his foot and pull it away. Someone shouted hi
s name, but he was too intent, too focused. The ship jolted and a wave of water swept across the deck, spinning Drake around and washing him away. He hit the railing hard and felt the gradient lessen as the ship levelled off. Something slammed into his chest, forcing the air from his lungs, and he gasped in cold, salty water. For what seemed like forever, Drake’s world was one of coughing and gasping and trying to desperately rub water from his eyes.

  Drake heard a groan, and the thing that had slammed into his chest started to move. Without thinking, he reached out and wrapped his hands and legs around the figure, pulling it close and holding on with all the strength he could muster even as the ship started to tilt into its ascent of the next monstruous wave.

  The dead pirate started to pull away. Even with another man encumbering it, the thing was able to claw its way across the deck towards the navigators. Drake kicked and punched at it, and still the monster kept going.

  Teeth sunk into Drake’s right arm, and he screamed. Unable to hold on anymore, he rolled away down the deck, cradling his bitten arm, and slammed into the stairway where the pirate had died.

  One of his crew members skidded and slipped down the railing to Drake’s crumpled position and tried to help him up.

  “Fucking kill that thing!” Drake pointed at the dead pirate with his bad arm and saw for the first time just how much blood he was losing as it mixed with the sea spray and soaked into his clothing.

  “Who? Merle?” the crewman shouted back.

  With a growl, Drake shoved the man away, picked up a nearby splinter of wood no longer than his hand, and leapt after the corpse. It reached for the terrified navigator, who was busy trying to hold the ship’s wheel steady while kicking away the monster attempting to chew on his ankle.

  Roaring out every bit of pain and frustration he was feeling, Drake drove the shard of wood down into the base of the dead pirate’s neck. The creature spasmed and groaned, but kept reaching for the navigator’s foot. Drake planted his feet as firmly as he could and started dragging the corpse backwards, inch by inch, away from the wheel. Somewhere along the way the ship levelled off, then tilted back the other way, beginning its terrifying descent down a wave. Drake tightened his grasp on the creature, ignoring its attempts to turn and snap at him or pull itself free, steadying himself with one leg hooked through some rigging. Finally, after the ship had hit the bottom of the wave and a fresh wall of water had slapped them all about, Drake dragged the dead pirate to its feet and gave it an almighty push towards the railing. It stumbled, tripped against the railing, and toppled backwards overboard.

  Drake sank down onto his knees amidst the ship and the raging storm and let out a groan. His arm felt like it was on fire where the pirate had bitten him, and he was somewhere beyond exhausted. There was no time to rest. A fresh sheet of sea spray whipped his face, and it was all the wakeup he needed.

  Forcing himself back to his feet even as the ship started her next ascent, Drake stumbled his way over to the main mast, passing pirates hanging on for dear life and others scrambling to their jobs. If any of them needed direction, Drake was too exhausted to give it.

  He found Beck still clinging to the rigging on the mainmast, her knuckles white and a fearful look in her eyes. Drake doubted it was the dead pirate walking that had frightened her so, and guessed it was more the dubious motion of the ship as she raced up and down the waves. It wasn’t uncommon; some folk simply couldn’t handle the raw power of a churned-up ocean tossing them about like flotsam.

  “You saw a sail?” Drake screamed over the storm.

  Beck nodded.

  “What did it look like?”

  Beck seemed to think about it for a while before opening her mouth to answer and receiving a lungful of salty water for her troubles. After a few good retching coughs she managed to speak.

  “Like overlapping scales. Lots of sails all together.” She shrugged as though it was the best she could do, but it didn’t matter. Drake already knew what ship it was: a Drurr corsair. And unless he was very much mistaken, they were carrying a necromancer on board.

  Chapter 37 - Mary’s Virtue

  There weren’t many people who could keep up with Daimen when it came to a drinking contest. He was one of the few folk to have been born and raised on the isles, and his mother, bless her eternally resting soul, might as well have breastfed him grog, he’d started drinking the stuff at such a young age. Of course, it also didn’t help that her suitors had quickly taken to giving Daimen a bottle of something strong and incapacitating to keep him out from underfoot when they came a-calling. All in all, Daimen had been drinking booze since before he was able to stand, and that, along with his natural tolerance for the stuff, made him nigh on unbeatable when it came to any sort of contest that relied on the ability to consume vast amounts of intoxicants.

  Of course, his ability to quite literally drink most folk under the table had made him something of a legend among the people of the isles. And along with any reputation of being the best at something, as Stillwater had very recently learned, came challenges from those who thought themselves better.

  Daimen’s current opponent, a boy with a prolific amount of hair on his neck and none on his face, named himself Caster Shallows. The lad claimed more feats, accomplishments, and miracles than Drake Morrass himself, and Daimen had never met another man quite so enamoured with himself as Drake.

  “I shailed with…” Caster paused to let out an inhuman belch that wafted sour, fishy breath into Daimen’s face. “With Peregrew Fin out of Korral. Privateers, we named ourselves.”

  “Aye, is that so?” Daimen put his feet up on the table and signalled the serving wench for another round of piss-flavoured grog. The tavern was merry, the music lively, the shanties were bordering on obscene, and Daimen felt like stringing the poor boy along for a few drinks longer. “I met Peregrew once. Had a face as long as me arse and looked like he’d been usin’ it to scrape barnacles off his ship.”

  “Uglier shunofabitch ya never did see,” Caster agreed with a grin and a slow shake of his head.

  Daimen laughed. Captain Peregrew Fin was a retired, ex-Acanthian navy officer who had been discharged for alleged piracy and had decided that if he was to be branded as such, he might as well make the claims true. He’d captured a total of one ship before a mutiny had made him governor of his own little island somewhere in the southern isles where, to this day, he remained and screamed bloody murder at any ship that came within hailing distance. For that brief career in piracy though, Peregrew had been known as “the Pretty Pirate”, due to his stunning good looks and total ineptitude in command of any vessel larger than a bucket.

  The next round arrived and Daimen paid the serving wench, with both coin and a healthy slap on the arse. He pushed one of the mugs towards Caster, who looked down on it as though it were an old friend with a grudge, come to stick him with the pointy end of a five-year-long estrangement.

  “I must, uh… must be ahead of you,” he slurred.

  “Aye? Ya reckon?” Daimen smiled, raised the new mug to his lips, and proceeded to gulp down the entire contents before signalling the nearby wench that he required another. Caster swayed in his chair and let out a painful moan before toppling sideways and hitting the floor, already unconscious.

  Daimen lifted his empty mug. “A drink to the fallen,” he shouted.

  “We’ll be joining them soon,” called back a fair few of the folk nearby.

  “Ya got anything stronger than this swill, darlin’?” Daimen winked at the serving wench as she came over with a new mug. “Not that I don’t enjoy a good bit o’ grog, but this stuff is weaker than piss and makes ya do just that after every mug.”

  The wench shook her head. “We ain’t exactly at the forefront of many deliveries. We’re all waiting for Captain Morrass to get back an’ fix it all up.”

  “Aye, we are. Well, I reckon I need to drain the monster out back. Fancy holdin’ it for me?”

  The wench’s face went from all smiles to see
thing disgust in the blink of an eye, and Daimen took the hint well. “Reckon I’ll manage it alone then, eh.”

  Without so much as a stumble, Daimen stood up and, leaving two full mugs of grog at the table, headed for the door. It wasn’t that he trusted folk in the Righteous Indignation not to help themselves to his booze, but more that he didn’t care. He’d already made more than enough from out-drinking Caster and, if he was going to drink himself into a hangover, he preferred to do it with something worth drinking.

  Outside, the air was still and stagnant. Drake might have picked the most dangerous and defensible island in the Pirate Isles, but he also appeared to have picked the only one without a single breath of a breeze, even at night. It made for oppressive days followed by sticky nights, and made New Sev’relain a place Daimen would be glad to get away from.

  The tavern’s outhouse was just next to the main building and set back a little from the dirt street that ran through the town. Daimen was within a few paces of the outhouse when he changed his mind about using it to take a piss. Judging by the smell that enveloped the place, it was either occupied or had recently been occupied by a dead cat, and in Daimen’s opinion, there was little that smelled worse than a dead cat. There were plenty of places for a man in need to relieve himself – a nearby building, a nearby tree, the middle of the street – but Daimen sometimes found his bladder needed a bit of coaching, and nothing made a man feel he could let go quite like the sound of the sea.

  New Sev’relain was a busy little place no matter the time of day or night, and even the stagnant air couldn’t keep the people from the streets. Some might be heading to the tavern, or to the brothel, or to some midnight tryst. Daimen knew full well he had a few weirds on his own ship, but as long as they didn’t go screwing each other while at sea, he didn’t care what they did ashore. All men had needs; women had them too, as far as Daimen was aware, and whether or not he had the same needs didn’t make another man’s any less important. Even as Daimen considered the weirds among his crew, he saw one of them walking along the street with a pretty young lad from Stillwater’s ship. They looked deep in conversation and didn’t notice the approaching captain. Daimen grinned and decided to give them a bit of a ragging.