by Jon Kiln
‘Well, I’d say losing their captain put a dint in their day,’ Ikrit sniggered.
“Imp.” Vekal breathed shallowly. “I haven’t had to ask you before now. What did you do? Back there, at Stonewatch. How did you even do that?”
‘Like I said, priest. You aren’t the only ones with lore. There are devil-libraries and devil-hordes that are as ancient as your City of the Gods itself! Older, even,’ the devil whispered seductively.
“But you said that they lost their captain,” Vekal pointed out. “The captain that you almost had Talon plunge a dagger into.”
‘It wasn’t their captain anymore. It was a stuck-up featherhead by the name of Ruthiel. Angel Ruthiel.’ Ikrit did not sound happy.
“Angels. That one in Avantis said that one of the number was bringing the child to them.” Vekal grimaced. How was he going to seal the Lockless Gate, do the bidding of heaven, and manage to fend off the armies of devils and angels all around?
‘Well, you were the one who wanted to go to heaven in the first place.’
“Shut up, imp,” Vekal said with resignation, and, for a wonder, the creature did.
That was something different now, too, the priest thought as he watched the boat come in. Ever since returning from heaven, unless he was in anguish or in pain (which was most of the time, he had to admit), it seemed that he had much more control over the devil inside of him. Had heaven weakened it, somehow? Or had he just become more resolute?
Either way, the answers were not forthcoming right now. Instead, what was forthcoming was the pirate ship – and something else.
There was a sound of movement behind him, making Vekal freeze by the edge of the rocks.
Shapes were moving at the treeline. Men and woman in a variety of dark clothes standing in a line, a few feet apart. The priest recognized one of them. “Eremund,” he muttered. It was the smuggler and his crew, standing to attention in the late afternoon as if they were statues.
“What is wrong with them?” Vekal whispered, watching them. They didn’t appear to be talking, making any gestures or even looking at each other. It was almost as if they were…
‘Possessed,’ Ikrit confirmed.
“By who? Angels? Devils?” Vekal’s heart started to race. If the Hosts of Heaven had managed to meet the boat here, then he had no chance of trying to extract Meghan. Kariss, and Talon before they seized them.
‘You’re in luck, priestling. It’s my lot. The Hordes of Hell, not the feather heads.’
Vekal wondered if he could sense a bit of pride from the demon inside of him. “But what are they doing here? Why now? What are they going to do?” Vekal was starting to panic. His eyes scanned the cove, but he could see no other boats. Not even a rowboat. They must all be up in the smuggler’s sheds, behind the hell-possessed smugglers themselves.
‘I don’t know, do I? Just because I am an ancient spiritual being, does not mean that I can read minds! Apart from yours, that is. But that is because you are so transparent,’ Ikrit teased him.
It was enjoying this, Vekal thought. It did not feel threatened by them.
‘No. I don’t. Who ever they are in there, I probably taught half of them the difference between a thumbscrew from a hot poker, so I should think that I get just a little bit of respect, right?’
“That’s not what that other one thought.” Vekal remembered the devil that had actually opened the Lockless Gate. The one that had almost killed him.
‘Shut up.’ A surge of fury and hurt pride from the devil inside.
Aha. So, I hit a nerve, did I?
But before the priest could press further, there was a sound of a shout from the boat, and he turned to see it visibly slowing, and eventually pausing in the cove. Shadows of figures came up to the nearest side of the rail, scanning for signs of enemies. They didn’t appear to see the stationary statues of the devil-possessed smugglers.
“Take us in!” Vekal heard a shout, as, on either side of the boat, longboats were lowered on winches, packed with surly looking men and women.
No! The devils will get them! What will happen to Kariss? Vekal thought wildly, looking first one way, and then another. He had to do something, and now.
The devil inside started to hiss in annoyance at him, but the Sin Eater wasn’t going to be put off. He picked up the nearest rock that he could find, and as fast as he could, threw it at the approaching long boat.
It exploded into the water a good way from the boat, but it had its intended effect.
“What was that?”
“Are we under attack?”
“Bows!”
The boat stopped, and started to spin slightly in the cove as Vekal saw the sailors searching the treeline for any possible attacker. Two of them stood up with bows trained on his direction.
“Can you see anything?”
“Nah. You know what the Shattering Coasts are like. Probably some backward-little village…” he heard them say in alarm. He stooped for another rock, but when he tried to raise it over his head to throw once more, he found that his arm wouldn’t move.
He grunted, unable to move it at all. It was the devil, exerting all of its might against him. It seemed unable to stop him talking or moving, but it could freeze one arm at a time.
Stop this, fiend! he hissed at it. I have to save Kariss from your kind!
‘And what good will getting us shot do?’ the devil explained. ‘Let’s say that by some miracle you manage to scare an entire boat of pirates off just by throwing rocks – then what good will it do, you being stuck here, and the girl that you so seemingly want to rescue being at the mercy of whatever devil or angel happens to be near her?’
But the smugglers… Vekal thought in horror.
‘Wait until we know what they want, first,’ the devil snapped at him, and Vekal realized that the creature was right. Or maybe he realized that he was more selfish than he was noble, because the thought of being stuck here without Meghan was almost too much to bear. That is why I left heaven in the first place.
Still, he didn’t have to like it, he thought as he gritted his teeth, shivering with frustration and anger as the sailor’s boats beached, and hesitantly, they stepped up onto the sand.
“Who’s there?” they called, sweeping the treeline with their bows. But still, the demon-possessed smugglers didn’t move.
“Stop spooking us out,” one of the pirates laughed at the other. “Go and start scouting for a place to set up camp, and a get some drift wood for a fire.”
That was when it happened. There was a slight change in the light, a flicker as if someone had thrown a veil over the sun.
“What the…” Vekal whispered, looking up.
A breath of cold wind blew across his face, coming from the north, and behind it: a wall of black cloud.
“By the Holy Relics!” Vekal looked up at the towering wall of black storm clouds. There was nothing natural about it. The wall of shadow had somehow advanced over them, right to the edge of the cove, completely obscuring the seas and the coats beyond without anyone noticing.
And then it hit.
The whine of the hellish winds ripped into the cove, forcing Vekal to his knees. It was an infernal, high-pitched noise that appeared to be made of voices. Many countless voices.
“It’s the storm! The hell storm!” He heard the pirates below shouting as they attempted to run back to the longboat, but they could not, the winds were too fierce.
‘Down!’ Ikrit snarled, forcing the priest to take shelter by the bowl of a tree. No one could stand in such a furious gale. No one that is, apart from the possessed Eremund and his smugglers, who were striding calmly down the beach towards the stranded pirates.
But now, screams were joining them from the boat. Vekal shouted, craning his head to see shapes fighting. Dark figures of other pirates, fighting other pirates. “What is going on?” he yelled, and the words were whipped from him in an instant.
‘Look!’ Ikrit pointed with his own hand to where Eremund had rea
ched the first wave of stranded pirates. One of them loosed an arrow, but the spectral hurricane tore it from the air. Another swung with an axe, felling one of the smugglers in a tangle of blood and bone.
But then Eremund was among them, and Vekal saw him seize the nearest pirate with his hands on both sides of the pirate’s head. With an infernal strength, he wrenched the head back as the man screamed, and something entered into him from the skies above. The pirate dropped to the floor, twitched, and then pushed himself up with that same, cold, mechanical precision as Eremund.
The devils weren’t seeking to kill the pirates, they were recruiting, the priest realized.
24
“Arm yourselves!” the older woman said, dropping the wrapped bundle onto the floor. From the wrapped cloak dropped a collection of weapons, short and long, both swords, daggers, and axes.
“I’ve never been much good at fighting,” Meghan murmured, as behind her in their little cabin room, there was the sound of her daughter waking up.
“Ma? What is it?” she said, blearily at first, before her eyes widened as she took in what was before them. The young Talon, still looking exhausted, holding a short sword, the older Mother Aldameda carrying her staff, and her own mother Meghan, now holding a hatchet.
“It’s going to be all right, Kariss.” Meghan turned immediately to comfort her, but her daughter’s eyes were already going far.
“They’re here,” she announced, her face a picture of terror.
“Who?” Aldameda hissed quickly. “Tell us, child!”
“Watch it, old woman.” Meghan moved between them, her eyes spitting fire.
“All of them,” Kariss said, as the boat suddenly rocked, as if hit by a fierce wind.
There were shouts and screams from the decks above, and the sound of clashing weapons. Meghan felt her heartbeat thud in her chest as she moved without thinking, lifting her daughter from the bunk, wrapping her in her thick cloak and belting it securely. “Stay behind me at all times, Kariss. Do you understand?” she said seriously, turning back to see that Aldameda had already moved to the door to listen at the crack.
“Just like before. The devils are trying to take the ship,” Aldameda said, as Talon joined her.
“What should we do?” Meghan watched the boy say.
Aldameda didn’t have any answers. Of course not, Meghan thought. What answers can she give us against a horde of devils from hell? Her own eyes moved to the small porthole high on the opposite side of the bunk room. If she could smash the glass, she might be able to get Kariss out of that – but then what? Drop her into the cold, night-time seas off the Shattering Coast? That would be condemning a child of her size to death as surely as if she had handed her over to the devils!
“Unless the First Mate Fatim can somehow take back control of the Red Hand, then our only hope is to get ourselves clear.” Aldameda opened the door a crack, looking back at Meghan. “Are you ready?” she asked, although the herbalist knew that what she meant was ‘is the girl ready for this?’
No, and no, the herbalist thought. “What choice do I have?” she said instead.
“None,” Aldameda agreed, opening the door as quietly as she dared, and then beckoning for Talon and the others to follow behind her as she slipped into the corridor beyond.
The boat was moving as a sudden torment of waves smashed and buffeted it from first one side, and then another. Meghan clutched at her daughter’s shoulder as she heard screams and shouts of rage.
When will this ever be over? she thought grimly as they ran, first down one corridor, where the older woman waited by the corner, panting and peering around the edge. When will we ever be able to live in peace again?
“One day,” she heard Kariss murmur under her breath, and looked down to see her own daughter’s shining eyes looking up at her, full of innocence and hope.
How did she know what I was thinking? Meghan thought, before a sudden hiss from the older woman.
“Come on! The way is clear.”
They turned the corridor at a run, and heard the banging of hold doors and the sudden rush of storm winds, as the boat lurched first from one side to the next. Ahead of them was the wide staircase leading up to the deck. And through it, Meghan could see dark and terrible winds.
The winds keened, they shrieked, and they moved oddly. Unlike any other storm that Meghan and the others had seen; well, since the last demonic storm. There was a boiling mass of black clouds over them, but smaller wisps and trails of black cloud surged first one way and then another across the face of it. Meghan got the terrible suspicion that it was those fingers of clouds that were demons made flesh. She shivered.
“Don’t be afraid, ma,” Kariss breathed at her side, even as they ran up the stairs, and out into the fight.
Aldameda went first, quickly followed by Talon. They were lucky, Meghan saw, there were no other pirates near the stairs at that time, but the deck was already slick with blood.
“Don’t look!” Meghan held her daughter close, pressing her into her belly.
“But why? They’re only dead, Ma.” Kariss fought her way free. “Dead things aren’t bad. They’re just… dead.”
What have I done to my child to make her so nonchalant around killing and death? Meghan followed the others across the deck.
There was a pitch battle raging around them. Or perhaps, Meghan thought, a better description of the bloody mayhem was a total defeat of the still as-yet unpossessed devils. She saw the Navigator – a hard woman who appeared to be no stranger to a sword – fall from the sudden chop of her fellow mate, his face now a mask of savage glee.
Another pirate fell from the rigging above them, a dagger lodged into his throat.
“There! Over the side!” Aldameda was pointing to the farthest edge of the galleon, and beyond it, to a small beach cove surrounded by thickly wooded rocks and cliffs. “We’ll have to jump,” Aldameda was already saying, but it was Talon who turned to Meghan.
“Can she swim?” he asked.
“Of course,” Meghan said. “But isn’t there another way?” That water will be freezing. Kariss is only small.
Another member of the Red Hand was catapulted across the deck by a superhuman blow from one of their previous fellows.
“Not if you want her to live,” Aldameda snapped.
She was right, Meghan saw. All of the rowboats had already left the galleon and had made their way to the beach beyond. Were those pirates safe? she wondered. Were they free of demons? She had no way of knowing, but her eyes kept moving to the collection of people that seemed to be waiting on the beach.
“You!” A scream came from behind them, as lurching and stumbling on her mauled and mutilated knee, came the First Mate, Fatim.
And on her face was a look of murderous fury.
“It’s you lot that those things want!” she accused, leaning against one of the masts and pointing her scimitar at them.
“Run!” Meghan said, pulling on Kariss’s small hand as she dodged another falling body and chased across the deck after Mother Aldameda and Talon.
But it seemed that even Meghan had underestimated the will of a furious First Mate Fatim. The herbalist heard the thuds and hisses of her hurried lurch, and, sparing a glance saw that she had previously splinted her shattered knee, and was swinging her straightened leg like a crutch, powering across the deck towards them. The First Mate, also, was used to a swaying and storm-filled deck. She did not stumble or skid as her quarry did every time that the storm winds hit.
Suddenly, a large man with a shaved head, clearly possessed, spun between Aldameda, and Meghan, Talon, and Kariss. He had in his hands a large boathook on the end of a long pole, which he threatened them with.
“Mother!” Talon shouted, holding two short blades out in front of him in a defensive crouch. He didn’t look old enough to even know how to do that, Meghan had a moment’s thought, as she heard Fatim approach from behind them.
“Kariss, down!” Meghan said quickly, pushing her dau
ghter into a crouch as she turned to raise her hatchet just in time.
The shock of the First Mate’s scimitar meeting under the hook of the hatchet blade was enough to drive Meghan back, stumbling over her own daughter as Fatim raised her scimitar once more.
“You’re cursed! The lot of you! You’ve cursed my ship,” she snarled.
But Fatim wasn’t one of the possessed. The skinhead pirate – presumably once a mate under her own command, calmly lunged forward, shouldering the smaller Talon out of the way to punch his boat hook forward like a spear. It hit Fatim squarely in her chest as she held her scimitar over her head, and Meghan, from her fallen place on the floor beside her daughter, heard the sickening crunch of ribs breaking.
Fatim fell to the deck with a holler, rolling back and gasping in pain.
Her attacker stepped forward, now looming over the mother and girl, but his eyes were only on Fatim as he pulled the hook back once more.
“Hold her!” a voice shouted from the edge of the boat. A new voice. Not one that Meghan recognized as she drew Kariss between her legs and wrapped her arms around her protectively.
“Mother?” Talon was saying, stepping back beside Meghan and her daughter, and this time the herbalist did tear her gaze away from the danger, to see what new threat had emerged.
There was a new cadre of pirates and rogues climbing on board the boat. Some of these rough-looking men and women, Meghan had never seen before in the cramped confines of the Red Hand galleon. The one who spoke wasn’t a very tall man, with short dark brown hair and eyes that looked shifty – were it not for the way that he moved. The same mixture of fluidity and jerky movements that told her that he was possessed.
In fact, all of the newcomers were, Meghan saw, as they fanned out from the gunwales, holding their weapons at their side as if nothing on board posed a threat to them anymore, which, Meghan guessed, nothing did. The fighting was over. The devils had won.