Richard Byers - The Reaver

Anton crept astern and positioned himself beside the hatch leading into the captain’s cabin. Umara lifted a storm lantern down from its hook, climbed up into the bow beside the sentry she’d put to sleep, and waved the light back and forth in the air.

The signal brought the rest of the Thayans sneaking down the dock. Twenty men couldn’t do so as quietly as she and Anton had alone, but the mariners made it onto the ship with only a little noise.

In their hands were scraps of lumber, lengths of chain, and other improvised and pilfered weapons. The Turmishan sailors had confiscated their boarding pikes, cutlasses, crossbows, and such when they’d taken possession of the Octopus , and maybe it was just as well. Anton didn’t want his crew killing anybody, nor should it be necessary to achieve the current objective.

The Thayans’ clothing was different, too, but that was of their own choosing, or rather, Umara’s. She’d ordered them to discard their ragged crimson uniforms and put on whatever they could scrounge amid the current crisis. The results made them appear like a tough-looking but otherwise nondescript company of tramps, which was pretty much the desired effect.

They and Umara surrounded the hatch beneath which the rest of the Turmishans were sleeping out of the rain. The wizard murmured too softly for Anton to hear and swirled her hands in sinuous patterns. Phosphorescent green vapor billowed into existence around her fingers, most of it clinging there, a few wisps trailing as she made the mystic passes. Some of the other Thayans flinched from a stink Anton was too far away to smell, but if it bothered Umara, no one could have known. Her expression of calm concentration never waivered.

She nodded to a sailor to signal that her incantation was coming to an end. He stooped and lifted the hatch.

Umara spoke the final word and thrust her hands down at the opening. Luminous mist streamed down like the steaming breath of a dragon turtle.

Anton could imagine the noxious fog abruptly filling the hold. The putrid reek would wake the sleepers, and the cloud would blind them. Overwhelmed by nausea, many would simply lie where they were and puke. Those with stronger stomachs would struggle to reach uncontaminated air, but even they would blunder on deck coughing and retching with their eyes full of stinging tears, in no condition to withstand the foes awaiting them.

The Thayans subdued the sick men with brutal efficiency and, almost certainly, satisfaction. As they’d complained, the Turmishans had played a trick of their own to dispossess them of the Octopus without even giving them a chance to fight for her, and now they were paying them back.

Of course, they couldn’t do so altogether quietly, without the occasional outcry or crack of wood bashing somebody’s head, and suddenly, the hatch to the captain’s cabin flew open. Still invisible, Anton stuck out his foot to trip the officer when he rushed out with a sword in one hand and a buckler on the other arm.

The captain crashed down on the deck. His hands and arms reappearing in a surge from the fingertips upward, Anton moved to dive on the other man’s back, pin him, and choke him unconscious.

But his opponent, a burly man with a slab of forehead over deep-set eyes and a touch of silver in his square-cut beard, wrenched himself around and slashed. Anton just managed to jerk to a stop in time to keep the sword from slicing his belly.

No one was that fast without magical assistance. The swordsman must have drunk an elixir or recited a charm before coming through the hatch.

Anton stepped back and reached for the hilt of his saber. His opponent started to scramble to his feet. Anton rushed him.

The move startled the Turmishan captain and made him falter for half an instant. Then he tried to put his point in line.

By then, though, Anton was already safely inside his reach. He plowed into his adversary, bore him down beneath him, and made sure the back of the bearded man’s head hit the deck hard. The impact slowed the naval officer down but didn’t stop him struggling. Using the heel of his hand, Anton hit him in the nose, smashing it flat and banging his head against the deck again, and that knocked him unconscious.

Panting, the pirate turned and looked toward the bow. The Thayans were just finishing up the task of subduing any sailor who’d made it out of the hold.

That left the incapacitated men still below, who’d recover quickly as soon as the foul vapor dissipated. Hoping to deny them the opportunity, Anton had instructed the Thayans to attack as soon as the glow of the mist winked out, and he himself was the first man to leap down the hatch.

There was just enough light left to reveal a pair of figures rushing him with blades. He swayed back to avoid a slash to the head and parried a thrust to the chest with his cutlass, a better weapon than a saber for tight quarters like these.

He bellowed, rushed the Turmishan sailors, and made cut after furious cut. He needed to drive them backward and clear the space under the hatch so the Thayans could start dropping after him.

The sailors gave ground for a moment, then pushed back. The one on the left tried a thrust to the face. Anton slipped the attack, stepped in, and hammered the cutlass’s guard into his assailant’s jaw.

The remaining Turmishan cut at the pirate’s flank. Anton pivoted and swung the cutlass down just in time to parry. Then a Thayan smashed his foe over the head with a piece of board.

From that point onward, it was easy. Superior numbers overwhelmed the one or two other Turmishans who’d recovered sufficiently to fight.

Afterward, still hurrying, some of the Thayans hauled up the gangplank or manned the halyards to ready the Octopus to set sail. Others bound and gagged the prisoners, whom they’d put ashore or set adrift when they had an opportunity.

Watching the latter operation, Umara shook her head. “It would have been easier just to kill them.”

Anton chuckled. “I was just thinking the same thing. But Stedd wouldn’t have approved.”

Dwelling in the house of Silvanus, preoccupied with Shadowmoon’s mental deterioration and other threats to the wild lands that a blade couldn’t answer, Shinthala had in recent years seldom worn her scimitar. But the weight still felt comfortable riding on her hip.

She still felt at ease in her old war cloak, too, but had taken it off for the moment. The enchantment it bore made her appear a half step away from her actual location, an advantage when enemies were trying to aim blows or missiles at her but inconvenient on the rolling deck of a warship with crewmen scurrying back and forth. Even in the bow and the stern, there was nowhere to stand that was truly out of the way, and the poor fellows kept jostling her, then cringing and stammering apologies as if they expected her to strike them dead or turn them into frogs.

She’d retrieve the cloak when the enemy armada appeared. Hoping to catch a first glimpse of it, she squinted out over the waves.

But it was Shadowmoon and Ashenford who wavered into view before her. It was like she was looking through a hole in the air and the House of Silvanus was on the far side, except that the opening didn’t have clearly defined edges. Rather, the shadowy space around the other elders blurred by degrees until it was indistinguishable from the backdrop of gray cloud and falling rain.

Shinthala sighed. “I suppose it was too much to hope the two of you would believe I was off meditating.”

“This is unnecessary,” Shadowmoon said. “We arranged for druids to sail aboard every ship.”

“And if we were going to send our followers to fight the Chosen of Umberlee,” Shinthala replied, “on the open sea, no less, it was only right for one of the Elder Circle to share the danger.”