Richard Byers - The Reaver

When the pain released him, he found himself sprawled on broken planking, in some danger of dropping through into the hold beneath. His ears rang, and patches of his putrid flesh were burned black and smoking. His high-collared sea-green cape was on fire.

Clambering to his feet, he stripped the burning garment off his shoulders and waved it like a flag for the druidess to see. Because he suspected her mastery of lightning was her deity’s special gift to her and her greatest weapon. And he wanted her to know right away that it wasn’t enough to stop him.

Meanwhile, catapults arced projectiles back and forth, some ablaze, some balls of cold stone and iron. Ballistae and springalds shot their darts, archers their shafts, and crossbowmen their bolts.

Some missiles found their marks. Wood crunched, and men fell thrashing and screaming. But many missed. The rain had soaked hemp and flax strings and sinew cords to the detriment of both range and accuracy.

Evendur realized he didn’t mind. As magic hadn’t decided the fight and artillery and bows weren’t getting the job done, either, he’d just have to do it by leading a boarding party onto the enemy ship and hacking down its defenders with axe and cutlass. And why not? That was the pirate way.

He bellowed his orders, and other voices relayed them the length of the galleon, to the mix of reavers, soldiers of the church, and Impilturian sailors who now made up the crew. The helmsman adjusted the ship’s course.

Boulders fell like the rain, ripping sails, cracking into spars, breaking cordage, and crashing onto the deck, a few smashing men to pulp and spatters in the course of their descents. The conjured barrage was another worthy effort on the part of the druids, but once again, not devastating enough to arrest the Fury ’s forward progress, especially when Evendur didn’t really even need the rigging. If necessary, the sea alone would sweep the ships together.

Still, he hated having bits of his splendid new vessel battered into kindling, and he retaliated by bellowing Umberlee’s name and spinning his boarding axe in a circle. The water under the caravel copied the motion, churning into a whirlpool that spun the Turmishan vessel and shook a crewman and a catapult over the side.

As Evendur would have wagered, the druids managed to quell the maelstrom before it capsized the caravel or dragged it under. But the quelling took time, and when they finished, their ship no longer had any hope of keeping away from its foe. The crew scrambled madly to prepare to repel boarders; the whirlpool had shaken and tumbled any previous arrangements into disarray.

The Fury ’s archers and crossbowmen obliged them to do it under a hail of shafts and quarrels. And as the two vessels came side-by-side, other pirates threw grappling hooks then hauled on the lines that now bound the ships together.

Because the galleon stood higher that the caravel, some boarders would slide down those ropes. Evendur, however, simply leaped before the corsairs pulling on the ropes had even finished their task.

His strength carried him across the gap, and he thumped down on the caravel’s quarterdeck. For this moment, he was alone, every one of his followers left behind on the galleon, and his enemies would never have a better chance to attack him. But, goggle-eyed, the closest Turmishans froze.

No doubt someone had warned them what to expect, but even so, Evendur’s appearance-hulking, slimy-rotten, the lightning burns surely only adding to the horror of it-had balked them. Laughing, reveling anew in the gifts the Queen of the Depths had given him, he struck left and right, cleaving the skulls of two dark-skinned mariners with square-cut black beards.

That jolted the remaining Turmishans on the quarterdeck into motion. But at the same instant, timbers groaned as the two hulls bumped and ground together, and the first of Evendur’s crew jumped and swarmed after him.

He let the newcomers handle the Turmishans left in the stern. He had a white-haired old woman to kill, and he gazed out over the main deck to determine her current location.

Once Anton managed to maneuver the Octopus squarely astern of the galleon, the same strong, steady wind that Evendur had likely called up to speed his own vessel aided the one behind her as well. The reaver called the Thayan helmsman back to his post and trotted to rejoin Umara in the bow. She scowled at the ship ahead.

“Ready?” he asked.

She snorted. “Are you? Back in Sapra, the fact that neither of us has ever managed to hurt Evendur Highcastle very badly failed to persuade me that we should stay well away from him henceforth. Now, however … well, let’s just say I’m still game, but I see both sides of the argument.”

Anton grinned. “I’m sure you’ve devoted some thought to the question of how to hurt him worse.”

The tattooed wizard nodded. “I have one or two ideas. They involve other spellcasters wearing him down as much as they do some cunning masterstroke on my part, so let’s hope the druids have been fighting fiercely. What about you?”

“When we fought before, I sliced him up a little, but I never cut his hand off his wrist, a leg out from under him, or the head off his shoulders. This time, I’m going to work on the assumption that dismemberment will stop pretty much anything, even an undead Chosen.”

“When I was a mage in training, I had to accompany a band of troll hunters into a swamp. The creature killed two of them after it had already lost an arm and a leg. Then it grew the arm back.”

Anton laughed. “Thank you. What a perfect thing to say to bolster my morale. Remind me, why are we doing this?”

Umara smiled. “I thought you knew.”

Peering through the rain, Anton studied the galleon. As far as he could tell, no one aboard the larger ship was alarmed at the Octopus ’s approach. If Evendur’s men had even noticed, they must believe that Mourmyd Jacerryl and his cutthroats were coming to lend them a hand.

In time, Umara said, “They’re in range for a blast of fire if you want one.”

“Tempting,” Anton replied, “but it wouldn’t be like my incendiaries all detonating at once in the bowels of the Jest . It’s unlikely that one attack would sink her. So let’s creep at least a little …” Squinting, he leaned forward.

“What’s wrong?” Umara asked.

“I know you can’t see much of what’s happening aboard the galleon from here, but try.”

Gripping the rail, she leaned out over it like he had. “I see … scurrying.”

“That’s one word for it. We knew Evendur was chasing another ship. He caught her. Now his men-or most of them-are boarding her.”

“Then we can’t set the galleon on fire lest the blaze spread to the Turmishan ship as well.”

Anton nodded. “Exactly. What we are going to do is lead a boarding party of our own.”

The galleon held the captured Turmishan warship on its starboard side, so the Octopus steered for the port side. As Anton and his comrades made their approach, his nerves felt taut as the string of any cocked crossbow or ballista, and he studied the larger vessel for a sign that he was sailing into a trap.

But there was none. There was only the rattle of the rain and shouts, screams, and the clanking of blade on blade, the latter sounds muffled by the galleon’s bulk.

When the Octopus reached the proper position, Thayan marines lifted grappling hooks, but Umara raised a hand to tell them not to throw. She then murmured a spell, and the end of a coiled rope on deck reared like a serpent. It rose up and up until it was as high as the galleon’s railing, then looped around it and tied itself off, without the telltale thud a grapnel would have made.