Richard Byers - The Reaver

That gave Shinthala the chance to take note of her surroundings. Instead of blundering back into the running rigging, she slipped nimbly through and put the lines between Evendur and herself.

Anton charged before the spheres of light even finished flashing out of existence. As a result, a screech stabbed pain into his ears and made his teeth clench, but he reached the Chosen of Umberlee in time to slash at his knee from behind.

The saber cut deep enough to shear through muscles and tendons and cripple any living man. But it didn’t cut through bone to take the swollen, oozing limb completely off, and Evendur didn’t fall. Rather, he whirled and cut. Anton jumped back barely in time to keep the boarding axe from smashing in his ribs.

The dead man pursued him with the luminous axe poised for a strike to the head. For three steps, Anton retreated on a straight line, then pivoted on the diagonal. The shift caught Evendur by surprise, and he failed to defend as the saber bit into his extended arm.

Once again, the blade sliced deeply. Anton felt it scrape bone, but it didn’t cut through. Evendur didn’t even fumble his grip on the axe, just snapped it out in a short, vicious cut of his own.

Anton parried with the cutlass. The clanging impact tossed him backward, and his back foot came down in water or blood. He slipped and floundered off balance.

Evendur stepped in, then stiffened as darts of blue light pierced him from overhead. He glanced up at Umara, who still stood at the railing of the galleon, and growled, “Drown.” The wizard reeled backward out of sight.

Hoping to take advantage of the undead pirate’s distraction, Anton lunged and tried a head cut. But Evendur hadn’t lost track of him, and his axe blocked the saber. Anton shoved closer and stabbed with the cutlass for the other corsair’s glazed, sunken eye.

Evendur jerked his head down, and instead of catching him in the orbit, the cutlass sliced a flap of slimy flesh from his brow. The injury intensified the putrid stench that emanated from him even in the rain, but it didn’t make him falter. He pushed with the axe even though it was still hooked on the saber blade, trying to shove through Anton’s guard and bring the glowing edge to his face through pure brute force.

Reflex made Anton push back. It only took an instant to feel it was the wrong choice. He couldn’t match Evendur’s strength. But before he could spring backward or twist aside, the axe pressed into the side of his face from jaw to temple, then hitched upward to split the skin.

The gash itself was a superficial wound. Anton had suffered worse in the midst of battle and kept on fighting. But the luminous poison in the axe head filled his lungs with what felt like frigid brine. He fell down retching.

Evendur raised the axe, and a small man in armor that looked like a coat of leaves shouted words that made thorny vines grow from the deck and try to coil around the living corpse. Evendur spat black sludge, the briars vanished, and a huge hand made of water rose from the sea, snatched the little druid, and yanked him over the side.

Meanwhile, Anton struggled to stand. He made it to his knees, but he still couldn’t breathe, and another spasm of coughing wracked him. The convulsions spattered the deck with blood from the gash on his face.

“Fight me !” Shinthala called. Evendur pivoted to face her, then stiffened.

The druidess’s eyes shone like lightning. Phantom serpents crawled through the ghostly holly that surrounded her, and streaks of a different grayness shot through Evendur’s body.

Anton just had time to realize the undead pirate was turning to stone before he wasn’t anymore. His inherent mystical strength had resisted the petrification. He snarled and brandished his axe, and a ball of silvery phosphorescence flew from the head of the weapon.

It missed Shinthala by a hair but discharged its magic when it was right next to her. The blast of pale light froze puddles on the deck and plummeting raindrops, and painted the left side of her body with frost. The holly and snakes vanished, and she toppled. The newly-made hailstones clattered around her.

Black spots dancing at the edges of his vision, Anton struggled again to rise. But something went wrong and he flopped back down on his belly instead.

As he did, Evendur stumbled slightly and gripped a tack. He only held on for an instant, though. Then his unsteadiness, if that was what it had been, passed, and he appeared as formidable as ever.

Certainly, he must seem so to the Thayan mariners. As Anton had intended, they’d followed him and Umara onto the galleon and then started jumping and sliding down onto the Turmishan warship in an onslaught that, in any normal battle, would quickly have turned the tide against the enemy. But now, with no spellcasters left to oppose the Chosen of Umberlee and Anton likewise helpless if not dying, the men still peering down from Evendur’s magnificent ship hesitated.

Then someone rasped, “Keep going! Kill the scum!” The voice was so hoarse that it took Anton an instant to recognize it as Umara’s. She’d somehow managed to free herself of the drowning curse, but not before coughing her throat raw.

Evendur looked up at her. “Your men have better sense than you,” he said.

Umara sneered back at him. “They’ll follow where a Red Wizard leads.” She stepped back, spoke a word of power, ran at the rail, and leaped.

Magic made her jump like a grasshopper; she cleared the obstruction and landed forward of Evendur in the caravel’s forecastle. Encouraged by her example, her countrymen resumed their attack.

But Evendur laughed. He ripped the dangling flap of flesh loose from his forehead, exposing a patch of bare skull, and started toward her.

Stedd now understood what Lathander wanted him to do-or at least he hoped so-but not how to do it. The fight was out to sea, and he was here.

Then the god gestured to draw his attention to the chanting celebrants inside their circle of stones. A column of hazy green light rose into the air above them. When it was taller than the tallest tree, it started turning west and ultimately became a verdant thread winding across the slate-gray vault of the sky. Thanks to the Morninglord’s unspoken guidance, Stedd realized it was like a river of power the druids here were sending to their counterparts in the battle. And a person could swim down a river.

Stedd squared his shoulders. It was something he’d seen Anton and the Thayan fighting men do when they were about to start some hard or dangerous task. Then he moved to the center of the circle, still without any of the druids noticing him. He settled himself, stared up at green phosphorescence, and wished himself to the middle of what he imagined to be a tangled mass of dozens of warships attacking one another on the Sea of Fallen Stars.

Nothing happened.

So then he pictured Anton and Umara. They were his friends, and he wanted to be with them.

That made something happen. The emerald luminescence suddenly felt different, almost as if Stedd were above it instead of the other way around. It was like the pond back on the farm, daring him to jump from the high overhanging willow branch, or like a steep, snowy hillside challenging him to make a running start with his toboggan pressed to his chest.

Shadowmoon turned in his direction, and the slanted eyes in her delicate face widened in surprise. “Stedd!” she said.

He thought about pausing to explain what was happening. But now that he could feel the green current, he felt an urgency, too, as if he were running out of time to do whatever it was he needed to. Hoping the elf would understand, he gave himself over to the power.

He shot up faster than an arrow, faster than he’d ever imagined anything could fly. In a heartbeat, the druids were tiny as bugs below him. The moment after that, he’d left them, the House of Silvanus, and the whole flat mountaintop behind.