Tim Waggoner: Thieves of Blood

“Ghouls,” Ghaji said. “If there’s one thing I hate more than vampires, it’s ghouls.”

Those Grimwall citizens still standing on the floor screamed in abject terror and fled for their lives. The ghouls, nearly forty of them in all, Ghaji judged, shrieked in dark delight and began attacking whatever mortals happened to be nearest, including Diran and Ghaji.

Yvka and Hinto were urging the first of the prisoners through Grimwall’s entrance and onto the dock when they heard shouting behind them.

“They’re coming!”

“The raiders!”

“Erdis Cai knows, he knows!”

Yvka swore. It seemed the wounded guard who’d gotten away had managed to sound the alarm. She knew they had only seconds before the prisoners’ fear overwhelmed them and they panicked.

“Hinto, lead the prisoners onto the galleon. I’ll slow down the raiders!” She had no idea if the halfling would be able to maintain control of his emotions long enough to complete the task, but she had no choice but to trust him.

A flicker of nervousness passed across the halfling’s features, but he nodded and began shouting for the prisoners to follow him. Yvka plunged back through the entrance, shoving through the mass of frightened men, women, and children.

“Which way are they coming from?” she demanded, and several people pointed to the left-hand branch of the corridor. The elf-woman turned and saw the raiders running toward them, swords drawn, false teeth bared to inspire maximum terror in the prisoners.

“Go!” Yvka shouted. “Follow the halfling!”

The prisoners mulled about, uncertain and afraid, and Yvka had to yell at them to go one more time before they finally started moving.

Yvka stepped forward, placing herself between the fleeing prisoners and the oncoming raiders. She reached into her leather pouch and grabbed hold of a handful of objects. She didn’t have time to select carefully, and she hoped that whatever she brought out would at least be enough to buy the prisoners enough time to get aboard the remaining functional galleon. She pulled her hand out of her pouch and hurled the items she’d grabbed toward the raiders. She caught a glimpse of the items as they flew through the air-crystalline pebbles, a dried cicada husk, tiny rodent bones, and a mummified frog’s leg. Just as the first of the objects was about to hit the floor, Yvka spoke a single word in Elvish and averted her gaze. There was an explosion of light, smoke, fire, and wind, and the raiders cried out in pain and confusion. Though Yvka couldn’t see through the smoke, she guessed that some of the raiders had been injured, though not all.

“Be careful to hold your breath until you’re outside!” Yvka shouted. “That gas is deadly!”

It wasn’t, of course, but there was no reason the raiders needed to know that. She turned to check on the prisoners’ progress and saw that the last of them were hurrying through the entrance, perhaps spurred on by her false warning. The elf-woman sprinted after the prisoners, already hearing several raiders shout that it was just a trick and there was no poison gas.

Once outside Grimwall, Yvka saw a line of prisoners running down the dock and up the gangplank of the elemental galleon that Tresslar had spared. Hinto stood on the ship’s deck, urging the prisoners to move faster. Of Tresslar, Yvka saw no sign. That struck her as ominous, though most likely the artificer was simply hidden from her view at this distance.

“Go, go, go!” Yvka shouted as she brought up the rear.

The prisoners, most of whom she guessed hadn’t been outside of Grimwall in a very long time, picked up speed as they tasted the sweet salty air and saw the stars and moons shining down on them. They cried out in delight as they ran, and more than a few had tears of joy streaming down their faces.

The last of the prisoners reached the gangplank and were pushing and jostling to start climbing when the first of the raiders emerged onto the dock.

“Hinto, as soon as the last person’s aboard, dislodge the gangplank!” she called.

She had a few toys left in her pouch. She hoped they’d be enough to slow down the raiders long enough for all the prisoners to board the ship.

“Miss, are you talking to the halfling?” It was the girl who’d been the first to speak to them through the bars of the gate that had kept the prisoners trapped in their squalid quarters.

Yvka turned and saw the girl standing at the ship’s railing, looking down at her. “What’s wrong with him?” she shouted back.

“He’s lying on the deck, shivering as if he’s got a fever, though his forehead’s not warm!”

Great. Hinto had picked a most inopportune time to surrender to his fear. “I don’t care who does it, but make sure to push the gangplank away from the ship!”

“What about you?” the girl asked.

Yvka didn’t have time to answer, for the raiders came rushing at her then, weapons drawn and eager to use them. Yvka knew that neither acrobatic maneuvers nor what remained in her pouch would be enough to stop all the raiders, but if she could stay alive long enough, she might be able to-

“Crabs, Miss!” the child cried out. “Hinto says to tell you to remember the crabs!”

Yvka smiled. Even caught in the throes of his panic, the little pirate hadn’t abandoned them.

As the first raider drew near, Yvka performed a forward handspring and slammed her heels into the man’s jaw. He stumbled backward, dropping his sword. Yvka landed in a crouch, caught the sword before it could hit the dock, and swept it around in an arc that sliced open the raider’s belly. The man shrieked as blood and intestines spilled out of the wound and splattered onto the dock. Yvka used the sword’s momentum to bring the weapon around for another strike, gripping the hilt with two hands and angling the blade so the flat struck the screaming raider on the shoulder. The man staggered to the edge of the dock, slipped on his own blood, and tumbled into the water with a loud splash.

The rest of the raiders froze where they stood and stared at the water where their comrade had disappeared. For a moment nothing happened, but then the water erupted in a churning froth as dire crabs began fighting over the remains of the raider Yvka had gutted. Drawn by the blood and bits of viscera smeared on the surface of the dock, a crab climbed out of the water and scuttled toward the nearest tasty morsel, which happened to be another of the raiders. The woman cried out and swung her sword at the advancing crab, but the creature batted away the blade with one of its huge foreclaws and moved in for the kill. The raider screamed in agony as the crab began feeding, and her screams attracted the attention of more crabs. Within seconds the dock was swarming with dire crabs ranging in size from several feet wide to some large as horses. Some raiders fought while others tried to flee, but it was no use. There were simply too many crabs, and soon the dock was covered with blood, scraps of meat, and fragments of splintered bone.

The crabs didn’t ignore Yvka. They came for the elf-woman too, and she leaped and tumbled to avoid their snapping claws. Yvka started to make her way toward the gangplank just in time to witness a group of prisoners dislodge it and shove it away from the ship. The gangplank bounced against the side of the dock several times, scraping the wood as it fell half onto the dock and half into the water. Yvka didn’t blame the prisoners. She’d told them to do it, and though they no longer had to worry about the raiders, they couldn’t afford to let any of the crabs scuttle up and onto the ship. That left Yvka with a dilemma: how was she going to get away from these damned crabs and onboard the galleon? She continued dodging snapping claws, but she knew she couldn’t keep doing so for much longer. There were too many crabs and not enough raiders to feed them all. More and more would turn their attention to her, and when that happened she would be overwhelmed.