David Drake - Godess of the Ice Realm

Hutena hacked at a grappling iron with his axe. The leader was chain, but a clean blow using theBird 's gunwale as a chopping block parted it in a shower of sparks. The vessels began to swing apart, though the grapnel farther astern still bound them.

"We're afire!" a Sea Guard screamed. "We're afire! Oh Lady help us!"

Ilna noted that she hadn't heard Rincip's voice. Perhaps Lusius hadn't bothered to pick up his former second-in-command in his haste to run down theBird of the Tide. That might have been the best luck yet in Rincip's whole miserable life…

A group of Sea Guards-more than a handful; in the confusion and scattered light, numbers were even more doubtful than usually-leaped from the patrol vessel to theBird. Chalcus and his crew met them. Ilna stayed back, letting the fight weave into her consciousness. When the pattern required her action, she would act.

Shausga and Ninon were cutting at the remaining grappling iron. Their cutlasses didn't have the authority of the axe and, they were getting in each other's way besides. At least one of the would-be boarders missed his footing and went straight into the sea boiling with the blood-maddened violence of Our Brother.

Nabarbi had dropped the pike and was wrestling with a Sea Guard. Ilna twitched her noose back to throw, but as she did so Nabarbi slammed his dirk to the hilt in the Guard's chest. He flung the dead man from him with one arm, clearing his weapon by tugging on it with the other. The great seawolf leaped so high to meet the victim that Ilna glimpsed his wedge-shaped head over the gunwale.

Chalcus was killing with single thrusts, using his dagger to block his opponents' strokes. His slim, curved blade didn't seem sturdy enough to stop the Sea Guards' stout swords, but Ilna saw Chalcus lock one of them in a shower of sparks. When the Guard fell back, his neck cut through to the spine, the sword flew out of his hand. The dagger had cut a deep notch in the heavier blade.

TheBird was free of boarders again, all but the man who sprawled half into the open hatch. Convulsions had thrown him there when Hutena crushed his skull with the axe. Ninon's two-handed blow had finally severed the grapnel's line, and the ships were drifting apart.

TheDefender 's bow was fully ablaze. The roar of the flames was louder even than the screams of men still trapped on the lower deck with the reef snakes.

Lusius climbed out on the bitts holding the steering oar; he'd thrown away his helmet but his silver breastplate gleamed in the light of his burning vessel. He looked down at the sea, then up again at theBird already ten feet distant. He was clinging to the end of the steering oar, leaning forward but unwilling to risk the leap.

"Jump, man!" Chalcus shouted. "I'll spare your life!"

He reached out with his free hand, but not even the outstretched boarding pike would've touched his fingers. "Sister take the fool," Chalcus said in a voice of calm disgust. He sheathed his sword and dagger with a skill that was far more remarkable than the way he drew them. "We've questions for him, though, so-"

As Chalcus stepped to theBird 's gunwale, Ilna cast her noose with a side-arm motion. It dropped neatly over the Commander's head and outstretched arm.

"Jump, you fool!" she shouted in a voice that would've pierced bronze. When Lusius still hesitated, Ilna braced her right foot on the gunwale and jerked back with all her considerable strength. Lusius gave a despairing cry as he flew toward her.

More hands grasped the silken rope-Chalcus took it in front of her and at least two of the sailors grabbed the end trailing behind. The Commander splashed into the sea.

"Pull!" Chalcus bellowed, tugging upward with the whole strength of his back. His tunic ripped as the muscles bunched under it. Ilna sat down on the deck-the deck and Hutena's legs as the bosun fell down behind her.

Lusius grabbed the gunwale with both hands and started to lift himself over. His polished breastplate was flopping loose: he must have tried to take off the heavy armor when he realized he had to abandon theDefender.

Chalcus dropped the lasso and grabbed the Commander's right wrist. As he did so, Lusius gave a terrible scream and slid backward. Nabarbi stepped to the gunwale, holding the pike overhead in both hands. He stabbed straight down.

Lusius screamed again but Chalcus lifted him over the side and flopped him belly first on theBird 's deck. The Commander's right leg had been severed raggedly above the knee; blood spurted from the big artery which had been pulled several inches free of the torn muscles.

The men were shouting. The dead Sea Guard from the first attack had worn a waist sash as well as carrying his sword and dagger on a leather belt. Ilna freed the sash with a quick pull, then looped it over Lusius' right thigh and tightened it for a tourniquet.

"I'll take it, mistress," Hutena said. He laid his axe helve across the simple hitch, then knotted the free ends of the sash over the wood to give him leverage. He twisted, squeezing off the blood that still dribbled from the open artery.

Ilna rose, swaying slightly. Lusius was a heavy man and for a moment she'd supported his weight by herself. She had the strength to do it, but that didn't mean her body didn't have to pay for her exertions.

She glanced over the side. The two vessels continued to drift apart. TheDefender was burning from bow to stern. She saw a man, his hair and clothing ablaze, try to climb over the railing. He fell backwards instead.

The flames hammered reflections from the sea. Debris floated between the vessels, mostly bodies and body parts. Our Brother swam in tight circles, his tail lashing from side to side. The pike shaft slanted up from his neck, waving in counterpoint to the movements of the tail.

"And now, Commander Lusius," Chalcus said in a bantering tone, "we've some questions about your tame wizard and his lair. I hope you'll choose to answer them, because-"

Chalcus laughed. The sound was as ominous as the clop of the reptile's jaws when they took Lusius' leg off.

"-I believe your seawolf friend has already eaten as much as is good for him. I wouldn't want to give him indigestion by sending the rest of you to join your leg!"

Sharina'd been lying with her head over the bow of the Queen Ship, peering into the depths. The water was gray but clear, like the sky before the first color of dawn.

She could see to the bottom, miles below. On it crawled monsters, and through the water swam greater monsters. The teeth of the creature peering out of a deep trench must themselves have been as long as the ship; its ribbon-shaped body pulsed with azure and crimson wizardlight.

"Oh, they're real," Beard said, answering a question that hadn't gotten beyond the surface of Sharina's mind. "You're not seeing them with your ordinary eyes, of course. Although those eyeswould show you the ice sheet ahead."

"Mistress?" said Scoggin. She jerked her head around. Scoggin and Franca wore worried looks, their eyes flicking from her to the horizon.

"What's…?" Scoggin went on, gesturing with the hand he'd stretched out to touch Sharina's shoulder if she hadn't responded. "That we're coming to?"

The men of Alfdan's band, all those who weren't sleeping, stared toward the dark line ahead also. The wizard himself stood in a capsule of his art, speaking words of power through his tight lips.

"Beard says we're coming to the ice sheet," Sharina said, turning again and sitting up so that she could look at what she'd just identified to the others. A jagged boundary separated the pale gray sea from the sky washed with wizardlight. It was the charcoal shadow of a vertical edge where the ice met open water.

To the north were humps and hillocks and glitter, white except where ice threw back the sky's reflections in a form harsher than the original. The sullen sea was almost as still as the frozen waste beyond, but bits of debris moved in slow circles at its margin.