David Drake - Godess of the Ice Realm

He didn't mention that his troops were looting the merchantman's holds. In all fairness, Ilna didn't suppose she'd met ten men in her lifetime who'd have passed up a valuable cargo whose owners had been reduced to a scatter of body parts.

"And your wizard Gaur?" Chalcus asked. "Where would he be, Commander?"

Lusius shrugged. "Back in his bed, I suppose," he said. "Gaur doesn't leave the castle often, and he never goes aboard a ship."

Ilna stood silent with her hands cupped over the fabric of cords that she would display if she needed to. Getting out of the cabin would be possible if not easy; getting down the side of theQueen of Heaven with a troop of hostile soldiers above them… that would be another matter, a problem to solve when they must.

The Commander's look hardened and he drew himself up. "Now, Captain," he said, "there's the matter of howyou came to be here. For the time being I'm willing to accept your story, though many folk would find it unlikely that any man went unbidden into wizardry unless his duty required him. What I say is this: get back to your ship, and get back to Terness-now. By my order as Commander of the Strait."

Ilna sneezed again from the brimstone in the air. Bits of a pattern connected in her mind. While Lusius spoke in an increasingly louder voice and Chalcus faced him with his hands on his hips, Ilna bent forward and grasped the sword on the floor of the cabin.

"Watch her!" Rincip shouted, grasping Ilna's shoulder; she wriggled free. Chalcus caught Rincip's neck in one hand and jerked him away.

Ilna used the sturdy sword as a pry bar, her left hand reversed on the grip and her right on the pommel. She rammed the point into the seam of the strongbox' latch, then levered upward. After a moment's resistance the lid flew open.

The supercargo, Pointin, crouched like a hare in her forme within. He leaped up screaming, blind with fear. The iron straps protecting the chest were held on with large rivets. Pointin had used a silk sleeve from his sleeping tunic to tie together mushroomed rivet-heads on the side and lid of the chest.

"By the Sister!" Lusius swore.

"Don't!" cried Chalcus, holding Rincip back with his right hand, his left poised.

The Sea Guard who'd come in with Lusius grasped his sword hilt. Ilna brought the Blaise sword around in a short arc. The back of the blade wasn't sharpened, but it broke the soldier's wristbones with a crunch. He screamed and dropped the lantern in his other hand. Oil spilled but didn't catch fire for the moment.

"You're human!" Pointin cried. He'd been shoving away the air; now he lowered his hands. "Wha… where are the demons? Have they gone?"

Chalcus punched Rincip in the stomach, then kneed him in the jaw as he doubled up. Lusius' deputy thumped to the floor and lay still, groaning and bleeding from the mouth.

"Now, Commander Lusius…," Chalcus said. His eyes hadn't moved from the Commander's during the moments it'd taken him to put Rincip out of the way. "We'll leave theQueen of Heaven to you and your fellows to deal with, as you demand. But for safety's sake, you'll come as far as the deck of theBird of the Tide with us. We'll climb down the netting with you on the side of my dagger hand."

Chalcus spoke pleasantly enough, but Ilna noticed he hadn't worded the statement as a question even for the sake of conventional politeness. Lusius glared, gathering his thoughts for a response.

Before he could make one, Ilna said, "No, the Commander will climb down after you so that if anything's thrown over the side it'll land onhis head."

Chalcus opened his mouth for a protest. "And as he climbs," Ilna said, loosing the silken rope that served her for a sash, "he'll have my noose around his neck-"

She tossed the running loop. Lusius bellowed in surprise and jerked his head back. The noose slipped over his head anyway and settled to his shoulders. Ilna tugged the soft rope tight-but not stranglingly tight-before Lusius got his hand up to throw it off. His lips twisted in a snarl, but he was smart enough to take his hand away before Ilna choked him to the floor, gasping and helpless.

"-to remind him that his duty is to escort us clear."

"Right," said Chalcus with the quick decisiveness that was the difference between life and death when time was short and the risks uncertain. "Pointin, going out of the cabin you'll follow Mistress Ilna and the Commander, and I'll bring up the rear."

Ilna put a finger's weight of pressure on the noose. Lusius grimaced and started for the cabin door.

"But where are you taking me?" the supercargo demanded in a tone that started high and ended as a falsetto.

"Some place other than the belly of a seawolf with what's left of your friends," Ilna snapped. "If that's not reason enough, I've got enough cord here to put a loop in the other end too and drag you along with the Commander!"

Pointin's face registered shock; he didn't respond for a moment. Chalcus took him by the shoulder and headed him toward the door. Pointin raised his feet high enough to clear the side of the box in which he stood, but he moved in a slack-mouthed daze.

Ilna curled her lips under in irritation with herself. She had years of experience in telling people unpalatable truths, and never once had it seemed a good idea afterwards. If she kept doing it nonetheless, she must be as great a fool as most of the rest of humanity.

The air outside was cool enough to be a surprise. She'd expected to see the Sea Guards waiting with their weapons drawn, but the interplay inside the cabin had gone unnoticed by most of those aboard. They had their own concerns, hauling heavy fabrics from the ship's several holds and disposing of the remnants of the vessel's crew.

Splashes and the swirling attacks of Our Brother sounded unabated. Whatever had killed the crew was a messy eater. The scattered fragments reminded Ilna of what was left of a chicken devoured by rats-feathers and feet and perhaps the head after the back of the skull was gnawed open to lick out the brain.

"Hutena, you lead," Chalcus said. "Quickly, man."

The bosun was over the railing like a great, squat spider. He continued to hold the hatchet instead of slipping the helve through his belt to free the other hand.

"Say, Commander, how many of these rolls are we supposed to bring up?" asked a soldier who'd seen Lusius and hadn't noticed anything wrong. "We'll never empty her in one night-nor three if I'm a judge."

Ilna smiled tightly and pulled with the care she'd have taken to place a thread in her weaving. "Later!" Lusius growled.

"But look-"

"Later, Dover!" Lusius shouted. "Do you want to feed Our Brother, is that it?"

The Sea Guard snarled a curse and backed away. Chalcus prodded Pointin to the railing; when the supercargo simply stood there, Chalcus lifted him one-handed and dangled him over the side. Only then did Pointin grasp the ropes and begin descending, clumsily but with increasing speed.

Ilna climbed the rail, paying out a little more line as she did so. The boarding net was an old friend by now, a brief transport to a dry place without the slurp/clop! of a seawolf gobbling human tidbits. Lusius followed with the speed of long practice.

When the Commander was well over the side and unable to change his mind, Chalcus dropped like an ape leaping from a tree. He caught the net halfway down, swung himself beneath Ilna, and dropped the rest of the way to the barge to join Hutena and Pointin.

The crew of the barge had recovered from the shock Ilna'd given them, but they weren't ready for more. One of them cried out when he saw her; all of them backed into the relative darkness of the bow.

"What did you do to them, mistress?" Hutena murmured wonderingly as he gripped the Commander's shoulder.

Ilna whipped off her noose as easily as she'd caught Lusius in it. "I made their heads spin," she said, doubling and redoubling the rope before she looped it back around her waist. "That's all."