David Drake - The Fortress of Glass

Hellplants pulled themselves toward the bow from either side, using their grip on the leading oars like men crossing a span hand-over-hand by a pole. It wouldn't have done any good for the crew to cast the oars loose the way they'd done before, since this time the monsters were in front of the ship. Backing water wouldn't help either, since the plant they'd gotten past was swimming up in the wake.

The one behind was the one Cashel'd probably try to deal with, seeings as Chalcus was in the bow-one foot on the outrigger, the other on the ram-waiting for whichever of the front pair came in range of his sword first. Cashel stayed where he was for the time being. He figured his job was to protect Ilna and Tenoctris the best way he could, and just now he wasn't sure what that'd be.

You didn't win fights by being too hasty. Of course this time Cashel didn't expect to win, but he wasn't going to change ways that'd served him well so far.

"Master Cashel!" Cervoran said. That high voice was as nasty to hear as a rabbit screaming, but like the rabbit it sure did get heard. "I have need of you!"

Cashel hadn't thought about the wizard since he'd carried him aboard. Cervoran was holding out that piece of skull again. "Fill this with sea water," he said when he saw Cashel was looking at him.

Ilna nodded agreement, but Cashel hadn't been going to hesitate anyhow. Nothing he'd come up with for himself to do was going to be much good. The first plant he got close to would've known it'd been in a fight, but the monsters were the size of oxen. They didn't have a head or a heart you could split with an axe, either.

Cashel took the cup and dropped it down the front of his tunic. He could climb down one-handed, but just now he figured the other hand had better be holding the hatchet.

He swung over the railing, pushed a couple standing crewmen aside with his feet, and dropped. The bench he came down on creaked angrily and threatened to split; he'd landed heavier than he'd meant.

TheHeron dipped like a lady doing a curtsey: a hellplant had grabbed the outrigger with more tentacles than a hand has fingers and was pulling its huge body out of the water. Chalcus slashed, his sword twinkling like lightning in the clouds. Feathery tufts of green fluttered up.

The ship's bow lifted, but another tentacle snaked around Chalcus' ankle from behind. Without seeming to look, the sailor jerked his leg up against the plant's strength and flicked his dagger across. The plant's tough fibers parted, and the curved sword whirled in an arc of its own through a couple more gripping tentacles.

The plant behind them had reached the stern. Crewmen there started hacking at it. Most used swords, though one fellow shoved in a pike. He was still holding the shaft when two tentacles lifted him screaming into the air and pulled his limbs off one by one.

In the bow, chips flew from the outrigger as oarsmen swung their swords with more enthusiasm than skill. Somebody was bound to cut a friend's hand off the way they were acting, though Cashel didn't suppose it'd matter much in the long run.

Cashel fished the cup out, then dipped it full. He turned to lift it to Ilna's waiting hand. His sister was one of those people who didn't wait around wondering what was going to happen next. Cashel could never figure why there were so few folk like her, but that made him happier for the ones he did meet.

With one hand on a deck support and the other holding the hatchet against the top railing, Cashel lifted himself up to where the women were. Tenoctris chanted over her little triangle on the decking. Cashel could see an occasional rosy gleam of wizardlight in the air, but anything else happening was beyond him.

Ilna had her paring knife out. Its blade was good steel, not like the knives forged from strap iron that every man back home in the borough carried. Cashel figured the tricks Ilna did with twine didn't work on the hellplants or she wouldn't have taken the knife from her sleeve. That was too bad, though he didn't doubt she'd give as good an account of herself with the little knife as any of the sailors would with their swords.

He grinned at her. She sniffed, looking peevish but resigned to a world that didn't work the way it ought to. That was so much his sister's normal expression that Cashel guffawed loudly. It took more than a whole army of plants to change who Ilna was.

Cervoran held the cup over his brazier and started chanting again. The charcoal hadn't gone out with all the tossing around it'd gotten, though the sticks were just ghosts of what they'd been, nested in a mound of white ashes.

Cashel couldn't figure how the wizard stood the heat that rippled the air above the cup in his hand. Maybe he just didn't have any feeling in his fingers.

Cashel looked down at the fight. He was itching to mix into it, but he knew there'd be time aplenty. They'd all get their bellies full of fighting today…

Timbers were crackling and theHeron rode way deep in the water, but it was next to impossible to make wood really sink. Chalcus cut like a very demon. He was bloody in a dozen places and'd lost his leather breeches; pulled clean off by a tentacle, Cashel supposed, but it hadn't slowed him a mite. Ilna'd found herself a man and no mistake.

From the height of the deck Cashel saw plants in all directions. There was a lot of seaweed floating in the Inner Sea. Once back home when the winds and currents were just right, he'd seen the whole bay on the other side of the headland from Pattern Creek filled with slowly turning greenness. This was the same, only the green swam toward them.

Cervoran's eyes were open but they weren't focused on anything, as best Cashel could tell. Thinking about previous times he'd seen the wizard, he wasn't sure there was a difference. Cervoran was alive, no question about that; but Cashel got the feeling he wasriding in his body instead of living in it the usual way.

A hellplant dropped away from the starboard bow. Chalcus had hacked its tentacles off, however many there were. That was a wonderful thing, but the plant on the port side was struggling with the crewmen there. Chalcus sat on a bench with his head bowed forward to make it easier for him to drag breaths in through his open mouth.

Cashel knew better than most what fight took out of you, even when you won. Chalcus'd be back in it soon, but nobody could keep up for long what he'd been doing.

Cashel looked critically at his hatchet. The blade was straight and as broad as his palm; it had a good working edge, put on with a stone some time since it was last used. Rust flecked it, which pleased him. Steel rusted quicker than iron did, he'd found.

The haft was hickory like his quarterstaff. He grinned. Hickory was a good wood for tools, hard but with more spring to it than cornelwood or elm. Besides, he liked the feel of it.

The sea around theHeron was solid green, a mass of waving fronds and bodies like fat barrels. There were more plants than Cashel could count with both hands, many more. Chalcus was back in the fight. Men cut and screamed and died in the grip of arms stronger than any animal's.

A hellplant had grabbed the outrigger to starboard. It'd driven the sailors back, and now a tentacle waved toward the raised deck. Cashel couldn't wait any longer. Instead of cutting at the arm-the plant had who knew how many more?-he lifted one foot to the railing. He'd leap on top of the plant and with the hatchet "Phroneu!" Cervoran cried, his voice stabbing through the ruck of noise. Cashel glanced instinctively toward the wizard. The water in the skull was at a rolling boil, frothing over the silver lip.

Cervoran's case was open at his feet. In his free hand he held a small velvet bag, the sort of thing a woman used to store a fancy ring or broach. Cervoran shook the contents, a dancing and glittering of metal filings, into the water. They burned with a savage white glare, and around theHeron the sea burned also.