Nigel Findley - The Broken Sphere

Could he use the cloak to see them, to learn how they were planning the assault? He closed his eyes, let his mind expand to include the cloak at his back, and felt his thoughts expand throughout the ship.

The mental link was fitful, intermittent. The squid ship was dying, as far as the cloak was concerned, but it wasn't dead quite yet. Through a gray, flickering haze Teldin saw the nautiloid's hull and the vessel's crew streaming over the bow and onto the underside of the Boundless, fifteen of them, twenty, twenty-five…

But they were humans, not the illithids he'd expected! Teldin's surprise broke the mental link, and he was unable to reclaim it.

Humans! That made things more hopeful-at least his crew wouldn't be facing creatures that could fry their brains with mental blasts.

But what were humans doing aboard an illithid nautiloid? he asked himself. So many of them, and seemingly eager to go into battle-infinitely more eager than slaves would be. He forced the question aside. If he and his crew didn't win the upcoming battle, it wouldn't matter at all.

So, no illithids-or, at least, none who'd yet put in an appearance. But there were still twenty-five-no, thirty, now--hard-bitten mercenary types, armed with swords, axes, and maces, clambering across the hull. Maybe the enemy didn't need mind-blasting monsters.

Teldin heard a cry of alarm from the starboard rail. One of his crewmen thrust with his boarding pike and was rewarded by a scream from over the side. Battle is joined, he told himself.

For the first two minutes, the squid ship's crew was able to block all efforts by the nautiloid's mercenaries to climb onto the deck. It couldn't last, however.

"They're on the afterdeck!" one of Teldin's crew shouted. The Cloakmaster looked aft. There were four attackers clambering over the aft rail. Apparently they'd given up a direct assault as too risky and, instead of staying on the hull, had climbed onto the port spanker fin, and from there to the upper portion of the stern.

"With me!" Teldin cried. Flanked by Djan and two other crewmen, he charged up the ladder to the sterncastle.

The first of the boarding party over the stern rail was a huge, black-haired man wielding a crescent-bladed hand axe. With a snarl, he swung a whistling cut at Teldin's head. The Cloakmaster ducked under the swing and drove the point of his sword into the attacker's chest. He spun to the right to parry a sword thrust from another attacker and riposted quickly, laying open the man's left shoulder. Then, as the man howled, Teldin ran him through and pushed him backward, to fall clear of the ship. Teldin turned and looking for another foe.

Djan and the other crewmen had put paid to the remainder of the attackers, not without cost, however. One of the sailors was down, blood pooling around him from a gaping head wound, and Djan was bleeding from a nasty gash in his right forearm.

Teldin heard cries and the skirl of steel on steel from behind him. He spun.

Attackers had made it over the squid ship's rail and were among the defenders. Their boarding pikes useless in toe-to-toe battle, Teldin's crewmen were laying about them wildly with short swords, axes, hammers, even belaying pins, any kind of weapon they could find.

"We'll lose this," Djan said quietly.

Teldin felt the chill of space invading his bones. "I know it." Suddenly he clapped the half-elf on the shoulder. "Do what you can here," he ordered. "I've got an idea."

Djan didn't ask any questions. Beckoning to the surviving crewman, he charged down the ladder to the main deck and into the fray.

The first mate was right, Teldin knew. There was no way they'd be able to hold off the attackers. The squid ship's crew would be butchered, and the cloak would fall into the hands of whoever captained the nautiloid, unless the Cloak-master did something soon.

All right. Static defense wasn't the answer. He had to take the fight to the nautiloid's captain, and he thought he knew how. It was a risk-he had no idea how many of the attackers knew the details of their captain's plans-but any risk was better than the certain defeat of staying aboard the Boundless.

He forced himself to ignore the singing of steel, the crying of wounded men. He let an image build in his mind: a broad, flat-nosed face, a heavy-set body, short black hair… Dargeth, the half-orc. In his mind's eye, he superimposed the image over his own face and body. His skin tingled as he felt the cloak make the change.

He drew a deep breath and returned the short sword to its scabbard. Here goes, he told himself.

He swung a leg over the aft rail and lowered himself onto the slightly upswept surface of the squid ship's stern. Arms spread for balance, he dropped onto the curved wood surface of the port spanker fin. The surface of the fin was almost perfectly aligned with the squid ship's gravity plane, he knew. He lowered himself to his knees, then to his belly. Cautiously, he crawled to the forward edge of the fin.

From this vantage point, he could see a dozen mercenaries standing-upside down, according to his present orientation-on the underside of the Boundless's hull, preparing to climb down to the gravity plane, then up the other side to the rails. Preparing to board and kill my crew, Teldin told himself bitterly. His hand strayed to his sword hilt, as he fought the temptation to leap into their midst and hew about him wildly.

But, no, he told himself firmly, that wouldn't help in the long run. No matter how good he was with a sword, no matter how lucky, there was no possible way he could take down a dozen armed mercenaries. He'd just get himself killed or captured, and then he'd have no way of saving his men from their fate. No, the only way he could help them was to follow through with his plan.

He slid himself forward along the fin until his shoulders and chest extended out into space, then he bent forward, down, over the edge of the fin.

As soon as his head and shoulders passed through the plane of the fin, he wasn't looking down anymore, but up. His balance spun dizzily as his brain tried to make sense of conflicting data. The gravity plane passed through the middle of his body now, with "local down" being toward the plane of the spanker fin. He closed his eyes and struggled to fight the nausea that twisted within him.

He had to move fast, he knew. He bent farther, until his chest touched the other flat surface of the fin. Now he was folded around the forward edge of the fin. He pulled himself forward with his hands and kicked his legs out into space. Again his balance reoriented itself sickeningly. He tasted bile in his throat. He slid forward again until he lay flat on the fin-on what had been the underside of the fin but was now, to his senses, the top. He jumped to his feet.

From his new vantage point, the Boundless looked as though it had capsized. The nautiloid, its ram still buried in the squid ship's hull, appeared the right way up-thanks to its final maneuver before impact-but angled upward at fifteen or twenty degrees. He ran to the illithid ship's open lower battle station and vaulted over the rail, onto its canted deck.

Three mercenaries faced him, weapons drawn and faces grim.

For a second, Teldin's sense of vulnerability was almost more than he could stand. He wanted to snatch his sword from its sheath and at least go down fighting. Instead he kept his hand clear of the weapon's hilt and forced a look of urgency onto his face. "Where's the captain?" he grunted.

One of the mercenaries tightened his grip on his sword and stepped forward. I'm dead, the Cloakmaster told himself. They don't know who Dargeth is and don't know his significance. All I've done is kill myself.

Then another of the mercenaries grabbed the man by the shoulder, pulled him back. "No," he grunted, "he's with us."