Juliet McKenna - The Assassin's Edge

Frenzied, Naldeth snatched at the roiling air around him but a hail of slingshot thudded all around, bruising him cruelly. He wove a frantic, fragile shield but it was too late. Master Gede was down, bleeding from a gash to the head, the Tang drifting forlorn without his guiding hand.

Parrail had been vomiting but struggled towards the captain on his hands and knees. Tears poured down the scholar’s face but he gritted his teeth and mouthed the measured syllables of a charm.

Naldeth looked wildly into the waist of the ship where the crew fought with pirates swarming aboard from all directions. Gede’s boatswain went down to a slashing blade, the shipwright beside him struggling to defend himself with a belaying pin at the same time as stretching a hand to his fallen comrade. The pirate hacked it from his arm and raised his weapon for a killing blow but the sailor who’d fallen first kicked out with his last breath. The one-handed sailor smashed the pirate’s face to a bloody pulp with his length of solid oak but another raider cut him down, stamping for footing on the bodies of ally and prey alike.

“ Nis tal eld ar fen. ” Parrail wiped bile from his chin. He knelt beside Master Gede but his eyes were fixed on the murderous pirate below. The man yelled and clapped his hands to his face, swords forgotten as he swung this way and that rubbing at his eyes.

“I have him!” Naldeth exulted. He pulled a shaft of lightning from the confusion of grey and white clouds overhead and seared the man dead but a blue echo of his magic flashed all around him drawing several arrows. Worse, pirates below made a concerted move towards the rear deck.

Parrail grabbed at the mage’s tunic. He drew a deep breath, enunciating an incantation with meticulous care. Naldeth was simply frozen with fear until he saw the pirates intent on his death had halted, confused like a pack of questing hounds who’d lost their scent. Faces turned to the aftdeck seemed to be looking straight through him.

Parrail’s eyes were hollow with consternation. “What do we do now?”

“Take hold.” Naldeth held out a shaking hand, hoping he was equal to his sudden inspiration.

Parr ail snatched at it like a drowning man. “But Master Gede—”

Too late. An azure spiral of power bound his arms to his sides, his feet leaving the deck for an instant before he was plunged into darkness. Parrail groaned with misery as his abused stomach sought to empty itself once more. Then he realised they were in the dimness below decks. Panicked voices rose in the broad hold where those hoping for a life in Kellarin had been waiting out the long days at sea among their hammocks and chests of treasured possessions.

“What’s happening?” demanded a man’s voice.

“It’s pirates!” Naldeth replied, anguished. “They’re killing everyone!”

The consternation that provoked threatened to turn to outright hysteria but everyone fell silent a few moments later when a hatch at the far end of the deck opened to the white and terrified faces below.

“Out!” A swarthy Gidestan beckoned with a bloodstained glove.

The hapless youth at the bottom of the ladder looked around wildly for guidance but everyone else dropped their gaze.

“Out, all of you.” The Gidestan sounded menacing.

The lad climbed slowly up the ladder, yelping as his head reached deck level and unexpected hands hauled him bodily through the hatch.

“And the rest!” What little patience the Gidestan had was plainly exhausted.

Someone else was half pushed, half urged up the ladder and others followed. A surge of bodies carried Naldeth and Parrail closer to the shaft of pitiless daylight, whimpers of fear and ragged breaths of distress all around them.

“We work no magic or enchantment.” Parrail dug painful fingers into Naldeth’s arm as the wizard opened his mouth. “We have to live long enough to get word out to Hadrumal or somewhere, anywhere.”

The press brought the two of them to the ladder and they had no choice but to climb, Parrail first then Naldeth close behind him. Scrambling on to the deck, rough hands shoved them towards the motionless crowd clustered around the main mast. Homespun folk with the honest faces of craftsmen and farmers huddled together, watching the pirates casually tossing the bodies of the slain overboard. Parrail recognised the ship’s sailmaker, the helmsman, a farmer from Dalasor whose name he couldn’t recall.

A few were looking wide-eyed at the forecastle where a bare-chested pirate was tying up the remaining sailors. A few struggled with the pirates restraining them, more went with sullen obedience but one man managed to break free. He hit out wildly, felling one and then kicking out to catch another in the groin, shouting some incomprehensible abuse. The defiance died on his lips as the bare-chested man smashed the back of his head with an iron bar. He twisted his fingers in the blood-soaked wavy hair and held the corpse up to warn sailors and passengers alike. “That’s what making trouble gets you!”

Naldeth’s gorge rose at the sight of the dead man’s misshapen pate, bone gleaming white around grey pulp and gore. He swallowed hard and his terror unexpectedly receded in the face of desperate calm as he forced himself to assess his plight. At least he and Parrail were dressed much the same as the rest of the passengers. For the first time since his childhood he breathed a thanks to Saedrin. The showy robes and elemental colours fashionable in Hadrumal would have condemned him as a mage at once.

With the unresisting sailors now bound, pirates were moving among the prisoners, cutting knives and purses from belts, ripping the few pieces of jewellery visible from necks and wrists, dumping all the spoils in a prosaic wicker basket once destined for a goodwife’s trips to market.

“Your rings.” One gestured at a yeoman’s gold-circled fingers with a bloodstained knife and an evil grin on his undernourished face. “Take ’em off or I cut ’em off.”

Naldeth offered no resistance as rough hands searched his jerkin and breeches pockets, his coin purse torn from the cord he wore beneath his shirt. Then the rat-faced man reached for Parrail’s hand.

“The ring,” the pirate ordered.

Parrail’s stricken expression was little different to those all around but Naldeth saw the added pain in the scholar’s eyes as he surrendered the silver emblem of Vanam, hard-earned symbol of long years of study and self-denial.

That distraction left the mage slow to realise why everyone had fallen silent. All the pirates standing upright and ready, faces turned to the far rail. Naldeth saw the single mast of the ship that he’d failed to hit with any useful magic, snake pennon whipping to and fro in lazy mockery.

A taller man than any Naldeth could recall climbed over the rail with a deftness belying his bulk. The pirates raised a loud cheer, boots stamping, swords smacked together in raucous celebration. The tall man swept a courtly wave to acknowledge those on the forecastle and Naldeth noticed he was lacking the little finger on his sword hand. He had black hair with a curl to it, long enough to fall below his shoulders if it hadn’t been pulled back into a merciless queue. Those shoulders looked broad enough to bear any burden but the man was dressed like a noble who’d never had to soil his hands.

As he turned to share his approval with his pirates, Naldeth saw a delighted smile deepening creases beginning to claim a permanent place around the pirate’s eyes. He was a man in the prime of life, teeth white against the trimmed and disciplined beard that showed just a touch of grey. “Well done, my lads. Now, let’s have a little hush.” His voice was a carrying boom well suited to his barrel chest. The pirate approached the terrified colonists, heedless of his polished boots as he kicked some bloodied body aside.