Барб Хенди - Dog in the Dark

The man’s shock passed—and Leesil charged.

As the crewman grabbed the head of the cudgel to pull it, Leesil ducked into a slide across the deck. His right foot extended first, with his booted toe outward. As that foot passed the man’s right boot, the man faltered with his cudgel half-drawn. Perhaps he was caught between shouting, pulling the weapon, or even trying to hop aside.

Leesil twisted to the right on the deck. As he flopped over, his extended foot hooked the back of the man’s right boot. Leesil flattened his hands to the deck and pushed up as his left foot shot upward.

His left heel slammed in under the stocky man’s chin.

The maneuver was among a few that his mother had taught him in his youth, though he hadn’t learned a name for it until later. She, with her long legs, could use it to even greater effect as an anmaglâhk. Sgäile had once called it “the cat in the grass.”

The stocky guard never even grunted. The worst of the noise was the guard’s body toppling on the deck. That couldn’t be helped, and Leesil rolled into a crouch and listened carefully as he looked about.

All he heard was Magiere scurrying in low behind him. He saw no one else, even up in the rigging. Magiere helped him shove the unconscious guard in against the first cargo hatch’s frame sidewall.

The hatch wasn’t that large. In place of netting or a grate, it was covered with a lashed-down canvas. Leesil undid one corner to peek in, and Magiere tapped him on the shoulder.

She pointed around the hatch’s side, and there was a rolled-up rope ladder.

Dänvârfij stood beside Én’nish at the rail and stared toward the great ship at the end of the next pier.

“What do you mean, someone with white-blond hair climbed that hull?”

“Yes,” Én’nish answered sharply, “and when they were under the lanterns, I knew the second one by the sword on its ... her back. Léshil and his woman are aboard that ship, unguarded by the traitor!”

“There,” Rhysís said, pointing.

A loose skiff floated at the waterline of the Bell Tower , and Dänvârfij was at a loss. Though she believed what Én’nish claimed, she did not understand it.

Léshil and Magiere had boarded another vessel in secret. Had they arranged other passage in trying to flee the port unseen? Were they after something on that other ship? The latter seemed unlikely, and either way, why had Brot’ân’duivé let them go alone? Or had he?

It left only one tentative conclusion.

“They know we are here,” Dänvârfij whispered.

Worse, there was only one way they could have found out: Brot’ân’duivé must have spotted her when she had tried to follow him. But why was the traitor not with Léshil and Magiere? Had they tried to leave the greimasg’äh behind? If so, why abandon the majay-hì as well?

“If they are not fleeing by arrangement,” Eywodan posed, “then they are at risk of discovery. If they are killed before we can extract the information they have, then we fail in our purpose.”

Dänvârfij had contemplated this as well. Even if Léshil and Magiere were only captured, they could be locked away out of easy reach. That they had pulled their skiff around in plain sight of the Cloud Queen suggested one useful thing.

They did not yet know their own vessel had been taken.

“Rhysís, get over into that ship’s crow’s nest,” she commanded. “Cover us from above as we board it. Eywodan, remain here and lock up all of the crew. We need somewhere close to bring captives and quickly take them out of sight.” Glancing at Tavithê, she added, “Bring your bow, remain out of any conflict, and wound either of our quarry for easier capture.”

The team broke apart as Rhysís rushed to climb the Cloud Queen ’s main mast and Eywodan began herding the few crewmen below deck.

Dänvârfij led the way as Én’nish and Tavithê followed her over the side, into the water, and then into their own waiting skiff. Once aboard the skiff, they pushed off with their hands and drifted to the starboard side of the Bell Tower .

Boarding was easier for the rope that had been left dangling, but Dänvârfij did not climb over the rail when she reached the top. She hung there against the hull and out of sight from its deck, and looked back to the Cloud Queen .

It was too dark to see Rhysís go up into its rigging, but she heard the whir of a rope followed shortly by a quick clatter overhead. Rhysís had already gained the heights and had cast a line between the two ships. Before the lookout in the crow’s nest of the Bell Tower even saw him, the man would be silenced with an arrow.

Dänvârfij rolled over the rail into a crouch and waited for Én’nish and Tavithê to follow.

Magiere would do anything Leesil asked of her, but as she climbed down the rope ladder into the ship’s hold, she wondered about the wisdom of what he did tonight.

He knew what it was to be a slave in the Warlands—to be used as a weapon. Once he’d escaped that life, he’d drunk himself to sleep for so many years, even after they’d first met. Dreams of his victims could be smothered only by strong wine or worse.

Magiere knew something of servitude from her own youth as a peasant caught between the feuding would-be grand princes of Droevinka, her homeland. She understood the guilt that now drove her husband, determined to carry this through. Foolhardy or not, she loved him for this as well, but they had their own task to complete.

The weight of that grew each time they thought they had finished after too many years far from home. And now here they were, risking their lives to free indentured servants off a ship. Much as she would have done the same at some other time and place ...

Magiere kept silent as her right foot stepped down and found the hold’s floor.

There were no lamps, and barely any light from the deck filtered through the corner of the peeled-back hatch cover above. She saw the barest movements, like black shadows deeper than the dark, in the hold. She pulled her falchion over her shoulder, and then she clapped her other hand over her nose and mouth.

The place reeked like a fetid pig barn, with the stench of urine, filthy and sweating bodies, and rotten swill or food. All of her senses began to sharpen, and she swallowed hard.

A whimper, like crying, rose from somewhere in the hold and then choked off in a fearful draw of breath.

“Who’s there?” a frightened voice whispered.

The voice sounded young to Magiere, belonging to someone no more than a child.

“We hadn’t done nothin’,” the tiny voice whispered. “We been quiet ... so quiet ... please.”

Magiere felt tears start rolling down her face as her irises expanded. The scant light slipping through the opened canvas above showed them to her eyes.

Dozens and dozens of bone-thin people, young and old, in threadbare clothing, huddled against the walls and between the barrels and crates. Tight and thick ropes were knotted about their arms and ankles. Four, five, or more were bound together to iron rings bolted into the hull walls or floor. There was no way of knowing how long some of them had been held down here.

Magiere’s gaze fell upon one face with skin so taut that the man’s cheekbones and jaw looked sharp.

He wrapped his arms around a woman and tried to pull her farther back between a stack of lashed-down casks and the hull wall. When his gaze dropped down, Magiere remembered the falchion gripped in her hand. She pulled it behind herself and hid the heavy blade with her leg as she looked at all of them trapped here in the darkness ... which slowly grew brighter in her sight.