Барб Хенди - Dog in the Dark

An arrow suddenly quivered in the edge of the crate’s opened top. She looked up, her sight widening.

The hatch’s cover had been fully pulled back, and the silhouette of a form knelt up there. It took less than a blink for Magiere to make out its cowl and a matching wrap over the face of the archer.

That anmaglâhk drew back another nocked arrow.

Magiere couldn’t scale the ladder quickly enough. She and Leesil were trapped and pinned down—and where was he? She couldn’t turn her eyes away to look for him. All she could do was wait for the bowstring’s thrum and charge the ladder whether she was hit or not.

The light above on deck suddenly dimmed ... as if something passed between the archer and a lantern.

The anmaglâhk hesitated. Perhaps his head turned, though she couldn’t be certain, as the shadows within the man’s cowl deepened in that instant.

A darker shadow enveloped the anmaglâhk’s head.

She made out an arm that wrapped around his neck.

The anmaglâhk’s neck and head slammed against the hatch’s edge, and a muffled crack echoed in the hold, but the shadow that had appeared above him continued to drop.

Both forms passed through the open hatch and fell through the dark air. Magiere watched in silence as one form landed lightly in a crouch like a man of immense height. Magiere saw amber eyes inside his hood ... and that one was looking out at her through bars of scars on his face.

Then a body slammed upon the hold’s floor. The archer lay still, with his head twisted at an unnatural angle.

“One,” was all that Brot’an whispered as he rose before Magiere.

Prisoners began screaming and scattering amid the sound of strained chains and ropes.

“On deck, now!” Brot’an ordered. “Chap is outnumbered.”

Magiere heard snarling above, and Leesil had reappeared, already scrambling up the ladder. She rushed after him with no time to ponder Brot’an’s sudden appearance.

Dänvârfij saw victory within reach for but a moment.

Her team had seized the Bell Tower and eliminated any crew on the deck. They prepared to slip into hiding to search for the quarry, and Tavithê had pulled back a partially opened canvas atop a cargo hatch.

He had looked to her and nodded, and she had known they had their quarry—and so quickly. She had nodded back, and he aimed and fired, intending to wound for easier capture.

Shouts rose out of the hold as he drew another arrow.

It should have ended there, with either Léshil or Magiere incapacitated and the other unable to save either of them.

An enraged snarl rose somewhere behind Dänvârfij. Before she could turn, Én’nish cried out. Savage snaps, scraping claws, and shattering wood rolled across the deck just before ...

A shadow fell through the light of a lantern dangling beyond Tavithê.

Dänvârfij never finished her turn.

Tavithê was slammed headfirst against the hatch’s edge. She lunged for him and then heard his neck snap. He fell from sight beneath the form of an immense shadow, and both vanished into the hold.

Dänvârfij’s heart seemed to stop. She wanted to scream Tavithê’s name, but she did not dare do something so pointless.

The traitor was among them again.

True anger, so rarely felt, surged inside her. She whirled to run toward Én’nish’s shouts but gained only three strides before she heard a door slam open.

Two humans with cudgels and sabers rushed out of the aftcastle’s left doorway. One instantly grunted and fell, and momentum slid him across the deck with an arrow protruding from his back.

Dänvârfij did not glance up toward Rhysís in the crow’s nest. She set herself for the one human coming at her. More shouts carried across the deck.

“We’ve been boarded!”

A white-blond head of hair popped out of the hold’s hatch.

Léshil rolled out into the open with his monster of a mate right behind him.

Chap rammed Én’nish again and sent her bouncing sideways off a water barrel. He was on her before she could right herself.

Throwing his bulk atop her, he clawed her arms and tried to pin at least one as he snapped for her throat. Instead he had to clamp his jaws on her wrist when she tried to slash a blade at his face.

Chap ground his teeth through forest gray wool until Én’nish let out a savage scream, and then a sharp pain burned across his right shoulder, and his hold faltered. His snarl turned into a yelp when he twisted away and stumbled off as she tore her wrist from his jaws. A stiletto came at him again in her other hand.

Chap had to duck, and Én’nish rolled away to her feet and ran off. He lunged after her but faltered as the open deck filled his view.

Dänvârfij kicked a crewman, who staggered off to her right and nearly fell. The man then stiffened, arching, and toppled forward with an arrow through the back of his neck. Chap could not tell from where that arrow had come, and Dänvârfij bolted straight at Magiere.

“Do not fire at the quarry!” she shouted out in Elvish.

Before Chap could blink, Dänvârfij and Magiere went at each other ... and Én’nish closed on Leesil in a maddened rush.

Where was Brot’an? This was all his fault. If they survived this, Chap would make certain Brot’an never had such a chance again.

As if summoned, the old assassin appeared to leap from the uncovered hatch. Three crewmen came running out of the aftcastle’s far door, though they faltered at what they saw. They would have no idea who was with whom or that more than one faction had boarded their vessel.

“We’re under attack!” one of them shouted.

They would simply kill anyone viewed as an intruder.

Én’nish and Leesil slammed together, falling to the deck in a flurry of blades.

If either Magiere or Leesil was taken, one hostage was all these anmaglâhk would need to control the other.

Chap stalled too long in choosing either Magiere or Leesil to aid first. Heavy footfalls came at him from behind. He lunged aside, and the head of an iron mace cracked the deck boards.

Én’nish saw no one but Léshil ... the one who had killed her beloved, Grôyt’ashia.

She barely heard the guttural shrieks of rage from Léshil’s monster of a mate, or the click and screech of Dänvârfij’s blades off the heavy falchion. She had barely heard Dänvârfij call to Rhysís not to fire.

Én’nish’s orders were to take Léshil alive. Once, the thought of his being tortured had held her to obedience. The hope of him watching his mate die would have even been enough.

She rushed at him and drove a stiletto straight for his throat.

Léshil twisted as her blade point nearly touched his flesh. The stiletto’s tip caught and tore a hunk from his tunic’s collar, and suddenly he was gone.

Én’nish leaped, tucking her legs up in midair.

Léshil attempted to lash his leg across her shins, but his foot passed below her raised ones. Then he was up again, spinning away across the deck and pulling one of his winged blades as her feet touched down.

Magiere tried to hold on to reason as she fended off a double slash of white stilettos with her falchion’s tilted blade. She couldn’t let the hunger overwhelm her; she had to stay sane. None of them could falter here and now if any of them were to escape alive. And it wasn’t her own life that she feared for.

She could kill this woman, this anmaglâhk, but if she lost all awareness of Leesil, or Chap, or what she had to do to back them up, someone might die.

As the woman’s double slash passed off her sword, Magiere dropped to one knee and swung with her white metal dagger.