by Ree Soesbee
Cobiah watched from his post near the ship’s wheel as his sailors climbed the high netting. The creaking took on a different tone as the sails shifted, letting the wind escape. It blew through the crevices of the ruined islands, lifting the ship over low coral reefs. For the first time in three days, Macha wasn’t at his side. Instead, she sat on the bowsprit like a strange, multicolored imp. She held an odd little telescope to her eye and a notebook in her lap, scribbling and muttering as the Pride drifted through shattered islets. Here and there, bubbles rose in foamy, sulfurous-smelling wafts where heat from underground volcanoes welled up beneath the ocean. These made the tides even more dangerous as warm waters rose to collide with the cold currents of the open sea.
Isaye held the ship’s wheel tightly, keeping her eyes forward and counting beneath her breath. She and Cobiah hadn’t spoken in days. Nor had Henst left her side, which was part of the reason. The Ascalonian stuck closer to Isaye than her own shadow.
The weight of the sails shifted as the yardarms settled into a new position. Fassur called to the men in the sails, “Belay your pull! That’s far enough.” The dark-furred charr turned back toward the quarterdeck and yelled toward Isaye, “Pilot? What’s our heading?”
“Our position’s twenty-one minutes from the north latitude line,” Macha piped up. Fassur stared at her, and she began to explain her odd time-distance-north-south conversion. The moment she slowed her incomprehensible gibberish to take a breath, the first mate cut her off in desperation.
“Hush, you crazy asura. I don’t care what the damn lat-snood is, I need to know our heading.” The charr turned toward Isaye. “Pilot!”
Isaye answered soberly, “North by northeast. Wind’s from the west at six knots.”
Macha shot Isaye an evil look. She hopped down from the bowsprit and tucked her notebook into a pocket of her robe. “How soon can we get that woman off the ship?” she growled to Cobiah. “Can’t we just put her in a cannon and fire her at Divinity’s Reach?”
“Macha,” Cobiah scolded gently. “We need her.”
“Yeah. Like a trephination patient needs a head cold.”
Cobiah shot the asura an irritated glare. Macha’d been moody lately, up and down, ranging from happy to snarky—sometimes within minutes. She’d refused to talk about whatever was bothering her. Between the asura and Isaye, Cobiah felt as if he were walking on glass. “We should be sighting the Salma’s Grace soon, Captain,” Verahd murmured at Cobiah’s elbow. Macha was unpredictable, Isaye was angry, Henst was worse, and Sykox stayed below to keep the engines running—meaning that the creepy elementalist was the only one talking to Cobiah. That didn’t make Cobiah feel better. If anything, it made him feel worse.
“Any time now,” Cobiah sighed. “It’ll be dangerous, fighting in these shifting tides, but at least the Grace will be at a disadvantage. She’s larger than the Pride, and these islets are narrow. Hard to navigate.”
“Reefs,” Verahd mused. “If she strays from her path through the maze, the Krytan ship could tear out the bottom of her hull.” He didn’t seem either happy or sad about it, simply acknowledging a random truth. As he talked, Verahd toyed with the wrappings that bound his arms, tugging them tight and then loosening them again in bored preparation. Cobiah caught glimpses of strange tattoos hidden beneath the black cloth strips.
“She likes you, you know,” Verahd observed. “But he’s going to cut your throat.”
Blinking in shock, Cobiah blurted, “What?”
Before the elementalist could respond, the sailor in the crow’s nest waved a bright red kerchief. That was the signal! All eyes turned toward the bow of the Pride.
“There she is!” Victory flashed in the asura’s black eyes as she lowered the telescope. “I did it!”
The Salma’s Grace came into view. It was a massive galleon in the Krytan style, but fatter through the belly and lower in the water than any ship Cobiah’d seen before. Her hull was shaped of rich old wood, a mahogany brown striped with golden whorls, and on her sails flew the strutting golden griffon of Divinity’s Reach: the symbol of the royal family.
Cobiah counted three tall masts with two great sails each. A triangular jib hung so far at the stern that it lapped the rear of the ship and hung out over the waves. To the front, leaning out past the bowsprit was a fourth mast, cocked at an angle and rigged to the foremast by a spider’s web of rope. The rigging swung down on either side of her hull, making the ship seem for all the world as if she’d been draped in a cat’s cradle of string. Ten guns were rolled out below the top deck, the portholes latched open as if they remained so at all times. But for all her beauty and all her more than two hundred crew members—the standard on a galleon, and four times the number of sailors on the Pride—the Salma’s Grace moved like a wallowing pig. She was sluggish on her turns through the islet channels, and her sails were half-stowed to prevent strong winds from accidentally running her aground.
“Is it the gold that makes her ride so low in the waves?” suggested Fassur, greed dripping from his tone.
“Gold”—Cobiah drew the cutlass from his belt—“and guns.” He turned to face the rest of the crew and raised his voice above the wind. “There’s our prey! Let’s take her for our own!” His cry was met with a resounding cheer, and the Pride turned slightly to her port and let her six-pounders roar.
Bursts of flame flashed along the side of the pinnace, and the thunder of cannon fire ricocheted off the chasm walls. The Salma’s Grace was taken by surprise, with nowhere to turn and the very rocks that had sheltered her now hemming her in. Holes tore through her hull just above the waterline. One of the Pride’s gunmen was so accurate that a ball crashed directly through a porthole and destroyed one of the Salma’s Grace’s cannons in a single shot. Cobiah whooped with glee.
The Pride was prepared for battle, but the Salma’s Grace was a sturdy ship; a few cannonballs wouldn’t sink her outright. Cobiah ordered the charr warband forward to the bow. “Ready, Verahd?” The elementalist was standing by the gunwale with an absent smile. He nodded, and Cobiah grinned even more widely.
“Now!” Cobiah yelled as the guns on the Krytan galleon sounded a return barrage. Her cannons were larger, broader, and more numerous, and their cannonballs were ten pounds of iron shot—nearly twice the size of those from the Pride. But the Pride had something the Krytan ship didn’t have.
An elementalist.
Verahd raised his voice to summon a mighty wind spell as cannonballs burst through the cushion of smoke. As it had at Port Stalwart, the gale rushed forward to answer Verahd’s command. The spell served two purposes. First, it raised a wall of air before the armament of the Salma’s Grace, shoving her cannonballs back down her throat. Second, the wind lifted the Pride’s warband as they leapt from its bow. The charr arced up through the gunnery smoke like hunting hawks stooping upon their quarry.
The sailors on the Salma’s Grace had been trained in combat tactics. Each and every one of them was a member of the military, their captain was a Krytan officer, and his personal guards were battle-hardened Seraph. They’d drawn weapons, manned the guns, and responded to the threat with exacting discipline and obvious training. But they could not possibly have been prepared for six gigantic armored charr leaping from the smaller ship. The king’s sailors fell back in shock and horror as Fassur, Sykox, and the rest of the Pride’s warband burst through the smoke, landing with heavy thuds on the deck of the Salma’s Grace.
To their credit, only a few of the Krytan sailors broke ranks and outright fled. The rest stood their ground, courage shaken but unbroken. Sykox landed before the others of his warband, the engineer’s impressive bulk pulling him to the deck first. A pistol in each hand, he unloaded a double shot of small-arms fire into his foes, blazing a trail for the rest of the charr to follow. When the guns were empty, Sykox cast them aside and bared his claws.
Fassur alighted immediately after the engineer. His longsword flashed through the ranks of men defending the Salma’s Grace,
dropping one of them before any could react. The warrior charr rocked on the balls of his feet, haunches bunching, and leapt to knock one of the deck guns aside. As Fassur’s shoulder struck it with massive force, the carronade erupted into flame. The gun spun sideways. The shot misfired and blasted through the Salma’s Grace’s quarterdeck.
The rest of the warband landed at last, claws extended, weapons ready. The youngest of them, golden-maned Aysom Steamhawk, let out a battle cry and raced forward, tearing into the crew of the Krytan ship with abandon. Filled with bloodlust and battle fury, the charr laughed and called out to one another with vicious glee as they waded through their enemy. Henst fought among them, for once ignoring the charr. His blades flashed like quicksilver. Two of the Krytan sailors fell to his advance before they could draw their weapons. Even clustered together four-to-one against them, Krytan sailors were no match for the battle-hardened charr. But humans were not the only sailors on board.
“What in the Mists happened to the ceiling?” someone bellowed from the mid-deck as two figures shoved their way up through the ruined boards. Massive by human standards, the men stood head and shoulders above even the charr. Salt-gold hair capped broad, identical faces. Although those faces were the same, one wide jaw sported a long, braided beard, and the other had muttonchops and a thick mustache.
“Oh no,” Sykox groaned. “They hired norn!”
“Looks like twins, even. Are the ships close enough for the rest of the boarding party to get over here?” Fassur looked back over his shoulder.
Shaking his head, the engineer answered, “Not yet.” With a sigh, he crouched and readied his claws. This was going to be a much harder fight than anyone on the Pride had anticipated.
“What—charr? A battle? Ha! That’s a far better use of our time than guarding a rock-boring storeroom door,” the bearded figure bellowed enthusiastically. “Bronn, my brother, remind me to thank King Baede for providing entertainment for our voyage.”
The second one soberly drew a massive two-handed sword from his back, shifting it from one hand to the other as if it were no more than an oversized dagger. “I don’t think the Krytan king had anything to do with it, Grymm. These are pirates.”
Laughing, his companion replied, “Then remind me to thank the pirates!”
Grymm, the norn with the braided beard, strode forward and grabbed young Aysom in his hands, grappling with the catlike warrior without a trace of fear. Bronn paused to bellow a battle prayer: “May the Spirits of the Wild have mercy on your souls!” He lowered his sword like a horseman’s lance and charged Sykox with fire in his eyes.
Sykox dodged the greatsword thrust with a quick sideways leap. As the mustached norn passed, Sykox clawed him, landing a fierce blow that raked down Bronn’s shoulder and left arm. The norn roared in pain and returned the blow, lifting one hand from the sword and burying the fist in the side of Sykox’s muzzle. Meanwhile, the bearded Grymm lifted Aysom entirely off the ground, wrapping his arms around the charr’s arms and rib cage to give him a mighty squeeze. Aysom cried out in pain, and Sykox heard a rib crack.
Bronn tried to bring his sword across Sykox’s belly, but the charr kicked the weapon aside. As the norn lunged to retrieve it, the engineer called out to the other norn. “Hey! Fur face! You’re picking on a cub?” Sykox snarled mockingly. “And here I thought norn preferred a fair fight.”
Grymm paused and looked carefully at the charr wriggling in his grip. “That’s a fair argument,” he said musingly. Smiling, he loosened his grip on young Aysom. As the young warrior fell to the deck with a gasp, the norn paused to pat the golden-furred charr’s shoulder and give him a smile. “Sorry ’bout that, mate. Didn’t notice you were a bit overmatched. Been shut up too long—you know how it is.” Aysom didn’t respond, unable to do anything but desperately draw breath back into his lungs. The norn laughed. “I’ll go pick on one of yer larger friends.” Spying Grist, the norn nodded in eager anticipation and strode away.
“Leave it to Sykox to fight with his mouth instead of his claws,” Macha grumbled. She peered through her little spyglass, watching the fight through the smoke of a second cannon volley. Her ears flicked, and she perked up, pausing her sweep of the other ship’s deck. “Well, hello, pretty . . . Cobiah?” she called out. “I think I found their captain.”
She pointed, and soon Cobiah could see the man as well. He was older, stocky and graying, wearing a sharply pressed frock coat of Krytan gold and green. The officer’s coat reminded Cobiah of Captain Whiting—but the cold competency that radiated from him was nothing like the whining steward of the Indomitable’s living days. This man showed no fear of battle. He strode into the fray and called on the sailors to rally—and rally they did. Cobiah noted a long scar down the right side of the captain’s jaw; this man was no stranger to a fight. As he watched, the sailors on the vessel rallied around their captain, drawing strength from his mere presence. Indeed, there was something about the man, a strangely calm aura that bolstered his crew even against cannon fire, wind magic, and six furry murder machines.
The captain of the Salma’s Grace strode down the stairway onto the main deck, pulling loose a heavy spiked mace from its holster. His eyes narrowed as a charr crewman tossed one of the Krytan sailors over the ship’s side. Although Cobiah couldn’t make out what he was saying, the look of disdain and anger on the Krytan captain’s face spoke his thoughts as clearly as words. Fassur spun to face him, shifting his longsword in a figure eight before him as he prepared for battle. The weapon never finished its maneuver.
The captain of the Krytan ship swung his mace, calling out in a stentorian tone. As he did so, a brilliant orb of lightning crackled from his weapon, flying out from the end of his heavy mace and launching itself toward the charr. The crackling sphere struck Fassur so hard that the quick-footed charr was flung backward. He slammed into the mast with a painful yelp and slid to the deck, stunned. The Krytan captain raised his weapon and called out to the heavens. He brought it down with a loud rumble of thunder, and as he did, thick manacles of energy coalesced around Fassur’s wrists.
“What’s he doing? What kind of magic is that?” Cobiah stared, snatching away Macha’s telescope to get a better look. “Is he a mesmer like you? Is that an illusion?”
“Stop that! Hey!” Macha leapt at him, trying to grab back her sighting glass. “Let me see!”
“That’s got to be an illusion! Right? Right, Macha?”
One of the other charr hurdled past the row of sailors trying to fend him off and dove between the captain and Fassur. It was Aysom, young, wounded, and stubborn, his lionlike features shifting from battle courage to concern as the captain did not waver but stood in the path of his charge. Roaring, Aysom shook out his pale mane and clawed the Krytan with all his strength. “Aysom! No!” yelled Fassur, but the charr youth was angry from his treatment at the hands of the norn and eager to redeem himself against a smaller, human opponent.
The captain pressed his mace to his chest and murmured softly. As Aysom’s claws tore toward him, a glittering golden shield surrounded the captain of the Salma’s Grace in a protective shell. Aysom struck the glowing light with his full weight, but the blow merely ricocheted away. He struck again, claws out, but he could not shatter or penetrate the magical defense. The Krytan captain smiled and continued to chant.
“That’s no illusion.” Cobiah frowned.
Macha managed to wrest the spyglass away from him and thrust it to her own eye. With a frown, she considered the spectacle occurring on the far deck. “It’s a pile of Elonian protection magic, mixed with a little monk training, wrapped up in some crazy ritualist hoo-ha from Cantha. A real grab bag of ‘you can’t hurt me.’ They’re called guardians, and simply put”—Macha lowered the little telescope—“they mean trouble. I don’t think the warband can handle that guy. What do you think we should do, Cobiah?”
There was no answer. Macha looked to either side, confused, but she was standing alone on the bow of the Pride. “Cobiah?”
The captain of the Pride was already grabbing his ship’s rigging, climbing so fast he seemed nearly a blur against the knotted rope. When he reached the top of the Pride’s forward mast, Cobiah drew his knife and cut free one of the long ropes that tied the masts together. Before anyone could stop him, Cobiah leapt out and swung away. He spun over the pinnace, her white sails rippling beneath his feet as the world tilted dizzyingly. The canyon wall careened toward him, and Cobiah slammed into it with both feet, using the leverage to push himself toward the Salma’s Grace. Where the charr warriors knew how to use their bulk in battle, Cobiah’s training as a child had taught him how to act quickly, with no waste of movement and an impeccable sense of balance. It was a skill that served him well aboard the Pride.
The rope skidded through his hands, chafing the callused skin, and when he reached the end, he shoved his legs against the stone, pushed off, and jumped for all he was worth. Everything spun as the weight of gravity took hold. Knife still in his hand, Cobiah plummeted into the galleon’s mainsail. Deftly, he buried the blade into the white silks and rode the ripping sail down toward the Salma’s Grace.
Across the deck, he could see Sykox and old Grist fighting tenaciously against the twin norn. They circled like hunting animals, feinting and striking with quick, sharp blows, while the norn bellowed and laughed. Occasionally, Bronn’s greatsword lashed out in a circle, keeping them back while Grymm taunted them good-naturedly. Cobiah couldn’t help admiring the brothers’ sense of strategy. If the charr stayed at sword range, Bronn’s great-sword would cut them to pieces. If they came too close, Grymm would grab and hold them, punching them with his titanic strength. These norn might have been playing around, but they knew how to fight as a team.
Cobiah slid down the sail, both hands desperately clutching the hilt of his knife. He could see scattered fighting all around, blurred by the smoke drifting in gray clouds from the ruined quarterdeck. Overall, the Pride’s forces were winning. Several of the Krytan sailors were on the verge of surrender, dropping their weapons before the fury of the charr. The Pride’s weaponry had caused damage, crashing holes through the outer hull and causing panic in the lower decks.
