Lycan Tides: Guardians of Light, Book 3

by Renee Wildes

  “Rudder an’ sail,” Niadh replied. “Slash a sail, crack a rudder.”

  Trystan frowned at bows and arrows on the pirate vessel, grappling hooks on coiled lines, knotted nets with more grappling hooks along one edge. Bridges, he realized, to connect two bobbing ships and allow men to cross betwixt. Once aboard, it was all hack-and-slash until one side or the other gained the advantage.

  And fight he would. The thought of death was less fearsome than slavery.

  “All livin’ things die,” Niadh agreed. “Rest now, laddie. I canna see them catchin’ us afore dawn.”

  Trystan’s mind returned to his body. He swore he’d just closed his eyes when a horn sounded from up on deck. The effect on the men was instantaneous, as if struck by a backlash from distant lightning. They poured up the companionway stairs and through the open hatchway onto the deck, snatched leather breastplates and bronze and leather helmets from where they’d been stashed at the bow, guarded by the peacock figurehead. Trystan grabbed his own dragon-scale hauberk, but disdained a helmet. He preferred clear vision in a fight, trusting his own enhanced speed to duck a head blow. Most of the men took up shields and weapons—bows and arrows, hatchets and knives. Reed alone wore chainmail and carried a sword. There’d be no mistaking who was the captain when the pirates boarded. Mick, the boson, had a broadaxe and a mace that would have done any riever proud. Trystan was the sole spear-wielder.

  Just a few men remained working as sailors, taking positions at the rudders or sheets to keep the Sunrisen on her course toward the safety of Lighthaven. The rest donned the garb of temporary soldiers. Trystan watched Giles, armed with bow and arrows, scramble up to the crow’s nest. He joined Mick at the stern, guarding the armored but unarmed men at the rudders.

  The pirate vessel was but a galley-length off the starboard stern. The pirates howled and screamed obscenities at the merchantmen. Mick scowled. “Just like wolves.”

  Trystan glared. They sounded naught like the deep, mystical calling of wolves on the hunt. Crows or jackals, mayhaps—all raucous bluster. “Ealga, fly!” he called. “Watch!”

  The eagle launched herself into the air, winged over the pursuing galley. The enemy raised drawn bows for a first volley.

  “Shields up!” Reed roared.

  Trystan thought they could hear the man in the unseen port of Lighthaven.

  The merchantmen got their shields up just in time to intercept the rain of arrows. Trystan positioned his over his rudder man, Jan, and himself. Ealga drifted in the galley’s wake, well back of the attack.

  “Return fire!” Reed ordered. His archers obeyed. The resulting screams told Trystan the pirates were less skilled at dodging. Not a few were unarmed rowers, poor bastards.

  Another rain of arrows dropped from the morning sky. Their shields prevented any injury. Mick grinned. “We’re better armed than most o’ their prey. They’ll find we’re not so easily taken.”

  Thinking of little Toby below, Trystan hoped so.

  “I’ve got Toby,” Niadh rebuked. “Focus—an’ be careful.”

  Through Ealga’s eyes, Trystan saw an oarsman pull at an arrow in his shoulder. One of the pirates, rather than helping the man, stabbed him in the back with his cutlass. Trystan clenched his jaw. If that was the fate of one who’d outlived his usefulness on the other ship, then death ’twas indeed preferable to capture. He braced his legs against the roll of the deck and gripped his spear with his shield-hand, leaving one hand free for throwing knives and axes.

  The galley drew alongside and the near rowers shipped their oars as pirates tossed out grappling lines, hooking into the various lines. Now Giles fired, taking down the saboteurs, but there were too many. Trystan noted one enemy archer fire a grapnel at the artemon, saw it tear through the sailcloth. The artemon collapsed, no longer able to hold the wind. Others fired at the mainsail with the same intent, and as the mainsail leaked, softened, the Sunrisen slowed. Without propulsion, the rudders were nigh useless. What good steering when you could not move?

  Trystan saw the first net cast. The hooks caught in the bulwark railing, and the first wave of invaders scrambled like rats over the knotted nets. Reed and a group of his men greeted them. The first wave died at their hands, but there were more nets, more pirates. The merchantmen were forced back and battle ensued. Brutal, fast and furious, all hack-and-slash. No quarter asked, nor given. The deck ran red with blood, but no time to grab a bucket. ’Twas for later.

  Pirates swarmed aft. Mick threw the first axe, followed by Trystan’s. The first two dropped. Those that followed ran over them. Trystan had time for one more throw, then he grabbed his spear in his free hand and brought the shield to bear. The pirates crashed into it. Trystan bent his knees to absorb the force, one foot sliding behind him to brace. Then he shoved back, using every ounce of converted Badger scrap to throw the enemy clear, far enough for him to thrust with his spear. The skewered man looked shocked as he died, his sword dropping to the deck.

  Jan, no longer needed for rudder work, released the tiller and rolled under Trystan’s spear to grab the sword, bringing it up to make short work of another invader. Trystan set into the rhythm of battle——brace, shove, thrust. Ealga plunged from the sky to rake a pirate’s eyes. Trystan cursed. Why couldn’t females—eagle or human—follow a simple order? Stay clear of the fray, where ’twas safe? That her attack was effective wasn’t the point.

  “I’m tellin’ yer mother,” Niadh threatened. “Ye think ye’d given up with yer sister, but ye’re a slow learner…e’en for a Badger.”

  Trystan didn’t bother to reply. The sounds and smells of battle loomed on the edge of his focus. Blood and sweat, fear and rage, screams and curses. Trystan wondered at the kind of man willing to die for mere possessions, driven to risk death to steal what was not his, who’d rather die on the point of a spear than earn his own way. ’Twas like fighting rievers, men without honor or decency. They didn’t just seek to steal the Sunrisen from her men, but from the families. The women and children waited back home for their men to return, with money enough to afford them a life. Stealing from them was out of the question.

  Sweat ran down into his eyes, but he could not spare the moment to brush it away. He shook his head. His hair stuck to his forehead. His shield grew heavy. His gaze swept the deck. One of the Sunrisen crew slipped and went down, just behind Reed. The captain battled the leader of the invaders. The corsair swung at Reed’s face and the Sunrisen’s leader jerked backward to stumble over his own man. Trystan reacted by instinct alone, flinging his shield at the corsair captain. The edge of the bronze disc caught him beneath the chin. Trystan dropped his spear, pulled out two axes and waded into the fray. He fought his way to Reed.

  “My thanks!” the man shouted above the din.

  Trystan thought with the loss of their leader the pirates would retreat. He’d not figured their savagery would increase. They fought like men possessed by demons, like there was no going back. Trystan found himself the target for their revenge. An arrow bounced off his hauberk, the dragonscale too slick and tight for penetration by so small a weapon. A corsair swung his sword at his unprotected head. He ducked, blocked the blow with his axe and returned a strike of his own. Reed tried to protect his back, but the enemy surrounded them.

  Another man, beady-eyed and feral, attacked with a cutlass. Trystan spun to parry and one of the other corsairs dropped under his reach, slamming an enormous studded morning-star into the back of his left thigh.

  Ealga screamed for him as Trystan’s leg collapsed and he fell to the blood-soaked deck. Reed and Mick cleared away the attackers. Trystan’s whole world shrank down to simple pain. Burning pain, like demon-acid, the kind that peeled the mind away and left the nerve exposed. A pain that left room for naught else.

  Niadh seized his mind, clouded it and placed himself between Trystan and the agony enough for Trystan to regain himself. “Focus!” he snarled. “Pain’s our friend. Tells us we’re no’ dead yet.”

  Trystan took
a deep shuddering breath and clenched his jaw. He struggled to clear his mind, to rise above his body so he could assess the damage. He turned his head to see and wished he hadn’t. His leg looked like he’d been used to bait bears. The blow missed the main blood vessels, but the bone shattered. Splintered shards buried themselves into the torn flesh and mangled layers of muscle. Dimly aware of Ealga raking the battleground, no longer able to control her, Trystan struggled against the overwhelming urge to shift, to turn. His superstitious newfound friends might kill him themselves. Although he could shift anytime, he depended on the power of the full moon for healing and rejuvenation. The new moon was growing, but its powers were negligible as yet. He dared not shift, and dared not wait.

  “I can heal.” He echoed Niadh’s earlier words. “Slow, like any other creature.”

  At least until the full of the moon.

  The corsairs were annihilated to the last man. The Sunrisen had no brig for prisoners. Reed ordered their bodies tossed overboard, then sent men across to the corsair vessel to rescue the oarsmen and salvage food, drink and what cargo they could. Mick and Jan carried Trystan to Doc. The man splinted the leg and poured relag tea into the wound. “I’ll not lie t’ ye, lad.” His voice carried over the groans of the other fallen. “If the wound sours, ye’ll lose the leg.”

  “Nay,” Trystan rasped. “Leave the wound unsewn an’ bound with relag an’ waxroot. I’m a fast healer. I just need time, an’ rest.”

  Doc frowned, but packed the wound with shaved waxroot and wrapped the leg in bandages soaked in relag tea. “I’ve dreamwine. Ye might wish for a drop or two.”

  Trystan shook his head. He didn’t dare. Dreamwine was a potent painkiller but left the patient softheaded. If his mind weakened instinct would take the upper hand and he’d shift to heal, against the moon and his better judgment. “I could use a drop o’ drenieval whiskey.”

  “Ye’re in luck,” Giles said from the doorway. “Guess what the corsair cap’n had stashed in his cabin? Greedy bastard. Better used on the hero o’ the day, I say, an’ as luck would have it, the cap’n agrees.” He handed Doc a cup, and Trystan caught the sharp, fiery scent of home as Doc raised him up and held the cup to his lips. It flowed through him like molten lava from Mt. Aege, seared away the pain and distant numbness.

  “All the comforts o’ home,” Trystan joked. “I’ll be fine, ye’ll see. I’m a tough old bastard, too mean t’ die. Ask anyone.” He lay back and closed his eyes. Time passed in disjointed shifts. Despite the Arcadian medicines, his nose told him first the leg soured. Doc gave him the bad news as he shivered in his improvised bed on the table. “Ye’ve caught a fever, lad. The poison’s spreadin’. I want t’ try something else. A Rhattany remedy that sometimes works.” He crumbled up moldy bread, wrapped it in relag-soaked linen and applied it to the wound.

  “Bread crumbs?” Trystan lifted an eyebrow as he drank down a bitter concoction of willow bark and rose hips.

  Doc shook his head. “’Tis no’ the bread, but the mold. Don’t ask me why, but mold sometimes helps a bad wound. I’ve made a broth with rondane root an’ seaweed. Don’t ye curl yer lip at me. Ye need t’ keep up yer strength.”

  “Hold on,” Niadh urged. “Ye must wait.”

  Trystan tried, through rounds of medicines and liquid food, passed from burning hot to freezing cold and back again. Ever the moon loomed larger in the night sky. The pull of it under his skin was unbearable, irresistible. He stretched out his hands, to see the ripple of bone, the first shimmer of fur. He fought to hold on to the human, when everything within screamed to turn, to heal. Niadh helped as much as he could, but ultimately the battle was Trystan’s. Never had he thought the hardest battle would be against himself.

  Doc shook him awake. “Best t’ take the leg off, above the wound. Clean flesh can heal. Otherwise, ’tis poisoning yer whole body, an’ we may yet lose ye altogether.”

  “Nay!” Trystan shook with cold, with fever, but his mind was clear enough to comprehend. He just needed two more nights. He could hold on for two more nights, no matter how much the beast within snarled.

  “There’s a storm brewin’,” Doc argued. “If we don’t do it now, we won’t be able t’ do it later. I’m good, lad, but even I can’t do surgery when the room’s tossin’ me one way an’ my patient the other, an’ all my instruments’re slidin’ off the table onto the deck.”

  “I said nay. Giles says we’re almost t’ Lighthaven. If I’m t’ die, I’ll do it on dry land, an’ in one piece.” Trystan set his jaw. “Have ye…maggots?”

  “We have.” Doc frowned.

  “Might work t’ clean the wound, no’?”

  “Barbaric thought, but aye, they would. All right, lad. We’ve naught t’ lose at this point.”

  Trystan barely noticed the man’s return. His jaw shifted, his fangs lengthened. Niadh nudged his hand. His hand. Not paw, hand. Trystan focused. Hand. Man. Human. Two more nights. He could hold that long. Shift in the pouring light of the full moon, heal, and shift back. He was strong, Badger-strong. Wolves had naught on the stubbornness of Badgers. He could wait.

  Chapter Two

  Finora stood at the edge of the cliff. She stared out over the harbor and the breakwater. Her gaze swept across the open sea toward the distant horizon. The drop in air pressure pulled at her skin and in the waning daylight she watched the clouds boil up. The waves built a churning restlessness as Cilaniestra awakened. The wind whipped Finora’s long sable tresses about her and she braided them back, knotting the end. She stared up at the Light, at the mortal defiance of the ravenous sea goddess who claimed Her tithe in blood and lives.

  Long had her own people, the selkies and their merfolk cousins, watched the mortals sail across the surface of the deep against all common sense. Could they swim? Not hardly. Could they breathe underwater? Nay. Could they hold their breath underwater? Not for any useful period of time. And when they sank like stones, they were absolutely vulnerable to the crushing pressure of the deep.

  Yet still they went out. Day in and day out. Cilaniestra demanded Her toll and the survivors put another name on the memorial wall of The Mermaid Pub, drank themselves sick and went back out the next day to tempt their own fates. ’Twas madness.

  ’Twas that foolhardy courage which had first drawn her. She’d been curious to see what manner of creature could be so…chalgrecois. Did they not value their lives? Did they worship death? What drove them? She had to know. So she’d crawled from the sea on that long-ago night, slipped free of her sealskin to walk among them. The music from The Mermaid Pub floated across the shore, the lights and smoke lured her in. And there he sat, smoking a pipe and contemplating the full moon. That accursed burning moon.

  Bran the handsome. Bran the charmer.

  Bran the lying, treacherous shark, who’d taken her precious sealskin and hidden it away, trapping her on land for seven long years. Away from her family, from her friends. From Prince Matteo, the selkie bull she’d been bound to. Her sire had hoped binding her to the future king of the neighboring pod would strengthen their own position in the greater selkie hierarchy. Instead she’d borne two children, tainted by their half-human blood. The elitist Matteo would have none of her now. And Bran was gone. Only Cilaniestra knew where her skin was.

  Finora started back home, where Storm watched over the children playing in the heather. The dog was an excellent nursemaid. But when she reached the three, Storm faced the clouds, his nose twitching. Braeca looked anxious. Three-year-old Ioain alone seemed oblivious to the tension. He was his father’s son, with none of his mother’s or his sister’s sensitivities.

  “What’s wrong, poppet?”

  Six-year-old Braeca shivered in the rising wind. “Bad dream kinda night, Mama.”

  At least Braeca just dreamed storms. Thus far she was spared the deaths. “Time to go inside,” Finora stated. “Don’t want you to get wet and catch a chill.”

  Braeca rolled her eyes. “We don’t get chills, Mama.”

  �
��Twas the truth. Finora’s blood prevented her children from getting the normal human childhood diseases, even as Bran’s blocked selkie ailments. Braeca and Ioain were as accident prone as any other children their age but illness never touched them. Not so much as a sniffle.

  “Don’t sass your mama, poppet,” Finora ordered. “Let’s get inside now.”

  They ran ahead of her into the cottage at the foot of the Light. Storm lumbered behind her. Before he went inside, he turned one last time to eye the growing tempest and whined.

  “I know, boyo.” Finora stroked his floppy black ears. “Come inside now. With any luck there’ll be naught for us to do tonight.”

  He shook himself and followed her. Finora shut and bolted the door against the wind. She lit the beeswax candles on the table. Her last pot of lilac honey glowed like amber. Whilst Braeca and Ioain played with blocks in the corner, Finora started a fire in the hearth and grabbed a kettle. Crossing the plank floor to a small unassuming door, she entered the well-house. She shivered as she uncovered the well and drew enough water for a pot of soup. Strategic cracks in the walls took advantage of the cooling wind. Even in summer the room was chilly, perfect for storing food. She looked around at the choices. Ioain was in an “I-hate-fish” stage. Salt pork, she decided, potatoes, turnips, carrots, parsley and seaweeds.

  Cilaniestra’s claws dug at her through the cracks. Odd how much colder air seemed than water. Finora frowned as she left the well-house, shutting and bolting the door against the cold—and the goddess. Finora hung the pot on the iron lug-pole and dumped in the chunk of salt pork and the dried seaweed. Chopping the vegetables on the table, she added those to the pot as well.