The Reaver

by Richard Lee Byers

  The caravel dragged him through the cold brine, and he pulled himself hand over hand along the rope until he could haul himself out of the water and swarm up toward the deck. He noted the Jest was about due for scraping and recaulking, then grinned at his outmoded way of thinking. The condition of the ship was no longer his concern. If he had his way, it soon wouldn’t even be Naraxes’s.

  Anton swung himself over the rail just below the quarterdeck, where a different helmsman stood in the same spot where One-Ear Grim had breathed his last. This close, Anton had more concerns about the rain spoiling his invisibility, but so far, the helmsman plainly hadn’t noticed him. Nor had the archers in the fighting top or the men clustered at the bow waiting to board the galley.

  The hanging line swung and creaked as Umara climbed up behind him. Looking down, he could just make out the ghost her spell and the raindrops made of her. He took hold of her arm and pulled her onto the deck.

  “Thanks,” she gasped.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Just winded. Crawling up a rope half drowned was harder than I expected. What now?”

  “I’ll show you.”

  As they skulked forward, he peered in an effort to spot the sea mage Naraxes had recruited. He couldn’t, though. The spellcaster was probably all the way forward, where it would be easiest to target the galley, and masts, cordage, and assorted reavers were in the way.

  Well, if the fellow was at the far end of the ship, perhaps that was just as well. Anton took a cautious look around, then undogged a hatch. The ladder beneath it descended to a different section of the hold than the one where he and Stedd had been imprisoned.

  With the hatch lowered again, the cramped, cluttered compartment was too dark to see anything more than shadows. Then Umara murmured a charm, and a patch of bulkhead glowed silver, revealing a miscellany of casks, crates, and tools.

  “I take it,” she said, “you were counting on me to take care of this detail in the master plan as well.”

  “Why not? Whoever heard of a wizard who couldn’t make light?”

  “Now that I have, what are we looking for?”

  “This.” He gestured to a box with cabalistic sigils painted on it, then remembered she couldn’t see him do that or anything. Smiling, he indicated the container by giving it a little shake inside the netting that held it securely on a shelf.

  When Umara spoke again, her voice sounded from right in front of the crate. “These are signs of cold and quiescence.”

  Anton sawed at the netting with his dagger. “And I paid a wizard plenty to draw them. Many a captain has doomed his own ship by bringing incendiaries aboard. Until this morning, I didn’t intend to be one of them.”

  When he finished cutting the netting away, he pried the box open and lifted off the frigid lid. Nestled in straw, the round black catapult projectiles inside had arcane symbols of their own inscribed on them.

  “It looks they’re all here,” Umara said.

  “They are. A pirate can’t make much profit burning up the very prize he’s chasing. They were only for an emergency, and lucky me, I finally have a suitable one. Can you set them off from up on deck?”

  “I can, but will it matter? The sea wizard put out one fire already.”

  “Yes, but surely he was expecting Kymas to throw more flame. We can hope a surprise explosion ripping through the guts of the ship will befuddle him. Even if it doesn’t, flooding the hold to put out our blaze ought to pose its own problems.”

  Topside once more, the pair of them phantoms in the rain, she whispered, “When I cast fire, I’ll reappear. I’ll veil myself again immediately, but still.”

  “I’ll watch your back,” he told her.

  She murmured hissing, popping words that had no business issuing from a human throat, then swept one vague, transparent arm down at the open hatch. A red spark shot from fingertips that simultaneously became opaque flesh and gleaming nails once more.

  A detonation boomed, and a tongue of flame leaped higher than Anton’s head. He just had time to think, Not bad, and then a far louder explosion jolted the caravel from bow to stern and sent him reeling. The initial blast had only been Umara’s spell birthing flame, while the one that followed an instant later had been the incendiaries detonating in response.

  Staggering, ears ringing, he struggled to recover his balance. A part of him was appalled at what he’d done. But the ship he’d just scuttled didn’t belong to him anymore and never could have again. He thrust such sentimentality aside, pivoted to see how Umara was faring, and cursed.

  The Red Wizard sprawled on the deck next to the hatch and had evidently bumped her head when she fell. Her eyes were open and her mouth was moving soundlessly, so perhaps she wasn’t entirely unconscious, but she was near enough that she wasn’t even trying to shift away from the heat of the flames shooting up right beside her.

  She was useless in that condition, a liability, and Anton started to turn away. But then he hesitated. For all he knew, she might come to her senses in a moment. And he needed her to convince Kymas Nahpret to welcome him aboard the galley.

  The Iron Jest was already listing to port—maybe the blast itself had punched a hole in the hull without the fire needing to burn through—and Anton dragged Umara until he could deposit her at the foot of one of the shrouds to keep her from sliding over the side. Had any of his fellow pirates been paying attention, the knave likely would have realized that an invisible agency was hauling the stunned woman along. But the crew had plenty of other matters to distract them, like their own falls and resulting injuries, the yellow flame leaping and black smoke billowing upward in various places—remarkably, somehow fire was already licking at the mainsail—and a first panicked scramble for the lifeboats.

  Anton crouched beside Umara and patted her cheek. “Wake up,” he said, “we have to go.”

  The green eyes blinked, but she still seemed dazed. She certainly wasn’t trying to get up.

  “Come on,” he growled, “or I swear by every devil in every hell, I’ll leave you behind.” He pinched her cheek as hard as he could.

  She pawed clumsily at his hand in an effort to push it away. Then he sensed a figure standing over them. He looked up and caught his breath.

  Anton had known Evendur Highcastle was now undead. But he didn’t frequent any deity’s temple, even Umberlee’s, and he’d only glimpsed the Bitch Queen’s new hierophant at a distance in the streets of Immurk’s Hold. And now, even though he’d never liked the swaggering bully his fellow captain had been, it was revolting to finally, truly behold the slimy, swollen horror his transformation had made of him.

  Evendur glared down at Umara. “You again,” he snarled. “You did this.” He bent to seize her in hands whose rings were all but buried in puffy rot.

  Anton sprang up, whipped out his saber, and slashed.

  The rapid motion compromised his concealment. Sensing something whirling at him through the rain, Evendur jerked backward. The tip of the saber still sliced him across the forearm, but the cut was scarcely the lethal stroke Anton had intended. It was, however, a sufficiently aggressive action to make opacity race up the blade from the sludge-smeared point to the guard and then on into his hand and arm.

  Evendur peered at his newly revealed attacker with a mix of fury and surprise. “Marivaldi!”

  “Wait,” Anton replied. Even as the request left his mouth, he recognized it as likely the most useless word he’d ever uttered.

  “Kill him!” Evendur bellowed, and though many of the reavers were too busy trying to fight fires or abandon ship to heed even Umberlee’s Chosen, several came running.

  The first one thrust with a boarding pike. Anton sidestepped, and momentum impelled his opponent another step down the slanting deck. That brought him into saber range, and Anton slashed his leg out from under him.

  That was one adversary down, but Anton had to pivot instantly to confront the next. This time, the treacherous footing made him slip, and, off balance, he only j
ust managed to parry a cutlass cut to the head and riposte with a slash that opened the other pirate’s belly.

  The wounded man dropped the cutlass to clutch at his stomach. As the weapon started to slide and tumble away, Anton stabbed the tip of the saber into the loop defined by handle and guard, flipped the captured blade into the air, and caught it in his off hand.

  That bit of panache made his other assailants hesitate, but only for an instant. Then they resumed their advance, and in a more organized fashion than before, spreading out to flank him. Meanwhile, seemingly untroubled by the fresh gash in his arm, Evendur unlimbered the boarding axe slung over his back, stroked a fingertip along the edge, and made it glow a sickly green.

  A figure at the edge of Anton’s vision hacked with a broadsword. Anton whirled, parried with the cutlass, and saw that his attacker was Naraxes. He cut with the saber, and the former first mate blocked with a buckler. Steel bit into wood.

  Anton heard or perhaps simply sensed motion at his back. With a hollow feeling in his gut, he realized it was likely suicide to turn away from Naraxes and suicide not to. He opted to turn and found Evendur rushing him with the boarding axe raised above his head.

  Anton lifted the cutlass into a high guard and whipped the saber in a stop cut to the ribs. He scored, but it didn’t matter. The Chosen started to swing his weapon anyway.

  Then, however, two luminous spheres leaped through the air to strike Evendur from behind. On impact, one vanished in a burst of flame, while the other winked out of existence with an earsplitting screech that flensed gobs of rotten flesh off his bones. He jerked, and the slanted deck betrayed him and sent him staggering, too. The flailing axe cut missed.

  Anton spun back around toward his other foes. Though he was too late to witness it, magic had plainly attacked them, too. The front of his body encrusted with frost, Naraxes looked like a helplessly shuddering snowman. Two other pirates lay dead, each burned in one fashion or another, one with patches of flesh still bubbling and melting.

  Traces of phosphorescence fading on the fingers that had cast the spell, Umara gripped the shroud and dragged herself to her feet. “You said we need to go,” she panted.

  Anton grinned. “Now that you mention it.”

  “No,” Evendur said. “Stay and die with your ship like a captain should.” He ripped the burning jerkin and shirt from his back and moved to place himself between his foes and the port edge of the deck.

  Anton had just about reached the unhappy conclusion that while he and Umara might be able to slow the Chosen of Umberlee down for a breath or two, no power at their command was likely to stop him. But they might as well try. Hoping Evendur was unfamiliar with the stance and the combinations that flowed out of it, he raised both blades high in a guard his father’s master-of-arms had taught him.

  Then the Iron Jest gave another great lurch as the sea surged into another breached compartment below deck. This time, the stern dropped, while the bow lifted out of the water.

  The motion sent nearly everything and everyone, Evendur included, sliding, reeling, or tumbling helplessly aft. Umara, however, was still hanging onto the shroud, and, dropping the cutlass, Anton managed to snatch hold of a halyard.

  Anton rammed the saber back into its scabbard. “Come on!” he said. “Evendur won’t give us another chance.” He made a floundering run at the port side of the caravel and dived into the sea. Umara splashed in after him.

  Despite the best efforts of the saber that seemed intent on fouling the action of his kicking legs, he swam away from the Jest as fast as he could. When a ship sank, it created a suction that could drag swimmers under. He’d seen it happen.

  Finally, unsure if he truly deemed himself out of the danger zone or was just too spent to swim any farther, he halted, turned, and started treading water. Umara was still with him.

  “As you should be,” he rasped, “after the trouble I took on your behalf.”

  The Red Wizard didn’t ask what he meant. She was intent on the Iron Jest, and why not? It was quite a spectacle.

  The back third of the caravel was underwater. The rest was canted even higher, and much of it covered in roaring flame that made a mockery of the rain. The spars and sails were trees of fire, and as best Anton could tell, most of the boats were burning, too. Some men risked setting themselves alight in what must be an agonizing struggle to lower the smaller vessels into the water. Others, clinging precariously to whatever support they could find, stabbed, chopped, and wrestled for a place aboard them. A gray-black wave of rats flung themselves over the side of the Jest to attempt the impossible swim to land.

  Then, with a horrible, sudden smoothness, the rest of the caravel slid under the sea, leaving only smoke above the waves. It was almost as if Umberlee, who supposedly loved sinking ships above all things, truly had taken the Jest in her colossal hand and pulled it down.

  The submersion raised a wave that lifted Anton and Umara and dropped them back amid charred scraps of flotsam. A scrabbling rat pulled itself aboard a broken section of ribband and claimed it for its raft.

  Hoping for more comfortable transportation, blinking against the water trickling down from his hair into his eyes, Anton peered about and found Falrinn and his sailboat, visible once more, off to the left. “Falrinn! Here we are! Come get us!”

  “I’m working on it,” the gnome answered. He threw a line and it plopped down in the water.

  Anton used the rope to clamber back inside the sailboat. Umara sought to do likewise, but likely thanks to her knock on the head, exhaustion, and saturated garments, struggled unsuccessfully. Anton took her arm and, with a grunt, heaved her aboard.

  “So,” Falrinn said, “on to the galley?”

  Umara gave him a smile. “Of course.”

  She kept smiling, too, as the gnome adjusted their course, and she and Anton slumped on benches. The Turmishan, however, felt a bleak anger rising inside him.

  It wasn’t simply the bitter melancholy that sometimes overtook him after a battle, although that might be a part of it. It was the realization of just how thoroughly he’d wrecked his own schemes.

  His intent had been to eliminate a shipload of rivals and then sell Stedd to Evendur. But instead, he’d attacked the undead captain himself and sent him to the bottom.

  How was Anton supposed to collect the bounty now? He supposed he could still try selling Stedd to the Umberlant church, but would the waveservants even want the boy now that the leader who’d declared his apprehension important was gone? Even if they did, would they deal fairly with a man who’d assailed Evendur Highcastle with fire and blade?

  Curse it, anyway!

  Perhaps the most galling aspect of the whole affair was that Anton hadn’t needed to reveal himself to Evendur. He could have preserved his invisibility and then salvaged the situation somehow. But he hadn’t. He’d swung his saber because … he wasn’t even sure of the because. Maybe just because the new Evendur was so hideous to look at, and he and the old one had so seldom gotten along.

  In any case, he supposed that now he’d simply have to accept whatever payment the Thayans offered for sinking the Iron Jest and Umara’s safe return and go on his way. It surely wouldn’t be enough to buy a new ship, and the prospect of serving aboard some other pirate captain’s vessel, as he had in the early years of his exile, had little appeal. But what was the alternative?

  As the sailboat approached the galley, Umara, still looking annoyingly pleased at the “success” of their foray against the Iron Jest, stood in the bow with her head bared. She hadn’t shaved her scalp during her time with Anton and Falrinn, and her black hair had started to grow out. But plainly, she still trusted the other Thayans to recognize her, and apparently, they did. No one shot at the smaller vessel, and a sailor dropped a rope ladder over the side.

  Falrinn waved Anton toward the larger vessel. “Go collect our pay,” the smuggler said.

  “You’re both welcome aboard the galley,” Umara told him.

  “Thank you,
lass,” Falrinn answered, “but I’ll be fine down here.” Where, Anton thought, he’d have a better chance of escape if Kymas Nahpret proved less appreciative of their efforts than Umara had promised. Other than the unsavory reputation of Thayans in general and Red Wizards in particular, he saw no reason why that should be the case, but it didn’t surprise him that the gnome felt he’d taken enough chances for one day.

  It did surprise him that when the moment came to board the galley, Umara’s air of exhilaration fell away from her. She stopped smiling, took a long breath, and squared her shoulders in the manner of someone resignedly taking up a chore. But maybe she was simply wrapping herself in the dignity the crew expected of her.

  She climbed the rope ladder first, in the slightly hesitant manner of someone unaccustomed to them, and he followed. He reached the deck just in time to find her countrymen still standing at attention.

  The living ones, at any rate. Three, currently armed for battle like the rest, were slouching zombies with slack gray faces and a yellow sheen in their sunken eyes. By the essentially intact look of them, they hadn’t been dead, or undead, more than a tenday or two.

  Umara waved her hand, and, while casting some curious glances in Anton’s direction, most of the mariners returned to the task of making the galley shipshape after the tossing Evendur had given it. But a middle-aged man with a pocked, sour face and the last two fingers missing from his left hand approached the wizard.

  “Captain,” Umara said.

  “Lady Sir,” the officer replied. “Did you sink the pirates?”

  “With the help of this warrior”—she nodded to Anton—“and his friend.”

  “After we abandoned you in Westgate,” the captain said, a note of disgust in his voice.

  “We all have to follow orders,” Umara said. “Speaking of which, is Lord Kymas in his cabin?”

  “Yes,” the other Thayan said. “He rushed in there as soon as it became clear the pirates wouldn’t be bothering us anymore.”

  Anton wondered why. It was strange behavior for any commander in the wake of an engagement. But perhaps Kymas was a landlubber like Umara and realized that, though nominally in charge, he had nothing to contribute to the task of setting the galley to rights.