by Mel Odom
The skink climbed down Wick, careful of where he trod. “If you don’t mind,” Rohoh said, “I’ll manage on my own from here.” The lizard was somehow miraculously clean of foulness.
“Come on,” Bulokk said. “We’ve got an escape to attend.” He trotted back up the mineshaft.
Wick took a moment and kicked as much of the dung from his feet as he could. He wished he had a stick to clean out between his toes, but he didn’t. When he saw the dwarves leaving, he finally gave up and ran after them, avoiding the Burrower trail that had been left in the creature’s wake.
Farther down the mineshaft, the goblinkin shrieked in terror, but the shrieks came less and less often.
They gained the front entrance without further incident, but there were ten goblinkin standing guard.
“Axes!” Bulokk yelled.
Immediately, Adranis, Hodnes, and Drinnick formed on Bulokk. The goblinkin tried to stand their ground, but they went down before the dwarven axes like wheat before a flail. The battle was short and vicious, with no mercy given to the goblinkin. Rassun and the other dwarf took on any that managed to escape the whirling death that was the dwarven axes. By the time they reached the entrance, all of them were covered in the blood of their foes.
Stumbling over the bodies of the fallen goblinkin, Wick peered outside. It took a moment for his eyes to adapt to the night.
“To the docks!” Bulokk roared, taking off at once. “They’ve made it around to the goblinkin ship!”
Glancing down, Wick saw that the escapees and the rest of Bulokk’s warriors had made it around to the stone pier. A massive battle was taking place on the pier. Not all of the goblinkin had abandoned their posts to pursue the fleeing slaves.
Looking up, Wick saw that a number of dead goblinkin littered the stone steps leading up to the ridge. More of them had fallen to the hard-packed ground.
Wick followed the dwarves down the steps even though it meant running into the battle. He definitely didn’t want to remain standing at the mine entrance by himself in case any goblinkin survived the Burrower’s attack and decided to come out. Or if there were other groups that hadn’t yet gone down before the Burrower.
Several of the loose rocks Wick had dumped down the steps remained and he had to be careful. Still, he slipped twice and ended up barely keeping himself from going over the edge, and he had new sets of bruises to show for his efforts.
When he reached the bottom of the steps, he was even with the dwarves. He was faster than they were, more sure-footed in spite of the falls he’d taken, and unburdened by armor.
Wick guessed that most of the prisoners had made good on their escape, because most of them appeared to be with Bulokk’s warriors. They used weapons they’d taken along the way or picked up when they arrived at the harbor. Some of them threw rocks into the milled mass of goblinkin trying to keep the dwarves from reaching the anchored ships.
Within a few steps, the skink leaped onto Wick’s leg and slithered up. At first Wick had started to beat the skink away, thinking that one of the dead goblinkin around him wasn’t quite as dead as he’d looked. Then he recognized the lizard and relaxed a little.
“I guess maybe I don’t stink so bad now,” Wick said.
“I’m too short to wade through this makeshift battlefield,” Rohoh replied. “I might get squished.”
Maybe that wouldn’t be a bad thing, Wick thought briefly, then chided himself for being so small-minded. Despite the skink’s harsh nature, finding Master Oskarr’s battle-axe would have been almost impossible without the creature given the logistics of the search.
Bulokk and his mineshaft team enjoyed a brief but telling advantage when they raced out of the darkness and slammed into the goblinkin warriors from behind without warning. The goblinkin went down in pieces, felled again and again by the dwarven battle-axes.
“Wick!” Bulokk roared, using his name for once instead of calling him halfer. “Get them women an’ children to one of them ships! Adranis, you an’ Drinnick give him a hand!” He was in the thick of the battle, standing ankle-deep in the incoming tide, scattering dead goblinkin in all directions. But still they came. The dwarf looked every inch the warrior, as at home on the battlefield as he would be at a blacksmith’s anvil.
Wick looked around and spotted the women and children huddled in a mass on the other side of the stone pier. He ran to them. “Quickly!” he cried. “We’ve got to get you onto a ship! You have to hurry if you’re going to have any chance at all!”
“It’s a halfer!” a woman grumbled. “I’m not going to listen to a halfer!”
“Ye will!” Adranis thundered. “Elsewise we’ll leave ye here fer them goblinkin to lock up again!” He bristled angrily. “Now ye get on up here an’ do as he says!”
The woman climbed to the top of the stone pier. Yelling over the confusion, Wick organized a line that helped the weaker adults and smaller children to the stone pier where they were temporarily out of the way of the brunt of the battle.
Looking over his shoulder, Wick saw that the goblinkin had already reorganized, taking a step back to put both dwarven fronts ahead of them again. Now they were once more pressing their superior numbers. Worse than that, the human archers onboard the black ship had decided to weigh into the fight as well. Their shafts flew, but they seemed to be indiscriminate about whether they hit dwarves or goblinkin. Both were wounded and killed in the fusillades, and confusion swept across the combatants.
Once he had the women and children behind him, Wick led them to the goblinkin ship anchored on the other side of the pier from the battle. Arrows sped toward them as well, sometimes thunking into the stone pier and sometimes hitting the goblinkin ship on the battle side. Either way, the human archers from the black vessel were aware of the attempted escape by ship.
What are they waiting on? Wick wondered as he helped the escapees on board. “Do any of you have sailing experience?” he yelled.
“Aye,” an elderly human man said. He was long in years as humans went, with gray hair flowing down past his shoulders. Arthritis or old injury had rendered him largely infirm, and Wick knew the old man had probably only been days away from death by overwork or by execution once the goblinkin deemed his work wasn’t enough to justify whatever meager amount they were feeding him to keep him barely alive. “I’ve sailed afore.”
“You’re the captain,” Wick said, addressing the man like he would a Novice or a Third Level Librarian back at the Vault of All Known Knowledge. “Until you’re relieved of command.”
“Aye,” the man replied, and immediately straightened his shoulders with the acceptance of the responsibility.
“Get a crew together and get us squared away,” Wick called out. “I want to be able to leave as soon as we’re able.”
“You probably know as much about sailing as he does,” Rohoh said.
“Probably,” Wick admitted. “But most humans, dwarves, and elves would rather take orders from a human or a dwarf before they would an elf or a dweller.” Especially one covered in Burrower dung that had once been goblinkin.
“Aye,” the human replied enthusiastically. Instantly, he started separating the escapees into groups, those with sailing experience and those without.
When the last of the women, children, and elderly had been loaded aboard the ship, Wick glanced back at the dwarven front. Bulokk and his warriors were starting to crumble now. Two more of them were in the water, unmoving. Another had three arrows jutting from his chest but somehow still found the strength and courage to continue fighting.
“Bulokk!” Wick yelled.
Some of the human archers had quit the ship now, coming ashore in a longboat pulled by steady stroke. A tall man with a moon-white face under his bloodred cowl stood in the stern. He held a staff beside him.
That, Wick decided, doesn’t look good. He scampered to the end of the stone pier, calling Bulokk’s name again and again. But the dwarves couldn’t disengage without exposing their backs to the goblinkin. Wic
k knew they would never make the distance to the ship.
The longboat with the humans landed.
“Back!” the man in the bloodred cowl roared.
Most of the goblinkin pulled away at the command, but there were some that didn’t.
The man in the bloodred cowl waved. Instantly, the humans lifted their bows, drew and fired in one smooth motion. The arrows cut through the goblinkin and dwarves alike. Seven goblinkin and two dwarves went down. Bulokk and two other dwarves remained standing, their bodies pierced by the arrows.
“Give me the axe,” the man in the bloodred cowl ordered.
Bulokk drew a throwing knife from somewhere on his body and flicked it forward. The blade caught the moonslight as it whirled end over end.
The man in the bloodred cowl lifted a hand. The throwing knife stopped in midair less than an arm’s length from the man. Casually, he flicked a hand and the knife shot back along the path it had come.
The blade took Bulokk high in the chest even as the dwarf strove to avoid the unexpected attack. Before he could recover, the man in the bloodred cowl gestured again, flinging his fingers wide as if flicking away a bothersome pest. In response, Bulokk went flying backward.
At another gesture, Master Oskarr’s battle-axe suddenly flew upward. Bulokk tried to hang onto the weapon, blood streaming down him from his various wounds, but it was no use. Ultimately whatever magic the red-cowled man wielded was stronger than Bulokk’s grip.
The battle-axe flew to the red-cowled man’s hand. A grin split the moon-white face. Without a word, the wizard turned to go. The human archers closed ranks behind him and sent a few more shafts into the goblinkin and the dwarves.
Seeing that made Wick’s heart sick as he took cover behind the stern of the goblinkin ship. But his keen vision also spied the identical tattoos under the right eyes of the archers: It was the black image of an unfolded straight razor overlaid with crimson lips.
No thieves’ guild wears identifying marks, Wick thought. Then he remembered, from a book he’d borrowed from Hralbomm’s Wing rather than a nonfiction source, that some thieves’ guilds did mark their members. They were members of the elite, the special thieves that victims never saw and kings hired for clandestine missions or revenge.
But why would a thieves’ guild be interested in Master Oskarr’s battle-axe? How had they known where to find it? Questions tumbled through Wick’s frantically jumping mind.
The goblinkin lay low while the thieves’ guild members once more boarded their longboat and began rowing back to the black ship.
“C’mon, halfer,” Adranis said at Wick’s side. “We gotta go rescue them what’s still alive.”
Although he didn’t want to, Wick went with Adranis and Drinnick. Hodnes brought up the rear. Wick couldn’t sit idly by and watch the dwarves get killed even though he wanted to hide in fear for his own life.
They ran to the end of the stone pier and to the dwarves, humans, and elves that still stood and could wield weapons. Wick ran to Bulokk, who lay on his back with arrows and a knife sticking out of him. The little Librarian felt certain the dwarven leader would be dead.
Instead, Bulokk was in shock from his wounds and whatever mystical force had been used against him. His breath came in gasps as blood leaked out of him.
Even if we manage to get him out of here, Wick thought, he’s not going to live. But Wick couldn’t give up on Bulokk any more than the dwarf could quit laboring for his next breath.
Stepping behind the dwarf, Wick grabbed Bulokk’s shirt and started trying to pull him toward the ship as arrows struck the ground around them. Having no other choice, Wick unhooked Bulokk’s shield and stood guard over the fallen dwarf like any shieldmate would on a battlefield.
But Wick’s thoughts were his own. Please don’t let me throw up, he pleaded as his stomach swirled threateningly. Heroes don’t throw up on other heroes. I know I’m no hero, but I don’t want to throw up on Bulokk. I’m already covered in Burrower dung—the worst kind of Burrower dung at that—and it just wouldn’t be fair to be so inept.
Slowly, inexorably, the goblinkin line advanced. Behind them, the black ship lifted its sails and raised anchor. It shifted, rolling on the tide, and got the wind behind it, heading into the fogbank that blew over the Rusting Sea.
Then, without warning, dwarven war horns trumpeted across the bay. The sound gave pause to the warriors battling on the beach.
Hunkered down behind Bulokk’s shield, the wounded dwarf’s breathing rasping in his ears, Wick gazed out to sea and saw the black ship slide right by One-Eyed Peggie as the pirate ship came into the harbor under full sail. The skull and crossbones fluttered under the topgallant.
“Pirates!” the goblinkin shouted.
Not just pirates, Wick thought with pride. Those are pirates of the Blood-Soaked Sea. They don’t come any more fierce!
One-Eyed Peggie came about smartly, dropping anchor and sail less than fifty paces away, evidently taking her mark from the goblinkin ships floating at the pier. A longboat filled with dwarves smacked into the sea as a few of the pirates with bow skills feathered the goblinkin with a few shafts.
“Row!” Hallekk’s lusty voice rolled across the sea. “Row, ye seadogs, or by the Old Ones I’ll dangle yer corpses from the ’yards an’ watch the gulls strip the flesh from yer bones!”
Wick knew that the harsh words were more for benefit of the onlookers than for the crew. Hallekk and the pirates wouldn’t hesitate to give everything they had to rescue him.
Or maybe Master Oskarr’s axe, Wick had to admit.
“Pirates?” Bulokk whispered weakly.
“Not pirates,” Wick assured the dwarf. “You’re among friends, Bulokk. Hallekk and his bunch, why, they’ll set things to rights soon enough.”
Bulokk’s eyes closed, and for a moment Wick thought he’d lost the dwarf. Then Bulokk whispered, “That man took Master Oskarr’s axe.”
“I know,” Wick said, watching as goblinkin dropped from bowshots and tried to get reorganized. “But we’re not finished with that either, I’ll wager.” Craugh won’t let this go.
In the next moment, the two longboats bearing Hallekk and the pirates arrived. The dwarven pirates jumped boat at once and ripped their axes free, wading into the goblinkin with a ferocity that sparked a second wind from those Bulokk had called in to battle.
Horrified but mesmerized at the same time, Wick watched Hallekk walk into the thick of it. The big dwarf whooped and hollered in a properly piratical fashion as his axe lashed out again and again. The crew of One-Eyed Peggie hated slavers, too.
In a short time, the goblinkin line broke. Survivors ran screaming for the stone steps. Hallekk and the pirates pursued them all the way to the ridge, managing to catch a few of their opponents, killing them outright or sending them plunging into broken heaps at the bottom of the cliff.
“Just stay with me,” Wick told Bulokk. “Everything’s going to be all right.” He took the dwarf’s hand and held on tight, hoping for the best because his grip was stronger than Bulokk’s. “Just stay with me.”
EPILOGUE
The Razor’s Kiss
“Wick.”
Certain that he had to be dreaming that voice and that no one would be trying to wake him, Wick rolled over and nearly fell out of his hammock. He caught himself just in time, his heart threatening to explode in his chest. Angry and embarrassed, he turned to whoever had called for him.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded. “Don’t you realize that I’ve nearly been killed several times in the last few days and—” He stopped at once when he saw who the offender was.
Scowling, Craugh stood in the small crew’s room and looked at Wick.
I’m going to be a toad, Wick thought morosely. Still, he couldn’t go down without pleading for his life. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was you.”
“Of course you didn’t,” Craugh said. “You’ve barely had enough sleep to know anything.”
Wick l
ooked at the wizard, waiting for the jaws of the trap to snap closed on tender flesh. What would it feel like to be turned into a toad? “I haven’t. I didn’t mean to—”
“Get out of bed,” Craugh said, waving impatiently. “We need to talk.”
Wait, Wick thought heatedly. Just because you haven’t turned me into a toad doesn’t mean … doesn’t mean … He sighed and threw the blanket off. Doesn’t mean you won’t if I make you angry enough.
“Slops has a meal prepared, I believe,” Craugh said. “Get dressed and let’s go eat.”
Holding the blanket tight around him, Wick took out a fresh set of clothes from the sea chest under his hammock. He looked at Craugh. “Uh, would you mind waiting outside?”
“Why?”
“I’m going to change clothes.”
Exasperated, Craugh rolled his eyes up. “Old Ones help me. In addition to being a bungler, he’s also modest.” He let himself out and closed the door.
“I’m not a bungler,” Wick called to the wizard’s departing back.
“We didn’t get Master Oskarr’s axe,” Craugh growled. “I’d say that was fairly bungled.”
“I found the axe, though.” Wick dressed quickly. “That’s what you sent me there for.”
“I didn’t send you to find it so you could let the enemy have it,” Craugh responded.
True, Wick told himself. “I didn’t even know there was an enemy. If I’d known, I might have handled things differently.” Although I don’t know how that would have been possible.
“There is. And they’re still out there. That’s one of the things we have to talk about.”
Wick opened the door and joined the wizard. Together, they went topside and entered the galley. The smell of fresh, warm biscuits and firepear jelly, sweet butter, bacon, sausage, pepper gravy, and journey cakes made Wick’s mouth water in anticipation.
Few people were in the galley so they took seats by themselves. Wick piled his plate high, but discovered that his engineering lacked by comparison with Craugh. They dug in and ate without talking for several long, satisfying minutes.
