by Shae Ford
Shamus glared at him.
“C’mon, mate — Lysander needs us. If it was you getting the stuffing punched out of your gut, he’d do whatever it took to spring you.”
The snickering grew into full-out laughter, at this. A few of the pirates whistled.
Meanwhile, Shamus’s face burned so hot that he could hardly think. “No, there’s no point in it! Midlan’s out there, and we haven’t got enough blades to face them. Even if we manage our way out of these chains, we’ll still be trapped.”
Jonathan sighed. “You heard the mage: they’re going to kill us all, anyways. And I don’t know about you lot, but I’d rather die with a blade in my hands than at the end of a chain.”
There was a rumble of agreement.
“So what do you say, mates? Are we going to hang around here and let our captain have all the fun, or are we going to get out and take a few of those tinheads with us?”
The pirates roared in answer. They grinned and thumped their fists against their burly chests.
Jonathan swung back to Shamus. “It’s all up to you, mate.”
“All right, fine. I’ll get your blasted pick,” he snapped. “But if you utter one word about this — and I mean it, fiddler — I’ll cast your bones into the hull of my next ship.”
“No worries, mate. Your secret is safe with me,” Jonathan said.
But the way he grinned said otherwise.
CHAPTER 31
Lowlanders
“You’re running out of time, pirate,” the mage hissed.
The floor danced before Lysander’s eyes. Wet warmth coated his lips and ran down his chin. He spat it away, watching as the blood soaked into the grain at his knees.
His lip had been busted at the middle. Though it stung him horribly, he forced himself to grin. “No, you’re the one running out of time — and options, I might add. You’ve burned me, shocked me, split me. What do you plan to do next? Skin me?”
The mage smiled. “No … we’re going to hang you. We’re going to leave your body dangling there for the next man we question — and I’m certain we’ll get through to him much quicker.”
Lysander’s grin faltered. His stomach bunched into a knot as his throat suddenly went dry. “What do you mean, the next man? There is no next man. I’ve already told you that all of my original crew perished in a tempest on our way back from the mountains. These men don’t know anything.”
“Do you honestly expect me to believe that?”
“Well, it was a monster of a tempest. We never saw it coming.”
“I’ve had the pleasure of torturing dozens of men in His Majesty’s name,” the mage said, eyes trailing around the darkened room. “A moment with you, and I knew you’d never utter a word about what happened to the Sovereign Five — even if you do know the truth, you aren’t giving it up.”
Lysander glared. “Why did you keep me here for so long, then?”
“To give us time to finish the gallows, of course.” The door opened, and the mage nodded to the man behind it. “Perfect. Right on schedule.”
Two sets of hands clamped around Lysander’s arms, pressing painfully against the raw burns the mage’s spells had left behind. But he hardly noticed — all of his worries turned elsewhere. “You’re wasting your breath. They’ll never talk to you!”
“Oh, one of them will,” the mage assured him as he followed with a smirk. “There’s always one.”
A muted red sky hung over Harborville — the last faint shred of a dying light. Soldiers milled about the village square, spears propped over their shoulders. They’d taken the houses for barracks and seized the shops. Makeshift camps filled the alleyways, packed to their seams with guards.
Lysander balked when they reached the heart of the square.
Bodies already littered the area around him. The sunken remains of men hung from stocks, several pairs of legs dangled from iron cages. A damp wind blew across it, waking the stench of rot and decay. The noise of the guards’ march startled the carrion birds from their feast. They took off in a flurry of indignant squawks but stayed circling overhead — each of their mirror-black eyes fixed eagerly upon Lysander.
He soon forgot about the reek and his stomach heaved against something else. The gallows steps became like a mountain before his eyes: they stretched and wavered at their tops, shrouded by a haze. He ground his heels into the cobblestone and shoved back against the guards. For one crazed moment, he clung to where he stood.
He knew that if his boots left the ground, they would never return — but dangle for an age inside the ruins of Harborville, his ribs a nest for carrion birds …
“This is my favorite part. I rather like to watch them struggle.”
The mage’s voice swam inside his ears, carried in by the echo of the guards’ laughter. And in that moment, Lysander came to his senses.
His heels struck the stairs hard. His legs shook slightly when he reached the gallows’ top. But by the time he turned to face the square, he’d locked them tight. Nothing would sag his shoulders or drop his chin — not even when he felt the noose scrape down his neck did he flinch. It pressed hard upon the bone above his chest until the hangman cinched it tight about his throat.
The mage slid to the front of the platform and propped his elbows on the floor before Lysander’s boots, watching in interest. “Any last words, pirate?”
Lysander kept his eyes on the red horizon, and a thought pulled a smile from his lips. “My father was hanged … and I plan to bear it with a grin, as he did.”
The hangman crammed a sack over his head, dulling the mage’s laughter. Lysander’s middle bunched tightly as he prepared himself for the fall. He sucked in panicked breaths, heaving against the moldy reek of the sack.
“On my count, hangman. Let’s see how long those legs twitch —”
Something like the shriek of a falling tree cut over the top of his words. Lysander jumped at the sound — and judging by the wave of rattling and swears, quite a few soldiers jumped as well.
“They’ve kicked in the front gate!” someone cried from behind him. He gasped and choked, his words jostled by his sprint. “They kicked it in! Knocked it off its bloody hinges!”
“What do you mean, they kicked it in?” the mage shouted back. “No one could’ve possibly kicked in that gate. It weighs more than —”
Screams filled the air where the gate had fallen. Lysander didn’t know what was happening, and he didn’t have time to wonder. This might be his only chance to escape.
He twisted against his bonds. If he could only see how they’d been tied, he might be able to squirm free. That blasted sack was in the way. He slung his head about, trying wriggle it off. But it felt as if the hangman had knotted it behind his neck.
The screams were fading fast. Lysander didn’t know what had come bursting through the gates, but he knew the soldiers of Midlan weren’t easily rattled. For the army to be shrieking the way it was, it must’ve been something horrible — and he had no intention of being around when it reached the square.
“Form ranks, hold your ground,” the mage cried. “I don’t care what sort of devilry comes around the corner — the first man who twitches will have his legs lopped off at the knee!”
Sweat poured down Lysander’s face and his head went light from the strain of trying to breathe the thickened air. Somehow, he managed to get one cord of the knot undone. He held it carefully, trying to lead it through another tangle …
“Blast it all!” he shouted when the end fell.
“Silence, pirate. I’ll deal with you just as soon as I’m finished here,” the mage snapped.
Lysander was about to retort when a chorus of howls drowned his voice.
It was a frightening thing — the call of a beast so bloodthirsty and powerful that not even Midlan stood a chance against it. And it made Lysander grin.
“I’d start running if I were you,” he warned.
His grin only widened when he heard the mage’s boots tromp up the s
teps. He flinched away from what he knew was the searing tip of the dagger. But the rope only stretched so far. When he reached its end, the mage pressed the red-hot metal tighter against his ribs.
“What do you know?” he hissed.
The dagger burned through Lysander’s tunic and stung his flesh. He gasped against the pain, but still managed to hold his grin. “You’ll see … don’t want to spoil … the surprise.”
Something hissed across the mage’s dagger, the start of a spell. Lysander had bared his teeth against what he knew would be a singeing pain when the noise came to a halt.
Everything had gone quiet: the soldiers’ screams, the rattling of their gold-tinged armor. Even the howling ended. When Lysander strained his ears, he thought he could hear the faintest march of steps — an army of feet clad in soft boots led by a pair that clomped its heels into the cobblestone.
The mage laughed. “Mountain rats. They fight like savages, so you’d better kill them quickly. I’ll take care of the leader,” he said as he thumped down the stairs. Then he raised his voice: “You’ve made a deadly mistake, trespassing on His Majesty’s land — and you’ll be made to pay for it.”
“I’ll tell you exactly what I told the men at the gate: I don’t carry coin. So you can either step aside, or we’ll cut through your middle,” a woman’s voice replied. “It makes me no difference.”
“Oh, good Gravy,” Lysander muttered through his grin. “If that’s who I think it is, you’d better let her through.”
“Shut it, pirate,” the mage snapped. Then he yelled again: “The King’s servants yield to no one, least of all a swarm of mountain rats.”
With a roar, he loosed his spell. Lysander heard it hiss through the air, heard the whoosh as it struck a body on the other side of the square. And for half a moment, there was silence once again.
Then the mage began to scream. “Whisperers! Move — get out of my way!”
Another spell blasted up as the mage tried to escape. It knocked out the gallows’ front legs and the platform rocked forward, sending Lysander to his knees. Bits of armor clanged onto the ground all around him. Howls pierced the air.
He listened to the mage’s panicked steps as he tried to race away. There was the sound of some object ripping through the air, a woman’s furious cry, and then a fleshy thunk brought the mage’s sprint to a halt.
The battle ended quickly: the howling warriors silenced Midlan with a bone-crushing attack, laughing as they fought. Lysander grimaced when he heard another thunk from where the mage’s body had fallen.
“I hate mages,” the woman growled. “The only way to kill them is to cut off their heads.”
“Wisdom indeed, my Thane,” a man purred in reply.
“How many times have I got to tell you, Silas? I’m not —”
“Actually, mages die in as many ways as anybody else,” Lysander called. The floor beneath him creaked dangerously as the broken gallows shifted. One wrong move, and he might fall through. “Ah, would you mind cutting me free?”
He flinched when something struck the rope above him, and the sudden slack dropped him onto his face.
“Be careful, Lydia,” the woman said as she clomped up the stairs. “We don’t know what’s under there.”
“Don’t you remember me?”
“Well …” her voice came a mere inch from his nose, “you do sound a bit familiar.”
“It’s me — Captain Lysander.”
“The pirate?”
“Yes. Now if you’ll kindly take this sack off my head —”
“You didn’t mean to wear it?”
“No! Why would I put a sack over my head?”
“I don’t understand anything you lowlanders do. It’s been one strange sight after the next since we left the mountains.”
Lysander blinked when the sack was torn away, and he found himself staring into the face of a wildwoman. Paint adorned her features and stained her lips. Her short crop of bright red hair seemed to almost stand on end as her eyes wandered over him.
“What are you doing here, pirate?”
“Well, it’s a rather long —”
“Taste blood, tinheads!”
“Aye — hold on, Captain! We’re coming to set you free!”
The pirates’ furious charge ended abruptly when they nearly collided with the wildmen. From the looks of things, they’d managed to raid the armory: they’d retrieved their cutlasses — and quite a few other weapons, besides.
Jonathan’s bare feet slapped to a stop, and his mouth fell open. “Pig’s feathers … what are you lot doing here?”
The wildmen hailed him with grins and bloodied weapons.
Shamus, on the other hand, looked far less pleased. “I can’t believe it. A few moments more, and these fellows would’ve sprung us. Now I’ve got no pride and a memory I can’t put back.”
“Oh, quit your moaning. It wasn’t all that —”
The wildmen erupted in laughter when Jonathan turned — revealing the torn-out seat of his breeches.
Gwen rolled her eyes. “Lowlanders,” she muttered.
*******
Apparently, Midlan hadn’t quite managed to capture the ships that’d been stuck at the docks. “Some of the fisherfolk took off with them,” one of the villagers said when Lysander asked. “They were out before dawn and saw Midlan coming over the hill. So they grabbed as many ships as they could manage and sunk the rest. Left all of us merchants here to rot.”
Lysander tried not to think about the fact that Anchorgloam might well be sunk. Instead, he focused himself on trying to find the pirates.
They found Perceval’s men locked inside a blacksmith’s shop, along with a few merchants from the Valley. There was a company of soldiers hiding inside a row of tents — and the wildmen dealt with them handily. Lysander had started to lose hope when he heard Jonathan yelling from one of the jewelry shops.
“Hello, mates! How about a bit of fresh air, eh?”
A familiar chorus of cheers sent Lysander running. He slapped the pirates on their backs as they climbed out of the cellar. Several of them had full pockets, and they jingled suspiciously as they walked.
“We didn’t know how long we’d be caged in, so we thought we might as well do a bit of looting on the way down. A bad idea, locking pirates up in a jeweler’s shop,” one of them said with a wink.
Lysander wasn’t the least bit surprised. “I’m just glad you’re all —”
“Well, it’s about blasted time!” a man cried from behind him.
Lysander turned and was more than a little shocked to see Alders crawling out of the cellar — and he was more than a little furious when he saw what he wore. “Is that one of our tunics?”
“It’s all right, Captain. We agreed to hide him, and he agreed to call our ships back the moment we escaped. They’ve got a signal worked out with the fisherfolk.”
Lysander found that rather hard to believe. “You’d better not be lying, Alders.”
He glared as he stood. “I’m not. Do you think this is the first time Harborville’s been invaded? Where do you think the bandits go, once they’ve been kicked out of Crow’s Cross? The ships are in a cove not far from here. They’ll return at my signal.”
Lysander grabbed Alders around the tunic and thrust him out the door with a growl. “Then you’d better get signaling.”
The pirates seemed thrilled to see the their companions from the mountains. They dug into their pockets and fished out handfuls of jewels, which they passed around the wildmen.
Gwen frowned at the necklace Jonathan pressed into her hand: a golden chain with a teardrop ruby hanging from its middle. She held it out as if it might bite her. “What’s this for?”
“What do you mean, what’s it for? It’s your share of the loot,” he said, nudging her with an elbow.
She wrinkled her nose at it. “But what do I do with loot?”
“Wear it, trade it, give it to somebody else — it’s yours to use however you want,” Jon
athan called as he loped away.
Gwen glared at it a moment longer before she held it out to Silas. “Here. Do something with this.”
“Yes, my Thane.”
“I’m not a Thane anymore,” she growled as he took it.
Lysander couldn’t hide his surprise. “You’re not?”
“No. My brother’s better suited to rule our people. He’s far wiser than me. I only wish I’d seen it sooner.” Her face went dark for a moment before she straightened up. “I’ve agreed to stay on as his Warchief, though. He gave me a small army and sent me to find the Wright — we need his help.”
At a snap of her fingers, Silas drew a small, worn book from the pocket of his breeches. Lysander recognized it immediately as the book Kael used to read. “Where did you —?”
“We know he lives here,” Gwen said, pointing at the map. “We just don’t know how to get there.”
“That’s my village. I’ll be happy to show you the way, lass,” Shamus called.
“Yes, as soon as we’re done at the chancellor’s castle, we’ll take you straight to Copperdock,” Lysander said. He didn’t even bother to hide his grin: with the wildmen’s help, things with the council might just work out.
Silas edged in next to Gwen. “Shall I let your wild ones know, my Thane?”
“Yes.” She grabbed him roughly by the collar. “And I’m not going to tell you again, cat. Don’t call me a Thane.”
Silas didn’t look at all concerned. As his glowing eyes swept across her face, they seemed to trace every dip and swirl of her paint. His hands slid up and when they’d gone, he’d somehow clasped the teardrop necklace around her throat.
Gwen frowned as he slipped away, a curious red arched behind her paint. “What are you looking at, pirate?” she said when she caught Lysander watching.
He thought it best to feign indifference. “Nothing. Nothing at all. I was just wondering when those blasted ships are going to come in.”
He snatched Alders by the hair as he tried to slink away and twisted hard. “Ah! Any moment, now — they’ll be in at any moment!” he cried.
