Hope exploded in my chest. I glanced sidelong, slyly, at the knot of men facing me, and gave especial attention to the heavyset one in red and yellow at the edge of the dock. “It would be very lucky for me,” I murmured, “if he were to lose his footing and fall off the dock.”
The forward movement of an impatient man behind him sent my target tottering into the ocean. I smiled, and shifted my gaze. “And if that lean weasel hit a weak spot in a board…”
The impatient man’s foot went through the dock, quickly followed by his body and most of his teeth.
My smile became generous.
I brought my sword-my very special Sword-up into a guard. “Come on, gentlemen. As luck would have it, I’m in the mood to take you all!” With the boldness of a berserker, I leaped over the missing board and stabbed out as two blades passed on either side of my body. Pulling my Sword free of one man’s shoulder, I parried the other, then slapped the flat of the blade across his ample belly. The two men fell to either side, leaving me a straight avenue to their comrades.
They broke, and I chased them with laughter. I pointed Coinspinner at one and imagined how happenstance might make him run blindly off the dock. Before he hit the water I shifted my attention to another, thinking to myself that it would be well within the vicissitudes of life for him to faint dead away in terror of me. His limp body tripped the man following close on his heels, tumbling that man into one yet further forward. They both crashed to the ground, narrowly missing the last man. It almost appeared that he would get away, but it was my lucky day, not his, so he suffered the misfortune of having his boot heel catch in the space between planks on the dock. This pitched him sideways and wrapped his middle around the upper end of the pilings that supported the dock.
Looking up as I strutted along the wharf, I saw a host of pirate reinforcements pouring out of the castle. I laughed nonchalantly and, somewhat disturbingly, much akin to the way Fabio had when I had vowed to avenge myself for the butter knife duel. These men, these luckless men were mine for the harvesting.
I watched the line of them scurrying down the narrow stairs carved into the side of the island’s stone face. I was moved to pity the fourth man in line as he took an unfortunate misstep in his haste and fell into the man in front of him. The fifth man vaulted him, but hit the second man, turning the whole front end of the procession into a roiling mass of jumbled bodies.
Dame Fortune smiled on me when another pirate caught his halberd at a narrow point in the trail, slamming running men into his back until the weapon’s haft gave way and they all spilled to the ground. Lady Luck seduced loose stones from the rocky face above to crash down among the defenders of Pirate Isle. As I advanced to the foot of the steps, I considered it the greatest of luck that the confident man picking his way down toward me suddenly suffered an anxiety attack over the lack of approval his father has shown for him as a child. Equally as fortunate, from my point of view, was that when he laid down his sword and began to weep another man slipped on the blade and bumped his way down a length of granite stairs on his tailbone.
My glee knew no bounds as I picked out one enemy after another for special treatment. One doomed fellow caught his spurs-bad luck for a pirate to be wearing them, it seems-on the tunic of a downed man and crashed head-first onto a landing. Another star-crossed corsair attracted the attention of a passing seahawk, rendering himself hors de combat as he dove for cover from its slashing talons.
“And you,” I noted as I pointed Coinspinner at an archer preparing to shoot me, “your bow will attract lightning…” I stopped because lightning struck me as too improbable and the rapid gathering of dark clouds on the horizon scared me. Coinspinner handled him itself when the bowstring snapped in mid-draw and the arrow tipped down to stick the man in the leg.
I mounted the steps like a conquering hero, graciously nodding in response to the whimpers for mercy rising from around my knees. “You are a Commodore now, Marlin,” I announced over my shoulder to the fisherman following me. “Into your care we commend these prisoners.” I made certain to keep my voice pleasant, yet infused it with an imperial tone in a synthesis that Fabio had never managed to produce.
“Aye, sir.”
The respect in his voice played like soft music in my ears. Never had anyone spoken to me with that hushed tone of awe. I’d heard it used many times when men and, oh, so many women spoke to or about Fabio, but until Marlin addressed me with it, I did not realize how much the veneration of Fabio had annoyed me. He, by accident of birth, by being tall and strong and handsome, was beloved by many and envied by even more.
Including me. I discovered. No more! I had earned through my deeds what he had been given by the gods. Marlin’s respect for me, the pirates’ cowering in fear, all this had been won by my actions. I deserved exaltation, and before I was through I would have accomplished enough that even Fabio would come to me on bended knee.
I slid Coinspinner home in my scabbard and stalked upward. Even with the Blade out of my hands, men pulled back away from me. Those who were still ambulatory, or at least conscious, bowed in my direction. They watched me cautiously, in case I chose to capriciously strike out at them. They knew they could not stand against me, and they wanted to provide me with no reason to demonstrate my superiority.
“Who dares assault my people so?”
Though the shout from the top of the stairs surprised me, I conquered my reaction and continued to pace up the last two steps to a landing before I looked up at him. I forced and suppressed a yawn, then folded my arms across my chest. “Your people?” I glanced about at the pirates huddling in fear below and above me. “Then you must be this scurvy sea-bandit, this wharf-rat in pantaloons who calls himself Red Rinaldo.” I echoed Fabio’s contempt for me in the tone I used to address him.
“And who is the fool who dares address me in so dismissive a manner?”
I wished I had a hat so I could doff it as part of my exaggerated bow. “I am Count Callisto of Fishkylle, Protector of the Duchy of Newgrave.” I wanted to make up another title or two to throw at him, but my mind betrayed me as I looked up at Red Rinaldo. He was tall enough and thick enough of limb to be an even bet in a wrestling match with a bear. I felt a familiar jolt of fear run through me, but I overcame it and thrust my jaw as far forward as it would go. “I have been sent to end your dominion of the seas and restore peace to the coast.”
“Have you now? You bear a sword, good. I will not sully my blade by slaying an unarmed man.” Rinaldo smiled as he drew the Sword he wore. Immediately I heard a slow, dull thudding sound reverberate down the stairway between us. The men crouched there looked at me and then back at him, many moaning, more slinking down past me and a few even going up and over the wall for the drop to the wharf. “This blade is Shieldbreaker, and none may stand before it.”
I knew he meant his comment to terrify me but it did not-quite. Actually, even in my exalted state, it did make me uneasy. The rhyme did say that Shieldbreaker shattered Swords, which I wanted to take as a generic use of the word. Still, all the translations and iterations of the verse did capitalize Sword, and that could be taken as a portent of dire difficulties on the horizon. Still, I refused to let my confidence in Coinspinner flag.
“That may be, Reedy Rinaldo, but I think you will have the misfortune of falling down the stairs and cracking your skull.” I stared at his feet as he began his descent, willing him to slip, or for granite stones to crumble, but nothing happened, save for the pounding thunder of his Sword growing louder and more swift.