Others unpacked the crates while Ping and Helgre examined the goods. The crew was cheerful. The slaughter was over, and there would be a generous bonus for all when Ping sold the booty to his contacts on the north shores of the Moonsea. In the meantime, there was food and drink for all, and their captain was pleased with their work.
Gareth stood, stretching his sore shoulders, and watched the merchantman burn. He’d had more than his share of fighting and lifting loads this day. Ivor joined him as a spurt of flame burst from the merchantman’s side, and the drifting vessel listed heavily to one side.
“Why waste a good vessel when we could strip her of identifying marks and sell her?” Ivor kept his eyes on the doomed ship, as if he were speaking to himself.
“Each ship has her idiosyncrasies,” said Gareth, keeping his voice indifferent. “Ping knows she would be identified eventually.”
“But we would be long gone with a decent purse before that happened. And why kill crew and passengers who could be ransomed, or sold far south in the Beastlands, or anywhere the slave trade flourishes?”
Was it his imagination, or was there anger beneath Ivor’s carefully modulated voice?
“It does seem wasteful,” Gareth said, blinking against the ash in the air as the prow of the merchantman began her long, inexorable slide beneath the surface of the Moonsea.
Two tendays later, Gareth Jadaren didn’t have time for moralizing as he blinked the blood out of his eyes. The cut across his forehead smarted, but he’d been lucky. The sellsword had slipped in the gore on the surface of the deck, and the blow meant to split his skull glanced sideways. Gareth had skewered the hapless sellsword as he lay sprawled and stunned, and his sword still quivered in the wooden deck, piercing the mercenary through the torso.
Gareth wiped away another handful of blood, looking around for something to staunch the bleeding. His late opponent wore a jaunty twist of a scarf around his neck that wasn’t too grimy, so Gareth bent and flicked it away with two fingers, wadding the scarf against the wound. It stung and would leave a scar, but that was of little consequence.
He glanced about the deck of the Starbound. The smell of char was heavy, and small flakes of burned canvas floated in the air. The remaining masts were blackened, and the mainmast lay across the deck, embers glowing along its split-asunder length. Here and there the remaining defenders of the Starbound fought in fierce pockets of resistance, but they were outnumbered and couldn’t last long.
Ivor loped across the deck toward Gareth. The long knife he preferred for close work was clotted with gore to the hilt; he must have been on mop-up duty. Gareth swallowed the acid that rose in his throat at the sight. He shouldn’t let it affect him-he knew he wouldn’t long survive his stint on the Orcsblood if he was maiden-squeamish about slaughter. And he did mean to survive and accumulate coin enough to start an honest-well, mostly honest-business far from here, enough to protect him and his from the brutality of such as Ping, and those whom Ping succeeded in making like himself.
Ivor pointed at the bow, where Ping stood surveying the carnage.
“Ping wants us to check belowdecks,” said Ivor, catching his breath. He surveyed the man Gareth had affixed to the deck.
“Lucky blow,” he said in approval, and kneeled to wipe his blade on the mercenary’s trousers. From the bow, Ping caught Gareth’s eye and pointed at a spot on the deck to Gareth’s right. Gareth glanced that way and saw a trapdoor that had been flung open, with the rope that secured it snaked carelessly across the decking. Ping crooked his fingers and thrust his palm down. His meaning was clear.
Gareth nodded. Ivor sheathed his knife and drew a short sword, and Gareth pulled his weapon from his late opponent. Together they approached the trapdoor cautiously.
Ivor pointed at the deck. Dark splotches led directly to the gloomy entrance. When they glanced down into the dark maw, they saw fresh drops of blood soaked into the worn wooden steps leading below.
Gareth ventured down, making sure his booted foot was secure on one step before he attempted another. Four steps down he gestured to Ivor to follow. He heard the steps creak under the Turmish man’s weight. Halfway down he paused, blinking to accustom himself to the dim light of the ship’s interior. Squinting, he surveyed the hold and the various-size boxes piled along the walls. The only sound he could hear was Ivor’s regular breathing behind him. He sidestepped the rest of the way down, making it to the slippery floor without incident.
“Nobody here,” he whispered over his shoulder to Ivor.
He saw the flash out of the corner of his eye. On pure instinct, he ducked, hitting the slimy floor, froglike, as a long, snaky stretch of blue-green lightning seared the space where his head had been. Ivor yelled something inarticulate as the step he was standing on shattered and he fell the rest of the way into the hold, landing with an oath heavily beside Gareth.
Something moved in the shadows before them. Sword extended and poised, Gareth rose quickly, knees bent and ready to move. Ivor was still cursing and trying to untangle himself from his weapon. An odd smell, not quite like a campfire and not quite like an alchemist’s shop, but evocative of them both, lingered in the musty air. No doubt it was due to the strange electrical attack.
Between two tall boxes a pale shadow shifted, then advanced into the dim light that the hatch overhead admitted. Half-light illuminated a fierce, feral face. At first Gareth thought it was an elf, or perhaps a massively overgrown gnome. But this creature was far more gaunt than any elf or creature of the Feywild. Its sunken cheeks and high, sharp cheekbones gave it a predatory look, and its nose was reduced to an abbreviated bony ridge with two elongated slits for nostrils. Its huge black eyes glittered with desperation and hatred. One hand was clutched tight to its chest, as if it had been injured, and the other was stretched toward Gareth, the thin fingers impossibly long, the fingernails curved and sharp as claws. It stared at him, hissing in pain or, with his luck, preparing another deadly, electric blast.
Its face was tattooed all over with what looked like scrolling runes, scattered throughout with dots and spirals-or perhaps those were its natural markings. Similar markings decorated its tattered robe, gray-blue in the dim light.
With a quick, supple movement, it thrust its hand toward him. Gareth threw himself to his left, as much to draw fire away from Ivor as to avoid the blast himself. He staggered against the interior wall, scraping his cheek on the rough wood, as another bolt of snakelike lightning surged from the extended palm and crackled past his ear. The singed-air smell intensified, and an electric prickle tingled unpleasantly through his bones.
The tattooed creature moaned with the effort of spellcasting and bowed its head from pain or weariness. Gareth caught a glimpse of long pointed ears, exaggerated as a lynx’s with what looked like a frill along the outer edge. He took advantage of its distraction to sidestep away from the wall, jumping surefootedly over bags scattered across the floor as he did. His cornered adversary must have taken refuge belowdecks to hide or protect some object of value. Gareth had seen none of those distinctive blue-green bolts in the fighting on the deck.
The glossy, insect black eyes in the elaborately scrolled face turned back to him, and there was no mistaking its expression of malevolence. It raised a sinewy arm in its shredded blue silk sleeve toward him again, and Gareth could feel the air around him contract and flex, as if it were made of tiny components that had become charged with static electricity.