“Shut your mouth! You call out to the guards, and those’ll be your last words.”
Leesil grabbed the shirtless man and pulled him back.
“You lead ... take fighters,” Leesil ordered him, and then gestured to the women and children in their small group. “They stay middle. Magiere and I ... rear, fight guards who follow.”
Dirken nodded, gripping his pickax.
“But you must run,” Magiere got out. “We cannot ... protect you all, so run to the city guards.”
A half-starved woman blinked at her. “City guards? In Drist? There ain’t no such thing here, and anyway, holding us here ain’t no crime. The captain’s got papers on all of us.”
Dirken nodded, turning his dark eyes on Magiere. “I’ve been here before. There’s no law in Drist. This ship was taking us all up to the Northlander coast to work in some shipyard. We’re indentured workers, not slaves, so it’s legal. Even if there was a constabulary, they’d turn us back over to the captain.”
Leesil went quiet at this, and Magiere knew his desperation was growing again. Something else Dirken said bothered her enough to clear her mind a little more.
The Northlanders that she’d met used only longboats. Why bring so many to build longboats? It didn’t make sense. Unless these slaves were to build something else, something that required a good deal more labor, in a true shipyard?
Leesil appeared to waver, looked to her, and switched to Belaskian. “I’m not sure about this now. I won’t break them out just to get them killed or imprisoned again. Where can we send them?”
Magiere didn’t know, but she wasn’t leaving anyone who wanted out. Quickly she counted those willing to try to escape.
“We only have fourteen,” she answered, “and Wynn said our hotel is safe.”
“For anyone who can pay,” Leesil answered bitterly, and then he grew too quiet again.
Magiere knew he was scheming and, desperate as he was, that could be trouble.
“What about the Cloud Queen?” he said. “Bassett may be hard, but he’s no slaver. Maybe he’d offer them a short refuge, hide them in his hold until the next port.”
This was possible, but Magiere still felt trapped in not having a better answer. The scant light above, shining down upon Leesil, suddenly grew slightly brighter.
Magiere barely looked up when ...
“Down!” Leesil shouted.
She caught a glimpse of a glint before he shoved several prisoners aside. A thrum in the air caught in her ears, and then a shriek of pain pulled her eyes. An arrow stuck out from the leg of a half-starved woman, who crumpled right beside her.
“Hide!” Magiere called, backing away from the ladder. Any who weren’t chained or tied scattered as she stepped in front of the wounded woman.
Leesil was nowhere to be seen.
Falchion in hand, Magiere crouched, reached back for the woman, and then heard someone else behind her drag the woman off. Her hand slipped up to the small of her back, and she pulled out the white metal dagger.
Unless she stayed near the ladder, there wouldn’t be enough room to use her sword, but she could be easily picked off from above. She sidestepped, inching around the open crate of tools, and crouched lower.
At another thrum, she shifted left.
An arrow suddenly quivered in the edge of the crate’s opened top. She looked up, her sight widening.
The hatch’s cover had been fully pulled back, and the silhouette of a form knelt up there. It took less than a blink for Magiere to make out its cowl and a matching wrap over the face of the archer.
That anmaglâhk drew back another nocked arrow.
Magiere couldn’t scale the ladder quickly enough. She and Leesil were trapped and pinned down—and where was he? She couldn’t turn her eyes away to look for him. All she could do was wait for the bowstring’s thrum and charge the ladder whether she was hit or not.
The light above on deck suddenly dimmed ... as if something passed between the archer and a lantern.
The anmaglâhk hesitated. Perhaps his head turned, though she couldn’t be certain, as the shadows within the man’s cowl deepened in that instant.
A darker shadow enveloped the anmaglâhk’s head.
She made out an arm that wrapped around his neck.
The anmaglâhk’s neck and head slammed against the hatch’s edge, and a muffled crack echoed in the hold, but the shadow that had appeared above him continued to drop.
Both forms passed through the open hatch and fell through the dark air. Magiere watched in silence as one form landed lightly in a crouch like a man of immense height. Magiere saw amber eyes inside his hood ... and that one was looking out at her through bars of scars on his face.
Then a body slammed upon the hold’s floor. The archer lay still, with his head twisted at an unnatural angle.
“One,” was all that Brot’an whispered as he rose before Magiere.
Prisoners began screaming and scattering amid the sound of strained chains and ropes.
“On deck, now!” Brot’an ordered. “Chap is outnumbered.”
Magiere heard snarling above, and Leesil had reappeared, already scrambling up the ladder. She rushed after him with no time to ponder Brot’an’s sudden appearance.
Dänvârfij saw victory within reach for but a moment.
Her team had seized the Bell Tower and eliminated any crew on the deck. They prepared to slip into hiding to search for the quarry, and Tavithê had pulled back a partially opened canvas atop a cargo hatch.
He had looked to her and nodded, and she had known they had their quarry—and so quickly. She had nodded back, and he aimed and fired, intending to wound for easier capture.
Shouts rose out of the hold as he drew another arrow.
It should have ended there, with either Léshil or Magiere incapacitated and the other unable to save either of them.
An enraged snarl rose somewhere behind Dänvârfij. Before she could turn, Én’nish cried out. Savage snaps, scraping claws, and shattering wood rolled across the deck just before ...
A shadow fell through the light of a lantern dangling beyond Tavithê.
Dänvârfij never finished her turn.
Tavithê was slammed headfirst against the hatch’s edge. She lunged for him and then heard his neck snap. He fell from sight beneath the form of an immense shadow, and both vanished into the hold.
Dänvârfij’s heart seemed to stop. She wanted to scream Tavithê’s name, but she did not dare do something so pointless.
The traitor was among them again.
True anger, so rarely felt, surged inside her. She whirled to run toward Én’nish’s shouts but gained only three strides before she heard a door slam open.
Two humans with cudgels and sabers rushed out of the aftcastle’s left doorway. One instantly grunted and fell, and momentum slid him across the deck with an arrow protruding from his back.
Dänvârfij did not glance up toward Rhysís in the crow’s nest. She set herself for the one human coming at her. More shouts carried across the deck.
“We’ve been boarded!”
A white-blond head of hair popped out of the hold’s hatch.
Léshil rolled out into the open with his monster of a mate right behind him.
Chap rammed Én’nish again and sent her bouncing sideways off a water barrel. He was on her before she could right herself.
Throwing his bulk atop her, he clawed her arms and tried to pin at least one as he snapped for her throat. Instead he had to clamp his jaws on her wrist when she tried to slash a blade at his face.
Chap ground his teeth through forest gray wool until Én’nish let out a savage scream, and then a sharp pain burned across his right shoulder, and his hold faltered. His snarl turned into a yelp when he twisted away and stumbled off as she tore her wrist from his jaws. A stiletto came at him again in her other hand.