“Brightdawn,” he moaned.
She looked at him, her eyes gleaming. “Please put him down,” she murmured. Her voice broke, and she coughed raggedly. “I’ll do whatever you want.”
“Yes,” the half-ogre hissed. “You will.” He bent forward, his tongue brushing her ear, then nodded toward Swiftraven. “Go ahead, Hurth.”
The glint in the gaff-wielder’s eyes became a horrible blaze. He stepped toward Swiftraven, raising the hook, and pressed the point against the young warrior’s belly, just below his breastbone. “This is going to hurt,” he breathed. “Now hold st-”
Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, a fist-sized stone shot through the air. It struck Hurth in the side of the head with a wet smack. The gaff fell from the pirate’s suddenly nerveless hand, hit the deck, and bounced overboard. Hurth’s knees buckled and he crumpled in a lifeless heap.
A stunned silence fell over Brinestrider. Everyone-pirates, sailors and Plainsfolk-turned to look down the length of the ship, toward the stern. A female kender stood at the hatch, hoopak in hand. There was already a second stone in its pouch.
“Reel him back in,” Catt said, gesturing toward Swiftraven with her hoopak. “And hurry up.”
A strange sound rose, then-a dull roar of vengeful hate, coming from Red Reaver. They came out of the pirate ship’s hold, pale and ragged, scrawny and battered, a tide of near-naked men bearing blades and clubs. Shrieking with bestial rage, they rushed toward the boarding planks, then surged aboard Brinestrider.
Kronn was in the front of the mob, chapak in hand, gemstones and steel coins falling from his overstuffed pockets. Behind him, several slaves were pouring pitch over the Reaver’s deck and setting it alight. Black, oily smoke started to rise from the ship.
It had all happened so fast, so suddenly, that the pirates’ captain could only watch the charging slaves with open, dumbfounded shock. Finally he shoved Brightdawn away from him-she tripped over a coil of rope and stumbled to her knees-and jerked the massive hammer from his belt. “Attack!” he shouted.
His call galvanized the stunned pirates. They turned toward the boarding planks, then charged toward the slaves, cutlasses held high. The men who held the rope from which Swiftraven hung simply let go; the young warrior dropped over the edge with a shout, followed by a loud splash.
The pirate who held the cutlass to Riverwind’s throat had lowered his blade without thinking, gawking as his fellows ran to intercept the attacking slaves. It was all the opportunity the old Plainsman needed. His foot lashed out, slamming against the side of the pirate’s knee. Bone cracked, and the man fell, sobbing in pain and clutching his ruined leg. Riverwind kicked him a second time, in the head, and the man fell still.
His muscled arms bulging, Riverwind strained against his bonds with all his strength. The jute cord around his wrists snapped, and he dashed to Swiftraven’s rope, grabbing it before it could spool away. He hauled on the rope, slowly reeling it in; moments later, Kael Ar-Tam and two of the sailors burst their bonds and joined him.
The escaped slaves smashed into the pirates, hacking viciously with cutlasses and cudgels. Driven by rage, they drove back their former captors, cutting them down without mercy. Kronn buried his chapak’s axe head in a pirate’s side, then jerked it free as the man staggered into the railing and fell overboard. Catt jabbed the metal-shod tip of her hoopak at a pirate’s throat, then leaped aside as he swung back at her with his sword. A slave buried his cutlass in the pirate’s ribs.
The half-ogre captain shoved his way past his faltering men, his warhammer singing through the air. A slave fell beneath the weapon, then another, and then a third. The half-ogre roared with fury.
Then, directly behind him, a scream cut through the din of battle. The half-ogre glanced over his shoulder, and his eyes widened in surprise as he saw the steel head of a mace swinging toward his face. He opened his mouth to cry out, but the mace struck before he could make a sound, and his world vanished in an explosion of red mist. He fell, groping at what had once been his face.
Brightdawn stared at his twitching body, seething with fury, then hit him again. He jerked one last time, then stopped moving for good. Brightdawn stumbled back, her mace dripping blood.
Riverwind and the sailors were trying to reel in Swiftraven. At last, the young warrior surfaced, unconscious and bleeding afresh from a short gash on his leg. The sailors grabbed him and laid him down on the deck, and Riverwind tore a strip from his own tunic, using it to bandage his wounds. When the fighting was all but over, only a handful of pirates remained, pinned against Brinestrider’s gunwale by the escaped slaves. One by one they fell, until only one man was left. He stood silhouetted against the leaping flames that raged across Red Reaver’s deck, flailing wildly with his cutlass to keep his attackers at bay. In the end it was Kronn who evaded his blade and leapt in, chapak swinging. The pirate leaned back from the kender’s axe, overbalanced, and toppled over the railing into the churning sea.
The kender watched him fall, then looked around with satisfaction. His eyes met Riverwind’s, and he grinned.
The Plainsman stared back, still half amazed, then slumped wearily to the deck.
Red Reaver was still smoldering at sunset, creaking and crackling. The cinders of her hull glowed red in the deepening dark. She listed sideways as seawater seeped in through her fire-weakened hull, and her bow was considerably closer to the waterline than her stern, but stubbornly she refused to sink. The black, charred fingers of her masts clutched upward, toward the pale, rising moon.
Amid the fire’s dim light, the survivors of the battle wrapped their dead in blankets and lined them along the bloodstained deck. It had been a heavy toll. Nine of the escaped slaves, and all of Captain Ar-Tam’s crew save three young seamen, had been slain. The pirates were all dead, too, but the slaves and sailors had given them to the sharks without a funeral.
The slaves’ black-bearded leader, a Khurrish mariner named Alaruq ur-Phadh, bent over each of his dead fellows and placed a steel coin-given to him by Kronn, who had salvaged some small part of the Reaver’s spoils-in each man’s mouth. It was an old rite of the Mikku, the clan to which Alaruq and his fellows belonged; the coins were payment for the guardians of the underworld, so the dead could pass by the Abyss and find peace among the stars.
Kael Ar-Tam gave his men no coins, nor did he speak as he looked over the corpses of his men. The creases on his scar-lined face deepened as his eyes flicked from body to body.
Swiftraven lay on a bundle of sailcloth, moaning as Brightdawn tended his wounds. Catt knelt at his side, holding his hand. He managed to smile at the kender.
“I doubted you,” he murmured. “I thought you were hiding, that you were afraid to help us.” He drew a deep breath, summoning words he found hard to speak. “I’m sorry.”
Red Reaver’s mizzenmast, made brittle by burning, groaned loudly against the gusting wind, then snapped and fell with a crash. Everyone on Brinestrider jumped at the sound. Then Alaruq spoke a word to the other escaped slaves. The men were dressed now, having taken clothes from the dead sailors’ lockers, but there was no hiding the hollow pallor of their faces or the difficult shadows deep within their eyes. One by one, the slaves lifted the shrouded bodies and dropped them into the sea. The corpses bobbed briefly on the waves before the waterlogged blankets dragged them down.
When the last of the dead had been cast overboard, Riverwind stood at Brinestrider’s rail and stared silently out across the sea. After a time, he reached into his fur vest and pulled out the Forever Charm. He looked at it accusingly, his fingers tracing its endless loop. Then he heard footsteps on the deck behind him. Recognizing the rhythm of his daughter’s light but confident stride, he curled his fingers around the charm, hiding it from view.