The sky was a dirty orange dotted with clouds, obscured by giant masts stretching up to greet them. There was a small group of soldiers watching the hatch, two busy reloading crossbows while another two were armed with swords. They charged at T’ruck even as he got a knee onto the deck.
With a roar of fury T’ruck swung his shield, swatting away the first soldier’s attack while he blocked the other with his sword, swallowing down the agony in his shoulder. He pushed off from the foot he had on the deck and launched himself at the two men, barrelling into both of them at once and bearing them down with his weight. The world twisted beneath him and the pain from his shoulder reduced his vision to a tunnel. T’ruck had no idea where he was, let alone where the soldiers were. He surged back onto his knees and began to lay about himself with his sword, the pain in his shoulder fuelling his rage.
“Cap’n! Cap’n!” one of his sailors shouted, and T’ruck stopped his wild flailing and opened his eyes. His own crew were gathered in front of him. The two soldiers with the crossbows and their guards were down, dead or dying. The two men he’d dragged to the deck with him had died where they fell, plenty of bloody gashes in each from T’ruck’s wild sword-swinging.
“We need to get into the fight, Cap’n,” said Pocket, a numb sorrow in his eyes.
T’ruck glanced down and saw a bolt sticking out of his flesh. Only a finger’s width still showed. He knew it would need removing and that his body would need time to heal, but time was something he didn’t have. He would have to ignore the wooden intruder for now and hope one of his surviving crew would know how to patch him up later.
Struggling to his feet, T’ruck limped forwards and stared down at the main deck, where the majority of the fighting was taking place. Soldiers were everywhere, struggling with the witch’s shadow monsters. T’ruck saw a giant, four-legged shadow lumber out from the darkness cast by the main mast. The creature scooped up the first soldier it came across and dashed the man into the deck, before turning to face a knot of men who had started hacking at it with swords. Whether or not the steel had any effect, T’ruck couldn’t tell, but it certainly seemed to enrage the beast, and soon it was slamming two more soldiers into the deck with its massive paws.
More and more shadows were pouring from one of the hatches on the main deck, each one like a snake slithering across the wood to find a larger patch of darkness to feed it. Everywhere T’ruck looked, soldiers were dying to the witch’s magic, and he could only wonder how she had the strength to manage it in her state of exhaustion.
“You!” someone shouted, and T’ruck looked sideways to see Admiral Peter Verit climbing the stairs to the aft deck, guards swarming around him. “You did this!”
T’ruck plastered a weary grin to his face and turned towards Verit, noticing for the first time how close they were to Storm Herald’s dinghies. The admiral was attempting to abandon his ship, giving it up for lost. T’ruck’s own depleted crew moved to his side, each of them as weary as he was, but each one just as determined to survive and to pay back the admiral for destroying their ship and murdering their friends.
One of the witch’s creatures slithered its way up onto the aft deck and angled towards T’ruck, disappearing into the large shadows cast by his crew. A moment later T’ruck felt a chill as a small monkey-like shape brushed past him. The monster seemed to have no head and no eyes, just a body and legs that looked like black smoke. He shuffled out of its way, but it didn’t seem interested in either him or his crew. It broke their ranks and charged at the admiral and his guards.
T’ruck bellowed out a laugh that set all his wounds to aching, and rushed in after the shadow monster. The admiral’s guards moved to meet him even as his own crew followed him in, and a moment later the battle was joined and the world became wood and steel and sweat and blood.
Blocking the first strike with his shield, T’ruck struck back with his own sword only to have it deflected. As the remainder of his crew joined him, forming a loose shield wall, the first of the admiral’s soldiers went down. The little shadow monster was attached to his chest, tearing into it with bloody talons.
Two of the downed soldier’s comrades turned on the shadow and hacked at it. The little beast ceased its attack and started to fade, soon leaving no evidence that it had ever existed except for the ruined mess of a man dying on the deck. T’ruck and another of his crew, Owan, locked shields and started to push as one, driving a wedge into the loose enemy line, protecting each other and forcing the soldiers to turn so that the rest of his men could attack their flanks.
T’ruck felt a cut open up on his left side and roared in pain. Rage filled every part of him, and new strength flowed into his limbs as he broke free of the two-man wall, swinging his stolen sword about him in wild, powerful strokes that shattered defences and sent men crashing to the deck with horrific injuries. His crew surged in his wake, taking advantage of the distraction to murder their enemies. They were all veterans of T’ruck’s crew, and every one was used to his berserker strength. They knew just how much it terrified their foes and how to make the most of it.
Admiral Verit came out of nowhere, leaping at T’ruck with well-timed, perfectly aimed blows that T’ruck struggled to turn aside despite his greater strength. The man was obviously well trained, but if he could just hold the bastard up for long enough the odds would turn in the pirate’s favour.
Strike after strike after strike and the admiral kept his composure, not a hair out of place on either his head or his chin. His eyes were cold steel. T’ruck decided he didn’t want his crew’s help to defeat the man – he wanted the royal bastard’s death all to himself.
T’ruck waited for his moment, blocking blow after blow, then catching the admiral’s sword on his shield and pushing forwards to catch him off balance. The admiral sidestepped at the last moment, dancing to the side.
New pain blossomed in T’ruck’s right leg and he stumbled to the ground, flailing with his sword and catching the admiral with a glancing blow of the flat of his blade.
T’ruck tried to stand, but his injured leg collapsed underneath him and a glance down told him the admiral had cut a deep gash in his ankle, probably severing a tendon. The pain was intense, but not as bad as the bolt still in his chest. He struggled to his knees and looked up just in time to see the admiral dance in and impale him.
T’ruck had experienced more wounds than he cared to count, and he had the scars to prove each one, but this was the first time he’d ever been run through. In truth he would have expected it to hurt more. He felt cold and detached, watching the battle being fought around him. His own crew were slaughtering the admiral’s guards, and soon they would turn and deal with the bastard himself. By then it would be too late. It was already too late.
The sun was rising over the admiral’s shoulder, and it was a brilliant orange-gold that lit the ocean and the sky like fire.
“Barbarian filth,” Verit hissed, leaning into his sword to drive it deeper into T’ruck’s chest. The pain rushed in and shattered the calm cold that had settled over him. He gasped, tasting blood.
“I may die here,” the admiral continued, “but I will see you dead first.”
T’ruck lifted an arm to stop him. But he had no strength left, and the man easily batted it away and changed his grip on his sword to pull it free of T’ruck’s chest.
Something large and angry crashed into the admiral from the side, sending him to the deck. T’ruck toppled sideways, too weak to stop himself falling. He saw the admiral struggling with Pocket, only for the young pirate to smash his head again and again with the edge of a wooden shield.