It didn’t take long for T’ruck and his crew to finish off the knights, distracted as they were by the shadows. Not a single one of the fools escaped, but the battle had made more than enough noise and Nerine was certain the alarm had been raised. The rest of the night wouldn’t go nearly so easily.
Chapter 6 - North Gale
T’ruck slumped against the wall, looking up at the ladder that led to the main deck of the ship. He could hear the creak of rope and canvas, the shuffling feet of nervous men, and the occasional shout from those in charge to keep steady. He looked back at his own crew, all as weary as him and all spattered with blood both fresh and long since dried.
One of his pirates, Pocket, a younger lad with a crooked nose and heavy jaw, had collapsed onto the deck and was leaning against a wall, sobbing quietly into his hands. T’ruck would have loved to leave the man to his sorrow. They all needed time to come to terms with the things they’d done, but there were precious few of his crew left now. Of the twenty-two pirates who had escaped the brig, only twelve remained in any sort of fighting condition, and they were lucky that many of them had survived.
“On your feet, lad,” T’ruck said, walking over to his grieving pirate and trying to hide how much effort just that small feat took.
Pocket didn’t respond.
T’ruck glanced around at the rest of his crew, who were all watching the exchange. He knew that if he let just one of his crew break now, they would all follow suit – and there was still plenty of slaughter left to do. Even Yu’truda looked on the verge of giving up.
“Get up, Pocket,” he said again, in a voice that sounded weary even to his own ears.
Still the lad just wept into his hands.
T’ruck leaned his blood-soaked sword against the wall and reached down, grabbing hold of Pocket’s shirt and wrenching the man to his feet. He pinned him against the wall and gave him the full force of his captain’s stare.
“I’m a monster,” Pocket said with a sob, his eyes crazed and red with tears. “We’re all monsters. So much blood. So much… I… I lost count.”
T’ruck cuffed the lad on the side of the head. “Aye, you’re a monster. Tonight we all are. We’re monsters ’cos monsters is what we need to be.”
T’ruck dropped the lad back to his feet. Pocket stayed standing, his eyes blank. T’ruck had seen it before, warriors on the battlefield coming out of the bloodlust and realising just what atrocities they’d committed. Every one of his crew had killed during the night, and every one had killed again and again. With the help of the demons Lady Tsokei had been summoning, they’d murdered hundreds of men. What they’d accomplished so far was nothing short of a miracle, a bloody miracle that would likely see them all damned in the eyes of whichever god they believed in. Unfortunately, what they’d accomplished so far wasn’t the end of it.
T’ruck and his crew had moved from deck to deck, room to room, ambushing soldiers with steel and monsters formed of shadow. Hundreds upon hundreds of men had fallen, and blood washed every deck of the ship except one. The last of Storm Herald’s resistance were gathered above decks under the command of Admiral Peter Verit, and there they waited, no doubt with bows ready to ambush the surviving members of T’ruck’s crew. T’ruck himself could barely lift his sword, his arm aching like fire in his veins, but unless they stormed the deck and finished off the admiral and his soldiers, they would surely die just as if they’d stayed in their cells.
“We need to be monsters for just a little bit longer,” T’ruck said. “Up there are the last bastards standing between us and freedom. We kill them, and we’ve done the impossible, so I need you to be strong. We either finish them off now or we all die when they come for us, so I… we need you all to be strong for just a while longer.”
Pocket looked up at his captain and nodded slowly.
“Pick up your sword, lad,” T’ruck said.
The witch was standing apart from his crew. Her back was straight, but she was swaying on her feet and her eyes looked distant. Her skin was pale and her hair was plastered to her head with sweat. They all looked terrible, exhausted and speckled with blood, but Lady Tsokei looked like she had nothing left to give. She’d joined each battle with the rest of the crew and had tipped the scales of each encounter in their favour with her magic. T’ruck worried she wouldn’t have the strength to complete the taking of the ship, and he knew they would fail without her.
“Are you…” he started.
“I am fine, Captain Khan,” Lady Tsokei said. Her voice lacked its usual iron and ice. “This much contact with the Void… I feel raw, used up.”
“I have a plan,” T’ruck said. “Can you summon any more of those… um… shadow monsters?”
The witch nodded, and a sigh escaped her lips. “I believe I can do that once more, Captain Khan. But that will be all the magic I can…” She trailed off, tears in her eyes.
“Aye, it’ll be enough. Stay here with Yu’truda and Connel. They’re gonna make some noise, make it sound like we got an army down here. I’ll take the rest of us to the aft deck ladder. Give us a few minutes, then release your monsters. We’ll wait until the chaos is good and started and then we’ll charge up the ladder, take the bastards from the rear.”
Lady Tsokei nodded, saying nothing, her eyes fixed on the ladder. Without another word, T’ruck turned to his crew.
“Make plenty of noise, Yu’truda,” he said with a forced grin. “The more of those fuckers looking this way, the less likely any will be pointing bows at us. Once the fight is on, you pop up the ladder yourselves. We’ll need you.”
“Aye, Cap’n,” Yu’truda said without a hint of emotion. Between the loss of her husband and the death she’d seen over the last few hours, T’ruck wondered if the last surviving member of his clan would ever be the same.
T’ruck and nine of his crew jogged quickly to the aft of the ship, not even bothering to check the rooms they passed. They’d been this way earlier and cleared it of soldiers and sailors alike, and there were plenty of bodies both in the corridors and in the otherwise empty rooms. T’ruck ignored the dead, concentrating instead on not slipping on the pooling blood left behind.
The ship was sitting still in the water, no doubt stopped while the crew dealt with the escaped prisoners, but there was still a slight sway as her massive frame moved with the waves. T’ruck prayed a storm would rise up out of somewhere; it would provide them with an extra distraction and some protection from the archers. Aiming with a bow was next to impossible when standing on a deck that couldn’t decide which way was up.
They slowed their pace as they came close to their destination, attempting to keep as quiet as possible so the men up on the aft deck wouldn’t know they were there. T’ruck waved for everyone to stay silent and approached the ladder at a crouch. He could hear a dull, rhythmic banging, and guessed it was the noise he’d asked for. He crept closer to the ladder and waited for the witch to do her final part.
It didn’t take long for the shouting and screaming to start.
T’ruck held up a hand to his crew, making them wait a bit longer. He wanted as many of the folk up on deck distracted as possible, and a few extra seconds of staring into the face of a rampaging shadow monster was fairly distracting.
After a tortuously long count of ten, T’ruck grabbed hold of the ladder and started to climb as quickly as he could with a sword in one hand and a shield in the other. The hatch to the deck was open and T’ruck rushed up through it. Something struck his shield with a solid thud, and pain erupted in his chest, near his right shoulder. T’ruck ignored it – he needed to get up out of the hatch and out of the way so the rest of his crew could follow him.