A figure at the edge of Anton’s vision hacked with a broadsword. Anton whirled, parried with the cutlass, and saw that his attacker was Naraxes. He cut with the saber, and the former first mate blocked with a buckler. Steel bit into wood.
Anton heard or perhaps simply sensed motion at his back. With a hollow feeling in his gut, he realized it was likely suicide to turn away from Naraxes and suicide not to. He opted to turn and found Evendur rushing him with the boarding axe raised above his head.
Anton lifted the cutlass into a high guard and whipped the saber in a stop cut to the ribs. He scored, but it didn’t matter. The Chosen started to swing his weapon anyway.
Then, however, two luminous spheres leaped through the air to strike Evendur from behind. On impact, one vanished in a burst of flame, while the other winked out of existence with an earsplitting screech that flensed gobs of rotten flesh off his bones. He jerked, and the slanted deck betrayed him and sent him staggering, too. The flailing axe cut missed.
Anton spun back around toward his other foes. Though he was too late to witness it, magic had plainly attacked them, too. The front of his body encrusted with frost, Naraxes looked like a helplessly shuddering snowman. Two other pirates lay dead, each burned in one fashion or another, one with patches of flesh still bubbling and melting.
Traces of phosphorescence fading on the fingers that had cast the spell, Umara gripped the shroud and dragged herself to her feet. “You said we need to go,” she panted.
Anton grinned. “Now that you mention it.”
“No,” Evendur said. “Stay and die with your ship like a captain should.” He ripped the burning jerkin and shirt from his back and moved to place himself between his foes and the port edge of the deck.
Anton had just about reached the unhappy conclusion that while he and Umara might be able to slow the Chosen of Umberlee down for a breath or two, no power at their command was likely to stop him. But they might as well try. Hoping Evendur was unfamiliar with the stance and the combinations that flowed out of it, he raised both blades high in a guard his father’s master-of-arms had taught him.
Then the Iron Jest gave another great lurch as the sea surged into another breached compartment below deck. This time, the stern dropped, while the bow lifted out of the water.
The motion sent nearly everything and everyone, Evendur included, sliding, reeling, or tumbling helplessly aft. Umara, however, was still hanging onto the shroud, and, dropping the cutlass, Anton managed to snatch hold of a halyard.
Anton rammed the saber back into its scabbard. “Come on!” he said. “Evendur won’t give us another chance.” He made a floundering run at the port side of the caravel and dived into the sea. Umara splashed in after him.
Despite the best efforts of the saber that seemed intent on fouling the action of his kicking legs, he swam away from the Jest as fast as he could. When a ship sank, it created a suction that could drag swimmers under. He’d seen it happen.
Finally, unsure if he truly deemed himself out of the danger zone or was just too spent to swim any farther, he halted, turned, and started treading water. Umara was still with him.
“As you should be,” he rasped, “after the trouble I took on your behalf.”
The Red Wizard didn’t ask what he meant. She was intent on the Iron Jest, and why not? It was quite a spectacle.
The back third of the caravel was underwater. The rest was canted even higher, and much of it covered in roaring flame that made a mockery of the rain. The spars and sails were trees of fire, and as best Anton could tell, most of the boats were burning, too. Some men risked setting themselves alight in what must be an agonizing struggle to lower the smaller vessels into the water. Others, clinging precariously to whatever support they could find, stabbed, chopped, and wrestled for a place aboard them. A gray-black wave of rats flung themselves over the side of the Jest to attempt the impossible swim to land.
Then, with a horrible, sudden smoothness, the rest of the caravel slid under the sea, leaving only smoke above the waves. It was almost as if Umberlee, who supposedly loved sinking ships above all things, truly had taken the Jest in her colossal hand and pulled it down.
The submersion raised a wave that lifted Anton and Umara and dropped them back amid charred scraps of flotsam. A scrabbling rat pulled itself aboard a broken section of ribband and claimed it for its raft.
Hoping for more comfortable transportation, blinking against the water trickling down from his hair into his eyes, Anton peered about and found Falrinn and his sailboat, visible once more, off to the left. “Falrinn! Here we are! Come get us!”
“I’m working on it,” the gnome answered. He threw a line and it plopped down in the water.
Anton used the rope to clamber back inside the sailboat. Umara sought to do likewise, but likely thanks to her knock on the head, exhaustion, and saturated garments, struggled unsuccessfully. Anton took her arm and, with a grunt, heaved her aboard.
“So,” Falrinn said, “on to the galley?”
Umara gave him a smile. “Of course.”
She kept smiling, too, as the gnome adjusted their course, and she and Anton slumped on benches. The Turmishan, however, felt a bleak anger rising inside him.
It wasn’t simply the bitter melancholy that sometimes overtook him after a battle, although that might be a part of it. It was the realization of just how thoroughly he’d wrecked his own schemes.
His intent had been to eliminate a shipload of rivals and then sell Stedd to Evendur. But instead, he’d attacked the undead captain himself and sent him to the bottom.
How was Anton supposed to collect the bounty now? He supposed he could still try selling Stedd to the Umberlant church, but would the waveservants even want the boy now that the leader who’d declared his apprehension important was gone? Even if they did, would they deal fairly with a man who’d assailed Evendur Highcastle with fire and blade?
Curse it, anyway!
Perhaps the most galling aspect of the whole affair was that Anton hadn’t needed to reveal himself to Evendur. He could have preserved his invisibility and then salvaged the situation somehow. But he hadn’t. He’d swung his saber because … he wasn’t even sure of the because. Maybe just because the new Evendur was so hideous to look at, and he and the old one had so seldom gotten along.
In any case, he supposed that now he’d simply have to accept whatever payment the Thayans offered for sinking the Iron Jest and Umara’s safe return and go on his way. It surely wouldn’t be enough to buy a new ship, and the prospect of serving aboard some other pirate captain’s vessel, as he had in the early years of his exile, had little appeal. But what was the alternative?
As the sailboat approached the galley, Umara, still looking annoyingly pleased at the “success” of their foray against the Iron Jest, stood in the bow with her head bared. She hadn’t shaved her scalp during her time with Anton and Falrinn, and her black hair had started to grow out. But plainly, she still trusted the other Thayans to recognize her, and apparently, they did. No one shot at the smaller vessel, and a sailor dropped a rope ladder over the side.
Falrinn waved Anton toward the larger vessel. “Go collect our pay,” the smuggler said.
“You’re both welcome aboard the galley,” Umara told him.
“Thank you, lass,” Falrinn answered, “but I’ll be fine down here.” Where, Anton thought, he’d have a better chance of escape if Kymas Nahpret proved less appreciative of their efforts than Umara had promised. Other than the unsavory reputation of Thayans in general and Red Wizards in particular, he saw no reason why that should be the case, but it didn’t surprise him that the gnome felt he’d taken enough chances for one day.