It did surprise him that when the moment came to board the galley, Umara’s air of exhilaration fell away from her. She stopped smiling, took a long breath, and squared her shoulders in the manner of someone resignedly taking up a chore. But maybe she was simply wrapping herself in the dignity the crew expected of her.
She climbed the rope ladder first, in the slightly hesitant manner of someone unaccustomed to them, and he followed. He reached the deck just in time to find her countrymen still standing at attention.
The living ones, at any rate. Three, currently armed for battle like the rest, were slouching zombies with slack gray faces and a yellow sheen in their sunken eyes. By the essentially intact look of them, they hadn’t been dead, or undead, more than a tenday or two.
Umara waved her hand, and, while casting some curious glances in Anton’s direction, most of the mariners returned to the task of making the galley shipshape after the tossing Evendur had given it. But a middle-aged man with a pocked, sour face and the last two fingers missing from his left hand approached the wizard.
“Captain,” Umara said.
“Lady Sir,” the officer replied. “Did you sink the pirates?”
“With the help of this warrior”-she nodded to Anton-“and his friend.”
“After we abandoned you in Westgate,” the captain said, a note of disgust in his voice.
“We all have to follow orders,” Umara said. “Speaking of which, is Lord Kymas in his cabin?”
“Yes,” the other Thayan said. “He rushed in there as soon as it became clear the pirates wouldn’t be bothering us anymore.”
Anton wondered why. It was strange behavior for any commander in the wake of an engagement. But perhaps Kymas was a landlubber like Umara and realized that, though nominally in charge, he had nothing to contribute to the task of setting the galley to rights.
Umara looked at Anton like she wanted to say something but didn’t know what. After a moment, she settled for, “I’ll go talk to Kymas.” She turned toward the hatch under the awning projecting out from the quarterdeck. Likely knocked loose by the shaking the galley had weathered, the left side of the sailcloth rectangle drooped.
Then an oarsman cried out. Together with Umara and the captain, Anton hurried to the larboard side of the galley to see what had alarmed the man. By the time they got there, other folk were peering, pointing, and exclaiming.
A bowshot away, a shadowy form stood on the surface of the sea. In the gloom and the rain, Anton couldn’t see it particularly clearly, but he had no doubt it was Evendur Highcastle.
And why, Anton thought bitterly, wouldn’t it be? The living corpse was the Chosen of the Queen of the Depths. He felt like an idiot for imagining he could dispose of such a monstrosity just by sinking a caravel out from under him.
“Still,” Umara breathed, “he doesn’t have a ship or a band of followers anymore. Perhaps he’ll give up for today.”
As if in response, the sea heaved beneath the galley and sent it crashing down, throwing the decks into confusion once again. Oars lurched in the thole pins, battering rowers with bone-breaking force. Arms flailing, a marine toppled over the side. For a moment, it looked as though Umara might tumble after him, but Anton grabbed her arm and steadied her.
“Kill the creature!” Anton bellowed. “Kill him!”
He’d momentarily forgotten he wasn’t the captain aboard this vessel, but the Thayans heeded him anyway. Arrows and crossbow bolts arced in Evendur’s direction. Rattling off words of power, Umara thrust out her arms and sent darts of blue light streaking after them.
Some of the arrows and quarrels fell short or flew wide. Waves leaped up to block the others. Even so, two or three actually pierced the bloated, decaying flesh of their target, and Umara’s magic did, too. But they evidently didn’t do much damage, because Evendur started forward.
The sea raised the galley and dropped it into a trough. For a heartbeat, the sea streamed across the deck, and someone screamed.
Then the tall, pale man Anton had met on the benighted street in Westgate strode out of the cabin in the stern. He now wore an intricately embroidered scarlet robe and cloak. “What is this?” he demanded.
Umara stared at him. “You-”
“I know a spell to shield me when I absolutely require it. Now, why is the ship still being tossed about when our attackers are burned alive or drowned?”
“Not quite all of them are.” Anton pointed to the figure advancing atop the sea.
Kymas Nahpret smiled a grim little smile. “The fool doesn’t know when to give up, does he? But if he insists on perishing with his vessel, I’ll oblige him.”
The wizard pulled a slender ebony wand from his sleeve. He hissed an incantation that filled Anton with instinctive revulsion even though he didn’t understand a word of it, then flicked the wand in Evendur’s direction as though miming a teacher’s admonitory tap on a daydreaming pupil’s head.
The air around Evendur darkened. Then vapor puffed from the dead man’s body, and Anton realized it was the rain that had truly darkened in the course of changing from water to something that seared like vitriol.
And, to Anton’s excitement, it appeared to be hurting Evendur more than anything else hitherto. The dead man flailed, staggered, and then plunged down into the sea as, perhaps, the magical assault broke his concentration.
Some of the Thayans cheered. Until, like an invisible cable was drawing him up, Evendur rose above the surface once more.
By then, though, in a manner that momentarily reminded Anton of Dalabrac and his countless blowpipes, Kymas had traded the ebony wand for one made of glass or crystal. He shouted a word that sounded like crockery smashing and stabbed the instrument at the Chosen.
At the same moment, Evendur shook his fist at his attacker. The wand shattered, and a wave of transformation ran up Kymas’s hand and on into his arm, turning the limb as clear as the mystical weapon had been. Immediately after the first wave flowed a second that made the wizard’s altered substance crack and crunch.
Wincing, Anton expected to see Kymas’s whole body break into hundreds of glittering shards. But Kymas arrested the change by dissolving his whole arm into mist, in effect amputating it above the highest point to which the infection had spread. When he willed it back into solidity, it was pallid flesh and blood-red sleeve once more.
Anton thought it an impressive defense, but Kymas still looked rattled that Evendur had reflected his own attack back on him. The Red Wizard pivoted to the captain and said, “Why aren’t we moving?”
“Same reason as before,” the officer answered. “The rowers aren’t ready to row, and the current and the wind are both running against us.”
Now that someone had drawn Anton’s attention to it, the pirate felt the wind gusting from bow to stern driving spattering rain before it. At least, he thought, it was doing Falrinn some good. Unwilling to bide dangerously close to the Thayan ship while Evendur bounced it up and down, the gnome was fleeing westward.
Anton hoped Falrinn would get away, and it actually looked likely. The Bitch Queen’s Chosen appeared to be devoting all his attention to the galley.
All his attention and all his power. The ship rose high and smashed down. The mainmast snapped at the base and fell toward the stern with broken cordage streaming out behind it.
Anton sprang in front of Umara and raised his arm to protect his face. A line whistled past his ear, but nothing struck him. The mainmast slammed into the smaller mast aft, snapping it as well, and both hammered down on the quarterdeck.
“Much more of this,” the captain said, “and the hull’s likely to start coming apart.”
Umara turned to Anton. “You said Evendur wants Stedd alive.”