By then, though, Anton was already safely inside his reach. He plowed into his adversary, bore him down beneath him, and made sure the back of the bearded man’s head hit the deck hard. The impact slowed the naval officer down but didn’t stop him struggling. Using the heel of his hand, Anton hit him in the nose, smashing it flat and banging his head against the deck again, and that knocked him unconscious.
Panting, the pirate turned and looked toward the bow. The Thayans were just finishing up the task of subduing any sailor who’d made it out of the hold.
That left the incapacitated men still below, who’d recover quickly as soon as the foul vapor dissipated. Hoping to deny them the opportunity, Anton had instructed the Thayans to attack as soon as the glow of the mist winked out, and he himself was the first man to leap down the hatch.
There was just enough light left to reveal a pair of figures rushing him with blades. He swayed back to avoid a slash to the head and parried a thrust to the chest with his cutlass, a better weapon than a saber for tight quarters like these.
He bellowed, rushed the Turmishan sailors, and made cut after furious cut. He needed to drive them backward and clear the space under the hatch so the Thayans could start dropping after him.
The sailors gave ground for a moment, then pushed back. The one on the left tried a thrust to the face. Anton slipped the attack, stepped in, and hammered the cutlass’s guard into his assailant’s jaw.
The remaining Turmishan cut at the pirate’s flank. Anton pivoted and swung the cutlass down just in time to parry. Then a Thayan smashed his foe over the head with a piece of board.
From that point onward, it was easy. Superior numbers overwhelmed the one or two other Turmishans who’d recovered sufficiently to fight.
Afterward, still hurrying, some of the Thayans hauled up the gangplank or manned the halyards to ready the Octopus to set sail. Others bound and gagged the prisoners, whom they’d put ashore or set adrift when they had an opportunity.
Watching the latter operation, Umara shook her head. “It would have been easier just to kill them.”
Anton chuckled. “I was just thinking the same thing. But Stedd wouldn’t have approved.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Dwelling in the house of Silvanus, preoccupied with Shadowmoon’s mental deterioration and other threats to the wild lands that a blade couldn’t answer, Shinthala had in recent years seldom worn her scimitar. But the weight still felt comfortable riding on her hip.
She still felt at ease in her old war cloak, too, but had taken it off for the moment. The enchantment it bore made her appear a half step away from her actual location, an advantage when enemies were trying to aim blows or missiles at her but inconvenient on the rolling deck of a warship with crewmen scurrying back and forth. Even in the bow and the stern, there was nowhere to stand that was truly out of the way, and the poor fellows kept jostling her, then cringing and stammering apologies as if they expected her to strike them dead or turn them into frogs.
She’d retrieve the cloak when the enemy armada appeared. Hoping to catch a first glimpse of it, she squinted out over the waves.
But it was Shadowmoon and Ashenford who wavered into view before her. It was like she was looking through a hole in the air and the House of Silvanus was on the far side, except that the opening didn’t have clearly defined edges. Rather, the shadowy space around the other elders blurred by degrees until it was indistinguishable from the backdrop of gray cloud and falling rain.
Shinthala sighed. “I suppose it was too much to hope the two of you would believe I was off meditating.”
“This is unnecessary,” Shadowmoon said. “We arranged for druids to sail aboard every ship.”
“And if we were going to send our followers to fight the Chosen of Umberlee,” Shinthala replied, “on the open sea, no less, it was only right for one of the Elder Circle to share the danger.”
“But you’re needed here,” Ashenford said, and in his voice, Shinthala heard the fear of losing someone who’d been a friend and sometimes more for over a hundred tumultuous years.
But she couldn’t speak to that now, only to their duties and the choices they entailed. “Even without me, the Emerald Enclave’s magic will be at least as strong as it was before Stedd Whitehorn came to us. The restorations of the island and-forgive my bluntness, my friend-of Silvermoon’s sanity ensure that.”
Ashenford shook his head. “Still-”
“There is no ‘still,’ ” Shinthala said. “The more I thought about it, the more I realized Anton Marivaldi was right. We do need to fight these waveservants and pirates, and we won’t be able to lure them into the forests. So we’ll just have to meet them on the water.”
Shadowmoon smiled a sad little smile. “Of the three of us, sister, you were always the one who relished a battle.”
“Then let me have one,” Shinthala said. “Why not? If I die, how much has the Emerald Enclave truly lost? I don’t have elf blood in my veins, and the Treefather’s gift of long life is running out in me.”
“We’ll do everything we can,” said Shadowmoon, “to send you power and luck from here.”
“I know,” Shinthala said. “But do me one more favor. Bring Stedd to the circle.”
The elf cocked her head. “If you think there’s a point.”
“There might be. My judgment tells me we who serve Silvanus should help fight this war. But in the deepest sense, it’s Lathander’s struggle, and perhaps if his Chosen is present when you’re casting magic to oppose Evendur Highcastle, that will finally rouse the boy.” Shinthala smiled at Ashenford. “Or perhaps he’ll simply respond to the sound of your harping. I always did.”
“The boy will be there,” Shadowmoon said. “May the Forest Father keep you.” She waved a tiny copper-skinned hand, and she and Ashenford vanished, just as Shinthala was about to take what might well prove to be a fond last look at them.
With a snort, the white-haired druidess returned to playing lookout. She fancied her sight was still keen despite her advancing years, but even so, a young man in the fighting top partway up the foremast spotted the enemy’s sails before she did. “Pirates off the bow!” he shouted, his voice breaking. Just audible despite the distance and the rain, a sailor aboard the nearest caravel to starboard shouted the same thing.
It had seemed to Shinthala that Delise’s Needle, the ship she’d chosen to ride, had made extensive preparations for battle before ever leaving the harbor. Still, the lookout’s warning triggered bursts of activity both on deck and aloft. Some of it, like the artillerymen fussing over ballistae and catapults, was comprehensible even to a landlubber. Other procedures were not.
But in all cases, the haste seemed to reflect taut nerves rather than necessity. The Umberlant fleet was still far away. Refusing to succumb to her own anxiety, Shinthala watched its upper sails, then the lower ones, and finally the hulls of the vessels appear above the waves before she fetched her cloak and whirled it around her shoulders.
Perhaps that momentary respite from standing and staring did her good. For when she looked out over the rail again, she noticed gray shadows gliding beneath the waves in advance of the Umberlant ships. One raced straight at Delise’s Needle.
Muttering a charm of seeing, she studied the oncoming form, and then she perceived it as clearly as if she were swimming alongside it. It was a long, slender fin whale, gray-brown on top and paler on the belly, and magic crawled in its head like worms. No doubt that was the source of the rage or compulsion driving it toward the warship.
Fortunately, a whale was an animal, and in theory, druids had power over all beasts, even those of the sea. Shinthala held out her hand and called her sickle with her thoughts, and it leaped into her grip all the way from her personal quarters in the Elder Spires. She whirled the bronze blade in ritual cuts as she rattled off words of command. Holly-ghostly to others, she knew, but real to her-flowered around her and filled the air with its scent.