Trembling with a joy so keen it almost felt like terror, Stedd took a long breath. “You never showed yourself to me before.”
Lathander smiled, and somehow, that simple change of expression communicated his message as clearly as words: You weren’t ready to see me before. Now, you are.
The Morninglord then waved his hand, and a golden shimmer trailed from his fingers. Stedd gasped as strength and well-being surged through him. Suddenly feeling too exhilarated to keep lying down, he scrambled up, and none of the druids noticed that, either.
For a moment, grinning, he imagined Lathander had accelerated his recovery purely out of kindness. Then visions poured into his head, first a panorama of battling warships and sea creatures seen from high above, and then a closer view of three particular vessels locked together. Anton, Umara, and Shinthala were in that fight. So was Evendur Highcastle.
Stedd sighed. “I was supposed to beat Umberlee by ending the famine. But the fight’s not over, is it? Because she and her Chosen haven’t quit.”
Lathander inclined his head.
“All right.” Stedd swallowed. “I want to help. But how can I?”
Lathander proffered a golden mace. Stedd was certain the god hadn’t been holding anything a moment before. But he was now, and surely, it was Dawnbringer, the weapon he’d wielded in all his great battles against the lords of darkness.
Stedd hesitated. Chosen or not, he felt unworthy to touch such a holy thing. He was also afraid it would be too heavy for him, and he’d drop it in the mud.
But since Lathander wanted him to take it, that was what he did, and without any fumbling. Dawnbringer was light as a stick in his hands.
“All right,” Stedd said, “I’ve got it. What am I supposed to do with it?”
Another image of Anton flowered before his inner eye.
Though his face was slime and tatters, Evendur somehow managed a recognizable sneer. “You’re nothing,” he growled. He flicked the boarding axe, its edge glowing a poisonous green as it had aboard the Iron Jest, like he was brushing away a fly.
The gesture made water explode from empty air. The stinging blast splashed Anton and knocked him backward onto his rump. A warrior of Umberlee’s temple rushed him to spear him with a boarding pike.
Anton blocked with the saber, hamstrung his attacker with the cutlass, and leaped to his feet as the other man went down. It only took a moment, but, left unhindered, Evendur might have only needed a moment to dispose of Shinthala.
Fortunately, Umara had seen fit to hinder him. She’d cast her spell of the five colored orbs at him, and the discharges of fire, acid, and other destructive forces made him recoil.
That gave Shinthala the chance to take note of her surroundings. Instead of blundering back into the running rigging, she slipped nimbly through and put the lines between Evendur and herself.
Anton charged before the spheres of light even finished flashing out of existence. As a result, a screech stabbed pain into his ears and made his teeth clench, but he reached the Chosen of Umberlee in time to slash at his knee from behind.
The saber cut deep enough to shear through muscles and tendons and cripple any living man. But it didn’t cut through bone to take the swollen, oozing limb completely off, and Evendur didn’t fall. Rather, he whirled and cut. Anton jumped back barely in time to keep the boarding axe from smashing in his ribs.
The dead man pursued him with the luminous axe poised for a strike to the head. For three steps, Anton retreated on a straight line, then pivoted on the diagonal. The shift caught Evendur by surprise, and he failed to defend as the saber bit into his extended arm.
Once again, the blade sliced deeply. Anton felt it scrape bone, but it didn’t cut through. Evendur didn’t even fumble his grip on the axe, just snapped it out in a short, vicious cut of his own.
Anton parried with the cutlass. The clanging impact tossed him backward, and his back foot came down in water or blood. He slipped and floundered off balance.
Evendur stepped in, then stiffened as darts of blue light pierced him from overhead. He glanced up at Umara, who still stood at the railing of the galleon, and growled, “Drown.” The wizard reeled backward out of sight.
Hoping to take advantage of the undead pirate’s distraction, Anton lunged and tried a head cut. But Evendur hadn’t lost track of him, and his axe blocked the saber. Anton shoved closer and stabbed with the cutlass for the other corsair’s glazed, sunken eye.
Evendur jerked his head down, and instead of catching him in the orbit, the cutlass sliced a flap of slimy flesh from his brow. The injury intensified the putrid stench that emanated from him even in the rain, but it didn’t make him falter. He pushed with the axe even though it was still hooked on the saber blade, trying to shove through Anton’s guard and bring the glowing edge to his face through pure brute force.
Reflex made Anton push back. It only took an instant to feel it was the wrong choice. He couldn’t match Evendur’s strength. But before he could spring backward or twist aside, the axe pressed into the side of his face from jaw to temple, then hitched upward to split the skin.
The gash itself was a superficial wound. Anton had suffered worse in the midst of battle and kept on fighting. But the luminous poison in the axe head filled his lungs with what felt like frigid brine. He fell down retching.
Evendur raised the axe, and a small man in armor that looked like a coat of leaves shouted words that made thorny vines grow from the deck and try to coil around the living corpse. Evendur spat black sludge, the briars vanished, and a huge hand made of water rose from the sea, snatched the little druid, and yanked him over the side.
Meanwhile, Anton struggled to stand. He made it to his knees, but he still couldn’t breathe, and another spasm of coughing wracked him. The convulsions spattered the deck with blood from the gash on his face.
“Fight me!” Shinthala called. Evendur pivoted to face her, then stiffened.
The druidess’s eyes shone like lightning. Phantom serpents crawled through the ghostly holly that surrounded her, and streaks of a different grayness shot through Evendur’s body.
Anton just had time to realize the undead pirate was turning to stone before he wasn’t anymore. His inherent mystical strength had resisted the petrification. He snarled and brandished his axe, and a ball of silvery phosphorescence flew from the head of the weapon.
It missed Shinthala by a hair but discharged its magic when it was right next to her. The blast of pale light froze puddles on the deck and plummeting raindrops, and painted the left side of her body with frost. The holly and snakes vanished, and she toppled. The newly-made hailstones clattered around her.
Black spots dancing at the edges of his vision, Anton struggled again to rise. But something went wrong and he flopped back down on his belly instead.
As he did, Evendur stumbled slightly and gripped a tack. He only held on for an instant, though. Then his unsteadiness, if that was what it had been, passed, and he appeared as formidable as ever.
Certainly, he must seem so to the Thayan mariners. As Anton had intended, they’d followed him and Umara onto the galleon and then started jumping and sliding down onto the Turmishan warship in an onslaught that, in any normal battle, would quickly have turned the tide against the enemy. But now, with no spellcasters left to oppose the Chosen of Umberlee and Anton likewise helpless if not dying, the men still peering down from Evendur’s magnificent ship hesitated.
Then someone rasped, “Keep going! Kill the scum!” The voice was so hoarse that it took Anton an instant to recognize it as Umara’s. She’d somehow managed to free herself of the drowning curse, but not before coughing her throat raw.