As Miron opened his mouth to reply, he was cut off by a sudden response from Denaos.
‘It’s the tattoos,’ the rogue said, eyeing the priest, ‘isn’t it?’
‘Indeed.’ Miron’s reply was grim. ‘They are adornments of an order who serve a power far crueller than any pirate. Their appearance here is. . unexpected.’
‘A power?’ Asper asked, frowning. ‘They’re. . priests?’
‘Of a sort.’
‘Then why do they side with the pirates, Lord Emissary?’
‘There is no time to explain,’ Miron replied urgently. ‘Your friends require your aid above.’ He raised his hands in a sign of benediction. ‘Go forth, and Talanas be with you in your-’
A door slammed further down the corridor. Miron whirled about, Denaos and Asper looking over his shoulders to spy the fifth intruder darting away from the direction of the priest’s quarters. He paused to regard the trio warily for a moment, clutching a square silk pouch tightly to his chest.
‘Drop that, you filth!’ Miron roared with a fury not befitting his fragile frame.
The creature’s reply was a mouth opened to reveal twin rows of pointed, serrated teeth in a feral hiss. Without another moment’s hesitation, he stuffed his prize into a burlap sack and tore down the hallway.
‘Stop him!’ Miron bellowed, charging after the fleeing infiltrator. ‘STOP HIM! He must not have that book!’
‘What’s so important about it?’ Denaos called after him.
The priest did not respond, rushing headlong into the shadows of the hold. Denaos opened his mouth to repeat the question, but the breath was knocked from him as Asper shoved her way past, hurrying after the priest. With a sigh, Denaos shook his head and sprinted after them both.
Pirates, boneless beasts, books worth dying for, he thought grimly, all in one day. Whatever distressed young ladies are rescued from this mess had better be disgustingly grateful.
Five
Screaming from above, an arrow caught a tardy pirate crawling across the chain. It struck deep into his neck, forcing a blood-choked gurgle from the man as he lost his grip on the bridge of links and went tumbling headfirst into the churning waters below.
‘Eight,’ Kataria remarked, nocking another arrow.
Her bowstring sang a melancholy dirge for the next pirate struck, the shict grinning as he fell to join his companion in the liquid tomb.
‘Nine,’ she added, drawing another missile.
‘Stop it,’ Quillian growled in response, levelling her crossbow towards the deck. ‘You’re shattering my concentration. ’
‘You have to concentrate to lose?’ Kataria asked coolly as she loosed her arrow. ‘How sad. Ten.’
‘I have to concentrate to make sure I don’t kill the wrong people,’ Quillian snapped back. She squeezed the trigger on her weapon and sent a bolt flying down to meet one of the deck-bound invaders below.
‘So you kill a few of your own along with the pirates.’ Kataria laughed. ‘It’s not like anyone was expecting you to do your job flawlessly.’ She winked an emerald eye. ‘You’re only human.’ Her bow hummed and someone screamed from below. ‘Eleven.’
‘You stupid savage,’ Quillian muttered, loading her crossbow.
‘You’re just upset that you’re losing.’ She launched another arrow. ‘To look, one would think you’ve never counted Kou’ru before.’ Before the Serrant could reply, she smirked. ‘You see, Kou’ru is-’
‘What your breed calls humans, I know,’ Quillian growled. ‘I take no pride in killing my own kind, much less making games of it.’
‘Well, no wonder you’re so bad at this.’
The Serrant held her tongue, opting instead to focus her aim. It was difficult to ignore the shict; her idle babble was a paling annoyance compared to the grating accuracy of her scorekeeping. That only tightened her resolve, however. She vowed that no simple-minded savage would outshoot a trained Serrant.
‘No way in hell,’ she hissed to herself.
‘Would it help if I shot blind?’
Quillian turned, incredulous. ‘What?’
Kataria’s grin was broad as she tugged her headband down over her eyes. Her ears quivered, one rotating to the left, the other to the right, like hounds with the scent of prey.
‘I can’t be blamed for this, you know. Shicts invented archery. We’re even named after the sound of arrows hitting flesh.’ She let her missile fly and smiled. ‘Shict.’
‘Really,’ Quillian muttered, ‘and here was I thinking you were named after what comes out of my-’
‘Your envy certainly smells like that.’ Kataria lifted her headband and frowned out. ‘Twelve. . wait, no, that was just a glancing shot.’ The fall in her voice lasted only a moment before she jumped up and down, giggling madly. ‘Wait again! Someone got him in the neck with a sword! He’s dead! That counts, that counts!’
‘Will you shut up?’
‘Well, you can hardly expect me to help you when you keep shoving that foul attitude at me. Too bad; I could have improved your score to being at least halfway respectable for a human.’
‘Help?’ Quillian laughed blackly. ‘I’ve seen your kind’s “help” first-hand, savage. I know what you’ve done to my people.’
‘If we’re talking about crimes and kinds,’ Kataria replied nonchalantly, ‘we may as well discuss this strange little rabble of vermin called humanity.’ She loosed an arrow. ‘Thirteen.’ She reached for another. ‘At any rate, all the shict tribes put together only add up to a fraction of your teeming race. We’re smarter than you, quicker than you, craftier than you, and yet all you need to do to beat us out,’ she uttered the last words contemptuously, ‘is breed.’
‘And how many people, innocent people, will never get the chance because of what your kind has done? Your tribes slaughter without remorse, discrimination or respect for the rites of combat!’
‘We can’t afford to discriminate between strains of disease.’ Kataria’s voice and weapon were one cold, cruel amalgamation, hissing callously in unison as she loosed her arrow. ‘Shicts don’t fight fair. Fourteen.’
‘And your companions, are they strains of the same disease?’
Kataria fought hard to keep her body from stiffening, to keep her ears from flattening against her head. The Serrant could not hit a target with arrows. The shict resolved that she could not allow her to see her hit a target with words, either. She could not let the Serrant see her offence at the suggestion. Better to keep the ears upright, proud ears.
Shict ears.
A roar turned her attention to the deck and she glowered. Smoke curled into the sky from smouldering bodies. Men swarmed about the red-skinned brute at their centre, trying to hack at him, trying to take courage in their numbers even as Gariath continued to rip, to pull, to claw and to bludgeon.
Stupid reptile, she thought resentfully, taking all my kills. She glowered at the rapidly thinning crowd of foes. I could kill them all if they’d just stop moving around so much, scampering little monkeys. Her eyes drifted to the Linkmaster, keeping pace with the Riptide so easily, its helmsman shouting encouragement as he guided the ship with expert ease.
And his big, fat, ripe head. .
‘That’s it,’ she whispered.
She loosed an unpleasant guffaw, which only increased as Squiggy cast her a curious cringe.
‘This is how I’ll help you,’ she said. ‘We put a stop to these little pirates moving about and we’ll pluck them off one by one.’ She glanced to the black ship. ‘Of course, we could also just end this game by putting their ship behind us.’
‘What?’ One of Quillian’s eyebrows arched in response to an inner twinge of dread and she whirled about to follow the shict’s gaze. ‘What do you mean?’