should have avoided. The fiend's eyes rolled left as its black guts spilled into the water, followed by the rest of the deformed monster's body. By now, a half-dozen fiends were closing with Anvil. Instead of attacking, he grabbed the screaming Turbalt by the shirtfront and pulled him out of the water.
Terrified beyond reason, Turbalt flailed and twisted in Anvil's grasp. His violent thrashing slowed Anvil as the Sharker staggered out of the surf. The fiends were slow, but Turbalt would doom them both in his panic. Sharessa could wait no longer. She ran forward, despite Belmer's order.
Before Sharessa could reach him, Anvil had lost his patience with the struggling Turbalt. With the bell guard of his sabre, he struck the man hard in the belly. Sharessa could hear the whoosh of air from Turbalt's lungs, and all the fight left him. Anvil hefted the limp form onto his shoulder and began to run.
Sharessa fell in beside him to fend off any fiends who proved faster than the others. She was surprised to see Belmer on Anvil's other side, doing the same. His face was grim, and Sharessa feared for Anvil after their escape.
Soon they had outdistanced the fiends. The moon had risen higher, and its reflection in the sea cast blanched light all the way to the forest's edge. The Sharkers and the sailors of the Morning Bird had stopped less than a half mile along the shore. Before reaching the group, Belmer raised a hand, signaling Anvil and Sharessa to stop. Anvil shrugged Turbalt off his shoulders, and the smaller man grunted as he hit the sand. He kept his gaze down, hiding his face from the others. In a second he scrambled up and walked quickly away, toward the larger group, indignant or ashamed.
Belmer ignored the ship captain and turned to Anvil. Sharessa braced herself to defend her comrade with an argument.
'Very impressive,' said Belmer. Sharessa saw the surprise on Anvil's face and imagined it looked much the same as hers. Perhaps Belmer had come around. He began walking after Turbalt. Anvil and Sharessa followed. Belmer put a friendly hand on Anvil's big arm.
'Disobey me again, and it won't be the fiends that kill you.' His voice was anything but friendly.
'Here they come,' announced Brindra. 'Dozens of them. Hundreds, maybe.' The heavy woman was almost out of breath. Running was not easy for her, though she could fight as long and hard as any of the Sharkers.
'How far?' asked Belmer. The others crowded around to hear the news.
'A little over a mile,' she answered. 'Probably not much less than that now. The things are damned slow.'
'Lucky for us,' said Belgin Dree with some irony.
'The ones behind us are closer,' said one of the Morning Bird sailors. 'There's more of them, too.'
'They're herding us,' said Ingrar. He had been a shepherd before leaving the Web mountains to find his fortune. While he still had much to learn about sailing and pirating, Sharessa supposed he knew plenty about herding. She didn't like the thought that this time they were the sheep.
Sharessa suddenly wished Ingrar had stayed at his home, never to join the Sharkers or find himself stalked by fiends in the wilds of Doegan. She looked at his face. He looked older in the moonlight, and some of his fear had left. The Sharkers had learned to depend on his courage in a fray, but something about the fiends in the woods unnerved him. If the truth were told, Sharessa thought, the fiends unnerved them all. Impulsively, she leaned toward him and brushed his cheek with her lips. He straightened his shoulders and gave her a half-smile. She turned and found herself staring into Belmer's cold eyes.
'Herding us is right,' said Rings. 'But where?'
'Into the woods,' said Belmer, still holding Sharessa in his gaze. The dark-tressed pirate knew he was right.
'But why?' asked Ingrar. Sharessa thought she knew the answer to this, too.
'You saw how slow those things are,' she said. 'Whatever killed Elsger and Jan is wickedly fast. Maybe it controls the slow ones. Maybe it sent them out to push us back in.'
'And maybe that one can't leave the woods,' suggested Ingrar, hopefully.
'I don't think so,' said Belmer. 'I think it wants to play.'
'What?' said Brindra.
'It could have killed more of us,' said Belgin. 'Plenty more.' He had taken a pair of dice from his vest pocket and was rolling them around in his palm. Each revolution made another tiny click.
Belmer nodded. 'It doesn't just want to kill us.'
'It wants to terrify us,' finished Belgin. Click. Click.
'What do we do?' said Ingrar. His voice was calmer than Sharessa would have expected, but not resigned.
'We could take our chances in the woods,' offered Sharessa. 'If we stay together, it can't get us all. If we don't carry a lantern and..' Everyone was looking at her as if she were insane. Even Belgin's dice-clicking had stopped.
'Never mind.'
'We can't fight our way thought the melty ones,' said Ingrar.
'Mm,' agreed Rings. 'Too many.'
'We could swim around a group of the slow ones,' suggested Brindra. Sharessa almost groaned at that idea. The Sharkers had spent far too much of their time swimming away from burning or sinking ships. Still, the fiends might not follow them there, and they could all swim faster than those lumbering, half-melted fiends.
Belmer nodded at Brindra's suggestion. 'We could go deep enough that the slow fiends couldn't wade out after us.'
'Uh,' rasped Anvil. His voice was raspier than usual. 'I didn't say anything earlier, since we were close to shore and didn't really have a choice, but — '
'Let me guess,' said Belmer. 'There are fiends in the waters of Doegan, too.'
Anvil just nodded. 'Gigantic ones.'
'Joy.'
'I didn't put them there,' grumbled Anvil.
'Well, you were right about fiends in the woods,' said Belmer. 'I'll take your word on the ones in the water.'
'So what do we do?' asked Ingrar. They all looked at Belmer, and he turned to look back at the woods.
'Oh, no,' said Brindra-and Ingrar, and about half of the sailors. 'Oh, yes.'
They crept into the forest slowly, Belmer and Sharessa in the lead. The others followed as reluctantly as skinny-dippers in winter, but the forest was warm and still. The farther they moved away from the sea breeze, the warmer it grew. Sharessa felt her clothes beginning to cling to her damp flesh. She loosened the strings of her shirt and shook the fabric briskly.
With the heat came renewed fear, and the Mar sailors became clumsy in the stifling darkness.
'Ow!'
'Watch where ye're going.' 'I can't see a-' 'Shh!'
'Slowly,' said Belmer. 'And quietly.'
They moved along, trying to obey. Even Turbalt was uncharacteristically quiet. The shipless captain hadn't said a word since Anvil had saved him from his own cowardice.
Sharessa felt Belmer's hand upon her arm. It was cool and dry in the moist heat of the forest. His whisper was so quiet that she had to strain to hear it.
'Stay,' he said. Then he was gone, and Sharessa waited until the sailor behind her came close before putting her hand on his arm and a whisper in his ear. He did the same, and so on down the line with one or two startled yelps. Then Belmer returned and led Sharessa to a new path in the darkness. They continued this way for more than an hour, stopping four more times, more quietly than before.
Finally, when Belmer returned from the darkness, they gathered close to talk again.
'Over the hills to the city, right?'
'Right,' whispered one of the sailors.
'That's right,' said Anvil. Though he had spent most of his adult life at sea, the big pirate had been born in Doegan.
'There's a river canyon in the way,' pointed out Belmer. 'About fifty yards north.'
'Shouldn't be,' said one of the sailors uncertainly. Sharessa imagined a withering stare from Belmer, but she
