That thought lasted for but a moment, while the moment existed as a drop of moisture on the pirate’s blade, dangling for a silent eternity. Lenk felt his breath run cold in his lungs, felt his blood freeze in his veins and time with it.
His muscles did not strengthen beneath his skin, rather they denied strength entirely in favour of the frigid fingers that crept through him. In one long, cold breath, he felt the numbness sweep up his arms, into his chest.
Into his mind.
The thought grew stronger, louder with every twitch of his hands, every fingerbreadth he gave to the blade. It echoed through his head, down into his chest, into an arm that involuntarily broke from his opponent’s grip and sought his fallen blade.
Through shut eyes, he could see the moment dangling off his opponent’s sword.
He felt it drop.
‘
Blue flashed, pitiless and cold, behind his eyelids. Eyes not his own stared back into him. Teeth that were not his clenched. Fingers that were not his gripped a hilt. The thought did not leap to his mind, did not whisper inside him.
It had a voice.
It spoke.
Lenk felt something move, a snap of cold air that sent his hair whipping about his face. He opened his eyes and stared down the long steel blade of a sword he didn’t remember swinging, life dripping down it, upon which the Cragsman’s shock was violently etched.
He looked up, just as surprised as his opponent, and met the man’s eyes. No fear this time, no moment of futile hope and extinguished life. The pirate stared at him with eyes that could reflect nothing, the blow having come too swiftly to grant him even the privilege of a horrified death.
He mouthed, ‘No fair.’
And fell to the deck.
The numbness did not flee from Lenk’s limbs, but rather seeped into his body, as water disappearing into the earth. He felt suddenly weak, legs soft under a body suddenly unbearably heavy, breath offensively warm and jagged in his throat.
Slowly, he staggered to his feet. Slowly, he felt the sun again, heard the din of battle. But the warmth was faint, the sounds distant. He could feel the chill, he was aware of it as he was of his own shadow. It seeped away, dissipated into blood that began to run warm, leaving only a single thought given a voice behind.
‘
‘What?’ he gasped, his own voice suddenly alien to himself.
‘
‘I. . I don’t-’
‘MORE, YOU IDIOT! THERE’S MORE COMING!’
Argaol’s roar came from the helm with desperation. Lenk glanced up to see four sailors locked in combat with a pair of Cragsmen, desperately trying to keep the blade-wielding pirates away from their captain with their staves. The dark man himself looked directly at Lenk, pointing to the railing.
He shrieked, of course, as he usually did when addressing the young man, but Lenk didn’t hear him. He didn’t need to as he saw two more tattooed men leap from a boarding chain onto the deck. Instead of rushing towards the battle to aid their fellows, they instead cast wary looks about, hungry eyes and bare feet immediately setting off for the companionway.
‘Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn,
A curse for every step as he charged after the boarders. Ironic, he thought absently as he pushed his way through the melee, that moments ago he was ready to leave the Lord Emissary to die. Then again, it was hardly surprising; so long as he had been hit in the face once today, he might as well get paid for it.
Which wasn’t likely to happen if his employer was gutted below decks.
‘Protect the charter, boys!’ Argaol roared to his own crew. ‘Protect the Lord Emissary! The Gods demand it and smile on us for it!’
Lenk’s pace was quick as he leapt over bodies, side-stepped brawls, darted around stray blades. The battle raged with no clear victor; he passed corpses both familiar and tattooed. But the sailors held, the Cragsmen had not overrun them yet, and the two boarders were not as swift as Lenk was. For a moment, he felt a rush of victory as he drew closer.
For a moment, he thought that maybe the Gods
That belief died with the sudden twist of an ankle and a shriek as he recalled that the Gods loved irony far more than they loved their servants. He hit a patch of red-tinged seawater, his boot slid out from under him and he went sprawling, sword clattering to the deck.
There was barely enough time to spew out a curse before he lunged to his feet, seizing his weapon. Too late; he saw the two boarders vanish into the shadows of the companionway, laughter anticipating the impending looting ringing in their wake. Once inside, they would easily lose any pursuit in the maze of cargo holds and cabins, chopping up passengers at will, cutting and pillaging in a few breaths. And he was too late to stop it.
Just as the darkness of the companionway loomed up before him like a gaping maw, he was forced to skid to a halt. Something squirmed in the shadows. Someone screamed.
He threw himself to the side just in time to see the body of one of the invaders sail through the air, landing limply on the deck with his neck twisted at an angle at which necks clearly were not meant to twist.
‘G-GET AWAY FROM ME!’ the remaining pirate squealed from inside. He came shrieking out of the gloom, weapon lost, mouth gibbering. ‘MONSTER! THEY’VE GOT A GODS-DAMNED DRAG-’
His scream died in his throat, his feet torn from the deck as a great red arm ending in a set of brutal claws reached out from the darkness to wrap about his neck. The hand tightened, the sound of bones creaking between its massive fingers. Lenk cringed, but only for a moment. He knew the smile that then spread across his face was unwholesome, but he could hardly help himself.
The sight of Gariath brought out all sorts of loathsome emotions in people.
The dragonman emerged from the companionway, holding the writhing pirate aloft with an arm rippling with crimson muscle. He surveyed the battle through black eyes, his captive a mere afterthought.
The expression across his long snout was unreadable as he swung his horned head back and forth. The ear- frills at the side of his head twitched in time with the leathery wings folded on his massive back, as if stretching after a long nap.
‘I thought you weren’t coming up,’ Lenk said.
Gariath looked down at the young man, who only came up to the lowest edge of his titanic chest. He sneered, far more unpleasantly than either Lenk or Kataria could ever hope to, baring rows of sharp, ivory teeth.
‘It was stifling below,’ he grunted. ‘I came up for air and find humans dying.’ He glanced over the melee. ‘I can’t say I’m not pleasantly surprised.’
He became aware of the captive pirate thrashing in his hand, pounding at the thick red wrist wrapped in a silver bracer. His scaly eye-ridges furrowed as he turned to the companionway.
His snarl was short and businesslike as he slammed the pirate’s face against the wooden doorframe, staining it red. His roar was loud and boastful as he drove it forwards again, bone fragments splintering with the frame. His snort was quick and derisive as he crushed the pirate once more, reducing a formerly grisly visage to featureless red pulp. Already bored with his now-unmoving prey, the dragonman dropped him to the deck, raising a clawed foot to rest upon his head.
