A hand caught the Nurian’s wrist, and Rias yanked her away. Tikaya stumbled and went down. Arrows spilled from her quiver.
The practitioner leapt on top of her, a dagger held aloft. Tikaya grabbed an arrow and rammed it into his gut. Luckily, it was the pointy end.
Eyes bulging, the practitioner reeled back. He dropped the dagger and clutched the arrow in his belly.
Before Tikaya could decide if she was safe, Rias loomed behind the practitioner. He wound up and swept the cutlass through flesh, muscle, and bone. The Nurian’s head fell onto Tikaya.
“ Errkt!” She shoved it off and scrambled away. Panting, she pressed a hand against the wall for support.
“ I’ve got your back.” Rias raked her with his gaze. “Are you injured?”
“ Not…severely,” she said numbly, staring at the decapitated practitioner. “How- why do you do that?” It came out more accusatory than she meant. Or maybe not. He had just saved her life-again-and she did not want to sound ungrateful, but, damn, it was chilling when the man on her side was more fearsome than those trying to murder her.
Rias turned her away from the decapitated practitioner and nodded toward the tiller room. “I’ve seen too many wizards I thought dead heal themselves and later come back after my men. As to how…” He ducked low to enter. “If you’re ever in the imperial capital’s war library, look up Applications of the Kinetic Chain Principle in Close Combat. I wrote it for Lord General Micacrest during my final year of studies, and parts are now used by the military training academies. Not scintillating reading, I’ll admit, but it covers everything from breaking boards with a punch to-”
“ Beheading people?” She trailed him inside, also ducking for the hatch.
“ That’s not listed in the table of contents, but, essentially, yes.”
A pair of glowing orbs in sconces by the door illuminated the interior, though even without them Tikaya would have noticed the matching ragged holes adorning the exterior walls of the wedge-shaped compartment. A cannonball had gone straight through, leaving uneven gaps more than two feet in diameter. Wind shrieked, and water splattered the deck, pooling and running with the rocking of the ship.
“ That doesn’t look good,” she muttered, before noticing a dead warrior on the deck, short sword still clutched in his grip.
“ Actually…” Rias shut the door and peered out both gaps. He lingered on one side and kicked out a few broken boards to enlarge it. “It’s fortuitous since there aren’t portholes in here. There’s the other Nurian vessel on this flank, and I see the Fist’s smokestacks beyond it.”
He strode to one of the block and tackles stretched from either side of the long metal tiller. They allowed manual access, though control ropes disappeared through the ceiling to connect to the wheel on the upper deck.
Rias grabbed one of the ropes and readied his cutlass. “They’ll know right away they’ve lost wheel control, and half the crew will probably charge down here.”
“ I see, and how will we stop them from killing us?”
“ Let me know when you figure it out.” At odds with the seriousness of the situation, a mischievous glint warmed his eyes. “It’s going to take all my strength to man the tiller.”
He sliced through the control ropes even as she blurted, “You’re crazy!”
Rias unhooked the end of the rope on the starboard block and tackle, glanced at measurements on the wall above the tiller, and sank into a low stance to pull. Inch by inch the great lever shifted, and the ship leaned, cutting across the waves in a new direction.
Tikaya hunted for something to block the door that she would surely be defending in a moment. Alas, there was no convenient beam for barring it shut-probably so people could not do what they were attempting.
She pushed a trunk full of spare rope to the door. Forcing queasiness aside in favor of practicality, she muscled the dead Nurian’s body on top of it to add weight.
“ Where exactly are you steering us?” she panted.
Rias was a statue, leaning back, arms extended, fingers wrapped around the rope, tendons taut with the strain, but he grinned at her nonetheless. “The closest Nurian ship.”
“ Oh, dear.”
A fist hammered at the door.
“ The Turgonians cut the ropes,” Tikaya yelled in Nurian. “We’re taking care of it. They ran to the hold!”
A long pause answered her, and, for a moment, she thought they might believe her. Then synchronized thuds struck the door.
“ A nice try,” Rias said, and she wondered how much Nurian he understood.
The chest skidded with each strike. She shoved it back in between blows.
“ Get a ram,” someone yelled.
“ Better ready that bow,” Rias said.
“ If we’re successful in crashing this ship, how are we getting out of here?” Tikaya asked.
Rias nodded toward the cannonball holes. “Hope you can swim.”
She groaned.
For a moment, the thumps at the door stopped. Tikaya abandoned the chest and looked out the hole. They had halved the distance between themselves and the other Nurian ship, where a fire burned on the deck. People were scurrying to put it out.
“ Are they tacking?” Rias asked. “Do I need to make adjustments?”
“ Not yet. You’re dead on, and they’re busy. Not sure they’ve figured things out yet.”
“ Let’s hope.”
The hairs rose on the back of Tikaya’s neck. Before she could shout a warning, a wave of power surged at the door. The trunk and body were flung into the room.
While nocking an arrow, Tikaya tried to shut the door with her shoulder. Warped hinges kept it from closing fully, and someone thrust it wide.
She jumped around and fired the bow, point blank, into the lead man’s chest. Shocked eyes launched an accusation at her. She forced aside guilt and kicked him into others trying to surge forward. While they struggled to get around their dying comrade, she targeted a practitioner in the corridor behind them. Her arrow sailed over the heads of men shorter than she, but bounced harmlessly off an invisible shield. The practitioner never flinched.
The Nurians cleared the fallen man away, and their renewed push demanded Tikaya’s attention. The corridor and door were too narrow for more than one to attack at once, but the seconds it took to nock and aim arrows let them push her back.
“ Rias! I can’t-”
Then he was there at her side, the slashing cutlass a wall of steel guarding the doorway. He had tied the rope to the other block and tackle. The lever wavered with the rocking of the ship, but hopefully they were close enough now that their course was inevitable.
“ Get in there, you fools!” the practitioner shouted. “We’re on a crash course!”
An arrow clipped the doorjamb and whizzed past Tikaya’s head. Every time she found the opportunity, she shot around Rias, peppering their attackers. Her supply of arrows dwindled.
“ This is madness,” she yelled over the clamor.
“ Yes!” Rias grinned at her, as if he loved every second.
A gifted swordsman made it to the front. Blade a blur, he forced Rias back.
Metal screeched in Tikaya’s ears. She drew the bow, hoping for a clear shot. Two men slipped in behind the swordsman. Tikaya shot one, but more piled inside.
A thunderous crash buried the din, and the ship lurched and tilted on its side. Men scrambled and fell over each other, sliding toward the lower wall. Tikaya tumbled into Rias, but he grabbed the jamb and kept them from falling. Even in the stern of the ship, the cracks of wood breaking against wood were audible. Water gushed in from one of the cannonball holes, which was now submerged. Men flailed and floundered, struggling to get back to the door.
“ I can’t swim!” someone yelled.
“ Time to go,” Rias said.
Tikaya grabbed one of the glowing orbs from a sconce before he pushed her toward the upper wall. They had
