“Do you know how to use a club?” Jenna asked her after taking a breath to fight down the adrenaline coursing through her blood.
Bailynn shook her head and looked at her hands instead, which were also smeared with the blood of her victim.
“Okay, let’s hurry and find our friends,” Jenna said, understanding that she only knew how to be the savage killer that Jenna’s kin had turned her into. With a blush of shame coloring her skin, Jenna hurried down the hallway to the next door and peered into it.
No sooner had she looked in when a shout came at them from down the hallway. Two more slavers approached, one of them carrying another bowl of what passed for stew. Another two hurried down the stairs behind them, with a third bowl. They set the stew down and drew their clubs, with the furthest on in the back rushing back up a set of stairs to get more help.
Jenna cursed and turned to face them. “Open that door, I couldn’t tell if anyone was in there or not,” she said.
Bailynn moved past her and shifted the heavy wooden beam out of the locks before pulling open the door and looking in. Kragor peered out, ready to spring into action himself in spite of recognizing Jenna’s voice and hearing the sounds of the scuffle. Behind him a strange man, Xander, stood and stared at her curiously.
“About time,” Kragor said, hurrying out of the room and turning to move up beside Jenna. “Where’s Jodyne?”
The slavers had advanced cautiously down the passage, pausing to glance at the two corpses the women had left in their wake before coming towards them.
“Lynn, can you check the other doors?” Jenna asked, not daring to stand down from her position. She glanced down at the dwarf and found herself smirking in spite of their situation.
“Not a word, elf,” Kragor growled at her, picking up the wooden plank used to bar the door to his and Xander’s cell.
“Yes, Sir,” Jenna said, failing to hide her smile.
Kragor scowled but dismissed it as the pirates approached them.
“You throw down that club and we’ll go easy on ya,” one of them said, addressing Jenna.
Jenna ignored him, and instead stood in her defensive position, club raised. The motley pirate crew snarled, spat, and insulted them before finally just rushing forward with the intent of overrunning them.
The close quarters aided Kragor, for his was able to get inside the reach of their opponents and use his smaller size to his advantage. Jenna, though unfamiliar with the tips and tricks of wielding a club, gave better than she received, smashing into every unprotected attacker that presented himself to her. In a matter of moments Kragor picked up a dropped club from a fallen slaver and was able to provide a more dangerous opponent as well.
Jodyne and Bekka hurried to join them; relief flooding through both dwarves to learn that the other survived. The matter of missing clothing was forgotten under the circumstances, although privately both felt embarrassed for the other.
Bailynn was approaching the final door when something slammed into it from the other side, jarring it. She stopped and watched it, equally curious and nervous about it. The slamming came again and again, as though something was trying to get out. She glanced back down the passage at Jenna and the others — her friends? Bailynn shrugged and slid the plank out of the braces, allowing the next impact with the door to send it flying open and a surprised Keshira to stumble into the hallway.
She paused, once in the hallway, and looked around. She looked to her right, where a set of stairs led up and down, and nearly headed in the direction. Several men came rushing down the stairs, blocking them and advancing forward. She looked back to the right where the others waited and quickly judged that they had things as under control as they could hope to.
In a smaller hallway, with fewer assailants attacking them, it might be possible to fight the slavers off longer, she reasoned. Or at least long enough for Captain Dexter to make it back to them. She could feel him drawing closer with each passing minute. She turned back to the stairs on her right and ran forward, catching the pirates by surprise as she plowed into their ranks and actually drove them back.
Bailynn, at a loss for what to do, decided to help Keshira. She had never spoken to the woman, and rarely found the pleasure golem speaking to others. Even now she had expressed no gratitude or greeting. Given the confusion she herself felt, Bailynn found herself wondering about the voluptuous woman easily overpowering the slavers that came at her. Besides, helping Keshira put her further from the confusing elf. Jenna was obviously at war with her own nature, and Bailynn wanted to be nowhere near her when the war ended, in case the elven side of her won out and found a way to imprison her again.
They fought for what seemed like an hour or more. Their arms were leaden and their breath burned in their throats. The crew of the Voidhawk was bruised and bloodied many times over, but thus far only the bodies of the slavers cluttered the floor of the passage. A dozen, perhaps, had fallen, but still more filled the ends of the tunnel and sought to subdue them. A few times other weapons had entered the fray, instead of the simple clubs that the slavers used in attempts to subdue them. Jenna upgraded to wield a club in one hand and a dropped short sword in the other. A few daggers had fallen as well, though Jodyne was quick to acquire them and send them spinning back into the ranks of the slavers.
Of them all Keshira alone fought tirelessly. She had disabled or killed several pirates on her own, and fresh ones were not so anxious to come against her. Their knives and swords had little effect on her, which astonished and terrified them. They could not understand how a woman so beautiful and soft looking could be so deadly.
Bailynn grew tired herself, but if she needed a short respite it was easy to do by letting Keshira pick up the slack in the narrow corridor. She was covered in blood and felt as though she might never be free of the stink and the taste of it. It sickened her, but she knew this time she fought for herself, not for a Master.
“He’s here!” Keshira said, pausing only slightly after having thrown a pirate into the wall and his comrades.
Bailynn looked at her, wondering what she was talking about. She also noted the renewed frenzy that Keshira went into as she tried to force her way through the ranks of the slavers.
Bailynn strove to aid her, fingers sinking into the hamstring of one of the few lizardmen slavers that tried to disable the pleasure golem. Bailynn yanked him towards her, with the surprised lizardman hissing in pain all the while, and then she dug bloody furrows across his face with her other hand when it turned to look at her. Recoiling in surprise at the savagery in the small woman, it was caught unprepared again when her next strike tore into its abdomen and pulled something bloody, fleshy, and important for continued survival into the open air.
The crew of the Voidhawk heard some shouting in the distance, and only after the cry was taken up by others did they make it out. Someone was calling for the slavers to stop fighting. Another order came once both groups stopped, and they pulled back so that the exhausted prisoners could make their way, warily, up three flights of stairs and out onto the main deck of the ship.
A pile of gear was being assembled on the deck, all of that which had been taken from the prisoners. Xander cried out in joy when he saw a collection of books spilling out of a sack on the decking. Standing up on the forecastle of the ship was Dexter and Rosh, the latter of which holding the cutlass wielding captain of the slave ship with a curved dagger to his throat.
“Captain!” Keshira cried out when she saw him, a great relief in her voice.
Dexter and Rosh looked at them all in shock. Even Rosh could only focus on the nudity of the woman for so long before he, too, had to show some shock at the exhaustion they displayed and the level of gore covering them. Bailynn, in particular, was nearly covered head to toe in blood. They put their clothing back on, although in Keshira’s case it had been torn so badly it was an impossible task.
Dexter opened his mouth to ask who Xander was, but decided instead he would deal with that later. Instead he growled some orders to the pirate Captain, who nervously called out for his crew to let the prisoners gather their things and cross the gangplank that had been set up between the pirate ship and the Voidhawk, which had been sailing alongside as further captured booty.
Jenna and the others made their way across, though Keshira waited until Dexter motioned for her to go as well. Rosh and Dexter, dragging the slaver captain with them, made their way to the plank as well. They waited while Kragor and Jenna rounded up the pirates that had sailed the Voidhawk and they ushered them back across the gangplank to the pirate vessel.
