She may be killed, or captured. I've no desire to see Althea with a slave tattoo across her cheek. So let's try to turn this to our advantage.' He sprang to the deck. 'Semoy! Break out the weapons!'
Semoy came on the run. 'Right away, Captain. But you ought to tell the men who we're fighting.'
Brashen grinned, wild and reckless. 'Anyone that gets between us and Althea!'
A surprising bellow burst suddenly from Paragon. 'But save Kennit forme!'
THE BATTLE, CONFINED TO THE MAIN DECK OF THE VIVACIA, SUDDENLY shifted. The sheer pressure of men pouring over from the Jamaillian ship was turning the tide. In horror, Malta saw Jek pulled down. Althea dove into the melee after her. As she vanished, a wave of Jamaillian warriors came up over the lip of the deck. She had one glimpse of Wintrow, Etta and Kennit, all in a tight group, fighting for their lives.
'Here he is!' roared a Jamaillian sailor as he leapt up to her. She swung her rung at him. It hit his sword arm, but he simply shifted his arm so the blow was glancing. With his free hand, he snatched the rung out of her grip as easily as taking a toy from a child. He roared with laughter and pushed her aside. His push and the Satrap clinging to her sent her sprawling. The man grabbed the Satrap by the back of his collar, shook him free of his grip on Malta. When she snatched at the Satrap, the fighter held him out of her reach and drew his sword back to plunge it into Malta, then stared in sudden disbelief at a sword tip standing out from his chest. Behind him, a tall man roared his fury. He jerked both sword and victim back and away from Malta. He shoved the dead man into his comrades, pulling the sword out as he did so.
'Get down! Be small!' Reyn shouted at her furiously, and then he turned his back to her. His copper eyes flashed through his tattered veil. She had a glimpse of his left sleeve, sodden with blood. Then three men flung themselves at him and he went down before her very eyes.
'Reyn! No!' she cried and tried to spring forward, but the Satrap was a clinging, shrieking weight behind her. He latched onto her shoulders like a limpet, gibbering and weeping. A man seized her by the hair and flung her aside. With a wild laugh, he sprang on the Satrap as if he were a child seizing a cornered puppy. 'I have him!' he roared. 'I have him!'
Malta jerked her head aside to avoid a kick. It glanced off her skull, dazing her for an instant. It was not deliberate. Now that they had the Satrap, no one was interested in her anymore. She saw him picked up like a sack of meal and flung to a man's shoulder. He bore him away, roaring his triumph. The battle parted for him and receded after him. The boarders had what they had come for and now they were leaving. She had one glimpse of the Satrap's white face, his mouth and eyes wide with terror. She could not see Reyn anywhere. She scrabbled to her knees and stared wildly about. The Satrap was toted across a deck where dead men sprawled amongst the rolling, groaning wounded. The pirates who still fought were in defensive positions, battling for their own lives, unable to spring to his rescue.
The Satrap was an annoying, useless person, but she had cared for him like a child. Day and night, she had been at his side. It smote her heart to see him being borne off to his death. 'Malta!' he cried, and his one free hand strained toward her.
'The Satrap!' she shouted uselessly. 'They have taken him! Save him, save him!' No one could answer her cry for help. As his captors bore him off, the other Jamaillian warriors fell back around him, grinning and shouting with triumph. As the focus of the battle shifted, Malta caught a glimpse of Althea. She had taken a blade from someone. She made an abortive attempt to break free of the knot of fighters that engaged her, but Jek dragged her back.
'He's not worth your life!' the tall woman shouted at her. Her blonde tail of hair dripped blood.
Then, from a tangle of bodies on the deck, Reyn reared up. Malta shrieked aloud with joy at the sight of him. When he had gone down, she had given him up for dead. 'Reyn!' she cried, and then as he snatched up a blade and staggered after the Satrap's captors, she screamed, 'No! No, come back, don't, Reyn!'
He did not get far. A wounded man clutched at him as he dashed past and Reyn fell solidly to the deck. Malta staggered to her feet. Reyn was all she could see. He grappled with the man who had dragged him down. The other man had a knife, already reddened with blood. Heedless of all else, Malta flung herself toward the struggling men.
'LET ME GO!' ALTHEA TRIED TO BREAK JEK'S GRIP, BUT HER FRIEND WAS relentless.
'No! Let him go. They've taken him onto their deck. Will you take the fight there, where the odds are even worse? We've lost him, Althea, at least for now!'
Althea knew she was right. The man carrying the Satrap had caught a dangling line and swung across to the other ship's deck. The Jamaillian sailors were retreating in triumph, cutting the lines that had bound the ships together during the short, fierce fighting. As swiftly as they had come, they left, taking the Satrap with them.
Althea saw Reyn's curtailed charge. She thought he would get up, but before he could scrabble to his feet, an unlikely savior sprang to the Satrap's rescue. With a wild cry of fury, Kennit sprang from between Etta and Wintrow and into the fray. 'Don't let them take him!' he roared angrily. He had a short blade in one hand and his crutch gripped under his other arm. She did not expect him to get more than a few steps, but he swung his way across the deck, loping from foot to crutch with a grace that amazed her. 'To me!' Kennit roared as he ran. Loyal pirates closed in behind him. Etta and Wintrow sprang after him, but others had filled the gap. They were cut off from him.
When Kennit came to the ship's railing, he didn't pause. His peg hit the deck, his foot the railing and he flung himself out. With a leap that would have shamed a tiger, he sprang after the departing ship. Althea expected him to fall between the vessels but he hit the other deck and rolled. A bare handful of his men followed him. One fell short, yelling as he plummeted into the water.
She could not see what became of Kennit after that. Too many men converged on the outnumbered pirate king and his men. Etta screamed in rage and gathered herself. Wintrow tackled her to keep her from flinging herself after Kennit. The gap between the ships had widened to an impossible leap. Jeering laughter and triumphant calls rose stingingly from the other ship as it pulled steadily away from the Vivacia. Two men held the pale Satrap aloft and shook him mockingly at Vivacia's crew.
Etta pushed savagely free of Wintrow. In her despair and anger, she turned on him. 'You fool! We cannot let them have him. They'll kill him. You know that.'
'I don't intend to let them keep him. But your drowning just now would not save him,' he retorted angrily. His voice deepened in command. 'Jola! They've taken Kennit! Vivacia! After them, they've taken Kennit, we must pursue!'
Vivacia took up the cry. 'Up anchor! Put on sail! We must go after them, they've taken Kennit.'
'No!' Althea groaned, low. 'Let him go, let them have him.' But she knew the ship would not. She could feel Vivacia's anxiety, pulsing up through her wood. The ship loved him and she would have him back, no matter the cost. Althea looked across the water at the Jamaillian fleet spread before them. If Vivacia challenged them, she had no chance, even if the Marietta and the Motley backed her. It would not be swift, it would be bloody with more men dying on Vivacia's decks and in the end, her ship would be in Jamaillian hands. It was a lost cause already, but she knew that the ship would pursue it. She would be borne along with her to face a savage end.
Then a voice reached her, booming across the water and setting the hair on the back of her neck on end. 'Halloo the Vivacia! Who has taken Kennit?'
She turned slowly as a chill raced over her. It was a voice from the grave. Paragon's voice reached across the water as no man's could do. She looked at him, and then looked again. It was not Paragon. The battered liveship with its makeshift rigging bore Paragon's nameplate, but the figurehead was an open-countenanced young man, beardless, with his hair bound back in a warrior's tail. Then she had a glimpse of a golden woman standing on the deck just back of the figurehead, waving both her arms in a wild greeting. For an instant, all other thoughts and fears were suspended as she watched them come on. She could not see Brashen; there was no way to be sure he was alive, too, but she suddenly felt he must be. Paragon's eyes were closed and he sailed with his hands stretched blindly before him. That wrung her heart. It was as they had feared. Amber had recarved him, but it had not restored his sight. A white serpent cut the water before his bow.
'They're alive!' Jek was suddenly beside her, jumping up and down and pounding her on the back with a bloody fist. It was unnerving yet wonderful to be snatched off her feet and whirled around by the larger woman as Jek gave a howl of joy.
'Ho, Paragon!' Vivacia cried in despair, 'There, that ship, he's on board her. They'll kill him, Paragon,
