‘For they are such grotesque blades, are they not?’ Caradryel added. ‘No taste, our fallen kin. No taste at all.’
The hours did not pass quickly. The three dark-sailed hunters steadily hauled the gap closed, sailing with reckless skill through a wind-chopped sea. Arian drove the Ithaniel as hard as he had promised to, straining the rigging and almost losing the mainsail twice. The crew worked as hard as he did, for they all knew the odds; only at the very end would they take up bow, blade or spear, ready to fight to the last, knowing that captivity would be far worse than a clean death in combat.
Arian leaned over the railing of the ship’s sloping quarterdeck, watching the foam-edged wake zigzag away towards the enemy. On either side of him stood two big repeater crossbows, each one wound tight with iron-tipped bolts. The shafts were huge – as thick as his thigh and longer than he was tall.
By then he could make out the detail on the lead druchii corsair: a rune of Khaine on a satin-black ground, elaborate and gauche. It looked like a spatter of blood on dark glass, glistening wetly in the strong sun.
Like most of those now serving in the Phoenix King’s navy, Arian was not old enough to remember the time before the Sundering. Horror and grief had thinned the ranks of those who had been there at the time, eight hundred years ago during the dark days when his race had cracked itself apart. Arian could, though, remember the subsequent years of horrific bloodshed. He could remember believing, long ago, that a reconciliation would somehow be found.
Now he entertained no such dreams. He knew, as all on Ulthuan surely knew, that war would now be with them for as long as any could foresee. Most of the druchii who crewed the corsair ships would not have been born in Ulthuan and would have only a sketchy knowledge of their ancient home. Most of the crew he commanded had never known a world in which the druchii were not mortal enemies from a frozen land across the oceans. The two sundered kinfolks now looked at one another and saw nothing more than an enemy, as alien now as the greenskin had always been.
How far the sons of Aenarion had fallen.
‘They sail like maniacs,’ observed Caradryel.
Arian hadn’t heard him approach. He remained poised on the railing, eyes fixed out to sea. ‘They know what they’re doing.’
‘If you say so. Why not explain it to me?’
Arian pointed out the lead vessel. It was still too far out for a bolt-shot, but every buck of its prow brought it closer. ‘That’s the one they want to close first. Caelon’s spied grapples in the bow and it’s stuffed with troops. I’d guess fifty, maybe more.’
‘And the two others?’
‘They’ll eat our wind,’ said Arian grimly. ‘They’ll swing out as they get closer, cutting our sails flat. When we’re hooked by the lead corsair they’ll close back for the kill.’
‘I see. Anything you can do about that?’
Arian had to hand it to the prince: his tone was one of amiable curiosity, unmarked by the slightest tremor of fear. He might have been discussing the merits of the wine from his father’s vineyards. ‘Caelon knows this ship better than his own wife,’ said Arian. ‘We’ll slip the trap for as long as we can, praying the wind drops or we spy ships of the fleet.’
‘And what, do you suppose, are the chances of that?’
‘I would not lay money on it.’
‘Then we are hoping for the miraculous.’
‘You could say that.’
Caradryel laughed. It was a light, unaffected sound, and it made several of the deck-hands turn from their labours. ‘I should not fret, captain,’ he said. ‘The miraculous has a way of following me. Always has. Should you wish to, you might give thanks to the gods for having me amongst your crew this day. In any event, try not to look so worried – it is not, as they say in Lothern, good form.’
Caradryel could only watch as the corsairs did exactly what Arian had predicted. They ran fast, dipping through the pitch of the waves before crashing up again with spiked prows. More details became visible – curved hulls glossy as lacquer, black pennants fluttering around bone-like mastheads, ranks of warriors in ebon armour, crowding at the railings, eager for the boarding to come.
Caradryel withdrew from the quarterdeck and walked unsteadily towards the prow. As he did so he scoured the western horizon. The sky was clear, the wind remained strong, the seas were empty.
Dying here will annoy my father, he thought to himself as he drew his sword from its scabbard. That, at least, is something.
His blade had not been well cared for and showed signs of rust along the edges. Caradryel had never been a warrior. He had never been much of anything, though that had never shaken his inner confidence. He had always assumed that his time would come and his path would open up before him like the petals of a flower.
‘Bolts!’ came a cry from the high-top, and spearmen on either side of him crouched down low. Caradryel followed suit, pressing himself to the deck. A second later the air whistled with crossbow quarrels, some of them thudding hard into the wood, some sailing clear.
Before Caradryel could react, the Ithaniel opened up with its own bolt throwers and the recoil shuddered down the spine of the ship. Spray crashed up over the prow, salty and death-cold. He pushed his head up from the deck and saw two black sails standing off, eating up the wind just as Arian had predicted. The other one had tacked in close, bursting through the heavy swell like a pick hammered through ice.
Another volley of bolts screamed across the deck at stomach-height, barely clearing the rails. Caradryel
