thick accent.
'Aye, sir.' I acknowledged his order and stood to let Kelpy have my bench and oar. It did feel good to pause. My shoulders cracked when I rolled them. But I was ashamed, too, to take a rest when the others did not. I rubbed my eyes and gave my head a rattle, wondering what nightmare had seized me so firmly. What watchman? Where?
Antler Island. They came in under the fog's cover. No town there, but the signal tower. I think they intend to slaughter the watchers, and then do their best to destroy the towers. A brilliant strategy. Antler Island is one of our first lines of defense. The outer tower watches the sea, the inner tower passes on the signals to both Buckkeep and Neatbay. Verity's thoughts, almost calm with the same steadiness that seizes one as a weapon is brought to the ready. Then, after a moment: The single-minded slug is so intent on reaching Carrod, he won't let me through. Fitz. Go to the master. Tell him Antler Island. If you get into the channel, the current will practically fly you to the cove where the tower is. The Raiders are there already, but they'll have to beat against the current to get out again. Go now, and you may catch them on the beach. NOW!
Easier to give orders than to obey them, I thought, and then hurried forward. 'Sir?' I requested, and then stood an eternity waiting for the master to turn and speak to me, while the mate glared at me for going straight to the master rather than through him.
'Oarsman?' the master said at last.
'Antler Island. If we make for it now, and catch the current in the channel, we'll practically fly to the cove where the tower is.'
'That's true. Do you read currents, then, boy? It's a useful skill. I thought I was the only man onboard with an idea of where we actually are.'
'No, sir.' I took a deep breath. Verity had ordered this. 'We should go there, sir. Now.'
The 'now' drew his brows together in a frown.
'What is this nonsense!' Justin demanded angrily. 'Are you trying to make me look a fool? You'd sensed that we were getting close to each other, didn't you? Why do you want me to fail? So you won't feel so alone?'
I wanted to kill him. Instead I drew myself straight and told the truth. 'A secret order from the King-in- Waiting, sir. One I was to pass on to you at this time.' I addressed only the master. He dismissed me with a nod and I returned to my bench arid took my oar back from Kelpy. The master stared dispassionately into the mist.
'Jharck. Have the steersman swing her about and catch the current. Take her a bit deeper into the channel.'
The mate nodded stiffly, and in an instant we had changed course. Our sail bellied slightly, and it was as Verity had said it would be. The current combined with our rowing sent us skating down the channel. Time passes oddly in a fog. All senses are distorted in it. I don't know how long I rowed, but soon Nighteyes whispered that there was a tinge of smoke in the air, and almost immediately we became aware of the cries of men in battle, carrying clear but ghostly through the fog. I saw Jharck the mate exchange glances with the master. 'Put your backs into it!' he snarled suddenly. 'We've got a Red-Ship attacking our tower.'
Another moment and the stink of the smoke was distinguishable in the fog, as were the battle cries and screams of men. Sudden strength leaped in me, and about me I saw the same, the clenched jaws, the muscles that knotted and sprang as we rowed, even a different tang to the sweat of those who labored around me. If we had been one creature before, we were now part of the same enraged beast. I felt the leap of the heating anger igniting and spreading. It was a Wit thing, a surging of hearts on the animal level that flooded us with hate.
We drove the Rurisk forward, sending her skimming up finally into the shallows of the cove, and then we leaped out and ran her up the beach just as we had practiced. The fog was a treacherous ally, concealing us from the attackers that we would in turn attack, but concealing from us also the lay of the land and a view of exactly what was happening. Weapons were seized and we rushed toward the sounds of the fighting. Justin stayed with the Rurisk, standing and staring into the fog toward Buckkeep earnestly, as if that would help him Skill the news to Serene.
The Red-Ship was drawn up on the sand, just as the Rurisk was. Not far from her were the two small boats that served as ferries to the mainland. Both had been stove in. There had been Six Duchies men down here on the beach when the Red-Ships arrived. Some of them were still there. Carnage. We ran past crumpled bodies leaking blood into the sand. All of them seemed to be our own folk. Suddenly the Antler Island inner tower loomed gray above us. Atop it her signal fire burned a ghostly yellow in the fog. The tower was besieged. The Raiders were dark muscular men, wiry rather than massive. Most were heavily bearded and their hair hung black and wild to their shoulders. They wore body armor of plaited leather and carried heavy blades and axes. Some wore helms of metal. Their bared arms were marked in coils of scarlet, but whether this was tattoo or paint I could not tell. They were confident, swaggering, laughing, and talking like workmen completing a task. The guardians of the tower were cornered; the structure had been built as a basis for a signal light, not as a defensible rampart. It was a matter of time before all the cornered men were dead. The Outislanders did not look back toward us as we came pouring up the rocky incline. They believed they had nothing to fear from behind them. One tower gate hung on its hinges, a huddle of men inside barricaded behind a wall of bodies. As we advanced they sent a thin hail of arrows out toward the encircled Raiders. None of them hit.
I gave a cry between a whoop and a howl, terrible fear and vengeful joy merged into one sound. The emotions of those who ran beside me found vent in me, and spurred me on. The attackers turned to see us as we closed with them.
We caught the Raiders between us. Our ship's crew outnumbered them, and at sight of us, the beleaguered defenders of the tower took heart and poured forth themselves. Scattered bodies about the tower gate attested to several efforts before this one. The young watchman still lay where I had seen him fall in my dream. Blood had spilled from his mouth and soaked into his embroidered shirt. A dagger thrown from behind had taken him. An odd detail to note as we rushed forward to join in the melee.
There was no strategy, no formation, no plan of-battle. Simply a group of men and women suddenly offered the opportunity for vengeance. It was more than enough.
If I thought I had been one with the crew before, I was now engulfed in them. Emotions battered and thrust me forward. I will never know how much or which feelings were my own. They overwhelmed me, and FitzChivalry was lost in them. I became the emotions of the crew. Ax raised, roaring, I led the way. I had no desire for the position I had seized. Instead I was thrust forward by the crew's extreme desire for someone to follow. I suddenly wanted to kill as many Raiders as I could, as fast as I could. I wanted my muscles to crack with each swing, I wanted to fling myself forward through a tide of dispossessed souls, to tread on the bodies of fallen Raiders. And I did.
I had heard legends of berserks. I had thought them animalistic brutes, powered by bloodlust, insensitive to the damage they wrought. Perhaps, instead, they were oversensitized, unable to defend their own minds from the emotions that rushed in to drive them, unable to heed the pain signals of their own bodies. I do not know.
I have heard tales of myself on that day. Even a song. I do not recall that I frothed and roared as I fought. But neither do I recall that I did not. Somewhere, within me, were both Verity and Nighteyes, but they, too, were drowned in the passions of those around me. I know I killed the first Raider that went down before our mad rush. I also know that I finished the last standing man, in a battle we fought ax to ax. The song says it was the master of the Red-Ship vessel. I suppose it could have been. His leather surcoat was well made, and spattered with the blood of other men. I don't recall another thing about him except how my ax crushed his helm deep into his skull, and how the blood gouted from beneath the metal as he sank to his knees.
So the battle ended, and defenders rushed forth to embrace our crew, to shout the victory and pound one another's backs. The change was too much for me. I stood, leaning on my ax, and wondered where my strength had fled. The anger had abandoned me as suddenly as carris seed leaves an addict. I felt drained and disoriented, as if I had wakened from one dream into another. I could have dropped and slept among the bodies, so totally exhausted was I. It was Nonge, one of the Outislanders in the crew, who brought me water, and then walked me clear of the bodies so I could sit down to drink it. Then he waded back in among the carnage to join in the looting. When he came back to me a while later, he held out to me a bloodied medallion. It was hammered gold, on a silver chain. A crescent moon. When I did not reach to take it from him, he looped it over the gory head of my ax. 'It was Harek's,' he said, finding the Six Duchies words slowly. 'You fought him well. He died well. He'd want you to have it. He was a good man, before the Korriks took his heart.' I did not even ask him which one had been Harek. I
