Into the Void

oars.'

Teldin responded instantly but kept his eye on the wasp. There was movement on the deck, but nobody was pointing a weapon at them. In fan, the pirate crew didn't seem to be watching the longboat at all….

'Ship ho!' Dana screamed hoarsely. Her head was tipped back, eyes on something directly overhead. Teldin followed her gaze. There was another shape against the stars, another ship, this one with lines as smooth and streamlined as the wasp's were angular. Its hull was long and slender, tapering at the stern to a sharp point set with a vertical spanker sail. Its bow was rounded, reinforced by a metal ram. Metal lobes extended from the hull just aft of the ram, each with a circular port at its end, which reminded Teldin uncomfortably of an eye. Just aft of the lobes, vertical structures were visible on the hull, looking very much like the gill slits of some impossibly huge shark.

The new ship was several hundred yards away, too distant for Teldin to make out any details of its crew, though he could see movement on deck. The vessel's blunt bow was pointed directly at the pirate wasp, and it was under speed.

The wasp's crew had obviously spotted the approaching vessel as well. The pirate ship's torn wings shifted, and its bow began to bear off. Without warning, fire blossomed on the wasp's deck, a silent concussion of orange flame. The vessel shuddered but continued to turn away from its new enemy. As the wasp began to accelerate, Teldin saw that the fire was spreading, devouring the wing roots.

'The ship's dead,' Dana hooted. In a transport of excitement, she clasped Teldin's shoulder as she would a comrade's. 'They'll never control that fire,' she cheered.

Teldin was silent, his eyes on the new ship, drawing ever nearer. 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend,' his grandfather had always told him, but was that true? Had it ever been true?

Dana fell silent and withdrew her hand from his shoulder. After a moment she asked quietly, 'What do we do, Horvath?'

'We can't outrun that hammership,' he said calmly. 'I say we remember our wounded.' He lifted his hands from the arms of the throne and clenched them into fists as though to relieve tension in his forearms. He brushed a light beading of sweat off his brow and looked at the approaching vessel-for the first time with his natural eyes, rather than the arcane senses provided by the minor helm. 'Oars in, if you please,' he requested. 'And prepare to greet our rescuers.'

Teldin watched as Dana quickly unseated the oarlock and brought her oar inboard, then tried to copy her actions. It wasn't nearly as easy as it looked. The oar's length made it clumsy, and he was hindered both by inexperience and his worry about jostling Miggins. By the time he had his oar safely shipped, the approaching vessel-the 'hammership' as Horvath called it-was within a spear cast of the longboat and drawing smoothly closer. For the first time he could see the ship's crew: human, as far as he could tell. As if that was any kind of guarantee; the pirate wasp had been manned by humans, too…. At least they weren't neogi.

The long, blunt hull of the hammership drew alongside the longboat and eased to a stop with less than fifty feet separating the two vessels. For an instant Teldin's vision swam with vertigo, then the universe settled down once more.

Half a dozen of the hammership's crew were lining the near rail. They weren't wearing armor, and their weapons were limited to belt daggers or clasp-knives, but they had the same unmistakable air about them that Teldin remembered from the veterans he'd met in the war. There was nothing about their actions, or even their justifiable scrutiny of the longboat, that could be considered hostile. Still he recognized an unmistakable sense of readiness-whether to deal violence or receive it, he wasn't sure.

Something snaked across the intervening distance. Instinctively Teldin grabbed it-a rope.

'Cleat it off,' a voice ordered from the hammership. Teldin had no trouble picking out the man who'd spoken. Holding on to the other end of the rope, he was easily a head taller than anyone else at the rail. His shoulders were broad and his chest deep and muscular. His hair-curly and dose-cropped to his head-was pale enough at this distance to appear gray, but his face seemed to be that of a man not much older than Teldin himself. There was something about the man that spoke of command. 'Well, cleat it off.' The powerful voice boomed across space again.

Horvath gently took the rope from Teldin's hand, passed a bight around the midships thwart, and tied it off. 'Tell him to bring it in,' he told Teldin quietly. 'Humans are more comfortable dealing with humans.'

Teldin nodded. He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, 'Bring us in.'

The big man stepped back as three other crew members took the rope and threw their weight against it. Teldin nodded to himself. The pale-haired man had the aura of command. Was he the captain?

The longboat moved closer and bumped against the hammership's hull. The smaller vessel floated at the same point on the hammership as it might were both ships floating in water. Teldin nodded to himself; this seemed to confirm his deductions about a 'gravity plane.' The larger vessel's rail was a good four feet higher than the longboat's gunwale-no difficulty for Teldin, but a significant obstacle for the gnomes.

The barrel-chested man must have recognized the same difficulty. He swung his legs over the hammership's rail and dropped lightly into the longboat. His face split in a lopsided grin as he asked Teldin, 'Give you a hand with the crew?'

There was a flurry of movement beside Teldin. He glanced over toward Dana… and saw the gnome training a cocked and armed crossbow on the large man. When did she bring that out? he asked himself. When I was shipping the oar? 'Dana…' Horvath began.

'No,' Dana cut him off, 'we have to know.' She settled her finger more firmly on the trigger and aimed the weapon at the center of the man's chest. 'What do you want?'

The man's asymmetrical grin didn't falter. When he spoke, it was directly to Teldin. 'Spirited, isn't she?' The big man's eyes didn't shift, but his hand lashed out with the speed of a striking snake. He batted the crossbow aside- the bolt thudded harmlessly into the hammership's hull as Dana pulled the trigger much too late-then gave the weapon a twist and wrenched it almost contemptuously from the woman's grasp. He glanced casually at the weapon in his hand-'Gnomish design, right?' he speculated-and handed it to Teldin. 'Do they do this often?' he asked.

It was Horvath who answered. 'There will be no more trouble,' he said quietly. He gestured at the motionless Saliman and Miggins. 'We have wounded.'

The man nodded, but his grin remained. 'That's right,' he said, feigning wonder. 'Almost half your crew injured. Grievous losses for taking out a wasp ship.' He nudged Teldin with a rock-hard elbow. 'Remind me to take gnomes more seriously in the future.'

Two more of the hammership's crew clambered down into the longboat, easily passing the injured gnomes up to their fellows above. In response to a surprisingly cordial gesture of invitation from the large man, Horvath climbed onto the gunwale and extended his arms up, to be hoisted aboard the larger vessel. Dana hesitated for a moment to glare at the man who'd so easily disarmed her, then did the same. The others from the hammership swung themselves back aboard their ship, leaving Teldin alone with the big man.

For the first time, Teldin had time to really look the fellow over. He was a large man, at least a hand's breadth over six feet tall, with shoulders to match. Lines seamed his face around his eyes, making it difficult for Teldin to judge his age, and a scar, bone-white against weather-tanned skin, angled up from his right eyebrow into his curly blond hair. The large man extended a big-knuckled hand toward Teldin. 'I'm Aelfred Silverhorn, of Toril.' His voice was deep but not harsh, with a trace of an unfamiliar accent. 'And you are?'

Teldin grasped the large warrior's wrist. 'Teldin Moore of Krynn.'

Aelfred's grip was firm. 'Well met, Teldin Moore,' he said. 'Now, what do we do with the boat?'

'Bring it aboard?'

Aelfred shook his head. 'No space.'

Teldin frowned. At the speed the Unquenchable had taken off, it didn't seem likely it would be back soon… if it even survived. 'Cut it loose, then.'

'As you say.' Aelfred put a boot onto the gunwale, reached up for the hammership's rail… then stepped down again. 'After you,' he said with a half-bow.

Teldin hesitated, not quite sure how to take the larger man's politeness. He shrugged. If I'm supposed to be captain, I'll be captain, he told himself. He stepped onto the longboat's gunwale, grabbed the rail above him, and swung himself over onto the hammership's deck. Saliman and Miggins were nowhere to be seen-presumably they'd been taken belowdecks and were being tended to-but Dana and Horvath were beside him. The two gnomes stood