“Ware feet!” Temar yelled as he kicked the loose weapon backward to arm any sailor who could grab it. As his next victim fell away in a flurry of gore, legs cut from beneath him, two more came at Temar abreast but he had the reach on them with his longer blade and soon felled them for an eager pair of sailors to finish with their belt knives. Further assault broke and faltered on a rapidly improvised barrier of spars and captured weapons as the crew rallied to support Temar, bringing all the savagery of dockside brawls to bear in the battle, kicking, gouging, spitting, biting as the sailors dodged to get inside the reach of swords and axes and bring their own crude weapons to bear with devastating effect. A shudder ran through the vessels as the Eagle fought to pull free.
A yell from behind hauled Temar’s head round. One sailor had managed to free a grapnel, gouging his hand grievously in the process. Now he dropped to his knees, screaming as he clutched at his head, eyes stark with terror and pain. A second fell, convulsing, howling. Temar spared them a horrified glance before looking around wildly for any explanation of this unexpected turn of events.
“Temar!” Guinalle’s shout tore through the chaos. He found her instantly, on her knees on the stern deck, skirts all stained and bloodied to the elbows as she tried to help a dying sailor. Temar looked frantically for any black-clad figure threatening her but could see none.
“It’s him, that man, up in the prow. He’s the one with the Artifice!” Guinalle shouted, her voice hoarse with effort. She shrieked abruptly, her own hands rising to claw at her eyes before she managed to control them. Falling forward, she lay there, panting for a moment that seemed an eternity to Temar before dragging herself upright again, jaw set, eyes huge in her white face. “Kill him!” she screamed, shrill as a stricken hawk.
Temar looked at the motionless figure high in the prow of the entangled Salmon and took a breath to assess their situation. The crew of the Eagle were holding their line, the air thick with curses. A flutter of color overhead caught Temar’s eye. Aloft in the rigging, Meig and a couple of others were raising a signal to bring the longboat back with reinforcements and weapons. The bastards, Temar realized with sudden, impotent fury; they had been standing off behind that headland, waiting until the Eagle was weakened by the departure of half her complement. Guinalle might not have been able to see them but somehow that bastard in the long cloak had been spying on the Tormalin ship as he held the strings of the marionettes he had made of the innocent colonists. Just as Temar thought this a hapless figure fell headlong from the ropes above his head, Meig making no move to save himself with nerveless hands as he crashed to the deck to lie motionless in a broken huddle.
Temar lifted one foot on to the swaying rail, one hand reaching up for a rope as the ships struggled against each other, planks splintering, lines creaking under the strain, canvas snapping overhead. His sword was ready in his other hand, the razor-sharp edge showing silver through the clotting blood choking the fuller.
“Who’s with me?” he yelled, all the while judging the narrowing gap as the Salmon swung back into the battered side of the Eagle. Satisfied with the bloodthirsty howls at his back, Temar leaped, putting every effort he possessed into his jump, falling to his hands and knees on the far deck, sword nevertheless poised and ready. Thuds behind him announced the arrival of a handful of the Eagle’s crew, eager to make use of their captured weaponry.
“Ramsen!” Temar saw one of his men drop his guard as he gaped at a figure rolled this way and that by the plunging motion of the trapped vessels. “They’re lost!” Temar shouted harshly, his own stomach hollow as he recognized a face slack and white among the fallen crew of the Salmon. “Watch yourselves!”
The enemy were quick to react to this unexpected counterattack and a close-knit detachment was making its way down the deck, blades raised. Temar steadied himself, his longer sword at the ready to defend and to rend, but half an eye spared for the tall figure in the forecastle, blond hair blowing in the breeze, a gold gorget bright at his throat as he focused all his attention and skills on the attack on the other ship.
An axe came scything in at Temar’s head but he blocked the blow with ease, following up to force the man backward. Taking a pace forward but careful not to outstrip the others behind him, Temar cut and sliced, feinted and parried, less to kill than to gradually force those opposing him into a gradual retreat up the ship. He focused all his efforts on the men before him, trusting the sailors at his back and the stout defense of the ship’s rail to his off hand. Step by step, Temar and his men drew closer to the enemy Artificer, who abruptly turned to face them, arms raised, hands spread, hatred twisting his face as he spat at them in an unknown, harsh-accented tongue.
The air before Temar seemed to shimmer and ripple, the faces before him distorted as if seen through poor glass. The deck beneath his feet suddenly felt rough and broken, like a rocky road. Temar took a pace forward but his footing shifted and slipped, snarls as of wild beasts echoing all around him, greedy and eager for blood. The hair on Temar’s neck rose as every instinct told him to flee and he heard cries of dismay and terror from the men behind him. Temar shook his head in frenzied denial and furiously ransacked his memory for the wards and defenses that Guinalle had been teaching him before their friendship had foundered.
“Tur ryal myn ammel,” he yelled, screwing his eyes shut for a scant breath to put every effort he could summon into throwing the Artificer’s touch from his mind. Panting, he opened his eyes and found his gaze was clear again, more than that, the sailors at his back seemed to have recovered. Temar spared a moment to wonder just what the incantation he had half remembered was actually supposed to do.
The shouts of the enemy back aboard the Eagle grew suddenly louder, but now they were ringing with consternation rather than victory. A dull tremor shivered through the deck and rolled the lifeless body of another crewman at Temar’s feet, threatening to trip him until he steeled himself to kick it aside. Tormalin voices suddenly rose in shouts of triumph from the other ship, taunts mingled with obscenities and curses. Temar spared a glance to see several of the black-clad invaders dropping their weapons to struggle, screaming, with some unseen threat, scrambling backward to escape some horror only they could see, one tumbling over the rail to vanish into the turbid waters as the ships swung apart and crashed back together. The soldiers facing Temar and his men fell back to the steps leading up to the aft castle, weapons now ready to defend rather than to attack.
Temar looked back to the enemy Artificer and saw consternation mingled with hatred on the thin, lined face as the man stared at Guinalle, now standing on the aft deck, a circle of sailors defending her as she wrought unseen destruction on the attackers. As Temar watched a handful hurled themselves yelling toward her, felled even before they could bring blade to bear on the ring of wood and iron. The Artificer raised a hand, the threat in the gesture unmistakable, but a sudden lurch of the deck threw him off balance. Temar grabbed at the rail himself but a bark of humorless laughter escaped him nevertheless.
“The longboat!” One of the sailors shook Temar’s shoulder and he nodded with grim satisfaction as he saw the returning crew of the rowing-boat scrambling up over the distant rail of the Eagle, weapons raised, fresh wrath pouring over the attackers like a breaking sea, sweeping the black-clad figures aside like so much flotsam. The deck swung beneath Temar’s feet again and he realized nearly all of the grappling irons had been unhooked.