“For every slight, for every insult, I will send a dozen of them to the Shades,” Esmond muttered as he caught the velipad and swung into the saddle with effortless grace. “For Nanya, not all their lives are enough.”
Adrian swallowed at the sound of his brother’s voice, even now. There was a huge rasping slither behind them as Audsley’s men drew their assegais in turn, then a banging clatter like all the smiths’ shops in the world as the fight came to close quarters. He risked a glance over his left shoulder; the volunteers were going down like greatbeasts under a sacrificer’s axe, but there were so many of them that it would take some time . . . and the dust and confusion were immense. Without Center to sketch images across his vision it would have all been a mass of steel and shouting and blood, patternless, Chaos and Old Night come again.
“When Demansk’s men get through with the rabble, they’ll curve in to take Audsley’s regulars from the rear,” he called up to Esmond. “If we get out of the bag in time . . .”
“Exactly,” Esmond said, like an apparition of Wodep the War God on the restive velipad, his armor splashed with blood.
Me too, Adrian realized, daubing at himself. Me too.
* * *
“Strike sail,” Adrian said.
The skipper of the Wave Strider shrugged. “Lay aloft!” he shouted. “Strike sail!”
The ship they’d hijacked was much like the ones their father had run out of Solinga for most of their lives: a hundred feet long and forty at the broadest part of the hull, fully decked, with one tall mast and a single large square sail. Adrian didn’t think his father would ever have tolerated the skirt of weed that showed green against the blue water all around, or bilges that stank badly enough to overpower even the iodine smell of the sea. The swan’s head that curled above them on the quarterdeck was standard, but the blue and gold paint was chipped and faded. For all that, the hull was watertight and they’d made good time from the west-coast port of Preble. Adrian licked dry lips, squinting out over the white-flecked blue of the Western Ocean; they hadn’t had time to ship extra water or supplies, and with two hundred men aboard they were down to a cupful a day—green, slimy, sweeter-tasting than any wine.
The big yard came down with a rattle, and a curse from the Emerald mercenaries on deck who had to scramble out of the way. With the sail down, Adrian had a better view of the craft that was approaching them.
It was no merchantman. The hull was low and long and snake-slender, with glaring eyes and snarling teeth painted above a bronze ram that flashed out of the water with every forward bound. Outriggers held seats for oarsmen who would drive two banks of long oars when the mast was down. Right now it was rigged for cruising, the mast up and a sail painted the same blue-gray as the hull bent to it. Two light catapults stood manned near the bows, ready to throw rocks or jugs full of clingfire; two ballistae flanked the quarterdeck, with giant javelins ready to hurl. The knot of men by the steering oar was bright with plumes and gold and blowing cloaks dyed in the famous purple of the western islands. And the flag above them had the stylized cresting wave of the Lords of the Isles.
The other ship’s sail came down like magic, neatly furled—a heavy crew, a warship’s crew. Esmond came up beside his brother, shading his eyes with a palm. As he did, the oars flashed out of the other ship’s sides and struck the water all together like the limbs of a centipede, slashing creamy froth from the waves. The slender hull jerked forward, then turned to present its ram to the merchantman’s side in a smooth curve, turned by the oars as well as the twin steering oars; they could hear the clack . . . clack . . . clack of the hortator’s mallets on the log that served as drum.