Fortress Draconis (27 page)

The little boat made its way easily through the harbor and then out into the Crescent Sea. There the swells grew and bounced the tiny boat around. The wind had continued to blow from the southwest, which had helped speed the fleet to Vilwan. But it made the return trip difficult, forcing the captain to tack back and forth. The boat constantly ran at an angle to the waves, either bobbing strongly while sailing along, or crashing roughly into them as it came about, changing course.

Kerrigan hung on tight to the wales, but still felt as if each dip the boat took would spill him out. And since he was larger than most of the other refugees, and more portly, he could not duck when waves spattered over the sides, so quickly water stung his eyes and left his dark hair pasted to his face. His robes began to stink. He closed his nose against that scent and clenched his jaw.

The up and down motion also wrought havoc with his sense of balance. His stomach roiled, but he’d only eaten breakfast, so nausea remained at bay for a bit. He’d humiliated himself earlier with the flour, and he was determined he’d not vomit. He shook his head to clear it of dizziness, found that did not work well at all, then forced himself to suck in lots of air through his nose and exhale it forcefully. He concentrated on breathing, ignoring everything else.

He’d actually begun to control his stomach when the red-haired Apprentice sitting on his right lunged toward the wales. She might have made it, save that Kerrigan had braced his feet against the deck. She failed to hurdle his thick thighs, so she flopped down face first into his lap, then threw up.

The sour scent caught him as he breathed in. His stomach contracted and he heaved, but nothing came up. His ribs and guts ached as his body heaved again and again, starting him crying. Then a wave crashed over the bow, splashing water into his open mouth, choking him. He expelled it in a wracking wet cough, splattering it all over the Apprentice who had puked on him before she could regain her seat.

The boat continued to rock and bob on into the night, as cold nibbled away at Kerrigan’s fingers and toes. He’d not so much become accustomed to the dizziness imparted by the boat’s motion as lacked the energy to deal with it. Even his stomach had given up its protests.

Sodden clothes clung to him, as did the girl. Her closeness frightened him, but not because she stirred lustful thoughts in him. He’d thought about women before, had had dreams about them. In learning elven magicks he’d been instructed in things biological and even sensual, since so much of their magick involved life. It brought with it an intimacy that he had to understand to be able to cast the spells. He’d studied hard, which meant his knowledge vastly outstripped his experience, and feeling her lying beside him, tucked under his right arm, was certainly the closest and most prolonged contact he’d had with any female.

The idea of sex did not scare him, but the girl’s vulnerability did. More exactly, the fact that she found sanctuary huddled against him shocked him. Warmth rose from between them, and she made little contented sounds. She felt safe there, and that terrified Kerrigan because he knew he was hardly capable of taking care of himself, much less someone so small and helpless.

The tillerman’s voice rose above the snap of the sail. “Belike trouble astern, Magister.”

Kerrigan turned just enough to look back without disturbing the girl. Orla slowly made her way back toward the stern. In the distance two lights bobbed up and down. One burned a bit above the horizon, while the other appeared nestled in with the stars. Red and blue flashes appeared near the taller light.

Orla crouched near the stern. “Not another ship returning to Saporicia?”

“Not one of ours. Tall mast, red and blue, that would be Wruonin.” The man shook his head. “Gaining on us, too. Now, if you’d be knowing some magick…”

She laughed. “I know a lot of it, but nothing that will speed us up. We can’t run from it?”

“Nay. She’s got more canvas than us. Running lamps like that, finding us, I’m thinking she’s with magickers having a lend of owl’s-eyes for seeing.”

Orla nodded. Kerrigan raised his right hand to swipe it across his eyes, preparing to cast the sort of spell the tUler-man was talking about.If I follow with a hawk’s-eye spell, I can see them better, too. Pushing away the distraction of the slumbering girl, he started to control his breathing again, and summoned the power to cast the spells.

“Kerrigan, no!” Orla’s command came in a harsh whisper. “If they do have magickers there, they’ll know those spells.”

The young man hesitated. He ignored for a moment the question of how she figured out what he was going to do, and instead concentrated on the implications of her explanation. The spells she mentioned were not difficult to cast, but were not easy to learn. Of the people on the boat, doubtless Orla and he were the only ones who could use them.And if I cast them, then they will know we have magickers on the boat. They might even mistake me for a powerful mage.

Orla rubbed a hand over her forehead. “We can’t run. We have a boat full of sick children. Any spells we can cast can be countered. We get one shot, one surprise.”

“It best be good, Magister.”

“It will be, Captain.” She turned and pointed. “Kerrigan, my staff.”

The young man grabbed it from the deck and twisted it around to bring it up from between the seats. He slid his hands down it, wiping the beaded water off the smooth wood, then extended it to her. She nodded her thanks as she took it from him.

“Captain, what do you think they will do?”

He shrugged. “If they’s hunting, they’ll be killing. Run over us, rake us with arrows, could be anything. Maybe they’re mounting a dragonel.” The man’s voice rose at that prospect. “Now there would be a way to die.”

“I’m hoping we won’t die at all. I think I can hurt them, if they get close enough. Be ready to bring us around and run before the wind.”

“Hurry, Magister. You may not know spells to be hurrying a ship, but the like ain’t true of them.”

A reddish glow backlit the entire ship, rendering its three masts and billowing sails in sharp silhouette. Creatures moved on the high forecastle and along the wales. Torches suddenly flared to life, then smaller fires burned. Those little fires arced up into the air and flew toward the boat, but hissed out in the sea.

“Fire arrows, then.” The tillerman spat. “They just be killing.”

Orla nodded, then prodded the two Apprentices nearest her with the end of her staff. “Move forward. Give me room.”

They got up and crawled toward the bench where Kerrigan sat.

The old woman’s eyes narrowed. “Two hundred yards?”

The tillerman nodded. “Give or take, and they’re taking by the second.”

“Right, get ready to run.” She grasped her staff at the top with her left hand, halfway down with her right. A bright blue spark glowed at the tip. Orla brought the staff back, then whipped it forward, flicking the spark toward the enemy ship. It drew after it a slender blue tendril, thin as a bit of webbing, yet fairly crackling with power.

The conjured whip lashed the rail. Fire burned brightly where it touched wood. The spark itself snapped against a man’s chest, combusting him into a black skeleton that died in a bright burst of white light. Where the tendril cut at rigging, ropes parted, steaming.

Sailors flew to the severed rigging. Some clenched lines for splicing in their teeth. Yet others grabbed both ends of a split line. A reddish glow oozed from their hands and repaired the link, leaving the rigging intact save that some sections had the angry glow of embers burning hot.

Other creatures moved along the rails. Too small to be mistaken for human, the magickal energy arcing green between their hands identified them as vylaens. One raised his hands, then cast them outward. A dozen little darts of green fire raced from him to the smaller boat.

Orla snorted derisively. With a flick of her staff, the tendril coiled into a cone around the darts. They bumped up against its walls, but failed to pierce them. She snapped the cone down, plunging the darts into dark water, where they sank, glowing evilly until the water quenched them.

Still the pirate ship came closer. The tillerman shoved hard on the rudder, swinging the bow around. Waves hammered the little boat, killing its momentum. As it started to come around, and the sails filled again, a flaming arrow pinned the man’s hand to the tiller. He screamed and recoiled, but the tiller came with him, causing the boat to turn again and founder. Worse yet, as the spar came around again, it cracked Orla in the back, driving her to the deck.

Arrows flew through the darkness, ripping canvas. The girl in Kerrigan’s lap screamed as one hit her above the knee. She rolled to the deck clutching her leg, looking imploringly at him. He bent to help her, fighting furiously to calm himself so he could use the elven magick and heal her, but a wave bucked the ship up and tossed him backward. His legs caught on the bench, upending him. He landed hard and wanted to cry out, but another arrow ripped through the tillerman’s throat. As that man slumped over the tiller, clutching at his neck, Kerrigan felt lost.

Panic raced through him. He couldn’t do anything. The boat was rocking, people were screaming. 7don’t have any of my things, no space to work. A million reasons why he couldn’t do anything assaulted him, but somehow he levered himself to his feet and got his back to the mast. Swiping at the wetness on his face, he set his teeth with determination.It’s up to me, now. I have to do something!

An arrow quenched its flames in his flesh, skewering his chest and pinning him to the mast. Pain exploded from the wound, searing and hot, sharp-edged and brilliant. Agony twisted through him, shaking him, which started new pain from the wound. He wanted to cough. When he did, he hurt anew, and tasted blood.My blood.

Pain, blood, the screams, the ship pounding upward, dragging on the arrow, all of it should have crushed him. There he was, far from home, wet, miserable. The girl who had depended on him lay writhing and mewing beneath a bench that bristled with arrows. Torn pieces of canvas snapped and cracked in the wind, then more arrows thudded into the boat.

Yet, despite all that, he focused on one thing. The vylaens emitted a high, keening laughter that scourged him more than all the laughter on Vilwan. The laughter before had stung badly, but their laughter clawed him and tore him. Somewhere, deep inside, Kerrigan realized they wanted to kill him, and that this laughter was just one more cruel weapon.

Not much more than a child save in one important area, Kerrigan lashed out at the pirate ship, scared and hurt. Though he knew hundreds of spells, a devastating selection of combat spells among them, he hit the ship instead with one spell he knew so very well. He’d used it multiple times, for as long as he could remember. Had he been thinking, he might even have imagined that the vylaens wouldn’t have a counter prepared to a noncombat spell like that, but he wasn’t thinking.

He just reacted.

Thaumaturgical energy surged from him in an invisible wave that swept out toward its target. It swelled and gathered the ship up into its grasp. He raised his right hand and the ship emerged from the sea. Water ran from the barnacle-encrusted hull in rippling sheets. Twenty feet, forty, higher and higher. Kerrigan snarled, wanting to lift the ship to the moon, then to tighten his hand, crushing it. He wanted to see splintered planks bulge from between invisible fingers, with broken spar fragments whirling through the sky, trailing lines and canvas like flames in their descent.

He knew, however, he did not have the strength to do that. So when—to his eye—the ship eclipsed the moon, he opened his hand and simply let it go.

The ship listed slightly as it fell. Some crewmen flew off while others held tightly to rails and rigging. Some of the splices failed, leaving men thrashing about at the end of lines like the knot at the tip of a whip. Those who could not hang on were flung off, spinning wildly through the air. The sails filled with air, straining masts and spars. The canvas shredded and masts cracked.

Then the ship hit the dark water. The hull had been fashioned to take the pounding of waves even in the fiercest of gales. From the height the ship fell, however, the water might as well have been granite. Timbers buckled and masts snapped like kindling. Deck planks sprang free, spinning up into the air. The ship bobbed up once, then wallowed and bubbled loudly. The canvas sails descended like tattered shrouds over the sinking wreck.

Tagothcha, cloaked in the night-dark, greedily clawed the ship down into his realm.

Hurt, coughing out bloody mist, Kerrigan watched the ship die. He slumped forward, snapping the arrow off somewhere at his back, and landed on his knees on the deck. He smiled at the sinking ship, displaying a mouthful of bloody teeth. He savored his victory for a moment, letting it consume him.

And in the next moment he knew pure dread.

The pirates had their revenge. The huge wave created when the ship crashed into the sea reached up and capsized Kerrigan’s little boat.

The grinding pain in Will’s shoulders competed with the aching in his back for the part of him that hurt the most. His butt and legs weren’t even close to the lead in that contest, so they just contented themselves with burning. The occasional quiver of muscles in his thighs, or the back of his arms, added some contrast, but did nothing to improve the situation.

Yet, as dusk fell on Vilwan, and Will took bucket after bucket of seawater from one Apprentice and passed it up the hill to another, his physical discomfort could only take up residence in the back of his mind. Full-blown fury occupied him, and were he not fatigued to the point of near collapse, he’d have been cursing a streak that would have had the Apprentices a’round him scurrying for cover. He felt humiliated and shamed—worse yet, confused—and all of that provided tinder for his anger.

The bucket brigade shipped water up the steep face of Vilwan’s northern coast. Above the line of Apprentices, a good forty feet above sea level, a crenellated fortress wall gnawed into the darkening blue of the sky. Warriors patrolled the walls, appearing for only a second between merlons. At intervals of twenty yards rose slender towers, with warriors lighting fires at their crests, and Will easily made out the forms of Resolute and Crow atop the nearest.