Thornhold (31 page)

Bronwyn came to Ebenezer’s side. The dwarf noticed that she didn’t look any keener about the idea of crossing than he felt. “I don’t suppose you can swim, either,” he ventured.

Her response was a grim smile. “We’ll just have to make sure we don’t fall in.”

She climbed over the rail and took up one of the ropes with both hands. With a deep breath, she dropped to hang over the hungry sea. She began to work her way across, hand over hand, her feet swinging precariously from side to side to aid her momentum.

“Stones,” breathed Ebenezer, both as curse and compliment. “That woman’s got a barrel full of ‘em!”

Determined not to be outdone, he hauled himself up to the rail and tugged at a couple of ropes before he found one he thought might hold his weight. He dropped and began to inch his way across.

Bronwyn made it over in moments. Swinging herself over the side of the slave ship, she darted a quick look back at the still-struggling dwarf. She beckoned impatiently, then pulled her long knife from its sheath and hurled herself into the battle that was raging across the deck.

“Hurry up, she says,” Ebenezer muttered as he gingerly eased his way along, never quite letting go of the rope with either hand. “Easy for her to say. Long arms, nothing to haul but a scrawny little—”

A sudden, sharp downward jerk stopped him in mid insult. He sent a glance over his shoulder, and his eyes widened in pure panic. His rope was fraying, threads of twine flying free, just at the point where it rubbed against Narwhal’s rail.

The dwarf frantically redoubled his pace, his arms pumping, intent upon getting over while the getting was good. He was perhaps ten feet from the ship when the line behind him gave way.

Howling in terror, Ebenezer swung toward the dark water. He hung onto the rope for dear life, and instinctively brought his boots up before him, legs stiff and braced.

He slammed into the ship, just above the waterline, and with a force that rattled his bones and sent white-hot flashes of pain shimmering through every fiber and sinew. Old wood gave way with a mighty crack, and his feet plunged through the hull. He wrenched them free, and with a few determined kicks he punched a hole big enough to crawl through.

Ebenezer wriggled through, cursing at the thought of the splinters he’d be picking from his legs and backside. The sight inside the hold stopped him in mid curse.

There were his lost clan, looking thinner and more bedraggled than any dwarf should ever have to look. They were chained to wooden bunks so closely packed that they looked like bookshelves, too close for them to so much as sit up. Barrels and crates were spilled about every which way; In the center of the chaos stood a small, brown-haired child, her face utterly white and her big brown eyes rounded with terror.

The ship rolled suddenly as the sea rocked it lose from the caravel’s lancelike prow. Water spilled in through the shattered hull. For a moment Ebenezer had the uncanny feeling that he was reliving Bronwyn’s personal nightmare.

“This is no damn time to be taking a bath!” exclaimed a querulous and much beloved female voice. “Are you gonna cut us loose or just pass the soap?”

A grin split the dwarf’s bearded face. Tarlamera was alive and feisty as ever! He hurried toward her voice, picking up the child as he went. He placed the girl on a crate, well out of reach of the frigid water that sloshed around his ankles. Before he left her, he took a small knife from his belt and pressed in into her hand.

“For rats, with two legs or four, just in case they trouble you,” he explained kindly.

The child’s fingers closed on the knife, and her eyes were steady as she nodded in understanding.

Ebenezer grinned and chucked her under the chin. Durned if there wasn’t yet another female kicking nothing but a beard. The tunnels were full of them these days.

Then he was off, axe in hand, chopping at Tarlamera’s prison like a deranged forester. The way he saw it, there was no way he could cut through so many chains—the best and quickest way to turn the dwarves loose was to demolish the bunks.

The moment she was freed, Tarlamera rolled off the shelf, one wrist trailing a length of stout chain and the hunk of splintered wood. She moved stiffly, and with obvious pain, but her face was glad and fierce.

“I never once saw a prettier sight,” Ebenezer swore, and meant it down to the depths of his soul. Tarlamera was bedraggled and filthy, and her festive wedding garments stiff with blackened blood, some of it her own. Her red ringlets were lackluster and wildly disheveled, and her beard nearly as stringy as a duergar’s, but she was safe and whole.

Tarlamera’s grin matched his own, and her eyes were as suspiciously bright as his. She seized her brother by his ears and dragged him forward. She planted a kiss smack on the tip of his nose, then slapped him upside the head. And then she was off, running toward the ladder that led to the deck and clutching the remains of her bunk like a deadly club.

Ebenezer sighed happily, delighted by this unusually sentimental reunion. He didn’t have long to ponder it, for his clan was setting up a clamor fit to wake their ancestors. Each dwarf loudly demanded to be next, offered scathing comments on his axe technique, and just generally abused him left, right, and center.

It was good to have them back.

Each dwarf he freed took off up the ladder to join the battle. Not a one stayed to help him free the others. Although Ebenezer grumbled, he understood them well enough. If he’d been packed in here like a heap of coal by a bunch of damn dwarf-stealing humans, he’d be wanting to get his own licks in, too. Even the dwarf children went, as grimly determined for blood as any of their elders, and with no time out for a by-your-leave.

All but Clem, a dwarf lad who was kin to Ebenezer by way of a couple of cousins. The little scamp paused long enough to throw his arms around his rescuer’s middle for a quick, fierce hug. When he straightened up, he had a huge grin on his beardless face—and Ebenezer’s hammer clenched in his hand. Raising the stolen weapon in salute, he turned and darted for the ladder.

“Git back here, you durned thief!” roared Ebenezer, but though he mustered some impressive volume, his heart wasn’t in it. In fact, his grin was so wide it threatened to raise up his ears a mite and leave them there. Better Clem went up armed than not. And if Ebenezer couldn’t get in on the fighting, at least his hammer would shatter a skull or two.

“What’s the holdup? Dull blade?” taunted a gruff dwarven voice.

Among dwarves, that insult was roughly on a level with a reference to an orcish ancestor. Ebenezer whirled toward the direction of the sound and stabbed his forefinger at the dwarf who’d spoken. “Damn it, Jeston, you could shave with this blade!”

“I’d be willing to, if’n you’d turn me lose.”

The faintly pleading note in the tough smith’s voice smote Ebenezer’s heart, and he wavered in his decision to leave this ornery cuss for last. He hefted his axe for the first blow. “Just might be I’ll hold you to that,” he muttered.

On the deck above, Bronwyn heard her friend’s shout resounding from the hold. Her first response was relief that he had made it across safely. Her second reaction was a quick stab of concern. Judging by the number of grim-faced dwarves staggering about the deck, whacking away at their captors with rough, makeshift clubs, she suspected that Ebenezer had little fighting support below decks.

Bronwyn edged toward the hatch. A mercenary lunged at her, his cutlass whistling down toward her in a quick, deadly sweep. She sidestepped the attack and struck down hard with her knife, pressing the cutlass down to the deck. Then she pivoted toward the joined blades and kicked out high and hard with her left foot. Her boot sank deep, just above the man’s weapon belt. The cutiass clattered to the deck, and the man staggered back—into the outstretched hands of a waiting ogress. The sailor grinned horribly, her fangs flashing. She spun the man around a couple of times as if they were children playing at blind man’s bluff, and then flung him back toward Bronwyn.

“Catch!” she roared.

Bronwyn brought up her knife. The man fell heavily on it, and his weight slumped against her. For a moment they were eye to eye.

Bronwyn had seen death before, more times than she liked to count, but never at such close range. The life drained away from his face, surely as a receding tide, and his black eyes went empty and flat. Then he jerked back with a suddenness that left Bronwyn staggering for balance.

The ogress held the man by the collar as a boy might hold a puppy by the scruff of the neck. She grunted with approval at the sight of Bronwyn’s dripping knife, then flung the dead man aside.

Bronwyn turned back to the hold and was nearly knocked over by the dwarf lad who exploded from the hatch as if he’d been launched by a smoke-powder canon. She noted the hammer he held clenched in his hand and understood the source of Ebenezer’s ire. Reassured that her friend was not besieged by foes, she picked her next battle.

Narwhal’s first mate, a hugely muscled barbarian woman, was pinned down by two fighters, her back against the mast and her sword flailing. Bronwyn noted the jerky motion of the blade, the huge beads of sweat on the massive woman’s brow. Just then one of the attackers ducked, and Bronwyn caught sight of the wound that slashed across the sailor’s collarbone. It didn’t look fatal of itself, but the woman’s tunic was sodden with her own blood, and the cold sickness that followed a battle wound was settling upon bet

Bronwyn waded in, dodging a pair of dwarves who carried a human male between them, one dwarf holding the man’s hands and one holding his feet. Their captive writhed and struggled and cursed, but the dwarves moved inexorably toward the rail, intent upon hurling him over.

She seized one of the first mate’s attackers by the hair and jerked his head back. Without hesitation, she lifted her knife and drew it hard and fast across the man’s throat. His startled oath, though quite quickly and literally cut short, drew his partner’s attention. The second man turned toward the sound, only to be hit in the face by the sudden spurting flow of his shipmate’s lifeblood.

The man shouted and slashed blindly with his blade. Bronwyn still had her grip on the dead man’s hair, and she spun around to duck behind him. The body jolted from the impact. Bronwyn released him and danced back, almost losing her footing on the blood-slick deck.

Again the slaver lashed out. Bronwyn dropped into a crouch, ducking the blow so narrowly that she felt the wind of it. Before he could reverse his swing for another attack, she tensed for the spring and came up, knife leading.

Her blade punched hard into his ribcage. The blow registered in his eyes, but he did not go down, and his grim expression proclaimed his intent to take her with him to the gates of death.

Bronwyn wrenched her knife free and jumped up, bringing her knee up high and hard as she came. She connected in a profoundly debilitating blow. The man’s forgotten sword clattered to the deck.

She stepped back, breathing in quick, shallow bursts.

“Behind you, girl!”

The woman’s shout snapped Bronwyn back into the battle. She whirled to face the grim-faced dwarf who was preparing to apply the spiked nail in his club to the base of Bronwyn’s spine.

Instinct and memory took over. “For Stoneshaft!” she shrieked in the dwarvish tongue, remembering what her long-ago dwarf friend told her about rallying cries.

Her response clearly startled the dwarf. He lowered the club, and the red haze of battle-lust faded from his face. For a moment he peered keenly at Bronwyn. Apparently he recognized her as someone other than one of his captors, for he gave a curt nod and went off in search of another fight.

But the battle was nearly over The sounds of fighting had dwindled to a few clashes of steel, a few screams of pain— some of which ended with chilling abruptness.

Captain Orwig’s bombastic voice could easily be heard over the ebbing tide of battle, ordering his crew to round up the dead of both sides and all the slavers and toss them into the sea as Umberlee’s due. This rallied even the dwarves, who cared not a wit for the Sea Goddess. They took to the task with such grim gusto that they didn’t even seem to notice that they were taking orders from an ogre.

Bronwyn tucked her knife into its sheath just as the barbarian’s eyes rolled back in her head. Bronwyn caught the woman as she fell and lowered her to the deck—not an easy task given the difference in their size, but at least she managed to ease the woman down to a gentler landing than she would otherwise have had.

Bronwyn tore a strip from the hem of the woman’s tunic and pressed it to the wound, holding it firm until the bleeding stopped, then shrugged off her cloak and tucked it over the woman’s broad shoulders to keep her warm until the cold sickness ebbed. That was all the help Bronwyn could give her, and she hoped it would be enough.

Narwhal’s crew had not gone unscathed. Some of the dead tossed overboard wore familiar faces. One of them was the ogress who had played the deadly game of catch with Bronwyn, thus accepting her, if for one brief moment, as a comrade. Bronwyn took a deep breath and headed back to the stern, where stood a small, wooden shack built over the helm.

In this, as she had expected, she found the ship’s records. Quickly she thumbed through the pages, looking for something that would provide a clue to the identity of the people who had destroyed the dwarves’ home and stolen from them their freedom—and from her, her father.

But the transaction was coded. In time, she could probably figure out what it said. There was, however, a lengthy list of cargo neatly written up in Common, the language of trade. Bronwyn skimmed it and whistled softly. This would be enough and more to satisfy Narwhal’s captain’s and crew’s desire for booty. It might also help her negotiate with Orwig on a delicate matter. He was an ogre. Even in tolerant Waterdeep, he would be closely watched. And he was a smuggler, which meant his affairs would not hold up to close scrutiny. Yet she could not subject Ebenezer and his kin to the punishing journey back through the magical locks into Skuilport.