Wren tucked her book back inside her tunic.
She’d done a long session of spell-practice, watched anxiously by Danal and warily by Patka. That ended when the pirates began dousing their lights.
Patka and Danal sat at the sails, tense and still. Thad waited at the tiller, Lambin with his bow. They had furled their sail so they wouldn’t catch any reflected glow, no matter how faint, as the wind was still dormant.
Wash-wash, wash-wash. The water lapped against the hull, and here and there fish splooshed up from the water and back down again, vanishing beneath the ripples.
Patka asked sarcastically, “Do those rockheads really think we’re stupid enough to believe six attacking ships are just settling down for the night?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Thad replied shortly. “Since they aren’t.”
Everyone fell silent, watching, waiting. Wren’s stomach growled from time to time. She drank more water. So did the others.
“They’re still lulling us,” Patka said a long time later, when the light patches behind the clouds were balanced in the sky, one low in the north, the bigger one low in the south.
“Keep your voice down,” Thad whispered. “Remember. Voices carry a long way over water when there is no wind.”
Not long after, Danal gasped. “Look!” He whispered.
“Where? Where?” everyone muttered at once, looking around.
“There. Just now. A dark thing. I dunno, it was just on the edge of my sight, and when I turned, it was like, I don’t know—”
“Like a mast passing in front of the moonglow?” Thad leaned forward, talking in a low, urgent voice as he squinted sternward.
“That’s what it was,” Danal whispered. “It was thin. Hard to see. I thought it was just my eyes.”
“The big ships must be rowing,” Lambin murmured. “Should we row, too?”
“No,” Thad whispered. “Remember those longboats they put down at sunset? We don’t want to row right into ‘em.”
“What do we do?” Patka turned to Wren, her face a pale round shape in the darkness.
Wren frowned. “I wish I knew how well they can see us. Right now our best chance is to be as invisible as we can.”
“Our hull is dark, our mast small. How about another of your illusion spells?” Thad asked.
Wren shook her head. “I daren’t hold it long. It makes me too tired, and I want all my strength for the real fight.”
Thad said, “Now that I think of it, maybe we’d better lie flat. If they’re peering through their spyglasses, our faces might be visible.”
They hunkered down, leaning their elbows on the benches and peering over the rail. “Now we really can’t see anything,” Danal muttered.
Thad said, “How about this? If we spot anything the least bit suspicious, Lambin, you send up a fire arrow. It’ll show us where everyone is.”
“Including us.” Patka sighed softly.
“Can’t be helped,” Lambin put in. “And if they’re slowly closing in, they pretty much already know where we are.”
They fell silent once more.
Wren peered down the length of the boat. It was difficult to see where Thad was, except as a vague shape, dark against an even darker background. “You have the most experience on the sea of any of us. What would you do if you were in charge of those pirates?”
“I’ve been thinkin’ on that,” Thad said. “I’ve only been on the one cruise, and there weren’t no pirates. I don’t know their tricks, except what I’ve been told. I think them longboats are circling around to come at us from the other direction. So all of ‘em can attack us at once.”
Silence once again.
Wren crossed her arms on the bench and laid her head on them. The wood smelled dank, salt mixing with mold. She could feel as well as hear the steady wash-wash of the water on the hull. She knew the others would keep watch. She would soon need every bit of her strength. She closed her eyes, drifting into a light doze, for she was hungry as well as tired from the magic making of the morning, and her preparations during the long afternoon.
So when a hand grabbed her shoulder in an urgent, tight grip, she jerked upright, trying not to yell.
“I heard something,” Thad whispered into her ear. “Oar splash. Close.” The boat rocked a little as he clambered his way back again.
Fear and tension snapped through Wren as she reached for the first of the arrows she’d worked on that afternoon. There was the tiny notch she’d made to distinguish it from the others.
“This one.” She barely breathed the words as she handed it to Lambin.
Everyone took their positions. Thad was at the tiller, Patka and Danal scrambled to one of the rowing benches in the middle, oars to hand, and Wren and Lambin scooted as far forward as they could get, to give the rowers room.
Lambin pulled the arrow back. Wren whispered the fire spell, and Lambin shot. The tiranthe string he’d sacrificed to make the bow hummed softly in the still air as the smoldering arrow arced up, and up, then burst into a small fireball.
Wren had warned everyone to shade their eyes against it or the fireball would keep them from seeing anything. They flattened their palms over their eyes until after the flash. For a heartbeat they could see clearly all around them. There were nearly twenty longboats grouped to the west of them, one just within arrow shot. The longboats were closing in on some sort of debris in the water, not on the gig, but they were still horribly close.
Somebody on the closest pirate longboat gave a yell, pointing violently toward the gig as the burning arrow fell into the sea.
Darkness promptly closed in, but they could hear the excited splash of oars.
Simple spells, one at a time
, Wren reminded herself.
A clear mind
.
“Crawlies first,” Wren said.
“Don’t waste any,” Patka muttered.
“I won’t,” Lambin promised, groping for the arrow Wren was handing him. Without taking his gaze away from a long dark shape just slightly darker than everything around it, he fitted the arrow to his bow, raised it, took careful aim—and shot.
Wren held her breath. No splash—
“Auuuuugh!” The pirates in the closest boat started howling.
“Crawlies away,” Patka gloated.
The others uttered muffled, nervous snickers.
Wren grinned, imagining the pirates feeling every single hair on their bodies start worming around as if alive. In the dark, it would be easy to imagine a sudden onslaught of really nasty insects—and judging from the howls, yells, and curses rising from that direction, that was just what the pirates thought.
“Row,” Thad commanded. “No splashes, remember.”
Patka and Danal began plying their oars, Thad whispering a count under his breath so they stayed in rhythm. They began to glide slowly away from the longboat—very slowly, for the gig was long and heavy for only two rowers. Lambin shot seven more crawly-arrows, and Wren leaned forward, peering ahead for her next target.
Four distinct yells and howls sounded across the water from the direction of the longboats.
“Four hits,” Patka whispered, grunting as she pulled her oars. “Not bad for shooting in the dark.”
Lambin whispered back, “There are so many I’m sure to hit one.”
That grim thought silenced everyone, and the rowers worked even harder.
In the distance, two pirate ships lit lamps, alerted by the yells carrying over the water.
Wren drew in a breath, another idea forming—this one risky, but irresistible. With twenty enemy longboats hunting them, what did she have to lose? She picked up one of her fire-breads, focusing on the twinkle of a light on the foremast of the nearest pirate ship.
Then, muttering the transfer spell, she tossed the bread into the air, finished—
And it vanished with a soft
pop!
Half a heartbeat later a huge fireball whooshed up the pirate foremast. Now another great cry went up, sounding like birds from that distance.
The second ship hastily began putting its lights out, but not before she sent a second fire-bread high into its foremast. The sails of two pirates lit the sky with flames, as black shapes crawled about in the rigging, trying to put the fires out.
Zzzip! Zzzzip!
A hissing of arrows sped directly overhead, followed shortly after by slingshot stones. The pirates were now trying to sink them, and worry about capture later.
The missiles skimmed harmlessly overhead, but each one that was diverted lessened the protective ward. Wren whispered softly, strengthening the ward. It was the biggest she’d ever had to make and sustain; it had taken all afternoon to establish it, and now it was wearing away much too quickly.
Lambin grabbed an arrow at random. Twang! Zang! Another arrow flew over the water, and then shouts rose.
One had hit a longboat, releasing a fine powder of dried breadcrumbs loaded with itch spells. Triple strength itch spells.
The shouts turned into howls of anger and disgust as pirates began scratching furiously.
One arrow had obviously missed, but Lambin shot again, and this time connected, releasing a fresh load of itch weed.
“They’re going to ram us,” Thad said sharply.
Wren swung around. A row of longboats ranged directly behind them, rowing fast.
“Time for the net?” Danal asked.
“Time for the net.” Wren settled back against the rail, drawing in a deep breath.
This was a complicated spell. She whispered the Crisis Rules, but images kept skittering through her mind: seaweed, nets, pirates. Ships. Fire.
Chickens.
She shook her head. She’d gotten no use whatever out of repeating the Crisis Rules. She wasn’t even listening to herself.
Concentrate!
This was more sustained magic, much tougher than wards because it involved physical objects. She touched the first seaweed.
One at time, you can do it
. . . She began the first spell. The bundled seaweed net on the gig’s prow slowly began to unfold its length, rising into the air. It was working! Patka gave a gasp of joy.
—And that broke Wren’s concentration.
The net promptly fell with a squelching
plerp
sound, like a bubble popping in mud.
Again. She turned her back so she wouldn’t see the others watching her. She brought her hands up, just like a beginner, as she enunciated her spells. She used her hands to keep her focus steady, for this sort of magic—used for lifting huge beams and stones in building—required not only focus to keep the object steady, but precision in moving it through space. Her net wasn’t all that heavy, but it was quite large, big enough to drape over a big three master—or else along a row of attacking boats.
Like the ones coming on fast, the oars splashing high.
Concentrate!
The net bobbled. She shut her eyes and whispered. The magic strengthened the net’s flow up, up . . .it trembled . . . the ends wobbled . . . Wren tensed her fingers, using them as guides. When the net was hovering over the foremost longboat, she finished her spell—
“Danal,” she gasped.
—and began the next spell.
The net began to drop. Danal blurted his string of magic words, and with a loud
splorch
! the net dissolved into a rain of slime.
“Yearrrgh!”
Stinky
slime. It had been Patka’s idea to add the aroma of rotting fish to the net. Even at this distance, the stench was eye-watering.
The effect on the pirates was quite spectacular. The crunch of rending wood smote the air as two, then three longboats crashed together. After that, others collided with the three already tangled up. The remainder veered wildly—or attempted to, but their beslimed oars slipped out of their hands and squirted out onto the water.
As the pirates in the longboats tried to get away as fast as they could, Wren turned to the ships silhouetted by the flames. With the help of Lambin and Danal, she loaded the pirates with spells: their weapons flew up into the rigging and masts, sticking there. Then, with a mental salute to Laris, Wren used the same spell that had caused her own shoes to attack her on her return to her room after the war. Buckets and blocks started chasing any pirate within arm’s reach, thumping them vigorously while the pirates ran about trying to escape, an impossibility unless they dove overboard into the water.
Wren’s eyes prickled with tears. Dear Laris! So much fun, such an excellent mage. Another victim of Andreus’s war.
You
would
have
done
far
better
today
than
I’m
doing
,
Laris
.
Then she forced herself back to work.
Ghost images of other ships drove the ships into one another, spreading the fire—and the chaos. Wren clung to the gig’s mast, intent on magic-making on a scale she’d never before attempted. Exhilaration kept her going until exhaustion and then singing dizziness threatened to overwhelm her.
In the east, a faint smear of light had gone unnoticed, but now it began to spread. Sky and sea began to take on color, revealing the pirates, and . . .
Patka uttered a cry of woe.
Lambin whispered, “We’re done for.”
Wren turned her head, ignoring the pangs running down from her neck to her left hand clinging so tightly to the mast. She gazed in blank-minded dismay at the sight of ten huge ships sailing straight toward them, sails and studdingsails billowing in a faintly rising breeze, jib sails along the bowsprit curved to catch every breath of wind.
Overhead the jackdaws wheeled and dived.
“What’s with Red? I’ve never seen him like this, and we shipped together through the islands all last autumn.”
Connor was aware of the voices behind him, but he kept the spyglass pressed to his eye as he leaned against the rail of his friend’s schooner, the
Piper
, and scanned the horizon.
The high, scratchy voice of his friend, Captain Tebet, went on. “Is it this some kind of prince foolery? I didn’t know he was any prince. Six weeks together on board last fall, twice fighting off river pirates, and I didn’t know that.”
“Nobody knew,” came the deeper voice of Connor’s friend Marpan, known to everyone as Longface because of his predilection for jokes told in a deadpan voice and expression. “Six weeks, nothing. Six months we were caravan guards together, through the Purba Hills. Brigands, robbers, thieves, you name it, we fought it. Sharing drink, flirting with village and harbor girls. No hint of any crowns or thrones.”