Stalking Darkness

38

It was silent and dark under the water. Seregil could see the bright silver surface wavering above him as he struggled, but something in the depths below gripped his ankle, holding him just out of reach.

A tall, dark figure loomed over him, distorted by the surface refraction. It saw Seregil floating helplessly below and beckoned to him.

With a final, frantic kick, he managed to get his face above water just long enough to fill his bursting lungs. As he did so, he looked up into the face of the man standing over him. The lips moved as he told Seregil what he must do.

He couldn't understand the words, but they filled him with such horror all the same that he cried out and water poured into his mouth as the unseen force below pulled him under again-

"Seregil! Seregil, wake up, damn it."

Gasping for air, Seregil focused on Micum's worn, freckled face, the ship, the open sea around them.

The ship. The open sea.

"Oh, shit, not again," Seregil groaned, pressing his fingers against his throbbing temples. Over his friend's broad shoulder, he saw a few sailors gathered nervously nearby, craning their necks for a glimpse of him.

"Did I-?"

Micum nodded. "They heard you clear back to the stern this time. This is the third time."

"Fourth." In the week since they'd set sail, the dream—whatever it was, since he couldn't recall it when he woke—had come more often. Worse yet, he was beginning to nod off at odd times during the day to have it, this time in broad daylight right here at the foot of the bow platform.

"Any man with time on his hands can report to me for extra duty," barked Captain Rhal, scattering the knot of gawkers as he stumped up the deck.

Reaching Micum and Seregil, he lowered his voice to a growl. "You said you'd keep to your cabin after the last time. The men are beginning to talk. What am I supposed to tell them?"

"Whatever you can," Micum replied, helping Seregil to his feet.

"Those two who were with you on the Darter, can they still be trusted?" Seregil asked.

"I've told them to keep their mouths shut about that and they will." Rhal paused, still frowning. "But Skywake's muttering about you being a jinx, a stormcrow. He knows better than to say it outright but the others are starting to sense it."

Seregil nodded resignedly. "I'll keep out of sight."

Micum followed as he headed for the companionway. "By the Flame, you'll get us pitched over the side for certain if you don't mind yourself," he muttered.

"These sailors are worse than soldiers when it comes to anything that looks like an omen." Seregil ran a hand back through his lank hair.

"What did I say this time?"

"Same as before, just 'no, I can't' over and over until I got to you. I suppose I shouldn't have left you when I saw that you'd dozed off." Entering their cabin, Micum dropped onto his bunk.

"Did you remember any of it this time?"

"No more than before," Seregil sighed, stretching out on his own bunk with a flask of ale. "I'm drowning, and I see someone looking down at me through the water. That's all I can ever recall, but it scares the hell out of me. The closer we get to Plenimar, the worse it feels."

"I'm not so happy about it myself," Micum said with a wry grin.

Since rounding the southern tip of Skala two days before, they'd spotted half a dozen enemy vessels in the distance, and outrun two of these. This was another point of contention with the crew; there would be no bounty to divide up if they didn't engage.

"You don't suppose Nysander could be trying to reach you this way?" Micum asked without much hope.

"I wish it was, but I think I'd feel it if it was that." He took a sip of ale and stared disconsolately up at the cabin ceiling.

"Illior's Light, Micum, what I do feel is a wrongness in him not being here. And Alec."

Seregil reached inside his coat, felt the dagger hilt there, and the soft lock of hair. If they were too late, if Alec died, was dead already—

"You never said anything to him, did you?" asked Micum. "About your feelings for him, that is?"

"No, I never did."

His friend shook his head slowly. "That's a pity."

Aura Elustri malreis, Seregil prayed silently, clenching the hilt until his knuckles ached. Aura Elustri watch over him and keep him until I can plunge this same knife into the hearts of his enemies.

The pounding of feet on deck overhead woke them just after dawn the next morning.

"Enemy sail off the port bow!" a lookout shouted.

Snatching up their swords, Seregil and Micum ran above.

Standing at the helm, Rhal pointed toward the northeastern horizon, where a black and white striped sail was just visible. "The bastards must've sighted us last night and trailed us."

"Can we outrun them?" asked Micum, shading his eyes. At this distance he could already make out the vessel itself, running low and fast over the waves.

"From the cut of their sails, I'd say not. Looks like we'll have to fight this time," Rhal replied with a certain grim satisfaction. "I know your feelings on this, Seregil, but it'd be best if we take the offensive."

Seregil said nothing for a moment, but appeared to be studying the oncoming vessel. "The sails on that vessel aren't so different from ours, are they?" he asked.

"No, we're rigged out about the same."

"So you could sail this ship with those sails?"

Rhal grinned, catching his drift. "In the proper navy they'd call that a dishonorable trick."

"Which is why I stick with privateers," Seregil replied, grinning back. "The closer we get to Plenimar, the less attention we'd attract, at least from a distance."

"By the Old Sailor, Lord Seregil, you've the makings of a great pirate in you. Trouble is, if you want the sails off her, we can't use our fire baskets."

"Keep it as a last resort and throw everything else you've got at her."

"All hands, prepare for battle," Rhal sang out, and the call was passed down the deck.

The crew of the Lady sprang to action with a will. The pilot have the ship around to meet the Plenimaran challenger. Hatches were dragged back, the catapults fitted into their bracing sockets along the deck and on the battle platforms fore and aft, and baskets of stones, chain, and lead balls hauled up from the hold. Rhal's archers took their places and the edge of every sword and cutlass was given a final touch of the thumb.

"She's showing the battle flag, Captain," the lookout shouted as they bore down on the enemy ship.

"Run up the same!" answered Rhal.

Micum lost sight of Seregil in the general confusion, but his friend reappeared moments later with Alec's bow.

"Here," he said, handing it to Micum without meeting his eye. "You're better with this than I am."

Before Micum could think of a reply, Seregil hurried off to join one of the catapult crews.

The Plenimaran ship swooped toward them across the waves like an osprey, closing the distance rapidly.

"A warship, Captain, and they got fire baskets lit!" the sharp— eyed lookout called down.

"How are they set?" Rhal bellowed back.

"Two catapults to a side, fore and aft! Fire baskets to the fore."

"Keep at her bow, helmsman!"

As the ships closed within a few hundred yards of each other, archers on both sides took aim.

Standing with Rhal's bowmen along the port rail, Micum listened to the bowstring song of Alec's Black Radly as he loosed shaft after shaft at the enemy. The song was quickly answered. Plenimaran arrows whined and buzzed across the water at him like angry dragonflies.

Welken, the faithful lookout, crashed to the deck with a shaft through his chest. Nettles was hit in the leg but kept on shooting. Others fell and the shouting and screams on both sides echoed over the water between the vessels.

No shortage of arrows,

Micum thought, pulling enemy shafts from the deck and rail and sending them back the way they'd come.

The heavy thud of the catapults sounded fore and aft as catapults on both sides let fly. Flaming balls of a pitchy concoction known as Sakor's Fire sailed across the

Lady's bow, narrowly missing her forward sail. The Lady responded with double loads of chain that clawed through the enemy's rigging, collapsing one of her mainsails like a broken wing. Panicked shouts rang out on the enemy ship as she slowed.

"Hard about and give her another!" Rhal ordered.

Skywake fought the rudder to port and the Lady leaned dangerously into the waves as they wheeled to press their advantage. A groaning volley from the port catapults smashed the Plenimarans' forward mast and the enemy ship yawed, wallowing in the swells.

Like a wounded dragon, the Plenimarans released a second volley of Sakor's Fire as the Lady passed. This one found its mark, striking the forward platform. An oily sheet of flame engulfed a catapult and its crew. Burning men fell writhing to the deck or leapt overboard. Sailors tore the covers from sand barrels lashed against the rails, smothering the flames before they could spread.

Choking on the smell of burning flesh, Seregil dropped his load of chain and ran up the platform ladder to help drag the wounded away from the flames.

"What now?" he called, spotting Rhal on the deck below.

"Hard around, strike sails and board 'em,"

Rhal yelled. "Makewell, Coryis, tell your group to stand ready with the grapples."

A final volley of stones from a Plenimaran catapult shattered the Lady's main mast as she bore down on them. Dodging the fallen spars, the grappling crew tossed their hooks across and hauled the two ships together before the Plenimarans could cut the ropes. As soon as the bulwarks were close enough to leap, Rhal's

fighters boarded the other ship and waded into the black-uniformed marines massed to repel them.

From his vantage point on the platform, Seregil scanned the fray for Micum's red mane. As expected, his companion was already across in the thickest of the fight.

The gods chose you well for the Vanguard, Seregil thought, shinnying down the ladder and elbowing his way to the rail. Reaching it, he did his best to ignore the foaming chasm that opened and closed beneath him as the two disabled vessels wallowed in the swells. He-made his jump, drew his sword, and was immediately confronted by a Plenimaran sailor armed with a cutlass.

The battle soon spread to both ships. Somehow in the confusion, Micum and Seregil found each other and fought shoulder to shoulder, back to back, as the precariously balanced fight raged on.

For a time it seemed that it would go on indefinitely, but in the midst of the melee one of Rhal's seamen killed the captain of the Plenimaran ship. At almost the same moment, Micum struck down the commander of the marines. Confusion spread among the remaining enemy and they finally surrendered.

A cheer went up from the Lady as the surviving enemy sailors and soldiers threw down their weapons in surly submission. Whooping and howling their triumph, Rhal's men surged forward to loot the vanquished ship.

Exhausted, Seregil and Micum left them to it and jumped back aboard the Lady.

"By the Flame, that was a proper fight," Micum gasped, nudging a severed hand out of the way with his foot before collapsing on a bulkhead.

Looking his friend over, Seregil saw that Micum had come out with no more than a cut over one eye. He'd taken a shallow cut across the shoulder himself.

Stripping off his tunic and shirt, he glanced at it, then held a wad of cloth against it to stanch the bleeding.

"Too close quarters for my taste," he said, collapsing on the deck with his back to the bulkhead.

Rhal appeared from out of the surrounding confusion and strode over to where they sat. "Well, we caught your ship for you but there's still better than twenty of her crew left standing," he informed Seregil. "I know we don't want to be weighed down with prisoners, but I'll tell you straight that I won't be a party to the execution of beaten men."

"Neither will I," Seregil told him wearily.

"I say strip whatever we need off her, take the sails, and set the crew adrift on her with food and water. How long will repairs to the Lady take?"

Rhal rubbed his jaw, looking around at the damage. "We'll have to step a new mast and rig the new sails. No sooner than sunup tomorrow."

"How many days to Plenimar?"

Rhal eyed the sky. "Barring foul weather, I'd say three days, maybe four. Running with Plenimaran sails could save us a fight or two."

Seregil looked to Micum, but the big man merely shrugged.

"Do it, then," Seregil told the captain. "And put the Plenimarans to work, too."