The Mercenaries

Chapter 4

Sharessa stood in a trance and watched the dancing skeleton swing at her, but at the last moment she shuddered and flung herself to the deck. As its blade of bone passed over her, she kicked out at the thing's shins, saw it stagger, and scrambled to her feet, hacking at its sword arm.

It was not a pretty attack. She slipped once, then again, and ended up clinging to the brown bones she was trying to sever. That grinning skull turned to look at her, only inches away-and in a sudden surge of terror Sharessa brought the hilt of her blade smashing down into its teeth.

Bone shards flew in all directions, and with a snarl of horror she hacked and slashed, hewing at the headless undead horror until it flew apart. Bones fell and spun around her at last, and she staggered back, panting. The bone blade was still waving feebly; she stamped on it with both feet and ground it into the deck.

Another skeleton was dancing her way. Sharessa swallowed, hefted her blade, and went to meet it. Beyond it she saw Anvil cut down a skeleton with a rain of calm blows, like a woodsman chopping a tree; beyond him, Brindra laughed and hit one with a sail-pole, spinning the long spar in her hands as if it weighed nothing. The ghoulish thing flew apart around the wood like a smashed toy, its bones tinkling down the mainmast in a shower of fragments.

Sharessa dared watch no longer. Her own skeletal foe was moving to meet her, raising its blade-and then it wasn't. Kurthe had come around one of the deck boats at a dead run, lowered his head, and put his shoulders into the thing. Bones flailed the air vainly.

Sharessa ducked aside, holding out her blade, and sheared an arm off the undead thing as it spun past her, smashed into the rail, and flew out to sea in a rain of separate bones.

Kurthe grinned at her, clapped her on the shoulder, and set off up the deck again at a lumbering run, slipping in oil from time to time. There seemed to be only a few skeletons left, but flames were snarling every where now, and Sharessa's heart sank. They might yet die as drowned ashes.

"Shadow!" Belmer called, and she spun around. Somehow the little fat man had reached the stern again. Now he was trudging back the length of the boat with his arms locked around a squirming bundle that was larger and heavier than he was. "I need you to throw sand-the buckets are aft, with Belgin!"

As Sharessa nodded and hurried down the boat, she saw that Belmer's burden was the fat old captain, his eyes rolling in terror.

"Cease, fishbrains, or I'll cut off one of your fingers and make you eat it!" she heard Belmer hiss. Turbalt squealed in wide-eyed terror and vigorously, but vainly, tried to hit and kick his way clear of the smaller man. Sharessa hadn't yet reached the open hold where Belgin was when their employer shouted another order.

"Rings! Brindra! Stop amusing yourselves with those bonewalkers and tie this lout to his own mainmast! I haven't time to waste on keeping him aboard and alive just now!"

Sharessa heard the dwarf whoop as she reached the hold and saw Belgin's sweating face looking up at her. A line of buckets was waiting just below the Hp of the open hatch; he boosted them up to her. "Mind you don't get those buckets burnt!" he warned, puffing.

"Ah, the glorious life of a pirate!" she hissed, staggering and nearly falling under the weight of two full buckets of sand.

By the time she'd emptied her load, the other Sharkers were hastening aft to help-and Belmer was running along the rails opening all the sluice-chutes.

She thought she was fast on her feet, but by the time she reached the open hatch again, Belmer was there before her, calmly handing out orders again. "Buckets all-except Kurthe."

The Konigheimer's head snapped up, and his brows drew together.

"You," Belmer told him, "are going to pump. Sharessa can hold the hose. What we can't smother, shell wash off the decks into the sea, and it can burn the waves instead of us."

"And just what will you be doing?" Kurthe grunted.

Belmer gave him a cold look and turned away without a word. Kurthe stared after him for a moment, his eyes twin flames, and then shrugged and went below. The hose nozzle soared up through the hatch and crashed onto the deck next to Sharessa a breath or two later. She trapped it with her foot out of habit, her attention on Belmer.

Their fat employer was scurrying around among the deck boats, doing something with ropes. Coils of hose slapped against Sharessa's boots, and she caught up several loops and started to trudge along the deck, heading for the flames. Sharkers were trotting past, lurching under the weight of their sand buckets. Sharessa barely saw them.

Belmer was lashing several of the deck boats together. Then he unchocked their rail-ramps, tested the pry bars that would propel them along those ramps and over the side, and nodded as if satisfied. He loped along the decks to where the flames were fiercest and came back gingerly juggling flaming debris, shouting at Ingrar to keep clear when the youth helpfully offered his full sand bucket.

The hose in Sharessa's hands jerked, grew heavy and cold, and then trembled in earnest as cold black bilge-water spewed from it. She hastened to a good location on the smoking deck and tried to sluice the burning oil out of the chutes Belmer had opened-gods, but the little man had been busy-as the burning wreckage tumbled down into the bottom of one of the boats.

He was burning their only escape…

Sharessa went closer with the hose. Could she strike him with the stream of water and stop his destruction? She looked back along the moonlit deck. No, the hose was not long enough, no matter how she aimed it.

Belmer came back with another blazing load, dumped it into another boat, and rushed away again. There were four boats, but she could see ropes joining only three of them. Sharessa looked up and down the decks at her comrades bending to take the buckets Belgin was handing up to them. Should she say something? Rush to stop him?

What was it he'd said, along with trust*? Something about things not being as they seemed?

And then she let out her breath and relaxed; it was too late to do anything. He'd dumped something smouldering into the third boat-and bright fire leaped up!

Sharessa heard startled shouts from Ingrar and Brindra. They broke into a run, but someone-Rings- darted in from the side and ran under Brindra's legs, and she stumbled, crashed forward onto her face, and skidded along the deck. Rings popped up from the deck to grab Ingrar's wrist and spin him around-and that was all the time their employer needed.

Belmer was fumbling with his shirt, unbuckling something… Some sort of hidden pouch, low on his belly? Sharessa peered, and saw something gleam in the fat man's fingers: a glass vial.

The fat man bent over the three boats in turn, sprinkling something from the vial, looking for all the world like an old crone adding poison to her cooking pots. Whatever that powder was, it made the flames roar.

Belmer tossed the empty vial into one boat and ran for the nearest pry bar. Rings was already moving to another, though it was clear he'd have to leap high into the air even to grab hold of it.

Sharessa had a sudden vision of the dwarf kicking his legs vainly in midair, like a small child dangling from a swing, and burst into hysterical giggles even as she dropped the streaming hose to the deck and ran for the third pry bar herself.

They sweated and gasped and strained together, and then Anvil came out of nowhere to take the third pry bar and heave-and suddenly the boats were moving, slipping away down the greased ramps with perilous speed, rushing and-.

Were gone into the sea with a tremendous splash. They ran to the rail and looked down. Belmer spread his hands to shove Rings and Sharessa away from him. There was another vial in his hand. He unstop-pered it and then threw it, underhand and carefully- straight down into the middle boat.

The night erupted into towering sheets of flame, so hot and so sudden in their roaring birth from the pitching boats that everyone at the rail stumbled back, cursing and clapping their hands over their eyes-except Belmer, whose hand was already shielding his.

Night seemed to become day as the flames went white and spat sparks, and through the blinding brightness Sharessa saw Belmer running along the decks again. She trotted unsteadily after him, shaking her head to banish brilliant afterimages of searing flame.

The fat little man moved like lithe lightning now, wearing an air of command like a mantle. He was bound for the mainmast.

"Jander Turbalt," he snapped, as he slowed in front of the white-faced, sweating man who was bound there, "I want you to up sail, rouse your men, and find guts enough to stay aboard! You're safer obeying and keeping close than leaping into the endless sea, witless dog! We'll be your crew-but I want us out of here, straight out to sea, as fast and as quiet as you can take us? Understood?"

The terrified shipmaster gulped and stammered and nodded his head. Belmer whipped out his sword, and the captain's noises of assent rose into a terrified wail. The small man slashed once, his steel winking in the moonlight.

The captain's bonds fell free, and Turbalt followed them to the deck, pleading and groveling on his knees. Belmer hauled him to his feet and said something soft, level, and menacing. The shipmaster scuttled away down his still-smouldering decks like a shore crab fleeing the claw of a hungry bear. Anvil and a grim-looking Brindra were waiting for him.

Sharessa smirked as she watched him dwindle and then disappear into the tangle of ropes and bound sails in the forethroat. Then Belmer looked at her and at the abandoned hose, and she remembered what it was she was supposed to be doing. She ran back to where the bilgewater still flowed. It was coming slowly now; Kurthe must be very tired.

As the ship turned again toward her former course and started to pick up speed, leaving the still-impressive columns of flame behind, Belmer slowly strode the decks in search of places that were still alight. Idly he kicked a bone across the deck and out a sluice-chute.

Sharessa raised her brows. Impressive aim, too. Rings was stalking over to their employer now, and Sharessa drifted closer to hear what was said.

The dwarf stopped and planted his hands on his hips. Sharessa knew that gesture of old; it was what Rings did when he was talking to the captain.

A night after Blackfingers had met his final fire and water, the Sharkers had a captain again.

As the Morning Bird slipped away into the night, Rings squinted up at the man whose eyes were looking knowingly back down at him.

"I understand what ye're about," Rings began, "fooling them on the black ship, them as tried to ram us, into thinking we're ablaze from stem to stern, and going down. But what if they see us, now, and aren't fooled?"

Belmer looked back at the flames behind them for a moment, and turned to face the dwarf again. "Then," he said softly, and Sharessa saw the white flash of his teeth as he smiled mirthlessly in the darkness, "youll all have to start earning your jargoons."