"I'll bet you're keeping a tally," Mervyn told Rose Marie, laughing despite himself as his eyes swept across the square to the spot where Captain Roch Joubert had squared off against Bosun Teague…
The two men circled each other near the frozen well, on a ring of open ice that even the pirates seemed to know better than to step into.
"The fallen knight," Teague sneered. The whip trailed from his right hand, its many tails dragging across the ice with a faint clicking sound that set Mervyn's teeth on edge. A long knife rested in his left, held low and reversed along his forearm.
"Captain Giston always said you'd crawl back to the lords one day," the bosun said in a voice that dripped with condescension. "He'll laugh when he hears how cheaply they bought you. A few empty promises of a pardon and a title and you've thrown common sense out with the bilge water."
