The longship was already pulling away when a hand caught my shoulder. I was leaning over the rail without remembering how I'd gotten there, fingers white on the wood, watching the oars bite the water.
The sea foamed behind them as they turned north, a white streak cutting over the blue. My sword arm twitched, the blade lifting an inch, as if my body meant to reach out and cut through them from a distance.
"Lord Galladon."
I blinked. Grey's voice was hoarse. He pulled harder, dragging me back a step.
My boots slipped on the deck, slick beneath my feet. I looked down and saw why. Blood everywhere, pooled between planks, smeared into dark handprints and dragged bodies. A man lay face-down at my feet, one of ours by the look of his red jerkin, eyes open and already glassy.
"How many?" I asked. My mouth felt thick.
Grey swallowed. He didn't look at me when he answered. "Nine."
I stared at him.
"Nine who can still sail," he added. "And that's counting you, Jack, Jace, and me."
The sounds of the ship crept back in then. The timbers seemed to groan as if in pain. Someone retched over the rail. A man was crying by the mast, hunched over the body of a fellow crewman.
"Eleven breathing," Grey went on. "Two of them… not for long."
I nodded once. Thirteen, then. Soon to be fifteen. I didn't say it aloud. The crew of the Fair Winds had been twenty before we stepped on board. Only five would live to see the sunset.
My sword felt too light in my hand. I looked at it, at the way the steel was darkened nearly to the hilt. Frowning, I tried to remember the first man I'd killed when the fighting began.
I couldn't. It was all a jumble. Only fragments came back to me. Impact, resistance, the jolt up my arm when steel met bone. Their faces blurred together, young and old, wind-bitten, scarred, eyes wrinkled as if they were used to laughter.
I knew I'd been shouting at some point, just roaring nonsense and warcries, but I couldn't remember the words. My chest still rose and fell too fast, heat thrumming through my limbs, a restless pressure that begged for motion.
The longship dwindled in the distance, and I wanted to chase it.
The thought was sudden and violent, like a spark thrown onto dry kindling. To take an oar, turn the cog, drive her forward until we ran them down. Until there was nothing left to run. I would just kill and kill and keep killing until the deck of their longship looked much like ours.
My hand tightened on the rail again before I forced myself to let go.
"They're rowing upwind," Grey said quietly, as if reading it on my face. "We won't catch them."
I knew that. Some part of me did. The rest snarled in protest. Something inside me wanted to see it all finished.
That's when I heard the shouts. They rose from the far end of the deck, faint and distant. I turned, pulse suddenly kicking harder.
The carrack.
A finger of dark smoke curled up to the sky, faint but unmistakable. On the sea, the Lannister colors were still visible, tangled with the sails of the galley I didn't recognize.
They were too far to hear clearly, but I could imagine the sounds easily enough. The ring of steel. Men screaming. Begging. Crying. Ser Gerion would be out there, no doubt, fighting amongst the men.
I wiped my blade on my sleeve and sheathed it with a jerk. "We're going to them."
Behind me, a murmur rippled through what remained of the crew. I turned to them ready to yell, only to freeze. It was exhaustion, not cowardice, that I saw on their bloodied faces. They slumped against each other, eyes wary, cuts and nicks leaking red beneath slashed shirts.
"The captain's dead," someone said. I didn't see who. "And the first mate."
Jerek, I thought. I had seen him fall, cut down by the silver-haired man who'd almost gotten the best of me. He moved like a ballet dancer with that sword of his, its single-edged blade meant to cut and hack. A dangerous man. Old Jerek didn't stand a chance. He died quickly.
"We've done enough fighting for one morning," another crewman said.
I looked past them across the deck. The planks seemed reddened as if someone had thrown a coat of pain over the wood. Corpses littered the floor in knots of flesh and limbs. A taller wave splashed over board, the salty seawater washing over the blood and disturbing the dead.
I saw the boy, then.
Young man, really, the one I'd run into on my second day aboard. Daven by name. I'd talked to him a few times throughout the trip. Red cheeks, eager eyes, always too quick with a grin. He asked me about Tarth and I asked about his family. He had two younger sisters, the same as I, and he's worked on ships since he was a boy to put food on the table for them and his ailing mother.
Now, he lay crumpled near the mast, throat opened from ear to ear, blood soaking into the deck beneath his head. His eyes were closed, at least.
My stomach clenched. After all the men I killed, it was seeing his lifeless body that made me want to puke. A young life just thrown away like that, as if it was nothing.
It could've just as easily been me. Or Gray or one of the twins. I felt bile rise up my throat like battery acid.
No time for this, I told myself, fists clamped tight. Right now, with the men watching and the carrack at risk, I had to be strong. I pushed the sick feeling down until it became a tightly wound ball inside me. I could deal with it later.
"The living come first," I croaked. My voice sounded strange to my own ears, like it'd been scraped raw. "We dump the bodies and head for the Western Will. Now."
With Grey already moving, no one argued after that. Maybe they were too tired to complain. Or too scared. They'd seen me cut down a dozen men not ten minutes prior. That kind of thing bred compliance even beyond my noble status.
Ropes were pulled, buckets of water were hauled up to wash the deck. The dead were lifted. Ours gently, theirs not. Yet still they all slid over the side like butchered meat. The sea swallowed them without ceremony, and I watched until the last body disappeared beneath the waves, until the water closed smooth again. Only then did I say my prayers to the crew. To Jerek. To Daven and his sisters.
When the rigging was fixed, I turned toward the sails as they snapped in the wind.
"Downwind," I muttered. "We can reach them in minutes."
Finally, the ship began to move. Small as my cog was, it didn't need a large crew to run. I left Grey helping the dying crewmen and went to find the twins. Jack had gone down during the fighting, apparently, but his wounds had not been fatal.
I found them in the small aftercastle arguing about something. Jace was fussing over his brother with a bolt of white linen, kneeling above him as Jack tried to bat away at his hands.
"Is it bad?" I asked in lieu of announcing myself.
They glanced up at me. Jace gave me a respectful nod, but he soon turned back to caring for the cut on Jack's leg..
"No, m'lord," the man himself said, grinning through the pain as his brother tightened up the make-shift bandage. "Some of the ladies back home have done worse." When Jace pressed a hand to the wound, he nearly elbowed his brother in the face. "Ack, careful with that."
I watched them bicker for a second before I shook my head, smiling despite myself. My lads would be fine, but I didn't want them fighting again. The crew had been right when someone said they'd done enough fighting for the day.
Besides, as we pulled closer to the besieged carrack and I could make out what was truly happening there, I realized there were better ways for them to help me.
As if reading my mind, Jack pushed his brother away and jumped to his feet. He wobbled a bit, had to lean over to grab a rail to keep his feet.
"Ready for some boarding action, m'lord," His smile was true and eager. "Always wanted to do a bit o' pirating myself, if you don't mind me saying."
I chuckled. I had really trained them too well.
"Not this time, Jack," I told him. "You're all better use to me up here." When they made to complain, I just lifted up a hand. "Trust me. Here's the plan."
xxx
HIT ME UP WITH SOME POWER STONES. IT HELPS A LOT!!
Read ahead if you want. Chapters on [PATREON] are longer than on Webnovel. Patreon is roughly 25-30 Webnovel chapters ahead, or 10 regular (longer) chapters.
patreon(dot)com/pathliar