Fingers of death, cold as the grave, pierced the sailors' flesh and ripped it warm from their bones. They screamed as they came apart. At the moment when each died, though, the screaming stopped, and what was left of their flesh turned gray.
The shivering cadavers then spun about to join the ranks of the undead.
"Not good!" shouted Rytlock, swinging Sohothin like a torch to keep the undead at bay. Garm circled behind him, snarling at the wall of monsters.
Behind the phalanx of undead, a figure strode down from the aft deck and crossed over amidships. The man was large and amorphous beneath a tattered cape-a norn warrior. He lurched forward on leech-covered legs and strode toward the fore of the ship.
"That's him," Rytlock said. "That's Morgus Lethe."
But to reach Lethe, they would have to fight through a wall of undead.
While the battle raged on both decks below, Caithe began her invasion from above.
She leaped from the crow's nest of the Cormorant and slid down the ratlines, knocking off numerous undead on her way. Then she swung out onto the lowest spar and balanced lithely across it. The yardarm extended beyond the ship's sides, nearly touching the boom of the undead ship. It was a simple thing, therefore, to walk out on a beam of solid wood and walk in on a beam of rot.
Caithe reached the mainmast of the enemy ship and wondered at it, soft and slimy to the touch. "Weak points." She drew an enchanted dagger from her hip and plunged it into the mainmast. It gave no more resistance than wet clay. She twisted the blade, wondering if it would-"Amazing!"
The mast severed and tilted outward and plunged.
With a great whoosh, the upper half of the ship's mast dropped to the deck, smashing a dozen undead below. Staying in the tops, Caithe could cut down the mizzenmast and the fore and the aftExcept that undead were climbing the ratlines toward her.
She winged a dagger at one of them, but the blade buried itself in the thing's chest, and it just came on. That didn't work. Caithe ran along the spar, slicing loose the lines that held the sail and gathering the cloth. She flung it around the ratlines, pinning the undead to it. She tied off her trap with a double-shank knot.
On the other side of the mast, though, undead had topped the spar and were treading toward her. Caithe approached, cutting more lines. The first creature grasped her shoulder, icy fingers piercing her skin. Screaming, Caithe wrapped one of the severed lines around its neck, cinched it, and kicked the dead man from the spar. It jolted out, hanged in midair.
This was fun. Why were the others so frightened?
Hauling on another line, Caithe swung away from the undead that reached toward her. She landed on the mizzenmast and cut it down as she had the main. Then she grabbed a line and swung out and around, back toward the bow of the boat, landing on the foremast. In moments, it, too, went tumbling. Now, only the aft mast stood, but no lines remained to swing to it.
Caithe leaped down from the spar, striking the deck and rolling. She came up, ready to run toward the aft, but a huge, fetid figure rose before her: Morgus Lethe.
He turned empty eye sockets toward her, and water streamed through his rotten cheeks. "Where do you think you're going?"
"To the aft deck. I want to cut down the last of your masts."
"Don't you know who I am?"
Caithe lifted an eyebrow and said, "Captain Lethe?"
"The same." He reached beneath his tattered greatcoat and drew forth a cutlass that dripped with black ichor. "I have a blade that sucks the life out of any living thing."
Caithe nodded politely. "Only if you hit me with it." She lifted her white stiletto. "I'm pretty good at killing things, too."
Captain Lethe's vacant eyes turned toward the blade. "I'm sure you are. But you can't kill me. I'm dead already." He lunged for her, his cutlass spattering black ooze.
Caithe cartwheeled away, careful not to let the ichor touch her. She leaped up on a nearby barrel and bounded out past a pile of rotten line. The black stuff spattered the deck just short of her and burned through.
The captain stalked forward, swinging his cutlass. "I'm your destiny, you know. I'm the destiny of all living things." He lunged for her.
On the Cormorant, the battle had become brutal. Undead swarmed the ratlines and sails. The fight in the tops sent a steady hail of bodies down to pound the decks below.
Those decks were awash in monsters. Logan and Eir stood back-to-back, smeared with gray flesh and black blood. Logan still painted aura in the air around them, but the undead clawed their way through it. His hammer smashed them back, and Eir used axes to tear them limb from limb.
Between these two grisly defenders, Snaff and Zojja huddled, clinging to each other. Their minds spun as their meat-grinding golems ate up the things that swarmed their ships.
But perhaps Captain Magnus had it worst. The undead formed a thicket around him. His axe cut through arms like branches. All the while that he defended the Cormorant, he stared at the enemy ship, at the creature that marshaled these undead.
All would be lost if Morgus Lethe did not fall.
With a roar, Captain Magnus the Bloody Handed plowed through undead and leaped rail to rail and landed on the deck of the undead ship.
On the enemy ship, Rytlock and Garm fought a rotting host. The undead raked them with bony fingers and bit them with horrid teeth.
But the charr and the wolf gave as good as they got. Sohothin rammed into them and ignited their tattered flesh. Garm meanwhile clamped fangs on the monsters and ripped out their bones. Rancid meat spattered him. It clung and stung. No matter how many undead they slew, more marched up from the hold, barring their way to Lethe.
Garm suddenly howled, and Rytlock turned to see why. There, on the aft deck of the undead ship, Captain Morgus Lethe towered over Caithe, his black cutlass raised to strike.
FIGHTS AND FEASTS
Morgus Lethe roared, lunging at Caithe.
She spun aside, letting the black-oozing cutlass jab beneath her arm. Meanwhile, she rammed her own stiletto between two of Lethe's ribs.
Lethe only laughed, a hacking sound. "I have no heart to pierce."
Caithe buried a second stiletto in his chest. It, too, brought only mockery.
"You cannot kill me!" A blast of grave air broke over her as Morgus lunged with his cutlass.
Caithe twisted aside, but the undead captain fell atop her. His blade struck the deck beside Caithe, and Morgus roared, writhing.
In his back stood the axe of Magnus the Bloody Handed.
"Whose blade!" hissed Morgus, clawing at his back.
"Mine," Magnus said, stepping on the haft and driving the blade deeper through his spine.
Morgus jolted on the planks. "You can't kill me! I am death!"
"Now you're dead!" Caithe said, ramming both stilettos into his skull. She twisted, and the cranium severed and fell in two halves. Where the brains should have been was instead a nest of maggots. The voracious vermin erupted from the skull and spread out all across the whole horrid figure, eating as they went.
Caithe scrabbled back.
In moments, Morgus Lethe was stripped to bone. Then the bones, too, were eaten away. At that point, the worms fell to the planks, twitching.
"It's ending," Magnus said, reaching out to take Caithe's hand. "Zhaitan's champion is destroyed…"
Caithe reached down to pluck her blades from the writhing ruins of Lethe. "What now?"
"Now, we must fight our way back to our ship," Magnus said.
Side by side, Caithe and Magnus battled the hosts of Lethe. Caithe's stilettos split more heads, emptying them on the deck, while Magnus's axe harvested them whole.
They headed toward the rail, but it was too late. The ship was sinking.
"Down we go," Magnus said.
The ship plunged into the water, dumping Caithe and Magnus throat-deep in sloshing waves.
Worse, the undead hordes that had been crawling up the sides of the Cormorant now fell into the water around them. Caithe and Magnus swam and fought, slicing their foes apart, a job made easier because the undead had lost much of their will.