The first officer leaped for the companionway. His boots barely grazed the steps. Half-sliding down the rail, he heard the shrill crash of glass as the panes in the stern window burst. The instant his feet slapped deck, he rammed shoulder-first into the chartroom door. Teak panels exploded into slivers. The first officer carried on into blackness dense as calligrapher’s ink. Sounds of furious struggle issued from the direction of the broken window.
‘Stop him!’ The first officer’s shout became a grunt as his ribs bashed the edge of the chart table. He blundered past. A body tripped him. He stumbled, slammed painfully against someone’s elbow, then shoved forward into a battering press of bodies. The hiss of the wake beneath the counter sounded near enough to touch. Spattered by needle-fine droplets of spray, the first officer realized in distress that Arithon might already be half over the sill. Once overboard, the sorcerer could bind illusion, shape shadow and blend invisibly with the waves. No search would find him.
The first officer dived to intervene, hit a locked mass of men and felt himself dashed brutally aside. Someone cursed. A whirl of unseen motion cut through the drafts from the window. Struck across the chest by a hard, contorted body, the first officer groped blind and two-handedly hooked cloth still damp from the sea. Aware of whom he held, he locked his arms and clung obstinately. His prisoner twisted, wrenching every tendon in his wrists. Flung sidewards into a bulkhead, the first officer gasped. He felt as if he handled a careening maelstrom of fury. A thigh sledge-hammered one wrist, breaking his grasp. Then someone crashed like an axed oak across his chest. Torn loose from the captive, the first officer went down, flattened under a mass of sweaty flesh.
The battle raged on over his head, marked in darkness by the grunt of drawn breaths and the smack of knuckles, elbows and knees battering into muscle. Nearby, a seaman retched, felled by a kick in the belly. The first officer struggled against the crush to rise. Any blow that connected in that ensorcelled dark had to be ruled by luck. If Arithon’s hands remained bound, force and numbers must ultimately prevail as his guardsmen found grips he could not break.
‘Bastard!’ somebody said. Boots scuffled and a fist smacked flesh. Arithon’s resistance abated slightly.
The first officer regained his feet, when a low, clear voice cut through the strife.
‘Let go. Or your fingers will burn to the bone.’
‘Don’t listen!’ The first officer pushed forward. ‘The threat’s an illusion.’
A man screamed in agony, counterpointed by splintering wood. Desperate, the first officer shot a blow in the approximate direction of the speaker. His knuckles cracked into bone. As if cued by the impact, the sorcerer’s web of darkness wavered and lifted.
Light from the aft-running lamp spilled through the ruptured stern window, touching gilt edges to a litter of glass and smashed furnishings. Arithon hung limp in the arms of three deckhands. Their faces were white and their chests heaved like runners just finished with a marathon. Another man groaned by the chart-locker, hands clenched around a dripping shin; while against the starboard bulkhead the mate stood scowling, his colour high and the pulsebeat angry and fast behind his ripped collar. The first officer avoided the accusation in the older seaman’s eyes. If it was unnatural that a prisoner so recently injured and unconscious should prove capable of such fight, to make an issue of the fact invited trouble.
Anxious to take charge before the crew recovered enough to talk, the first officer snapped to the moaning crewman, ‘Fetch a light.’
The man quieted, scuffled to his feet and hastily limped off to find a lantern. As a rustle of returned movement stirred through the beleaguered crew in the chartroom, the first officer pointed to a clear space between the glitter of slivered glass. ‘Set the s’Ffalenn there. And you, find a set of shackles to bind his feet.’
Seamen jumped to comply. The man returned with the lantern as they lowered Arithon to the deck. Flamelight shot copper reflections across the blood which streaked his cheek and shoulder; dark patches had already soaked into the torn shirt beneath.
‘Sir, I warned you. Chartroom’s not secure,’ the mate insisted, low-voiced. ‘Have the sorcerer moved to a safer place.’
The first officer bristled. ‘When I wish your advice, I’ll ask. You’ll stand guard here until the healer comes. That should not be much longer.’
But the ship’s healer was yet engaged with the task of removing the broadhead of an enemy arrow from the captain’s lower abdomen. Since he was bound to be occupied for some time yet to come, the mate clamped his jaw and did not belabour the obvious: that Arithon’s presence endangered the ship in far more ways than one. Fear of his sorceries could drive even the staunchest crew to mutiny.
That moment one of the seamen exclaimed and flung back. The first officer swung in time to see the captive stir and awaken. Eyes the colour of new spring grass opened and fixed on the men who crowded the chartroom. The steep s’Ffalenn features showed no expression, though surely pain alone prevented a second assault with shadow. Briane’s first officer searched his enemy’s face for a sign of human emotion and found no trace.
‘You were unwise to try that,’ he said, at a loss for other opening. That the same mother had borne this creature and Amroth’s well-beloved crown prince defied all reasonable credibility.
Where his Grace, Lysaer, might have won his captors’ sympathy with glib and entertaining satire, Arithon of Karthan refused answer. His gaze never wavered and his manner stayed stark as a carving. The creak of timber and rigging filled an unpleasant silence. Crewmen shifted uneasily until a clink of steel beyond the companionway heralded the entrance of the crewman sent to bring shackles.
‘Secure his ankles.’ The first officer turned toward the door. ‘And by Dharkaron’s vengeance, stay on guard. The king wants this captive kept alive.’
He departed after that, shouting for the carpenter to send hands to repair the stern window. Barely had the workmen gathered their tools when Briane plunged again into unnatural and featureless dark. A thudding crash astern set the first officer running once more for the chartroom.
This time the shadow disintegrated like spark-singed silk before he collided with the chart table. He reached the stern cabin to find Arithon pinned beneath the breathless bulk of his guards. Gradually the men sorted themselves out, eyes darting nervously. Though standing in the presence of a senior officer, they showed no proper deference. More than a few whispered sullenly behind their hands.
‘Silence!’ Crisply, the first officer inclined his head to hear the report.
‘Glass,’ explained the mate. ‘Tried to slash his wrists, Dharkaron break his bastard skin.’
Blood smeared the deck beneath the Master. His fine fingers glistened red, and closer examination revealed that the cord which lashed his hands was nearly severed.
‘Bind his fingers with wire, then.’ Provoked beyond pity, the first officer detailed a man to fetch a spool from the hold.
Arithon recovered awareness shortly afterward. Dragged upright between the stout arms of his captors, he took a minute longer to orient himself. As green eyes lifted in recognition, the first officer fought a sharp urge to step back. Only once had he seen such a look on a man’s face, and that was the time he had witnessed a felon hanged for the rape of his own daughter.
‘You should have died in battle,’ he said softly.
Arithon gave no answer. Flamelight glistened across features implacably barred against reason, and his hands dripped blood on the deck. The first officer looked away, cold with nerves and uneasiness. He had little experience with captives, and no knowledge whatever of sorcery. The Master of Shadow himself offered no inspiration, his manner icy and unfathomable as the sea itself.