Mark shook himself and climbed over to check that Brynne was okay. She bent down to clean the knife-blade on the man’s tunic, then drew herself up and glared at the group of men and women who were watching her. Although she said nothing, her expression was taunting, almost daring them to come forward and face her.
The injured man thrashed about, splashing water up as he kicked his legs and flailed his arms. He screamed for his mother, and to someone else – not a name Mark could recognise – and then, thankfully, fell silent. The ruffians on the beach moved forward slowly, waiting for the order to engage the enemy.
‘This is not good,’ Mark said as he shuffled nervously back and forth, his feet ankle-deep in the pebbles.
‘Do not come against us,’ Steven yelled towards the longboats, then, with a note of sincerity in his voice, ‘I have no wish to kill you.’
‘You are outnumbered, fifty to one,’ their commander called back with a laugh. ‘Yield now.’
‘You don’t understand.’ As Steven raised the staff, the closest assailants cringed visibly before him. ‘We will not yield. You will lay down your arms, or you will die.’
Garec searched the gloom, an arrow drawn full, hoping to pinpoint the leader’s voice. He sighted down its shaft waiting for an opportunity to silence the man for ever, but he was beaten to it: off to his right, from somewhere out on the water, he heard the telltale snap of a bowstring.
There was no time to cry out a warning; he drew a quick breath and held it, waiting for the arrow to pierce him through. But he was not the target: he watched in almost stupefied amazement as Steven, with positively inhuman speed, snatched the shaft from the air and snapped it in two with one hand. Recovering quickly, the Ronan bowman found the enemy marksman crouched in the bow of a longboat and sent his own shaft hurtling across the water. With a muted thud, the arrow embedded itself in the man’s neck. Several startled cries nearly drowned out the pirate’s incoherent last words and Garec felt his hands shake for a moment as the dead man fell forward into the water with an insignificant splash.
The voice cried out again, this time in anger, ‘Beach party, attack! Longboats forward! Take them now!’
Brynne dropped to a crouch and Mark fought the urge to run as thirty armed ruffians charged with an unholy bellow that sounded as if it would reverberate through the cavern for an eon. Behind him he heard similar cries as the group flanking them advanced as well. Oars squeaked in rusty oarlocks, groaning as the longboats made for shore.
Garec’s hands were steady again. Calm and controlled, he began firing into the boats, aiming for the oarsmen, not just to slow down their approach, but to force more of the enemy to expose themselves as targets while they struggled to clear the benches of their dead. He’d made three shots for three clean kills when he caught sight of the force bearing down on Mark and Brynne. Grimacing, he changed target, but though he killed or wounded a soldier with every shaft, there were simply too many: the horde was about to overrun his friends.
Steven wished Garec would stop firing for a moment so he could try to bring a peaceful end to the confrontation. He was sorry Gilmour wasn’t there; somehow the old man would have negotiated a truce by now and they’d all be sitting around the fire together, smoking pipes, chucking back the local liquor and swapping stories.
He sighed, and glanced to his right, where Brynne and Mark were about to engage a force large enough to take Denver in an afternoon. So much for peace to all humankind! Maybe he could have this deeply meaningful philosophical discussion with himself once he’d saved his friends from being chopped into the evening’s main course. Steven closed his eyes and focused his thoughts.
The shoreline came to life as thousands of small, smooth, rounded stones and pebbles sprang into the air and careened through the marauding horde as if fired from an invisible catapult. With a gesture, Steven repeated the attack on the group advancing from the adjacent shore. Eyeballs were ruptured, noses broken, ribs cracked and teeth dislodged; deep welts and bruises coloured exposed flesh as the stones ripped mercilessly through the enemy ranks, denting helmets and even shattering sword blades. The raiders screamed in terror, diving into the lake or running headlong back along the beach in an effort to escape the punishing hailstorm of pebbles. A small cloud of stone projectiles pursued every one of them, punctuating the message that the small company was not about to surrender.
In spite of the blood and broken bones, no one had died in Steven’s counter-attack. He wondered if they appreciated that yet.
Steven turned his attention to the longboats. His initial reaction was to sink them all, but it occurred to him that a boat or two might be useful for them, so instead, he drove the staff into the shallows at his feet and, replicating the wave he had created in Meyers’ Vale, sent a wall of water forward to capsize the boats and leave their passengers adrift. ‘Kill as many as you like, Garec!’ he shouted loudly enough to be heard above the cries of the injured, ‘but try not to hit the boats. We’ll need at least one of those intact.’
Garec looked over at him, and Steven shook his head slightly. He set off to examine the pirate Brynne had so deftly gutted. For a moment he hoped the man might be saved, but he shuddered as he looked down. The massive wave had washed away the blood and if he didn’t look any further than his face, the dead raider looked as though he had simply fallen asleep with his feet in the water. Steven avoided looking anywhere else; he knew that seeing entrails would make him vomit. On the beach before him lay five or six more of Garec’s casualties, each with an arrow jutting awkwardly from someplace soft and vital.
He turned to Brynne. ‘Did you have to-’ His voice trailed off. Of course she did. The man had attacked her. He had come screaming out of the shadows, and if Brynne had not dispatched him so efficiently, she or Mark would be lying here instead.
Steven couldn’t take his eyes off the corpse. He had seen the man clumsily trying to push his own organs back in, as if the act of forcing them back inside his abdomen might save his life. It was a reflex; anyone would have done the same, grasping feverishly at the slippery, blood-soaked intestines and shoving them back inside, not caring even if they were returned to their correct position. Were his hands clean? He hoped so, because forcing clumps of dirt in between the tubes might cause an infection. Looking down into the dead man’s face, Steven saw that although open, his eyes were askew in their sockets, pointing in different directions. Were his hands clean? If not, it hadn’t mattered for long. The body sprawled, arms and legs akimbo, somehow taking up too much space. The warden of this subterranean boneyard would not be pleased. As Steven folded the man’s arms across his chest, a bemused chuckle escaped his lips. He drew back, momentarily shocked at the sound of his own voice.
‘Don’t get jaded, Steven,’ he told himself, and ran a hand over his eyes. He wiped his hand contemplatively on his tunic. ‘Don’t get used to this,’ he repeated.
Two large groups had formed on the beach, one behind him and one before. People were still emerging from the water, many dragging their injured with them. At a quick estimate there were nearly three hundred of the soldiers, pirates, ruffians or whatever they were still standing, but regardless of their numbers, their attitude had changed. They hovered between embarrassment and fright – embarrassed at how handily they had been put down, and frightened, because they did not expect to leave the cavern alive. Nine longboats lay capsized about fifty yards from shore. One still burned, smoke billowing up in great clouds beneath the bone-decorated stone ceiling.
Steven looked at the person emerging from the lake to address them; he assumed it was their leader, the one who’d ordered the foolish attack. He waited expectantly, silently.
Even Brynne gave a little start when the raider clasped a handful of matted hair and pulled it behind one ear. It was a woman. Steven cleared his throat, adjusted his grip on the staff, and waited.