“Then what in the Bitch’s name are you good for?” Mourmyd pivoted to Borthog. “Turn out the villagers to fight the fire. Tell them that if Octopus burns, they will, too.”
Like Gimur, Borthog hesitated. It gave Mourmyd the infuriating feeling that everything including his own crew was conspiring against him. He felt a momentary urge to draw his cutlass and start cutting.
Then Borthog said, “If you think it best. But it will take time to get the peasants moving. And if we don’t have time …”
Curse him, the boatswain was right. “Then get the crew moving!” Mourmyd snarled. “I want them standing in front of me with buckets in their hands before I finish counting to twenty!”
It didn’t happen quite that quickly, but once their officers started shouting orders, the pirates scurried to obey. Everyone understood the potential consequences of losing the caravel.
And while they all rushed through the woods, tripping over fallen branches, scratching and snagging themselves on brambles, and even bumping into tree trunks in the dark, Mourmyd prayed,
Please, he thought, great Queen of the Depths, let Octopus be all right! I came to this pesthole on your business because your high priest-curse him! — made me. Don’t let me suffer because of it!
As the pirates approached the anchorage, wavering yellow light shined through the trees ahead. Heat warmed Mourmyd’s face, and smoke stung his nostrils and set a man on his left to coughing. Near panic, the captain ran even faster, and his men did the same. Then they all faltered in confusion as they reached the strip of mud and weeds at the water’s edge.
The first thing Mourmyd noticed was that the ship was all right, and the realization brought a surge of relief. But the feeling only lasted an instant, because the vista before him was uncanny.
The pillar of smoke he’d observed from the village still billowed above the treetops. But there were no flames underneath it, just a sourceless radiance that gilded the surface of the water. The odd thought came to him that the missing fire was like a detail a lazy artist might omit from a mural when he realized the layout of the hall would keep anyone from looking closely at that end of the painting.
Except that in this case, it was a detail nobody would miss until it was too late, and illusion had already lured Mourmyd and his men into an ambush.
He bellowed, “Trap!” But at the same moment, figures popped up from behind the gunwales along the length of the Octopus to shoot crossbows at the befuddled men on land.
Other quarrels streaked out of the darkness on the pirates’ flanks. Someone screamed as he staggered with a bolt jutting from his face. Then, as soon as the barrage ceased, shadowy figures burst from cover to charge Mourmyd’s crew with pike, axe, and sword.
Honed in many a fight, Mourmyd’s instincts told him he and his crew had the ambushers outnumbered. But that changed almost instantly as his corsairs started to drop with their pails still in their hands and their blades still in their scabbards.
Mourmyd realized that even he was still gawking like a halfwit with a bucket in his grasp. He cast about, discovered Gimur in a similar stupefied condition, and lashed the pail into the sorcerer’s ribs. Gimur yelped and lurched around.
“Do something!” Mourmyd screamed.
Gimur gave a jerky nod and gripped a talisman in the shape of a curved iron glaur horn. He howled and ripped the plait to which the arcane ornament was clipped right out of his scalp.
The sorcerer’s scream became an ear-splitting blare like a call from a giant’s trumpet. The ground shuddered under Mourmyd’s feet but the shaking was even stronger where foes rushed in on the crew’s left flank. There, trees swayed and rustled, and the oncoming attackers reeled and fell.
That gave the men of the Octopus a last chance to prepare themselves for battle if the brainless scum would only take advantage of it. Mourmyd cast aside the bucket, drew his cutlass, and ran into the middle of them roaring, “Fight, drown you, fight!”
At least some of the reavers snapped out of their daze and reached for their own blades. Then a foe armed with a boarding pike rushed Mourmyd. Clad in the soaked, filthy uniform of a Thayan marine, the man knew how to handle his weapon, and for the next several breaths, Mourmyd had to devote his full attention to dueling him.
Finally, the pirate captain slipped past the jabbing, rust-speckled point of the pike and slashed the Thayan across the belly. The marine dropped the pike and, reeling, clutched at the wound to keep his guts from sliding out. Mourmyd pivoted away from him and looked around.
What he saw was cause for desperation. His crew were fighting back, but, taken by surprise, were doing so with just the side arms they wore habitually, not the full range of lethal gear they customarily carried into battle. Some only had daggers to pit against pikes and axes. It was rapidly proving to be a fatal disadvantage.
It might not be as disastrous if they had more sorcery strengthening them and blasting their enemies. Alas, Gimur was busy looking after himself. Jabbering incantations, he stood facing a tall, slender woman in a red hooded cloak across a distance of several yards. Her lips were moving, too, and she flourished a wand in broad, lazy sweeps above her head.
Orbs of phosphorescence appeared around the two spellcasters, bobbed and drifted sluggishly for a few heartbeats, and then dissolved. Streaks of light shot back and forth. Sometimes, they bent away from their targets, or simply stopped short. At other moments, radiant disks like shields flared into existence to block them.
In the flashing, flickering play of all that glow, hints of figures and faces appeared, vanished, and reappeared. A phantom lion sprang at a ghostly serpent, and a hovering expressionless mask of a countenance divided down the middle, flowed apart, and became two such objects.
Mourmyd lacked the esoteric knowledge that would have enabled him to comprehend much of what he was seeing. Still, it was clear Gimur was losing the arcane duel. His adversary appeared calm and confident, whereas he’d already yanked out several braids from his bloody scalp. That was a trick he only used when he needed to cast a spell more quickly and forcefully than normal.
The one cause for hope was that the Red Wizard appeared intent on her chosen opponent. Mourmyd surveyed the battle as a whole and found a path through the various knots of combatants that would enable him to circle around behind her. He started forward.
Then a familiar voice said, “Now, now. Let the mages have their fun, and you and I will have ours.” Mourmyd pivoted to see Anton Marivaldi advancing on him with a bloody saber in his left hand and a cutlass in his right.
Mourmyd had to swallow away a sudden thickness in his throat. Generally speaking, he had faith in his own prowess and had vindicated that confidence in battle after battle. Yet he realized he didn’t want to cross swords with Anton. Not on a calamitous night like this, when Tymora had so manifestly turned her back on him.
But maybe he wouldn’t have to. Borthog, a boarding axe he must have taken from a fallen Thayan in his hands, crept up behind the Turmishan. Mourmyd need only keep Anton from discerning the half-orc’s approach and the other captain would cease to be a problem.
Retreating, Mourmyd snarled, “You’re a traitor! To your fellow pirates and our faith!”
Anton grinned. “Let’s not belabor the obvious.”
“I mean it!” Mourmyd said, still giving ground. “You’ve thrown everything away!” Meanwhile, Borthog slipped into striking distance.
But as the half-orc raised the boarding axe, Anton whirled. Either he’d known Borthog was there all along or had somehow sensed it just in time. Reflecting the rainbow luminescence of the mages’ duel, his saber sliced into his would-be assailant’s neck. Borthog collapsed with blood spurting from the gash and his tusked head flopping backward like it was on hinges.