With that, he turned and clambered onto the quarterdeck. Arietta nocked an arrow and kneeled beside the headless body of her last target and tried not to think about the three lives she had just taken. It had been easy to kill the Shadovar when they were the ones attacking, but it felt much different when she was the aggressor. She had to remind herself that her enemies had brought this on themselves, that Yder had killed her father and made a hostage of her mother.
The bulwark crackled beneath Kleef’s weight, and a few breaths later he was planting his boots on the deck. He drew his sword and crouched next to her, his eyes scanning the rest of the ship.
“Jang?” he whispered.
Arietta pointed toward the quarterdeck. “He went to check for more guards.”
Kleef looked in the direction she had indicated, then nodded in satisfaction when Jang rose from behind the helm and displayed a fist with no upraised fingers.
“Looks like he hasn’t found any,” Kleef said, turning forward. “Let’s finish this.”
“You’re leaving Jang up here alone?”
“There may be more guards in hiding,” Kleef said. “And somebody needs to make sure Yder doesn’t come back and surprise us.”
Arietta nodded and led him to the forward companionway, which descended to the rowing deck. As eager as she was to find her mother, their plan called for them to seize control of the Wyvern first, and that meant freeing the men the Shadovar had been using as galley slaves.
Kleef paused at the entrance and looked at the agate glowing on the crossguard of his sword, then motioned for Arietta to wait. He kicked the door open and descended the stairs in a single leap.
Arietta peered through the opening and found him six feet below, crouching beneath the low ceiling and spinning, whipping his sword ahead of him in a clearing circle. He caught her eye and dipped his head in a barely perceptible nod, then completed his turn and stepped away from stairs.
Arietta descended the stairs about halfway, then stopped and peered under the railing back toward the rowing benches. Greatorm’s fog was not as thick below the Wyvern’s decks as it was above, but visibility down there was still even more limited than usual. She had a clear view of only the first three rowing benches, where a dozen haggard men sat with their arms resting on their oars, a few of them too exhausted-or too badly beaten-to even raise their heads.
Kleef pointed his sword at them. “You men,” he said. “Are you ready to fight for Cormyr?”
The cheer that came in reply was hardly rousing, but it was sincere, and someone with a gravelly voice said, “Get these shackles off us, and we’ll fight.”
“Good,” Kleef said. “Consider yourselves soldiers again.”
He started toward the first bench, and that was when a pair of Shadovar stepped out of the murk behind him. A chorus of half-broken voices croaked warning cries, but Arietta’s arrow was already flying toward the shape on the right. It buried itself between the Shadovar’s shoulders and sent him sprawling on the deck.
Knowing she had no time to nock a second arrow, Arietta leaped off the stairs, jabbing her bow tip at the figure on the left. Her blow caught the Shadovar in the back of the head, causing little damage but forcing him to glance back over his shoulder.
That was all the hesitation Kleef needed to whirl around and send the fellow’s head tumbling. He continued his spin, deftly lifting the blade over Arietta’s head and bringing it down through the neck of the Shadovar her arrow had sent sprawling.
A stunned silence fell over the rowing deck. Kleef worked his sword tip free of the wood in which it had buried itself. He glanced at the agate on the crossguard, which had fallen dark again, then relaxed and turned to Arietta.
“Thanks,” he said. “You fight pretty well for an heiress.”
“And you’re not bad for a clumsy ox,” Arietta replied.
The retort drew a chorus of catcalls and cheers from the rowing benches, and she knew that Siamorphe’s grace was still working through her. She smiled and turned to address the deck.
“You were my father’s best men,” she said. “He picked you to escort him on the journey to Elversult because he believed you to be his strongest, most capable men-at-arms. Then the Shadovar came and made galley slaves of you. The next time you meet them, I want you to give them reason to regret that!”
Rather than the enthusiastic cheer she had expected, most of the men merely looked down and tried to avoid her gaze. And those who did speak seemed rather embarrassed and apologetic, promising to do their best and not let the Shadovar take them alive again.
Arietta hid her disappointment with a polite smile. “Well, I’m sure you’re all very eager to be free.” She turned to Kleef. “Shall we?”
Kleef nodded and started down one side of the aisle, his greatsword rising and falling as he freed the men from their bonds. Arietta went down the opposite side with her own sword, though she was not nearly so fast.
Because her father’s ship had not been designed as a slave galley, it lacked the steel eye hooks through which shackle chains commonly ran-and even the shackles and chains themselves. So the Shadovar had improvised with their dark magic, binding the ankles of their captives with thick ropes of pure shadowstuff. And while all of Arietta’s weapons were enchanted-she was the daughter of a grand duke, after all-she lacked Kleef’s strength. Where he simply lopped the lines apart, she found herself sawing and hacking, and she was only halfway down the aisle when she met him coming from the opposite direction.
He glanced over her head toward the men climbing from their benches, then grunted, “Only thirty.”
Arietta frowned. “Thirty?”
“Thirty men.” Kleef looked back toward her. “And only twenty look strong enough to fight.”
Arietta turned to study the men staggering into the aisle behind her. They were filthy and gaunt, with sunken cheeks, lips so cracked they bled, and bare torsos showing through the tattered remnants of their tunics. Their backs were striped by pale welts, and their ribs showed through the gray flesh on their sides. Only their broad shoulders and old scars suggested that they had once been soldiers, and it was obvious that sending them into battle against Yder and his shadow warriors right now would be little short of a death sentence.
“Then it’s time to change the plan,” Arietta said. “Even Yder can’t catch Greatorm in the Wyvern’s longboats. All we need to do is deny the Shadovar a ship.”
Kleef furrowed his brow. “True enough,” he said. “How do we do that without a fight?”
“Like this.” Arietta raised her arms, gesturing for the attention of the newly freed captives. “We need to lighten our load. I want you to start dumping cargo-the locked holds first.”
An astonished murmur spread across the deck. A red-bearded man whom Arietta recognized as one of her father’s personal bodyguards, Balen, stepped forward.
“You’re asking us to throw the Seasilver fortune overboard?”
“No, Balen,” Arietta said. “I’m telling you.”
Balen looked confused. “Why?”
Knowing better than to assert an authority her father’s men might not respect, Arietta simply turned to another captive-a lanky man with a weathered face and a sun-bleached beard.
“Tell him, Mister Grynwald.”
Grynwald, who had served her father as the Wyvern’s first mate, smiled and pointed at Balen’s feet.
“Feel that?” he asked. “The Wyvern is rolling on her keel, and that means she can be freed-if she can shed enough weight.”
Balen was quick to shake his head. “Her Grace wouldn’t like that.”
“She’ll like it more than having the Shadovar cut off more fingers,” Kleef said. He stepped toward the man, then ran his gaze over the rest of the deck. “Do you really think you’re ready to turn the Shadovar away when they return to the ship? Because I don’t.”