Khan lifted the leather strap that held his sword in place up over his head and drew the weapon, throwing the scabbard away into the dust and planting his sword in the ground. It was a monster of a weapon best suited to huge, cleaving blows, but the giant looked like he could use it much like most normal men would use a longsword. Keelin, on the other hand, had his weapons of choice: dual cutlasses. They were heavy and sharp and deadly, but he wasn’t looking to be deadly today. Khan began stretching and, with his chest completely bare barring his dangling beard, Keelin could see the man’s muscles and reckoned he was outmatched at least twice over. With such strength and such a sword, blocking attacks would be useless. Keelin would have to rely on dodging and parrying, and somewhere along the line he might look at getting in a few strikes of his own.
Khan raised his sword and held it ready in front of him. The crowd cheered. With a heavy sigh Keelin slipped out of his jacket, letting it fall to the dust, and stepped into the arena, drawing both his cutlasses in one smooth motion.
Khan charged.
It took only a moment for the giant to cross the stretch between them. He slid to a halt, planted his feet, and swung his sword around in a deadly, neck-height slash that could have decapitated a bear made of stone.
Reacting on pure instinct, Keelin dropped into a crouch, rolled forwards into the giant’s reach, and thrust both swords up into the pirate captain’s unprotected belly. Khan gasped, his mouth dropping open. He made a pained mewling sound, slumping forwards onto one knee with much of his weight resting on Keelin. They remained there for what seemed like an age as Khan fought to regain his breath and Keelin fought to keep the bigger man from collapsing on top of him.
“If I were trying to kill you,” Keelin said eventually, still struggling to support the giant’s weight, “you would be very dead right now.”
Khan let out a grunt that left Keelin none the wiser to his future intentions.
“Is this over?” Keelin said.
“Stop fuckin’ huggin’ an’ fight,” someone shouted, and Keelin realised the crowd was still there, and that the cheering had been replaced with a dissatisfied murmuring.
“Aye,” Khan growled as he pushed his weight back onto his own legs and used his sword as a crutch. Very little sapped the strength from a man’s limbs like a good winding, and two sword pommels to the gut would do just that. “You win, Captain Stillwater.”
Keelin stood, still watching Khan warily. He seemed the honourable sort, but honour among thieves was ever a fluid definition, and they were all nothing if not thieves.
“Is that it?” shouted another member of the crowd.
“Yes,” Khan roared back so suddenly that Keelin had to fight every instinct he had not to jump backwards and take up a battle-ready stance. “Stillwater bested me.”
Keelin resheathed his cutlasses and sent a prayer of thanks to Rin that he’d had the sense to reverse his grip on his swords at the last moment.
“Nobody’s even fuckin’ bleedin’.” Keelin recognised the antagonist as Smithe, and scanned the crowd for the ugly bastard’s face.
“You want blood?” Khan shouted. “Then step down here and fight me. I will drain yours and drink it from your skull.”
The crowd fell silent, and many even started to slip away.
Keelin wiped sweat from his forehead. Now he was confident the giant wasn’t about to swing for him and catch him unaware, he wanted nothing so much as a bottle of rum and the company of an infuriating woman.
“Morrass is stronger than you?” Khan said quietly, still staring down members of the crowd.
Keelin thought about it. In a fight he was certain he could dispatch Drake even quicker than he had the giant, but not all strength was measured in skill with a blade, and Keelin knew for certain that no other captain in the isles could unite the pirates. Like it or not, Drake was the strongest candidate for king they had.
“Aye. You said you follow strength. Drake’s the mightiest we got.” Keelin smiled. “And we need you. We need that bloody great ship of yours, and we need your crew.”
Khan turned to Keelin with a toothy smile beneath his midnight-black beard. “You have all three.”
Keelin laughed. “I reckon that deserves a drink, eh? And if you wouldn’t mind telling me, how the fuck did you take the Victorious with only a sloop?”
Chapter 36 - Fortune
Most folk thought there was some kind of magical trick to locating the Rest, and in truth, there was. Fortune’s Rest wasn’t just the largest pleasure house in the known world; it was also the only mobile city. It was capable of packing up, raising sails, and moving at the drop of a hat. The majority of Drake’s fortune was housed at the Rest, and he didn’t like the idea of it being in one place for too long lest unsavoury folk get bright ideas about pirating a pirate, or the more savoury of folk get ideas about liberating a pirate’s wealth. So the Rest moved every month or so, sailing away to tempt a new locale of clients with its innumerable pleasures, and Drake always knew where it was.
Long ago he’d had his brother fashion a number of charms like no other. The first of them was a stone about the size of a child’s head, with powerful runes chiselled into almost every bit of its surface. The stone acted as an anchor, and even half the world away, would always draw the other charms to it. The slave charms, as his brother had named them, were ten in number, and each was hidden within a compass. To most observers the compass would simply appear broken, as its needle rarely pointed north, but those few who owned one knew the real reason; the compass needle would forever point to the anchor charm and to the Rest.
Unfortunately for Drake, his compass needle was currently pointing directly into the heart of a developing storm front that, judging by the purple-black horizon, spanned every bit of the water between him and his Rest.
“I don’t like the looks of it, Cap’n,” Princess said with a terrified shake of his head.
The purple clouds in the far distance lit up a touch brighter for just a moment, signalling that the lightning had just begun. If he was honest with himself, Drake didn’t like the look of it either, but he wasn’t about to be honest to anyone when being honest meant admitting fear, especially not while Beck was watching.
“We’ll be fine, Princess.” Drake forced a grin. “Rin’ll see us through.”
“Meaning no disrespect, Cap’n, but we both know that’s a bunch of shit,” Princess said. “She might have some pretty terrible powers when it comes to the sea, but we both know she can’t do fuck all about the weather. If she could, Soromo would have been a touch less terrifying.”
Drake couldn’t argue with that. His escape from the Dragon Empress’ dungeon had almost ended in death thanks to that storm, but they’d all survived then and they would survive again now.
“We’ve been becalmed for weeks, Princess. Now we finally have a bit of wind, I’m not about to waste it because of a touch of bad weather. You said it yourself just yesterday; supplies are running low.”
“There was an island just half a day back, Cap’n. I reckon we should turn tail and head back there for shelter. We’ve tempted fate once too often of late.”
Drake laughed at that. “You heard the Oracle’s telling, Princess. It ain’t my fate to die in that storm.” He pointed at the dark clouds and hoped Hironous had been truthful about his brother’s destiny.