“The dead,” Drake shouted, pointing up towards the wheel, where he could see the dead pirate still crawling slowly across the deck.
“I see it,” Beck yelled back, whipping her head to the side to get her sodden hair out of her face.
The mast above Drake gave a worrying groan, and he sent a quick prayer to Rin that it would hold. If the main mast snapped now they would all likely follow it into the cold dark below them.
“Shoot it!” Drake shouted at Beck.
The Arbiter shook her head just as another flash of lightning made plain the fear on her face. “Powder’s wet!”
With a growl that was half frustration and half determination, Drake dropped to his hands and knees and began a painstaking climb up the deck towards the navigators still straining against the wheel. The dead pirate continued his own slow crawl just a few metres away. All it would take was one of the men on the wheel to let go, and the ship would careen and be lost beneath the waves.
Hand over hand, his boots scrabbling for purchase on the soaking deck, Drake edged closer and closer to the dead pirate until he was almost close enough to grab hold of his foot and pull it away. Someone shouted his name, but he was too intent, too focused. The ship jolted and a wave of water swept across the deck, spinning Drake around and washing him away. He hit the railing hard and felt the gradient lessen as the ship levelled off. Something slammed into his chest, forcing the air from his lungs, and he gasped in cold, salty water. For what seemed like forever, Drake’s world was one of coughing and gasping and trying to desperately rub water from his eyes.
Drake heard a groan, and the thing that had slammed into his chest started to move. Without thinking, he reached out and wrapped his hands and legs around the figure, pulling it close and holding on with all the strength he could muster even as the ship started to tilt into its ascent of the next monstruous wave.
The dead pirate started to pull away. Even with another man encumbering it, the thing was able to claw its way across the deck towards the navigators. Drake kicked and punched at it, and still the monster kept going.
Teeth sunk into Drake’s right arm, and he screamed. Unable to hold on anymore, he rolled away down the deck, cradling his bitten arm, and slammed into the stairway where the pirate had died.
One of his crew members skidded and slipped down the railing to Drake’s crumpled position and tried to help him up.
“Fucking kill that thing!” Drake pointed at the dead pirate with his bad arm and saw for the first time just how much blood he was losing as it mixed with the sea spray and soaked into his clothing.
“Who? Merle?” the crewman shouted back.
With a growl, Drake shoved the man away, picked up a nearby splinter of wood no longer than his hand, and leapt after the corpse. It reached for the terrified navigator, who was busy trying to hold the ship’s wheel steady while kicking away the monster attempting to chew on his ankle.
Roaring out every bit of pain and frustration he was feeling, Drake drove the shard of wood down into the base of the dead pirate’s neck. The creature spasmed and groaned, but kept reaching for the navigator’s foot. Drake planted his feet as firmly as he could and started dragging the corpse backwards, inch by inch, away from the wheel. Somewhere along the way the ship levelled off, then tilted back the other way, beginning its terrifying descent down a wave. Drake tightened his grasp on the creature, ignoring its attempts to turn and snap at him or pull itself free, steadying himself with one leg hooked through some rigging. Finally, after the ship had hit the bottom of the wave and a fresh wall of water had slapped them all about, Drake dragged the dead pirate to its feet and gave it an almighty push towards the railing. It stumbled, tripped against the railing, and toppled backwards overboard.
Drake sank down onto his knees amidst the ship and the raging storm and let out a groan. His arm felt like it was on fire where the pirate had bitten him, and he was somewhere beyond exhausted. There was no time to rest. A fresh sheet of sea spray whipped his face, and it was all the wakeup he needed.
Forcing himself back to his feet even as the ship started her next ascent, Drake stumbled his way over to the main mast, passing pirates hanging on for dear life and others scrambling to their jobs. If any of them needed direction, Drake was too exhausted to give it.
He found Beck still clinging to the rigging on the mainmast, her knuckles white and a fearful look in her eyes. Drake doubted it was the dead pirate walking that had frightened her so, and guessed it was more the dubious motion of the ship as she raced up and down the waves. It wasn’t uncommon; some folk simply couldn’t handle the raw power of a churned-up ocean tossing them about like flotsam.
“You saw a sail?” Drake screamed over the storm.
Beck nodded.
“What did it look like?”
Beck seemed to think about it for a while before opening her mouth to answer and receiving a lungful of salty water for her troubles. After a few good retching coughs she managed to speak.
“Like overlapping scales. Lots of sails all together.” She shrugged as though it was the best she could do, but it didn’t matter. Drake already knew what ship it was: a Drurr corsair. And unless he was very much mistaken, they were carrying a necromancer on board.
Chapter 37 - Mary’s Virtue
There weren’t many people who could keep up with Daimen when it came to a drinking contest. He was one of the few folk to have been born and raised on the isles, and his mother, bless her eternally resting soul, might as well have breastfed him grog, he’d started drinking the stuff at such a young age. Of course, it also didn’t help that her suitors had quickly taken to giving Daimen a bottle of something strong and incapacitating to keep him out from underfoot when they came a-calling. All in all, Daimen had been drinking booze since before he was able to stand, and that, along with his natural tolerance for the stuff, made him nigh on unbeatable when it came to any sort of contest that relied on the ability to consume vast amounts of intoxicants.
Of course, his ability to quite literally drink most folk under the table had made him something of a legend among the people of the isles. And along with any reputation of being the best at something, as Stillwater had very recently learned, came challenges from those who thought themselves better.
Daimen’s current opponent, a boy with a prolific amount of hair on his neck and none on his face, named himself Caster Shallows. The lad claimed more feats, accomplishments, and miracles than Drake Morrass himself, and Daimen had never met another man quite so enamoured with himself as Drake.
“I shailed with…” Caster paused to let out an inhuman belch that wafted sour, fishy breath into Daimen’s face. “With Peregrew Fin out of Korral. Privateers, we named ourselves.”
“Aye, is that so?” Daimen put his feet up on the table and signalled the serving wench for another round of piss-flavoured grog. The tavern was merry, the music lively, the shanties were bordering on obscene, and Daimen felt like stringing the poor boy along for a few drinks longer. “I met Peregrew once. Had a face as long as me arse and looked like he’d been usin’ it to scrape barnacles off his ship.”
“Uglier shunofabitch ya never did see,” Caster agreed with a grin and a slow shake of his head.
Daimen laughed. Captain Peregrew Fin was a retired, ex-Acanthian navy officer who had been discharged for alleged piracy and had decided that if he was to be branded as such, he might as well make the claims true. He’d captured a total of one ship before a mutiny had made him governor of his own little island somewhere in the southern isles where, to this day, he remained and screamed bloody murder at any ship that came within hailing distance. For that brief career in piracy though, Peregrew had been known as “the Pretty Pirate”, due to his stunning good looks and total ineptitude in command of any vessel larger than a bucket.