The flames, which had been climbing the tarred hull, predictably eager, suddenly flickered, then guttered out.
And soft footsteps sounded, down the walkway from the head. Large, almost hulking, a figure wearing a full-length hauberk of black chain that slithered in the gloom. Bald pate a dull grey, thick-fingered hands reaching down as the figure crouched above the crushed body of the rat.
A soft whimper escaped Korbal Broach’s flabby lips.
The very last rat aboard Suncurl. His most cherished, if temporary, servant. Witness to the monstrosity that had slain the first mate with such perfunctory delight. And well of course the victim’s head was missing. That made perfect sense, after all.
Korbal Broach paused, cocking a suitably attached ear.
The panic above seemed to have dwindled. Perhaps the crew had abandoned ship, and oh, that would be regrettable. Surely neither the captain nor Bauchelain would permit such a thing. Did not Bauchelain know how Korbal so cherished these myriad pulses of sordid, not-especially-healthy lives? A harvest promised him, yes, once they were no longer necessary. Promised.
Why, Korbal Broach might have to pursue them, if truly they had fled A rasping cackle from the darkness-somewhere far down towards the stern.
Korbal Broach frowned. “Rude,” he murmured, “to have so interrupted my precious thoughts. So rude.”
The cackle crumbled into a rasp, and a voice drifted out. “You.”
“Yes,” Korbal Broach replied.
“No, it can’t be.”
“But it is.”
“You must die.”
“So I must. One day.”
“Soon.”
“No.”
“I will kill you. Devour your round head. Taste the bitter sweetness of your round cheeks. Lap the blood in its round pool beneath you.”
“No.”
“Come closer.”
“I can do that,” Korbal Broach replied, straightening and walking towards the stern. He passed beneath the grainy rectangle of lesser darkness that was the still undogged hatch. And in his mailed hand was a crescent-bladed short-handled axe that seemed to be sweating oily grit. Gleaming most evil.
“That cannot hurt me.”
“Yes, no pain. But I have no wish to hurt you.” And Korbal Broach giggled. “I will chop you up. No pain. Just pieces. I want your pieces.”
“Bold mortal. We shall indeed test one another… but not right now.”
Korbal Broach halted. The demon, he knew, was gone. Disappointed, he slipped the handle of the axe under his belt. He sniffed the air. Tasted the darkness. Listened to the slurp and swirl of water beyond the hull. Then, scratching his behind, he turned and began climbing the steps.
He never reached the top. But then, he had never intended to.
At the rush of chaotic commotion on the mid-deck of the Suncurl immediately following the screams from below, Emancipor Reese crouched down in the doorway of the cabin hatch, stared out at the shrieking, hair-tearing, biting, clawing mob of sailors thrashing this way and that. Bodies plummeting over the rail. More screams rising up unabated from the hold’s hatch. And he muttered, “Not again.”
This was how the world circled round itself, curly as a pubic hair, plucked and flung wayward on whatever wind happened by as the breeches were tugged down and coolness prickled forever hidden places-as hidden as the other side of the moon, aye-and life spun out of control again and yet again, even as scenes repeated themselves, ghastly and uncanny-why, he half expected to hear the crunch of wood against rocks and ice, the squeal of horses drowning below decks, the staggering figures, their faces blurring past in a smear of blood and disordered features. As the wind howled as if flinging darkness itself in all directions, a mad night’s fit of murderous destruction.
But that, he reassured himself, was long ago. Another ship. Another life.
As for this, well.
Adjusting his grip on Bauchelain’s oversized sword, Emancipor Reese straightened and ascended the steps onto the deck. He raised the weapon high. Then bellowed, “Sailors abide! Abide! Abide for orders, damn you all!”
Stentorian roars, as invariably erupted from officers in charge of things and the people working those things, could, if the fates so decreed, reach through to that tiny walnut-sized knob of civil intelligence that could be found in the brains of most sailors; could, with the Lady’s blessing and Mael’s drawn breath, shock into obedience those figurative nuts, and so deliver order and attentiveness “It’s Mancy the Luckless! He’s to blame! Get him!”
“Aw shit.”
Gust Hubb, hapless in his earlessness, poked his mangled head up from the hatch and, eyes bugging, was witness to a frenzied rush upon that manservant so aptly nicknamed the Luckless. Who happened to be holding an enormous sword which he began waving dangerously in an effort to hold back the snarling sailors. A belaying pin knocked the weapon from Mancy’s hands and Gust saw the weapon cartwheel through the air-straight for him.
Bleating, Gust Hubb lunged back, and fire exploded between his eyes. Blood spurting everywhere as he brought his hands up to where his nose used to be, only to find two spraying, frothing holes. He fell to one side and rolled away from the hatch. The terrible smell of cold iron flooded up into his brain, overwhelming even the pain. This, commingled with the endless rush of water-which he now felt streaming from his half-blinded eyes-and some faint creaking from somewhere else, was all too much for his assailed senses and blessed oblivion swept in to engulf him in the black tide of peace.
For now.
Heck Urse, pulling Birds Mottle up into view, glanced over to see Gust lying motionless on the deck, his head resting in a pool of blood. Anger surged, white hot. He dragged Birds over the lip of the hatch and left her there, tugging free his short-sword that only a while earlier he had forgotten was even there.
A score of sailors jostled around something at the base of the mainmast, lines rippling, then they were hoisting a limp body upward, scraping against the mast, arms dangling. Mancy the Luckless, beaten senseless and maybe worse, tied by one ankle, climbing skyward in ragged jerks.
“What in Hood’s name are you doing!?” Heck roared, advancing on the mob.
A woman named Mipple, her hair looking like a long-abandoned vulture nest, snapped her head round and bared stained teeth at him. “Luckless! Tryin’ to kill us all! We’s sacrificing him to Mael!”
“Atop the mainmast? You fools, let him down!”
“No!” cried another sailor, waving a belaying pin and strutting about as if in charge.
Gust scowled at the man, trying to recall his name. “Wister, is it?”
“You ain’t a man’ o’the seas, Heck Urse-and don’t go tryin’ to tell us different! Look at you, you’re a damned soldier, a deserter!”
“Mancy ain’t got-”
“He cut off your friend’s nose!”
Heck stopped, his scowl deepening. He wiped the blood from his own nose, heard a click. “He did?”
“Aye, with that big sword-the one jammed in the rail there-see the blood on the blade? That’s Gust’s blood!”
A chorus confirmed these details, heads nodding on all sides, manly sideways spits to punctuate Wister’s assertions.
Heck slid his sword back into its scabbard. “Well then, hoist away!”