Assail (Malazan Empire, #6)(128)

The strange vessel was long and sleek, and moved with extraordinary speed – all the more astonishingly as she showed no sail nor sweeps. Like a shot arrow, it darted straight for the Forbearance and pulled up alongside, slowing to match the ponderous pace of the sweeps that pulled the Forbearance along, as there was no wind to speak of.

A lone figure straightened from the deck. It was a thin old man, mostly bald, wrapped in a ragged cloak. ‘Permission to come aboard,’ he called up in a reedy voice.

Gwynn, next to Shimmer, muttered: ‘That vessel is soaked in magery.’

‘Raise your Warren,’ she answered, and signed likewise to Petal and Blues.

A rope ladder was lowered. The foreign vessel manoeuvred alongside. The old man climbed aboard – quite vigorously for such an ancient. K’azz came forward to meet him. The fellow scanned the deck with eyes tiny and dark, like deep wells.

‘What can we do for you?’ K’azz asked.

‘You can surrender this vessel and all those behind to us.’

‘I’m sorry …’ K’azz began.

The old man snapped up a wizened hand. ‘Do not argue. And do not resist. We will destroy—’ The fellow stopped himself, his gaze narrowing. He murmured, ‘Wait a moment …’

Someone very big and sturdy brushed past Shimmer: Bars pushing his way forward. ‘Just a minute,’ he called.

The two met at mid-deck. The old man’s gaze widened and he gaped; Bars rocked back, pointing. ‘You!’ the old man growled.

‘It’s them!’ Bars called. ‘The Sharrs of Exile Keep!’

Snarling, the old man spun sending his cloak flying across to enmesh Bars who went down in its smothering folds. Beneath, bands and belts wrapped the old fellow from head to foot, all holding short blades that shone like polished silver. He threw his arms out and every one of the blades, an entire forest of them, flew from their many sheaths.

The blades scattered over the deck. Shimmer staggered at a blow to her chest, then threw herself flat as several glinting shards flew for her face. She heard the slivers punch into someone near, and his answering grunt as he fell: Sept, thrust through the throat. Multiple impacts now sounded as Black the Elder closed on the man behind his shield – the blades thudding home. But, the slivers of metal flew like birds, and many swung round to strike Black from the rear, hammering into him so hard they disappeared fully into his back. He fell as well.

She glimpsed Gwynn lying against the side, a hand pressed to one eye, blood coursing between the fingers.

A thrown rope took the mage round his neck and yanked him viciously from his feet, but the spinning blades flew and severed the rope. A new figure appeared at the bow: a young man wielding lengths of slim chain in each hand. These he lashed about, clearing the space round him. The tearing of cloth revealed Bars freeing himself. K’azz and others were closing on the old man, all crawling forward.

With another snarl, the Sharr mage jumped over the side. Shimmer leapt to the rail; saw him on his own vessel. A panicked yell snapped her attention to the bow: Blues was closing upon the youth, the chains now wrapped about his twinned fighting sticks. Bars lunged in, blade overhead, for a ferocious swipe that hacked through the lad’s shoulder, collarbone and ribs and stuck in the spine. A kick sent the body over the side. As one, like a flock, all the flying shards converged upon Bars. Rather coolly, he simply rolled over the rail to follow the lad into the sea below.

At that instant Reed, Cole and Amatt all bounded past Shimmer to throw themselves after the mage. K’azz and she yelled simultaneously, ‘No!’ But all three thumped to the strange vessel’s deck, rolling, and came up, blades readied.

K’azz joined Shimmer at the rail. ‘Get off there!’ he yelled.

Chains, Shimmer noted, lay all about the decking. The old man laughed and gestured, and the chains snaked to life. They lashed their fat links about the three Avowed, then tumbled over the side in huge splashes. She caught one last glimpse of Cole before he disappeared, and she wasn’t certain, but she thought the man flashed her one last typical roguish smile, as if to say: well … had to happen sometime. She had one boot up on the rail when a firm hand on her shoulder urged her back down – K’azz.

A sudden blur of motion next to the Exile mage, and the fellow fell stiffly to the deck. Or rather, most of him did: Cowl stood holding his severed head. The last links of chain slithered off the deck to sink into the water, and all was quiet.

Shimmer stood staring at the waves where moments before three good friends had disappeared. She shook her head in horror and disbelief.

‘By the gods …’ someone murmured, in awe.

She rubbed her chest where one of the flying slivers had rebounded from her mail armour. K’azz was staring at her, a strange expression on his face. She frowned at him, distracted.

A call sounded from the water below: ‘Hello? Some help here?’

Everyone dashed to the side. Bars was splashing about. Ropes were thrown and soon the man was up over the side, dripping water to the deck. Shimmer embraced him, but he did not share her pleasure. ‘How many?’ he asked K’azz.

Their commander opened his mouth to answer, but stopped himself. He looked to Shimmer. ‘How many?’

She scanned the deck: Gwynn, she saw, now stood, a cloth tied over one eye. ‘Five, I believe,’ she answered. ‘Black the Elder, Sept, Cole, Amatt, and Reed.’