Snake Heart (Chains of Honor #2) -Lindsay Buroker Page 0,79
enough for the three of them. Yanko worried he would sink it if he crawled in, but that did not keep him from swimming toward it.
Something splashed into the water between him and it, and he flinched, thinking a shark had broken the surface. But no, it had been a cannonball dropping down alarmingly close to his friends. More cannonballs arched over the crowded dinghy.
“How about some protection, mighty mage?” Lakeo yelled after following the arc of the last one. It splashed down less than ten meters from their craft.
Dak rowed toward Yanko, a cut streaming blood down the side of his face to drip from his chin. His face was grim with determination, and he did not seem to notice it.
“Shark, Yanko.” Arayevo pointed behind him.
He sensed the large hammerhead approaching and flung an image of fire into its mind before realizing that would probably mean nothing to a shark. He replaced the fire projection with one of killer whales chasing the shark, though he had no idea if they actually were a threat to the fearsome predators. He did not stop swimming long enough to look back and see if his ruse had worked. Instead, he added a shield behind him to deter creatures from taking a chomp from his legs.
“Duck,” Lakeo yelled, pulling her head down as a cannonball shot past, barely a foot above them.
Before Yanko could figure out how to get into the strange dinghy without tipping it over, Dak grabbed him under the armpits and hauled him out of the water as if he weighed nothing.
A hand latched onto his shoulder before he had fully landed, the slender and thin-hulled boat rocking upsettingly. His legs dangled over the side, as he landed on his back between Dak and Lakeo. Arayevo crouched in the bow, all of them pressed in so closely that they touched.
“Seriously, Yanko. Some magical cannonball repellent would not be unappreciated right now,” Lakeo said, her fingers digging into his shoulder.
One of those cannonballs was arcing straight toward them, and Yanko did not have time to respond, not with words. He compressed the air between them and the ship firing at them, creating a wall. The cannonball bounced off as surely as if it had hit solid rock.
“Good,” Dak said, as talkative as ever. “Keep it up.”
He patted Yanko on the chest, then immediately set to rowing.
Yanko pulled his legs into the boat and scrunched them to his chest, finding a spot where he could sit in the puddle on the bottom, between Dak and Lakeo. The puddle hardly mattered since even more water dripped from his robe and hair. He could see the pirate ships from this new vantage point, but did not find the view inspiring. A second vessel had turned its side toward them, gun ports on display, smoke wafting up as more cannons fired. The artillerymen had gotten their range down, and those iron balls hurtled through the air, landing alarmingly close to the boat. Yanko kept his defenses up, shielding them as Dak rowed, though it was not easy. He found it simpler to block a fireball for a few seconds than to maintain a barrier. Maintaining it was hard since the mind tended to fool itself, thinking it had not lessened its effort at all, only for it to be revealed that it had when a ball sailed through to land a foot off their stern. A huge wave of water sluiced over the edge, and Lakeo cursed as it hit her in the back.
“Yanko,” she protested, swatting him in the shoulder.
“Considering you almost wrecked me along with my moth—Pey Lu’s ship, you should be delighted that I’m shielding you at all,” Yanko said, though he felt abashed and redoubled his efforts.
“I wasn’t the one firing at the ship. That was Dak. He said you were tough enough to survive a few mugra.”
“If those are the giant pointy cannonballs that explode, I don’t think anyone can survive a direct hit with one. Never thought I’d see something like that on a Kyattese vessel.”
Without pausing in his rowing, Dak offered a rare smile. It reminded Yanko uncomfortably of a wolf chasing after his prey.
“As I told you,” Dak said, “the underwater boats were designed by my people. They have many means of defense.” His smile turned to a grimace. “Though I wasn’t expecting to encounter a mage who could simply crush the craft with his mind like a sardine tin.”