suggesting she heard quite clearly their intentions and divined their meaning. ‘Possibly for me to put an arrow in their gullets.’
‘They could easily overrun us,’ he muttered. ‘Why wouldn’t they attack now, while they still have the advantage? ’
‘Scared?’
‘Concerned.’
‘About what?’
Largely, he told himself, that we’re going to die and you’re going to be the cause. His thoughts throbbed painfully in the back of his head. They’re waiting for something, I know it, and when they finally decide to attack, all I’ve got is a lunatic shict to fight them. Where are the others? Where’s Dreadaeleon? Where’s Denaos? Why do I even keep them around? I could do this. I could survive this if they were gone.
If she were . . .
He felt her stare upon him as surely as if she’d shot him. From the corner of his own eye, he could see hers staring at him. No, he thought, studying. Studying with an unnerving steadiness that exceeded even the unpleasantness of her long-vanished smile.
His skin twitched under her gaze, he shifted, turned a shoulder to her.
Stop staring at me.
She canted her head to one side. ‘What?’
Any response he might have had degenerated into a sudden cry of surprise, one lost amidst countless others, as the deck shifted violently beneath him, sending him hurtling to one knee. He was rendered deaf by the roar of waves as the Riptide rent the sea beneath it with the force of its turn, but even the ocean could not drown out the furious howl from the Riptide’s helm.
‘More men!’ the voice screeched. ‘Get more men to the railing! What are you doing, you thrice-fondled sons of six-legged whores from hell? Get those chains off!’
Not an eye could help turning to the ship’s wheel, and the slim, dark figure behind it. A bald beacon, Captain Argaol’s hairless head shone with sweat as his muscles strained to guide his bride of wood and sails away from her pursuer. Eyes white and wide in furious snarl, he turned a scowl onto Lenk.
‘What in Zamanthras’s name are you blasphemers being paid for?’ He thrust a finger towards the railings. ‘Get. Them. OFF!’
Several bodies pushed past Lenk, hatchets in hand as they rushed the chains biting into the Riptide’s hull. At this, a lilting voice cut across the gap of the sea, sharp as a blade to Lenk’s ears as he pulled himself to his feet.
‘I say, kind Captain, that hardly seems the proper way to address the gentlemen in your employ, does it?’ The helmsman of the Linkmaster taunted with little effort as he guided the black vessel to keep pace with its prey. ‘Truly, sirrah, perhaps you could benefit from a tongue more silver than brass?’
‘Stuff your metaphors in your eyes and burn them, Cragscum!’ Argaol split his roar in twain, hurling the rest of his fury at his crew below. ‘Faster! Work faster, you hairless monkeys! Get the chains off!’
‘Do we help?’ Kataria asked, looking from the chains to Lenk. ‘I mean, aren’t you a monkey?’
‘Monkeys lack a sense of business etiquette,’ Lenk replied. ‘Argaol isn’t the one who pays us.’ His eyes drifted down, along with his frown, to the dull iron fingers peeking over the edge of the Riptide’s hull. ‘Besides, no amount of screaming is going to smash that thing loose.’
Her eyes followed his, and so did her lips, at the sight of the massive metal claw. A ‘mother claw’, some sailors had shrieked upon seeing it: a massive bridge of links, each the size of a housecat, ending in six massive talons that clung to its victim ship like an overconfident drunkard.
‘Were slander but one key upon a ring of victory, good Captain, I dare suggest you’d not be in such delicate circumstance, ’ the Linkmaster’s helmsman called from across the gap. ‘Alas, a lack of manners more frequently begets sharp devices embedded in kidneys. If I might be so brash as to suggest surrender as a means of keeping your internal organs free of metallic intrusion?’
The mother claw had since lived up to its title, resisting any attempt to dislodge it. What swords could be cobbled together had been broken upon it. The sailors that might have been able to dislodge it when the Cragsmen attacked were also the first to be cut down or grievously wounded. All attempts to tear away from its embrace had proved useless.
Not that it seems to stop Argaol from trying, Lenk noted.
‘You might,’ the captain roared to his rival, ‘but only if I might